" I heard it through the AgLine"

January 20, 2010

 

 

·        GM corn leads to organ failure!? No so fast

·        Analysis – America’s angst over agriculture

·        Scientists unravel secretes of parasitic wasps

·        Dole Fresh goes interactive in latest campaign

·        Children’s book answers, Who grew my soup?

 

 

GM corn leads to organ failure!? No so fast

 

(discovermagazine.com) – Few things bring out the hyperbole like genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and that was true again with a study making the rounds yesterday and today.

 

In the International Journal of Biological Studies, a team examined three genetically modified corn varieties created by Monsanto. The study’s authors say they see evidence of possible toxicity to the kidney and liver, “possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn.” However, the findings became over-hyped headlines like the Huffington Post’s “Monsanto GMO Corn Linked to Organ Failure, Study Reveals.”

 

That’s a pretty big leap from the not entirely convincing finding of a potentially questionable study. What actually happened is that the research team, led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, re-analyzed data from tests that Monsanto scientists themselves conducted on rats eating these three varieties of corn—data that, to be fair, the team had to scratch and claw and sue to get their hands on. In their statistical analysis, Séralini’s team says that Monsanto interpreted its own data incorrectly, and that its new analysis shows potential for toxicity.

 

But the scientists themselves give significant caveats that make such bold headlines a bit of a reach: “Clearly, the statistically significant effects observed here for all three GM maize varieties investigated are signs of toxicity rather than proofs of toxicity”—that is, the evidence isn’t rock solid, and not enough to warrant a bunch of alarmist headlines. The researchers argue that more research is necessary to settle the question either way: “In conclusion, our data presented here strongly recommend that additional long-term (up to 2 years) animal feeding studies be performed in at least three species, preferably also multi-generational, to provide true scientifically valid data on the acute and chronic toxic effects of GM crops, feed and foods.”

 

In addition, there are a couple issues that make the study itself seem a little fishy:

 

1. Funding. “Greenpeace contributed to the start of the investigations by funding first statistical analyses in 2006, the results were then processed further and evaluated independently by the authors,” the scientists write. Certainly one can’t oppose a huge corporation like Monsanto without funding, but drawing those funds from a political lightning rod like Greenpeace can paint conclusions in a bad light, University of California, Davis, plant genomics expert Pamela Ronald tells DISCOVER. “That does not mean that it is incorrect,” she says, “but makes me a little skeptical.”

 

2. The journal: The International Journal of Biological Sciences is somewhat obscure, with an “unofficial”–that is, self-assigned–impact factor of 3.24. “In other words, it has not been assessed for impact or quality,” Ronald says. Again, that doesn’t mean Séralini’s team is wrong, but it suggests that jumping to conclusions would be unwise.

 

The actual data analysis of the paper has started an in-depth back-and-forth on the statistical analysis. We’ll continue following this story to see how the analysis shakes out.

 

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Analysis – America’s angst over agriculture

 

(Forbes.com) – In this high-tech information age few look to the most basic industries as sources of national economic power. Yet no sector in America is better positioned for the future than agriculture--if we allow it to reach its potential.

 

Like manufacturers and homebuilders before them, farmers have found themselves in the crosshairs of urban aesthetes and green activists who hope to impose their own Utopian vision of agriculture. This vision includes shutting down large-scale scientifically run farms and replacing them with small organic homesteads and urban gardens.

 

Troublingly, the assault on mainstream farmers is moving into the policy arena. It extends to cut-offs on water, stricter rules on the use of pesticides, prohibitions on the caging of chickens and a growing movement to ban the use of genetic engineering in crops. And it could undermine a sector that has performed well over the past decade and has excellent long-term prospects.

 

Over the next 40 years the world will be adding some 3 billion people. These people will not only want to eat, they will want to improve their intake of proteins, grains, fresh vegetables and fruits. The U.S., with the most arable land and developed agricultural production, stands to gain from these growing markets. Last year the U.S.' export surplus in agriculture grew to nearly $35 billion, compared with roughly $5 billion in 2005.

