Agribusiness

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Synopsis: Domenii: Agribusiness:

The satellites it put into the space provide everything from high-resolution imagery to monitor the country's shrinking farmland, to cheaper wireless and internet coverage.

broadcasting and GPS mapping to weather forecasting for agriculture and climate monitoring. Since 2010, satellite capacity across the continent has tripled nearly, helping in part fuel Africa's"mobile revolution#.

They are the world number one non-grain crop, in 130 countries, and a hefty source of starch for billions around the world.

Olivier Dubois, senior natural resources officer at the United nations Food and agriculture organisation (FAO), says that using food for energy like sugar cane for biofuels must avoid depleting food stocks

and competing with farmers. ou first need to look at: are there enough potatoes to eat?

Then, are we not competing with farmers making income from selling potatoes? he explains. o

the potato is the second most important food for families after maize. Smallholder farmers produced around 10 million tonnes of potatoes this year,

yet around 10-20%were lost in postharvest waste due to lack of access to markets, poor storage conditions,

and other issues, according to Elmar Schulteeldermann, potato science leader for subaharan Africa at the International Potato Center in Nairobi, Kenya.

and spray crops is regulated already and sanctioned in both North and South america. Another will be the fuel itself.

The futuristic visions of the 1950s and 60s imagined neighbourhood airports and helicopters in our back gardens-but space travel is more likely.

From fields to global tech hub The farmers'children in dusty Darbaripur no longer want to work the land.

and farmers settle down to their traditional clay hookahs. There's very little left of their ancestral village.

Karan Singh is a 47-year-old farmer whose life#like the other farmers in his village#used to depend on erratic monsoons.

Then property prices soared. He sold his farmland and became an overnight millionaire.""There are no farms left here for us to remain farmers,

#he says.""Our hope is that our future generation will also be employed as software engineers in the offices that have sprung up here.

Given good education and the right facilities, our children are also capable of achieving anything.#

From health and agriculture, to business and electioneering, it is quietly playing an ever more central role in many of our lives."

The ability to use just the right amounts of water and fertiliser to produce a good harvest without wasting resources can improve crop yields and rural incomes.

Bluetooth is also being used to help those in agriculture in other ways. Kenyan mobile tech company Virtual city has developed Agrimanagr

Small, rural tea farmers in Kenya, for example, complain that unscrupulous buyers routinely under-weigh their produce by 10-20%.

electronic scales are used to transmit the weight of produce via Bluetooth to a mobile phone which records this in farmers'accounts on a cloud-based server.

farmers would get conned on the weight, #says Virtual city chief executive John Waibochi.""Buyers would tamper with the weight scale.#

#Going digital and printing receipts"cuts out fraud#and increases the value to farmers 9-13%,#he adds.#

#Tech fix for Africa's big farming challenge Africa could help feed the world if its farmland was utilised properly.

Things are starting to change, however, thanks to ideas transforming farmerslives. Before last year, George Wainaina tiny shop selling agricultural goods

and that of the farmers he wanted to serve, cut straight to the heart of one of Sub-saharan africa deepest challenges

Africa is home to a quarter of the world arable land ripe and ready to become the world breadbasket.

And of the 20%that is, the majority is owned by poor smallholder farmers with just one or two hectares of land,

who face enormous challenges when it comes to accessing things to improve harvests and incomes that developed world farmers perhaps take for granted:

credit; seeds; fertiliser; information on weather and market prices; and the markets to sell their products.

which hopes to boost smallholder productivity by providing farmers with high-quality products, services, and information.

The company is also offering to help farmers actually figure out what they need to improve their harvest.

With their new soil-testing service, Farm Shop agents can collect soil samples from farmers,

and within a few days send results directly to the farmers via SMS, informing them what will help improve yields.

a farmer can then go to the shop and purchase more fertiliser, or get the right kind for

o individual solution can solve the problems for rural farmers in Africa. It an ecosystem that needs to be built.

Hedging harvests That ecosystem, at least in Kenya, is slowly starting to develop. Several innovations like Farm Shop are improving the lives and income of Africa struggling smallholder farmers,

and across the entire value chain of rural agriculture. For the past few years, social enterprise Kilimo Salama has been piloting a crop insurance scheme for smallholder farmers

hoping to reduce risk and serve a critical and vulnerable market that traditional insurance schemes don reach. obody ever really wakes up

and says want insuranceconfesses Rose Goslinga, Technical Coordinator for Kilimo Salama. But, it become a highly valuable tool for helping farmers secure much-needed credit from banks.

