54.9 Million Acres Irrigated, Says USDA

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Amanda

As a livestock producer, I like to follow the trends as pastures are converted to cropland. In many places, pastures will always be there, as the land is too steep, hilly or rocky for modernizing or farming. However, the low profit margins in the livestock industry are pushing many farmers and ranchers to expand their crop enterprise and decrease their cowherds. On another note, it seems that water is in short supplies these days, and an increasing number of acres are being irrigated. Since we have had such a wet, cold year here in South Dakota, I can only imagine the troubles those are experiencing in places of drought. Check out the statistics from the USDA as printed by the Delta Farm Press.

In 2008, farmers and ranchers spent $2.1 billion on expenses related to irrigation equipment, facilities, land improvements and computer technology. USDA’s 2008 Farm and Ranch Survey has found that farmers and ranchers are now irrigating 54.9 million acres farmland across the United States, an increase of nearly 5 percent since 2003. USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) collected the data for the Irrigation Survey earlier this year.

“Water is the most critical, limited resource for our nation’s farmers and ranchers,” said Molly Jahn, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics. “For farmers and ranchers who are looking for more efficient ways to irrigate their land and ways to reduce their expenses, the results of the Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey provide a valuable tool to help them make informed decisions about the future of their operations.”

Genotyping With Fluidigm

Posted on November 24, 2009 by Chuck

Fluidigm Ramesh Ramakrishna With a title like Director of Molecular Biology you might think that it would be hard for a non-technical person to carry on a conversation with Ramesh Ramakrishna. Not so. Ramesh works for Fluidigm Corporation and is my latest interview in the series we’re doing to introduce the agribusiness world to their break through research technology.

In our interview you’ll learn about SNP genotyping and microsats. What are they you ask? Watch or listen to the interview and learn. Ramesh says his team is responsible for developing applications where the Fluidigm System can be used and one of those areas is genotyping. You can learn more about genotyping in this Science magazine article. If this sounds very technical, don’t worry. Ramesh defines genotyping, SNP’s and microsats for you.

He offers as an example of why this is important in today’s agricultural biotechnology the fact that a farmer or researcher really needs to be sure that something they are planting or working on (plant or animal) is really what it is represented to be. This type of genetic analysis allows for that surety. You can be sure this is important with so many new seed varieties and the desire to be able to track the source for a certain product. The Fluidigm System, unlike other methods to accomplish the above, is extremely flexible and allows for very small volumes and costs.

You can watch or listen to my interview with Ramesh below:

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National Pork Board Responds to Jonathan Safran Foer

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Amanda

13-books-eating-animals Last week, I was watching the Ellen DeGeneres Show because I knew she would be interviewing Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of “Eating Animals,” a gruesome attack against animal agriculture and a strong testimony for a vegan lifestyle. Recently, the National Pork Board responded to Foer’s statements, especially when he falsely linked H1N1 to a hog farm in North Carolina. Read on to learn more about this ongoing debate. To read the entire article and watch the video, link to the New York Times.

“This swine flu that’s now an epidemic, they’ve been able to trace it back to a farm in North Carolina,” he said. “A hog farm. Nobody knows this. Nobody talks about it. We’ve been told this lie that it came from Mexico.”

But Liz Wagstrom, a staff veterinarian at the National Pork Board, said the claim that the novel 2009 H1N1 virus originally came from swine farms in North Carolina is “patently false.” Researchers at that time did find an H3N2 flu virus in pigs there, she said, but it had a different genetic architecture than the current H1N1 pandemic virus circulating around the world. And those trying to link the H1N1 to factory farming “are using a scare tactic to try to cast a negative light on modern pork production,” Ms. Wagstrom said.

R&D At Fluidigm

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Chuck

Fluidigm Andy May When it comes to research and development at Fluidigm Corporation, one of the key people involved is Andy May. In my interview with him he puts the high level technology Fluidigm develops into easy to understand terms. You’ll find out why this is necessary when we get into the whole DNA sequencing issue and how Fluidigm has pioneered some of the latest mechanisms to work with it. Forward a link to the interview to your favorite R&D’er!

Andy says there are two main products they’ve been developing. One of them is called Slingshot which he says is a very accurate method of measuring concentrations of DNA samples. The other product, which his group is focused on, is called AccessArray which streamlines the preparation of small regions of DNA for sequencing using the current generation of sequencing platforms. He says there has been a huge change in the technology used for DNA sequencing in recent years and people are looking for new ways and improved methods for introducing samples into those instruments. Like the whole Fluidigm System, these products help streamline the work flow and in fact are more production devices than just measurement devices.

