Morning Read: Ag experts say region’s farms must prep for climate change
While politicians dither over climate change, a growing number of experts in fields like engineering, public planning, and agriculture are preparing for what they view as an inevitably changed planet.
That view was shared again on Friday by an expert from Monsanto, who spoke at a USDA conference in Washington, according to the Watertown Daily Times.
[T]he change isn’t that far away. Surface warming in the Northern Hemisphere has accelerated since the late 1960s, equivalent to moving Earth a million miles closer to the sun, said David Gustafson, senior fellow for water quality and agricultural sustainability with the Monsanto Co. Prospects for lessening the global warming effect are increasingly dim, Mr. Gustafson said. “Agriculture will, in fact, be forced to deal,” he said.
Change could affect the North Country’s dairy interesting in particular, writes the Times’ Mark Heller.
In New York, the trend toward warmer conditions could cost the state part of its advantage in the dairy industry: cool weather. Cows begin to experience heat stress when temperatures reach the mid-70s, and production suffers sharply as readings reach into the 80s and 90s.
“Dairy farmers could adapt to this by renovating barns with better cooling systems, but these costs would have to be weighed against potential risks and benefits,” wrote David W. Wolfe, a professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, in a paper on climate change and Northeast agriculture.
Tags: agriculture, climate change
I don’t think farmers needed Ag experts to tell them that climate change has been and will be a problem for them.
And Monsanto? What drugs are they working on to push on farmers next?
Knuck – the ag experts are telling the farmers they need to be prepared to adapt thats slightly different.
So maybe they can switch to growing oranges?
Question. How is it I see ads on TV about the happy cows in California? Last I heard, California is still warmer than upstate NY>
Much of what Monsanto and other similar companies do is based on tilling and natural breeding and has nothing to do with drugs.
Paul,
my knee jerk reaction to February 27, 2012 at 10:34 am is i doubt that very much.
Isn’t Monsanto’s motto “better life through chemicals” ?
Monsanto is one of the largest agricultural biotechnology companies in the world. They produce Roundup and the genetically-engineered Roundup resistant seeds. Not so much “natural breeding” these days. They developed bovine growth hormone. Tilling??? Well I guess the GPS/satellite/computer software driven integrated farming system could be lumped under the heading of “tilling”. But that tilling requires the use of Roundup and genetically-engineered seeds.
To increase agricultural yields to what will be necessary to sustain the worlds population with food and now fuel requires the kind of work that these companies do. It becomes even more relevant now as many people (like myself) are willing to pay more for food that is grown under less than ideal conditions for yield.
Monsanto and other companies like this have huge breeding programs. And they use tilling to find naturally occurring varieties of plants that have desirable traits, not the other kind of “tilling”. They know that if they can make a non-GMO plant as opposed to a GMO plant that it will sell well in many large markets including Europe. Basically you use genetic manipulation to figure out what the best traits are, then you go and find a naturally occurring plant that has that genotype.
I don’t give a hoot about Monsanto but without Roundup resistant crops food would be much more expensive than it is now, much more land would be needed for agriculture, and a lot more kids would go to bed hungry every night.
They did it to make money but it has a huge benefit to society and the environment.
“Basically you use genetic manipulation to figure out what the best traits are, then you go and find a naturally occurring plant that has that genotype.”
And you hope like hell that Mother Nature doesn’t pull an Australia-type unforeseen disaster on you down the road.
Thanks Paul, but not “diggin” it.
Monsanto, ADM, etc… would like to go it alone without them.
My solution to a world with more food?
Irrigate Africa, and use the Military and their budget.
Drill the desert till it looks like swiss cheese, we’ll do it for oil but not for water. That’s pure B.S. in my book.
If we want to find “a naturally occurring plant that has that genotype.” lets use the old tried and true scientific method–observation.
If it exists, it should be obvious.
I’m skeptical of monoculture.
Variations exist for a reason.
Walker, We could sit back and do nothing as an alternative.
