UPfront
Stops on the march toward biofuels
We’ve talked about the future of biofuels depending on the advancement of new enzymes, but there is another component. Scientists will need to better understand all of the new crops that biofuel pioneers believe have potential to create fuel.
So expect to see more projects like the one underway at Michigan State University. There, scientists are using a half-million-dollar federal grant to create an easily accessible, Web-based genomic database of information on crops that can be used to make ethanol.
“Right now, about half of the biofuel crops don’t have genomic databases, and the ones that do are in many different places and are annotated differently, which makes it difficult to compare and use the information,” said Michigan State’s C. Robin Buell, associate professor of plant biology and project leader.
Genomic databases contain information on the molecular biology and genetics of a particular species.
Buell will use a $540,000 joint grant from the departments of Agriculture and Energy to centralize the genomic databases, create uniform descriptions of the genomes, provide data-mining and search tools and provide a Web site for scientists from around the world to access the databases. And they’ll keep it all updated.
Meanwhile, ADM, Deere and Monsanto have agreed to collaborate on research to explore technologies and processes to turn crop residues into feed and bioenergy products.
The companies will work together to identify environmentally and economically sustainable methods for the harvest, storage and transport of corn stover.
The world in words
A selective picture of today’s headlines Average cost for acre of Illinois farmland hits $5,000
The State Journal-Register, IL Remember the 80s as land values rise, experts advise
Michigan Farm News, MI Land values on the rise even for non-prime farmland
Minnesota Public Radio, MN Indiana Farmland Value, Cash Rents Increase By Double Digits
CattleNetwork.com, KS Farmland prices raise the stakes
Bismarck Tribune, SD Fields of gold
Toronto Star, Canada In Farm Country's Boom, Hints of a Bubble
Washington Post, Washington D.C. |
Stover is usually left on the field, where, in proper amounts, it helps reduce soil erosion and build up soil organic matter. A 170-bushel-per-acre corn crop also produces about 4 dry tons of stover. The USDA forecasts that in 2008, farmers will harvest 12.3 billion bushels of corn, resulting in approximately 290 million tons of stover.
In their work, the companies will address a number of complexities and challenges. For example, stover collection rates need to be adjusted on a field-by-field basis to ensure that sufficient stover is left on the soil to reduce erosion and maintain or improve soil quality for the next season’s crop. Also, the amount of moisture in the stover at harvest can present challenges in transportation and storage.
New numbers in green and yellow
John Deere is transitioning to a new name and number system for its full line of tractors starting with the new 5D, 5E, 5M, and 6D series tractors.
The plan is to make the number more reflective of the engine horsepower of a tractor, its capability and its size.
Each new tractor model number has six available positions. The first position is a number and represents its size. The second, third and fourth positions are numbers and denote its relative engine horsepower. The fifth position is a letter and indicates its capability or price level within its family.
Letters at the beginning of the alphabet indicate a tractor model has lower levels of capabilities when compared to other models in its family. Letters higher in the alphabet specify a tractor has more advanced capabilities. Some tractors will also have a sixth position to designate a specific configuration such as a high-crop or narrow-profile tractor. Consider the new John Deere 5045D, 5065E and 5065M tractors. The 5065E is a 65-engine horsepower tractor. When compared to other models in the 5 family of tractors, the 5065E has fewer capabilities while a 5065M has greater capabilities.
This new system does away with the word thousand in the series title. The name and numbering switch will not be immediate for all John Deere tractors. It will be phased in over time when new product families are introduced.
Sooey - Ever wonder just what that means?
If you want to hear an interesting conversation, ask a dozen old-timer farmers from different parts of the country how they call in the livestock. You’ll get some interesting variations, with plenty of folks saying something like “here boss!” or “s’boss!” And if you ever want to feel a bit dim, stop by to help a friend bring in the cattle and try to call his herd with your traditional call. This is one of the only times that cows produce an expression of condescension.
Yet if one herd doesn’t seem to answer to another farmer’s call, why do so many calls seem to contain a form of “boss”?
Over at the Oxford Press USA blog, (http://blog.oup.com), a blogger-etymologist weighs in:
| Calls to animals are numerous, and linguists from various countries have discussed them many times. Here are the English calls stored in my database (their occurrence means that someone has tried to explain their origin, for otherwise I would not have included them): boss, chatty chotty, cheet cheety-puss, chibs, co-jack, coobiddy, coppe, cush(a), ge-ho, gee-(gee, -hup, -wo), gisy(sy), goosy, guiss(ie), koh, prutchy, purr, seck, sess, shoo, sooey, suee, surg, turalura, whoa and whosh-wo. |
Our blog contributor mentions that among language sleuths, there is speculation that many herdsmen are calling out a variation of a phrase in ancient Greek that meant literally, “the cow.” But tracing linguistic origins is never that easy. She goes on:
| However, other explanations are also possible. Take sooei. Su- is the root of [the] English sow “female pig,” English swine (originally an adjective meaning “of, pertaining to pigs”), and German Sau “sow.” The Old English for sow was su and sugu. …Sooey need not be Latin or Indo-European: It is probably a universal sound imitative complex designating both the pig and the pig’s grunt. Boss is less clear, except that bwoo, boo and moo have been associated with bellowing nearly everywhere. There also is English regional boose “cow stall” (a northern German form is similar), and it has been suggested that boss means “(go to) stall.” This suggestion seems rather improbable to me. |
Now you know. Or at least you have a theory. You can see the full post at http://blog.oup.com/2008/08/gleanings-5/.
