World Agriculture
Developments, trade, data, and topics in world agriculture
-
India's grain production may exceed last year's levelFoodgrain output may surpass last year's level: Shobhana Pattanayak, Agriculture Secretary PTI| Jul 08, 2018, 11.22 AM IST India's foodgrain output could exceed last year's record of 279.51 million tonne (MT) buoyed by favourable monsoon, higher MSP and likely increase in crop productivity, an official said. Agriculture Secretary Shobhana Pattanayak exuded confidence that sowing, which is lagging behind so far, will pick up in the coming weeks with wide coverage of rainfall in all growing states. Moreover, farmers will now be enthused to bring more acreage on the back of sharp increase in the minimum support price (MSP) for all 14 kharif crops announced last week. The sowing area of kharif crops like paddy is currently lower than the last year because of deficit rains in some parts of the country, he added. Sowing of kharif crops begins from June with the onset of southwest monsoon and harvesting takes place from October onwards. "The shortfall in acreage will be made up in the coming weeks. We will definitely exceed last year's production," Pattanayak told. This year's situation is "much better", and is not like what was witnessed in .. Read more: //economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/64903750.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst published: 2018-7-11 | Responsible Editor: Xie Jinli
-
Kazakhstan invites foreign investors to invest in the agro-industrial sectorTimes of Central Asia | 5 July 2018 Kazakhstan invites foreign investment in agro-industrial sector ASTANA (TCA) - The agro-industrial sector of Kazakhstan is a promising platform for attracting foreign investments, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture Umirzak Shukeyev said at the round table “Agro-industry: ensuring food security on the new Silk Road”, held as part of the Kazakhstan Global Investment Roundtable in Astana on July 3, Kazakh Invest National Company for Investment Support and Promotion reported. He spoke about the main advantages of investing in the agro-industrial complex of Kazakhstan. Firstly, it is the availability of natural pastures - 180 million hectares, which are currently used at only 25-30%. Secondly, it is the availability of labor resources, since 45% of Kazakhstan's population lives in rural areas. Thirdly, to support investment activities, the Government of Kazakhstan has developed a special tax and customs regime, including exemption from corporate tax for a period of up to 10 years, exemption from property tax for up to 8 years, exemption from customs duties on imported equipment and raw materials. Fourthly, it is the possibility of producing organic products, which has an increased cost and is in demand on world markets. This advantage is due, above all, to the historically low level of the use of mineral fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides in Kazakhstan. “We have developed a regulatory framework for the creation of a full-fledged organic production system in Kazakhstan - a law and all by-laws have been developed, at the moment, work is under way to create a certification system, as well as training farmers," said Shukeyev. The vice-premier emphasized that Kazakhstan has developed a state program for the development of the agro-industrial complex of Kazakhstan for 2017-2021, mechanisms of which are available to both Kazakhstani and foreign investors. “In addition to the State Program of the Agro-Industrial Complex, a number of other government programs are being implemented in Kazakhstan aimed at infrastructure development of projects, including the Business Roadmap 2020 program, the state program for infrastructure development of Nurly Zhol, and the program for industrial and innovative development, which is the creation of new export-oriented high-tech industries," said the Agriculture Minister. He also spoke about export opportunities for investors. “Kazakhstan is located in the heart of Eurasia, between Europe and China. Due to its location, a number of large infrastructure projects are being developed in Kazakhstan: the dry port of Khorgos on the border with China, the Aktau port on the Caspian Sea, the international transit corridor Western Europe - Western China. Moreover, Kazakhstan's accession to the Eurasian Economic Union with a market capacity of about 180 million people opens additional opportunities for investors to effectively implement investment projects on the territory of Kazakhstan. Investors can freely promote their products to the markets of Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia," Shukeyev concluded. Published: 2018-7-11 | Responsible Editor: Xie Jinli
-
Pakistan: Agricultural sector will provide broad development opportunities for higher economic growthNot only since when, banks and agricultural finance have had this inseparable relationship. They influenced each other and developed each other before. Recently, the Governor of the Central Bank of Pakistan Bajwa participated in the National Bank Business System Conference. At the meeting, he said that the Central Bank of Pakistan will focus on promoting the development of agricultural finance and small and medium-sized enterprises in the future. He stressed that "fairness and firmness" will be the guiding principles for the future development of Pakistan's banking industry, requiring banks to actively play their own role to achieve the goals of inclusive economic growth and job creation. He pointed out that Pakistan is rich in natural resources, and providing better financial services to farmers should be the focus of the bank. The agricultural sector will provide broad development opportunities for achieving higher economic growth. Small and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone industry of Pakistan's industry, but this field has been neglected for a long time. It requires the joint efforts of Pakistan's commercial banks to promote the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in Pakistan. He also promised to promote the development of Islamic banks and strive to solve major problems such as asset liquidity management for Islamic bonds. Source: First Agricultural Economy | Release Date: 2017-07-21 | Responsible Editor: Zhai Tianchang
-
USDA predicts China will import 91 million tons of soybeans in 2016/17According to US media reports, a few days ago, the US Department of Agriculture has released the current export inspection weekly report. From the inspection weekly report, it can be seen that US exports to mainland China soybean144,550 tons have been shipped in the week ending July 20, 2017, compared to 140,999 tons shipped in the previous week. U.S. soybean exports to China accounted for 24.2 percent of total exports that week, compared with 49.3 percent last week and 0.7 percent two weeks ago. In its July 2017 supply and demand report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted that China would import 91 million tons of soybeans in 2016/17, 2 million tons higher than last month's forecast and 9.3 percent higher than 83.23 million tons in 2015/16. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also predicted that China's soybean imports in 2017/18 would be 94 million tons, 1 million tons higher than last month's forecast. In contrast, China's soybean imports increased by 6.2 per cent year-on-year in 2015/16, 11.4 per cent year-on-year in 2014/15 and 17.5 per cent year-on-year in 2013/14. Source: First Agricultural Economic Journal | Release Date: July 25, 2017 | Responsible Editor: Zhai Tianchang
-
Why is India's cotton price high and difficult? Deviating from the international cotton price trend?Cotton is an item often used in our daily life, and it is widely used in various industries, such as medical treatment, clothing, household goods (quilts, etc.), especially in winter, the demand is relatively wide, and the price is almost acceptable to us. In addition to the self-sufficiency of cotton, we also have some import and export trade, and the price will fluctuate. Judging from the quotations of some foreign investors and large import enterprises, ICE's main contracts have continued to oscillate in 66-69 cents/pound boxes since late June (a low of 66.15 cents, a new low since September 2016). Spot quotations such as US cotton (including new flowers in 2016/17 and 2017/18), Australian cotton, West African cotton new flowers and Uzbekistan have fallen steadily, however, the Indian cotton S-6 did not dive with the deep adjustment of ICE and outer plate, and the ginning mills and exporters were very calm. According to statistics from India's Ministry of Agriculture, as of June 29, the sown area of cotton had reached 71.865 million mu, an increase of 56.5 per cent over the same period last year, which was much higher than expected; as of June 30, the total amount of new Indian cotton on the market in Japan reached 5.554 million tons, up from 5.454 million tons in the same period last year. However, the ex-factory price of Indian cotton ginning factory and the quotation of Far East main port remained high and stable, which deviated from the trend of international cotton price. From July 13 to 16, the July/August shipping dates of Qingdao, Zhangjiagang, Shanghai and other major ports are C/A SM 1-1/8 ", EMOT SM 1-1/8" and SM 1-5/32 "Australian cotton and SM West Africa cotton, which are quoted at 81.65-81.75 cents/pound, 78.60-78.70 cents/pound, 84.10-84.20 cents/pound and 79.10-79.25 cents/pound respectively. However, the price quoted by S-6 1-1/8 "China's main port is as high as 84.20-84.25 cents/pound, even slightly higher than that of Australian cotton. The upside-down price with EMOT SM is 5.50-5.65 cents/pound, higher than that of West African cotton by more than 5 cents/pound. From the survey point of view, since mid-June, the port of high-quality Australian cotton, American cotton, black cotton goods, inquiry and contract shipments than the previous active, bonded, spot contract growth, but S-6, J34, MCU5 and other Indian cotton but slow shipment, little response, so what is the reason for the Indian cotton prices in high, sellers rather lack of abuse? The author analyzes as follows: first, there is almost no profit margin and price reduction space for Indian cotton from the ginning mill to the exporter.. Affected by the increase in MSP in 2016/17, the new monetary policy, GST, etc., the purchase price of Indian seed cotton has been rising all the way and the cost of lint has been rising. However, the strengthening of the Indian rupee against the US dollar has added fuel to the price of Indian cotton. Trading enterprises and exporters have little room for relaxation and bargaining. A little carelessness will lead to a situation of losing everything. Second, the number of foreign businessmen and traders operating in Indian cotton has decreased significantly. According to the survey, since 2013, there have been fewer and fewer international cotton merchants operating and operating Indian cotton, and Indian ginning enterprises directly exporting cotton have gradually disappeared. There are not only the reasons for the decline in export volume caused by the sharp increase in domestic cotton consumption demand in India, but also the sharp rise and fall of cotton prices, indian cotton farmers, cotton processing enterprises, exporters often unilaterally raise prices, delay shipment, breach of contract or large-scale cancellation of supply contracts and so on to international cotton merchants, buyers and other factors, so in recent years, the main business of Indian cotton is less and less. Third, Indian companies estimate their domestic cotton consumption capacity on the high side. According to the latest USDA monthly report, India's domestic cotton consumption in 2017/18 was about 5.389 million tons, up 218000 tons from 2016/17, while the statistics of relevant Indian ministries were more optimistic. Fourth, India's cotton planting costs, labor wages and other taxes, financial costs, etc. rose significantly.. According to the survey, in recent years, the wages of Indian workers, the price of agricultural materials, the input of cotton planting, and the cost of financing have been rising. In Southeast Asian countries, the cost advantages of cotton, spinning, weaving, and clothing have declined in an all-round way, just like China after 2010, it is in a bottleneck period of transformation. Source: First Agricultural Economic Co-operation | Release Date: 2017-07-28 | Responsible Editor: Zhai Tianchang
-
107 Nobel laureates signed an open letter demanding that Greenpeace stop its anti-GM food campaign.~ ~ 107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs By Joel Achenbach June 29 at 12:01 PM? More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The letter asks Greenpeace to cease its efforts to block introduction of a genetically engineered strain of rice that supporters say could reduce Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in the developing world. "We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against 'GMOs' in general and Golden Rice in particular," the letter states. The letter campaign was organized by Richard Roberts, chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs and, with Phillip Sharp, the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of genetic sequences known as introns. The campaign has a website, supportprecisionagriculture.org, that includes a running list of the signatories, and the group plans to hold a news conference Thursday morning at the National Press Club in Washington. “We're scientists. We understand the logic of science. It's easy to see what Greenpeace is doing is damaging and is anti-science," Roberts told The Washington Post. “Greenpeace initially, and then some of their allies, deliberately went out of their way to scare people. It was a way for them to raise money for their cause ." Roberts said he endorses many other activities of Greenpeace, and said he hopes the group, after reading the letter, would "admit that this is an issue that they got wrong and focus on the stuff that they do well ." Greenpeace has not yet responded to requests for comment on the letter. It is hardly the only group that opposes GMOs, but it has a robust global presence, and the laureates in their letter contend that Greenpeace has led the effort to block Golden Rice. The list of signatories had risen to 107 names by Wednesday morning. Roberts said that, by his count, there are 296 living laureates. Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post, “I find it surprising that groups that are very supportive of science when it comes to global climate change, or even, for the most part, in the appreciation of the value of vaccination in preventing human disease, yet can be so dismissive of the general views of scientists when it comes to something as important as the world's agricultural future ." The letter states: Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity. Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia. The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people, suffer from VAD, including 40 percent of the children under five in the developing world. Based on UNICEF statistics, a total of one to two million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of VAD, because it compromises the immune system, putting babies and children at great risk. VAD itself is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally affecting 250,000 - 500,000 children each year. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight. The scientific consensus is that that gene editing in a laboratory is not more hazardous than modifications through traditional breeding, and that engineered plants potentially have environmental or health benefits, such as cutting down on the need for pesticides. A report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released in May, said there is no substantiated evidence that GMO crops have sickened people or harmed the environment, but also cautioned that such crops are relatively new and that it is premature to make broad generalizations, positive or negative, about their safety. [Are GMO crops safe? Scientists weigh in, saying the focus should be on the plant and not the process.] Opponents of GMOs have said these crops may not be safe for human or animal consumption, have not been shown to improve crop yields, have led to excessive use of herbicides and can potentially spread engineered genes beyond the boundaries of farms. Greenpeace International's website states that the release of GMOs into the natural world is a form of "genetic pollution." The site states: Genetic engineering enables scientists to create plants, animals and micro-organisms by manipulating genes in a way that does not occur naturally. These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating non 'GE' environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way. Virtually all crops and livestock have been genetically engineered in the broadest sense; there are no wild cows, and the cornfields of the United States reflect many centuries of plant modification through traditional breeding. Genetically modified crops started to become common in the mid-1990s; today, most of the corn, soybeans and cotton in the country have been modified to be resistant to insects or tolerant of herbicide, according to government statistics. [The 'GMO-free' marketing ploy] Opponents of GMOs have focused a great deal on the economic and social repercussions of the introduction of lab-modified crops. Greenpeace has warned of the corporate domination of the food supply, saying that small farmers will suffer. A Greenpeace spokesman Wednesday referred a reporter to a Greenpeace publication titled "Twenty Years of Failure: Why GM crops have failed to deliver on their promises ." This debate between mainstream scientists and environmental activists isn't new, and there is little reason to suspect that the letter signed by the Nobel laureates will persuade GMO opponents to stand down. But Columbia University's Martin Chalfie, who shared the 2008 Nobel in chemistry for research on green fluorescent protein, said he thinks laureates can be influential on the GMO issue. "Is there something special about Nobel laureates? I'm not so sure we're any more special than other scientists who have looked at the evidence involved, but we have considerably more visibility because of the prize. I think that this behooves us, that when we feel that science is not being listened to, that we speak out ." Roberts said he has worked on previous campaigns that sought to leverage the influence of Nobel laureates. In 2012, for example, he organized a campaign to persuade Chinese authorities to release from house arrest the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Roberts said he decided to take on the GMO issue after hearing from scientific colleagues their research was being impeded by anti-GMO activism from Greenpeace and other organizations. He said he has no financial interest in GMO research. Further Reading:
-
Agriculture and the Paris AgreementAgriculture and the Paris Agreement SOURCE: AP/Seth Perlman A central Illinois farmer cultivates his cornfield in Illinois, October 2012. By the CAP Energy and Environment Team | Thursday, May 12, 2016 Climate change and U.S. agriculture Today, the effects of climate change on domestic agriculture are felt through events such as droughts, wildfires, heavy downpours, and greater occurrences of pests. Emissions of greenhouse gases from agricultural processes amount to 9 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and have increased 11 percent since 1990. Thus, as the United States moves forward with the rest of the world to respond to climate change, the agriculture sector will face the dual challenge of reducing emissions and enhancing resilience to climate change. This will require more sustainable agricultural practices-often referred to as climate-smart agriculture. This fact sheet describes how the recently established Paris climate agreement relates to the agriculture sector, along with the opportunities that climate-smart agriculture presents. The Paris agreement In December 2015, 196 governments reached an agreement in Paris to jointly address the threat of climate change. Although the Paris agreement does not explicitly outline the role of agriculture in reducing global emissions, it does present opportunities for both mitigation and adaptation, and its preamble makes clear that the global community must address climate change's effects on agriculture to build resilience and enhance food security globally. Specifically, the agreement commits to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C ." In order to achieve these goals, countries will have to go beyond their current emissions reduction commitments and develop additional plans for further action. As CGIAR, a worldwide partnership on agricultural research, has noted, “it will be impossible to stay within either a 1.5 or two degree C target if agriculture does not contribute to emissions reductions." Most countries recognize this necessity; more than 80 percent outlined mitigation strategies for agricultural emissions in their pledges under the agreement. Furthermore, agriculture is already a key focus point for countries' adaptation plans and commitments. Preparing for the effects of climate change The 2014 National Climate Assessment concluded that unmitigated climate change will have varied and widespread effects on agriculture, including drought, cold snaps, increased pests, and extreme weather events. Historic drought in California and the western United States caused $4 billion in damage in 2014, and persistent drought conditions in Texas and the Great Plains states in 2012 and 2013 resulted in more than $41 billion in damage. A growing body of scientific research has found that, in part, climate change triggered both of these droughts, as well as that warming temperatures will increase both the likelihood and intensity of droughts. Crop damage and loss not only have devastating effects on farmers' livelihoods but also can cause increased food prices and shortages. For this reason, adapting agriculture to the effects of climate change is essential to the ongoing success of this sector and the well-being of American families. The agriculture sector is taking steps to prepare for these effects and develop more resilient crops. These strategies center on smarter and more sustainable use of resources, such as diversifying crop varieties and modifying tillage practices to improve the productivity of farming operations. Broadly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, describes a framework of resistance, resilience, and transformation strategies in agricultural management. This approach encourages farmers to develop resistance methods, such as crop selections, that are resistant to pest pressures brought on by climate change. In the longer term, the framework states that farmers will have to adopt resilience measures such as smarter irrigation practices, ultimately leading to the creation of an agricultural sector that can thrive despite increased pressures from climate change. To that end, the USDA has outlined five climate-smart building blocks to encourage such measures. These include voluntary and incentive-based technical assistance programs, tracking the success of such programs, and leveraging the efforts of the agriculture sector and conservation organizations to spur greater action. Mitigating emissions The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, outlines three strategies to reduce emissions from the agriculture sector: land and crop management, livestock management, and manure management. Mitigating emissions through land and crop management requires more precise application of nitrogen-based synthetic fertilizers to reduce nitrous oxide emissions, which are nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide emissions. Livestock and manure management also reduces methane emissions-another potent greenhouse gas that is emitted through livestock digestion and manure decomposition. The EPA's methane mitigation strategies for livestock call for improved feeding practices as a means to reduce methane emissions during livestock digestion and for the control and capture of methane emissions during manure decomposition. Soil management is also an important component in mitigating the effects of farming emissions, as soil can sequester carbon dioxide when properly managed. Currently, however, agricultural soil management contributes to more than half the emissions from the agriculture sector, including through the release of carbon previously stored in the soil. Additionally, nongovernmental organizations have called for more widespread and accurate recording of emissions from companies' agricultural operations. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol-a nonprofit initiative to motivate businesses to monitor greenhouse gas pollution-issues agricultural guidance for companies, detailing emissions inventory methods that more accurately assess the climate impact of farming and livestock. Conclusion With the Paris agreement in place, global leaders have committed to tackling greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the effects of climate change. Agriculture offers tremendous potential in the fight against climate change. Even as the United States and countries around the world work to unlock this potential, mitigation must be coupled with strategies to adapt agriculture to the stresses of climate change and make the agriculture sector itself more sustainable and resilient.
