You might think this scenario would tempt plenty of farmers to flip their acres from cattle pasture to cropland. But it’s a tough decision that depends on much more than recent prices.

Acres That ‘Flex’

Some farmers use the term “flex acres” to describe land that can be used either to graze cattle or to grow crops like corn and soybeans.

Wearing green coveralls and a tan hat, Morse stands outside his barn watching his 17-year-old son Noah drive a feed wagon down a row of cattle while the animals feast on corn and hay.

This 320-acre farm will see some changes soon. Despite the record-high corn prices, Morse is shifting his land out of corn and soybeans and into pasture.

“With the cattle you’re more on your own,” he says. “In some ways, it’s an act of faith because you have got to look out into the future a couple years and see that this will be a paying proposition as well.”

Morse is used to analyzing figures. He’s also a law professor at nearby Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. Morse admits corn is tempting but says he’ll stick to cows for now.

An Increase In Planting Crops

But that’s an unusual decision, according to agricultural economist Darrell Mark at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

He says there’s been a drop in cattle operations in key Corn Belt states including Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska. “We’re seeing an increase in acres being planted to row crops.”

In central Missouri’s Calloway County, farm owner Margot McMillen says one of her tenants offered her three times the rent to convert some of her pasture land into row crops. But she turned down the offer because of her long-term plans and a desire to avoid knee-jerk decisions based on what commodity is hot.

“It’s almost like the gamble,” McMillen says. “You make the decision because of what your neighbors are doing, what you hear — sort of the buzz. And you really can do better if you become independent and think on your terms as to what’s going to work for me.”

Getting Creative To Balance Cattle, Crops

Historically low cattle numbers over the last three years, combined with increasing worldwide demand, have led to some of the highest cattle prices ever.

Sean McClatchey, 38, of Lincoln, Neb., sees this as an opportunity.

“We gotta grow it to make it work,” he says. “It’s not like maybe it was 30 or 40 years ago where a farm the size of ours could support a family or two.”

McClatchey’s parents got rid of cattle when he was a boy. He now has 115 head and is slowly increasing his herd size.

He’s getting creative with his wheat crop this spring to save on feed and fuel. For example, he’ll graze on the wheat fields early in the growing season in a way that will still allow the wheat to be harvested.

McClatchey says these practices allow him to get more than one harvest per year. And he says growing feed on the farm also helps keep costs down.

But it will likely be a while before herd sizes increase from their lowest point since the 1950s. It takes a minimum of 14 months for cattle to move from birth to the market.

While agricultural economist Darrell Mark predicts herd sizes will increase later this year, he doesn’t expect it to drive down costs at the meat counter for quite a while.

Meanwhile, farmers like Morse and McClatchey will try to figure out just where the profit tipping point will be. By Clay Masters, National Public Radio

The money is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2010 Farmers Market Promotion Program.

The city of Albuquerque will receive $63,914 to establish a sales and marketing organization to help create a permanent indoor/outdoor growers’ market in the city.

The Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute will get $54,086 to improve the Santa Fe Farmers Market with professional development workshops and consumer education. About $4,000 will be used to promote the existing electronic benefits program, which makes it possible for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children to use assistance funds to purchase locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. Business Journal

Dr. Roland Buresh, part of the International Rice Research (IRRI) team that has joined the Philippine Department of Agriculture to establish the system, says that after responding to a series of simple questions about their rice paddy, farmers would receive an automated text reply recommending what amounts, sources, and timings of fertilizer are needed for profitable rice production in their paddy.

In Rice Today July–September 2010, Buresh explains the technology and what they hope to achieve.

In Cambodia, farmers are further advancing technology adoption of mechanical harvesters and dryers, better storage techniques, among other postharvest technologies. In this issue, we hear how the technologies are spreading and being embraced by Cambodian rice farmers to reduce labor, save money and time, and improve the quantity and quality of grain available at the end of the day.

Rice Today also delves deeper into the controversial topic of “land grabs” for rice production, exploring the potential benefits and downsides to this approach to increasing global rice production.

Land grabs will also be one of the themes at the 3rd International Rice Congress 2010 (IRC2010), which will be held in Hanoi, Vietnam, 8-12 November 2010. IRC2010 is the world’s largest gathering of rice scientists, researchers, and technology experts and is expected to attract thousands of international delegates. IRC2010 follows the Africa Rice Congress 2010, held in Mali in March this year—Rice Today reports on the Congress and its recommendations to boost Africa’s rice sector, including a “Marshall Plan” for capacity building.