Understand livestock behavior and facilities for healthier animals
Humane Livestock Handling
By Temple Grandin
Storey Publishing
Paperback
240 pages
8 1/2 x 10 7/8
ISBN: 978-1-60342-028-0
$24.95—click here to buy
If you’ve been around livestock long, you have heard of Temple Grandin. She is the best-selling author of books such as Animals in Translation and Thinking in Pictures. Grandin’s livestock facility designs have been adopted across the world and come from her unique ability to interpret how animals see and react to design. And when she isn’t consulting, Grandin is assistant professor of animal science at Colorado State University.
In Humane Livestock Handling, Grandin brings her expertise to the farm level, explaining how to improve an operation and its profitability by raising healthier, more contented animals. She includes some interesting background on animal behavior, including reading hair whorls to predict disposition.
But the real meat of the book is its third section in which Grandin shares dozens of methods and detailed plans she has developed for low-stress ways to move livestock. Design sketches include detailed measurements for chutes, corral systems, pens and fences.
All of this leads toward Grandin’s conviction that low-stress handling will deliver livestock that:
• Injure themselves less frequently, keeping bruised meat to a minimum
• Stay healthier, reducing veterinary expenditures
• Remain calm in most circumstances, keeping human handlers safer
• Deliver higher yields of marketable meat
• Answer consumer demand for humanely raised meat
• Are an indispensable part of efficient, ethically managed farms
100 years of Today’s Farmer—In search of the family farm In the fall out of the 1980s farm crisis, our editors asked a few leaders to define “family farm.” It is difficult to pinpoint when the debate about what it means to be a family farmer started. It’s an older debate than you might think. Coverage and editorializing about farm consolidation has been a part of this publication from the magazine’s beginning 100 years ago. Of course, media memes have a way of repeating themselves. So you see the question of what it means to be a family farmer arise during any time of disruption or change in agriculture. In these pages, it was especially prevalent during the height of early farm mechanization, the onset of commercial fertilizer, modern crop protection chemicals and during tumultuous economic times like the 1930s and 1980s. Here we drop in on Today’s Farmer coverage from 1984. From the midst of a farm crisis, and as our national leadership was pondering the 1985 farm bill, Today’s Farmer editors caught up with a few farm bloc leaders to see what they thought a family farm should be. Bob Bergland
(Former Secretary of Agriculture)
Executive Vice President, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association “I differentiate them from the 5 percent of massive corporate operations which produce 50 percent of the output of American agriculture. And I differentiate them from the other 71 percent of farms which account for only 12 percent of all sales. …We cannot ignore this group in the mistaken belief that its struggling half million members must somehow rise again to some superhuman and cruel laissez-faire expectation and become more efficient still. Missouri’s U.S. Senator
Thomas F. Eagleton In the fall of 1979, the former Secretary of Agriculture, Bob Bergland, held a series of public meetings. At one of those meetings, the family farm was described as “democracy and free enterprise at its best, a family surviving and working a business together, working together to produce food and fiber.” Beyond the symbolism, almost every farmer and farm organization has a different view of the family farm. To find broad agreement on its definition, be it by income, amount of acreage, level of sales, or by any other measure, has been virtually impossible. Missouri’s U.S. Senator
John C. Danforth The preservation of family farming is important. The role of the federal government, I believe, is to encourage an economic climate in which family farms can do well. The single most important thing Washington can do is to reduce the federal deficit. North Carolina’s U.S. Senator
Jesse Helms The family farm should be both a way of life and a way of making a living. The public needs to recognize that, in order to survive, family farms must make a profit. Profit is not a dirty word. When farmers can sell their goods profitably, they have incentive to produce—which assures consumers of a continuing supply of food—and the farm income which they receive multiplies throughout our economy, creating economic growth. One of the best ways for farmers to work together for economic success is through their cooperatives such as MFA. The Capper-Volsted Act allows farmers to purchase supplies and market their goods cooperatively. That authority is vital if family farmers are to survive and prosper. Kentucky’s U.S. Senator
Walter Huddleston To me, the central component of the definition of family farmer is the idea that one man or woman—or a couple—can manage the operation, usually with the aid of only family members or occasional hired help. Family farmers are remarkably resilient under rapidly changing conditions. In years of drought or depressed prices, the family tightens its collective belt so as to keep its assets intact for the next year. Also, throughout American history, we have seen family farmers adjust their methods of production to become amazingly efficient, so that they are now able to respond to the agriculture needs not only of the nation but also of the world. |
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