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#30

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:12 pm
Subject: News: World Food Aid Needs Restructuring, World Bank Says

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http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5687

World Bank President Proposes "New Deal" for Food Aid

Ben Block - April 4, 2008 - 6:00am

Illustration Omitted:
World Bank President Robert Zoellick and Center for Global Development President Nancy Birdsall discuss foreign aid challenges. Photo Courtesy of the World Bank

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said he supports greater reliance on cash or vouchers instead of commodity aid as part of a "New Deal" for global food policy. He made the comments during a speech he delivered Wednesday at the Hilton hotel in Washington, D.C.

Speaking a week before the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings in Washington, Zoellick also urged the United States, European Union, Japan, and other industrialized nations to supply the $500 million in additional food supplies that the United Nations World Food Programme has desperately requested. In urban areas across the developing world, rapidly growing food prices and demand are creating "a perfect storm" of hunger and desperation, according to the agency.

"The World Bank Group estimates that 33 countries around the world face potential social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices," Zoellick said. "The realities of demography, changing diets, energy prices and biofuels, and climate changes suggest that high-and volatile-food prices will be with us for years to come."

Staple food costs have risen by as much as 80 percent since 2005. Rice last month hit a 19-year high, and the real price of wheat was at a 28-year high, Zoellick said. Riots are already breaking out in Egypt, C�te d'Ivoire, and elsewhere.

Internationally, the punishing food prices are a result of the growing demand for meat and dairy in China and India, and the preference for wheat rather than rice or maize among the emerging urban middle classes of many developing countries. Rising oil prices are encouraging biofuel production on valuable farmlands. Climate change has triggered local and regional drought, especially on Australia's wheat fields, as well as extreme floods. The depreciating dollar is also hurting efforts by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to deliver food and other aid.

Many economists agree that one solution lies in granting poorer nations income support in the form of cash or vouchers to help purchase local commodities, rather than flooding developing world food markets with international food. In his speech, Zoellick noted that, "a shift from traditional food aid to a broader concept of food and nutrition assistance must be part of this New Deal." He advocated customizing financial support based on local needs, and perhaps supporting national feeding programs or public works development in exchange for food.

"I applaud hearing his ambitions. They are very respectable," said Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, which sponsored Zoellick's talk. "Linking the bank to hungry people, that's what the World Bank should be doing... But it all depends on whether it all adds up."

Nora Lustig, the Shapiro Visiting Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University, cautioned that local feeding programs in the developing world may not be able to handle Zoellick's expectations. "Can they be put in place quickly enough? In either case, do countries have the fiscal resources to fund these programs whose costs have risen as a result of higher food prices?" she said.

Zoellick also said that the World Bank would nearly double its agricultural lending to sub-Saharan Africa. And with the World Trade Organization's contentious Doha debates possibly nearing an agreement that could reduce agricultural tariffs and subsidies, Zoellick urged immediate action. "There is a good deal on the table," he said. "It's now or never."

The Doha Round's agricultural talks have been on hold since the United States and European Union pulled out over concerns that reducing existing trade barriers on agricultural commodities would hurt domestic producers. According to Lustig, the proposed trade agreement would likely help poorer nations that are net sellers of these goods, but damage poorer nations that are net purchasers.

Ben Block is a staff writer at the Worldwatch Institute who covers everything environmental for Eye on Earth. He can be reached at bblock@....

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#29

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Wed Apr 9, 2008 11:29 am
Subject: News: Food Becomes Unaffordable for Poorest Africans

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http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article3701346.ece

April 8, 2008
Food prices rise beyond means of poorest in Africa
Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg

It has been called a "perfect storm" - a combination of apparently unrelated events that have come together to trigger soaring food prices. Millions of people, particularly in developing countries, are affected by rises that have caused riots and many deaths.

Increased energy prices, competition between biofuels and food, rising demand from economic growth in emerging countries and the effects of sudden climatic shocks, such as drought and floods, have combined to cause skyrocketing prices in some of the world's poorest countries, such as Ethiopia and Burkina Faso.

Peter Smerdon, Africa spokesman for the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), told The Times: "The people hit hardest by this combination of factors are those living on the razor's edge of poverty.

There is not one single country in Africa not negatively affected. Indeed, most countries in the world are affected."

The "perfect storm" has arrived as global food reserves are at their lowest for 30 years and commodity markets volatile and vulnerable to sudden spikes and speculation.

The situation is exacerbated by the falling value of the dollar, the currency in which all main commodities are traded.

In Sierra Leone, the price of rice has risen 300 per cent and in Senegal and much of the rest of West Africa by 50 per cent. Palm oil, sugar and flour, all imported, have also surged.

Two weeks ago Josette Sheran, the new US head of WFP, made an extraordinary emergency appeal for $500 million (�250 million) to 20 heads of government to offset the increased price of food commodities.

As ever, the world's poor - those who spend between 60 per cent and 80 per cent of their budget on food - are hit hardest. These groups include rural landless and small-scale farmers, but the biggest impact has been on the world's increasing urban poor.

Mr Smerdon added that, dangerously for governments, it is not a question of availability as one saw in previous drought-induced famines. "People can suddenly no longer afford the food they see on store shelves because prices are beyond their reach. It is about accessibility and it is hitting hard populations who are reliant on the markets."

African governments are watching nervously. Food riots have been reported in recent weeks in several countries. At least 40 people were killed in protests in Cameroon in February. There have also been violent demonstrations in Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Senegal and Burkina Faso, where a nationwide strike against any more food price increases started yesterday.

Experts say that the only way out for Africa is greater self-sufficiency and alternative sources of energy to cut demand for imported food and oil. They praised an initiative by Sierra Leone to start producing rice from next year and to ban imported rice.

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#28

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Tue Apr 8, 2008 11:11 am
Subject: News: UN Calls for More "Natural, Local" Agriculture

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http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26223&Cr=agriculture&Cr1=

Agriculture must revert to more natural, local production - UN-backed report

7 April 2008 - Modern agricultural practices have exhausted land and water resources, squelched diversity and left poor people vulnerable to high food prices, even though they are also highly productive, according to a report announced by the United Nations scientific agency today.

"Business as usual is no longer an option," states the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which will be formally launched on 15 April by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The report's authors recommend that agricultural science place greater emphasis on safeguarding natural resources and on 'agro-ecological' practices, including the use of natural fertilizers, traditional seeds and intensified natural practices, and reducing the distance between production and the consumer.

The need for action is urgent, the report says, because many poor people are now reliant on the global food market, where soybean and wheat prices have increased by 87 per cent and 130 per cent respectively in the last year.

Global grain stores are today at their lowest level on record and prices of staple foods such as rice, maize and wheat are expected to continue to rise because of increased demand, especially in China and India, and because of the alternative use of maize and soybeans for bio-fuels.

In addition, the report states that 35 per cent of the Earth's severely degraded land has been damaged by agricultural activities.

UNESCO says that the IAASTD report is the result of three years of cooperation between nearly 400 scientists, the governments of developed and developing countries, and representatives of civil society and the private sector.

Its conclusions will be presented for approval to the plenary session of the IAASTD intergovernmental panel that will gather from 7 to 12 April in Johannesburg, South Africa. It will then be launched simultaneously in several cities, including Washington D.C., London and Nairobi.
Agriculture must revert to more natural, local production - UN-backed report

7 April 2008 - Modern agricultural practices have exhausted land and water resources, squelched diversity and left poor people vulnerable to high food prices, even though they are also highly productive, according to a report announced by the United Nations scientific agency today.

"Business as usual is no longer an option," states the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which will be formally launched on 15 April by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The report's authors recommend that agricultural science place greater emphasis on safeguarding natural resources and on 'agro-ecological' practices, including the use of natural fertilizers, traditional seeds and intensified natural practices, and reducing the distance between production and the consumer.

The need for action is urgent, the report says, because many poor people are now reliant on the global food market, where soybean and wheat prices have increased by 87 per cent and 130 per cent respectively in the last year.

Global grain stores are today at their lowest level on record and prices of staple foods such as rice, maize and wheat are expected to continue to rise because of increased demand, especially in China and India, and because of the alternative use of maize and soybeans for bio-fuels.

In addition, the report states that 35 per cent of the Earth's severely degraded land has been damaged by agricultural activities.

UNESCO says that the IAASTD report is the result of three years of cooperation between nearly 400 scientists, the governments of developed and developing countries, and representatives of civil society and the private sector.

Its conclusions will be presented for approval to the plenary session of the IAASTD intergovernmental panel that will gather from 7 to 12 April in Johannesburg, South Africa. It will then be launched simultaneously in several cities, including Washington D.C., London and Nairobi.

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#27

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Tue Apr 8, 2008 11:04 am
Subject: News: Further Surge In Food Prices Could Lead to Increased Unrest

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http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26221&Cr=food&Cr1=prices

Surge in food prices could lead to increased unrest, warns senior UN aid official

Illustration Omitted:
Rioting over rising food prices last week

7 April 2008 - The head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today called on donors to respond to the agency's appeal for additional funds to deliver lifesaving assistance, warning that the global surge in food prices could lead to further tensions such as those witnessed recently in Haiti and other countries.

"What we see in Haiti is what we're seeing in many of our operations around the world - rising prices that mean less food for the hungry. A new face of hunger is emerging: even where food is available on the shelves, there are now more and more people who simply cannot afford it," said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran.

Following the deaths of four people in two days of rioting last week over rising food prices, WFP has called on donors once again to urgently support its operations in Haiti, which has been particularly vulnerable to the spike in costs.

So far the agency has only received 13 per cent - or $12.4 million - of the $96 million required to assist 1.7 million people in Haiti - the western hemisphere's poorest country. As a result, it barely has enough to support operations throughout April.

"Riots in Haiti underline the additional need for lifesaving food assistance," Ms. Sheeran said. "At this critical time, we need to stand with the people of Haiti and other countries hardest hit by rising food prices."

Last month, WFP announced it was seeking funding to close a $500 million gap caused by the global spike in food and fuel prices, which have increased by an estimated 55 per cent since last June.

In addition to Haiti, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Cote d'Ivoire, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal have also experienced unrest in recent weeks related to soaring food and fuel prices.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been watching the rise in global food prices with "deep concern," according to his spokesperson, who noted that the reasons for the shortages are many and cannot be solely ascribed to a simple trade-off between biofuels and agriculture, though this may be a factor.

"We must take steps, beginning now, to assure the world's food security," Michele Montas told reporters in New York, emphasizing the need to first meet urgent humanitarian needs and to then increase production.

The effects of rising food prices also featured in discussions between the UN's top humanitarian official and leaders in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

"I have found a shared concern around the region about the potential effects of the current structural shift upwards in basic food prices across the world," said John Holmes, who is on a six-day mission to the Gulf region, along with the Secretary-General's Special Humanitarian Envoy, Abdul Aziz Arrukban.

"Tackling this global issue is a long-term challenge to the wider international system, but meanwhile we need to be aware of the short-term humanitarian effects in terms of increased hunger and greater strain on our resources in trying to combat this," he added. "This is a huge common problem we have to address together."

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#26

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Wed Apr 2, 2008 9:36 am
Subject: News: Biofuel Boom Impacting Food Prices

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http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/World_cooling_on_biofuel_solution_to_climate_change_999.html

World cooling on biofuel solution to climate change

by Staff Writers
Jakarta (AFP) April 1, 2008

Once a golden promise in the fight against climate change, biofuels are fast losing their lustre as high demand for essential crops drives land clearing and pushes up the price of food.

Biofuels made from food crops such as corn, sugar, soybeans and oil palm burn cleaner than fossil fuels, but experts say high demand is sending ripples through the world economy, and could be doing the environment more harm than good.

Rudy Gosal, a 36-year-old courier who queued with hundreds of others in Indonesia's capital in March to buy government-subsidised cooking oil, is one of millions feeling the pinch of the push towards biofuels.

After the latest rise earlier this year, the cost of cooking oil in Jakarta jumped a massive 70 percent, to around 12,000 rupiah (1.31 dollars) a litre.

Cooking oil in much of the world comes from palm oil. And, in recent years, mostly European demand for biodiesel has helped push the price to record highs.

Gosal is relatively lucky -- he supports his wife and three children on 1.6 million rupiah a month, nearly twice the minimum wage here.

But the latest price increase still meant he could afford less tofu to go with his family's rice. Another likely rise could mean doing without a twice-monthly luxury: meat.

"If there's a price rise, our salaries don't go up but the cost jumps. It's out of balance," Gosal said.

Demand for palm oil has also been a major source of land clearing here.

The spread of palm oil plantations into forests and highly sensitive peatlands on Sumatra and Borneo islands have helped make Indonesia the world's third-highest greenhouse gas emitter.

The peatlands are a swampy store of semi-decomposed vegetation up to several metres (yards) deep, and clearing and draining them releases massive amounts of carbon.

A study published in the journal Science in February found it would take around 86 years for biodiesel made from palm oil grown on cleared tropical lowland forest to repay the "carbon debt" generated from clearing the land.

For biodiesel from cleared peatlands, the study found, the debt would take more than 840 years to repay.

"Certainly the carbon debt from converting peatlands is far and away larger than in any of the other ecosystems we considered," said Jason Hill, an economist at the University of Minnesota and study co-author.

But Indonesia appears intent on running up that debt. Already at least 10 million of its 22.5 million hectares (55.6 million acres) of peatland have been cleared, according to the Centre for International Forestry Research, and the clearing shows no sign of slowing.

Shifting crops over to biofuels can also have environmental and social consequences that cross borders, said Timothy Searchinger, an environmental law expert from Georgetown University in the United States.

"Whenever cropland in some countries is diverted to fuel, the price goes up and farmers in other countries produce more, in significant part by expanding into forest and grassland," he said.

In the United States, for example, government subsidies for corn ethanol have pushed up global corn prices to levels unseen in decades, spurring a 15 percent growth in land planted with the crop last year.

Less land devoted to crops like soybeans has led to higher global prices that may spur farmers in Brazil to clear more of the Amazon to take advantage of the windfall -- thus increasing carbon emissions, said Joe Fargione, another author of the Science study.

Meanwhile, in Jakarta's side streets, it's not only cooking oil that is becoming more expensive. Record global corn prices mean high prices for livestock feed, making protein sources such as eggs -- and Gosal's family's twice-monthly meat -- an increasingly rare luxury.

Siegfried Falk, an analyst with German-based consultancy Oil World, said that despite the hype, palm oil only makes up between 10 and 20 percent of biodiesel used in the European Union, the largest market for the fuel.

Most European biodiesel comes from rapeseed oil which is less efficient to produce but is protected by tax incentives, Falk said.

Despite this, he said, palm oil prices are rising as investors react to high oil prices by bidding up palm oil futures as a possible alternative.

"A lot of people in the market are hoping that (expensive fossil fuel) creates substantial demand in palm oil, and oils in general," Falk said.

As a result, biofuel producers are struggling with the increased cost of their raw material.

Indonesian producers are currently only making a fraction of the one million tonnes (1.1 million short tons) of biodiesel they have capacity for, said Yohan Soelaiman, a manager at local producer Eterindo.

"Our capacity at the moment is 240,000 tonnes per year and we're only running 20,000 tonnes," he told AFP.

"We cannot export now because the price (of palm oil) is so high."

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#25

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Wed Apr 2, 2008 9:27 am
Subject: News: Cutbacks In Corn Plantation Could Increase Food Prices for Consumers

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-ap-plantingreport,0,1390328.story

Less corn could mean higher food prices for consumers

By MARY CLARE JALONICK | Associated Press Writer
12:04 AM CDT, April 1, 2008

WASHINGTON

From chicken nuggets to corn flakes, food prices at grocery stores and dinner tables could be headed even higher as farmers cut back on the land they're planting in corn this spring.

Corn prices already are high, and a drop in supply should keep them rising. Combine that with the huge demand for corn-based ethanol fuel -- and higher energy costs for transporting food -- and consumers are likely to see their food bills going up and up.

Farmers are now expected to plant 86 million acres of corn this year, the Department of Agriculture predicted Monday, down 8 percent from last year, which was the highest since World War II.

Corn is almost everywhere you look in the U.S. food supply. Poultry, beef and pork companies use it to feed their animals. High fructose corn syrup is used in soft drinks and many other foods, including lunch meats and salad dressings. Corn is often an ingredient in breads, peanut butter, oatmeal and potato chips.

Corn components are even used in many grocery store items that aren't edible -- including disposable diapers and dry cell batteries.

When the corn that goes into those products goes up in price, increases eventually can be passed along to consumers.

And corn prices have skyrocketed in recent years, almost tripling since 2005.

Corn began its latest surge in early 2007, rising from just over $3 per bushel to record prices above $5 per bushel today. If prices hold steady or rise, the average yearly price per bushel in 2008 will be the highest ever, according to USDA statistics.

Corn climbed higher Monday following the release of the USDA report, with the most-active contract briefly hitting an all-time record of $5.88 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade before settling at $5.6725 a bushel, still up 6.75 cents.

They have been pushed along by the burgeoning ethanol industry, which turns the crop into fuel, and by rising worldwide demand for food.

"People who are working families, just barely making it and already paying higher prices for gas and home heating oil are going to be shot in the pocket by higher food prices," said Carol Tucker-Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America.

Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council said recent increases in the cost of corn feed have been absorbed by larger chicken companies, such as Pilgrim's Pride Corp. or Tyson Foods Inc., that provide feed to poultry farmers. But that could change.

"At a certain point we have to readjust and get back to square one," Lobb said. "The only people who have money ultimately are consumers."

Tucker-Forman of the Consumer Federation of America and Scott Faber of the Grocery Manufacturers Association both say rising food prices could be stemmed if Congress would pull back subsidies for the ethanol industry.

The number of ethanol plants has almost tripled since 1999 and more are being built, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Such plants could gobble up more than a quarter of the country's corn crop.

"Food prices being driven by the food-to-fuel mandates will most significantly affect the working poor," Faber said.

Matt Hartwig of the Renewable Fuels Association said the higher prices can't be blamed only on the ethanol industry.

"There are a host of factors contributing to higher corn prices -- surging global demand to feed people and livestock, a weak dollar encouraging exports, and rampant speculation -- that have a far greater impact than America's ethanol industry," he said.

According to the Agriculture Department, corn planting is expected to remain at historically high levels but may dip this year because of the high expense of growing corn and favorable prices for other crops, such as soybeans.

As many farmers have switched, soybean planting is expected to be up 18 percent this year, at almost 75 million acres. Farmers are also expected to plant more wheat this year, which could lower retail prices for pasta and bread.

Soybeans for May delivery fell the 70-cent limit Monday on the Chicago Board of Trade, settling at $11.9725 a bushel. Still, soybean prices are up 45 percent since March 2007.

The Department of Agriculture report is based on sample surveys of 86,000 farm operators in the first two weeks of March.

Terry Francl, a senior economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, predicted Monday that corn prices will continue to rise but he said consumers shouldn't panic just yet.

Many farmers will take a look at the report and decide to plant corn instead of other crops, he said, and weather conditions could also change things.

"We're going to have to wait until we go through the spring planting season," he said.

John Hoffman, a soybean grower from Waterloo, Iowa, and president of the American Soybean Association, said farmers will always find ways to grow more crops to stabilize prices. Though high prices are good for the farmers, there's bound to be a correction, he said.

"There's an old saying out on the farm that the cure for high prices is high prices."

------

On the Net:

Where the corn ends up: http://www.ncga.com/education/unit9/u9l1.asp

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#24

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Tue Apr 1, 2008 8:58 am
Subject: News: Food Prices Rising, Globally

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7423892

Tensions rise as world faces short rations

* Reuters
* , Monday March 31 2008

(This is the first in a series of stories on rising world food prices and their consequences)

By Russell Blinch and Brian Love

WASHINGTON/PARIS, March 31 (Reuters) - Food prices are soaring, a wealthier Asia is demanding better food and farmers can't keep up. In short, the world faces a food crisis and in some places it is already boiling over.

Around the globe, people are protesting and governments are responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports -- a new politics of scarcity in which ensuring food supplies is becoming a major challenge for the 21st century.

Plundered by severe weather in producing countries and by a boom in demand from fast-developing nations, the world's wheat stocks are at 30-year lows. Grain prices have been on the rise for five years, ending decades of cheap food.

Drought, a declining dollar, a shift of investment money into commodities and use of farm land to grow fuel have all contributed to food woes. But population growth and the growing wealth of China and other emerging countries are likely to be more enduring factors.

World population is set to hit 9 billion by 2050, and most of the extra 2.5 billion people will live in the developing world. It is in these countries that the population is demanding dairy and meat, which require more land to produce.

"This is an additional setback for the world economy, at a time when we are already going through major turbulence. But the biggest drama is the impact of higher food prices on the poor," Angel Gurria, head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, told Reuters.

In Gurria's native Mexico, tens of thousands took to the streets last year over the cost of tortillas, a national staple whose price rocketed in tandem with the price of corn (maize).

Global food prices, based on United Nations records, rose 35 percent in the year to the end of January, markedly accelerating an upturn that began, gently at first, in 2002. Since then, prices have risen 65 percent.

In 2007 alone, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's world food index, dairy prices rose nearly 80 percent and grain 42 percent.

"The recent rise in global food commodity prices is more than just a short-term blip," British think tank Chatham House said in January. "Society will have to decide the value to be placed on food and how ... market forces can be reconciled with domestic policy objectives."

Many countries are already facing these choices.

After long opposition, Mexico's government is considering lifting a ban on genetically modified crops, to allow its farmers to compete with the United States, where high-yield, genetically modified corn is the norm.

The European Union and parts of Africa have similar bans that could also be reconsidered.

A number of governments, including Egypt, Argentina, Kazakhstan, and China, have imposed restrictions to limit grain exports and keep more of their food at home.

This knee-jerk response to food emergencies can result in farmers producing less food and threatens to undermine years of effort to open up international trade.

"If one country after the other adopts a 'starve-your-neighbor' policy, then eventually you trade smaller shares of total world production of agricultural products, and that in turn makes the prices more volatile," said Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.

In Argentina, a government tax on grain led to a strike by farmers that disrupted grain exports.

Vietnam and India, both major rice exporters, announced further curbs on overseas sales on Friday, sending rice higher on U.S. futures markets. Other food commodities retreated from record highs in recent days but analysts attributed that less to fundamentals and more to profit-taking by investors.

DISCONTENT

In the next decade, the price of corn could rise 27 percent, oilseeds such as soybeans by 23 percent and rice 9 percent, according to tentative forecasts in February by the OECD and the U.N.

Waves of discontent are already starting to be felt. Violent protests hit Cameroon and Burkina Faso in February. Protesters rallied in Indonesia recently and media reported deaths by starvation. In the Philippines, fast-food chains were urged to cut rice portions to counter a surge in prices.

Last year, the central bank of Australia -- where minds were focused by a two-year drought -- asked whether the surge in commodity prices could be one of the few really big ones in world history, like those of the mid-1930s or the 1970s.