 

The overall impact of agriculture on the economy is much greater than generally assumed, notes my colleague Delore Zimmerman, of Praxis Strategy Group. Roughly 4.1 million people are directly employed in production agriculture as farmers, ranchers and laborers, but the industry directly or indirectly employs approximately one out of six American workers, including those working in food processing, marketing, shipping and supermarkets.

 

Yet none of this seems to be slowing the mounting criticisms of "corporate agriculture." A typical article in Time, called "Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food," assailed the "U.S. agricultural industry" for precipitating an ecological disaster. "With the exhaustion of the soil, the impact of global warming and the inevitably rising price of oil--which will affect everything from fertilizer to supermarket electricity bills--our industrial style of food production," the article predicts, "will end sooner or later."

 

The romantic model being promoted by Time and agri-intellectuals like Michael Pollan hearkens back to European and Tolstoyan notions of small family farms run by generations of happy peasants. But this really has little to do with the essential ethos of American agriculture.

 

Back in the early 19th century Alexis de Tocqueville noted that American farmers viewed their holdings more like capitalists than peasants. They would sell their farms and move on to other businesses or other lands--a practice unheard of in Europe. "Almost all the farmers of the United States," he wrote, "combine some trade with agriculture; most of them make agriculture itself a trade."

 

Despite the perceptions of a corporatized farm sector, this entrepreneurial spirit remains. Families own almost 96% of the nation's 2.2 million farms, including the vast majority of the largest spreads. And small-scale agriculture, after decreasing for years, is on the upswing; between 2002 and 2009 the number of farms increased by 4%.

 

This trend toward smaller-scale specialized production represents a positive trend, but large-scale, scientifically advanced farming still produces the majority of the average family's foodstuffs, as well as the bulk of our exports. Overall, organic foods and beverages account for less than 3% of all food sales in the U.S.--hardly enough to feed a nation, much less a growing, hungry planet.

 

Then there's the even more fanciful notion--promoted by Columbia University's Dickson D. Despommier--of moving food production into massive urban hothouses. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times he argues we are running out of land and need to take agriculture off the farm. According to Despommier, "The traditional soil-based farming model developed over the last 12,000 years will no longer be a sustainable option."

 

Yet Praxis Strategy's Matthew Lephion, who grew up on a family farm, points out that such projects hardly represent a credible alternative in terms of food production. Urban land is far more expensive--often at least 10 times as much as rural. Energy and other costs of maintaining farms in big cities also are likely to be higher.

 

Furthermore the notion that America is running out of land--one justification for subsidizing urban farming--seems fanciful at best. The past 30 years have seen some loss of farmland, but the amount of land that actually grows harvested crops has remained stable. Though some prime farmland close to metropolitan centers should be protected, agriculture has over the past decades returned to nature--forests, wetlands, prairie--millions of acres, far more than the land that has been devoted to housing and other urban needs.

 

However ludicrous the arguments, the Obama administration remains influenced by green groups and is the cultural prisoner of the lifestyle left, with its powerful organic foodie contingent. That leaves farmers and the small towns dependent on them with little voice.

 

The ability of greens and others to wreak havoc on agriculture can be seen in the disaster now unfolding in California's fertile Central Valley. Large swaths of this area are being de-developed back to desert--due less to a mild drought than to regulations designed to save obscure fish species in the state's delta. Over 450,000 acres have already been allowed to go fallow. Nearly 30,000 agriculture jobs--held mostly by Latinos--have been lost, and many farm towns suffer conditions that recall The Grapes of Wrath.

 

Not satisfied with these results, the green lobby has prompted the National Marine Fisheries Service to further cut water supplies, in part to improve the conditions for whales and other species out in the ocean. Given these attitudes, farmers, including those I have worked with in Salinas, are fretting about what steps federal and state regulators may take next.

