Americans Face Higher Food Prices as More Corn is Used for Ethanol Production

The United States Department of Agriculture says high demand for ethanol fuel made from corn will mean higher meat prices. In its monthly crop report on March ninth, 2007, the department said feed costs are rising for cows, pigs and poultry birds. Corn, or maize, is their main feed.

Corn has been selling at more than three dollars a bushel in early 2007. In 2006, the average was two dollars.

The government says ethanol is using twenty percent of the American corn crop from last year. With this year's harvests, the amount is expected to reach twenty-five percent.

The National Chicken Council has objected to Congress about the situation. The council is a trade organization that represents the industry. It says the feed cost of the chicken industry alone has risen by forty percent.

In January, Tyson Foods, the world's biggest meat processor, reported its first profitable three-month period in a year. But the head of the Arkansas company warned that sharply higher corn prices have become a "major issue" for the food industry. Richard Bond says people will have to pay more for food because companies will be forced to pass along rising costs.

But Deputy Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner says demand for corn will probably get farmers to plant more corn. A University of Missouri Extension official says ethanol could bring the biggest change in American agriculture since farmers began planting soybeans.

Some economists have suggested that land from the Conservation Reserve Program should be used for additional corn production. But the Agriculture Department says only a limited area of land will be released for use over the next four years. The program supports the planting of things like native grasses or trees to reduce the loss of soil from croplands.

The department has appointed a committee to study the needs of biofuel producers. These are fuels like ethanol that are made from renewable resources.

On March ninth, the United States and Brazil signed a cooperation agreement on biofuels technology. The signing took place in Sao Paulo during the first stop on a trip by President Bush to Latin America. Seventy percent of the world's ethanol supply comes from the United States and Brazil. But while most American ethanol is made from corn, most Brazilian ethanol comes from sugar cane.

Source:
VOA News

Global Warming Could Decrease Crop Yields

If there is any good to come from global warming, it is the notion that plants would thrive on the rising emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the leading greenhouse gas that helps trap heat. Carbon dioxide is as vital to plant breathing as oxygen is to us. Biologists say that for most vegetation, the more carbon dioxide there is in the air, the more they grow.

At the same time, they point out that extra CO-2 also hurts plants. They say plant growth is slowed by higher temperatures and lower soil moisture caused by faster evaporation.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading authority on global warming, has concluded that these two trends balance each other, so global warming was not expected to hurt agriculture overall.

U.S. government and university experiments carried out in greenhouses have supported this view.

"What they do is put one kind of plant in two different greenhouses that are right next to each other and then they put higher CO-2 levels in one of the greenhouses and have regular atmospheric level of CO-2 in the other greenhouse," said Myron Ebell from the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, a pro-business group that opposes government efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

He says more carbon dioxide is good for farming.

"The results of these studies going back half a century or more are stunning because almost every single study show not only do all kinds of plants grow more quickly with higher levels of CO-2, but they are also much hardier," he said. "They are more resistant to things like drought."

But a new study shows differently when crops are grown outdoors. University of Illinois agriculture expert Stephen Long and colleagues report in the journal "Science" that the benefits of raised CO-2 levels in global warming do not balance the harmful effects.

"The two things were very roughly thought to counteract each other," he said. "However, the CO-2 fertilization until recently has been studied only in greenhouses and other enclosed environments. If you raise the CO-2 level under fully open conditions, do you see this large fertilization of crop yield? Roughly what we found was that under open air conditions, that increase appears only to be half of what was expected."

The experiments were carried out using five different crops around the world. All showed considerable growth reductions outdoors. Long says that in the tropics, carbon dioxide increases may not help the growth of crops like corn and sorghum at all.

The findings suggest that without changes in the way crops are planted, future yields will drop with increasing carbon dioxide levels.

"We also simulated that rise in our experiment," he said. "That reduces the yield of soybean by about 20 percent, which is a very large yield decrease, and this has not been taken account in future projections on food supply."

But Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute maintains that higher carbon dioxide concentrations benefit agriculture.

"There is a lot of satellite evidence that the Earth is in a period of rapid greening right now and that is probably due to higher CO-2 levels," he said.

Researchers on both sides of the debate agree that more studies are needed to understand the effects of climate change and greenhouse gases on crops.

