" I heard it through the AgLine"

February 15, 2011

 

 

·        Chill wreaks havoc on US, Mexican veggies

·        China now top importer of US ag products

·        Stronger cyclones menace crop production

·        WSU research focuses on spinach pathogens

·        Fighting over water in the arid Imperial Valley

 

 

Chill wreaks havoc on US, Mexican veggies

 

(The Wall Street Journal) – A major freeze in Mexico earlier this month has resulted in a shortage across the U.S. of tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and other produce that could last until April and lead to higher prices at the grocery store.

 

Supermarkets, distributors and restaurant chains are scrambling to find other sources for the items and to offer replacements. But the problem has been compounded by the fact that inclement weather has also hit other growing regions, like Florida and Texas, that would normally be able to make up for a supply interruption from Mexico.

 

"It's extremely unusual for more than one production area to experience abnormal weather in the same year. We are continuing to harvest tomatoes in Florida, but our current volume is maybe half of what it would normally be," said Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, adding that a 25-pound box of tomatoes went from costing less than $15 to more than $30 in the past week.

 

"Our supplies will become closer to normal in the latter part of March or the beginning of April, barring any other bad weather," he said.

 

Supervalu Inc., the U.S.'s fourth-largest food retailer by sales behind leader Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is girding for lower availability of some key vegetables because of the deep freeze, Mexico's worst in more than 50 years. Dan Bates, director of merchandising for the Eden Prairie, Minn., company's produce division, said that in the last 10 days he has seen the price of peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash and eggplant rise and that the grocer may pass along some of those costs to shoppers.

 

"It's been kind of the perfect storm of problems this year," Mr. Bates said. "It's the first time I remember every area having the same problem at the same time."

 

Mr. Bates says some growers are shipping smaller heads of lettuce since the outside layers have to be removed due to damage. Some growers who normally ship red peppers are picking them while they are still green in order to take advantage of currently higher green pepper prices, he added.

 

Because the weather has affected the quantity and quality of round tomatoes, hamburger chain Wendy's this past Thursday starting serving tomatoes on its hamburgers and chicken sandwiches only upon request. "The tomato shortage is expected to continue until mid-April when the new crop of tomatoes should be available," Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini says. Wendy's is a part of Wendy's/Arby's Group Inc.

 

A Sweet Tomatoes restaurant in Waukegan, Ill., on Saturday posted a sign saying "Mother Nature strikes again," and listed a number of vegetables that aren't currently being offered in the salad bar. Just this past March, a weather-related shortage of tomatoes from Florida forced restaurants and supermarkets to ration supplies amid soaring prices.

 

Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp., the San Diego-based company that owns 78 Sweet Tomatoes and 40 Souplantation restaurants, has added edamame, tofu, feta cheese and other items it doesn't normally stock in its salad bars to replace the items hurt by the freeze in Mexico.

 

"Typically when we have a produce issue, there's a two-week gap, but this looks like it could last a lot longer," said Susan Miille Hoffman, vice president of purchasing at Garden Fresh.

 

She said the chain is trying to determine if anything can be salvaged from Mexico while also considering whether it can buy tomatoes from Florida and cucumbers from Honduras. "Everyone's grappling for these products right now," she said, adding that passing higher prices along to customers is a "last option."

 

A spokeswoman for Darden Restaurants Inc., parent of Red Lobster, Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, said, "We have seen an impact on suppliers in [Mexico]. We are sourcing from other regions to ensure no interruptions in supply for items such as tomatoes and peppers."

 

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China now top importer of US ag products

 

(Peoples Daily Online) – For the first time, China emerged as the top market for U.S. agricultural exports, according to statistics released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Feb. 11.

 

According to the data, China imported agricultural products valued at 17.5 billion U.S. dollars from the United States in 2010, which accounted for 15.1 percent of the total exports of agricultural products of the United States. The major import from the United States is soybean.

 

Li Guoxiang, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said that increasing grain imports will help ease the contradiction between major agricultural products and farmland and increase the country's grain security.

 

In general, the advantages of increasing the amount grain imports outweigh the disadvantages, Li said.

 

As the most populous country in the world, China should guarantee the cultivation of key agricultural products, such as rice, wheat and corn, to feed its people, while demand for cash crops such as soybean can be met from the international market, Li said.

