Since late last summer, Big Seed’s big players have looked more like anxious high school kids hoping to pair off for the senior prom than international businesses investing in new products and markets. The first to go courting was St. Louis-based Monsanto. Last August it offered nearly $46 billion for its Swiss classmate, Syngenta, only
Big Seed’s big players prepare to dance
Trade deals going nowhere
The three front-runners in the U.S. presidential race are leery of trade deals
As the politics of this U.S. election year heat up, the chances of Congress debating — let alone passing — either of the White House’s marquee trade deals continue to melt away. Oh, there’s plenty of talk about the westward-looking Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Euro-centred Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TPP and TTIP, respectively.
Farmland. They never stopped making it
Forty-five years ago, anyone in agriculture was offered the same advice: “Buy land; they’re not making it anymore.” But “they” were making it, lots of it. According to United Nations data, the world’s farmable land base grew by about 240 million acres between 1971 and 1991. The “not-making-it-anymore” believers, however, plunged ahead and U.S. land
U.S. farmers have an ethanol addiction
Ethanol growth has caused the U.S. corn crop to balloon, and now U.S. farmers are facing a bleak price future
March did not go out like either a lion or a lamb. In fact, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its Prospective Plantings Report midday March 31, the month — as well as the 2016 corn market — highballed it into history faster than a runaway train. The coal under the boiler was USDA’s
There’s no such thing as a free lunch — or free trade
We in U.S. agriculture talk about free trade agreements as if they are the international equivalent of a free lunch. This lovely belief, of course, overlooks the absolute certainty that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone somewhere always pays. More often than not, that someone over the last 25 years has
Consumers trust farmers — but not farming
Despite claims to the opposite, the increasing chances of Donald—“You’re fired!”—Trump changing to “I, Donald—do solemnly swear—Trump” is not a sign of the coming apocalypse. Granted, the end could be closer than we think when any billionaire steps off his Boeing 757 airliner and declares, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and
The promise and the pitfalls of CRISPR
This technology doesn’t set new boundaries for genetic manipulation, it removes them
About the only one ever happy to see a mosquito is a hungry purple martin, the acrobatic swallow that dines on the bothersome insects morning, noon, and night. You and me, however, would be perfectly happy never to see another mosquito for the rest of our lives. Science can now make that happen. A powerful
Never heard of CRISPR? You will
It is now possible to program a plant to alter its own genetic material
Few sectors of the global economy are more hooked on gene modification technology than agriculture. One in five farmable acres around the world grows GM crops. Adoption of GM seeds might be quicker if not for two factors: GM seeds are more expensive than their conventional counterparts and many consumers view food made with GM-based
Going against the flow on water quality issues
Strong leadership is needed to address problem of deteriorating water quality
As summer heats up so too will agriculture’s ongoing water quality problems. On July 10, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that Lake Erie’s algal bloom will be “more severe in 2015” due to “historic rains in June.” On a scale of 1 to 10, forecasts NOAA, this year’s bloom will be 8.7,
Dirt’s big year
The FAO has designated 2015 as the International Year of Soil
Last year may have been a lot of things to a lot of people but one thing it surely wasn’t was predictable. I mean who foresaw last year’s record-setting high in the U.S. stock market, the plunge in global crude oil prices, Russia’s naked grab of Ukraine’s sovereign territory or the Obama administration’s reaching out
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
