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June 21, 2011
· Syngenta expects to double key crop sales
· Calif. growers united against new water regs
· Wild pollinators take over for honeybees
· India’s food chain seeing big changes
· Peruvian spuds have high-tech home
Syngenta expects to double key crop sales
Informing investors at the company's capital markets day at
its Jealott's Hill Research Centre in the
"Our confidence in the future growth potential of our business is underpinned by an innovation pipeline which will increase sales of key crops to over $17 billion [after] 2015 from $8.4 billion today", said chief executive Mike Mack. "This, combined with our integrated business model, will enable us to grow faster than the global market and deliver superior returns to our shareholders."
Syngenta, based in
According to recent research published by consultancy marketsandmarkets, the sector is set to grow sales at double- digit rates over the next five years. This is because food prices have soared during 2010 and 2011 and have remained at elevated levels ever since, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation. The body's FAO Food Price Index, which includes cereals, oils and meat, stood at 232 points in May, slightly below its record level of 238 points, which it hit in February.
Syngenta in February launched an restructuring that will integrate the commercial operations of its seeds and crop protection divisions, helping the Swiss company, which was created out of Novartis AG (NVS) and AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) in 2000, keep costs in check and also spur sales.
Innovative products such as the recent launch of a seed protection product designed to help shield the root system of cereals and soybean--and which could fetch global peak sales of some $200 million--should also help the company outgrow the market and expand its market share to 17% over the next few years.
According to consultancy marketsandmarkets, the global agrochemical market is expected to grow $223 billion in 2015 from $134 billion in 2010. The consultancy said the rise is "due to increasing population and decreasing land availability" and is "also driven by the use of agrochemicals in the production of biofuels, which are rapidly gaining in importance over traditional petroleum-based fuel."
This situation has proved a boon for agriculture companies, which had previously struggled to find fresh avenues of growth and at a time when most farmers were concerned about food price developments, making them reluctant to buy newer and often more expensive products. As food prices have remained at high and comparatively stable level, companies such as Syngenta were recently able to lift prices.
Analysts and investors welcomed Syngenta's bold projection, sending its shares higher. The stock, which has remained flat this year despite the company's strong first quarter performance, also benefited from CEO Mack's confident statement about the company's "robust" performance in the second quarter. At 1146 GMT, the shares were up 3.4%, or CHF9.1, at CHF278.4 in a slightly higher Swiss stock market.
"The outlook for its key crops business is above consensus," said Zuercher Kantonalbank. "It's also positive that the company remains confident about its second quarter performance as there were market concerns that the bad weather might have impacted its business." Other analysts agreed, noting that Syngenta may also increase dividends or launch share buybacks if the agrochemical market remains sound.
Calif.
(Santa
Cruz Sentinel)
"It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my
life," said Peixoto, whose
Peixoto is not alone in that view.
Large and small farmers throughout the
Moving slowly toward a September vote, the rules would
radically reshape how farms in the Pajaro and
But those controversial, and largely unknown, rules could
still be part of the mix as Gov. Jerry Brown seeks a final budget solution that
likely would need at least some Republican support, including possibly from
Republicans whose districts include the
What's at stake? Merely safe drinking water for Californians, the price of putting food on the table, the economic vitality of a $36 billion farming industry, and a decision that should resonate for years, locally and across the country.
The rules propose tough new rules for farmers that aim to eliminate pesticide discharges and limit nitrate runoff and even sediment runoff.
Problems from nitrates
Nitrates, which can enter groundwater through fertilizer, are a nationwide problem and growing point of contention between farmers, regulators and environmentalists seeking to ensure access to safe water. In levels that exceed safe drinking levels — and a lot of the untreated groundwater beneath the Central Coast does — nitrates can lead to numerous ailments, including a blood problem known as Blue Baby Syndrome, when an infant's blood is incapable of carrying sufficient oxygen.
The rules also implement a broad monitoring and enforcement program that has farmers up in arms.
While some general monitoring has been done to outline the scope of the problem, the proposed rules also allow the board to keep records on individual farms, and make those records public.
In other words, the rules name names.
Farmers have objected on numerous grounds, and Peixoto's sentiment is a common one. Farmers say it's hard to pinpoint exactly how much farms contribute to the nitrate problem (something many agree with) and that seeking to prevent pesticide runoff amounts to a back door regulation on pesticide use.
"It would be impossible to have zero runoff," Peixoto said.
