" I heard it through the AgLine"

September 8, 2009

 

 

·        Leafy green safety rules may go nationwide

·        Global program preserves ag biodiversity

·        Report highlights global loss of seed varieties

·        Water issues galvanize California farmers

·        IBM dives into water management technologies

 

 

Leafy green safety rules may go nationwide

 

(Fresno Bee) – WASHINGTON -- California's leafy green vegetable industry could be leading growers nationwide into new ways of keeping food safe.

 

Prompted by a 2006 outbreak of illness due to contaminated spinach, the growers and processors established voluntary industry standards adopted by 99% of the state's leafy greens handlers. A new marketing agreement would extend similar voluntary standards to all states, under the proposal now being rolled out.

 

"In the interest of public health, if we can get all of the leafy green industry covered, that would be good," said Scott Horsfall, chief executive officer of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement.

 

On Thursday, the Agriculture Department scheduled public hearings that will start in Monterey on Sept. 22 and end in Charlotte, N.C., a month later. Supporters in the agriculture industry hope to have something in place by early next year. The Agriculture Department has the final say.

 

The hearings will give farmers, food safety regulators, consumers and others their chance to weigh in.

 

Some already have. The Agriculture Department has received about 3,500 written comments, some very critical of the new proposal or fearful of its implications, which are independent of federal food safety regulations proposed earlier this summer.

 

The proposed agreement would establish a set of farming practices aimed at reducing the potential for contamination. Those practices include maintaining water quality, providing field sanitation and keeping up-to-date records of their practices. Regular audits also would be required.

 

Like the California agreement, the national program would be voluntary. Only companies that sign on would be obliged to pay assessments and follow the rules. But some fear that those who don't sign up could be shut out of the market.

 

"I am opposed to any arrangement that allows a board of handlers to dictate farming practices for all farms in the country," wrote Judy Low, of the Santa Cruz County town of Davenport, adding that "many family farms will be driven out of the leafy greens market."

 

The Community Alliance with Family Farmers in Davis said there is little evidence that leafy greens such as spinach, lettuce and cabbage, grown for local farmers markets, have been the cause of a food-borne illness.

 

"The smaller growers feel like they don't have a problem, so why should they be part of this?" said David Runsten, policy director at the alliance.

 

Bakersfield-area farmer Dan Andrews said the proposed standards "seem severe." Organic farmers and others signed identical letters raising alarms about "one-size-fits-all requirements."

 

But agricultural groups ranging from the California Farm Bureau Federation and Western Growers Association already have endorsed the proposal, as have members of the existing California leafy greens agreement. California growers consider it a matter of self-protection, in part, as food scares don't respect state boundaries.

 

Supporters of California's program say they know all too well the consequences of an outbreak of food-borne illness. Their program was created in 2007, a year after an outbreak of E. coli in bagged spinach killed three people, sickened 200 others and cost the leafy greens industry nearly $100 million.

 

"There was a crisis of confidence associated with products from California and we needed to do something as rapidly as possible," said Hank Giclas, vice president of Western Growers Association. "And we knew that the best possible scenario was to try and move this concept forward on a national level."

 

The national agreement would cover more than a dozen leafy green crops, from kitchen stand-bys like lettuce, spinach and cabbage to others like escarole.

 

A 23-member committee, six of whose members would come from California or four other Western states, would oversee the program. New labels would alert consumers.

 

The Obama administration hasn't yet concluded whether it will actively support the marketing agreement proposal. It has, however, launched its own efforts to improve food safety.

 

In July, the president announced a far-reaching initiative calling for stepped-up enforcement by the Food and Drug Administration, creation of new food-safety standards for produce, and a system that can rapidly trace the path of contaminated food.

 

The effort, like the national leafy greens agreement, has gained support from farm industry groups.

 

"We don't want thousands of people getting sick," said Ed Beckman, president of the Fresno-based California Tomato Farmers. "And the only way to change that is to put corrective measures in place and make them a priority."

 

Consumers groups say the increased attention to food safety is long overdue.

