Genetic Deletion Hurts Fertility in High Milk Yield Dairy Cows

Science Daily, via Sowing Agricultural Seeds Daily:

Scientists have found a genomic deletion that affects fertility and milk yield in dairy cattle at the same time. The discovery can help explain a dilemma in dairy cattle breeding: the negative correlation between fertility and milk production.
For the past many years milk yield in Scandinavian dairy cattle has gone in one clear direction: up. This has been due to targeted breeding programs and modern breeding methods. Despite putting large weight in the breeding goal in Nordic countries, almost no improvement is achieved for fertility. It now seems that this unfavorable correlation between milk yield and fertility is partially affected by a deletion of a simple gene sequence. The presence and effects of this mutation have recently been discovered by scientists from Aarhus University, University of Liège, MTT Agrifood Research Finland, in collaboration with the Danish Agricultural Advisory Service and the Nordic Cattle Genetic Evaluation.
Scientists, farmers and advisors have generally assumed that the reduction in fertility is primarily due to the negative energy balance of high-producing cows at the peak of their lactation but now the scientists have also found a genetic explanation.
"We have discovered a deletion encompassing four genes as the causative variant and shown that the deletion is a recessive embryonically lethal mutation," explains Goutam Sahana. "This means that the calves die while they are still embryos and are aborted or reported as insemination failure. The fact that the mutation is recessive means that both parents must carry it and pass the genes on to their calf for the calf to be affected. The bulls carrying the deletion can be routinely identified in on-going genomic selection program and by avoiding carrier-by-carrier matings a quantum jump in fertility could be achieved in Nordic red breeds," adds Goutam Sahana.
To make matters worse, this particular mutation has become rather common in Nordic Red cattle, however, the deletion is totally absent in Nordic Holstein and Danish Jersey populations. Based on the frequency of the mutation in the population, it is estimated that 2.89, 1.32 and 0.42% of embryos are dying in Finnish Ayshire, Swedish Red and Danish Red cattle respectively due to this mutation.
The reason that the deleted gene sequence causing embryo mortality has become relatively widespread is that it has such as strong positive effect on milk yield. By selecting for high milk yields, breeders have inadvertently also selected for embryo mortality -- a situation of so-called hitchhiking.

The dominance of AI, and selective breeding for milk yield has massively increased milk production in dairy breeds, but I think it has probably made the dairy cow genomes extremely  susceptible to recessive mutations.  I also expect that at least some of the BSE cases in the U.S. and Canada have been genetucally inherited cases, and not a result of tainted feed.

Hard White Wheat Gains Market Foothold

Harvest Public Media via Big Picture Agriculture's new sister site, Sowing Agricultural Seeds Daily:

A new wheat variety may have cracked the code to marry the fluffiness of white bread with whole grain nutrition.
For a long time, American bread makers have been in a bind. Many consumers like the texture and taste of white bread, but want the nutritional benefits of whole grains.
Snowmass, named for a Colorado peak, is a hard white wheat variety, a crop in high demand as bread makers increasingly seek new markets -- in this case health-conscious consumers who don’t want to give up white bread. Hard white wheats lack the dark bran color and potent flavor of their red wheat cousins, which are grown widely across the Great Plains.
Farmers and food companies have been interested in hard white wheat for a while, but economic and climatological realities have kept it from taking off. Hard red winter wheat grows well in wheat states like Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska. But it doesn’t mill into white flour, it has to be bleached. By itself, the dark, flavorful bran it can be a tougher sell to more finicky consumers who prefer white bread.
Wheat breeding programs, both public and private, have been hard at work trying to come up with a variety like Snowmass -- a type of white wheat that yields well, mills into a white flour and mixes easily into dough.
Colorado State University wheat breeder Scott Haley finally had success. He’s the father of Snowmass. When you come up with a well-performing, novel crop, there’s a whole community of people who consider you a rock star.
“Well, I’ve been told that this is the most famous wheat in the world, which is just like, oh my gosh. I don’t believe that,” Haley said.
The foundation that funds some of Haley’s research receives money from food giant ConAgra to develop wheat varieties for commercial use. The exact amount is part of a confidentiality agreement among Colorado State University, ConAgra and the Colorado Wheat Research Foundation. ConAgra has been after healthier white flour, which its customers, like Sara Lee and Azteca, can then turn into whole grain white products like breads and tortillas.

