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December 15, 2009
· Farming practices in middle of climate debate
· Indian farmers adapt to shifting weather patterns
· Dole Fresh names America’s Top Salad Cities
· New pea varieties unfazed by viral bully
· After walkout, Copenhagen talks regroup
Farming practices in middle of climate debate
(Minnesota
Public Radio)
The global warming bill the House passed last summer gives farmers incentives to manage their soil to trap carbon, one of the main factors in global warming.
Carmen Fernholz, an organic farmer in western
"In the spring as the temperatures warm up, [the radishes] start decaying and disappearing," Fernholz said. "And in this decay process it's slowly releasing the nutrients that it scavenged the previous fall."
Those nutrients will help fertilize next year's crop. But the radishes also help fight global warming. Through photosynthesis, the radishes convert carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into organic plant matter.
When the radish dies and decomposes, the carbon in the plant also remains stored in the soil. Fernholz said the nutrient benefits are his main objective in planting the radishes, but he also likes knowing they help reduce greenhouse gases.
"The less we can have a carbon footprint, I think the better we are," said Fernholz. "So yes, there's no question that's where I'm looking at, in those directions."
If the U.S. House has its way, there could be a lot more farms like Fernholz's in the future. The House passed a bill last summer aimed at reducing global warming, and the Senate will take up the legislation soon.
The House bill would pay farmers to manage their land to store carbon -- the carbon is "sequestered," in agricultural parlance. Fernholz said the legislation signals a change in the world of farming.
"I think the fact that it did pass is definitely a positive," said Fernholz.
Some say legislation doesn't go far enough
Some farmers worry the bill will raise the cost of agriculture and possibly put them out of business. Others, like James Dontje, say the House bill doesn't go far enough.
"It was really an attempt to limit how much agriculture had to change," Dontje said. "It conveys the message of, 'Leave us alone, we don't want to change.'"
Dontje manages the
"Outside of farm country, the ethanol industry is seen as a political pork barrel project," Dontje said.
But for many farm-state House members, including their leader, U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., ethanol is a success story. Although supporters say that ethanol helps reduce greenhouse gases, Dontje said it may actually contribute to global warming.
He said that's because the fuel helped boost corn prices, causing farmers in other parts of the world to plow up virgin land to grow the suddenly very profitable grain. That land breaking releases significant amounts of greenhouse gases.
The House bill prohibits using the land issue in calculating ethanol's carbon footprint. Dontje said those sorts of protective measure are the wrong position for farmers to take.
"Carbon sequestration will have some value and that becomes an income stream," said Dontje. "By adopting an oppositional, 'keep your hands off approach,' agriculture might miss some of the opportunities."
He said those opportunities include expanding production of farm-based energy, ones that are more efficient than corn ethanol. He said that includes biofuels made from grasses and other farm produce. The grasses store carbon in the soil, and the fuel would help reduce gasoline use, a major source of greenhouse emissions.
Dontje said another opportunity is to use gas collectors which capture livestock methane emissions, a contributor to global warming. Dontje also said more wind energy production should be built, reducing the nation's reliance on coal-based electricity.
"Carbon legislation can really affect that," said Dontje. "Because those kinds of efforts will become very valuable if we truly account for the cost of carbon in the system."
But many farmers say the proposed climate legislation will
increase their cost of doing business. Among them is southern
Sukalski checked on the corn he has stored in one of his bins, to make sure there's no mold growing on it. Sukalski keeps close track of the corn because it's one of his major moneymakers. He's worried the global warming legislation could change that.
"If it passes we're going to have Europe-style food prices and Europe-style fuel prices," said Sukalski. "Everything will be so high you won't be able to do anything."
Including making a profit on the farm. Sukalski said the climate bill will force petroleum refiners, the electricity industry and others to spend money on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He said those costs will be passed on to consumers, including farmers, in the form of higher energy prices.
Sukalski doubts that farmers will be able to offset those higher costs with money made from sequestering carbon on their land.
"I am not sold that this will make money for the farmers later on down the road," said Sukalski. "There's just too many things to it; it's too complex."
Recent research
Recent research shows just how uncertain the economics of carbon sequestering are. Many people thought "no-till" farming would trap large amounts of carbon in the soil. In no-till, farmers open a thin furrow for the seed but leave the rest of the surface unplowed. The theory was the practice reduces the amount of soil-based carbon escaping into the air compared to conventional plowing.
