Tag Archives: food
Corn Prices, Land Values And World Population
Pat Westhoff provides perspective Aug. 2, 2013 David Bennett | Delta Farm Press What is in this article?: Producers and ranchers take notice: Corn prices are about to settle back down. Corn prices, land values and world population Farmland values, ethanol Corn prices likely to hold steady after dip. World population indeed growing, but leveling off. Farmland around the world still available for production. U.S. ethanol exports to rise? In a wide-ranging mid-July conversation with Farm Press , Pat Westhoff, director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri, said he wouldn’t “paint an overly pessimistic picture of the future outlook. The corn price is certainly much higher than we’ve had in the past – just not as high as in the last couple of years.” Westhoff, who recently spoke at a Kansas City Federal Reserve forum on global agriculture, told the crowd “that a lot of people are bit too willing to assume that (prices) can only go up from here, that a rising population and other factors mean that prices will continue to go up and up. “I don’t think that’s at all a safe assumption. If we were to have a larger than expected crop this year, or some other year, we could see a pretty serious downtown in prices.” While world population continues to rise to an estimated 9 billion by 2050, Westhoff said predictions show the number of people added to the world population each year “is expected to decline.” Based on U.S. Census Bureau estimates, “the number of people added to the world’s population averaged about 77 million people per year between 2000 and 2010, and we are projected to add about 76 million per year this decade. That drops to 69 million per year in the 2020s and 48 million per year by the 2040s.” The common belief is that projected population growth itself creates some unprecedented challenge. In fact, “population growth will probably decline in importance as a driver of future demand growth as population growth rates continue to decline around the world. “The real difficult questions are how much per-capita consumption will change in the future, and whether productivity growth will continue at the current rate, speed up or slow down. “To oversimplify a bit, if per-capita consumption levels off but productivity continues to grow at the current pace or even faster, then we should expect lower prices in the future; if per-capita consumption grows rapidly (with income growth and/or biofuel demand) and productivity growth slows, then we should expect higher prices.” Another commonly held belief is that the world’s available farmland is all currently in production. Not so. “There’s additional land which could come into production,” said Westhoff. “We’ve seen a big increase in the overall amount of land used for producing the four major crops over the last 10 years. That’s led to a pretty astounding increase on a global basis. Part of the increase occurs because USDA statistics count double-crop acres. “Get two crops off the same acre, that’s even more production. “That’s happening not just (in the United States) but in China, Brazil and India. I was rather surprised when looking at the numbers that the largest increase in reported acres harvested is actually in India. That isn’t because they’ve found more dirt to farm but because they’re doing a much better job of double-cropping and managing their crops. “Going forward, Ukraine is a place where there has already been some growth and there could be more. The same is true in Russia, where there is land that was in crop production in the past and could come back in with incentives like higher prices and favorable government policies.” Don’t forget Africa. “Nations in southern Africa are also poised to bring increase acreage if the political situation were to improve. “Unless there’s some new driver for demand out there that we don’t currently know about, it isn’t obvious to me that we need to bring in lots and lots of additional land for the next 10, 20, or 30 years. Just ordinary yield growth – if it continues at the recent pace – might be able to accommodate a lot of the demand increase we’re likely to see.” Farmland values, ethanol So, what is Westhoff’s take on farmland values in the United States? Is there really a bubble that some are worried is set to pop? “It’s not just all speculation. We have, indeed, had very strong fundamentals in recent years. There have been very good returns to crop production along with low interest rates. That combination has made cropland worth a lot more than it would’ve been worth 10 years ago. “But it does raise the question of what happens if and when crop prices come back down and interest rates go back up? “I know there are people out there who are firm believers that there has been too much of a price run-up in too short of a time in ways that are not generally justified.” At the Kansas City forum, “this was discussed a fair amount. One of the speakers, Michael Swanson (a senior vice president and consultant with Wells Fargo), talked about this and one of his points was that even if there are arguments for why land prices have come up, we’re not seeing people being as discerning as they should be. Lower-quality land is perhaps being sold for more than it should be relative to good-quality land. “One of (Swanson’s) arguments is that people should perhaps put more money into improving the quality of their land instead of buying more land — tiling, irrigation and the like to make the land more productive. That would provide a better return on investment in the future instead of simply buying more land.” Another of Westhoff’s points is that the future rate of growth depends on public and private investments. Has he looked at that in terms of research funding in the farm bills passed by the Senate and House? “The farm bill itself doesn’t provide a lot of money for research. The actual money for USDA research comes from annual