" I heard it through the AgLine"

April 18, 2007

 

 

·        Organic or bureaucratic? Good question

·        Syngenta to build research center in China

·        Self seeding – Innovative management system

·        Energy researchers test the power of beets

·        Vietnam target to triple fruit, vegetable exports

 

 

 

 

Organic or bureaucratic? Good question

 

There are two competing schools of thought in the organic industry. Boisterously grabbing the headlines are the political activists who claim organic farming can feed the planet. Toiling away quietly beneath the surface is the much more down-to-earth philosophy seeking better nutrition and soil fertility.

 

Both schools claim to focus on saving the environment, but only one is actually doing so. You might’ve assumed there was a united brotherhood of concerned farmers, brokers, traders, wholesalers, processors, importers, exporters, retailers and consumers, all holding hands to save the environment. You might also have assumed politics and nutrition naturally went hand in hand. But they don’t, and never have.

 

Overwhelmingly, farmers and consumers who produce and eat organic food are indeed concerned with fertility, nutrition and preserving the environment. The farmer wants to do something tangible to improve his and his family’s health – and the health of the environment where his farm is nestled – and so pays dearly to be certified as organic. The consumer meanwhile is willing to pay a premium for certified organic food in order to eat purer, healthier food while also saving the environment. How often the farmer or the consumer gets what they pay for is anyone’s guess because there’s no testing of organic farms to prove compliance with organic standards.

 

Imagine how many world records would be broken at the Olympics if they quit testing athletes. Imagine if an athlete only needed a dated and signed list of all the things he ingested over the last four years to “prove” he was clean. See anything wrong with that? This is how this $46 billion industry runs. It’s a bureaucratized honor system with piles of paperwork that are somehow supposed to prove no one is cheating. Feel better now?

 

This comes as a shock to consumers who assumed “certified organic” meant the farm was tested. But don’t blame the farmers. They never asked for this system and would welcome an annual test of every organic farm so they could feel confident they’re not competing against cheaters. It only makes sense, as long as you’re not a political activist.

 

The problem is with the ever-expanding matrix of players between the farmer and the consumer: private and state certifiers, federal regulators, review committees, sub-committees, local chapters, inspector review boards, international policy boards, accreditation committees, technical committees, and so on… and they’re all staffed by political activists. Then there are all the broker/traders and retailers who bring organic food to the store shelf, and for some strange reason they’ve all decided to take their marching orders from the activists instead of from farmers and consumers.

 

Governments consulted with all of these players to come up with national organic standards, but forgot to ask farmers and consumers what they thought. The result is the biggest “feel good” system ever devised; a system which fails to promote sustainability and doesn’t even begin to promote soil fertility, purity or nutrition.

 

No one between the farmer and the consumer supports organic testing. They toil away in offices day-in, day-out shuffling documents and requesting follow-up documentation from farmers whose farms they have never seen and probably never will. There’s no effort to stamp out fraud and negligence, or to improve what it means to be organic. But rest assured, any of these people will pick up a protest sign, or sign a petition to save the environment.

 

“Adequate” hardly begins to describe it, and you’re paying for it whenever you and your family fill up on organic groceries.

 

Testing is fine when it comes to condemning the enemy of the organic industry. Environmental activists will always collect samples to analyze in a lab to prove that profit-motivated, evil, greedy corporations are destroying the environment; and often they’re right. Unfortunately this fits their larger political agenda of fighting the mainstream system along with the very concept of industrialization, and in extreme cases the very existence of western civilization itself.

 

But what happens if an organic inspector suggests a test on an organic farm to ensure the farm is indeed organic? What if the inspector doesn’t trust a farmer’s paperwork or all the forms and affidavits he signed? What if the inspector has a bad feeling and wants to use science to ensure that harmful herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and synthetic fertilizers aren’t being used? Just as important, what if an inspector wants to use science to ensure that the fertility of the soil is actually being improved? Wouldn’t this go right to the heart of what the consumer expects?

 

Well, like the gangsters say… Fuggetaboutit! Hard though it might be to swallow, an organic farmer can lie and get away with it, as long as all the paperwork is complete.

