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September 21, 2011
· Super weeds pose growing crop threat
· Certifying organic crops from space
· Texas scientists focus on better melons
· Surfing African radio for sustainable ag
· High-rise tank yields successful fish farm
Super weeds pose growing crop threat
PAOLA,
"When we harvest this field, these waterhemp seeds will spread all over kingdom come," he said.
Nelson's struggle to control crop-choking weeds is being
repeated all over
The problem's gradual emergence has masked its growing
menace. Now, however, it is becoming too big to ignore. The super weeds boost
costs and cut crop yields for
With food prices near record highs and a growing population straining global grain supplies, the world cannot afford diminished crop production, nor added environmental problems.
"I'm convinced that this is a big problem," said
Dave Mortensen, professor of weed and applied plant ecology at
"Most of the public doesn't know because the industry is calling the shots on how this should be spun," Mortensen said.
Last month, representatives from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the Weed Science Society
of America toured the
"It is only going to get worse," said Lee Van Wychen, director of science policy at the Weed Science Society of America.
MONSANTO ON THE FRONT LINE
At the heart of the matter is Monsanto Co, the world's biggest seed company and the maker of Roundup. Monsanto has made billions of dollars and revolutionized row crop agriculture through sales of Roundup and "Roundup Ready" crops genetically modified to tolerate treatment with Roundup.
The Roundup Ready system has helped farmers grow more corn, soybeans, cotton and other crops while reducing detrimental soil tillage practices, killing weeds easily and cheaply.
But the system has also encouraged farmers to alter time-honored crop rotation practices and the mix of herbicides that previously had kept weeds in check.
And now, farmers are finding that rampant weed resistance is setting them back - making it harder to keep growing corn year in and year out, even when rotating it occasionally with soybeans. Farmers also have to change their mix and volume of chemicals, making farming more costly.
For Monsanto, it spells a threat to the company's market strength as rivals smell an opportunity and are racing to introduce alternatives for Roundup and Roundup Ready seeds.
"You've kind of been in a Roundup Ready era," said Tom Wiltrout, a global strategy leader at Dow AgroSciences, which is introducing an herbicide and seed system called Enlist as an alternative to Roundup.
"This just allows us to candidly get out from the Monsanto story," he said.
Certifying organic crops from space
(RedOrbit.com) -- Organic agriculture provides healthy food and protects the environment by practicing methods that avoid the widespread dissemination of chemicals. ESA (European Space Agency) is now helping to develop the use of satellite images for certifying crops as organic.
Products can be labeled ‘organic’ only if they are produced according to a set of standards, undergo an evaluation and pass a yearly inspection.
Since organic and conventional crops are treated differently, their characteristics are also different.
ESA has been working with Ecocert, an organic certification organization, to use satellite images to spot these differences and support the certification process.
Observation from space can be applied to wide areas on a regular basis. The concept was tested on winter wheat and corn grown in relatively large fields.
Five different satellites were used during the trials to develop the new approach: SPOT-4, Kompsat-2, Landsat-5, Proba and WorldView-2.
Multi- and hyperspectral satellite imagery were used to derive several indicators based on biophysical justification and crop management practices to differentiate between conventional and organic methods.
Candidate indicators that were investigated include crop spectral reflectance, yield forecasts and spatial heterogeneity.
According to Dr Pierre Ott from Ecocert, the trial results were “over and beyond what could have been envisioned initially.”
Dr Ott said, “Accuracy rates of 80% to 100% in discriminating organic from conventional fields are a performance in itself. It seems very promising as far as the potential of future developments is concerned.”
More tests are being carried out now to turn this concept into an operational service that is reliable and affordable for users.
This new approach for organic farming was developed by Keyobs, VISTA and
Texas
(Texas
A&M) UVALDE — With the extended statewide dry
spell, researchers at the Texas AgriLife Research and
"We're looking into improved varieties of melons, such as cantaloupe and honeydew, and are growing and assessing some Spanish and Italian specialty melons that are relatively new to this area," said Dr. Daniel Leskovar, Texas AgriLife Research vegetable physiologist and interim center director.
Leskovar said the goal of the research is to identify and produce melons with consumer-preferred characteristics, such as size, shape, color, texture, firmness and sugar content, as well as identify or develop other traits to improve them.
"In our melon breeding program, we've been evaluating the more well-known Texas-grown cantaloupe varieties for several years, but we've only been evaluating the possibility of commercially producing Spanish, Italian and other specialty melons for the past few years," he said.
He said in addition to melon look, feel and taste, he and other researchers have been assessing overall food quality, yield, and disease and drought resistance.
