 |
|||
 |
" I heard it |
||
November 4, 2011
· Declining crop diversity a media myth
· Immigration bill splits House GOP
· Plan aims to ban kids driving tractors
· Fertilizer firm CF looking offshore
· Groups sue over GM crops in wildlife areas
Declining crop diversity a media myth
(PhysOrg.com)
– The conventional wisdom that says the 20th century was a disaster for crop
diversity is nothing more than a myth, according to a forthcoming study by a
Law professor Paul Heald says overall varietal diversity of
the $20 billion market for vegetable crops and apples in the
"The conventional wisdom, as illustrated in the July 2011 issue of National Geographic, holds that the last century was a disaster for crop diversity," he said. "In the mainstream media, this position is so entrenched that it no longer merits a citation."
To support their conclusions, Heald and co-author Susannah
Chapman, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the
"When we began this study, we started with the assumption that every year we advanced in the 20th century there would be fewer and fewer varieties offered for sale commercially," Heald said.
But when the researchers went to
"There was no evident sign of decline, so we decided to step back and take a snapshot of 1903 and 2004, two years where others had collected full data on all important vegetable crops," Heald said. "We came to this with the exact same preconceptions as everyone else, but we couldn't ignore facts that were smacking us in the face."
According to Heald, the reason no one questioned the conventional wisdom of a crop diversity crisis earlier is that the narrative "resonates so completely with assumptions made in all the socio-biological fields."
"Humans generally cause significant environmental damage, so this false notion of waning crop diversity fits an accepted narrative," Heald said. "It reconfirms what people already believe, and that belief is certainly bolstered by people's casual observations about lack of diversity in the supermarket."
Heald says the lack of choice in the fruit and vegetable section of grocery stores creates the impression that there's a diversity crisis.
"Since we don't see the diversity, it must not be there," he said. "It fits in with a narrative of bad environmental news. There's no doubt the 20th century was a bad century for the environment, so it must also have been a bad century for crop diversity. But it turns out this is one area in the last century that was pretty good. So all these factors bundled together led to a consensus that was never questioned and never really explored systematically until now."
According to the study, 40 percent of the diversity gains the researchers found were from imports, but only 3 percent of gains could be traced to patents and less than 1 percent from biotechnological innovation.
"The influx of immigrants from South America and Asia
have really brought a lot of new germ plasm into the
In the debate between economists who believe that patent law is essential to increasing plant diversity through innovation, and anthropologists and ethno-botanists who believe that patents destroyed plant diversity in the 20th century, Heald says the study demonstrates that both sides are wrong.
"The story of vegetables and apples in the 20th century is a story of markets working without government intervention, so it's really a confluence of liberal and conservative dogma," he said. "You see immigrants, off-the-grid seed savers, small farmers and local gardeners preserving and innovating. They create what appears to be a very efficient market for diversity in the absence of significant legal regulation."
The study also includes the caveat that corn may be the exception to the influence of the patent system, as federal property rights play a more prevalent role in the ubiquitous crop, as well as with soybeans and cotton.
"The interesting question is, 'Why do firms patent these new strains of corn?' " Heald said. "Some agricultural economists would say that patents allow a firm to capture a certain segment of the market, but people who study varieties of patented corn say that it's more of a phenomenon of defensive patenting, where you patent something because you don't want to be sued by someone else when they try to patent the exact same thing. Since patent suits can be expensive, it's easier and safer to patent what you produce."
But to become a player in the corn market, you may need as big of a patent portfolio as the competition, Heald says.
"There's also the sense – and this has been borne out in other industries, such as computer technology – that you want to create this huge arsenal of patents that you can wield as a big club in the market," he said. "If that's true, then, ironically, it may be inefficient to have patent protection, if the public gets too much of this sort of game-playing and legal jockeying.
"So the interesting question is, do you really need patent protection to stimulate new kinds of corn? That, of course, is going to turn on how expensive it is to create a new strain, and how easy to appropriate the technology."
More information: The paper is titled "Veggie Tales: Pernicious Myths About Patents, Innovation, and Crop Diversity in the Twentieth Century."
Immigration bill splits House GOP
(The Hill) – House Republicans are split over an immigration bill that is backed by presidential candidate Mitt Romney as the measure is attracting escalating criticism from industry groups and rank-and-file members.
The rift over House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith’s (R-Texas) E-Verify bill is jeopardizing its chances of passing the Republican-controlled House.