Traditionally, farmers try to reduce their exposure to risks like crop failure (from bad rains or crop parasites) by minimising their investment in farming inputs.

As a consequence, farmers remain trapped in a cycle of low agricultural productivity and poverty. If the rains fail,

they are left with nothing to invest in the next season. Using weather stations across the country Kilimo Salama has developed a unique eather-based index insurance,

which farmers can buy into at the beginning of the season, for typically around 10-20%of the amount they invest in seeds and inputs.

Kilimo Salama then works with agronomists to calculate the index and find where the rain was too much, too little,

Farmer payouts are calculated automatically based on their crops, location, and number of seeds purchased. By coupling bank loans with Kilimo Salama insurance scheme, the organisation has enabled banks

making access to essential credit easier for farmers. e not just selling insurance, says Goslinga,

ee enabling farmers to get a harvest. As of this year, Kilimo Salama has insured over 100,000 smallholder farmers across Kenya and Rwanda.

One SMS at a time Yet even if farmers have a great harvest that doesn mean it easy for them to sell their produce.

Calestous Juma, Harvard Professor and author of The New Harvest; Agricultural innovation in Africa claims that the greatest failure of Africa agricultural sector is the absence of investment in rural infrastructure. arkets cannot function

if you cannot move goods, services, information and ideas, he says. In a nutshell, the problem is many of Africa rural farmers can get their produce to the markets in time, because of bad roads, lack of communication,

and the nature of a highly fractured middleman-dominated agricultural market. Back in 2011, when nearly 3. 7 million people in northern Kenya were facing near-famine conditions,

farmers in other parts of the country were driven either by swindling middlemen to sell cabbage at nearly a tenth of the price,

%Through a simple text message, MFARM allows rural farmers in remote areas of Kenya to check the latest market prices,

post information on their harvest for buyers to see and purchase, and band together with other farmers in their area to make bulk purchases of expensive but needed agricultural inputs like seeds,

fertilisers and equipment at discounted rates. It also allows them to join together to sell their harvests,

making it easier for buyers to reach them. MFARM approach hopes to improve the agricultural sector by in a sense leapfrogging physical infrastructure troubles,

farmers were being exploited by middlemen, claims Adrian Mukhebi, Chairman of the Kenya Agricultural Commodities exchange (KACE.

ow, with information via mobiles, farmers are better able to bargain prices against middlemen, and can in some cases increase 25-35%of their profits.

Technology role in improving access for farmers may be exciting and hold great potential, Mukhebi claims,

but as these tools and information are not yet available to all farmers it still has some way to go.

#California Unveils Strictest Rules on Pesticide California farmers now must abide by the nation's strictest rules for a widely used pesticide in a change designed to protect farmworkers

and work near agricultural fields but is likely to raise prices on produce. The restrictions announced Wednesday target chloropicrin, a pesticide injected into the ground before planting crops such as strawberries, tomatoes and almond orchards.

In recent years, the chemical has caused hundreds of people to suffer from irritated eyes, coughing fits and headaches,

Costs are sure to rise for farmers, who will pass it along to consumers, but Leahy said it is worth it."

"Under the new regulation, farmers are limited to applying the pesticide on up to 40 acres in one day, a reduction of 75 percent.

Farmers who use upgraded tarps to cover their fields while applying the pesticide can follow less stringent regulations,

Farmers use about 5 million pounds of the pesticide a year, most heavily in the Central Valley counties of San Joaquin and Fresno and along the coast in Monterey, Santa barbara, Santa cruz and Ventura counties.

California farmers fear that tighter restrictions will increase the costs of their fruits and vegetables,

when they plant a new orchard or vineyard, but California's strawberry growers, who use it each season,

California produces 88 percent of the nation's strawberry crop, supporting a $2. 3 billion industry,

It will cost the state's strawberry growers an estimated $20 million to buy upgraded tarps to cover their crops

"Farmers and their families live near their farms and work in their fields and care deeply about protecting the safety of their workers, neighbors and communities,

and the grocery store in the months ahead since everything from transportation to manufacturing to our petroleum-intensive agricultural system is a puppet flailing upon the strings of this volatile commodity.

which includes recommendations on how to make the island agriculture fisheries transportation and energy systems more sustainable.

