" I heard it through the AgLine"

December 16, 2009

 

·        Salinas school salad bars a model for the nation

·        Southern reps seek emergency aid for farmers

·        Webinair to explore agriculture outlook for 2010

·        ARS battles potential pest on its native ground

·        Prospects fading for Copenhagen climate deal

 

 

Salinas school salad bars a model for the nation

 

(thecalifornian.com) – It's lunchtime at Jesse Sanchez Elementary School, and dozens of first-graders are huddled around a small salad bar.

 

The children look over corn, lettuce, spinach, kiwi and fresh fruit salad, trying to decide what they want to eat.

 

Jonathan Palomares, a smiling 6-year-old, carefully fills his tray with fresh fruit salad, corn and some spinach before walking to the next station, where cafeteria workers serve him mashed potatoes, turkey and gravy.

 

"I love eating pineapple," Palomares says, holding a piece of the fruit. "It makes us stronger."

 

Jesse Sanchez is a school that the United Fresh Produce Association, which represents dozens of Salinas-based growers and shippers and lobbies Congress to include more fruits and vegetables in school lunches, wants to use as a model for the rest of the country.

 

Last week, the association invited Alisal Union School District Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas to brief lawmakers and staffers in Washington, D.C., about the benefit of having salad bars in the 11 elementary schools in the district — including Jesse Sanchez.

 

The trip was paid for by the UFPA.

 

"We believe that if your children learn to reach out for broccoli during lunch they will be reaching for broccoli for the rest of their life," Zendejas said. "Children need to learn from an early age healthy habits." Having salad bars in schools is also good for business.

 

"Thirty million kids eat school lunches in the country. If all those kids got one or two servings of fruits and vegetables, it would be a huge benefit to the industry," said Lorelei DiSogra, vice president for nutrition and health for the United Fresh Produce Association. "This [having salad bars in schools] is what we call a win-win- win situation. It's a win for kids' health, win for the ag industry and a win for public health." In September, Congress extended the Child Nutrition Act, which governs school lunch programs, for one more year. But advocates are still trying to improve it.

 

U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, will introduce the Children's Fruit and Vegetable Act next week to Congress, DiSogra said. The bill would promote salad bars in schools, help districts buy equipment and increase the reimbursement rate.

 

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Southern lawmakers seek emergency aid for farmers

 

(AP via Google) NEW ORLEANS – Some Southern lawmakers are seeking billions of dollars in emergency aid for farmers after recent natural disaster declarations in at least 20 states.

 

A farm disaster program authorized by Congress last year still isn't fully in place, and even if it was, some lawmakers say its design could keep many farmers with losses this year waiting for help until January 2011. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's disaster declarations allow farmers affected by weather ranging from hail to volcanic emissions to seek low-interest loans or other assistance, but some debt-laden farmers say the last thing they need is another loan.

 

In Louisiana and Mississippi, early season drought and late-season rains compounded the losses many growers suffered due to the 2008 hurricanes. Lawmakers from Mississippi and Arkansas are helping lead a push for at least $2.1 billion in emergency farm aid and hope to gain approval by year's end from a Congress that has been focused on other spending packages and the health care debate.

 

"I believe we have a good argument for providing direct payments to farmers whose crops have been ruined this year by floods, drought and other disaster conditions," said Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.

 

Ted McDermott is grateful for the effort, but questions whether it will help him much. The northeast Louisiana sweet potato grower said he filed for bankruptcy after last year's storms left him with rotten potatoes, fields too wet to harvest and loans he couldn't pay off. He managed to plant 100 acres this year but the seemingly unrelenting rains in September and October left him with more rotted potatoes and the prospect of having to leave the state to find work.

 

"I think my business is done," said the 41-year-old from Oak Grove, who is still waiting for money from a grant and loan program the state set up with federal money after hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

 

"I needed help in the spring of 2009, coming out of my '08 losses, and I think at this point, I'm too far in the hole to come out of it. Unless they want to write a lot of my debt off," McDermott said, "and I doubt seriously they'll want to do that."

