" I heard it through the AgLine"

December 15, 2011

 

 

·       EPA Oks BioNik PGR for use in corn seed

·       Crop insurance soars for soggy farmers

·       Young detasselers vital to seed industry

·       Calif. growers wary of divisive pesticide

·       HP to build Syngenta’s private cyber cloud

 

 

EPA Oks BioNik PGR for use in corn seed

 

(Wire Services) LIBERTYVILLE, Illinois – Valent BioSciences Corporation (VBC) announced that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has granted registration approval for BioNik^TM Plant Growth Regulator for use on corn seed.

 

BioNik is a 25% formulation of s-abscisic acid (s-ABA), one of the five classes of plant growth regulators naturally present in plants. Abscisic acid regulates numerous plant processes including dormancy, maturation, growth, and response to stress conditions.

 

Hybrid corn seed producers will use BioNik to delay germination and better synchronize the flowering of male and female parents, capturing flexibility, efficiency, and reducing risk. Typically, pollen shed from the tassels of the male line plants does not completely overlap the receptivity period of the silks from the female line plants and fertilization is not maximized. To get the most value from their female line plants, seed producers typically make a second planting of the male line to ensure that pollen is available throughout the silking period.

 

Now, seed producers will have a new tool.  When s-ABA is applied to the seed of the male line, germination is delayed.  By treating their male line seed with BioNik, seed producers can extend the overall germination period and expand the pollen shed window from a single planting. This provides significant benefits to seed producers in terms of flexibility and cost-savings.

“BioNik is a good example of how a strong research effort can address a very specific market need and deliver value to a production system looking for innovative solutions,” said Mike Donaldson, president and CEO of Valent BioSciences. BioNik is the first release from VBC’s new Physiological Seed Enhancement business platform, under its plant growth regulator umbrella brand MASSIVO^TM, and is the second release from VBC’s new s-ABA franchise. “Our first registered s-ABA product, ProTone^® Plant Growth Regulator has been extremely successful promoting the development of fruit color on red table grapes. VBC is continuing to expand its research with s-ABA into several more areas within the horticulture, agronomic, and ornamental crop segments,” Donaldson said.

 

BioNik can be applied along with or on top of standard seed treatment products using standard seed treatment equipment. It can be applied months or hours prior to planting, with no effect on performance. In 2012, the product will be available on a semi-commercial basis as use patterns are fine-tuned through large scale trials conducted with key corn seed producers. The first wide scale commercial use is planned for 2013.

 

VBC is developing BioNik in other regions including Europe, Argentina, and Chile. Research is also ongoing in hybrid seed production for other crops such as sunflower, canola, and sorghum.

 

 

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About Valent BioSciences Corporation: Headquartered in Libertyville, IL, Valent BioSciences Corporation is a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sumitomo Chemical Company. VBC is the worldwide leader in the development, manufacturing and commercialization of biorational products, with sales in over 90 countries around the world. For additional information, visit the company’s website at www.valentbiosciences.com

 

 

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Crop insurance soars for soggy farmers

 

(AP) KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Midwestern farmers who saw their land swamped by summer flooding may be socked again with steep increases in their crop insurance premiums, the expensive result of the failure to fix broken levees before the winter snow and next spring’s rains.

 

The Missouri River rose to record levels this year after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began releasing massive amounts of water from reservoirs in Montana, Nebraska and the Dakotas that had been inundated with melting snow and heavy rains. Many levees in downstream states such as Iowa and Missouri were no match for weeks of sustained pressure and gave way. Homes and farms were damaged or ruined.

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency said $114 million in claims have been paid so far for flooding damage on 436,000 acres along the Missouri River downstream from the Gavins Point Dam on the Nebraska-South Dakota border. Record high water levels also created havoc along the lower Mississippi River from Missouri to Louisiana.

 

In southeast Missouri, the corps used explosives to blow gaping holes in the Birds Point levee to let water out of the Mississippi River and save the tiny town of Cairo, Ill., on the river’s eastern bank. The blast sent water cascading over Missouri farms.

 

The deluge flooded about 130,000 acres behind the levee, including about 8,000 on which Ed Marshall, 55, of Charleston, grows corn, wheat and soybeans. He received $1.5 million in federally-subsidized crop insurance, which covers part of farmers’ losses from such things as drought, flooding, hail, wind, insects and plant disease.

