If you pull something like this from
between your corn rows, keep it.

     Take care of your soil and it will take care of you. Especially around Hiddenite, North Carolina. Ninety-year-old Renn Adams and his siblings own a farm there where every once in awhile you might plow up an emerald or two. There was a time when the Adams family charged folks $3 a day to wield their shovels and take away any green goodies they might find. Terry Ledford, described in newspaper reports as a family partner, pulled an emerald out of the dirt a few years ago, and he could tell right away it was none of those run-of-the-mill emeralds, fit more for show-and-tell than a jewler's setting. Ledford's stone was big and dark and, well...big. After some cutting and polishing, processes that removed more than four-fifths of the stone's weight, the end product was a 65-carat gem about as big as a quarter and as heavy as a AA battery. It was cut to resemble a similarly sized emerald once owned by Catherine the Great, empress of Russia. That stone sold at Christies in New York this past April for a cool $1.65 million, which even if the Adamses and Ledford split it a few ways, is a sight better than 300-bushel corn. So, next time you're picking rocks, you might want to look down now and then to be sure it's not just a chunk of flint in your hand. AP writer Emery P. Dalesio wrote a gem of a story about the find, which you can read here: http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1110ap_us_carolina_emerald.html

Lyle Klingaman talks to visitors about
his high density grazing methods.

     High density grazing cuts feed costs and boosts profits for a Pa. cattleman with a herd of 20 Angus cows. By moving his animals from pasture to pasture, sometimes as often as twice a day, healthier grass, healthier cattle and a healthier bank account he told a group of about 25 curious farmers who turned out for a field day at his Mainville farm. The farmer, Lyle Klingaman, along with the Columbia County Extension Service and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service hosted the field day. Lancaster Farming correspondent Lisa Leighton covered the event and prepared a report which you can read in our current edition. Or check it out online at our website here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/High-Density-Grazing-Taking-Smaller-Bite-of-Farmer-s-Profits


     If I ever get old, I want to be like Mary Maxwell. http://www.caregiverstress.com/2010/07/a-reminder-that-laughter-is-the-best-medicine/

Infrared photo by Dick Wanner

     Visit this tree if you ever get to Penn State's Southeast Area Research Center near Landisville. This wounded locust is beautifully isolated and hard to miss.

    Speaking of Landisville, the center hosted a mini-field day this morning devoted to the subject of nitrogen management. How to keep it in your soil, how to get the most value from it, how to measure the effectiveness of your N application, whether in the form of manure, granules or liquid.  A surprise to me was that manure loses 20% its nitrogen in the first hour after it's spread on the surface. Also news to me was the value of aerial photography as a tool for nutrient management. There'll be a story about the event in the September 3 (September? Already?) edition of Lancaster Farming, both in print and online.

     Why I'll always be careful where I pitch my tent. Or maybe I'll just stay in the lodge. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/brown-bear-attack/269tm7de

    

     American-style farming techniques are threatening to revolutionize the British dairy industry, and not everybody's happy about it. Nocton Dairies is seeking approval for an 8,100-cow facility near the village of Nocton in Lincolnshire. Nocton's owners say they will keep pollution out of their watershed, and they'll keep the cows clean and happy. (Britons are especially sensitive to animal comfort. PETA, the Humane League, et al are pretty much minor league players compared to British animal rights activists.) Nocton says they'll be adding 85 jobs to the local economy - which could use the jobs - and they'll be using manure digester technology to generate electricity to run the farm with enough left over to sell to the national grid. It would be the biggest of the UK's 13,500 dairy farmers, where the average herd numbers 114. Only 94 of the current dairy operations have more than 500 cows. There's a story in The Economist about the stir the plans are causing, and you can read it here: http://www.economist.com/node/16793059?story_id=16793059


     Using antibiotics to not just cure but to prevent livestock disease is a perennial hot button topic. at last week's Penn State Ag Progress Days, Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres sat in on a session with Penn State Extension veterinarian David Wolfgang as he explained what he feels are the pluses and minuses - mostly pluses - of treating sick animals and also of treating animals with subtherapeutic doses to keep them from getting sick. You can read the report in our current print edition, or check it out at our new website, which is here: http://lfg.live.mediaspanonline.com/assets/4940567/A01LFWE-082110_1.pdf

     Hoops at the White House. (Not what you think.) Saw this first on our new website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07vtMJgp0no

AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili

Camelicious Dairy camels await their turn
in the milking parlor in Dubai, Saudi Arabia.

