
		" I heard it through the AgLine"

November 30, 2009

· Organic farming worse for Earth – Syngenta CEO

· ‘New’ bug poses risks, benefits to Georgia crops

· ‘Seeds of change’ spur US antitrust inquiry

· US shoppers going green despite ailing economy

· Online registration now open for World Ag Expo

Organic farming worse for Earth – Syngenta CEO

(The New York Times) – When Michael Mack, the chief executive of Syngenta, a Swiss agribusiness giant that makes pesticides and seeds, hears people say that organic food is better for the planet, he has one response: "Au contraire."

"Organic food is not only not better for the planet," he said, in an interview at The New York Times building. "It is categorically worse."

Michael Mack, the chief executive of the Swiss agribusiness firm Syngenta, says organic farming is “categorically worse” for the planet.

The problem, Mr. Mack said, is that organic farming takes up about 30 percent more land, on average, than non-organic farming for the same yield (though this varies by crop, of course). If the world wants to feed its fast-growing population on existing cropland - and Mr. Mack is clear that he does not want forests chopped down to clear more land for biofuel production, let alone food - then productivity becomes a key factor, he said.

"If the whole planet were to suddenly switch to organic farming tomorrow, it would be an ecological disaster," he said.

In terms of yields, he continued, organic food is the "productive equivalent of driving an S.U.V."

Mr. Mack also addressed what he called the "mistaken belief that natural is always better."

Pesticides that help crops to grow more efficiently in this country, he argued, "have been proven safe and effective and absolutely not harmful to the environment or to humans," and have been certified as such by the Food and Drug Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency.

The implication of not believing that pesticides are safe, he said, is that you don't trust the government's findings.

"Once you go down that path, I don't know where the guard rails are," he said.

Mr. Mack dismissed the notion that Syngenta, a company that sold nearly $12 billion of seeds and "crop protection" technologies last year, felt threatened by the organic movement.

His concern, he said, was to make people aware of the limitations of organic food.

"It underplays the significance of agricultural productivity," he said.

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‘New’ bug poses risks, benefits to Georgia crops

(AP via SFGate.com) – Researchers recently found an insect in north Georgia that has never before been reported in the Western Hemisphere - and its arrival could be both a blessing and a curse.

Some might celebrate the arrival of the kudzu-munching bug, which could help control the invasive vine that drapes much of the South. However, the bug also feasts on valuable crops like soybeans and other legumes.

As of Nov. 12, the insect was reported in nine north Georgia counties, mostly on homes and other buildings with nearby kudzu patches. Experts aren't sure yet how fast or wide the bug will spread or how damaging it might be to crops.

"I think in time it's going to spread significantly," said Dan Suiter, an associate professor of entomology at the University of Georgia's Griffin campus. "But only time will tell."

Suiter and Lisa Ames, director of the university's Homeowner Insect and Weed Diagnostics Lab, first received specimens of the bug from pest-control companies and county agricultural officials in mid-October. Neither had ever seen it before and both initially misidentified it.

Just before Halloween, Dow AgroScience field researcher Joe Eger visited the University of Georgia campus, and Suiter happened to show him a specimen. That turned out to be a lucky break.

"There are literally five people in the U.S. who could've identified this insect," and Eger was one of them, Suiter said.

An insect enthusiast who has devoted a lot of time to studying stink bug varieties, Eger quickly recognized the bug as a bean plataspid, a native of India and China that is commonly called lablab bug and globular stink bug.

It was not good news.

The brownish bugs have a narrow head and a wide, rounded back end and are a little bigger than the eraser on a pencil, Eger said. They waddle a bit when they walk but fly quickly.

As a variety of stink bug, the insect gives off an odor when threatened that Suiter describes as "a mildly offensive, bitter smell."

Kudzu was introduced into the United States from Asia at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, according to the Nature Conservancy Web site. From the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, farmers in the South were encouraged to plant it to prevent soil erosion. But in the warm Southern climate, the invasive species quickly got out of control, growing at a rate of up to a foot a day and smothering other plants.

