" I heard it through the AgLine"

December 10, 2009

 

 

·        Ag groups take GM alfalfa case to Supreme Court

·        High-tech irrigation: Wireless sensors and GPS

·        Growing the perfect pepper for fall production

·        US wants robust climate talks, no ‘reparations’

·        US Rep calls for end to ‘scientific fascism’

 

 

Ag groups take GM alfalfa case to Supreme Court

 

(fb.org) – Lower courts failed to adequately consider the mountains of evidence that prove biotech alfalfa is safe, and thus those courts abandoned a well-established legal principle when they banned the planting of the crop. That is just one of the points supporting a request for the United States Supreme Court to review a case related to biotech alfalfa, according to a brief filed by several groups.

 

The American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Corn Growers Association, the Biotechnology Industry Organization and the American Seed Trade Association have submitted a joint friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court in support of a petition seeking review of the “alfalfa” case, “Monsanto v. Geertson Seed.”

 

According to the brief, if left to stand, the lower court ruling “could begin a wave of anti-biotechnology injunctions.” Such a wave would generate uncertainty in the agricultural biotechnology industry, throughout American agriculture and in the global food market, according to the brief.

 

The lower court’s injunction against biotech alfalfa was made without the court conducting a thorough review of evidence and absent a finding of irreparable harm, according to the brief. It was also made despite the fact that agricultural biotechnology already is adopted widely in the U.S. for a number of key crops, ranging from corn and cotton to papaya, sugar beets and soybeans.

 

“The lower courts abandoned the well-established principle that evidence of likely irreparable harm is a prerequisite to issuance of an injunction,” the brief stated. “The district court ruling in this case, instead of fashioning an injunction based on the evidence before it, declined to conduct an evidentiary hearing and applied a legal standard that effectively presumed the existence of irreparable harm.”

 

If the courts do not respect those established legal standards, the ability to bring future innovations, especially biotech crops, to the marketplace is in real jeopardy, according to the brief.

 

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High-tech irrigation: Wireless sensors and GPS

 

(InformationWeek.com) – Derk VanKonynenburg used to think measuring the soil moisture every 15 minutes on his 1,500-acre fruit and almond orchard was as precise as he could possibly need. He gets the data from probes that measure moisture in the soil and send readings over a wireless link to a collection station. From there, it's relayed to a data center, and VanKonynenburg accesses the data online from a PC, helping him decide when and how much to water the trees.

 

Once VanKonynenburg and his partners got accustomed to the feed, however, they wanted even more data, and they wanted it better. "We decided we needed a measurement every minute," he says.

 

That's right. On this one midsize farm around Modesto, Calif., a farmer is measuring the soil moisture every single minute of the day to make irrigation decisions. Understand, VanKonynenburg isn't looking at that moisture count minute-by-minute like a stock ticker, waiting to hit the water switch. He looks about once a day to create an irrigation plan. But because the farm irrigates in bursts--say, seven minutes on and 14 minutes off--collecting readings every 15 minutes wasn't accurate enough. With better understanding of moisture needs, "we think it may allow us to lower our water use another 10%," says VanKonynenburg, "and 10% is a huge number."

 

The breakthrough here isn't the sensors, which farmers have had for decades. It's wireless. In the past, a farmer had to collect the readings by hand with a meter, since running wires to a sensor is impractical in a farm field. A farmer might get to a sensor every few days.

 

VanKonynenburg and his water-conscious peers show the potential for information technology to help with a major environmental issue: how to feed the masses without exhausting fresh water resources. For the sense of urgency, look no further than California, where several years of drought amid growing demand for water spurred lawmakers this month to pass the most significant water-use reform in three decades.

 

A number of emerging technologies promise to cut water use. Wireless sensors that allow for more precise water use are one. Some farmers are applying GPS controls to their center pivot irrigation systems, so that as the automated rigs move across a field, they know to turn off or lessen the flow in areas that need less water. Web-based data services are available to help farmers calculate when to water even if they're using low-tech techniques, such as flooding a field.

 

But the problem of reducing irrigation doesn't come with a tidy technology solution, given the obstacles to adoption.

 

Agriculture uses about 80% of all water consumed in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and more than 90% in some Western states. Irrigated fields produce just 16% of all crops, yet they generate nearly half of the value of all crops sold. Increased use of biofuels such as ethanol could add to the pressure, if such demand prompts farmers to grow corn instead of less water-intensive crops.

