" I heard it through the AgLine"

January 11, 2011

 

 

·       USDA office closures open safety concerns  

·       What’s in that OJ? Tropicana must tell all

·       Cargill sees earnings plunge 88 percent

·       Refuge strategy to delay insect resistance

·       In Taiwan, money grows on watermelons

 

 

USDA office closures open safety concerns  

 

(Associated Press) DES MOINES, Iowa — The U.S. Agriculture Department announced Monday it will close nearly 260 offices nationwide, a move that won praise for cutting costs but raised concerns about the possible effect on food safety.

 

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the goal was to save $150 million a year in the agency's $145 billion budget. About $90 million had already been saved by reducing travel and supplies, and the closures were expected to save another $60 million, he said.

 

The plan calls for 259 offices, labs and other facilities to be closed, affecting the USDA headquarters in Washington and operations in 46 states. Seven foreign offices also will be shut.

 

Some of the closures had been previously announced. The USDA said last year it would shut down 10 agricultural research stations, including the only one in Alaska, where scientists were seeking ways to use the vast waste generated by the largest wild fishery in the nation to make everything from gel caps for pills to fish meal for livestock feed.

 

Other parts of the announcement were a surprise. Andrew Lorenz, deputy district manager for the Food Safety and Inspection Service in Minneapolis, learned his office would be closed, along with those in Madison, Wis., and Lawrence, Kan.

 

"They wiped out the entire Midwest," said Lorenz, whose office handles all federal inspections of meat, poultry and egg products in Minnesota, Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming.

 

FSIS offices in Chicago and Des Moines will remain open. It was not immediately clear whether work from the other offices would be shifted to them.

 

Lorenz said about 16 people work in his office, and he expected 12 to 14 of their jobs to be eliminated. A USDA spokeswoman said employees would be given the opportunity to transfer to other offices whenever possible.

 

Elisabeth Hagen, undersecretary for food safety, said the closures would affect management and support staff as FSIS offices are consolidated from 15 to 10, but that there wouldn't be a reduction in inspectors or inspection work.

 

"There will be no reduction in inspection presence at slaughter and processing facilities and no risk for consumers," Hagen said.

 

"Not only do we have a statutory obligation to be in every facility, we have an unwavering commitment to food safety," she added. "We will still be on the job, in every facility, every day."

 

Vilsack said he didn't anticipate widespread layoffs, in part because 7,000 USDA employees took early retirements over the past year. He said the agency is trying to do more with less in light of federal cutbacks, and many of the offices to be closed had few employees or were near other offices.

 

"Our workload is at record highs, we have less money and fewer people and work to do and we tried to address how do you do that without interrupting service," Vilsack said in a phone call from Honolulu, where he was speaking to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

 

The USDA manages a wide array of programs, from emergency aid for farmers to grants for rural development and food assistance programs for the poor. Along with the Agricultural Research and Food Safety and Inspection services, six other departments will be affected by closures, including the Farm Service Agency and Rural Development.

 

Kevin Ross, 31, a sixth-generation farmer in Iowa, expressed concern about how services would be affected. Farmers could drop out of programs if they have to travel long distances, he said.

 

"Access to agencies is a big deal, especially in rural areas," said Ross, who grows 400 acres of corn on his farm near Minden. "It's easy to say it looks like great cost savings, but I hope they are careful and strategic in their decisions."

 

Vilsack said public hearings will be held in counties where Farm Service Agency offices are to be closed. That department handles disaster assistance, farm loans and crop subsidies, among other programs. The USDA plans to shut 131 FSA offices in 32 states, with largest number of closures in Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas.

 

Bruce Babcock, a farm economist at Iowa State University and director of the school's Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, said consolidation was a long time coming, given that advances in technology made it possible to file applications and do other tasks over the phone or online. He said he's more concerned about the USDA's ability to maintain programs that deal with disease prevention.

 

"The capability to collect data and do the behind the scenes activities that really help U.S. agriculture stay safe, that should be concerning," Babcock said.

 

Colin Woodall, a spokesman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which represents more than 147,000 ranchers nationwide, applauded the USDA for trying to save taxpayers' money in tight economic times but also expressed concern about food safety.

 

"We can't say this is all great news because some offices will be closed," he said. "We have to make sure we have the process in place to keep food safe."

 

Vilsack said the closures and other cost-cutting measures will allow the agency to keep investing in programs that make agriculture more productive, including maintaining credit to farmers, providing aid to beginning farmers and scientific research.

