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March 1, 2010
· Pioneer brought on its own distress, rival says
· Oregon lawsuit seeks to ban GM sugar beets
· Bill would let farmers grow industrial hemp
· Scientists see biochar as promising fuel source
· Australian bees mummify their enemies alive
Pioneer brought on its own distress, rival says
(DesMoinesRegister.com)
– Monsanto Chief Executive Hugh Grant says the dispute between his company and
Pioneer Hi-Bred comes down to the fact that the
"Originally, (Pioneer) wanted to go off on their own in their next generation of seeds," he said. "Then later things changed, and Pioneer decided it wanted Roundup Ready after all."
The Roundup Ready seeds resist Monsanto's popular Roundup herbicide, which has dominated farm fields for two decades. The company has widely licensed the trait, or genetic characteristic, to other seed companies.
He compared Pioneer of Johnston to "the teenager at the Greyhound bus station who suddenly doesn't think it was such a good idea to have run away from home."
Grant's homey description covers an issue involving Pioneer's planned use of the Roundup Ready trait in its Optimum line of soybean seeds it hopes to introduce by 2013.
The dustup has generated a patent infringement lawsuit by
Monsanto and an antitrust lawsuit by Pioneer's parent, DuPont. The
Pioneer already was paying Monsanto $725 million in licensing fees to put the trait in other Pioneer seed lines.
Pioneer President Paul Schickler said, "We believe that the wording of our licensing agreement allowed us to use Roundup Ready in our Optimum lines."
Not so, Grant said.
A deal was a deal, he said, and Pioneer had legally and publicly declared its independence from Roundup Ready when it negotiated its menu of traits for new lines of seeds.
"They want the trait for free," Grant said. "Pioneer has been one of our biggest customers. We'd be glad to license Roundup Ready for their new seeds, but for a price.
"We don't give our traits away."
Pioneer prefers to consider itself as something more than another Monsanto customer.
The company's heritage dates to agricultural legend Henry A. Wallace and the commercialization of hybrid corn before World War II. It had a more dominant hold on the seed market before Monsanto entered the business.
Monsanto prevails in court in first round of licensing
The result is a volley of acrimony between the two
companies, which control about two-thirds of the
Monsanto has won the first round in the licensing issue.
Last month, a federal judge in
"We believe that when the entire antitrust case is heard we will have the right to use Roundup Ready in our Optimum seeds," Pioneer's Schickler said.
Pioneer and other Monsanto critics hope that the March 12 meeting will lead to antitrust actions by the government against Monsanto.
Pioneer's antitrust lawsuit doesn't specify a remedy, but its lawyers have suggested a parallel in the antitrust case the government pursued against Microsoft a decade ago. The courts ruled that Microsoft was obligated to open its operating system to other Internet applications.
Grant has argued that Monsanto has done just that by widely licensing its genetic traits, led by Roundup Ready, to all.
The trait side of the business is where the biggest profits fall.
Monsanto's vice president for seeds and traits, Brett Bregemann, said the gross-profit margin on traits can be up to 80 percent, or more than double the gross profits (before taxes and interest) on sales of the seeds themselves.
Not all companies view Monsanto as a villain
In many competitive fields of the seed business, Monsanto generates plenty of hushed, "don't quote me" kinds of loathing. Pioneer has even accused Monsanto of using the leverage of its trait licensing to block competition and innovation.
"It is important that one company not be a gatekeeper to innovation," Pioneer's Schickler said.
But it is possible to hear voices speaking evenly about Monsanto.
John Long, customer agronomist for Dow Agrosciences, is selling the eight-trait SmartStax seed developed jointly by Dow and Monsanto for Dow's Mycogen brand.
SmartStax allows farmers to set aside only 5 percent of acreage while planting. The Environmental Protection Agency requires farmers to set aside 20 percent of their fields as a pest refuge, planted with corn not genetically engineered to kill insects so that the insects won't mutate into a trait-resistant variety.
Although Mycogen competes against Monsanto's DeKalb and other lines, Long said Monsanto hasn't put down an anticompetitive mark in the market.
"We share genetic traits in SmartStax, but we have unique germplasm, so we go our own ways and there hasn't been a problem," Long said.
Syngenta President David Morgan said late last year that his company — represented in Iowa by NK, Garst and Golden Harvest brands — has licensed Roundup Ready and its newer generation Roundup Ready 2 traits for its Agrisure and future Viptera seed lines.