More than 100 groups have weighed in on the proposals, which
would affect farms from
"Everyone has a dog in this fight, even if they don't know it," said Gary Shallcross, a former member of the board weighing the rules, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. "There hasn't been much press on it, and part of the reason is, it's so complicated."
It wasn't always like this. When the state signaled more that a decade ago that it wanted to get a handle on the water quality problem posed by agriculture, the two sides ventured forward in a spirit of cooperation. Proposals were advanced that helped outline the scope of the problem and begin work on solutions.
New set of rules
But a second set of rules was due in 2009, and with more aggressive rules, things changed. That spirit of cooperation — forged in part by people no longer part of the debate — now seems an idyllic memory.
"Everybody looked to the
Shallcross, a pro-environment former board member replaced in one of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's last acts in office, agrees with Merkley's assessment, even if their outlook on new proposed rules differs.
If passed, the rules would hand environmentalists their biggest victory yet in their battle against nitrates, an issue some say dwarfs the biggest environmental struggles of the past several decades. A win here gives them a pedestal from which to carry the fight nationally.
"These are serious, serious problems. We should be glad
to live in a state where it's easier to have your voice heard," said
"We're not interested in (type of) agriculture that's
taking place in the
Merkley bristles at those kind of sentiments. He said the Farm Bureau is having "high-level" conversations about finding ways to ensure communities have access to safe water. To him, some of the players in the environmental community seem less interested in finding solutions and saving farms, particularly small ones, than in raising money and building their organizations' membership lists.
Other regional water boards have proposed tough rules, but
it's widely acknowledged that the
Not backing down
In an email, the board staff made clear it has no intention of backing down. Supporters say that's because this region grows crops such as strawberries and lettuce that require added fertilizer, which contributes to water problems.
"The water board is the only agency with the authority and responsibility to take on this challenge," wrote Lisa McCann, supervisor of the watershed protection section of the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.
As the two sides have become more entrenched, speculation
has turned to whether lawmakers in
Normally, state lawmakers would hold only persuasive authority over the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. In fact, many have weighed in through letters that almost universally criticize the aggressive rules.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, long a supporter of working with farmers cooperatively to develop clean-water strategies, sent his own strong letter.
Fear of more conflict
"I fear that if the (board) implements the staff's current ... proposal, much of the time, energy and resources that previously went into water quality measures, will instead be channeled into further conflict over practical viability, economic impact and scientific validity of the new (proposal) itself," Farr wrote in February.
But the board has been unable to vote on the rules. With three vacancies and two members who cannot vote because of conflict-of-interest rules, the board lacks a quorum. And since the governor is tasked with filling those vacancies, Brown could wield vast sway over how the controversy plays out.
Speculation has focused on the two moderate Republican
senators representing the
Brown would need both votes, along with two Republican members of the Assembly, to force through a budget that includes an extension of taxes due to expire June 30. His budget veto last week is likely to renew efforts to win that support.
Weeks ago, members of Brown's staff notified select members of the environmental community that Republicans had placed the Central Coast proposed rules on the table as a talking point during budget discussions, said several sources familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A spokesman for Brown said the governor was working to fill the vacancies, but declined to say whether the agricultural water rules are on the table as a potential piece of the final budget solution.
Worried about changes
Environmentalists are guarding against any
"Our understanding is, one of the asks in the budget — and this is all being done behind closed doors — is easing up on the ag regulations. And that's real problematic," said Jennifer Cleary of Save Our Shores.
During a hectic week in
"I am gravely concerned that the increasing level of regulation and mitigation requirements ... will result in the loss of productive agricultural land and will threaten the existence of small farmers and ranchers," Cannella wrote to the board in March.
Cannella is not alone in those
sentiments. Even Democratic Assemblymen Luis Alejo of
In a statement provided by his staff, Blakeslee said more work needs to be done on the rules.
Blakeslee's concerns
"An ag ... program must be developed to protect water quality without driving agriculture out of our state," Blakeslee said. "I continue to be concerned that the staff proposal fails to strike the right balance."
Lobbying, of course, is a vital part of any regulated industry, and Merkley doesn't deny that he's spoken with state lawmakers and the highest levels of state government about the issue.
"We're constantly asked by legislators who represent that region, and the governor's office, what's going on down there? What's happening? What's your side of the story?" Merkley said.
Merkley said the Farm Bureau prefers to work with staff to make the rules more palatable.
"When that fails, sometimes that's your only other option, to raise it to a higher level," he said.
But environmentalists are hoping the board sticks to its guns, with a vote on the rules now scheduled for September.