 

However, the USDA estimates that in 2006, the last year for which data is available, less than 8% of irrigated farms used "smart" irrigation--soil or plant moisture-sensing devices, irrigation scheduling services, or computer simulation models. California farmers could cut water use by 17% by using local climate and soil data to make decisions, abandoning flood irrigation in favor of sprinklers, and other techniques, concludes the nonprofit Pacific Institute in a report this year.

 

Economics can be a barrier to water-saving technology. In some areas, water's just not expensive enough to justify investment in technology to conserve it, says Guy Fipps, director of the Irrigation Technology Center at Texas A&M University. It's why drought-plagued developed countries such as Australia and Israel are leaders in water-saving irrigation.

 

Politics can make the economics more complicated. In the Western United States, in particular, water's a major public policy issue. In California, water shortages led to tens of thousands of farmland acres left unplanted last year. That kind of uncertainty makes it dodgy to invest in water-saving technologies.

 

For farmers to invest in such technologies, they need long-term assurances of a water supply--even if it's for less water than they're currently allocated or used to having access to, says David Zoldoske, director of the Center for Irrigation Technology at Fresno State University. "You can't go to the banker and borrow if you have water this year and you might not next year," he says. "You can invest with less water, but you can't invest with no water."

 

Tom Rogers considers both the economic and political issues as he considers investing in high-tech irrigation. Rogers and his brother work a 170- acre almond farm in central California, about 30 miles north of Fresno, that their father ran before them. Rogers has access to water, from wells on his land and surface water he pumps in, but the rate he had to pay for surface water shot up 40% recently, driving up his operating costs. "That hurt," he says.

 

By reducing water costs and maximizing crop yields, Rogers figures his investment in a wireless soil moisture sensor network paid for itself in three years. The risks of trying to minimize water use, however, are significant. Underwatering during the peak May, June, or July growing season can cut crop size 20% to 30%, he says.

 

Politically, Rogers thinks that the data he collects will be increasingly important in helping farmers justify their water use. He has watched farmers on the drier, west side of the valley lose almost all water to urban use in recent seasons. "There isn't an unending supply of water," Rogers says. "I have to show that I use water responsibly, or why should I have it?"

 

That thinking applies to everything Rogers does on the farm, because of both cost and environmental pressures. For instance, he'd like similar tools as he has for irrigation to help him monitor and manage how much fertilizer to give crops at a given time.

GPS-Enabled Watering

 

The greatest adoption of smarter irrigation technology is in center pivot irrigation, Texas A&M's Fipps says. This is the technique that creates those endless circles of crops you can see when flying over farm country. About a quarter mile of irrigation piping on wheels swings automatically around the field, spraying water constantly as it passes over field crops such as corn or soybeans.

 

In just the past few years, farmers have started mapping their fields based on water needs using GPS, which lets them mark areas that don't need watering, such as a bog, or areas that need less watering because of soil conditions. Since it's adding intelligence to an existing automated system's control panel, it's easy to integrate into existing operations, Fipps says. The GPS controllers also can be used to improve "chemigation," when chemicals are applied along with water.

 

There's also hope that the Web can help promote data sharing--data that's been available since the mid-1990s, but that's far from universally used.

 

The most basic calculation in irrigation comes down to this: Farmers must water enough to replace what's sucked out of the soil--either what evaporates into the air or is gulped up by plants. That calculation's called evapotranspiration, or ET, and it's based on temperature, rain, sunshine, wind, humidity, and more. There are myriad regional efforts to collect that data (generally on the county level), calculate ET information for those areas, and get the information to farmers so they can use it to adjust irrigation.

 

Fipps runs a network in Texas that provides this data on a Web site that lets farmers do custom calculations, entering when they planted crops and calculate water needs based on that and ET conditions. The system then e-mails each farmer with personalized suggestions for watering. It doesn't take sophisticated irrigation control systems to implement ET, Fipps says, which is why water conservation advocates promote it so widely.

 

Still, he acknowledges "a slow increase" in the number of farmers using ET data to estimate how much water their plants need, rather than just watering on a set schedule. Making ET data more accessible by the Web and e-mail isn't enough. "I wish something like a technology was going to be the answer," Fipps says. "Technologies help and will make a big impact, but it's the individual that turns water off or runs it too long."

