The resolution asks for a ban on importing, exporting and growing plants and seeds containing genetically engineered DNA, and raising GE animals within B.C.

The motion generated extensive debate from the floor, including farmers speaking passionately for and against the motion.

Among those supporting the ban was Richmond city councillor Harold Steeves, who raises grass-fed cattle in the B.C. Interior and Lower Mainland.

“A growing number of B.C. ranchers have switched to grass-fed beef and are direct marketing. We are making way more money than we ever did when we shipped our cattle to Alberta to be grain fed, but we depend upon alfalfa,” says Steeves. “We simply do not want to be in a position where we are marketing beef that has been fed alfalfa that is contaminated,” referring to Monsanto’s glyphosate-tolerant variety.

“This is really opening up the whole issue. We are asking for B.C. to be the first major jurisdiction in Canada to follow suit with Europe and all the other countries that have banned GE crops,” he adds.

More than 60 municipalities in B.C. passed similar GE-free resolutions prior to the UBCM convention. The discussion has stepped up the rhetoric on both sides of a debate that is as divisive within B.C.’s agricultural community as it is among the consumer public.

Debates at the local level have divided the farm community along commodity lines, large- and small-scale agriculture, organic and conventional, new farmers and old. It has also raised concerns about the increasing influence of public opinion on farm practices.

Jurisdiction questioned

“Legally, municipal governments have no jurisdiction over regulation such as this, and the Right to Farm Act would supersede it,” said Jen Woike, councillor and large-scale egg producer in the Municipality of North Cowichan on Vancouver Island.

The B.C. Farm Practices Protection Act, commonly known as the Right to Farm Act, protects the rights of farmers to conduct their business within the parameters of “normal farm practice.” The definition under the act includes the use of innovative technology in a manner consistent with proper advanced farm-management practices.

Implementing the resolution would affect many livestock producers.

“I have 60,000 laying hens on my property and we cannot source non-GMO feed,” says Woike. “To make a sweeping ban like this, you really put pressure on the dairy industry, the poultry industry and hog industry who use feed products.”

Whether the resolution will have any impact at a policy level has yet to be seen. Responsibility for regulation of food and agricultural products rests with Health Canada, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. B.C.’s agriculture minister, Pat Pimm, has given no indication that his government is interested in taking a strong position on the issue.

“There has been a lot of good debate and discussion about the topic with many different opinions expressed both at UBCM and elsewhere,” Pimm said. “I will certainly share the results of the vote and summary of the debate with the federal minister, as it is the federal government’s jurisdiction to approve or deny foods for production in Canada.”

The B.C. government is required to provide a written response to UBCM on each of the resolutions that pass. The official response from the Ministry of Agriculture is expected in the coming weeks. The response will outline any steps the provincial government will take, and allows the government time to consider and discuss the resolution.

The post Municipalities pass resolution for GE-free British Columbia appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The resolution was brought before the Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) 2013 annual convention Thursday in Vancouver.

The resolution asks for a ban on importing, exporting and growing plants and seeds containing genetically engineered (GE) DNA, and raising GE animals within B.C.

The motion generated extensive debate from the floor. Among those supporting the ban was Richmond city councillor Harold Steeves, who raises grass-fed cattle in the B.C. Interior and Lower Mainland.

“A growing number of B.C. ranchers have switched to grass-fed beef and are direct-marketing. We are making way more money than we ever did when we shipped our cattle to Alberta to be grain-fed, but we depend upon alfalfa,” he said.

“We simply do not want to be in a position where we are marketing beef that has been fed alfalfa that is contaminated,” he said, referring to Monsanto’s glyphosate-tolerant variety.

“We are asking for B.C. to be the first major jurisdiction in Canada to follow suit with Europe and all the other countries that have banned GE crops,” Steeves added.

More than 60 municipalities in B.C. passed similar GE-free resolutions prior to the UBCM convention. The discussion has stepped up the rhetoric on both sides of a debate that is as divisive within B.C.’s agricultural community as it is among the consumer public.

“Legally, municipal governments have no jurisdiction over regulation such as this, and the Right to Farm Act would supersede it,” said Jen Woike, councillor and large-scale egg producer in the Municipality of North Cowichan on Vancouver Island.

