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December 17, 2009
· Report highlights climate change impacts in US
· NASA opens web portal to wealth of climate info
· New power for old tractors found in electricity
· Precision breeding results in German super spud
· Decline in research hits global farm productivity
Report highlights climate change impacts in US
(USDA) – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in
cooperation with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and the
U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), released The Effects of Climate
Change on U.S. Ecosystems at the climate talks in
"Climate change poses significant threats and
challenges for farmers, ranchers, and those who make a living off the land,
which will have a serious impact on our ability to feed the people of the
The report provides an accessible summary of findings
contained in a
Based on a wealth of source and review literature, the
report concludes that climate change is already affecting
* Climate change has had an impact on American farmers, ranchers, rural land owners, and foresters, and will continue to do so, through its influence on production, distribution, and yields.
* Although the report does not reflect the economic consequences of these effects on production, economic implications are inescapable due to the dependence of productivity on climate, both directly (through changes in temperature and precipitation) and indirectly (through the effects of climate on pest outbreaks, weed distribution, water supplies, changes the nutritional content of forage due to elevated CO2, and so on, that in turn influence production).
* Grain and oilseed crops will mature more rapidly, but increasing temperatures will heighten the risk of crop failures, particularly where precipitation decreases or becomes more variable.
* Marketable yield of horticultural crops (such as tomato, onion, and fruit) are more vulnerable to climate change than grains and oilseed crops due to the high sensitivity of their quality and appearance to climate factors.
* Livestock mortality will decrease with warmer winters but this will be more than offset by greater mortality in hotter summers. Hotter temperatures will also result in reduced productivity of livestock and dairy animals, due to changes in consumption and lower pregnancy rates.
* Weeds that can thwart agriculture production grow more rapidly under elevated atmospheric CO2, extend their range northward, and are less sensitive to herbicide applications.
* Disease and pest prevalence will escalate as a result of shorter, warmer winters, challenging crop, livestock, and forest systems.
* The trends toward reduced mountain snowpack and earlier spring snowmelt runoff in the Western U.S., and toward increasing drought in the West and Southwest, imply changes in the availability of water and a need to monitor the performance of reservoir systems with implications for water management and irrigated agriculture in that region.
* Climate change is inducing shifts in plant species in rangelands, favoring the establishment of perennial herbaceous species that reduce soil water availability early in the growing season. Shorter winters, however, decrease the need for seasonal forage reserves.
·
Forests in the interior West, the Southwest, and
NASA opens web portal to wealth of climate info
(NASA via physorg.com) – There's a storm brewing -- a storm of information, that is, in climate and environmental research. People are wading through the turbulence, trying to make sense of it all.
At the eye of the storm is a unique new web site called Climate One-Stop (http://climateonestop.net).
"It's a 'calm spot' where scientists, decision-makers,
nonprofit workers, and officials can find all the latest research," says
Dan Irwin of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "We unveiled the site at
this week's United Nations Climate Change Conference in
A group of US and international organizations, including NASA, USAID, the National Science Foundation, the Institute for the Application of Geospatial Technology, the University of Alabama-Huntsville, and CATHALAC in Panama, developed the site as a "one-stop shop" for the low-down on Earth with a particular emphasis on international development applications.
"Right now, there's so much climate information scattered out there -- it’s a real challenge to find exactly what you're looking for by just Googling it," says IAGT's Jessica Coughlin. "Climate One-Stop is the place to go for all the information."
Orlando Altamirano of USAID in
"USAID has developed tools to help our partners in developing countries," adds John Furlow of USAID. "Every time I meet with colleagues from other organizations I hear about the great work they've been doing -- new tools, data, and case studies showing what does and doesn't work. It's hard for development workers to find all these things available to help them. Now the development workers in the field will have all this information right at their fingertips - at Climate One-Stop."
In developing countries in Central America, Africa, and elsewhere, 60% or more of the people earn their livelihoods from agriculture and other activities that can be affected -- even devastated -- by weather.
"The economies in these countries rely heavily not only
on farming, but also on tourism and forestry," says Furlow.
"Weather affects people's livelihoods much more than it does in the
Development workers need to know how climate and environmental changes could affect the communities they serve. They also need to know how to apply that knowledge locally so they can teach the people there how to adapt. For example, are the crops they plant suitable to the range of temperatures and precipitation expected in their region? Or might they need to select other crops?
