Study: No-Till Farming Reduces Greenhouse Gas

By Rick Callahan

No-till farming, in which farmers don’t plow under their fields between crops, releases far smaller amounts of a potent greenhouse gas into the air than conventional farming, according to a new study that suggests no-till may help combat global warming.

Researchers said the findings also could help farmers make more efficient use of the costly nitrogen-based fertilizers used to spur plant growth by showing them how to keep more of it in the soil.

The three-year, federally funded Purdue University study looked at the amount of nitrous oxide released by no-till fields compared to plowed fields. No-till farmers aim to disrupt the soil surface as little as possible, although they do cut into it to plant seeds and inject fertilizers.

The study found no-till fields released 57 percent less nitrous oxide than chisel tilling, in which plants are plowed back into the soil after harvest, said Purdue agronomist Tony Vyn, who led the research. They also produced 40 percent less gas than fields tilled with moldboard plows, which turn the dirt over onto itself.

Those numbers are averages, he said. Researchers looked at fields where corn and soybeans were alternated from year to year and others that were planted each year from corn. Emissions in fields where crops were rotated were lower than in those where they weren’t, he said.

Vyn said he was stunned by the large amounts of nitrous oxide his team detected in the air above the plowed fields compared with those that had long been farmed using the erosion-fighting no-till approach.

The results are particularly disconcerting in light of the fact that nitrous oxide packs 310 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas largely blamed for climate change, he said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that nitrous oxide can remain in the atmosphere for 120 years, adding to its global warming impact.

“Because it’s so long lived, we need to do everything we can in terms of farming practices to reduce these releases,” Vyn said. “Once it’s released, it’s going to be in the air for a long time — longer than anyone’s lifetime.”

His team’s research results appear in the January-February issue of the Soil Science Society of America Journal.

Robert Horton, a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University who was not involved in the study, called the results exciting and said they highlight another potential benefit of no-till farming, which has already been shown to reduce erosion and improve soil quality.

“Now we can add an air quality advantage of no-till rotations to the list,” he said.

Vyn’s team conducted its research in fields Purdue maintains near the West Lafayette campus in rich soils that once were tall grass prairie. The university has farmed those fields for three decades using either no-till or one of the common plowing practices. The differences seen in the nitrous oxide emissions are likely due to variations in microbial life and soil chemistry created by the different farming practices, Vyn said.

Rodney Venterea, a soil scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research arm, said the Purdue study supports his research, which also found that scaling back on field plowing reduces nitrous oxide emissions.

But he said the release of the gas is complex and not simply a matter of one farming practice versus another. For example, he’s found no-till fields release more nitrous oxide than plowed land when fertilizer is applied to the soil surface rather than injected into the dirt. The Purdue researchers injected the liquid nitrogen fertilizer a few inches into the soil.

Venterea said it’s important to note those different outcomes because some no-till farmers still use the surface-application approach, instead of injecting fertilizer below the surface, where plant matter accumulates and bacteria and fungi are active and can break down chemicals.

“So if you can get your nitrogen fertilizer down below that active zone then that’s the best scenario,” he said. “The more nitrogen fertilizer that stays in the soil, the more that’s available for the plants and there’s less that can be released as (nitrous oxide) and other forms that have other environmental effects.”

Sixty-eight percent of the nitrous oxide emissions in the U.S. in 2008 came from farmland, according to an EPA report leased last year. It said U.S. emissions of the gas grew about 6 percent between 1990 and 2008.

Although the study looked at conventional farming techniques and industrial fertilizers, Vyn said manure used as fertilizer by some farmers, including organic farmers, can also release nitrous oxide if it is applied in large amounts.

“It is the decade of agriculture in Africa. Food security will become the next tradable commodity”

By Carey Gillam

BOSTON (Reuters) – Africa as has long been a target for wealthy philanthropists who donate money in a fight against the continent’s poverty, disease epidemics and food shortages.

Now, taking a cue from the nonprofit world, profit-hungry investors are eyeing Africa in a new way, putting a charitable spin on their pursuit of double-digit returns.

Whether it’s making loans for refrigeration trucks serving a fishery in Sierra Leone, or financing an organic cotton undertaking in Uganda, more investment groups are following in the footsteps of grant-making philanthropists as they put their money to work on projects in some of the world’s poorest countries.

“It is the decade of agriculture in Africa. Food security will become the next tradable commodity,” said Soros Economic Development Fund President Stewart Paperin. “You don’t have to swoop in and say I’m going to take all of your crops.

“You can operate in a responsible way and still make money,” he said. “This is just basic blocking and tackling – how you build an economy.”

A number of charitable foundations, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,

have targeted the continent for years with programs to help improve food production through agricultural upgrades.

As profit-seeking investors grow more interested in Africa, the two sides are starting to team up.

One of the newest such efforts is the “TransFarm Africa Transformation Fund (TFA Fund),” a private equity investment vehicle aiming for 15 percent returns by investing in “growth-oriented, mid-scale commercial farms and agri-businesses whose business models incorporate small farmers and small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises.”

The fund, managed by Lion’s Head Global Partners, a London investment bank, was the brainchild of the Menlo Park, California-based William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The foundation has $6.7 billion in assets and a long history of funding anti-poverty programs around the world.

“Basically, millions of small holder farmers have to go through a transformation from being subsistence to commercial producers,,, and by doing so, help maintain Africa’s march toward economic growth,” said TransFarm Africa Director Kurt Hoffman in an interview from Johannesburg where he was meeting with investors.

Hoffman said the TFA investment fund has commitments of nearly $20 million so far. It is focused on aiding mid-sized commercial farmers and agribusinesses in processing and distribution that include small farmers in their operations. One of the first such investments was made in southern Tanzania.

The investments are generally seen having a life of seven to 10 years, ranging in equity stakes from $2 million to $5 million.

In addition to the fund, TransFarm backers have established a public policy program working with African governments and regional economic officials to promote more investments.

Smita Singh, the Hewlett Foundation’s global development program director, said she hoped TransFarm Africa would demonstrate to investors around the world that money could be made outside the large-scale plantations that attract the most capital.

Some investors as well as foreign government entities have been criticized for “land grabbing” — buying up large swaths of African farmland. Critics say this practice does little to alleviate poverty or empower farmers, and sometimes creates strife as Africans lose control of key resources.

“With the land grabs, the motivation is to push people off the land. What we’re talking about is how you incorporate small holder farms into the commercial food chain,” Singh said.

“The challenge has been to demonstrate to capital markets that this is worth the risk. We’re hoping to demonstrate there is both social impact as well as commercial viability.”

IMPACT INVESTING TAKES ROOT

TransFarm is only one example of many “impact investing” groups targeting Africa now. The new breed hopes to avoid the stigma and opposition associated with land grabbing by partnering with local business development groups. The aim is to boost production and trade for Africans while producing profits for investors.

“There is an increased recognition that good governance, respect for indigenous/worker rights, education, social services, environment, etc., are good business sense… providing the foundation for high rates of return,” said Diana Glassman, a partner in EBG Capital, an advisory spinoff of Credit Suisse.

African agriculture has long been plagued by low productivity and poor market access for small, subsistence farmers, a failure of commercial agriculture to find a critical mass that meets domestic needs, poor infrastructure, trade barriers and a lack of supportive government policies.

But with world population rising substantially and incomes in Asia and elsewhere also up, demand has grown for food, especially more sophisticated and higher-priced food products.

Investors say Africa offers an expanse of low-cost agricultural land with the potential for big gains in production and profitability. These can be achieved through use of new agricultural practices, including improved seeds, fertilizers, and modern machinery.

Among some recent deals, investors led by Boston-based Root Capital recently approved a $700,000 loan to back the launch of organic cotton production operations in Uganda’s northern district of Gulu, a center of such violence less than a decade ago that many farmers are only now back from refugee camps.

Also, in Burkina Faso, $300,000 in trade finance funds from Root helped prop up a mango exporting group that represents more than 1,800 African farmers.

For Soros Economic Development Funds, investments include refrigerated transportation that supports local fisheries, milling operations, and investments in projects that support rice production and improved use of soil nutrients to increase crop production.

AN “EMERGING PRIORITY”

Ann Tutwiler, coordinator for global food security at the United States Department of Agriculture, calls Africa an “emerging priority,” and said the U.S. government wants to encourage private investment into food and agriculture projects there.

The U.S. government and wealthy foundations have numerous programs underway to help African farmers, boost food production and trade, and improve infrastructure. Still, Tutwiler said, private investors are critical.

“Even with the amount of money the U.S. government and the other donors are putting in… it is small potatoes compared to the level of investment we need,” she said.

“That investment has to come from the private sector.”

Farmers Increasingly Adopt “No-Till” for Major Crops

 

 

John Horowitz
Robert Ebel
Kohei Ueda

Widespread adoption of less intensive tillage practices could enable U.S. agriculture to sequester substantial amounts of carbon and contribute to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Less intensive tillage would also reduce water sedimentation and chemical pollution as well as atmospheric dust and haze.

Tillage—turning the soil to control for weeds and pests and to prepare for seeding—has long been part of crop farming. However, intensive soil tillage can increase the likelihood of soil erosion, nutrient runoff into nearby waterways, and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. A reduction in how often or how intensively cropland is tilled enables the soil to retain more organic matter, which helps store, or “sequester,” carbon and leaves the soil less susceptible to wind and water erosion.

ERS researchers compiled data on U.S. tillage practices using USDA’s Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) and the National Resources Inventory (NRI). ARMS, which provides some of the most reliable nationwide information on farming production practices, suggests that no-till operations accounted for an estimated 35 percent of the cropland planted to eight major crops in the U.S. in 2009. The crops—barley, corn, cotton, oats, rice, sorghum, soybeans, and wheat—constituted 94 percent of total U.S. planted acreage in 2009. Furthermore, the use of no-till increased over time for corn, cotton, soybeans, and rice, the crops for which the ARMS data were sufficient to calculate a trend.

No-till adoption varied substantially across crops, however, even for those that have generally similar production practices. For example, land planted to barley had roughly twice the percentage of no-till (27 percent in 2003) as land planted to oats (14 percent in 2005).

Greenhouse gas benefits are largest when no-till is practiced over a prolonged period. NRI’s Conservation Effects Assessment Project Cropland Survey collected data on farming practices during 2003-06. In the Upper Mississippi River Basin, one of the Nation’s major growing areas, 13 percent of cropped acres were in no-till for 3 consecutive years during the relevant survey period.

