That contrasts sharply with the United States where the University of Missouri says 3.1 million acres were damaged by dicamba.

Monsanto introduced Xtend soybeans for commercial production in Manitoba this spring. The soybeans are resistant to the herbicides dicamba and glyphosate.

Meanwhile, in the United States Xtend soybeans and cotton were grown for a second season.

Arkansas, the epicentre of dicamba drift complaints in the U.S., temporarily banned dicamba use earlier this season and its plant board recommended prohibiting dicamba applications after April 15 — a move Monsanto opposes, saying it’s not based on scientific data.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticides federally in the U.S., has also been investigating dicamba drift complaints.

Asked if Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency was considering any label changes for dicamba in Canada, Gagnon stated in an email: “Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) completed a re-evaluation of dicamba in 2008 and concluded that products containing dicamba do not pose unacceptable risks to human health or the environment when label directions are followed. As an outcome of the re-evaluation, a number of risk reduction measures have been implemented on labels of all registered products to reduce potential exposure to humans and the environment. For example, as part of this re-evaluation, PMRA considered the impact of dicamba on non-target plants and revised the label directions including required buffer zones to protect non-target terrestrial plants and aquatic systems from spray drift. As well, mitigation measures are required to protect those with the highest occupational exposure levels. These include additional protective equipment, and reductions in quantity and/or concentration of the product.”

Monsanto suspects many dicamba drift issues in Arkansas stem from farmers there being prohibited from using new, less volatile dicamba formulations because the state had not approved them.

Observers also suspect dicamba is more likely to vaporize and drift in warmer, more humid climates.

There are also fewer dicamba sensitive crops grown in Manitoba. The main one is non-dicamba tolerant soybeans, underscoring the need for Manitoba farmers to be aware of what crops are growing near their Xtend soybeans.

The post Health Canada had no herbicide drift complaints from Manitoba appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Genus, which supplies pig and bull semen to farmers worldwide, said on Tuesday it had worked with the University of Missouri to develop pigs resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSv).

The condition, also known as blue-ear disease, can be fatal as it affects the animals’ immune system and costs farmers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. There is no cure.

By using precise gene editing, the team from the University of Missouri was able to breed pigs that do not produce a specific protein necessary for the virus to spread in the animals. Their research was published in journal Nature Biotechnology.

Early-stage studies showed the new PRRSv-resistant pigs, when exposed to the virus, did not get sick and continued to gain weight normally.

The development of these resistant pigs is further proof of the power of gene editing, which is taking the biotech industry by storm. Genus chief scientific officer Jonathan Lightner said it was “a potential game-changer for the pork industry”.

Editing the genes of living organisms holds out great promise for treating diseases and improving agricultural crops and animal species. But when applied to humans it could also be used to create “designer babies,” prompting critics to call for a global ban on genetic modification of human embryos.

The technology allows scientists to edit genes by using biological “scissors” that operate a bit like a word-processing programme that can find and replace selected stretches of DNA.

It has been put to work in laboratories around the world, even as the ethical and safety issues it raises are fiercely debated.

An international summit on human gene editing in Washington last week urged caution on human gene editing but said editing genes in human embryos was permissible for research purposes.

The work on Genus’s gene-edited pigs is still at an early stage and Lightner said there were several critical challenges ahead to fully develop and commercialise the technology.

Liberum analyst Sophie Jourdier said commercialisation would likely take five years or more but the new resistant pig line would add to Genus’s long-term growth prospects, given the economic importance of PRRSv.

PRRSv affects millions of pigs and costs the swine industry around US$700 million a year in the United States and 1.5 billion euros (US$1.6 billion) in Europe, according to a 2011 Iowa State University study cited by Genus.

— Ben Hirschler reports on the health and pharmaceutical sectors for Reuters from London.

The post Disease-resistant pigs latest win for gene editing technology appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

There is no question that addressing the lengthening list of weeds that have developed resistance to glyphosate must be a top priority for researchers and extension agronomists advising conventional farmers.

As reported by Reuters, resistance to glyphosate has now reached the point where row-crop farmers in the Midwest are unable to control weeds with herbicides. University of Missouri and University of Kansas weed scientists are proposing a return to tillage.

Researchers say Palmer amaranth is the No. 1 weed to watch, because of its aggressiveness — it grows one to two inches per day and produces millions of seeds — and its ability to develop resistance to herbicides.

These weeds were a problem limited to the deep south a few short years ago, prompting farmers in Arkansas to resort to hands and hoe to bring them under control. They are now “exploding” in the Midwest, Kansas State University weed specialist Dallas Peterson told Reuters.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says 70 million acres of U.S. farmland had glyphosate-resistant weeds in 2013.

