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July 26, 2010
· McDonald’s lures locavore crowd
· Roundup’s potency slips, foils farmers
· Idaho spud growers slapped with lawsuits
· Protein links plant growth and resistance
· Baking heat wreaks havoc on Russian farms
McDonald’s lures locavore crowd
(BRANDWEEK)
– McDonald's has unveiled a new campaign for
The fast-food chain has created a microsite
that lists specific products and their origin. For instance, the site states
that 95 percent of McDonald's fries, 95 percent of Filet-O-Fish fillets, and 85
percent of the apples served in
Billboards for the campaign show fries and a potato with a
headline that reads: "Served in
Eric Giandelone, director of food-service research at Mintel, said the inclusion of the disclaimer on the billboards leaves McDonald's open to criticism because "[the chain] isn’t spelling out percents or numbers that we can verify." Giandelone cited a campaign for Chipotle Mexican Grill, which promised to increase its locally grown produce from 35% in 2009 to 50% in 2010, as part of the “Food with Integrity” program. In fact, Chipotle redesigned nearly all of its marketing efforts in 2010 to reflect that goal.
While eating local is often considered an environmental
decision, communities around the nation are embracing the trend in order to
keep money in the area. According to a report by Sustainable Seattle, if 20% of
food sales went to local spending,
Exactly how far can food travel and still be considered local? According to the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, food in American travels an average of 1,500 miles from its place of origin, with lettuce topping the chart at 2,055 miles. In comparison, CUESA shows that the same food at local farmers markets travels approximately 100 miles. Chipotle said its “local” produce comes from within 250 miles of Chipotle's distribution centers, but there is no government standard that defines use of the word “local.”
From Frito-Lay’s new "Chip Tracker" to Hellmann’s "Real Food Movement," large brands are putting a lot of ad dollars toward touting their local connections. According to Giandelone, the recent local marketing efforts in the food-service sector are all about “removing the impression that they’re taking money away from the ‘mom and pop’ shop that doesn’t really exist.”
Roundup’s potency slips, foils farmers
(stltoday.com) – Farmers in the South started noticing the problem before anyone else. When they sprayed their fields with Roundup weed killer, weeds kept growing anyway. In some areas, fields became so choked with weeds that farmers abandoned them.
Midwestern farmers have been watching the troubles in the South. Roundup, or its ingredient, glyphosate, is used with crops genetically modified to withstand the herbicide and has become the most ubiquitous product in American farming. It has meant less pesticide use. Less environmentally damaging tillage. And it has helped catapult Creve Coeur-based Monsanto, the developer of the Roundup Ready system, into the most dominant player in the seed industry.
But now, this silver bullet of American agriculture is
beginning to miss its mark. The herbicide-resistant weeds that have plagued
Southern farmers are emerging in
"It's a serious, serious problem," said Blake
Hurst, a corn and soy farmer in northwestern
So far, glyphosate-resistant weeds have been found in at
least 22 states. Last month,
"There is no question glyphosate is a once-in-a-century
herbicide," said Kevin Bradley, a weed scientist with the
Monsanto, and the farmers who use its products, stress that glyphosate is still an effective product, one that controls more than 300 weeds. But the company acknowledges that it may have underestimated how long it would take for weeds to become resistant to the chemical and that it should have educated farmers sooner about the issue.
"With the benefit of hindsight, we could have been more aggressive with education," said John Combest, a Monsanto spokesman. "In the industry, we could've used more talk about diversity and multiple modes of action."
But, many farmers point out, that the efficacy of the
Roundup system made it tempting to be lulled into complacency. "Glyphosate
is clearly the cheapest weed control there is, and that's part of the
problem,"
Monsanto and other biotech industry players have been working with university extensions and farm groups to urge farmers to use different herbicides that work in different ways. Monsanto is even offering subsidies to Southern farmers - of about $12 an acre - as an incentive to use other companies' products to keep Roundup viable. The company also recently announced the launch of a new herbicide, Warrant, which can be used on cotton and soybeans and has been effective in some areas.