Together, ARMS and NRI data indicate that efforts to increase the adoption of less intensive tillage practices by U.S. farmers could be an important component of policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help protect the environment.

Money Flows to Green Ag and Farming at Hague Investment Fair

Farming generates 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and an “Investment Fair” on the sidelines of UN talks in the Hague aims to change that by funneling investment dollars into sustainable agriculture projects that capture carbon in soil.  Three deals have already been signed to fund five projects, but more scale is needed..

 

Hans Hoogeveen may not have gotten everything he wanted, but he’s off to a good start.

A Professor of Practice in Natural Resource Policy, Hoogeveen also serves on the advisory board of Ecosystem Marketplace publisher Forest Trends and is the man “responsible for International and European Affairs, Agrochain, Trade, Fisheries and implementation of European Union policies” in the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture.  In that capacity, he spearheaded an Investment Fair which runs through Thursday as part of the International Conference on Agriculture, Food Security, and Climate Change in the Hague.

“We need concrete results, and not just pretty words,” he said at the start of the fair.  “We need new money flowing into real projects that are delivering verifiable results, and not just recycling the same government pledges for the third and fourth time.”

It’s now three days into the fair, and three deals have already been inked.  Together, they put roughly $2 million into five projects that are helping poor farmers work their land in a sustainable way.  More importantly for the long-term viability of the projects, they do so by harnessing carbon finance to reward farmers for adopting sustainable practices that capture carbon in the ground.

The Deals

The first deal was signed on Monday, and it’s more of a grant that promotes investment than it is an actual investment.  Under it, the Rockefeller Foundation is putting $1.5 million dollars into three projects:

• the African Agricultural Climate Finance Facility (ACFF), a project of Forest Trends which is developing new transaction models to support greater investment in smallholder, farmer-driven agricultural mitigation and adaptation projects;
• the Rainforest Alliance, which is developing criteria that help small farmers adopt practices that decrease their carbon footprint and increase their climate resilience; and
• the Nature Conservation Research Centre of Ghana, which is helping small-holder cocoa farmers produce shade-grown cocoa, which supports greater long-term productivity, sequesters more carbon, and should also fetch a higher price.

The second deal was inked on Tuesday, and more closely resembles the kind of payment for ecosystem services that can bring the value of nature into the production stream.  Under it, the Dutch minister for Agriculture and Foreign Trade, Henk Bleker, signed a financial commitment with the investment fund Food 4 All, which invests in smaller companies and cooperatives in East and West Africa.

The third deal was inked on Wednesday, and is a the first soil-carbon project approved in Africa.  Under it, the World Bank is purchasing carbon credits from Vi Agroforestry, an NGO that has been active in Eastern Africa since 1983.  The credits will be sold to the BioCarbon Fund, and the project makes it possible for small-holder farmers in Kenya to access the carbon market and receive carbon revenues through the adoption of productivity enhancing practices and technologies.

UN launches decade-long drive to combat desertification

 

 

 

16 August 2010 – The United Nations today unveiled a decade-long push to raise awareness and mobilize action to fight desertification, which threatens the livelihoods of more than 1 billion people in 100 countries.

Desertification is defined as the degradation of drylands, which comprise more than 40 per cent of the world’s land surface and are home to 2.1 billion people – one in every three people worldwide.

One third of all crops cultivated today have their origins in drylands, which also support half of all livestock.

“Continued land degradation – whether from climate change, unsustainable agriculture or poor management of water resources – is a threat to food security, leading to starvation among the most acutely affected communities and robbing the world of productive land,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a message to the launch of the Decade for Deserts and the Fight against Desertification in Fortaleza, Brazil.

The General Assembly designated 2010-2020 as the Decade in 2007 to heighten public awareness of the threat posed by desertification, land degradation and drought to sustainable development.

As the 10-year scheme gets under way, Mr. Ban said, “let us pledge to intensify our efforts to nurture the land we need for achieving the Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] and guaranteeing human well-being.”

Agreed upon by world leaders, the MDGs are eight anti-poverty targets with a 2015 deadline.

The Secretary-General pointed out that there are growing social costs resulting from land degradation, with increased competition for resources spurring conflict, while the forced migration of millions of people also heightens the risk of social breakdown.

“These are formidable challenges,” he said. “But they are not intractable.”

Around the world, efforts to rehabilitate drylands are bearing fruit, Mr. Ban noted. Continued help for local communities can lead to the preservation or recovery of millions of hectares of land, alleviate vulnerability to climate change and reduce hunger and poverty.

Some 12 million hectares of land – an area the size of Benin and which could produce 20 million tons of grain annually – are lost every year to degradation, resulting in an annual loss of $42 billion.

Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), stressed in Fortaleza today that “the path of business-as-usual will worsen the speed of degradation with devastating impacts on livelihoods families and communities, and will further cause more extinction of life and jeopardize the future of humanity.”

He underlined the need for an alternative route that “will embrace and undertake the formidable challenges of sustainability implying that we choose to channel our collective action towards it.”

Nearly all of the inhabitants of drylands are in developing countries, and the official issued a call for international cooperation on financial assistance, capacity building and technology transfer.

The Decade, he emphasized, must fight lingering misperceptions of drylands as being wastelands, marginal areas or liabilities, as well as the idea that desertification is only a local – not global – concern.

“Let us not be the generation that jeopardizes the heritage of future generations by degrading any land,” Mr. Gnacadja said today.

Along with the UNCCD, four other UN agencies – the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) – have been mandated by the General Assembly to spearhead activities related to the Decade.

Through its work during the last three decades, IFAD said that “it has become clear that to eliminate rural poverty we must also address the issue of how land and natural resources are managed.”

The agency pointed to the experience of Bedouin communities in the Badia rangelands, 10 million hectares in central and eastern Syria, known for its poor soils and low rainfall.

After years of severe drought and intensive grazing, the Badia has become badly degraded, but vegetation has been restored in one third of the area, with Bedouin herders working with project experts to draft and implement management plans to determine how many animals should graze in a given area at a given time.

That scheme, just one of numerous success stories, took a three-pronged approach to rehabilitation: resting, re-seeding and planting.

“When governments, UN agencies and other partners work together, we can ensure that experiences like those of the Bedouin communities in the Badia rangelands become the rule – and not the exception,” IFAD said.

Vesco Agricultural Technologies Developing Nations Initiative

PROMOTING SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

“By the year 2025, 83 per cent of the expected global population of 8.5 billion will be living in developing countries. Yet the capacity of available resources and technologies to satisfy the demands of this growing population for food and other agricultural commodities remains uncertain. Agriculture has to meet this challenge, mainly by increasing production on land already in use and by avoiding further encroachment on land that is only marginally suitable for cultivation.”

 

 “Major adjustments are needed in agricultural, environmental and macroeconomic policy, at both national and international levels, in developed as well as developing countries, to create the conditions for sustainable agriculture and rural development (SARD). The major objective of SARD is to increase food production in a sustainable way and enhance food security. This will involve education initiatives, utilization of economic incentives and the development of appropriate and new technologies, thus ensuring stable supplies of nutritionally adequate food, access to those supplies by vulnerable groups, and production for markets; employment and income generation to alleviate poverty; and natural resource management and environmental protection.”

“We at Vesco also recognize the need to combat desertification and feel confident that our developing nations technology will play a meaningful role”. 

Developing Nations farmers face a wide variety of agronomic and economic conditions. No single solution has been identified and made available to, useable by or affordable to farmers in all regions and circumstances.

However, the scalable range of options made possible by the Vesco  Terra-Glide™ technology has allowed the development of a range of machine sizes that bridges these problems. 

Within the Terra-Glide™ family of technologies there is a combination that will provide the seeding solution to the needs of most farmers in developing nations. Our goal is to work with government agencies, NGOs and the UN to establish a framework that supplies this technology to the poorest nations of the world at no cost to the farmers by establishing the Terra-Glide™ technology in a verified offset project for no-till carbon credits sold and traded under the Chicago Climate Exchange and others as Soil Carbon Management Offsets through the newly established carbon offset credit programs.

Vesco Agricultural Technologies Inc is at present in the process of being acquired by Clean Seed Capital Group a Canadian company that is predicated on identifying solution-driven, sustainable, environmentally responsible, agricultural based companies that need a strategic partner to facilitate progress. As a value added group, Clean Seed Capital Group provides strategic capital, business advisory services, and marketing strategies that yield both positive impact and significant investor returns from this rapidly growing sector.

For more information Visit www.vescocanada.com and www.cleanseedcapital.com

Hague Action Plan Puts Climate-Smart Agriculture on Cancun Radar

Modern farming churns up soil and releases carbon, which contributes to climate change.  Climate-smart agriculture turns farms into carbon sinks and can slash greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 15%, but it’s also more labor-intensive than modern farming methods.  Carbon finance can make it worthwhile.

 Delegates from more than 80 nations have endorsed an action plan designed to ratchet up schemes that promote promote “Climate-Safe” agriculture, which employs no-till farming, mulching, and other labor-intensive but climate-friendly practices to capture carbon in soil rather than releasing it into the atmosphere.  Up to 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide currently come from agriculture, with an additional 17% coming from deforestation – which is often caused by farmers moving into forests after depleting their soil.

The Hague Action Plan, which was cobbled together over the past week at the International Conference on Agriculture, Food Security, and Climate Change in the Hague, Netherlands, aims to promote climate-friendly agriculture through education, knowledge-sharing and research – as well as by investing in climate-friendly agricultural projects and techniques and improving trade.

An Investment Fair on the sidelines of the Hague meeting funneled roughly $2 million into climate-smart agriculture in Africa, and the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, Henk Bleker, says he will present the week’s outcomes at year-end climate-change talks in Cancun, Mexico.
 
“I will make sure that climate smart agriculture that can feed more people and is better for the environment will stay on the agenda,” he says. “I will present the ‘The Hague Action Plan’ myself at the climate conference in Cancun, Mexico.”

The Action Plan also contains a list of actions that countries and organizations should take to stimulate this new and climate smart agriculture so more people can be fed and less carbon is emitted. The countries have spoken out their commitment towards these actions.

Worldwide there are about 2.2 billion farmers, and current projections say they will have to feed nine billion people in 2050. The lack of attention for agriculture has lead to lower yields, lack of knowledge and fewer investments. Poverty is common for smallholder farms in many developing countries.

