" I heard it through the AgLine"

July 18, 2011

 

 

·       Resistant weeds leave farmers desperate

·       Ag industry facing $30B in budget cuts

·       Pest trappers help thwart citrus disease

·       Farm groups study labor shortage

·       NM chili crop not so hot this year

 

 

Resistant weeds leave farmers desperate

 

(stltoday.com) – Farmers in the state's south are resorting to some old-fashioned tactics.

 

Weeds in cotton fields have gotten so tenacious — some with stems 4-inches around — that farmers are paying itinerant crews to chop them down by hand.

 

"In the Bootheel they're hiring people to go out there with hoes," said Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau. "I swung a hoe for 15 years, and I fail to see the romance in it."

 

The problem, farmers and weed scientists say, is getting worse: Weeds are becoming increasingly resistant to Monsanto's Roundup, sold generically as glyphosate, forcing farmers to use other herbicides or "multiple modes of action." But during this season especially farmers are finding that these other modes of action aren't working either — and there appears to be little relief on the horizon. In Missouri, herbicide dealers have sold out of Cobra, one of the herbicides most widely used in tandem with glyphosate.

 

"Are they running out of options?" asked Aaron Hager, a weed scientist with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The simple answer is yes."

 

Farmers across the Midwest and South are, increasingly, using herbicide cocktails to combat weeds in cotton, corn and soybean fields.

 

"They're using about every bullet they have in their gun," said Derek Samples, a dealer with Agro Distribution in Portageville, about 150 miles south of St. Louis. "It's just been a nasty year."

 

That worries environmental scientists who say these combinations employ older, more toxic herbicides that glyphosate was marketed to replace. In some areas of the state, certain weeds have become resistant to three herbicides. In Illinois, some weeds have become resistant to four.

 

"It's rather ironic that we were sold glyphosate as an alternative to these older pesticides, and now farmers are using them again," said Brett Lorenzen, a legal analyst with the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based environmental advocacy group. "But that's part of the pattern of the pesticide industry."

 

Reliance backfires

 

Farmers say they're frustrated, not least because these additional herbicides and strategies are costing them profits. They admit, however, that commodity prices are high enough to justify the additional expenditure.

 

"It's easily costing $30 an acre for the hand weeding, and the pre-emergence herbicides are costing $10 and $20 an acre," said Tom Jennings, who farms cotton, rice, soy and corn near Sikeston. "If we see the markets drop back down, the economics are going to get a lot more difficult. As high as it is, we can afford some hand labor."

 

Over the past 15 years glyphosate has become a ubiquitous product on American farms. Its rise has coincided with unprecedented crop yields and profits for farmers and has helped propel Creve Couer-based Monsanto into the world's most dominant seed maker.

 

But reliance on glyphosate, scientists say, has led to an explosion in weeds that are genetically adapting to withstand its application. These weeds adapt faster and more vigorously than their weed cousins, choking fields and clogging irrigation ditches so badly water can't pass through.

 

"Pollen can transfer the resistant trait; that's the problem," said Kevin Bradley, a weed scientist with the University of Missouri. "There's not much we can do about pollen flying through the air, and that's why we see such rapid spread of resistance."

 

In recent years, Monsanto has slashed prices, offered rebates to farmers and given incentives to buy other herbicides, even those of the company's competitors. The company has acknowledged the situation and admitted that, perhaps, it could have more aggressively worked to get the message out about alternative strategies. Farmers, too, have accepted some of the blame.

 

"It was so effective and so cheap compared to everything else, that's all you used," Jennings said. "Now we have problems out here and we don't have new herbicides. Before Roundup you had a new product every two or three years. Almost all the new products are just combinations of old products. There's no new chemistry."

 

The small print

 

Critics of the industry point out that Monsanto and its competitors have known about glyphosate resistance since the mid-1990s, when crops genetically engineered to withstand its application first hit the market. They say the companies should have more clearly warned about over-reliance on glyphosate sooner. Government-required labels urged farmers to use other herbicides in conjunction with glyphosate, but these suggestions were tucked away in fine print.

 

"It's hard to read a 54-page booklet," Lorenzen said. "Monsanto has been saying don't just use glyphosate, but farmers don't have time to read the label."

