The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

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This Genetically Modified Rice Could Transform the Global Food Supply
by Joanna Thompson
August 3, 2022

Introduction:
(Inverse) GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS are a hot-button issue. Many people are hesitant to eat plants or animals that have been enhanced with foreign genes, citing health and environmental concerns, the perceived “ick” factor, and occasionally conspiratorial thinking.

But GMO foods have the potential to feed the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who are undernourished. Given the benefits of tinkering with our meals’ genomes, a new study published in Science could offer a helpful compromise: a way to improve the yields of a crucial crop without adding genes from different organisms.

“Rice is one of the most important crops because it is a staple food for almost half of the world’s population,” Wenbin Zhou, a geneticist at the National Key Research and Development Program of China and co-author of the study, tells Inverse.

By duplicating one key gene, a team of researchers in China has successfully engineered a strain of agricultural rice that yields up to 40 percent more grain per plot compared to controls. If widely adopted, this breakthrough technique has the potential to feed magnitudes more people with fewer resources — but only if consumers and regulatory bodies are willing to give the transgenic dish a chance.
Read more here: https://www.inverse.com/innovation/gmo-rice-china
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More Wheat for Global Food Security
August 4, 2022

Conclusion:
(EurekAlert ) We are approaching the biophysical limits of wheat yields. So we need to understand the functions of crops to boost yields further,” says the scientist (professor Senthold Asseng). He firmly believes that the genetic resources of wheat are considerable. In his experiments, he has identified the unused genetic resources in this cultivated plant with the potential to increase yields around the world. He speaks of a genetic yield gap of 51 percent. The goal is to mobilize this breeding gap. This can be done by targeted breeding that will utilize the yield potential of wheat and thus lead to richer harvests.

Genetics are important, but only an interdisciplinary approach will achieve the goal

However, Prof. Asseng is certain: “Genetics alone cannot solve the global nutrition problems. We can achieve this only with an interdisciplinary approach through the application of genetics combined with soil and climate science as well as research into cultivated plants.”

The use of advanced modern breeding instruments and the continual improvement of agricultural crop production through optimized plant and soil management will achieve the urgently needed increases in the global wheat harvest. "This can then bring about an effective solution for an adequate worldwide supply of food in the future," says Asseng.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/960892
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Nutrition Solution Can Help Heat-stressed Cows as U.S. Warms
by Caitlin Hayes
August 3, 2022

Introduction:
(Cornell Chronicle) Rising temperatures pose major challenges to the dairy industry – a Holstein’s milk production can decline 30 to 70% in warm weather – but a new Cornell-led study has found a nutrition-based solution to restore milk production during heat-stress events, while also pinpointing the cause of the decline.

The study, published Aug. 2 in the Journal of Dairy Science, confirmed for the first time that heat-stressed dairy cows develop gut permeability, or leaky gut, which contributes to a reduction in milk production. Researchers also found that milk production can be partially restored by feeding the cows organic acids and pure botanicals.

“This has immediate application,” said Joseph McFadden ‘03, associate professor of dairy cattle biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and senior author of the paper. “And we hope it serves as a catalyst for the field and ignites further research into dietary approaches.”

The paper’s first author is Ananda Fontoura, a doctoral student in McFadden’s lab.

The research will help maintain the efficiency and sustainability of the dairy industry as demand and temperatures both rise. Climate change is already causing reduced production and threatened health in Holsteins, by far the dominant breed in U.S. dairy farming. McFadden said the New York state dairy industry is not safe because of its relatively cool climate – heat stress in Holsteins begins to occur at 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
Read more here: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/ ... -us-warms

For a technical presentation of the results of the study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ ... 222004210
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While developments in technology and science are major drivers determining the future of food, governmental policies will also play a part.

Congress Could Beef Up Meatpacking Oversight This Fall. But Obstacles to Enforcement Remain
by Aruni Soni
August 4, 2022

Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest) A century ago, Congress wrote a law intended to counteract unfair business practices in the meatpacking industry.

Fast forward to 2022: Just four companies control more than half of the beef, pork and poultry markets, and the meatpacking industry has fielded lawsuits alleging abusive behavior. The Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 largely has failed in what it was supposed to accomplish, legislators and fair market advocates said.

However, new bills before the U.S. Senate aim to reinvigorate the act.

At a time when there’s greater scrutiny at the federal level on consolidation in the meatpacking industry, the Meat and Poultry Special Investigator Act of 2022 would create an Office of the Special Investigator for Competition Matters in the U.S. Department of Agriculture tasked with enforcing the 1921 law.

While experts said broad problems remain in enforcing the law, the potential new office is seen by advocates as a step in the right direction. Ultimately, the bill strives to boost regulation of an industry riddled with allegations of price manipulation and producer exploitation.
Read more here: https://investigatemidwest.org/2022/08 ... t-remain/
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A Cousin of a Crop-killing Bacteria is Mutating Rapidly
August 12, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) A bacterial species closely related to deadly citrus greening disease is rapidly evolving its ability to infect insect hosts, and possibly plants as well.

