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October 13, 2009
· Food a bigger issue than climate change
· UN says ag investment must increase five-fold
· Tropical storm clobbers Philippine ag sector
· Aggies embracing social media on the Internet
· Boring sex eyed as a cause of honeybee decline
Food a bigger issue than climate change
(AAP via Yahoo!) – Dealing with the prospect of food shortages in the next 40 years is a bigger problem than climate change, an Australian Senate inquiry has been told.
With the world's population expected to reach about 9.2 billion by 2050, coupled with food demand growing at one per cent per annum, the requirement for food will roughly double by mid-century, academic Julian Cribb says.
Professor Cribb outlined his concerns
to the Senate's select committee on agricultural and related industries during
a public hearing into food production in
Under current projections, five billion people will face
water scarcity by 2050, and
Adding to the mix, a quarter of arable land around the world was degraded in some form and global stock of good farm land was declining about one per cent each year, Professor Cribb said.
Yet more than half of all food produced and about three quarters of all nutrients were being wasted.
"This is the problem of our age, it is more immediate than climate change, it's going to happen a lot faster than climate change," the former CSIRO National Awareness director told the hearing.
Climate change was, of course, a part of the issue, he said.
"But the real impact of this is going to be upon us within a generation."
Professor Cribb, now an adjunct
professor at UTS in
"Our cities are immense traps of water and nutrients, huge quantities of water and nutrients pour from these places and we, generally speaking, chuck them out to sea.
"So if we can trap even a part of that water and nutrients and recycle it back into agriculture and other nutrients, we're stemming the haemorrhage."
"It's a big industry that we could have here if we wanted to."
However, it would take 25 years to develop technology before introducing it to farms.
"So we've only just got enough time to do something about this."
UN says ag investment must increase five-fold
(AP via SFGate.com) – Agricultural investment in developing countries will have to increase more than fivefold to ensure that by 2050 the world has enough to eat, a U.N. food agency said Monday.
Poor countries will need a yearly $44 billion of development assistance in agriculture compared with the current $7.9 billion, the Food and Agriculture Organization said as it opened a two-day forum of experts on how to feed the world in 2050.
By then, population is expected to rise from 6.7 billion people to 9.1 billion and the world's food output will have to increase by 70 percent, the agency said in a statement.
Investments in developing nations are needed to increase access to irrigation systems, modern machinery, as well as to build roads and train farmers.
"The challenge is not only to increase global future production but to increase it where it is mostly needed and by those who need it most," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said. "There should be a special focus on smallholder farmers, women and rural households and their access to land, water and high quality seeds ... and other modern inputs."
Diouf told the 300 experts
gathered at the Rome-based agency that agriculture faces the challenge of climate
change, which is increasing extreme events like floods and droughts. The
effects of climate change could reduce output by up to 30 percent in Africa and
up to 21 percent in
Food production must also compete with biofuel production, which is set to increase nearly 90 percent over the next 10 years. While more environmentally friendly than coal and oil, fuels that are made from food crops, like corn-based ethanol, are often seen as helping to increase commodities prices and swell the ranks of the world's hungry.
The agency, which will host a world food summit in November, says that although prices have stabilized from their 2007-2008 spikes, they continue to remain high especially in developing nations hit by poor harvests and unrest.
In June, the FAO said the number of hungry people had reached a record 1 billion under the combined effect of the global financial crisis, high food prices, war and drought.
Tropical storm clobbers Philippine ag sector
(Xinhua)
– Rains brought by tropical depression
The Philippine agriculture department said an estimated 246,152metric tons of palay (paddy rice), valued at 4.2 billion pesos (about 90 million U.S. dollars), was lost as massive rainfall submerged rice fields.
Floods and heavy rains inundated 180,121 hectares of rice-growing areas. These areas are in the provinces of Isabela, Cagayan, Nueva Vizcaya, Ilocos region, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Albay, Camarines Sur and the Cordillera provinces.
The department also reported that
Officials said that they're assessing typhoon
According to the latest government tally, 199 people were
killed in floods and landslides triggered by
Aggies embracing social media on the Internet
(Fresno Bee) – With a hand-held video camera, a computer and 800 cows, Barbara Martin of Lemoore is letting the world into her life as a dairy operator.
