The Chinese camera crew from China gathered around Scott Stewart, director of horticulture and agriculture programs at Kankakee Community College, ready to capture his every word for an agriculture education program aimed at their nation’s 800 million farmers.

“We work with the minimal fertilizer applications here,” Stewart said to Zheng Xunling, a Chinese national who learned English watching American movies, and who serves as the group’s main interpreter and the show’s host. “We teach students how to look at the plants and see for themselves if they need extra nutrients.”

Then it was beans. “You can see the veins clearly in the lower leaves and you see the color green there,” he said. “Now focus on the newer leaves. The veins aren’t as distinct. The leaves are a little more yellow. So, we will add a little fertilizer over the next few days.”

During their visit, Stewart covered drip irrigation technology, minimal cultivation practices and the value of covering crops in the winter.

Every word Stewart uttered during the visit to KCC on Wednesday was captured by the four-member Chinese television crew. Xunling translated with passion for the program, which will be offered in multiple installments on Shandong Television. With satellite transmission, the programs will reach all of China and much of the Pacific region.

Source: Daily-Journal.com | by:Dennis Yohnka

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeks applications for grants to help farmers improve rural environmental quality and energy efficiency.

The USDA is seeking proposals for grants to improve water quality, air quality and promote energy conservation. USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is making available $25 million through the Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) program to address natural resource concerns nationwide, according to a press release from the USDA.

Now in its eighth year, the CIG program offers funding for the adoption of technologies to address a broad range of agricultural issues. Successful applicants will demonstrate that their projects use innovative, onthe ground conservation approaches and technologies.

Funds will be awarded through a nationwide competitive grants process. Applications will be accepted from all eligible individuals, non-federal governments and non-governmental organizations, including federally recognized tribes and private businesses.

The federal contribution for a single project cannot exceed $1 million. At least 50 percent of the total cost of the project must come from non-federal matching funds provided by the grantee. Grants are available for single or multi-year projects not to exceed three years. Proposed projects must comply with the description of innovative conservation projects or activities established in the Announcement for Program Funding (APF).

Pre-proposal applications for the national competition must be received at the NRCS national headquarters by close of business on Dec. 28. To apply electronically, visit www.grants.gov/.

New Jersey NRCS will hold a state-level funding competition beginning in January for projects located in New Jersey that request a maximum of $75,000 in federal funds.

For more information about NRCS conservation programs, visit www.nj.nrcs.usda.gov or the local USDA center.

source:  http://examiner.gmnews.com/news/2010-12-16/Front_Page/USDA_offering_25M_in_grant_funding_to_farmers.html

In the old days, farmers produced, people bought and that was that. Today, all that is changing.

Nowadays, consumers are calling the shots, telling farmers not only what they want to eat (fresh, heirloom vegetables, artisan cheeses), but how they want it grown (as naturally as possible, with no harm to animals), where they want it raised (locally, on small, quaint family farms), and packaged with guarantees that it will never make them sick. And most of all, they want it cheap — whether it’s expensive to produce or not.

The latest example: Upstate Niagara Cooperative, made up of about 385 dairy farmer-members from Wayne to Chautauqua counties, has decided to go completely hormone-free in 2011. Recombinant bovine growth hormone, also known as rBGH or rBST, increases milk production, but some consumer groups have argued that it increases the risk for certain cancers in humans.

“There have been more and more customer requests for rBST-free only, and it was getting harder (and costlier) to keep the rBST-free milk segregated,” explained Kim Zuber of Churchville, who like many dairy farmers throughout New York has been treating his herd with BST since the mid-1990s. But Upstate Niagara Cooperative buys Zuber’s milk, so he’s now weaning his herd off the shots. “It was a marketing decision for sure. It’s what consumers want.”

Not all members are happy about the decision and what it will mean for their yields. But the consumer has spoken, and the cooperative’s leadership is responding.

With other commodities, too, consumer preferences are influencing farming practices — which means a major component of our state’s economy is affected. Farming acreage makes up roughly 23 percent of our state. The entire farm chain, from seed and field to food processing and other ag-related business, represents an $85.5 billion slice — or 8.3 percent — of the state gross domestic product, according to 2006 calculations by Todd Schmit, an assistant professor at Cornell University’s Department of Applied Economics and Management.

