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January 26, 2010
· Roving farm party lends many hands to growers
· Cover crops – More seed yields fewer weeds
· How tobacco plant thwarts caterpillar onslaught
·
Irrigation technology on tap at World Ag Expo
· FarmVille is the hottest thing for online gamers
Roving farm party lends many hands to growers
(newsobserver.com)
SILK HOPE,
About once a month, a growing contingent of farmers, food activists, office workers and the unemployed chooses a small farm somewhere around the Triangle and puts a serious dent in the owner's to-do list.
More than 50 volunteers showed up Sunday morning at Okfuskee
Farm, near the northwest
For many, it was a way to get their hands dirty and act on their beliefs about local food.
"If you want to eat local, healthy food, you can't wait for someone else to do it," said Nick Fox, an engineer with Piedmont Biofuels. "Someone's got to build ... the infrastructure."
Fox moved to the Triangle from
In its early days, the founders met at one another's farms and shared a meal; work isn't so hard when it's a social event, and they were tired of pushing their cause in boring meetings.
Now, the idea is spreading and drawing people who probably wouldn't have much use for a pitchfork otherwise. Over the months, word of mouth and media exposure has helped Crop Mob draw almost 300 people to its e-mail list. More than 40 people show up at a typical event.
Sunday, dozens of people combined to put in hundreds of hours of labor. At the edge of the farm, they hauled log after log from the woods while a photographer with The New York Times snapped pictures for an article about the local-food movement.
The volunteers also built hugelkultur [a German term] beds, which are raised beds of rotted wood that eventually enrich the soil.
Some volunteers already work on farms or are studying agriculture, including 20-somethings trying to make their own small farms thrive. The night before, the laborers gathered for a party and a campfire. On Sunday, Vimela Rajendran and Angelina Koulizakis served homemade food, such as venison stew, sourdough pancakes and bakalava, for free.
It made sense, said Koulizakis, because her Pittsboro restaurant, Angelina's Kitchen, relies on local farmers as much as it can.
"These are the guys that grow the food," she said.
Rob Jones, a founder of the group, sees the roving work parties as a modern, Internet-connected take on the agrarian culture that faded with the industrialization of farming. In a tough market, crop mobs can give small farms a shot in the arm and connect them to potential customers.
"There's a need for community in this kind of system," Jones said.
Plus, Jones said, many modern farmers in the area did not grow up farming - for them, a crop mob is a way to find customers who are also willing to work the fields.
The hosts of Sunday's mob are new farmers themselves. Bobby Tucker, 27, and his parents bought the 20-acre Okfuskee Farm, where they now raise fruits, vegetables and livestock, about a year and a half ago. For his father, Joe, it was a chance to return to fond childhood memories of the farm.
For Bobby, it's more than a hobby. He could spend decades trying to perfect a sustainable farm, he said.
"It's a lifestyle. It's a political statement," Tucker said. "It's trying to reconnect with your food."
Cover crops – More seed yields fewer weeds
(USDA-ARS) – Farmers cultivating organic produce often use winter cover crops to add soil organic matter, improve nutrient cycling and suppress weeds. Now these producers can optimize cover crop use by refining seeding strategies, thanks to work by an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist.
In moderate climates, suppressing weeds in winter cover crops is important because weeds that grow throughout the year produce seed that can increase weeding costs in subsequent vegetable crops. ARS horticulturist Eric Brennan, at the U.S. Agricultural Research Station in Salinas, Calif., conducted studies comparing winter cover crop planting protocols in organic systems along California’s central coast.
Brennan looked at how seeding rates and planting patterns affected cover crop performance. He planted rye using three seeding rates: 80 pounds per acre, 160 pounds per acre and 240 pounds per acre. The seeds were either planted in a grid pattern that required driving a grain drill across fields twice, or in traditional rows. All seeding was carried out in October.
Brennan found that planting rye at higher seeding rates consistently improved early-to midseason rye biomass production and weed suppression. But he saw no consistent crop improvement from grid planting.
Brennan also studied seeding rates and planting patterns using a cover crop of legumes and oats. The seeds were planted at densities of 100, 200, and 300 pounds per acre and planted both in grids and traditional rows.
