" I heard it through the AgLine"

October 12, 2011

 

 

·       Big data mined in the dirt and the cloud

·       Resistance to Bt pesticide identified

·       Farmers’ Almanac, folksy meets future

·       The real promise of advanced biofuels

·       Hong Kong rooftops abuzz with honey

 

 

Big data mined in the dirt and the cloud

 

(The New York Times) – Big data, the term for scanning loads of information for possibly profitable patterns, is a growing sector of corporate technology. Mostly people think in terms of online behavior, like mouse clicks, LinkedIn affiliations and Amazon shopping choices. But other big databases in the real world, lying around for years, are there to exploit.

 

A company called the Climate Corporation was formed in 2006 by two former Google employees who wanted to make use of the vast amount of free data published by the U.S. Weather Service on heat and precipitation patterns around the country. At first they called the company Weatherbill, and used the data to sell insurance to businesses that depended heavily on the weather, from ski resorts and miniature golf courses to house painters and farmers.

 

It did pretty well, raising more than $50 million from the likes of Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Allen & Co. The problem was, it was hard to sell insurance policies to so many little businesses, even using an online shopping model. People like having their insurance explained. The answer was to get even more data, and focus the agriculture market through the same sales force that sells federal crop insurance.

 

“We took 60 years of crop yield data, and 14 terabytes of information on soil types, every two square miles for the United States, from the Department of Agriculture,” says David Friedberg, chief executive of Climate Corp., a name Weatherbill started using Tuesday. “We match that with the weather information for one million points the government scans with Doppler radar – this huge national infrastructure for storm warnings — and make predictions for the effect on corn, soybeans, and winter wheat.”

 

The product, insurance against things like drought, too much rain at the planting or the harvest, or an early freeze, is sold through 10,000 agents nationwide. Climate Corp, which also added former North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan to its board Tuesday, will likely get into insurance for specialty crops like tomatoes and grapes, which do not have federal insurance.

 

Like the weather information, the data on soils was free for the taking. The hard and expensive part is turning the data into a product. Mr. Friedberg was an early member of the corporate development team at Google. His co-founder, Siraj Khaliq, worked in distributed computing, which involves apportioning big data computing problems across multiple machines. He works as Climate Corp.’s chief technical officer. Out of the staff of 60 in the company’s San Francisco office (another 30 work out in the field) about 12 have doctorates, in areas like environmental science and applied mathematics.

 

“They like that this is a real-world problem, not just clicks on a Web site,” says Mr. Friedberg. He figures that Climate Corp. is one of the world’s largest users of MapReduce, an increasingly popular software technique for making sense of very large data systems. The number crunching is performed on Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services computers.

 

Climate Corp is working with data designed to judge how different crops will react with certain soils, water and heat. It might be valuable to commodities traders as well, Mr. Friedberg figures the better business is to expand in farming. Besides the other crops, he is looking at offering the service in Canada and Brazil, or anywhere else where he can get decent long-term data. It’s unlikely he’ll get the quality he got from the federal government, for a price anywhere near “free.”

 

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Resistance to Bt pesticide identified

 

(Cornell University via ECN) – For the first time, researchers have identified how cabbage looper caterpillars in the field develop resistance to the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which naturally occurs in the soil and on plants and has been developed into the most successful and widely used biological insecticide.

 

When ingested, the insecticidal toxins in Bt kill insects by destroying their guts. Insects in the field develop resistance to it, however, via a genetic mechanism that alters a toxin receptor in the insect's gut, two Cornell researchers have discovered. The receptor belongs to a class of digestive enzymes called aminopeptidase N (APN), two of which undergo changes when cabbage loopers develop resistance to Bt on crops.

 

Under normal circumstances, the Bt toxin Cry1Ac, which is a caterpillar-specific toxin, binds to an enzyme called APN 1 along the wall of the insect's gut, where the toxin destroys the gut lining. But when cabbage loopers develop resistance, APN 1 significantly decreases while another aminopeptidase, APN 6, which does not bind to Bt, significantly increases, allowing the insect to properly digest food and Bt without harm.

 

"If an insect loses an aminopeptidase N, you will expect to see an negative effect on the physiology of the insect gut," said Ping Wang, associate professor of entomology and senior author of the paper published online in the Aug. 15 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Kasorn Tiewsiri, a postdoctoral associate in Wang's lab, is the paper's lead author.

