July 25, 2011· Farm thieves nab everything in sight · Syngenta AG plans price hikes in 2012 · Product research focus of Tomato Center · Non-destructive method to estimate leaf index · Getting real about the promise of vertical farms Farm thieves nab everything in sight(The
New York Times)
"Usually grapes are put into plastic bags," said Sergeant Reed, a 28-year veteran of the Kern County Sheriff's Office. "But these grapes were just thrown in a Styrofoam box."
Sergeant Reed -- who eventually arrested a suspect after staking
out a
While other states have their own agricultural intrigue --
cattle rustlers in
"All of our ag crimes are up," said Sergeant Reed,
who oversees a unit of two full-time detectives -- down from three a year ago
-- all patrolling a county about eight times the size of
"Everything this year is doing well," Sergeant Reed said. "And if it's doing well here, there's somebody looking to steal it."
Counties up and down the state also are dealing with a surge in copper theft -- a perennial problem made all the worse of late by the soaring price for the metal. Such robberies are remarkably simple. Bandits simply snip copper wires running between outdoor wells and their power boxes.
"To repair them is anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 a
whack," said Greg Wegis, a
And copper is not the only tempting metal.
"Two hundred pounds of iron might bring them 75, 100 bucks," Sergeant Reed said. "That's money they can use to put gas in their trucks. They can get some food."
Nor are the crimes limited to poorer areas; in Napa County, where fans of the good life flock for the wine and warm weather, the police set up a tip line in June to combat a raft of thefts, including solar panels at some vineyards.
In other areas, deputies say they have witnessed a kind of Robin Hood effect, where some small, struggling farmers filch materials from their better stocked competitors.
"It's typical during certain times of the year: you'll
see a surge in theft from bigger farms," said Deputy Sheriff John H.
McCarthy, a rural crime investigator for
Not even insects are immune. In
Brian Long, a beekeeper based in
Like many lawmen in vast agricultural areas, Sheriff Anderson said a major challenge was the remoteness of farms and the lack of witnesses. "It's not like breaking into the neighbor's house and the dog barking," he said. "These things are just sitting out here in the middle of nowhere."
Chris Wadkins, the president of the California Rural Crime
Prevention Task Force, a nonprofit coalition of law enforcement and agricultural
organizations, echoed that sentiment. Mr. Wadkins, a deputy sheriff in
"You always get your mom and pop who might stop and pick one or two for dinner," Mr. Wadkins said. "That's not what we're talking about here."
Danielle Rau, the director of rural crime prevention for the California Farm Bureau, said the nonviolent nature of farm theft often made it a low priority when it comes to financing. "Violent crimes have to come first," Ms. Rau said.
The cutbacks are not limited to
With many
Still, Mr. Mello was so frustrated that he briefly took to sitting sentinel on his tractor with a shotgun. Not that he ever saw anyone, thankfully.
"Death for thievery is kind of a severe sentence," he said. "I wouldn't want that on my conscience."
Instead, Mr. Mello is now relying on a camera system, something professional lawmen like Sergeant Reed also use. The Kern County Sheriff's Office also uses hidden tracking devices in seemingly defenseless pumps and other decoy equipment.
Rural theft cost
"If we send a guy who doesn't know which end the hay goes in and which goes out, that becomes a little -- I don't want to use the word offensive -- but it becomes troublesome," he said. "Now, at least, they've got someone they can talk to." Syngenta AG plans price hikes in 2012"Prices have stabilized in 2011," Ramsay told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview after the Swiss agrochemicals reported a 14% rise in first-half net profit to $1.4 billion. "But we are looking at price increases in 2012 as inflation in emerging markets, which make up some 50% of our sales, is significant." Syngenta has benefited from soaring food prices over the past few months and has said earlier this year that it expects to double revenue from its key products over the next few years. In the first half, sales increased 14% to $7.7 billion on soaring demand. Ramsay said that although Syngenta was "short of candidates" when it comes to potential takeover and partnership targets, it was open for deals. Even as it expects to generate more than $1 billion in cash in 2011, Ramsay said Syngenta would continue to diligently protect its balance sheet, to have cash on hand for deals. Ramsay, however, said the company is considering to buy back another $100 million in shares. Product research focus of
(HanfordSentinel.com)
– It’s no secret that there’s a huge tomato-processing plant south of Lemoore,
Calif. run by Olam, an international food processing company. But something new
has been added to the mix — the
It’s not what you might think.
The center, which opened last week as the long tomato-harvesting season got under way, isn’t doing genetic research to build a “super tomato.” It is, however, researching better ways to transport tomato paste. Complete with a research kitchen, it is also designed to develop all kinds of sauces, mixes, flavors, salsas and other consumer products that build on the basic tomato in a seemingly infinite variety of ways.
“It’s about the product itself,” said Christoph Rudolf,
Olam’s
Olam isn’t just on the processing side. It also formulates
bulk product specifically for customers, Rudolf said. Olam also processes and
develops varieties of garlic, onions and peppers. Mixing them together in new
combinations is part of what the
Salsa alone is a huge opportunity because of the rapidly growing Hispanic population in the Southwest, Rudolf said.
That’s not the only reason Olam located the new center in
Lemoore.