Deborah Allan, a soil scientist at the
"I feel pretty confident that for
But even if no-till does not pay off, Allan said there are plenty of other ways farmers can hold carbon. Planting trees or perennial crops, like alfalfa, or Carmen Fernholz's tillage radishes, could be additional components to reduce carbon and prevent the consequences of a too-warm plant.
"It's on my mind all the time," said Fernholz. "It's just sometimes you feel a little bit frustrated that you can't do more."
That frustration is something both sides of the farm debate over global warming are feeling. For some, like Fernholz, the fight against global warming is moving too slowly. For others, the pace is too rapid, and they fear it will do long-term damage to the job of producing food.
Indian farmers adapt to shifting weather patterns
(Reuters
via Yahoo! News)
For decades, people of Uttar Pradesh, whose population is
more than half that of the
The rain, combined with heavy mountain run-off from nearby
Such floods have destroyed homes, crops and livestock,
highlighting the fact that the poorest in countries such as
While world leaders in
In the fields of Manoharchak village, where terms such as "global warming" are unknown, such experiments are bearing fruit, changing the lives of poor farmers who outsmart nature using simple but effective techniques to deal with rising climate variability.
"For the last three years, we have been trying to change our ways to cope with the changing weather," said Hooblal Chauhan, a farmer whose efforts have included diversifying production from wheat and rice to incorporate a wide variety of vegetables.
"I don't know what those big people in foreign
countries can do about the weather, but we are doing what we can to help
ourselves," said the 55-year-old from Manoharchak,
situated 90 km (55 miles) north of the bustling city of
IMPROVISATION
Villagers here have raised the level of their roads, built homes with foundations up to 10 feet above ground, elevated community hand pumps and created new drainage channels.
Supported by the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group -- a research and advocacy group -- farmers are also planting more flood-tolerant rice, giving them two harvests a year where they once had one, and diversifying from traditional crops to vegetables such as peas, spinach, tomatoes, onions and potatoes.
The diversity of crops, they say, is particularly beneficial when their wheat and rice fail. And the vegetables give them not only a more varied and nutritional diet, but also help in earning an income when excesses are sold.
Increasingly, intense rain means farmers in the region also have to contend with silt deposition from long periods of water-logging in their farms.
But 50-year-old widow Sumitra Chauhan, who grows about 15 different vegetables as well as rice and wheat on her two-acre plot, says she has learned ways to overcome the problem.
"We plant our (vegetable) seedlings in the nurseries and then when the water drains, we transfer them to the land so there are no delays," she said, standing in her lush green plot packed with vegetables including mustard, peas, spinach and tomatoes.
CLIMATE REFUGEES
Farmers have also started using "multi-tier cropping" where vegetables like bottle gourd and bitter gourd are grown on platforms raised about 5-6 feet above the ground and supported by a bamboo frame.
Once the water-logged soil drains, farmers can plant the ground beneath the platforms with vegetables and herbs such as spinach, radish and coriander.
Warmer temperatures and an unusual lack of rain during monsoon periods in eastern Uttar Pradesh have also led to dry spells. To cope, villagers have contributed to buying water pumps for irrigation, lowering their dependence on rain.
According to Oxfam, which is supporting the action group's
work in Uttar Pradesh, millions of people in
Some have been forced into debt. Others have migrated to towns and cities to search for manual labor or have had to sell assets such as livestock to cope.
"It is true that developing countries need a lot of investment to adapt to the effects of climate change, but small and marginal farmers, who are some of India's poorest, can make a start by using simple, cheap techniques to help themselves," said Ekta Bartarya of the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group.
Dole Fresh names America
(Wire Services) – Hold the top sirloin, fried chicken and
BBQ. A study by the world’s largest producer of fresh fruits and vegetables
suggests that residents of a number of
The internal study, conducted by Dole Fresh Vegetables of
Monterey, Calif., named 21 markets as “Top Salad Cities” in the
Dole Fresh Vegetables is a subsidiary of Dole Food Company, Inc. (NYSE: DOLE), the world’s largest producer of fresh fruits and vegetables. The exhaustive, 18-month research effort, part of the company’s relaunch of its reinvented DOLE Salads line, surveyed the in-store buying habits and in-home consumption trends of prepackaged salad consumers throughout the United States and Canada.