You have to admire these plants’ remarkable ability to adapt. It took scientists decades of effort to figure out how to modify crops to have resistance to herbicides and less than two decades for nature to accomplish the same thing, albeit helped by farmers through intensive selection pressure.

It is only a matter of time before more of these invasive plants make their way to the Canadian Prairies. Stacking of traits for resistance to other herbicides as well as glyphosate will help, but is a short-term solution. So is tillage.

But does it have to be either/or of two bad choices?

What if there was a third option, not just in theory, but with a proven track record through more than two decades of research and monitoring through several crop rotations?

The Glenlea long-term crop rotation study, now the longest-running study of its kind in Canada, compares four-year crop rotations for annual crops and annual crops mixed with forages under organic and conventional production systems.

Those trials, which started in 1983, have shown that the annual grain-based conventional rotation is the most productive by way of yield, although not the most economic. But it is susceptible to resistant weed problems because of its reliance on herbicides.

However, researchers have found that adding a perennial alfalfa crop into the rotation for two years virtually eliminates the risk of herbicide-resistant wild oats. It’s also very good at reducing other annual grasses, thistles and quack grass.

“Alfalfa does not reduce small-seeded broad-leaved weeds (like pigweeds) so effectively. But by not spraying these weeds during the alfalfa phase, we reduce resistance development to herbicides in these populations. In other words, we make the herbicides last longer,” said the rotation study’s overseer Martin Entz.

Farmers accustomed to growing annual crops under conventional management are quick to argue the economics; they can’t afford to “lose” two years of production to a crop such as alfalfa, for which they have no use unless they have livestock.

However, the economics of including perennial forages in an annual cropping system are changing as the cost of controlling some of the unintended consequences of conventional systems, such as superweeds, rises and more becomes known about how alfalfa can benefit the total farm.

Alfalfa reduces the nitrogen needs by 40 per cent over the rotation cycle and it provides other soil-building qualities, such as biological drainage — its deep tap roots aerate the soil and draw out excess moisture.

There are other reasons for considering this as an option, such as the role of forage-based diets in sustainable livestock production and the production of healthier food products, which at this point sell for a marketplace premium. Or the growing demand for cover crop seed in the U.S.

No one is suggesting that alfalfa is the panacea for invasive weeds or any other issue plaguing a farming system. Picking one approach as the answer is a mistake that has been made before. But it’s an option — another tool that farmers can consider. And thanks to long-term trials such as these, they have accurate, scientifically valid metrics to help them assess how it fits on their farm.

The post Editorial: The third option appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

‘We found that feeding vibrations signal changes in the plant cells’ metabolism, creating more defensive chemicals that can repel attacks from caterpillars,” said lead researcher Heidi Appel, senior research scientist in the Division of Plant Sciences in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and the Bond Life Sciences Center at MU.

“Previous research has investigated how plants respond to acoustic energy, including music,” she said. “However, our work is the first example of how plants respond to an ecologically relevant vibration.”

In the study, caterpillars were placed on Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant related to cabbage and mustard. Using a laser and a tiny piece of reflective material on the leaf of the plant, researchers were able to measure the movement of the leaf in response to the chewing caterpillar.

• More ‘Did you know?: Insect farms: Investors see big profits in thinking small

They then played back recordings of caterpillar feeding vibrations to one set of plants, but played back only silence to the other set of plants. When caterpillars later fed on both sets of plants, the researchers found that the plants previously exposed to feeding vibrations produced more mustard oils, a chemical that is unappealing to many caterpillars.

“What is remarkable is that the plants exposed to different vibrations, including those made by a gentle wind or different insect sounds that share some acoustic features with caterpillar feeding vibrations did not increase their chemical defences,” said Rex Cocroft, professor of biological sciences. “This indicates that the plants are able to distinguish feeding vibrations from other common sources of environmental vibration.”

“Caterpillars react to this chemical defence by crawling away, so using vibrations to enhance plant defences could be useful to agriculture,” Appel said. “This research also opens the window of plant behaviour a little wider, showing that plants have many of the same responses to outside influences that animals do, even though the responses look different.”

The post Plants can hear the difference appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The post LIVESTOCK-Hog futures up on firm cash, Smithfield deal discussed appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Feb. 1 said the U.S. cattle herd as of January 1 was 89.30 million head, down 1.6 per cent from a year earlier and the smallest U.S. herd since 1952. Analysts expected a 1.8 per cent decline.

However, the data suggests ranchers are beginning to retain female breeding stock, the foundation for herd rebuilding, possibly in anticipation of even higher cattle prices.

