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from Photographers Blog:
Quiet work amidst the reeds
By Herwig Prammer
The light is soft and warm, yet I am astonished at how cold it is. The thermometer says minus 15 degrees Celsius, but it feels far lower. In the car I did not recognize how strong the wind was blowing from the north.
Ernst Nekowitsch makes thatched roofs from reeds that grow along the shore of Lake Neusiedl, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Vienna, Austria. He tells me to have a look around. I will find his workers out in the reeds, he says.
So I climb up on the roof of my Land Rover and try to position myself in reeds higher than my vehicle. When I see the harvesters with their machines on the expanse of frozen water, I wonder why I cannot hear them. It is so quiet here. There is just a swoosh of reeds swaying in the wind. I take my cameras and walk along the grooved lanes the harvesting machines cut through the reeds. It is more difficult than I expected. The ground I cover is a 15-centimeter-thick layer of ice as smooth as glass. Sometimes you can even see the lake bed.
A young woman stops her small tractor with balloon tires and welcomes me. Julia, the daughter of Ernst Nekowitsch, explains that she is actually a beautician, but in the winter she helps with the harvesting and in the summer she joins her father roofing. Her father has leased more than eight square kilometers (3.1 square miles) of reeds at the lake, and usually they harvest two to three square kilometers (1 square mile) each year – assuming it is cold enough and the ice on the lake is thick enough to bring on the harvesting machines. Nearly all of the reeds are exported, most of it to the Netherlands. Here on Neusiedlersee we have the largest reed belt in Europe besides the Danube delta – always enough work, she laughs, as she starts her tractor again.
from The Great Debate UK:
How to feed a hungry world?
-Pamela C. Ronald is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California. Raoul Adamchak is an organic farmer and Market Garden Coordinator at the University of California. The opinions expressed are their own.-
This week, the G20 Agriculture Ministers gathered for their first-ever meeting to discuss potential measures to address price volatility and record high food prices. The key to any long-term solution is acknowledging that we need to empower the very people whose lives are most affected by food shortages. Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people get their food and income by farming small plots of land. The potential of small farmers for getting us out of this and future food crises cannot be understated.
Today, we find that millions of lives depend upon the extent to which agricultural science can keep pace with the growing global population, changing climate, and shrinking environmental resources — and the extent to which this science is available to millions of the world’s poorest farmers.
Few people will argue with the idea that we need to grow more food. World economic and agricultural leaders have projected that the human population will surpass 9 billion by 2050, and 10 billion by the turn of the century. And they have forecast that we must double or even triple food production to meet demand.
Yet, already 40 percent of the earth is farmed (an area the size of South America). The amount of arable land is limited and what is left is being lost to urbanization, water shortages, erosion, and environmental degradation. Farmers are so pressed for space in many parts of the world that much of the land now being farmed is marginal, such as the steep hills of Ecuador. Overuse of pesticides sickens farmers and continuous cultivation of the same land drains it of nutrients.
So how will we keep up? How will we feed the world without destroying it?
My husband Raoul Adamchak and I often discuss this question. Raoul has been an organic farmer for thirty years, and I’m a plant geneticist. You may think that a geneticist and an organic farmer represent polar opposites. But we both have the same goal: an ecologically based system of agriculture that is able to grow more food, largely on existing farmland.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Great legs, nice calves…
Blog Guy, I have a huge complaint.
I started reading your blog for your great coverage of German farming news, but here lately you've written very little about it.
You're about to lose me and many of my friends, who are also German farming enthusiasts.
No, wait, I can't afford to lose any readers! Look, here are some fresh photos for you showing German cows and tractors and stuff.
Well, okay, that's better. Say, what kind of German farm IS this?
I don't know, I suppose they probably grow sauerkraut and hasenpfeffer and stuff. The usual.
from Shop Talk:
Check Out Line: Appetite grows for food deals
Check out what we're hearing from top executives attending our Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago this week.
Kantar Retail Americas Chief Executive Ken Harris, a top industry consultant, said he sees a healthy appetite for strategic acquisitions in the food and grocery space this year as improving credit markets and a recovering U.S. economy tempt buyers.
"It's not about making a big acquisition, but you'll see some smart acquisitions starting to happen over the next six to 12 months," said Harris, who advises food manufacturers and retailers on their business models and acquisition strategies.
