" I heard it through the AgLine"

August 31, 2011

 

 

·        Irene leaves hard times for area farmers

·        Huge greenhouses set for Calif. production

·        Kelp farming is on its way in Scandinavia

·        Ground covers bolster organic production

·        Can panda poop solve biofuel woes?

 

 

Irene leaves hard times for area farmers

 

STONEWALL, N.C. (AP) — Far from the beach towns that took Hurricane Irene's first hit, the storm inflicted some of its worst damage on inland farms as crops were pummeled by wind, scalded by salt spray and submerged by floodwaters. Some farmers are reporting total losses.

 

"My tobacco crop is completely wiped out. I can't harvest any of it," said Keith Beavers, whose Mount Olive farm lies about 70 miles from the ocean. "It's either blown off the stalk or off the limb, and what's left is raggedy."

 

It could take days or weeks for federal agriculture officials to estimate overall losses, but the toll is already clear for many individual farms after a growing season that was too hot in the South and too wet in the Northeast. Especially hard-hit were tobacco growers preparing to harvest in North Carolina and Virginia — two top tobacco states — and blueberry growers in New Jersey whose damaged bushes could spell trouble for future harvests.

 

After surveying farms in North Carolina on Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack urged farmers to file crop damage claims with their insurers and said federal assistance may cover additional losses and damage to rural infrastructure.

 

"I've not seen the kind of flooding and damage to crops that I saw briefly today," Vilsack said. "And if this is representative of what North Carolina has suffered, it's a fairly significant blow."

 

Still, the storm hasn't had a significant impact on the nation's food supply or crop prices, an analyst said. While Irene damaged some East Coast farms that grow corn and soybeans, the top producing states for those crops are located in the Midwest. And aside from some pockets of damage, livestock operations appear to have generally weathered the storm well, including North Carolina's large hog industry.

 

Also, most crops are shipped into and out of ports on the Gulf of Mexico and West Coast, meaning that much of the shipping infrastructure was far from Irene's reach, said Jason Ward, an analyst with Northstar Commodity in Minneapolis.

 

Tobacco took some of the worst damage from Irene. In a normal year, most tobacco would have been harvested by now. But a brutally hot summer delayed development of the plants so that many farmers had 75 percent or their crop still in the fields.

 

"We'll be lucky to harvest a third of our contracted amount," said Jimmy Hill, who owns a farm near Kinston, N.C. He says this is the worst hurricane damage he's seen in his 75 years.

 

The damage is worrisome in a state that grows more tobacco than any other. The crop is tied to around 255,000 North Carolina jobs and accounts for roughly $7 billion worth of business from sales to wages to purchases of supplies and equipment.

 

Across the state line in the No. 4 tobacco-growing state of Virginia, the crop was also badly damaged, along with cotton. Early estimates suggest the storm damage to crops could run to $20 million.

 

"The plants are leaning over, looking like a cat's been scratching on the leaves," said Virginia extension agent Taylor Clarke, who was checking tobacco fields in the southern part of the state. "They took a physical pounding."

 

Cotton may have an easier time bouncing back, since this was to be a bumper year for the plant.

 

"Even if we lose 10 to 15 percent we're still going to have a decent crop," said Spencer Neale, a senior assistant director of commodities marketing for the Virginia Farm Bureau.

 

Blueberry plants were inundated in New Jersey, a state that produces more of the fruit than any other state except Michigan.

 

Although blueberry season ended before Irene hit, flooding could kill plants and affect harvests in years to come. Rutgers Agriculture Experiment Station Atlantic County agent Gary Pavlis says the berry's root systems start to die in bushes that are in standing water for 27 hours. Some farms in southern New Jersey were still underwater on Tuesday, days after Irene made landfall.

 

"The ground was already saturated and there wasn't a lot of places for natural storm surge to go," said Paul Galletta of Atlantic Blueberry, who was still surveying damage at two farms he co-owns.

