 |
|||
 |
" I heard it |
||
February 22, 2010
· Indonesia aims to be world’s breadbasket
· US approves settlement for black farmers
· Produce mogul indicted in tomato scandal
· Fungal fumes clear out many crop pests
· A look at Climategate’s guerilla warriors
Indonesia
(AFP
via Yahoo! News) )
"Feed
Between now and 2030 Indonesia expects to become one of the world's biggest producers of rice, maize, sugar, coffee, shrimp, meats and palm oil, senior agriculture ministry official Hilman Manan said.
The world's fourth most populous country, with 235 million
people,
"If everything goes well,
The first area targeted for development is 1.6 million
hectares (3.95 million acres) in the southeast of the largely undeveloped
The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate will, the government hopes, create thousands of jobs and turn an impoverished and neglected corner of the Indonesian archipelago into a hive of activity.
"We chose Merauke because it's the ideal place for food crop cultivation, such as rice, corn, soybean and sugar cane. Merauke district has 4.5 million hectares of land; 2.5 million hectares are ideal for cultivation," Manan said.
"The area is flat and has a good climate. Its soil is
appropriate for those crops. Sumatra is already congested with other
plantations, such as palm oil, and
He said Merauke's population of some 175,000 people could rocket to 800,000 if the plan takes off.
Foreigners will be able to control a maximum of 49 percent of any investing company, and will be offered incentives like tax breaks and reductions in customs and excise duties.
"In order to avoid any forms of monopolies or land grabbing, we're limiting each company to a maximum of 10,000 hectares of land," Manan said, stressing that the government was selling land use rights, not the land itself.
He said interest had come from
But analysts said the region's biggest advantage -- expanses of "empty" land -- was also the main obstacle: the project will require up to five billion dollars in infrastructure investments, from a new port to roads and runways.
And there is opposition from small-scale farmers who say their traditional livelihoods could be threatened by the large-scale commercialization of agriculture.
"We reject the concept of the food estate. For us, food estates are another kind of land grabbing scheme. It's like going back to the era of feudalism," Indonesian Farmers Union official Kartini Samon said.
"The regular farmers' land will be taken by big companies and the farmers will be left with nothing," she said.
Such worries are well known in other countries with similar
schemes, such as
There are also fears for the rights of indigenous Papuans, an ethnic-Melanesian minority who have long complained that their traditional lands are being unjustly exploited by outsiders.
US approves settlement for black farmers
(The Washington Post) – The Obama administration announced a $1.25 billion settlement late last week to resolve charges by thousands of black farmers who say that for decades the Agriculture Department discriminated against them in loan programs.
Cabinet officials exhorted Congress to approve the deal by setting aside money for the farmers, who have fought through three administrations to secure a measure of justice. In the starkest cases, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, farmers lost their property after local administrators slow-pedaled loan applications, leaving them unable to plant key crops.
The agreement is part of a wider effort by Obama and senior
officials to dispense with lawsuits stemming from
Vilsack and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. took a personal interest in striking a deal with the black farmers, whose leaders have appeared regularly in the halls of Congress and in the White House. Vilsack predicted that Congress will approve the settlement.
"I'm going to focus all my time and resources on making that happen," he told reporters Thursday. "The president is prepared to indicate that it's a priority not just for his administration but for the country."
In a statement, Obama applauded the Cabinet members for "bringing these long-ignored claims of African American farmers to a rightful conclusion."
The government paid $1 billion to settle a related case with 16,000 black farmers in 1999, but notification and communication errors led to some farmers being omitted from that settlement.
The agreement announced Thursday would provide cash payments and debt relief to farmers who applied too late to participate in the earlier settlement. Authorities say they are not certain how many farmers might apply this time, but analysts following the dispute say the number could be higher than 70,000.
Under the terms of the settlement, which also requires the approval of a federal judge, farmers can walk away if Congress does not act by March 31. Officials involved in the agreement, however, said they think they could secure an extension if necessary.
Farmers can apply through a streamlined process if they wish to submit claims for up to $50,000, or they can complete a more detailed claim that could result in a larger payment. The payout to each farmer would depend on how many people make claims, said Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli.
John W. Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association, which has been lobbying for an agreement, said: "There's a huge trust factor that has been broken. The $50,000 will not put a farmer who has lost his farm back on his land, but it will help them have some comfort in their final years."