     A California camel dairy made AgScene about a month ago, notable because the sale of camel milk in this country is illegal, but if it were legal would sell for around $200 a gallon or $1,720 a hundredweight. That is, until all the neighbors started buying their own bactrians and dromedaries. Which may be somewhere on the distant horizon. Last month, European Union health regulators approved the importation of powdered camel milk from the United Arab Emirates. Ulrich Wernery, a veterinarian who works in Dubai, has been touting camels and camel milk for a decade. In 2003, with the backing of Dubai's ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Wernery started his Camelicious dairy enterprise, which today numbers 700 milking camels, producing 5,000 liters of milk per day, or about 105 cwt. Camelicious products, both in liquid and powdered form have been selling in the UAE for about the last four years and now, Wernery says, they're ready to expand into the 27-nation EU. And then maybe Asia and America. AP writer Brian Murphy paid a call on the Camelicious beauties. You can read his report here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/08/21/2417350/dubais-ruler-hopes-to-expand-popularity.html 

Lancaster Farming photo by Anne Harnish

Crowds found plenty to see and do at Penn State's Ag Progress Days.

     Lancaster Farming staffers spent much of last week at Penn State's Ag Progress Days in Rock Springs. The event never fails to entertain and educate. Food and Family Editor Anne Harnish spent a day there, trolling for story ideas and pointing her camera every which way. For the usual generous helping of recipes and more of Anne's Ag Progress Days' photos, see our current print edition, our check out our new web offering here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://lfg.live.mediaspanonline.com/assets/4940613/B03LFWE-082110_1.pdf


     No matter how famous this blog may make me, I will never submit to a Steven Colbert interview. 
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/350636/august-17-2010/better-know-a-lobby---american-meat-institute

Recalled.

     Do you buy eggs? Do you buy them one at a time? Does half-a-billion eggs sound scary? It sounds like all the eggs in the world to me and then some. This morning on the Today Show, Matt Lauer said the current egg recall involved nearly half a billion eggs, "...that's 'Billion' with a 'B'," he stressed, implying that absolutely the eggs in your fridge must be poison. In my opinion, the news reports are accurate, but they are overstating the case.
     The odds of getting sick from eating eggs are small, but make no mistake - this is a serious health issue and it's a serious challenge for the egg industry. A few bad apples, from what I've read, have put not only their customers, but their industry in peril. Did I say bad apples? I should have said "dirty, rotten crooks." 
     I did some marketing work for an egg company a while back - a way while back, actually - at a time when the industry was struggling with S. enteriditis. I can tell you that the people I worked with had their hearts in the right place - it was food safety first and profits later. And I think they are the kind of people who dominate the egg industry. 
     Collectively, they and their colleagues produce about 215 million eggs a day, or more than a billion eggs every five days. That's "Billion" with a "B." Or to put it another way, a way that is more understandable to the people who buy eggs, 18 million dozen eggs a day. About 41.7 million dozen eggs have been recalled so far, which is less than three days of the total national production. Those eggs were linked to 1,300 cases of salmonellosis, a disease that can make you sick and miserable. Or it can kill you. 
     The FDA, the USDA and the CDC are working overtime to measure the danger and get it under control. The feds are looking for more staff, more money and more control to deal with and prevent future outbreaks of food-borne illness, and I hope they get it. 
     But I think the industry needs to crack down on its own bad actors. The locavore movement has gained momentum because consumers want to know where their food comes from and who's producing it. They would not want to deal with Jack DeCoster, who runs Wright County Eggs in Galt, Iowa, and is believed to be the man behind the salmonella outbreak. 
     He's the sixth-largest egg producer in the U.S., and has a history of paying fines for tainted product, pollution, and animal cruelty. His enterprise has also paid fines for sexual harassment of female employees. He's a bad egg, a black eye and a liability for the industry, yet restaurants, grocery chains and food manufacturers keep buying his product. 
     If locavore consumers can be educated, and/or self-educated enough to check out their food sources, it seems to me that businesses, large and small, who are paying thousands and millions of dollars a year for eggs can check out their suppliers. If you are one of those buyers and a guy like Jack DeCoster comes knocking on your door, just say "No." Get rid of his market and you get rid of him. 
     I believe government oversight is always going to be with us because there will always be bad actors in the marketplace. I also believe that a self-aware and self-regulated market can be much more than a mechanism for profit, and much more effective than all the government controls in the world. Honest people in a well-run industry can also be a tremendous force for good. 
     I've seen it happen.      

