Agri-Tech Blog

An expert committee has called for enhanced use of remote sensing technologies and establishment of a National Crop Statistics Centre to help formulate accurate crop area and yield estimates for planning bodies.

In an interim report submitted in July this year, the committee led by eminent agriculture scientist A. Vaidyanathan had recommended ramping up the use of remote sensing technologies to assess independent sources of land use, the area under crop cultivation and possible yield estimates, an official statement said.

The panel highlighted deficiencies in the existing system and suggested alternatives to ensure reliable and timely estimates of crop area and yields at the national and state level.

It has also recommended the creation of a National Crop Statistics Centre (NCSC) — an autonomous, professionally run organisation funded by the Centre to supervise the generation of crop area and yield estimates.

The government had constituted the committee under Mr. Vaidyanathan in February 2009, to suggest ways to improve the process of collecting agricultural statistics.

The panel was set up in accordance with the recommendations of a Steering Committee set up by the Planning Commission for formulation of Eleventh Five Year Plan estimates for agriculture and allied sectors.

The committee, comprising former Space Chairman Committee U. R. Rao and Calcutta Statistical Association Chairman S. P. Mukherjee, will submit its final report next month.

November 29th, 2010 | Tags: Remote sensing tech | Category: Agriculture Technology | Leave a comment

Dramatic price fluctuations, increasing demand, the food vs. fuel debate, and other events of the past year may have food producers wondering which way is up.

Despite these recent uncertainties, ‘up’ is precisely the direction an Iowa State researcher believes agriculture is headed for at least the next 10 years.

Wally Huffman, professor in agricultural economics and Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor in Agriculture and Life Sciences, predicts supply will go up, demand will go up, and real prices of grain and oilseeds also will go up.

“I’m very optimistic about the next 10 years,” said Huffman.

Huffman presented his research to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, France, last month. OECD and the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station supported the research.

An important part of Huffman’s study was the long-term trend of corn and soybean yields in Iowa, wheat in Kansas and France, rice in Japan and potatoes in the Netherlands. Huffman examined the trends and then made projections about the next decade.

The optimism starts with the producers.

“Prices right now for corn and soybeans are up about 50 percent relative to two years ago, so those are relatively good prices,” he said. “That’s good news for grain producers.”

The impact that the rising demand for biofuels will have on the market for agricultural products is not entirely clear, but grain and oilseed prices will generally be higher than they would be without biofuels.

“Overall, biofuels are probably a good thing for farmers,” he said. “However, there will be more erratic variation in grain and oilseed prices than there would be without biofuels,” he said.

The main reasons are the erratic components to both supply and demand of crude oil.

While biofuels are pushing demand for grain and oilseeds up, Huffman says the long-term trend in supply of grain and oilseeds is due to new technologies that are being developed by the private sector and marketed to farmers.

“Supply is going up, and demand is going up,” he said. “I think they will grow at a similar pace. There will be occasional spikes due to bad weather and abrupt restriction in crude oil production, but prices will come down. When they do, they will come down to similar levels to what they are now in real terms, and those are pretty good prices.

“For the past 100 years, on average, real agricultural product prices have been falling as technology has been allowing supply to increase faster than demand,” he said.

But for the past decade, demand has been rising as quickly as supply, he added.

Yields for major field crops in major producing areas have been steadily increasing. There is no indication that the rate is slowing and no reason to fear falling crop yields. Huffman predicts that the rate of increase in yields for corn and soybeans in major production areas will rise much faster than it has in the past 50 years.

“In the case of corn, since 1955 the average rate of increase in Iowa crop yield has been two bushels, per acre, per year,” said Huffman. “That’s an amazing accomplishment starting from about 65 bushels, per acre, per year in 1955, up to about 165 bushels, per acre, per year now.”

Huffman thinks the future will be even better.

“From 2010 to 2019, corn yields are going to increase quite substantially, maybe at four to six bushels, per acre, per year,” he said.

Much of the increase will be due to genetic improvements in hybrid corn varieties associated with new, multiple stacking of genes for insect protection and herbicide tolerance that will permit a major increase in plant populations.

These improvements are the result of corn that has been genetically modified (GM) to have certain desirable traits.

Also, better equipment, improved farm management, and reduced- and no-till farming will contribute to rising corn yields in the Midwest.

Other commodities have also improved yield and will likely see continuing increases, according to Huffman.

Soybean yields in Iowa also are increasing, although less dramatically than corn, says Huffman.

