" I heard it through the AgLine"

August 8, 2011

 

 

·        Monsanto to market GM fresh sweet corn

·        New farmers markets sprout nationwide

·        California water wars continue to boil

·        Is water a better investment than oil?

·        ARS lab hunting for stink bug killer

 

 

Monsanto to market GM fresh sweet corn

 

(Los Angeles Times) – Monsanto Co. is expanding its reach -– into the grocery store's produce aisle.

 

The company said it plans to launch this fall a genetically modified sweet corn seed for farmers to grow. The corn, once ripe, would be harvested and then be carried in grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada.

 

Though biotech sweet corn is already sold in many grocery stores in California and across the country, the news marks the first time the St. Louis-based biotech giant has rolled out a product for a consumer-oriented food that has been genetically altered to let farmers spray their fields with Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.

 

Like farmers who grow corn for animal feed or fuel, the farmers who raise sweet corn are interested in using Monsanto’s glyphosate to battle weeds and insects, said Consuelo Madere, the company’s vice president of its global vegetable business.

 

This so-called “triple-stack” sweet corn -– meaning the hybrid has genetic modifications that have three additional traits that allow it resistance to insects and the Roundup herbicide –- is the company’s first foray into the relatively small market for this sort of produce. (Farmers plant about 250,000 acres of sweet corn for human consumption in the U.S., according to analysts and company officials. Corn raised to be turned into sugar, oil, animal feed or used as fibers makes up 92.3 million acres in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.)

 

Madere said the company’s launch would be modest, with the crop being grown in the Southeastern portions of the U.S.

 

The corn will also be grown in the Northeastern U.S., Madere said.

 

Monsanto is in discussions with companies that would can or freeze the corn, she said.

 

Madere said other companies, in particular rival Syngenta AG, have already jumped into the market for genetically altered vegetables. Given that, Madere said that Monsanto did not expect much consumer outcry.

 

The company, however, will not use the Monsanto brand to advertise the new line of sweet corn.

 

“We think it is a good product. It’s up to us to make sure we help tell people about the benefits,” Madere said. Besides, “given how sweet corn is normally sold -– by the ear, in larger bins in produce sections of the market –- it's not really something that can be easily branded.”

 

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New farmers markets sprout nationwide

 

(Yahoo! News) – The Department of Agriculture reported Friday that farmers markets all across the country have been sprouting up and that compared to last year there are more than 1,000 new farmers markets.

 

The news comes as the USDA releases their 2011 National Farmers Market Directory, which lists a total of 7,175 farmers markets in the U.S., which is a significant increase over last year. This number is compared to 2010, in which the USDA listed 6,132. The USDA's 2011 directory is based on voluntary self-reporting from individual farmers markets from April 18 to June 24. However, the USDA continues to update the directory throughout the year as more submissions are received from individual farmers market.

 

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan said, "The remarkable growth in farmers markets is an excellent indicator of the staying power of local and regional foods. These outlets provide economic benefits for producers to grow their businesses and also to communities by providing increased access to fresh fruits and vegetables and other foods. In short, they are a critical ingredient in our nation's food system."

 

The Chicago Tribune reported the USDA also noted there has been a growth in the amount of farmers markets that take SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, as a way for customers to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables. In fact, 12 percent of farmers markets listed this year accept the SNAP credit to make purchases.

 

The news site also noted the Union for Concerned Scientists released a report that suggested that local food systems, including farmers markets, could be the source of tens of thousands of jobs and that more food systems could shift from large operations to medium and smaller-scale operations which directly produce edible crops.

 

The state that saw the greatest growth of farmers market is Alaska, which now has 35 markets listed, up 46 percent from last year. Following Alaska are Texas, Colorado and New Mexico, all of which saw a 38 percent increase. Additionally, the states will the greatest number of farmers markets are California (729), New York (520), Michigan (349), Illinois (305), and Ohio (278).

 

The USDA is kicking off National Farmers Market Week from Aug. 7-13, which was declared by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Residents can access the 2011 National Farmers Market Directory through the official USDA website. The directory allows users to search by location, types of payment accepted, products available, and more.