 

"To compensate for the loss of the enzyme APN 1, the activity of APN 6 jumps up high, and that allows the insect to perform a normal digestive process, where Bt no longer binds to the gut," Wang added.

 

Organic farmers use Bt as a key weapon against insects, and crops genetically engineered with insecticidal Bt genes are now sown on 59 million hectares (more than 145 million acres) worldwide.

 

Farmers first reported Bt resistance in the field 20 years ago. Since then, researchers have uncovered a number of mechanisms for resistance in insects in the lab, but then learned that lab insects, which don't face the same stressors as field insects, develop different tactics for overcoming Bt.

 

In this study, Wang and Tiewsiri obtained cabbage loopers from greenhouses in British Columbia that were resistant to Bt and crossed them with a lab strain that had no resistance. The progeny carried the isolated Bt-resistant trait from their field-stressed parent. The researchers then used that line of cabbage loopers to conduct biochemical, proteomic and molecular studies.

 

Next, the researchers plan on trying to identify which gene mutates in the Bt-resistant insects, how that gene controls the expression of targeted proteins, and uncover resistance mechanisms to other Bt toxins, as many varieties are used in agriculture. The researchers hope their studies will lead to new management strategies for Bt-resistant insects, Wang said.

 

The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

 

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Farmers’ Almanac, folksy meets future

 

LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — The Farmers' Almanac has a hole punched in the corner, made for hanging it on a hook in the outhouse "library" in the olden days. These days, though, there are some higher-tech options, including social networks, cell phones and e-readers.

 

Known for forecasts that use an old-fashioned formula, the almanac now has a mobile website for smart phones and nearly 6,000 followers on Twitter. More than 30,000 people "like" the publication's Facebook page. By year's end there'll be software applications for Kindle, Nook and iPad.

 

Karen Shackles, of Dillon, Colo., follows the almanac on Twitter and Facebook, checks its website and receives its email newsletter. She likes the folksy style of the almanac and appreciates its embrace of technology. She and her husband use the information for their snow-plowing business.

 

"We try to reach out to see who is giving some long-range forecasts and then we go through them all and put them together and come up with what we might expect for the winter," she said. "The Farmers' Almanac is one of the best sources for long-range forecasts."

 

The latest version of the annually updated almanac, released this week, is predicting stormier-than-usual weather this winter from the Middle Atlantic to New England. Its reclusive weather prognosticator, who works under the pseudonym Caleb Weatherbee, sums it up as a winter of "Clime and Punishment."

 

"This one is definitely wet, and definitely stormy," said Editor Peter Geiger. "Depending upon where you are, it's going to be either snow or rain."

 

Elsewhere, the weather formula dating to the 1800s suggests it'll be colder than usual in the Upper Midwest and wetter than usual in the Pacific Northwest.

 

Conventional forecasters don't put much stock in the almanac formula that uses sunspots, planetary alignment and tidal action, nor do they for its main competitor, the New Hampshire-based Old Farmer's Almanac, which will be released later this month.

 

Kathy Vreeland, with the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, suggests the almanac takes "artistic license" with its long-term forecasts.

 

"It's tradition. It's folklore. And it's fun," Vreeland said. "That's the whole thing. You don't base your vacation on their forecast. You have fun with it."

 

The almanac has a mixed track record. In the last volume it called for a "fair, cold Christmas holiday" in the Northeast for Dec. 24-27, 2010. That's when the region got clobbered by a blizzard that dumped more than two feet of snow and crippled cities for days.

 

On the other hand, it called for a hurricane threat to the Southeast between Aug. 28 and 31 this year. Hurricane Irene made landfall in North Carolina on Aug. 27 — though critics may note that predicting a hurricane in August is like shooting fish in a barrel.

 

Geiger said people shouldn't be surprised that the almanac's website gets 21 million page views each year, has 32,000 fans on Facebook and a large Twitter following.

 

But the print version isn't going away. The almanac has a circulation of 4 million, including retail editions and promotional versions given away by businesses.

 

The forecast, along with recipes, brainteasers, trivia and tips for resourceful living, comprise a formula that's largely unchanged from the first publication in 1818.

 

Editors of the Farmers' Almanac said a theme of self-reliance and simplicity espoused by the almanac is resonating with younger readers because of the sour economy.

