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Home » Development » Transformation Airdmillan, Kalamia and Seaforth sugar plantations, c1888 Proposed sugar mill sites, Tully and Banyan area, 1923 Proposed Queensland sugar mill locations, 1923 Australian sugar growing and refining sites, c1950 Queensland sugar map, 1941 By: Peter Griggs Commercial production of sugar commenced in Queensland during the mid-1860s. Over the next century, the growth in the area under sugar cane was mostly steadily upwards, although this growth was tightly regulated to avoid overproduction. During the late nineteenth century, sugar cane cultivation became concentrated primarily along the deltaic and levee soils of the main rivers and creeks in eleven discrete coastal areas between Mossman and Nerang, separated by areas of unreliable rainfall and/or unsuitable soils. Production remained concentrated in these areas throughout most of the twentieth century. Organising the production landscape Initially, sugar production in Queensland occurred on plantations or large, vertically integrated agro-industrial units combining both the growing of the sugar cane and the manufacture of raw sugar in a sugar mill located on the property. Sixty per cent of the sugar plantations formed in Queensland between 1864 and 1880 covered between 120 and 360 ha, with the average size being 200 ha. A few estates exceeded 800 ha in size. During the 1880s, much larger sugar plantations were established in Queensland. They included Airdmillan, Kalamia and Seaforth sugar plantations. The Colonial Sugar Refining Company established some of the largest sugar plantations during the 1880s, forming estates that covered 4000-8000 ha. Despite securing so much land, most sugar planters cultivated less than 200 ha, with only a handful cultivating over 400 ha. Land not cropped with sugar cane was devoted to cattle grazing or planted with crops of tropical fruit, maize and potatoes to feed the estate’s horses and field workers. In Queensland before 1890, the sugar planters overwhelmingly relied upon indentured Pacific Islanders or Asians, not slaves. However, after 1880 the practice of recruiting Pacific Islanders for the Queensland sugar industry was increasingly opposed by residents of all the Australian colonies. This opposition and the implementation of the White Australia Policy after 1900 led to a transformation in the production unit of the Queensland sugar industry. The majority of sugar planters subdivided their estates. They either leased the land to small farmers, creating tenanted sugar plantations, or sold the land to the small farmers. They converted their sugar mills into proprietary central sugar mills. The Queensland government assisted this transformation by providing funds to erect farmer cooperative central mills, often in localities not served by a planter’s mill. This arrangement still forms the basis of the Queensland sugar industry today. Transforming the natural landscape The sugar cane producing lands of Queensland were once covered by a variety of forests. However, the cultivation of sugar cane called for large-scale clearing of the native vegetation. Beyond the initial clearing, the growing of sugar cane placed other demands upon the native forests. Forested land was cleared for railway track right-of-way and to provide timber for rail sleepers. Before 1950, large amounts of firewood were also needed to fuel the boilers in the sugar mills: approximately one ton of firewood was used to produce one ton of sugar. This firewood came from nearby forested land. Sugar cane requires large supplies of water to support its growth, but it cannot tolerate its roots being submerged in water for long periods of time. Initially, Queensland’s canegrowers avoided areas that were water-logged or poorly drained. However, during the post-World War II expansion of the Queensland sugar industry, land was reclaimed from draining wetlands, such as the Babinda Swamp. In addition, Queensland’s canegrowers paid more attention to drainage, creating new channels on their properties to speed up the removal of water in order to improve yields. The sugar-producing lands on Queensland, especially in Far North Queensland, are criss-crossed by drains established to enhance on-farm drainage. Natural watercourses have also been deepened or straightened to improve local drainage. In the Herbert River, Tully and Johnstone River districts, most of the freshwater wetlands have disappeared, a consequence of drainage-related works for the sugar industry. References and Further reading (Note): Peter D. Griggs, Global industry, local innovation: the history of cane sugar production in Australia, 1820-1995, Bern, Peter Lang AG, (in press) References and Further reading (Note): Peter D. Griggs, ‘Deforestation and sugar cane growing in Eastern Australia, 1860-1995’, Environment and history, 13/ 3, 2007 References and Further reading (Note): Peter D. Griggs, ‘Sugar plantations in Queensland, 1864-1912: origins, characteristics, distribution and decline’, Agricultural history, 74/ 3, 2000 Keywords: agriculture, cane, farmers, sugar, sugar cane Date created: 26 October 2010 Copyright © Peter Griggs, 2010 Related: Transformation Sugar cane, Atherton Shire, 1966 A gang working on sugar cane tram lines, Isis central sugar mill, 1976 Sugar terminal, Mackay, c1960 Mechanical harvest of sugar-cane, Kingaroy Shire, 1956 Burning sugar cane near Cairns, 1965 Unloading bulk sugar rail trucks, Mackay, 1958 Cane knife Sugar bag SoilSunshine Coast About the Queensland Historical Atlas

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2017-17/0130/en_head.json.gz/23818

Charlie Warner Community & People Decision to return to the farm was a good one for the Arnolds Published June 6, 2012 at 6:57 am Barbara and Fred Arnold, tending to one of the young calves, who seemed to be more interested in one of the barn cats than the photographer. Photo by Charlie Warner By Charlie Warner Argus Editor Imagine a married couple being in the teaching profession for a combined 20 years, the bulk of that in the Twin Cities metro area, and then deciding to take up dairy farming in Houston County. And imagine being in the dairy business for 28 years and deciding to make a substantial investment in their dairy operation at a time in life when most farming couples are selling out. That, in a nutshell, is what Caledonia-area dairy farmers Fred and Barbara Arnold have done. The Arnolds own and operate a dairy/beef farm between Caledonia and Spring Grove. They milk 120 cows twice a day, tend to a 130-animal beef operation and own and/or lease 1,000 acres of farm land. The vast majority of what they raise on those 1,000 acres goes right back into their dairy and beef cows. While Barbara comes by dairy farming naturally, (the farm has been in her family for 102 years) Fred doesn’t. Fred grew up in north central Iowa and was the son of a farm implement dealer. He didn’t know a whole lot about farming, but he did have considerable knowledge of farm equipment. Fred was a musician and attended Luther College in Decorah where he received his teaching degree in music. His first teaching gig was at Canton High School in 1960. “That’s so long ago, it wasn’t even Mabel-Canton,” Fred said with a laugh. While in his first year of teaching general music and band at Canton, Fred was having troubles with his flute players. “I was a trumpet player and although I learned how to play all the instruments in band, I struggled with the flute,” Fred recalled. Spring Grove High School had a band instructor who excelled with woodwinds. So Fred contacted Donald Gjerdrum to get some advice. Gjerdrum had a senior in his band named Barbara Sylling, who was an accomplished flutist. Fred and Barbara Arnold are shown with some of the tall silos behind them. Photo by Charlie Warner “I met this young lady, who was a senior in high school. I was right out of college and five years older than she. When I first saw her, it was history.” After Barbara graduated from Spring Grove High, she and Fred began to date. They later married and Barbara earned her music teaching degree from St. Olaf. The two music teachers worked in the St. Paul Public School system and then the Rosemount/Apple Valley School District. Back on the farm In the summer of 1973 Fred and Barbara decided to give dairy farming a trial run. Barbara’s father Leonard Sylling wanted to get out of farming. Neither of his sons were interested in taking over the operation. So Fred and Barbara spent the summer on the Wilmington Township farm. They decided it was time for a change, gave their notices to the Rosemount/Apple Valley School District, finished out their teaching year and took over the farm in June of 1974. “For me, it was on the job training,” Fred said shaking his head. “Barbara grew up on this farm. It was a great move for us. And Leonard and Russ Krech (former Houston County Extension agent) were great teachers.” When Fred and Barbara took over in 1974, Leonard had one of the larger dairy operations in the area with a 60-cow herd. And it was quite modern for the times, with a newly-installed pipeline milk delivery system. Back then the entire countryside was dotted with dairy farms. Fred recalled that their farm was surrounded with dairy farms. “Quite a few of them have sold their herds,” Fred noted. “There’s still some of the larger operations left, but it sure isn’t the way it was nearly 40 years ago when we started.” A diversified operation The Arnolds’ farming operation is a diversified one. Along with an ever-growing dairy herd, they also had a substantial beef operation. By 1978, their dairy barn was maxed out and they put up a free-stall barn that would hold 135 animals. They also added two tall blue Harvestore silos and a liquid manure handling and storage system. Fred and Barbara rode out the highs and the lows of the farming industry in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2002 they started talking about retiring. Milking cows twice a day for nearly 30 years and Fred in his mid-60s, the urge to call it quits, sell the cows, the equipment and the land was quite strong. “Nobody in their right mind would have bought a tie-stall operation with a pipeline,” Fred said. “And we didn’t want to see everything we had worked for during the past 30 years just disappear.” Major update in 2002 So instead of selling out, the Arnolds built a new double-six herringbone dairy parlor, a free-stall barn and increased their dairy herd to 120 animals. “It was a tough decision to make. But we are glad we did it, most of the time,” Fred said. “We just couldn’t see abandoning the operation…having it cease to exist. By modernizing it, we’re hoping when we do retire, we will be able to sell it and the dairy operation will continue.” The Arnolds employ three full-time and seven part-time persons. They milk twice a day, with Barbara still taking a very active role with the milking chores. “That’s her domain,” Fred said pointing to the dairy barn. Changes in the industry Improvements in the genetics of the cows has been quite dramatic, according to Fred. When he and his wife first took the farm over, the top cows were producing 15,000 pounds of milk per year. Now almost all their cows are producing 25,000 pounds per year and there are some dairy cows in the area that have hit the 30,000 pound mark. Feed rations also have a lot to do with the massive increase in productivity. It’s “new and improved” all the time. “There are some very smart people out there coming up with new ideas all the time,” Fred said. When asked if they ever thought years ago when they were both music teachers in the Twin Cities that they would be spending their lives on a dairy farm in Houston County, both Fred and Barbara said they never considered it. “But it was a very good decision. This farm has been in Barbara’s family for more than 100 years. We are both very happy here,” Fred concluded. You can contact Charlie Warner at [email protected] Filed Under: featured Post navigation

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First Name: E-mail Basil for Everything By Judi Singleton I planted three kinds of basil today. I love basil it is one of those herbs that just is is truly indispensible in the kitchen. Ocimum basilicum, Sweet Basil, is the most common. Two or three plants will keep you in fresh Basil all summer, and give you plenty to dry for winter. The flavor is great, but deteriorates some after the plant flowers. Let a stalk or two go to seed for next years crop. Purple basils: have dark purple serrated leaves, pink flowering; good for cooking. 'Purple ruffles' is an example that is good for salad vinegars. East Indian: has a spicy clove-like aroma and flavor; good with tomatoes and curries.Thai basil: is anise flavored and used in Indian and Thai cooking. I also planted some seeds of a globe variety of basil Bush basils: are compact rounded plants, have tiny leaves, good flavor. Examples are 'spicy globe', 'bush' and 'tiny leaf purple'. Try different kinds. There are many different kinds of basil that are fun to grow. I like to look for the ones with tiny leaves, and the purple-leafed kind, and also spicy basil. Basil is a polymorph, meaning it occurs in many different forms, varieties and closely related species. The different types are easily hybridized, producing many different kinds of plants with different essential oil constituents and compositions. There are cinnamon, lemon, clove and licorice scented basils; purple and green, curly and lettuce leafed varieties. Dwarf bush types with tiny leaves are grown as ornamental plants. Sweet Basil, Ocimum basilicum is an herbaceous member of the mint family. It is the basil most commonly grown. It is a delicate herb with a bold aroma and flavor, containing about 1% essential oil which has an intense, spicy-sweet, aroma and a slight anise-like undertone. Often associated with Italian cuisine, basil is native to the region surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Popular as a seasoning and easy to grow, basil is cultivated and used throughout the world. Basil will flourish in your garden or in a pot on a sunny windowsill as long as it gets lots of warmth, water and sun. Pinch the flowers The minute you see flowers, get rid of them. The plant should keep flourishing with hearty leaves thereafter. Pinch your basil back to keep it small and tender even if you are not eating it as fast as it can grow. Last year mine was too top heavy for its root base and tended to fall over on anything unfortunate enough to be nearby. Snails and slugs absolutely love basil, and will devour young tender sprouting basil voraciously. I start my basil indoors so that it's not as much of a problem. I put it in pots outdoors but I surround the pots each night with pans of beer. It has been so wet here this Spring that I had about 40 slugs a night just around one basil plant. Common basil pests are aphids, Japanese beetles and slugs. Knock off aphids with a spray of water, hand pick off Japanese beetles and drop into soapy water. For slugs, put out small containers of beer to attract them to their "fatal beer swim". Basils are also susceptible to fungal leaf spot (caused by poor drainage, high humidity), fusarium wilt, and cucumber mosaic virus (transmitted by aphids). In the garden, basil is a fine ornamental and has a long history as a companion plant; it's supposed to improve the growth and flavor of tomatoes and help repel flying insects. Basil can be grown best in zones 4-10 and prefer warm soils and climate. Start seeds indoors six weeks before the last frost date in a moist medium at 80 degrees F. Or start seeds outdoors after soil is warm. Plant in well-drained soil with a little compost tilled in or add a small amount of balanced organic fertilizer. Optimum soil ph is 5.5 - 7.5. Space plants 12-18 inches apart. You can snip fresh basil leaves into a pasta dish or salad and have your aromatherapy and eat it too! Basil Lore Cultivated since antiquity, basil originated in India, where it was regarded as a sacred herb. The name comes from the Greek basileus meaning 'king.' In India, Hindus believed that if a leaf of basil was buried with them, it would get them into heaven. Basil was also sacred to the Gods Krishna, and Vishnu and is still found growing around temples. In Italy, basil was used as a signal for love; a pot of basil placed on the balcony meant that a woman was ready for her suitor to arrive. In England, basil was used to ward off insects and evil spirits. Basil is a part of religious traditions around the world, from Christianity to Hindu. Although there is no mention of basil in the Bible (21), the plant is said to have grown at the site of Christ's crucifixion (21, 24) and is associated with St. Basil, whose feast day is celebrated in Greece on January 1 by having basil blessed at church (21, 45). Holy basil, Ocimum tenuiflorum, is particularly sacred in Hindu tradition. It is thought to be the manifestation of the goddess, Tulasi, and to have grown from her ashes. There are several versions of the legend, but according to a widely known one, Tulasi was tricked into betraying her husband when she was seduced by the god Vishnu in the guise of her husband. In her torment, Tulasi killed herself, and Vishnu declared that she would be "worshipped by women for her faithfulness" and would keep women from becoming widows (37). Thus, holy basil, which also goes by the common name tulsi, an obvious reference to the goddess, became a Hindu symbol of love, eternal life, purification and protection (21, 30, 37). In addition to basil's role in the death of Tulasi in the Hindu legend, basil has played a role in burial rituals and has been grown on graves in various countries. Love and Courtship Basil's love symbolism isn't limited to India. It has been considered an aphrodisiac by some, is associated with the pagan love goddess, Erzuli (20, 56 in 75), and is used in love spells (20). In Italy, where sweet basil is called "kiss me Nicholas," "bacia-nicola," it is thought to attract husbands to wives (21), and a pot of basil on a windowsill is meant to signal a lover (75). In Moldavian folklore, if a man accepts a sprig of basil from a woman, he will fall in love with her (21). As is typical for its folklore, while being linked to love and attraction, basil has also conversely been associated with chastity. In Sicilian folklore, basil is associated with both love and death when basil sprouts from the head of [L]isabetta of Messina's slain lover (21). Protection and Luck Basil is considered a good luck charm in some folklore. It is reportedly used in exorcisms, for protection and to attract wealth (20, 26, 75). Language of Flowers Basil's symbolism in the Victorian language of flowers also reflects its dual nature. It signifies both hatred (for common basil) and best wishes (for sweet basil) (34). History & Folklore Basil has a long and interesting history steeped in legend. Probably originating in Asia and Africa (73), it is thought to have been brought to ancient Greece by Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.E.), to have made its way to England from India in the mid 1500s and arrived in the U.S in the early 1600s (21). It was grown in medieval gardens (18, 40) and is mentioned in many classic herbals, including those of Culpeper, Gerard, Parkinson and Dioscorides (19, 33, 64). Basil's folklore is as complex as its flavor and aromas. In terms of its legend and symbolism, basil has been both loved and feared. Its associations include such polar opposites as love and hate, danger and protection, and life and death. The generic name, Ocimum, derives from the ancient Greek word, okimon, meaning smell (21, 24, 79), which suggests the impressive nature of basil's fragrance. The specific epithet, basilicum, is Latin for basilikon, which means kingly/royal in Greek (21, 24, 79). Henry Beston, in Herbs of the Earth, suggests that basil was so named for the regal "Tyrian" purple color [of its flowers] (11). According to Parkinson, basil's scent was "fit for a king's house" (35). Many authors suggest that basil's negative associations stem from the similarity of its Latin specific epithet, basilicum, to the name of the basilisk (or basilicus), the mythical serpent with the lethal gaze. According to Helen Noyes Webster's 1936 Herbarist article, the first mention of basil was by Chrysippus (pre-206 B.C.E.): "Ocimum exists only to drive men insane" (78, 82). In his seventeenth-century herbal, Parkinson claimed basil could be used "to procure a cheereful and merry heart" (66). Gerard praised basil as a remedy for melancholy but also repeated Dioscorides' warning that too much basil "dulleth the sight…and is of a hard digestion" (33). Culpeper and Gerard claimed basil would cure scorpion and bee stings, and Gerard mentioned that basil could spontaneously generate worms if chewed and left in the sun (19, 33). Basil was also reputed to cause the spontaneous generation of scorpions and to cause scorpions to grow in the brain (19, 35). This connection with scorpions persists to this day in basil's association with the astrological sign, Scorpio (69). Culpeper sums up the disagreement among ancient writers by deeming basil "the Herb which all Authors are together by the Ears about, and rail at one another like Lawyers" (19). Medically, basil has been used as a sedative, an expectorant, and a laxative but it is not used much in herbal preparations today. Still, adding basil leaves to food is an aid to digestion. The essential oil of basil is used to treat skin conditions such as acne. basil has a long history as a medicinal herb. The Greek physician Dioscorides prescribed basil for headache. Pliny thought it was an aphrodisiac; his contemporaries fed it to horses during the breeding season. In modern aromatherapy, basil is used to cheer the heart and mind. The sweet, energizing aroma seems to help relieve sorrow and melancholy. Growing Basil Folklore holds that you have to curse the ground as you sow basil for it to grow well, but you can forego the cussing and still grow basil successfully. Its main requirements are sun and heat. ---History---The derivation of the name Basil is uncertain. Some authorities say it comes from the Greek basileus, a king, because, as Parkinson says, 'the smell thereof is so excellent that it is fit for a king's house,' or it may have been termed royal, because it was used in some regal unguent or medicine. One rather unlikely theory is that it is shortened from basilisk, a fabulous creature that could kill with a look. This theory may be based on a strange old superstition that connected the plant with scorpions. Parkinson tells us that 'being gently handled it gave a pleasant smell but being hardly wrung and bruised would breed scorpions. It is also observed that scorpions doe much rest and abide under these pots and vessells wherein Basil is planted.' It was generally believed that if a sprig of Basil were left under a pot it would in time turn to a scorpion. Superstition went so far as to affirm that even smelling the plant might bring a scorpion into the brain. Carry it in your pocket and it brings money to your business..Ahh, let's see..Plant basil on your property and it keeps goats away and keeps you from becoming inebriated...It was also thougt to be a soother of tempers...if that were true, parents of teenagers should probably have a lot of it around... and witches were suppose to drink 1/2 cup of basil juice before they took to the air. For anyone out there who is a witch, this is not to make fun of your belief...It is just some things I read and thought were kind of cute ( for lack of a better word.) In Romania if a young lady offers a young man a sprig of basil, and he accepts, they are officially engaged. In Haiti, basil is thought to belong to the goddess Erzulie the voodoo goddess of love. In Italy, basil is thought of as a sign of love. At one time young girls would place some on their windowsill to indicate they were looking for a suitor. In Tudor times, small pots of this were given by farmers' wives to visitors as parting gifts. It is also reputed that any man will fall in love with a woman from whom he accepts some basil from as a gift. Culpepper says: 'Being applied to the place bitten by venomous beasts, or stung by a wasp or hornet, it speedily draws the poison to it. - Every like draws its like. Mizaldus affirms, that being laid to rot in horse-dung, it will breed venomous beasts. Hilarius, a French physician, affirms upon his own knowledge, that an acquaintance of his, by common smelling to it, had a scorpion breed in his brain.' If you're looking for a lot of basil recipes, I recommend picking up "The Basil Book" by Marilyn Hampstead (ISBN 0-671-50685-4). Marilyn runs an annual basil festival at her herb farm. This is the largest collection of pesto recipes that I've seen. HarperCollins Practical Gardener: Kitchen Garden : What to Grow and How to Grow It by Lucy Peel The Medicinal Garden: How to Grow and Use Your Own Medicinal Herbs by Anne McIntyre What Herb Is That?: How to Grow and Use the Culinary Herbs by John Hemphill, Rosemary Hemphill Food Folklore : Tales and Truths About What We Eat (The Nutrition Now Series) by Roberta Larson Duyff (Paperback) The Meaning of Herbs: Myth, Language & Lore by Gretchen Scoble, Ann Fiery Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs (Llewellyn's Sourcebook Series) by Scott Cunningham (Paperback) Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs by Claire Kowalchik (Editor), William H. Hylton (Editor) (Paperback) Books: The Green Pharmacy : The Ultimate Compendium Of Natural Remedies From The World's Foremost Authority On Healing Herbs (Green Pharmacy) by James A. Duke Judi Singleton publishes ten blogs a week if you like this article please go to http://herbalharvest.blogspot.com/ and read other articles by her. Copyright © 2004-2011 The Fusion Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

农业

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Tobacco purchasing should be based on value, not price Apr 03, 2017 Some Georgia growers wanted to talk soybean weed control, most didn’t Apr 10, 2017 Caledonia: Where prisoners have grown their food for 125 years Apr 04, 2017 How a blueberry family won and lost against a punishing situation Apr 05, 2017 Crops>Peanuts Second great malaise gripping U.S. as leadership lacking The cable network HBO has been broadcasting a mini-series in recent weeks entitled “John Adams,” based on the superb book of the same title by David McCullough. Both the series and the book are heroic portraits of our second president, and of his courage, wisdom and leadership in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. And it wasn't just Adams. He was surrounded by great leaders — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin — none of whom had any experience in forming a new country, but all of whom were more than up to the task. What brings this to mind, among other things, is the continuing debate over a new farm bill, and the fact that we are now well into 2008 without one. As of this writing, a second short-term extension was being discussed, and perhaps by now we finally have new legislation in place. But why is it taking so long, or why did it take so take so long? It just makes you wonder. If the same leaders who are in power today were running things back in the 1700s, would they have had the courage, the intellect and the fortitude to form this great nation? Judging by all accounts, it's not likely. There seems to be an unprecedented leadership vacuum in Washington, D.C., today, and it cuts equally across party lines. In a democracy, we can expect great debates over contentious legislation, but this farm bill should have been relatively easy. The much ballyhooed “listening sessions” leading up the Bush Administration's farm bill proposal should have told anyone who was really listening all they needed to know — that farmers, for the most part, were satisfied with the previous legislation. It was working, which isn't true for every piece of legislation that comes out of Washington. Perhaps a bit of tweaking was required — especially from a budgetary point of view — but for the most part, it was sound legislation. And, after all of this time and debate, we'll probably get a slightly altered version of the 2002 farm bill, with minor adjustments so that it'll comply with budgetary restraints set by the Administration, including possible payment limits. It's little wonder the approval rating for Congress hovers at around 20 percent. The only thing this esteemed body has agreed upon in recent months has been the economic stimulus plan — a piece of legislation that requires our government to give money it doesn't have back to the taxpayers, in hopes that the taxpayers — rather than paying off their personal debts — will use their rebates to get further into debt. The only way this plan works is if consumers spend the money, at a time when many have maxed out their credit cards and are drowning in debt. It represents the height of cynicism on the part of Congress and the Administration. Many parallels can be drawn between the events of today and those that existed almost 30 years ago when a peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., named Jimmy Carter was serving his first and only term as president. In 1979, the United States was facing an energy crisis, the economy was on the skids, and there were problems in the Middle East. Carter addressed the country in what would become known as his “Great Malaise Speech.” His original intent was to speak to the nation about the growing concerns over looming oil shortages and to urge energy conservation. However, he chose to talk more frankly about another growing crisis, and that is the obvious lack of trust and faith the American people had in their government. “The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways,” said Carter. “It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. The confidence we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July.” Some decried the speech as “preachy,” and others contend that it contributed to Carter losing the presidency to Ronald Reagan. But it was something we don't hear much from politicians today — a harsh truth. And as he concluded the speech, President Carter offered some hope. “First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.” It's a message that rings even truer today, in the midst of war and an economy bordering on disaster. One more thing about those great leaders of the past, including Adams and Jefferson — many of them were farmers. Maybe there's something about having a special relationship with the land that enhances your ability to lead. Whatever it is, we need more of it in Washington today. RelatedPeanut farmers asked if revenue crop insurance meeting their needsApr 24, 2017Don’t gamble with peanut diseases this year. Make right choices earlyApr 24, 20172020 strategic plan positions peanuts for optimistic futureApr 20, 2017One of farming’s tragic truths gets national news coverageApr 20, 2017 Load More

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Busy bees | April 9, 2014 | Almanac | Almanac Online | https://almanacnews.com/print/story/print/2014/04/09/busy-bees Cover Story - April 9, 2014 Beekeeping is booming on the Peninsula by Kate Daly Local honey is becoming a sweet business for beekeepers on the Peninsula these days. For Richard Baxter, who started beekeeping when he was 9 years old, it's exciting to see so many new people getting involved in his favorite hobby. Semi-retired, he runs Golden Harvest Bees out of his home in Redwood City, and helps set up and maintain about 100 hives in the area. He says that when he joined the Beekeepers' Guild of San Mateo County 10 years ago, there were maybe 50 members; now there are more than 300. The support group meets monthly to talk about the joys and challenges of raising bees. Mr. Baxter teaches introductory classes in beekeeping a couple of times a month for $45. He also sells basic starter kits that include a box to set up a hive with bees, and food to get a colony established. That costs around $600; he also offers a maintenance plan for $75 a month on top of that. He harvests the honey usually in the spring and fall, and the owner gets to keep all of it. Alternatively, he will install a hive at a property for free, give the resident up to five pounds of honey, and keep the rest to sell as raw honey at places such as Draeger's, Beltramo's, and the Country Corner store in West Menlo Park. His wife makes soaps, lip balms, and lotions out of the wax and honeycombs, and they sell that, too. Mr. Baxter recently spoke at Wegman's Nursery in Redwood City to about 50 people wanting to know more about backyard beekeeping. He says he was thrilled to see so much interest because "this is generally the time to get started." Spring is when bees naturally swarm to try to find a new home. He will gladly trap a local swarm of honey bees, or what Woodside hobbyist Mike Sieber calls "freebies." The only other way to obtain bees is to buy them, and that can cost a $100 and more per package. Mr. Sieber sells his honey at Emily Joubert in Woodside. He has been keeping bees for 35 years, and notices that it's getting harder and harder to keep his hives alive. He estimates he lost 30 to 50 percent of his hives this past winter due to colony collapse disorder. He's driving to Vacaville and Orland (about 20 miles west of Chico) this month to pick up new bees to replenish his supplies. Starting in February, more than a billion honeybees are trucked to the Sacramento Valley to pollinate the state's almond crop, a multi-billion-dollar industry. After their work is done, the bees are then shipped off to other parts of the country that need them. What's killing off the hives? Experts explain it could be a combination of pests, pathogens, pesticides and herbicides, and/or lack of habitat. Bees forage a mile or two to collect pollen, then return to their hives to make honey. During their travels they could easily encounter natural enemies such as varroa mites, wax moths and small hive beetles, and environmental stressors such as lack of rain. Mike Vigo, ranch foreman of the Bee Ranchers, based in the East Bay, services dozens of hives at homes in Woodside, Portola Valley and Atherton. This year, he says, he's very concerned about late-season bee forage. "If there's not enough rain, everything blooms early ... and by the end of July and beginning of August, if bees don't have adequate food sources, we'll need to feed them," he says. He recommends feeding them simple syrup made from two parts sugar and one part water. Less than two years ago, Mr. Vigo set up a hive in Leslie Doyle's yard in Portola Valley. With kids, dogs and cats, the family gives it a healthy 5-foot berth and has run into no problems getting stung, Ms. Doyle says. Mr. Vigo comes by regularly to maintain the hive, and last fall harvested 36 pounds of honey. She's a graphic artist and was delighted to put her own label on 70 eight-ounce jars and give them to clients, family and friends for Christmas. Mr. Vigo also keeps hives in Portola Valley and Woodside, where the arrangement is that the host gets two pounds of the honey, and then Mr. Vigo sells the rest of the harvest to Roberts Market, where it is packaged as Roberts Kitchen Honey in 16-ounce jars that retail for $16.99. Mr. Vigo keeps two hives at Mike Corley's home in Woodside. "The honey is phenomenal," says Mr. Corley. "There is something extra to it that makes it feel cool because it's from your house." After the last harvest Mr. Corley ended up buying the honey back and putting a personalized label on it so he could give jars to clients over the holidays. Mr. Vigo also keeps four hives in Karen Gilhuly's garden in Woodside. Last fall he set up his gravity-strained extractor in her garage to harvest his local clients' honey. Frames of honeycombs were scraped into a bucket, and the wax was salvaged for Mr. Vigo's daughters to make lip balm and candles. Ms. Gilhuly's daughter Kate sampled some of the fresh honey and pronounced it as having "almost a smoky, darker, more flavorful" taste than the spring harvest, which tends to be lighter and sweeter, based on what's blooming then. Mr. Baxter says some people seek out local honey "for medicinal benefits ... for a good 80 percent of people with hay fever the pollen in the honey has a way of stimulating your immune system to build up tolerance." "Talk to your doctor," he recommends, since some believe there's only anecdotal evidence to support this claim. Mr. Sieber says for him it's not all about the honey. He finds the entire beekeeping experience therapeutic. "In the afternoon light you look up in the air and see the bees coming and going, and in the summer when it's warm in the garden, there's a scent, the most incredible smell."

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Dr. Frankenstem: Etowah gardener invents patented system to grow enormous plants | Times Free Press Local Dr. Frankenstem: Etowah gardener invents patented system to grow enormous plants by Casey Phillips in Life Entertainment These are some of the vegetables that have come out of gardener Jon Dewey's garden using his invention, the Waterstick. These are some of the vegetables that have... Eggplants the size of footballs. Spinach with leaves so broad they dwarf a grown man's hand. Tomato plants that tower to the height of a two-story house. Pumpkins that pack on pounds faster than a couch potato. To most gardeners, these probably sound like Big Veggie Tales, if not outright fibs. In a book released last December, however, green thumb inventor Jon Dewey of McMinn County details a series of techniques he says can help backyard gardeners grow vegetables by the bushel with a minimum of fuss. "This method I'm trying to teach people is designed to grow the most food possible in the smallest amount of space possible with the least amount of work," Dewey says. "I figured out several years ago that plants need vitamins and minerals just like people do. If you give them the right ones, they'll grow huge and you'll get lots of vegetables, too." "The 20 Foot Tomato Plant: How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Imagined Using the Waterstick Grow System" ($7.69, Amazon), is now available as an e-book. The book provides step-by-step instructions for building the Waterstick, Dewey's patented device that delivers water directly to a plant's roots through a feed tube buried in the soil. This method, he says, allows gardeners to use one-quarter as much water and grow roots that are bigger and spread deeper. In the book, he also provides instructions for mixing his fertilizer blend, which he calls Super42Vitalizer, and for making Bug Juice, an organic insect repellent. Both the repellent and the fertilizer can be delivered to the plants' via the Waterstick. In a compact, 12-by-4-foot, raised-bed garden next to his home in Etowah, Tenn., Dewey, 54, has used his gardening system to grow such a profusion of vegetables that he and his wife, Theresa, almost never have to visit the grocery's produce section most of the year. In the course of three plantings in 2013, Dewey's garden yielded 287 pounds of Better Boy tomatoes, 169 pounds of cherry tomatoes, 184 pounds of bell peppers and so many pounds of acorn squash, sugar snap peas and potatoes, he says he didn't even bother keeping count. "If you see the size of these things, they were just massive; everything was massive," he says. Hamilton County Extension Agent Tom Stebbins says one of the main benefits of Dewey's system could be its ability to curtail over-fertilization by focusing the food where the plant needs it. "By fertilizing at the root level and keeping it in a container, it's not getting away, so the roots will extend in the water and take up fertilizer," Tom Stebbins. "If you're in a more urban environment where you'd like to be careful about over-fertilizing, that's a plus." Dewey's book is named in honor of what he calls his greatest gardening success story, a tomato plant that grew 20 feet 8 inches tall in 1995. The plant yielded 372 pounds of tomatoes in a seven-month growing season, he says. It was so colossal, he couldn't reach the topmost branches, even when standing on top of a 10-foot stepladder placed on boards laid across the bed of his pickup truck. Eventually, the massive plant toppled in the high winds brought by Hurricane Opal. When they dug it up, he says, the combined weight of so many tomatoes had bent the galvanized steel pole he'd used to support it. "When it died I was sad but, at the same time, I was relieved because I wasn't going to have to get back up on that ladder," Dewey admits, chuckling. "It wasn't the safest thing in the world." Despite his mad-scientist-like enthusiasm for growing enormous vegetables, Dewey says the experience of climbing that rickety ladder taught him to check his "bigger is better" mentality. He now limits himself to growing tomato plants that top out at "only" 12 feet, but he says he's still a compulsive inventor and tinkerer, a skill set he developed as a necessity growing up on a small farm in rural Pennsylvania. "When you're raised on a farm, you get used to inventing things because things break and you have to come up with ways to make them work," he says. "I'm always trying to invent things. It never stops. Once I get an idea in my head, it won't go away until I do it." The irresistible itch to experiment has given birth to more than just the Waterstick. Dewey also has developed a number of hybrid vegetables, including "bowling ball" acorn squash and garlic spinach. Techniques for growing these cross-breeds are included in the book in a chapter titled "Fun Experiments." "I get bored and try and think of things," Dewey says, his voice betraying an impish enthusiasm. "One year, I crossed jalapenos with tomatoes just to see what would happen. They're interesting to grow and fun to mess with your friends' minds." When Dewey first developed the Waterstick in 1995, the invention attracted the attention of an investor in Gulfport, Miss., who paid $35,000 in 1999 to produce a mold and begin manufacturing it. The device was only available for a few months, however, before Dewey suffered a work injury that left him with five herniated spinal discs. The Waterstick mold sat on the backburner at the Gulfport factory for several years until 2005 when, Dewey was physically able to begin promoting it again. Then Mother Nature threw a wrench in the works. "Hurricane Katrina finished the job by destroying the factory where our mold was," he says, laughing ruefully. "That was the end of it." For several years, Dewey says, he felt sorry for himself at this lost opportunity to sell his inventions. Two years ago, however, he decided he would rather share his secret to bounteous produce, even if it meant losing out on profits from mass manufacturing then device. Even a mad scientist wants to leave behind a legacy. "Everything in my book works," Dewey says. "We don't have any children, so I don't have anyone to leave this to. I don't want all my ideas and inventions to go away when I'm gone. "I want people to be able to use them. That's one of the reasons I invented them." Contact Casey Phillips at [email protected] or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP. More Articles Literary Dublin: Immerse yourself in books and writers and words Wagner: 'Daddy, come see my castle!'

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Top Searches: Home Newspaper Prints Weather Agribusiness Published June 29, 2010, 01:32 PM VALLEY CITY, N.D. — What does a good ag offset look like? That is the question from Bruce Knight, former chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, as he starts his duties as moderator of a panel on agriculture and carbon policy, June 10, at the Valley City (N.D.) Eagles. By: Mikkel Pates, Agweek VALLEY CITY, N.D. — What does a good ag offset look like?That is the question from Bruce Knight, former chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, as he starts his duties as moderator of a panel on agriculture and carbon policy, June 10, at the Valley City (N.D.) Eagles.Knight notes that this may “be one of the first times you’ll have an opportunity to be a part of the establishment of a market.”The event drew about 30 people, and included state leadership from sugar, corn, barley and ethanol groups. Also in the room were biomass and wind experts.North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring, had expressed concerns after recent discussions he’s had with EPA officials. Goehring reports the agency is moving forward on establishing greenhouse gas emission levels. “Ag is on their radar, but the only thing on their radar is animal ag,” Goehring says.In apparent disbelief, Goehring adds that wildlife and nature are “off the table,” and that even though wildlife and wild areas such as wetlands emit greenhouse gases. He says that agriculture is designed to produce food, fuel and fiber. “If we are going to design a program that’s just for carbon, we’ve missed the mark. We haven’t served society, not only the people of just this country, but globally,” he says. “I believe that agriculture — if this is done right — can benefit. But we have to be the ones designing that policy.”Some producers are seeing the potential income from “offsets” a system of rewarding individuals and companies for safely storing more carbon than they are releasing.Gene Goven, a farmer and rancher from Turtle Lake, N.D., spoke about the benefits of cover crop cocktails and other efforts to improve productivity and enhance soil qualities, but others aren’t as excited.Questions, not answersNick Sinner, executive vice president of the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association, says his industry “doesn’t have a lot of answers but we do have a lot of concerns.” He says no-till practices don’t work with beets in the Red River Valley, and that if “we go out of business” then sugar will come from “parts of the world that have less regulation than we do.”Steve Edwardson, executive director of the North Dakota Barley Council, notes that the malting and brewing industry is “not a small energy user.” He only half-joked that if the government over-regulates the malting and brewing industry, then “you don’t have any beer, thank you very much.” Hitting a more serious tone, he says there is “a lot of fragmentation in the whole cap-and-trade and sequestration program and it needs to be refined and narrowed.”Tom Lilja, executive director of the North Dakota Corn Growers Association, speaking in place of Bart Schott of Kulm, N.D., who will become president of the National Corn Growers Association next year, says the cap-and-trade plans have huge implications because things like diesel fuel are expected to go up 32 cents per gallon because of it, by 2020. He says there is “no guarantee” that fertilizer industries will receive “sufficient allowances” for being energy and trade sensitive.He says there is a concern that “every corn grower will recognize a cost of production increase” but that no-till producers in the Southern seaboard, would benefit the most from credits.Coming, regardless?Laura Sands, consultant and coordinator of the Ag Carbon Market Working Group, has been working for several years to help organizations discuss what kinds of climate policies will work with agriculture.Sands spoke about “marketplace drivers” for carbon policies, some of them led by companies such as Wal-Mart, Costco, Kroger and Safeway who are asking suppliers for information about carbon footprints.“Applications” are coming available on devices like for iPhones, for example, that will help them see not only the price per unit on an item in the store, but also its “sustainability score,” which includes a carbon footprint analysis.Sands says agriculture still is seen as a source of “offsets” for industries that are net carbon emitters beyond their caps.She says a recent study by the Memphis, Tenn.,-based Informa research company in 2009 says that agriculture, in one version of cap-and-trade, would see a rise in production costs of 1.2 percent for corn and soybeans and 1.9 percent for wheat through the year 2025 when a provision runs out that exempts fertilizer. Wheat and corn will see higher cost increases than soybeans because they use more nitrogen.Sands says that some farm organizations want to think that climate change legislation can just be killed, but she notes that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled several years ago that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should and can regulate greenhouse gases. There is a Senate bill to push back on EPA regulation, she adds, but the House is unlikely to pass it and President Obama “won’t sign it.”Farmers face the threat that if not regulated directly, the EPA would regulate greenhouse emissions for “all things within agriculture.” She says the best option for agriculture likely is to be the cap-and-trade, where at least there will be some payments coming back the other way.China, India movingShe says that while Americans fear the U.S. will be acting alone, that other emitters, including India and China, are moving ahead. She says China has announced a 20 percent reduction in those emissions in 10 years. She says that while the federal government is moving slower, some states are taking action on their own, and there are now “greenhouse gas nuisance suits” cropping up around the country. And some of the nation’s largest companies, including John Deere and Caterpillar are asking Congress to enact carbon caps — some, while enjoying exceptions.Sands says agriculture must be “at the table” to make sure any cap-and-trade policies are reasonable.As an example, she says, agriculture helped derail an earlier proposal that would have led to massive “afforestation,” a word the government uses for tree planting, as one of the “only options for agriculture” to get offset credits.Among the current keys for agriculture is to make sure the U.S. Department of Agriculture, not the EPA, is the lead agency for agricultural and forestry offsets. She says the policy should be flexible, meaning shorter-term contracts. She says there will be “stackability” of credits from other conservation or stewardship program payments, and that there will be generous crediting for holders of early offsets. cap and trade, agribusiness, farm, offsets FCC Careers FCC Digital Network Jobshq.com Carshq.com Apartmentshq.com Homeshq.com Northlandoutdoors.com Agweek.com Areavoices.com , , | Phone: © 2017 Forum Communications Co. — All rights reserved

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Industry Chinese companies swing investing more to ag By Edited from HighQuest Partners Global AgInvesting July 06, 2014 | 1:10 am EDT China Investment Corp., (CIC), which is China’s $650 billion sovereign wealth fund is shifting its investment focus into global agriculture by partnering with governments, multilateral organizations and institutional investors around the world. It appears the Chinese are realizing that self-sufficiency in food will never be a total reality. China is, therefore, shifting its strategy to securing food sources through global mergers and acquisitions as it once did for fuel and mines. The CIC plans to invest in sectors such as irrigation, animal feed production, and land transformation and other sectors that it leadership sees as being overlooked by institutional investors, according to Financial Times reporters. Over the years since CIC was formed in 2007, CIC’s focus changed a couple times—first investing in U.S. financial institutions but then shifting to investments into energy, mining and metals to support China’s industrial growth and now agricultural sectors investing. China has 21 percent of the world’s population and only 9 percent of the world’s arable land, and in order to feed its growing population by 2050 the country will need approximately half of the total global beef and wheat production, claims Bloomberg business news. Last year Chinese and Hong Kong-listed companies spent $12.3 billion on overseas takeovers and investments in agriculture, food and beverages, Bloomberg further noted. There have been takeovers by Chinese companies of U.S.-based Smithfield Foods Inc.; a Dutch trader company—Nidera Holdings BV; and the agribusiness unit of Noble Group Ltd. All are big players or can be in the international market although China will have to compete against mega-companies world ag trade such as Cargill. Edited from HighQuest Partners Global AgInvesting View All Posts

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News CenterA Corny Turn for Biofuels from Switchgrass: Feature Story Lynn Yarris (510) 486-5375 • November 18, 2011 Introducing a maize gene into switchgrass substantially boosted the potential of the switchgrass biomass as an advanced biofuel feedstock. (Photo courtesy of USDA/ARS) Many experts believe that advanced biofuels made from cellulosic biomass are the most promising alternative to petroleum-based liquid fuels for a renewable, clean, green, domestic source of transportation energy. Nature, however, does not make it easy. Unlike the starch sugars in grains, the complex polysaccharides in the cellulose of plant cell walls are locked within a tough woody material called lignin. For advanced biofuels to be economically competitive, scientists must find inexpensive ways to release these polysaccharides from their bindings and reduce them to fermentable sugars that can be synthesized into fuels. An important step towards achieving this goal has been taken by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a DOE Bioenergy Research Center led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). A team of JBEI researchers, working with researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), has demonstrated that introducing a maize (corn) gene into switchgrass, a highly touted potential feedstock for advanced biofuels, more than doubles (250 percent) the amount of starch in the plant’s cell walls and makes it much easier to extract polysaccharides and convert them into fermentable sugars. The gene, a variant of the maize gene known as Corngrass1 (Cg1), holds the switchgrass in the juvenile phase of development, preventing it from advancing to the adult phase. “We show that Cg1 switchgrass biomass is easier for enzymes to break down and also releases more glucose during saccharification,” says Blake Simmons, a chemical engineer who heads JBEI’s Deconstruction Division and was one of the principal investigators for this research. “Cg1 switchgrass contains decreased amounts of lignin and increased levels of glucose and other sugars compared with wild switchgrass, which enhances the plant’s potential as a feedstock for advanced biofuels.” JBEI researchers studying Cg1 switchgrass included (foreground) Seema Singh, (from left) Chenlin Li, Lan Sun, Blake Simmons and Dean Dibble. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab) The results of this research are described in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) titled “Overexpression of the maize Corngrass1 microRNA prevents flowering, improves digestibility, and increases starch content of switchgrass.” Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic material on earth. Studies have consistently shown that biofuels derived from lignocellulosic biomass could be produced in the United States in a sustainable fashion and could replace today’s gasoline, diesel and jet fuels on a gallon-for-gallon basis. Unlike ethanol made from grains, such fuels could be used in today’s engines and infrastructures and would be carbon-neutral, meaning the use of these fuels would not exacerbate global climate change. Among potential crop feedstocks for advanced biofuels, switchgrass offers a number of advantages. As a perennial grass that is both salt- and drought-tolerant, switchgrass can flourish on marginal cropland, does not compete with food crops, and requires little fertilization. A key to its use in biofuels is making it more digestible to fermentation microbes. “The original Cg1 was isolated in maize about 80 years ago. We cloned the gene in 2007 and engineered it into other plants, including switchgrass, so that these plants would replicate what was found in maize,” says George Chuck, lead author of the PNAS paper and a plant molecular geneticist who holds joint appointments at the Plant Gene Expression Center with ARS and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. “The natural function of Cg1 is to hold pants in the juvenile phase of development for a short time to induce more branching. Our Cg1 variant is special because it is always turned on, which means the plants always think they are juveniles.” George Chuck and Sarah Hake, at the Plant Gene Expression Center, Albany, California, introduced a variant corngrass gene into switchgrass. (Photo courtesy of USDA/ARS) Chuck and his colleague Sarah Hake, another co-author of the PNAS paper and director of the Plant Gene Expression Center, proposed that since juvenile biomass is less lignified, it should be easier to break down into fermentable sugars. Also, since juvenile plants don’t make seed, more starch should be available for making biofuels. To test this hypothesis, they collaborated with Simmons and his colleagues at JBEI to determine the impact of introducing the Cg1 gene into switchgrass. In addition to reducing the lignin and boosting the amount of starch in the switchgrass, the introduction and overexpression of the maize Cg1 gene also prevented the switchgrass from flowering even after more than two years of growth, an unexpected but advantageous result. “The lack of flowering limits the risk of the genetically modified switchgrass from spreading genes into the wild population,” says Chuck. The results of this research offer a promising new approach for the improvement of dedicated bioenergy crops, but there are questions to be answered. For example, the Cg1 switchgrass biomass still required a pre-treatment to efficiently liberate fermentable sugars. Overxpression of the Cg1 gene in switchgrass (left) compared to Wild-type of switchgrass of the same age and grown under the same conditions. (Photo courtesy of USDA/ARS) “The alteration of the switchgrass does allow us to use less energy in our pre-treatments to achieve high sugar yields as compared to the energy required to convert the wild type plants,” Simmons says. “The results of this research set the stage for an expanded suite of pretreatment and saccharification approaches at JBEI and elsewhere that will be used to generate hydrolysates for characterization and fuel production.” Another question to be answered pertains to the mechanism by which Cg1 is able to keep switchgrass and other plants in the juvenile phase. “We know that Cg1 is controlling an entire family of transcription factor genes,” Chuck says, “but we have no idea how these genes function in the context of plant aging. It will probably take a few years to figure this out.” Co-authoring the PNAS paper with Chuck and Simmons were Christian Tobias, Lan Sun, Florian Kraemer, Chenlin Li, Dean Dibble, Rohit Arora, Jennifer Bragg, John Vogel, Seema Singh, Markus Pauly and Sarah Hake. This research was supported in part by DOE’s Office of Science and by the USDA-ARS. JBEI is one of three Bioenergy Research Centers established by the DOE’s Office of Science in 2007. It is a scientific partnership led by Berkeley Lab and includes the Sandia National Laboratories, the University of California campuses of Berkeley and Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. DOE’s Bioenergy Research Centers support multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research teams pursuing the fundamental scientific breakthroughs needed to make production of cellulosic biofuels, or biofuels from nonfood plant fiber, cost-effective on a national scale. For more about the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), visit the Website at www.jbei.org For more about the Plant Gene Expression Center, visit the Website at http://www.pgec.usda.gov/ Updated: November 18, 2011. . . . .Additional Information4194 ViewsTAGS: biofuels, biology, clean energy, energyConnect

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Meat Market Update | Grilling demand pulls prices higher Apr 20, 2017 Prime and Choice producing more dollars Apr 17, 2017 2017 Feed Composition Tables: Use this to mix your cattle feed rations Mar 21, 2017 2017 Parasite & Pest Management Product Listing Apr 18, 2017 QSA Joins The Industry Lexicon Quality system assessment (QSA), the USDA-certified process that qualifies cattle for export to Japan, creates some new industry challenges, as well as opportunities. Walt Barnhart | Feb 01, 2006 Depending on your point of view, quality system assessment (QSA) programs can be simple, complex, common sense, or a lot of work. But no matter your opinion, government rules controlling beef exports will affect the industry's ability to meet beef sales potential to the newly opened Japanese market. Japan officially opened its doors Dec. 12 to U.S. beef from animals 20 months of age or younger. And the rules for verifying that meat qualifies for export to Japan can be found in detailed QSA plans that fit the Beef Export Verification (BEV) program. QSAs are created by packers, feeders, stockyards, producers and suppliers under strict USDA oversight. The evaluation of their compliance to BEV is conducted by USDA's Livestock and Seed Program, Audit, Review and Compliance (ARC) Branch. All QSA programs are audited by ARC at least twice a year. In terms of the Japanese export market for beef, a QSA provides assurance that animals bred, raised and harvested are 20 months of age or younger. Qualifying cattle Information on QSAs has been making its way across the U.S. for more than a year (see “Prove It!” November 2005 BEEF), but confusion still exists. For example, just having “age- and source-verified” cattle isn't enough to qualify for the beef export program, says John Lawrence, Iowa State University (ISU) livestock economist and Iowa Beef Center director. The animals must be part of a USDA-approved QSA program (find a listing of such programs at www.ams.usda.gov/lsg/arc/qsap.htm). Properly documented calves should be accepted into most existing QSA programs. Stockers and feedlots wishing to participate, however, have additional hoops to assure animals through their operations can be effectively traced and are from QSA-certified operations. A whole new world According to Paul Clayton, U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) senior vice president of export services, it's now a whole new industry ballgame when it comes to exporting beef products. “The page has turned,” Clayton says. “We have a new set of rules.” QSA participation is voluntary for cattle selling domestically, but mandatory for sellers wishing to potentially test the lucrative Japan export market. That applies to every sector from cow-calf to packer — no exceptions. Cow-calf producers, stockers and feeders aren't required to have their own QSAs, however. They can participate as a supplier to a customer's QSA program, for instance, or join an umbrella QSA program set up by an organization or stockyard. And it doesn't mean a producer wanting to determine the value potential of QSA participation will find it difficult, says Ben Weinheimer, Texas Cattle Feeders Association (TCFA) regulatory manager. “QSA isn't a program requiring drastic change,” he says. “If producers are smart enough to stay in the business and remain profitable, it will be straightforward for them.” For cow-calf producers, Weinheimer says it's a process of documenting the date the first animal in a group was born. That documentation can be on pocket calendars, wall calendars or other verifiable, visible records. “Bull dates alone aren't sufficient, although bull dates can provide good supporting documentation,” he says. Lawrence agrees cow-calf producers should find the process straightforward. “For producers with recorded birth dates, and who know the age of the oldest cattle (in the group), it's pretty simple,” he says. Steve Owens is co-owner of Joplin Regional Stockyards (JRS), Carthage, MO. Owens says JRS, which established its own QSA program under the Missouri Department of Agriculture umbrella and is the first U.S. auction market to be QSA qualified, picks up most of the burden for its customers. “We're the ones doing the work. The work is at the stockyard, feeder and packer level,” Owens says. “It doesn't have to be difficult for the normal producer.” Auditing is a key Clayton says QSA involvement requires a “realistic record” of the animals. The records must make sense to an auditor, he says. While QSA-approved sites will be USDA audited twice/year, those requesting QSA certification also will be subject to auditing by USDA or a QSA-approved site. Audits by the latter, which would be similar to those by USDA, will take place at least once each year. “There needs to be a real comfort level with the records,” Clayton says. “Everything must add up.” An audit “comes down to being a few pieces of documentation, and the involvement doesn't always need to be face-to-face,” says Weinheimer of TCFA, which has instituted its own umbrella QSA. What is verified is the training process, age records and detailed information on commingled cattle, with more detailed procedures on how the cattle were kept separated. Weinheimer says feeders and producers who establish their own QSAs will spend more, not just because of the initial development costs but because they must pay for USDA's fee-based auditing. Meanwhile, an umbrella program will be audited regularly by USDA, with only a percentage of its participants audited every six months. Getting past the confusion Weinheimer admits there's been much confusion with the export-verification process. Lawrence attributes it to the fact each QSA program is developed by the qualifying location, which creates some differences. “This is one of those cases where producers could sit down in the coffee shop and tell different stories about what's required — and they all could be true,” he says. Still, the differences should be minor in most QSA-approved locations, as bottom-line requirements to meet export qualification to Japan are the same. Producers may have to keep slightly different sets of documentation for different QSA-approved locations, Lawrence says, but cattle approved for an independent QSA plan should be portable to any QSA-approved system. Clayton adds, “Producers shouldn't make this more complicated than it is. These things can be simple.” Will it pay? Of course, the big question for all industry segments is whether the extra effort is worth it pocketbook-wise? Lawrence says a lot of that depends on cattle availability. “We don't know if packers will pay for animals that qualify,” he says. “Will they pay a premium, or will they be able to find enough eligible cattle in the cooler?” While it may be a slow process, Clayton says, as time goes on, there will be value incentives for providing this information, which is a “value attribute” of the cattle being sold. “The producer should get paid for those things,” he says, adding that “the industry gets the value” for this extra market for its animals. Joplin's Owens believes QSA participation will pay off in the long run. “Recording this information is probably something producers are already doing,” Owens says. “You might as well go ahead and get approved as a QSA producer if you have the opportunity.” After all, he adds, it represents another market for your cattle. Walt Barnhart is president of Carnivore Communications LLC, Denver, CO, and a former National Cattlemen's Beef Association communications director. Age options Documented birth dates aren't the only approved method of verifying age of cattle for export of their beef to Japan. Beef from carcasses with A40 maturity also qualify. Most carcasses in the A40 classification, which is certified by USDA graders who grade the ossification of the chine bone and other factors, will be those of cattle less than 15 months of age. The drawback of using the A40 method to separate export items is that important variety meats, such as tongue, can't be tied to the carcass, and thus aren't eligible for export to Japan. Such products have much more value in foreign markets than domestically. Packers would prefer to stage their cattle by documented age, which a QSA makes possible, so all beef and offal in a harvest and fabrication session would qualify for export. TAGS: Exports Load More

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Competitive issues, polarizing views Will the rule proposed by GIPSA result in more or less competition in the meat industry? MeatPoultry.com, 10/14/2010 by Bernard Shire Will the rule proposed by the US Dept. of Agriculture’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration result in more or less competition in the meat industry? Last month, a New York Times editorial supported the rule as an effort by the Obama Administration to bring back competition in an industry where four processors – JBS, Tyson, National Beef Packing and Cargill – control 80 percent of the business in the fedcattle slaughter and processing industry.For years, there were arguments between processors and cattle producers over steps taken by larger meat packers to lower competition in the industry. Some producers have seen procurement contracts and similar arrangements as more beneficial to meat processors than them. Four years ago, this led to a hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court after some cattle producers had won a $1.25 billion lawsuit against Tyson Fresh Meats for using these procurement arrangements to knock down fed-cattle prices in the market. But for a long time, most producers felt they were on the outside looking in when dealing with the big processors. Now they may get some relief, with the publishing of proposed rulemaking by the USDA’s GIPSA making changes in the Packers and Stockyards Act. The new rules were proposed as a result of the 2008 Farm Bill, which requires the federal agency to fix specific problems in the livestock and poultry industries. The Packers and Stockyards Act has existed since 1921 to promote fair competition, payment protection and guard against fraudulent and deceptive trade practices in the livestock and poultry markets. Advocates say the new rulemaking would help producers by creating a more balanced and transparent marketplace and protect producers from retaliation and coercion from big processors. For example, a producer should be able to speak freely against wrongful treatment by a processor without threat of losing their contract. Smaller producers could compete against larger ones, rulemaking advocates say, and producers making large capital investments in animal agriculture would be protected from further debt. USDA says the new rules are needed due to increasing consolidation and vertical integration in the livestock and poultry-processing industries. According to the rule, “This level of concentration and vertical integration increases the possibility packers, live poultry dealers and swine contractors may engage in unfair practices undermining a producer’s ability to compete freely in the marketplace.” Due to consolidation and concentration, USDA adds, there are fewer buyers with whom producers can conduct business. The rule also provides for the Secretary to consider whether terms are offered to producers or growers who can meet the same contract requirements as larger producers, when deciding whether an undue or unreasonable preference has taken place. Although processors will not be required to do business with smaller producers, big processors and large producers think the proposed GIPSA rule will hurt meat and poultry processors, as well as producers. “We are confident that USDA – Department of Justice Workshops will show what dozens of analyses by the government and universities have concluded repeatedly – that the U.S. meat and poultry industry is dynamic and competitive and livestock and poultry procurement practices, including marketing agreements and forward contracts, are legitimate,” said Mark Dopp, American Meat Institute senior vice president of regulatory affairs and general council. AMI says a long list of groups have asked to withdraw the proposed GIPSA rule, while proponents represent “a minority view.” Dopp notes attempts to prove these agreements and contracts afford undue preferences have been rejected by eight appellate courts. The National Pork Producers Council says the rule “will have a chilling effect on innovation and flexibility and violations will include practices that don’t diminish competition.” The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says the rule’s effect in opening cattle markets to trial lawyers is not in the best interest of the marketplace or of producer profitability. And the National Chicken Council says the regulation was drafted to satisfy a small number of activist growers, and will not enhance the business of the great majority of broiler producers who are satisfied with the current system. Implementing the rule is being pushed by the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund/United Stockgrowers of the USA and other smaller groups, rivals to large groups of producers like NCBA. Comments are being accepted by USDA until Nov. 22. At the same time, the Mandatory Price Reporting Act of 2010, reauthorizing mandatory price reporting programs run by USDA, has become law. The law requires livestock sales information to be reported and published publicly on a timely basis.Bernard Shire is M&P’s Washington correspondent, contributing editor and feature writer based in Lancaster, Pa. He also works as a food safety consultant and writer for Shire & Associates LLC.

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Shipping Profiles Plantation Produce makes big changes By Tom Burfield Plantation Produce Co., Mission, Texas, expects big changes as it kicks off its winter produce deal. The company will become a repacking and processing house, said Marcelino Garza, president and chief executive officer. It also will open its doors for public storage, warehousing and repacking and will handle in-and-outs for other companies. The firm also expanded its cold storage and now has the capacity to handle 60 truckloads, he said. At the same time, the company expanded its docking space and created a climate-controlled dock. Five refrigeration settings are available. In the field, Plantation Produce will grow and ship greens from south Texas and Mexico for the first time. Greens will be available seven months of the year from Texas and six months from Mexico. The program includes organic and conventional collard greens, kale, swiss chard, mustard greens, turnips, cilantro, parsley and green onions. The firm also has launched organic and conventional broccoli programs. By January, Garza said, the facility will be Global Food Safety Initiative certified. The company exports to Korea from its operations in Mexico, he said. A lot of greenhouse-grown Mexican products will go to Asia, including greens. Pilot programs have been started for tomatoes, bell peppers and hot peppers. In the spring, the company, which used to grow only onions, cabbage and some cucumbers in south Texas and Mexico, plans to plant squash, zucchini and straightneck yellow squash along with cucumbers and tomatoes in south Texas. “This is a spring deal that we’re doing for some of the chain stores,” Garza said. Garza took over the 40-year-old company three years ago, bought the former 78,000-square-foot Frito-Lay processing facility and plans to bring the firm back to being the powerhouse it once was, he said. “We tested the waters and we know where we’re going and where we need to be,” he said. plantation producewinter produce deal About the Author: Tom Burfield , Western Correspondent Tom Burfield has been Western correspondent for The Packer for more than 20 years, and he also writes for Produce Retailer magazine and has contributed to several other Farm Journal Media publications. View All Posts

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Crop Protection Brazil Likely To Need Fertilizer Imports Source: Rabobank | Jul 15, 2010 According to a new Rabobank report, plans to increase fertilizer production in Brazil will not eliminate the country’s fertilizer imports. Instead, it is opening a new window of opportunity for retailers. “Brazil’s efforts to increase fertilizer production will lower the gap between domestic supply and demand,” says Rabobank Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory (FAR) Farm Inputs Analyst Erin FitzPatrick. “However, demand growth will outpace domestic supply growth, keeping the country dependent on fertilizer imports, which could continue to leave Brazilian famers exposed to price volatility.” Some of this volatility will be eased as companies around the globe – not just in Brazil – work to increase fertilizer supply. According to International Fertilizer Association data in the report “Changes in Brazil’s Fertilizer Industry,” between 2010 and 2014, global potash capacity is expected to increase 11.4 million tons, and global capacity of phosphoric acid, the intermediary for phosphate fertilizers, is expected to grow 7.9 million tons. “The resulting increase in supply will ease price volatility experienced in 2008 and thus the volatility farmers experience,” says FitzPatrick, who co-authored the report with FAR Brazil-based Fertilizer Analyst Priscila Richetti. “However, it does not install a mechanism to remove future price volatility from the Brazilian fertilizer industry.” As part of a Brazilian government $880 billion program focused on infrastructure investments to boost economic and social development, $6.2 billion is slated for the fertilizer industry. Specifics of how the money will be disbursed were not disclosed, but the government is likely to focus on private sector deployment, in contrast with prior announcements that privately owned reserves could be nationalized. “In the fertilizer industry, this means government threats to set up a fertilizer company will likely remain just that,” says Richetti. “Instead the focus will be on leveraging existing assets, infrastructure and knowledge of Brazilian fertilizer and mining companies.” Brazil’s economic reserves of phosphate rock and potash place them sixth and fifth in the world, respectively. Phosphate rock reserves are sufficient to meet the country’s demand through capacity expansions. Potash reserves, on the other hand, can be further developed in Brazil, but will not be enough to meet long-term demand in the country. Plans to develop phosphate rock reserves could potentially double production to 12.4 million tons in 2015 – up from 6.6 million today. At least half of this expansion will come from phosphate reserves controlled by Vale (a Brazilian company that is now the country’s biggest phosphate rock producer). This could decrease Brazil’s phosphate imports to 20% of demand. For potash, capacity production in Brazil could nearly triple in the next five years. This increase – from today’s 493,000 tons to nearly 1.2 million tons – will come from the country’s only potash producer, Vale, which has stated its desire to become a global leader in potash production. Additionally, Vale’s expansions in Argentina and Canada could be considered an extension of Brazil’s control over global potash production. “Planned domestic expansion could lower Brazil’s share of imported potash and phosphate fertilizers in the short term,” says FitzPatrick. “However, because Brazil’s demand for phosphate and potash fertilizers is two to four times the amount of domestic supplies, the country will remain dependent on imports.” Brazil’s increase in fertilizer production comes mainly from Vale, which is putting production in the hands of fewer companies and represents a change in Brazil’s fertilizer chain. This leaves less integration between upstream and downstream players in the value chain causing retailers to seek new strategies. “This opens the door for new market entrants at the retail level in Brazil, which could interest international or regional companies,” says Richetti. Background With agriculture representing 25% of Brazil’s gross domestic product (GDP), and as home to 13% of the world’s untapped arable land, that percentage is likely to grow. As it does, so does the need for fertilizer. However, Brazil’s strong demand growth for fertilizer has rapidly outpaced its domestic supplies, creating an increasing reliance on imports. Today, more than 70% of Brazil’s fertilizer use is imported – making it the world’s second-largest importer of phosphate and potash fertilizers. Because of this, Brazilian farmers have been increasingly exposed to international price volatility. So, in early 2010, the Brazilian government announced new incentives to encourage the expansion of its domestic fertilizer industry. The incentives, which will be disbursed over four years, are designed to encourage growth in the country’s domestic fertilizer production. RelatedLiquid N additive drives uptakeApr 07, 2017Dow, DuPont get conditional EU nodMar 27, 2017Match sprayer to new herbicidesFeb 10, 20172017 Crop insurance considerationsFeb 06, 2017 Load More

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Illinois State Museum The Land of Illinois The glaciers of the Ice Ages formed the soils and terrain of Illinois. The northeastern and central areas of the state are very flat where the last glacier ground up rock and soil in its path. It deposited sand, gravel, dirt, and some rocks from farther north when it melted. Dust and sand also blew onto land surrounding the edges of the glaciers. All these deposits make up the fertile soil of the central area. There are also areas of the state that the glaciers did not change. In the northwest and far southern parts of Illinois, there is hilly, forested terrain that does not have glacial drift as a topsoil. The rivers of Illinois and their seasonal flooding also affect agriculture. In the flat prairies, water stood for months after heavy rains. Farmers and communities had to drain acreage before they could farm. In other areas, such as along the Illinois River, dams were built to prevent flooding. Each natural section of Illinois helped determine the type of farming that developed there. There are cattle ranches in western Illinois and orchards and vineyards in the south, as well as the wheat, corn, and soybean fields everyone knows about. This part of the History of Illinois Agriculture will include information and images about the creation of Illinois soils and their types.

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NCIA 2017 OPENING SESSION AND KEYNOTE SPEAKER Glenn Hickman, President and CEO of Hickman’s Family Farms Glenn Hickman is a third generation Arizona farmer, and is the current President and CEO of Hickman’s Family Farms. According to payment records, his official start with the family business was in 1973, when he was 12 years old. He was a driven man even at a very young age, and at 19 he left college to run and manage the family farm with his mother and father, Gertie and Bill Hickman, Sr. Two years later, younger brother Billy followed the same path, and soon Clint and Sharman joined the ranks. Hickman’s Family Farms began on grandmother Nell Hickman’s porch in 1944 in Glendale, Arizona. Growing from an enterprise with an original flock of 50 chickens, Hickman’s Family Farms is now the largest egg company in the Southwest. Together the Hickmans have transformed the small “backyard” egg operation into a multi-million dollar family enterprise. Considered an Arizona success story, Hickman’s Family Farms has provided fresh eggs for 72 years. Glenn and his wife, Audrey, are the parents of two adult sons, Michael and Grant, and recently became grandparents for the first time. Glenn Hickman will discuss the 20-year history of success between Arizona Correctional Industries and Hickman’s Family Farms, a CI partner that employs 279 offenders and encourages them to learn about every part of the business. During their twenty years of collaboration, Arizona CI and Hickman’s Family Farms have trained nearly 2,500 offenders who have worked for over 4.5 million hours. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear the story of a successful CI-business partnership!

