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January 25, 2011
· Report renews California water debate
· Ag products bolster DuPont revenues
· Judge: Raw almonds must be treated
· Improving crops from the roots up
· Chefs, farmers join forces for better eats
Report renews California
(modobee.com)
– Some would argue that the work of farmers is about done when it comes to
saving water in
They point to a recent report estimating that new conservation efforts would trim a mere 1.3 percent from total water use.
Others still see plenty of wasted water — as much as a sixth of the farmers' supply — that would be better used to restore rivers.
Farmers and environmentalists have renewed the debate over
water conservation in light of a new report from the Center for Irrigation
Technology at
The report said most of the excess water on farms runs off into streams or seeps into groundwater basins, where it is available to other users. If one farm reduces its use, the thinking goes, these other folks lose out.
This point needs to be made often in the conservation
debate, said Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water
Coalition in
"People who aren't involved in farming have preconceived notions about agriculture and irrigation," he said.
The Pacific Institute, based in
Juliet Christian-Smith, a senior research associate at the institute, said experts do not know enough about groundwater volume or flows to be able to say how much excess farm water ends up in aquifers.
"We have to collect the data to know the answer to that question," she said.
The institute estimates that farmers could save 4 million to 6 million acre-feet of water a year — 12 percent to 18 percent of the average year's supply. An acre-foot covers an acre one-foot deep.
The CSU,
Agriculture uses about 40 percent of the state's water in an average year, according to the 2009 update of the California Water Plan. Cities use about 10 percent, and the rest goes to environmental uses such as river releases to benefit fish.
Environmentalists long have sought to get more of the farmers' share, on the grounds that this water is being wasted via flood irrigation and other unsound practices.
The Tuolumne River Trust has urged the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts to improve on-farm water use so more of the supply can flow downstream of Don Pedro Reservoir.
"We can find solutions that are good for the ag-based economy and good for the river," executive director Eric Wesselman said.
Farmers say they have done plenty to reduce water use. They have replaced flood and furrow irrigation with drip and micro-sprinker systems that target the water to the roots. They monitor soil moisture and plant tissue so they water only when needed. They use laser-guided tractors to level their land so the water is distributed evenly.
They have done this not just to save water, but to enhance the yield and quality of their crops. Wine grapes can improve in flavor if irrigation is cut off at the right time. Drip lines keep water off tomatoes, which can develop diseases if they are wet.
Efficient water systems are especially useful on the West
Side, said Tom Wei-mer, president of Houk Systems, a
Turlock-area farmer Randy Fiorini, a leader in statewide water issues, said drip and micro-sprinkler systems are being used in most fruit, nut and vegetable production.
Flood irrigation remains in wide use for field crops such as corn and oats, he said, but this seemingly wasteful practice is a good thing: It replenishes aquifers that supply many cities in the region.
"If it weren't for the over-irrigation of these field
crops throughout the
Fiorini grows grapes, peaches, walnuts and almonds. He also serves on the Delta Stewardship Council, a state body charged with drafting a plan for that region that balances water conservation, supply improvements and other approaches.
Environmental leaders said they would like to work with farmers on water-
saving practices that improve crop yields and quality.
"If we can use less water and get more crop value, why wouldn't we explore this?" Wesselman said.
Ag products bolster DuPont revenues
(Forbes) – Large chemicals and technology company DuPont released fourth quarter earnings before the bell on Tuesday, seeing volumes drop across all its major business units but agricultural products, which benefitted from a strong Latin American selling season. The company managed to grow revenues on pricing increases and delivered decent 2012 guidance.
DuPont’s net income came in at $373 million, slightly below the $376 million it earned in Q4 2010. In a per share basis, the Wilmington, Delaware-based company earned 35 cents when correcting for one-time charges, two pennies above Wall Street’s consensus forecast.
Fourth quarter revenue grew 14% to $8.43 billion, just below expectations. But the company told investors most of the increase came from higher local selling prices, which were up 14%. “Volume declines in all regions were driven by destocking in photovoltaics, polymer and industrial supply chains, as well as weaker demand for products supplying consumer electronics and construction,” read the release.
Agriculture was the outlier, with revenues in the unit
growing 8% to $1.3 billion on strong sales in
DuPont reaffirmed its full-year 2012 earnings outlook of $4.20 to $4.40, an increase of 7% to 12% over adjusted 2011 results. DuPont has fared better than rivals Dow Chemical over the last 12-months, the stock up 1.4% compared with a 5.4% decline for Dow. But DuPont’s Q4 earnings showed weakness across several business units.