Results were similar to the rye cover crop results. As seeding rates increased, weed biomass production decreased from around 267 pounds per acre to less than 89 pounds per acre. In addition, planting patterns had no effect on cover crop yield or weed suppression.
Brennan’s findings suggest that increased seeding rates could provide organic producers with a cost-effective weed control strategy. However, planting in a grid pattern would probably not consistently boost the benefits of cover crops—and since it would require two passes through the field, grid planting would likely double dust production, fuel use, planting time and labor.
The research was published in the Agronomy Journal.
How tobacco plant thwarts caterpillar onslaught
(ScienceDaily.com) Butterflies and moths are welcome visitors to many plant species. Plants attract insect pollinators with the colors, forms, nectars and scents of their flowers to ensure fertilization and reproduction.
However, female moths are also threatening to the plant: Once attracted by the flower's scent, they lay their eggs on the green leaves, and shortly voracious young caterpillars hatch. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology have now discovered how tobacco plants successfully solve this dilemma.
The researchers found that herbivory changed the opening time of the flower buds from dusk to dawn. In addition the emission of flower scents was dramatically reduced. This change in flower timing was elicited by specific molecules in the oral secretions of the larvae, and required the jasmonate signaling cascade, which is known to elicit a host of other defense responses in plants. Instead of night-active moths, these morning-opening flowers attract day-active hummingbirds which are also able to transfer pollen -- without threatening the plant's life.
Outbreak of tomato hornworms
During field experiments performed by PhD students of the
Department of Molecular Ecology headed by Prof. Ian T. Baldwin in the Great
Basin Desert of Utah (
Pollination wanted, but no oviposition
Ecologists had already noticed that female moths attracted for pollination laid their eggs, and shortly leaf-eating larvae hatched to feed on the same plant. The scientists considered whether plants would actually submit without reserve to this life-threatening disadvantage -- just for pollination. They intensively studied the remarkable morning-opening flowers (MoF) which were only produced by plants that had been attacked by insect larvae and compared them to the usually occurring night-opening flowers (NoF). The first experiment already revealed an astounding result: MoF did not emit the attractant benzyl acetone anymore (see also Kessler et al., Science 321, 2008) and also the sugar concentration in the floral nectar was considerably reduced. Furthermore, it was striking that the petals of MoF only opened to a third of the size of NoF. All in all, the MoF were rendered literally unnoticeable by the moths -- however, they may become interesting for different pollinators living nearby the field station: hummingbirds.
Hummingbirds visit the morning-opening flowers and serve as pollinators
To find out whether moths or birds successfully transferred pollen from flower to flower, the scientists determined the outcrossing rate of plants visited by moths or hummingbirds in field experiments. They removed the anthers from young flower buds to rule out self-pollination. Then an unattacked and an insect-attacked tobacco plant were covered with a mesh-covered wire cage until the morning of the next day to exclude night-active pollinators. A second pair of plants remained uncovered and thereby accessible to night-active pollinators. Before dawn the cages were exchanged, so that the plants that had been uncovered during the night were now covered and the plants that had been covered at night became accessible to pollinators during the day. In the evening all experimental plants were covered and the plants remained so until seed capsules were produced. Counting of the capsules revealed that a significant majority of capsules on plants that had not been attacked by caterpillars originated from flowers that were pollinated during the night between 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., whereas in caterpillar-infested plants successful pollination had occurred in majority during the day between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., therefore by hummingbirds.
The scientists verified the assumption that actually hummingbirds visit the MoFs and drink their nectar by directly observing and counting out more than 1000 flowering wild tobacco plants. 18 humming bird visitations were intensively studied which showed hummingbirds visiting larvae-infested plants. As a matter of fact, more than 90% of the birds preferred the MoF compared to NoF, even if only a few MoF were on a plant. "It is likely that the hummingbirds can recognize the special shape of the partially open corollas of the MoF in the morning and associate these characteristics with the reliable quality and quantity of the nectar in these flowers," says Celia Diezel, co-author of the study.
Experiments using larval oral secretions and transgenic tobacco plants
In further experiments the scientists studied how attacked plants recognize herbivory and subsequently change the developmental program of the flowers to favor hummingbirds. Instead of infesting the plant by putting caterpillars on the leaves, the researchers mechanically wounded a leaf with a pattern wheel and applied oral secretions from hornworm larvae on the wounds. The plant reacted as after direct insect attack: After approximately 3 days more morning-opening flowers compared to non-induced plants were produced.
