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" I heard it
through the
AgLine"
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July 25, 2008
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Ag giants intensify debate over food versus fuel
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Mexico hot under the collar at US pepper scare
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Tomato growers get help in compensation quest
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Ethanol
co-product eyed for organic weed control
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Nutritional value of organics questioned … again
Ag giants intensify debate over food
versus fuel
CHICAGO -(Dow Jones)- A group of U.S.
agribusiness companies led by Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM) launched a new
front in the intensifying food-versus- fuel debate Thursday, maintaining that
technology can ease global supply shortages.
ADM, backed by seed makers Monsanto Co. (MON)
and DuPont Co. (DD), as well as Deere & Co. (DE), made their call through a
new lobbying organization called the Alliance
for Abundant Food and Energy.
The move highlights a sharp divide in the U.S.
agribusiness sector over food and energy policy, notably subsidies for ethanol
and other renewable fuels.
Members of the new alliance have long argued
that technological improvements would boost crop yields and prevent demand from
renewable fuels from crowding out food supplies.
This view is fiercely opposed by food
companies such as Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN) , which has
called for U.S.
ethanol subsidies to be dropped as its profits have been eroded by higher feed
costs for its poultry, pork and beef processing business
The alliance is led by Mark Kornblau, a Democratic strategist, and its launch in a
general-election year coincides with a period of sharply rising food inflation,
as well as soaring gas prices.
Executives from the four companies and the
Renewable Fuel Association, or RFA, will call on lawmakers worldwide "to
support agricultural innovation globally".
"While others are asking should it be
food 'or' feed 'or' fuel, we believe the answer is 'and'," said Monsanto
Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant on the company's earnings call last month.
The lobbying is expected to trigger staunch
opposition from other executives in the U.S. agribusiness sector who have
called for reform of renewable fuel policy.
Tyson Chief Executive Dick Bond attributes
rising food inflation in the U.S.
to competition for corn from ethanol producers, as well as the rising global
demand for protein that pushed corn and soybean prices to record levels in
recent weeks.
Bond has called on Congress to reduce or drop
a federal tax subsidy and end import tariffs on sugar-based ethanol.
"Diverting corn to make ethanol doesn't
make sense," said Bond in April. Tyson declined to comment ahead of the
alliance launch at a press conference in Washington.
Current U.S.
renewable fuel policy includes a 51-cent-a-gallon subsidy on corn-produced
ethanol and a tariff on imports, mainly sugar-based ethanol from Brazil.
Bond wants both of these removed, a call that
makes his stance more strident than others in the sector, such as Cargill's
CEO, Greg Page, who has made repeated calls for a greater level of national
debate on the food-versus-fuel issue.
Cargill and Bunge Ltd. (BG), another agribusiness group
vocal in the debate, are not members of the alliance.
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Mexico
hot under the collar at US
pepper scare
(Reuters) – Mexicans
are jumping to the defense of the jalapeno pepper, maligned by U.S.
health inspectors in a salmonella scare but loved by millions in its ancient
home and growing in popularity north of the border.
The U.S. Food
and Drug Administration said on Monday it found a jalapeno pepper contaminated
with the strain of salmonella that has sickened more than 1,200 people and
warned everyone across the United
States to stop eating them.
But the warning
did little to dampen the appetite for jalapenos in Mexico, where the spicy green
pepper is heaped on tacos and sandwiches at almost every street corner.
Jalapenos,
named after the eastern Mexican city of Jalapa,
were grown before the Spanish conquest in the 1500s and chiles
are among the oldest domesticated crops in the Americas.
"Mexico
has one of the best cuisines in the world. In the United States they don't
understand, they have hamburgers and hot dogs. That's not a tradition, that's
just junk," said Pedro Garcia while slathering
salsa on to fried tacos at a busy street stall in Mexico City.
Mexico's ancient Aztec royalty favored drinks of chile and chocolate and Mayans tried to cure everything
from dysentery, to asthma to vertigo with spicy powders.
"In the United States,
they have weak stomachs, everything makes them sick," said Garcia, 46, a
school administrator.
The outbreak of
the salmonella strain, known as Salmonella Saintpaul,
has now made 1,251 people ill and put 229 into hospitals in the United States.
But Mexico's agriculture ministry says that
salmonella strain has never been found here and that the Texas packing factory where the pepper was
processed might be to blame.
NEW FASHION
Despite the
salmonella outbreak, jalapenos have become increasingly popular in the United States,
both in Mexican restaurants and on supermarket shelves.
"It's the
new fashion," said Jose Manuel Gochicoa who
heads the chile growers' association in Mexico,
the world's largest producer of fresh chiles.
Exports, most
of them to the United States, have risen between 10 and 15 percent every year
over the last decade and now over 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of peppers
are grown in Mexico, 80 percent of them jalapenos.