Since black farmers first filed the lawsuit, known as the Pigford case, in 1997, Hispanic farmers, women and Native Americans have also sued the government, based on alleged widespread discrimination in awarding agriculture loans and subsidies. Advocates for those farmers are expected to lobby Congress to be included in the new Pigford settlement in the weeks ahead, analysts said.
The USDA's relationship with minorities has been fraught for
decades. Nearly eight years ago, black farmers took over a regional office in
Administration officials said Thursday that the outlines of the settlement had met with bipartisan support, particularly from lawmakers from agricultural districts. But House appropriators, who would be the first to act on the measure, said they needed more time to review the settlement before offering solid predictions as to its fate.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said she was encouraged by the settlement, which could provide the most help to farmers in Southern communities. "Over the past 20 years, the number of farms operated by black farmers has declined by nearly 50 percent," Lee said. "In part, this decrease was caused by a lack of access to loans and other assistance which were provided to other farmers."
House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), also a member of the caucus, said: "This settlement is a case where justice delayed will no longer be justice denied. . . . History has taught us to never give up when fighting for what is right. What happened to these black farmers was wrong, and we now have the opportunity to make it right."
Produce mogul indicted in tomato scandal
(Los Angeles Times) – A federal grand jury has indicted former SK Foods owner Frederick Scott Salyer on racketeering and six other counts of corruption for allegedly directing a decade-long scheme to quash competition and sell tomato products at inflated prices -- a practice that led to consumers paying more at the grocery store.
Salyer, a member of one of the state's most powerful farming families, was accused Thursday of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as conspiracy, obstruction of justice and four counts of wire fraud. If convicted on all counts, Salyer could face at least 20 years in prison.
Among other things, prosecutors alleged that Salyer, SK Foods' onetime chief executive, organized and led a conspiracy to use more than $330,000 in bribes from 1998 to 2008 to subvert competition and get deals to sell his company's tomato paste, peppers and other products to Kraft Foods Inc., Safeway Inc., Frito-Lay North America Inc. and Gerber Products Co., among others.
Salyer, 54, was arrested at
Prosecutors said Salyer had been
living in
Salyer is the eldest son of one of
largest land barons in the
Nearly 95% of all tomatoes grown in the
Prosecutors claimed that Salyer and other SK Foods officials tricked food makers into buying a lesser-quality tomato paste -- which had been mislabeled to appear of a higher grade -- and then shut out rivals on deals with big processors and supermarket chains.
In the end, prosecutors say, the conspirators were able to sell the paste at a markup of 30% or more. For the plan to work, Salyer allegedly directed that some employees of the company's customers be bribed to take the orders and look the other way.
Since December 2008, 10 people have pleaded guilty in the federal probe of SK Foods. And like the charges outline in the indictment of Salyer, the pleas are to offenses typically associated with organized crime: racketeering, collusion, bribery, money laundering and bid-rigging.
Six of the people worked for SK Foods; four were employed by
its customers. SK Foods' sales plunged as the case unfolded. It was sold out of
Bankruptcy Court last year to a
The most recent plea also came Thursday when Steven James
King, the former manager of the company's processing plants in Williams and
Salyer said he is being wrongfully blamed by corrupt employees at SK Foods and its customers who are trying to get reduced sentences, Segal said.
"There was no way on God's Earth that [Salyer] had the time or the willingness to participate with these individuals in criminal activity," Segal said.
But at a news conference at the federal courthouse in
"The investigation has exposed a web of corruption and
fraud in the tomato products industry, centered at SK Foods," said
Benjamin B. Wagner, the
Besides the RICO violations, the grand jury also charged Salyer with obstructing justice by altering the minutes of a board of directors' meeting to hide a connection between SK Foods and a director who had already pleaded guilty to racketeering, money laundering and other charges as part of the probe.
Fraudulent practices in the food sector are a long-standing
problem; they include processors or distributors misbranding products or
conspiring to inflate prices that trickle down to the consumer, said John
Spink, a food-fraud expert at
"Food used to be moved around regionally," Spink said. "Now, there's so much product moving so fast around the world and little oversight, particularly in other countries. Fraud in food has become a small side-effect of globalization."
Fungal fumes help clear out crop pests
(USDA-ARS) – A cocktail of compounds emitted by the beneficial fungus Muscodor albus may offer a biologically based way to fumigate certain crops and rid them of destructive pests. That's the indication from Agricultural Research Service (ARS) studies in which scientists pitted Muscodor against potato tuber moths, apple codling moths and Tilletia fungi that cause bunt diseases in wheat.