“Ranchers are retaining heifers because of record prices for feeder cattle and the futures market is saying we’re going to get higher,” said University of Missouri livestock economist Ron Plain. Friday’s herd inventory results also reaffirms results issued in the government’s report in July 2012 in which the U.S. cattle herd at the start of 2012 was 2.3965 million head larger than 60 years earlier, but dropped below that level around April 2012.

U.S. cattle numbers have declined for several years as producers have encountered a number of hardships including mad cow disease that reduced U.S. beef exports for several years, a recession that hurt domestic beef consumption, a lengthy drought that damaged pastures, and record-high feed prices.

Those who raise, feed and process cattle in the central and western U.S. Plains this year felt the heat from the worst dry spell in more than 50 years. It raised feed and hay costs to all-time highs last summer. Chicago Board of Trade corn futures in December averaged $7.24-1/8 per bushel, the fourth highest as drought damaged the crop. Prices reached a record high of $8.43-3/4 on August 10.

The smaller cattle herd has increased retail beef prices, with a record high of $5.15 per lb. set in November 2012. That slipped to $5.11 the following month but was still up from $5.01 a year earlier.

The post U.S. cattle herd at 61-year low appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

There’s not solid evidence for the latter, but there is some cause for concern, according to a presentation by agronomy expert Bob Hartzler at Ag Days.

“Based on my experience in Iowa, where we have 22 million acres of Roundup Ready corn and soybeans, we have not seen any problems that we can correlate with the widespread use of glyphosate and plant disease and micronutrients,” said the extension weed specialist and professor of agronomy from Iowa State University.

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause problems. We’re at near-crisis levels in terms of glyphosate-resistant weeds.”

Looming over his presentation were public statements made by “that person” – Don Huber, an emeritus professor of plant pathology from Purdue University – who Hartzler described as the “flag-bearer” for those portraying glyphosate as “a bad thing.”

A case “could be made” for the retired professor’s concerns about glyphosate’s role in new and emergent crop diseases such as fusarium and Goss’s wilt, said Hartzler, who knew Huber briefly during his undergraduate days.

“It’s well documented that plants that are susceptible to glyphosate — when exposed to a sublethal dose — that increases the risk of disease developing in that plant,” said Hartzler.

However, the insertion of a foreign gene into Roundup Ready crops such as corn and soybeans keeps a critical pathway of immunity open for such plants, thus preventing disease, he added.

Hartzler also addressed Huber’s claim that the strong chelating effect of glyphosate immobilizes micronutrients such as manganese in plant tissues leading to more disease outbreaks.

“Again, there has been a lot of research conducted and none of it has shown that glyphosate ties up micronutrients in plants,” he said.

One area that may have “greater credibility,” noted Hartzler, is the “well-documented” suspicion that the herbicide’s tendency to be translocated through the plant to the root zone may be influencing pathogen activity in the rhizosphere.

University of Missouri microbiologist Robert Kremer’s research has “clearly documented” that spraying Roundup Ready soybeans with glyphosate causes increased colonization of the roots by fusarium species, he said.

“Glyphosate does increase the number of disease organisms growing on the roots, but what Dr. Kremer has never shown is increased disease incidence,” said Hartzler, adding that outbreaks of disease require “unique conditions.”

He also pointed to long-term plot research that seems to show the real culprit in sudden death syndrome outbreaks may, in fact, be genetic weaknesses in the source hybrids used to create Roundup Ready crop varieties, not the genetic modification itself.

“You could look at this data and say glyphosate is actually protecting us from disease,” he said.

A study of fusarium in barley conducted in Saskatchewan and Quebec found production of fusarium inoculum and mycotoxins in the grain seemed to be more related to the susceptibility of the cultivar grown than the application of glyphosate, he said.

In response to a question about glyphosate’s reported tendency to become resurrected in soil after an application of phosphorus fertilizer, Hartzler said all the studies of this phenomenon were done under lab conditions, not field conditions.

Hartzler, who said he’s considered a “tree-hugger type” by his peers, admitted that as “just a weed scientist” he often gets “really nervous” when discussing plant pathology in the public sphere. He said he agreed to address the glyphosate controversy after being approached by officials at the University of Iowa who were concerned about the effect Huber’s sensational allegations might have on exports from the Midwest Corn-Soy Belt.

“They talked to the plant pathologists and they said they didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole,” said Hartzler. “The majority of plant pathologists say there’s nothing there.”

Still, audiences are often hostile to his defence of the technology, he said, adding he’s been asked “what he will tell his children when Huber is eventually proven right.”

The post Iowa weed scientist wades into glyphosate controversy at Ag Days appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Reuters — U.S. pork production in October hit a record high as the hog slaughter surged to an all-time high of 10.86 million head.