Two Cents, I see where you are coming from but without the companies you don’t like we would need a lot more oil wells to make the fuel that we need to produce what we have now. For example it takes much less fuel (and chemicals) to grow crops using technology like Roundup than it does without. These things are not perfect but you have to be realistic about the world we live in.
Do the math and figure out how many metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions are prevented each year due to “no till” farming practices that are made possible by plant biotechnology.
“We could sit back and do nothing as an alternative.” That’s what the guy said before he brought the first rabbits to Australia. But hey, maybe nothing will go wrong!
Walker, I am just saying that unless we want to go back to just hunting and gathering that you have to try and find solutions to these issues. I agree that we need to learn what we can from those past mistakes. Is the lesson that we can’t do anything? Hopefully not.
That roundup-resistance gene was isolated maybe 30 years ago (from a bacteria where they had been using a lot of roundup). Its been cloned into plants for a long time – and nothing has happened so far. In fact, as Paul points out, its been all good so far.
In fact, if you look at the natural (disease) disasters that have occurred due to extraneous DNA getting introduced by standard traditional plant breeding practices, biotechnology looks really good.
Sorry – Im biased on this one. When I was a graduate student, the grad student from the lab next door isolated that glyphosate (roundup) resistance gene a year after he and half the scientists from my lab were recruited to one of the first plant biotech companies. I’ve followed this issue pretty closely since then. I understand the psychology of it but the science is pretty much on the side of safety.
We could and probably will “genetic manipulate” ourselves out of existence.
The more we tinker with nature, the more problems we create. It is total insanity to manipulate crops so we can grow more on less land so more land is available for more people to have housing, shopping malls, etc.
More people equals more energy consumption, more solid waste, much of it toxic.
If you look at the Earth as a house, which it is, do we really want to see how many we can cram into a finite space. Some of us would like to move around without bumping into everyone and everything all of the time.
It’s one of the main reasons many of us choose to live in the Adirondacks.
Pete, some of that is true but the example of Roundup that we are discussing not only makes it possible to leave land for malls but also for woods, the kind you and I both like. As we continue to promote things like bio-fuels and wind and solar farms we are going to need to produce more per acre every year. Along with the climate benefits I mentioned above, It also saves millions of tons of soil from being eroded away each year due to less tilling and plowing. Too many people here seem to have on blinders that have been formed by listening to too many people drone on about how bad GMOs are.
Pete, don’t fret, there is plenty of natural “genetic manipulation” going on every day all around you. That is part of the problem, it is hard to keep up with the changes that we can’t control. This is an issue for the ongoing use of things like Roundup.
“The science is pretty much on the side of safety.”
I’m really not especially paranoid about the genetic engineering in this case, but I am not so sure about the safety of using the vast amounts of Roundup that the GMOs make possible. Roundup is a potent endocrine disruptor, and it can cause genetic damage. We already have problems with endocrine disruptors in the environment affecting human health. It’s bad for earthworms. And we’re seeing alarming things in frog and fish populations. Then there’s the bees.
So sure, we’re way more sophisticated now than we were when the Aussies started mucking up their bit of the world. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this comes back to bite us sooner or later. You can’t dump millions of pounds of potent chemicals on millions of acres of land decade after decade with zero consequences.
Then there’s Monsanto’s trustworthiness: on two occasions the United States Environmental Protection Agency has caught scientists deliberately falsifying test results at research laboratories hired by Monsanto to study glyphosate. They’ve also been accused of false and misleading advertising, claiming that Roundup was “safer than table salt” and “practically non-toxic” to mammals, birds, and fish.
And finally, we have the emergence, naturally enough, of super-weeds, weeds that are immune to RoundUp, just like the crops are.
I defy anyone to read the entire Wikipedia page on Roundup without coming away with at least a few nagging doubts about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_%28herbicide%29
What is interesting is that although Dairy farming is made for cooler climates, the larges dairy producers are essentially now in the desert. It makes no sense. California dairy my ass.