 

Then his premium skyrocketed. He recently paid about $100,000 to insure about 2,700 acres of wheat that he planted in the fall and hopes to harvest in the spring. The amount is nearly five times what he paid a year ago because the U.S. Department of Agriculture now considers his land high risk and he increased his coverage because of the risk.

 

Marshall, like many farmers, feels like the government has left him high and dry.

 

“You are going to blow my levee up and then you are going to turn around and take more money from me for insurance because I don’t have a levee because you all blew it up,” he said. “There is nothing right about that in my opinion.”

 

The higher premium is worth it, given that Marshall expects to earn $1 million from the wheat.

 

But the rise in insurance costs “is almost adding insult to injury to farmers who lost their crops this year,” said Kathy Kunkel, the clerk in Holt County on the opposite side of the state, where the Missouri River flooded more than 120,000 acres and 32 levees were breached. Insurance is a regular cost of doing business, but “this is going to put some people out of business,” she added.

 

Officials with the USDA’s Risk Management Agency began warning farmers of potential rate increases over the summer because they didn’t want them to be shocked when the 2012 rates were announced last month, said Rebecca Davis, a spokeswoman for the agency.

“We had a lot of public meetings and at those meetings I said, ‘We have to recognize that this levee is no longer there. And if it doesn’t get repaired by the time that the insurance attaches, we have to recognize that it is a higher risk,’” Davis said. “We tried to let them know as early as possible.”

 

It can be two to three times more expensive to insure farmland behind damaged levees than those where repairs have been made. Some farmers, like Marshall, have already paid the higher rates for crops planted this fall. Others will pay unless repairs are made before crops like corn and soybeans are planted in the spring. Along with the Birds Point area, the higher rates could apply in 22 counties in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska and Tennessee.

 

The corps has estimated it will cost more than $2 billion to repair damage this year’s flooding did to levees, dams and riverbanks. With a funding bill stalled in Congress, the corps has been focusing its limited money on fixing levees that protect communities and facilities such as water treatment plants.

 

“We are not going to have them all fixed,” said Jody Farhat, chief of the Missouri River Basin Water Management office. “The (levees) that we are working on because the funding is limited won’t be restored to their pre-flood conditions. And there are many that we won’t even have money to start the repairs.”

 

Farmers also must restore their soil to pre-flood conditions to get their insurance rates back down. Flooding often cuts massive ruts in the land, washes top soil away and leaves sand from the river bed, which isn’t good for farming.

 

The cleanup is costly. Marshall said he spent $270,000 to clean ditches and clear 200 acres of land. He figures it will cost another $300,000 to fix another 200 acres that were badly damaged.

 

If the corps can’t take care of the levee repairs, it should help farmers pay the higher insurance premiums, Missouri Farm Bureau President Blake Hurst said.

 

“It’s a mess,” he said. “These folks have lost their homes. They’ve lost their grain bins, they’ve lost their implement sheds, they’ve lost a year’s crop. They have a tremendous amount of damage to the land from both scouring and sand deposits. And now they are looking at an increase in insurance premiums. Something has got to be done.”

 

The levee at Birds Point was 62.5 feet high before the explosion. Generally levees must be restored to their pre-flooding condition, but in the case of Birds Point, farmers won’t face big premium increases if the corps gets it back up to 55 feet before spring planting. Marshall said the rebuilding has been going slowly.

 

“They had a plan to destroy it,” he said, “but not a plan to fix.”

 

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Young detasselers vital to seed industry

 

(KerneyHub.com) KEARNEY, NEB. — Much of the debate about proposed U.S. Labor Department rules to limit agriculture work that can be done by youths younger than 16 has focused on detasseling.

 

Crews of detasselers in their early to mid-teens are taken to Nebraska cornfields before sunrise in late July and early August. They walk down the rows and remove tassels from female plants that were missed by machines.

 

That hand labor is critical for seed companies to get the specific crossbreeding genetics desired for the next year’s hybrids.

 

The job doesn’t involve specific hazards that are the focus of the Labor Department’s proposed child safety rules. The detasseling machinery leaves the fields before the teenagers arrive, there is no livestock and the task doesn’t involve power tools.

 

However, state Department of Agriculture Director Greg Ibach of Sumner said that if age limits are imposed for detasselers, there would be major implications for the seed industry and agriculture in general.

 

“If we can’t access that temporary help, who will fill in and do those jobs?” he said, worrying that seed companies would move to other parts of the world that don’t have such child labor restrictions. “Argentina and Brazil could raise seed corn that they then would sell back to us.”

