Where the Grass Is Made Greener

By The Wall Street Journal

I'm standing in the midst of a grassy, windswept field holding what could be the next killer app in lawn care. It's a vial of herbicide made from a sustainable, natural source—Canadian thistle fungus—and it's designed to wipe out clover, dandelions and other broadleaf weeds without damaging grass.

If plans stay on track, the product—code-named CBH, for Canadian Bioherbicide—could reach America's lawns as soon as 2011. If so, it will be a pivotal moment in the fast-moving evolution of naturally derived lawn and garden products in the U.S. In no small way, success will hinge on the marketing heft of its formulator, lawn and garden giant Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., whose labs supply much of what the world's homeowners buy each year in a quest to keep their grass green, plants plentiful and homes pest-free.

It's an industry in transition, and Scotts is preparing everything from an insect repellent derived from wild tomatoes to mulch uses automotive-surfactant technology to help water penetrate soil faster. Nearly 40% of the nation's 100 million households with a yard or garden say they are likely to use all-natural methods in the future due largely to environmental and health concerns, says the National Gardening Association.

A key hurdle for Scotts, whose roots lie deep in synthetic chemical products, is meeting that new demand while not sacrificing the effectiveness that keeps sales up and shareholders happy.

Recently I spent time at Scotts's headquarters. Experiments take place on 120 acres of rolling turf and inside an 18,000-square-foot greenhouse that can mimic any environment in North America. In a nearby humid "rearing room," bugs are bred for sacrificial duty and white-coated researchers pepper their speech with phrases like "knockdown time" (how long it takes a bug to stop moving).

Much of the company's $45 million annual research and development budget is devoted to formulating technology to benefit those who partake in green lawn services. What applicator is best? Will it freeze, thaw and still work? While the company manufactures the majority of its products, it often licenses or buys intellectual property from smaller companies and research institutions and then tweaks it—a trickier task with naturals, a broad term for ingredients derived from plants, animals and minerals. There are just not as many people working on green products for lawn care. And the ones that are don't always understand the biology of pests.

This year, for instance, Scotts introduced an insect killer under its new Ecosense label whose active ingredient is soybean oil. Scotts bought the technology from a small North Carolina company and set about speeding up its pest knockdown time, which was clocking in at an uncomfortable one minute. (Under 30 seconds is the goal, and 10 seconds is on par with non-natural solutions). A popular test subject: the hearty American cockroach, which Scotts keeps in large supply and feeds a diet of mostly dog food and apples.

Scotts used the Ecosense insecticide to demonstrate knockdown time of less than 30 seconds on a fat cockroach that jerked about briefly before growing still. (Researchers believe soybean oil thwarts pests' breathing.) The speed is an achievement for scientists, who, through repeated reformulations, halved the number of ingredients needed—making it less expensive to produce—while also improving its efficacy.



The bioherbicide, which interrupts the plants' ability to photosynthesize, is also looking promising. Scotts's researchers point to 3-by-3-foot plots of ailing dandelions and clover treated with the product adjacent to plots treated with Scotts's tried-and-true chemical weapon, Weed-B-Gon. The "injury," as scientists call it, is nearly identical.

Other natural herbicides are sold in the U.S. from well-known brands such as Jonathan Green and Safer, though many must be applied in significant quantities as pre-emergent weed suppressants or are non-selective, meaning they also kill grass. A Montreal-based company sells a fungus-based selective weed killer aimed at dandelions.

Scotts says its bioherbicide will be aimed at a variety of broad-leafed weeds and won't harm grass. It plans to launch the product first in a granular spot-control format to apply after weeds come up and is working on a pre-emergent formulation and a "weed and feed" product with fertilizer.

These new natural weed killers are the holy grail of organic lawn care. It's not about how to grow grass. It's about how not to grow weeds.

Some environmental advocates remain circumspect about Scotts's plans, suggesting a better natural route is to improve soil conditions so grass and plants can fight weeds and disease on their own.

Many environmentalists have been calling to replace lawns with native plants that don't consume as much water or fertilizer—a direct assault on Scotts's core business. Its response? New grass seeds and soils that conserve moisture, and fertilizers that require lower application rates. For instance, its "Water Smart" EZ Seed introduced this year contains coconut-fiber "coir technology" that helps seeds absorb eight times their weight in water.

Also, Americans spend more than three billion hours per year using lawn mowers and garden equipment. Our lineup of Scotts reel mowers, brill reel mowers, sunlawn reel mowers, push reel mowers and classic reel mowers is leading the eco-friendly reel mower movement, making it easy and enjoyable for any individual to eliminate their climate impact and transform lawn mowing to a clean future and more enjoyable experience. Please help us shift the consumer turf care industry towards more sustainable practices with reel lawn mowers and green lawn mowers.

