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September 13, 2007
· Droughts spur prices and demand for GM seed
· Chinese grower serenades his veggies
· Government accused of inaction on spinach ordeal
· Arizona to launch high-tech produce inspections
·
BASF sees new products adding $1 billion in revenue
Droughts spur prices and demand for GM seed
(IBD via Yahoo) – From dust bowls in
Wheat prices topped $9 a bushel for the first
time Wednesday, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture said strong global
demand and tight supplies will push
Some blame bad farming. Others cite climate
changes that reduce rainfall and raise temperatures.
Arid Agriculture
The good news is that big agribusiness
players such as Monsanto (NYSE:MON - News), DuPont (NYSE:DD - News) and
Novartis (NYSE:NVS - News) are using genetic engineering to produce
drought-resistant crops -- including corn and grain -- that grow on far less
water than regular strains.
"If one result of global climate change
could be increased drought, then drought-resistant corn and other crops would
certainly help mitigate this stress," said Sara Duncan, a Monsanto
spokeswoman.
Even if global warming proves more of a
fizzle than a threat, scientists warn that the expanding world population
intensifies the use of wells and other irrigation sources to grow food. This
drains local water tables, rivers and lakes -- exacerbating the drought issue.
"It's an irrigation issue, not a climate
issue," said Kendal Hirschi, a molecular geneticist and associate director
of research for the Vegetable and
The U.N. Environment Program estimates that 70%
of the world's fresh water used annually goes to agriculture. Nations like
Monsanto is using genetic engineering to
develop drought-resistant corn, soybeans and cotton.
"Corn is the furthest along and will
most likely be the first to market," said Duncan, who expects it to be
rolled out in a few years.
She says such designer crops will also help
satisfy growing demand for corn for use in making ethanol.
Shlomo Aronson, a professor of political
science at
"It applies to any area of the world
where you have problems with diminishing water supplies," said Aronson,
whose university is spearheading work on drought-resistant crops.
"The tomatoes are very tasty and are
also insect- and disease-resistant," Aronson said.
Major droughts will be more common in the
middle latitudes and semiarid low latitudes of the globe in coming decades,
according to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Affected areas include the
Biotech Crops Gain Favor
One upshot is that rising demand for
drought-resistant crops could lead to wider public acceptance of biotech-based
plants.
Some critics blast these so-called
"Frankenfoods" as dangerous, since their effects on the human body
and the environment are still unknown. But Aronson and others say climate
change will make such scientific techniques more acceptable by force of
necessity.
In drought-hit
Aronson says
Monsanto is finishing its fifth season of
field testing drought-resistant corn and other biotech crops.
Monsanto also is testing drought-resistant
strains in undisclosed locations in the Southern Hemisphere, in a range of
environments.
Once these crops have been successfully
commercialized in the
Ted Schettler warns that drought-resistant
crops solve just a small part of food-growing problems.
"With climate change we'll not only see
drought, but other wild climate swings like floods," said Schettler,
science director at the nonprofit Science and Environmental Health Network.
He says researchers and governments must also
focus on efforts to increase soil fertility and crop diversification -- not
just biotech.
"We ought to be looking at the entire
system of agriculture," said Schettler, "rather than a technological
fix that's pointed at a small part of a much larger problem."
Chinese grower serenades his veggies
(
Since last March, Ye has installed dozens of cartoon-shaped sound boxes outside
10 plastic-sheeting vegetable tents in his Feihong Vegetable Base in Zhenhai
District, on a trial basis. In the morning, he would let the vegetables listen
to Symphony No 6 "Pastoral" by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) while
in the afternoon, he would play piano music with soft melodies.
And among the 15 types of vegetables growing in the 10 tents, five kinds have
remarkably grown more quickly, Ye said. Clients and employees at his vegetable
base said his technique was a bit odd. "Even clients who conducted
business with me for dozens of years would ask me what the sound boxes are used
for," Ye said.
Ye's musical method was initiated early this year after he visited the northeastern
Chinese city of Dalian, where he found some growers had used sound wave
instruments to help their vegetables grow. "Some growers told me after
listening to the sound, the output of their cucumbers could be raised by some
20 percent and they even tasted better," he said.
In order to know why, Ye also traveled to East China's
"I think the experiment has brought effects. The growth speed of
cucumbers, tomatoes, dishcloth gourd and two others has been raised by some 5
percent to 7 percent over the previous years," Ye said. Wang Yuhong,
director of Vegetables Research Institute under
"It is now quite understandable to use music on cows to raise the output
of milk, and the test by using sound wave instruments on vegetables is still
being trialed," he said. "But Ye's practice is a bit different from
the sound wave instruments. He is playing music, and I think it needs more
tests. If it is really effective, it is surely an agricultural
innovation."