 

Greed can infect anyone’s thinking, even a farmer’s; it’s human nature. As such, billions of dollars worth of “certified organic” food makes its way to the organic retail shelf year after year, regardless of its actual benefits to the environment or to the consumer’s health. The political activism continues apace, and everyone between the farmer and the consumer pretends we don’t need to reduce the bureaucracy or test organic farms because everything is just fine. I guess they’re all too busy amassing fortunes to bother to care.

 

Organic imports from places like China and Mexico are on the rise in the United States and Canada, and many good organic farmers are dropping their certification because it no longer helps them sell their hard-earned harvests. If you think this is actually what organic is all about, then you probably quit reading this already. If on the other hand you’d like to stop the madness, go to: http://www.isitorganic.ca/ and join the movement to test organics.

 

About the author:

After graduating from university, Mischa Popoff worked for five years as an Advanced Organic Inspector in the United States and Canada. He performed over 500 inspections and saw fraud and negligence, but was powerless to do anything about it under the current system. He runs the world’s first organic crop and livestock testing company with his wife Sherry who has degrees in mathematics and business.

 

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Syngenta to build major research center in China

 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Swiss agrochemical company Syngenta AG said Thursday it will build a new biotech research and technology center in Beijing, and expects to invest $65 million in the project in the first five years.

The company plans to begin operating temporary facilities on the site this summer. The building is expected to be completed in 2010.

The center will initially have about 100 employees. That number is expected to double once the building is opened.

Work at the center will evaluate crop traits and ways to improve yield, drought resistance and disease control, for crops such as corn and soy, Syngenta said.

U.S.-traded shares of Syngenta slipped 4 cents in premarket electronic trading, from their close Wednesday at $63.55.

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Self seeding – Innovative management system

 

(PHYSORG.com) – Winter cover crops provide important ecological functions that include nutrient cycling and soil cover. Although cover crop benefits to agroecosystems are well documented, cover crop use in agronomic farming systems remains low. Winter cover crops are usually planted in the fall after cash crop harvest and killed the following spring before planting the next cash crop. Recent research has identified time and money as major impediments to farmer adoption of winter cover crops. Developing innovative cover crop management systems could increase the use of winter cover crops.

 

A scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service National Soil Tilth Lab and colleagues at Iowa State University investigated the potential for winter cereal cover crops to perpetuate themselves through self-seeding, thereby eliminating the cost of planting a cover crop each fall and time constraints between cash crop harvest and the onset of winter. Results from the study were published in the March-April 2008 issue of Agronomy Journal.

In the research investigation, winter rye, triticale, and wheat were planted and managed chemically and mechanically in varying configurations to facilitate self-seeding. After soybean harvest in the fall of 2004 and 2005, establishment and green ground cover of self-seeded winter cover crops was measured because of their important relationships with nutrient uptake capacity and soil erosion protection. The study revealed that plant establishment through self-seeding was generally accomplished within one week after soybean harvest. Green ground cover and self-seeding was consistently higher with wheat.

“The significance of this research, in addition to lowering the cost and risk of establishing cover crops, is to extend the ecological functions that cover crops perform beyond the normal cover crop termination dates between mid-April and early May,” says Dr. Jeremy Singer of the National Soil Tilth Lab. “Furthermore, producers using organic crop production techniques could adopt these systems because of the potential for enhanced weed suppression without soil disturbance.”

According to Singer, increasing the presence of cover crops on the landscape can increase nutrient capture and lower soil erosion, both of which can improve water quality.

Research is ongoing at the National Soil Tilth Lab to identify self-seeded cover crop systems that minimize competition with cash crops and maximize the effectiveness of self-propagation. The impacts of cover crops on soil quality in systems with biomass removal are also being investigated because cover crops can help offset the carbon and nutrient losses that occur when biomass is harvested in row crop production systems.

Source: American Society of Agronomy

 

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Energy researchers test the power of beets

 

(Muscatine Journal) FRUITLAND, Iowa — Half an acre of beets planted Wednesday at Iowa State University’s research farm in Fruitland is one of the nation’s first tests of the crop’s biofuel potential.

“We probably would say this is one of the pioneers,” said Senior Technical Manager Carl Stael von Holstein of Syngenta Seeds Inc.

Syngenta provided four seed varieties, including some specifically engineered for energy purposes, planted in test plots at the Muscatine Island Research Farm.

Stael von Holstein said plots are for "proof of concept."

The test will be replicated at the Southeast Iowa Research Farm in Crawfordsville to compare beets’ performance in the sandy soil found in Muscatine's island area and more typical Iowa soil.

