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September 12, 2008
·
Taiwan center exports vegetable technology
· Monsanto produces blueprint for female corn
· Bayer CropScience plans big India push
· Creating markets for environmental stewardship
· Fed up with thieves, angry growers form veg-ilantes
Taiwan
(ChinaPost.com.tw) SHANHUA,
Taiwan -- While the world is tackling food shortages, a Taiwan-based
international research institute is seeking to alleviate malnutrition and
poverty in developing counties by improving production and consumption of
vegetables.
Since its founding in 1971 in Shanhua, south Taiwan, the Asian Vegetable Research and
Development Center (AVRDC) -- the World Vegetable Center -- has changed the
lives of millions of farmers in Asia and Africa by teaching them how to grow vegetables,
store and transport them as well as how to cook the produce.
Over the past 37 years, AVRDC has seen its
size and role expand rapidly as improved vegetable production can help reduce
malnutrition and poverty.
"We are not trying to use vegetables as
a substitute for food, but rather as an addition to the food basket, to help
farmers become better nourished and grow out of poverty," the center's
director, Dr. Dyno Keatinge,
told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Malnutrition represents a serious global
problem. According to figures released by the World Health Organization, 2 to
3.5 billion people suffer from malnutrition and 1.1 billion people are
underweight.
By improving vegetable production and raising
yields, people's nutrition levels can be improved, at the same time allowing
farmers to make more money by growing and selling better vegetables, Keatinge said.
As a non-profit organization, it gets funding
from dozens of governments and foundations which for 2008 totaled US$18
million, operating regional centers in
One main task for the center is to gather germplasms - seeds or plant culture - of indigenous
vegetables from around the world and store them so they won't become extinct.
So far, AVRDC has stored 56,136 germplasms from 150
countries.
At the center germplasms
are planted to record their growth and characteristics for long-term storage -
up to 100 years. Thousands of species of indigenous vegetables existed in the
world, providing important nutrition to people in developing countries Lin Li-ju of AVRDC's international
cooperation unit said, pointing to the plots of land and greenhouses where the
plants were grown.
"Take sweet potato shoots and leaves for
example, they were poor men's diet or pigs' feed in
AVRDC researchers are also experimenting with
natural crossing to improve the quality of vegetables and to make them pest-
and heat-resistant. Genetic engineering was monitored at the center, but not
actively pursued, officials said.
Peter Hanson, a plant breeder, held up a
plate of egg-sized yellow tomatoes, the result of several years' of research.
"This Golden Tomato contains three to
six times more beta carotene which is the precursor to vitamin A. A single
improved tomato like this can provide all your daily vitamin A needs," he
said, popping a Golden Tomato into his mouth.
AVRDC also teaches farmers in Asia and
Research shows that post-harvest loss can be
up to 50 percent if the product is not transported properly, resulting in a
waste of the produce and a loss of income for farmers.
Often very simple actions can have great
effects.
Monsanto produces blueprint for female corn
(Wire Services) ST. LOUIS -- Scientists at Monsanto say they
are a step closer to further unlocking the yield potential of corn to help
enable each seed to increase its ability meet the world's growing demand for
food, feed and fuel.
The company announced today it has produced a genetic blueprint of one of its
top-performing elite female corn lines. The scientific achievement, important
for developing better-performing corn seeds for farmers, was made through the
use of high throughput DNA sequencing methods, as well as data generated by the
recently completed maize genome project.
"These sequencing efforts will not only identify preferred genes for our
research and development pipelines, but move us into a high-definition
molecular breeding era that uses a combination of sequence and markers to
derive future higher-yielding hybrids globally," said Monsanto Chief
Technology Officer Robert Fraley.
High throughput sequencing methods enable scientists to rapidly identify
variations in the genomes of complex organisms. In health care, for example,
high throughput sequencing aids in the discovery of gene variants that can lead
to development of new medicines.
"In agriculture, high throughput sequencing has the potential to provide
an unprecedented level of detail about our current market-leading hybrids and
to point us in the direction of meeting Monsanto's commitment to double yields
in our core crops by 2030," said Fraley.
In February, scientists led by a team of researchers at
Hybrid corn seed is planted by farmers each spring and is developed by crossing
two corn inbred parents, male and female. Monsanto's elite parents represent
the culmination of more than a decade of intensive breeding effort, Fraley
said.
