World Agriculture
Developments, trade, data, and topics in world agriculture
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Food security will not be achieved without ensuring universal access to water~ ~ Without ensuring universal access to water, there can be no food security A new report on water for food security and nutrition shows how land, food and water issues are inextricably linked. This must be reflected in policymaking Friday 15 May 2015 09.00 BST Last modified on Saturday 16 May 2015 00.03 BST Ensuring universal access to water is vital in order to address food security and improve nutrition, yet recognition of the links between water and food are too often missed. A major report on water for food security and nutrition, launched on Friday by the high-level panel of experts on food security and nutrition (HLPE), is the first comprehensive effort to bring together access to water, food security and nutrition. This report goes far beyond the usual focus on water for agriculture. Safe drinking water and sanitation are fundamental to human development and wellbeing. Yet inadequate access to clean water undermines people's nutrition and health through water-borne diseases and chronic intestinal infections. The landmark report, commissioned by the committee on world food security (CFS), not only focuses on the need for access, it also makes important links between land, water and productivity. It underlines the message that water is integral to human food security and nutrition, as well as the conservation of forests, wetlands and lakes upon which all humans depend. Policies and governance issues on land, water and food are usually developed in isolation. Against a backdrop of future uncertainties, including climate change, changing diets and water-demand patterns, there has to be a joined-up approach to addressing these challenges. There are competing demands over water from different sectors such as agriculture, energy and industry. With this in mind, policymakers have to prioritise the rights and interests of the most marginalised and vulnerable groups, with a particular focus on women, when it comes to water access. Global development podcast/ Water and sanitation in health centres in Mali - podcast A recent World Health Organisation report has highlighted an alarming lack of clean water and sanitation in health centres in Mali, one of the poorest performers among low and middle income countries. Lucy Lamble investigates Listen There is vast inequality in access to water, which is determined by socio-economic, political, gender and power relations. Securing access can be particularly challenging for smallholders, vulnerable and marginalised populations and women. Advertisement All around the world, water reform processes as well as large-scale land acquisitions often overlook and threaten the customary and informal rights of poor and marginalised women and men. Moreover, women's entitlements are often recorded as belonging to the male “head of the household”. Removing this gender bias in farming and water and providing equal access to resources for both male and female farmers would have a big impact on food security and nutrition. Smallholder farmers produce more than 70% of the world's food but often lack recognition of their land and water rights in formal legal systems. Women and girls frequently spend several hours a day collecting water but lack decision-making power when it comes to water management. Indigenous people are often displaced from their lands and rivers as a result of large infrastructure projects, and the interests of fisherfolk and pastoralists are rarely advanced in national policies. Mechanisms to allocate water need to give adequate priority to water for food production as well as for the basic needs of poorest populations and those pushed to the edges of society. There is increasing corporate interest in water, and states should ensure that investments respect basic rights to water and sanitation as well as food. Taking these complexities into account, the report proposes ways to enhance the capacity of poor farmers to manage water and land and to increase water and agricultural productivity in a range of food production systems, improve governance and invest in metrics and knowledge. The human right to safe drinking water and sanitation as well as the right to food are globally recognised. States should ensure the full implementation of these rights and explore how they can be meaningfully joined up. The right to water largely focuses on safe drinking water and sanitation and rarely considers the productive uses of water. In Kenya, Colombia and Senegal, 71-75% of households use domestic water supplies for productive activities such as food gardening. Water is integral for sustainable livelihoods. There is no doubt that land, food and water issues are linked. The barriers to joined-up national and global policies do not derive from a lack of technology or resources. Rather they are rooted in the absence of human rights, and the failure to recognise that water and food are intertwined. The HLPE report argues for coherence on these issues at all levels of policymaking and management, from local to global. We are calling for a human rights approach to water governance to enhance food security and nutrition. Only this will ensure healthy and productive lives for all. Lyla Mehta is leader of the project team for the HLPE report, and professorial fellow at the UK's Institute of Development Studies