Sowing Agricultural Seeds Daily looks like it will be a must-visit site.

Prairie Suffers as Land Comes Out of CRP

(chart should read million)

Weekend Edition Sunday:

"Goodness, there's thousands of species that live in grasslands, including several hundred species of higher plants," says , an ecologist at South Dakota State University in Brookings, S.D. Plus, permanent grass cover keeps soil from washing away.
"With those deeps roots that grasses have, and thick thatch, the water has a hard time getting a hold of the soil," says Johnson.
So more land in CRP means cleaner streams, less fertilizer runoff and more carbon stored in the soil.
Back when Reynolds was showing me those duck eggs, there were 34 million acres enrolled in the CRP — an area roughly the size of the state of New York.
In recent years, though, the conservation reserve has shrunk by more than 25 percent, including those 1.6 million acres that farmers took out of the program this past year.
It's partly because Congress has cut funding for the program. But there's a more important reason: high grain prices.
Farmers have been making a lot of money recently growing corn, soybeans, and wheat. They're bidding up prices for land, and landowners are cashing in.
In southwestern Iowa, near the town of , the owners of about 60 acres decided to take it out of the CRP. They rented it instead to farmer Mark Peterson. "They felt that it would make more income for them, renting it out, than it would being in the CRP," says Peterson.
Peterson recognizes that "it is fragile ground," so he says he'll be extra careful with that land, which is on a hillside. Some parts are quite steep, and the soil could easily wash away.
He grew soybeans on it this year, but he tried to disturb the soil as little as possible. And he'll plant cover crops in the off season to anchor the soil.
Ecologist Johnson, at South Dakota State University, says the shrinking Conservation Reserve is just one part of a larger trend: Farmers are ripping up other grasslands, too, including native prairie that never was plowed.
"I've seen things that I never thought I'd see here in South Dakota," he says. "With these land prices going up, there actually are people out there with Bobcats and front end loaders, pulling out the rocks in hundreds of acres of land that's been in pasture all these years."

This is one of the worst aspects of the biofuels-driven ag boom economy of the last six years.   Big Picture Agriculture has featured some pictures of some of the worst examples of sensitive land being abused in an effort to cash in on the boom.  Overall, it is tremendously depressing.  As Kay notes in one of the posts, all the additional land contributes to overproduction, which contributes to price deflation, which risks pushing prices below cost of production.  So we are destroying sensitive lands and destroying the ag economy at the same time.  That is not good at all.

Beer's Role in the Civilization of Man

Nautilus:

The domestication of wild grains has played a major role in human evolution, facilitating the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on agriculture. You might think that the grains were used for bread, which today represents a basic staple. But some scientists argue that it wasn’t bread that motivated our ancestors to start grain farming. It was beer. Man, they say, chose pints over pastry.
Beer has plenty to recommend it over bread. First, and most obviously, it is pleasant to drink. “Beer had all the same nutrients as bread, and it had one additional advantage,” argues Solomon H. Katz, an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Namely, it gave early humans the same pleasant buzz it gives us. Patrick E. McGovern, the director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania, goes even further. Beer, he says, was more nutritious than bread. It contains “more B vitamins and [more of the] essential amino acid lysine,” McGovern writes in his book, Uncorking the Past: the Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages. It was also safer to drink than water, because the fermentation process killed pathogenic microorganisms. “With a four to five percent alcohol content, beer is a potent mind-altering and medicinal substance,” McGovern says, adding that ancient brewers acted as medicine men.
In fact, McGovern has found that the ancients used beer as medicine. Working with the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, McGovern discovered traces of sage and thyme in ancient Egyptian jars. Luteolin, which is in sage, and ursolic acid, which is in thyme, both have anti-cancer properties. Similarly, artemisinin and isoscopolein from wormwood fight cancer, and were found in ancient Chinese rice wine. “The ancient fermented beverages constituted the universal medicine of humankind before the advent of synthetic medicines,” McGovern says......The great advantage of grain is that it didn’t spoil like fruit or berries, and could be kept for months and used as needed. That motivated our ancestors to build permanent structures to store their grains and homes close to their fields—which in turn led to the creation of villages. Archeologists have found stone silos dating from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age at sites in the Middle East.

Makes sense to me.

