
		" I heard it through the AgLine"

October 28, 2011

· Farm scheme shuts out specialty growers

· GPS technology to reduce ag water use

· Nevada farmers grow teff as a cash crop

· Bayer reports Q3 profits more than double

· Adaption key to Oregon farm’s prosperity

Farm bill scheme shuts out specialty growers

(SFGate.com) – Leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are attempting a breathtaking end-run around the democratic process. They are hatching their own farm bill in private and plan by Nov. 1 take it to the new deficit Super Committee to be enacted whole, without votes in their own committees or in Congress.

The farm bill sets U.S. food policy for five years. It is the biggest environmental bill by far that Congress enacts. One quarter of California — 27.6 million acres — is farmland, much of it in the heavily polluted San Joaquin Valley. Agriculture covers 40 percent of the land in the United States. How food is grown on that land has massive consequences for the air, waterways and wildlife. The farm bill also (mis)shapes the American diet.

The Ag committees, populated by Midwest and Southern farm state lawmakers from both parties, want to defend subsidies to the big commodity crops such as corn, wheat, cotton and rice. They know that $5 billion a year in “direct payments” to commodity farmers are vulnerable, so they want to replace these with a new scheme to “insure revenues.” The new scheme — variations of which are being written by the commodity groups — would lock in today’s record crop prices as a new subsidy while claiming to save money.

Let us pray that the other committees in Congress don’t get the same idea. The deficit Super Committee was born last summer as a political manuever to get around Congress’s inability to raise the debt ceiling and make hard choices generally. If the Super committee can pass a deficit reduction plan, it will be presented to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendment. This would allow the Ag committees to get their farm bill enacted into law without so much as a vote. The Super Commitee may be well intended, but its creation has clearly opened a Pandora’s Box by overriding the normal committee process.

“It’s a profoundly undemocratic process,” said Kari Hammerschlag, a senior analyst with Environmental Working Group in Oakland.

California, the nation’s largest farm state, locked out for decades from the commodity subsidy system because it grows mainly fruits, nuts and vegetables, is sure to get short-changed by this process.

California food, health and environmental groups such as Roots of Change, Prevention Institute and others have sent a letter, and more than 16,000 Californians signed a letter, urging California’s Congressional delegation, Gov. Jerry Brown and state farm and health officials to lobby for changes that would protect current conservation programs, the incorporation of fresh fruits and vegetables into federal food programs and the like.

What Californians really need to do is not lobby within this new “process” but blow it up completely. Congress needs to go back to regular order before the Armed Services Committees figure out they can jam through Pentagon spending the same way.

Return to Top

GPS technology to reduce ag water use

(Forbes) – Faculty at the University of Georgia have invented an easy-to-use, GPS-based technology that allows farmers to more accurately target irrigation needs, reducing water consumption by an average of 15 percent.

Most of our water use worldwide goes to agriculture, so reducing that amount will be critical as our population grows and climate change makes water supplies less predictable.

The Ceres Aqua Gauge report paints that picture:

The rising global population (estimated to grow from 7 billion to 9 billion by mid-century) together with economic growth in emerging markets will mean burgeoning demand for both potable water and food. Agriculture now accounts for roughly 70 percent of global water use, but as dietary changes in developing countries raise demand for water-intensive foods such as meat and dairy, this proportion will grow yet higher. Without efficiency gains, agricultural water demand is expected to grow by 45 percent — or an additional annual 1,400 billion cubic meters of water per year — by 2030.

While historically wet, the Southeast United States have seen persistent drought conditions over the past decade and legal conflicts over water. That makes Georgia’s Flint River basin, where farmers grow thirsty cotton, corn, peanuts, and pecans, a good proving ground for this technology.

A common method of irrigation is the center pivot, which projects water 360 degrees, creating the crop circles obvious from an airplane. The Flint River basin has 6,250 center-pivot systems. The problem with this technology is that it sprays water blindly, even across areas too wet to plant, such as grass waterways, seasonal wetlands, permanent ponds, a lake on the edge of a field.