     Locavores are self-indulgent, self-defeating, dogmatic do-gooders who may or may not have jumped the sustainably raised organic-chub-fed shark. Whoa! Where did that come from? Was that Glenn Beck? A Sara Palin Rant? No, actually. The self-indulgent part came from Stepen Budiansky, an op-ed contributor to yesterday's New York Times and the author of a blog called liberalcurmudgeon.com. Budiansky, of Leesburg, Va., grows a lot of stuff in his backyard garden which is about as local as you can get. Just 42 steps from his back door and he's got a handful of spinach. He's annoyed that New Yorkers consider it a sin to buy a California tomato, but it's okay to buy one from a lavishly heated greenhouse in the Hudson Valley. He has no problem with the locavores' sentiments. He just wants them to get their math straight. He gives some examples, and you can read them here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/opinion/20budiansky.html?th&emc=th. The jump-the-shark goodie came from here: http://jcarrot.org/has-locavore-jumped-the-sustainably-raised-organic-chub-fed-shark. The jcarrot.org blogger was astounded when he read in yet another New York Times story that a company in San Francisco will actually come to your house to plant and tend to your garden throughout the growing season. The writer comments that "locavore" was named Word of the Year for 2007 by the Oxford New American Dictionary. His pick for the next word of the year? "Lazyvore." 

Don McNutt, of the Lancaster
County Conservation
 District, addresses
the hearing in Rock Springs.

     Can farmers dodge the EPA hammer? Matt Ehrhart, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Pennsylvania office told a meeting Wednesday that his state's farmers have made tremendous strides in reducing the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus entering the Chesapeake Bay watershed. He said the agency should not be treating every cleanup effort like a nail that needs to be hammered equally, and that agriculture has already taken more than its share of pounding. Pennsylvania ag sent a lot of its biggest guns to Ag Progress Days at Rock Springs for a joint hearing of the State House and Senate Agriculture and Rural Affairs committees. Ag Secretary Russell Redding testified on behalf of farmers, as did Penn State Dean of Agriculture Bruce McPheron. They were joined by other commentators. Lancaster Farming special sections editor Charlene Shupp Espenshade attended the hearing and wrote a report that will show up with your paper in the mailbox tomorrow. Or you can read it now in our online edition: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/APD-heading


     The thing that puzzles me is: Why are numbers 43 and 44 smiling? http://www.flixxy.com/presidents-morphing.htm

Can a company be too successful?

   Deere & Company - they make those green and yellow tractors out there in Moline, Illinois - released its third-quarter earnings figures this morning. Sales for this year's third quarter were $617 million, compared to $420 million for the same period last year. So naturally the company's stock price dropped by 24-cents a share by 3:45 in the afternoon, just 15 minutes from the stock market's closing. Can somebody explain the stock market to me? Deere spokesmen said their sales improved because American farmers bought more than enough equipment to make up for lowered sales in struggling Europe. But their yearly sales are expected to be up 5-10 percent over last year's. CEO Sam Alllen did say that European sales could be down as much as 20 percent, but strong commodity prices in the US and Canada strengthened the company's income outlook. Which sounds good, but if they make too much money, who knows how far their share price will plummet?

