" I heard it through the AgLine"

October 15, 2009

 

·        US organic sector sprouting protectionism

·        Ag critic’s solo show angers university alumni

·        Greenhouses that store heat for winter studied

·        Bacterium named prime suspect in spud disease

·        Students tested in weed identification contest

 

 

US organic sector sprouting protectionism

 

(Oxford Analytica via Forbes.com) – The U.S. organic food industry has grown rapidly over the past decade, mirroring similar growth trends in Europe and Japan. In general, federal officials view this emerging market in a very positive light, establishing certification standards for organic foods and beverages, and implementing measures to ease the entry costs of potential producers. These actions are both environment-friendly and protectionist.

 

In Europe and Japan, debates over organic foods have focused primarily upon their alleged health benefits for consumers. Yet in the United States, the healthy effects have been downplayed while the environmental benefits of organic food production have been emphasized. As the administration of President Barack Obama pushes its green policy agenda, organic food policy is expected to receive increasing attention and support as an environment-friendly measure.

 

Easing producer entry. Farmers interested in transitioning to organic growing face a series of obstacles and risks. These include higher management costs, a lack of awareness of organic farming techniques, novel marketing strategies and new distribution channels. As part of a broader environmental agenda, recent state and federal initiatives sought to ease barriers to entry for potential organic farmers:

 

--The 2002 Farm Act explicitly aimed to expand market opportunities for organic producers. It included a cost-share program to offset costs of certification incurred by organic farmers and livestock producers. It also allocated funding for research projects to study marketable aspects of organic commodities.

 

--The U.S. Department of Agriculture now administers an organic certification cost-share program. It helps farmers pay the cost of acquiring the much-desired organic label.

 

--The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 increased funding for organic food research and certification cost-sharing. As part of its conservation mandate, it also included a series of general measures intended to help producers manage the transition to organic farming systems.

 

Many states and localities have initiated organic programs. The Minnesota state government now publishes a farmer directory to market organic growers and facilitate inter-producer communication. Montana and Washington state provide for organic export assistance. Iowa, a major farming state, now offers property- tax rebates to organic farmers.

 

Certification controversy. Accompanying state subsidies and incentives for organic farming has been increased government control over the certification process:

 

--No global standard. For many decades, organic food existed as a "social movement" rather than a mainstream industry. Small, independent farmers sold their produce in local markets. Because the buyers knew the growers personally, the status of the food as organic was a matter of trust. All parties treated transactions informally, and eschewed paperwork and other bureaucracy.

 

--Multilateral certification agreements. As the industry expanded, so has the distance--both physical and social--between producer and consumer. Interpersonal trust is no longer adequate to establish food's organic status. In the United States, the National Organic Program of 2002 restricted the use of the organic label to certified organic producers (excepting growers selling under $5,000 a year). More recently, negotiations over equivalency have taken place internationally, and several agreements are now in place to harmonize certification standards and thereby facilitate international trade. The United States now has in place recognition agreements with six countries, notably Japan and the United Kingdom.

 

--New international bodies. International certification bodies have arisen in recent years. These include Ecocert, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements and the Organic Crop Improvement Association. Where formal agreements are not in place between trading nations, organic product for export is typically certified by importing countries, many of which now have permanent offices dedicated to the task.

 

While U.S. consumers have increasingly embraced organic foods, U.S. agricultural producers find themselves competing with foreign growers. The latter can claim many advantages such as lower labor costs, cheaper raw materials and fewer state regulations. Recent federal and state regulations have sought to lower barriers to entry and operating costs for organic producers in the United States. Such pieces of legislation are framed as environment-friendly, but also constitute subsidies to domestic producers in a newly globalized marketplace.

 

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Ag critic’s solo show angers university alumni

 

(Los Angeles Times) – When officials at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo scheduled a free lecture by bestselling author Michael Pollan, they envisioned a lively talk about sustainable food, along with Pollan's customary critiques of agribusiness.

 

What they didn't expect was a wave of denunciations from angry farming and ranching alumni who rank Pollan as a force only slightly less damaging to agriculture than the Mediterranean fruit fly.

 

Threatening to pull his donations, the head of one of California's biggest ranching operations succeeded in turning today's planned lecture into a panel discussion involving Pollan, a meat-science expert, and a major grower of organic lettuce.

 

Pollan assented but said in an interview that the incident raised troubling questions about academic freedom.