"We, as a country, as a state, have an obligation to provide water that is safe for families," said Bhatnagar of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water. "We don't want farms to go away, but they have to become sustainable."
Wild pollinators taking over for honeybees
(physorg.com)
Bumblebees, solitary bees and other wild pollinating insects are much more
important for pollinating
They found that honeybee populations have nose-dived so dramatically in recent years that they can only do half as much pollination as they did in the early 1980s.
Where honeybees used to provide around 70 per cent of the
Paradoxically over the last 20 years, the proportion of
This means that honeybees can't be solely responsible, or aren't the only important pollinator.
So if honeybees aren't pollinating the crops, what is? The researchers think that other important pollinating insects, such as bumblebees, hoverflies and solitary bees must be making up the shortfall.
"Our finding suggests that wild insect pollinators make
a much bigger contribution to
£400 million per year
Insect pollination is estimated to be worth around £400
million per year to
"We had an inclination that this wasn't an accurate figure at all," says Breeze. "Honeybees have been in decline for years, so it didn't make sense."
Indeed, there's zero large scale research that backs up the assumption that honeybees are the biggest pollinators.
So Breeze and colleagues from the
Bee Swarm Removal L.A - Go green and Call (818)884-6891 10% Off on your First Appointment - www.abeeking.com
This is the first time anyone has looked at the contribution from both honeybees and other pollinators on such a grand scale.
"Bumblebees, hoverflies and red mason bees are key wild
pollinators, but there are at least 250 bee species alone in the
Although Breeze and his colleagues found that honeybees don't provide the same level of service that other species do, they point out that it's not one pollinator or the other that's important; both types are crucial.
"There was a seminal study in 2006 which found that you get the best pollination, best yields and best fruit when you have both wild pollinators and honeybees," says Breeze.
He says the next step for this research is to do the same
thing on a Europe-wide scale to compare different countries with the situation
in the
"This study challenges the long held beliefs surrounding the importance of honeybees as the major pollinators and could potentially result in a paradigm shift in people's thinking," says Science and Innovation Manager Dr. Andrew Impey from the Natural Environment Research Council.
The research is published in Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment.
India
SHIVTHAR, India (Reuters) - Ajit Govind Sable's family have owned their farm in India's western Maharashtra state for 10 generations, which even for a region that has been farming for more than 10,000 years is long enough to witness plenty of changes.
Two generations back, they started cultivating sugar cane
here in Shivthar, a village in Maharashtra's
highlands near the
Today, it's not sugar the 35-year-old Sable is talking about as he sips sweet tea in the front yard of the low, two-storey farmhouse where half the ground floor houses his turmeric crop.
He's discussing peppers, which he is now growing under
polythene plastic coverings. Like an increasing number of farmers in
"My colleagues grow flowers under poly," Sable says. "But the investment for that is too much for me, so I'm trying out peppers. You can't eat flowers if you can't find buyers for them," he notes.
While many Indian farmers are eager to adjust to changing diets in one of the world's fastest growing markets, the government continues to subsidize the cultivation of wheat, sugar and rice crops to ensure basic food needs for the country's half a billion poor.
The result is overflowing stocks of these carbohydrate-heavy staples and a huge subsidy bill that is adding to a ballooning budget deficit.
But in a country where one out of five Indians goes hungry,
the government has had to focus on foods that fuel or fill -- carbohydrate-heavy
wheat, rice and sugar. About 36 percent of women and 34 percent of men in
At the same time, a growing urban middle class is consuming more higher-value, high protein foods, which is stoking food price inflation -- as well as changing business and farm models in rural India.
The food chain in
"There is a view that this is a structural shift and pulses, milk, meat, eggs, fish, protein items -- these are sectors where you need to concentrate," Abhijit Sen, who sits on the government's planning committee, said in a speech on June 5.
RISING MIDDLE CLASS
Those shifts have been under way for years but are
accelerating with rapid urbanization and the expansion of
The Singhs are still fond of traditional Indian food such as idlis, southern style rice pancakes served with spicy sauce, and parathas, wheat flatbreads cooked with oil or ghee.
But on this day Avantika, 41, is cooking pasta with fresh peppers.
"As a working person, I look at whatever is easy to do and nothing too elaborate," she says. "When you make idlis it's a whole day, day-and-a-half procedure. I don't have that kind of time."
She sees her parents' generation suffering the effects of the sugar-heavy, oily diet they grew up on.
"Even if we make parathas, we don't put butter and ghee in," Avantika says.