Real commodity prices remained flat or even fell during the rapid industrialization of the United States and Germany in the early 20th century. But the industrialization of China, with 1.3 billion people, is on a totally different scale, it noted.

"China's population is proportionately much larger than the countries that industrialized in earlier periods and is almost double that of the current G7 nations combined," the Australian central bank said.

The emergence of China's middle class is adding hugely to demand for not just basic commodities like corn, soybeans and wheat, but also for meat, milk and other high-protein foods.

The Chinese, whose rise began in earnest in 2001, ate just 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of meat per capita in 1985. They now eat 50 kilograms (110 pounds) a year.

Each pound of beef takes about seven pounds of grain to produce, which means land that could be used to grow food for humans is being diverted to growing animal feed.

BIOFUEL TROUBLE

As the West seeks to tackle the risk of global warming, a drive towards greener fuels is compounding the world's food problems.

It is estimated that one in four bushels of corn from this year's U.S. corn crop will be diverted to make fuel ethanol.

"Turning food into fuel for cars is a major mistake on many fronts." said Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental group based in Washington.

"One, we're already seeing higher food prices in the American supermarket. Two, perhaps more serious from a global perspective, we're seeing higher food prices in developing countries where it's escalated as far as people rioting in the streets."

Similarly, palm oil is at record prices because of demand to use it for biofuel, causing pain for low income families in Indonesia and Malaysia, where it is a staple.

But despite the rising criticism of biofuels, the U.S. corn-fed ethanol industry enjoys wide political support because it boosts farmers, who suffered years of low prices, and that support is likely to continue.

John Bruton, the European Union's Ambassador to the United States, predicts that the world faces 10 to 15 years of steep rises in food costs. And it is the poor in Africa and, increasingly, South East Asia, who will be most vulnerable.

The director of the U.N. World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, is on a global tour in search of donations to fill a $500 million funding gap caused by the rising prices. America's largest aid program, Food for Peace, has seen its commodity prices jump 40 percent and may have to curtail donations.

But aid and many policy options available to governments for helping the hungry distort markets and cause pain elsewhere in their economies, according to proponents of free markets.

"I was involved in a government that introduced food subsidies in Ireland and we had the devil's own job to get rid of them," said Bruton, who was Prime Minister of Ireland from 1994 to 1997.

Others trust that better fertilizers and higher-yielding crops -- some of them genetically modified -- will keep production in line with demand.

Bruce Babcock, an economist at Iowa State University, said the rising markets are a signal to farmers that they need to raise production.

"It's actually the greatest time in the world to be a farmer around the world," Babcock said. "We are going to see fairly substantial increases in production because farmers have never had such a large incentive to increase production."

But others note that expensive seeds and fertilizers are out of reach of farmers in poor countries.

Around the beginning of the 19th Century, British political economist Thomas Malthus said population had the potential to grow much faster than food supply, a prediction that efficient farming consistently proved wrong. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, some are revisiting his predictions. (For graphics, pix and video, click on http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/agflation)

(Reporting by Russell Blinch and Brian Love; Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe and Missy Ryan in Washington, Alistair Thomson in Dakar and Ho Binh Minh in Hanoi; Editing by Eddie Evans)

� Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

   * * *

http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/292

Global Food Prices Rise to New Heights
Submitted by Amy Cassara on Thu, 2008-03-13 23:45.

Food Prices Since early 2007, global food prices have increased by 30%, placing the issue of food price inflation as a top priority for policymakers at the local, national, and international level. The price of cereals such as wheat, rice and corn has risen by 50%, while the cost of dairy products, oils, and fats has increased by an even higher percentage (see Figure 1 below).

While rising food prices can have economic impacts across all segments of the population, the results are felt most acutely by the global poor. Nearly three billion people earn less than $2.00 a day and spend, on average, well over one-half of their household income on food. The urban poor, who typically do not produce their own food, are particularly vulnerable to price fluctuations.

Figure 1. FAO Food Price Index: February 2007 - January 2008
     Source: FAO, 2008

Food aid agencies are feeling the pinch, too; last week, Josette Sheeran, the head of the United Nations' World Food Program, reported that global food reserves were at their lowest level in 30 years and the agency faces a $500 million shortfall in 2008.

Some of this inflation can be attributed to short-term production shortfalls. But many of factors driving food price increases are more lasting, and their effects are likely to be felt for several years at least. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, along with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, identified the following root causes for food price inflation in 2007:

    * Agricultural subsidies in developed countries that make more efficient production in developing countries unprofitable;
    * Decreases in food stocks;
    * Rising fuel prices;
    * Increased demand for some products, such as meat, particularly in rapidly emerging markets such as China and India;
    * Growth in biofuels production (see figure 2 below); and
    * Speculation in agricultural commodity markets.

Global population increases and climate change are also contributing to rising prices. The global population is expected to exceed 9 billion within the next 50 years, and simultaneously the impacts of climate change are predicted to reduce agricultural productivity by as much as 50% in some parts of the world, most notably sub-Saharan Africa.

Figure 2: World Ethanol Production, 1975-2005
     Rising demand for biofuels, used in both ethanol and biodiesel production, has pushed up prices of commodities such as corn and rapeseed. Around 30% of the United States' corn production will be used to produce biofuels by 2010.

Source: EarthTrends, 2007 using data from Earth Policy Institute, 2006.

Many the causes mentioned above will require major, concerted global action to address. In the meantime, policymakers are considering a variety of more immediate actions. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon emphasized the growing importance of investing in a "green revolution" for Africa in a speech this week. Additionally, the EBRD and the FAO convened a panel of experts in London on Monday to explore the potential of increasing agricultural production in eastern Europe. Up to 13 million hectares of agricultural land in countries such as Russia, Kazakhstan, and the Ukraine could potentially be placed back into production.

RELATED LINKS:

BBC News: The Cost of Food, Facts and Figures

Washington Post: UN Warns about High Fuel, Food Costs

EBRD and the FAO: Fighting Food Inflation

EarthTrends Links

Can a Green Revolution Catalyze African Development?

Global Biofuel Trends

Agricultural Trade Reform and Poverty in the Developing World

Searchable Database: Food Production Index

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#23

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:42 am
Subject: Feature; Considering Nanotechnology, In Food

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/mar/26/nanotechnology.food

Once bitten ...
The science of nanotechnology is already revolutionising the worlds of medicine and construction. Soon it could be doing the same for our food - but after the backlash against GM foods, says Steve Boggan, will the consumers swallow it?

Illustration Omitted:
Burgers: Nanotechnology could leave fatty foods tasting the same - while preventing your cholesterol level from rising. Photograph: Corbis

How do you fancy tucking into a bowl of ice cream that has no more fat than a carrot? Or eating a burger that will lower your cholesterol? If you are allergic to peanuts, perhaps you'd like to fix your food so that any nut traces pass harmlessly through your body. Welcome to the world of nanofoods, where almost anything is possible: where food can be manipulated at an atomic or molecular level to taste as delicious as you want, do you as much good as you want, and stay fresh for ... well, who knows? A world where smart pesticides are harmless until they reach the stomachs of destructive insects; where food manufacturers promise an end to starvation; where smart packaging sniffs out and destroys the micro-organisms that make good food go bad. In short, a food heaven to those who see it spelling the end of obesity and poor diet. Food hell to those who believe the case for nanofood safety is still far from proven. One thing is certain: after the controversy that surrounded genetically modified foods, nano is set to become the next kitchen battleground.

Nanotechnology has its roots in a talk delivered in 1959 by physicist Richard Feynman to the American Physical Society. He predicted a time when individual atoms and molecules might be used as the building blocks for a set of tools that could then make a smaller set, and so on. The scale he was talking about strains the imagination. A nanometer - nm - (from the Greek word nanos, dwarf) is one-billionth of a metre. To help you visualise how small that is, a red blood cell is about 7,000nm across, a human hair 80,000nm wide and a water molecule slightly less than 0.3nm in diameter. The science of nanotechnology generally inhabits the region of 0.1nm to 100nm.

The science behind the theory became a reality in the 1980s with the invention of specialist microscopes which allowed scientists to see how atoms and molecules behaved in different conditions. By manipulating those conditions - say, with other chemicals, heat, moisture, electromagnetism and so on - they could encourage atoms and molecules to form useful shapes.

This resulted in the creation of new nanomaterials built at the atomic level that promise to revolutionise everything from chemistry to aeronautics. Some nanotechnology products are already on the market - sunscreens, for example, make use of titanium oxide, TiO2. At larger scales TiO2 is white, opaque and good for blocking ultraviolet light. However, at the nanoscale it becomes transparent while retaining its UV-blocking properties, making it perfect for protection against the sun's harmful rays.

Others look set to follow. Carbon nanotubes, for example, could revolutionise the construction industry. Seamless tubes of graphite one atom thick and 10,000 long (to the naked eye, large quantities would look like soot), carbon nanotubes are up to 100 times stronger than steel but around eight times lighter. They can be teased into a twine that can be woven into sheets and, potentially, mixed with composites to eventually overhaul the way - and the height to which - we build. And those buildings could be covered with solar cells made from nanomaterials that could supply all their energy needs. In medicine, "nanocapsules" containing pharmaceuticals that can be programmed to release their cargoes only on contact with, say, cancer cells, are promising new and improved treatments. Not surprising, then, that the proponents of nanotechnology predict that it will lead to a new industrial revolution.

In food, however, the excitement is being matched by health and environmental concerns at all three stages of production: farming, processing and packaging. In its report, Down on the Farm, the ETC Group, an independent Canadian technology watchdog, predicts: "From soil to supper, nanotechnology will not only change how every step of the food chain operates, but it will also change who is involved. At stake is the world's $3 trillion food retail market, agricultural export markets valued at $544bn, the livelihoods of 2.6 billion farming people, and the wellbeing of the rest of us who depend upon farmers for our daily bread."

Nano-futurists don't dispute that, one day, nanofoods will be everywhere. They envisage a day when tiny sensors called motes or smart dust will radio information to the farmer detailing what is going on in his field, inside his crops and in the bodies of his animals so that he can optimise his yields. While such "precision farming" is some way off, nanotechnology is already here in the form of smart pesticides, or nanocides. Syngenta, Monsanto and BASF are among companies that have either developed or are researching pesticides on the nano-scale that they claim will be more stable, longer-lasting and deadlier to pests.

Several of these have already passed safety tests and are licensed for use in Britain and the US. Their active ingredients have been around for years without causing problems; only the delivery method has changed. This involves controlled-release systems that use small polymer capsules which can be more evenly diluted in liquid, be programmed to "stick" to the parts of plants where they are needed, and even remain inert until activated by the alkaline content of a certain insect's stomach; only then do they burst open and kill the pest. Agrochemical companies argue that this means the pesticides are smarter, need lower concentrations of active ingredients, can be programmed not to harm "friendly" insects, and are more easily and safely broken down in the environment.

Packaging, too, may change. Coatings made from smart nanoparticles that can sniff out the telltale gases given off by deteriorating food will trigger colour changes on labels. The label will also tell you when something is ripe. It's called intelligent packaging.

But there is a problem. There are signs that consumers will recoil from any food to which this new technology is applied. Several years ago, the big food companies were happy to talk about products that might be in the pipeline. Famously, Kraft Foods described a tasteless, odourless drink that might contain dozens of flavours, colours and nutrients in billions of microcapsules that could be activated - possibly by microwave - at home. You might turn it into a strawberry-flavoured drink, while I might opt for lemon and lime. Then came the consumer opposition to GM. Nowadays it is difficult to get food companies even to admit they are conducting researching into nano.

However, one firm of German technology analysts, the Helmut Kaiser Consultancy, estimates that hundreds of food companies are conducting research into nanotechnology. Its latest report says: "The nanofood market [soared] from $2.6bn in 2003 to $5.3bn in 2005 and is expected to reach $20.4bn in 2010. The nano-featured food-packaging market will grow from $1.1bn in 2005 to $3.7bn in 2010. More than 400 companies around the world are active in research, development and production. The US is the leader, followed by Japan and China. By 2010, Asia, with more than 50% of the world population, will become the biggest market for nanofood, with China in the leading position."

I approached five of the world's largest food companies, Kraft, Cadbury Schweppes, Unilever, Nestl� and HJ Heinz. Cadbury Schweppes said it was "keeping a watching brief" but was not actively researching nanofood; Heinz had no plans to use nanotechnology; and Kraft and Nestl� made no comment. Unilever, however, was willing to provide a food manufacturer's perspective.

Charles-Fran�ois Gaudefroy, whose job title - head of consumer confidence and sustainability for research and development - is indicative of the task ahead of him, says there is much hype about nanofood. "There are some people who say nanotechnology is everywhere," he says. "Well, I'd like to see it first. We do not have it in food at the moment, but the potential is manifold, particularly in stabilising foods and enhancing their nutritional properties. For example, if you squeeze an orange and drink it now, you will get vitamin C from it, but if you leave it a while, all the vitamin C will vanish. Putting the vitamin C in nanocapsules can allow it to be released only when it is drunk.

"And [it could be useful in] stabilising nutrients in food. For example, iron and essential fats such as omega-3 do not remain stable in liquids; they oxidise and that changes the colour, odour, the taste of the product ... You could use nanotechnology to stabilise the nutritional properties of products and that would be of benefit to people with deficiencies - anaemia, for example."

Food companies, he says, are also excited by the prospect of intelligent packaging and the ability to give foods a longer shelf life. "In Africa, there is food, but part of the issue is bringing it to the table and increasing its nutrition profile to give children a better start. Stabilisation of nutrients and enabling longer shelf life are areas of development that can reduce suffering."

In Europe, any nanofoods would have to gain approval under a European Commission directorate on new foods and ingredients that was introduced in 1997 to regulate genetically modified products or those manipulated at a molecular level. The directorate requires such products to be assessed by member states before a licence can be granted. In Britain, the EU and the US, moves have been made to introduce voluntary codes of practice for research and manufacturing in nanotechnology, but hard legislation is lagging behind.

So what about safety? A report by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2004 expressed concern that little was known about the behaviour of nanoparticles in the environment and recommended that waste containing them should be treated as hazardous until proven otherwise. Since then, the Royal Society and the Council for Science and Technology (CST), the government's main advisory body on science issues, has criticised ministers for failing to put measures in place for assessing the environmental risks. "There is a pressing need for a programme of central government spending [on research] into the toxicology, health and environmental effects of nanotechnologies," the chairman of the CST's nanotechnologies sub-group, Professor John Beringer, said in March last year. "Without a substantial home research endeavour, the UK risks being left out in the cold in future international collaboration. To put it bluntly, the safe development of a new technology should not depend on whether an academic wins a highly competitive research grant."

The US's Environmental Protection Agency has set up a committee to develop a framework for safety legislation, but the tendency so far has been to accept nano-manipulated materials as being no different from their larger relatives. But any chemist will tell you that materials behave differently at different sizes. Aluminium, for example, is stable in everyday concentrations, but becomes explosive at micro-fine levels.

"I think the authorities know this and they are concerned, but they've been caught flat-footed," says Pat Mooney, the executive director of ETC. "I met a guy who said his company was shipping carbon nanotubes but they'd started limiting the shipment to a couple of kilos at a time because in concentrations of more than that they tended to become explosive. His company didn't know why. That inevitably raises questions about nanotechnology in pesticides and food."

Lynn Frewer, professor of food safety and consumer behaviour at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, acknowledges the potential benefits nanotechnology could bring, but when I ask her about the risks, she says: "The problem with the digestion of nanoparticles is that we don't know where in the body they would end up. If they are small enough to travel through the wall of the gut, which some nanoparticles would be designed to do, they could end up anywhere. And how will they accumulate and travel through the food chain? We simply don't know."

Dr Mike Bushell, Syngenta's research head, disagrees, arguing that nano-sized particles are more easily and safely degraded in the environment. There is, then, much disagreement in an industry still in its infancy, an industry that hasn't yet got international standards of safety. There isn't even an internationally accepted lexicon of nanotechnology.

Last year, the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, an independent Washington-based research institute, published a report entitled Nanotechnology in Agriculture and Food. It expressed concern at the lack of research, concluding: "Neither industry nor government appears to be doing its homework. Products could end up in the market without a proper assessment of risk or end up indefinitely halted at the threshold of commercialisation."

Whether nano-engineered foodstuffs land on our tables will, to a large extent, depend on consumers. If it proves as controversial as GM to many food buyers and environmentalists, then marketing it could be difficult - something of which the industry is well aware. Unilever's Gaudefroy says: "There are areas where debate is vital and it is only just beginning. Much of this is driven by what happened with GM. We have to explain to consumers the good side of nanotechnology and what benefits it can bring them.

"Food regulations, in particular the EU's novel-foods directive, prescribe stringent environmental and safety evaluation before anything is introduced to the market. I can see areas where people could be afraid of nanotechnology - in weaponry, for example. But in food? No. I really don't see mad scientists doing mad things."

� Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

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#22

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:04 pm
Subject: News: World Rice Yields Threatened By Climate Change

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http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13517-major-food-source-threatened-by-climate-change.html

Major food source threatened by climate change

    * 00:01 24 March 2008
    * NewScientist.com news service
    * Jim Giles

Rice is arguably the world's most important food source and helps feed about half the globe's people. But yields in many areas will drop as the globe warms in future years, a review of studies on rice and climate change suggests.

The poorest parts of the world, including Africa, will probably be hardest hit, the study says. Rice harvests already need to increase by about a third just to keep up with global population growth.

Predicting how a changing climate will affect crop yields is notoriously difficult. Temperature, carbon dioxide concentration and ozone levels all have a big impact on growth. Yet most studies look at just one of these factors, making it difficult to know what the combined effect will be.

It is also hard to know whether results from experiments in greenhouses with artificial climates will hold true in the real world. But when the evidence from some 80 different studies is combined, the outlook is bleak, says Elizabeth Ainsworth of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Troubling temperatures

In regions where the average daily temperatures are expected to rise above 30�C, rice yields will start to fall off, and the impact will get worse as the temperature increases.

The drop in yield caused by rising temperatures can be counteracted by the boost to photosynthesis provided by the increased levels of carbon dioxide driving climate change. But when Ainsworth pooled the studies, she found that effect is not strong enough to counteract the stress plants suffer at high temperatures.

Harvests will also be reduced by rising ground-level ozone concentrations. They are caused by nitrogen oxides (NOX) from power stations that catalyse the formation of ozone in warm and sunny conditions. Ainsworth's review found that ozone concentrations of around 60 parts per billion, which have already being recorded on farms in China and the United States, cause yields to drop by 14%.

Experiments on the effect of ozone using greenhouses containing artificial atmospheres are still crude, so other rice researchers are urging caution in interpreting Ainsworth's results. For example, many experiments use fixed levels of ozone, but outdoors levels fluctuate daily and plants can use the low points to recover from brief periods of high concentrations.
"Better breeds needed"

In general, however, critics agree with Ainsworth's conclusion that new varieties of rice, bred to tolerate high ozone and increased temperatures, are urgently needed.

She points out that tropical regions need these varieties most, as temperatures there are already close to the maximum that traditional types of rice can withstand. And these many of those areas, including parts of Africa, already suffer regular food shortages.

"This won't affect the planet equally," says Ainsworth. "In places where the demand for food is already too great, things are going to get worse."

Agricultural scientists say it is still too early to say for sure how climate change will affect yields. Very little is known about the combined effect of high ozone levels and increased carbon dioxide, for example, since the two factors are usually studied independently.

"In the real world, it's still pretty hard to know how these factors will stack up," says Daniel Taub of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, US.

But he adds that Ainsworth's study, together with her previous field experiments, have all but wiped out early hopes that increased carbon dioxide might be enough to overcome the other factors and boost yields. "Considering that we're likely to see an increase in population, if one doesn't see an increase in yields that's worrisome," Taub told New Scientist.

Climate Change - Learn more in our continually updated special report.

Journal ref: Global Change Biology (DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01594.x)

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#21

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:43 am
Subject: Feature: Food Miles Concept May have Been Overextended

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/23/food.ethicalliving

How the myth of food miles hurts the planet
     Ethical shopping just got more complicated. The idea that only local produce is good is under attack. There is growing evidence to suggest that some air-freighted food is greener than food produced in the UK. Robin McKie and Caroline Davies report on how the concept of food miles became oversimplified - and is damaging the planet in the process

    * Robin McKie
    * The Observer,
    * Sunday March 23 2008

Illustration Omitted:
       Green beans that have been flown in from Kenya. Photograph: Wendy Stone/Corbis

Mike Small and his wife, Karen, sat down last Thursday to a dinner of smoked fish pie crusted with mashed potato and served with purple-sprouting broccoli, an unremarkable family meal except for one key factor: every ingredient came from sources close to their home in Burntisland, Fife. 'The fish was Fife-landed, while the potatoes and broccoli were grown on nearby farms,' he says.

Nor was this a one-off culinary event. For the past six months Mike and Karen and their two children, Sorley and Alex, have consumed only food and drink bought in their home district.

This is the Fife Diet, developed by Mike Small as a response to the environmental dangers posed by carbon-emitting imports of Peruvian avocados, Kenyan green beans, New Zealand lamb and all those other foreign foodstuffs that now fill the shelves of our supermarkets. Each of these imported products involves the emission of carbon dioxide from the planes and ships that brought them to our shores.

So Mike Small argues that we should eat local produce and save the planet, an idea that has obliged his family - and a growing number of adherents to his cause - to eat meals of local lamb, pork and a great many dishes based on parsnips, beetroots, kale, potatoes, leeks and all the other root vegetables that typify the agricultural output of this wind-swept corner of Scotland.

This is the future of ethical eating, insists Small: the consumption of local produce at all costs. It is an attitude now shared by thousands around the UK and overseas, individuals who have decided to reject foods that have been transported over long distances by road, air or sea to their dinner plates. They even have their own name for themselves - locavores - and insist that their way is the only one to save the planet.

But the idea that 'only local is good' has come under attack. For a start, food grown in areas where there is high use of fertilisers and tractors is likely to be anything but carbon-friendly, it is pointed out. At the same time the argument against food miles - which show how far a product has been shipped and therefore how much carbon has been emitted in its transport - has been savaged by experts. 'The concept of food miles is unhelpful and stupid. It doesn't inform about anything except the distance travelled,' Dr Adrian Williams, of the National Resources Management Centre at Cranfield University, told The Observer last week.

Given that the food miles cause was hailed only a few months ago as the means to empower the carbon-conscious consumer, such criticisms are striking, and suggest that some careful reassessment of the concept's usefulness has been going on.

Certainly the issues involved no longer seem clear-cut. Consider that supermarket stalwart: green beans from Kenya. These are air-freighted to stores to allow consumers to buy fresh beans when British varieties are out of season. Each packet has a little sticker with the image of a plane on it to indicate that carbon dioxide from aviation fuel was emitted in bringing them to this country. And that, surely, is bad, campaigners argue. Rising levels of carbon dioxide are trapping more and more sunlight and inexorably heating the planet, after all.