 

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California water wars continue to boil

 

By Victor Davis Hanson

 

(Los Angeles Times) – California's water wars aren't about scarcity. Even with 37 million people and the nation's most irrigation-intensive agriculture, the state usually has enough water for both people and crops, thanks to the brilliant hydrological engineering of past Californians. But now there is a new element in the century-old water calculus: a demand that the state's inland waters flow as pristinely as they supposedly did before the age of dams, reservoirs and canals. Only that way can California's rivers, descending from their mountain origins, reach the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta year-round. Only that way, environmentalists say, can a 3-inch delta fish be saved and salmon runs from the Pacific to the interior restored.

 

Such green dreams are not new to California politics. But their consequences, in this case, have been particularly dire: rich farmland idled, workers laid off and massive tax revenues forfeited.

 

You can learn an important fact about the water wars simply by driving the width of California's vast Central Valley, home to a large chunk of the state's $14-billion farm export business. What the drive teaches you is that there is no single Central Valley agriculture. Rather, the state is divided longitudinally, right down its middle, into two farming landscapes. These regions — the east and west sides of the Central Valley — differ not only in the crops they grow but also in the availability of water.

 

Start with the east side, which looks like a verdant, well-tended park from the air, thanks to the Sierra Nevada, which each spring sends copious snowmelt into the rivers that flow into the Central Valley.

 

Proximity to this guaranteed runoff from the Sierra explains why the east side's small towns favored permanent orchards and vineyards, which represented more than a single year's investment, rather than annual row crops, beef and dairy. In the early 20th century, power companies and the state improved on what nature had bestowed, tapping the massive snow runoff with an ingenious system of dams and gravity-fed canals that channeled the stored water to farmland below.

 

To this day, gravity-fed irrigation usually supplies the east side with enough summer runoff for its crops. But in rare drought seasons, farmers have a second resource: an enormous aquifer, originally perhaps as large as a billion acre-feet, with a water table close to the surface. The water is good and the cost of pumping cheap.

 

The far larger, far more fragile west side of the valley is a different story. It is too distant from the Sierra to easily tap much of the snow runoff. And the water table can be more than 1,000 feet underground.

 

Until the 1960s, this vast interior land was sparsely populated, mostly unfarmed and owned by large ranching concerns. But then the federal and state governments, in a series of complex partnerships, built the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project — sprawling networks of dams, pumping stations and canals sending water from the north more than 400 miles south. Once west side farmland was brought into irrigated production, it proved to be some of the world's most fertile, and a multibillion-dollar farming industry was born from desert.

 

That industry, however, was dominated by massive corporate and family-held operations. Even as they found ways to produce an ever-greater variety of crops, they came under attack, particularly from California's vocal left, which harped that taxpayers were subsidizing corporate farming — that the $130 and more that farmers were charged per acre-foot of water represented far less than it cost to build and maintain the irrigation system. More recently, environmentalists have argued that diversion of the northern rivers degraded the ecology of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

 

In late summer 2007, a federal judge in Fresno ruled in favor of an environmentalist lawsuit demanding that the government curtail water deliveries to the west side 80% and more. The suit involved salmon and the 3-inch delta smelt. The number of smelt in the delta had plummeted over the years, the environmentalists claimed, because water projects had diverted too much northern water. The solution, they argued, was to shut down the irrigation pumps.

 

So, in 2008 and 2009, water deliveries to farmers were drastically reduced. Chaos followed. Thousands of acres of crops were idled. Farmworkers were laid off. In some cases, newly developed orchards and vineyards on the west side died — often near the frequently traveled I-5, where thousands of passing motorists daily saw dead trees and signs erected by angry landowners proclaiming a man-made dust bowl.

 

Farmers are resourceful people. Some were able to switch to drought-resistant crops; others had reserves to pay the exorbitant costs of pumping scarce groundwater. Still others purchased irrigation supplements from east side canals. A variety of factors, including spiraling agricultural prices, helped them hang on, and in the winter of 2009 they got a lucky break: California entered one of its periodic wet cycles. The result is that, though the state certainly lost hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural revenue, California will probably still export a record $14 billion in farm commodities in 2011.

 

At the end of my frequent drives across the state, I generally descend into the environmentalists' stronghold, the San Francisco Bay Area. Here, particularly at Stanford University and UC Berkeley, much of the environmental research and ideological advocacy took place that put the salmon and the smelt ahead of agribusiness.

