The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

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caltrek
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What Should Desert Farmers Grow?
by Stephen Robert Miller
February 7, 2022

https://thefern.org/2022/02/what-should ... mers-grow/

Extract:
(Food & Environment Reporting Network) The West is mired in a water crisis that’s difficult to fully comprehend. More than 40 million people in seven states and two countries depend on the Colorado River, and its waters are depleting at a terrifying rate. Since the 1900s, flows have decreased by 20 percent, a drop largely associated with climate change. Experts say the situation will only get worse.

For decades, leaders have sought a way to equitably share what’s left of the shrinking supply, but there has always been one stubborn sticking point: Farmers consume three-quarters of the region’s precious water, often to grow thirsty, inedible crops like cotton and hay. Many of them have been here for a century or more, and they aren’t about to leave. So, why can’t they grow something that sucks less water?

….Eventually, I came to a chain-link gate with a warning: “Watch out for snakes.” Behind it, I found a 300-acre desert laboratory operated by the Japanese-owned Bridgestone Corporation where a small team was toiling away, in some sense, on the same question.

…Out back, rows of ragged shrubs grew at varying heights. This was guayule (pronounced why-oo-lee), a plant native to Southwestern deserts that happens to produce latex. From this unassuming outpost, Bridgestone was trying to establish the country’s sole domestic source for the kind of high-grade natural rubber used in airplane tires and surgical gloves — and they were doing it with a crop accustomed to drought.

…The company intends to disrupt a supply line that has for more than a century been milking rubber from musty tropical forests and shift it to the middle of the searing desert. To succeed, this laboratory will have to develop a wundercrop that produces high rubber yields with relatively minuscule amounts of water. But that’s just the start. Bridgestone will also have to develop guayule-specific farm equipment and convince Arizona’s farmers — who cling proudly to their role in providing food and fiber for American families — to produce something that can be neither eaten nor worn. Many companies and the U.S. government have already tried and failed.
Image
Researcher Dave Dierig walks along a row of guayule plants at the Bridgestone Guayule Research Farm outside Eloy, Arizona.
Photograph by Bill Hatcher
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Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

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New Robot Helps to Check Cheese Quality in Seconds
February 22, 2022

https://science.ku.dk/english/press/new ... and-danbo/

Introduction:
(University of Copenhagen) The world’s very first cheese robot is on the move and helping a Danish dairy with the quality control of its cheeses.

According to the University of Copenhagen researcher behind the invention, the robot can save dairy companies time and money, while contributing to more sustainable production in the long term.

At Arla’s dairy in Taulov, Denmark, apron-clad dairy workers have been joined by a shiny silver and red-eyed colleague—a robot that helps them produce delicious Danish Havarti, Danbo, and Maribo cheeses.

The robot illuminates the cheeses with near-infrared light through two thin metal tubes that are inserted directly into the soft curd. The light emits back wavelengths that are then stored as data about the cheese on a computer.

“Analyzing the light allows us to map the chemical fingerprints of a cheese—including its fat, protein, and carbohydrate content, among other things. In doing so, we can always see whether cheeses meet the dairy’s quality standards vis-à-vis safety, texture, and taste,” explains Klavs Martin Sørensen, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen’s food science department.
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Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

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Potato Genome Decoded
March 3, 2022

https://www.mpg.de/18386613/potato-geno ... n1CKiooZPo

Introduction:
(Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) More than 20 years after the first release of the human genome, scientists at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, have for the first time decoded the highly complex genome of the potato. This technically demanding study lays the biotechnological foundation to accelerate the breeding of more robust varieties - a goal in plant breeding for many years and an important step for global food security.

When shopping for potatoes on a market today, buyers may well be going home with a variety that was already available more than 100 years ago. Traditional potato varieties are popular. And yet this example also highlights a lack of diversity among the predominant potato varieties. However, that could soon change: researchers in the group of geneticist Korbinian Schneeberger were able to generate the first full assembly of a potato genome. This paves the way for breeding new, robust varieties:

“The potato is becoming more and more integral to diets worldwide including even Asian countries like China where rice is the traditional staple food. Building on this work, we can now implement genome-assisted breeding of new potato varieties that will be more productive and also resistant to climate change – this could have a huge impact on delivering food security in the decades to come”.