John Pecchia talks about
 Penn State's mushrooms.

     Scientists are still in the dark about some aspects of mushroom growing, but they've learned a lot about bringing those tasty fungi to the table. About two-thirds of the U.S. mushroom supply is grown in Pennsylvania, and most of that comes from Chester County. But Penn State has a 40-year-old research facility where John Pecchia and his crew produce 75,000 pounds of shrooms annually in their 640 square feet of allotted space. That's a lot of fungus. Pecchia brought a bus to Pennsylvania's Ag Progress Days this week, and picked up a load of the curious for a tour of his facility. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres hitched a ride, and prepared a report for this week's issue. If you can't wait for Saturday's mail, you can read his tour reactions on our newly refurbished website by clicking here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/APD-mushrooms


     Horsing around on that new website. http://www.lancasterfarming.com/video/Equine-Experience-AgPro-2010-Video

Fresh from the tree and ready for a blast of hot air.

     Does it take as much water to peel a peach as it does to grow it? Seems that way to me. But that may be about to change. Gour Choudhury, a specialist in food processing systems, is a professor at California State University, Fresno. He and his students developed a system that could reduce water used in processing by 80 percent for some fruits. The Wawona Frozen Foods plant in nearby Clovis, Calif., cut its water use for peeling peaches from 240 gallons an hour to 48 gallons with a prototype of Chodhury's system. His system uses a blast of moist air rather than a stream of water to remove skin from the fruit. The system could be adapted for other soft fruits, he believes, and he is currently working on a way to skin tomatoes. Fresno Bee reporter Robert Rodriguez looked into Chodhury's work and wrote a report, which you can read here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/08/16/2043782/fresno-state-profs-idea-saves.html

Doug Tomlinson cranks out a bale of hay
from his baler while his great-grandchildren
(from right) Kylie Barber, Anthony Barber
 and family friend Becca Boshart look on.

     At an age when many people are, quite frankly, dead, Doug Tomlinson is still riding his 1949 Massey-Ferguson into hayfields and putting up as many as 700 bales a day. Cheryll Borgaard, a reporter for the Longview, Washington, Daily News, took a ride out to see Tomlinson and to watch him at work. She watched him crank at least one bale out of his baler with a hand crank, but didn't ask him what kind of baler it was, nor she she ask if he cranked them all out by hand. My guess is probably not. It's a nice little story, though, on page A24 of our current issue, or you can read it on our new and very dandy website, here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/ Just click on the e-edition button and navigate to page A24.
Doug Tomlinson cranks out a bale of hay from his baler while his great-grandchildren (from right) Kylie Barber, Anthony Barber and family friend Becca Boshart look on.


     I think I'd need an aspirin, like, every 10 minutes. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/worlds-most-massive-horns/p739nt6

Mock meat pie - harbinger of the future

     There is a need to convert corn, soybeans and small grains into meat if the world is going to feed a population of 9 billion people by 2050. We have the tools to  do the conversion today - they're called chickens, pigs and cattle - but a group of scientists report today that we're going to have to do it in vats. You know, put feedstuffs into the vat, take meat out. The scientists were 21 in number and prepared their reports for Great Britain's Royal Society, one of the world's most respected scientific organizations. The scientists foresee population growing by a third in the next 40 years, don't see more cropland being developed, but do see promise in the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. More CO2 from burning things like coal could actually help crops become more productive, but the researchers still think we'll (well, "you'll" and "they'll" since I'll have cashed my last Social Security check by then) still have to eliminate the middle-animal and convert plant life directly into something like meat. Kind of like what we do today with tofu. John Vidal, environmental editor of The Guardian in the UK wrote a report about the mock meat projections. You can read it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/16/artificial-meat-food-royal-society 


