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March 5, 2010
· International ag all stars headed for Miami
· Feds set to focus inquiry on Monsanto Co.
· Store light helps keep spinach full of vitamins
· Organic pesticide doubles as a worm killer
· Tabasco Sauce – 142 years old and still hot
International ag
all stars headed for Miami
(AgPR) – An international all-star team representing the
latest agricultural technologies is set to gather later this month in
Delegates and Exhibitors representing more than 220 companies and institutions from 40 countries, more than two-thirds from outside the United States, have registered for the IFA-New Ag International conference on Enhanced Efficiency Fertilizers (EEF) and for the 8th New Ag International Conference and Exhibition.
The events and exhibition will take place March 23-26 at the
Hyatt Regency Hotel in
If you have not registered, there is still time. Also, if you would like to check and see who is already registered, simply follow the links below.
http://www.newaginternational.com/ifa/ifa.html
http://www.newaginternational.com/miami/miami.html
A primary goal of the event is to allow Top executives from industries involved with high-tech agriculture from around the world to gather in one location and discuss strategic alliances and partnerships in a professional, but relaxed atmosphere. The event is also a unique venue for networking, facilitated by the fact that participants will receive a full list and contact information of all attendees BEFORE the event begins. The first list will be sent out to registered delegates on Monday, March 8th.
THE ENHANCED EFFICIENCY FERTILIZER CONFERENCE: A HIGHLY FOCUSED PROGRAMME AND ATTENDANCE
The EEF portion of the conference will run all day March 23 and the morning of March 24. A total of 23 papers will be delivered by speakers from nine countries representing academic, industry and consulting perspectives. About 180 delegates representing 100 fertilizer companies and research institutions from around the world have already registered to the event.
The EEF conference is sponsored by world leaders in this field including Agrium Advanced Technologies, Agrotain, Haifa Chemicals, Scotts Professional and SFP. The entire program is available for downloading in .pdf format at: http://www.newaginternational.com/ifa/ifa.html
THE NEW AG INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION: THE BEST EVER WORLD EVENT ON BIOSTIMULANTS
In addition to the usual coverage of irrigation, fertigation and biocontrol, Biostimulants will take center stage at the New Ag conference. These products are considered at the cutting edge of both plant nutrition and plant protection and all aspects of their innovative roles will be discussed.
Three lectures from international experts on March 25 will anchor this section:
- Giuseppe Natale, CEO of the world leading supplier of biostimulants, during his opening lecture at 8.30 am, will cover market size and developments of specialty products – including biostimulants – in various parts of the world. The opening lecture by Valagro's CEO will also present a novel approach to the positioning of biostimulants – the last step missing between plant protection and plant nutrition – which will also be an ideal platform to discuss the reshaping of legislation on these products around the world.
- Prof. Pierdomenico Perata, probably one of the best Plant Physiologists in the world, who will follow Natale at 10 a.m. in the opening session, will highlight plant genomic tools to predict the function and efficacy of biostimulants.
- Dr. Anna Benedetti, Director of the Plant Nutrition Institute at the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, in her opening lecture of the technical session on biostimulants chaired by Professor Patrick Brown of UC Davis in the afternoon, will look at the characterization of biostimulating properties in fertilizers, using bioassays.
Most of the important world suppliers of biostimulants (seaweed, humic acids, amino-acids, etc.) and leading industry figures – including association and academic representatives – from the United States and around the world are taking part in the event either as exhibitors or as conference delegates.
More than 40 companies from the irrigation, biocontrol, plant nutrition and technology sector have booked exhibition
space representing 16 countries:
The event is
sponsored by Brandt (USA), COMPO Expert (
As an extra bonus for those attending the conferences, New Ag International has announced it will publish a special issue of its quarterly English language magazine with unique coverage of EEF’s, Biostimulants, waste water re-use in irrigation systems and a special report of the irrigation market in the United States and a statistical overview of agriculture in Central America.
This is the first time in its eight-year history the
conferences and exhibition will be held in the
For more information, contact New Ag International at conference@newaginternational.com or by phone at +44 (0) 208 892 4821
Feds set to focus inquiry on Monsanto Co.
(Bloomberg) -- For a man trying to feed the world, Monsanto Co.’s Hugh Grant has no shortage of people trying to disrupt his dinner plans, from activists fighting genetically modified crops to the U.S. Department of Justice probing his company’s sales practices.