In June the company announced a three-point commitment to agriculture
sustainability, which includes the goal of developing better seeds to enable
farmers to double yields in corn, cotton and soybeans by the year 2030,
compared to a base year of 2000; helping farmers reduce by one-third the amount
of key resources required to grow crops by the year 2030; and helping to
improve farmers' lives globally.
Monsanto Company is a leading global provider of technology-based solutions and
agricultural products that improve farm productivity and food quality. Monsanto
remains focused on enabling both small-holder and large-scale farmers to
produce more from their land while conserving more of our world's natural
resources such as water and energy.
Bayer CropScience plans big India
(livemint.com) Monheim, Germany: India will receive a substantial portion of the €3.4 billion (about Rs21,522 crore) that Bayer CropScience AG proposes to spend on research and development globally over the next four years, underlining the country’s growing stature as a market for advanced farm products as well as a research hub.
The agro-chemicals and plant biotechnology unit of German
health care company Bayer AG has also applied to register in
“
“The company is all set to grab the opportunities in the country’s growing agriculture market, as well as the local skill for product development and manufacturing for the company’s global requirement,” he said.
Berschauer did not specify exactly
how much Bayer CropScience has budgeted to spend in
Bayer’s biosciences and plant biotechnology research
facility in
Bayer CropScience last week disclosed its global research investment plans as it looks at “long-term opportunities for growth on the agricultural markets”.
“Out of the total new global R&D investment proposed, the company will be spending almost €2.7 billion to develop innovative crop protection active ingredients, and €750 million for developing plant biotechnology products,” Berschauer said.
The company expects to achieve its global sales target of €2
billion by the end of 2009, two years earlier than originally planned. In
bioscience, which is mainly focused in the
The expansion of the
Though it expects to generate most of its sales growth on its own, the company will also tap opportunities for alliances and acquisitions in the seed and biotechnology business. Bayer CropScience’s bioscience business rose 15% to €304 million globally in the first half of 2008.
Much of this expansion, which is higher than the company’s
annual growth in health care and agrochemicals, came from growing cotton seeds,
or Bt cotton, in North America,
India’s agriculture sector “offers attractive opportunities for agrochemicals and biotechnologies companies on the back of rising income levels and consumption levels, resulting in rising food prices,” said Rajen Shah, chief investment officer at Mumbai-based Angel Broking Ltd.
Angel Broking views agriculture, valued at around Rs9
trillion, as the “next big investment opportunity” in
Creating markets for environmental stewardship
(Amber Waves) – What does a farm produce? Food and fiber is
the obvious answer, but most farms have only a portion of their land in crop
production. Farms also contain significant amounts of pasture, forest, ponds,
meadows, grasslands, and wetlands. In 2002, farms accounted for 41 percent of
all
When farmers decide how to use their land, they generally consider only uses that produce goods and services that can be sold. Products expected to generate the greatest net returns are the ones generally selected for production. As a result, when farmers make their production choices, market commodities win out. Since environmental services generally do not have markets, they have little or no value when the farmer makes land-use or production decisions. As a result, environmental services are under-provided by farmers. This is one reason why billions of dollars are spent each year by government and nongovernment organizations to pay farmers to maintain natural areas and improve the environmental performance of their farms.
If environmental services could be sold like other commodities, at prices that reflected their true value to society, farmers would likely invest more to maintain wildlife habitat, woodlots, and wetlands. And, those who benefit the most from environmental services would pay for them. This could mean a reduced need for taxpayer-funded investments in environmental services, increased private investments that are more responsive to changing economic and environmental conditions, and, perhaps, less costly service provision. The question remains: If these services are valued by society, why are there no markets for environmental services?
Environmental Services Defy Ownership
The biggest reason that markets for environmental services do not develop naturally is that the services themselves have characteristics that defy ownership. With private goods, such as traditional agricultural commodities, a farmer transfers ownership only when a buyer pays the desired price. Environmental services do not have this characteristic. Once they are produced, people can “consume” them without paying a price. Improved water quality, for example, benefits everyone downstream, whether or not they pay for it. Most consumers are unwilling to pay for a good that they can obtain for free, so markets cannot develop. Without a market, there are no price signals encouraging farmers to produce environmental services as part of the farms’ output.
Can anything be done other than relying on government programs to provide publicly funded investments in environmental stewardship? While government programs provide incentives to farmers to provide environmental stewardship, they lack many of the desirable characteristics of fully functioning markets. Markets allocate resources efficiently (at least in theory), those who benefit pay, and markets are flexible in the face of changing conditions. Farmers could also benefit from the additional stream of income earned from their land.
