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May 26, 2011
· Perennial crops hold hope for environment
· Rooftop greenhouse redefines locally grown
· Argentine growers tempted by Monsanto bait
· Infection allows whiteflies to thrive – study
· Economic report says NAFTA costs US jobs
Perennial crops hold hope for environment
(desmoinesregister.com) Washington, D.C. — The time could come when farmers aren't getting on their tractors every spring to plant their crops, or even plowing their fields, exposing them to erosion.
At least that's the vision of a few scientists - and a senior Obama administration official - who want to develop perennial versions of corn, wheat, rice and other crops that don't need to be planted every year and wouldn't cause the environmental damage linked to growing conventional grains.
"Getting to the yields of today's corn in central
"With prior technology, it would have taken 100-plus years. Now, I think we can do it in 20 years with a concerted effort."
The idea of replacing annual food crops with perennials has
long been on the fringe of agricultural research, largely confined to a private
facility in
But Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan, a lead author of the nation's organic food standards during a previous stint at the USDA, has been talking up perennial grains as a promising way to produce food with less environmental impact.
"We're interested in the development of perennial
grains - big seeds, high yields," she said at a recent food-policy
conference in
She noted that the USDA is funding some initial research into the genetic basis of perennialism and developing the genetics for breeding perennial crops.
Perennial crops, however, have little appeal to today's agribusiness, including seed giants like Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto.
"They depend on selling a lot of seed every year,"
said Bill Beavis, interim director of
So far, the USDA is spending nothing close to what scientists say the research needs.
An article last year in the journal Science co-authored by Buckler and scientists at the Land Institute and elsewhere, said perennial grain crops could be ready in 20 years but that it would take a funding commitment comparable to what the government is now putting into developing biofuel crops.
The USDA has asked Congress for $1 million in fiscal 2012
for perennial grain or sunflower research at its own labs, a slight increase
over this year's funding. In 2009-10, the department provided about $1.5
million in grants for perennial grains research at the Land Institute and a few
universities, including
A serious effort to breed perennial corn crops would require spending $1 million to $2 million for five years to identify the genes necessary for perennialism, Buckler said. After that, $10 million to $20 million a year and dozens of scientists would be needed to breed a perennial corn that could eventually be commercialized, he said.
With deep roots, perennial crops would prevent top soil from washing away, lessening the need for nitrogen fertilizer and reducing the amount of farm chemicals that pollute rivers and streams.
"Before agriculture, 95 percent of the Earth's ice-free
land surface was covered by mixtures of perennial plants," said Stan Cox,
senior research scientist at the Land Institute, which has focused on crops
such as wheat because of the center's location in
Perennial crops could help save
Research in
Those perennial strips could provide a double benefit to growers if perennial crops produced a grain that the farmers could harvest and sell, Liebman said.
It's a steep challenge to develop perennials that can produce grain at the rate of annuals, which have fed humans for millennia. There are tradeoffs when breeding plants for producing seed, or grain, or for longevity, scientists say. Perennials put much of their efforts into developing roots, rather than seeds.
Still, Buckler said it's theoretically possible to develop perennials that produce even more grain than annuals, based on the fact that perennials have a longer growing season and won't need to re-grow their roots.
Buckler and his USDA colleagues have been studying perennial
relatives of corn, including one with the scientific name of Zea diploperennis. The grassy
plant doesn't flower or produce seeds in climates such as
"That's a massive crop market," Hart said. "Trying to develop something that will replace even part of that is a massive achievement."
Rooftop greenhouse redefines locally grown
(dcnonl.com)
– An unusual construction project is nearing completion in
What makes it unusual is that it’s on a roof — all 31,000 square feet of it.
The owner, Lufa Farms, is calling it the world’s first commercial-scale greenhouse on a roof, and it plans to grow about two dozen different vegetable crops, bringing Montrealers locally-grown produce year round.
But Lufa isn’t a “dirt” farm; the growing operation will be hydroponic. Some types of plants grow directly in the water; others are grown in an inert medium, such as gravel or coconut husk, and are irrigated with the nutrient solutions.
There has been a lot written of late about high-rise urban farms, and some proposed designs have been wildly futuristic. Not this one.
This urban farm is atop a low building in an industrial area
north of
It consists of several long greenhouses. It’s a green roof in a way, but there are no pathways, no frills. Just greenhouses.
Mohamed Hage and Kurt Lynn had the idea for the farm, brought in Howard Resh, a well-known horticulturalist, and then spent about four years in study and consultation with architects, engineers, plant scientists, nutritionists and greenhouse operators before launching construction during the summer.
One of their important supporters was Michel Leonard, president of Fonds de placement immobilier BTB, the firm that owns and manages the office building under the Lufa greenhouse.