-
The Future of AgricultureTHE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE Factory fresh If agriculture is to continue to feed the world, it needs to become more like manufacturing, says Geoffrey Carr. Fortunately, that is already beginning to happen TOM ROGERS is an almond farmer in Madera County, in California's Central Valley. Almonds are delicious and nutritious. They are also lucrative. Californian farmers, who between them grow 80% of the world's supply of these nuts, earn $11 billion from doing so. But almonds are thirsty. A calculation by a pair of Dutch researchers six years ago suggested that growing a single one of them consumes around a gallon of water. This is merely an American gallon of 3.8 litres, not an imperial one of 4.5 litres, but it is still a tidy amount of H2O. And water has to be paid. Technology, however, has come to Mr Rogers's aid. His farm is wired up like a lab rat. Or, to be more accurate, it is wirelessed up. Moisture sensors planted throughout the nut groves keep track of what is going on in the soil. They send their results to a computer in the cloud (the network of servers that does an increasing amount of the world's heavy-duty computing) to be crunched. The results are passed back to the farm's irrigation system-a grid of drip tapes (hoses with holes punched in them) that are filled by pumps. The system resembles the hydroponics used to grow vegetables in greenhouses. Every half-hour a carefully calibrated pulse of water based on the cloud's calculations, and mixed with an appropriate dose of fertiliser if scheduled, is pushed through the tapes, delivering a precise sprinkling to each tree. The pulses alternate between one side of the tree trunk and the other, which experience has shown encourages water uptake. Before this system was in place, Mr Rogers would have irrigated his farm about once a week. With the new little-but-often technique, he uses 20% less water than he used to. That both saves money and brings kudos, for California has suffered a four-year-long drought and there is social and political, as well as financial, pressure to conserve water. Mr Rogers's farm, and similar ones that grow other high-value but thirsty crops like pistachios, walnuts and grapes, are at the leading edge of this type of precision agriculture, known as “smart farming”. But it is not only fruit and nut farmers who benefit from being precise. So-called row crops-the maize and soyabeans that cover much of America's Midwest-are being teched up, too. Sowing, watering, fertilising and harvesting are all computer-controlled. Even the soil they grow in is monitored to within an inch of its life. People will want to eat better than they do now Farms, then, are becoming more like factories: tightly controlled operations for turning out reliable products, immune as far as possible from the vagaries of nature. Thanks to better understanding of DNA, the plants and animals raised on a farm are also tightly controlled. Precise genetic manipulation, known as “genome editing”, makes it possible to change a crop or stock animal's genome down to the level of a single genetic “letter”. This technology, it is hoped, will be more acceptable to consumers than the shifting of whole genes between species that underpinned early genetic engineering, because it simply imitates the process of mutation on which crop breeding has always depended, but in a far more controllable way. Understanding a crop's DNA sequence also means that breeding itself can be made more precise. You do not need to grow a plant to maturity to find out whether it will have the characteristics you want. A quick look at its genome beforehand will tell you. Such technological changes, in hardware, software and “liveware”, are reaching beyond field, orchard and byre. Fish farming will also get a boost from them. And indoor horticulture, already the most controlled and precise type of agriculture, is about to become yet more so. In the short run, these improvements will boost farmers' profits, by cutting costs and increasing yields, and should also benefit consumers (meaning everyone who eats food) in the form of lower prices. In the longer run, though, they may help provide the answer to an increasingly urgent question: how can the world be fed in future without putting irreparable strain on the Earth's soils and oceans? Between now and 2050 the planet's population is likely to rise to 9.7 billion, from 7.3 billion now. Those people will not only need to eat, they will want to eat better than people do now, because by then most are likely to have middling incomes, and many will be well off. The Food and Agriculture Organisation, the United Nations' agency charged with thinking about such matters, published a report in 2009 which suggested that by 2050 agricultural production will have to rise by 70% to meet projected demand. Since most land suitable for farming is already farmed, this growth must come from higher yields. Agriculture has undergone yield-enhancing shifts in the past, including mechanisation before the second world war and the introduction of new crop varieties and agricultural chemicals in the green revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet yields of important crops such as rice and wheat have now stopped rising in some intensively farmed parts of the world, a phenomenon called yield plateauing. The spread of existing best practice can no doubt bring yields elsewhere up to these plateaus. But to go beyond them will require improved technology. This will be a challenge. Farmers are famously and sensibly sceptical of change, since the cost of getting things wrong (messing up an entire season's harvest) is so high. Yet if precision farming and genomics play out as many hope they will, another such change is in the offing. Advertisement Smart farms: Silicon Valley meets Central Valley In various guises, information technology is taking over agriculture ONE way to view farming is as a branch of matrix algebra. A farmer must constantly juggle a set of variables, such as the weather, his soil's moisture levels and nutrient content, competition to his crops from weeds, threats to their health from pests and diseases, and the costs of taking action to deal with these things. If he does the algebra correctly, or if it is done on his behalf, he will optimise his yield and maximise his profit. The job of smart farming, then, is twofold. One is to measure the variables going into the matrix as accurately as is cost-effective. The other is to relieve the farmer of as much of the burden of processing the matrix as he is comfortable with ceding to a machine. An early example of cost-effective precision in farming was the decision made in 2001 by John Deere, the world's largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment, to fit its tractors and other mobile machines with global-positioning-system (GPS) sensors, so that they could be located to within a few centimetres anywhere on Earth. This made it possible to stop them either covering the same ground twice or missing out patches as they shuttled up and down fields, which had been a frequent problem. Dealing with this both reduced fuel bills (by as much as 40% in some cases) and improved the uniformity and effectiveness of things like fertiliser, herbicide and pesticide spraying. Bugs in the system Bacteria and fungi can help crops and soil MICROBES, though they have a bad press as agents of disease, also play a beneficial role in agriculture. For example, they fix nitrogen from the air into soluble nitrates that act as natural fertiliser. Understanding and exploiting such organisms for farming is a rapidly developing part of agricultural biotechnology. At the moment, the lead is being taken by a collaboration between Monsanto and Novozymes, a Danish firm. This consortium, called BioAg, began in 2013 and has a dozen microbe-based products on the market. These include fungicides, insecticides and bugs that liberate nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium compounds from the soil, making them soluble and thus easier for crops to take up. Last year, researchers at the two firms tested a further 2,000 microbes, looking for species that would increase maize and soyabean yields. The top-performing strains delivered a boost of about 3% for both crops. In November 2015 Syngenta and DSM, a Dutch company, formed a similar partnership. And earlier that year, in April, DuPont bought Taxon Biosciences, a Californian microbes firm. And hopeful start-ups abound. One such is Indigo, in Boston. Its researchers are conducting field tests of some of its library of 40,000 microbes to see if they can alleviate the stress on cotton, maize, soyabeans and wheat induced by drought and salinity. Another is Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies, of Seattle. The scientists who formed this firm study fungi that live symbiotically within plants. They believe they have found one, whose natural partner is panic grass, a coastal species, which confers salinity-resistance when transferred to crops such as rice. The big prize, however, would be to persuade the roots of crops such as wheat to form partnerships with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria. These would be similar to the natural partnerships formed with nitrogen-fixing bacteria by legumes such as soyabeans. In legumes, the plants' roots grow special nodules that become homes for the bacteria in question. If wheat rhizomes could be persuaded, by genomic breeding or genome editing, to behave likewise, everyone except fertiliser companies would reap enormous benefits. Since then, other techniques have been added. High-density soil sampling, carried out every few years to track properties such as mineral content and porosity, can predict the fertility of different parts of a field. Accurate contour mapping helps indicate how water moves around. And detectors planted in the soil can monitor moisture levels at multiple depths. Some detectors are also able to indicate nutrient content and how it changes in response to the application of fertiliser. All of this permits variable-rate seeding, meaning the density of plants grown can be tailored to local conditions. And that density itself is under precise control. John Deere's equipment can plant individual seeds to within an accuracy of 3cm. Moreover, when a crop is harvested, the rate at which grains or beans flow into the harvester's tank can be measured from moment to moment. That information, when combined with GPS data, creates a yield map that shows which bits of land were more or less productive-and thus how accurate the soil and sensor-based predictions were. This information can then be fed into the following season's planting pattern. Farmers also gather information by flying planes over their land. Airborne instruments are able to measure the amount of plant cover and to distinguish between crops and weeds. Using a technique called multispectral analysis, which looks at how strongly plants absorb or reflect different wavelengths of sunlight, they can discover which crops are flourishing and which not. Sensors attached to moving machinery can even take measurements on the run. For example, multispectral sensors mounted on a tractor's spraying booms can estimate the nitrogen needs of crops about to be sprayed, and adjust the dose accordingly. A modern farm, then, produces data aplenty. But they need interpreting, and for that, information technology is essential. Platform tickets Over the past few decades large corporations have grown up to supply the needs of commercial farming, especially in the Americas and Europe. Some are equipment-makers, such as John Deere. Others sell seeds or agricultural chemicals. These look like getting larger still. Dow and DuPont, two American giants, are planning to merge. Monsanto, another big American firm, is the subject of a takeover bid by Bayer, a German one. And Syngenta, a Swiss company, is being bid for by ChemChina, a Chinese one. Business models are changing, too. These firms, no longer content merely to sell machinery, seed or chemicals, are all trying to develop matrix-crunching software platforms that will act as farm-management systems. These proprietary platforms will collect data from individual farms and process them in the cloud, allowing for the farm's history, the known behaviour of individual crops strains and the local weather forecast. They will then make recommendations to the farmer, perhaps pointing him towards some of the firm's other products. But whereas making machinery, breeding new crops or manufacturing agrochemicals all have high barriers to entry, a data-based farm-management system can be put together by any businessman, even without a track record in agriculture. And many are having a go. For example, Trimble Navigation, based in Sunnyvale, at the southern end of Silicon Valley, reckons that as an established geographical-information company it is well placed to move into the smart-farming market, with a system called Connected Farms. It has bought in outside expertise in the shape of AGRI-TREND, a Canadian agricultural consultancy, which it acquired last year. By contrast, Farmobile of Overland Park, Kansas, is a startup. It is aimed at those who value privacy, making a feature of not using clients' data to improve its products, as many farm-management systems do. Farmers Business Network, of Davenport, Iowa, uses almost the opposite model, acting as a co-operative data pool. Data in the pool are anonymised, but everyone who joins is encouraged to add to the pool, and in turn gets to share what is there. The idea is that all participants will benefit from better solutions to the matrix. Some firms focus on market niches. iTK, based in Montpellier, France, for example, specialises in grapes and has built mathematical models that describe the behaviour of all the main varieties. It is now expanding into California. Thanks to this proliferation of farm-management software, it is possible to put more and more data to good use if the sensors are available to provide them. And better, cheaper sensors, too, are on their way. Moisture sensors, for example, usually work by measuring either the conductivity or the capacitance of soil, but a firm called WaterBit, based in Santa Clara, California, is using a different technology which it says can do the job at a tenth of the price of the existing products. And a sensor sold by John Deere can spectroscopically measure the nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium composition of liquid manure as it is being sprayed, permitting the spray rate to be adjusted in real time. This gets round the problem that liquid manure, though a good fertiliser, is not standardised, so is more difficult than commercial fertiliser to apply in the right quantities. Things are changing in the air, too. In a recapitulation of the early days of manned flight, the makers of unmanned agricultural drones are testing a wide range of designs to find out which is best suited to the task of flying multispectral cameras over farms. Some firms, such as Agribotix in Boulder, Colorado, prefer quadcopters, a four-rotored modern design that has become the industry standard for small drones, though it has limited range and endurance. A popular alternative, the AgDrone, built by HoneyComb of Wilsonville, Oregon, is a single-engine flying wing that looks as if it has escaped from a 1950s air show. Another, the Lancaster 5, from PrecisionHawk of Raleigh, North Carolina, vaguely resembles a scale model of the eponymous second-world-war bomber. And the offering by Delair-Tech, based in Toulouse, France, sports the long, narrow wings of a glider to keep it aloft for long periods. Even an endurance drone, though, may be pushed to survey a large estate in one go. For a synoptic view of their holding, therefore, some farmers turn to satellites. Planet Labs, a firm in San Francisco, provides such a service using devices called CubeSats, measuring a few centimetres across. It keeps a fleet of about 30 of these in orbit, which it refreshes as old ones die by putting new ones into space, piggybacking on commercial launches. Thanks to modern optics, even a satellite this small can be fitted with a multispectral camera, though it has a resolution per pixel of only 3.5 metres (about ten feet). That is not bad from outer space, but not nearly as good as a drone's camera can manage. Satellite coverage, though, has the advantage of being both broad and frequent, whereas a drone can offer only one or the other of these qualities. Planet Lab's constellation will be able to take a picture of a given bit of the Earth's surface at least once a week, so that areas in trouble can be identified quickly and a more detailed examination made. The best solution is to integrate aerial and satellite coverage. That is what Mavrx, also based in San Francisco, is trying to do. Instead of drones, it has an Uber-like arrangement with about 100 light-aircraft pilots around America. Each of the firm's contracted planes has been fitted with a multispectral camera and stands ready to make specific sorties at Mavrx's request. Mavrx's cameras have a resolution of 20cm a pixel, meaning they can pretty much take in individual plants. The firm has also outsourced its satellite photography. Its raw material is drawn from Landsat and other public satellite programmes. It also has access to these programmes' libraries, some of which go back 30 years. It can thus check the performance of a particular field over decades, calculate how much biomass that field has supported from year to year and correlate this with records of the field's yields in those years, showing how productive the plants there have been. Then, knowing the field's biomass in the current season, it can predict what the yield will be. Mavrx's method can be scaled up to cover entire regions and even countries, forecasting the size of the harvests before they are gathered. That is powerful financial and political information. A truly automated, factory-like farm, however, would have to cut people out of the loop altogether. That means introducing robots on the ground as well as in the air, and there are plenty of hopeful agricultural-robot makers trying to do so. At the University of Sydney, the Australian Centre for Field Robotics has developed RIPPA (Robot for Intelligent Perception and Precision Application), a four-wheeled, solar-powered device that identifies weeds in fields of vegetables and zaps them individually. At the moment it does this with precise, and precisely aimed, doses of herbicide. But it, or something