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April 1, 2011
· Japan nuclear crisis erodes farming life
· Africa seen growing more GM crops
· Native plants attract bees for pollination
· Proposal to tax Calif. beekeepers stings
· GM crop laws have unintended consequences
Japan
(The New
York Times) TOWA,
Mr. Sato, 59, is a 17th-generation family farmer, a
proprietor of 14 acres of greenhouses and fields where he grows rice, tomatoes,
spinach and other vegetables. Or did grow: Last week, the national government
banned the sale of farm products not just from Towa, but also from a stretch of
north-central
Already, Mr. Sato stands to lose a fifth of his income because of the ban. If the government cannot contain the Daiichi disaster, he could lose a farm that his family has tended since the 1600s.
“Even if it’s not safe, I need my fields for my work,” he said. “I have no other place to go. I don’t even want to think about escaping from my land.”
Here and elsewhere in Fukushima Prefecture, the region hit hardest by the nuclear crisis, farmers are worried about their future — and convinced, like Mr. Sato, that the government is not on their side.
In interviews, several said they believed that leaders in
And they are clearly hurting.
The government’s ban on produce sales last week stopped that
industry — and those in three adjacent prefectures to the south,
“I can’t keep going for too long,” said Kenzo
Sasaki, 70, who milks 18 cows on a farm outside the city of
Across town, Shoichi Abe, 62, milks about 30 cows in his own dingy barn. He has been unable to sell his 1,100 pounds of daily production since the March 11 earthquake damaged the milk-processing plant at the local farm co-op.
Now the government has extended that prohibition indefinitely.
Mr. Abe said, “It’s costing us 70,000 yen a day” — about $860.
“We have no income,” he said, “and the truth is that we
don’t want to continue this. All the agriculture is gone. The consumers don’t
want to buy products from
To a person, the farmers say their products are safe to eat and drink. None of the growers interviewed had been visited by anyone seeking to monitor radiation on their land. The government’s radiation readings — to the extent that they have been publicized — have been ambiguous at best.
The government has ordered residents to leave a zone within
12 miles of the stricken
Outside the city, however, readings have been spotty, and
some local residents feel overlooked. “They found radiation in the water in Tokyo,
so they announced about Tokyo,” said Miyoko Abe, 57,
the wife of a Fukushima diary farmer, referring to radiation reports that
caused a run on bottled water in Tokyo last week. “But we know nothing about
water north of
“Maybe the prime minister is hiding in the nuclear shelter,” she said. “We don’t see him anywhere.”
More confusing to growers and consumers alike is the opaque
official stance on what is safe and unsafe to buy and eat. The National Health
Ministry, which had no limits on radiation in food, scrambled to set safety
standards after the
Japanese officials began by banning the sales of only certain foods, including spinach and milk, which are especially prone to absorbing radiation. But the ban was later extended to a broad range of produce, even as officials stressed that the radiation level in any single product was not dangerous for anyone who consumed it at ordinary levels.
Farmers say the ambiguity has effectively shut down their sales. “We think we’ll lose 80 percent of our income,” Ryuji Togashi, who runs a Towa-area farmer’s co-op store, said last weekend. “We’ve been damaged by rumor. People think that all our vegetables are affected by radiation. We can’t even sell the products that aren’t affected.”
The central government has promised that farmers will be
compensated for their losses, and
The government has said that the Tokyo Electric Power
Company, which runs the
“What the government offers is much less than what we expect,” said Mr. Sasaki, the dairy farmer. “It has always been like this. But this time, we’re on the edge.”
At least one farmer has been pushed over the edge. The
newspaper The Asahi Shimbun reported recently that a
64-year-old farmer in Sukagawa, a city in
The farmer, who was not identified, was reported to have lost his house in the earthquake but had a field of 7,500 organically grown cabbages ready for harvest when the prohibition was announced.
“Vegetables in
Africa
seen growing more GM crops
Now
"There is increasing support to test biotech in several African countries," said Diran Makinde, director of the African Biosafety Network of Expertise.
Other countries are keenly watching to see whether
"
Ephraim Mukisira, a director at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, said: "We should rely on biotechnology to prevent further losses in yields and performance of crops. We need to expedite scientific methods that reduce time needed to develop new crop varieties."