Hiring Pros for a Lusher Lawn

By The Wall Street Journal

In some parts of the country, patches of lawn are peeking through mounds of snow. So we're preparing for one rite of spring: The quest to turn some noticeable brown spots into lush lawn.

For this task, we turned to professional lawn care companies -- both national and local -- to hear their plans for our yard. We were looking for personal attention and a customized plan to treat a few problem spots in our yard. We also wanted to explore options for organic lawn-care products.

About 25% of Americans pay for professional lawn care services, according to Bruce Butterfield, research director of the National Gardening Association. These companies specialize in periodic fertilizer applications, along with weed and pest control. Some also offer things like tree pruning, snow removal, mowing and gardening.

Many companies offer organic options to lawn care, but it can be confusing as to what that means. Organic fertilizers are available, but it can be more expensive. The options are fewer for organic weed and insect controls, so some lawn-care customers request a partially organic approach, with organic fertilizers and minimal amounts of synthetic weed and pest controls.

The five companies we contacted -- TruGreen, Lawn Doctor, Scotts LawnService, SavaTree and Second Nature -- said this is a good time for homeowners to do their research, because the first treatments in the Northeast are usually applied in late March or early April. Mr. Butterfield of the gardening association advised us to find a company that looks at the "lawn system" holistically, instead of "just doing the treatment, coming back in six weeks, and doing it again." So that's what we set out to do.

First we contacted TruGreen, a company we've used at our Connecticut home for the past seven years. The company has been responsive when we've had particular problems -- like those annoying brown spots, but technicians haven't suggested organic options or customized lawn care tailored to our problem areas. This year, our annual contract arrived in the mail with an option to prepay and get a discount. It was a nice option, but we would have liked some personal contact.

TruGreen is a national professional lawn care company based in Memphis, Tenn., with 278 locations across the country -- and more than 3.4 million residential and commercial customers. For our lawn, we were quoted a rate of $71.69 each for six fertilizer applications a year. The annual treatment plan also recommends grub and insect prevention, aeration and seeding to promote new growth, for an additional $448.26. In our area, TruGreen says, the application fee for its organic option is the same as for the non-organic blend, but that in other parts of the country, the organic option can cost as much as 60% more.

The TruGreen spokeswoman said fewer than 5% of its customers use their organic program nationally. "We're beginning to be able to communicate more with our customers on options for lawn care," she added.

The next national professional lawn care chain, Marysville, Ohio-based Scotts LawnService, gave us a proposal over the phone without seeing the property. A Scotts spokeswoman later explained that technicians typically don't visit a home to give quotes for seasonal applications, since the lot-size information is "easily calculated" using Google Earth and other online tools.

Based on Scotts' estimates, our professional lawn care treatment plan would consist of a first fertilizer treatment at $59.95, then four more at $97, plus a grub preventive at $205. Like TruGreen, Scotts has organic options, but we had to ask about them. Organic fertilizer treatments would start at $59.95, just like the fertilizers with weed control, but then would cost either $170.90 each (which includes pest control) or $143.40 (without pest control) for the four remaining treatments. The company says grub control is a non-organic treatment.

Overall, the company representatives were friendly and seemed informed about local conditions, but the process felt a bit bureaucratic, rather than personal.

The third national professional lawn care chain we spoke with, Lawn Doctor, offered the best combination of service and pricing of all the services we tested. The assistant general manager who came to our house was attentive and promised that his brother would be our technician. He stressed that the company was able to customize its products based on our lawn type and said it could use organic fertilizers for four of the six treatments. (The first two treatments are only partially organic because they include a weed killer.) He also said the treatments would specifically target problem areas for weeds and insects. The price: $70.55 each for six basic fertilizer treatments, with free service calls.

In our region, SavaTree, with 20 branches in eight states along the East Coast, has made a name for being green. Greg Huse, an arborist, came to our home and explained that his company offers fully organic and partially organic treatment plans -- in addition to traditional treatments that use weed and insect controls. Mr. Huse was the only lawn-care person we met who specifically raised the idea of treating different parts of our yard differently, pointing out that we should have "shade seeding" under a white pine in our backyard.

SavaTree's proposal was far more expensive than TruGreen's and Scotts', with an application costing $134. Add $476 a year for the aeration and overseeding treatment. But we really liked the personal attention. Mr. Huse also said he would take a free soil sample if we signed up with his company, which would help the company further refine our treatment plan.

