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December 30, 2009
· Turning farms into forests not a good idea
· Farm accident study yields better patient care
· A dietitian’s view of food trends for 2010
· Molecular markers track watermelon disease
· Nufarm spurns Chinese for deal with Sumitomo
Turning farms into forests not a good idea
(The Washington Times) – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has ordered his staff to revise a computerized forecasting model that showed that climate legislation supported by President Obama would make planting trees more lucrative than producing food.
The latest Agriculture Department economic-impact study of the climate bill, which passed the House this summer, found that the legislation would profit farmers in the long term. But those profits would come mostly from higher crop prices as a result of the legislation's incentives to plant more forests and thus reduce the amount of land devoted to food-producing agriculture.
According to the economic model used by the department and the Environmental Protection Agency, the legislation would give landowners incentives to convert up to 59 million acres of farmland into forests over the next 40 years. The reason: Trees clean the air of heat-trapping gases better than farming does.
Mr. Vilsack, in a little-noticed statement issued with the report earlier this month, said the department's forecasts "have caused considerable concern" among farmers and ranchers.
"If landowners plant trees to the extent the model suggests, this would be disruptive to agriculture in some regions of the country," he said.
He said the Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization
Model (FASOM), created by researchers at
Mr. Vilsack said he has directed his chief economist to work with the EPA to "undertake a review of the assumptions in the FASOM model, to update the model and to develop options on how best to avoid unintended consequences for agriculture that might result from climate change legislation."
The legislation would give free emissions credits, known as offsets, to farmers and landowners who plant forests and adopt low-carbon farm and ranching practices. Farmers and ranchers could sell the credits to help major emitters of greenhouse gases comply with the legislation. That revenue would help the farmers deal with an expected rise in fuel and fertilizer costs.
But the economic forecast predicts that nearly 80 percent of
the offsets would be earned through the planting of trees, mostly in the
The American Farm Bureau Federation and some farm-state Republican lawmakers have complained that the offsets program would push landowners to plant trees and terminate their leases with farmers.
The model projects that reduced farm production will cause food prices to rise by 4.5 percent by 2050 compared with a scenario in which no legislation is passed, the department found.
A department spokesman declined to comment about how quickly the review would take place or whether Mr. Vilsack would revise the department's economic-impact projections.
The Senate has not taken action on climate legislation, although the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a bill similar to the House's last month. That measure did not include agriculture provisions.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Arkansas Democrat and chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, has said she will hold hearings on climate provisions but has not indicated when those will take place.
The ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Saxby
Chambliss of
"EPA's analysis was often cited during debate in the House of Representatives and the study had a great impact on the final vote. If there was a flaw in the analysis, then it would be prudent to correct the model and perform a more current and complete analysis on both [bills]," they wrote.
In a statement, the EPA said: "EPA looks forward to working with USDA and the designer of this particular computer model to continue improving the analytical tools that all of [us] use to predict the ways that different climate policies would affect agriculture."
Allison Specht, an economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said other studies have largely confirmed the results of the EPA and Agriculture Department analysis.
"That's one of the realities of cap-and-trade legislation. The biggest bang for your buck for carbon credits is planting trees," she said.
Farm accident study yields better patient care
(The Wichita Eagle) – Don Hauschild really didn't set out to make agriculture less deadly. But that appears to be a bottom-line result from his study of fatal farm accidents and the training he has provided to emergency responders and others.
Hauschild is an eCare-ICU nurse for Via Christi Health, a high-tech remote monitoring system.
He also is the son of a farmer whose hand was injured in a
combine accident, a
That background added up to his compiling 25 years' worth of data on 547 fatal farm accidents in Kansas plus training for paramedics, air transport crews, firefighters and others.
In the early years covered by his study, "there was no education in extricating people from farm accidents," he said, so he helped develop rescue techniques that still are being taught.