I’m not so sure that thirty years is a “long time” :)
Walker (et al) I was defending GMO in general, but roundup is easier. (although I wouldnt probably use it in my own yard). Roundup is degraded in 24 hours and it sticks to clay particles so it doesnt go anywhere. In any of these agricultural changing practices issues, you have to think in terms of what are they replacing, or whats the alternative. If you are growing a crop, you still have to get rid of the weeds. You can use a mechanical weeder on a big machine or you can hire a bunch of laborers to go through with hoes (long, hard rows to hoe). If you go through with a machine, that uses oil etc. Laborers are practical in third world countries and really high value crops. But its generally exploitative labor,(ideal for slavery).
Peter, right, “safer than table salt” and “practically non-toxic.”
For starters, the idea that it “it sticks to clay particles so it doesnt go anywhere” sounds good, but what happens after all the clay particles have adsorbed all the Roundup they can handle? And if it is “degraded in 24 hours” how does it kill weeds?
From the Wikipedia article: “A 2009 study using a RoundUp formulation has concluded that absorption into plants delays subsequent soil-degradation, and can increase glyphosate persistence in soil from two to six times.[42]
In soils, half lives vary from as little as 3 days at a site in Texas, to as much as 141 days at a site in Iowa.[43] In addition, the glyphosate metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid was shown to persist up to 2 years in Swedish forest soils.[44]
A recent study concluded that certain amphibians may be at risk from glyphosate use.[45] One study has shown an effect on growth and survival of earthworms.[46] … In other studies, nitrogen fixing bacteria have been impaired, and also crop plant susceptibility to disease has been increased.”
And “In many cities, Roundup is sprayed along the sidewalks and streets, as well as crevices in between pavement where weeds often grow. However, up to 24% of the glyphosate from a Roundup formulation applied to hard surfaces can be run off by water.[107] Glyphosate contamination of surface water is highly attributed to urban use.[108]
In many Canadian cities Roundup use for cosmetic purposes is either banned or restricted.”
And sure, you’re right, it’s replacing something more toxic still. But when we’re told that it is “safe as table salt,” we’re likely to be lulled into a sense of security that may not be entirely warranted.
I’m sure that you could do a better job of evaluating the real risks than I can. I wish I felt sure that you had really made a sincere effort to look beyond the company’s claims.
I understand the concept of higher yield through the use of chemicals and technology. We’ve had a policy intended to limit the number of farms and farmers and to produce more food on lesser acreage.
I believe we can go back to having more farmers, smaller farms and still feed everyone–perhaps better than we do now. I see lots of farm fields growing to woods all around. Those fields can be used productively. Small farms can produce very large yields; granted, at the cost of higher labor
Yes, food will get more expensive but that can be off-set by better quality and rehabilitating rural economies through the increased numbers of small farms and farmers.
Mind-boggling amounts of acreage in this country are dedicated to growing feed crops for industrialized meat production. The statistic I’ve heard is that it takes 16 pound of grain to make 1 pound of meat. A change in diet that includes less meat will free up grains to be fed to people. If 1 pound of meat feeds 8 people for one meal 16 pounds will feed 32 or 64.
I’m going to ignore agricultural acreage being used for ethanol production because it is obscene.
We can also work at limiting population growth, but that is a whole can of worms. (Worms are also a goof source of protein, incidentally)
My point here is that there are many ways to approach production of food in order to feed the world and at the same time limit the use of chemicals which are poisons, after all. And while I am all for increasing scientific knowledge, we should be very careful about how we mess with Mother Nature. Technologies that seemed good at the time have often turned out to have unforeseen negative consequences.
Peter H, yes I understand that experts are telling farmer they need to adapt. Having known a few farmers I’ve found them to be the kind of people who are constantly working to adapt and are usually open to ideas, whether they subscribe to them in the end or not.
The problem for the farmer is that the Market often will not reward them for doing what they know is the right thing to do.
Worms are also a good source of protein, they are a chief builder of soil quality. Kill them off (as Roundup may do) and keep using chemical fertilizer, and watch the healthfulness of your crops diminish over the years.
