
		" I heard it through the AgLine"

January 14, 2010

· Farm Bureau opposes EPA on greenhouse gases

· DuPont and BASF settle seed patent lawsuits

· John Deere stock tanks on hefty harvest report

· Sunflower holds promise for sustainable ag

· Recession? One state has booming economy

Farm Bureau opposes EPA on greenhouse gases

(Reuters via Yahoo? News

) – The largest U.S. farm group called on Congress on this week to prevent the government from regulating greenhouse gases if lawmakers kill climate change legislation.

The 6-million-member American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) also underlined its firm opposition to legislation to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for boosting global temperatures.

In their first item of policy work, delegates at the AFBF annual meeting voted to support "any legislative action" to suspend authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases under air pollution laws.

The EPA cleared the way for such regulation a month ago by ruling that greenhouse gases endanger human health.

It offered a route to control greenhouse gases, if Congress does not pass a climate law. AFBF staff say the Senate is unlikely to pass a "cap and trade" climate bill this year.

At least one bill is pending in the House to prohibit EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. Senators say they may offer amendments to do the same thing.

Delegates applauded after Phil Nelson, president of the Illinois Farm Bureau, read a 1-1/2-page critique of climate legislation, which included a warning that EPA regulation "would significantly burden all sectors of the economy" as well as drive up food prices.

Nelson's resolution was adopted on a unanimous voice vote.

"I think the delegates wanted to send a strong message by passing it," he said afterward.

"They don't have enough lipstick to put on that pig (climate legislation) to make it look good," said Missouri Farm Bureau president Charles Kruse.

While opposing a mandatory cap-and-trade system and EPA regulation of greenhouse gases, the AFBF backs voluntary carbon credit trading, development of alternative energy sources and incentives to industries trying to reduce emissions.

Four dozen climate scientists asked the AFBF in a letter last week to divorce itself from "climate change deniers."

Farmers are dubious of Obama administration analyses that say higher fuel and fertilizer costs resulting from climate legislation would be outweighed by revenue from contracts to offset greenhouse gases by planting trees and crops that capture carbon.

Higher production costs are certain, but many farmers will not see any income from carbon sequestration, Nelson said.

An Agriculture Department study says that up to 8 percent of crop and pasture land, or 59 million acres, would be converted to woodlands by 2050 because carbon-capturing trees would be more profitable than crops.

The USDA is taking a second look at its analysis because of complaints about the economic models that were used.

In other activity, the delegates:

-- elected Bob Stallman, a Texas beef and rice grower, to his sixth two-year term as AFBF president.

-- voted that the government should "properly compensate farmers when the government issues an inaccurate food safety warning or recall that causes losses."

DuPont and BASF settle seed patent lawsuits

(stltoday.com) – DuPont Co., the third-biggest U.S. chemical maker, and larger rival BASF SE settled lawsuits with each other over U.S. patents for technology to create herbicide-tolerant crops.

BASF, the world's largest chemical maker and DuPont agreed to cross-license the disputed patents and dismiss claims filed in June, the companies said Wednesday. They had sought to enforce intellectual property rights on

engineered seeds, including traits for tolerating applications of sulfonylurea

and other so-called ALS herbicides.

DuPont last month delayed release of its Optimum GAT corn and soybeans,

engineered to resist glyphosate and ALS herbicides, until the middle of the

decade. DuPont faces another suit from Creve Coeur-based Monsanto Co., which claims the inclusion of the Roundup Ready gene in Optimum GAT soybeans violates a license prohibition on stacking two glyphosate traits in one seed.

DuPont countersued Monsanto, claiming it is using litigation to stifle

competition. About 93 percent of U.S. soybean plantings last year contained

Monsanto's Roundup Ready trait. The Justice Department has made inquiries into DuPont's allegations and will hold a March workshop on crop seed competition.

John Deere stock tanks on hefty harvest report

(Bloomberg) -- Deere & Co., the farm-equipment maker whose shares often move in tandem with crop futures, fell the most since August as corn and soybeans plunged amid record harvests.

