This
is startling considering that “from 1970 to 2007, hundreds of millions
of pounds of pesticides were applied annually to U.S. food crops to protect ...
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) deregulated biotechpotato known as Innate, after 10 years of scientific development, safety assessments, and extensive field tests by J.R. Simplot Company. Innate
potatoes have ~40% less bruise caused by impact and pressure during
harvest and storage than conventional potatoes and have lower levels of
asparagine. Asparagine is converted into acrylamide when fried, which is
a chemical compound linked to cancer. It is projected that Innate
will decrease annual potato waste by about 400 million lbs. in the food
service and retail industries and about 3 billion lbs. discarded by
consumers.
Simplot is looking forward to the completion of the FDA review process before Innate is introduced into the marketplace in limited test markets in 2015.
For more information, visit http://www.simplotplantsciences.com/ and http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/09/mcdonalds-mulling-embrace-of-simplots-bruise-reducing-innate-gmo-potato/.
The
Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam (MoNRE) has
issued on November 3, 2014, decisions No. 2485 and 2486 / QD-BTNMT
granting certificates of biosafety for herbicide resistant transgenic maize
with event GA21 (Syngenta Vietnam Co.) and NK603 (Dekalb Vietnam Co.,
Ltd.). The decisions came after assessing and evaluating the dossiers
for registration in accordance with the provisions of Circular No.
08/2013 / TT-BTNMT dated May 16, 2013 stipulating procedures for
granting and revoking certificates for biological safety of GM crops.
The certificate requires their holders to manage and monitor the biosafety
of these events and annually send the report on the time, location and
area of their release to MoNRE. The certificate holders are also
requested to report timely to concerned authorities if there is any
urgent case of new information on risk or reverse impact to environment
and biosafety relating to these maize varieties and to take appropriate
remedies. Before receiving biosafety certificates in Vietnam, transgenic
maize event NK603 was approved in 11 countries and event GA21 were
approved in 9 countries for releasing into the environment, including
USA, Canada, Japan.
Translated by Agbiotech VN from http://antoansinhhoc.vn/Noi-dung/Bo-TNMT-cap-Giay-chung-nhan-an-toan-sinh-hoc-doi-voi-ngo-bien-doi-gen-mang-su-kien-NK603-va-GA21-/2453183.
Bt rice (mfb-MH86) produces cry1Ab protein to reduce feeding damage of pests including Asiatic pink stem borer (Sesamia inferens), Asiatic rice borer (Chilo suppressalis), yellow stem borer (Tryporyza incertulas) and rice leafroller (Cnaphalocrocis medinalis). Huan Song of China Agricultural University and colleagues used rice flour from Bt rice
and its non-biotech counterpart (MH86) for 90-days feeding test of
Sprague-Dawley rats. The researchers separately formulated rodent diets
at concentrations of 17.5, 35 and 70 % (w/w).
Overall health,
body weight and food consumption were comparable between groups fed
diets containing mfb-MH86 and MH86. Differences in haematological and
biochemical parameters of the blood samples were noted, but still within
the normal range of values for the size and gender of the rats, thus
not considered as effect of the treatment. Macroscopic and tissue
examinations were conducted, but no significant differences were found.
Based on the results, Bt rice mfb-MH86 is as safe and nutritious as non-GM rice.
Read the abstract at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11248-014-9844-6.
Oregon and Colorado voters rejected the ballot measures that requires labeling of GM foods. In Colorado, 66% rejected labeling while in Oregon, 50.5% of the voters did not want GM foods to be labelled.
According to DuPont spokesperson Jane Slusark, their company opposed the labeling initiatives because they could be costly and confusing for consumers.
To date, only three US states require GMO labeling.
Connecticut and Maine have both passed such laws, but they contain
provisions stating that they can't be implemented unless several other
states approve similar labeling laws. Vermont has passed a labeling law
which will be implemented in 2016.
Read more at http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/11/us-states-reject-genetically-modified-food-labeling.
The “pro” side in the debate over the benefit of genetically modified foods ... The review included studies of GM crops conducted from 1995 to March ...
If these traits can be transferred to our food crops through breeding programs, they could help provide us with a continuing, resilient and diverse food ...
“It will answer the question: is this GM food, and associated pesticide, safe for ... involved in an intense debate since GM foods were introduced in 1994. ... in the US, and the use of the herbicides to which these crops are resistant has ...