 

"Over the long haul, we believe farmers and ranchers across the country will be better served by the choices we made," he said.

 

But that was of little consolation to California cotton growers mourning the loss of the 80-year-old agriculture research station at Shafter, which solved many of the industry's pest and fungus issues.

 

Calcot, a growers' co-op that sells more than a million bales annually, had lobbied officials to keep the center, which lately has been working to address fusarium wilt, a soil-dwelling fungus that attacks cotton plants.

 

"This is going to be to the detriment of the U.S. cotton industry and ultimately the world because so much research there has benefited growers everywhere," Calcot spokesman Mark Bagby said.

 

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What’s in that OJ?  Tropicana must tell all

 

(Reuters) - A California woman is suing the maker of Tropicana claiming it is squeezing consumers by touting the best-selling U.S. orange juice as "100% pure and natural" when it is not.

 

In her federal lawsuit, plaintiff Angelena Lewis said Tropicana Products Inc, knowing consumers "want and demand natural products," deceives them in its advertising and packaging for its Pure Premium juice, including cartons featuring an orange with a straw stuck into it.

 

Lewis said the unit of PepsiCo Inc actually puts the juice through extensive processing, adding aromas and flavors that change its "essential nature" and give it a longer shelf life.

 

This deception lets Tropicana charge more than rivals and helps fuel more than $5 billion of annual sales worldwide, according to Lewis, who lives in Vacaville, about 55 miles northeast of San Francisco.

 

"While Tropicana claims that 'making Tropicana orange juice is truly an art' it is far more a science," said the complaint filed on Friday in Sacramento, California. "The resulting product does not taste like fresh squeezed orange juice."

 

Tropicana's website says Pure Premium has 16 fresh-picked oranges squeezed into each 59-ounce container.

 

In a statement, Tropicana said it "remains committed to offering great-tasting 100 percent orange juice with no added sugars or preservatives. We take the faith that consumers place in our products seriously and are committed to full compliance with labeling laws and regulations."

 

The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Sacramento, California and alleges violations of U.S. consumer fraud laws.

 

It seeks class-action status on behalf of all U.S. purchasers of the juice, a halt to the alleged deception and compensatory, punitive and triple damages.

 

Sarah Westcot, a lawyer for Lewis, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

 

Last year, trade publication Beverage Digest said Tropicana held a 28.2 percent market share for orange juice and orange juice blends sold in supermarkets. PepsiCo is based in Purchase, New York.

 

The case is Lewis v. Tropicana Products Inc, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California, No. 12-00049.

 

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Cargill sees earnings plunge 88 percent

 

(pioneerpress.com) – Cargill's earnings plunged 88 percent in the second quarter, underscoring the financial jolts that last month led the agribusiness giant to lay off 2,000 employees.

 

The privately owned business said today it earned $100 million in the quarter, down from the $832 million its ongoing operations earned last year. Cargill's trading and financial operations had an especially tough quarter.

 

"The second quarter was significantly below expectations, especially in contrast to last year, when we posted our strongest quarter ever," Cargill CEO Greg Page said in a statement.

 

At Wayzata-based Cargill, Page said its food ingredients and ag services businesses "generated solid earnings." But the trading and financial sides struggled.

 

"First, commodity and financial markets were driven more by political uncertainties than by underlying supply and demand fundamentals," Page said. "Second, our performance in the sugar market was poor. Additionally, our meat businesses ... (had) one of their weakest quarters."

 

Plus, the company faced a lot of acquisition, integration and write-down costs, he said.

 

In early December, Cargill announced it would lay off 2,000 employees worldwide, or about 1.5 percent of its huge global workforce.

 

Cargill hasn't said how many Minnesota workers were affected. The company had 6,600 employees in Minnesota. But some laid-off workers say the cuts were quite deep locally, far exceeding 1.5 percent of the local workforce, with administrative functions especially hard hit.

 

Page said he is optimistic about Cargill's earnings prospects for rest of the fiscal year.

 

"Cargill has been through difficult cycles before, made changes and emerged stronger for it," he said.

 

Revenues were $33.3 billion, up 17 percent from the previous year.

 

Last year, Cargill's earnings and revenues were aided by the presence of Mosaic, the fertilizer company Cargill sold off last year.