 

Lorenzen and other industry critics worry that the new herbicide cocktails farmers are using haven't been tested. The Environmental Protection Agency reviews individual herbicides, not combinations. "Nobody tests what happens when all those chemicals are combined together," he said. "Nobody knows."

 

Analysts, too, worry that the problem could hit profits.

 

"They've taken a big hit with [Roundup] already," said Jeff Windau, an analyst with Edward Jones. "So moving forward there could be more pressure on sales."

 

Windau also said that if farmers start spending too much to combat weeds then the benefits of genetically modified seed could diminish and they will stop buying it.

 

"There definitely could be issues there," he said.

 

There is, however, some hope in the pipeline. Monsanto is working on developing soybeans and cotton that are resistant to the chemical dicamba. The cotton could be on the market within three years.

 

Until then, farmers say, they're going to be spending more time in their fields, applying more chemicals, tilling and hoeing.

 

"Fortunately," Jennings said, "weeds haven't developed a resistance to cold steel."

 

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Ag industry facing $30B in budget cuts

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Farm groups are rushing to save government subsidies they've long received.

 

President Barack Obama and lawmakers have targeted $30 billion or more in agriculture spending cuts as they try to negotiate a deficit-reduction deal.

 

Farmers say they know they will have to take a hit. But they fear too many cuts will send booming crop prices into a dive, raising the potential for another 1980s-era farm crisis.

 

Budget negotiators are looking at three pots of agriculture money:

 

--direct payments, which are subsidies that farmers get regardless of what they grow.

 

--crop insurance, which helps farmers in the event of losses.

 

--conservation money, which pays farmers to protect environmentally sensitive land.

 

As happens every five years when Congress renews a farm bill, lobbyists and lawmakers from farming states are fighting to save their piece of the pie. Now it's just happening a little earlier, and largely out of public view, as Washington tries to find a way to raise the nation's debt limit and cut spending before the government defaults on some payments Aug. 2.

 

A new farm bill isn't due until next year but could be pushed up if lawmakers are forced to find immediate savings. A budget deal could dictate the terms of the cuts or leave it up to the congressional agriculture committees.

 

The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., says he hopes negotiators will tell lawmakers exactly how much they want cut from the farm budget and let Congress hash out the details.

 

Negotiators are looking at reductions of $30 billion to $35 billion over 10 years, which amounts to a more than a 15 percent cut from the three programs.

 

"If they give us an absolute number, we will meet that number," Lucas said. "But don't make major policy decisions on the back of a piece of yellow paper or a napkin at the White House that rural agriculture has to live with."

 

Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the committee, says such large cuts would make it almost impossible for Congress to write a new farm bill and figure out how to protect producers from a downturn. "It's a mess is what it is," he said.

Negotiators at the White House and congressional leaders were originally looking to cut about $33 billion, or roughly the amount to be spent in direct payments over the next decade, according to several congressional and farm industry officials familiar with the talks.

 

Direct payments are farm subsidies popular in the South with cotton and rice farmers who say they need the money because their crops are expensive. They are a frequent target of conservatives and farm subsidy critics because, unlike other subsidies, direct payments are made regardless of whether prices fall.

 

As rice and cotton groups have pushed back, negotiators have discussed making fewer cuts from direct payment programs and cutting deeper from crop insurance or conservation programs. Those familiar with the talks said it is unclear if negotiators will dictate how the money is spent.

 

The officials spoke on conditional of anonymity to freely discuss developments in the private negotiations.

 

Midwestern corn and soybean farmers generally depend on crop insurance more than Southerners do, and lawmakers and groups that represent that region are fighting for direct payment cuts instead of crop insurance cuts.

 

Crop insurance is subsidized by the government, and Congress and the Agriculture Department have frequently used the program to find extra savings in recent years. The department took about $6 billion from the program just last year.

 

Any additional cuts to crop insurance would probably mean lower and fewer payouts for farmers, advocates say. Like those who depend on direct payments, they say that destroying what farm country calls its "safety net" could hurl farmers into a depression when prices drop. As in previous downturns, farmers would then turn to Congress to bail them out.