Source:
VOA News Service
Author: Frank Ling
First published: June 30, 2006

Jojoba - An Unusual Oilseed Crop

Jojoba is a woody plant that grows in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. It needs dry weather and cannot survive low temperatures.

The jojoba plant produces a high quality oil. In fact, more than half of the seed can be oil. This liquid wax does not spoil easily. And it keeps its chemical qualities at temperatures up to three hundred degrees Celsius.

Jojoba oil is mainly used in skin care and beauty products. Scientists say the oil is chemically similar to the oil produced by human skin.

But jojoba oil can also be used to control insects on crops. It was approved in the United States as a pesticide in nineteen ninety-six.

It can be sprayed on all crops to fight white flies. It is also used to control mildew on grapes and on non-food plants. Jojoba-based pesticides work mainly by forming a barrier between a plant leaf and pests.

The Environmental Protection Agency says jojoba oil is not a risk to non-target organisms. And it says it does not know of any harmful effects to humans even if the oil is eaten. But farmers should not release jojoba products into waterways. Oils are generally dangerous to water life.

Many industrial uses for jojoba oil are being studied. It can be used as a lubricant for machines or electronic parts. It has even been considered as a low-calorie food additive because the body cannot break down jojoba oil.

Large plantings of jojoba in the United States are said to date back to the late nineteen seventies. The export market started to grow in the middle of the nineties. By two thousand, the Agriculture Department found that about ninety percent of American jojoba oil was exported. France, Switzerland and Japan are major importers.

The International Jojoba Export Council has members in Mexico and the United States. It also includes companies and universities in Australia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Egypt and Israel.

A limited number of producers, and changing harvest conditions, mean that prices for jojoba oil can change sharply.

Source:
VOA News Service

Protecting Crops with Pest-Controlling Plants

There are a variety of ways that farmers and gardeners can use plants to protect their crops from pests and diseases without resorting to chemical controls. For instance, some plants provide food and protection for insects that help control harmful insects.

Ladybugs are beneficial beetles that like crimson clover and hairy vetch. They find food, water and a resting place in the clover and vetch. Ladybug larvae eat harmful aphids, tiny insects that feed on many different kinds of crop plants.

Plants also help each other through their root systems. For example, scientists say the roots of the marigold flower reduce harmful nematode populations in the soil. Nematodes are tiny worms. There are more than ten-thousand different kinds of nematodes. And some of them feed on corn.

Wild mustard is another plant that releases a poison through its roots. This poison kills nematodes. It also kills some kinds of fungi.

A researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the wild mustard should be cut close to the ground after the first fifteen days. After that, it should be cut once a month. If left to grow freely, wild mustard will compete with the corn for nutrients in the soil.

Canadian researchers discovered that the dandelion weed can protect tomato plants from fusarium disease. Fusarium attacks the plant roots. It reduces the number of tomatoes that the plant produces.

Dandelion roots produce cichoric acid. This acid prevents the disease from getting iron from the soil. Fusarium needs iron to survive.

There are, however, plants that should never be grown together. The roots of the black walnut tree, for example, produce a poison that kills potatoes, peas, tomatoes and peppers.

Dying parts of the brassica family of plants produce a poison that prevents the seeds of some plants from growing. Brassica plants include broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower.

Plants with small seeds, such as lettuce, are especially affected by the brassica poison. A professor at the University of Connecticut said brassica plants should be removed from the soil after they have produced their crop.

Related topics:
Plants Invite Insect Allies to Dine on Pests
Try Natural Pest Control with These Insect-Repelling Plants

Source:
VOA News Service
Author: Bob Bowen
First published: April 1, 2005

Norway Plans to Store Seeds of All the World's Crops

The government of Norway is planning to build an unusual storage center on an island in the Arctic Ocean. The place would be large enough to hold about two million seeds. The goal is to represent all crops known to scientists. The British magazine New Scientist published details of the plan last month.

The structure will be designed to protect the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change and other possible threats. It will be built in a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. The mountain is less than one thousand kilometers from the North Pole, the northernmost position on Earth.

An international group called the Global Crop Diversity Trust is working on the project. The director of the group, Cary Fowler, spoke to New Scientist. He said the project would let the world rebuild agriculture if, in his words, "the worst came to the worst."