It's unknown how the bug got into this country, Suiter said, adding that it could have hitched a ride in someone's suitcase or on a plant sample.

When the new bug was identified, Suiter reached out to see if any kudzu experts knew if the bug had ever been imported from Asia to control the plant. However, he was told it was ruled out because of its taste for soybeans.

The stink bug feeds on the seeds of the beans and other legumes, and also sucks juices from plants. That leaves holes that can cause the plant to wilt or allow bacteria to seep in.

As host plants die off in the cooler fall weather, the bugs are looking for places to spend the winter, settling into attics and cracks in wood siding on houses, Suiter said.

Jim Chase, an entomologist for pest-control company Terminix, said customers in several north Georgia counties started calling with complaints about the bugs several weeks ago, but he wasn't sure how many confirmed cases they'd had. Some of the bugs were discovered by Terminix agents who were called for other problems.

The bug was discovered after most legume crops had been harvested, and it has only been spotted in the northern part of the state so far, while most farms are in the south. After waiting out the winter, the bugs will likely come out again in the spring to lay eggs, Suiter said.

And they can quickly hitch a ride to other parts of the state on cars and clothing.

So far, no sightings of the bug have been reported outside of Georgia, but state and federal officials are closely watching the insects.

The Georgia Department of Agriculture is working with the University of Georgia and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to learn more about the bean plataspid and what might be done to control it, Assistant Agriculture Commissioner James Sutton said in an e-mail. Growers should be aware of the new pest and should check their crops carefully, he wrote.

"While the insect is new to the U.S., early indications are that our agronomic practices should be able to control it," he wrote. "Eradication does not appear to be likely, as the insect appears to be widespread and well established."

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Seeds of change spur US antitrust inquiry

(The Washington Post) By Peter Whoriskey – For plants designed in a lab a little more than a decade ago, they've come a long way: Today, the vast majority of the nation's two primary crops grow from seeds genetically altered according to Monsanto company patents.

Ninety-three percent of soybeans. Eighty percent of corn.

The seeds represent "probably the most revolutionary event in grain crops over the last 30 years," said Geno Lowe, a Salisbury, Md., soybean farmer.

But for farmers such as Lowe, prices of the Monsanto-patented seeds have steadily increased, roughly doubling during the past decade, to about $50 for a 50-pound bag of soybean seed, according to seed dealers.

The revolution, and Monsanto's dominant role in the nation's agriculture, has not unfolded without complaint. Farmers have decried the price increases, and competitors say the company has ruthlessly stifled competition.

Now Monsanto -- like IBM and Google -- has drawn scrutiny from U.S. antitrust investigators, who under the Obama administration have looked more skeptically at the actions of dominant firms.

During the Bush administration, the Justice Department did not file a single case under antimonopoly laws regulating a dominant firm. But that stretch seems unlikely to continue.

This year, the Obama Justice Department tossed out the antitrust guidelines of its predecessor because they advocated "extreme hesitancy in the face of potential abuses by monopoly firms."

"We must change course," Christine Varney, the Obama administration's chief antitrust enforcer, said at the time.

Of all the new scrutiny by Justice, the Monsanto investigation might have the highest stakes, dealing as it does with the food supply and one of the nation's largest agricultural firms. It could also force the Obama administration, already under fire for the government's expanded role in the economy, to explain how it distinguishes between normal rough-and-tumble competition and abusive monopolistic business practices.

Monsanto says it has done nothing wrong.

"Farmers choose these products because of the value they deliver on farm," Monsanto said in a statement. "Given the phenomenally broad adoption of these technologies by farmers, such questions are normal and to be expected."

Even with the growing cost, farmers have embraced the genetic modifications because they save work and enable them to cultivate more land. The modified plants can stand up to the powerful herbicide glyphosate, best known commercially as Roundup, allowing them to use the weedkiller not just before planting but also after the crops have come up.

