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August 24, 2011
· King corn takes root in Hawaii
· Drought simulator tests crop hardiness
· USDA puts up $103M to expand broadband
· Syngenta sues over biotech corn treatment
· Agriculture at center of the green debate
King corn takes root in Hawaii
(Greenwire via The New York Times)
– KUNIA RESEARCH FARM,
Churned into the rust red dirt, ticker-tape pieces of black plastic flutter in the baking sun. Silence hangs in the air. Not so long ago, pineapples grew in the field and plastic lined the soil, conserving moisture and heat. When the pineapple plantation went south, the lining remained. With each new plowing, plastic shoots appear, peppering the soil.
The debris is a minor annoyance, however, for the farm's new owner, Monsanto Co.
Kunia has some of the best
farmland in
"Building a new [corn] variety is like a Rubik's
Cube," Perlak said. "No matter how skilled
you are, no matter how bright you are, you still have to do a number of turns
to get all the panels to line up. We're turning the panels [in
Increasingly, many of
Over the past decade, the five major companies that dominate
the world seed industry have starkly increased their operations in
Growing on limited acres, the seed farms are now
"They've become as strong a force as what sugar cane once was," said Carol Okada, manager of the Hawaii Department of Agriculture's Plant Quarantine Branch. "They've replaced essentially sugar cane and pineapple."
The shift began subtly. Fruit plantations fell fallow,
undone by foreign competition, and the seed firms, operating nurseries and
trial sites in the islands, began to expand. Driven by their competition to
breed larger corn ears and advanced biology that can analyze a seed's traits
before it is planted, the companies flocked to
There's nowhere in the world like it, given its combination of climate and familiar laws, said Cindy Goldstein, the outreach manager for Pioneer Hi-Bred International, the seed firm owned by Dupont Co., which has operated in the state since 1968.
"We have an ideal climate," Goldstein said.
"It doesn't get too hot and it doesn't get too cold for good pollen
production." And given that at least half of the crops grown by Pioneer
are genetically modified and often under experimental permits, "We like
being able to work under the
Many in Hawaiian agriculture see the seed companies as
saviors. The firms have spared farmland that would otherwise be lost to
development. While the rest of the farm sector has flatlined,
the seed companies have grown at double-digit rates, testing their corn,
conventional and biotech, in a cluster of fields northwest of the
While
"People come to
Santoro is an outspoken skeptic of the seed industry's rise.
They are using vacant land and creating jobs, but their seed, flowing back to
research centers on the mainland or
"All it is is another plantation," he said.
In
For the seed firms, paradise is biotech crops. For many others, it's not farming at all.
Luring 'seedmen'
Jim Brewbaker does not, at first glance, seem like a corporate mastermind.
A geneticist stationed at the
Using a stubby curved knife locked between his fingers like a brass knuckle, Brewbaker slips through the alphabetically arranged rows. There is one cob that, beneath its pale yellow kernels, burns a royal purple. Many of the stalks are inbred, their genetic purity leaving them weak against disease like smut, which replaces kernels with tumorous fungus. Protecting corn against such plagues is Brewbaker's specialty.
Some of Brewbaker's breeds are not so applied. Continuing on, he shucks a cob to reveal, rather than seeds, an ear sprouting elongated, cartoonish kernel sheaths, the corn seemingly cloaked in the chunky, green-tinted spikes of a punk singer's hair.
"Oh dear. Look at that," he said. "Isn't that ugly?"
More than anyone else, Brewbaker
is responsible for King Corn's arrival in
"He was able to demonstrate that you could grow corn in the islands year round, and do it quite successfully," said Paul Koehler, Monsanto's outreach manager, who has worked in Hawaiian agriculture since the 1970s. "Those initial efforts are what really led to the industry taking a look as to whether it could succeed here in the state."
Brewbaker appeared at meetings on
the mainland, encouraging "seedmen" to grow
on
While productive on their few acres, the seed companies were shut out from the prime land dominated by sugar cane. They won leases from a hog and watermelon farmer but never from the plantations. It was a different time. The seed companies lacked the resources or power to win out over Big Sugar.
