It’s also good for business.

Cornell University researchers say workplaces that invest in good eats as well as good places to eat actually get a return on that investment. And what could be better than a home-cooked meal served in the great outdoors?

The Cornell research was focused on firefighter platoons, but the study’s authors say their findings have implications for any organization that wants to enhance team performance. Researchers found that firefighter platoons that eat meals together have better group job performance compared with firefighter teams that dine solo.

“Eating together is a more intimate act than looking over an Excel spreadsheet together. That intimacy spills back over into work,” said the study’s author, Kevin Kniffin, visiting assistant professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management in a release. “From an evolutionary anthropology perspective, eating together has a long, primal tradition as a kind of social glue. That seems to continue in today’s workplaces.”

Given the findings, organizations would do better to consider their expenditures on cafeterias as investments in employee performance, Kniffin said.

Over the course of 15 months, Kniffin and his colleagues conducted interviews and surveys in a large city’s fire department, which included more than 50 firehouses. The platoons that ate together most often also got higher marks for their team performance. Conversely, the platoons that did not eat together got lower performance ratings.

In interviews, firefighters said daily group meals were a central activity during their shifts.

In fact, the researchers noted firefighters expressed a certain embarrassment when asked about firehouses where they didn’t eat together. “It was basically a signal that something deeper was wrong with the way the group worked,” Kniffin said.

“Eating Together at the Firehouse: How Workplace Commensality Relates to the Performance of Firefighters” appears in the current issue of Human Performance and is featured in the Harvard Business Review’s December issue.

The study was funded in part by Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences.

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Over 200 American kitchens were photographed to determine if the food sitting out on counters could predict the weight of the woman living in each home. The new Cornell study found that women who had breakfast cereal sitting on their counters weighed 20 lbs. more than their neighbours who didn’t, and those with soft drinks sitting out weighed 24 to 26 lbs. more. The good news? Those who had a fruit bowl weighed about 13 lbs. less.

“It’s your basic See-Food Diet; you eat what you see,” said lead author Brian Wansink, professor and director of the Cornell Food and Brand lab and author of Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life. “As a cereal lover, that shocked me. Cereal has a health halo, but if you eat a handful every time you walk by, it’s not going to make you skinny.”

Although the study cautions that the findings are correlational, Wansink says, “We’ve got a saying in our lab, ‘If you want to be skinny, do what skinny people do.’ If skinny people make their homes ‘Slim by Design’ by clearing the counters of everything but the fruit bowl, it won’t hurt us to do the same.”

The forthcoming study — dubbed “The Syracuse Study,” because all of the photographed households were in Syracuse, N.Y. — is published in the journal Health Education and Behavior.

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Ag economist Andrew Novakovic of New York’s Cornell University said in a release that the TPP, for U.S. producers, marks a major opportunity in Canada’s supply-managed dairy market.

“The breakthrough for the dairy chapter was a Canadian agreement, under heavy U.S. lobbying, to expose their closed system to slightly greater imports, which (Canada) cleverly will do within their production quota system,” he said Wednesday.

Canada said Monday that despite “significant and broad demands from several of our TPP negotiating partners,” it offered “only limited” new access for supply-managed products such as dairy.

Access to the Canadian dairy market, granted through quotas to be phased in over five years, amounts to 3.25 per cent of Canada’s current annual dairy production, with a “significant majority” of that additional milk and butter to be directed to value-added processing, the federal government said Monday.

Dairy farm profitability in Canada is “more stable than the U.S., but not dramatically higher,” Novakovic said. “The implication is that (Canada’s) supply-managed system has, over time, allowed increased costs to be rewarded with increased prices.”

From 1991 through 2000, he said, Canadian farm milk prices averaged 18 per cent higher than those in the U.S., but since 2000, they have averaged 62 per cent higher.

“Eliminating the protection of the Canadian cocoon is a frightful prospect for Canadian farmers and an alluring opportunity for world exporters, including New Zealand and the U.S.”

Provincial dairy associations this week estimated 3.25 per cent of Canada’s 2016 dairy production will amount to about 250 million litres of milk. The British Columbia and Alberta boards estimated the deal would displace about 23 million and 22 million litres of milk respectively from their provinces’ producers.

Canada’s concession, Novakovic said, “represents a brand new opportunity for the U.S. to develop marketing relationships with Canadian processing and marketing companies and the confidence of Canadian consumers.”

That opportunity, he said, “will be available to any dairy firm in the U.S., but it will be especially enticing to border states, like New York. As a beginning, it is assuredly modest, but what is terribly important is that it is a beginning.”