But a warning that beans have been air-freighted does not mean we should automatically switch to British varieties if we want to help the climate. Beans in Kenya are produced in a highly environmentally-friendly manner. 'Beans there are grown using manual labour - nothing is mechanised,' says Professor Gareth Edwards-Jones of Bangor University, an expert on African agriculture. 'They don't use tractors, they use cow muck as fertiliser; and they have low-tech irrigation systems in Kenya. They also provide employment to many people in the developing world. So you have to weigh that against the air miles used to get them to the supermarket.'

When you do that - and incorporate these different factors - you make the counter-intuitive discovery that air-transported green beans from Kenya could actually account for the emission of less carbon dioxide than British beans. The latter are grown in fields on which oil-based fertilisers have been sprayed and which are ploughed by tractors that burn diesel. In the words of Gareth Thomas, Minister for Trade and Development, speaking at a recent Department for International Development air-freight seminar: 'Driving 6.5 miles to buy your shopping emits more carbon than flying a pack of Kenyan green beans to the UK.'

'Half the people who boycott air-freighted beans think they are doing some good for the environment. Then they go on a budget airline holiday to Prague the next weekend,' adds Bill Vorley, head of sustainable markets for the International Institute for Environment and Development. 'They are just making gestures.'

It is not that the concept of food miles is wrong; it is just too simplistic, say experts. In fact, balancing your diet with its carbon costs turns out to be a fiendishly tricky business. Consider these two staples: apples and lettuce. The former are harvested in September and October. Some are sold fresh; the rest are chill stored. For most of the following year, they still represent good value - in terms of carbon emissions - for British shoppers. But by August those Coxs and Braeburns will have been in store for 10 months. The amount of energy used to keep them fresh for that length of time will then overtake the carbon cost of shipping them from New Zealand. It is therefore better for the environment if UK shoppers buy apples from New Zealand in July and August rather than those of British origin.

Then there is the example of lettuces. In Britain these are grown in winter, in greenhouses or polytunnels which require heating. At those times it is better - in terms of carbon emissions - to buy field-grown lettuce from Spain. But in summer, when no heating is required, British is best. Picking the right sources for your apples and lettuces depends on the time of year.

'Working out carbon footprints is horribly complicated,' says Edwards-Jones. 'It is not just where something is grown and how far it has to travel, but also how it is grown, how it is stored, how it is prepared.'

This uncertainty even extends to the Soil Association, which announced last year that it was considering halting its endorsement of air-freighted organic food because their emissions negated the benefits of growing it organically. But now the organisation has dropped the plan and is to continue to endorse air-freighted organic food, provided it is grown under conditions that meet its ethical trade standards.

In addition, the government has revealed that it is changing its stance on food miles, as was recently stressed by Gareth Thomas. 'Food miles alone are not the best way to judge whether the food we eat is sustainable. We need a better-informed food miles debate. Long term, the only fair option is to ensure the prices of the goods we consume, including organic produce, cover the environmental costs wherever the goods are from. We also need a labelling system that tells consumers about how the product is reducing poverty.'

Nor is this argument lost on the nation's supermarkets. 'An airplane sticker is of no environmental value whatsoever, as studies have shown air-freighted products are not necessarily less sustainable than local produce grown in heated greenhouses,' said a spokesman for Tesco. 'Thus we may remove those plane labels in future. What people are actually interested in is the amount of carbon that is emitted during a product's manufacture and import.' As a result, Tesco has promised to put carbon labels on 30 of its own-brand products in the near future: six types of potatoes, 11 types of tomatoes, five types of washing power and liquid capsules, four types of orange juice and six types of light bulbs. 'We want to see how customers react and find out how it affects their purchasing behaviour,' added the spokesman.

In fact, these carbon cost labels have already been tested on a small range of products, including Walkers crisps and Cadburys chocolates. Packets and wrappers have a small C with a downward arrow through it, beside a figure which represents the number of grams of carbon dioxide emitted during the manufacture of that product. In this way it is revealed that packets of Walker's Ready Salted and Salt and Vinegar crisps each generate 75g of carbon, while the cheese and onion variety produced only 74g.

Now this limited range of products is to be expanded and will appear in Tesco and other stores, says the Carbon Trust which - with the British Standards Institute - has been involved in calculating how a meaningful carbon inventory can be compiled for foodstuffs.

Not surprisingly, such exercises have proved to be extraordinarily tricky, says Graham Sinden of the Carbon Trust. 'You have to take into account emissions that occurred in the farmyard, for example. Cows and sheep produce methane, which is far more damaging a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Similarly, fertilisers produce nitrogen oxides that are also dangerous. Then you have the issue of transport and processing. Taking a sheep to the slaughterhouse produces carbon emissions, for instance. Cooking is another factor. That requires heat that in turn releases carbon dioxide. After that you need to store products. That often requires refrigeration, which requires electricity, which releases carbon dioxide. Estimating how long a product will be kept in a store and how efficient is its refrigeration is not easy to assess, but it has to be done.

'Then you have to work out how long your product will be kept at home once it has been purchased. You also have to estimate how efficiently it will be cooked. And finally you have to work out how much carbon is involved in its packaging and how much will be emitted in disposing of those wrappers and labels once discarded.'

For some products, such as crisps, a carbon number is easy to calculate. But for others, the process will be much more awkward. How can you accurately calculate a pizza's carbon footprint when it often comes with a variety of toppings?

Even if you could get a carbon label that accurately reflects a product's impact on the environment and identify products that have high footprints, would you be right in boycotting them? In many cases, such as brands of coffee, these products come from struggling third world nations. Using our Western concerns with the climate as an excuse to increase poverty there has dubious ethical consequences.

In short, the issue of trying to reduce the emissions produced by food is bedevilled by complexity. Even replacing food miles with a carbon footprint figure will only partly simplify the issues, a point stressed by Tara Garnett of the Food Climate Research Network.

'There is only one way of being sure that you cut down on your carbon emissions when buying food: stop eating meat, milk, butter and cheese,' said Garnett. 'These come from ruminants - sheep and cattle - that produce a great deal of harmful methane. In other words, it is not the source of the food that matters but the kind of food you eat. Whether people are prepared to cut these from their shopping lists is a different issue, however.'
The chickpea: A green dilemma

Chickpeas are sold in supermarkets in two versions: dried or cooked. The carbon footprint of the latter is far higher than the former. The only processing involved in drying chickpeas is to lay them out in the sun to drive off moisture. By contrast, heat is needed to cook chickpeas before they are tinned. Hence the carbon gram total for tins of cooked chickpeas would be far greater than those on packets of the dried variety.

'That seems straightforward,' says Graham Sinden, of the Carbon Trust. 'But you can't eat dried chickpeas. You have to cook them. And when you take them home you find the carbon you emitted when cooking those chickpeas exceeds the figure for the tinned variety - because cooking small portions at home is inefficient compared with that of large industrial kitchens.'

As a result, when the trust system is taken up and used widely, the gram measure on a packet of dried chickpeas will include an estimate of the heat that will be used in a customer's home to cook them. But that figure will be a guess, for it will depend on whether the customer uses gas or electricity for cooking. The former is more efficient and less prone to carbon emissions.

As for individuals who use renewable energy to heat their homes and kitchens, they would completely negate the point of carbon labels in many cases. 'That is why it is impossible to have accurate carbon labels on a lot of products,' says Gareth Edwards-Jones, of Bangor University.

� Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

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#20

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Sun Mar 23, 2008 12:46 pm
Subject: Feature: Counting the High Environmental Costs of Meat and Fish

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Week of March 22, 2008; Vol. 173, No. 12

The Costs of Meat and Fish
The animal protein in our diets can have a high environmental cost

Janet Raloff

"Can Meat and Fish Consumption Be Sustainable?" That's the provocative title of a press release just sent to us by the Worldwatch Institute, a small but venerable think tank that focuses on natural resource issues.

It's also the theme of a chapter in Worldwatch's 2008 State of the World report, its 25th annual book-length analysis of resource trends and economics. Here, its analysts take on the substantial-and often hidden-costs of producing animal protein to satisfy human hunger.

In 2006, "farmers produced an estimated 276 million tons of chicken, pork, beef, and other meat-four times as much as in 1961," Worldwatch has just reported. As for fish, some 140 million tons were hauled in globally during 2005, the most recent year for which data are available. "That was eight times as much as in 1950," note Brian Halweil and Danielle Nierenberg, the chapter's authors.

Part of the growth in production reflects a growing demand, fueled by world population and increasing wealth that allows increased consumption of animal protein, even within formerly impoverished nations. For meat, it has doubled over the past 45 years; fish consumption quadrupled over a 55-year span.

Bottom line: "Meat and seafood are the two most rapidly growing ingredients in the global diet," Halweil and Nierenberg find, and "two of the most costly." Demand for both are slated to go the way of oil-up, up, up, with prices following-as incomes in China, India, and hosts of developing countries rise.

Industrial meat production and fish harvests have dropped the economic cost of animal proteins in recent decades. But much of that fiscal savings has come at the expense of the environment. Wastes are not captured and destroyed or recycled. They're allowed to run into the ground or waterways, degrading ecosystems all along the way. These are costs that are not captured in traditional accounting.

Anyone who has tried fishing in the Gulf of Mexico's annual dead zone has experienced one cost of allowing livestock wastes from the upper Midwest to flow through the ground and into waters that feed the mighty Mississippi-and Gulf of Mexico (SN: 6/12/04, p. 378). Anyone who lives with the pervasive stench downwind of animal feedlots knows there's a cost that they're being asked to subsidize with their discomfort-and perhaps health.

Fishers, in recent years, have been mining the ocean's top and middle predators, substantially distorting the balance of ecosystems (SN: 6/4/05, p. 360). The net primary productivity of the oceans probably hasn't changed much: that is to say, about the same mass of living cells probably inhabits it. However, instead of tuna, cod, sharks, and trout, the bulk of the mass may be shifting to alewives, smelt, jellyfish, and algae (SN: 2/7/98, p. 86). One solution, fish farming, has proven moderately successful-but can also prove harmful to nonfarmed species and the environment generally.

"Part of the reason that livestock and fish farms have become ecological disasters is that they have moved away from mimicking the environment in which animals exist naturally," the Worldwatch report maintains.

There's another problem as well. People the world over want to eat the same few species-cows, pigs, and lambs, salmon, tuna, and trout-even if their own environment cannot support the production of these animals. Moreover, as relatively large and high-in-the-food-chain animals, these species grow at the expense of hosts of plants, animals, and other energy inputs. The land and energy needed to produce 1,000 calories of grain, legumes (like soy), or algae is a fraction of what it takes to produce 1,000 calories of beef or catfish.

Many people don't want to eat just greens, grains, and pulses (like beans). In truth, I don't.

f9432_1709.jpg

Illustration Omitted:
BETTER THAN BEEF? This smorgasbord offers ant pupae and yellow bamboo caterpillars around a pile of ordinary scrambled eggs. Meyer-Rochow photographed this platter of appetizers during his foreign travels. He and other researchers have shown such bugs to be nutritious. Many researchers argue that their harvesting can also be better for the environment than is the production of conventional meat animals. Meyer-Rochow

However, there is another source of animal protein that may prove dramatically more sustainable than fish and hoofed livestock: Insects.

All right, it may take a bit of work to wrap your head around this idea-especially if you grew up in the U.S.A. We're talking ants, grasshoppers, and beetles.

There was a time and place where the arrival of hordes of locusts blackening the skies was a period for rejoicing. Hungry farmers would see this as a smorgasbord of animal protein that could be gathered by the bucketsful. Eaten raw, fried with onion and chilies, or roasted for consumption throughout the months ahead, this was nutritionally high-quality animal protein. And you didn't have to chase it. It came to you.

Those old enough to remember shipments of food aid to starving masses in Ethiopia and Somalia during the '70s and '80s may also remember scandals describing hundreds if not thousands of tons of wheat flour that arrived at its destinations spoiled by infestations of beetles, notes Victor B. Meyer-Rochow of Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. "But that's really nonsense," he argues, "because those beetles were nutritionally more valuable than [the grain] that people were trying to protect."

Bottom line, diets throughout the globe have been changing. And if we all want reliable access to animal protein, we may have to embrace mini-livestock-the six-legged kinds.

You'll be able to read more about this topic-a serious one-soon in the pages of Science News and at Science News for Kids, our online sister publication. So stay tuned.

And who knows, one day we may read that termites, popular for millennia in nations throughout the world, have become a growth industry for New Orleans. It's home to permanent hordes of the Formosan variety (SN: 11/29/03, p. 344)-insects that weathered Hurricane Katrina far better than did the region's taxpayers.

*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only. ***

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#19

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Sun Mar 23, 2008 12:44 pm
Subject: News: Wal-Mart May Provide Tipping Point Against Bovine Growth Hormone In Milk

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080322.RMILK22/TPStory/Business

Wal-Mart move 'tipping point' for non-hormone milk

JANET MCFARLAND
March 22, 2008

Organic food proponents will remember Thursday as the day the ground shifted.

Giant food retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced that its store brand milk in the United States will now come exclusively from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones.

The move sends a powerful signal to food manufacturers about the growing mainstream demand for health food products. With Wal-Mart already the largest retailer of organic milk in the U.S., it has been clear that consumers interested in greener food products are no longer the narrow group of back-to-the-earth types and wealthy urban yuppies.

"It's reached the tipping point," said Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association in the U.S., who has spent years campaigning against the use of hormones designed to boost milk production by up to 15 per cent in dairy cows.

"Even Wal-Mart's customers are demanding milk free from genetically engineered hormones."

Similar demands are growing in Canada, with mainstream grocery retailers like Loblaw Cos. Ltd. introducing reams of new products to meet mainstream demands for organic and "green" foods. Canada, however, banned artificial growth hormones for dairy cows in 1998, so is not affected by the milk changes sweeping the United States.

"I think things are accelerating now and people are getting more health conscious and are getting more conscious about the connection between their personal health and the health of the environment," Mr. Cummins said.

Grocery chain Kroger Co., with 2,500 stores in the U.S., began last month selling only milk produced without the use of hormones like recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST). Safeway Inc., with more than 1,700 stores, has switched its in-store brands to non-rBST milk, though it also sells other brands produced from cows given the hormone. And starting in January, Starbucks Corp. has only used non-rBST milk in its stores.

As the largest grocery retailer in the United States with more than 4,000 locations, however, Wal-Mart was the "big get" for consumer advocates.

The retailer said Thursday that its change was prompted by consumer demands. "Many Wal-Mart customers have expressed a desire for milk choices," the company's release said. The change means Wal-Mart's Great Value store brand milk will be rBST-free, as will milk offered at the company's Sam's Club warehouse locations.

"We've listened to customers and are pleased that our suppliers are helping us offer Great Value milk from cows that are not treated with rBST," said Wal-Mart general merchandise manager Pam Kohn.

In the U.S., non-rBST milk has become a cheaper alternative to milk that is fully organic. Mr. Cummins said it appeals to many consumers who want to avoid the hormones but are unwilling to pay the far larger premium for organic milk. "When you look at all the surveys of consumer attitudes about food safety, hormones consistently rank way up there, along with pesticides," he said.

Most dairy farmers do not use the artificial hormones, which were first approved by the U.S. Drug Administration in 1993, so the impact on the industry from Wal-Mart's announcement will be incremental rather than dramatic. Mr. Cummins said USDA statistics show 18 per cent of U.S. dairy cows were given artificial hormones in 2006.

David Darr, vice-president of public affairs for Dairy Farmers of America Inc., a major U.S. producer of milk and dairy products, said yesterday that there is already a lot of non-rBST milk available.

"There are more dairy farms across the U.S. that don't use it than do," he said. "And the farms that did use the technology, they did not necessarily use it on every cow."

His firm, a co-operative owned by 18,000 dairy farmers, has members who produce both kinds of milk.

"We continue to try to give our members a choice on what technology they use, and try to find markets for milk however they want to produce it," he said. "But we are also cognizant and recognize the needs of our customers and try to give them what they want."

*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only. ***

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#18

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:54 am
Subject: News: Fair Trade, Local Foods Compete for Attention

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http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/16/eco.food.miles/index.html

Food and fossil fuels
    * Transportation not as harmful in food chain as previously thought
    * Initial production phase "by far the most important" in food chain, says FAO
    * Food and Agricultural sector contribute over 33 percent of global emissions
    * Meat and dairy contribute 50 percent of "food-related impacts"

By Rachel Oliver
For CNN

(CNN) -- Eating ethically is no easy task these days. One problem is deciding which ethic is more important. Keeping third-world farmers in fair trade jobs by purchasing their produce? Or assuaging your concerns over the environmental impact of getting that produce to your kitchen by shopping locally instead?

Illustration Omitted:
      A farmer at work in California. The UN says the food cultivation stage is the most damaging in the food chain.

Up until recently it has been the latter concern -- how food is transported -- that has hogged the limelight when it comes to looking at the role the food chain plays in climate change. Statistics such as the fact that the average American meal travels on average 1,500 miles before it gets to the diner's plate, have led to stronger backing for "grow locally" movements.

But the local food movement has been greeted with dismay by the developing world -- and for good reason.

According to the UK-based Food Climate Research Network (FCRN), as many as 1.5 million people in the developing world, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa, depend on the export horticulture market. Agricultural exports, meanwhile, have been partly to thank for Africa's economic growth rates of around 5 per cent a year, according to the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

British shoppers alone spend more than $2 million every single day on fruit and vegetables imported from Africa. Encouraging them to shop locally instead of buying imported produce from the developing world could obviously have disastrous consequences for third-world farmers.

Domestic not international food miles can leave bigger footprint

Doing away with food imports could be seen as understandable if international transport played a dominant role in the food chain's greenhouse gas emissions.

But in the UK 's case -- where much of the research into the "food miles" concept has taken place -- that doesn't seem to be the case. A sturdy 85 percent of UK food transport-related emissions actually derive from domestic road deliveries according to the DFID. Road freight traffic in the UK grew by 67 percent between 1980 and 2001, with the average journey length also increasing by 40 percent.

By comparison, international freight contributes 11 percent of UK food transport-related emissions -- that's less than one-tenth of one percent of the UK 's overall emissions, the DFID says.

Transportation as a whole contributes 2.5 percent of the food chain's emissions, says FCRN. Food refrigeration, on the other hand, accounts for as much as 18 percent (and notably 3.5 percent of the UK 's entire greenhouse gas emissions).

The whole transport issue initially came to the fore after the "food miles" concept was coined in Europe to illustrate how fossil fuel-intensive the global food distribution network had become.

But the relative blame that the transport sector should be taking for this is debatable.

In the U.S., up to 20 percent of the country's fossil fuel consumption goes into the food chain, according to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), which points out that fossil fuel use by the food systems in the developed world "often rivals that of automobiles".

To feed an average family of four in the developed world uses up the equivalent of 930 gallons of gasoline a year -- just shy of the 1,070 gallons that same family would use up each year to power their cars.

The average developed world diet uses 1,600 liters of fossil fuels each year, according to the U.S. based Organic Consumers Association (OCA). Only 256 of those liters come from transporting the food, says OCA.

By contrast, a whopping 496 liters goes into the chemical fertilizers used during the food growing stage, representing well over one third of the food chain's entire fossil fuel consumption.

Food production responsible for much of greenhouse gas emissions

According to the FAO, the food and agricultural sector is responsible for more than one third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with "by far the most important" aspect of that sector's environmental impact, it says, lying in the initial production process -- not in transportation.

Within that initial stage, the most harmful activities are deforestation and cultivation. Deforestation, which clears the way for food to be grown, accounts for 18 percent of the food and agriculture sector's emissions. Cultivation, including "intensive livestock operations, irrigated rice paddies and application of synthetic fertilizers on cultivated land" releases enough methane and nitrous oxide to account for 13.5 percent of the sector's greenhouse gas contribution.

Quoting the UK-based Soil Association, the FAO says in conventional agriculture (i.e. non-organic) the largest amount of energy used -- 37 percent -- goes towards "synthetic pesticides and mineral fertilizers, particularly nitrogen, and to a lesser extent, phosphorous, and potassium."

Nitrogen fertilizer in particular is extremely fossil fuel-intensive, requiring 1.5 tons of oil equivalents to make 1 ton of fertilizer.

Meat and methane: climate killers?

There is, of course, one other major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the food chain: Meat.

Back in 2006, the FAO revealed that rearing livestock produced more greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation sector -- 18 percent of the world's entire greenhouse gas emissions.

Notably, livestock production generates 37 percent of human-induced methane and 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide emissions. Methane has 23 times the global warming potential of CO2; the impact of nitrous oxide meanwhile is a staggering 296 times more powerful.

Meat and dairy represent 50 percent of "total food related impacts", according to the Climate Action Program. And in terms of the fossil fuel bill meat runs up, for that family of four who is using up 930 gallons of fossil fuel a year on food, 265 gallons of it goes towards putting meat on their table.

Going vegetarian, or vegan, therefore is being increasingly suggested as one of the best ways to slash our carbon contributions. A University of Chicago study found, for example that meat-eaters individually emit 1.5 more tons of emissions a year than vegetarians or vegans; and according to the OCA, it takes 8 times as many fossil fuels to produce animal protein than their plant equivalent.

Being vegetarian is by no means a panacea, however, as even the OCA concedes that eating a 2 kg box of vegetarian-friendly cereal is the equivalent of burning half a gallon of gasoline.
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But perhaps banking on everyone going vegetarian fails to take into account one simple fact: 1.4 billion people work in the global livestock sector and rely on meat-eaters for their livelihoods.

How one would go about telling 1.4 billion people to shut up shop is anyone's guess. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

(Source: Organic Consumers Association; Sustainable Business; The Guardian; The New Yorker; UN Food and Agricultural Organization; UK Department for International Development; Transport 2000 Trust; Food & Water Watch; Danish Institute of International Studies)

*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only. ***

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#17

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:48 am
Subject: News: Ethanol Craze Creates Food Shortages, Raises Price of Bread

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http://www.thestar.com/News/article/346536

Ethanol craze raises concerns

Illustration Omitted:
Trucker Dave Rose watches corn flow from his trailer at Suncor's St. Clair Ethanol Plant near Sarnia. CRAIG GLOVER FOR THE TORONTO STAR

The Bush doctrine on ethanol, and to a lesser extent, the burgeoning Canadian interest, doesn't come from nothing. In the mid-'70s, Brazil was importing 75 per cent of its oil. When OPEC forced a global oil crisis shortly thereafter, the country's military dictatorship took action to break Brazil's dependence.

General Ernesto Geisel, the country's dictator, poured money into the development of ethanol plants drawn from sugar cane, an abundant and rapidly renewable crop in the country's Amazon basin. The government mandated ethanol pumps at gas stations nationwide, and provided generous incentives to car makers to make vehicles that ran on the cane-based alcohol.

In the '90s, as oil prices bottomed out, Brazil began to turn back to the fossil fuel. But with oil prices now past $100/barrel, ethanol is back in a big way in Brazil, with 85 per cent of new cars sold running on "flex" engines - able to run on either fuel. Today, Brazil imports no foreign oil for any of its energy needs.