KLH, you’re right about meat (and ethanol). But changing the way we do this stuff is the mother of all uphill battles. And part of it has to do with those small-population-state senators bringing home the pork, er, bacon.
to bring the roundup story back to the main thread, roundup resistance is, I think, used commercially in soy bean production, which has been suggested as a potential crop for the North country if global warming continues.
I personally wouldnt consider roundup safe as table salt, but if you need to use an herbicide, its probably the safest one out there.
But it’s not as safe as organic farming.
And if, as I strongly suspect, its safety is significantly over-rated, then it is dangerous precisely because it is considered safe.
Enough with the Roundup discussion! Farmers, no matter which style are dependent on predictability in weather most of all. Not enough rain, too much at the wrong time, too much heat, and we turn a marginal industry into an impossible one. Populations continue to rise, water tables continue to fall, and global food stocks are at all time lows, and then the weather does something completely off the charts and we will find ourselves in a whole lot of trouble.
Mass starvation isn’t something from futuristic science fiction…it’s something from present day Africa. It’s their bad luck to be where the climate changes have made weather prediction unreliable. No one knows where things will go to hell next. Last year it was Russia…and Texas!!! Ever closer to my back door.
Plant a garden. Get good at it. Cross your fingers.
Walker, you have to be realistic. The use of something like roundup (imperfect as it may be) is far better than what preceded it. Like Peter says you have to control weeds unless you want to use far more acreage to produce the same yield. I don’t prefer the other chemical herbicides that you would need to employ, and again there you will need to do more tilling, more plowing, use more fuel, emit more GH gases etc. You have to make choices, none are perfect.
Organic farming is great but it will never produce the necessary yields per acre that we require even today. Like I said I prefer to buy products grown this way but I am willing and able to pay more for these. That has many negative impacts.
Mike, what you describe is the same “discussion” as Roundup. There are ways to make crops that are more drought tolerant (GMO and breeding solutions). You don’t need to cross your fingers, and the last time I checked many poor people don’t have any land to plant a garden.
Peter, I think that the vast majority of soybean (like corn) planted in the US is GMO soybeans, much of that Roundup resistant. We are all exposed to it probably more than table salt. So far so good.
In fact I suspect that Walker you are a guy that would follow science as a guide. I think I have seen you talk about it here regarding things like climate change. I challenge you to find one singe peer reviewed scientific article that shows any negative health effects of ANY genetically modified crop. You can’t find it because it doesn’t exist. All you have are your “strong suspicions” that you mention above that have nothing to do with science.
Large farms in the Midwest today go no-till. You just kill everything and plant your crop without ever scraping the soil at all.
ttmike, part of the problem in Africa today is very similar to what happened in Ireland a century and a half ago. Financial types have bought up productive farmland in Africa to produce specialized high value crops, like flowers, to be flown to Europe. The Investor Groups make a tidy profit while Africans only a few hundred miles from those farms starve.
While this is a discussion of climate change and local agriculture we may start to see echos of that same sort of song here. Already investors and hedge funds are buying up farmland in the mid-west and driving independent farmers out of business or preventing locals who might wish to start their own farm from doing so. Adjusting to climate change will take the collective genius of many people to work out.
Certainly a few hedge fund types can add to the conversation but there is also the danger that they can make the farms turn the numbers they need not through good agricultural practice but through commodity speculation and government payments/tax benefits.
“I am just saying that unless we want to go back to just hunting and gathering that you have to try and find solutions to these issues.”
Good hyperbole, but no need to go back to hunting and gathering.
Here are two solutions to the problems you seem to be bringing up here: 1. Population Control, and 2. Less reliance on fossil fuels.
They sure seem like more reasonable options to me than genetically manipulating organisms and then suing the be-jeepers out of small farmers.
“I challenge you to find one singe peer reviewed scientific article that shows any negative health effects of ANY genetically modified crop.”