appropriations bills. The farm bill does set the rules of the road for those appropriations. “There have been concerns with the annual appropriations. We haven’t seen the increase in public funding (of agriculture research) that a lot of people like to see. That’s why there are many folks concerned about what future productivity will be in the United States and elsewhere. “There has been an increase in private sector research. But a lot of people are concerned about public sector funding be maintained to ensure that all portions of agriculture receive the support needed to develop future productivity.” If the price of corn drops to, say, $3, how would the ethanol market respond? “For domestic consumption, the real question is whether we’ll be able to satisfy the RFS (Renewable Fuel Standard) in 2014. “And look at the value of a RIN – the certificate required to show compliance with RFS. After the last couple of weeks, the value has been about $1.35 per gallon. That implies we are being forced to discount ethanol sharply to try and get anyone to buy a blend higher than 10 percent. Trying to change that in the near-term is very difficult because of the lack of flex-fuel cars and E-15 or E-85 pumps. “A question that’s been below the radar screen so far is: if corn prices come down sharply, will there be a big increase in ethanol exports? We were a net exporter of ethanol for several years recently. Those exports were rather significant until the drought hit. That could happen again in 2014, although I don’t see us exporting billions and billions of gallons.” Continue reading
The Future of Farming, Part 1: Controlling the Environment
By Ned Madden TechNewsWorld 08/06/13 “We’re in the midst of a global movement, and the demand for locally grown, organic produce has never been stronger,” said Greengro Technologies CEO James Haas, “but the biggest problem is that in our society in the U.S., everybody stopped doing basic food-security things — like, for example, collecting seeds. … “Urban growers have to take personal responsibility for what they grow and eat.” Famine… or feast? Soil… or hydroponics, aquaponics, aquaculture or aeroponics? Nine billion hungry human beings will be living on planet Earth by 2050, according to United Nations estimates. “We will need to produce more food in the first half of this century than we did in the previous 100 centuries combined,” declared Tony Kajewski, an engineering manager at John Deere and president of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers . http://www.ectnews.c…4&ign=0/ign.gif Along with an increasing population, the world faces climate change, rising fossil fuel prices, ecosystem degradation, and water and land scarcity — all of which are making today’s food production methods increasingly unsustainable, according to “Latest Agricultural Technology Innovation,” a November 2012 report from Kachan & Co. There’s an upside to all this flux and food insecurity, however. The need for solutions is driving important new agricultural innovations — in particular, urban agriculture and indoor cultivation. Farming has migrated from the fields to the cities and moved into the developed environment. Urban Agriculture and CEA Urban agriculture involves growing plants and raising animals within and around cities. Urban agriculture means food production in densely populated areas, and it features many types of production systems, including traditional open gardens, protected environments and hydroponic greenhouses. Indoor farming goes by many names: “all-season farming,” “undercover agronomy,” “commercial indoor cultivation” and “controlled environment agriculture,” or CEA, to name a few. Entrepreneurial types are converting unused factories, warehouses, office buildings and other facilities into urban farms. Many are building new glasshouse greenhouses for that superior mix of natural sunlight and the powerful artificial lights favored in grow rooms. Urban agriculture offers a promising path toward the goal of feeding the planet’s growing — and increasingly urban — population. Many of the tools to make that path viable come from CEA. CEA involves a combination of engineering, plant science and computer-managed facility control technologies used to optimize plant growing systems, plant quality and production efficiency. In addition to indoor crop farming, CEA is used in research at universities and corporate laboratories. It is useful for isolating specific environmental variables for closer study. For example, researchers may study photosynthesis by comparing a crop grown with induction lighting vs. one grown with LEDs. The advantage is that all other factors can be kept constant, reducing the incidence of another influence on the experiment. CEA has celestial applications as well. NASA pioneered “astroculture” by flying a plant growth facility on nine Space Shuttle missions, including one in 1995 in which potatoes were grown in weightlessness. Some of the research on the International Space Station anticipates traveling beyond low-Earth orbit, focusing on meeting the needs of a long-term spaceflight to Mars, for example. A group of engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida are developing an ISS plant habitat with a large growth chamber to learn the effects of long-duration microgravity exposure to plants in space. CEA is “an integrated science- and engineering-based approach to provide specific environments for plant productivity while optimizing resources including water, energy, space, capital and labor,” according to Gene A. Giacomelli, PhD, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center and a professor in the Department of Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Arizona. In CEA, conventional aquaculture (fish farming) has merged with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) to produce bio-integrated “aquaponics,” a sustainable food production system that mixes vegetable and herb crops and aquatic