“Obviously,
Olam also operates a research facility on
Now comes the
“I think it’s very exciting,” Rudolf said. “The tomato
industry here in the Non-destructive method to estimate leaf index(eurekalert.org)
Many methods have been used to measure LAI directly; most are variations of either leaf sampling or litterfall collection techniques. To date, direct methods for determining leaf area have been restricted to the use of an automatic area-integrating meter (planimeter). Tracing, shadow graphing, and the use of a planimeter to measure LAI are all time-consuming and tedious approaches. These direct, or "destructive" sampling methods also have multiple limitations; equipment handling by different operators, limitations in sample size, and measurement errors in the planimetry can all reduce the reliability of the sampling method. Scientists Carlos Campillo, M.I. García, C. Daza, and M.H. Prieto designed a research study they describe as "aimed at developing a cheap and simple method to estimate LAI". The researchers measured percentage of groundcover (PGC) in two vegetable crops with prominent differences in leaf type and plant architecture. "Our experiments analyzed digital images obtained with a commercial camera with open-source software", explained Campillo. At an experimental farm near Results showed that the method produced non-destructive estimations of LAI comparable to more expensive indirect methods. The method produced rapid, accurate estimation of leaf area. "This method allows non-destructive estimations of LAI measured from complex types of cover compared with other indirect methods that are more expensive and require skilled operators", the researchers concluded. ### The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS HortScience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/45/10/1459 Getting real about the promise of vertical farms(Free Internet Press) – Agricultural researchers believe that building indoor farms in the middle of cities could help solve the world's hunger problem. Experts say that vertical farming could feed up to 10 billion people and make agriculture independent of the weather and the need for land. There's only one snag: The urban farms need huge amounts of energy. One day, Choi Kyu Hong might find himself in a vegetable garden on the 65th floor of a skyscraper. But, so far, his dream of picking fresh vegetables some 200 meters (655 feet) up has only been realized in hundreds of architectural designs. In real life, the agricultural scientist remains far below
such dizzying heights, conducting his work in a nondescript three-story
building in the South Korean city of From the outside, the so-called vertical farm has nothing in common with the luxury high-rises surrounding it. Inside the building, heads of lettuce covering 450 square meters (4,800 square feet) are being painstakingly cultivated. Light and temperature levels are precisely regulated. Meanwhile, in the surrounding city, some 20 million people are hustling among the high-rises and apartment complexes, going about their daily lives. Every person who steps foot in the Heads of lettuce are lined up in stacked layers. At the very
bottom, small seedlings are thriving while, further up, there are riper plants
almost ready to be picked. Unlike in conventional greenhouses, the one in Choi meticulously checks the room temperature. He carefully
checks the wavelengths of the red, white and blue LED lights aimed at the
tender plants. Nothing is left to chance when it comes to the laboratory
conditions of this young agricultural experiment. The goal is to develop
optimal cultivation methods -- and ones that can compete on the open market.
Indeed, Nine Billion People by 2050 Vertical farming is an old idea. Indigenous people in South
America have long used vertically layered growing techniques, and the rice
terraces of The Green Revolution of the late 1950s boosted agricultural productivity at an astounding rate, allowing for the explosive population growth still seen today. Indeed, since 1950, the Earth's population has nearly tripled, from 2.4 billion to 7 billion, and global demand for food has grown accordingly. Until now, the agricultural industry could keep up well enough -- otherwise swelling population figures would have leveled off long ago. But scientists warn that agricultural productivity has its limits. What's more, much of the land on which the world's food is grown has become exhausted or no longer usable. Likewise, there is not an endless supply of areas that can be converted to agricultural use. By 2050, the United Nations predicts that the global
population will surpass 9 billion people. Given current agricultural
productivity rates, the Vertical Farm Project estimates that an agricultural
area equal in size to roughly half of Vertical farming has the potential to solve this problem.
The term "vertical farming" was coined in 1915 by American geologist
Gilbert Ellis Bailey. Architects and scientists have repeatedly looked into the
idea since then, especially toward the end of the 20th century. In 1999,
Dickson Despommier, a professor emeritus of environmental health sciences and
microbiology at From the initial idea of "rooftop farming," the
cultivation of plants on flat roofs, the class developed a high-rise concept.
The students calculated that rooftop-based rice growing would be able to feed,
at most, 2 percent of With its many empty high-rise buildings, The Power Problem Despite these promising calculations, such high-rise farms still only exist as small-scale models. Critics don't expect this to change anytime soon. Agricultural researcher Stan Cox of the Kansas-based Land Institute sees vertical farming as more of a project for dreamy young architecture students than a practical solution to potential shortages in the global food supply. The main problem is light -- in particular, the fact that
sunlight has to be replaced by LEDs. According to Cox's calculations, if you
wanted to replace all of the wheat cultivation in the It gets even more difficult if you intend to rely
exclusively on renewable energies to supply this power, as Despommier hopes to
do. At the moment, renewable energy sources only generate about 2 percent of
all power in the Getting Closer To Reality Even so, Despommier still believes in his vision of urban
agriculture. And recent developments, like the ones in In fact, the concept seems to be working already, at least
on a small scale. In the As a country which has limited land resources but which
possesses much of the necessary technology, the 'The Next Agricultural Revolution' Despommier believes that entire countries will soon be able
to use vertical farming to feed their populations. The South Korean government,
at least, is interested in exploring the possibility. At the moment, the
country is forced to import a large share of its food. Indeed, according to a
2005 OECD report, These facts are not lost on the researchers in the vertical
farming laboratory in Still, it will be some time before vertical farming is
implemented on a commercial scale in End Transmission |
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