 

The agricultural products on which China has high external dependence include soybeans, cotton, vegetable oil and edible sugar. China has little dependence on the international market for major grains, such as rice, wheat, and corn.

 

Statistics from China's Ministry of Agriculture show that China's self-sufficiency in rice, wheat and corn stands at 100 percent. This indicates that China's dependence on the international grain market is moderate.

 

China's grain security outlook is undergoing significant changes. China is now making full use of both the domestic and overseas markets rather than focusing only on the balance of domestic supply and demand.

 

As the country imports more agricultural products, increases in price of world agricultural products will have a greater impact on China, which may result in imported inflation, according to Zhang Junling, an analyst from Dongxing Securities.

 

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Stronger cyclones menace crop production

 

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Witnesses to Cyclone Yasi's destructive tear across northeastern Australia described it as a monster for its size and ferocity. It was also an omen.

 

Climate scientists say global warming is heating up the world's oceans and atmosphere, providing more fuel for tropical cyclones and creating ever greater risks for crops, miners and billion-dollar beachfronts.

 

The risks from stronger storms flow right through the heart of the global economy, affecting food security and inflation, iron ore and coal production and higher insurance losses.

 

Particularly vulnerable are Asia's booming coastal megacities from Manila to Karachi, large areas of the U.S. Gulf and east coast, Australia's iron-ore and northern coal mines and tropical Asia's rice-growing river deltas.

 

Insurers say unrelenting development along coastlines is placing more homes, businesses and infrastructure in the path of destruction that will drive up insurance losses.

 

United Nations data says 231 million people lived in cities in Asia in 1950. By 2050, that figure is forecast to grow to more than 3 billion.

 

Climate change and stronger storms are also a growing threat to Asia's rice crop.

 

Asia grows 90 percent of the world's rice and the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines estimates an additional 8 to 10 million tonnes of rice needs to be produced each year, meaning disruption from droughts, floods and storms can hurt supplies and cause price spikes.

 

FOOD SECURITY

 

Munich Re said there were 950 natural catastrophes recorded last year, 90 percent of which were weather-related events such as storms and floods, making it the year with the second-highest number of natural catastrophes since 1980.

 

A major climate study in 2010 based on the results of a range of computer models concluded there was likely to be a substantial increase in the number of storms in the severe category range of 3 to 5, with 5 being the maximum.

 

Overall, storms would be between 2 and 11 percent more intense by 2100 and rainfall would increase about 20 percent near the centre, it predicted.

 

The study also found that, with the exception of the Atlantic, there might be a drop in the number of storms in the Pacific and around Australia, but the storms that did form would tend to be more dangerous.

 

"Since the early 1990s, we have seen a significant increase in the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic," said Peter Hoeppe of reinsurer Munich Re, pointing to a natural cycle in which hurricane numbers vary over several decades.

 

"We think now we have a mixture of two phenomena, one is the natural oscillation and the other is the steady increase in sea surface temperatures due to global warming. And this adds up to increased risks," said Hoeppe, head of Geo Risk Research and Munich Re's Climate Centre.

 

Hurricane Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005 highlighted that risk, as did Hurricane Andrew that struck Florida in 1992. According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, Katrina killed 1,500 people and caused $81 billion in damage while Andrew caused $26.5 billion in losses, not adjusted for inflation.

 

In Asia, there was a danger in assuming nothing needs to be done if storm numbers don't increase, said climate scientist Johnny Chan, one of the authors of the 2010 review.

 

"It is a grim picture. Even if the number of storms is not increasing, the amount of rain that comes out of these storms is increasing," said Chan, director of the Guy Carpenter Asia-Pacific Climate Impact Centre at City University of Hong Kong.

 

Fellow climate scientist John McBride said there was little doubt storms would become stronger as seas warm. Oceans soak up much of the excess heat and carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuels and the oceans have already warmed on average about 0.5 degrees Celsius.

 

"You should expect a shift towards more intense cyclones. That's coming across as a stronger prediction," said McBride, of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research.