Its 8 percent annual growth, second only to
Middle class households are expected to grow 67 percent in the next five years, bringing over 53 million households into an annual income bracket between 340,000 and 1.7 million rupees ($7,600-38,000).
Bijay Kumar, managing director of the National Horticulture Board, says having more money than your parents is pushing up demand for high-protein foods.
"Rising income levels are allowing people to spend on high value stuff," he says. "People are more aware of health. They are increasing their intake of fruits in their regular diet."
In 2009-10, Indians boosted spending on fruit and vegetables by nearly 9 percent over the year earlier. They shelled out almost 31 percent more on meat, eggs and fish. Spending on cereals, on the other hand, was flat.
"A dietary transformation is underway in the country and demand for high value, vitamin and protein rich food such as fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, poultry, meat and fish is increasing," the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said in a study this year.
FOOD SECURITY
Years of eating an oil-rich, sugary diet high in
carbohydrates have left many Indians with a paunch and a health problem.
Yet hunger is endemic among the country's 500 million poor.
The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is drafting a Food Security Act that promises to expand subsidized wheat and rice well beyond the current 30 percent of the population in a country that is home to 40 percent of the world's malnourished children.
That could mean
While the farm sector is slowly diversifying, it is a declining contributor to growth, despite providing a living to more than half the country's workforce.
About 600 million Indians are dependent on farming -- half the population of 1.2 billion -- even though agriculture makes up only 14.6 percent of the economy and has been declining from 30 percent a decade ago.
A severe drought meant no growth for the sector in 2009-10 and last year it missed its 4 percent target for expansion, Indian officials said, even as the overall economy powered ahead with 8.5 percent growth.
The average size of farms in
Farmers are finding it ever more difficult to make ends
meet. The introduction of high-yielding seed varieties and increased use of
fertilizers and irrigation spawned the Green Revolution in the 1960s that
allowed
Since the mid-1990s, an estimated 150,000 small farmers have
committed suicide, according to the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
at
Increasingly, voices in government and among experts are calling for a different approach, one that curbs subsidy spending, tackles inflation and boosts agricultural production of higher-value foods.
CUT SAFETY NETS
Ashok Gulati is a recent recruit
to the government's inner circle from the world of research. His white hair and
beard marked him out at conferences when he worked for IFPRI in
Now as chairman of the government's commission on farm prices and costs he has moved, as he puts it, from talking a lot with hardly anyone listening to being heard every time he speaks.
Gulati says too much money is going into safety nets such as subsidies and minimum wages when the government should be investing more to boost agricultural growth and innovation.
"I would say you should have 70 percent of resources for growth and 30 percent for welfare objectives, but it's the other way around," Gulati says.
The World Bank has criticized the subsidies as highly inefficient. But they have powerful political supporters, especially Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress Party, whose vote bank has long been in rural areas.
Gulati also favors modernizing distribution networks. Supply chains should be shortened, by making it easier for retailers and food processors to buy direct from farmers.
Although many states now allow retailers to do this outside the regulated local markets known as mandi, in practice poor infrastructure makes that difficult.
COLD STORAGE
Ganpat Chowdhary, 45, is a trader at a mandi in Pune. Surrounded by piles of rose and pale green mangoes sweating in the fierce summer sun, he has his own problems -- the perishable nature of his products.
About 30 percent of fruit and vegetable production goes to
waste in
Temperature-controlled warehouses are sprouting up across
"We are also keen to set up a cold storage facility," Chowdhary says. "It's essential, as damage levels are very high in fruits."
The National Horticulture Board's Kumar says wastage can be trimmed by increasing the amount of cold storage facilities available.
"We need good infrastructure to collect and aggregate farm goods produced in remote areas," he said. "They need to be delivered to consumers as early as possible.
Chowdhary, who's been in the fruit business for the past two decades, has a different idea.
"In the last four to five years, sales of fruit have risen by 25-30 percent. The next stage for us is to go back to the farm and process fruits."
That way he could sell direct to the supermarkets.
SUPERMARKET SUPPLY CHAINS
Devendra Chawla
is showing off his display of chutney jars at a branch of a Big Bazaar
supermarket in an expensive
Indians are increasingly heading to air-conditioned stores like this, where aisles are packed with choice instead of the tiny mom-n-pop stores where items are lifted off dusty shelves offering just one or two brands of essential groceries.
Chawla says Big Bazaar's size and
presence across
He sees huge potential for those who get it right. "If the country is growing by 8 to 9 percent, incomes will increase and I think food as a category will get developed," he says.