Dozens of
varieties of chiles, some which provoke sweating and crying,
have become a cooking trend in the United States. Food writer and
spice expert Dave DeWitt describes the fad as "culinary bungee
jumping."
"Very
rarely do you ever hear someone say, 'I used to eat hot and spicy food but now
I'm back to bland,"' said DeWitt, the author of over 30 books on chiles like "The Spicy Food Lover's Bible" and
"The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia."
Inspectors are
holding up truck loads of the some 100 tons of peppers crossing into the United States from Mexico every day, raising the risk
of produce being left to rot before it reaches stores, Gochicoa
said.
"By
creating this bottleneck at the border, people are just going to stop
exporting," he said.
Health
inspectors have had trouble identifying the origin of the salmonella bacteria
and first blamed tomatoes grown in south Florida
or Mexico.
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Tomato growers get help in compensation
quest
(The Wall Street
Journal) – Federal health officials haven't cleared tomatoes as a cause of the
salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 1,270 nationwide, but the
tomato industry has -- and it is asking taxpayers to compensate them for their
loss.
Rep. Tim Mahoney, a Democrat from
Florida, a big tomato producer in the U.S.,
introduced legislation Wednesday night that would give the nation's tomato
growers and shippers $100 million to compensate for losses they incurred in the
outbreak. The Agriculture Department would decide who qualifies, much like the
way disaster assistance is carried out.
At the same time, Congress has
scheduled at least three hearings next week on the salmonella outbreak and why
it took so long to figure out what caused it.
The sought-after amount is based
on an estimate from Florida growers and includes crops abandoned in the field,
products thrown out by retailers and tomatoes forced to be sold as low as $5 a
box, compared with as much as $20 in a normal market, said Reggie Brown,
executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a cooperative
of tomato farmers. The Agriculture Department hasn't released a firm estimate
of the cost to farmers or distributors.
On June 7, the Food and Drug
Administration warned consumers against eating certain types of raw tomatoes,
suspected of carrying the virulent Saintpaul strain of
salmonella. Many restaurants dumped their supplies of tomatoes, and many
consumers shunned them. But the number of cases skyrocketed, and tests seeking
salmonella on tomatoes all turned out negative.
This week, the FDA and Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention announced they had discovered a single
jalapeño pepper tainted with the Saintpaul strain in
a Texas
distribution center. Last week, the FDA lifted its warning on tomatoes, but the
CDC held out the possibility tomatoes had caused earlier cases.
"In this particular case,
there is no smoking gun," said Rep. Mahoney. "What we have is
losses." He said he wasn't "blaming the FDA for the choices they
make, but there are consequences to those choices."
Michael Herndon, an FDA
spokesman, said, "FDA's actions are based on public health. Congressional
efforts to improve food safety are something FDA always supports."
Consumer advocates oppose the
bill. Sarah Klein, a staff attorney at the Center for Science in the Public
Interest, said the food-industry lobby over the years has weakened federal
food-safety oversight, and consumers shouldn't foot the bill now. "We'd
like to see the industry focusing on how to prevent these outbreaks for the
future to protect consumers and their bottom line," she said.
Tom Stenzel,
president of United Fresh Produce Association, said the fresh-produce industry
has sought tougher FDA regulation of tomatoes and other items. In recent years,
Florida tomato growers and California leafy-green growers pushed
through tougher measures in their own states, including mandatory inspections
and training.
But the industry disagrees on who
should benefit from the bill. Mr. Mahoney said it covers farmers and shippers,
which were hit the hardest by the FDA warning. Mr. Stenzel,
said it also should cover those further up the supply chain, such as packers
and repackers, who suffered damages, too.
It is uncertain whether the bill
will pass Congress. There isn't similar legislation in the Senate, and there is
little time for lawmakers to act before the November election. Last year,
spinach growers unsuccessfully pushed a similar measure to compensate for
losses after the government's 2006 recall of fresh spinach after an outbreak of
E. coli.
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to Top
Ethanol co-product eyed for organic
weed control
(USDA-ARS) – Studies by Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
scientists have shown that dried distiller's grains (DDGs),
co-products of corn ethanol production, have potential as an organic fertilizer
and for weed control. But some ethanol producers are adopting new corn-grinding
methods that may affect the DDGs' usefulness.
To further study DDGs, ARS plant physiologist Steve
Vaughn and colleagues entered into a one-year cooperative research and
development agreement (CRADA) with Summit Seed, Inc., a Manteno, Ill.-based company specializing in turfgrass
production.
America's
ethanol industry generates an estimated 10 million to 14 million metric tons of
DDGs annually from both wet and dry milling of corn,
processes that yield fermentable sugars for conversion into fuel alcohol. About
75 percent of the DDGs are fed to livestock. But
since 2005, Vaughn has led a team at the ARS
National Center
for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR) in Peoria, Ill.,
to develop new, value-added uses for DDGs.