He says putting greenhouses on roofs is a good idea for developers and owners because there are “many benefits, including a new source of revenue and a more responsible posture with respect to urban issues.”
“We were willing to take a risk with Lufa Farms on this project because we think there can be many interesting and profitable development possibilities that come out of this. We’ve had to work out several unusual issues with the construction and zoning of the greenhouse, but frankly, this takes ‘going green’ for building and development to a new level.”
A number of specialists were involved, including Westbrook
Greenhouse Systems, of Beamsville, Ont., a supplier
of commercial greenhouse structures, and GKC, a
The first crops are to be seeded in January, with harvesting to begin a few weeks later.
As the crop rotation develops, the farm will offer a range of perhaps two dozen fruits and vegetables.
They plan to have things like potatoes, onions, carrots, berries, tomatoes and the like. All will be organic; none will be genetically modified.
Consumers will be able to buy by subscription. That means signing a contract to receive a basket of assorted produce, delivered weekly.
Lufa Farms is already looking for
more rooftops to farm, scouting not only for a second
They’re especially interested, they say, in buildings that offer 100,000 square feet of roof space or more.
Argentine growers tempted by Monsanto bait
Monsanto's attempt to sell an earlier version of its seeds
introduced 15 years ago was a flop after the company failed to obtain an
Argentine patent and its efforts to collect royalties were foiled by local
regulations.
Its new Roundup Ready 2 seeds, which are resistant to glyphosate-based herbicides and insect pests, are expected to increase yields by 10% to 15%, according to St. Louis-based Monsanto.
Monsanto hopes to reach an agreement with at least 80% of the country's growers as "a sign that the Argentine farm sector really wants to move forward with this technology," Pablo Vaquero, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Director for Southern Latin America, said in an interview.
Vaquero said that about 2,600 farmers who cultivate 4.5 million hectares, or 25% of the nation's farmland, have already agreed to the deal. The company is focusing on large-scale growers in a country where about 10,000 farmers are responsible for 80% of soy production, he said.
Today, Monsanto mainly sells transgenic corn seeds in
Monsanto has patented the new soy seeds in
Monsanto's efforts have run into fierce resistance from one of the country's leading farm groups, the Argentine Agrarian Federation, or FAA, which represents small-scale growers.
The FAA's May newsletter carries a broad banner on the title page exhorting farmers to "Stand Up To Monsanto" and tells them to refuse to sign any kind of agreement.
The company "is looking to control the productive process and convert the farmer into Monsanto's tenant," the FAA said. "It's a return to feudalism."
Monsanto has enjoyed strong sales of Round Up Ready 2 in the
Monsanto is well aware of the risk that its new seeds could
be smuggled across the border to
In fact, Brazilian farmers engaged in a similar scheme a
decade ago when they saw the high yields their Argentine counterparts were
getting with Monsanto seeds. Despite being illegal in
"We can't do anything to stop the seeds from coming
into
"The risk exists and we're doing everything we can to avoid a repeat of the past," he added.
The company may have better luck with organizations representing large-scale farmers.
"We're working together with the other farm groups to find a way to effectively pay for the new technology," the President of the Argentine Rural Society, Hugo Biolcati, said in an interview.
"We're not willing to give up the 'own use' right in its entirety, but it's possible to accept some new regulations," said Biolcati, who leads the country's largest farm group.
The Argentine Rural Society hasn't decided whether to recommend that its members sign the agreement, or not, but it is studying the issue.
"Farmers are going to do whatever they wish, but they'll have a clear explanation from us of the consequences," Biolcati said.
Infection allows whiteflies to thrive – study
(Arizona Daily Star) – In a situation reminiscent of Spider-Man, a team led by UA researchers has discovered sweet-potato whiteflies - a common crop pest - experience "instant" evolution when infected with Rickettsia bacteria, which allows them to thrive better than uninfected whiteflies.
Researchers believe they may be able to use the findings to fight agricultural pests and the spread of plant viruses.
While it's not exactly a Peter Parker-like transformation, the infected sweet-potato whitefly shows evolutionary advantages, called "fitness," over a short time.
The advantages include increased fertility, faster development and greater survival rates, though there's no visible change, researcher Anna Himler said.
Molly Hunter, a
"You add a genome to your own and suddenly you're a different animal," she said.
In six years, the bacterium has infected almost the entire
population of whiteflies in
Whiteflies cause millions of dollars in crop damage, Himler said.
There are several reasons they're so detrimental to
agriculture, she said: First, with a mild climate like
Because whiteflies thrive in warmer climates, they're able to move from crop to crop year-round.
Additionally, much the way mosquitoes transfer malaria to humans, whiteflies transmit plant viruses, spreading disease among uninfected plants of the same crop.
