Research for More Sustainable Food Production

The Meat Site – Safer food, less waste, more efficient food production and better use of natural resources are just some of the goals inspiring the work of a new research group at the University of Lincoln in the UK.

The Agri-Food Technology Research Group aims to develop new technological solutions for all stages of food production including cultivation, harvest, processing and packaging.

Agri-food is the largest industry in Lincolnshire and food security is also one of the major challenges identified by the UK Research Councils.

Flu vaccine backfires in pigs

By Beth Mole
Nature – Preventing seasonal sniffles may be more complicated than researchers suspected. A vaccine that protects piglets from one common influenza virus also makes them more vulnerable to a rarer flu strain, researchers report today in Science Translational Medicine1.

The team gave piglets a vaccine against H1N2 influenza. The animals responded by making antibodies that blocked that virus — but aided infection with the strain H1N1, which caused a pandemic among humans in 2009. In the study, H1N1 infected more cells and caused more severe pneumonia in vaccinated piglets than unvaccinated ones.

The root of the different immune responses lies with the mushroom-shaped haemagglutinin protein found on the outside of influenza-virus particles, which helps them to attach onto cells in the airways. The protein occurs in all types of flu, but the make-up of its cap and stem vary between strains….>Continue Reading<<

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More Than 300 People Hit by Salmonella from Live Birds

The Poultry Site – A total of 316 persons infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Typhimurium have been reported from 37 states, according to the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The source of infection has been traced to sales of young poultry from agricultural stores, which are mainly frequented by small-scale and hobby farmers.

According to the latest CDC report – dated 19 August – among 199 ill persons with available information, 51 (26 per cent) have been admitted to hospital; 59 per cent of ill persons are children 10 years of age or younger.

Exploring 100 Years of Food Security I

The Rockefeller Foundation launches the second book in its Centennial Publications Series, Food & Prosperity: Balancing Technology and Community in Agriculture.

From the Foundation’s earliest days, John D. Rockefeller and his program staff recognized that agricultural productivity is critical to prosperity. Agriculture provides income in poor rural communities and satisfies basic nutritional needs. Done well, agricultural development can also address important issues like environmental degradation, population increase, and the politics of development.

Quinoa: A Miracle Grain and the Fight for Food Security

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has named 2013 “the international year of quinoa”. This ancestral grain, native to Bolivia and Peru, has been heralded as a super-food with the potential to alleviate hunger and malnutrition globally. Quinoa is rich in protein and other nutrients and, through the Andean ancestral cultivation practices, can provide nutritional and biodiversity benefits to countries looking to improve food security. Yet as international demand for quinoa grows, especially among gourmets in Canada, the US, and Europe, prices have risen, making quinoa less affordable for Peruvians and Bolivians. Despite an overall increase in quinoa production, local consumption has decreased due to a host of factors including competition on the global expert market. This situation has generated questions about the potential for the miracle grain to aid in meeting food security goals globally, if global demand and limited production continues to present challenges to achieving food security locally. For more insight, the publication Agenda: Suramerica, give a local perspective on this issue with their feature, “Global vs. Local Food Security: The Case of Quinoa in Bolivia.”

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Source: Rockefeller Fundation

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Report Calls for Reduction in Food Waste and Aid to Small Farmers

The Poultry Site – The report urges consumers in the UK to eat less meat and to eat meat from more sustainable sources rather than intensive units.

It added that biofuels are having a detrimental impact on food production helping to cause shortages and volatile prices.

However, the committee’s views have on meat consumption have been rebuffed by the British poultry industry.

Franco-Chinese Agreement on Avian Influenza Vaccine Research

The PoultrySite – The agreement was signed in France this week by Dr Marc Prikazsky, Ceva Santé Animale Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Prof Ren Tao, Vice-Dean of the South China Agricultural University, under the patronage of Stéphane Le Foll, Minister for Agriculture, Agribusiness and Forests, Guillaume Garot, Minister-Delegate for Agribusiness and Martine Aubry, Special Representative for China in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Ceva said the agreement came about because of the importance of China in the global poultry sector.

With a growing population and rising living standards meat consumption is rising, particularly chicken.