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Constraints of Recommended Production Technology of Fennel Cultivation by the Farmers in Nagaur District of Rajasthan, India Sunil Kumar Sharma1* and N.K. Sharma2 1Agriculture Research Station, SKRAU Bikaner, Rajasthan, India2Department of Extension Education SKNAU Jobner, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India *Corresponding author Seed spices occupy prominent place in the total basket of spices of the country and play a significant role in our national economy. The group of spices account for about 37 per cent and 18 per cent of the total area and production of spices in the country, respectively. Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) commonly known as ‘Saunf’ is an important and highly valued spice grown in India. This crop is widely grown throughout the temperate and subtropical region of the world for its aromatic fruits used in various food preparations such as soups, meat dishes, sauces, pastries, confectionaries, pickles, liquors etc. The fennel seeds are aromatic, stimulants and carminative. Rajasthan is the third largest producer of spices in the country and accounts for 12.48 % of the total production of major spices. The major fennel producing districts of Rajasthan are Nagaur, Sirohi, Jalore, Dausa, Tonk, Sawai Madhopur and contribute above 90 per cent of area and production of fennel crop. Fennel is an important commercial cash crop of arid and semi arid region. There is a wide scope to improve and increase the fennel production and productivity by enhancing the knowledge and adoption of fennel production technology. The present study was conducted in eight villages (four villages from Mertacity tehsil and four villages from Degana tehsil) in Nagaur district of Rajasthan. A sample of 120 fennel growers was selected from these selected villages by using simple random sampling with proportion sample method. The results indicated that 43.33 per cent of the total respondents were in important constraints group, whereas 38.33 per cent in most important and remaining 18.33 per cent respondents were observed in the group of least important constraints in the study area. It was also observed that Poor knowledge about irrigation management and Lack of knowledge about plant protection chemicals (Technical constraints), Supply of inferior quality seed by the agencies and Green color maintaining variety is not available (Input constraints), Lack of knowledge about market intelligence and Incorrect weight measurement by businessman (Marketing constraints), Late sowing reduces the yield and Cloudy weather and rainfall at the time of flowering (Miscellaneous constraints) were perceived as most important constraints by the fennel growers. Keywords: Fennel growers, Constraints, Knowledge, Large, small and marginal farmers. Download this article as How to cite this article: Sunil Kumar Sharma and Sharma, N.K. 2017. Constraints of Recommended Production Technology of Fennel Cultivation by the Farmers in Nagaur District of Rajasthan, India.Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci. 6(3): 2326-2337. doi: https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2017.603.266

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Citrus growers lose $441 million from California freeze The early December freeze in California's Central Valley caused $441 million in crop losses as about 30 percent of navel oranges and 40 percent of remaining mandarins were lost, according to an industry group. Tim HeardenCapital Press Published on February 3, 2014 11:15AM Icicles hang off oranges as growers use water to help keep the orchard warm during freezing weather on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2013, in Del Rey, Calif. The California Citrus Mutual reports steep damages in some areas as a result of the freeze. (AP Photo/The Fresno Bee, MARK CROSSE) Buy this photo SACRAMENTO — Citrus growers lost about $441 million in revenue because of the early December freeze in California’s Central Valley, as about 30 percent of navel oranges and 40 percent of remaining mandarins were destroyed, an industry group estimates.Lemons fared slightly better, as only 20 percent of that crop was destroyed, the Exeter-based California Citrus Mutual reported Feb. 3 after extensively examining orchards throughout the valley.The state’s citrus industry has spent $49 million using wind machines and irrigation equipment to protect the valley’s $1.5 billion crop from frigid overnight temperatures that lingered Dec. 3-11 and returned on several nights since then.“It’s shaping up to be a challenging year for growers, who are coming off the freeze and going into a drought year,” said Bob Blakely, CCM’s director of industry relations. “In some ways it’s uncharted territory.”Blakely said about 90 percent of growers have purchased crop insurance which will cover the costs of continuing to farm, but “that doesn’t leave any room for extras,” he said. And in areas where water is available, it may become more expensive, he said.Effects from the freeze were uneven, with some varieties and some areas being hit harder than others, Citrus Mutual officials have said. Kern County, for instance, has seen a greater degree of damage because of the timing of the freeze and the amount of fruit that was still on trees.Mandarins were wiped out in some parts of Kern and Madera counties, while other areas saw damage as great as 50 percent, Citrus Mutual chairman Kevin Severns explained in a news release.“Among the (growers) who were completely frozen out, some of those have already taken the fruit off and sent it to the juice plant,” Blakely said.About 20 percent of the mandarin crop had been picked before the freeze hit. Among the remaining mandarins, the equivalent of 4.7 million 40-pound cartons were lost, meaning $150 million in lost revenue, CCM reported.In addition, the equivalent of 22 million cartons of navel oranges were destroyed, causing $260 million in lost revenue, and 1 million cartons of lemons were lost, equating to a $24 million loss, according to Citrus Mutual.Prices for oranges in the supermarket may increase slightly, but the industry is wary of raising prices to the point that consumers turn to offshore citrus or other types of fruit, CCM president Joel Nelsen said in the release. The freeze will likely shorten the harvest season, which could end in mid-May rather than early summer, industry officials have said.OnlineCalifornia Citrus Mutual: http://www.cacitrusmutual.com

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2017 Cotton Producer Tour of Cotton Incorporated Headquarters Apr 14, 2017 2017 Mid-South Agricultural and Environmental Law Conference June 8-9 in Memphis Apr 18, 2017 Make sure hay donations are properly inspected before moving Apr 19, 2017 John Bradley: Still leading the innovation charge Apr 13, 2017 Regulatory>Legislative Top 10 agricultural-related law stories (Part Two) Last year, a bevy of court decisions and actions by Congress impacted agricultural law. Among the top five: Bona fide purchaser defense under Superfund Attempt to extend jurisdiction over "prior converted" wetlands David Bennett | Feb 23, 2011 In 2010, a bevy of court decisions and actions by Congress impacted agricultural law. In mid-February, Delta Farm Press spoke with Roger McEowen, director of Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation (CALT), about what he sees as the most significant agriculture-related developments over the past year. For more, see CALT In reverse order of importance, his top five picks are: (for picks 6 through 10, see Part One) 5. Bona fide purchaser defense under Superfund “We tend not to think of Superfund in an agricultural context. But it can be very important. “When you buy agricultural land, someone in the past may have placed hazardous chemicals on that property. There are a lot of ag properties with a remote area that was used in the past as a dump: pesticide and herbicide containers, oil, all of the types of chemicals used on a farm… Many of the chemicals and substances used in a farming operation are classified as ‘hazardous’ waste under the Superfund law. “When you buy land, the last thing you want is to be held liable for the conduct of someone who owned, or operated, the property before you. There are ways to avoid that liability. One of those is to conduct ‘all appropriate inquiry’ concerning the status of that property. In other words, you ask the seller a list of questions and get them to certify there’s no problem with the property, they know of no problem. … That way, if a problem is discovered once you own the property, you won’t be held liable. “Well, we’ve never really had the framework for figuring out what it takes to be a bona fide purchaser and what is the defense. … We now at least have a framework for how to establish a bona fide purchaser defense.” 4.FDA Food Safety Modernization Act The Food Safety Modernization Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in late 2010. For more see Food Safety Act “It’s the biggest change in U.S. food safety law since the 1938 federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. “It heightens inspections by, about, a factor of seven over the next five years of ‘food facilities.’ That will be paid through a tax on those facilities which will be passed on to consumers in higher food costs… “All food facilities have to produce ‘risk-based preventative controls’ and undertake periodic hazard analysis. “Meat, poultry and dairy products are covered under different legislation. “Also, the FDA is given mandatory recall authority over covered food products, except alcoholic beverages. Most food companies will have to write and implement food safety protocols designed to minimize potential food hazards. The cost of that additional administrative burden will, again, be passed on to consumers.” The act “also provides whistle-blower protections for employees of employers engaged in the manufacture, process, packing or importation of food. And the FDA has the power to ‘harmonize’ U.S. food and dietary supplement industries with internationally recognized standards. That means basic food staples will be genetically modified. Indeed, Monsanto was a major supporter of the act because of that provision. “It will cost about $1.4 billion over the next four years. The additional costs to the private sector haven’t been estimated. “The thing that’s interesting is that Congress passed this and the president signed it into law in spite of data showing the incidence of food-borne illness has dropped by a third over the past 14 years.” Wetlands/NCC v. EPA 3. Attempt to extend jurisdiction over “prior converted” wetland (New Hope Power Company, et al. v. United States Army Corps of Engineers) “This has been important in parts of the country for many years, particularly since ‘Swampbuster’ rules came into play in the 1985 farm bill. But we also have CWA rules that involve prior converted wetlands – and that was the issue in this case. “If you’d converted wetland to cropland prior to the effective date of the farm bill, then you’re in the clear. You get a ‘prior converted’ status and you do what you want on that land: farm it, develop it. “Well, the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) and the EPA have concurrent jurisdiction over many issues with respect to wetlands. “In this case, out of Florida, a tract of land was used before 1985. It was converted and previously used to grow sugarcane. In 1993, the ACE designated the property as ‘prior converted wetland’ and told the plaintiff it didn’t need to get a CWA permit to build a plant. They were putting up a renewable-energy facility on part of that land. (The plaintiff) then wanted to put in an ash monofill – a land-fill for waste for waste produced at the facility… “The ACE promulgated some internal rules -- didn’t publish them for notice and comment in the Federal Register – and kind of changed their position regarding prior converted wetland. Then, they told the renewable energy plant they were in violation of the CWA. “The plant sued saying ‘you can’t change the rules without making them public and complying with the Administrative Procedure Act.’ The court agreed and struck those rules down as invalid. “It’s a big case for paring back by what’s seen by many as over-reaching by the ACE.” 2. Supreme Court denies review in Clean Water Act case (The Cotton Council of America, et al. v. UnitedStates Environmental Protection Agency) “The issue in this one is: if you’re using pesticides in compliance with the Federal Insecticide Fungicide Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), are you exempt from the CWA permitting requirements? The CWA requires you get a permit before you discharge a pollutant into navigable waters of the United States. “Well, if you have run-off of pesticides that were applied consistent with FIFRA, and they run-off into navigable water are you subject to the CWA requirements?” For more, see NCC versus “The trial court said there was. The CWA clearly covers a discharge of a pollutant from a point source. But pesticide residue is something that occurs after a discharge occurs. “Federal courts are all over the board on this. Some have ruled pesticides applied consistent with FIFRA aren’t chemical waste – in other words, they aren’t pollutants so you don’t have to get a CWA permit. But some courts have reached that conclusion only when the pesticide leaves no residue. “A lot of people in agriculture hoped a rehearing would be granted in this case. … And, if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court would agree to hear the case and clarify the different outcomes in the lower courts. “But the full 6th Circuit declined to rehear the case in early 2010 and, later in the year, the Supreme Court refuse to take it. So, there’s still some uncertainty.” 1 . Estate taxes, etc. In late 2010, Congress was faced with the potential of the 2001 tax rules – known as the ‘Bush tax cuts’ – expiring. For more, see estate taxes “They came in very late in the year and passed a bill that basically gives us a two-year reprieve. It basically extends the law through 2012. “One of the big portions of that law has to do with the relief – some would call it a tax increase – with respect to estate tax, gift tax and generation-skipping tax (transfer tax). Now, instead of no estate tax (the rule in 2009), the estate tax is reinstated at a $5 million exemption. Taxable amounts above that are taxed at 35 percent. “So, we went from a zero tax last year to a 35 percent tax on amounts above $5 million. That $5 million exclusion is portable between spouses – if both die in 2011/2012, it will be a true $10 million exclusion without the need to do some high-brow and expensive estate-planning techniques.” RelatedDelta leaders seeking renewed effort to complete Upper Yazoo Basin ProjectsApr 20, 2017No funding for Upper Yazoo Project in president’s budgetApr 18, 2017Delta Farm Press Calendar of EventsApr 18, 2017Agriculture secretary vacancy looms large as farmers struggle to stay in businessApr 17, 2017 Load More

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Grape commission intensifies promos with international retailers by Rand Green | October 12, 2010 FRESNO, CA — Export markets are a major outlet for fresh California grape sales, consuming for typically around one-third of the state's roughly 95 million-box annual crop. Last year, total exports were a little over 34 million boxes (19-pound equivalents), with Canada accounting for about one-third of that volume and Asian countries constituting 38 percent of all grape exports from California. Because of the importance of export markets to the industry, the California Table Grape Commission has long put a strong emphasis on market development programs in importing countries. With supermarkets playing an increasingly significant role in produce distribution in many developing countries, the commission has been increasing the amount of attention it gives to working with retail chains in various markets. "We’ve got an expanded and increased retailer promotion program this year, especially in Asia," Susan Day, vice president of international marketing for the commission, told The Produce News during a Sept. 22 interview. Five Asian countries are in the top 10 export markets for California grapes, with China and Indonesia ranking in second and fourth place, she noted. Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam have all seen “tremendous growth” in the past three years. There are many retail chains that have operations in multiple countries, she said. “So we are targeting those on a regional basis as well as on a local level.” Because of that, “we have an expanded program … with those multi-national retail chains,“ particularly in Southeast Asia and China. With the preponderance of the state’s grape crop yet to be shipped, this year is “shaping up really well for promotions,” she said. “Those promotions are primarily working with the retailers in an effort to create activities in the store that attract the consumers to buy California grapes, and buy more of them more often and in bigger quantities.” Those activities include helping the retailers build attractive, “nicely merchandised” displays and giving consumers samples of the fruit. “That program is ongoing, and that is a huge effort on the ground,” said Ms. Day, who had just recently returned from a marketing trip to Asia. “We have our representatives in all these countries. They have teams of people who are out meeting with the retailers on a regular basis, merchandising the fruit, reporting back to us, helping with the displays and helping with each opportunity that we can possibly do to get that consumer to buy California grapes and pull that volume through the retail sector.” The commission has increased its retail focus not just in Asian markets but in the United Kingdom as well, she said. “We have a lot more activities going on in the U.K. with retailers now. In the past, they have been reluctant to allow too much activity in their stores, but the last two to three years, that has really changed and they are looking at all kinds of promotional ways to move California grapes through their stores. We are doing some in-store activities in a lot of those store groups in the U.K., which we weren’t able to do before. That is new for us.” In the past, “we have done some on-site … promotions,” offering a trip to California as part of a competition, she said. “But this year, it looks like we will be doing a lot of in-store activities using promotional materials” and using demonstrators to offer grape samples to consumers. In New Zealand this year, “we are on television with one of the retailers,” participating in a program in which a chef presents a product in television commercials. “We have not done this before. We are doing that in two bursts of television advertising this year in New Zealand,” Ms. Day said. “This year, we have really fine-tuned our program to target the retailers much more strongly,” she said. “We are trying to work in every possible area we can with the retailers to help those retailers move the grapes to the end consumer, which obviously results in larger volumes being shipped.” Foodservice is also getting attention in export markets. In the Philippines this year, the commission is working with the hotel and restaurant sector, which is an expanding market there, Ms. Day said. “We are doing a restaurant promotion” with 168 restaurants in seven chains that “are going to promote California grape smoothie drinks in the restaurants.” The promotion will run for three months and will be publicized in the national press, giving consumers as well as restaurants “an idea of how to expand their usage of California grapes.” Videos

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HomeFarm & RanchLawn & GardenLife & HealthEnvironmentBusiness & FinanceScience & Tech Giant spider webs make another appearance in Dallas area August 6, 2015 Paul Schattenberg, 210-859-5752, [email protected] Contact: Mike Merchant, 972-952-9204, [email protected] A large ‘communal’ spider web at the Lakeside Park South section of the Dallas suburb of Rowlett. (Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service photo by Mike Merchant) DALLAS – While traveling down CA Roan Drive in Rowlett recently, people have been exposed to an “eerie” sight on a number of trees lining that route, said Mike Merchant, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service urban entomologist in Dallas. “CA Roan Drive is a quiet stretch of road running through Lakeside Park South in the Dallas suburb of Rowlett,” Merchant said. “But in the trees along a football field-length stretch of the drive, the spiders have been taking over.” Merchant said “glistening webs are draping the trees like shrouds at Lakeside Park,” near Lake Ray Hubbard. “Someone stepping off the road for a closer look will see thousands of lanky spiders darting among the webs that extend up to 40 feet into the trees,” he said. “There is a surreal quality to the extensive webbing covering these trees.” Merchant said while rare, it is not unheard of that such massive web-works may appear once in a while. For example, he said, in 2007 the media reported about a giant spider web found at Lake Tawakoni State Park, about 35 miles from Rowlett. “At the time, the discovery of the web was more than creepy – it was a revelation to many arachnologists — spider experts,” he said. “That’s because spiders typically work alone to construct their webs. So finding spiders working together to build a huge web in what was more of a cooperative or ‘communal’ scenario was a real surprise for many experts.” Merchant said in the case of the giant web that appeared in 2007, the spiders responsible for the nest construction were ultimately identified as Tetragnatha guatemalensis. While the specific identity of the massive web-building spiders is as yet unknown, they are likely a long-jawed spider of the family Tetragnathidae. (Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service photo by Mike Merchant) “Arachnologists had previously noted that this species is known to build communal nests when conditions are right,” he said. “But it is rare to see them building such large nests in the U.S. Spider experts have indicated that those ‘right conditions’ appear to include a glut of small insects like midges that emerge at night from lakes. Without lots of food, these communal webs just don’t seem to form.” “These types of spiders are unusual in that they are not aggressive to other spiders of the same species on the same web,” he said. “They also are not known to bite or be harmful to humans.” Because of their lack of aggression, Merchant said there is really no need to treat for them. “Insecticides or other treatments are really unnecessary as this spider is essentially harmless and, although the communal nest may look spooky, they too are basically benign and are a sight more to be appreciated than feared.” Many arachnologists and others consider these nests natural works of art, he said. “If you get the chance to take a drive along CA Roan Drive in Rowlett, you might want to take a few moments to stop and admire this spider handiwork. But please don’t touch the art.” Article by Paul Schattenberg [email protected] View all articles by Paul Schattenberg → Category: Environment, Lawn & Garden, Uncategorized Agency: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service

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New Mexico produce growers learn of California's new mandatory standards Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Google+ LAS CRUCES - With the recent recalls of spinach, shredded lettuce, peanut butter and, now, hamburger, and before the growing and harvesting season begins in New Mexico, producers and processors from across New Mexico met in Las Cruces to discuss ways to protect their crops and products from contamination. The Southwest Border Food Safety and Defense Center at New Mexico State University held a workshop to inform members of the produce industry about the California Leafy Green Product Handlers Association, which was established after the 2006 spinach crisis. Joe Pezzini of OceanMist Farms in California and chairman of the association said contaminated produce from one grower impacts the entire industry. "The consumer's confidence in our product has not returned and we have not regained our market share of the leafy greens market," Pezzini said of spinach sales. "Since the federal government put a freeze on spinach sales for two weeks in September, we have only returned to 80 percent of our sales for this time of the year. People are slowly regaining confidence in our product." Pezzini said the positive aspect of the spinach incident was the establishment of the management agreement standards that are more specific than the U.S. Department of Agriculture's good agricultural practices. "The idea to develop mandatory food safety practices for green leafy produce was presented to the state legislature by the Farm Bureau of California and the Western Growers Association," Pezzini said of a bill that was introduced by California State Sen. Dean Florez from the San Joaquin Valley. The state inspection program ensures that the standards are met by the producers and processors. Ultimately, an association seal will be on the packaging of the members' produce. While a food processor conducts internal testing of its product to ensure it is safe, they must also be aware of the environment the produce is coming from so their operation will not be contaminated. Sharon Gamboa of Rio Valley Chile in Rincon, N.M., said she hoped other states do what California has done. "There has to be better control to ensure all producers are operating at good health standards," she said. Billy Dictson of the Southwest Border Food Safety and Defense Center said since 80-plus percent of the nation's produce is grown in California the standards adopted there will eventually impact New Mexico growers. "Producers in New Mexico are aware that they need to do their part in providing non-contaminated food. Currently they are doing their best to make sure the produce is safe for consumption," Dictson said. "But, because of increased awareness of consumers regarding food safety, the marketplace may dictate the way we do business in the future." Online Publications

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USA: Engage Business Media Introduces Largest Group of Agriculture Sites for B2B Online Advertising By Press Release | 11 August 2000 Engage Business Media, a full service B2B online advertising network and division of Engage, Inc. (Nasdaq: ENGA), today announced the creation of the industry's largest and most in-depth Agriculture vertical audience group as part of its B2B online advertising network. With brand name sites such as Dairy Business.com, Farm Equipment Auctions and GrainFarmer.com, Engage Business Media provides the most valuable B2B agriculture ad inventory to online marketers. Research indicates that the agriculture market is one of the hottest vertical industries on the Internet. The Red Herring reported that this year $500 million worth of farm supplies are expected to be transacted over the Internet, while Goldman Sachs reports that by 2004, US agriculture e-commerce is expected to reach more than $120 billion with an annual growth of approximately $20 billion. With research demonstrating that agriculture professionals were early adopters of the Internet, Engage Business Media aggressively recruited well-known sites to join its B2B ad network. At more than 5 million impressions, Engage has demonstrated that it owns the largest, most valuable agriculture inventory on the Web today. "Agriculture has become one of our fastest growing vertical markets," said Joanne Currie, general manager of Engage Business Media. "We have spent a great deal of time and effort researching this market and getting to know the top agriculture Web sites as well as leading agriculture ad agencies and marketers. Through these efforts, we have firmly established Engage Business Media as the place to go for agriculture email and Web advertising opportunities." Agriculture sites that have joined Engage Business Media include: Dairy Business.com (

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Follow @thecattlesite News & Analysis Features Markets & Reports Sustainability Knowledge Centre Directory Events Our Shop NewsNFU Uses Sustainability To Show Importance of Farm Bill12 September 2013 US - The National Farmers Union (NFU) has highlighted the importance of passing a five-year, comprehensive farm bill this year; and how the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) creates jobs, reduces greenhouse gasses, and reduces our dependence on foreign oil.“The need for certainty for America’s family farmers and ranchers has never been greater,” said NFU President Roger Johnson. “In order to provide that certainty, Congress needs to finish its work on the 2013 Farm Bill before the current law expires on September 30.” Speakers at the event included U.S. Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate majority leader, U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, Neil Young, of LincVolt, Tom Buis, Growth Energy CEO, and Johnson. “In addition to the work that needs to be done on the farm bill, reauthorizing the RFS needs to be made a priority in Congress,” said Mr Johnson. “The RFS is a crucial tool to reducing our reliance on foreign oil, and provides America’s farmers and rural communities with new economic opportunities. Mr. Young’s LincVolt vehicle is a great example of the innovative possibilities for the use of clean energy in our country.” Sens. Reid and Stabenow were also presented with the NFU Golden Triangle Award at the event. The Golden Triangle is NFU’s highest honor for members of Congress who are champions for family farmers and ranchers, and the policies of National Farmers Union. “We are thankful to be joined by Sens. Reid and Stabenow today,” said Mr Johnson. “They are champions for family farmers and ranchers, and the future of our industry.” TheCattleSite News Desk Markets, Sustainability, Policy and Regulatory, General Share This

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New Mexico agriculture, public health officials practice response to avian influenza Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Google+ ALBUQUERQUE - Highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza, commonly called Bird Flu, has not yet been reported in North or South America but public health and agriculture professionals stay vigilant for cases developing in New Mexico. The confirmation on Nov. 13 of an outbreak of the H5N1 strain, which can be fatal to humans, at a turkey farm in England demonstrates the real danger that exists in the international world of agriculture. To help prepare for a response to an outbreak of the disease, the New Mexico Department of Health, New Mexico Department of Agriculture and the New Mexico State University College of Agriculture and Home Economics, through the Southwest Border Food Safety and Defense Center, recently held training exercises in Albuquerque for various state and federal agencies that would respond to an outbreak of the potentially zoonotic virus. "While there is no evidence right now of an outbreak of Bird Flu, in New Mexico, the public should know that New Mexico is aggressively preparing for such an event," said Paul Ettestad, state public health veterinarian with the New Mexico Department of Health. "During this meeting we participated in two tabletop exercises - one focusing on the agricultural response and the other dealing with the public health response to an avian influenza outbreak." Participating in the exercise were representatives from NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service, New Mexico Livestock Board, New Mexico Department of Agriculture, USDA Wildlife Services, USDA Veterinary Service, New Mexico Department of Health, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish and New Mexico's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. "The overall objective of this meeting was to have agency representatives get to know each other and learn what each agency's jurisdiction is and what their responsibilities would be if an outbreak occurred," said Jeff Witte, director of agriculture biosecurity with the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. "It is better to become acquainted before an incident or disease outbreak. If or when an outbreak occurs they will have an awareness of each other's response capabilities. New Mexico has one of the most proactive multi-agency response teams in the nation." The group used a scenario designed by the Center for Naval Analysis for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to address the spread of the disease in animals, and a scenario designed by Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga., to address the public health response plan. "This was a very good exercise," said Billy Dictson, director of the office of biosecurity at the Southwest Border Food Safety and Defense Center, housed at NMSU. "We divided the people into the state regions they are from so they would be working with the people they would work with in a real situation. Now we have four teams of multi-agency groups that can be deployed if an outbreak occurs in their region." Dictson and Witte have been instrumental in getting emergency response agencies to discuss potential agricultural hazards and how they would respond to the situation. "Now we are beginning to involve people from the human health side with people from agriculture," Dictson said. "Most agriculture incidents that could occur will involve people from public health as well as animal health and food safety." For more information about avian influenza in New Mexico, visit the joint agency Web site: www.nmbirdflu.org. Online Publications

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Over the last week, we've seen what feels like the last gasp of winter. Two storms have come through, the first dropping about an inch and a half of rain (a lot for April; our long-term average for the entire month is just 1.86") and a couple more are expected this and next week. We've had several other days with significant cloud cover, and two nights where we got down around freezing, though we think we escaped any damage to the new growth. At the same time, the days are lengthening and the sun is warm, the vines have all come out of dormancy, and we're getting the cover crop turned under where the animals weren't able to do it for us. It's a point in time where the view in any given vineyard block changes daily. A few photos will give you a sense. First, one taken on Friday 4/7, during our rainy day, with the cover crop and vines a mix of winter green/brown and summer gold/green: In the areas where the animals last grazed in February (or earlier) the grasses are knee-high and starting to turn gold. This view, with high grass and new growth, is going to be short-lived, as we need to bring the cover crop under control for a variety of reasons. The winter's heavy rain and its associated risk of erosion are largely in the rear-view mirror. With our always-dry summer on its way, we want to eliminate the vines' competition for the soil's available water. Returning the cover crop to the soil renews the earth's fertility and provides nutrients for the vines to draw on the rest of the year. Finally, it's important to knock down the cover crop to allow the cooler air at the surface to drain downhill rather than having it pool around the vines and cause frost damage. From the head-trained, dry-farmed "Scruffy Hill" block yesterday: Within a few weeks, all this growth will be turned under and decomposing in the topsoil, while the vines begin their trek toward harvest. Last April 27th, I spent a morning taking photos on Scruffy Hill. The difference from the photo above is dramatic, but not likely much different from what you'll see in two weeks: The April rainfall pushed us over 40" and made this winter our second-rainiest ever. We still have a chance to catch 2004-5, which at 42.85" is our wettest since we installed our weather station in 1996: And yes, if you were wondering, the 2017 vintage is underway. The Grenache vines on Scruffy Hill already have tiny flower clusters forming: I'm sure we'll be sharing many photos in coming weeks and months of the new growth and the 2017 growing season. This is where it all begins. Posted at 02:48 PM in Dry-Farming, Pretty Pictures, Vineyard, Weather & Climate | Permalink At the end of January, I wrote a blog announcing that January 2017 had become our wettest month ever. But at that time, we were only at 23.88" for the rain year (July-June), which while better than in recent years was still below our 20-year average, albeit with nearly half the rainy season still to come. I concluded that while we were very happy with what we'd received so far, "we've got a long way to go to climb out of the hole the last five years of drought has put us in". February continued the winter's remarkable attack on our long-term drought, adding another 12.56" of rain to the tally, roughly 250% of what we'd get in an average February. By month: How rare are back-to-back 10+ inch rain months? Since our weather station went in during the summer of 1996, this is the first time. In fact, we've only once before had two 10+ inch months in a single rain season: December of 2010 and March of 2011. Otherwise, the closest we've come to these back-to-back wet months was a 13.5" month in December of 2004 followed by a 7.5" month in January of 2005, en route to our wettest-ever year at 42.85". At 38.41" winter-to-date, we're not far from that now: You can see the impact of the 30" inches we've received (!) in 2017 in ways both more and less obvious. The vineyard is wet, with springs welling out of many of our hillsides. Las Tablas Creek is running cheerfully through its valley, for the first time since spring of 2012: The lake, which the previous owners made by damming up the creek, which we have visions of tapping to help with our frost protection in the spring, is full for the first time since 2011, complete with ducks: The drought is significantly ameliorated, according to the United States Drought Monitor. In fact, San Luis Obispo County is almost entirely free of drought, upgraded to the lowest "abnormally dry" classification, when at the beginning of the fall it was split between "severe drought", "extreme drought", and "exceptional drought": So, are we truly out of the woods? I wouldn't go that far. There are still enormous pressures on groundwater. While out here aquifers recharge quickly, compared to most other California regions, it's still early to declare us free from worry. I know that we're going be as careful as ever in how we develop our vineyard. The water in the ground will certainly give the head-trained, dry-farmed vines we're planting this winter on our new property an easier go of it. And we're unlikely to need to irrigate even the close-spaced established blocks this growing season. That's all good. But this year's wet winter doesn't change the likelihood that our climate is going to be gradually getting warmer and drier with climate change. While we're grateful for all this water, we've also been happy to have the sun in recent days. The ground is so saturated, and so soft, that until the last 10 days or so it's been impossible to get into the vineyard to prune. We're still behind, but making good progress, and feel confident that we'll get everything done before budbreak. I like this panoramic shot, taken between two Mourvedre rows where our crew left off at lunchtime: pruned, uphill on the left, and as-yet-unpruned, downhill on the right. Click on it to expand: About that budbreak. At this time last year, we'd already seen budbreak in several of our early-sprouting grape varieties. This year, we've been having frosty mornings for most of the last two weeks, which combined with the water in the soil, seem to be convincing the vines to stay dormant a bit longer. It seems likely that we're going to be back to a more normal start time to the growing season -- late March or early April -- rather than the exceptionally early beginning that we've seen the past few years. That is comforting. But as to whether it insulates us from a damaging frost, we'll have to see. We've been lucky to avoid frosts these last few years, despite the early onset to the growing season. But the last two years which produced bad frost events (2009 and 2011) both saw late budbreak, in April rather than March. Is it possible that a cold spring, which leads to a late budbreak, may also put you more at risk for a post-budbreak frost? It doesn't seem far fetched. But we'll still take every dormant night that we can, and shorten the frost season as much as possible. Fingers crossed, please, everyone. January 2017 is Tablas Creek's wettest month ever Sometime around 6:30 this morning, as the third of three powerful storms pushed through the Paso Robles area, our rain gauge for January passed 16.32" for the month and displaced February 1998 as the wettest single month in Tablas Creek's history. Our running total (with much of this storm still to pass, and 9 days left in January) is now 17.17", more than triple the normal average for January, our wettest month: For the year, we're at 23.88", just about at our 20-year average for the winter rainy season and about more than 90% of the way toward the 26" that old-timers quote as the long-term annual "normal" for our pocket of the Paso Robles Adelaida District. You can see, looking at the last 20 years, that we're still quite a ways from matching our wettest-ever rainy season, 2004-05: Of course, we're still only just past the midpoint of the normal winter rainy season. It seems like we'll get another inch or so in the aftermath of this storm, and February-June brings another 11.47" of rain on average. That would put us up above 35" of rain, on par with the last two wet winters, 2009-10 and 2010-11. Even with the recent rain, we've got a long way to go to climb out of the hole the last five years of drought has put us in. Between the winters of 2011/12 and 2015/16, we built up a deficit of more than 54" (compared to that 26" average). So, it will take more than one wet winter to recover. But between the reports of greatly increased capacity in our local reservoirs and the news that most of Northern California has been declared free of drought it's clear that the rain has made a measurable difference. As for the vineyard, it's wet. Springs have sprouted in low-lying areas, and enough water has drained to cause Las Tablas Creek to flow during more than the immediate aftermath of a storm for the first time in four years. You venture into the vineyard at peril of losing your footwear. After this low pressure system passes through on Tuesday, we're forecast for a week or so of dry weather. That's perfect. It will allow the surface water to drain down into the limestone clay layers, and give the cover crop a week of sun. And then the long-term forecast suggests a return to a wet pattern in early February. That's perfect too. At this point, we're feeling good about where we are. Anything more at this point is gravy. Posted at 01:08 PM in Dry-Farming, Paso Robles, Vineyard, Weather & Climate | Permalink Spring Cleaning in the Vineyard: How Eliminating Surface Grasses Conserves Water Over the course of about six weeks, the vineyard has gone from looking like: To looking like: This transformation takes place as the rainy season ends, and our focus shifts from encouraging a cover crop to hold the topsoil in place to making sure that the vines (rather than the cover crops) get the bulk of the water that is stored in the absorbent limestone-rich soils. Think of each plant that's growing in a given plot of land as like a wick, with its roots delving into the soil for available moisture. If we had overabundant water, we might want to leave some surface weeds to keep levels more reasonable. Instead, in our California climate, eliminating competition from grasses and other surface plants is an essential part of our ability to dry farm. Tilling in the cover crop also allows the insects and microorganisms in the soil to start breaking down the surface biomass accumulated during the winter growth into nutrients that the vines will draw from in the coming months. Finally, the loosening of the soil creates an insulating layer at the surface that helps conserve the water deeper down. The main tool we use to turn our cover crops under is the spader, shown in action below. The row to the right has been mowed but not turned under, while the spader is chopping up the topsoil with a collection of tooth-like blades that penetrate deep into the topsoil: The end result, when a whole block has been spaded, is a manicured surface from which weeds rarely re-sprout, like the head-trained Tannat block below: We're only about 30% done with turning the cover crop under, and the work will continue for another month. The one section that we have finished is Scruffy Hill, and it looks amazing. Two shots follow, beginning with the fully leafed out Grenache block, looking down over the less-advanced Mourvedre vines below: And a view that shows you a close-up of the soils. Tilling in the surface weeds allows you to see just how calcareous the soils are: Pretty soon, the whole vineyard will look like this, just in time for summer. Posted at 02:34 PM in Biodynamics, Dry-Farming, Pretty Pictures, Vineyard, Weather & Climate | Permalink Harvesting under the stars By: Lauren Phelps I arrived at the vineyard today at 4:00 AM in the crisp morning air to photograph the "night harvest" of one of our last blocks of Mourvedre. Our crew used only head-lamps and the lights from the tractors to harvest which was challenging to photograph and made for some very interesting and rewarding shots. I found our 17-person harvest crew deep in the vineyard at a newly planted block of head-trained, dry-farmed Mourvedre on the parcel we call Cross-hairs. This block was part of an experiment that we're excited about, using some very old-fashioned, deep-rooting rootstocks in high stress parts of the vineyard. This block of about 3 acres (there are also 3 acres of Grenache) was planted in 2013 and is now on its third harvest (in vineyard jargon, "third-leaf"), which is the first year you expect to pick any fruit, though only a small amount even in the best of situations, which 2015 has not been. Given the drought and our low yields overall this harvest, we were pleased that the crew was able to pick about 3/4 of a ton. The quality looks excellent! Just as the crew was finishing up the sun began to rise over the mountains. What a treat! This is our third year harvesting in the very early morning. Night harvesting is great for the fruit; picking them at lower temperature protects them from oxidation and allows the fermentation to start more gradually and predictably. It's also better for our harvest crew than picking in the heat of mid-day. I absolutely love getting out into the vineyard for these photo excursions; I felt like a National Geographic photojournalist on-site documenting an ancient, rarely seen event. And it's true, it is not very often that we get an in-depth look into the process of harvesting, especially in the dark. I feel honored to witness and become a part the crew that is responsible for hand-harvesting the fruit that will soon become the next vintage of Tablas Creek wine. Posted at 10:10 AM in Dry-Farming, Harvest 2015, Pretty Pictures, Vineyard | Permalink Harvest 2015 update: just over 15% completed & yields are looking low In the cellar, things are in full-gear! According to veteran Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi harvest is already over 15% completed. As of August 29th, we have worked with 65.82 tons of fruit. The 1700 gallon French oak upright fermenters are all full fermenting Syrah for the 2015 Patelin de Tablas! Our first estate grapes were harvested on August 26th when we brought in about 3 tons of Viognier. According to Viticulturist Levi Glenn, the estate Viognier yields appear down at least 50% due to the drought however, both acids and PH look great. Levi's dog Mavis, vineyard dog extraordinaire, conducts a rigorous "lab test" of a bin of Viognier. Although estate Viognier yields look low, Levi explains that "it's really more of a mixed bag. Mourvedre and Roussanne both look a bit higher than normal". In general, we're thrilled with the quality of fruit and a bit concerned since yields remind us of frost reduced years in 2001, 2009 and 2011. We're waiting until we've harvested more from the estate to draw any firm conclusions. Posted at 10:00 AM in Dry-Farming, Grapes (mostly) of the Rhone Valley, Harvest 2015, Paso Robles, Pretty Pictures, Vineyard, Winery & Winemaking | Permalink Did 2.6" of rain in July really just happen? Yesterday, we hosted a seminar on dry-farming. In the rain. In Paso Robles. In July. And it wasn't just a little rain, either. As we were talking about how we've been working to plant increasing acres of vines without any irrigation infrastructure, and how we've been weaning even our established vines off of needing regular water, we were in the process of accumulating more rain -- seven times more rain -- than Paso Robles had received in any July day in its history. In fact, we received four times more rain yesterday than Paso Robles has ever received in an entire month of July before. Of course, July is the driest month of the year in Paso Robles, averaging less than 0.2" of rain for the month. But residents of other parts of the country may not realize just how unusual summer rain is in the Central Coast of California. Maybe a graph will help (from the useful site climate-data.org): The unusual storm was caused by the remnants of Hurricane Dolores, which instead of remaining offshore or moving inland toward Phoenix (both more common paths for Pacific ex-hurricanes) wandered slowly and more or less directly north up California's coast, bringing unusually hot, moisture-laden air to parts of the state where humidity is almost totally foreign. This moist, unstable air spurred a series of thunderstorms (themselves rare in this area) whose path took them directly over Paso Robles. The town recorded 3.55", the highest total in the county and more than a quarter of the average annual rainfall the city can expect to receive. It's also more than the town averages in any month during the year; for those of you who like me need a translation from the metric, 3.55" is more or less 90mm... about 10% more than Paso Robles receives on average in January, its wettest month. We saw a little less rain out here than they did in town, but at 2.6" we still received more than we did all but two months (December and February) this past winter. Given how much rain we received, and how fast it came down, you might wonder how the vineyard fared. It came through with flying colors. We rarely see much erosion here, due to the porosity of the clay-limestone bedrock, and we didn't see any in the vineyard. The little we saw was confined to a few vineyard tracks, where the occasional tractor traffic compresses the soils enough that water runs down rather than soaking in. From this afternoon: We don't anticipate any serious negative consequences from the rain. After a last round of showers and thunderstorms that are forecast to blow through this evening, it's supposed to dry out. It looks like we'll have a few sunny, breezy, relatively cool, low humidity days, and then it will warm up to normal for the season (highs in the 90s and lows in the 50s, with virtually no humidity). This should serve to dry out the surface layer of the soil, and prevent too many weed seeds from germinating. Plus, both the low humidity and the warm days will serve to prevent mildew from becoming a problem. On the positive side, this is a time of year when the vines are nearly all under some stress. A dose of rain now helps alleviate this stress, and gives the vines the energy to make their final push toward ripeness. And the amount of rain that we received was enough to get through the topsoil and replenish the moisture in at least the upper layers of the calcareous bedrock, which will provide a reservoir for the vines over the next couple of months. You can see how rich and soft the soils look after the rain, and also how void of erosion channels they are even near the bottom of a steep hillside: If the rain had come a month later, with some grapes nearly ripe, we would worry that the water might dilute the flavors and even cause grapes to swell and split. But now, with veraison barely started, that's not a risk. It's worth remembering that most other wine regions, including the Rhone, see summer rain. The same chart as above, for Chateauneuf-du-Pape, shows that while rain is a bit less common in the summer than in other seasons, it's hardly rare: So, we'll enjoy the unusual moisture in the air, and feel thankful that we got it now and not during harvest. If this is a precursor to what is sounding likely to be a strong el nino winter, so much the better. I'll leave you with one final photo, taken in the middle of yesterday's rain, and looking more like an impressionist painting than a summer Paso Robles landscape: Posted at 02:50 PM in Dry-Farming, Paso Robles, Pretty Pictures, Vineyard, Weather & Climate | Permalink Dry Farming in California's Drought, Part 3: How We Got Here (and Where We Go Next) I was struck by a quote from Tegan Passalaqua, the winemaker at Turley, in a recent article on JancisRobinson.com. In an interview with Alder Yarrow, Tegan said "In a Mediterranean climate like we have, vertical shoot positioning and 3 by 6 vineyard spacing is basically farming hydroponically". Hydroponic farming, with its overtones of bland supermarket tomatoes, seems an unlikely candidate to provide the intensity and ripeness that a winemaker would expect from California. But in its essence, that the farmer is providing everything that a plant needs to bear fruit, I don't think he's far off. It's worth taking a few moments to understand how grapevines came to be so widely irrigated in California. In the first part of this 3 part series, I looked at how our understanding of California's climate dictated changes versus what had been done in the Mediterranean. In the second part, I detailed how we have been farming our vineyard since the beginning to wean it off of irrigation, and what changes we've made in recent years to adjust to the likelihood of a drier future. In this third part, I will explore how viticulture evolved in California to rely so heavily on irrigation. If you missed the earlier parts, this article will make more sense after you've read them. According to Jancis Robinson1, wine grapes were likely first domesticated from their wild progenitors somewhere near where modern-day Armenia, eastern Turkey, and north-western Iran meet, sometime before 4000 BC. That area is a relatively arid climate, averaging around 400mm of rainfall per year (about 16 inches). There, grapevines, along with similarly rugged crops like olive trees, were planted on dry, rocky hillsides where the more useful grain and vegetable crops couldn't survive. This took advantage of grapevines' genetic predisposition to search out scarce water sources, delving dozens of feet deep if necessary. By 2000 BC, wine grapes had been brought to areas around the eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt, Mesopotamia, southern Greece, Crete and the southern Balkans. Expansion to areas north and west came over the next two millennia, brought by the exploring and colonizing Phoenicians, Greeks, and (later) Romans. High quality winemaking requires the concentration of flavors, achieved through stress on the grapevines and the maturity of fruit. This happens naturally in the hot, dry climates where grapevines evolved. But as viniculture moved north through Europe, into climates cooler and wetter than where wine grapes originated, the grapevines faced different challenges. Instead of not enough water, grapevines were challenged with too much water, threatening to dilute flavors. And the cooler climes meant that lack of ripeness was a significant threat. The solution to both these problems came in a new way of planting: spacing vines much more closely, so they competed against each other for the available water, and reducing the yield per vine so that the clusters ripened more rapidly. For contrast, look at the differences in the old world. An old vineyard in a warm Mediterranean climate (in the example below, Priorat, taken as a still from a promotional video on the Priorat DOQ Web site) might see grapevines three meters apart or more from their nearest neighbors (500 vines per acre, or less): By contrast, a Burgundian vigneron in search of maximum concentration and character might plant grapevines as close together as one meter by one meter (over 4000 vines per acre), and reduce yields per vine from 20-30 clusters per vine to just 3 or 4. The example below (from Wikimedia Commons) is of a vineyard near Gevrey-Chambertin, in Burgundy, where vines are so close together a tiny tractor can barely fit: The net result is a can be a greater yield in tons per acre, with increased intensity and a better chance of getting the grapes ripe before the first frost. It is perhaps useful to think of a grapevine as a small machine, whose roots act as pumps to wick water and nutrients out of the ground. A vine's leaves absorb solar energy to power this machine. The water that is pulled from the ground is used during photosynthesis as the vine respires through the pores of the leaves, and is also trapped in the plant's tissues and fruit. Planting more vines into a given plot of land requires more water for photosynthesis to be successful. If there is enough (or too much) water, this extra density is beneficial and even important. If there is not enough water, this extra density requires more irrigation to keep photosynthesis going. And if irrigation becomes a major source of water for the vines, they change their root system to better capture that water source, growing more rootmass under the irrigation drips and less exploring deeper. So, is California's climate more like that of the Mediterranean, or more like that of Burgundy? It depends on what you look at. In terms of temperatures, you can find both, as evidenced by the success California's winemaking community has had with a a wide range of grapes, from the cool-loving Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir (with origins in the north of France) to the late-ripening Grenache and Mourvedre (with origins in the hot, dry Spanish plateau). But in terms of rainfall, it should be clear that except for perhaps in extreme north and coastal regions, our total precipitation more resembles the warmer, drier Mediterranean. In fact, many parts of California receive significantly less annual rainfall than the classic Mediterranean climate. Relatively arid areas like Priorat receive more rainfall than most of the Central Coast, and the rainfall distribution in Paso Robles actually looks more like the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon than it does like Priorat, let alone anywhere in France. The fact that we receive nearly all our precipitation in the six-month period between November and April only adds to the stress on the vines, and the need for planning if we're going to try to grow grapes without having them dependent upon regular irrigation. You might wonder why plantings of grapevines in California look more like those in Northern Europe than they do like those of the Mediterranean. That they do is a relatively recent phenomenon. A paper on vine spacing presented to the American Society for Enology and Viticulture (ASEV) in 1999 by two winemakers from Robert Mondavi Winery makes for fascinating reading. Before the late 1980's, most vineyards in California were planted at around 450 vines per acre. The first large-scale (35 acre) high-density (2170 vines/acre) planting came in Oakville in 1985. Since then, the paradigm has shifted rapidly, as winemakers found that they could translate the higher density into earlier-ripening, more reliably yielding crops of good intensity. The downside? It hasn't seemed like there was much of one. More reliable yields, more reliable ripening, and increased intensity all seem like a good thing. If I find that many of the wines that come from high-density irrigated plantings have a sameness, a fruit-driven thickness and relative lack of soil expression, this doesn't seem to be a complaint shared by many. And separating out the preference for increasingly ripe flavors that developed over a similar timeframe is difficult (many connoisseurs of Bordeaux, where irrigation is prohibited, have described a similar development over the last two decades). But these higher-density crops can only survive in most parts of California through the regular application of irrigation. When that irrigation water was cheaply and easily available, the fact that our natural rainfall distribution more resembles the Eastern Mediterranean than Burgundy or Bordeaux didn't seem to matter much. From an environmental standpoint, planting an irrigated vineyard was often a responsible choice for a farmer, as the high efficiency of drip irrigation and the relatively little water that grapevines need compared to a crop like alfalfa offered sustainability in both resource use and economics. But with all of California's agricultural communities engaging in a new level of soul-searching after four years of drought, it's clear to me that the calculus is changing. Perhaps the solution for a drier future begins with a look at the past. The old vineyards planted by immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many of which survived decades of neglect during prohibition and continue to produce a century later, were planted with the densities common to the warm Mediterranean climates (from where, of course, most of the settlers came). Given our success in recent years replicating these older planting styles, I would hope that one benefit to come out of our current drought will be a renewed interest in low density plantings on deep-rooting rootstocks, requiring at most a fraction of the water of "modern" vineyards. That the wines have turned out to be so good is icing on the cake. It doesn't get more sustainable than that. Footnotes1 Jancis Robinson's "Wine Grapes" (Penguin Books, 2012) is an incredible resource for anyone interested in the history or characteristics of different grape varieties. Posted at 01:13 PM in Advice to Wineries, Dry-Farming, Vineyard, Weather & Climate | Permalink A Vertical Tasting of En Gobelet, 2007-2013 When we first made En Gobelet in 2007, it was driven by our feeling that the dry-farmed lots we tasted in our annual blind tastings shared a distinctive character, different from our trellised lots. In my blog post from 2009 announcing the first vintage, I talked about these dry-farmed lots: "they seem to share an elegance and a complexity which is different from what we see in the rest of the vineyard. Perhaps it's the areas where they are planted (generally lower-lying, deeper-soil areas). Perhaps it's the age of the vines and a comparative lack of brute power. But, whatever the reason, we believe that these lots show our terroir in a unique and powerful way." The wine has always been a blend primarily of Grenache and Mourvedre, with a touch of Tannat to cut the perception of sweetness that both the primary grapes can have. When, starting with the 2010 vintage, we got some head-trained Syrah and Counoise in production, we added those too. Our largest head-trained block, from which most of our recent vintages have come, is called Scruffy Hill, and we've been interested in exploring how this might fare as a block-designate, so between 2010 and 2013 the core of the En Gobelet was a co-fermented lot from Scruffy Hill, with selective additions from elsewhere on the property. While it started as a wine we made because we thought we tasted something interesting in the lots, with our increasing focus on dry farming and our plans to plant all 55 acres on our new property dry-farmed, we've also come to see our En Gobelet as an indication of our future. In celebration, we decided to look back today at the six vintages of En Gobelet we've bottled so far, and I thought it would be fun to share my notes. The lineup: 2007 En Gobelet (48% Mourvedre, 47% Grenache, 5% Tannat): The nose is rich, meaty, and still primary, with lots of ripe red fruit and an appealing touch of mint. A touch of alcohol showed at the (nearly room) temperature at which we tasted it. A slightly caramelized tone to the sweetness of the fruit is the only sign of age. On the palate, it is rich, lush and chocolaty, brought back to earth with firm tannins like coffee grounds at the end of a Turkish coffee. There's a great texture to the finish, with a powdered sugar character to the tannins and lingering flavors of dark plum. [Note that we didn't make an En Gobelet in 2008 because we didn't taste enough distinction between the dry-farmed, head-trained lots and the rest of the cellar.] 2009 En Gobelet (56% Mourvedre, 23% Tannat, 21% Grenache): A remarkably chalky nose, with some menthol and kirsch. On the palate, an initial impression of balsamic-marinated cherries is quickly overtaken by some massive tannins. The finish is actually gentler than it was in the back-palate, with a creamy minerality and flavors of milk chocolate. Still very, very young, 2010 En Gobelet (37% Grenache, 28% Mourvedre, 13% Syrah, 12% Counoise, 10% Tannat): Chelsea's comment, which I agreed with completely, was that this wine "smelled more like Tablas Creek" than the previous two vintages. There was more fruit in evidence in the nose -- blueberries, we thought -- and a minty, cool, pine forest savoriness characteristic of the 2010 vintage. The mouth is vibrant with flavors of plum skin, juniper, a creamy, chalky texture and a little saltiness coming out on the finish. This is really good, and going to get better. Patience. 2011 En Gobelet (29% Mourvedre, 27% Grenache, 26% Tannat, 18% Syrah): The most appealing nose yet, dark with soy marinade, wild strawberry, and roasted meat. The least rustic of the noses, surprising since we'd attributed that character to the Tannat, and at 26% it is the most Tannat we've ever had in the wine. The mouth is defined by its texture more than its flavors: creamy, chalky, savory and salty. The flavors of loam and new leather linger on the finish. My favorite wine of the tasting, for right now, and it's clearly got a long, interesting life ahead. 2012 En Gobelet (63% Grenache, 12% Mourvedre, 11% Syrah, 8% Counoise, 6% Tannat): Notably lighter in color, unsurprising given the predominance of Grenache in 2012. It smells like Grenache, too, with red cherry, watermelon rind, orange peel and baking spices. There's something deeper lurking on the nose, too, with time: like a clove-studded orange and baker's chocolate. The mouth is full of high-toned fruit, lots of fresh strawberry, then firming up and turning darker on the finish, with a salty marinade character and something leafy. Not quite minty. Maybe shiso? Complex and cohesive, if still young. 2013 En Gobelet (34% Grenache, 31% Mourvedre, 19% Syrah, 11% Counoise, 5% Tannat): Just bottled a few weeks ago, and the nose still shows some shyness from that, but the aromas of mint, cherry, strawberry and soy come out with time. The mouth is richer than the 2012, but similarly cohesive and complex, with red fruit held in check by something herby. Maybe thyme? Lots of pepper, too, which Chelsea nailed as pink peppercorn. Nice acids and some youthful tannins. Obviously young, but going to a good place. Will go out this fall to wine club members. A few concluding thoughts: We preferred the more recent vintages to the first couple of years. There are several reasons why this might be the case. The vines were older, with deeper roots. Starting in 2010 we were sourcing the majority of the wine from the hillside vineyards of Scruffy hill rather than the low-lying areas that had formerly been rootstock fields. The more recent vintages include Syrah and (in most cases) Counoise, which add a coolness and a vibrancy to the wines. But in tasting the wines now, I think it might be ripeness as much as any of the other factors. The first two vintages come across as a little over the top. At 15% and 14.5% alcohol respectively, the 2007 and 2009 were higher in alcohol than the 2011 (13.9%), 2012 (14.2%) and 2013 (14.0%). The relative restraint of the recent vintages seems to play well with the dark savoriness of the wine. Of course, the 2010, which was also 14.5%, tastes more like the later vintages than the earlier ones. Despite the evolution in style and the often-varied compositions, there were recognizable currents that ran through all the wines. The wines were all more savory than fruity, perhaps because of the Tannat component. They all had a chalky texture and a salty finish, perhaps because of the necessarily deep root systems of all dry-farmed vines. And they all felt like they could go out another decade easily, still fresh and vibrant even at the first vintages. If this is what our future looks like, I'll take it. Posted at 10:25 AM in Dry-Farming, Library Wines | Permalink Dry-Farming in California's Drought, Part 2: Looking Forward to the Past In the first part of this 3-part series on farming in California's drought, I looked at how our climate here in California differs in crucial ways from that in the Mediterranean, and what lessons we took from these differences in how we would choose to farm. In this second part, I pick the story back up with how we planted and trained our vines in the early days to allow us to dry-farm them now, and what changes we've made in recent years as we adjust to what is likely to be a drier future. The third part is more historical, looking at how grapevines -- which should be one of the easier crops to dry-farm -- came to be so widely irrigated in California. If you missed Part 1, go read it now. OK, welcome back. When we began planting, we used a hybrid of the planting methods of modern California and the traditional Rhone. At Beaucastel, vines are planted head-trained but closely spaced on their relatively flat terrain. They cultivate these vineyards using tall over-the-vines tractors as the spacing (roughly 1.5 meters square) doesn't allow tractors to pass in-between. On our steep hillsides, these tractors wouldn't work, so we matched the overall vine density, but moved the vines into rows, planting more closely within the rows (3 feet) and spacing the rows either 8 feet or 10 feet apart, depending on our terrain. We achieve a similar vine density at around 1600-1800 vines per acre, but can cultivate mechanically, essential for our organic techniques: Our decision to plant at similar density to Beaucastel was grounded in our initial belief that in our broadly similar environment we should use the techniques that they had developed over the years as a starting point, and then learn from our experiences here and adjust gradually over time. The first choice we needed to make was what rootstocks to use. Wine grapes need to be grafted onto rootstocks to be resistant to the root parasite phylloxera. These rootstocks are descended from different species of American wild grapes, and have inherited differences in level of vigor, rooting configuration, tolerance for soil chemistry, and affinity for various varietals from their progenitors. [For a good technical overview of rootstock science, see this piece in Wines&Vines.] Modern fashion in relatively water-rich areas (including Napa Valley, which has a fairly stable water table on the valley floor) suggests the use of low-vigor, shallow-rooting rootstocks, to keep the vines from growing too much canopy and from setting high quantities of low-intensity fruit. But it was clear to us that we should focus instead on higher-vigor, deeper rooting rootstocks because of the high-stress nature of our climate and topography. We chose deep-rooting, relatively high-vigor rootstocks to graft to (principally 110R and 1103P). Our next decision was if and how to irrigate the blocks we would be planting. After speaking to local growers, it became clear to us that in order to get our young vines through the dry summer months, we would need to be able to irrigate at least in the early years. Grapevine roots grow down fairly rapidly, about a foot and a half per year when the vines are young, slowing as they age. To determine the length of time we'd need to supplement, we did some trench cuts in the vineyard, digging down a dozen feet through the topsoil and the top layers of limestone, to see where the water was by late summer. These showed that even with the water-holding capabilities of our calcium-rich soils, we needed to dig down 6-8 feet to find layers that still had moisture in September. So, we figured we would need to irrigate for the first five or so years, if all went well, and if we were able to encourage the deep root growth that would eventually allow us to get the bulk of the root mass down where water could be found. Our technique was infrequent but deep irrigation. This should be intuitive. Grapevine roots grow where water is present. If you water frequently but shallowly, roots continue to grow near the surface, where water can be found. If the only water to be found is deep, roots grow deep. Watering infrequently (twice per summer, and eventually only once) but deeply causes the soil to dry out from the top down in between waterings, and encourages root growth in the deeper areas that have moisture. It didn't work as smoothly as we had originally hoped. We lost so many vines to gopher predation that we had to replant in some cases as much as 25% of our blocks with young vines. These vines needed to be irrigated when they were young, and even longer, as they grew more slowly due to competition from the older vines nearby. It wasn't until the wet years of 2005 and 2006 that we felt able to wean our established blocks entirely from supplemental irrigation, but when we did, we were rewarded by consecutive great vintages. Now, we feel that our older blocks are able to go not just through a normal rainfall winter without needing to be supplemented, but can go one year into a drought cycle (as in the 2012 vintage) without needing additional water. When we get multiple years into a drought, as we have been since 2013, we are able to supplement, again using the infrequent but deep watering that will discourage the vines from the bad habits of excessive shallow root growth. We supplemented most blocks once in 2013 and twice during the 2014 vintage, and feel that these are going to be two of our greatest vintages ever. Recent Adjustments In addition to the continuing work that we've done easing our original plantings toward water self-sufficiency, the last decade has seen us look to even older models to plant vineyard in ways that won't need to be supplemented even in droughts. As early as 2000, we had planted some of our low-lying blocks in relatively deep soils head-trained, dry-farmed. These areas most resembled, to our minds, the terrain at Beaucastel. We also looked at old vineyards in the Paso Robles area, many of which date back to the years before Prohibition. These vines, mostly Zinfandel, were head-trained and widely spaced, and had made it nearly a century still in high quality production. Our first block that we planted in this manner was the small block of Mourvedre near our front entrance, just to the east of where our tasting room is currently located. We spaced the vines 8 feet apart in a square pattern (a density of 680 vines per acre). A recent view of this block (with the vines and their solar panel backdrop) shows how well established they've become in the last 15 years: The success of these never-irrigated vines encouraged us to plant most of our former rootstock fields in this manner between 2003 and 2005. Though these worked well too, we weren't sure yet whether we could translate these successes to hillside blocks with less topsoil and less water. In the end, it was the logistical challenge of getting well water pumped to our one block on the south (opposite) side of Tablas Creek that pushed us to give it a shot. We planted that thirteen-acre block, which we call Scruffy Hill, head-trained and dry-farmed in 2006 and 2007. Scruffy Hill presented some new challenges. It was (is) one of our most rugged blocks, on a very steep slope, with at the top just a foot or so of topsoil. Cultivation was also going to be a problem, with slopes as steep as 35% making it unsafe to cultivate across the hills, so after speaking with locals we decided on a 12 foot by 12 foot diamond pattern, reducing the vine density to about 340 vines per acre and creating two mostly-vertical avenues we could use to cross-cultivate safely. We weren't comfortable leaving these vines to fend for themselves entirely, so we bought several 5-gallon plastic buckets, drilled a small hole in the bottom of each, and then used our water truck to give each vine a single bucket of water in the late summer in years one and two. Scruffy hill is now thriving: We've also been experimenting with our rootstocks. The rootstocks that we have used, from the beginning, have needed to be relatively high in vigor and tolerant of Calcium. This has meant that we use predominantly 1103-P and 110-R. In recent years, we've planted a few blocks of Grenache on the famously deep-rooting St. George rootstock, the standard in California before irrigation, though in more recent decades largely replaced by lower-vigor, more shallow-rooted crosses. We are hopeful that these experiments will allow us to develop healthier, more vigorous vineyards without needing supplemental irrigation. The Upshot: Forward to the Past All told, in the last decade we've planted over 30 acres head-trained, dry-farmed, in the manner vineyards would have been planted (per force) a century ago. And while it may not be intuitive, in our recent dry years, the vines in these blocks have shown less signs of stress, and the production from these blocks has declined less, than in our trellised blocks. But perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising that 340 vines in a dry-farmed acre can thrive with the roughly 15 inches of rain we've received each of the last four winters, while the 1800 vines planted in a trellised acre really need something closer to the 28 inches that is our average. While a 24-hour irrigation session can keep them going through a dry summer, it's still not making up the difference between a normal rainfall winter and what we've averaged during our drought. Would we make the same commitment to dry-farming if we needed 4 or more tons per acre off of our vineyard? Perhaps not. Our dry-farmed blocks tend to produce between 2 and 2.5 tons per acre, even in the most productive years. But given that we're only aiming for between 2.5 and 3 tons per acre even from our trellised blocks, we're not sacrificing much production. And given how much less expensive it is to plant, prune, cultivate and thin 340 vines per acre than it is to do the same work on 1800, it may not be costing us more per pound of fruit even with the lower yields. Even more important, the quality of the wine lots from these dry-farmed vines has been among the best in the cellar both of the last two years. Take into account that these are still among our youngest blocks and you can see why we feel it's a win-win situation for us, and why we're planning to plant our entire new parcel -- all 55 acres -- this way over the next decade. So, if we're so happy with these old-fashioned techniques, how did the paradigm in California become so dependent on irrigation? I explore the history in part 3. Posted at 02:20 PM in Advice to Wineries, Dry-Farming, Pretty Pictures, Vineyard, Weather & Climate | Permalink

农业

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Of cowboys and Indians: Ravi Malhotra helps rural businesses Joshua Zaffos Delta, ColoradoRavi Malhotra steps from an air-conditioned SUV and inhales the stench from mounds of human waste chips and rows of evaporation ponds cooking in the rising summer sun. This is the CB Industries-Delta Inc. Composting Facility, tucked along a back road among adobe buttes and gullies just outside of Delta, Colo., a conservative agricultural community. With his trim mustache, business-casual clothes, deep brown skin and unmistakable Indian accent, Malhotra appears thoroughly out of place. Born and raised in Mumbai (which he still calls Bombay), Malhotra is progressive, well-educated and tech-savvy. He looks like someone you'd see walking briskly down a city street with a Bluetooth snugged in his ear, not casually chatting about the finer points of septic systems with cowboy-clad and bearded local septic pumper John Caven -- a conversation that began hours earlier over continental breakfast in a chain hotel. But this is a typical day for Malhotra. He and his colleague Christopher Jedd are on a 72-hour journey around the state's Western Slope on behalf of Malhotra's Denver-based nonprofit iCAST -- the International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology. The group's name and mission -- "to provide economic, environmental, and social benefits to communities in a manner that builds local capacity" -- make it sound like an aid group at work in the developing world. And in a way, that's what iCAST is. The economic hardships in small Western communities are a far cry from the persistent poverty in developing nations. But even so, unemployment in Delta County reached over 11 percent during the recession, surpassing the statewide average. And average per capita income ranks near the bottom for Colorado counties. As in many rural areas, families scramble to get by, shuttered storefronts punctuate the streets, and wireless Internet remains a novelty. It doesn't help that educated young people tend to flee depressed rural areas for jobs in cities, leaving locals without much access to technical expertise. That makes it harder to tackle small engineering projects, develop ambitious business or marketing plans, or gain access to much-needed capital or credit. And many locals don't want help directly from the government. ICAST tries to bridge those gaps, helping rural residents learn how to maintain or expand their businesses in ways that also benefit the environment. Malhotra is quick to say that he and his staff are not experts on sanitation or forestry, ranching or horticulture, although iCAST projects have addressed all those fields. John Caven's predicament, though unique in its particulars, is hardly uncommon. He's a plumber with 40 years' experience, and most of his recent work comes from pumping septic systems and hauling waste in his truck, up to 2,000 gallons of sludge per trip. The recession has hit him hard because people put off septic maintenance when money's tight, and the rates he must pay to dispose of sludge at local facilities are two to three times the national average. In 2010, he had to cut his staff from 11 to two. Caven explains that finding alternatives to expensive disposal areas might help; perhaps he could get equipped to handle treatment himself. Malhotra nods quietly. He doesn't react when the septic dump manager blames the economic slump on the state's Democratic leaders. And Malhotra knows better than to shift the conversation to talk about "sustainable development." After all, he's not here to promote an ideology or a specific approach. He's just here to help. ICAST's methods are rooted in Malhotra's background. "Coming from India obviously gives me a different perspective," he says, "but I think that's beneficial because it's an outsider's perspective." Like many urban schoolchildren on the subcontinent, Malhotra, now 45, studied the Queen's English and read Shakespeare in high school. He took a degree in engineering at the Delhi campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, which has been called the "MIT of India," although it's even more selective. In 1988, he took his first job with a New Delhi-based nonprofit called Development Alternatives. "Growing up, my aunts and uncles were doing social-service work, helping the poor -- and there's a lot of them in India, unfortunately," Malhotra says. "So that was ingrained (in me)." There, he designed and established manufacturing lines for solar cookers and stoves, geared handlooms and mud-block presses, each meant to capitalize on available labor and minimize fuel costs in developing regions of India, Asia and Africa. The projects provided basic services to families and created new business prospects, often improving local living conditions in the process. The job also introduced him to his future wife, Jyotsna, who worked for the group. After four years, Malhotra was tired of traveling India's rough and uneven roads and dealing with corrupt bureaucracies, so he joined his own country's brain drain. He headed to the U.S. on a scholarship to the University of Texas, eventually earning a master's degree in engineering and an MBA. Over the next decade, Malhotra worked at several engineering and technology-development firms and eventually started his own company, which analyzed school data and student performances. But the work wasn't exciting; he wanted a greater purpose. Besides, Texas wreaked havoc on his allergies, he says. "So I decided to do what I wanted to do and live where I wanted to live." In 2001, he and his wife moved to Colorado because they love the mountains. "I'm kind of a Westerner at heart," he says. "Going to Bombay, or New York, is good for a vacation, but I can't imagine living in those close spaces." Malhotra launched iCAST as a student service-learning initiative in 2002, placing engineering majors in rural outposts. The center was initially attached to several universities in Colorado and projects were dispersed around the West and the world. Advisers suggested narrowing the scope, so Malhotra spun off iCAST into an independent nonprofit, focused mostly in Colorado. Malhotra broadly defines the organization's path to sustainability. Caven's business troubles might not interest the Sierra Club, but coming up with a solution that circumvents his multiple trips to disposal facilities should cut his fuel use and pollution -- and create jobs. Many iCAST projects aim to increase energy efficiency -- for homes, farms, or businesses -- by applying small-scale renewable technology or finding novel uses for byproducts. Such efforts are "an uphill battle to get on people's radar," Malhotra says, because they aren't as exciting as larger green-jobs initiatives, but the benefits add up for individuals and communities. In order to gain traction in rural areas that are often suspicious of urban outsiders, iCAST generally reaches out to local Resource Conservation & Development councils -- nonprofits established through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which engage local government officials and community members to promote rural development -- or other economic-development boards. Malhotra ducks touchy political or environmental matters to avoid confrontations with his clients. "We don't get into any discussions about climate change," he says, although iCAST touts its projects' energy and carbon savings. ICAST pulls in about half of its money from grants and federal stimulus funds, enabling the firm to work with clients of modest means and provide otherwise unaffordable professional services. It also coordinates workforce training and energy-efficiency projects around metro Denver. Malhotra's first successes came in southern Colorado, after a university professor connected him with members of the San Luis Valley RC&D. In this six-county farming region, more than 20 percent of residents fall below the poverty line, compared with 11 percent in the rest of the state. The staff hooked Malhotra up with local potato growers to study potential markets -- everything from vodka to starch to ethanol to fresh-frozen mashed potatoes -- for the valley's millions of tons of irregular, "off-grade" taters considered unsuitable for sale. John Baxter, who runs one of the few small timber-mills still operating in Colorado, says Malhotra walked, practically unannounced, through his shop door in the San Luis Valley some years ago. In fact, Malhotra had learned about Baxter through the RC&D, and the two men struck up a partnership to identify new uses for the mill's waste. Baxter, who calls Malhotra "aggressive" but "accessible," now sells his wood shavings as filler in animal bedding, using a baler that Malhotra helped him acquire. "The baling has helped us maintain some needed cash flow using our byproducts, and it's been able to open up some other markets we wouldn't have had," says Baxter. In the wide-open southeastern corner of the state, some counties have experienced more than 10-percent population losses in the last decade, as if the winds were blowing away the small farming and ranching towns. Malhotra discovered the hardscrabble landscape through a referral from San Luis Valley to the Southeast Colorado RC&D council. Over several years, iCAST has helped put wind turbines and solar arrays on local farms to keep landowners' energy bills down. The group has also helped install three biofuel facilities that produce oil from crushed sunflower or canola seeds, making farmers more self-sufficient and saving them fuel money. A mobile slaughtering unit, which would allow area ranchers to directly market their beef to in-state customers and avoid the high costs of shipping livestock, is still under consideration, as is a manure-to-fuel gasification plant. Engineering and business students still help with these projects, providing cheap, capable labor to clients while gaining valuable real-world experience. iCAST's interns, including several international students, have had some unexpected but "endearing" multicultural opportunities, laughs Misty George, a former project manager with the Southeast Colorado RC&D. One landowner taught some of them to shoot. And the iCAST students "couldn't believe what kind of food happens at a potluck in a rural community ... the full spread of hot rolls and casseroles, and a dessert table that just doesn't end." The council recently made iCAST its official "technical service provider." "There's a place for Ravi and iCAST and that philosophy down here," says Matt Heimerich, a local farmer, Republican and former Crowley County commissioner who joined the organization's board of directors in 2009. "The model is really about empowering local people to change their own destiny." After checking out the Delta waste facility with John Caven, Malhotra and iCAST project manager Jedd head back to Caven's office, a converted trailer along a state highway. Malhotra listens as Caven runs through a few options he found on the Internet. Over the next few months, Malhotra analyzes their benefits and costs with help from chemical engineering students. Ultimately, they determine that the high price of a promising piece of equipment probably doesn't fit Caven's small-scale business. Malhotra suggests a similar technology that should slash his hauling trips and transportation costs. The center could eventually help finance equipment through a grant or loan, and Malhotra hopes to bring the findings to other septic haulers and industry groups. Caven, who describes himself as both "so conservative" and "far green," is pleased. In an era of political polarization and government stagnancy, Ravi Malhotra is a doer, he says. Indeed, after a decade of "doing," Malhotra and iCAST say they've directed $5 million in investments, grants and iCAST services to small businesses and other initiatives, while generating another $25 million in economic benefits to communities through those projects. "Nobody's going to have that larger conversation unless we can show some results," Malhotra says. "We're not here to tell anyone we're here to save their community. It's more: 'Here's what we bring to the table, and here's what's of interest to you.' And eventually the conversation gets around to the bigger picture" -- the energy savings, waste reduction, and more diversified local economies that come from this brand of job creation and business development. It's not a discussion every rural citizen or economic-development board is interested in having, but Malhotra has found his niche. As far as facing prejudice as an Indian working among mostly pale-faced Westerners, Malhotra says: "It hasn't been so much that I'm not from around 'these parts,' (meaning) the U.S., or that I have a weird or Indian accent. But there's definitely: 'You're not from around these parts ... you're from Denver.' "

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Posts Tagged Chesapeake Bay Amish Farming Draws Rare Government Scrutiny Posted by admin in Amish In The News | 2 Comments Matthew Stoltzfus, left, on his farm in Lancaster, Pa., where a government program is working with Amish farmers to try to instill more environmentally sound methods for handling runoff. By SINDYA N. BHANOO LANCASTER, Pa. — With simplicity as their credo, Amish farmers consume so little that some might consider them model environmental citizens. “We are supposed to be stewards of the land,” said Matthew Stoltzfus, a 34-year-old dairy farmer and father of seven whose family, like many other Amish, shuns cars in favor of horse and buggy and lives without electricity. “It is our Christian duty.” But farmers like Mr. Stoltzfus are facing growing scrutiny for agricultural practices that the federal government sees as environmentally destructive. Their cows generate heaps of manure that easily washes into streams and flows onward into the Chesapeake Bay. And the Environmental Protection Agency, charged by President Obama with restoring the bay to health, is determined to crack down. The farmers have a choice: change the way they farm or face stiff penalties. “There’s much, much work that needs to be done, and I don’t think the full community understands,” said David McGuigan, the E.P.A. official leading an effort by the agency to change farming practices here in Lancaster County. Runoff from manure and synthetic fertilizers has polluted the Chesapeake Bay for years, reducing oxygen rates, killing fish and creating a dead zone that has persisted since the 1970s despite off-and-on cleanup efforts. But of the dozens of counties that contribute to the deadly runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus, Lancaster ranks at the top. According to E.P.A. data from 2007, the most recent available, the county generates more than 61 million pounds of manure a year. That is 20 million pounds more than the next highest county on the list of bay polluters, and more than six times that of most other counties. The challenge for the environmental agency is to steer the farmers toward new practices without stirring resentment that might cause a backlash. The so-called plain-sect families — Amish and Old Order Mennonites, descended from persecuted Anabaptists who fled Germany and Switzerland in the 1700s — are notoriously wary of outsiders and of the government in particular. “They are very resistant to government interference, and they object to government subsidies,” said Donald Kraybill, a professor at Elizabethtown College who studies the Amish. “They feel they should take care of their own.” But the focus on the plain-sect dairy farmers is unavoidable: they own more than 50 percent of Lancaster County’s 5,000-plus farms. “It’s been an issue over the last 30 years,” Dr. Kraybill said. “We have too many animals here per square acre — too many cows for too few acres.” For now, the environmental agency’s strategy is to approach each farmer individually in collaboration with state and local conservation officials and suggest improvements like fences to prevent livestock from drifting toward streams, buffers that reduce runoff and pits to keep manure stored safely. “These are real people with their own histories and their own needs and their own culture,” said John Hanger, the secretary of environmental protection in Pennsylvania. “It’s about treating people right, and in order to treat people right, you’ve got to be able to start where they are at.” But if that does not work, the government will have to resort to fines and penalties. Last September, Mr. McGuigan and his colleagues visited 24 farms in a pocket of Lancaster County known as Watson’s Run to assess their practices. Twenty-three of the farms were plain sect; 17 were found to be managing their manure inadequately. The abundance of manure was also affecting water quality. Six of the 19 wells sampled contained E. coli bacteria, and 16 had nitrate levels exceeding those allowed by the E.P.A. Persuading plain-sect farmers to install fences and buffers underwritten by federal grants has been challenging because of their tendency to shy from government programs, including subsidies. Members neither pay Social Security nor receive its benefits, for example. Word of the E.P.A.’s farm visits last September traveled rapidly through Amish country, Mr. Stoltzfus said, even though most plain-sect farmers do not have their own phones. The farmers whom the agency visited declined to be interviewed. But Mr. Stoltzfus, whose brother-in-law was among them, said that as the news circulated, some farmers decided on their own to make changes in anticipation of intervention by the agency. “I had never heard of the E.P.A. coming out to do inspections,” he said. “I think these practices are going to be required more.” With help from the Lancaster County Conservation District, Mr. Stoltzfus applied for a government grant to help finance construction of a heifer barn with a manure pit. He expects the grant to cover about 70 percent of the cost. But some Amish farmers were angered by the agency’s intrusion and its requirements. “It’s certainly generated controversy,” said Sam Riehl, a farmer in the area. “We wonder whether we are being told what to do, and whether the E.P.A. will make it so that we can’t even maintain our farms.” Mr. Riehl said he had vowed never to accept a government grant. He does have a manure management plan and a manure pit, he said, although several of his neighbors do not. Last year the federal Fish and Wildlife Service awarded $500,000 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to work with the farmers on switching to barnyard runoff controls, streamside forest buffers, no-till farming and cover crops. The money has been lucrative for local agricultural companies like Red Barn Consulting, which has used some of it to hold milk-and-doughnut sessions in barns for Amish farmers and drop off fliers door to door. The firm’s owner, Peter Hughes, and his employees instruct the farmers on manure management and do free walkthroughs to offer suggestions. In the last six months, Mr. Hughes said, his plain-sect clientele has soared from several dozen farmers to about 200. Working with the plain sect presents challenges, Mr. Hughes said. For one thing, the group is deeply averse to salesmanship. Then there is the technological communication problem: most of the farmers share a phone booth along a road with several neighbors. “I had one client who would call me at 5:15 every morning,” he said. “That was his allotted time to use the phone, and that was the only way for us to talk.” Most days Mr. Hughes is on the road in his pickup visiting farmers. As he drives, he said, he is often struck by the dichotomy between a would-be pastoral ideal and the environmental reality. “You see those cows and the fields, and it’s beautiful,” he said. “But then there’s that big pile of manure sitting back there.” Mr. Stoltzfus hopes he is ahead of the game. By adopting new practices and building the manure pit, he thinks he can both help the environment and steer clear of E.P.A. interference. At midday, Mr. Stoltzfus was placing a bowl of cut fruit into a propane-powered cooler in his backyard, one of the family’s few concessions to technology. Hand-washed black pants and plain cotton dresses fluttered on a clothesline behind him. He offered a taciturn reflection on how quickly things had changed — his willingness to accept the grant, for example. “A while back, Old Order Amish would not participate in programs like this,” he said, “but farming is getting expensive.” And then he ended the conversation. “Is that all?” he said politely but coolly. “I have work to do.” It was milking time. Tags: agency, Amish, barn, Chesapeake Bay, conservation, dairy farmer, Department of Agriculture, environment, environmental agency, environmental protection, EPA, farm, Farmer, farmers, Fines, fish, government, government grant, government program, hughes, kraybill, lancaster county, manure, manure management, manure pit, matthew, mcguigan, Mennonites, old order, Penalties, people right, plain-sect, red, riehl, run, said, said plain-sect, sam, september, stoltzfus

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Research shows some applicator hoses can retain crop-damaging Auxin residues Apr 18, 2017 High-Input Soybean Production: Soybean yield response to rhizobia inoculant, gypsum, manganese fertilizer, insecticide, and fungicide Apr 19, 2017 Answers on water quality, drainage Apr 14, 2017 Best practices for splitting nitrogen applications Apr 21, 2017 Corn and Soybean Crops Progressing Rapidly Kent Thiesse 1 | Aug 02, 2011 Crop conditions across the Midwest vary in early August, depending on planting date, as well as impacts from heavy rainfall and severe storms in June and July. Overall, across southern Minnesota, a large percentage of corn and soybeans are in good to excellent condition; however, excessive rainfall, along with wind and hail, in some locations could reduce 2011 yield potential. The combination of adequate soil moisture, together with above-normal temperatures during July, has helped the 2011 corn and soybean crop make up for later-than-normal planting dates in many areas, which should help improve the 2011 yield prospects. July 2011 was ranked as one of the warmest Julys on record in many areas of Minnesota. As of July 28, a total of 1,537 GDUs had been reported since May 1 at the U of M Southern Research and Outreach Center at Waseca, which is about 6%, or four days, ahead normal for July 28. On July 1, the 2011 GDU accumulation at Waseca was 869, which was about 20 GDUs behind normal, while on June 1 the GDU accumulation was approximately 40 GDUs behind normal. Total precipitation for the month at Waseca as of July 28, was 7.13 in., compared to a normal total July precipitation total of 4.47 in. The adequate and frequent rainfall events have helped the crop avoid significant stress from the very warm temperatures that have existed throughout most of July. Interestingly, a total of 1,505 GDUs had been accumulated at Waseca by July 28, 2010, so 2011 GDU accumulation is actually ahead of the 2010 rate. Of course most corn and soybeans in southern Minnesota were planted two to three weeks earlier in 2010, as compared to 2011. A majority of the corn and soybeans in the region were planted seven to 10 days later than normal in 2011, so the warm temperatures in July have helped the crops make up for the late planting. As a result, most corn and soybeans are now near normal development for early August. Crops are further behind in some areas of central Minnesota that had later planting dates and have had higher incidences of heavy rains and severe weather during June and July. Corn takes about 60 days from the time of tasseling until the corn kernels reach physiological maturity (black-layer), with normal accumulation of GDUs. Once the corn kernel is black-layered, it is usually free of significant damage from a killing frost. Much of the corn in southern Minnesota tasseled and pollinated from July 10 to 20, and should adequately mature in 2011, assuming fairly normal GDU accumulation in August and early September – and a normal date for the first killing frost. Some of the later-planted corn in central Minnesota, which did not tassel until late July or early August could have some challenges being fully black-layered by the first frost, especially if temperatures turn cooler or if the first killing frost is earlier than normal. Many growers in Southern Minnesota have been spraying for soybean aphids in the past couple of weeks. Soybean aphid populations have been on the rise in recent weeks in many areas. With the current high commodity prices for soybeans, the economic threshold level for applying soybean aphid treatments is quite low. Heat Stress on Livestock The near-record temperatures and high humidity during mid-July caused considerable heat stress on livestock, with many reports of significant animal losses to cattle, hogs and poultry in some areas. The heat also led to reduced weight gains in market livestock, reduced mild and egg production, and lower production in breeding herds. Producers who lost livestock from the July heat might qualify for the Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP) through the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), which may provide some partial compensation for the financial losses that were incurred. Losses must be filed at the County FSA offices within 30 days of the date(s) that the losses occurred, and losses must be verified by a third party not directly associated with the farm operation. For more information on the LIP program producers should contact their county FSA office or download the following LIP Fact Sheet (pdf).