 

It often takes a crisis--economic or political turmoil, or both--to drive change. Water shortages in California and the rest of the West are creating those conditions, which is partly why one startup picked that region to launch a software business that helps farmers manage irrigation using data like the kind generated by wireless moisture sensors.

 

One Startup's Story

 

PureSense was founded four years ago by a team of technologists and farmers determined to give farmers a better sense of what's going on in the ground on their farms, beyond just giving them weather data and related calculations such as ET. Farmers have been "running blind for years," says John Williamson, co-founder and chief operating officer of PureSense, which says it has about 200 customers, mostly in California.

 

PureSense's system relies on monitors in the ground that include wireless transmitters, at least one wireless weather station, and software on farmers' PCs, which they use to access and analyze the data held on PureSense servers. (Other companies such as Acequia and Hydropoint apply similar technology to landscape watering.)

 

There are a lot of challenges to getting a system right. Each one needs to be calibrated to a farm's particular conditions--some might need a probe every 150 acres, others every 20 acres if the soil is more variable or the crop types are more water-sensitive. That's one of the limits on PureSense growing its business: It takes a lot of staff time and resources to deliver a unique system and build the trust of farmers.

 

But it's necessary for vendors to be so service-intensive because past failures have made farmers wary of IT, Williamson says. Too often, systems are sold without the support to make it work in that particular farm. "Selling a grower a piece of hardware that collects data isn't of much help," he says.

 

Apple and peach farmer VanKonynenburg, a customer, describes PureSense as a "tool in its early stages." He pushes the PureSense team to improve the product, and he credits them with listening. "They're a little less confident than they were two years ago, but they're providing better information," he says.

 

Consider that change VanKonynenburg wanted to make, from collecting data every 15 minutes to collecting every minute. The solar panels in the field that run the probes and transmitters couldn't power that much data transmission over the wireless network. PureSense had to recode the systems to allow data to be collected and held, then sent in a bundle every 15 minutes.

 

VanKonynenburg is still using ET calculations in parallel to the soil moisture data monitoring, and he considers both when making irrigation decisions.

 

VanKonynenburg also is looking for more uses for the data he's collecting on soil moisture, temperature, and sunshine. He'd like to use the dashboard he gets from PureSense, which is focused on irrigation decisions, to determine risks for certain pests, fungus, and bacteria, to know when best to spray for them. Like any busy executive, he wants one decision-making dashboard.

 

Irrigation, like most elements of farming, won't become automated. It's no different from providing greater visibility into a supply chain or sales pipeline: Soil moisture provides insight into what's happening in the fields and allows more informed decisions, but there are still critical judgments to be made. "You need data, and then you need smart people with enough experience to interpret that," VanKonynenburg says. "A lot of those decisions are subjective."

 

Rogers believes that as well--and the data that this 57-year-old almond farmer is getting has him rethinking some of his long-held ideas about the water trees need. With four years of data in hand, he thinks he may start irrigating trees slightly in early December, something he's never done. "I'm thinking I've been wrong," he says.

 

Rogers and VanKonynenburg share something besides a faith in technology to improve farming--it's a belief that farmers are going to face mounting pressure to cut water use, and they need to prepare for it. VanKonynenburg has what are considered long-term water rights, which come with the land, but he knows the political climate could change. "Just because this is where my grandfather settled, I don't think those long-term rights are bulletproof," he says.

 

VanKonynenburg's trust in technology goes back 20 years, when he unpacked a TRS 80 computer and ran a cost accounting and payroll system on it to figure out the real costs of activities like running a tractor per acre. He considers such moves good business, but admits it's also his passion. "Some people have guns, some people race boats, I like this stuff," VanKonynenburg says.

 

Not that he jumps on every technology trend. While he could access his moisture sensor data on an iPhone, he laughs off the idea. "I'm 69 years old," he says, adding that checking data once a day on the computer is fine. Then, a moment later, VanKonynenburg can't help but confess: "I suspect that a year from now, I will be carrying one."

 

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Growing the perfect pepper for fall production

 

(salisburypost.com) – Jeff Wilson had a hunch he could make good use with one of the idle greenhouses at Patterson Farms Inc. this fall.

 

After a lot of research and with cooperation from a seed distributor, Wilson arrived at a way to grow a viable fall pepper crop.

