World Agriculture
Developments, trade, data, and topics in world agriculture
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Canada cuts wheat production estimate~ ~ canada cuts wheat production estimate 2015-04-21 09:47 | source: China Grain Network | according to foreign news on April 18, the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture stated in a report that the country's 2015-16 crop annual wheat production will reach 29.5 million tons, lower than the 2.9 million tons estimated last month.
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2015/16 U.S. wheat ending stocks are expected to be 0.82 billion pu.~ ~ 2015/16 U.S. wheat ending stocks are expected to be 0.82 billion pu. 2015-04-21 09:49 | source: China Grain Network | according to a report released by ADM Investment Services, most analysts expect 55.4 million acres of all wheat to be planted in the United States in 2015, down from 56.8 million acres the previous year. If weather conditions are normal, average U.S. wheat yields could approach 45.7 bushels per acre in 2015, up from 43.7 bushels per acre in 2014. That means nearly 2.145 billion bushels of all U.S. wheat were produced this year, down from 2.206 billion bushels the previous year. If wheat demand is close to 2.175 billion bushels, up from 2.077 billion bushels in the current year, US wheat ending stocks will be close to 0.82 billion bushels in 2015/16, compared with the USDA's forecast of nearly 0.684 billion bushels in 2014/15. (Source: 99 Futures)
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G7 and food security~~Food Security and the G7: Is Elmau the new L'Aquila? April 16, 2015 Posted by Gawain Kripke Industrialized nations are considering a big, new food security and nutrition commitment. It's easy to forget the bad old days of 2008. Food prices were going crazy around the world. There were “food riots” in 30 countries. The World Bank (and many others) issued a call for action to help the poorest farmers in the world, based on analysis that showed that the international development community had essentially abandoned them, with aid and investment in the agriculture sector withered to a small fraction of what it once was. Suddenly, food security, food production and farming were top-tier issues. Donors rallied to put agriculture and food security back near the top. And the G8 highlighted the issue with an important initiative launched at the Italy summit in L'Aquila. Since then, food security has remained a significant priority, although you can feel the energy and urgency deflating. Food prices have floated downward in the last few years. And donor assistance for food security and agriculture is, again, falling. Comes now another G7 summit (Russia since expelled for bad behavior), this time hosted by Germany in the mountain resort of Schloss Elmau. For months we wondered what issues would bubble up the agenda for the summit. Now, it seems an answer is emerging: Food security. Word is leaking out that the German government has proposed a new, ambitious initiative that would renew and build out the L'Aquila initiative. Today at the Chicago Council conference in Washington DC, Stefan Schmitz, the German “food sherpa” announced that Germany has put food security and nutrition on the G7 agenda. He describes a broader initiative that will continue the L'Aquila initiative's focus on small farmer productivity, but also to expand to include other elements on nutrition, climate resilience, gender. He noted that fragility and conflict should be recognized as important drivers of hunger and need more attention. He spoke about the need to break the cycle of poor nutrition and ill health from mothers to children. “Germany is convinced that a world without hunger is possible, but 'business as usual' is not an option ." This is a welcome - even exciting - boost the historic effort to end hunger. Details to be negotiated.
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Over-consumption and climate change threaten food security and freshwater supplies~~Over-consumption, climate change threaten food security, water supply: FAO • BY MAGDALENA MIS, REUTERS • APR. 14, 2015, 2:23 PM Thomson ReutersThe logo of the Food and Agriculture Organisation is seen on the door of the headquarters in Rome. By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - There will be enough water to produce food for 10 billion people in 2050, but over-consumption and the impact of climate change threaten food security and water supplies in many regions, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday. By 2050 some 60 percent more food will be needed to feed the world's people and as farming remains the largest user of water, food must be produced sustainably to ensure future supplies of food and water, the FAO and the World Water Council (WWC) said in a joint report. "In an era of accelerated changes unparalleled ... in our past, our ability to provide adequate, safe and nutritious food sustainably and equitably is more relevant than ever," Maria Helena Semedo, FAO Deputy Director-General Natural Resources, said in a statement accompanying the report. "Water, as an irreplaceable element of achieving this end, is already under pressure by increasing demands from other uses, exacerbated by weak governance, inadequate capacities, and under-investment ." Water scarcity already affects more than 40 percent of the world's population, largely because too much water is used to produce food. Excessive use and pollution of water resources in key food-producing regions are threatening the sustainability of jobs that depend on water and agriculture, the report said. "Agriculture has to follow the path of sustainability and not the one of immediate profitability," said Benedito Braga, president of the WWC, an international think tank. The two organizations called for government policies and investment by both private and public sectors to ensure that crops, livestock and fish are produced sustainably, and in ways that also protect water resources. This is essential to reduce poverty, increase people's incomes and ensure food security, the report said. (Reporting By Magdalena Mis; Editing by Tim Pearce) Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-over-consumption-climate-change-threaten-food-security-water-supply-fao-2015-4#ixzz3XvVgyJau
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WTO and FAO to strengthen cooperation on food security and trade~~WTO, FAO to cooperate on trade, food security 4/17/2015 - by World Grain Staff GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - The World Trade Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization will bolster their collaboration on matters related to trade and food security, offering mutual assistance on critical themes such as the functioning of international grain markets, the groups announced on April 17. WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo met with José Graziano da Silva, the director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and announced their agreement in Geneva. "Food security is closely linked to trade and therefore it is an important element of our work at the WTO," Azevêdo said. "I am delighted that we will now be able to enhance our work on this crucial issue, which affects so many people, through an even closer partnership with the FAO ." The WTO will be taking part in the preparatory work on FAO's flagship publication, the State of Agricultural Commodity Markets, which this year will focus on trade and food security. The FAO and WTO chiefs discussed how the report could provide evidence and greater clarity on a range of issues related to the governance of trade flows and the pursuit of broader food security. The FAO will also hold a symposium on food security at the WTO on June 5. Considering the important role of open and strengthened food markets in supporting food security objectives, the two directors-general discussed how both enhancing opportunities for trade and the multilateral trading system could help in creating a more favorable global environment for both food security and sustainable agriculture. "I am deeply engaged in continuing to develop our joint work with WTO as food security and trade can together play a very important role to help fulfill FAO's mandate," said Graziano da Silva. They also discussed the current state of play in the Doha Round of trade negotiations, and the renewed efforts that the governments are making towards a successful outcome.