The scientists--at ARS laboratories in
In field trials conducted since 2007, ARS plant pathologist
Blair Goates found that treating wheat seed or the
soil with a formulation of Muscodor and ground rye completely
prevented common bunt under moderate disease conditions. Caused by the fungus
T. tritici, common bunt reduces wheat yields and
grain quality. Although chemical fungicide seed treatments have kept common
bunt outbreaks to a minimum, alternative controls are
worth exploring if the chemicals lose effectiveness or are discontinued, notes Goates, with the ARS Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit in
At the ARS Yakima Agricultural Research Laboratory in Wapato, entomologist Larry Lacey and colleagues tested Muscodor against potato tuber moths, which damage potato leaves and tubers, and apple codling moths, which feed inside apples. In fumigation chamber tests, 85 to 91 percent of adult codling moths died when exposed to Muscodor fumes, while 62 to 71 percent of larvae died or failed to pupate. In apple storage tests, a 14-day exposure to Muscodor killed 100 percent of cocooned codling moth larvae, which are especially difficult to control.
Lacey and colleagues have also been testing Muscodor's effectiveness in biofumigating sealed cartons of apples stored at various temperatures. The results have been encouraging so far, he reports, and there appears to be no adverse effect on the apples' color, firmness or other characteristics.
More information: Read more about this research in the February 2010 issue of Agricultural Research magazine, available online at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/feb10/pests0210.htm .
A look at Climategate’s guerilla warriors
(The
Globe and Mail) – Much remains murky about the scandal dubbed Climategate,
which involves the release last fall of e-mails leaked or stolen from the
Climate Research Unit at the
The question of scientific misconduct is still under
investigation at
A Toronto-based retired mining executive who has emerged as a uniquely polarizing figure in one of our era's most contentious issues, Mr. McIntyre has been an outspoken critic of the CRU's research on his blog, Climate Audit, and has launched countless freedom-of-information requests for data used by its scientists. He likes to speculate that the Climategate e-mails were released by a whistleblower unhappy at the research unit's intransigence over making data public. That may or may not be true, but whoever got hold of the e-mails and made them public clearly kept a close eye on Mr. McIntyre's struggles with the CRU, which form a strong theme in the leaked e-mails.
Many reveal researchers bristling at the armchair
scientist's criticism. One e-mail, written by Benjamin Santer
of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
In the wake of the scandal, blogs that question the reality of man-made global warming have surged in public attention, leading new readers to websites such as Wattsupwiththat.com (run by weatherman Anthony Watts) and climatedepot.com (run by conservative activist Marc Morano). The sites' rising popularity, and the growing influence they appear to wield in shaping public debate, is deeply worrying to the scientific community.
“There has been a transition in the way people get their news over the last decade or so, from the traditional print media to online sources of news,” says Michael Mann, one of the key researchers behind the now-famous “hockey stick” graph (which shows the temperature of the Earth steeply rising in the 20th century after a long period of stability – data hotly disputed by the online skeptics, although accepted by the scientific community).
“I think the climate-change-denial movement has recognized that transition was taking place and has really invested a lot of effort and resources in creating this huge infrastructure of online disinformation. And I think it is a challenge for legitimate news organizations to compete with that massive disinformation network.”
Science journalist Chris Mooney, co-author of the 2009 book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, calls the Internet a “complete Wild, Wild West for scientific information.”
Mr. Mooney thinks the belief in the reality of man-made global warming, which is the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community, is losing ground in public opinion because of these blogs. “It's a drumming,” he laments. “If it's a football game, it would be 56-0.”
AN EPIC GAME OF NITPICKING
The major climate-change-skeptic blogs have distinct identities. Mr. Morano's Climate Depot is a ramshackle aggregator site, gathering together news links from around the world, often putting a partisan spin on them. A former producer for the Rush Limbaugh television show and informal adviser to Republican Senator James Inhofe, Mr. Marino has strong ties to the American conservative movement.
Climate Depot's tabloid style was captured in a headline earlier this week: “The Jig is Up! Climategate U-turn as Phil Jones admits: There has been no global warming since 1995.” The spin applied to the story, about a media interview with the former director of the CRU, was picked up by news outlets and columnists around the world. But it distorted Prof. Jones's comments, which actually indicated that a short-term warming trend appears to exist at levels “quite close” to scientifically significant. And Prof. Jones stressed that statistically significant trends are much more likely to be detected over longer periods. “The fact that there is almost 95 per cent certainty about the rise from 1995 to 2009 means that it is likely,” he said.