 

Over the past decade, Congress has approved multiple emergency aid packages for farmers and ranchers hurt by bad weather. But farm-state lawmakers often faced a hard sell with colleagues worried about the cost and their own constituents' needs. And in some cases, farmers still had to wait a year or more for help.

 

Last year, members of North Dakota's congressional delegation helped lead an effort to add a farm disaster program to the latest multiyear version of the federal farm bill. Lawmakers agreed to limit the cost of the program in part by basing aid on farmers' total income.

 

That means a farmer who lost a lot of cotton, which is expensive to produce, but made money on corn or soybeans harvested earlier might not get any aid. Southern farmers, who often plant multiple crops, say the program could end up favoring one-crop farms that are more often seen in the Midwest.

 

Past emergency aid has often been based on the amount of a crop lost. Gary Adams, chief economist for the National Cotton Council, said that type of direct assistance will likely still be needed even after the farm disaster program is set up.

 

"I think we have a good idea of what it will and won't provide," Adams said of the new farm disaster program, "and the financial hole that's left for farmers is fairly significant."

 

In Kelsey McKoin's case, a federal bailout could make the difference in getting financing to plant next year. The 57-year-old lost all the sweet potatoes on his farm, near Bonita in north Louisiana, last year and expects big losses again this year. He said his crop insurance didn't provide help.

 

A federal loan he got last year did, "but that has to be repaid. They made me sign a piece of paper saying they'd come get my house if I didn't pay it," he said. "It's hard to do it — you can't control the weather or government programs."

 

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Webinair to explore agriculture outlook for 2010

 

NEW YORK – The U.S. food and agribusiness industry was not immune from the 2009 economic downturn. However, it will be an industry that offers opportunities for growth and improved returns as the recession eases, according to Rabobank's recently released 2010 North American Food &

Agribusiness Outlook.  

 

Analysts from Rabobank's Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory (FAR) team, will provide their take on 2009 -- the 'lost year' of agriculture -- and what lies ahead in 2010. The webinar is slated Friday, Dec. 18 at 11:30 am (ET).

 

According to the authors of this year's Outlook, "in spite of the difficult year for U.S. agribusiness, the fundamentals underpinning the food and agribusiness industry remain largely in place for 2010."

To register, go to: https://rabobankevent.webex.com/rabobankevent/k2/j.php?ED=131435642&UID=912425772&FM=1

 

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ARS battles potential pest on its native ground

 

(USDA-ARS) – Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have launched a preemptive strike to combat the false codling moth, a major pest in its native Africa.

 

If the moth enters the United States, it will damage citrus, corn, cotton and a wide range of nuts and fruits, according to entomologist James Carpenter, at the ARS Crop Protection and Management Research Unit in Tifton, Ga. He is working to control the moth in Africa, thereby reducing the risk of its arrival in the United States—and ensuring a future weapon if it does show up.

 

Carpenter and an international team of scientists have turned to a tried-and-true method of pest control: the sterile insect technique (SIT). Using this technique, both male and female insects are irradiated. The female insects are left sterile by the irradiation and are unable to produce offspring. The males are completely or partially sterilized; if they are able to produce offspring, the offspring are sterile. By repeating the process, the target insect population eventually declines.

 

Originally developed by ARS scientists to control screwworms, SIT is now used to control Mediterranean fruit flies, pink bollworms and a number of other moths and pests.

 

Carpenter began working with South African scientists several years ago to develop SIT to control false codling moths and to test the methods in South Africa’s citrus groves. In a series of studies, Carpenter and his colleagues found that irradiating adult false codling moths sterilized the females and ensured that males produced only sterile offspring. The research has been largely funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is dedicated to finding peaceful uses for nuclear energy.

 

Carpenter also helped South African scientists establish a facility in a rural village where codling moths are reared, chilled, irradiated and transported for release in the orchards. In a year of operations, sterilized moths released aerially and by hand drastically reduced moth populations in South Africa’s Western Cape region. The sterile moths also are available for shipment to the United States if they are needed here. A report on this work was recently published in Area-Wide Control of Insect Pests.