The newly identified species belongs to Liberibacter, a family of bacteria known to infect several economically important crops. There are nine known Liberibacter species, including one that infects potatoes and three that are associated with citrus greening.

Citrus greening, also known as Huanglongbing, is the number one killer of citrus trees worldwide. Though many are working on solutions, there is presently no effective prevention or treatment option on the market.

Given its relatives’ destructive qualities, UC Riverside scientists set out to understand the ways the new species, L. capsica, genetically resembles other types of Liberibacter.

“As with new strains of COVID-19, bacteria become variants of concern if their mutations can impact pathogenic or transmissible properties,” said Allison Hansen, UCR entomologist and study lead.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/961650
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Your Future Shrimp Meal Could Come from Atarraya’s Farming Technology
by Christine Hall
August 15, 2022

Introduction:
(Techcrunch) Atarraya, creator of Shrimpbox, a sustainable “plug-and-play” shrimp farming technology, is swimming to the surface after being in stealth mode since 2019. The Mexico City-based company emerges with new funding, $3.9 million in Series A dollars, and a new U.S. headquarters in Indianapolis.

The company is claiming this is the “world’s first” technology of its kind, and Daniel Russek, founder and CEO of Atarraya, told TechCrunch that Shrimpbox was an idea he got after college in 2005 when he started with a non-government organization working with fishing communities.

That grew into aquaculture farming technology with Russek and his team creating a startup company around it called Maricultura Vigas. That company mainly focused on the biotechnology aspects of aquaculture, including the challenge of raising shrimp in a closed loop system.

“We wanted to make the shrimp business more sustainable and more efficient without destroying the environment,” Russek said. “We decided to take a bet on the technology and became a startup. We raised some money, got some grants from the Mexican government.”

However, in 2019, the company realized that the challenge was a bit bigger than the founders previously anticipated. In addition to biotech, Russek felt there also needed to be software and automation components. So they created Atarraya, a U.S.-based company tasked with the challenge of making the shrimp farming technology sustainable and more affordable.
Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/15/shri ... chnology/
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Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency Researchers Prove Bioengineering Better Photosynthesis Increases Yields in Food Crops for the First Time Ever
August 18, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — For the first time, RIPE researchers have proven that multigene bioengineering of photosynthesis increases the yield of a major food crop in field trials. After more than a decade of working toward this goal, a collaborative team led by the University of Illinois has transgenically altered soybean plants to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis, resulting in greater yields without loss of quality.

Results of this magnitude couldn’t come at a more crucial time. The most recent UN report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022, found that in 2021 nearly 10% of the world population was hungry, a situation that has been steadily worsening over the last few years and eclipsing all other threats to global health in scale. According to UNICEF, by 2030, more than 660 million people are expected to face food scarcity and malnutrition. Two of the major causes of this are inefficient food supply chains (access to food) and harsher growing conditions for crops due to climate change. Improving access to food and improving the sustainability of food crops in impoverished areas are the key goals of this study and the RIPE project.

Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency, or RIPE, is an international research project that aims to increase global food production by improving photosynthetic efficiency in food crops for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, and U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

“The number of people affected by food insufficiency continues to grow, and projections clearly show that there needs to be a change at the food supply level to change the trajectory,” said Amanda De Souza, RIPE project research scientist, and lead author. “Our research shows an effective way to contribute to food security for the people who need it most while avoiding more land being put into production. Improving photosynthesis is a major opportunity to gain the needed jump in yield potential.”
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/961779

For the UN report The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022: https://www.fao.org/3/cc0639en/online/cc0639en.html
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Climate Change Likely to Raise Wheat Prices in Food-insecure Regions and Exacerbate Economic Inequality
August 19, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Wheat is a key source of nutrition for people across the globe, providing 20% of calories and protein for 3.4 billion people worldwide. Even if we meet climate mitigation targets and stay under 2°C of warming, climate change is projected to significantly alter the yield and price of wheat in the coming years. Researchers publishing in the journal One Earth on August 19 predict that wheat yield is likely to increase at high latitudes and decrease in low latitudes, meaning that prices for the grain are likely to change unevenly and increase in much of the Global South, enhancing existing inequalities.

“Most studies primarily focus on how modelling climate change impacts on wheat yields,” says lead author Tianyi Zhang, an agro-meteorologist with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Science. “This is indeed important, but crop yields do not provide a holistic vision of food security. In the real world, many countries, especially developing countries, heavily rely on agribusiness.”

The team has developed a new climate-wheat-economic ensemble modeling approach. This improved model system allows the researchers to explicitly look at impacts of both climate mean conditions and extreme events on wheat yields, price and global supply-demand chain. “We know from previous research that extreme events do not necessarily respond in the same way as the mean conditions, and because these extreme events are the most impactful on societies, this is an important step forward,” says co-author Karin van der Wiel, a climate scientist in the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.
Read more of the EurekAlert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/961592

For the article published in One Earth: https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltex ... 2)00371-2
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The Colorado River Drought is Coming for Your Winter Veggies
by Benji Jones
August 20, 2022

Introduction:
(Vox) It’s a classic Italian-American meal: a crispy Caesar salad with a plate of marinara pasta.