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US accuses EU of endangering global food security~~High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bdf3f582-f487-11e4-9a58-00144feab7de.html#ixzz3bIzWsqLB May 7, 2015 9:42 am US accuses EU of undermining global food security Shawn Donnan in Washington The US has accused the EU of undermining efforts to improve global food security by proposing new rules that would allow any of its 28 member states to opt out of decisions by Brussels to open the door to genetically modified crops. In an interview with the Financial Times, Tom Vilsack, the US agriculture secretary, said the move also raised “serious issues” about the future of transatlantic trade talks. FirstFT is our new essential daily email briefing of the best stories from across the web “If we are serious about global food security then we have to be very serious about the science that will allow us to be as productive as possible in the most sustainable way possible," Mr Vilsack said on the eve of a meeting of G20 agriculture ministers to discuss efforts to improve global food security. “The EU's decision potentially . . . creates a serious obstacle to meeting the challenge of global food security," he told the FT. “It is, in our view, inconsistent with the notion that we would have a science-based, rules-based [global] system ." The world has made progress in tackling malnourishment and the issue of food security in recent years, he said. Yet 850m people in the world are still malnourished and, with the global population growing and the effects of climate change looming, more needs to be done. The answers would have to come in large part from increasing agricultural productivity through technological innovation, Mr Vilsack said, with experts projecting that production would have to increase 60-70 per cent by 2050 to feed the 9bn people expected to be living on the planet by then. To do that would require a level of innovation in food production over the next 35 years equivalent to that seen over the past 10,000 years, Mr Vilsack said. The EU has long had a much more sceptical view of genetically modified organisms than the US and has heavily restricted their trade. The European Commission last month proposed giving individual member states the ability to opt out of any decisions it made to expand the heavily restricted list of genetically modified grains allowed into the EU. The move, which was accompanied by a decision to authorise 19 more GM products for distribution in the EU, was widely seen as a political fudge meant to accommodate public opposition to GMOs in countries such as France and Germany. Opponents of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership present a petition with 1m signatures outside the European Commission in Brussels this month ©AFP Opponents of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership present a petition with 1m signatures outside the European Commission in Brussels in December But it immediately drew an angry reaction from the US. Officials in Washington have since not only expressed anger about the impact on efforts to secure a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) but also have raised the possibility of bringing the EU to the World Trade Organisation if the proposal becomes law. In Washington on Monday, Cecilia Malmström, the EU's trade commissioner, defended the decision and said the EU was confident it complied with both WTO rules and the union's internal market regulations. Mr Vilsack, a former governor of the agricultural state of Iowa, said he accepted that there were different view points on GM crops in both the EU and the US, where a growing number of states are considering GMO labelling laws. The point is if you're going to establish a trade relationship and you are committed to open trade . . . you can't inject the culture or the politics or consumer choice into the discussions -Tom Vilsack, US agriculture secretary But “that's not the point”, he said. “The point is if you're going to establish a trade relationship and you are committed to open trade, you are committed to a science-based system . . . you can't inject the culture or the politics or consumer choice into the discussions ." He added: “The consumer can make the choices in the context of an open market . . . The problem is you are basically constraining the market in order to avoid having consumer choice. And that's inconsistent with the notion that you want a trade relationship with the EU that creates less friction in the system as opposed to more friction. “This creates more friction. This creates a lot more friction. It creates serious issues as to whether we will even get a TTIP. I'm not sure why the Europeans aren't willing to let the market decide ."
