" I heard it through the AgLine"

June 23, 2011

 

 

·        Deere leads campaign to save GPS bandwidth

·        Probationers harvesting Georgia veggie crops

·        G20 nations agree on ag market measures

·        King cotton taking a Texas-size weather beating

·        Pot bust uproots ‘good life’ for tomato growers

 

 

Deere leads campaign to save GPS bandwidth

 

(Business Journal) – Deere & Co. has banded with a number of industries, all of which rely on the nation’s GPS system, to oppose a wireless venture’s plans for a new network that Deere says jeopardizes use of GPS in agriculture and construction equipment.

 

The Coalition to Save Our GPS, a working group formed to evaluate the proposal by LightSquared Inc., released a study Wednesday that indicates the proposed wireless broadband and satellite network could have a $96 billion negative impact on the U.S. economy.

 

The industry stakeholders, including numerous aviation groups, have said LightSquared’s high-powered broadband signal will leak into the frequencies allocated to GPS and cause severe interference hindering millions of GPS receivers. It could affect federal, state and local governments, first responders, airlines, mariners, construction, agriculture and everyday consumers, the coalition reports.

 

“It is not acceptable to allow interference to these important industries when there is no practical solution to mitigate the problem of interference,” said Barry Schaffter, Deere’s senior vice president and chief information officer.

 

LightSquared’s proposal, which must receive approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, calls for serving mobile-Web users over a network of 40,000 ground stations. It also proposes repurposing a portion of the satellite spectrum that has been reserved for GPS.

 

The FCC has ordered Reston, Va.-based LightSquared to deliver a report on interference by July 1. But  LightSquared announced this week that it has addressed the problem of interference with GPS receivers and will use different airways of the spectrum band, located further away from the GPS frequencies.

 

“This is a solution which ensures that tens of millions of GPS users won’t be affected by LightSquared’s launch,” Sanjiv Ahuja, LightSquared chairman and chief executive officer.

 

But Deere spokesman Ken Golden said Wednesday the LightSquared’s revised plan still does not address the interference with agricultural and construction equipment. “The technical solutions are not there yet,” he said.

 

Schaffter said Deere customers depend on GPS to deliver increased productivity, lower overall costs and reduce their operation’s environmental impact. “Degradation of GPS signals could significantly erode the strong competitive position of U.S. farmers in the global agriculture economy,” he said.

 

The coalition’s report estimates that that interfering with the GPS signal could have a negative impact in the $14 billion to $30 billion range for farmers. Golden said no figures are available for the construction industry.

 

“Farmers can’t have partial use of a clear GPS signal. We need the full capacity of what we have now in place with our StarFire system,” he said. “The intelligence of the machine requires knowing where the farmer is in the field and to know that requires GPS.”

 

Golden added that an Indiana customer told Deere that his operation saved more than $180,000 because of GPS. He also saw an 11-bushel increase in yield per acre because of his ability to map the field using GPS.

 

For the construction industry, GPS technologies assist owners in maintaining equipment, lowering fuel costs and, like in agriculture, help map out an area to better design and managed large construction projects.

 

Schaffter said Deere supports additional broadband services for rural America, which could be one of the outcomes, but allowing a plan to interfere with existing GPS usage is not acceptable.

 

Deere said a technical study recently released by the National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing concluded that the FCC should rescind its conditional approval for LightSquared’s proposal because of the detrimental impacts to government and commercial GPS applications.

 

The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is scheduled to hold a joint subcommittee hearing today to study the impact of LightSquared’s proposed network on GPS systems used in aviation and marine safety.

 

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Probationers harvesting Georgia veggie crops

 

LESLIE, Ga. (AP) — It's 3:25 p.m. in a dusty cucumber field in south Georgia. A knot of criminal offenders who spent seven hours in the sun harvesting buckets of vegetables by hand have decided they're calling it quits — exactly as crew leader Benito Mendez predicted in the morning.

 

Unless the cucumbers come off the vine soon, they will become engorged with seeds, making them unsellable. Mendez's crew of Mexican and Guatemalan workers will keep harvesting until 6 p.m., maybe longer. Not so for the men participating in a new state-run program aimed at replacing the Latino migrants Georgia farmers say they've lost to a new immigration crackdown with unemployed probationers.

 

"Tired. The heat," said 33-year-old Tavares Jones, who left early and was walking down a dirt road toward a ride home. He promised Mendez he'd return the next morning. "It's hard work out here."