 

"It's an open threat to the university," he said. "The issue is really about whether the school is free to explore diverse ideas about farms and farming."

 

Pollan was the star attraction at a fundraising dinner for Cal Poly's sustainability programs Wednesday night.

 

For David E. Wood, chairman of Harris Ranch Beef Co., Pollan's solo lecture would have provided the author of such books as "The Omnivore's Dilemma" a soapbox for "anti- agricultural views."

 

"While I understand the need to expose students to alternative views, I find it unacceptable that the university would provide Michael Pollan an unchallenged forum to promote his stand against conventional agricultural practices," Wood wrote in a Sept. 23 letter to Cal Poly President Warren Baker.

 

Wood has pledged $150,000 toward a new meat processing plant for the campus cattle herd. In his letter, he said Pollan's scheduled appearance had prompted him to "rethink my continued financial support of the university." He also criticized an animal-sciences professor who said that conventional feedlots like the one run by Harris Ranch were not a form of sustainable agriculture.

 

Harris produces and markets 150 million pounds of beef a year. As many as 250,000 head of cattle annually are fed on a grain diet at the company's sprawling feedlot beside Interstate 5 in the San Joaquin Valley. In a 2008 interview with The Progressive magazine, Pollan said the sight of the "manure-encrusted" acreage was one of the things that permanently changed the way he ate.

 

Cal Poly officials said they had contemplated using Pollan's talk as the basis for a panel discussion at some point -- but the negative reaction to the planned lecture from Harris officials and others propelled the plan onto the front burner.

 

"When we realized how significant a backlash was coming, we thought of having the panel right after his speech," said David Wehner, dean of Cal Poly's College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences.

 

"I'm frustrated and saddened by some people's attitudes," he said. "They've looked at this as us supporting his views and not supporting them. We don't have a political position -- we only educate students."

 

In an interview, Pollan said he rejected the idea of participating in a panel immediately after his talk.

 

"I thought, 'Wow! You're going to add some whole other event at the behest of some cranky donors?' "

 

He said he offered the university a choice of either his lecture or his appearance on a panel. The other panelists are Gary Smith, a meat-science researcher at Colorado State University, and Myra Goodman, co-founder of Earthbound Farm, a company that grows organic vegetables on 33,000 acres.

 

Pollan, who teaches journalism at UC Berkeley, has faced negative reactions to his college appearances from farm- related businesses elsewhere.

 

At the University of Wisconsin, where his book was part of a campus-wide reading project, a state farm bureau official called him "narrow and elitist," saying that he "sees an evil empire behind every item in your refrigerator." At Washington State University, an alumnus dug into his own pocket to pay for Pollan's appearance after a similar reading was canceled.

 

"It's part of what appears to be a more aggressive industry push-back against critics of industrial agriculture," Pollan said.

 

Some in the industry fear that Cal Poly's highly regarded agriculture school is veering away from its mission of teaching accepted farming practices. Critics cited the school trimming its herd of dairy cows from about 150 to 30 -- an economic necessity, according to school officials.

 

"I'm worried about Cal Poly's direction," said Barbara Martin, who writes a blog called Dairy Goddess from the 800-cow Lemoore ranch she runs with her husband, Tony. "Do I think they're out to turn vegan? No -- but there'll be fewer opportunities for hands-on learning."

 

Martin, whose son is a Cal Poly dairy science student, said the panel format for Pollan's appearance is a perfect compromise: "As a parent and a taxpayer, I'm satisfied that students will be exposed to all sides of farming practices and agricultural decisions."

 

For Pollan, though, questions remain.

 

"Is the principle of balance going to apply across the board? The next time Monsanto comes to speak at Cal Poly about why we need GMOs (genetically modified organisms) to feed the world, will there be a similar effort? Will I be invited back for that show?"

 

Wehner, the Cal Poly dean, said, "The answer, essentially, is yes."

 

When voters in San Luis Obispo County were considering a measure banning genetically modified foods, he said, the school sponsored a panel with advocates on both sides.

 

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Greenhouses that store heat for winter studied

 

(The Copenhagen Post) – A promising new project could more than halve the energy consumption at the nation’s greenhouses

 

A heat storage project on the island of Funen could pave the way for a 60 percent reduction in greenhouse energy costs, reports trade publication Ingenøren.

