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" I heard it
through the
AgLine"
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March 9, 2011
·
Farmers, EPA
clash over Chesapeake rules
·
Twitter is
transforming commodity trading
·
Helicopter
designed to count nursery plants
·
Health
benefits of eating tomatoes emerge
·
A food fight erupts in the
US budget debate
Farmers, EPA clash over Chesapeake rules
(The
Christian Science Monitor) Stuarts Draft, Va.,
-- Lloyd McPherson bought his farm in the Shenandoah Valley, along the
headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay, more than 20
years ago. Back then, the Chesapeake
was far from sight and mind. But now, as the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) launches a new effort to clean up the bay, Mr. McPherson and his farming
neighbors find themselves swept up in the largest and most ambitious
water-restoration project ever attempted in the United States.
"It's very, very complex," says McPherson, casting
an anxious glance at his pasture on a snow-covered hillside above Christians Creek. "Nobody knows what they're
going to demand."
In late December, the EPA set limits for nitrogen,
phosphorous, and sediment pollution in each of the bay's major tributary
rivers. These limits are part of a TMDL, or total maximum daily load – a
regulatory mechanism created by the Clean Water Act.
While thousands of TMDLs have been
created over the past several decades, none has been attempted on such an
enormous scale. The bay's 64,000-square-mile watershed stretches across parts
of New York, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Delaware,
Virginia, and West
Virginia, plus Washington,
D.C. It is home to almost 17
million people, as well as nearly 500 large public and industrial waste-water
treatment plants.
"This isn't your mother's TMDL," says Roy
Hoagland, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's vice president for environmental
protection and restoration. "This is something significantly different in
the arena of restoration of waters in this nation."
But for many farmers, the TMDL is hardly the best thing
since the combine. The EPA has identified the watershed's nearly 88,000 farms
as the largest source of nutrient and sediment pollution entering the bay. Many
in the agricultural industry fear that the cost of increased pollution controls
will place onerous financial burdens on them.
So on Jan. 10, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF)
and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau filed suit in federal court to block the TMDL.
"We're very concerned that ... [the TMDL is] going to
push agriculture out of the watershed," says Don Parrish, AFBF senior
director of regulatory relations.
This isn't the first time that people have tried to
decontaminate the Chesapeake.
It's been the subject of cleanup efforts since the 1980s, when nutrient and
sediment pollution reduced its famous oyster populations to an estimated 1
percent of historic levels and oxygen-depleted "dead zones" began
covering up to 20 percent of the bay each summer.
While some progress has been made, such as the blue crab
population's recent rebound, the overall situation remains little improved. In
its 2010 "State of the Bay" report, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation
declared the bay ecosystem "dangerously out of balance."
Hence the EPA's unprecedented cleanup effort, which may get
less federal funding as congressional Republicans push
for budget cuts. An amendment to the recently passed House budget bill, added
by Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R) of Virginia, would eliminate all EPA funding to
develop and implement the TMDL. Though it is unclear if it
will prevail in final negotiations.
A key aspect of the cleanup plan is that each state within
the watershed will decide how to meet the EPA's targets, says Jon Capacasa, director of the water-protection division for the
EPA's mid-Atlantic region.
In other words, states will choose their strategies –
whether increased control of runoff from farms, stricter regulation of
industrial effluent, restriction of fertilizer use on residential lawns and
golf courses, or some combination of these options.
Right now, states are drawing up detailed plans for
pollution reductions on a stream-by-stream scale throughout the watershed. The
due date for these plans will be determined soon.
At stake: federal grant money
The TMDL, which sets a completion date of 2025, also
outlines consequences that the EPA will impose on states that fail to make
sufficient headway. Among these are the withholding of EPA grant money and
stricter requirements for federally regulated pollution sources such as
factories and waste-water treatment plants.
"This plan gives me the greatest optimism I've ever
had," says Mr. Hoagland, who has worked on bay issues for nearly 25 years.
Agricultural groups beg to differ. After the lawsuit was
filed, Virginia Farm Bureau president Wayne Pryor issued a statement supporting
bay restoration in principle, but warning that the TMDL puts "the entire
economy ... at stake."
The lawsuit raises several objections to the cleanup plan.
First, as the TMDL neared completion, groups like the AFBF increasingly
criticized data used in its development. One complaint focused on the EPA's
exclusion of data on existing, "voluntary" conservation measures –
ones that farmers have undertaken outside public-subsidy programs and that
therefore are mostly unrecorded.