The trend over the past 50 years is an increase of about .5 bushel, per acre, per year (bu/ac/yr). That rate of improvement in Iowa soybean yields will continue or possibly increase over the next decade. Current soybean yields are about 50 bu/ac/yr.

Kansas is the leading producer of wheat in the United States with yields of about 45 bu/ac/yr. Yields have been improving at about .5 bu/ac/yr since about 1950.

Farmers in France are producing wheat at about 113 bu/ac/yr. Yields are improving at more than 1.5 bu/ac/yr.

France is the leading wheat producer in the European Union, and Huffman attributes much of their production advantage to the French emphasis on wheat advantage. They are also showing faster production improvement. France often puts their best land into wheat production. Huffman predicts wheat yields may increase faster if GM wheat is more successful.

Japan is a major rice producer. Yields are improving at a rate of .5 bu/ac/yr, and are now at 113 bu/ac/yr compared to around 90 bu/ac/yr in 1960. GM rice has been tried, but has not measurably increased yields, according to Huffman.

Netherlands is the most advanced country in the world when it comes to potato production technology. Yields in the Netherlands have been increasing by about 4.6 bu/ac/yr over the last 50 years and are now at 670 bu/ac/yr.

“Potatoes are a major world food crop and they don’t get a lot of attention,” said Huffman. “They are consumed in large amounts in Europe and other places, including the United States, and yields are phenomenal.”

Several variables will impact the future of crops.

According to Huffman, the biggest are:

* both private companies and government researchers are working on improving production
* higher yields as a result of new techniques in breeding crops, including methods to condense decades of breeding and testing into a few years
* change in biofuels from corn-based to biomass-based by 2019
* GM crops gain more acceptance in Europe

November 9th, 2010 | Tags: future agriculture | Category: Agriculture Technology | Comments (9)

As farmers quest for farm technologies that will significantly increase productivity, crop production practices continue to change. Yet plant diseases remain a big problem, limiting yields.

An effective disease management involves good agronomic practices such as balanced and appropriate fertilization, crop rotation, tillage, and weed control. But plant disease prevention and identification are still the best and first line of defenses against the onslaught of diseases.

There are many ways to manage plant diseases. And Dr. Naomi G. Tangonan, plant pathologist, Univer sity of Southern Mindanao Professor and Philippine Society for the Study of Nature Kalikasan Awardee fo Teaching and Research, suggests thy following measures:
• cultural measures such as intercropping, proper plant density, weeding. off-barring, hitting up, trap cropping. and irrigation;
• mechanical measures like roughing and pruning;
• physical measures such solar radiation, smudging, light traps for patho gen-carrying insects;
• application of organic-based formu lations like fermented teas from agricultural wastes such as fruit peels, cobs, legume pods, bagasse, straws, animal manures, and vermicasts;
• use of biocontrol agents like bacteria, fungi, mild strain viruses fc cross protection and friendly insects, and biopesticides or extracts of bo tanicals with fungicidal, bactericidal, nematicidal, insecticidal and viricidal properties;
• planting of disease-resistant cult vars; and
• judicious use of synthetic fungicides.

November 4th, 2010 | Tags: Plant Diseases | Category: Agricultural Science | Comments (1)

In a striking marriage between the oldest and newest technologies, PepsiCo today unveiled plans to roll out a web-based software tool to help farmers manage and reduce their water use and greenhouse gas emissions.

The food and beverage giant will bring its “i-crop” farming technology to the world, beginning with Europe in 2011, then to the U.S., India, China, Mexico and Australia by 2012.

I-crop is a cloud computing program developed by PepsiCo with Cambridge University that is currently being tested at 22 farms in the U.K. PepsiCo yesterday announced plans to reduce carbon emissions and water usage by 50 percent across the farming of its core crops in the next five years.

The company is the world’s largest purchaser of British potatoes, and also a significant buyer of oats and apples, with a commitment to using 100 percent British produce in some of its product lines, including Walkers Crisps, Quaker Oats and Scott’s porridge.

“Farming is in the DNA of our business – we rely on fresh produce every day. Finding ways to produce more food with less environmental impact is essential to our future,” Richard Evans, President of PepsiCo U.K. and Ireland, said in a statement. “I-crop has the potential to revolutionize the way we farm, enabling our farmers to save costs and water and carbon consumption, while at the same time improving their yields.”

PepsiCo’s move comes just a week after Walmart unveiled its own sustainable agriculture commitment, focused on local sourcing and sustainable growing methods.