 

In Vermont, officials won't be able to estimate the damage from massive flooding until the waters have begun to recede. But the state Agency of Agriculture said growers are facing flooded fields and barns, while dairy farmers have no way to transport their product over washed-out roads and bridges. Southern New England farmers appear to have weathered the storm well, particularly apple growers, who were collectively "breathing a sigh of relief" this week, according to Russell Powell, executive director of the New England Apple Growers Association.

 

In New York, agriculture officials were most concerned about field crops including feed corn and onions in the black dirt regions of the Hudson Valley. Fruit orchards and Long Island's grape crops were largely spared.

 

"Some farms are completely under water," said Peter Gregg, spokesman for the New York Farm Bureau.

 

Across eastern North Carolina, farmers were out Tuesday surveying the damage to fields. In Stonewall, Maurice Benton managed to harvest nearly 1,500 acres of his corn crop before Irene made landfall and sent a wall of water gushing over his fields. But he was left with 450 acres of corn and around 2,060 acres of soybeans underwater.

 

He thinks much of the waterlogged crops can be salvaged, but the storm adds further harm in a year aleady plagued by drought.

 

"We started out bad, but it gradually got worse," said Benton, who's been farming 35 years. "It's a below-average year, but it's not going to kill us."

 

Not far from Benton's farm, Charles Alexander raced to unload storage silos full of corn and wheat after floodwaters pushed several inches of water up into the bottom of the bins.

 

While most of the grains stayed dry, the silos are made to unload from top to bottom — so everything had to go to enable him to get at the wet stuff. At stake was 33,000 bushels of corn worth about $7.25 per bushel — or nearly $240,000.

 

"It'll swell, and when grain swells it has a tendency to bust the bin," Alexander said.

 

With electricity out at his silos, like in most of the Pamilco County, Alexander first had to use a large vacuum tool hooked to a generator to suck his corn out of the silos and into the beds of trucks to carry it to market.

 

"We've had to improvise," Alexander said. "I'll save it. It's just a little aggravating."

 

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Huge greenhouses set for Calif. production

 

(Santa Ynez Valley News) – Growing up in British Columbia, Steven Newell didn’t even like tomatoes until somebody got him to try one of the Campari variety, which is known for its juiciness and sweetness.

 

A couple of decades later, the 37-year-old Newell can’t get enough tomatoes — and his family business, Windset Farms, is bringing greenhouse-grown varieties and 21st-century hydroponic agriculture to Santa Barbara County.

 

The company is building two vast 32-acre greenhouses and a 174,000-square-foot processing facility and packing plant on Black Road near Santa Maria and, despite some delays, construction is on schedule.

 

In fact, Newell hopes to plant the first 16 acres of Greenhouse No. 1 in about three weeks. Additional indoor acreage will be planted when the facilities are ready.

 

“All depends on how much sun we get in Vancouver,” said Newell, explaining that like the Santa Maria Valley, which has been shrouded in morning fog much of the summer, his native Vancouver, British Columbia, where the plants are propagated, has also been deprived of sun this year and that has slowed production.

 

“There’s a lot of pressure,” he said. “This particular facility and operation, everything is new from the ground up. All the systems we have are new. There have been some delays with the trades. There have been some delays in not getting the right parts shipped from the Netherlands. The sheer number of tasks to do is incredible.”

 

About seven to 10 weeks after the first tomatoes are planted in their coconut fiber medium, Newell said, the facility will harvest its first crop. Hydroponic agriculture grows plants in liquid nutrient solutions rather than in soil.

 

The wet winter also slowed construction, but even with the delays, the two greenhouses now look more like biotechnical clean rooms than a tomato farm. The floors of the both are covered in more white than a Canadian winter, but this is fabric designed to prevent soil-born plant contamination.

 

The greenhouses, two of four planned, seem like living, breathing beings, with active and passive ventilation systems, water and carbon dioxide reclamation systems and a centralized computer system that will measure everything from plant nutrient levels to employee production.

 

Not long after the greenhouses are planted, the white flooring, support columns, planting platforms and water recycling gutters will be obscured by a 20-foot canopy of leafy green tomato vines.

 

“It’ll be like a jungle in here,” Newell said, walking through Greenhouse No. 1 in heat he estimated at about 35 degrees Celsius — 95 Fahrenheit for Americans.