Why The Dairy Cliff Won't Materialize

Because it would be a stupid pain in the ass:

U.S. farm law is set by a 1949 act that includes hefty price supports for dairy farmers. Those supports were once needed because dairy prices often weren’t high enough to cover the costs of production. The law directs the federal government to buy milk, butter and cheese, artificially inflating prices to prop up farmers.
But the “permanent law” is superseded by the farm bills Congress is supposed to pass roughly every five years. Not surprisingly, the current Congress has had some trouble reaching an agreement this time around, and the farm bill is now ridiculously late. A one-year extension at the end of last year wasn’t enough, and congressional leaders have said the bill will be taken up in January. Theoretically, that means a reversion to the “permanent law,” which would force the Department of Agriculture to start buying dairy products at (perhaps) about double their current prices on January 1. Hence the headlines warning that a gallon of milk is about to shoot up to anywhere between $6 and $9 a gallon, depending on which account you believe. There were even more scary “dairy cliff” headlines last year, before the extension was passed. We weren’t any close to the edge then than we are now.
Like the debt ceiling, the “permanent law” carries the “threat that it’s such a goofy law that Congress will pass a new one and rewrite the rules and not go back to the old rules,” Kent Olson, a University of Minnesota Extension economist, told Minnpost.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, though, has said that he won’t implement “permanent law” as long as Congress continues debating the farm bill in January, which they will be doing. And even if we were to go over the dairy cliff, Vilsack has any number of options for stalling price supports. It’s not like the federal government can suddenly just start buying (and storing) vast amounts of dairy products.

The Farm Bill is one of the better examples that Congress is full of clowns.  They've had forever to bang out a farm bill, and they are still unable to get anything done.  And the kicker is that the reactionary morons from rural areas in the House decided to hack the food stamps out of the bill, which was the only reason the Congressmen representing areas with sustainable population densities had any interest in passing a Farm Bill.  What a bunch of asshats.

Pilot Pork Inspection Program Hits Snags

Bloomberg:

The idea for the program sounded promising: If plants hired their own quality-assurance officers to sort out diseased carcasses and parts before they reached government inspectors, then, proponents theorized, there would be fewer carcasses for the USDA to inspect and reject. This weed-out of diseased animals earlier in the process would reduce the chance of food contamination; it would also allow plants the flexibility to devise their own inspection processes, rather than adhering to rigid cookie-cutter requirements; and, best of all, these efficiencies would streamline production, reducing the cost of pork for consumers.
Almost from the moment the program was fully implemented in 2003, the participating meatpackers saw huge benefits. In 2004, Excel and Hatfield achieved the largest production increases (measured by total number of swine) of any two packers in the U.S. The other three plants accelerated production for Hormel—not just at the official Hormel plant in Fremont, but also at QPP, which bills itself as a “custom packer” for Hormel, and at Farmer John, which Hormel purchased at the end of 2004. Thus, for the last decade, Hormel’s three cut-and-kill operations—the plants that supply all 9.4 million hogs annually for its operation nationwide—have been among these select five plants that have profited from dramatically increased line speeds.
But if packers have been delighted by the increased output, workers’ rights advocates say that runaway production increases have also jeopardized safety...Equally troubling, the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General has raised concerns that faster line speeds could compromise food safety. In May, the OIG released a report finding enforcement of protocols at the five pilot plants was so lax that between 2008 and 2011 three ranked among the top 10 violators of food safety requirements. That’s out of 616 pork-packing plants nationwide. As recently as last year, inspectors at the five test plants found hog carcasses bound for processing with lesions from tuberculosis, septic arthritis (with bloody fluid pouring from joints), and fecal smears. The OIG’s assessment warned that “recurring, severe violations may jeopardize public health.”

Wait, self-regulation might not be working?  Companies get richer, but workers and the public face greater danger?  No, not in an unregulated market.  Seriously, who is surprised by the outcome of this pilot program.  As the article goes on to say.  A similar program is going into effect across the poultry industry, and watchdog groups fear the pork pilot program will be expanded to the entire industry.

The Grain Treasure Trove

Modern Farmer:

One day in 1965, several members of the agriculture society were out hiking through the fields of Ardre on Gotland, an island off the Swedish coast, when they discovered a chest on Ragnar Pettersson’s farm. While Pettersson had a reputation for his bread, most people thought he was a little off his rocker. Instead of planting monocultures, he sowed his fields with a hodge-podge of grains. He claimed this blend was the secret behind his superior bread.