Especially the low diversity makes potato plants susceptible to diseases. This can have stark consequences, most dramatically during the Irish famine of the 1840s, where for several years nearly the entire potato crop rotted in the ground, and millions of people in Europe suffered from starvation simply because the single variety that was grown was not resistant to newly emerging tuber blight. During the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, scientists and plant breeders succeeded in achieving large increases in the yields of many of our major crop staples like rice or wheat. However, the potato has seen no comparable boost, and efforts to breed new varieties with higher yields have remained largely unsuccessful to the current day.
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The Corporate Raider Taking Aim at McDonald’s Over the Treatment of Pigs
by Kenny Torrella
March 3, 2022

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2295 ... al-welfare

Introduction:
(Vox) Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, is known for spearheading hostile takeovers of underperforming companies on Wall Street, so it seemed odd when he bought a small stake in McDonald’s and last month nominated two new directors to its board, since the company has outperformed its fast food competitors in recent years.

But Icahn’s rancor wasn’t directed at the company’s financial performance. Rather, it was directed at how pigs in the company’s supply chain are treated.

The fight has made headlines in the business press in recent weeks, but its origins go back a decade. In 2012, after pressure from Icahn and the Humane Society of the US, McDonald’s pledged that it would end the use of gestation crates for pregnant pigs — which confine the animals so tightly they are unable to turn around for months at a time — throughout its supply chain by the end of 2022.

Now that 2022 has arrived, Icahn argues the company is far from following through on its commitment, and he’s ready to take action.
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Cayena Delivers Inventory Marketplace for Food Preparation Businesses
by Christine Hall
March 7, 2022

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/07/cayen ... usinesses/

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Procuring items to fill the shelves of local stores is not an easy task in Latin America. Orders are mostly still done on paper or over the phone, and sometimes store owners have to drive to the wholesaler to get their orders.

Cayena founders Gabriel Sendacz, Pedro Carvalho and Raymond Shayo believe injecting technology into procurement will make the process much simpler for food preparation facilities, like restaurants, bars, bakeries, hotels and dark kitchens, in their home country of Brazil and across the region.
“Latin American B2B is a massive market, but it is fragmented when it comes to supply and demand,” Shayo told TechCrunch. “About 90% of our customers are small and medium, independent and family-owned businesses. On the supplier side, there are thousands of distributors all with different products, but they have less than 1% of the market share.”

In contrast, the United States has large foodservice companies, like Sysco, U.S. Foods and Gordon Food Service, which hold around 10% market share and offer a one-stop shop for everything from food to cleaning supplies.
Further Extract:
…they created a business-to-business marketplace, targeting the $100 billion wholesale food industry in Latin America, that enables users to source inventory from multiple suppliers at one time and get orders delivered the next day. It is also offering add-on services like buy now, pay later financing.
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Why American Farmers Keep Losing Money
by Caro Clark-Emory
March 2, 2022

https://www.futurity.org/farmers-agricu ... y-2705292/

Introduction:
(Futurity) US agricultural systems are world leaders in the production of food, fuel, and fiber. This high level of production enables consumers to spend an average of only 8.6% of their disposable income on food, a percentage that has trended downward since 1960.

Growing evidence, however, shows that many hidden costs of cheap food may be passed on through factors such as reduced nutritional content, environmental degradation, and the diminishing livelihoods of US farm operators.

“It’s not that agriculture as a sector is not profitable,” says lead author Emily Burchfield, assistant professor in the environmental sciences department at Emory University. “It’s that, despite hard work and significant financial risk, many of the people who operate US farms are not able to make a decent living at it.”

Rising input costs, shrinking production values, commodity specialization, and challenges to land access all appear to be connected to declining farm operator livelihoods, the new study in Frontiers of Sustainable Food Systems concludes.

“We’ve shown in a quantitative, systematic way the extent to which these trends are happening and, in many cases, how they appear to be worsening,” Burchfield says.
Last edited by caltrek on Fri Mar 11, 2022 10:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Soil Friendly Farming Produces Healthier Food
by Hannah Hickey
March 7, 2022

https://www.futurity.org/soil-regenerat ... d-2706862/

Introduction:
(Futurity) Results of the preliminary experiment, which included 10 farms across the US, show that the crops from farms following soil-friendly practices for at least five years had a healthier nutritional profile than the same crops grown on neighboring, conventional farms.

The results showed a boost in certain minerals, vitamins, and phytochemicals that benefit human health.

