" I heard it through the AgLine"

December 29, 2011

 

 

·       Farmers markets flourish in winter snows

·       Scientists a-buzz: Superbee combats mites

·       Young farmers break the traditional mold

·       Growers may contribute to GM corn resistance

·       Apple rain? Wackiest produce story of the year!

·       Happy New Year: AgLineNews returns Jan. 3

 

 

Farmers markets flourish in winter snows

 

(npr.org) – If you're a fresh vegetable lover, it's hard to get excited about what's available in the supermarket produce section in the dead of winter. Whatever is there often has made a long journey from a field in a distant, sunny locale and been sprayed with something to keep it looking fresh. It's usually a little worse for the wear.

 

But winter veggies from your local farmer may be right under your nose for the picking, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Earlier this month, the agency announced that winter farmers markets are taking off.

 

Since 2010, these markets have increased 38 percent across the country to more than 1,200 sites. You can scout out the closest one through the National Farmers Market Directory.

 

New York, California and Pennsylvania lead the way with the most winter markets so far. Our colleagues over at KUNC in Colorado are also reporting a big expansion of markets in their state.

 

But even though more farmers are finding a way to maintain the harvest through the cold months, and get crops to market, coaxing vegetables out of the ground when the air is chilly and the wind brisk is tough work. That's why some universities that work with farmers have made winter production a new research priority.

 

"Winter farmers markets showing up throughout New England and are drawing large crowds of eager customers," the cheery UMass Extension Vegetable Program reports on its website. And so the program, along with the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension and two local food organizations, is experimenting with different technologies and farmers to expand their winter harvests and sales.

 

A lot of simple measures already exist to help cold weather crops like green and root vegetables along. Some farmers, like Zach Lester and Georgia O'Neal in Unionville, Va., use high tunnels – steel arches covered with plastic sheeting that act like greenhouses for tender crops like salad greens. Nancy Shute reported on their farm, which produces fresh leafy greens all year round.

 

Other farmers prefer low tunnels to protect cold-hardy crops from the elements. They're much cheaper and simpler than high tunnels, and usually only two-feet tall. (Check out this nifty tunnel primer from Cornell University for more details.)

 

This year, the folks up at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in New York (the same folks who appeared in Dan Charles's piece earlier this month on young farmers) are building low tunnels out of old PVC pipe, according to Erica Helms, the center's director of marketing and philanthropy.

 

"We also want to preserve the harvest," Helms tells The Salt. That means improving root storage and cold storage so that fall vegetables last deep into the winter. Good, hearty seeds are also key to growing vegetables that beat the cold. "We want high productivity and flavor," she says.

 

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Scientists a-buzz: Superbee combats mites

 

(The Washington Post) – On a farm on the outskirts of Frederick, Md., Kelly Rausch and Adam Finkelstein crack open a wooden beehive whose design dates to the 19th century. Inside, they point out a superbee they have made for the 21st century.

 

In two months, the carefully bred queen bee has built a large, productive colony that knows how to cluster against the cold and fill the winter larder with honey.

 

More important, her bees have sought out and destroyed a sneaky parasitic mite that feeds on their baby sisters. “The bees are definitely taking care of everything,” said Finkelstein from behind his veil.

 

The desire for a bee that will look after itself may seem pretty basic. But with as many as one-third of honeybee colonies routinely dying off each year and the rest requiring extraordinary care, the quest for a better bee has become critical.

 

Scientists are trying to find the cause of colony collapse disorder, the five-year-old phenomenon of worker bees suddenly disappearing. Other maladies abound and may be a factor in the disorder: new pests and diseases, the effects of pesticides and the strain of industrial-scale pollination.

 

Farmers rely on the insect not just for honey, but also to pollinate much of our food.

 

From their five bee yards in Frederick County, Rausch and Finkelstein run a business called VP Queen Bees, which supplies breeder queens to producers at up to $165 a queen. The producers, in turn, propagate daughter queens by the thousands and sell them to commercial beekeepers and backyard hobbyists for about $30 each.

 

The object: a queen that will pass on to her colony the traits of disease and pest resistance, gentleness, productivity and winter hardiness.

 

The single greatest threat is an Asian mite called the varroa. It feeds on honeybee young and adults and spreads viruses.

