" I heard it through the AgLine"

June 4, 2010

 

 

·        Consumers unafraid of biotech foods

·        Central America awash in storm damage

·        DuPont sells mancozeb fungicide to UPL

·        Solving the mystery of a major crop malady

·        Iowa guard unit trains to help Afghan farmers

 

 

Consumers unafraid of biotech foods

 

(PharmPro.com) WASHINGTON, DC – A newly-released International Food Information Council (IFIC) survey shows that an overwhelming percentage of consumers will choose foods that are produced through biotechnology based on environmental benefits and sustainable agricultural practices.

 

 IFIC reported that consumers responded favorably to purchasing foods modified by biotechnology "to provide more healthful fats like Omega-3s (76 percent); to avoid trans fat (74 percent); or to make them taste better/fresher (67 percent)" while 73 percent of respondents would likely buy wheat-flour products that use biotechnology for sustainable production practices "to feed more people using fewer resources such as land and pesticides."

 

 "As consumers learn more about how biotechnology preserves food quality and nutrition, as well as its role in more sustainable food production, they overwhelmingly embrace foods using biotechnology," noted Sharon Bomer Lauritsen, Executive Vice President for Food and Agriculture at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

 

 The June 2010 report, "Consumer Perceptions of Food Technology," surveyed consumers' perceptions of various aspects of plant and animal biotechnology.  While overall consumer awareness of food biotechnology use remains low, zero percent of respondents listed biotechnology as something to be avoided and less than one percent sought food labeling related to biotechnology.  As survey participants learned of the benefits from biotechnology, such as preserving freshness, increasing nutritional qualities, and reducing water, pesticides, and land use, consumer favorability of biotechnology use in food production ranged from 67 percent to 80 percent.

 

 About three-quarters of survey respondents noted they knew little or nothing at all regarding the use of biotechnology in animals.  Like other biotechnology products, as consumers learned more about the benefits to animal health, food quality, and environmental impact, more than half of the consumers had a favorable impression of animal biotechnology use.

 

Return to Top

 

 

Central America awash in storm damage

 

(AP via Yahoo! News) GUATEMALA CITY - Three Central American countries battered by landslides and flooding are reassigning aid loans to help offset millions of dollars in damage caused by the season's first tropical storm, which killed 184 people.

 

Authorities in Guatemala — the hardest hit by Tropical Storm Agatha — said this week that $190 million in loans will be used to rebuild dozens of bridges and renovate homes for nearly 25,000 families.

 

The amount includes $85 million that the World Bank had slated for disaster preparedness, while other loans, including those designated to improve education, will be used to repair schools and other buildings, government spokesman Ronaldo Robles told The Associated Press.

 

He also warned of huge losses in the agriculture sector.

 

The country's association of exporters reported a 75 per cent drop in production in the vegetable and shrimp industries, while the National Coffee Association forecast a loss of 122,000 bags this season.

 

In Honduras, the government estimated the storm caused $90 million worth of damage, including $25 million in agricultural losses. Vice Livestock Minister Juan Carlos Ordonez predicted those figures will increase, saying inspection teams had barely started to report on damage across the country, which is the fourth poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

 

El Salvador's transportation minister, Gerson Martinez, said reconstruction efforts there could reach $20 million. Officials expected to release further details later.

 

Agatha made landfall Saturday near the Guatemala-Mexico border with tropical storm winds of up to 45 mph (75 kph). It dissipated the following day after causing landslides and floods that killed 184 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

 

Pope Benedict XVI issued a statement Wednesday urging the international community to provide humanitarian aid.

 

The European Union pledged $3.9 million, while the U.S. sent helicopters to Guatemala to help with rescue efforts and Japan promised Honduras more than $100,000 worth of emergency supplies.

 

Guatemalan Vice Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Ibarra said his country also would seek a temporary halt in deportations by the U.S. of Guatemalan migrants.