First-Ever African Soil-Carbon Deal Signed at Hague Investment Fair

| THE HAGUE | Netherlands | Small-holder farmers in Kenya are changing their farming practices and earning carbon credits. This is a result of the first soil carbon project approved in Africa, which seeks to improve food security, help address climate change, and improve the lives and livelihoods of rural dwellers who today live in poverty. The agreement to purchase the carbon credits which the project generates, the Emission Reductions Purchase Agreement (ERPA), was signed today in a ceremony held at the Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change in The Hague.  Representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture in Kenya, Vi Agroforestry and the World Bank presented the project to the media and delegates at the Investment Fair of the conference.

The agreement adds the benefits of carbon finance to a sustainable agricultural land management project based on changes in the practices of farmers in Kenya which not only increase productivity but also sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The project, developed with the support of the Africa Region of the World Bank, generates carbon credits which are sold to the BioCarbon Fund. It allows small-holder farmers in Kenya to access the carbon market and receive carbon revenues through the adoption of productivity enhancing practices and technologies.

Not only is this the first project that sells soil carbon credits in Africa, but it is also paving the way for a new approach to carbon accounting methodologies, which do not yet exist for this nascent area. As Kenya ramps up its participation in carbon markets, this project illustrates concretely how carbon finance can support both the environment and generate revenues for local communities. Although the value of the ERPA exceeds this, the direct benefit to communities is over $350,000 with an initial payment of $80,000 to be made in the first year, 2011, based on project performance with payments for the sequestered carbon.

The Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project, implemented by the Swedish non-governmental organization Vi Agroforestry, is located on 45,000 hectares in the Nyanza Province and Western Province of Kenya. There, small-holder farmers and small-scale business entrepreneurs are trained in diverse cropland management techniques such as covering crops, crop rotation, compost management and agroforestry.  These practices increase the yield of the land and generate additional sources of income for the farmers through the payment for environmental services in the form of carbon credits.

“We are proud to be part of the development of this ground-breaking project. The development of a new methodology for carbon sequestration in agriculture has great direct benefits for the farmers in Kenya and tremendous potential for scaling up. Without the support of the World Bank and the Kenyan Government, this project would not have been possible”, says Henrik Brundin of Vi Agroforestry.

The project is an example of a triple win strategy: implementing policies and programs that will, first, increase farm productivity and incomes; second, make agriculture more resilient to variations in climate, and thus promote stability and security; and, third, help make the agriculture sector part of the solution to the climate change problem rather than part of the problem.

“The approval of this first soil carbon project in Africa is an important step in extending carbon finance to include agriculture. The potential for carbon sequestration in the soil is estimated at 5.5 gigatons annually with good land management practices, equivalent to 13% of current emissions from all sectors. So soil carbon has a huge contribution to make to addressing the climate change challenge”, says Dr. Andrew Steer, Special Envoy for Climate Change, World Bank.

The BioCarbon Fund is an initiative with public and private contributions, administered by the World Bank.  It purchases emission reductions from afforestation and reforestation projects under the CDM, as well as from land-use sector projects outside the CDM, such as projects that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and increase carbon sequestration in soils through improved agriculture practices. In addition, the BioCarbon Fund, which was created to help open the carbon market, develops methodologies and tools that are in the public domain.

Rockefeller Foundation Pledges $1.5 Million for Climate-Smart Agriculture

 

The Rockefeller Foundation announced several commitments this week totaling over $1.5 million dollars to support the development of climate-smart agriculture. The commitment was announced at the Global Conference on Food Security, Agriculture, and Climate Change at The Hague, The Netherlands.
 
The agricultural sector has a pivotal role to play in addressing, mitigating, and helping to adapt to climate change. Despite this, the opportunities for engaging this sector in climate change mitigation have been the subject of extensive debate. There are several reasons for this debate, largely stemming from the underlying importance of agriculture to climate mitigation and the challenge of integrating it into policy approaches.

Agriculture is a significant contributor to global GHG emissions, and consequently has an important role to play in addressing climate change. Agriculture, forestry, and other land uses contribute 30% or more to global greenhouse gas emissions.

More important, agriculture has the potential to reduce GHG emissions through long-term storage of carbon in soils and perennial biomass and through reductions of nitrous oxide and methane emissions. In other words, agriculture has a critical role to play in addressing climate change.
 
First, the Rockefeller Foundation is contributing initial funding to Forest Trends in support of the African Agricultural Climate Finance Facility (ACFF). This facility will innovate, develop, and test new transaction models to support greater investment in smallholder, farmer-driven agricultural mitigation and adaptation projects.
 
In addition, the Rockefeller Center is supporting the Rainforest Alliance with a grant to develop criteria for low-carbon farming techniques for incorporating into their sustainable agricultural standards. These criteria will help drive farmers to adopt practices that decrease their carbon footprint and increase their climate resilience, while supporting environmental services and receiving a premium price for climate-friendly commodity production.
 
Finally, we are proud to be supporting the Nature Conservation Research Centre of Ghana in their on-going work with small holder cocoa farmers to produce shade-grown cocoa, which supports greater long-term productivity, sequesters more carbon, and should also fetch a higher price.

Agriculture becomes the next big thing

What might Canada’s next great growth industry be? Smart phones, oil sands technology, aerospace, alternative energy, nuclear power, biotech? Each of those industries has a “been there, done that” feel about them, even if a couple of them could keep thriving for years to come. Agriculture is the one industry you might not even consider putting on the list.

Most Canadians live in cities and don’t think about agriculture. They think food comes from supermarkets. The connection back to the farm, to the export terminals, to the commodity futures markets, to the R&D labs, where seeds are engineered, and to the farm equipment assembly plants is often not made. Yet Canada has all the ingredients needed to become the world’s premier farm-to-fork economy.

A new report by Australia’s Macquarie Agricultural Funds Management concludes that heroic efforts will be needed to feed a global population that will expand by 40 per cent by 2050. Some countries will struggle to feed their citizens; food riots broke out in dozens of poor countries at the height of the food crisis in 2008.

But others might thrive. Macquarie notes that “those countries with a robust agricultural sector, sustainable farming practices, modern infrastructure, reliable water access and safer political structures will increasingly become the global agricultural powerhouses.”

Vesco Agricultural Technologies…Setting a new standard in No-Till farming equipment. (Part 3) Soil erosion

 

 

Marvelle Media continues to  feature this company. Today we are focusing on Soil erosion and how Vesco can play its part.

Soil erosion:

The world is facing an agricultural crisis of pandemic proportions: the catastrophic loss of topsoil. After covering the earth for thousands of years, the world’s topsoil is being lost at an alarming rate. In reality, for the past 100 years, our land has been more ‘mined’ than farmed. Historically farmers used the soil, depleted the soil and moved on. Even with current farming methods more topsoil disappears each year than is created.

Such poor management of the topsoil is not the failure of a single farm or even a single region. It’s a problem of worldwide dimension. Across the globe, world agriculture faces a growing crisis. The world’s four top crop-producing areas (U.S.A., the countries of the former USSR, China and India) are all losing topsoil at an alarming rate of over 13 billion tons per year.

Sediment from soil erosion is the single greatest pollutant of the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers. Scientists estimate that before intensive agricultural cultivation began, approximately 9 billion tons of topsoil was carried into our waterways annually through runoff. Today the volume has tripled, exceeding 27 billion tons every year, and continues to increase.

“Our problem with erosion was very serious and it was very damaging to the environment to the extent that, in these crops, to produce one ton of grain in Brazil, we lost 10 tons of soil per hectare per year. We solved this problem by eliminating tillage,” says Almir Rebelo, grower advisor and president of Friends of the Earth, a Brazilian grower organization influential in the adoption of no-till farming in Brazil.

With conservation tillage, farmers leave the stubble or plant residue on the soil’s surface, rather than plowing or disking it into the soil. The new crop is planted directly into this stubble, and genetically modified (GM) herbicide-tolerant plants make it possible and practical for growers to control weeds in the crop by applying an herbicide rather than plowing.

“As a result of us keeping crop residue on the ground, we have a new foraging opportunity for wildlife,” says U.S. cotton, corn and soybean farmer Jay Hardwick. “So we’re seeing a new happening on the landscape in terms of wildlife emergence. Not only top of it, but underneath. Earthworms are coming back to play, and earthworms are strategic in getting water into the soil structure.”

The impact of no-till farming and soil erosion control has been just as significant to farmers in the developing world. “We do not have to burn the residue in our harvest anymore,” says Jerry Due, a Filipino corn farmer. “We just allow the residue to decompose in the field to become fertilizers.”

For more infprmation please visit: www.vescocanada.com

What is Carbon Trading all about and how can Vesco play a role?

 

Carbon Offsets:

The UN-administered Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows companies and governments to meet part of their emission reduction targets by financing carbon-cutting projects in the developing world, accounted for a further 947 million tons of carbon trading in 2007, valued at approximately US$18.7 billion (Point Carbon, 2008).   This Kyoto sanctioned carbon offset protocol validates and measures projects to ensure they produce authentic benefits as a way for governments and private companies to earn carbon credits which can be traded on established marketplaces.  Organizations that have difficulty meeting their emissions quota are able to offset by buying CDM-approved Certified Emissions Reductions.

Carbon Trading:

The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS), launched in 2005, has a binding target to reduce the overall greenhouse gas emissions of the European Union by 20%, compared to 1990 levels, by 2020, by imposing caps on emissions from energy-intensive industries.  To date, EU members have achieved a 2 percent reduction in GHG emissions.  Current targets expire in 2012, with new EU-ETS targets expected to be much steeper if the 20% target by 2020 is to be achieved. 

State and regional initiatives in the United States and Canada continue to gain momentum, with 10 north-eastern U.S. states committing to a multi-state cap-and-trade program in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas by 10 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2018, under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.   Voluntary markets, where companies or individuals concerned about their carbon footprint can choose to buy emission credits, continue to grow; the largest being the U.S.-based Chicago Climate Exchange, where 2007 trading volume doubled to approximately 25 million tons.

In March of 2008, the Canadian Federal Government announced plans to establish a national carbon emissions trading market, including a carbon offset system, to provide incentives to reduce GHG emissions with a target to reduce overall emissions in Canada by 20 percent by 2020.  Canada has allocated CDN$66-million to develop the necessary certification and regulatory structure to establish the carbon emissions trading market.