"We've been interested in the possibility of specialty
melons such as Tuscan-type melons with orange flesh, Galia-type
melons with green flesh and canary types with near-white flesh, from the
perspective of how they might fare as a high-value, high-income crop for
Leskovar said in spite of this year's drought, the center's fields dedicated to melon production saw "exceptional growth and yield."
From center production data, Leskovar estimates that early or "right" planted melons, those planted from mid-March to mid-April of this year, would have produced up to 85,000 kilos of total production of melons per hectare. Later-planted melons were estimated to have potentially produced about 50,000 kilos per hectare.
"From these totals, we had up to 75 percent marketable melons," Leskovar said. "We grew these melons using drip irrigation and are assessing the use of varying amounts of irrigation to determine the effects on melon growth. Melon production is similar to that of peppers in that drip irrigation is the key, along with proper bed population and mulching of the beds."
Researchers at the center are using scientific technology to take vegetative growth measurements to determine how the melons cope with varying levels of irrigation, as well as differing soil types and levels. The mini-rhizotron technique is used to image root development, a portable photosynthesis system measures gas exchange over the leaf area, and soil moisture sensors assess water dynamics around the plant root systems.
"These measurements are used to determine whether the roots are developing properly and achieving adequate soil penetration, as well as the effects of the variables we are using in our investigations on plant physiology," Leskovar said.
Melon varieties were planted at three different locations including a study at the Uvalde center where plants were given 50 percent and 100 percent irrigation to determine effects on yield, quality and root management, said Sat Pal Sharma, graduate research assistant at the Uvalde center.
"We discovered that some melon varieties still provided excellent yields with only 50 percent irrigation when applied after the young transplants are fully established, and that one specialty melon produced as well or better than a traditionally planted variety, Sharma said. "Potentially this could mean that a producer could make a lot more from planting the higher-value specialty melon instead."
"We're investigating the use of synthetic cytokinins on cantaloupe and specialty melons to see if this will enable them to have an easier time when establishing," he said, "And we're also investigating plant growth regulators and the ethylene inhibitor 1-MCP to see if those can assist in fruit set development."
Cytokinins are phytohormones that promote plant growth through stimulation of cell division in roots and shoots of plants, and also impact bud growth and leaf maturity.
Leskovar said this research would help producers be more successful when establishing melons in "more stressful" areas of the state, such as drier areas with less-than-optimal soil.
"Melons prefer a medium textured soil, but the South and South Central Texas area has more of a silty clay soil," he said. "Melons developed or bred for better efficiency using less irrigation will have a lower risk of failure in areas that might once have been considered inhospitable for them."
He said he has contacted growers in these areas about testing melon production on a more commercial basis and that he already has had some positive response to the idea.
Kevin Crosby, AgriLife Research
specialist in vegetable breeding and genetics with the Texas A&M
Vegetable and
"What you might see in terms of disease related to
melon varieties are viral diseases spread by whiteflies, and fungal pathogens
which cause vine-decline diseases, and mildew,"
He said he and others at the
Among those phytochemicals the melons are being assessed for are vitamin C and beta-carotene, which is a carotenoid found in fruits and vegetables that provides much of the vitamin A recommended for the typical American diet. Beta-carotene is also used in a number of medical applications, including the treatment of exercise-induced asthma symptoms, heart disease and age-related macular degeneration.
"Typically, the only melons on the market in early May
have been the ones from the
"We're hoping the results of the work we're doing at the Uvalde and Weslaco centers and elsewhere will enable us to expand and implement melon production of both traditional and the newer specialty melon varieties through South and South Central Texas, as well as West Texas," Leskovar said. "These efforts should allow us to help the producer eliminate some of the risks that come with other traditional crops being grown in those areas."
Surfing African radio for sustainable ag
(allafrica.com)
– While the use of mobile phones is rapidly surging across
Twenty-nine-year-old Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu is one of such entrepreneurs who sees the mobile telephony gap as a call to innovate. His organization connects rural farmers with the information they need through a combination of mobile telephony and radio, which is widely used in rural areas.
"Where the four-wheel vehicle stops, that's where the radio wave starts," said Ikegwuonu.
A Time Magazine '100 Most Influential People in the World,'
a Rolex Laureate and an Ashoka Fellow, Ikegwuonu is founder of the Smallholders Foundation, a
multi-technology platform that promotes environmentally sustainable
agricultural activity in rural parts of Imo State, Nigeria. The foundation
primarily runs a radio station that broadcasts daily programs on agricultural
and environmental management, market information, financial planning and
business skills to over 250,000 small farmers 10 hours a day. The foundation
collects daily commodity prices from the major markets in and out of
"We tell them, for example, 'If you take this bag of garri (a popular staple food) about 10 to 15 kilometers out of this village, you are going to sell it for 6,000 naira. In their village a bag of garri is 2,000 naira, so they have the opportunity to make 4,000-naira profit," Ikegwuonu said. "We also advise them on actual agricultural activity: how to grow plantain, the market availability of plantain, where to obtain seedlings to grow cocoyam, and so forth."