 

"Nowadays people want to get back to the basics again. They want to live a more affordable, smart kind of life," said Sandi Duncan, the publication's managing editor. "Let's face it — the economy has forced people to get back to the basics, to live within their means."

 

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The real promise of advanced biofuels

 

(Forbes.com) – As the United States seeks national energy security and more environmentally friendly fuel sources, the opportunity for the nation's advanced biofuels industry is clearly extraordinary. The U.S. has the scientific lead in this industry; it has experience with processes, technologies and various nonconsumable feedstock to convert biomass to fuels and energy.

 

Indeed it already has more than 100 companies at work in the field--pioneering the conversion of algae, municipal solid waste and widely available biomass such as wood waste and crop residues into renewable fuels. It also has a useful federal mandate: In accordance with the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, the country must triple its use of biofuels to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

 

Meeting one part of this challenge is clearly not going to be difficult.

 

In establishing the overall 36 billion gallon goal, the government assigned subtotals to ethanol on the one hand and all advanced biofuels on the other. The ethanol goal--15 billion gallons--already appears within reach.

 

But how feasible is the advanced biofuels goal of 21 billion gallons by 2022? Especially when the government estimates that to meet this goal, the U.S. will need more than 500 bio-refineries at a cost of some $168 billion? Today we have just a handful.

 

Many observers are skeptical. Let's look at some of their arguments:

 

With the price of oil hovering at about $80 a barrel, biofuels just aren't price competitive.

 

The price of oil won't stay at $80 a barrel. It will rise.

 

Meanwhile, the price of biofuels will drop as technologies mature. A recent report by GTM Research, a market research and consulting firm, predicts that at the current rate of commercialization, the advanced biofuels market will achieve cost parity with petroleum in 2017 or 2018. Several companies, such as Coskata of Warrenville, Ill., and Dynamic Fuels of Geismar, La., (a joint venture between Tyson Foods and Syntroleum Corp.), are projecting next-generation biofuel production costs of $1 to -$2 a gallon--very competitive with traditional fossil fuels. These companies rely on technology and high-efficiency processes that increase production, reduce operating costs and minimize manufacturing downtime.

 

 

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New infrastructure is needed to support next-generation biofuels.

 

In many cases next-generation bio-refineries are already producing high-grade, premium "drop-in" fuels--fuels that are nearly identical or in some cases superior in purity to existing petroleum fuels. For proof, see Dynamic Fuels' Geismar, La., plant, which will start commercial operations any day now, converting animal fat into drop-in diesel fuel. Or see the demonstration plant Virent Energy Systems is operating in Madison, Wis., converting plant sugars into gasoline, or the pilot plant Gevo operates in St. Joseph, Mo., converting sugars into biobutanol to make renewable gasoline, diesel or jet fuel. All these fuels are compatible with existing petroleum facilities and other infrastructure.

 

In another respect, this argument is valid. Infrastructure needs to be put in place to cost effectively collect the volumes of biomass needed to support these advanced biofuels facilities--to move the wood chips and wastewater and municipal solid waste and other feedstocks to bio-refineries. Fortunately, the knowhow to accomplish this objective already exists. The paper industry, for example, is already expert at handling biomass, and in the ethanol industry, there are relationships like that between Osage Bio Energy and Mid-Atlantic farmers who are growing 300,000 acres of winter barley within a 100-mile radius of Osage's Hopewell, Va., plant.

 

Scaling up from pilot plant to commercial-scale facility presents a whole new layer of challenges that may prove unsolvable.

 

It's true that a commercial bio-refinery using biochemical and thermo-chemical process or gasification technologies is quite complex, requiring careful process controls, plant automation and safety systems. Many new refineries are designed with built-in flexibility to accept different feedstocks and produce a variety of fuels, chemicals and other end products, increasing the level of complexity and risk. But building in automation and control systems at the front end of the production process generally ensures that operations are consistent and optimized as they're scaled up. It's important to remember that with each plant, engineers and designers learn more.

 

Advanced biofuels companies require some financial risk-taking to realize their potential.

 

This is true. By far the biggest challenge facing the advanced biofuels industry is financing. Venture capitalists fund early-stage, young companies, but seldom linger to develop capital-intensive, commercial- scale operations; that's not what they're about. Commercial banks, which might be counted on to finance third and fourth plants, aren't eager to finance risky pilot ventures.