Another call went to Stamford, Conn.-based Second Nature. This company's approach initially felt similar to SavaTree's, though they seemed particularly eager to provide a broader range of services, and stressed their scientific approach to the biology of the lawn. The company uses "synthetic control products" -- again non-organic weed and insect controls -- if the homeowner wants them. But the company says its emphasis is on making sure the lawn is healthy down to the roots and not just green on the top. To that end, technicians apply a special "compost tea" that is used to feed the lawn, says company President Jeffrey Thrasher.

We wound up requesting a proposal for Second Nature's basic professional lawn care service, as well as its property-management program, which includes everything from lawn care to snow blowing. The fertilizer applications came in at $116 each, less than SavaTree but significantly higher than the national chains. The lawn aeration and overseeding treatment came in at $735.

In the end, we were disappointed with the limited options for a truly organic lawn. And we were equally dismayed that no one who came to look at our lawn took a soil sample before giving us a proposal -- something Mr. Butterfield says would help lawn-care companies figure out what really should be put down on each lawn. Still, two of the companies -- Second Nature and SavaTree -- said technicians always take soil samples before starting to treat lawns. And Lawn Doctor said it takes soil samples when the customer requests it -- or when the lawn looks off to the salesperson or the technician.

Deere Sets Access Terms For Russian Investment

Story from Des Moines Register

Deere & Co. said Monday that it is prepared to invest up to $500 million in its Russian operations "under the right market access conditions."

Deere's statement marked negotiating at the commercial level as President Barack Obama meets with Russian leadership this week. A Russia-U.S. business forum is scheduled in conjunction with the summit in Moscow.

The phrase "market access conditions" is key because since the fall of communism in 1991 many U.S. companies have approached Russia only to be disappointed by Moscow's attitudes toward open markets.

Deere already has about 2,000 employees in Russia at factories and it also has a U.S.-style dealer network there, too.

The company has a manufacturing operation in Orenburg in southwestern Russia that makes seeding and tillage equipment for the Russian market and exports to other locations. In addition, John Deere is developing an operations, training and parts center near Kaluga in western Russia.

Deere President Samuel Allen said the company "could envision a series of significant investments over the next five to seven years in expanded capacity for manufacturing and supporting all types of Deere equipment," with the support of the Russian government. Allen said the investment could reach $500 million, according to Reuters.

USDA May Revise Genetic Modification Rules

Story from Inforum.com

Consumers who prefer organic foods, or food free of genetic modification, should know that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering rules that could affect their choices. GM experimentation has been plagued by unauthorized releases of experimental crops, which have then entered the food supply. If this continues, it will be harder and harder for consumers to obtain the foods they want.

One recent example is a variety of GM rice that got into the 2006 Arkansas rice harvest. This particular rice variety was never grown outside USDA-supervised test plots, yet the USDA is unable to explain how it got into the commercial harvest.

Going back to 2005, federal inspectors have issued a series of warnings to the USDA that it needs to improve oversight of GM experiment crops. They have gone unheeded. The 2008 Farm Bill required the USDA to write rules taking into account the federal inspectors’ criticisms. But the USDA’s draft rules not only fail to do so, they actually weaken oversight of GM experiment crops.

Consumers who want to retain a wide range of choices in the food they buy should urge the USDA to set a goal of 100 percent containment of experimental crops.

To express support for farmers who grow crops for organic and non-GM markets, consumers should also urge the USDA to study the economic impact of unauthorized releases of experiment crops.

To submit your comments to USDA, go to this Web site: http://ga3.org/campaign/Aphis3.

Crop Crisis In Maine

Story from Bangor Daily News

LINCOLN — Earl Ireland has been farming vegetables for 50 years and said Wednesday that he had never seen weather such as Maine is experiencing now.
“Another 10 days of rain and we’ll be out of business,” he said.



Ireland raises vegetables and berries on his Lincoln farm, and in a normal year, would have planted 70 acres this spring.

“We got in 35. We couldn’t get on the rest of the fields,” he said.

The lack of sun and continued rain are causing crops to rot in the fields.

“Nothing is growing and what is there is molding on the vine,” he said. “I don’t think we are even going to be able to salvage the pea crop.”

It’s an assessment being repeated on farms all over the state.

Crop-devouring insects that are thriving in the wet conditions, plants and fruit molding in the fields, and farmers’ inability to drive tractors on the wet ground are taking a crisis-level toll on Maine’s farmers.

Walt Whitcomb of Belfast raises corn, and thousands of cutworms have devastated about one-third of his feed corn acreage. But Whitcomb can’t drive on the fields to spray the needed insecticide, “and in two weeks, we are anticipating an even bigger problem — army worms. They eat everything, go across roads, up trees. There will be no fighting back.”

Late blight disease — the cause of the Irish potato famine — has been spotted in Maine, but farmers aren’t able to get on the fields to cull or spray infected plants, jeopardizing Maine’s potato crop.

