|
|
 |
" I heard it
through the
AgLine"
|
|
June 29, 2011
·
Monsanto
reports net income up 77 percent
·
India paying
heavy for shunning GM crops
·
How
California farmers weathered drought
·
Key plant
traits yield more sugar for biofuels
·
Success in
farming Hong Kong’s urban islands
Monsanto reports net income up 77
percent
(Bloomberg)
– Monsanto Co. (MON), the world’s largest seed company, reported fiscal
third-quarter earnings that topped analysts’ estimates and raised its full-year
profit forecast on higher sales of Roundup weed killer and genetically modified
crop seeds.
Net income climbed 77 percent to $680 million, or $1.26 a
share, in the three months through May 31, from $384 million, or 70 cents, a
year earlier, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in a statement. That beat the
$1.10 average estimate of 17 analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Sales rose 21
percent to $3.59 billion from $2.96 billion.
Profit excluding some items will rise
to $2.84 to $2.88 a share in the fiscal year through August, from $2.41 a year
earlier, Monsanto said. Its previous forecast was for $2.72 to $2.82. The
average estimate of 20 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was $2.82.
Roundup, the world’s best-selling herbicide, and other crop
chemicals returned to profit after a $175 million loss before interest and tax
in the year-ago quarter. Gross profit from seeds and genetics rose 21 percent
after Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant cut prices of new corn and soybean
seeds in an effort to stop gains by DuPont Co.’s Pioneer unit.
“Its decision to aggressively lower its list prices has
provided the company with a much-needed opportunity to repair its badly damaged
relationship with growers,” Don Carson, a New York-based analyst at Susquehanna
Financial Group who rates Monsanto “positive,” said in a June 26 report.
SEC Probe
Monsanto also said the staff of the Securities and Exchange
Commission is conducting an investigation regarding its customer incentive
programs relating to its glyphosate products in fiscal years 2009 and 2010.
Monsanto said it received a subpoena for documents and is cooperating
High crop prices are generating record income for U.S.
farmers, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. That typically helps
boost demand for pricier seeds that Monsanto engineers to kill pests and
tolerate applications of weed killer.
Monsanto rose $1.18, 1.8 percent,
to $66.90 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares
have declined 3.9 percent this year.
DuPont last year tied Monsanto for the lead in North
American corn-seed market share, and the Wilmington,
Delaware- based company said on
June 14 that it gained more share this year in corn and soybeans.
Return to Top
India paying heavy for shunning GM
crops
(rediff.com)
– India is paying a heavy cost by not adopting the genetically modified crops
in a big way and the farmers should be given opportunity to reap benefits of
the technology like in case of BT cotton, experts with the global agri-research bodies ISAAA and ICRISAT have said.
"India [ Images ], the pioneers among the developing
countries is paying a high cost by not going for biotech crops in a big
way," founder and chair of International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Application Clive James said at a global
conference on crop biotechnology in Hyderabad.
India,
which allowed commercial cultivation of Bt cotton in
2002, has put moratorium on Bt brinjal since February 2010.
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid
Tropics director general William D Dar exuded confidence that Indian policy
makers would soon realise the advantage of this plant
technology and go for it in a big way.
"Indian farmers have already tasted the success from
commercial cultivation of Bt cotton. . . why are these farmers not given the
opportunities to reap rich benefits by growing other Bt crops," James and
Dar said making a strong case for popularisation of
GM crops in India.
Both experts described crop biotechnology as a powerful tool
to address the food demand of the rising global population.
Terming as 'untrue' the apprehensions spread by activists
that GM crops have bad health affects, James and Dar said the Bt crops are safe
from science research point of view which is reflected in expanding areas under
it world over.
The ISAAA chief said though the Bt crops seeds cost higher
than the normal ones, the overall input cost involved in cultivating GM crops
is less than the latter as it does not involve deep ploughing
and use of expensive fertilisers.
The one-day conference on 'Demystifying crop biotechnology:
Issues and concepts for the Asian media' was organised
jointly by ISAAA, ICRISAT, Asian Media Information and Communication Centre and
the department of biotechnology on Monday.
There were participants from India,
Japan [
Images ], China, Sri Lanka [ Images ], Philippines,
Singapore, Switzerland [ Images ], Sweden and some European countries.
The world population is expected to touch 9 billion by 2050,
and there is a need to double the production from current level to feed this
mammoth population, James said.