 

Mendez urged another man to stay. "I need you today," he said. "These cucumbers not going to wait until tomorrow."

 

Republican Gov. Nathan Deal started the experiment after farmers publicly complained they couldn't find enough workers to harvest labor-intensive crops such as cucumbers and berries because Latino workers — including many illegal immigrants — refused to show up, even when offered one-time or weekly bonuses. One crew who previously worked for Mendez told him they wouldn't come to Georgia for fear of risking deportation.

 

Farmers told state authorities in an unscientific survey that they had more than 11,000 unfilled agriculture jobs, although it's not clear how that compares to prior years or whether the shortage can be blamed on the new law.

 

For more than a week, the state's probation officers have encouraged their unemployed offenders to consider taking field jobs. While most offenders are required to work while on probation, statistics show they have a hard time finding jobs. Georgia's unemployment rate is nearly 10 percent, but correction officials say among the state's 103,000 probationers, it's about 15 percent. Still, offenders can turn down jobs they consider unsuitable, and harvesting is physically demanding.

 

The first batch of probationers started work last week at a farm owned by Dick Minor, president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. In the coming days, more farmers could join the program.

So far, the experiment at Minor's farm is yielding mixed results. On the first two days, all the probationers quit by mid-afternoon, said Mendez, one of two crew leaders at Minor's farm.

 

"Those guys out here weren't out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, 'Bonk this, I ain't with this, I can't do this,'" said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer. "They just left, took off across the field walking."

 

Mendez put the probationers to the test last Wednesday, assigning them to fill one truck and a Latino crew to a second truck. The Latinos picked six truckloads of cucumbers compared to one truckload and four bins for the probationers.

 

"It's not going to work," Mendez said. "No way. If I'm going to depend on the probation people, I'm never going to get the crops up."

 

Conditions in the field are bruising, and the probationers didn't seem to know what to expect. Cucumber plants hug the ground, forcing the workers to bend over, push aside the large leaves and pull them from the vine. Unlike the Mexican and Guatemalan workers, the probationers didn't wear gloves to protect their hands from the small but prickly thorns on the vines and sandpaper-rough leaves.

 

The harvesters carried filled buckets on their shoulders to a nearby flatbed truck and hoisted them up to a dumper, who tossed the vegetables into a bin.

Temperatures hovered in the low 90s with heavy humidity Thursday, but taking off a shirt to relieve the heat invited a blistering sunburn. Tiny gnats flew into workers' eyes and ears. One experienced Latino worker carried a machete that he used to dispatch a rattlesnake found in the fields.

 

By law, each worker must earn minimum wage, or $7.25 an hour. But there's an incentive system. Harvesters get a green ticket worth 50 cents every time they dump a bucket of cucumbers. If they collect more than 15 tickets an hour, they can beat minimum wage.

 

The Latino workers moved furiously Thursday for the extra pay.

Jose Ranye, 37, bragged he's the best picker in Americus, the largest community near the farm. His whirling hands filled one bucket in 25 seconds. He said he dumped about 200 buckets of cucumbers before lunch, meaning he earned roughly $20 an hour. He expected to double his tickets before the end of the day.

 

None of the probationers could keep pace. Pay records showed the best filled only 134 buckets a day, and some as little as 20. They lingered at the water cooler behind the truck, sat on overturned red buckets for smoke breaks and stopped working to take cell phone calls. They also griped that the Latinos received more tickets per bucket than they did, an accusation that appeared unfounded.

 

Robert Dawson, 24, was on his fourth day of fieldwork. On probation for commercial burglary, he said the governor's idea was a good one and long overdue. He said farmers were at least partially to blame if they're experiencing a labor shortage because they hired illegal immigrants.

 

"I feel like they should have gone and hired us first before they even hired them," he said in the morning. "You pay us right and we'll get out here and work. If you don't want to pay us nothing and we're out here in this hot heat, 100-and-some degree weather, it ain't gonna last."

 

By the afternoon, Dawson had sweated through his shirts, and his steps had become labored. His arms and back were sore, but he continued to work after other probationers had quit or were sitting under the shade of the truck. In a quiet sign of mercy, a Latino supervisor helped Dawson fill his bucket and walked it to the truck.

