 |
|||
 |
" I heard it |
||
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
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
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,
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
'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
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
'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.'
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,
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
- 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
- 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
This study demonstrates atrazine and chloro-s-triazines
simazine and propazine
benefit
“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
Mitchell, an associate professor in the UW Department of
Agricultural and Applied Economics, grew up on his family’s farm in
Before joining UW, he was an assistant professor in the
Department of Agricultural Economics at
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
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
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
Agricultural services profit decreased $268 million on poor
international merchandising and lower
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.
Brazil’s ag trade with Arab nations soaring
(AFP)
–
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
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
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."
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.
"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
Land opportunities can be as small as a half-acre or as big as 800 acres.
There is an urban parcel in
One of the successful linkages produced an operation known
as the Cloverleaf at Bridgeway Farms, at the
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
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
While FarmLink provides
connections, lease models, advice and even some farm loans, those who use the
Land Bank can make their own arrangements,
Like Brian Ekiss, who lives on 5.5
acres outside
"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."
End Transmission