"If you go back about 60 years, you could go into
almost any village in
The seed companies didn't lease any plantation land until 1980; by then, the writing was on the wall for the sugar industry. The companies could not compete with sugar produced from tropical countries with cheaper labor and few environmental laws. One by one, the plantations would close over the next two decades.
"They had huge investments in the factories that they basically wanted to rust [out]," Brewbaker said. "And that's about the way it disappeared. Very gently."
Plantations survive
In many ways, however, the plantations haven't disappeared -- only their crops have.
Famous for its surfing and bohemian spirit,
"Cane was dominant on the whole side of the North Shore," said Shintaku, who grew up raising hydroponic tomatoes on his uncle's nearby farm. "Now there is none. We have [wild] sugar cane here and there, but basically you have diversified agriculture and corn."
For 18 years, Shintaku worked nearby overseeing pineapple operations for Dole Foods before joining Pioneer in 1999. The pineapple industry held on longer than sugar, and for a time Dole was even growing corn for Pioneer. That failing, Dole, like many of its sugar peers, found itself a promising new role on the island: landlord.
"Dole is the corporate landlord around here," Shintaku said. "They own a lot of the land."
It is a common situation, stemming back to the plantation
families that ran
The trusts are not often eager to sell their land, its
market price inflated by projected urbanization, unless it's to the developers
unrolling housing across
"A lot of farmers are quitting because without
long-term leases, what kind of future do you have?" Okimoto
said. "
The government and nonprofits have encouraged the trusts to
make some farmland available through easements and conservation programs --
according to Okimoto, 40,000 acres have been
designated permanent farmland so far -- but resources are limited, and
High land prices and limited budgets have
It is a pattern that has repeated itself throughout Hawaiian agriculture.
"It's kind of like double jeopardy for us," Kokubun said in an interview in his downtown office in
The seed companies are not growing products for Hawaiians, but Kokubun still welcomes their success. Many thought, after the plantations left, little farming would survive.
"[They] left a huge void," he said. "What the seed industry has done is provided a good alternative to that kind of large-scale agricultural enterprises. ... It's created an opportunity to view agriculture as a viable industry."
From a sense of duty or public relations, the seed companies
have taken steps to make land available to small farmers. For instance,
Monsanto leases 1,600 acres of farmland from the
"We're putting farmers on there that are going to do food production agriculture in the middle of GMO corn," Okimoto said. He hopes to get a few organic farmers on the land, assuming they do not cultivate corn. If the park works, Okimoto will push for the other seed companies to follow suit.
Often, however, even when land is sold for farming, it is not put to use, said Santoro, the organic farmer. His farm, growing breadfruit and lychee, is one of 15 lots created from a former plantation, all flagged for agriculture. But Santoro is the only real farmer around, he said. His neighbors raise one or two horses, living lives of leisure.
"The guy with two horses getting same tax exemptions that I'm getting," he said.
It is a role often played by haole
money. For example, many coffee plantations on the
"They don't realize they're hurting the industry," he said.
Vacant farms
Back on a tour of Monsanto's Kunia farm, Taylor Kellerman wades into a field of corn.
Among its duties, Kunia helps maintain the genetic purity of Monsanto's inbred lines of corn. It is grueling work, said Kellerman, who worked in pineapple before joining Monsanto. Workers shift from stalk to stalk, alighting a paper bag, previously placed to trap the corn's pollen, over its ear, self-pollinating the plant. Each stalk is emblazoned with its own barcode, allowing the gene jockeys on the mainland to track their work.
The firm tests many different transgenic traits on the islands. The recent government-issued permits for their experimental corn alone read like a laundry list of biotech dreams: improved nitrogen metabolism; cold and drought tolerance; reduced environmental stress; altered oil, seed, protein and fiber content; fusarium resistance; and, of course, herbicide tolerance and insect resistance, the company's bread-and-butter traits.
Monsanto bought the 2,300-acre farm in 2007 from James Campbell Co. for an undisclosed sum, after its previous lease holder, Del Monte, abruptly abandoned the Hawaiian pineapple game, reportedly leaving an entire harvest behind. The lot came with some familiar neighbors: Two of Monsanto's biggest rivals, Pioneer and Syngenta, own farmland above and below its fields.
