" I heard it through the AgLine"

February 16, 2010

 

 

·        Nurseries struggle with lagging economy

·        Science coalition backs ag biotechnology

·        A hungry India balks at GM food crops

·        Computer reveals where pathogens grow

·        Biopesticide alliance grows by 50 percent

 

 

Nurseries struggle with lagging economy

 

(AP) PORTLAND, Ore.  — Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, David Niklas feels the quickening of spring as the season ramps up at his wholesale nursery in a farming community south of Portland. Niklas and his workers busily package plants for shipment.

 

These days, his flowers and vegetable seedlings have fewer places to go, as the housing bubble burst and the state and national economies flatlined.

 

Just three years after reaching a record high of almost $1 billion in sales, Oregon's nursery industry has plummeted into an historic slump. Nurseries are laying off employees, cutting costs and foregoing new buildings and equipment.

 

A few, like Niklas' Clackamas Greenhouses, have gone bankrupt.

 

“The family has poured money into it as we tried to restructure it and make new markets,” said Niklas, who had to file bankruptcy after losing almost half his sales when his primary retailer was bought out.

 

“Commercial lenders aren't talking to me because I'm coming out of bankruptcy.

 

“They aren't even talking to GM, so why would they talk to a little nursery?”

 

Across the country, the nursery and landscaping trades are also facing tough times.

 

“You have to eat, but you don't have to plant ornamentals,” said Terry McElroy, a spokesman at the Florida Department of Agriculture.

 

Florida, which produces 80 percent of the house plants grown in the United States, had about $844 million in sales of nursery stock in 2007 — the last year figures were available. California, the largest producer, reported $1.6 billion in nursery stock sales in 2007.

 

Both states did not have more recent figures, but officials said they had seen a decline in business. They expect the industry to slowly recover — but they also expect the belt-tightening will remain, with fewer purchases, less expansion and fewer employees.

 

“We know, just by tracking sales in general, that it's down but we don't know how down,” said Jennifer Nelis, spokeswoman for the Florida Nursery Growers Association. “It's the life cycle of home construction. Plants are some of the last to go in, so the industry is the last to bounce back.

 

“Things are starting to get a little better, but it will always lag.”

 

In Oregon, the downturn was swift and stunning. The rich soil and mild climate of Oregon's Willamette Valley is ideal for growing plants. And for 18 years, starting in 1990, the nursery industry steadily grew, reaching $988 million in sales in 2007. The nursery commodity outpaced cattle, then ranked second, by as much as $500 million that year.

 

Then the industry slammed into a swarm of trouble: the halt of home and business construction, high transportation costs, financial lending woes and a depressed national economy. Sales plunged 17 percent, to $820 million, in 2008. State leaders expect a similar drop for 2009.

 

Back in the heady days, Niklas could count on $4 million in annual sales at his nursery in Aurora. Bankruptcy knocked him down and, just as the nursery began to recover under Chapter 12 restructuring, the nation's economic downturn landed a sucker punch.

 

Niklas' annual sales plummeted to under $2 million. He hasn't found a commercial lender to help him refinance. He and other nursery owners worry that two tax measures passed by Oregon voters earlier this year — raising the state income tax on upper income individuals, and hiking the corporate minimum tax and taxes on corporate net income greater than $10 million — will push them closer to the financial edge.

 

“If the financial system doesn't get fixed, it's going to be extremely hard for agriculture to get back on its feet,” Niklas said.

 

David Van Essen, whose Van Essen Nursery in the community of Lebanon is one of the largest container growers in the state, had never seen such a precipitous swing. The 300-acre nursery had to cut back. About 35 full-time employees were laid off.

 

Like many others, Van Essen had to become more efficient.

 

“This is a benchmark year,” Van Essen said. “If things continue to decline, it's going to be very difficult to weather this storm. We can only withstand so many years of down sales.”

 

Growers also are having a hard time finding loans.

 

“It's a very tough lending environment for a nursery,” said John Aguirre, executive director of the Oregon Association of Nurseries. “In most typical downturns, things would have been fine. But given the severity of this, where banks have been quite aggressive, even brutal in their response, people just can't refinance.”

 

A few Oregon nurseries have gone bankrupt. More have quietly gone out of business.

 

Not all is gloom. Nurseries that specialized in edibles — vegetables, fruit trees and berries — didn't fall as far thanks to the interest in grow-your-own food. Nurseries that produce native and drought-tolerant plants for restoration work also have fared better.

 

J. Frank Schmidt & Son, which sells about 1.2 million trees yearly, saw its sales fall about 10 percent. It has laid off workers and cut back production. But the company's cooler warehouse in Boring is full of trees bundled for shipment. Crews are busy grafting, trimming roots and branches, caring for cuttings.