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Report: The Trump Effect on You Impressive Evolution March 5, 2009 By: Paul Schrimpf | EmailEmailPrintFacebookGoogleTwitterLinkedIn In January, I was invited by the Nebraska Ag Technologies Association to speak at the organization’s winter meeting and share some thoughts on where we are with technology in agriculture and where we might be headed. I was only marginally enthused about the prospect of hearing my own voice for almost an hour, but I was really excited about doing the prep work that would be needed for such a presentation. About a month was spent interviewing experts from ag technology companies and retail dealerships, as well as consultants and other people with a lot to say on the subject. After more than 30 interviews, a fairly clear image of ag technology trends in the immediate and longer term came into view. Consolidation Comes Around One interesting trend in technology last year was the plethora of consolidations and joint ventures occurring in the precision side of technology. Trimble, which traditionally has been strong in GPS guidance technology, made a move toward adding more “on the ground” technology by purchasing planter clutch company Tru-Count and variable-rate controller manufacturer Rawson Controls. Trimble also partnered up with DICKEY-john on a variable-rate seeding technology offering. Equipment manufacturer AGCO partnered up with Topcon to bring Topcon’s range of current and future guidance offerings to AGCO machinery. Certainly, the drive to be competitive on as many fronts as possible and the desire to gain user loyalty through fuller product lines impacted the industry in 2008. Looking at the bigger picture, the message from everyone was that, despite the general economic malaise, the fundamentals of agriculture are sound. And while agriculture is managing to dodge and parry challenges all around, it’s a good time to tighten up efficiency and improve productivity. Bringing on new technology, or using the technology you already own more efficiently, is a part of any improvement strategy. Global Positioning If data means virtually nothing unless it’s geographically referenced to a specific point on a field, then global positioning is the underpinning to all meaningful data. Not surprisingly, improvements to global positioning systems have been an important focus both for governments and private companies. In the sky, there’s been a dramatic uptick in the number of available satellites for positioning, and more are on the way. Along with the U.S.’ GPS constellation, Russia continues to add birds to its GLONASS system, and China, India, and Japan are also moving rapidly forward on plans to add positioning satellites. Receiver manufacturers are adding capabilities to use these satellites to improve accuracy and reduce the chance of losing a signal. On the ground, the real-time kinematic (RTK) base stations and tower networks now covering millions of acres across the country are being joined by CORS networks in some areas. CORS — Continuously Operating Reference Stations — have largely been used by state governmental agencies such as departments of transportation to provide positioning for surveying and construction. States such as Iowa and Alabama are opening up their CORS networks and making them available to users who register with the state free of charge. The networks can offer RTK-quality signals. The operational CORS networks are working well, but how fast they might proliferate across the country remains to be seen. Retailers can contact their state department of transportation for information on plans for CORS networks in a particular state. Telematics: Managing Data In conversations before and after the meeting, one word I used to describe growers and agronomists and their relationship with their own field data rang true: exhaustion. Folks are exhausted with trying to manage the amount of data flowing in on a particular operation, and with the task of making data make sense on a given operation. A key part of the problem is the amount of data intercession in which growers must engage along the way — for example, moving data cards from cab to computer. The data movement issue is huge because of the potential for miscues from the machinery to the office. Use of telematics — allowing smart machines to transfer information wirelessly and compatibly — is showing great promise and is a key focus of development for manufacturers. In addition to information such as georeferenced data, field machinery will be able to transfer maintenance and efficiency information to help operators manage the equipment to avoid breakdowns and make best decisions. Some manufacturers are taking a “dashboard” approach to developing new software, which would give growers a view of their total operation. The idea is to include everything in one screen — for example, equipment maintenance reports sent wirelessly from the equipment to the desktop, letting the grower know about upcoming regular maintenance or failing parts, as well as access to field data and other farm operation information. Telematics: Logistics Spring season is always full of surprises and curve balls that test the mettle of logistics managers at retail dealerships, and by all accounts this spring will be particularly difficult. Any tool that has the potential to help manage the madness is worth a look — thus, there’s plenty of buzz around the plethora of logistics programs being offered by manufacturers. With the proliferation of reliable cellular signals in many rural areas and the availability of data plans, there are a growing number of programs available that allow retailers to track equipment operating in the field in real time. Using a computer and monitor in a central location, logistics managers can monitor the movement of equipment across a geographic area, along with details of the field work such as equipment speed and work order specifics. It also allows the manager to quickly make on-the-go changes that improve efficiency and take intuition and guesswork out of the process. A bit farther down the road, developments in on-the-go sensor technology will likely make serious progress in precision agriculture programs. Some experts are imagining a time when sensor technology could eventually serve to replace soil sampling for nutrients by scanning a plant and making an on-the-go application based on plant need as detected by the sensor. There are also some success stories, in particular in Australia, that use the GreenSeeker on-the-go sensor in post applications for weed control. Sensor technology, and the algorithms that drive them, continue to improve. These are but four trends that technology experts shared with me, but there are plenty of big ideas still in the hopper. And they’re coming on fast. It took more than 60 years from the time the tractor was invented for tractors to outnumber horses on the farm. Conversely, it was just over two decades ago that agriculture’s technological revolution began with Soilection, the marriage of computer technology with an application rig. Now, more than two-thirds of retailers do electronics-based variable-rate application. And it’s hard to imagine a rig without functional computer technology that’s built in, ready-to-go, and features controlling aspects of the rig we could have only dreamed of back in 1985. Despite the challenges of compatibility and adoption, technology is making us more efficient, more profitable, and better stewards of the land.

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Future of UK supply at heart of Sainsbury’s horticulture apprenticeship by Gill McShane The apprentices in the 2014/15 scheme are expected to remain in the produce industry The apprentices are training to become commercial growers At a time when UK food production is becoming more important, while natural resources are in decline, Produce Business UK takes a look at how Sainsbury's Commercial Horticulture Apprenticeship Scheme aims to inject enthusiastic, skilled and dedicated blood into the fresh produce industry and bring about real change by involving the entire supply chain Forming part of Sainsbury’s 20x20 Sustainability Plan, the commercial horticulture apprenticeship got underway in September 2014 when major UK produce companies – G’s Fresh, AC Goatham, Taylorgrown, Drimbawn (formally Monaghan) Mushrooms, Cornerways Nursery, Allpress Farms and Vitacress took on eight grower apprentices for topfruit, mushroom, salad, root vegetable and brassica production. For Sainsbury’s, the programme complements its existing work in agriculture and horticulture but the overarching goal is much greater. The retailer recognises that bringing new, highly skilled and trained workers into the industry is crucial to its continued success. Why produce apprenticeships are vital “It’s as much our responsibility as others to act now,” Rob Honeysett, horticulture manager at Sainsbury’s tells Produce Business UK. “We recognise that working together as a partnership we have an opportunity to change things and bring a new entrance of people into horticulture and the supply chain. This will have an impact on the quality of produce grown and sourced, plus it contributes to our sustainability as a retailer.” Honeysett claims there is a lack of people entering agriculture as a profession because it’s an “unknown industry”, particularly the horticulture sector. People see fresh produce in the supermarkets yet they rarely get a glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes. “The bigger challenge for the industry is to raise its profile among school leavers and those heading off to university,” Honeysett explains. “Agriculture is tied to family farms so it’s a complex dynamic. But the horticulture industry is consolidating into bigger businesses and there’s now more of a career path in management, for example.” Both Sainsbury’s and its apprenticeship training partner Staffline believe the industry needs to work on its overall profile among youngsters. If people don’t enter horticulture careers from manual labour right up to management, they argue there will simply not be an industry to supply food to the nation. “Getting new blood and trained workers into the industry is vital for the future of businesses and the horticulture industry so we can continue producing top quality food for the future,” notes agriculture and horticulture training consultant Mike Dodd, who joined Staffline in January 2014 to set up and run the scheme. “Apprenticeships are very relevant and valuable to the industry. Horticulture isn’t taught at school, so how else would you learn about farming and growing unless you were born into it? Apprenticeships give you the practical and theoretical knowledge needed to be a grower/farmer.” The ethos of Sainsbury’s Commercial Horticulture Apprenticeship Scheme is to encourage new (and not necessarily young) blood into the produce industry and to harness the dedicated talent that will eventually become the managers of the future. Given the opportunities and career paths on offer, Dodd says there has to be better education of farming and better careers advice in schools and colleges as well as government incentives. “Some training advisors and schools are trying to promote farming as a career,” he admits, adding that certain produce companies promote horticulture jobs at career fairs, while Allpress itself goes out to local schools and invites students to visit its farms in Cambridge. “Horticulture a very advanced and high tech industry these days, meaning the skills are transferrable,” Dodd continues. “A lot of growers are using drones, and the tractors have GPS systems. It’s long hours, of course, so you have to be flexible. But it’s quite well paid, especially if you move up the management chain.” What the scheme is doing To raise awareness and promote the produce trade Sainsbury’s specifically devised a national scheme that would bring together the supply chain in a unique way; pitching the idea to all of its farmers, growers and suppliers. “We [Sainsbury’s] carry a bit of weight and we hope to bring about real change,” Honeysett points out. “We wanted to make it truly collaborative among our suppliers, and really supply-chain driven, rather than developing a bespoke programme that fits our requirements. The government is really keen on apprenticeships so there is good funding. We [Sainsbury’s] are just providing the link to make it happen.” According to Honeysett, an apprenticeship of this type has never before been rolled out on this scale nor at this level of quality. When completed, the six apprentices will achieve a Lantra and City & Guilds-recognised and transferable Level 2 Work Based Diploma that Sainsbury’s and Staffline have tailored to commercial horticulture. In short, the apprentices will be trained horticulture growers but thanks to Sainsbury’s open and wide-reaching approach the apprentices will also have gained a vast amount of knowledge about the inner workings of the entire supply chain. “We want the apprentices to be enthusiastic about our industry so we’ve opened it up [as part of the course] so they can get to know it first-hand,” Honeysett explains. “They will get to understand the scale of the industry, all the processes and its complexity. “They’re visiting our stores, our depots, our growers, packers and even seed breeders. They’ve seen how we sell produce and in July we’ll show them the buying process. It’s a comprehensive education programme – they are seeing it all.” While many of the apprentices are expected to stay within the production field of horticulture, Honeysett says it’s vital they understand the supply chain at large, especially the end consumer. “It’s a commercial horticulture qualification and they are learning how to grow produce but like any other course they may end up taking other roles within the industry so they’re getting to see the marketing, operations, finance etc,” he notes. “As a grower it’s crucial to understand the end consumer. One of the challenges for growers in recent years has been to understand their market better.” What the employers think The employers themselves also recognise that training and skills are important but their challenge will be to see through their investment. Fortunately, the signs are already pointing in the right direction. “Apprenticeships by nature are an investment – by far the value is when they’re fully trained but you don’t know if it will pay off for three or four years,” says Honeysett. “Several of the apprentices currently involved will definitely have an exciting career ahead because they have the ability, and they will be an asset to their employers. But it’s up to employers to incentivise the apprentices to stay on. We are just creating that opportunity.” Dodd agrees, adding: “The employers need good quality staff that they can retain in the business or the industry. The vision is that the apprentices will secure a job with the companies they’re placed with, subject to them achieving their diploma. Provided there are opportunities for the apprentice they are likely to stay.” The fresh produce companies involved are fully backing the scheme, according to Dodd, who says thanks to broad-minded owners, the employers saw the benefits of bringing in youngsters. “They’ve all come on board thoroughly,” he explains. “G’s is already quite big in training because the firm has a good management training scheme, so they thought the apprenticeship would fit nicely into that,” explains Dodd. “AC Goatham also does a lot of training with its employees and it felt this initiative would be a natural progression from that. In fact, they took two apprentices!” What the apprentices are learning In a nutshell, the apprentices are learning how to become growers. From there, they can choose whether to continue with the training to become a farm manager. The skills they are learning are science-based and include: identifying pests and disease and their control, irrigation systems, nutrient requirements, monitoring crops (crop walking), plant terminology (knowing the Latin names and subspecies), preparing crops, harvesting and storing, as well as being able to communicate with their superiors and colleagues, and leadership qualities. All the apprentices are assigned a Staffline assessor who visits every four to six weeks to tweak the programme where necessary. Every 12 weeks the apprentices attend college for one week for classes in theory and underpinning knowledge as well as to work on their portfolio or to visit other farms/places of interest to complement their knowledge. They also receive homework from college. How it’s going The scheme is going well with both employers and apprentices said to be very happy, according to Dodd. “The apprentices appreciate the fact that they can go to college for a full week as in other apprenticeships it’s usually just a day,” he explains. “They also can’t believe how many people they’ve met and how much they’ve learnt.” Dodd says those involved have access to a closed Facebook account to share their experiences, which has proved popular with the apprentices. “They send in photos of themselves at the farm, sometimes at 3am!,” he explains. “It’s been better than the apprentices themselves expected. They’re working hard but the rewards are really good. Some of the machines are worth over £100,000 each so they can’t believe they’ve been given responsibility to handle them. Alex Parkinson at Taylorgrown is on tractors for most of the day and he’s now been asked to oversee the brassica side of the business, so he’s already been given the opportunity for more responsibility.” Where it goes from here Academically, once the apprentices have completed the Level 2 Diploma, they can apply for a Level 3 supervisory qualification to become a farm manager and continue on their work-based learning route. Or, they could go on to university. For Sainsbury’s and Staffline, the Level 2 apprenticeship lasts 20 months (until July 2016) and will continue as a rolling scheme with the second cohort of apprentices starting in January 2016, once selected following the summer. “The aim is to run the apprenticeship once a year,” reveals Honeysett. “Those employers currently involved in the scheme are already coming back for a second apprentice next year so the hope is that it will snowball.” Sainsbury’s has also just launched a similar apprenticeship programme for livestock and poultry, which will get under way in September. In addition, the retailer is involved in a new trailblazer apprenticeship to raise awareness among farmers. Meet the Sainsbury’s Commercial Horticulture Apprentices Adam Hall Now that G’s Fresh’s apprentice Adam Hall realises not all farmers are born farmers, he is considering joining G’s own management training scheme to carve out a future in the industry. “It was never really mentioned as a career choice at school - I never knew how to get into the industry,” explains the 24-year-old. “It wasn't until I started searching for a new job last year that I stumbled upon this apprenticeship scheme and the doors started opening for me.” Already, Adam says he’s met “many great people” thanks to the programme and learnt a lot in a short space of time from crop monitoring, to pest and disease control, soil moisture monitoring, moisture probe/weather station installations and maintenance and much more. Long-term, he’s keen to gain hands-on experience in all the different areas of the business at G’s. “I am very interested in the more technical side of the industry and would like to learn more about the science behind the crop and the soils themselves,” he says. “I am also interested in new technology and ideas, research and development, trial work as well as data analysis and input.” Alexander Parkinson Alex Parkinson is an apprentice for Taylorgrown, who is proud to be involved in supplying organic produce to consumers and keen to climb the corporate ladder. “I am passionate about what I do […] and I aspire to work my way up the ladder and become a farm manager,” he explains. “In the future I hope to bring something new to the industry and help carry out new techniques in organic and conventional farming to strive for success while safeguarding our land for future generations.” Ellie Errett Ellie Errett at Drimbawn (formally Monaghan) Mushrooms loves food and fresh produce, having spent most of her career in catering. Despite juggling family life, a full-time job and study, the 31-year-old says the experience has been a positive and exciting challenge aided by her skills in preparation, organisation and attention to detail. “The apprenticeship has helped to give my career some direction,” she comments. “With the support and the opportunities we are being given I really hope to find my niche and grow in confidence to become the professional I know I’m capable of being.” Ellie is particularly interested in a forum/agency partnering farms to research projects and universities, farm branding and marketing, research and development and at my place of work, which is currently undergoing an expansion project, an onsite, exclusive mushroom restaurant, showcasing our product. Esther Harvey AC Goatham apprentice Esther Harvey says the scheme has been a great way to develop her passion of agriculture thanks to growing up in a rural area. “I have gained experience with the apprenticeship in different aspects of the company from harvesting fruit to preparing a new orchard. I would like to get more insight of different types of agriculture not just top fruit,” she notes. On completing the apprenticeship, Esther already has plans to remain in the horticulture industry and hopefully study a higher qualification. Jack Swindley Jack Swindley is an apprentice agricultural machinery operator working for Allpress Farms who is loving every minute of his experience and recently joined the Huntingdon Young Farmers Club in Cambridgeshire. “I have experienced a lot of different work and I cannot find anything which I do not love doing,” he claims. “I have always had an interest in farming and horticulture and since I left school I have always wanted to have a career in horticulture.” Ambitious Swindley says his father’s influence as a head gardener at a stately home first attracted him to the industry where he plans to own his own contracting business in The Fens and across the whole of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. “This is my first stepping stone to that career and I hope to gain a lot more experience and qualifications so I can build up a business for the future,” he reveals. “If I managed to set up and run a successful contracting business I would love to take on apprentices and hand over any training and experience I can to them.” Liam Walker Apprentice Liam Walker wishes to work as a horticulture grower now he’s experienced all the main operations at Cornerways Nursery in West Norfolk. “I would like to become more established within this industry and gain a good network of contacts within it,” he explains. “I also want to progress further with my studies and study towards a level three qualification or a foundation degree,” he explains. In the last eight months Liam has learnt about harvesting, crop working and turnaround. He’s now working within the Cornerways growing team; learning about all aspects of tomato production including; irrigation, pest and disease and monitoring plant growth. “Most of this is being taught by Robert Farthing (the recent winner of the Young Horticulture Grower of the Year award),” he says. “I enjoy learning about the scientific principles behind production horticulture. At college I have enjoyed studying subjects like pest and diseases and soil science.” The six Sainsbury’s apprentices took part in the mentored student programme at the London Produce Show and Conference 2015 on June 3-5 to learn even more about the produce industry and make new contacts. Anyone wishing to get involved in the apprenticeship scheme should contact Sainsbury’s Further materials: Information for employers Information for apprentices Sainsbury’s 20x20 Sustainability Plan Sainsbury’s progress so far Sainsbury’s 20x20 Factsheets

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New Book Reveals Food Monopolies are Everywhere Food monopolies are everywhere – and they’re growing. A new book by a Michigan State University professor dissects the troubling trend and shows how it’s happening on all levels of the food chain. Most people know about fast food and big beer monopolies. Many people don’t know, though, that many craft beers are actually owned by big breweries, and margarine – yes, margarine – is nearly a monopolized market, said Phil Howard, associate professor of community, agriculture, recreation and resource studies, and author of Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat? “At almost every key stage of the food system, four firms alone control 40 percent or more of the market, a level above which these companies have the power to drive up prices for consumers and reduce their rate of innovation,” he said. “These trends are often hidden from most of us – and even from people who work in these industries – because acquisitions may not result in changes of brand names.” Map of Beer Monopolies Here are some examples: Walmart rules retailing, owning 33 percent of the U.S. market; AB InBev dominates more than 46 percent of the U.S. beer market; and Monsanto controls 26 percent of the international seed market. In the dairy case, Unilever accounts for more than 51 percent of sales of margarine while ConAgra accounts for nearly 17 percent of all U.S. sales. “In terms of margarine, the corporations’ power is hidden from us through an illusion of numerous competing brands,” Howard said. “There’s a deliberate attempt to obscure how much shelf space is controlled by just a few corporations.” In the craft beer market, Goose Island and Leinenkugel’s, two faces of midwestern craft breweries, were bought out by AB InBev and SABMiller, respectively. Away from the Midwest, AB InBev recently purchased five craft brewers on the West Coast. “They’re doing this because big-brand beers’ market shares are stalled or declining. To increase market share, they must buy out craft breweries that are growing or merge with other, larger competitors,” Howard said. “For example, if the proposed merger between AB InBev and SABMiller goes through, they’ll control nearly one-third of the international beer market.” The book identifies dominant corporations and supermarket chains and shows the extent of their control over markets. It also analyses the strategies these firms are using to reshape society in order to further increase their power. “The book covers how corporations influence vulnerable populations, such as recent immigrants, ethnic minorities and people with lower socioeconomic status,” Howard said. Map of Organic Food Monopolies The book isn’t all doom and dread, however. Some of the positive market trends include the effort to increase the variety of turkeys consumed at Thanksgiving. In 1997, there were only 1,300 individual turkeys in the U.S. that weren’t broad-breasted white. Today, there are tens of thousands of heritage turkeys being raised around the country. The increased variety gives consumers many choices in many price ranges. The book, which is geared toward college classrooms and can be bought at Bloomsbury Publishing, is a good resource for anyone interested in the food industry or who is concerned about these trends. Even though Howard points out numerous worrying trends in the food market, he’s optimistic regarding its future. “Some of these monopolistic trends sound overwhelming,” he said. “It often looks unstoppable, but it’s not.” – Layne Cameron, Phil Howard via MSU Today Category: Business & Society, Food Safety & Security, Latest Research · Tags: College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Department of Community Agriculture Recreation and Resource Studies, Phil Howard

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Weisinger’s looks ahead to the next 25 years Viticulture section stories By Patty MamulaFor the Capital Press Last changed on November 6, 2013 10:33AM Patty Mamula/For the Capital Press Eric Weisinger, winemaker and general manager of Weisinger's Winery in Ashland, stands on the front deck of the tasting room overlooking the Rogue Valley. Weisinger traveled to New Zealand for several years to broaden his wine knowledge. Buy this photo Patty Mamula/For the Capital Press Part of the vineyard and production barrels for Weisinger's Winery in Ashland, Oregon. One of seven original wineries in the Rogue Valley, it was founded in 1979 by John Weisinger and is known for pioneering a vineyard in Ashland. Wines include Pinot Noir, a well known blend called Petite Pomard,Chardonnay, Viognier, Petite Blanc, Merlot, Mescolare - a red blend of Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Buy this photo ASHLAND, Ore. ­— John Weisinger was a minister and youth counselor before moving to Ashland to pursue his lifelong dream — founding a winery. The first grapes he planted in 1979 were Gewurztraminer cuttings a friend gave him.The 4 1/2-acre estate vineyard, the first in Ashland and, at 2,100 feet, the highest in the Siskiyou foothills, also now grows Pinot Noir and Tempranillo.When the tasting room opened in the spring of 1989, there were only six other wineries in the Rogue Valley.In the early years John was the primary winemaker. His son Eric took over from 1997 to 2006 when he left for New Zealand to broaden his experience. “When I chose this as a career, I decided that to get better I had to go. I learned more about grape growing, about management, about the art of making wine and about production — how to streamline and work smarter, not harder,” he said.He returned in 2011 and still consults locally and in New Zealand, primarily for the April harvest. He resumed winemaking and took over as general manager.“When I first came back, I took a fresh look at our production and changed vineyards to improve the quality of our fruit,” he said.In addition to the original vineyard, Eric manages several others and uses 11 acres of grapes, making 75 percent of the fruit they use estate grown.Eventually all the grapes will be estate grown. “Then our wine will really be the taste of Ashland,” said Eric. In August, at the time of this interview, wildfires in southwest Oregon filled the Rogue Valley with smoke. Eric said the sky reminded him of conditions from the 2002 Biscuit Fire. Smoke can have an affect on the grapes in terms of taste and maturation time, he said.After tackling production issues, Eric turned his attention to marketing, asking questions like “What is this brand and what’s it about? What do we want to be known for?”“It’s our 25-year anniversary, a good time for introspection. I think my job is to reshape the business for the next 25 years,” he said. The four pillars of the winery were clearly history, family, quality and locale. A new name, Weisinger Family Winery, and a new logo will be rolled out this fall.Another change to their business model is an emphasis on the custom crush service that takes grapes from raw fruit to bottled wine. This has grown from 10 percent to 60 percent of their production in the past few years. “What we earn off 2,000 cases of custom crush is about one-third what we make on our own wine, but the margins are higher,” said Eric.“We have the capacity to produce as much as 4,500 cases of our wine. But, we only want to make as many as we can sell. Decisions we make today will affect our business in 2015.” He continues to spread production out to hedge slightly and expects about 1,600 cases this year.Even so, he notes that the southern Oregon market is growing, especially toward the reds and the Rhone varieties that grow so well there, and tourism is on the increase in Ashland.Accordingly, he plans to increase wholesale marketing in 2014 and to grow the wine club by 25 percent.Weisinger Family WineryLocation: Ashland, Ore.Founder: John WeisingerWinemaker and general manager: Eric WeisingerVineyard: Fifteen acresProduction: About 1,600 cases annually of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Bordeaux style blends, Chardonnay, Semillion, GewurztraminerAVA: Rogue ValleyOpened for business in 1988.

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The State of Texas: Court Unanimously Upholds The Block On Trump’s Refugee Ban The State of Texas: Texans Targeted Amid National ICE Raids The Bluebonnets Have Already Arrived We love our state flower, of course, but it’s a little early for them to be blooming, right? By John Nova LomaxFebruary 10, 2017Comments Bluebonnets, here already?! Press spacebar to see more share options. I’ve lived a couple of blocks off White Oak Bayou in Houston for about seven years, and I’ve been casually monitoring the first outbreak of bluebonnets through that time. I remember when they came up a day or two before Valentine’s Day, and even that seemed really early to me. But on February 8, a week ahead of all my previous records, I spotted my first bluebonnet of 2017. I talked to Andrea DeLong-Amaya, director of horticulture at the University of Texas’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center about what was, to me, a startling development. Though I see the upshot: at least we’re being treated to bluebonnets a little earlier this year. John Nova Lomax: This beats my previous record bluebonnet by about a week. What are your thoughts on that and when, historically, do bluebonnets start popping up? Andrea DeLong-Amaya: If you’ve been documenting it, especially for your area, then you’ve probably got a better idea of it. But yeah, I think things are a little early. Because we’ve been seeing unseasonably warm and sunny weather, I’ve been seeing a lot of things come up. Now is the time that a lot of things do come up but it is a little on the early side, especially for bluebonnets. But it’s just been warm, crazy-warm. JNL: I remember, I think in 2011, that I freaked out because the bluebonnets were up in time for Valentine’s Day. And now we are six days ahead of even that. I’ve heard they’ve been in Big Bend already. ADA: That’s not as uncommon. Their bluebonnets tend to be earlier than ours. I often think of February as their peak season, because I’ve been to Big Bend in March, and they are kind of wrapping things up, whereas ours [in Austin] are full swing in April. So that doesn’t sound atypical to me. JNL: I don’t want to freak everybody out but this seems like a clear sign of global warming to me. ADA: (Laughs) Well, I think it is a clear sign of the unseasonably, record-breaking heat that we’ve had. I know Austin, and I think Houston, has had some record-breaking heat this week. We’ve had three days in the mid- to upper-80s, and all three have broken records. And we didn’t just have that record-breaking heat, but also just warm weather in general. We did have some cold weather in January, but that was long ago enough that any plants that were slowed down at that point are now picking back up because of the warm weather. JNL: This has kind of been the worst winter in my lifetime because we had just enough cold weather to kill all our tropical plants and then it’s been warm ever since. Our lemons, our oranges, some of our cacti, they all bit the dust in that cold snap. ADA: Cold enough to kill and warm enough to confuse everything else. (Laughs). January and February are normally the coldest months of the year, and it’s very likely that we are going to have more cold weather this winter. Trying to predict the winter—I am not going to do that—but chances are, we’re going to have another cold snap. And I hope it happens soon, and it will slow things down, because the longer all this tender growth comes up the more susceptible it will be if it does get really cold again, assuming that it will. It happens regularly: just a couple of years ago, we had Texas mountain laurels getting ready to bloom or starting to bloom, and if we get enough of a cold snap, then we might lose all those flowers for that year. Bluebonnets seem a little more tolerant of that, and I have seen them get nipped by frost, but I think the tops just get nipped a little bit and they just push out of it so quickly that it’s not too big a deal. Normally they are plenty cold-hardy. It’s just that new tender growth that can be more susceptible. wJNL: Bluebonnets are a harbinger of spring, and it’s arriving so early, and summer is coming right behind that. And do we really welcome summer here in Texas? ADA: Yeah, it would be great if we had perpetual spring, but we know it’s about to get hot. Tags: Bluebonnets, Environment, Texana, The Culture Get Texas Monthly. Daily. The State of Texas: Court Unanimously Upholds The Block On Trump’s Refugee Ban The State of Texas: Texans Targeted Amid National ICE Raids Related Content Thousands of Texans Take Part in National March For Science: Your Texas Roundup Man of Style The Top 5 Myths About Home Energy Use Held for Ransom Get Texas Monthly. Daily.

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Newly renamed Canada Agriculture and Food Museum inaugurates new Learning Centre and exhibition - Canada Agriculture and Food Museum Homepage / Newsroom / Newly renamed Canada Agriculture and Food Museum inaugurates new Learning Centre and exhibition Newly renamed Canada Agriculture and Food Museum inaugurates new Learning Centre and exhibition OTTAWA, May 2, 2013 – Today, the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum (CAFM) is proud to announce its new name and inaugurate an exciting new Learning Centre and exhibition. The Museum has added ‘Food’ to its name to draw a stronger and important link between agriculture and food. The ultimate goal of agriculture is to produce food that sustains and nourishes us. And through the new Learning Centre, the CAFM will be able to vastly expand its programming, teaching children and families about the how’s and why’s of getting food from the farm to the fork. “The CAFM is truly a showcase for Canadian agriculture, food production and the science and technology which feeds the nation,’ says Canada Science and Technology Museums CEO Denise Amyot. “This new Learning Centre will enable us to do it better, and our new ability to fully operate year-round will allow us to reach an even greater audience than before. This project was a major undertaking which will see us reap great benefits, and I want to thank and congratulate all of those who have made it such a success. Following the completion of a $4.6 million retrofit of a heritage Central Experimental Farm building, the newly modernized Learning Centre is now the ‘hub’ of year-round Museum and community activities focused on Food. Located in the heart of the nation’s capital on the Central Experimental Farm National Historic Site, the Learning Centre introduces a new suite of interactive, educational and community programming centred around the food we eat. The Centre design includes new exhibition space, a lecture hall, event space, modern learning labs and other visitor amenities. The first exhibition to be showcased in this new Learning Centre is called A Piece of Cake! This exhibition will allow visitors to understand that getting the ingredients for a simple cake recipe from the field to the fork is no mere ‘piece of cake’. The emphasis on food is reflected in the new exhibition, as well as an upcoming exhibition on food science, which will be presented thanks to the support of CAFM’s new sponsor, Nestlé Canada. In addition, Nestlé Canada is supporting a classroom in the new Learning Centre, the Nestlé Good Food Good Life Learning Lab. ‘We’re very happy and proud to be partnering with the Museum,’ says Shelley Martin, President & CEO of Nestlé Canada Inc. ‘As the leading Nutrition, Health & Wellness company worldwide, we’re passionate about food and food science. We value and support education about food, where it comes from, how it’s made and how it fuels us, and the new Learning Centre, Labs and exhibition are exciting new platforms for this kind of learning.’ The public opening of the CAFM’s new Learning Centre will take place on Saturday, May 4 2013. Members of the public are encouraged to come and visit the new facilities. About the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum (CAFM) Located on a heritage site of the Central Experimental Farm, near the National Capital’s downtown core, the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum offers its visitors the unique experience of a fully functioning farm in an urban setting. Part of the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation, the CAFM is mandated to preserve Canada’s agriculture and food heritage, and to share and promote scientifically accurate knowledge about the way agriculture is best practiced and food produced and consumed in Canada. The CAFM is proud to count on the financial support of generous sponsors, such as the Canadian Fertilizers Institute (insert other important sponsors other than Nestlé here). However, the CAFM’s mandate is to provide factual, unbiased information and education about agriculture and food to Canadians, and the CAFM prides itself on the accuracy, independence and objectivity of the content it produces and presents through exhibitions, guided visits, and other means of communication with the public. About Nestlé Canada Backed by more than a century of research and experience, Nestlé Canada's Vision is to be Canada’s number one food and beverage company, helping Canadians live happier and healthier lives. Nestlé in Canada manufactures some of the world's most recognized and trusted brands, including STOUFFER'S, LEAN CUISINE, NESQUIK, NESTLÉ GOOD START, POWERBAR, HÄAGEN-DAZS, KIT KAT, NESCAFÉ, NESTLÉ PURE LIFE, NESTLÉ DRUMSTICK, NESTLÉ PROFESSIONAL and Nestlé Purina BENEFUL. Nestlé in Canada employs approximately 3,600 people in more than 20 manufacturing sites, sales offices and distribution centres across the country. Olivier Bouffard CSTMC Selena Fiacco Manager, Corporate Affairs Nestlé Canada Inc.

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Fund a Future Community members and volunteers work together to build greenhouses specifically for families to maintain a business and generate income. These greenhouses allow for the production of year-round crops rather than relying on the rainy season which is only from December to March. We have already completed over 60 greenhouses and every single one has become self-sufficent within six months.Together we have established "Mil Plantas" (One Thousand Plants), which is a highly successful small business that produces flowers and vegetables for consumption and sales in local markets. This has resulted in a better diet and has increased the weekly family income from $3 to $60. These families now have direct clients from Cusco, including restaurants, hotels and shops, who travel to the communities because of the excellent quality of their produce. Workshops We are working with locals to setup workshops within the community. These small businesses allow community members to learn new skills in textiles, art and craft, building, and cooking and carpentry. Products are then sold to volunteer and tour groups.The participants are mainly women who are now financially independent and are able to adopt a leading role in caring for their family. The women are now recording an average weekly income of $40 per week - some as high as $60. Just as importantly, if not more so, this sense of independence, pride and confidence created has seen a direct decrease in the level of domestic violence and alcoholism. Irrigation systems During the dry season in Peru (April to November), it is extremely hard to grow any produce in the community fields. To overcome this, we have sourced a natural spring and have installed a piping system and irrigation sprinklers into every small field in the Pumamarca community. Each family takes turns to water their fields without the need of electricity. This system now allows families to produce vegetables all year round and sell them in the local markets - providing a constant stream of income. The produce is also organic and free of sprays - which means there is a great demand from restaurants in Cusco. Animal farms Animal farms are providing an ongoing supply of food and a steady income for families as they are able to sell their product in the local markets. These funds also go towards the school kitchen by paying for gas, quinoa, rice, pasta, fish and meats.Before each farm becomes self sufficient, we cover initial costs such as infrastructure, purchase of animals, feed, and medicines. Our animal farms usually become self-sufficient within 12 months. Bread ovens By providing bread ovens, the school can produce bread daily for students whilst also setting up a small business. The school is able to sell their local bread to community members for cheaper than the cost of travelling to, and purchasing from Cusco.In the future, we are planning to produce specialty bread to sell to shops, hotels, and restaurants in Cusco. How we workMission & historyTeamOur partners​Testimonials VolunteerFund a FutureCareer opportunities © COPYRIGHT PERU'S CHALLENGE 2016. ​ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.DESIGN: © COPYRIGHT LA CREATIVA 2016. ALL RIGHT RESERVEDPRIVACY POLICY | TERMS OF USE

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Shelter Island profile: Mary Hillemeier by Charity Robey CHARITY ROBEY PHOTOMary Hillemeier amid binfuls of the fruit of her team’s labors at the Manor’s farmstand. Farming is not what it used to be. Mary Hillemeier, vegetable grower at Sylvester Manor Farm, is articulate, well-educated and elegant. The very model of a modern farmer, she is trained in, and devoted to small-scale, sustainable and community-based practices. She leads the workers of Sylvester Manor Farm by example. Picking a row of prickly okra, her smile is bright and her manner friendly, but her hands are powerful, rough and calloused, and they speak volumes about her. Hired to manage the planning, planting and people who raise Sylvester Manor’s exquisite, sustainably grown produce, Mary came to Shelter Island last February when we were in the tight grip of a nasty winter. The Island’s climate had been described to her as relatively mild, but in her first months here the warmth she experienced came from the people she met. “Shelter Island is singular … very, very friendly. I don’t have to introduce myself more than once and most people remember me. They are curious about who I am, and where I came from, and how I got into what I’m doing, and that is really lovely.” She came to farming through her love of food and cooking. While studying Italian and art history at the University of Michigan, Mary spent a year in northern Italy. Experiencing the way food was grown, prepared and eaten there was life changing. “I don’t think at that point I saw myself as a farmer, but I definitely got excited about food.” After graduating from Michigan in 2006, Mary moved to New York City, determined to keep food at the center of her life. By day she worked in book publishing. But by night she cooked at a restaurant in Brooklyn and worked with Norwich Meadows Farm in partnership with Common Ground and Just Food, to establish a “sliding-scale CSA,” or community supported agriculture, that provided locally-farmed food to New Yorkers of all income levels. In the fall of 2008, Mary grew from foodie to farmer; going to Argentina to learn farming through the Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) program. She stayed through the spring of 2009, working on two subsistence farms and learning how to raise everything from goats to berries. Mary went on to work at the Urban Roots Youth Development and the Green Gate Community Farms in Austin, Texas, and then to study at the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California at Santa Cruz — the first and oldest such program in the U.S. Mary remembers first hearing of Shelter Island when she was living in Brooklyn and read an article in the New York Times. “I read about the farm right around the time I was going to Argentina. Later, when I saw the name, it sounded familiar.” In winter of 2014, she accepted the job of vegetable grower at Sylvester Manor. Mary manages three full-season apprentices, two summer apprentices and anywhere from three to four WWOOFers at any given time. Recent Sylvester Manor Farm WWOOFers hail from Brooklyn, Vermont and Switzerland. The crew lives in the Manor House or in tents on the property and Mary rents a cottage close to the farm. The whole crew cooks and eats together. “Like a village,” she said. “It’s wonderful. A lot of sharing. We made gumbo on Monday. Our okra was just coming in. I used green peppers and onions and made a nice roux.” Ask around at the farmstand, and you’ll learn that Mary’s gumbo is already the stuff of legend. An important part of Mary’s job is to help apprentices and WWOOFers who may not have extensive farming experience adapt to a lifestyle that involves hard physical labor. “Your body definitely changes when you are bent over half the day carrying heavy bins … I certainly felt that shock and shift for myself.” She helps the workers understand the changes in their bodies as nature’s way of making a farmer. “In spring you start out with leafy greens, things that are light and easier to carry, and then you get tomatoes and zucchini and then work up to melons and pumpkins … getting heavier and heavier as you go through the season. You kind of feel your summer body starting to happen … The more cartons of cucumbers you carry, you feel your arms getting stronger, building yourself up to the finale, the October harvest.” A primary focus of Mary’s work prior to the growing season is to develop a “crop plan,” which she calls, “a blueprint for what I’m going to grow and where I’m going to grow it.” She incorporates crop rotation in her plan, “Part of an organic process is not to grow tomatoes where you grew them the year before.” She also considers vegetables that she has had experience eating, as well as growing, such as the Padron pepper, “the size of your thumb round or oblong. Fry them with oil and salt. The bigger the hotter. They were all the rage in Santa Cruz, but they taste even better grown here.” Among the many factors Mary has to weigh in choosing what vegetables to include in her crop plan are the tastes and food traditions of the community (light on the collards here, heavy on the tomatoes), the resistance of crops to diseases that can’t be effectively controlled using organic practices (no corn) and the climate of Shelter Island (mild and well-sheltered). Among other sources, she consults local farmers. With her friend and colleague Layton Guenther, the farm manager at Quail Hill in Amagansett, Mary said, “We joke that Shelter Island is ‘Tropicalia’ compared to Amagansett.” Mary arrived at the farm a few months before Eben Fiske Ostby, 10th generation descendant of the original European settlers to Shelter Island, officially donated his 1737 Manor House and grounds to the nonprofit Sylvester Manor Educational Farm. She experienced the “joy and gratitude toward the family and the sense that this project is getting such support. It is exciting to be part of this organization in that moment.” Mary has felt the embrace of the community. “It’s really been a nice thing for me as a newcomer to Shelter Island to be in such a central location, to meet local folks … I feel welcomed. I’d love to continue living here.” community supported agriculture, enter for Agroecology & Sustainable Food System, Green Gate Community Farms, Norwich Meadows Farm, Quail Hill, Sylvester Manor Farm, University of California at Santa Cruz, Urban Roots Youth Developmen Next Post >A ‘super’ moment to remember < Previous PostThe world of Peter Waldner Find A Pro Riverhead Fence Co. Fences fireplaces and garage doors

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Deeping drought hurting U.S. harvests JIM SUHR, AP Business Writer ST. LOUIS (AP) - A deepening drought in the nation's farm states has cut further into this fall's harvest, with farmers now expected to pull from their fields the lowest corn yield in more than a decade. But American farmers are still expected to produce their eighth-largest harvest ever, and while there's sure to be a rise in prices at the grocery stores, there's little risk of a failed harvest that would lead to shortages on the shelves. The U.S. Agriculture Department predicted the nation's biggest harvest ever in the spring, when farmers planted 96.4 million acres of corn - the most since 1937. But it cut its estimate a month ago and again Friday, saying it now expects the nation to produce 10.8 billion bushels, the least since 2006. If that estimate holds, the federal government says it will be enough to meet the world's needs and ensure there are no shortages. But experts say food prices will almost certainly climb as corn is a widely used ingredient found in everything from cosmetics to cereal, colas and candy bars. The drought stretching across the U.S. from Ohio west to California is deepest in the middle of the country, and major farm states like Iowa and Illinois are seeing conditions get worse each week. Farmers credit advances in seed technology that have produced hardier, more drought-tolerant corn for any harvest at all. "I have to be honest with you, I'm totally stunned we have corn with green stalks and leaves after going through weeks of 105-degree temperature," said Garry Niemeyer, the National Corn Growers Associated president who has 1,200 acres of corn and 800 acres of soybeans near Auburn, Ill. "Our corn yield normally would be about 190 bushels per acre. This year, if I get 110, I'd be thrilled to death." The USDA's latest estimate predicts corn farmers will average 123.4 bushels per acre, down 24 bushels from last year in what would be the lowest average yield in 17 years. But the yield would still be as good as nearly a decade ago, when the average was about 129 bushels in a year without drought. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack trumpeted the resilience of U.S. farmers and ranchers on Friday, saying he didn't expect immediate increases in food prices and was optimistic the U.S. would continue meeting global demand for grain. The U.S. is the world's top exporter of corn, soybeans and wheat. "Americans shouldn't see immediate increases in food prices due to the drought," Vilsack said during a trip to drought-stricken Nebraska. "What is important going forward is that we continue to do all we can to help the farmers, ranchers, small businesses and communities being impacted by this drought." But experts have already been predicting increases in food prices. Rick Whitacre, a professor of agricultural economics at Illinois State University, said he believes the greatest impact will be in meat and poultry prices, given that many ranchers have sold off livestock as pastures dry up and feed costs rise. The selloff will result in lower prices through December with a glut of meat on the market - but higher costs beginning next year. Whitacre predicted an eventual 4 to 6 percent increase in the cost of pork and beef. "You're going to see the ripple of this go out for quite a distance," he said. The effect on packaged goods and other products is harder to predict because the price of corn may be only a small part of the total cost. For example, even with today's high corn prices, a 12-ounce box of cornflakes would have only about 8 cents worth of corn, said Paul Bertels, vice president of production and utilization at the National Corn Growers Association. That's a very small portion of the $4 or so consumers might pay for that box of cereal. Dennis Conley, an agricultural economist in University of Nebraska's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, said he expected to see nominally higher prices in U.S. supermarkets, although when "is the million-dollar question." He thought it might be a month or two before products using corn as an ingredient cost more. Corn prices have already been going up with steady reports of worsening drought and crop damage, jumping from just under $6 a bushel in late June to over $8 a bushel in early August. There was little immediate effect from Friday's report, perhaps because the commodities sector expected the bad news. "There was nothing really surprising. We've already had some private analysts suggesting the crop could be that low," said Mark Schultz, chief analyst at Northstar Commodity in Minneapolis. "In another two weeks there will be people picking corn in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa. So we'll start getting an idea of what these yields truly are."

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Agweb HomeMILK HomeBusiness Noble News and Views RSS By: The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Drovers The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation is an independent, nonprofit institute headquartered in Ardmore, Okla. Founded in 1945, the Noble Foundation conducts direct operations, including assisting farmers and ranchers, and conducting plant science research and agricultural programs, to enhance agricultural productivity regionally, nationally and internationally. www.noble.org Wheat Research Benefits Producers Mark Newell Stocker cattle producers in the Southern Great Plains grow winter wheat for pasture grazing. However, most available wheat varieties being used in southern Oklahoma today are at least 30 years old. To provide producers with the newest cultivars, the Noble Foundation and Oklahoma State University (OSU) have created a five-year collaboration to expand grazing wheat cultivar research and development. The ultimate goal of our collaboration is to create a new cultivar for producers to graze in the southern Oklahoma and northern Texas region. Ideally, the cultivar would be dual purpose, producing a high grain yield after grazing. OSU has a rich legacy of producing quality wheat cultivars for grain production, especially for north and west Oklahoma. However, some of these cultivars would fit well in the southern Oklahoma and northern Texas region as a grazing cultivar, but there has not been an outlet for those lines until now. Brett Carver, Ph.D., wheat breeding and genetics professor at OSU, explained: "We have access to the latest research and technology to dig deeper into other traits within genetic backgrounds that were previously underexplored. In the long run, we are able to develop and cultivate a better relationship and make better use of our complementary missions. We are better utilizing all of our resources for a better product." The first set of genetic materials received from OSU consisted of 36 lines and was planted at the end of October 2012. These vary from lines that are primarily grain types and would not be available for release. Some are potential grazing types, and others are varieties that are currently being used by producers in the region. All of the cultivars are being evaluated under grazing conditions. This first trial will end in late spring 2013, and a new trial year will begin with new experimental lines in the fall of 2013. However, some lines that have potential as grazing releases may be evaluated in further research, such as testing under heavier grazing conditions and experiments that explore animal daily gain.

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Home / News / Food Exports / Export group sees rosy future as demand for… Export group sees rosy future as demand for commodities grows Posted May. 30th, 2014 by Dan Yates Despite a railway logjam that caused shipping delays, food exports are expected to rise this year. | File photo Up 13 percent this year A weaker Canadian dollar and rebounding American economy is spurring demand Analysts at Export Development Canada are projecting a large increase in the country’s agri-food exports this year, despite the railway logjam that has left many grain bins across Western Canada full. “We’ve had ships sitting off coast in B.C. for quite some time now. They’re waiting for what it is that they need,” said Peter Hall, EDC’s chief economist. “There’s some weather reasons why that movement hasn’t happened, but the transportation industry as a whole is very animated around making sure that logjam gets cleared and we believe that by the end of this year much of it will be.” Customers of Canada’s primary agricultural products may be concerned about the delay, but the country’s reputation as an exporter hasn’t been irreparably damaged, he said. “The ships have stayed there,” Hall said of shippers waiting at Canadian ports, many of whom have been waiting for weeks if not months. “If they had other places to go, they would’ve gone there… For the moment, the demand is still there for what it is that we have. We’ll still be able to sell it; it’s just too bad we don’t have the capacity to move what was grown in the last year.” In its most recent global export forecast, the federal crown corporation is projecting agri-food exports to rise 13 to 15 percent this year in each of the three prairie provinces following last year’s bumper crop. The organization is projecting a smaller increase for the sector next year, closer to two percent. Factors that have challenged the transportation system — a large crop, increased traffic from the energy sector and weather — are temporary, he said. “We always forecast a return to normal levels of activity,” he said. “We’ve embedded that inside of our forecast, and that, together with moving the surplus that was created this year, still gives us two percent growth next year. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s amazing to me that actually we can build on this year’s huge levels to the tune of two percent for next year.” EDC expects commodity prices to soften but is generally projecting a positive outlook for the country’s economy, buoyed by a weaker Canadian dollar, a rebounding American economy and growing demand from emerging markets overseas. Hall highlighted fertilizer and potash and agricultural equipment as two sectors that will benefit. Hall is keeping a close eye on turmoil in Eastern Europe, which is an important market for machinery makers, and said tensions may slowly ease following this month’s election in Ukraine. “We’re looking forward and saying, ‘I don’t care what you’re growing. I don’t care what you’re producing. I don’t care what you’re adding value to, it’s all looking like growth to me.’ ” Dan Yates — Reporter Also by this author Experts use rapid cooling to preserve…Large eggs in demandBill urges tax deferred transfer of… Latest opinion pieces

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Blueberries Blueberries from Morocco cleared for U.S. access By Tom Karst July 29, 2014 | 4:05 pm EDT Blueberries from Morocco have been cleared to enter the U.S. In a final rule that will be effective at the end of August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that commercial shipments of blueberries from Morocco will be permitted if they meet several phytosantiary requirements. The USDA said that Moroccan trade officials expect the country’s exporters to ship 360,000 pounds of fresh blueberries to the U.S. That amount would equal about one-tenth of 1% of U.S. domestic supply, according to the USDA. Imports of Moroccan blueberries are expected to arrive in July and August, according to the USDA. usdablueberriesmoroccoapproved About the Author: Tom Karst Tom Karst is national editor for The Packer and Farm Journal Media, covering issues of importance to the produce industry including immigration, farm policy and food safety. He began his career with The Packer in 1984 as one of the founding editors of ProNet, a pioneering electronic news service for the produce industry. Tom has also served as markets editor for The Packer and editor of Global Produce magazine, among other positions. Tom is also the main author of Fresh Talk, www.tinyurl.com/freshtalkblog, an industry blog that has been active since November 2006. Previous to coming to The Packer, Tom worked from 1982 to 1984 at Harris Electronic News, a farm videotext service based in Hutchinson, Kansas. Tom has a bachelor’s degree in agricultural journalism from Kansas State University, Manhattan. He can be reached at [email protected] and 913-438-0769. Find Tom's Twitter account at www.twitter.com/tckarst. View All Posts

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Information for: Kids and Teens Librarians USDA Employees You are here: Home / Plants and Crops / Milho, makka and ya mai: early journeys of Zea mays in Asia Printer Friendly Page Chapter 2: Turkische Korn in Europe View: Introduction | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Conclusions | References Christopher Columbus and the other explorers of the Spanish fleets first introduced maize into Europe, but we have no eyewitness records of the exact circumstances of the occasion. Although Columbus and some of his educated officers wrote logbooks and letters describing their travels, few of those documents have survived (12). The main source of information about Columbus' voyages in the Americas is the Vida del Almirante Cristobal Colon by his illegitimate son Hernando Columbus, who accompanied his father on his fourth voyage. The Vida is available in an Italian version published in 1571, but the original Spanish version is lost. Other sources are the accounts of Spanish royal historian Fernandez de Oviedo, who began publishing his multi-volume Historia general y natural de las Indias in 1535, and Friar Bartolome de las Casas, whose Historia de las Indias was begun about 1527, but not published in its entirety until the 1800s. Columbus on Maize in the Bahamas (1492) On his first voyage of 1492-93, Columbus and his fleet of three ships reached the islands of the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Columbus' original log-book of the voyage is lost, but apparently was used by his son Hernando and by las Casas. The only surviving original document of the first voyage is a summary account written by Columbus during his return voyage to Lisbon, which makes no mention of maize. According to las Casas, in 1492 at Fernandina Island in the Bahamas, Columbus observed that "this island is very green, flat and fertile and I have no doubt that they sow and reap Indian corn and other crops throughout the year", and in Cuba he reported that "they had seen many fields ... also of a grain like panic-grass that the Indians call maize. This grain has a very good taste when cooked, either roasted or ground and made into a gruel" (13). From their first explorations in the Caribbean islands, the Spanish adopted the Native Arawak word maiz or mahiz as one of their names for Zea mays. In 1753, when Linnaeus named maize according to his new binomial system, he combined the Greek word Zea, meaning grain, with the adopted Arawak word for the species name mays (14). Origin of Name of Maize Columbus returned to the Americas in 1493 with 17 ships and several thousand men, many of them in hopes of finding gold in the islands of the Caribbean Sea. On this second voyage from 1493 to 1496, Columbus reached Martinique and Jamaica, but no logbook has survived. Twelve ships of the fleet returned to Spain in 1494, carrying a letter written somewhere in the Caribbean region by Guglielmo Coma. Some of Coma's observations were included in a Latin pamphlet published in 1494 by Nicolo Syllacio in Pavia, Italy, and the plant described is undoubtedly maize, "There is also a prolific kind of grain, the size of a lupin, rounded like a chickpea. When broken it produces a fine flour, and it is ground like wheat. A bread of excellent flavor is made from it" (15). The second book of the 1511 edition of De Orbe Nouo Decades by Pedro Martir de Angleria, an Italian scholar at the Spanish court, is addressed to a church dignitary and dated at the Spanish court in 1494. This book includes an account of the second voyage and the statement "The bearer [of this letter] will also give you, in my name, certain white and black grains of wheat from which they make bread [maiz]." According to Paul Weatherwax, these two documents from 1494 are the first known records of maize in Europe (16). First Records of Maize in Europe The third voyage of Columbus from 1498-1500 explored the northeast coast of South America from Trinidad to the mouth of the Orinoco River (now Venezuela). Columbus' 1498 account of this voyage includes a description of the natives of the Orinoco region "They brought in bread and various kinds of fruit and different wines. Some of it must be made from maize, which is a cereal with an ear like that of wheat. I have brought some back and there is now much in Castile. The best is apparently considered excellent and most prized" (17). On his fourth and final voyage in 1502-04, Columbus explored several locations along the mainland coast of Central America from Honduras to Panama. Although Columbus' accounts of this voyage contain no mention of maize, "his brother Diego, who accompanied him on this voyage, reported that in one place in Central America, he had traveled for 18 miles through fields of maize" (18). The Spanish conquests continued with military actions by Cortez against the Aztecs in Mexico in 1521, by Alvarado against the Maya in Guatemala in 1526, and by Coronado against native Americans as far northwest as New Mexico by 1540. Maize was undoubtedly exported from Mexico, Guatemala, and Columbia, all areas with a great diversity of land races of maize. The conquest of the Inca empire of Peru by Pizarro by 1533 allowed the export of Peruvian varieties of maize, varieties that are noted for extreme diversity, including maize with giant seeds, interlocking cobs, and extremely long and flexible cobs (19). Import of Peruvian maize into Spain is supported by the use of the Peruvian word zara as an early name for maize in Spain (20). Cassava - The Bread of Brazil Maize probably was taken by Portuguese traders from Brazil to Europe and to the western coast of Africa after 1500, but the times and places of its introduction are not known. In 1500, the Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares de Cabral, en route to India, landed at Porto Segro on the eastern coast of Brazil. After ten days trading with native tribes along the coast, one ship returned to Lisbon while Cabral and the remaining fleet of 12 ships continued on to Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, Mozambique, Madagascar, Mombasa, and eventually to Calicut on the western coast of India. Records of this voyage are scarce and there is no information on whether the Portuguese observed maize in Brazil or carried it on their continuing voyage to Africa and India. In a letter, Cabral commented on the natives of the Brazil coast "nor do they eat anything except these manioc (Manihot esculenta, also called cassava), of which there is much, and of the seeds and the fruits which the earth and trees produce" (21). However, the Italian Antonio Pigafetta, who survived and chronicled Magellan's exploration of Brazil in 1519, included the word maiz (translating it as the Italian word miglio) in his short vocabulary of Brazil (22). Portuguese agricultural colonization of Brazil did not begin until the 1530s and long remained confined to a coastal strip less than 30 miles wide. Manioc, rather than maize, was the staple food of both the natives and the early Portuguese settlers, and sugar and tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), rather than maize, were the main export crops of the Portuguese agricultural colonies through the 16th and 17th centuries (23). On his first voyage to coastal Brazil in 1593, the English slave trader Richard Hawkins reported cassava as the bread of the country, and pineapples (Ananas comosus) and potatoes (probably the sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas). Hawkins made no mention of maize on the coast of Brazil, even though earlier on the same voyage he had described maize in the Cape Verde Islands on the western coast of Africa (24). One hundred years later, in 1699, the English privateer William Dampier observed both roots and maize as staple foods at Bahia on the coast of Brazil (25). But even as late as 1768, on his voyage in HMS Endeavor with Captain James Cook, botanist Joseph Banks noted that cassava was the only bread of Rio de Janeiro and its fishermen, "their provision for the sea consisted of a cask of water and a bag of flour of cassada which they call farinha de pao or wooden flour, a very proper name for it which indeed tastes more like powdered chips than anything else " (26). Maize in Spain Maize appears to have been introduced first into Spain. In 1498 Columbus wrote that maize was being grown in Castile (27). In the 1525 edition of the Historia of Ovieda, there is mention of maize growing near Madrid (28). In a later edition of 1535, Ovieda wrote "I saw in that city (Avila), which is one of the coldest in Spain, inside a house a good plot of maize with stalks about ten hands high as stout and green and as beautiful as can be seen around here; near by was a well from which they watered it each day. I was really astounded, remembering the distance and the difference in climate of this region [the Indies] from that of Avila. The event took place in 1530 A.D." (29). In the early 16th century maize spread from Spain throughout the countries of Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East that border the Mediterranean Sea, and to northern Europe. Weatherwax notes that Georg Schweinfurth in 1904 described a specimen of maize collected in Italy by Gherhardo Cibo in 1532 as the oldest herbarium specimen of the plant in existence (30). Early Confusion on Origin of Maize Because many of Columbus' contemporaries still believed that the Americas were part of the Asian continent, they erroneously thought that maize originated in Asia. The Ottoman Empire of Turkey dominated trade in the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East at that time, thus maize often was called Turkische korn or Turkish wheat in the European botanical literature, or Herbals, of the 16th century. Maize was first described in the 1539 first edition of the Herbal of the German botanist Jerome Bock, who believed that the plant probably came from India. Bock described maize ears with silks, husks, and eight to ten rows of kernels, and with kernels of red, brown, yellow or white, but included no illustration of maize in the first edition of his Herbal (31). Then, in 1542 another German botanist, Leonhard Fuchs, published his Herbal De historia stirpinum, which included a beautiful woodcut of an entire maize plant with ears and tassels, the first illustration of maize in Europe (32). Fuchs wrote that maize was growing in all gardens in Germany and described ears with eight to ten rows of kernels, and with kernels of red, white, yellow or purple, but he still believed that the plant was brought into Germany from Asia by the Turks (33). Early Diversity of Maize in Europe After Magellan's circumnavigation of the world in 1522 and the publication of selected literature of American exploration, European botanists began to question the Asian origin of maize. The Italian botanist Pierandrea Mattioli appears to have had access to the Historia of Oviedo and the works of others who had traveled in the Americas (34). In his 1565 Herbal, Mattioli wrote "Among the kinds of wheat may be counted that grain which some erroneously call Turkish. Erroneously, I say, because it ought to be called Indian, not Turkish, for it came from the West Indies, not from Turkey or Asia as Fuchs says" (35). Mattioli described maize ears with eight to ten rows of kernels and kernels of red, black, white, brown, purple or yellow, and also described some maize plants that required 40 days for maturity and others that required two months (34). In his 1950 text Maize in the Great Herbals John Finan documented the precision and detail of the descriptions of maize in the collection of European Herbals in the library of the Missouri Botanical Garden. Finan concluded that botanists of the 16th century observed, described, and illustrated a great diversity of types of maize: ears of different shapes; ears with different numbers of rows of kernels; ears with kernels of different colors such as black, purple, red, blue, gold, yellow, and white, and with speckled and other mixed-colored kernels; ears with kernels of different shapes such as flat, round, long, or pointed kernels; plants with and without prop roots, plants with single stalks or with multiple stalks, plants with different numbers of ears, and dwarf plants and other unusual types (36). The development of molecular genetic markers provides new tools for understanding the introduction and spread of maize from the Americas to Europe and to other parts of the world. A comparison of genetic markers of American populations and European populations of maize revealed that several different types of American maize contributed to the establishment of the main races of maize in Europe (37). Maize populations from southern Spain were closely related to Caribbean flint populations, which is consistent with the historical record of their introduction by Columbus. In contrast, orange flint maize from Italy was more similar to populations from Peru and Argentina, and maize populations from northern and eastern Europe were more similar to flint maize from the eastern coast of the United States and Canada. Thus, maize genetic evidence supports the historical evidence for diverse early introductions of maize to Europe. Diverse Opinions of Maize Maize was first grown in European gardens as an agricultural curiosity, and early Herbals differed considerably in their opinion of the grain as a human food. In 1597 the English botanist John Gerarde published his English translation of the Latin De frugum historia of Rembert Dodoens. In his Herballe Gerarde added some new material including a description of maize, "Turkey wheate doth nourish far lesse than either wheate, rie, barly or oates. The bread which is made thereof is meanly white, without bran: it is hard and dry as bisket is, and hath in it no clammenes at all: for which cause it is hard of digestion, and yieldeth to the body little or no nourishment" (38). In contrast, John Parkinson wrote in his 1640 Theatrum Botanicum that "although the grain be dry, yet the meale thereof. hath in it some clamminesse, which bindeth the bread close and giveth good nourishment to the body, for wee finde both the Indians and the Christians of all nations that feede thereon, are nourished thereby in as good manner no doubt as if they fed on wheate in the same manner" (39). In certain regions of southern and eastern Europe, maize became established as an important food grain by the end of the 17th century, giving rise to diets based on maize breads and on maize porridges such as the polenta of Northern Italy. Back to Top << Chapter 1 Chapter 3 >> Last Modified: Oct 29, 2012 NAL Home | USDA | Agricultural Research Service | Science.gov | GPO Access | Web Policies and Important Links | FOIA | Accessibility Statement | Privacy Policy | Non-Discrimination Statement | Information Quality | USA.gov | White House

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CARD: Center for Agricultural and Rural Development Products/Output Iowa Land Value Ag Policy Review Iowa Ag Review Summer 2002, Vol. 8 No. 3 Local and Global Perspectives on the New U.S. Farm Policy Beef Quality Assurance "Down Under" Iowa's Agricultural Situation: Crop Progress, Options under New Farm Program Legislation, and the Forecast for Hog Farmers The Costs of Foodborne Illness Rich Countries, Poor Countries, and the Doha Round Trade Negotiations Meet the Staff: David Hennessy Helen H. Jensen [email protected] Despite evidence that the U.S. food supply is among the safest in the world, there is continuing concern over the human health risks posed by microbial pathogens (bacteria, parasites, fungi, and viruses) in food. Each year an estimated 6 to 33 million cases of foodborne disease occur in the United States, and up to 9,000 people die. The USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) has estimated that diseases caused by five major bacterial pathogens alone � Campylobacter spp., E. coli O157:H7, E. coli non O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella � cause at least $6.9 billion (in 2000 dollars) in medical costs and productivity losses annually, with a total of 3.4 million cases, over 31,000 hospitalizations, and 1,229 deaths. Campylobacter spp. and Salmonella are responsible for most of the foodborne illness cases, and Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella are responsible for most of the costs attributed to these five pathogens because of their larger share of fatalities. The cost-of-illness estimates are calculated from the number of annual foodborne illness cases, hospitalizations, and attributable deaths; the number of cases that develop secondary complications or chronic complications; and the corresponding medical costs, lost wages (productivity losses), and other illness-specific costs, such as special education and residential-care costs. New food safety regulation, including the mandated use of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) systems of control for meats, poultry, and fruit juices, has contributed to a reduction in bacterial foodborne illness since 1996. So has the food industry's more widespread adoption of technological innovations for quality control, such as pasteurizers, antimicrobial rinses, and irradiation. Although much of the responsibility for reducing pathogens in foods used to rest with the final food preparer, a shift to more ready-to-eat foods, an increase in imports and the variety of food preparations, and more meals consumed away from home have reduced direct consumer control over food preparation and have strained the traditional safety control system. These changes have transferred greater responsibility for food safety to the food industry. At the federal level, new controls and regulation for animal products have focused on the animal slaughter and processing stage as the critical control point for reducing pathogens in the food chain. Policymakers and industry leaders are challenged to balance the benefits and costs of regulation while finding cost-effective ways to identify the optimum stages for intervention system-wide in order to protect consumers. ♦ Contact Us · Site Map · RSS News Feed · Links · Staff Intranet Copyright 2017. CARD is a center located within the Department of Economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University.