A list will be published. Biotech companies insist that many studies have already proved that GM crops and food and safe. Dr Julian Little, chairman of ...
This has meant that food growers gradually breed crops varieties that thrive in ... "To have a truly self-sufficient local food system, we need seed that is ...
The current WTO norms cap the value of food subsidies at 10% of the value of total production of a particular food crop, based on prices prevalent in ...
When your business is growing food, plants or flowers, insuring your crop can help protect you from financial disaster, as well as cover minor setbacks ...
The Innate is, in theory, perfect for food giants that use a lot of potatoes, ... EU-wide investigation into the potential for biotechnology to protect crops, ...
“We tried our best to work through the administrative process,” says Bill Freese, science policy analyst for The Center for Food Safety. “For two years ...
Modification of crops' genetic code has prompted protests against ... the secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture authority over ...
About 75 percent of all food crops require pollination. With bees and other pollinators already dwindling in number because of pesticide use, disease ...
Agricultural producers spend millions of dollars a year to keep their crops clean and uncontaminated. They must test the soil, water, fertilizers and ...
Among these foods we are collectively about to lose are beans, cherries, ... Over the past quarter-century, yields of all crops have increasing trends, ...
Since the bears gorged on the abundant food sources in 2013, sows ... so many of the moms had three kids, and then [the food crop was poor this year ...
The
adequate irrigation was , equally, good news for the African Union's
recommendation to make of 2014 a year for agriculture and food security in ...
Gates foundation spends bulk of agriculture grants in rich countries
African NGOs received just 4% of Bill Gates’s money for agriculture work, with 75% for US organisations, report says
Farmers break cocoa pods in Ghana’s eastern town of Akim Akooko.Photograph: Reuters
Most of the $3bn (£1.8bn) that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
has given to benefit hungry people in the world’s poorest countries has
been spent in the US, Britain and other rich countries, with only
around 10% spent in Africa, new research suggests.
Analysis of grants made by the foundation shows that nearly half the
money awarded over the past decade went to global agriculture research
networks, as well as organisations including the World Bank and UN
agencies, and groups that work in Africa to promote hi-tech farming.
The other $1.5bn went to hundreds of research and development organisations across the world, according to Grain,
a research group based in Barcelona. “Here, over 80% of the grants were
given to organisations in the US and Europe, and only 10% to groups in
Africa. By far the main recipient country is the US, followed by the UK,
Germany and the Netherlands,” it says in a report published on Tuesday.
Of the $678m given to universities and national research centres, 79% went to the US and Europe, and only 12% to Africa.
“The north-south divide is most shocking, however, when we look at
the $669m given to non-government groups for agriculture work.
Africa-based groups received just 4%. Over 75% went to organisations
based in the US,” says the report.
“When we examined the foundation’s grants database, we were amazed
that they seem to want to fight hunger in the south by giving money to
organisations in the north. The bulk of its grants for agriculture are
given to organisations in the US and Europe,” said agronomist Henk
Hobbelink, a co-founder of Grain.
“It also appeared that they’re not listening to farmers, despite
their claims. The overwhelming majority of its funding goes to hi-tech
scientific outfits, not to supporting the solutions that the farmers
themselves are developing on the ground. Africa’s farmers are cast as
recipients, mere consumers of knowledge and technology from others.”
The private foundation – one of the world’s largest with an endowment
of more than $38bn from Bill Gates, and which supports the Guardian’s
Global development website – has emerged in under a decade as one of the
major donors to agricultural research and development and the largest
single funder of research into genetic engineering. In 2006-07, it spent
$500m on agricultural projects and it has maintained funding at around
this level since. The vast majority of the foundation’s grants focus on
Africa.
It aims to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty but its
agriculture work has been criticised for being fixated on the work of
scientists in centralised labs and ignoring the knowledge and
biodiversity that Africa’s smallholder farmers have developed over
generations.
The single biggest recipient of Gates foundation agricultural grants is the CGIAR consortium of 15 international agricultural research centres.
“In the 1960s and 70s, these centres were responsible for the
development and spread of a controversial ‘green revolution’ model of
agriculture in parts of Asia and Latin America which focused on the mass
distribution of a few varieties of seeds that could produce high yields
– with the generous application of chemical fertilisers and
pesticides,” says the report.
