
		" I heard it through the AgLine"

February 25, 2010

· Organic production survey results from USDA

· FDA partnership to boost regulatory science

· First time in decades, African food production up

· N.C. State intros new tomato site via webinar

· Stop turning cheap food into expensive fuel

Organic production survey results from USDA

(hobbyfarms.com) – Survey shows organic farmers incur high production expenses but have high sales.

As a supplement to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the 2008 Organic Production Survey, outlining sales and production practices on organic farms in the United States.

“This was USDA’s first wide-scale survey of organic producers, and it was undertaken in direct response to the growing interest in organics among consumers, farmers, businesses, policymakers and others,” said Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan. “The information being released today will be an important building block for future program and policy development.”

The survey was conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Services, which collected 2008 data from farm operations certified organic by the USDA, transitioning to organic production or exempt from certification because sales were less than $5,000. A total of 14,540 organic farms and ranches across the U.S. participated—10,903 USDA-certified organic and 3,637 exempt from certification.

According to the study, the top state for both numbers of certified-organic farms and organic-product sales is California, with 2,714 organic farms and organic sales reaching 36.3 percent of total sales.

In 2008, organic sales for the participating farms topped out at $3.16 billion, with $1.94 billion in organic crops and $1.22 billion in organic livestock, poultry and their products. While most of organic products were sold at wholesale markets, processors, brokers and retailers, the remaining 6.8 percent went directly to the consumers who purchased from organic farms (2.4 percent), at farmers’ markets (1.9 percent), and through community-supported agriculture (1 percent).

Most farm operators sold their organic products locally: 44 percent within 100 miles of the farm and 30 percent between 100 and 500 miles. National sellers shipping organic products 500 or more miles accounted for 24 percent of those surveyed, while only 2 percent of organic producers sold internationally.

Sales numbers aren’t the only high-dollar figures considered by organic famers—organic production comes at an increased cost to traditional farming practices. In 2008, an organic farm spent an average of $62,000 more on production costs than a traditional farm, according to feedback from the interviewed organic-farm operations. The average organic farm spent $171,978, while the 2007 Census of Agriculture reported a $109,359 average for all farms nationwide. The bulk of the expense for organic farmers went to labor ($569 million) and feed ($480 million), followed by repairs, supplies and expenses; fertilizer, lime and soil conditioners; and rent and lease fees for land, buildings and machinery.

In addition to information on organic sales and expenses, the Organic Production Survey provides information on farm categories, practices and procedures; federal programs; production plans and challenges; and average farm incomes. For more information and to view the full report, visit the USDA Census of Agriculture.

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FDA partnership to boost regulatory science

(Los Angeles Times) – The Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday announced a plan to help the FDA make swifter decisions about the safety and effectiveness of new products and procedures that flow from advanced research.

The new partnership will promote the development of testing and other tools that FDA regulators need in order to assess drugs and other products coming from fields such as genomics, nanotechnology and stem cell therapy.

Officials from both agencies said laboratory science leading to treatments had vastly outdistanced regulatory science, which develops the methods to evaluate the safety and quality of those treatments.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg compared the imbalance to the arms of a rower. "We have allowed the arm of regulatory science to become weak and underdeveloped," Hamburg said at a news briefing. If not corrected, "instead of pulling us into an exalted future, we will row in circles."

NIH Director Francis Collins said research sponsored by his agency had yielded 128 compounds that showed some degree of promise for medical use, but also presented new challenges for safety regulators.

Some are intended for rare diseases for which there are no established testing protocols.

Others are intended to be used in combination with other therapies, a relatively new approach to treatment of diseases such as cancer and HIV/AIDS.

Because the combinations of drugs can have differing interactions, it's difficult to assess them for safety, Collins said, adding that "the FDA doesn't have in place the kind of paradigm that's needed."

The NIH-FDA collaboration includes the formation of a six-member council of top scientists from both agencies to make sure that the latest science is incorporated into the regulatory review process.

The NIH and FDA also will make at total of $6.75 million in grants for regulatory science research over a three-year period.