RED TAPE
Beyond the usual debates about GM effects on health and the
environment, there have also been concerns the presence of GM crops might
reduce export opportunities -- a key reason that
Potential legal pitfalls pose another concern.
Makinde said 23 countries in
"No private sector will invest in a country where they can be sued for the slightest or even imaginary damage. This is a no-go area for the biotech crop developer," said Makinde.
The high costs of GM are another hurdle for
"Subjecting (small-scale farmers) to GMs would mean that they will lose control over their seeds and that they have to constantly depend on suppliers for seeds every season. How will they afford this?" asked Josephine Akia, policy and advocacy officer at the National Organic Agricultural Movement of Uganda.
In
"You can't market GM technology as being a way out of poverty for small-scale farmers ... if you do that you are being dishonest," said Mariam Mayet, director of the African Centre for Biosafety.
UNTAPPED MARKET
Nevertheless, GM crops have expanded so rapidly in other areas that African countries are not likely to fend them off much longer.
A report issued by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) shows that an 87-fold increase in crop area was recorded globally between 1996 and 2010, making biotech crops the fastest adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture.
The continent's untapped market has caught the attention of
big
Growing foreign investment in African agriculture is likely to bring a greater interest in GM crops as well.
"Investors' appetite is increasing for investing in
African agriculture. The combination of fertile land and the demand for soft
commodities in
Meanwhile, countries such as
"Of course we must be alert and responsible in the
development of GM crops ... but if we are really serious about food security in
Africa, emotional propaganda about these issues will never get us there,"
Researchers say that with food prices expected to be high in 2011, African countries need to work hard to ensure there are enough calories on the continent.
"Biotech is not going to fix all the problems, but it
has the potential to make a difference," said
Native plants attract bees for pollination
(PhysOrg.com)
-- Certain crops influence the number of bees in farmland habitats, according
to groundbreaking new research by the
And the findings could have major implications in helping shape future agricultural policies around crop growing to ensure bees – which play a vital role in human food supply – survive.
Ecologists and students found that the cultivation of field beans, which attract large numbers of bees to their flowers, resulted in higher bee numbers in nearby hedgerows.
While biologists have previously demonstrated that mass flowering crops like beans can attract increased numbers of bees to the local area, until this new study, little was known about whether there was any benefit to native plant communities.
Working on over 20 farms located near Saltash, Okehampton and in the South Hams, a team led by Dr. Mick Hanley and Dr. Mairi Knight recorded bee activity along hedgerows situated next to field bean and wheat crops. They recorded which bee species were present and which native hedgerow plants the bees were visiting for pollen and nectar to determine whether the presence of a large-scale floral resource affected bee-foraging behavior.
They found that where hedgerows were situated next to beans, native plants like foxgloves and red campion received over twice as many bee visits as did plants growing next to wheat fields, which are wind pollinated and don’t attract pollinating insects.
“This is important, as a low number of pollinator visits may severely limit the ability of the plant to produce viable seeds and so reproduce successfully,” said Dr. Hanley.
The recent dramatic decline of many pollinators, including bees, has caused widespread alarm amongst conservationists.
Bees provide an invaluable ecosystem service to agriculture as they pollinate many of the crop species upon which we rely.
And the loss of a suitable pollinator like bees may mean the disappearance of many common hedgerow plants in the British countryside.
Dr. Hanley, from the
“By helping understand how modern farming practice affects pollinator numbers, ecologists can better predict how climate change or fluctuations in world food prices will influence pollinator numbers by virtue of dictating which types of crops farmers grow.
“Government and EU subsidies for different crops can then be determined not simply on the basis of their value in food terms, but also with regards to their potential role is sustaining pollinator communities and the essential ecosystem service these insects provide.”
Provided by
Proposal to tax Calif.
(AP
via Yahoo! News)
The proposal to set up a California Apiary Research
Commission with the power to tax comes as bees nationwide are perishing in
great numbers from colony collapse disorder and other health problems.
But many beekeepers say they will vote against forming the
commission in a summer referendum because they don't want to be forced to pay
fees when their industry continues to suffer big losses. The proposal would
allow the commission to tax beekeepers doing business in
"It's a tough economy and there are a lot of beekeepers who are in trouble because they're losing their bees," said David Mendes, president of the American Beekeeping Federation. "This isn't the best time in the world to ask people to give more money."