"The thing that kills most of the farmers, from the time I started this study, is tractors," he said. They accounted for nearly half of the fatal accidents in Hauschild's study, and more than half the tractor accidents were overturns.
Rollover equipment and seat belts are standard on tractors now, Hauschild said, but some farmers don't use seat belts, some still have older equipment and some have disabled the rollover equipment to get their tractors through low barn doors.
Without protection, tractor rollovers are fatal 90 percent of the time, he said. With it, "99 percent of them would walk away" from the accident.
Hauschild said the number of fatal agricultural accidents has been going down through the years, in part because of protective equipment and in part because rescue crews have been trained "so the actual time it takes to rescue these people has really been cut down."
His study notes that specialized training now is offered as
part of University of Kansas-sponsored fire schools and by
Industrial farming concerns, he said, "are pretty darned safe." The typical victim is an older man working by himself on a family farm. About three children die each year in farm accidents, too.
Hauschild tracked any fatal accident that happened on farm or ranch land, whether it was work- or pleasure-related. That explains the high number of accidents in Sedgwick and Johnson counties, he said: "Horseback riding accidents skews it."
In contrast, accident numbers are low in western
Hauschild's study goes through March 2005. He plans to update it in 2010 and expects it to show an upsurge in all-terrain vehicle accidents.
Collecting the data, Hauschild says in his study, helps focus safety curriculums toward threats, helps trauma systems evaluate their response, and alerts manufacturers to unforeseen hazards.
A dietitian’s view of food trends in 2010
(The Herald) – It's been a tough year. And I for one am looking forward to the new decade ahead. What can we expect in food and nutrition news in 2010? Here are some global trends predicted by one research group (thefoodpeople.co.uk) ... with a few additional comments:
· Food cocooning: A return to the comforts of home and a resurgence of family dinners and dinner parties. Hooray! Research confirms that families who eat meals together benefit emotionally as well as nutritionally. Children who eat meals with their families do better in school and are also less likely to fall into substance abuse, studies have found.
· Simplicity: Restaurants and foodies will feature simple preparations with few ingredients. Yep, that chopped apple and some nuts tossed into a salad is now "trendy" as well as a simple way to add extra fiber, vitamins, minerals to meals.
· Global comfort food — including baked comfort: I believe this may have something to do with the expansion of Cinnabons in airport terminals.
· Local: Farmers markets will gain even more prominence. And
locally produced food will be more and more sought after. This means that I
will plan to eat more spinach in
· Need for treats: More "feel good" foods such as mini desserts are on the horizon. This trend may be one reason why childhood obesity is the No. 1 top food story of the decade, according to one year-end survey.
· Street food: A trend away from restaurants (I'll believe it when I see it) and toward dining trucks, street vendors, informal and authentic ethnic food. This also brings into focus the third top food story of the decade ... food safety concerns.
· Planet-conscious eating: I would like to expand this to "plant conscious eating." As we embrace "green" eating to sustain the planet, let us choose more "green eating" to sustain our bodies.
· National health: Increase in programs, initiatives, products and even legislation to improve our health, especially diabetes and heart disease. And this, dear fellow Americans, is where I step up on my soapbox. According the American Dietetic Association, we have paid a big price for overlooking or underestimating the important role of food and nutrition in improving our nation's health — "a price paid in lives and dollars."
"We know what works and what doesn't work for real people trying to eat well, be healthy and prevent chronic disease," says the ADA. Now is the time to support programs such as nutrition therapy and diabetes education that save health care costs and prevent major health issues.
Back to basics. Plant a garden. Eat more green. Chop up some vegetables instead of opening a box or can. We can do it! Have a safe and healthful New Year!
Barbara Quinn is a registered dietitian and certified
diabetes educator at the
Molecular markers track watermelon disease
(USDA-ARS) – Finding watermelon genes that confer resistance to the devastating zucchini yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV) has just been made easier, thanks to molecular markers developed by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and university and international cooperators.