Meanwhile, the biggest drag on Monsanto's profitability has
been the decline in its Roundup business. In the last quarter, Monsanto's
Roundup and glyphosate business fell 56 percent. The reason: a flood of
Chinese-made generic weed killer saturating the
"There have been multiple Chinese manufacturers of glyphosate, so there's been a lot of surplus, and that's putting pressure on profits," said Jeff Windau, of Edward Jones & Co. "Now, in addition to that, we've got this ‘superweed' problem."
For farmers, herbicide resistance means more work and more money spent on different products and approaches.
"We're spraying more,"
One of the benefits of the Roundup Ready system farmers
point out, is that it has meant less erosion-inducing tillage, or plowing under
of weeds. "It allows us to save soil,"
Now farmers are resorting to tilling and environmentally damaging chemicals they haven't used in decades. The success of Roundup has left few options.
"It's led us down a narrow path," said Rick Oswald, president of the Missouri Farmers Union. "Most of the chemical companies quit developing other herbicides, so all there is Roundup or something that was around 20 years ago."
Some farmers say they are turning to conventional varieties of herbicides because they are unwilling to pay a higher price for a Roundup system that isn't working as it once did. But some younger farmers have never farmed any other way.
"They only know glyphosate,"
Idaho
(IdahoStateJournal.com)
– Two antitrust lawsuits are targeting the biggest potato growers in
The law firm
representing a
“I would be very surprised if this lawsuit went anywhere,” says Idaho Farm Bureau Federation spokesman John Thompson, former communications director for Potato Growers of Idaho.
Thompson notes the lawsuits allege that growers formed agricultural cooperatives to control prices, but the Capper-Volstead Act of 1922, which provides limited antitrust exemption to associations of producers, clearly allows them to do that.
“They’re completely within their legal boundaries to do that,” Thompson says.
If the lawsuits
are successful, it could harm
According to a
The first lawsuit
was filed in U.S. District Court in
The second,
so-called copycat lawsuit was filed June 23 in federal court in
The lawsuits name
24 defendants and they include some of the country’s largest spud producers,
including many right here in
The lawsuits also name United Potato Growers of America, whose collective members produce up to 80 percent of the nation’s fresh-market potatoes. The lawsuits claim UPGA is the mechanism through which the “defendants coordinated and facilitated their price-fixing conspiracy on a national and international scale.”
The lawsuits claim that together, the defendants engaged in “classic cartel behavior” and formed what amounts to an “OPEC of potatoes.”
They claim the defendants agreed to fix, raise, maintain and stabilize fresh and process potato prices in the United Sates by controlling and reducing the supply of spuds.
But Thompson says that’s exactly what Capper-Volstead allows them to do. Before the act became law, farmers were prosecuted for acting together to market their products. According to the USDA, the act allows them to unite to collectively market their products.
In addition, the act allows a particular group of producers (such as UPGI) to join other associations of producers (such as UPGA) to have a common marketing agency. That’s why it’s also known as the Cooperative Marketing Act.
“The allegations are that growers colluded to set prices,” Thompson says. “The Capper-Volstead Act clearly allows them to do that because they’re an agricultural cooperative.”
The lawsuits claim the country’s largest growers came together in 2004 to form regional and then nationwide cooperatives not for the purpose of marketing and selling their potato products, but to create a national vehicle for growers “and their co-conspirators to conspire together to reduce potato output and fix prices.”
The lawsuits also claim that the alleged conspiracy involved non-growers, such as shippers and packers, which destroys any potential immunity growers have under Capper-Volstead.
The lawsuit claims
the “North American potato cartel” originated with UPGI and its founders, which
include a who’s who of
Defendants referred questions about the lawsuit to UPGA, which released a short statement that says the group is “careful and diligent to ensure that we are in full compliance with the law. We are confident that the case is not well founded and that the defendants will prevail.”
“We view this as an ill-conceived attack on our cooperative, its members and the potato industry in general,” UPGA’s statement concluded.
The lawsuits claim
the growers’ “price-increase conspiracy” has been a resounding success, which
seems rather odd to growers since many if not most growers in
“The lawsuit comes after a pretty bad year of prices,” says Thompson, who adds that growers actually need to do a better job of organizing and controlling prices. “Prices were $2-3 per hundredweight beneath the cost of production most of the year.”