FDA spokeswoman Karen Riley said there were obvious targets for researchers. Among them is trimming the length of time it takes to devise tests for the potency of flu vaccines.

The process currently takes three to four months, but "if we were able to work on it, we think we could cut that in half," Riley said.

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First time in decades, African food production up

(SciDev.net) NAIROBI – Food production in Sub-Saharan Africa grew in 2008 for the first time in decades, according to a new report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The 3.5 per cent increase ? higher than the two per cent rise in population ? was driven in part by increased use of technology, says the report, which was written for a forum of senior experts on food production meeting in Rome this week (12-13 October) ahead of November's World Summit on Food Security.

Other factors behind the increase include positive changes in national policies for agriculture and higher food prices which have the effect of stimulating growth, the report says.

"Increased research in agriculture has led to improved crop varieties more suited to specific African regions, and this has had a direct impact on yields," says Hilary Clarke, spokesperson for the FAO.

"The coming of the high yielding, drought resistant New Rice for Africa (NERICA), for example, has led to higher rice production in West Africa and Uganda," she adds.

Daniel M'Reri, an agricultural expert with Sumitomo Corporation in Nairobi, Kenya, says improvements in farming methods by smallholder farmers are also paying off. For instance, by adopting new irrigation methods, including water conserving drip irrigation, farmers are becoming less vulnerable to erratic rainfall.

M'Reri adds: "Research into drought resistant and fast maturing crops has led new varieties of crops such as sorghum."

But the report also highlights the challenges for Africa in its use of science and technology. It says "determined action" is needed in technological innovation, adding that poor transfer of agricultural technologies to farmers has led to a low uptake of irrigation, fertilisers, pesticides and superior seeds.

"Governments and donors need to fund research in agriculture more," says M'Reri.

Africa must also make better use of its land and water if growth is to be sustained or even boosted on a continent which struggles with food deficiency, according to the report.

It recommends more extensive farming of the Guinea Savannah region in particular. Currently, only ten per cent of this 600 million hectare zone is farmed but more extensive farming would require massive investment in infrastructure and technology.

The report stresses that Africa must be helped to cushion itself from the effects of climate change which, in a continent heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture, could destroy up to 50 per cent of yields in some countries.

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N.C. State intros new tomato site via webinar

(Wire Services) – N.C. MarketReady, a program of N.C. Cooperative Extension, is hosting a webinar to introduce the new Tomato Growers Information Portal on March 10, 2010 at 10 a.m. The session is an “online tour” for growers and Extension agents that will highlight key resources on the portal, including production guides, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) information, crop budgets and more. N.C. State tomato specialists will guide the tour and will be available for questions after the session. Though geared toward N.C. growers, the portal contains resources that tomato growers throughout the region may find valuable.

Event Details

What: N.C. MarketReady Tomato Portal Web Tour

Who: Growers and N.C. Cooperative Extension Agents

When: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 – 10 to 11 a.m.

Where: Visit www.ncmarketready.org to get the webinar link (Computer Requirements)

This is an open session. When asked for a “Login Name” and “Password,” simply type in your first and last name and leave the password blank. You can log in up to one hour before the start time.

Presenters

Dr. Chris Gunter – Vegetable production specialist, Department of Horticultural Science

Mr. Rod Gurganus – Team leader, N.C. MarketReady

Dr. Kelly Ivors – Plant pathologist, Department of Plant Pathology

Dr. Katie Jennings – Weed management specialist, Department of Horticultural Science

Dr. Penelope Perkins-Veazie – Postharvest physiologist, Plants for Human Health Institute

Agents and growers can download and distribute a flier to others who may benefit from this new resource by visiting www.ncmarketready.org. (Direct Link)

The Growers Information Portals (including Blackberries/Raspberries and Strawberries) can be accessed by visiting N.C. MarketReady online at www.ncmarketready.org and clicking the tab on the left menu bar. The Tomato Growers Information Portal was developed by N.C. MarketReady, a program of N.C. Cooperative Extension, with financial support from the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission and the Agricultural Advancement Consortium of The N.C. Rural Economic Development Center.