Interactive Radio
The Smallholders Foundation's technology platform uses mobile technology to allow rural radio listeners, particularly small farmers, to participate in the foundation's agricultural radio programming.
"I wanted to develop an innovative and interactive
platform," said Ikegwuonu, referring to the
rural farmers' need not only for feedback, but also for the kind of feedback
that is timely, relevant and well adapted to the content being broadcasted. Ikegwuonu worked alongside researchers and developers at
the
"The farmers' contributions are transmitted to us via a Wi-Fi connection. We receive tons of messages. But we first have to listen to the messages to ensure that they are relevant," Ikegwuonu said. "For example, farmers can call in to ask questions when we have guests in the studio like an agriculture professor or an agricultural engineer." The foundation is also working on voice software that allows General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)-enabled phones within the radio station's coverage area to be used to participate in the radio discussions free of charge.
Ikegwuonu foresees more
integration between mobile phones and radio. "Where there is no
electricity, people can get batteries for radio," Ikegwuonu
said, implying that radio remains the most effective medium of mass
communication in rural
Increased Yields
Based on an impact measurement survey conducted by the foundation, members of the Smallholders listening club have increased their farm yields by an average of 50 percent and increased their household income by 45 percent. "We're working with a group of people that earned about less than U.S. $.50 a day," said Ikegwuonu. "Today most of them are earning $.80 to $1 a day because we're working with them. It's a long process. But it gradually comes together."
ICT organizations working predominantly in communities with low literacy rates face huge challenges. "Training rural people to use new versions of the mobile phone is a little bit tricky," Ikegwuonu said. "They are very comfortable with the old mobile phones like the Nokia 3310; however, for us, we're using a new device that is much simpler in design."
Electricity is another challenge. The Smallholders Foundation runs 15 hours a day on diesel generators. "We make money, but spend about 70 percent to buy fuel, and the remaining 30 percent [goes] for salaries and administrative expenses. We realize that we could be way more profitable if we didn't spend so much on fuel and electricity supply," said Ikegwuonu.
World Bank Study
A recent World Bank Group (WBG) study on the expansion of information and communications technology (ICT) shows that while there remain access chasms between developed and developing countries in Internet and broadband connectivity, the gap in the number of mobile phone users is rapidly closing as a result of private sector investment and policy reforms.
The WBG, which has committed a total of $4.2 billion to expansion, supports the ICT sector through lending, policy advice, investment in private projects, and political risk guarantees.
Last year, 3.9 billion people in the developing world used
mobile phones, equivalent to a 68-percent penetration rate. In
Driven largely by the private sector, mobile expansion in
The surge in mobile telephony has created new opportunities for entrepreneurship and development in sectors such as banking, education, health care and agriculture. However, the urban-rural gap makes it difficult for ventures utilizing ICT to have optimal impact. Often superseded by the needs of the urban markets, the World Bank has been largely unsuccessful in targeted efforts to improve access in rural areas.
Ikegwuonu said that he understands how the shifting ICT landscape has influenced a large section of the development community to move into new media. However, he adds, "When we want to do some good and make some money in rural parts of Africa using communication systems, we must utilize the already-established old media like radio as we work to introduce new media like the mobile phone."
High-rise tank yields successful fish farm
KAMPERLAND, Netherlands (AP) — Adri Bout trawled Dutch waters for 25 years until he recognized the ocean's limits. Now he raises 100 tons of turbot a year in a unique high-rise tank that has overcome some of farmed fishing's most persistent problems.
"I knew 20 years ago there is an end. When you keep
fishing like this, the
When he started out, Bout knew nothing about aquaculture.
Turning to neighbors and books for advice, he ran into headaches that plague enclosed farms like his: The fish suffered disease epidemics, he spent a fortune on energy to pump and heat water in his tanks, and he had to dispose of the fish waste without befouling the surrounding area.
"We did everything by the book. But the books were wrong," he said.
Bout, 55, represents a pioneering breed in an industry seen as increasingly crucial to the world's need for food stability while the oceans' capabilities are dwindling. And as the crisis of the oceans becomes clearer, the term "sustainable farming" is gaining as much resonance for the sea as for land — and is just as difficult to achieve.
Nearly half the fresh and sea water fish on the market is grown in cages along coasts, in lakes, or in tanks on land — some of them inside factory-like buildings with gleaming silver pipes and whirring water pumps.