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Agricultural and Urban Water Debate-California Drought~~Agriculture Versus Cities In The California Drought Saga The response to my initial commentary on the drought problem in California was met with questions regarding my concerns for the impact on the agricultural sector. According to comments then by Governor Brown, Ag had already been paying its fair share and would largely go unaffected. His later comments were further clarified that more likely it may come down to making a decision of whom/what gets adequate water. Would walnuts be sacrificed so almonds could prosper? Would dairies have to cut herd size to accommodate less growing of alfalfa which is one of the larger users of Ag water? Or would it come down to a decision of high value products taking precedence over esthetics (lawns and golf courses). I experiencedq first-hand the controversy surrounding the continuing saga of the 25% mandate of curtailing water usage in CA by visiting the San Joaquin Valley recently. This area is considered the center of agriculture and the bulk user of water used for agriculture. Listening to talk shows and associated rhetoric brought out the polarization evolving between the agricultural users and the non-Ag sector. It seems that the perception that Ag might go unscathed couldn't be further from the truth. Pointing fingers at who may be receive the lion's share of the blame for water usage will be left to the press, internet blogs, talk shows and innuendo founded on what appears to be unsubstantiated information. For example, the largely held belief that agriculture is responsible for 70% of the total water usage. The argument is that water that eventually flows to the ocean is counted as agricultural water flow that is not used for Ag, resulting in actual usage more in tune with a 40% figure. While still a substantial amount, it results in much less of a shock effect than the 70% figure bantered around. Some commentaries in the media even suggested that only enough grains and nuts be produced for California usage and to curtail exports thus saving water by producing less. One could get a feeling that an attitude is evolving that pits the high population areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles against the lesser populated rural areas. After all should not the rights of the masses prevail over the minority? Being from the Midwest, I found it interesting the change in the equal rights attitude when it is someone else's ox that is being gored. It is the, “who's water is it anyway” question that will be difficult to answer outside of a court of law. Enforcing a 25% cut in water usage presents a whole set of problems, the solving of which is beginning with a sort of “self-policing” endeavor that promises to pit one neighbor against another. While keeping government away from the dirty work, snitching on someone who has a puddle on their cement driveway or who may water during daylight hours rather than at night, makes for a vigilante approach. A likely scenario could present the situation where two neighborhood families who go to the same church will not sit on the same side of the aisle, giving rise to a whole new meaning of “situation ethics ”. It was recently reported by a news source that housing will or is in fact, suffering from the effect of the implications of the drought and its consequences on what has been long thought of as a paradise life style, especially in Palm Springs CA where I reside to escape the cold Illinois winters. Even with an abundance of water, the Palm Springs area is covered by the edict of cutting usage. The question is whether the restrictions will or will not affect private wells. While not directly affected by the situation in California, I can't help but think that what ultimately happens in California regarding ownership of ground water whether municipality or privately owned will migrate eastward to the Midwest serving as a template for laws. California is often the hotbed of new ideas, regulations and government policies promising to save us from ourselves that eventually moves eastward affecting in some manner the rest of the US. Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas have had an ongoing controversy over agriculture water rights with regulations of water usage already in place to some degree. One would think it prudent for agricultural residents of those states to keep a watchful eye on the evolution of water rights emendating out of California. California has been in this situation before, only to escape with change in weather patterns to save residents from a calamity. With the raining season behind them, this time seams far more daunting. If a weather system worthy of dislodging the current one that is plaguing the west evolves over time, it has good odds of moving it eastward in the process to western KS, NE and IA later this summer or by this fall/winter. If not, the drought in California looks to get worse before it gets better. If the “moving out of the CA system” occurs it leaves open the potential for hot/dry to affect Midwestern crops in a negative fashion during July/August, making the planted acreage debate of corn versus soybeans a moot point. A 5% variance in baseline yields used to project available supplies of feedgrain and protein is not unusual. The complacency, by which commodity traders are viewing current ample stocks along with expectations of a normal production year, makes any weather premium in market prices for corn, wheat and soybeans look inadequate. The current too dry in the Northern Plains and too wet in the South suggests that resolution of even those weather events will require a change in the current US patterns, the results of which are yet unknown. Timing is important and given that government is more reactive than pro-active, odds are regulatory actions will come at a time things look the worst and that California and the rest of us will have to live with.
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The Precision Agriculture Revolution~~The Precision Agriculture Revolution Making the Modern Farmer By Jess Lowenberg-DeBoer FROM OUR MAY/JUNE 2015 ISSUE Thousands of years ago, agriculture began as a highly site-specific activity. The first farmers were gardeners who nurtured individual plants, and they sought out the microclimates and patches of soil that favored those plants. But as farmers acquired scientific knowledge and mechanical expertise, they enlarged their plots, using standardized approaches-plowing the soil, spreading animal manure as fertilizer, rotating the crops from year to year-to boost crop yields. Over the years, they developed better methods of preparing the soil and protecting plants from insects and, eventually, machines to reduce the labor required. Starting in the nineteenth century, scientists invented chemical pesticides and used newly discovered genetic principles to select for more productive plants. Even though these methods maximized overall productivity, they led some areas within fields to underperform. Nonetheless, yields rose to once-unimaginable levels: for some crops, they increased tenfold from the nineteenth century to the present. Today, however, the trend toward ever more uniform practices is starting to reverse, thanks to what is known as “precision agriculture." Taking advantage of information technology, farmers can now collect precise data about their fields and use that knowledge to customize how they cultivate each square foot. One effect is on yields: precision agriculture allows farmers to extract as much value as possible from every seed. That should help feed a global population that the UN projects will reach 9.6 billion by 2050. Precision agriculture also holds the promise of minimizing the environmental impact of farming, since it reduces waste and uses less energy. And its effects extend well beyond the production of annual crops such as wheat and corn, with the potential to revolutionize the way humans monitor and manage vineyards, orchards, livestock, and forests. Someday, it could even allow farmers to depend on robots to evaluate, fertilize, and water each individual plant-thus eliminating the drudgery that has characterized agriculture since its invention. ACRE BY ACRE Someday, farms might be filled with hundreds of small autonomous robots. The U.S. government laid the original foundations for precision agriculture in 1983, when it announced the opening up of the Global Positioning System (GPS), a satellite-based navigation program developed by the U.S. military, for civilian use. Soon after, companies began developing what is known as “variable rate technology," which allows farmers to apply fertilizers at different rates throughout a field. After measuring and mapping such characteristics as acidity level and phosphorous and potassium content, farmers match the quantity of fertilizer to the need. For the most part, even today, fields are tested manually, with individual farmers or employees collecting samples at predetermined points, packing the samples into bags, and sending them to a lab for analysis. Then, an agronomist creates a corresponding map of recommended fertilizers for each area designed to optimize production. After that, a GPS-linked fertilizer spreader applies the selected amount of nutrients in each location. A worker on a flower field in Carlsbad, California, March 2012. (Reuters / Mike Blake) Over 60 percent of U.S. agricultural-input dealers offer some kind of variable-rate-technology services, but data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicate that in spite of years of subsidies and educational efforts, less than 20 percent of corn acreage is managed using the technology. At the moment, a key constraint is economic. Because manual soil testing is expensive, the farmers and agribusinesses that do use variable rate technology tend to employ sparse sampling strategies. Most farmers in the United States, for example, collect one sample for every two and a half acres; in Brazil, the figure is often just one sample for every 12 and a half acres. The problem, however, is that soil can often vary greatly within a single acre, and agricultural scientists agree that several tests per acre are often required to capture the differences. In other words, because of the high cost of gathering soil information, farmers are leaving productivity gains on the table in some areas of the field and overapplying fertilizer and other inputs in others. Researchers are beginning to tackle the problem, developing cheap sensors that could allow farmers to increase their sampling density. For example, one new acidity sensor plunges an electrode into the soil every few feet to take a reading and records the GPS coordinates; manually sampling on that scale would be far too costly. Such sensors have not yet arrived at most farms, however. Some haven't proved reliable enough, breaking after a few acres of use, whereas others aren't accurate enough. But several research groups around the world are working on developing sturdier ones. More practical are sensors that look at the color of plants to determine their nutritional needs. Plants with too little nitrogen, for example, tend