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EU-US trade deal will be a big threat to Irish agriculture~ ~ EU-US trade pact poses major threat to Irish agriculture, IFA warns Proposed deal will open up EU market to cheaper US beef imports, association says Wed, May 27, 2015, 01:00 First published: Wed, May 27, 2015, 01:00 The opening up of the EU import market to large volumes of US beef poses one of the greatest threats to Irish agriculture in decades, the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) has warned. The association's deputy president Tim O'Leary says the reduction in trade barriers envisaged by the proposed EU-US trade deal “without regulatory convergence” on both sides would put producers here at a competitive disadvantage. This is because of the extra costs European farmers would incur in complying with EU regulations, which include tighter controls on the use of GMOs, hormones and non-hormonal growth promoters, he said. The Department of Agriculture said it was working with meat processors to gain re-entry into the US. Photograph: Paul McErlane/Bloomberg Dawn Meats wins US beef export licence “The IFA is clear that, as a fundamental principle, EU negotiators must insist on equivalence of standards," said Mr O'Leary, noting that “mutual recognition of standards” was simply not enough. Seminar He was speaking at a seminar on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Agreement (TTIP) hosted at the European Parliament's Dublin office, organised by Fine Gael MEP for Ireland South, Sean Kelly. Ireland exports 90 per cent of the beef it produces, which equates to about half a million tonnes, worth about €2 billion to the economy. It is the single biggest component of the State's €10 billion food and drink exports. A recent report by research group Copenhagen Economics predicted the beef industry here stood to lose up to €50 million a year from increased competition if TTIP goes ahead. Mr O'Leary said beef production costs in the US are significantly lower than in Ireland or the EU due to a number of factors, including the relatively larger scale of production and the use of hormones and non-hormonal growth enhancers, which are banned in the EU. These factors are estimated to reduce production costs by up to €100 per head, he said. “While the TTIP offers opportunities for Ireland overall, IFA is clear that the interests of European and Irish agriculture must not be sacrificed by EU negotiators in pursuit of an overall trade deal," he said. Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton and Mr Kelly, meanwhile, told the seminar that TTIP offered “massive opportunities” for the Irish economy. Mr Bruton said the Copenhagen Economics report indicated comprehensive trade agreement with the US would add 1.1 per cent to gross domestic product here and create up to 10,000 extra jobs. Mr Kelly said businesses that currently trade with the US find the compliance requirements “very off-putting ”. Trade barriers “An ambitious but calculated EU trade agreement with the US will tear down trade barriers, open up investment opportunities, boost EU exports and particularly benefit SMEs," he said, noting the deal could lead to a €250 billion or 2 per cent increase in EU GDP. This equated to an annual extra €500 per European family and the creation of over two million jobs across Europe, he added. http://www.irishtimes.com/business/agribusiness-and-food/eu-us-trade-pact-poses-major-threat-to-irish-agriculture-ifa-warns-1.2226999
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Why 2015 will be the take-off year for agricultural drones~ ~ Why 2015 is the year agriculture drones take off May 18, 2015, 5:02 PM EDT U.S. drones are expected to change how we cultivate and grow food across the country. For years now, drone advocates have cited precision agriculture-crop management that uses GPS and big data-as a way to boost crop yields and profits while resolving water and food crises. Unfortunately, for all the hype surrounding the concept drones haven't had a significant impact on the agriculture business, at least, until now. With the debut of the Federal Aviation Administration's Section 333 exemption (which permits companies to fly drones commercially on a case-by-case basis) in November that's poised to change, particularly in the United States. For the first time agriculture drones will legally be able to gather widespread data across an entire growing season, allowing companies to test their business models and technologies together for the first time-and ideally make a profit in the process. “This is the first year we'll actually be able to see, by the time the growing season is over, the impact on the farmer and the impact of the quality of the grapes," says David Baeza, whose precision agriculture startup Vine Rangers uses drones and ground robots to gather data on vineyard crops.We're really excited about that ." Before the F.A.A. began offering permits for commercial drones, companies like Vine Rangers couldn't charge farming operations for their services, which meant they were often relegated to working with farms (often smaller independent ones) on exploratory pilot