 

Some of the major oil companies, however, have shown a willingness to put their capital at risk. Shell's $6 billion investment in Iogen, Codexis and Virent; Exxon's $600 million investment in Synthetic Genomics; and BP's more-than $250 million investment in Verenium all illustrate an understanding that it is in Big Oil's long-term interest to diversify beyond petroleum.

 

Uncle Sam has shown an interest to participate as well. In 2009, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the federal government committed almost $800 million in grants and loans to help build demonstration and commercial-scale plants to produce competitively priced, environmentally cleaner fuels. To date, however, less than a quarter of those funds have been disbursed. It's encouraging that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently announced plans to fund new biorefineries and accelerate the development of a commercial advanced biofuels industry in the U.S.

 

Federal assistance to an economic sector deemed critical for our future is certainly in the American tradition. Hamilton and Jefferson didn't debate whether the government should play a role--they debated where its priority should be, on manufacturing or agriculture. In the 19th century, railroads were built with government loan guarantees and land grants. In the 20th, the jet engine and semiconductor industries received government seed money, as did the Internet. Since 2009 $2.3 billion in Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits funded through the ARRA have provided support for 183 individual projects and led to $5.4 billion in private investment in the wind industry.

 

Our national goal of 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022 is clearly attainable--but only if all parties play their part. If they do, the benefits to our security, to the environment and to job creation and our economy will be incalculable.

 

Alan Novak is the director of alternative energy at Emerson Process Management, a business of Emerson.

 

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Hong Kong rooftops abuzz with honey

 

HONG KONG (Reuters Life!) - In the corner of a Hong Kong rooftop, amid the shining glass and steel of the city's high rise skyline, stands a humble wooden box on legs -- a beehive, packed with roughly 10,000 honey bees.

 

Densely urban Hong Kong seems an unlikely match for any form of agriculture, but a few hardy souls have been venturing into the increasingly popular practice of beekeeping.

 

"Hong Kong's pretty dense -- a dense concrete jungle in the centre," said Michael Leung, founder and creative director of HK Honey, an organisation that seeks to promote beekeeping in the city and keeps the hive on the roof of a 14-storey building in the busy Wanchai district.

 

"But around the whole of Hong Kong there are actually loads of green spaces, like mountains with trees and flora for bees to pollinate and harvest nectar from."

 

In reality, Leung said, Hong Kong is an ideal environment for honey bees. The warm weather is optimal for beekeeping, and the absence of a cold winter allows the honey to be harvested year round.

 

Leung's interest in beekeeping was piqued by the sight of a beehive during a trip to Sweden. After returning to Hong Kong he acquired the tricks of the trade from veteran beekeepers in the city, as well as some in New York and London.

 

There are now around 11 urban beehives scattered through the city, owned by farmers, organisations and private individuals.

 

While urban beekeeping is hardly unique to Hong Kong -- the practice is growing in popularity, with bees raised in cities including Tokyo, Paris and Chicago -- there is a uniquely Chinese touch to how they are kept.

 

The traditional Chinese beekeeper does not wear smoke the bees or wear protective gear, which Leung believes builds a closer connection with the bees.

 

Leung himself removed a bee frame with bees on it while wearing casual clothing, including a t-shirt, and said it is hardly as perilous as one might think -- although he has been stung 13 times in the 18 months of his beekeeping career.

 

Even though Chinese bees are more aggressive than their Western counterparts, as long as they are not disturbed they will happily ignore humans, he said.

 

"We really try to communicate the value of bees being pollinators and really necessary for our food chain," he said.

 

"They are really resourceful and industrious insects so we want to promote this, and the consumption of local honey."

 

Among other benefits, Hong Kong honey also helps prevent hay fever, Leung said. The HK Honey hive produces honey with a fresh flavour.

 

Leung's organization works to promote the value of bees and has made candles for Amnesty International, as well as a short documentary for Nokia. The beehive, one of the group's latest projects, provides honey for a cafe in the same building that serves locally-sourced, organic produce, and is supplemented by a rooftop herb garden.

 

In Hong Kong, which currently imports 90 percent of its food, eating locally produced honey is also ecological.

 

"The great thing about eating local honey is that it reduces the carbon footprint and food mileage of honey you would buy from maybe another country," Leung said.

 

"Honey from New Zealand or France travels roughly 10,000 km to get here, which contributes to a lot of carbon emissions. But in Hong Kong you're not 10 km away from the nearest beehive."

 

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