Aside from being IRRI’s 50th anniversary year, 2010 is also the International Year of Biodiversity. Rice Today explores the challenges farmers face in finding the perfect biodiversity balance in their paddies to minimize losses due to pests and weeds, reduce labor, supply additional food sources, and deliver ecosystem services such as nectar for bees.

Just keeping up production in the MERCOSUR (Southern Common Market) region of South America responsible for 85% of the continent’s rice production is a challenge this season, with adverse weather conditions causing production to drop an average of 8% since last season. The weather is also upsetting North American rice production, where rains in California are predicted to reduce the crop there.

Despite changes in rice production, “In the last few months, global rice prices have fallen by more than 25%,” according to Dr. Sam Mohanty. In his Rice Today article, Mohanty provides some insights into the market and the ongoing need to boost rice yields by 1.2-1.5% every year to ensure food security in Asia.

To help understand changes in rice production, IRRI’s mapping team, led by Dr. Andy Nelson, has published a map of rice-growing regions in South Asia for this season. They will compare maps from different years to identify new rice production areas and areas where rice is replaced by other land uses.

And, in a final farewell, this issue’s Pioneer interview is with Dr. Michael Jackson—who recently retired from IRRI after 19 years. He joined IRRI to lead the International Rice Genebank where he applied scientific best practice and harnessed the skills of staff to build the Genebank into one of the world’s best. He then applied his “systematic way of doing business” to improve project and contract management, and donor relations. redOrbit

Torbert Rocheford, the Patterson Endowed Chair of Translational Genomics and professor of agronomy at Purdue, led the study that made findings in yellow and particularly orange corn, a type he said likely originated in the Caribbean and is popular in some Asian and South American countries as well as in northern Italy. The orange color comes from relatively higher levels of carotenoids, one of which is beta-carotene. Humans convert beta-carotene, which also is abundant in carrots, into vitamin A during digestion.

Rocheford is using simple visual selection for darker orange color combined with more advanced molecular natural diversity screening techniques to create better lines of the orange corn.

“We’re sort of turbocharging corn with desirable natural variation to make it darker and more nutritious,” Rocheford said.

Between 250,000 and 500,000 children – mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia – go blind each year because of vitamin A deficiency, according to the World Health Organization. Half of those children will die within a year of going blind. Rocheford said increasing beta-carotene levels in cereal grains, such as corn, is an economical approach to addressing these deficiencies in developing countries.

Rocheford said the gene beta-carotene hydroxylase 1 (crtR-B1) alters beta-carotene in corn in a way that reduces pro-vitamin A activity. Through a process known as hydroxylation, beta-carotene is converted into other carotenoids that can cut the amount of pro-vitamin A that is created through digestion in half, or eliminate it altogether. Reducing the function of the crtR-B1 gene would reduce hydroxylation considerably.

“Because of this, selecting a form of the gene that does not have much activity causes beta-carotene to build up,” said Rocheford, whose findings were published in the journal Nature Genetics. “We have started to move the favorable ‘weak’ allele into breeding materials.”

Conversely, “strong alleles” increasing crtR-B1 function boost the hydroxylation process, which creates more zeaxanthin. Zeaxanthin is a micronutrient that could protect against macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in people over 55 in Western industrialized nations, according to the American Macular Degeneration Foundation.

Zeaxanthin makes up 75 percent of the central macula in human eyes, according to the AMDF, and data show that macular pigment increases through dietary supplements.

Rocheford said the findings are encouraging for addressing problems in both developed and developing nations.

“It’s like a designer gene. We can select one version for the U.S. population to increase zeaxanthin and a different version to increase beta-carotene for the needs of the developing world,” he said.

Rocheford’s research will continue to look for ways to improve the nutrient profile of orange corn through simple visual selection and more advanced DNA and compound analyses. He said further efforts would focus on other genes that also hold promise to increase pro-vitamin A in corn.

Another challenge, he admits, would be introducing a new variety of corn to consumers.

“The U.S. only grows yellow and white corn, and Africa largely grows white corn,” Rocheford said. “But parts of the world – some parts of Asia and South America – actually prefer orange corn.”

Rocheford recently returned from a meeting in Zambia and saw an initial indication of consumer acceptance of orange corn there. He also stopped in northern Italy where orange corn is used for polenta, a sign that acceptance is possible in the developed world as well.

