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February 17, 2011
· Farmland: A bright spot for real estate
· GM alfalfa scare? Don’t panic just yet
· Tomato taste, shelf life key ARS research
· Massive database to boost food production
· Veggie fed salmon yield healthful meal
Farmland: A bright spot for real estate
(Bloomberg)
– The bidders drove over snow- and ice-covered highways for a chance to own one
of the most lucrative properties in the U.S. Midwest: 120 acres of farmland in
The winner of last month’s auction at
“It’s reflective of what we’re seeing,” Mike Duffy, an
Farmers and investors across the Midwest are bidding up
cropland at auctions like the one in
Prices may continue to climb even after the rise prompted
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair to warn in October that a
bubble may be forming. Values in
“In the next year to two years, I don’t see a lot right now
to indicate that it’s going to take a nosedive,” said Duffy, who conducts the
annual
Demand for Corn
Corn futures rose 52 percent last year on the Chicago Board
of Trade, the most since 2006. Global demand grew as inventories fell and warm,
dry weather threatened output in
Corn may surge to a record in the first half of 2011, Agrocorp International Pte. said yesterday. The firm joined Rabobank International and Blackstone Group LP’s Byron Wien in forecasting new highs for the grain as demand increases and global stockpiles decline.
John Harder, 64, who owns 4,000 acres and lives in
Bullish Farmers
“I’m bullish because I’m a farmer,” he said in a telephone interview. “I’d buy another farm or two tomorrow if I could buy it right.”
Net farm income may increase 20 percent to $94.7 billion in 2011 from $79 billion in 2010, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast Feb. 14. The 2011 estimate is the second- highest in 35 years when adjusted for inflation, the agency said.
For investors in
The agricultural economy is doing so well that farmers
making good profits have no incentive to sell their land, said Jim McCandless, the leader of UBS AgriVest
LLC, based in
Limited Supply
“Prices continue to increase due in part to the limited supply,” said Randall Pope, chief executive officer of Champaign, Illinois-based Westchester Group Inc., which manages farm tracts. “There are a number of people who would like to buy these days but there isn’t a lot of product on the market.”
Prices jumped 14.8 percent for irrigated cropland in parts
of seven states in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, and gained 12.9
percent for non-irrigated land, the Federal Reserve Bank of
The bank’s region includes all or parts of
It’s a different story in large cities in the upper
The Midwest had 10.1 months of supply of single-family homes
on the market in December, the second-highest among the four
Commercial real estate in the
The farmland rally’s endurance depends on prices for commodities and how much farmers can get from selling what they grow, said Jeff Conrad, president of Hancock Agricultural Investment Group in Boston. His company, part of Manulife Financial Corp., manages $1.5 billion of farm real estate, according to its website.
Possible Trouble
Jim Riesberg, 55, a farmer from
“Land’s strong,” he said after the
The FDIC’s Bair, speaking in October to the Risk Management
Association in
“While the credit structure underlying
1970s Boom
Demand for farmland surged in the 1970s and early 1980s as
Today’s farmers aren’t carrying as much debt as those in the 1980s, Duffy of Iowa State said.
Farm real estate interest rates in the third quarter -- 5.81
percent in
“A large percentage of this land is being bought with cash,” Louwagie said, as profits get invested in more acreage.
The winner of the
“It’s always been in the family,” said Fiedler, 29. He plans to rotate crops of corn and soybeans on the land, which he purchased with his sister from the estate of a relative.
Along with fluctuating land values, farmers have to adapt to changing energy costs and commodity prices, Fiedler said.
“There’s always some sort of wondering what’s going to happen,” he said.
GM alfalfa scare? Don’t panic just yet
(the Atlantic) – The USDA's recent decision to (re)deregulate genetically modified (GM) alfalfa has sent a shock wave of panic through the organic foods industry. Samuel Fromartz explained to Food Channel readers how "the move has been opposed by organic farmers and consumers because of the strong possibility that genetically modified alfalfa will cross-pollinate non-GM alfalfa." In essence, organic growers (who produce between .5 and 1 percent of the nation's alfalfa) could have their product contaminated by gene flow from genetically modified seed and, as a result, have their hard-earned organic designation undermined. Of course, this seems terribly unfair.
I'm not a big supporter of alfalfa production, be it organic or conventional or genetically modified. In an age of declining agricultural resources and rising food prices, the decision to grow a feed crop for animals that convert a relatively small percentage of it into meat strikes me as inherently wasteful. (I make this point knowing that alfalfa is a nitrogen-fixing crop, meaning that it improves soil fertility.) That said, as I encountered one condemnatory article after another regarding Tom Vilsack's choice to deregulate GM alfalfa, I kept wondering what I often wonder when grappling with an agricultural controversy: where's the data? Fromartz (echoing the standard line) refers to the "strong possibility" of contamination.
Okay. How strong?
