" I heard it through the AgLine"

April 16, 2010

 

 

·        Local growers get big boost from USDA

·        Food bill could clobber small producers

·        The quest for accurate long-range forecasts

·        Asian diners getting a taste for US potatoes

·        Device tells grower when crops needs water

 

 

Local growers get big boost from USDA

 

(SFGate.com) Washington – Obama administration officials this week outlined a broad array of efforts to elevate organic and local farming to a prominence never seen before at the sprawling U.S. Department of Agriculture.

 

The shift is raising eyebrows among conventional growers and promising federal support to a food movement that began in Northern California and was considered heretical only a few years ago.

 

"Guys, this is your window - use it," USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan told organic farmers, processors and retailers at a conference Wednesday in Washington that was sponsored by Santa Cruz's Organic Farming Research Foundation and the Organic Trade Association.

 

When her microphone went dead as she discussed genetically modified foods, a member of the audience joked, "They're already sabotaging you."

 

Talking more like a Berkeley foodie than a USDA bureaucrat, Merrigan described efforts to penetrate "food deserts" in poor neighborhoods where people rely on corner markets and liquor stores for groceries, tougher enforcement of the USDA organic label and initiatives such as the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program to connect local farmers with consumers.

 

Anti-obesity campaign

 

The efforts parallel first lady Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign, which she took Wednesday to a community farm in San Diego supported by the California Endowment, whose mission to improve the health of Californians is mirrored by the first lady's campaign.

 

"Food is finally either close to or at the center of the USDA plate," said Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Santa Cruz foundation, which struggled for years to get federal support for organic farming.

 

Scowcroft cited Merrigan's interest in such innovations as mobile slaughterhouses, which allow tiny livestock producers to get USDA certification of their meat.

 

"California is desperate for these," Scowcroft said. "The entire U.S. system is now based on massive factory farms. You have lamb producers that want to sell into a local restaurant, but if they even can find a unit to slaughter their lambs, it's 300 to 500 miles away. Driving 10 lambs there is cost prohibitive."

 

Even a small shift in the giant machinery of the USDA - be it more research money for organics or stiffer antitrust enforcement against industrial operators Merrigan said is coming - could have big repercussions given the agency's central role in U.S. farming. Merrigan said the administration is also linking USDA efforts with other departments such as Health and Human Services.

Not the old USDA

 

Big growers are not thrilled.

 

After Merrigan addressed a USDA conference in Washington last month, Tim Burrack, a corn and soybean grower who chairs the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, stood up and told her, "This is not the USDA that I've known," according to Iowa press accounts.

 

"I've farmed for 37 years and worked with the government and everything - and what I'm hearing out here is radically different than what has taken place in the first 36 years of my career," he said.

 

Burrack cited concern among conventional producers that focusing on organics and small local farms conflicts with traditional agriculture production that "has provided for this nation a very safe and very low-cost food supply."

 

The department took its first survey of organic farmers two years ago, counting 14,540 of them, located in all 50 states. Sales have reached $24.6 billion a year, growing 14 percent to 21 percent annually over the last decade, but still remain less than 1 percent of all U.S. agriculture.

More small farms

 

In addition, the census showed for the first time that the number of small farms in California, many of them minority-owned, has increased.

 

Growers and retailers at Wednesday's conference expressed exasperation over losing their organic certification after their fields were contaminated by neighboring farms growing genetically modified crops.

 

Alan Lewis, a manager at the Natural Grocers chain in Lakewood, Colo., cited a 1970s-era USDA rule that designates beef as "natural" if it is unadulterated after slaughter, even if the cow was pumped with hormones, de-wormers and corn for the months it was alive.

 

"Magically, it becomes 'natural' on the day of harvest," he said. The agency is looking at a new rule for "naturally raised" beef as a midpoint between natural and fully organic.

 

But that, Lewis said, is likely to sow confusion with consumers.

 

"As an industry, we really need to be clear about who's toeing the line and who isn't," Lewis said.

 

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Food safety bill could clobber small producers

 

(Billings Gazette) – America’s food safety laws need tightening, but not if small producers and farmers’ markets are harmed, said U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, who worries that new reforms could clobber the local-food movement.

 

Wednesday, the Montana Democrat rolled out two amendments exempting small food producers from a broad overhaul of food-borne illness regulations.

 

The Food Safety Modernization Act is headed to the Senate floor next week. Proponents say the act is good medicine for a food industry stricken by high-profile outbreaks of E. coli and salmonella in recent years. Among other things, the bill requires better record keeping, testing and tracking from food producers of all sizes.

 

Small producers, who contend they’re not the source of the nation’s food problems, say the costs of meeting the new regulations will put them out of business.

