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January 27, 2010
· Hiring push for research yields profits for Pioneer
· US Navy inks plan to sail under biofuel power
· Eating your greens could save your life – study
· Millions allocated to promote overseas ag trade
· Signs the warming scare is collapsing – opinion
Hiring push for research yields profits for Pioneer
(desmoinesregister.com) – Pioneer Hi-Bred of Johnston, Iowa unnerved investors and bucked employment trends by hiring more than 400 workers in central Iowa in the last two years to buttress its competition with Monsanto.
Pioneer's parent, DuPont, released results Tuesday that show the hiring may be paying off.
The seed company reported sales of $4.7 billion for the year ended Dec. 31, up 19 percent from the previous year. Seed sales volumes for 2009 rose 17 percent.
Pioneer also gained market share in both corn and soybean seeds for the first time in a decade.
Spurred by the need to compete with Monsanto in biotech seed
trait development, Pioneer is hiring 50 more seed researchers this year to add
to the 133 researchers it has hired in the last two years at its
"These are well-paying jobs with education requirements that go up to Ph.D.," company spokeswoman Julie Kenney said.
Competitive field brings expectations
DuPont Chief Executive Ellen Kullman told analysts that President Paul Schickler and his Pioneer team "delivered on their commitment to improved profits and market share."
"We expect the same results this year," Kullman said.
Analyst Mark Connelly of Sterne, Agee in
The news was welcome for Pioneer, whose 2,300 employees at
its
"For decades, the name Pioneer by itself could sell seed," farmer Ron Gordon of Creston said.
But in the last decade, Pioneer saw its once-dominant market
position eroded by competition from the DeKalb, Kruger and Asgrow
subsidiaries of the chemical giant Monsanto. The
The $13 billion
The so-called transgenic seed has hastened the end of the
long-time practice of some farmers to save some of their seed to replant the
next year's crop. This means that every acre of
The battle has spilled into the open with Pioneer's antitrust lawsuit filed last year against Monsanto and a federal investigation - which will be the subject of a hearing March 12 in Ankeny - on competition issues in the seed industry.
Marketing helps company make gains
The issue has created the perception that Pioneer has lagged behind Monsanto in developing seed traits.
Kullman, of
Schickler on Tuesday exulted in the company's market share gains of 2 percentage points in corn seed sales and 3 points in soybeans.
Monsanto leads in corn seed sales, with 36 percent market share to Pioneer's 32 percent. In soybeans, Pioneer is the leader with 26 percent to Monsanto's 23 percent.
Schickler attributed much of Pioneer's turnaround last year to its new Proaccess joint venture marketing, which it created a year ago with 11 independent U.S. and foreign seed companies to distribute Pioneer seed products.
Under Proaccess, other companies
such as NuTech Seed of
"In the
Schickler also credited some of the market share gains to a bulked-up sales and service team, which goes into the fields to help farmers under Pioneer's "right product, right acre" marketing program.
"We've learned over the years that it's nice to have blockbuster new products, but those are few and far between," Schickler said. "What counts is the ability to get into the field with the farmer."
Pioneer continues push to develop products
Monsanto already is selling its new "Smartstax" corn seed with newest-generation pest-resistant traits. Pioneer is awaiting regulatory approval for its "acremax" seed product that would accomplish the same thing.
Both rivals plan to create soybeans that have the ability to make oils more comparable to the canola and olive oils that have taken much of the low-fat oil market away from conventional soybean vegetable oils in the last decade.
A yet-to-be-developed seed is what farmers and analysts
consider the ultimate blockbuster: drought-tolerant corn that would have the
potential to dominate corn production in the drier areas to the west of the
"There's no question that Pioneer has some issues with its seed portfolio and that Monsanto is ahead," analyst Connelly said. "Down the road, Pioneer will need some bigger products."
US Navy inks plan to sail under biofuel power
(Wire Services) – THE
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has set four, specific goals for moving the Navy and Marine Corps onto an aggressive renewable energy – including advanced fuels -- agenda. He outlined those goals as he and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at supporting the Navy’s program.