 

"We are going to put ourselves in the `85 farm crisis again," says Chandler Goule, the top lobbyist for the National Farmers Union. "Do these politicians want us to produce food, fiber and fuel in this country or do they want us to import it all from China? I think they are cutting farm subsidies because they don't understand what they truly do."

 

Though a strong farm coalition has protected agriculture interests in Congress for decades, Goule says farm interests have had a tougher time since the November 2010 elections. That's when many moderate, rural Democrats were swept out of office and replaced by conservatives who are more focused on spending cuts than farm subsidies. The House Agriculture Committee lost more than a dozen Democrats after the elections.

 

Anthony Bush of the National Corn Growers Association, who grows corn, soybean and wheat in Ohio, says he believes the nation's food supply is at risk if money is taken away. But he is also concerned about the national debt.

 

"I am as worried about that as I am how it affects my farm," he said.

 

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Pest trappers help thwart citrus disease

 

CENTERVILLE, Calif. (AP) -- On a bright July morning, Adam Marler punched locations into a GPS device and set off in his pickup truck from Fresno into the back roads and citrus orchards of California's Central Valley.

 

His mission: to thwart the invasion of the Asian citrus psyllid, a pest the size of a rice grain capable of carrying a disease deadly to citrus trees.

 

The disease, known by its Chinese name Huanglongbing but also called "citrus greening," has devastated citrus orchards in Florida and other parts of the world, but it hasn't touched California's $1.8 billion industry. The Golden State ranks first in the nation in crop value and second after Florida in citrus production.

 

Marler, who works for the California Citrus Research Board, is one of 18 pest trappers who fan out daily across far-flung commercial groves to trap the psyllid and electronically map the tiny beast's every move.

 

"It's kind of like a war," Marler said, "and California is the last frontier."

 

California's approach is novel, because it's preemptive: it aims to eliminate the bacteria carrier before it can spread the disease. That's because, unlike in Florida and elsewhere, relatively few invasive psyllids have made it to California thus far.

 

"We have a unique opportunity to be proactive in managing this insect to either prevent the introduction of the disease or to slow its movement," said Citrus Research Board data director Richard Dunn.

 

Florida's woes led California growers to consider the new approach. The invasive psyllid first arrived to Florida in 1998, but officials didn't recognize its threat. When they first detected the disease six years later, the Asian citrus psyllid population had exploded and the disease spread like wildfire -- a fate California hopes to avoid, said the board's president Ted Batkin.

 

Florida is now losing trees to the infection at a rate of 15 percent a year, Batkin said, which means removing and replacing thousands of trees, an expensive process.

 

The trapping program was Batkin's brainchild; he and other industry leaders came up with the idea after visiting diseased orchards in Brazil.

 

"The trees looked like skeletons," Batkin recalled. "It was like a blowtorch had come along and just fried them. It was scary. It got our attention real fast."

 

Three years ago, the Citrus Board set out to hire trappers.

 

On this day, about seven miles north of tiny Centerville, Marler's truck roared down the paths of a hilly lemon grove. Bob Dylan humming from an iPod, Marler skirted ditches and gates, bounced through an empty pasture and up a stony road in search of a lemon tree.

 

He found it, hung a bright yellow rectangular trap on its branch and scanned the old and new traps, as well as the tree tag, into his GPS device. He also surveyed the tree for signs of disease.

 

Huanglongbing is hard to detect, Marler said, because the bacteria can be present in a tree for a year or longer before symptoms are visible. Once infected, the tree dies within five years. Typically, a healthy lemon tree is productive for up to 25 years, a grapefruit tree for up to 50 years and an orange tree for up to 75 years.

 

No known pesticide can combat the disease. It can only be eliminated by finding and eliminating the insect carrier. The trap's yellow color attracts psyllids, but they're too tiny to distinguish with the naked eye. Back at the Citrus Board office, workers survey the traps with giant magnifying glasses.

 

Marler, 30, sets about a dozen traps every hour. Overall, he's responsible for 700 traps, swapping each twice a month. He and fellow trappers set up nearly 8,000 traps ---- roughly one every quarter mile in every commercial citrus orchard in the state. The trapping program is funded by commercial citrus growers, who tax themselves 9 cents per every 40 pound bin of picked fruit to pay for it.