Also in the basket:
Danone: U.S. yogurt consumption to double
from Commodity Corner:
Millions Fed: some solutions close at hand
More than a billion people go hungry each day -- about the same number as did in the late 1950s. That's both a "tragedy on a grand scale" and an "astounding success," according to a new report called "Millions Fed," produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. While the absolute number of hungry people is the same as it was 40 years ago, the proportion is dramatically smaller -- one in six today, compared to one in three then, the report said. It illustrates 20 successful case studies where progress has been made in the fight against hunger.
Some solutions come from science: new varieties of wheat, rice, beans, maize, cassava, millet and sorghum. Others deal with markets, government policies, or the environment. Two farmers from the Sahel region of Africa, oft plagued by drought and famine, visited Washington last month to talk about solutions they found close to home -- one of the success stories trumpeted in "Millions Fed." Almost 30 years ago, farmers in Burkina Faso experimented with a traditional technique called "zai," digging pits in their plots and adding manure to improve soils before the rainy season, resulting in dramatically better yields. "There was a long period of drought in my village," Yacouba Sawadogo told reporters. "Many people left because their life was very, very difficult. But I decided to stay," he said, explaining how he taught others the technique. In Niger, farmers manage trees on their land to prevent erosion, improve yields, and provide livestock fodder. Before, women had to walk 6 miles to get firewood, but now they have enough for themselves and to sell to others, said Sakina Mati, who coordinates tree projects in six villages. The projects have improved 13 million acres of farmland and fed 3 million people, said Oxfam America, a development group that works with the farmers. It's food for thought as rich nations ramp up efforts to help small farmers grow more food in poor countries. "In our approach toward solutions and programs, we really need to listen as well as talk," said Gawain Kripke of Oxfam. "Solutions don't always come from us."
PHOTO CREDIT: Yacouba Sawadogo on his farm in Burkina Faso /Courtesy of Oxfam America
from The Great Debate UK:
Farming battles and the future of food
Everybody wants to end hunger, but just how to do so is a divisive question that pits environmentalists against anti-poverty campaigners, big business against consumers and rich countries against poor.
The Food Chain Campaign is not about becoming vegetarian, say the Friends of the Earth, it is about putting pressure on the government to mitigate the damaging impact of meat and dairy production on the environment.
"The meat and dairy industry produces more climate-changing emissions than all the planes, cars and lorries on the planet," argues the group. "A hidden chain links animals in British factory farms to rainforest destruction in South America."
London-based Kirtana Chandrasekaran shared the goals of the campaign with Reuters.
Kirtana, you are right! Industrial farming in the U.S. requires tremendous amounts of oil to manufacture fertilizer. When the world passes peak production of crude this practice of farming will be unsustainable. The concentrated livestock practices here in the States creates a huge animal waste problem affecting air and water quality as well as meat safety.
The logical solution is to go back to small farms that raise livestock. Pastures can be rotated with crops greatly reducing the need for industrial fertilizer and mitigating all other environmental concerns as well.
from The Great Debate:
Awakening Africa’s sleeping agricultural giant
Hans Binswanger is the former senior adviser to the World Bank on rural development in Africa. He is currently an independent agriculture and development consultant based in South Africa. The opinions expressed are his own.
The World Bank’s recent study of the prospects of commercial agriculture in Africa focused primarily on the Guinea Savannahs that cover some 600 million hectares, of which about 400 million can be used for agriculture. Less than 10 percent of this area is currently cropped, making it one of the largest underused agricultural land reserves in the world.
During the past four decades, two similar, backward, landlocked, and largely rain-fed agricultural regions developed rapidly and became international agricultural powerhouses: The Cerrado of Brazil and Northeast Thailand. The difficult agro-ecological conditions, remoteness, and poverty levels of the two regions were successfully overcome, and the same should happen in the Guinea Savannahs.
The study found that farm level production costs in Africa are competitive, with family farmers generally having lower costs than commercial farmers. African farmers are also generally competitive in domestic and regional markets, but not competitive in international markets. Logistics costs are much higher than in Brazil and Thailand on account of inadequate transport, processing and marketing infrastructure; lack of competition in vehicle import and trucking industries; cumbersome transport regulations; and the need to pay bribes at border cross¬ings and police checkpoints.
In addition to resolving these problems, awakening of this sleeping giant requires appropriate agricultural policy regimes, greater state leadership and greater development expenditures for family farmers, greater involvement of local governments, communities, and the private sector.
