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Post Tagged with: "Plant"
Red Tape Hobbles a Harvest of Life-Saving Rice
Publication – Wall Street Journal By Matt Ridley Date – May 18, 2012 Website – www.wsj.com This week saw the announcement of the latest conclusions of the Copenhagen Consensus, a project founded by Bjørn Lomborg in which expert economists write detailed papers every four years and then gather to vote on the answer to a [...]
Rice Farmers Seek to Save Their Crops From Salt
Publication – The New York Times Author — By Yuriko Nagano Date — April 22, 2012 Website — www.nytimes.com TOKYO — Toshiharu Ota, a rice farmer in Miyagi Prefecture, in northeastern Japan, survived the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster last year. But his fields were devastated by the salt deposits left behind when the tsunami’s [...]
BASF to undertake GMO potato trials in Europe
Publication — Reuters Date — April 5, 2012 Website — www.reuters.com (Reuters) – BASF said on Thursday it will undertake trial cultivation of potatoes containing genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) this year on less than one hectare on sites in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. The German chemicals group said in January it will transfer its main research [...]
Governors defend BPI product at tour of plant
Publication — Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier Author — By Dave Dreeszen Date — March 30, 2012 Website — http://wcfcourier.com SOUTH SIOUX CITY, S.D. — After getting a close-up look at how Beef Products makes its low-fat beef trimmings Thursday, governors of three states forcefully called for an end to “unwarranted” attacks they say have unfairly [...]
Success for salt-resistant wheat crop
Publication — ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Author(s) — By Michael Vincent Date — March 12, 2012 Website — www.abc.net.au After 15 years of work, Australian scientists have successfully grown salt-resistant wheat. The CSIRO first identified the gene in the 1990s and now, using non-GM crop breeding techniques, University of Adelaide researchers have successfully grown [...]
Precision farming yields many gains
China Daily March 8, 2012 By Robert Paarlberg The Chinese government’s No 1 central document released in February attached greatimportance to high-tech agriculture, and it is a hot topic during this year’s annual sessions ofthe National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Everyone thinks high-tech farming means biotechnology, but it actually goes far beyond that.Biotech seeds are now being upstaged in the United States by a variety of ”precision farming”technologies, such as drip irrigation and GPS guidance systems, that offer savings in the useof water and chemical inputs. On big farms in the US four out of five tractors are now equipped with GPS systems that ”auto-steer” the equipment in perfectly straight lines. With differential correction signals, thesesystems can tell a machine exactly where it is in a field, down to 1 square meter. This in turnallows on-board computers to access GIS mapping data and instruct the machine to applyfertilizer or lime at differential rates, location by location. This eliminates both under-applicationthat can hold down yields and over-application that wastes money and pollutes theenvironment. GPS positioning and sensing technologies also allow farmers to save on water, by instructingmachines to deliver water only where the seeds have been or will be planted, and in responseto actual soil moisture conditions at the depth of the plant roots. Computerized drip irrigationsystems are even more precise, and lasers are now used to level fields so as to eliminateirrigation water runoff. An earlier innovation in precision farming was no-till or reduced-till planting. In the 1970s,farmers learned how to seed unplowed fields, to minimize soil disturbance. This helpedconserve moisture and sequester carbon, while saving on diesel fuel. A second dimension ofprecision arrived in the 1990s, when seeds were engineered to resist a chemical herbicidenamed glyphosate. Farmers who planted these seeds could control weeds without multiple pre-emergence chemical sprays and without energy-intensive mechanical cultivation. As a paralleldevelopment, seeds were also engineered to contain a protein that the larvae of insects couldnot digest. Farmers who planted these Bt seeds could reduce insecticide sprays and controlpests with far greater precision. In fields planted with Bt maize or Bt cotton, only the insectsactually eating the plant suffer any harm. This kind of high-tech precision farming has multiple benefits. Since the 1990s when many ofthese techniques were first introduced, the annual rate of growth of total factor productivity inUS agriculture has accelerated from 1.49 percent to 1.91 percent, reducing food costs whilebringing more profits to farmers. Much of this new productivity has come from less wastefulinput use. Total fertilizer use and total pesticide use have both declined in American agriculturesince the 1980s, even as total production volume increased by roughly 45 percent. In theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development world as a whole, excess nitrogenfertilizer use in farming has declined by 17 percent since 1990. This has also been good for theenvironment. Chinese farmers who face water scarcity and who often damage the environment with too muchnitrogen use might take an interest in these new precision-farming techniques, which do nothave to be capital intensive. In some cases China’s farms will have no problem adopting these high-tech solutions. Forexample, China has been planting genetically engineered Bt cotton seeds since 1997. Thesegenetically engineered varieties of cotton have given even small farmers in China a 10 percentincrease in yield per hectare, along with a 60 percent reduction in the spraying of insecticideson cotton. China is now the largest producer of cotton in the world, with 69 percent of its cottonacres now planted with high-tech Bt varieties. In 2009, China also approved the planting ofgenetically engineered Bt rice, and in June 2008, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told theChinese Academy of Science, to solve the food problem, we have to rely on big science andtechnology measures, rely on biotechnology, rely on GM (Genetic Modification).” In other cases, China might want to consider low-tech solutions. The machinery used in the USto apply fertilizer will be too expensive for China’s much smaller farms, but other new methodsfor applying fertilizer with greater precision and less waste are easily affordable. For example inrice cultivation, a new method called fertilizer deep placement replaces spraying urea onflooded paddy fields, which leads to runoff, with the placement of solid ”briquettes” of fertilizerdirectly into the soil close to the root zone of the rice plant. This technique, currently beingscaled up in Bangladesh, can reduce fertilizer use by 40 percent while increasing crop yields by15 percent. Greater precision in modern farming raises a farm’s income, brings down food prices, and isgood for the environment. China will want to move toward precision farming using its ownunique mix of solutions, based on both high-tech and low-tech methods, including bothconventional and biotech seeds. The new Chinese farming model that emerges can leadagriculture in all of Asia toward a more prosperous, environmentally sustainable future. The author is B. F. Johnson professor of political science, Wellesley College, and adjunctprofessor of public policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Vilsack: Trade Barriers Against U.S. Food on the Rise
Food Safety News February 29, 2012 By Helena Bottemiller The number of food safety and plant health trade barriers plaguing U.S. agricultural exports is way up, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told a congressional committee recently. “In the last 10 years, the number of sanitary and phytosanitary barriers we have had to deal with has increased [...]
Words Matter: Biotechnology Does Not Contaminate
Sometimes you just have to pay attention. I do not grow organic crops on my farm and often do not listen to discussions about organic rules and regulations. That is a mistake, because some pretty obscure language from the United States Department of Agriculture is important to me and other farmers that plant biotech seeds. [...]
GM plant trials to be held by Teagasc
The Irish Times February 28, 2012 By Dick Ahlstrom GENETICALLY MODIFIED crop trials may get under way later this year, which would be the first time in almost 15 years that GM plants would be grown in the open. Environmental groups have already said they will oppose the move, arguing it will undermine our reputation [...]
Hicks: Pioneer takes long view on work in China
Des Moines Register February 18, 2012 By Lynn Hicks If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of 10 years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people. — Confucius Bill Niebur tells his Chinese guests: We will create a revolution in your country. But first, [...]
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