“When you think about Wall Street and the entire financial sector, that’s pretty remarkable,” Schmit said. “Agriculture’s contributions to the New York state economy goes beyond the farm. Food manufacturers are based here because it’s important to be near production.”

Monroe and surrounding counties play a critical role in that sector. Dairy is the state’s No. 1 commodity (New York ranks third nationally), and Wyoming County is New York’s leading dairy producer. New York is second only to Washington state in apples, and Wayne County produces more than any other county in the state. Monroe, Orleans, Genesee and Ontario counties help make New York the third largest cabbage grower in the country.

“The issue now for producers becomes how do we incorporate the concerns that consumers are expressing?” said Nathan Rudgers, the state’s former agriculture commissioner who is now with Farm Credit East in Batavia and serves as a panelist for Food Foresight, a trend spotter for the agri-food chain.

The problem is, for both consumers and farmers, the bottom line is the bottom line. Consumers are willing to pay only so much for their long and growing wish lists. In order to survive, farmers must either find niche markets where they can charge accordingly or seek out efficiencies that might defy some of the romantic notion of the small, organic, family farm where animals graze on pastures and heirloom fruits hang heavy on the branches.

Safety first

Congress is wrestling with food safety reform and the FDA is drafting new food safety rules for U.S. produce growers, but farmers can’t afford to wait. More of them have been participating in third-party food safety audits, which seek to lower the risk of contamination and provide traceability in case there is an outbreak. The costs of participating can add up, but retailers and wholesalers are strongly encouraging or sometimes requiring farms to adhere to the audits. For example, for high-risk crops such as leafy greens, tomatoes, melons and green onions, Wegmans Food Markets Inc. requires its suppliers to provide documentation that they follow Good Agricultural Practices, or GAPs, a national program that Cornell University runs in New York that monitors risk-reducing procedures surrounding worker hygiene, water quality, manure and other factors. For years, Wegmans has recommended that local growers get GAP-certified; this was the first year it was required.

Wegmans has been offering GAPs training to its local growers of those 85 or so commodities, said Dave Corsi, vice president of produce and floral. The company also reimbursed growers for part of the audit costs.

But other wholesalers and retailers may have their own set of criteria around food safety and sustainability that suppliers must follow, which makes it more challenging and often cost-prohibitive for a producer selling to multiple markets, noted Robert King, senior agriculture specialist at Monroe Community College’s Agriculture and Life Sciences Institute.

Corsi is on a committee with United Fresh Produce Association that’s trying to harmonize food safety standards so that growers can avoid the burden of having to pass multiple audits.

John Bolton, owner of a 2-year-old hydroponic operation in Hilton that sells its greens, herbs and tomatoes at local farmers markets as well as to food processors and other wholesalers, finds such third-party audits worthwhile, and believes they protect the producer as much as the consumer. But Kate Mendenhall, executive director of Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, worries that such certification programs are unfairly onerous to small farms, which typically have a diverse array of crops and would have to pay for audits for several crops that are harvested at different times during the growing season.

Such measures in part are driving many organic farmers to sell directly to consumers, at farmers markets or through Community Supported Agriculture programs (CSAs), where they can communicate their growing practices directly.

Keeping it local, sustainable

As consumers seek out a face-to-face relationship with the people who grow their foods, many farmers are changing the way they market and sell their products. That means more farmers markets, farm stands and CSAs, where consumers buy a share of the farm in exchange for regular deliveries of foods.

It’s evidence of — and a response to — the continued momentum of the local foods movement. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, from 1997 to 2007, direct-to-consumer sales of agricultural goods grew 105 percent nationally. In the 10 states where direct-to-consumer sales are the highest, which includes New York, sales have grown four times faster.

A just-released survey from the New York Field Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service shows that 20 percent of the 36,600 farms in New York now sell at least some of their products directly to consumers.

Consumer hunger for local foods has been a catalyst of change for Porter Farms in Elba, Genesee County. When the family-owned certified-organic vegetable farm started its CSA program 15 years ago, it had only 100 shares between the Buffalo and Rochester markets. This year, noted Mike Porter, membership is at 950 shares.

Shifting to direct sales means the Porter clan moves less product through wholesale channels, where profit margins have tightened as more and more farmers have responded to the call for organic. Most of Porter’s wholesale products end up in New York City or Boston, where they’re sold under the “local” moniker at Whole Foods markets.