Brazil is more than a model for Canada and the U.S., though. Cane yields seven crops before replanting is required, versus corn's one, making it that much more efficient. What's more, production of corn-based ethanol uses a litre of fossil fuel for every litre of ethanol produced; cane is one litre per eight litres of ethanol.

It's no small wonder that the U.S. keeps heavy tariffs on Brazil's relatively cheap and plentiful ethanol. But all is not perfect down south, either.

Conservationists warn that the country's ethanol boom is prompting the razing of hundreds of acres of rain forest to plant cane and further fuel the boom.

Among all the crops humans grow, corn is perhaps the most essential
Corn-derived biofuel already has dramatically altered the economic reality of the American heartland and promises boom times for Ontario farmers. But how can we possibly keep up with demand? And what about the spiralling cost of food?
Mar 16, 2008 04:30 AM
Murray Whyte
Staff Reporter

NEAR MELBOURNE, ON-In the deep cold of the too-long winter here, ice pools in the fields just outside Larry Cowan's two-level backsplit, creating a worrying, if not unfamiliar, predicament.

"We get concerned about that," says Cowan, squinting, as he guides his truck along the salty blacktop that quilts the tilled earth here into tidy packages of farmland. "That's got to disappear real quick."

It's nothing Cowan hasn't seen before; 32 years spent on his own 728 hectares here at Chimo Farms, growing corn, wheat and soybeans, don't leave a lot of room for surprise. Out here in the fields, at least.

Back inside is a different story, courtesy of an unlikely source: The business report on CNN.

"The head of one of the big investment firms in New York City was talking about gold going to $1,000 an ounce," Cowan recalls, his eyes wrinkling with a pinched smile. "And then he talked about Chicago corn going to $6. And that is the first time I ever, in 32 years, have ever, ever heard a stock broker talk about corn in the same breath as gold. So there's some frenzy in the marketplace, yes."

Cowan, laconic and soft-spoken, carries with him a certain world-weariness that is the farmer's right. Things are never easy in the world of agriculture, and Cowan, like most of his kind, tends to temper any enthusiasm with a strong dose of common sense, if not outright pessimism.

IN THE '80S, with interest skyrocketing and commodity prices bottoming out, it was all Cowan could do to stay afloat. "We almost went bankrupt," he grins. "But we managed to rejig and survive."

Cowan can be forgiven a touch of skepticism. But at the same time, in the corn patch, this is an historic moment. It is the stuff of pure paradox: An agricultural boom. Corn prices have soared in the past year, both here and especially in the U.S., where the industry standard Chicago Exchange pegged it around $5.75 (U.S.) a bushel. As recently as November, it was hovering around $3.50, and a year before that, under $3. And it has dragged soybeans and wheat up along with it, both of them up more than 50 per cent in the past year.

Cowan has seen prices jump before. In 1997, corn leapt briefly to $7, due largely to a drought that crippled supply, before it crashed back down. "That's what history teaches us," Cowan sighs.

This time, there is no drought, no blight, no yield disaster making corn stocks much coveted in the face of scant supply. Some point to a growing appetite in China and India, and they do play their part. But that would be ignoring the elephant in the room, growing fatter by the day.

Ethanol, the corn-derived alcohol now being used as a gasoline additive by most big retailers, has already drastically altered the economic reality of the American heartland. In 2005, the Bush administration introduced incentives for the ethanol industry meant to stimulate its growth and throw the country's quest for renewable fuel and decreased dependence on foreign oil into fast forward.

It's a tantalizing hypothesis, and in Brazil, it's already been achieved. Already the world's biggest ethanol producer - from sugar cane - 85 per cent of the cars sold there are "flex" vehicles, which can run on either ethanol or gas. Brazil, once a voracious consumer of foreign oil, now imports not a drop. (The U.S. heavily taxes Brazilian ethanol imports to protect its own industry.)

In the U.S., the Bush plan has been working, largely to the benefit of midwestern farmers and agricultural giants like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, who act as middlemen between farmers and the ethanol plants, which have been coming online as fast as they can be built.

In 2002, there were 61 plants in the U.S. Today, there are 134, producing 7.2 million gallons of ethanol a year, prompting U.S. farmers last spring to plant their largest corn crop since World War II. With 77 more under construction, and Federal production goals set at 36 billion gallons by 2022, there's no end in sight.

Canada and Ontario have been a little slower to the ethanol craze, but they're making up for lost time. Last year, the federal government introduced a $200 million grant program for new biofuel projects, through 2011. At the same time, the McGuinty government introduced a mandate for all gasoline sold in the province to contain at least 5 per cent ethanol. That's due to increase to 10 per cent by 2010 - the highest content a conventional engine can use without modification.

It was enough incentive for Suncor, one of the founding giants of Northern Alberta's oil sands, to set up shop on the cusp of Ontario corn country in Sarnia last year with an ethanol plant of its own. "Basically, the market is growing, and that's because of the government mandate," said Jason Vaillant, a manager at the Sarnia facility. "It made more sense for us to make it ourselves than buy it from someone else."

Suncor's Sarnia plant produces 200 million litres of ethanol a year, consuming 20 million bushels of Ontario corn in the process. Vaillant estimates that the plant consumes about 10 per cent of the province's annual corn production all by itself. When it reaches full capacity, those numbers will double. The other operating plants in the province collectively produce another 250 million litres - and consume another 12 per cent of the crop.

BUT, AS INCENTIVES lure more investors into the ethanol business, Ontario's corn supply starts looking increasingly short. Six more plants are either planned or under construction. If they all reach capacity, the province's ethanol production would jump by another 1.63 billion litres, to more than 2.2 billion, total.

Quick math tells a potentially troublesome tale: At a ratio of 10 litres per bushel, the proposed ethanol production in Ontario would consume virtually all of the province's corn production of 250 million bushels a year. "That was a real question when we were building," Vaillant says. "Where are we going to get all the corn?"

The ethanol industry isn't the only one asking that question. Among all the crops humans grow, corn is perhaps the most essential. Of all the things in your local supermarket - more than 45,000, says Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma - about a quarter of them contain corn.

It is the ultimate staple in the broadest sense: It's in processed foods like cereals. Its starch is used in sauces as thickener, its sugar in soft drinks as sweetener. It's a binding agent, a colourant, the alcohol in your beer. It's in coffee whitener, ketchup, candies, canned fruit and condiments.

Go to the meat counter and you'll find beef and pork fattened by corn feed, chickens and turkeys raised on kernels. Your eggs are laid by corn-fed hens. Commercial fish feed is largely corn-based, and even the carnivores among them, like salmon, have been sufficiently genetically engineered to be raised on a corn-based diet.

And forget about just the things you eat: Corn is in toothpaste and lipstick, eyeshadow and batteries, diapers, cleaners, plastic products, paper and cardboard. Touch the grubby drywall at your local super-grocer, smudged with the fingers of a thousand errant children, and you'll be in direct contact with it: Corn is a binding agent in plaster products, too.

Ancient civilizations, like the Mayans, were built on its nourishment, and Third World countries remain dependent on it. This is the ugly side of the corn boom: Food and fuel economies are intertwining, and the market is revealing an unpalatable truth about which one the markets deem to be more essential.

Rising corn prices to feed the ethanol industry invariably impact food prices, too. And the entire chain can be disrupted.

Hog and beef producers are suffering badly due to the high price of corn-based feed. Last week U.S. Pilgrim's Pride, one of the country's biggest poultry producers, cut 1,100 jobs and closed one of its massive processing plants and half its distribution centres. Its justification: "Unprecedented increases" in feed costs.

And this is relatively comfortable First World suffering at the hands of the corn boom. In Mexico, where corn is a revered component of an ancient diet - until recently, it was considered sacrilege to feed it to animals - large-scale protests about the cost of tortillas, a Mexican diet staple made from corn flour, have become commonplace, touched off when 75,000 took to the streets of Mexico City last year when tortillas quadrupled in price in just a few months. Once again, the voracious U.S. ethanol industry was cited as the culprit.

IT ALL SERVES as something of a cautionary tale to Ontario's still-nascent ethanol industry. Ontario corn, by its own description, is "basically an in-house operation," Cowan says. Very little is exported; almost none is imported. But in an ethanol-fuelled future, that will have to change.

"If we had a below-average yield one year, where would it all come from?" asks Bill Deen, a professor in the plant agriculture department at the University of Guelph.

Deen, who studies cropping systems and agronomy in the province, doesn't see a solution. "Virtually all the farmable land base in the province is in use," he says. "What we're using is pretty much it."

That means increasing demand would mean stealing it from other crops, upsetting rotations and potentially damaging yields. And current prices provide a potent incentive.

How times change. Two years ago, Deen was recruited by the Ministry of Agriculture to give a series of talks to farmers about the importantance of keeping up their corn production.

"The price was so low, growers were looking at a loss," he recalls. "They couldn't possibly make money."

A year later, with prices spiking alongside the U.S. ethanol boom, Deen had a new message: "I had to tell them 'don't grow too much corn - you need to maintain a rotation to keep your crops healthy,'" he says.

The lure is certainly there. For Rick McCracken, who farms his 769 hectares with his wife Betty just outside Melbourne, boom times have spread the wealth around. In the buoyant corn economy, everyone prospers.

"If you want to buy a tractor or a combine, you're going to have to wait until next year to see it," he says. McCracken, who's also a seed dealer, shares Cowan's leavened optimism. "It's an exciting time," he says. But the disaster years of the '80s, when high interest rates drove over-leveraged farmers into bankruptcy by the dozens, are never far from mind.

"We're only a few months into this. We don't want to get too optimistic and see it happen again."

One thing they don't have to worry about is the crop itself. A remarkably adaptable, hearty crop that spread from Mexico into Ontario long before the arrival of Columbus, corn has natural genetic variability that allows it to grow and flourish in almost every climate imagineable. In the agricultural world, corn is relatively reliable, thanks to genetic engineering, drought and disease are no longer major concerns.

BUT OVER-GROWTH has consequences, Deen says, and not just because of basic agronomy. Crops are rotated - beans one year, corn the next - to keep one or the other from depleting the soil of the different nutrients they require.

Corn-based ethanol , to those who follow the industry, contains a central paradox: Among the crops grown here, corn is the most machine intensive and demanding, spewing exhaust into the air to collect the very material meant to deliver us into a carbon-neutral fuel future. Corn also cries out for more herbicides and nitrogen fertilizer than any other crop, and erodes soil more quickly than any other as well.

For all the hype, the future of corn-based ethanol is less than assured. Research is pouring into deriving ethanol from less intensive, non-food crops like prairie grass, and even crop waste.

"That, at least, makes sense," says Ann Slater, the president of the Ecological Farmers' Association of Ontario. "I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that corn-based ethanol is in any way sustainable, here or anywhere else."

Cowan has seen too much, been here too long, to buy into hype. He's rotating his crop as per usual this year, reducing corn acres and increasing beans. Despite the frenzy, most responsible farmers will do the same, he says.

"All it takes is a stroke of the pen from a new U.S. president to lower that tariff on Brazilian ethanol, and it's over," he says.

Jitters reverberate through the market. Earlier this month, buyers, wary of betting too much on corn's upswing, pulled their bids for 2009/2010, fearing overpayment and a drop in a price that, by all accounts, seems only to be going up. "It's volatile," Cowan shrugs. "I guess they're getting a little nervous."

Under a slate-grey March sky, Cowan pulls his truck into his storage area, where corrugated metal silos store last year's grain. Birds wheel overhead, dropping earthward to light on the frozen ground to peck at the kernels scattered in the muck.

Here, surrounded by the fruits of his long labours, Cowan allows the unshakeable pragmatism he has cultivated for the past 32 years to soften. Slightly, at least.

"Optimistic? I don't know if I'd say that," Cowan allows. His eyes wrinkle again with that smile. "Let's call it optimism, with a side note note of caution."

* * *

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-fi-bread16mar16,1,3257196.story

Our daily bread? It's costing more
Bread costs more bread

Illustration Omitted:
Baker Julien Bohbot poses for a portrait at the Delice Bakery in L.A. He was paying $12 for each 50-pound bag of flour but in his next shipment the price for each bag will be between $26 to $35. Stefano Paltera / Los Angeles Times

Higher wheat prices are forcing bakers into a competition for flour

By Jerry Hirsch, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 16, 2008

When a French-style patisserie opened on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles six years ago, owner Julien Bohbot thought the competition for his small Delice Bakery would come from the other kosher bakeries down the street.

But now Bohbot is competing with bakers from Paris and Pretoria -- all in search of flour. Short supplies have raised the price of wheat worldwide and sparked protests over the cost of tortillas in Mexico and pasta in Italy. In the United States, it's raised the cost of such basic goods as bread, cereal and pizza.

The latest statistics from the federal government have given Bohbot more reason to worry. The price of bakery and cereal products rose 1.8% in February, the largest monthly increase since January 1975. Overall, the cost of eating at home has risen more than 5% so far this year, the fastest rate since 1990.

Mike Celeste, a San Dimas financial advisor, has experienced the increase firsthand. Since October, the price of the two-loaf bag of sourdough bread he frequently buys at Sam's Club has jumped 28% to $4.06. Celeste said the warehouse chain also raised the price of the fresh pizza he likes by 90 cents, to $8.87.

The price of white bread has risen 19% in the Western U.S. since June, according to the government.

The plight facing small bread makers like Bohbot -- and much larger businesses such as Sara Lee Corp. -- prompted the American Bakers Assn. to hold a protest march in Washington, D.C., last week.

"It is crucial that the White House, our elected representatives and the Department of Agriculture hear firsthand how bakers . . . are struggling with current market conditions," said Robb MacKie, chief executive of the trade group. "Wheat markets -- and commodity markets in general -- are behaving in ways that we have not seen before. We believe that extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures."

As the bakers were marching, wheat hit a record price of $12.70 a bushel Wednesday. It fell back to $11.60 by Friday but still stands 31% above where it started the year.

A series of wheat crop failures abroad, combined with the U.S. dollar being at historic lows against the Euro and other currencies, has forced Bohbot and other bakers to compete with the rest of the globe for grain -- even what's grown in the United States.

World demand for the staple has sent the price of the 50-pound bags of flour Bohbot uses for his baguettes and marzipan cakes soaring to $27, up from $12 a year ago.

To cover the increase, Bohbot has doubled the price of his loss-leading baguettes to $1.98 and pushed the cost of his breads up a buck to $5.50.

Bohbot said it's only going to get worse. His supplier will be increasing the price of flour "to $30 next week and said it could be $60 in a few months."

Big companies are pushing their prices up too. Three times in the last year, baking giant Sara Lee raised what it charges supermarkets for its bread and bagels -- an average increase of 25 cents per product.

Pizza makers also are struggling with higher flour prices.

"We are really nervous. What happens if we have to charge $14 or $15 for a pizza that we sell for $9.95 now?" said David Sanfield, co-owner of Pitfire Pizza Co., a chain of three Los Angeles restaurants that buys more than 7,000 pounds of flour a month.

Some bakers want the government to create a strategic reserve of wheat, similar to the emergency oil supply it keeps on hand.

On Wednesday, MacKie, the head of the bakers' association, called for a reduction in the federal Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to plant ground cover instead of wheat or other crops -- thus improving water quality, controlling soil erosion and creating habitat for waterfowl and other wildlife.

He believes such a move could free up as much as 7 million acres for planting wheat and other food crops. MacKie also wants the government to waive penalties for farmers seeking early release from the program, which typically locks up land for 10 to 15 years.

The trade group also said the government needs to better balance the use of farmland between food and fuel needs. On land previously used for wheat and other food crops, farmers are rushing to plant corn to be refined into ethanol.

Bohbot, the Pico Boulevard baker, also wants the government to step in. He said he doesn't understand why the U.S. continues to allow wheat exports at a time when supplies are so short here. Other nations, including Argentina, Russia and China, have slapped new restrictions and tariffs on exports of wheat and other grains in an attempt to protect their domestic supplies.

For now, there's not much that bakeries can do about the soaring cost of wheat, said Chris Hurt, a Purdue University agricultural economist. They are small players, used to purchasing supplies as they use them, and they don't have the clout or economic sophistication to compete with the giant foreign buyers and market speculators that are outbidding domestic users of American grain.

Wheat exports are 32% higher than one year ago, 33% of the U.S. soybean crop will be shipped abroad and corn exports this year are on pace to rise by 15% and break the 1979-80 record of 2.4 billion bushels, Hurt said.

Normally, people start to cut back on items when prices soar. But bread and wheat products are such basic foodstuffs that few consumers are doing that at this point, Hurt said. "It has to get to a critical level before we see a change in consumption. There are not a lot of good substitutes for bread."

Still, companies like Pitfire and Delice are particularly vulnerable because they sell upscale products in an economy where there are lower-priced options, such as supermarket brands and Domino's Pizza.

They also won't get any relief soon from the foreign buyers purchasing American wheat, because the dollar's low value blunts a large part of the price increase experienced domestically. Right now, for example, $11-a-bushel wheat in the Midwest is equivalent to something in the range of $8.25 overseas, Hurt said.

That's showing up in orders for the 2008-09 U.S. wheat crop, said Joe Sowers, senior market analyst with U.S. Wheat Associates, a farm trade group. Foreign nations have already placed orders for 2 million metric tons of wheat, almost 10 times the advance purchase of a year ago.

"Japan, the Philippines, South Africa and a lot of other countries don't want to get left behind," Sowers said.

"We are at the bottom of the wheat bin."

jerry.hirsch@...

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#16

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Date: Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:46 am
Subject: News: Organic Farmers Meet Genetic Engineering

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The new organic
The future of food may depend on an unlikely marriage: organic farmers and genetic engineering.

By Pamela Ronald
March 16, 2008

BEGINNING IN 1997, an important change swept over cotton farms in northern China. By adopting new farming techniques, growers found they could spray far less insecticide over their fields. Within four years they had reduced their annual use of the poisonous chemicals by 156 million pounds - almost as much as is used in the entire state of California each year. Cotton yields in the region climbed, and production costs fell. Strikingly, the number of insecticide-related illnesses among farmers in the region dropped to a quarter of their previous level.
more stories like this

This story, which has been repeated around the world, is precisely the kind of triumph over chemicals that organic-farming advocates wish for.

But the hero in this story isn't organic farming. It is genetic engineering.

The most important change embraced by the Chinese farmers was to use a variety of cotton genetically engineered to protect itself against insects. The plants carry a protein called Bt, a favorite insecticide of organic farmers because it kills pests but is nontoxic to mammals, birds, fish, and humans. By 2001, Bt cotton accounted for nearly half the cotton produced in China.

For anyone worried about the future of global agriculture, the story is instructive. The world faces an enormous challenge: Its growing population demands more food and other crops, but standard commercial agriculture uses industrial quantities of pesticides and harms the environment in other ways. The organic farming movement has shown that it is possible to dramatically reduce the use of insecticides, and that doing so benefits both farm workers and the environment. But organic farming also has serious limits - there are many pests and diseases that cannot be controlled using organic approaches, and organic crops are generally more expensive to produce and buy.

To meet the appetites of the world's population without drastically hurting the environment requires a visionary new approach: combining genetic engineering and organic farming.

This idea is anathema to many people, especially the advocates who have helped build organic farming into a major industry in richer countries. As reflected by statements on their websites, it is clear that most organic farming trade organizations are deeply, viscerally opposed to genetically engineered crops and seeds. Virtually all endorse the National Organic Standards Board's recommendation that genetic engineering be prohibited in organic production.

But ultimately, this resistance hurts farmers, consumers, and the planet. Without the use of genetically engineered seed, the beneficial effects of organic farming - a thoughtful, ecologically minded approach to growing food - will likely remain small.

Despite tremendous growth in the last 15 years, organic farms still produce just a tiny fraction of our food; they account for less than 3 percent of all US agriculture and even less worldwide. In contrast, in the same period, the use of genetically engineered crops has increased to the point where they represent 50 to 90 percent of the acreage where they are available. These include insect-resistant varieties of cotton and corn; herbicide-tolerant soybean, corn, and canola; and virus-resistant papaya.

After more than a decade of genetically engineered crops, and more than 30 years of organic farming, we know that neither method alone is sufficient to solve the problems faced - and caused - by agriculture.

It is time to abandon the caricatures of genetic engineering that are popular among some consumers and activists, and instead see it for what it is: A tool that can help the ecological farming revolution grow into a lasting movement with global impact.

By 2050, the number of people on earth is expected to increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion. To feed those people with current crop yields and farming practices, we will need to clear, fertilize, and spray vast amounts of wild land. Millions of birds and billions of beneficial insects will die from lost habitat and industrial pesticides, farm workers will be at increased risk for disease, and the public will lose billions of dollars as a consequence of environmental degradation. Clearly, there must be a better way to boost food production while minimizing its impact.

An alternative is to expand the number of organic farms, which do not use synthetic pesticides and thus support higher levels of biodiversity than conventional farms. Some organic farmers even retain patches of natural habitat on farms to provide shelter for wildlife. But at current crop yields, farming will still need to absorb huge amounts of additional land that is now home to wildlife and diverse ecosystems. A clear challenge for the next century is to develop more productive crops, not just better farming techniques, and genetic engineering has demonstrated great promise here.

One way to boost yields is to develop crops that can survive harsh conditions such as drought, cold, heat, salt, and flooding. Many of the world's poorest people farm in areas that are far from ideal, and freshwater sources are decreasing in quantity and quality throughout the world. Organic farming can help somewhat: Organically cultivated soil tends to hold water longer because of the higher levels of organic matter. Still this approach has limits. Far more helpful would be new crop varieties designed to survive in difficult environments, and in the future this is where genetic engineering will likely have the most significant human and ecological impact. Crops with enhanced tolerance to drought, for instance, would allow farmers to produce more food using less water. Already there are varieties of genetically engineered wheat that can tolerate drought, as well as rice that can tolerate flooding and tomato plants that can tolerate salt.

Another important challenge is to fight pests and disease, which take an estimated 20 to 40 percent bite out of agricultural productivity worldwide. Reducing this loss would be equivalent to creating more land and more water. But current pesticide use is a health and environmental hazard, and organic and genetic engineering offer complementary solutions. Genetic engineering can be used to develop seeds with enhanced resistance to pests and pathogens; organic farming can manage the overall spectrum of pests more effectively.

Genetically engineered crops have already enjoyed major success against pests. For example, on farm field trials carried out in central and southern India, where small-scale farmers typically suffer large losses because of pests, average yields of genetically engineered crops exceeded those of conventional crops by 80 percent. In Hawaii, the 1998 introduction of an engineered papaya plant that could resist the papaya ringspot virus virtually saved the industry. There was no organic approach available then to protect the papaya from this devastating disease, nor is there now.

When engineering hits its limits, though, organic farming can help. For example, the Bt cotton that transformed Chinese farming only kills caterpillars of some species, so it cannot be a stand-alone solution for general insect control. In fact, after seven years of pesticide reductions in Bt cotton fields in China, populations of other insects increased so much that farmers had to resume spraying certain insecticides. Organic farmers, by contrast, control these secondary pests by introducing beneficial insects that feed on the pests and by rotating crops to reduce the overall pest populations.