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III. Implementation programme for the Strategic Framework The Strategic Framework forms an essential part of the enhanced programme-budget process, now approved for the Organization. When fully implemented, this process will include the Strategic Framework, with its 10- to 15-year time dimension, a Medium-Term Plan for a six-year period and a biennial Programme of Work and Budget. The Medium-Term Plan will ensure the link between the agreed strategic objectives and FAO's programme of work. It will thus become FAO's Corporate Plan for a six-year period, while the Programme of Work and Budget will essentially become FAO's short-term Business Plan. The essential functions of implementation monitoring and programme evaluation will continue in the new process. In particular, a new evaluation regime is being developed in consultation with the Programme Committee. The proposed regime is more comprehensive and will realign the thrust of certain evaluation studies so that they address, to the extent possible, progress towards the achievement of the strategic objectives established in this framework. The new regime also envisages streamlined reporting arrangements, allowing the submission of a more concise Programme Evaluation Report to Council and Conference. 140 The following table shows the elements of the new regime: Document Period Frequency Purpose Strategic Framework years About every To set the strategic direction Medium-Term Plan Rolling plan To establish programme priorities and project resource requirements Programme of Work and Budget 2 years To appropriate resources and seek approval for the two-year programme Programme Implementation Report To provide quantitative post facto reporting on programme implementation Programme Evaluation 6 years or more To provide a selective, qualitative and analytical evaluation of programme implementation Planning framework The Strategic Framework The Strategic Framework establishes the overall definition of those areas in which Members of the Organization require FAO's services. It does this in the form of 12 strategic objectives with associated strategies, which will become the basis of all programme planning within the Organization. It also defines the key cross-organizational strategic issues that need to be addressed in order to ensure that the Organization has or acquires the optimum capacity to provide the services sought by Members. In addition, the Strategic Framework includes definition of the criteria for priority setting, with a view to their application in the Medium-Term Plan as described below. While the Strategic Framework has a time frame of 10 to 15 years, it is recognized that it may need to be updated periodically - either because of major events on the international scene (e.g. key international conferences) or because of the changing internal and external environment. In this regard, it is considered that the time frame for the strategies addressing cross-organizational issues is generally shorter than for those addressing Members' needs. Therefore, without intending to be too prescriptive, a revision every six years or so may be appropriate but this will be subject to review closer to the time. The Medium-Term Plan will propose programmes that address each strategic objective in the Strategic Framework. These will be accompanied by information on the planned results, including outputs, effectiveness criteria and indicators. It will be a rolling plan, to be updated every two years by deleting completed programme entities and including the new ones that are proposed to be commenced in the new planning period. The revision will also take account of the outcome of evaluations and implementation performance reporting although, in the interest of economy, it will not seek to replicate these reports. The programme entities constituting the Medium-Term Plan fall into three categories: Technical Projects, Continuing Programme Activities and Technical Service Agreements, the latter two concerning outputs and services that the Organization is committed to provide on a fairly constant or continuing basis (for a detailed definition see Planning methodology - new programme model, p. 50). As Technical Projects have a duration of up to six years, only one-third will, on average, be "new" in any one biennium, thus reducing the volume of work involved in reviewing the Plan. The document will concentrate on justifying the "new" entities proposed for introduction in the upcoming biennium while, at the same time, presenting the complete picture for each strategic objective. Each of the new entities will be accompanied by a more detailed explan- ation of the objectives, outputs, related time frames, inputs and estimated lifetime costs. Programme of Work and Budget Rather than serving as the principal foundation of the planning and budgeting system for the Organization, as it does at present, the Programme of Work and Budget will become less of a programme and more of a budgetary document, and it will represent the detailed implementation plan for a two-year time slice of the Medium-Term Plan. As such, it will become a vehicle for fine-tuning agreed activities to match available budgetary resources. Programme Evaluation Report While the precise form of this report is currently under review by the Programme Committee, it is expected that the coverage will tend to be driven more by the new process inherent in the Strategic Framework and the Medium-Term Plan. While detailed evaluation reports will continue to be submitted to the Programme Committee, a more concise Programme Evaluation Report can be envisaged as a synthesis of all of reports submitted to the Committee, thus meeting the request of the Council for a shorter Programme Evaluation Report. Programme Implementation Report Some Members have suggested that the Programme Evaluation and Implementation Reports be integrated into a single document. However, given the difference in their time frames and scope, the general feeling is that the Programme Implementation Report now needs to be redesigned and integrated with the hitherto separately issued Certified Audited Accounts and FAO Annual Review to produce an FAO Biennial Report. This would both avoid duplication and reduce overall costs. It also implies a somewhat more concise and attractive document. Preliminary thoughts are that this would best be accomplished by making available the quantitative data concerning outputs achieved through WAICENT on the FAO Web site, rather than by including them in the document itself. Planning methodology - new programme model The Medium-Term Plan and Programme of Work and Budget documents will be based on a new programme model, with the following features: full identification of the inputs, the activities to be carried out, the outputs to be produced and the outcomes or effects that are intended to be achieved, allowing for means-ends analyses to be carried out as needed; provision of a clear framework for identifying all necessary interdisciplinary inputs from various units; an improved basis for appraisal, evaluation and performance reporting to both management and governing bodies. The advantage of the new programme model is that these features, taken together, will provide a mechanism for harnessing a critical mass of resources, within a clear time horizon, in order to achieve an intended and precise result. Such results will be designed to contribute to the achievement of one or more of the strategic objectives established and agreed in the Strategic Framework. While the planning model will evolve with experience in its application, it currently foresees formulation of Technical Projects (TPs), Continuing Programme Activities (CPs) and Technical Service Agreements (TSs), defined as follows: TPs cover a set of actions that can have a duration of up to six years and are designed to work towards precise objectives, defined in terms of benefits to the target users and in terms of their relevance and contribution to the Organization's strategic objectives. CPs refer to the production of outputs that contribute to the strategic objectives but are not amenable to the time-bound structure of technical projects (e.g. statistical series). TSs refer to the provision of services such as Field Programme support and technical advice to member countries where the individual work activities cannot be defined far in advance and may include servicing statutory bodies where the work is in general support of the sector (e.g. the Committee on Agriculture, the Committee on Fisheries). 151 For each of the above-mentioned entities, the following will be stipulated: Rationale: describing the contribution to the corporate strategy in question, identifying the need to be met and stating why it is important that FAO - rather than another agency or organization - meet the need. Objectives: expressed in terms of relevance to the strategic objectives and of benefits to the users, with quantified targets when possible. Outputs: identifying the major outputs that will allow the stated objective to be achieved, not only in terms of the product but also in terms of the period of time in which they are to be produced, thus establishing milestones for monitoring purposes. Outputs will probably be divided, to the extent possible, into the following categories: information (including information products and systems and databases); studies and analyses (e.g. intermediate outputs such as the publication of case studies as well as major products such as The State of Food and Agriculture); methodologies and guidelines (pilot testing, meetings to develop the methodologies and published materials in paper or digital form); international undertakings, agreements/conventions and standards; training (including training courses and training materials, etc.); coordination and information exchange; other (a category for the very few significant outputs that could not be classified under any of the above headings). For major outputs, it will be necessary to identify the following factors: - user focus: who is the output going to be used by (e.g. technical staff of government and private sector institutions concerned)?; - efficiency: was this the lowest-cost way to deliver outputs of the desired quality at the required time?; and - effectiveness criteria and indicators: was the output used and, if so, how? e.g. the adoption of standards by countries is an effectiveness criterion, the publication of standards is not. Links: identifying and defining links of three types: Links to other TPs, CPs and TSs: stating the contribution that is expected in terms of outputs towards the achievement of the objective - this will be the key record of the nature and extent of interdisciplinarity at this level; Links to the Field Programme: stating the substantive interaction with the Field Programme and the extent to which funding is assumed and/or assured; Links to partners (i.e. other organizations): describing the nature of the link (consultation/contracted services/partnership programme/joint activities/production of specific outputs by the partner). Managerial arrangements: providing a clear indication of management arrangements envisaged, particularly where various units are involved. Appraisal: Each TP and CP activity will be subject to a specific appraisal aimed at determining the priority of the proposal using the criteria that are further described below. Priority setting in the context of the new planning framework 152 While Members have differing views on the relative importance of each of the 12 strategic objectives, the proposed framework does not rank them or apply lower or higher priority among them. This is because the importance of priorities comes into play at the resource allocation stage, which first occurs in the development of the Medium-Term Plan. Criteria will be used to determine the priority to be accorded to the medium-term programme entities that will contribute to the achievement of the strategic objectives. The Strategic Framework is the appropriate place to establish the criteria for priority setting, and this in turn requires an examination of FAO's comparative advantages and, consequently, its potential partners and their capacities. Criteria for priority setting The development of practical and effective criteria will be an evolutionary process but, with the initial coming into force of the Strategic Framework, the following criteria, based on experience, will be applied: conformity to the Organization's mandate and relevance to the strategic objectives of the Organization as specified in the Strategic Framework, keeping in view the need to maintain a balance between normative and operational activities; expressed priority and usefulness to a broad section of the membership or to special groups identified by the governing bodies (least-developed countries, the small island developing states, etc.); justification, in terms of FAO's comparative advantage, potential for synergies through collaboration with partners, and avoidance of duplication with the work of other institutions; quality of programme design, including clarity of the causal link between the inputs provided and the planned outputs and objectives; probable cost-efficiency of the programme entity in mode of operation, including the use made of internal and external partnerships; likelihood of achieving desired objectives and substantive and sustainable impact; extent to which the achievement of objectives can be evaluated through the criteria and indicators proposed. More detailed procedures and internal mechanisms for development and appraisal of programme entities will be established for the first Medium-Term Plan, responding to the objectives set in the Strategic Framework. Major comparative advantages Clearly, comparative advantage is an important criterion in priority setting and it therefore follows that this criterion needs to be more fully defined. FAO's major comparative advantages are derived from an analysis of the Organization's general strengths, recognizing that, while they are considerable, they constitute comparative advantages only when appropriately brought to bear on problems for which the intervention of an organization such as FAO is needed. 157 Clearly, the comparative advantages briefly described below could be applied to most UN specialized agencies and, in this case, should be understood to apply to FAO within the sphere of its mandate and in line with the division of labour among the organizations of the UN system. With regard to other "comparator" organizations or groups of organizations (e.g. non-UN intergovernmental organizations, academic and research institutes, non-profit or voluntary organizations, private consulting firms) the comparative advantages of FAO will apply even in cases where the field of action of the comparator is similar to that of the Organization. Authority and status as a global intergovernmental organization FAO has the mandate and membership to enable it to take a global view of problems in its domain of competence. As an intergovernmental organization, it is able to address issues at both the national and international levels, both directly and in partnership with other organizations. In this regard, FAO can furnish technical, economic and legal expertise. FAO as an "honest broker" FAO can act as an "honest broker", identifying and advocating common solutions that are independent of specific ideological and national perspectives. In this regard, it can provide a neutral forum for the negotiation and development of international agreements, codes of conduct, technical standards and other instruments. Unparalleled information source and institutional memory FAO's wealth of experience and of information, collected, analysed and disseminated on a continuous basis, constitutes a unique asset, which is both available to Members and a support to the Secretariat's activities. Without this, it would be virtually impossible to carry out much of the essential work that is expected by the membership and that depends for its authority and value on FAO's being able to provide a dimension (its institutional memory) not obtainable from other sources. Broad networking capacity with Members and other partners 161 The Organization has wide access to decision-makers in Member Nations. As part of the UN system, it is involved with many international initiatives and is able to offer an institutional framework for intercountry cooperation, cutting across geographical boundaries and even political or cultural divides. The success of a number of the Organization's past activities has been attributed to this worldwide networking capacity, including FAO's direct access to specialized sources of expertise relevant to food and agriculture, the numerous technical cooperation ventures it sponsors, and its wide array of expert panels and advisory bodies and its multilingual mode of operation. Growing links with the world of NGOs and CSOs, which facilitate outreach of FAO activities beyond government circles, add a further dimension. Decentralized capabilities 162 Coexisting with FAO's global vocation and networking capacity are its decentralized capabilities. They facilitate and, in many cases, provide the major justification for implementation of both single country and multicountry activities requested by the membership. The immediate presence at the national level (through FAORs) and at the subregional and regional levels (through the Regional and Subregional Offices) is instrumental in ensuring timeliness in responding to requests and relevance to local needs. Professional and multidisciplinary staff The professionalism and dedication of a multidisciplinary and multilingual workforce, devoted to the cause of multilateralism and bound by the standards of conduct of the International Civil Service, must count as a major comparative advantage. The existence of a wide range of disciplines within the Secretariat (at headquarters and in the decentralized units) provides continuity of action and a unique resource for normative activities and for support to technical cooperation and investment mobilization activities. Capacity to respond to unforeseen needs of member countries As a support and adjunct to FAO's Regular Programme activities and its field programmes funded from extrabudgetary sources, the TCP provides a valuable mechanism to respond to member countries' immediate and/or unforeseen needs. This, combined with the Organization's contacts with governments (facilitated by the presence of Permanent Representatives in Rome) enables FAO to take some immediate action while making efforts to mobilize or leverage resources for further assistance. Responsible financial and administrative management1 The Organization has sound and responsible financial and administrative management. Financial and internal controls are highly effective, as is evidenced by the fact that, in more than 50 years of activity, the FAO accounts have always been approved by the External Auditor without qualification and the Organization has avoided any significant financial default. Fundamental to the concept of comparative advantage is the existence of other institutions that can offer similar services. Partnerships with such institutions need to be envisaged proactively in the interest of avoiding duplication and increasing FAO's effective impact by drawing on the capacity of such partners to achieve its strategic objectives. The question of partnership hinges on the reason why FAO, rather than another potential agency, should work to meet any one of the identified needs. Analysis of this question presupposes up-to-date and comprehensive knowledge of the comparative advantages, capacities and programmes of other organizations working in the field in question. Effective partnership is predicated both on the exchange of information and experience and on cooperation, based on a mutually agreed division of labour, with a wide range of partners. More important, it opens the way for mobilization of the contribution of others to achievement of broad goals which FAO, by itself, could not attain. While much exchange of experience and cooperation already exists, both at the institutional level and at the level of individual technical units, it expected that implementation of the corporate cross-organizational strategy for broadening partnerships and alliances should reinforce the "culture of cooperation" within the Organization. As a general principle, for the establishment of effective partnerships, FAO must seek to ensure that cooperation addresses specific issues and problems and aims at achieving tangible results, particularly at the country level. Cooperative relationships with partners will build on established institutional links and intrinsic complementarities but will entail different practical modalities and instruments, depending on the context. UN system organizations In respect of the UN system, a key aspect is follow-up to global conferences and summits, including the World Food Summit, which are shaping the agenda for action by the international community. The system must help countries translate commitments, particularly those taken within the framework of international conventions and follow-up to UNCED, into effective and practical measures, building on the potential for synergy inherent in the system. In particular, FAO will need to maintain a proactive role in ensuring a coherent UN system approach to the implementation of the World Food Summit Plan of Action and participate in other system-wide initiatives from the perspective of food and agricultural issues. Special attention needs to be paid to further strengthening the links among the Rome-based organizations. International financing institutions FAO can continue to use its multidisciplinary technical expertise for the generation of investment in food and agriculture, through the fruitful tripartite relationship it enjoys with the World Bank and other IFIs and the concerned governments themselves. In the policy advisory area, the Organization must seek to dovetail its sectoral advice with the overall macroeconomic assistance provided by these institutions. It may also build on their readiness to establish a broader base of cooperation to support specific national programmes such as those on agricultural statistics or aquaculture, as evidenced by new memoranda of understanding signed with them at the highest policy level. Research organizations 171 In pursuing institutional links with CGIAR, of which it is a cosponsor along with the World Bank, UNDP and UNEP, FAO can further develop close contact and joint activities with the individual centres themselves, facilitating outreach of the results achieved by research institutions through catalytic action in support of technology transfer, taking maximum account of local conditions. Collaboration with research-oriented organizations will be well served by the presence of the NARS and TAC secretariats at FAO, and maximum use can be made of networking modalities. Intergovernmental organizations 172 A number of other intergovernmental organizations, particularly many regional ones, have interest in agricultural issues and may be actively involved with food and agricultural cooperation programmes. In full recognition of the comparative advantages these organizations may have in specific regional contexts, FAO must continue to explore avenues for cooperation to maximize complementarities in keeping with its mandate. FAO must also continue to adjust to the significant changes that are taking place in the respective roles and responsibilities of the state, the market and civil society. FAO cannot match the capillary outreach of CSOs, particularly the farmers' and consumers' organizations and the large number of NGOs active in food and agriculture, down to the level of farming communities themselves. However, it can play a useful catalytic role in mobilizing action at the national level, supporting coalitions and fostering exchanges of experience. It will, therefore, need to expand constructive partnerships with non-state actors, building on its long experience and institutional memory in joint practical work, e.g. with rural producers' organizations. Links with the private sector should include active dialogue to foster mutual understanding of the potential for cooperation, while respecting each other's characteristics. FAO can marry its extensive field experience and knowledge of the requirements of food and agricultural development with the unique entrepreneurship capacities of private sector agents, for instance by playing an "honest broker" role in increasing private sector investment in agriculture and investments in new technology to bring greater benefit to developing countries. Implementation schedule Intergovernmental organizations 175 The following table describes the proposed implementation schedule leading up to, and following, approval of the Strategic Framework by the Conference in November 1999: Programme Committee/Finance Committeee Council 2000-2015 Jan. to March May and Sept. 1999 June and Nov. 1999 Nov. 1999 (for decision) Medium-Term Plan 2002-2007 Jan. and March 2001 Sept. 2000 Nov. 2000 (for decision) (for information) Programme of Work and Budget 2002-2003 N/A May and Sept. 2001 June and Programme Implementation Report 2002-2003 Jan. to March 2005 Sept. 2004 Nov. 2004 Nov. 2005 (for decision) Programme Evaluation Report 2005 (covering an approximate period from 1998 to 2003) As appropriate June 2005 Nov. 2005 (for decision)

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India's Effort to Boost Biofuel Encounters Growing Pains Country aims to feed boom with hardier crops, though it's a tough sell Clay Dillow, Sep 22, 2008 12:36 PM CDT A worker is seen in the field of jatropha curcus plant, a source of biodiesel, at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, in Hyderabad, India. (AP Photo) Just months after India’s finance minister called converting food crops to biofuels “a crime against humanity,” the government has launched a program that aims to get 20% of India’s diesel from plants by 2017, relying heavily on hardy plants that won’t keep rob needed land. But the biofuel crops take years longer to yield much of value, making it a tough sell, the Economist reports. Jatropha, a hardy shrub, and pongamia pinnata, a tree whose seeds yield 30% of their weight in oil, are the centerpiece plants of the effort to wean India from its growing thirst for oil. Both plants grow in rocky soils and require a fraction of the water of food crops, but their yields are unreliable. Line Between Public, Private Lost on Small-Town Palins

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My SciELO Estudos Sociedade e Agricultura Print version ISSN 1413-0580 Estud.soc.agric. vol.5 no.se Rio de Janeiro 2010 Labeling as precaution: the release of RR soy and the regulation of transgenics in Brazil Cristiano Luis Lenzi1 Translated by Celina de Castro Frade Translation from Estudos Sociedade e Agricultura, Rio de Janeiro, vol. 18 no. 1, p. 220-255, Abril 2010. ABSTRACT This paper presents an analysis of the conflict involving the release of Roundup Ready (RR) soy in Brazil from what is called a story-line of labeling. The aim is to assess the resources and strategies used by two discursive alliances existing in the conflict to legitimize their position in the political arena in the process of release of transgenics. The work examined statements and arguments that permeated the debate on the issue in the country at different times and used the case involving the release of RR soy as a reference for the analysis. The text aims to show that these discourses have very different assumptions about labeling and its relation to issues involving the principle of substantial equivalence, science, risk and nutritional safety. Key words: labeling- GMOs- precaution- discourse- conflict. "When I presented this project [labeling], I did not intend to define all the policy about transgenics in Brazil. (…). Obviously, it was not only a matter of consumer's choice, it was based on the principle of precaution (…). (Representative Fernando Gabeira). " "The government has not decided for labeling because it thinks it is dangerous. The government has decided for labeling because it thinks it is the consumer's right to know if the product he is consuming is a transgenic product (Bresser Pereira, former Science and Technology - S&T - Minister). For the last six or seven years, by regulating transgenics, the governors and even the scientific community have, all the time, committed themselves to the idea that the consumer would be ensured his/her right to information so as he/she could then perform his/her legitimate right to eat or not to eat. All these promises, as we know, have not been fulfilled. The real truth is that, in the end, there has never been so far any labeling for transgenic products in Brazil" (Luiz Eduardo R. de Carvalho - former president of the Brazilian Society of Food Science and Technology). Introduction In the last decade, a growing number of countries started to implement policies for transgenics labeling. Moreover, in addition to labeling itself, conflicts and tensions usually resulted from this kind of policy became very common in these countries. For the companies, labeling is a key element in the product's marketing policy and tends to be seen as directly influencing consumer's decisions. On the other hand, for environmentalists, labeling tends to be seen as a space of symbolic struggle and a means of reaching a better regulation of these products. Due to this, it seems natural that labeling constitutes itself an important space for the struggles that seek to define the commerce of genetically modified organisms (GMO). In this paper we will make an attempt to discuss the development of this conflict in Brazil in different moments with reference to RR soy. The conflict is discussed from what we call a storyline of labeling. This represents the axe through which the various structuring issues of conflict over labeling present themselves in the Brazilian case. To discuss these issues, we will make use of an interpretive analysis of the political process. Under this approach, politics is seen as a continuous process of discursive struggle for the definition of social and political problems. The key issue for the interpretive political analysis is how the political issue is being conceptualized or framed in the political debate (FISCHER, 2003). Hajer's (1995) concept of story-line is a way of examining the frames embedded in such conflicts. In The Politics of Environmental Discourses, the author shows that storylines "are devices through which actors are positioned, and through which specific ideas of "blame" and "responsibility", and of "urgency" and "responsible behaviour" are attributed" (HAJER, 1995:65). Under an environmental controversy, says the author, the discursive elements are presented as "narratives on social reality through which elements from many different domains are combined and that provide actors with a set of symbolic references that suggest a common understanding" (HAJER, 1995: 62). The labeling storyline is formed by two discursive alliances: a) the discursive alliance of labeling and b) the discursive analysis of substantial equivalence. Such discourses display different assumptions on labeling and its relation with issues involving the principle of substantial equivalence, labeling, science, risk and consumer's choice (see Table 1). The other part of the study aims at examining these differences. Labeling risks: the release of commercial RR soy and the conflict over labeling Differently from the discussion about the use of Risk Analysis (RA) in the release of RR soy, the debate on labeling seemed to offer a more consensual picture for the GMO critics and supporters in Brazil. After all, since the beginning, representatives of CTNBio and the government seemed favorable, at least in discourse, to labeling. But if there is an apparent consensus for labeling GM products, why did labeling raise such an intense conflict between the government and civil society groups? Firstly, it is worth considering that since the beginning of CTNBio, organizations such as Institute of Consumer Protection (in Portuguese,IDEC) and Greenpeace have not seen any serious commitment of the biosafety commissions to labeling policy. In 1996, IDEC sent various requests to the commission, including the creation of a labeling policy, without any answer. That is why this organization separated from the biosafety commission in 1997. This lack of interest was based on the own limits of responsibility that the CTNBio members assigned to the commission in its role to implement a labeling policy. For Esper Cavalheiro, former president of CTNBio: "The labeling issue transcends CTNBio legal responsibilities as it involves issues related to consumer's protection and so it is related to the Consumer Protection Code". For Leila Oda, labeling is "more a political issue than a technical one". So, as far as CTNBio was seen as a scientific commission, labeling itself, as a "political" project, was seen as something strange to the commission, which shows that the issues involved the labeling of GMO products were not regarded as CTNBio own responsibility. Moreover, the release of soy growing, as it seems, would lead to a gradual and automatic commercial release of the product. The approval occurred, on the other hand, without the government presenting any specific labeling program for the GMOs, resulting in an immediate reaction from civil society organizations. In the public civil lawsuit brought against the government and CTNBio, IDEC claimed then that before analyzing and issuing a conclusive technical opinion to Monsanto's request, the government should regulate the "norms of food safety, trade and labeling. Without it, it cannot evaluate any request" [our emphasis] (IDEC, 2008). We could assume that the release for the growing would wait for further studies to confirm the safety of soy. However, this assumption was constantly denied by CTNBio and the government, which started to see risk analysis (RA) as a satisfactory means to evaluate the risks linked to RR soy. If the safety of soy had already been confirmed by RA, what would be the obstruction to release it commercially afterwards? The import of transgenic soy proved itself another important issue for the development of the conflict. This launched a shadow of doubts on the real intentions of the government or on its capacity to conduct the regulation of transgenics in the country. One should remember that both S&T Ministry and CTNBio did not take any measures to reverse what had happened and even tried to inform the resistance to the fact in regard the regulatory policy which was being implemented. Labeling safety: defending the consumer's right in the absence of danger In the conflict about transgenic labeling, the alliance of discursive equivalence shows a position that can be found in other countries. In the USA, for example, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) has informed that it is in favor of the consumer's right though, at the same time, was against compulsory labeling because it consider it could confuse consumers (KLINTMAN, 2002). In Brazil, it was not uncommon that members of the government, CTNBio and the food industry become favorable to the consumer's right, but it was not uncommon either to present arguments to invalidate the implementation of specific labeling for the GM products.2 To analyze this ambivalence, we need to examine the different arguments generally shown to invalidate transgenic labeling. Different reasons are usually claimed for not labeling transgenics. The economic costs associated with labeling are usually presented as a way to reject a specific labeling system for these products. Once labeling can raise the GMOs' prices, the economic benefits associated with them could be made void for the consumer. This could happen, particularly if the costs were enough to enable the offer of such products in the market. Another argument is based on the thesis that labeling would also involve an arbitrary distinction among "substantially equivalent" products. This argument unfolds into a general approach which claims that, once GM and conventional products display equivalent nutritional proprieties, there would be no legal grounds for justifying their labeling. Therefore, if there is no scientific or legal grounds to differentiate GM and conventional products, labeling could create "guilt by association". Products would be considered more dangerous though presenting themselves, in terms of safety, similar to the others. It is also claimed that labeling tends to be confused, erroneous and irrelevant even when its information is considered correct. An American scientist contrary to labeling says that, for example, "even a message that is accurate, in the narrowest sense, can mislead and confuse consumers if it is irrelevant, unintelligible, or so craftily selected that it provides inadequate or biased information" (MILLER apud KLINTMAN, 2002:74). Finally, the supporters of non-labeling also based on the impossibility of evaluating the levels of transgenesis showing the technical and scientific impossibilities to reach this goal. In the Brazilian conflict, there were not few moments in which the arguments for discrediting labeling were presented. In spite of, in discourse, they were for consumer's right, it was not uncommon representatives of the government, CTNBio and the food industry help to promote some of these arguments which are just used to discredit a specific labeling system for the GM products. The thesis of Bresser-Pereira and CTNBio that soy was a "substantially equivalent" product, for example, is the basis of the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) discourse in the United States of America (USA) for exactly not labeling these products.3 In 1999, after justice enforced the need to conduct a specific labeling policy for the GM products, various arguments contrary to labeling were raised again in public hearings. It was expressed, for example, by representative Luciano Pizzato who showed that, in the absence of scientific facts about the risks of transgenic soy, labeling would be incoherent (PIZATO, 2000: 17). So, although the rejection of labeling has not always been evident in the discursive alliance of equivalence, the criticism to its irrationality always proves itself in a present aspect in this discourse. Their proponents accuse the informative inconsistency provided by labeling and its little validity to promote consumer's rational choice. In the former, it will be based on the classificatory arbitrariness that labeling establishes among "substantially equivalent" products. For representative Confúcio Moura, the labeling bill introduced by representative Gabeira in 1999, which foresaw the labeling of the GM products, looks controversial "because the countries, particularly the USA, find it discriminatory the placement of specific labeling". Labeling also would be inconsistent by the "difficulties of indicating the ingredients and the sub-products in food composition". Therefore, for the representative, "labeling would be a very difficult and discriminatory way for certain products" (MOURA, 2001: 12). It is possible to notice in these extracts how the principle of substantial equivalence was used to invalidate the need for labeling. When the former president of CTNBio, Dr. Barreto de Castro, says that, not being identified the risks of soy, it would be irrelevant the requirement for labeling, he is also using in his discourse the principle of substantial equivalence since the risks of soy were examined out of the assumptions of such principle. And so does Bresser-Pereira, former S&T Minister, by saying that, in the case of soy, "there is no substantial change of the product" and that the "product is exactly the same"4 This principle plays a key role in the conflict about labeling in Brazil and evidences that the assumptions used by CTNBio to guide its decision for the commercial release resulted in direct implications for the debate on labeling in the country. It is this principle that, somehow also sustains the accusations of discrimination. Because discrimination guides itself on the accusation that labeling would be making equivalent things become different. This accusation will happen in both ways. Firstly, the discrimination is seen as existing in the comparison that can be made with other transgenic products, but not agricultural ones.5 The second type of discrimination is seen as associated with the type of communication provided for labeling itself. The refusal of the food industry to incorporate specific labeling for the GM products in the conflict was justified by the possible distorted communication that labeling would be about to produce. As informed by the Brazilian Association of Food Industry (in Portuguese, Abia) legal director, "[the labeling requirement] is in force, but it is not incorporated because industry does not want to associate its brand with an alert, as if it was something dangerous" (Abia Legal Director apud IDEC, 2008c). One concern that will also be present in the bill of the legislative decree n. 90, 2007, of representative Kátia Abreu, informing that the label to be placed in the products "refers to the idea of attention and care and can result in the population's suspicion about products which had already been evaluated and considered safe by the National Technical Commission of Biosafety (CTNBio), thus jeopardizing the insertion of these products in the market [our emphasis] (Abreu apud BRASIL, 2007).6 Some of these statements about the discrimination do not inform, however, where would be the communicative distortion they affirm to exist. Some arguments lead to thinking that, regardless how labeling presents itself, it will always lead unequivocally to consumer's irrationality. These criticisms do not always object to whether the message provided by labeling is true or false. They simply object to labeling by the simple irrational effect it can produce. Therefore, the "fear" and "suspicion" that it may create to consumers are seen as not having any valid scientific grounds for the consumer's decision-making. Labeling as precaution: consumer's choice, autonomy and environmental safety We can imagine many reasons through which people can get interested in labeling. The main reason takes us to the role of labeling in the process of consumer's choice. Labeling enables people to make choices as from questions associated with cultural prohibitions (vegetarianism and animal well-being) and health risks so as to articulate their consumption choices with their lifestyle. In this case, by offering a series of information associated with consumer's values, labeling can serve as a means to allow them to make autonomous choices. The discursive alliance of labeling has been based on arguments close to this one to justify the labeling of these products. It is worth noticing that labeling was seen, at first, involving a kind of precaution. The liaison between labeling and precaution will be shown in this alliance in two distinct forms. One of them happens for a strategic reason when this discourse mentions the use of labeling as a means of postponing the release of soy and as a means of promoting protective effects with this action. In 2001, when Gabeira's labeling bill served as a basis for a initial discussion on labeling in the country, the representative informs that "it was not only a matter of consumer's choice, it was based on the principle of precaution". Thus, he found it "necessary to postpone a little the process of entrance of transgenics in Brazil" (GABEIRA, 2001: 02). The decision of judge Antonio Souza Prudente in the civil lawsuit brought by IDEC and Greenpeace reveals a similar vision to the one precaution and labeling are also seen as interlinked. In this document, he points out that "The simple labeling of transgenic products is insufficient to fulfill the efficacy of the principle of prevention (…)" (PRUDENTE, 2000: 41). Although considered insufficient, labeling is seen here as an essential part of the principle. The judge mentions the insufficiency of labeling to apply the principle of prevention because it seeks exactly to establish a correlation between labeling and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as a means of applying precaution. And following the same viewpoint, Lynn Silver, of the same organization, claims that "labeling is indispensable for the identification in the future of the adverse effects that may eventually arise after the introduction of the products". For her, "besides being the consumer's right, labeling is an essential tool for the control of unexpected effects as to human or even animal health" (SILVER, 2001: 25). The relation between labeling and precaution is not always recognized as to the way the latter is usually expressed. Instead of absolute prohibition, precaution can be understood as enabling a wide range of measures that not always result in a prohibition of this kind. Precaution, as shown (WHITESIDE, 2006), may imply the need to implement permanent guard as, in many cases, it is not possible to reach an immediate decision about the safety of the products. Therefore, the more relevant contemporary measures in the field of transgenic labeling, imposing a compulsory labeling on all these products in the EU, have come out in a moment when it is recognized that the idea of precaution would require labeling and traceability of new products (WHITESIDE, 2006). The decision on opening space for corrective measures in the future is the core of the precaution policy and is this sense that, as seen before, is assigned to labeling by organizations such as IDEC. The labeling alliance has also been supported by a legal argument and another one of moral character to approve the specific GMO labeling. The legal argument is based on the thesis that consumer's legislation would be in favor of labeling. Judge Souza Prudente's decision was basically based on this argument, In the civil lawsuit brought by IDEC, the judge affirms that: "If it is undeniable that, in accordance with article 6, II and II, the consumer has the basic right to adequate and clear information, with correct specification of the characteristics, quality and risks presented, among other data, it is always right that only these data will provide for the adequate consumer's right of choice, also guaranteed by the Consumer Protection Code" (PRUDENTE, 2000). Organizations such as Greenpeace and IDEC also saw in these rights a basic legal condition to justify the labeling of the GM products. However, this legal interpretation was put in doubt in another moment of the conflict. It was challenged by the decision of judge Selene Maria de Almeida on 25 February 2002 that issued an injunction that authorized the growing and commerce of Roundup Ready (RR) soy. The judge's decision, however, suspended judge Souza Prudente's decision and, this way, contradicted the interpretation which informs that the Consumer Protection Code would be enough to require the specific labeling of these products. This judge's decision is emblematic once it breaks with the usual interpretation that says that consumer's legislation would provide for the legal grounds to require the labeling of GM products.7 While the requirement of fulfilling EIAs was complied in the environmental legislation, the labeling requirement, in return, sought compliance in the consumer's legislation. This shows that, while the environmental legislation is clearer about the requirement of fulfilling EIAs for innovations that may result in some kind of impact for the environment, it is much less precise for the requirement of GMO labeling. In this process, the labeling requirement was at the mercy of the interpretation of the Consumer Protection Code and the way it can be interpreted to require the specific labeling for these products. While labeling supporters have seen in the consumer's legislation strong grounds to require labeling, representatives of the food industry have interpreted this legislation in their behalf. The reason for this contradiction seems to lie in the fact that, although consumer's legislation seems to provide a reason for labeling, the same legislation was not made to deal with the challenges associated with GM products. It provides for a similar legal standard for both conventional and GM products. The critics may argue that, once legislation provides for a legal standard to justify labeling for both GM and conventional products, then it would justify labeling of the former ones. But this argument is mistaken on a key point. The supporters of non-labeling do not defend the absolute non-labeling. What they, in fact, defend is that transgenics are submitted to the same labeling as the other products. The "non-labeling" represents this. As long as GM and conventional products are seen as "equivalent" in terms of risk, what they wish is that transgenic products are then labeled as conventional products. They defend that the consumer's legislation should be interpreted equally for both conventional and transgenic products once these products can be classified as "substantially equivalent". This implies the use of a single labeling standard for the products. What also implies the impossibility of differentiating the GMO products from the others.8 The moral argument presented by the alliance of precaution leads us to the idea of autonomy.9 Not only does this discourse not assume that consumers can guide their choices through risks, considering these choices as a right, but it also assumes that these choices can happen beyond reasons involving safety. For the groups who defend labeling in Brazil, safety was therefore just one of the important reasons but not the only one. In the civil lawsuit brought by IDEC, it informs that labeling has its right for factors which transcend a mere question of safety and then states that: "This data [gene of animal or vegetal species] is indispensable for the consumer perform his/her right of choice considering also allergenic, religious, cultural aspects" (IDEC apud PRUDENTE, 2000). This cultural view will be evident in the dispute over the scientific or the ideological character of precaution. As long as labeling has been associated with consumer's autonomy, its absence has been considered an attempt of his/her manipulation. Between consumer's autonomy and manipulation: the ideological conflict about GMO labeling Under the precaution discourse, the defense of consumer's choice and autonomy is associated with a view of his/her empowerment based on the consumer as an "economic person" who, by means of market tools, can now fulfill his/her choices. In this view, the consumer is sovereign and plays a predominant role in the way society's resources are allocated.10 The relevance given to labeling therefore is not only associated with the defense of consumer's choice but also with the influence that this choice can imply for the production and commerce of GM products. Labeling is seen as a means through which consumers can make their choices but can also, due to the same responsibility, reject these products. By doing so, consumers can subsequently influence the economic process more broadly. Non-labeling has been seen as a threat to consumer's autonomy as in its absence consumers can reveal confused beliefs about what they are consuming.11 Part of this confusion in consumer's information lies in the beliefs that they hold on governmental regulation. In the absence of labeling information of the products, consumers may belief they are not consuming GM products. The absence of labeling can make consumers conclude therefore that, by not having labeling, the products are not "GM products". This concern is expressed in the Brazilian case in the words of a representative when he says that the ‘transgenic products in Argentina are being consumed here indirectly and without us knowing what we are consuming". This leads to "a disrespect to the consumer who should be at least informed that they are transgenics products" (GRANDÃO, 1999). Gabeira also points out that, once Brazil has been importing GM food, it would be "necessary that such food had an indication for consumers" because this process suggests that "Brazil continues to consume various types of genetically modified food without being aware of this" (GABEIRA, 2001). These remarks suggest that people should be consuming GM products not because they are in favor of them but simply because they are not aware they are consuming them. Under the discourse of equivalence, the consumer is forbidden to choose between these types of products, at least while labeling for transgenics tend to be unqualified. After all, arguing against labeling or suggesting its irrelevance is to stand oneself against the possibility of the consumer's making this type of choice.12 So the discourse of equivalence involves, as we shall see next, a kind of political paternalism which exempts the consumer from the responsibility of decision making. According to this viewpoint, the process of rational choice is assigned to the entities and organizations which are considered more liable to take decisions on these matters. In the discourse of equivalence, the "consumer's right" was generally interpreted as right to information about food safety. What shows a consensus in this alliance is the assumption that, in terms of safety, there is no difference between transgenic and conventional soy. The acceptance of labeling became, in the beginning, a merely political issue to comply with the consumer's right. This position claims then that the communication provided by labeling should be a scientific communication strictly related to scientific facts. It also assumes that this scientific information is restricted to issues on food nutritional safety. These assumptions reflect the various lines which rule the American policy on labeling. So, we shall briefly examine some aspects of this policy and move to examine how these assumptions are reflected in the Brazilian case. The policy of substantial equivalence: non-labeling as conventional labeling The FDA policy in the USA claims that information on label is useful for the consumer only when it brings information on the food nutritional basis and on its implications to consumer's health. As pointed out by Pariza: "This position does not recognize a consumer's "right to know" simply for the sake "knowing", nor does it recognize a manufacturer's "right to inform" simply for the sake of "informing."(PARIZA, 2007:07). The FDA policy requires information when and only such information is important to issues involving product safety and consumer. But as long as, for the FDA, GM food is not even more or less safer than conventional food, this body does not require specific labeling for these products (STREIFFER and RUBEL, 2008).13 Under this perspective, it does not fall on labeling to express economic or cultural issues or any kind of information but strictly issues on food safety. If GM products do not endanger public health, transgenic labeling does not bring any useful information to the consumer. So labeling is seen as involving an arbitrary separation of "substantially equivalent" products. The discourse of equivalence in Brazil reflects the lines of the American regulatory policy in many aspects. For example, when Bresser-Pereira declares that the government policy would follow the European policy, he also affirms that "in the case of soy, (…) there is no substantial change of the product- the product is exactly the same (…), the grain is exactly the same, undistinguishable" (BRESSER-PEREIRA, 1999). In this extract, the former minister was already aligning himself with the American policy. By saying that "there is no substantial change of the product" and that the "the product is exactly the same", Bresser-Pereira endorses the assumption of the substantial equivalence which is the basis of the non-labeling policy in the USA. The view of the former CTNBio, Esper Cavalheiro, on labeling also reflects the assumptions of the American standard, through which labeling should concentrate in the food nutritional components. Labeling, he says, "of any product should provide precise and correct information about the nutritional and compositional characteristics so as to ensure the consumer's free choice" (CAVALHEIRO, 2001). This shows that S&T and CTNBio started to defend labeling as from a precept that is exactly used for not labeling the GMO products in countries such as the USA. Moreover, in the release period of RR soy, Bresser-Pereira (1999) also informed that "the American position was the same as Embrapa's". This statement can be regarded as a recognition that some governmental bodies were already aligned with the American standpoint for non-labeling GM products. And in the lack of any judicial decision in the period, it is possible to assume that they remained faithful to the precept of substantial equivalence. This position, in turn, contrasts with Bresser-Pereira's information when he says that "the Minister of Justice and I took the President of the Republic the position that we should have the European type labeling, which informs, whenever necessary, that the product contains a genetically modified product." (BRESSER-PEREIRA, 1999). The European policy for GM products could be, in this period, more different from the American policy in many aspects, but as far as labeling is concerned, it was "substantially equivalent". Whiteside (2006: 24) points out that "before 1997, EU regulations- like those in the United States - pertained only to the premarket testing of GMOs. It was assumed that once GMOs producers and various regulatory authorities concluded products were safe, then they were safe, period" [our emphasis]. The European position was, therefore, the same as the American position. Defending the consumer from him/herself: political paternalism and the deficit of laypeople's knowledge In the Brazilian case, non-labeling is justified as being based on consumer's "fears" and "suspicions". It is regarded as a way of correcting mistakes and misunderstandings that consumers themselves can make as to their consumption decisions. This is a typically paternalistic vision. It is assumed that non-labeling is based on the benefit of the consumer himself/herself. It would be a way to defend the consumer against his/her limitations in order to make the right choices in situations like these. Paternalism is not something easily to be defined. Some definitions consider it as a restriction to an agent's freedom in favor of his/her own benefit. Other definitions emphasize the reasons through which this same intervention is made. Gerald Dworkin defines paternalism as the "interference with a person's liberty of action justified by reasons referring exclusively to the welfare, good, happiness, needs, interests, or values of the person being coerced" (DWORKIN apud GERT and CULVER, 1976: 45). So, paternalism can be understood as an interference of an agent's freedom of actions for the sake of his/her well-being.14 Following a legal interpretation of the conflict in the Brazilian case, this paternalism primarily expresses itself from a legal viewpoint. It emerges when it is suggested that CTNBio decisions should be followed assigning it almost absolute powers in its decisions. "The law, by determining the regulatory limit, grants full compliance with the principle of precaution, followed in the biodiversity convention. The lack of scientific certainty cannot postpone the enforcement of norms, of rules. Automatically, by determining this process, this regulatory logic, creating a high level technical-scientific collegiate body to decide on whether the existence of risk or not, we are complying with the precepts of precaution." (José Silvino apud CESARINO, 2006: 103).15 And so, says the same technician, "if there is no risk, it [soy] will be treated as the common ones and goes to the vigilant bodies that originally have common authority for the common ones" (José Silvino apud CESARINO, 2006: 103). This argument summarizes the vision of the discourse of equivalence: for equivalent products, equivalent labeling. It is also worth noticing that, in this case, non-labeling (or conventional labeling) implies a situation in which it would be "complying with the precepts of precaution". The idea that CTNBio is supported by law and that therefore its authority should be fully respected does not correspond to the existing differences between the knowledge based on CTNBio decision and the critics who rejected it. This paternalism expresses itself whenever the actors in favor of the release try to convince their interlocutors of their false beliefs about transgenic processes. In this case, the most important is not to know whether the public assigned all decisions to CTNBio or not but rather whether is this approval would be based on the public's own knowledge. Or else, as pointed out by Streiffer and Rubel (2008) in the American case, paternalism implies that the public would assign FDA the decision if "it was well-informed" as it is assumed that if "were people better informed, they would change their preference, thereby giving hypothetical consent to the delegation" (STREIFFER AND RUBEL, 2008:31). Take the case of CTNBio president for an example of this case. When asked about the relation of trust between the public and the regulatory agencies, Walter Colli, on a debate held by the Research Support Foundation of State of São Paulo (in Portuguese, Fapesp) on 10 May 2008, answered the question involving labeling and the relation of trust between scientists and laypeople as follows: "When you eat organics, you are eating Bacillus and you are eating this gene, the same thing! Then the only thing I want is that you understand what a scientist is saying, that's all. If [you are] for or against, it is the same thing as being corinthiano or palmeirense, I am corinthiano. What am I going to do?" (COLLI, 2008: 34) CTNBio president's answer was not restricted to this, but this was the point of his argument: transgenic and organic products are even similar in certain circumstances. It is surprising then how government representatives, CTNBio, industries and the political sector try to demonstrate the equivalence of both GM and conventional products since this equivalence is kept away from the principle that rules the transgenic labeling policies in various countries, which assume the existence of the non-equivalence of these products. The public's suspicious concerning the scientists is seen as the result of some information deficit and the central interest then is to make the other understand "what the scientist is saying". In this case, the aim is to make the public understand that transgenics are not so much different from conventional products and that, for this same reason, there is no reason for concern. It is assumed that if people were better informed, they would agree with CTNBio decisions. GMO Traceability and segregation: elements of an environmental utopia? To conclude this analysis, it is important to discuss one last issue: the way the traceability and segregation systems have been incorporated to the debate. Smith and Phillips (2002) make a distinction between systems of identity of preservation, segregation and traceability that help us to understand the Brazilian conflict in some points. As claimed by the authors, segregation can be seen as a "a regulatory tool that is required for variety approval and commercial release of grain and oilseed varieties that could enter the supply chain and create the potential for serious health hazards" (SMITH and PHILLIPS, 2002: 31). Segregation occurs where, for food safety measures, there is a concern about the mixture of the segregated product in relation to all other products. This segregation can be summarized as follows: "systems of IPPM are used to capture premium, and segregation is used to ensure food safety" (SMITH and PHILLIPS, 2002:31). The system of traceability leads us to the same question. Smith and Phillips (2002) argue that traceability systems are used when "unacceptable bacteria levels or intolerable levels of pesticide or chemical residues need to be quickly and completely removed from store shelves. Traceability systems allow for retailers and the supply chain to identify the source of contamination and thereby initiate procedures to remedy the situation" (SMITH and PHILLIPS, 2002:31). Thus, EU sees traceability as providing for "a "safety network" that would allow vigilance on unforeseen adverse effects" (EU apud SMITH and PHILLIPS, 2002: 32). This makes us understand why concerns about the systems of segregation and traceability have been away from government sectors, CTNBio and the industry. These systems are nothing less than the result of a policy of food safety for certain products that present a not well known risk level. Therefore, if transgenic soy is seen as presenting a safety level equivalent to the conventional soy- what the alliance of equivalence has been defending during all the conflict- what would be the reason for the implementation of such kind of systems in Brazil? Insisting in these systems would be incoherent when it is said that the GM product is completely safe and when it is claimed that labeling is a simple political issue and not a safety one. It will not be then a coincidence to examine that, in over 10 years of conflict, the government, CTNBio and the industry sectors have not offered any detailed program for the segregation and traceability of GM products. The creation of systems of food safety with these characteristics has been supported by environmentalists and particularly organizations such as IDEC and Greenpeace. Final remarks The Brazilian conflict about labeling evidences how this issue can be interpreted distinctively depending on which side one is. For supporters, it has been associated with environmental safety and values which transcend the simple consumer's right. It has been also associated, as seen, with the principle of precaution and the creation of a system of food safety involving segregation and traceability. This stance has been confronted with the one offered by the government, CTNBio and the industry. Not only did the arguments presented by these actors give some doubtful support to "consumer's right" suggesting many times that this could be complied with conventional labeling, but they were also based on the principle of substantial equivalence which, in other countries, is used precisely to invalidate the requirement of specific labeling for GMOs. The principle of "substantial equivalence" is on the basis of many of the arguments that reject GMO labeling. However, the labeling of GM products assumes a gap with this principle once these policies are based on the assumption that such products are not substantially equivalent. Among the countries with specific labeling legislation, the only aspect in common is the almost generalized conviction that GM products, as Greure e Rao (2007:52) point out, "are no substantially equivalent to their conventional counterparts". In these countries, labeling is seen as compulsory because it is known that "consumers should be informed of the novel traits and properties of the food products in order to make informed decisions (GREURE and RAO, 2007:52). The application of the principle of substantial equivalence is therefore ineffective to support a transgenic labeling policy. The principle invalidates a basic assumption of the GMO labeling policy which informs that these products are different from the others and that, for this same reason, also deserve a different treatment. It is this difference that provided for the creation of the Biosafety Law in the country and the own creation of CTMBio which, ironically, turned out to treat RR soy as an equivalent product as the others. References ANBIO. Report on the commercial approval of transgenic soy in Brazil. Available at <http://www.anbio.org.br/notícias/relatório.htm> on 23/7/2008. BICK, Léo F. 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The genetically modified (GMO) food labeling controversy: ideological and epistemic crossovers. Social studies of science, 32 (1), 2002, pp.71-91. MOURA, Confúcio. Public Hearing n. 000565/01, held by th Commission of Consumer, Rights, Environment and Minorities. Discussion on the projec of law no. 2905 under review by the Special Commission. Held on 19/06/2001, 01-24. ODA, Leila M. Presidenta da CTNBio fala sobre a rotulagem dos transgênicos. on 12/11/08. ODA, Leila M. Para presidente da CTNBio, Leila Oda, é inevitável a entrada de transgênicos e a rotulagem dos produtos é a garantia do consumidor. Story published on the newspaper Valor Econômico, 5 June 2000. Available at <http://www.agrisustentável.com/trans/dialoda.htm.> on 10/4/2008. PARIZA, Michael W. A scientific perspective on labeling genetically modified food. In: WEIRICH, Paul. Labeling genetically modified food. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 03-09. PIZZATO, Luciano. Public Hearing n. 0927/00, held by the Commission of Consumer Rights, Environment and Minorities. Discussion on the labeling of transgenic products. Held on 13/9/2000, pp. 01-59. PRUDENTE, Antonio S. Transgênicos: decision on public civil lawsuit. Decision on 26/6/2000. Available at <http://jus2.uol.com.br/pecas/texto.asp?id=337>on 11/2/2009, pp. 1-62. RUBEL, A. and STREIFFER, R. Respecting the autonomy of European and American consumer: defending positive labels on GMO Foods. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 18 (1), 2005, pp. 75-84. SILVER, Lynn. Public Hearing n. 001019/01, held by the Commission of Consumer's Rights, Environment and Minorities. Held on 27/9/2001. SILVER, Lynn. Debate. In: SOARES, Francisco de A. P. (org.). Anais do seminário. A sociedade frente à biotecnologia e os produtos transgênicos. Brasília: Confea, 1999, pp. 47-53. SMITH, Stuart and PHILLIPS, Peter W. B. Product differentiation alternatives: identity preservation, segregation and traceability. AgBioForum, 5(2), 2002, pp: 30-42. STREIFFER, Robert e RUBEL, Alan. Democratic principles and mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food. Available at <http://www.tccouncil.org/reports/Streifferand Rubel%20GELabeling.pdf.> on 10/4/2008. STREIFFER, Robert and RUBEL, Alan. Genetically engineered animals and the ethics of food labeling. In: WEIRICH, Paul. Labeling genetically modified food. Nova York: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 63-87. WHITESIDE, Kerry H. Precautionary politics. Principle and practice in confronting environmental risk. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006. 1 Cristiano Luis Lenzi has a Ph.D. in Social Sciences- UNICAMP. Professor at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH-USP). E-mail: [email protected]. 2 The fact that the government, CTNBio and the industry stand, in the conflict, in favor of labeling does not imply that their representatives were effectively for compulsory and specific labeling for transgenics. As we will try to demonstrate, the signal given when one is for transgenic labeling can simply suggest that one is being in favor of conventional labeling for these products. In this case, although transgenics can be labeled, such option does not provide for the differentiating GM products from conventional ones. 3 Lynn Silver, IDEC representative, refers to the following dialogue with CTNBio president: "In fact, what I understood from Dr. Barreto de Castro's speech, it was not clear if this was his personal position or the commission's position but that, not being identified any risks for human health, it was irrelevant the inclusion of labeling in the indicative of genetic engineering" [our emphasis] (SILVER, 1999: 53). 4 Similarly to the representative below, the former S&T minister Bresser-Pereira will state that arguing simultaneously that the government would follow the European labeling policy in which "you show, whenever necessary, that the product contain genetically modified product" (BRESSER-PEREIRA, 1999). However, as we shall see next, this statement encloses a strong contradiction when examined in the context into which the European labeling policy for GMOs has been developed. 5 Thus, for representative Luciano Pizzato: "We have genetically modified trees. Why do we only discuss agricultural products? Why has the Department (…) not required that the genetically modified medicine warn in the labeling that they are transgenics? Why does this Commission forget that?" (PIZZATO, 2000: 16). 6 The argument shows once again as CTNBio position continued to have strong influence to invalidate labeling. This last one was unnecessary due to the fact that transgenics products have been "evaluated and considered safe by the National Technical Commission of Biosafety" (CTNBio). The argument of former CTNBio president, Leila Macedo Oda, that labeling is a "much more a political question than a technical one" hides then the fact that the scientific considerations used by CNTBio to release soy were repeatedly used to try to discredit the need of labeling of GM products in the country. The political debate on labeling has been in any moment dissociated from the scientific controversies that involve its commercial release. 7 On a report presented by the National Biosafety Association (in Portuguese, ANBio) it is informed that "judge Selene's account makes it clear that there are no reasons of technical-scientific or legal nature which prevent the commerce of RR soy in Brazil approved by CTNBio 54 notice" [our emphasis] (ANBio, 2008). 8 Let us consider, for example, the following information of former CTNBio president, Leila Oda. According to her: "We will not label to say the product is dangerous but to respect the consumer's right of option wherever its reasons. If a person is allergic to egg, he/se has the right to know that the final product, transgenic or not, contains egg protein" [our emphasis]. It is worth informing that a product containing "egg protein" does not imply to inform that the product is transgenic or not. As far as the nutritional composition is seen here as the main goal of labeling, what would be informed to the consumer, in this case, is no the way it was produced (GM product) but only its nutritional components. 9 Autonomy is related to a person's capacity to make his/her own decisions from the values which comprises his/her way of living. Autonomy does not refer only to the capacity of "making choices" but to the capacity of making choices which harmonize with the values that guide a certain way of living (RUBEL and STREIFFER, 2005). 10 For the case we are examining here, this vision of "economic person" only suggests the consumer's capacity to use his/her power as a means of influencing investments and productive processes. This was the meaning given by the economist Ludwig Edler Misses when he said that "the consumers are the masters, to whose whims the entrepreneurs and capitalists must adjust their investments and methods of production" (MISSES apud KLINTMAN, 2002:73). 11 In 2003 in the USA, although 70% of processed food had GM ingredients, 58% of consumers believed that they had never consumed transgenics. In 2004, 41% of consumers were not sure whether the genetically modified food was available in supermarkets while 11% of them believed that they were not. Still in this period, 46% of consumers were not sure whether they had consumed GMO products and 23% believed that they did not. In another research conducted in the USA, only 33% of consumers knew that labeling was not required for GMO products and 28% believed erroneously in the compulsory labeling requirement for GMO products. More about this issue, see Streiffer and Rubel (2008). 12 As Jacobs (1991: 43) says, "consumers have to be offered a choice to express their environmental concerns. (...) Although orthodox economists may pretend that consumers have "sovereignty" in a market, one can actually only buy what is offered by producers. Although orthodox economists claim that consumers have "sovereignty" in the market, in fact one cannot buy more than what producers offer. On the other hand, as pointed out by Klintmann (2002), this marginal role of consumer is not always consistent with the idea of free market. This can happen once this passivity can be accepted as the argument that consumer's sovereignty is only valid under circumstances where consumers "rule" using valid information. In the Brazilian case, the arguments against labeling due to consumers' "fears" follow this viewpoint. 13 In 2000, asked about the reason of not labeling GMO products, FDA in the USA made the following statement:: "We are not aware of any information that foods developed through genetic engineering differ as a class in quality, safety, or any other atribute from foods developed through conventional means. That's why there has been no requirement to add a special label saying that they are bioengineered. Companies are free to include in the labeling of a bioengineered product any statement as long as the labeling is truthful and not misleading. Obviously, a label that implies that a food is better than another because it was, or was not, bioengineered, would be misleading". (apud DEGNAN, 2007: 27). The FDA policy reflects a change in labeling policy happened in the industrialized countries in the last decades. The FDA policy is based on a sound science approach which reduces information to be placed in labels to scientific information related to issues of nutritional safety. From a space reserved to product advertisement, labeling has changed in the USA into a means of providing consumers with scientific information. In this process, the roles of the regulatory agencies have changed. More than ensuring the product contents, the agencies started to monitor the truth of the information contained in labeling. Cultural issues or issues involving the process through which the products are made are excluded from this labeling system (GUTHMAN, 2007). 14 In the American case, one way of defending oneself non-labeling is based, for example, on paternalistic grounds. This paternalism can be expressed as follows: the public assigns FDA the decisions on labeling because: (1) the public elected the Congress; (2) which created FDA, a legitimate authority; (3) conventional labeling is embedded in legitimate labeling. Therefore, the public would agree with the current FDA policy. For discussion on paternalism in the American case, see Streiffer e Rubel (2008). 15 This paternalism is also supported in Bresser-Pereira's vision when He says that "the National Congress has approved the Biosafety Law and this law created the National Biosafety Technical Commission (CTNBio). (…). It is CTNBio responsibility then to examine, case by case, whether a certain product is liable or not of approval for health and the environment on the viewpoint of biosafety. (…) The most recent example of the Commission authority to implement the Biosafety Law was the approval and enforcement of the commercial use of transgenic "round up ready" soy. This product was deeply analized and was finally approved by CTNBio. Therefore, the policy of the National Congress concerning transgenic products is being rigorously complied with" (BRESSER-PEREIRA, 1999). © 2017 Programa de Pós-graduação em Desenvolvimento, Agricultura e Sociedade da UFRRJAv.Presidente Vargas, 417 9º andar Centro 20071-003 Rio de Janeiro RJ Brazil+5521 [email protected]

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SectionsSearchFarming Income insurance ‘is no panacea’ warning GEORGE EUSTICE: ‘This could be something to look at’ Mike Bridgen The fourth annual Northern Farming conference attracted a record audience of 330 at Hexham mart. Organisers had to stop taking bookings as the conference room was full. Mike Bridgen reports THE practicality of introducing an insurance scheme to help farmers hit by severe weather or plunging prices is to be investigated further. Farming Minister George Eustice told the conference that it had been an idea put forward by the NFU at the June Farming Resilience Summit of banks, farming charities and farming representatives. The summit was called after the disastrous weather of 2012 and the exceptionally heavy snowfalls, which hit parts of the country in the spring. Mr Eustice said that in 2009, Defra officials had looked at insurance schemes run in the US and Canada. In America, farmers pay into the scheme and the US government pays for its administration. If a farmer’s income drops singificantly below a certain level, they can claim on the insurance and receive a top-up. In Canada, farmers pay a fee and the government meets 60 to 80 per cent of the cost of the scheme. If the farmer’s income drops below 70 per cent of the average for the previous five years, then the insurance kicks in. But Mr Eustice said: “There are big drawbacks. In Canada and the US, they do not have a single farm payment. Any scheme here may mean not having the single payment and having insurance instead.” Administrations costs can also be high and there can be complexity. “It is by no means a panacea,” said Mr Eustice. “It would be a radical departure from CAP, but I recognise this could be something to look at for managing the risk in the future and the Farming Resilience Group will be looking at this.” He suggested it might be something to consider for post-2020 and pointed out that there are already some commercial schemes available. The theme of the conference was managing risk and resilience and the minister highlighted the Met Office’s new Get Ready for Winter webpage, which had been introduced to give farmers up-to-date information on weather coming their way, so they could try to protect their crops and livestock. “As we enter winter, it is essential we do all we can to support the industry in its efforts to prepare and plan to mitigate risks,” he said. “The Met Office’s webpage is an example of joint-working to make our industry more resilient.” Mr Eustice also said he was “very keen” to encourage new entrants into farming. “Having new people coming in with fresh ideas is the lifeblood of any industry,” he said. Profit-sharing might be one way of helping a young person build up a stake in a business, contract farming and share farming could be used much more and increasing the length of tenancies – and the amount of land available – was needed. “If you are going to invest in the land, it is quite hard to do that when you have only four years security,” said Mr Eustice. “We need to look at encouraging landowners to offer longer-term tenancies.”

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Follow @thecattlesite News & Analysis Features Markets & Reports Sustainability Knowledge Centre Directory Events Our Shop NewsAg Industry Moves Forward Despite Government Shutdown09 October 2013 US - Uncertainty looms across the United States as to when the government shutdown will end, and this uncertainty has troubled the agricultural industry and those wanting to make trading decisions for their crops and livestock.“I don’t know how long this will last, but context is important,” said Glynn Tonsor, associate professor and livestock economist for Kansas State University. “The sun still came up today. Feeder cattle are being sold. Corn is being harvested. Those kind of physical activities I don’t think are changing. What is changing, at least in the short term until the shutdown is resolved, is how we discover ag prices, how they’re reported, and how people make buy-sell decisions.” The US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) entities are among those currently not functioning due to the shutdown. Even the USDA’s website is not available for use. The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is the entity responsible for facilitating the fair marketing of U.S. agricultural products and reporting price averages. Ag commodity traders rely on those unbiased numbers from the AMS, Professor Tonsor said. Some private companies develop cash numbers as well and might issue them for a fee, but many of those companies use AMS data to figure their numbers. Professor Tonsor points out that even AMS data isn’t free, as the AMS is a tax-paid service. But, due to the shutdown, the most recent cash numbers available for cattle, for example, are from September 27. Professor Tonsor said people should educate themselves about the origin of the data and the potential targeted audiences, if any, of private data companies. The AMS is viewed as an unbiased source, much like universities, he said. A private provider might show a rosier example of prices to cow-calf producers, for instance, if that’s its targeted audience. “I don’t want to come across as an advocate for USDA, but I have made a point to try to raise awareness to ag producers that a lot of publicly gathered data gets repackaged, and folks like me and others end up bringing it to them,” Professor Tonsor said. “Understanding where that data comes from, how it’s collected and the fact that it isn’t collected for free, is very important.” How long the government shutdown will continue and how long commodity traders will go without base-reported prices is uncertain. Without the AMS data, it is evident that the marketplace is uneasy, but Professor Tonsor said the typical cow-calf producer who is going to sell his or her calves is probably still going to do it. “We’re still going to find a price that makes transactions go forward, but the cost of that price discovery system, at least in the short term, has gone up,” Professor Tonsor said. “Everybody is adjusting to find this information somewhere else, and maybe it’s not as efficient. Not everybody has the same network. Not everybody has access to the same private data sources.” Tonsor said in addition to using private sources to obtain data, people should consult their personal networks and do some searching online to better understand the current markets. Another problem that has developed out of this shutdown is gaps in historical perspectives of the markets. The feeder futures market, for example, has a cash settlement index that is based on prices reported from various parts of the country. Professor Tonsor said because no information is being collected now, there won’t be the ability to build that index for the traditional way of settling the feeder cattle contract. “We are definitely building gaps, some of which will not be resolved even if the shutdown ended right now,” Professor Tonsor said. “Every day, every minute that goes by, there is something that is not being captured that won’t be back-filled. Some things that are being captured won’t be back-filled because of computer systems being down. So you have gaps in the data series.” As the shutdown continues, the agricultural industry can continue to lobby to put AMS reporters back to work, Tonsor said. TheCattleSite News Desk Policy and Regulatory, General Share This

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Arizona tree nut plantings on the fast track Apr 18, 2017 California State Water Project boosts irrigation allotment Apr 18, 2017 Even with effective synthetic alternatives Sulfur remains a relevant tool for controlling powdery mildew Apr 12, 2017 With buds pushing in late March, start of San Joaquin Valley wine grape crop follows normal timing Apr 12, 2017 brought to you by Jeff Fowle: Getting ag’s message heard first requires listening Hembree Brandon | Jan 02, 2013 For agriculture to convey its message to the public and to governmental agencies and regulators first requires those in agriculture to listen, says Jeff Fowle. And he said at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, agriculture needs to stop using old methods of communicating with the non-farm community. The fourth generation California farmer/rancher says he is “just a cowboy who latched on to technology and social media” as part of his “passion for talking to others about agriculture and telling our great story.” He says he came home from college in the 1990s “and was immediately immersed in a regulatory quagmire, spending hours upon hours dealing with all the agencies, all the regulations, all the fees, all the entities that threaten our way of life. I was constantly asking myself, ‘Can they hear what we’re trying to tell them?’ “I began to analyze how we could best get our message across, to develop a process for very aggressively reaching out to these agency representatives and trying to shape regulations we could deal with. He says, “These agencies, in theory, get their power from the people, and those people are our customers. But it’s critical to realize we can’t converse with our customers and the government agencies in the same manner.” Farmers, Fowle says, “need to be in the right place to be heard, to say things in the right way in order to influence or use people of influence for our benefit. Ten percent of the population will be against you no matter what you say or do. Ten percent will be in your corner, will be your allies, no matter what you say or do. It’s the group in the middle, the 80 percent who are basically neutral, that will be receptive. They’re the ones we’re trying to connect with, the people to whom we want to make sure we’re saying the right things. “Bottom line, it all comes down to influence. If you’re not saying the right things and you aren’t saying them in the right place, sorry, you’ve lost your influence.” Social media, Fowle says, “worked for me — as it can for you. It’s about having conversations, creating relationships with people you never knew before, and using that relationship as a bridge to a community where you can have influence on others to achieve what you’re trying to accomplish.” He makes social media an important part of his routine, he says, and on an given day reached 900,000 to 1 million people. “It’s not complex,” he says. “Who are you? What makes you unique? What are your passions? These are things you share with your customers who know nothing about agriculture. They can be the gateway to starting conversations and having influence. It can take as little as 15 minutes a day, or a week — it’s the consistency that’s important, the quality, not the quantity. “What you say needs to be reflective of you. Is your message accurately portraying who you are as a farmer? “We need to realize that there are two agricultures: old and new, Fowle says.“These agencies, in theory, get their power from the people, and those people are our customers. But it’s critical to realize we can’t converse with our customers and the government agencies in the same manner.” “In the old agriculture,” Fowle says, “we emphasized the need for maximizing production. In the new agriculture, we need to change that philosophy to one of optimizing production. In the old agriculture, we stressed educating the public, the schools, the media, about farming and what we do. “In the new agriculture, it’s about listening, using our ears, making sure we’re hearing what our customers want. Old agriculture emphasized ‘tell your story, tell your story.’ We can tell our story as much as we want, as loud as we want, but until the other person is listening, it doesn’t do any good. We need to engage in conversations — to talk with people, not at people. “In the old agriculture, it was, ‘we need more resources, more money, more time.’ In the new agriculture, we need to think smarter, to do more and be more creative with what we have. Old agriculture said ‘keep the media off the farm and ranch.’ In the new agriculture, we have got to be open and transparent, because that’s how we demonstrate our authenticity.” In recent dealings with media personalities who were portraying agriculture in a negative light, Fowle says, “We learned three critical lessons: Our message, our stories, what we say, must come from farmers themselves and their employees — not from organizations or PR agencies. They don’t have the trust that we farmers and ranchers have. “The information we share about farming must be stored in a central repository, where everyone has access and it can be shared at all levels, federal, state, even globally. “And probably most important, we need to speak about our feelings, in the language of farming, In conversations with our customers, we shouldn’t use science, economics, or business. They don’t buy it, and they don’t care about it — they want to know what we think and feel about what you do, not the details.” (For more, see Fowle’s blog at commonsenseagriculture.com) TAGS: Agenda 0 comments Hide comments RelatedR&D vital to continued agricultural growthNov 28, 2012Agriculture alive and well in CaliforniaJan 03, 2013 Load More

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Cucumber Beetles and Bacterial Wilt These pictures show bacterial wilt. It can start rather innocuously. The first picture shows normal leaves and then, at the bottom, a few that are wilted but which don't look awful. As soon as a day later the leaves and then the whole plant will wilt, then turn dry and crisp. This may start on just a part of a leaf, as in the second picture. With the wet weather the gardens are getting in later than usual, but the pests have hatched on time. So this year they're voraciously waiting for our seeds to hatch. I think that seedlings are even more susceptible than seeds, and so I always grow my squash family plants from seed in the garden, rather than transplanting. Striped Cucumber Beetles are about 1/4 inch long, with a rectangular back striped yellow and black. They will feed on all cucurbits except watermelon, plus tomatillos and a few other plants. (I've found them on tomatoes and milkweed). They like the undersides of leaves, especially lower down on the plant, and the interior of blossoms. (There is another species called Spotted cucumber beetle, which we don't have). At least in the community gardens the beetles aren't here in large enough numbers to damage the cucumbers themselves, but they carry a devastating disease called Bacterial Wilt. About 30 days after the infected beetles start to feed on a plant, the water-carrying pores in the plant stems become clogged with bacteria and the plant wilts dramatically and dies. It's very important to get rid of the cucumber beetles, their eggs and larvae. We may get as many as four generations during the summer, and if the last generation in the fall has fed from plants carrying disease, the disease will carry over the winter in the bodies of the cucumber beetles. So pulling and destroying any plants with the wilt will also reduce the amount of disease next year. The plants can be protected by floating row cover, or by spraying with a kaolin clay. The floating row cover (the best known is Reemay, but you can get a lighter-weight insect control fabric, which is a spun polyester) keeps the beetles from getting to the plants, and is a useful solution for root maggots, potato beetles, and bean beetles as well. The cover has to be removed at blossom time for pollination. Otherwise you can get varieties that are parthenocarpic, meaning they don't require pollination. They'll also be seedless if protected from pollination. Johnny's seeds shows varieties that are parthenocarpic in their descriptions. Surround is one brand of kaolin clay, available from Gardens Alive and perhaps other places, which will keep the cucumber beetles from eating. These are the two best solutions to prevent feeding. I've found that the Surround even lasts through a rain or two. The most difficult thing about it is application. It tends to clog sprayers, but the fine mist of a sprayer covers better than applying by hand. (You might experiment with Kaopectate, but I've really no idea if it would work, or if there's anything in it that would harm the cukes. It's obviously edible, so that's not a problem. Try it on just a few plants at first.) The beetles can be killed with rotenone and/or pyrethins (sometimes called pyrethrum), acceptable on organic programs. But even killing the beetles that have landed on the plants will potentially let them feed initially and transmit the disease, so prevention is the best strategy. (The disease is transmitted through their feces which contaminate the open wounds in the plant from their feeding). The beetles are even more attracted to tomatillos than to cucumbers, so tomatillos can be grown as a "trap crop" to collect the beetles away from the plants you want to grow. Then it's important to collect and destroy the beetles on the tomatillos, so they don't build up a big population that way. The tomatillos don't particularly suffer from the beetles, and you can use them in salsa. I wonder whether having a large number of beetles that feed exclusively on tomatillos will reduce the number of infected beetles (since the tomatillos don't have bacterial wilt), but don't know if that's so. During cucumber beetle season turn over the lower leaves of plants in the early morning when the beetles are sluggish, and either catch the beetles and throw them into soapy water, or crush them. They fly readily, so catching them in mid-day is difficult. Also rub off the yellow eggs they've laid on the undersides of the leaves. Some varieties of cucumbers and summer squash are more attractive to the beetles, and some are more susceptible to the disease. If you pay attention to the varieties you grow you might be able to determine this. County Fair is a variety of cucumber (available by catalog) reputed to be somewhat resistant to the bacterial wilt. Another strategy is to plant successive crops of cucumbers. Often we'll get some cucumbers before the wilt destroys the plant, so if you've planted every 2 weeks you may get an adequate harvest in spite of the disease. This is the most challenging pest we face in our Community Gardens, since the damage from the disease is irrevocable. cucumbers, garden - diseases,

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Arizona tree nut plantings on the fast track Apr 18, 2017 California State Water Project boosts irrigation allotment Apr 18, 2017 Even with effective synthetic alternatives Sulfur remains a relevant tool for controlling powdery mildew Apr 12, 2017 With buds pushing in late March, start of San Joaquin Valley wine grape crop follows normal timing Apr 12, 2017 Management Californians at risk from nitrate contamination in water Nitrogen in organic and synthetic fertilizers has dramatically increased crop production in California in recent decades. However, excess nitrate in groundwater from surface nitrogen use has been linked to thyroid illnesses, some cancers and reproductive problems. The report concludes that more than 90 percent of human-generated nitrate contamination of groundwater in these basins is from agricultural activity. UC Davis | Mar 15, 2012 One in 10 people living in California's most productive agricultural areas is at risk of exposure to harmful levels of nitrate contamination in their drinking water, according to a report released today by the University of California, Davis. The report was commissioned by the California State Water Resources Control Board. The report, "Addressing Nitrate in California's Drinking Water," is the first comprehensive scientific investigation of nitrate contamination in the Tulare Lake Basin, which includes Fresno and Bakersfield, and the Salinas Valley, which includes Salinas and areas near Monterey. It defines the extent of the problem, suggests promising solutions and outlines possible funding mechanisms. "Cleaning up nitrate in groundwater is a complex problem with no single solution," said Jay Lund, director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and a report co-author. "This report should help inform discussions among people involved with drinking water, waste discharge, and agricultural issues, including various local and state government agencies." The study was funded by the State Water Board in response to state legislation passed in 2008 that required an examination of nitrate contamination in the Tulare Lake and Salinas basins. "California groundwater quality is a significant concern to the Water Boards, and this comprehensive report presents current science and potential solutions on how to deal with this chronic and longstanding issue," said State Water Board executive director Thomas Howard. In their new report, UC Davis scientists examine data from wastewater treatment plants, septic systems, parks, lawns, golf courses and farms. The report concludes that more than 90 percent of human-generated nitrate contamination of groundwater in these basins is from agricultural activity. The nitrate study area includes four of the nation's five counties with the largest agricultural production, representing 40 percent of California's irrigated cropland and more than half of the state's confined animal farming industry. Since the 1940s, synthetic fertilizer use, increased manure applications to cropland, and a shift from pasture-raised dairy cattle to confined animal facilities have resulted in the accumulation of excess nitrate in groundwater, the report says. Much of that excess is only now beginning to affect water quality in the Tulare Lake Basin and Monterey County portion of the Salinas Valley. Today's discharges will continue to contaminate drinking water decades from now, the report says. Fixes for drinking water systems in these basins could cost about $20 million to $35 million per year for decades, the report concluded. As nitrates continue to spread, drinking water system costs could increase for Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley communities. The UC Davis report outlines several potential funding solutions, including a fee on nitrogen fertilizer use to help fund drinking water costs. The report found that 10 percent of the 2.6 million people in the Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley rely on groundwater that may exceed the nitrate standard of 45 milligrams per liter set by the California Department of Public Health for public water systems. The problem is likely to worsen for decades, as nitrogen applied to today's crops slowly makes its way into groundwater as nitrate. Communities often respond to initial contamination by drilling a new well or shifting to cleaner water sources. But as high nitrate concentrations continue to persist, communities are faced with using expensive treatment and alternatives. In addition to the public health risk, nitrate groundwater contamination imposes major abatement costs on small rural communities, which often have little financial means or technical capacity to maintain safe drinking water. More than 17 percent of the residents in the Tulare Lake Basin and 10 percent of residents in the Monterey County portion of the Salinas Valley live below the poverty line. "First and foremost, this is about getting safe drinking water to people," said report co-author Thomas Harter of the UC Davis Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources. "In the intermediate and long-term, it's about fixing the source of the problem." The report also calls for a statewide effort to integrate water-related data collection by various state and local agencies. "The report defines the extent and costs of the problem, for the first time, and outlines how we can address it," said Harter. "We hope it provides the foundation for informed policy discussions." Key findings include: Drinking water supply actions, such as water treatment and finding alternative water supplies, are most cost-effective. However, well supplies will become less available as nitrate pollution continues to spread. While many options exist to provide safe drinking water, there is no single or ideal solution for every community affected. Agricultural fertilizers and animal manure applied to cropland are the two largest regional sources of nitrate leached to groundwater -- representing more than 90 percent of the total. Reducing nitrate in the groundwater is possible, with methods such as improved fertilizer management and water treatment. Costs range from modest to quite expensive. Directly removing nitrate from large groundwater basins is extremely costly and not technically feasible. Part of the natural global nitrogen cycle, nitrogen is a key element that plants require for growth. Yet, in addition to contaminating groundwater, the surge in human-related nitrate over the past century has also created marine "dead zones," nitrogen oxide emissions that contribute to climate change and a host of other environmental problems. The State Water Board will be conducting a public workshop on May 23 to consider public comment, as well as discuss the findings and options outlined in the UC Davis report. The board will review the public comment and issue recommendations to the state Legislature, as called for in the legislation. The board has posted the documents on the Internet for public review and comment at http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/nitrate_project/index.shtml. For the full UC Davis report, videos, maps, and more information, visit http://groundwaternitrate.ucdavis.edu.