Terrestrial Carbon Sinks:

The U.S. is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide with China in second place.  Annual greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. are projected to increase from 7.2 gigatons carbon dioxide equivalents in 2005 to 9.7 gigatons in 2030, an increase of 35 percent (U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2007; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and USDA).  This growth in emissions is accompanied by a projected decrease in absorption of carbon by U.S. forests and agriculture land (McKinsey & Co, 2007).  After rising for 50 years, carbon absorption by U.S. forests and agriculture lands is forecast to decline by 7 percent, from roughly 1.1 gigatons in 2005 to nearly 1.0 gigatons in 2030. 

In December 2007, McKinsey & Company released a report titled Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost? analyzing resource costs and abatement potential for more than 250 opportunities to reduce or prevent GHG emissions.  With a goal of reducing GHG emissions in 2030 by 3.0 to 45 gigatons of CO2e the report identifies agriculture and forestry as important terrestrial carbon sinks, with the potential to reduce between 440 to 590 megatons of GHG emission through 2030, at costs significantly below $50 per ton carbon dioxide equivalent associated with other potential carbon sinks.

Working with major U.S.-based companies, industry experts, leading academics and environmental NGOs, the McKinsey’s report identifies improving soil management practices as relatively low cost options requiring linkages to carbon-offset mechanisms to access needed capital, plus improved monitoring and verification.  Within the 440 and 590 megatons of annual emissions offset (absorb carbon emissions), forestry and land-use changes account for 320 megatons of sequestration, enough to increase net carbon absorption by 30 percent over present levels; with opportunities for the further expansion of agriculture sequestration to provide the remaining 120 megatons of annual emissions offset. 

Vesco Agricultural Technologies (Terra Glide) No - till Technology will play a meaningful role in improving soil management practices and will qualify for carbon offset credits.

Conservation tillage practices store carbon by preventing the disruption of organic matter in the soil, allowing the organic matter to accumulate in the ground rather than be released as carbon dioxide, as occurs through traditional tilling practices that are still widely used today. Additionally, conservation tillage helps improve soil and water quality, reduces on-farm fuel burn and emissions, and also enhances the ability of food producers to withstand climate extremes.

Management practices that allow soils to move carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to agricultural soils are explicitly cited as an important greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation option in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, and in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Activities that increase on-farm soil carbon are explicitly included as credited activities in U.S. proposals to legislate a GHG cap-and-trade program, for both early action and inclusion going forward. In Canada, agricultural soil carbon crediting is also included in existing GHG reduction initiatives.

For more information on Vesco Visit: www.vescocanada.com

EPA Paves Way For Cap And Trade

Carbon trading executive sees doors opening in the United States.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s findings earlier this week could be a green light for cap and trade as the government agency has declared carbon dioxide emissions can pose a threat to human health. The statement by Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA could start a wave of carbon trading as the agency moves to further regulate businesses that release the compound into the air.
Dan Braun, head of the new carbon trading division at Knight Capital, calls the EPA’s decision on greenhouse gases “a logical way to cap and trade.” Now that the EPA has finalized its carbon endangerment finds, the organization has to begin working on lowering emissions to avoid lawsuits from non-governmental organizations, Braun says. The Copenhagen conference could be another step toward cap and trade as well.
Knight Capital launched its carbon trading division earlier this month to get ahead of the global trend the firm foresees in trading this commodity. Knight’s operations are already starting in Europe, where the carbon trading market has progressed further than in the U.S.
Founded in 1995, Knight Capital makes most of its money in equity trading. Carbon markets could well be dominated by the alternative trading systems that have sprung up around stocks this decade. Investment banks, particularly Deutsche Bank ( DB – news – people ), are also interested in these markets. The IntercontinentalExchange ( ICE – news – people ) already has a robust energy futures trading platform that could work in these markets. Other players could be veteran energy traders like Duke Energy ( DUK – news – people ) and Dynegy ( DYN – news – people ).
The European carbon trading markets have been active for the last two years, Braun says. He describes that market as “a very liquid market with good price discovery.”
Braun sees a “huge opportunity” in the U.S. market once carbon trading has been defined. The U.S. market could even progress without a federal program. Some companies and other organizations could put together voluntary carbon trading programs while before a federal program begins, he says. What might be standing in the way of private carbon trading programs is a lack of technology. Braun says the U.S. doesn’t have a commercially viable form of technology yet.

Alexandra Zendrian

Eye on Agriculture – No Till Farming

Technology driven world of Agriculture, Zero-till or No-till farming has been the direction many producers in the state have been heading.

(Alan Ness, Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Tillage Association) “Zero Till used to be a practice that you’d do on an annual basis now zero till has really turned into a system.”

A system that started as a way to conserve top soil and help guard against run-off and groundwater contamination

Now it’s a viable, economically driven system that pairs technology with science to help farmers produce better crops while sustaining the viability of their land.

(Alan Ness, Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Tillage Association) “Where it’s bunch of crop rotations, rotating the proper crops for disease and insect control, rotating crops for nutrient management and those types of things. So consequently we’re looking at a bigger picture than we used to look at.”

That big picture is also on the agenda of the United Nations

Theodor Friedrich with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says zero till is a proven practice

His mission is traveling the world and showing how conservation agriculture helps sustain farm land while feeding the world.

(Theodor Friedrich, UN Food and Agriculture Organization) “We are promoting world wide as part of our strategy to combine sustainability of farming with the high production. Because we are facing still an increasing number of hungry people around the world.”

Friedrich says the zero till practice is catching on around the world but is still in the minority in farming practices

He says more underdeveloped countries tend to adopt it quicker with the lack of fertilizer available and big machinery to till land.

(Theodor Friedrich, UN Food Association Organization) “The laggers on Europe. Europe is actually the last area to catch up not because they wouldn’t have technology in theory but they don’t have it in practice and there’s a lot of resistance.”

And Friedrich says much of that has to do with mis-information about zero till.

For farmers in North Dakota group like the Man-Dak Zero Till association continue to promote the idea here

With tried and true results of sustainability, economic and environmental benefits, it’s a practice that is showing a win-win for farming in the future.

(Alan Ness, Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Tillage Association) “Bottom line is from our organizations standpoint as long as there’s cover on the field, we’ve taken care of the erosion problem, increased the efficiencies and we’re happy.”

“Clean Seed Capital Ltd” is identifying and developing solution-driven, sustainable, environmentally responsible, agricultural based companies.

The Initiative

 

Our primary initiative is predicated on identifying solution-driven, sustainable, environmentally responsible, agricultural based companies that need a strategic partner to facilitate progress. As a value added group, CleanSeed Capital Group provides strategic capital, business advisory services, and marketing strategies that yield both positive impact and significant investor returns from this rapidly growing sector.

We work in partnership exclusively with companies that share our vision of a sustainable future in agriculture and that will have a meaningful effect on the current system.

www.cleanseedcapital.com

Canada’s Private Equity industry is on fire

Original Post CVCA

Good news abounds for the Canadian private equity industry.

Just last week, Onex just closed on a new US$4.3 billion fund, called Onex Partners III, of which US$3.5 billion came from third party institutional investors. That US$3.5 billion is 75% more than had been raised for Onex II. According to CPP Investment Board’s website, it committed US$400 million to Onex Partners III in 2008; this commitment is more than double their US$150MM stake in 2003-vintage Onex Partners I.

CPPIB’s 2003 vintage investment in Onex I earned a 124.7% return on the capital invested (see prior post “CPPIB Canadian general partner Q2 2009 performance numbers” Nov 14-09).

Oncap, the small and mid-sized buyout arm of Onex, has also come through the recession with flying colours. $575 million Oncap II has been prudent about capital deployment during private equity’s “Golden Era”, and still has plenty of dry powder to invest. In a lower-valuation environment, having a chequebook is everything. Particularly when many U.S.-based PE funds are marketing their own new funds, and likely out of the market for new deals.

Birch Hill Private Equity Partners had a fabulous first close of $425 million in November. Considering the state of the pension fund universe and the negative impact that the drop in the public equity markets has had on the allocations that pensions have to “alternative assets”, this $425 million number is blockbuster. The fundraising target is $850 million in total. Their Sleep Country and Shred-It investments stick out as recent successes.

Clairvest Group Inc. had a $200 million first close on Clairvest Equity Partners IV, with one Ontario-based pension fund subscribing for $100 million at the outset. The balance of the $200 million comes from Clairvest’s own public company cash, a majority of which is owned by the management team and board of directors. Given their success with back-to-back PE “Deals of the Year” (see prior post “Clairvest makes it back-to-back “Deal of the Year” awards” Sept 23-09), you can be sure that $200 million figure will grow larger with subsequent closings in 2010. CPPIB’s $50 million commitment to 2001-vintage Clairvest EP Igrew by 51% in value as of the last reported quarter.

For its part, Torquest Partners has been busy closing new investments and financing tuckunders for portfolio company FirstOnSite. They even recruited the well-respected and popular Michael Hollend away from the excitement of the venture capital industry; Michael officially became a merchant banker in December. Every time I take my Nikon D300 on the road, I take a piece of Torquest with me via their Lowepro investment.

Canada’s private equity industry is definitely on a roll.

The Topsoil Crisis

The Topsoil Crisis
By Chris Mayer
Gaithersburg, Maryland

“All life is a process of breaking down,” the great F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. “But the blows that do the dramatic side of the work…don’t show their effect all at once.” These other blows you don’t feel until it is too late to do anything. Fitzgerald was writing about his own famous crackup in the 1930s, but his comments also apply to the agricultural scene circa 2010.

We return to a theme in last month’s letter. The world will need to boost its production of food. The UN estimates that the world will need to boost investment in agriculture by $83 billion a year – that’s a 50% annual increase – to feed a growing population. Its estimate may prove an errant shot from an uncertain bow into an unpredictable future. But it doesn’t matter. Investing is more like horseshoes and hand grenades, as the old saying goes – close counts.

If the UN is half right – others have done similar work with similar conclusions – then we’re talking about a healthy bull market in all things green. The question is where does the boost in production largely come from? The answer is Brazil, as we discussed last month. We’ll explore the idea a little further here from a different angle.

In my last letter, I noted how lack of electricity in India leads people to heat their homes and cook with dung cakes, crop residue and firewood. Why is this a bad thing?