 

The state also sends out trappers into residential areas. So far, more than 10,000 invasive psyllids -- all without the bacteria -- have been found in ornamental/backyard trees in Southern California.

 

Last month, a trapper found the first Asian citrus psyllid in a California commercial citrus orchard near the community of Moorpark in Ventura County. Marler immediately received a text message with the news, which reminded him of the urgency of his work.

 

Beyond that electrifying moment, trapping is a quiet, solitary affair. Marler can go for days or a week without speaking to anyone, though he occasionally runs into coyotes, rabbits and road runners.

 

When his truck got stuck in mud, an indignant farmer had to pull it out with a tractor. Another time, Marler was stranded in a field for hours when the truck broke.

 

Between traps, Marler -- who graduated in 2007 from Fresno State University as an English major -- listens to music, radio podcasts and recorded books.

 

"I got my music, my audio books, so I don't mind working by myself," Marler said. "And I like being outside rather than stuck in an office."

 

At the end of a work day, Marler transmits his GPS data to a central database. Trap information from around the state appears on a live online map, available to farmers who pay for the program. They can keep track of where traps, psyllids and quarantine areas are. In the event of the disease's outbreak, they can track how close the disease is to their groves.

 

That technology, Batkin said, is the best known method to date to fight the disease.

 

"We're about as close to a cure as the medical industry is to curing cancer," Batkin said. "We know a lot about the disease, but we're about 15-20 years away from a solution."

 

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Farm groups study labor shortage

 

(GPB News) ATLANTA  —  Georgia agriculture groups are launching a study of this spring’s labor shortage. They say the state’s new immigration law may have scared off migrant workers. The groups want to know the impact a smaller workforce had on harvest size.

 

The University of Georgia will conduct the survey for the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association and other groups.

 

UGA will poll farmers about how many acres they harvested and how many workers they employed, compared with previous years.

 

The association’s Charles Hall says the survey will look at "what [farmers] were expecting as far as harvest size, volume and value, and what they actually experienced this year, with regard to crops, and if they did indeed leave crops in the field or if there were crops that were not able to be harvested.”

 

He says the survey will also gauge if local shops suffered when, for example, a blueberry farmer hired fewer people.

 

“If they had 50 less workers than they would normally have, what is the economic impact that we had 50 less people in the community for those six weeks when blueberries would be picked who were not buying groceries, who were not buying gas, and were not involved in any kind of trade in the community?”

 

Farmers say migrant workers left after Gov. Nathan Deal signed the new immigration law in May, and without them, they couldn’t fill many farm jobs. The state department of labor estimated that there were 11,000 unfilled farm jobs at one point this spring.

 

A federal judge blocked part of the law, citing constitutional questions. But other provisions, including one requiring businesses to check workers’ immigration status, went into effect on July 1.

 

The Georgia Agribusiness Council has estimated the total loss stemming from spoiled and unpicked produce could be close to $1 billion. That includes about $300 million for the actual value of the crops. The economic impact increases as crops are processed and packaged.

 

Officials have said they are worried there will also be a shortage of labor to pick and process the state's largest and most profitable crops, cotton and peanuts.

 

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NM chili crop not so hot this year

 

(ABQJournal.com) LAS CRUCES —  Farmers in the Hatch and Mesilla valleys who are making do with a trickle of Rio Grande irrigation water say they expect a smaller supply of green chili this season. If so, consumers will see a price hike.

 

Mesilla farmer Chris Alexander, who sells roasted green chili at his Ristramnn Chili Co., said this could be the first year he’s had to price green chili at more than 50 cents per pound, and the price could reach up to 70 cents per pound. A 30-pound bag of roasted green chili that sold for $15 last year could cost $21 this year, Alexander said.

 

“Availability this year will be a lot more scarce,” Alexander said.

 

The harvest of green chili will get under way around Aug. 1, when New Mexicans will get a whiff of roasted peppers at retail outlets around the region.

 

“My advice to the public is get your chili early this year, because you might not get some if you wait too long,” said Jim Lytle, a Hatch-area farmer who sells some of his chili at Hatch Chili Express.

