" I heard it through the AgLine"

March 15, 2011

 

 

·        FAO warns of looming global food crisis

·        Countries test food from Japan for radiation

·        Drug war means danger for Texas farmers

·        Mineral oils effective controlling spud viruses

·        ARS: Combating stunting disorder in melons

 

 

FAO warns of looming global food crisis

 

(Reuters via CNBC.com) – Surging global prices of basic foodstuffs raise the risk that the food crisis of 2007-2008 in developing countries will be repeated, the head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said on Monday.

 

A jump in oil prices and the fast recent drawdown in global stocks of cereals could herald a supply crisis, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf told Reuters in an interview during a visit to the United Arab Emirates.

 

"The high prices raise concern and we've been quickly drawing down stocks," he said. "For years we have warned that what is needed is more productivity and investment in agriculture."

 

The most recent UN Food Price Index showed prices have risen to the highest levels since at least 1990, when the index began.

 

Diouf said until recent months, global stocks of cereals were at much healthier levels than the dwindling supplies that set off a crisis in 2007 and 2008.

 

Last July, inventory levels were a healthy 100 million tons higher than during that crisis, but rapid economic growth in developing countries, and a return to growth in highly industrialized economies, has led to new drawdowns.

 

A number of countries in north Africa and the Middle East have made big grain purchases to head off the sort of unrest, partly fueled by food prices, which has toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt.

 

South Korea is looking to build a strategic grain reserve and is planning to buy cargoes of corn and another staples, joining similar efforts by other Asian nations worried about high food prices and social unrest.

 

"It is a rational thing to do, to cover yourself, Diouf said.

 

The recent surge in oil prices, which rose to nearly $120 per barrel in late February, is contributing to higher food prices that may crimp developing countries' ability to cover food import needs, as it raises the price of both transportation and agricultural inputs, Diouf said.

 

Biofuels

 

The FAO has been advising developed countries to re-examine their biofuels strategies — which include large subsidies — since these have diverted 120 million tons of cereals away from human consumption to convert them to fuels.

 

"We've been advising member countries to revisit these policies" Diouf said. "Relying on more renewable energy does not mean you have to make more biofuels."

 

Diouf said avoiding a return to food crisis hinges on crop yields in the next harvest season, as well as how economic growth impacts demand. But he also said rising food prices and oil prices could have a detrimental effect on growth.

 

It was too early to determine whether Japan's recent earthquake and tsunami will have any effect on global supply or demand of agricultural products, Diouf added.

 

Return to Top

 

 

Countries test food from Japan for radiation

 

(Reuters via GMA News) BANGKOK — Thailand and Taiwan will randomly test imported Japanese food products for possible radiation contamination, the country's Food and Drug Administration said, after Japan warned of more radiation leakage from a power plant.

 

There have been four explosions at the plant in Fukushima, north of Tokyo, since it was damaged in last Friday's massive earthquake.

 

"We will give priority to fresh food and fresh produce including vegetables and fruit from Japan," Pipat Yingsaree, Thai secretary-general of the Food and Drug Administration, told Reuters on Tuesday.

 

Pipat said the authorities would urge food importers to avoid or at least reduce imports of Japanese food products including meat, dairy products, seafood and seaweed.

 

Thailand has a big Japanese population of over 45,000 in major cities such as Bangkok, Chiang Mai and the industrial provinces of Chonburi and Rayong.

 

Imported Japanese food products such as chocolate, ice cream and cookies are considered luxury items by Thais and are popular in gourmet supermarkets.

 

"We are very sympathetic toward the Japanese but consumer safety must come first," Pipat said. "Radiation level tests are not part of our standard procedure but we are introducing a random test, given the worries over this."

 

Pipat said the authorities were ready to step up their safety measures and test all food products from Japan if necessary.

 

Thailand's Office of Atoms for Peace, part of the Ministry of Science, said it would work with food authorities in testing products from Japan and had protectively installed radiation testing devices in major cities.

 

"We are randomly buying products from Japanese restaurants and Japanese supermarkets as well to test the current levels," said Suchin Udomsomporn, a radiology physicist at OAP.

 

"Products tested now were probably imported last week so it's not a problem, but we want to have a standard level to measure against."

 

Return to Top

 

 

Drug war means danger for Texas farmers

 

(AP via Yahoo! News) LA JOYA, Texas – As Texas farmhands prepared this winter to burn stalks of sugarcane for harvest along the Rio Grande, four masked men on ATVs suddenly surrounded the crew members and ordered them to leave.

 

Farmer Dale Murden has little doubt they were Mexican drug traffickers.