similar, could instead use a beam of microwaves, or even a laser. That would allow the crops concerned to be recognised as “organic” by customers who disapprove of chemical treatments. For the less fussy, Rowbot Systems of Minneapolis is developing a bot that can travel between rows of partly grown maize plants, allowing it to apply supplementary side dressings of fertiliser to the plants without crushing them. Indeed, it might be possible in future to match the dose to the plant in farms where individual plants' needs have been assessed by airborne multispectral cameras. Robots are also of interest to growers of fruit and vegetables that are currently picked by hand. Fruit-picking is a time-consuming business which, even though the pickers are not well rewarded, would be a lot faster and cheaper if it were automated. And robot pickers are starting to appear. The SW6010, made by AGROBOT, a Spanish firm, uses a camera to recognise strawberries and work out which are ripe for the plucking. Those that are have their stems severed by blades and are caught in baskets before being passed on by a conveyor belt for packing by a human operator sitting on the robot. In the Netherlands, researchers at Wageningen University are working on a robot harvester for larger produce such as peppers. All these devices, and others like them, still exude a whiff of the Heath Robinson. But robotics is developing rapidly, and the control systems needed to run such machines are getting better and cheaper by the day. Some think that in a decade or so many farms in rich countries will be largely robot-operated. Yet others wonder just how far farmers will let their farms be robotised. Self-guiding agricultural machinery such as that sold by John Deere is all but robotic already. It is like an airliner, in which the pilot usually has little to do between landing and take-off because computers do the work for him. Yet Deere has no plans to hand over complete control to the cloud, because that is not what its customers want. Tunnel vision If total control still seems some way off in outdoor farming, it is already close for crops grown in an entirely artificial environment. In a warren of tunnels beneath Clapham, in south London, Growing Underground is doing exactly what its name suggests. It is rearing around 20 types of salad plants, intended for sale to the chefs and sandwich shops of the city, in subterranean voids that began life as second-world-war bomb shelters. In many ways, Growing Underground's farm resembles any other indoor hydroponic operation. But there is one big difference. A conventional greenhouse, with its glass or polycarbonate walls, is designed to admit as much sunlight as possible. Growing Underground specifically excludes it. Instead, illumination is provided by light-emitting diodes (LEDs). These, in the minimalist spirit of hydroponics, have had their spectra precisely tuned so that the light they emit is optimal for the plants' photosynthesis. As you would expect, sensors watch everything-temperature, humidity, illumination-and send the data directly to Cambridge University's engineering department where they are crunched, along with information on the plants' growth, to work out the best regimes for future crops. For now Steven Dring, Growing Underground's boss, is confining output to herbs and vegetables such as small lettuces and samphire that can be brought to harvestable size quickly. He has reduced the cycle for coriander from 21 to 14 days. But tests suggest that the system also works for other, chunkier crops. Carrots and radishes have already been successfully grown this way, though they may not command a sufficient premium to make their underground cultivation worthwhile. But pak choi, a Chinese vegetable popular with trendy urbanites who live in inner-London suburbs like Clapham, is also amenable. At the moment growing it takes five weeks from start to finish. Get that down to three, which Mr Dring thinks he can, and it would be profitable. The firms that make the LEDs could also be on to a good thing. Mr Dring's come from Valoya, a Finnish firm. In Sweden, Heliospectra is in the same business. Philips, a Dutch electrical giant, has also joined in. In conventional greenhouses such lights are used to supplement the sun, but increasingly they do duty in windowless operations like Mr Dring's. Though unlike sunlight they do not come free, they are so efficient and long-lasting that their spectral advantages seem clinching (see chart). This kind of farming does not have to take place underground. Operations like Mr Dring's are cropping up in buildings on the surface as well. Old meatpacking plants, factories and warehouses the world over are being turned into “vertical farms”. Though they are never going to fill the whole world's bellies, they are more than a fad. Rather, they are a modern version of the market gardens that once flourished on the edge of cities -in places just like Clapham-before the land they occupied was swallowed by urban sprawl. And with their precise control of inputs, and thus outputs (see Brain scan, below), they also represent the ultimate in what farming could become. Brain scan: Caleb Harper PLANT breeders are understandably excited about manipulating botanical genomics (see next page). But it is a crop's phenotype-its physical instantiation-that people actually eat, and this is the product of both genes and environment. Optimising phenotypes by manipulating the environment is the task Caleb Harper has set himself. Dr Harper is the founder of the Open Agriculture Initiative (OAI) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. At first sight, that seems odd. The Media Lab is an information-technology laboratory, best known for having helped develop things like electronic paper, wireless networks and even modern karaoke machines. It is very much about bits and bytes, and not much hitherto about proteins and lipids. However, environmental information is still information. It informs how a plant grows, which is what interests Dr Harper. As he once put it, “people say they like peppers from Mexico. What they actually like is peppers grown in the conditions that prevail in Mexico." He reckons that if you can replicate the conditions in which a botanical product grew, you can replicate that product. But this means you have to understand those conditions properly in the first place. To help with this, he and his colleagues at the OAI have developed what they call the Personal Food Computer: a standardised tabletop device that can control illumination, carbon-dioxide levels, humidity, air temperature, root-zone temperature, and the acidity and dissolved-oxygen content of water delivered to the roots, as well as its nutrient content and any other aspect of its chemistry. Plant phenotypes are monitored during growth by web cameras linked to software that detects leaf edges and colour differences and by sensors that can detect areas of active photosynthesis. After harvesting they are examined by lidar (the optical equivalent of radar) to record their shape in detail, and by gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy to understand their chemical composition. The idea is that Personal Food Computers can be built by anyone who chooses to, and form part of an “open science” network that gathers data on growing conditions and works out those conditions' phenotypic effects. Of particular interest are matters such as flavour and astringency that are governed by chemicals called secondary metabolites. These are often parts of plant-defence mechanisms, so in one experiment the computers are looking at the effect of adding crushed arthropod exoskeletons to the water supply, which may mimic attack by insects or mites. The hope is that this will change flavours in controllable ways. Though Dr Harper is from a rural background, his career before the OAI was conventionally Media Lab-like. In particular, he designed environmental-control systems for data centres and operating theatres-keeping heat, humidity and so on within the tight limits needed for optimal function. But the jump from controlling those environments to controlling miniature farms was not enormous. Some three dozen Personal Food Computers already exist and about 100 more are under construction the world over. This geographical dispersion is important. Dr Harper's goal, as his view on Mexican peppers suggests, is to decouple climate from geography by building a “catalogue of climates”. That would allow indoor urban farms to be programmed to imitate whatever climate was required in order to turn out crops for instant local consumption. This would certainly appeal to those who worry about “food miles”-the cost in terms of carbon dioxide of shipping edible items around the world. How it will go down with farmers in places whose climates are being imitated in rich-country cities remains to be seen. The founder of the Open Agriculture Initiative at MIT's Media Lab is building a “catalogue of climates” to help plants grow better Crops of the future: Tinker and tailor Farms need better products. Genomic understanding will provide them C4 SOUNDS like the name of a failed electric car from the 1970s. In fact, it is one of the most crucial concepts in plant molecular biology. Plants have inherited their photosynthetic abilities from bacteria that took up symbiotic residence in the cells of their ancestors about a billion years ago. Those bacteria's descendants, called chloroplasts, sit inside cells absorbing sunlight and using its energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen then combines with carbon dioxide to form small intermediate molecules, which are subsequently assembled into sugars. This form of photosynthesis is known as C3, because these intermediates contain three carbon atoms. Since the arrival of chloroplasts, though, evolution has discovered another way to photosynthesise, using a four-carbon intermediate. C4 photosynthesis is often more efficient than the C3 sort, especially in tropical climes. Several important crops that started in the tropics use it, notably maize, millet, sorghum and sugar cane. C4 photosynthesis is so useful that it has evolved on at least 60 separate occasions. Unfortunately, none of these involved the ancestors of rice, the second most important crop on Earth, after wheat. Yet rice, pre-eminently a tropical plant, would produce yields around 50% bigger than at present if it took the C4 route. At the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, outside Manila, researchers are trying to show it how. The C4 Rice Project, co-ordinated by Paul Quick, is a global endeavour, also involving biologists at 18 other laboratories in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. Their task involves adding five alien enzymes to rice, to give it an extra biochemical pathway, and then reorganising some of the cells in the plant's leaves to create special compartments in which carbon dioxide can be concentrated in ways the standard C3 mechanism does not require. Both of these things have frequently happened naturally in other plants, which suggests that doing them artificially is not out of the question. The team has already created strains of rice which contain genes plucked from maize plants for the extra enzymes, and are now tweaking them to improve their efficacy. The harder part, which may take another decade, will be finding out what genetic changes are needed to bring about the compartmentalisation. Genome editing resembles the natural process of mutation The C4 Rice Project thus aims to break through the yield plateaus and return the world to the sort of growth rates seen in the heady days of the Green Revolution. Other groups, similarly motivated, are working on making many types of crops resistant to drought, heat, cold and salt; on inducing greater immunity to infection and infestation; on improving nutritional value; on making more efficient use of resources such as water and phosphorous; and even on giving to plants that do not have it the ability to fix nitrogen, an essential ingredient of proteins, directly from the air instead of absorbing it in the form of nitrates. Such innovations should be a bonanza. Unfortunately, for reasons both technical and social, they have so far not been. But that should soon change. The early days of genetically engineered crops saw two huge successes and one spectacular failure. The successes were the transfer into a range of plants, particularly maize, soyabeans and cotton, of two types of gene. Both came from bacteria. One protected its host from the attentions of pesky insect larvae. The other protected it from specific herbicides, meaning those herbicides could be used more effectively to keep fields free from weeds. Both are beloved of farmers. The spectacular failure is that neither is beloved of consumers. Some are indifferent to them; many actively hostile. Even though over decades there has been no evidence that eating genetically modified crops is harmful to health, and little that they harm the environment, they have been treated as pariahs. Since people do not eat cotton, and soyabeans and maize are used mainly as animal fodder, the anti-GM lobby's impact on those crops has been muted. But the idea of extending either the range of crops modified or the range of modifications available has (with a few exceptions) been thought commercially too risky to try. Moreover, transgenics, as the technique of moving genes from one species to another is called, is haphazard. Where the moved gene will end up is hard to control. That matters, for genes work better in some places than others. Spell it for me The search has therefore been on for a better way than transgenics of doing things. And one is now emerging that, its supporters hope, may kill both the technical and the social birds with a single stone. Genome editing, as this approach is known, tweaks existing DNA in situ by adding, subtracting or substituting a piece that may be as small as a single genetic “letter” (or nucleotide). That not only makes the technique precise, it also resembles the natural process of mutation, which is the basis of the variety all conventional plant-breeding relies on. That may raise fewer objections among consumers, and also holds out the hope that regulators will treat it differently from transgenics. After a couple of false starts, most researchers agree that a technique called CRISPR/Cas9, derived from a way that bacteria chop up the genes of invading viruses, is the one that will make editing crop genomes a realistic prospect. Transgenic technology has steered clear of wheat, which is eaten mainly by people. But DuPont's seed division, Pioneer, is already trying to use CRISPR/Cas9 to stop wheat from self-pollinating, in order to make the development of hybrids easier. Similarly, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences are using it to try to develop wheat plants that are resistant to powdery mildew, a serious hazard. Not all current attempts at agricultural genome editing use CRISPR/Cas9. Cibus, in San Diego, for example, employs a proprietary technique it calls the Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS). This co-opts a cell's natural DNA repair mechanism to make single-nucleotide changes to genomes. RTDS has already created one commercial product, a form of rape resistant to a class of herbicides that conventional transgenics cannot protect against. But at the moment CRISPR/Cas9 seems to be sweeping most things before it-and even if it stumbles for some reason, other bacterial antiviral mechanisms might step in. Advertisement Whether consumers will accept genome editing remains to be seen. No one, however, is likely to object to a second rapidly developing method of crop improvement: a souped-up breeding technique called genomic selection. Genomic selection is a superior version of marker-assisted selection, a process which has itself been replacing conventional crop-breeding techniques. Both genomic selection and markerassisted selection rely on recognising pieces of DNA called markers found in or near places called quantitative trait loci (QTLs). A QTL is part of a genome that has, because of a gene or genes within it, a measurable, predictable effect on a phenotype. If the marker is present, then so is the QTL. By extension, a plant with the marker should show the QTL's phenotypic effect. The difference between conventional marker-assisted selection and the genomic version is that the former relied on a few hundred markers (such as places where the DNA stuttered and repeated itself) that could be picked up by the technology then available. Now, improved detection methods mean single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced “snips”), can be used as markers. A SNP is a place where a single genetic letter varies in an otherwise unchanging part of the genome, and there are thousands of them. Add in the enormous amounts of computing power available to link SNPs with QTLs-and, indeed, to analyse the interactions between QTLs themselves-and the upshot is a system that can tell a breeder which individual plants are worth raising to maturity, and which should then be crossed with each other to come up with the best results. Crop strains created this way are already coming to market. AQUAmax and Artesian are drought-tolerant strains of maize developed, respectively, by DuPont and Syngenta. These two, intriguingly, are competitors with another drought-tolerant maize strain, DroughtGuard, developed by Monsanto using the transgenic approach. Genomic selection also offers opportunities for the scientific improvement of crops that seed companies usually neglect. The NextGen Cassava Project, a pan-African group, plans to zap susceptibility to cassava mosaic virus this way and then systematically to improve the yield and nutritional properties of the crop. The project's researchers have identified 40,000 cassava SNPs, and have now gone through three generations of genomic selection using them. Besides making cassava resistant to the virus, they also hope to double yields and to increase the proportion of starch (and thus the nutritional value) of the resulting strains. If modern techniques can similarly be brought to bear on other unimproved crops of little interest to the big seed companies, such as millet and yams, the yield-bonuses could be enormous. For the longer term, some researchers have more radical ambitions. A manifesto published last year by Donald Ort, of the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, and his colleagues proposes not merely recapitulating evolution but actually