You can find it in restaurants across the country, but depending on the time of year, many of the ingredients come from just one region. Yuma, Arizona, along with California’s Imperial Valley, produces more than 90 percent of the country’s winter leafy greens and much of its vegetables. Arizona is also a major grower of wheat, which the state exports to Italy for making pasta.

Historically, this made a lot of sense. The region has nutritious soil and a warm climate for growing food year-round, even when the rest of the country is frozen over.

There’s just one problem: The water that farmers use to grow these crops comes from the Colorado River, and the Colorado River is drying up.

The iconic river is in its 23rd year of drought, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, and the two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, have sunk to historic lows, prompting a series of water restrictions. Under climate change, the drought could worsen in the years ahead.
Read more here: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health ... nia-farms
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I have just come across an article in Investigate Midwest which contains a lot of reading material both in the article itself and in links to other items of interest. I will try and highlight the gist of it all, but even that will take several citations and links.

With Corn Belt Inching North, Farm Diversification Gains Momentum
by Adam Goldstein
August 17, 2022

Introduction:
(investigate Midwest) CONCORDIA, MISSOURI — Corn and soybeans once covered Josh Payne’s farm as far as the eye could see. Tidy rows of green and brown marched across his 600 acres from spring to fall, kept in line by tillage, and herbicide. Though Payne’s operation was the picture of modern agriculture, he could not shake a general dissatisfaction.

Today, Payne calls his farm “a messy, complex, diverse life worth living.” Gone are the corn and soy, replaced by a diversified farm that includes various animals, nuts and fruits. Young chestnut trees reach their limbs skyward. Dozens of sheep, bleating and plodding, graze on native grasses in Payne’s front yard. And several brown cows lounge on rolling pasture in the distance.

“We're trying to rethink our food, and we're trying to regrow our land,” Payne said.

Payne is one of a small but growing number of Midwestern farmers re-evaluating how to manage their land as they face climate change, market shocks, and other threats. Diverse farms like his made up only 10% to 15% of the roughly 2 million farms in the 2017 U.S. agricultural census. Yet researchers predict these farms will become more common across the Midwest as climate change redraws the American agricultural map. Already, the Corn Belt – which traditionally spanned from Kansas to Ohio and from Missouri to the Dakotas – has shifted northwest, a trend that’s expected to continue.
Read more here:
https://investigatemidwest.org/2022/08/ ... -momentum/

One of the sites linked in the article explains an aspect of government policy on this matter:

Introduction:
(U.S. Department of Agriculture) JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., Feb. 7, 2022 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today at Lincoln University that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is delivering on its promise to expand markets by investing $1 billion in partnerships to support America’s climate-smart farmers, ranchers and forest landowners. The new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities opportunity will finance pilot projects that create market opportunities for U.S. agricultural and forestry products that use climate-smart practices and include innovative, cost-effective ways to measure and verify greenhouse gas benefits. USDA is now accepting project applications for fiscal year 2022.

“America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest owners are leading the way in implementing climate-smart solutions across their operations,” said Vilsack. “Through Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, USDA will provide targeted funding to meet national and global demand and expand market opportunities for climate-smart commodities to increase the competitive advantage of American producers. We want a broad array of agriculture and forestry to see themselves in this effort, including small and historically underserved producers as well as early adopters.”

For the purposes of this funding opportunity, a climate-smart commodity is defined as an agricultural commodity that is produced using agricultural (farming, ranching or forestry) practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon.

Funding will be provided to partners through the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation...
Read more here: https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releas ... ng-markets


Here is an interesting example of the kinds of projects being selected and promoted by the USDA:
(Purdue University) WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A $10 million project seeks to make Midwestern agriculture more resilient by diversifying farms, marketing and the agricultural landscape.

We’ve all heard of hedging a bet or diversifying a portfolio to be able to weather ups and downs, and this is the same concept, said Linda Prokopy department head and professor of horticulture and landscape architecture at Purdue University, who leads the project.

“What’s new is that market and environmental research tailored to this part of the U.S. will inform our next moves, and individual farmers and stakeholders will be involved in every step of the process,” she says. “Growing only a rotation of corn and soybeans is not necessarily sustainable economically, environmentally or socially. We will be working with farmers in Indiana, Illinois and Iowa to evaluate alternative cropping systems that can be used in the Midwest – we will be evaluating small grains and/or forage crops in rotations, perennial forage or bioenergy crops, agroforestry, horticultural food crops and grazed livestock.”

The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture selected the project, titled “#DiverseCornBelt: Resilient Intensification through Diversity in Midwestern Agriculture,” which has a multidisciplinary team that spans the life, physical and social sciences.

”This project draws upon the talents of our faculty and can make a crucial contribution to diversifying Midwest agriculture. The lessons learned can benefit farmers throughout the region,” said Karen Plaut, the Glenn W. Sample Dean of Purdue’s College of Agriculture.
Read more here: https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/release ... oject.html
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