Yet nearly everyone involved in agriculture agrees more research on bees is needed.
Colony collapse disorder, in which all the adult honey bees
in a colony suddenly disappear, continues to decimate hives in the
Researchers haven't been able to determine what causes
colony collapse or find a way to prevent it. The work so far points to a
combination of factors including pesticide contamination, a lack of blooms —
and hence nutrition — and mites, viruses and parasites, said Marla Spivak, a
Still, colony collapse disorder persists, and its presence
is particularly alarming in
The thousands of out-of-state hives brought in temporarily create an enormous potential for spreading disease rapidly around the nation.
But money for bee health research has been tight, said Frank Pendell, president of the California State Beekeepers Association. Despite promises, Congress has appropriated little money for it. A few other private groups are investing in it, and Pendell's group collected about $50,000 last year through auctions and donations, most of it coming from about 20 percent of the state's beekeepers.
At the association's request,
Supporters say the commission and its tax would provide a dependable source of money for research and make the industry less dependent on government funds. It could raise about $500,000 initially if the assessment was set at 50 cents per hive, Pendell said. The research would benefit beekeepers nationwide.
"We're trying to make this as fair as possible to everyone, and spread the burden around the industry," Pendell said.
But many beekeepers bristle at the idea. Some can't afford a
new tax, and others prefer to decide themselves which research to support
instead of letting a commission choose,
"Our industry is on edge," said Pender, who lost 60 percent of his colonies, or about 1,000 hives, in December. "We do need the research, but it's hard to put the money out when it's not in your pocket."
He also thought it would be difficult to track down beekeepers subject to the tax. Although they are supposed to register with their county or agricultural inspection stations at the state border, that doesn't always happen, he said.
The American Beekeeping Foundation did not endorse the
proposal at its national conference in January, Mendes said. Some members were
concerned the money would be swallowed up by the state of
Beekeepers already feel
But Pendell said this commission would be different: It would be made up of beekeepers, who would control its expenses, and its board would set the assessment rate each year.
Any beekeeper with more than 50 colonies who
does business in
GM crop laws have unintended consequences
(Forbes) – (Opinion) – Wrong-headed regulation often has unintended consequences. A good example is governments’ approach to “genetically engineered” crops.
In only 15 years, modern genetic engineering technology —
specifically, recombinant DNA technology, sometimes called “genetic
modification” — has achieved monumental humanitarian and economic successes.
Higher productivity, lower costs for inputs, economic gains to farmers and
environment-friendly agronomic practices have made it the most rapidly adopted
agricultural innovation in history.
Since 1996 there has been an astonishing 87-fold growth in farmers’
adoption of genetically engineered crops; in 2010 more than 15 million farmers
in 29 countries cultivated 366 million acres.
In
Many of these varieties have been around long enough that the intellectual property rights (patents and plant variety rights) in these seeds will soon expire. And with the expiration of these IPRs, some of the unintended consequences of bad regulatory policy come into play.
In spite of their benefits and unblemished safety record, genetically engineered crops are subject to excessive, discriminatory, expensive regulation in every country of the world that grows them. Seeds cannot be sold to farmers until the seed producers gain regulatory approval, variety by variety, trait by trait. This process is time-consuming (years), effort-intensive (yards-high stacks of paper) and very costly (tens of millions of dollars per application). The seed companies that obtain these approvals become the holders of the regulatory permits and also the owners of the data submitted to regulators. In most countries, the regulatory approval for a genetically engineered variety is permanent, but in others, such as the nations of the European Union, the regulatory approval expires after ten years; after that, the plant variety again becomes “unapproved” unless someone reapplies for and renews the regulatory permit. This disparity has important implications.
When farmers purchase genetically engineered seeds protected by IPRs, most often they must agree contractually not to save and replant seeds from the harvest — much as the purchaser of Microsoft’s Windows software commits not to share it with others. After the IPRs in a biotech crop expire, however, farmers are free to save seeds to grow the crop without infringing any IPR; and seed companies may then produce and sell “generic” genetically engineered seeds without violating IPRs and probably, for anti-trust reasons, without violating any contractual licenses from the original developer.