redesigning the photosynthetic process in ways evolution has not yet discovered. Dr Ort suggests tweaking chlorophyll molecules in order to capture a wider range of frequencies and deploy the resulting energy more efficiently. He is also looking at improving the way plants absorb carbon dioxide. The result, he hopes, will be faster-growing, higher-yielding crops. Such ideas are controversial and could take decades to come to fruition. But they are not fantastic. A combination of transgenics (importing new forms of chlorophyll from photosynthetic bacteria), genome editing (to supercharge existing plant enzymes) and genomic selection (to optimise the resulting mixture) might well be able to achieve them. Those who see this as an unnatural, perhaps even monstrous approach to crop improvement should recall that it is precisely what happened when the ancestors of modern plants themselves came into existence, through the combination of a bacterium and its host and their subsequent mutual adjustment to live in symbiosis. It was this evolutionary leap which greened the Earth in the first place. That something similar might re-green it is at least worth considering. Fish farming: Catch of the day Farming marine fish inland will relieve pressure on the oceans IN THE basement of a building on a wharf in Baltimore's inner harbour, a group of aquaculturists at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology is trying to create an artificial ecosystem. Yonathan Zohar and his colleagues hope to liberate the raising of ocean fish from the ocean itself so that fish farms can be built inland. Fresh fish, served the day it comes out of the brine (even if the brine in question is a judicious mixture of tap water and salts), would thus become accessible to millions of landlubbers who must now have their fish shipped in from afar, deep-frozen. Equally important, marine-fish farmers would no longer have to find suitable coastal sites for penning stock while it grows to marketable size, exposing the crowded animals to disease and polluting the marine environment. People have raised freshwater fish in ponds since time immemorial, but farming species such as salmon that live mainly in saltwater dates back only a few decades, as does the parallel transformation of freshwater aquaculture to operate on an industrial scale. Now fish farming is booming. As the chart on the next page shows, human consumption of farmed fish has overtaken that of beef. Indeed, one way of supplying mankind with enough animal protein in future may be through aquaculture. To keep the boom going, though, technologists like Dr Zohar must become ever more inventive. His ecosystem, which is about to undergo commercial trials, constantly recycles the same supply of brine, purified by three sets of bacteria. One set turns ammonia excreted by the fish into nitrate ions. A second converts these ions into nitrogen (a harmless gas that makes up 78% of the air) and water. A third, working on the solid waste filtered from the water, transforms it into methane, which-via a special generator-provides part of the power that keeps the whole operation running. The upshot is a closed system that can be set up anywhere, generates no pollution and can be kept disease-free. It is also escape-proof. That means old-world species such as sea bream and sea bass, which cannot now be grown in America because they might get out and breed in the wild, could be delivered fresh to the table anywhere. Besides transforming the design of fish farms, Dr Zohar is also working on extending the range of species that they can grow. He has spent decades studying the hormone system that triggers spawning and can now stimulate it on demand. He has also examined the needs of hatchling fry, often completely different from those of adult fish, that must be met if they are to thrive. At the moment he is trying to do this for one of the most desirable species of all, the bluefin tuna. If he succeeds, and thus provides an alternative to the plummeting wild populations of this animal, sushi lovers around the world will be for ever in his debt. Gone fishin' Fish farmers used to dream of fitting their charges with transgenes to make them grow more quickly. Indeed, over the past couple of decades researchers have treated more than 35 fish species in this way. They have often been spectacularly successful. Only one firm, though, has persisted to the point of regulatory approval. AquaBounty's transgenic Atlantic salmon, now cleared in both America and Canada, has the desirable property of rapid growth. Its transgene, taken from a chinook salmon, causes it to put on weight all year round, not just in spring and summer. That halves the time the fish will take to reach marketable size. Whether people will be willing to eat the result, though, is an experiment in its own right-one that all those other researchers, only too aware of widespread public rejection of transgenic crops, have been unwilling to conduct. That may be wise. There is so much natural variation in wild fish that conventional selective breeding can make a big difference without any high-tech intervention. Back in 2007 a report by researchers at Akvaforsk, now part of the Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research (NOFIMA), showed that three decades of selective breeding by the country's salmon farmers had resulted in fish which grew twice as fast as their wild progenitors. Admittedly starting from a lower base, those farmers had done what AquaBounty has achieved, but without the aid of a transgene. If conventional selection can yield such improvements, it is tempting not to bother with anything more complicated. Tempting, but wrong. For, as understanding of piscine DNA improves, the sort of genomic selection being applied to crops can also be applied to fish. Researchers at SalmoBreed of Bergen, in Norway, have employed it not to create bigger, faster-growing fish but to attack two of fish farming's banes-infestation and infection. By tracking SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms, a variation of a single genetic letter in a genome used as a marker) they have produced varieties of salmon resistant to sea lice and also to pancreas disease, a viral illness. They are now looking into a third problem, amoebic gill disease. In Japan, similar work has led to the development of flounders resistant to viral lymphocystis, trout immune to “cold-water” disease, a bacterial infection, and amberjack that evade the attentions of a group of parasitic worms called the monogenea. Altering nature, then, is crucial to the success of fish farming. But nurture can also give a helping hand, for example by optimising what is fed to the animals. As with any product, one key to success is to get costs down. And here, environmental and commercial considerations coincide. A common complaint by green types is that fish farming does not relieve as much pressure on the oceans as it appears to, because a lot of the feed it uses is made of fish meal. That simply transfers fishing pressure from species eaten by people directly to those that get turned into such meal. But fish meal is expensive, so researchers are trying to reduce the amount being used by substituting plant matter, such as soya. In this they have been successful. According to a paper published last year by researchers at NOFIMA, 90% of salmon feed used in Norway in 1990 was fish meal. In 2013 the comparable figure was 30%. Indeed, a report published in 2014 by the European Parliament found that fish-meal consumption in aquaculture peaked in 2005. It's a gas Feeding carnivores like salmon on plants is one way to reduce both costs and environmental harm. Another, which at first sight seems exotic, is to make fish food out of natural gas. This is the proposed business of Calysta, a Californian firm. Calysta feeds the gas-or, rather, its principal component, methane-to bacteria called methanotrophs. These metabolise the methane, extract energy from it and use the atoms thus liberated, along with oxygen from water and nitrogen from the air, to build their bodies. Calysta then turns these bodies into protein pellets that are sold as fish food, a process that puts no strain at all on either sea or field. Even conventional fish foods, though, are low-strain compared with feed for farm animals. Because fish are cold-blooded, they do not have to eat to stay warm. They thus convert more of their food into body mass. For conservationists, and for those who worry whether there will be enough food in future to feed the growing human population, that makes fish a particularly attractive form of animal protein. Nevertheless, demand for the legged and winged sort is growing too. Novel technologies are therefore being applied to animal husbandry as well. And some imaginative researchers are even trying to grow meat and other animal products in factories, cutting the animals out of the loop altogether. Animal husbandry: Stock answers Technology can improve not only productivity but animal welfare too IF THE future of farming is to be more factory-like, some might argue that the treatment of stock animals such as chickens and pigs has led the way. Those are not, though, happy precedents. Crop plants, unsentient as they are, cause no welfare qualms in those who worry about other aspects of modern farming. Even fish, as long as they are kept healthy, rarely raise the ire of protesters. Birds and mammals are different. There are moral limits to how they can be treated. They are also individually valuable in a way that crop plants and fish are not. For both these reasons, they are worth monitoring one at a time. Cattle, in particular, are getting their own private sensors. Devices that sit inside an animal's rumen, measuring stomach acidity and looking for digestive problems, have been available for several years. They have now been joined by movement detectors such as that developed by Smartbell, a small firm in Cambridge, England. This sensor hangs around a cow's neck, recording its wearer's movement and transmitting that information to the cloud. An animal's general activity level is a good indication of its fitness, so the system can give early warning of any trouble. In particular, it immediately shows when its wearer is going lame-a problem that about a fifth of British cattle suffer at some point in their lives-even before an observant farmer might notice anything wrong. If picked up early, lameness is easily treated. If permitted to linger, it often means the animal has to be destroyed. Movement detectors can also show if a cow is ready for insemination. When she is in oestrus, her pattern of movement changes, and the detector will pick this up and alert her owner. Good breeding is crucial to animal husbandry, and marker-assisted genomic selection will ensure that the semen used for such insemination continues to yield better and better offspring. What is less clear-and is actively debated-is whether genome editing has a role to play here. Transgenics has given an even wider berth to terrestrial animals than it has to fish, and for the same reason: wary consumers. Some people hope, though, that this wariness will not apply to animals whose DNA has merely been tweaked, rather than imported from another species, especially if the edits in question will improve animal welfare as well as farmers' profits. Following this line of thinking, Recombinetics, a firm in St Paul, Minnesota, is trying to use genome editing of the sort now being employed on crops to create a strain of hornless Holstein cattle. Holsteins are a popular breed for milking, but their horns make them dangerous to work with, so they are normally dehorned as calves, which is messy, and painful for the animal. Scott Fahrenkrug, Recombinetics' founder, therefore had the idea of introducing into Holsteins a DNA sequence that makes certain beef cattle hornless. This involved deleting a sequence of ten nucleotides and replacing it with 212 others. Bruce Whitelaw at the Roslin Institute, in Scotland, has similarly edited resistance to African swine fever into pigs, by altering a gene that helps regulate immune responses to this illness to make it resemble the version found in warthogs. These wild African pigs have co-evolved with the virus and are thus less susceptible to it than are non-African domesticated animals. Randall Prather at the University of Missouri has similarly created pigs that cannot catch porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, an illness that costs American farmers alone more than $600m a year. And at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Steve Kemp and his colleagues are considering editing resistance to sleeping sickness, a huge killer of livestock, into African cattle. All this would make the animals healthier and hence happier as well. Not all such work is welfare-oriented, though. Dr Fahrenkrug has also been working on a famous mutation that increases muscle mass. This mutation, in the gene for a protein called myostatin, is found naturally in Belgian Blue cattle. Myostatin inhibits the development of muscle cells. The Belgian-Blue mutation disrupts myostatin's structure, and thus function. Hence the animals' oversize muscles. Two years ago, in collaboration with researchers at Texas A&M University, Dr Fahrenkrug edited the myostatin gene of a member of another breed of cattle to do likewise. Where's the beef? There may, though, be an even better way to grow muscle, the animal tissue most wanted by consumers, than on animals themselves. At least two groups of researchers think it can be manufactured directly. In 2013 Mark Post of Maastricht University, in the Netherlands, unveiled the first hamburger made from muscle cells grown in laboratory cultures. In February this year a Californian firm called Memphis Meats followed suit with the first meatball. Dr Post's original hamburger, which weighed 140 grams, was assembled from strips of muscle cells grown in Petri dishes. Including all the set-up costs, it was said to have cost 250,000 ($350,000), or $2.5m a kilogram. Scaling up the process will bring that figure down a lot. This means growing the cells in reactor vessels filled with nutrient broth. But, because such cells are supposed to be parts of bodies, they cannot simply float around in the broth in the way that, for example, yeast cells used in biotechnology can. To thrive, they must be attached to something, so the idea is to grow them on small spheres floating in the vessels. Fat cells, which add juiciness to meat, would be cultured separately. Do this successfully, Dr Post reckons, and the cost would fall to $65 a kilogram. Add in technological improvements already under way, which will increase the density of muscle cells that can be grown in a reactor, and he hopes that Mosa Meat, the firm he has founded to exploit his work commercially, will have hamburger mince ready for sale (albeit at the pricey end of the market) in five years' time. Meanwhile researchers at Clara Foods, in San Francisco, are developing synthetic egg white, using transgenic yeast to secrete the required proteins. Indeed, they hope to improve on natural egg white by tweaking the protein mix to make it easier to whip into meringues, for example. They also hope their synthetic white will be acceptable to people who do not currently eat eggs, including vegans and some vegetarians. Towards 2050: Vorsprung durch Technik Technology will transform farmers' lives in both the rich and the poor world ONE of the greatest unsung triumphs of human progress is that most people are no longer working on the land. That is not to demean farming. Rather, it is to praise the monumental productivity growth in the industry, achieved almost entirely by the application of technology in the form of farm machinery, fertilisers and other agrochemicals, along with scientifically improved crops and livestock. In 1900 around 41% of America's labour force worked on a farm; now the proportion is below 2%. The effect is less marked in poorer countries, but the direction of travel is the same. The share of city-dwellers in the world's total population reached 50% in 2007 and is still rising relentlessly, yet the shrinking proportion of people living in the countryside is still able to feed the urban majority. No crystal ball can predict whether that will continue, but on past form it seems perfectly plausible that by 2050 the planet will grow 70% more food than it did in 2009, as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says it needs to. Even though some crops in some parts of the world have reached a productivity plateau, cereal production increased by 11% in the six years after the FAO made that prediction. The Malthusian fear that population growth will outstrip food supply, now 218 years old, has not yet come true. Yet just as Thomas Malthus has his modern-day apologists, so does his mythical contemporary, Ned Ludd. Neo-Luddism is an ever-present threat that can certainly slow down the development of new technologies-as has indeed happened with transgenics. But while it is fine for the well-fed to be prissy about not eating food containing genetically modified ingredients, their fears have cast a shadow over the development of transgenic crops that might help those whose bellies are not so full. That is unconscionable. With luck, the new generation of genome-edited plants, and maybe even animals, will not provoke such a reaction. Regardless of whether it does, though, some other trends seem near-certain to continue into the future. Precision agriculture will spread from its North American heartland to become routine in Europe and those parts of South America, such as Brazil, where large arable farms predominate. And someone, perhaps in China, will work out how to apply to rice the sort of precision techniques now applied to soyabeans, maize and other crops. The technological rationale for precision suggests farms should continue to consolidate, though in an industry in which sentiment and family continuity have always played a big part that purely economic analysis might suggest is irrational, this may not happen as fast as it otherwise would. Still, regardless of the speed at which they arrive, these large holdings will come more and more to resemble manufacturing operations, wringing every last ounce of efficiency out of land and machinery. Such large-scale farms will probably continue to be served by large-scale corporations that provide seeds, stock, machines and management plans. But, in the case of the management plans, there is an opening for new firms with better ideas to nip in and steal at least part of the market. Other openings for entrepreneurs are available, too. Both inland fish farming and urban vertical farming-though niche operations compared with Midwestern soyabean cultivation or Scottish sea-loch salmon farms-are waves of the future in the service of gustatorially sophisticated urbanites. And in these businesses, the idea of farm as factory is brought to its logical conclusion. It is in the poorer parts of the world, though, that the battle for full bellies will be won or lost; and in Africa, in particular, the scope for change is both enormous and unpredictable. Though the problems of African farming are by no means purely technological-better roads, better education and better governments would all help a great deal-technology nevertheless has a big part to play. Organisations such as the NextGen Cassava Project, which apply the latest breeding techniques to reduce the susceptibility of crops to disease and increase their yield and nutritional value, offer Africans an opportunity to leap into the future in the way they did with telephony, bypassing fixed-line networks and moving straight to mobiles. Crops could similarly jump from 18th- to 21st-century levels of potential in a matter of years, even if converting that potential into productivity still requires the developments listed earlier. Looking further into the future, the picture is hazier. Large-scale genetic engineering of the sort needed to create C4 rice, or nitrogen-fixing wheat, or enhanced photosynthetic pathways, will certainly cause qualms, and maybe not just among the neo-Luddites. And they may not be needed. It is a general technological truth that there are more ideas than applications, and perfectly decent ones fall by the wayside because others have got there first. But it is good to know that the big ideas are there, available to be drawn on in case other yield plateaus threaten the required rise in the food supply. It means that the people of 2050, whether they live in Los Angeles, Lucknow or Lusaka, will at least be able to face whatever other problems befall them on a full stomach. Read more from the print edition»
