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" I heard it
through the
AgLine"
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February 1, 2011
·
N. America
pollution wrecking Euro crops
·
Atrazine
reduces soil erosion, study shows
·
Archer Daniels
2Q profits hit the skids
·
Brazil’s ag
trade with Arab nations soaring
·
Linking
would-be farmers with plots of land
N. America
pollution wrecking Euro crops
(Mail
Online) – Man-made air pollution from North America causes Europe to lose 1.2 million tonnes
of wheat a year, a new study has found.
Ozone pollution - produced by coal fired power stations and
cars - travels between continents much more easily than thought, traveling
thousands of miles on the wind.
Crops on every continent are damaged by pollution from others.
The wheat loss in Europe is
the biggest worldwide.
The chemical - a powerful air pollutant - is produced when
pollutants near the ground react with sunlight.
The researchers say that the pollution could even endanger
the security of the food supply in future.
Ozone pollution in all of the northern hemisphere's major industrialised regions - Europe, America and southeast
Asia - harms major crops such as wheat, maize, soy, cotton, potato and rice on
other continents.
The scale of the impact has previously been unknown.
Ground-level ozone pollution is produced from chemicals
released during high temperature combustion, for example by combustion of
fossil fuels by motor vehicles and in coal fired power plants.
It's separate from the ozone layer, a protective layer
around the outside of our atmosphere. Ground-level ozone is harmful to humans
as well as plants.
The study also suggests that increasing levels of air
pollution from one continent may partly offset efforts on another.
The findings have important implications for international
strategies to tackle global food shortages, as well as climate.
Dr Steve Arnold, a senior lecturer in atmospheric
composition at the University
of Leeds, who led the
study, said: 'Our findings demonstrate that air pollution plays a significant
role in reducing global crop productivity.
'It shows that the negative impacts of air pollution on
crops may have to be addressed at an international level rather than through
local air quality policies alone.'
Michael Hollaway, a PhD student at
the University of
Leeds, used a computer
model to predict reductions in global surface ozone if man-made emissions of
nitrogen oxide from the three continents were shut off.
Using crop location and yield calculations, he and the
research team were able to predict impacts on staple food crops, each with
their own unique sensitivity to ozone pollution.
Dr Lisa Emberson a senior lecturer
from the University
of York: 'This study
highlights the need for air pollution impacts on crops to be taken more
seriously as a threat to food security.
'Air quality is often overlooked as a determinant of future
crop supply Given the sizeable yield losses of staple crops caused by surface
ozone, coupled with the challenges facing our ability to be food secure in the
coming decades further coordinated international efforts should be targeted at reducing
emissions of ozone forming gases across the globe.'
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Atrazine reduces soil erosion, study
shows
(Iowa
Farmer) – The 50-year-old herbicide atrazine is instrumental to
conservation as well, according to a new study.
Paul Mitchell, University
of Wisconsin economist,
found the use of atrazine helps farmers reduce aggregate soil erosion by up to
85 million tons per year — enough to fill more than 3 million dump trucks,
according to a news release.
Syngenta, the principal registrant for atrazine, provided
resources and support for Mitchell’s research.
The study’s other key findings include:
- Atrazine and sister triazine
herbicides, simazine and propazine,
benefit U.S.
society by up to $350 million in soil erosion costs per year.
- By encouraging conservation tillage and no-till farming,
atrazine and the other triazines reduce soil erosion,
decrease fuel use and improve water quality.
- Increased farmer adoption of conservation tillage and
related practices, made possible in part by popular herbicides such as
atrazine, led to a 43-percent decrease in soil erosion from U.S. farmland over the past three
decades.
- Because atrazine increases corn and sorghum yields,
farmers use less land for crops. This allows as many as 875,000 acres to remain
in the CRP, where it generates environmental benefits for everyone, including
wildlife habitat and reduced soil erosion.
Mitchell also has written a second paper: “Economic
assessment of the benefits of chloro-s-triazine
herbicides to U.S.
corn, sorghum, and sugar cane producers.”
This study demonstrates atrazine and chloro-s-triazines
simazine and propazine
benefit U.S.
corn, sorghum and sugar cane farmers up to $3.3 billion in value annually.
“We are just beginning to understand the full environmental
economic impact atrazine has on the agriculture industry and global food
markets in this new agricultural economy,” said Mitchell.
“Atrazine effectively controls weeds and significantly
increases corn, sorghum and sugar cane yields. But, it also supports
conservation tillage and no-till farming, which are critical to protecting the
environment and providing food and clean water to our world’s population.”