Even more recently, farmers have started catering to consumers who want locally grown produce year-round, even when fields are blanketed in snow. Rochester saw its first winter farmers market debut in 2008 with the Long Season Farmers Market, a joint venture of the Brighton Farmers Market and the South Wedge Farmers Market. When the Long Season market disbanded last year, the Brighton Farmers Market decided to do its own winter market. This year, Brighton will be joined by the weekly Highland Park Winter Farmers Market at the Cornell Cooperative Extension building on Highland Avenue, debuting Wednesday.

“A number of us have changed some of our infrastructure,” said Ed Fraser, a Riga farmer who is heading up the Highland Park Winter Farmers Market. These winter produce growers are learning when to plant winter crops so they hit maturity at the right time and then stay in stasis until harvest. They’re building hoop houses in the fields to protect crops from wind, frost and snow. They’re heating their greenhouses to grow warm weather crops in the winter and building storage facilities to keep some crops such as apples, cabbages and beets fresh until spring.

Like many of the new farmers markets that have opened over the past five years, the Brighton and South Wedge markets require their vendors to either have organic certification or use organic or sustainable methods. That decision comes out of a growing appetite for organic. According to the USDA, “consumer demand for organically produced goods has shown double-digit growth for well over a decade,” and in national surveys by the Hartman Group and Food Marketing Institute during the early 2000s, two-thirds of shoppers said they bought at least some organically grown foods.

“A lot of farmers are asked, ‘Is this organic?’” noted Sue Gardner Smith, market manager at Brighton and South Wedge. “And people want a broader range of products, such as sustainably raised meats and dairy. We can’t keep enough eggs in the market.”

That itch for organic has ushered in a new branch of business for Kreher’s Farm Fresh Eggs, one of the state’s largest egg producers and supplier to Wegmans and Tops. Two years ago, Kreher’s built an organic egg farm in Alabama, Genesee County, and since last year, those eggs have been available to local consumers under the Eggland’s Best brand and Wegmans private label. Organic eggs already comprise about 10 percent of Kreher’s egg business.

“We definitely had to change the way we do business, and it is being driven by the consumer. The initial thing that brought this to a head for us was the push for organic foods in general,” said Scott Kreher.

Since launching its own organic research farm in Canandaigua five years ago, Wegmans is also responding to sustained demand for organic produce. The hope, said Corsi, is that the 540 farmers it partners with will consider converting some of their acreage to organic.

Ideals vs. reality

The proliferation of consumer demands on agriculture — from safety traceback and sustainability to organic and fair trade — has created a plethora of audits, certifications, labels and other assurances that has put regional farming at a crossroads, noted MCC’s King. “People want to know where their food comes from, but they want a third party to figure it out for them. They won’t do it themselves,” he said.

For farmers, it means an ever-increasing complexity to the age-old concern of supply and demand. “If consumers were willing to pay more for food,” said Jim Ochterski of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ontario County, “farmers would do exactly what they want.”

At the same time, a more informed consumer might just become a more understanding one. “Everyone thinks farming is cool,” said Julie Suarez, director of public policy at the New York Farm Bureau. The locavore movement “is farming’s best friend to come along in a long time.”

She and others hope that consumer interest in where their food comes from will help them not only want to get to know the farmer they buy corn from at the nearby farmers market, but will help them better appreciate the complexities of all types of agriculture in New York, be it small farms or large, conventional or organic.

KMILTNER@DemocratandChronicle.com

A bout this series

Each month this year, the Democrat and Chronicle is examining a key sector of our economy and how it affects our lives.

source:  http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20101031/NEWS09/310310003

Is farmland going to be the next gold?

It isn’t as implausible as it may sound. Forecasts are always a sucker’s game, but there are good reasons why the next few decades could see a new boom in farm country—and big money for those who own the land.

Demand for food is soaring. The world has consumed more food than it has produced in nine of the past 10 years, Susan Payne, chief executive of agricultural investment firm Emergent Asset Management, told the World Agricultural Investment Conference in London this week. Population is rising fast; another billion mouths to feed will probably be added in just in the next 15 years.