 

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G20 nations agree on ag market measures

 

PARIS (AFP) – G20 agricultural ministers reached a consensus on measures to improve food security and combat price volatility at talks on Thursday, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

 

"The consensus reached today by the G20 agricultural ministers marks an historic union of resolve in combating the pressing challenges of hunger and food price volatility confronting our world with greater regularity," Vilsack said in a statement.

 

G20 agriculture ministers also supported establishing an international agricultural market information system, or AMIS, said the US minister.

 

Vilsack said that "if fully supported and utilised" the information system "will mitigate volatility" on agricultural commodity markets by improving production and price information.

 

Ministers also agreed to remove food export restrictions for food purchased for humanitarian purposes.

 

"In particular, we recognise that food export bans restricting humanitarian aid penalise the most needy," Vilsack said in statement.

 

"We have also reaffirmed our opposition to erecting trade barriers through export bans," he added.

 

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King cotton taking a Texas-size weather beating

 

LUBBOCK, Texas (Reuters) – Punishing temperatures of more than 100 degrees left Wesley Butchey's 2,000 acres of West Texas cotton looking as if they had been zapped in a microwave.

 

Mother Nature followed up one afternoon with a 45-minute, 60-mile-per hour dust storm, battering tender green plants peeking out of the roasted soil.

 

"That next morning, it was black - just sandblasted," Butchey said of his crop.

 

Dry heat and high winds have seared The Texas Panhandle, host to the world's second largest contiguous cotton patch after India, a sea of roughly 4 million acres of fluffy white fiber in the best seasons.

 

"You feel like there's no relief in sight," said Butchey, a veteran farmer with 54 years of experience "You try to remain optimistic, or we'd never go out in the field."

 

The region produced more than 5.5 million bales in 2010 - more than a quarter of U.S. cotton production that year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This year, experts expect a big decline in output due to the drought.

 

"The implications are that it's going to be pushing the worst extreme, the historical worst, and I'm not challenging that at all," said John Robinson, a Texas A&M University professor and cotton economics specialist.

 

Domestic markets will get their first objective reports in August, when U.S. Department of Agriculture agents begin studying crops in the fields across West Texas, Robinson said.

 

Cotton has thrived in the dry, sunny fields of West Texas, where summer often delivers just enough rainfall to prod the crop along. A knee-high forest of short, green cotton plants typically begins to carpet the region in late May and June.

 

But drought already delivered $1.5 billion in losses before cotton plants perked up this season in West Texas. Hot, dry and windy weather starved pasture for livestock, winter wheat and other crops across rural Texas during the state's driest eight-month period on record.

 

Since they began assessing damage last week, crop insurance agents for ARMTech Insurance Services, Inc. had seen no acreage without expensive irrigation systems that have produced anything, claims supervisor Steven Fortenberry said.

 

More than half the region's farmers rely on irrigation systems for their crops, but even they will struggle in July without help from rain, he said.

 

"They might be in worse shape than the dry-land guys right now," Fortenberry said. "They put so much money into it already, and their wells aren't able to keep up with no relief."

 

Despite the expected drop in U.S. cotton production, farmers who do weather the summer have no guarantee of high prices, he said.

 

A U.S. cotton shortage would not mean much in the face of big crops in India, China and Brazil, Robinson said.

 

"They'll use up their supplies first, and whatever we harvest is going to go sit in a warehouse," Robinson said.

 

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Pot bust uproots ‘good life’ for tomato growers

 

(appeal-democrat.com) – Two well-known Sutter County farmers were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of violating federal law by converting their hydroponic tomato business into a large-scale marijuana farm, authorities said.

 

Thomas Wesley Jopson, 62, and his brother David Eldon Jopson, 60, were arrested at their home and farm on suspicion of conspiracy to manufacture at least 1,000 marijuana plants, a federal crime that carries a minimum 10 years to life prison sentence, said Mike Hudson, commander of the Yuba-Sutter Narcotic and Gang Enforcement Team.

 

In all, 12 people were arrested as part of Operation Facade, including a prominent activist in Oakland's marijuana growing industry, Yan Ebyam, who was arrested at Cal-Nevada Wholesale Florist in Sacramento.

 

Fourth-generation farmers, the Jopsons converted their greenhouses into a marijuana growing operation in late 2010, Hudson said. By their own admission, they planned to harvest six crops a year, with each crop yielding $4 million, and expected to make enough money the first year to retire, sell their family farm and "lead the good life," Hudson said.

 

"I don't understand the mentality of someone to jeopardize a farm that's been in your family for generations, and to jeopardize your own freedom by doing this," Hudson said. "It's also concerning to me that a farm in our area would participate in something like this."