Government accused of inaction on spinach ordeal
(AP) – Government regulators never acted on calls for
stepped-up inspections of leafy greens after last year's deadly E. coli spinach
outbreak, leaving the safety of
The regulations governing farms in the central
AP's review of data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act found that
federal officials inspect companies growing and processing salad greens an
average of just once every 3.9 years. Some proposals in Congress would require
such inspections at least four times a year.
In
The AP review found that since last year's E. coli outbreak,
"We have strict standards for lead paint on toys, but we don't seem to
take the same level of seriousness about something that we consume every
day," said Darryl Howard, whose 83-year-old mother, Betty Howard, of
She was one of two elderly people to die in the outbreak that began in August
2006 and also included the death of a child and sicknesses reported from more
than 200 people from
By mid-September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a two-week
nationwide warning not to eat fresh spinach. Authorities eventually traced the
likely source of the E. coli to a cattle ranch about 40 miles east of
But a regulatory backlash never happened.
State Sen. Dean Florez, a Central Valley Democrat who sponsored three failed
bills to enact mandatory regulations for leafy greens earlier this year, said
momentum faded as the E. coli case dropped from the headlines and the industry
lobbied hard for self-regulation.
"That legislation was held up waiting for this voluntary approach for food
safety to see if it works," said Florez, who is skeptical of that
approach.
"It only took one 50-acre parcel to poison 200 people and bring the
industry to its knees," he said. "We don't get why the industry would
be playing this game of roulette with our food."
Among the AP's other findings:
-- Since September 2006, federal Food and Drug Administration staff inspected
only 29 of the hundreds of California farms that grow fresh "stem and leaf
vegetables," a broad category the agency uses to keep track of everything
from cauliflower to artichokes. Agency officials said they did not know how
many of those grew leafy greens.
-- Since raw vegetables, especially leafy greens, are minimally processed, they
have surpassed meat as the primary culprit for food-borne illness. Produce
caused nearly twice as many multistate outbreaks than meat from 1990-2004, but
the funding has not caught up to this trend. The U.S. Department of Agriculture
branch that prevents animal diseases gets almost twice the funding as the FDA
receives to safeguard produce.
--
Last year's outbreak prompted a temporary downturn in sales of salad greens,
but more than 5 million bags of salad are now sold each day nationwide, a
number the industry says will grow as health-conscious consumers opt for more
greens and vegetables.
Much of those sprout near
Men in sweat shirts and baseball caps cut heads of lettuce from the ground and
loaded them into cardboard boxes to be taken to a nearby plant owned by
Castroville-based
In an attempt to reassure wary customers, Ocean Mist's vice president recently
helped organize a group to police food safety, run entirely by the $1.7 billion
leafy greens industry. Some 118 salad processors have signed on to the
California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement, which uses its own
voluntary food safety guidelines.
Public health inspectors can impose mandatory food-safety rules on the farm
only after an outbreak, said Patrick Kennelly, chief of the food safety section
at
Some scientists question the approach.
"Mandatory measures give a level playing field and make sure everybody
responds," said Martin Cole, a food safety expert at the Illinois
Institute of Technology.
But in the absence of federal regulations, 10 auditors from the California
Department of Food and Agriculture are monitoring the fields, including Roxann
Bramlage, who tramped down the rows of lettuce with a checklist.
"When somebody cuts their finger and it bleeds, what will you do?"
Bramlage asked foreman Fernando Vasquez, standing next to a harvester machine
rolling gently over the beds.
"When he cuts his finger, even if it's a small cut, I take him to the edge
of the field," Vasquez said in Spanish. "Then I put a border around
the area where he was working and I don't let anyone cut in it."
That was the right answer.
Ocean Mist passed Bramlage's field audit because the company could prove its
growers protected their crops against pathogens, which gave them the right to
use a state seal telling consumers the product was grown safely. Growers say
that seal sends a powerful message to consumers.
"Once they join, there's nothing voluntary about the program," said
Scott Horsfall, who oversees the marketing agreement. "If a handler is
decertified, buyers will definitely react."
The industry-led approach isn't foolproof, however.
On Aug. 29, Metz Fresh, a grower and shipper in
No one knows how the bacteria got into the leaves. But the news rekindled fears
among consumers and legislators who say they are skeptical of the government's
willingness to let the industry police itself.
"Some will say the system is working and that we are catching the problem
and recalling products, but the average consumer wouldn't know that," said
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture,
Nutrition and Forestry. "Last year, it was E. coli; this year,
salmonella."
Harkin and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., are both working on bills to develop a
set of mandatory national guidelines to supercede the current patchwork of food
safety regulations.