to turn pale green or yellow, whereas those with enough appear dark green. Several U.S. and European companies have developed sensors that detect greenness, generating measurements that can be used to generate a map recommending various amounts of nitrogen to be applied later. Alternatively, the measurements can be linked directly to the nitrogen applicator to change the application rate on the go. A tractor may have a sensor mounted on the front and an applicator on the back; by the time the applicator reaches a point that the sensor has just passed, an algorithm has converted the readings into settings for how much fertilizer to apply. Because research in this area has focused mainly on small grains, such as wheat, barley, rye, and oats, the technology is mostly limited to the parts of the United States and Europe that grow those crops. According to a 2013 survey by Purdue University, only seven percent of agricultural-input dealers offer plant-color sensors. Given the number of start-ups in this area, however, it is clear that many investors see the technology as a potential gold mine. FIELDS AND YIELDS The government's GPS decision also enabled another revolutionary technology to emerge: yield monitoring. Most harvesters in the United States and Europe are outfitted with special sensors that measure the flow rate of grain coming in. An algorithm specific to the crop then converts the resulting data into a commonly used volume or weight, such as bushels per acre or kilograms per hectare. That information is then turned into colorful maps that show the variation within fields. These maps have become a staple of farming magazines and trade shows, and for good reason: they have given farmers unprecedented insight into the effects of various production techniques, weather conditions, and soil types. Such a map can help a farmer arrive at yield numbers for the purpose of insurance or government programs, measure the results of experiments that test the qualities of genetically modified crops or the effectiveness of various cultivation practices, and reveal which parts of a field aren't living up to their potential. In the eastern United States, it was only through yield monitoring that farmers were able to convince landlords that flood-related crop losses were not limited to completely submerged parts of the field; they also extended to a ring around those spots. In response, farmers installed more subsurface drainage systems. In Argentina, the technology has taken off because most managers of large farms there, unlike their U.S. counterparts, rarely operate vehicles themselves (a consequence of the peculiar history of landownership there). For them, yield maps offered on-the-ground insight into productivity they couldn't otherwise get. A labyrinth cut into a corn and hemp field outside Berlin, September 2009.(Reuters / Thomas Peter) When it comes to the quality of the data, however, yield-monitoring technology still has a long way to go. In most cases, the algorithms that convert data about flow into volume or weight measurements must be calibrated annually for each crop and farm, and many farmers don't bother to do so. The data can also be affected by how fast a harvester is driven and other idiosyncrasies. And although research studies can rigorously analyze data from yield monitoring, farms and agribusinesses typically lack the necessary statistical skills and software. The next step in yield monitoring is for agribusinesses to adopt the statistical techniques now used mainly by researchers; since their findings would be spread across millions of acres, they should be able to justify the cost. PLOW BY WIRE The most common use of precision-agriculture technology is for guiding tractors with GPS. Manually steering farm equipment requires skilled operators and is a tiring endeavor. And even the best drivers often overlap their passes by as much as ten percent to avoid skipping parts of the ground. The late 1990s saw the introduction of LED light bars, each a series of LED lights in a foot-long plastic case that is mounted in front of the operator of a tractor, harvester, or other vehicle. If the lights in the center are lit up, then the equipment is on track. If those on the left or the right are illuminated, then the driver needs to correct the steering. Increasingly, farmers are taking this technology to its next logical step, replacing the light bars with automatic guidance systems that link GPS data directly to a vehicle's steering mechanism. Although an operator still needs to sit on the equipment, for the most part, it can be driven hands-free. The technology first gained widespread use in the 1990s in Australia, where clay-rich soils-plus a lack of freezing and thawing-make fields particularly vulnerable to compaction from wheeled vehicles. Australian farms used GPS automated guidance to concentrate equipment traffic on narrow paths, preventing the rest of the soil from getting compacted. Today, about 40 percent of fertilizer and other agricultural chemicals are applied with automated guidance in the United States. Such systems have led to numerous spinoffs. One category is mechanisms that track the path of a tractor and automatically shut off its seed-planting and chemical-spraying functions when it passes over parts of the field that have already been covered or are environmentally sensitive. The technology is especially useful for irregularly shaped fields, which are vulnerable to overplanting and overspraying. Geospatial data aren't just for plowing straight lines, however. For decades, NASA and some of its foreign counterparts have encouraged farmers to use their satellite imagery. Along with aerial photography, these images form the basis for “geographic information systems," which enable farmers to store and analyze spatial data. The technology has proved particularly useful in areas where multiyear data are available, since it allows growers to divide large fields into zones that receive different seeds, fertilizers, and herbicides. Some managers of farms are even using GPS to keep an eye on their employees in the field, especially in the former Soviet Union and particularly in Ukraine. Since the biggest farms there-many of which cover over 100,000 acres-tend to rely on hired staff and not owner-operators, farm managers like to track all field operations in real time. If a tractor stops for more than a few minutes, for example, the head office will notice and can call the driver to inquire about the problem. The tracking technology also allows managers to crack down on employees who use company machines on their own farms. YIELD OF DREAMS Precision agriculture has already turned one of the oldest sectors into one of the most high-tech, but the best is yet to come. The next step likely involves “big data." Farmers and agribusinesses are increasingly considering how to best take advantage of their treasure troves of data to boost profits and make agriculture more sustainable. In 2013, for example, the agriculture giant Monsanto acquired the Climate Corporation, a start-up founded by two Google alumni to use weather and soil data to create insurance plans for farmers and generate recommendations for which crop varietals are best suited to a particular plot of land. Another low-hanging fruit for big data is research on how to use equipment. For example, it's not clear how fast a tractor should be driven when planting corn: too slow makes for an inefficient process, but too fast results in uneven planting, which hurts yields. After collecting data on the tractor's speed, the eventual yield of the crop, and other factors, however, one could determine the optimal speed for planting. In order to harness big data's power, companies will probably have to pool information across farms. In the United States and Europe, individual farms are too small to generate a meaningful quantity of data, and even the very large farms in Latin America and the former Soviet Union would benefit from combining data with their neighbors. The problem, at the moment, is that farmers have little incentive to collect quality data. In the United States, some start-ups have tried to pay farmers for data, without much success. So far, it is the agricultural-input suppliers and agricultural cooperatives that have been able to collect the most data. But even their data sets are relatively small. Some of that big data may come from drones. With the United States largely out of Afghanistan and Iraq, some suppliers of military hardware have turned their attention to the agricultural market. The move might be smart: small, unmanned aircraft can capture regular images of crops to guide irrigation, pesticide application, and harvesting. And unlike satellites, drones are largely unaffected by cloud cover. Given the operating expense and expertise required, drones will most likely be used commercially at first only for high-value crops, such as wine grapes. And in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration will first have to open up the skies to commercial drones. The technology that would truly transform agriculture as we know it is robotics. The rapid adoption of GPS guidance has opened the door to more autonomous farm equipment, and most major manufacturers have already tested driverless versions of their tractors. Once the driver is removed from the picture, the design criteria for a piece of equipment change radically: it can become far smaller. It's possible to imagine farms someday filled with hundreds of small autonomous robots, doing everything from planting to harvesting. Robots could scout fields continuously and identify pest and disease problems at the earliest possible stages. They could apply pesticides in tiny doses, targeting individual insects or diseased plants. They could efficiently manage small and oddly shaped fields, such as those common in the eastern United States, which are hard to farm profitably with conventional equipment driven by humans. In the United States, by reducing the need for Mexican laborers, robots might even affect immigration policy. When it comes to emerging technologies, it is a fool's errand to pick winners. But the history of farming in the twentieth century offers some clues to its future. Almost all the agricultural technologies that were widely adopted in the twentieth century were characterized by what economists call “embodied knowledge," meaning that the scientific advancements were contained within them. Farmers didn't have to know how pesticides killed insects or how a gasoline tractor worked; they just needed to know how to spray the chemical or drive the vehicle. Likewise, the tools of precision agriculture will gain widespread use only once they are sold in easy-to-use forms. That's why GPS guidance has become so widespread: farmers don't need to understand it to use it. And so variable rate technology for fertilizer, to take one example, will take off the day a farmer can trigger it with the mere push of a button. Eventually, precision agriculture could take humans out of the loop entirely. Once that happens, the world won't just see huge gains in productivity. It will see a fundamental shift in the history of agriculture: farming without farmers.