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ROBOTIC BEES ARE NOW BEING BUILT TO POLLINATE CROPS INSTEAD OF REAL BEES By Waking Science | October 6, 2016 Submitted by Alexa Erickson via Collective Evolution, Honeybees pollinate almost a third of the food we consume, but they’ve been dying at alarming rates due to threats like habitat loss and disease, as well as colony collapse disorder (CCD), the phenomenon where worker bees abandon their hives, leaving behind only the queen bee and enough food and nurse bees to help take care of the immature bees and the queen. There is also increasing evidence of a direct link between neonicotinoids, which are the most common type of insecticides, and CCD. Then, last week, federal authorities placed seven yellow-faced bee species native to Hawaii on the Endangered Species Act. And while honeybees have been dying off in many countries over the last decade, causing widespread concern over how much of the world’s food crops will get the pollination they require, different authoritative approaches have been implemented. The White House gave a task force a mere 180 days to create a plan to protect bees and other pollinators, for instance. The National Pollinator Health Strategy plans to: “Restore honey bee colony health to sustainable levels by 2025.” “Increase Eastern monarch butterfly populations to 225 million butterflies by year 2020.” “Restore or enhance seven million acres of land for pollinators over the next five years.” But other scientists have taken different avenues for dealing with the crisis, using modern technology to replace living bees with robotic ones. Researchers at Harvard University introduced the first RoboBees back in 2013. Led by engineering professor Robert Wood, the team created bee-size robots that can lift off the ground and hover midair when connected to a power supply. The details were reported in the journal Science. Harvard graduate student and mechanical engineer Kevin Ma, who co-authored the report, noted that the team is “on the eve of the next big development” and that the robot “can now carry more weight.” Prior to this development, it had been impossible to put all the necessary things to make a robot fly into such a minuscule structure while still keeping it lightweight enough to actually stay off the ground, but the Harvard researchers believe that these RoboBees could, within a decade, artificially pollinate a field of crops. The White House determined that the loss of bees and other species “requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment.” The RoboBees aren’t exactly a solution just yet, however, as they still need to be able to fly on their own and communicate with each other to perform tasks like a real honeybee hive is capable of doing. “RoboBees will work best when employed as swarms of thousands of individuals, coordinating their actions without relying on a single leader,” explained Wood and colleagues in an article for Scientific American. “The hive must be resilient enough so that the group can complete its objectives even if many bees fail.” And while Wood explained that CCD and its threat were part of the reason for producing the robotic bee, he says the devices aren’t actually supposed to replace natural pollinators indefinitely. This means, despite their efforts, the focus should still remain on how to save these essential creatures. The RoboBees would serve as “stopgap measure while a solution to CCD is implemented,” the project’s website cautions. Why Not Just Get Rid of Pesticides? s it a little to late? It seems that we’ve known for years that pesticides are killing millions of bees, if not billions. More specifically, it’s neonicotinoid pesticides that have been targeted as the culprit, and the province of Ontario, Canada is doing something about it. Ontario’s government recently made the decision that neonicotinoid pesticide use will be reduced by 80 percent no later than 2017. Neonicotinoid insecticides persist in very high levels in planter exhaust material produced during the planting of crops treated with these insecticides. This runs contrary to industry claims that the chemicals biodegrade and are not a threat, they lied. These pesticide components are found in soil, they are also found in fields where the chemicals are not even sprayed. Bees also actively transfer contaminated pollen from primarily pesticide treated corn crops and bring it back to their hives. Furthermore, bees transfer these pesticides to other plants and crops that are not treated with the chemicals, which goes to show just how persistent these chemicals truly are in the environment. As CBC news reports: “The Ontario government has moved to limit the use of neonicotinoid pesticides amid growing evidence that the substances are responsible for drastic reductions in bee populations in the province. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs laid out a three-point initiative Tuesday that it says will ensure “healthy ecosystems” and a “productive agricultural sector” while reversing the downward trend of pollinator numbers.” (source) Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller recently made an appearance on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation news network stating that: “The science is very clear. It is absolutely linked to the problems with bees, the death of bees, but also the sub-lethal effects on bees, such as disorientation, which leads to colony failure. The new information that is before us and very alarming is that the impact on the ecosystem is much greater and much broader. The bees are the canary in the coalmine.” (source) A study out of Harvard University, published in the June edition of the Bulletin of Insectology puts the nail in the coffin, “neonicotinoids are killing bees at an exponential rate, they are the direct cause of the phenomenon labeled as colony collapse disorder (CCD).” FYI, neonicotinoid’s are the world’s most widely used insecticides. (source) A paper published in the journal Nature discusses how bees are twice as likely to die when exposed to pesticides; two-thirds of the bees are lost when exposed compared to a third when not exposed. The exposed bees are also half as successful in gathering food. (source) Scientists from the US Department of Agriculture as well as the University of Maryland published a study that linked chemicals, including fungicides, to the large scale die-off of bees that has recently plagued the planet, you can read that study as well. (source) It’s not just bees, it’s other insects (not to mention the effects on human health as well as the environment) like Monarch butterflies, you can read more about that here. Alarming bee losses have also been recorded in various parts of the world where these pesticides are sprayed, they are dying by the hundreds of millions. To learn more about this or to find more detailed articles on this subject, check out any of the related articles already available on CE by clicking HERE. Related CE Article (If if you didn’t know about GM Insects) Thousands of Genetically Modified Insects Are Set For Release Related Itemsbees ← Previous Story How the Bayer-Monsanto merger will cause the price of groceries to skyrocket Next Story → MASSACHUSETTS VOTERS WILL SOON PASS A HISTORIC ANIMAL PROTECTION LAW You may also like... Europe is on the Brink of Completely Banning Bee-Killing Insecticides Thousands of dead bees wash up on Florida beach Major Big Box Retailer Calls on Suppliers to Stop Using Bee-Killing Chemicals

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Governors' Climate & Forests Task Force Working to protect tropical forests, reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and promote realistic pathways to forest-maintaining rural development. GCF Member Updates GCF Events & Announcements Carbon Accounting Low Carbon Agriculture Registries & Infrastructure Performance & Tracking GCF Members in Action at COP 22 Rosa Maria Vidal, GCF Fund Watch 2016 GCF Chair, Governor Sandoval, on representing Jalisco, Mexico, and Latin America at COP 22. This year’s 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP 22) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been coined the “The COP of Action,” promising to put the Paris Agreement into action. In response, jurisdictions from the Governors Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF) have been actively involved in demonstrating the critical role of subnational governments in the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Guided by the Rio Branco Declaration (RBD), a commitment to reduce deforestation by 80% by 2020, GCF jurisdictional efforts will be crucial in achieving the Paris Agreement by accelerating the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), reducing deforestation, and closing the carbon gap. Participation in COP 22 from GCF member states and provinces from regions such as Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, Peru, and the United States helped propel the advances of both the GCF's unique subnational network and the global climate action community (see catalog of events for comprehensive list). The arrival of the GCF network in Marrakech at the COP follows the momentum garnered in Jalisco, Mexico at the 2016 GCF Annual Meeting under the visionary leadership of the 2016 GCF Chair, Governor Aristoteles Sandoval. In Marrakech, Governor Sandoval and the Director of California Governor Jerry Brown's Office of Planning and Research, Ken Alex, co-chaired the Under 2 MOU event organized by the Climate Group, which identified a plan to increase reporting from subnational governments and promote subnational leadership under the Paris Agreement. During this year’s COP, twenty-nine new signatories joined the Under 2 MOU, including GCF Task Force members East Kalimantan and West Kalimantan from Indonesia and Tabasco, Mexico. As a result, a total of 18 GCF members are part of the 165 jurisdictions endorsing the MOU. Governor Sandoval (Jalisco), along with California representatives, and Cross River State Commissioner for Forestry and Climate Change, Dr. Alice Olok Ekwu, also attended the Climate Summit for Local and Regional Leaders where they shared insight from experiences within their states with fellow subnational leaders. At the Climate Summit, the Marrakech Road Map for Action, a global action framework towards localizing climate finance, was launched. Governor Sandoval’s dedication to climate action was also reflected in his promotion of an ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors within Jalisco, including land use, deforestation, and through initiatives such as the establishment of a "Green Fund" to reward environmental stewards. Cross River State Commissioner for Forestry and Climate Change, Dr. Alice Olok Ekwu. Click here for more photos of GCF members in action at COP 22. The GCF Brazilian delegation included representatives from the States of Amazonas and Mato Grosso. Amazonas State Secretary of the Environment, Antonio Stroski, was involved in several side events organized by Fundação Amazonas Sustentável (FAS) and GCF’s Brazil Coordinator Instituto de Conservação e Desenvolvimento Sustentável da Amazônia (IDESAM). Secretary Stroski highlighted Amazonas’ climate efforts which include the promotion of green development and payments for environmental services to local communities, building on integrated intervention programs such as Bolsa Floresta, and encouraging participation from the private sector. As a result of efforts underway in Amazonas, the state still has 96% of its tropical forests intact (INPE/PRODES 2014), the most among any Brazilian state. As one of the founding members of the GCF Task Force, Amazonas has focused on reducing deforestation by preventing illegal logging and land encroachment due to the expansion of subsistence agriculture, amongst other causes. Secretary Stroski also participated in a side event organized by national Brazilian institutions that focused on the Amazon Fund and the national REDD+ Strategy. The GCF’s RBD champions reduction in deforestation by both increasing collaboration with the private sector and linking production and protection activities. This approach was further explored during the “Jurisdictional Sustainability: A Bottom-Up Integrated Approach to Reducing Deforestation panel organized by Earth Innovation Institute and the Southern Tropical Alliance. GCF Governor Victor Manuel Noriega, from San Martín, Peru, advocated for jurisdiction wide sustainability. Fernando Sampaio, the new Director of the Conserve, Produce, and Include (PCI) Program in Mato Grosso, a founding GCF member, also participated in this panel, as well as various other events during the COP including the Global Landscape Forum. He promoted the PCI initiative as a way to achieve both economic and environmental benefits by simultaneously maintaining productivity of major commodities and reducing deforestation. His strategy includes a combination of policies, incentives, and investments that could lead to preferential sourcing. Jeff Seabright, Chief Sustainability Officer at Unilever, contributed by confirming Unilever’s vision of establishing long-term sourcing agreements that will produce positive performance for environmental and social indicators. He emphasized that with a common vision, governments and the private sector can work together to achieve improved sustainability. The culmination of “The COP of Action,” brings further resolve and commitment to the RBD and the Paris Agreement. COP22 may be over; however, GCF members will continue their dedication to reducing deforestation and carbon emissions through subnational leadership, partnerships, and innovation. You can follow these jurisdictions as they turn their commitments into action on both the GCF Task Force and Governors’ Climate and Forests Fund (GCFF) websites. Central Kalimantan North Kalimantan West Kalimantan Cavally The GCF is funded in part by Governors' Climate and Forests Task Force [email protected]

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Switchgrass could be the Midwest's next big energy source By Jeff Caldwell Switchgrass field in NE Groningen, the Netherlands. Photo from www.switchgrass.nl Posted August 26, 2005, as reported by CropChoice: For better or worse, land that was taken out of production years ago as part of the Conservation Reserve Program will be kicked back into production in the coming years. How will landowners and farm managers make use of the newly functional ground? If taken back to row crops, the perennial soil quality benefits from CRP grasses may be lost, proving the program's long term gains to be marginal at best. What if another crop existed, one that might partially maintain the benefits of the Conservation Reserve Program, while at the same time, allow landowners to advance profits on the land that sat idle for years? Decades-worth of study and research that continues today has been brought to fruition in a crop that can successfully be grown in the Midwest and has a well-defined market, yet today lacks some of the legislative support necessary to catapult it to the level of more conventional crops: Switchgrass. Switchgrass is a perennial warm-season grass native to the rolling prairie hills of southern Iowa and northern Missouri. Long a staple of the grasslands of the area, switchgrass has in the last decade become recognized as having a new function: Energy generation. Ground switchgrass can be burned in a coal-firing energy facility, displacing a small amount of coal used. While in its infancy, this type of energy supplementation may become another way the Midwestern U.S. can play a large role in strengthening the nation's energy independence and security. Yet the benefits of switchgrass as a primary crop don't hedge completely toward the consumer, and John Sellers Jr., knows this. Sellers has been growing switchgrass, alongside other forage crops like Big Bluestem and Eastern Gamma grass at his southern Iowa farm and ranch in Wayne County, near Corydon, for almost 30 years. Currently in his seventh year as a state soil conservation committee member and Wayne County Soil and Water district commissioner since 1973, Sellers operates 360 acres of his own grassland in addition to managing 1,000 acres for others. To him, switchgrass is a logical crop for his area. "When looking for what will be the most efficient and best adapted crop to grow in an area, look to what Mother Nature had there to begin with," he says. "In our case in the Midwest, it is tallgrass prairie grasses of which switchgrass was one." Sellers, also coordinator of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture's Iowa Grassland Agriculture Program, says he recognizes that conservation and farm profitability must go hand-in-hand in order to be successful. He started planting switchgrass not in search of the next big energy source, but because of its practical applications to his operation. "Switchgrass is highly adaptive. You can grow it from the Rocky Mountains of Canada all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It was promoted for its wildlife benefits and all of that years ago. I started planting it in 1980 and was just interested in it at first as warm-season grazing and a wildlife habitat, and it kind of went from there," Sellers says. "Then, when switchgrass was recognized as having the best potential for energy, the focus started to shift." That focus today, at least in southern Iowa, has blossomed into a new use for switchgrass that has fueled a whole new industry's development. Today, a cooperative group of farmers, Sellers among them, is growing switchgrass for utilization to generate energy alongside coal in the Ottumwa Generating Station in Chillicothe, just over 50 miles east of Corydon. The growers comprise the Chariton Valley Biomass Project, part of Chariton Valley Resource Conservation and Development, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded system for conservation encompassing Lucas, Wayne, Appanoose and Monroe counties in southern Iowa. Burning switchgrass for energy Today, more than 3,000 acres in southern Iowa is planted to switchgrass. The U.S. Department of Energy is working with the Chariton Valley group, providing periodic grant funding for research and development to help determine switchgrass' prospects for more widespread and regular use as an energy crop. Switchgrass, which is sold through power purchase agreements directly to the energy plant, comprises 2.5 percent of the total resource input at the Ottumwa energy facility. When entering the plant, the grass is debaled and ground, yielding finely chopped dry matter that is injected into boilers much the same way powdered coal is injected in conventional plants. "It goes into a big blower and it's transported pneumatically up into a boiler, then from its own nozzle, blown into the firebox," Sellers says. "The coal is going in on its own stream, and we're pouring in through our own stream." To date, Sellers says no decline in the plant's energy efficiency has been observed with co-firing switchgrass and coal. "We've had experts test every aspect of that facility's operations, and that plant hasn't shown a difference so far," he says. "We don't expect that plant to even know it's there." At the 700-megawatt energy plant, Sellers says 55,000 3- by 4- by 8-foot square bales must be produced to consistently meet the input quota. Because of the costs associated with growing switchgrass, combined with the low cost of coal, it is a constant challenge to find ways to bolster production efficiency to cost effectively meet energy demands. "Unfortunately, coal is dirt cheap, and it's going to stay dirt cheap. A baler costs $75,000, and you don't have an electric plant on every street corner. We have to truck it 55 miles from here to the plant," Sellers says. "We've pushed it and applied more nitrogen early in the growing season just to see what the soil is capable of. Four tons per acre is where it cash flows, but we can raise as much as six tons/acre." Utilizing switchgrass for energy has another avenue for the future: Ethanol. With cellulose ethanol technology on the verge of reaching the mainstream, switchgrass could be an alternative to more conventional ethanol production methods, according to Sellers. "We've got the cellulose-to-ethanol technologies in place now, so this is what you're going to start seeing spring up if we have some policy that would help a little bit," he says. "The corn people have the policy to support them. They've worked super-hard for it. "We have seen a lot better net energy gain with a bale of switchgrass than with a bushel of corn, when making ethanol out of it." Managing switchgrass Switchgrass as a crop requires atypical management. For optimal output, it is harvested every other year, rather than annually. Even though it is common in CRP fields, switchgrass harvested for energy generation must be a relative monoculture, meaning derived from primarily a single seed type, rather than part of a mixture of grasses. Once the grass reaches maturity in harvest years, it is swathed and baled, much like other forage crops. Sellers says the 3- by 4- by 8-foot bales are used in the Chariton Valley project because of ease of handling and storage. Bales are currently stored in 13 buildings around the Rathbun Lake watershed area that comprises the four counties of Wayne, Lucas, Appanoose and Monroe. One building near the energy facility houses 16,000 bales and is utilized in times when weather prevents hay delivery from more outlying areas. In terms of soil conservation and preservation, switchgrass is unique in its benefits. Much of Sellers' ground is highly erodible, yet switchgrass flourishes. This is due in part to its "sod roots," which form an interwoven layer of roots that don't penetrate extremely deep in the soil, but form a layer of solely root tissue just beneath the surface. This, in effect, stabilizes ground that might be easily eroded if planted to row crops. For this reason alone, Sellers says the value of switchgrass should be clear. "The fields have a soil quality that's just sky high. We've got moderate to severely eroded soils from years and years of row cropping, or too short of rotations of full tillage. This is really helping this soil bring itself back," he says. "We're spending millions on soil conservation in this country so we can row crop all the land when we could rotate in switchgrass and accomplish the same thing." Perhaps the greatest benefit of switchgrass to soil quality comes through its manipulation of nutrients. According to Sellers, switchgrass is a C4 grass, which means nutrients move throughout the plant during different times of the growing season. This culminates with the first killing frost in the fall, when nutrients like phosphorous and potassium move into the roots. As a result, nutrients stay circulating throughout the soil, rather than being removed, like they are with row crops. "At the time of the killing frost, all the P and K in the plant goes back down to the root. So, if you wait two weeks after a killing frost, almost all of the nutrients have gone back into the roots for the next year," Sellers says. "It makes it extremely sustainable so you don't have the enormous take-out rates that you see, for example, when you cut silage and remove all of it for hay." Current policy Even though some say the conservation of natural resources in agriculture is a point of strength of current farm policy, when it comes to switchgrass production, a natural means of soil conservation, current law leaves much to be desired. The coming years will be pivotal for the future of growing switchgrass, as CRP contracts are fulfilled and more of that land will be released back to production. Yet, currently, CRP land must consist of polycultural grasses, meaning a mixture of different types, including switchgrass. The result is a set of requirements that works against the replacement of CRP grasses with a switchgrass monoculture for production. "Our acres are down because of the farm program, with the renewal of CRP contracts. Guys are having good switchgrass stands, but they're having to tear it out because of CRP," Sellers says. "There are even payment reductions for harvesting it now." Acres are down, but in the near future, around the time when the new farm bill is scheduled for approval by Congress, the reduction could turn into a landslide because of CRP requirements, like those requiring specific plantings habitats. Instead, Sellers says strict requirements should be abandoned in favor of what works in terms of conservation, sustainability and profitability, all things farmers know a great deal about. "In 2007, we're going to have a major revolt of farmers who have perfectly good stands of both warm- and cool-season grasses, and they're going to say they've had enough of this, because they don't want to have to spend $200 to $300/acre for some exotic native grass mix that is going to be extremely difficult to establish and manage. The new seeding requirements affect farmers who have contracts expiring in the next few years--more than 1 million acres in 2007 through 2009--and wanting to renew," says Sellers. "A lot of times, you've got a wildlife specialist who lives in town, learning this stuff out of a book, and he has no idea what it takes to establish or manage a stand. I can get folks out here, show them how I can manage these grasses and how I can produce fabulous wildlife habitat." The net effect of these misguided controls over CRP, Sellers says, are leading to an obvious outcome for him personally. "I'm going to have to bail out of (CRP)," he says. "I'm just heartsick, because I love CRP, because it's allowing me to have the habitat out here. But, I've also got a farm that I need to make a living ." Yet, if regulation can turn a corner towards switchgrass, and a safety net can be established under switchgrass growers, something Sellers says is the first step in fostering a healthier switchgrass industry, the crop's vast potential could be realized. "This stuff does have a place, and is going to become more of a player, but our policy is just getting more and more difficult all the time. Some people just can't see the big picture. There are a few senators, especially in the upper Midwest, who see the potential for this, but we're not getting all the support, policy-wise, we need at this time," Sellers says. "It is a potential gold mine. But, how long can we wait? I'm going to be 60 in a few days. I can wait a little while longer. I'm still an innovator, and I'll still try anything, but how long do you wait before you just throw up your hands and look at other alternatives?" Recent news and research 404 Not Found Affordable, ReliableWeb Hosting Solutions. 404 Error File Not Found Web Hosting provided by Bluehost.com Stay Up-to-Date – NewFarm.org changes daily! Don't miss out on the latest interactive features, columns and news. Sign up now for our monthly e-newsletter and stay connected. ACTION ALERTS •Free the meat markets! End packer ownership and stop closed-door deals • Support Saskatchewan farmers in efforts to block GM wheat • Stop budget cuts to conservation programs--the one's that help you pay for environmentally sound farming practices! Are you a farmer? A consumer? Whatever story you have to tell, let it be an inspiration to others. Share it with us now... T H E N E W F A R M – R E G E N E R A T I V E A G R I C U L T U R E W O R L D W I D E

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Arizona tree nut plantings on the fast track Apr 18, 2017 California State Water Project boosts irrigation allotment Apr 18, 2017 Even with effective synthetic alternatives Sulfur remains a relevant tool for controlling powdery mildew Apr 12, 2017 With buds pushing in late March, start of San Joaquin Valley wine grape crop follows normal timing Apr 12, 2017 Italian farm equipment targets North American market sales Harry Cline Farm Press Editorial Staff | Dec 20, 2003 A farm equipment show in Bologna, Italy seems an unlikely place for a discussion about sudangrass hay production in California's Imperial Valley. Nevertheless, Carlo Tonutti, owner of one of Italy's 1,000 farm tractor and implement manufacturers, is very interested in that market. He is testing his company's haying equipment there on sudangrass, admittedly one of the toughest forage crops to harvest. Mature sudangrass can take on the rigidity of small trees, and it can be brutal on farm equipment. Nevertheless, that is where Tonutti believes his company has a market niche to fill and he wants to ensure that his equipment is up to the task. That is why he had equipment in the fields last season. “Sudangrass really tears up equipment, but that is what we want. We want to learn about that market and what it takes to satisfy sudangrass farmers in the Imperial Valley,” said Tonutti. “We think it can be an important market for us, and we want to be ready for that market next year.” It is not just California farming that Italian farm machinery manufacturers are interested in. Many of the companies exhibiting at the recent 34th annual International Agricultural and Gardening Machinery Exhibition (EIMA) in Bologna, Italy left no doubt that the U.S. is a key market for them. Many like Tonutti have been aggressively marketing their equipment in the U.S. and around the world. They view the U.S. as one of the more positive markets right now. EIMA, organized by Italian National Union of Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers, featured more than 1,700 exhibitors (1,100 Italian manufacturers) in more than 20 giant exhibit halls totaling more than 1.6 million square feet housing 22,000 machinery models and innumerable other suppliers of agricultural parts and services. More than 100,000 people visit the show annually. It makes the World Ag Expo in Tulare, Calif. look like a county fair. Exports 70 percent Italy annually produces $9 billion worth of farm equipment and exports about 70 percent of that. While Europe is the destination of the overwhelming majority Italian exports, America represents about 12 percent of Italian-made farm machinery exports. Tonutti, like several others manufacturers, is introducing larger, more rugged machines for the U.S. market where farmers put more hours on tractors and implements than in many other parts of the world. No discussion about farming and farm equipment would be complete without addressing the subject of government subsidies. It is an ongoing debate. Americans claim Europeans receive subsidies that make it impossible for U.S. products to compete in Europe. Of course, Europeans claim the same thing about the American federal farm program. The debate over subsidies goes to the economic heart of farm machinery makers worldwide. For Lucia Colombaro, customer care manager for Tonutti, “we love American subsidies.” She explained that European farmers are subsidized “not to produce crops”, and that is not good for European farm equipment manufacturers. In the U.S., she said farmers are subsidized to aid them in marketing crops and that affords a better market for Tonutti equipment. Italian farm equipment is marketed in the U.S. through distributors, but many of the Italian manufacturers also have U.S. or Canadian warehouses and offices to provide quicker service and technical support. One of those is Maschio/Gaspardo, which recently opened a warehouse/technical center in Rock Island, Ill., according to Vincenzo Abate, corporate export area manager. From there, the company services seven distributors throughout the U.S., and it is looking for more distributors. “We are introducing a new vegetable planter exclusively for the North American market,” said Abate. “It will have a heavier frame than what we sell in Europe.” The frame will be made by an outside supplier in Illinois, and Gaspardo planter units will be shipped to Rock Island for assembly on the heavier frames. It will not be marketed through one of Gaspardo's seven distributors. Direct marketing “We will market the planter directly to growers,” said Abate. “The U.S. represents a huge market for us.” Maschio/Gaspardo is one of many Italian manufactures which supply proprietary merchandise to U.S. manufacturers and suppliers. Companies like Polmac in Mirandola, Italy which makes spray nozzles and values for many companies in the U.S. Bondioli and Pavesi of Suzaara, Italy supplies power take off shafts for several U.S. equipment manufacturers. Abate said his Maschio/Gaspardo recently signed an agreement to supply finishing mowers and tillers to Deere and Co. for the U.S. market. They will be manufactured in Italy, painted Deere green and shipped to the U.S. Another major supplier of hay equipment is Sitrex, with two distribution locations in Houston, Texas, and Omaha, Neb. Sitrex is based in Perugia, Italy. Sitrex is introducing a new, larger twin hay rake into the U.S. market. Again, it is more heavy duty than earlier models for the U.S. and North American market. North America is such an important, growing market Sitrex is considering establishing a manufacturing plant in the U.S., according to Nadia Pannaci, Sitrex export manager. There is no doubt American agriculture is a target market for the Italian manufacturers, even with the 20 percent difference in currency value between the Euro and the American dollar that makes European equipment more expensive in the U.S. Several companies at the Bologna show indicated they would absorb that added cost to remain competitive in the U.S. market. e-mail: [email protected]

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Researcher gets to root of plant health Plant pathologist Bob Linderman has devoted his career to helping plants naturally ward off pathogens.Now retired from USDA, Linderman runs a company, Plant Health, that provides research and consulting services to farmers. By Mateusz Perkowski For the Capital Press Published on September 2, 2013 10:11AM Last changed on September 3, 2013 1:46PM Bob Linderman of Corvallis, Ore., grows mycorrhizal inoculum that is used to build plant health underground. He is the owner of Plant Health, a research and consulting firm, and Santiam Organics. Mycorrhizal fungi are like underground “quarterbacks” that coordinate the activities of beneficial organisms in the soil, plant pathologist Bob Linderman says.Their role is crucial in a crop’s offense — extracting water and nutrients — as well as its defense: fighting off pathogens, he said.The fungus establishes a symbiotic relationship with the plant, living within its roots and expanding their reach to nooks and crannies in the soil that would otherwise be unreachable.“It’s the interface between the plant and the soil,” Linderman said. “The biomass of the fungus is outstandingly large. It’s basically mining the soil.”Linderman first became began studying mycorrhizal fungi early in his 40-year career with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, while looking for biological controls against plant diseases.“I became interested in all things that happen around the roots,” he said.Now retired from USDA, Linderman runs a company, Plant Health, that provides research and consulting services to farmers. He also manufactures the inoculum for mycorrhizal fungi through a sister company, Santiam Organics.To produce the inoculum, the fungus is grown in a proprietary soil medium in plastic-lined bins. A crop like Sudan grass is also planted in the bins, because the fungi won’t grow without access to roots.“You can’t grow them in a test tube,” Linderman said.It usually requires four to five months for the mycorrhizal fungi to fully pervade the bins, at which point the fungus, medium and roots are granulated. The mixture is then bagged and is ready to use for inoculating crops with the fungus.The benefits for mycorrhizal fungi are particularly noticeable in crops like onions or grape vines, which have coarse or limited root systems.The fungus not only acts as an extended root system for the plant, increasing access to nutrients and water, it also improves the crop’s ability to tolerate drought.“When mycorrhizae form, they change the physiology of the plant,” Linderman said.The fungus also orchestrates the actions of other organisms, like “antagonistic” bacteria that help plants fight off pathogens.“That should result in natural disease suppression,” he said. “I don’t want that disease to get a chance to happen.”Phosphorous fertilizer has a tendency to bind to certain soils, like those rich in iron, making the nutrient less available to the plant.“It’s not really mobile. It doesn’t move in the soil,” Linderman said. “Now you have to do something to dissolve that bond to get at the phosphorous or the iron.”Bacteria that live on the mycorrhizal fungus create acids that break these bonds, freeing up the nutrients for the fungus to absorb.“Once it gets to the fungus, it will go to the plant,” Linderman said.The ability of mycorrhizal fungi to capture nutrients is useful for nursery plants grown in containers, which are prone to leaking fertilizers, he said.“The dynamics of potting mix are different than the dynamics of soil,” Linderman said.The company produces three distinct types of the fungus inoculum that form symbiotic relationships with different kinds of plants.Endomycorrhizae, the most predominant type, will work with most crops.Ectomycorrhizae form on the roots of pines, firs, spruces and oaks, while ericoid mycorrhizae are associated with blueberries, rhododendrons and cranberries.While the fungi exist naturally in the soil, it can take a long time for plant roots to reach them, Linderman said.Mycorrhizal inoculum, meanwhile, can be applied in-furrow during seed planting, or poured into holes when trees and shrubs are planted, ensuring quicker access to the fungi.“I want to deliver them right from the get-go,” he said.Bob LindermanOccupation: Owner of Plant Health, a research and consulting firm, and Santiam Organics, which makes mycorrhizal fungi inoculum.Age: 74Education: Doctorate in plant pathology from the University of California-Berkeley, 1967.Family: Wife, Lynne, and three grown childrenHometown: Corvallis, Ore.

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COTTON SPIN: Will the boom in U.S. cotton exports continue? Apr 21, 2017 USDA announces 2017 cotton loan rate differentials Apr 18, 2017 Conservation cropping systems, crop rotation focus of Rolling Plains study Apr 24, 2017 2020 Strategic Plan Positions Peanuts for Optimistic Future Apr 19, 2017 Icy moons of Jupiter more important than ag Forrest Laws Farm Press Editorial Staff | Jan 19, 2006 The national debt is projected to reach $7.8 trillion this fiscal year, but the federal government continues to spend money on projects such as a $248-million study of the icy moons of Jupiter. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, doesn't understand why the government is shelling out that kind of money for what he clearly considers to be frivolous research when it is also planning to cut farm program spending by at least $3.7 billion over the next five years. Cuellar, a late addition to the program at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences in San Antonio, says the federal government has a number of areas it could cut spending — including excessive payments to Medicare practitioners — before it reduces funding for agriculture. “When we started the Iraq War, we went in and took over one of Saddam's palaces,” he said. “Now I've been to Iraq, and I've seen some of the palaces. Saddam didn't take care of his people, but he took good care of himself.” Cuellar said the U.S. government took the palace and spent $100 million rehabbing the buildings for a new location for the U.S. Embassy. “First of all, $100 million put on top of a palace is a lot of money to begin with,” he said. “But we had a provision in the supplemental appropriations bill to spend another $558 million for a new compound for a new U.S. embassy that was taken out in the House. “Now if you think about that, that's $558 million for the embassy and $248 million to study the icy moons of Jupiter. Imagine if you could take that money and give it to agriculture or use it to reduce the national debt.” Cuellar, a member of the House Budget Committee, says recent studies indicate the federal government could save tens of billions of dollars a year if it cracked down on excessive payments in the Medicare program. Changes in the prices the federal government pays for prescription drugs could produce savings, he said. “I'm all for reducing the federal deficit,” said Cuellar. “Figures show that 40 percent of the national debt of $7.8 trillion is owned by foreign countries such as China and Japan. How would you feel if you had a loan and 40 percent of it was held by your competitors?” In his budget proposal last year, President Bush proposed to reduce agricultural spending by $7 billion. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss was able to persuade the Senate Budget Committee to reduce that figure to $3 billion. “President Bush was wrong,” said Cuellar. “We should not be focusing on cutting agriculture spending when we have these other areas that are much more deserving of reductions.” So how should the United States reduce the federal deficit, Cuellar asked. “Do you reduce it on the back of an industry like agriculture that, in my opinion, has done a great job of becoming more productive and more efficient and accounts for less than 1 percent of the total budget? “So are you going to focus the reductions on an industry that has sacrificed for many years? I don't think so, especially when there are so many other areas we could look at for savings.” Cuellar said that's why farmers must spend more time educating and working with members of Congress to help them understand issues such as farm programs and Medicare and prescription drugs. “And you can't wait until the day of an important vote and call your congressman to express an opinion,” he said. “John Maguire and your staff in Washington do a great job of representing you and your industry, but they can't do it alone. You have to pitch in and help spread the word about issues that involve you.” One of those issues, he said, is immigration reform. Cuellar, a native of Laredo, Texas, said the recent legislation taken up by the House “just deals with border security. It does nothing to address other issues such as immigration reform.” If the House bill becomes law, he said, overnight the estimated 11 million undocumented aliens in the United States would become felons. That means that anyone who associated with them — such as employers — would also be subject to criminal penalties. “President Bush has been pushing for a guest worker bill, while Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Congressman Gutierrez and myself have been seeking legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship,” he noted. “As this bill passes over to the Senate, I hope we can have a serious debate on immigration reform that will regulate the number of individuals entering the United States but also meet the needs for labor that many employers, including farmers, obviously have.” e-mail: [email protected]

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Arizona tree nut plantings on the fast track Apr 18, 2017 California State Water Project boosts irrigation allotment Apr 18, 2017 Even with effective synthetic alternatives Sulfur remains a relevant tool for controlling powdery mildew Apr 12, 2017 With buds pushing in late March, start of San Joaquin Valley wine grape crop follows normal timing Apr 12, 2017 Agriculture dodges Oscar bullet Forrest Laws | Apr 06, 2010 Commercial agriculture, the kind that produces most of the food, feed, fiber and alternative fuels consumed in America, dodged a bullet at this year’s Oscar ceremonies. You may not have heard that Food Inc., the movie that claims to expose “the highly mechanized underbelly” of the nation’s food industry, was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards. Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to give the award to The Cove, a film that tells the story of a team of filmmakers who traveled to a cove in Taiji, Japan, where 23,000 dolphins reportedly are killed every year. Farm organizations were bracing for the publicity that would have been showered on Food, Inc., if it had been named best documentary. The National Corn Growers Association sent out an Action Alert arming members with a fact sheet to use in discussing the film with friends and neighbors. It’s unfortunate a movie with a flawed premise and factual inaccuracies can receive so much attention. But it seems to be agriculture’s fate that the more outrageous the claims and less grounded in reality a film, article, book is — the more notoriety it achieves. In the press notes, filmmaker Robert Kenner claims “Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment.” The film says these corporations – Smithfield Foods, Tyson, Perdue and Monsanto and other multinationals “control” everything from seed to plate. It uses stories, video clips and interviews – not with scientific experts – to imply the overuse of corn in U.S. food production results in higher likelihood of food borne illness, obesity and declining numbers of farmers. The interviews are with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Easter’s Manifesto, so-called experts who have turned criticizing America’s farmers and ranchers and food processors into a cottage industry. It never mentions that pesticide manufacturers spend upwards of $250 million testing a new product to make sure it is safe or that plants containing biotech traits are no different than conventional or even organically grown crops except for the gene that protects them against a specific pest or herbicide. If “experts” like Schlosser and Pollan really want to address food safety, they should travel to China or to other countries that ship food and other products that are practically unregulated to the U.S. That would be far more productive than attacking a system that, while not perfect, offers a safe, nutritious bountiful harvest that is the envy of the world. email: [email protected]

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Certification Strategies, Industrial Development and a Global Market for Biofuels Rodrigo Wagner | Jan. 13, 2010 A disproportionately large amount of the world's agronomic potential for the production of bio-ethanol is concentrated in a subset of developing countries. This phenomenon represents a rare opportunity to help countries that rank among the poorest in the world to make progress towards industrialization and export-led growth. The list of potential biofuel competitors includes small, tropical economies where the current denominator of total exports is low, so the development of even a small biofuel industry could represent a large proportion of exports. By creating demand for relatively complex inputs and capabilities, the industry's development may also make it easier for these countries to develop other more sophisticated industries in its wake. The emergence of a biofuels industry, therefore, may not only be meaningful for global energy supply, but may also promote the competitiveness of some of the world's most vulnerable communities. This opportunity is being threatened, however, by the complexity of the coordination challenges, like standardization and the building of an integrated supply chain, as well as by the large number of policy priorities that are shaping the industry's emerging structure. This paper will discusses all these tensions in the context of the international policy debate. Creating a viable global biofuels market depends on a range of both local and global policy inputs. Translating the biological potential for biofuels into an economically exploitable opportunity requires a business ecosystem that provides the intermediate inputs and market structures that maintain the private cost of production below the sale price. Since this complex network of requisite conditions - infrastructure to connect agricultural land with ethanol processing plants, a logistic system to move the ethanol to port or to market, ports that can handle ethanol, a car fleet that can use the ethanol, refineries that mix ethanol with gasoline in known ratios, a network of service stations that sell the mix, etc. - can neither be developed quickly nor provided by a single firm, it is crucial to coordinate entrant entrepreneurs by providing certainties. At the local level, these industry dynamics imply an organization of buyers and some basic complementary inputs. Some of these inputs are privately provided, but many others are in the purview of the public sector, such as infrastructure or standards. Ensuring that these are provided simultaneously represents a coordination problem that requires policy action. At the global level, given the large scale of potential production relative to the size of domestic markets and given potential hold-up problems between producers and local distributors, reliable global market demand is needed in order to trigger large bioenergy investments. Global certainty is particularly important for biofuel entrepreneurs. The only fully scalable carbon-saving production technology available that is profitable at around US$ 60 per barrel - sugarcane ethanol - requires comparatively large investments in local processing compared to other well developed agricultural-based industries like wheat or soybeans, increasing the salience of potential market failures in its development. A global market is critical to ensuring demand and to giving producers an outside option. But it is not yet clear how this market will function. The market's structure is being shaped haphazardly by a series of different and sometimes conflicting policy goals. For example, biofuels have been affected by agricultural policies in developed countries focused on increasing local farm incomes by restricting supply and raising domestic prices. One implementation of this policy is the American US$ 0.54 per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol, which makes imports unfeasible at all but the very high oil prices seen briefly in 2008. The opposite policy goal - that of keeping food prices low - has also been a consideration regarding biofuels policy, as many fear that increased competition for arable land would raise food prices and deteriorate the living standards of the urban poor. One implementation of this policy is to stop the promotion of biofuels, as suggested by some specialists in the press, especially during the food price spikes of 2007-2008. At the same time, biofuels are seen as a potential substitute for imported fossil fuels and are being encouraged in some developed countries for energy security reasons, since they would reduce dependence on failed or potentially hostile oil-rich states. Through this lens, Brazilian sugarcane farmers would be competing with Iranian and Russian oil magnates, not Iowa corn farmers. Environmental goals are also a primary factor in the industry's emergence, but leveraging biofuels to advance these goals is not clear-cut. First, some biofuels have the potential to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, because the carbon their combustion releases is offset by their capture of CO2 through photosynthesis. But not all biofuels are created equal. Some have large reduction effects, while others have small or adverse effects. Moreover, CO2 is not the only GHG, and agriculture may generate others such as methane and nitrous oxide. A policy to reduce GHG emissions would need to distinguish between them, but this cannot be done by just looking at the chemical composition of the final product. Hence, some form of certification would be needed. Second, GHG emissions are not the only environmental goal. Agriculture disturbs the environment through deforestation, chemical pollution of land and water and a reduction in biodiversity, among other ways. Hence, a policy to encourage biofuels would expand the agricultural frontier and thus affect the environment. This paper engages this discussion with two central goals: first, to compile a set of principles to guide the design of a global biofuels market that reconciles industrial development with the other policy goals around the industry and, second, to offer practical implications that ground these principles in the landscape of the current policy discussion. We seek to contribute to this discussion in a variety of dimensions. First, unlike other normative pieces, we emphasize the industrial development potential of bioenergy and the implications of incorporating this goal into emerging policies at both the local and global level. In particular, we argue why it is so important to avoid regulations that are highly intensive in State capacity which, among other things, would bias industrial development against poor countries. Second, we explore the trade-offs of multiple policy goals, ending with a call for either adding more instruments or reducing the goals. If you will indulge an unfortunate metaphor for an environmental issue, a single certification stone is unlikely to kill all of the birds we are targeting. Third, we propose scaffolding regulations to deal with an uncertain global institutional environment for bio-energy. Just as the rules that started the Chicago Board of Trade in the mid XIX century are not the same ones that govern the global commodity business today, so the rules for green bio-energy must be allowed to co-evolve as the market develops. Last, we argue that the global regulation of bio-energy must be compatible with a global trading system and be mindful of transaction costs. We have to make a global market for bio-energy as green as possible, but not go beyond that. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 starts by showing the potential for bioenergy, particularly in some developing countries. Immediately after, we argue why it is disproportionately important to avoid holdups for entrepreneurs in the industrial development of bio-energy. Section 3 discusses why doing so is challenging, because different and conflicting policy goals pervade the policy arena of biofuel. Subsequently section 4 develops a framework of organizing principles to deal with these conflicting goals. In section 5 we offer some examples and applications of these organizing principles. Finally, in section 6 we offer some conclusions and suggest some proposals for regulation. Hausmann_Wagner_Biofuels_Certification_2009_web.pdf For more information on this publication: Please contact Environment and Natural Resources Ricardo Hausmann, Rodrigo Wagner. "Certification Strategies, Industrial Development and a Global Market for Biofuels." Discussion Paper 2009-15, Environment and Natural Resources Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Sustainability Science Program, Center for International Development, Harvard University, October 2009. The Authors Ricardo Hausmann How to Handle an Oil Shock Scientist and Statesman Ernest Moniz Joins Belfer Center as Senior Fellow Ernest J. Moniz - The Diplomat With Growth of Coal Power Plants, Vietnam's Future Is Grim Viet Phuong Nguyen Emerging Markets Development

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COTTON SPIN: Will the boom in U.S. cotton exports continue? Apr 21, 2017 USDA announces 2017 cotton loan rate differentials Apr 18, 2017 Conservation cropping systems, crop rotation focus of Rolling Plains study Apr 24, 2017 2020 Strategic Plan Positions Peanuts for Optimistic Future Apr 19, 2017 Ag industry companies are aggressive about aricultural research, but government investment in public institutions is a good investment, says Monsanto President and COO Brett Begemann. Management Ag needs to improve communication efforts The agriculture industry needs to do a better job of educating the public about the challenges of feeding a growing population and the necessity of using both traditional methods and new technology to achieve sustainable food production. Ron Smith 1 | Jun 03, 2014 The agriculture industry needs to do a better job of educating the public about the challenges of feeding a growing population and the necessity of using both traditional methods and new technology to achieve sustainable food production. And the industry also needs to listen, says Brett Begemann, Monsanto President and COO. Begemann sat down with Southwest Farm Press recently before addressing the Dallas Friday Group, an organization of business people with an interest in public affairs and business issues. Begemann said society faces the daunting challenge of a population that will reach 9 billion souls, probably before 2050, with many likely to move into a growing middle class that will expect improved diets. But the challenge is greater than just an expanding population. Begemann says water availability poses serious challenges to food production. “Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of water use,” he said. As the population increases, more people require more water, leaving less for food production. “We have to figure out a way to feed 9 billion people with less water,” he said. More drought tolerant and nutrient efficient crops will help. For the latest on southwest agriculture, please check out Southwest Farm Press Daily and receive the latest news right to your inbox. Adapting to climate change and conserving soil also pose challenges for the agriculture industry. Technology will play a significant role in fulfilling the demand. “We have to become more efficient,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of improvement over the last few decades but we have to get more efficient using water and conserving topsoil. The good news is that most people in agriculture are willing to do that. The tools are there, but the challenge is great.” One of those challenges is to inform the public about how their food is produced. “More people today want more information about agriculture and where their food comes from,” Begemann said. “We all have to address the issue of sustainable agriculture. That’s a challenge for all of us.” Explaining role of technology And explaining how technology—including biotechnology, global positioning system agriculture, and other innovations—plays a crucial role in sustainability must be an industry priority. “We have to engage in a broader conversation about agriculture. We have to provide more information to consumers.” Begemann said all stakeholders must be a part of that conversation. That includes farmers, associations, industry and consumers. “It’s reasonable to assume that people want facts.” The truth, however, often becomes muddled with misinformation, rumor and innuendo that restrict fair information exchanges. The GMO issue is a case in point. Following Begemann’s prepared remarks to the Friday Group, a Q&A session elicited a query about the safety of GMO crops. “A lot of stuff about GMOs is simply not true,” Begemann responded. “Nearly 2,000 studies performed on biotechnology products show they are perfectly safe and no different than conventional food.” In the earlier interview, Begemann said the studies include peer reviews, “not sponsored by biotech companies.” With some 20 years of biotech products in the marketplace and with all those studies, Begemann said “not one bellyache” has been attributed to GMOs. The industry, he added, has to do a better job of getting that information to the public. “If we don’t engage in that dialogue, why would we think that attitudes will change? Most people are rational and intelligent,” he said, and willing to examine facts. “We’re doing better. We are not where we want to be, but I think we’re making a difference. We continue to look for ways to do things better. Even in recent history we’ve seen the world under-supplied with food.” For someone who works in the agriculture industry, the thought of anyone being hungry is difficult to imagine, he says. Climate change Climate change poses another challenge and may put even more pressure on water. Begemann has seen evidence of change. When he started working with Monsanto years ago in Minnesota, North and South Dakota were considered wheat states. Now they grow a lot of corn. “Sure, better, more adaptable varieties have helped expand the corn (growing zone) but the warmer climate is a key factor.” That represent another talking point for a discussion between agriculture and consumers, he said. Adjusting to a changing climate, at the same time the population is rapidly expanding, puts more pressure on the food production system. “That means even more pressure on conserving water and topsoil,” Begemann said. “We have to become more efficient and we have to get society to help us. That means we have to talk to them. We need for them to know that we have to use all our agriculture production systems and not engage in debates about which is better.” He said a better dialogue with society in general would have made introduction and acceptance of biotechnology smoother and possibly prevented some of the “myths” prevalent today. “We can’t go back, but we can do something now. We (in agriculture) are at the beginning of the food chain. We have to provide bright people with the information we have about food production. But we also have to look at the information they have. We need to do some things differently going forward.” Begemann said the communication age offers significant new benefits and serious challenges. Information is readily available to anyone with a computer or a smart phone. “The challenge is that everyone is a publisher,” he said. But not everything published is accurate. “We have fewer checks. But we can help supply more fact-checked information that the public will see and understand.” Social media, he added, offers agriculture an opportunity to get information to the general public. Begemann said another critical issue, and one that has been rife with misunderstanding, is declining populations of pollinators, especially honeybees. “It is a critical topic,” he said. “Agriculture pollinators are crucial to what we are. We rely on them to produce food.” Pesticides, even biotechnology, have been targeted as main causes of bee and other pollinator declines. “But the issue is more complex than that,” Begemann said. “A more damaging agent is the varroa mite, a pest that weakens honey bees and makes them more vulnerable to other stresses.” He said Monsanto recently bought a company, Beeologics, to enhance research efforts in protecting bees and pollinators. “We are working diligently on this issue. Efforts will involve all stakeholders. It’s not a case of them versus us, but we are learning from each other to develop a more sustainable system.” He said a biological control agent to target the varroa mite also shows promise. Biological development, in fact, offers a new area of concentration for Monsanto and includes the possibility of creating agents that would turn herbicide resistant weeds into susceptible targets again. He told the Friday Group that Monsanto’s role in providing food and fiber to the world is three-fold: “Produce more; conserve more; and improve lives,” and to double key crop yields by 2030. Declining funding of public institution agriculture research is another concern. “Government funding for agriculture research has declined significantly over the last few years in the United States and around the world. Independent companies are spending aggressively,” he said. But public institutions play vital roles in food production research. “It would be hard to argue against investing money in agriculture. We ought to feed everybody and we ought to feed them well,” he said. Research will be necessary to accomplish that. Begemann said the agriculture industry has made significant strides over the past few decades with better, more productive varieties, better production systems that use water more efficiently and with practices that conserve soil by reducing tillage. Technology has reduced labor and energy costs and allowed farmers to do more with fewer resources. But that’s not enough to provide for future needs. “We have to produce affordable, safe, nutritious food,” he said. “And we have to do it sustainably.” RelatedLifecycle Inventory providing answers about cotton sustainabilityMar 04, 2011GMO attracts negativity in absence of substanceJan 14, 2014It’s time to speak up about drastic changes to an American institutionApr 03, 2017Monsanto launches ‘National Agronomy Week’ April 3-7Apr 03, 2017 Load More

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Small Changes in Ag Practices Could Reduce Produce-Borne Illness CONTACT: Jim [email protected] WASHINGTON, DC – October 21, 2013 – Researchers from Cornell University have identified some agricultural management practices in the field that can either boost or reduce the risk of contamination in produce from two major foodborne pathogens: salmonella, the biggest single killer among the foodborne microbes, and Listeria monocytogenes. Their findings are published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. “This is going to help make produce safer,” says Laura Strawn, a researcher on the study. “We could significantly reduce risk of contamination through changes that occur a few days before the harvest.” Many of the risk factors were influenced by when they were applied to fields which suggests that adjustments to current practices may reduce the potential for contamination with minimal cost to growers, says Strawn. Foodborne illness sickens an estimated 9.4 million, and kills around 1,300 annually in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Produce accounts for nearly half the illnesses, and 23 percent of the deaths. “The research is the first to use field collected data to show the association between certain management practices and an increased or decreased likelihood of salmonella and L. monocytogenes,” says Strawn. For salmonella, manure application within the year prior to the researchers’ sampling boosted the odds of a contaminated field, while the presence of a buffer zone between the fields and potential pathogen reservoirs such as livestock operations or waterways was protective. Irrigation within three days before sample collection raised the risk of listeria contamination six-fold. Soil cultivation within the week before sampling also increased the chances of contamination. “These findings will assist growers in evaluating their current on-farm food safety plans (e.g. “Good Agricultural Practices”), implementing preventive controls that reduce the risk of pre-harvest contamination, and making more informed decisions related to field practices prior to harvest,” says Strawn. “Small changes in how produce is grown and managed could result in a large reduction of food safety risks.” A copy of the manuscript can be found online at http://bit.ly/asmtip1013b. Formal publication is scheduled for the December 2013 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. # # # Applied and Environmental Microbiology is a publication of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). The ASM is the largest single life science society, composed of over 39,000 scientists and health professionals. Its mission is to advance the microbiological sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide. 92134 JavaScript is currently disabled.Please enable it for a better experience of Jumi.

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Volume 7 Issue 4 •June 4, 2012 CCA VP featured on McDonald's® Canada tray liner CCA among key stakeholders at global conference on sustainable livestock sector development CCA appears before House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment CCA 2012 Semi-Annual -- agricultural tour update Historic evaluation of research investments Canadian beef producers may notice a familiar face or two joining them at the table as they dig into their favourite hamburger at McDonald's. Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA) Vice President Dave Solverson and his daughter, Joanne Solverson, are featured on a new paper tray liner at McDonald's restaurants across Canada. The father and daughter duo are featured alongside the iconic image of a Big Mac, made from 100 per cent pure Canadian beef. The beef-focused tray liner is part of a campaign to highlight the quality ingredients that are used to make McDonald's food. "We are proud of the quality of our food, and want to be transparent about the ingredients we use and where we source those ingredients," said Jeff Kroll, Senior Vice President, National Supply Chain, McDonald's Restaurants of Canada Limited. Solverson said he is pleased to be a part of the tray liner campaign for beef as it raises awareness among McDonald's customers about the level of care and attention that Canadian producers put into cattle production every day. A fourth-generation farm family, the Solversons produce beef at their ranch near Camrose, Alberta. The family takes great care to ensure the production practices used at their ranch produce healthy and nutritious beef. As the long-standing Chairman of the CCA's Animal Care Committee, Dave is actively involved in animal welfare issues, including the ongoing evolution of national farm animal care guidelines to ensure they reflect best practices. He was pleased to be able to share that messaging with consumers who enjoy Canadian beef at McDonald's. "Canadian producers really appreciate McDonald's commitment to 100 per cent Canadian product," Solverson said. The tray liners are printed on 100 per cent recycled paper. The Solverson tray liner will be used throughout the summer at McDonald's locations across Canada. Back to top CCA among key stakeholders at global conference on sustainable livestock sector development CCA Manager of Environmental Affairs, Fawn Jackson, participated in a multi-stakeholder platform meeting in the Brazilian capital of Brasília, to discuss 'Restoring value to grasslands.' The workshop is part of a larger initiative, The Global Agenda of Action (GAA) in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development. The GAA is an initiative undertaken by a multitude of stakeholders to address the growing challenge of fulfilling the increased demand for meat with limited resources. The GAA premise is that as the demand for livestock products continues to grow globally it needs to do so in the most environmentally, socially and economically sound manner. The initiative was spurred by a recommendation from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nation's (UN) Committee on Agriculture to have the FAO actively engage in a global dialogue with the livestock sector. Following initial consultations the GAA outlined three initial focus areas: 'Closing the efficiency gap in natural resource use,' 'Reduced discharge: Towards zero discharge' and 'Restoring value to grasslands.' Appropriately managed grasslands can provide large natural resource benefits in the form of carbon sequestration, provision of water services, and biodiversity. During the workshop on 'Restoring value to grasslands' the topics of discussion focused on the technical interventions, policy and the institutional tools that can be used to optimize these benefits. Jackson shared Canada's current grassland strategies with the workshop participants. "It is extremely important that all stakeholders in the global livestock industry work together to achieve sustainable outcomes. Livestock producers from around the world face similar challenges and share common goals. We all want to be able to provide for our families through caring for the land and the livestock. It is our job to ensure that producers everywhere are able to continue doing that," she said. Some of the proposed solutions to returning value to grasslands include sharing of existing data, information and experiences, developing methods to appropriately value grasslands economically, socially and environmentally and creating awareness through advocacy on the importance and value of grasslands to societal well-being. Jackson said the knowledge and experiences shared at the workshop was of great value and will go a long way to forming a sound global strategy. "All stakeholders had many lessons to share that we, as a global industry, can learn from as we continue on with this process," she said. Now that the three multi-stakeholder platform meetings have taken place an official launch of the GAA is expected for September of 2012. Back to top CCA appears before House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment The CCA appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development recently to provide input on the development of a national conservation plan. The CCA was among a dozen stakeholder groups, representing the cattle, energy, agriculture and conservation sectors, invited to appear as witnesses before the committee and provide their perspective on the development of a natural conservation plan. CCA Environment Committee Chair Lynn Grant told the committee that farmers and ranchers are conservationists by nature, and that grazing is essential for a properly functioning grassland ecosystem to remain healthy. "Grasslands National Park, near my home, reintroduced cattle to the park after 20 years of excluding this major grazer. Their studies had shown a reduction in biodiversity and ecosystem function without the major grazer on the landscape. So eliminating cattle is not an answer; they are part of the solution," he said. Approximately one-third of Canada's 160 million acres of agricultural land, or more than 50 million acres, is grass. Grant highlighted the many opportunities for collaboration with producers to reach environmental goals within a working landscape under a national conservation plan. Fawn Jackson, CCA Manager of Environmental Affairs, added that a national conservation plan could also address the growing disconnect between consumers and producers through ensuring that young people come back into the agriculture community. Having young people act as industry ambassadors -- like they do in the Cattlemen's Young Leaders Program -- and having them spread that positive messaging via social media, would help fill that information gap. Back to top CCA 2012 Semi-Annual -- agricultural tour update The CCA is pleased to offer an agricultural tour as part of its Semi-Annual Meeting and Convention, which is once again being held in conjunction with the International Livestock Congress (ILC) in Calgary. The CCA Semi-Annual Meeting and Convention takes place August 13 - 17, 2012 at the Deerfoot Inn & Casino. In addition to the agricultural tour, the CCA also offers a golf tournament. As previously mentioned in Action News, the CCA has partnered with the Canadian Beef Breeds Council and Canada Beef Inc. to host The Canadian Cattle Industry's AAA Golf Tournament on Thursday, August 16. The tournament offers a great day of golf and relationship building with those in the cattle industry. The tournament will be capped at 125 players, so register early. Those less inclined to work on their backswing can consider the CCA agricultural tour. The CCA`s agricultural tour will start in High River with a tour of the Cargill processing plant or Western Feedlots. The Cargill tour is limited to 24 participants and registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. The tour will then head to Stavely to visit the VJV Livestock Auction and watch a demonstration from Integrated Traceability Solutions (ITS) before heading back to the Deerfoot Inn & Casino. Interested individuals can register for the CCA`s agricultural tour here. Those planning on attending the CCA Semi-Annual can find a preliminary schedule on the CCA website. Those attending ILC can register on their website. For more information on the CCA agricultural tour, click here. Back to top Historic evaluation of research investments In order to evaluate the contribution of research to the Canadian beef cattle industry, the Beef Cattle Research Council (BCRC) is focused on defining research indicators that can be monitored on an ongoing basis. As part of that, a historical evaluation of past contributions was commissioned. It is important to understand historical contributions in research to appreciate the value of continued investments, because research is a slow process that takes years to develop practical applications out of basic scientific concepts. In many cases, current advancements in production are derived from research done several years ago. The recently completed historical analysis demonstrates that there have been significant gains from research investments over recent decades. Research has contributed to the industry's ability to compete internationally and stabilize beef demand domestically through management of input costs and adding value to finishing and processing sectors. To view a summary of findings from the historical evaluation of Canadian beef cattle research contributions, click here. Back to top CCA Action News Staff Contributors: Fawn Jackson, Brenna Grant Written, edited and compiled by: Gina Teel and Matthew French To sign up for CCA's “Action News:” Visit www.cattle.ca and click on “Sign-up for Action News.” CCA Communications at [email protected] or visit our website at www.cattle.ca The Canadian Cattlemen's Association is the national voice for nearly 83,000 Canadian beef cattle producers. Ste. 310, 6715 8th Street NE, Calgary, AB T2E 7H7 Ottawa office: 1207, 350 Sparks Street, Ottawa, ON K1R 7S8

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Home County to host Farm Bureau meeting for first time in 93 years strict warning: Non-static method view::load() should not be called statically in /home/addison/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/views.module on line 1118. MIDDLEBURY — It took 93 years, but Addison County on Nov. 7 will get its first-ever turn hosting the Vermont farm Bureau Annual Meeting and Convention. The two-day event will see the state’s farm community discuss the condition of Vermont agriculture and draft priorities to push during the upcoming legislative session. The 54 elected Farm Bureau delegates — including four from Addison County — will conduct their business at the Middlebury Inn. Tim Buskey, administrator of Vermont Farm Bureau Corp., explained that Addison County had not previously hosted the organization’s annual meeting because there was no lodging/convention venue big enough to accommodate the crowd of 150 or more people the event has drawn in recent years. But in a bittersweet development for the county, participation at this year’s annual meeting is anticipated to be around 125 people, making it a good fit for the Middlebury Inn, Buskey noted. “This will be one of the smallest groups we’ve had; it’s simply a sign of the times,” Buskey said. “It has contracted a little bit.” Indeed, this year’s annual meeting/convention was originally scheduled to by a three-day affair, beginning Thursday, Nov. 6. But Buskey said organizers were forced to cut out Thursday’s program when the major event set for that day — an agricultural business tour — failed to draw enough sign-ups. Still, farm bureau officials are pleased to finally bring the convention to one of the state’s most active farming counties. “It gives us an opportunity to see an area we haven’t seen,” Buskey said, noting last year’s gathering was held in Burlington and next year’s will be in Rutland. “It’s nice to know that for then first time in 93 years … it’s going to be held in Addison County,” delegate Andrea Ochs of Orwell said. “Addison and Franklin counties are the two biggest farming communities in the state.” The event will kick off on Friday, Nov. 7, with the annual meetings for the Vermont Farm Bureau Corp. and the two organizations under its umbrella: The Vermont Farm Bureau Service Co., through which farmers can buy products; and the Vermont Foundation for Agriculture, which promotes ag education in grades K-12 as well as through the 4-H and FFA programs. All Vermont Farm Bureau officers are up for re-election, so delegates will have an opportunity to nominate and choose the organization’s top leaders. Following the annual meetings, delegates, members and all others with an interest in farming will convene in a town-meeting style gathering titled “Voices, Volunteers and Vision,” to talk about the future of the Farm Bureau and other agricultural issues. Friday evening will see participants gather for a reception/awards dinner, during which the “farm family of the year,” among others, will be lauded for their achievements. The organization has invited Gov. James Douglas to address the crowd. On Saturday, the Farm Bureau’s 54 delegates will vote on the policies and issues the organization will promote at the state and federal level for 2009. Addison County’s four delegates are Jane Clifford of Starksboro, Addison County Farm Bureau President Bill Scott of Ferrisburgh, Ochs, and Ted Foster of Middlebury. David Lane, deputy secretary of agriculture, is scheduled to speak to convention-goers during a Saturday luncheon. The event wraps up at 4 p.m. on Saturday. Scott stressed that the convention is not only for delegates. “I hope other people will drop in,” he said, noting the importance of agriculture to Addison County and the state as a whole.

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PROTECTION & MANAGEMENT We strive to protect and promote biodiversity. We make commercially reasonable efforts so that our farms and facilities are not located in protected areas such as forest reserves, conservation or rainforest areas. We seek to minimize environmental impact by providing mitigating, where possible, measures to protect the ecosystem. The El Tigre Forest Reserve for Wildlife in Costa Rica is an example of our commitment to enhance and promote biodiversity. The El Tigre, a 275-hectare area declared by the Ministry of Environment of Costa Rica as a private reserve and maintained by us is home to many native plant and animal species and a venue where local school children can learn more about biodiversity. We also support the protection of forest reserves in Kenya, Brazil and the Philippines. We believe that the protection of these delicate areas is an important part of achieving environmental and economic sustainability. In addition, we conduct information campaigns to protect ecosystems not only for our employees but also for the communities where we operate. El Tigre Forest Reserve The El Tigre Forest Reserve for Wildlife is a 275-hectare area declared as a private refuge for wildlife by the Costa Rica Ministry of Environment (MINAE) and is sponsored and maintained by us. It is considered an ‘outdoor classroom’ with self-guided nature trails and ten learning stations. Each learning station has a sign discussing various environmental topics aimed to promote awareness of biodiversity, environmental protection and conservation. Additional Forest Reserves in Costa Rica With the acquisition of additional farms in Costa Rica, we have been able to consolidate an area of about 300 hectares adjacent to the confluence of three rivers: Rio Cacao, Rio Sonardor and Rio General. We have proposed to the Costa Rica Ministry of Environment (MINAE) that this area be declared as a private reserve for wildlife. The area, considered to be a rainforest, is home to a variety of insects, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds, as well as different species of native plants and trees. Conservation Areas In Brazil, we are involved in reforestation programs in areas which have been designated as conservation areas. Approximately 30 percent of our total production area in Brazil is maintained as conservation areas. Additionally, tree seedling nurseries have been established to sustain our reforestation program. Tree Seedling Donations A tree seedling nursery has been established in our Kenya operations which provide seedlings for tree planting activities. In addition, seedlings are donated to encourage the community to plant trees in their own villages. Support of Various Environmental Programs In the Philippines, we are involved in various environmental activities and provide support for the protection of the Talomo Lipadas Watershed, Mt. Kitanglad Natural Park and the Malagos Watershed, home to the Philippine Eagle. Sustainability Protection & Management Reforestation Efforts

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About/ KC's Agricultural Heritage About KC's AGRICULTURAL HERITAGE KC ANIMAL HEALTH INITATIVE ADVISORY BOARD 2016-2018 STRATEGIC PRIORITIES CONTACT KC's Agricultural Heritage Kansas City’s historical strength in agricultural markets helped to lay the groundwork for its current leadership position in animal health. Stock Yards The Kansas City Stock Yards were established in 1871 and were second only to Chicago as a livestock and provision market. Kansas City grew to become one of the great stockyards of the world, and today that heritage continues through the region’s strength in a variety of agricultural markets. It was this history and heritage that led to the development of the region’s top-tier veterinary schools, as well as both Kansas and Missouri’s top ten position in America’s livestock industries. American Royal & Ag Hall of Fame No event better captures KC’s agricultural heritage than the American Royal livestock show and rodeo. The American Royal has been a Kansas City tradition since its founding in 1899 to support agricultural education and values. Plus, KC is home to the Agricultural Hall of Fame – a national agricultural center chartered by Congress to honor the American farmer. Transportation Facilities Kansas City was founded as a transportation center and gateway to western expansion. Stock yards and agricultural growth continued in transportation and distribution. Sixteen railroads converged in Kansas City switched directly to KC’s stockyards. Transportation/logistics continues to provide Kansas City with an advantage in today’s markets, with KC being the top rail center in tonnage in the U.S. and the nation’s No. 3 trucking center. For more information on KC’s superior transportation and logistics capabilities, please visit the Kansas City SmartPort web site.

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Starting at $2.08/Week More than a stroll (Reformer file photo) Strolling of the Heifers Founder Orly Munzing walks out into the fields at Dwight Miller and Sons Orchards. Munzing came up with the idea to have an annual celebration of agriculture while meeting Dwight Miller in his orchard. (Howard Weiss-Tisman/Reformer) Posted Saturday, May 18, 2013 12:38 am Saturday May 18, 2013 BRATTLEBORO -- The trail to the Dwight Miller and Sons Orchard starts across the street from Orly Munzing's house on Partridge Road in Dummerston. The well-tended path, which is maintained by a number of homeowners in the area, winds through dense forest, and Munzing walks or skis it when she can for physical, spiritual and mental health. Munzing used to walk the trail to meet Dwight Miller in his orchard, part of one of the oldest continually operated family farms in Vermont. Munzing and Miller never made arrangements to meet, but, as she recalls it, he would often be out there, tending to his hay bales, apple trees or blueberry bushes. Miller would always take the time to talk with Munzing and the two would discuss local politics, the weather, and very often, Vermont's struggling dairy and farming industries. This was back in the late 1990s, which was a particularly tough time for farmers. Development threatened open land, national and international agro-businesses were making it hard for small family farmers to compete, and many older farmers like Miller were retiring with few prospects from the younger generation willing to take over. One day, while the Dummerston residents were chatting, Miller suggested that Munzing do something to help the situation. Looking out over Miller's land -- the rolling hillsides dotted with apple trees and rich fields of rows of vegetables -- Munzing first came up with the idea of starting a day-long celebration in Brattleboro to support farming and get more people involved in what Munzing understood to be a critical problem. "I remember him looking at me and saying, ‘You have to do something Orly. You have to do something to help farmers,'" Munzing recalls. "If you don't do something all of this you see won't be here in 10 years." Downtown Brattleboro was also going through a rough patch with a number of downtown storefronts boarded up, so Munzing thought it would help everyone to have a day-long festival and parade celebrating agriculture. The first Strolling of the Heifers was held on one Saturday afternoon in June 2002 with a handful of volunteers and an enthusiastic crowd that was there to cheer the farm animals as they marched up Main Street. This year the 12th annual Strolling of the Heifers is a five-day event, with a budget of about $250,000. Its expansion includes the three-day Slow Living Summit which is expected to bring more than 400 people to town in the days leading up to the stroll, and for the first time The Strolling of the Heifers has hired a full time, year-round general manager. Strolling of the Heifers also filed a request for proposal to take over the River Garden in downtown Brattleboro, which would give the group a highly visible year round presence, and a chance to develop and run even more programs, Munzing says. Even after the success of that first year, Munzing wasn't sure she'd return to for another, and she had no idea the Strolling of the Heifers would eventually grow into the educational, development and entertainment enterprise that it has become. And even as she approaches 60, Munzing says her group is poised to continue its work to support family farms and advocate for a slower, simpler and more mindful future. "You know, we've come a long way, and a lot of the ideas we talked about 12 years ago are commonplace now, and they get more support all the time," she said one afternoon while looking over the Dwight Miller and Sons Orchard. "There are a lot of positive changes going on. I'm very encouraged about the future." It's not just a parade Prior to taking over as Executive Director of Strolling of the Heifers Munzing worked for more than two decades in education. When Miller convinced her to start an event she wanted to raise money and bring attention to the plight of farmers, but she also said she was committed to teaching something, and to making sure that the people who did come to the stroll left with more than a green balloon and a belly full of free ice cream, cheese and yogurt. "From the start I saw this as a great chance to educate people," she said. "I knew we had to do more, and when these people went home they had to take something with them, and hopefully think about the choices they were making in their own communities." Not only was Munzing trying to get people to think about agriculture, health, obesity, sustainability and development, but she recognized that the money raised could extend beyond the June weekend when the stroll was held. Over the years many of the programs Munzing helped start have spun off to take on lives of their own. She wanted to get more teachers and schools involved in school gardens, and in the early years she provided funding to bring classes out on to area farms. Today the Agencies of Agriculture and Education support farm-to-school programs, and Vermont is a leader in the movement. The stroll also wanted to get more youth involved in agriculture, and Munzing was able to get a grant through Sen. Bernie Sanders' office to bring high risk teenagers to local farms to work. Now, across Vermont high schools, career centers and colleges are increasing their options for students who want to learn about agriculture. A micro-loan program for farmers was spun off and is now run by a nonprofit organization in Massachusetts and a local agricultural business plan contest expanded to include the whole state of Vermont and is co-produced with Vermont Technical College. Munzing is humble about the impact she had on all of the changes that have come around over the past few years. And to be sure the locavore movement, Michelle Obama's campaign to encourage home gardens, the explosion of community supported agriculture and the growing focus on sustainability cannot all be attributed to Munzing's discussions with Dwight Miller. Still, if Munzing did not start the revolution, she has certainly been in on it from the ground level. "Whatever we started, I wanted to make sure it was sustainable," she said. "I wanted to bring more people in to the movement." One of the newest and most successful additions to the Strolling of the Heifers weekend is the Slow Living Summit which will hold its third conference this year starting on Wednesday, June 5. Just like most of the group's programs, the Slow Living Summit grew out of an idea. Four years ago Woody Tasch, an author who wrote a book on slow investment strategies, wanted to come speak during the weekend. His ideas about sustainability and slow investing fit in with the mission of Strolling of the Heifers, said Marketing Director and Slow Living Summit Coordinator Martin Langeveld, and the next year the first Slow Living Summit was held. There were about 300 people the first year, 400 in 2012, and Langeveld says interest is strong for this year's event. While the Strolling of the Heifers was started to bring attention to small family farms and local food systems, Langeveld said similar ideas about slow living, slow investing, sustainability and spirituality all share a belief in working toward a better world, and he says the summit is a place to bring all these ideas under one roof. Langeveld said he thinks the Slow Living Summit will remain as a project of Strolling of the Heifers. "We see this as the serious side of the stroll," he explained. "We want people to have fun but we also want to take the time to explore some the bigger topics around sustainability, slow growth and resiliency." The Slow Living Summits turns the Strolling of the Heifers into a five day event. It expands the festival's impact on the local economy and broadens it's goals beyond the farm fence. "It's a lot of work to run a five-day festival, but it's worthwhile," Langeveld said. "We see it fitting hand in glove with the weekend. It is an expansion of the mission. We realized a while ago that this is not just about farming. We need changes in our farming system and our energy system and our housing system, and our financial system. The question is how do all of these things interact? Everybody is a part of something bigger." After the last cow pie is cleaned up The Strolling of the Heifers made one the biggest changes in its 12-year history this year when it hired Julie Potter to be its general manager. Munzing will continue to make the calls to raise corporate and private grants, and Langeveld will work on development and concentrate on the Slow Living Summit, but having a full-time manager ensures that the education and development work continues beyond the weekend parade. The hiring of Potter comes as the stroll tries to take over the River Garden. Two other organizations also have proposals in with Building a Better Brattleboro to manage the currently vacant, downtown property on Main Street. Potter says that since she was hired this winter she has had to get up to speed with the group's mission, finances and organization. Over the past few months she has put all of her energy into preparing for the weekend. After the parade this year, Potter said the staff, board and volunteers are going to have serious discussions about the future. If the River Garden proposal is accepted, the Strolling of the Heifers would have a highly visible presence in Brattleboro. It would have a space to promote food and agricultural events, including the Brattleboro Winter Farmers' Market, and Potter says managing the River Garden would open up a while new chapter in the group's history. "I think they wanted to hire a general manager to help bring all of these pieces of the stroll together," Potter said. "Our whole objective is trying to promote education, and to help people see those connections between the food they eat, the farmers who provide that food, and the food systems." Potter grew up in Windham County and her grandparents, Frank and Mary Hickin, ran Hickin's Mountain Mowings Farm in Dummerston for more than 40 years. She has a long history, and a strong bond, with family farms and says the Strolling of the Heifers is poised to be an important player in the growing sustainability and local food movements. "If the River Garden works out it, would give us a year-round presence in Brattleboro, which already has strong food and agriculture connections," she said. "Whatever happens we want to continue to be a force and engage people in this conversation. The more people you can help to make those connections, to find a place in their lives to be more mindful about the food they eat, the better it is for everyone." Potter playfully refers to her office at the Cotton Mill Building as The World Headquarters of The Strolling of the Heifers. On the wall, white boards show sketches of traffic flow, entertainment schedules and volunteer phone numbers. For now Potter's main focus is organizing next month's festivities, and it is more than enough to keep her busy. She says that with all of the talk of fundraising and consciousness raising, of helping farmers and of adding to the national dialogue on obesity, sustainability and local agriculture, The Strolling of the Heifers still is, and always will be, a celebration. "We raise a lot of money during the weekend, but you can't do all of the other stuff without the party," she says. "A lot of work goes into this, and it's really all about making sure everyone has a good time." Howard Weiss-Tisman can be reached at 802-254-2311, ext. 279, or [email protected]. Follow Howard on Twitter @HowardReformer.