Deere tumbled $2.56, or 4.3 percent, to $57.39 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the biggest decline since Aug. 17. The decrease followed a U.S. Department of Agriculture report on farm output today as well as Deere’s announcement yesterday that its December retail sales of tractors and combines in Western Europe dropped in the “double digits.”

“The stock tends to move with commodity prices, particularly corn and soybean,” Joel Levington, director of corporate credit for Brookfield Investment Management Inc., said today in an interview.

Corn and soybeans declined after the USDA said in its report that corn production climbed 8.8 percent while soybean output increased 13 percent. Crops avoided damage from late harvests and cold weather that sparked a fourth-quarter rally in prices amid concern of reduced output.

Agco Corp., the second-biggest U.S. maker of farm equipment, fell $1.62, or 4.4 percent, to $35.24 in New York trading. Deere is the world’s largest maker of farm equipment.

The harvests will translate into a carryover for 2010, and if there’s another big crop, prices will be under a lot of pressure, said Eli Lustgarten, an analyst with Longbow Securities in Independence, Ohio. Deere’s stock was also hurt by Alcoa Inc.’s report that fourth-quarter profit trailed analysts’ estimates, he said.

‘Disappointing Number’

“The Alcoa numbers put a pale on a lot of the industrials,” Lustgarten said. “It was a disappointing number to start off the earnings season.”

Deere, based Moline, Illinois, said yesterday that North American retail sales for row-crop tractors in December were up a “single digit” and sales of four-wheel drive tractors increased in the “double digits.” Industrywide, row-crop tractor sales were unchanged and sales of four-wheel drive tractors were down 3 percent.

North American sales of utility tractors last month dropped 16 percent, while Deere’s were down “a high single digit,” the company said.

“North American agricultural equipment performance outperformed the industry in all segments,” Andrew Casey, a Boston-based analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, wrote in a report to investors.

Sunflower holds promise for sustainable ag

(physorg.com) – As agricultural land becomes increasingly valuable, the need to maximize its utilization increases and decisions about what crops to plant and where, become paramount.

The sunflower family includes a number of valuable food crops, with sunflower seed production alone valued at about $14 billion annually. Yet the sunflower family is the only one of a handful of economically important plant families where a reference genome is not available to enable the breeding of crops better suited to their growing environment or consumers tastes.

A new research project, largely funded by Genome Canada, Genome BC, the US Departments of Energy and Agriculture, and France's INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research), will create a reference genome for the sunflower family - currently the world's largest plant family, containing 24,000 species of plants, including many crops, medicinal plants, horticulture plants and noxious weeds.

The US$10.5 million research project titled, Genomics of Sunflower, will use next-generation genotyping and sequencing technologies to sequence, assemble and annotate the sunflower genome and to locate the genes that are responsible for agriculturally important traits such as seed-oil content, flowering, seed-dormancy, and wood producing-capacity.

"The intent is to have the basis for a breeding program within four years," says project leader, Dr. Loren Rieseberg (University of British Columbia).

One of the potential applications of this research includes a hybrid variety of sunflower, grown as a dual-use crop. The wild Silverleaf species of sunflower, known for its tall, woody stalks that grow 10 to 15 feet tall and up to 4 inches in diameter in a single season, could be crossbred with the commercially valuable sunflower plant that produces high quality seeds, capitalizing on the desirable traits of both species.

"The seeds would be harvested for food and oil, while the stalks would be utilized for wood or converted to ethanol. As a dual-use crop it wouldn't be in competition with food crops for land," says project leader, Dr. Loren Rieseberg (University of British Columbia).

In addition, this fast growing annual crop will be highly drought resistant, thanks to desirable traits from the Silverleaf variety, and would therefore be suitable for use in subsistence agriculture in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in much of North America.

Dr. Nolan Kane (University of British Columbia) is one of the co-investigators on the project and together with colleagues at INRA in France, is doing much of the bioinformatics for the genome project.

"The sunflower genome is 3.5 billion letters long - slightly larger than the human genome. The sunflower family is the largest plant family on earth - encompassing several important crops and weeds. Mapping its genome will create a very useful reference template for the entire plant family, which will enable us to work on closely related species," says Kane.