"By displaying strong political will, China has approved Bt in cotton, papaya, poplar, tomato and sweet pepper and
its farmers are reaping rich benefits," James said emphasising
the need for adoption of this crop technology by other countries.
Pakistan
also joined the Bt club in 2010, by growing Bt cotton
in 2.4 million hectares of land, James added.
Making a strong argument in favour
of GM crops, James said the biotech crops have registered a record 87-fold
increase in hectares globally between 1996-2010, making it
the fastest adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture.
"From 1996 (when Bt technology was introduced) to 2010,
Bt crop acreage increased by an unprecedented 1 billion hectares, which is
equivalent to more than 10 per cent of the total land area of the USA (937
million hectares) or China (956 million hectares)," ISAAA chairman said.
The number of countries planting biotech crops soared to a
record 29 in 2010, from 25 in 2009, James said.
Only six countries had adopted the technology in the inaugural
year 1996.
The ISAAA chief said by 2015, 40 countries are expected to
adopt biotech crops.
USA
is the leader in the Bt crop technology with 66.8
million hectares under biotech crops like maize, soybean, cotton, canola,
sugarbeet, alfalfa, papaya and squash, he said.
Return to Top
How California farmers weathered drought
(SFGate.com)
– California's most recent drought cost consumers more than $1.5 billion in
lost hydropower and led to the cancellation of two commercial salmon fishing
seasons, but its impacts on agriculture were more mixed than previously
thought, according to a water policy report released today.
While water shortages drove down revenues in some farming
districts nearly 20 percent, statewide the industry posted some of the highest
sales totals on record.
"A lot of districts suffered and faced drought
restrictions, but in other counties they had record crop plantings," said
Juliet Christian-Smith, researcher at Oakland's
Pacific Institute.
The 107-page study, titled "Impacts of the 2007-2009
California Drought: What Really Happened?" examined state and federal data
on crops, employment, river flows, wildlife surveys, salinity levels and other
indicators in an effort to gauge the economic fallout of three consecutive
years with well-below-normal precipitation.
Researchers found that while fallowed farmland and parched
irrigation canals drew much media and political attention between 2007 and
2009, many of the biggest and most productive farms with senior water rights in
the San Joaquin Valley
received the maximum volume of water they requested from state and federal
operators of the California
water system. And even those that received a small fraction of their requests
managed to find other water.
As a result, the state's nearly 82,000 farms and ranches
sold just under $35 billion in goods in 2009, the third-highest year on record.
Power and pollution
In contrast, anemic river flows during the drought cut the
state's hydropower production in half, forcing utilities to turn to more
expensive and less eco-friendly natural gas combustion. Christian-Smith
calculated that consumers paid an additional $1.7 billion for natural gas
during the three-year period, a resource that added some 13 million tons of
greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
The drought took its toll on the environment in other ways,
too. With less freshwater flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta,
fish populations already in decline experienced further deterioration. In the
case of the commercial salmon fishery, federal regulators shut down the 2008
and 2009 seasons completely, resulting in 1,823 lost jobs and $118.4 million in
lost income, the report said.
That's not to say that food growers had an easy time during
the drought years. Holders of junior water rights on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley received only about 10 percent of
their requested water deliveries during drought years. And crop revenues in
Kern and Kings counties fell by 9 percent and 19
percent, respectively, between 2006 - the last wet year before the drought -
and 2009.
Employment problems
But the report pointed to labor data showing that high
unemployment in the Central Valley is a
chronic problem that has less to do with water supplies than with the downturn
in housing and construction. In fact, many farmers were able to sustain their
operations during the recent water scarcity by shifting to less thirsty crops,
buying water from other sources or pumping water from underground aquifers.
Bill Chandler, who grows nuts and tree fruits on his farm
south of Fresno,
relied almost entirely on his property's wells during the drought. While that
helped keep his crops healthy, he said the extra energy costs to pump well
water ate into his already thin profits.
Still, Chandler
is glad that his local irrigation district is buying up area land to build a
series of water-collection ponds that will refill the aquifers under the land
his family has controlled since 1888.
"We have to be ready for the next drought or we'll have
to sell out to someone who wants to build houses," Chandler said.
Indeed, the Pacific Institute said more agricultural
districts need to follow the lead of Chandler's
district. More farmers must also install water-efficient irrigation systems and
switch to drought-resistant crops.
But they aren't the only Californians who need to make
changes, the report emphasized. To better cope with the next inevitable
drought, the entire state must bolster water conservation and recycling,
increase energy supplies from neighboring states and expand fish hatcheries to
ensure survival of vulnerable species.