While these companies most famously work in genetic engineering, they are also locked in a cutthroat competition to increase the yields of their crops through advanced breeding. Over the past decade, it has become commonplace for these firms to assess a new generation of corn not through how it grows in the field, but by genetic markers flagged in the seed's DNA (Greenwire, Dec. 21, 2009). The faster a generation is produced, the faster these breeding gains can be assessed.
Such competition caused the recent spike in Hawaiian activity, Monsanto's Perlak said. "[Our competitors are] clever as well," he said. "We're not the only smart people out here. They see the opportunities and they're expanding."
On
"If you're in the middle of
A decade ago, this isolation was not enough to prevent
controversy. From 2001 to 2003, Monsanto was one of four companies testing
biotech crops in
By then, Monsanto had abandoned development of "biopharma" crops for three years. While the company
cited financial reasons, it was clear that
That means much farmland will remain vacant, said Brewbaker, the breeder.
"It's kind of embarrassing," he said. "The 250,000 acres that were in sugar are now empty. And the corn seedsmen only want 10,000 of it. The sugar people would be happy to see them use more."
For all his connection with land, Brewbaker
is a realist. He has heard the fears about food security expressed by Kokubun, the agriculture chief, and he is not convinced.
"It's obvious to me that with the world ecosystem and
world agriculture, we need to have industries like the seed industry that you
can't have in
Santoro, the organic farmer, is not so certain. While newer
to farming than Brewbaker, he believes that has given
him a clear view of
Of course, there are realities to acknowledge, Santoro said.
"Land in
Drought simulator tests crop hardiness
(University
of Missouri via EurekaAlert.org)
The simulators, part of a $1.5 million Missouri Life Sciences Research Board grant, are essentially mobile greenhouses measuring 50 feet by 100 feet. To simulate drought, researchers move the greenhouses over plants when it is raining and move them away from plants when it is sunny. A test plot of the same plants will be kept next to the simulator to provide a comparison. The drought simulators will increase the real-world application of scientific research, as they allow researchers to more closely mimic actual drought conditions.
When funding is available, additional simulators will be
built at the
"This network of drought simulators will be unlike any other network in the U.S., providing Missouri scientists with state-of-the-art field facilities to conduct a broad range of drought-related research," said Felix Fritschi, assistant professor in the CAFNR Division of Plant Sciences. "Our objective is to develop real-world products and practices to improve food security and increase profitability for farmers."
"The ability to manage the timing, duration and intensity of water-deficit stress under field conditions is essential to examine plant responses to drought," said Bob Sharp, a co-investigator and director of MU's Interdisciplinary Plant Group. "Thus, the drought simulators will bridge the gap between controlled-environment facilities, such as growth chambers and greenhouses, and real conditions encountered in the field."
Thirteen co-investigators from several disciplines, including water quality, soil biology, soil physics, plant-insect and plant-disease interaction, and plant breeding, genetics and plant root biology will collaborate on the project. Another focus area is tissue dehydration tolerance. Researchers plan to study the genetic characteristics of plants that are extremely tolerant to dry climates and how these characteristics might be used to improve commercial crops.
USDA puts up $103M to expand broadband
Policymakers, public interest groups and telecom companies
are seeking to bridge the digital divide by reaching even the most remote
pockets of the
"There's a big gap that remains between rural and urban areas because it's just hard to make a business case in rural areas," said Jonathan Adelstein, the agriculture department's rural utilities service administrator, in a conference call with reporters. "Rural areas' future depends upon access to broadband and we're not where we need to be today."
The states that will benefit from the funding are: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
As many as one in 10 Americans can't get Internet connections fast enough to engage in such common online activities as watching video or teleconferencing, and two thirds of schools have broadband connections that are too slow to meet their needs, the Commerce Department reported earlier this year.
Last year, the Federal Communications Commission released a
national broadband plan that set a goal of hooking up 100 million
About 28 percent of rural
Adelstein said rural areas lag behind the urban areas of the country when it comes to broadband Internet access because the more remote areas don't have enough people, have rugged terrain, or it's too costly for companies to serve them.