Because the soil needs that precious manure and crop residue. It nourishes the soil and allows it to hold water. Without this natural replenishment, the soil deteriorates. It compacts and turns to dust. When the next monsoon season rolls around, it washes away. And the burning of firewood, on such a scale as the Indian population requires, leads to the disappearance of forests. A similar cycle ensues.

This is the “topsoil crisis” that we first talked about more than a year ago. The world continues to deplete its base of arable land. Though it’s been going on for some time, the dramatic blows are only now showing their effect. In East and North Africa, in the plains of India all the way to Turkey, the story is the same. Some of it is just human carelessness about the land. Some of it is climate driven: the declining snow melts of the Himalayas and more frequent crop-killing heat waves in places such as India.

Climate change has been going on for a long time, too. As Peter Matthiessen points out in The Snow Leopard, the Gobi Desert was once fertile. In Central Asia, he writes, “broad lakes vanished in dry pans and grasslands turned into shifting sands.” Many of these changes happened in only a few hundred years. “The death of a civilization can come quickly; the change in climate that dried up rivers and destroyed the savannas of the central Sahara scattered the great pastoral civilizations of [Africa] in just a few centuries after 2500 B.C.”

Such changes impact economics as well. Already, we are close to passing some giant milestones of our own. China, you may recall, is now the largest net importer of soybeans in the world. A mere 15 years ago, it made more than it needed and exported soybeans. Now India may import rice. Some think that India could import as much as 2 million metric tons, the most in the world. Traditionally, India has been the world’s third largest exporter. (It’s already banned overseas rice sales in an effort to keep rice at home.)

The Philippines, thanks to typhoon damage, will also be a net buyer of rice this year. South America will produce less, and there is potential trouble with the crop in the Mississippi Delta. Yes, Thailand and Vietnam appear to have healthy rice supplies. But it won’t be enough.

All of this puts Brazil in the catbird seat, as more people are starting to figure out. “Superpower Is Ready to Feed the World,” reads a Financial Times headline. You may quibble with the FT’s exuberant labeling of Brazil as a superpower. But Brazil is now the top exporter of chicken and beef, orange juice, green coffee, sugar, ethanol, tobacco and the soya complex of beans, meal and oil. It is No. 4 in maize and pork. It is, agriculturally speaking, deserving of the superpower label.

However, expansion is not so easy, and here lies the treasure for investors. As the FT reports: “In Brazil, analysts say [that] output is reaching its limit and the investment needed for growth, especially in transport infrastructure, is falling short.” This jibes with the UN’s report I mentioned above.

On-the-ground reports from farmers in Brazil add further confirmation and make the hurdles clear. There is a lack of rail and water transport infrastructure. As author and traveler Roy Nash wrote in 1926 – and it is still true today – “Space is Brazil’s pride. Space is equally Brazil’s weakness.”

Most of those crops must make a tortuous 2,000-kilometer trek over bad roads to congested ports. (Brazil has the world’s third largest road network, but only 12% is paved.) The cost of transportation is often north of a $100 a tonne, more than three times what farmers pay in the US to bring their goods to market.

The Brazilians have a national history that ought to give them hints that infrastructure is critically important. The history of the city of São Paulo is one example.

Founded by Jesuits in 1554, São Paulo was one of the few cities that did not sit on the coast. Instead, São Paulo was inland, perched on the confluence of four rivers. From here Paulistas would search inland for gold. But the city didn’t really boom until the end of the 19th century. Then coffee became the cash crop. The coffee boom set off an investment boom in railways and ports. São Paulo soon passed Rio de Janeiro as Brazil’s most important metropolis. And wealthy Paulistas and coffee barons invested in the city. Today, São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world, with some 20 million people.

So perhaps the new boom in all things agricultural will spur similar investment boomlets in Brazilian cities and towns.

This is why Roberto Rodrigues, an agribusiness consultant and former Brazilian ag minister, says: “If I were an investor, I would put my money in logistics and fertilizer. The opportunities are fantastic.”

We are amply represented here with our fertilizer stocks, though only one remains close to my buy price as I write: Mosaic (NYSE:MOS). This one is particularly fitting for the Brazil angle because it is the world’s largest producer of phosphate, of which Brazil is in particular need. Mosaic has phosphate plants in Florida, in places such as Riverview and Hopewell and Wingate. It ships these to Brazil, where it has seven warehouses and blenders and two production facilities. It also has a major office in Brazil – in São Paulo.

Unlike the crackup Fitzgerald describes, it’s not too late for agriculture to do anything about its long process of breaking down. Prices of grains and agricultural commodities will rise to attract the needed investment. That will be good especially for the fertilizer companies, who sell a product needed to replenish the world’s tired soils.

NewSeed Advisors Says Sustainable Agriculture is the New Cleantech Source:

Clean Seed Capital Group is pleased to announce it will be attending the Agriculture 2.0. conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Palo Alto, California.

A flurry of activity among Bay Area investors points to surging interest in sustainable agriculture investment. On March 24, hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors, and industry experts will convene at the Four Seasons Hotel in Palo Alto, California for Agriculture 2.0, the first event of its kind on the west coast. Firms sending delegates include Kleiner Perkins, Khosla, Black River, Foundation Capital, Venrock, Mohr Davidow, Rockport, Redpoint, Flagship, Slow Money Alliance, among others. “Creating a sustainable food system will happen one company at a time. It’s encouraging to see that investors are taking notice of this space, the fastest-growing niche in agriculture.” says Janine Yorio, Managing Director of NewSeed Advisors. As co-host, US Venture Partners is securing its place as a thought-leader in sustainable agriculture, “Because feeding nearly 10 billion people by 2050—without destroying the planet—poses both a daunting problem and an enormous investment opportunity,” remarked Paul Matteucci. Co-hosts NewSeed Advisors and SPIN Farming also launched the first Agriculture 2.0, which was held in September 2009 in New York City. The overwhelming response indicated a need to expand to the West coast. “Rebuilding a more sustainable food system will take as much innovation and investment as the digital revolution,” says Roxanne Christensen, co-founder of SPIN-Farming. A jury selected entrepreneurs to present their investor-ready ag-business opportunities to the audience. Company presenters include 18 Rabbits; AeroFarms; Capay Valley Growers; Cityscape Farms; Estancia Beef; FoodLogiQ; Inka Biospheric Systems; Itronics; Marrone BioInnovations; NextGen Illumination; Pasteuria Bioscience; PurFresh; Solum; TerraGreen Biologics; Vestaron; Verdant Earth Technologies; Wild Idea Buffalo. Due to the overwhelming number of applicants, a separate track (sponsored by Aquacopia) will highlight investment opportunities in aquaculture. Company presenters include Blue Ridge Aquaculture; Hawaii Oceanic Technology; Kona Tuna; Litchfield Farms; Montana Microbial Products; Oberon FMR; and Open Blue Sea Farms. In addition to investors, industry professionals from organizations like Dow Chemical, Toro, the USDA and Food Alliance are on the agenda. Speakers include Jason Matheny of NewHarvest, Patrick Pohlen of Latham & Watkins, Michael Dimock of Roots of Change, Jeana Hultquist of US AgBank, and Derek Yurosek of Bolthouse Farms. Information about the event, including registration details and the agenda are available at www.agriculture20.com. A sellout crowd is expected, and all registrations must be processed online, in advance. ABOUT NEWSEED ADVISORS NewSeed Advisors is both the founder of Agriculture 2.0 and an investor in and advisor to sustainable agriculture companies. ABOUT US VENTURE PARTNERS U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) is a leading Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, dedicated to helping entrepreneurs build world-class companies that are leaders in their industry. ABOUT SPIN FARMING SPIN-Farming publishes the SPIN-Farming® and SPIN-Gardening™ online learning series and conducts workshops in partnership with leading farming, gardening, environmental and investment organizations.

Clean Seed Capital’s primary initiative is predicated on identifying solution-driven, sustainable, environmentally responsible, agricultural based companies that need a strategic partner to facilitate progress. As a value added group, CleanSeed Capital Group provides strategic capital, business advisory services, and marketing strategies that yield both positive impact and significant investor returns from this rapidly growing sector.

While at the show Clean Seed Capital will be introducing Vesco Agricultural Technologies Inc:

Vesco Agricultural Technologies has developed superior No-Till farming equipment that produces higher yields, combats soil erosion, reduces seed, fertilizer and fuel costs and qualifies for carbon-offset credits, tradable on the growing number of carbon credit markets emerging worldwide as part of the fight against Climate Change.

We look forward to meeting with Janine Yorio and all the participants of  Agriculture 2.0.

“Sustainable agriculture is a space that looks as big or bigger than clean tech,”

 

“Sustainable agriculture is a space that looks as big or bigger than clean tech,” said Paul Matteucci, a venture capitalist with U.S. Venture Partners in Menlo Park, Calif. “Historically, we have not seen a ton of entrepreneurial activity in agriculture, but we are beginning to see it now, and the opportunities are huge.”

A catch-all phrase for environmentally beneficial farming, sustainable agriculture has long been the province of organic enthusiasts. But venture capitalists say a growing awareness of conventional agriculture’s contribution to climate change and concerns over its consumption of water and energy are creating markets for technological innovation to minimize those effects.

Clean Seed capital groups primary initiative is predicated on identifying solution-driven, sustainable, environmentally responsible, agricultural based companies that need a strategic partner to facilitate progress. As a value added group, CleanSeed Capital Group provides strategic capital, business advisory services, and marketing strategies that yield both positive impact and significant investor returns from this rapidly growing sector.

They work in partnership exclusively with companies that share there vision of a sustainable future in agriculture and that will have a meaningful effect on the current system.

Kwantlen U steps closer to unique degree in sustainable agriculture

METRO VANCOUVER — The Kwantlen Polytechnic University Senate last week approved in concept a new bachelor’s degree program in sustainable agriculture with an eye to starting classes in the fall of 2011.

The four-year program will combine a course load focused on human-scale and urban interface agriculture with intensive hands-on training and research, literally, in the field.

“This program will be unique in North America,” according to Kent Mullinix, director of Kwantlen’s Institute of Sustainable Horticulture, who added that students will not only be learning the principles of sustainable agriculture, but advancing the field with their own research as well.

To do that, the university will need a partner to step up with the land required to run the program.