 

Horticultural centre Gartneriet Hjortebjerg in Søndersø, north-west of Odense, has invested 10 million kroner in the project, which is experimenting with storing the summer’s heat for use in the winter. Special curtain panels in the greenhouses trap heat from the sun in the summer and transfer it to the groundwater where it is stored until needed.

Hjortebjerg has received an additional 4 million kroner for the project from the Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Ministry.

 

Greenhouses are typically heavy energy consumers. The 500 or so greenhouses nationwide are responsible for 0.9 percent of the country’s total energy usage.

 

But greenhouses could eventually become energy producers, according to Jesper Mazanti Aaslyng, the head of the horticultural innovation department at Agrotech.

 

‘Our data for the project shows that the numerous greenhouses around Odense could produce heating for 19,000 homes,’ he said.

 

Several different companies and researchers are behind Hjortebjerg’s unique solar curtains.

 

Swedish firm AB Ludvig Svensson produced the curtains, which consist of 300-400 layers of plastic foil. The thickness of each layer is measured by nanometres.

 

The rolling in and out of the curtains and control of carbon dioxide allocation is being handled by software from the Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute at the University of Southern Denmark.

 

The greenhouse industry in Denmark is Europe’s second largest, behind only The Netherlands.

 

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Bacterium named prime suspect in spud disease

 

(USDA-ARS) – Since 2000, a mystery disease has struck some potato fields in Texas, Arizona, California, Nevada, and other western states, reducing tuber yields and quality. Losses have been estimated in the millions of dollars.

 

In response, scientists from ARS laboratories in Washington State, California, and Texas joined their state university colleagues to track down the cause of the disease, dubbed “zebra chip” (ZC). In 2007, an ARS-led team completed studies implicating the potato psyllid (Bactericera cockerelli) as an insect accomplice. In January 2008, New Zealand scientists—followed 7 months later by a University of California-Riverside team—announced their discovery of DNA evidence, coupled with investigative fieldwork, tying a new species of Candidatus Liberibacter bacterium to ZC in potatoes.

 

Throughout, growers had been spraying their crops with insecticides to prevent psyllids from transmitting ZC. But they didn’t know what actually caused the disease—only that it correlated to psyllid feeding. Now, with researchers building their case against the new C. Liberibacter species, growers have more information to go on. Confirmation of the bacterium’s ZC crimes will also create new opportunities for managing it.

 

For example, “If we know that the psyllids we get in area B each summer migrate in from area A, then we can test the population overwintering in area A to see if it’s infected. If it is, we can alert growers ahead of time,” explains Joseph E. Munyaneza, an entomologist with ARS’s Yakima Agricultural Research Laboratory in Wapato, Washington.

 

Predicting psyllid migration could also help time the use of natural enemies, including wasp parasitoids, insect-killing fungi, and ladybugs. Longer-term biological studies of the newly discovered Candidatus species will aid development of disease-resistant potato varieties.

 

ZC was first reported in Mexican potato fields in 1994 and in U.S. spuds in 2000 near Pearsall, Texas, and the Texas side of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where psyllids overwinter before migrating north each spring.

 

“Zebra chip” is so-named because afflicted tubers form dark, unsightly stripes when they’re cut and fried to make chips or fries—the result of soluble sugars being caramelized. This can also affect flavor. Eating such chips causes no harm, but growers feel the pain, economically speaking, when their harvest is rejected at the processing plant.

 

Since December 2007, Munyaneza, ARS plant pathologist James M. Crosslin, and ARS entomologist John Goolsby have conducted field experiments in Weslaco, Texas, to better understand the psyllid-Candidatus connection—and hopefully identify weak links to exploit. Of particular interest is determining why some psyllid populations transmit ZC and others don’t. One intriguing lead involves “vertical transmission”—whereby the bacterium is passed from female psyllids to their offspring.

 

The researchers’ studies also examined how altered planting dates may affect the severity of ZC. For example, 90 percent of potatoes planted in mid-December were infected with ZC by harvest in April, versus 25 to 30 percent of those planted in mid-January or mid-February and harvested in May. Munyaneza cautions it’s still too early to draw solid conclusions. “We need to understand why this is happening and repeat these same experiments,” he says.

 

Still, unmasking ZC’s identity has accelerated such research, leaving the disease with fewer avenues of escape.—By Jan Suszkiw, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.

 

This research is part of Crop Protection and Quarantine, an ARS national program (#304) described on the World Wide Web at www.nps.ars.usda.gov.

