The United States is the newest member of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, a ground-breaking instrument that works to strengthen global food security by promoting the conservation, sharing, and sustainable use of agricultural plant genetic resources. Today FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva and Thomas M. Duffy, Cha...
In the agreement FMC will receive DuPont’s global chewing pest insecticide portfolio, global cereal broadleaf herbicides and a substantial portion of DuPont’s global crop protection research and development capabilities. FMC anticipates this acquired business will generate $1.5 billion in revenue in 2017 and launch the company to the fifth largest crop protection chemica...
You may have heard about the close call that Lorsban (chlorpyrifos) could have lost its label, including on soybeans. Chlorpyrifos is one of only a few insecticides that will control spider mites in soybeans. The fact that the active ingredient has been widely used for more than 50 years without significant problems is a testament to the pesticide’s utility and safety. ...
A relatively high soybean to corn price ratio is driving the switch, not because soybean prices are particularly attractive but because corn prices are so unattractive. 2017 wheat planted acreage is also down 8.2 percent from one year ago at 46.1 million acres, again driven by unattractive wheat prices. This follows a general trend of decreasing wheat acreage resultin...
EVERY TIME ROSA GARCIA’S FAMILY* relocates—pursuing the latest harvest opportunity, from Florida’s winter citrus crops to the autumn vegetables of Michigan—she must negotiate a strange town and, often, a strange school. Now a tenth-grader, Rosa encounters the same cliquish cruelty all teenagers face, but magnified a hundredfold by virtue of her status as the new girl, th...
The confusion comes, at least in part, from a lack of regulation. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is in charge of labeling, and there actually are no rules on the books for expiration dates. In fact, the only food that is required to have an expiration date, according to the FSIS website, is infant formula. So all those other labels you see? Purely o...
Our how-to guides this year have spanned the full breadth of the agricultural industry, from basic primers (how to raise chickens!) to the advanced (how to grow California-style produce outside California!) to the unexpected (how to make your own dog food!). Here are some of our favorite, most helpful, most popular, and most interesting of the year. How to Raise Chick...
When all types of ownership are considered, there were 65,000 farms with $1 million or more GCFI. Some 90% were family owned. The remaining 6,300 farms included 1,760 corporations. Almost all of the rest were partnerships, cooperatives, or operated by managers on behalf of trusts, estates, families, or institutions. Most of the corporate farms had 10 or fewer shareholder...
In summer of 2016, several reports from the southern San Joaquin Valley came in about aphids in forage sorghum that were difficult or impossible to control with typical applications of dimethoate and chlorpyrifos. By the end of August, CDFA identified the species of this newly emerged pest as the sugarcane aphid – Melanaphis sacchari – now an invasive species. Previously...
Because Brazil’s number one raw material for ethanol production faces seasonal issues, biofuel producers are turning to corn as a more reliable source. Sugarcane plants historically face a major problem: a shortage of raw material to produce biofuel during the off-season for sugarcane. During this period, the sugar energy sector would lay essentially dormant for four ...
Army cutworms overwinter in Oklahoma. They tolerate cold temperatures and feed throughout the winter months. Adult army cutworm moths migrate to Oklahoma each fall from their summer residence in the Rocky Mountains. They usually seek bare or sparsely vegetated fields (like a newly prepared field ready for sowing wheat, or a field that was “dusted in” but not yet emerged)...
The Earth's soils contain more carbon than the planet's atmosphere and vegetation combined, but are dangerously neglected in the fight against climate change, Fiji's president told a U.N. conference on Tuesday. George Konrote, whose small Pacific nation is threatened by rising sea levels, warned commitments under the Paris climate change agreement to limit global temp...
Agriculture officials are trying to limit the damage, but it's unclear whether quarantines, transportation bans and mass killings will stop the spread, said Joseph Hess, a poultry science professor at Auburn University. The disease was first confirmed in southern Tennessee earlier this month and has since been detected in northern Alabama and western Kentucky. "We'...
“We believe in the potential of this grain to make a positive ecological impact,” says Carla Vernón, vice president of Cascadian Farm. “This helps us live up to the expectation that our consumers have for Cascadian Farm and continue to be a pioneer in organic farming and land stewardship." The company says Kernza could help improve soil health and carbon sequestration...
It hasn't rained on John Mwema's farm in over a month. But on his one-acre piece of land stand thousands of green maize plants. "I grow baby corn," said Mwema, bending to examine a bunch of tiny corn cobs. "It is a type of corn that is three to four times quicker to harvest and uses less water than regular corn." Farmers in the eastern Kenyan village of Ngoliba and...
Indonesia is recruiting tribespeople to help fight outbreaks of haze which shroud Southeast Asia every year with a government deal designed to tap into traditional ways of containing forest fires. The region suffers every dry season from a haze caused by smouldering fires, often set deliberately to clear land for pulp and paper and palm oil plantations on Sumatra and ...
“The federal crop insurance program is the cornerstone of farm bill risk management programs, and it is more important than ever, given the state of the farm economy,” according to Steve Ebke, the Nebraska farmer who chairs the NCGA Risk Management Action Team. “We commissioned an independent analysis of the crop insurance industry’s performance to determine whether crit...
Speeds Up Progress. “This new technology allows us to discover, develop, deploy and commercialize traits with more precision and predictability,” says Steve Webb, Dow AgroSciences external technology and intellectual property portfolio development leader. “We see gene editing as rounding out the toolbox.” Dow’s new gene-editing tool called EXZACT, co-developed by S...