“An important part of this degree will be experiential, so we will need to run experimental farms, teaching farms,” Mullinix said.

Kwantlen has been talking on and off for three years with the City of Richmond, the Musqueam First Nation and the Canada Land Corp. about creating an urban agriculture research centre on the Garden City Lands, a vacant 55-hectare (136-acre) plot of land on the eastern edge of Richmond city centre that is currently locked in the Agricultural Land Reserve. Those negotiations got a little simpler when the city bought out the portion of the site owned by the Musqueam and CLC for about $60 million in March. Richmond has long coveted the land for fields and community amenities as well as some form of urban agriculture.

“I think we have a tremendous opportunity,” said Richmond Coun. Harold Steves. “When we first started to talk about acquiring the [Garden City Lands] one of the things we were interested in was the Kwantlen farm school proposal.”

Richmond is demonstrating its commitment to preserving farmland by becoming the second largest owner of agricultural land within its municipal boundaries, said Steves. The city has already bought 119 hectares of farmland, some of which is already in use by Kwantlen programs, such as the Richmond Farm School at the Terra Nova Sharing Farm. Students began class in the one-year non-diploma program in March.

Steves reckons about 22 hectares (55 acres) of the Garden City Lands are suitable for farming with soil remediation. Much of the rest is bog.

“I’ve examined the soil and that land could easily be cleaned up and cultivated,” he said.

Mullinix defines sustainable agriculture as a way of “growing food on a human scale while minimizing outside inputs.” The most obvious outside input in commercial agriculture is petroleum, which includes the fuel required to run machines, vehicles for transport and the elements required to manufacture chemical fertilizers and pesticides. “The industrial agriculture model is sustained entirely by cheap fossil fuels,” he said.

“[Sustainable agriculture] is environmentally sound, economically viable and contributes to social equity,” Mullinix explained. Rather than commercial mono-culture – raising a single crop across thousands of hectares of land – the focus is on human-intensive, smaller-scale farms that grow a mix of crops and livestock, enabling farmers to practice “closed loop” agriculture that enhances the environment.

If that sounds a lot like the family farms that supplied more than 80 per cent of Canada’s produce before the Second World War, that’s no accident.

“The research is clear that mid-sized family farms are biologically more productive,” he said.

“This is not going backwards, but it is learning the lessons of our agricultural history,” he said. “We have a 10,000-year agricultural history, but only a few decades of commercial agriculture.”

Metro Vancouver is the perfect environment to advance the science of farming along the urban-rural interface, in which sustainable food production is integrated into the fabric of the city, Mullinix said.

Senate approval of the degree concept allows Mullinix and his colleagues to draft specific curricula for courses this summer with an eye to starting classes next year.

“The students who graduate from this program will have the knowledge and the skills to create this new agriculture,” Mullinix said.

By RANDY SHORE, Vancouver Sun

Carbon credits offer opportunities for farmers

No-till fields store carbon in the form of soil organic matter, which can be sold by farmers, providing them with an additional source of income.

As the United States looks to become more green, a program to trade carbon credits from farmland could play a role.

When carbon is emitted into the atmosphere, by vehicles or other means, it can be absorbed and stored by trees and other plants and may eventually wind up in the soil as organic matter.

No-till fields store carbon in the form of soil organic matter, which can be sold by farmers, providing them with an additional source of income.

“Carbon credits are currently a voluntary method used by organizations that want to offset their carbon emissions,” said Lenny Farlee, Purdue University Extension forestry specialist. “But it also creates an opportunity for farmers that may have no-till fields or landowners who replant forest trees.”

Carbon offset credits are sold through the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), which operates like a stock exchange. Offsets typically come from agriculture methane capture, no-till farming, grasslands and planting trees.

The CCX will accept a minimum of 100 tons of carbon at a time. Most landowners sell credits through an aggregator, comparable to a stock broker, who will combine multiple landowners’ credits together.

“An aggregator will lump several accounts together until it reaches 100 tons or more and sell the carbon to the CCX,” Farlee said. “This is really the easiest solution for farmers and landowners, because some people do not own enough land to sell 100 tons of carbon, and the aggregator can handle most of the administrative work associated with selling the credits.”

Carbon from grasslands and no-till farming is sold to the CCX at a fixed rate per acre. Carbon from trees also is sold at a fixed rate based on tree species, age of the planting and region.

As the voluntary program becomes more popular, the federal government is debating whether to make reduction of carbon emissions a mandatory system.

‘There have been legislative proposals in place for about a year,” Farlee said. “Part of the debate is over making the carbon emissions reduction system a carbon tax or a market-based offset and reduction system or whether to have a mandatory reduction system at all.”

Under a carbon tax, emitters might be charged based on emission rates above some established threshold. If an offset market system is used, those entities emitting carbon could be allowed to buy and sell carbon offset credits based on their carbon emission reductions and offset credits to meet a required total emissions target.

“Europe has installed a mandatory carbon reduction and offset system, and the price per ton of carbon offset credits has been between $20 and $35 a ton,” Farlee said. “It is hard to predict what the future will bring here in the United States in terms of legislation related to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Clean Seed Capital Launches New Website and Blog

Visit Site Link Below:

www.cleanseedcapital.com

Clean Seed Capital Group poised to facilitate progress in sustainable agriculture.

Vancouver based Clean Seed Capital Group is positioned to play a meaningful role in the growth of sustainable agriculture.

Clean Seed Capital’s focus is to identify solution-driven, sustainable, environmentally responsible, agricultural based companies that need a strategic partner to facilitate progress.

Agriculture has changed dramatically, post World War II food and fiber productivity soared due to new technologies, mechanization, increased chemical use, specialization and government policies that favored maximizing production.

Although these changes at the time had some positive effects and reduced many yield risks in farming, there have also been significant costs. Prominent among these are topsoil depletion, groundwater contamination and the release of carbon into our atmosphere due to heavy tilling of the soil.

A growing movement has emerged during the past two decades to question the role of the agricultural establishment in promoting practices that contribute to these social and environmental problems. Today this movement for sustainable agriculture is gaining increasing support and acceptance within mainstream agriculture. Not only does sustainable agriculture address many environmental and social concerns, but it offers innovative and economically viable opportunities for growers and the investment community.

 Clean Seed Capital Group provides strategic capital, business advisory services, and marketing strategies that yield both positive impact and significant investor returns from this rapidly growing sector.

 “We work in partnership exclusively with companies that can contribute to our vision of a sustainable future in agriculture and that will have a meaningful effect on the current system, we are confident that we are in a space that is emerging as a growth sector for investment and we look forward to working with companies that share our objectives” Said CEO Graeme Lempriere.

‘Stock’ up for the world’s biggest food fight

 

The global population is rising – it’s expected to top eight billion by 2030.

As a result, demand for everyday essentials is soaring, too.

No doubt you’ve heard the debate about how the world is striving to find adequate energy resources and beefing up aging infrastructures in order to handle the strain.

But what about items that are even more critical to basic human survival – namely, food and water?

I’ve discussed the world’s water issues here before. Today, we turn to the food industry. Because like water, with an additional two billion people on the planet in 20 years, we’re going to have to come up with ways to satisfy all the extra demand.

Longing for more land

The trouble is, there simply isn’t enough arable land available to grow all the extra crops necessary. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the world needs as much additional arable land as there already is in the United States, Brazil and Argentina.

Adding to the crunch is the ongoing mandate for biofuel production across the world. We all know about the frenzy for mass-produced ethanol from corn a few years ago.

With subsidies tossed around like confetti to farmers who planted more corn for ethanol production, the rush caused a trio of problems…

• It took massive amounts of corn out of the food production chain.
• It left less acreage for other crops like soybeans and wheat.
• The focus on biofuel production at the expense of food sent food prices soaring.

And although the fervor has died down from the giddy “this is the fuel of the future… let’s kick up production to warp speed” days a few years ago, one-quarter of the U.S. corn crop still goes towards ethanol production.

And now, emerging market nations are expected to take the food production baton in a big way…

Boom in the BRICs

Along with its fellow “BRIC” nations (Russia, India and China), Brazil is among the nations expected to “provide the main source of growth for world agricultural production, consumption and trade,” according to the annual Agricultural Outlook report from the United Nations and Organization for Cooperation and Development.

More specifically, the report states that agricultural output in the BRICs will grow by 27% – three times faster than production in major Western European economies. Breaking it down…

• Brazil leads the pack, with agriculture growth of more than 40% through 2019.
• The three other BRIC nations – Russia, India and China – are forecast to notch up 26%, 21% and 26% growth through 2019.
• The Ukraine is also projected to enjoy an agriculture sector boom, posting 29% growth through 2019.

Overall, the UN-OECD report estimates that global production will expand by 70% by 2050.

Supply-demand-price conundrum

However, with the population growing and land acreage shrinking, global food prices are set to rise.

While the UN/OECD report doesn’t project a food price spike, it warned that these factors, coupled with higher energy costs, will result in consumers paying more for food.

For example, crop and dairy prices are projected to climb between 16% and 45%. And that doesn’t take into account any rise in energy/commodity prices.

Government of Canada Makes Major Investment to International Climate Change and to enhance sustainable agriculture

OTTAWA, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – June 23, 2010) - Today, the Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of the Environment, announced that the Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment under the Copenhagen Accord to help the poorest and most vulnerable countries with their efforts to fight climate change. As promised as part of the Copenhagen Accord, Canada will invest $400 million for international climate change efforts this fiscal year. This represents the 2010 portion of Canada’s fair share of the fast-start financing promised by developed countries under the Copenhagen Accord.

“This is an important announcement for Canada and for the global community,” said Minister Prentice. “Through this investment, we are working to help developing countries reduce their emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change. As countries begin to follow through on their commitments made in Copenhagen last December, Canada will continue to provide its fair share of the support promised”.

Under the Copenhagen Accord, developed countries committed to provide fast-start financing approaching US$30 billion for 2010-2012 that would help the poorest and most vulnerable countries adapt to the effects of climate change, including clean energy development and delivery, efforts to address deforestation and to enhance sustainable agriculture. Canada’s contribution is consistent with our traditional share of developed country donor pledges in the context of multilateral international assistance efforts—approximately 4%.

The Government of Canada is continuing to deliver strong action on the environment both domestically and internationally. As inscribed in the Copenhagen Accord, Canada has set an ambitious, realistic target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020, a target which reflects the importance of aligning with the United States. 

