Agriculture News
Foreign investment in U.S. farmland on the rise
Des Moines Register | Posted on July 6, 2017In 2013, the Chinese firm Shuanghui received wide public attention when it purchased U.S. pork producer Smithfield Foods for a record $4.7 billion.In an overlooked part of the deal, Shuanghui also acquired more than 146,000 acres of farmland across the United States, worth more than $500 million, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. The deal made Shuanghui, now the WH Group Limited, into one of the biggest foreign owners of U.S. agricultural land, according to an analysis of that same data.That purchase was just a part of a continuing surge in foreign investment in American farmland and food that has raised concerns in Congress and among rural advocacy groups. “When foreign entities buy farmland, my assumption is that we’re never going to get that farmland back,” added Gibbons. “They’re going to keep it forever.”Indeed, over the past decade, foreign companies have been investing in agricultural land in the United States at a record pace, according to a Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting analysis of USDA data. The data was compiled from 1900 to 2014 under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act.
Opioid abusers could be 'doctor shopping' with pets, vet warns
CBC Canada | Posted on July 6, 2017Richardson said opioid prescriptions issued at veterinarian clinics are not recorded in the province's prescription monitoring system, which means there is a risk of "doctor shopping." "The same client could go into another veterinarian with the same complaint and potentially get the same medication from that veterinarian and so on down the line," said Richardson."There's an opportunity for some of these drugs to be diverted to the street, which is never a good thing, and certainly something that we're all conscious of, and we want to minimize the risk of those things happening."
U.S. Rice Farmers Turn Sustainability into Carbon Credits, with Microsoft as First Buyer
Inside Climate News | Posted on July 6, 2017Microsoft bought carbon offsets from rice farmers in Arkansas, Mississippi and California who had worked for the better part of the last 10 years to implement conservation measures on their farms. Through a complicated measurement and verification process, these conservation steps ultimately translated to carbon offsets purchased by the software giant. The transaction this month was the first of its kind and, in the complex and controversial world of carbon markets, it represents a milestone for agriculture."Now we know what it takes to do this," said Debbie Reed, director of the Coalition on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases, a group that works with agricultural producers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "It's not symbolic, so much as proof-of-concept."For years, researchers, advocacy groups and private-sector environment-focused investment groups have eyed agriculture's potential contribution in carbon markets to help address climate change. But carbon trading is complex under any circumstances, and particularly so when the entities generating the offsets grow rice or corn or raise cows. Measuring emissions—or, rather, emissions reductions—accurately and consistently from agricultural sources can be more complicated than for wind energy or solar power projects.
How producers can control anti-animal agriculture press
Watt Ag Net | Posted on July 6, 2017The key to all of the preparations, she said, was transparency. “This is what I tell all my producers in Illinois: We cannot go around in blinders. We have to move forward. We raise our animals indoors, but we need to tell our consumers why. We have biosecurity issues so we can’t bring a whole busload of people into our barns, but there’s the internet, people,” Tirey said. “There’s a lot of different ways we can share this information and that’s how we have to continue to be transparent because we were able to neutralize, we were able to form partnerships and work together and we were able to learn from this for future issues.”
Mountaire to buy Maryland, Virginia grain facilities
Watt Ag Net | Posted on July 6, 2017Mountaire Farms has entered an agreement to purchase the grain elevators and operating assets of Lansing Trade Group LLC in Pocomoke, Maryland; and Eastville and Painter, Virginia.
Debunking the myths about GM crops
Innovators Magazine | Posted on July 6, 2017A network of unpaid experts are giving up their time to debunk the many myths about GM crops.GMO Answers – backed by The Council for Biotechnology – is an online platform where people can find out more about an issue which is often misunderstood.“GMO Answers is an initiative committed to responding to your questions about how food is grown. Its goal is to make information about GMOs in food and agriculture easier to access and understand,” the organisation’s website states.A recent paper ‘GM Crops: Global Socio-Economic and Environmental Impacts 1996-2015’ from PG Economics says biotech crops are helping to slash harmful greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time injecting tens of billions of dollars into the global agricultural industry.