Syngenta, to be sure, fought its own antitrust battle in the early part of the last decade, ultimately settling before trial.
Grant said of such dustups: "We've had several of those and have been able to settle them. DuPont is the company we've been the least successful in reaching agreements."
Oregon
(AP via Yahoo! News) – PHILOMATH, Ore. – Organic farmers fear this year's spring breezes will be carrying pollen from genetically altered sugar beets, which they say could render their crops worthless, and they hope to persuade a federal judge this week to halt the plantings nationwide.
Experts and industry groups say such an injunction could
jeopardize
"It will be a big problem," if the injunction is
granted, said Carol Mallory-Smith, professor of weed science at
The beets, engineered to be resistant to Monsanto's popular
herbicide Roundup, comprise 95 percent of the crop after two seasons of
planting. All the seed comes from
Organic farmers, food safety advocates and conservation groups already have won a lawsuit forcing federal authorities to reconsider their 2005 approval of the Roundup Ready beets for unrestricted use, saying the government failed to take a hard look at cross-pollination risks.
If granted at a hearing scheduled for Friday in San Francisco, a requested injunction would halt planting of the altered beets until the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service does an environmental impact statement — a process that could take two or three years.
The farmers also want to bar the sale of any sugar made from generally engineered beets.
"The sugar beets were unlawfully deregulated," said Paul Achitoff, an attorney for Earthjustice, the environmental public interest law firm representing plaintiffs. "The court has already found that. Legally, they shouldn't be on the market.
"Consumers should not be exposed to it," he said. "The environment should not be exposed to it."
In 2007, another lawsuit stopped planting of Roundup Ready alfalfa pending an environmental review, though at that point only a small percentage of farmers used it. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Monsanto's appeal.
The latest lawsuit's roots are in Frank Morton's small farm
outside the small town of
When he learned BetaSeed in nearby Tangent and other growers were producing genetically modified sugar beet seed for use elsewhere, he went to his local growers' association and tried to get them to push back.
"They told me if you don't like it you can sue USDA. So we did," he told The Associated Press last September. He has since stopped talking about the case.
The problem is not just the potential for cross pollination. Testing is so sensitive now that genetically engineered pollen could be detected on his crops, making them worthless, whether it pollinates them or not, Morton said.
The Center for Food Safety and the Organic Seed Alliance also worry Roundup Ready crops — which include corn, soybeans and cotton — are creating herbicide-resistant weeds and threaten food safety.
Sugar beet growers declined interview requests, referring questions to the American Sugar Beet Growers Association. Spokesman Luther Markwart characterized the injunction request as "radical."
"It would have disastrous impacts on the 10,000 growers, our processors, the seed companies, and the economies of 10 states," he said.
If the groups believed there was an immediate threat, he said, they should have filed for an injunction two years ago rather than wait until the biotech beets were being "widely and safely used," he added.
Agricultural extension educator Jim Gill in
If the injunction is granted, there is not enough conventional seed and related herbicides to go around, and farmers will have to scramble to plant other crops, he said.
"It's a tough situation. There's a lot of money that's already been invested — put in the ground — to prepare for the 2010 crop," he said. "These are all things that these guys and gals are trying to figure out."
The court hearing will focus on whether allowing this year's crop to be planted is likely to cause irreparable harm.
Mallory-Smith said growers already take precautions to prevent cross-pollination between conventional crops, and the Roundup Ready seed growers are keeping their distance from Morton's farm.
Monsanto spokesman Garrett Kasper said the past two years have demonstrated the beets are safe.
Achitoff counters that there's
already evidence in the ground in
Last May, specklings — tiny roots
planted to produce seed — for Roundup Ready sugar beets were found in a batch
of compost being sold at a garden center in nearby
"People have these Roundup Ready sugar beets sprouting, whether they are in backyard farms or gardens," he said.
Bill would let farmers grow industrial hemp
(stevenspointjournal.com)
-- A bill introduced by a
Currently, farmers in the state are prohibited under state and federal law from producing hemp, which is cultivated from Cannabis sativa, the same plant used to grow marijuana.
The strains of the plant used in hemp production differ from those grown for marijuana because they contain less than .03 percent THC, which produces mind-altering effects. Marijuana can contain anywhere from 6 percent to 7 percent THC.