One-Stop builds on NASA's SERVIR program, which has
facilities in Central America and
The One-Stop will help users find SERVIR's
many datasets and models. For example, the website includes downscaled models
showing average temperature and precipitation and projected climate information
for
The One-Stop's database actually stores all the information, which is then searchable via its web portal. So it immediately offers up direct links to the latest climate and environmental data, models, research, projects, and workshops.
The website's grand opening is set for the December United
Nations Climate Change Conference in
"One-Stop's potential benefits are enormous," says Coughlin. "It could have dramatic effects within the climate change and decision-making communities."
"It's a great way for developed and developing countries to share their knowledge and information about climate change," adds Irwin. "From space, NASA's Apollo astronauts saw Earth as a unified whole with no boundaries. Climate One-Stop will help that become a reality, in a sense. We'll all be able to work together as a global community."
Source: by Dauna Coulter, Science@NASA
New power for old tractors found in electricity
(AP
via Yahoo! News) APPLEGATE,
Like a small but growing number of organic farmers around
the country, Chris Jagger has converted an old
Allis-Chalmers Model G tractor built in the 1940s to run on electricity at his
farm in southwest
They like the small tractor's nimble ways around row crops. And with an electric motor instead of a gasoline engine bolted on the back, it runs cleanly, quietly and slowly with no belches of exhaust, few breakdowns and no direct consumption of fossil fuel.
Jagger still plugs into the grid back at the barn, but some farmers are setting up photovoltaic panels in the fields or on the tractors to draw power from the same source that grows their vegetables: the rays of the sun.
"As long as I'm alive, I am probably always going to be dependent on petroleum myself," said Jagger, who has a conventional tractor for heavier work at his farm outside Applegate. "But I think it's important to be always making a step in the direction of looking for alternatives."
The founding father of the idea, organic farmer Ron Khosla in New Paltz, N.Y., is embarrassed to admit that when he built his first one in the winter of 2001-2002, he was not interested in saving the Earth so much as finding a less smelly and more reliable alternative to his Model G's balky gasoline engine.
"There was no idealism in my conversion," he wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "I thought electric motors would be no maintenance."
He said the torque curves are flatter than with gas or diesel engines, and it was easy to double the power. Plus, the machines can be driven extremely slowly.
"We have two of them now, and they're terrific," he added. "Absolutely no trouble with the motors. I have had connections to the batteries loosen up and cause sparking, but that's just because I'm an idiot, and you tighten a bolt and you're back in business."
Khosla has no idea how many electric Gs are out there, because he quit counting after he got to 100. A number of farmers are doing it themselves after reading the directions he posted on the Web with a sustainable farming grant. They can buy conversion kits on the Web from various producers.
Between the tractor and the conversion, Khosla figures a farmer can put one together for about $3,000, though the growing demand for Model Gs is driving up the price.
"The first 100, I was so excited," Khosla said. "Every single person, I remembered their names. I would get every once in a while a little newspaper clipping or e-mail that they were in some parade. It's really amazing."
Jagger stumbled on those directions doing a Google search.
"I was really thinking about doing this, but didn't want to reinvent the wheel, and there it was," Jagger said.
He tracked down a Model G with a blown engine in
"When I bought this thing, it was completely rusted out," Jagger said. "I repacked the bearings, fixed all the joints. The guy said, 'There's no engine on it.' And I said, 'Yeah, that's exactly what I want, because I'm going to be doing this electric conversion to it.'"
Corliss was inspired to start doing electric conversions, too, and has done seven, compared to 155 diesels.
Nearby,
On the other side of the country in
"Here is the rub," he said. "It takes about 80 pounds of lead-acid battery to equal one pound of gasoline, to carry the same amount of energy.
"My Ford tractors have 1,200 pounds of lead acid batteries," which is fine, he said, because tractors often need extra weight for traction on soft ground. But, "You can only do serious work for about two hours with the energy you have on board."
That's no problem for the Model G, which is not powerful enough for plowing but well suited for light jobs such as seeding, weeding and cultivating.
Khosla has one Model G with six 8-volt batteries and one with four 12-volt batteries. He finds he can work off-and-on all morning, give it a booster charge over lunch and be back in business.
With old Model Gs becoming harder to find, Khosla has been working on something completely different, designed from the ground up around an electric motor. He wants it to do everything the Model G will do, and be simple enough that a farmer in the developing world can weld a frame together, then mount an electric motor onto it. He has built three prototypes and figures it will be ready to go after two more.
"If you are working with electric motors, it like totally frees your mind," he said. "The new tractors I'm building look really different.
"People are like, 'Yes! Sign me up! That's great, because I can't find a G anywhere,'" he said. "We're mostly there."
