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August 31, 2009
· More women finding their niche on the farm
· Laughing gas – A necessary evil of agriculture
· New seal identifies mostly GM-free foods
· Large processing vegetable crop expected
· Poorest of the poor can be creditworthy
More women finding their niche on the farm
(Seattle Times) – Few things bug Claire Thomas more than being called a gardener.
The 63-year-old
But part of the reason she's so good at farming, Thomas said, is because she's a woman — not in spite of it.
"It's really like taking care of a family," Thomas said of tending the vegetables on her farm, The Root Connection. It's a community-supported farm that charges members a seasonal fee for fresh produce they pick up each week.
Thomas is among an unprecedented number of women who own
their own farms. Between 2002 and 2007, the number of female-owned farms in
Although farming is still overwhelmingly dominated by men, the number of male-owned farms increased just 3 percent during that same time period.
Nationally, the number of women who own farms jumped almost 29 percent from 2002 to 2007, while the number of male-owned farms stayed essentially flat.
The census counts only owners of farms that generate at least $1,000 in revenue annually.
Many women farmers say the move toward organically grown food and the surging popularity of farmers markets have contributed to the boost in women in the industry.
The census showed that men tend to own large, commodity-crop farms while women usually operate small, diversified farms — the kind that tend to target eco-conscious buyers.
Thomas said she and her seven employees hand-planted all the vegetables on her 22-acre farm. Once her plants are in the soil, the main tools she uses to care for them are her hands — and the occasional pair of scissors.
Whether it's the carrots, the tomatoes, the squash or the beets, she makes sure she treats each vegetable as if it were a child with its own unique needs.
"I talk to them," she said, while snipping leaves from her tomato plants. "I'll look at them and say, 'OK, you all grow now.' "
It just wouldn't be as satisfying to operate a large farm with "a whole lot of machinery and a whole lot of acres," Thomas said. At a big farm, she would hardly come into contact with the plants she grew or people who bought her food.
About 500 customers sign up each season to buy produce from her farm.
"I think that this more personal relationship really appeals to women," Thomas said.
Most women who own farms are between 45 and 54 years old, according to the census. Many of them grew up thinking that women weren't supposed to be farmers — like Nancy Hutto, chairwoman of the King County Agriculture Commission and owner of Snoqualmie Valley Honey Farm.
When Hutto, 68, was growing up, women were told they had to be teachers, nurses, or secretaries, she said. She went into teaching, but it bored her. In her 30s, she decided she needed to move onto something new, something more challenging. So she started her own business — a honey-bee farm.
"You're always having to interact with nature, which is a continual and ongoing dance," she said.
Some women farmers said they were lured to farming by the chance to make money while working from home and keeping a close eye on their children. They also didn't want to work for someone else. As a farmer, you're your own boss, Hutto said.
However, women haven't always been accepted as serious farmers.
Anne Schwartz, 55, said she remembers encountering the kind
of sexism "that would just make you raise your eyebrows and drop your
jaw." She owns a 13-acre organic vegetable farm in Rockport,
Schwartz recalled when she was first starting out as a
farmer at the
"This guy pulled up to buy some berries and he said, 'You're an abomination to womanhood — you should be ashamed of yourself,' " Schwartz said. "He was very offended by what I looked like."
Another time, she said, a man told her she had no right to call herself a farmer, and that she was just an "extravagant gardener." But Schwartz, like other women farmers, didn't let remarks like that derail her career.
As stereotypes about women farmers crumble, more women also are inheriting farms from their families, said Patrice Barrentine, direct-marketing coordinator for the state's agriculture department.
"In the past, women weren't seen as farmers, so typically farms were handed down from male to male, and that's just not the case anymore," she said.
As more women enter the industry the world of farming will begin to change, Thomas said. She named her farm The Root Connection to remind people what it's like to bond with the earth — an aspect of farming that she thinks the industry deserted long ago but women farmers will help to revive.
When people come to her farm, Thomas tells everyone that touching is welcome. She encourages everyone to pick some of her flowers, herbs and greens to go with the vegetables she packs for them.
"If you want (it)," she said, "you've got to come out here in the heat, in the rain, and pick it yourself."
Laughing gas – A necessary evil of agriculture
(NPR) – Scientists are surprised to discover that a gas produced mainly in agriculture is doing more to damage the Earth's ozone layer than synthetic chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons.