 

“What they’re really after is having everybody who makes or sells a product have a tracking system,” said Perry McNeese of Good Earth Market. “That’s one piece of it. That kind of record keeping for a small producer can become astronomical.”

 

Good Earth Market relies upon 81 small vendors producing everything from baked goods to jam, McNeese said. Most of those businesses are one-person operations. Collectively, they might do less than $400,000 in business a year with the Billings food cooperative. The tight relationship Good Earth has with its vendors would make it easy to respond to any food problem, he said. The small vendors are responsive in ways larger ones aren’t.

 

Tester echoed those sentiments while announcing his amendments during a press conference between Senate votes.

 

“We’re really taking a punch at people who don’t need to have a punch taken at them,” Tester said.

 

State and local regulations apply to small producers, which should be enough, the senator said. His two amendments would assure that producers with adjusted gross incomes of less than $500,000 a year would only answer to state and local laws for processed food. Producers selling food directly through farmers’ markets would also be exempt.

 

Not everyone believes local food is so wholesome that it should be exempted from food safety reforms. Howard Reid, who oversees food and consumer safety for Montana’s Department of Public Health and Human Services, said the food-borne illnesses handled by his office stem from various sources, including small producers. For that reason, he supports regulating small producers under the Food Safety Modernization Act.

 

Sandra Eskin, who oversees food safety issues for the Pew Charitable Trusts, said Montana has food-borne illness outbreaks in its fairly recent past. In 1995, E. coli contaminated lettuce sickened nearly 100 people in the Missoula area. Health officials traced the outbreak back to a half-dozen lettuce farms selling produce under the same brand, but that’s where they lost the trail. Without traceability, inspectors weren’t able to positively identify which of the farms caused the contamination. They did note that one Montana farm was using a manure-contaminated stock pond to water its lettuce.

 

Eskin said there should be regulation of scale, which she thinks the pending legislation allows and the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture will accommodate.

 

“I’m sympathetic to their concerns,” Eskin said of the small producers, “but get in there and give us solutions. Tell the FDA and USDA what you can do, not what you can’t.”

 

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The quest for accurate long-range forecasts

 

(Iowa Farmer Today) AMES -- Rob Malone dreams one day researchers will be able to look at several long-term climate patterns and piece them together to offer farmers a projection about the coming growing season.

 

“There’s promise here,” says the ag engineer with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) at the National Laboratory of Agriculture and the Environment here.

 

Malone and other researchers at the lab, formerly known as the National Soil Tilth Lab, understand weather and plant growth are difficult areas to project.

 

Lab director Jerry Hatfield puts it succinctly.

 

“This isn’t rocket science,” he says. “It’s much more difficult.”

 

With rocket science, he quickly notes scientists just have a few variables, such as thrust and gravity. With agriculture they are dealing with weather patterns, soils, seeds, weeds, pests and a variety of other factors.

 

“It’s extremely complex,” he says.

 

Nonetheless, Hatfield, Malone and other researchers are optimistic they can eventually at least offer farmers some useful information that could help with seed and fertilizer decisions for upcoming growing seasons.

 

Malone and his fellow researchers looked at a series of weather climate signals and compared corn yields in a part of Iowa with those historical climate patterns.

 

For example, they took three ocean weather patterns: the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Southern Oscillation Index (which is related to El Nino), and the quasi-biennial oscillation (which is a measure of equatorial atmospheric patterns).

 

They soon noticed there seemed to be a relationship between the three climate patterns and corn yields in Iowa. But, getting accurate and timely measurements that could be used to predict yields in the coming season is still a challenge.

 

For example, getting timely readings for all three at once is difficult.

 

Malone and other researchers also compared several historical corn yield cycles that showed up in National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) records.

 

Spectral analysis can be used to focus on short-term variations in corn yield data, as well as long-term patterns, he explains.

 

Using that idea, they found several patterns. If they overlaid those patterns on a chart, they could find some combined patterns which could be useful.

 

For example, combining 2.3-year and 2.6-year patterns could indicate a pattern of high- and low-yield years.

 

When those yield patterns are put alongside the combination of long-term weather patterns, they may allow researchers to at least offer farmers a much more accurate picture of the possibilities going into a specific growing season.

 

“If the pattern holds, 2010 will be a high corn-yielding year,” Malone says.

 

Of course, Malone says there are many variables that go into corn yields, and he isn’t guaranteeing high yields. But, he is excited about the research.

 

“It’s definitely a challenge,” Malone says. “But, right now this research is showing promise.”