Precision breeding results in German super spud
(EurekaAlert.org)
– The fall of 2009 was a truly special season for the Emsland
Group: For the first time in the history of the largest German potato starch
manufacturer, it processed Tilling potatoes, which exclusively contain amylopectin starch. Not only can nutritional starches for
emulsifying soups and desserts be extracted from it – it can also be used for
paste and smooth coating for paper and thread production. "This potato is
the first product in
Tilling – an acronym for "Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes" – is a breeding process that researchers want to use to push evolution yet another step forward. In nature, evolution proceeds slowly: Through mutation and selection, plants and animal species adapt and change. Over the course of generations, those species develop that, due to their genetic make-up, are best adapted to the prevailing environmental conditions. Others became extinct. For millennia, humans have been using this evolutionary process for their own purposes, by focusing on highly productive- – and profit yielding – species. Modern breeding processes operate the same way, though the natural mutation rate is accelerated. "With the aid of chemicals, a vast number of mutants can be rapidly obtained," says Jost Muth of IME, who participated in the development of the new potato starch. "We are working here with natural principles. In nature, sunlight triggers changes in the genome. With chemistry, we accomplish the same thing – only faster."
Until now, mutation breeding was an exhaustive process. "Growers had to bring out the mutated seeds to the field, and then wait until they reached the end of their vegetation period in order to determine if one of the genetic modifications achieved the desired result. In addition, the majority of generated mutations could not be determined, since the characteristic is only expressed in a homozygous state," explains Prüfer. His team has succeeded in accelerating the implementation. In the laboratory at IME, the mutated seeds were germinated. As soon as the first leaves appear, it's harvest time: The researchers take a leaf sample, break apart the cellular structure, isolate the genome and analyze it. This way they can find out within a few weeks if a mutation has attained the desired traits.
In a project sponsored by the "Nachwachsende
Rohstoffe" agency, researchers at IME, in
collaboration with the Bioplant and Emslandstärke companies, found the super potato germ. They
had to examine 2,748 seedlings until just the right one was identified that
exclusively produces the starch component amylopectin.
From this germ, experts were able to generate the first generation of super
potatoes. There are genes active in their genome responsible for the formation
of amylopectin, whereas genes that trigger the
formation of amylose are shut off. "Until now,
potatoes always contained both starch types. Industry had to separate the amylopectin from the amylose – an
energy and cost-intensive process," explains Prüfer.
"With the Tilling potatoes, which only contain amylopectin,
this process stage is superfluous. In
This fall, 100 tonnes of the new super potato that exclusively produces amylopectin were harvested. "They can be processed as usual in the production lines," reports Muth. "Special measures aren't necessary, because the Tilling potatoes are totally normal breeds that contain no genetically modified material." The example shows that conventional or modern breeding methods will lead to success if the gene responsible for the expression of a specific trait is a natural part of the plant, and is known to scientists. The gene for the production of amylose in potatoes is one such gene. "Gene technology-based processes are indispensible and it is prudent to use them, when we want to integrate genetic material into a plant genome – , for example if we develop transgenic tobacco plants producing pharmacological substances," concludes Prüfer. "When it comes to dealing with genes, there is an easy rule: as much modification as needed, but as little as possible."
Decline in research hits global farm productivity
(China Daily) – CANBERRA, Australia: A global fall in agricultural research spending - other than in China - is slowing growth in farm output and will lead to higher world food prices for the first time in five decades, an economist said recently.
Climate change and associated water shortages have contributed, but the productivity slowdown is "heavily related" to declining research spending since the late 1970s, said Philip Pardey, professor of science and technology policy at the University of Minnesota.
"The ultimate consequences of the productivity slowdown are that we're going to move away from a 50-year trend of declining real prices of food to moving back into a trend for increasing food prices," Pardey told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a conference here on world food security.
He said most world regions have experienced a slowdown of growth in farm productivity since 1990.
The slip varies from country to country although the slowdown is global. Pardey blames a lack of investment in improving crop strains and farm management techniques.
Marco Ferroni, executive director of the nonprofit Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, agreed that falling investment in research on better farming practices and ways to produce hardier crop varieties that can thrive in poor soil or resist insects and disease were factors slowing farm productivity growth.
"Not every country is effected the same, but here we're talking about long-term trends and its down for most of the major world regions," Ferroni said.
Figures for 2000, the most recent global figures available,
show that the
Of the $20.3 billion in public funding, the
Pardey said increasing amounts of this spending was for research on the impact of farming on climate change and the threat of terrorism to food supply - and not on increasing farm production.
End Transmission