“Think about getting your lawnmower stuck on your front lawn,” Rick Kersbergen of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension said Wednesday. “Now multiply that by 100 acres or more.”

Kersbergen said some large dairy farms, trying to save their feed corn crops, are seeking aerial sprayers to apply insecticide. Other farmers are erecting hoop-style greenhouses to keep the moisture off plants.

“It is bad, really bad out there,” he said.



Ken Gustin, state director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency, said Wednesday that farmers may not know the overall loss until the end of the year. He already has asked each county to provide the agency with damage assessment reports.

“We know there are problems because of 22 out of 30 days with either rain or no sun,” Gustin said. The paperwork being compiled will be used to go after a governor’s declaration of disaster or federal loss programs.

At Spiller Farm in Wells, Bill Spiller said the rain has completely ruined his season. “We are getting some strawberries but a lot of mold is settling in. The raspberries are molding as they ripen,” Spiller said.

In Washington in Knox County, Sweet Season Farm’s strawberries and raspberries are molding, while blueberries are loving the wet weather.

“For every strawberry we pick, we throw four away,” Virginia Reardon said. “We are getting a fairly good crop but the mold and the slugs are taking it away.”

Nathan Pennell, district manager for the Washington County Soil and Water Conservation District, said the area’s hay crop has been greatly affected. “It will be another two weeks before most of us will be able to start first crop,” he said. “This year it may therefore be September before we start haying. Totally unheard of in the past.”

David Bright and Jean Hay of Bright Berry Farm in Dixmont reported Wednesday that their berries set well before the rains came.

“The good ones are awesome, big and beautiful, thanks to the rain,” Bright said. “But we have had quite a bit of mold problems in recent days, with entire berries molding on the stalk and moldy spots on otherwise beautiful specimens. Yield is up dramatically because of the rain, but shrinkage is way high.”

Bright added, “Our other worry is if this weather holds for another couple of weeks, the raspberries will ripen and promptly mold on the cane, as they did seven or eight years ago, when we — and most growers in the state — pretty much lost our entire crop.”

Bright said the tips of some of the pea plants seem to be tired of the rain, but not enough to affect the yield. His corn, however, is not growing because of the lack of warm days.

“Squash and pumpkins have also slowed right down, but most are hanging in there. Before we realized it, the summer squash and melons were eaten up by the slugs that nuzzled under the cover. Then the cucumber beetles settled right in,” he said.

“The good news is that every time we get an inch of rain it saves us about 4 gallons of gas because we don’t have to run the irrigation pump to water plants the hose lines won’t reach,” Bright said. “We have two kids living in Seattle who we think are beginning to feel sorry for us.”

Jane Eaton of Beauty of the Earth Farm in Robbinston said farmers are struggling to get customers to turn out at area farmers markets for the fresh produce that is still able to be harvested.

She reported that at last week’s Sunrise County Farmers Market in Calais, Ted Carter of Alexander was selling “snowshoe lettuce,” so named because his wife, Liz, harvested the lettuce in snowshoes because the ground was too soft to walk on.

Eaton said that her farm, which produces mainly flowers, just finished up a fantastic peony season, shipping almost 3,500 stems to the cut-flower markets in Boston and Connecticut.

“The peonies were a little early this year, but the lack of sun means the next big crop, lilies, is slow, so I may suffer a gap in my ability to provide my customers,” she said.
John and Christine Alexander of Sugar Hill Cranberry Co. in Columbia said the rain is complicating production.

“The increase in rain is slowing down the whole growing process and makes scheduling for applying fertilizer difficult to do on a timely basis,” the Alexanders wrote in an e-mail. “The lack of sun is keeping the pods on the uprights of the vines from turning into blossoms, so bees are also affected. There is also potential for fruit rot after cranberries set, but we won’t know that for awhile.”

Robin Follette of Seasons Eating Farm in Talmadge said she went to bed Tuesday night thinking the soil was draining nicely and she could spend Wednesday pulling weeds.
“I woke up to pouring rain at 2:30 a.m. If the weather doesn’t change very soon, the summer harvest will be 50 percent of what I expected,” she said.

State Rep. Nancy Smith, D-Monmouth, is a diversified farmer and has managed to retain her sense of humor. “We’ve renamed our farm Snafu Acres Slug Farm,” she said. “And if we could just find a way to market those things, our problems would be solved.”

Small Farmers Experi-Mint With Crop Diversification

Story from the Detroit News

As Crosby Mint Farm prepares for its 98th harvest of the fragrant herb, siblings Jim and Linette Crosby, fourth-generation growers, are busy forming business partnerships they hope will keep the family farm operating for many years.