 

Commercial beekeepers have turned to heavy feeding and medication to try to keep hives strong in advance of their biggest gig of the year. In the new year, beekeepers will assemble more than a million hives — half the nation’s stock — in the almond groves of California’s San Joaquin Valley, to ensure a successful pollination of the 2012 nut crop.

 

One of the bright spots has been the development of a bee that battles the mite.

 

Marla Spivak, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, began breeding bees to fight back nearly 20 years ago. She froze pupae and waited to see which colonies would fastidiously remove the corpses from the hive. This hygienic trait, first observed in the 1940s when young were killed by disease, was effective in breaking the life cycle of the mite. She called her queens Minnesota Hygienic.

 

Separately, scientists at the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s honeybee lab in Baton Rouge were studying why some of their hives had low mite levels. After about 10 years of work, they finally figured it out. The bees in those colonies were able to detect mites hiding in sealed cells and feeding on developing young. The bees uncapped the cells and dragged out the mites, along with infested brood. Hybridizers label these neatnik bees varroa sensitive hygienic (VSH).

 

Tom Glenn, of Glenn Apiaries in Fallbrook, Calif., has worked with the lab to produce VSH breeder queens for queen producers around the nation. After 10 years, about 25?percent of the nation’s honeybees have significant hygienic behavior in their DNA, Glenn said.

 

As vital as the hygienic bee is, the breeder must preserve existing desirable traits — a reluctance to sting or swarm, for example, as well as genetic diversity as a hedge against future diseases or pests.

 

“That’s why gains are so slow,” said Susan Cobey, a bee geneticist at the University of California and Washington State University. “I would say we are just in the infancy of bee breeding.”

 

Finkelstein, however, says he thinks he is close to achieving his primary aim of creating a bee that can survive with just basic husbandry. He says he hasn’t medicated his hives in 14 years.

 

Another challenge is that unlike with apple or cattle breeding, for example, the average bee breeder cannot control the male line. The queen mates on the wing with 2o or so drones from surrounding colonies. The most able breeders are getting around this by artificially inseminating virgin queens with the semen from known drone stock, a technique perfected by Cobey. Only a handful of hybridizers can do it. Glenn is one. Rausch is another.

 

Creating a superbee is one thing, getting professional beekeepers to accept it is another. For now at least, there is enormous resistance by the commercial beekeeping industry to using improved bee stock without the continued regimen of medication and supplemental feeding.

 

“The large commercial beekeepers are essentially farmers, and they’re risk averse,” said Robert Danka, a research entomologist at the government’s Baton Rouge lab. “This is a very dangerous parasite we’re dealing with, and a vast majority believe if you stopped treating with chemicals, their bees will die,” he said.

 

Pat Heitkam, a major queen producer in Orland, Calif. said he spends “in excess of $40,000” a year medicating his queens against gut disease. “I’m not sure it’s necessary,” he said, but he can’t risk selling diseased bees to his customers.

 

Under a new initiative, entomologists are working with queen producers in California to evaluate colonies for the strongest stock. Organizers hope that this, in turn, will lead to the selection of hardier bees and, ultimately, less reliance by beekeepers on chemical treatments. The 20 producers in the program raise about half the queen bees sold in the United States.

 

Near-term salvation may come from backyard hobbyists, who are more willing to risk losing an unmedicated colony.

 

Karla Eisen of the Prince William Regional Beekeepers Association tracked the fortunes of more than 40 hives over two years and found the survival rate of locally sourced hives and queens — most of them from Rausch and Finkelstein — significantly outperformed traditionally sourced queens and bee packages from the South.

 

After two winters, 74 percent of the local colonies were still alive compared with 40?percent of the Southern bees.

 

“They call it the James Bond approach,” Spivak said. “Live and let die. You keep colonies without any medications. In theory it sounds good, except you reduce the gene pool” by losing bees that might have other valuable breeding traits.

 

Everyone agrees that a bee that could survive pests without the stresses of chemicals “would make beekeeping a lot easier,” said Reed M. Johnson, an entomologist at Ohio State University. In the nightmarish maze that the honeybee has found herself, breeding, he said, “is really our way out.”