 

These are no ordinary peppers — the seeds are bred and developed in Canada. Emulating Canadian growing conditions is important because of our reduced sunlight during the winter months.

 

Wilson chose yellow and red peppers because of their great demand. Large colored bell peppers are retailing for nearly $4 per pound at local retail outlets. The peppers are grown using a system similar to greenhouse tomato production. The pepper plants were planted in late August in plastic containers. These plants are grown under extremely clean conditions in an effort to reduce insect and disease pressures.

 

Since fall pepper production in this area is uncommon, Wilson must do a bit of experimenting and extreme record-keeping, guaranteeing the success of the crop. Plant tissue samples are examined on a weekly basis to determine nutrient uptake.

 

As with greenhouse tomato production, sterile bumble bees are used to pollinate the plant. At a cost of $2 per bee, the bees are worth their weight in gold for the amount of work they produce. Bumble bees are routinely used because they work tirelessly, constantly going from flower to flower ensuring proper pollination for the pepper and other greenhouse crops.

 

The red pepper variety grown is Fascinato which begins as a very ornate, dark green pepper. However, as the fruit matures, its fruit turns dark chocolate, eventually fading to a bright red fruit.

 

The yellow variety, Tenato, turns yellow from the tip back as the fruit matures. Both varieties are very large, smooth and well developed on the plant with few culls. The plant's growth should peak near 4 feet.

 

Since it is a new crop, Wilson is unsure how long the peppers will viably produce. Greenhouse tomatoes are scheduled for this greenhouse in February, so they should have a crop for another six weeks.

 

Harvest begins in earnest next week with most of the crop already sold. However, some of the peppers will make their way to Patterson Farm Retail market on Caldwell Road just off N.C. 150.

 

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US wants robust climate talks, no ‘reparations’

 

(Reuters via Yahoo! News) COPENHAGEN – President Barack Obama's top aides promised on Wednesday "robust" negotiations toward a global climate change deal this month, but firmly stated the United States does not owe the world "reparations" for centuries of carbon pollution.

 

They also warned that China, with its booming economy, would not be a recipient of any U.S. aid, even though the Asian heavyweight is considered a developing country under U.N. rules.

 

But Yu Qingtai, China's climate change ambassador, told reporters that "China has never sought to become the first candidate of financial support," despite its emphasis on the need for developed country financial aid.

 

That emphasis, he said, was to "safeguard the basic principles" agreed in previous United Nations climate deals.

 

Three of Obama's Cabinet secretaries and his lead climate negotiator arrived in Copenhagen for the talks that began on Monday and are scheduled to continue through December 18.

 

"We are seeking robust engagement with all of our partners around the world," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said at a news conference.

 

Speaking just days after her agency announced it intends for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, Jackson declared: "We are seeking to prevent the rapid approach of climate change."

 

Todd Stern, Obama's special envoy for climate change, assured reporters that the United States will contribute to a rich-country fund aimed at helping developing nations deal with climate change problems.

 

Stern warned, however, that China, with its booming economy and large reserves of U.S. dollars, would not be a recipient of financial aid from Washington.

 

"I don't envision public funds, certainly not from the United States, going to China," he said, adding that the government would direct public money to the poorest countries.

 

"We don't think China would be a first candidate."

 

And he said countries that did get U.S. cash should not see it as a sign that the world's largest economy be blamed for its growth in an era when carbon dioxide was not recognized as a threat to the planet.

 

"We absolutely recognize our historic role in putting emissions in the atmosphere, up there, but the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations, I just categorically reject that," Stern said in response to a reporter's question.

 

There have been discussions of a $10 billion annual fund for the next few years, which would be a downpayment toward what in the long-run could grow to hundreds of billions of dollars of financial and other support each year.

 

U.S. Senator John Kerry has asked the Obama administration to contribute $3 billion next year.

 

The financing plan is a key part of the ongoing talks.

 

Another high-ranking Obama administration official, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar toured an off-shore Danish wind mill.

 

Saying climate change solutions were put on a back-burner for the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency, Salazar told reporters: "I think the world has hope and optimism that we in the U.S. will be able to get our act together on energy and a climate change bill that will be one for the world."