Grant, a salesman who became chief executive officer in
2003, says Monsanto will be vindicated on all fronts because it has licensed
genetics to hundreds of rivals since the dawn of the biotech seed industry in
the mid-1980s. That strategy, and billions of dollars of research, got the
company’s genes into 93 percent of
“We have made the technology accessible to all comers,” Grant, 51, said in an interview. “The fact that we went for an open-architecture, broad licensing system at the very beginning rather than holding the technology ourselves, I feel very good about that approach.”
Grant’s argument will get a public hearing when the Justice
Department and Department of Agriculture hold a workshop on seed-industry
competition in
DuPont Co. has led the charge against Monsanto, arguing in a
lawsuit in federal court in
“Monsanto is not allowing the best seed to get to the market and is imposing unjustified pricing that hits American farmers and independent seed producers throughout the United States,” Paul Schickler, president of DuPont’s Pioneer seed unit, said in an interview.
‘Over the Line’
David Kruse, president of commodities brokerage CommStock Investments Inc., said he’s planting Monsanto’s new Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans this year on his 640-acre farm near Royal, Iowa. Still, he thinks Monsanto uses its genetic licenses to keep seed companies from offering competing varieties.
“It’s OK to have a good product, but it is not OK to control competitors’ access to the market,” Kruse said by telephone. “Monsanto has stepped over the line. If you can control what can come to market, that is anticompetitive.”
Monsanto, the world’s largest seedmaker, already has begun trying to counteract the criticism from farmers like Kruse and the movie Food Inc., which argued the St. Louis-based company bullies growers who save patented soybeans to replant the following year.
Generic Seeds
Grant said in January that he won’t block generic versions of Monsanto’s modified seeds as they come off patent. The company said it’s working to help double food production by 2050 as the planet’s population reaches 9 billion and portrays itself as a friend of farmers with its americasfarmers.com Web site.
The legal and public relations fights are the latest battles
for the
Grant solved intellectual property disputes early in his
tenure as CEO, settling patent lawsuits with Bayer AG, Syngenta AG and Dow
Chemical Co. by agreeing to cross-license technologies. The
“Hugh is a very shrewd operator and a tough warrior,” said Michael Pragnell, who squared off against Grant as CEO of Syngenta from 2000 through 2007. “He’s also a realist. You don’t fight battles you are not going to win.”
DuPont Lawsuit
The allegations the Justice Department is investigating include those at the center of the legal dispute with DuPont, the world’s second-largest seedmaker. Monsanto sued DuPont in May, seeking to prevent it from producing soybean seeds that combine DuPont’s genes with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready traits, which allow farmers to kill weeds with Roundup herbicide while leaving the crops unharmed.
DuPont countersued, claiming that Monsanto’s Roundup Ready patent is invalid and that the company abuses its control over seed technology. Monsanto won an incremental victory in January, when U.S. District Judge Richard Webber ruled that DuPont violated the companies’ licensing agreement by combining Monsanto’s Roundup-tolerance gene with a DuPont trait that does the same thing.
DuPont has hired James Denvir, an attorney with Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP who led the Justice Department’s antitrust suit against AT&T in the 1980s. Monsanto’s lead attorney is Dan Webb, the Winston & Strawn LLP partner who defended Microsoft Corp. against antitrust claims.
Justice Department Inquiry
Monsanto said in October that it received questions from the Justice Department about DuPont’s complaints. The questions weren’t a formal request, and DuPont and other companies were receiving similar inquiries as the department examines competition in farming markets.
While Grant said he takes the federal inquiry “seriously,” the company faced bigger challenges in 2003, his first year as CEO. The company had lost $1.7 billion the previous year and the seed business had yet to turn a profit. He focused the company on corn, soybeans, cotton and canola, a plan that led to seven straight profitable years and boosted Monsanto’s shares 14-fold through their June 2008 peak.
“The turnaround, frankly, is the story of a big piece of my career,” Grant said in the interview. “We had a very simple plan. It doesn’t make it easy, but it was very simple, and we executed.”
Now, the Roundup herbicide business is in decline as cheap
generics from
Profit Rebound
Profit will rebound as farmers upgrade to Monsanto’s new SmartStax corn, developed with Dow, and Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans, Grant said. Long-term growth will be driven by demand for crops that resist herbicides, bugs and drought, he said. Corn that uses less nitrogen fertilizer, soybeans with healthier oils and tastier vegetables also are on the horizon, he said.