"We can definitely grow sugar beets here, it’s just going to be a question of economics," said Vince Lawson, superintendent of the Muscatine Island Research Farm.

The results of the test plots should be available after the beets are harvested in October. That information will be of particular interest to area farmers and the eight Muscatine-area partners in HRE Engineering Firm L.L.C. The company is developing plans to build a plant in southern Muscatine that would make 10 million gallons of ethanol each year from sugar-based feedstock.

Rick Whittaker of Muscatine, vice president of Heartland Renewable Energy, said rules of the the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission do not allow him to comment on the plans while soliciting private investors.

Whittaker said previously that the company was investigating sugar beets and molasses as potential feedstock.

It could be the first ethanol plant in the U.S. to make ethanol from beets. A list of biofuel refineries on the Web site for the Renewable Fuels Association, based in Washington, D.C., lists none using beets as feedstock.

“Economics, yield, pest problems are going to make a big difference of whether they’re going to be grown here,” Lawson said.

Stael von Holstein, who traveled from Syngenta’s office in Glyndon, Minn., said beets are grown in Minnesota for sugar, but have not been grown in Iowa since they were grown

in the Mason City area more than 40 years ago.

Lawson said that makes it difficult to guess how the test beets will perform.

“We’ll have to irrigate, we’re counting on that,” he said.

Beets do not require much moisture and put down root systems as deep as 6 feet underground, Stael von Holstein said. However, the sandy soil in the island area dries easily, Lawson said.

Stael von Holstein said beets are a bi-annual crop, but those grown locally would be harvested after a single growing season.

“Theoretically, they’ll go to seed, but they’ll freeze to death here,” he said.

Farmers may need new farm machinery to harvest the beets, Stael von Holstein said, but Lawson felt it could be accomplished by adapting equipment used to harvest corn.

Stael von Holstein said beets grown in Iowa could weigh up to 3-4 pounds, more than the 2 1/2 pound variety grown in Minnesota.

Only the beet would be used for ethanol, but the tops have potential for use as animal feed, he said.

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Vietnam target to triple fruit, vegetable exports

 

Asia Pulse - Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry Tran Duc Minh has said Vietnam expects to earn US$1 billion from vegetable, flower and fruit exports by 2015.

At present, the country earns around $300 million annually from these exports.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Vietnam earned $76 million from vegetable and fruit exports in the first quarter of this year, a 28 per cent increase compared with the same period last year.

Vietnam's consumption of these products has remained stable, and Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, Russia and the US are the five largest markets for export.

Among them, mainland China is a crucial market, buying 60 per cent of all exported vegetables and fruit from Vietnam.

Emerging export markets include Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore as well as European Union countries.

However, the fruit and vegetable sector still faces certain limitations.

Produce volume tends to be inconsistent. Farmers production scales are small to begin with. Each household has between 200 and 300 sq.m of vegetables and 1,000 sq.m of fruit. The small scale makes it difficult to apply advanced technology which could help stabilise supply and improve produce quality.

Storage facilities are also in poor condition, which makes transport and shipping delays even more difficult for farmers already struggling with crop production.

MARD has begun to co-operate with many domestic and foreign organizations to find effective development methods for these sectors. A successful model exists between Metro Cash and Carry Vietnam Co and the agricultural sector in Ho Chi Minh City and southern provinces. Officials help train farmers to raise their production volume, improve business expertise and build warehouses to international standards. The company also provides assistance with domestic consumption and exports.

Nguyen Thi Ninh, an official from the HCM City Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the department had a project for 2008-10 to help enterprises export vegetables, flowers and fruit from HCM City and nearby provinces to the European market.

The project will also train farmers on how to promote exports, gauge the market and build business strategies.

MARD will focus on developing 10 kinds of fruit trees for export: Oranges, tangerine, grapefruit, pineapple, mango, longan and blue dragon, among others.

In addition, scientists are replacing low quality strains with high quality ones, such as the Hoa Loc and Chin Hoa mango.

To encourage farmers to develop orchards in planned regions, the Ministry of Trade and Industry has asked the State to prioritise tax policies on fruit production and businesses.

This would involve exempting value-added taxes for co-operatives and enterprises that trade fruit and exempting agricultural taxes for farmers with orchards.

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