life in a closed-loop, recirculating, symbiotic environment. “Aeroponics” is a method of growing plants without soil by suspending them above misting sprays that constantly moisten the roots with water and nutrients. Controlled variables include temperature, humidity, pH and nutrient analysis. Aquaponics is essentially an organic hydroponic system, explained Rebecca Nelson, co-owner of Nelson and Pade , which markets its Clear Flow Aquaponic Systems for commercial ventures and other applications. “The plant production part of the system doesn’t vary much from hydroponics,” Nelson told TechNewsWorld. “It is a soilless system. But in aquaponics, we use a natural fertilizer source, which is derived from fish waste. Aquaponics is a fully integrated system that produces both fish and plants.” CEA is “the future of farming,” according to Nelson. “A controlled environment greenhouse protects the crop from extreme climatic conditions and also allows a grower to implement biosecurity practices to ensure food safety.” Lettuce and Tomatoes The four major hydroponically grown plants are tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and lettuces, which can be grown and distributed within urban communities on a scale that doesn’t work for high-volume staple crops such as wheat, corn and rice. These basics foods for much of the world’s diet are unsuitable for CEA, due to issues like the massive production and distribution demands of the crops. By extending the growing season and ensuring product quality of veggies and fruits, CEA complements but does not replace field crop production. Local CEA practices can make a difference in people’s nutrition and quality of life while enhancing the remediation of resources. CEA and hydroponic-type systems offer relatively inexpensive “farms” for the urban grower who may be but more likely is not a traditional farmer, according to UA CEAC’s Giacomelli. “CEA provides the door into production agriculture for those with a non-farm background,” Giacomelli told TechNewsWorld. A long and productive farm background distinguishes Hollandia Produce , which specializes in the production, as well as the wholesale and retail marketing of vegetables it grows in greenhouses using hydroponic methods. Hollandia “Live Gourmet” brand living lettuces and leafy greens — harvested with their roots intact to preserve freshness — are distributed in 45 states and Canada. “CEA is definitely the way of the future,” CEO Peter Overgaag told TechNewsWorld. “Protecting the crops means less waste and of course more production per acre.” The Great Park AG Kawamura, former California secretary of agriculture, could easily be considered the King of Urban Ag in America. Kawamura is a founding member of Orange County Produce , which farms nearly 1,000 acres in a densely urban county. Kawamura also operates the leased 114-acre Orange County Great Park Farm, where his company grows a variety of fruits and vegetables for the consumer market and for contribution to local food banks. “This is now the largest ag operation in an urban park in the country,” said Tom Larson, the park’s farm, food and landscape manager. “What’s so spectacular is it pays for itself.” With an eye always fixed on the future, Kawamura is planning the construction of hydroponic greenhouses at the Great Park Farm. “CEA greenhouses can provide a new strategy for establishing production capacity inside urban areas where open ground may be scarce, impaired — brown fields — or difficult to farm traditionally,” Kawamura told TechNewsWorld. “They certainly can create new opportunities for year-round production of fruits and veggies in places where extreme weather has made farming impractical.” Food Security = Food Knowledge Greengro Technologies markets both indoor and outdoor aquaponic and hydroponic systems and grow rooms. CEO James Haas emphasizes the importance of philosophy and attitude in any successful urban agriculture initiative. “We’re in the midst of a global movement, and the demand for locally grown, organic produce has never been stronger,” Haas told TechNewsWorld, “but the biggest problem is that in our society in the U.S., everybody stopped doing basic food-security things — like, for example, collecting seeds for growing some of their own food. “If we want to create better urban food sources, we need to better understand our food itself,” he advised. “Urban growers have to take personal responsibility for what they grow and eat — that’s what rural farmers do.” High-tech Exurban Ag Houweling’s Tomatoes operates California’s first large-scale, energy-neutral urban ag vegetable greenhouse, producing a broad range of tomatoes and cucumbers grown hydroponically under glass across 125 acres. “I believe there is a place for urban agriculture, said David Bell, chief marketing officer, for Houweling’s Tomatoes, which is surrounded by farmland. “However, we see the future of CEA leaning towards larger-scale greenhouse farms built to meet a bigger regional area,” Bell told Tech News World. “It’s positioned for reduced but easy access to freight, with the integration of grow lights to facilitate year-round local production.” Still Experimental While they are understandably attractive, urban agriculture and urban farms remain at an experimental stage in the U.S., according to Danilo S. Lopez, principal at Novelle Consulting . “Communities will have to face up to regulatory requirements — relating to effluent discharge, noise, logistics, lighting, etc. — and higher quality labor supply year round on one side — and on the other side, the benefits of fresher products to the community — hopefully at lower or competitive cost to consumers,” Lopez told TechNewsWorld. “The U.S. can be supplied year round by Canada and Mexico with greenhouse vegetables,” explained Lopez. “For large commercial U.S. producers, the tested dependable hydroponics greenhouses should remain popular for the next decade. The jury is still out whether urban