"In order to secure the strategic energy future of the United States, create a more nimble and effective fighting force, and protect our planet from destabilizing climate changes, I have committed the Navy and Marine Corps to meet aggressive energy targets that go far beyond previous measures," Mabus said in a statement.
The goals include:
* By 2012, demonstrate a Green Strike Group composed of nuclear vessels and ships powered by biofuel;
* By 2016, sail the Strike Group as a “Great Green Fleet” composed of nuclear ships, surface combatants equipped with hybrid electric alternative power systems running on biofuel, and aircraft running on biofuel;
* By 2015, cut petroleum use in its 50,000 non-tactical commercial fleet in half, by phasing in hybrid, flex fuel and electric vehicles; and
* By 2020, produce at least half of shore based installations' energy requirements from alternative sources. Also 50pc percent of all shore installations will be net zero energy consumers. By 2020 half of DoN's total energy consumption for ships, aircraft, tanks, vehicles and shore installations will come from alternative sources.
The biofuels and renewable energy industries have long looked to military – and other government departments – as major potential customers for the new technologies.
"USDA looks forward to working with the Navy and other public and private partners to advance the production of renewable energy by sharing technical, program management and financial expertise," Vilsack said in a statement issued after signing the USDA-Navy MOU on Jan. 21.
The MOU complements USDA and The Navy and Marine Corps' existing renewable energy programs and efforts. USDA has a variety of programs and services that support renewable energy development as does the Department of Energy.
Eating your greens could save your life – study
(Lab News Daily) – The age old reminder to always eat your greens isn’t just for kids any more.
Not only are the vitamins and minerals good for you, but eating greens could also save your life, according to a recent study involving scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
LLNL researchers Graham Bench and Ken Turteltaub found that giving someone a small dose of chlorophyll (Chla) or chlorophyllin (CHL) — found in green leafy vegetables such as spinach, broccoli and kale — could reverse the effects of aflatoxin poisoning.
Aflatoxin is a potent, naturally occurring carcinogenic mycotoxin that is associated with the growth of two types of mold: Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Food and food crops most prone to aflatoxin contamination include corn and corn products, cottonseed, peanuts and peanut products, tree nuts and milk.
Bench and Turteltaub, working with colleagues from Oregon State Univ. and an industry partner, Cephalon Inc., found that greens have chemopreventive potential.
Millions allocated to promote overseas ag trade
(USDA-FAS) – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today
announced the allocation of $234.5 million to 70
"In today's highly competitive international markets, we must provide our exporters with the resources they need to compete overseas during the 21st century," said Vilsack. "When you consider the current global financial crisis, increasing production in key competitor countries and aggressive use of export promotion tools by our competitors, USDA's market development programs are more important than ever."
The funding announced today was allocated under the Market Access Program (MAP) and the Foreign Market Development (FMD) Cooperator Program, both administered by USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS).
The MAP uses funds from USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation
(CCC) to share the costs of overseas market development and promotional
activities with
Under the FMD program, USDA's CCC establishes a partnership
with nonprofit
For more information about FAS's market development programs, contact the Office of Trade Programs at (202) 720-4327, or visit www.fas.usda.gov/mos/marketdev.asp
Signs the warming scare is collapsing – opinion
(heraldsun.com.au) – ONCE global warming was “the great moral challenge of our generation”. Or so claimed the (Australian) Prime Minister.
But suddenly it’s the great con that’s falling to bits around Kevin Rudd’s ears.
In fact, so fast is global warming theory collapsing that in his flurry of recent speeches to outline his policies for the new decade, Rudd has barely mentioned his “moral challenge” at all.
Take his long Australia Day reception speech on Sunday. Rudd
talked of our ageing population and of building stuff, of taxes, hospitals and
schools - but dared not say one word about the booga booga he used to claim could destroy our economy, Kakadu, the
What’s happened?
Answer: in just the past few months has come a cascade of evidence that the global warming scare is based on often dodgy science and even outright fraud.
Here are just the top 10 new signs that catastrophic man-made warming may be just another beat-up, like swine flu, SARS, and the Y2K bug.
1. Climategate
THE rot for Rudd started last November with the leaking of
emails from the Climatic Research Unit of Britain’s
Those emails from many of the world’s top climate scientists showed them conspiring to sack sceptical scientists from magazines, hide data from sceptics, and cover up errors.