Dr. Dan Putnam, a forage expert at UC-Davis, has extensively researched this question. His work reminds those willing to dig deeper than the topical media reports that the matter at hand is far more complicated than it seems. Putnam explores rates of contamination based on alfalfa crop distance, types of pollinators, and adjacent systems of production (i.e., seed-to-seed, hay-to-seed, and hay-to-hay). In a 2008 study evaluating the chances of a Roundup Ready alfalfa seed crop contaminating a non-Roundup Ready hay crop (the seed-to-hay scenario), Putnam found that when the crops are a modest 160 feet apart the rate of successful gene flow from GM seed crop to non-GM hay crop was a mere 0.25 percent. (Hay-to hay, rather than seed-to-hay, is the most common situation—but the chances of contamination in that scenario appear to be even lower.)
Even if one-fourth of 1 percent seems too much, Putnam notes that the figure is an overstatement. In his study he purposefully allowed the non-GM hay crop to go to seed—something that must happen in order for pollinators (bees or leafcutters) to cross-pollinate from the GM seed crop. In the real agricultural world, however, a farmer growing alfalfa hay would almost never allow this to happen, thereby radically reducing the chance of contamination. Writing in The Progressive Farmer, agriculture reporter Chris Clayton (who, I must add, is one of the fairest—if lesser known— agricultural writers around) notes, "Hay is often cut multiple times each year before flowering occurs." So the GM seed pollen, should it wander into a neighboring field, would have nothing to grab onto.
There's more. Let's say that the non-GM hay did flower and produce seeds. Two more unlikely events would also have to happen in order for successful contamination to occur. 1. There would have to be simultaneous flowering between seed crop and hay crop in order for cross pollination between GM and non-GM to happen. And 2: If that rare coincidence took place, the seeds in the hay field contaminated with GM pollen would have to fall and germinate on-site rather than being carried afield by a puff of wind. There is, Putnam recently told a meeting of concerned farmers at the recent World Agriculture Expo, "a pretty low level of risk." (PDF)
Purists will argue that a "low level of risk is not enough." But seeking a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to contamination denies the reality of floral life. Pollen moves. To seek an absolute guarantee against contamination of any crop would be like driving a car while insisting that the manufacturer promise you'll never be harmed. Even so, with a contamination possibility that's less than 1 percent, we are not looking at a scenario in which GM alfalfa is going to overtake its organic counterpart.
A final and often overlooked point to consider is this: Even if the minimal odds were beaten, successful contamination did occur, and a bit of GM alfalfa were fed to a cow producing organic milk, the impact would be, for all intents and purposes, benign. The GM trait—glyphosate resistance—has been around for over a decade, it has been approved for both human and animal consumption, and it presents no pest problems. The organic industry already allows less than 5 percent of its crops to be contaminated with synthetic pesticide drift. So I think it's perfectly reasonable for organic alfalfa farmers to accept the extremely low (not "strong") chance of GM contamination as the cost of doing business in the modern world.
James
McWilliams is an Associate Professor of history at Texas State University, San
Marcos, and author of Just
Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.
Tomato taste, shelf life key ARS research
(USDA-ARS) – Agricultural Research Service researchers are working to save our tomatoes—or at least some of them.
Tomatoes spend so much time on shelves and in refrigerators
that an estimated 20 percent are lost to spoilage, according to the USDA
Economic Research Service. Autar Mattoo,
an ARS plant physiologist with the Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory
in
Mattoo, Handa, and Savithri Nambeesan, a graduate student working with Handa, recently focused on manipulating a class of nitrogen-based organic compounds known as “polyamines” that act as signals and play a role in the plant’s growth, flowering, fruit development, ripening, and other functions. Polyamines have also been linked to the production of lycopene and other nutrients that lower our risk of developing certain cancers and other diseases, making them a prime target for investigation, according to Mattoo.
“We wanted to see if we could increase the levels of polyamines in tomatoes and then investigate their biological effects,” Mattoo says.
The researchers introduced a yeast gene, known as “spermidine synthase,” into tomato plants specifically to increase production of a single polyamine—spermidine. Spermidine is found in all biological organisms and is one of three polyamines believed to modulate the plant-ripening process.
The results, published in The Plant Journal, showed that introducing the gene not only increased spermidine levels and vegetative growth, but also significantly extended the tomato’s postharvest shelf life. Shriveling was delayed by up to 3 weeks, and there was a slower rate of decay caused by tomato plant diseases. The tomatoes also had higher levels of the antioxidant lycopene. The study shows for the first time that spermidine has its own effects, independent of the other polyamines, extending shelf life and increasing growth. Polyamines are found in other plants, so the work could assist in efforts designed to extend the postharvest shelf life of other crops.
“We know that in tomato fruit, the signaling machinery continues to function late into the ripening process. By designing genes that would lead to higher levels of polyamines, it should be possible to modulate ripening and influence nutrient levels as well,” says Mattoo.