As mentioned above, slowing demand from the solar industry hurt the company. First Solar, the largest solar company by market cap, saw its stock tank more than 75% over the last 12 months. In comparison, strength in the agricultural sector fed DuPont’s earnings, as well as Monsanto’s stock price, which is also in positive territory over the last 12 months.
Judge: Raw almonds must be treated
(McClatchy)
The mandatory pasteurization or chemical treatments protect consumers from salmonella. The requirement to apply them is also well within the Agriculture Department's power, a federal judge ruled this week.
"The salmonella rule does not exceed the (department's) authority," U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle concluded in a decision quietly issued late Wednesday, "and it was promulgated pursuant to the proper procedures."
Huvelle's decision is a victory for the Modesto-based Almond Board of California, which administers the agricultural marketing order by which the industry regulates quality control, research and advertising. The board recommended new safety rules in 2006 following incidents of salmonella contamination, and the Agriculture Department subsequently put them in place.
The 30-page decision, though, is another defeat for Fresno, Calif.-area farmers Nick and Steven Koretoff, Livingston, Calif.-based farmer Cynthia Lashbrook and others who complain the required treatments undermine their ability to sell organic produce for a premium price.
"People should be able to buy them," Lashbrook said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Now, Lashbrook lamented, consumers keen on raw almonds will simply turn to foreign sellers, who are not bound by the Agriculture Department rules.
Raw, organic almonds can be sold for as much as 40 percent more than a conventionally treated almond.
All told, 15 organic almond producers signed on to the legal challenge first filed in 2008. Since then, the legal road has been a bumpy one.
In March 2009, Huvelle dismissed the original complaint, partly on the grounds that the farmers hadn't exhausted their administrative options. The next year, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Huvelle and allowed the almond producers' challenge to proceed.
"Producers can sue to challenge agricultural marketing orders, but consumers cannot," concluded Judge Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of President George W. Bush.
Huvelle, appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, thereupon began wading through an extensive administrative record that spanned thousands of pages, ranging from transcripts to written statements.
"Many national
retailers and smaller retailers of raw and organic almonds have ceased
purchasing
The almond board, in turn, declared at the time the new treatment rules were imposed that "while contamination in almonds is not common, the industry determined that aggressive measures were necessary to prevent any other occurrences."
An almond board spokesperson could not be reached to comment Thursday.
Huvelle this week ruled on summary judgment, without having the case go to a full-blown trial. She concluded, among other points, that the quality control authority granted agricultural marketing orders encompasses anti-salmonella treatments.
Improving crops from the roots up
(EurekaAlert) – Research involving scientists at The University of Nottingham has taken us a step closer to breeding hardier crops that can better adapt to different environmental conditions and fight off attack from parasites.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), the researchers have shown that they can alter root growth in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, by controlling an important regulatory protein.
Dr Ive De Smet, a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) David Phillips Fellow in the University's Division of Plant and Crop Science, said: "The world's population is increasing, and a new green revolution is even more pressing to deliver global food security. To achieve this, optimising the root system of plants is essential and these recent results will contribute significantly to our goal of improving crop growth and yield under varying environmental conditions."
The work was carried out by an international team of researchers.
Led by scientists from the Plant Systems Biology Department in the life
sciences research institute VIB in
Plant root biology is essential for healthy plant growth and, while the so-called hidden half of the plant has often been overlooked, its importance is becoming increasingly recognised by scientists.
Despite this, particularly in view of the critical role plants play in global food security, improving plant growth by modulating the biological architecture of root systems is an area which is largely unexplored.
In this latest research, the scientists modulated levels of the protein, transcription factor WRKY23, in plants, analysed the effects on root development and used chemical profiling to demonstrate that this key factor controls the biosynthesis of important metabolites called flavonols.
Altered levels of flavonols affected the distribution of auxin, a plant hormone controlling many aspects of development, which resulted in impaired root growth.
The results of the research can now be used to produce new plant lines, such as crops which are economically valuable, which have an improved root system, making them better able to resist environmental changes which could lead to plant damage or poor yield.
In addition, WRKY23 was previously found to play a role in the way plants interact with types of nematode parasites, which could lead to further research into how to prevent attacks from the creatures during the early stages of plant growth.
Chefs, farmers join forces for better eats
(Los Angeles Times) – It's ironic, in a rosemary-infused sort of way, that in today's farm-to-table restaurant era few chef-and-farmer relationships have evolved into the true collaborations those farm-specific menus often suggest. Their lives tend to exist in parallel worlds, firmly rooted together but never quite merging.