Although the EPA has acknowledged this shortcoming and is
working on an accounting system for voluntary practices, farmers worry that
credit will not be issued quickly for existing conservation efforts and that
the agriculture sector will thus be asked to make more than its fair share of
pollution reductions.
Another criticism centers on inconsistencies between EPA data
used to develop the TMDL and data collected by the US Department of Agriculture
for a report on farm pollution controls in the watershed. These discrepancies
were identified last fall in a study commissioned by several agriculture
groups.
The EPA has defended its data. According to Mr. Capacasa, the expansive set of bay water-quality data
gathered during previous restoration efforts has allowed the agency to write
the most scientifically rigorous TMDL ever. That claim has the support of
several prominent university scientists in the bay region, who signed a letter
last fall declaring the scientific community's consensus that the TMDL data and
models are "both useful and adequate."
EPA has 'overreached,' critics say
The lawsuit, Mr. Parrish says, also claims that the EPA
overstepped its authority granted under the Clean Water Act, because it has set
individual pollution limits for each state in the watershed and for the bay's
tributary rivers.
"The ends in this case do not justify the means.... We
believe the EPA overreached," Parrish says.
Capacasa responds that the EPA
believes it has a "very defensible TMDL that meets the requirements of the
Clean Water Act."
The EPA, which has until March 14 to respond to the lawsuit,
is now reviewing the case, Capacasa says.
While the American and Pennsylvania
farm bureaus are the only groups so far to challenge the TMDL in court,
municipal storm-water associations in Virginia
and Maryland
have also expressed concern about the TMDL's economic
impact. Both groups cite a study that estimated a cost of at least $700 per
household per year to retrofit urban storm-water controls to satisfy the
pollution allocations included in a draft version of the TMDL.
Back at his farm just outside Stuarts Draft, Va., McPherson
lists the actions he's already taken over the years to protect Christians Creek
and, ultimately, the bay: adopting no-till practices instead of repeatedly
plowing his fields, fencing his cattle from long sections of the creek, and
fertilizing his crops with far more precision and restraint than the
"happy homeowners" whose emerald lawns also drain into the bay.
"There's so much that we've changed," he says, the
sunset casting a glow across the barnyard. "[But] we're [still] getting
singled out because we're the ones who can be controlled the easiest."
Return to Top
How Twitter is transforming commodity trading
(CNBC) –
Passing through Giltner,
Neb. early last August, farmer
Mike Haley used his Twitter account to post a message, or tweet, about a
particularly robust corn crop.
“If I was @zjhunn or @cornfedfarmer I would be smiling, best corn iv seen is their area!”
What may have seemed like a passing compliment turned into a
$200,000 profit.
The harvest belonged to brothers
Zach and Brandon Hunnicutt—known on Twitter as “zjhunn” and “cornfedfarmer”
respectively—fifth-generation south central Nebraska farmers who raise corn, soybeans,
and popcorn on their 3,500 acres they share with their father and neighbor.
To Zach Hunnicutt, Haley’s tweet
was a revelation. “We knew by that point that we weren’t going to have as high
yield as we hoped for,” he said in a recent interview. “We knew that if ours
might be the best out there,” he added, “that gave us the confidence to maybe
hold out a little bit—for prices to go higher.”
Corn prices, in fact, spiked nearly 50 percent between
Haley’s tweet and the end of the year. By the time the Hunnicutts
sold their corn in December, they were able to lock in an additional $1 per
bushel, Zach Hunnicutt estimates—generating another
20 percent, or $200,000 or so, in profits. And about half of last year’s corn
harvest is still in storage.
The back-and-forth between the Hunnicutts
and Haley, a grain and cattle farmer in West Salem,
Ohio, is part and parcel of the way in which
Twitter is revolutionizing agriculture markets in the U.S.
Once a convenient outlet for boredom on
the tractor, tweeting with fellow farmers has become a way for the participants
in a far-flung and isolating business to compare notes on everything from
weather conditions to new fertilizers. And now, commodities brokers and
traders are paying close attention.
“A lot of time farmers are talking to other farmers and I’m
sitting there listening,” says Thomas Elwood, aka @cornbroker,
who trades corn and other grains on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile
Exchange. “Twitter is kind of like a big coffee house,” he said.