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UN-backed treaty meeting seeks to boost conservation of world’s plant varietiesThe Multilateral System forms a gene pool of over 1.3 million unique crop samples 14 March 2011 – The governing body of a United Nations-backed treaty considered vital for the preservation and use of the world’s threatened plant genetic resources met in Bali, Indonesia, today to map out a future course in the face of food insecurity and climate change. The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, adopted at the Conference of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2001 and backed by 127 members, creates a multilateral system through which member countries share the genetic material of 64 of the most important crops for food security – crops that account for more than 80 per cent of our plant-sourced food. No country is self-sufficient in plant genetic resources, and international cooperation and exchange of genetic resources are thus pivotal for food security. Through the Treaty, countries have agreed to establish a multilateral system to facilitate access to key plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, and to share the benefits derived from that access in a fair and equitable way. “The more efficiently crops are protected under the Treaty, the better humankind will be able to conserve and share crop genetic resources to meet the enormous food security challenges of the present and future generations,” Treaty Secretary Shakeel Bhatti said. The five-day meeting will consider the full spectrum of plant genetic diversity and the role it can play in providing or cross-breeding varieties that can meet ever changing environmental conditions to provide food for the world’s surging multi-billion population. Today, the multilateral system forms a gene pool of over 1.3 million unique crop samples. The Treaty also has a benefit sharing fund by which farmers are supported in the conservation and use of genetic diversity on their own farms. FAO estimates that 75 per cent of crop diversity was lost between 1900 and 2000. A recent study predicted that as much as 22 per cent of the wild relatives of important food crops such as peanut, potato and beans could disappear by 2055 because of a changing climate. The Treaty recognizes the enormous contribution that farmers and their communities have made and continue to make to the conservation and development of plant genetic resources. This is the basis for farmers’ rights, which include the protection of traditional knowledge, and the right to participate equitably in benefit-sharing and in national decision-making about plant genetic resources. It gives governments the responsibility for implementing these rights. Agriculture ministers and senior officials from more than 100 countries gathered in Bali last week in preparation for this week’s meeting and urged those nations who have not yet signed the treaty to do so as soon as possible. They recognized that climate change poses a serious risk to plant genetic resources that are essential as a raw material for crop genetic improvement, whether by farmer selection, classical plant breeding or modern biotechnologies, as well as in adapting to unpredictable environmental changes. Most of the world’s food comes from four main crops – rice, wheat, maize and potatoes, but local crops, not among these, are a major food source for hundreds of millions of people and have potential to provide nutrition to countless others. The Treaty helps maximize the use and breeding of all crops and promotes development and maintenance of diverse farming systems. UN-backed meeting on plant genetic resources opens in Rome UN agency uses satellite data to aid farmers in Africa, Middle East boost water efficiency New UN guidelines to make international trade in plants and seeds safer Guidelines on keeping illegally caught fish from global supply chains near ‘finish line’ – UN agency

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YOU ARE HERE: Aberdeen News Home→Collections→Crop InsuranceLessons from a rural road tripCongress faces unique challenges in crafting a new rural policyCongress faces unique challenges in crafting a new rural policyApril 20, 2007|By Sara Wyant, Special to the Farm ForumWhile most of my friends and family members were celebrating spring break in sunny, exotic locations, I spent the last week of March driving across Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. My friends returned with better tans and probably read more books, but I gained a wealth of information about this slice of rural America. To be sure, there is no "one size fits all" description for Rural America. It's diverse and dynamic - a fact frequently misunderstood by East Coast editorial writers and political pundits who are increasingly trying to figure out what's happening alongside those country roads. It's also changing dramatically, making the challenge even greater for policymakers hoping to craft a more robust rural policy in the 2007 Farm Bill. Consider this: There are 65 million people who live in rural America and 63 million of them are not involved in any type of production agriculture. They represent all sorts of different ethnic groups, but in many regions, are increasingly Hispanic. Some rural residents live in neatly kept farmsteads, while others reside in fancy lodges, beaten down trailers and all types of cottages in between. Some individuals have access to quality schools and medical care; others must drive an hour or more for the same. Each section of the country is unique in its topography, resource concerns and culture, but there are some cross-cutting themes and challenges across this beautiful and vast landscape: Weather: Still the biggest threat and opportunity for the fiercely independent folks living in the High Plains. Although the sun was shining and temperatures were in the sixties when I drove west out of the Oklahoma City airport toward Clinton, OK, it started to pour buckets of rain by evening and throughout the next day. By the end of my trip through towns like Great Bend, KS, Wray, CO, Sidney, NE and back to Denver, I had dodged tornadoes, hail, ice and snow. Holly, CO., with a population of about 1,000, was not so fortunate. Out of the 65 tornadoes that were reported traveling across the region, the one that whirled through Holly killed several people and wiped out much of the tiny town. Risk Management: Extreme weather creates the need for some type of integrated approach to rural risk management, but the concept and approach varies significantly across regions and states. In Oklahoma, growers told me that, if they grew wheat and raised cattle, they hoped for at least one segment to make a profit. The wheat fields I drove by looked lush and green, but freezing temperatures the following week threatened to destroy portions of the crop. Still, only 63% of the Oklahoma wheat crop was insured under some type of crop insurance policy last year. But across Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska, crop insurance has become the risk management "weapon" of choice for most major crops. Growers insured between 83% and 91% of their major crops, according to USDA's Risk Management Agency. Following some tough years, these growers said they could use disaster payments, but just don't count on them anymore. "Without crop insurance, I couldn't stay in business," explained a Nebraska farmer. "It's allowed me to forward contract more production and take advantage of higher prices. One lender pointed out another obvious benefit: "We can pencil crop insurance in on the balance sheet." Water: The one limiting resource that's growing scarcer. Some Nebraska farmers told me they are not sure they'll be able to farm 10 years from now, as the competition for water increases. Wells are running dry or being closed down for irrigation purposes. Water shortages are also tempering the enthusiasm for new ethanol plants. A 100 million gallon per year ethanol facility could utilize about 300 million gallons of water, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Renewable energy: Still fairly untapped, but growing interest in all things renewable. Shortly before turning off to Clinton, OK, there is the 100+ megawatt Weatherford Wind Energy Center located near Interstate 40. It was the only wind farm I saw on my journey, but farmers said new wind farms, ethanol plants and biodiesel refineries are under consideration or being built in each state. Traditional energy sources are still "king" throughout much of Oklahoma, with almost all of their 77 counties having some type of capacity to produce oil and gas. I lost count of the number of small pumps that were scattered across the landscape, bringing in the black gold. Connectivity: One of the most limiting factors for rural business growth is the ability to connect via cellular phones and the Internet. Dial-up connections are better than nothing, but productivity lags as you wait and wait and wait for something to download. Outside of Great Bend, KS., I pulled off along the roadside and sent e-mail messages from my computer, via my high-speed wireless connection. Coverage was also pretty good along most of the major interstates. But once you headed out along many of the state or county roads, forget about it. Small towns: There are a lot of things you can tell about the viability of a community by driving down the main street. Visible signs of life include new construction, diverse businesses (excluding antique shops) local eateries, and people under 30 who work and live in town. Less visible: a cadre of local leaders who are committed to improving the quality of life in their small town with jobs, services and other amenities. Clinton, OK, with a population of about 9,000, seemed to be thriving. The birthplace of country singer Toby Keith also is home to a modern conference center. The same can't be said for dozens of other communities, where only a few homes remain and the town's lone gathering spot is either a cafe or a gas station. Farm bill implications Rural policy considerations have remained largely a "back water" concern for U.S. public policy over the last four decades, usually rising only with a new Farm Bill tide and then receding after sufficient lip service, testified Chuck Fluharty, President of the Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI) at the University of Missouri-Columbia during a recent Senate Agriculture Committee hearing. However, he said that a number of developments are driving significant new attention to these opportunities and challenges. With any luck, a new comprehensive rural strategy will be included in the next farm bill. "Current ag policy has many goals, but we must acknowledge it has failed to adequately assure broad-based rural economic growth," emphasized Fluharty. "Rural counties most dependent on commodity payments have consistently posted weaker growth than the rest of rural America." He called for a new rural policy framework that builds upon rural innovation, entrepreneurship, collaboration and strategic investments. Key components of this new rural vision include the energy, conservation and rural development titles of the farm bill. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) pledged that he will offer new ideas in the 2007 Farm Bill to ensure America's farmers and rural communities are prepared to thrive and succeed in a rapidly changing global economy. And he'll likely have plenty of other politicians jumping on the "rural" bandwagon as the next presidential campaign plays out. Already, Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has introduced a package of rural legislation and others are expected to follow suit.AdvertisementFIND MORE STORIES ABOUTCrop InsuranceFEATURED ARTICLESBetter planning needed for Rural America's transportation...April 22, 2011Battle intensifies over rural votersSeptember 5, 2008Farm Credit Services of America donates $50,000 to the SDSU...March 22, 2013Copyright 2017 Aberdeen NewsTerms of Service|Privacy Policy|Index by Date|Index by Keyword

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Norval Dvorak Norval Dvorak For the last 56 years, Norval Dvorak has been a mover and shaker in Wisconsin's meat and agriculture industries. Dvorak was born to Joseph and Caroline Dvorak on a farm near Whitelaw, Wisconsin, one that has been in the Dvorak family since 1864. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in agricultural economics in 1943. Norval married Jean Hird and they are the parents of four sons, David, Stephen, Richard and Robert. Between 1943 and 1957 Norval farmed with Jean and their sons, and helped to organize the Lakeland Egg Marketing Coop, Lake-to-Lake Dairy Coop, F.S. Feed - Supply Cooperative, Badger Breeders Artificial Insemination Coop, and Lakeshore Farm Management Association. The Dvoraks were named Wisconsin Outstanding Young Farmers in 1957. From 1956 to 1967, he managed the Wisconsin/Minnesota Feeder Pig Marketing Cooperative, where he was responsible for much of the organization's growth and success. From 1967 to 1972, he managed and expanded the Midwest Livestock Producers Cooperative. In 1972, Dvorak became vice president of corporate growth and development at Packerland Packing Co. in Green Bay. At Packerland, he was instrumental in popularizing Holstein steers as a respected source of high quality beef. Dvorak retired from Packerland in 1989. Following his retirement, he has served as an agricultural marketing consultant to a number of Eastern European countries, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, and the Ukraine as a representative of Volunteer in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (VOAC). With VOCA, he has assisted in privatizing state farms and converting them to cooperatives and privately held operations, and he has guided meat companies in orienting their marketing plans and strategies to a competitive marketplace rather than a planned economy. He helped in developing the first cooperative founded in Poland on the basis of U.S. cooperative principles and practices. Dvorak is currently working to persuade Wisconsin's Holstein beef feeders to form an association for dissemination of marketing information. He is also working with state agricultural officials and the meat industry to win their support for improving animal science education. It seems that he never stops becoming involved in supporting Wisconsin's livestock and meat industry!

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Traditional Agriculture in Sri Lanka Edward Goldsmith interviews Mudyanse TennekoonPart 4 Edward Goldsmith interviews Mudiyanese Tennekoon Goldsmith: It seems that practically all the traditional foodstuffs also had medicinal uses, did you have any effective traditional cures for malaria?Tennekoon: A very effective one. We use banja or ganja-marijuana as it is usually known. This was one of our most important medicines; it used to be called "the leaf that can win the entire world" so great were its medicinal uses. We used to reduce it to powder and boil it like tea and add jaggery (sugar from the Kittul palm) to it. It was only effective against malaria but also against worms. We often took it with other foods for it reduced the time it took for them to be absorbed by the blood. Honey has the same effect.Gunasekara: Robert Knox the Englishman who was shipwrecked in Sri Lanka in the 16th century and spent seventeen years here as a prisoner of the king referred to banja as the cure for malaria in his Account of Ceylon. The plant was called "the ruler of the three worlds".Goldsmith: Do you still use banja for medicinal purposes? Tennekoon: No, today it is banned by the government.Goldsmith: It is said that you can increase yields by transplanting the paddy plants when they have just sprouted, have you tried to do this?Tennekoon: The government tries to force us to. They learnt this technique from the Japanese. In many areas of Japan where they grow paddy there is an annual frost which often lasts as long as three weeks. The plants get damaged if left in the paddy fields. They get round this by broadcasting the seed inside green-houses where they are protected from the frost. They are then transplanted into the paddy fields. But here we find that the plant after being transplanted is sick, it takes as much as two weeks for it to recover. The only way to get round this is to use artificial fertilisers to give them a fillip and pesticides to protect them in their weakened state against pests. Also the transplantation takes up a lot of time and this interferes with other activities such as Chenna cultivation and tank fishing. The government is also very keen that we should have three harvests instead of two which they claim is possible with modern agricultural methods but this takes up a lot of time and interferes with most of our other activities - including our social life - besides which it will provide a permanent niche for the brown hopper.Goldsmith: Have you tied to use a tractor?Tennekoon: I haven't but many farmers have done so. It is not as good as the buffalo. A pair of buffaloes weigh about 2,000 pounds. Their feet are just the right shape for pressing down the soil in the paddy field, which as a result forms a clay or crust which holds the water in. They also stir up the soil above the clay and loosen it.The buffalo also produces about 1,500 pounds of dung every year and a vast amount of urine both of which contribute very significantly to the fertility of the soil. The tractor on the other had is much too heavy for the paddy field. Wherever it passes it breaks through the clay and water penetrates into the sub-soil. So if one uses a tractor one requires very much more water and this especially today is unlikely to be available. Also it stirs up the soil. The light organic matter comes to the surface and is lost to the flood water. So its use leads to reduced fertility. Needless to say of course the tractor neither defecates nor urinates, hence makes no contribution to soil fertility. Nor does it produce milk and ghee (clarified butter) nor curd, both of which play a very important part in our diet. Nor, for that matter, does it reproduce itself when it dies one simply has to buy another tractor.Of course it saves labour and that is what we are always told, but my profession is agriculture which means that I must be in the fields, that is my life. I don't want to sleep all day nor to spend my time gossiping with my neighbours. in any case what is the point of saving labour in a country which has such high unemployment. In the old days, labour saving devices made still less sense; the family and the community were intact and there were always enough people for the ploughing, the sowing, the harvest and the maintenance of the tanks.Senanayake: If they had not co-operated in this way the tanks would never have been maintained. The civilisations of Anuradapura and Polonaruwa would never have existed. We would never have been able to sustain a population which was possibly as much as fifteen million people, equal to the present population. Goldsmith: Isn't the government trying to restore the old irrigation system?Senanayake: They have restored a number of tanks with World Bank aid. But only the big tanks and that is not enough. The big tanks are only of use if the small village tanks are also in use and these have largely silted up. It is the job of the Department of irrigation to maintain them but they cannot be maintained by a bureaucracy. Once the social structure of the village has collapsed they must inevitably silt up and remain that way. In fact if we wish to restore our traditional agriculture we must first restore the social life and the culture that gave rise to it and without which it cannot be conducted.Tennekoon: I fully agree. It is not the tanks that must be restored but the whole system of tank cultivation and this cannot be done by bureaucrats. We used to have five different types of tanks. First of all there was the forest tank which was dug in the jungle above the village; it was not for irrigation but to provide the drinking water for the wild animals that live in the jungle. They knew it was for them, they had thousands of years to learn this, so they do not come to the village in search of water and interfere with our agricultural activities.The second sort of tank was the mountain tank. There were no canals running from it, its purpose was to provide water for Chenna cultivation.The third sort of tank was the erosion control tank known as the 'Pota Wetiye'. We used to have several of those and the silt would accumulate in them before it could build up in the storage tank. They were so designed as to be easily de-silted.The fourth was the storage tank. There were usually two of them. They were know as the twin-tanks. They were used in turn. One was in use while the other was being maintained. These were connected to a large number of village tanks which they fed and which fed them too with their overflow.Senanayake: These tanks played an essential part in the traditional rural life. One could not imagine a village in the dry zone without a tank any more than one could imagine it without a temple or a rice paddy. In fact the three basic constituents of the village were the temple (dagoba), the rice paddy (kumbura) and the tank (wewa). Of course there were other important constituents as Tennekoon has told you. The jungle above, the garden and the scrub where the Chenna cultivation took place.Tennekoon: Absolutely.Goldsmith: What did the old traditional village look like?Tennekoon: The houses were built very close together. In this way they occupied the minimum amount of precious land. This arrangement favoured the essential co-operation among the villages. For instance, one woman could look after the children of a number of neighbours at the same time which is important when the maximum number of people are required in the fields to harvest the crops or maintain the tanks.Goldsmith: How was the maintenance of the tanks organised?Tennekoon: It was part of the Rajakariya service that was owed to the king. Everybody had to provide this service forty days a year. It was not for the purpose of serving his personal whims or caprices. It was work that had to be done in the interests of the whole community.Gunesekara : Indeed one of our Kings tried to get the people to de-silt the artificial lake in front of his palace in Kandy as part of their Rajakariya work they refused to do so saying that this was not community work. It was his personal responsibility and he had to arrange for it separately. Senanayake: Of course the British misunderstood the whole principle of Rajakariya, they thought it was abusive, a relic of Kandy's feudal past and they abolished it. This was one of the most destructive things the British ever did. It destroyed the very principle of co-operation in this country. Fortunately it did not destroy it completely, it lingered on in a somewhat rudimentary form. The villagers still worked fourteen days each year for the common good, a practice that was finally stopped in 1970 by the Irrigation Department. Bureaucrats will not tolerate any co-operative work by the villagers. It reduces the demand for its services. If the Rajakariya system were still functioning there would be no need for the bureaucrats of the irrigation department. Of course, now that it is their responsibility to maintain the tanks they do nothing about it.Tennekoon: "What was everybody's business had become nobody's business."** A comment made by a British official at a Select Committee set up by the British parliament in 1849 to consider these matters.Goldsmith: I take it from all you have told me that you reject out-right the whole package of western technological agriculture?Tennekoon: I do.Goldsmith: You would prefer to be a traditional farmer of the old school?Tennekoon: I would, but everything is done to make this as difficult as possible. In the eyes of officialdom I am a pauper because I am a "subsistence agriculturalist". I am uneducated because I have not been subjected to western education. All my knowledge, in particular the traditions and culture of my people counts for nought. I am even considered unemployed because I am not part of the formal economy. I make little contribution to the workings of the market. I have even been told that I am a beggar.Senanayake: All this will change soon, you will be the model and our youth will flock here to learn our traditions from you. This must be so because current trend cannot be sustained. The problem has got out of hand. The jungle has been everywhere cut down to make way for plantations. As a result there had been vastly increase erosion and the tanks have silted up at an unprecedented rate. There is no longer anybody to maintain the anti-erosion tanks, twin-tanks or the village tanks. In some villages the tanks are completely silted up. In the meantime everybody is moving to the towns and the cities. Colombo now has vast slums which did not exist a decade ago. If current trends continue Colombo will soon look like Calcutta. People are becoming to depend more and more on the formal economy for their food and its price is going up by leaps and bounds. The government is not interested in feeding the people, if it were it would not use half our land in the wet zone to produce cash crops for export. Nor would it be building the vast complex of dams that make up the Mahaweli scheme. It would restore instead the agricultural system of the past. This of course it cannot do without abandoning its present priorities - development in particular. The attempt to transform this country to a tropical version of a Western industrial nation is suicidal - it can only lead to ever greater malnutrition and indeed famine. And all this in Sri Lanka which should be, as it had been in the past, a "land of milk and honey". Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 "In a Goiya's Looking Glass": Farmer-folklorist Mudyanse Tennekoon on Sri Lankan history and society

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SectionsSubscribeAgriculture Help tell ag’s story at the Smithsonian By Sharon Covert From the horse-powered plows of the first settlers to the GPS-driven combines of today’s farmers, agriculture has played an important role in the history of Illinois. And farmers in our state have helped shape the heritage of the entire nation by providing food, fuel and fiber as the United States grew from a colony into a world leader. The importance of agriculture to Illinois and the nation will be celebrated in a new exhibition called “American Enterprise” at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington. D.C. The display will feature objects that represent innovations to build museum visitors’ awareness of the many contributions farmers have made to this nation, such as biotechnology and environmental awareness. Just a few examples of items you’ll be able to see include Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, a 1920s Fordson tractor, Barbara McClintock’s microscope and Stanley Cohen’s recombinant-DNA research notebook. The United Soybean Board (USB) recognized the importance of telling agriculture’s story and decided to help sponsor the 8,000-square-foot exhibition, which is scheduled to open in 2015. “Despite the drop in the number of individuals involved in farming over the years, productivity has skyrocketed, and agriculture has evolved into a technology-driven profession in which the decisions made from the cab of a tractor are akin to those made in a CEO’s office,” said John Gray, director of the museum. It’s important for Illinois farmers to tell our story and promote the importance of agriculture to our nation’s history and economy. No one knows how much agriculture has evolved over the last 70 years better than America’s farmers. I encourage farmers to visit the museum’s website, www.americanhistory.si.edu/agheritage, to help shape the exhibit and highlight the ways innovations and technology have helped to continually improve our industry. The museum is currently seeking stories, photographs and other agricultural memorabilia. A few suggested themes for submissions include personal experiences, technology, biotechnology, finance, the environment, competition, safety, animals, water and labor. Stories that are submitted to the site will be used by the Smithsonian’s staff to help prepare the “American Enterprise” exhibitions and others, and could be featured on the museum’s blog and social media entities. Accepted submissions will be made available to the public on the Web. Whether you’re a sixth-generation farmer or the first in your family to use a planter, you are helping shape our state and country. Your story is one that deserves to be told, and there’s no better time than now. Sharon Covert is the USB secretary and a soybean farmer from Tiskilwa.

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U.S. & WorldWoe and opportunity: Tales of historic drought By David Mercer Associated Press Published: Aug. 11, 2012 11:00 p.m. Comment View 10 Items In this Aug. 3, 2012 photo, Tony Frost, of Frost Farms, lines up a hose into a 1,000-gallon water tank in Tallula, Ill., as he fills it to take back to the farm for his cattle. After months of drought, the central Illinois creeks and ponds that the 300 cows and calves drink from on the farm are dry or close to it. Frost has to buy and haul water, about 4,000 gallons a day, split up in four trips to different pastures. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman) CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The United States is in the midst of the worst drought in decades, and the dry weather and soaring temperatures are taking a toll on people living and working in Ohio, west to California and Texas, north to the Dakotas. Farmers have watched their corn wither and their cattle go hungry. Homeowners have seen their lawns turn brown and gardens wilt. Communities in the Midwest that rarely experience water shortages have enacted restrictions, and businesses are looking for ways to stay afloat as sales fall off. Here are a few of their stories: WATER FOR QUARTERS The creeks and ponds that Cimeron Frost's 300 cows and calves drink from in central Illinois are almost dry. So each day, he takes rolls of quarters to what amounts to water vending machines in nearby towns. He drops in the coins, collects the water in metal and plastic tanks and tows it on trailers to his pastures around the town of Tallula. He hauls 4,000 gallons a day in four separate trips, dumping or piping the water into big, galvanized-steel troughs for his herd to drink. Even at 40 to 50 gallons per quarter, it adds up. "It takes a little over two rolls of quarters a day, plus probably $40 in gasoline a day, to water all our cows in all our locations," Frost, 65, said. At $10 a roll, that's about 60 bucks a day, or $420 a week, and he's been hauling every day since mid-June. He estimates he has spent about $2,700 so far. But he worries more about what could lie ahead. "If we don't have a wet fall and a wet spring, we could be in trouble for another year," Frost said. — David Mercer in Champaign, Ill. BUY NOW, PLANT LATER Jeff Gatewood has never seen a summer this bad in 36 years at Allisonville Nursery in the Indianapolis suburb of Fishers. Indianapolis had its hottest July on record, with temperatures topping 90 degrees on 28 days, and less than an inch of rain fell in June and July. "We've now gone where nobody's gone before. Hot, dry, hot, dry, record-setting all the time," Gatewood said. With business down 20 percent to 30 percent because of the weather, he quit ordering new plants in June and cut hours and staff. Then, he decided to get creative. The nursery held a "heat stroke" sale in late July, offering customers a chance to buy plants and pick them up later, once cooler temperatures arrive and local watering bans are lifted. That brought people in and helped business some, he said. "We're seeing a pent-up demand like a dam wanting to break. I think once we see cooler temperatures in the lower 80s, get a little rain shower — that's going to help," he said. The nursery has clustered plants in shaded areas to protect them. Gatewood said hydrangeas are especially vulnerable. "Even in the shade, when it's 95 or 100, they hate it," he said. — Jeni O'Malley in Indianapolis RESOURCE RATIONING Randy Pettinghill buys water from the city of Morrilton for his farm in the Arkansas River Valley, but this year, the city put a cap on what he could have. It turns on the spigot every third night from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and Pettinghill collects as much as he can in lagoons on his property in Arkansas' Conway County. He tries to ration the water, but with the temperature regularly over 100 degrees, he's losing a lot to evaporation. He has wells on his property, too. He spent $25,000 to have the second one drilled in July because the first was producing half its normal amount of water. He connected the two, and they still aren't producing enough to keep his corn and soybeans irrigated. He left about two-fifths of his 1,700 acres unplanted this year, and he's been pumping water onto the rest, spending $22,000 a month for fuel. "If I run out of water, they'll be dead in two weeks," he said. — Charles Bartels in Little Rock, Ark. For some, the drought will likely be a money-maker — especially those who fall outside the dry-weather zone. One of those farmers is Harlan Anderson. The rainfall on his 800-acre farm near Cokato in southern Minnesota has been normal, maybe a bit more. That means he'll have alfalfa, corn and soybeans to sell when others don't, and he'll benefit from rising prices. But demonstrating what he described as his Scandinavian sense of reserve, Anderson said he feels a little guilty when talking about how he expects to profit from the misfortune of other farmers in the Upper Midwest. "My projection is that our gross profits for the year will double," Anderson said. "The drought has certainly been good to me. Don't say that too loud." He's started getting frequent calls in recent weeks from livestock farmers around the country. Some usually grow their own feed, while others buy it from farmers like Anderson. All are starting to worry about their supply. "Looking ahead, they're trying to decide if there's a sufficient supply of feed, can they afford it and are they going to keep feeding their dairy cow or their horse — or are they going to shoot them?" Anderson said. — Patrick Condon in Minneapolis

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Fire-Setting Ranchers Have Burning Desire To Save Tallgrass Prairie April 28, 20143:33 AM ET A line of fire turns brown grass into black earth. For the past month, in part of eastern Kansas, the prairie has been burning, as it does almost every spring. On some days, you could look toward the horizon in any direction and see pillars of smoke. The plumes of pollution have traveled so far that they've violated limits for particulates or ozone in cities as far away as Lincoln, Neb. But here's the twist: Environmentalists have come to celebrate those fires. The story of how this happened starts with ranchers like Bill Sproul, who runs cattle on 17,000 acres near Sedan, Kan. I found Sproul sitting on a chair in his front yard, looking out over rolling hills covered with brown, dried grass. This is native prairie. It's never been plowed. Nobody ever planted the dozens of grasses and legumes and wildflowers that grow on this land. They're just here — God's gift to bison, and now to ranchers and their cattle. Enlarge this image Rancher Bill Sproul depends on the tallgrass prairie for his livelihood. "We get quite a bit of rain," Sproul says. "In fact, we get so much rain, we can grow big, tall grass." Once upon a time, this tallgrass prairie stretched from Illinois to Nebraska, from Minnesota to Texas. But now, almost everywhere, it's gone. The only place where a large expanse of it survives is right here, in the Flint Hills of Kansas. There's a simple reason: You can't drive a plow through this soil. "Most people cuss rocks, but that's what saved the Flint Hills," Sproul says. "If it wasn't for these rocks, we'd be standing in corn and soybeans right now." And because the grass survived, the Flint Hills turned into a central link in the chain of American beef production. This grass becomes steak on your plate. Every spring, about a million young steers come here to graze and put on weight before they go on to feedlots. The cattle come from as far away as Florida and Pennsylvania. "They all show up here in a two-week period. There will be hundreds of these cattle trucks coming every day," Sproul says. But before the cattle arrive, ranchers like Sproul set fires on their land. There's a simple economic reason. "You get this new growth back," says Sproul. "It comes back almost instantly, and it grows at a phenomenal rate. That is the most nutritious part of the plant — that new growth." Cattle love that fresh grass. They put on weight faster — an extra quarter-pound of meat each day, compared with grazing on prairie that wasn't burned, according to studies. For ranchers, meat is money. To outsiders, the fires, and the charred landscape they leave behind for a week or two, can seem barbaric. The fires can also be dangerous. There was a time when academic experts on grazing tried to get the ranchers to stop. Enlarge this image Many ranchers burn at night, when the winds die down. Within days, new green grass appears. But then, about 40 years ago, scientists took a closer look at prairie fires and changed their tune. To see what they saw, I drove to another part of the Flint Hills: Konza Prairie, near Manhattan, Kan. This is an 8,000-acre laboratory, owned by the Nature Conservancy and managed by Kansas State University. As I arrive, they're getting ready to burn one section of it. Conditions are perfect. There's a light, steady wind from the south. The fire crew, mostly volunteers, gathers on a ridge overlooking the section that they're planning to burn. There's just a hint of tension in the air. Nobody knows, for sure, how a fire will behave once it starts. That's part of the thrill for volunteers like Anna Zahner, a graduate student at Kansas State. "They had to limit the signup list because too many people want to sign up," she says. "My brothers are all jealous because I've set a bigger fire than they have." They start with a line of fire along the road. The fire can't find any fuel on the road, so it moves in the other direction into the wind, slowly creating a wide, charred strip of rocky earth. John Blair, an ecologist from Kansas State who's in charge of scientific research here, explains that this is a backfire. Its purpose is to create a burned area that will serve as a boundary, keeping the fire contained. The volunteers create buffer strips like this all around the area that they intend to burn. And a little bit later, I see why those buffer strips need to be wide. The fire crew lights a new fire at the bottom of the hill. It's driven by the wind and turns into a monster, racing up the hill faster than a person could ever run, orange flames as tall as trees erupting from a cloud of thick smoke. Enlarge this image Gene Towne, the fire chief at Konza Prairie, lays out the day's burning plan. Several of us, including John Briggs, director of the Konza Prairie Biological Station, watch in awe from a safe spot. "You can imagine, if you were a settler and saw something like this coming, just how scary it must have been," says Briggs. This is an important point. European settlers in the prairie did see fires coming. In fact, the prairie must have always gone up in flames on a regular basis, because without fire, there wouldn't even be a prairie here. John Briggs shows me the evidence in another part of the research station. It's a hillside of grass, but with one difference. Here, there and everywhere, I see young cedar trees. "This is why you need to burn the tallgrass prairie," says Briggs. "Because if you don't, this is the kind of situation you get." The researchers stopped burning this part of Konza Prairie in 1991. At that time, researchers counted just four cedar trees. "Last year, we counted 1,200," says Briggs. In fact, researchers have observed this phenomenon consistently. When a prairie doesn't burn, trees appear. The grasses and other prairie plants die out in the shade, and ground-nesting birds move away. Kansas State's John Blair says it's amazing how fast an ecosystem that has thrived for thousands of years can just disappear. "You can see that in as little as a couple of decades, without fire, you convert these grasslands to woodlands," he says. Blair says it raises an interesting question. How do you conserve the prairie? "It's not an ecosystem that you can simply fence off and keep humans away from." Native Americans once set prairie fires to bring back green grass and attract bison. These days, the prairie depends on ranchers. They bring the grazing cattle, and they now set the fires. Which leaves just one big complication: A lot more people now live in the prairie, or close to it, and the smoke from all those fires isn't good for people. Enlarge this image The landscape, minutes after burning. "You can definitely see it, and also people can feel it," says Tom Gross, who's responsible for monitoring air quality for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. On the day that I watched the fire at Konza Prairie, there were so many fires in the Flint Hills that ozone levels in Wichita exceeded federal limits. On other days this spring smoke from the fires in Kansas blew so far north, it violated air pollution limits in Omaha and Lincoln, Neb. Gross and his colleagues have come up with an online tool that monitors the weather and tells ranchers when fires in their area are likely to cause problems for nearby cities. It's not really clear how many ranchers are taking that into account when they decide to burn. State officials are trying to persuade them to. They're hoping that such coordination will give cities clean air and allow the ranchers to keep burning, and preserving, the prairie.

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COTTON SPIN: Will the boom in U.S. cotton exports continue? Apr 21, 2017 USDA announces 2017 cotton loan rate differentials Apr 18, 2017 Conservation cropping systems, crop rotation focus of Rolling Plains study Apr 24, 2017 2020 Strategic Plan Positions Peanuts for Optimistic Future Apr 19, 2017 Management Fertilizer to play critical role in producing food to feed future world population Food production needs to be doubled by 2050 to meet demand. Production will take place on approximately the same area of arable land using fewer resources, particularly fossil fuel, water and nitrogen. We must also mitigate some enormous challenges associated with climate change, says Julie Borlaug. Blair Fannin, Texas AgriLife | Aug 30, 2011 At the recent annual meeting of American feed and fertilizer control officials, an expert stressed that fertilizer is vital to production of food to feed the world in the future. Julie Borlaug, assistant director of partnerships in the Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture at Texas A&M University, said in her keynote speech at the Association of American Plant Food Control Officials meeting in Austin, that food production would need to be doubled by 2050 to meet future demand. “This will have to be done on approximately the same area of arable land using fewer resources, particularly fossil fuel, water and nitrogen at a time when we must also mitigate some enormous challenges associated with climate change as we have seen with the drought in the Horn of Africa and here in Texas,” she said. Compounding the issue is the current critical and humanitarian need to “alleviate poverty, hunger and malnutrition,” Borlaug said. Borlaug, whose grandfather, the late Dr. Norman Borlaug, was a Nobel Peace Prize winner and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Freedom, pioneered high-yielding wheat for areas that had limited cultivation for land and increasing populations. Borlaug’s developments transformed agricultural production in Mexico during the 1940s and 1950s, and later in Asia and Latin America, sparking the Green Revolution. Julie Borlaug’s speech was part of two main meetings held in Austin and hosted by the Office of the State Chemist, headquartered in College Station. Dr. Tim Herrman, State Chemist and director, said the Association of American Control Officials annual meeting brought together feed and plant-food control officials and industry leaders across the nation.“The purpose of this gathering is to bring together experts in animal feed and fertilizer to craft science-based policy pertaining to the future of food security and food protection,” Herrman said. “We address these two issues with science-based solutions that protect consumers and enhance agribusiness that instill confidence and facilitate trade.” The Association of American Feed Control Officials meeting featured Dr. Lynn Post, a Food and Drug Administration veterinary medical officer. In his keynote address, Post said Texas is a “laboratory of innovation.” Post began his duties stationed at the Office of the State Chemist in February this year, working as a liaison between the Food and Drug Administration Center for Veterinary Medicine and the Office of the State Chemist. “States can innovate and launch new programs and ideas faster than FDA,” Post said. To carry this forward, Post is serving as a member of the Texas Rapid Response Team as a toxicology expert, advising the State Chemist office and other state government agencies on toxicology issues for feed and food in addition to his federal work with FDA. “We think this is a model for federal-state collaboration and provides a great opportunity for innovation in food security and protection,” Herrman said. For more information about the State Chemist office, visit http://otscweb.tamu.edu/. RelatedIt’s time to speak up about drastic changes to an American institutionApr 03, 2017Monsanto launches ‘National Agronomy Week’ April 3-7Apr 03, 2017Texas cotton company bases operation on vertically integrated poultry modelMar 22, 2017Burlesons: Southeast High Cotton Award winnerFeb 28, 2017 Load More

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Seminar: Agriculture in the shadow of the Arab oil economy London, LSE, June 24-25th 2011 This project held a first workshop on June 24-25th 2011 to develop a network of anthropologists, economists and agronomists concerned with the problems faced by the agrarian sector, source of food and workers for the Arab economy. The region that was the cradle of agriculture exhibits today the greatest food insecurity in the world. Its stark dependence on imported food is not infrequently treated as a technical problem arising from natural aridity exacerbated by climate change, from population growth, or, less commonly, from macro-economic policy. All are critical factors. Yet research that tackles change in the region’s rural areas in an integrative manner remains extremely rare. At the macro-economic level, one needs to ask how the region’s food insecurity relates to its equally record-breaking levels of unemployment, income inequality, and international armed conflict. At the micro social-economic level, one needs to explore how the development of larger-scale capitalized agriculture relates to the survival (or demise) of small-farming and the work of men and women. It is our aim to bring together sociological, agronomic and economic expertise, to develop research on the ground to understand the causes that thwart the productive potential of rural farming and pastoral societies, and on that basis to propose interventions and changes to policy to release that potential. (Our geographical compass concerns the Arab East including Egypt and, potentially, Sudan.) Below is a brief report on the June 2011 workshop. A second larger workshop is planned for early January 2012 in Amman where we look forward to being joined by more colleagues from the region than possible in London. We are grateful to the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies and Department of Anthropology at LSE, and above all to the British Academy for support of these workshops. Structure of the June 2011 workshop Prior to the workshop Participants in the workshop had been invited to speak to the present structure of rural labour and food production from their own perspective and to characterize the state of research. Prior to the workshop particular themes were identified which participants were invited to address: (a) Macro-economic policy and the crisis of agricultural systems: to what extent are national and international macro-economic policies rendering whole sectors of agriculture unviable? (b) The relation between Arab migration to the Gulf oil economies and the wider patterns of Asian migration: are there commonalities in the experience of Arab rural migrants, those of today or of an earlier generation, and contemporary Asian migrants to the core oil-producing Gulf states? (c) Analysis of the rural production sector as an integrated whole where crop and animal production is combined with other productive work on and off ‘farm’, notably how pastoral and agricultural production are articulated today? (d) The relation between male rural out-migration and the changing nature of production and of women’s work in the rural areas. Results and development of research questions The thrust of discussion was both to press for more integrative frameworks of analysis and to engage with those on the ground who were seeking to respond to the crises of the agrarian sector of Arab economies. The agronomists argued that analysis of land-use or the more aesthetic term ‘landscape’ permitted a conceptual integration of physical forms (settlement, types of cultivation, irrigation, technology on land, animals and their human minders) and living processes of land-holding (the common, the state and the private), production, and work. Critical historical documentation of ‘landscape’ can reveal the blockages to access for pastoral production as well as log the transformation of forms of livelihood and production. They thus argued for foregrounding the documentation of ‘landscape’ as a heuristic tool. The development economists argued for the need to document in rather classical terms the parameters of agrarian transformation over the last decades: the legal and administrative frameworks of land ownership and tenancy rights, the legal status of (gendered) agricultural labour, and the differentiation of the agrarian sector according to scale, labour-relations, capitalization and markets. They felt that the strength for the network of combining anthropological field research – which attempts to understand and document the lived experience of people – with macro-economic perspectives and agronomic analysis was to challenge misleading, abstract social science legitimation for policies that time and again have borne results very different from those announced. It was agreed that it was important to foreground ‘food sovereignty’, i.e. control over and prioritization of producing basic foodstuffs, as against the notion of ‘food security’. The first opened the perspective of active participation in production at local and regional levels, whereas the second tended to treat the ‘food deficit’ as a quantitative problem of international exchange or distribution. A parallel distinction was made between considering cultures of food consumption as linked to local and regional production – that is diet and cuisine as fundamental cultural and economic characteristics – as opposed to a vision of food merely as quantities of global food stuffs available to the world’s mouths and markets. This entailed a certain management of the market in the interest of ‘food sovereignty’. The question was raised as to whether at present there was a regional framework of analysis beyond the specialised work of international and Arab organisations and whether, however modest our fledgling research network remained, we could contribute to the elaboration of such a regional analysis. By holding a second workshop in the region, with a more focused theme – the relation of smaller, often domestically organized, farming and herding to the larger-scale often more capitalized agricultural enterprises – we will further explore the possibilities of developing of a regional interdisciplinary research problematic. The wider framework: international migration and global economic regime (24th June) Session 1: Labour and the agricultural sector Andrew Gardner, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Comparative Sociology, University of Puget Sound, USA – Overview of labour migration to/within the region Gardner had worked on Asian male migration to the Gulf (Bahrain and Qatar), see his City of Strangers: Gulf migration and the Indian community in Bahrain (2010). From this work he raised questions of a comparative nature about the integration of labour from agricultural areas globally into employment in the oil-producing states of the Peninsula, the parallelisms and differences with Arab migration, and the division of work in Gulf. Too often Asian and Arab labour migration are viewed separately and so he sought to raise questions about that relationship in his talk. Whereas ‘citizens’ of the oil-producing states worked primarily in government jobs, migrant labour estimated at some 15-20 million persons in the Gulf States entered employment under the sponsorship system entailing the personalization of government of labour. Yet migration is an industry in itself governed by manpower agencies in the Gulf and labour brokers in S Asia in which mis- or dis-information is integral to the profitability of the system. Gardner’s work revealed that migrants had to pay on average $2,000 to secure work in the Gulf. Thus, one question concerned the profitability of labour importing itself, notably whether Arab rural migrants had to advance similar sums to secure work or in fact passed through different kinds of channels en route to work in the Gulf. (The paper by Alajmi, see below, addresses one case study that in part responds to these questions.) The other comparative set of questions concerned the impact on the largely rural sending areas. It goes without saying the poorest of the poor do not have the means to access such migrant work and that the experience of working in the Gulf heightened the valuation of consumerism, all the more for migrants who were prevented by the security guards from entering the shopping malls in the cities where they laboured. At the sending end, the decision (and raising of money) to send a male migrant was a collective household one, not simply that of an individual, thus reinforcing ‘extended’ versus ‘nuclear’ family relations. And in that process both women and the elderly made particular sacrifices in terms of cash and labour at home. Gardner stressed the manner that not only the particular households but the sending countries more generally were abjected in the process of migrant labour exportation to the oil-economies. He asked whether similar processes were at work at the sub-regional level with regard to Arab migration or whether the political factors were so central there that decisions to import or to exclude Arab labour exhibited quite different patterns. Ali Kadri, Visiting Senior Fellow, Department of International Development, LSE – A post-revolutionary strategy for employment in the Arab Mashreq Kadri responded by attempting to characterize the place of labour in the Arab oil-economy more generally. The starting observation was how through the circulation of oil-rent between the oil-producing and the other Arab states, a regional economy had been created wherein consumption was funded by oil-rents not by value-adding labour. As a result, not only in the labour-receiving countries but also increasingly also in the labour- sending countries, a regional rent model is today dominant. Where there had been relatively more autarchic systems of production, these have over the years been integrated into the whole. Kadri noted that the official statistics scarcely indicate the magnitude of the problem: if we take as a definition of employment a person who works at least 20 hours/week and covers his/her basic needs, then we would find rates of unemployment at about 50% of the work-age population, not the 20% generally cited. Indeed on average in the region some 25% of the work-force is employed by the public sector, some 50% unemployed, leaving only 25% in private-sector full-time work. Not surprisingly, wages have fallen, thus in Egypt they are about half what they were eight years ago. Likewise, the basis of knowledge-production is very extremely small (and education of elites geared to the export of high-quality labour abroad), and oil-rent also allows the importation of labour-saving technology. Conventional economists (and international organisations) continue to explain the high (official) rates of unemployment in terms of a rigid labour market and call for further labour-market deregulation. In fact the labour supply is extremely elastic and the solution proposed is absolutely incapable of addressing the problem. Labour is among the least legally protected in the world; it is very difficult to speak of the meaningful existence of labour law; for example, Kuwaiti labour law contains no definition of a wage or a salary. One faces regional economies with extremely reduced productive capacity and yet with no balance of payments constraint, i.e. with ample capital. Any solution to this disastrous economic structure would require major action by the state, but this clearly is not possible without radical change in the character of the regimes and the economic orthodoxy to which they subscribe. Such states have to take food production as seriously as work, knowledge and production in other sectors; they would also need to develop strategies to grasp control over the privatization of flows of oil revenue regionally and internationally. In this sense, the problems of the agricultural sector are but symptoms of wider economic problems. In Kadri’s words: For the regional unemployment rate to stay in the double digit category for more than a decade and then to respond poorly to the recent fervour of economic growth rates implies that there is something fundamentally flawed with the policies in place. If it was about the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) ‘macro fundamentals,’ then, in the present oil boom and up to the point at which the Arab revolutions were sparked, these were well positioned: the fiscal accounts were in surplus, the inflation rates were under control and the reserves were way up high when capital and trade accounts were wide open. Despite that, the unemployment rates and income distribution measures remained ill-placed globally. In the preponderance of rents, the remaining productive economy and its capacity for employment generation cannot keep pace with the rate of growth of the labour force nor fully absorb initial levels of that labour force. Therefore, unemployment is broadly cyclical. In fact, public sector employment and declining productivity growth have been, to a large extent, a blessing in disguise, acting as a social safety-valve in the absence of unemployment insurance programs. The welfare implication of this labour market condition indicates that the trickledown effect is obviously missing; more importantly, the labour share stayed excessively low - the lowest globally. And for matters to take an alternative course, one must make the policy of employment creation central to economic policies with rent redistribution creating more employment in the short term and give preferential status to regional capital and labour in the intermediate to long term. Pursuant to the recent revolutions, employment policies are best set in a regional cooperation framework and with a social efficiency criterion for employment, under which, socially valued and relevant work reimburses the costs incurred at present from the long term gains it generates. Equity, in an Arab context, must come before the neo-classical notion of efficiency. Development, it has to be remembered, is a long term process and not a quarterly reporting exercise on financial performance. Session 2: Transformation of food production systems Rami Zurayk, Professor of Agricultural and Food Science, Faculty of Agriculture, American University of Beirut - Evolution of food systems, landscapes and livelihoods Zurayk problematizes the usages of ‘food security’ within international and national policy-making agendas and development programmes. While food security policies may articulate that the right to nutritious food must encompass ‘access,’ ‘availability’ and ‘use,’ they remain embedded within market enterprises. Therefore much like Kadri’s critique of economic models of liberalisation and privatisation, Zurayk questions the efficiency of food production and sustainability within such paradigms. While trade liberalisation may have created some ‘pockets’ that are food secure within the Arab world, there is, by far, a larger problem of poverty, famine and malnutrition. At one level, the (extreme) disparities between zones that are food secure and insecure in the region can be illustrative of the spatialisation of capital. Situated within a global perspective, they are also indicative of the ways in which food-security projects foster food-dependency. Reliance-and this is increasingly so-upon imported food and agricultural stuffs has political, economic and social ramifications; and thus adds another dimension to the perspective of labour exploitation discussed earlier by Gardner and Kadri. The ‘driving force’ of food dependency has to do with large landowning urban elites who deploy rent-seeking strategies in order to maintain their monopoly privileges within rural areas. Alliances made with development agencies, also entrenched within a market orientated framework, only exacerbate labour inequality and food unsustainability. Zurayk offers the example of a UNDP led research report entitled The Development Challenges in the Arab Worlds (DATE). The report shows that the self-sufficiency ratio of cereal had increased to 60% across the region. This is similar for dairy production that went up to 70% and meat increasing to 80%. Drawing on his own research, Zurayk presents the case that these figures are extremely problematic and presents a distorted image of the actual modes and forces of production occurring across the region. Lebanon is a case in point, where the United States is its biggest agricultural trader. Through its acolyte, USAID, the United States mainly exports corn which is sold as feed to the local industrial chicken farms. Yet in spite of the high number of chicken farms located across the country, it is cereal and not meat which is more commonly consumed within local communities. Such views and practices fail to understand and use the full potentiality of the land from both socio-cultural and agronomic perspectives. Instead Zurayk argues for a more perceptive understanding of land in terms of the physical attributes of the land. This is to move from a one-dimensional system into a multi-dimensional one. In other words market-driven agro-industries, characterised through mono-culture, perpetuate the cycle of zones of food security alongside insecure ones as well as forms of food dependency. Here the concept of ‘landscape’ as applied by Zurayk is a methodological one that is used to map out a cultural history of agrarian practices within a region. Through such a lens, transformations of land into an agriculturally diverse landscape can take place and be more suited to local methods of production and consumption, subsequently giving way to incentives more in line with principles of food sovereignty. Frédéric Pelat, Agronomist, ONG Iddeales, Sana, Yemen - Food Systems and Natural Resources Linkages facing Socioeconomics Mutations in Yemen Pelat explains that currently 93% of the water is used - and wasted - in agricultural production. This proportion is increasing despite rising domestic needs due to high population growth and this has direct consequences upon food production in country, all the more given that water, like cultivable land, is a scarce resource in Yemen. A shift in agricultural production across Yemen took place during the 1970s and 1980s. Until that point, 82% of the agricultural surface area was rain-fed and water management occurred through terrace farming. There was a cultivation of cereals such as sorghum, barley and wheat as well as legumes. With the introduction of fruits, vegetables and also the expansion of qat as cash crops in some regions, the terrain of the rain-fed zones has dramatically altered. Land erosion is occurring at a rate of at least 20%-and this is predominantly across the terraces. In line with Zurayk, Pelat argues that mono-cropping and market-dependence - both of which are interrelated - have had direct impacts upon water scarcity, poor diets and malnutrition. As Pelat points out, farmers when purchasing food from the market will aim at compensating deficient production in grains, mainly wheat, and not at diversifying their food basket with fresh vegetables or fruits, given both their limited income and the absence of such crops in the traditional cropping pattern. Two case studies are provided in the presentation in order to shed light upon the problems faced when addressing issues of market dependency in rural areas. The two villages, originally both reliant on rain-fed farming, are located within a few kilometres of the other, but each practices a different agricultural system today. One uses techniques for sustainable agriculture and adheres to more traditional practices, notably with regard to the production of seeds and agro-biodiversity. The other engages with more intensive methods of irrigated farming and produces crops to be transported to urban markets. Pelat notes that in spite of the diversity in agriculture in the first village, local farmers still had to buy a substantial amount of wheat from outside sources due to insufficient production. As non- local wheat varietals (like “Kanada”) have displaced local cereal varieties, notably sorghum and barley, there has been a shift in dietary habits as well. As Pelat explains, in the second much wealthier village, although there has been much work to intensify cultivation practices and water systems since the 1970s, farmers are still buying foreign wheat from local markets due to the market orientation of their own production, now mainly based on potatoes and vegetables. Intensified agriculture and market access have failed to solve food insecurity and to balance food diversity; and, today, one of the many problems faced are health problems linked to water pollution from chemicals used in intensive farming. Session 3: Employment and food insecurity Abdullah Alajmi, Course Chair, Social Sciences, Arab Open University, Kuwait - Food insecurity and Yemeni employment in the Gulf: A case from Kuwait Alajami examines the employment conditions of migrant workers who come from the rural regions of Hadramawt in Yemen to work in Kuwait. Migration from Hadramawt to Kuwait began in the 1940s with the advent of the oil boom. Up until the first Gulf War in 1991, there were at least 100,000 Yemenis working in Kuwait. Many specialised in domestic house services working for well-established Kuwait families; and it is their experiences of domesticity which shape their relationship with Kuwaitis today. Currently there are about 20,000 labourers who work as shop assistants, government sector employees and some also hold menial roles in Kuwaiti owned companies. Yet they have inherited these roles (not jobs) from their forefathers, as their Kuwait sponsor is a kind of social father who holds a ‘normative socio-economic and moral position.’ In this way a migrant worker’s son will take the place of his father once he retires. The charitable donations that the retired worker relies upon, suggests Alajmi is a form of social security. However, in spite of this set up, the remittances sent back to Yemen are irregular and sporadic. These are usually in the form of money or as food stuffs and medicine which are sent and/or taken back during festive occasions or visits. Yet the precariousness of the workers is due to their ‘visiting-feeding’ position and this means that they rely heavily upon the goodwill of their employers. Despite their difference of social positioning in comparison to other migrant workers who have arrived from other regions of the world, the Yemenis are still in a dependent and vulnerable situation. Alajmi’s concern with migrant labours travelling from Hadramawt to Kuwait is to explore possible research avenues that will enable a designing and implementation of food security policies in the region which will also address such massive social discrepancies. This is especially the case given the contrast in living conditions between the Kuwaiti employees and their labourers as well as their labourers’ kin (back in Yemen). All the more is that by 2010, Yemen was one of the countries suffering from the highest form of food insecurity. As Alajmi also points out, the relationship between the Yemeni workers and their employees is an especially complex one situated within particular interrelated notions of kinship and labour ties. Qualitative research analysis is thus essential in order to understand the ways in which state policies and legislation (and lack of) are applied and experienced within daily life. His presentation draws from his doctoral research and fieldwork and considers these employment conditions within a wider context of class-formation, labour practices and gender extending to and from Kuwaiti and Yemeni societies. State policy and the agricultural sector: studies on Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt (25th June) Session 4: Economic policy, the state and the agricultural sector Kamil Mahdi, Visiting Senior Fellow, Middle East Centre, LSE – Perspectives from Iraq Mahdi offers an historical analysis of agricultural and land tenure policies in Iraq. While the country has a deep rural culture and historic social organisation that centred around diverse agricultural activities, its engagement with the world market has been problematic for agriculture, and not least since the onset of the oil era. The current state of Iraq’s agricultural sector is evidently a ‘story of unfulfilled potential’. This is not only due to the oil rent effect, but also to the highly inequitable land rights prevalent until the reforms of the 1950s, to policies that have failed to support peasants and small farmers since, and to a reversion to land concentration from early in the 1980s. At present, poverty are widespread among Iraq's rural population and there are serious pockets of malnutrition especially in conflict zones. The poverty is frequently associated with the country's wider food deficit, but historically and until the 1950s, rural poverty prevailed while Iraq was also a major exporter of staple crops, grains and dates. Received wisdom has it that the land reforms of 1958 and since were the cause of output decline. These ideas are experiencing a strong revival under the current neoliberal onslaught. A system with a predominantly rural population at the time, where 75% of farming households owned no land at all, and where 1% of landholders held two thirds of all agricultural land was somehow presumed more efficient than the much less inequitable peasant farm system of the immediate post-reform period. Research suggests the opposite was true, and that despite disruption and upheavals of early reform period, the reform had an overall positive effect on agricultural production. Much is made of the fall in output in the immediate aftermath of the 1958 reforms, but that was due as much to the severe drought years of 1958-1961 as to the administrative and political chaos of the period. In fact, although the agricultural area in Iraq was reduced by a third between 1959 and 1971, output during the second half of the 1960s was at a peak. The emerging middle peasantry were able to invest in land and agricultural machinery, and they also developed a private farm service sector that rented machinery services to other farmers. This revival was short-lived and the return of the second Ba'th regime instituted the centralisation and market squeeze in the midst of the oil boom of the 1970s. The decline experienced subsequently from around the mid-1970s, was predicated upon policies of urban bias, bureaucratic centralisation, weak support, and an economic squeeze of small scale farming. By 1977, non-agricultural employment began to predominate even in rural areas. Twenty percent of rural labour was engaged in construction alone and there was a growing feminisation of farming while land ownership remained a largely male preserve. As the country was plunged into war and mass military mobilisation, the crisis of agriculture was accentuated. A policy response favouring large landholdings and capital intensive farming ensued at a time of imposed austerity and degraded state capacity. Weakened peasant and small farmer agriculture was a major reason why a subsequent policy response favouring agriculture under the early sanctions phase had limited success. Adverse trade policies since the introduction of the Food-for-Oil programme under the UNSC sanctions regime, and more acutely under US occupation, coupled with the decline in institutional effectiveness and a growing water crisis have brought the agriculture and food security situation to its present parlous state where Iraq faces a deficit in every agricultural product category-with the exception of dates. Even with regards to date production, date palms numbers have dropped from 32 million in 1960 to at most 10 million now. In dairy, poultry, sugar, cotton, as well as cereals and grains, Iraq is very highly dependent upon imports. Session 5: Land tenure, rent and work in the agricultural sector Elizabeth Saleh, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths - Neoliberal strategies and monopolisation of rent in the Bekaa Saleh maps out the types of rent-seeking strategies deployed by urban(ized) entrepreneurs across the Kefraya region of the West Bekaa in Lebanon where most of the local residents grow wine grapes on their lands. Grapes-mainly of the Cinsault variety-were planted as early as 1949 by the ‘urban aristocrat,’ Michel de Bustros, the founder and current chairman of the Chateau Kefraya winery. These were on lands inherited from his father. In this regard there are to date, three wineries located within the municipality. These are Chateau Kefraya established in 1979, Cave Kouroum in 1998 and Chateau Marsyas (established post fieldwork in 2009). While these wineries grow their own grapes, they also rely upon sourcing grapes from the Kefraya village. This is the case also for other wineries located across the Bekaa Valley and beyond, such as Chateau Ksara. The quantities of grapes sourced from Kefraya have changed over the years as the different wineries organize new contracts with landowners in other regions of the Bekaa Valley. Nevertheless Kefraya remains an important site for wine production. Saleh presents the case of the shift during the harvest of 1996 by the largest wine producer, Chateau Ksara. The winery stopped sourcing their grapes from Kefraya and switched to other regions in the Bekaa Valley where grape varietals other than Cinsault were grown. Local grape producers in Kefraya were left with a surplus of grapes and one resident, Mr. Bassam Rahal decided to open the Cave de Kefraya winery. Tensions arose between Chateau Kefraya and the new winery; and in 1998, based upon the grounds that the Kefraya name was a licenced trademark owned by the former, Cave de Kefraya was forced to change to the name Cave Kouroum. The presentation traces historically Kefraya’s transformation into a landscape of wine production and situates these shifts within particular forms of entrepreneurialism and types of monopoly rents. Both are linked to the laissez-faire economy in Lebanon and also in general to a global political economy of wine. Entrepreneurialism within the Lebanese wine-agro businesses is linked especially to conceptualisations of territory and place that articulate-through the notions of origins- the unique potentialities of a particular land for the production of wine grapes. The concept of ‘site monopoly’ is useful here whereby certain properties of a ‘site’ are articulated in order to promote a product’s distinctive uniqueness. Wine in this sense has the capability to highlight many dimensions of these kinds of qualities. After all it is not just the wine produced that displays distinction, uniqueness and authenticity. It is also the vineyard and the winery that become important sites of exclusivity. Here, other forms of trade, such as tourism can then be exploited. ‘Sites’ such as Kefraya therefore attract the investment of entrepreneurs seeking to gain monopoly privileges. On the other hand, competing entrepreneurs will seek to maximize their capital by developing other ‘monopoly sites’ (both within and outside of Kefraya) and are thus part of wider neoliberal expansionist projects demarcating boundaries between the rural and urban. Raymond Bush, Professor of African Studies and Development Politics, University of Leeds (Egypt) – Perspectives from Egypt Bush considers the fate of small scale farmers in Egypt within a broader context of the country’s political economy. Historically small scale farm production has been seen to be far more efficient than large scale production. Nevertheless, a law passed in 1992 that became fully effective in 1997, revoking earlier reforms that allowed farmers to hand down their tenancy to the next generation, worked in the interest of large land owning parliamentarians. Bush demonstrates how mass displacements of small farmers were part of a wider class struggle and conflict. The process of accumulation and dispossession and the persistence of violent practices within it reproduce a pattern occurring across wider spaces. Agricultural strategies deployed by the pre-revolutionary Egyptian state-which were supported by USAID-focused entirely upon the control of land value. Bush argues that analytically land should be considered to be more than just a commodity with a price or value for its land-use. It should also be looked at as a territory, constructed as a kind of bio-politics, which becomes a form of political power. By doing so, the territorialisation of the land through legal reforms such as that passed in 1992 and fully effective in 1997 resulted in the abjection or marginalization of small scale tenant farmers within these new agricultural frameworks. Since January 25th, 2011 and the escalation of protests inside Cairo’s Tahrir Square, there has also been a strong mobilisation of small-scale farmers, with over 1,500 coming from rural regions to protest in the streets of Cairo. The current Ministry of Agriculture has made attempts to address the issues stated above. The return of the cooperatives has been considered as a possibility for sustaining long term agricultural growth. This is especially interesting given that historically a lot had been done to eliminate cooperatives. The displacements from land and the development of rural enclaves have far reaching implications concerning class struggle and class formation. Bush concludes that any future research carried out with an aim of assisting in policy making, must also address issues of class dynamics. More importantly, it must look at how poverty is not simply created, but also reproduced. Invited Participants Abdullah Alajmi, Course Chair, Social Sciences, Arab Open University, Kuwait Raymond Bush, Professor of African Studies and Development Politics, University of Leeds Elizabeth Frantz, doctoral candidate, Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics Andrew Gardner, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Comparative Sociology, University of Puget Sound, USA Ali Kadri, Visiting Senior Fellow, Department of International Development, London School of Economics Kamil Mahdi, Emeritus Senior Lecturer in the Economics of the Middle East, Exeter University and Visiting Senior Fellow, Middle East Centre, LSE Dina Makram-Ebeid, doctoral candidate, Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics Michelle Obeid, Research Fellow in Arab Diaspora, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester Frédéric Pelat, Agronomist, ONG Iddeales, Sana, Yemen - Food Systems and Natural Resources Linkages facing Socioeconomic Mutations in Yemen Elizabeth Saleh, doctoral candidate, Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London Rami Zurayk, Professor of Agricultural and Food Science, Faculty of Agriculture, American University of Beirut London workshop final_64.pdf Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