Genetic engineering also helps achieve other goals of the organic farming movement. By reducing the use of pesticides and by reducing pests and disease, it can make farming more affordable and thus keep family farmers in business and assure local food security. It can also make food more nutritious: In 2011, plant breeders expect to release "golden rice," a genetically engineered variety that will help fight Vitamin A deficiency in the developing world, a disease that contributes to the deaths of 8 million young children each year.

To successfully blend the two important strands of modern agriculture - genetic engineering and organic farming - we will need to overcome long animosity between the advocates of organic farming and conventional farmers. We also need to address the repulsion many consumers feel toward the idea of genetic engineering.

To many supporters of organic agriculture, genetically altering crops feels fundamentally wrong or unnatural. They believe that farmers already have enough tools for a productive and healthy farming system.

On an environmental level, many worry that genetically engineered crops will cross-pollinate nearby species to create a new kind of weed that could invade pristine ecosystems and destroy native plant populations. On a personal level, many consumers worry that genetically engineered foods are unsafe or unhealthy to eat.

So far, however, it appears those concerns are driven more by technological anxiety than by science. Virtually all scientific panels that have studied this matter have concluded that pollen drift from genetically engineered varieties currently grown in the United States does not pose a risk of invasiveness. (Although this does not mean that future crop varieties will also be harmless: each new crop variety must be considered on a case-by-case basis.) And in terms of food safety, a report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the process of adding genes to our food by genetic engineering is no riskier than mixing genes by conventional plant breeding.

Today 70 percent of all processed foods in the United States have at least one ingredient from genetically engineered corn, cotton, canola, or soybean. Unlike the well-documented adverse effects of some pesticides, there has not been a single case of illness associated with these crops.

Many opponents of genetic engineering fear that a blizzard of patents on genetically engineered plants and seeds will put control of agriculture in the hands of a few giant companies that produce the seeds.

Yet there are many new and imaginative methods that businesses and universities are now using to ensure that breakthroughs and useful technologies benefit less developed countries and small-acreage farmers. For example, the nonprofit initiative Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture brings together intellectual property from more than 40 universities, public agencies, and nonprofit institutes and makes these technologies available to developing countries around the world for humanitarian purposes.

Pitting genetic engineering and organic farming against each other only prevents the transformative changes needed on our farms. There seems to be a communication gap between organic and conventional farmers and between consumers and scientists. The stakes are high in closing that gap. Without good science and good farming, we cannot even begin to dream about establishing an ecologically balanced, biologically based system of farming and ensuring food security.

It seems nearly inevitable that genetic engineering will play an increasingly important role in agriculture. The question is not whether we should use genetic engineering, but more pressingly, how we should use it - to what responsible purpose. Agriculture needs our collective help and all appropriate tools if we are to feed the growing population in an ecological manner. Consumers have a significant opportunity to influence what kinds of plants are developed and to address the key agricultural challenges. Let us direct attention to where it matters - the need to support the use of seed and farming methods that are good for the environment and for the consumers.

What we can hope for is a future in which farmers use the best organic farming methods to grow the most beneficial engineered crops. Any effective approach in feeding the world in a sustainable manner will require us to embrace more than one great new idea.

Pamela Ronald is a professor of plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, and co-author with her husband, an organic farmer, of "Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food."

� Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

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#15

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:43 pm
Subject: News: Nanoparticles in Food Linked to Health Risk

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http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=do-nanoparticles-in-food-pose-health-risk

March 13, 2008 spacer

Do Nanoparticles in Food Pose a Health Risk?
A new study reveals that nanoparticles are being used in everything from beer to baby drinks despite a lack of safety information

By David Biello

Illustration Omitted:
NANO-SIZED RISK: Nanoparticles, like the one modeled here next to a mouse, are appearing in food and food packaging in a range of products. �ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/SCHWARTZ

Plastic imbued with clay nanoparticles helps make Miller Brewing Co. beer bottles less likely to break as well as improves how long the brew lasts in storage. Simply H's Toddler Health nutritional drink mix includes 300-nanometer (300 billionths of a meter) iron particles. And a wide range of cooking and cleaning items now employ nanosize silver particles to kill microbes.

Yet, the Washington, D.C.-based environmental group Friends of the Earth (FoE) reports that none of the more than 100 food or food-related products it identified that contain nanoparticles-puny particles between 100 and one nanometers-bears a warning label or has undergone safety testing by government agencies.

"Products created using nanotechnology have entered the food chain," says report author Ian Illuminato, FoE's health and environment lobbyist. "Preliminary studies indicate there is a serious risk�. We should know that it's safe before we put it in our food."

The report builds on several studies in recent years that have shown that some nanoparticles may cause harm. A 2005 study in Environmental Science & Technology showed that zinc oxide nanoparticles were toxic to human lung cells in lab tests even at low concentrations. Other studies have shown that tiny silver particles (15 nanometers) killed liver and brain cells from rats. "They are more chemically reactive and more bioactive," Illuminato says, because of their size, which allows them to easily penetrate organs and cells. "Products should be at least labeled so consumers can choose whether they want to be part of this experiment."

FoE says it is probably underestimating the number of foods and food products containing the miniscule particles, because they depended on self-reporting by companies and a list of 600 nanotechnology products compiled by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (a think thank created by Congress in 1968 to foster links between scholars and politicians) as part of its project to study the implications of nanotechnology.

The environmental group charged that the federal government has failed to protect consumers from the potential dangers of nanoparticles and called for a ban on their use in food and food-related products until they have been thoroughly tested to rule out health risks.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently does not specifically require nanoparticles to be proved safe but does require manufacturers to provide tests showing that the food goods employing them-be it beer or baby products-are not harmful. "Industry would bear the burden of demonstrating the safety of the material under its intended conditions of use," says FDA spokesperson Christopher Kelly. "Nanoparticle versions of [FDA-approved] materials may well be new materials" that would trigger new investigations, "and this is considered on a case-by-case basis."

To date, there are few published industry, government or scientific studies on the health and environmental impacts of nanoparticles. Further complicating the matter is the fact that nanoparticles have been in the food supply for years. "Nanoparticles have been in food products for decades, we just never realized they were there," says physicist Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor to the Wilson Center project. "We need to better understand how nano can be benign in foods, but [also] where the dangers are."

For example, it remains unclear whether nanoparticles used in food packaging might migrate or leach into food or beverages. And it is completely unknown what impact a wide variety of these nanoparticles might have on human health.

A wide variety of government agencies, including the FDA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have taken an interest in nanotechnology. The federal government spent more than $1.4 billion on nanotechnology research last year as part of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, a joint effort of 25 federal agencies investigating the promise and potential perils of the emerging technology. Of that, roughly $40 million was devoted to health and safety research (an amount set to nearly double to $76 million in the fiscal year 2009 proposed budget).

The FDA could not provide figures on how much it spends on assessing the safety of nanoparticles.

The EPA received $8.6 million of that $40 million, some $3 million of which went directly to labs to research potential health and environmental risks, according to Jim Willis, director of the EPA's Chemical Control Division.

The EPA and its counterparts in Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia also began in February a three-year study into the effects of 14 nanomaterials-including silver, iron and other elemental nanoparticles as well as carbon nanotubes and nanoballs. "Once we get the results of phase one, we'll look at moving into more in-depth testing on some of those or maybe some other nanomaterials," Willis says, adding that any new chemical submitted for approval that contains 10 percent or more nanosize elements receives special attention from EPA reviewers. "We've seen about 30 or so in the past three years," he says.

In 2006 the EPA began to regulate nanosilver as a pesticide under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. As a result, companies employing such nanosilver particles (as an antimicrobial in a wide array of merchandise from computers to cooking pans) are required to register them as pesticides. Last week, the agency fined computer equipment maker IOGEAR of Irvine, Calif., $200,000 for failing to register the antimicrobial nanosilver in some of its wireless computer keyboards and mouses.

In January the agency also asked companies that use nanoparticles to begin voluntarily providing the results of any health and safety studies they had conducted. Willis says that the EPA will review company response to determine whether voluntary compliance is enough this summer.

Friends of the Earth insists that such reporting should be mandatory, given the potential risks. The lobby also says the definition of what constitutes a nanosize particle should include anything 300 nanometers or smaller. But the Wilson Center's Maynard notes it is the effect rather than the size that is significant.

"It all comes down to the need for more research. We can't fly blind here. We need to know what's going on," Maynard says. "There is no hard evidence that nanomaterials in products on the market will harm humans or the environment, but there is enough evidence to say that we need to reexamine.''

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#14

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:46 pm
Subject: News: Concern Rising Over the Use of Nanotechnology In Foods

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/culture/sweating-the-small-stuff/2008/03/13/1205126082298.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

Sweating the small stuff

Michael Lallo
March 13, 2008 - 2:06PM

IT SEEMS like a Willy Wonka fantasy, but right now food companies are using nanotechnology to create all sorts of bizarre products.

Milk cartons that glow when their contents turn sour. A sinful-tasting, non-fat ice-cream with loads of fibre, protein and nutrients. Programmable soft drinks, even (simply select the flavour and pull the tab).

Such wonders are still being developed, yet engineered nanoparticles are already used across the globe in everything from antibacterial sponges to iron-fortified baby formula.

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter at a minuscule scale. A human hair is 80,000 nanometres wide. One nanoparticle is just 100 nanometres wide.

And scientists are utterly fascinated by them. Many use phrases such as "a new toolbox" and "bigger than the industrial revolution" when talking about their potential. The reason is that nanoparticles often behave in weird and wonderful ways compared to bigger particles of the same substance.

Unfortunately, that could make them risky. Who knows how nano-sized iron particles react in humans? Could they slip past the barriers to the brain that keep larger particles out? Or could they be a godsend to iron-deficient women? What's more, food manufacturers don't have to tell consumers or regulators whether their products contain nanoparticles. Nobody can say for sure which, if any, foods in Australia contain engineered nanomaterials (an Epicure investigation found only one brand - a line of body building supplements made by Advanced Sports Nutrition - claiming to contain nanomaterials). There are few rigorous studies of the effects of nanoparticles in humans and most laboratory research examines particles that are inhaled or injected rather than eaten.

Yet early tests have raised concerns.

In 2004, a toxicologist discovered that largemouth bass exposed to water containing carbon-based nanomaterials known as "buckyballs" suffered brain damage. When a chemist exposed lab-grown human skin and liver cells to a much weaker solution, half the cells died. Meanwhile, Cambridge University researchers claim that carbon nanoparticles can penetrate the nucleus of human cells, potentially damaging DNA.

So what? Producers don't sprinkle carbon dust into our breakfast cereals. Isn't it a stretch to use non-food research to condemn nanofood?

Well, that's the point, critics say. Many substances are more toxic at the nano scale - or even become toxic at the nano scale. Why should nanoparticles in food or food packaging be any different?

It's these concerns that have this week prompted Friends of the Earth to call for a moratorium on all nanomaterials in food until nano-specific testing procedures and laws are developed. Nanomaterials should be regulated as new substances, the group insists, even where the properties of larger-scale counterparts are well-known. And mandatory labelling must be introduced.

These calls echo those of a growing number of scientists and consumer action groups around the world. Britain's Royal Society - the world's oldest scientific organisation - has called for nano-sized particles of all chemicals to be treated as new substances and to undergo a full safety assessment, as well as mandatory labelling. In the United States, the Consumers Union wants all nano-scale food ingredients - even those already approved for use as larger particles - classified as new additives. It, too, has called for mandatory labelling.

Yet human health risks are not the only worry. If it becomes easier and cheaper to transport perishable food, we could see a jump in greenhouse gas emissions. And who knows what effect nanoparticles will have once they enter our landfills and waterways?

Paradoxically, the potential of these more absorbable particles to deliver greater nutrition could result in malnutrition.

"If we have a whole range of nutrient-fortified 'superfoods' with virtually no sugar, salt or fat but the same taste and texture, we run the risk of people eating less fresh food," says Georgia Miller, nanotechnology project co-ordinator for Friends of the Earth Australia. "We don't have a perfect understanding of why food is good for us. To think we can pull it apart and put it back at the nano scale and make it healthier - it's a bit deluded, to be honest."

Miller is even more sceptical about claims that nanofood could feed the starving millions. "Genetically engineered food was promoted as being about feeding hungry kids, but the products it delivered were about increasing the herbicide resistance of plants in the north," she says.

"And the products containing nanomaterials on the market right now all target affluent, diet-conscious consumers and pander to their fears about bacteria."

Miller has compiled a global list of such products. Among the 100 or so slimming teas, body building supplements and anti-bacterial chopping boards, it's hard to find anything an African villager would be grateful for.

But do they really contain nanoparticles? With practically no nano-specific regulations anywhere in the world, Miller relied on manufacturers' marketing claims. Legal experts stress that just because a product claims to contain nanomaterials, that's no guarantee that it does. Given the almost insurmountable time and expense required to scientifically test these claims, no one can be sure.

What makes it even harder is that there is no universally accepted definition of a nanoparticle. Most scientists agree that a nanoparticle has at least one dimension - width, length or depth - smaller than 100 nanometres. Others say that particles up to 300 nanometres are essentially the same. Yet at a recent food convention in Europe, a group of manufacturers claimed a true nanoparticle is one with all three dimensions smaller than 100 nanometres. This rubbery definition could allow manufacturers to use nanoparticles when it suits them but deny their presence when it doesn't.

According to Advanced Sports Nutrition's Australian distributor, customers claim fewer stomach upsets compared to other brands and no adverse effects have been reported.

Of course, we only know this because the company trumpets its nano advantage on its website and product packaging. But given the lack of nano-specific laws, we simply don't know which - if any - other foods in Australia contain nanoparticles.

Epicure contacted several major food manufacturers to ask whether they use this technology. Most insist their products don't contain nanomaterials and they have no plans to introduce them. PepsiCo, which Epicure understands has signed a partnership with an Australian company currently developing nanotechnology food applications, refused to comment.

A spokeswoman for Food Standards Australia New Zealand said the regulator, "is not aware, nor has it been made aware . . . of any commercially sold foods in Australia that have been developed using nanotechnology". (Sports supplements are regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which does not have nano-specific regulations either.) However, the spokeswoman added that, "all food that is sold must be safe".

"All food is safe because it has to be safe?" says Miller. "That's not actually addressing the loopholes."

She's even more critical of a recent speech made by FSANZ's chief executive officer, Steve McCutcheon, to a group of food manufacturers.

"This is one of those cases . . . where the food industry has to help us help it," McCutcheon said. "You know the (nanotechnology). You know what your plans are to introduce it to the food supply. Please take us into your confidence and give us a bit of a heads-up."

"Please," scoffs Miller. "A heads-up? He's basically saying, 'Tell us whether the products are unsafe so we know whether we should ensure their safety'."

A FSANZ spokeswoman defended McCutcheon's comments, claiming they "were designed to encourage the food industry to discuss with FSANZ the use of nanotechnology in foods and to determine if a risk assessment is required to ensure that the food produced is compliant with the code or if an amendment is required," and that "robust regulatory arrangements to ensure the safety of food (are in place)".

For Miller, this only highlights the need for urgent action. Others aren't so sure. "There are some dangers in over-regulation," says Brian Priestly, director of the Australian Centre for Human Health Risk Assessment and chair of the National Health and Medical Research Council Advisory Committee on Nanotechnology and Health. "We could see certain advancements stifled."

And the potential benefits are huge. Scientists have developed a nano-treatment that targets cancer cells in mice but appears to leave surrounding cells unharmed. Others talk of the potential to massively increase the efficiency of solar panels.

"I don't support a moratorium or nano-specific regulations," Priestly says. "When people say we're playing catch-up in terms of the regulation of this technology, there's probably a reasonable basis for that. But I think that governments and regulatory authorities are starting to address those issues. They're responding in an appropriate way."

But perhaps not fast enough. Sam Bruschi, a toxicologist contracted by the Federal Government to review nanotechnology safety issues for the Australian Safety and Compensation Council, insists a moratorium must be imposed immediately.

"One of my major recommendations is that because nanoparticles have inherently different properties to their bulk scale equivalents they should be treated as separate entities in terms of handling and regulation," he says. "My position is quite clear: they should be embargoed until we have the necessary regulations to assess their toxicity - especially in anything you're going to ingest."

The key point, Bruschi insists, is this: no evidence of danger is not the same as proof of safety.

"The fact we're even talking about this at such an early stage of the technology is an indication that humans have got a bit smarter," he says.

"You wouldn't have had this sort of conversation 50 years ago with things like dioxins or pesticides or asbestos. People were just saying, 'Oh, of course they're safe.

"But if you're saying you have no evidence of harm, the next logical question is, 'Have you looked?' ''

www.foe.org.au

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#13

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:00 pm
Subject: Feature: Super Foods Have Super Powers, Some Say

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http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-superfruits10mar10,1,660321.story

Superfruits, super powers?
Fruits from faraway lands have been showing up in a growing number of products. But will a mangosteen a day keep the doctor away?

By Emily Sohn, Special to The Times
March 10, 2008

Want a taste of the tropics? Forget the plane ticket. Go to the grocery store and take your pick: a�a� sorbet, mangosteen iced tea, pomegranate granola, noni smoothies, yogurt-covered dried goji berries and more.

Fruits from faraway lands have been showing up in a growing number of products lately: bottled water, granola, powders, energy bars. With labels that evoke jungles and beaches, most promise to fight cancer, boost immunity and extend your life span, among other benefits.

But will a mangosteen a day keep the doctor away any better than an apple can? And is it worth the extra price you'll pay to get ingredients that have crossed oceans to get to you?

If you believe the companies that market these ingredients, the answer is a loud yes.

"Innumerable people across the world, including health professionals, have reported astonishing and life-changing health improvements as a result of using Noni," claims the Hilo, Hawaii-based Healing Noni company, which markets juice from the fruit of Morinda citrifolia, an Asian shrub.

Or as the San Clemente-based, a�a�-focused Sambazon company puts it: "Say hello to a�a�, the fruit that's making believers of world-class athletes and health-conscious people everywhere. Grown in the Amazon rain forest, a�a� is truly a gift from Mother Nature."

Nutrition researchers and dietitians aren't so sure. So far, they say, there are no gold-standard-type studies to support the idea that exotic superfruits carry special health benefits. Eating a variety of fresh, colorful produce, they add, does far more good than obsessing over whatever the superfruit of the moment happens to be.

And some worry that consumers are too quick to believe in whatever's new and different.

"I hate that term 'superfruit,' like your [fruit] is somehow wearing the cape," says Jeffrey Blumberg, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Antioxidants Research Laboratory at Tufts University in Boston. "There's no evidence that one type of fruit is better for you than any other variety. They're all good."

A handful of complaints in recent years filed by consumer advocacy groups have targeted the vague and overstated claims made by the dietary supplement industry, some of which have sparked official grievances and lawsuits. Pom Wonderful gained angry attention from the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus in 2005 for advertising that its juice could reduce arterial plaques by as much as 30%, a claim based on a small and limited pilot study.

Exotic superfruit products are the latest addition to the booming popularity of "superfoods," a marketing category (as opposed to a scientific one) that includes antioxidant-rich foods and beverages, such as red wine, dark chocolate, tea and blueberries. And for a growing number of Americans, the lure of the exotic is proving too tempting to resist.

In 2007, sales of goji berry-enhanced products were up nearly 75% from 2006 at natural-food supermarkets, according to SPINS, a natural-products market research firm based in Schaumburg, Ill. Sales of a�a� (pronounced ah-SIGH-ee) products grew by more than 50% at natural-food supermarkets.

And pomegranate-related sales rose more than 60% -- perhaps no wonder, given the recent sharp growth in pomegranate offerings. A startling 350 new pomegranate beverages were introduced in 2006 alone, according to a spokeswoman at the Los Angeles-based Pom Wonderful company. (Numbers for 2007 aren't yet available.)

Superfruit companies are funneling millions of dollars into research aimed at proving that yes, the secret to longevity is a refreshingly exotic sip away. And the scientists they fund, based at major research institutions, are turning up evidence to support the health benefits of their power foods -- showing, for example, that mushed-up a�a� can pummel free radicals in test tubes, and that goji berry extracts slow the growth of human cancer cells in Petri dishes.

It is only a matter of time, the companies say, before Western science catches up to a long history of traditional medicinal use in remote rain forests and mountain villages.

It's about antioxidants

Most superfoods get their "super" label from antioxidants, molecules that fight free radicals. These cell-damaging chemicals emerge from nearly everything our bodies do that involves oxygen, including digesting and breathing.

Our cells make some antioxidant defenses on their own, but plants make far more. The theory is that eating antioxidant-rich plants gives us extra help in battling our own free radical demons.

There are many thousands of plant-based antioxidants, called phytochemicals, and these compounds appear in various combinations in different types of produce. Blueberries, red wine and a�a�, for example, are high in anthocyanins. Tea has lots of catechins. Mangosteens are rich in xanthones. Dark chocolate contains flavonoids.

Plenty of studies now show that eating a variety of fruits and vegetables can help reduce the risk of chronic disease and might even help us live longer. So, companies that market superfruits often tout the high antioxidant concentrations of their star ingredients. Their findings are sometimes at odds with each other.

In several studies published or presented at meetings, for example, Pom Wonderful (which has poured $23 million into researching the 'Wonderful' variety of pomegranates that the company grows on orchards in Central California's San Joaquin Valley), found that its 100% pomegranate juice had more antioxidant activity than more than a dozen other beverages, including blueberry, grape, a�a� and orange juices. The next nearest competitor, red wine, had 17% fewer polyphenol antioxidants and neutralized 54 fewer free radicals than the juice did.

However, the a�a�-focused Sambazon company claims on its website that a�a� has 50% more antioxidants than pomegranates and 30 times as many antioxidants as red wine.

One reason for the confusion is that there's a lot of slop in tests for antioxidants.

Most of these tests involve grinding up a fruit, putting it in a test tube and seeing how many free radicals it disables. One such test spits out something called an ORAC score. According to recent USDA data, a small Red Delicious apple has 6,370 ORAC points. Half a cup of blueberries (74 grams) weighs in at 4,848. And a medium baked sweet potato has 2,411.

But basing health claims on ORAC-like tests is misleading, Blumberg says. For one thing, there is no official recommendation for how many ORAC "points" people need. For another, these tests are notoriously touchy: Different labs conducting the same test can produce widely different numbers. Results depend on which parts of the fruit you use. (An apple's ORAC score will be higher with the peel than without it, for example). Antioxidant levels can vary a lot in fruit, depending on how much water it contains, how it's been harvested and handled, and how much time has elapsed since it was picked.

And then, Blumberg says, "There is no established relationship between ORAC values and any health outcome. None." The same, he says, goes for other ORAC-like tests that have different acronyms, and measure for different free radicals.

In any case, he says, watching what a pulverized fruit does in a test tube doesn't say anything about what will happen in the human body. It is possible for one fruit to contain more antioxidant compounds than another, for example, but for antioxidants in the second fruit to be more easily absorbed by the gut.