ZYMV, a member of the Potyvirus family, seriously affects the commercial production of cucurbit crops like watermelon worldwide. Potyviruses are the largest of the 34 plant virus families currently recognized, most of which are transmitted by aphids. Cucurbit plants infected with ZYMV lose their ability to photosynthesize, resulting in yellow mosaic on leaves, stunted plant growth, unmarketable and deformed fruit, or even early plant death.
In the
ARS plant virologist Kai-Shu Ling and geneticist Amnon Levi, with the agency's U.S. Vegetable Laboratory in Charleston, S.C.; geneticist Karen Harris, now with the ARS Crop Genetics and Breeding Research Unit in Tifton, Ga.; and geneticist Michael Havey, with the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wis., collaborated with scientists in France and at North Carolina State University to sequence and clone a gene called eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E), which the scientists believe confers resistance to ZYMV in watermelon.
The scientists have also identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced "snips") that are potentially responsible for resistance to ZYMV in watermelon. SNPs are variations in DNA sequences that can affect protein sequence and functions and, in this case, how a plant responds to ZYMV.
Based on these SNPs mutations, two molecular markers, named CAPS-1 and CAPS-2, have been developed to help facilitate watermelon breeding through marker-assisted selections. Currently, advanced watermelon breeding lines with resistance to ZYMV are under development at the ARS Charleston laboratory for future public releases.
Details of this study, which was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), can be found in the scientific journal Theoretical and Applied Genetics.
ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency. The research supports the USDA priority of promoting international food security.
Nufarm spurns Chinese for deal with Sumitomo
(brisbanetimes.com.au) – A WHITE KNIGHT in the form of
Sumitomo Chemical of
Nufarm will also launch a $250 million capital raising in step with the entry of its new equity partner as it races to renew its debt obligations, with $1 billion in commitments due to be finalised by tomorrow now completed.
Sumitomo, the world's ninth-biggest maker of agricultural chemicals, has agreed to pay $14 a share for its proposed 20 per cent stake in Nufarm via a tender offer to all shareholders. It will be recommended by the Nufarm board. The price is a 17 per cent premium to the revised $12 offer from Sinochem for control of the entire company.
Following months of discussions between Nufarm and
The reduced offer, believed to have been triggered by Nufarm's deteriorating earnings outlook, threw the talks into confusion. Nufarm announced yesterday that the lower offer was unacceptable and that talks had been terminated.
Yesterday Sinochem stood by the $12 offer following due diligence findings. ''Given the challenging and complicated environment in which Nufarm is operating, Sinochem strongly believes that the revised offer was fair and in the best interests of all parties,'' it said.
Nufarm posted a 42 per cent slump in net profit to $79.9 million for 2008-09 as earnings per share sank 52 per cent and revenue rose 7 per cent. It blamed the profit slide on write-offs associated with inventories, restructuring costs and foreign exchange losses. It also faced a challenging environment in the crop protection industry this year.
Shares in Nufarm, suspended since Christmas, resumed trading yesterday and rose 30c to $10.86.
The chairman of Nufarm, Kerry Hoggard, said Sumitomo's investment gave shareholders the opportunity to realise a fair price for some of their shares.
It is unclear whether the chief executive of Nufarm, Doug Rathbone, who owns about 11 per cent of the company, will sell a portion of his shares into the offer.
Nufarm and Sumitomo will enter into an agreement to co-operate in a number of business areas, and Sumitomo will be invited to nominate one director to the Nufarm board.
The managing director of Australian Foundation Investment Company, Ross Barker, said the deal with Sumitomo was good news. ''The board needed to do something to validate its view that the stock was worth more than $12, so from that point of view I think it's welcome.''
After completion of the tender offer Nufarm will undertake a $250 million capital raising via a renounceable entitlement offer to all shareholders, including Sumitomo.
Sumitomo has received approval from
The tender offer is subject to approval by Nufarm shareholders.
End Transmission