tenant-amenities such as rooftop gardens and pools; and other high-footprint features. ee worked hard to achieve both large-scale and high power conversion efficiency,

and human activities, such as leakage from natural gas systems and the raising of livestock. uman activities such as agriculture, fossil fuel combustion, wastewater management,

#Smart sensors that harvest power from sun heat or vibrations European researchers have developed advanced energy harvesting technology that allows wireless sensor networks to power themselves from the sun, heat or vibrations.

or in agriculture and water management, suggests Ignasi Vilajosana, CEO of Worldsensing, a project partner based in Spain. n the context of smart cities, for example,

Agricultural lands for olive orchards and other crops are being damaged. Unregulated quarrying has deteriorated coastal mountain ecosystems and soil quality.

And, only a small portion of solid waste is being recycled or composted. These trends are having effects across society and the economy

impacting health, energy agriculture, production, transportation and tourism. In 2011, an EU-funded project began an in depth analysis of these challenges with an eye toward developing long-term solutions.

but also in agriculture, cosmetics and beyond, says Polymode project co-ordinator, Professor Bruno Moerschbacher of the University of Münster in Germany.

This 460 hectare vineyard is located in a green and prosperous area of the country where agriculture is the main industry.

whether genetic techniques could be used to create new antibiotics from bacteria commonly found in garden soil.

#BIOBROOM#Breeding flies to fight broomrape parasite weeds Can flies be bred as gardeners weeding undesirable pests from the crop?

That is what a European union (EU) research project has achieved offering hope for farmers battling the broomrape one of nature's parasites.

herbicide-free control of parasitic weeds in all vulnerable crops. Tóth is assistant professor at the Slovak University of Agriculture in the city of Nitra where he teaches in agricultural entomology,

weed control and integrated pest management. His project, backed by#166,563 of funding from the EU's Marie Curie Actions fellowship programme,

Tóth says he expects the applications will be picked up by farmers across Europe suffering from broomrapes.

Farmers struggle to control the broomrape, whose scaly flower shoots produce millions of dust-size seeds that are dispersed easily, and long-lived.

Broomrape has plagued European agriculture for years, although climate change has made it more aggressive recently, Tóth says."

and it is a real problem in tomatoes, tobacco and hemp crops. In some areas they have stopped growing tobacco and tomatoes."

it could offer an environmentally-friendly protection against a crop menace. Project details Participants: The netherlands (Coordinator), Slovakia FP7 Proj.

Food Agriculture and Fisheriesbiotechnology; Nanosciences nanotechnologiesmaterials and new productiontechnologies; Energy; and Environment (includingclimate change. Established in 2010 and due to continue until2014 the project is focused on developing ahighly integrated multipurpose refinery.

Theproject will provide an efficient bridge betweenthe agriculture and chemical industries byintegrating the entire biomass chain in asingle concept adaptable for use in a rangeof locations.

By contrast, the antibodies produced by PHARMA-PLANTA were derived from tobacco plants grown in greenhouses in Germany,

And it not just the occasional flower buyer who needs guidance on watering as even experienced farmers can misjudge how much to sprinkle on their crops,

Available as a smartphone app, it a breakthrough that could save harvests, as well as trillions of litres of water wasted in world farming every year.

Global agriculture wastes 60%,or 1 500 trillion litres, of the 2, 500 trillion litres of water it uses each year, according to the WWF.

Even in Europe, farmers still suffer during droughts, and the Mediterranean region, with its limited, fragile and unevenly distributed water resources is especially vulnerable:

the 2003 heat wave cost about#11 billion in lost crops. The waste is mainly down to inefficient irrigation systems.

Aided by a grant of#1. 14 million from the European commission, the Waterbee Demonstration Action project which gathered ten European partners over two years-brings the innovations together to help farmers irrigate where

and when they need. e wanted to build something that is easy for farmers to use

Italy and Estonia, using crops like lettuce, courgettes, and berries. In The british trials, on Maris Piper potatoes, Waterbee used 56%less water than the local irrigation system in use.

so we can imagine it being used by farmers, growers, hotels, golf clubs, and even domestic homeowners, says Olaherty. t the same time,

Experts once believed filoviruses came into being some 10000 years ago coinciding with the rise of agriculture.

While the low-carb dieters got 41 percent of their calories from fat most were healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats like olive or canola oil.

##California is the top agricultural producing state in the nation grossing $38 billion in revenue from farm crops in 2010.