In the West, aquaculture is the new agribusiness. In 35 years, it has grown from a tiny specialty of small farmers to a largely corporate-controlled 52 million-ton industry worth nearly $100 billion in 2008, the last year for which the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has figures. The FAO says the world will need another 30 million tons a year within 20 years.
But it comes at an environmental cost. As the global business exploded in the 1970s, coastlines and mangrove forests were destroyed to make way for open sea cages, and the waste dirtied the waters for miles around. Some fish would escape, spreading pathogens and weakened genes among wild populations.
Like industrially grown cattle or chickens, some fish were raised in overcrowded and filthy tanks, wallowing in their own feces. Whether raised on land or at sea, the fish were dosed up with antibiotics against diseases rampant in unsanitary conditions.
Bout was unusual in his willingness to lose vast sums of money with his trial-and-error methods — killing tens of thousands of fish in the process.
Three years ago he took his turbot out of the standard meter-deep (three-feet) square concrete tank and put them in his experimental eight-tiered system. Each tier is a U-shaped fiberglass "raceway" 64 meters (210 feet) long with 15 centimeters (6 inches) of water and a swift current that sweeps away excrement and uneaten food pellets.
Bout uses gravity to circulate the water eight times an hour — traditional farms change water once hourly — running it through cleansing filters each time it drops to the level below. He says his electricity costs are one-quarter of a similarly sized farm that uses standard tanks.
He also doesn't let organic waste go to waste. While other farms flush water back into the sea laden with untreated feces, he oxidizes it for plant fertilizer or food for shellfish.
He discovered that disease-spreading bacteria thrive in water above 16.5 Centigrade (61.7 Fahrenheit), a temperature turbot can tolerate but is too cold for other ocean fish like bass or bream, which he once raised but abandoned. The fish grow more slowly in cool water but are free of disease, and Bout says he has not used medication for eight years. He also found that with cleaner the water the fish ate less, but grew faster.
"Don't ask me why," he shrugged in an interview at
Seafarm, his installation above the Oosterschelde estuary in southern
His next project is raising sole, finding a profitable formula. "You can think about sustainability. But you have to make money," he says.
Bout "is exceptional ... an innovative thinker," says Margreet van Vilsteren of the North Sea Foundation, which assesses the ecological impact of fish farms around the world. "The last step, I think, that has to be taken is to control the food that is given to the fish."
Turbots, sold more commonly in restaurants than for home consumption, are flat, bottom-hugging saltwater fish that, when not feeding or agitated, lie still, clustered on top of each other, stirring only occasionally.
His system does not work for other kinds of salt water fish in tanks, which require warmer water to grow. Nor can it be used for salmon, the most popular farmed marine animal, and other fish like cod which are raised in open net systems in the sea.
But new methods are continually being developed. The salmon industry in particular "got a lot of things wrong. In recent years there has been a significant improvement," said Dawn Purchase, of the British-based Marine Conservation Society.
Not long ago, salmon were raised in densely packed cages and
heavily medicated. Now, vaccines administered individually to young fish have
cut the need for antibiotics by 90 percent, said Purchase, who monitors salmon
farms in
Producers also have learned that reducing the density in the nets lowers stress. "Stress affects the taste and quality of the flesh. It releases stress hormones," she said.
But rather than ease the pressure on fishing, the need has grown for wild caught fish to feed carnivorous high-value animals like salmon, bass and turbot. Even mixing soy and other cereals into the feed, it takes 1.1 kilograms (2.4 pounds) of ocean fish — mainly small anchoveta — for each kilogram (2.2 pounds) of salmon. Eventually, even this abundantly available fish will become scarce unless the laws of sustainability are applied.
More than a quarter of all fish caught in 2008, topping 27 million tons, was used for nonfood products, mainly for fish meal or fish oil to feed farmed animals, the FAO said. Some of it goes to barnyard animals, like cattle and pigs, because it is still cheap.
It's wrong to see aquaculture as the solution to overfishing, says Farah Obaidullah, an oceans campaigner for the environmental group Greenpeace. "We have serious concerns with the current way that aquaculture is developing."
Fish are still being overmedicated, and not enough is being done to find alternative feed, she said.
Even if growers are aware of environmental concerns, they are often ignored for the sake of profit. "We're talking about short-term gains. There is a huge demand out there for seafood products, and there's money to be made."
Environmentalists agree that feeding farmed fish remains the industry's most serious problem.
"No sustainable source (of food) exists yet," said Van Vilsteren, the North Sea Foundation analyst. But she hoped that within five years researchers will develop a plant-based food to supplement, if not replace, caught fish.
Purchase, speaking by phone from
"When we're chewing up fish to make fillets or fish fingers, let's make sure that all those trimmings are actually going in to make fish food."
End Transmission