The culprit is a gas called nitrous oxide, known in your dentist's office as laughing gas. But in the stratosphere, it's no laughing matter.
The Earth is protected from harsh ultraviolet sunlight by a layer of ozone up in the stratosphere. That layer was being depleted by synthetic chemicals used in aerosol spray cans, refrigerators and air conditioners.
We averted global disaster by phasing out those chemicals with a treaty called the Montreal Protocol. But the Montreal Protocol is silent about nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide has always been a normal part of our
atmosphere, "but since industrialization, its concentration has been going
up," says A.R. Ravishankara at the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in
Now that synthetic chemicals are waning in the atmosphere, he wondered if other gases posed any environmental threat. As he reports in the online edition of Science magazine, nitrous oxide, a byproduct of agriculture, is a serious problem for our planet.
"There's so much being emitted, that right now, nitrous oxide emissions would be the largest ozone depleting gas emissions today, and it will continue to be in the future," Ravishankara says.
Holes In The Ozone
Nitrous oxide doesn't threaten to devastate the Earth's ozone layer the way the synthetic chemicals did. But it's still eroding a bit of our planetary sun shield, so it's increasing the risk of skin cancer, among other concerns.
Ravishankara estimates that by the end of the century, we will have 4 percent less ozone in the stratosphere than we would have had before the Industrial Age, as a result of nitrous oxide.
The biggest ozone problem is over
"It turns out that nitrous oxide does not have a deleterious effect on the ozone hole. Its effect is on the global ozone layer," he says.
That's because the ozone hole is influenced by supercold clouds found only over the poles. Those clouds release chlorine, which destroy ozone, but they actually neutralize nitrous oxide. So that's the good news.
The Downside Of Fertilizer
The bad news is that it isn't easy to reduce human
production of nitrous oxide. Cindy Nevison of the
"Whereas nitrous oxide is produced by microbes in the soil, and humans have greatly increased the amount of nitrogen available to these microbes," Nevison says.
When we spread nitrogen fertilizer on the soil, we also feed those bacteria. And they produce more nitrous oxide. Bacteria in seawater also produce nitrous oxide when the fertilizer runs down the rivers and out to sea. Nevison says factories and automobile tailpipes produce some nitrous oxide, but not all that much.
"I think that limiting nitrous oxide is going to be more difficult than, for example, limiting carbon dioxide emissions. And we know how difficult that is," she says.
That's because we need nitrogen — it's an essential part of protein. Carbon dioxide comes mostly from smokestacks and tailpipes.
"You can get your energy from other sources than carbon, but you really can't get your food from sources other than nitrogen."
We can't phase out nitrogen fertilizers, Nevison says. And studies show we could make only a modest difference if we used them more carefully.
And it's not just the ozone layer that's at issue here. Nitrous oxide also contributes to global warming — so there's another important reason to pay attention to this often neglected gas.
New seal identifies mostly GM-free foods
(The New York Times) – Alarmed that genetically engineered crops may be finding their way into organic and natural foods, an industry group has begun a campaign to test products and label those that are largely free of biotech ingredients.
With farmers using gene-altered seeds to grow much of
The industry group, the Non-GMO Project, says its new label is aimed at reassuring consumers and will be backed by rigorous testing.
“There’s a vulnerability here that the industry is addressing,” said Michael J. Potter, the founder and president of Eden Foods and a board member of the Non-GMO Project, the organization responsible for the testing and labeling campaign.
As plantings of conventional crops with genetic modifications soared in recent years, Mr. Potter put in place stringent safeguards to ensure that the organic soybeans he bought for tofu, soy milk and other products did not come from genetically engineered plants. He even supplies the seed that farmers use to grow his soybeans.
But many other companies have not been so careful, and as a result, Mr. Potter said, the organic and natural foods industry is like “a dirty room” in need of cleaning.
“What I’ve heard, what I know, what I’ve seen, what’s been tested and the test results that have been shared with me, clearly indicate that the room is very dirty,” Mr. Potter said.
Hundreds of products already claim on their packaging that they do not contain genetically modified ingredients, but with little consistency in the labeling and little assurance that the products have actually been tested. The new labeling campaign hopes to clear up such confusion.
The initials GMO stand for genetically modified organism. Participants in the Non-GMO Project include major players in the organic and natural foods business, like Whole Foods Market.