'Complicated stuff'

Besides quantity, companies often point out that certain phytochemicals are found in their fruits and nowhere else. The implication is that these compounds are better than the phytochemicals in other fruits. But that's a problem, too, says Will McClatchey, a botanist at the University of Hawaii in Manoa.

"The industry is continually trying to make this out to be a very simple system," McClatchey says. "Having any one antioxidant is not the answer. This is very complicated stuff."

Most exotic superfruits play important roles in traditional cultures. A�a�, for one, grows only on palm trees in the Brazilian Amazon, where people have long used it to treat fevers, swollen lymph glands and skin ulcers, says Jeremy Appleton, a naturopathic doctor in Portland, Ore., who has written a book on the fruit.

Goji berries are used by healers in China and Tibet to treat inflammation and improve eyesight, circulation and sperm production. And pomegranates, which originally come from Iran and India, were prescribed by ancient Greek doctors to treat gastrointestinal distress.

Life-saving foods?

In his book, "101 Foods That Could Save Your Life," registered dietitian David Grotto cites a 2006 test-tube study in which University of Florida researchers found that antioxidants extracted from a�a� berries reduced growth and encouraged death of human leukemia cells. Similar cancer cell studies, with similar findings, have been reported for extracts of other exotic fruits, such as goji berries and pomegranates.

In other studies, goji berry extracts have reduced blood glucose, total cholesterol and triglyceride levels (all signs of heart health) in rabbits, and eating the fruit improved insulin sensitivity in diabetic rats.

But even Grotto warns against reading too much into results from Petri dishes and animals. And certainly, he says, "The data are too early to say one fruit is superior over another."

Increasingly, purveyors of exotic superfruits are attempting to make the leap from lab dish to real life.

In a study funded by the Orem, Utah-based company Tahitian Noni International and conducted by researchers from the University of Illinois College of Medicine, 38 heavy smokers drank half a cup of the company's noni juice every day and 30 other smokers drank a placebo juice.

After one month, the researchers found lower levels of two types of free radicals in the blood of the noni-drinkers compared with those of the placebo juice-drinkers. The study was presented at a meeting of the Society for Free Radical Research International in 2002.

Members of the same research group published evidence last year in the journal Circulation that drinking noni juice leads to lower levels of total cholesterol and triglycerides in smokers' blood; both are risk factors for heart disease. The studies focused on smokers because smoking greatly increases the concentration of free radicals in the blood, giving the researchers something tangible to measure, says Brett West, director of research for the company. Similar studies are now underway with nonsmokers.

Tahitian Noni-funded studies have also found a boost in endurance for both mice and treadmill-running athletes after regular consumption of noni juice, though some of that work has yet to be published, West says. And some new work, he adds, suggests that the fruit can stimulate the immune system.

Published human studies sponsored by Pom Wonderful have linked the company's juice with a variety of health benefits, including increased blood flow, reduced markers of heart disease, clearer arteries, and maybe even reduced symptoms of erectile dysfunction.

Cancer is another target. In a two-year study of 46 men who had been treated for prostate cancer, UCLA researchers found evidence that drinking one cup of pomegranate juice daily slowed the increase in levels of prostate-specific antigen. Raised PSA levels are a risk factor for recurrence. The study, published in 2006, lacked a placebo group, so some experts have questioned its significance. A larger, more controlled study is now underway, says Mark Dreher, a biochemist and chief scientist at Pom Wonderful.

Better studies needed

Despite such suggestive studies, many experts remain unconvinced of the clout of superfruits because the studies are mostly small, short-term, aren't conducted on humans, lack adequate control groups, are funded by industry -- or all of the above.

They say they would like to see data from big population studies that follow people for decades and correlate what they eat with how healthy they are -- or even better, studies that objectively compare a large group of people that get the juice with a large group that doesn't.

For now, most independent experts say that exotic produce can add to the recommended variety of fruits and vegetables that most of us are lacking in our diets anyway, but only if you can handle the price -- and the taste.

Pomegranate juice is famously tart. Goji berries have been compared to stale raisins. And noni (considered a weed throughout Hawaii, McClatchey says) tickles the palate with notes of blue cheese.

"If you're paying extra, and you don't like the stuff, save your money," says Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale Griffin Prevention Research Center in New Haven, Conn. "Buy orange juice instead."

Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times

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#12

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:19 am
Subject: News: Group Issues Warning Report Over Rise of Nanomaterials In Foods

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Green group issues warning over nanotechnology in food

by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) March 11, 2008

The green group Friends of the Earth on Tuesday said legal loopholes in Europe bred worries about the impact of nanoscale compounds, used in the food industry, on health and the environment.

In a report presented to the press, Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) said it had identified "at least" 104 food or food-related products on sale in the EU that contained manufactured nanomaterials or were produced using nanotechnology and for which there was insufficient scrutiny under health and safety laws.

Internationally, several hundred nano-food products were likely to be on sale, it said.

Nanotechnology entails using materials on the scale of a nanometre, or a billionth of a metre.

Nanoparticles are being closely studied in fundamental research because of their potential in science and medicine -- for instance as new drugs for cancer.

But they are increasingly leaving the lab and entering the public domain, raising unresolved questions as to whether these novel materials are being vetted for safety, for workers in contact with them and people who use or consume them, FoEE said.

The group's nano-list included nutritional supplements, cling wrap and containers, antibacterial kitchenware, processed meats and chocolate drink.

"Europeans should not be exposed to potentially toxic materials in their food and food packaging until proper regulations are in place to ensure their safety," said Helen Holder, coordinator of the organisation's food and farming campaign.

"Policymakers must stop claiming that existing regulatory frameworks are adequate to deal with the emerging science of nanotechnology and address the gaps in current food safety legislation as soon as possible."

French scientists, speaking at a press conference in Paris last month, said the principal concerns over nanoparticles were about any effects on the lung, through inhalation, and of toxicity in the blood -- if for instance, sunscreen nanoparticles entered an open wound in the skin.

* * *

http://www.foeeurope.org/press/2008/Mar11_Nano_food_and_agriculture_report.html

Untested, unlabelled and potentially unsafe: Nano foods and products on supermarket shelves in Europe

Brussels (Belgium), 11 March - Untested and potentially hazardous manufactured nanomaterials can be found in food, food packaging and other products on supermarket shelves in the European Union, according to a new report released today by Friends of the Earth Europe.

'Out of the laboratory and on to our plates: Nanotechnology in food and agriculture' [1] reveals that despite concerns about the toxicity risks of nanomaterials, consumers are unknowingly ingesting them because regulators are struggling to keep pace with their rapidly expanding use.

Nanotechnology - the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules - is now used in the manufacture of products such as nutritional supplements, cling wrap and containers, antibacterial kitchenware, processed meats, chocolate drinks, baby food and chemicals used in agriculture. At least 104 food and agricultural products containing manufactured nanomaterials, or produced using nanotechnology, are currently on sale worldwide. Furthermore, industry analysts also estimate that there are several hundred nano food products on the international market.

Friends of the Earth's investigation reveals that in the EU, and elsewhere in the world, laws are ill-equipped to deal with the unique properties of nanomaterials [2].

The group is calling on European policy-makers to adopt comprehensive and precautionary legislation to manage the risks caused by the use of nanotechnology and is recommending the introduction of policies supporting sustainable food and farming in order to improve public and environmental health.

Helen Holder, coordinator of the Food and Farming campaign at Friends of the Earth Europe said: "Europeans should not be exposed to potentially toxic materials in their food and food packaging until proper regulations are in place to ensure their safety. Policy-makers must stop claiming that existing regulatory frameworks are adequate to deal with the emerging science of nanotechnology and address the gaps in current food safety legislation as soon as possible."

"In the absence of proper safety regulations or mandatory labelling, consumers are being left in the dark about the products they are consuming and are unknowingly putting their health and the environment at risk," she added.

Out of the laboratory and on to our plates: Nanotechnology in food and agriculture was released internationally today in Europe, the USA and Australia.

***
For more information please contact:

Helen Holder, Coordinator of the Food and Farming campaign at Friends of the Earth Europe, Tel: +32 2 542 0182, helen.holder@...

Patricia Cameron, Chemicals Policy and Nanotechnology Campaigner at BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany), Tel: + 49 30 275 86 426, patricia.cameron@...

Hannah Charley, Assistant Communications Officer at Friends of the Earth Europe Tel: +32 2 542 6109, Mob: +32 485 930 515, hannah.charley@...

***

NOTES:

[1] The full report, 'Out of the laboratory and on to our plates: Nanotechnology in food and agriculture', is available online: http://www.foeeurope.org/activities/nanotechnology/Documents/Nano_food_report.pdf

[2] Friends of the Earth has analysed the following pieces of EU legislation: Food Law Regulation 178/2002, Novel Foods Regulation 258/97, Food Additive Use Directive 89/107, Food Packaging Regulation (EC 1935/2004) as well as the Pesticides and Biocides laws (Directive 91/414, Council Directive 79/117, Regulation 396/2005 and Directive 98/8/EC, Directive 76/769/EEC) and have found them inadequate to manage the new risks associated with nanofoods. For further information see: http://www.foeeurope.org/activities/nanotechnology/Documents/Nano_food_report.pdf

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#11

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:17 am
Subject: News: High Energy Organic Foods Catch On

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The New Super Foods
Higher Energy Organics Hit the Shelves

By Julia Hirsch

Goji berries
We are a fast-paced nation of convenience, always searching for a quick energy boost through a cup of coffee, energy bar or fast-acting energy drink. And the latest trend is all-natural "super-foods." Zach Adelman, vice-president of Nativas Naturals, says the new world of high-energy organics is experiencing an "extreme" growth spurt.

The "Happy Berry"

Adelman's company has developed a new line of snack mixes called "Trail Power," which prominently feature the antioxidant-rich Goji berry, which has its origins in traditional Chinese medicine. The tiny, dried berries are sweet with a zing, like a cross between a cranberry and a cherry. A good source of protein and fiber, the berry is also credited with curbing appetite and boosting energy and well-being, earning the nickname, "the happy berry."

"It's the berry of the month," says David Muckle, manager and buyer for natural foods market It's Only Natural. "It wouldn't surprise me if you started seeing Goji berries in your cereal, like flax." The berry is most convenient in its dried form, where it can be combined in a trail mix or stirred in yogurt or oatmeal. And Nativas Naturals' latest development is freeze-dried Goji powder, which can be mixed in water or added to smoothies.

Adelman stresses the importance of consumer education. "I only work with the whole berry that is certified organic," Adelman says, "That's where all the nutrients are present."

Challenging Coffee

Yerba mate (pronounced mott-ee), a South American "health tonic," is a new alternative to the morning cup of coffee or afternoon energy drink. Yerba mate drinks "give the kick without the crash," says David Karr, vice president of Guayaki, a fair trade company. Mate enthusiasts say that the tea's caffeine is balanced by the plant's natural stimulants and nutritional content. In addition to boosting energy, yerba mate is purported to strengthen the immune system, relieve allergies and aid in weight control and elimination. The brewed leaves contain theobromine (also found in cocoa), the alkaloid responsible for mood elevation.

"The current research on the potential benefits of mate is very promising," says Yale-New Haven Hospital nutritionist Lisa Tartamella Kimmel. "But further research is still warranted to better identify the components that are believed to be therapeutic agents." Many studies have tentatively linked yerba mate consumption with cancer prevention. Versions of brewed mate in the U.S. include teas, lattes, coffee blends and energy drinks. The drink has an earthy flavor. Although the plain tea may be an acquired taste, companies like Guayaki make flavored versions of unsweetened tea, sweet latte mix and energy drinks with a hint of cane juice to suit the American palate.

The beverages are taking hold. Karr reports that his products are now sold at Safeway, Wegmans and 7-11 and brewed at coffee chains across the West Coast. The East Coast isn't far behind, offering yerba mate products in most natural foods stores and Earth-conscious coffee shops.

As with many dietary supplements, consumers should be cautious. Mate does contain caffeine, which is a known stimulant, but other medical claims are largely speculative and are not government regulated. "Al-ways talk with your doctor or health-care provider before taking any of these supplements," says Kimmel, "Just because something is natural doesn't mean that it won't interact with your medication."

Hemp: No Longer Taboo

Hemp, a once-controversial fiber used to make clothing, is making its way into the market as a new source of protein in the form of powders, shelled seeds, milk, butter and oil. With a pleasant, nutty flavor, hemp products are easily integrated into the American diet. Muckle says people purchase hemp as "an alternative to soy or dairy protein."

Hemp food products contain undetectable levels of THC (the mind-altering chemical found in marijuana), and have no hallucinogenic effects. Hemp does not contain high levels of all nine essential amino acids, but the plant includes several vital proteins that aid in early development, proper enzyme formation and metabolism for exercising muscle. Esther Blum, registered dietician and certified holistic nutritionist, suggests that hemp "can be part of a diet that contains fish and lean proteins. I don't rely on plant proteins as a full energy source because they are not complete."

And with its high protein content (34.6 percent protein, comparable to soy) hemp seed is a source of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. These "good fats," touted for promoting cardiovascular health, account for nearly half of the hemp seed. Studies have shown that the proper balance of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids may also delay or reduce the effects of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. And hemp seed contains the "super omega-6" gamma linolenic acid, which has been found to be proactive in treating some cancers.

"Omega-3s are definitely useful in preventing cardiovascular disease, depression, neurological disease, skin problems, eczema, acne and psoriasis, and it's a natural anit-inflammatory that can be useful in treating rheumatoid arthritis," says Blum. "But to get omega-3 from a protein plant source is far less efficient than eating a piece of fish or fish oils."

To maximize nutritional benefit, Blum recommends hemp seeds, due to the high fiber content. "You can grind the seeds in a coffee grinder just like flax seed," Blum says, "and then mix the powder into "yogurt, oatmeal or smoothies."

When it comes to energy and nutrition, it seems that convenience is key. These new super foods are gaining attention not only for their nutritional content, but also for the smooth integration into our grab-and-go lifestyle

CONTACTS

Yerba Mate Association of the Americas

Navitas Naturals
Phone: (888)645-4282

Manitoba Harvest
Phone: (800)665-4367

International Information on Dietary Supplements

Guayaki
Phone: (888) GUAYAKI

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#10

From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:24 pm
Subject: News: Monsanto Mounts Offensive In Support of Bovine Growth Hormone In Milk

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Fighting on a Battlefield the Size of a Milk Label

Illustration Omitted:
Milk at the Rutter's plant in Thomasville, Pa., is labeled as having "no artificial growth hormone." Steve Ruark for The New York Times

By ANDREW MARTIN
Published: March 9, 2008

IT may be the last stand of Posilac.

Illustration Omitted:
Posilac is the brand name of a Monsanto synthetic hormone used to increase milk production in cows. Kevin P. Casey for The New York Times

A new advocacy group closely tied to Monsanto has started a counteroffensive to stop the proliferation of milk that comes from cows that aren't treated with synthetic bovine growth hormone.

The group, called American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology, or Afact, says it is a grass-roots organization that came together to defend members' right to use recombinant bovine somatotropin, also known as rBST or rBGH, an artificial hormone that stimulates milk production. It is sold by Monsanto under the brand name Posilac.

Dairy farmers are indeed part of the organization. But Afact was organized in part by Monsanto and a Colorado consultant who lists Monsanto as a client.

Afact has also received help from Osborn & Barr, a marketing firm whose founders include a former Monsanto executive. The firm received a contract in 2006 to help with the Posilac campaign.

Lori Hoag, a spokeswoman for the dairy unit of Monsanto, said her company did provide financial support to Afact. But Ms. Hoag asserted that the group is led by farmers, not Monsanto.

"They make all the governing decisions for their organization," she said. "Monsanto has nothing to do with that."

Afact has come together as a growing number of consumers are choosing milk that comes from cows that are not treated with the artificial growth hormone. Even though the Food and Drug Administration has declared the synthetic hormone safe, many other countries have refused to approve it, and there is lingering concern among many consumers about its impact on health and the welfare of cows.

The marketplace has responded, and now everyone from Whole Foods Market to Wal-Mart Stores sells milk that is labeled as coming from cows not treated with the hormone. Some dairy industry veterans say it's only a matter of time before nearly all of the milk supply comes from cows that weren't treated with Posilac. According to Monsanto, about a third of the dairy cows in the United States are in herds where Posilac is used.

And the trend might not stop with milk. Kraft is planning to sell cheese labeled as having come from untreated cows.

But consumer demand for more natural products has conflicted with some dairy farmers' desire to use the artificial hormone to bolster production and bottom lines, and it has certainly interfered with Monsanto's business plan for Posilac.

Cows typically produce an extra gallon a day when they are treated with Posilac. That can translate into serious money for dairy farmers at a time when prices are near record highs.

So Afact has embarked on a counteroffensive that includes meeting with retailers and pushing efforts by state legislators and state agriculture commissioners to pass laws to ban or restrict labels that indicate milk comes from untreated cows.

Last fall in Pennsylvania, Dennis Wolff, the agriculture secretary, tried to ban milk that was labeled as free of the synthetic hormone because, he said, consumers were confused. Mr. Wolff's office acknowledged that it had no consumer research to back up his claim, and he eventually had to scale back his plans when consumer groups and Gov. Edward G. Rendell balked.

Instead, the state tightened up the language on milk labels to make sure it was more accurate.

But Posilac's supporters haven't given up.

In recent months, labeling changes have been floated in New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Utah, Missouri and Vermont, according to Michael Hansen, who has tracked the issue as a senior scientist for Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.

A Consumer Reports survey last summer found that 88 percent of consumers believed that milk from cows not treated with synthetic hormones should be allowed to be labeled as such.

Afact says it believes that such "absence" labels can be misleading and imply that milk from cows treated with hormones is inferior. In fact, the F.D.A. maintains that there is no significant difference between milk from cows that are treated and from those that are not.

Afact also argues that some consumers are paying a premium for milk that doesn't include artificial hormones.

"We know it's a technology that makes us money and is safe for our cows," said Carrol Campbell, a Kansas dairy farmer who is co-chairman of Afact. Mr. Campbell said he became involved in the issue because his cooperative called him and asked him to stop using Posilac; instead, he found a new cooperative.

Ms. Hoag of Monsanto said her company was not actively pushing changes in milk labeling laws.

Advocates for Posilac, including Monsanto, have been complaining for years about milk labeled as free of artificial bovine growth hormone. In September 2006, Kevin Holloway, president of the Monsanto dairy unit, gave a speech in which he said the "fundamental issue" was dairy farmers' ability to choose the best technology. "Dairy farmer choice to use a variety of F.D.A.-approved technologies is at risk," he said.

That same year, the Monsanto dairy unit hired Osborn & Barr to handle, among other things, the Posilac brand, according to an article in the St. Louis Business Journal.

In 2007, Monsanto and several dairy organizations met by phone to "lay the groundwork" for a grass-roots organization, according to an online dairy industry newsletter.

Afact was created in the fall of 2007. In addition to receiving money from Monsanto, Afact has received help with its Web site from Osborn & Barr, said Monty G. Miller, a Colorado consultant who was hired to organize the group.

Afact believes that the push for milk from untreated cows is being driven by advocates like Consumers Union and PETA, "who make a profit, living and business by striking fear in citizens," Mr. Miller said in an e-mail message.

The group also believes it will be hard for food retailers to "move away from the rBST-free stance without legislation and government policy," according to an Afact presentation to dairy farmers in January.

In the presentation, Afact also listed "integrity," "honesty" and "transparent" as "words we wish to embody."

They could start by being more straightforward about who is behind Afact.

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From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:17 pm
Subject: News: Big Business Moves In On Farmers Markets, to Capture Produce

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-market9mar09,1,4669491.story

A food fight over the cream of the crop
Santa Monica's Wednesday market began as a place for farmers to sell directly to home cooks. Then the top chefs came to buy -- until big distributors swarmed in, leaving them empty-handed.

Illustration Omitted:
Chef Josiah Citrin, far left, chef at Melisse, talks with Laura Avery, manager of the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, center, white short hair with Quinn Hatfield, far right, chef at Hatfield's. Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

By Russ Parsons, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 9, 2008

Josiah Citrin was livid. As chef-owner at Santa Monica's M�lisse -- one of only three Michelin two-star restaurants in Southern California -- Citrin is used to getting what he wants, particularly when it comes to sweet, fresh English peas. But Wednesday morning, the McGrath Family Farms stand at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market was sold out, and Citrin was on the warpath.

It wasn't a matter of the peas not being there that made him angry; he could see boxes of them behind the table. But they had all been ordered in advance -- mainly by produce companies that would sell them to restaurants and markets across the country.

"The chefs who actually come to the market every week need to be supported," Citrin fumed to anyone who would listen -- and quickly a who's who of the L.A. food scene gathered around: Jason and Miho Travi of Culver City's Fraiche, considered by many the best new restaurant in Southern California; Donato Poto of seafood temple Providence, Vicki Fan and Kazuto Matsusaka of trendy Beacon, Mark Peel of landmark Campanile.

Quinn Hatfield, chef-owner at the tiny, highly regarded Hatfield's on Beverly Boulevard, joined in.

"This is my last day here," he said. "I don't want to compete with the produce companies. Look at all of these trucks. This isn't a farmers market anymore; it's some kind of boutique wholesale operation."

It may seem like a tempest in a pea pod, but it's one more sign that the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers' Market, one of the most cherished food institutions in Southern California, is undergoing profound change.

Though ordinary shoppers can still rub elbows with famous chefs while buying just-picked fruits and vegetables from folksy farmers, there is no denying that the market has also become an important economic engine.

Those same fruits and vegetables you buy for your family might also wind up on tables at fancy restaurants in Las Vegas and New York, flown out by major produce companies such as LA Specialty and FreshPoint Consolidation, a subsidiary of restaurant supply giant Sysco Corp.

Inspired by the chefs, home cooks have adopted many of the ingredients themselves, and now former rarities such as Meyer lemons, blood oranges and fingerling potatoes can be found at high-end supermarkets across the country, many of them bought at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market by specialty produce distributors Frieda's and Melissa's.

For the small farmers who grow those items, the market is an economic lifesaver -- a place where they can earn more than commodity prices for growing ingredients that can't be found elsewhere or that taste better than what the big farmers grow.

Though no hard figures are kept, some growers say that as much as half of what they sell at the market is bought by produce companies.

As a result, what had long been a kind of informal meeting place for many of Southern California's foodies and chefs is no longer quite so clubby. What chefs once regarded as a combination of culinary laboratory and kaffeeklatsch -- a place to find new ingredients and ideas and swap gossip, sometimes seemingly in equal proportions -- is more and more a place for big business.

"It used to be that everyone thought how great it was to be out there picking things for ourselves; it was so exciting," said Matt Molina of the white-hot Mozza restaurants, co-owned by star chefs Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton. "Then all of a sudden it began to become a business, a big-money business. Now farmers are sometimes catering to the big people, so local restaurants are sometimes getting left behind.