Norway is expected to start work next year. The project is expected to cost three million dollars. Workers will drill deep in the side of a sandstone mountain. Temperatures in the area never rise above zero degrees Celsius. The seeds will be protected behind concrete walls a meter thick and high-security doors.

The magazine report says the collection will represent the products of ten thousand years of farming. Most of the seeds at first will come from collections at seed banks in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

To last a long time, seeds need to be kept in very low temperatures. Workers will not be present all the time. But they plan to replace the air inside the storage space each winter. Winter temperatures on the island are about eighteen degrees below zero Celsius. The cold weather would protect the seeds even if the air could not be replaced.

Mister Fowler says the proposed structure will be the "world's most secure gene bank." He says the plant seeds would only be used when all other seeds are gone for some reason.

Norway first proposed the idea in the nineteen eighties. But security concerns delayed the plan. At that time, the Soviet Union was permitted use of Spitsbergen.

New Scientist says the plan won United Nations approval in October at a meeting in Rome of the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Source:
VOA News Service
Author: George Grow
First published: February 7, 2006

Scientists Search for Healthy Uses for Tobacco

Tobacco has been the major cash crop in the southern state of Maryland for 400 years. But with growing concerns about the health risks of smoking, the state is paying farmers to switch to other crops. However, none is as profitable per hectare as tobacco. So researchers at the University of Maryland are looking for alternative uses for the crop, which could end up helping society and tobacco farmers.

There are a lot of bad things associated with tobacco use: lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease. But at the University of Maryland in College Park, a team of researchers is focusing on the plant's good side -- its nutritional benefits. "Yes," insists agronomist Bob Kratochvil, "believe it or not, tobacco does have a lot of very good properties."

Professor Kratochvil runs the University's research farm, where they're growing tobacco, a plant he says has enormous potential for medicine, cosmetics, and energy. And, he points out, scientists hope they can even tease food out of the inedible plant. "It's got excellent quality proteins - human food proteins," he explains. "They're tasteless, odorless, the same quality as you have in soybeans or with milk. One of the potential benefits is that, supposedly, it will not cause allergies, as some folks have allergies to milk, (they're) lactose intolerant. Wheat is another crop; there is some protein allergy problem that some folks have. It's thought the tobacco protein [could] be something in special diets."

While tobacco leaves contain many proteins, finding the ones of value is the challenge for researchers like Martin Lo. Using a device called a screw press, he processes the research farm's harvest, extracting protein from the plants and analyzing it. "The small chopped-up tobacco leaves will be sent through this … screw press, and then we press the juice out of it, leaving the residual as the sludge."

From that juice, Professor Lo extracts protein crystals. He has identified two proteins so far. Both contain all 21 amino acids essential for human health. Because our bodies can't synthesize these amino acids, we have to get them from our food. Tobacco proteins could be an inexpensive, easy nutritional additive.

Professor Lo also sees the possibility of one day using tobacco proteins in medicines. He is studying several amino acids from the peptide segment of the protein. "[I want] to see if any of the protein segments actually match the therapeutic protein that might be of value to the pharmaceutical industry, to replace those proteins from animal origin. Those are considered more risky because there might be some disease that can be transmitted through animal protein." He explains that extracts from plants are much safer.

Another goal of the tobacco researchers is to eventually replace some petroleum-based products with plant-based ones. Remember the sludge left in the screw press? As bio-tech entrepreneur Neil Belson, another member of the University of Maryland tobacco team, points out, "tobacco produces an enormous amount of leaf matter that's
left over after you get the proteins out, and it's from this material left over that we envision looking for petroleum substitutes."

But first, the University team must generate more tobacco protein. Since the project began three years ago, Martin Lo has produced only a small amount of his two proteins. He says he hopes that by the end of next year, the researchers will have perfected the process of tobacco protein extraction. Then, they will seek investors to help build facilities where the proteins can be produced in large amounts.

The ultimate goal, according to project advisor Gary Hodge, is to help tobacco farmers in the state of Maryland. "If we can [identify] a way for them to continue growing tobacco for beneficial purposes," he explains, "then we can begin in Maryland to see the transition of a smoking tobacco-based ag[ricultural] economy to one that produces benefits for society, and maybe that will be picked up in the other tobacco growing states, and we can begin to see something very positive come out of this 400-year legacy of smoking tobacco production."