“One piece of this is the world is going to eat more; the
other piece is the Western world is going to eat healthier,” Grant said. “We
have taken long-term bets on macro trends: water, fertilizer, nitrogen,
nutritional planes, growth in
Grant’s plan to sell higher-priced seeds may begin to falter this year, said Paul Christopherson, a Morristown, New Jersey-based analyst at Gilford Securities. Farmers may not upgrade to SmartStax corn, which has eight genetic changes, if they are happy with seeds offering similar benefits, he said.
‘Overkill’
“I question whether farmers will always pay up for more traits,” said Christopherson, the only analyst of the 19 tracked by Bloomberg who rates Monsanto’s shares “sell.” “If you have seeds with eight traits, isn’t that overkill?”
Plantings of SmartStax corn and Roundup Ready 2 soybeans may fall 20 percent short of plans this year, Monsanto said last week. Grant is counting on the two new varieties to help boost seed earnings to as much as $7.5 billion in 2012 from $4.5 billion in 2009.
Grant grew up the older of two boys in
That first job had him demonstrating Roundup weed control in barley fields for growers who supplied makers of Scotch whisky.
‘Lived in the Field’
“My criteria for working outdoors was massively satisfied,” recalled Grant, who stands more than 6 feet tall and sports a clean-shaven head. “I kind of lived in the field.”
He soon was promoted, helping Monsanto expand Roundup sales
to European homeowners, before moving to
After losing money in 2002, the newly independent company’s board ousted CEO Hendrik Verfaillie and was looking only at external candidates for the top spot. Grant threw his name into the ring.
“That he was clearly bright and strategic was clear on first impression,” said Robert Shapiro, Monsanto CEO from 1995 to 2000. “But what I found really impressive about Hugh is that he is thoughtful. He reflects on situations and decisions carefully before coming to a conclusion.”
Strategy Sessions
Grant starts his week with a Monday morning meeting of his 12-person executive team. He supplements those meetings with strategy sessions every six weeks that bring together biologists, regulatory specialists, regional leaders, sales and marketing executives and his top lieutenants, enabling him to make decisions on the spot.
Farmers pay a premium for Monsanto seeds because they increase yields and reduce expenses for pesticides, water and nitrogen fertilizer, Grant said. That premium will rise as the world strives to feed a growing population on limited farm land, he said.
Agricultural companies are under scrutiny because they are key actors in issues such as food availability and quality, corn-based ethanol production, water scarcity and climate change, Grant said. Monsanto can help mitigate those problems by enabling farmers to double crop yields by 2030, he said.
The success of Monsanto, which devoted $1 billion to seed research last year, has prompted competitors to develop their own technologies, Grant said. Many of those seeds are set to reach the market later this decade.
“A competitive market is getting increasingly competitive,” Grant said. “And that’s OK.”
Store light helps keep spinach full of vitamins
(Reuters
via Yahoo! News)
The surprising findings should apply to other fresh vegetables and may offer insights into how to keep produce fresher longer, the researchers reported in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
They may also suggest ways to boost nutrients in fresh foods, said Gene Lester of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. He said the idea for the experiment came to him when he was shopping.
Supermarkets often display fresh spinach in clear plastic containers at around 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees C) under fluorescent light 24 hours a day. Lester wondered if this was good or bad for the leaves.
"It is about time we asked some of these questions and do some of the science," Lester said in a telephone interview.
His team kept fresh spinach leaves under continuous light or darkness for three to nine days.
Spinach kept under lights for as little as three days had significantly higher levels of vitamins C, K, E and folate, as well as more the colorful and healthful carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, they reported.
Leaves stored in the dark lost nutrients, Lester said. On reflection, he said, the findings should not be surprising.
"These vitamins are basically in the plant for photosynthesis and we humans, being the biggest predator of plants, have evolved over time to utilize them as opposed to we having to manufacture them," he said.
Even when picked, leafy greens continue to photosynthesize, Lester said. "As long as there is moisture in the leaves and as long as there is gas exchange and light, it is good to go whether they are picked or not," he said.
His team chose fresh spinach as it is "arguably one of the most nutritionally complete vegetables commonly consumed." A serving of spinach provides 20 percent or more of the recommended dietary intake of vitamins C, A, B9, K and E.
Organic pesticide doubles as worm killer
(newscientists.com) – A common organic pesticide could do double duty as a cure for intestinal worms, and drag hundreds of millions of people out of poverty – provided cash can be found for human trials.