 

"Government is finally acting now because there is recognition on the part of the administration and Congress that something needs to be done," said Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute with the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, D.C.

 

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Global program preserves ag biodiversity

 

(CNN) – When the chips are down, the world may one day owe a debt of gratitude to a group of potato farmers high up in the mountains of Peru.

 

Thanks to a new $116 million global fund established this summer, the Quechua Indians are being paid to maintain their diverse collection of rare potatoes and ensure that they will be available to help the world adapt to future climate change.

 

The Quechua are one of 11 communities around the world, chosen for the important collection of crops they farm, which together are part of a major new initiative to ensure that the world has the options it might need to cope with future food crises.

 

Other countries involved include Cuba, where they will be focusing on maize and beans, as well as oranges in Egypt and wheat in Tanzania.

 

The fund, a cornerstone of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), aims to maintain a reservoir of essential species for all our major food crops.

 

"Agricultural biodiversity is essential," Dr Shakeel Bhatti, Secretary of the Treaty, told CNN. "It is really the global insurance that in the future we will be able to adapt to problems like climate change and population growth."

 

Just as biodiversity is now seen as the cornerstone of the resilience of natural world, so having a broad variety of agricultural crops is essential to the resilience of agriculture. Different species of plants are often able to cope with widely differing environmental conditions and many obscure varieties could hide vital disease resistance.

 

But the world's valuable diversity is disappearing incredibly fast.

 

"The figures are quite disturbing," said Dr Bhatti.

 

Over the millennia, humans have relied on more than 10,000 different plant species for food. Today, we have barely 150 species under cultivation -- and of those only 12 species provide 80 percent of all of our food needs. Four of those -- rice, wheat, maize and potatoes -- provide more than half of our energy requirements.

 

As global markets have grown and seed production and agriculture become more commercialized, the old system of farmers saving their own seeds - and by doing so a myriad of different crops, often closely adapted to local conditions - has almost disappeared.

 

As a result variety is dwindling towards a vanishing point. China has lost 90 percent of the wheat varieties it had just 60 years ago. In the United States more than 90 percent of fruit tree and vegetable varieties found in farmers' fields at the beginning of the twentieth century are no longer there. Mexico has lost 80 percent of its corn varieties. India has lost 90 percent of its rice varieties

 

"They're gone; they've disappeared forever," said Dr Bhatti. "From a food security point of view this makes the world's farmers much more vulnerable to pests... and increases the vulnerability of some poor countries to price shocks in global commodity markets."

 

The ITPGRFA has two major aims: to prevent the loss of underused crops and ensure the full diversity of common crop species is maintained. It has already enabled the establishment of a seed bank containing 1.1 million varieties that opened in Svalbard, Norway, in 2008. But now the focus is on crop varieties than cannot be stored in this way -- such as potatoes.

 

Historically, both the 19th century Irish Potato Famine and the Bengal Famine, in India, are hard lessons in what happens when we rely too much on a small range of species that are hit by disease.

 

But, according to Dr Bhatti, there are problems around the world now that offer a glimpse at what could happen in the future if we don't maintain our vigilance.

 

Wheat Stem Rust is a devastating wind-born disease affecting cereals that has spread across Africa and is now in the Middle East, and migrating further eastwards.

 

"If it reaches South Asia and China then millions could face a major threat to food security," says Dr Bhatti.

 

In southwest Australia years of drought, believed to be linked to climate change, have had a huge impact on rice production.

 

"It has almost wiped out the sector," said Dr Bhatti.

 

Although the ITPGRFA was agreed in 2001, and came into affect in 2004, but for the last five years signatories have been locked in negotiations over how the scheme would be financed. It wasn't until a conference in Tunis in June 2009 that the deadlock was broken with the new $116 million benefit sharing fund, which will fund the 11 projects.

 

There are also contracts to ensure those countries that are centers of diversity -- often poorer nations -- benefit when species are used commercially by richer nations.

 

"That was a major step forward," said Dr Bhatti. "We now have tremendous confidence in the system; the treaty is on track."