The B.C. Farm Practices Protection Act, commonly known as the Right to Farm Act, protects the rights of farmers to conduct their business within the parameters of “normal farm practice.” The definition under the act includes the use of innovative technology in a manner consistent with proper advanced farm-management practices.

The B.C. government is required to provide a written response to UBCM on each of the resolutions that pass.

The official response from the ministry of agriculture is expected in the coming weeks. The response is expected to outline any steps the provincial government will take, and allows the government time to consider and discuss the resolution.

— Tamara Leigh is a Vancouver writer and communications consultant. The full version of this article will appear in the Sept. 30 edition of Alberta Farmer.

The post B.C. municipalities pass resolution for GE-free province appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

But things are changing.

“Kenyans need to do it themselves,” says Rien Geuze, agribusiness adviser for Agriterra, a Dutch organization working on agricultural business development in Kenya.

“What we have done for hundreds of years in Europe and North America, they have had to learn since independence in 1963. What can you do in a lifetime? You can do a lot but not everything.”

Agriculture is a primary driver of the Kenyan economy, accounting for 75 per cent of employment and 25 per cent of the GDP, with cash crops such as tea, coffee, and tobacco, as well as roses and other flowers, dominating exports. Smallholder farms remain key, producing 80 per cent of the country’s food.

But getting food to market is a challenge.

“If the western world didn’t want to give development aid anymore, if suddenly it was all too much, then just make roads,” says Geuze. “That’s the least you can do.”

Kenya also needs more reliable marketing systems, and organizations able to support farmers.

Farmer-owned co-operatives are increasingly being seen as one solution, and the model has worked particularly well in Kenya’s dairy sector.

The typical dairy farmer in Kenya has one to three cows, but dairy is still big business, contributing $2 billion a year to the economy. Of the 4.2 billion litres of milk produced each year, about 80 per cent comes from the one-million-plus farmers with fewer than 10 cows.

Dairy co-op success

Dairy co-operatives help organize and provide extension services for these small-scale farmers, as well as collecting and selling milk to the two dominant companies — government-owned New Kenya Co-operative Creameries and privately held Brookside Dairy.

Some co-operatives are also pushing into yogurt production, a competitive market but one that pays premiums which allow them to maintain the price they pay for milk when big companies cut their prices.

“Sometimes the success of the co-operative will drive the competition to step up its act,” says Geuze. “Farmers do not realize they only get at high prices from the companies or the hawkers because the co-op created value and drove up the price. If you take away the co-op, the whole thing falls apart.”

It’s quite different in the cereals sector, which in Kenya means maize. It accounts for 90 per cent of production, with wheat, sorghum, barley, millet and rice making up the remainder. Unlike the dairy sector, small-scale maize growers have struggled to find a marketing system that works.

It’s partly a legacy of the colonial system, says Justus Monda, president of the Kenya Small Scale Cereal Growers and deputy chairman of the Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers.

After independence, the national government, like its colonial predecessor, played a major role in the markets. When the World Bank pushed for market liberalization in the ’80s and early ’90s, farmers simply weren’t prepared, says Monda.

“When the market opened in the name of liberalization, farmers didn’t understand the new marketing channels,” he says. “Farmers have not reconciled our thinking to see what we can do, how competitive we can be, how we need to organize in order to meet the current status.”

Supply chain

Canada is a model that Kenya wants to emulate, says Monda.

“We want to learn the models and see the technology in Canada,” he says. “Canada has good supply-chain management and a very strong system. It’s not that we lack resources in this country, but people need to link up and learn a successful model.”

Monda is attempting to pioneer his own version of a reliable supply chain. He grows maize and sorghum on his 2.5-acre plot, and has established contracts with three schools in his region to supply maize. He also works with other farmers in his area to ensure he can get the quality and quantity of maize required by the schools.

“If you produce first and then discuss price when the produce is ready, that’s not business, it’s subsistence,” he says. “This is the cycle we have to break.”

In the village of Engineer, 35 local vegetable growers have collectively marketed their produce since 2011 and improved productivity. Working with the faculty from Nairobi University, they have developed a demonstration plot and farmer field to teach their members new techniques in planting, production and pest management. Just by implementing proper crop rotation, they have more than tripled annual production.