Paul, you seem not to have read what I’ve written here: my focus is on the heavy use of Roundup that the GMO crops permit, NOT on the genetic modification issue itself. And the Wikipedia article that I have linked, above, cites dozens of articles in peer reviewed journals showing negative health effects from Roundup.
And Peter has notably failed to address my comments regarding the safety of Roundup– that the supposed rapid neutralization of it by binding to clay soils is not quite as claimed.
Walker – it should not be a shock that roundup is more toxic than Monsanto claims in its advertising. Nor should you be surprised that Wikipedia heavily favors the roundup-is-toxic research. Its a volunteer encyclopedia and the people passionate about this subject enough to contribute all have strong feelings. I doubt that anyone has strong pro-herbicide emotional ties. But (from that same wikipedia article) “The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers glyphosate to be relatively low in toxicity, and without carcinogenic or teratagenic effects.[18] The EPA considered a “worst case” dietary risk model of an individual eating a lifetime of food entirely from glyphosate-sprayed fields, and with residue levels remaining at their maximum levels, and concluded no adverse effects would exist under these conditions.[18]”
Read ANY of Pollan’s books.
http://michaelpollan.com/books/in-defense-of-food/
Walker – I am not an expert in any field remotely related to understanding the metabolism of roundup in the soil. That said, my memory is that there are specific pH’s and soil types where roundup persists longer than advertised.
On the other hand, compared to all the other chemicals that modern agriculture uses, roundup is probably on the very low end of the environmental damage scale.
It should be quite obvious from all of the above we are continuing to paint ourselves into a dooms day corner.
As we meet the demand for food by increasing crop yields on smaller portions of land, the population grows and demands more food (and more energy).
You look at Africa and you need to remember there was a time when Africans could feed themselves. Now we have a cycle where they are fed, their numbers increase, they starve, they are fed, their numbers increase, more starve, they are feed and their numbers increase, and on and on it goes.
Does this make any sense?
Let me be cruel here for a moment. Because of the situation you have in Africa and other places as well, the mindset you have when it comes to procreation is to procreate as much as possible because some of the children will die from starvation. Each time they are rescued, some children are lost but some are saved and the population grows, setting up the stage for the next round of starvation. It’s like the whole world is running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
The solution is not Roundup or any other chemical because the problem is humans constant war against nature and their refusal to accept the fact that they are part of nature. Nature is not our enemy but we have become the enemy of nature and thus the enemy of ourselves.
Pete – starvation is part of nature.
“we need a bigger boat”……:)
Peter, I’m sorry, I took the following to imply that you had some related training: “…half the scientists from my lab were recruited to one of the first plant biotech companies. I’ve followed this issue pretty closely since then.”
I just spent 15 minutes looking for evidence of problems with Roundup, and found little, other than this Greenpeace link: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/Herbicide-tolerance-and-GM-crops/
The link on that page is to a 44-page pdf that I haven’t read in detail, and don’t have the knowledge to really evaluate, but it does suggest that there is some ground for concern. We are applying hundreds of millions of pounds of the stuff every year. Let’s hope the “No Immediate Danger” folks are right.
“It should be quite obvious from all of the above we are continuing to paint ourselves into a dooms day corner.”
Pete, one lesson we know from the evolutionary record is that at some point all species come to an end. We are not special in that regard. But we can stretch it out if we do certain things. Technology can help us do it. Walker, I agree we need to be careful. But we do need to make informed choices at some point, you can’t always wait for all the data.
We may even figure out a way to get to some other hospitable planets some day. You never know.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nasa-finds-new-planet-kepler-22b-outside-solar-system-with-temperature-right-for-life/2011/12/07/gIQAPfzFdO_story.html
Paul, I come at this as someone who was subject to aerial spraying at the Jersey shore and other places in the early 1960s. DDT was perfectly harmless, we were assured. So was smoking. So were cars without seatbelts and god only knows what else. One thing I know for sure is that when an industry is making a ton of money, you can’t trust them to tell the truth about any downside to their products. Ever.
Were you around when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published?