If farmers save seeds and seed companies develop generic versions of genetically engineered seeds, it is possible that these varieties will be planted long after regulatory approvals have expired in export markets such as the EU. That presents a conundrum: Who will have the incentive to spend the time and resources to apply for renewal? The original holder of the regulatory approval whose IPRs have expired and who is now selling newer, more advanced competing genetically engineered seeds (which are protected by current IPRs and with regulatory approvals intact)? Farmers or their trade associations? The seed companies who have produced the “generic” seeds?
In spite of the fact that it will legitimatize and lengthen the life of products that compete with their later-generation seeds, the Monsanto Company has pledged to renew regulatory approvals for its off-IPR genetically engineered crops through at least 2021. No other agribusiness company or public research institution of which we are aware has made a similar commitment.
Compounding the conundrum surrounding who will renew the regulatory approval for a genetically engineered variety are questions related to the data needed to apply for renewals. If a renewal application requires the same voluminous data as the original application, the applicant would either need to generate that data de novo or get access to the data that belongs to the original permit-holder. Pharmaceutical and pesticide industry models allow for compensation for proprietary data, either by law or voluntary agreement, but no such compensation mechanisms currently exists in the seed industry.
The resolution of these issues is critical because of the economic implications of the expiration of regulatory approvals. The expiration of the regulatory permit for a genetically engineered variety, which causes it to become unapproved, is important because many countries impose a legal limit of “zero tolerance” for the presence of unapproved varieties. These countries reject imports of agricultural products (corn, soybeans, and so on) that contain even trace amounts of an unapproved crop. Incredibly, billions of dollars of agricultural trade in export markets can be disrupted even though the seeds or other agricultural commodity are identical to what had been imported and sold routinely and uneventfully during the previous decade (and are, virtually by definition, an improvement over conventional seeds). The expiration of approvals thus becomes a trade-barrier — one that makes no sense except as blatant protectionism.
But the chaos doesn’t end with the disruption of trade. The
expiration outside the United States of the regulatory approval of a product
that remains approved within the U.S — which, as discussed above, makes a
variety unapproved and illegal wherever the approval has expired — creates a
problem for domestic farmers whose ability to export is disrupted. This situation would likely result in the
filing of domestic class-action lawsuits as farmers sought compensation from
someone — perhaps seed-saving farmers, generic seed developers or the original
permit-holder — for pecuniary damage from loss of exports. Whether American courts would allow a cause
of action for losses due to trade disruption, especially when the genetically
engineered variety retains perpetual approval in the
There are several ways to drain this bureaucrat-generated swamp:
– Countries could harmonize the longevity of their regulatory permits, making them all permanent, which would enable farmers to save seed and seed companies to develop generic versions of genetically engineered seeds without concerns about interference with exports, trade disruption or liability lawsuits. After all, the products do not become unsafe merely because some of the paperwork (which was arguably gratuitous in the first place) has expired.
– Countries could establish sensible “tolerance levels” for unapproved varieties. This would potentially allow farmers to save seed because the number of farmers doing so may be sufficiently small in number such that their saved-seed harvest, when pooled with the harvest of other fields of approved crops, might remain below the tolerance level. However, seed companies developing and selling generic seeds that meet certified seed standards could be exposed to class action lawsuits because if farmers purchased these generic certified seeds (which are of higher quality seeds than saved seeds and cheaper than approved IPR seeds) in such quantity that the permitted tolerance was exceeded in pooled harvests.
– The best and most definitive solution of all would be for the harmonization of regulatory approaches in order to eliminate the existing discrimination against and excessive regulation of innocuous genetically engineered plants. This would constitute recognition at long last of the decades-old consensus that the newer techniques are essentially an extension and refinement of older breeding techniques and take into account that genetically engineered crops offer economic and environmental benefits without any unique or substantial risks compared to other crops. This course would promote advances in agriculture and unleash the ingenuity and entrepreneurism of both private and public agricultural research sectors. And on a practical level, it would remove the discontinuities that exist in current public policy and that create various unintended consequences. But because of bureaucratic inertia and self-interest, it is highly unlikely to come to pass, yet another reason that agricultural biotechnology is a tough row to hoe.
Drew L. Kershen is the Earl Sneed Centennial Professor of Law,
University of Oklahoma College of Law, in Norman, Okla. Henry I. Miller, a
physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public
Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a fellow at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was
the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA.
End Transmission