-
Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta: M & A winds threaten food securityMonsanto, Dow, Syngenta: rush for mega-mergers puts food security at risk Recent deals in the global agrochemical and seed industry, driven by financial motivations, are a threat to farmers, prices and the environment Professor in global food security and sustainability at the University of Waterloo Thursday 5 May 2016 15.30 BST Last modified on Thursday 5 May 2016 15.40 BST The global agrochemical and seed industry is undergoing profound upheaval, with a spate of mergers and attempted mergers consolidating the sector and raising concerns about the future of the food system. It began last year when Monsanto started looking for a partner, trying three times (unsuccessfully) to link up with Syngenta. By the end of 2015, Dow and DuPont announced they were teaming up. Subject to regulatory approval, the new $130bn company - DowDuPont - plans to split into three parts, one of which will focus exclusively on agricultural chemicals and seeds and is set to command a hefty market share. It is estimated DowDuPont could account for around 40% of the corn and soybean seed market in the US. In February this year, ChemChina announced a $43bn purchase of Syngenta, bolstering ChemChina's genetically engineered seed capacity and giving it the largest slice of the agricultural chemical market. The remaining players - Monsanto, Bayer and BASF - are now under pressure to join the mega-merger dance, with talks on various potential permutations reportedly under way. sustainable business These proposed corporate mega-mergers are the result of pressure from financial investors. Years of low interest rates since the financial crisis have made corporate borrowing cheap and easy. But the onset of low agricultural commodity prices and faltering economic growth in emerging economies has weakened demand for commercial seeds and crop protection chemicals, making it harder for agribusiness firms to generate high returns for their shareholders, and to pay their debts. Concerned about excessive borrowing and weak performance, investors have increasingly put pressure on agribusiness managers to improve their performance. In the case of Dow and DuPont, individual activist investors - each managing enormous hedge funds for wealthy clients - pushed hard on these firms to cut costs through restructuring. Essentially, mergers and acquisitions have been the tools of choice to attempt to placate restless investors. Regulators in the countries in which these firms are based are scrutinising the details of these deals, deciding whether to allow them to proceed. No doubt they are reviewing the mergers looking for evidence regarding traditional concerns about the effects of corporate consolidation - that it stifles competition, reduces innovation and can lead to a loss of tax revenue if the firm relocates its headquarters. These concerns merit close consideration, but there is so much more at stake. New index ranks Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta on efforts to help smallholders Read more For starters, mergers are likely to lead to higher costs of inputs for farmers. Already, the seed and chemical industries are highly concentrated. In 2013, the top six firms controlled 75% of the agrochemical market and 63% of the commercial seed market. If the number of firms drops, it will be that much easier for them to raise prices. Consolidation in the agribusiness industry also tends to concentrate political power as giant firms lobby governments to shape the rules of the food system in ways that support their interests. According to the non-profit, ETC Group (pdf), small-scale farmers feed around 70% of the world's population, and do so mainly with seeds saved from one harvest to the next rather than commercially purchased seed. Changes in government policies that favour big corporations' desire for more large-scale industrial agriculture will directly threaten small farmers' livelihoods. Further spread of the industrial agricultural model is also likely to have devastating ecological effects. Large-scale, chemical-based monoculture farming is recognised as a major contributor to both climate change and biodiversity loss, problems that pose significant threats to long-term food security. If the proposed mega-mergers proceed, the food system will face profound changes in the name of increased short-term financial returns for relatively few investors. Ironically, there is little evidence to show that corporate consolidation is even economically productive in the long run. A short-term financial boost for a handful of investors is hardly justification for allowing the mega-mergers when they threaten farmer livelihoods, the environment and long-term food security.
-
Why Monsanto's Bio-Breeding Techniques Are Frustrated in India~~• Business Why Monsanto's Biotech-Food Business Isn't Growing in India Seed giant's genetically-modified food crops stymied despite nation's food-security needs US-based Monsanto and its partners in India have been selling farmers genetically modified seeds for cotton crops for years. Now the companies want to sell GMO seeds for food crops as well. Photo: Karan Deep Singh/The Wall Street Journal By Jacob Bunge and Biman Mukherji Updated March 13, 2016 8:04 p.m. ET In a research laboratory surrounded by acres of arid land in western India, Bharat Char showed off tiny sprouts of rice, wheat and okra in glass bottles. These plants could solve a lot of India's food problems, he said. Because they are genetically modified to resist bugs and weed-killing sprays, said the scientist for Mahyco, an Indian firm that joined Monsanto Co. MON 2.20 % to develop biotech crops, the plants could boost impoverished Indian farmers' profits and reduce food imports. There is precedent: Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, grow in an estimated 97% of India's cotton fields and have helped India by some measures become the fiber's top global producer. But after a decade of Monsanto's efforts with Mahyco to win Indian-government approval for biotech food crops, seeds for plants like Mr. Char's remain in limbo, stymied by environmentalist opposition, farmer skepticism and bureaucratic inertia. Despite dozens of biotech-food-crop trials in India, the country has approved none for commercial cultivation. “What greater case study in terms of food security than a country that will soon have more people than any other country in the world?" said Robert Fraley, Monsanto's chief technology officer. “To see a country that has the potential and intellectual ability to be a leader in these biotech advances, to be stymied politically, I think it's a tragedy ." india's Agriculture Minister, Radha Mohan Singh, said the government was waiting for India's Supreme Court to rule in a case opposing genetically modified food crops before deciding on their commercial cultivation. Advertisement Meanwhile, Monsanto's established cotton business in India faces new threats, including new government price controls around seed genetics and an antitrust probe into pricing practices, prompting Monsanto on March 4 to warn that it could withdraw its biotech crop genes from the country. Monsanto's experience is part of a broader backlash against genetically engineered crops from a mix of environmentalists, consumer groups and nationalism thwarting the technology's expansion after years of growth. Biotech-crop opponents say they can damage the environment, burden poor farmers with high-price seeds and potentially harm health. GMO proponents reject such assertions, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, World Health Organization and European Commission have concluded GMOs are safe to eat. Yet pushback has swept the world. More than half of European Union countries have moved to bar GMO cultivation. Russia hasn't approved any biotech crops. China, which allows cultivation of some, isn't expected to approve new ones soon. In the U.S., where GMO crops are widespread, some food brands are stripping GMOs from their products. Monsanto joined India's Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co., or Mahyco, to develop biotech crops for India. Plants grow in tubes at this Mahyco laboratory in Jalna, India. PHOTO: KARAN DEEP SINGH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL The backlash has slowed global-sales growth of genetically modified seeds. Sales grew 4.7% to $21 billion in 2014, compared with 8.7% growth in 2013 and average annual growth of 21% from 2007 through 2012, according to research firm PhillipsMcDougall Ltd. Monsanto, a top global seller of biotech seeds, in 2015 made an unsuccessful $46 billion bid for Syngenta AG SYT 0.56 % , a top pesticide seller, partly for access to more countries' fields than biotech seeds give it. Syngenta last month agreed to a $43 billion takeover by China National Chemical Corp. Biotech seeds have nearly saturated major markets where approved, said Mike Mack, who retired in October as chief executive of Syngenta, also a GMO-seed seller. “Show me the new markets or the new crops that are going to bring the sort of wave that we saw in the last decade," he said in September. “I don't see how it's going to pick up in a material way anytime soon ." India appeared fertile ground for Monsanto two decades ago. Once a pesticide giant, the company had introduced the world's first genetically modified cotton in the U.S. in 1996. India cultivated the world's largest cotton-growing area, yet produced among the fewest bales per acre. Four million Indian cotton farmers battled many of the same pests that U.S. farmers did-pests resisted by a gene Monsanto created with a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, that lets plants secrete a bug-killing protein. Monsanto in 1997 formed a joint venture with Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co., or Mahyco, to pair its biotechnology with Mahyco seeds suited to India's soil. When Mahyco won permission to sell India's first biotech cottonseed in 2002, scientists and staff threw a party at its research center in Dawalwadi, said Mr. Char, who joined Mahyco in 1999. “It was like India winning the cricket world cup," said Monsanto Treasurer D. Narain, its India unit's chief financial officer in the late 1990s. Monsanto's success seemed to augur well for GMOs in India, which boasts the most arable land of any country and is projected to surpass China as the world's-most-populous by 2023. India had a history of pioneering agricultural methods. The so-called Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s revamped Indian farms with high-yielding wheat and rice supported with fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation. Government officials credited it with saving millions from starvation. By late 2006, Monsanto's Bt genes blanketed about 40% of India's cotton fields, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, or Isaaa, a nonprofit funded by governments and companies that tracks and promotes agricultural biotechnology. After a decade of effort by Mahyco, Monsanto and other companies to win government approval for genetically engineered food crops in India, the seeds remain stuck in regulatory limbo. PHOTO: KARAN DEEP SINGH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL “I had gravitated to Bt cotton because my yields used to be poor," said Dheeraj Chhaganbhai Wadodariya, a farmer in India's Gujarat state. Genetically modified seeds increased his earnings so much, he said, he can now buy cattle, do up his home and occasionally travel. But clouds were gathering over the field. Fears that India's government relied too heavily on biotech companies to research safety and that GMO plants would mix with wild versions prompted nutritionist Aruna Rodrigues to seek out independent scientists and compile data to challenge the government over its handling of biotech crops. In 2005, she filed a petition with India's Supreme Court seeking a moratorium on GMO field trials, arguing that such crops would damage the nutritional qualities of the food. The court accepted her petition, which is still winding its way through India's notoriously slow judicial system. As public pushback increased, India in 2010 placed a surprise moratorium on an insect-resistant brinjal, or eggplant, which had been set for approval. India's potential nevertheless persuaded Monsanto to continue research here and it continued to get approvals for trials, including biotech corn. Other companies pursued rice, mustard, peanuts, potatoes and sorghum. A cotton farmer from Jalna in Western India uses genetically modified seeds that resist bugs and weed-killing sprays. PHOTO: KARAN DEEP SINGH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL “We never lost hope that things were moving," said Mr. Narain, who led its India business from 2010 to 2013. Globally, pushback was spreading. In America, where the Agriculture Department says GMOs represent more than 90% of corn, soybeans and cotton acres, opponents launched state-by-state efforts to require GMO-food labeling. Following the USDA's 2015 approval of genetically modified apples and potatoes, companies including McDonald's Corp. MCD 1.31 % and Wendy's Co. WEN 1.69 % said they didn't plan to use them, saying they were happy with non-GMO suppliers. The EU unveiled a new opt-out program in 2015. Ukraine and Russia have also ruled out using GMO seeds. China, which permits some biotech cotton, papaya, sweet peppers and tomatoes, isn't expected to approve new GMO crops until the domestic seed industry shows it can compete against Western rivals, the USDA and seed-industry officials said. Chinese government officials didn't respond to inquiries. India's food-security concerns may lead it to soften its stance, seed industry officials say. The country is a big importer of edible oil and lentils-protein sources for many mired in poverty-and has high child-malnutrition rates. GMO proponents say biotech seeds would increase production of protein-rich crops on India's mostly small farms, which the United Nations numbers at 138 million. The 2014 election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who supported GMO crops as chief minister of Gujarat state, encouraged biotech-seed makers. India has since approved field tests for biotech crops, although state governments can block trials. Cotton farmer Dheeraj Chhaganbhai Wadodariya says genetically modified seeds increased his earnings so he could buy cattle, do up his home and occasionally travel. PHOTO: KARAN DEEP SINGH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Cotton, the only genetically modified crop approved in India-rapidly came to dominate its farm fields since its introduction in 2002, helping India become a top exporter of the fiber. PHOTO: KARAN DEEP SINGH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL india's Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the petition to bar GMO-crop cultivation. But Monsanto faces more immediate challenges in cotton, after India's agriculture ministry this month imposed a 70% cut in the royalty fees that Monsanto and Mahyco had charged for their crop genes. The companies also face an inquiry from India's antitrust enforcer over pricing of their pest-resistant cotton genes, and some Indian seed companies have withheld tens of millions of dollars in royalty payments, according to Monsanto. The price controls on crop biotechnology -- which Monsanto and Mahyco license to about 50 Indian seed companies -- may force the companies to reassess all aspects of their joint venture in India, they say. Officials for India's Ministry of Agriculture said in a court document that Monsanto and Mahyco's dominance in supplying biotech cotton genes requires curbs on royalties, which ministry officials called “exorbitantly high ." “We need innovation in agriculture in the country," said Shilpa Divekar Nirula, chief executive of Monsanto's India unit. “The government seems intent on promoting innovation…but something like this is at cross-purposes with what the government is seeking to do ." Write to Jacob Bunge at jacob.bunge@wsj.com and Biman Mukherji at biman.mukherji@wsj.com
-