The new Fluidigm products have been developed in conjunction with early access clients and several systems have been sold and are now available via general release.

You can watch or listen to my interview with Andy below:

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The Fluidigm System

Posted on October 26, 2009 by Chuck

Fluidigm Yong Yi The Fluidigm System starts with their Integrated Fluidic Circuits. The Product Manager who is intimately familiar with the IFC’s is Yong Yi. I spoke with him about this system and he helps explain what the IFC’s do and can do for a client company. In the picture he’s holding one of their chips containing an IFC.

It’s all about miniaturization and therefore efficiency which is particularly important in ag bio since you’re dealing with a tremendous number of samples and wide variety of species and applications. The company manufacturers the chips or IFC’s for their clients. The chips are built on semiconducter technology which uses silicon chips that allow them to be very precise. Yong says they work with a wide variety of clients including seed companies who want to use it for quality control to make sure their farmer customer is getting exactly what is ordered.

The IFC’s have become increasingly complex since they first started production and Yong says that will continue. So the chips will be able to handle increasingly complex functions as time goes on.

You can watch or listen to my interview with Yong below:

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Getting To Know Fluidigm

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Chuck

Fluidigm Gajus Worthington The President/CEO and co-Founder of Fluidigm (AgWired Sponsor) is Gajus Worthington. Let’s meet him and learn about the company and how its technology can benefit agribusiness.

I met with Gajus at the company headquarters in South San Francisco and asked him a number of questions to help us better understand their core technology. Before getting to the technology, he explains how he decided to start the company one day while walking down the street and “in an instant, like being hit by a bolt of lightning” he knew his future was defined and that “what I was supposed to do was build a company that could contribute in a variety of different ways to a variety of different industries.”

The core technology produced by Fluidigm is the production of integrated fluidic circuits (IFC’s). Gajus uses the analogy of electronics where large computers using vacuum tubes were made very small by the use of a chip. That made electronics much more high performance and affordable. That innovation has impacted ag through the use of GPS in precision applications for example. He says Fluidigm does a similar thing for biology. Biology research today uses machines much like those old vacuum tube computers except they use arrays of test tubes and hoses. Fluidigm takes all that “plumbing” and puts it on a chip. For example, a single chip (IFC) can have as much plumbing as in a 1,000 room hotel! This allows for very high throughput biological research much more cost effectively and easily. This has major implications for genetics, conservation, seed selection and quality control.

Because the technology is so small it allows this type of work to move to the field in places where it couldn’t be done before, like feedlots for example. One example is a Fluidigm client, the Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game, which uses their technology in the field to manage salmon fisheries. He says seeing the use of their technology in industries like agribusiness and the management of wildlife is extremely gratifying because it’s contributing to people’s livelihoods and helping the environment.

We’re going to learn more about Fluidigm systems and technology in upcoming stories that include interviews with key company representatives. Gajus provides a very good overview of what you can expect from Fluidigm now and in the future.

You can watch or listen to my interview with Gajus below:

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Happy FAPRI Anniversary

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Cindy

For 25 years a group of University of Missouri economists has provided commodity price projections and policy analysis to the U.S. Congress, international trade negotiators, farm groups and farmers.

FAPRI 25th anniversary On Friday, the MU Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) celebrated its silver anniversary with a gathering of friends and supporters, including Missouri Senator Kit Bond and FAPRI founder Abner Womack.

Womack has turned over leadership of the unit started in 1984 to professors Pat Westhoff and Willi Meyers, co-directors of MU FAPRI. He continues as FAPRI adviser and professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics.

“Every acre of crop land in the world and every cow in the world’s herd are represented in our models,” Womack said of the analytical team he founded 25 years ago. “Our main job remains in giving unbiased facts, based on numbers. We don’t make policy recommendations,” Womack said. “We present the facts and let policymakers determine the answers. That is our strength.”

A silver edition Web site shows a policy timeline, a history of MU FAPRI, videos, letters and quotes from supporters.

Plant Disease Experts Prepare for Ug99 Wheat Stem Rust

Posted on August 12, 2009 by Cindy

APS Plant disease experts at the American Phytopathological Society annual meeting are preparing to potentially do battle with a new strain of wheat stem rust.