What the researchers found there would later spur a radical movement of growers and a new generation of experimental bakers. That cache of seeds is now referred to as the “treasure of Ardre.”
“What we discovered in Ardre was pretty much the history of wheat,” says Curt Niklasson, an organic spelt farmer on Gotland.
At the time, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences had issued a request that all native seeds and animal breeds be recorded, so the discovery was sent to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. As the majority of farmers around the world began growing modern, short-stemmed bread wheat (triticum aestivum) the treasure of Ardre sat, virtually untouched, for 30 years.
It wasn’t until the 1990s when Hans Larsson, a researcher in plant breeding for organic farming at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, decided to unearth Pettersson’s seeds take a closer look at their DNA. He counted at least 70 different varieties of grain. Larsson enlisted the help of Niklasson and together they began experimenting with re-growing the ancient grains. But by 2007 the pot of seeds was nearly depleted.

The majority of the article covers using these heritage grains in bread, but I thought this quick history of wheat interesting:

 Gotland is located smack-dab in the middle of the Baltic trade route between Denmark and Sweden. Originally, einkorn made its way from Persia, crossed with wild grasses and turned into wild emmer, was cultivated and crossed with another wild grass and became spelt. There is evidence that einkorn, emmer and spelt were all cultivated on Gotland as far back as 500 B.C. and seeds of all of these were found in Ardre, including multiple sub-varieties, like summer wheat, white, red, blue and black emmer, and borstvete, a variety of wheat that appears to be unique to Gotland. Borstvete, or “brushed wheat” is now listed in the Slow Food Ark of Taste.

Anyway, I enjoyed the story about Ragnar Petterson.  Farms tend to raise up some "interesting" characters. One thing to remember about the heritage varieties which the trendy gardeners have been flocking back to is that because they haven't been improved by breeding, the yields are tremendously low, and just can't provide cheap food for a global population.

Sinking Two Feet?

In a story at Pacific Standard on the ineffectiveness of a Dutch groundwater tax, there was a link to this story:

Federal scientists added another piece of evidence last week in the argument for regulating California's underground water — the San Joaquin Valley's famous sinking landscape is still dropping.
The U.S. Geological Survey study showed a 1,200-square-mile section of the west side in Madera, Fresno and Merced counties has dropped almost 2 feet in just two years.
The land is always subsiding in the Valley, but not this fast. It happened quickly, mostly because of new permanent crops, such as almond orchards, in areas of Madera County that do not have access to river water, say many water experts.
The study has some water community insiders quietly buzzing to me about California passing its first law over groundwater supplies. States such as Colorado have had such regulation for years. There is no such law here.
Even among some farmers, there is talk of the regulation, though nobody has stepped up yet to openly suggest it. This political hot potato will burn most anyone, even in a state as environmentally minded as California.
The USGS study is important. Nearly 2 feet of subsidence in two years over a broad landscape is telling, especially with the clarity of new technology. But a swiftly sinking landscape is hardly new in the Valley.
Between 1926 and 1970, the ground sank nearly 29 feet on the Valley's west side. It slowed after farmers started buying Northern California river water to irrigate.
But farmers have long complained to me that drought and environmental regulation at the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta would force them to use more underground water. It defeats the purpose of the projects to deliver water from the north, they say.

1,200 square miles is nearly 3 counties in this part of the world.  That is crazy.  And 29 feet?  Holy shit.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/11/26/3634251/groundwater-law-coming.html#storylink=cpy

Are Veterinarians Overprescribing Antibiotics?

Morning Edition looks at whether veterinarians help encourage farmers to overuse antibiotics.  The whole story is worth reading, but I found this part interesting:

Pork producers rely heavily on veterinarians like Henry for advice. "They don't want to spend money on drugs if they don't need to," says Henry. "Now, you have to juxtapose that with a tremendous amount of pressure from pharmaceutical companies to move product."
Those companies aim advertising campaigns at farmers and veterinarians alike. Henry says he dismisses it, but others are influenced. As a result, farmers sometimes use more drugs than they should.
In addition, many veterinarians have a financial interest in such decisions. They resell antibiotics to farmers.
"There's some margin in there for the veterinarian, so there's some incentive for the veterinarians to sell more," says Henry.
In Denmark, the government took away that incentive in 1994; it stopped veterinarians from earning profits on such sales. The next year, antibiotic use by almost 25 percent. (The Danish government also banned sales of one antibiotic that year, which may account for part of the decline.) Since then, Denmark has passed other regulations limiting antibiotic use in agriculture.
But Henry says he still trusts veterinarians, more than any regulations by government, to make sure antibiotics are used wisely.