African Agriculture: A Green Revolution~~African agriculture A green evolution The farms of Africa are prospering at last thanks to persistence, technology and decent government Mar 12th 2016 | GITEGA | From the print edition • NOT so long ago Jean Pierre Nzabahimana planted his fields on a hillside in western Rwanda by scattering seed held back from the last harvest. The seedlings grew up in clumps: Mr Nzabahimana, a lean, muscular man, uses his hands to convey a vaguely bushy shape. Harvesting them was not too difficult, since they did not produce much. This year the field nearest to his house has been cultivated with military precision. In February he harvested a good crop of maize (corn, to Americans) from plants that grew in disciplined lines, separated by precise distances which Mr Nzabahimana can recite. He then planted climbing beans in the same field. On this and on four other fields that add up to about half a hectare (one and a quarter acres) Mr Nzabahimana now grows enough to enable him to afford meat twice a month. He owns a cow and has about 180,000 Rwandan francs ($230) in the bank. Although he remains poor by any measure, he has entered the class of poor dreamers. Perhaps he will build a shop in the village, he says. Hopefully one of his four children will become a driver or a mechanic. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Rwanda's farmers produced 792,000 tonnes of grain in 2014-more than three times as much as in 2000. Production of maize, a vital crop in east Africa, jumped sevenfold. Agricultural statistics can be dicey, African ones especially so. But Rwanda's plunging poverty rate makes these plausible, and so does the view from Gitega. Another farmer, Dative Mukandayisenga, says most of her neighbours are getting much more from their land. Perhaps only one in five persists with the old, scattershot “broadcast” sowing-and most of the holdouts are old people. Rwanda is exceptional. But in this respect it is not all that exceptional. Cereal production tripled in Ethiopia between 2000 and 2014, although a severe drought associated with the current El Niño made for a poor harvest last year. The value of crops grown in Cameroon, Ghana and Zambia has risen by at least 50% in the past decade; Kenya has done almost as well. Millions of African farmers like Mr Nzabahimana have become more secure and better-fed as a result of better-managed, better-fertilised crops grown from hybrid seeds. They are demonstrating that small farmers can benefit from improved techniques. Despite some big, much-publicised land sales to foreign investors, almost two-thirds of African farms are less than a hectare in their extent, so this is good news. Progress need not mean turfing millions of smallholders off the land, as some had feared-though by making them richer it may yet give them and their children the means to move, should they wish. For the time being, though, more than half of the adult workers south of the Sahara are employed in agriculture; in Rwanda, about four-fifths are. With so many farmers and not much heavy industry, boosting agricultural productivity is among the best ways of raising living standards across the continent. And there is a long way to go. Sub-Saharan Africa's farms remain far less productive than Latin American and Asian ones. The continent as a whole exports less farm produce than Thailand. The revolution will not be broadcast Since 1961 the total value of all agricultural production in Africa has risen fourfold. This is almost exactly the improvement seen in India, which sounds encouraging; after all, India had a “green revolution” during that time. But whereas Indian farmers got far higher grain yields per hectare, in Africa much of the new production just came from new land. In the early 1960s sub-Saharan Africa had 1.5m square kilometres given over to arable farming; now it uses 800,000 square kilometres more. Another thing African farming had more of was people. Even today, when population growth has slowed in rural Asia and Latin America, in rural Africa it is still 2%. More people meant more workers, which can mean more yield from a farm in absolute terms. But it also meant more mouths to feed. Africa's population grew more steeply than India's, and as a result production per person fell in much of the continent during the late 20th century. The explanations for Africa's difficulties begin with geology. Much African bedrock is ancient, dating back to before the continent's time at the heart of a huge land mass known as Gondwanaland. For hundreds of millions of years Africa has seen little of the tectonic activity that provides fresh rock for the wind and rain to grind into fertile soils. There is some naturally fertile land in the south and around the East African Rift, which runs through Rwanda. But much of the interior is barely worth farming (see map). Only about 4% of arable land south of the Sahara is irrigated, so local weather patterns determine what can be grown. Those patterns vary a lot from time to time and place to place. Variations in time make farmers more inclined to stick with hardy but low-yielding varieties of crop. Variations in space mean that crops and diets differ a lot across the continent. In Rwanda, white maize and beans are the staple foods. In other places millet, teff, sorghum, cassava or sweet potatoes are more important. Asia's green revolution was a comparatively simple matter, says Donald Larson of the World Bank, because Asia has only two crucial crops: rice and wheat. Provide high-yield varieties of both and much of the technical work is done. African agriculture is so heterogeneous that no leap forward in the farming of a single crop could transform it. The continent needs a dozen green revolutions. Humans have added to these handicaps in all sorts of ways. Beginning in the 1960s, Africa's newly independent nations-often, thanks to colonial borders, small and landlocked-taxed farm produce heavily to finance industrial ventures which often failed. They did little to improve the colonial era's scant and inappropriate infrastructure, which tended to concentrate on railways from mines to ports. Africa still has a thin road network; in rural areas the roads are often primitive and impassable after a heavy shower. Governments frequently imposed price controls, reducing what farmers could earn. And in some places, such as Ethiopia, farmers were subjected to oppressive command-and-control regimes that sapped their will to work. “We lost two and a half to three decades," says Ousmane Badiane of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The sorry history of fertiliser subsidies shows the cost of official ineptitude. Worldwide, about 124kg of artificial fertiliser is used per hectare of farmland per year. Many would argue that this is too high. But the 15kg per hectare in sub-Saharan Africa is definitely too low (see chart). Some countries, like Ghana and Malawi, have thrown money at fertiliser subsidies in flush years only to cut back when budgets tighten. Subsidised fertiliser intended for smallholders has often been resold at market rates with middlemen pocketing the profit. Nigeria's system became so corrupt that in 2012 the agriculture minister, Akinwumi Adesina, estimated that as little as 11% of subsidised fertiliser was actually getting to small farmers at the subsidised price. Like the clumps of earth that African farmers whack with their hand hoes, these natural and human obstacles are stubborn and hard to break down. But bit by bit they can be worn away. African agriculture is improving not because of any single scientific or political breakthrough, but because the things that have retarded productivity for decades, both on the farm and off, are being assailed from many sides. For farmers, perhaps the most potent symbol of change is hybrid seed, often dyed a bright colour and usually burdened with an unlovely name, such as SC719. Joe DeVries of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, based in Kenya, says that by raising the prospect of higher yields, these seeds persuade farmers to spend money and time on fertiliser, weeding and pesticides. Today AGRA collaborates with more than 100 seed companies, representing about a third of the market. They produced about 125,000 tonnes of improved seed last year-up from 26,000 tonnes in 2010. Many of these seeds are being developed in Africa for Africans. N'Tji Coulibaly of the Institut d'Economie Rurale in Mali has developed six hybrid maize varieties. Because these tolerate drought well, they can be planted north and east of the capital, Bamako, in fields where sorghum is now the dominant crop. As though in retaliation, another nearby team has created a variety of sorghum that yields about 40% more than the indigenous kind even without additional fertiliser. Governments and charities are rushing to teach farmers how to plant the new seeds. In Rwanda, One Acre Fund, a charity, provides its clients seeds, fertiliser, know-how and, crucially, credit. To upgrade to hybrids means changing to a system where new seed has to be bought every year, because the plants that grow from hybrid seed do not produce seed of the same sort. And small farmers are usually starved of credit-one large survey for the World Bank found that only 1% of Nigerian farmers borrowed to buy fertiliser. Last year One Acre Fund's large network of instructors, farmers themselves, taught some 305,000 more east African smallholders skills such as carefully spacing seeds so as to maximise productivity and measuring fertiliser using bottle caps. Mr Nzabahimana is a client, as are about a third of the farmers thereabouts. In parts of Kenya where One Acre Fund has been operating for at least four years, even the farmers who are not clients get about 10% more maize per hectare than similar farmers in areas where the charity recently arrived. Know-how spreads. Too few trucks, too many tariffs Untouched, if marginal, land used to be plentiful in Africa. Today it is rare, so farmers must work out how to grow more on each plot. And even countries with plenty of land have little to spare near their growing cities; given the difficulties of moving fresh produce over long distances that makes intensification near the big markets particularly attractive. These urban markets can also change what farmers grow. Farmers close to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, are switching from red teff to fancier white teff because that is what city folk increasingly want. White teff is harder to grow, so the farmers are using more fertiliser and improved seed. Elsewhere, urban hunger for meat and eggs is persuading more farmers to keep cows and chickens. Poor roads are not the only reason it is hard to move farm produce long distances. In 2013 the UN estimated that African businesses that exported goods to other African countries faced average tariffs of 8.7%, compared with 2.5% for those that exported goods beyond Africa. But the tariffs and barriers are gradually coming down. Maximo Torero, an analyst at IFPRI, points out that 31% of the food calories exported from African countries went to other African countries in the mid-2000s-a low proportion, but an improvement on the 14% rate ten years earlier. The El Niño droughts of the last few months in Ethiopia and southern Africa have not yet led to widespread bans on food exports. Reform has been slower in another area. African farmers often have few or no rights over the land they work. Insecure farmers tend not to invest much, either because they do not see the point or because they cannot get credit. These problems can be particularly bad for women. One study in Ghana found that women farmers were less likely to let their land lie fallow (a simple way of increasing its fertility). They seem to have feared losing it if they did not plant it continuously. Well-intentioned attempts to entitle farmers have sometimes made things worse for women: as customary rights are replaced with legal ones, men tend to assert control. Still, things are improving in a few countries. In Ethiopia, where land is formally owned by the state, farmers' rights to cultivate it and rent it out have been clarified. That reform, combined with a change to family law, seems to have increased women's control. The Rwandan government has changed inheritance law to give women more rights. Few of these benign changes would have taken place without a rash of superior government. Sub-Saharan Africa still has some awful regimes in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe (where agricultural productivity is dropping). It has some failed states such as the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Somalia. Yet some terrible rulers have gone and border wars are rare. In part as a result, the region is more placid than it was. The Centre for Systemic Peace, an American think-tank, tallies civil and ethnic conflicts, assigning them a seriousness score of one to ten. Between 1998 and 2014 the total conflict score in sub-Saharan Africa fell from 55 to 30. More peaceful land is more productive. So is land where the people are healthier. The World Health Organisation estimates that 395,000 Africans died from malaria in 2015, compared with 764,000 in 2000. New HIV infections are down by about two-fifths in the same period. There is still much to do. When Mr Nzabahimana wants to sell food, he simply hawks it around the village or hires a woman to carry it on her head to Rubengera, a tiny market town a few miles away. He does not know in advance what price his crops will fetch. As Africa's fields grow more productive, such thin, fragmented markets are becoming a bigger problem. Too few agricultural buyers reach villages, and the ones that make it can often dictate prices. “The traders have all the information-they pay the farmers what they want," says Mr Adesina, who is now head of the African Development Bank. Technology can help, to an extent: in Kenya, where mobile phones are ubiquitous, farmers can subscribe to services that give them price data. But rural roads will have to improve, as well as rural phones, if smallholders are to obtain better prices. So will the ability to store crops somewhere other than in their houses, where the weevils get them. Processing foods near farms, something Mr Adesina is keen on, would help reduce such waste and provide decent paying jobs. A lack of clouds on the horizon Another boost would come from better livestock. Far more of Africa is grazed than is planted, and demand for animal products is rising. Yet there are few meaty analogues to hybrid seeds. African cows are increasingly crossbred with European breeds to create tough animals that produce lots of milk; fodder yields are improving, just like yields of other crops. But animal vaccines remain expensive and are often unavailable, since they need to be kept cold. A pastoral revolution remains in the future. Mr Adesina likes to say that African agriculture is not a way of life or a development activity; it is a business, and it is as a business that it will grow, through investment and access to markets. That said, it will remain a risky business, one in which a vital input, rain, cannot be controlled-as millions of farmers are regretting at the moment. One way to face that risk is to encourage irrigation, especially water-hoarding drip-irrigation. Another is to offer some sort of crop insurance that pays out in particularly bad seasons, as Ethiopia is trying to do. Both are good options. How much they can do in the face of increasing climate change, which is likely to render the dry parts of the continent drier still, and which will do some of its damage just by making peak temperatures even hotter, remains to be seen. Some crops may become impossible to grow in the places where they are grown today. As with hoes and hard soils, there are no easy breakthroughs to be had. But for a long time Mr Adesina's idea of African agriculture as a business to build up would have seemed alien inside the continent and fantastical beyond it. That it no longer does is as strong a basis for hope as any. From the print edition: Briefing
-
Global agricultural science and technology innovation presents a new trendThe No. 1 Central Document focuses on planning the "13th Five-Year Plan" agricultural and rural work, focusing on development ideas, goals and key tasks in the next five years, while taking into account the annual key tasks. The document points out that a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is emerging, injecting strong driving force into agricultural transformation and upgrading. Under the background of the deepening influence of the international agricultural product market, how to make overall use of both international and domestic markets and resources to enhance China's agricultural competitiveness and win the initiative to participate in international market competition is a major challenge that must be addressed. The world's agricultural science and technology innovation has entered a new active period, leading agricultural technology into a new round of development era. Since entering the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", agriculture is stepping into modern agriculture dominated by informatization, led by biological manufacturing, intelligent production, and sustainable development. The agricultural innovation chain supports the agricultural industry chain, and the agricultural science and technology innovation system has become a new direction of competition. At present, the process of globalization of agricultural production division is accelerating, and major international agricultural multinational enterprises such as Monsanto and John Deere have relied on the advantages of scientific and technological innovation to carry out global industrial layout. The agricultural industry chain has shown new characteristics and development trends such as joint investment and joint development at the high end of the industry chain. The competition of agricultural science and technology innovation is evolving from the single, single and one-way competition of technology and product to the multi-integration and innovation competition of the whole industry chain of brand, industrial organization and business model characterized by technology and product. Agricultural science and technology innovation activities continue to break through the boundaries of region, organization and technology, and evolve into the competition of innovation system. The combination of agricultural science and technology and finance is becoming more and more close, and agricultural enterprises have become the new main body of competition. The establishment of an investment and financing mechanism under the guidance of the government, the main body of the market, the coordination between the government, the enterprise and the people, and the organic combination of science, technology and finance has become the driving force for the development of emerging agricultural industries in the world. Multinational agricultural enterprises have increased investment in science and technology to seize the technological commanding heights. In the past ten years, seed companies have become the main body of forage and turfgrass breeding in the United States, registering nearly 100 new forage varieties every year. Agricultural enterprises have become the main body of agricultural science and technology competition. Since the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", my country's agricultural technology has developed rapidly, and the supporting and leading role of technological innovation in the development of modern agriculture has gradually increased. Compared with developed countries, it is found that China has formed a basic pattern of a small number of leading, most parallel and following, and most of them are in a state of parallel and following. In addition to technological competition, China has not yet formed an effective mechanism and system to turn scientific and technological advantages into the driving force of economic development; there is still a lack of leaders and excellent teams in the scientific and technological team to accurately grasp the trend of scientific and technological development and determine the direction of breakthrough. These issues will pose serious challenges that affect our ability to achieve innovation-driven development. Science and Technology Daily