Lastly, whiteflies produce a sticky substance they flick onto plants, which then gathers mold and may ruin the crop.
"What we're finding out is that the addition of a particular (bacteria) is possibly making this pest worse," Hunter said.
The instant evolution isn't just good for the whitefly - it's good for the bacteria, too.
An infected whitefly helps spread the bacteria because it's transferred from mother to offspring, meaning there are more bacteria in the next generation.
But the bacteria also changes the whiteflies' sex ratio, Hunter said, forcing them to produce a greater number of females, which creates a route for the bacteria to better spread in successive generations.
But the whiteflies aren't always benefiting from the bacteria.
A skewed sex ratio can mean trouble. When the sex ratio is biased toward females, the fitness benefit of producing males - which would lead to more mating opportunities - is tremendous, Hunter said. So causing whiteflies to produce more females than males is a source of conflict between whiteflies and their Rickettsia companions.
The research team isn't yet sure how the bacteria increases the fitness of the insect, but its members do have a few theories: One is the possibility the Rickettsia lets whiteflies change plant chemistry in a way that makes plants more nutritious. Another theory is that there are performance-reducing pathogens like viruses within whiteflies that Rickettsia protects against.
"We don't yet have evidence of either, but this is the direction we're going," Hunter said.
Though the team has good lab data, it plans to study the effect of the bacteria in the field to confirm its results.
The research may support agriculture in the future. The addition of bacteria is a potential agricultural problem, but researchers eventually may be able to manipulate insects and bacteria to increase the fitness of a pest's natural enemy, for example, or act upon bacteria to stop hosts from transmitting plant viruses.
"This is the start of a lot more work to be done," Himler said. She said it's exciting to look at several hypotheses about the effects of bacteria on these insects. The group's work was recently published in the journal Science.
"There's a whole world of microbial stuff going on affecting their larger hosts," Himler said. "We're just tapping into that."
About The Sweet-Potato Whiteflies
• They're not actually flies - sweet-potato whiteflies are more closely related to aphids.
• Sweet-potato whiteflies feed on a number of different plants, unlike most whiteflies.
• The "B" biotype of sweet-potato whitefly is considered the most troublesome for agriculture.
• The sweet-potato whitefly can be found all over the world
in temperate climates, such as the Caribbean,
Economic report says NAFTA costs US jobs
(The
Commercial Appeal)
But a report by the Economic Policy Institute earlier this month analyzed the terms of the agreement and concluded it would lead to displacing 159,000 American jobs in its first seven years.
The same report, "Heading South: U.S.-Mexico Trade and job displacement after NAFTA," makes the case that the free-trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that went into effect in 1994 has cost 682,900 American jobs, three-fifths of them in the manufacturing sector.
In the three states of the Mid-South, while some jobs were
created from increased exports, far more were lost when manufacturing
production lines left the region as tariff barriers fell.
In
The five congressional districts of the Greater Memphis area lost 7,500 jobs in that period, the report indicates.
As the report says, "Trade both creates and destroys jobs. While exports tend to support domestic employment, imports lead to job displacement: As imports are substituted for domestically produced goods, production that supports domestic jobs falls, displacing existing jobs and preventing new job creation..."
"Like NAFTA, the (Korean Free Trade Agreement) will likely
result in growing trade deficits and hence
The EPI, since 1986 a leading nonprofit think tank that analyzes the impact of economic policy on the middle- and lower classes, predicts in the 32-page report that domestic jobs in the motor vehicle and auto parts and computer and electronic parts industries, in particular, would be hardest hit if the Korean agreement goes through. Those are the same industries negatively affected by bilateral free trade agreements, it said.
Opponents of NAFTA as it worked its way through Congress in
the early 1990s predicted job losses and a race to the bottom as good-paying
jobs went to export assembly plants, known as maquiladoras,
across the border in
International Brotherhood of Teamsters president James P. Hoffa said in response to an inquiry by The Commercial Appeal last week that "EPI's findings come as no surprise to our membership.
"We have said from the beginning that NAFTA was a job killer. We shouldn't be sending American jobs with good American benefits to countries with cheap labor and no benefits. That is not fair trade," Hoffa said.
The
"With respect to the U.S.-Korea trade agreement, we are
committed to ensuring that the significant economic promise of that agreement
is fully realized -- more than $10 billion in increased annual exports of
"The U.S.-South Korea trade agreement will provide
The agreement would eliminate tariffs on two-thirds of
American agricultural exports to
The
The
The U.S. Trade Representative's website indicates the
The EPI report says that the North American Free Trade
Agreement made it attractive to companies all over the world to invest in
Another effect of NAFTA has been that wages have not kept pace with labor productivity, resulting in rising income inequality, and putting more pressure on the American manufacturing base, according to Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
End Transmission