 

Rich signatories, such as Norway, Spain and Italy, have agreed to provide the rest of the funds within five years, and according to Dr Bhatti the U.S. has expressed a desire to sign up after disinterest during the Bush administration.

 

So successful is the model established by the ITPGRFA that the World Health Organization is looking at it as a way of sharing information on viruses, including influenza; there are also plans for a bank of animal genetic material.

 

"I must say I have been so delighted by the Tunis conference this year," said Dr Bhatti. "To a certain extent we were at a crossroads, but we completely came through. It was a quantum leap; a major thing. We are moving forward."

 

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Report highlights global loss of seed varieties

 

LONDON,  (Reuters) - Farmers in developing countries are losing traditional varieties because of growing corporate control of the seeds they plant, hampering their ability to cope with climate change, a London-based think tank said on Monday.

 

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) said in a report that the diversity of traditional seed varieties is falling fast and this means valuable traits such as drought and pest resistance could be lost forever.

 

The report was issued ahead of the World Seed Conference which opens on Tuesday at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

 

"Where farming communities have been able to maintain their traditional varieties, they are already using them to cope with the impacts of climate change," said project leader Krystyna Swiderska of IIED.

 

"But more commonly, these varieties are being replaced by a smaller range of 'modern' seeds that are heavily promoted by corporations and subsidised by governments."

 

IIED partner organisations in China, India, Kenya and Peru participated in the research behind the report.

 

The report said an international tready on the protection of new varieties of plants -- known as UPOV -- protects the profits of private corporations but fails to recognise and protect the rights and knowledge of poor farmers.

 

"Western governments and the seed industry want to upgrade the UPOV Convention to provide stricter exclusive rights to commercial plant breeders," Swiderska said.

 

"This will further undermine the rights of farmers and promote the loss of seed diversity that poor communities depend on for their resilience to changing climatic conditions.

 

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Water issues galvanize California farmers

 

(HanfordSentinel.com) – By Seth Nidever: It's June 29. A group of protesters is marching in front of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco, chanting slogans and waving signs as traffic rushes by. Television cameras zero in on the demonstration. The protesters walk to Union Square, handing out brochures and talking to anybody who will listen.

 

Another Bay Area interest group pushing a pet cause? Not quite.

 

These protesters were conservative Republicans from Kings and Fresno counties. They were farmers, mostly from the remote Westside, stung by water cutbacks from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta that are threatening their way of life.

 

They were doing something that conservative Republicans aren't generally associated with: Political activism, 1960s style.

 

As water concerns and survival worries mount, Westside agriculture is getting increasingly vocal in public demonstrations.

 

It's putting media-shy farmers in the spotlight as never before.

 

"They're typically private people. That's part of our problem. We haven't been very vocal about what we're doing," said Sarah Woolf, spokeswoman for the Westlands Water District, the giant Westside entity at the epicenter of a region hard hit by drought, endangered-species water cutbacks and runaway unemployment.

 

The new wave of political action has created interesting combinations. It's not unusual, as in April's March for Water, to see growers and workers walking side by side, wearing the same shirts, chanting the same slogans.

 

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was different. Then, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement were locked in a bitter battle with growers.

 

Now, growers are learning a few lessons from their workers.

 

At the Pelosi protest, members of the Latino Water Coalition were fearless in approaching media and Pelosi staffers, Woolf said.

 

"I think it's something we haven't historically done. We don't know how to do it very well," Woolf said.

 

According to her, the relationship between growers and their workers on the Westside is closer than in other areas of the San Joaquin Valley where the work is more seasonal. Because Westside ag is mostly mechanized -- and has a year round growing schedule -- employees tend to be skilled farm hands who stay long term, Woolf said.

 

So growers have been drawn into the struggles of their workers, some of whom they've had to let go after years of loyal service.

 

Phil Brooks, a farmer in Kings and Fresno counties, said he's painfully aware of what's happening to his employees and former employees.

 

"These people want to work. They are embarrassed to be in food lines. I think everybody realizes now how much we rely on each other," he said.

 

Brooks himself has been involved in almost all the protests of the last several months, but he said it feels strange.

