 |
|||
 |
" I heard it |
||
April 7, 2011
· Ag industry group takes aim at GOP budget
· A New Mexican chile from China? NOT!
· X-ray vision may improve crop yield
· Dell goes green with mushroom packaging
· Biotechs break blockbuster mould for success
Ag industry group takes aim at GOP budget
(The
Commercial Appeal)
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., put out his 73-page budget blueprint, "The Path to Prosperity," that includes proposals to reduce fixed payments to farmers unrelated to commodity price levels and to reform what it calls the "open-ended nature of the government's support for crop insurance."
Ryan's proposal says it "calls for a re-examination of federal agricultural programs that spend billions each year, to ensure that taxpayers aren't funding support for a sector that is more than capable of thriving on its own."
The entire proposal got an enthusiastic endorsement from U.S. Rep. Alan Nunnelee, R-Miss. In a statement, he said, "I am confident the Path to Prosperity is the spending blueprint that will put our families, our economy and our nation first." The statement did not specifically address Ryan's agriculture proposals.
U.S. Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., a farmer who serves on the Agriculture Committee, said: "Chairman Ryan's proposal is a first step in a multistep process, and though I may not agree with every provision -- I am glad to see someone finally get serious about these important issues."
But the NCC says the cuts Ryan is proposing represent 20 percent of the funding baseline for agriculture programs over the next 10 years. It said the cuts recommended are in addition to $6 billion in cuts from the re-negotiation of the Standard Reinsurance Agreement of 2010.
Ryan's report says that while production costs have risen for farmers, farm income has outstripped them and is forecast this year to be the second highest in 35 years. He notes that the top five earnings years for farmers in the past 35 years have all been in the last decade.
NCC chairman Charles Parker of
"Agriculture should not be asked to bear a disproportionate share of the federal deficit-cutting process," Parker said.
The NCC statement said that "Parker warned that the severe cuts in chairman Ryan's proposed budget resolution, if enacted, could severely limit the Agriculture Committee's ability to write an effective farm bill in 2012."
The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of money in public policy, noted that members of that committee received more than $1.8 million in political contributions from the agricultural products and services industry in the last election cycle. The NCC spent $401,181 on political candidates in the same cycle.
Claude Chafin, a spokesman for
U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said she finds
the Ryan proposal a "serious and even brave attempt to resolve
The Environmental Working Group, a longtime critic of farm subsidies, said the Ryan plan was a "small but welcome step toward a more equitable and sensible support structure for American farmers."
A New Mexican chile from China
The
"People all over the country advertise
But the industry is in decline, pushed out by cheap imports and a lack of water that forces some farmers to grow cotton instead, Nunez said.
Fewer than 9,000 acres of chile plants were harvested in
"People think our biggest problem comes from
In fact, 82 percent of all chiles consumed in the country are foreign-grown, Hawkins said.
"We just want our consumer to feel confident that when
they order
Violators of the misdemeanor could be fined or serve time in jail, Nunez said.
X-ray vision may improve crop yield
(American
Institute of Physics)
Into the CT scanner on a conveyor belt went little potted rice plants in an automated facility that could process 4,320 rice plants a day. The non-invasive CT energy analyzed tissues and matched their traits against a computer program to aid rice breeders in selecting plants with the best rice tillers. Tillers are specialized grain-bearing shoots of the plant that determine grain yield—and therefore are crucial to crop success.
Given that an estimated 3 billion people around the globe depend on one of the many species of rice for survival, demand pressure is high on rice breeders to maximize yield. Constructing large-scale, high-throughput automated industrial rice growing facilities helps. But one aspect of rice farming—tillering—is still done by hand. It is therefore vulnerable to human error that can undermine the success of a crop.
"In rice breeding, it is imperative that the traits of the tillers that result from hybridization or mutation are monitored and analyzed accurately," Dr. Liu explains. "This is true because with modern crop breeding methods using genetically modified organisms, it is possible to produce hundreds of new varieties daily. We need efficient techniques for screening the best plant material possible. Automating tillering by CT provided higher throughput, higher measurement accuracy and lower cost than other technologies previously used to measure the tillers on rice plants."
In the study, Dr. Liu collaborated with Wanneng
Yang, Xiochun Xu, Lingfeng Duan, Qingming Luo, Shangbin
Chen and Shaoqun Zeng at
the
Dell goes green with mushroom packaging
(Forbes.com) – Mushrooms grown within a mold will cushion Dell products during shipping, the computer manufacturer announced today.