hydroponics greenhouse farming will be commercially viable.” The road ahead is not completely clear, however, according to Melissa Brechner, PhD, director of the CEA Hydroponic Technology Transfer Center in the Dept. of Biological and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University , who issued a word of caution to urban ag enthusiasts. “It is NOT true that ‘if you grow it they — restaurants, etc. — will buy it’. We have seen much perfectly grown produce go into landfills because the proprietor failed to sell it,” she noted. “In my opinion, the most important thing to remember is that CEA encompasses an integrated system that includes greenhouse design, environmental control, labor, marketing, management, distribution and consumer demand,” Brechner told TechNewsWorld. “All of the details must be working together, and the failure of any one aspect can bring the entire operation to a halt — bankruptcy.” Growth of Greenhouses World greenhouse vegetable production hit a major milestone in 2012, when the total worldwide greenhouse vegetable production area surpassed 1 million acres, according to the International Greenhouse Vegetable Production Statistics released by Cuesta Roble Consulting. “I predict that greenhouse construction will double in the next decade, completing a paradigm shift worldwide in the way mankind produces commodity fruits and vegetables,” Tim Madden, president of BiodynamicsCEA , told TechNewsWorld. “Instead of altering the genetics of the plants to provide the ability to grow in harsh environments, we change the environment to provide the best growing conditions for the plants.” Continue reading
Biotechnology Is Panacea For Africa’s Green Revolution
Page last updated at Sunday, August 11, 2013 gm-cropsAfrica missed the Green Revolution, which helped Asia and Latin America achieve self-sufficiency in food production, missed the Industrial Revolution, but Africa cannot afford to miss another major global ‘technological revolution’, which can help boost our agricultural sector. Africa is often described by derogatory remarks such as the “dark continent, the hungry continent, the disease-plagued continent” and these remarks are further reinforced by scaring statistics produced by global bodies such as the World Health Organisation and UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, which rate Africa as the continent with the highest disease burden and mortality from malnutrition, absence of protein and non-availability/shortage of food. “For me, I think the time has come for us to use this new technology availed us to change that perception and unfortunate remarks”. These were very strong statements that came from Mrs Shakirat O. Ajenifujah-Solebo, Chief Scientific Officer and Head of the Plant Biotech and Tissue Culture Laboratory of Nigeria’s National Biotechnology Development Agency during an interaction with the Ghana News Agency at the ongoing International Environmental Biosafety Training for 22 research scientists and regulators from 11 countries across the globe. The training course organised by the Michigan State University (MSU) College of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Collaboration with the Plant Breeding and Genetics Program, is to offer participants science-based information, skills, and resources to help them evaluate and address biosafety issues in their respective countries. The knowledge, information, and experience gained through this course would help participants contribute towards the development of environmentally sound and safe use of agricultural biotechnology. Using a participatory approach, the course will foster linkages and provide opportunities for networking among participants to exchange their experiences and establish regional collaborations. Answering a question on whether Africa really needs such a technology, Mrs Ajenifujah-Solebo said with passion that Africa must embrace agricultural biotechnology or risk being excluded from a major technological revolution that has resulted in increased food production in South America, North America and Asia. To her, the technology was already with Africans because some countries in Africa like South Africa, Burkina Faso, Egypt and Sudan had already commercializing Genetically Modified (GM) crops whilst other countries like Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon and Kenya were undergoing Confined Field Trials (CFTs) backed by some form of legislation. She explained that with emergence of climate change, crop pests and high production costs, it was urgent that Africa invested in developing agriculture biotechnology if the challenges were to be addressed. “In the coming years, growing populations, stagnating agricultural productivity and increasing climate change will make it more difficult for Africa to fight poverty and malnutrition. And to confront these challenges, many African countries are assessing a range of tools and technologies, including agricultural biotechnologies which hold great promise for improving crop yields,” she added. Dr Mojisola O. Edema, Associate Professor (Food Microbiology/ Biotechnology) of the Federal University of Technology, Akure, told the GNA Africa needs not re-invent the wheel but can borrow the technology and domesticate it to suit the needs of various African countries. Though biotechnology is not the panacea to the world problems it is to complement existing technologies and also help avoid the environmental damage caused by conventional methods of agricultural production. With the efforts being made to push biotech in African agriculture, the adoption of it has been slow in most places, due to what she described as the lack of political will from most governments, but was quick to commend Burkina Faso who started with a Presidential Decree and subsequently developed their regulations. “I think we will need the drivers or the promoters to drum it into the ears of our decision-makers that we are losing a lot of