Around 2004, University of Georgia faculty Calvin Perry, Stuart Pocknee, and Craig Kvien, developed variable rate irrigation (VRI), which allows farmers to selectively turn off specific nozzles as the pivot crawls over patches that don’t need water.

This year, they made the system easier for farmers to use. The previous version required a farmer to develop a water application map on a computer, upload that map to a thumb drive, and transfer it to the irrigation controller. Using the new push-button version, “he would just walk his irrigation system to one of these areas he wishes to not apply water … push the button to tell the controller, ‘this is where this anomaly starts.’ He then walks the system to the far edge of the anomaly, pushes another button, which says, ‘this is where that ends,’” said Perry, who works in the university’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

The VRI equipment, sold by vendor Advanced Ag Systems out of Dothan, Ala., is expensive: about $5,000 for a modular, limited system and up to $30,000 for a large, full system, according to Perry, who acknowledged that most farmers can’t afford it.

But a partnership among The Nature Conservancy, the University of Georgia and the Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District are working to bring down the cost for Flint River farmers by supplementing their contributions with a variety of grants and federal funding sources, including the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The hope is that future economies of scale will put the systems within reach for other farmers.

“The equipment and technologies continue to be refined and improved with cost reduction as one goal,” said David Reckford, Flint River basin project director for The Nature Conservancy in Georgia. “Major irrigation equipment providers are beginning to mass produce this equipment so that it can be offered more broadly, further bringing down the cost.”

That could be soon. “The patent is expiring in December for the general concept for VRI,” said Perry. “That means more players can get into the game.”

Still, he said he expects an ongoing need for subsidies, an uncertain prospect in the current budget climate.

The partnership is also working with farmers to reduce water consumption in other ways:

Reducing water pressure and capping irrigation lines. Farmers use lower water pressure and distribute moisture closer to the soil to reduce wind drift. They also cap the ends of irrigation lines so water is not broadcast beyond the fields.

Advanced irrigation scheduling. A system of soil sensors, monitored through a wireless broadband network and powered by solar panels, allows farmers to monitor soil conditions on a daily or hourly basis and to selectively target areas for irrigation. For example, a farmer could hold off watering when it’s raining.

Conservation tillage. By using a cover crop and leaving plant residue in the field, farmers can modify plant root structure to improve the soil’s capacity to hold water and reduce soil temperature, thereby reducing the amount of water lost to evaporation.

Sod-based rotation. Farmers plant a warm-season perennial grass and fallow the field for two years, improving soil quality and water-holding capacity. However, only farmers who both plant row crops and graze cattle can afford to do this, said Perry.

In spite of the cost, reducing agriculture’s water consumption in Georgia’s Flint River Basin (and beyond) isn’t an abstract exercise: Water scarcity in the Southeast has lowered water flows in the lower Flint River system, threatening its extreme biodiversity, including endangered species. Leaving water in the river protects these species — and the future of farming. The region’s agricultural industry is worth $2 billion in revenue annually, and irrigation is central to production, said The Nature Conservancy.

The western United States operates under very different water laws than the East, such as “use it or lose it” (PDF), which encourages water waste. Others farmers are selling or leasing their water rights to burgeoning cities, taking cropland out of production.

Water and food costs are likely to rise worldwide due to increased demand — accompanied by growing anxiety about food and water security — which would make technologies like VRI more economic. Until then, Perry, his partners, and the Flint River basin farmers may be just a bit ahead of their time.

Return to Top

Nevada farmers grow teff as a cash crop

(Reno Gazette-Journal) – Teff is tough.

The grass, native to the highlands of Ethiopia, grows best at altitude, likes sun and doesn't require much irrigation.

That makes it ideal for the Fallon farm country, where altitude and sunlight are plentiful but water is in short supply.

Enter John Getto and Dave Eckert, partners in Desert Oasis Teff of Fallon, a leading northern Nevada teff grower.