To grains traders looking for any kind of edge in the
markets, Twitter has become a game-changer. Whereas agricultural brokers and
traders once spent hours conducting telephone surveys with farmers or embarking
on so-called windshield surveys, in which they drove down Interstate 80 during
harvest season to eyeball crops, they can now gather real-time updates on
planting intentions and yields on Twitter.
About a year and a half ago, Tom Grisafi,
who trades commodities from his basement office, put up a screen dedicated
solely to Twitter feeds in his Valparaiso, Indiana
home—right next to the more traditional screens showing corn and other grain
prices. Six months later, he asked an analyst to monitor it regularly.
Grisafi, known as @IndianaGrainCo on Twitter, says he tweets with at least 15
farmers on a regular basis to check on crop conditions. “They’re really good
about getting back to me on how much rainfall they received, what crops they’re
planting, how the weather is,” he said.
Given that weather can vary dramatically across a given
region, he says Twitter is particularly helpful in discerning where, for
instance, a rainfall has been hardest.
Launched in 2006, the closely-held Twitter now boasts more
than 200 million accounts and typically posts more than 130 million unique
messages per day. The company’s of-the-moment tweets are now being used to
track a multitude of trends, from potential box-office results to flu
outbreaks.
But Twitter spokesman Matt Graves said the commodities
market chatter and other projects aren’t the company’s focus. “We’re aware of
that stuff,” he said in a phone conversation, “but we’re just about providing a
platform where people can connect.”
Return to Top
Helicopter designed to count nursery
plants
(AP
via deseretnews.com) LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A team of researchers is
developing a way to save nursery producers across the globe the hassle of
manually counting millions of plants over vast acres of land, and the solution
is in the sky.
Researchers from the University of
Arkansas Division of Agriculture, Oregon
State University
and the University
of Florida are tackling
the issue with a remote-control helicopter equipped with a digital camera and
software that not only can count the plants, but also sort them by size and
grade.
"As with any business, having an accurate and real-time
inventory is critical," said Jim Robbins, extension horticulture
specialist for the University of Arkansas Division of
Agriculture. "The key is that we could provide them with a more accurate,
cost effective way to collect inventory data."
Robbins said 2011 will be an important year for the project.
"This is the first year of starting to work out the critical
details of using this multi-rotor aircraft to take inventory, and we are just
now starting to attract research dollars," he said. "We have a lot of
work to do, but it looks as though this is a very promising avenue of
research."
Robbins said the idea originated in 2008 when he was
visiting a nursery producer in Oregon
who casually mentioned the challenges and limitations of current inventory
methods. Robbins said traditionally, inventory is done by manual counts in the
field, and that particular nursery in Oregon
has around 15 to 20 million trees.
"It's not humanly possible for them to use human beings
to count all of these plants, so what they do is count a subsample and use that
to estimate the total crop," he said. "Our goal is to give them a cost-effective
way to obtain real-time information that can far exceed what a human can
do."
The multi-rotor helicopter consists of a platform 3 feet in
diameter attached to four to eight separate propeller blades and supports an
off-the-shelf digital camera. The entire device weighs about two pounds and is
expected to range in cost from $3,000 to $5,000.
Dharmendra Saraswat,
extension engineer for the University of Arkansas Division of
Agriculture, said the team wanted to use products that could be bought off the
shelf and were not overly expensive.
In September, the research team hosted a demonstration in Oregon for top leaders
in the nursery industry. Robbins said researchers are still in the early stages
of the design process, but they have already received ample interest from the
leading nursery producers in the country.
The team also has received funding from the Oregon
Association of Nurseries, the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the J. Frank
Schmidt Family Charitable Foundation.
Gary McAninch, nursery and
Christmas tree program manager for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, said
this project was one of nine to receive funding from the agency in January, and
that members of the industry are excited to see it in action.
"This was a very highly ranked project," McAninch said. "It's fairly labor intensive to do
inventory counts on your plants. We thought this project would be very helpful
to the nursery industry."
The goal is to have the helicopter generate real-time aerial
images that are sent to a computer being monitored on the ground. Researchers
are currently working on image recognition software that will identify certain
plant and tree types.
Robbins said they also plan to further adapt the software to
include capabilities to measure more specific things like plant size, grade and
health.
"The challenge with the nursery or greenhouse industry
is that we are dealing with a living product," he said. "We not only
need an accurate count but information on the quality of the product."
Saraswat said he hopes to make
significant progress by the end of the year, adding that future buyers will
need to undergo training to operate the device.