 

“We're down to the bare bones,” said Nancy Buley, a spokeswoman for the company. “But we're excited for the recovery — it's going to come.

 

“Nothing happens very quickly in the tree business. It will probably take us longer to recover. But we've seen some bright spots already.”

 

Niklas and his Clackamas Greenhouses are equally resilient.

 

“I'm a farmer,” he said. “I have to have optimism.”

 

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Science coalition backs ag biotechnology

 

(ScienceDaily.com) – Yields from some of the most important crops begin to decline sharply when average temperatures exceed about 30 degrees Celsius, or 86 Fahrenheit. Projections are that by the end of this century much of the tropics and subtropics will regularly see growing season temperatures above that level, hotter than the hottest summers now on record.

 

An international panel of scientists writing in the Feb. 12 edition of the journal Science is urging world leaders to dramatically alter their notions about sustainable agriculture to prevent a major starvation catastrophe by the end of this century among the more than 3 billion people who live relatively close to the equator.

 

Specifically they urge world leaders to "get beyond popular biases against the use of agricultural biotechnology," particularly crops genetically modified to produce greater yields in harsher conditions, and to base the regulations of such crops on the best available science.

 

"You're looking at a 20 percent to 30 percent decline in production yields in the next 50 years for major crops between the latitudes of southern California or southern Europe to South Africa," said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.

 

He is a coauthor of a Perspectives article in Science that urges food production experts, scientists and world leaders to begin thinking in dramatically different ways to meet food needs in a significantly warmer world. Lead author is Nina Federoff, science and technology adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

 

"I grow increasingly concerned that we have not yet understood what it will take to feed a growing population on a warming planet," said Federoff, who also is a biology professor at Pennsylvania State University.

 

The challenge is becoming more difficult, the scientists said, because the world's population is likely to have increased more than 30 percent, to 9 billion people, by 2050.

 

Even without climate change, feeding all of these people will require doubling the grain production in the tropics, Battisti said, but a warmer climate will reduce yields because the temperature will be too high to achieve the most efficient photosynthesis. That factor, combined with less rainfall in major food-producing regions and increasing pressure from pests and pathogens, is likely to cut major food crop yields a minimum of 20 percent to 30 percent.

 

The authors advocate developing systems that have the potential to decrease the land, energy and fresh water needed for agriculture and at the same time reducing the pollution associated with agricultural chemicals and animal waste.

 

Battisti noted that the so-called green revolution in agriculture produced a 2 percent increase in yields per year for 20 years, primarily through development of new grain varieties and use of fertilizer and irrigation. But there is little, if any, new land available for farming, and such yield increases cannot be sustained without further innovation. In addition, there already are 1 billion people, mostly in the tropics, who do not have enough food for a healthy life.

 

"We're really asking for yield gains comparable to those at the peak of the green revolution, but sustained for an unprecedented length of time, 40 years, and at a time when climate change is acting against us," he said.

 

A major obstacle is that many of the institutions involved do not work together closely enough to succeed and, despite years of safe production and consumption, there is continued resistance to crops such as corn and soybeans that have been genetically modified to be insect resistant and tolerant of herbicides.

 

"There has to be a lot of creative thinking, a greater blending of biotechnology and agriculture and better coordination between private and public research efforts throughout the world for us to keep pace with the increasing demand for food," Battisti said. "We need to be thinking about the long-term demands for food and the environmental and social ramifications of how we will produce it."

 

The Science article represents the views of the authors and stems from a workshop they presented for the State Department last September in Washington, D.C.

 

Other authors are Roger Beachy of the U.S. Agriculture Department; Peter Cooper of the India-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics; David Fischhoff of Monsanto Co.; Carl Hodges of The Seawater Foundation; Vic Knauf of Arcadia Biosciences; David Lobell of Stanford University; Barbara Mazur of the DuPont Experimental Station; David Molden of the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute; Matthew Reynolds of the Mexico City-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center; Pamela Ronald of the University of California, Davis, and the Joint Bioenergy Institute; Mark Rosegrant of the International Food Policy Research Institute; Pedro Sanchez of Columbia University; Avigad Vonshak of Ben-Gurion University in Israel; and Jian-Kang Zhu of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and the University of California, Riverside.

 

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A hungry India balks at GM food crops

 

(AP via Yahoo! News) MUMBAI, India – It began quietly in America a decade ago, with a tomato.

 

Since the introduction of the Flavr Savr tomato, engineered for long shelf life, genetically modified food has become a fact of American life.

 

Not so in India. The debate over GM food, long settled in America, is noisily beginning here.