"I can understand why Quinn [Hatfield] gets upset. It's turned into a very tricky market. It's not just this little mom and pop thing anymore, the way it was back 20 years ago."

Farmers markets started out in the late 1970s as a way to help small farmers and bring fresh produce to home cooks. Chefs, drawn by just-picked freshness and often hard-to-find ingredients, enthusiastically adopted them.

And gradually the markets became something more than just a place to shop. Cooking in a restaurant, even a very fine one, can be isolating -- both creatively and socially. Night after night, chefs churn out the same menu items, and the only way they can meet other professionals is by driving across town for a late drink after closing.

Surrounded by ingredients at farmers markets, chefs found that they could let their imaginations roam free of the constraints of the menu. Many items that we now regard as fine dining staples got their start this way. What could you do with the green garlic some farmers brought in? Or all of those fava beans? Or stinging nettles, for goodness' sake?

At the same time, chefs could connect with their colleagues, catch up on family news or compare linen services and valet parking companies.

Now they say that the increasing commercialism of farmers markets is threatening that. Today, along with shoppers and chefs, there are representatives of big commercial produce distributors walking the market, often trailed by workers with truck dollies to help tote away purchases.

Chefs, including Citrin and Hatfield, accuse corporate buyers of hogging the best produce, keeping it out of the hands of hardworking, hands-on cooks like themselves.

But Peel, who has been shopping at the Wednesday market most weeks since opening Campanile in 1989, points out that it wasn't so long ago that the same complaint was being leveled by shoppers against him and other chefs.

"Farmers markets started as a way for farmers to sell directly to home cooks, then chefs started going there and home cooks would moan about the chefs coming in early and scooping up everything good," he said. "I'm a chef, and I'd kind of roll my eyes and say, 'Get out of bed earlier.' Now the same thing is happening to us."

The average shopper probably hasn't noticed much of a difference. If you want to buy only a pound or two of English peas, they're still there; it's the 10-pound purchase that gets tricky. And as far as the real treasures are concerned, well, those have been out of reach for years. To get your hands on James Birch's fragrant Persian mulberries or Jerry Rutiz's candied wild strawberries, your best chance is befriending one of the chefs who have long claimed almost all of them.

Certainly, there's nothing preventing Citrin and Hatfield from phoning in their orders in advance, as do other chefs and produce companies. But Hatfield says the spontaneity of choosing what's best at the farmers market and letting it inspire his menu is one of the great things about being a chef.

"To me, that's what going to the farmers market is all about," Hatfield said. "If I'm going to have to pre-order things in order to be sure I get them, I might as well just stay in bed an extra of couple hours every Wednesday morning."

Chris Kidder of Brentwood's Literati II shops the market regularly, but he has started to pre-order more of the things he needs.

"But I am still going to go there to get other things I might not know about or to find the very best products," Kidder said.

On the other side of the argument are farmers like Phil McGrath, he of the hotly sought sweet peas.

"Look, I don't want to make anybody mad, but is it so hard to pick up the phone?" he asked plaintively. "Can't they call us up the day before and say, 'Hey are you coming down tomorrow? Could you bring some peas?' "

The issue goes well beyond mere convenience. Farming is a business that runs on highly perishable stock, and when something is harvested it must be sold quickly, particularly when it's as fragile as English peas, which start to turn from sweet to starchy within hours of being picked. Peas that don't get sold are good only for compost.

"Someone calls in an order, and that's a sale that's already made and paid for as far as I'm concerned," McGrath explained. "When I bring something to the market and put it out on the table, that's a gamble. I don't know whether I'll sell those or not."

One of the most constant of the commercial shoppers at the Wednesday market is Karen Beverlin of FreshPoint. Her company ships produce from the Santa Monica Farmers' Market all over the country, including to restaurants in Las Vegas and New York. But Beverlin said 90% of its sales are in Southern California, to customers as varied as Providence restaurant and the USC dining hall.

"I think we're helping the family farmers who come to the market, and isn't that what it's all about?" she said. "I don't haggle about prices with the farmers I buy from. . . . In most cases, I'm paying exactly the same prices for most of what I buy as you would if you just walked up to the table.

"We do want the farmers markets to remain vibrant, and I think we're helping that on multiple levels: We're helping them economically, we're encouraging a vibrant community and we're giving chefs access to high-quality, local, seasonal produce, much of it sustainably grown, even if they can't come to the farmers market every week. How can that be bad?"

Caught in the middle is Santa Monica market manager Laura Avery, who has run the operation since 1982, just a year after it opened.

"There is certainly a wide range of opinions among farmers, among chefs and among the produce companies," she said. "They're all trying to get more small-farm produce into restaurants, which is great. But we want to be sure to keep stuff on the tables for regular customers and smaller restaurants who come every week."

One idea Avery has been considering is separating the wholesale activity from the main market -- allowing it either before the 9 a.m. opening or at a different location.

"We're all of us interested in helping the farmers, but we need to separate the two," Avery said. "That's what has to happen in a very nice, positive kind of way. Certainly, we're victims of too much good stuff, of too many happy customers. But I think we can make it work."

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From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:16 pm
Subject: News: Global Grain Prices Rise, As Supply Becomes Constrained

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The Food Chain
A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can't Fill

Illustration Omitted:
On his North Dakota farm, Dennis Miller has seen wheat prices steadily climb. Dan Koeck for The New York Times

By DAVID STREITFELD
Published: March 9, 2008

LAWTON, N.D. - Whatever Dennis Miller decides to plant this year on his 2,760-acre farm, the world needs. Wheat prices have doubled in the last six months. Corn is on a tear. Barley, sunflower seeds, canola and soybeans are all up sharply.

Illustration Omitted:
The cost of bread in Nigeria soared in the last year as demand for wheat outstripped supply. Benedicte Kurzen for The New York Times

"For once, there's great reason to be optimistic," Mr. Miller said.

But the prices that have renewed Mr. Miller's faith in farming are causing pain far and wide. A tailor in Lagos, Nigeria, named Abel Ojuku said recently that he had been forced to cut back on the bread he and his family love.

"If you wanted to buy three loaves, now you buy one," Mr. Ojuku said.

Everywhere, the cost of food is rising sharply. Whether the world is in for a long period of continued increases has become one of the most urgent issues in economics.

Many factors are contributing to the rise, but the biggest is runaway demand. In recent years, the world's developing countries have been growing about 7 percent a year, an unusually rapid rate by historical standards.

The high growth rate means hundreds of millions of people are, for the first time, getting access to the basics of life, including a better diet. That jump in demand is helping to drive up the prices of agricultural commodities.

Farmers the world over are producing flat-out. American agricultural exports are expected to increase 23 percent this year to $101 billion, a record. The world's grain stockpiles have fallen to the lowest levels in decades.

"Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe," said Daniel W. Basse of the AgResource Company, a Chicago consultancy. "But if they do, we're going to need another two or three globes to grow it all."

In contrast to a run-up in the 1990s, investors this time are betting - as they buy and sell contracts for future delivery of food commodities - that scarcity and high prices will last for years.

If that comes to pass, it is likely to present big problems in managing the American economy. Rising food prices in the United States are already helping to fuel inflation reminiscent of the 1970s.

And the increases could become an even bigger problem overseas. The increases that have already occurred are depriving poor people of food, setting off social unrest and even spurring riots in some countries.

In the long run, the food supply could grow. More land may be pulled into production, and outdated farming methods in some countries may be upgraded. Moreover, rising prices could force more people to cut back. The big question is whether such changes will be enough to bring supply and demand into better balance.

"People are trying to figure out, is this a new era?" said Joseph Glauber, chief economist for the United States Department of Agriculture. "Are prices going to be high forever?"

Competition for Acres

At a moment when much of the country is contemplating recession, farmers are flourishing. The Agriculture Department forecasts that farm income this year will be 50 percent greater than the average of the last 10 years. The flood of money into American agriculture is leading to rising land values and a renewed sense of optimism in rural America.

"All of a sudden farmers are more in control, which is a weird position for them," said Brian Sorenson of the Northern Crops Institute in Fargo, N.D. "Everyone's knocking at their door, saying, 'Grow this, grow that.' "

Mr. Miller's family has worked the Great Plains for more than a century. One afternoon early last month, he turned on the computer in his combination office and laundry room to see what commodity prices were up to.

"Oh, my goodness, look at that," Mr. Miller said. Barley was $6.40 a bushel, approaching a price that would tempt him to plant more. Soybeans were $12.79 a bushel, up from $8.50 in August.

The frozen earth outside was only a few weeks from coming to life, but Mr. Miller was happily uncertain about what to plant. Last year, the decision was easy for Mr. Miller and everyone else: prices of corn were high because of new government mandates for production of ethanol, a motor fuel. This year, so many crops look like good bets, and there is so little land on which to plant them.

"I'm debating between spring wheat, durum wheat, canola, malting barley, confection sunflowers, oil sunflowers, soybeans, flax and corn," Mr. Miller said.

The biggest blemish on this winter of joy is that farmers' own costs are rising rapidly. Expenses for the diesel fuel used to run tractors and combines and for the fertilizer essential to modern agriculture have soared. Mr. Miller does not just want high prices; he needs them to pay his bills.

Until recently, he could expect around $3 a bushel for his wheat - far less than his parents and grandparents received, when inflation is taken into account. Consumption in the United States was dropping as Americans shunned carbohydrates. The export market, while healthy, faced competition.

Now prices have more than tripled, partly because of a drought in Australia and bad harvests elsewhere and also because of unslaked global demand for crackers, bread and noodles. In seven of the last eight years, world wheat consumption has outpaced production. Stockpiles are at their lowest point in decades.

Around the world, wheat is becoming a precious commodity. In Pakistan, thousands of paramilitary troops have been deployed since January to guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. Malaysia, trying to keep its commodities at home, has made it a crime to export flour and other products without a license. Consumer groups in Italy staged a widely publicized (if also widely disregarded) one-day pasta strike last fall.

In the United States, the price of dry pasta has risen 20 percent since October, according to government data. Flour is up 19 percent since last summer. Over all, food and beverage prices are rising 4 percent a year, the fastest pace in nearly two decades.

The American Bakers Association last month took the radical step of suggesting that American exports be curtailed to keep wheat at home, though the group later backed off.

If all this suggests a golden age for American growers, it could well be brief, said Bruce Babcock, an economist at Iowa State University. He predicted that farmers would do their best to ramp up production, possibly to the point of pulling land out of conservation programs so they could plant more. "Give farmers a price incentive, and they'll produce," he said.

The Agriculture Department forecasts that world wheat production will increase 8 percent this year. In the United States, spring and durum wheat plantings are expected to rise by two million acres, helping to drive prices down to $7 a bushel, the government said.

Yet the competition among crops for acreage has become so intense that some farmers think the government and analysts like Mr. Babcock are being overly optimistic.

Read Smith, a farmer in St. John, Wash., thinks a new era is at hand for all sorts of crops. "Price spikes have usually been short-lived," he said. "I think this one is different."

His example is plain old mustard. Two years ago, Mr. Smith would have been paid less than 15 cents a pound for mustard seeds. As more lucrative crops began supplanting mustard, dealers raised their offering price to 20 cents, then 30 cents, then 48 cents early this year. Mr. Smith gave in, agreeing to convert up to 100 acres of wheat fields to mustard.

Mr. Smith said it was inevitable that supermarket mustard, just like flour, bread and pasta, would become more expensive.

"We've lulled the public with cheap food," he said. "It's not going to be a steal anymore."

Bread to Be Had, for a Price

As the newly urbanized and newly affluent seek more protein and more calories, a phenomenon called "diet globalization" is playing out around the world. Demand is growing for pork in Russia, beef in Indonesia and dairy products in Mexico. Rice is giving way to noodles, home-cooked food to fast food.

Though wracked with upheaval for years and with many millions still rooted in poverty, Nigeria has a growing middle class. Median income per person doubled in the first half of this decade, to $560 in 2005. Much of this increase is being spent on food.

Nigeria grows little wheat, but its people have developed a taste for bread, in part because of marketing by American exporters. Between 1995 and 2005, per capita wheat consumption in Nigeria more than tripled, to 44 pounds a year. Bread has been displacing traditional foods like eba, dumplings made from cassava root.

Nigeria's wheat imports in 2007 were forecast to rise 10 percent more. But demand was also rising in many other places, from Tunisia to Venezuela to India. At the same time, drought and competition from other crops limited supply.

So wheat prices soared, and over the last year, bread prices in Nigeria have jumped about 50 percent.

Amid a public outcry, bakers started making smaller loaves, hoping customers who could not afford to pay more would pay about the same to eat less. Sales have dropped for street hawkers selling loaves. With imports shrinking, mills are running at half capacity.

At Honeywell Flour Mills, one of the largest in Nigeria, executives were glued one recent day to commodity screens. The price of wheat ticked ever upward. "Even when you see a little downturn, you wait for some few hours or a day, and before you know it, it's gone way up again," said the production director, Nino Albert Ozara.

Despite the crisis, there is little sense of a permanent retreat from wheat in Nigeria. The mills are increasing their capacity, hoping for a day when supply is sufficient to stabilize prices. "The moment you develop a taste, you are hooked," said a confident Muyiwa Talabi, director of an American wheat-marketing office in Lagos.

Mr. Ojuku, the man who buys fewer loaves, and one of his fellow tailors in Lagos, Mukala Sule, 39, are trying to adjust to the new era.

"I must eat bread and tea in the morning. Otherwise, I can't be happy," Mr. Sule said as he sat on a bench at a roadside cafe a few weeks ago. For a breakfast that includes a small loaf, he pays about $1 a day, twice what the traditional eba would have cost him.

To save a few pennies, he decided to skip butter. The bread was the important thing.

"Even if the price goes up," Mr. Sule said, "if I have the money, I'll still buy it."

Will Connors contributed reporting from Lagos, Nigeria, and Salman Masood from Pakistan.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Wed Mar 5, 2008 1:09 pm
Subject: News: Skim Milk Linked to Cancer Risk

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Got milk -- and increased cancer risk?
Some studies link dairy consumption and prostate cancer.

March 3, 2008

How is drinking skim milk linked to the risk of developing prostate cancer?

Some studies suggest that heavy consumption of dairy foods is linked to prostate cancer, but other studies have not confirmed this. It has become a somewhat controversial issue in cancer research. A study in the December issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology found that intake of low-fat and nonfat milk increased the risk of localized prostate cancer, while whole milk decreased the risk. Another study in the same journal found a weak link between nonfat milk and advanced prostate cancer. But the bottom line is that no one really knows if there is an increased risk of prostate cancer from consuming dairy products.

Even less is known about how dairy intake would contribute to cancer risk. Some researchers think that high intake of dietary calcium decreases the function of vitamin D in the body; the nutrient is important in protecting against prostate cancer. Other scientists suggest that the hormonal composition of milk may play a role: Skim milk, they note, contains more androgens than whole milk.

Still others suggest that men who drink skim milk may be more health-conscious and more likely to get regular cancer screenings than men who drink whole milk -- and thus their cancers are more likely to be detected.

Yikyung Park, a researcher in the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics at the National Cancer Institute and the author of one of the recent studies, notes that skim milk only slightly raised the risk of advanced prostate cancer in his study. The risk was so small, he said, he can't rule out that the finding wasn't due to chance.

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Date: Wed Mar 5, 2008 1:08 pm
Subject: News: Britain Wastes As Much As Half the Food it Produces

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Britons waste $40 billion in food annually

by Staff Writers
London (UPI) Mar 03, 2008

Britain is throwing away nearly half of all the food it produces, costing the nation an estimated $40 billion a year, it was reported Sunday.

About 20 million tons of food is thrown out each year, with most of it -- 16 million tons -- wasted in British homes, restaurants and hotels, The Independent reported.

Lord Haskins of Skidby, a former government adviser on rural affairs and chairman of Northern Foods, said eliminating some of the waste would help preserve the environment and help alleviate a global food shortage.

Food waste is a "shameful feature of most modern consumer societies," he said.

"Unfortunately, we live in a world where many people do not have access to food in general, and good-quality food specifically, while at the same time millions of tons of perfectly fine food are being disposed of," said Tony Lowe, chief executive of FareShare, the British national food charity.

"In the UK alone, the extent of food poverty is staggering, as millions of people with low or no income find it harder to access affordable, nutritious food."

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Date: Wed Mar 5, 2008 1:00 pm
Subject: News: Effort By Trans-National Corporations to Control Global Food Supply Decried

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'Plan by TNCs to Control Seeds Bound to Fail''
Interview with Tewolde Berhan Egziabher

Illustration Omitted:
Tewolde at a discussion on IPR issues in New Delhi organised by campaigner Vandana Shiva, seen at right. Credit:Ranjit Devraj/IPS

NEW DELHI, Mar 3 (IPS) - An attempt by a handful of developed countries and trans-national corporations (TNCs) to monopolise and control the world's seeds is doomed to failure, says Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, director-general of Ethiopia's Environment Protection Agency, and a formidable negotiator at biodiversity-related fora.

Tewolde, who won the Right Livelihood Award in 2000 for ''exemplary work to safeguard biodiversity and the traditional rights of farmers and communities to their genetic resources'', explained to IPS correspondent Ranjit Devraj why ''the attempt to reduce the world's farmers to serfs of a different kind'' is doomed.

IPS: What gives you grounds for such optimism? After all in major agricultural countries like India we have been seeing steady inroads made into the farming sector by such TNCs as Monsanto.

Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher: First of all the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which made the control over seeds by TNCs possible through its Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) mechanism is slowly getting paralysed -- especially after Doha. As WTO weakens, the controls that have been creeping in will automatically disappear.

IPS: What about the bilateral agreements outside the WTO?

TBGE: These bilateral agreements favoured by the United States and the European Union, and also other countries, have only served to create greater uncertainty. They have certainly undermined the hope that the MNCs once harboured, that the WTO would become an instrument with which to subjugate the world.

IPS: What do you foresee?

TBGE: Well, we seem to be heading back, briefly, to the chaotic world that existed before World War II when a handful of colonial powers were able to exert their influence on the world. But, this will be a temporary stage because the Western world did not earlier have to contend with the emergence on the world stage of such countries as India, China and Brazil.

IPS: How exactly will the emergence of such countries as India, China, Brazil and South Africa help?

TBGE: To start with there will be greater room for manoeuvring. This can lead to a better global system than the one that exists in which countries that emerged victorious at the end of World War II have for too long continued to dictate the agenda. If you look at China's investments and involvement in Africa you will see that they steer clear away from interfering in what is not their business. So the tone is already being set for a new world order.

IPS: What are the worst results of TRIPS impinging on agriculture?

TBGE: Without doubt the idea that the patenting of mechanical inventions -- that began in the city-state of Venice -- can be transferred to plants, animals and microorganisms is misconceived. Most farmers are illiterate and living in countries that are not developed but are vulnerable to pressure with WTO members creating conditions ideal for TNCs to patent seeds. This is an unbelievable distortion of justice. And it becomes truly absurd when the onus falls on farmers to prove that they have not been using seeds without a license from the TNC that claims to own them. What can farmers do in the event of natural pollination? Call in the birds and the wind as witnesses?

IPS: What about genetically modified organisms and genetically engineered crops -- especially those that are claimed to help increase the production of biofuels?

TBGE: Firstly the deployment of genetically engineered organisms or crops must be resorted to only after they have been rigorously tested for safety. Many developed countries, especially those in the EU, are already wary of genetic engineering products. As for production of biofuels they can be useful in reclaiming land that is unsuitable for agriculture, but if they are dependent on fertilisers that go back to fossil fuels what is the benefit to the environment? What I say is that there should be no hasty action when it comes to adopting genetically engineered crops.

(END/2008)

* * *

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NGOs Wary of Doomsday Seed Vault
By Keya Acharya

Illustration Omitted:
Entrance to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. Credit:Mari Tefre /Svalbard Global Seed Vault

BANGALORE, Mar 4 (IPS) - Agricultural non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in India and elsewhere are criticising the newly-opened Global Seed Vault (GSV) at Svalbard in Norway as fundamentally unjust in its objectives.

The Barcelona-based agriculture lobby, GRAIN, with branches in major developing nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, says a serious deficiency of the seed vault is that it deals basically with state and private-body depositors to the bank, thereby excluding the rights of poor farmers who cannot access these seeds.

GRAIN says the GSV's ex-situ storage system takes unique plant varieties away from farming communities that originally created, selected, protected and shared the seeds. Farmers, it holds, do not know how to access the scientific and institutional framework involved in setting up the system and are excluded.

"This system forgets that farmers are the world's original, and ongoing, plant breeders,'' GRAIN's Asia Programme Officer, Shalini Bhutani, who is based in New Delhi, told IPS.

Negotiating intellectual property and other rights over the seeds, originally conserved by farmers, thus becomes the business of governments and the seed industry itself, she says.

Decisions on the GSV will be taken by the Norwegian government, currently regarded as trustworthy, but without guarantee that its policies will change. It has a ten-year agreement with depositors that included clauses allowing them to be terminated if policies change.

Management of the GSV is spelled out in a tripartite agreement between the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) and the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, a cooperative effort of the Nordic countries.

GRAIN alleges that decisions on the GSV will be shared with the GCDT, a private entity with strong corporate funding which brings to the forefront all the 'terrible controversies' over access to and benefits from global agricultural biodiversity.

Trans-national seed corporations currently control over half of the world's 30 billion US dollar yearly seed market, buying up many public plant-breeding programmes that have governments relinquishing control over them. "The ultimate beneficiaries will thus be the very same corporations that are at the roots of crop-diversity destruction,'' says a GRAIN publication.

But Cary Fowler, head of the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT), in charge of the GSV, says such criticism ''seriously misrepresents the purpose and workings of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and portrays the GCDT in an inaccurate, misleading and unflattering manner."

"The Seed Vault has been welcomed by over 165 countries and the Food and Agricultural Organisations (FAO)'s Commission on Genetic Resources, and it is already being used by developed and developing countries and by NGO seed savers (though not by corporations)", said Fowler in an e-mail interview with IPS.

The GSV built into the Arctic permafrost, with a natural temperature of minus 6 degrees centigrade, some 1,000 km away from the North Pole, has three cold rooms further cooled to minus 18 degrees C and is capable of storing 4.5million batches of seeds.

Should some major disaster hit world agriculture, such as a nuclear war or a natural disaster, countries could turn to what is popularly referred to as the 'doomsday vault', to pull out seeds and restart food production.

But there are many who are unhappy with the GSV continuing with existing in the science of agricultural conservation.

The Bangalore-based GREEN Foundation, which won the United Nations' Equator Prize in 2004 for its work on seed conservation on farms through community seed-bank networks, run mainly by women, says the vault's claim to protect genetic biodiversity is more 'illusion than reality'.

"It is already a decade since the UNCED in Rio de Janeiro and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) realised that gene banks had their own limitations, starting from major power breakdowns, to excluding farmers' access to these banks, to realising that seeds conserved under freeze conditions did not evolve when grown under changed environmental conditions," Vanaja Ramprasad, founder-director of the GREEN Foundation told IPS. "It is a sad commentary on the science behind the assumption that the world's food is secure inside a freezer,'' she said.

