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May 11, 2011
· Farmers join scientists in climate study
· Japanese firm tightens its grip on Nufarm
· Monsanto renews its efforts with GM wheat
· Canadian veggie growers sacrifice livelihood
· Lights, action … Showtime in the packinghouse
Farmers join scientists in climate study
(The
Associated Press)
Nearly 100 researchers and farmers from across the region
met Monday at the
"Climate change is one of the challenges that faces the sustainability of agriculture in this region," said UI professor Scott Eigenbrode, who is leading the project.
Funding for the study comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Temperatures in the area have already risen about 1.8 degrees on average in the past century, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is predicting they will increase another 3.6 degrees by 2050, Eigenbrode said.
Winter precipitation is predicted to increase by 5 percent, but summer rainfall could drop by 5 to 20 percent, he said.
Warmer summer temperatures could spell problems for grains and other crops that will face increased heat and water stress.
Pests such as the cereal leaf beetle, Hessian fly and aphids could become bigger problems in a warmer climate, he said. Pathogens carried by aphids might also be aggravated.
The project team includes more than 30 scientists from UI,
Sales of cereal grains were worth $1.5 billion to the
The project builds on earlier work done through the Climate Friendly Farming project at WSU as well as the Solutions to Environmental and Economic Problems involving the three universities over the past four decades.
The latter project has promoted seed drilling to reduce soil erosion. It also allows carbon to be reintroduced to the soil, thereby reducing carbon dioxide in the air, a chief component of global warming.
Dick Wittman, a farmer in
"Many are in denial that climate change is even a reality, and many more argue about what is causing it," Wittman said. "Scientific studies conclusively show increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that can't be ignored."
Japanese firm tightens its grip on Nufarm
(Adelaide Now) – THE boss of agrichemicals supplier Nufarm has sold 4.5 million shares to Japanese shareholder Sumitomo.
The deal with CEO Doug Rathbone allows Sumitomo to increase its shareholding in Nufarm by 1.3 per cent, to 21.7 per cent.
The sale was agreed after the market closed on Monday at $5.28, which was the three-month volume weighted average price of the stock between February 1 and April 29, Nufarm said in a statement on Tuesday.
Sumitomo said in the statement that it planned to purchase further shares from the market over the next six months to lift its shareholding to 23 per cent.
The statement said the relationship between the two companies was ``progressing smoothly'' since Sumitomo Chemical made a strategic investment in Nufarm a year ago, in April, 2010.
"Sumitomo's strategic relationship with Nufarm is progressing smoothly in such fields as distribution, development, manufacturing (formulation) and procurement and logistics, and synergies from the collaboration have already started to materialise,'' the statement said.
Sumitomo had decided to increase its stake in Nufarm ``in order to strengthen the relationship with Nufarm and to help expedite additional areas of collaboration''.
Sumitomo said the relationship would allow it to ``improve efficiency in its operations and strengthen its global crop protection business''.
Monsanto renews its efforts with GM wheat
(stltoday.com) – Wheat is one of the world's primary crops and, in the American landscape, an almost mythical one. But over the past decades, American farmers have turned away from their amber waves of grain.
That's a trend the wheat industry and seed companies — including Creve Coeur-based Monsanto — are trying to reverse.
Over the past two years, the agricultural biotechnology giant has renewed its interest in wheat, committing more resources to creating new traits and seed varieties that it hopes could eventually bring more farmers back into the wheat fold.
In 2009, the company paid $45 million to buy WestBred, a Montana-based wheat seed company. In the past six months, the company has built a 'seed chipper" for wheat — a proprietary and prohibitively expensive machine that speeds the process of identifying beneficial crop traits.
"We're seriously trying to be successful in wheat," said Sean Gardner, head of the company's wheat efforts. "We think we can make a difference in what is the world's largest crop."
Monsanto had been working to commercialize a genetically
modified wheat, but in 2004, facing industry rejection, the company pulled
back. "A couple of things led us to stop,"
Half of the country's wheat is exported — and some of those export markets adopted a zero-tolerance stance on the presence of genetically modified grain, meaning even one genetically modified seed could prompt a wholesale rejection of a shipment.
"So much of the wheat crop goes into the export market
— more so than corn and soybeans," said Anne McKendry,
a wheat breeder with the
"We realized we're behind and we need access to the technology," said Jane DeMarchi, the association's director of government affairs for research and technology.
Wheat is grown on more acres globally than any other crop and provides roughly 20 percent of the world's calories, according to the United Nations. But American farmers have stopped planting it in recent years. From the 1980s to today, wheat acreage has dropped about 30 percent, from 85 million acres to 60 million.
The drop, growers say, is largely because research in wheat has lagged, while innovation in soy and corn has exploded.
"Wheat growers are concerned about the lack of innovation," DeMarchi said. "Most of these farmers grow other crops and they're seeing increased yields. They're seeing other crops are more economical for them to grow."
Those crops may be surging ahead because advances in technology have been easier to attain. Wheat, meanwhile, is extremely complicated — with three genomes, to corn's one, for example. Wheat is also more regional in nature and one variety may only grow well in one relatively small area. That means less potential and less payoff on hefty research and development budgets.