Overuse of antibiotics, along with manure management and animal welfare are going to be the biggest issues for animal agriculture going forward.  I would anticipate that having to cut back on antibiotic use will end up challenging standard confinement practices as much as, if not more than PETA and HSUS do.

Flour Mill To Be Built In SE Indiana

Cincinnati Enquirer:

A new wheat processing plant is expected to open in West Harrison and the plant’s operator expects to employ 35 people at the site by 2016.
Teutopolis, Ill.-based Siemer Milling Co. and Cincinnati-based H. Nagel & Son plan to launch Whitewater Mill LLC as joint venture, the companies said Thursday.
The companies plan to invest $37.4 million to build and equip a five-floor wheat flour mill on Old U.S. 52. The facility is expected to be operational by spring 2015 and allow the company to produce 700 tons of wheat-based products daily.
Whitewater Mill will produce flours, flour co-products, wheat germ and bran for snack and dessert foods, baking mixes, biscuits, batters and breading. About 7 million bushels of wheat are expected to be processed annually, much of which will be supplied by local farmers, the companies said.
Early next year, Whitewater Mill will begin hiring millers, loaders, maintenance and packaging associates, laboratory technicians and managers.
“Nagel and Siemer see a great opportunity for flour milling in southeast Indiana,” said Rick Siemer, president of Siemer Milling, in a statement. “Existing and potential wheat supply and flour demand factors point to long-term success for this venture.”

I would not have picked that area as a good location to build a new flour mill.  I would think that we'd be seeing fewer acres of wheat in the area, not more.  

Fighting the Tragedy of the Commons

Some northwest Kansas farmers agree to limit irrigation water:

A few years ago, officials from the state of Kansas who monitor the groundwater situation came to the farmers of Hoxie and told them that the water table here was falling fast. They drew a line around an area covering 99 square miles, west of the town, and called together the farmers in that area for a series of meetings.
They told the farmers that the water was like gasoline in the tank. If every one agreed to use it more sparingly, it would last longer.
Proposals to cut back water for irrigation have not been popular in parts like these, to say the least. In the past, farmers across the American West have treated them like declarations of war. Raymond Luhman, who works for the that includes Hoxie, says that's understandable: "Many of them feel like the right to use that water is ..." he says, pausing, "it's their lifeblood!"
It's also their property. Under the law, it's not clear that any government can take it away from them, or order them to use less of it.
But in Hoxie, the conversation took a different turn.
Some influential farmers, including Baalman, pushed for everybody to pump less water. Baalman talked about his four children, how he wanted to preserve water for them.

He also talked about the town, and how it depended on irrigated agriculture. He argued that it would be better for the town to manage that water, to keep it flowing in the future.

What will determine whether the experiment continues?  Probably whether other farmers in the High Plains limit their own water usage:

Another farmer, Gary Moss, says he supports the agreement, but he's really waiting to see if farmers in other parts of western Kansas will do anything similar. The farmers of Hoxie don't want to stand alone in this, he says. It wouldn't be fair.
"If nobody else is jumping onboard, I think there's a lot of people who will say, 'We're not doing any good. We're just hurting ourselves,' " he says.
It's a paradox. This agreement to pump less water only happened because it was small: a deal among neighbors who cared about their town. But it may not survive unless it gets much bigger, including farmers all across the High Plains Aquifer.

I don't have much faith that other groups of farmers will join in until it is obvious they are screwed.  The mining will continue until it no longer can.  I'm glad to see that somebody is trying to be wise, but money talks and everything else walks.

