 |
|||
 |
" I heard it |
||
August 23, 2011
· Agriculture as a tool to protect the environment
· Dow dumps Monsanto’s GM soy technology
· China turns to the UK to end potato poverty
· Chip maker funds urban farming project
· Marketing junk food that’s good for you
Agriculture as a tool to protect the environment
(DW-World.DE) – Radically overhauling farming could both boost food production and protect the environment, scientists say. Paying for environmental services is one step that could also help people and the planet at the same time.
For too long, it has been a question of either-or: either boost agricultural production or protect the environment. Now researchers from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) say this no longer needs to be the case.
They analyzed how of farming and natural systems impact each other and suggested that a radical transformation of this interaction could boost food production and simultaneously protect endangered ecosystems.
Agriculture: degradation's cause and victim
The need to feed a growing global population has increased pressure on ecosystems while at the same time 10 million hectares (25 million acres) of farmland are lost due to ecosystem degradation every year, according to the report titled An Ecosystem Services Approach to Water and Food.
"Sustainable intensification of agriculture is a priority for future food security," said Eline Boelee of IWMI, the report's lead scientific editor. "But we need to take a more holistic 'landscape' approach."
A change of mindset when it comes to how the world evaluates ecosystems is needed, agreed David Molden, deputy director general for research at IWMI.
"Agricultural production systems are ecosystems, and the idea is to view them as such rather than as isolated production systems," he wrote in an e-mail to Deutsche Welle.
Water resources are close to running out in many areas, the
report said, including in the plains of northern
Farming bans only make it worse
But simply excluding agriculture in order to preserve
wetlands or protect water resources is not a solution, IMWI researchers said.
In the past, farming bans in sub-Saharan
"People already use wetlands for agriculture across
sub-Saharan
He added that rather than banning agriculture, it was better "to figure out how to manage wetlands to support agriculture and a range of other services like biodiversity and flood protection."
The researchers said agriculture needed to be included as a part of the "green economy." Farming practices that protect water resources, the researchers said in their report, should be valued in much the same way as the international community is beginning to value forest management, which helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
So-called "payments for environmental services" (PES) should be put higher on the agenda, the report said. Such schemes provide farmers with incentives to adopt improved practices and are already in place - but mainly in developed countries.
Price tag for environmental services
In practice, PES means that people who generate services like clean water, or less sediment, are paid by beneficiaries of that service.
"Downstream city dwellers who benefit from farming practices that reduce sediment in water would pay upstream farmers for those practices." Molden said, citing one possible example.
The researchers observed a growing trend in which conservation groups are slowly joining forces with groups concerned with agriculture.
Molden said these alliances "are challenging the notion that we have to choose between food security and ecosystem health by making it clear that you can't have one without the other."
It was high time for these lobby groups to start speaking a common language, he added, since the planet's resources are running out.
Dow dumps Monsanto’s GM soy technology
(Bloomberg)
– Dow Chemical Co. (DOW), the biggest
The soybeans will substitute Monsanto’s Roundup Ready brand of glyphosate weedkiller resistance for genetics developed with M.S. Technologies LLC, Kendra Resler Friend, a spokeswoman for Midland, Michigan-based Dow, said today in a phone interview. The second generation of Enlist was recently submitted for U.S. Department of Agriculture approval and will be available by “mid-decade,” Dow said in a statement.
Dow is targeting customers who use St. Louis-based
Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds and Roundup weedkiller.
Dow forecasts its Enlist system may generate as much as $1.5 billion of profit
from herbicide and seed sales by helping farmers
combat weeds that are no longer killed by Roundup herbicide.
The latest generation of Enlist brand beans also have been engineered to tolerate 2,4-D and glufosinate weedkillers, Dow said in the statement. Dow and West Point, Iowa-based M.S. Technologies are stacking the genetic changes at a single site on the plant’s genome, speeding up breeding compared with the first-generation Enlist soybeans in which the genes were added at three separate locations, Friend said.
Dow has said it plans to begin selling the first generation of Enlist herbicide tolerance by 2013 in corn, 2015 in soybeans and 2016 in cotton, pending regulatory approvals.
China
turns to the UK
(Telegraph.co.uk) – After centuries of relying on rice and noodles to feed its hungry masses, China is now turning to a familiar British staple to meet the needs of its 1.3bn-strong population the humble potato.
Facing more frequent droughts, falling water tables and
widespread soil erosion,
This spring
"What we are seeking is market access for British seed
potatoes in
The potato is proving
attractive both to Chinese consumers, who eat an increasingly Westernised diet, and to government officials charged with
maintaining
With 20pc of the world's population and just 7pc of its
arable land
Last May
Although
"More and more Chinese are studying and travelling
abroad, and as a result buy more and more imported foods," said Peter Bloxham, chairman of PFB Associates, which imports
However, British growers have so far been deterred by the risk of having their most valuable varieties which can increase yields by 30pc overnight - copied and cloned by unscrupulous farmers.