     Not one, not two, but three crops a year are coming off Eli Weaver's fields in Leola, Pa. Weave is a small scale dairy farmer - 30 cows on 45 acres - but a large scale thinker who went from buying most of his forages and grains. His two-year crop rotation includes 94-day corn, tritacale/annual ryegrass mix, sorghum sudangrass and oats. He also uses pasture paddocks. He's gone from buying feed to selling forages to his neighbors, and is tinkering with ways to harvest his cover crops. And he's always on the lookout for new varieties. Lancaster Farming special sections editor Charlene Shupp Espenshade called on Weaver to talk about his methods, and prepared a report for our current edition. You can also read it on our website:
http://www.lancasterfarming.com/node/3122


     Maybe Baxter Black should just stick to poems. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuQ-DH2M4Y8

Will cages be phased out in Ohio? This guy wants to know.

     Ohio farm leaders have agreed to settle their issues with animal rights groups who want producers to give chickens more room, take nursing sows out of gestation crates, and release veal calves from confinement. It was a surprise truce, spurred by farmer fears that a state-wide voter referendum in November would place them under tighter restrictions than those they agreed to.  Governor Ted Strickland urged the two sides to negotiate an agreement. The Ohio Farm Bureau and the Humane Society of the United States were the main proponents of the opposing viewpoints. Kirk Irwin, writing for the New York Times, talked to a number of farmers who felt challenged by the changes affecting their operations, but seemed to be taking them in stride. The family of Irv Bell, 64, has been growing hogs in Zanesville, Ohio, since the 19th century. “I work with the hogs every day, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with gestation crates,” Bell said. “But I have to be aware of things on the horizon, the bigger things at work.” A spokesman for the United Egg Producers said following Humane Society guidelines could raise the cost of eggs by 25 percent. The story in the Times is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/us/12farm.html?th&emc=th

     Monday morning you'll be able to see the newest version of LancasterFarming.com. And it looks like it'll be a doozy. After months of preparation, our new website if finally ready with new and improved content. Readers will be able to access current editions, look up stories on previous editions and troll through our 500-plus ads a week by category. The website is designed to complement, rather than replace, our print edition, and some of the electronic features - particularly the Mailbox Markets section - will be available only to print edition subscribers. Staff writer Chris Torres wrote a downright exciting review of the new website, which you can read here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/node/3120


     And you thought your house was old... http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/digging-up-britains-oldest-house/6ratcl5

PetroAlgae's Florida test facility.

     A Florida company says it can wring fuel from algae, and compete with oil even if oil prices were to drop to $20 a barrel. The company, PetroAlgae, is planning an initial public offering of stock hoping to raise $200 million  to bring its technology to the marketplace. Sounds like the kind of news that should make a lot of people happy, but the rest of the algae-to-oil crowd are feeling a bit cranky. The fact that PetroAlgae's revenue is actually zero isn't the biggest problem, according to analysts interviewed by Camille Ricketts for the VenntureBeat website. The real problem is that the algae market just isn't mature enough to sustain the kind venture that PetroAlgae is proposing. Their technology is intriguing, Ricketts reports. They grow algae in sealed plastic bags supplied with sunlight and CO2, an approach that can yield 10,000 to 14,000 gallons of fuel per acre. That's more than twice the industry average. If they succeed, we could all be driving our cars, tractors, planes and trucks on an actual green fuel. The VentureBeat story is here: http://green.venturebeat.com/2010/08/11/petroalgae-ipo/  And you can watch PetroAlgae's own cheery and upbeat video here: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-RyKyvWr3I

     These are busy times here at Lancaster Farming, with the fair season ready to roar into full swing, Empire Farm Days this week, Ag Progress Days next week, and all the recipes, features, farm news and farm and food related news that keeps coming over our transom every week. (Does anybody remember what a transom was? And why it was?) Keeps the staff hopping. Look for coverage of everything agriculture in our print edition, and very soon expanded coverage on our revamped web site. Keep watching for our new presence on the web here: http://lancasterfarming.com/

 
      Geneticists are working on a six-foot-long version of this  critter. That's what I heard. They say it's just for fun. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/the-worlds-weirdest-creature/26m4ml1n

Is this real estate up for grabs? No. Not really.