 

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Refuge strategy to delay insect resistance  

 

(PhysOrg.com) -- A 10-year study has led to a model that assesses the effectiveness of insect refuges in slowing evolution of resistance.

 

A team of entomologists led by University of Arizona Professor Yves Carrière have devised and implemented a new test to help farmers in their never-ending war against insect pests. Based on nearly a decade of dogged research, they've provided the first direct evidence confirming the effectiveness of the so-called refuge strategy for delaying pest resistance to insecticides.

 

Farmers use refuges to delay the evolution of resistance by insects to insecticides that are sprayed or made internally by genetically engineered plants, called Bt crops. Scientists have long known that while insecticides may kill most of the pests initially, they will adapt quickly if the rare survivors have genes that render them resistant.  This, said Carrière, is "a prime example of Darwinian evolution in which the fittest insects survive and pass the genes for resistance to their offspring."

 

Refuges are safe havens where insects are not exposed to insecticides. Non-resistant insects can survive in refuges and live to mate with the few resistant insects that survive exposure to insecticides. In principle, refuges will help to delay evolution of resistance. Computer models, small-scale laboratory experiments, and retrospective analyses suggest that refuges work, but a direct, large-scale test of refuges has been elusive – until now.

 

Yves Carrière, a professor of entomology, and his colleagues at the UA and several other institutions in the U.S. and Canada tested the effectiveness of refuges in Arizona against whiteflies using 8 years of data from laboratory bioassays, as well as GIS data from crop and pesticide distribution maps. Their work is published in the Jan. 6 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Large-scale, spatially-explicit test of the refuge strategy for delaying insecticide resistance).

 

Since 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency has mandated that farmers in the U.S. who plant Bt crops, which make insecticidal proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, also plant refuges.

 

EPA regulations stipulate the proportional area of refuges to be planted in a region and the maximum distance between refuges and Bt crop fields. However, until now precise methods to identify habitats that are efficient refuges and the maximum distance at which such refuges can delay the evolution of resistance had been lacking.

 

Carrière and the others tested the refuge strategy by combing through eight years of data on the distribution and abundance of crops, application of the pesticide pyriproxyfen, and whitefly resistance to pyriproxyfen.

 

Pyriproxyfen is an insect growth regulator that targets sweetpotato whiteflies, a key pest in Arizona. It is applied once in cotton during the growing season, which limits the selective pressure for resistance evolution. It also is a specific insecticide that contributes in preserving natural enemies of cotton pests.

 

Whiteflies feed on the sap of the cotton plant, inhibiting a plant's growth and productivity, and excrete a sticky substance onto opened bolls that bear the fiber, which often reduces the value of the crop.

 

The test area was a swath of agricultural land in central Arizona, home to three main whitefly crops.

 

"It is a lot less complicated than, say, Yuma, where they grow carrots, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and other things. Central Arizona has only cotton, alfalfa and melons, but it has treated and untreated (no pyriproxyfen) cotton," Carrière said.

 

"The method we developed is data intensive because you have to monitor resistance across the landscape in different fields," he said. "And then you have to relate the spatial variation in resistance to the abundance and distribution of potential refuges and treated fields. In some fields you have high resistance; some fields you have less. And the hypothesis is that you have less resistance in some fields because you have more refuges near these fields."

 

The group developed spatially-explicit, statistical models based on the first four years of data that included aerial remote sensing maps and documented pesticide applications in the study area. The models identified the crops affecting the spatial variation in resistance and the maximum distance at which these crops affected resistance. They then used a separate data set from the next four years to predict resistance at the landscape level with these models. The successful prediction of resistance confirmed that refuges of cotton delayed the evolution of resistance and fields treated with pyriproxyfen accelerated the evolution of resistance.

 

"We had the resistance data from 84 cotton fields. What we didn't have was information on the crops surrounding these fields. We had to use remote sensing, digging back through satellite images for the last eight years, and then analyzed the images to map the crops surrounding each cotton field."

 

Carrière said that the method and framework developed by their research could help refine the refuge strategy for many key pests. Carrière points out that "This is important because some pests targeted by a Bt crop or insecticides are generalist feeders. They can come from many types of crops or uncultivated habitats. A pest targeted by Bt corn, for example, could come from soybeans or tomatoes or sorghum. So, then how do you know which of these habitats are efficient refuges, and how do you know the distance at which these refuges will produce enough susceptible insects to delay the evolution of resistance?"