The use of molecular genetics to enhance tomatoes has faced some resistance from consumers and industry. But scientists have used such molecular techniques for years to develop improved varieties of corn, soybeans, and cotton, and Mattoo is confident that in time the approach will become more widely accepted as its benefits are better understood.—By Dennis O'Brien, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of Plant Biological and Molecular Processes, an ARS national program (#302) described at www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
Massive database to boost food production
(MPRnews)
The Global Landscapes Initiative combines on-the-ground reports and satellite images to pinpoint trends in crop production, fertilizer and water use, and other variables in agriculture around the world.
Team member Paul West said the information can help agribusiness figure out where to invest acquiring oats, corn, beans in areas that will have a smaller environmental impact per ton of food that is produced.
West said the database is based on reports on 175 crops from around the world.
"From those many different data sources we have good information on what crops are grown where, how much they're producing, what the land base is, and in general how much fertilizer or irrigation is used in each of these places for each of these crops," West said.
The team is designing tools that can make the database useful to farmers, corporations, and non-profit groups as they try to meet the food needs of a growing population while protecting the environment.
Veggie fed salmon yield healthful meal
(ScienceDaily.com) — Vegetable ingredients can replace much of the fish proteins and fish oil used in conventional feeds for farmed salmon and salmon trout -- without sacrificing the health benefits of consumer products.
AquaMax, a large international project with strong Norwegian participation, has studied the effects on the nutritional benefits of fish raised on a diet that substitutes vegetable feed ingredients for some of the marine ingredients. The project has generated new, important knowledge about the nutritional requirements of production species and what makes these fish safe and healthy for human consumption.
The project, a collaboration between
33 partners from 14 countries, was headed by the National Institute of
Nutrition and Seafood Research (NIFES) in
AquaMax has been a prime example of successful Norwegian participation in EU-funded research. Its results are now benefitting the Norwegian aquaculture.
Good source of healthful fats
The AquaMax researchers conclude that fully 70 per cent of the fish oil and 80 per cent of the marine proteins in conventional feed can be replaced with vegetable ingredients without any adverse effect on fish health.
Even with such a radically altered diet, salmon appear to retain their value as a good source of fatty acids that are healthy for humans.
Dietary dilemma
"Exchanging vegetable ingredients for fishmeal and fish oil involves taking a great many feed components into account," explains Project Coordinator Øyvind Lie, Director of NIFES.
Eating seafood can be seen as something of a trade-off. "We know we risk losing some of the beneficial marine omega-3 fatty acids in fish fat by altering the feed composition. Compared to vegetable sources, however, those same marine ingredients may contain more pollutants such as dioxins, PCBs and brominated flame retardants. We have observed substantially lowered amounts of dioxins in fish that are fed vegetable ingredients."
The AquaMax project examined whether production salmon can still be considered healthful food when raised on roughly 50 per cent vegetable feed.
"The risk of ingesting contaminants must be weighed against the health benefits of eating seafood rich in the marine omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA," points out Dr Lie. "This is a dilemma for pregnant women in particular."
Pregnant and vulnerable
The AquaMax researchers chose to focus on precisely that group: expectant mothers.
"Pregnant women and the children they are carrying are most vulnerable to pollutants such as dioxins -- yet they also have the greatest requirement for the nutrients in fish," explains Dr Lie. "Marine omega-3 fatty acids are especially important for both mother and baby."
In designing a diet for pregnant subjects, the researchers raised salmon on a customised feed in which large proportions of marine ingredients were replaced with vegetable meal. The salmon feed still contained some marine ingredients. The fish fillets were consumed by 62 pregnant women twice a week, from Week 21 of their pregnancy until giving birth. The babies were also followed up for their first six months.
The control group of 62 women, also pregnant, consumed the
same amount of fish as they normally would have. "Where these women
resided (in
"The results were very encouraging. In the group that ate the test salmon fillets, omega-3 levels were elevated in both the mothers and their babies. Even though these test salmon had received less omega-3 through a feed based mainly on vegetable ingredients, the salmon meat still provided an excellent source of the healthful fatty acids."
Dietary advice depends on research
"This means we can raise salmon on feed with high proportions of vegetable ingredients. This in turn reduces our need for marine resources while at the same time maintaining a sufficiently healthy level of fatty acids and lowering the risk of pollutants. Knowledge like this is vital for the authorities who provide nutritional guidelines concerning public consumption of seafood."
Vegetable ingredients used in fish feed do contain pollutants, but the AquaMax project's preliminary results indicate that not much of these are carried over into the actual fish fillets. Comparatively more pollutants are transmitted from fish ingredients.
What do consumers think?
Part of the AquaMax project was to study consumer reactions to production fish eating feeds with different ingredients. Researchers examined media coverage of the issue and interviewed focus groups to get an idea of public opinion and understanding.
"Public opinion is highly relevant to the issue; unfortunately, the negative perceptions outnumber the positive," reports Dr Lie. But consumer thinking differed from country to country. The findings from this study provide the industry with insight into how it can better communicate with consumers.
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