programs. The shift in regulatory policy will now allow Vine Rangers and other certified firms-many of which are in the startup phase-to assist both large and small farming operations with water and disease management, and charge for the services. They'll also be able to use drones to help with better planting and crop rotation strategies, and provide a higher degree of all-around knowledge of how crops are progressing day-to-day in different parts of a given field. This boost in crop intelligence should make farms more efficient and help smaller operations compete with their more well-heeled Big Agriculture competitors. More importantly, companies can now test their business models and develop new revenue streams, as well as attract new investment. “We can actually move companies from pilot program to paid," Baeza says about revenue possibilities that now exist for companies like his. The startup currently has two clients-both vineyards-in California's Central Valley and working to expand its operations to other wine growing regions. “The biggest part about getting paid is obviously bringing in revenue," he says. “But now we can test the parameters of the business model as well ." Revenue will be key for drone agriculture startups-most of which currently focus on smaller specialty crops like grapes and avocados over row crops like corn or other grains-as they prepare their businesses as and aim to grab market share in a space analysts expect to grow exponentially in the years ahead. A widely-cited drone report released by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International predicts that the legalization of commercial drones will create more than $80 billion in economic impact (such as revenue, job creation) between 2015 and 2025, and that precision agriculture will provide the biggest piece of that growth. Startups like Vine Rangers are honing their drone technologies on specialty crops for now, but eventually will move into large-scale farms, which are bigger and require more resources to cover, Baeza says. As such, the advent of all these technologies will impact both small and international companies, though exactly how that will unfold remains to be seen. “The biggest thing to watch is what's going to happen to giants like Monsanto," Baeza says. “How you define this market is changing, and the incumbents are in for a battle ." http://fortune.com/2015/05/18/drone-agriculture/
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Europe faces rapid loss of biodiversity and wildlife~ ~ Europe is rapidly losing its biodiversity and wildlife habitats 15:50 18 May 2015 by Andy Coghlan Wildlife is rapidly dying out across Europe, as biodiverse habitats are invaded by urban sprawl, intensive agriculture, alien species and commercial forestry. This is according to the European Commission's forthcoming report assessing Europe's biodiversity, expected to be published later this week. The report is a mid-term review of progress towards the EU's Biodiversity Strategy, launched in 2012. The strategy has the overall target of halting the loss of biodiversity by 2020, and where possible restoring biodiversity that's already been lost. It seems that, at the moment, biodiversity is still in decline. "We're losing and fragmenting natural areas," says Frank Wugt Larsen of the European Environment Agency. Larsen revealed that 77 per cent of Europe's most biodiverse habitats were judged to be in an "unfavourable conservation status" between 2007 and 2013. The position was equally bleak for species diversity, with 60 per cent of assessed species not in a favourable position. Pollination threat Butterflies, bees and birds are all in decline. The report reveals, for example, that populations of grassland butterflies halved between 1990 and 2011 and 24 per cent of European bumblebee species are now threatened by extinction. The report also warns that the decline in pollinator insects could affect agriculture, seeing as 84 per cent of Europe's crops have at least some dependence on insect pollination. Between 2000 and 2010, the capacity of insects to pollinate crops decreased by around 5 per cent because of their dwindling numbers. "The value of insect pollination is estimated at €14 billion per year, but we get it for free," says Larsen. "We depend on nature to deliver these goods and services ." Small success The same bleak picture is painted for Europe's fish stocks and marine habitats. Only 7 per cent of species and 9 per cent of habitats in the marine environment were rated as "in favourable conservation status ". Larsen says that many fish stocks are still fished above their maximum sustainable yield. Europe's common bird populations are doing no better. Numbers have declined by 12 per cent since 1990. The declines have affected the 39 species of farmland birds most severely, their populations collectively declining by 20 per cent. On a more positive front, large carnivores, including the brown bear, the lynx and the wolf, are recovering. Also, the Europe-wide Natura 2000 network of protected areas has been growing and now covers 18 per cent of the EU. "It's an area twice the size of Spain," says Larsen.