 

Return to Top

 

 

DuPont sells mancozeb fungicide to UPL

 

(News Wires) – Wilmington, DE – DuPont announced it has divested its global non-mixture mancozeb fungicide business assets to United Phosphorus, Ltd. (UPL), including manufacturing and formulation production facilities in Barranquilla, Colombia. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

 

UPL will receive rights to registered brands for non-mixture mancozeb products, as well as registrations and supporting regulatory data for those products, which include Manzate® brand fungicides. DuPont will continue to market and maintain registrations and trademarks for mancozeb mixtures such as DuPont™ Curzate® M, Equation® Contact and Mankocide® fungicides.

 

“DuPont is entering a critical and exciting phase in the renewal of its crop protection portfolio,” said James C. Collins, president – DuPont Crop Protection. “New products are emerging from our research and development pipeline and are launching in the marketplace, like DuPont™ Rynaxypyr®. Strategic divestitures like this one give us more resources and energy to focus on delivering innovations to growers that help them increase food production.”

 

DuPont is a science-based products and services company. Founded in 1802, DuPont puts science to work by creating sustainable solutions essential to a better, safer, healthier life for people everywhere. Operating in approximately 80 countries, DuPont offers a wide range of innovative products and services for markets including agriculture and food; building and construction; communications; and transportation.

 

Return to Top

 

 

Solving the mystery of a major crop malady

 

(USDA-ARS) – Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have solved a longstanding mystery as to why a pathogen that threatens the world's wheat supply can be so adaptable, diverse and virulent. It is because the fungus that causes the wheat disease called stripe rust may use sexual recombination to adapt to resistant varieties of wheat.

 

ARS plant pathologist Yue Jin and his colleagues Les Szabo and Marty Carson at the agency's Cereal Disease Laboratory at St. Paul, Minn., have shown for the first time that stripe rust, caused by Puccinia striiformis, is capable of sexually reproducing on the leaves of an alternate host called barberry, a common ornamental. The fungus also goes through asexual mutation. But sexual recombination offers an advantage because it promotes rapid reshuffling of virulence gene combinations and produces a genetic mix more likely to pass along traits that improve the chances for survival.

 

Barberry (Berberis spp) is already controlled in areas where wheat is threatened by stem rust, caused by another fungal pathogen. But the work by the ARS team is expected to lead to better control of barberry in areas like the Pacific Northwest, where cool temperatures during most of the wheat growing season make stripe rust a particular threat.

 

The researchers suspended wheat straw infected with the stripe rust pathogen over barberry plants and found that fungal spores from the wheat infected the barberry. They also took infected barberry leaves, treated them to promote the release of spores, and exposed them to wheat. Tests confirmed that the wheat plants were infected within about 10 days.

 

The researchers began the study last year after finding infected leaves on barberry plants at two sites on the University of Minnesota campus. They initially thought the symptoms were a sign that the stem rust pathogen had overcome the resistance commonly found in U.S. varieties of barberry.

 

Instead, they found barberry serving as a sexual or "alternate" host for stripe rust. When the overwintering spores of the stripe rust fungus germinate in the spring, they produce spores that reach barberry leaves, forming structures on the top of the leaves that allow mating between races or strains of the fungus. Spores resulting from this mating can, in turn, infect wheat.

 

Return to Top

 

 

Iowa guard unit trains to help Afghan farmers

 

(DesMoinesRegister.com) Boone, Ia. — The Iowa National Guardsmen who will help Afghanistan farmers know they'll face conditions vastly different from the fertile land of the Iowa State University Field Laboratory where they began field training this week.

 

The 734th Agri-business Development Team unit's mission is part of a series of Guard and Department of Agriculture teams sent to Afghanistan to try to weaken the Taliban by weaning the nation off its main cash crop, poppies grown for opium.

 

The guard unit is training at the Iowa State farm near Boone for four days this week. Members have been getting briefings and classroom work since January.

 

But Iowa conditions are nowhere like Afghanistan's.

 

Afghanistan rainfall averages about 8 inches per year, one-quarter of what Iowa receives and less than half the minimum of what Afghanistan's wheat crop will require.