The U.S. Agency for International Development and HarvestPlus funded Rocheford’s contributions to the research. Other agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation funded the research of Rocheford’s collaborators.

Rocheford worked with researchers at CIMMYT, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Boyce Thompson Research Institute, Cornell University and Michigan State University. redOrbit

For customers, the sweet information for tasting the juicy flesh of sweet melon is that there is no change of price of melon when compared to the last year. Heaps of watermelons have been seen in different parts of important roads of Ramanathapuram.

The roadside hawkers, who often change the business depending upon seasonal fruits and vegetables, keep themselves busy in cutting, slicing and selling the colourful fruit. A few of them work overtime to get melons from the suppliers, besides selling them to the customers during daytime. Different sizes of melons weighing from 3 to 15 kg are available in the market, particularly roadsides.

“The sun is shining bright than last summer, during which the town and peripherals received good summer shower. I hope we will have a good business this season,” says C. Murugan, a wholesale and retail melon merchant in Ramanathapuram.

According to a rough estimate, around 400 to 500 kg of watermelon arrives daily to the town alone. While some traders get melons from the Madurai market, some have contact with the traders in Poovanthi near Madurai, who buy melons from the farmers in the nearby localities in Madurai and Sivaganga districts.

The average retail price for a kg of melon is Rs.10. A piece of melon is being sold at Rs.5. Some traders, particularly fresh juice stalls, offer a glass of melon drink at a cost of Rs.15. By C. Jaishankar, The Hindu

However, that era is a long way back for the Philippines, among the top five coffee exporters in the world in the 1880s after Spanish friars brought beans with them to their colonial outpost.

The Philippine Coffee Board, an industry group spearheading the revival attempt, knows the country can not compete with the likes of current regional exporting giants Indonesia and Vietnam in volume.

So they are aiming for niche markets and targeting the fast-growing number of young Filipinos who crowd cafes across the country of 93 million people.

“We have a lot of exotic coffees and that is the way to present our products,” said Josefina Reyes, director of the board.

Coffee board co-chairman Pacita Juan said the Philippines had long had a thriving coffee-drinking culture with a populace that favoured coffee over tea, and this was becoming stronger as society modernized.

“People are drinking more coffee with the change in lifestyles. People are working 24-7 in call centers so there is more opportunity to drink coffee. Even hotels are serving better coffee instead of just instant coffee,” she told AFP.

The Coffee Board is promoting “Kape Isla,” which loosely translates to “Island Coffee” and is a trademark to distinguish specialty coffees grown in the Philippines.

It is also helping entrepreneurs set up small coffee shops across the country where they can offer their own regional blends.

In this way, they can compete with the global giants such as Starbucks, whose local outlets sell specialty coffees generally only from Africa and South America. The Daily Tribune

Huang Dafang, director of Biotechnology Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said Friday that the genetically-modified crops are of great significance to the sustainable development of agriculture and China’s competitiveness in global arena.

“It could help increase the output to ease the food supply strain caused by the shrinking of farmland,” Huang said.

“We are technically advantageous in hybrid rice planting. The genetically-modified technology could ensure China’s superiority in food production.”

China, a populous country with 1.3 billion people, has put the food security on high agenda in its national development planning.

China’s central authorities issued a document on January 31, which calls for pushing forward the industrialization of genetically-modified crops on the basis of scientific appraisal and management in accordance with law.

However, people are concerned with the safety of genetically-modified food.

Wu Yongning, a food safety specialist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said current studies have not proved genetically-modified food harmful to human health.

Wu said that genetically-modified food have to pass scrupulous testing in order to get on shelves, including laboratory and field studies, toxicity and allergy tests.

Besides, health administrations will establish a system to monitor and report adverse effects, said Wu.

“I am not ruling out all possible risks, but those risks of genetically-modified food are no greater than that of traditional ones, given the heavy use of pesticide in growing traditional food,” he said.

Huang Dafang said the genetically-modified food are less vulnerable to insects and diseases, and as a result, fewer pesticide is needed in growing them, which is safer to human beings and the environment.

According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Application (ISAAA), about 224,000 tons of pesticide was saved during the decade between 1996 to 2006, thanks to the expansion of genetically-modified planting.