"Maybe the fatty acid amino acid conjugates present in the oral secretions of the larvae elicit this reaction. We already know that they switch on the plant's defense against herbivory, for instance by producing toxic substances to fend off the attacker," Danny Kessler, PhD student at the institute, explains. In an additional experiment he used genetically modified tobacco, in which the signaling pathway between the messenger molecule in the oral secretion and the defense reaction was interrupted; these plants were unable to produce jasmonate, a plant hormone initiating plant defense responses. In fact, the transgenic jasmonate-deficient plants used in the field experiment did not produce MoF after spit induction, but could if the plants were sprayed with jasmonate, which showed that the reprogramming of the flower production is actually related to the pathway that switches on defense mechanisms.
Why do plants risk attracting tomato hornworm moths as pollinators, although the insects' larvae feed on the plants? "We cannot answer this question from the perspective of one single plant, but, if at all, from an evolutionary and ecological background," says Ian Baldwin.
Wild tobacco populations grow on vast areas after fires, comparable to synchronized monocultures with thousands of widespread plants. Hummingbirds may not be the most reliable pollination service the plant species needs for outcrossing and reproduction. Using volatiles, the plants can attract moths from large distances, whereas hummingbirds are only available, if their nests are accidentally in the vicinity of the tobacco populations. Moreover, looking at the special mode of hummingbird pollination, it is more likely that flowers of one single plant are pollinated with pollen from the same plant than from flowers of different plants. This can decrease the genetic variability of the seeds produced. Moths may move more frequently among plants and this behavior may results in greater genetic variability for the seed produced from their pollination services.
Irrigation technology on tap at World Ag Expo
A full day of seminars
related to new technologies and innovations in crop irrigation will help
farmers incorporate new tools and strategies for maximizing productivity with a
limited water supply.
Crop Irrigation
Seminar Schedule February 11, 2010
10 a.m. – 10:30
a.m. Determining Irrigation Requirements for Every Plant Growth Stage
Careful
considerations of irrigation strategy and target moisture levels at every crop
growth stage are key to promoting plant health and
securing optimal yield and quality. Tools will be presented for calculating and
managing the delivery of irrigation water that help better meet plant-water
needs at all crop growth stages and that easily can be incorporated into a
grower’s irrigation decision-making. Studies have shown that a crop’s potential
is closely tied to managing plant-available water in the soil at each crop
growth stage. Failing to meet plant-water requirements at every growth stage,
from dormancy through bloom and all the way to post-harvest, can compromise
results not only in this year’s harvest but in future years as well. For
example, refilling the deep moisture bank during dormancy and pre-bloom will
help impact the success of fruit development and resulting crop quality and
yield.
This presentation
will look at tools for simplifying management of plant-water requirements.
These include annual water budgets capable of identifying plant-water
requirements at each growth stage as well as scheduling and reporting tools
that simplify the process of making daily irrigation decisions.
Speaker:
Matt Angell, PureSense
10:30 a.m. – 11
a.m. Getting More from Less—Scheduling Irrigation Based on Crop Demand
Limited
availability of water for agricultural irrigation is foremost for many growers
in the West. Strain on the water conveyance infrastructure has brought public
scrutiny to irrigation practices that have been employed for decades. Political
pressures, environmental concerns, water rights, and other issues combined with
record drought conditions have made it increasingly more important to manage
every drop of water very carefully. However, in order to manage this precious
resource, growers must have an accurate and reliable method of measuring soil
moisture status in order to improve irrigation-scheduling practices. The most
efficient irrigation schedule will provide only what the crop demands to
replenish the depleted soil moisture. In some cases growers may apply more than
this amount for deep leaching, which requires even more diligence to ensure
water is not wasted.
The seminar
will present several methods of monitoring soil moisture status for maximum
irrigation efficiency as well as improved crop yield. The principle of soil
tension measurement and how it relates to various crop types will be discussed.
Methods of manual and automatic data collection will be explained. Various
options for remotely accessing the data will also be covered. Most importantly
will be sharing how monitoring soil moisture can improve irrigation efficiency
and reduce associated costs such as fuel and electric power consumption, labor,
nutrient application, and wear and tear on irrigation equipment.