The Government has recently published draft regulations for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, and will continue to work with the United States to do the same for heavy trucks. Furthermore, we have tabled new regulations requiring renewable content for gasoline and diesel fuel. Starting in September 2010, gasoline will be required to contain five per cent renewable content.

G8 Gets Praise for Re-committing to Food Security

At the G8 summit this past weekend, leaders renewed their commitment to food security.  They stood by their pledge to spend (US) $22 for sustainable agriculture by 2012.

The commitment was made last year at the L’Aquila summit in Italy.  So far, about $6 billion has been allocated.

Quite delighted

Dr. Lindiwe Majele Sibanda is CEO of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), a member of the Farming First coalition.  Farming First represents about 130 organizations worldwide.

“We are quite delighted that there was time spent on deliberating and linking to the L’Aquila agreement,” says Sibanda, speaking from Pretoria, South Africa.  “And the good thing is that at least our world leaders have agreed that accountability is the way forward.  And the Muskoka framework is a big step forward.”

The framework makes the G8 process more transparent

“For once we know what is discussed behind closed doors,” she says, “And they’ve made a commitment that by 2011 there will be a report back on food security and health, which is excellent, child health.”

The farming community around the world is pleased with the L’Aquila recommitment, according to Sibanda.

“In the past we’ve had figures that are floated and there is no follow-up.  So for us, the fact that we now have a framework that talks about the initial commitment of $22 billion – the fact that to date only $6.5 billion has been disbursed – and the commitment that by 2012 the balance will be delivered – I think it gives us something to hold onto,” she says.

Storing CO2 in soil should be on U.N. agenda: Gore

Developing emissions markets to encourage farmers in poor countries to store more carbon dioxide in soil should be a key topic on the U.N. climate talks agenda, global warming activist Al Gore said.

“I think that soil carbon conservation and recarbonizing of soil must be the next stage in this negotiating process,” former U.S. Vice President Gore told reporters on the sidelines of a climate conference at the United Nations.

Agriculturists can store more carbon in soil through techniques such as no-till farming that leaves crop residue on the ground instead of plowing it up and releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, or through crop rotations.

Soils can hold carbon for thousands of years when dead leaves, crop residue and other vegetation combine chemically with existing soil particles instead of rotting fully. More carbon is held in this way than in trees and other vegetation.

But agricultural techniques such as heavy plowing, the use of too much fertilizer, and the discarding of the practice of rotating crops have led to the depletion of soils and the carbon in them in many countries.

Gore said polluters and investors in rich countries could potentially help invest in projects promoting new and improved agricultural methods that retain carbon, such as no-till farming, in developing countries through carbon credits.

Similar offsets resulting from storing carbon in forests and soils are already available in voluntary carbon markets, including ones for domestic projects on the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Opponents of such programs say the science is still young on measuring how much carbon is stored in this way. As a result, the price for soil sequestration offsets has traditionally trailed the price of other offsets projects such as solar energy farms.

Others say measurements are improving and that the offsets are a huge potential market that could reward farmers and make the soil yield more and better food.

Gore said improving the soil in many poor countries through such offsets could help fight against hunger and malnutrition.

 

Vesco Agricultural Technologies has a developing nations initiative that can address this issue.

Developing Nations farmers face a wide variety of agronomic and economic conditions. No single solution has been identified and made available to, useable by or affordable to farmers in all regions and circumstances.

However, the scalable range of options made possible by the Vesco Terra-Glide™ technology has allowed the development of a range of machine sizes that bridges these problems.

Within the Vesco Terra-Glide™ family of technologies there is a combination that will provide the seeding solution to the needs of most farmers in developing nations. Our goal is to work with government agencies, NGOs and the UN to establish a framework that supplies this technology to the poorest nations of the world at no cost to the farmers by establishing the Vesco Terra-Glide™ technology in a verified offset project for no-till carbon credits sold and traded under the Chicago Climate Exchange and others as Soil Carbon Management Offsets through the newly established carbon offset credit programs.

For more information visit www.vescocanada.com

A New Vision for Agriculture

 

Deepening public-private collaboration to accelerate growth in sustainable agriculture.

The Issue
In the past year, food security and economic crises have highlighted both the urgent need and the potential for developing sustainable agri-food systems. Over one billion people, or one out of six globally, do not have access to adequate food and nutrition today.  By 2050, the global population will grow to a projected 9.2 billion people, and demand for agricultural products is expected to double. In the intervening years, the agri-food system will face increasing constraints and volatility driven by resource scarcity and climate change, raising the risk of production shortfalls. While substantial gains can be realized through improved technologies, policies, infrastructure and investment, it will require an exceptional level of collaboration among stakeholders in the agricultural value chain including, individual farmers, consumers and entrepreneurs; governments and companies; civil society and multilateral organizations. And while many initiatives and processes are underway, few effectively tap both public and private-sector insights and capacities. Alignment around shared priorities and large-scale initiatives is therefore key to success on both global and regional levels.

A New Vision for Agriculture
The World Economic Forum’s Consumer Industries Community is championing an initiative through multi-stakeholder engagement in developing a shared agenda for action to meet food security, economic development and environmental sustainability goals through agriculture. The New Vision for Agriculture initiative engages high-level leaders of industry, government and international institutions and civil society– with support from leading experts – to define joint priorities, recommendations and opportunities for collaboration. Issues to be addressed will vary according to the region and forum, but may include:

 Leveraging public and private-sector investment for agricultural growth
 Boosting good stewardship practices of natural resources and preservation of biodiversity
 Developing agricultural markets through improved infrastructure and policies
 Driving economic growth through agriculture, including opportunities for small-scale farmers

Through a series of structured dialogues, engaging key public and private-sector actors, the initiative will provide opportunities to develop shared insights and priorities; provide advisory input and recommendations for focus and action by key stakeholders; and identify and support existing initiatives which offer promising opportunities for collaboration and scaling.

Land Degradation

by Mark Sircus

Picture from the National Archives, taken during the “Dust Bowl” in the 1930’s

The world’s croplands are in decline due to the pressure of human activities. The figure shows the regional and global trends in the total available area of the world’s croplands. The loss of arable land has been caused by a number of factors, many or most of which are tied to human development. The primary causes are deforestation, overexploitation for fuelwood, overgrazing, agricultural activities and industrialization. On the global basis, the soil degradation is caused primarily by overgrazing (35%), agricultural activities (28%), deforestation (30%), overexplotation of land to produce fuelwood (7%), and industrialization (4%).

The University of Washington published that throughout history civilizations expanded as they sought new soil to feed their populations, and then ultimately fell as they wore out or lost the dirt they depended upon. When that happened, people moved on to fertile new ground and formed new civilizations. That process is being repeating today but the results could be far more disastrous for humans because there are very few places left with fertile soil to feed large populations, and farming practices still trigger large losses of rich dirt.

“We’re doing the same things today that past societies have done, and at the same rate,” said David Montgomery, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences who studies the evolution and structure of the various aspects of the Earth’s surface. In essence, he said, we are slowly removing our planet’s life-giving skin. “It only takes one good rainstorm when the soil is bare to lose a century’s worth of dirt.”

Montgomery is the author of “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations,” in which he examines how soil is slowly created over time, the vital role it has played in the rise and fall of civilizations from Mesopotamia to Rome, and how it shaped where and how we live today.

Sub Story by Marvelle Media:

Vesco Agricultural Technologies recognized early on that the world is facing an agricultural crisis of pandemic proportions: the catastrophic loss of topsoil. After covering the earth for thousands of years, the world’s topsoil is being lost at an alarming rate. In reality, for the past 100 years, our land has been more ‘mined’ than farmed. Historically, farmers used the soil, depleted the soil and moved on. Even with current farming methods more topsoil disappears each year than is created.

Such poor management of the topsoil is not the failure of a single farm or even a single region. It’s a problem of worldwide dimension. Across the globe, world agriculture faces a growing crisis. The world’s four top crop-producing areas (U.S.A., the countries of the former USSR, China and India) are all losing topsoil at an alarming rate of over 13 billion tons per year.

Sediment from soil erosion is the single greatest pollutant of the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers. Scientists estimate that before intensive agricultural cultivation began, approximately 9 billion tons of topsoil was carried into our waterways annually through runoff. Today the volume has tripled, exceeding 27 billion tons every year, and continues to increase.

“Our problem with erosion was very serious and it was very damaging to the environment to the extent that, in these crops, to produce one ton of grain in Brazil, we lost 10 tons of soil per hectare per year. We solved this problem by eliminating tillage,” says Almir Rebelo, grower advisor and president of Friends of the Earth, a Brazilian grower organization influential in the adoption of no-till farming in Brazil.

With conservation tillage, farmers leave the stubble or plant residue on the soil’s surface, rather than plowing or disking it into the soil. Typically, the new crop is planted directly into this stubble, and growers control weeds in the crop by applying an herbicide rather than plowing.

Alternatively, with what could be considered a “best-practice” in conservation agriculture, organic growers will utilize no-till in conjunction with established certified organic methods such as crop rotation, cover crops and biological pest control.

“As a result of us keeping crop residue on the ground, we have a new foraging opportunity for wildlife,” says U.S. cotton, corn and soybean farmer Jay Hardwick. “So we’re seeing a new happening on the landscape in terms of wildlife emergence. Not only top of it, but underneath. Earthworms are coming back to play, and earthworms are strategic in getting water into the soil structure.”

The impact of no-till farming and soil erosion control has been just as significant to farmers in the developing world. “We do not have to burn the residue in our harvest anymore,” says Jerry Due, a Filipino corn farmer. “We just allow the residue to decompose in the field to become fertilizers.”

Vesco Agricultural Technologies has developed superior No-Till farming equipment that produces higher yields, combats soil erosion, reduces seed, fertilizer and fuel costs and qualifies for carbon-offset credits, tradable on the growing number of carbon credit markets emerging worldwide as part of the fight against Climate Change.

Vesco Agricultural Technologies is in the final phase of development and expects to launch its pilot programs in the spring of 2011. Vesco looks forward to playing a meaningful role in the protection of our planets soil.

For more info visit www.vescocanada.com

Is food the new oil?

In the Financial Times, Javier Blas gives us the back-story to the attempt by the world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton, to buy its largest fertiliser company, PotashCorp. Suddenly fertiliser is big business: in the first eight months of the year, deals valued at $61bn have been announced by companies in the industry, a high that more than doubles the peak hit in 2008.