 

One particular concern revolves around the movement against genetically modified food. Already there are calls for banning GMOs in Monterey County. Local officials worry this would cripple the area's nascent agricultural biotech industry as well as the long-term ability of existing farmers to compete with less regulated competitors elsewhere. The fact that a less advanced form of genetic engineering also sparked the "green revolution" that greatly reduced world hunger after 1965 seems, to them at least, irrelevant.

 

When viewed globally, the anti-big farm movement seems even more misguided. As Chapman University's professor of food science Anuradha Prakash observes, India's own organic farms serve a small portion of the market and cannot possibly meet the nutritional needs of the country's expanding population. "You just don't get the yields you need for Africa and Asia from organic methods," she explains.

 

A formula that works for high-end foodies of the Bay Area or Manhattan can't produce enough affordable food to feed the masses--whether in Minnesota or Mumbai. The emerging war on agriculture threatens not only the livelihoods of millions of American workers; it could undermine our ability to help feed the world.

 

Joel Kotkin is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Legatum Institute in London and serves as executive editor of newgeography.com. He writes the weekly New Geographer column for Forbes. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin in February.

 

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Scientists unravel secretes of parasitic wasps

 

(The Medical News) – Researchers from the University of Geneva and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics led an analysis of the sequenced genomes of parasitic wasps.

 

Generally unknown to the public, the parasitic wasps kill pest insects. They are like 'smart bombs' that seek out and kill only specific kinds of insects. Harnessing their full potential would thus be vastly preferable to chemical pesticides, which broadly kill or poison many organisms in the environment, including humans. The results of this large study are featured in today's issue of Science. Professor Evgeny Zdobnov from the University of Geneva Medical School and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics directed the comparative evolutionary genomics studies as part of this international project, which revealed many features that could be useful to pest control and medicine, and to enhance our understanding of genetics and evolution.

 

The scientists sequenced and analysed the genomes of three parasitoid Nasonia wasp species. "Comparing the genes and genomes of those wasps revealed almost 7'000 genes that have recognisable counterparts in humans (orthologues)", says Zdobnov. "However, the wasp is more different from its closest sequenced relative, the honeybee, than humans are from chickens". In addition to being useful for controlling pests and offering pharmaceutically interesting venoms, the wasps could act as a new genetic system with a number of unique advantages. So far, fruit flies have been the standard model for genetic studies, mainly because they are small, can be grown easily in a laboratory, and reproduce quickly. On top of sharing these traits, Nasonia present another advantage. Male Nasonia have only one set of chromosomes, instead of two sets like fruit flies and people, so that "A single set of chromosomes, which is more commonly found in lower single-celled organisms such as yeast, is a handy genetic tool, particularly for studying how genes interact with each other," says John H. Werren from the University of Rochester, who led the project together with Stephen Richards from the Genome Sequencing Centre at the Baylor College of Medicine.

 

Unlike fruit flies, these wasps also modify their DNA in ways similar to humans and other vertebrates, a process called "methylation" which plays an important role in regulating how genes are turned on and off during development. "Importantly", says Zdobnov, "our comparative analyses discovered hundreds of Nasonia genes that are shared with humans but absent from fruit flies, opening new avenues for their functional investigation in these genetically tractable wasps". "We identified changes to metabolic pathways that may reflect the amino-acid rich carnivorous diet of these parasitoids. Such information could support efforts to produce artificial diets for parasitoid wasp mass rearing in biological control and improve hymenopteran cell culture methods".

 

Emerging from these genome studies are many opportunities for exploiting Nasonia wasps in topics ranging from pest control to medicine, genetics, and evolution. "Insects are the most diverse group of terrestrial animals", says Zdobnov, "and the sequencing of the wasp genome significantly augments the opportunities for scientists to examine the genetic basis of this incredible diversity that underlies their success".

 

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Dole Fresh goes interactive in latest campaign   

 

(foodprocessing.com) – An apron-wearing, fork-wielding salad spokesperson and a 2,000-percent increase in Facebook followers are forever changing the face of the packaged salad category.