 

A full share of river water stored at Elephant Butte Lake and the Caballo reservoir normally amounts to 3 acre-feet per acre. An acre-foot is equal to 326,000 gallons, enough to cover an acre of land with water 12 inches deep.

 

But this dry year, with little runoff from the southern Colorado mountains that feed the Rio Grande, the Elephant Butte Irrigation District set the season’s lone water allotment at a scant 4 acre-inches.

 

Chili crops typically require about 3½ to 4 acre-feet of water per growing season and must be irrigated 14 to 16 times.

 

As a result, farmers have had to rely almost exclusively on groundwater pumped from wells, and those farmers lacking wells have had to cut back on chili planting or switch to less thirsty crops, like cotton, which is priced at more than $1 per pound.

 

Officials with several processors said they did not expect to be affected much by the smaller water allotment from the Rio Grande, because they generally buy chili from farmers with wells who can deliver on prearranged contracts.

 

“I just notice a lot more cotton around,” said Hatch Mayor Judd Nordyke. “I think there will be enough around, but it will affect the price. … There are just a lot of guys producing less (chili) because of the water.”

 

Lytle said the small water allotment from EBID this year is “going to have a big effect on the availability of chili.”

 

“A lot of people didn’t plant because they didn’t have enough water,” Lytle added. “We’re thinking the chili crop is going to be a little short this year. The supply isn’t going to be as good as it has been.”

 

Farmer Chris Franzoy, a partner in Young Guns Produce, which he said is the largest supplier of Hatch green chili, agreed. “I think the crop’s short overall, but I just don’t know what percentage,” he said.

 

Last year was not a great one for the state’s chili harvest, either: The 8,700 acres of chili harvested marked the lowest amount since 1973, according to data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

 

The 2010 harvest was down 29 percent from 2009, when 12,300 acres were picked statewide.

 

The value of the state’s red and green crop was estimated at $41.6 million in 2010.

 

Federal agriculture officials will not tally the scope of chili planting and production statewide until early next year.

 

Alexander, who usually plants 7½ acres of chili, is letting his land lie fallow this year, because he does not have wells to supplement the reduced amount of river water.

 

“We always have relied on EBID water, and we no longer can do that, because one watering is taking our entire allotment for the year,” Alexander said.

 

Another Mesilla Valley farmer, Guadalupe Garcia, said the lack of well water and scarcity of river water for irrigation led him to cut back his chili production from 21 acres in 2010 to half an acre this year. “I just planted it to have some for the house,” he said, adding that he has replaced chili with cotton. “We need some water down here.”

 

Hatch Chili Sales owner Pete Atencio sells roasted chili to customers from California to Colorado, Arizona to Texas, typically in 40-pound sacks at $20 a bag. Along with growing his own product, he also buys from other farmers in the region.

 

Atencio said he typically plants 20 acres of chili, but this year he cut back to 12 acres, some of it rented from a neighbor who has wells for irrigation. He said he’s not alone in cutting back on chili. “This year, there’s a lot less chili in the (Hatch) Valley than normal,” said Atencio.

 

“So far, this is looking like a pretty good year qualitywise and in terms of volume” for the processors, said Marvin Clary, an agronomist with Border Foods in Deming, the largest processor of green chili in the U.S.

 

While most of the jalapeños processed by Border Foods comes from Mexico, the “great majority” of green chilis are produced in the U.S., Clary said.

 

But several processors said that the farmers supplying them with chili will see lowered profits because of the added costs of running wells so much to compensate for reduced Rio Grande water.

 

“It could offset any price increase that is given,” said Chris Biad, a partner in Biad Chili Products, which operates three chili processing plants in southern New Mexico and Arizona. “It definitely doesn’t help their pocketbook, but it shouldn’t hurt their crop.”

 

“We’ve used more well water this year than we have in the past 50 years,” said  Franzoy of Young Guns Produce, whose Hatch area partners grow about 275 acres of chili.

 

Even if it appears there might be less green chili for the retail market this year, Atencio said consumers should not worry.

 

“Every year, there’s always a scare,” Atencio said. “In July, there’s always a fear that there won’t be enough, but, come August, everybody’s got chili coming out of their ears.”

 

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