Denis Richard, president of Quebec agrifood co-operative La Coop federee, said the “breach” to Canada’s tariff barriers for dairy is “of great concern” and it adds to the “laxity of border protection that has arisen in recent years through the uncontrolled importation of milk proteins and poultry.”

Ottawa, he said in a separate release Monday, “needs to put a lock on all new dairy and poultry imports. The future of supply management itself, and that of thousands of dairy farms across Canada, depends on it.”

Measures announced Monday to strengthen border controls against unauthorized dairy imports “will not stop the flow of milk protein entering the country,” he added. “It is urgent that a solution to this issue be found.”

Ottawa’s further plans for a $1.5 billion compensation package for loss of quota value over 10 years, and $2.4 billion for lost income over 15 years, seem “unnecessarily high, if we are only talking about a 3.25 per cent dairy quota cut,” Jan Slomp, president of Canada’s National Farmers Union, said in a separate release.

Those dollar amounts, he said, suggest “the intent is to completely dismantle dairy supply management over the next 10 years.”

Canada’s supply-managed sectors, he said, instead “should have been kept right out of TPP negotiations.” — AGCanada.com Network

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The pesky feeders on crucifer crops, including canola, mustards and vegetables, have developed resistance to many insecticides as well as Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), a soil bacteria that has been genetically engineered into corn and cotton to help control such pests.

The Cornell Chronicle newsletter cites recent research in which male diamondback moths genetically engineered with a gene that prevents females from reproducing can suppress populations and slow their evolution of resistance to Bt.

“We are at a crossroads right now with how we control pests, reduce pesticides and provide food for a growing world population in a changing climate,” said Anthony Shelton, professor of entomology at Cornell’s New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) in Geneva, New York, and co-author of the paper. “We need to put our heads together to solve these problems with new solutions.”

The genetically engineered moth was developed by the United Kingdom’s Oxitec Ltd.

A paper published in BMC Biology describes greenhouse trials where high numbers of the GE male moths were released into cages containing pest diamondback moths. Within a few generations, the engineered moths mating with the pest females led to a rapid decline of the pests.

The Chronicle said that in additional experiments, the researchers released low levels of the GE male moths in cages with Bt broccoli and pest moths. They discovered that the GE males kept pest populations in check and also delayed the buildup of resistance to the Bt broccoli.

“Adding the two biotechnologies together — engineered insects and Bt plants — demonstrates that you could both suppress the pest population and also decrease the number of Bt-resistant individuals in the population. The way forward in farming is responsible integrated pest management to improve available methods and to introduce new methods for safe and sustainable insect pest control,” Shelton said.

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“While $22,000 seems like a large penalty, there are non-financial rewards they experience working for the family business,” Loren Tauer, professor at Cornell’s Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management said in a release (all figures US$).

There are roughly 5,400 dairy farms in New York, large and small. “Family members like to work for the family farm, as it brings prestige and satisfaction by working with siblings, cousins and parents,” Tauer said.

“The socioemotional part is that these family members feel an attachment to the dairy farm. It’s a warm and fuzzy feeling.”

The study, “Socioemotional Wealth in the Family Farm,” by Tauer and co-author Jonathan Dressler, will be published in a forthcoming Agricultural Finance Review.

Dressler explained that socioemotional aspects of running a dairy farm “create a sense of pride and belonging, as collectively each family member is contributing an effort toward a common family goal.”

The release said Dressler and Tauer examined dairy farm income in 1999 through 2008 and showed that New York farm manager median salaries varied widely from $41,884 in 1999, to $64,466 in 2004 to $74,986 in 2005, all adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars.

“While the family farm managers were paid on average about $22,000 less, family members were compensated in other ways, such as with equity in the family business, which includes land values and the value of the operation,” the release said.

With “sweat equity,” Tauer said, children eventually inherit farms or are given an opportunity to purchase farms at a low estimate of the farms’ value. That future ownership opportunity and the chance to work with family members offset reduced annual compensation. — AGCanada.com Network

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In what they said could be a pesticide-free and environmentally friendly way to control insect pests, the scientists, from the Oxford University spinout company Oxitec, developed diamondback moths with a “self-limiting gene” which dramatically reduced populations in greenhouse trials.

The self-limiting gene technique has already been tested against dengue fever-carrying mosquitoes, cutting their populations by over 90 per cent in trials in Brazil, Panama and the Cayman Islands.

“This research is opening new doors for the future of farming with pest control methods that are non-toxic and pesticide free,” said Neil Morrison, an Oxitec research scientist who led the study.

According to the researchers, whose work was published in the journal BioMed Central Biology, the struggle with diamondback moths in cruciferous vegetable production costs farmers around the world up to $5 billion a year.

Tony Shelton, an entomology professor at Cornell University in the United States who worked with Morrison, said neither conventional nor organic pesticides can control the moths.