The latest USDA data shows more hogs passed through U.S. packing plants last month than ever before as farmers liquidated their herds as the worst drought in half a century shrivelled fields, catapulting feed prices to historic highs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said pork production in October rose nine per cent from the previous year to 2.21 billion lbs. The October slaughter number was 10 per cent higher year on year and surpassed the previous record of 10.654 million in October 2008.

The rush to slaughter could benefit consumers in the near term as increased supplies weigh on pork prices, but costs are expected to go up by mid-2013 as hog supplies tighten, analysts said.

Hog numbers typically increase during autumn, particularly after unusually warm weather last spring improved sow breeding rates.

And, packers last month had 23 weekdays and four Saturdays to process hogs, compared with 21 weekdays and five Saturdays last year in October, said USDA. The flood of hogs strained the bottom line of producers who in September lost about $54 per head, according to the Iowa State University hog producer profit index.

University of Missouri livestock economist Ron Plain forecast fourth-quarter 2012 hog losses to average $32.50 per head and about $24 for the first quarter of 2013.

He expects producers to be about $0.70 in the hole in April with May being the first profitable month at $2.

Chicago Board of Trade corn futures averaged $7.56 per bushel in October. Although they were down from the Aug. 10 record high of $8.43-3/4, they were the third highest on record. Heated competition between livestock producers and ethanol manufacturers for corn, the major ingredient in cattle rations, is further fuelling feed prices along with hay costs that doubled as drought withered fields and pastures.

“We not only saw a liquidation of market hogs, but we also saw sow slaughter move about four to five per cent higher than last year during the month of October,” said Allendale chief strategist Rich Nelson.

The post U.S. pork supplies at all-time high appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The bulk of the price gains could come in the second half of next year, analysts said.

“We slaughtered lots of hogs during September, far more than expected, with a good chunk ending up in cold storage,” said University of Missouri economist Ron Plain.

The USDA estimates end-of-September pork stocks at 630.7 million pounds, up eight per cent from August and up 28 per cent from last year. It was the fifth straight monthly record.

Leading the way was the tally for hams at 213.9 million pounds, an all-time high for any month. Pork bellies also jumped 79 per cent from a year earlier to 16.9 million pounds.

More hams landed in cold storage facilities for the upcoming holidays. And some were concerned that high prices for bacon last summer slowed demand for product, backing bellies up in storage.

Fewer hogs, less pork

“Retail pork prices will begin to move up modestly through next April or May, and a rapid increase in the last half of 2013, due to the reduction in the breeding herd,” said University of Purdue livestock economist Chris Hurt.

He sees retail prices for pork to remain steady to higher into the end of the year.

The retail pork price in September was $3.50 per pound, compared with $3.52 in August and $3.56 a year earlier.

Pork prices have come down, but not as much as some had anticipated given the glut of supplies.

“It’s the in-between costs, getting product from the farm gate to the dinner plate, that adds up and generally doesn’t go down, but goes up over time,” said independent market analyst Bob Brown.

He said any subsequent retail pork price increases may be more associated with continually rising marketing costs — everything from transportation to packaging of the product — and less so because of eventual tighter hog numbers.

Linn Group analyst John Ginzel said pork was heavily featured in grocery stores when prices declined in the middle of September through October, the latter being National Pork Month. That will begin to wind down soon, he said.

The post Analysts expect fewer pigs and higher prices next year appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The Obama administration is weighing whether to relax a requirement to use corn-based ethanol in gasoline as meat and dairy farmers complain that demand for corn-based biofuels is driving up the cost of food.

But the record-high corn prices caused by the worst drought in half a century will cause a 10 per cent decline in ethanol production next year, according to the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, or FAPRI.

“Higher ethanol prices contribute to sharply reduced ethanol exports and increased imports, but domestic ethanol consumption declines by just two per cent,” said the newly updated FAPRI forecast.

Ethanol output will fall to 12.4 billion gallons next year compared to 13.8 billion gallons this year, according to the forecast. Exports would drop to 505 million gallons from nearly 1.1 billion gallons this year.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell joined governors of seven other states — Texas, Georgia, New Mexico, Arkansas, North Carolina, Maryland and Delaware — in asking the Environmental Protection Agency for relief from the so-called ethanol mandate. They say the Renewable Fuels Standard is disrupting livestock production and causing severe economic harm.

The so-called ethanol mandate guarantees use of 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol in 2012 and 13.8 billion gallons in 2013. An ethanol trade group estimates production will total 13.4 billion gallons during 2012, a reduction from earlier estimates.

“It could be lower than that depending upon market conditions through the rest of the year,” said the Renewable Fuel Association. The trade group had no forecast for 2013.

The post Ethanol output to drop 10 per cent appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.