 

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Asian diners getting a taste for US potatoes

 

(PerishableNews.com) – US table-stock potatoes are popping up in new forms and new dishes at restaurants throughout Asia—a trend that owes its origin to an annual chef seminar organized by the United States Potato Board (USPB). Just months after concluding the second annual seminar, new menu additions created by the participants bring the total to at least 39 new potato-based dishes launched in 16 restaurant chains in the past 15 months.

 

Held November 10-11, 2009, the USPB’s second annual International Chef Seminar drew 27 chefs from leading restaurants in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. This year’s event was held in Hong Kong at the Chinese Cuisine Training Institute and was conducted with assistance from the Hong Kong Chef’s Association. The two-day event was geared toward helping Asian chefs gain a new perspective on how US fresh table-stock potatoes fit into local trends and new menu items.

 

“In Asia, potatoes are not usually one of the first things chefs think of in creating new dishes. Local cuisine historically relies on rice and noodles,” explained the USPB’s Sarah Mahler, Manager of International Marketing–Table-stock. “Even in restaurants that traditionally use US potatoes, such as American-style steakhouses, the offerings have not typically been very innovative. Our objective with this event has been to help chefs forge a new outlook on the versatility of US potatoes and their suitability to a range of dishes.”

 

Throughout the two-day event, chefs learned about the US potato industry, the many US potato varieties and how to fit US potatoes into current foodservice trends. They were shown how to use fresh US potatoes in 13 different menu applications from American comfort food to dessert to dim sum. Chefs from the Hong Kong Chef’s Association demonstrated recipes and shared ideas on using US potatoes to create innovative dishes.

 

After the cooking demonstrations, the chefs applied what they learned through a “black box” cooking competition. They were organized into groups of three, given a sealed black box containing ingredients, and assigned a category for menu development. The key requirement was the new recipe must use US potatoes. The results yielded dishes with great eye appeal and great taste that ranged from recipes for children to classic European-type cuisine.

 

The real test of the event’s effectiveness came afterward, however, as USPB followed up to see if the new ideas were being utilized. Based on the number of new potato dishes added to menus and the number of potato promotions conducted, the seminar achieved its goal.

 

For example, in Singapore, Sizzler restaurant conducted a promotion featuring four US potato side dishes with a fresh take on traditional American food via new varieties and ingredients. Yellow flesh potato wedges, baked purple potatoes, roasted fingerling potatoes and Dijon russet mashed potatoes were all popular with customers.

 

In Malaysia another event participant, Bubba Gump, added two new potato varieties to their menu during the Christmas period, which were so well-received it is now considering adding them to the regular menu. Also, the Bankers Club restaurant just introduced several new recipes using US potatoes in main courses and snack items, using russets in addition to more unique blue, purple and yellow flesh varieties.

 

Successes like these build upon the first year’s seminar, which also spurred many new dishes. In Hong Kong, the Double Star Group added 10 new menu items after participating in the 2008 seminar. These used six US potato varieties in snacks, side dishes and main courses. Double Star Group then ran a promotion from March to May 2009 raising US potato sales by 67 percent.

 

“The chef seminar is proving to be an effective way to give consumers a new outlook on US potatoes,” Mahler said. “By focusing on working with chefs, US potatoes are becoming more visible to consumers.”

 

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Device tells grower when crops needs water

 

(KCBD.com) LUBBOCK, TX  – A Lubbock company is receiving a million dollar investment through the Texas Emerging Technology Fund to help commercialize a device that could change the face of farming nationwide.

 

Lubbock based Smartfield has about 100 SmartCrop devices in use. "These will actually measure the temperature of the plant itself. It will communicate back to the base station that information," says Smartfield chief financial officer Kyle Gayler.

 

Using infrared thermometry, SmartCrop monitors the plant's temperature and alerts the farmer or producer of the plants stress level through a text message or email. The device basically allows the farmer to listen to their crops to know when they need water or if they've had too much.

 

"Ultimately we are convinced it will help save water," says Gayler. He says the new technology will help farmers produce more efficiently by giving them the information to make smarter decisions on watering their crops.

 

Gayler says this SmartCrop doesn't just affect the farmers. "If we live in Lubbock, Texas, we're affected by the agriculture industry, and certainly we rely upon water and food so we think this technology that will benefit everyone," he says.

 

This new technology has also brought new jobs to the Lubbock area. Smartfield started out with four employees and quickly grew to more than a two dozen after receiving funds from the state. "These are jobs that are higher salary positions and really help in economic development throughout West Texas," says West Texas Coalition for Innovation and Commercialization Executive Director Steve Anderson.

 

Although SmartCrop started here in Lubbock, Gayler says the device has the potential to change farming far beyond Lubbock's city limits. "This is something that we think will have a significant impact throughout the world," say Gayler.

 

Smartfield hopes to have more than a thousand SmartCrop devices in use by the end of next year.

 

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