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Urban agriculture: beneath the surface~~Urban Agriculture: What's Not to Like? Contributor: Steve Hansen Published: 21 April 2015 Urban agriculture is viewed by some people as a viable alternative to industrial food production, but does it really offer more advantages than disadvantages? Urban agriculture advocates charge that industrial agriculture depends on unsustainable practices such as profligate use of fresh water, harmful pesticides and fertilizers, and long supply chains, for example. Urban agriculture, they say, provides fresher and healthier food that supports local economies, and does not depend on petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers. The RUAF Foundation, for example, is a globally focused non-profit organization that advocates for urban agriculture. According to RUAF, by 2020, “85% of the poor in Latin America, and about 40-45% of the poor in Africa and Asia will be concentrated in towns and cities ." Population growth and increasing urbanisation cause many people who live in cities in developing nations to struggle with livable housing, sufficient employment and food security. Urban agriculture enables people to grow their own food despite lack of income or purchasing power. Some can grow extra food to sell or barter. Urban agriculture also creates community bonds and social interaction, and is valuable as a relaxing physical activity in more developed areas. Ecological factors can also benefit from urban agriculture. Developing cities often struggle with disposal of urban waste, and urban agriculture can turn some forms of waste into productive resources. In the US, a non-profit organization called Growing Powerhas been doing urban agriculture since 1993. Founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by former professional basketball player Will Allen, Growing Power uses intensive methods to produce over 450,000 kilograms annually of broccoli, lettuce, eggplant, kale, chard, carrots, tomatoes, and other vegetables. In addition, the organisation raises goats and uses aquaponic systems to produce tilapia and perch. The organization provides training for would-be urban farmers, as well as demonstrations and technical assistance with the development of community food systems. The group also has growing facilities in Madison, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois. Milwaukee, a small city of about 600,000 people, has seen flat population growth for the past two decades. Is the Growing Power model, apparently successful in that city, adaptable to dense and fast-growing urban areas across the globe? The United Nations estimates that by 2050, two thirds of the world's nine billion people will live in cities. Can urban agriculture provide enough food for densely populated cities? Blogger and urban planner Chris Kok does not believe so. In a blog post, Kok slammed urban agriculture (not urban gardens or community gardens) for using valuable urban land in a non-intensive manner. “My problem is with industrial scale agriculture in urban areas. With the exception of a handful of cities, such as Detroit, there are better uses for land than agriculture," he wrote. One part of the problem he labelled the “festishization of the local foods movement” that values food grown close. “How close is close enough? Ultimately there are going to be decreasing returns on localism as there are with anything else," Kok wrote. “It is much more important to focus on obtaining food from the local region than it is to be obtaining food from the neighborhood ." In addition, urban agriculture displaces dense urban housing, which might contain 30 units or more per acre, Kok said. Housing that gets pushed to the outer fringes (suburban or exurban) of a city by urban agriculture will be built less densely, so where 30 units of housing may occupy an acre of urban land, only one to four units of housing will occupy an exurban acre. For that reason, he said, “A loss of 1 acre of development in an urban area could result in 30 acres or more of new greenfield development ." Another blogger, Zane Selvans, calls urban agriculture an “awful idea” and offers an hypothetical example of his small city attempting to grow its own food locally. Using the benchmark of one-half hectare per person needed to grow food, Selvans determined that all arable land in the county would be needed to produce food for the city's residents. Even though his city, Boulder, Colorado, is relatively small and not dense, with only 100,000 residents, urban agriculture “can never scale up to feed even a small fraction of the citizenry ." Fast-growing cities in the developing world face an even tougher challenge. “For those cities, no plausible increase in farming intensity can hope to feed the population, even if every square meter of the city were dedicated to food production," Selvans noted. In dense urban areas, urban agriculture may be just one piece of the puzzle, along with larger regional farms. Another option may offer more promise. Rooftop agriculture makes use of previously unused space, produces food and oxygen, consumes carbon dioxide, decreases the urban heat island effect, decreases runoff, and also can decrease buildings' energy use. One objective analysis of an urban green roof concluded that due to the project: • The green roof intercepted about 78 per cent of all rainfall during a 10-month monitoring period, or more than 104,000 litres. • Runoff from the green roof contains much less nitrogen and other pollutants than typical urban runoff. • Most rainfalls of under 25 millimetres result in no runoff at all. • The building's energy use decreased by 10 per cent in the winter months. • On the hottest summer days, the green roof's temperature can be up to 59 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than neighboring conventional roofs. Green roofs combined with urban agriculture are not new, but Dr Sara Wilkinson, associate professor at the School of the Built Environment at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), has undertaken a study funded by the city to ascertain best practices. Her study built three different types of gardens on three campus rooftops. Herbs and vegetables were grown in raised beds, vertical gardens, and wicking beds. Wicking beds grow plants in a container, with geotextile fabric separating the plants and soil from the water in the reservoir below. In this case, the wicking bed was the clear winner, with the lowest cost, the least need for water and the most abundant harvest. With Australia's highly urbanised cities, rooftop agriculture may offer a promising alternative to conventional agriculture, which will face increasing challenges from climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted higher temperatures, more extreme droughts and flooding, and more variable rainfall in the coming decades. Southern Australia and the Murray-Darling Basin will see less rainfall, for example, while areas in the north-east and north-west will see more intense rainfall. Rooftop farms, with their soils absorbing water, and their masses of edible plants cooling and cleaning the air, could provide an antidote to the perils of both climate change and industrial agriculture.