And as the developed countries get richer, they want to eat more meat and dairy products. The Chinese eat about four times as much meat per person as they did in the 1980s, says Ms. Payne. These are intensive products. It takes seven pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. SG Securities estimates that demand for grain alone will rise by 50% to 100% over the next 40 years.

We’ve already seen trouble. There were food riots in some countries two years ago. Wheat, coffee and sugar prices have rocketed this summer. Canaries in the coal mine? “We expect to see a resource war around 2020,” says Ms. Payne.

View Full Image

A worker irrigates a field in China’s Hainan Province in July. The Chinese eat about four times as much meat per person as they did in the 1980s.

coffee and sugar prices have rocketed this summer. Canaries in the coal mine? “We expect to see a resource war around 2020,” says Ms. Payne.

They’re not making any more land. Indeed, they’re taking some of it away. A lot is being appropriated for cities, factories and shopping malls. We are losing yet more to soil erosion, salinization, overexploitation and desertification. Climate change is having an effect. Charmion McBride, head of agriculture for Insight Investment, says the amount of arable land per person on the planet has halved in about 40 years.

Emmanuel Jayet, head of agricultural commodities research at SG Securities, says there are still 450 million additional hectares that the world could farm. Yet most of them are in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, where infrastructure—and political stability—have sometimes left something to be desired.

The picture is similar when it comes to food from the seas. The world’s wild fisheries are overfished, perhaps terminally so. There is a big push to expand fish farms. That is one solution, but hardly a sufficient one.

Meanwhile, investor interest in land, and in agriculture generally, is decidedly low. This week’s World Agriculture Investment Conference attracted much fewer than 100 people. One attendee I spoke to said this was an improvement: A few years ago no one was interested at all.

It’s seen as an asset class that is simultaneously dangerously unusual and absolutely tedious. Several people in finance, when I explained where I was going, affected a sudden attack of narcolepsy.

Some institutions are starting to take an interest, but the numbers involved are comparatively small—$200 million here, $50 million there. The Chinese, notably, are active around the world, buying land and investing in projects. That may be a harbinger of something.

If overall investor interest is low, the asset class nonetheless has a pedigree. Scarlett O’Hara’s father was on to something: Land has proven a decent investment over long periods.

Shonda Warner, chief executive of Chess Ag Full Harvest Partners, a farmland investment fund with about $60 million in assets, calculates that U.S. farmland has produced an average return of 11.6% a year since 1951. That includes income and capital gains. U.S. stocks—as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 index—have produced 11.8%. And land has produced those gains with half the volatility of the stock market.

Famously, land has also proven a terrific hedge against inflation. It has boomed when prices skyrocketed—such as during the two world wars, and the 1970s. There is a serious risk that we will see a surge in inflation down the road: You could argue the governments need it. No wonder investors have been bidding up the prices of other inflation hedges, such as gold and inflation-protected bonds. Why not land?

Typically, investment assets in the U.S. are more expensive than their counterparts overseas. But not when it comes to land. Insight Investment’s Ms. McBride says U.S. farmland is well down the global table in price per hectare. Average prices are about $5,000 per hectare. In Europe they can sometimes go as high as $24,000. U.S. prices are closer to those of lesser-developed countries. One reason? We have so much of it. Among big countries, America, unusually, also has far more arable land than it needs to feed its own population.

Investors have been bidding up some prices, but mainly in certain areas of the Midwest, such as Iowa. Chess Ag’s Ms. Warner says the best deals are elsewhere—in places such as Texas, Mississippi, Idaho and the Dakotas.

Institutions and even rich individuals with, say, half a million dollars to invest now have their pick of specialized funds investing in farmland and agricultural projects here and overseas. What ordinary investors could really use is a good real-estate Investment trust that invests in farmland. A few are in the works: Stay tuned.

Write to Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com

source:  http://online.wsj.com

THE National Farmers Union is disputing the time-frame given by the Fiji Sugar Corporation to the resumption of crushing at the Rarawai mill in Ba.

“Repairs to the electrical system attached to boiler at Rarawai mill are expected to take close to a month and not the two weeks stated by the FSC,” said NFU spokesman Gaffar Ahmed yesterday.

According to the NFU, the FSC was misleading growers and lorry drivers by saying that the mill would be operational in two to three weeks.

Mr Ahmed said he had also been reliably informed that the reason for the fire and problems at Lautoka and Labasa was because inferior quality parts were used during the mill upgrade program that began in 2006.