October 21st, 2010 | Category: Agricultural Science, Crop | Comments (2)

Mother Nature ruled the Crop Tech Tour the last couple of years: Excess moisture created challenges for many farmers, widened the harvest timeframe and made it tough to get an accurate feel for how some new tools worked in the field.

But, this year’s warm, dry harvest season in the Corn Belt so far is giving a lot of farmers the chance to not just see better how new technology tools are performing, but also use past experience to make them even larger parts of their farms.

So, what’s working? Precision ag tools remain high on most farmers’ tech lists. But, the 2010 crop year showed one clear trend on the Crop Tech Tour: As more farmers gain experience with tools like GPS and autosteer, they’re starting to use them more often and in different, more advanced ways. In other words, after having gleaned precise data from their fields for a few years, they’re now starting to put those tools — and the data gleaned — to better use.

Farmers are starting to use some tools during a longer timeframe during the growing season, not just during specific times in the year like planting, spraying or combining, according to Mike Brandert, a Deere AMS consultant with Platte Valley Equipment in Fremont, Nebraska.

Precision controls — whether for planting, fertilizer and chemical application or harvest yield monitoring — have “worked really well” for Brandert’s farmer customers this year. In wetter years when harvest has been long and drawn-out, precision controls like autosteer and autotrack have helped farmers take full advantage of their time in the field and work longer hours during the precious few harvest days between rains. This year, though, the results have been shown more in yields, not just time.

“They’re getting good information. They can say ‘variety A made X number of bushels per acre’ and so on. Then, they can go to their fertilizer and seed companies and say these did better, and I want more of that,” Brandert says. “Technology has been impacting us in a lot better ways. Customers are able to maximize the yield they see at the end of the year.”

Chris Weydert takes it a step further: On his farm near Bode in north-central Iowa, he uses a system of precision data management to show how all his crop inputs are performing. He layers these variables on maps to reflect the “most advantageous practicse to stack.” It’s a major departure from a few short years ago, when the data management approach was much less structured.

“Now, we’ve got a way to manage this information better than before. In the past, we’d print out maps…then sit here and try to make judgment calls,” says Weydert, who works with West Des Moines, Iowa-based Premier Crop Systems LLC for his data management. “But, when we can throw all this into a query, we can maybe say these are our top 10 performing hybrids; then, re-query where those hybrids were, the seeding rates…what are the most advantageous practices to stack and where we performed best with all of these variables.”

Precision data management and utilization’s moving beyond the farm level, too. Some crop advisers are starting to collect wider-scale data to show how certain inputs are performing across larger geographies. Not only does it expand the number of acres from which precision field data is utilized, it also shows how a larger number of inputs are performing. To Bryan Arndorfer, crop adviser with Precision Management Services in Bancroft, Iowa, this kind of wider-scale data management has a bright future.

“We’ll aggregate our whole client database together so we can see these trends across thousands of acres in our area,” he says. “It’s valuable to have it on one field, but if we can combine 20 fungicide trials in one area, it gives us a better idea of how it’s working. It’s interesting to see it on a certain operation, but when we can see it across multiple ones, we can get a better idea of the trend and what is truly happening.”

October 21st, 2010 | Tags: agriculture, Crop | Category: Agricultural Science | Leave a comment

The Queensland Farmers Federation (QFF) says the use of chemicals in agriculture could be significantly reduced if consumers were willing to accept produce with some imperfections.

The use of endosulfan will be phased out in Australia over the next two years because of adverse environmental effects.

The insecticide is used by fruit and vegetable growers.

QFF spokesman Dan Galligan says growers will have to move to more expensive alternatives when they’re available, unless consumers are willing to make concessions.

“Less pesticides is a good thing for farmers because they’ll get more on the bottom line for them,” he said.

“But often they are pushed towards that higher quality of protection purely because of consumer demand.

“Its certainly a good thing if consumers can appreciate that a few blemishes doesn’t really matter and that’s a better thing for farmers and a better thing for the environment.”

October 13th, 2010 | Tags: agricultural chemicals, fruit | Category: Agricultural Science | Leave a comment

Who would think that farmers could still extract profit from residues?

Researchers of the Bicol Integrated Agricultural Research (BIARC) do so. They have developed an innovative, environment-friendly technology to convert sweet sorghum residues into bioorganic fertilizer.

Bio-organic fertilizer is compost from any organic material that has undergone rapid decomposition through the action of introduced homogeneous microbial inoculants. It is different from fresh organic fertilizer in which natural decay process is brought about by the action of heterogeneous microbes present in the organic matter. Compared with the traditional composting method, the introduction of microbial inoculants shortens composting time from three months to just three to four weeks.