In the past several years, the farmers have introduced the new crop, invested $100,000 in equipment — some of it custom-made — for harvesting and cleaning, found a milling partner to grind teff grain into flour, and begun selling the flour to customers across the country.

"This has been a process of trial and error," Getto said. "Almost no one you go to in the industry knows anything about teff."

The University of Nevada Cooperative Extension was a different matter. It provided equipment, grant and planting assistance to Getto and Eckert, who were willing to take a chance on a new crop when other farmers weren't.

Today, their customers are mainly Ethiopian restaurants needing teff flour to make injera, a spongy flatbread used to scoop up salads and stews, that's essential to Ethiopian cooking.

The most promising market for teff, however, consists of people who are gluten-intolerant or who are trying to eat more healthfully.

Teff lacks the protein that irritates gluten intolerance, but it's rich in other proteins, fiber, calcium and other nutrients.

"The health food stores, the gluten-free — that's where we think things are going," Eckert said. "That's the future."

Alfalfa and corn still might be the kings of Fallon farming, but drought, increasing municipal water use, and the need to rotate crops to preserve soil fertility and reduce weeds have increased teff's appeal.

Teff is a low-water crop, and because it flourishes in Fallon, it could be rotated every few years into alfalfa and corn fields.

About half of the teff sold as grain or flour in the United States is grown in Nevada.

Getto and Eckert plant 35 varieties of teff across 100 acres as a primary crop, almost all of it going to flour production. But because of weeds, the farmers said they, too, have had to consider a rotation crop for their primary teff.

Weeds, in fact, pose an ongoing challenge to teff farming because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hasn't yet approved herbicides for use on teff, Eckert said.

Teff grain is minuscule — 1/150th the size of wheat. There are 1.2 to 1.3 million seeds per pound.

Last year, Desert Oasis harvested and cleaned millions upon millions of those seeds, sending enough to the mill in Redding, Calif., to make possible annual flour sales of 400,000 pounds.

But because of its small size and sheer number, harvesting and cleaning teff grain isn't like processing other grains.

Agricultural equipment is made for larger grains, something Getto and Eckert discovered when they set out to become teff tycoons.

They improvised at first, rigging together a hopper, seeder, a sort of Dumpster and a fan, but too much waste got through.

Today, their harvesting and cleaning process includes a hulking clipper cleaner, housed in an outbuilding and modified from wheat use, in which five custom screens filter teff seeds while dirt, pigweed and other undesirables are sucked out through waste ducts.

"At first, we didn't know where the seed came out," Getto said of the machine. "We walked around trying to figure it out. You have to keep going outside, looking to see if too much teff is being sucked out, then adjust it."

Teff flour, besides being injera's main ingredient, also can be used for baking, and teff grain can be cooked for hot cereal, "sort of like cream of wheat," Getto said. "My sons do that all the time. They love it. It's a whole grain, so there's more nutrients."

The market for teff flour far exceeds the market for teff grain, and both are more commercially valuable than the 2,000-pound polybags filled with harvest waste. What to do with them?

"It may end up as bird seed," Getto said. "You can't feed a cow a whole grain, it'll go right through them."

Return to Top

Bayer reports Q3 profits more than double

(RTTNews) - German conglomerate Bayer AG Thursday reported a sharp increase in third-quarter profit, helped by a continuing growth momentum in emerging markets. The company recorded a significant improvement in HealthCare and CropScience margins and confirmed its full-year 2011 sales and earnings outlook.

In the third quarter, the company's net income surged 125.3 percent to 642 million euros from 285 million euros in the same quarter last year. On a per share basis, earnings were 0.78 euros, significantly higher than 0.35 euros per share reported last year.

Core earnings per share for the recent quarter improved 17.9 percent to 1.12 euros from 0.95 euros per share in the prior-year quarter. EBITDA was 1.73 billion euros, up 41 percent from the preceding year.

The company noted that it has restated certain figures for the year 2010.

Sales for the quarter improved 1 percent to 8.67 billion euros from 8.58 billion euros in the same quarter last year. Adjusted for currency and portfolio, the increase was 4.8 percent. Sales in the emerging markets rose 9.5 percent on a currency-adjusted basis and accounted for a disproportionately large share of growth, the company said.