 

Local Monsanto officials declined to comment for this story.

 

However, Kearney teacher Brian Hagan, who with his wife, Hallie, has owned Hagan Detasseling for  eight years, said it is an issue he’s watching.

 

Businesses such as his are independent contractors that supply crews of young workers to do the seasonal job of detasseling corn for seed companies. Hagan said he provides jobs for 165-170 youths ages 13 and older — many are around 15 — for about three weeks each summer.

 

For 18 days last summer, his second- or third-year detasselers made $1,600 to $1,800 each.

 

“For a lot of these kids we hire and a lot of the kids who work for farmers, this is their money for the year,” Hagan said. The youths spend the money on school clothes and supplies and on transportation as they get older.

 

It also may be their only option for summer employment with a good paycheck.

 

Hagan said there are few, if any, injuries during detasseling season.

 

“We are so safety conscious,” he said. “We have to wear hats and nets ... and not much skin is showing.” Detasselers wear long pants and shirts to protect their skin as they move through the corn rows, and corn plants taller than the workers offer more protection from the sun.

 

Ibach said that limiting farm and ranch activities or agribusiness jobs by age also raises concerns about the ability to recruit the next generation of U.S. ag producers.

 

With the world’s population expected to double by 2040, that next generation must be inspired to be food producers while they’re still young “or we’re not going to be able to feed the world,” Ibach said. “And a hungry world is not a peaceful world.”

 

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Calif. growers wary of divisive pesticide

 

(California Watch) – A year after environmentalists lost a regulatory battle to keep the controversial pesticide methyl iodide off the California market, they appear to be winning the ground war against the chemical.

 

Only six California growers have used methyl iodide – marketed as MIDAS – to zap soil-borne pests and weeds before planting crops like chili peppers, strawberries and walnut trees.

 

Methyl iodide manufacturer Arysta LifeScience Corp. paid for at least two of the fumigations. The company shared in the cost of a third, according to the grower.

 

By way of comparison, more than 8,500 soil fumigations took place in California in 2009, the last year for which data is available from the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation.

 

“Methyl iodide is a speck on the horizon,” said Les Wright, Fresno County deputy agricultural commissioner.

 

Growers and agriculture industry groups clamored for methyl iodide registration last year before the Department of Pesticide Regulation gave the chemical its final approval.

 

They pointed to the coming ban on methyl bromide, one of the most effective and widely used fumigants in the state, and argued that without methyl iodide, California’s billion-dollar agriculture industry would hemorrhage jobs and profits. Methyl bromide is being phased out under the Montreal Protocol; it’s expected to be eliminated altogether by 2015.

 

Every year, however, the Montreal Protocol grants critical-use exemptions for growers who don’t have alternatives to methyl bromide. Methyl bromide is costly because of dwindling supplies, so many growers are also using other chemicals.

 

But now, some growers say methyl iodide is too politically risky to use.

 

“The people who oppose this particular chemical are really loud and effective,” said Liz Elwood Ponce, co-owner of Lassen Canyon Nursery in Redding. “If no one said anything, I think the chemical would be used more widely. But the objection has pretty much paralyzed the growers into no action.”

 

Methyl iodide use has been so rare that Arysta put out a press release in November to announce its first application on the Central Coast, which took place only after the Santa Barbara County agricultural commissioner dismissed a challenge to the fumigation permit by environmental law firm Earthjustice.

 

The controversy over methyl iodide has simmered for years, but it erupted in 2010 when Department of Pesticide Regulation managers overruled both their own staff scientists and an agency-appointed peer review panel to approve the chemical for use in California agriculture.

 

UCLA professor John Froines, who led the peer review committee, appeared at a state Assembly hearing in Sacramento last April and said “science was subverted” in the state’s decision to approve methyl iodide.

 

“I would not want my family, my friends or anyone else to live or work or go to school near fields where this methyl iodide will be used,” Froines said after detailing the chemical’s properties that are known to cause cancer and damage nervous systems. “You had the best science you could have had, and the fact that it was ignored is devastating.”

 

Earthjustice and California Rural Legal Assistance have sued the state Department of Pesticide Regulation on behalf of environmentalists and farm workers, arguing that regulators put politics before safety in approving methyl iodide and demanding the decision be reversed.

 

A Fresno County methyl iodide application last summer drew protests, and last month, Santa Cruz County supervisors passed a resolution urging Gov. Jerry Brown to reconsider methyl iodide registration. In March, the governor told a Ventura County newspaper that his administration would take a fresh look at the decision, but he’s taken no action since then.