Inoculants are commercially available in selected areas in the country. One of these is the Compost Fungus Activator (CFA), and often used is Trichoderma harzianum, a single-celled fungus that hastens the decomposition of organic materials high in lignin and cellulose like bagasse.

Bagasse is the pulp or dry refuse left after the juice is extracted from sweet sorghum or sugarcane stalks in the process of production of sugar, ethanol, and other sweet sorghum products.

For this technology, the researchers used sweet sorghum bagasse including those produced in sweet sorghum plantations that ordinarily dispose bagasse.

WHY Go BIO-ORGANIC?
The use of bio-organic fertilizer is promoted as inexpensive alternative to restore the fertility of poor degraded soils. Poor soils are the result of intensive agriculture, slash and burn methods, extensive use of pesticides and chemicals, mining, and urbanization. These practices degrade the quality of our soils and result in low yields and low productivity.

When applied to crops, bio-organic fertilizers can supply specific nutrients to plants, thus these are also known as microbial fertilizers. Their effects include enhancing the supply and total volume of plants’ nutritional elements, stimulating plant growth, or stimulating plants’ absorption of nutritional elements.

They facilitate the continuous and longterm soil improvement and recycling and availability of nutrients and minerals essential for survival, growth, and fruit bearing of a wide variety of plants and trees.

RECYCLING SWEET SORGHUM BAGASSE
BIARC implemented a collaborative project on the commercialization of sweet sorghum through a collaborative undertaking with the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) and the Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU). This resulted in the successful field tests of sweet sorghum varieties that were found suitable in Bicol’s agro-climatic condition. From this, BIARC proceeded to the region-wide commercialization of sweet sorghum including the development of village-level technologies.

Following the Four F’s Crop strategy for sweet sorghum, representing Food, Fuel, Feed, and Fertilizer, BAR urged its regional partners to continuously develop technologies to promote not only high agricultural productivity but to make use of available resources for other farm uses.

According to Romulo C. Cambaya, head of the Soil and Water Research Unit of BIARC who also leads this initiative, conversion of sweet sorghum bagasse into bio-organic fertilizer is one of the region’s initiatives.

Cambaya said that a one-hectare plantation of sweet sorghum will yield about 50-75 tons of stalks and produce from 22,000 to 35,000 tons of bagasse. Given the technology developed by BIARC, the bagasse can be converted to approximately 88-151 bags of bio-organic fertilizer with value from P22,000 to P37,750.

There are six basic steps in producing bio-organic fertilizer from sweet sorghum residues according to Ambaya. These are the following: 1) collecting leaves after stalk stripping; 2) gathering sweet sorghum bagasse; 3) shredding sweet sorghum bagasse using machine shredder; 4) composting the shredded bagasse (combining the CFA with bagasse, chicken dung, kakawate) ; 5) turning over the compost after two weeks; and 6) harvesting well-decomposed sweet sorghum bagasse.

In composting the shredded bagasse, the Rapid Composting Technology (RCT) involves inoculating the substrate along with small amounts of animal manure with Trichoderma. Using this inoculant, referred to as CFA, the composting time is reduced. Specifically, the RCT combination used 80 percent sweet sorghum bagasse, 15 percent chicken dung, 5 percent kakawate leaves, and 8 packets of CFA (per one ton mixture). The bagasse is soaked in water before adding the chicken dung after which the kakawate leaves are mixed in.

After harvesting the well-decomposed sweet sorghum bagasse, it is dried, sieved, weighed and packed for market.

PROFIT FROM NEAR ZERO CAPITAL
It is more advantageous to use bio-organic fertilizers than chemical fertilizers. Since bio-organic fertilizer involves recycling of nutrients from waste material, it is a cheap alternative or supplement to inorganic fertilizers. Thus, using it leads to increase in yield and profit. Soil tilth and fertility are also enhanced.

According to reports, with decreasing input price, bio-organic fertilizers can increase farmers yield and profit by as much as 30 percent to 200 percent. Agricultural and industrial wastes if processed into biodegradable fertilizers and enhanced with microorganisms can continuously improve the growth, protection, and productivity of the plants or crops.

A 25,000 kg of. sweet sorghum bagasse can produce 125 bags of the bio-organic fertilizer which can be sold at P230 er bag, with a gross value of P28,750.

October 13th, 2010 | Tags: Bio-organic Fertilizer | Category: Agricultural Science | Leave a comment