APS Washington State University plant pathologist Tim Murray says wheat stem rust has been in the United States since the early 1900s but this new strain could pose new problems. “The Ug99 strain is a new strain of this fungus that emerged in Africa in 1999,” he said. “That fungus has since spread in West Africa and there is concern in the United States that if it eventually gets here it could cause problems.” Over 80 percent of the wheat varieties currently grown globally are susceptible to the disease.

Scientists in the U.S. are working together coordinating a surveillance program to watch for the fungus, similar to the Asian soybean rust program. “It’s very similar to Asian soybean rust with the rusty red color on the plants and both spread by aerial spores,” Tim said.

No time frame for when, or if, the fungus could arrive in the U.S., but Tim says they are working on a recovery plan and they are investigating which fungicide will be most effective on it. “There are materials registered now that can be used,” he said.

Listen or download to an interview with Tim Murray here:

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Credibility & Reputation Challenges Abound Online

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Joanna

cowpic_440 Like many, when I look for information I go online first. With so much information out there, I often wonder if it is accurate. According to a new study conducted by v-Fluence Interactive, the information consumers search for regarding the production practices that put meat and dairy products on their kitchen tables, they are most likely to see the kind of one-sided content featured in the documentary Food Inc. This is at the expense of content reflecting the points of view of most conventional producers or major food brands.

“Our research shows very few conventional producer groups or well-known food brands have a presence in the content that most frequently shows up when consumers search on these food production topics,” says Randy Krotz, senior vice president and head of v-Fluence’s Food and Agriculture practice. “And when they do, it’s more likely because organic competitors or animal rights advocates are talking about them in a critical manner.”

Krotz notes that in addition to omitting important voices that consumers should hear, this environment creates an uphill battle for producers and brands that seek to promote more animal-friendly production techniques. It is becoming more commonplace for producers to discuss their sustainability and corporate reputation initiatives as more attention is focused on environmental issues – often relating to agriculture.

Here are some key findings from the study:

70 percent of the content consumers are likely to see when they search for information about beef production comes from producers of organic or grass-fed beef, rather than from conventional producers. A good example is the documentary Food Inc., which unfairly criticized food and meat production and is received major buzz and this year’s Toronto Film Festival.

60 percent of the content consumers see when they search for poultry and egg production topics comes from promoters of free-range and organic chicken. About 30 percent of the visible and influential content found online comes from advocacy groups such as United Poultry Concerns.

Content critical of large-scale producers of beef and poultry appears when consumers specifically search for animal welfare topics. The content includes references to the treatment of animals and workers at slaughtering and packing facilities and comes from advocacy groups like the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Consumers associate some large food producers and brands with animal welfare and well-being more than others when they search. The study’s analysis of consumers’ most frequently-used search terms shows they link meat supplier Cargill and Tyson – via search terms like “Cargill animal welfare” and “Tyson free range chickens” – to these topics more than other brands.

Consumers also appear more likely to search for advocacy groups, such as the Animal Welfare League, Animal Welfare Society and Animal Welfare Institute, more frequently than food production companies, producer groups and individual brands when they are interested in animal welfare and well-being topics.

The solution to the problem? Organizations should ramp-up their online content so that consumers have a greater opportunity to see more balanced content. To learn more about v-Fluence’s findings and to learn how to more effectively blow-up your content online, visit www.v-fluence.com.

AG Community Vindicated with CBO Report

Posted on April 16, 2009 by Joanna

“This report is welcome to the farmers and those I represent,” said Rick Tolman, CEO of the National Corn Growers Association. “This proves that there are no food and fuel issues, but merely the work of a campaign designed to shift blame on farmers and take our eyes off the ball.”

Tolman joined several others in the agriculture and ethanol community today to applaud the recent report, “The Impact of cornfields1 Ethanol Use on Food Prices and Greenhouse-Gas Emissions,” authored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The report concluded that from April 2007-April 2008 ethanol did have a slight impact on rising food prices but that other culprits, such as high energy prices, had the most impact on rising food costs. Of the 5.1 percent increase in food prices, expanded ethanol production contributed between 0.5 and 0.8 percent of the increase in food prices measured by the consumer price index as determined by the CBO report.