“Efforts to implement the same model in Africa failed and, globally,
CGIAR lost relevance as corporations like Syngenta and Monsanto have
taken control over seed markets. Money from the Gates foundation is now
providing CGIAR and its green revolution model with a new lease of life,
this time in direct partnership with seed and pesticide companies.” Gates foundation grants: where does the money go?
The centres have received more than $720m from Gates since 2003.
During the same period, another $678m went to universities and national
research centres – more than three-quarters of them in the US and Europe
– for research and development of specific technologies, such as crop
varieties and breeding techniques.
Britain has been the Gates foundation’s second largest recipient,
receiving 25 grants worth $156m since 2003. In the US, where
universities and research groups have been awarded $880m, Cornell
University has received $90m – more than all other countries except the
US, UK and Germany.
“We could find no evidence of any support from the Gates foundation
for programmes of research or technology development carried out by
farmers or based on farmers’ knowledge, despite the multitude of such
initiatives that exist across the continent and the fact that African
farmers continue to supply an estimated 90% of the seed used on the
continent,” says the report. “The foundation has elected consistently to
put its money into top-down structures of knowledge generation and
flow, where farmers are mere recipients of the technologies developed in
labs and sold to them by companies.”
Grain suggests that the foundation uses its money to indirectly
impose a policy agenda on African governments. “The Gates foundation set
up the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) in 2006 and has
supported it with $414m since then. It holds two seats on the
alliance’s board and describes it as the African face and voice for our
work,” it says.
“Agra trains farmers on how to use the technologies, and even
organises them into groups to better access the technologies, but it
does not support farmers in building up their own seed systems or in
doing their own research. It also funds initiatives and agribusiness
companies operating in Africa to develop private markets for seeds and
fertilisers through support to ‘agro-dealers’.
“An important component of its work, however, is shaping policy. Agra
intervenes directly in the formulation and revision of agricultural
policies and regulations in Africa on such issues as land and seeds. It
does so through national ‘policy action nodes’ of experts, selected by
Agra that work to advance particular policy changes,” says the report.
The foundation, based in Seattle, responded to the report’s main
points by saying they gave an incomplete picture of its work. “The needs
of millions of smallholder farmers – most of whom are women – are very
much at the centre of the Gates foundation’s agriculture strategy. Our
grants are focused on connecting farmers with quality farming supplies
and information, access to markets, and improving data so that
government policies and resources are in line with their needs.
Listening to farmers to understand their needs, and to developing
country governments to understand their priorities, is crucially
important,” said spokesman Chris Williams.
“We fundamentally believe that development should be led by
developing countries themselves. We invest directly in the capacity of
national governments to execute their own agricultural strategies and
join with other donors to fund those strategies through multilateral
mechanisms like the global agriculture and food security programme.
“Looking at the primary grantees in our database doesn’t provide a
complete picture of where our funds end up and who they benefit. Many of
our primary grantees sub grant funds to local institutions in African
and south Asian countries, including farmer organisations.
“Many local NGOs in Africa and south Asia are small organisations
without the capacity to absorb large grants and often choose to partner
with larger organisations to get work done most efficiently. But at the
same time, we are also engaged in direct capacity-building funding to
ensure these organisations will be more able to administer grants of
this size on their own in the future.”
The same is true for research funding, Williams said, adding: “We
fund research on crops and livestock that are critically important to
the poor, but have historically been neglected by donors. For example,
with support from the British government, our foundation and others,
researchers at Cornell and the US department of agriculture are now
working on improved varieties of cassava, a staple crop in many tropical
regions. Partners in Uganda and Nigeria are growing new plants,
recording their traits, and sending genetic samples to Cornell for
sequencing. This will help breeders in these countries develop new
locally adapted varieties faster than ever.”
• Agra has responded to this article in a letter to the Guardian
It all started when Eric Johnston came to work at
AgriEnergy Resources as an agronomist nearly a year ago. While visiting
customers in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Ohio, Eric was
awakened to a whole new world.
A world filled with cover crops, which is proving to be one of his favorite parts of farming. And for good reason.
He farms row crops alongside his family near Tiskilwa, Illinois and
is always on the look out on how to best increase yield potential year
after year.
Meet Eric:
“Yes I had read about them in ag magazines, but had never personally
seen cover crops growing in fields or talked with the cutting edge
producers who were implementing them into their farm systems. Heck one
of our customers in Indiana had alternated Austrian winter peas and
radishes in 30 inch rows. This year he was going to use RTK to plant
corn in the middle of these rows. Another of our customers from
Wisconsin planted some fields with cereal rye. He let the cereal rye get
to 3-4 foot tall this spring and then no till planted soybeans into it
(pictured to the right).