Why? “Countries are starting to see potash much as they see crude oil: as a hunted, strategic commodity. But, as with oil, potash deposits are not evenly spread. A handful of nations – led by Canada, Russia, Belarus and Israel – command the bulk of the reserves. Eight companies control more than 80 per cent of global supply. Two marketing groups – Canpotex for North American producers and BPC for the Russian and Belarusian groups – dominate the global trade.”

And just as with oil, China is getting worried: “[It] has to import about half of its needs, a dependency that “may become a major threat to China’s fast-developing national economy and long-term strategic needs”, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a think-tank that advises the government. Little surprise, then, that its primary importer of the mineral, Sinochem, says it is paying “close attention” to the PotashCorp battle, suggesting the group could launch a counterbid.”

And Blas thinks this is just the start. “The bid for PotashCorp is a litmus test for how companies – and nations – view the prospect of a world with tighter food supplies. In the past century, anguish over who will feed the world has always been answered with breakthroughs that have more than compensated for growing populations. But if a Chinese state-owned company should plant its flag on the potash industry, it could indicate the introduction of a more cut-throat edge to the geopolitics of agriculture.”

African farms lure overseas investment

Funds seek assurances on land ownership

By SLINDILE KHANYILE

 

THE AGRICULTURAL sector in Africa has caught the eyes of wealthy global investors. There are about 45 new private equity funds that are planning to invest an estimated $2 billion (R14.7bn) in the sector across the continent, in the next three to five years.

This is according to Angela Hansen, an associate partner at Dalberg, a strategic advisory firm that has been speaking to the potential investors.

Of these 45 firms, 17 would invest directly in agriculture and agribusiness. Some of the countries that will benefit from this are South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Mozambique.

Hansen said yesterday that it was the increased demand for agricultural products and biofuels that was drawing attention to Africa.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Africainvestor Agribusiness Project Summit, Hansen said the world was looking for a new place to secure agricultural productivity.

“Africa has the largest untapped and underdeveloped land. There is specifically a huge amount of arable land in Africa and the world is scrambling to increase production,” Hansen said.

The summit, which brought together government ministers, private investors and farmers, is looking at highlighting opportunities that exist within the continent to grow the sector.

Hansen said that despite the availability of land, the sector had not grown much in Africa.

“There is also the issue of land ownership because in most areas the land is tribally owned and farmers cannot, for example, use it as collateral. There are other challenges like access to fertilisers and quality seeds. The yields in Africa are lower,” Hansen said.

Chayton Africa is one of the private equity firms that intends investing in agriculture. Neil Crowder, the managing partner, said it was looking at producing basic food crops that would be sold within the continent and not for export.

Crowder said it would invest between $200 million and $300m in six countries. It has signed an investor protection and promotion agreement with the Zambian government, which spells out a clear framework for investing and investor rights. It hopes to have these agreements in place in other countries.

“South Africa is a more mature country for agriculture, with better infrastructure, and there is access to market which eliminates some of the risks we see in other countries. But we are looking at creative ways of investing in South Africa and we are watching land reform, trying to determine the impact it might have,” said Crowder.

Crowder said it was important to have certainty over access to land, even if Chayton would not be able to acquire it.

Izak Strauss, the chief investment officer of private equity firm Agri-Vie, said the firm had about $100m to invest over the next three years in southern and east Africa.

Conserving and Rebuilding Soils

Earth Policy Institute on October 6, 2010

By Lester R. Brown

The literature on soil erosion contains countless references to the “loss of protective vegetation.” Over the last half-century, clearcutting, overgrazing, and overplowing have removed so much of that protective cover that the world is quickly losing soil accumulated over long stretches of geological time (see “Civilization’s Foundation Eroding”). Preserving the biological productivity of highly erodible cropland depends on planting it in grass or trees before it becomes wasteland.

Soil Conservation: The American Experience

The 1930s Dust Bowl that threatened to turn the U.S. Great Plains into a vast desert was a traumatic experience that led to revolutionary changes in American agricultural practices, including the planting of tree shelterbelts (rows of trees planted beside fields to slow wind and thus reduce wind erosion) and strip cropping (the planting of wheat on alternate strips with fallowed land each year). Strip cropping permits soil moisture to accumulate on the fallowed strips, while the alternating planted strips reduce wind speed and hence erosion on the idled land.

In 1985, the U.S. Congress, with strong support from the environmental community, created the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to reduce soil erosion and control overproduction of basic commodities. By 1990 there were some 14 million hectares (35 million acres) of highly erodible land with permanent vegetative cover under 10-year contracts. Under this program, farmers were paid to plant fragile cropland to grass or trees. The retirement of those 14 million hectares under the CRP, together with the use of conservation practices on 37 percent of all cropland, reduced U.S. soil erosion from 3.1 billion tons to 1.9 billion tons between 1982 and 1997. The U.S. approach offers a model for the rest of the world.

Another tool in the soil conservation toolkit—and a relatively new one—is conservation tillage, which includes both no-till and minimum tillage. Instead of the traditional cultural practices of plowing land and discing or harrowing it to prepare the seedbed, and then using a mechanical cultivator to control weeds in row crops, farmers simply drill seeds directly through crop residues into undisturbed soil, controlling weeds with herbicides. The only soil disturbance is the narrow slit in the soil surface where the seeds are inserted, leaving the remainder of the soil undisturbed, covered by crop residues and thus resistant to both water and wind erosion. In addition to reducing erosion, this practice retains water, raises soil carbon content, and greatly reduces energy use for tillage.

In the United States, where farmers during the 1990s were required to implement a soil conservation plan on erodible cropland in order to be eligible for commodity price supports, the no-till area went from 7 million hectares in 1990 to 27 million hectares (67 million acres) in 2007. Now widely used in the production of corn and soybeans, no-till has spread rapidly in the western hemisphere, covering 26 million hectares in Brazil, 20 million hectares in Argentina, and 13 million in Canada. Australia, with 12 million hectares, rounds out the five leading no-till countries.

Once farmers master the practice of no-till, its use can spread rapidly, particularly if governments provide economic incentives or require farm soil conservation plans for farmers to be eligible for crop subsidies.

Farming practices that reduce soil erosion and raise cropland productivity usually also lead to higher carbon content in the soil. Among these are the shift to minimum-till and no-till farming, the more extensive use of cover crops, the return of livestock and poultry manure to the land, expansion of irrigated area, a return to more mixed crop-livestock farming, and the forestation of marginal land.

Should the next green revolution be brown?

Philanthropist Howard Buffett

Could the next green revolution be brown? Philanthropist Howard Buffett, who has joined Microsoft founder Bill Gatesin pouring money into agriculture development, used an appearance at the World Food Prize symposium on Wednesday to call for a “brown revolution” that would involve boosting food production through improving the soil.

And the theme continued during the symposium on Thursday and at a side event sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute, a group that focuses on sustainability issues in agriculture.

Conserving organic matter in the soil will improve fertility while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Across the globe, north, south, east and west, we have major problems in the soil,” said Hans Herren, past World Food Prize laureate.

Brian Halweil of Worldwatch said that improving soil fertility through mulching, reducing tillage or planting cover crops has been shown to increase corn yields in Kenya by at least 20 percent.

Herren said more money needs to be put into measures like educating farmers on how to make compost properly.

Rolf Derpsch, a conservation expert and a panelist during the symposium, said that about 25 million acres of agricultural land is lost to soil degradation every year, with the worst losses in the tropics and sub-tropics. He said that plowing is a leading cause of the problem and that no-till farming “can no longer be ignored” as a solution, he said.

In the United States, farmers have been conserving soil through the use of genetically modified herbicide-immune seeds that make it easier to grow soybeans and corn without plowing between crops. An official with biotech seed giant Syngenta said the benefits (of no-till farming) “we’ve seen in the developed world are even more needed in the developing world.”

Viterra Reaches Carbon Credit Milestone

CALGARY, ALBERTA, Oct 26, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Viterra Inc. (“Viterra”) /quotes/comstock/11t!e:vt (CA:VT 9.88, +0.13, +1.33%) (asx:VTA) is pleased to announce that its carbon credit program has aggregated over one million offsets, representing over $10 million paid to Alberta farmers, since its launch in March, 2008.

Viterra purchases and aggregates carbon offset credits, based on the Alberta government’s protocols for tillage system management. They are generated through no till or reduced till practices on agricultural land, which decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

“Viterra’s carbon credit program illustrates our commitment to developing solutions that bring value to our farm customers while encouraging sustainable farming practices. Reaching this milestone is a testament to the success of our program and to our employees, who work closely with our customers.” said Doug Wonnacott, Viterra’s Senior Vice-President, Agri-products.

In November, 2008, Viterra signed a long-term supply agreement with ENMAX Energy Corporation (“ENMAX Energy”), Alberta’s leading competitive electricity retailer. Through this arrangement, Viterra customers have access to a reliable market for their carbon offset credits.

“We would like to congratulate Viterra on the success of its carbon credit program. Innovative solutions such as these are excellent examples of what can be accomplished through collaboration and a shared commitment to environmental best practices,” said Corey Wilson Commercial Manager, ENMAX Energy.

No-Till Farming on the Rise

Today, a growing number of U.S. farmers are adopting no-till cropland management practices, according to a newly released USDA report.

USDA Economic Research Service researchers compiled data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey and the National Resources Inventory-Conservation Effects Assessment Project’s Cropland Survey and compiled “No-Till Farming is a Growing Practice.” The data in the report show that approximately 35.5 percent of U.S. cropland planted to eight major crops, or 88 million acres, had no tillage operations in 2009.

While it is true that most U.S. farmers prepare soil for planting, as well as weed and pest control through tillage the trend to non-tillage practices have been trending upward.

Tillage, of course, is of particular interest because practices affect soil carbon, water pollution, and farmers’ energy and pesticide use. That makes data on tillage practices valuable to better understand the practice’s role in reaching climate and other environmental goals. No-till would have less environmental impact.

In the end, the report and ongoing research efforts are to help policymakers and other interested parties better understand U.S. tillage practices and those practices’ potential contribution to climate-change efforts.

You can access the 28-page, Economic Information Bulletin No. (EIB-70), November 2010 here.

For a copy of the full report http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB70/EIB70.pdf

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