Return to Top
Health benefits of eating tomatoes emerge
(physorg.com)
– Eating more tomatoes and tomato products can make people healthier and
decrease the risk of conditions such as cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular
disease, according to a review article the American Journal of Lifestyle
Medicine, (published by SAGE).
Of all the non-starchy vegetables, Americans eat more
tomatoes and tomato products than any others. Researchers Britt Burton-Freeman,
PhD, MS, and Kristin Reimers, PhD, RD of the National Center for Food Safety & Technology,
Illinois Institute of Technology and ConAgra Foods, Inc., looked at the current
research to discover the role tomato products play in health and disease risk
reduction.
The researchers found that tomatoes are the biggest source
of dietary lycopene; a powerful antioxidant that, unlike nutrients in most
fresh fruits and vegetables, has even greater bioavailability after cooking and
processing. Tomatoes also contain other protective mechanisms, such as antithrombotic
and anti-inflammatory functions. Research has additionally found a relationship
between eating tomatoes and a lower risk of certain cancers as well as other
conditions, including cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, ultraviolet
light–induced skin damage, and cognitive dysfunction.
Tomatoes are widely available, people of all ages and
cultures like them, they are cost-effective, and are available in many forms.
"Leveraging emerging science about tomatoes and tomato products may be one
simple and effective strategy to help individuals increase vegetable intake,
leading to improved overall eating patterns, and ultimately, better
health." write the authors.
"Tomatoes are the most important non-starchy vegetable
in the American diet. Research underscores the relationship between consuming
tomatoes and reduced risk of cancer, heart disease, and other conditions,"
the authors conclude. "The evidence also suggests that consumption of
tomatoes should be recommended because of the nutritional benefits and because
it may be a simple and effective strategy for increasing overall vegetable
intake."
The article is particularly timely since the recently
released Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 moved tomatoes to a newly
established category of "orange/red" fruits and vegetables to
encourage higher consumption of these healthy foods.
Return to Top
A food fight erupts in the US budget debate
(Time)
– One of the most overlooked rifts in Washington's
budget debate is the escalating food fight. In the last two years, the U.S.
has endured everything from salmonella-contaminated tomatoes to Chinese milk
laced with melamine, a potentially lethal ingredient used to make plastic.
House Republicans, in their sweep to enact billions in cuts to federal
spending, are now looking to trim the fat at food safety agencies like the Food
and Drug Administration, and the Department of Agriculture.
Republicans have proposed reducing the FDA and USDA's
combined budgets by $4.8 billion, 22% below what the President's 2011 budget
requested. The Democratic-led Senate, meanwhile, has moved to cut those
agencies' budgets by $1.1 billion, or 5% below the requested amount. Food
safety advocates warn that if the FDA's funding were dialed back to 2008
levels, the consequences could be severe: Hundreds of FDA inspectors would be
laid-off, they say, preventing the surveillance of some 7,000 food facilities.
The USDA's meat inspectors could be furloughed, prompting hundreds of plants
across the country to close because federal agents must be present during
operating hours. That in turn could shrink the country's meat supply and send
prices soaring.
The debate comes barely two months after President Obama
signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law. If fully enacted, that
initiative would trigger the most sweeping overhaul of the nation's food safety
system in nearly three-quarters of a century. The law basically directs the
FDA, which regulates about 80% of what we eat, to preempt, rather than react
to, food-borne illness outbreaks. That's no small matter: Nearly one in six
Americans – 48 million people – contract illnesses like salmonella each year.
Experts say such illnesses cost consumers and businesses $152 billion annually.
Fortifying the FDA's safety efforts with $1.4 billion in the coming years is a
"bargain," said Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat and one of
Congress's chief food safety advocates.
Rep. Jack Kingston, a Republican congressman from Georgia,
one of the nation's top chicken producers, sees things differently. The FDA
doesn't need $1.4 billion to implement the new food safety law, he argues,
because food-borne illnesses are relatively rare. The system works. Case
closed. "Money is scarce, and we'll be looking at everything closer,"
he says.
The issue of how to fund food safety will take center stage
on Friday, when the FDA's commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, is scheduled to testify
before a House subcommittee. Food safety advocates are preparing for battle,
especially on the current fiscal year's budget, because that will set the tone
for how the new safety law will be handled. Caroline Smith DeWaal,
food safety director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington advocacy
group, is issuing a simple warning. After the next outbreak of contaminated
tomatoes or peppers sickens hundreds of Americans, she says, "The
Republicans will be left holding the bag."
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End Transmission