 

Others, even those with previous political experience, said the same.

 

"The ag industry as we know it in California is going to die if we don't get this (water) thing fixed," said Paul Newton, a Stratford-area grower and former chairman of the Kings County Republican Central Committee.

 

Newton said he hasn't particularly enjoyed going to several of the recent demonstrations, but felt like he had to.

 

"I think we're going to do it until we can no longer see any daylight or any gain. I think we're going to continue to do it until we go broke," he said.

 

Woolf called such activism "unprecedented."

 

But, according to a couple of academics interviewed for this story, farm protests go back at least to the American Revolution.

 

"I think farmer activism is not rare," said David Schecter, a political science professor at CSU Fresno. Schecter noted the importance of Shays' Rebellion, a 1786-1787 uprising of Massachusetts farmers protesting crushing debt and taxes, in bringing about the Constitutional Convention.

 

Still, Schecter noted that there is no long-standing tradition of grower activism in the conservative culture of the Central Valley. He said he found irony in the fact that conservative Republicans are calling for government action on their behalf.

 

But he said their strategy makes sense -- trying to sell urban voters on the need for an expanded water supply.

 

That's why farmers have been making a point of going to the Bay Area and Sacramento. Here, in the rural San Joaquin Valley, they are preaching to the choir.

 

But even in Hanford and Lemoore, the situation on the Westside -- a vast area fairly remote from population centers -- probably isn't as well known as farmers would like.

 

In a sense, Westside growers are victims of their own efficiency. Mechanized agriculture and giant square plots have made farming so efficient, farmers now make up only 1 to 2 percent of the nation's population.

 

So the pressure is on growers like never before to make the rest of America know and understand what they're doing.

 

"I think the farmer is saying, 'Look, we're important people, you'd better listen to us,'" said Don Larson, a retired history instructor at Fresno City College.

 

Larson pointed out that farmer protests during the Great Depression, which devastated many farms in the 1930s, led directly to the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the starting point for many of the government programs involving agriculture today.

 

The question for many farmers now is, how effective are the marches, the TV coverage, the rallies, the speeches of recent months?

 

They have been effective in drawing national attention, according to Schecter.

 

"You're getting celebrity-status individuals coming out," he said.

 

Woolf thinks farmers are being "invigorated" by the protests, though she could point to few tangible achievements in terms of policy changes or governmental action.

 

"Legislators [who] have never been to the Valley know we have a water crisis," she said.

 

Farmers can point to the involvement of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has come down solidly in favor of new water storage and new ways to get Sacramento River water around the fragile delta. Several ideas have been proposed, including a canal around the delta and a tunnel going under the delta.

 

Many of them now say they believe farmers' past tendency to avoid the media is no longer viable in the face of current challenges.

 

"I don't feel comfortable doing this, but me and my family feel like we have to fight for what we work for," Brooks said.

 

The reporter can be reached at 583-2432.

 

Year of discontent

 

--April 14-16: Local farmers join the March For Water, a trek from Mendota to San Luis Reservoir to protest water-delivery cutbacks from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta to the Westside. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the keynote speaker.

 

--June 15: Farmers from Kings and Fresno counties drive tractors and other slow-moving farm equipment on Interstate 5 to protest lack of Westside water.

 

--June 29: Several busloads of local farmers go to the San Francisco office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to protest federal rulings cutting pumping in the delta to protect endangered fish species. Farmers chant, march on Golden Gate Avenue and take their message to Union Square.

 

--July 1: Dozens of local farmers and ag supporters join thousands at downtown Fresno water rally. Speakers demand action to solve state’s drought crisis.

 

--Aug. 11: Hundreds converge on abandoned almond orchard near Huron to be interviewed and serve as the backdrop for a prime-time satellite interview with Fox News. The issue is again cutbacks on pumping from the delta to Westside farmland.

 

--Aug. 13: Westside growers and their supporters besiege Rep. George Miller’s office in Concord.