 

The economic recession in the United States that has pushed unemployment above 10 percent has dampened enthusiasm for climate change legislation, which could raise consumer prices as industries are gradually forced to switch from fossil fuels like coal and oil to more expensive alternative energy sources.

 

But Obama administration officials hope that in coming months Congress will be able to finish work on a bill that would be more comprehensive than EPA regulations.

 

Recently, the recession has cut U.S. gas emissions, putting the country on track to reach Obama's short-term emissions goals, but cutting pollution further will take more effort as the economy recovers.

 

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also is in Copenhagen and will be joined later by other administration officials, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

 

Obama will arrive here toward the end of the talks, when deal-making typically peaks.

 

Over the past two days, Chinese officials attending the Copenhagen meeting have been highly critical of the U.S. offer to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels. China's top climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, told Reuters he hoped Obama can offer a tougher target in Copenhagen. But that could be difficult for the U.S. president because Congress so far has failed to embrace any specific goals.

 

Stern countered that the "core part of this negotiation is significant action by the major developing countries, there's no question."

 

While he said China and other major developing countries had taken steps toward controlling carbon emissions, they needed to offer firm, transparent plans in negotiations.

 

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US Rep calls for end to ‘scientific fascism’

 

(Fox News) –The ranking Republican on the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming said Tuesday he is going to attend the Copenhagen conference on climate change to inform world leaders that despite any promises made by President Obama, no new laws will be passed in the United States until the "scientific fascism" ends.

 

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., also wrote to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on Monday to demand that researchers who authored e-mails and documents that demonstrate climate change data were manipulated should not be allowed to participate in the latest report written by the U.N. panel.

 

"I call it 'scientific fascism,'" Sensenbrenner said during a press conference with fellow climate change skeptics. "The U.N. should throw a red flag. .... They relied on these scientists unjustifiably in my opinion."

 

Sensenbrenner wrote that "these bad actors" limited peer-reviewed studies used by the IPCC, which is leading the Copenhagen conference on climate change.

 

"Their behavior has caused grave damage to the public trust in climate science in general, and to the IPCC, in particular," Sensenbrenner wrote. "They should not be allowed to do so in the future. I therefore request that you and the co-chairs of each of the three IPCC working groups ensure that none of the individuals involved in these nefarious e-mail exchanges participate as contributors, reviewers, or in any other capacity in the preparation of" the next IPCC report.

 

Sensenbrenner is just the latest lawmaker to jump into the fray over "Climate-gate," a growing scandal over the release of thousands of e-mails written by global-warming scientists that show an effort to manipulate data and prevent publication of opposition research. More than 1,000 e-mails and 2,000 other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain were released just weeks ahead of the Copenhagen conference.

 

In his letter to Pachauri, Sensenbrenner noted an e-mail from Pennsylvania State University researcher Michael Mann that proposes warding other scientists off of "Climate Research" journal because it published scientific studies counter to the conclusions of the IPCC's contributors.

 

"The e-mails, however, demonstrate that a cabal of supposed 'cream-of-the-crop' climate scientists were indeed successful in getting editors of journals that had published contrarian views fired and that they conspired to boycott journals that did not bend to their wishes -- therefore ensuring that such views would not be adequately represented in IPCC Assessment Reports," Sensenbrenner wrote.

 

But supporters of putting curbs on fossil fuel emissions say that despite the questionable nature of the e-mails, they don't undermine the science, and point to the latest data from the very agencies wrapped up in the scandal.

 

"Global warming deniers are trying to say this is all a trick, but the truth of the matter is that our world is getting hotter, faster," said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and a co-author of legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Markey cited data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which concluded that this decade had an average global surface temperature about 1 degree fahrenheit above the 20th century average.

 

Data from NOAA as well as NASA and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia are used by the World Meteorological Organization, the U.N.'s weather agency. Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the WMO, announced at Copenhagen on Tuesday that 2000-2009 "is very likely to be the warmest on record, warmer than the 1990s, than the 1980s and so on."

 

"There is a mountain of evidence proving global warming is a fact, but the defenders of the fossil fuel status quo are using a molehill of a scandal to distract the world. The deniers will not win, because they are wrong," Markey said.

 

Obama is headed to Copenhagen next week for the end of the conference. After the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday issued a scientific finding on the danger of carbon dioxide, several Republicans say they fear Obama will make pledges at the conference that will try to bypass congressional approval.

 

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