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The GMO ControversyStand tall on your GM choices TRENT THORNE 21 Apr, 2015 02:00 AM Millions of hungry people in developing countries around the world are counting on you However, far too often consumers are allowing activist groups to define 'threats' to the community's wellbeing, claiming they are the only parties with sufficient independence to enlighten all and sundry. Interestingly, President Roosevelt opined in relation to Upton that "three-fourths of the things that he said were absolute falsehoods - for some of the remainder, there was only a basis of truth ." The sentiments hold true to this day. Truth is not the ally of activists, who operate within the paradigm that near enough is good enough. Why present facts when half-truths, suppositions and smears are far more effective in getting their jaundiced message across? It is fair to say that almost all of the food we eat today has been the result of selective breeding processes over thousands of years. Various crop traits such as yield, disease resistance, hardiness and taste, were preferred over time, which has meant that most crops are significantly different to their initial wild cousins. By way of example, the humble potato is one of the most ubiquitous crops on the planet. But the original wild potatoes were quite toxic as they contained a poisonous alkaloid, a trait of the nightshade family of plants. Mutagenic techniques (exposing plants to radiation and/or chemicals to produce mutant plant strains) have also been used by scientists for over 70 years to produce desirable traits. Selective breeding and mutagenic techniques are still practiced, but given that the outcomes are often unknown and the process can take many years before a desirable trait is produced, scientists are increasingly looking to utilise technology that provides greater certainty. Compared with selective breeding and mutagenic techniques, GM technology allows scientists to be very specific in terms of the outcome they are trying to achieve, often by the insertion of a single gene. Last year, researchers from the University of California, Davis went a long way towards allaying community concerns in relation to the safety of GM. They published a groundbreaking study into the health of US livestock straddling the period pre and post-introduction of GM animal feed in 1996. In summary, the study found that there were no unusual trends in the health of animals since GM feed was introduced. That is, GM feed is just as safe as non-GM feed. The findings should not come as a surprise, as it mirrors a significant number of prior studies that reached the same conclusion. The difference with this study is the size of dataset involved: 29 years of livestock production, greater than 100 billion animals, which represents trillions of GM meals. A data set of this magnitude means that the debate as to whether GM is safe is a done deal. In other words, the flat-earthers can pack up their bat and ball and head home. But the most galling aspect of the fear and scorn foisted on GM advancements and technology is the myopic, first-world prism that critics view the word through. It is pretty easy to have convictions about how other people 'should' be eating and the ethics of how food 'should' be produced, when you never have to worry about feeding your family at the end of the day. The simple fact of the matter is that GM crops have made farming practices vastly more sustainable, by decreasing the use of herbicides, removing the need for tillage (which increases the potential for soil erosion and degrades the soils potential) and increasing yield. Let there be no doubt - removing or stifling the uptake of GM crops from the worldwide food equation will lead to an increase in food prices and the number of hungry bellies in developing countries. But this problem is out of sight, out of mind for most activists and a clear form of economic colonialism. Critics will continue to wallow in their 'enlightened' smugness - but in reality they are denying perfectly safe food and nourishment to those most in need. It is often said that the hottest fires make the hardest steel. Steely determination is required. Millions of hungry people in developing countries around the world are counting on you. Trent Thorne is an agribusiness lawyer.
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5.3 million U.S. chickens infected with bird flu~~Bird flu confirmed at US farm with 5.3 million chickens The US' poultry industry may have to live with a deadly bird flu strain for several years, the US Department of Agriculture's chief veterinary officer said Thursday, April 16, 2015 on a visit to Minnesota, the state hit hardest by outbreaks that have cost Midwest producers over 2 million turkeys and chickens. Photo: AP DES MOINES (IOWA) - Up to 5.3 million hens at an Iowa farm must be destroyed after the highly infectious and deadly bird flu virus was confirmed, the US Department of Agriculture said yesterday (April 20). The farm in north-west Iowa's Osceola County has nearly 10 per cent of the state's egg-laying hens. Iowa is home to roughly 59 million hens that lay nearly one in every five eggs consumed in the country. Egg industry marketing experts say it's too early to predict the impact on prices, but say it's unlikely to immediately cause a spike or a shortage, because number of chickens that are to be euthanised is a little more than 1 per cent of the nation's egg layers. “Don't panic. Let's wait and see," said poultry industry consultant Simon Shane, who also teaches poultry science and veterinary medicine at North Carolina State University. He added that if 20 million to 30 million hens are infected, consumers could start seeing prices rise. Several Midwestern states have been affected by the outbreaks, costing turkey and chicken producers nearly 7.8 million birds since March. The virus was first detected in Minnesota, the country's top turkey-producing state, in early March and the H5N2 virus has since shown up on commercial farms in Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Yesterday, the virus was confirmed in another turkey farm in Minnesota and a backyard flock of mixed birds in Wisconsin. The Osceola County farm provides shell eggs and liquid egg products to the market. “It may not have a direct effect on shell egg pricing but any time you take production out of a marketplace there's likely to be some consequence," Iowa Poultry Association Executive Director Randy Olson said. “I anticipate the market and production will recover, but right now we're reminding people that this is not a food safety issue and it's not a human health issue ." Mr Olson said he's confident authorities have identified the extent of the outbreak and have a plan to control it. It's the first chicken farm in Iowa to be affected by the virus, which was confirmed at a turkey farm in the state last week. The chickens on the large operation reside in more than 20 houses, said Mr Dustin Vande Hoef, a spokesman for Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey. “It's a huge challenge for this producer and highlights the importance of biosecurity and other producers trying to take steps to limit the spread of this disease," he said. The Center for Disease Control and the Iowa Department of Public Health considers the risk to people from these infections in wild birds, backyard flocks and commercial poultry, to be low. No human infections with the virus have ever been detected. AP
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Japanese plant factories are moving towards commercialization and are being promoted globally.Comprehensive report on the through train for agriculture, rural areas and farmers: vegetables grow up "without seeing the sun", but they are watery and healthy. This is not a hypothesis, but a new type of agricultural production, a boon for large cities or areas with little arable land. As of February this year, the number of Japanese plant factories has risen to 168, an annual growth rate of about 20%. Japan's future (mirai) is promoting plant factories around the world as a new type of agricultural production. The demand for food is expanding, but urban arable land is shrinking. How to solve this problem? Japan, a country with very limited land area, has given a solution-plant factories. This plant factory can be built in the suburbs or in idle factories. On the layered cultivation shelves, the vegetables grow "out of sight", but they are watery and healthy. This is not imagination or hypothesis, but a new agricultural production method that Japan's future (mirai) has commercialized and is being promoted globally. nutritious led lamp plants must carry out photosynthesis to be able to grow, so in the totally enclosed plant factory, how can plants obtain the energy for growth? the answer is, led lights. Plant factories completely replace natural light with led lights and fluorescent lamps, provide vegetables with the nutritional light they need, and strictly control the environment required for plant growth such as temperature, humidity, light, carbon dioxide, and nutrients. Light is the heart of the plant factory. In the past, most similar plant factories used metal lamps and energy-saving lamps as light sources, but due to the large power consumption, they could only be used as a means of light supplement, not as main lighting. The led lamp is a very ideal substitute: the chip of the led lamp emits light, which can adjust the nutritional light more targeted to plants, and can realize the artificial adjustment of brightness, light quality and light rhythm; In addition, it also has the advantages of pure light quality, high light efficiency, low heat generation, energy saving and environmental protection. Solar radiation can't exactly match plant needs, but artificial light can. According to the above research results, the lighting on the cultivation shelf of the plant factory is divided into three areas: white, red and white, and the general lighting technology is adopted, which