Despite several reports confirming that ethanol and corn prices had a small role in rising food prices, Bob Stallman, President, American Farm Bureau Federation; Tom Buis, CEO, Growth Energy; Roger Johnson, President, National Farmers Union; along with Rick Tolman jointly called for Congress to hold new hearings to determine why food prices are still on the rise. Johnson said that, “We’d love to see the same witnesses who blamed farmers in Congressional hearings last year.”

Tolman stated, “Our farmers are owed a huge apology for the damage they have done to farmers in the eye of the consumer.” He noted that agricultural technology continues to improve each year and that 2007 and 2008 have seen record corn bushels on decreased acres and this trend is expected to continue in 2009 and beyond.

The group reiterated the importance of ethanol in reducing America’s dependence on oil and stressed the importance of increasing the blend wall to 15 percent (E15) in order for the country to meet the goals laid out in the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).

BIVI Research Behind The Scenes

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Chuck

Dr. Petra Maas, DVM Attending the Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium from the corporate marketing group was Dr. Petra Maas. She is the Technical Manager for Ingelvac CircoFLEX.

Her presentation was focused on a behind the scenes look at the research and development of Ingelvac CircoFLEX-MycoFLEX. She says the other speakers presented all the data, she just wanted to let attending veterinarians know more about the science behind the vaccines and why they’re working so well in the field.

Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium Photo Album

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Vaccination Comparison

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Chuck

Dr. Keith Bretey, DVM “Qualifying Animal Responses to Various Immunization Protocols.” That’s the title of the talk given at the Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium by Dr. Keith Bretey. He’s a professional services veterinarian for BIVI. He says that basically means comparing the negative side effects of different vaccines.

The BIVI products Ingelvac CircoFLEX and MycoFLEX were used in the study and he says they were much less impactive on the pigs compared to other products.

Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium Photo Album

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Vaccinations Make a Difference

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Chuck

Dr. Ernest Sanford, DVM Dr. Ernest Sanford came to the Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium from Canada. He had some of the hottest new research to present. The title of his presentation was, “Impact of PCV2 Vaccination on Subclinical PCVAD Cases in Canada, France and U.S.”

He says this topic has come up fairly recently and they’ve now got some new research data with some interesting results. For one thing, he says the research showed that “. . . obvious thing would be that you probably need to vaccinate pigs against circovirus whether or not you believe you have a circovirus problem.” Another finding that he says came as a big surprise was regarding carcass characteristics with the vaccinated pigs showing more desirable characteristics compared to the pigs that weren’t vaccinated. He says it was significant enough to pay for the vaccination.

Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium Photo Album

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One Dose Is Enough

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Chuck

Dr. John Kolb, DVM One of the speakers at the Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium was Dr. John Kolb. I met him at the company’s Animal Health Seminar last month.

His topic was “Pig Performance with Ingelvac MycoFLEX vs. Two-Dose Vaccines.” At the Flex Symposium he presented research data that compared using this new single dose product vs. some of the competition’s that required two doses. He says the research not only showed that it works well but it also works well over the long run, which had been a question for many veterinarians.

Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium Photo Album

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IA State Grad Receives PCVAD Research Award

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Chuck

The other winner of the Boehringer Ingelheim PCVAD Research Awards was Brad Leuwerke, DVM. Brad is an Iowa State University graduate. Brad (center) is pictured with Klaas Okkinga, Boehringer Ingelheim (left) and Dr. Edgar Diaz, DVM, technical manager for PCVAD at BIVI (right).

BIVI is providing Brad with a $25,000 cash grant for his research project:

* a study to determine the influence that maternal porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) antibodies have on the interference of circovirus vaccination efficacy in young pigs.

Brad says he’s going to get started on his new project as soon as possible. He was very impressed with the Flex Symposium that was held in advance of the annual Allen D. Leman Swine Conference and says that he’ll be taking home information from the presentations to use in the field. I’ll have more on those presentations coming up soon.

You can listen to my interview with Brad here:

Or you can download the interview here: Brad Leuwerke Interview (mp3 file)

Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium Photo Album

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Boehringer Ingelheim PCVAD Double Award

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Chuck

There were several PCVAD Research awards presented at the Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium. A double award recipient was Tanja Opriessnig, DVM, PhD, seen here in front of the attendees.

BI is providing $25,000 cash grants to the winners of the PCVAD Research Awards for their projects. Tanja will be working on two different studies as follows:

* a study to determine the prevalence of PCV2 viremia and persistent infection in conventional piglets at birth.
* a study to evaluate the influence of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus viremia on circovirus vaccine efficacy in conventional growing pigs.