“Before these new parts were fitted on, the mills were running quite well. This is the reason these questions need to be asked and answers have to be given,” Mr Ahmed said.

No comments could be obtained from FSC on the issues.

source:  http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=156573

A first draft of the cacao genome is complete, a consortium of academic, governmental, and industry scientists announced today. Indiana University Bloomington scientists performed much of the sequencing work, which is described and detailed at the official Web site of the Cacao Genome Database project.

Despite being led and funded by a private company,
Inc., Cacao Genome Database scientists say one of their chief concerns has been making sure the Theobroma cacao genome data was published for all to see — especially cacao farmers and breeders in West Africa, Asia and South America, who can use genetic information to improve their planting stocks and protect their often-fragile incomes.

“When you have to wait three or more years for a tree you plant to bear the beans you sell, you want as much information as possible about the seedlings you’re planting,” said Keithanne Mockaitis, IU Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics (CGB) sequencing director and IU project leader. “We expect this information will positively impact some of the poorest regions in the world, where tropical tree crops are grown. Making the genome data public further enables breeders, farmers and researchers around the world to use a common set of tools, and to share information that will help them fight the spread of disease in their crops.”

Mockaitis, a biochemist-turned-genomicist, joined the project in early 2009, and quickly set to work with her collaborators to tackle the challenge of sequencing and accurately pasting together the approximately 400 million base pairs of the tree’s genome. Mockaitis’ Cacao Genome Group partners at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Subtropical Horticulture Research Station in Miami sent samples to Bloomington, and these were prepared and sequenced in a redundant manner by her sequencing team in the CGB genomics laboratory. Sequence of some of the same material was generated using additional methods in laboratories of the USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and at the National Center for Genome Resources in Santa Fe, N.M.

Raw data were then sent to HudsonAlpha Biotechnology Institute, a partner of the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Joint Genome Institute, for assembly. Other important datasets generated by Mockaitis’ group were not the sequences of the DNA itself, but of the RNA, or transcripts produced in different tissues of the tree. Transcript sequences reveal which genes are expressed (turned on).

Finally, IU Bloomington Department of Biology scientist Don Gilbert analyzed both the genome and transcriptome sequences and generated the annotations that point to the locations in which each active gene and its components (exons and introns) reside.

“The final number of genes is still being counted and validated, but we currently estimate the cacao plant has about 35,000 genes,” Mockaitis said.

That’s a typical gene number for flowering plants whose genomes have thus far been sequenced. Humans have approximately 30,000 genes. Rice has about 40,000.

Since its inception about 11 years ago, the CGB has been involved in dozens of different projects that address the workings of different species’ genomes with the use of high-throughput technologies.

“Cacao is something of a first for us,” Mockaitis said. “This is the largest genome the CGB has sequenced to date. As a group we now have more experience and more resources to take on a wider variety of projects.”

Mockaitis says the relative efficiency of the project so far has been due to Mars’ support of the academic and non-profit contributing laboratories.

“We’ve benefited from having a collegial group of researchers, from the USDA-ARS and a variety of genomics-focused laboratories, that each bring different scientific expertise to the table to complete this genome. It’s also been particularly inspiring to see West African cacao researchers come to some of our meetings — they listen to us talk about the esoteric technologies we’re using, and we know that they’ll soon go to work and start benefitting from the data. That’s a rare treat for an academic researcher.”

Mockaitis was first introduced to this project through Roche Diagnostics, based in Indianapolis, which owns the 454 Sequencing technology. Her group had developed improved methods for the sequencing of transcripts (active gene products, above), and was asked to contribute some data to the project. Since then the IU CGB has been able to contribute to the sequence of the genome itself as well.

Unlike some other food products, such as corn or wheat, which are often grown on large, industrial farms, cacao is almost exclusively grown on small farms. There are about 6.5 million chocolate farmers around the world, primarily in West Africa, northern South America, and Southeast Asia. The United States produces virtually no chocolate on its own, instead opting to engage cacao-growing countries with economic policies that support the production and trade of what may be the world’s most popular food.