 

Afghanistan has no mechanical irrigation, relying instead on soil and nutrient-wasting flood irrigation similar to that used for rice.

 

There is no anhydrous ammonia to provide nitrogen, and no fancy biotech seeds of the kind Iowa farmers have come to depend on for ever-expanding yields.

 

Undernourishment is a problem for up to 40 percent of the population, reducing the kind of vigor Iowa farmers take to their fields.

 

Finally, Iowa farmers don't work in fields surrounded by security forces, as will be the case when the guard team begins work in August in the northeast part of the war-torn nation.

 

"We were not a unit six months ago, but we're coming together," said their commander, Col. Craig Bargfrede, an Ankeny native who grew up on a hog and dairy farm and has spent two decades in the grain elevator business.

 

Bargfrede said one goal will be to help bridge the gap between the average wheat production of 19 bushels per acre in Afghanistan and the 60- to 80-bushel yields normal for U.S. farmers.

 

"Annual income is $400 per farmer," Bargfrede said. "If we can help raise that, we will accomplish our mission."

 

Iowa State University agronomy professor Mahdi Al-Kaisi, an Iraq native who knows the harsh conditions, both political and agronomic, of the Middle East, said, "This will be an extremely difficult undertaking."

 

The U.S. death toll in Afghanistan reached 1,000 last week as the military focuses on defeating the Taliban resistance. The military deaths in the last 10 months surpassed those in the conflict's first five years.

 

But those realities haven't cut the optimism and hope that have spread over the more than 60 members of the Iowa Guard unit, who will deploy for 12 months to Afghanistan.

 

The group is drawn from various specialties, ranging from on-farm work to grain elevators, engineering, government and other disciplines needed for farming.

 

Marty Osmundson graduated from Des Moines North High School but has engineering experience with a construction company.

 

"Engineering and mechanical skills are needed in agriculture everywhere, whether it's Iowa or Afghanistan," Osmundson said. "We want to help make a difference."

 

While Osmundson is preparing for his first deployment, Rick McClain of Stockport in southeast Iowa has done two Iraq deployments. He raises hay and alfalfa on his 160-acre farm, but said he knows where to go to get ideas for more basic agriculture.

 

"I plan to visit some of the Amish farms in southeast Iowa and see how they do things," McClain said. "That might help relate to what we'll see over there."

 

Iowa's heavy emphasis on corn and soybeans would make the Iowa Guard unit an uncertain choice to connect with Afghan wheat farmers.

 

But Mark Carlton of ISU Extension, who briefed the unit on wheat farming practices, said "there's actually quite a bit of wheat grown in southeast Iowa."

 

Carlton said a big challenge will be figuring out how to get the needed 80 to 90 pounds per acre of nitrogen onto Afghan wheat without the steady supply of anhydrous ammonia that U.S. farmers use.

 

Livestock manure would be an obvious answer, but Al-Kaisi said Afghanistan doesn't have a hog industry, and its herds of cattle, goats and sheep are thin and have an uncertain supply of nutrients.

 

"The soil management is the real challenge," said Lt. Col. Neil Stockfleth of Sergeant Bluff, who spent 20 years with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, mostly with the Soil Conservation Service.

 

Soil testing will be crucial, Stockfleth said. The training Tuesday included hands-on field work with ISU agronomy professor John Sawyer on taking soil samples.

 

"We can have some tests done in Pakistan, but some soils will be sent back to Iowa State for testing just to make sure," Stockfleth said.

 

Stockfleth answered the obvious question about the safety of the Guardsmen while they are in the fields with Afghan farmers.

 

"We'll have security around the perimeters of the fields," he said. "So I would say that the farm fields probably will be one of the safer places in the country."

 

He said another agricultural mission to Afghanistan had discovered that loyalty could be converted into security.

 

"A California unit that did similar work found out that after the farmers developed confidence in the units, that the farmers would help with security and look out after the troops," Stockfleth said.

 

Return to Top

 

 

End Transmission