With the cost of farming going up and the price of mint oil increasing only $8 per pound since 1925, Jim Crosby said it was crucial to look for new ways to make the farm -- the oldest mint producing operation in the United States -- profitable. But, when the farm in St. Johns, near Lansing, recently came under the threat of foreclosure, diversification became a matter of survival.

"I had to do it," he said, "because I wanted to keep the farm going."

Above: Double The Fun -- Jim Crosby, right, has partnered with Dr. Eugene Watkins, who owns Pure Herbs Ltd. in Sterling Heights. The firm recently bought 200 gallons of spearmint oil. (Pure Herbs Ltd.)


New products boost business
Crosby, who goes by the nickname "Peppermint," started looking for a mint oil distributor 25 years ago, but couldn't find one who shared his commitment to improving the quality of customers' lives.

So, he diversified the 130-acre farm in other ways, including opening the farm to tourists in 1998 and developing a mint-based cleaner and a mint-based compost, which he began selling in 1997. In the past year, Crosby formed partnerships with a candle company, a candy company and a honey producer that use the mint oil in their products.

Before him, his parents and grandparents sold the mint and oil wholesale to a broker. During the 1940s and 1950s, mint farming was profitable, Crosby said, but markets changed and the price of mint held steady while expenses went up; smaller growers lost contracts because larger farms could do it cheaper. Crosby could see he was going to have to do things differently if he wanted to keep the farm viable.

Jim Crosby said it was crucial to look for new ways to make the farm -- the oldest mint producing operation in the United States -- profitable

His dad died in 2005, and his uncle, who helped maintain the farm, had a stroke a year later, leaving Crosby on his own. He was so busy taking care of the everyday operations that he let the business aspect slip away. Four years ago, he had taken out four loans, but wasn't able to repay them all.

That's when the lender Greenstone Farm Credit Services started the foreclosure process. Shortly after that, all the partnerships Crosby had begun forming crumbled because no one wanted to do business with a farm that wouldn't be around for long.

"We had done a lot, but it goes back to wearing all the hats," he said.

Pete Lemmer, an attorney for Greenstone, said the agency is working with Crosby and they have agreed on a repayment plan.
Interest in mint oil increases

Crosby has since formed new partnerships with candymaker R Candies in Bellevue, Soy-Beam Candle Buffet in Owosso and Frantz Honey in Davison to use the mint oil in their products. Henry Ford Hospital also is buying the oil for medicinal uses, he said.

The partnerships have generated more income for the farm and give the mint oil international exposure, Crosby said. Business is up 125 percent since the partnerships were formed, he said, and customers all over the country and as far away as Europe are interested in buying the oil and mint.

"We're able to offer more products people are asking for or wanting to buy," Crosby said.

R Candies began using Crosby's mint oil in its candies a year ago and it's getting rave reviews from customers.

"My strongest impression is that they love the freshness of the mint," said Ed Baker, whose family operates the company. "It makes a humongous difference."

Pure Herbs Ltd., an herbal manufacturing company in Sterling Heights, just bought its first shipment of 200 gallons of spearmint oil from Crosby Mint Farm last week, fulfilling Crosby's wish 25 years ago to partner with a business that shared his philosophy. Pure Herbs plans to sell the oil to its 6,500 active U.S. distributors.

The company bought the oil after owner Eugene Watkins tried it and loved it, said Al Pfund, production manager. The staff also liked the fact that it was 100 percent natural.

"We were very, very impressed," Pfund said. "We don't want the kind of oil that's made for food or has anything synthetic in it."

Even with all the financial trouble Crosby and his sister have faced during the past couple of years and their ongoing struggle to save the farm, he still believes in what they are doing and vows to continue growing mint and educating the public.

"Every day is a challenge and every day is a test of faith," he said. "It's always easy to walk away, but when you're doing what your heart believes, there are no obstacles."

John Deere Adds To Its 1910 Commodity Cart Line

Story from WebWire.com

LENEXA, Kansas .— John Deere expands its lineup of 1910 Commodity Carts with the addition of two larger models — a two-tank 350-bushel, and a three-tank 430-bushel, tow-between configuration. These new models provide the increased capacity for customers to seed and fertilize a large number of acres in less time. In addition, the 80-bushel tank on the 430-bushel tow-between commodity cart can also be ordered liquid-fertilizer capable.