In keeping with his background as a weatherman, Mr. Watts's website focuses on the nitty-gritty of measuring temperatures. As one of the signature issues of his blog, Mr. Watts has focused on meteorological stations, arguing that they were often misplaced – positioned in areas where temperatures were artificially high, such as asphalt parking lots. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration responded to this critique by calculating temperatures minus Mr. Watts's list of objectionable stations. Ironically, the new data showed a slight rise in temperatures.
As distinct from Mr. Morano's conservative populism and Mr. Watts's focus on the weather, Mr. McIntyre's Climate Audit is the most highbrow of the climate skeptic blogs. Even Mr. Mooney acknowledges that Mr. McInytre is “more scientifically inclined” than his peers. Climate Audit is regarded by many as the best of all the climate-skeptic blogs, the one richest in detailed technical arguments and most attentive to the rules of science and evidence.
To his many fans, Mr. McIntyre is a sterling example of a citizen-scientist, an amateur who was able to poke holes in a too-quickly constructed consensus. But to his critics, who include some of the most eminent names in climate science, he casts a very different image, as a gifted pest whose scattershot criticisms indiscriminately mix a few valid points with a larger body of half-truths, a potent concoction that produces much confusion but little benefit.
After working for years in the mining industry, Mr.
McIntyre, 62, came to the climate-science debate in 2002 when he became
suspicious of the political passions surrounding the Kyoto Protocol. He quickly
teamed up with
Their 2005 critique of the graph, published in Geophysical Research Letters, sparked a renewed examination of the hockey-stick data, but didn't make any fundamental change in the debate. Since its original publication, the graph research has been replicated by nearly a dozen studies. Although the hockey stick has been battered and bruised by many critics, it still works.
“What McIntyre has essentially done is put his finger on
small technicalities that don't matter,” argues Prof. Mann, now based at
The key objection to the work of bloggers such as Mr.
McIntyre is that they are engaged in an epic game of nitpicking: zeroing in on
minor technical issues while ignoring the massive and converging lines of
evidence that are coming in from many disciplines. To read their online work is
to enter a dank, claustrophobic universe where obsessive personalities talk
endlessly about small building blocks –
Understandably, Mr. McIntyre doesn't agree with dismissals of his work, and the criticism he has received has made him increasingly critical of the peer-reviewed process that has vindicated the hockey-stick graph. “Peer-reviewed scientists have denied the point of [our] research,” he complains. Many of his recent attacks on climate change have focused on the argument that seemingly independent studies validated by peer review are actually the work of a small group of insiders who control the peer-review process and rubber-stamp each other's scholarship.
Online writing has other advantages over the peer-reviewed system, some bloggers believe. If blogging is a speedy new medium, peer review is a classic example of a slow and deliberative old medium.
“There are 10 peer-reviewed articles I could draw out of the Climate Audit posts,” Mr. McIntyre says, “but I've got this very large audience. I've got to keep feeding the blog.”
As much as climate change, the issue of peer review separates Mr. McIntyre from his critics. “There is a very fundamental distinction between the way science actually moves forward, which isn't on blogs,” Prof. Mann notes. “It's through the traditional process of doing the hard work necessary to get your work published in legitimate peer-reviewed scholarly journals and then it's out there for others to either improve upon, to refute, to address. That's the self-correcting process. Frankly, that process has been subverted by those who … make sometimes outlandish claims in the completely un-peer-reviewed environment of the Internet.”
Still, the scientists concede that the work of some of these online bloggers has led to some necessary corrections – including sloppy misrepresentations of data such as the recent “Glaciergate” brouhaha (over unreliable estimates of when Himalayan glaciers would eventually melt), which Mr. Mooney says the researchers “ought to be ashamed of.”
Gavin Schmidt, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies cites a mistake that Mr. McIntyre found in an analysis of global temperatures, which “we fixed in a day and thanked him for his attention. That got blown out of all proportion and was made to look like we did it on purpose ... something McIntyre did nothing to prevent. So you take something that is constructive and turn it into a huge piece of misinformation.”
One little-known irony of the debate is that for all the harsh words, many scientists have a grudging respect for Mr. McIntyre's intelligence. “He could be a scientific superstar,” Mr. Schmidt says. “He's a smart person. He could be adding to the sum total of human knowledge, but in effect he adds to the reduction of the sum total of human knowledge.”
As the world looks toward
Jeet Heer is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
End Transmission