 

California lakes and canals are a testament to our fathers' using nature to bring water, power and prosperity to the Central Valley. The state's visionary engineers and politicians saw the massive federal west side irrigation projects as the logical 20th century successors to smaller state and local enterprises that had irrigated the east side in the 19th century. But today, coastal scientists have tired of such visions. They consider them destroyers of nature, not catalysts of wealth, so they use their academic expertise to thwart them.

 

The smelt and the salmon are now back in court, thanks to a hypothesis that Bay Area wastewater, not just river diversions and massive delta pumps, is also to blame for their still diminished numbers. U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger has approved a temporary compromise that tries, in wet years like this one, to grant farmers up to 85% of their contracted water deliveries. The deal has made environmentalists happy, since it keeps the rivers flowing to the sea. The farmers are less happy, reasoning that if they're getting little more than three-quarters of their deliveries during one of the wettest seasons on record, they'll surely receive even less in the inevitable drier years to come.

 

But in today's California — with vast Democratic majorities in the Legislature, statewide officeholders mostly Democratic, and a delegation to Congress that's also largely Democratic — there is almost no chance of restoration of the original 100% delivery contracts, no matter what weather the future brings. When the wet cycle passes, thousands of acres on the west side of the Central Valley will again become idle until Californians accept that unused farmland is a luxury that a struggling state can no longer afford.

 

Victor Davis Hanson is a contributing editor of City Journal. He is the author of the forthcoming novel "The End of Sparta." Adapted from the summer issue of City Journal.

 

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Is water a better investment than oil?

 

(Forbes) – Currently, we fight massive and expensive wars over oil. Everybody needs oil, there is a finite supply of it, and a cartel owns most of it, hence the wars.

 

Water might become the next oil because everyone needs it and the demand for it far exceeds supply.

 

Although water covers 70% of the Earth's surface, 97.5% of it is salt water, leaving only 2.5% as fresh water. There are 6.9 billion people on the planet, and about half of them have no access to fresh water on a daily basis. We see the demand for water as an investment opportunity.

 

Much of the following statistics were provided by the University of Michigan. Less than 1% of the world's fresh water is accessible for direct human uses. This is the water found in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and those underground sources that are shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost. Only this amount is regularly renewed by rain and snowfall, and is therefore available on a sustainable basis.

 

Agriculture is responsible for 87% of the total water used globally. In Asia it accounts for 86% of total annual water withdrawal, compared with 49% in North and Central America and 38% in Europe. Rice growing, in particular, is a heavy consumer of water: it takes some 5,000 liters of water to produce 1 kg of rice. Compared with other crops, rice production is less efficient in the way it uses water. Wheat, for example, consumes 4000 m3/ha, while rice consumes 7650 m3/ha.

 

A great deal of water use is non-consumptive, which means that the water is returned to surface runoff. Usually that water is contaminated however, whether used for agriculture, domestic consumption or industry. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 5 million people die each year from diseases caused by unsafe drinking water, and lack of sanitation and water for hygiene.

 

Some sources estimate that by the year 2025, there will be critical water shortages. The population is growing rapidly, putting more pressure on water supply because demand is increasing but supply is not. The water cycle on Earth is essentially a closed system–we always have the same amount of water. Plus, the amount of water is effectively reduced by pollution and contamination.

 

Runoff is the source for all human diversions or withdrawals for irrigation, industry, municipal uses, navigation, dilution, hydropower, and maintenance of aquatic life including fisheries. Distribution of global runoff is highly uneven and corresponds poorly to the distribution of the world population. Asia has 69% of world population but 36% of global runoff. South America has 5% of world population, 25% of runoff. Much of runoff is inaccessible. The Amazon River accounts for 15% of runoff and is currently accessible to 25 million people, or less than 1% of the world’s population.

 

The seven billion people of Planet Earth use nearly 30% of the world’s total accessible renewal supply of water.  By 2025, that value may reach 70%.  Yet billions of people lack basic water services, and millions die each year from water-related diseases.  Water is a basis of international conflict.

 

Thanks to the University of Michigan, that is enough background to make our point--water makes a good investment. Buy water utilities, companies that serve water utilities, and companies that desalinate water.