"For grain producers concerned about compaction and productivity, these new tow-between carts address both issues. Our customers can seed and fertilize more acres in less time and make fewer stops to refill. This increases their productivity and seeding efficiency" says Aubrey Grove, project manager, John Deere Seeding Group. "The new carts are ideal for large-scale, small-grain producers who own air seeders, and for growers or ag-service providers who apply fertilizer with strip-till equipment"

For the 2010 model year, the two new tow-between carts come equipped with a 10-inch diameter auger with steel flighting that allows a customer to fill twice as fast as they could when compared to smaller models equipped with an 8-inch diameter auger. The larger auger is also standard on the company’s existing lineup of 350- and 430-bushel tow-behind 1910 Commodity Carts.

The 1910 Commodity Cart is one component of an integrated John Deere seeding and fertilizer application solution. The carts are compatible with the company’s SeedStar™ 2 seed monitoring system and GreenStar™2 displays. The SeedStar 2 system displays the planting and seeding functions, seed population, coverage maps, field documentation, and guidance information together on one screen.

The new 1910 Commodity Cart models are now available for customers to order. For more details you can visit with your local John Deere dealer, or go online and visit the company’s Web site at www.JohnDeere.com.

Success In Europe For The GreenStar Lightbar Guidance System

Story from Stackyard News

Designed for newcomers to the world of guidance, including small and medium size livestock farms and medium size arable farms, John Deere’s recently introduced GreenStar Lightbar guidance system is emerging as a best-seller.

Only four months after its official launch, almost 2000 units of this easy to install and easy to use system were ordered throughout Europe.

“With GreenStar Lightbar, we have successfully addressed the needs of customers who seek a simple, straightforward and cost efficient solution for their farm,” says Ralf Ulrich, marketing manager of John Deere AMS Europe. “This parallel tracking system helps farmers to achieve higher levels of accuracy and input cost savings when operating in the field with wider implements like cultivators, crop sprayers or lime spreaders – especially in challenging conditions like fog, dust or at night.”

Ready to use in under 10 minutes, the system is compatible with John Deere machines and other equipment brands which operate with a 12V power supply. The system is based around the new StarFire 300 EGNOS only receiver, which is mounted on the vehicle cab. The GreenStar Lightbar display uses LED indicators, each representing a 10cm deviation from the ideal track, to help the driver steer straight and parallel with previous work.

For its unrivalled ease of use, John Deere’s GreenStar Lightbar has already been recognised with innovation awards at two Spanish trade shows this spring – CIMAG in Galicia and AGRARIA in Valladolid.

Committee Backs Farm Overtime

Story from the Post-Journal

ALBANY - What has already been a bad year for farmers could get worse if a bill requiring mandatory overtime for farmworkers is approved by the state Legislature.

On Tuesday, the state Senate's Labor Committee voted in favor of a bill that would require mandatory payment of overtime to farmworkers, require farm employers to allow at least 24 consecutive hours of rest each week, provide for an eight-hour work day for farm laborers, makes unemployment insurance and workers compensation laws apply to farm workers, and requires farm worker injuries to be reported.

The bill has moved through committee in the Assembly, where a vote could be held this week. California is the only other state with such comprehensive labor rules for farms, according to the New York State Farm Bureau. Farmers say crops can only be picked during a short period of time, and having to pay overtime for the hours required during the harvest could make harvesting crops too expensive.

State Sen. Catharine Young, R-Olean and ranking member of the state Senate Agriculture Committee, on Tuesday blasted the Senate committee's vote, saying in a news release that the proposed changes will drive labor costs high enough to force farms out of business.

''The impact will be devastating,'' Sen. Young said. ''Thousands of farms statewide will go under, and countless jobs at farms, processing plants and farm-supply businesses will be lost."

"Crops will rot in the fields because farmers will have no money to harvest them, and dairy cows will be taken to the slaughterhouse because farmers won't be able to afford to milk them. Weeds will overrun our vineyards; orchards; and corn, alfalfa and vegetable fields," Sen. Young continued.

UPSTATE VS. DOWNSTATE

Opposition is coming largely from upstate legislators and organizations, including the Farm Bureau. Sponsors of the bill in both the Senate and Assembly are all from the New York City area, and the farm workers bill has received the editorial support of the New York Times and New York Daily News. Support in favor of the Assembly bill was recently pledged during an Albany rally hosted by Sheldon Silver, Assembly speaker. Those in favor of the bill say farm workers should receive the same protections given to other workers

''That farm workers should be denied unemployment insurance, denied workers compensation insurance, denied the right to bargain collectively, is a moral outrage,'' Silver said in a news release. ''For too long, this state has turned its back on our farm workers. This must be the year we make things right. I came here this afternoon to tell you that the Assembly Democrats stand with you.''

According to a Farm Bureau of New York fact sheet, farm workers already have access to unemployment and workers compensation insurance, and farm work agreements are already required by state law for all farm employees. If a farm employs 10 or more employees or reaches $20,000 in payroll in a quarter, the farmer must pay unemployment. Workers compensation is required once a farm has an annual payroll of $1,200. Farm work agreements and state overtime law already stipulate work to be performed, wages, work hours in a standard day and week, the pay period, benefits and time off.