“The mushroom cushioning is unique because it is grown and not manufactured in the traditional sense,” said Oliver Campbell, Dell’s senior packaging manager.
Because it’s grown, the new packaging requires 98 percent
less energy to produce than foam packaging, and after it serves its purpose,
customers can compost it. The ability to divert packaging from the waste stream
reduces costs for businesses and individuals in states like
The process works like this. Waste product—like cotton hulls—are placed in a mold which is then inoculated with mushroom spawn. Our cushions take 5-10 days to grow as the spawn, which become the root structure — or by the scientific name, mycelium — of the mushroom. All the energy needed to form the cushion is supplied by the carbohydrates and sugars in the ag waste. There’s no need for energy based on carbon or nuclear fuels.
Dell announced the new packaging in a press release issued
today, and
"EcoCradle" grown mushroom packaging
Dell has tested the packaging in its laboratories and will now try it with select customers of its PowerEdge R710 servers, which are shipped four at a time, before deciding whether to deploy mushrooms in all its packaging. The mushroom cushions will be used in combination with other packaging made from bamboo.
“We’ve tested this in the lab, it’s
passed all of our packaging tests. It performed like a champ. But it’s not
something we just want to start sending to our customers. That would be
surprising,”
No comment from Dell on the packaging’s relative cost.
[UPDATE: Comment arrived this afternoon from Dell spokesman Bob Kaufman on the packaging's relative cost: "It’s a bit premature for that cost comparison, since the test is just underway and we don’t have the data yet to fully know."]
The packaging was developed by Ecovative Design with funding from the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Biotechs break blockbuster mould for success
(swissinfo.ch) – Biotechnology firms are looking beyond mega-selling blockbuster drugs as they search for a profitable future business model.
The spiraling cost and risk of relying on magic pills for revenues, plus increasing competition from generics and changing demand from developing countries is forcing smaller enterprises to diversify their production, an industry conference has heard.
The cost of developing a promising molecule into a blockbuster drug has risen from around $300 million (SFr300 million) in 1996 to $2 billion in today’s market, thanks mainly to increased regulatory safety requirements.
The nearly seven-fold increase in production costs inside 15 years has resulted in more cost, risk and profit-sharing alliances between biotechs and pharmaceutical firms to produce, market and distribute drugs.
But it has also forced a strategic rethink and the start of
a movement into niche areas, such as veterinary and eye care products, vaccines
or nutritional healthcare, the Swiss Equity Biotech Day in
“The industry has become too fixated on blockbusters,” Oreste Ghisalba of the Swiss Biotech Association told some 200 executives at the conference. “There will still be a market for blockbusters, but many companies will need to explore other niche areas.”
Important sector
Biotechnology is one of the most important industries in
The sector is boosted each year by several start-up enterprises, usually formed by former employees of larger companies or created as spin-offs from university research programmes.
But with competition intensifying both at home and abroad, and the cost of traditional pharmaceutical production becoming ever more onerous, many firms are looking to develop their business into new areas.
One such company, Evolva that was founded in 2004, has taken the broad-based product strategy to heart. The company specialises in synthetic biology, creating new molecules in dishes of yeast injected with artificially-manufactured chromosomes.
The resulting molecules can be used in a wide range of fields, from nutrition, energy, fragrance, agriculture, plastics and textiles.
Yeast yield
Evolva has secured contracts with
the
The company announced on Tuesday that it was on the verge of
acquiring
Evolva’s strategy, according to chief executive Neil Goldsmith, is to produce a wide variety of molecules that could be manipulated by many industries for different uses.
This would save the company the cost of converting molecules into end products. And at a time when many firms in the industry are nervous about putting too many eggs into one basket, Evolva would be better able to absorb the cost of molecule failures.
Nutrition trend
“Continuing to follow the blockbuster drug model is becoming harder and harder,” Goldsmith told swissinfo.ch.
“If you take the risk and you get it right then you are on the path to glory. But the odds are that you will not succeed and there are too many examples of companies that have narrowed down onto one product and then vanished if it has failed.”
Goldsmith said that emerging markets such as
One recent trend has seen food and drugs companies converging into the nutrition and consumer healthcare markets. Nestlé opened a new health science division at the start of the year focusing on health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
While the sector is in its infancy at the moment, Goldsmith sees a lot of potential for future growth.
“The consumer healthcare market[s] are by some factors bigger than the pharmaceutical market,” he said. “There is no doubt that the whole industry is shifting.”
End Transmission