According to Russell Evans, senior brand manager for Dole
Fresh Vegetables, the list of “Top Salad Cities” includes a number of markets –
including
New pea varieties unfazed by viral bully
(USDA-ARS) – Four advanced dry pea breeding lines that tolerate the pea enation mosaic virus a “scourge” of Pacific West pea crops--have been identified by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists.
Use of the breeding lines PS08-39, -41, -68 and -76 to develop new commercial cultivars could give growers added insurance against PEMV. Currently, there are no PEMV-resistant dry pea cultivars. The few fresh pea cultivars that are resistant all contain the same single dominant gene--the En gene--for resistance, raising concern the virus could quickly evolve virulent new forms to overcome it, note Richard Larsen and Lyndon Porter, plant pathologists with the ARS Vegetable and Forage Crops Research Laboratory in Prosser, Wash.
The PS08 lines, however, somehow tolerate the virus’ presence, even at high concentrations, without sustaining significant damage, loss of growth or seed yield. Because of this plant-pathogen “truce,” PEMV may be less apt to turn more virulent than it would with resistant varieties. Plus, the resistance-conferring En gene may cause “yield drag,” whereby the plants lose some of their yield at the expense of viral protection.
PEMV is transmitted to peas, as well as to chickpeas and other legumes, by aphid feeding. But spraying insecticide to prevent such feeding isn’t always effective. In affected plants, PEMV disease symptoms include stunted growth, translucent veins, blisterlike lesions, deformed pods and reduced yield.
However, in field tests at
In related work, Larsen and ARS colleague Claire Coyne at Pullman, Wash., teamed with researchers in New Zealand to show that PEMV is not seed-transmitted in pea, correcting an earlier published report that has resulted in costly testing of pea exports to the island country, a key winter seed increase nursery for U.S. seed companies.
ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s principal intramural scientific research agency. The research supports the USDA priority of promoting international food security.
After walkout, Copenhagen
(FT.com) – The Copenhagen climate talks have entered a ”new phase” as ministers join in intensive negotiations to deliver an agreement by the end of the week, the president of the meeting said on Tuesday.
The United Nations described the talks as having reached a ”very distinct and important moment”.
Some negotiations were suspended for five hours on Monday when African delegates walked out in protest that their demands were not being respected by developed countries.
However, Connie Hedegaard, the former Danish climate minister who is president of the talks, said it was an important step that the organisers had ”managed to get ministers down to work”.
Ministerial working groups to address difficult issues such as the amount of money to be provided by rich countries to help the developing world, and possible taxes on aviation and shipping fuel, worked until 2am on Tuesday and reconvened at about 10am.
They were expected to deliver reports to the main strands of the negotiations by the end of Tuesday afternoon.
Ms Hedegaard said progress so far in the talks had been ”all right”, but continued: ”It is very clear that ministers have to be extremely busy and focused over the next 48 hours if we are to reach an agreement.”
She added: ”This is a UN conference, and everybody has to agree on everything. And if they don’t, you get stuck. That is the reality here.”
Yvo de Boer, the top UN climate official, said the talks had ”seen progress, but we haven’t seen enough of it”.
He added that the issues being discussed by ministers ”need to be nailed down in very clear conclusions if world leaders are to go back to the people who elected them [with a deal]”.
Andreas Carlgren,
He said the offer should be used as a ”lever” to extract deeper cuts from other countries. ”It would just be in vain, and not for the good of the climate, if we sell out our 30 per cent target too cheap,” he said.
Ms Hedegaard acknowledged that the watching public ”might sense a discrepancy between their demands and call for action, and what they see coming out of the conference”.
As the talks continued, Pope Benedict XVI used his message for the Catholic church’s World Day of Peace to call on developed countries to accept their ”historical responsibility” for carbon emissions.
”It is important to acknowledge that among the causes of the present ecological crisis is the historical responsibility of the industrialised countries,” the Pope said.
”This means that technologically advanced societies must be prepared to encourage more sober lifestyles, while reducing their energy consumption and improving its efficiency.”
End Transmission