 

Provided by University of Arizona

 

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In Taiwan, money grows on watermelons

 

(mb.com.ph) MANILA, Philippines — The melon family – watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew - are major crops in Taiwan. That’s because the farmers have discovered them to be usually more profitable to grow than many other crops. For one, the yield is high when the proper seeds and technology are employed. They don’t take a long time to grow. The fruits are well liked by consumers and so the market is big.

 

In the past many years, thousands of cultivars have been developed by plant breeders, especially those of Known-You Seed Company, Taiwan’s biggest seed firm specializing in the melon group, pepper, tomato, eggplant, cucurbits, crucifers, papaya, sweet corn and several others.

 

It could be said that Known-You has been largely responsible for the popularity of melons and watermelons today. Starting as small seed store in 1968 in Fengshan, Kaohsiung, it has grown into a giant company, thanks to the dedication of its founder Wun-Yu Chen who at 86 still goes to his office and visits the company’s experimental farms regularly. He has, however, delegated much of the administrative work to his son, Lung-Mu Chen, who is also a plant breeder.

 

Known-You’s success was not instant. It took a lot of effort not only to produce new cultivars but also to convince the farmers to plant the improved varieties. They had to set up demonstration farms, had to conduct lectures and seminars, and also come up with promotional activities such as harvest festivals.

 

The annual watermelon festival, for instance, is a major event that is participated in by hundreds of grow-ers. It has created much interest in the industry among farmers, traders and input suppliers. There is intense competition for winning in the different award categories such as the biggest, the sweetest fruits, and so on. The participants are not after cash awards. In fact, the owner of the winning fruits will usually contribute a substantial sum to the coffers of the seed association or to some other beneficiary. The reward comes in the form of prestige and higher prices for the owner’s produce.

 

While it was not that easy to convince the farmers to try the new seeds, they would become loyal customers once they have the seen the advantages of growing the improved varieties. Just like Lee Chin Yue, 83, who first tried hybrid watermelon seeds 40 years ago, or three years after Known You was established.

 

Since then, up to now, he has been planting watermelon and melons. He could not hide the profits he had reaped the past 40 years. One evidence is his palatial house that has three storeys. Lee Chin Yue has also influenced the farmers in his community. Today, they are planting no less than 250 hectares to melons and watermelons in Tongsan.

 

His son Lee Hung Chen is also a melon farmer for many years now. Unlike many other farmers, he prefers to grow honeydew melon, particularly the Honey World variety. This is an early variety that ripens in 45 to 55 days after flowering. The flesh is light green, tender and sweet. What he likes most about Honey World is that it is much easier to manage than the cantaloupe varieties. The cantaloupes, he said, are often attacked by mildew diseases.

 

Lee Hung Chen says it does not require a big area to make a decent profit. In fact, he has planted to Honey World only 100 plastic-roofed tunnels which are one meter wide and 60 meters long. In each tunnel, he has planted 150 hills that will give about 300 fruits (two per hill). With an average weight of 2 kilos per fruit, that means 600 kilos per tunnel. Multiply that by 100 tunnels and you get 60,000 kilos or 60 tons.

 

Lee’s honeydew fruits are due for harvest this coming Chinese New Year and prices are expected to be high. But even if the price would be the prevailing price during our interview last December 21, which was NT$28 per kilo, the gross income from the 100 tunnels would be NT$1.68 million. His cost of inputs was NT$160,000 while labor cost is estimated at NT$100,000. Add to that other costs in packing and transporting the produce and there’s still a big margin.

 

Multiply that by the thousands of farmers benefiting from the seeds and technologies developed by Known-You and you realize how huge is their impact on the lives of farmers, especially the smallhold farmers. And then consider the impact of the same on the lives of millions of farmers in other countries where Known-You seeds are grown such as the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, India, China, United States, Korea, Indonesia and many others around the world.

 

The plant breeders of Known-You are continually conducting research to come up with varieties for the changing times. These could include hybrids that have shorter growing period that will be suitable for areas with short rainy period. Other hybrids could be ones that are more resistant to pests and diseases. Then new hybrids could either be smaller or bigger, depending on the target market.

 

For instance, there could be demand for smaller fruits that will be more affordable in some areas. Small fruits have their own advantages. They could be eaten in one sitting so you don’t have to store in the refrigerator unconsumed portions. Or they could be easier to market because they are more affordable, especially where the purchasing power is limited.

 

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