The additional stipulations in the Senate bill would, according to the Farm Bureau, cost the farm families of New York more than $200 million per year. Jon Greenwood, a dairy farmer from St. Lawrence County, estimated the bill would cost him $6,000 a week in overtime costs alone. Farm officials are also concerned that Canada, Mexico and China, which are competition for state farmers, are not required to pay overtime, unemployment insurance or other state mandates.

"If passed, this bill would put our industry into a major tailspin and wreck the already struggling Upstate and Long Island economy," said Dean Norton, president of New York Farm Bureau and a dairy farmer from Batavia. "The tragic irony of the situation is that the sponsors are primarily from New York City or urban areas, and most of them have never been on a farm. If the bill's sponsors spent some time understanding the issue, talking to farmers and farm workers, they would know that the bill doesn't actually benefit the worker."

SEN. YOUNG'S OPPOSITION

On Tuesday, Sen. Young said New York already has some of the strictest laws and standards in the country. She said farms are already subject to constant regulation and are regularly inspected by a variety of federal and state agencies. Adding mandatory overtime pay after eight hours, unemployment insurance and worker's compensation costs and collective bargaining rights will make farms unable to compete with other states and countries.

She said farmers are already receiving less for the food they produce and had to deal with cuts to state-funded agriculture programs totaling more than $11 million, and also had an emergency dairy relief program voted down.

Sen Young is calling on Senate Democrats, who took over the majority in the November election, to stop the bills from coming before the entire Senate.

''This year already has been an unmitigated disaster for farmers,'' Sen. Young said. ''They are getting dangerously low prices for the food they produce. The state budget piled on huge hikes in taxes, utility charges, and health insurance premium costs. Farming suffered severe cuts to state-funded agriculture programs to the tune of more than $11 million. Farmers had their emergency dairy relief program voted down. Now that the state has hammered agriculture, Albany may put countless farms out of business for good. There is only one way to stop this catastrophe, and that is making sure these bills never come to the Senate floor for a vote.''

Come On, Let's Go Space Farming

Story from Gourmet.com



Faced with budget cuts, NASA plant researchers are turning their attention to this planet—and they could be shaping the future of agriculture. Plus, see the evolution of space food through the years.

Forty years ago this month, Apollo 10 astronauts spread “meat salad” on slices of white bread for a cosmic-cuisine “first”: the first sandwiches made in space. Up until that moment, food on NASA missions meant either dehydrated (freeze-dried) meals or bite-size, ready-to-eat foods that were consumed directly from their plastic packaging. None of it bore much resemblance to earthbound food, so fresh bread (which had made an illegal appearance in space once before, when astronaut John Young smuggled a corned-beef deli sandwich aboard the Gemini 3 mission in the ’60s) was a real treat.

Space snacking has come a long way since those days, to be sure. Astronauts now eat foods as varied as kimchi, beef enchiladas, and the occasional meal from Alain Ducasse, Emeril Lagasse, or Rachael Ray. But fresh produce is scarce and is limited to sturdy items like oranges and apples.

That all could change in coming years, as researchers perfect methods for what they hope will be the future of space food: cosmic gardening. The thinking is that fresh crops would sustain astronauts on long-term missions to the Moon and Mars, creating variety in their diets, helping reduce the high cost of replenishing food supplies, and providing both nutritional and psychological benefits (anecdotal evidence indicates that a diet of healthy, tasty foods and the presence of plants both help to decrease the stress of long missions). NASA’s plant growth experiments began in earnest during the 1990s, and gearing up for missions to the Moon and Mars was a NASA priority under President Bush, so the agency has put effort and funding behind horticultural research for the past two decades, with impressive results: Astronauts have successfully grown plants—including soybeans, potatoes, tomatoes, wheat, peas, and more—in space (though they haven’t made them a regular part of their diet yet), and earthbound researchers have experimented with growing additional species including peppers, strawberries, onions, and herbs in conditions that mimic those in space.

Now, due at least partially to funding cuts, many researchers are shifting their focus toward ways of making agriculture more sustainable here on earth—and their work has the potential to revolutionize farming worldwide, from major urban centers to remote desert and mountain villages.

Growing plants in space presents unique problems: The absence of wind and insects means some crops need to be pollinated by hand; natural light isn’t available inside space bases; crops can’t be too labor- or energy-intensive, as bases have limited manpower and natural resources; and of course there is no naturally available water source, so water efficiency is extremely important. According to Ray Wheeler, a plant physiologist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, scientists have been largely successful in tackling these challenges. “Over the years of testing, NASA-sponsored research has shown that you can push the yields of many crops beyond what people thought was possible—beyond world records,” he says, explaining that this increase in yield has been accomplished mainly by using high-intensity lighting, creating optimal CO2 environments for the plants, and growing them in hydroponic cultures.