Speaker:
Lanny Sowell, Irrometer
11 a.m. –11:30
a.m. Increasing Yields While Reducing Inputs Using Wireless Ranch Control
Today’s farmers
need new approaches to increasing their yields to stay competitive, while at
the same time dealing with more limited inputs, such as water and labor. This
presentation describes the concept of “Wireless Ranch Control— a comprehensive
approach to gaining complete control of a farm operation by monitoring a wide
range of environmental and operational factors affecting yield, as well as
implementing automation of critical functions. The factors that can be
monitored include temperature (e.g. frost and heat waves); relative humidity
(e.g. disease); wind (ETo and spraying); solar
radiation (Eto); soil moisture; water resource levels
(ponds, tanks); water pressure (irrigation system performance); pH (acid
injection performance); water flow (irrigation records); and crop imagery
(cameras). The factors that can be controlled include irrigation valves; pumps;
and work flow. The presentation will discuss these various factors, how they
can drive yield while minimizing input, as well as the challenges to
implementation. The practical benefits will be demonstrated through customer
case stories.
Speaker:
Jacob Christfort, Ranch Systems
11:30 a.m. – Noon
A Case Study in Utilizing UgMO Wireless Soil Sensors
for Soil, Plant and Irrigation Management Scheduling Irrigation Based on Crop
Demand
The presentation
will discuss an innovative wireless soil monitoring system, UgMO,
for tracking in real time soil moisture, salinity and temperature. It allows
the user access to this data anywhere and anytime through a stationary or
mobile internet browser, which displays the data in an easy to understand yet
informative live interface. Case studies using the UgMO
system, including alfalfa and potatoes in
Speaker:
Carmen Magro, Advanced Sensor Technology
Noon – 1 p.m. Solar
and Irrigation From a Farmer’s Perspective
The increase of
solar-energy use for irrigation and other agricultural purposes has soared in
recent years. During this session, a farmer who implemented solar will discuss
the pros and cons.
Speaker:
To be determined
1 p.m. – 1:30
p.m. Irrigation Pump Efficiency Testing
Twenty percent of
the energy consumed in
An example of a
pump test will be shown and explained during this seminar. Following is a brief
explanation on how pumps work and how to determine their efficiency. A
pump-efficiency test can be performed to determine the Overall Pumping Plant
Efficiency (OPE) of an individual pump. The test compares the energy into the
plant (in the form of electricity, diesel, natural gas, gasoline, etc.) versus
the energy out in the form of water flow and pressure being developed by the
pump. The OPE is a percentage of that energy in versus energy out. Thousands of
pumps have been tested over the last few years in
Speaker:
Bill Green, Center for Irrigation Technology,
1:30 p.m.
– 2 p.m. The Advantages of Closely Spaced Emitters
There are many
advantages in using drip irrigation with closely spaced emitters. In fruit and
vegetable row crop production, many producers successfully use drip tape
systems to germinate seed and set transplants without the traditional use of
sprinklers. A technique common to their success is the use of drip tape with
closely spaced emitters to achieve desired wetting patterns. This seminar will
address the specific techniques of three producers growing strawberries
and celery in
Speaker:
Inge Bisconer,
Toro Micro-Irrigation
2 p.m. – 2:30
p.m. Center Pivot Irrigation Systems
What are the
advantages and disadvantages of center pivot irrigation systems? Geared to
those who are interested in more information about the technology or who may
want to install a system, the seminar will provide detailed information about the
Valmont center pivot system.
Speaker:
Ray Batten, Valmont Industries
2:30 – 3 p.m. Irrigating
Rice With Mechanized Irrigation
This seminar will
focus on the information and data that has been collected over the last three
years in research and field scale production sites in
Speaker:
Jake L LaRue, Valmont Industries
The 43rd annual World Ag Expo 2010, powering
global agriculture, will run February 9–11 at the International Agri-Center show grounds in
Online attendee registration is now open at WorldAgExpo.Those
who register online through Feb. 1 will save time at the gate, $2 off daily
admission, and be automatically entered to win a Yamaha Rhino and other
registration prizes. World Ag Expo tickets are $10 online if purchased before
Feb. 1, or $12 at the gate. Attendees who pick up their badges at the onsite
registration center also will receive a complimentary admission to West Coast
Nationals on the same day. For more information about West Coast Nationals, go
to westcoastnationals.com.