Marijn Dekkers, Management Board Chairman said that the continuing growth momentum in emerging markets is a key success factor. "Another highlight was the substantial increase in earnings at Bayer HealthCare and CropScience. At MaterialScience, on the other hand, earnings were diminished by higher energy and raw material costs."

Sales of the HealthCare subgroup declined 1.7 percent to 4.2 billion euros, reflecting negative currency effects. After adjusting for currency and portfolio effects, sales rose 1.6 percent from last year. Underlying EBITDA margin improved 29.2 percent from 26.3 percent a year ago.

Return to Top

Adaption key to Oregon farm’s prosperity

(OregonLive.com) MCMINNVILLE -- To hear Tom Boyer explain it, farming has a proper pace to it. He shakes his head at farmers who get too big too fast. The ones who get out ahead of themselves in terms of acreage, bank loans or expensive equipment. In their haste, those fellows are "right next to stumbling," he says.

Sometimes, of course, every farmer races from chore to chore, hustles to beat the weather and scrambles to solve the latest tractor breakdown. "It keeps you high-stepping to keep on top of it," Boyer says.

On their 400 acres a mile south of McMinnville, Boyer and his wife, Barbara, face the challenge common to Oregon's 38,800 farmers: How do you keep your balance when markets change, costs increase and regulations crank?

How do you mesh what you love with the complications of water, fuel, fertilizer and financing? What about consumer expectations? What if traffic is so thick and fast you're scared to move bulky equipment to your next field down the highway? What if the neighbor sells out and plants condos instead of crops?

How do you adapt, hold on and prosper?

This is one farm's walk. The Boyers found their pace by going organic and sticking local. By scaling back while reaching out, and by dialing in and diversifying.

Tom Boyer is 54, the fourth generation to farm in Oregon and the third on this ground, which hugs the curving contour of the South Yamhill River. He's a jacket and jeans guy, wears his cap to the dinner table and calls his wife Babs. He's bald, stocky, keeps a droopy 1970s mustache and is a central casting font of laconic country expressions.

Which can be misleading. He gets by on four hours sleep a night, and spends his time, when the house is quiet, reading and researching. "You're constantly fine-tuning," he says. "If you're not fine-tuning, you're out of business."

"I call him my Einstein," Barbara Boyer says.

She's 44, a Connecticut girl with a plant science degree who never imagined she'd end up an Oregon farmwife. She's dark-haired, gregarious and a natural organizer. She won election to the board of the Yamhill County Soil & Water Conservation District and in November will take a seat on the Oregon Board of Agriculture.

She co-founded and now manages the McMinnville Farmer's Market. She's leaning on the county's school districts to add local fruit and vegetables to lunch menus. A "no brainer" in such a fine agricultural county, she says.

The Boyer farm, under Tom's father and grandfather and in his first years, grew grain, multiple varieties of grass seed, and turnips, radish and mustard for seed. That changed after a seed marketing company folded and left him holding several million pounds of vegetable seed. Never again, he vowed, would he let a middleman control his destiny.

DIVERSIFY AND PROSPER

The Boyers set out to establish five "profit centers" at the farm -- five ways to make money.

At the heart of it is their "Gourmet Hay."

The Boyers have always grown grass hay -- some fields have produced 30 years running -- but they began marketing to the many hobby farms and ranches in the area, people with a few horses, goats or cattle to feed. Although international demand has pushed the price of Oregon hay to $220 a ton or more, the Boyers sell for $130 to $160 a ton. Couldn't look customers in the eye if they gouged them, they say.

They produce 30,000 to 40,000 87-pound bales annually and deliver to about 450 regular customers. They restrict deliveries to a 50-mile radius. Haul beyond that, Tom Boyer says, and you're a trucker instead of a farmer.