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California's Drought-Zone Farmers Agree to Drought Reduction in Agricultural Water Use~ ~ Farmers in drought-stricken California agree to drastically cut back on water use Associated Press May 23, 2015 | 3:09 a.m. EDT By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and SCOTT SMITH, Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California farmers who hold some of the state's strongest water rights avoided the threat of deep mandatory cuts when the state accepted their proposal to voluntarily reduce consumption by 25 percent amid one of the worst droughts on record. Officials hope the deal agreed upon on Friday will serve as a model for more such agreements with growers in the nation's top-producing farm state, where agriculture accounts for 80 percent of all water drawn from rivers, streams and the ground. "We're in a drought unprecedented in our time. That's calling upon us to take unprecedented action," Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the state Water Resources Control Board, said in announcing the agreement. The rare concession from the farmers is the latest indication of the severity of the water shortage in California, which is suffering through its driest four years on record. California water law is built around preserving the rights of so-called senior rights holders - farmers and others whose acreage abuts rivers and streams, or whose claims to water date back a century or more, as far back as Gold Rush days. The offer potentially could cover hundreds of farmers in the delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the heart of California's water system. About 25 percent of all California river water runs through the delta, according to the state's Department of Water Resources. Some of the farmers made the offer after state officials warned they were days away from ordering the first cuts in more than 30 years to the senior water rights holders' allotments. The state already has ordered cities and towns to cut their water use by 25 percent, and it has curtailed water deliveries to many other farmers. But in recent weeks, many city dwellers and others have complained that agriculture should be made to share more of the sacrifice. Rudy Mussi, whose family farms about 4,000 acres in the delta southwest of Stockton, reacted with mixed emotions about state approval of the deal. "The 25 percent savings, that gives us certainty," Mussi said. "But at the same time I'm being asked to give up 25 percent of my paycheck ." By itself, the delta farmers' offer would not go far enough to save shrinking waterways statewide. But if more farmers sign on across the state, California could save significant amounts of water, since the nearly 4,000 senior water rights holders alone consume trillions of gallons a year. The agreement "is an illustration of creative practical approaches that water managers in the state of California are taking to help get us all through this devastating drought," said Michael George, state water master for the delta. California produces nearly half of the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in the U.S., but agriculture experts say they would expect only modest immediate effects on food prices from any reduction in water for the senior water rights holders. Other regions would be able to make up the difference, economists say. Under the deal, delta farmers have until June 1 to lay out how they will use 25 percent less water during the summer. That could include irrigating their crops less or leaving some of their land fallow. In exchange, the state gave assurances to the farmers it will not cut the remaining 75 percent of the water to which they are entitled. "When your back is up against the wall, I guess you'll do anything," said Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation and an almond grower in the Modesto area, outside of the delta. He said he is skeptical the deal will protect the farmers if the drought worsens. Senior water rights holders last saw their water cut in 1977, but that move applied only to dozens of people along a stretch of the Sacramento River. http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/05/23/california-farmers-agree-to-drastically-cut-water-use
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Spain and Italy hit by "olive Ebola"Spain and Italy hit by devastating 'olive ebola' outbreak ~ ~ ~ Monday 25 May 2015 Spanish olive groves are at risk of being wiped out by a strain of “olive ebola” which has ravaged the crop in Italy. The bacteria Xylella fastidiosa, believed to have originally come from the United States, has torn through southern Italy since it first appeared in late 2013. Dubbed “olive ebola” by a Blanca Landa, a researcher at the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture, is threatening to wipe out decimate entire groves across southern Spain. Landa told Spanish daily newspaper ABC: “The Italian outbreak is very virulent. The bacteria's virulence in olive trees is unprecedented. "It is unforgiving. The Italian farmers we met told us they had taken better care of their olive groves than their children and now they are irrevocably damaged. In barely a year it can wipe out an entire plantation ." It is causing serious concern for Spanish officials as Spain is the biggest olive oil producer in the European Union. There is no cure for the disease, which causes "olive quick decline syndrome", and all affected trees must be felled. At the end of April when the EU's agriculture body, Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (Paff) asked Italy to cut down its affected trees to stop the disease spreading further. Italian authorities will now be required to test all olive trees in a 20km zone adjacent to affected areas, Brindisi and Taranto. If any places test positive, all olive crops within a 100m radius must be destroyed. But these harsh measures have been criticised by Roberto Moncalvo, the president of Italian agricultural group Coldiretti. He told The Local website in Italy: the destruction of Italian olive groves could “cause unacceptable economic and environmental damage” and wipe out “hundreds of years of history ”.