Despite recent efforts, mainly by foreign investors, to launch large-scale agribusinesses in Africa, the study found no evidence that the large-scale farming model is either necessary or even particularly promising for Africa. The apparently successful settler farms of eastern and southern Africa were nurtured by streams of preferential policies, subsidies, and supporting investments.
Nevertheless, large-scale farming, along with other alternatives, may be considered in Africa in three circumstances:
from Commodity Corner:
Blanche Lincoln and her committee of chairmen
On the congressional scale of measurement, Blanche Lincoln got a plum of a birthday present -- the gavel as Senate committee chairman. She is the first woman to head the Agriculture Committee. Amid the congratulatory banter on Sept 30, Lincoln's 49th birthday, were reminders of the enduring power of its members, past and present.
As Lincoln noted, her committee includes the chairmen of four other committees -- Budget, Judiciary, Finance and Health. It is a higher number of sitting chairmen than most Senate committees and allows a useful melding of interests.
Finance chairman Max Baucus and Budget chairman Kent Conrad used their jurisdictions to help write the 2008 farm law, for example, sometimes in seeming competition with Tom Harkin, who passed the gavel to Lincoln and is now Health chairman. Harkin holds a historical footnote for chairing Agriculture twice.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is an Agriculture member as well. In years past, Republican Bob Dole and Democrat Tom Daschle served on Agriculture while also party leaders in the Senate.
Chairmen are thick on the ground in the Agriculture Committee by another gauge too. Five of its former chairmen sit at the head of the table with Lincoln -- Democrats Harkin and Pat Leahy on her right and Republicans Saxby Chambliss, Richard Lugar and Thad Cochran on her left.
"Maybe we should have a special chairman's pin (for) former chairmen," remarked Leahy, now Judiciary chairman.
Further down the table are Republicans Pat Roberts of Kansas, a former House Agriculture Committee chairman, and Mike Johanns of Nebraska, who resigned as U.S. agriculture secretary two years ago to run for the Senate.
from Commodity Corner:
Vilsack rips media over swine flu, I mean, H1N1
Hog markets are depressed. Farmers struggle to put food on the table. Hard times are seeping into the rural economy, hurting owners of grocery and hardware stores.
Blame the media, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, unleashing several lengthy rants about the evils of oversimplification during a 25-minute teleconference with reporters on Thursday.
Vilsack scolded the media for continuing to call the new strain of pandemic H1N1 flu by its more common name: swine flu.
"It is not swine flu," Vilsack thundered. "Every time that is said, consumers get confused. Schools that are considering purchases for school lunch and school breakfast programs get confused, get worried."
Vilsack implied that pork consumption is down because people worry they can catch swine flu -- whoops, H1N1 -- from eating pork. (You can't.) Instead of stressing safety of pork, or sharing details about how the USDA plans to keep watch for the flu-that-shall-not-be-named in hogs, Vilsack dressed down reporters for harming farmers.
"I know this may seem difficult for people, or silly, unless you're the pork producer, unless you're out there trying to make a living and take care of your family," said Vilsack, heading straight over the top.
"And you pick up the paper, you turn on the radio, you turn on the television, and you see this thing mischaracterized, and then you try to go to the market and sell your pork, and you get less than what you're spending to produce it. And so you've got to tell your family you've got to do without."
from Environment Forum:
Onion grower powers up on its own juice
The green industry prides itself on innovation, perhaps especially in California, one of the most environmentally progressive states.
So it should be no surprise that a company in California has made headlines with a new technology that converts onion juice into electricity. Read about it here.
The company, Oxnard, Calif.-based Gills Onions, has been working on the project for years. But Steven Gill, co-owner of the family-owned company, didn't set out with green energy as his goal. Gill just wanted to figure how to get rid of his onion waste in a sustainable, responsible way. Trucking excess onion tops, tails and skins out to the fields for composting was becoming a big hassle - and expensive.
In his research, and help from engineers at University of California at Davis and others, he discovered he could use the onion waste, especially the juice, in an anaerobic digester to create gas and then power up fuel cells. He ended up killing two birds with one stone. He got rid of his waste and created a clean energy source for his processing plant.
Gill said he's gotten a lot of interest from other companies, including a carrot grower and processor. Will more food growers follow suit? Will we soon have fuel from not just onions, but carrots and potatoes and other vegetables?
-- Reporting by Laura Isensee
(Photo Credit: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth. A vendor holds a string of onions at his stall at the annual "Zibelemaerit" onion market in Bern, Switzerland.)