-
FAO: Asia-Pacific region needs to improve agricultural data accuracy~~Improved agricultural statistics needed in Asia-Pacific for future food security, FAO says THE NATION February 16, 2016 1:00 am OBTAINING more accurate agricultural statistics in Asia and the Pacific will help the region meet its future food-security targets, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said yesterday. As agriculture becomes ever more important to meeting the food-security challenges of a growing and rapidly developing Asia-Pacific region, the need for improvements to its systems of collecting agricultural statistics is critical, a gathering of regional statisticians and experts heard on the first day of the biennial meeting of the Asia Pacific Commission on Agricultural Statistics (APCAS). The meeting plans to review the region's preparedness in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The 26th Session of the Commission, co-organised by FAO, is being held in Thimphu, Bhutan, until Friday. It is hosted by Bhutan's Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, with delegates drawn from some 20 countries and sub-regional organisations. The participants will deliberate on the challenges of meeting the information needs of the agriculture sector to monitor and respond better to the patterns of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition while highlighting new methodologies and initiatives that will help them achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). "The Asia and Pacific region, home to more than 57 per cent |of global population, has nearly 62 per cent of the world's undernourished. Data and information play vital roles in planning growth |and development for poverty |reduction in this largely agriculturally dependent region," said Yeshy Dorji, Bhutan's minister of agriculture and forests, during the |opening session of the |commission. Mukesh Srivastava, secretary of APCAS, said: "Agricultural statistics are vital for monitoring progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals. "This meeting will not only focus its attention on the importance of the SDGs, but also highlight the critical role of the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics [GSARS] in the region in ensuring that governments are prepared for today's challenges in providing food security through sustainable agricultural production |and adaptation to climate |change ." The GSARS is an ambitious |five-year programme implemented by the FAO in collaboration with other partners that seeks to empower developing countries to produce better agricultural and rural statistics for effective policymaking and to improve lives. GSARS is currently being implemented in 15 countries in Asia and the Pacific to produce a Strategic Plan for Agricultural and Rural Statistics (SPARS) that will assist in building national capacities to produce core data for monitoring the SDGs and for better development planning. Bhutan is a GSARS partner and is preparing a Strategic Plan for Renewable Natural Resources Statistics (SPRNRS), which will be presented to the meeting to obtain feedback. Similar initiatives in Bangladesh, Laos, Samoa and Sri Lanka will also be presented during the commission session. In addition to GSARS and the SDGs, the commission session will serve as a forum for sharing advances and innovation in economic, social and environmental statistics, including the new World Programme for the Census of Agriculture (WCA 2020, which will refer to the period 2016-2025). WCA 2020 provides guidance to countries for integrated data collection on agriculture, including the crop, livestock, fish and forestry sub-sectors, in line with international standards, and addresses the main emerging information needs of the 21st century. The improved data are vital to planning and policymaking in the region. The recommendations of APCAS serve as a guide for the FAO in redirecting its efforts towards building capacities of its member countries. http://www.nationmultimedia.com/business/Improved-agricultural-statistics-needed-in-Asia-Pa-30279382.html
-
Experts: Global food crisis will emerge in 2050~ ~ Food security crisis will be felt globally by 2050, say experts Naser Al Wasmi February 16, 2016 Updated: February 17, 2016 01:38 PM what? ??ABU DHABI // Environmentally sustainable farming will be key to tackling a 70 per cent increase in demand for food by 2050, according to the Minister of Climate Change and Environment. Dr Thani Al Zeyoudi raised concerns about current practices at the third Global Forum of Innovations in Agriculture on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi. The two-day event attracted scientists and agricultural specialists from more than 80 countries and is a platform for a debate over global food security and water scarcity. “The task at hand is immense, the globalised nature of the food supply chain means that no country, region or continent is immune to food insecurity," Dr Al Zeyoudi said. He said although this phenomenon was a global challenge, it would first be felt in the Middle East where the arid climate posed particular problems when it came to feeding growing populations. “Climate change is perhaps the greatest long-term challenge to farming, the increasing frequency of droughts and floods, changing rainfall patterns, steadily increasing surface temperatures and extreme weather phenomena will make food production increasingly difficult," he said. He said there had to be a holistic approach, because 20 per cent of greenhouse gasses came from agriculture, resulting in a cyclical dilemma that called for an end to traditional environmentally degrading methods of agriculture. Dr Al Zeyoudi called for another “Green Revolution”, alluding to the 1960s boom in agricultural production, except this time the food being produced should have positive effects on humanity and the environment. Others agreed. Aiden Cotter, chief executive of the Irish Food Board responsible for the carbon assessment of the country's agricultural production, said lessons learnt in Ireland could be transferred elsewhere. “Despite Ireland given ideal circumstances for agriculture, we think that through carbon footprinting and eco-monitoring we can transfer lessons learnt in Ireland abroad," he said. Deterring carbon footprinting is the process of analysing the total amount of greenhouse gases produced directly by any one human activity, usually in carbon dioxide. Ireland has some of the most eco-friendly agricultural practices, despite it being one of the biggest exporters of beef. According to the European Commission, it has the best air quality, and according to Yale University, none of its land is under water strain. Mr Cotter said that monitoring agricultural practices - they have conducted more than 100,000 analyses of carbon footprinting in Ireland - was the key to success and future of environmentally friendly growth. Innovation, he said, was key. During the conference, Masdar announced it would be opening a research facility on a two-hectare site at Masdar City, to be used as a platform to explore the commercial viability of a sustainable bioenergy system that produces food and fuel. The Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium is a research project aimed at producing alternative fuel without using arable land or fresh water in a desert environment. “In an interconnected world where rapidly growing populations stress our finite resources, the UAE is addressing food security challenges," said Dr Behjat Al Yousuf, interim provost, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. “The challenge of food security is also an unprecedented opportunity to advance ideas and innovations that are both sustainable and economically viable ." The UAE imports about 90 per cent of its food and that demand is predicted to increase by 300 per cent over the next decade, Dr Al Yousuf said. “Next month, we will begin operating the world's first bioenergy research facility using desert land, irrigated by seawater, to produce food and aviation fuels," said Dr Al Yousuf. “Abu Dhabi's commitment to advance cutting-edge research that addresses water and food security underpins the country's transformation into an economy driven by knowledge capital ." nalwasmi@thenational. AE http://www.thenational. AE /uae/food-security-crisis-will-be-felt-globally-by-2050-say-experts
-
Fisheries and food security~ ~ Fishing for food security February 19, 2016 Local fishermen in Indonesia are catching less fish. Whatever the reason, it is a significant problem for those who live on small islands in particular, as fish make up about 90 per cent of the protein they eat. A team of Indonesian and Australian social scientists is looking at how communities adapt to these changes. Initially, in a pilot project study financed by the Australia Indonesia Centre, the researchers are examining whether there is a link between fishing productivity and feelings of food insecurity in the small islands off Kai Kecil, and if so, whether a weakening of local management of fish populations and a rise in intercommunity conflicts over fish resources play a role. The researchers are also studying how individuals cope with food insecurity, and attitudes to alternative ways of making a living. "There are a lot of small islands in the world," says project coordinator Dr Budy Resosudarmo of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University (ANU). "And Indonesia is a good case for this issue. If we can find out how to handle this, maybe we can provide answers to the rest of the world, particularly the islands of the Torres Strait and the Pacific Ocean ." The collaboration has been able to draw upon resources of two universities in Indonesia, Hasanuddin in Sulawesi and Pattimura in the regional capital of Ambon; the Tual Fisheries Polytechnic in Kai Kecil; and from two universities in Australia: the Australian National University and the University of Tasmania, where there are experts in fisheries economics. Fishing for food security Scientists are investigating whether there's a link between fishing productivity and feelings of food insecurity in the small islands off Kai Kecil. Credit: Australia Indonesia Centre "The two local institutions are important as they have been working in the area continuously, so a lot of background information already exists," says Budy. "They can provide us with literature on local fisheries management, for instance, where each village decides and enforces its own seasonal or species restrictions ." The team has been updating this information using what they call a 'rapid rural appraisal approach,' visiting the villages, talking with the heads and the local people, observing what is happening, and checking whether the questions they propose asking in a forthcoming questionnaire are relevant and will provide them with meaningful information. The bulk of the initial phase of the study will involve analysis of the information gained from the questionnaire, including questions on food security, impressions of fish stocks, fishing productivity, fisheries management, conflict and attitudes to alternative livelihoods. The questionnaire will even carry queries about electricity issues and supply which will provide information to another Australia Indonesia Centre project on remote electrification. Electricity is important to fishing communities for the production of ice to preserve their catch. Fishing for food security Local collaborators have provided valuable information on fisheries management. Credit: Australia Indonesia Centre Originally planned to be held in November, the questionnaire has had to be postponed until February 2016 because an early start to El Niño brought high waves to the area increasing the dangers of sea travel and the level of boat maintenance for locals. Budy believes that alternative livelihoods, such as switching to other fish or marine resources or supplementary occupations, are likely to turn out to be short term solutions of limited appeal to local fisherman. A longer term bet, in his opinion, would be a willingness for fishing families to put more money in educating their children so they can take advantage of other job opportunities, but he has little idea of how fishing people would feel about this strategy. Another area being explored is forging stronger regional connections through modern transport. "Improved transportation could create a better flow of goods and services, and that could generate the possibility of great trade with the rest of the world and a bigger market for Australian agriculture, in particular," Budy says. The Kai Islands are in Indonesia's Maluku Region, which sits between Darwin, Timor-Leste, Ambon and Irian Jaya. http://phys.org/news/2016-02-fishing-food.html
-
American Agricultural Association: TPP helps agricultural exports~~Farm Bureau: TPP Will Boost Farm Exports, Income WASHINGTON, D.C., February 23, 2016 - The Trans-Pacific Partnership will tear down trade barriers and help level the playing field for U.S. agricultural exports to 11 nations across the Pacific Rim. Ratifying TPP will boost annual net farm income in the United States by $4.4 billion, compared to not approving the pact, according to an economic analysis conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation. “TPP will mean a boat-load of expanded exports and increased demand for America's agricultural products," AFBF President Zippy Duvall said. “Clearly, America's farmers and ranchers have much to gain from approval of TPP and we support its ratification. American agriculture is a growth industry, and to continue that trend, we must expand our market opportunities ." Not approving the trade deal would have adverse effects, too. “While our farmers and ranchers have a lot to gain with passage, the consequences of not approving the deal would be harmful," Duvall said. “Every day we delay means lost markets as other TPP countries implement the deal's advantages with each other. We are already arriving at the party late because, right now, expanded trade due to TPP is going on across the Pacific Rim - just without us ." While procedural steps along the way will take time, Duvall said “the sooner TPP is ratified, the better it will be for American agriculture ." AFBF's analysis forecasts farm-price increases for corn (5 cents per bushel), soybeans (12 cents per bushel), wheat (2 cents per bushel) and rice (16 cents per hundredweight). While cotton prices are not projected to change, cash receipts are projected to increase by $21 million. AFBF also predicts price increases for beef ($2.66 per hundredweight), pork ($2.45 per hundredweight) and poultry ($1.40 per hundredweight). In the dairy sector, prices will increase for butter ($2.81 per hundredweight), cheese ($1.68 per hundredweight), nonfat dry milk ($1.29 per hundredweight) and all milk (21 cents per hundredweight). Net trade is expected to increase for rice, cotton, beef, pork, poultry, butter, cheese, soybeans and products and non-fat dry milk, according to AFBF's analysis. While the analysis projects that the net trade for corn will decline by 45.3 million bushels, overall demand and use for corn is forecast to increase by 54.2 million bushels. Corn revenues are expected to rise by $680 million per year and prices are projected to rise by 5 cents per bushel, due to higher domestic feed use from additional beef and pork exports created by TPP. The agreement has been approved by negotiators from the 12 TPP nations. The U.S. International Trade Commission is preparing an official analysis for the administration, which will formally ask Congress to ratify the deal. The full analysis is posted here. State fact sheets are posted at: http://www.fb.org/issues/tpp/
-