     OK, so I know it's a climactic catastrophe, and it's going to cause problems, but let's think for a minute about this chunk of ice that's broken off from Greenland's Petermann Glacier. It's going to threaten ships (it was a Greenland iceberg that sank the Titanic, you'll remember). It could menace oil rigs, 14-year-old girls sailing solo around the world, and it could crash into Canada in a year or two. Meanwhile...what? It is a 100-square-mile iceberg, four times the size of Manhattan. It's too big to melt, blow up or to move in any direction other than the direction it wants to move. So here's my thought: ice tourists. Build hotels, motels, restaurants and shopping malls on the ice. Have snowmobile races. Ice boats. Huskies and sleds. Igloos. Fish from the edge of the ice - what could be more locavore? That sounds interesting, you might be thinking, but what about the permits, the licenses, permission from...whom? Who owns this ice? No one, really. It's adrift, just waiting for someone to claim it. A quick-thinking visionary. Someone maybe a little...off. And so, I, Dick Wanner, lowly scribe, do hereby claim this floating piece of the ocean as my domain. And this is your notice, world. Welcome to LouieVille, ye merchants and customers. Build. Sell. Buy. Party. Just don't forget to pay your rent.

Frank Zeager and daughter, Dot, with an old milk pail.

     After half-a-century of collecting farm-related antiques, Frank Zeager is ready to part with his stuff. He and his late wife, Rhoda, put the fruits of their collecting efforts into a small museum on their Middletown, Pa., farm. More than 700 of those items will be sold by Morphy Auctions in Denver, Pa., on August 14 in an auction that has already drawn bids from buyer hopefuls around the world. There are milk bottles, farm toys, tractor seats and a host of other items, mostly farm related. Lancaster Farming correspondent Lou Ann Good talked to Zeager about his collections and his decision to sell the items after his wife died. She wrote a story about it for our current edition, or you can read it online here: http://lancasterfarming.com/node/3099.


     So...you always wanted a big family? http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/sextuplets-3-wreak-havoc-on-today/66vnbs9

HC&S sugarcane field in Hawaii.

     Hawaii sees a sweet future with biofuels.  That's because the feds have turned to Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar for help in developing biofuels that can power the planes and ships operating out of the islands. Some 90 percent of Hawaii's energy needs are met with imported oil. The Navy and the USDA - talk about politics making strange - are cooperating on a project with HC&S to use the company's 35,000 acres of sugarcane fields to test a variety of crops for their biofuel potential. The Navy hopes to supply half its energy needs with biofuels by 2020, and Hawaii is its focal point. There are lots of planes and ships on the islands, and the climate is conducive to growing crops. They'll be testing sugarcane, of course, as well as sweet sorghum, jatropha and other alternatives, like algae. Audrey McAvoy, writinng for the Associated Press, reported that while the technology is promising, HC&S is being challenged by indigenous Hawaiin groups because of its use of Maui's fresh water resources. Also, everybody is trying to figure out what the heck is a jatropha. McAvoy's story can be read here: http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/business/article_85a37dac-7a01-5f1a-bb4a-6e7fe7490ca1.html 

This old stone house on the Patterson farm is still in use.

     Preserving history and paying the bills have come into conflict in Lower Makefield Township, Pa., a posh suburb 25 miles north of Philadelphia. The township father's bought the Colonial-era 177-acre Patterson farm for $7.2 million in 1998, and now its needs some work. According to Teddy Fedorchak, the township manager, the farm has become an expensive liability, and the historical buildings, some of which date back to the days of William Penn, need as much as $500,000 worth of maintenance. The board last month began a process that could result in a five-acre subdivision being carved out of the farm's 177 acres. Donna Doan, a township resident whose family once farmed the land, has mounted a campaign to make her fellow citizens aware of what she sees as a threat to the farm's future. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres looked into the issue and prepared a report for our current issue. Or you can read it on our website, which is here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/node/3106


     So you're looking for another source of farm income? I think this guy is serious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWb_amK812E

Chinese farmers need to grow more corn, but are wary of
mechanization because it would eliminate farm jobs. 