“Diamondback is a serious problem for farmers in New York state and around the world — anywhere cruciferous vegetables and field crops are grown,” he said. “These moths invade and attack the crops, and they are developing resistance to insecticides, so we urgently need new tools to better control them.”

The researchers genetically engineered male moths that can mate just as well as the non-GM insects, but only produce male offspring. In greenhouse trials, releasing the GM moths into the population resulted in a crash in moth numbers within eight weeks.

The scientists said that unlike insecticides, which can affect a range of insects including bees, the genetic modification approach is purely species specific, only affecting the targeted pest. The self-limiting gene is also non-toxic, so birds or other animals eating the moths get no harmful effects.

Independent experts welcomed Oxitec’s success.

“If the results can be replicated in the field then it would represent a big step forward in eco-friendly ways of controlling insect disease and improving food production,” said Johnjoe McFadden, a professor of molecular genetics at Britain’s University of Surrey.

Shelton now plans followup studies to test the Oxitec moths under harsher, outdoor conditions in upstate New York.

These studies, already approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will include field cage tests this summer, he said, with plans for small-scale field releases in future.

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This survey of conservation activity among rural landowners in Upstate New York considered a range of possible predictors such as gender, age, education, political ideology, and beliefs about the environment. All other factors being equal, birdwatchers are about five times as likely, and hunters about four times as likely, as non-recreationists to engage in wildlife and habitat conservation. Both birdwatchers and hunters were more likely than non-recreationists to enhance land for wildlife, donate to conservation organizations, and advocate for wildlife — all actions that significantly impact conservation success.

The contributions of individuals who identified as both birdwatchers and hunters were even more pronounced. On average, this group was about eight times more likely than non-recreationists to engage in conservation.

“We set out to study two groups — birdwatchers and hunters — and didn’t anticipate the importance of those who do both, and wildlife managers probably didn’t either,” said Dr. Caren Cooper, the study’s lead author, now at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “We don’t even have a proper name for these conservation superstars, other than hunter/birdwatchers.”

The study, published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, speaks to wildlife agency managers. Findings could assuage concerns about diminishing support for conservation in the United States and its historic ties (both socially and economically) to hunting, an activity that has been declining for decades.

“Our results provide hope for wildlife agencies, organizations, and citizens concerned about conservation,” offers study co-author Dr. Ashley Dayer of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Birdwatchers, a group not traditionally thought of as a constituency by many wildlife management agencies, have real potential to be conservation supporters, if appropriate mechanisms for them to contribute are available.”

As agencies and conservation organizations ponder how to better work with birdwatchers, hunters, and hunter/birdwatchers on conservation, one take-home message is clear: The more time we spend in nature, the more likely we are to protect it.

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With a 12-month growing season, Hawaii is a mecca for crop-breeding programs. All of the large agricultural companies have operations on several islands. Corn, soybeans and papaya are the main GM crops grown, although research is currently being done on bananas, pineapple and lettuce. Over the last few years though, Hawaii has become Ground Zero of the war over GM crops.

Over the past two years, the counties (islands) of Kauai, Hawaii, and Maui have passed laws restricting the use of GM plants. The laws differ slightly. Kauai’s ban included restrictions on where any pesticides could be sprayed, but yet excluded GM papaya. The County of Hawaii’s ban excluded all future GM crops on the island and required that all farmers must register their fields of existing GM crops. Violators would be fined $1,000 per day.

Currently the laws in Hawaii and Kauai have been overturned by courts. The moratorium in Maui, which calls for a complete stop to the cultivation of any GM crop until studies conclusively prove it is safe and sets fines at $50,000 per day for farmers who knowingly grow GM crops, is under appeal.

Papaya virus

GM technology has been used since the mid-1990s in Hawaii, and is credited with saving the state’s papaya industry, following the arrival of the papaya ringspot virus (PRV) in the 1980s. Once a plant is infected with PRV, it can never recover, and another papaya can never be planted on the same spot. Transmitted by aphids, the virus quickly kills young seedlings, while older trees turn yellow and die a slow death, producing smaller and smaller fruit.

Dennis Gonsalvez is credited as the “saviour of the papaya industry.” In the late 1970s, as a young plant virologist at Cornell University, Gonsalves realized that PRV had the potential to decimate all papaya trees and began research on a solution.

His initial approach was to try to vaccinate the papayas, but the system required every seedling to be injected which was incredibly cumbersome. Finally, in 1991, Gonsalves successfully modified the fruit with a specific protein gene enabling resistance to the virus. Although it took over nine years to pass through the various U.S. levels of approval, the Rainbow papaya was the first GM horticultural crop.