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Is Europe facing a land crisis?~Is Europe running out of land? Amy Forde ? May 21, 2015 ? 0 Comment Is Europe running out of land? That is the question Teagasc Director Professor Gerry Boyle posed at the recent launch of a new research project for sustainable land management. “Last autumn, the UN revised its projections for population growth. The world's population is no longer expected to stabilise after 2050, instead it is now expected to continue to grow and approach 11 billion people by 2100. “These new figures will certainly fuel the debate whether the world, including Europe, is 'running out of land'," he said. " The number of mouths to feed from each parcel of land continues to rise. But the ecological footprint that we can afford ourselves continues to shrink. The new research project entitled 'Landmark' is a consortium of European researchers and advisors that will seek to unearth practices and policy pathways that make the most of Europe's rich and diverse heritage of soils, which are key to so many ecosystem services, Teagasc says. The aim of Landmark is to open up the soils of Europe and assess farm practices and policies that optimise the delivery of food and other ecosystem services, it says. Teagasc says that since both the European food system and ecosystems do not recognise borders, Landmark has taken an international approach. It will bring together all the knowledge on land management from European farmers, advisors, scientists and policy makers, it says. By 2020, Landmark aims to produce three outcomes: •For farmers: a soil navigator that provides advice on the sustainable management of soils on 'my farm '. •For legislators: a framework for monitoring of soil quality and soil functions that is applicable across Europe. •For policy makers: an assessment of policies that can ensure that we 'make the most of our land', from both an agronomic and environmental point of view. Landmark Co-ordinator Dr. Rachel Creamer from Teagasc said that not only do we expect Europe's agricultural land to provide a nutritious diet for all; we also expect it to provide clean water, to store carbon, recycle our waste and provide a home for biodiversity. “These competing demands have now brought soil science sharply back into focus. If we are to make the most of our land, we need to understand the 'engine room' of agriculture in all its diversity," she said. The Pan-European project was launched recently in Castledockrell, Co. Wexford by Minister of State for Skills, Research and Innovation Damien English. Landmark receives €5m in European funding from the European Commission as part of its Horizon 2020 Research Programme. Read More From EU?
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Agriculture is key to the success of ASEAN market integration~~Agriculture key to success of ASEAN single market: Oxfam The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | World | Tue, May 26 2015 Oxfam has warned that ASEAN economic integration, which will create a single market where goods, workforce and capital can flow freely, could slow down if it failed to calculate the impact of climate change on agriculture in the region.It says in its new “Harmless Harvest” report that sustainable agriculture will help ASEAN nations cope in a changing climate. Sustainable agriculture will boost farmers' incomes and ensure food security without racking up huge quantities of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are behind global warming.“Sustainable agriculture is a key ingredient for ASEAN economic integration to succeed," Oxfam's Grow campaign policy coordinator, Riza Bernabe, said on Tuesday.He said as countries worked together as one economic entity, so must they act together to boldly face the impact of climate change on a region that engaged in food production and agricultural trade.“Sustainable agriculture will help beef up Southeast Asia's resilience in a changing climate," Bernabe said.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports many economies in ASEAN rely on the agriculture sector, and the effect of climate change on the sector is expected to result in a mean drop of 2.2 percent in the gross domestic product of several countries in Southeast Asia by 2100.Oxfam says poor food producers in different parts of the region have had a front seat view to the consequences of extreme weather events or slow-onset impacts, which are becoming more and more ordinary because of climate change.Oxfam's report found that in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam, rainfall has been below average since 2009, resulting in droughts, which are associated with lower yields and increased pest and disease infestation. (ebf)( ) - See more at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/05/26/agriculture-key-success-asean-single-market-oxfam.html#sthash.l44C3ovE.dpuf
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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