"We have to get out of this game of fish versus cities
versus farms," said Chris Sheuring, water
analyst with the California Farm Bureau Federation. "We're going to have
50 million people in this state soon. The demands on the system are only
increasing, and the supply isn't. We have no choice but to work together."
Return to Top
Key plant traits yield more sugar for
biofuels
(UC
Riverside via EurekaAlert.org) RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- New clues about plant structure
are helping researchers from the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center
narrow down a large collection of poplar tree candidates and identify winners
for future use in biofuel production.
Led by Charles Wyman of the Bourns College of Engineering's
Center for Environmental Research and Technology at the University of
California, Riverside, a research team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory and UCR determined that the amount and
composition of lignin in the plant's cell wall interact in an unanticipated way
to influence release of sugar from the plant.
The research was published as "Lignin content in
natural Populus variants affects sugar release,"
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Lignin serves as a major roadblock for biofuel production
because it forms strong bonds with sugars and interferes with access to these
carbohydrates, making it difficult to extract the plant's sugars contained in
cellulose and hemicellulose for conversion to
transportation fuels.
"The real driver for bioenergy is how to get sugar as
cheaply as possible from these recalcitrant materials," Wyman said.
"We're looking for clues as to which traits in these poplar materials will
lead to better sugar release."
Using a high-throughput screening method, the BESC
researchers rapidly analyzed an unprecedented number of poplar core samples in
their search to understand the chemical factors that drive sugar yields.
The analysis revealed a correlation between one plant trait,
the S/G ratio, and increased sugar yields. The ratio refers to the two main
building blocks of lignin – syringyl and guaiacyl subunits.
"The conventional wisdom is that high lignin contents
are bad for sugar release," said lead author Michael Studer.
"We unexpectedly found that this statement is only valid for low S/G
ratios, while at high S/G ratios lignin does not negatively influence yields.
However, replacement of carbohydrates with lignin reduces the maximum possible
sugar release."
"Another interesting result was that the samples with
the highest sugar release belonged to the group with average S/G ratios and
lignin contents. This finding points to a need for deeper understanding of cell
wall structure before plants can be rationally engineered for efficient
biofuels production," Studer said.
The team's study also pinpointed certain poplar samples that
produced unusually high sugar yields with no pretreatment. Biofuel production
typically requires various pretreatments, such as applying high temperature and
pressure to the biomass. Reducing pretreatment would represent a substantial
decrease in the price of liquid transportation fuels produced from lignocellulosic feedstocks like
poplar.
"It's very enticing that several of the samples released
more sugar than typical with no pretreatment," Wyman said.
Poplar trees, botanically known as Populus,
represent the leading woody crop candidate for the production of biomass feedstocks for the creation of biofuels in the U.S.
Naturally occurring selections of poplar trees contained wide variations in all
observed traits, says Gerald Tuskan, an ORNL plant
biologist and one of the co-leads of the study.
"We can mine this natural variability and find extreme
poplar phenotypes that have value in increasing sugar yield," Tuskan said. "Moreover, these native individuals are
adapted to local environments."
From this work, superior poplar cultivars may soon be
available for commercial testing and propagation, yielding plant materials that
will contribute to reducing the nation's dependence on fossil fuel based
transportation fuels.
###
The team, supported by BESC at ORNL, included co-lead Mark
Davis and Robert Sykes from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Jaclyn DeMartini from UCR, and Brian Davison and Martin Keller
from ORNL.
BESC is one of three DOE Bioenergy Research Centers
established by the DOE's Office of Science in 2007.
The centers support multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research teams
pursuing the fundamental scientific breakthroughs needed to make production of
cellulosic biofuels, or biofuels from nonfood plant fiber, cost-effective on a
national scale. The three centers are coordinated at ORNL, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and the University
of Wisconsin-Madison in partnership
with Michigan State University.
The Bourns College of Engineering's Center for Environmental
Research and Technology (CE-CERT) at UCR is a model for partnerships between
industry, government and academia. It is a recognized leader in research and
education in the areas of atmospheric processes, emissions and fuels,
sustainable energy and transportation systems.
ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of
Energy's Office of Science
Return to Top
Success in farming Hong
Kong’s urban islands
Hong Kong (CNN)
-- On the roof of a 21-story office building in Hong Kong's
eastern district sits a grassy patch of hope that agriculture can thrive even
in one of the world's most congested spaces.