“We couldn’t find studies that related directly to how the health of the soil affects what gets into crops,” says lead author David Montgomery, a professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington. “So we did the experiment that we wished was out there.”

Montgomery designed the study during research for his upcoming book, What Your Food Ate (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022) due out in June. His spouse, Anne Biklé, is a biologist and coauthor of the study and the upcoming book.

The researchers collaborated with farmers using regenerative farming practices to conduct an experiment. All the participating farms, mostly in the Midwest and in the Eastern US, agreed to grow one acre of a test crop—peas, sorghum, corn, or soybeans—for comparison with the same crop grown on a neighboring farm using conventional agriculture.
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Potentially High Fertilizer Costs: Here’s What the Situation in Ukraine Means for U.S. Agriculture
by Johnathan Hettinger and Madison McVan
March 3, 2022

https://investigatemidwest.org/2022/03/ ... riculture/

Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest) As Ukraine continues to fight against Russian forces, experts warned of potential fallout for the U.S. agriculture industry.
On Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine, and Russian troops stormed into the country.

Reportedly, tens of thousands have died, and about half a million people have fled their homes, according to The New York Times.

The same day as Putin’s announcement, Ukraine's military halted all commercial activities at its ports in the Black Sea. Also that day, a missile struck a ship chartered by Cargill, according to Reuters.

Multinational agricultural corporations stopped operations in Ukraine as farmers expect the Russian invasion of the country — and the subsequent economic sanctions — to drive up already high prices for fertilizer, a key input for U.S. growers, according to interviews and company statements.

“That region of the world is a pretty significant producer of key fertilizers or key components to fertilizer, so that is definitely on the minds of farmers,” said Garrett Hawkins, the Missouri Farm Bureau president.
One interesting observation in the body of the article (see link above quote box) is that soy beans require relatively small amounts of fertilizer. So many farmers might switch to this crop, in which case presumably soy bean prices could drop.
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Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

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Here is a follow up article from the same source. The link includes some interesting graphs (if you are into that sort of thing).

USDA Pledges Investment in U.S. Fertilizer as Russia’s Invasion is Expected to Disrupt Global Market
by Sky Chadde
March 15, 2022

https://investigatemidwest.org/2022/03/ ... al-market/

Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest) There are three kinds of fertilizers commonly used around the world, and Russia is a top producer of all of them.

Following the country's invasion of Ukraine, Russia's position among the top fertilizer producers has sparked fears of skyrocketing prices. The United Nations has warned the global fertilizer market could suffer "considerable disruptions" (though other experts have said it's too soon to tell).

The situation has already garnered action from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It announced Friday it would invest $250 million into fertilizer production in the U.S.

“Recent supply chain disruptions from the global pandemic to Putin’s unprovoked war against Ukraine have shown just how important it is to invest in this crucial link in the agricultural supply chain here at home,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
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Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

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The world's other wheat producers can't increase their own production levels to compensate for the loss of Russian and Ukrainian wheat on the global market.
“It will impact millions and millions of people, particularly in the poorest countries of the world,” WFP Executive Director David Beasley told The Associated Press in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv last week as he visited a refugee center where food aid was distributed.

There are unanswered questions about how Western sanctions on Russia, the world’s top wheat exporter, could affect its grain exports and distribution networks. Russia is also the biggest exporter of fertilizer, while Ukraine ships huge amounts of corn, rye, oats and millet. The Black Sea region is a top producer of the grains used to feed livestock worldwide.

Australia and India have responded with increased grain exports, but there’s little room for others to immediately do the same. That’s mainly due to recurrent drought, said Arnaud Petit, executive director of the International Grains Council.

The U.S. produced around 44 million tons of wheat for the 2021-2022 season. Just two to three years ago, it was over 50 million tons. Petit pointed to drought and farmers switching to more profitable crops.

Canada, Argentina and Australia could try to ramp up wheat production for the coming season that ends in mid-2023, but it’s too early to tell if farmers are changing their planting patterns to focus more on grains like wheat.

Doug Martin said it’s too late for his family farm in Manitoba, Canada, to make significant changes to what’s being planted now. Plus, growing a range of crops spreads out risks.

“Most producers have a set idea of what they are seeding and will probably stick to that,” Martin said.

Although higher wheat prices will reap earnings for farmers, that isn’t enough incentive to expand production because prices are also climbing for crops like oats, canola and barely.

“There are other crops that are going to get good returns,” Martin added.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrai ... 121d2090ed
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