“Genome sequencing helps eliminate much of the guess-work of traditional crop cultivation,” said Howard-Yana Shapiro, global staff officer of plant science and research at Mars Inc. “Cocoa is what some researchers describe as an ‘orphan crop’ because it has been the subject of little agricultural research compared to corn, wheat and rice. This effort, which will allow fast and accurate traditional breeding, is about applying the best of what science has to offer in taking an under-served crop and under-served population and giving them both the chance to flourish.”

Mockaitis says she hopes the project will have a positive impact on the farmers’ lives and livelihoods.

“It is an export crop that can reduce poverty,” she said. “I believe the work our groups have done will eventually help small farmers stay in business over time, because improved breeding programs based on reliable genome data will give them plants naturally equipped to fight off disease and to thrive in their specific location. This will lead to more sustainable crops and of course a more stable chocolate supply for all of us — pretty important!”

David Bricker @ Indiana University

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Central Queensland mango growers are spending thousands of dollars spraying crops to prevent a fungus disease that could damage their crops this season.

Capricorn Coast farmer Ian Groves says prolonged wet weather can cause a fungus disease that kills fruit as soon as it sets.

Mr Groves says his crop has not been affected but growers are taking precautions.

“We only scored two millimetres here but we have had a very wet season all the same,” he said.

“There was three inches a couple of weeks ago, so every week there’s been a small rain event and there’s been some fog and showers around.

“[It has been] one of those more humid years so we’ve kept the tractor warm putting out the fungicide.”

source:  http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/13/3009704.htm

Weary Canterbury farmers picking themselves up from days of earthquakes face new threats – floodwaters and herd sickness.

Farmer Paget Milsom last night worried that a rising river could top its banks and flood a faultline cutting through his property towards his house.

Mr Milsom has spent the past week digging out the bottom of the Hororata River so it would stop flowing on to his farm.

The river had diverted along the faultline, its flow making a sharp turn from southwest to due east.

Early last week, his farm, about 40km southwest of Christchurch, was submerged in water half a metre deep because the faultline had been lower than the river bottom.

The house was surrounded by a newly formed lake 400m wide, and some cows got trapped.

After Mr Milsom dug out 800m of the river, the flooding was reduced to about 5cm.

But heavy rain on Saturday renewed his fears that the flooding could start all over again.

“It’s a long way off from being comfortable – we just happen to be in its flow path,” Mr Milsom said.

“But we just have to keep going,” he added.

Nearby, cows on Brendon Woods’ farm have suffered major infections due to disruptions caused by the earthquake.

The farm, near the Burnham military base, has obvious signs of earthquake damage – a formerly straight line of trees has been split into two segments 5m apart.

The dairy shed is relatively fine, but there is enough damage to cause serious health problems in the cows.

“They like to be milked every day, particularly this time of year, so we’ve had some major infection issues,” Mr Woods said.

“It’s all caused by stress. Just like the humans are stressed, the animals are stressed.”

The infection would compromise milk quality for the rest of the year, and the farm would incur hefty penalties as a result, he said.

Among the diseased cows are those suffering from mastitis.

Other cows suffered when power was knocked out and they could not get nutrients supplied through mineral water.

Federated Farmers North Canterbury dairy chairman Kieran Stone said that farmers were under immense pressure.

“People are just tired. This time of the year is the biggest for dairy farmers anyway. And many were hit by South Canterbury Finance. It’s been bang, bang, bang,” Mr Stone said.

But despite the stress and trauma, the clinical head of the Christchurch anxiety disorders unit, Caroline Bell, warned that people should not be enticed by offers of therapy.

“People are going through a normal reaction to an abnormal situation,” Ms Bell said.

“I’ve had concerns related to people saying, this is like 9/11. This is like post-traumatic stress disorder. Linking it in that sensationalist kind of way is harmful.”

The best thing for people to do was to be in their community and share their experiences. “Medicalising” the trauma could make it worse, she said.

But Karen Ross, who specialises in transformational coaching and therapy, said many people were traumatised and therapy could help change their patterns of thinking.

An approach called neurolinguistic programming was being brought to Christchurch by a group of therapists under the name NZ Trauma Recovery Team, Ms Ross said.

If people experienced thoughts that caused fear, there would be no harm in seeking treatment through NLP, she said.

Members of the team worked in Samoa after the tsunami and in New York after September 11, 2001. The technique was internationally recognised, Ms Ross said. “New Zealanders are a little behind the eight ball.”