Democrats, by and large, oppose the legislation, which would mandate that employers use the E-Verify system to check their employees’ legal work status.
The Obama administration and many Democrats on Capitol Hill want Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. That legislation, however, is considered dead in the 112th Congress.
Smith’s measure in September cleared the Judiciary panel on a party-line vote, though it isn’t clear that the bill has the votes to pass on the House floor.
Republican lawmakers have major concerns with key aspects of the bill’s effects on states’ rights, the federal government’s enforcement of the system and its impact on the agriculture industry, which relies on foreign labor.
Debates over illegal immigration have been a theme of the GOP presidential primary, with Smith’s bill getting some attention.
Romney, the former
Sen. Marco Rubio (
Rubio said he has heard objections raised from agriculture sector, suggesting he sees the need for flexibility in E-Verify legislation.
Meanwhile, sources say that at least two dozen House GOP lawmakers have an issue with Smith’s bill because it includes language to preempt the states and local governments and keep them from enforcing their own employment verification laws.
The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has endorsed Smith’s bill, maintains that the preemption provision is vital to its support.
Freshman Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), who campaigned on battling illegal immigration last year, is leading the opposition to Smith’s bill.
As mayor of
“I have no faith that the federal government is serious
about enforcing our immigration laws. They haven’t, I don’t believe they will.
And the Supreme Court agrees that the states have the right — why would we come
along now and take that away from them? And the United States Chamber gets
solidly behind this preemption — which raises all sorts of red flags for me —
this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, this bill,”
A source close to the Chamber of Commerce, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says that the hodgepodge of local and state laws on immigration matters is disruptive to businesses.
“The whole mantra that [Smith] and others have is … we need to make this work for employers. I can’t tell you how much we hear from our state and local chambers as well as the members of our policy committees that this patchwork of state laws is a huge problem. A huge problem,” the source told The Hill.
Other groups, such as the National Small Business Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, have objected to provisions in Smith’s bill.
Lawmakers who represent districts with many agriculture workers believe that the bill isn’t going to make it to the floor unless it is amended.
California Rep. Dan Lungren (R) told The Hill that he supports E-Verify but that “it has to be accompanied by a workable guest worker program for agriculture.”
“A bill on E-Verify won’t come to the floor unless we address agriculture, I am convinced,” Lungren said.
Smith however, remains undeterred, and downplayed GOP opposition to his bill. He declined to predict when it would hit the House floor, but seemed optimistic that it could happen sooner rather than later.
Smith cannot count on a lot of help from Democrats. During the markup this fall, Democrats questioned why Republicans — who have decried government regulations and their effect on jobs — would try to pass a bill that would impose more mandates on businesses.
Even if Smith’s bill passes the House, it is unlikely to attract the necessary 60 votes in the Senate.
Plan aims to ban kids driving tractors
(npr.org) – For a lot of farm kids, "learning to drive" means learning to drive a tractor before ever driving a car.
Tractors are a big part of family farm life, which is one reason advocacy groups and dozens of congressional representatives have heavily criticized a U.S. Department of Labor proposal that would bar children under age 16 from doing many dangerous farm jobs, such as driving a tractor and handling pesticides. The outcry has been so strong that on Monday, the agency backed away from the Nov. 1 deadline it had set for public comment and extended it another month.
But while traditional family farmers say the change threatens the future of agriculture, child and labor advocates say the plans are a much-needed update to protect vulnerable young workers.
The changes do include a legal exemption for farm families that would allow children to work on the farms owned by their parents. But it would still affect many small farmers who hire kids in the summer or who have extended family members work on their land.
At the 20-acre farm of Julie and Scott Wilber near
The Wilbers say finding part-time seasonal workers is difficult; they can't spend a lot on wages and need sporadic help for hard, manual labor.
"It's easier to hire kids or teachers, because people who have regular full-time jobs aren't going to quit their job to work in the summer," Julie Wilber says.
Ag advocacy groups are also outraged about the changes. They say the government doesn't understand how agriculture gets done today.
Most farms are now organized under a corporation that includes multiple members of an extended family — uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, grandparents — but having that status would mean many families that count on their kids wouldn't be exempt, says Jordan Dux, national affairs coordinator with the Nebraska Farm Bureau.
"So kids of individuals who are involved in a family corporation would no longer be able to help mom and dad on the ranch, on the farm. They wouldn't be able to work with animals. They wouldn't be able to work on hay wagons stacking bales 6 feet tall," he said. "There are lots of ... typical farm practices that ... would be outlawed by the Department of Labor."