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Stop turning cheap food into expensive fuel

(The Japan Times) LONDON — U.S. Department of Agriculture figures reveal that a quarter of U.S. cereals grown in 2009 went to biofuel, turning cheap food into expensive fuel. This pushes up food prices and damages the environment, yet President Barack Obama promised "continued investment in advanced biofuels" in his recent State of the Union address.

A paper on the 2007-2008 food crisis by the World Bank Development Prospect Group, leaked in 2008, said U.S. and European Union biofuel production was responsible for 70 to 75 percent of the price rises — against 3 percent admitted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

These subsidies are about political pandering, not cutting greenhouse gases. But despite a backlash against biofuels in 2008, they have now fallen off the international agenda.

Biofuels from crops like corn, sugar and palm oil have more than tripled since 2000. The U.S. is to increase ethanol blending to 57 billion liters by 2012 and 136.8 billion liters by 2022, up from 34.2 billion liters last year.

A recent report by Rice University (Texas) found that the U.S. spent $4 billion on biofuel subsidies in 2008 to replace a mere 2 percent of the U.S. gasoline supply. It estimates that this costs taxpayers about $82 per barrel, or $1.95 a gallon (3.8 liters) more than the retail price of petroleum fuel. By 2022, U.S. biofuel subsidies will have totaled $400 billion, according to environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth. The European Union is no better, giving around 3.7 billion euro ($5.2 billion) in biofuel subsidies in 2007, aiming to replace 5.75 percent of transport fuel by the end of 2010. Japan has been cautious but the government has invested in Malaysian and Indonesian bio-diesel projects using sugar cane and jatropha.

On top of wasted taxes and higher food prices, biofuels make little environmental sense: production in the U.S. and the EU can release more emissions than it avoids. Nobel-Prize-winning chemist Paul J. Crutzen estimates: "For rapeseed bio-diesel, which accounts for about 80 percent of the biofuel production in Europe, the relative warming due to nitrous oxide emissions is estimated at 1 to 1.7 times larger than the quasi-cooling effect due to saved fossil carbon-dioxide emissions. For corn bioethanol, dominant in the U.S., the figure is 0.9 to 1.5."

Although the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization sees little chance in the near future of another "concurrence of so many factors" like the one that caused the food crisis, there is no room for complacency. Food prices are taking a long time to fall (corn is still 50 percent above its 2003-2006 average), while the number of hungry people recently topped one billion. This is a worrying trend as there has been an increase in both the absolute number and the percentage of hungry people, reversing decades of progress.

Ethanol already takes up 10.9 million hectares out of the 36.4 million hectares of corn in the U.S.: from 2006 to 2008, the World Bank's Food Price Index doubled.

If biofuel was about the environment, the U.S. would not impose tariffs on environmentally-friendly ethanol from Latin America and the Caribbean. Likewise, new EU tariffs are clearly aimed at American producers who send 95 percent of their biofuel exports to Europe.

In addition, there is the fear that natural habitats will be converted to farmland to take advantage of biofuel subsidies. The diversion of existing U.S. cropland to biofuels has shifted soya bean production to South America and Indonesia, encouraging deforestation.

Nor do biofuels save energy. Some varieties require as much to grow, transport and process as they release when you burn it.

And according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, at oil prices below $70 per barrel (the recent range is $70-85), corn-based ethanol is about the same price at the pump as normal petroleum fuels — not counting what taxpayers have already paid in subsidies.

The U.S. and the EU (and Japan) claim "second-generation" biofuels from plant cellulose or waste will help achieve their stringent self-imposed "renewables" targets but this is a nascent industry that has yet to deliver value for money. The EU said it would reconsider biofuels following the food crisis. But there is powerful pressure from farm lobbies in both places.

Agriculture faces many difficulties, but the biofuel problem is a no-brainer. Creating an artificial market with subsidies is no way to reduce emissions, save rain forests or feed the poor. Biofuel subsidies are a green handout to farm lobbies in rich countries: it's time to end them.

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