 

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Young farmers break traditional mold

 

(SFGate.com) – The average age of a farmer in California is creeping toward 60, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture is trying to attract newcomers to work the land.

 

The need is especially acute, given that experts are forecasting that the world will have to double its food supply to keep up with a booming population - growing from 7 billion people to 9 billion by 2050. California is a significant player in feeding the globe, providing 12 percent of the nation's agriculture exports.

 

Farming also is a $37.5 billion business in California, employing 800,000 people. With the average age of the primary farm operator now 58 - nearly 20 percent are 70 or older - it's crucial that the state's farms and ranches get fresh blood, said Karen Ross, California's agriculture secretary.

 

"We are leaders," she said. "Being one of only five Mediterranean climates in the world, we produce the food - fruits, vegetables and nuts - that have the greatest health benefits."

 

But how do you convince people that back-breaking work, risky conditions and low profit yields are a good career move?

 

Bucking the norm

 

Oddly enough, Ross said, there's a whole crop of greenhorns willing to take the reins. But they're decidedly different from the face of the traditional farmer or rancher. And their methods - everything from urban rooftop gardening to the latest in conservation and sustainability practices - buck the old norm.

 

"We're seeing an interest from young people who don't come from farming families," Ross said, adding that last year a record-breaking 70,000 students enrolled in their high school Future Farmers of America program.

 

Craig McNamara, an organic walnut and olive grower and president of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture, knows the difficulties of farming and is concerned.

 

"Our nation needs 100,000 new farmers in a short amount of time," he said.

 

The 61-year-old doesn't know if his own three children will take over his farm, Sierra Orchards in Winters (Yolo County), when he retires. So he and his wife founded the Center for Land-Based Learning. The nonprofit is an incubator in which young people study the rudiments of agriculture and the importance of watershed conservation. McNamara hopes the program inspires others to start their own farms or take over existing ones.

 

California's advantages

 

Poppy Davis, the USDA's national program leader for small farms and beginning farmers and ranchers, said California might hold more advantages for the new farmer than any other state. It's not just the temperate climate. Unlike other states, where future generations are expected to take over the land and outsiders aren't always welcome, the agriculture community here has more tolerance for change and few preconceived notions, she said. Almost anything goes.

 

"The next generation doesn't have to be lineal descendants," she said. "While it might be good public policy to say this land needs to stay in farming or ranching, who are we to say, 'This land needs to stay in the same family.' "

 

While California is looking for fresh young faces to till the ground and drive the cattle, Davis said youth is in the eye of the beholder.

 

"There are lots of people starting whole different lives in their 50s," she said. "And for a lot of the new farmers in California, this is a second career. Some of these people can be very successful. While they may not know much about farming, they are seasoned in life and make really good business people."

 

There are other changes, too. It used to be that farming and ranching required large swaths of land and expensive equipment. Not anymore.

 

"A young man came to me four years ago and said he wanted to farm," McNamara said. "He was a graduate from UC Santa Cruz. To this day, he's farming without owning land or a tractor." McNamara leases the young farmer some of his Winters land. As for the tractor, McNamara pitches in with his.

 

Inspired by Costa Rica

 

Marisa Alcorta, 34, of Davis has wanted to farm for the past 10 years. She did her undergraduate studies at Cornell and spent three months in Costa Rica examining the farming methods of a small mountain village.

 

"I came back completely inspired," she said.

 

Getting the capital to start a farm was overwhelming, but when she met three women with a similar goal, they joined forces. The owner of Bridgeway Farms in Winters leased them 16 open acres and 4 acres of peach, nectarine and apricot trees at a very low price, Alcorta said. The women plan to pitch in about $5,000 each to start a community-supported agriculture business. They will sell 20 to 30 public shares in Cloverleaf Farm at Bridgeway in the form of weekly or monthly produce boxes.

 

"It's the first farming opportunity that I've come across that feels doable," she said.

 

There are even smaller operations taking root across the state, including public vegetable gardens in city vacant lots, rooftop gardens and urban farms, said Ross, the agriculture secretary.

 

"Eighteen to 20 percent of California is food insecure," she said. "So farmers of the future won't necessarily be just in the (rural areas). We need big and large to sustain the world's need for food."