The team will spend a week in Christchurch talking to medical authorities about how they can help.

source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/christchurch-earthquake/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502981&objectid=10672979

BY LUTHER DORR

The cows are gone, their kids are gone and the barn stands unused on Ray and Betty Edgren’s century farm about seven miles southwest of Milaca.

But Ray and Betty, who have been married for 56 years and have lived on the farm the past 48 years, love where they are and plan to remain there as long as they can.

Ray, 79, was born in the farmhouse and has spent all but a few years of his life on the piece of property that first came into his family 101 years ago.

After they were married (they met at the Milaca roller rink) they lived across the road from Arvid and Hazel, Ray’s parents, before moving to the farm permanently in 1962.

Arvid and Hazel got the farm from Nels and Hannah Isaacson, Ray’s maternal grandparents who purchased the farm in 1909.

It was 120 acres originally but today the Edgrens own 176 acres, about 95 of them tillable, divided this year between 50 acres of soybeans and 45 of corn.

Ray’s Grandpa Isaacson bought the farm as an investment and didn’t figure to farm the land. But he lost his job with the Cedar Lake Ice Company and left Minneapolis for Mille Lacs County to become a farmer.

“Grandma wanted electricity,” recalls Ray, so his grandpa came up with a system of batteries that would be charged to provide that electricity.

“There were lights in the barn, a water pump and running water in the house in 1920 and that was unusual,” Ray said.

In 1929 when the Great Depression hit the United States, Ray’s father Arvid was a mechanic in Minneapolis. “He just loved cars,” said Ray, “and he could fix anything.”

But the Depression cost him his job and he came back to the farm, his parents moving to Milaca.

That move back to the family farm set the wheels in motion for Ray to become a farmer, along with eventual wife Betty (Johnson) who had grown up in Mille Lacs County’s Borgholm Township.

Ray’s father Arvid had a herd of 17 registered purebred Holsteins and, as was the case with most family farms of the 1930s, also raised chickens and pigs.

“There were just a few pigs and they were for butchering,” said Betty.  “You had eggs from the chickens and there was a garden. You raised your food on the farm.”

Disaster struck for Ray’s parents in the 1940s when Bang’s disease, a disease discovered in the late 1800s with the major source as unpasteurized milk, was discovered in the Edgren herd.

“Dr. Parent [a veterinarian from Foley] told them they had to sell all the cows,” recalls Ray.

The herd was sold and Ray’s father had to start all over again.

In 1949 Ray Edgren was awarded a creamery calf (see accompanying picture) at the Mille Lacs County Fair for being the outstanding 4-H member in the county.

That calf, named Bonnie Victor from the herd at the Anoka State Hospital, provided the impetus for the Edgren herd returning to “registered” status.

“We were off and running with that calf,” said Ray last week, also giving credit to Ralph Grant, the U of M Extension agent in the area at that time.

The herd was built up to 28 milk cows and, with young stock, there were 55 to 60 head of cattle on the Edgren farm.

Ray farmed with his parents from 1954 to 1962 and at that time he and Betty  bought his parents out.

Ray continued to show cattle throughout his farming years and won a number of awards at the East Central Black and White Show, a competition for owners of Holstein cows.

The Edgrens, with son Dan and daughter Nancy helping out and also showing cows as 4-H members, continued their dairy operation until 1996.

“That was a very hard decision,” Ray said about deciding to sell a herd he had worked so hard to maintain through the years.

The best compliment Ray ever got about his herd, he said, came when a man from Colorado came to buy some of the cows in the Edgren herd.

“It must not be hard to get up in the morning and milk cows like that,” he told Ray.

The Edgrens still raise crops today with neighbor Steve Bemis doing the planting and combining for them.

They plan to continue raising crops as long as they can

Ray remembers when his grandpa, unlike some farmers who stopped cultivating when the corn got too high, would pay his grandchildren to hoe the corn.

“He gave us kids a nickel a row and he didn’t have to ask twice,” Ray said.

Reminders of days gone by can be found at the house and around the farm.

A towel hanging on the stove contains the image of a cow. Cannisters on the shelf are awards from livestock shows of the 1980s. Dozens of tomatoes from the garden across the driveway sit on an outside stairway, waiting to be canned.

Betty noted that Ray had helped out with the 4-H dairy show at the State Fair a couple days earlier, something he has done for about 30 years.