Whole Foods plans to place the project’s seal on hundreds of products it markets under its “365” store brand. Nature’s Path, a leading manufacturer of organic packaged foods like cereals, frozen waffles and granola bars, has also embraced the initiative.
The project’s seal, a butterfly perched on two blades of
grass in the form of a check mark, will begin appearing on packaged foods this
fall. The project will not try to guarantee that foods are entirely free of
genetically modified ingredients, but that manufacturers have followed
procedures, including testing, to ensure that crucial ingredients contain no
more than 0.9 percent of biotech material. That is the same threshold used in
Dag Falck, a project board member who is the organic program manager of Nature’s Path, said testing and labeling were needed to protect the industry from the steady spread of biotech ingredients. His company has been testing for such ingredients for several years and is strengthening those measures.
“The thing is, if we have a contamination problem that’s growing in organics, what will happen one day when someone tests something and finds out that organics is contaminated beyond a reasonable amount, say 5 or 10 percent?” he said. “Consumers would lose all faith in organics.”
While a consensus has developed among scientists that the genetically modified crops now in cultivation are safe, many biotech opponents say that questions remain over whether such foods pose health risks and whether the crops, and agricultural practices associated with them, could damage the environment.
The genetic modifications used in major crops in the
Plantings of crops with genetic modifications have risen sharply over the last decade, to the point that about 85 percent of corn and canola and 91 percent of soybean acreage this year was sown with biotech seed. Few food products in the supermarket lack at least some element derived from these crops, including oils, corn syrup, corn starch and soy lecithin.
The most recent agricultural sector to convert is sugar beets. Once this year’s crop is processed, close to half of the nation’s sugar will come from gene-engineered plants. Monsanto, a major developer of such seeds, has said it plans to develop biotech wheat, and scientists are moving forward on other crops.
Farmers who want to plant without using biotechnology are often surrounded by neighbors whose fields are sown with genetically modified crops. And manufacturers who want to avoid genetically engineered crops and their byproducts find that increasingly difficult to do.
Pollen from a biotech field may be carried by wind or insects to fertilize plants in a nonbiotech plot. At harvest and afterward, biotech and nonbiotech crops and their byproducts are often handled with the same farm equipment, trucks and so on. If the equipment is not properly cleaned, the two types of foodstuffs can mix.
While federal organic regulations bar farmers from planting genetically engineered seed, they are silent on what should be done about issues like pollination from nearby biotech crops. Few regulations govern foods labeled “natural,” but retailers say consumers of those products want them to be free of genetically engineered ingredients.
“There’s some GMO presence in almost everything today,” said
Lynn Clarkson, president of Clarkson Grain Company, in
Mr. Clarkson tests every truckload that farmers bring him, rejecting 5 to 7 percent of corn and soybean loads because they contain more than 0.9 percent of genetically modified material.
The Non-GMO project works with companies to test their ingredients and improve manufacturing processes. It will also spot test products in stores.
Officials with the project would not provide details of the test results conducted so far under the program.
Sandra Kepler, the chief executive of Food Chain Global Advisors, a consulting company that administers the project, said it was too early to draw conclusions and that much of the testing had been done on ingredients used by companies with safeguards already in place.
The executives of several companies participating in the
project, including
“People are going to be reluctant to say, ‘My brand of cereal, we found some contaminated products and we changed sources,’ ” said Michael S. Funk, a project board member who is co-founder and chairman of United Natural Foods, a major distributor. “Nobody wants to have that information out there.” He said, however, that he believed the number of cases was small.
Labeling of food products for biotech content, or lack of it, has long been controversial. The biotechnology industry fought off early efforts to require labeling of genetically modified foods. Then, when some natural foods makers began using labels saying they were free of biotech ingredients, the Food and Drug Administration criticized the labels as potentially misleading. Labeling remains a gray area, with a host of products continuing to make such claims.
Supporters of the biotech industry questioned whether the new labeling campaign would pass muster with the F.D.A. “It’s very important that the labels on those products are used for marketing and branding purposes and not to make statements about food safety,” said Karen Batra, a director of communications of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a lobbying group.
The F.D.A. said it did not have authority to approve labels before they appeared in the marketplace. Once a label is in use, the agency could initiate a review if it received consumer complaints or had concerns the label was misleading.