Similar proposals were developed a year ago, but none have gone forward.
In March, the Bush Administration issued a draft of its guidance to minimize
microbial hazards of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables. Unlike the strict
hazard-control program governing meat and poultry, the guidance included no new
laws.
Many growers and producers are either unaware of the guidelines or simply
aren't complying, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a
Washington-based consumer advocacy group.
"Inspection alone isn't going to fix the problem, unless the farmers
utilize food-safety plans that are effective for controlling pathogens,"
said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of the center's food safety division.
"They're not getting at the source of the contamination: on the
farm."
Arizona
(azcentral.com) – The Arizona Department of Agriculture says
it will introduce new technology next month that will make fresh produce
inspection faster, cheaper and more effective.
The department hopes that with the increased productivity, produce inspections
will be more numerous and thorough, helping to prevent outbreaks of illness,
department spokesman Ed Hermes said.
With the new procedures, officials say that it will be easier to keep produce
tainted with bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella, from ending up in
consumers' hands.
The introduction of the Fresh Electronic Inspection Reporting/Resource System
allows inspectors to input inspection data, such as sugar content and produce
quality, into software developed specifically for that purpose. A grade level
for that item is then calculated.
Inspectors can then print copies of the inspection report for warehouses that
request them.
Under the old system, inspectors had to handwrite their reports and compute
statistics by hand. Not only was time lost, but also in many cases, inspectors
had to hand over illegible reports, an inconvenience for both the inspectors
and the retailers.
Previously, each inspection took about an hour, Hermes said.
The new technology will cut at least 15 minutes from the inspection time.
This will mean there will be time for inspectors to complete more mandatory
checks and to perform more random checks, Hermes said.
Farmers will be affected by the change in technology as well.
"Any time they can streamline a process and improve efficiency, as a
producer I'm going to be encouraged because it should make things better for
me," said Julie Murphree, director of public relations for the Arizona
Farm Bureau.
Even technology that does not directly affect farmers is welcomed by the
farming community, Murphree said.
Most technological advances generally result in advances and reduced costs
industrywide.
The amount of produce imported into the state, as well as efforts by the
Agriculture Department and Arizona leaders including Gov. Janet Napolitano,
allowed Arizona to become the first state to introduce the technology
previously reserved for the federal government and federal markets, Hermes
said.
Other states are interested in the technology, Hermes said, and it is only a
matter of time until all the states convert to the new electronic inspection
process.
"We're delighted to be the first ones chosen by the USDA. It's just good
inspection practices," Hermes said.
The department conducted 39,000 fruit and vegetable inspections in 2006, the
department said.
BASF sees new products adding $1 billion in revenue
Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- BASF AG, the world's
largest chemical company by sales, said revenue from new herbicides and other
crop-protection chemicals currently coming to market may total 1 billion euros
($1.39 billion) this year.
Seven active ingredients, including
fungicides and one insecticide, are being marketed to farmers and another eight
with the potential for 800 million euros in sales are in the development stage,
Ludwigshafen, Germany-based BASF said.
``The sharp focus of our research is paying
off,'' Michael Heinz, head of BASF Agricultural Products, said at a
presentation in
BASF has pursued agricultural ingredients and
genetically- modified crops to diversify away from ammonia and other basic
chemicals where demand is growing at a slower pace. It bought CropDesign NV
last year to bolster research into plant-types offering higher yields or
resistance to drought, fungi or weeds. Monsanto Co. is the leader in a market
forecast to grow to 50 billion euros by 2025 from about 2.5 billion euros now.
DuPont Co. is No. 2.
BASF has gained 26 percent this year for a
market value of 46 billion euros. Dow Chemical Co., the biggest
BASF's crop and nutritional division has
about 6,000 employees worldwide and accounted for almost 10 percent of BASF's
53 billion euros in sales last year.
Rust, Termites
Demand for crop-protection increased in the
first half and that's a long-term trend rather than any ``flash in the pan,''
Heinz said. Earnings, margins and sales will all increase this year. Growth
depends largely on
The region's farmers planted more sugar cane
to make biofuels, bolstering demand for the company's insecticide Fipronil used
to combat termites.
Rust disease is also more virulent than it
has been for years, spurring demand.
The company in March entered a $1.5 billion
partnership with Monsanto to develop genetically modified seeds, focusing on
corn, soybeans, cotton and canola. Population growth coupled with a decline in
the amount of farmland is driving demand for higher- yielding crop traits.
A decision by European Union regulators to
allow planting of BASF's Amflora potato that was genetically modified to raise
its content of starch used by the textile, packaging and adhesives industry is
expected this month.
End Transmission