“Those were great days,” Ray said. “Farmers used to go to the fair, take their lunch along, and sit on a bench and eat at noon. It was a great outing.”

The barn, in need of a paint job, stands in silent testimony to years and years of hard work, years that hold good memories for Betty and Ray.

“It reminds us how we lived our life,” Ray said.

There appears to be no one to pass the farm on to, the Edgrens said, both of their children having careers in music. But don’t expect them to move anytime soon.

“My daughter says don’t sell it,”  Ray said.

“He won’t,” said Betty. “His roots go down too deep.”

LITTLE RIVER – Farmers in Bell County are struggling to deal with an unusually large amount of a toxin that is infecting their corn crops and cutting into their wallets.

It’s called aflatoxin, and the heat wave that hit Central Texas this month caused excessive amounts of it to pop up in corn. It comes from the mold found in corn and is a naturally occurring toxin. Some farmers have seen up to three times the amount of aflatoxin they normally see.

If consumed by animals, it can be deadly to some of them. Corn is the number one ingredient for feed given to most livestock, and aflatoxin has been shown to cause damage to the animal’s liver. How much of the toxin is considered dangerous is decided by the Texas State Chemist and varies depending on the animal.

Farmers are expressing growing concerns over the inspection process. A process that can determine whether crops can go on to be sold or destroyed.

“I consider it playing Russian Roulette,” said Richard Cortese, who owns a farm in Little River and also works for the Texas Farm Bureau. ”You don’t know what kernels of corn they’re going to pull out of that truck.”

Cortese cites how some loads can pass inspection while others from the same truck get rejected.  Estimates for how much money Texas corn growers have lost is at around $14 million.

Texas State Chemist Dr. Tim Herrman says there are programs in place to help farmers recoup some of the money lost by destroying crops.

“We work with the Risk Management Agency which administers federal crop insurance in a way that ideally should benefit producers if they’re carrying crop insurance,” said Dr. Herrman.

source:  http://www.kxxv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13069739

Zealand is affected the worst as rain ruins corn crops

Many farmers across Denmark are considering completely giving up on the harvest this year, following weeks of unusually bad weather.

The continued intense rain that has been pounding down on the country in recent weeks could lead to a catastrophic wheat and barley harvest this year. The situation in eastern Zealand is so dismal that some farmers are considering calling off the entire harvest, writes DR.

Carl Åge Pedersen, the head of the Danish Centre for Agriculture, said the expense incurred in drying the crops could amount to as much as 2,000 kroner per hectare, a fee which would barely make the harvest worthwhile. He added that the problem is a nationwide one, but that it is especially Zealand which has been hardest hit.

A typical harvest normally yields 5 million tonnes of wheat and 3 million tonnes of barley.

source:  http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/88-national/49801-farmers-abandon-harvest.html

LUDHIANA: Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering and Technology, on Tuesday, issued license to a Khanna based farmer for commercial scale production of Soya milk.

The farmer, Mohinder Singh, said that demand for soyabean and groundnut milk has increased manifold, owing to its nutritional benefits for being low in fat. He added that soyabean milk is a worthy alternative to the adulterated cow & buffalo milk.

CIPHET director, Dr RT Patil, said that this milk is suitable for diabetic people and has many more health benefits as well. Head of transfer of technology division, Dr Deepak Raj Rai, said that entrepreneur farmers who might be interested in the project may contact them.

source:  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ludhiana/Licensed-farmer-to-promote-soyabean-milk/articleshow/6427611.cms

GRANDVIEW, Wash. (AP) – Small farmers in central Washington say they are in a crisis – private loans are tougher to get and it’s hard for them to get enough aid from the federal government to expand or simply hang on.

The Yakima Herald-Republic says farmers met with bankers, lawmakers and government officials in Yakima last week to discuss the problem, but there were few easy answers. Bankers say they are restricted by tougher regulations. And while the federal Farm Service Agency has loan programs for farmers who can’t get bank financing, growers say the maximum of $1.1 million is insufficient.

Farmers at the meeting, organized by the state Mexican Fruit Growers Coalition, say they want the government to give them access to larger loan programs available to bigger growers, fruit warehouses, food processors and dairies.

source:   http://www.kndo.com/Global/story.asp?S=12993943