 

So far, no health and safety issues related to the six California applications have been reported. But the political heat is too much for growers, especially those with recognizable labels, Elwood Ponce said.

 

“Big growers that market in all these stores can’t take a chance on a boycott," she said.

 

“Methyl iodide is indeed a political hot potato," said Paul Towers of Pesticide Action Network North America, whose group is a plaintiff in the methyl iodide lawsuit. “But what made it a political hot potato is grounded in scientific reality.”

 

Dennis Lane, a sales manager for Trical Inc., a Hollister-based company that markets and applies fumigants, said he thinks slow sales are normal for a new product.

 

“They haven’t seen it on their farm,” Lane said of California growers.

 

So far, at least one farmer, Tzexa Lee of Fresno County’s Cherta Farms, said his experience with an Arysta-funded fumigation was mixed. He lost 20 percent of the chili peppers he planted and doesn’t know why. The company took soil samples, but representatives haven’t given Lee any answers yet. Still, he said the chemical was great at weed killing.

 

“No workers were needed for weeding,” Lee said.

 

Grower David Sarabian also lost some of his pepper crop after a methyl iodide application in Fresno County. But he said scorching summer temperatures were to blame, not the chemical.

 

In Florida, the company reported to the Environmental Protection Agency 14 incidents of minor plant damage in 2008 and 2009. Such post-fumigation problems are reportedly rare.

 

In California, the high cost of methyl iodide might be keeping some growers away. Lane also noted that state-mandated half-mile buffer zones between fields that are fumigated with methyl iodide and homes, schools, day care centers and other such sensitive sites also limit its use because of the proximity of agricultural land to neighborhoods, especially in coastal areas.

 

“It almost makes it unusable,” Lane said.

 

Arysta officials declined to discuss methyl iodide use in California. The company’s website says MIDAS has been successfully applied on more than 17,000 acres in the southeastern U.S.

 

However, in several of those states, including Florida, one of the nation’s biggest agricultural producers, officials say methyl iodide use has been light. In an e-mail, Dennis Howard, chief of Florida’s Bureau of Pesticides, wrote that based on his discussions with Arysta and growers, “my understanding is that very few if any applications are occurring in Florida.”

 

At North Carolina State University, plant pathologist and extension specialist Frank Louws said, “The Montreal Protocol has seen methyl iodide as a true replacement (for methyl bromide), but our growers have not gravitated that way.”

 

In California, the fate of methyl iodide is in the hands of Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch, who will hear the Earthjustice case in January.

 

“I think many people are waiting to see what is the outcome of this lawsuit,” said Rick Tomlinson, public policy director for the California Strawberry Commission. “Farmers live in these communities. They’re not going to rush in and adopt something when there’s a concern.”

 

This story is courtesy of HealthyCal.org, a nonprofit journalism group based in Sacramento.

 

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HP to build Syngenta’s private cyber cloud

 

(Computer World) – Syngenta, the pesticide and genetically-modified seed firm, has signed a new seven-year infrastructure services deal with HP, which includes a private cloud computing initiative.

 

The move is part of an IT outsourcing initiative, under which the company has a shared services and process standardisation deal, covering its 90 countries of operation, with Infosys.

 

As part of the HP deal Syngenta, which already had a previous outsourcing agreement with the supplier, will move parts of its technology infrastructure to a private cloud computing environment using the vendor's cloud computing systems and data centres.

 

Syngenta said the arrangement will enable it to secure processing capacity and real-time data access, "allowing it to adjust quickly to changing business conditions at a predictable cost".

 

The new cloud model will allow Syngenta to operate a research and development testing environment in the cloud. It will provide an environment where Syngenta only pays for the compute capacity it consumes, said the firm. The deal will enable researchers to quickly deploy the compute and storage capacity required to run complex and resource-hungry bioinformatics computations.

 

"Syngenta has embarked on a new era of productivity and innovation to help growers around the world," said Martin Walker, head of business services at the company, adding that the systems were crucial.

 

HP will provide security systems to protect Syngenta's data in the cloud. It will also provide a service desk and on-site support services covering desktops, notebooks and printers for the company's 26,000 users spread across 90 countries. This will include virtual desktops as a service for about 5,000 users.

 

The services will be supported from HP global delivery centres in Argentina, Bulgaria, China, India, the Philippines and Slovakia.

 

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