Food security is not just about production.~ ~ Food security: It's not only about production Food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to maintain healthy and productive lives. The key elements of food security are: (a) availability of enough food from domestic production and/or imports to meet the demand, (B) access of the food to all people at all times through enough incomes and affordable prices, (c) proper hygiene and sanitary practices and safe water for utilisation of food to have optimum impact on health and nutrition, and (d) a regulatory framework in place and its proper implementation for controlling contamination to ensure food safety. So when we talk about food security status in Bangladesh, we need to keep in mind that it's not only about food production. Food security is a larger canvas - where production of food is definitely an important part but, that's not all of it. Once production of food is enough to meet consumers' demand, it fulfils one criterion of food security but a whole range of other issues still remain to be addressed. Even after producing sufficient volume of food grains, system may fail ensuring its availability at all the places, all the time in a certain geographical territory, in certain market, in certain pocket. Once foods are transported, marketed and managed properly and distributed in every nook and corner, still some consumers can miss out accessing the same because of their poor buying capacity. So the question of making food available, making food affordable are no less important issues than the challenge of producing food for the people. Besides, the full cycle of food production is equally important. Maintaining proper hygiene and sanitary practices are crucial. Unless foods are produced safe, consumers would remain exposed to unsafe food. This is a public health concern. From farm-to-fork food can be contaminated, adulterated at any stage of production, marketing, preserving and distribution cycle. Unless necessary regulatory frameworks are in place; and even if, those are in place, but not enforced than we are asking for a great public health danger. Right at the moment Bangladesh is a case of success as far as producing food is concern, particularly rice, the staple. But, is it safe to have food in Bangladesh remains a big question. Food contamination and food adulteration remain a nagging problem here. Thanks to 18 million farming households and their back-breaking jobs that Bangladesh today able to grow over 35 million tonnes of food grains annually, over three times higher what it used to produce back in 1971 (11 million tonnes). Unfortunately, our regulators, policy planners, and political leadership in charge of ensuring food safety governance, failed us in having access to safe food yet. Till the time we have safe and unadulterated safe food in our plates, food security will remain a far cry no matter how much we produce, how efficiently we market, how wonderfully we distribute. At times, unsafe food is worse than no food. People can survive starvation for limited period but, may have to die from consumption of adulterated food. We have heard enough of outdated laws such as pure food act, and heard enough of government enacting stringent, modern laws in place but any visible enforcement is yet to come by. Couple of years gone by since parliament passed safe food laws and it has been almost a year now that safe food authority is formed but public confidence on safety of food items served to their dishes is still very low. ADVERTISEMENT Over the last three/four decades, Bangladesh as well as entire South Asia has overcome the problem of food availability. All countries now have enough food for people to meet their minimum energy requirements. However many people still lack money to buy sufficient quantities of nutritious food. This is manifested in high level of malnutrition, hunger and poverty. Rising income inequality acts as deterrent in reducing poverty, hunger and malnutrition in a faster pace. This is evident from the fact that in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan more than two out of every five children are stunted (low height for age), one in three are underweight (low weight for age), and over 15% are wasted (low weight for height). Similarly, about half of the women in these three largest countries of South Asia are suffering from anaemia. Over the last three decades, food production and availability has increased at a good pace in Bangladesh as well as entire of South Asia. Food production grew annually by 1.2% between 1980 and 2010 regionally. This increase was attributed to the impressive performance of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, where per capita food production increased by 1.1%, 1.4% and 1.0% respectively. While India and Pakistan are self-sufficient in the production of most food commodities, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have also become self-reliant in production of their staple rice. As a result, South Asia's per capita food availability increased from 2,259 kcal/person/day to 2,434 kcal/person/day between 1991 and 2011. Malnutrition, poverty and hunger have decreased in Bangladesh over the last three decades. This can be attributed to pro-poor growth policies coupled with specific educational and nutritional interventions. The government's budget allocation for the social sector has increased significantly and non-government organisations played an important role as well. Also, the country has formulated a comprehensive social safety net which has benefited the population, particularly the vulnerable ones. The nutritional status of women has improved over the last several decades, yet disparities exist by income and social status. In 2011, nearly a quarter of women (aged 15-49 years) suffered from chronic energy deficiency (with a BMI of less than 18.5) compared to half of the women in late 1990s. Micronutrient deficiencies in iron, iodine and vitamin A are also a challenge. Though decreasing, yet anaemia among pregnant women is still high. Thanks to farm mechanisation, agricultural technology developments, better breeding and farm subsidy and other policy supports, farmers in Bangladesh are still being able to grow more crops from fast depleting farmlands. Resources (land, water, etc.) are scarce; demand for food is on the rise thanks to an increasing population. Choice is limited here. Higher demand for housing, road-building and industrialisation is taking away fertile farmlands while challenge is getting bigger and bigger in meeting greater food demand of increasing population. Though the birth rate is stabilised yet because of an existing large population base, Bangladesh needs to grow nearly half a million tonnes of additional rice year-on-year just to keep pace with the increased number of mouths to be fed. Photo: Strar Almost 30% of the households do not own any land and another 30% own only up to half an acre. Such tiny landownership is insufficient to meet the food needs of four to five-member households, whatever advanced technology the farmer use. There has been no move, whatsoever, for any sorts of land reforms. Tenancy farming is order of the day. People who own land largely don't do farming while people who don't own land mostly do the job as lessees. Economic disparities, relative opportunity costs, flourishing non-farm sectors have got something to do about this phenomenon. Despite such huge challenges it's to the credit of laborious farmers and supporting farm policies that Bangladesh is being able to self-sufficient in rice production. In wheat, we're largely import-dependent but in maize growth has been fantastic over the last two decades. There has been tremendous growth in yields of potato and vegetables and rise in fish productions is quite significant as far as meeting nutritional needs is concerned. But still for the poorer section of the population, rice-centric dietary habit and serious absence of dietary diversities remain a great challenge. Probably that explains why the number of undernourished people in Bangladesh has remained almost static in recent years despite the country's commendable improvement in food security status since 1990. Number of undernourished people stands at 26.3 million in 2015 compared to 26.5 million in 2010-12, said the State of Food Insecurity (Sofi) report-2015, a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) flagship published annually on the eve of World Food Day (October 16). Sofi statistics show that number of Bangladeshi undernourished people dropped from 36 million in 1990 to 27.7 million in 2000 and further down to 24.3 million in the 2005-07 period. But the pace has rather lost momentum in recent years as the number of undernourished people increased to 26.5 million in 2010-12, from which it has dropped by a mere 0.2 million now. Undernourishment means that a person is not able to acquire enough food to meet the daily minimum dietary energy requirements over a period of one year. Bangladesh has done well and we all know that it achieved some of the vital MDGs even ahead of time. In fact, Bangladesh is one of the forerunners in achieving the first of eight Millennium Development Goals - reducing extreme poverty rates by a half (from 58% to 29%) between 1990 and 2015. Probably we have reached a point now that we need to identify the 'pockets' where things are not moving fast. We have to look into the areas where people lost their traditional occupations; we have to look into the vulnerabilities of elderly people; people lacking skills, differently-able persons and ethnic minorities. In order to further reduce the number of undernourished people, Bangladesh also needs to focus on people living in shoals, river-erosion areas, khas lands and saline-prone areas. The writer is Assignment Editor The Daily Star.
-
Automated agriculture: good news for food security, bad news for job security?~~Automated farming: good news for food security, bad news for job security? New technology is revolutionising modern farming, but this brave new world of robot farms and hi-tech sensors could have consequences for rural livelihoods Evan Fraser and Sylvain Charlebois Thursday 18 February 2016 07.00 GMT Last modified on Thursday 18 February 2016 07.03 GMT Around the world, but especially in the developing world, food and farming systems continue to rely on 20th century technology. But this is changing. The same information technologies that brought us the internet and transformations in medicine are now revolutionising farming. It's a new era for agriculture and it's taking off in at least two distinct areas. On the farm, technology is changing the way farmers manage farmland and farm animals - such as the use of satellite driven geo-positioning systems and sensors that detect nutrients and water in soil. This technology is enabling tractors, harvesters and planters to make decisions about what to plant, when to fertilise, and how much to irrigate. As this technology progresses, equipment will ultimately be able to tailor decisions on a metre-by-metre basis. Related: Gene editing could create medicines and self-fertilising crops. But are we facing another GM food-style furore? Robots already do much of the harvesting of lettuce and tomatoes in our greenhouses. And it's even becoming feasible to place fitness trackers on farm animals to monitor their health and welfare. The dairy industry has been at the vanguard of this where robotic milking and computer controlled feeding equipment allow for the careful management of individual animals within a herd. sustainable business Join Guardian Sustainable Business Sign up today and receive exclusive member newsletters, networking opportunities, member-only discounts and more. Click here A similar tech revolution is happening with the genetics of the plants we grow and the animals we raise. Genomic tools are on the cusp of allowing scientists to rapidly and inexpensively evaluate the genetic code of individual plants and animals. This makes it much easier to identify individual plants and animals that are particularly robust or productive. This knowledge, in combination with traditional breeding, can accelerate how quickly we improve the genetic potential of our crops and livestock. Scientists at UK research institute the John Innes Centre, for example, are attempting to create a strain of barley that would make its own ammonium fertiliser from nitrogen in the soil, something which could save farmers the cost of artificial fertilisers. Taken together, both farm and genome-scale technologies are boosting the efficiency of modern farming, which is increasingly important to feed a growing population set to reach almost 10 billion by 2050. But this is just the beginning. Many experts are looking forward to a future where the Internet of Things (where physical objects such as vehicles, buildings and devices are connected to collect and exchange data) is applied to food and farming to create an Internet of Living Things. In this future, advanced sensors embedded in fields, waterways, irrigation systems and tractors will combine with machine-learning systems, genome-identifying devices and data dashboards to give rise to a generation of smart farming technology that will have the capacity to sense and respond to its environment in a way that maximises production while minimising negative impact. However, there are problems. In many of the poorer parts of the world, sophisticated agricultural technologies are much less important than education, healthcare, access to capital, sound governance and basic infrastructure. For the HIV positive farmer supporting her family on just one hectare in rural Malawi, satellite driven tractors and high productivity beef germplasm are about as useful as a moondust. Furthermore, many of these technologies require very little human labour. For example, Japanese company Spread has recently announced that robots will carry out all but one of the tasks required to grow tens of thousands of lettuces each day in its indoor automated farm. Related: Japanese firm to open world's first robot-run farm For countries in the industrial world, this growing automation probably means the continued decline of rural life. The issue of labour is even more important for the economies of the global south, where there are fewer urban job opportunities. In those countries, technologies that take labour out of the fields may undermine efforts to reduce poverty and enhance development. Similar to the fear that Uber and Google cars will make taxi and lorry drivers obsolete, will the same thing happen to farmers? In the brave new world of satellite driven tractors and robotic milking parlours, where will rural communities and cultures fit? And for countries still dependent on agricultural labour, what will people do to survive? The answers to these questions are not simple but the outcome of them will help define global society over the next hundred years. Evan Fraser is Canada research chair and professor of geography. Sylvain Charlebois is professor of food distribution and policy. They work at the University of Guelph, Canada and are affiliated with the university's Food Institute http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/feb/18/automated-farming-food-security-rural-jobs-unemployment-technology
-
Freshwater diversity has a positive impact on world food security~ ~ Freshwater biodiversity has positive impact on global food security February 24, 2016 Freshwater biodiversity has positive impact on global food security Girl selling fish in the market at Stung Treng Cambodia, where a high diversity of fish species supports one of the world's greatest inland fisheries. Credit: Dr William Darwall Inland freshwaters with a greater variety of fish species (biodiversity) have higher-yielding and less variable fisheries according to a new study from the University of Southampton and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). At least two billion people depend directly on inland freshwaters, such as lakes, rivers and wetlands, for the provision of food. However, despite thousands of freshwater species contributing to food security, the relationship between biodiversity and yield remains poorly understood. Using datasets from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and IUCN covering 100 countries in Africa, Europe and parts of Asia, researchers from the University of Southampton have conducted the first large-scale test of the impact of freshwater biodiversity on fishery yields and the variability of yield over time. After taking into account other factors that would be expected to have an effect on yield, such as fishing effort, the size of lakes, and temperature and precipitation, they found that those fisheries with a higher number of species are also producing higher yields. In addition, they showed that in parts of the world where there was a higher number of fish species there was also more stability in the yield year on year. Countries with the strongest relationship included Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam and Thailand. Emma Brooks, Postgraduate Research Student in the University's Centre for Biological Sciences and lead author of the study, said: "The results suggest that fish biodiversity may deliver benefits for human wellbeing. As such, these results provide a powerful argument for placing biodiversity conservation centrally within fisheries management, particularly in countries with the highest yielding inland fisheries as these also tend to have high freshwater biodiversity ." Dr Felix Eigenbrod, Associate Professor (Spatial Ecology) in the Centre for Biological Sciences and senior author of the study, said: "Our study demonstrates that maintaining healthy freshwater systems that support a wide variety of fish (not just those targeted for fishing) is good not only for freshwater species conservation, but is also critical for food security and livelihoods. This is especially true in developing countries where fisheries provide a major source of protein and micronutrients, are a source of income, and where they are used as a safety net in times of hardship such as when crops fail ." Beyond food security, the researchers say that understanding the degree to which biodiversity underpins freshwater fisheries has particular policy relevance because freshwater systems are of major importance for the conservation of biodiversity. Freshwater habitats are disproportionately species rich given that they cover only 0.8 per cent of the Earth's surface but contain 10 per cent of species described to date and as many as a third of all vertebrates. Dr Will Darwall, Head of the IUCN's Freshwater Biodiversity Unit and co-author of the study, says: "Inland waters are the most threatened systems globally, with dams, water extraction, pollution and invasive species as well as overharvesting of the fisheries themselves recognised as some of the biggest threats. It is imperative that the relationships we explored should be considered within freshwater and fisheries management; the protection and conservation of species diversity in freshwater systems is a win-win outcome for human food security and conservation efforts to preserve freshwater ecosystems ." The findings also highlight the urgent need for more data to fully understand and monitor the contribution of biodiversity to inland fisheries globally. Emma Brooks adds: "There is a lack of data for freshwaters, including a thorough understanding of species compositions and distributions worldwide. Equally, a concentrated effort is required to increase reporting not only of inland fishery yields, but also of fishing efforts. Only by doing this will we be able to fully understand the extent of the role that biodiversity plays in underpinning inland fisheries ." Explore further: Awareness and labeling initiatives can benefit inland fisheries Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-02-freshwater-biodiversity-positive-impact-global.html#jCp