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Engineering Topics Special Reports Blogs Multimedia The Magazine Professional Resources Search Feature Africa: Continent of Plenty Ten reasons why Africa can feed itself—and help feed the rest of the world too By G. Pascal Zachary Posted 6 Jun 2013 | 15:32 GMT Photo: Tony Karumba/Getty Images Kojo Anku left a high-paying job on Wall Street last year to return to his native Ghana, not to replicate his financial career there but to launch an aquaponics farm, raising organic lettuce, tomatoes, and herbs indoors in nutrient-rich vats. That business, in central Accra, is now booming. “I feel I’m making a bigger difference in the lives of others by applying my knowledge and capital to food production,” Anku says. “Sure, my family and I are adjusting, but it’s worth it to help Ghana leapfrog to the forefront of innovative farming.” Anku is one of tens of thousands of African émigrés who are returning home with money and skills, hoping to cash in on a farming boom that is remaking the continent. According to the World Bank, agricultural GDP in sub-Saharan African grew from 2.3 percent per year in the 1980s to 3.8 percent per year from 2000 to 2005—a jump of 65 percent. The most densely populated, western part of the continent has sustained such profound gains in farm output that Steven Wiggins, a leading expert on agriculture, has declared that “a green revolution is already under way.” Some readers may find that statement incredible. And indeed the haunting images of starving Africans are so ingrained in our collective psyche that many people still cling to the notion that Africa can’t feed itself—and maybe never will. That conclusion, however familiar, is wrong. Fewer Africans face famine now than at any time since the world began counting. While it’s true that sub-Saharan Africa as a whole still leads the world in poverty and food insecurity rates, it is also true that in Uganda in East Africa and in the 15 countries of West Africa, food production now outpaces population growth. In Ghana, for instance, farm output has jumped by 5 percent every year for the past 20 years, which helps explain why the poverty rate there has fallen by half. Even infamously food-insecure Malawi and Ethiopia now grow record amounts of crops and even export surpluses to their neighbors. Map: Why Africa Can Feed Itself—and Help Feed the World Too 14 bright spots of agricultural innovation The mounting evidence of this historic reversal is impossible to ignore. Against the new reality, international food agencies that spent decades proclaiming Africa’s inevitable doom are being forced to shift their rhetoric. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the leading nongovernmental donor to African agriculture, reports that 10 African countries are posting annual output increases of 6 percent, more than twice the rate of population growth. After years of bemoaning the inadequacies of African farmers, the Gates foundation now trumpets a series about them entitled “Profiles of Progress.” In short, African agriculture is booming. And that transformation is happening despite the fact that African farmers have a ways to go in adopting new farming technologies and methods—less than 5 percent of land in the sub-Sahara is irrigated, and use of high-quality seeds and fertilizer is minimal. So there’s a considerable upside to African agriculture. If farmers adopt proven technologies in the coming years, as many believe they will, “they will not only feed their own people but help feed the rest of the world too,” predicts Calestous Juma, an expert on technology and development who teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Gallery Slideshow: Scenes from Africa’s Farming Boom The author’s photos document signs of change in the sub-Sahara. Still not a believer? My observations here are drawn from the 40 visits I’ve made to sub-Saharan Africa since 2000. Many of those trips were made so I could understand from the ground up the new forces at work in rural Africa and in farming and agribusiness in the region. I visited scores of villages, interviewed hundreds of farmers, and made detailed observations of a single village over a period of years. I paid special attention to the rollout of new technologies, the role of urbanization in altering agro-business dynamics, and the importance of women and education in farm productivity. My field research was funded partly through writing for such journalism outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and The Wilson Quarterly. I also received research grants from international donors with a keen interest in African agriculture, including the Gates Foundation, the International Food Policy Research Institute, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Based on what I’ve learned and what other Africa watchers have observed and studied, here are 10 reasons why African farmers are becoming more productive, wealthier, and increasingly essential to a sustainable food economy for the entire world. 1. More Africans now live in cities Africa is the most rapidly urbanizing region on the planet. And while it may seem counterintuitive, that’s great news for farmers. “The single biggest stimulus to most farmers is a thriving local city,” says Wiggins, who leads the agriculture program at the United Kingdom’s Overseas Development Institute. Here’s why: Africa’s city dwellers spend roughly half their incomes on food, and as their ranks have grown—by 4 percent per year—small farmers located on the urban perimeters have responded, offering food that’s cheaper and fresher than what gets trucked in from further out. “African farmers have opportunities today that they only dreamed of in the past,” says Wiggins. “In areas within an hour or two's drive of major cities, you can already see many small-scale and some larger farmers who are taking advantage of this.” Often located within 5 to 8 kilometers of central urban markets, these “peri-urban” farmers [PDF] typically bring their goods to market by taxi or motorcycle, striking deals in advance by text message. My wife’s mother, who lives on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s major oil-producing city, grows cassava and a kind of leafy spinach in a field she leases. While she consumes some of the produce, her main source of income comes from selling what she grows. Proximity to customers means spoilage is nearly zero, and transport costs are low, leaving her enough profit to consider leasing more land in the future. The shift to cities and towns also means there’s more rural land for the farmers who remain. As it is, Africa has the greatest amount of idle arable land on the planet. For example, the Guinea Savannah zone covers around 600 million hectares in West Africa—through Uganda and Tanzania and encompassing Malawi, Zambia, Angola, and Mozambique—which is around one-third of the total area of sub-Saharan Africa. Of this, 400 million hectares can be used for agriculture, reports the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization. However, less than 10 percent of this area is being cultivated today. Ken Sakwa, a farmer in eastern Uganda, profitably farms a dozen plots he leases from neighbors, many of whom have left for city life. Because of the growing stability of cash crop prices, Sakwa can reliably estimate how much a field will yield, and thus what a “fair” rent should be. “Disagreements are rare,” Sakwa says, “because the owner gets a windfall for doing nothing.” 2. Farming is now cool Farming in Africa is not only profitable, it’s become popular. Even the educated and well-off, who long shunned getting their hands dirty, now extol farming as a path to prosperity. Nigeria’s former president Olusegun Obasanjo has campaigned for progressive farming practices, and he walks the walk by operating his own chicken farms. In Uganda, former vice president Gilbert Bukenya has promoted cattle ownership and small-scale production of cash crops that can quickly and easily be sold in urban markets. The flood of well-educated people going into farming has sped up the absorption of new technology across the board. Kojo Anku, the aquaponics farmer in Accra, says his yields of organic vegetables and herbs are up to eight times those of traditional farms, and the plants grow faster. More rapid maturation in turn means a faster turnaround on his investment. And at city markets, his produce commands about the same prices as it would in developed countries. “We can pursue the best interest of people and profits at the same time,” Anku says. Multinational agribusinesses see similar opportunities in Africa, albeit on a grand scale, and have been buying up land in recent years, attracted by prices that may seem ultralow by global standards. One buyer, Emergent Asset Management of London, calculates the price of African farmland at about one-seventh that of land in the United States or Brazil. “That alone is an arbitrage opportunity,” Susan Payne, Emergent’s former chief executive officer and now executive chairman of EmVest, an investment fund focused on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. “We could be moronic and not grow anything” and still make money, she says. That African “farmland rush” has in turn ignited fears that Africans may end up farming only for export—and, worse, suffer hunger as a result. But this scenario has two problems. First, the existing foreign-owned plantations in Africa have tended to under-perform small-scale family farms on a per-acre basis, partly because of the relatively high costs of mechanized farming and farm labor. And second, it ignores the fact that much of the available farmland in Africa still consists of small farms that are owned by the families who farm them. No less an authority on peasants than Cuba’s Che Guevara noted the same phenomenon nearly a half century ago when he traveled in the Congo, attempting to foment rebellion: Almost every African family he met owned a plot of farmland—a radically different situation than in Latin America, where landless families were (and remain) typical. And so the new demand for African land raises the value of everyone’s farmland, and would-be foreign investors frequently encounter difficulties assembling large tracts of land. “I’d rather work my own land than a company’s land,” says John Baird, a small farmer in Malawi who often turns down work on a nearby tobacco plantation in favor of his own plot. That sentiment is widespread. Many investors end up buying land in sparsely populated parts of Africa, such as Mozambique and Zambia, where of course they then struggle to attract farm labor. And so true plantation-style farming remains rare in Africa. Even when labor is plentiful, there’s no guarantee of success. India’s Emami Biotech had grand plans to open a US $80 million biofuel plantation in Ethiopia, only to cancel the project after struggling with local officials for more than a year. There is one highly successful foreign agricultural model, however: roses. Greenhouse operations, packed with Dutch and Israeli technology, have taken root in Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Tens of thousands of workers carefully harvest the flowers, package them into attractive bouquets, and then bar-code them, before they’re flown to Europe and the United States. Growers can afford to pay relatively high wages because their products command high prices internationally. Even this relatively mature sector, however, is evolving to allow more small-scale flower growers to participate. In Kenya, Wilmar Agro Limited acts as an intermediary for more than 2000 small flower farmers, whose goods it then sells at Dutch flower auctions. 3. International demand for Africa’s crops is soaring Global prices for African cocoa, cotton, and even green beans are at or near historic highs. Cocoa, the key ingredient in chocolate, commands double what it did in the 1990s, which means the farmers in Ghana who grow it are together collecting $2 billion annually. Europe’s surging demand for fresh vegetables and cut flowers has been a windfall for African farmers. Even ordinary staples, such as maize, have risen markedly in price. High prices have boosted the living standard of millions of African farmers, especially the most enterprising, well-organized ones. High prices also increase the cost of living, of course, but because a higher percentage of Africans farm than any other people anywhere else in the world, high prices help most Africans more than they hurt. What’s more, they boost the incentive to farm and have fostered a growing class of “superfarmers.” In Zambia, for instance, one in five cotton farmers and one in 20 vegetable farmers have now achieved “commercial success [PDF],” reports Steven Haggblade of Michigan State University and his colleagues. For these superfarmers, success means they have enough cash to pay for school fees, medical expenses, and the like and also to invest in expanding and improving their farms. 4. The “lost crops” of Africa have been rediscovered Long ignored, Africa’s “forgotten” crops, including cassava, sunflower seeds, and cowpeas, have in the last two decades rapidly expanded in production, bringing unexpected benefits. “Outsiders often miss the real action in African agriculture by ignoring important staples that are grown in the region but not well-known elsewhere,” says Calestous Juma, of Harvard. Consider cassava, a protein-rich root that in Latin America goes by the name manioc or tapioca and whose heartiness has earned it the nickname “the Rambo of crops.” In Nigeria alone, output tripled from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s to reach 45 million metric tons per year, according to figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Each additional million metric ton is enough to meet the cassava needs of 22 million Africans. One reason for the cassava miracle has been the ongoing breeding of improved varieties that are more resistant to disease, pest, and drought. Another is the development of more sophisticated postharvest handling that reduces spoilage. Dried cassava is increasingly being turned into an easily stored flour, called gari in West Africa, that is convenient to cook and bake with and wildly popular. Experts expect even greater expansion through improved technology. The Gates foundation is funding tens of millions of dollars of cassava-related research. One project, led by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, in St. Louis, is genetically engineering the vegetable to contain more iron and beta-carotene. Another effort, based at Cornell University, aims to raise cassava productivity through genome-based breeding, looking at the variations in the plant’s DNA to more quickly identify those strains and traits with the potential to boost yields. In both cases, the participation of African researchers and institutions is ensuring that these are not simply one-way transfers of knowledge. Cowpeas—a nutritious crop known as black-eyed peas in the American south—also show how much can be done with even basic technology. Weevil infestations caused postharvest losses as high as 50 percent until Purdue University researchers discovered that storing the cowpeas in airtight containers could preserve the crop for up to a year. They devised the Purdue Improved Cowpea Storage (PICS) bag, made from two inner high-density-polyethylene plastic bags and an outer nylon sack. Now sold in 10 African countries for about $2 each, the rugged bags provide an airtight seal for long-term, pest-free storage. The Gates Foundation estimates that by using them, 1.7 million cowpea farmers in West and Central Africa will increase their annual incomes by an average of $150 [PDF]—a significant increase in a region where most farmers live on about $2 per day. 5. Information technology is boosting farmers’ profits Go to any African market in even the tiniest village and you’ll see farmers busily text-messaging on their cellphones. By linking buyers and sellers, and making it easier to disseminate important information like market prices and better planting and harvesting techniques, information technology is greatly enhancing farmer productivity and allowing coordination at an unprecedented scale. Food brokers, for instance, can aggregate the efforts of small holders quickly and inexpensively; what’s more, much of the software they use to do that is designed by and for African programmers. Multinational food broker VP Group regularly buys from about 5000 small farms near Nairobi. Thanks to text messages and the mobile Internet, it can now collect produce from the field, package it, and send it to Nairobi’s airport in a single day. And because farmers still control and work their own land, they dramatically benefit when prices and output rise. In the mid-2000s, Uganda’s largest cooking oil company, the Mukwano Group, rapidly enlisted 100 000 small farmers to grow sunflower seeds by using text messaging and mobile-phone “trees” to explain everything from when to plant and weed to where and when to deliver the harvested crops. In the last decade, sunflower seed production has more than tripled. “Farm radio” is another vital channel for agricultural innovation. Government-run extension services in Africa tend to do a poor job of educating farmers, but radio—more popular than television in Africa—delivers basic information about how to choose crops, find improved seeds, boost yields, and identify buyers. One project, working through partner radio stations in Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Mali, and Malawi, has reached an estimated 40 million listeners. 6. African farms use the least amount of modern technology in the world, so any uptick in usage could lead to enormous gains Two of the most important technologies in farming are irrigation and fertilizers, and yet both are largely absent in Africa. Cost is the major reason. In much of the sub-Sahara, fertilizer costs two to three times more than it does anywhere else in the world, largely because of the shipping costs of imported ingredients. Irrigation schemes, meanwhile, require government support, which has until now been virtually absent. Once these two proven techniques become more widespread, as they have nearly everywhere else, African farm productivity will soar. In the Millennium Villages demonstration project sponsored by the United Nations, for instance, farmers in central Malawi who had previously relied on rain to water their crops learned the benefits of spooning water directly onto their plants. In the absence of fixed irrigation, such low-cost, improvised irrigation methods are gaining ground and helping to improve yields. What about more advanced technology? For years African governments opposed the genetic modification of crops, but recently some have backtracked and now promote its adoption, starting with a nonfood crop—cotton. Whether African farmers can grow GM crops—as American farmers do on a massive scale—remains “mired in controversy,” according to an authoritative study of the subject by Amy Orr and Sakiko Fukuda-Parr [PDF]. European opposition to GM food remains high, and U.S. donors, such as the Gates Foundation, have been reluctant to promote the bioengineering of African crops. Yet because such crops require less water, fertilizer, and pesticides and reap higher yields, African farmers are interested. The case of cotton in Burkina Faso highlights biotechnology’s potential. Breaking ranks with other governments in the region, Burkina approved genetically modified cotton several years ago, and by 2011 about half of the cotton grown in this West African country was bioengineered. Yields went up, spending on pesticides and fertilizer went down, and total income roughly doubled. Even if cotton remains the only GM crop in Africa, the benefit to farmers could still be huge. Most African cotton farmers grow other crops, sometimes planting them between rows of cotton. So if they can spend less to grow more and better cotton, these other crops should benefit, too. 7. Government support for food producers is getting better Everyone agrees that African farmers remain heavily inhibited by poor governance. Farm extension services are notoriously inefficient. Irrigation schemes are practically nonexistent. Transport links are terrible; where proper roads do exist, you’ll often see police roadblocks capriciously set up to extract bribes from drivers. Rather than support their own producers, many African governments ease the importation of foreign-grown food. In Ghana, for instance, canned tomato paste from Italy, frozen chickens from Brazil, and rice from Thailand can be sold below cost, killing local production. The Italian, Brazilian, and Thai governments subsidize those goods, so their farmers don’t lose out; it’s the Africa growers who suffer. Trade in foodstuffs between neighboring African countries is often hampered by misguided government rules. In Tanzania, ham-handed bans on exports of some staples have resulted in food rotting in the fields. But government aid to farmers is improving. Kenya’s support for small dairy farms is an encouraging example. Kenya’s cows are the top milk producers in Africa, giving 4 billion liters of milk a year, nearly all of it consumed domestically (at 145 liters per person annually). Fifteen years ago, the government pushed through reforms in the processing and marketing of milk that boosted farmers’ profits, then reinforced those gains by funding research into hardier, higher-output cow breeds. A parallel success occurred with cassava. Starting in the 1970s, researchers in Nigeria successfully bred varieties of cassava that are more resistant to pests and disease, mature faster, and are lower in cyanide. Now Nigeria is the world’s top producer of cassava. Felix Nweke, an international cassava expert, has described the transformation as “an important scientific success story.” Targeted subsidies to farmers, which have long been accepted in Europe, the United States, and parts of Asia, are also becoming more common in Africa, thereby raising farmer incomes and output. In Malawi, the government’s decision in 2005 to give maize farmers fertilizer and hybrid seeds at a steep discount resulted in record harvests. The country quickly went from shortage to surplus; its farmers now sell excess corn to neighboring Zimbabwe. To be sure, government remains the source of frustrating, even mind-boggling, difficulties. Such massive incompetence, however, provides fuel for reformers. In highly fertile Uganda, where ample rains permit three growing seasons annually, the government has encouraged exports to neighboring Kenya, Rwanda, and South Sudan, where local shortages of food can be severe and frequent. With more customers now within easier reach, Ugandan farmers have opened up idle land, expanded production of corn and other staples—and been rewarded by bumper earnings. “Uganda is now a food basket for East Africa,” stated the October 2012 World Bank report “Africa Can Feed Africa.” 8. Women are getting better educated, and that will lead to better farm outcomes In sub-Saharan Africa, improvements in the education and status of women make them better farmers—which matters, because women produce up to 80 percent of the region’s food. At urban markets, legions of “market women” buy food wholesale and then peddle it retail, some amassing tidy fortunes through their efforts. On the farm, women increasingly are granted the power to profit from their direct labor. Jessica Sakwa and her husband, Ken, run a peanut and cowpea farm in eastern Uganda. She gets to keep the money she earns from her fields, and she even maintains her own ledger in which she records expenses and sales. “I see the difference in her commitment,” says Ken, who agreed to this arrangement shortly after he married Jessica about 10 years ago. The couple compete in a friendly way over who manages their fields more efficiently. “I encourage women in my village to make similar arrangements with their husbands,” Jessica says. 9. Climate change has an upside Harsher environments will force African farmers (and their counterparts around the world) to work smarter and make long-term investments that they should be making anyway. In staving off doom, they will actually be building a more sustainable future. Wishful thinking? Consider the striking evidence of “regreening” in the Sahel region, where the savanna grasslands of West Africa meet the Sahara desert. Chris Reij, a sustainable land management specialist at VU University Amsterdam, has studied reforestation efforts there, which were accomplished using simple technologies to combat desertification. He describes such efforts by farmers in parched Niger as “the biggest environmental transformation in Africa.” Satellite photographs attest to the success, recording blocks of green that once were brown and gray. To do that, farmers dug crescent-shaped ditches and erected low fences out of stones, deadwood, and brush to catch drifting soil. These keep the dirt stationary long enough for it to catch water and insects, germinate seeds, and allow farmers to add manure. Near-desert plots are gradually transformed into small, narrow fields in which the farmers then plant trees. And in the shadows cast by the trees, they grow fruits and vegetables. Greening projects are also succeeding in Mali, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. Reij argues that these limited successes can spread to other “drylands” in Africa. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has caught the spirit, introducing a worldwide campaign around “climate-smart agriculture.” Climate change can also be managed by greater reliance on drought-tolerant crops. Here, hearty cassava is a natural choice. Indeed, hotter temperatures and and less rain may actually result in higher cassava yields, according to climate scientist Andy Jarvis, lead author of a 2012 paper in the journal Tropical Plant Biology. Jarvis and fellow researchers at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, headquartered near Cali, Colombia, found that cassava outperformed potatoes, maize, beans, bananas, millet, and sorghum in tests of 24 climate-prediction and crop-suitability models. The best hedge against potential food shortages created by climate change? Bringing Africa’s hundreds of millions of hectares of fertile unused farmland into production. 10. Africa has done it before and can do it again After World War II, a starving Europe, its farms ruined by the most destructive conflict in human history, leaned heavily on growers south of the Sahara. Wheat from Kenya, maize from Zimbabwe, and fruits and vegetables from western and southern Africa adorned European tables. African farmers prospered, and by the early 1960s, they supplied 8 percent of the world’s tradable food. Although that figure stands at less than 2 percent today, many African agricultural experts believe, as Harvard’s Calestous Juma has stated, that “history can repeat itself.” Already, evidence is overwhelming that farming in Africa, if less productive than other places, has entered a bountiful new phase. And a recent World Bank report entitled “Growing Africa” argues that African agribusiness could be a trillion-dollar market by 2030—triple what it is today—provided farmers gain access to things like capital, electricity, and irrigation. A remaining challenge is the equitable distribution of food. Part of the solution lies in improved links between African countries whose postcolonial borders often don’t make geographic sense and place artificial barriers between areas of surplus food production and areas of deficit. In a recent paper, Steven Haggblade identifies “breadbasket” regions that routinely produce food surpluses and finds that most are close to areas that must import food. Kenya, for instance, leads East Africa in dairy and wheat production, while neighboring Uganda produces surpluses of maize and other staples; yet parts of western and northern Kenya face a chronic struggle for food. What Africa needs most—and is increasingly getting, Haggblade reports—is more commerce between the food-rich and the food-poor. To be sure, hunger remains a specter in Africa for a small but significant minority of people. There continue to be hunger seasons and hunger zones. But for many Africans, the experience of hunger is shifting—and in the right direction. Hunger once afflicted much of Malawi as recently as 10 years ago. When I first visited the Baird family in 2006, in the central part of the country, their struggle to provide enough food was heart-wrenching. And their situation was all the more dire because the Bairds had lost two sons to AIDS—sons who had previously helped to support their parents and sister. I was there when Mrs. Baird became disconsolate at discovering that rats had broken into the family’s sole remaining bag of corn. And yet collective action has now largely ended Malawi’s seasonal food shortages. The government began giving farm families such as the Bairds a discount on the purchase of fertilizer and hybrid seeds, and production of maize soared. Skeptics of farm subsidies must at least accept that Malawi has only followed the U.S. and European example of rewarding farmers with aid. How sustainable is the farm boom in Africa? How wide and deep will its effects be felt? Rapid population growth alone means that feeding the sub-Sahara’s nearly 900 million people will remain an ever-evolving task. But the task, it should now be realized, is subject to the principles of engineering. And for the first time in a half century, the question is no longer whether sub-Saharan Africa can produce enough food to feed its people. It can—and can feed some of the rest of the world too. A condensed version of this article appeared as "Africa’s Food Solution." About the Author G. Pascal Zachary is a professor at Arizona State University. His extensive reporting in sub-Saharan Africa since 2000 has led to articles in Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Wilson Quarterly, as well as two books, most recently Hotel Africa: The Politics of Escape (CreateSpace, 2012). 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CARD: Center for Agricultural and Rural Development Products/Output Iowa Land Value Ag Policy Review Iowa Ag Review Summer 2006, Vol. 12 No. 3 Crop Insurance: A Good Deal for Taxpayers? Global Prospects for Dairy in Argentina and Chile and Lessons for U.S. Dairy Industries Agricultural Situation Spotlight: Acreage Shifts Follow Price Signals Can South America Pick Up the Soybean Slack? Biorenewables Policy at CARD Frank Fuller John Beghin [email protected] In contrast to the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a successful Doha Round of WTO negotiations is likely to bring major changes in international dairy markets. Some countries protect their domestic producers by using restrictive tariff rate quotas (TRQ) and high over-quota import duties. And large export subsidies allow the European Union and other countries to continue to export dairy products despite high internal price supports. The significant tariff cuts and elimination of export subsidies currently proposed in the Doha negotiations would create notable shortages in international dairy markets in the near term. Rising world prices will undoubtedly generate a supply response in countries with historically strong dairy industries, such as New Zealand and Australia, but it is less clear which other countries will step up to fill the void created by the removal of subsidized products and meet market opportunities created by lower tariffs. Argentina and Chile are two potential beneficiaries of a new WTO agreement. We review key findings of a recent CARD study on these two countries' dairy sectors and draw lessons for U.S. dairy. Argentine Dairy: Strong but with Continuing Challenges Argentina has a century-old tradition of dairy production. In 1999, Argentina was 13th in global milk production, right behind New Zealand. In that same year, Argentina was a major exporter of whole milk powder and a growing exporter of cheese. The economic crisis in 2001 prompted a severe contraction of dairy production. The sector has emerged from the crisis as a viable industry with tremendous potential. Argentina has several critical assets that contribute to its competitive advantage in milk production. First, feedstuffs are abundant and of high quality. Argentina's primary milk producing regions co-exist geographically with its vast cropping regions, thereby assuring low feed costs. These regions have adequate land to facilitate both crop production and improved pasture, without intense competition. Second, Argentine dairy farmers have access to and use high-quality genetic stock. Third, Argentine dairy farms are generally well managed by experienced producers who can produce excellent quality milk. They have the infrastructure on the farms (automated milking and on-farm cold storage) to preserve the quality of the milk and to meet international standards for export. Argentina has a competitive processing sector dominated by a number of large firms with a clear export orientation. Many of the top firms have long been involved with export markets and have built brand recognition in foreign markets. Moreover, the connections between domestic firms and international partners, such as Nestl�, Fonterra, and Saputo, give Argentine processors access to expanded marketing expertise abroad. These processors have proven they have the ability to meet international consumers' demand for quality and product safety. The road infrastructure in Argentina is excellent, even in remote areas. This is in sharp contrast to Brazil and, to a lesser extent, Chile. The transportation and communication infrastructures seem more than adequate to allow quick price discovery and easy communication between the processors and farmers for sample test results and other marketing matters. Pricing incentives are already in place to pay farmers for low bacteria counts, high fat, and high milk-solid content. Despite these advantages, Argentina's dairy sector faces significant challenges in expanding its production and exports. Since the financial crisis, a great source of uncertainty for investors in Argentina has been the instability of the Argentine currency and the threats of price control. The peso underwent a massive devaluation in 2002. The peso is now expected to appreciate in real terms against the U.S. dollar because of relatively high inflation in Argentina. Competitiveness based on the massive devaluation will be progressively eaten away by inflation. Argentina's domestic and trade policies add to the uncertainty for dairy producers. Argentina imposes a 15 percent export tax on most dairy products, handicapping the industry. Value-added-tax refunds on exports were eliminated as well after 2001. The government has a history of adjusting the export tax rate as international prices change, and this discretionary approach to taxation adds to the uncertainty of future profitability for dairy producers and processors. The export tax raises government revenues and lowers the cost of food for urban constituencies. Exports are a convenient source of fiscal resources. In addition, the government has threatened to impose a price freeze on dairy products, effectively resulting in administered price controls. These tactics have been employed in other agricultural sectors, most notably in beef. Price controls on consumer products have ripple effects; processors are then forced to lower raw milk prices to offset their lost sales revenue. The negative impact of these disastrous policies is seen in Argentina's country risk rating, which is among the worst in Latin America. Market access issues, mostly tariffs and TRQs, are the primary barriers to Argentine dairy exports. Argentina exports milk powder to OPEC countries (Algeria, Iran, Iraq, and Nigeria) that tend to have relatively low duties on powder. For example, Algeria applied a 5 percent duty on milk powder products. Subsidized products, primarily from the European Union, have some negative impacts on Argentina's potential foreign sales because Argentine exports compete with EU exports. Chilean Dairy: Poised for Growth Over the last two decades, the government of Chile has been committed to an open economy, which has led to extremely low tariffs by international standards, increasing competitiveness in export-oriented and import-competing sectors and to significant integration into world markets. As a result, Chilean agriculture has shown remarkable growth, both in terms of total value and productivity. The growth in agricultural exports is double that of the country's GDP growth, approximately 10 to 12 percent annually. The central valleys of Chile, with their temperate conditions and dry summers, produce most of the high-valued agricultural products. In the southern Los Lagos (10th) region, where roughly 70 percent of Chile's milk is produced, the climate is wetter, supporting lush grasslands and pasture. However, the bulk of Chile's population and demand for dairy products is further north in the Santiago area. Consequently, much of the milk produced in the south is processed for transport north as milk powder or shipped to export destinations. Only roughly half of the pasture resources in the 10th region is currently used, so there is great potential for substantial growth in dairy production. Historically, Chile has been a small net importer of dairy products. In 2004, Chile became a net exporter of dairy products. While making this transition from importer to exporter, Chile's dairy production lost natural protection from tariffs and from the costs of international transportation. A reduction in milk and dairy prices occurred in Los Lagos early in the decade, and milk production costs are now at levels that are competitive on world markets. Chile's pursuit of free trade agreements has opened doors for its dairy industry in foreign markets. The country has become the largest exporter of hard cheeses to Mexico, shipping roughly 18,000 metric tons of cheese annually under its preferential agreement. The agreement with China in 2005 is expected to lead to an increase in China's imports of Chilean whey powder in the near term and in cheese imports after five years. Chile's 10th region shares many characteristics with the dairy areas in New Zealand. However, Chile's dairy sector has been oriented toward non-seasonal production for decades to provide a steady supply of milk and dairy products to Santiago and other population centers. If Chile is to expand its influence on international dairy markets, the dairy industry will need to embrace a more export-oriented approach to production and marketing. This will require investment so that dairy farms can upgrade to meet international quality standards. Chile currently lacks the financial and support services necessary to modernize its dairy operations, particularly using seasonal production, which is popular in New Zealand. Farmers find it difficult to secure financing for investments and for working capital. Likewise, the local insemination, veterinary, and contract labor systems needed for efficient management of a seasonal dairy operation are not in place. Milk-processing capacity is near full utilization, and additional capacity currently under construction is partially offset by the closure of a number of small cheese plants. In contrast to Argentina, Chile is a safe and profitable investment location and receives the best risk ratings in Latin America. The presence of Nestl� and Fonterra in Chile may provide some of the financial resources needed to promote a general increase in production scale and accelerate the rate of technology adoption. Our research suggests that the reduction of tariffs and elimination of subsidized dairy exports in a new WTO agreement will increase milk production in Argentina and Chile by 7 and 4 percent, respectively, over expected production under current policies. Argentine milk powder exports will increase by more than 20 percent, and cheese exports will rise more than 50 percent. Similar impacts are projected for Chilean whole milk powder and cheese exports. However, the expansion of Argentine dairy trade will be significantly lower if the government does not eliminate its taxes on dairy exports. International Prospects for U.S. Dairy Industries These two case studies shed light on U.S. dairy prospects in global markets. The U.S. dairy industry combines most of the sources of competitiveness characterizing its two South American competitors: availability of inexpensive feed and land in many regions suitable for dairy production, high human capital, access to modern technology, an efficient processing sector, excellent transportation and communication infrastructures, low capital cost and credit risk, and a tradition in dairy production. So it is puzzling that the United States does not export more dairy products. The current U.S. dairy program, with its price distortions and border impediments, obscures the international competitiveness of U.S. dairy and provides producers with incentives to cater to domestic rather than to foreign markets. Reducing these domestic incentives would force the U.S. dairy industry to turn outward, where it is well equipped to be internationally competitive in world markets, especially if all countries reform their own distorting policies. ♦ Contact Us · Site Map · RSS News Feed · Links · Staff Intranet Copyright 2017. CARD is a center located within the Department of Economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University.

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In flavour: Sorghum by Marcia Mogelonsky on January 24th, 2017 Originally native to Africa, some 28 species of sorghum are now cultivated in a number of markets, including Australia and North America. While typically used as a grain and a sweetener – in the form of sorghum syrup or molasses – sorghum also is used in alcoholic beverages, animal fodder and biofuels, demonstrating the ingredient’s importance on a global basis. One of the top five cereal grains globally, sorghum has been gaining in popularity as an ingredient in the salty snacks category over the past two years, mainly as a gluten-free grain alternative for popular snacks such as pretzels. It’s also a popular snack food in its own right as a popped product similar to popcorn. A global perspective India accounts for one quarter of global launches of products containing sorghum 2014-2016. India, where sorghum is an established food source, accounts for one quarter of global launches of products containing sorghum between 2014 and 2016, according to Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD). Sorghum is commonly used in foods ranging from baking ingredients, biscuits and cereals to hot beverages and bread products throughout the region. In the US, just 10% of global sorghum-based food and drink products have been launched in the last three years, used primarily in snack/cereal/energy bars, bread, cereal and snacks. The grain’s use in China is quite broad, and, while China ranks third in global food and drink launches of sorghum-based snacks, such products are relatively uncommon, found particularly in dressings, biscuits, meat products, cereals and prepared meals. Is sorghum the new quinoa? As Mintel’s 2017 Global Food and Drink Trend “Power to the Plants” discusses, there is a growing preference for natural, simple and flexible diets, and manufacturers are releasing or promoting formulations that center on plants and the flavors, fortifications and functionalities they can add to food and drink products. The popularity of quinoa – and its ongoing status as an ancient supergrain – is demonstrated by its increased popularity across categories, from a side dish to a snack. Sorghum is poised to show a similar growth trajectory as a versatile, gluten-free grain with a long history. In developed markets, there is room to expand the vocabulary of grains that can be used in place of wheat. Products such as millet, teff and emmer are slowly moving into a range of categories, while quinoa and chia are now well-established, gluten-free ingredients. Like quinoa, sorghum’s versatility (as an ingredient in snacks or as a snack food on its own in popped form), will give it room to grow in the category. What’s more, sorghum’s “heritage” will help it gain popularity as more consumers seek artisan, handmade, “clean” ingredients. The extent to which manufacturers are positioning sorghum as an artisan product can be seen in the publicity surrounding the launch in the US of Quinn’s sorghum-based pretzels. According to the manufacturer, the sorghum used in the pretzels comes from a “fourth generation” farm in which was “one of the first to bring ancient whole grain sorghum flour to market.” Consumers are likely to be drawn to the product because of its gluten-free status, but also because of the backstory: a snack that provides gluten-free, GMO-free ingredients, with a clear path from farm to table. What we think Sorghum is positioned to move into the snack category, providing another gluten-free, ancient grain alternative across a range of snack types. Already well-established in Asia, sorghum is not as well known in North America and Europe, where its primary role is as a sweetener or breakfast cereal. Since it can take on a number of forms, sorghum’s flexibility will help it grow the “alternative snack” category, offering a change from popped corn or wheat-based snacks. Marcia Mogelonsky, Director of Insight, Food and Drink, has been with Mintel since 2000. Her expertise is centered on a number of areas in confectionery and snacks. Before joining Mintel, Marcia headed her own consulting company which focused on consumer behavior and product innovation in a wide range of industries. Snack attack: Snacking in Australia goes to extremes New products people want to buy & why: Plant-based products Asia set to cut back on rice as diabetes rates rise 5 innovative low-sugar product launches in Germany Food MarketOur international network of field researchers and food analysts works together to blend data, knowledge, foresight and innovation into actionable insights you can feed into your strategy and development processes.Read More Categories

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Home / Markets / News / Grower sniffs out new varieties Grower sniffs out new varieties Posted Aug. 14th, 2014 by Ross Freake Proper variety selection, grading and marketing could make Okanagan garlic a gourmet product KELOWNA, B.C. — A self-proclaimed science geek is hoping to revolutionize the garlic industry.
Bill Campbell wants to overthrow thousands of years of tradition on how to grow, pick and sell the savory bulbs that add zest to food.
Campbell grew up in Trail, B.C., where garlic was a popular recipe ingredient in many homes. He went on to help spawn the software industry in Vancouver and was a consultant to the Premier’s Advisory Council for Science and Technology. He also worked at labs at Cominco, Hewlett Packard and the University of British Columbia.
Campbell and his wife, Linda, looked for a way to supplement their income when they moved to Kelowna and Linda retired.
He wondered whether he could turn a passion into a money maker, but before establishing Okanagan Gourmet Garlic, he did the necessary research.
“From here to mid-Washington state is probably the finest garlic-growing region in the world,” he said about what he discovered.
That was a revelation, but he also noticed something equally interesting. “Growing garlic in Okanagan is just like growing grapes in the ’60s and ’70s,” Campbell said. “They had the wrong varieties and they tried to get the highest yield from them: 10, 20 tons an acre. There was no added value, no grading of the grapes. Garlic is exactly the same way. No one was grading their garlic. They were all selling it by the pound. It was a bulk commodity.”
Campbell would like to convince other growers that they should grow only the finest garlic and build a worldwide brand as did Okanagan grape growers and wine makers. He thinks they could create a festival that would rival the Okanagan Wine Festival,and the garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif., which draws 100,000 people a year.
ADVERTISMENT The inquiring mind necessary to run science experiments in a lab is also an asset in the garlic field. “Anything that didn’t make sense to me, I would do an experiment. Weird things go on out on the garlic patch,” he said. “When you see an anomaly and you follow through and plant it, in time it will certainly improve your own stock or possibly, like I did, discover your own variety.”
His variety is Darwin, a mutation of the Italian variety that he experimented with for four years. He thinks it is akin to the original plant from 10,000 years ago. “Darwin is a good name, as Darwin wrote about this phenomenon extensively,” Quentin Charles Cronk, who runs the Cronk lab at UBC wrote in an email to Campbell. “He called mutations ‘sports’ and was fascinated by horticultural mutations.”
Campbell’s crop has increased from 4,500 bulbs four years ago, to 50,000 this year. Of those, 900 are Darwin.
“We had no intention of getting this big,” he said. “This is way out of control. It takes an enormous amount of work to go through the drying and cleaning stage. With 50,000 bulbs, I would need to hire 10 to 20 people, and I said no way. That’s when I in-vented the U-pick.”
He uses repurposed equipment from the tobacco and ginseng industries to cut the five-foot tops off the garlic and then lifts the entire bed from below, cutting the roots and letting the garlic cure in the ground. “All the garlic is lying on the top of the ground under a shade cloth,” he said.
ADVERTISMENT “No pulling, no digging. You pick up the garlic and brush off the dirt. You can pick 10 Gourmet Garlic bulbs in less than five minutes.” Campbell grows seven varieties that he hopes will appeal to a broad cross section of people,
“I selected each variety for a specific feature that I thought would have specific appeal in the foodies sector, which is part of our target market,” he said. “The second target market is the ‘fed-ups,’ people fed up with California and Chinese garlic.”
He grows mostly hard neck garlic, which he said is richer and more flavourful. “Every thing in the grocery stores is soft neck. They don’t have flavour,” he said. “They have bite and they have aroma, but the hard necks have all kinds of beautiful, rich flavours.”
A wine taster has helped him create a flavour profile of his seven varieties. “We’re creating a unique experience and they’re buying the experience and not the poundage.”
Campbell has asked tasters and chefs to evaluate his Darwin variety before he starts selling it. It’s a culinary version of computer beta testers who check codes for flaws, and is a concept that comes easy to Campbell, considering he used to run an international beta team for Skype.
He said one such beta tester is Chris Shaften, a Calgary chef who co-owns Krafty Kitchen in Kelowna. “He had his crew out in the midst of the garlic field before the scapes, the seed pods on top of the plant, were cut off, and discussing the best way to use them. Imagine the thrill of eating a 10,000 year old garlic and promoting it.” Ross Freake — Freelance writer B.C. pollination business has sweet sideGrower sniffs out new varietiesGrape grower honoured for industry… Latest opinion pieces

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Dennis R. Buege Dennis R Buege In November, 2005, the Wisconsin meat industry gathered to celebrate this honoree’s retirement. Today, we are very proud to induct him into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame and only regret that we must do so posthumously. It is a difficult task to list his impressive array of achievements without his presence. Although he was never officially dubbed “Mr. Meat Industry”, Dennis R. Buege was known throughout the industry as the “meat science guy”. A title he earned time and again during his more than 35 years of service to Wisconsin meat processors and producers. Dennis was born and raised in Juneau, WI. He attended the University of Wisconsin – Madison and received a Bachelor of Science in Meat and Animal Science in 1967. He earned his Masters Degree from Cornell University and following a brief stint in the U.S. Army Veterinary Food Inspection Corps he returned to Madison to obtain his Ph.D. in Meat Science. Dennis ventured into private industry, naturally in the meat business, when he took a position with the research and development team at George A. Hormel and Company. His passion for teaching and fulfilling the Wisconsin Idea brought him back to the University of Wisconsin – Madison once again when he returned to become the UW Extension Meat Specialist in 1977. He became a full professor in 1987 and worked at the UW until he retired in 2005. Dr. Buege enjoyed a long and distinguished career at the UW but he always stayed involved in the industry via a wide variety of extension and outreach opportunities. His focus was consistently on educating the consumer and the producer on meat safety and handling practices for meat products. His research centered on meat safety, nutritional composition of meat products and improved processing technology. He worked closely with state and national agencies to establish guidelines for nutritional labeling of meat and poultry products. Meat safety was foremost in Dennis’ educational efforts and when the meat industry underwent the enormous transition to HACCP philosophy Buege led the way; establishing training for meat plant managers and assisting them in developing their own HACCP plans. He did extensive research on jerky production and helped establish national standards for safe jerky production. Throughout his professional career Dennis was active in the American Meat Science Association. He served on numerous AMSA committees and was its’ president in 2005/2006.He also chaired the Extension Meat Industry Committee and the Meat Industry Research Conference. Dennis served as an advisor to the Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors for 28 years and was instrumental in their convention program; planning and executing America’s largest cured meats show every one of those years. The Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors honored Buege with their Distinguished Service Award and designated their annual Best of Show award the “Dennis R. Buege Award”. At his retirement, WAMP established an endowment to a new scholarship/assistantship program at the UW Foundation in Dennis’ name. One of Dennis’ greatest joys was working with youth. He was constantly mentoring and advising in a positive way. He worked tirelessly setting up meat evaluation contests and worked closely with FFA and 4- H youth. Dennis was the impetus behind the annual 4-H Processed Meats Auction to benefit 4-H youth at the Wisconsin State Fair. He regularly served as a technical resource in the Wisconsin Livestock and Meat Council meat promotion booth. He advised and supported all species through his work on the WLMC in promoting safe meat handling and the nutritional benefits of meat consumption. Dennis was considered a national resource for information on the nutritional composition of fresh and processed meats. He also made numerous trips abroad to share his knowledge of meat processing with small meat processors in developing countries. His legacy was his special brand of networking. He managed to make everyone who worked with him feel respected and he brought all views to the table in an effort to ensure the greatest benefits for each segment of the industry. Dennis’ contributions to the meat industry were significant and far-reaching. His support of the smaller meat processors was immense. His help with HACCP standards created a huge benefit for all Wisconsin meat processors and meat producers throughout the nation. The alumnae from his sausage and processed meat schools have won recognition nationally and internationally. Thomas Powell, Executive Director of the American Meat Science Association summed it up, “Dennis was a person of many talents who made multiple contributions to his family, church, community and professional organizations. He was a man of deep faith and conviction in the things of life that matter. He knew how to treat his fellow man and was respectful of other’s views and opinions”. Dennis met the love of his life, Catherine Hughes in zoology 101 at the UW. They married in 1966 and enjoyed 40 happy years together. They have two daughters, Beth and Amy who wrote a special poem for Dennis’ retirement party “Its Been Different With a Meat Science Dad”. They summed up Dennis’ career in one of the final paragraphs; “(But) our Dad always loved his job to the core, Whether in a smoke house, meat locker or butcher store. He loved it because of all the things he’d do, But mostly because he worked with people like you!” Dennis Buege loved many aspects of his job. He appreciated all the support, friendship and fun the people he worked with shared with him during his many years of service and he was grateful for those wonderful relationships. We are pleased to recognize Dr. Dennis R. Buege as he joins the Meat Industry Hall of Fame.

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Journal American Rhododendron Society Current Editor: Dr. Glen Jamieson [email protected] DLA Ejournal Home | JARS Home | Table of Contents for this issue | Search JARS and other ejournals Winners in Washington State Centennial Event The 1989 Washington Centennial Commission endorsed the selection committee's choice of Dr. Frank Mossman's deciduous azalea (Portland Chapter) and Mr. Fred Peste's rhododendron (Shelton Chapter) as unusual, beautiful and suitable for use as a part of their state's centennial celebration in 1989. Frank's azalea will be known as "Centennial" and Fred's rhododendron will be known as "Centennial Celebration." The committee will seek registration of these names with the American Rhododendron Society. At the appropriate time, these plants will also be planted in a ceremony on the state capitol campus. The committee is now working to develop the required contracts to allow for speedy propagation and the introduction of the plants in time for the 1989 celebration. The Centennial Celebration Rhododendron - Fred Peste The Centennial Azalea - Frank Mossman The Centennial Celebration Rhododendron Dr. Frank Maranville, Shelton, WA The plant selected is a cross of 'Purple Lace' x R. yakushimanum FCC. Fred Peste was born in Seattle in 1909 of German parentage, and did not speak English when he started school in Shelton. Fred dropped out of school early and first worked in the woods for a local timber company, then switched to the pulp mill where he rose to foreman and worked shift work. This allowed him to work part time during the days at his own business, raising Christmas trees. Logged off land could be bought for a song during the Depression and he foresightedly bought land, planted Christmas trees and pioneered in fertilized and pruned trees. As soon as he could, Fred left the pulp mill and devoted full time to his own business, becoming one of the major growers in Mason County. Shelton is known as Christmas Town U.S.A. Today Fred's Christmas tree interests have shifted to a partnership in the Noble Mountain Christmas Tree Farm near Salem, Oregon which uses the most modern methods, including harvesting by helicopter, to raise noble firs on over 4000 acres. In 1975 the Northwest Christmas Tree Association presented the Plumb Award to Fred for his services to the Association and the industry. Fred is the only surviving charter member of the Association. Fred became interested in rhododendrons in the early sixties, in part through his friendship with Bill Whitney, and started hybridizing in 1969. He and Lillian, his wife of 27 years, make about two dozen crosses every year. Four plants are registered: 'Lillian Peste', 'Walt Elliott', 'Party Girl' and 'Dorothy Peste Anderson'. They had 23 acres around their beautifully landscaped home on the edge of Shelton, with approximately 5 acres planted in rhododendrons. Fred had been very active in the Shelton Chapter, having served both as show chairman and as president, and had donated many plants to the Chapter for raffles and for civic plantings. Fred and Lillian were much appreciated for their gracious hospitality in hosting a May potluck Chapter meeting nearly every year for the past thirteen. The accompanying garden tour is the crowning event of the rhododendron season in Shelton. Fred was awarded the Society's Bronze Medal by the Chapter in 1983. Editor's Note: Fred Peste died April 1985. The Centennial Azalea David W. Goheen, Camas, WA Few persons have shown a keener interest in our western azalea R. occidentale than Frank D. Mossman, M.D. of Vancouver, Washington. Along with his collaborator, Britt Smith, he has prowled the hills of Northern California and Southern Oregon for more than twenty years observing and recording the characteristics and beauty of this azalea. Thus, it is very fitting that one of his azalea hybrids, [(R. occidentale x R. bakeri) x 'Santiam'] was selected last year to be named the Centennial azalea. It will be introduced in 1989 along with the Centennial hybrid rhododendron as part of the commemoration of the 1OOth year of statehood for the State of Washington. In addition to his interest in azaleas, Frank has traveled extensively to many parts of the World, including Borneo and New Guinea, always on the lookout for specimens of the Genus Rhododendron. He has also become an expert on magnolias which he considers the perfect companion plants for rhododendrons and azaleas. He was not always aware of these plants. Few azaleas and rhododendrons can stand the rigors of the climate in Omaha, Nebraska, where he was born some sixty-odd years ago and where he attended school. He was graduated from the University of Nebraska and also received his medical degree from there. In the late 1940's he moved west and set up his medical practice in Vancouver, Washington. By 1955, he was well established in his specialty, Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat. He and his wife, Doris, had built a home and landscaped it with routine garden plants, including four hardy rhododendrons. During 1955, the bug hit him - one of his patients was Ben Lancaster of Camas, Washington, a few miles up the Columbia River from Vancouver. Ben invited him to visit his garden in Camas and select any plant. His choice was 'Snow Lady' and from then on the Genus Rhododendron had a real champion. Frank hasn't looked back. His contributions to the Genus have been outstanding. Truly, the landscaping around his clinic in Vancouver is unique. Visitors come from great distances in the spring to view his collection of species and hybrids with their magnificent magnolia companions. Frank has always been a great family man. He has two sons, Frank and Marc, and a daughter, Laurian. He has four brothers in the Midwest with whom he keeps in touch, but who can not lure him back to that non-rhododendron part of the United States except for short visits. Interestingly, the Centennial azalea was slated to be named Laurian in honor of his daughter, but the centennial celebration takes precedence. This honor could not be given to a more deserving person. Frank has been active in the Portland Chapter of the ARS and has held many offices, including president. He has also received the Gold Medal from the ARS in recognition of the importance of his azalea investigations. It is altogether fitting and proper that his plant was selected for the centennial celebration. URL: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JARS/v39n3/v39n3-centennial.htm Last modified: 06/11/12 15:21:40 by Anne Lawrence

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Arizona tree nut plantings on the fast track Apr 18, 2017 California State Water Project boosts irrigation allotment Apr 18, 2017 Even with effective synthetic alternatives Sulfur remains a relevant tool for controlling powdery mildew Apr 12, 2017 With buds pushing in late March, start of San Joaquin Valley wine grape crop follows normal timing Apr 12, 2017 Regulatory>Legislative Agriculture on alert as immigration reform gains steam As immigration reform momentum builds, agricultural interests are keen to bend the coming legislation to their best advantage. David Bennett 2 | Apr 04, 2013 Immigration reform continues to build momentum in Congress. As migrant workers are a vital component of the U.S. food and fiber sector, agricultural interests are keen to bend the coming legislation to their best advantage. Towards that end, in late 2012, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) first floated a proposal to deal with labor needs. On Tuesday (April 2), Kristi Boswell, AFBF director of congressional relations, spoke with Farm Press about the current mood on the Hill, what would be acceptable for agriculture in the reform legislation and when the debate on immigration will begin in earnest. Among her comments: On what’s happening in Congress… “There’s a lot of energy and things happening on the immigration front in both chambers. There are bipartisan groups – eight senators, eight congressmen – working on comprehensive immigration reform. That includes everything immigration-related: border security enforcement, future foreign guestworker programs for business, for agriculture, for high-skilled workers. It runs the gamut on immigration issues. “For agriculture specifically, we’re working with champions in those groups on developing the agricultural piece. “In the Senate, we’re working with California Sen. Diane Feinstein and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet – Democrats – and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio – Republicans. Ultimately, what they come up with will be placed in the comprehensive bill.” Chances on the legislation passing? Harder to pass in the House? “Not necessarily. The group in the House has been working on this for years, under the radar. They are, from all reports, further along in drafting legislative language than the Senate. Want access to the very latest in agriculture news each day? Sign up for the Western Farm Press Daily e-mail newsletter. “Now, politically, I think there are still questions about the route the House will take. Leadership seems to be making public statements supporting the process. But it’s yet to be determined how it will be unveiled. Whether it’s a comprehensive bill or is done piece-by-piece, it will go through regular order. It’ll go through the Judiciary Committee, I believe, and go through mark-ups. “There is a political appetite to take a bipartisan approach to reform in the House. “In the Senate, there’s no question that comprehensive immigration reform is the route the lawmakers want to take. They want to put together a package deal that will go through the Judiciary Committee and be debated on the floor.” If it doesn’t go through in a comprehensive package, you’ll still push for the agricultural piece? Is there any indication that piece will get through regardless? “Our resources are all focused on the comprehensive side. Both chambers are there – but specifically in the Senate. “Agriculture isn’t picky on the vehicle, so long as it’s a vehicle that moves. So, we’re doing our best to work with (those developing the legislation). “If comprehensive reform stalls, we’ll be pushing for an agriculture-only fix and make sure agriculture’s needs are met.” On the specifics in the proposals so far… “What agriculture must have in order to support what comes out of this process includes short-term stability. We must be able to maintain our experienced agricultural workforce. “We propose a work authorization that requires a commitment to work in agriculture for a set period of time. Whether that turns into a pathway to citizenship or some other form of legal status is a political question that will be decided at a much higher level than ours, frankly. “However, we must also have long-term stability. We’ll continue to rely on a foreign-born labor force, which we have for more than 20 years. We must have a reform of the guest-worker program to meet future needs. “What we propose is not a reform of the H2-A program. We propose a new program that is more flexible, more streamlined. It would allow employers to hire workers under a contract or hire workers at will. That would allow portability in the program – a worker could come in and work for multiple agricultural employers during the term of the visa. “A lot of the elements of the program are in negotiations and discussions so I can’t get into too many details. But at the end of the day, we have to have a guest worker program that’s affordable for employers, that meets the need for a year-round labor force and also is more market-based and less bureaucratic. That would mean workers are coming in on time and meeting the needs of our perishable commodities. The program just has to work on the ground. “We’re in discussions with the United Farm Workers Union and other labor advocates trying to find a balance for a program that works for employers -- that is affordable and efficient -- and also treats workers fairly.” Unions and a timeline How would you characterize those union negotiations? “The negotiations have honestly tapered off. We’ve transitioned to direct discussions with Senate and House staff rather than one-on-one conversations with the United Farm Workers Union. “There was progress made between agriculture and labor advocates over the broad framework. However, when we got into the details of what a wage rate would be and what cap calculations would be, there wasn’t agreement between (the sides).” What about capping the number of workers that can come into the country annually? “That’s a huge issue. Frankly, it’ll make or break the program. If the cap is set too low, we’ll be forced to hire underground or go offshore. (The cap) must be done carefully. The American Farm Bureau and the Agricultural Workforce Coalition opposes an arbitrary, statutory cap. But politically caps seem to be a reality. So, we’re trying to fine-tune in a way that meets agriculture’s needs and provides an ample supply of labor.” Any indication when this will be taken up in earnest on the floor? “From all reports, we expect to see something released publically in the next week, or so. We’ll see if that pans out. “I think the goal is to have this in committee in May and on the floor in the summer. Maybe it will be even sooner. “We’re cautiously optimistic that something can be achieved this year. For agriculture this is a very important issue. We need to make sure we get this fixed and the opportunity is available.” More from Western Farm Press Wine market sparks gold rush in China Fire ant balls can wreak havoc Farmland real estate crash a growing concern Biggest wine hoax in history reveals trade secrets RelatedPhotos: U.S. agriculture hopeful in 2013Mar 11, 2013Superweeds a growing nightmare for agricultureMar 25, 2013Honey bee alarm sounded as losses mountApr 03, 2013CDFA casts framework for state 'agricultural vision'Apr 24, 2017 Load More

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US EPA - Environmental Protection Agency 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW US EPA - Environmental Protection ... PA Region 7 to participate at national association of Farm ... PA Region 7 to participate at national association of Farm Broadcasting Trade Talk Event, Nov. 10 in Kansas City, Mo. Source: US EPA - Environmental Protection Agency Kansas City, Kan. -- EPA officials will attend the annual National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) Trade Talk event at the Westin Crown Center Hotel in Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday, Nov. 10. Interview topics include regulatory updates on air and water quality programs, animal feeding operations, nutrient management and pesticides. WHAT: National Association of Farm Broadcasting Convention and Trade Talk WHEN: 7:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011 WHO: Karl Brooks, Regional Administrator; Josh Svaty, Senior Adviser; and Kris Lancaster, Agricultural Public Affairs Specialist WHERE: Booth 74, Westin Crown Center, 1 Pershing Road, Kansas City, Mo. Biographies of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Booth 70 Staff Karl Brooks serves as the Regional Administrator for EPA Region 7. He was appointed by President Barack Obama and reports directly to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. His responsibilities include supervising environmental programs in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and nine tribal nations. Brooks practiced trial and appellate law for a decade. He was elected in 1986 to the first of three terms in the Idaho Senate. Retiring from elective politics, from 1993 to 1996 he served the Idaho Conservation League as executive director and legislative liaison. Since earning his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and joining the faculty in 2000, he has taught American environmental, political, and legal history as well as environmental law and policy. Josh Svaty is a senior adviser to the Region 7 Administrator. He is the fifth-generation of his family to farm in Ellsworth County, Kan. The Svaty farm is a diversified operation that includes wheat, milo, soybeans, corn, sunflowers, a cow/calf herd and sheep. Svaty served as the State Representative of the 108th District in Kansas for seven years. His committee assignments included the committees for Energy and Utilities, Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the joint committee on Energy and Environmental Policy. Svaty later served as Secretary of the Kansas Department of Agriculture. In this position, he managed a $27 million budget, a 380-employee workforce and statutory duties for 17 programs. He holds a B.A. from Sterling College in Sterling, Kan. Kris Lancaster is an EPA spokesperson responsible for agriculture, pesticides, renewable fuels, water and wetland issues. His past agricultural employment includes serving as a licensed grain inspector, agricultural adviser to the chairman of the Missouri House Agriculture Committee and to two members of Congress, a farm real estate broker, a federal crop insurance broker and a negotiator of agricultural leases for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His family owns a corn and soybean farm in Scotland County, Mo. Lancaster has 28 years of media relations experience and serves on Region 7’s Agriculture and Renewable Fuels Team. He graduated from Central Missouri State University and completed an advanced sciences program at Park University. soybean farming sunflower farming sheep housing farm resource farm resource management calf farming herd reporting cow-calf Cow-calf Producers: Pay Attention to Livestock Nutrition Needs, Especially After Calving As livestock producers move from winter feed to spring grazing, they should pay extra attention to spring-calving beef cows to make sure their nutritional needs are met, says a beef cattle expert with the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University. That could mean leading the animals away from early green grass this spring, said John Grimes, beef coordinator for Ohio State University Extension and a member of the OSU Extension Beef Team. OSU Extension is the outreach... Vermeer Interview Lands Indiana Farmer Brand New Round Hay Baler For The Year A brief interview with Mary Vermeer Andringa, President and CEO of Vermeer Corporation, at the National Farm Machinery Show (NFMS) last February - plus the luck of a draw among 130 participants – has landed a Floyd Knobs, Ind. farmer a brand new Vermeer hay baler for the entire year. Billy Hollis, who owns and operates a cow-calf operation just northwest of Floyd Knobs, was one of the 130 Vermeer customers who stopped by and visited with Vermeer personnel at their NFMS booth to discuss the “ups”... Monitoring cow nutrition This month 2013 NMR/RABDF Gold Cup winner Bill Higgins updates us on the latest news from Wilderley Hall Farm, Pulverbatch, Shropshire, and in particular cow nutrition. Following on from last month’s article we are a third of the way through the maize and the bucket brush is in full use. It does surprise me that after only six loads of maize from the first field we were checked out by the police regarding mud on the road. But all the signs were up and Andrew was doing his bit with the bucket brush so no... When is a cow like a car? Martin Barrow, Head of Footprinting at the Carbon Trust discusses the need for the meat industry to take action on carbon emissions. When is a cow like a car? It may sound like a joke, but the answer could be serious for meat producers. Red meat is suffering from a wave of bad press. Shoppers` confidence in beef products has been knocked by the horsemeat scandal which has also increased awareness of high prices. Concerns are also emerging about the environmental impact of rearing cattle and sheep for consumption.... No comments were found for PA Region 7 to participate at national association of Farm Broadcasting Trade Talk Event, Nov. 10 in Kansas City, Mo.. Be the first to comment!

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Shumei Natural Agriculture: Farming to create heaven on earth Morioka Town: Yoshinori Takahashi Farmers and customers in this CSA began their mutual involvement out of obligation, but the romance of earth and the power of food won their hearts The process was rocky, the results amazing. Stumbling into farming, the farmers learned to balance consumer demand against their own sheer joy of growing food. Their customers grew to see the healing power of their food and develop deep respect for the farmers’ role. Further changes have the farmers renting out their land and helping families to grow their own. By Lisa M. Hamilton, Posted June 14, 2004 Editor's NOTE: To open “Farming to create heaven on earth” -- her series on Shumei Natural Agriculture in Japan -- California photojournalist Lisa M. Hamilton crafted a three-part historical and cultural foundation (Click here to visit the very first article in the series). The fourth and fifth installments told the story of Reiji Murota, an inquisitive man who thinks deeply about embedding agricultural systems within the natural world on Kishima Island. Installment seven featured a visit to Nobuaki Nakayasu in Hyogo prefecture. The eighth installment was the story of Osamu Yoshino, Chiba prefecture, who farms 30 acres in the midst of chemically farming neighbors. Story nine featured the cheerful struggle of Toki Kuroiwa, 66, in Gunma prefecture, who practices Natural Agriculture amid the vast cabbage fields near Tsumagoi. The final series entry and farm visit describes the metamorphosis of a CSA in Morioka in Iwate, one of the northernmost prefectures of Japan’s main island. (See Morioka town on the map below or click here for a full map of Japan and the other farms in this series). Yoshinori Takahashi began farming “cold turkey” in the early 1990s when Shumei’s leaders began the modern re-emphasis on Natural Agriculture, as taught by their founder, Mokichi Okada. He learned from an older farmer then suddenly had to take the lead in both growing and marketing. It was only when a Shumei non-farmer felt compelled to do whatever was necessary to help the local Shumei farmers succeed that the rest of the spiritual community rallied around. They formed a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) variation that succeeded in building relationships – and finally trust – between Shumei consumers and farmers. About the Author: Lisa M. Hamilton Lisa M. Hamilton, a California journalist and fine-arts photographer. Her stories and photos have delighted readers in national publications such as National Geographic Traveler, Gastronomica, Z Magazine and The Humanist. She has edited, written and produced publications on art, entertainment and environmental issues, in print and on the Web. She has distinguished herself in agricultural journalism with an acclaimed series of stories on prominent California crops in The Newsletter of CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers). Taste of food, soil soft Homemaker Miyoyo Tanooka reports that she has been touched in a number of ways. She started out with the same blind devotion that made new food hard to deal with. Initially, she was impressed by how her severe food allergies were left unaggravated by Natural Agriculture meals. It was the sheer taste, however, that won her over. “I had lost my palate,” she says. “But now that it’s back, I won’t return to that other way of looking at food.” She also recognized differences outside herself. Now that she knew where her food came from, she was horrified to think about her previous diet. She noticed that the non-organic farm where she lived was devoid of all insects but leeches, and empty of animals aside from the occasional frog found dead in the drive. When she first helped in a Natural Agriculture rice paddy, she found the ground not cold and hard as she was used to, but soft and warm—a place she wanted to be. SLIDESHOW: Farming to create heaven on earth The beauty of Natural Agriculture When Yoshinori Takahashi started farming, he wasn’t thinking about how he would do it, he just knew that he had to. He was an electrician for a cigarette company in Morioka, in the mountainous northernmost region of Japan’s main island, Honshu. In the early 1990s he heard the call from Shumei’s leaders to embrace the philosophy’s essential but (then) oft-forgotten directive to grow food according to founder Mokichi Okada’s methods. Until then, Natural Agriculture had existed largely in theory; Shumei’s food and farming looked no different from the rest of the world’s. Takahashi got a part-time job with the first local Natural Agriculture farmer, Masamitsu Sakata. As he worked, his devotion was clarified by the tangible effects of the labor. Whereas his previous job had left him with rheumatism and a troubled immune system, growing and eating Natural Agriculture food was nurturing him back to health. At the same time he watched a child with a chronic disease who, after months without solid food, was able to eat Natural Agriculture rice. As he saw the child’s skeleton regain strength, he felt the calling to devote himself to farming. When Sakata dropped out of farming, Takahashi took over his 5 acres and went full time. Land is precious in the area, and the farmers who own it are loathe to rent to newcomers because of competition. So when Sakata’s family reclaimed the land soon after Takahashi took over, it looked like the end. But the new farmer was undeterred. He called on the local Shumei community and found 5 more acres. After borrowing money and dipping into his government retirement funds, he finally owned his own farm. But after the initial elation wore off, Takahashi realized that his survival was now dependent on the consumers. Because his crops were grown in this alternative way, he couldn’t sell them outside Shumei. His only income came from leaving crops at the Morioka center and hoping people would stop in and buy them. Some growing, some buying, some rotting At the same time, eight others in the area had been inspired by the call to Natural Agriculture and had started farming part-time. While the strength in numbers meant a sheer bulk of food that would attract consumers’ attention, it also meant competition for a limited market. You see, while Shumei members were characteristically obedient in supporting the farmers, it simply wasn’t in their blood yet. They bought whenever they visited the center, but sometimes that was less than others. Some weeks, the farmers were called in to retrieve their produce, which lay rotting exactly where they had dropped it off. The part-time farmers weren’t hurt too badly, but Takahashi couldn’t survive on such a precarious income. When his friend from the cigarette company and fellow Shumei member Masae Sasaki saw this, she was determined to help. As with Takahashi, there was no plan on how, exactly, it would happen, only sheer will that it would. Working off the model of the successful CSA in Chiba, Sasaki rounded up 100 members to join what she called the Vegetable Club. Members contributed 500 yen (about $4.50) monthly to participate, then paid for weekly shares of the participating farmers’ produce. Sasaki convened a steering committee made of farmers and consumers, and after a seemingly smooth year sent out a survey to assess the program. A flood of anonymous responses confided that things weren’t as good as she had thought. The members’ hearts and minds were committed to the Shumei ideal, but they couldn’t help that their palates had been trained by supermarket food. They were disappointed by the food’s appearance and its seasonality. Further, they were getting way more than they could eat, especially since many of the unfamiliar crops were culinary mysteries. “I finally understood how difficult it is to coax a crop out of the ground. With that knowledge, you start to lose the supermarket mentality.” As the steering committee began making changes, they knew one thing had to stay the same: the members had to keep eating the food—it was the only way the plan would ever work. In turn, the adjustments they made centered not around appeasing consumers, but around drawing them closer to the things that repelled them. The first step came out of Sasaki’s own experience. She, too, had come to the CSA with no consciousness about food-growing, but through visiting the farmers and working in their fields her perspective had changed. “I saw how hard the work was,” she says. “I finally understood how difficult it is to coax a crop out of the ground. With that knowledge, you start to lose the supermarket mentality.” Reconciling buyers to mystery crops The consumers were encouraged to go to the fields and learn for themselves. And then they were sent back to the kitchen. The steering committee organized cooking classes that taught members how to take advantage of every last bit of food the farmers produced. For tomatoes gone soft, they learned how to make tomato juice. For carrots gone limp, they learned to make a gelatin mold. They showed how to make the seasonal abundance of turnips appealing day after day, and how to make obscure “mountain crops”” (ambiguous roots, shoots and leaves) appealing at all. The final step was to take all this individual learning and turning it back into a community experience. In what remains tradition to this day, the farmers and consumers gathered twice a year to share the experiences they’ve had with the food: how their views have changed, how their lives have improved, how their bodies and minds have been healed. By 1999, things were much better. The consumers were comfortable with the seasonal diet because they understood it more clearly. Further, they were able to see the remarkable physical effects of eating Natural Agriculture food, after the benefits had accumulated for several years. Their commitment was indomitable. Only one problem remained: Takahashi still wasn’t making a living. In order to survive, he needed his customers to buy more or pay higher prices. But they were stretched thin as it was, both economically and practically. They were accepting produce that was sometimes mediocre and still buying as much as they could eat. Their wallets couldn’t accommodate a price hike. Neither side could compromise any more than it already had. In addressing the issue, the steering committee realized that the farmers (10 part-time and one full-time) had been producing far more food than the Morioka members could eat. Takahashi was even sending excess to the Tokyo-area CSA, which complicated things for farmers there. In its first stage, the CSA had gone from no food to full capacity because of the growers’ unbridled passion to produce crops. They simply grew as much as they could of whatever worked best, driven by the spirit of the act. But now that the organization had matured, the production management had to follow suit. “Community” guidance boosts opportunity The steering committee began directing who would grow what, how much, and when. The mere mention of such outside control makes most non-Natural Agriculture farmers bristle. For these growers, though, agriculture was more of a spiritual act than a professional one. What’s more, their roles were not as individual business-people but as players in a community, so it made sense to plan the farming as a unit. Perhaps the central organization would even mean less waste, and more profit. Morioka CSA members. Agriculture was more of a spiritual act than a professional one . . . their roles were not as individual business-people but as players in a community. The systematization allowed the steering committee to branch out into food processing, which meant more market for the farmers. The committee ordered increased soybean production so it could start making tofu and miso and selling it to members. It researched ways to dry potatoes and other produce. It even found a factory that would process Natural Agriculture soy sauce. Suddenly, the farmers’ sales stretched beyond the six-month growing season. Meanwhile, a similar change was taking place on the farms. When several growers fell ill and couldn’t work, they found that their fields were taken care of by consumers. Takahashi and others realized what had really been missing: trust. Until then, despite good intentions they had all been acting as individuals rather than as a community that worked together. Their hearts and minds were committed, but their actions were stuck in old patterns. This was an essential realization for dealing with the economic downturn at the turn of the 21st century. As consumers took second jobs, they found themselves without time to volunteer at the farms. Predictably, Takahashi had to switch some fields from vegetables to the less labor-intensive grains. But the next step was totally unexpected. Instead of pulling away because they couldn’t afford it, consumers chose to move closer. They began renting parts of the farm so they could grow their own food. It started with rice, a crop one can grow without daily maintenance. Growing it themselves wasn’t much cheaper, but they found that because the fields were their own, they wanted to go out there—they made time to farm. CSA roles evolve Mitsuko Hasegewa and her family took on 1/10th of an acre at Takahashi’s. Both her husband and father were reluctant at first, but eventually got so excited they started vegetable gardens to complement the rice production. Her kids treated the paddy as a playground, a set-up that delighted Hasegewa. Not only was it a safe place for them to be, it allowed them to develop their own relationships with the land and the food it produced. Connecting people to food this way acts as a time-release education: the families change what they’re eating this season, they learn how to do it on their own next season, and they alter their views of food for years to come. “When my son goes out to play now, he’ll make himself a rice ball to take with him for lunch,” she says. “He doesn’t put anything in it, just a little salt. It’s amazing, with all greasy fast food around him, he now just enjoys the taste of the rice. That’s because he knows it.” The Hasegewas and many others now rely more on their gardens and paddies and less on the CSA. In fact, some members have dropped out completely, as they grow all their own food. New members are still joining, but the CSA’s ranks are ultimately decreasing. According to Takahashi’s wife, Kinuko, that’s not such a bad thing. “This has always been less about 'Let’s start a CSA' than 'How do we form this around the food?'” she says. “In this case, full-time farmers feeding the people is not necessarily the best solution. It’s a natural evolution. In fact, it’s almost like a school: people graduate up through the ranks.” Many farmers still grow for the CSA, but others have moved on to fill the new need: education. Yoshiteru Shimisa, one of the former part-time farmers, now runs a farm that teaches food growing to people in Shumei and beyond. School groups come through for one-day lessons, but the garden is run by families that participate for the whole season. Together with Shimisa, they decide what they’ll plant, grow it together, and each take home some of the harvest. As he sees it, connecting people to food this way acts as a time-release education: the families change what they’re eating this season, they learn how to do it on their own next season, and they alter their views of food for years to come. “McDonald’s operates on the theory that if you get kids eating something before they’re ten years old, they’ll eat it forever,” Shimisa says. “Well, hopefully that means that because of this experience, they’ll be eating Natural Agriculture food for the rest of their lives.”