While pesticides are critical for the modern agriculture industry certain commonly used pesticides are neurotoxic and may pose threats to brain development during gestation potentially resulting in developmental delay or autism.

and plant sciences department. f a population from the blue soup region mixes with a population from the red soup region their offsprings would appear as a purple soup. he more genetic admixture that takes place,

and affect our daily lives from pollinating our crops to vectoring diseasessays lead author Bernhard Misof with the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn Germany. e can only start to understand the enormous species richness

As more gardeners and farmers add ground charcoal or biochar to soil to both boost crop yields and counter global climate change the study offers the first detailed explanation for this mystery. nderstanding the controls on water movement through biochar-amended soils is critical

to explaining other frequently reported benefits of biochar such as nutrient retention carbon sequestration and reduced greenhouse gas emissionssays lead author Rebecca Barnes an assistant professor of environmental science at Colorado College who began the research as a postdoctoral research associate at Rice university.

Transcription factors known as genetic switches drive gene expression in plants based on external stresses such as light rain soil quality

and the transcriptional network work could allow scientists to breed plants that are better able to deal with stressful environments#crucial in a world where farmers attempt to feed an increasing population amid urban development of arable land

and flexible electronic devices to harvest solar energysays Luyao Lu a graduate student in chemistry and lead author of a paper in the journal Nature Photonics that describes the result.

The US Department of agriculture s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the UC Davis School of veterinary medicine s Center for Food Animal health provided funding r

The device harvests energy in any location where these temperature changes naturally occur powering sensors that can check for water leaks

Today legal poppy farming is restricted to a few countries including Australia France Hungary India Spain and Turkey supervised by the International Narcotics Control board

or bad crop yieldssmolke says. e ll have more sustainable cost-effective and secure production methods for these important drugs. h

which could lead to better canola oil and possibly to less bitter broccoli. Published in the journal Science the findings will help scientists understand how plant genomes evolve in the context of domestication.

Broccoli cauliflower Brussels sprouts Chinese cabbage turnip collared greens mustard canola oil all these are different incarnations of the same plant genus Brassica. hole-genome sequencing efforts like this one allow us to address two fundamental

#Clear material on windows harvests solar energy Michigan State university rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Oswald-Michigan State on August 20 2014a new type of ransparent solar concentrator

#Rice genome could answer the 9 billion-people question Researchers have sequenced the complete genome of African rice a hardy crop that could help feed the world s growing population. ice feeds

and chair of the school of plant sciences with a joint appointment in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology. ice will play a key role in helping to solve what we call the 9 billion-people question. he 9 billion people question refers to predictions that the world

and agriculturalists can search for ways to cross Asian and African species to develop new varieties of rice with the high-yield traits of Asian rice

and pesticides. ardy high-yield crops will become increasingly vital for human survival as the world faces the environmental effects of climate change and an ever-growing global population.

Much of the evolutionary analysis of the genome was performed by plant sciences doctoral candidate Muhua Wang and by Carlos Machado of the University of Maryland.

and traits that make harvesting the crop easier. Additionally the sequenced genome helps resolve questions about

Wing is also working with Quifa Zhang from Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan China to create a set of super-crop science

#Why are Newfoundland s honey bees parasite free? Penn State rightoriginal Studyposted by Sara Lajeunesse-Penn State on July 3 2014some honey bee colonies in Newfoundland Canada are free of invasive parasites found elsewhere in the world.

Scientists say the discovery offers a unique opportunity to investigate honey bee health. nvasive parasitesâ##such as Nosema ceranae a fungus

and Varroa destructor a miteâ##have incurred heavy economic penalties on the honey bee industry via colony losses

and reduced productivity of surviving colonies and both parasites threaten global food security because of reduced pollination services to agriculturesays Nancy Ostiguy associate professor of entomology at Penn State. he extent to which these detriments are attributable

to specific parasite species is difficult to assess however because of the occurrence of multiple parasites within honey bees.

because few areas in the world have western honey bee colonies that are free of invasive parasites. stiguy

and her colleagues found a geographical area in Newfoundland in which a number of important invasive honey bee parasites including Varroa destructor

The researchers used molecular techniques to test for the presence of viruses and Nosema ceranae in honey bee colonies managed by beekeepers.