can not only evenly disperse the high directional led light, but also irradiate the light with different wavelengths according to the growth stage of the plant. For example, in the initial stage of vegetable sowing to seedling, white and red led light sources will be irradiated to promote photosynthesis. Then, the red light emitted by the red and blue LED light source is irradiated to promote the growth of leaves and rhizomes. Near the harvest period, will be irradiated with white light again to promote photosynthesis. After using this method, compared with the use of only fluorescent lamps, not only the power consumption is reduced by 40%, but also the harvest of the same area is increased by 50%. Since the cultivation racks in the plant factory are stacked, the interval between the cultivation racks is about 35cm, and the total height can vary from 6 to 15 layers (depending on the actual environment, it can be adjusted), occupying less land and shortening the growth cycle by about half. At present, a total of 40 to 50 kinds of vegetables can be cultivated in plant factories, with lettuce and vanilla leafy vegetables in the majority. The future president of the company, Shimamura Maozhi, told the reporter of "21st Century Business Review" (hereinafter referred to as "21cbr") that the reason for choosing lettuce is its strong vitality, suitable production cycle and plant height. "The traditional production cycle of lettuce is about 70 days, while in plant factories, the production cycle only takes 33-35 days." lixia
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Three lending models of global agricultural supply chain financeAbstract: Supply chain finance can effectively solve the problem of information asymmetry between borrowers and lenders, and the three mainstream models include the cooperation between agricultural supply chain enterprises and P2P, public welfare P2P lending for farmers and commercial P2P lending. Although the practice in the field of supply chain finance in developed countries has been quite mature, forming three business models dominated by logistics enterprises, core enterprises in the production chain and commercial banks, there are not many attempts to test supply chain finance in agriculture. At present, the three mainstream models include the cooperation between agricultural supply chain enterprises and P2P, public welfare P2P lending for farmers and commercial P2P lending. The first model is represented by the cooperation between Danish food retailer COOP and P2P platform MYC4. COOP is one of Denmark's top food retailers, owning and managing five production supply chains, while MYC4 is a well-known P2P platform in Denmark that connects European investors with agricultural micro-enterprises and individual farmers in developing countries, the former providing microfinance to the latter. The basic model of the whole business chain is: COOP has cooperated with MYC4 in a project called "Commodities from Africa". COOP has put MYC4 website link on its official website to direct its consumers to P2P platform and participate in African projects that apply for loans on MYC4. The projects on MYC4 are selected by local cooperative credit institutions (credit provider) in Africa, and African farmers applying for loans provide COOP with a large and continuous supply of agricultural products through MYC4 financing and reproduction, while using part of the proceeds from the sale of agricultural products to repay the loan. In addition, COOP has also set up an "Africa Fund" to return African commodities sold in the autumn of 2010 to the fund in the amount of 0.5 euros per piece to help "suppliers" in Africa ". The second model is a public welfare lending platform for farmers, typically represented by KIVA in the United States, which is also the world's first public welfare P2P network credit platform. In 2003, Matt Flannery (Matt Flannery) and Jessica (Jessica Jackley), inspired by Muhammad Yunus (Muhammad Yunus), the father of small loans, founded KIVA in October 2005 to lend investors' idle funds to poor people around the world who are eager to change their fortunes or start businesses. Agriculture accounts for a large part of KIVA loans, the founders hoped to supplement agricultural development by providing interest-free loans to farmers at the bottom of the entire agricultural supply chain. KIVA also works with local small lenders and other organizations working to change poverty to screen eligible borrowers and then post projects online through the website to provide loans. At present, the platform has borrowed a total of 684,633,175 US dollars, with a repayment rate of 98.75 per cent. The third model is more common, but it also lacks strong pertinence, that is, ordinary commercial lending platforms, such as well-known foreign P2P platforms such as Zopa in the United Kingdom, Prosper and Lending Club in the United States, are all individual-to-individual loans and investments. Investors indirectly participate in agricultural supply chain finance through direct loans to farmers or individuals engaged in agriculture-related industries. Some scholars in China believe that supply chain finance can effectively solve the problem of information asymmetry between borrowers and lenders. For agriculture with deep-rooted traditional genes, the effect of transformation will be more obvious. At the same time, it will help individual farmers who are in a traditionally disadvantaged position. Significant. Compared with the mature development of supply chain finance in manufacturing and retail in developed countries, the fertile soil of agricultural supply chain finance is still to be developed, and there are many excellent cases and experiences in related fields in China that are worth learning. He Kun, general manager of Silicon Valley Hopu (Beijing) Financial Information Service Co., Ltd., believes that supply chain finance uses the credit advantages of the core enterprises to connect the logistics, information flow and capital flow of the whole chain, which is lower than the risk of a single credit and is the core value embodiment. 2015/4/16 China Agriculture News Network lixia
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Global Rice Trade Outlook 20152015/4/15 16:26:00 China Agricultural News Network content Summary: As India's export supply decline is greater than the sales growth of Pakistan, Vietnam and the United States, global rice trade is expected to be 42.3 million tons in 2015, down about 1.6 percent from 43 million tons in 2014. According to the rice outlook report released by the US Department of Agriculture, global rice trade in 2015 is expected to be 42.3 million tons, down about 1.6 percent from 43 million tons in 2014 and slightly lower than the 42.5 million tons predicted in March. The slight decline in global rice trade in 2015 was mainly due to the fact that India's export supply fell more than the sales growth of Pakistan, Vietnam and the United States. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), India's rice exports in 2015 may fall from 10.9 million tons in 2014 to 9.3 million tons, a decrease of about 18%, because of the decline in rice production in the autumn harvest in 2014. FAO expects India's total rice production to be 0.1582 billion tons (0.106 billion tons of finished rice) in 2015, up about 2% from 0.1546 billion tons in 2014. Due to weak monsoon rainfall, the decline in water storage in major reservoirs, and the lower-than-average rainfall in most parts of the country during October and November 2014, delayed winter rice planting, which may affect rice production in early spring 2015. The price of rice fell steadily in January 2015, mainly due to the second season rice harvest.
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Restrictions halve Russian wheat exports~ ~ restrictions halve Russian wheat exports 2015-03-30 15:58 | source: China Grain Network | russian wheat exports have halved from last year after the government began imposing tariffs on wheat exports. Transport company ZAORusagrotrans forecast that Russian wheat exports in March were 65% lower than last year. After export tariffs took effect in February, wheat exports plunged 45 percent in the month, government data showed. Rusagrotrans vice president IgorPavensky said many grain buyers are turning to European sellers, whose goods are cheaper as the euro weakens. "Our market share was taken away a little bit." He called from Moscow. "Record supply in Europe." Pavensky said that Russia is expected to export 450000 tons of wheat in March, compared with 1.3 million tons in the same period last year. Exports are expected to be at least 600000 tons, said VladimirPetrichenko, president of ProZerno, a market research firm in Moscow. The export tariff system has successfully reduced the cost of wheat in Russia. Data compiled by Rusagrotrans show that shrinking demand from exporters has reduced the ex-factory price of wheat in southern Russia this week by nearly 20% from the highest of about 9,600 rupees/ton this year hit in mid-December. Price declines accelerated last week as farmers began selling stocks to finance spring planting, market researchers said SovEcon. **European Supply** Pavensky said Russian wheat export duties were 15 percent of the total value of the shipment, plus 7.50 euros per ton. In addition, the rebound in the ruble this year has also increased the cost of buying Russian wheat. As Russian supplies dwindle, buyers are turning their attention to countries such as Germany, France and Romania. Since July 1 last year, EU regulators have issued 24.4 million tons of soft wheat export permits. SwithunStill, president of the Lausanne SolarisCommoditiesSA, said that Russian wheat exports have not completely dried up in the past two months because traders are currently sourcing at low prices and selling abroad profitably. The DmitryRylko in charge of the Russian Agricultural Market Research Association (InstituteforAgriculturalMarketStudies,IKAR) said that the impact of tariffs on exports continues.
