" I heard it through the AgLine"

June 3, 2010

 

 

·        Go vegetarian, cut fuels to save planet – UN

·        Libby’s hopes to avoid pumpkin shortage

·        Pioneer plans to acquire three seed firms

·        EU battles over billions in farm handouts

·        ARS explores irradiation for safer salads

 

 

Go vegetarian, cut fuels to save planet – UN

 

(Reuters via Yahoo! News) – An overhaul of world farming and more vegetarianism should be top priorities to protect the environment, along with curbs on fossil fuel use, a U.N.-backed study said on Wednesday

 

The report said food production and fossil fuel use caused pollution, greenhouse gases, diseases and forest destruction.

 

"How the world is fed and fueled will in large part define development in the 21st century," said the 112-page report by the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management.

 

"Agricultural production accounts for a staggering 70 percent of the global freshwater consumption, 38 percent of the total land use and 14 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme.

 

The report said consumers could help by cutting down on meat consumption and use of fossil fuels in heating or travel. "Animal products are important because more than half of the world's crops are used to feed animals, not people," it said.

 

"A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

 

Researchers said it was no surprise fossil fuels were a top concern.

 

"More surprising was food production -- agriculture, fishing and pasture," Edgar Hertwich, lead author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, told Reuters.

 

Reform "will be a titanic task, but one that is essential for our future prosperity and quality of life," Janez Potocnik, European Environment Commissioner, said in a statement.

 

Increasing wealth in developing nations could mean more damage, such as more demand for meat.

 

"Meat consumption per capita in China rose by 42 percent over eight years from 1995 to 2003," said Sangwon Suh of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

 

The study also said that the world should focus on improving use of materials such as plastics, iron, steel and aluminum.

 

Janet Salem of UNEP said the report should remind people in urban areas that clearance of distant forests -- making way for farmland and destroying habitats of animals and plants -- could be traced to their choice of food in supermarkets.

 

"Faraway environmental impacts are related to people in cities," she said.

 

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Libby’s hopes to avoid pumpkin shortage

 

(The Washington Post) Six cans: That's the sum total of the 100-Percent Pure Pumpkin inventory at Libby's, the company that dominates the U.S. market.

 

And that, in turn, has limited consumer options before the start of another high-use season. A couple of 29-ounce cans of Libby's are going for nearly $30 on eBay. A meager supply of organic canned pumpkin is available in Washington area stores.

 

With pumpkin-planting season about three weeks away, you could get ready to grow your own. But the best bet might be to start praying for sunshine in pumpkinland, or central Illinois, source of nearly 95 percent of all American-grown pumpkins that are commercially prepped, cooked and canned.

 

By harvest time late last summer, after three growing seasons with too much rain and not enough sun, the rich Illinois soil could take no more. Tractors got "buried up to their axles in mud," said Libby's spokeswoman Roz O'Hearn, "and we couldn't harvest all the pumpkin we had grown." Well before Thanksgiving, the company had dispatched its last shipment, a disappointing end to a second year of shortages. Most other brands grown and processed in the same area soon ran out as well.

 

Trying to head off another shortage, Libby's, a subsidiary of Nestle responsible for 87 percent of the canned pumpkin sold from September to December, has added crop acreage this year. O'Hearn said she expects the company's canned pumpkin to return in September, "as long as Mother Nature is cooperative."

 

This year got off to "a much better start" than last, says Illinois state climatologist Jim Angel, with "warmer-than-normal temperatures through April and almost normal precipitation." But May was cooler and wetter than usual, with rainfall a worrisome 1.5 inches above normal on the fields where Libby's pumpkin seed will be planted this month.

 

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Pioneer plans to acquire three seed firms

 

(DesMoinesRegister.com) – Pioneer Hi-Bred said Wednesday that it has agreements to buy NuTech Seed of Ames and two other seed companies, AgVenture of Kentland, Ind., and Hoegemeyer Hybrids of Hooper, Neb.

 

Terms were not disclosed for the purchases, which are expected to close later this year.

 

The three companies have been part of Pioneer's Proaccess marketing system since Proaccess was organized in 2008. Proaccess continues to include five other seed companies in Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Louisiana.

 

The Proaccess members already have the right to sell Pioneer-licensed products. Although NuTech and other Proaccess members carry Pioneer traits and germplasm in their seeds, they will be free to use genetic traits from other companies as well.

 

Bart Baudler, director of Proaccess for Pioneer, said the Johnston company wished to make permanent its relationship with the three seed companies it is purchasing. Other purchases may be in the works.

 

Pioneer in 2009 reversed a decade of lost market shares to Monsanto and its DeKalb, Asgrow and Kruger subsidiaries. Pioneer said sales through the Proaccess network contributed half of Pioneer's 2-percentage-point gain in corn market share.

 

Pioneer now has 32 percent of the North American seed corn market, trailing Monsanto's 36 percent. In soybeans, Pioneer leads with 26 percent of the market. Monsanto is reported to have about 23 percent.

 

NuTech general manager Tim Elliott said the sale "will allow our customers to continue to gain access to new genetics and traits."

 

Monsanto, meanwhile, on Wednesday announced the licensing of its Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybean technology to Dow Agrosciences, which sells primarily through the Mycogen brand.