South Dakota Blizzard Kills Thousands of Cattle

This is from earlier in the week, but I thought there was some interesting information in it:

South Dakota ranchers are facing devastating losses in the aftermath of a blizzard that dropped as much as four feet of snow in western reaches of the state. It has been estimated as many as 100,000 cattle have been killed because of the snowstorm, devastating herds that many ranchers rely on to make a living, FoxNews.com reported.
Sprinkled among melting patches of snow, thousands of carcasses now litter the flatlands where the cattle once grazed. The cattle likely died of either hypothermia or suffocation under the growing snowdrifts, said Silvia Christen, executive director of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association.
“It’s anyone’s guess how drastic this loss will be. The cattle were soaked to the bone. Then the wind and really heavy snow started -- it just clung to them and weighed them down,” Christen told Reuters. “Many of them just dropped where they were walking.” In all, it has been estimated most of the ranchers in the state lost between 50 percent and 75 percent of their herds, as Christen said the state is now looking at cattle deaths into the “tens of thousands if not pushing 100,000 at this point.”

I was surprised so many cattle would die in the storm, but then there is this:

 The snowstorm arrived so early in the season this year that the cattle were unable to grow their heavier winter coats.

One article also mentioned that the cattle were still on more open and remote summer pasture ground, and that normally ranchers move the cattle to more sheltered valleys for winter, but that the storm was so early that it hit before they had moved them. It is unbelievable how fast the weather changes there.

Salmonella Outbreak on Government Shutdown

Wired:

While the government is shut down, with food-safety personnel and disease detectives sent home and forbidden to work, a major foodborne-illness outbreak has begun. This evening, the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the US Department of Agriculture announced that “an estimated 278 illnesses … reported in 18 states” have been caused by chicken contaminated with Salmonella Heidelberg and possibly produced by the firm Foster Farms.
“FSIS is unable to link the illnesses to a specific product and a specific production period,” the agency said in an emailed alert. “The outbreak is continuing.”
This is the exact situation that CDC and other about-to-be-furloughed federal personnel warned about last week. As a reminder, a CDC staffer told me at the time:

I know that we will not be conducting multi-state outbreak investigations.  States may continue to find outbreaks, but we won’t be doing the cross-state consultation and laboratory work to link outbreaks that might cross state borders.

That means that the lab work and molecular detection that can link far-apart cases and define the size and seriousness of outbreaks are not happening. At the CDC, which operates the national foodborne-detection services FoodNet and PulseNet, scientists couldn’t work on this if they wanted to; they have been locked out of their offices, lab and emails. (At a conference I attended last week, 10 percent of the speakers did not show up because they were CDC personnel and risked being fired if they traveled even voluntarily.)

Hopefully people notice that government does do some important things for them on a day-to-day basis.  Food poisoning isn't one of the biggest concerns I have, but this can really hurt a lot of people.

Feedlots From the Sky

Wired highlights photos by Mishka Henner:

Tascosa Feedlot, Texas 2013

Seen from a satellite, an industrial feedlot has a sort of abstract beauty. The washes of colors, the juxtaposition of organic and rigid geometries, initially obscure the subject. Then comes the realization: That’s where our food comes from.
Such is the power of “Feedlots,” a new series of images crafted by British artist Mishka Henner from publicly available satellite photographs. Henner does work with the photos, enhancing the colors — the waste lagoons above, for example, are flat green rather than bright — but the physical details are unaltered.
Henner, who noticed the feedlots while scanning for pictures of oil fields in Texas, didn’t at first realize what he was looking at. Factory farms exist in the United Kingdom, but not at landscape scales.

That is a lot of cattle in one place.  The other pictures are pretty cool, too.

China Buys Up Ukrainian Ag Production

The Atlantic:

China has inked a deal to farm three million hectares (about 11, 583 square miles) of Ukrainian land over the span of half a century—which means the eastern European country will give up about 5% of its total land, or 9% of its arable farmland to feed China’s burgeoning population.
Under the deal between China’s Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, or XPCC, and KSG Agro, an Ukrainian agricultural company, crops and pigs raised in the eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk will be sold at preferential rates to two Chinese state-owned grain firms. The project will launch with 100,000 hectares and eventually expand to three million. Here’s some context on what that looks like:

 The deal comes after Ukraine lifted a law barring foreigners from buying Ukrainian land last year. As part of the deal, China’s Export-Import bank has given Ukraine a $3 billion loan for agricultural development. In exchange for its produce, Ukraine will receive seeds, equipment, a fertilizer plant (Ukraine imports about $1 billion worth of fertilizer every year), and a plant to produce a crop protection agent. XPCC also says it will help build a highway in Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea as well as bridge across the Strait of Kerch, a transport and industrial center for the country.