“American Cyanamid biochemist Robert White-Stevens and former Cyanamid chemist Thomas Jukes were among the most aggressive critics, especially of Carson’s analysis of DDT. According to White-Stevens, “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”
“Others went further, attacking Carson’s scientific credentials (because her training was in marine biology rather than biochemistry) and her personal character. White-Stevens labeled her “a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature”, while former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson—in a letter to Dwight D. Eisenhower—reportedly concluded that because she was unmarried despite being physically attractive, she was “probably a Communist”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson
That’s why I tend to be a bit skeptical.
From that Greenpeace pdf:
For example, Monsanto says ‘glyphosate-containing products labelled for forestry use have shown no adverse effect on aquatic animals’ (Monsanto 2010a) and that these products present ‘extremely low toxicity to mammals, birds and fish‘ (Monsanto 2010b). However, there is now a significant body of evidence from the peerreviewed scientific literature showing that these claims can no longer be supported where Roundup formulations are applied. The toxicity of glyphosate is strongly increased by the adjuvants and surfactants that it is mixed with in order for it to adhere to foliage and penetrate into plant cells, allowing it to then be transported (or translocated) to all parts of the plant. Approvals of products are based on separate assessments of glyphosate and the adjuvants and surfactants6 but not the combined commercial product. At least 12 different adjuvants have been used in glyphosate-based formulations (Cox 2004). In most cases, the mixtures and ratios are commercially confidential.
And
Declines in the numbers and the diversity of amphibian species across the world have been widely reported since the 1980s. It is estimated that one in three of species globally is threatened with extinction (Williams 2004). Causes such as habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, disease and environmental contamination have been put forward as contributing to this decline.
In the past, testing pesticides on amphibians, as part of the approval process, was rare. When it did occur, it was only over short time periods (Reylea 2005a). However, the global decline of amphibian numbers led researchers to focus on agro-chemicals as a potential cause of their decline. Glyphosate and Roundup formulations were selected for independent toxicity studies because of their widespread use. The conclusions from several projects suggest that, under close-tofield- conditions, glyphosate-based products, including Roundup, have a direct toxic effect on the adults and tadpoles of a range of amphibian species…
…
The findings of these studies suggest that glyphosate-based products harm amphibians at concentrations which occur as a result of their normal use in agriculture or forestry. This group of animals includes many species that are predators of pests in and around agroecosystems and forest ecosystems. Losses of the order reported above in wild populations could have significant impacts upon pest populations and a long-term impact on crop yield and quality.
Etc.
Again…enough of the Roundup discussion! The origin of this stream is about climate change…not organic versus chemical farming. Neither system will be productive in Tyler Texas, where my nephew spoke to me on the 100th day of 100+ degree weather. All the Roundup in the world won’t grow crops without water.
Thirty or so years ago, we saw maps that predicted the expansion of the Sonoran desert. It’s just beginning now, and will expand. These changes might have been lessened, (but that’s another discussion that’s already been thoroughly hashed out), now we deal with the reality of climate change, and despite all the Tea Party rhetoric…it won’t be changing back for a long, long time.
How we feed ourselves, and for that matter the global markets in the next decades will be the largest concern of our governments and our farmers. We have grown up as a country with the mid-west grain-belt as a given. Like Russia our immense agricultural region has made us healthy and wealthy…but last year, Russia went from major grain exporter to hungry importer in a single season. The weather prediction is always a bit of a crap shoot, and climate change only makes it more so.
Fair enough, Mike. Don’t be too tight, though… side threads are allowed.
“That’s why I tend to be a bit skeptical.”
Skeptical is good. Isn’t that why we have things like the EPA study that Peter pointed to? You don’t have to trust the company in any case.
Tootight, don’t be so tight! If you don’t like a string ignore it.
Besides a discussion on climate change and agriculture should include a discussion on technologies used in agriculture to try and limit climate change. Even if you want to start the discussion with the assumption that climate change can’t be slowed in anyway it still makes sense to discuss technology that is developed to deal with a changing climate.