 

In 2009, typhoons Ketsana and Parma caused damage and losses to crops, property and infrastructure of $4.4 billion in the Philippines, or 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, the World Bank says. For the year, storms led to the loss of 1.3 million tonnes of rice paddy, forcing the country to import.

 

A year later, Typhoon Megi, a maximum category 5 storm, killed 26 people in the Philippines and caused rice crop losses of more than 520,000 tonnes.

 

STORM SURGES

 

Tropical Asia's vast river deltas are also at risk from flooding and powerful storm surges from cyclones.

 

Cyclone Nargis, which ripped through the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar in 2008, killed or left missing 140,000 people and triggered a 2.5 metre (8 ft) storm surge that inundated much of the delta, wiping out a third of the rice crop.

 

Reiner Wassmann, IRRI's co-ordinator of climate change research, said new varieties of rice that were flood and saltwater tolerant would help reduce losses from storms. Faster-growing varieties could also help farmers avoid the typhoon season.

 

Australia's A$2 billion sugarcane crop is particularly vulnerable to more powerful storms. Floods over the past several months caused losses of A$500 million, said Steve Greenwood, chief executive of Queensland's Canegrowers Association.

 

Cyclone Yasi, a large category 5 storm, caused further losses of up to a quarter of the remaining crop.

 

But Greenwood said while there was little farmers could do faced with 250 km/h (156 mph) winds that smash cane stems, new varieties could at least reduce losses from flooding.

 

Hoeppe of Munich Re expected insurance losses to rise, in part because of greater risks to mines, such as Australia's storm-prone northern open-pit iron ore and coal mines that are central to global steel production.

 

Australia is the world's top iron ore exporter and also a top thermal and coking coal producer.

 

Climate change was already prompting major miners to re-assess the weather risks to their operations and existing designs of infrastructure, such as road, rail and port links and holding capacity of tailings dams, analysts say.

 

The key to existing strict building codes is the assessment of the return period of extreme weather events. That assessment is now being challenged. Munich Re says weather related natural catastrophes have tripled in the past 30 years in Australia.

 

"I think what people are still coming to grips with is how the traditional civil engineering design guidelines around return periods. Those are going to change," said Peter Lilly, a senior minerals and energy strategist at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia.

 

"The historical 1 in 100, 1 in 200 and 1 in 500 years events are going to change. The traditional design criteria are going to have to change," he said.

 

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WSU research focuses on spinach pathogens

 

(WSU Today) MOUNT VERNON - Warm greenhouse air gives life to spinach plants in the rainy Skagit Valley, but disease threatens that life. WSU researchers are figuring out how to stop the pathogen.

 

Ph.D. student Emily Gatch is working in the lab of plant pathologist Lindsey du Toit (doo-TOY) to detect and combat Fusarium wilt - a soil-dwelling microscopic fungus. The work is being done at the WSU Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center in Mount Vernon.

 

Local farmers, nation depend on crop

“It’s important … that we are able to produce seed for growers throughout the country who are relying on spinach from Washington State," Gatch said. "If you’ve eaten bagged baby leaf spinach that you can get in the grocery store, chances are the seed for that crop came from this valley.”

 

Fusarium is devastating: Once soil is infected, spinach can’t successfully be grown in that field for up to 15 years. The disease has been responsible for a decline in land for spinach seed production in the Pacific Northwest.

 

“We need to … get the rotation interval back down from 15 to 16 years, to four or five someday, because we’re running out of ground,” said Kirby Johnson, president of the Puget Sound Seed Growers Association and a fourth generation farmer in the Skagit Valley.

 

Applicable to other crops too

The research starts with a bucket of soil from a field slated for a spinach seed crop. Gatch and du Toit have developed a greenhouse soil assay that indicates which soils are at high risk for Fusarium wilt.

 

Once soils are tested, locations where spinach can be grown safely are identified.

 

Many aspects of the disease in spinach seed crops are applicable to other crops also threatened by Fusarium wilts, Gatch said. If researchers understand the characteristics of the soil, that information might translate to other crops as well.

 

Tax dollars at work

Johnson said the work WSU is doing is important to the livelihood of growers and their families. Once further research is conducted, Gatch said the results will go a long way toward helping growers.

 

“It is hands on, actual tax dollars at work, that makes sense and makes money for the industry and for the farmers,” Johnson said. "It’s very important; it’s a big deal.”