 

Grape tomatoes will be the first crops, but Roma, Campari, beefsteak and other varieties will follow.

 

Even though the facility hasn’t yet produced a single tomato, Newell said the future is ripe. He said he thinks construction of the next two greenhouses — identical to the first two on the east side of the packing facility — will probably proceed much sooner than first anticipated. Windset Farms is already exploring financing options for them.

 

The business has also added some new customers, including Sysco Corp., which will increase demand for its products.

 

“We still believe this is the best growing climate anywhere,” Newell said. “This is really the most environmentally sound method of growing in the world. At the end of the day, the tomatoes will taste better and they’ll have a much better shelf life.”

 

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Kelp farming is on its way in Scandinavia

 

(ScienceDaily) — An underwater "field" as big as a Norwegian county could provide two billion litres of kelp-based fuel a year. SINTEF, the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia, is currently establishing a centre of expertise that will enable us to cultivate seaweed and kelp on a large scale.

 

Kelp cultivation will mean that we can produce bioethanol fuel in addition to biogas for heating and fuel, without the need to use food crops as a raw material, and without having to utilise agricultural land or freshwater resources.

 

This is among the reasons behind SINTEF's decision to establish the Norwegian Centre for Seaweed and Kelp Technology, which was opened in Trondheim on August 15 by State Secretary Kristine Gramstad of the Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs

 

Many areas of application

 

There are even more potential uses of kelp and seaweed beyond applications as sources of energy.

 

As well as being an energy resource, macroalgae such as kelp and seaweed are used in food production and as agents that bind water, in biological purification systems, the reestablishment of kelp cultures in fjords that have suffered high rates of kelp mortality, as soil improvers and in the hunt for new compounds for medical and industrial applications (bioprospecting).

 

Exciting interface

 

"Macroalgae cultivation lies at an exciting interface between better resource utilisation, new marine-based products and potential renewable energy production. Although the process of establishing new industry can be demanding, I believe that a maritime land such as Norway, with its major offshore and marine supply industries, solid research base and a world-beating aquaculture industry should be quite capable of achieving success in this field," says State Secretary Gramstad.

 

Efficiency challenges

 

Today, some 15 million tonnes of seaweed and kelp are cultivated all over the world, mostly in Asia, and are used in foods, animal feedstuffs, chemicals, medicines, health foods, cosmetics and fertilisers.

 

"The Norwegian coastline, including all its islands, is twice as long as the Equator. In other words, we possess huge areas that are suitable for cultivating seaweed and kelp. However, manpower is more expensive here than in Asia. This means that the greatest challenge lies in cultivating large volumes at sufficiently low cost, and research-based knowledge will be essentlal if we are to manage this,"says chief scientist Trina Galloway of SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture.

 

International invitations

 

Galloway says that SINTEF has already been cultivating kelp on a trial basis, on behalf of Norwegian industrial interests and with financial support from the the Research Council of Norway.

 

"We ourselves have a good deal of competence, but there are also inportant sources of knowledge elsewhere in the world. The aim of the centre is to gather all such sources of expertise into a single team, so we are inviting both Norwegian and overseas research gropups into the centre.

 

Could be fertilised by farmed fish

 

The competence centre will offer industry and the authorities its knowledge, which will cover everything from controlled production of seed plants and cultivation in the sea to harvesting and processing the raw material for a wide range of applications.

 

Seaweed and kelp take up nutrient salts (fertilisers) and CO2 from the sea. The plants can be cultivated in dedicated macroalgae systems, or side by side with farmed fish. The plants can thus be fertilised by the fish and thus help to cleanse the water around the sea-cages.

 

From harvesting to cultivation

 

At present, seaweed and kelp are not cultivated commercially in Norway. But we already have a major industry based on an annual harvest of around 150,000 tonnes of kelp from which alginates are extracted. These are substances that have the ability to thicken and stabilise liquids, and are therefore used in a large number of food products. Grisetang is also used to produce kelp meal, which is used as a soil improver and in animal feed and health-food products.