One of the grants announced Monday will help provide
Internet services to about 570 members of the Karuk Native American Tribe in a
mountainous region of
"It is a remarkably remote place. It's one of the darkest places from space in the lower 48" states, said Craig Tucker, a spokesman for the tribe.
Tucker said lack of reliable Internet services is a "limiting factor for economic development" for the tribe and the non-Native community that lives in the area as well.
"There's not really good cell phone service, or Internet service. Even electricity is a struggle/ A lot of people are off the grid entirely," he said.
Another grant will help rebuild the broadband infrastructure
in
Adlestein said there's still a
"long way to go" in terms of bringing rural
"There's not a future there for them," he said. "Not only do they expect it, but they need it ... if young people want to stay rural areas where they grew up."
The majority of the funding comes in the form of infrastructure loans of totaling about $90 million for five broadband projects. These projects join others across the countries that are sharing $192 million in loans announced by the Agriculture Department in late July.
About $13 million of the funding is through the USDA's Community Connect program, which provides grants to rural, economically challenged communities. The funds can be used to build, buy or lease facilities to bring broadband access to community facilities such as schools and government offices, as well as residents and businesses.
The USDA funding is just one of several federal, state and local programs working to expand Internet access to rural parts of the country.
Syngenta sues over biotech corn treatment
(siouxcityjournal.com)
Bunge, which operates a network of North America grain elevators , including a facility in Council Bluffs, Iowa, recently posted notices saying it would be "unable to accept" for delivery this fall corn planted with Syngenta's Agrisure Viptera seeds.
Bunge says the modified seed, designed to protect the crop
against insect damage, has not been approved for export to
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 1
percent of the
Syngenta picked
Agriculture at center of the green debate
(FarmingLife.com)
– GO back a generation and agriculture was all about food production. This was
thinking that began in Europe with the hungry years after the Second World War,
while in the
Today, however, agriculture is has a very different role. It is the best way of maintaining the countryside and rural areas - but beyond that it has an increasing role in energy production. And now, if the European Commission has its way, in helping reduce the impact of global warming.
This effectively puts agriculture at the centre of the green debate. Indeed, many of its critics may have to think again and conclude that farming far from being the problem is now a key part of the solution.
From being rightly criticised for the excesses of the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), when it produced milk lakes and beef mountains, farmers now need to be rewarded, through the CAP and the market, for helping tackle global warming. Many scientists have deemed this the most serious problem facing the world.
In the green debate the focus has been on agriculture
delivering bio-diesel and ethanol, as a substitute for petrol. The
As things stand, the
This will not be possible with farm crops, but by the time this becomes clear science will have moved on to the next generation of biofuel sources. Farming may then look a very costly way to produce these.
The arguments for biomass - timber and short rotation crops like willows - is, however, more compelling.
This is something we can do now, and will almost certainly continue doing well into the future. This really is a green solution, but what it needs is a much more rapid buy into the technology by the public sector.
Governments delight in preaching about the minor solutions, such as changing to low energy light bulbs or feeling guilty each time we step on a plane.
But they have it in their power to accelerate the shift to public buildings and houses heated by biomass. This would kick-start a new green industry, and it would be a classic win, win for farmers, the environment and consumers.
In
It claims that as temperatures rise farming will cease to exist in many southern European countries, while in the north crops that are now marginal or impossible to grow will become mainstream.
These are problems further down the global warming road, but in the meantime the Commission wants agricultural policy, through the CAP, to reflect concerns about climate change. It wants some husbandry techniques to change, for example the introduction of reduced tillage methods to lock more carbon in the soil.
It sees this as an issue to be tackled in the post 2013 changes to the CAP - but it has also suggested changes to cross compliance rules could be considered as early as next year's CAP health check.
That agriculture has a role to play in reducing climate change is good news for farmers.
It is all part of a new focus on moving the debate away from the excesses of the CAP and over production onto safer ground, where issues such as the environment and food quality are more important. This will make the CAP more sustainable, in terms of selling to European taxpayers the value of supporting agriculture.
One argument farmers do not, however, want to overplay is food miles.
It is tempting to conclude that food produced closer to consumers has to be good for the environment, but recent figures suggest this may not be entirely true.
This is because the energy cost of producing crops in a
climate like the
Examples cited include
End Transmission