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FAO: Global rice production will be reduced to 0.4956 billion tons in 2014/15FAO: Global rice production will be reduced to 0.4956 billion tons in 2014/15 2014-12-16 09:25 | source: China Grain Network | according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global rice production in 2014/15 is expected to be 0.4956 billion tons, down from 0.4975 billion tons in the previous year and slightly below the earlier forecast of 0.4963 billion tons. The global decline in rice production is due to falling production in major producers such as India, Thailand and Papua New Guinea. Global rice use is expected to be 0.4996 billion tons in 2014-15, an increase of 2% over the previous year, slightly lower than the earlier forecast of 0.5002 billion tons, as consumption in many countries is likely to increase. Global rice trade is expected to be 40.5 million tons, slightly higher than the previous year's 40.2 million tons and 1 per cent higher than the earlier forecast. Global ending stocks of rice are expected to be 0.1774 billion tons, down 2% from the previous year and slightly lower than the earlier forecast of 0.1777 billion tons.
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IGC: Global wheat production and ending stocks are expected to decline year-on-year in 2015/16.~ ~ IGC: Global wheat production and ending stocks are expected to decline year-on-year in 2015/16. 2015-03-27 15:14 | source: China Grain Network | according to a monthly report released by the London-based International Grains Council (IGC) on Thursday, global wheat production and stocks will both decline in 2015/16. IGC predicts that global wheat production will be reduced to 0.709 billion tons in 2015/16, 10 million tons less than the previous year. In 2015/16, global wheat consumption will increase slightly, reaching 0.711 billion tons, up from 0.708 billion tons in 2014/15. Therefore, the global wheat ending stock in 2015/16 will be reduced to 0.196 billion tons, down from 0.198 billion tons in 2014/15. IGC also said that global grain stocks in 2015/16 will be reduced to 0.406 billion tons, 23 million tons or 5 percentage points lower than the previous year. However, the level of global food stocks is still good, and the ratio of stocks to consumption will reach the five-year average.
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Reducing waste and loss and strengthening scientific research are key to achieving food security~ ~ Reduce and Research, the Key to Food Security and Nutrition Posted: 03/23/2015 3:39 pm EDT Updated: 03/23/2015 3:59 pm EDT According to the WFP, "There are 805 million hungry people in the world and 98 percent of them are in developing countries." According to the World Food Program, hunger kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. These sad facts are even sadder when we consider that an estimated one-quarter of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted each year. Halving that would save enough to feed the whole population that lives in hunger. Food loss and waste occurs both in developed and developing countries. In the developed it tends to happen more at the end of the food chain -- on the store shelf and in the kitchen. In developing countries food losses are mostly at production, post-harvest and processing stages. This is largely due to the lack of infrastructure -- from accessible roads to poor storage facilities. The Copenhagen Consensus Center has taken on the task of examining the costs and benefits of reducing post-harvest losses and their findings can be found in the report Benefits and Costs of the Food and Security Nutrition Targets for the Post 2015 Development Agenda. What really struck me were the figures on research and development. The paper studied different scenarios to show that investment in infrastructure contributes to lower food prices, improved food security and has positive economic rates of return. Such improvements are estimated to cost $240 billion over the next 15 years, but will reduce the number of hungry people by 57 million, avoid the malnourishment of four million children and generate $13 of benefits per dollar spent. Although this would be a significant step towards the achievement of the sustainable development goals, there may be a better way. The Copenhagen Consensus Center points out: There is an even better food target: an extra $88 billion in agricultural research and development over the next 15 years will increase yield growth by an additional 0.4% each year. For each dollar spent, this will achieve $34 of social benefits. It will save 79m people from hunger and avoid 5m children being malnourished. It seems it is time to get focused on ways to kick start R&D, as well as post harvest losses in the developing world. According to the UN-DESA, "During the last decade, global R&D increased approximately 22 per cent." However, public spending in R&D did not increase but on the contrary has been declining in highly food insecure countries. China and India, increased their public spending on R&D and have significantly accelerating their agricultural productivity. Fortunately, the private sector has been dedicating resources to R&D. According to USDA, in 2010 global private sector investment hit $11 billion. Reductions in post-harvest losses will require large public and private investments in infrastructure and should be complemented with agriculture R&D that is focused on long-term productivity growth and food and nutrition security. As we look to new goals for agriculture, we need to make sure agriculture is getting funding and that is breaking ground on research and post harvest losses.
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U.S. soybean acreage to hit record high~~U.S. farmers expect to plant record-high soybean acreage Posted: Tuesday, April 7, 2015 8:51 am U.S. farmers expect to plant record-high soybean acreage For a second year in a row, U.S. growers are raising the bar on soybean acreage. Growers across the United States intend to plant an estimated record-high 84.6 million acres of soybeans in 2015, up 1 percent from the previous record set in 2014, according to the Prospective Plantings report released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Increases of 200,000 acres or more are anticipated in Arkansas, Iowa, and Ohio. Compared with last year, the largest declines are expected in Kansas and Nebraska. If realized, soybean acreage will be the largest on record in Kentucky, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Driven by expectations of lower prices and returns in 2015, U.S. corn growers intend to plant 89.2 million acres in 2015, down 2 percent from last year and down 6 percent from 2013. If realized, this will be the lowest planted acreage since 2010. Countering this trend, Minnesota and Wisconsin are both expecting an increase in planted acreage from last year. The Prospective Plantings report provides the first official, survey based estimates of U.S. farmers' 2015 planting intentions. NASS's acreage estimates are based on surveys conducted during the first two weeks of March from a sample of more than 84,000 farm operators across the United States. Other key findings in the report are: •All wheat planted area for 2015 is estimated at 55.4 million acres, down 3 percent from 2014. •Winter wheat planted area, at 40.8 million acres, down 4 percent from last year. •All cotton planted area for 2015 is expected to total 9.55 million acres, 13 percent below last year. •Sorghum growers intend to plant 7.90 million acres in 2015, up 11 percent from 2014. Kansas and Texas, the leading sorghum-producing states, account for 75 percent of the expected United States acreage. NASS also released the quarterly Grain Stocks report to provide estimates of on-farm and off-farm stocks as of March 1. Key findings in that report include: •Corn stocks totaled 7.74 billion bushels, up 11 percent from the same time last year. On-farm corn stocks were up 13 percent from a year ago, and off-farm stocks were up 7 percent. •Soybeans stored on farms totaled 1.33 billion bushels, up 34 percent from March 1, 2014. On-farm soybean stocks were up 60 percent from a year ago, while off-farm stocks were up 18 percent. •All wheat stored totaled 1.12 billion bushels, up 6 percent from a year ago. On-farm all wheat stocks were up 17 percent from last year, while off-farm stocks were up 3 percent. •Durum wheat stored totaled 37.6 million bushels, down 1 percent from March 1, 2014. On-farm stocks were down 22 percent from last year, but off-farm stocks of Durum wheat were up 23 percent from March 1, 2014. The Prospective Plantings and Grain Stocks reports and all NASS reports are available online at www. nass.usda.gov.