And here are some other large land deals that have taken place in the last few years:

 Personally, I expect if folks in those countries get short on food, the government will confiscate the land back and the country that purchased the land would have to invade to try to retain the land.  It just doesn't seem like a good risk to me.

Climate Change and Wheat Production

A recent K-State study concludes that a one degree C rise in average temperature could shave 10 bushels off of yields in Kansas:

To quantify the impact of genetic improvement in wheat, disease and climate change over a 26-year period, a team of researchers at Kansas State University examined wheat variety yield data from Kansas performance tests, along with location-specific weather and disease data.
Their results showed that from 1985 through 2011, wheat breeding programs boosted average wheat yields by 13 bushels per acre, or 0.51 bushel each year, for a total increase of 26 percent.
Simulations also found that a 1 degree Celsius increase (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in projected mean temperature was found to decrease wheat yields by 10.64 bushels per acre or nearly 21 percent.
"Kansas wheat producers are challenged by weather, pests and disease," said Andrew Barkley professor of agricultural economics and lead researcher of a multi-disciplinary team that included agronomists and plant pathologists. "Fortunately, the Kansas wheat breeding program produces new varieties of wheat that increase yields over time.
"Given weather trends in recent years, climate change is expected to increase temperatures, and this is likely to lower wheat yields in Kansas," Barkley said. "Diseases such as fungi and viruses can attack wheat and lower yields. This research quantifies the impact of weather, diseases and new wheat varieties on yields. So far, genetic improvement has allowed wheat yields to increase significantly over time, but there are challenges ahead to keep up with potential increases in temperature."
The study, funded by the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, is the first to quantify all of these impacts (climate change, disease and genetic improvement) using a unique data set, and state-of-the-art statistical methods, Barkley said.

I've wondered whether climate change will seriously impact wheat production in Ohio, and more importantly, in places like Kansas and Eastern Colorado.  Apparently, it will have an impact.  And since wheat production is already a hit-or-miss proposition here, it probably will lead to even fewer wheat acres.

Greek Yogurt Boom Leaves New York Looking For More Milk

Morning Edition:

Greek yogurt leaders Chobani and Fage started the boom in 2007 and 2008, and production has tripled since then. Now there are more than 40 yogurt plants scattered across the state, surpassing even California's yogurt industry. Steve Hyde, who directs the Genesee County Economic Development Corp., calls New York "the Silicon Valley of yogurt."
But can New York's dairy farmers keep up?
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature have passed all kinds of programs to induce dairy farmers to meet the milk demand. There are grants for modern milking equipment, new business plans and anaerobic digesters that turn manure into electricity.
But even with all that, New York's dairy herd is no bigger than it was last year.
Mike Kiechle, a small dairy farmer, says he's one of the ones who would like to expand but can't.
One big problem is that milk doesn't obey the laws of supply and demand. A federal formula sets the milk price farmers are paid by region. And that price because there are a bunch of Greek yogurt plants looking for milk nearby. So to add, say, 50 cows, Kiechle's looking at a frightening risk.
"I'm going to have to have some more land," Kiechle says. "My equipment's not big enough. My barn's not big enough. And the return that we've had the last 10 years, you've got to think twice before you invest your money there."
Despite the challenges small farmers are facing, New York is producing about 3 percent more milk. Farmer Shelly Stein says that's because a lot of bigger dairy farms are milking smarter. They're encouraged by the Greek yogurt future, so they're investing in new technology and bigger, cleaner barns that make the cows more productive.

I like the dairy farmer's take on it.  After 10 years of getting his ass kicked, he's supposed to sink a ton of money into the latest diet trend?  Sounds like a bad idea to me.  And, "the Silicon Valley of yogurt"?  Yes, oh so cutting edge.

Peak Water Out West?

