Month: September 2012

September 5, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Emu underpass planned for Australia’s Pacific Highway

Australian road officials have proposed building emu underpasses beneath the east coast Pacific Highway so that a population of endangered flightless emus can safely cross one of Australia’s busiest and most dangerous roads.

But wildlife experts say the emu, the world’s third largest bird, which can run as fast as 30mph, is unlikely to use the underpasses.

“Emus are big birds with little brains,” said Gary Whale of Birdlife Australia.

The New South Wales state roads authority said it was working on a plan to minimise the impact of a Pacific Highway upgrade on the small emu population on Australia’s east coast.

Between 20 and 40 people have died on the road each year over the last decade, prompting authorities to spend hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading the highway to eliminate accident “black spot”.

But Birdlife Australia said the suggested new route of the highway would bisect emu foraging and breeding areas and endanger the lives of emus in Clarence Valley.

“It could see the extinction of the coastal emu,” said Whale.

Special pathways to “provide safe passage under bridges” were being considered as part of an environmental impact statement, said a spokesperson for the New South Wales Roads and Maritime Service.

“There are also four dedicated underpass structures designed for the emus, three 5.5 metres (18ft) high and the other 4 metres (13ft) high,” said the spokesperson.

Emus can stand up to 2 metres (6.6ft) tall.

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September 5, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Protecting Public Lands

Residents testify against the PLDC at public hearing

“It is dangerous to put public lands in private hands,” said Molokai resident Kauhane Adams. Yet it seems that this is exactly what legislature created the Public Land Development Corporation (PLDC) to do when they passed senate bill Act 55 in 2011 that established the corporation.

The PLDC’s intent to “generate additional revenues for the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) by developing under-utilized or unused public land,” according to a written statement circulated by the PLDC.

Homesteader Adolph Helm claimed that the PLDC would allow “fast-track boondoggle projects that benefit the private developer and the pockets of the well-connected [while] stripping Native Hawaiian beneficiaries of trust lands.”

Sentiments against the advancement of the PLDC have echoed throughout the state at similar meetings hosted by the PLDC last month on Hawaii Island, Maui, Oahu and Kauai. These public hearing meetings were meant to gather community feedback on its proposed new administrative rules, but have largely resulted in Hawaiians calling for the repeal of Act 55 and the disbanding of the PLDC.

Who determines what is best for the land?
PLDC’s Executive Director Lloyd Haraguchi opened the Molokai meeting, held last week at Mitchell Pauole Center, with an example of an “unused public land” — an abandoned school building that, in addition to being a safety hazard, is not being used to the best of its ability. The space could instead be developed to generate additional revenue to benefit the Department of Education, said Haraguchi.

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September 5, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

The sixth extinction menaces the very foundations of culture

In a cave in south-west France an extinct animal materialises out of the dark. Drawn in vigorous black lines by an artist in the ice age, a woolly mammoth shakes hairs that hide its face and vaunts slender tusks that reach almost to the ground.

Those tusks were not dangerous enough to save it. As human hunters advanced on its icy haunts, mammoths faced extinction between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago. The end of the ice age did for these shaggy cold-lovers, but humans helped: entire huts built from mammoth tusks and bones have been found.

We didn’t mean to help make the mammoth extinct. The wonderful portrait of a mammoth in Pech Merle cave reveals that early homo sapiens was fascinated by these marvellous creatures. This masterpiece of cave art is as acute as any modern work of naturalist observation. The hunters who painted in caves showed the same passion for the natural world as their descendants do. Their culture must have been bereft when the mammoth vanished – even as they helped it on its way.

In the 21st century the same paradox endures. Human activity endangers entire species, yet human culture is profoundly rooted in nature. The loss of a species is also a loss of the images, stories, symbols and wonders that we live by – to call it a cultural loss may sound too cerebral: what we lose when we lose animals is the very meaning of life. Those first artists in ancient caves portrayed animals far more than they portrayed people. It was in the wild herds around them that the power of the cosmos and the mystery of existence seemed to be located.

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September 4, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

The Great Egg Crisis hits Mexico

MEXICO CITY — It is the Great Mexican Egg Crisis, and it will not be over easy, though there will be puns, especially in the Mexican press, which is cracking a lot of jokes.

But seriously: The public here is faced with an extreme shortage of eggs in a country that has the highest-per-capita egg consumption on the planet.

Highest being 22.4 kilograms (about 50 pounds) per person in 2011, or more than 400 eggs a year, depending on the size of the egg, according to Mexico’s National Poultry Industry.

There has been hoarding, price spikes and two-hour lines to buy eggs. Some retail outlets have been forced to limit how many cartons a day a customer can buy.

American hens have been called to the rescue.

An outbreak of AH7N3 avian flu virus is partly responsible. The deadly bird flu was detected in June on poultry farms in the Pacific coast state of Jalisco, and Mexican farmers and the government acted with lethal authority and slaughtered 11 million chickens to prevent its spread.

Within weeks of the outbreak, 90 additional million hens were vaccinated against the virus, with a second round of inoculation now underway.