Large processing vegetable crop expected
(USDA-ERS) – With a record-large processing tomato crop anticipated and assuming yields for other processing vegetables at least match the average of the past 3 years, output of the five leading processing vegetables could approach the 1999 record high of 19.2 million short tons— about a tenth above last year’s strong production.
As a result, some easing of processed-vegetable wholesale prices is anticipated this fall. In July, wholesale prices for canned vegetables (including juices) were running 13 percent above a year ago, while
frozen vegetables were selling for 14 percent more.
Click here to view the entire report
Poorest of the poor can be creditworthy
(AP via Yahoo! News Singapore) – By Ambika Ahuja – The global financial crisis has highlighted a curious success story: A bank that doles out loans to some of the world's poorest, least-creditworthy people continues to have a payback rate of nearly 100 percent.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, known as the "banker to the poor," quips that the Grameen Bank he founded owes its success to "sub-sub-subprime borrowers" who also own nearly all the bank's equity.
When Yunus approached traditional
banks over 30 years ago about lending to the poor in
But since 1983, the bank has lent more than $8 billion to
nearly 8 million people in
Yunus thinks his model could teach big commercial banks some lessons.
"We have now shown that the poorest of the poor can be
creditworthy," he said in an interview with The Associated Press during a
recent trip to
Grameen takes on clients who have no collateral, no credit history and no lawyers. The vast majority of them are women. Most take out loans for $200 or less each time.
Yunus attributes micro-lending's success to a system of "moral responsibility" that makes approval and repayment of the loan the concern of the community as well as the individual borrower.
Here is how it normally works. A group of five prospective borrowers from similar social and economic positions come together to determine an appropriate loan for each. The request then goes before a larger council of borrowers, who are also shareholders in the bank, and finally to the bank for approval.
It's not entirely surprising that Grameen and other microfinance institutions have been largely unscathed by the financial turmoil, said Mayumi Ozaki, a microfinance specialist at the Asian Development Bank. They generally support tiny businesses such as retail shops, vegetable growing and craft making that are not affected much by a global trade slowdown.
But the success of Grameen is also attributed to building relationships and trust.
"Microfinance loan officers visit their poor clients frequently," she said. "They have good knowledge of the creditworthiness of their clients, and the clients as well value the trust and have a good credit discipline."
Ozaki says it's hard to draw too many lessons for big commercial banks, whose transactions are usually much larger and more complicated. But the success of microfinance "shows that successful banking operation on whatever scale is about understanding the risk and managing it well and not overreaching," she said.
Such overreaching, as well as lax oversight, contributed to
the
One big problem in the
American government regulators, meanwhile, had little power over mortgage brokers and other firms that catered to so-called sub-prime borrowers. Only now are lawmakers talking seriously about stricter regulations for the mortgage industry.
Yunus said at Grameen, "We know the limits of our operations and we know how much risk the bank and our clients can take."
A focus on consumption, rather than income-generating activities, contributed to the American credit fiasco, he adds.
Grameen also has been successful because it's grounded in what he calls "the real economy," rather than "fantasy economy" of ever-climbing asset prices. A loan for a goat, for example, produces tangible benefits that can support a family.
"The closer you are to the real economy, the safer you are," he said.
Grameen's model has been
replicated successfully in more than 100 countries, including the
The failure of traditional banks to provide this kind of credit is a "big hole" in the American financial system where millions cannot open bank accounts, according to Yunus.
The global financial meltdown "has given us an
opportunity to create a financial system that is more inclusive," said Yunus, who was in
Yunus' latest project is advocating what he calls "social business," which combine altruism with business models to bring corporate efficiency and innovation to help the poor. The goal is to solve social issues and not to maximize profits.
But unlike charity which has no mechanism to regenerate its funding, the business must recover its full costs and recoup its investment.
Joining with multinational companies, Grameen
has successfully launched a yogurt business, Grameen Danone, which provides malnourished children with a
low-cost source of nutrition. Grameen Veolia has
built several water treatment plants that provide clean drinking water to the
poorest in
Despite cynicism about whether such cause-driven projects could be done on a large scale with no profit incentive, Yunus remained optimistic. He has faced plenty of naysayers before.
"When things fail, then it's time to ask questions, fix the problems and redesign the system so it works for everyone," he said. "That's the challenge of the day."
End Transmission