Counting the Cost – of Poultry to the Environment and Avian Flu to the Industry

By Jackie Linden
The Poultry Site – A University of Delaware study has found poultry manure to be less environment-polluting than previous thought. A new report, however, highlights the contribution of livestock to greenhouse gas emissions, while researchers have identified changes in manure management and nutrition that could greatly mitigate the impact from poultry. China is beginning to count the cost of the H7N9 flu outbreaks to its poultry industry.
A new study in the US has found that poultry production brings a lower environmental burden than thought.
Federal environmental programmes have drastically overestimated poultry industry contributions to water pollution, according to a University of Delaware-led study that could trigger changes to river and bay clean-up plans across Delmarva and around the country.
James L. Glancey, a professor in the university’s Bioresources Engineering and Mechanical Engineering departments, said that a multi-state study, based on thousands of manure tests, found that actual nitrogen levels in poultry house manure are 55 per cent lower than the Environmental Protection Agency’s decades-old, lab-based standards.
This work could significantly impact the future of poultry farming in the Chesapeake Bay area, where a forecasting model has been used to guide a federally backed attempt to restore the bay’s health and ecosystems and assign clean-up goals.
Growth in agricultural production has resulted in increased agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – with a huge proportion of emissions coming from livestock production, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute.
In Japan, researchers comparing the figures for the output of GHG for pig and poultry production in France and Japan found that changing the manure handling process and increasing the use of synthetic amino acids in feeds could be beneficial in reducing GHG output.
Avian influenza can be very costly for the poultry industry, as the Chinese are finding to their cost. Official figures released this week by the China Animal Agriculture Association estimated that since the H7N9 influenza outbreak the poultry industry has recorded losses of more than 40 billion Yuan (US$6.5 billion).
The central government announced this week subsidies of 600 million Yuan ($96.77 million) to support the poultry producers across the country as live bird markets were closed to control the disease and poultry meat demand slumped. Processing companies will receive short-term subsidized loans and local financial institutions are being encouraged to offer credit aid to breeders and companies.
The China Development Bank, the country’s policy lender has said it has issued emergency loans worth 116 million Yuan (US$18.7 million) to help poultry firms cope with the impact of avian flu.
Chinese economists are predicting fewer cases of H7N9 flu in May and a dramatic improvement in market fortunes by mid-summer.
On human cases of influenza A(H7N9), the latest report from China gives the tally as 130 confirmed cases and 35 deaths from the virus.
Global players are also seeing bird flu affect their bottom lines. McDonald’s Corporation, for example, reported comparable sales in April 2.9 per cent below the same month last year in Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa, which the company attributed to the impact of bird flu, especially in China.
Bird flu outbreaks have also been reported this week in Nepal (in a backyard flock; virus subtype unknown), in North Korea (H5N1 highly pathogenic virus in domestic ducks) and Tibet (H5N1 in a mixed flock of village poultry).

Source and Photo: The Poultry Site, 16th May, 2013
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The state of the world: is it too late for sustainability?

The Guardian – In November 2012, the “big four” professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report that concluded it was too late to hold the future increase in global average temperatures to just two degrees Celsius. “It’s time,” the report announced, “to prepare for a warmer world”.

The same month, the World Bank released Turn Down the Heat, which soberly set forth why a four-degree warmer world must be avoided. Meanwhile, accounts of myriad emerging calamities were easy to find in the press: the failure of the Rio+20 talks to result in positive action, “zombie” coral reefs, calls for higher birth rates, declining Arctic sea ice, an approaching “state shift” in the earth’s biosphere, and other evidence of strain in natural systems and of human blindness, ignorance or denial ……..>> Access the complete article<<

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Beyond the farm: promoting agribusiness as a way out of poverty

By Simon Winter
The Guardian – If we’re serious about ending poverty and feeding a growing planet, it’s imperative that we focus on the 2 billion people who live and work on small farms in the developing world. Often, the best way to support these smallholders has less to do with things they can do to improve their farms and more to do with the systems in which they operate.

What happens at the farm level is important, and farmers need access to knowledge that enhance productivity inputs and tools. But to create sustainable growth in agricultural industries, that can provide opportunities for increasing economic benefits for farmers now and in the future, we need to take a broader approach to development that targets the entire market system.

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