 

--Aug. 18: More than 100 local ag supporters, farmers and family members attend water hearings in Sacramento, but are mostly unable to get into the packed room. They distribute videos of April’s March for Water and go door-to-door at legislators’ offices in the Capitol.

 

--Aug. 28: Kings County farmers join Tea Party organizers for demonstration in Sacramento calling for lower taxes and less regulation.

 

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IBM dives into water management technologies

 

(CNET news.com) – Even as billions of dollars are being spent around the world to modernize the electricity grid, the systems to delivery fresh water are also in desperate need of a 21st century upgrade.

 

IBM is developing a portfolio of IT-related water management technologies, a business that it estimates can total US$20 billion within five years. At a water conference next week, IBM and Intel will be forming a working group to study how information and technology can be used to improve water management, according to IBM.

 

The goal is to sketch out the technical architecture required to more efficiently use fresh water, only one percent of the available water on Earth.

 

Water systems even in developed countries like the United States are notoriously outdated, with faulty pipes--some of them still made of wood--result in 25 percent to 45 percent lost water. That means high-tech approaches, such as using sensors to gauge water quality, are a tough sell to cash-strapped municipalities, most of which are more concerned with maintaining the basic infrastructure.

 

IBM is betting, though, that fresh water will have more value attached to it from the public, governments, and corporations.

 

"The hard truth is that most of the countries in the developing world are outgrowing the amount of water that is available to them," said Peter Williams, the chief technology officer of IBM's Big Green Innovations program, who representing IBM at a conference organized by the Water Innovations Alliance industry association next week. "Certainly, it's the case that water is the great sleeping crisis and it is most definitely starting to wake up."

 

IBM launched Big Green Innovations two and a half years ago to capitalize on constraints in energy generation, carbon emissions, energy in the data center, and water. For the past 18 months, IBM has focused more of its attention on water, said Williams, who characterized the business as "incredibly nascent."

 

Reservoirs of data

Upgrading the water utility infrastructure is analogous to the smart-grid technologies now being tested to make the grid run more efficiently and use more renewable energy.

 

Gathering and processing information on the status of delivery allows water agencies to better manage their operations. For example, if a water authority can use meters or sensors to locate problems, such as leaks or sewage overflows, they can cut their maintenance costs, Williams explained.

 

IBM has already had a number of water-related deals. In a partnership with the Nature Conservancy, it's gathering data on various environmental factors to measure the health of river ecosystems. In the Netherlands, IBM is involved in the design of levies to understand potential breaking points.

 

In these cases, IBM is building the software and networks to handle incoming data from sensors and to provide tools to let people analyze the information. It is also testing smart water meters that would provide more accurate consumption data and alert customer if there is a problem, such as a leak. It is also looking at new sensors being developed to track the level of pathogens or chemical contaminants that come from use of pharmaceuticals.

 

Big Blue's Maximo "asset management" software is used by many water utilities to keep track and maintain their equipment of pumps, plants, and filtration equipment.

 

Still, water utilities are a generally low-tech bunch when it comes to IT. Most water authority executives do not consider technology options beyond basic SCADA control systems, Williams said. "They are where (electricity) utilities were five or 10 years ago," he said.

 

Corporate risk

IBM is pushing into water because the trends on water point to the need for greater conservation for social and economic reasons.

 

In poor countries, billions of people do not have regular access to clean water. Meanwhile, high-profile droughts in Australia and the western U.S. served by the Colorado River are causing severe financial problems for different industries, notably agriculture.

 

The high energy cost of delivering water helps makes the economic case for better monitoring and data analysis. In the U.S., between 3 percent and 4 percent of the entire electricity output is used to pump water. In California, it's almost 20 percent. Meanwhile, low water levels in rivers and reservoirs forced the shut down of nuclear reactors in France a few years ago.

 

Industries that rely on water, such as semiconductors, agriculture, or beverages, are susceptible to disruptions of supply. There's also "reputational risk" when consumers perceive that businesses are profligate with water, Williams said.

 

"It's something like greenhouse gases. Ten years ago in this country, few people were talking about them but now they are," he said. "The same will happen with water."

 

This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News

 

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