"It's difficult to work on ... It's susceptible to many different diseases," DeMarchi said. "A lot of the work that's been done has been local, so each state (university) had their own breeding program, and within that university, they were working on different micro-climates within each state."
Most of the research into wheat, so far, has been publicly funded, largely because low wheat prices have kept private companies away. But with global wheat prices — like all commodity prices — surging, and global food demands soaring, companies have something more to gain.
This is such a huge crop," DeMarchi said. "They're seeing an opportunity and they want to dive in."
The
Monsanto says its efforts will focus on biotechnology and
traditional breeding to achieve a drought-tolerant trait and increased yield.
The company will likely not commercialize a Roundup
Ready wheat, adding to its blockbuster Roundup Ready corn and soy products,
While it likely will be 15 years before the company introduces a product to farmers, the company's efforts will pay off in the long run, analysts say.
"Wheat is pretty complex, and that's what's driving Monsanto," said Jeff Windau, an analyst with Edward Jones. "Something that's a little more complex gives Monsanto a competitive advantage and potentially gives them more profitability moving forward."
Canadian veggie growers sacrifice livelihood
(Brandon
Sun) – Doug Connery fears his labour-intensive
vegetable and berry farm on some of
"I'll be out of business," he said Monday night shortly after the province announced plans for a controlled flood expected to swamp some properties like his to save many more that would be lost in an uncontrolled one.
The producer in the
"Asparagus, broccoli, all the green onion for the province and one-third of the carrots could be done in," he said.
There will be a major fallout for many families relying on the jobs connected with those crops, he said.
"I've got up to 140 Mexicans ready to work here. They should be cutting asparagus," he said. The cold and wet have delayed the harvest but the controlled flood could kill it, he said.
"Now they're probably flooding half of my land and I don't need these guys," said Connery.
"I already spent $40,000 to bring them up here," he said, asking if the province plans to reimburse him.
He was upset, too, that the controlled flood will be conducted Wednesday.
"I get a day of warning for 17 homes?" said Connery, incredulous at the lack of notice. "I'm one landowner -- how do I look after 17 homes? Who pays the price?"
He's the fourth generation of a farming family that's had to
move several times -- from Birds Hill to St. Vital to the
"This has never happened here to us before," Connery said. "(1996) was the closest we've had high water before," but nothing that ever affected their livelihood.
"Now we're getting hammered again."
Connery wasn't the only one taken aback by the province's
plan to cut the
"This is coming as a big surprise to us," said
Reeve Kam Blight of the
"We know the (
"They're now telling us a lot more water is coming our way than they expected," he said. The controlled flood will be a risk to about 150 homes to spare close to 500, the province said.
"It looks like a lot of it is being felt in our municipality," Blight said as the RM started letting its residents and ratepayers know.
"We're doing a phone blitz as we speak," said the reeve, who made some calls himself Monday night.
"There was shock," Blight said of residents' reaction. "They were quite surprised and not sure why some of the measures are being taken in our area."
But there's not much they can do, he said.
"The province declared a state of emergency and that trumps everything."
Blight said they're notifying more than the 150 homeowners the province said the controlled flood might affect.
"We're taking it to the farthest reaches," he said at the municipal office Monday night.
"We're in the middle of an emergency meeting and trying to plan our next few days."
Lights, action … Showtime in the packinghouse
(USDA-ARS) High-tech tactics to carefully examine apples and other fresh produce items as they travel along packinghouse conveyor belts will help ensure the quality and safety of these good-for-you foods.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists in
The system would provide, in a single image, evidence of certain kinds of defects or contaminants, according to biophysicist Moon S. Kim with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS). Defects could include cuts and bruises. Contaminants might include specks of fertilizer from orchard or field soil.
Kim, ARS agricultural engineers Yud-Ren Chen (now retired) and Kuanglin (Kevin) Chao, and ARS biomedical engineer Alan M. Lefcourt received a patent in 2010 for their automated approach to detecting defects and contaminants on the exterior of fresh produce or other items. The scientists work in the ARS Environmental Microbial and Food Safety Research Laboratory at Beltsville.
The team's system harnesses the capabilities of a type of camera known as a high-speed multispectral/hyperspectral line-scanner. Positioned above a conveyor belt, the scanner captures images of each fast-moving item, such as an apple. Each apple is exposed simultaneously to ultra-violet light from a UV fluorescent lamp and near infra-red light from a halogen lamp. The near infra-red light that bounces off the apple can be captured by an instrument known as a spectrograph and analyzed for tell-tale patterns of defects, while the UV light beamed on the apple can disclose the whereabouts of contaminants.
The system combines information from both forms of illumination into a single image with contaminant and defect results. When linked to a sorting machine, the system can signal the sorter to separate the problem apples from others.
At present, the system offers, at the rate of about 3 to 4 apples per second, a 180-degree view of each apple's exterior, Kim reports. The scientists are working to improve the process so it will provide a 360-degree whole-surface view for thorough inspection.
Preliminary findings from this work appeared in a 2008 issue of the journal Sensing and Instrumentation for Food Quality and Safety.
End Transmission