农业

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Download 01 December 2013 1. Background and key issuesRising food prices are a major cause for concern in Pacific ACP (PACP) countries, given these countries’ high dependency on imports. This concern is sharpening their policy focus on expanding domestic food production for local markets. Many initiatives have been launched to support local food production, while some countries have called for increased tariff protection for specific food products. A growing incidence of lifestyle-related diseases is also giving rise to calls for increased controls on imported foodstuffs.The issue of climate change hangs over PACP food security concerns. Saline contamination of agricultural lands is increasing, and threatens even the very existence of some PACP island nations.While agriculture remains the economic foundation of most PACP economies, they face serious physical and logistical constraints on competitive production and trade. Growth in other sectors of some countries’ economies threatens to draw labour away from established export sectors (e.g., the coffee sector in Papua New Guinea [PNG]). In response to these competitive challenges, a growing emphasis is being placed on niche marketing and value addition for agricultural products destined for export. Strengthening producer organisations, promoting direct sales links, easing logistical constraints, addressing sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) challenges and identifying ways of reducing the costs of organic certification are all areas of increasing attention and ‘aid for trade’ support.There is also a growing emphasis on developing intra-regional trade among the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), particularly among the four member states of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), which account for 98.8% of the PACP region’s total land mass, 87% of the population and 30.3% of its exclusive economic zones (EEZs). Moves towards sub-regional trade integration within the MSG are attracting more foreign investment in some agricultural sectors, to exploit regional trade preferences.2. Latest developments2.1 Developments in the PACP agricultural sectorThe policy contextPACP states constitute the smallest grouping in the ACP, with a total population of 8 million. They range in size from 6.5 million people (PNG) to a mere 10,000 (Nauru). While spanning a huge area, most PACP countries are land-constrained and, with the exception of PNG and Fiji, have limited agricultural potential. Transport infrastructure constraints further compound the underlying remoteness of PACP states, making competitive production for international markets commercially challenging. Even the larger economies face infrastructure constraints, with poor roads causing the loss of up to 40% of coffee production in PNG (see Agritrade article ‘ Constraints on product differentiation in the Pacific’, 13 June 2013).Most agricultural production is smallholder-based for self-consumption and local markets, with limited intra-regional trade. There are, however, pockets of estate-based production and medium-sized commercial farms, producing for both export and local markets.Food import dependency has risen sharply since the 1980s, linked to changing consumption patterns in an era of cheap food imports and more recently to changes in the retail sector. Rice and bread are replacing local traditional food staples, and consumption of cheap fatty meat cuts and processed foods with high sugar content is increasing. This raises major public health concerns, with calls being made for government policies to give priority to local production of healthy foodstuffs for local markets. Food import dependency rates in PACP countries range from 36% in Kiribati to 84% in Palau, leaving them particularly vulnerable to rising food prices.In the face of rising food prices, customary ownership of land is seen, by analysts at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, as “the one thing that stands between people of the Pacific Islands and hunger”. Customary land tenure systems dominate throughout the PACP, and there are fears that service provisions of comprehensive trade agreements might lay the basis for substantial land alienation. Under Vanuatu’s WTO accession services schedule, for example, the government will no longer be able to “limit the amount of land foreigners can lease for agriculture, hunting or forestry”, except in very few cases.This raises important issues related to the implications of international trade agreements for customary land-ownership structures. Indeed, concerns are growing about the impact that trade agreements might have on governments’ scope to adopt measures to promote both local agricultural production and healthier food consumption. Policy measures to restrict imports of fatty meats may be particularly affected.This, then, is the context within which PACP leaders have called on their international partners to recognise the unique challenges that PACP countries face, and to consider non-traditional forms of trade agreements, which place the development of production and trade capacity at centre stage.Balancing smallholder and commercial agri-food sector developmentGiven the focus of agricultural production in many PACP countries on home consumption and local markets, many initiatives have been launched to encourage smallholder farmers to create associations around diverse forms of agricultural production and livestock-raising. But the expansion of smallholder production for local use raises policy issues to do with the balance between small-scale production and the promotion of investment in larger-scale commercial production. This is closely related to questions of land tenure and policies on privatisation and foreign investment.This is perhaps particularly acute in two sectors: first, the poultry sector, where major regional companies are investing in the expansion of production for national and regional markets (e.g., the Australian Goodman Fielder International’s investments in poultry production in Fiji – see Agritrade article ‘ Fiji poultry sector to expand amid regional tensions’, 18 June 2012). Secondly, the dairy sector, where the government of PNG is seeking to encourage investment by foreign dairy companies in local dairy sector development, and where the newly privatised Fijian Dairy Company is actively seeking to expand production for regional markets, based on imported skimmed milk powder.As these larger commercial enterprises develop, will PACP governments simply let smallholder production in these areas disappear, or will government policy aim to promote out-sourcing links between commercial enterprises and smallholder producers? Concerns about this kind of issue are giving rise to calls for the greater involvement of farmers in the formulation of agricultural policy, and for governments to develop coherent policies to treat farms as small business enterprises.Commercial agri-food sector development and imports With PACP governments seeking to promote national commercial agri-food sector enterprises, pressures are increasing in some sectors, in some countries, to use import controls to make room for national agri-food sector development. This can perhaps be most vividly illustrated by recent developments in PNG, which has a strong policy commitment to trade liberalisation.In 2012–13, representatives of the PNG poultry sector claimed that retailers were sourcing more poultry meat from Australia, giving rise to increased imports and a decline in local production of poultry meat of 10–20% (see Agritrade article ‘ Poultry imports hit Papua New Guinea producers’, 9 September 2012). In November 2012 the Poultry Industry Association of PNG called for a ban on imports, conflating protectionist concerns with an alleged SPS threat from Australian poultry (a claim rejected by the PNG National Agricultural Quarantine and Inspection Authority – see Agritrade article ‘ Growing concerns over poultry imports in PNG’, 2 February 2013). Despite this rejection of the SPS grounds for trade restrictions, a “full review of fresh and frozen poultry imports” into PNG has been under way, nominally on biosecurity grounds.In 2012/13, tariff issues in the sugar sector also came to the fore in PNG, with Ramu Sugar, PNG’s only sugar producer, having reportedly “lost 31.5% of its sales since the government slashed [tariffs] on imported sugar”. This led Ramu Sugar to call for a 50% import duty to be levied for the next 5 years to ensure a viable sugar industry in PNG (see Agritrade article ‘ Concerns growing over the future of Papua New Guinea’s sugar industry’, 21 January 2013).While the government of PNG has not introduced bans or increased tariffs, the calls made by larger-scale agri-food companies are indicative of the policy pressures exerted in an era of rising food prices and a renewed focus on national food security.A growing focus on differentiated product exports and niche marketingAcross a range of sectors in the Pacific there is recognition that product differentiation strategies and niche marketing offer a means of side-stepping competitiveness and logistical constraints facing PACP agri-food producers. It is increasingly recognised that, wherever possible, this should involve movement up the value chain to the export of low-volume, high-value products. This process of product differentiation and niche marketing applies across a range of commodities, from major exports such as palm oil and sugar, through fine or flavoured cocoa and organic or fair-trade horticultural products, to value-added coconut-based cosmetics.In the palm oil sector, more than three-quarters of production by PNG-based New Britain Palm Oil Ltd (NBPOL) now takes place on land certified sustainable. While this does not generate significant price premiums, it enables NBPOL to position itself successfully in European markets to supply leading food manufacturers. The strong performance of NBPOL in promoting sustainably produced palm oil has brought investment in production expansion, co-generation of electricity, and an expansion of its UK refining operations (see Agritrade article ‘ Sustainable palm oil still ahead of canned tuna in Papua New Guinea trad...’, 31 March 2012). Against this background, concerns arise over the recent questioning of the integrity of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) sustainability certification scheme. In February 2013 an assessment by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) of the RSPO certification process found significant shortcomings in reporting by RSPO members (see Agritrade article ‘ RSPO members questioned over sustainability of palm oil production’, 28 April 2013).Efforts are under way across the PACP to develop fair-trade-certified production. In August 2012 some US$4.56 million in new funding for Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) was announced “to help unlock the export potential of smallholder farms in Pacific agriculture”. Real potential is seen for quality-differentiated products such as cocoa, coffee and vanilla in the Pacific, with fair-trade certification, for example, helping to improve the position of Pacific producers within the value chain. Concretely, a new initiative has also been taken by Fairtrade ANZ to develop exports of fair-trade coffee from PNG (see Agritrade article ‘ New funding for promotion of fair-trade production in the Pacific’, 8 October 2012).However, in the fair-trade sector, as with other instances of product differentiation, the issue of the volume of production involved is critical. An assessment of the Fijian fair-trade certification experience in the sugar sector found that “fair-trade certification works for sugar because of the large volumes and sufficiently large premiums”, which helped to carry the fixed costs of running a small producers’ organisation and staying certified (see Agritrade article ‘ The costs and benefits of fair-trade certification in Fiji’, 23 June 2013).The importance of the volume of production involved to the net benefits gained from any form of third-party certification (TPC) was highlighted in a review of the experience of the PNG coffee sector. The costs of compliance with TPC schemes were found to lead often to the exclusion of individual smallholders from such schemes. Indeed, it was maintained that “the most important factor in determining whether a farmer benefits from certification” was the volume supplied, with larger volumes and better producer organisation strengthening the position of primary producers in the supply chain (see Agritrade article ‘ Constraints on product differentiation in the Pacific’, 13 June 2013).Thus, where production volumes are limited, the costs of TPC can offset the net benefits to producers of the price premiums available, particularly as price premiums fall as competition among retailers of certified products increases.While these challenges vary for different products under different certification schemes, careful evaluation of the costs and benefits of specific product differentiation strategies would appear to be required, with certification on its own being insufficient to ensure net benefits.Recent initiatives around organic agricultural production and marketingDespite the challenges faced by a number of PICs, developing organic-certified agricultural production is seen as an important way forward. In the Cook Islands, for example, public–private partnerships are being launched to promote ‘green growth’ based on organic production methods, with opportunities identified particularly in horticulture. In Vanuatu, meanwhile, efforts are under way to convert its largest coconut plantations to organic production. This forms part of a wider Vanuatu Sustainable Agri-Business Initiative (VASABI), a logical move to enhance the value of current production, which already often takes place without the application of mineral fertilisers. Only certification, then, is lacking.For small island nations such as the Cook Islands and Vanuatu, converting the entire agricultural sector to organic production could offer major economic gains in terms of minimising the cost of inputs, reducing certification costs and developing a unique brand identity. If islands can become synonymous with natural (organic), high-quality production, the capacity of agricultural producers to gain price premiums on overseas markets could be considerably enhanced (although such a strategy is not without its challenges: see Agritrade article ‘ Going organic seen as way forward in Vanuatu’, 18 May 2013). What are participatory guarantee systems (PGS)?The International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) defines PGS systems as “locally focused quality assurance systems that certify producers based on active participation of stakeholders”, with the system being “built on a foundation of trust, social networks and knowledge exchange”. This system reduces certification and verification costs and can improve the net benefits to primary producers serving organic market components which accept such schemes.Such schemes are currently limited to local markets, where key customers can be actively involved in the inspection of farming processes practised by suppliers. Such schemes could prove useful in serving organic markets in the expanding tourism sector in the Pacific. It should be borne in mind that markets for organic products lie not only overseas. Expanding tourism sectors and mounting lifestyle-related health concerns are creating market opportunities much closer at hand in a number of PACP countries. These market components can be more cost-effectively served through PGS systems of organic certification.Organic producers’ associations across the Pacific (including French overseas territories) came together in May 2012 in the first meeting of the Pacific Organic and Ethical Trade Community (POETCom). A handbook on the PGS system of organic certification was launched at this meeting, and reviewed by a specially constituted POETCom review committee to ensure compliance with the Pacific organic standard. The handbook was then distributed throughout the region.PGS organic certification is cheaper than third-party certification and will potentially expand the supply and market for organic products across the region, and feed into growing tourism markets. The main ‘aid for trade’ programmes being implemented in 2012–13The Increasing Agricultural Commodities Trade (IACT) project, financed by the EU to the tune of €9 million, was rolled out in 2012. Launched in 2011 and scheduled to run until May 2015, the IACT seeks to build on the earlier Facilitating Agricultural Commodity Trade (FACT) pilot project, which ran from 2008 to 2012. The project aims to increase the agricultural and fisheries export capacity of PACP states by strengthening the national institutional framework, developing trade capacity, and increasing private sector competitiveness and access to international markets. The major focus of the programme to date has been on technical assistance and training in product development and marketing, support to participation in trade fairs, and support to the POETCom project.The IACT programme can be seen as complementing the more focused AusAid-financed Pacific Horticulture and Agriculture Market Access (PHAMA) programme, launched in 2011, with a second phase planned to start in 2013. The PHAMA programme focuses on addressing regulatory aspects of market access for agricultural products. Initiatives to date have focused on improving the quality of taro production, addressing quarantine issues so as to reduce losses from destroyed consignments, and addressing SPS issues linked to the export of Fijian pineapples to New Zealand.Sources:IACT programme http://www.spc.int/lrd/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&...PHAMA programme http://www.ausaid.gov.au/countries/pacific/rp/Pages/initiative-pacific-h... In a related development, the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) accepted in April 2012 the Pacific organic standard into its family of standards. This IFOAM scheme of mutual recognition aims to facilitate access for organic products to different markets and is achieving growing credibility as the basis for assessing equivalence of foreign standards. It is unclear how the EC’s proposed revision of food and feed controls will affect the organic sector. Fears have been expressed that the move to a uniform legal framework for official controls will entail the introduction of controls that will “virtually eliminate” the system of organic certification and controls established by the European organic farming industry (see Agritrade article ‘ Concerns expressed over impact of revision of EU food and feed controls...’, 11 August 2013). Controls on the production process might be replaced by systems based on product analysis. This is significant, since current Pacific organic cooperation initiatives span PACP countries and French Pacific territories.Overall, organic production for both local and overseas markets is seen as presenting “a new and exciting market opportunity” for farmers across the PACP. This emphasis on organic production is attracting growing levels of ‘aid for trade’, from capacity building for producers’ associations, through certification support, to marketing studies.2.2 Developments in intra-regional tradeDevelopments in the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG)The period 2012–13 saw significant developments in the framework of the MSG. Trade between member states reportedly grew by 300% between 2005 and 2009, although Australia and New Zealand still accounted for 43% of MSG members’ exports.In 2012 PNG agreed to remove all but three items from its list of products excluded from tariff elimination commitments under the MSG free trade agreement (MSGTA). Fiji had earlier removed all products from its negative list. Vanuatu followed PNG. Solomon Islands agreed to phase out tariffs on imports from MSG members by the end of 2017.The inaugural ministerial meeting of MSG trade ministers took place in May 2013. At this meeting, PNG’s trade minister expressed disappointment at the slow PACER-Plus negotiations, suggesting that PNG might refocus its efforts on developing increased trade and economic cooperation within the MSG. Fiji’s minister of trade meanwhile highlighted the commitment of MSG leaders to consolidate trade among MSG members by “putting in place a duty-free regime, working towards a tariff-free common market”. Vanuatu’s trade minister said that his government would need to examine how to “maximise the use of the MSG Trade Agreements in terms of labour mobility, and so forth”.The meeting as a whole committed member governments to revise the MSG trade agreement so that it might become more of an economic integration arrangement for MSG states. It was argued that intensified cooperation and trade among MSG members could strengthen the whole PACP region in its dealings with its traditional trade partners, Australia and New Zealand. In this context a bilateral PNG–Fiji Business Council was revamped in the run-up to the meeting.The Chief Trade Adviser to Pacific Island Countries has maintained, however, that the benefits to be gained from a PACER-Plus agreement will far outweigh the benefits to be gained from the MSGTA, and has called for greater policy attention to be paid to the PACER-Plus process.Intra-PIC trade integration and evolving patterns of corporate investmentPatterns of investment in agri-food enterprises are emerging in the Pacific, aimed at exploiting intra-regional market opportunities arising as a result of moves towards intra-PIC trade liberalisation. Thus in June 2012 it was reported that Fijian poultry production had increased 36% between 2008 and 2012 (from 11 million to 15 million chickens per annum), following investments by Australian-owned Goodman Fielder International aimed at exploiting emerging export opportunities under the MSGTA (see Agritrade article ‘ Fiji poultry sector to expand amid regional tensions’, 18 June 2012).Similar issues potentially arise in the dairy sector, where a pan-regional food procurement and distribution company (CJ Patel) in August 2012 purchased government stocks in Fiji’s sole dairy company (see Agritrade article ‘ Privatisation raises hopes for Fijian dairy sector but issues remain’, 25 March 2013).Both of these cases potentially raise import rules-of-origin issues under the MSGTA, given the high import dependency of production of poultry and dairy products under the corporate strategies currently being pursued. Depending on how they are handled, these issues could foster the development of backward linkages within the dairy and poultry sectors concerned. In addition, they are likely to give rise eventually to concerns over the intra-regional trade consequences of different levels of government support and fiscal incentives.This suggests that any review of the legislative framework for the management of trade in the affected products will need to get to grips with emerging intra-regional trade flows arising from corporate investments that are designed to take advantage of sub-regional trade agreements, such as the MSGTA. It also suggests a need to strengthen competition rules and their effective application, if private investment in necessary modernisation processes is to be mobilised.2.3 Developments in PACP third-country relationsDevelopments in the (I)EPA negotiationsIn the Pacific, the implementation of the PNG Interim Economic Partnership Agreement (IEPA) is under way. Major development benefits are reported in the fisheries sector as a result of the global sourcing provisions of the rules of origin. The Fiji IEPA has not been ratified and is not yet being implemented. According to EC representatives, three other PACP countries have indicated a desire to accede to similar IEPA arrangements.In the course of 2012–13, the Pacific–EU negotiations gathered pace, in line with the instructions issued by PACP leaders to conclude the negotiations in 2013. A formal negotiating session with the EC took place in October 2012, with all 14 Pacific countries having submitted their market access offers to the EC. Further technical meetings took place in December 2012 and in March 2013. It was maintained that decent progress had been made on technical aspects of the negotiations through these meetings. Nevertheless it is felt in the Pacific that more flexibility is now required to narrow the gap on outstanding contentious issues, particularly to do with fisheries, where securing improved rules of origin for chilled and frozen fish is accorded a high priority.The technical complexity of the outstanding fisheries issues, particularly linked to effective fisheries management and conservation systems, is recognised. So too is the growing political sensitivity in the EU to global sourcing and other issues related to rules of origin.The secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat concluded at the May 2013 PACP trade ministers’ meeting that “unfortunately… the European Union has not been responsive to the situation that is unique to the Pacific and to countries of this region, and thus has not lived up to Pacific expectations,” adding that it was “largely for these reasons that negotiations have taken this long to conclude”.In May 2013 PACP trade ministers expressed a sense of urgency over concluding the EPA process, given the establishment of 1 October 2014 as the deadline for the lapsing of the market access regulation MAR 1528/2007, which extended transitional duty-free, quota-free access to Fiji and PNG. Fiji’s trade minister argued that “continuing extension of the negotiations could no longer be tolerated,” with Fiji seeking to conclude negotiations by the end of 2013, thereby providing sufficient time for ratification by all the parties concerned before the 1 October 2014 deadline.The EC Pacific delegate, however, maintained that concluding the negotiations by the end of 2013 was “unrealistic”, since “there were just too many gaps… to believe such talks would be finalised before the end of the year” (see Agritrade article ‘ Fiji urges 2013 completion while EC delegate expresses doubts over end o...’, 1 July 2013). But the EC delegate also provided a slightly more nuanced perspective on the deadline issue, pointing out that “the market access regulations only concern the interim EPA” and “do not establish a deadline for negotiations of a comprehensive EPA” where “no deadline exists”.In June 2013 the PACP ministerial spokesperson, in a letter to Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, set out PACP concerns over the lack of progress in negotiations, stressing the importance of fisheries issues to PICs and reiterating the view of PACP governments that “if crafted properly, a comprehensive EPA has the potential to create the right conditions for trade and development.” But it was maintained that this would require the EC to offer PACP countries “improved market access, including global sourcing, and adequate and timely aid for trade resources… to improve their trade-related infrastructure and build their productive capacity, as well as the capacity to comply with EU export requirements”.From a Pacific perspective, considerable importance is attached to keeping the region’s options open. In this context, Fijian officials have highlighted the options of continued EPA access for less developed countries, ratification of the IEPA by Fiji, and even accession to the IEPA by other PACP countries if they so desire.Progress in the PACER-Plus negotiationsFrom 29 to 30 November 2012, the fifth meeting of officials of the PACER-Plus trade negotiations took place. The PICs reiterated their position of May 2012, that “PACER-Plus should not result in a conventional free trade agreement,” and stressed the importance of including provisions that would “ensure sustainable growth and development of the Forum Island Countries” (see Agritrade article ‘ Pacific PACER-Plus trade talks continue’, 27 January 2013). “Good progress” is reportedly being made in the PACER-Plus negotiations, with ongoing efforts to “narrow differences between the parties”. The principal outstanding issues for the agriculture sector are those related to SPS measures, technical barriers to trade (TBTs), rules of origin, and development assistance support targeted at building up trade-related infrastructure (see Agritrade article ‘ Progress reported in PACER Plus negotiations’, 15 July 2013).The long-running saga of access to the Australian market for Fijian ginger exports is illustrative in this regard. In May 2013 it was reported that “after over 12 years of negotiations, it appears the path may soon be clear for Fiji to commence exports of ginger to Australia”, following recommendations from the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (DAFF) on how to minimise SPS threats from yam scale and burrowing nematode. However, “the Australian ginger industry believes that a thorough research project into pests and diseases in Fiji should be carried out so that all major pests and diseases can be screened for strain and virulence”, before access is granted for imports of ginger from Fiji.In terms of rules-of-origin issues, a May 2013 press review of roadblocks in the PACER-Plus talks noted that, while the current non-reciprocal South Pacific Regional Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement (SPARTECA) allows “duty-free entry of islands’ goods to Australia and New Zealand”, the arrangement is deemed ineffective, since “rules of origin were too stringent and island countries had great difficulties complying with the agreement’s measures” on SPS and TBT.This provides the broader context against which current progress at the technical level in the PACER-Plus negotiations should be seen. PNGs trade minister expressed concerns in May 2013 that any PACER-Plus agreement would be “one sided”, given the SPS-related difficulties of exporting taro and horticulture products to Australia and New Zealand. Getting to grips with this issue, in the face of growing domestic protectionist pressures in the Australian horticulture sector, is likely to be critical to the actual benefits gained under any eventual agreement.3. Current policy debates and issues3.1 Balancing smallholder and commercial agri-food sector prioritiesThe focus of agricultural production in many PACP countries is on home consumption and local markets. Some PACP governments are now trying, in the context of growing urbanisation, to promote both local and foreign corporate investment in the agri-food sector. This raises important issues related to how to balance support for smallholder production with efforts to attract increased corporate investment, and throws up a range of challenges that PACP governments will need to get to grips with, both nationally and, increasingly, regionally, as intra-PACP trade liberalisation gains momentum (for example, the consequences for regional trade of domestic market protection).3.2 Promoting agri-food sector investment and trade regulationEfforts to promote commercial investment in the agri-food sector has prompted calls for increased tariff protection and even import restrictions, so as to create market space for new investment. Apart from the issue of consumer interest in lower-priced food and the impact of tariffs on food prices, differential rates of domestic tariff protection can give rise to distortions of competition, as tariffs on intra-regional trade are dismantled. These issues will need the attention of the MSG Secretariat at the technical level, and MSG trade ministers at the political level, if regional trade integration processes are not to be undermined by periodic food and agricultural trade disputes.3.3 Enhancing the credibility of palm oil sustainability certificationIf questioning the credibility of palm oil sustainability certification gains traction, then this could strengthen the trend towards “palm-oil free” labelling of processed food products in markets targeted by the Pacific region’s largest palm oil exporter.This suggests a need for initiatives to secure greater recognition of the strong performance of companies such as NBPOL in promoting palm oil production on land certified sustainable within the RSPO scheme, and to strengthen the scheme’s underlying compliance requirements.3.4 Ensuring a comprehensive approach to product differentiationProduct differentiation on its own is no guarantee of improved returns for producers. Government support for the provision of infrastructure is often required, alongside measures to strengthen the position of producers in the value chain through more effective organisation. This represents a complementary agenda for government action as part of private–public partnerships to develop and support effective product differentiation strategies.3.5 Reconciling organic production strategies with conventional agricultureEfforts to move towards island-wide organic farming should be balanced against the needs of existing conventional agri-food industries. This requires a nuanced approach to reducing costs of certified organic production while not undermining the operations of conventional agri-food enterprises. PACP-wide consultations on how best to address this issue could well prove useful.3.6 Centrality of SPS issues to the PACER-Plus negotiationsSPS issues are a major source of concern in the PACER-Plus negotiations, since they critically determine the value of the duty-free access granted to developed country markets. Procedural constraints on securing SPS approvals can fundamentally undermine the value of ‘aid for trade’ support at the enterprise level, and for infrastructural and institutional investment, as well as the nominal market access granted.Against this background the question arises as to how substantive the reported progress in the PACER-Plus negotiations is on the underlying SPS, TBT and rules-of-origin issues of concern to PACP governments, such as addressing current problems faced in developing Pacific exports as a result of ongoing SPS disputes and cumbersome SPS approval procedures. How this question is addressed is likely to be critical to the eventual net benefits arising in the agri-food sector from any PACER-Plus agreement.3.7 Ensuring that differentiated product certification yields net benefitsGiven that production volumes in PACP countries are often small, questions can arise about the financial sustainability of TPC. This is increasing the attractiveness of PGS systems of certification. Against this background, PACP governments may wish to join wider ACP efforts in ensuring that EC proposals to modify the regulatory regime for food and feed controls do not undermine current efforts to promote PGS-certified trade in organic products. Main sources 1. Monash University/PANG ‘The implications of free trade agreements for food sovereignty in the Pacific island Nations’, November 2012 http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2012/11/food-sovereignty-must-not-be-undermin... 2. Pacific Island News Association, home page http://www.pina.com.fj/3. Islandsbusiness.com, home page http://www.islandsbusiness.com/4. EC Delegation to the Pacific, home page http://www.delfji.ec.europa.eu/5. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, home page http://www.forumsec.org.fj/6. Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), home page http://www.spc.int7. EC, ‘Second meeting of the trade committee between Papua New Guinea and the European Commission under the Interim Partnership Agreement between the Pacific States of Papua New Guinea and Fiji and the European Union: Agreed minutes’, 24 February 2012 http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2012/february/tradoc_149145.pdf8. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, ‘Forum Trade Ministers’ Meeting: Outcomes document’, PIFS (12) FTMM, 11 May 2012 http://www.forumsec.org/resources/uploads/attachments/documents/FINAL%20...9. Secretariat of the Pacific Community, ‘Workshop focuses on strengthening Pacific product marketing’, 10 May 2013 http://www.spc.int/en/our-work/strategic-engagement-policy-and-planning-...10. GreenPalm, ‘WWF Assessment of RSPO member palm oil producers 2013’, 19 February 2013 http://www.greenpalm.org/en/blog-press/blog/wwf-assessment-of-rspo-membe...11. Australian Aid, ‘Creating opportunities for Pacific farmers’, 7 April 2012 http://www.ausaid.gov.au/HotTopics/Pages/Display.aspx?QID=22About this updateThis brief was updated in October 2013 to reflect developments since September 2012. Other publications in this series and additional resources on ACP–EU agriculture and fisheries trade issues can be found online at http://agritrade.cta.int/. Executive Brief Update 2012: Pacific: Agricultural trade policy debates and developments Login with your MyAgritrade account: MyAgritrade Forgot your password?No account yet? Create one! » Close window Choose ID

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" October 2007, Volume 13, Number 4 California: Pesticides, UFW Pesticides. The California Department of Public Health released a report in July 2007 suggesting that a high rate of autism in children may be linked to women's exposure to the organochlorine pesticides endosulfan and dicofol (now banned DDT belongs to this type of pesticide). There were eight autistic children in a sample of 29 women living within 500 meters (547 yards) of fields, a rate that is six times higher than for all women.The pesticides are used to kill mites in cotton and some vegetables, with the heaviest use in Fresno, Kings, Imperial and Tulare counties. Autistic children have impaired social and communication skills.The US Environmental Protection Agency in October 2007 approved the use of methyl iodide to replace methyl bromide, which has been banned under an international treaty because it damages the earth's ozone layer. The EPA promised critics that required buffer zones around the strawberry and tomato fields being fumigated will protect people. Fields are normally covered with plastic, and the fumigant, sold under the Midas label, is injected into the soil to kill a broad spectrum of insects and diseases without leaving residue on crops.The Senate Governmental Organization Committee held a hearing on July 19, 2007 that featured testimony from the UFW alleging that August 2005 heat-stress regulations were not being enforced. The state Division of Occupational Safety and Health said that it issued 136 citations in the first seven months of 2007, about the same as in all of 2006, and that most farm employers provided sufficient water, but in some cases workers did not drink enough.Summer 2007 was cooler than usual, and only one worker, an out-of-state trucker, died due to heat excessive heat; in the Fresno area, there were 27 days with 100+ temperatures, down from the average 36 days. Cal-OSHA has 215 inspectors for all work places, including agriculture, and found most violations of the heat-stress regulations in construction in summer 2007; agriculture was second.Teamsters Union Local 890 filed a class action suit in October 2007 against three Salinas labor contractors, charging that they did not pay overtime wages or give unauthorized workers meal and rest breaks because of their legal status. The suit charged that the plaintiffs had to pay to get their jobs.UFW. SB 180, which would allow farm worker unions to win recognition by having a majority of workers sign authorization cards, was approved by the Legislature in August 2007 but vetoed by the governor. The UFW argued that farm workers need to be the first private-sector employees to have an alternative to the secret-ballot elections required by the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act because many are migrants and unauthorized.The UFW accepted an amendment that requires both the worker and union organizer signing the authorization card to confirm that there was no coercion. An identical bill, SB 650, that would sunset the card-check procedure in 2013, was also approved by the Legislature and vetoed. Under both SB 180 and SB 650, unions could be recognized without a secret-ballot election, but a secret ballot election would be required to decertify a union.Many newspapers opposed SB 180, using Cesar Chavez's words on the need for state-supervised secret ballot elections to avoid having growers and the Teamsters sign "sweetheart agreements." The UFW opposed amendments to the ALRA for the first quarter century, fearing that opening the law to amendments could result in the loss of important worker and union protections. However, in 2002, the UFW won an amendment to require mandatory mediation or binding arbitration if a union and employer are unable to agree on a first contract.The governor, who made an unscheduled appearance at a UFW rally September 5, 2007 at the Capitol that was aimed at persuading him to sign SB 180/650 into law, emphasized in his veto message that "strengthening workplace protections for agricultural workers" was one of his "top priorities." Citing more labor law inspectors, reformed farm worker housing laws, and heat-stress regulations, the governor asked the UFW to work with the state to ensure that labor laws and regulations are "vigorously enforced."The UFW reported 5,504 members to DOL, including 874 retired members.AB 377, which would require farm labor contractors to disclose on worker pay stubs up to five farms where they worked during the pay period, was vetoed by Schwarzenegger, who said that it would impose an extra burden on licensed contractors and not affect unlicensed contractors. A similar bill without the five-farm cap was vetoed by in 2006.The UFW in August 2007 announced that the successor of Wasco-based Jackson & Perkins would continue to employ the operation's 665 workers, and provide severance pay if they are dismissed. According to the union, the firm's new owners will hire most of the laid-off workers and sign a two-year contract with the UFW.The ALRB, in an unusual decision, agreed to vacate its decision in D'Arrigo Brothers (32 ALRB 1) after the UFW and D'Arrigo reportedly reached agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement and dropped the charges they had filed against one another.The UFW filed over 20 Notices of Intent to Take Access to table grape farms in the southern San Joaquin Valley in summer 2007. If at least 10 percent of the workers on a farm sign authorization cards, the employer must provide the union with a payroll list that includes worker names and addresses.In 1983, about 22 percent of California's almost 10 million workers were union members. California's wage and salary work force expanded to 15 million by 2006, with 17 percent union members- half of the union members are public employees.Andy Furillo, "Heat deaths drop as state enforces job rules," Sacramento Bee, September 24, 2007. Marc Lifsher, "UFW wants another way to organize," Los Angeles Times, September 14, 2007. "Schwarzenegger attends farm worker rally at capitol," Salinas Californian, September 5, 2007. Don Thompson, "Bill seeks to change how unions can organize farm workers," Associated Press, August 27, 2007. Marla Cone, "Pesticide link to autism suspected," Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2007.

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Industry CropLife America celebrated 80th year at annual meeting By CropLife America September 27, 2013 | 11:37 am EDT CropLife America (CLA) celebrated its 80th anniversary as the national association representing the crop protection industry during its annual meeting at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.V. The theme of this year’s meeting was “The Great Progression of Agriculture” and included general session presentations on modern agriculture’s past, present and future. The first general session on Sept. 23 featured a panel discussion with former U.S. Secretaries of Agriculture John Block, Michael Espy, John Knebel and Ed Schafer. CLA’s president and CEO, Jay Vroom, served as moderator. The former secretaries shared memories from their respective terms in office and reflected on U.S. farm policy, including a five-year farm bill that is currently under deliberation in the House and Senate. “We were delighted that four former secretaries of agriculture were able to participate in an open dialogue at this year’s annual meeting,” said Vroom. “It was a truly unique opportunity for attendees to learn more about U.S. farm policy from the leaders who have seen it evolve so much in recent decades. The panel discussion embodied our annual meeting theme of looking back on agriculture’s past while still concentrating on the future.” Pollinator health served as the focus of the next panel presentation, which included speakers from diverse backgrounds. Panelists included Richard Fell, Ph.D., professor emeritus of entomology at Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Aaron Hobbs, president of RISE (Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment); Gabriele Ludwig, associate director of environmental affairs for the Almond Board of California; and Keith Menchey, manager of science and environmental issues for the National Cotton Council. During the discussion, panelists stressed a need for increased collaboration among the crop protection industry, beekeepers, crop farmers and regulatory agencies including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Cary Fowler, Ph.D., special advisor and former executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, delivered a keynote presentation during the second general session on Sept. 24. Fowler was instrumental in the development of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which provides security for seed samples of more than 750,000 unique crop varieties. His presentation focused on the continual preservation and security of seed diversity in order to sustain global food demands. Two students currently engaged in promoting agriculture among young adults also gave a brief presentation during the second general session. Brennan Costello, central region vice president of the National FFA Organization, and Caroline Weihl of Agriculture Future of America (AFA), challenged attendees to imagine what agriculture and the crop protection industry might look like in the next 30 years. “Throughout this year’s annual meeting, we celebrated the work of those ‘agricultural giants’ that came before us and worked so steadily on advancing modern agriculture from the time of CLA’s founding until today,” Vroom noted. “At all times, however, we must continue looking forward. Our industry is dependent on students like Brennan and Caroline, who represent the future of agriculture.” Topics: croplife americacrop protection industryagricultural historyfarm bill About the Author: CropLife America

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About us / Who we are / Staff bios Weise, Stephan Deputy Director General, Research Stephen joined Bioversity International in 2008 as the Director of the Commodities for Livelihoods Programme, based in our Montpellier Office in France. He was appointed Deputy Director General Research in 2011. Before joining Bioversity International, Stephan worked for 16 years with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) on a variety of programmes related to tree crops, the environment, and farm diversification in the forest margins of West and Central Africa. From 2002 until he left IITA, he was the Regional Programme Manager of the Sustainable Tree Crops Programme - a public-private partnership and innovation platform that was seeking to increase the income of West and Central African cocoa farmers in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. He was also the coordinator of the working group on agronomic/landscape sustainability in a related programme called the ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre. In addition, he spent 4 years on integrated weed management and farming systems research at the University of Guelph, Canada, after completing his PhD. Related categories Visit the Research Strategy pages Visit the Office of the Director General Page

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Home › content › Peasant family in Paraguay condemned by agrotoxins in Paraguay Javiera Rulli - July 18th, 2006: The tragedy faced by Petrona Villasboa's peasant family doesn't seem to come to an end. The family has been affected by agrotoxic contamination for more than 3 years. This time Petrona's 3 month-old grandchild is suffering from hidrocefalia. Even after 3 years of judicial battle the family is still waiting for the conviction of those responsible for the poisoning of Petrona´s son. In 2003, in the department of Itapúa, Paraguay, Silvino Talavera, then 11 years old, was fumigated with a cocktail of agrotoxins which are being used to crop Roundup Ready soybeans. The children of Petrona; Silvino, Sofia (then 13 years) and Patricia (2 years), had to be hospitalised the following days due to extreme exposure to the agrotoxins. When their condition stabilised they were able to return home, where they were then exposed to yet another fumigation from another neighbouring soy farmer. Silvino died a few days after. Traces of fenol, carbamato and glyphosate were found in his sister's blood. With the support of CONAMURI, a Paraguayan organisation of peasant and indigenous women, Petrona started a court case in 2003 to try to get justice for the murder of her son and the poisoning of her entire family. But the Talavera Villasboa family is not only suffering from toxic exposure. During the past 3 years they have been facing threats and violence that tried to silence them. Their animals have been killed and the soy producers planted a strip of eucalyptus bordering the family's land, drying it up. In May, Petrona's brother, Serapio Villasboa, was brutally murdered, stabbed eleven times. Serapio was a member of the national peasant movement, and it is suspected that his murder was one of many committed by the Civil Guards, a repressive force under the conduct of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Ministry is linked to the big landowners and large scale soy producers, especially focusing to prosecute peasant leaders. In the case of Silvino Talavera Villasboa, the public prosecutor refused to continue with the case, stating that the family only wants to get compensation payments out of the murder of one of their family members. Sofia, the oldest sister of Silvino, cooked the food Silvino was carrying on the day he got fumigated. Following that day her health started to deteriorate. In 2005 she suffered from chronical head- and stomach aches, nausea and loss of sight for 3 months. The 17 year-old Sofia gave birth last April to a child that looked healthy at birth, until his head volume began to increase after two months. The diagnose was HYDROCEFALI, a disease which causes the accumulation of excessive cefaloraquìdeo liquid in the brain. For the moment the child is hospitalized in the Children´s Hospital of Asunción waiting for an operation to insert a valve to remove the liquid. This disease, genetic or acquired, is considered a malformation of the central nervous system. A genetic predisposition to agrotoxins might be triggered during fetus development by environmental factors like Sofia's exposure to agrotoxins. In Mexico, health researchers the department of Nayarit discovered a causal relationship between the exposure to pesticides and genetic malformations, especially amongst women who are being exposed to agrotoxins during the first 3 months of pregnancy. The study shows that the risk on these malformations amongst women being exposed to agrochemical products is three times higher than in an non-exposed population; including the ones who live in fumigated villages, those who live close to fields where agrotoxins are used, those who have a partner working with agrochemicals and those who wash contaminated clothes. In Misiones, Argentina, 5 out of every 1000 children is born with meliomeningocele, a malformation of the central nervous system related to hydrocephali. The cases are more frequent in paper and tabaco producing zones, where they use agrotoxins. This problem is being transferred to the whole environment, resulting in soil degradation, air contamination and poisoning of water sources. On top of this, it is estimated that in Misiones close to 13% of the population has some form of disability, being the double of the national average. In Chile, this problem has sprung up in he last 15 to 20 years in the industrial forest and fruit regions, leading to one of the highest rates of genetic malformations in Latin America. The Sixth Region of Chile has seen the rapid development of industrialised agriculture, with the massive use of pesticides. Preliminary work conducted in the region suggests an association between the exposure and an increase of the prevalence of genetic malformations at birth. In Rancuaga 4.1% of the incidents of genetic malformations were registered amongst newborns, 27,65% had an agricultural background linked to the use of pesticides and 19,11% of the cases show an incidence of exposure caused by the location of the house. Dr. Martin of the University of Passo Fundo in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, realised a study on the cases of newborns whose mothers have been exposed directly to agrotoxins; finding that 38% of the malformations were neurological, of which the biggest amount corresponds to hydrocephali (44%) amongst other types like mielomenigecele, microcefalia, spina bifida and anencefalia. Soy monocultures stands out for the high incidence of malformations and neurological problems, 78% of the cases correspond to this type of monoculture while 22% is attributed to the cultivation of wheat. The studies presented above are just a small fraction of all the studies that show the devastating impact of agrotoxins on health. In the hospitals of Asunción in Paraguay, cases of children with malformation, tumours, leukemia and respiratory problems are increasing. In the Children´s Hospital, next to he grandchild of Petrona, lies another baby with hydrocephali. The child, called Ruben, is in a very critical state after 4 operations that didn't improve its condition. The baby comes from the area around Capiata where in 2004, agrotoxins were spilled by a passing truck. A truck that was illegally transporting more than 20 thousand litres of agrotoxins (Metadof, Duron, Novafate and Novaquat) turned over and caused a spill that reached a stream and the Ypacarai lake. Thirty people were hospitalized after the accident. Six other babies were born with anencefalia (no brain) during the first months of 2006 in the community of Pirapo'i in Itapúa 100 km from Encarnacin. 57 families live in this community, of which 17 live surrounded by soy, wheat and sunflower monocultures. Three of the cases of anencefalia were from these 17 families. Health personnel from this area told the press that the majority of the cases are diarrhoea, vomiting, and skin problems such as allergies, stains and boils. The Minister of Health publically denied that the cases could be attributed to agricultural fumigation, and presented the press a report by Dr. Cardozo, the person responsible for running blood tests on the affected population. But this report has never been signed by Dr. Cardozo. Meanwhile, Dr. Carrillo, from the Instituto Privado del Niño, irresponsibly suggested that what they were seeing was a generalized case of folic acid deficiency. Encarnación is commonly described as the illegal cementary for agrotoxins in Paraguay. Two illegal dumps were discovered there in February 2005. The first one included 80 drums of highly toxic insecticide, and the second one was full of empty herbicide and fungicide containers 20 kilometres from the capital. It looks as though, on top of the poverty caused by soy expansion in Paraguayan peasant communities, a wave of diseases is also threatening to kill them. The government keeps their eyes closed to this genocide, denying the connection between these incidents and the use of agrotoxins. Apparently soy is too big a business in Paraguay for the government to attack it. The price tag of 6% of Paraguay's GDP seems to make the government blind to the fact that 20 litres of glyphosate is being used for every hectare of transgenic soy. And glyphosate is used with even stronger agrochemicals like endosulfan, paraquat and even DDT. The more the private sector of agribusiness gains, the less budget there is for health. Paraguay is investing in the Hidrovia, a large scale infrastructure project, to facilitate the export of soy. The country is indebted and the only proposed solution to tackle the country's poverty is the World Bank's program of Swapt Debt for Health and Nature, which distributes USAID money through local NGOs. It seems that incapacity, lack of vision and impunity are the dominating characteristics of this government, which is willing to sacrifice its people to maintain the agro-export model. The nephew of Silvino Talavera, like many newborns in Paraguay, is born with a malformation which will affect the rest of his life. His entire family has to face chronic health problems caused by agrotoxins like stomach aches, allergies, respiratory difficulty and hormonal deregulations. The soy producers responsible for the murder of the child, Herman Schelender and Alfredo Laustenlager, are still free after 3 years of juridical struggle. The case is struck in the Paraguayan Supreme Court, right where the soy lobby wants it. Unperturbed, they keep on producing transgenic soy, fumigating peasant communities and causing disease and the devastation of future generations. Javiera Rulli - July 18th, 2006

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Arizona tree nut plantings on the fast track Apr 18, 2017 California State Water Project boosts irrigation allotment Apr 18, 2017 Even with effective synthetic alternatives Sulfur remains a relevant tool for controlling powdery mildew Apr 12, 2017 With buds pushing in late March, start of San Joaquin Valley wine grape crop follows normal timing Apr 12, 2017 Lower Colorado River basin crops fare well in perchlorate testing Cary Blake | Jan 13, 2007 Collaborative efforts over the last three- and a-half years by three researchers portends the perchlorate level in food and feed crops grown in the lower Colorado River basin is far lower than the 2005 National Academy of Sciences' recommended reference dose of .7 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day. “Even the latest research indicates the perchlorate level in crops is not a serious public health issue,” said Charles Sanchez, who spoke to farmers during the Desert Vegetable Crops Workshop in Yuma, Ariz., in late November. He is the resident director of the University of Arizona's Yuma Agricultural Center in Yuma, Ariz., and a professor of soil, water and environmental science. Perchlorate background Detected in the 1990s, the chemical ammonium perchlorate leaked from a defense-related plant near Henderson, Nev., into the Colorado River. While cleanup efforts have been successful, the bottom line is that the rocket fuel ingredient continues to exist in crops in the lower Colorado River basin. Food safety has been in question since the spill. The human issue — perchlorate levels in the body can interrupt iodine intake in the thyroid gland leading to goiter development. The ongoing issue remains: how much perchlorate leads to the problem? Perchlorate and agriculture The affected river basin includes areas in California and Arizona including the Coachella Valley north of the Salton Sea, the Imperial Valley (south of the sea), the Yuma County and Imperial County valleys adjacent to the Colorado River, the Parker and Palo Verde Valleys, and the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District on the Gila River that is fed by the Colorado River. Sanchez, along with University of California-Riverside toxicologist Bob Krieger, and Center for Disease Control chemist Ben Blount, have ongoing research, testing crops grown in the basin for perchlorate levels. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kerr Magee (former owner of the perchlorate plant), and commodity councils have funded the projects. So far, test results are positive for agriculture. The scientists' agricultural findings have been reviewed through normal scientific review channels. 2006 findings All of the research by Sanchez, Krieger and Blount has been published. The latest information released in 2006 was a telltale on perchlorate levels in citrus. Results showed below detection or very low levels. In separate findings also published in ‘06, durum wheat was the focal point. Sanchez told the farmers in Yuma, “You can get high concentrations in the leaves and can get other concentrations in other parts of the plant. However, the perchlorate level in the grain is very low in most situations.” ‘04-'05 findings In lettuce results published in 2004, lettuce grown in California outside of the referenced basin, plus product grown in Michigan, Ohio, New York and New Jersey, and even from Quebec, Canada, was tested. Four hundred samples were evaluated. In '05 published testing on various lettuce types in the Colorado River basin, perchlorate levels varied across lettuce varieties. The bottom line was exposure usually less than three percent of the reference dose. Sanchez said, “The point is there is perchlorate in all lettuce. You can't eat enough lettuce to get the perchlorate reference dose. The doses found in other parts of the U.S. and Canada are similar to what we're finding in the lower Colorado River area.” 2007 and beyond The researchers have collected data on all crops grown in the basin. Testing on brassica crops like broccoli, cabbage, and collards will soon be submitted for review. “We have data on dairy, watermelons, cantaloupes, alfalfa, Bermuda hay, carrots, green beans, and egg plant. We should publish the information in the spring (2007).” Sanchez called the researchers' efforts a comprehensive estimate of exposure in the area. The information for review will also address a broader perspective - cumulative exposure. “That's where we're headed in the studies. We don't have the data yet but ultimately we're going to see what happens to the person who eats for example lettuce, watermelon, and pasta grown in the basin. How does cumulative exposure play out with the reference dose,” Sanchez asked. He acknowledged early findings - cumulative exposure for adults will not be an issue under the current reference dose. The impact on children will be more difficult to determine. Timely reductions As the river cleanup continues and time moves forward, Sanchez said perchlorate amounts would fall in crops. Yet, contaminated groundwater would recover more slowly. “This (perchlorate) will have a much longer residence time and will take a lot longer for our groundwater to turnover than will our soil solutions in the rooting zone,” he said. Front-page news again While news of the NAS-developed reference dose opened a floodgate of controversy in 2005 that the level was not high enough, the perchlorate issue is expected to seize headlines in 2007 on two fronts. “Key leaders in the new Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress with perchlorate agendas have assumed key leadership of major committees. They are expected to bring the issue back to the forefront,” said Sanchez. According to a Nov. 20, 2006 story posed on the Web site insideEPA.com, four California Democrats in Congress will likely seek more attention to the perchlorate issue including Sens. Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein; and Reps. Hilda Solis, 32nd Dist., and Henry Waxman, 30th Dist. At press time, Sen. Boxer was in line to become the new chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Sen. Feinstein was expected to chair an appropriations panel funding military construction and other areas. Rep. Solis was the likely subcommittee chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials. Rep. Waxman was the expected chair of the House Government Reform Committee. The Congressional leaders are likely to insist on more strict risk controls on toxic substances like perchlorate. Also expected to create a firestorm in '07 is a CDC finding published in the journal Environmental Health and Perspective that suggested lower levels of perchlorate lead to thyroid malfunction. The report indicated a relationship between perchlorate concentrations and the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) thyrotropin. According to the report, TA4 and THS in women changed relative to perchlorate exposure particularly when iodine was marginal. The report said predicted reductions were significant. Some women under the reference dose experienced significant hormone changes. Sanchez noted, “The report will be a catalyst for the key Democratic leadership to reopen the debate.” Bottom line While the debate on acceptable perchlorate levels will face renewed challenges, Sanchez predicted the current reference dose would remain in effect for the next 2-3 years. Yet he pointed to the ongoing awareness and concern expressed by the retail food industry. “In 2005, lettuce growers received calls from buyers for Wal-Mart and Albertson's asking if the growers could assure them that the lettuce was perchlorate-free,” said Sanchez. “Growers can't give them that. It comes down to dose. Our analytical methodology is so good these days to the point that we can find anything in everything. The relevant issue is the dose versus the level of concern.” He pointed to a separate study conducted by another group, which tested urine samples in 3,000 U.S. citizens. The results - every sample contained perchlorate. The chemical occurs naturally in the environment even from lightning, Sanchez said.

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Low infrastructures Disrupted agricultural systems High unemployment rate Poor sanitation and water quality Overview Endowed with vast and varied natural resources, a large biodiversity, lush vegetation and a climate favorable to agriculture, Liberia has enormous potential in mining and ecotourism, as well as food and cash crop production. But decades of economic plunder and social disinvestments, amplified by two civil wars, eroded human capital, laid waste to social infrastructure and ravaged productive assets. War ended in August 2003 with the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement, followed by deployment of a 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force, UNMIL. Under the aegis of UNMIL and the broader international community, general and presidential elections were held late 2005. Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected President and Liberia returned to democratic rule. The country now enjoys relative political stability and improved security due to the government’s efforts and international political, financial and military support which have strengthened civil authority throughout the country and enabled a gradual recovery of the economy. However, the social, economic, infrastructural, and human costs of the civil war still linger more than half a decade after the war’s end. The country remains one of the poorest in the world, ranked among the bottom five countries (176 out of 179) on the 2008 UNDP Human Development Index. Per capita GDP was US$132 in 2008 (IMF Country Report No. 08/108, March 2008), and 64 percent of Liberia’s 3.5 million people live below the poverty line (Core Welfare Indicator Questionnaire, 2007). The government launched a three-year Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) in June 2008 aimed to expand peace and security, revitalize the economy, strengthen governance and the rule of law, rehabilitate infrastructure and deliver basic social services. The government and international partners are investing tremendous efforts and resources to achieve the aims of the PRS, considered critical in setting Liberia on an irreversible course toward recovery and development. WFP Activities WFP is working to connect farmers in Liberia to markets through the Purchase for Progress initiative. Learn more WFP uses food support to build the human capital of communities through school meals and to rebuild the livelihoods of rural families by helping smallholder farmers to rehabilitate agricultural assets with a focus on rice production. A 2008 external evaluation of WFP activities found that school meals was an important factor in revitalizing the education system in rural areas and encouraging the return and resettlement of displaced populations. WFP also provides food assistance to protect the nutritional and health status of mothers and children at risk of malnutrition, TB patients and People Living with HIV. Under the new protracted relief and recovery operation (PRRO) due to start in September 2009, WFP activities will include lean season safety net distributions to mitigate the impact of high food prices on vulnerable rural households in the most food insecure counties during the hunger period between harvests. WFP is strengthening the capacities of government and communities for their increased ownership and participation in the management of WFP programmes through the school meals and food security and nutrition monitoring programmes. WFP is helping to provide small-scale farmers access to reliable markets at fair price, while improving the capacity of farmer cooperatives in agro-processing and marketing, and in the development of procurement processes. This effort to strengthen the institutional, productive and competitive potentials of farmers and connect them to markets is being implemented through the Purchase for Progress initiative.

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A Future for Agriculture, A Future for Haiti Haiti's way forward is tied to food sovereignty and a renewed focus on local agriculture. A peasant group meets to discuss post-earthquake strategies for rebuilding agriculture. Photo by Roberto (Bear) Guerra. Beverly Bell posted Mar 04, 2010 "We plant but we can’t produce or market. We plant but we have no food to eat. We want agriculture to improve so our country can live and so we peasants can live, too." -Rilo Petit-homme, peasant organizer from St. Marc, Haiti What would it take to transform Haiti’s economy such that its role in the global economy is no longer that of providing cheap labor for sweatshops? What would it take for hunger to no longer be the norm, for the country no longer to depend on imports and hand-outs, and for Port-au-Prince’s slums no longer to contain 85 percent of the city’s residents? What would it take for the hundreds of thousands left homeless by the earthquake to have a secure life, with income? According to Haitian peasant organizations, at the core of the solutions is a commitment on the part of government to support family agriculture, with policies to make the commitment a reality. Haiti is the only country in the hemisphere that is still majority rural. Estimates of the percentage of Haiti’s citizens who are farmers span from 60.5 percent (UN, 2006) to 80 percent (the figure used by peasant groups). Nevertheless, food imports currently constitute 57 percent of what Haitians consume (World Bank, 2008). It wasn't always that way; policy choices made it so. In the 1980s, the U.S. and international financial institutions pressured Haiti to lower tariffs on food imports, leading to a flood of cheap food with which Haitian farmers could not compete. At the same time, USAID and others pressured Haiti to orient its production toward export, leaving farmers vulnerable to shifting costs of sugar and coffee on the world market. Eighty-eight percent of the rural population lives in poverty; 67 percent lives in extreme poverty (UNDP, 2004). Things have grown worse for them since the 2008 hurricane season, when four storms battered Haiti in three weeks, destroying more than 70 percent of agriculture and most rural roads, bridges, and other infrastructure needed for production and marketing. At least during the earthquake, only one farming area, around Jacmel, was badly damaged. There is a direct relationship between the state of agriculture and the earthquake’s high toll in deaths, injuries, and homelessness. The quake was so destructive because more than three million people were jammed into a city meant for 200,000 to 250,000, with most living in extremely precarious and overcrowded housing. This is partly due to the demise of peasant agriculture over the past three decades, which has forced small producers to move to the capital to enter the sweatshop and informal sectors. It is also due, in part, to the fact that government services effectively do not exist for those in the countryside. ID cards, universities, specialized health care, and much else is available exclusively, or almost exclusively, in what Haitians call the Republic of Port-au-Prince, forcing many to visit or live there to meet their needs. “It’s not houses which will rebuild Haiti, it’s investing in the agriculture sector,” says Rosnel Jean-Baptiste of the group Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen (translated literally, Heads Together Small Peasant Farmers of Haiti). Those interviewed for this article, including dozens of peasant farmers from five organizations as well as economists and development experts, agree that the current moment offers an opportunity to create secure employment for the majority, increase rural development, and reduce hunger. Their goal is resettlement with employment for those displaced from earthquake-hit areas. If reinforced, agriculture could help feed the nation, which is currently suffering a dire food crisis. More than 2.4 million Haitians are estimated to be food-insecure. Nine percent of children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition, and 24 percent from chronic malnutrition (World Food Programme, 2010). That poverty is political in origin, largely due to World Bank and IMF conditions on loans which have squeezed the poor, and free trade policies which have made it impossible for farmers to grow enough food to meet the needs. Securing adequate and affordable Haitian-grown food is one step toward diminishing that poverty, while another is rejecting IMF prescriptions. Food Rebellions:7 Steps to Solving the Food CrisisAlternatives to the trade and "aid" policies that displace farmers and increase hunger. Agriculture could also offer a solution for the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people now residing in rural areas. In interviews with dozens of Port-au-Prince residents who are taking refuge in the Central Plateau, most say they would stay there if they could find a way to sustain themselves. If they could be given the land and resources necessary to begin farming, they would not need to return to city sweatshops, which do not provide a living wage, job security, or health or safety protections. Port-au-Prince could then become a livable city without overcrowded and inhumane conditions, without more than eight out of ten people residing in slums (as suggested by UN Human Settlements Program reports). “We are meeting with different sectors to construct a Haiti where all Haitians feel like children of the land,” says Sylvain Henrilus of Tèt Kole. Peasant groups—even those with historic distrust of each other—and other allies are meeting regularly to plan their advocacy and mobilization for reorienting Haiti’s political economy in favor of agriculture, based on the following priorities: Food sovereignty, the right of people to grow and consume their own food. With trade policies which support local production, Haiti’s levels of self-sufficiency could increase. Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay and the National Peasant Movement of the Papay Congress says, “the country has the right to determine its own agricultural policies, its own food production policies, to produce for family and for local consumption in healthy and simple agriculture which respects the environment, Mother Earth, as the mother of future generations.”Decentralization of services. The "people outside," as rural inhabitants are known, must have access to services equal to the people of Port-au-Prince. The ability to meet their needs where they are is the right of rural people as well as a way to keep Port-au-Prince from again becoming overcrowded. Rosnel Jean-Baptiste says, “We need to deconstruct the capital, bringing services into the country and helping people find jobs there.”Technical support, especially for sustainable, ecological farming. Farmers in the region of the Artibonite, for example, stated that their melons, bananas, and tomatoes are not producing well, but they don’t know what the problem is or how to resolve it. They need advice from agronomists. They also need credit to help them buy equipment, as well as support with storage and marketing, reforestation, and irrigation and water management. Elio Youyoute, a member of a community peasant association in the south, says, “We are trying to grow enough food to feed the cities, but we need help from the state.”Land reform. Those who work the land need secure tenure. Otherwise they will continue to be unable to support themselves on what Haitians call ‘a handkerchief of land,’ plots sometimes no larger than 15 feet square. Land reform must be not just a one-time hand-out, which would quickly revert to its previous concentration as struggling farmers are forced to sell their small gardens, but a change in tenure laws accompanied by technical support. Sylvain Henrilus of Tèt Kole says, “The land reform we need is not what Préval did in his first term, which was to just divide a bit of land into very small plots without any support, but where those who work the land have the right to that land with all the infrastructure and means - not just to adequately feed the people but to export as we used to do, to have our sovereignty in all dimensions.”Seeds, what Doudou Pierre of Vía Campesina’s coordinating committee calls “the patrimony of humanity.” Haiti’s seed stock is not going towards the March planting season as intended, but rather toward feeding the flood of internally displaced people. Farmers need help in procuring seed supplies, which they insist not be genetically modified. Chavannes Jean-Baptiste insists that “If people start sending hybrid, GMO seeds, that’s the end of Haitian agriculture.”A ban on food aid in the medium to long-term. U.S.A.I.D. alone is giving $113 million in food aid this year, according to an Associated Press article on February 26. Farmers agree that aid is critical in this moment of crisis, but say that the government needs to quickly do everything it can to shore up production so that domestic agriculture can begin replacing the aid. Otherwise, Haiti will grow even more dependent, and multinational food and seed companies will overtake Haiti’s market even more.The challenges are many. The chief challenge is securing the state’s commitment of the priorities outlined above. The government has a long history of responding not to the needs of peasant farmers but to those of the large landowning class and, more recently, to the desires of the U.S. and other foreign powers looking to dump or sell food in Haiti. In interviews, farmer after farmer indicated a resolve to work to change this state of affairs, recognizing that it will be a long haul. Says Tèt Kole’s Rosnel Jean-Baptiste, “It’s up to us social movements to put our heads together to change the situation of food production and the model of the state in Haiti.” Interested? More of Beverly Bell's . :: How a community-based food system works Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives, and is associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. Beverly Bell in HaitiEverybody Eats :: How a Community Food System Works YES! Gift SubscriptionsGive friends and family a year of inspiration! Now with print and digital editions. Life After Oil IssueHow we can get to post-carbon—and what life will be like when we do. The Revolution Where You LiveLooking for hope? You'll find it in Sarah van Gelder's new book. Bill McKibben calls it "A passionate, powerful account."

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First Avenue at 46th Street Participants at UN-backed meeting agree to work towards rules on ... Participants at UN-backed meeting agree to work towards rules on biosafety Source: United Nations More than 2,000 participants attending a week-long biosafety meeting have agreed to work towards legally binding rules for liability and redress for potential damage caused by the movements of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reports. The participants at the fourth meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, held in Bonn, Germany, and said to be the largest ever gathering on the issue, have reached a deal on both a timetable and a framework for negotiating the rules and procedures. The contents of the legally binding instrument for liability and redress for the GMOs, also known as living modified organisms (LMOs), will now be discussed at the next meeting of the parties to the Protocol, itself a supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity. That meeting is scheduled to take place in October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan. Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary to the Convention, welcomed the agreement, calling it “great news for the biodiversity family.” While GMOs or LMOs have the potential to increase agricultural yields and to grow in habitats otherwise unfavourable to crops, there are also widespread concerns that they might pose major threats to local ecosystems and therefore biodiversity. agriculture crop damage Pests, Weeds and Crop Diseases Arriving Early You are here A warmer than usual winter and wet spring are ushering in some crop diseases and weeds early in the season and could trigger a pestier summer. Ohio State University entomologists are keeping a close eye on insect species that survived the winter and may appear earlier and more abundantly. Particularly concerning are the pests that preyed on last year’s crops, including slugs, stink bugs and bean leaf beetles on soybeans, cereal leaf beetles on small grains, and Asiatic garden beetles and western bean... Assessing crop damages after extreme weather Original story at MIT News Producing torrential rain and wind gusts exceeding 180 miles per hour as it made landfall in the Philippines, Typhoon Haiyan left more than6,000 dead and 4 million homeless. The November 2013 storm also obliterated thousands of hectares of crops, mostly rice, the staple food for about 90 percent of the population. Host to six to nine tropical cyclones per year since 1970, and a citizenry that consumes more rice than it produces, the Philippines has for many years augmented its homegrown... Taller, thinner crop beds save money, water, other resources Looking out over thousands of acres of tomatoes, Miguel Talavera, director of East Coast growing operations at Pacific Tomato Grower, Ltd., marvels at the narrow lanes of fruit that are thriving in the hot Florida sun. Talavera credits increase in yield and a decrease in the use of fumigants to a collaboration with researchers and Extension faculty at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Three years ago, Talavera began working with Sanjay Shukla, a professor in the agricultural... Fruit fly outbreak cost growers $4.1 million; could have been much worse University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences economists estimate the Oriental fruit fly outbreak last year caused at least $4.1 million in direct crop damages in Miami-Dade County, but the damage could have been far worse, UF/IFAS researchers say. In the new report, UF/IFAS researchers and the chief economist for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, compiled three scenarios for crop losses: optimistic, mid-range and pessimistic. So, although the optimistic scenario... No comments were found for Participants at UN-backed meeting agree to work towards rules on biosafety. Be the first to comment!

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MEDIA INQUIRIES | (858) 450-0008 | N/A California Congressman Scott Peters Makes Official Visit to Cibus’ San Diego Headquarters San Diego, CA (October 25, 2016) — On October 4, Congressional Representative Scott Peters, who represents California’s 52nd Congressional District, visited the San Diego headquarters of Cibus, a leader in developing products using novel non-transgenic (non-GMO) breeding technologies. Peters visited the labs at Cibus and its subsidiary company Nucelis, and met with Cibus executives including Peter Beetham, Greg Gocal, and Sean O’Connor to discuss the many positive ways Cibus’ technology has been laying the groundwork to help feed the world. Cibus employs a staff of over 110 in Peters’ district. Representative Peters spent roughly two hours touring Cibus’ state-of-the-art facilities, learning first-hand how Cibus scientists develop non-transgenic traits in crops including canola, flax, potatoes and rice. He spoke at length with 60 Cibus employees, addressing their concerns, encouraging STEM education for our nation’s youth, and sharing his wonder at their tremendous accomplishments in just 15 years. “Cibus is at the forefront of breakthroughs in precision gene editing that are poised to improve traits in every major crop within the next decade,” said Rep. Peters. “Their agricultural research and breeding has the potential to improve crop yields and make farming more sustainable and drought resistant.” “It’s important to have the support of Congressman Peters and other elected officials during this remarkable time in agriculture and technology,” said Peter Beetham, Ph.D., President & Chief Executive Officer of Cibus. “Because of the rising costs of developing transgenic crops and their lack of global acceptance, there is a pivot in the industry towards non-transgenic breeding technology. Cibus is answering this need by developing non-transgenic traits in major crops.” “The research and crop development being done at Cibus is a perfect example of how San Diego is leading the country in the biotech industry,” Peters said. “The Rapid Trait Development System technology, RTDS™, combined with their impressive labs is changing the world of plant breeding through new and innovative methods to address food production and hunger issues.” Congressman Peters was elected in 2012 and serves a district that includes the cities of Coronado, Poway and most of northern San Diego. He currently serves on the House Armed Services Committee & the House Judiciary Committee, with a focus on intellectual property protection. In addition to representing hundreds of the best scientific organizations in the world, Peters is also Biocom’s Elected Official of the Year for 2016. Peters has received this honor three times and is the first to receive the award for two consecutive years. Congressman Peters is also a co-founder of the bipartisan Life Sciences Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives. To schedule an interview with a Cibus representative, please contact Shawna McGregor at 917-971-7852 or N/A. About Cibus Cibus (www.cibus.com) is a leading precision gene editing company with a unique, patented technology for naturally modifying cell functions. With over 300 patents and patent applications, Cibus is a technology leader in the silent revolution in the development of non-transgenic traits. Cibus’ non-transgenic technology enables it access to global multibillion-dollar markets in agriculture, specialty chemicals, and human health. Utilizing its patented Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS™) technology, Cibus offers a disruptive alternative to transgenic approaches. To date, international regulatory authorities have deemed traits from Cibus’ RTDS technology to be indistinguishable from mutagenesis associated with normal breeding and thus have determined that these traits will be globally acceptable. Cibus has a worldwide presence, with subsidiaries in both Europe and North America, including Nucelis, its bio-industrials division, and a state-of-the-art research and development center in San Diego, California. Cibus’ core purpose is to lead the transition to sustainable non-transgenic agricultural and industrial products and improved human health by harvesting nature’s natural diversity. For more information, visit cibus.com. Find Cibus on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Google+.

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▼Agriculture (613) Hydroponics (2) ▼Alternatives/Organics (727) ▼State/Local (1315) ▼Water (309) WordPress.org « Antibacterial Soap Exposes Health Workers to High Triclosan Levels California Passes Bill That Mandates Response to Bee Crisis, but Delays Action until 2020 » 22 Aug Town Bans Land Application of Sewage Sludge, or Biosolids (Beyond Pesticides, August 22, 2014) The Town Board in Wheatfield, New York unanimously voted last month to amend its biosolids law to ban any application of sewage sludge and other similar materials from the treatment of municipal wastewater to any land in town, even for those who already have permits from the state. The law reasons that the potential contamination of groundwater, surface water, and soil, as well as the potential for air pollution, poses an unreasonable risk to town residents, public health, and the environment. Biosolids, otherwise known as sewage sludge, are composed of dried microbes previously used to process wastewater in treatment plants. The material is increasingly being used in conventional agriculture, but its application is explicitly forbidden in organic production. This is because the sludge can contain high concentrations of toxic contaminants, such as pesticides, detergents, estrogenic hormones, antibiotics, dioxins, PCBs, flame retardants, and heavy metals. A 2002 study revealed the material to be associated with an increased prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus infections, a condition known to cause skin rashes and respiratory problems, for people located in close proximity to biosolid application sites. More recently, new research adds to existing evidence of the hazards of sewage sludge fertilizer by demonstrating that chemical contaminants are sufficiently mobile and persistent that they can easily be transported to groundwater, with implication for local drinking water. Town Attorney Robert J. O’Toole explained that although the new law allows for the continuation of “existing facilities,” the amendment clarifies that land application is not considered an existing facility. “Any land application is not grandfathered,” Mr. O’Toole said. “There’s no application in Wheatfield, ever, for anything.” The ban, which passed July 28, was interpreted as making an exception for existing Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) permits, such as those held by Milleville Brothers Farm. The controversy arose last year from the byproduct created by Quasar Energy Group’s anaerobic digester on Liberty Drive. The “equate,” or the watery, nitrogen-rich byproduct, is hyped by the company as a good fertilizer. The company’s plant uses microbes to convert food waste into methane gas, which is harnessed to produce electricity or compressed natural gas. However, part of its raw material is sewage sludge, which is processed human waste. “I hope you’ll hold the Niagara County Sewer District No. 1 to the same standard,” Quasar spokesman Nathan C. Carr told the board. Unfortunately, however, the July 28 law exempts “the generation of biosolids at a public owned treatment works.” The town’s law firm, Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel, blasted the DEC in a letter for attempting to rewrite its regulation according to the types of soil on which the biosolids may be spread, in an apparent effort to weaken the law and make it easier for application in Wheatfield to be permitted. The DEC contends that the omission of a common soil type in Wheatfield from the list of allowable biosolids sites was an accident. The letter said the attempted change violates two state laws and U.S. EPA guidelines. The law cites the state’s Environmental Conservation Law, which allows for municipalities to impose controls on waste disposal operations that are stricter than the state law requires.. The amendments to the town law also add a penalty section to the measure, which includes fines and/or possible imprisonment for illegal land application or production or storage of biosolids. The sale, storage, or application of lawn and garden fertilizer intended for retail sale on an area of land less than 2.5 acres in size is excluded from the town law. The only surefire way to avoid food grown with biosolids is to buy products that are USDA organic certified, which does not allow the use of dried municipal waste microbes in its production. Additionally, be aware of products used on lawn and garden by scrutinizing any lawn fertilizers which claim to be “organic” or “natural” but list ingredients such as “biosolids,” “dried microbes,” or “activated sewage sludge.” For more information on the hazards of biosolids, read Beyond Pesticides’ Biosolids or Biohazards? Source: Buffalo News All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides. on Friday, August 22nd, 2014 at 12:01 am and is filed under Agriculture, Alternatives/Organics, Announcements, Biomonitoring, Chemicals, New York, State/Local, Take Action, Water. = Using the Blog

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Midwest Corn Drought Could Also Affect Soybean Output August 2, 2012 The recent drought that has torn through the Midwestern United States is one of the worst to hit the region in a number of years, and its effects could be far-reaching for the farmers who are reliant upon significant production levels. Two states could be hit especially hard, as Iowa and Illinois farmers are prepared for production levels to be much less than expected. The Champaign News-Gazette reported that corn and soybean prices should be peaking in the late summer or early fall. University of Illinois agricultural economist Darrel Good noted that this could be a bad thing for farmers. “With an early harvest, a price peak by September seems most likely, assuming that prices go high enough to slow the pace of consumption sufficiently,” Good told the news outlet, noting that his prediction was based upon historical data. The early peak in prices is not the worst problem for farmers in Illinois, however, as Good noted that the average yield for corn and soybeans in the area will be lower than anticipated. According to the news outlet, this year, corn and soybeans will qualify as short crops, something that the commodities have not been classified as more than 10 and eight times, respectively, since 1970. This same lack of production, caused by the brutal drought tearing through the midwest, should be seen for Iowa farmers. The Des Moines Register reported that the USDA noted that three-quarters of the nation’s corn crop is in fair-to-poor condition. Iowa’s stockpile of the commodity is doing worse than other areas, as just 23 percent of the crop wouldqualify as good-to-better. At the same point last year, 80 percent of the corn crop in Iowa was rated good to excellent. The same type of drop in quality has been seen for soybeans in the state, as only 28 percent of Iowa’s crop is in good-to-excellent shape, compared with 80 percent during the same period a year ago. The weather is the sole determining factor in the crop quality, according to Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey. “The statewide average precipitation last week was .10 inches while normal for the week is 1.00 inches. Iowa has now recorded below normal rainfall for ten of the past eleven weeks and above normal temperatures for eleven of the past twelve weeks,” said Northey. Photo Courtesy Of: http://globalbhasin.blogspot.com Categorized: Agriculture

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The Canola Council of Canada applauds recent steps towards settling trade dispute with China Home/Featured On Homepage/The Canola Council of Canada applauds recent steps towards settling trade dispute with China In All Sections August 31, 2016 – Winnipeg – China’s Premier Li Keqiang and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have announced that Canadian canola can continue to be exported to China under the current regulatory regime while officials work to finalize a long-term solution to blackleg concerns in the days and weeks ahead. “This is a significant step towards resolution of this long-standing issue”, said Patti Miller, President of the Canola Council of Canada. “We sincerely appreciate the Government of Canada’s efforts to achieve a science-based solution.” Today’s announcement is a turning point that enables government officials to quickly conclude their discussions. The Canola Council has been supporting technical discussions on the ground in Beijing in recent days. “Canadian and Chinese officials have worked diligently on finding a science-based approach to blackleg risk that will be both practical and effective,” says Ms. Miller. “With today’s announcement, we encourage both governments to rapidly conclude a science-based agreement that will provide long-term stability.” In 2009, canola exports to China were stopped as a result of concerns over transmission of blackleg to the Chinese rapeseed crop. Exports resumed to designated ports in China with an agreement to conduct joint research to better understand the disease and how risk of transmission could be mitigated. Over the last 6 ½ years the Canadian canola industry has invested millions of dollars in blackleg research. As a result of this investment, research has shown that reducing the incidence of blackleg in Canada will benefit both countries. “We applaud the efforts of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland and Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay,” says Miller. “Their timely interventions mean that a science-based solution is in sight and that Canada’s most valuable export to China can continue.” Canola seed exports to China have been the single most valuable export from Canada to China over the last five years. In 2015 Canada exported 3.8 million tonnes of canola seed to China, worth $2.0 billion – accounting for 40% of Canada’s canola seed exports. The CCC is a full value chain organization representing canola growers, processors, life science companies and exporters. Keep it Coming 2025 is the strategic plan to ensure the canola industry’s continued growth, demand, stability and success – achieving 52 bushels per acre to meet global market demand of 26 million metric tonnes by the year 2025. The CCC will celebrate its 50th anniversary at the annual Canola Council Convention, March 7-9, 2017 in Winnipeg, MB. For more information on the Canola Council of Canada, please visit www.canolacouncil.org. Crystal Klippenstein, Communications [email protected]

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like follow watch subscribe Tag Archives | salon READ: How neglecting bees could endanger humansMay 1, 2013 Bees pollinate much of our food supply, but a pesticide threatens their survival BY RICHARD SCHIFFMAN (Credit: StudioSmart via Shutterstock) If you are an almond farmer in the Central Valley of California, where 80 percent of the world’s production is grown, you had a problem earlier this spring. Chances are there weren’t enough bees to pollinate your trees. That’s because untold thousands of colonies — almost half of the 1.6 million commercial hives that almond growers depend on — failed to survive the winter, making this the worst season for beekeepers in anyone’s memory. And that is saying a lot, because bees have been faring increasingly poorly for years now. Much of this recent spike in bee mortality is attributed to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious condition where all the worker bees in a colony simply fly off as a group and never make it back to the hive. Scientists have been studying this odd phenomenon for years and they still aren’t sure why it is happening. But a slew of recent studies have pointed an accusing finger at a class of pesticides, the ubiquitous neonicotonoids (neonics for short), which include imidacloprid and clothianidin, manufactured by Germany’s agro-giant Bayer, and thiamethoxam, made by Syngenta. The neonics, the world’s leading insecticides, are applied on a whopping 75 percent of the farmlands in America, according to Charles Benbrook, research professor at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources. Neonics are a so-called systemic pesticide. That means that they are taken up by the plant’s vascular system and get impregnated into all parts of the plant that an insect encounters, including the leaves, seeds, nectar and pollen. Corn and soybean seeds are typically coated with the pesticide before planting. Fruit trees and many vegetables are sprayed. Few researchers believe that the neonics alone are to blame for the bees’ troubles, which appear to result from a perfect storm of contributing environmental factors. Pollinators have been called the canaries in the coal mine for ecosystem health. The declining numbers of both wild species and domesticated bee colonies worldwide is regarded as a troubling barometer of the state of the environment, reflecting habitat loss, the spread of agricultural monocultures, infestation by viral pathogens and bee parasites like the Varroa mite, climate change and even electromagnetic radiation, which seems to interfere with bees’ homing ability. But the neonics, which contains a chemical related to nicotine that attacks an insect’s nervous system, have been demonstrated to kill bees — and especially the queens — when applied in high enough doses. And a growing body of research suggests that at sub-lethal concentrations, these agro-chemicals mess with their navigation, foraging and communication abilities, throw off their reproductive patterns, and weaken bee immune systems, making them susceptible to sudden colony collapse. One study published by scientists at Purdue University in 2012 showed high levels of clothianidin and thiamethoxam in bees found dead near agricultural fields. Other bees at the hives were observed exhibiting uncoordinated movement, tremors and convulsions, all signs of insecticide poisoning. In yet another study conducted by scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health, which I reported on in Reuters last April, researchers actually re-created colony collapse disorder in several honeybee hives simply by administering small doses of a popular neonic, imidacloprid. These and other recent studies led the European Union to call on Monday for a provisional ban on neonics for two years to see what impact this has on Europe’s endangered bees. The use of the pesticides had already been temporarily suspended in Germany, France and Italy. The vote in Brussels was split (15 of the 27 EU countries voted for the ban). The British Newspaper the Observer said that there was “a fierce behind the scenes” campaign to prevent the ban. The paper reported that agricultural multinational Syngenta, facing what it called “serious damage to the integrity of our product and reputation,” threatened to sue individual European Union officials involved in publishing the damning report about the dangers of neonics. The U.K. voted against the ban, alleging that the science is inconclusive and that barring the pesticides would be hugely expensive and potentially cripple food production. But the ban had lots of public support, including a petition signed by over 2.5 million Europeans. And it was universally applauded by environmentalists, who have been fighting for it for years. Andrew Pendleton of the U.K division of Friends of the Earth said: “This decision is a significant victory for common sense and our beleaguered bee populations. Restricting the use of these pesticides could be an historic milestone on the road to recovery for these crucial pollinators.” Pressure has been building in the U.S. to restrict the neonics. A coalition of beekeepers and environmental groups filed suit in March against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its failure to ban the pesticides, saying that the agency didn’t consider the impact of the pesticides on vital pollinators. The American Bird Conservancy published in March a review of 200 studies on neonics, including industry research obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, which concluded that the neonics are lethal to birds and other wildlife and to the aquatic systems on which they depend. These threats to wildlife are significant, but the world’s attention is rightly focused on bees, which are responsible for pollinating nearly a third of our food supply. These industrious insects are in serious trouble. And if their decline continues unchecked, we humans may soon be in trouble too. [click to view original article via salon.com] Read full story · Posted in News Help us save the honey bees!! Donate to HoneyLove.orgYour contribution directly supports the educational outreach, community action and advocacy efforts to protect the health and well-being of honey bees. HoneyLove is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible.

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FG to produce 2.6 million metric tons of rice THE Federal Government said it is ready to produce 2.6 million metric tons of paddy rice in 2013 dry season farming following the success it recorded in the wet season rice cultivation and production. This was disclosed by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, during a courtesy call by commercial farmers from Zamfara State. Akinwumi acknowledged the farmers for their productivity and keying into the Agricultural Transformation Agenda, ATA, in the agricultural sector.He said the transformation recorded in Zamfara State agricultural sector had made it possible for government to record a great leap after 28 years of down trend of agricultural activities in the sector, adding that agriculture has become a serious business in the state.Adesina said, “Last year when President Goodluck Jonathan approved that we do dry season rice farming and production, it was the first time in the country the federal government took a policy decision to produce rice in the dry season. “As we are going into this dry season, our expectation is that we will produce 1.6 million metric tons of paddy rice in this dry season. Already in this wet season that just ended, our estimation is 9, 000 metric tons in the main season and we are going to do 1.6 metric tons in the dry season. If you add both together, you will get 2.6 million metric tons of paddy rice by the end of the season.“That means that we will produce the equivalent of 80 percent of what our needs are and if we can mill it in industrial scale quality, that will be 1.7 million metric tons of milled rice, and the total amount we are importing is 2.1 million metric tons of rice.“People want us to continue to import rice. So when they see us producing rice, they are not happy because they want to bring in rice from Thailand, and that will not be our portion.” The minister noted the federal government is seriously working hard to get a lot more of integrated rice mills into this country, saying that he will be leading a delegation to China with Rice Processors and Millers Association of Nigeria as part of delegation.“We have decided that we are going to adjust our tariff system, duties and levies to cut off those who are trying to kill us with smuggling through Benin Republic. And we are also going to have rice aggregation centres; all of them will be equipped to clean, grade and guarantee a price for the rice and it will be sold to the millers. That already, I have asked USAID to lead that effort and they are designing it,” Adesina stated.

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Industry Vilsack says rural America needs a new mindset By University of Tennessee Extension December 27, 2012 | 8:35 am EST U.S. Secretary of Agriculture garnered a lot of media attention on December 6 when he asked the attendees at the 2012 Farm Journal Forum, “Why is it that we don’t have a Farm Bill?” He went on to say, “It isn’t just the differences of policy. It’s the fact that the Rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that, and we better begin to reverse it.” From the tone of his statement one might expect that he was going to go into a discussion of how city folks have written off the future of rural areas. Instead the point of his comment was that it is rural residents who have written off the future of rural areas by adopting a preservation mindset instead of a growth mindset. As he says, we need “a new mindset in Rural America.” We need to ask ourselves “Where are the new opportunities?” And in his speech, Vilsack identifies a set of priorities and opportunities that are a part of the growth mindset he is talking about. He told his audience that in response to climate change, the USDA needs to “focus on additional research and ways in which we can adapt and mitigate and develop strategies that in the long term will allow us to continue to have the greatest agriculture in the world.” As part of that, Vilsack talked about increased double-cropping. In turning to what he dubbed a new rural development approach, Vilsack spoke of “expanding broadband access to ensure that those who set up a business, who establish an opportunity in rural areas, have the capacity and the power to be able to reach not just a local market, not just a regional market, but a global market.” Another part of this new rural development approach is convincing “smaller communities…that they have to look at themselves as a part of an overall region… addressing economic development opportunities from a regional perspective as opposed to a community-by-community perspective.” In addition, “We need to continue to promote local and regional food systems…. a multi-billion-dollar opportunity which is continuing to grow and provides opportunities for very small producers [and] which will help repopulate some of these rural communities,” Vilsack said. Vilsack also tied rural development to the “need to invest significantly in conservation and link it more closely to outdoor recreation and bring those tourism opportunities back into the rural areas. If people are spending hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said. “we need to capture those resources, and we need to turn them around in the economy more frequently.” In discussing a biobased economy, Vilsack took a line from the old saw that in slaughtering a hog, butchers used everything but the squeal when he said, “we need to absolutely seize the opportunity that the biobased economy creates, the ability to literally take everything we grow, every aspect of every crop, every waste product that’s produced and turn it into an asset, into a commodity, into an ingredient.” He then provided examples of this as he told of turning plant materials into lighter weight car bodies, hog manure into asphalt, and molecules from corncobs into plastic bottles. “This is an amazing new future where virtually everything we need in an economy can be biology-based, plant-based, crop-based, and livestock-based; enormous new opportunities to build refineries that are not large, as we see in the oil industry, but are small because of [the] bulk of [this] biomass is basically dotting the landscape, creating economic opportunity, creating new markets, as well as job opportunities.” Vilsack challenged his audience saying, “we need to cement that new economy in Rural America, and we need to sell it to our young people if we’re going to reverse the population and poverty challenges that Rural America faces. And frankly, I think we need to recognize that unless we respond and react, the capacity of Rural America and its power and its reach will continue to decline.” Source: Daryll E. Ray and Harwood D. Schaffer, Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, University of Tennessee farm billvilsack About the Author: University of Tennessee Extension

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Why B Veg? Monday, 24 April 2017 Home Quotes For evil to succeed, it is enough for good people to do nothing. --Edmund Burke (1729-97) Politician Livestock: Major Environment Threat 29 November 2006, Rome - Which causes more greenhouse gas emissions, rearing cattle or driving cars? Surprise! According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation. Says Henning Steinfeld, Chief of FAO’s Livestock Information and Policy Branch and senior author of the report: “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.” With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes. Long shadow The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector. It provides livelihoods to about 1.3 billion people and contributes about 40 percent to global agricultural output. For many poor farmers in developing countries livestock are also a source of renewable energy for draft and an essential source of organic fertilizer for their crops. But such rapid growth exacts a steep environmental price, according to the FAO report, Livestock’s Long Shadow –Environmental Issues and Options. “The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,” it warns. When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure. And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain. Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing. Land and water At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification. The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution, euthropication and the degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed. Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems. Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock’s presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock identified as a culprit. Remedies The report, which was produced with the support of the multi-institutional Livestock, Environment and Development (LEAD) Initiative, proposes explicitly to consider these environmental costs and suggests a number of ways of remedying the situation, including: Land degradation – controlling access and removing obstacles to mobility on common pastures. Use of soil conservation methods and silvopastoralism, together with controlled livestock exclusion from sensitive areas; payment schemes for environmental services in livestock-based land use to help reduce and reverse land degradation. Atmosphere and climate – increasing the efficiency of livestock production and feed crop agriculture. Improving animals’ diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, and setting up biogas plant initiatives to recycle manure. Water – improving the efficiency of irrigation systems. Introducing full-cost pricing for water together with taxes to discourage large-scale livestock concentration close to cities. These and related questions are the focus of discussions between FAO and its partners meeting to chart the way forward for livestock production at global consultations in Bangkok this week. These discussions also include the substantial public health risks related to the rapid livestock sector growth as, increasingly, animal diseases also affect humans; rapid livestock sector growth can also lead to the exclusion of smallholders from growing markets. ________________________________________ Contact: Christopher Matthews Media Relations, FAO (+39) 06 570 53762 < Prev

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