Weather takes a toll… everywhere

Farmers have always been subject to ever changing weather, but this year seems especially bad. I wrote last week about the problems local farmers (and researchers) have been facing. The NY Times has an article showing that the weather hasn’t been much friendlier elsewhere. Farms in places as diverse as Australia and the Philippines aren’t off to a good start.
The most sobering quote from the article:

Last year, the rice crop in Arkansas yielded a record 160 bushels an acre. This year, experts there say, 150 bushels will be an achievement.

“There’s no doubt about it, we’re not going to have the rice to export,” said Carl Frein of Farmers Marketing Service in Brinkley, Ark. “Poor countries like Haiti, I don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Randy Kron (photo from NY Times) is an Indiana corn and soy farmer who won’t be able to plant this year. The article follows his story of fields that are too wet to plant. He concludes “I don’t know if this is the worst year we’ve ever had, but it’s moving up the list pretty quick.”
A lot of the comments on the post are typical: too many people don’t research or think before typing. One, though, had a different perspective. I really like reading what real farmers think, especially because they tend to be more optimistic and solution oriented than the doom and gloom Malthusians. One commenter who farms less than 80 miles from the farm in the article writes:

The New Reality of Food and Fuel

Robert Reich, Prof of Public Policy at UC Berkley, gave a realistic view of fuel and food today on NPR’s Marketplace.

The cost of food and fuel are soaring, not just in the U.S. but all over the globe. The world’s poor are suffering the most — culminating in riots and starvation — but price hikes are eroding living standards in advanced nations as well.

Everyone, it seems, is looking for scapegoats — international conspiracies, speculators, hoarders. But the main reason food and fuel prices are skyrocketing is demand for both is rapidly exceeding supply.

You see, hundreds of millions of people in China and India and the former Soviet republics are ascending into the middle class at a rate never before seen in history. And the two items this huge, rapidly-growing middle class want most are cars and meat.

That’s the problem. Cars use enormous amounts of fuel. And meat uses up enormous amounts of agricultural land, because animals that provide it require lots of feed grains. And supplies of both are limited.

This means global prices for fuel and food will continue to increase in the foreseeable future. And these increases are likely to generate the biggest threats to global peace.

Political pressures will mount on governments to protect their own nation’s sources of energy and food for their own citizens. Conflict will intensify over whether land should be used for biofuels or food production. Farm subsidies in advanced nations will come under increasing attack from developing nations.

Meanwhile, superpowers China, Europe, and America will compete ever more intensely for access to global supplies. And as more cars are used and more forests are cleared for agriculture, greenhouse gases will further shrink arable land.

The answer to all this lies mainly in increasing the supply of food and fuels. And both will depend on two kinds of green research — into more productive and sustainable agriculture, and into more efficient and sustainable fuels.

in other words, we’re in a race between a new generation of biotechnology and non-carbon-based energy technology, on the one hand, and rising political and economic conflict on the other. And the global clock is ticking ominously fast.

So what do we do? Barring something terrible, the population size isn’t going to decrease anytime soon. We need to seriously increase production and decrease per capita demand – which means lifestyle change. One answer is simple – shift farmland from producing animal food to producing people food and carbon neutral (preferably carbon negative) fuel and materials. These are the easiest changes, as renovating suburbia and American car-culture by changing home type/location and shifting to public transportation are bit more difficult. Similar ideas apply to all countries, because unfortunately we were the model that started global aspirations to materialistic wastefulness. I just hope we can be the model again. You can read more of Robert’s no-nonsense views on public policy at his blog and listen to his commentary at NPR.

Colony Collapse Disorder

Colony Collapse Disorder has been in and out of the media since 2006. With conspiracy theories and non-science abounding, it can be hard to separate truth from fiction.

Dr. Diana Cox Foster of Penn State spoke at Iowa State about her work with CCD. She has been studying bees for 20 years and heads a diverse team of researchers working to solve the mystery. She said that there there are quite a few “theories” that her team disagrees with.

In particular, she said that CCD is not caused by the rapture or the Russians. She puts cell phones and genetically engineered crops in the same category, choosing instead to focus on legitimate leads. She says that there are many reasons why their group is not looking into these as possible causes, but one reason sticks out: some Amish and organic beekeepers whose hives are isolated from genetically engineered crops, many pesticides, and cell phones in the case of the Amish have experienced CCD, while some conventional beekeepers have not.

In other words, there isn’t a common thread connecting colonies that have collapsed.

Despite the fact that scientists like Dr. Cox Foster have spoken on the lack of legitimacy of these theories, people continue to write about them, such as this example from the always creative Global Research. I won’t pick the article apart due to time constraints, but wanted to show the range of views. A lot of mainstream articles have less extreme views, but few if any make an effort to debunk the incorrect theories. Instead, they reinforce them! Karl over at Inoculated Mind has a nice post summarizing some issues with the cell phone and GMO theories that’s over a year old. If only the reporters would research as he did.

There is abundant evidence that the Bt protein Cry1Ab doesn’t affect non-target insects. A meta-analysis from Jan 2008 of 25 independent studies found “that Bt Cry proteins used in genetically modified crops commercialized for control of lepidopteran and coleopteran pests do not negatively affect the survival of either honey bee larvae or adults in laboratory settings.” A meta-analysis from May 2008 of a public database found no significant effect on type or number of arthropods in Bt and non-Bt crops. They did find, as have many others, that various types of insecticides decreases the type and number of arthropods.

A quick lit search did come up with a June 2008 study that showed decreased learning ability in bees that were force fed syrup containing very high concentrations of Bt that are not found in the field. This data might indicate the need for more research on bee physiology, but doesn’t mean that Bt isn’t safe for bees in the field.

Now that we know what it’s not, I’ll share with you what Dr. Cox Foster thinks are the most likely causes and solutions…

One organic farmer's view of GM

Raoul Adamchak (at right) is a respected organic farmer and teacher who is stirring up new ideas with his wife, biotechnologist Pamela Ronald. They co-authored Tomorrow’s Table, a book about combining organic methods with biotechnology to produce healthy, cost-effective, sustainable food. Pamela has been outspoken about the book, but US News and Reports has the first interview that I’ve seen with Raoul: Solving the Food Crisis with an Unlikely Alliance. Of course, Pamela is an advocate of intelligent use of genetic engineering in farming, especially for traits like flood-tolerance. Raoul reminds us that genetic engineering is only a tool, one that isn’t worth much unless we use in a carefully designed system – such as organically grown Brandywine tomatoes that are engineered to be nematode resistant!
Via Pamela’s blog Tomorrow’s Table. Photo credit: Debbie Aldridge/UC Davis. Original caption: “Raoul Adamchak works with students in the Market Garden.”

Oddities on a college campus

I’ll start this by saying that I haven’t seen a marijuana plant for over twenty years. So, I could be completely wrong on this one. Walking past the ISU Memorial Union this morning, I saw a patch of weeds. Being the curious plant nerd that I am, I looked a little closer, only to find um, actual weed.