Industrial hemp is produced from the stalk of the plant, and is used to produce a variety of fibers, including rope.
Introduced by State Rep. Louis Molepske Jr., a Democrat, the measure would require the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to permit farmers to grow and process Cannabis sativa, as long as it contains no more than .03 percent THC. Farmers would be required to provide a legal description of the land where the hemp would be grown or processed and to report all sales. Any person convicted of violating controlled substance laws would not be eligible.
Molepske said there hasn't been a
great deal of demand from area farmers to grow the crop, but that is largely
because of a federal ban that prohibits farmers from growing the plant. The DEA
can license farmers to grow industrial hemp, but rarely does.
The legislation would not lift the federal ban, but would allow the DATCP, not the DEA, to oversee the growth of such crops. Molepske said being prepared for a change in the law makes sense, especially since U.S. Representatives Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Barney Frank, D-Mass., recently introduced legislation that would require the government to do so.
Molepske added that hemp would
make a good rotational crop for potato farmers because the plant can grow in
dry, sandy soil. According to Bill Tracy, Agronomy Department Chair at the
Dick Okray, owner of Okray Family Farms, a major potato producer in the area, said he would consider planting industrial hemp as a rotational crop if the federal ban were lifted.
"If you throw me one more thing I can plant as a rotational crop or a cover crop, I'll do it. There have been some really terrible rotational crops, but I don't think hemp is one of those," he said.
Scientists see biochar as promising fuel source
(tricityherald.com)
– Scientists in
Researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the
federal Department of Agriculture's research station in Prosser and
Biochar, a charcoal-like material, is produced when biomass -- including wood, plant and animal waste -- is burned in the absence of or under low oxygen conditions so the material doesn't combust.
This process, called pyrolysis, thermally decomposes the waste into biochar, bio-oil and syngas. Biochar and bio-oil show commercial promise and syngas offers a power source that can run a pyrolyzer.
The USDA's Agricultural Research Service has estimated that
if the
Although widespread research on biochar began less than a decade ago, debate already is brewing on whether its prevailing commercial use will be for fuel or for soil and carbon sequestration.
In January, UOP, a subsidiary of the Honeywell Corp.,
announced it had been awarded a $25 million grant from the federal Department
of Energy to build a demonstration plant in
Biofuels, including bio-oil from char, "can't replace all petroleum," said Doug Elliott, staff scientist with PNNL's Chemical and Biological Process Development unit. He has been researching biofuels for three decades.
"But
Could create jobs
Or the use of smaller portable pyrolyzer
units one day could be deployed in forests to clean up wood waste piles,
produce lower-grade fuel, generate power and create jobs in rural communities.
The Forest Service is funding research of a small demonstration project in a
small
"There's all kinds of things
that are potentially usable as a fuel source. You can make this work on a whole
lot of things that don't have a value and actively have a cost," said Eric
Twombly of BioChar
Products, who is conducting the forest fuels project in Halfway,
Twombly fired up his mobile plant
in December at an old lumber mill site about eight miles from the
A farmer already is buying some of the oil to use in his orchard heaters, and Twombly uses the syngas to power the plant. It now employs three people, but Twombly envisions one day creating at least a dozen full-time, family-wage jobs.
And ongoing research by soil scientist Hal Collins and his team at the USDA's vegetable and forage crop research unit in Prosser is looking at how dairy waste could be transformed on-site into a product that could be added to the soil, used as an energy source and to eliminate the environmental concerns of waste ponds.
Jim Amonette, a soil chemist at PNNL who has extensively studied biochar, and others say it isn't a panacea that will resolve the nation's energy and environmental challenges. But he says its potential use in storing carbon and as a soil amendment is promising.
"You are basically taking a biomass that would be back in the atmosphere in five to 10 years and converting it into biochar that will be in the soil for hundreds to thousands of years," said Amonette, who contributed a chapter to Biochar for Environmental Management, considered one of the definitive reference works on the topic.
"It is one of the few ways you can pull carbon out of the air and generate energy at the same time," he said.
Different products
The process isn't new. Researchers have found areas in the
Amazon basin where people centuries ago deposited charcoal, leaving behind
areas with rich soils and lush plant growth. Scientists aren't certain how they
created the charcoal, said David Granatstein, a
sustainable agriculture specialist at
Scientists subsequently have found that different methods of pyrolysis -- fast and slow, which are distinguished primarily by the rate of temperature increase in the pyrolyzing unit -- produced different amounts of finished product.
