Agriculture News
Fighting drought and flood with soil health
Prairie Business | Posted on August 15, 2017The Upper Midwest is in the grips of a historic drought, pretty close on the heels of several historic floods. Both extremes cause devastating, expensive problems for agriculture. But agronomist Andrea Basche thinks an answer to improving outcomes for droughts and floods might be the same."It might surprise people that soil can be a part of the solution," Basche says. "Soil can offset some of the impacts related to drought and flood."Basche was the lead researcher on a report entitled, "Turning Soils into Sponges: How Farmers Can Fight Floods and Droughts." Practices like no-till farming and using cover crops or perennials to maintain year-round soil coverage could be keys to managing moisture levels, her research suggests.Basche's research looked at existing studies in soil health to analyze how agricultural practices could change outcomes during extreme conditions. The study focused on Iowa, because of Basche's familiarity with the state and because it is representative of Midwestern agriculture.The study looked at no-till techniques, cover crops, alternative grazing systems, crop systems integrating livestock grazing, and perennial crops, and provided estimates for what would have happened had those techniques been used during recent floods and droughts in Iowa."And our model predicts that by shifting the most-erodible or least-profitable regions of Iowa to systems using perennial and cover crops, farmers could reduce rainfall runoff by up to 20 percent in flood events and make as much as 16 percent more water available to crops in droughts," the study says. A shift to more perennials could mean more land in grass for haying or grazing, or it could include use of a perennial grain like kernza that could be hayed, grazed or harvested for a cash crop, Basche says.
Dow, DuPont Set Aug. 31 for Closing of Historic Chemical Merger
Bloomberg | Posted on August 15, 2017Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co., the two largest U.S. chemical makers, have received all the regulatory approvals needed to close their historic merger. The deal will be completed after the stock market closes on Aug. 31, the companies said in a statement Friday. Shares of DowDuPont Inc. will begin trading Sept. 1 under the ticker DWDP. The companies, with a combined market value approaching $150 billion, would surpass BASF SE as the world’s largest chemical company. Within 18 months of closing, DowDuPont has said it will split into three separate companies focused on agriculture, specialty products and materials.
Report: Climate Change Is Already Hurting the U.S.
Time | Posted on August 15, 2017A draft report produced by 13 federal agencies concludes that the United States is already feeling the negative impacts of climate change, with a stark increase in the frequency of heat waves, heavy rains and other extreme weather over the last four decades. The preliminary report summarizes the current state of the science for the upcoming National Climate Assessment. Trump and his Cabinet have expressed public doubts that the warming is being primarily driven by man-made carbon pollution and will have serious consequences for Americans. The assessment has generally been released every four years under a federal initiative mandated by Congress in 1990. The assessment said global temperatures will continue to rise without steep reductions in the burning of fossil fuels, with increasingly negative impacts. Worldwide, 15 of the last 16 years have been the warmest years on record. Today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said 2017 is on track to be the second warmest for the United States. The report calls the long-term evidence that global warming is being driven by human activities "unambiguous.""There are no alternative explanations, and no natural cycles are found in the observational record that can explain the observed changes in climate," the report said, citing thousands of studies. "Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans."
Congress, stop horsing around
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on August 15, 2017If Congress permits the resumption of horse slaughter in the United States, it will be a difficult start-up. For one thing, companies will need to make investments in an industry that could be defunded again in a few years.For another, horses aren’t raised for meat. FSIS recognized that horses had the highest level of residue violations of all the slaughter classes. As we were looking at regulatory options, Congress made further considerations unnecessary with the ban. If horse slaughter resumes, expect FSIS to take a stronger regulatory posture than before the ban.So, the abandonment and misery of horses will continue in this country. Economic uncertainty due to the whims of Congress, and tight regulatory enforcement by FSIS cloud the future of horse slaughter in the United States if the “yeas” have it. Shipment of live horses over long distances to other countries for slaughter will continue if the “nays” have it. It doesn’t matter whether the House or Senate wins, because the “neighs” will continue to lose.
Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Why The Term “GMO” Is Misleading
Food and Wine | Posted on August 15, 2017Neil deGrasse Tyson is a man of many interests. Besides his fascination with how the universe operates, he’s actually quite interested in both food and wine. When it comes to food, though, there is one topic that Tyson is constantly addressing: GMOs. Most recently, he discussed genetically modified organisms with Dr. Pamela Ronald, a plant pathologist, geneticist, and professor at UC Davis, on his StarTalk podcast. While the entire episode is certainly worth a listen, the video segment published by Mashable provides a concise look at GMOs from a food science perspective and why both Tyson and Ronald don’t necessarily agree with the arguments surrounding GMOs.“We’ve been modifying organisms ever since the dawn of agriculture,” says Tyson in the clip. “There are no herds of wild milk cows wandering the countryside. We cultivated, or genetically changed, corn from whatever cavemen ate to these big ol’ sticks of corn that we now munch on. This is essentially true for every food in the grocery store.” The big issue that the two scientists agree on is that the blanket term "GMO" has been politicized over the years and is too often associated with “genetically engineered” food, which has only been present for the past 40 years or so. Specifically, from Ronald’s perspective, “It’s not that we need so-called 'GMOs,' but we need to advance sustainable agriculture. Within those, we need ecologically-based farming practices, but we also need seed.”According to Tyson and Ronald, all seed at this point has been modified through either selective breeding or crossing strains and the bigger problem facing American consumers might actually be ingesting pesticides (sprayed onto crops or sometimes even engineered into seeds) rather than genetically modified foods.
Tillamook County enacts new wetland process
Capital Press | Posted on August 15, 2017Wetland restoration projects on farmland will have to clear a new hurdle in Oregon’s Tillamook County to ensure they don’t disrupt agricultural practices. However, the county’s newly enacted ordinance isn’t expected to block wetland projects as much as steer them to the least-contentious areas, experts say.“Nobody’s intention was that we never see another wetland project in Tillamook,” said Mary Anne Nash, public policy counsel for the Oregon Farm Bureau.Landowners throughout most of Oregon are allowed outright to convert properties in “exclusive farm use” zones into wetlands, allowing them to sell credits to offset development on wetlands elsewhere.
Fed: Local food movement can spur job growth
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on August 15, 2017The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has released research examining how the growing popularity of locally sourced food can be harnessed to boost economic opportunities for both rural and urban communities. Regional food systems are a promising avenue for economic growth through creation and enhancement of jobs and businesses, Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said in a foreword to the research. Those opportunities can advance the financial security of low- and moderate-income households and communities, they said.
USDA report raises concerns about Canadian inspection system
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on August 15, 2017A recent USDA report questioning the system used by Canadian food inspectors for meat, poultry and eggs is expected to lead to another review of procedures as Canadian officials address proposed corrective actions. The report stems from a series of “onsite equivalence verification” audits by USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) last September at seven slaughter and processing plants and other Canadian offices and facilities. FSIS also verified that Canada’s Central Competent Authority (CCA) took the corrective actions offered by the U.S. agency after a 2014 audit, the report noted.
BPI attorney: Disney likely funding $177 million of settlement out of pocket
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on August 15, 2017Walt Disney Co., parent of ABC News, is likely funding $177 million of its settlement with Beef Products Inc. in the processor’s libel and defamation suit against the network, while Disney’s insurers cover the remainder of the cost, a BPI attorney told Meatingplace in an emailed statement. South Dakota-based BPI sued ABC for $1.9 billion over its 2012 coverage of lean finely textured beef, including its use of the term “pink slime” to describe the product. Under South Dakota law, such a claim may be trebled. Terms of the settlement, reached in June, were not announced.
Modern small scale farming- could it sustain us?
Strong Towns | Posted on August 15, 2017Could any of our communities actually survive on local food alone? Could we ever get to a point where local food makes up most of our diets and where local farmers are successfully supplying that? The more I study this, the more I realize it would be pretty darn tough, if not impossible. But, being an apartment dweller who hasn't had the opportunity to spend much time on farms, I wanted to talk to some real farmers to find out if this rang true from their perspective. Were they supporting themselves with their farm income? Could their harvest (and the harvests of their neighboring farmers) feed a community? I interviewed six farmers from around the country (as well as two people who serve in roles supporting local farmers) in both urban and rural settings, growing both produce and animals. All of them opened their farms in the last twenty years and most started in the last ten years. Between the high start-up costs, physical labor required, a regulatory environment geared for corporate farms and the public’s expectations about how much food should cost, it’s very hard to make it as a small-scale farmer. This was clear in my conversations with farmers and it bears out in the statistics as well. Mark and Kena Guttridge opened their family farm, Ollin Farms, in Longmont, CO, just over a decade ago. They spoke honestly about the economic challenges of their profession, even ten years after getting started: Kena: We do have other jobs because economically we cannot survive with the farm. It sounds beautiful and amazing but if we do just that, the farm would probably close.