Peter Gleick thinks so (h/t nc links).  A few of his data points:

• Groundwater is disappearing in California; the Great Plains; Texas (tables in this report (pdf) show continuous and often massive declines in almost all Texas groundwater systems); and elsewhere in the West, because our laws and policies ignore the fact that surface and groundwater are connected. Contributing the problem, water managers and legislators typically put no restrictions on groundwater pumping, leading to inevitable, and inexorable, groundwater declines.
• In the Lower Tule Irrigation District in California, demand for water has grown over the past two decades from 250,000 AF/year to 450,000 AF/year, much of it supplied by overpumping groundwater. In parts of the district, the average depth to groundwater in 1983 was 50 feet. In 2003, groundwater levels had declined to 75 feet. Today it is 125 feet, and some wells 300 feet deep are going dry.  In April 2013, John Roeloffs, a farmer and member of the Lower Tule Irrigation District Board, noted “Some guys are drilling wells 800 feet deep.”
• There is more and more and more evidence of declining snowpack in the western US as the climate warms.

I would anticipate that we have peak combined population and agriculture out there.  I'm not sure what will happen, but I think he's right about this:

 Maybe it is time to grow less rice, alfalfa, cotton, and pasture with flood irrigation. It is past time to retire the green lawn as an acceptable landscape option in arid climates.

Yeah, growing alfalfa in Arizona doesn't make much sense to me.  Putting on inches of water between cuttings just doesn't seem like the thing to do in the desert.  I would say some of those acres will be going fallow pretty soon.

Too Good To Be True?

Via Big Picture Agriculture, David Bowman is with me in doubting the claims of Allen Savory about improving grasslands with intensive grazing:

In a nutshell, Savory argues that more intensive cattle ranching could simultaneously improve meat production, reverse desertification and turn vast areas of the Earth into massive carbon sinks that would soak up carbon dioxide. This would save the world from climate change. His argument links lots of ideas about ecology that makes for a very inspirational, and for the uninitiated very sensible, narrative.
At the very core of the talk is the idea that rotating grazing animals across rangelands can mimic the migrations of wild animals. This would improve the productivity of pastures and the health of soils. Savory’s message is very positive, a rare a win-win for the environment and the economy.
The catch is Savory’s TED talk is littered with rhetorical devices that paper over problems and exaggerate the effect of grazing. Worse there are just plain errors of fact. In 2008 rangeland scientists undertook a review to determine if “rotation grazing” increased plant and animal productivity compared to other styles of grazing and they could not find any difference.
These authors concluded that “continued advocacy for rotational grazing as a superior strategy of grazing on rangelands is founded on perception and anecdotal interpretations, rather than an objective assessment of the vast experimental evidence”.
Savory’s TED talk builds to the truly astonishing claim that the least biologically productive landscapes on Earth could store so much greenhouse gas pollution it would restore CO₂ levels to near pre-industrial levels! This is a dangerous fantasy.
Rangelands are used for cattle grazing for the simple reason there is insufficient water for other more intensive forms or agriculture; more often than not, the soils are infertile. They are some of the least carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth, and no amount of management can get around that fact.

Like Bowman, I think there are ways to improve pasture land, but I think Savory's claims are too good to be true.  Maybe I'll be proven wrong.

The Semen Repository

Modern Farmer:

The National Animal Germplasm Program (NAGP) started in 1999. Its facility stores a huge mishmash of semen — rare and vintage samples, combined with the most common breeds on the market. Blackburn says the everyday strains are just as important as the heirloom semen, if not more so.
The repository stores samples from sheep, turkeys, goats, bison, pigs, elk, chickens, fish and cows. Every straw has a story. There are 30,000 salmon milt samples, obtained from the Nez Perce tribe in Idaho. There’s rare sheep semen from Kazakhstan, near sheep’s center of domestication. There’s even a full backup of 20,000 exclusively bred cows on the Island of Jersey, progenitors for Jersey cattle all over the globe.
So where does it all come from? Universities, companies and private collectors often donate semen to the NAGP. Other samples are tracked down by Blackburn and his colleagues. One woman in Broken Bow, Nebraska, had a rare breed of cattle dating back to the 1940s. “We called this farmer, asking for semen from her bulls,” Blackburn says. “She picked up the phone and said, ‘I thought you’d never call.’”  By Congressional decree, the NAGP will never charge you for the use of their samples, whether you’re a scientist, breeder or farmer. The only catch: You have to show it’s something you couldn’t obtain elsewhere (i.e., a private company).  For instance, the owner of a herd of milking cows recently contacted the agency. The farmer was looking to inseminate his cows with an otherwise unavailable shorthorn breed from Utah. The NAGP provided the sample — it was over 50 years old. “It’s amazing, isn’t it,” laughs Blackburn.

Had never heard of that.  God Bless the USDA.