 

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Students tested in weed identification contest

 

(Wire Services) Lawrence, Kansas -- Can you name that leafy weed overrunning your perennial bed or crowding out the fall crops in your vegetable garden? If not, you can rest assured that the next generation of weed scientists will be poised to help.

 

Eighty-five students from 11 universities gathered on an Indiana research farm recently to test their mettle by identifying more than two dozen weeds on sight. They were competing for coveted "Golden Hoe" awards in the 2009 Collegiate Weed Science Contest, sponsored by the Northeastern and North Central Weed Science Societies.

 

In addition to identifying weeds, students were asked to determine the herbicides used on demonstration plots by examining the "symptoms" exhibited by treated plants. They took a written test on herbicide sprayer calibration and application technologies - and then were given just 15 minutes to set one up using the proper nozzle tips, pressure and speed. In another scenario familiar to agricultural extension educators and company field representatives, they were asked to diagnose and recommend effective solutions for pests, fertility issues and other common crop production problems.

 

"Our goal was to see how students responded to the kinds of real-world scenarios that weed scientists encounter each day," said Fritz Koppatschek of ABG Ag Services, a member of the Weed Science Society of America and contest coordinator. "The event gave them a great way to network with leading practitioners and to gauge whether they can effectively apply what they're learning on campus."

 

Participating schools included: Cornell University, Kansas State University, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, Penn State University, University of Guelph, University of Illinois, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska, University of Tennessee, and Virginia Tech.

 

Each regional society presented awards to both teams and individuals. The Northeast Weed Science Society awarded top honors in the graduate division to a team from Penn State that included Ryan Bates, Benjamin Crocket, Franklin Egan and Nelson Debarros. The University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, took top honors in the Northeast undergraduate division with a team that included Andrew Reid, Blair Freeman and Scott Timmings. Individual winners included Angela Post of Cornell University (graduate division) and Andrew Reid of Guelph University (undergraduate division).

 

For the North Central Weed Science Society, a graduate team from Michigan State took top honors, including Kelly Barnett, Molly Buckham, Calvin Glaspie and Kate Withers. A team from the University of Illinois took top honors in the North Central undergraduate division, including Sean Breen, Caitlin Allen and Jared Roskamp. Individual winners included Michael Bell (graduate division) and Jared Roskamp (undergraduate division), both from the University of Illinois.

 

The two teams with the highest scores among all the universities competing won the Golden Hoe. Penn State took the honor for the graduate division, while the University of Guelph topped the undergraduate division.

 

The 2009 Collegiate Weed Science event was hosted by ABG AG Services on its farm near Sheridan, Indiana.

 

About the Weed Science Society of America

 

The Weed Science Society of America, a nonprofit professional society, was founded in 1956 to encourage and promote the development of knowledge concerning weeds and their impact on the environment. The Weed Science Society of America promotes research, education and extension outreach activities related to weeds, provides science-based information to the public and policy makers, fosters awareness of weeds and their impact on managed and natural ecosystems, and promotes cooperation among weed science organizations across the nation and around the world. For more information, visit www.wssa.net.

 

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Sidebar:

 

A Rogue's Gallery of Weeds

 

The 2009 Collegiate Weed Science Contest asked students to test their mettle by identifying 25 weed species at various stages of development - from seeds and sprouts to fully grown plants. The weeds included in the contest were:

 

1.    annual bluegrass (Poa annua)

2.    Asiatic dayflower (Commelina communis)

3.    barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli)

4.    buckhorn plantain (Plantago lanceolata)

5.    common chickweed (Stellaria media)

6.    common mallow (Malva neglecta)

7.    common mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

8.    common reed (Phragmites australis)

9.    common waterhemp (Amaranthus rudis)

10.    Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum)

11.    fall panicum (Panicum dichotomiflorum)

12.    field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)

13.    garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata)

14.    giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida)

15.    green foxtail (Setaria viridis)

16.    henbit (Lamium amplexicaule)

17.    hemp dogbane (Apocyanum cannabinum)

18.    hophornbeam copperleaf (Acalypha ostryifolia)

19.    horseweed (Conyza canadensis)

20.    Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense)

21.    prickly sida (Sida spinosa)

22.    quackgrass (Agropyron repens)

23.    shepherd's-purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)

24.    wild carrot (Daucus carota)

25.    yellow rocket (Barbarea vulgaris arcuata)

 

Think you can pass the same test? Visit www.wssa.net to try to match each weed with its photo.

 

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