 

"Although harvesting removes less than one percent of Norway's standing seaweed and kelp biomass, we do not recommend taking out more than this amount, as kelp forests are actually important nursery and feeding grounds for a wide range of invertebrates and fish. If we want to expand our kelp-based industry, we will have to cultivate kelp on a large scale," says Galloway.

 

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Ground covers bolster organic production

 

(USDA-ARS) – Studies by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists indicate that organic farmers who need to periodically amend their soils with compost after planting can still control weeds-and hold down costs-by using fabric ground covers. This will be welcome news to organic farmers who till composted manure into their crop fields after planting.

 

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) soil scientist Larry Zibilske, who works at the agency's Integrated Farming and Natural Resources Research Unit in Weslaco, Texas, set out to see how these ground covers limit water penetration and affect carbon and nutrient levels in soils. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency, and this work supports the USDA commitment to supporting sustainable agriculture.

 

Zibilske conducted a soil chamber study using two types of commercial ground covers: a needle-punched, double-layer fabric, and a tightly woven material made of flat polypropylene strands. He used two types of compost-poultry litter pellets or a compost mix of cattle manure and other organic materials-in the research.

 

Zibilske monitored the movement of nutrients from the two types of composted materials through the two types of ground covers for 30 days. Water was able to pass freely through the fabric cover, but the polypropylene cover limited the movement of water for the first two weeks. However, water was able to pass through the polypropylene cover much more easily by the end of the study, perhaps because the cover was becoming coated with organic molecules from the compost.

 

Zibilske found that soil microbial activity indicators were essentially the same in soils protected by fabric covers, soils protected by polypropylene covers, and control soil samples where the movement of nutrients had not been impeded by a ground cover. This similarity suggests that these ground covers did not significantly alter or limit biological activities in the soil. Links were also observed between the use of fabric covers and reduced soil levels of nitrogen and phosphorus levels.

 

The results from this study were published in 2010 in the International Journal of Fruit Science.

 

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Can panda poop solve biofuel woes?

 

(Yahoo! News) – Biofuels might be a way to make energy out of renewable resources and cut dependence on fossil fuels, but currently, producing them from corn and other edible plants is largely impractical.

 

Now, a group of researchers believes they may have found a solution — in panda poop.

 

The microbes in the feces of giant pandas break down super-tough plant material in grass, corn stalks and wood chips, the researchers reported Monday (Aug. 29) at the National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Denver. If the technique works on a large scale, inedible plants and plant waste could be used as biofuels instead of edible corn.

 

"Who would have guessed that 'panda poop' might help solve one of the major hurdles to producing biofuels, which is optimizing the breakdown of the raw plant materials used to make the fuels?" study researcher Ashli Brown, biochemist at Mississippi State University, said in a statement. "We hope our research will help expand the use of biofuels in the future and help cut dependency on foreign oil."

 

Brown and her colleagues spent a year collecting and analyzing panda feces at the Memphis Zoo.

 

In the excrement, they found several types of digestive bacteria similar to bacteria found in termite guts. These bacteria help termites break down and digest wood. In pandas, they probably help with the digestion of woody bamboo shoots.

 

"Our studies suggest that bacteria species in the panda intestine may be more efficient at breaking down plant materials than termite bacteria and may do so in a way that is better for biofuel manufacturing purposes," Brown said.

 

Under certain conditions, the panda poop bacteria can covert 95 percent of plant biomass into simple sugars, Brown estimated. The powerful enzymes in the bacteria speed up chemical reactions, eliminating the need for high heat, harsh acids and high pressures currently used to produce biofuels. Bacteria would also be a more energy-efficient way to turn materials such as switchgrass, corn stalks and wood chips into fuel, Brown said.

 

The next step for Brown is a complete census of the panda gut. She's looking for the most powerful digestive enzymes. Using genetic engineering, scientists could program yeast cells to make these enzymes, she said. The yeast, in turn, could provide large amounts of enzymes for biofuel production.

 

The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, The Memphis Zoological Society, the Mississippi Corn Promotion Board and the Southeastern Research Center at Mississippi State.

 

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