FarmVille is the hottest thing for online gamers
(AP
via Fox News) –
And the best part is the 40-year-old sex therapist never has to leave her computer to tend to it all.
She's one of tens of millions of occupants of FarmVille, a near-utopian, wildly popular online fantasy game where folks rush to another neighbor's aid, ribbons readily come as rewards, plants don't get diseased and there's never a calamitous frost, flood or drought.
Since its launch last summer, the cartoonish simulation game seeming to meld "Leave it to Beaver" and "Green Acres" has become a Facebook phenomenon, luring in everyone from urbanites like Grimes to actual farmers while gently nudging people to think more about where their food comes from.
"It's kind of what you don't see every day,"
Grimes said of FarmVille by Zynga, a San
Francisco-based developer of games widely played at online hangouts such as
Facebook. "I have to say, living in
FarmVille — with more than 72 million monthly users
worldwide, the most talked-about application in Facebook status updates — heads
a growing stable of simulated agriculture that also includes SlashKey's
Purposely simplistic, FarmVille lets players build and trick out their farms, starting with a tiny parcel they till and seed with a range of crops including berries, eggplant, wheat, soybeans, artichokes and pumpkins. Players can add pigs, cows and chickens and accouterments such as barns, chicken coops, windmills and greenhouses.
As on real farms, attentiveness in FarmVille is vital. Players who diligently tend to their crops see their farms flourish and their bank balances balloon. Those late with their harvests may see their crops — and their investment — shrivel and die.
Neighbors get rewarded with points and gold for scaring away pests, fertilizing or feeding chickens on another player's spread.
"One thing we feel we got right is it has extremely broad appeal," said Bill Mooney, Zynga's vice president and general manager. "Everybody likes farming, whether you're a gardener, whether you grew up on a farm or your grandparents did. It's literally something everyone can relate with."
And with FarmVille, "there's an appeal that's just cute, with the amazing ways people take the farms and develop them out as their own."
In the end, he hopes, "people will see this as a fun little escape."
Grimes sure has. The transplanted Oklahoman who detests video games and has no farm background razzed her FarmVille-loving friends before her sister successfully prodded her to join.
Now, she admits, "I'm a total FarmVille freak."
A mother of a 3-year-old daughter and the wife of a paramedic, Grimes squeezes in simulated farming between appointments and parenting. She devotes less than an hour each day "in little bitty spurts" to eventually max out her FarmVille spread to resemble a whimsical menagerie — black sheep, pink calves, penguins, reindeer with flashing Christmas lights in their antlers.
"It was completely mindless and just mine," she said. "I could decide where everything went, I could decide when it happened. I got to move things around. I got to make it look nice."
She loves getting rewards at every turn, often for helping a neighbor. And she credits FarmVille with hastening her reconnection with old friends, including a fourth-grade schoolmate who's now living next door to her in this online agricultural experience.
"I don't know anything about her life except she's a really nice neighbor — she leaves me little posts, she sends me nice gifts, harvests my crops. And it makes me feel better about people in my life," Grimes said. "What's so nice about this is it's really about camaraderie, like you depend on people to do things for you."
"I really would have never thought this would have been something I do," she said.
Even actual farmers are digging it. In his central Illinois farmhouse near Windsor, 31-year-old bachelor Darin Doehring started playing months ago with the game he credits with helping him wait out sogginess that hampered harvesting of his 2,000 acres of real corn and soybeans.
"There were more times this past fall I was doing my crops more on there (FarmVille), than I was in the field because of the rain and mud outside. I enjoy it," Doehring said, noting that he wished the fantasy game posed more challenges mimicking real-life ones farmers face, including weather events.
Mooney of Zynga says that isn't likely: "We don't want it to be a punishing experience. We want this to be a positive."
To John Reifsteck, a corn-and-soybean grower in
And while he doesn't play FarmVille — "I work in the fields for a living" — he understands those who do and welcomes FarmVille's popularity.
"It's a healthy sign for agriculture — but only if players don't come to think that running a farm is as easy as FarmVille makes it seem," he wrote. "If FarmVille was as difficult and complicated as actual farming, probably no one would play it."
End Transmission