Besides, the reduced workload to pesticide the crops will help ease the labor shortfall in China’s countryside resulted from large population of migrant workers, said Huang. China Daily

But the drawbacks are that it is the result of genetic engineering, and no one is saying what it actually tastes like.

The researchers believe the same process could be applied to other fruits, including bananas and mangoes.

However, the need for extensive safety testing means it will be years before the GM fruits could go on sale in British supermarkets, if ever.

Researchers in India lengthened the life of tomatoes by ‘turning off’ genes linked to the production of ripening enzymes.

This increased firmness and stopped the tomatoes going soft for up to 45 days, according to a report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers, from the National Institute of Plant Genomic Research in New Delhi, said the breakthrough could prove a boon for farmers who lose up to 40 per cent of their fruit to over-ripening.

Dr Asis Datta said: ‘Overall, the results demonstrate a substantial improvement in shelf life.

‘The engineering of plants provides a strategy for crop improvement that can be extended to other important fruit crops.’ The banana, mango and papaya all have a genetic make-up which could be manipulated in this way, Dr Datta added.

But Pete Riley, from the campaign group GM Freeze, said: ‘The majority of the public are very skeptical about the benefits of GM foods and I don’t think that this will do anything to persuade them.

‘We have survived for millennia without needing to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables.’

He added that although the GM tomatoes might appear to be fresh for a month and a half, their vitamin content could decline, making them less nutritious than normal varieties.

The researchers in India are not the first to try to use genetics to create healthier or more appealing food. British scientists have created purple tomatoes rich in the antioxidants said to keep cancer at bay.

U.S. scientists have bred pigs whose fat is high in the omega-3 fatty acids thought to combat heart disease. By Fiona Macrae, The Daily Mail

Supermarket prices have been reasonably stable so far but experts say this is only because stores fix prices with suppliers months in advance.

Clive Webster, executive secretary of the British Fruit Juice Association, said he expects prices to rise by between ten and 30 per cent when contracts are renegotiated, depending on foreign currency fluctuations.

He said: ‘There’s bound to be an impact when the raw price goes up. Supermarkets will be very reluctant to put prices up but they will have little choice when their contracts end.’

A survey of UK supermarkets over the past year has shown prices are yet to rise significantly.

A one-litre carton of smooth Tropicana rose from £1.81 to £1.90 at Waitrose and from £1.57 to £1.66 at Sainsbury’s.

But the price of concentrated orange juice has already soared on world markets, from 43p per pound a year ago to more than 80p per pound last week.

The US government expects this season’s yield of Florida oranges to be down 17 per cent on last year, at 135million boxes, because cold weather and ‘spotty’ rainfall have meant smaller oranges and fewer fruit per tree.

The state’s orange groves have also been ravaged by the deadly, incurable ‘greening disease’, which originated in Asia and forces farmers to uproot trees.

Millions of dollars have been spent on aerial pesticide spraying in an attempt to reduce the population of the insect that spreads the disease – the citrus psyllid.

But there is little comfort for people who prefer an alternative drink with their breakfast. Other breakfast staples such as tea, coffee, sugar and cocoa are also at their highest prices for decades, again because of the fluctuating weather. By Matt Sandy, The Daily Mail

Farmers say that R.S. Mangalam, Thiruvadanai, Ramanathapuram, Nainarkoil, Panaikulam and other coastal belt of the district had been affected with leaf roller. They said that the insect had eaten the green portion of the paddy crops in many fields.

“Though we have received good rainfall this year, the disease is threatening the crop. We have been forced to concentrate heavily on fighting the disease. If proper attention is not taken, it will affect the productivity,” said Rajan of R.S. Mangalam.

He added that many farmers of R.S. Mangalam, were facing the same problem.

It was stated that the continuous rain coupled with chill climate had caused the spread of the diseases particularly leaf roller.

S. Rajendran, Joint Director of Agriculture, told ‘The Hindu’ though there were reports of pest attack in a few places, there was no cause for concern. The farmers were asked to spray the recommended pesticide in the affected fields. Enough stock had been maintained in all agricultural extension centres in the district. It was sold at 50 percent subsidy to the farmers.

Z. Kamaludeen, Assistant Director of Agriculture, Tiruppullani said the affected fields had already been recovering. Farmers were clearly educated on the need to apply mild dose of the pesticide to fight the disease. Since bright sunshine had been reported for the last one week, the disease would be automatically contained gradually. By R.S. Mangalam, Thiruvadanai, Ramanathapuram, The Hindu