They’ve also focused on seven high-value food crops, negotiated contracts, and, as a collective, obtained bank financing for inputs. They’re currently negotiating with three of the country’s top grocery chains to supply vegetables.

“Marketing is still the biggest challenge,” says Esther Waithira Chege, chair of the group’s marketing committee. “It’s better to be seen as marketing as a group because as individuals we are in the hands of the brokers.”

The post Step by step, Kenyan farmers are improving their lot appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

That may not sound hard for beef producers to compete with, but researcher Dr. Mark Post says that as with any other product, cost will decline with volume. He thinks the process can be scaled up to make a commercially viable meat product within five years.

The presentation was made at North America’s biggest annual science event, the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting held here last month. Among the sessions available to one of the 5,000-odd attendees was one titled “The Next Agricultural Revolution: Emerging Production Methods for Meat Alternatives.”

“There are alternatives to livestock agriculture provided by the medical field,” says Post, head of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. “We have all the technologies needed to take stem cells from animals and grow them in the lab into muscle tissues.”

Animal muscle tissue grown in the lab is commonly referred to as “cultured” or “in vitro” meat. The development of technology for producing cultured meat for human consumption has been under development since the early 1950s.

“We are looking for efficiency of production and mimicry,” says Post. “It needs to replace meat as we know it.”

Muscle stem cells

The process starts with stem cells harvested from the muscle of a living animal. The cells are fed a serum of sugars, protein, amino acids and fatty acids, and grown out in Petri dishes with anchor points that provide structure for the “muscle” and allows it to be stretched and flexed.

To “exercise” the tissue, the cells are zapped with electrical currents to create higher protein production and achieve the typical striated muscle pattern that consumers are used to seeing in their meat.

Any steak aficionado will tell you that the flavour is in the fat — something the medical field is usually more concerned about reducing rather than adding. The lab is also cultivating strips of fat that will eventually be blended with the muscle to make a minced meat product.

Sound appetizing? One of the biggest concerns for the future of cultured meat is consumer acceptance. There are many who feel that people simply won’t have an appetite for Petri dish protein. Post is not one of them.

“If the price is right and we can get a guaranteed quality, then I think the choice will be easily made,” he says.

Part of the price will be measured in environmental impact. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has predicted that meat production will need to increase by up to 200 million tonnes per year by 2050 in order to feed the growing demand.

Currently, livestock production accounts for 70 per cent of all agricultural land and 30 per cent of the land surface of the planet. The doubling of production will have serious implications for the competition of land, water and other inputs.

“The basic issue is that cows and pigs are very inefficient,” says Post. “In vitro meat can be produced with a huge reduction in land, and considerable reduction in water and energy use.”

More efficient

A paper published in Environmental Science and Technology, performed a life cycle analysis for cultured meat. In comparison to conventionally produced European beef, cultured meat required 45 per cent less energy, 96 per cent lower greenhouse gas emissions, 99 per cent lower land use, and 96 per cent lower water use.

The energy advantage drops considerably when cultured meat is compared to other protein sources, particularly poultry, but it still only uses a fraction of the land area and water needed to rear livestock.

Post says the laboratory offers other opportunities, including the ability to develop new and healthier product traits, and producing meat from exotic animals or multiple sources.

The hamburger will hopefully be the “proof of concept” that Post needs to secure funding to take production to the next level.

“We are still growing very small pieces, too small to actually cook right now,” says Post. “We are now gearing up to produce a golf-ball size of this stuff and cook it.”

There are still considerable challenges to overcome, largely financial, before Post and his team will realize their goal of a commercial production facility. The project is currently bankrolled by an anonymous private funder, but eventually they are going to need a larger infusion of capital.

“Eventually this needs to come from governments and businesses. It’s really a long-term investment,” says Post. “We need quite a bit of resources to work through the variables to make it more efficient and scale it up.”

The post European lab promises world’s first in vitro hamburger appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Livestock agriculture is an obsolete technology, says Stanford researcher, Patrick O. Brown.