 

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Growers may contribute to GM corn resistance

 

(Associated Press) – One of the nation's most widely planted crops — a genetically engineered corn plant that makes its own insecticide — may be losing its effectiveness because a major pest appears to be developing resistance more quickly than scientists expected.

 

Scientists also admit part of the problem may be the fault of the farmers themselves.

 

The U.S. food supply is not in any immediate danger because the problem remains isolated. But scientists fear potentially risky farming practices could be blunting the hybrid's sophisticated weaponry.

 

When it was introduced in 2003, so-called Bt corn seemed like the answer to farmers' dreams: It would allow growers to bring in bountiful harvests using fewer chemicals because the corn naturally produces a toxin that poisons western corn rootworms. The hybrid was such a swift success that it and similar varieties now account for 65 percent of all U.S. corn acres — grain that ends up in thousands of everyday foods such as cereal, sweeteners and cooking oil.

 

But over the last few summers, rootworms have feasted on the roots of Bt corn in parts of four Midwestern states, suggesting that some of the insects are becoming resistant to the crop's pest-fighting powers.

 

Scientists say the problem could be partly the result of farmers who've planted Bt corn year after year in the same fields.

 

Most farmers rotate corn with other crops in a practice long used to curb the spread of pests, but some have abandoned rotation because they need extra grain for livestock or because they have grain contracts with ethanol producers. Other farmers have eschewed the practice to cash in on high corn prices, which hit a record in June.

 

"Right now, quite frankly, it's very profitable to grow corn," said Michael Gray, a University of Illinois crop sciences professor who's tracking Bt corn damage in that state.

 

A scientist recently sounded an alarm throughout the biotech industry when he published findings concluding that rootworms in a handful of Bt cornfields in Iowa had evolved an ability to survive the corn's formidable defenses.

 

Similar crop damage has been seen in parts of Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska, but researchers are still investigating whether rootworms capable of surviving the Bt toxin were the cause.

 

University of Minnesota entomologist Kenneth Ostlie said the severity of rootworm damage to Bt fields in Minnesota has eased since the problem surfaced in 2009. Yet reports of damage have become more widespread, and he fears resistance could be spreading undetected because the damage rootworms inflict often isn't apparent.

 

Without strong winds, wet soil or both, plants can be damaged at the roots but remain upright, concealing the problem. He said the damage he observed in Minnesota came to light only because storms in 2009 toppled corn plants with damaged roots.

 

"The analogy I often use with growers is that we're looking at an iceberg and all we see is the tip of the problem," Ostlie said. "And it's a little bit like looking at an iceberg through fog because the only time we know we have a problem is when we get the right weather conditions."

 

Seed maker Monsanto Co. created the Bt strain by splicing a gene from a common soil organism called Bacillus thuringiensis into the plant. The natural insecticide it makes is considered harmless to people and livestock.

 

Scientists always expected rootworms to develop some resistance to the toxin produced by that gene. But the worrisome signs of possible resistance have emerged sooner than many expected.

 

The Environmental Protection Agency recently chided Monsanto, declaring in a Nov. 22 report that it wasn't doing enough to monitor suspected resistance among rootworm populations. The report urged a tougher approach, including expanding monitoring efforts to a total of seven states, including Colorado, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The agency also wanted to ensure farmers in areas of concern begin using insecticides and other methods to combat possible resistance.

 

Monsanto insists there's no conclusive proof that rootworms have become immune to the crop, but the company said it regards the situation seriously and has been taking steps that are "directly in line" with federal recommendations.

 

Some scientists fear it could already be too late to prevent the rise of resistance, in large part because of the way some farmers have been planting the crop.

 

They point to two factors: farmers who have abandoned crop rotation and others have neglected to plant non-Bt corn within Bt fields or in surrounding fields as a way to create a "refuge" for non-resistant rootworms in the hope they will mate with resistant rootworms and dilute their genes.

 

Experts worry that the actions of a few farmers could jeopardize an innovation that has significantly reduced pesticide use and saved growers billions of dollars in lost yields and chemical-control costs.

 

"This is a public good that should be protected for future generations and not squandered too quickly," said Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology director at the Center for Science and Public Policy.