 

ARS is the principal scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This research supports the USDA priority of promoting international food security.

 

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Prospects fading for Copenhagen climate deal

 

(Bloomberg) -- World leaders will arrive in the Danish capital of Copenhagen over the next three days to agree on a pact to fight global warming. There may be nothing to sign.

 

Envoys from China, the U.S., the European Union and India, the world’s top polluters, have bickered, quarreled and walked out during talks among 193 nations. They’ve left presidents and prime ministers a choice between a fudge or a flop for the accord that the United Nations framed as the most comprehensive deal to curb global warming.

 

“Countries and blocks of countries have come here with very hard positions,” Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo said yesterday in an interview in Copenhagen. “You need some seismic shifts to really close a deal.”

 

Connie Hedegaard, chairwoman of the meeting, stepped down today, allowing Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen to take over. She called the move “appropriate” with so many heads of state arriving. Officials had just announced efforts had failed to amend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol climate accord.

 

The angst in conference rooms has been reflected on the streets, with protesters fighting riot police as Denmark mounted the biggest security operation in its history. More than half of Denmark’s 10,500 police are providing security for the talks at Copenhagen’s Bella Center, which can hold 15,000 people.

 

The difficulty for the police is 46,000 people have tried to get into the talks in the city dubbed ‘Hopenhagen,’ leaving thousands waiting outside in freezing temperatures and yelling at security.

 

Dubbed ‘Constipagen’

 

“We’re calling it Constipagen because the line’s not moving and the talks are not moving,” said Jasmine Hyman, who works for the Geneva-based Gold standard Foundation that certifies carbon offsets. She said it took her eight hours to get in.

 

Speakers yesterday included Prince Charles, the heir to the U.K. throne, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who’s won an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to publicize the issue of global warming, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived late Tuesday, while Obama will arrive later in the week.

 

Developing nations accused industrialized countries of trying to kill off the Kyoto Protocol, the current emissions- limiting treaty. Developed nations, including the U.S. and Japan, want to replace Kyoto with another treaty.

 

“The biggest obstacle to progress is that first it has to be clear that the Kyoto Protocol can’t disappear,” Mexican Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada said in an interview in Copenhagen.

 

Disputes

 

The U.S., the largest industrialized emitter, never ratified the Kyoto pact, which sets no binding emission targets for developing nations, such as India and China.

 

The disputes in Copenhagen stem from the division of the UN talks into two tracks: one to extend Kyoto’s binding emissions targets beyond 2012 for all developed nations bar the U.S., and another to establish what the world’s biggest economy and developing nations will do to cut their emissions.

 

The 27-nation European Union, which is bound by Kyoto, has called for the two negotiating tracks to be merged in favor of a single legally-binding treaty, a call rejected by poorer nations. Other developed nations support a single deal.

 

Japanese View

 

“The fundamental position of our government is that we are seeking a bigger comprehensive agreement than the Kyoto Protocol,” said Makio Miyakawa, Japan’s deputy director for global affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a Dec. 14 interview. “But the developing countries are still sticking to the Kyoto Protocol. And their position is very firm.”

 

Other issues dividing delegates include the size of emission reductions by developed nations, verifying emission reductions by developing countries and climate aid worth $100 billion a year from rich to poor nations.

 

The U.S. has rejected the demands of developing nations and most developed countries that it cut emissions more than its current goal of 17 percent from 2005 levels.

 

China and India don’t want their national commitments to become legally binding in an international treaty. Japan, the EU and other developed nations still haven’t come forward to say how much money they’re prepared to fork out past 2012 to help poorer nations adapt to the consequences of climate change and lower their emissions.

 

“This remains a very, very difficult process, and it could still fail,” said U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband. “It was always going to be the case that the most difficult bits would get left to the end. I hope ministers can sort them out. Some of them may be left to leaders.”

 

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