Smallhold farmers grow 50 percent of global food on 20 percent of global agricultural land.
Category: Farm Report
Maybe we’d be better off without a Farm Bill
An article on the current state of the Farm Bill.
Richer Farmers, Bigger Subsidies
An article on food growing in America.
World Food Prize
This year…the World Food Prize is likely to get some publicity, some of it in the form of anger and protests. The prize will go to who played prominent roles in creating genetically engineered crops: Marc Van Montagu, Mary-Dell Chilton and Robert Fraley.
The NPR Report
Farm Free or Die
New Englanders have never been shy about revolting against what they see as unfair food regulations. Remember that whole thing?
So perhaps it’s not so surprising that in Maine, towns have been staging another revolution: They’ve declared independence from state and federal regulations on locally produced foods.
In May, the tiny Isle of Haut became the tenth town in the state to pass what’s known as a food sovereignty ordinance. Essentially, these resolutions claim that small local food producers don’t have to abide by state or federal licensing and inspection regulations if they are selling directly to consumers.
The NPR Report
Monsanto, Soybeans, and an Indiana Farmer
What does a Supreme Court case about the sale of soybean seeds have to do with life sciences? A lot, says the U.S. Solicitor General and life sciences attorneys.
Bowman v. Monsanto concerns farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman who bought seed from one of Monsanto’s licensed seed producers and did a first and then, much later, a second seeding. Monsanto claimed Bowman had infringed the patent and the technology agreement that was in force when he had purchased the seed. The lower courts found there had been infringement.
The “first sale” or “patent exhaustion” doctrine provides that the first unrestricted sale by a patent owner of a patented product exhausts the patent owner’s control over that particular item. Bowman petitioned the Supreme Court for review, arguing that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit erred by refusing to find patent exhaustion in patented seeds after an authorized sale and by creating an exception to the doctrine of patent exhaustion for self-replicating technologies. Against the SG’s advice, the court granted review.
In his amicus brief to the court filed Jan. 8, the SG argued that the Federal Circuit’s ruling that patent exhaustion did not apply should be affirmed and stated that not affirming the ruling would also affect the “enforcement of patents for man-made cell lines, DNA molecules, some nanotechnologies, and other technologies that involve self-replicating features.” Companies marketing patented recombinant plasmids and transformed cell lines capable of replication “would lose much of their value if purchasers of patented bacteria or other self-replicating products could reproduce and sell those items free from the restraints of patent law,” the SG wrote.
Howard Bremer told BNA that the court’s affirming the Federal Circuit’s ruling would be the best solution and would prompt the continuation of the “motivation factor for the private sector to license self-replicating technologies for development and marketing under the auspices of licensing arrangements with universities and thereby serve the public interest.”
This is a case to watch.
(Source: Bloomberg News)
1.3 Million Acres of Grassland to Corn and Soybeans
For years, I’ve been hearing stories about the changing agricultural landscape of the northern plains. Grasslands are disappearing, farmers told me. They’re being replaced by fields of corn and soybeans.
This week, those stories got a big dose of scientific, peer-reviewed validation. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows actual pictures — derived from satellite data — of that changing landscape. The images show that farmers in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska converted 1.3 million acres of grassland into soybean and corn production between 2006 and 2011.
The Article
World Farmland Market Price Trends
The Article
Excuse Me ????
Link to a Bloomberg News article on record farm profits this year…in spite of the drought.
The Article
Urban Gardening/Farming
Excellent piece on Urban Gardening in Orion Magazine
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6918
Environmental Finance
Bunge, the agri-business ‘giant’, recently acquired Climate Change Capital…leading to a change in focus toward ‘impact investing’.
I always end up confused…particularly when they talk of CCC holding $1.4 B in ‘committments’. I know what they mean by committments, but I do not know (and they do not explain) how that translates to Company balance sheet.
Big numbers…impact investing….does this make sense?
The Article
Richard Pace 