Experiences With Creating Markets for Environmental Services
Creating markets for environmental services is not an entirely novel idea. Several markets (water quality trading, carbon trading, and wetland mitigation) have been created to reduce compliance costs associated with environmental regulations. Two other markets (eco-labeling and fee hunting) have developed on their own. Experiences with these markets highlight their promise and pitfalls.
One important characteristic of most markets for environmental services is that government or some other authority plays a central role in setting them up—they do not spontaneously develop from the interaction of buyers and sellers, as most markets do. The reason, as noted, is that environmental services, to varying degrees, defy ownership—they are public goods. One way to get around this is to create a good related to the environmental service that has private-good characteristics, as has been done for markets in water quality trading, carbon trading, and wetland mitigation. These markets would not exist without government programs that require regulated business firms (such as industrial plants and land developers) to meet strict environmental standards. In essence, legally binding caps on emissions (water and carbon) or mandatory replacement of lost habitat (wetland mitigation) create the demand needed to support a market for environmental services.
Fed up with thieves, angry growers form veg-ilantes
(mirror.co.uk) – Fruit and vegetable growers already under constant attack from hungry wildlife are now facing a cunning new menace...
Sometimes hunting alone, often thieving in packs, these sticky-fingered predators are invading allotments all over the country.
In an unlikely consequence of the credit crunch, there is a huge surge in reported thefts of prized fruit and vegetables as families try to cope with soaring food bills.
Now some angry growers have reached boiling point, forming teams of night-time "veg-ilantes" to patrol their stricken plots.
In picturesque Ottery St Mary,
"The worst offenders, though, are what we call the two-legged foxes - human thieves. Badgers can't untie three knots on a fruit net, can they?"
"My raspberries have been decimated. I caught a whole family picking them from my plants and when I challenged them the dad had the cheek to say, 'There's an abundance here. You'll never eat them all.'"
With a quarter of a million allotments in the
All around us is an amazing array of produce - and not just your potatoes, onions and cucumbers. There's Swiss and ruby chard, red sprouting broccoli, sweet potatoes, squashes and giant rhubarb plants - and some prize dahlias for colour.
Pat Leisk, 74, says: "This stuff is equal in standard to the very best organic stuff in the best grocers' shops. And thousands of hours of very hard work go into growing it."
Pat and Adrian, 52, and fellow allotment holders have now banded together to form evening patrols to stop the thieves.
A teenager on a bike scoots by with a heaving bag swinging from the handlebars.
Was he doing a runner with the beans?He's challenged at the gate - but turns out to be
the son of an allotment holder. "You can't be too careful," says
"It's the worst I've known it in 22 years. With the credit crunch, people think they can save money on their food bills. They're running off with our beans, peas and gooseberries. I'm miffed about my goosegogs. They were giant - would've made lovely pies - and they've stripped the bushes bare."
Jackie Roche, 52, shows me where two rows of plump lettuce disappeared overnight. "And look at this," she says, patting a fat, yellow pumpkin.
"There was an even bigger one, but someone nicked
it." Jackie, a biomedical scientist at an
"I'm also frightened - I am a woman alone and I wondered if this was a lone thief or people in gangs."
Clive Essame, 48, chips in: "I've just found out thieves have cleaned out my best courgette plants." Steve Hamilton, 61, who has tended his plot for 30 years, lives in a bungalow nearby and keeps an eye on who comes and goes. He's also done his bit to scupper the thieves - he's shoved 25lb of raspberries in his freezer.
"I would rather give them away than have people nick 'em," he growls.
Seventy miles to the west, in Torpoint,
But with 250,000 allotments nationwide, this problem isn't
confined to the south-west. In East Shields,
Funding is in the pipeline for a security fence for the Stranton allotments in
Entire crops of strawberries and broccoli, along with
onions, cabbages, tubs of flowers and sacks of manure, have been stolen from
plots in Abbotts Barton,
In
Allotments are big business. Alan Cavill, of the National Society of Allotments and Leisure Gardeners, says: "There's been an explosion of interest in the past few years. Every one has a waiting list. It's a result of TV cooking and gardening shows and doctors telling us we need five portions of fresh fruit and veg a day."
Back at Ottery St Mary, the town's deputy mayor, Ian Holmes, 64, points to the heavy-duty padlock about to be fitted to the freshly painted gate.
"It was fitting that the work was done using young offenders," he says.
Let's hope it gives those two-legged foxes plenty of food for thought.
End Transmission