In the scorching 40-degree Celsius heat of this village in northern Kenya, waiting residents take shelter under acacia and palm trees. A group of 30 men queue next to a pen holding about 50 goats. In the middle of the queue is Mamu Yarra, from the nearby village of Sesi, who has brought a goat to sell today. "Many of my goats have died because of lack of pasture. I...
The worst drought in five years has pushed 900,000 people in Sri Lanka into "acute food insecurity", the World Food Programme (WFP) says. An unpublished survey conducted by government agencies and relief organisations in February found that both food insecurity and debt were rising sharply among families hit by drought, the WFP office in Sri Lanka confirmed to the Tho...
The purpose of the agreement is to develop new digital farming solutions as well as to increase the use of existing nitrogen application technology including Yara’s N-Sensor and mobile imaging technology including the ImageIT. Under this agreement, Yara will grant Bayer access to its mobile imaging technology to determine the nutrient status and needs of plants with a s...
Could harnessing the power of "resurrection plants" - with the ability to survive severe water shortages for years - hold the secret to feeding a hungry planet? Jill Farrant, a biology professor at Cape Town University, hopes that by putting resurrection plants' survival skills into crops, making them drought-tolerant, the world's population could be better fed. Fa...
The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that awareness of the geographic origin of major food crops is shrinking, threatening conservation and breeding efforts. Governments should spend more money and effort on joint research and conservation to protect both original crop species and their wild relatives, says lead author Colin Khoury, a resear...
"A lot of what we do is out in the field or in small group meetings — farmers talking with their neighbors to see what's going on," said Tom Maxwell, K-State agricultural Extension agent for Saline and Ottawa counties. "There's a lot of cross-pollination and a lot of information being shared — not only between K-State researchers and Extension people but also farmers tel...
Wheat futures also were lower, with concerns about additional supplies flooding the export market pressuring prices. All three commodities were on track to post gains for the week, but Friday's bearish tone spurred investors to move money to the sidelines. "Some traders (are) headed to the exits rather than get bruised by more volatile trading into the weekend," Fa...
Because it’s an annual, every year wheat is planted, grown to its harvest stage, harvested, and then the entire crop must be ripped out and re-seeded. This makes for a lot of work and can also churn up the soil in a way that can impede its ability to hold nutrients and to prevent erosion. But a perennial variety of wheat has been nothing more than a dream for many decade...
Hazera's Global Cucurbits product manager Mark van der Zouwen released a statement outlining the company's improvements in cucumber genetics, as well as embracing other types of cucumber, conquering new markets, and exploring new marketing possibilities. Mark van der Zouwen: “Hazera’s heritage started in mini cucumber, that are mostly grown in non-heated greenhouses i...
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that between 1982 and 2012, residential and commercial developments claimed more than 740,000 acres of land that had previously been cropland, forest land and prairie. Development can destroy wildlife habitat, increase environmental contamination and decrease the capacity to grow food, The (Anderson) Herald Bulletin re...
I’ve seen it time and time again in my travels throughout Latin America—towering mango trees leaning over patches of banana and papaya, interspersed with little plantings of cassava here and there, perhaps a passion fruit vine snaking through it all. Chickens likely have the run of the place, because there are no dainty little lettuce plants for them to destroy. Instead,...
The Quinoa seed—that’s the part we eat—is high in protein and essential amino acids, and it’s gluten free. It can be grown in poor and even saline soils and at high altitudes where other crops, like wheat or rice, may not perform as well. All these things make it a potentially important food source as we head into the future with a quickly growing population to feed—an e...
These new products work well when used as part of a comprehensive, weed-control program in dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton. That’s how they’re designed and how the industry needs to use them. Be assured–you will have problems if these products aren’t used according to their respective labels. That’s not just my opinion. It’s what university Extension weed sci...
President of the Group, Aliko Dangote disclosed at the weekend that the company flag off with a pilot project of 500 ha by Gonroyo dam, in Goronyo community. The flag off ceremony, which is to be performed by the governor of the state, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwa, will witness seedlings being distributed to the primary local farmers who will in turn plant the seed after which D...
The shrunken carcasses of cows lie in scorched fields outside the city of Campina Grande in northeast Brazil, and hungry goats search for food on the cracked-earth floor of the Boqueirao reservoir that serves the desperate town. After five years of drought, farmer Edivaldo Brito says he cannot remember when the Boqueirão reservoir was last full. But he has never seen ...
A young Tanzanian entrepreneur is turning the country's mounting plastic waste into "lumber" to help meet demand for housing in its growing cities, in an effort to reduce depletion of forests. Christian Mwijage decided he could tackle those problems in one go - by turning discarded plastic bottles into building materials that can be used instead of wood. His year-o...
Historical Net Incomes on Illinois Grain Farms Figure 1 shows a history of average net incomes on grain farms enrolled in Illinois Farm Business Farm Management (FBFM). Over time, average farm size has increased. In 2015, the average farm size of farms summarized was about 1,500 acres, with some farms being smaller in size, and some farms being considerably larger in ...
The reports that feature in the journal Nature following their publication by Aarhus University and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, show the emergence of new races of both yellow rust and stem rust in various regions of the world in 2016. At the same time, well-known existing rust races have spread to new countries, the studies confirm, underlining...