“Rainbow” papaya now makes up about 77 per cent of the crop, although the industry is much smaller than it was before the virus hit. According to the Hawaiian Department of Agriculture, in 2010, 30.1 million pounds of papaya were harvested, compared to 80.5 million pounds in 1984.

Ken Kamiya, a second-generation papaya farmer from Oahu, remembers the days of the virus. “We got completely wiped out. We were cutting down trees every week, but the only option for replanting was to find virgin ground, and we ran out of that pretty quickly.”

Kamiya, a longtime friend of Gonsalvez, credits GM papaya for saving his farm. Since Hawaii is a net food importer, Kamiya views his land as critical for the assurance of local food supply. “I’ve had customers who have been with me for close to 40 years. They know me and my family, and realize that we’re doing our best.”

Vandalism

Kamiya finds it disheartening to see the current backlash against agriculture, science, and especially biotechnology. “Our community is divided, the conversations can quickly turn ugly and there’s a definite lack of respect and trust for us farmers.”

The hostility is to the point that several papaya farmers have awoken in the morning to find that their entire acreages were chopped down by vandals in the night.

All of the papaya farmers in the state pay a self-imposed levy for research, and Kamiya believes that scientists in both corporations and universities are necessary for continued advancement. “We need all the tools in our tool box. With the papaya virus, there are no other tools except for GM.”

When asked about the future of GM crops, both Gonsalvez and Kamiya wonder why, after 25 years, papaya remains the only GM horticultural plant to be commercialized. Aside from the cost, Gonsalvez suggests that “most horticultural biotech research has been done in the public sector by those lacking skills in commercialization.”

He also believes that science needs to be doing more to commercialize transgenics for smaller crops, those which can truly benefit Third World countries. “Think of the benefit that GM cassava could have in Uganda, for example. And we already know that Golden Rice (high in vitamin A) has the potential to improve the health of millions of people.”

Ultimately, the now 77-year-old Gonsalvez remains excited about the potential of GM technology. “It’s the one way we can beat the diseases impacting our food supply. There’s no such thing as a viricide, so we must use gene technology and resistance as tools.”

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Vegetable farmers were about to vote on establishing a marketing board (later rejected by 161 to 121), and members of the Canadian Agricultural Chemicals Association reported that they had made a profit of $214,123 on net sales of $19,358,234, or 1.1 cents per dollar of sales.

Elsewhere we reported that Cornell University found there has been a reduction of antibiotic and pesticide residues in milk, but it said “although radionuclides in food are partly related to (nuclear) bomb testing, nevertheless, our expanding monitoring system, which is keeping us well informed, indicates no cause for alarm.”

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The full genome sequence of a tomato breed known as Heinz 1706, and a draft sequence for its closest wild relative Solanum pimpinellifolium, were publaished in the journal Nature on May 30.

Researchers who carried out the work said that together the sequences provide the most detailed look yet at the functional parts of the tomato genome and show order, orientation, types and relative positions of all of its 35,000 genes.

The sequences should help researchers find the links between certain tomato genes and the characteristics they determine, and will also extend scientists’ understanding of how genetic and environmental factors affect the health of a crop.

“Tomatoes are one of the most important fruit crops in the world, both in terms of the volume that we eat and the vitamins, minerals and other phytochemicals that both fresh and processed tomato products provide to our diets,” said Graham Seymour, a professor of biotechnology at Nottingham University, one of 300 scientists involved in the Tomato Genome Consortium (TGC).

Good model

The tomato is also a good model to investigate the process of fruit ripening, so understanding its genome should help reveal the molecular circuits that make fruits ripen and give them their health-promoting properties, the team said.

“For any characteristic of the tomato, whether it’s taste, natural pest resistance or nutritional content, we’ve captured virtually all those genes,” said James Giovannoni from the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University, who was part of the U.S. tomato sequencing team.

Tomatoes represent a $2-billion market in the United States alone, while in Britain the market for tomatoes is worth around 625 million pounds ($980 million) a year.

The research also offers some insight into how the tomato and its relatives diversified and adapted to new environments over the years.

The scientists said the findings show the tomato genome expanded abruptly about 60 million years ago. Some of the genes generated during that expansion were involved in the development and control of ripening, making them particularly interesting to tomato breeders.

The TGC involved scientists in 14 countries including Argentina, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, Britain, the United States and others.

Giovannoni said the work has implications for other plant species.

Strawberries, apples, melons, bananas and other fleshy fruits share some characteristics with tomatoes, he explained, so knowledge about the genes involved in fruit ripening could potentially be applied to them, helping breeders and growers to improve food quality and cut costs.

“Now we can start asking a lot more interesting questions about fruit biology, disease resistance, root development and nutritional qualities,” he said in a statement.

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