 

One easy way to do this is to buy the PowerShares Water Resources exchange traded fund (PHO), which is based on the Palisades Water Index. The PHO fund invests in companies that provide potable water, the treatment of water, and the technology and services that are directly related to water consumption. The modified equal weighted portfolio is rebalanced and reconstituted quarterly.

 

Top holdings include: Valmont Industries (VMI), Nalco Holdings (NLC), Tetra Tech (TTEK), URS Corp. (URS), Danaher (DHR), Itron (ITRI), and Lindsay Corp (LNN). These are all solidly profitable companies with great management teams and sound technology that is hard to compete with. If you want a great investment for the next 50 years or so, PHO is a safe bet because we will always need potable water.

 

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ARS lab hunts for stink bug killer

 

(nj.com) EWING, N.J. — Behind closed doors at the Phillip Alampi Beneficial Insect Rearing Laboratory here, entomologists with the state Department of Agriculture have quarantined a stink bug killer in the form of egg parasites from Asia.

 

According to Mark A. Mayer, the supervising entomologist for the lab, the biologically controlled pest predator is so new it has yet to receive its very own scientific name, and it could be released as soon as 2013.

 

The egg parasites are joined at the lab by other creepy crawlers that are small enough to destroy your favorite fruits, vegetables and beans. Some fly, swim, even bite, and they're about to lose to an insect army being raised at the lab.

 

It's like something out of a science-fiction film -- an army of lab-raised insects with a single purpose: Find and destroy the enemy.

 

The work being done at the Department of Agriculture lab can save the private and public sectors millions in pesticide and herbicide costs, stem crop damage and protect public health.

 

For folks at the laboratory, it's everyday life.

 

Insect-rearing techniques

 

The 21,000-square-foot lab was built in 1985. It's responsible for developing insect-rearing techniques and the mass production of beneficial insects to reduce wildlife pests. The facility operates on both state and federal grants.

 

"We're working with a variety of invasive pests to help farmers and to help the general public use natural means," said Carl P. Schulze Jr., the Department of Agriculture's director for the division of plant industry.

 

Schulze says having biologically controlled insects "makes great economic sense for farmers."

 

"It keeps a lot of unnecessary pesticides out of the environment," he said.

 

Predators of Purple loosestrifes, copepods, San Jose scales, Euonymus scale predators, Hemlock woolly adelgid predators, tarnished plant bugs, tarnished plant bug parasitoids, beetles, parasites and "tiny weevils" are housed in climate-controlled glass containers that resemble fish tanks.

 

Depending on the type of insect or parasite, you can find up to 200 in each tightly monitored container.

 

A total of 30 small rearing rooms make up half the size of the lab. Room temperature, humidity and photo periods are regulated to simulate any season or time of day.

 

The lab raises two types of insects: those that live throughout the winter months and reappear in the spring and others that must be released at a specific time each year.

 

Swimming in murky water filled with nutrients, in what look like glass baking pans, microscopic aquatic crustaceans, also known as copepods, are being engineered to attract and kill mosquitoes in standing water.

 

They're native to New Jersey and feed on mosquito larvae. They've been used in old abandoned swimming pools, and Schulze says they're used around the state.

 

'TINY WEEVILS' RELEASED

 

In the "tiny weevil" or Rhinoncomimus latipes rearing room, you'll need to look closely if you want to spot the six-legged predator for the Mile-a-Minute Weed (Polygonum perfoliatum).

 

Adult weevils are black, but they turn orange-brown soon after feeding on Mile-a-Minute Weeds.

 

According to a packet provided by the lab, the USDA Forest Service reported that about 150,000 weevils were released in five states from 2005 through 2009.

 

Mile-a-Minute Weeds can grow up to 6 inches a day, shading native plants from necessary sunlight. The weed was accidently brought to Pennsylvania in the late 1930s from India and Eastern Asia.

 

The Mexican bean beetle resembles a ladybug. It feeds on foliage of soybeans, snap beans and lima beans.

 

But, thanks to the lab, you don't have to say goodbye to your favorite side dish. They've developed a type of wasp that attacks the larvae of the beetles.

 

In just 24 hours, leaves in the containers of Mexican bean beetles resemble Swiss cheese.

 

According to the Department of Agriculture's website, the biologically controlled wasp has saved growers thousands of dollars annually and dramatically reduced pesticide applications.

 

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