Dr. Steve Knapp (University of Georgia) is another co-investigator on the project, whose work includes genetic mapping for desirable traits such as wood formation, as well as the development of germplasm for breeding. "The complete sequence will give us a full draft of the genome and eliminate the arduous one at a time process that we have been using up until this point," he says.

"Genome BC is very pleased to support this innovative project, which will capitalize on Canada's strong genomics infrastructure and leadership in Sunflower genomics, in collaboration with other experts worldwide," says Dr. Alan Winter, President and CEO of Genome BC. "The potential applications of this research are extremely important, both globally and locally."

Recession? One state has booming economy

(AP via Seattle Times) – A state long ridiculed as cold and inconsequential stands as an economic hot spot within a nation suffering from its worst economic downturn in decades.

Holy buckets! Could it be that North Dakota is the nation's shining example of economic sure-footedness? Yah, you betcha, state officials say.

North Dakota is beginning the decade boasting a sturdy economy, a state government budget surplus, more jobs than takers and its highest population in a decade.

"That's a good thing," said Gov. John Hoeven. "But the biggest concern for our economy moving forward - and our biggest challenge - is the drag of the national economy on our economy."

A monthly analysis of economic stress by The Associated Press found that North Dakota in November was the least economically troubled state in the nation. With the nation's unemployment rate hovering at about 10 percent, North Dakota has about 8,000 unfilled jobs and the lowest jobless rate of any state, at about 4 percent.

"We've been buffered from the national experience," Richard Rathge, the state Data Center director and North Dakota demographer. "I don't think we recognize the pain the rest of the nation is going through."

North Dakota's economic growth is led by agriculture and energy but the state has made leaps in other industries, such as health care and technology, Rathge said.

"We've been growing and diversifying our economy and pulling away from things that limited our options in the past," Rathge said.

"A strong economy is about having a good variety of jobs," Republican Gov. John Hoeven said. "We've really worked at diversifying our economy - that's one of the reasons we're doing better and have opportunities for people."

The state's healthy economy has trickled down to even the smallest of businesses, including Dianne Aull's tiny juice bar in Bismarck.

"I think we're lucky in that we have an economy that seems to be alive," said Aull, a North Dakota native who opened the business four years ago.

She said even frugal North Dakotans don't seem phased by dropping several dollars on a smoothie.

"We're doing amazingly well," Aull said. "Our business is growing."

Census Bureau figures show North Dakota is entering the decade with its highest population since 2000. The bureau's most recent estimate put North Dakota's population at 646,844. It was the first time this decade that the state's population surpassed the 2000 count of 642,200.

Residents had been moving out of North Dakota for years, Rathge said.

"We lost people the first part of the decade and they started coming back in the second part of the decade," Rathge said. "The economy really didn't kick in until mid-decade."

No matter how strong the economy, North Dakota is still a tough sell to many outsiders, who view the state as a frigid and foreboding.

"Historically, attracting workers to North Dakota hasn't been that successful," Rathge said. "I think as time goes on that will be more problematic."

Nearly 100 companies are looking for people to work in the state's oil patch, said Ron Ness, president of the Bismarck-based North Dakota Petroleum Council, which represents about 160 companies. North Dakota went from the nation's ninth-largest oil producer in 2006 to its fourth-largest today, but a shortage of workers has slowed oil exploration and production, he said.

"There are literally hundreds of job openings and it's growing," Ness said.

Beth Zander, a Job Service North Dakota spokeswoman, said the number of available jobs has grown faster than the state's population in recent years. The biggest need is in health care, where there are some 1,200 jobs with no takers at present, she said.

North Dakota officials have hosted job fairs in several cities in an attempt to lure people to the state.

About 100 families have been identified as moving to North Dakota through those efforts, state Commerce Commissioner Shane Goettle said. The state targeted many former North Dakotans to move back, he said.

"Former North Dakotans are sort of low-hanging fruit," Goettle said. "They are our most likely candidates but not our only candidates."

North Dakota to outsiders is often considered frigid and foreboding. But Goettle believes the state's booming economy will have people warming up to it.

"Whatever the image people have of North Dakota, I think people move for opportunity," Goettle said. "With the lack of opportunity in other places, I think we are going to see that movement."

End Transmission