 

"They hide stuff in there," Murden said of the dense sugarcane crops, some as high as 14 feet. "It was very intimidating for my guys. You got men dressed in black, looking like thugs and telling them to get back."

 

Texas farmers and ranchers say confrontations like these are quietly adding up. This month the Texas Department of Agriculture, going beyond its usual purview that includes school lunches and regulating gas pumps, launched a website publicizing what it calls a worsening situation "threatening the lives of our fellow citizens and jeopardizing our nation's food supply."

 

However, some Texas Democratic lawmakers say the danger is being wildly overstated, and U.S. Border Patrol officials said they are not aware of landowners in the Rio Grande Valley facing increasing threats.

 

The launch last week of ProtectYourTexasBorder.com also left the state somewhat embarrassed after the site's message board quickly filled with postings calling for vigilante justice and the killing of illegal immigrants. The postings have since been removed.

 

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, a Republican in the job once held by Gov. Rick Perry, condemned those postings Thursday. But he said they shouldn't detract from the site's goal of getting more federal resources to the Texas border.

 

"The website demonstrates in undeniable form that greater federal government presence is needed. We need to keep this as a lookout post"," Staples said.

 

But Texas state Sen. Jose Rodriguez said the site is misleading, lacking any data that puts the incidents or danger in context.

 

"For the site to convey the impression that we are under a serious threat and that there's all this concern, including to the food supply, it's just total exaggeration of reality," Rodriguez said. "It's unacceptable."

 

Still, there is little doubt of increased unease on Texas border farms.

 

Most brazen among the reported confrontations occurred earlier this year on the sugarcane field near Rio Grande City. In February, a Hidalgo County employee was similarly threatened by three men along the border river to stop clearing brush near a canal, said Troy Allen, general manager of the Delta Lake Irrigation District.

 

Allen said another of his workers has taken to locking himself inside the water pump houses along the Rio Grande. If someone knocks, Allen said, he doesn't answer.

 

"Five years ago, if someone wanted a drink of water we'd give it to them," Allen said of illegal immigrants passing through. "We have a situation that's getting pretty serious in my opinion."

 

Last weekend, on a ranch adjacent to land owned by country music star George Strait, authorities said a ranch foreman was shot at by men inside a pickup truck who were found trespassing. The foreman returned fire, and no one was hurt.

 

Staples pointed out the bullet holes as proof of the escalating threat along the border. Webb County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Maru De La Paz, however, said there was no evidence tying the shooting to suspected drug traffickers.

 

Several growers and ranchers say their jobs started becoming more dangerous about two years ago.

 

An Arizona rancher was gunned down in 2009 while checking water lines on his property, in what authorities suspect was a killing carried out by a scout for drug smugglers. No arrests have been made. Apart from that incident, Arizona agricultural leaders say they've heard of no direct threats toward their farmers and ranchers.

 

In Texas, the run-ins with traffickers are largely anecdotal. Border Patrol spokesman Mark Qualia said any confrontations would be investigated by local law enforcement, but added that landowners "haven't been expressing those feelings to us."

 

Staples said farmers are scared to speak out. Last week, a 2 1/2-hour meeting between Staples and about 20 farmers was closed to reporters over concern farmers wouldn't otherwise attend.

 

"I told (farmers) we have to tell this story so our policymakers understand the critical nature of what's being said," Staples said. "It is a process that we have to continue to tell it until we get the help we need."

 

The Rio Grande Valley is largely farmland, making it an almost necessary route for drug smugglers. The border fence built in the last few years doesn't run through all the farms, and even farmers with the fence worry about their safety while cultivating their crops between the fence and rivers.

 

Texas farmers for decades have lived — begrudgingly but unafraid — with illegal immigrants cutting through their land. But some farms say they have become more intrusive in recent years, presenting a greater threat.

 

One farmer, Joe Aguilar, told state officials he quit the business because of the escalating risk.

 

"After so many years it's upsetting, but either you move on, or it's dangerous for your family," Aguilar says in a video posted on the state's new website.

 

But in a 2009 interview with a local TV news station about hard times for farmers, Aguilar doesn't mention danger as why he quit. He told The Associated Press this month that financial factors also played a role in his decision to sell his land.

 

Return to Top

 

 

Mineral oils effective controlling spud viruses

 

(Farmers Weekly Interactive) – Mineral oils may provide the best chemical control of non-persistent potato viruses in seed crops, two years of trials by Scottish Agronomy suggest.

 

Records show that the incidence of non-persistent viruses, such as potato virus Y and potato virus A, had been slowly increasing over the past five years, although 80% of seed crops remained virus free, Brian Fenton, a Zoologist at the Scottish Crop Research Institute said in a workshop at the Potato Council's seed potato conference.