 

Months after launching its reinvented line of Dole Salads, Dole Fresh Vegetables is stepping up its interactive marketing programs in the face of growing demand by bagged salad customers for salad-based conversations, contests, social marketing and other direct-to-consumer initiatives.  The intensified strategy calls for an expanded role for the company's Dole Salad Guide spokesperson, and increased use of Facebook and other programs designed to connect directly with salad users looking to broaden their salad horizons.

 

The new line is being introduced via a comprehensive multimedia campaign featuring a new Dole Salad Guide spokesperson, an all-knowing expert on salad tastes, textures and pairing possibilities.  In addition to his role as the star of the Dole Salads relaunch campaign, the Dole Salad Guide spokesperson is featured on his own Facebook page dedicated to reaching retailers, salad enthusiasts and other influencers with an assortment of salad-, nutrition- and health-based messages.

 

The marketing campaign for Dole Salads will ultimate create more than 1.7 billion media impressions in the U.S. and Canada in the form of national TV, trade and consumer magazines, outdoor, digital and PR elements, according to Dole.

 

In addition to social media, the Dole Salads interactive program encompasses a dedicated Web site; consumer contest; banner and display advertising on Hulu, Food Network, Recipe Zaar, Rachel Ray, All Recipes, Fine Cooking and other outlets; search marketing on Google, Yahoo and Bing; and a series of direct-to-consumer emails.

 

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Children’s book answers, Who grew my soup?

 

(Wire Services) CAMDEN, N.J. – What began as a personal project over the holiday season two years ago has resulted in a first children’s book for New York City ad agency veteran Tom Darbyshire.

 

By day Darbyshire is an SVP, Senior Creative Director at BBDO--New York, where he and his colleagues are responsible for the development of advertising that Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB - News) uses to promote its soups. But a lifelong passion for rhyme led Darbyshire in a slightly different creative direction when he conceived of “Who Grew My Soup?” a story about 10-year old Phineas Quinn, a young boy who is suspicious of all vegetables – until he learns where the vegetables in his favorite soup come from.

 

It was during the 2007 holiday season, while the agency was developing early advertising concepts for Campbell’s condensed soup, that Darbyshire repurposed a proposed tagline, “Who Grew Your Soup?” to author a children’s book. “Our creative team was exploring how to effectively tell the story of Campbell’s 100-year commitment to using only the highest quality ingredients in its soups,” said Darbyshire. “At the same time, Campbell was looking to help kids make better food choices. I believe this book is a way to engage kids in a discussion about food in a context that they will enjoy and relate to.”

 

In his book, Darbyshire features two of the actual farm families that have been growing vegetables for Campbell for generations. Young Phin meets Grant Hitchner and Phillip Perez during his adventure and is able to learn first-hand, who grew the vegetables in the soup that his mother has served. In real-life, the Hitchner family has been growing carrots and other vegetables for Campbell for three generations on their farm in New Jersey, while the Perez family has been growing tomatoes for Campbell for more than 40 years in California.

 

Darbyshire partnered with illustrator C.F. Payne to bring his creative vision to life. Payne is an award-winning artist, caricaturist and illustrator, whose previous work has appeared on the pages of Time, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated and National Geographic. Payne also has illustrated numerous children’s books, including The Remarkable Farkle McBride and Micawber written by Jon Lithgow.

 

Since the book was originally conceived, Campbell has partnered with the National FFA Organization (formerly Future Farmers of America) to develop the Help Grow Your Soup program. To date, Campbell has donated a total of $500,000 to FFA to promote educational programs that help students better understand the opportunities in agriculture. As part of this program’s ongoing support to local farming communities, Campbell and FFA will be preserving five historic barns in 2010. These barns were selected from among ten nominated barns by a vote conducted on the Help Grow Your Soup website. More information about the program and Campbell’s commitment to agriculture is available at www.helpgrowyoursoup.com.

 

The book, “Who Grew My Soup” costs $9.95, plus shipping, and is currently available for purchase at www.whogrewmysoupbook.com or on Amazon.com.

 

“Who Grew My Soup?” has been published by Publications International, Ltd., with underwriting support from Campbell Soup Company.

 

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