They use organic techniques. Instead of chemical fertilizer, the Boyers buy 300 to 500 tons of pomace -- grape skins and seeds left over from pressing at local wineries -- and mix it with manure. They spread it on the hay fields in the fall. Tom Boyer calls it "trail mix" for earthworms, whose work makes for rich, healthy, well-drained soil. "Our worm count is way high," he says.

A second profit center emerged in 2004 from a conservation project along the South Yamhill River. Working with the federal Farm Service Agency, the Boyers and various community groups planted 10,000 trees over seven years. The Boyers estimate they gave up 24 acres of cropland by planting trees in a buffer zone stretching 180 feet from the riverbank, and the FSA pays them $6,000 annually as compensation. That's less than what they could earn if the land was kept in production, but the restored riparian buffer cools the river and controls erosion.

"We want to have as nice a river to swim in as I did when I was a kid," Tom Boyer says.

Third is a Community Supported Agriculture operation, in which subscribers pay for weekly boxes of fresh vegetables. The Boyers converted 1.5 acres of hay field into a garden, and grow tomatoes, carrots, beans, kale, cabbage, squash and other edibles.

They plan to expand the garden by another quarter acre and continue enriching it with the pomace treatment.

"If you caress a garden it will produce a third more," Tom Boyer says. "That's how you do it."

The fourth profit center is Barbara Boyer's job at McMinnville Farmer's Market, which pays a $5,000 a year.

The fifth is a work in progress. They're fixing up the original farmhouse, a two-story, 1909 beauty, and plan to rent it to vacationers who want to experience a working farm. People ought to know, Tom Boyer says, there are "land rich, pocket poor" family farmers who are "out there busting their butts."

The restoration has a proper pace, as well. They pick one major project each year: replaced the roof in 2009, rebuilt the front porch last year and this fall will add stone steps, front and back.

Tom Boyer sees the house rental as a way to "keep the story alive."

His son, Ted, lives nearby and is beginning to show interest in returning to the farm. And Ted's young daughter, Josi, loves every aspect.

"If heritage were not important, why not just sell it and coast?" Tom asks.

His smile is his answer.

"I think it's worth punishing a few more generations," he says.

THERE'S MORE

Boyer Family FarmTom and Barbara Boyer changed their hay farm to an organic operation, put in a 2-acre vegetable garden and started a community supported agriculture where they provide veggies to families on a contract basis. The Boyers are adapting to changing markets and the economics of farming in 2011.Watch video

The Boyers have farmed up to 1,000 acres by leasing land, but found themselves "highway farmers" moving from field to field. They're scaling back to the home place, and believe they can maintain hay production with additional irrigation.

Even that comes with complications, however. The Boyers hold the oldest water rights on the South Yamhill. If they increase their take, some newcomer to the fast-growing county might get bumped off. They don't relish the prospect.

But farming is tough. There are testy times during harvest, when rain threatens the hay and the baler or stacker breaks down, when Tom Boyer says he has "a regular Jesus moment" and questions why he does it.

The answer lies deep. Farming, he says with a laugh, "gets in your blood and then you're screwed."

But good moments overcome bad. Delivering hay to somebody you like, he says, is like going to meet a friend.

Perspective and energy also arrive with the farm's idealistic "woofers," unpaid interns who come to the farm through a program called Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. In the past three years, the Boyers have hosted 79 woofers for two-week stays, putting them up in their basement. The current intern, Meghan Bender, was a waitress in Manhattan before arriving to pick beans and tomatoes and push a wheelbarrow for the first time.

"I spend most of the day in the garden," Bender says with a broad smile. "It feels really right."

That goes both ways.

"Maybe we are doing something right," Tom Boyer says. "These kids are coming from across the country to be here."

The Boyers have worked only two Sundays in 18 years; once when they had to catch up on the harvest after a friend's funeral on a Saturday, another time to help a friend whose equipment had broken down. Otherwise, Sundays are for spiritual recharge. Time to find that proper pace. Stay on the steady.

A reminder, Tom Boyer says, "That there's some sort of life other than on a tractor."

Return to Top

End Transmission