Findings from the two studies show atrazine and its sister triazines generate a $4.4 billion consumer surplus
annually.
Combining the consumer surplus estimates
with the soil erosion benefits, atrazine’s value to
the U.S.
economy totals up to $4.8 billion, with most of these benefits going directly
to consumers.
Mitchell, an associate professor in the UW Department of
Agricultural and Applied Economics, grew up on his family’s farm in Iowa and received his doctorate from Iowa State University.
Before joining UW, he was an assistant professor in the
Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M
University.
His current research and outreach programs focus on the
farm-level economics of crop production, emphasizing pest management, risk
management and specialty crop economics.
Mitchell’s research is part of a broad assessment by
Syngenta to examine the value of atrazine in today’s ag
economy.
For more information about atrazine, visit www.atrazine.com
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Archer Daniels 2Q profits hit the skids
(Reuters)
– Archer Daniels Midland Co.'s quarterly profit shrank to almost a tenth of
what it was a year earlier as the U.S.
agribusiness giant made less money in almost all of its major units and took a
big charge related to a plastic production facility in Iowa.
Companies like Archer Daniels, whose shares were down 4
percent in Tuesday pre-market trading, make money by buying, selling, shipping
and storing farm products and by processing commodities like corn and soybeans
into products like livestock feed.
Prices for corn and soybeans are historically high due to
concerns about global supplies, but those do not always translate into strong
revenues for agribusiness companies.
Commodity trading firms and processors have struggled as
volatile markets have increased risks and costs.
During the second quarter ended December 31, ADM saw
oilseeds processing profit fall $72 million while corn processing results
decreased $532 million.
ADM said the loss in corn processing included $339 million
in asset impairment charges related to a renewable plastic production facility
in Clinton, Iowa.
Agricultural services profit decreased $268 million on poor
international merchandising and lower U.S. export volumes. Results at
other businesses fell by $181 million.
During the second quarter, the company earned $80 million,
or 12 cents a share, compared with $732 million, or $1.14 a share, a year
earlier.
Excluding special items like asset impairment, earnings were
51 cents a share.
Analysts, on average, were expecting the company to earn 76
cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Net sales rose to $23.31 billion from $20.9 billion last
year.
Earlier this month, ADM said it would cut about 1,000
positions, or 3 percent of its workforce, worldwide in the first broad
reduction in company history, in the face of increasing global competition from
processors who are becoming more aggressive about managing costs.
Rival Cargill last month said it would eliminate 1.5 percent
of its staff, or about 2,000 people.
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Brazil’s ag trade
with Arab nations soaring
(AFP)
– Brazil's
trade with the Arab world soared more than 28 percent in 2011 to reach $25.13
billion and is expected to grow a further 15 percent this year, the Arab
Brazilian Chamber of Commerce said Tuesday.
Brazil
registered a trade surplus of $5.15 billion with the 22 countries making up the
Arab League last year, as its exports totaled $15.13 billion, up 20.3 percent
compared with 2010, while its imports reached 9.98 billion, up 43.36 percent.
Salim Taufic
Schahin, the chamber's president, said that despite
the global economic uncertainty, "Prospects for 2012 are optimistic and
our projection is that we will have an increase of 10 to 15 percent" over
the 2011 figure.
He pointed out that as a bloc, the Arab League ranks among
the world's 10 top economies.
Major export items last year were sugar with sales worth
$4.62 billion, up 19.81 percent; meat products with $3.55 billion in sales, up
9.89 percent; mining products with $2.97 billion, up 34.82 percent; and grains
with 1.17 billion dollars, up 96.83 percent.
Michel Alaby, the chamber's chief
executive officer, pointed to the great potential for boosting Brazil's
trade ties with the region, particularly exports of farm products, construction
equipment and machinery.
Industry and Foreign Trade Minister Fernando Pimentel was
due to lead a mission sponsored by ApexBrasil -- the
country's trade and investment promotion agency -- to the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) and Saudi Arabia
from February 12 to 16.
Saudi Arabia
was the top destination for Brazilian exports last year with $3.48 billion, up
12.19 percent over 2010, followed by Egypt, with $2.62 billion, up 33.37
percent, and the UAE with $2.17 billion, up 16.94 percent.
Schahin hailed former Brazilian
president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for the "extraordinary job" he did in
forging closer ties with Arab countries, which has translated into booming
trade exchanges.
He said Lula's successor, President Dilma
Rousseff, was taking a slightly different posture, by
giving more importance to the issue of human rights.