 

Because those viruses were acquired and transmitted very quickly by non-colonising aphids, it meant they were difficult to control with systemic insecticides, Eric Anderson of Scottish Agronomy told Farmers Weekly.

 

"Most systemic insecticides can take up to several days to kill aphids, and it only takes about 30 seconds to a minute to transmit these viruses, so they don't act quickly enough.

 

"The only chemical group to have any consistent efficacy are the pyrethroids, and in low pressure years they can be effective."

 

But in high pressure seasons they could easily be swamped by the numbers of aphids moving over a potato crop, Dr Fenton had explained. "Last season we measured between 300 and 1000 rose-grain aphids in an hour in 10sq m, and over one million in one week in 60sq m. The effect of a weekly spray to control such large numbers is questionable."

 

In the Scottish Agronomy trials pyrethroid insecticides had given only 25% reduction in high vector pressure years, Mr Anderson said. Highly refined paraffinic mineral oils, in contrast, had given up to 75% reduction in transmission.

 

"One hypothesis is it interferes with retention of the virus particle at the end of the aphid's stylet, effectively acting like a Teflon coating, and making the aphid less efficient at acquiring virus," he explained.

 

"We've proven they have a positive effect, and they are used widely in northern Europe as part of a virus control programme. But they give no control of persistent viruses, such as potato leaf roll virus, so they need integrating into a control programme with insecticides."

 

Cultural measures were also important to minimise non-persistent viruses. "Plant clean seed," he stressed. "If you plant infected seed then it is easy for aphids to acquire the virus and transmit it to clean plants close to the infection. If you plant 1% virus it could easily increase to 3-4% in daughter progeny over the season even using insecticides in a high pressure season."

 

That also highlighted why it was so important to keep early generations of seed clean during multiplication, he noted. "If you get virus in at an early stage it is very difficult to minimise in future generations if insecticides are being swamped."

 

Infection could also come from volunteers emerging or from surrounding crops, particularly unprotected ware crops, he added.

 

"The more you can isolate seed stocks from potential infection sources the better off you will be".

 

"It is also a good idea to grow seed entered for Certification in smaller blocks separated by a blank bed, so that if virus is found in one part of a field, not all of the crop is downgraded."

 

Return to Top

 

 

ARS: Combating stunting disorder in melons

 

(USDA-ARS) – U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are working to give melon growers some relief from cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus, or CYSDV.

 

In 2006, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant pathologist Bill Wintermantel with the U.S. Agricultural Research Station in Salinas, Calif., and university colleagues identified the plant disease that growers in California's Imperial Valley and nearby Yuma, Ariz., noticed was spreading through their cucurbit fields. Cucurbit crops affected included cantaloupe and honeydew melons.

 

ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency, and this research supports the USDA priority of promoting international food security.

 

CYSDV, a whitefly-transmitted virus originally from the Middle East, was identified by Wintermantel and colleagues in the melon-production region of California, Arizona, and Sonora, Mexico, in the fall of 2006. They also identified CYSDV a year later in Florida. Though it remains unclear how the virus spread to California and Florida, virus samples taken from both regions indicate they are essentially genetically identical to one another, according to Wintermantel.

 

In an effort to assist growers, ARS horticulturist and research leader Jim McCreight at Salinas is working to develop CYSDV-resistant melons. McCreight describes as serendipitous his discovery in 2006 of resistance to CYSDV in an exotic, salad-type melon from India that was being tested for resistance to another disease.

 

After screening more than 400 melon accessions from India in the field, McCreight found a few plants in several other vegetable-type melons from India that show promise for resistance to the virus. Work continues on developing a resistant melon that growers in the southwestern United States could plant.

 

McCreight's field tests showed that disease resistance can only be effective in the desert southwest when whitefly populations are controlled. According to McCreight, hundreds of whiteflies constantly feeding on the plants assure high frequency of infection by the virus. Continued feeding by the whiteflies, particularly in summer-planted melons grown in high temperatures (more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime), further weakens the plants. The result is often complete loss of fruit yield and quality or plant death.

 

Melons from plants infected with CYSDV may appear normal, but often have reduced sugar levels, resulting in poor marketability. The virus is spread by the whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, a small, sap-sucking insect that carries the virus from plant-to-plant as it feeds.

 

Several local weeds and important alternate crops such as alfalfa and lettuce were identified as hosts of CYSDV. However, unlike cucurbits, these newly identified crop hosts were symptomless carriers of the virus and their yield was unaffected. Wintermantel and his colleagues found the virus is capable of infecting plants in seven plant families in addition to the Cucurbitaceae family.

 

Return to Top

 

End Transmission