"The protocol was signed six years ago but not a single
producer has taken advantage of it because of the inability to protect their
varieties," said Mr Stevenson of the Potato
Council. "It would be like giving
Negotiations are now
under way to allow the export of full-grown seed potatoes to
After what it described as a "decade of false dawns", the Council now hopes a deal to export potato seed to China could be signed as early as May 2012, which, as well as allowing British potato seed, could also open the door to a package of spin-offs in science, agronomy and training.
"This market has been simmering for a while now," said Graeme Prentice, business development manager for Irish Potato Marketing, "but in the next five years, it is really going to take off."
Chip maker funds urban farm project
(mercurynews.com) – When Full Circle Farm planted its first crop of fava beans, broccoli and other vegetables no doubt reviled by the kids at Peterson Middle School next door, no one could have foreseen that four years later the 11-acre urban farm would grow more than 50,000 pounds of organic produce.
But that was only part of what a cultivated crowd of dazzling dirt farmers at the Full Harvest Feast celebrated under Saturday night's full moon.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., corn, cabbage and cauliflower collective became the latest recipient of the corporate equivalent of an Amish barn-raising when Nvidia, the Santa Clara, Calif., chip designer, announced it will unleash more than a thousand of its employee volunteers -- and a grant valued at about $320,000 -- on the farm.
It's all part of an Nvidia program called Project Inspire. This year, the company announced at the dinner, it will donate supplies toward construction of a teaching kitchen, packing and cooling sheds, a new irrigation system for the 3-acre orchard and a farm stand where community volunteers can sell fresh fruits and vegetables.
The idea of a teaching farm came about when
The farm's teaching model paraphrases the proverb: Give a man a zucchini and you feed him for a day; teach a man to grow zucchini in a community garden and you feed him for a lifetime.
Now the kids at Peterson run the
"No matter how much we do, we can never justify the value of the land based on the produce alone," said Greg Leonard, board president of Full Circle Farm. "And we can never grow enough vegetables and fruits to make a significant dent in the food problems we have in this country. What we can do is be a regional model on how you change the food system to make it more green, more healthy, more fair, and still be economically viable. That's a really important mission."
The farm donated 10,000 pounds of produce to food banks for the needy last year, some of which was sold to local restaurants or distributed to schools. The rest either went home with volunteers, who show up every Tuesday and Thursday to work the fields, or to members of the Community Supported Agriculture program, who get a bag of fresh produce once a week for three months in exchange for a $300 payment.
That's provided $30,000 in seed money -- literally. And
"Until this farm is sustainable, we couldn't export the
idea to East San Jose,
In the
On Saturday, Elizabeth Yip, 11, came down from
"It was interesting," she allowed. "But I don't think I will become a farmer."
As the kids roamed through the fecund fields, it was easy to forget they were near the heart of the semiconductor industry.
"Most of them get their food from Safeway," explained the group's leader, Tim Chiu. "Here, they can just pick the food and eat it, and it tastes much sweeter. This is nature in its purest form."
Marketing junk food that’s good for you
(Forbes)
– One of the best marketing campaigns of last year was created by a relatively
small snack food company ($700 million in sales) from the
The company, Bolthouse Farms, was
established in 1895. About 70% of their sales are carrots, and together with
another producer they form a duopoly of the
“However, during the recession we found out that people where not eating them as often. Because they are more expansive, people tended to leave them in the refrigerator longer. Our challenge was to increase the frequency of consumption”.
Bolthouse had never marketed its baby carrots before. It just sent truckloads to supermarkets, where they got piled up in the produce aisle. So they started by studying advertising campaigns for other agricultural commodities, such as almonds, avocados, eggs, and milk. They were surprised at what they found. “Every campaign paid back,” Reese says. “sometimes as much as 10 times over.”
The company was seeking an innovative way to talk about its product, and chose an ad campaign that positions carrots as snack food. Instead of baby carrots as an antidote to junk food, Bolthouse Farms was positioned as the exact opposite. Baby carrots as junk food. “We wanted to get away as far as we can from ‘health’ benefits and ‘good for you’ claims,” Reese says. “The point was to sell carrots as Lay’s potato chips or Doritos are sold, as snacks that satisfy emotional craving and are purchased on impulse”.
CP+B, the ad agency Bolthouse
hired, created a campaign with the tag line, “Eat ‘Em
Like Junk Food.” It debuted last September in two test
markets:
By November, sales in Bolthouse’s test markets were up 10% to 12% over the year before, compared to minimal improvement or slight decline in a control group. The vending machines were selling 80 to 90 snack packs per week; a number of schools have approached the company about installing their own machines, and Bolthouse is investigating what it would take to scale vending into a real business. In April, it tested its first movie tie-in with Universal , with snack packs promoting a new animated comedy, Hop.
Branding a commodity is a challenge and an art. Bolthouse Farms, with the help of a few marketing pros at the helm, has mastered it well.
End Transmission