Because of the mass culling, and stoked by price gouging and the soaring cost of chicken feed, the price of eggs has doubled this summer in Mexico, on average from less than 20 pesos to more than 40 pesos a kilo, or from $1.50 to $3. There’s about 16 or so eggs in a kilo.

This might not sound like much (unless you’re a family of five eating 2,000 eggs a year),

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September 3, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Hunger Games: The price of feeding the world – Inside Story

The World Development Movement, a UK-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), has accused Barclays Bank of profiting from world hunger by betting on food crises and helping to push food prices up.

“The real problem is not that food is becoming more expensive, it’s that money is losing value. Central banks all around the world are simply printing too much money and so you need more money to buy food. It’s not the weather, it’s not speculation, it’s the inflation that central banks around the world are creating.”
– Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital

The NGO said Barclays had reportedly made more than $800m over the past two years from speculating on food markets and that investors were using the food market as a “playground”.

It said this has contributed to hunger and poverty not only for millions in poor countries, but also in developed nations.

The allegations come on the back of a World Bank global hunger warning. According to a report by the bank released this week, global food prices have hit record highs. In July alone, its global food index increased by 10 per cent.

And the price of specific commodities has risen even faster. Corn and soybeans have reached record prices in recent days.

The World Bank lays the blame for price rises largely on the weather: drought in the US has been exacerbated by a dry summer in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

“There are other issues that are driving prices higher: There are many of us – seven billion … we are eating much more .… You have to be completely backward not to see that we have toasted this planet.”

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September 3, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Australian sheep stranded in the Gulf

Two Australian ships holding thousands of sheep have been rejected from loading in Kuwait and Bahrain and remain at sea.

The Australian ship Ocean Drover, carrying 22,000 sheep, has been blocked from unloading in Bahrain since the end of August.

The sheep have already been on the water for 33 days.

Kuwait has also rejected a shipment exported by the Australian company Emanuel’s on the Kuwaiti ship Al Shuwaikh. About 50,000 sheep are on board the ship and was due to dock a week ago.

There are unconfirmed reports that the carrier is now moving its cargo to shore.

According to the Australian agriculture department, the shipments are both infected with the disease scabby mouth.

After the Cormo Express case, in which more than 5,000 sheep died, Australia signed memoranda of understanding with destination countries that oblige them to accept live exports into feedlots within 36 hours, including into quarantine, if needed.

But the new cases suggest procedures for animal welfare in the live export trade have failed.

Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon says the situation is unacceptable.

“The memorandum of understanding now looks like worthless bits of paper,” she said.

“What they require is for the sheep to be unloaded within 36 hours of docking.

Australian sheep stranded in the Gulf – Middle East – Al Jazeera English

September 3, 2012 General Ag News and Notes, Organic Ag Post a Comment

Organic food: what you need to know

Organic food is no better for you than the traditionally grown even though it may taste better, say researchers.

Despite the perception that organic food grown without artificial fertilisers, pesticides and other chemicals, is more pure, nutritious and virtuous, scientists have said there is little evidence that it is healthier.

There are no convincing differences between organic and conventional foods in nutrient content or health-benefits

A review of 237 research studies into organic food found the products were 30 per cent less likely to contain pesticide residue than conventionally grown fruit and vegetables but were not necessarily 100 per cent free of the chemicals. They found no consistent differences in the vitamin content of organic products.

There were higher levels of phosphorus in organically grown food but the researchers said this was of little importance as so few people were deficient in this. The only other significant finding was that some studies suggested organic milk contained higher levels of omega-3 fatty acid, which is thought to be important for brain development in infants and for cardiovascular health. Dr Crystal Smith-Spangler, of Stanford’s Centre for Health Policy, said “we were a little surprised” by the results but that people should eat more fruit and vegetables, no matter how they are grown, because most Western diets are deficient.

Dr Dena Bravata, a fellow researcher, said that, beyond their perceived health benefits, people also bought organic products because of taste, concerns about the effects of conventional farming practices on the environment and animal welfare.

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September 3, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

The era of cheap food may be over

The last decade saw the end of cheap oil, the magic growth ingredient for the global economy after the second world war. This summer’s increase in maize, wheat and soya bean prices – the third spike in the past five years – suggests the era of cheap food is also over.

Price increases in both oil and food provide textbook examples of market forces. Rapid expansion in the big emerging markets, especially China, has led to an increase in demand at a time when there have been supply constraints. For crude, these have included the war in Iraq, the embargo imposed on Iran, and the fact that some of the older fields are starting to run dry before new sources of crude are opened up.

The same demand dynamics affect food. It is not just that the world’s population is rising by 1% a year. Nor is it simply that China has been growing at 9% a year on average; it is that consumers in the big developing countries have developed an appetite for higher protein western diets. Meat consumption is rising in China, India and Brazil, and since it takes 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef (and 4kg to produce 1kg of pork), this is adding to global demand.

Farmers have been getting more efficient, increasing the yields of land under production, but this has been offset by two negative factors: policies in the US and the EU that divert large amounts of corn for biofuels and poor harvests caused by the weather.

If the World Bank’s projections are anything like accurate, further massive productivity gains from agriculture are going to be needed over the next two decades. There will be an extra 70m mouths to feed every year

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