Like many farmers, Bill and Barbara Spencer of Windrose Farm have long focused their energy on the growing needs of their produce, such as Ashmead's Kernel and Hudson Golden Gem apples, on their 70-acre farm just outside Paso Robles. Their chef customers, including David Sundeen Jr., 36, and his wife, Susan Dumeyer, 40, have made all of the apple-inspired culinary decisions.
But what if, for an entire year, those chefs were farmers? Not as pickers, though Sundeen and Dumeyer did plenty of apple hauling during those 12-hour workdays on Windrose Farm. Nor as chefs-in-residence, even if the couple's cooking leans toward apple cobbler-type fare. But as the farm's new managers.
"Bill and Barbara were at a point they needed help tightening their focus," recalls Dumeyer of their somewhat fortuitous arrival at the farm last January. "There are so many parallels, business-wise, between a farm and restaurant operations that often people on both sides don't see."
The chefs knew the Spencers from their former restaurant
days when Dumeyer worked the pastry line at Grace and Sundeen was sous-chef at
Govind Armstrong's former West Hollywood restaurant Table 8 (and later
executive chef at Bouchon in
When Barbara Spencer bumped into the couple at the farmers market, she invited them up for a dinner. "We got to talking about the farm, but things really evolved over several months … we called it dating," jokesBarbara.
During the year of working at Windrose, Sundeen and Dumeyer
developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the flavor profile of each of the 40
apple varieties grown on the farm — knowledge, it turns out, that chefs making
the buying rounds at the
"It became more about seeing how far we, as chefs, could push the envelope and really be involved in a farm," Dumeyer recalls.
For the Spencers, Sundeen and Dumeyer's presence afforded them an opportunity to focus on neglected projects. "After 20 years of plugging away, having two people come on and give us a break allowed Bill to really take a long-term look at the farm," Barbara Spencer says. He now had the time to meet with contractors about adding solar power and a new produce washing station to the farm.
In the process, the Spencers also got a farm management wake-up call from Sundeen and Dumeyer. "We're the sort of farmers who love farming, which means I've had a terrible habit of planting whatever I feel like," says Barbara, an L.A.-based studio musician before buying the farmland in 1990. "That doesn't work so well when chefs call to say they want more tatsoi greens but I only planted one row."
It took Sundeen and Dumeyer's arrival to instill what both couples now refer to as "a sense of urgency" on the farm. Previously, Barbara says she picked produce as she pleased rather than considering whether picking, say, the herbs or lettuces first would maximize produce washing and packing efficiency.
They applied those same kitchen management principles to the farm's staff. "If you've got a guy with a real talent for pruning apples, you need to maximize your staff's talent and put him in that job," Dumeyer says.
The former pastry chef also created an inventory spreadsheet to track the net profit of each type of produce from seed packet to sale, including the costly labor hours, yield and sales volume. If that Tuscan kale had an incredible flavor but wasn't profitable, it had to be replaced.
"A lot of farmers think they need more product diversity, but like at a restaurant, at some point you need to scale back from 10 [items] and produce only two for volume and quality," Dumeyer says.
During their farm tenure, she estimates the number of regular customers quadrupled to more than three dozen restaurants, each buying substantially more produce than before.
Tracking profitability radish by radish helped improve the farm's bottom line, but the surge in steady customers wasn't a simple matter of cost accounting. When Sundeen started accompanying Barbara Spencer to the Wednesday Santa Monica market, it was clear he had a knack for building customer relationships with the people he knew best.
"The public buys a pound of potatoes; a chef buys 40 pounds," Bill says. "We needed David to remind us that we have to focus on our wholesale customers to survive. He always said that we needed to be the main course on the menu, not the weekly special, as we had in the past."
It was with that main-course motto in mind that Sundeen
approached restaurant customers from the perspective of a chef turned farmer.
One week he would bring a few tiny, freshly dug radishes just for David Féau,
executive chef at the Royce,
For other chefs, Sundeen regularly offered the farm's new apple varieties for tasting as he handed over invoices for their pre-ordered produce. Each came with Sundeen's advice on how best to cook that Red Gold or Bramley Seedling. "When you've got so many varieties of apples that you're taking to the market, there's no way chefs can keep up anymore with what [apple] they need to use," Sundeen says.
From now on, though, it will be up to the Spencers to
explain those subtle flavor variations. The chefs left the farm a few weeks ago
when Sundeen was recruited to revamp Dutchman's Seafood House in nearby
But the couple isn't leaving without a few insights of their own. "You always have to be training people in kitchens, and you can't get frustrated with them," Dumeyer says. "But we really discovered from Bill and Barbara how to appreciate the people who work for us.
"That, and we learned that farming is hard work," she continues. "We both lost a lot of weight last year."
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