 

Iowa State University entomologist Aaron Gassmann published research in July concluding that resistance had arisen among rootworms he collected in four Iowa fields. Those fields had been planted for three to six straight years with Bt corn — a practice that ensured any resistant rootworms could lay their eggs in an area that would offer plenty of food for the next generation.

 

For now, the rootworm resistance in Iowa appears isolated, but Gassmann said that could change if farmers don't quickly take action. For one, the rootworm larvae grow into adult beetles that can fly, meaning resistant beetles could easily spread to new areas.

 

"I think this provides an important early warning," Gassmann said.

 

Besides rotating crops, farmers can also fight resistance by switching between Bt corn varieties, which produce different toxins, or planting newer varieties with multiple toxins. They can also treat damaged fields with insecticides to kill any resistant rootworms — or employ a combination of all those approaches.

 

The EPA requires growers to devote 20 percent of their fields to non-Bt corn. After the crop was released in 2003, nine out of 10 farmers met that standard. Now it's only seven or eight, Jaffe said.

 

Seed companies are supposed to cut off farmers with a record of violating the planting rules, which are specified in seed-purchasing contracts. To improve compliance, companies are now introducing blends that have ordinary seed premixed with Bt seed.

 

Brian Schaumburg, who farms 1,400 acres near the north-central Illinois town of Chenoa, plants as much Bt corn as he can every spring.

 

But Schaumburg said he shifts his planting strategies every year — varying which Bt corn hybrids he plants and using pesticides when needed — to reduce the chances rootworm resistance might emerge in his fields.

 

Schaumburg said he always plants the required refuge fields and believes very few farmers defy the rule. Those who do put the valuable crop at risk, he said.

 

"If we don't do it right, we could lose these good tools," Schaumberg said.

 

If rootworms do become resistant to Bt corn, it "could become the most economically damaging example of insect resistance to a genetically modified crop in the U.S.," said Bruce Tabashnik, an entomologist at the University of Arizona. "It's a pest of great economic significance — a billion-dollar pest."

 

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Apple rain: Wackiest produce story of the year!

 

(The Christian Science Monitor) – Sky Apples? Motorists in England were pelted by apples falling from the sky, and were left to speculate as to the cause.

 

In the make-believe town of Chewandswallow, it rains soup and juice, and sometimes it snows ice cream. But who would have imagined that the world created by Judi Barrett in her bestselling children's book "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" would come true one evening in Coventry, England?

 

One night earlier this month, it started raining apples.

 

“I honestly don’t know where the apples could have come from,” Brian Meakins, a retired truck driver told UK’s Daily Mail.

 

More than 100 apples fell from the sky onto car roofs and windshields of motorists who were traveling through a busy intersection in the English city.  The bizarre phenomenon caused traffic congestion, left many wondering what had happened.   

 

A motorist told the Daily Mail that the apples fell out of nowhere.  “They were small and green and hit the bonnet hard,” she added.  “Everyone had to stop their cars suddenly.”

 

Bewildered by the incident, Mr. Meakins speculated:  “At first I assumed kids must have thrown them because we do get the occasional egg and apple thrown.” “But there’s way too many for that,” he continued.

 

British media also puzzled over the rain of apples.

 

Some speculated that a mini-tornado sucked up the apples from an orchard and deposited the fruit over Coventry. Another theory was they the fell from a cargo crate in an passing aircraft.

 

BBC ‘s Magazine reported that this is not the first time it has precipitated something other than H20. The site said that frogs had fallen from the sky in the past in Llanddewi, Powys as well as in Croydon, south London.  The  BBC also reported that back in 2000 scores of dead silver sprats dropped from the sky in the coastal resort of Great Yarmouth.

 

Paul Sieveking, co-editor of the Fortean Times, a magazine devoted to the analysis of strange global phenomena, told BBC that 300 apples came down in 1984  in Accrington, Lancashire.

 

However, Dr. Lisa Jardine-Wright, a physicist at Cambridge University described the event as unusual but not inexplicable.

 

“A tornado which has swept through an orchard will be strong enough to 'suck up' small objects like a vacuum [cleaner]. These small objects would then be deposited back to earth as 'rain' when the whirlwind loses its energy," she told BBC.

 

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