The plan's critics also say the regulations would hinder the recruitment of the next generation of farmers and ranchers, calling it a direct hit on youth groups like 4-H and Future Farmers of America.
Farm work is one of the most dangerous occupations, and it
frequently affects the 1.26 million children under age 20 who live on farms in
the
Child safety advocates and others applauded the Labor Department's announcement and said the changes are long overdue. Others, like Barry Estabrook, a food journalist who has done extensive reporting on farm labor, particularly in Florida tomato fields, says given the extent of injuries, the proposal was "timid at best."
Children who work in agriculture have little protection under the Fair Labor Standards Act, unlike their counterparts who work in other occupations, Estabrook said. Young people who work on farms "have suffered under a federally mandated double standard," Estabrook writes on his "Politics of the Plate" blog.
"I don't see it as any more ludicrous to envision a child driving a bulldozer or a backhoe on a construction site than driving a backhoe in the farm fields," he said in an interview. "What is the fundamental difference?"
In a separate update, the Labor Department also proposed
preventing anyone under age 18 from working at stockyards, livestock auctions,
commercial feed lots or grain elevators — sites of several high-profile deaths.
Six of the 26 people who suffocated in grain elevator deaths last year were
under the age of 16, according to a
Public Citizen, a congressional watchdog, supports the
increased protections. Justin Feldman, a worker health and safety advocate with
the group, points to the case of two 17-year-old boys in
"It took the fire department an hour to cut through the grain auger, and each one lost a leg. They were athletes," Feldman says. "They were going into their senior year in high school. And now their lives have been very much changed."
Fertilizer firm CF looking offshore
A large expansion outside CF's base of operations in the
"We always have our ear to the ground, seeking opportunities to invest money," CF Chief Executive Steve Wilson told Reuters. "There are possibly opportunities offshore that could interest us."
The company has been generating large amounts of cash this
year as high corn prices give farmers an incentive to plant more crops and use
more fertilizer.
As of September 30, CF had $1.43 billion in cash. That was even after the company bought back $800 million of its own stock during the third quarter.
"
Wherever CF decides to expand must have access to cheap
natural gas, much like North America does now,
"It's no secret if you look at North Africa, you see
difficulties in
CF, based in a
In 2008, CF said it would spend $1 billion to build a large
ammonia and urea fertilizer complex in
"We are watching what happens with the new (
Yara failed last year to buy Terra Industries Inc, a large American fertilizer maker that eventually was bought by CF for nearly $5 billion.
"We're not in the (mergers and acquisition) business
today,"
Groups sue over GM crops in wildlife areas
(Reuters) - Environmental and food safety groups filed suit on Wednesday against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, demanding it end the cultivation of genetically modified crops on Midwestern wildlife refuges.
The groups claim the federal agency broke the law by
entering agreements with farmers that allowed planting of biotech crops on
refuge land in eight
Most of the crops at issue are "Roundup Ready" -- biotech crops engineered by Monsanto to tolerate dousings of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, the plaintiffs said. Roundup Ready crops have been shown to "foster an epidemic of superweeds," and create other problems for the environment, according to the plaintiffs.
"National Wildlife Refuges are sanctuaries for migratory birds, native grasses, and endangered species," said Paige Tomaselli, an attorney for the Center for Food Safety, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
"Allowing pesticide-promoting, GE (genetically engineered) crops degrades these vital ecosystems and is antithetical to the basic purpose of our refuge system. Worse still is approval without meaningful review of these crops' impacts," Tomaselli said in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the
The plaintiffs include Beyond Pesticides, a nonprofit public health and environmental safety group; the Center for Food Safety, also a national nonprofit involved in health and environmental safety issues; and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit alliance of local, state and federal scientists, law enforcements officers, land managers and others.
The groups claim the government violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to do a complete environmental impact statement before allowing the biotech crops to be planted in the refuge areas. They also claim violations of wildlife protection laws.
The Fish & Wildlife Service had no immediate response to the lawsuit.
In the suit, the plaintiffs state that studies have shown
that cultivation of herbicide-tolerant genetically engineered crops such as
Roundup Ready soybeans and corn dramatically increases the use of herbicides.
The primary herbicide used on
Herbicides also harm habitats of wildlife and in many instances, directly harm plants and wildlife, including listed endangered species, according to the lawsuit.
End Transmission