benefits by not adapting these technologies and we must also encourage the “Seeing is Believing” strategy to reinforce that,” she added. In most parts of the continent, farmers are witnessing a rapid decline in crops yield and this is attributed to over use of the soil, pest and other infections that have drastically affected the ability of the crops to produce more. Recent development in biotechnology, especially genetic engineering, has made it possible for the inclusion of desired traits in staple foods that are common to the average Africans. The introduction of vitamin fortified Sorghum and Maruca-Resistant Cowpea are expected to assist farmers to improve on productivity as well as on income and their health conditions. She noted that the application of science and technology on agriculture has the potentials of solving the problems of food security in Africa and there was the need for Africa to prioritize properly to keep its citizens from hunger against the ever-growing population in the near future. “There are immense opportunities in biotechnology for the benefit of mankind. “Unlike what we now have, chemicals are used to control pests and diseases of plants, which are unsafe for consumption and environmentally not friendly, aside of it being expensive. But with science and technology, pest resistant plants are now bred. We have worked on the genes of cowpeas, tested them and seen that they are safe”, she spoke with confidence. With the current increasing world population serving as a major challenge for the future and predicting to hit 9 billion by 2050, 80 per cent of whom will live in developing and transition countries, each hectare of land in 2050 will need to feed 5 people compared to just 2 people in 1960. To feed this number, food production will have to increase by at least 70 percent on essentially the same area of land with less available water. This will then require ‘sustainable intensification – growing more from less’ by using land and resources more efficiently with the aim of meeting the current needs while improving the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In addition we must conserve natural resources and preserve ecosystem function while minimizing, adapting to and where possible, reversing the affects of climate change. Experts argue that to address these challenges, genetic engineering and other technologies must be allowed to play a crucial role. As has been with many new technologies, people are keen to embrace the benefits but are concerned about the potential risks. Dr Ibrahim Atokple, a Senior Research Scientist at the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute, Tamale, Ghana, and the principal investigator for the Maruca-Resistant Cowpea project in Ghana, in an interaction with GNA earlier on, also agrees that Africa cannot be left behind on the global drive to take advantage of bioengineering. “All the argument we are hearing against GMOs are based on personal opinions and not science.” To him, the world is a global village and Africa can no longer live in isolation. Therefore, the time has come for African countries to open up to the technology as presently there is no scientific evidence that shows that the technology is dangerous to humans or the environment. Touring some Green Houses in the MSU and the CFTs, the African participants expressed their amazement at how the United States have invested so much in infrastructure and urged African governments to do likewise if we wish to catch up with the West. According to Samuel Timpo, Senior Programme Officer and Socio-Economics Specialist of AU/NEPAD Africa Biosafety Network of Expertise, although many African countries have developed some features of their biosafety systems to regulate agricultural biotechnology, a look across the continent reveals the need for regulatory capacity strengthening. This observation he says led to the political leadership of the continent endorsing the need for biotechnology and biosafety to co-evolve so that regulation promotes innovation while at the same time safeguards human health and the environment. “Efforts are currently ongoing towards creating an enabling legal environment in member states for the regulation of biotechnology and for the practice of good science to ensure that the benefits of biotechnology are safely harnessed”, he added. To him, African countries must move onto a path of sustainable growth and development and be effectual participants in the thriving global bioeconomy, which will require overcoming the challenges of food, feed and fibre that confronts sub-Saharan Africa today and biotechnology could provide the needed useful tools in agriculture, medicine and industry to address these. “Any good technology could potentially help improve the welfare of our people but must be utilized in a safe and responsible manner. The future for Africa should be one that sees member states with functional biosafety regulatory systems and harmonized processes that will ensure that advances in science and technology are safely and sustainably used to enhance agricultural productivity, food and nutritional security, and incomes”, he asserted. Africans are always complaining about what happens in the USA and some parts of Europe and yet we travel to these countries and consume their GM products. On our own market shelves we have imported GM products like cooking oil, tomato puree and other cereals but we criticize the technology. Why don’t we adopt the technology and domesticate it to address our own demands. To Dr William Hutchison of the Department of Entomology of the University of Minnesota, USA, “Much has been written, the Science is here with us, it is a matter of the Will to resolve to improve quality of life for smallholder farmers, on less land”. By Linda Asante-Agyei Source: GNA – See more at: http://www.ghanabusinessnews.com/2013/08/11/biotechnology-is-panacea-for-africas-green-revolution/#sthash.PljMavW1.dpuf Continue reading