No, it's not a new reality television show. And Martin isn't craving her 15 minutes of fame.
But she is joining a growing number of farmers and others in agriculture who are using social media tools to communicate with each other, send out information and educate the public about agriculture.
Dairy operators have become especially skilled at launching Facebook pages, blog posting and using Twitter, a microblogging site.
Martin uses all three to tell the public about the family's 800-cow dairy. She launched her blog, "A Dairy Goddess's Blog," in late August.
For Martin, using social media and blogging is a way to dispel some myths about farmers and encourage a greater understanding of the slumping dairy industry.
She's blogged about everything from fixing the pricing structure for milk to sharing her childhood memories about growing up on a farm. Her most recent post is a video diary about her heifer Chica.
Martin and other dairy operators say their critics such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have used the Internet's power to portray them as cruel, greedy and corporate.
PETA has posted videos on its Web site showing animals being
neglected on a
"I want people to know about the people and families who run dairies in this country," said Martin, a third-generation dairy operator. "This is not a factory farm. We are a family who cares about their animals, and I want to show that."
Cindy Zimmerman, who co-owns a Missouri-based new media company with her husband, Chuck, said much of what's driving farmers to use Twitter, Facebook and even YouTube is the desire to raise the public's awareness about agriculture.
She said many consumers still don't understand the role farming plays in the economy and the challenges farmers face, including weather, pests and low prices.
"These new tools have become a way for the individual farmer to get their story out to the public," Zimmerman said. "And for some, this has become a way to connect with people that they never would have been able to do before."
Although it may be too early to tell whether Twittering farmers are changing public opinion, the effort to use social media shows no signs of slowing.
Among those who use social media is motivational speaker and new-media adviser Michele Payn-Knoper.
More than 2,000 people follow her posts on Twitter.
Payn-Knoper of
"Social media has become such an incredible information platform for farmers and agriculture," Payn-Knoper said. "And many are seizing that opportunity."
Payn-Knoper said more dairy operators are joining Twitter and Facebook largely because the industry has sponsored seminars on the topic. Other agricultural industries have been slower to latch onto the new technology.
Bob McKellar of Ivanhoe is a newcomer to Twitter. McKellar's Family Farm Fresh uses the site to promote its community-supported agriculture operation.
The farm delivers fresh fruits and vegetables to people who sign up and subscribe. Its Twitter site updates customers with the latest offerings or asks people whether they prefer plums soft or crunchy.
McKellar, a farmer for more than 30 years, admits he doesn't know how to use Twitter, but he fully understands its potential. One of his employees does the Twitter posts.
"I have a computer and a cell phone, and to be honest with you I know very little about either one of them," McKellar said. "But what I do know is that these new ways can help reach people like we haven't been able to do before."
State budget cuts have made it tougher for some UC farm advisers to reach growers through field meetings or personal visits to farms. To reach more farmers, Fidelibus has posted Twitter updates on how to deal with a recurring problem of powdery mildew, a fungal disease common among vineyards.
And while Fidelibus has become a regular on Twitter, his raisin farmer clients haven't quite caught up.
"The demographic of the raisin farmers we deal with is skewed more toward older growers, so we are not sure if they use this sort of technology or not," Fidelibus said. "But if we can dispel some of the myths about using Facebook and Twitter, then the potential to reach people could be huge."
Boring sex eyed as a cause of honeybee decline
(Yorkshirepost.co.uk) – Scientists are investigating whether the worldwide decline in the honeybee population is due to a lack of variety in the sex lives of queen bees.
Researchers at
One theory they will be looking into is whether the decreasing number of potential mates for queen honeybees means colonies are becoming less genetically diverse and more prone to disease.
The scientists hope that making sure the queen mates with enough different male bees could protect hives from being wiped out by disease.
They will study the bees' reaction to a common fungus parasite, which infects and eats larvae in hives, in order to look at genetic resistance.
The team believe that infections by
parasites in genetically susceptible bees may be combining with other factors
and overwhelming their defences. In 2008, average
losses of honeybee colonies in
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