Since 2000, when the state began paying farmers to stop growing tobacco, many have turned to other agricultural commodities. Some have planted vineyards, others are growing corn or soybeans, but no single crop has proven as lucrative as tobacco. The work being done at the University of Maryland could make tobacco farming a profitable, and respectable, business again.

Source:
VOA News Service
Author: Mary Saner
First published: November 30, 2005

The Quest for Perennial Grains

Thirty-three years ago, as a California genetics professor, Wes Jackson got to thinking about the annual planting, harvesting and re-planting cycle of the American farm -- AND about erosion, insects, drought, and chemical runoff's terrible toll. Remembering the hardy prairie of his native Kansas, Mr. Jackson wondered whether food grains could be grown perennially -- just like the prairie's sturdy grasses. And he set off to find out.

Now in his late 60s, one of American agriculture's notable contrarians is more rumpled and thicker in the waist than he was as a Kansas farmboy, coasting through what he calls one of the most misspent youths in the history of the planet.

Not until college would Wes Jackson take much besides football and girlfriends seriously. But his parents' aphorisms about thrift, discipline, restraint, and respect for the land slowly meshed with his own intellectual curiosity and with students' demands that science improve daily life.

"Students were screamin' for relevance at that time," Mr. Jackson says. "So, I clipped and tore and Xeroxed timely articles, and then began to see that the population problem is a serious problem. Resource depletion and environmental destruction were all a part of one fabric."

So in 1976 this brilliant and widely published geneticist returned to his roots, literally, and founded a combination farm and think tank called the Land Institute, outside the central Kansas city of Salina. Mr. Jackson still runs the operation from a tiny cabin next to what he calls the Sunshine farm, a 60-hectare labyrinth of test fields. In bluejeans and workshirt, he reclines in a squeaky chair with his feet propped up on his desk next to disheveled piles of papers -- a pot-bellied stove keeping the flatland chill at bay. In ways befitting an intellectual luminary -- for Mr. Jackson was awarded the prestigious, $250,000 MacArthur genius grant -- he takes the conversation in a hundred directions, not all of which the uninitiated listener can follow. For instance he's been known to say, "What we will be doing is developing elegant solutions predicated on the uniqueness of place."

The 24-person Land Institute staff now includes several other doctors of agronomy and ecology who are Jackson disciples. Their goal is to develop what they call sustainable agriculture based on deep-rooted perennial crops that mimic a prairie by fertilizing themselves, resisting insects and weeds, and popping out of the ground year after year. Mr. Jackson points to a number of plots where the scientists have succeeded in growing mixtures of wheat, sorghum, soybeans, and corn.

An ecological mosaic takes time, a LONG time. "But," reflects Mr. Jackson, "if you're workin' on something that you can finish in your lifetime, you're not thinkin' big enough!" And he laughs uproariously.

The institute's biggest hurdle, Mr. Jackson says, will be crossing swords with what he calls the corporate culture that makes billions of dollars selling farmers pesticides, fertilizers, and the machinery needed to perpetuate the annual crop cycle.

Wes Jackson predicts there will be powerful interests aligned against any switch from what he calls wasteful, harmful, profitable annual farming. "Oh," he says with a wink, "I think some people in ag schools think I'm a nut -- maybe the majority."

Farmers will become true believers in sustainable agriculture, Wes Jackson says, once crop yields approach those of single-crop, monoculture farming. "They won't be skeptical if they can make a profit. If they can cut their input costs," he says. "Farmers aren't stupid. They just want to make a profit. So I'm not worried. If the compelling alternative is there, they'll go for it."

Wes Jackson says he'd love to ease off a bit -- do some more writing. But, as he puts it, "What I'm doin's awfully interesting work." How about travel, a little fun? "I don't really go on vacations," he says. "I travel a lot. But my place -- this place right here -- to me is where the action is."

But don't call Wes Jackson a futurist. "Too heroic," he says. "We're just trying to make sense of the world."

Source:
VOA News Service
Author: Ted Landphair
First published: April 17, 2006