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97% of American farms are family farms.~~97 percent of all U.S. farms are family-owned Mar 17, 2015 USDA Southeast Farm Press Family-owned farms remain the backbone of the agriculture industry. The latest data come from the Census of Agriculture farm typology report and shines light on the question, "What is a family farm?" "As we wrap up mining the 6 million data points from the latest Census of Agriculture, we used typology to further explore the demographics of who is farming and ranching today," said NASS Statistics Division Director Hubert Hamer. "What we found is that family-owned businesses, while very diverse, are at the core of the U.S. agriculture industry. In fact, 97 percent of all U.S. farms are family-owned." The 2012 Census of Agriculture Farm Typology report is a special data series that primarily focuses on the "family farm." By definition, a family farm is any farm where the majority of the business is owned by the operator and individuals related to the operator, including through blood, marriage, or adoption. Key highlights from the report include the following five facts about family farms in the United States: Five Facts to Know about Family Farms 1. Food equals family - 97 percent of the 2.1 million farms in the United States are family-owned operations. 2. Small business matters - 88 percent of all U.S. farms are small family farms. 3. Local connections come in small packages - 58 percent of all direct farm sales to consumers come from small family farms. 4. Big business matters too - 64 percent of all vegetable sales and 66 percent of all dairy sales come from the 3 percent of farms that are large or very large family farms. 5. Farming provides new beginnings - 18 percent of principal operators on family farms in the U.S. started within the last 10 years. "Whether small or large - on the East Coast, West Coast, or the Midwest - family farms produce food and fiber for people all across the U.S. and the world," said Hamer. "It's due in part to information such as this from the Census of Agriculture that we can help show the uniqueness and importance of U.S. agriculture to rural communities, families, and the world." The 2012 Census of Agriculture Farm Typology report classifies all farms into unique categories based on three criteria: who owns the operation, whether farming is the principal operator's primary occupation, and gross cash farm cash income. Small family farms have GCFI less than $350,000; midsize family farms have GCFI from $350,000 to $999,999; and large family farms have GCFI of $1 million or more. Small farms are further divided based on whether the principal operator works primarily on or off the farm.
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The American Farm Association hopes to simplify biosafety standards, reduce tariffs and other legacy issues through TPP.~~US Farm Bureau looks to TPP to streamline biosecurity, cut tariffs and tackle unfinished business from past agreements Updated Fri at 1:02pm Lower tariffs and better market access are common goals for farmers in any free trade negotiation. But the US farm lobby is also looking to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to deliver a streamlined, science-based approach to dealing with biosecurity regulations around the Pacific rim. The American Farm Bureau says the TPP, currently being negotiated by 12 countries including Australia, Japan, Vietnam and Malaysia, will include a chapter on sanitary and phytosanitary issues. Those are the regulations that set biosecurity protocols for food imports and exports. The Farm Bureau's senior congressional relations director in Washington DC, David Salmonsen said sanitary and phytosanitary regulations were too often used as an alternative trade barrier once tariff walls came down. "So we want a better system there, and a quicker system," he said. "Our fruit and vegetable people were very concerned that when there's some kind of a tie up at the import level, product can go off quality very quickly while there's a dispute. So we're trying to get a rapid response mechanism to solve small issues and not have everything be a full blown dispute while you're trying to get your imports in ." The TPP hasn't yet been locked down, and it's not clear what any sanitary/phytosanitary chapter may eventually say, but the Farm Bureau believes it'll be less about specifics and more about the approach countries should take to quarantine disputes and issues. "Not specifically, technically, about this, but an approach where we'll get a quicker mechanism, where the governments could go more of a science-based, risk assessment approach, versus just a 'we don't like it' approach which we think is really unfair and operates as a trade barrier," Mr Salmonsen said. "There's a chapter in the TPP that's being discussed now just on that subject ." That's something Australian horticultural producers and exporters can relate to all too well. This year, Vietnam banned the import of all fresh produce from Australia citing concerns about fruit fly. And in recent years, as Asian countries have shifted from unregulated market status to requiring compliance with additional sanitary and phytosanitarty regulations, Australia has also lost markets including Thailand and Taiwan. On the other hand, Australia's high quarantine standards and slow risk assessment processes have been cited as a problem by other countries, which keen to export their produce here. But Australia has consistently maintained its approach to biosecurity is science-based, and the Australian Government has said it will not do a deal that compromises the nation's comparatively pest- and disease-free status. What US farmers want: Farm Bureau outlines agriculture priorities for TPP The USA already has free trade agreements in place with a number of TPP countries, including Australia, Canada, Mexico, Peru and Chile. Mr Salmonsen says it wasn't until Japan joined negotiations in 2013 that the TPP became a much bigger deal for the US farm sector. "Even though Japan is already a very good market for us - about $13 billion of all kinds of product - we know that Japan has relied on a lot of high tariffs," he said. "So the negotiations between the US and Japan are, in a sense, very classical trade negotiations trying to address tariffs. "Indications are that we're making good progress. Indications are just indications until it's all done, but we think there'll be a significant lowering of their tariff on beef, we think there'll be some improvements on the way they handle pork imports from the US. Japan, Australia to share defence technology and lift trade barriers Photo: Australia's economic partnership agreement with Japan provides extra motivation to finalise the TPP, according to the US Farm Bureau. (News Online Brisbane) "Our rice producers would always like to sell some more rice. Now the Japanese are very sensitive on that, but there is certainly discussion of trying to get a bigger tariff rate quota for our rice exports ." Mr Salmonsen said Japan's economic partnership agreement with Australia - its first with a major agricultural exporter - increased America's desire to close the TPP. "People can say, 'well, if we don't conclude a deal with Japan, then Australia will have the advantage because their tariffs are going down before ours are'," he said. "So in that sense, let us say that it's a little motivating ." It's not only in Japan where the US is seeking concessions. The US, Canada and Mexico signed NAFTA - the North America Free Trade Agreement - in 1993, and a bilateral US-Canada agreement came even earlier, in 1988. Mr Salmonsen said US agriculture wanted the TPP to resolve some of the sore points that remained. "Even though we have a free trade agreement with Canada, when that was negotiated dairy and poultry were left out of it," he said. "Canada strongly protects its supply management program for those product areas, and we'd like to get some more access in there. Those discussions have to continue ." Farm Bureau believes Congress will vote to fast-track approval for TPP Mr Salmonsen said he believed Trade Promotion Authority would have the numbers in Congress, when it came up for a vote as early as the end of the month. In the Trade Promotion Authority bill, Congress sets out what it wants the Trans-Pacific Partnership to achieve, and restricts itself to a straight yes or no vote on any deal struck between the US and trade negotiators from 11 other Pacific nations including Australia. Many observers in Washington DC say it's not yet clear whether Trade Promotion Authority will pass, and there's concern from other Pacific nations that the TPP will stall if it doesn't. But the US Farm Bureau believes it'll get there. "We've been working this very hard since the beginning of the year, and this is the time of year when a lot of our farmers from our state farm bureau organisations come to Washington," Mr Salmonsen said. "They've all been briefed on the issue, they all take it up and meet with their entire state delegation - urban and rural members - and are pushing our message. "That's as simple as we can make it: support TPA now. We think we need this done, we need the certainty for our negotiating partners to know that our Congress will deal with the trade agreement as it's negotiated to, we hope, come to a conclusion to the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations later this year ." Anna Vidot travelled to America as part of a group of Asia Pacific journalists at the invitation of the US State Department.