In greenhouse and field studies, Vaughn showed that the DDGs
can be used as an organic fertilizer for tomatoes and other crops. Indeed, in
2007, DDG-treated plots of Roma tomatoes yielded 226 total pounds of fruit,
versus 149 pounds from untreated plants. And in turfgrass
trials, the DDGs stopped annual bluegrass and other
weed seeds from germinating in stands of Kentucky bluegrass.
But now, with more ethanol plants using dry-grinding methods, the DDGs, germ and fiber fractions are generated before, rather
than after, corn sugars are fermented into ethanol. Determining how this new
practice changes the DDGs' biochemical and physical
properties is a chief focus of ARS' CRADA with Summit Seed.
Vaughn's ARS colleagues are Jill Winkler, Kathy Rennick,
Fred Eller, Mark Berhow and Brent Tisserat--all
with NCAUR in Peoria--and Rick Boydston and Hal Collins, both with ARS in Prosser, Wash.
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Nutritional value of organics
questioned … again
(foodnavigator.com) – A debate has ignited
over the nutritional benefits of organic produce compared to conventional, with
recent analysis disputing claims of its nutritional superiority.
In a report
published in March, the Organic
Center at America's Organic Trade Association
argued that organic produce is 25 per cent more nutritious than conventional
foodstuffs.
However, these claims were unfounded, according to Joseph Rosen, emeritus professor
at Rutgers University and scientific advisor to the American Council on Science
and Health (ACSH)
in his report "Claims of Organic Food's Nutritional Superiority: A Critical
Review", published yesterday by ACSH.
He criticised the methodology and said the
information was carefully selected to support arguments for the nutritional
benefits of organic produce. When recalculating the data used in the original
report, Rosen concluded that conventional products are actually 2 per cent more
nutritious than organic varieties.
The two takes on the data add to the ongoing questions on whether organic
produce, which is becoming increasingly popular among consumers, has
nutritional benefits.
Amarjit Sahota, director
for the UK's
Organic Monitor, said a key component driving this growth is the assumption
that organic food is healthier, especially for fresh fruit and vegetables,
which make up between 60 and 70 per cent of organic sales.
"Seven or eight years ago, there was much speculation on the benefits
of organic produce, but a real lack of any substantial research," he
said.
"But over the last few years, more and more research has shown that there
are more vitamins and nutrients
in organic food than in conventional food. And there is far more research
coming out with this conclusion than vice versa."
The organic market has been experiencing considerable growth in recent years,
as consumers have become ever more aware of the effects diet can have on their
health and are turning away from produce grown using pesticides.
The UK Soil Association, also advocates of organic food, expects a healthy 10 per
cent growth for sales of organic products this year, which it says if four to
five times higher than sales growth for the general food market in a good
year.
Differences between reports
The Organic
Center's review, "New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority
of Plant-Based Organic Foods", looked at peer-reviewed scientific
studies published since 1980 comparing nutrient levels in organic and
conventional foods.
It identified 236 organic and conventional
foodstuffs that were equally measured on nutrient content, and found that in 61
per cent of the cases, the organic versions were more nutritionally dense.
Furthermore, the organic samples contained higher concentrations of important polyphenols and antioxidants in about three-quarters of the
59 matched pairs representing the four phytonutrients.
And, in general, the report said: "Across all 236 matched pairs and 11
nutrients, the nutritional premium of the organic food average 25 per
cent."
However, in yesterday's report, Rosen wrote that the methodology of the
study was flawed as "results that were not statistically significant
were used throughout, non peer-reviewed papers were included and much relevant
data… not included".
Examples of Rosen's criticism include the fact that Organic Center's
report claimed organically grown vegetables had more quercetrin
than conventional varieties. Rosen said the organic ones studied had been
sprayed with an organic pesticide
that would have increased the plant's production of the nutrient.
Additionally, one study looking at the nutrient content from an analysis of
kiwi fruits included the skin, which most consumers do not eat, as well as the
pulp.
Previous studies
These conflicting views echo similar scientific
debates raging over the advantages of organic over conventional.
For example, a US
study published last July in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
concluded that organically-grown tomatoes contain higher levels of beneficial flavanoids than conventional ones.
The researchers said that organic tomatoes contained on average 79 and 97 per
cent more quercetin and kaempferol
aglycones than conventionally grown tomatoes.
Meanwhile, a review from the British Nutrition Foundation last June said that
the overall body of science does not support the view that organic food is more
nutritious than conventionally grown food.
"Organic farming represents a sustainable method of agriculture that
avoids the use of artificial fertilisers and
pesticides and makes use of crop rotation and good animal husbandry to control
pests and diseases," wrote BNF's Claire
Williamson.
"From a nutritional perspective, there is currently not enough evidence
to recommend organic foods over conventionally produced foods."
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End Transmission