"Everybody wants it, and Monsanto is seeing what the market will bear," said Lowe, 39. "People say that's capitalism. The question is, where does capitalism meet corruption?"

Before it jumped into biotechnology, Monsanto was already one of the nation's largest chemical companies and had patented glyphosate, bringing it to market as Roundup in the '70s.

The product kills just about all weeds, and for farmers it served as a wonderfully effective herbicide. Instead of tilling the earth, they could simply blanket it with Roundup. Because the chemicals in Roundup break down quickly in the sun and rain, seeds could be planted shortly afterward.

It became one of the best-selling herbicides ever, and the seed patents at the center of the antitrust allegations were built upon that chemical's appeal.

If there was a practical drawback with Roundup, it was that it couldn't be used after planting: Applying Roundup at that point would kill the crops, too.

Scientists wondered: Could they develop plants that could withstand Roundup?

The answer emerged, partly by accident, out of Louisiana muck.

Monsanto was producing Roundup at a plant in Luling, La., and the water and sludge in the waste ponds around the plant were exposed to the chemical. It was the perfect place to find organisms that could withstand the chemical's lethal effects.

After bacteria discovered in the pond sludge proved resistant to the chemical, scientists isolated the gene that gave the bacteria Roundup tolerance and placed that gene, known as CPS4, into soybeans, then corn.

The resulting plants, called "Roundup Ready," represented a billion-dollar breakthrough and, as Monsanto sees it, a just reward for its $1.5 billion investment in biotech research.

"During the same period, our competitors . . . largely ignored biotech," the company said in a statement. "Monsanto took risks our competition chose not to take."

Although farmers have grumbled about Monsanto's regular price increases for Roundup Ready technology for seeds, it is DuPont, a Monsanto rival, that has pressed the antitrust case.

Farmers and seed companies "are afraid to speak in public, worried that they will become victims of retaliation," Thomas L. Sager, DuPont senior vice president and general counsel, said in a statement. "That's why it's so important that antitrust investigators move quickly -- to learn the truth before even more harm is done to America's farmers."

In court papers, DuPont argues that Monsanto has used the dominance of the Roundup Ready brand to prevent competitors from bringing innovations to market.

In its view, Roundup Ready is so popular that any new biotech innovations must be designed to work with Monsanto's technology. But Monsanto effectively freezes out the competition, it says, by making it difficult for other companies to win a license to add their traits to Monsanto-patented seeds.

"Monsanto has abused its unlawfully-acquired monopoly power to block competition, thwart innovation and extract from farmers unjustified price increases of over 100 percent in recent years," DuPont argues in court documents.

A recent paper by Diana Moss of the American Antitrust Institute broadened the antitrust case against Monsanto and called for legal enforcement, citing "an almost intractable situation for competition." The institute has taken donations from DuPont but does not cater to its donors' viewpoints, officials said.

Monsanto says that the allegations of stifling competition are "without merit" and that it broadly licenses its technology.

"We license Roundup Ready technology to hundreds of independent seed companies and our major competitors," Lee Quarles, a company spokesman said. The company won't license Roundup Ready without restriction, however, because it wants to ensure that any other traits that are stacked onto the Roundup Ready seeds actually function as promised, a precaution that protects their brand and their customers, Monsanto officials say.

Out in the fields, meanwhile, there remains resentment and wonder about the Monsanto-patented seed.

According to Moss, the price of seed from 2000 to 2008 outpaced the growth of crop yields by 2 to 4 percent a year.

Several farmers said the cost of Roundup Ready seeds seemed to rise faster than their own margins. But that doesn't mean, at least just yet, that they'll stop using them.

"Everybody likes Roundup Ready," said William Layton, a grain farmer on the Eastern Shore. "Maybe it costs a little more than we like. But everybody's going to keep using it." For plants designed in a lab a little more than a decade ago, they've come a long way: Today, the vast majority of the nation's two primary crops grow from seeds genetically altered according to Monsanto company patents.