But he said Pimentel told him that Rousseff
was keen to further boost ties with the Arab world.
Schahin also noted Arab-Brazilians,
who number 12 million out of Brazil's total population of 190 million, have a
key role to play in expanding the relationship in various sectors, including
tourism, health and culture.
The chamber, which this year marks its 60th anniversary,
said it was encouraging Brazilian small and medium enterprises to export to
Arab world.
Meanwhile, Schahin highlighted the
great potential for Arab investment in Brazilian agriculture, particularly from
oil-rich Gulf countries keen to ensure their "food security and
sustainability."
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Linking would-be farmers with plots
of land
(SacBee.com)
– Putting farmers onto underused land was once a matter of creating homesteads.
Now it has entered the computer age, with nonprofits using
the Internet to match farmland with growers.
The need, advocates say, comes in part from an aging farm
population.
California farmers age 65
or older outnumber farmers under 35 by 9 to 1, said Liya
Schwartzman, Central Valley coordinator for
California FarmLink, one of those nonprofit groups.
"In many cases, their children don't want to go into
farming," she said. "We need more beginning farmers right now."
At the same time, many landowners are hoping to preserve the
land for agriculture, not development, and want to help younger farmers – not
large agribusiness.
It led to a dating service of sorts for farms.
"We're kind of a Match.com, a little bit," Schwartzman
said.
FarmLink has online listings of
about 80 land opportunities in the Central Valley
and connections to around 800 would-be farmers.
Land opportunities can be as small as a half-acre or as big
as 800 acres.
There is an urban parcel in West Sacramento
that the owner wanted productive, and orchard acreage in Apple Hill looking for
someone new to take it over.
One of the successful linkages produced an operation known
as the Cloverleaf at Bridgeway Farms, at the Kidwell Road exit
off Interstate 80 west of Davis.
When Bridgeway's longtime owner
Rich Collins wanted to start farming 30 years ago, finding land to start his
endive specialty operation was tough.
"When I started, there was no Web," Collins said.
"You were literally out there driving around."
Eventually, he found five acres that were part of another
farmer's 4,000-acre operation.
A couple of years ago, when Collins had 16 acres he wanted
to put in the hands of a new farmer – a way of paying things forward, he said –
he turned to FarmLink and its database.
FarmLink connected him with Emma Torbert, 32, who had interned and apprenticed on farms in
the East, and works at UC Davis' Agriculture Sustainability Institute.
She wanted to farm, but had no land.
"It was through FarmLink that
I saw his land and then I contacted him," Torbert
said.
She was taken by Collins' vision of Bridgeway
Farms becoming a place where travelers on the interstate could stop to see how
a working farm operates, with a dairy, winery, chickens and more.
Collins, in turn, was taken by Torbert
and her farming partner Sasha Klein.
"I appreciate young folk who are willing to work,"
Collins said.
FarmLink helped them craft a lease
agreement – $1 for the first year. That's how the Cloverleaf began.
The two farmers just broke even last year, their first,
because of expenses bringing irrigation to the parcel.
This year, they are taking over four acres of orchard from
Collins and adding two more partners.
The orchard will hold a pruning workshop Sunday. See www.thecloverleaffarm. com for
more information.
"It's somewhat of a time-honored tradition in
agriculture," Collins said of his help for the young farmers.
If FarmLink is like Match.com, the
Land Bank of Living Lands Agrarian Network is more like Craigslist.
The Network, based in Nevada County,
has nine parcels it manages with a network of young growers, taking on interns
to train new farmers.
As the word spread, however, they found more people who had small amounts of land they wanted farmed.
"We, as Living Lands, were approached by so many
landowners, we didn't have the resources," said Rachel Berry, the group's
director.
They established the online Land Bank late in 2011.
Now, the website, landbank.livinglandsagrariannetwork.org,
has 10 listed sites from Nevada County to Orangevale.
While FarmLink provides
connections, lease models, advice and even some farm loans, those who use the
Land Bank can make their own arrangements, Berry said. "Typically, there's very
little money exchanged," Berry
said.
Like Brian Ekiss, who lives on 5.5
acres outside Nevada
City. He just wanted someone to use some of his acreage.
"We went to the farmer's market and we just had this
light bulb go off," Ekiss said.
They contacted Living Lands and offered the space in a handshake
deal, not expecting money.
"We're not getting paid; we have some picking
rights," said Ekiss. "We're sort of
compensated by being part of the network."
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