Cotton nanoparticles can help kill bacteria
Science Direct | Posted on July 6, 2017Silver has been used as an antimicrobial agent for more than 100 years. Today, silver in the form of nanoparticles is incorporated in such products as plastic food containers, medical materials, and clothing. In textiles, however, preventing the nanoparticles’ antimicrobial properties from washing away has always been a problem. But not anymore.Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) Southern Regional Research Center (SRRC) in New Orleans, Louisiana, have developed a method to trap inside , where they remain wash after wash.The amount of silver nanoparticles required to kill bacteria is extremely small, which makes them efficient and cost effective to use. Moreover, the new method, developed by ARS materials engineer Sunghyun Nam and her colleagues, is inexpensive and eco-friendly.Typically, silver nanoparticles—particles that are 1 to 100 nanometers in diameter—are grown in a bulk chemical solution. In the new technology, the silver nanoparticles are produced within the cotton fibers, making their application more effective and affordable.
U.S. Plains drought highlights spring wheat supply crunch
Reuters | Posted on July 5, 2017Drought conditions in the northern U.S. Plains that have propelled spring wheat prices to a three-year high worsened in the past week and there are forecasts for more hot and dry weather that could crimp the harvest. As the world struggles with a glut of grain that has filled inventories to record-highs and cast a wet blanket over the corn and bean markets, the shortage of high-quality spring wheat has taken markets by surprise. The drought in the United States has propelled prices for the high protein grain that is prized by bread makers to three-year highs.
Documentary 'Food Evolution' turns to reason to discuss GMO controversy
The Los Angeles Times | Posted on July 5, 2017Calm, careful, potentially revolutionary, "Food Evolution" is an iconoclastic documentary on a hot-button topic. Persuasive rather than polemical, it's the unusual issue film that deals in counterintuitive reason rather than barely controlled hysteria. As directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy, "Food Evolution" wades into the controversy that makes the term GMO (genetically modified organisms) what Jon Stewart once called "the three most terrifying letters in the English language."or what right-thinking citizen hasn't quailed at the thought of armies of artificially conceived zombie fruits and vegetables marching in lockstep under the command of monster corporation Monsanto until they take over the world.As environmental activist Mark Lynas says, "it’s difficult to pay Monsanto a compliment. It's like praising witchcraft."But taking as his theme a quote attributed to Mark Twain that posits, "It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled," filmmaker Kennedy wants us to consider the notion that much of what we feel about GMOs may be wrong.Previously responsible for the splendid "OT: Our Town" and the Oscar-nominated "The Garden," about the plight of a 14-acre community garden in South Los Angeles, Kennedy is a veteran documentarian.Here he's engaged the mellifluous voice of science celebrity Neil deGrasse Tyson as narrator and made sure to talk to people on both sides of the issue, partisans who, ironically, all have the same goal: safe, abundant food for everyone without the use of excessive toxic chemicals.It is in fact the question of how to feed the staggering amount of people in the world — more than 7 billion now, 9 billion by 2050 — that was one of the stimuli that started Kennedy on this project. And he wants you to remember that trying to modify plants to emphasize desirable aspects is something farmers have been doing for a long time.
Study Suggests Modern Beekeeping Gives Varroa Mites Ideal Conditions to Spread
Growing Produce | Posted on July 5, 2017As the managed honey bee industry continues to grapple with significant annual colony losses, the Varroa destructor mite is emerging as the leading culprit. And, it turns out, the very nature of modern beekeeping may be giving the parasite the exact conditions it needs to spread nearly beyond control. In an article recently published in the Entomological Society of America’s Environmental Entomology, researchers argue that the Varroa mite has “co-opted” several honeybee behaviors to its own benefit, allowing it to disperse widely even though the mite itself is not a highly mobile insect. The mite’s ability to hitchhike on wandering bees, the infections it transmits to bees, and the density of colonies in managed beekeeping settings, make for a deadly combination.“Beekeepers need to rethink Varroa control and treat Varroa as a migratory pest,” says Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, Ph.D., research leader and location coordinator at the USDA-Agricultural Research Service’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, AZ, and lead author of the research.In the wild, bee colonies tend to survive despite Varroa infestations, and colonies are usually located far enough apart to prevent mites from hitching rides to other colonies on foraging bees. Wild bee colonies’ natural habit of periodically swarming — when the colony grows large enough that a portion of its bees splinter off to create a new colony elsewhere — also serves as a mechanism for thinning out the density of mite infestations and their associated pathogens. In managed honeybee settings, though, these dynamics are disrupted, DeGrandi-Hoffman says. Colonies are kept in close proximity, and swarming is prevented.