 

Last week, India halted the commercial release of the world's first genetically engineered eggplant, called Bt brinjal. The environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that given the lack of consensus within the scientific community and the pitch of public opposition, further study was needed to guarantee consumer safety.

 

Why the skepticism over a technology many scientists say is crucial for feeding the 9 billion people who will populate the planet by 2050?

 

To many in India, embracing Bt brinjal — which has a gene owned by Monsanto Co — also means embracing corporate farming and surrendering some control of the nation's food supply to a powerful foreign company. They worry this could have disastrous consequences for the nation's 100 million small farming families.

 

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that public concerns about Bt brinjal have been influenced very heavily by perceptions of Monsanto itself," Ramesh wrote in his report.

 

Some also feel the U.S. has been too quick to embrace GM food and are demanding tougher approval processes, more extensive health studies and mandatory labeling, which the U.S. does not have.

 

Whether India, like China, will ultimately embrace GM food is a question with profound implications.

 

At issue is how India — which the U.N. says will surpass China as the world's most populous country by 2030 — will feed itself.

 

Many other transgenic food crops are in the works, including staples like rice. Advocates say these new strains will boost yields and stabilize supply by, for example, improving drought resistance. Their fate now hangs in the balance, scientists say.

 

Rising wealth has increased India's appetite, even as agricultural productivity languishes. Food inflation is at 18 percent, due to supply bottlenecks and widespread drought. And the World Health Organization says 21 percent of Indians still don't get enough to eat every day, with 46 percent of children underweight.

 

Despite its high-tech image, India remains a nation of small, mostly poor farmers, many of whom are skeptical of the promises of industrialization. At least 45 percent of the population relies on agriculture for their livelihood, and most have small, family run farms — a far cry from the U.S., where less than 2 percent of Americans farm for a living.

 

The fate of these small farmers is at the center of the Bt brinjal debate.

 

While many embrace new technologies and their promise of higher profits, others fear international corporations could run roughshod over the nation's small farmers.

 

India remains sharply divided over the legacy of Bt cotton, the only transgenic crop now under commercial cultivation in the country. The genetically altered cotton seeds have increased productivity, but they are more expensive than traditional seeds and have left some farmers deeply in debt.

 

"The essential issue of livelihood makes a difference," said Mahesh Rangarajan, a history professor at the University of Delhi. "The farmer's concern is dependence on the seed company. That's a genuine concern."

 

Bt brinjal incorporates a pest-resistant gene owned by Monsanto and was developed by Mahyco, an Indian company 26 percent owned by the St. Louis-based multinational.

 

The referendum on Bt brinjal was also, in effect, a referendum on Monsanto — despite the company's best efforts to distance itself from the product.

 

"There has always been in India a critique of industrialization — the idea that high energy, high capacity, high-tech development will not generate enough jobs and will harm the dignity of the self-employed," Rangarajan said.

 

Gyanendra Shukla, director of Monsanto India, said genetic technology can improve productivity and farmer incomes, and he argued that Monsanto doesn't have a monopoly on the Bt gene — hundreds of variants are available from public and private sources.

 

Although there are many varieties of cotton seeds available, Shukla said Indian farmers have chosen Bt cotton in droves.

 

"No one on this earth can sell any technology which does not deliver value to the farmer," he said.

 

Critics in India say America, where most soybeans and corn have some genetic modification, is not asking tough enough questions about GM food.

 

The debate also rages on in Europe, where the 27-member European Union has approved only one genetically modified crop, maize Monsanto 810. Illustrating the deep divide, despite the approval, six countries have imposed a moratorium on the corn crop: France, Germany, Luxembourg, Greece, Austria and Hungary. And even in countries like Italy, where no formal ban applies, no one chooses to plant the crop, cultivated most prevalently in Spain.

 

The transgenic landscape is remarkably different in the U.S.

 

"By the early '90s we had a working (regulatory) framework in place that allowed developers to go to the agencies and say, 'I've got this new product, here's my data, do you approve it?'" said Bruce Chassy, a professor of food microbiology at the University of Illinois.

 

That's exactly what some Indians don't want.

 

Ramesh, the environment minister, said that allowing companies to conduct tests of their own products "does raise legitimate doubts on the reliability of the tests, doubts that I cannot ignore." He said the moratorium on Bt brinjal would be extended until independent studies establish its safety.

 

Many want mandatory labeling, but fear India's unorganized retail sector — most people buy their food from baskets or stalls at local markets — would make that almost impossible.

 

Peggy Lemaux, of the University of California, Berkeley, said the Internet — with its glut of sometimes unreliable information — has driven much of the outcry over transgenic food in Africa and Europe.

 

India, too, is awash in conflicting studies and irreconcilable opinions.