The rooftop is managed by local entrepreneur Osbert Lam, who spends his afternoons amid the rows of
planter boxes teaming with long beans, tomatoes and herbs that occupy his urban
farm.
Juxtaposed with the Hong Kong
skyline, his rooftop stands out like a dab of verdant paint on a canvas of
concrete, and is just one of the growing numbers of farms sprouting atop the
city's skyscrapers.
"There are a lot of empty, leftover rooftops that could
easily be transformed into fields," said Lam, who started the Eco-Mama
rooftop farm just six months ago.
For just $15 per month, Lam rents out toolbox-sized planter
boxes to businessmen, elderly couples and families alike, and even runs
horticulture classes. He uses imported soil from Germany to fill his planters and
lets the humid, subtropical climate do the rest.
"I found that the veggies loved the environment on my
rooftop," Lam, a 50 year-old father of two, said. "Here, there is
good sun from the South, good air from the East and we're above the crowded
streets."
And that's precisely the premise behind urban farming:
integrating farming practices into the urban ecological and economic systems.
This is done through direct interaction with the urban environment and
incorporating resources, such as using organic waste for compost or utilizing
portions of urban structures for farming projects.
Lam's farm -- a humble 2,000 square feet -- is one of an
estimated 300 urban farming projects that now occupy Hong
Kong's high-rises, joining the broader, global movement of food
sustainability projects in densely populated urban settings.
"Twenty years ago, locals thought that the soil here
was dirty," said Simon Chau, founder of the Produce
Green Foundation, which manages Hong Kong's
first urban farm in Tsuen Wan. "Now, after 20
years, people have started to realize that it is rewarding and meaningful to
grow something themselves and to eat it."
But unlike the burgeoning urban farms of New
York, Tokyo and Taipei,
the city's budding urban agriculture movement continues to run into problems as
it tries to expand, according to architecture and engineering professor Sam Hui of the Hong
Kong University.
"If we really want to see the maximum benefits of urban
farming here (in Hong Kong), we have to create
more rooftop farms," said Hui, whose research
focuses on sustainable agriculture and green roof use.
Hong Kong is one of the
most densely populated cities in the world, with roughly 7 million residents
living in an area of just over 400 square miles, according to government census
data.
The population density makes it difficult to have urban
farms anywhere other than on the rooftops of the city's soaring skyscrapers, Hui said. The city also has strict guidelines on
development, allowing just 25% of the land to be built upon.
Urban agriculture's growing pains
Aside from the logistical challenges of planting crops in a
city void of open space, many of Hong Kong's
urban agriculture pioneers are frustrated by the local government's lackluster
support toward urban farming.
Chan Choi-hi, a member of the Hong
Kong district council, said the Hong Kong
government must do more to build a viable urban agriculture policy.
"There is no policy, no vision (and) no idea of how to
do urban farming in Hong Kong from the
government. It's not even in the agenda," Chan said. "So first of
all, we are trying to push this idea from an economic angle."
The economic angle, Chan said, may be the only way to
convince top government officials to invest time and resources into bolstering Hong Kong's nascent urban farming movement.
But according to the numbers, that argument has proved to be
a tough sell.
Farming makes up just a fraction of Hong Kong's current GDP
and employs just 4,700 Hong Kong residents, less than one tenth of a percent of
the population, according to Hong Kong's
Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD).
The government has set up roughly 30 urban farm plots across
the territory, but many are found in the middle of highways or in remote
locations of the city, rendering them both unattractive and inconvenient for
residents, Hui said.
Although a submitted statement to CNN by the AFCD said that
they encourage "leisurely farming," support and services "are
primarily geared for income-earning or food-producing local farmers."
The movement, therefore, has taken longer to catch hold in Hong Kong.
Outside of convincing politicians, Chau
said Hong Kongers themselves have historically been resistant
to the idea of farming as a suitable pastime.
"It is the lowest of our traditional caste system. In
traditional Chinese culture, if you're good at nothing else, you work on the
farm," Chau said. "Also, Hong Kong is a
very money-minded place... land is also very expensive in Hong
Kong, so people don't spend time worrying about growing their own
food."
In light of the many challenges facing urban agriculture in Hong Kong, Lam is optimistic that his vision of a
megacity capped with green gardens will be realized.
"I believe you can build a community of rooftop farmers
here in Hong Kong," Lam said. "We
can be very mobile, farming on rooftops across the city."
Return to Top
End Transmission