March 23, 2024

Spotlight Stories

Spotlight 1 – Civil Eats discusses how vineyards are laying the groundwork for a regenerative farm future. Check out the story, here.

Spotlight 2 – Modern Farmer notes that soil blocking has many benefits. What is it, and how can you get started? Check it out, here.

Spotlight 3 – The Wall Street Journal writes about how sustainable agriculture is getting a push from big corporations. Check out the story, here.

Industry Updates

Congressman John Duarte (R-CA-13), a member of the House Ag Committee, says he’s unsure if we will see a new Farm Bill introduced and passed in the U.S. in 2024. Duarte notes that farm programs for conservation will spend a significant amount of money over the next few years and that Republicans would prefer to stretch that money out over 10 years, instead. Unless Republicans and Democrats can make a deal, Duarte believes that Congress will extend the 2018 Farm Bill another year into 2025. [link]

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) will host a Nebraska Soil Health School on Wednesday, April 24, at UNL’s High Plains Ag Lab in Sidney. The Nebraska Soil Health Schools are designed to build upon soil-related knowledge and practices for growers, crop consultants, ag professionals, and others. The HPAL event will focus on soil health topics in relation to dryland cropping systems, with the following presentations: soil health; the impacts of tillage, biochar, and cover crops; carbon markets; semi-arid systems management; and more. [link]

Brock University’s cutting-edge research that advances Canada’s grape and wine industry is expanding from lab to field to other areas of agriculture thanks to a $3.5-million grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The funding supports the Clean Agriculture for Sustainable Production (CASP) Field Infrastructure project, which will include the establishment of a Brock-led research farm where scientists from Brock, other institutions and industry will develop agricultural innovations. Specific project workstreams will focus on producing virus-free grapevines for the grape and wine industries; a better understanding of vine interactions with other plants and organisms; and research on precision agriculture. [link]

Invasive species can crowd out native species and damage agricultural production, leading to significant costs over time. While solutions themselves can be costly, a new movement is being created to put them on people's dinner plates. The idea, known as invasivorism, refers to eating invasive species to help control their havoc-wreaking populations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Invasive Species Information Center estimates invasive species cost Americans at least $26 billion a year due to their impact on local environments and economies. Chefs worldwide have started looking to invasive species as sustainable, and even beneficial, ingredients. Still, the movement has struggled to gain traction in part due to consumer concerns over taste and environmental impact. [link]

Scientists from the EPFL in Switzerland have developed a sustainable method to make high-performance plastics from agricultural leftovers, turning them into valuable materials. A study led by Jeremy Luterbacher's team at EPFL unveils a pioneering approach to producing high-performance plastics from renewable resources, introducing a novel method for creating polyamides - a class of plastics known for their strength and durability, the most famous of which are nylons - using a sugar core derived from agricultural waste. The bio-based polyamides exhibit properties that can compete with their fossil counterparts, offering a promising alternative for various applications. [link]

Canada's Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, along with its Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, have announced an investment of $1.9 million in the Common Ground Canada Network project led by Karen Foster, Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Rural Futures for Atlantic Canada, at Dalhousie University. The investment, made through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Network on Sustainable Agriculture in a Net-Zero Economy initiative, will focus on the development of a new national research network that works to advance sustainable agricultural sectors and food systems to support a just transition to net-zero in Canada. The Common Ground Canada Network is intended to promote collaboration and partnerships between academic institutions, research institutes, Indigenous communities, non-governmental organizations, industry and producers. [link]

This week, American Farmland Trust announced a major step in its efforts to preserve local food sources in the U.S., creating a "U.S Farmed" certification program. The certification and seal are designed to show a brand sources at least 95 percent of its agricultural ingredients from American farms. AFT announced Anheuser-Busch as the first company to earn the seal. [link]

Specialty finance shop Mad Capital has launched its Perennial Fund II that provides US farmers with loans to help them transition to regenerative and/or organic agriculture. The fund has received early commitments from The Rockefeller Foundation, impact investment platform Builders Vision, the Schmidt Family Foundation, family office Lacebark Investments, and many others. The fund, which is targeting $50 million, has already made two closes and is “actively” deploying capital to farmers, says Mad Capital co-founder and CEO Brandon Welch. [link]