 

Lemaux added that there's no guarantee all GM foods will remain widely accepted in the United States. She noted the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case in which a federal judge blocked the use of genetically modified alfalfa seeds over concerns the government hadn't properly evaluated the potential impact of the crop.

 

Similarly, there's no guarantee India will remain permanently opposed.

 

"We need gene technology," said P.G. Chengappa, vice chancellor at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Bangalore. "We are looking forward for drought-resistant varieties — disease, pests, salinity. We need gene technology to combat these problems. We're in a very confused state."

 

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Computer reveals where pathogens grow

 

(University of Florida via PhysOrg.com) -- An outbreak of food-related illness, such as E. coli-tainted spinach, often leaves food safety experts scratching their heads over the source of the contamination.

 

Thanks to a new computer model developed by researchers at the University of Florida, Wageningen University and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, food safety experts may have a better chance of predicting where contamination risks lie and what can be done to minimize those risks.

 

The program, dubbed COLIWAVE, can predict the growth and death of pathogenic bacteria in substances like compost, soil and water. The program uses variables such as oxygen availability, temperature and substance characteristics to predict how much bacteria is present at different periods of time.

 

As they describe in a paper in the online version of the journal Ecological Modelling, the researchers have already used the model to predict the growth of harmful E. coli in composted manure used as fertilizer on organic farms. Organic farming typically relies on compost or manure rather than chemical fertilizers.

 

“Many people have been skeptical of organic foods because of reports that the manure can be a source of contamination,” said Ariena H. C. van Bruggen, a researcher for UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and the Emerging Pathogens Institute. “However, what we found is that manure, when properly stored and treated, is actually safer than we previously thought.”

 

Before being spread as fertilizer, manure is composted. This process allows beneficial bacteria to “digest” the material, breaking it down into nutrients more easily absorbed into the soil.

 

This digesting process emits heat, and compost piles can often exceed 150 degrees — temperatures that kill many harmful pathogens.

 

However, the model revealed that it’s not just the heat that makes the manure safe, it’s the changing temperature. As the pile is mixed and turned, the temperature of the material rises and falls. Those changes put more stress on the harmful bacteria than high temperature.

 

As a result, the pathogenic E. coli in the turned pile had a 70 percent shorter survival period. Within eight days, the dangerous bacteria could no longer be detected.

 

Heat isn’t the only factor affecting pathogens. For example, the model also shows that the presence of other bacteria, such as nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, is beneficial because they compete for the same resources as the dangerous strains.

 

“Bacteria lead complicated lives,” van Bruggen said. “This is a way of looking at the bigger picture.”

 

Along with UF colleagues such as food safety expert Anita Wright, van Bruggen is now using her methods to examine potential sources of salmonella in Florida, such as ponds and other bodies of water.

 

“You might not expect it, but if there’s bacteria in a pond used for irrigation, that might be enough to cause a problem,” Wright said. “As we continue to find out, it’s important to take an intelligent look at things and not just assume we know what’s going on.”

 

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Biopesticide alliance grows by 50 percent

 

McFARLAND, Wis., (AgPR), Feb. 10, 2010 – Following a year in which its membership increased by 50% and nearly 20 companies, the Biopesticide Industry Alliance (BPIA), is pleased to announce that Eda Reinot of Becker Underwood has been elected its new Board Chairperson. Reinot assumes the role from longtime Chairman Bill Foster of BioWorks Inc., who remains an active part of the Board.

 

As Global Head of Research and Development for Becker Underwood, Reinot has more than 10 years experience in the area of biological control of pests in agriculture and horticulture.

 

"I am honored to have been elected and to step into the role of Chairman of BPIA," Reinot says. "The products and technologies that the members of Biopesticide Industry Alliance have, and the exciting new technologies in their development pipelines, are important sustainable tools that improve crop production efficiencies and yields,  and bring benefits to those producing food for all of us."

 

"This is an exciting time for the biopesticides industry, and as its leaders we continue to strengthen the acceptance and utilization of biological and bio-derived pest and disease control products through our expanding number of members and networks.“

 

Membership Committee Chair Robert Holm says that record growth in BPIA membership is a clear indicator that biopesticides are gaining value and becoming better understood.

 

"As public awareness of cropping systems increases, biopesticides are gaining exposure," Holm says. "Our membership increased by 50% in 2009, and such a dramatic increase reinforces the growing acceptance of biopesticides as key crop protection components in both traditional and organic production agriculture."

 

About BPIA:

Founded in 2000, the Biopesticide Industry Alliance is a non-profit organization committed to communicating the benefits of biopesticides as effective and environmentally responsible products in pest and disease management programs. Among its stated objectives are the development and promotion of industry standards for biopesticides, as well as the establishment of strong working relationships with regulatory authorities.

 

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