Fast pyrolysis takes place in seconds, with temperatures that can reach up to 1,000 degrees. WSU researchers and Collins found in their study, released in 2009, that higher heating produced more bio-oil and less biochar from the same amount of biomass, while slow pyrolysis with slow heating rates yielded more char and less oil.
Amonette said research of the two methods in general has shown that a ton of biomass subjected to slow pyrolysis can produce up to 750 pounds of biochar, while the fast process yields 300 pounds of char.
Pressure to produce bio-oil could grow as oil prices
continue climbing. UOP has said it expects to start fuel production in
Others, however, tout the potential value of biochar for use in soils and in controlling greenhouse gases. Production of biochar locks up carbon from the biomass that would otherwise rot or be burned, and therefore decreases the amount of carbon dioxide returned to the atmosphere, according to researchers.
"By finding ways to keep this carbon out of the atmosphere for longer periods, we're making better use of the service provided by plants when they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis," Amonette said.
Soil scientists also have found biochar is good for storing carbon because it takes a long time to decompose, Collins said. It also has shown promise in retaining phosphorous, nitrogen and potassium -- helping prevent them from leaching into lakes and streams -- and retains moisture because it is porous.
But research by soil scientists thus far suggests biochar
isn't a magic elixir for all types of soil. It may work best in tropical and
highly weathered soils -- such as in the southern
"It's not a nutrient. It imparts some characteristics that improve soil conditions," Collins said.
His team in Prosser now is looking at transforming dairy wastes into a fuel source and reducing environmental issues with the waste. The researchers are taking manure run through a digester at an Outlook dairy, running it through a pelletizer to change it to pellet form, and then subjecting it to slow pyrolysis to produce bio-gas or bio-oil.
Biochar produced in the process is being applied to dairy waste water to remove excess nitrogen and phosphorus, which could be sold as a fertilizer.
"We think it shows a lot of promise," Collins said.
Research will yield more clues into potential applications of biochar and bio-oil. Economics also will play a key role in how the technology is developed, said Jim Bartis, a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corp. who specializes in energy.
"We know we can implement (the technology) now on a small scale," Amonette said. "We can't wait 50 years to get all the bugs out."
Australian bees mummify their enemies alive
(BBC)
– A species of bee in
The stingless bee 'mummifies' any hive beetle that tries to enter its domain - wrapping the live parasite in resin, wax and mud until it can move no more.
The mummified beetles eventually starve and shrivel on the spot, researchers report in the journal Naturwissenschaften.
The strategy is so successful that it halts a beetle invasion within minutes.
Entomologist Mark Greco made the discovery while investigating the behaviour of a species of Australian stingless bee.
These stingless bees are important pollinators of crops in the country, and some have a lifecycle very similar to that of honeybees, with a queen and her colony producing one to two kilograms of uniquely flavoured honey each year.
Not a lot is known about the parasites or pathogens of Australian stingless bees.
However, "occasionally one finds native beetles or
other insects embedded in the wax structures of the nest while splitting or
managing the hives," says Dr Greco, who is studying for a PhD at the
University of Western Sydney, Australia and the Swiss
Bee Research Centre in
He and a team of colleagues, including honeybee expert Dr Peter Nuemann, investigated the response of the stingless bee ( Trigona carbonaria ) to adult small hive beetles ( Aethina tumida ).
Using an innovative imaging technique, which involves taking pictures of the bee colony using a CT scanner, they could observe the insects' interactions, both at the hive entrance and also within the hive.
Whenever a small hive beetle enters, it is set upon by worker bees that wrestle it and bite at its legs.
The beetles respond by adopting what the scientists call a "turtle posture", tucking in their heads and legs.
This gives the bees an opportunity to mummify their enemy, which they do by coating the invasive parasites in resin, wax and mud.
"The beetles remain in position and eventually starve and shrivel on the spot," Mr Greco told BBC Earth News.
The small hive beetle is a newcomer to
Originally from
But it doesn't appear to be major threat to healthy stingless bee colonies, perhaps due to the bees' defensive strategy.
The mummification process is so effective that once the bees go into action "it takes only ten minutes for all beetle advancements to cease," says Mr Greco.
"It prevents the beetles from feeding and reproducing, thus saving the colony."
End Transmission