 

Click here to watch the video

 

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Fighting over water in the arid Imperial Valley

 

(NPR) – Southern California's Imperial Valley produces about 80 percent of the nation's winter vegetables. But years of drought, and a population boom in the Southwest, now threaten the water supply in the desert region — and all those cheap winter greens.

 

The next time you eat a salad this winter, picture the valley Vince Brooke is driving through: a beige desert set against glittering fields of green. Brooke works for the local irrigation district and gives tours to busloads of water wonks from various Southwest cities through this valley — down the bumpy roads, past cropland and canals.

 

"You know, you can tell when they just are not — how can I say this diplomatically?" Brooke says. They're just not on board, he says, with the way agriculture uses water down here.

 

In some eyes, "We're water wasters, we're water hogs, the Ag sponge, a waste of water," he says.

 

The water they're talking about is the Colorado River — the lifeblood of a billion-dollar agricultural industry in the Imperial Valley. The system works, thanks to the giant cement Imperial Dam.

 

Doug Cox manages the dam for the Imperial Irrigation District.

 

"This is the only source of water for the Imperial Valley," Cox says. "All the drinking water, all the agricultural water — this is it."

 

Imperial Dam shunts water from the Colorado River 82 miles through a canal, across the desert to Imperial Valley Farms. Back in the 1930s, when the project was completed, it was considered one of the engineering wonders of the world.

 

In a newsreel from those days, a narrator describes "the Imperial Valley, once dry and barren, with the help of water from the Colorado yields rich crops when irrigated."

 

There was just one problem. When Imperial Dam was built, the region was in the midst of the wettest period of the past millennium, and the Colorado River was mighty.

 

But 11 years of drought — and more thirsty Southwest sprawl than the newsreel narrator could've dreamed — mean trouble for Imperial farmers. Soon, there may not be enough water to go around and still make the desert bloom.

 

That could bring an end to the area's days of growing sweet corn, onions, lettuce, carrots, cauliflower and broccoli.

 

Ralph Strahm, a third-generation farmer, hopes his generation won't be the last. The Strahms came here right around the time Western states were divvying up water from the Colorado River.

 

The strategy was pretty much "first come, first served." And Imperial Valley farmers got served a torrent — priority rights to almost a fifth of the entire river. That represented more water than Arizona and Nevada received combined.

 

That was almost a century ago, but Strahm says there is still a good reason so much water should go to farms like his.

 

"The rest of the nation is becoming a service economy, and the Imperial Valley is producing something," Strahm says. "So many of our jobs in the manufacturing industries have been exported away from the United States. We're keeping those jobs here."

 

But the farmers aren't keeping all the water here anymore. Under pressure from federal officials, farmers have reluctantly sold some of it — to the more populous and powerful cities of Los Angeles and San Diego.

 

Standing near an irrigation channel, Strahm points to a controversial result of that transfer of water: a big padlock that secures a gate across the channel's mouth.

 

"That lock is to prevent water from being put on this field for the term of a fallowing contract," Strahm says.

 

Over each of the next several years, farmers are fallowing a chunk of land about the size of 10 Central Parks. Cities pay thousands of dollars for each unfarmed acre, and it can actually be a good deal for farmers when crop prices are low.

 

But diverting that water strains the valley's larger agriculture economy — the tractor salesmen, the fertilizer companies. And in the future, even more fallowing may be needed.

 

Lake Mead — the reservoir that holds Colorado River water for the Imperial Valley and most of the Southwest — has a 50 percent chance of drying up in as few as 10 years, according to climate researchers. That's assuming the region's water use doesn't undergo fundamental change.

 

But, says retired farmer John Pierre Menville, "There's only so much blood you can get from a turnip."

 

Menville is on the board of the Imperial Irrigation District. He says the farmers should not be the only ones asked to change.

 

"We want to be good stewards to the land, and good neighbors with our urban partners, but they want to put restrictions on us and how we grow our crops and the amount of water we use here," he says. "Why isn't someone putting restrictions on growth on the coastal plain, and their development?"

 

It's a choice between growing urban populations and growing cheap winter vegetables. And it's one people across the nation make, each time they buy spring greens in February.

 

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