"The market is so huge that it can absorb many more (retail) brands," says the clean-shaven Chawla, sporting the intercontinental look of open-necked check shirt and chinos .
"The supply chain and cold storage are also getting developed, so I think for the country and for our company, food is a big bet. It's huge."
But the government needs to invest much more in distribution infrastructure, he said.
"If we can develop good infrastructure and then supply chains and cold storage, I think that can make a lot of difference to the country."
Its road system is clogged and underdeveloped, while railway freight turnaround times are slow with limited availability of refrigerated freight vans. Cold storage of about 24 million tonnes is woefully inadequate for the world's second-biggest producer of fruit and vegetables. All of this means availability of fresh produce is highly regionalized.
It's not unusual to see wooden flatbed carts loaded with vegetables and fruits right on the doorstep even in big cities -- very convenient for shoppers but it does increase the mileage and moves for produce and raising the chance of damage.
Back in Shivthar (Shiva's ground), transportation is also on Sable's mind as his daughter takes the evening's milk from their cow in a metal churn up to the end of the road for collection.
He says he'd like to sell to retail food chains because they offer higher prices, but it's hard to deal with them directly.
"It's a headache to arrange transport according to their needs. I prefer to sell to wholesalers. They buy from the farm gate, so I don't need to worry about the transportation delay and wastage," he says.
Peruvian spuds have high-tech home
(The Miami Herald) – David Tay heaves aside a metal door that leads into an earthquake-proof room chilled to 42 degrees. There, under the glow of blue-tinged lights, are thousands of test-tubes, each with small green sprouts trapped inside.
This room is the heart of the
For the last 40 years, the center, known by its Spanish
acronym of CIP, has scoured the globe building up the world’s most complete
collection of potatoes. In the process it has become a genetic Noah’s
“It may not be sexy,” said
Along with the in-vitro gene bank, the CIP is keeping root tips in cryopreservation — frozen in liquid nitrogen — at -321 degrees Fahrenheit, and has potatoes under guard at the fortified “Doomsday Seed Vault “in Spitsbergen, Norway. In addition, it has sent samples to more than 100 countries, and offers Andean farmers disease-free local varieties to keep them alive in the wild.
The obsession with preserving obscure potatoes may seem odd in the United States, where most people are only familiar with russets, fingerlings, yellow, red and white potatoes.
But Tay is fond of reminding
visitors that potatoes are not from
“These are the great-grandparents of all the potatoes in the world,” he said, waving an arm at the gleaming test-tubes. And there’s no way of telling which one of the 7,000 varieties may have “the winning gene” that could make it the ideal crop for a changing planet.
Since then, this New World crop has become an
But
Lisbeth Marisol, who tends one of the stalls, picks up a small red potato as knobby as a baby’s fist. It’s called the pusi piña, and Marisol said protective mothers ask their son’s girlfriends to peel them.
“When you peel it, you have to take out all the eyes very carefully and leave it really pretty,” Marisol said. “If you can do that, then they’ll let you stay with their son. If you can’t, then you lose him.”
Many of the varieties at the CIP are like the pusi piña — interesting to look at but not likely to catch on with consumers. Yet they possess genetic traits that make them invaluable.
Shelley Jansky is a research geneticist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been developing strains of potatoes that are resistant to diseases such as blight, the common scab and virus y.
What she has found is that wild potato species — those that have been left to fend on their own for generations — often have inborn defenses.
“Anytime we have looked for any kind of disease resistance in wild species we’ve eventually found it,” she said. Recently, a colleague discovered a wild potato that can fight off the virus y — an emerging global threat — even when rising temperatures have destroyed the resistance in other varieties.
“If we can have resistance that holds up under warm temperatures, that will be a significant improvement,” she said.
Jansky gets her wild potatoes from
the United States Potato Gene Bank in
One of the CIP’s biggest successes stories has been the
development of an amarilis variety potato that is resistant
to late blight. Blight is the same disease that wiped out the potato crop in
While potatoes are the world’s third-largest food crop after
rice and wheat, their ability to grow amid harsh conditions makes them ideal
for countries that are seeing the effects of climate change,
And unlike wheat, corn or rice, potatoes are not internationally traded. That has shielded them from the price spikes that have rocked other commodities.
“If climate change affects world food prices, the potato
could play an important role in price stability,”
If the lowly potato does emerge as the crop of the future, the CIP will be able to take some of the credit.
“We don’t own them,”
End Transmission