One of the scientists, CRU boss Phil Jones, even boasted of having found a “trick” to “hide the decline” in recent temperature reconstructions.
Jones was also on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so influential in convincing us our gasses are heating the planet that it won the Nobel Prize.
But he showed how political the IPCC actually is by promising in yet another email that he and another colleague would do almost anything to keep sceptical studies out of IPCC reports.
Just as damning was the admission by IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth that the world isn’t warming as the IPCC said it must: “We cannot account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
2. The
MORE than 40,000 politicians, scientists and activists flew
to
This circus ended in total failure.
Not only did this show that Rudd’s planned tax on our emissions will now be even more suicidally useless. It also suggested world leaders can’t really think global warming is so bad.
3. The Himalayan scare
RUDD has quoted the IPCC as his authority on global warming, claiming it’s a group of “guys in white coats” who “just measure things”. But the IPCC also just makes things up.
Take this claim from its 2007 report: “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.”
In fact, we now know this bizarre claim was first made by a little-known Indian scientist in an interview for an online magazine, and then copied into a report by the green group WWF.
From there, the IPCC lifted it almost word for word for its own 2007 report, without checking if it was true.
It wasn’t, of course, as the IPCC last week conceded. The glaciers will be around for at least centuries more.
But why did the IPCC run this mad claim in the first place?
The IPCC’s Dr Murari Lal, the co-ordinating lead author responsible, says he knew all along there was no peer-reviewed research to back it up.
“(But) we thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians ... “
Note: you are told not the truth, but what will scare you best.
4. Pachauri’s response
BUT what smells just as much is how IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, a former railway engineer, first tried to defend this “mistake” by accusing sceptical scientists of practising “voodoo science”.
Deny and abuse. That’s the IPCC way.
Even more suspiciously, Syed Hasnain, the scientist who first made the false claim, then turned out to be now employed by The Energy Research Institute, headed by ... er, Pachauri.
More astonishing still, only two weeks ago TERI won up to $500,000 from the Carnegie Corporation to study exactly Hasnain’s bogus claim. See how cash follows a good scare?
5. Pachauri’s conflicts
IN fact, Pachauri and TERI do amazingly well from his IPCC job.
Its recent donors include Deutsche Bank, Toyota, Yale University - and, sadly, Rudd, who last year handed over $1 million, hoping to win influence with such a big UN honcho.
Pachauri himself is now a director or adviser to a score of banks, investment institutions and carbon traders, many involved in areas directly affected by IPCC policies.
He denies any wrongdoing, and is not paid by the IPCC. But see again how cash follows a scare, and ask if the IPCC chief has a conflict of interest.
6. The green hand revealed
WE’VE seen how the IPCC just copied its false claims about
the
In fact, the IPCC’s 2007 report cites WWF documents as “evidence” at least another 15 times.
Elsewhere it cites a non-scientific, non-peer-reviewed paper from another activist body, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, as its sole proof that global warming could devastate African agriculture.
Whose agenda is the IPCC pushing?
7. More fake IPCC claims
THIS week came more evidence that the IPCC sexed up its 2007 report, this time when it claimed the world had “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s”, thanks to global warming.
In fact, the claim was picked out of an unpublished report
by a
8. New research on our gasses
AT least four new papers by top scientists cast doubt on the IPCC claim that our carbon dioxide emissions are strongly linked to global warming.
One, published in Nature, shows the world had ice age activity even when atmospheric CO2 was four times the level of our pre-industrial times.
Another, by NASA medallist John Christy and David Douglass, shows global temperatures did not go up as much as expected from man-made emissions over the past three decades.
9. New Australian research
10. The world still won’t warm
AND still the world hasn’t warmed since 2001, even though we pump out more emissions than ever.
Even professional alarmist Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, admits “we haven’t seen a continuation of that (warming) trend” and “the computer modelling and the real world data disagree”.
And with Europe, the United States and China hit with record cold and snow this winter, no wonder Kevin Rudd has suddenly gone cold on global warming, the mad faith that has cost us so many futile billions already.
End Transmission