“Animal farming is by far the biggest ongoing global environmental catastrophe,” says Brown. “It’s an inefficient technology that hasn’t changed for a millennia.”

In a presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting here last month, the researcher and entrepreneur gave a provocative presentation in which he characterized the livestock industry as “a sitting duck for disruptive technology.”

When it comes to feeding the world, Brown claims livestock is the real population bomb. The current human population has just surpassed seven billion, but the global livestock population is greater than 21 billion.

“Population growth is an issue because humans are carrying a population of livestock that outnumber and outconsume us by a lot,” says Brown. “They are competing with humans for primary nutrients.”

Brown argues that the world’s four major commodity crops — corn, wheat, rice and soy — already produce enough food to meet the caloric and protein requirements of the projected world population in 2050. The problem is that many of the food crops currently produced are used for animal feed.

“If we could replace animal-derived foods with plant-derived foods, we could free up 26 per cent of Earth’s land surface for other uses, reduce water use and greenhouse gas emissions and reduce pressures on biodiversity,” says Brown.

Motivated by a passion for environmental conservation and sustainability, Brown has committed the next phase of his career to developing alternative technologies to compete with meat and dairy products.

“If you just look at the chemical and physical characteristics of foods that are traditionally animal-based foods, you find that it is in the repertoire of components that you can get from abundant, cheap plants,” he says

Financed by a Silicone Valley venture firm, Brown is developing a grain-based product line that will compete head on with meat and dairy products. He claims to have a product that will satisfy the cravings of even the hardcore meat and cheese lovers.

“We have a class of products that totally rocks and cannot be distinguished from animal-based product that it replaces, even by hardcore foodies, and that’s something that we’re now in the process of scaling up so we can manufacture and distribute it,” says Brown.

The new products are expected to be available in the United States within a year.

The post Plant product to go toe to toe with meat and dairy? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“Our approach on this is that before we raise any fees we should first have a critical examination of all of the services that the grain commission provides,” WCWG executive director Blair Rutter said at the organization’s annual meeting last week. “It’s time to say ‘OK, which of these services are still required, which

ones could be reduced or eliminated, and which ones can be done better in a different way – through the private sector perhaps.’”

“Canada has set the grain standard for the world to beat,” CGC chief commissioner Elwin Hermanson told the meeting. “We have to be aware of how agriculture is changing, hear what people are saying, and stay relevant to the needs of the industry.”

The CGC is proposing changes to user fees to stabilize funding to allow it to maintain Canada’s reputation as a leader in grain quality, and continue the service for grain quality and safety assurance, as well as producer protection, and fair transactions.

It has been 20 years since the last increase in user fees. Now the CGC is consulting with the grain industry to find solutions because the fees only cover half of the cost of the services provided. Current revenues are about $40 million from services provided, against expenses of more than $80 million, leaving government to fund the shortfall.

“It has become an intolerable situation,” said Hermanson. “It’s a time-consuming function to always have to go back to Parliament for funding, and it’s not how it should work.”

PLANNING DIFFICULT

Hermanson says that the freeze on user fees has forced the CGC to stray from the original funding model and restricted the ability to plan. The CGC was originally established as a revolving fund, allowing it to finance continuing operations without any fiscal year limitation. The commission set user fees based on average grain volumes, and the carryover meant that it could buffer the low-volume years where the costs of service exceeded the fees with the high-volume years where the service fees produced a profit.

When fees were frozen in the 1990s, the commission became increasingly dependent on Parliament to supplement the budget. The proposed increases to user fees would restore the original vision of complete cost recovery, which is becoming increasingly important in the face of the current government-wide spending freeze. The CGC is not alone. As government agencies struggle with rising costs and fixed budgets, user fees are going up in other areas as well.

“They are going to have a hard time getting cost recoveries across all facets of government,” said Jay Bradshaw, president of Syngenta Canada. “It’s in the regulatory area and in the grain commission too. It’s going to be demanding because a lot of the user fees are going up.”

This year’s Western Canadian Wheat Growers convention, themed “Out in Front on the Waterfront,” focused on the end of the line for Canadian wheat. The highlight of the program was a tour of the Port of Metro Vancouver.