 

Roundup Ready 2 Yield is touted by Monsanto as the successor to Roundup Ready genetic technology, which goes off patent in 2014.

 

Most notably, the Monsanto-Dow agreement allows Dow to "stack," or combine, Roundup Ready 2 Yield traits with Dow-developed traits. Controversy over similar stacking by Pioneer with Roundup Ready traits led Monsanto to file a patent infringement lawsuit against Pioneer last year.

 

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EU battles over billions in farm handouts

 

(AFP via Yahoo! News) – MERIDA, Spain – Britain, France and Germany Tuesday staked out their positions ahead of an impending showdown over reform of the EU's controversial policy of agricultural subsidies.

 

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, plans to present its proposals for a reworking of the Common Agricultural Policy in November and a new CAP is to come into effect on January 1, 2014.

 

But the CAP, which provides billions of euros (dollars) in subsidies for food production and currently accounts for around 40 percent of total EU spending, is a major source of tension.

 

Britain leads a small group of nations opposed to what it sees as a costly system of subsidies to bolster an inefficient farming industry.

 

It has long called for a cut in EU farm spending to free up funds for other areas such as efforts to boost economic competitiveness, leaving farmers to deal with the rules of the market.

 

Britain's new agriculture minister, Caroline Spelman, on Tuesday told a meeting of EU farm ministers in Merida, southwest Spain, that London wants to see "a reduction and reorientation" of spending in the CAP.

 

Britain faces strong opposition from France, which has pledged to defend the CAP from deep cuts.

 

France, which received 9.5 billion euros under the scheme in 2009, is the main beneficiary of CAP subsidies.

 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said earlier this year he was ready to risk provoking a "crisis" in European relations in his efforts to defend French farmers from the dismantling of the CAP.

 

French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire on Tuesday said Paris is working with Germany on a joint position that will be ready later this year.

 

Germany, the second largest CAP beneficiary, wants "to fight side by side with France," said his German counterpart, Ilse Aigner.

 

But the two countries differ over regulations to protect farmers from market fluctuations, which Le Maire described as a "non-negotiable" point.

 

"On regulation, the French are going further than us," said a member of Aigner's entourage.

 

Paris and Berlin also want to form an alliance with Poland to better confront Britain.

 

But Poland, which received 2.03 billion euros in subsidies last year, is one of the new EU states which feel they have been badly treated under the distribution of subsidies, based on traditional criteria of the older EU nations.

 

The EU's agriculture commissioner, Romania's Dacian Ciolos, said the traditional criteria for subsidies are "today unjustified."

 

Le Maire said "we are ready to revise traditional criteria, it is already a real opening" toward Warsaw but added that the main issue was "how far to go and at what speed."

 

Aigner hoped that a redistribution in favour of the newer EU states should be as gradual as possible in order to avoid any "too sudden" loss to farmers.

 

The reforms aim to make European agriculture more competitive in the world market as the continent faces pressure to reduce its subsidies for the sake of poor farmers from the developing world.

 

Spain, as the EU's rotating president, has just launched negotiations on a free trade pact with the Latin American bloc Mercosur despite objections by a number of countries led by France.

 

Some 4,000 farmers demonstrated outside the site of the conference in Merida, accusing the Spanish government of failing to keep its promises to the sector.

 

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ARS explores irradiation for safer salads

 

(USDA-ARS) – Irradiating salad leaves after washing reduces harmful and non-harmful microorganisms. Now, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and colleagues have looked into the effect of various levels of irradiation on concentrations of four vitamins and four carotenoids in two popular baby-leaf spinach cultivars.

 

The study was conducted by post-harvest plant physiologist Gene Lester and entomologist Guy Hallman at the ARS Crop Quality and Fruit Insects Research Unit in Weslaco, Texas. Lester is now with the ARS Food Quality Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.

 

For the study, two spinach cultivars were grown, harvested, sanitized and packaged according to industry practices. Each cultivar was packaged in both air or nitrogen gas as used by industry to extend shelf life. The cultivars then were exposed to up to 2.0 kiloGrays (kGy) of radiation in 0.5 kGy increments. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved up to 4 kGy of irradiation for fresh iceberg lettuce and spinach.

 

Following irradiation, leaf tissues were tested for concentrations of vitamins C, E, K and folate (sometimes called vitamin B9) and the four carotenoids lutein/zeaxanthin, neoxanthin, violoxanthin and beta carotene. Lester and colleagues found generally that four nutrients--folate, E, K and neoxanthin--exhibited little or no change in concentration with increasing levels of irradiation.

 

Levels of lutein/zeaxanthin, and B-carotene--which make up 80 percent of all carotenoids in spinach--were reduced on average by 12 percent at the 2.0 kGy level, which is within the range of natural variation.

 

In addition, irradiation decreased ascorbic acid levels by 42 percent, mainly due to irradiation converting vitamin C to an oxidized form called dehydroascorbic acid. While the increased dehydroacsorbic acid with irradiation is an indicator of stress, the converted ascorbic acid provides the same benefits as vitamin C inside the leaf, according to the authors.

 

The researchers wanted to build on literature-based food safety evidence by controlling growth and other environmental variables that could affect nutrient depletion. More details on this study can be found in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

 

ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The research supports the USDA priority of ensuring food safety.

 

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