and parasites of honey bees along with various stressors such as pesticide exposure with the goal of providing information to help keep honey bees healthy. ur ability to find European honey bee populations free of invasive

and pathogens of honey bees. n addition to Ostiguy researchers from Acadia University Forestry and Agrifoods Agency Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Agriculture and Agrifood Canada Dalhousie University and University

The Agriculture and Agrifoods Research and development Program the Forestry and Agrifoods Agency the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador the Natural sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the US Department of agriculture supported the study.

the team also is conducting research on how it can make good financial sense for farmers.

which states that the voltage of a rechargeable battery is dependent on temperature. o harvest thermal energy we subject a battery to a four-step process:

and human activities, such as leakage from natural gas systems and the raising of livestock. uman activities such as agriculture, fossil fuel combustion, wastewater management,

As it moves along a carbon-nanotube track it continuously harvests energy from strands of RNA molecules vital to a variety of roles in living cells

#RNA readout tool could lead to tougher crops Scientists have developed a method that enables more-accurate prediction of how RNA molecules fold within living cells.

or develop with biotechnological methods crops that are more resistant to those stresses. Such crops which could perform better under more-marginal conditions could help feed the world s growing population. he project involved determining the structures of the varieties of RNA molecules in a plant named Arabidopsis thaliana.

This plant is used worldwide as a model species for scientific research. Arabidopsis thaliana commonly known as mouse-ear cress is an ideal organism for RNA studies the researchers say

#onest pheromones may explain decline in queen bees Queen bees are always truthful with worker bees when it comes to communicating their reproductive status and quality.

And scientists say this may help explain why honey bee populations are declining. e usually think of animals chemical signals (called pheromones) as communication systems that convey only very simple sorts of informationsays Christina Grozinger professor of entomology

and director of the Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State. owever this study demonstrates that queen honey bees are conveying a lot of nuanced information through their pheromones. n addition until now no one knew

In other words whether or not they have mated with a lot of males. hy do worker bees care if their queen is mated well?

if worker bees are able to detect poorly mated queens and take steps to remove them that could be an explanation for the rapid rates of queen loss

and turnover that beekeepers have been reporting. n the journal PLOS ONE researchers from Penn State North carolina

Finally the researchers presented the gland extracts to worker bees and observed the extent to which they were attracted to different extracts.

The team found that worker bees preferred pheromone extracts of queens that were inseminated with semen rather than saline.

or saline were preferred by worker bees. hese results suggest that queens are signaling detailed and honest information about their mating state and reproductive quality to workers

and workers are capable of adjusting their behavior accordinglyniã o says. hen workers replace failing queens it is particularly damaging to beekeepers

and therefore reduces honey production and even pollination efficiency. he team also found that the mandibular gland

Crop growers wine grape and other fruit growers food processors and even concrete makers all benefit from water sensors for accurate steady and numerous moisture readings.

and soil for accurate measurements in agricultural fields. For example sophisticated vintners use precise irrigation to put regulated water stress on grapevines to create just the right grape composition for a premium cabernet or a chardonnay wine.

While growers can use the sensors to monitor water in soils for their crops civil engineers can embed the chips in concrete to determine optimal moisture levels as the concrete cures. ne of our goals is to try

and develop something that is not only a great improvement but also much cheaper for growers and others to usesays Alan Lakso professor of horticulture at Cornell University.

#Gene keeps wheat from sprouting on the stalk A new way to keep high humidity from damaging wheat crops could save farmers millions of dollars

This phenomenon pre-harvest sprouting or PHS has such important economic repercussions for farmers around the world that scientists have been working on finding a solution to the problem for decades.

A team of researchers led by Professor Jaswinder Singh of Mcgill University s Department of Plant science has identified a key gene that acts as a switch to determine how a particular plant will respond to high humidity

It should also save farmers and governments around the world significant amounts of money in the future.

They are so thinâ##thousands of CNTS could fit side by side in a human hairâ##that it takes very little energy to switch them off according to Wong a co-author of the paper. hink of it as stepping on a garden hosewong explains. he thinner the hose the easier it is to shut off the flow. n theory this combination

Researchers say the discovery could one day lead to bigger harvests of biomass for renewable energy.

The researchers studied Arabidopsis thaliana often used as a model subject in plant science studies and found the protein binds to specific regions of cellulose microfibrils the long parallel chains of cellulose that make up plant cell walls.

and thus better harvest bioenergy. ong and Daniel Cosgrove professor and chair in biology at Penn State are the lead authors.

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