Southern Cross University in Australia has produced an online survey in order to understand grain farmers' perceptions of regenerative agriculture, along with their farming practices and goals. The university is seeking 500 crop farmers around the country, followed by an effort to recruit 75 grain growers for a broader three-year project. The ultimate goal is to establish effective ways to monitor the potential benefits or disadvantages of regenerative agriculture in Australian cropping systems across a range of agronomic, soil health, ecological, social, and economic indicators. [link]

The UK has pledged £6 million to help train Zambian farmers in “climate-smart agriculture” and reduce deforestation, the Government has said. The funding aims to boost Zambia’s efforts to curb rapid agricultural expansion into forests and woodlands, to help protect nature and cut emissions from deforestation that contribute to climate change. The investment is part of the BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes, a global program to support projects that reduce carbon emissions and promote sustainable land use and conservation of forests. [link]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is inviting public comments for 45 days on a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) and draft plant pest risk assessment (PPRA) in response to a petition from Bayer CropScience U.S. seeking to deregulate their MON 87429 corn cultivar. This cultivar was produced through genetic engineering to tolerate the herbicides dicamba, glufosinate, quizalofop, 2,4-D, and tissue-specific glyphosate. Bayer states in their petition that the MON 87429 cultivar is intended for hybrid seed production and is unlikely to pose plant pest risks. The draft EIS examines potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts that may result from approving Bayer’s petition to deregulate their MON 87429 corn cultivar. The draft PPRA examines potential plant pest risks. [link]

Global food and beverage company Nestlé has launched two new projects aimed at reducing and removing carbon emissions from the company’s cocoa supply chain. Developed with suppliers Cargill and ETG | Beyond Beans, the new five-year projects will promote agroforestry, accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture and support the reforestation of degraded lands around cocoa farming communities. Nestlé, home to leading chocolate brands including Kit Kat and Nesquik, is one the world’s largest corporate cocoa consumers, sourcing roughly 430,000 tons per year, with much of the supply sourced from Ghana and the Ivory Coast. [link]

Farmers in Cornwall, England are planting thousands of trees on their land as part of a government-funded project to create more woodlands and tree cover across the country. More than 4,000 trees have already been planted as part of pilot projects, with an overall target of 32,000 by next winter. Cornwall Council's Forest for Cornwall team supports the agroforestry pilot projects with funding from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' Woodland Creation Partnership Fund. [link]

Bayer has announced a partnership with UK-headquartered company, Trinity Agtech, wishing to leverage its platform "Sandy", which will be instrumental for Bayer's Carbon Initiative to measure and monitor carbon at the farm level in the EMEA region. The cooperation will also enable the customized development of Bayer's solutions to value chain players’ needs and growers based on Trinity's capabilities. Early project results show that growers that are using regenerative practices are emitting on average 15 percent less carbon than conventional farmers. [link]

A new study published in Science this week finds that expanding organic cropland can lead to increased pesticide use in surrounding non-organic fields, offsetting some environmental benefits. These harmful "spillover effects" can be mitigated if organic farms are clustered together and geographically separated from conventional farms, the researchers found. One of the main issues relates to tradeoffs involving beneficial species like birds and spiders that prey on insect pests to farmers and their crop land. Organic fields can harbor more of these beneficial species, however this can drive pests into nearby conventional fields. [link]

Researchers from the University of Bonn and the Swiss Federal Institution of Technology (ETH) Zurich have published a database containing over 6,000 agri-environmental policies, thus enabling their peers as well as policymakers and businesses to seek answers to all manner of different questions. The researchers have used two examples to demonstrate how this can be done: how a country's economic development is linked to its adoption of agri-environmental policies and how such policies impact soil erosion. Their study has now been published in Nature Food. [link]

In Case You Missed It…

In late February, KIWA Radio (Kansas) did a story on how U.S. farmers were getting concerned about dry soil heading into planting season this year. See more, here. This concern continues to be in place, as evidenced by a recent story from KGFW in Nebraska.