More than 1 billion people, almost all of them living below the World Bank's poverty line of $1.25 a day, are plagued by nematodes. While the worms don't usually kill, they stunt growth, cause anaemia and impair cognitive development.
All this helps to "trap the 'bottom billion' in
poverty", says Peter Hotez, a specialist in
tropical diseases at
Now Raffi Aroian at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues have shown that the protein Cry5B, produced by the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis and used as a crop pesticide, could act as an effective drug. An oral dose cleared around 70 per cent of the worms from infected mice.
Molecule for molecule, Cry5B is about three times as effective as tribendimidine, the other leading drug in development. And Aroian is confident of obtaining better results still.
Cry5B is largely broken down in the stomach before reaching the intestine, so his team is now working with SRI International of Menlo Park, California, to develop coatings to protect the drug from stomach acids and get higher doses to the intestine where the worms live.
The protein is known to be safe – it is one of the few pesticides used by organic farmers. The main obstacle is a dearth of funding to push the drug through human trials and begin mass treatment in the world's poorest countries. "If we don't get money this year, we will have to stop the project," Aroian warns.
Even the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, launched by Médicines Sans Frontières and other partners in 2003, has not yet made intestinal worms a priority. Instead, it is concentrating on killers including malaria and sleeping sickness. "Somebody's got to step into this space," says Hotez.
Tabasco
(CNN
via Yahoo! News) – Dozens of entrepreneurial hot sauce bottles line up on a
typical grocery store shelf, but only two or three boast significant market
share. Tops among them is
The company, still family-run and privately held, won't
disclose its financials, but analysts estimate that the iconic brand -- which
supplies countless bars, first-class airline cabins and the
McIlhenny, which grows its peppers
all over the western hemisphere, sells six flavors of
After a recent factory tour on
How did the McIlhennys get into the pepper business?
My great-grandfather was Edmund "E" McIlhenny. He died in 1890, but we still call him Grand-Père. He had been a banker in
That's when he started selling the pepper sauce he made for family and friends. He was truly an entrepreneur in terms of the sauce -- it was a totally new profession for him.
How did the operation grow?
The first sales happened in
By the mid 1870s the sauce was being sold in grocery stores
through food brokers in the
When did you decide to go into the family business?
I was attending the University of the South in
I started on Avery Island out in the field in the summer of 1967 doing what we call "working in khakis" -- which means I was in the field gathering and checking the quality of the peppers, weighing, sorting, processing, and loading them into rail cars. That ain't fun to do in the heat of September!
I did that for about two and a half months, visiting daily with Walter, who would go over company history with me. I knew the history thanks to my father, who was a shareholder and board member. He and my uncles were pleased to have me represent their side of the family.
After those two months, Walter sent me to work with the
company's oldest food broker in
I returned to
Was Walter grooming you to take over?
At that age you're just glad to have a job. Theoretically I could have been in line. I had a cousin in between who was a V.P. I didn't come in as an officer. I came in as management. I had a notion that I might take over, but it wasn't anything assured.
When did you start growing peppers away from
We started growing peppers in
Is there ever a problem with different flavors in the peppers, because of different soil and weather?
We don't detect any flavor differences from country to country because it's the same type of pepper.
What are some of the challenges the company faces today that didn't exist in 1868?
Look at the laws regarding wages, labor relations, 401(k)s, health care. It's all highly regulated now. There was no HR in 1868. It's much more complicated than it was in every area of administration -- the legal requirements of shipping, different laws for each state, tax laws, different laws for every country, the fluctuation of the dollar.
In those days it was a homemade industry. We've grown in size, volume, distribution. Now it's a global economy and we're a global company. We sell directly to 165 countries and we print labels in more than 20 languages.
E. used cologne bottles in the beginning. Since 1927 we've has the same trade dress -- the diamond-shaped white paper label, the green neck, the two ounce bottle. It's like the Coke name and bottle; you know it when you see it.
Has the company's most popular product changed throughout the years?
Our original red sauce is far and away the main product.
We're fully automated now but the formula is still the same: peppers, salt,
vinegar. Mash [crushed peppers and salt] comes from our various farms and
finishes aging on
Do you still soak the peppers in bourbon barrels?
Yes. We buy secondhand white oak bourbon barrels from
Which you can buy at the company store ...
Yes, and a bit of advice: When barbequing, don't get upwind -- there's pepper in the wood.
End Transmission