NGOs like Green Foundation, GRAIN and the Hyderabad-based Deccan Development Society believe that involving farmers to grow seeds in their field, conserve and exchange these with others is the most secure method of conserving genetic diversity and resources.

In the last ten years, says Ramprasad, there have been worldwide efforts to collect germplasm and conserve them on farmers' fields, breaking the notion that germplasm was meant only for breeding purposes. "This reinforced the fact that in situ conservation of germplasm was not only the food security of millions of the world's population, but also identified as imperative to food sovereignty," she said.

The Hyderabad-based Deccan Development Society (DDS), working in rural empowerment of poor dalit (the lowest caste in India's social hierarchy) women, and conserving indigenous cereals such as millets, does not believe that the scientific community can save crop diversity by cold-storage systems.

"Global seed wealth can survive only in the farms and homes of global rural communities. The GSV takes away these seeds from the farmer and breaks the first link in the food chain," says P.V. Satheesh, founder of DDS.

A depositor in the GSV currently is the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), run under the FAO and has approximately 15 global gene banks holding the world's most widely-used food crops, under a legal trusteeship arrangement on behalf of the international community.

GRAIN faults CGIAR's system as having excluded farmers totally from the trusteeship, a system being linked with the GSV which will give the CGIAR 'almost exclusive' access to the vault's deposits.

Accessions from India and Asia are part of the collections from India's Rice Research Institute and from the Hyderabad-based International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), under the aegis of CGIAR, that are to be locked in the GSV. "This vault is more the need of the life-sciences industry, known for its 'pirating' of farmers' material and traditional knowledge,'' said GRAIN's Bhutani.

An ICRISAT press note says that the organisation's participation in the duplicate conservation of seeds in the vault gives increased protection to global agriculture from climate change. But the seeds or germplasm to be transferred by ICRISAT are those of hardy dryland sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut and six small millets that can withstand climate change.

Bhutani says that there are methods of conservation that should be adopted along with this strategy, adding that there is nothing on offer to believe that Svalbard will be invincible in its protection.

ICRISAT has given examples of protection offered through its 1,400-odd genebanks currently in operation in various countries. It says sorghum germplasm lost during civil wars in Ethiopia and Rwanda was replenished from the collection stored in its genebanks.

GRAIN recommends that governments first support their national farmers and markets, rather than international gene banks, leaving seeds in the hands of local farmers with their innovative farming and seed-exchange practices. Developing countries with agro-biodiversity assets need to safeguard their farmers' interests before agreeing to corporate-controlled agricultural agreements, it said.

Fowler said the GCDT endorses the view that ex-situ and in-situ conservation are complementary.

(END/2008)

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From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Sat Mar 1, 2008 2:07 pm
Subject: News: Food Gardens May Help Decentralize Food Production

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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/home/gardening/stories/DN-nhg_wirevictorygarden_0229li.ART.State.Edition1.2b1cf74.html

A stake in your own salad
Victory gardens revive World War II project, with a modern twist

12:00 AM CST on Friday, February 29, 2008
By SCOTT LINDLAW The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - When the boys marched off to World War II, those left behind marched into back yards, parks and empty city lots and feverishly began gardening, convinced that it would help the war effort. A government propaganda poster depicted a pitchfork sinking into a tidy American lawn. "Groundwork for Victory," the placard declared.By the war's end, these "victory gardens" were turning out 40 percent of the nation's produce output, a bounty that freed up big farms to supply the troops. The crops were also a source of kitchen-table comfort amid wartime food rationing.

But when the bombs stopped falling, Americans dropped their pitchforks like hot potatoes, and the millions of little plots were paved over, built up, re-sodded. For 62 years, the notion has lain as dormant as a bulb in a box.

Amy Franceschini is trying to nurture the victory garden concept back to prominence - this time with a 21st-century agenda.

Thinking locally

To her, it's about weaning Americans from what she calls a "centralized" agricultural system that allows consumers to buy fruits and vegetables at the supermarket. In Ms. Franceschini's estimation, that system burns too much fossil fuel, requires too many fertilizers and pesticides and leaves the American food chain at too high a risk of E. coli outbreaks.

Ms. Franceschini, 37, is the architect of a San Francisco pilot project to revive victory gardens here and beyond. She recently secured $60,000 in seed money from the San Francisco government to pay for 15 backyard plots, with the hope of expanding the effort dramatically after 2008.

Inspired by a book on the history of community gardening, Ms. Franceschini assembled an art project titled Victory Gardens 2007+ for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which caught the attention of city officials.

Ms. Franceschini, an artist and assistant professor of visual arts at the University of San Francisco, wrestled with whether she should retain the word victory, which is "loaded with nationalism," she says.

Eventually she decided: "I wanted to keep that word 'victory' because we are in a time of war, [but] we should change what that word means so that victory should mean self-reliance and independence from corporate food systems."

To Blair Randall, 30, who will direct the project, a resurgence in victory gardens will herald a return of DIY to its rightful place in American society.

At some point after the war, he says, the do-it-yourself ethic gave way to a preference for store-bought goods, which made the statement: "If I can buy it in a store, I've made it."

"I think we're coming around again to another generation, when to do it yourself is to have made it," Mr. Randall says.

Victory gardens sprang up from coast to coast during World War II, from the lawns of the White House and Boston Common to unused industrial lands in the Midwest. San Francisco had a particularly fervent following of gardeners.

City Hall lowered water rates for households with bigger gardens - and tore up the lawn just outside the government seat for a large victory garden. A sprawling site in the heart of Golden Gate Park was split into 250 plots, and thousands thronged there to a Victory Garden Fair in June 1943.

The first 15

Ms. Franceschini's long-term goal is to reclaim that park site for a victory garden and to see window boxes, yards, rooftops and unused spaces churning out fruits and vegetables.

In the next two years, Ms. Franceschini and Mr. Randall will hand-pick 15 people to be the initial victory gardeners. In keeping with San Francisco's commitment to diversity, the gardeners will mirror the city's ethnic, geographic and economic spectrum.

They will be asked to take an oath that they will live in San Francisco for at least two years, attend gardening workshops, open up their plots to tours once a year and cooperate with the organizers as they record successes and failures.

Naturally, there will be a Web-based map depicting all the victory gardens in the city.

It is not easy to make a garden flourish in San Francisco, with its fog and inverted seasons, which bring cold in summer and sun in fall. Moreover, Mr. Randall says, most people rent their dwellings, and many live in apartments.

A recent experimental backyard gardening project was torn out by an angry landlord, Ms. Franceschini recalls.

"A back yard in San Francisco, if you have one, it's about this big, and it's shared," Mr. Randall says as he stood in a demonstration garden about 15 feet wide by 15 feet long.

Yet on this sunny afternoon, Ms. Franceschini munched on lettuce growing in the little plot next to a busy street, in a neighborhood with famously cranky weather. While mostly bare now, it will soon bear beets, chard, radishes and perhaps a tree with branches from different citrus plants grafted on, Mr. Randall says.

"If we can do it here, it can be done everywhere," he says.

Their dream is that 40 percent of America's produce supply will once again burst from modern-day victory gardens. "That's the utopian idea," says Ms. Franceschini. There have already been talks about expanding their program into Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and Minneapolis.

"If everybody can grow a little bit, that little bit makes a big difference," says Mr. Randall.

START A VICTORY GARDEN

Here are 10 tips for starting a backyard garden in the spirit of the World War II era. The advice was assembled by Blair Randall, the director of a San Francisco project to revive victory gardens.

1. Get to know your soil. What is the history of your soil? For soils near freeways or alongside buildings older than 1978, when lead was banned in paint, consider having your soil tested for lead before growing food crops.

2. Know your climate. This will determine what plants you should purchase or seeds you can sow. North Texas is USDA Zone 7 north of LBJ Freeway or 8 south of it.

3. Add compost, add compost, add compost! Compost will greatly improve the nutrient profile of your soil and allow your soil to accept and release water. Compost is easy to make at home with either a backyard compost bin or a worm compost bin.

4. Give up part of your lawn. If you have a yard, consider turning part of it into a vegetable garden. If space is limited, use the sunniest part.

5. Plant a fruit tree. To eat a plum today from your garden, you need to have planted that tree three or four years ago. A large number of fruit trees can be purchased on semi-dwarf root stock, keeping them to a manageable size.

6. Share with your neighbors. You will grow too many tomatoes, and they will grow too much zucchini. Invite them over for a picnic, and make a salad with your extra produce.

7. Plan in the winter for your spring plantings. Order seed catalogs, and allow the excitement for the coming spring and summer to carry you through winter.

8. Eat locally. A frequently cited 2003 study found conventional produce traveled an average of almost 1,500 miles from farm to markets in Chicago and St. Louis, consuming a great deal of fuel in the journey. You can reduce those "food miles" by growing some part of your meal at home.

9. Get out into your yard by tending a garden. The flowers you plant will attract wildlife such as birds and beneficial insects to your yard, but it will also attract you to your yard.

10. Donate extra produce to your local food bank. It is common to have too much of, say, okra. Local food pantries will appreciate your homegrown produce.

*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only. ***

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From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Fri Feb 29, 2008 11:03 am
Subject: News: Corn Genome Map May Lead to Higher Yields

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http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2008/2008-02-28-02.asp

Corn Genome Map Could Lead to Higher Yields

WASHINGTON, DC, February 28, 2008 (ENS) - The world's first map of the corn genome was unveiled today by a team of scientists led by Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers have completed a working draft of the corn genome, which they say should accelerate efforts to develop better crop varieties to meet growing demands for food, livestock feed and fuel.

The genetic blueprint was announced today by the project's leader, Richard K. Wilson, Ph.D., director of Washington University's Genome Sequencing Center, at the 50th Annual Maize Genetics Conference in Washington, DC.

Illustration Omitted:
Dr. Richard Wilson (Photo courtesy Washington University)

"This first draft of the genome sequence is exciting because it's the first comprehensive glimpse at the blueprint for the corn plant," Wilson said.

"Scientists now will be able to accurately and efficiently probe the corn genome to find ways to improve breeding and subsequently increase crop yields and resistance to drought and disease."

Corn is only the second crop after rice to have its genome sequenced, and scientists will now be able to look for genetic similarities and differences between the crops.

The genetic code of corn consists of two billion bases of DNA, the chemical units that are represented by the letters T, C, G and A, making it similar in size to the human genome, which is 2.9 billion letters long. By comparison, the rice genome is far smaller, containing about 430 million bases.

The challenge for Wilson and his colleagues was to string together the order of the letters, an immense and daunting task both because of the corn genome's size and its complex genetic arrangements. Corn has 50,000 to 60,000 genes, roughly double the number of human genes.

"Sequencing the corn genome was like putting together a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle with lots of blue sky and blue water, with only a few small sailboats on the horizon," Wilson explains. "There were not a lot of landmarks to help us fit the pieces of the genome together."

The $29.5 million project was initiated in 2005 and is funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Energy.

"Corn is one of the most economically important crops for our nation," says National Science Foundation Director Arden L. Bement Jr. "Completing this draft sequence of the corn genome constitutes a significant scientific advance and will foster growth of the agricultural community and the economy as a whole."

Illustration Omitted:
Corn is one of the world's staple foods. (Photo by Scott Bauer courtesy USDA)

Corn is used to make products from breakfast cereal, meat and milk to toothpaste, shoe polish and ethanol.

The team working on the endeavor has already made the sequencing information accessible to scientists worldwide by depositing it in GenBank, an online public DNA database. The genetic data is also available at maizesequence.org.

The draft covers about 95 percent of the corn genome, and scientists will spend the remaining year of the grant refining and finalizing the sequence. "Although it's still missing a few bits, the draft genome sequence is empowering," Wilson explains. "Virtually all the information is there, and while we may make some small modifications to the genetic sequence, we don't expect major changes."

Scientists at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and Iowa State University worked on the sequencing.

The group sequenced a variety of corn known as B73, developed at Iowa State decades ago. It is noted for its high grain yields and has been used extensively in both commercial corn breeding and in research laboratories.

The National Corn Growers Association applauded the scientific accomplishment and looks forward to its practical applications.

"The completion of a maize draft sequence is the first step in determining the function of all the genes in corn, which in turn, will allow corn growers to plant corn hybrids that are better able to withstand drought and other stresses and are better suited to market and environmental needs," said Ron Litterer, president of the association. "Consumers will benefit from a more nutritious, abundant and sustainable food supply."

The United States is the world's top corn grower, producing 44 percent of the global crop.

In 2007, U.S. farmers produced a record 13.1 billion bushels of corn, an increase of nearly 25 percent over the previous year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The 2007 production value of corn was estimated at more than $3 billion. Favorable prices, a growing demand for ethanol and strong export sales have fueled an increase in farmland acreage devoted to corn production.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only. ***

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From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Fri Feb 29, 2008 11:02 am
Subject: News: Food Price Crisis Growing Worldwide, Due to Biofuel Subsidies

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http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1717572,00.html

The World's Growing Food-Price Crisis
Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008 By VIVIENNE WALT/PARIS

Illustration Omitted:
People push to receive food distributed by the Kenyan Red Cross in the Mathare slum in Nairobi. AFP / Getty

Soaring prices of staples - which have risen about 75% since 2005, driven by growing demand, rising oil prices and the effects of global warming - have sparked riots in several countries, as people reel from sticker shock and governments scramble to feed their people. Crowds tore through three cities in the West African nation of Burkina Faso late last week, burning government buildings and looting stores; when officials tried to talk peace with one group of protesters, the enraged crowd hurled stones at them. The riots followed similar violent protests over food prices in Senegal and Mauritania earlier this year. And, last October, protesters in India burned hundreds of food-ration stores in West Bengal after stockpiles emptied, leaving thousands of people unfed.

Governments might succeed in quashing the protests, but lowering food prices could be far tougher and will likely take years, according to analysts who track global food consumption. The Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, or IFPRI, said last December that high prices are unlikely to fall soon, partly because world food stocks are being squeezed by soaring demand. The wild ride in agricultural markets has attracted intense speculation among investors, with billions of dollars being poured into commodities markets. On Monday, the price of wheat shot up about 25% on the Chicago Board of Trade, after officials in Khazakstan announced plans to restrict exports of their giant wheat crop in order to ensure the food supply to their own citizens. Russian officials have also said they are planning to restrict grain exports.

For the world's poorest people, the price rises are already proving devastating, since the speed at which prices have risen has wrought havoc on government relief programs. Earlier this month, a top official at the U.S. Agency for International Development admitted that in order to meet current targets, it had been forced to skim off funds from future food-aid programs, worth about $120 million.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that millions more people who were previously earning enough to feed their families can now no longer afford the food in their local stores, and are now swelling the ranks of those expecting relief from aid organizations. "We are seeing a new face of hunger," the executive director of U.N.'s World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, told TIME on Tuesday. "People who were not in the urgent category are now moving into that category." The organization currently feeds about 73 million people, including millions who get by on just 50 cents a day. After hosting a series of emergency meetings with international organizations and food experts this month at WFP's Rome headquarters, Sheeran said the organization has concluded that food prices will remain high for years. She announced on Monday that the organization might have to cut its relief programs unless it raises an extra $500 million this year. "There is no way we can absorb a 25% price rise in one day and the volatility of the markets," Sheeran said.

One factor driving up the cost of food is the rocketing price of oil, which raises agricultural costs of everything from fertilizer to transport and shipping. Like the oil price, the cost of food is responding, in part, to the burgeoning demand in China and India, where rising incomes allow people to eat bigger meals, and to buy meat far more frequently. That, in turn, has helped to squeeze the world's supply of grain, since it takes about six pounds of animal feed to produce a pound of meat.

Then there is climate change: Harvests have been seriously disrupted by freak weather, including prolonged droughts in Australia and southern Africa, floods in West Africa, and deep frost in China and Europe. And the push to produce biofuels to replace hydrocarbons is also adding to the pressure on food supplies - generous U.S. subsidies for ethanol has gobbled up needed food acreage, as farmers switch from producing food. "The area used for biofuels is increasing each year," says Nik Bienkowski, head of research at ETF Securities, a commodities trading firm in London.

The food price rises are not bad news for everyone, says Bienkowski, who estimates that his company took in about $2 billion worth of investments last year. And millions of farmers whose income has languished through years of cheap food are now earning well.

"U.S. and British farmers are laughing all the way to the bank," says Simon Maxwell, director of the London-based Overseas Development Institute, an independent think tank. "And some poor people will get jobs on farms or in local communities." Yet those people will need to buy food, whose prices are rising far faster than wages. With relief agencies struggling to feed the hungry and the shelves in Pakistan, Burkina Faso, Senegal and many other countries in the developing world stocked with food many locals can no longer afford, the prospects for chaos are steadily growing.

* * *

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Growing_Food_Crisis_As_Bio_Fuel_Subsidies_Undermine_Free_Markets_999.html

Growing Food Crisis As Bio Fuel Subsidies Undermine Free Markets

by Martin Walker
Washington (UPI) Feb 27, 2007

The announcement by Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, that the globe's main provider of food aid may have to start rationing is not just bad news for countries like Afghanistan and Ethiopia that depend on its supplies.

It's grim news for everybody. The global economy is just about coping with the subprime crisis, the fall of the dollar and oil at $100 a barrel. But the inflationary surge in food prices could prove to be the final straw.

Wheat prices hit $24 a bushel this week in the futures markets, having been $3 a bushel four years go. That dwarfs the rise in oil prices.

This problem has been coming for some time, driven by three separate factors. The first is overall population increase. The second is that emergent economies like China and India are climbing up the prosperity chain and demanding more meat protein, which takes eight times as much land to produce as vegetable protein. The third is that short-sighted government subsidies for biofuels are eroding the amount of crops available for eating.

Sheeran says the immediate problems are rising food prices and a lack of funds for the U.N. body to buy food aid, while demand from poor countries is increasing. Her statement echoes earlier warnings from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization that the soaring cost of grains and cereals was becoming "a major global concern."

"In some of these developing countries, prices have gone up 80 percent for staple food," Sheeran said, adding her agency's budget was soaring by millions of dollars a week. "If food is twice as expensive, we can bring half as much in for the same price and the same contribution."

This problem is not going to be easily resolved because the world faces the double threat of a long-term trend of rising demand in conditions of tightly constrained supply. There are already limits to the availability of arable land and severe pressures on water supplies, and climate change seems to be exacerbating both. The world is heading into a perfect storm.

The price movements tell the story. Soybean prices in the United States have jumped from $5.72 in 2004 to $10.60 now. Wheat sold for $3.01 a bushel in 2004 and is now over $7.50, with prices for March delivery being quoted at $10.50 a bushel. Spring wheat prices were trading last week at $18.

Joseph Glauber, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief economist, noted last week that wheat prices had previously moved from $3 to $5 a bushel without major pain for consumers. "But now the wheat price has jumped to nearly $20 a bushel."

World grain reserves are at their lowest levels since records were first kept back in 1960, and the U.S. stockpile had not been this low since 1948.

This is already having important political effects around the world. Pakistan has reintroduced food ration cards, an unpopular and crisis-driven move that has contributed to the unpopularity of President Pervez Musharraf and helps explain his party's recent stinging electoral defeat.

Egypt has extended its own food rationing system, and the Indian government is straining to maintain its food price subsidy system as costs soar. China and Russia are imposing price controls, and Argentina and Vietnam are reducing supplies to the world market through rationing and higher export taxes.

"India has a deficit of oilseed, a deficit of many pulses and now a deficit of wheat -- all the major staples are now getting hit by the demand-supply gap," B.C. Khatua, chairman of the Forward Markets Commission, which regulates futures trading for food commodities, warned this week.

The market should adjust, spurring more planting and more production in response to higher prices. Last week's annual outlook conference of the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that U.S. farmers were cutting their plantings of cotton and sugar in order to take advantage of the higher prices for wheat, corn and soy. Wheat production is projected to soar 13 percent to 2.33 billion bushels as farmers expand planting for the grain by 6 percent.

But markets worldwide face severe constraints from government manipulation of prices. Sometimes, like the U.S. subsidies for biofuels, this is done with the best of intentions, to cut U.S. dependency on imported fossil fuels. But government action can have severe effects.

The European Union, for example, sharply restricts the use of new genetically modified crops, which many agricultural scientists see as the technological way forward. Genetically modified organisms can be tailored to grow on marginal land and survive drought, to need less fertilizer or to survive saltwater flooding.

William Doyle, head of the world's biggest fertilizer company, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, sounded the alarm last week by using the word "famine." With world grain stocks at their lowest since records were first kept, Doyle warned: "If you had any major upset where you didn't have a crop in a major growing agricultural region this year, I believe you'd see famine."

It was just such an upset that led to this week's jump in the wheat price to $24. Kazakhstan had announced a freeze in grain exports.

"We keep going to the cupboard without replacing and so there is enormous pressure on agriculture to have a record crop every year. We need to have a record crop in 2008 just to stay even with this very low inventory situation," Doyle added.

There are few easy choices. GMO crops remain controversial. And while one fast way to increase food production would be to increase the acreage under the plough in countries like Brazil, that would also mean further erosion of the rainforest and tougher environmental problems in the future. Food prices look set to keep on rising, and unless the World Food Program gets significant new funds the world's poor are set to get even hungrier.

*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only. ***

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From: Yahoo Group <ashwani.vasishth@...>
Date: Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:59 am
Subject: News: Scientists Move Toward Drought Resistant Crops

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7268079.stm

Thursday, 28 February 2008, 00:41 GMT

Scientists advance 'drought crop'

By Matt McGrath
BBC News science reporter

Illustration Omitted:
Indian farmer waits for rain. For many, a drought means devastation as crops die

Scientists say they have made a key breakthrough in understanding the genes of plants that could lead to crops that can survive in a drought.

Researchers in Finland and the United States say they have discovered a gene that controls the amount of carbon dioxide a plant absorbs.

It also controls the amount of water vapour it releases into the atmosphere.

This information could be important for food production and in regulating climate change.

Water control

Plants play a crucial role in the regulation of the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. They absorb the gas through tiny pores on their leaves called stomata and these pores also release water vapour as the plant grows.

In extremely dry weather, a plant can lose 95% of its water in this way.

Scientists have been trying to find the gene that controls the response of the stomata for decades.

Now teams in Finland and California are reporting in the journal Nature that they have found a crucial genetic pathway that controls the opening and closing of these pores.

The researchers say that this understanding could allow them to modify plants so that they continue to absorb carbon dioxide but reduce the amount of water released into the atmosphere, enabling them to thrive in very dry conditions.

On the way

Professor Jakko Kangasjarvi from the University of Helsinki says this work is the first step on that road

"It opens the avenue, it is still several years away but before this publication, there was no single component which would have so many different effects... there was no target to modify, now we know the target," he said.

While the experiments have been done in a variety of cress, the scientists say that the underlying genetic mechanisms are the same in many food plants, including rice.

It is believed that this new genetic understanding of how to control the amount of water that plants use could be commercialised within the next 20 years.

*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only. ***

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