Tanja is from Austria (I just got back from there a week ago!) and is currently working as a veterinary pathologist at Iowa State University in the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. She says she feels “really good” about the awards and hopes to have her work done within the next year.

You can listen to my interview with Tanja here:

Or you can download the interview here: Tanja Opriessnig Interview (mp3 file)

Boehringer Ingelheim Flex Symposium Photo Album

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Infrared Mapping for Carbon

Posted on August 26, 2008 by Laura

Veris Technologies is doing what any committed any company specializing in agricultural technology should do: it’s thinking ahead and developing products it anticipates farmers will need in the near future. Representative Eric Lund says that’s why Veris has developed near infrared mapping. The technology is designed primarily for mapping soil carbon, a need that Eric explains might not be relevant right now, but one that is imminent.

“That’s a technology that really doesn’t have a commercial need right now because farmers aren’t needing to map their carbon,” Eric said. “But, in a couple of years, they may be able to sell soil carbon under a soil carbon sequestration program where they would really need to map beginning levels of carbon and ending levels of carbon. We have developed technologies that will enable them to do that cost effectively using near infrared sensing.”

Eric says the measurements obtained through infrared mapping are high quality measurements because they formed from direct contact versus remote imagery. Currently, researchers are using the technology and Eric expects the technology to be adapted to the commercial agriculture sector within the next two to four years. Especially, he says, in light of current levels of food and energy needs around the world:

“With demand for products high and the need to be able to produce as much food and fiber and energy as we can, anything we can do to produce more food and more fiber and more energy with the same or even less inputs is going to be good for the farmer, environment and basically everybody,” Eric said. “Consumers especially.”

I interviewed Eric about Veris Technologies’ carbon mapping applications. You can listen to my interview here:

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Monsanto Mitigates Crop Stress

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Chuck

Getting more corn yield per acre was the theme of an interview I did with Shannon Hauf, Monsanto Area Technology Development Manager for Minnesota and Iowa. Shannon was attending a Monsanto Technology Showcase Tour event in Elkhart, IA.

I got to speak with her after listening to a field stop that was all about “stress mitigation.” Shannon says that about three years ago during drought conditions in Illinois, farmers who had planted Monsanto’s YieldGard Rootworm technology were getting yield increases that were two to three times better than what Monsanto had anticipated. So in the following years she says they’ve been doing a series of stress mitigation trials. Those are now being done with the YieldGard VT Triple technology. In plots like the ones we were able to see, you can physically see the difference on the plants themselves.

Simulating drought here on the farm for this tour stop was accomplished by using a tent that allows light to pass through but not rainfall.. . The purpose of the stress mitigation tent is to determine how biotech traits help protect the corn plants from dry weather and other stresses. I can vouch for the fact that the drought-applied plants looked just as healthy as those that received plenty of moisture. Shannon says they monitor conditions below the ground using soil moisture probes and those show that the root structure for the YieldGard VT Triple plants under stress is significantly deeper than the conventional corn hybrids.

She finds it very interesting that this stress mitigation benefit is an “added value” to the technology that was originally developed to assist with weed control and to control pests.

One other thing that Shannon wants growers to consider to increase corn yield is planting more plants per acre. Because advances in germplasm and traits enable corn plants to tolerate higher plant densities, she says a 10 percent increase in plant populations per acre is recommended which will put “more ears on that acre.”

You can listen to my interview with Shannon here:

Monsanto Technology Showcase Photo Album

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Cow Tunes

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Chuck

Ear-A-Round Cows wearing headsets. Uh. Right. I want to know if they can subscribe to farm podcasts.

The same Global Positioning System (GPS) technology used to track vehicles is now being used to track cows.

But Agricultural Research Service (ARS) animal scientist Dean M. Anderson has taken tracking several steps further with a Walkman-like headset that enables him to “whisper” wireless commands to cows to control their movements across a landscape—and even remotely gather them into a corral.

He and his colleagues realize this is a highly futuristic technology, but they can envision a time when these technologies will be affordable and useful for a range of applications, from intensive animal operations to monitoring and controlling the movements of some wildlife species and even household pets.

The commands vary from familiar “gathering songs” sung by cowboys during manual round-ups, to irritating sounds such as sirens and even mild electric stimulation if necessary to get cows to move or avoid penetrating forbidden boundaries.

Via Engadget.