Then he used his roller crimper to knock down the rye. Notice the
weed control – this field had no herbicide on it!! And we just got word
that it yielded very well also.
Visiting our customer’s farms, talking with farmers, and of course
reading about cover crop use has me hooked. I fell for them hard and
there’s no looking back.
We drilled in cereal rye following the combine on some of our fields
this fall. We also flew on (by helicopter) some oats and radishes into
standing corn. All of the cover cropped fields are looking great so far
and I cant help but get giddy when I drive by or walk these fields.
I don’t understand why more farmers aren’t trying to implement cover
crops into their farming systems. To have living roots in the soil
throughout the year can only do good things. These roots release root
exudates in the form of carbon and sugar and are what feed the soil
microbes and increase organic matter. They also protect against
wind/water erosion, increase water infiltration, decrease compaction,
increase aeration and scavenge nutrients as to avoid run-off in our
water system. Talk about soil health!
Another big reason I am falling in love with cover crops is I think
they will decrease our herbicide usage on our farms and help us with
weed control. Mother nature wants to cover every acre of bare dirt with
something, so why not have it be a beneficial cover crop instead of a
weed!! I feel that cover crops and biologicals are going to be the future of farming, and I hope to pass my knowledge onto my son, Cullen (pictured with his grandpa).
On our own family farm, we’re already discussing ways we can put
cover crops and biological products from AgriEnergy Resources on more of
our acres next year. We know it takes a little more work and planning,
but the benefits far outweigh the work. As I drive by one of our green
cover cropped fields, and then look at the neighbors bare field right
next to it, my love for cover crops keeps growing. We need to be
thinking about the health of our soil for not only now but for future
generations as well.”
What about you? Do you use cover crops? We’d love to hear about it.
And maybe even share your story in next week’s edition of Farm Favorite
Friday.
Until next time, happy trails!
cover crops are not only great for soil rejuvenation. If the right
crops are planted they will help other benefactors like honey bees, In
the late fall there is not much left for the bees, not just honey bees
there are plenty of wild pollinators out there, we call them solitary
bees. There is plenty out there.
No matter what crop you plant, believe me it needs pollination.
If you choose the right cover crop, you will not only help the bees
but you will enforce and increase your pollination strengths for the
next spring.
Take care,
Bob
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) deregulated biotech potato known as Innate, after 10 years of scientific development, safety assessments, and extensive field tests by J.R. Simplot Company. Innate
potatoes have ~40% less bruise caused by impact and pressure during
harvest and storage than conventional potatoes and have lower levels of
asparagine. Asparagine is converted into acrylamide when fried, which is
a chemical compound linked to cancer. It is projected that Innate
will decrease annual potato waste by about 400 million lbs. in the food
service and retail industries and about 3 billion lbs. discarded by
consumers.
The
Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam (MoNRE) has
issued on November 3, 2014, decisions No. 2485 and 2486 / QD-BTNMT
granting certificates of biosafety for herbicide resistant transgenic maize
with event GA21 (Syngenta Vietnam Co.) and NK603 (Dekalb Vietnam Co.,
Ltd.). The decisions came after assessing and evaluating the dossiers
for registration in accordance with the provisions of Circular No.
08/2013 / TT-BTNMT dated May 16, 2013 stipulating procedures for
granting and revoking certificates for biological safety of GM crops. 
Bt rice (mfb-MH86) produces cry1Ab protein to reduce feeding damage of pests including Asiatic pink stem borer (Sesamia inferens), Asiatic rice borer (Chilo suppressalis), yellow stem borer (Tryporyza incertulas) and rice leafroller (Cnaphalocrocis medinalis). Huan Song of China Agricultural University and colleagues used rice flour from Bt rice
and its non-biotech counterpart (MH86) for 90-days feeding test of
Sprague-Dawley rats. The researchers separately formulated rodent diets
at concentrations of 17.5, 35 and 70 % (w/w). 
Oregon and Colorado voters rejected the ballot measures that requires labeling of GM foods. In Colorado, 66% rejected labeling while in Oregon, 50.5% of the voters did not want GM foods to be labelled. 
Bob Fisher says: 
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