Wheeler has done extensive research on lighting, specifically looking at LED lights (like the ones pictured above), which “are very convenient for little space chambers,” he says. “They don’t have mercury or vapor in them, and the high-quality ones last a long time,” which helps bring down the overall cost of crop production. LEDs are also cool to the touch, says Cary Mitchell, director of the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training for Advanced Life Support at Purdue University—so unlike most conventional lights, LEDs can be placed very close to (or even touching) plants, providing a concentrated light source with minimal wasted light. Mitchell and colleagues have developed LEDs that can stand right next to plants and shed light under and around the leaves, instead of just lighting from above (he calls these LEDs “lightsicles” because of their vertical, icicle-like shape). “We’re able to run the LEDs at fairly low power, because it doesn’t take a lot of power to get the light levels we need to grow the crops,” Mitchell explains. He adds that different species of plants have slightly different light preferences, so “you could actually custom-develop a lighting array for plants that emits the colors that the pigments in those leaves prefer,” he says.

The hydroponic systems being developed for space can also be tailored to specific plants, which are grown in a soil-free, recirculating stream of nutrients housed within a growth chamber (the process is called nutrient-film technique, or NFT). And these crops could pull double duty as water purifiers: Research has shown that plants in NFT hydroponic cultures can process soap-containing water with minimal effects on plant growth. “You can take waste water and regenerate that into potable drinking water, as opposed to doing it with chemical means,” says Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Program at the University of Arizona. If the system can also harness the oxygen generated by the plants and the CO2 generated by humans, it moves toward the “closed loop” that is the holy grail of space-life-support research. Giacomelli and Wheeler have found that in such a system, 50 square meters of plant-growth space per astronaut (about 538 square feet, roughly the size of a standard American hotel room) could provide half that person’s daily calorie requirements (the remainder would come from stored food), plus 100 percent of his or her fresh water needs and about twice the oxygen.

NASA sponsorship for plant-research projects has fallen away recently, and the agency could face further changes as a new administrator steps in and an independent committee begins to review NASA’s human space-flight plans; but some researchers are securing other funding sources and looking at how their work could be applied to Earth-based agriculture. For example, Mitchell—whose initial goal was to design a self-sustaining, closed-loop system for future space colonies on the Moon and Mars—has started to work on a project that would harness a wide variety of the NASA researchers’ achievements, and it could have a significant impact on earthbound agriculture. He is working with a Purdue colleague, Gioia Massa, to harness “waste heat” from industrial sites to warm the soil in cold climates, making it possible to grow crops year-round (see drawing below). At the coal-fired power plant on the Purdue campus, the team’s test site, hot wastewater is a byproduct of electricity generation; Mitchell and Massa are working to channel that water through underground pipes beneath a farm site to heat the soil. The field will be covered with “high tunnels” (cheap, bottomless plastic greenhouses that cost only about 15 percent of the price of a commercial plastic greenhouse) to trap the heat. If all goes well (the team is in the process of securing funds to finish the project and expect to test it with fruits and vegetables this winter), the project could be expanded to future applications at sewage-treatment plants and landfills, where CO2 and methane are additional byproducts. At those sites, Mitchell says, “We could inject both the heat and the carbon dioxide into the high tunnels to stimulate crop growth” and generate electricity from the methane to power LED lighting. “We intend to use the loop-closure principles that we've learned working with NASA so that we can have affordable, local production of fruits and vegetables,” he says. “We could produce food locally [in the winter] in New York, Indiana, Minnesota—because waste is produced everywhere.”

It’s an exciting prospect, and it points to a common thread in all of the NASA-sponsored plant research: controlled environments. As Mitchell explains, “The reason plants are so much more productive in a greenhouse—or better yet in a growth chamber, or better still with hydroponics in the growth chamber—[is because in those environments] they come much closer to their genetic potential for productivity.” While some commercial growers do use controlled environments, it’s a relatively small industry in this country. “The USDA hasn't historically had areas that cover controlled-environment agriculture,” says Wheeler. “The field growers of corn and soybeans have been very efficient at lobbying their case. But if you add up the [whole] greenhouse industry, it’s not insignificant—they just haven’t been as effective in lobbying the USDA.”

There’s a possibility that this could all change if these researchers get together with others in the field of controlled-environment agriculture, particularly urban farmers. Strange as it sounds, it just may be that for the local-food movement, space really is the final frontier.