“When we sell our wheat we haul it to the elevator. We have one buyer, the CWB, and there’s a bunch of paperwork listing deductions for freight, shipping and handling, inspection fees,” said B.C. wheat grower, Irmi Critcher.

“In the port you actually see what they have to do for quality assurance to the customer and ensure that they get what they have ordered,” says Critcher. “It’s an assurance to the farmer as well that that grain leaving the farm gets inspected again to make sure that it’s still what you said that you sent. It’s a whole bunch of checkpoints in the system which make the Canadian grain-marketing system work.”

———

“It’satime-consumingfunctiontoalways havetogobacktoParliamentforfunding, andit’snothowitshouldwork.”

– ELWIN HERMANSON

The post Wheat Growers Question CGC Increases appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“My biggest competitors are inside our own global research budget,” Bradshaw told the Western Canadian Wheat Growers convention in Vancouver last week. “We need to ensure that Canada continues to get research-investment funding. Right now other parts of the world have higher returns on research in the current environment.”

Wheat Growers president Kevin Bender, who farms at Bentley, Alta., said he has seen wheat acreage drop over the years, and believes that biotechnology and GM wheat can help reverse the trend.

“Bill C-474, which wants to stop biotech or genetically modified development of crops until there has been a study done on foreign market acceptance, would really be a step back for us,” said Bender. “If that happens here, the money could be going into other countries and Canada would really fall behind. We need to stay with the rest of the world when it comes to the development of crops.”

Bradshaw cites Bill C-474 and the Ontario government’s cosmetic pesticide ban as examples of regulation that move away from pure science and create an unstable environment for investment.

“When you look at a company like Syngenta that spends a billion dollars a year on research, there are other options,” said Bradshaw. “Head office is allocating research spending, looking at return on investment plus what we want to do as individual countries. When you get a couple of things that show they may be leaning away from science-based regulation, there may be better places to put our dollars.”

Bradshaw says he’s not giving up – it’s his job to advocate for continued investment in Canada. As long as the industry and government can work together, he is confident that wheat will be the next big success story for Canadian agriculture.

“Historically canola was the Cinderella crop for Western Canada – Canadian research, and Canadian innovation moving from rapeseed to canola,” said Bradshaw. “Now there are 18 million to 20 million acres planted, and $4 billion to 5 billion in exports. It created a phenomenal industry for Canada. We can do it again. We can do it with wheat.”

VOLATILITY

Regulation is not the only success factor in the development of GM wheat in Canada. Trish Jordan of Monsanto Canada has seen a change in the appetite of industry for the development of new technologies.

“Up until two years ago wheat was out of the picture because there was too much volatility and divergence about whether biotechnology was the way to go within the farmer base, the sector, and the federal government,” she said. “When you have that much volatility it’s not a good environment for investment.”

While the major players in biotechnology are lining up to get into the wheat market, translating the success of canola into wheat will ultimately depend on the industry’s commitment to cross-sector collaboration. Bradshaw points to the success of the Canola Council of Canada.

“Every canola grower grows wheat,” he says. “It’s the same people. Let’s take that knowledge and learning and apply it to the wheat industry.”

“If we are going to get into GM wheat, we are realistically seven to eight years out. If we start these collaborative discussions today then maybe by the time the technology is ready we’ll have public acceptance, so let’s get started.”

Bradshaw predicts that the next-step change in technology and yield advancement in wheat will come from partnerships between private and public breeders. As the largest private breeder in cereal crops, Syngenta is looking to Canada, the U.S., Australia, and even Eastern Europe for research partnerships.

“Sooner or later we are going to have to pick, and I want Canada to be the one,” says Bradshaw. “I think we have the best opportunity. We already have the credibility and status as one of the best, highest-quality wheat-producing countries in the world. I don’t want to see that slip, but I suspect that other countries have almost caught up to us, and I see their potential going past us.”

———

“BillC-474,whichwantstostopbiotechorgeneticallymodifieddevelopmentofcropsuntiltherehasbeenastudydoneonforeignmarketacceptance,wouldreallybeastepbackforus.”

– KEVIN BENDER, WCWGA

The post Uncertainty Threatens Research Investment In Canada appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.