Protein links plant growth and resistance
Antje Heese, MU assistant professor of biochemistry and a member of the Interdisciplinary Plant Group, identified the protein, known as SCD1, while searching for proteins that interact with a specific receptor protein on the plant cell’s surface, called FLS2. When FLS2 detects invading bacterial pathogens, it signals the cell to initiate several defense responses that restrict bacterial growth.
Through a series of experiments in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, Heese and her colleagues demonstrated that SCD1 is required for some, but not all, FLS2-initiated defense responses. Importantly, when exposed to a bacterial pathogen, plants with less SCD1 protein were more resistant to infection than normal plants.
The researchers also demonstrated that the protein’s function in immunity is independent of its function in growth and development.
“There are only a few examples in plants where two separable functions, one in defense and one in growth and development, have been demonstrated,” Heese said.
In its role in growth and development, SCD1 is involved in producing the pores that allow leaves to exchange water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Previous studies suggest that SCD1 helps to ensure that materials arrive at the right place on the cell surface for normal pore development. Heese believes the protein may play a similar role in disease resistance.
“SCD1 may be important for making sure the components of the defense response are located at their correct sites inside the cell. If they’re not transported to their correct site, they don’t function,” Heese said.
In their studies, Heese and colleagues identified a specific segment of SCD1 that is important for its functions in defense responses. This segment, called the DENN domain, is also found in proteins implicated in human neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s. The discovery that the DENN domain has a function in plant immunity may lead to new discoveries in human diseases.
The study “Novel functions of STOMATAL CYTOKINESIS-DEFECTIVE 1 (SCD1) in innate immune responses against bacteria” appears in the July 23 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Other MU researchers contributing to the study include David
A. Korasick, lead author and research technician in
biochemistry; Katie A. Walker, formerly an undergraduate student research
assistant in biochemistry and now research technician at Monsanto Corporation;
and Jeffrey Anderson, a postdoctoral researcher in biochemistry. Sebastian Y. Bednarek, associate professor of biochemistry at the
Baking heat wreaks havoc on Russian farms
(AFP) – Russian farm owner Ilshat Gumerov stands in the middle of his fields under the mercilessly hot sun with a look of despair on his face.
His 700-hectare land in the central Volga region of Tatarstan has not been touched by a drop of rain in weeks
amid one of the severest heatwaves of the century in
"It is a catastrophe," he said, ruefully fingering the dried-up ears of wheat. "This year I am going to make no profit. It will only be enough to buy fodder."
No rain has fallen since April in this largely Muslim region
800 kilometres east of
The drought is not just bad news for Gumerov
and thousands of other farmers across
Twenty three of
According to the ministry of agriculture, 10 million
hectares of land have been destroyed by the heatwave,
equivalent to around 20 percent of all of
"The drought is extremely unusual because we have never
seen such temperatures and such a lack of rain in the European part of
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin this week told First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov to take the situation under "firmer" control. "The situation is not getting better, it is getting worse," he said bluntly.
According to Rylko, director of
the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, the problems have not been
evenly spread across
By contrast, the harvest in Siberia and the south of
Tatarstan is one of Russia's leading agriculture regions, with one third of its land covered by the famous chernozyom, the black earth known for its richness in humus formed by the decomposition of plant matter.
But its earth and the large water resources in the Volga
region have not been enough to temper the effects of one of the severest
droughts in
The drought comes at the worst possible time for
But Rylko said it was likely that
Agriculture Minister Elena Skrynnik said that the forecast for exports this year was set to be less than 20 million tonnes, down even on last year's figure of 21 million tonnes.
In a country where average annual domestic consumption is 77
million tonnes of grain,
Rylko said the effects were
already being felt on the global wheat market, with
Prices for Russian wheat have spiked on international markets, moving to 195 dollars from 165 dollars within the space of two weeks. But this will hardly compensate producers for the lower harvest.
"In a boomerang effect, the prices of other products will rise proportionally," said Kamiyar Baitemirov, head of the association of farmers and landowners in Tatarstan.
Rylko said he hoped that the Russian agriculture market would be able to recover in the next two years. A full recovery in one year would be hard as "after bad harvests you never have good harvests," he said.
"Now we have to re-stablish ourselves and this is always easier than starting from scratch," Rylko said.
End Transmission