 

Agents seized 2,168 plants at the Jopsons' ranch in the 1200 block of Pleasant Grove Road and 3,305 plants at Cal-Nevada Wholesale Florist, a poinsettia business where only a few flowers were on site Tuesday.

 

Also arrested in conjunction with the raid were Aimee Kristine Sisco, 30, and Jesus Bruce, 35, of Los Molinos; Pablo Omar Vasquez, 31, Dolf Fred Podva, 35, Thomas Marrs, 38, Donald Fried, 37, and three other garden tenders.

 

When agents arrived at the Jopsons' ranch on Tuesday, there was not a tomato to be found.

 

An old refrigerated Foster Farms semi-trailer served as the cloning site, with tiny sprouts in plastic cups reaching toward florescent lights, and bright leafy plants in various stages of growth forming neat rows in each greenhouse.

 

At one point there were more than 7,000 plants at the ranch, Hudson said, but there was a falling-out between the Jopsons and Ebyam — the leader of the operation — over the most effective way to grow marijuana. Ebyam moved thousands of plants to Cal-Nevada Wholesale Florist, and the Jopsons continued growing the plants he left behind, Hudson said.

 

The Sutter County property is dotted with rusty pickups, aging cargo containers and ramshackle barns and structures.

 

A few piles of fertilizer sit outside the rows of greenhouses, which emitted the recognizable scent of fresh marijuana.

 

Agents walked in and out of the greenhouse doors, which were each clearly marked with "Do Not Enter" signs and hauled uprooted marijuana plants into a waiting trailer for destruction.

 

"This should be sending a loud and clear message to people in the Yuba-Sutter area," Hudson said. "You cannot blatantly operate outside the parameters of (Proposition) 215."

 

It was a Sutter County deputy who first noticed something out of the norm at the ranch, said Sheriff J. Paul Parker.

 

The greenhouses would glow at night with grow lights, a practice that would not be cost-effective for tomatoes.

 

Further investigation revealed the true scope of the marijuana growing operation, which claimed to operate as a cooperative under the Compassionate Use Act.

 

But operations blatantly did not abide by the state standards of Proposition 215, Hudson said. Two major elements of being a cooperative are being nonprofit and having members, neither of which pertained to the Jopson operation.

 

"I don't care if you are the world's greatest advocate," he said. "This is so outside of the real intent, no one can justify this."

 

In addition to the seized evidence, investigators are identifying numerous bank accounts containing hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug proceeds, with potential to reach more than $1 million. Forfeiture proceedings are being considered on the Jopson farm and Cal-Nevada Wholesale Florist.

 

The Jopson Ranch is in escrow, after being on the market since Sept. 22, according to listing agent Pearson Realty. The listing price is $4.35 million.

 

The Jopson Family Garden has been making news since the late 1990s for its hydroponic tomatoes.

 

The January-February 2010 issue California Country magazine, a publication produced by the California Farm Bureau Federation, noted that fourth-generation farmers Tom and David Jopson switched from growing rice and raising cattle to hydroponic tomatoes about 20 years ago.

 

They grew and sold tomatoes for $4 a pound from October through July in grocery stores and at a farmers' market in Sacramento. An article in Growing Produce in 2008 notes that the switch to tomatoes was also because the Jopsons did not want to be dependent on government subsidies any longer.

 

David Jopson is a former East Nicolaus High School trustee and former member of the Sutter County Parks and Recreation Commission.

 

All 12 arrested were booked into Sacramento County Jail.

 

A convicted felon, Ebyam has served 21/2 years in federal prison for conspiracy to launder several million dollars generated from sales of stolen Cisco and Sun Microsystems computer equipment.

 

He made national news in recent years when his East Oakland growing venture became the first one in the nation to be unionized and was slated for a business permit through the city until Oakland put the plans on hold because of federal legal conflicts.

 

The New York Times reported in May that Ebyam left Oakland in late 2010 after thefts, break-ins and other troubles at his growing facility. He had implied to the newspaper that he was still in the medical marijuana business but refused to say where, saying, "After last time, I think it's better that way."

 

About 100 law enforcement officers served seven federal search warrants at the Jopsons' ranch, a residence in Los Molinos in Tehama County, Cal-Nevada Wholesale Florist and a hotel room at Homestead Studio Suites in Sacramento.

 

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