     Chinese farmers can't grow enough corn to fill the country's growing demand for meat, milk and eggs. Hanver Li, a research specialist who studies Chinese agriculture, told the U.S. Grain Council's annual meeting in Boston that the country's domestic production is being overwhelmed by the demand for more corn. He predicted that imports would climb from 1.7 million tons this year to 15 million tons by 2015. Not only are the Chinese short on the land and water they need to grow corn, there  is a resistance to mechanized equipment because it would take away jobs. Alexa Olesen and Michael J. Crumb, writers for the Associated Press, attended the grain council meeting. You can  read their story here: http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/business/20100806_ap_usfarmershopetosoonsellmorecorntochina.html

Penn State's research farm is a riot of floral color.

    
A festival of color is yours for the asking at Penn State's research farm in Manheim. This year, the farm's flower trials included 1,225 cultivars grown from rooted cuttings that were sent to the site from plant breeders around the world. Come late July, the research staff hold a Flower Trial Research Dy for commercial growers, gardeners and anyone else with an interest in the nursery business. This year, some 280 people attended, but the public is welcome to wander around the gardens. You can wander by yourself until late fall, and self-guided tours are available on request. More information is available at http://trialgardenspsu.com. Among the attendees at this year's field trial show case was Anne Harnish, Lancaster Farming food and family features editor. You can read her report here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/node/3100 
    



Here's a fish I would rather release than catch. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/giant-death-ray/pagafae

AP Photo / Mikhail Metzel

Russian wheat - first came the drought, now comes the fire

     First the wheat dried up, then it burned. Drought and fires have destroyed one-fifth of Russia's wheat crop this year. Russia is the world's third-largest wheat exporter most years, but expects to cut wheat exports this year by some 30 percent. That news has sent wheat prices around the world soaring, but Russian farmers are expected to hold onto the wheat they do harvest in expectation of higher profits. Associated Press writer Nataliya Vasilyeva reported on Monday that uncontrolled wildfires raging through much of western Russia have spread to wheat fields. Pavel Grundinin, director of the Lenin State Farm, talked to a TV reporter on Monday and said that their crop had gone up in smoke the day before they planned to harvest it. December wheat futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange topped $7.00 a bushel earlier today, the highest they've been in more than two years. Growers in the U.S. and other exporting countries should be big gainers. American and European consumers may see a slight increase in the price of bakery products as the result of Russia's woes. People in other parts of the world will be harder hit. In Yemen, for example, the price of bread tracks more closely to the price of flour. You can read about Russia's wheat woes here: http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/business/20100802_ap_badrussianwheatharvestboostsusfarmers.html

Brian, left, and Russ Cotner.

     Buying local - 3 million bushels at a time. The locavore movement resonates a little more loudly in Danville, Pa., where the Cotner family operates a soybean buying-processing-marketing facility that uses beans grown mostly on nearby Susquehanna River Valley farms. Their Boyd Station facility has 20 employees working three shifts six days a week year-round, and they really do go through a lot of soybeans. Don Cotner and three Cotner offspring - Brian, Shannon and Russ - started the operation in 2002 and have been rolling ever since. Lancaster Farming correspondent Lisa Z. Leighton called on the Cotners to talk about their buy-local-sell-local philosophy and prepared a report for our current edition. You can also read it on our website: http://lancasterfarming.com/node/3088. The Boyd Station website is here: http://boydstation.com/.

     Helping Joey out down under. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/will-you-hold-my-joey/26id1ceq

Fertilized salmon eggs.

     Next on your dinnerplate - GM salmon. A company named AquaBounty says it is nearing FDA approval for a genetically re-engineered version of the Atlantic salmon. Although altered genes have been part of the American diet for decades - particularly in corn and soybeans - no such animals have so far been approved for human consumption. Writing for the McClatchy news organization, reporter Les Blumenthal wrote yesterday that AquaBounty plans to sell only fish eggs, and that each egg would produce a sterile female. These fish would be raised in net-pens, would get about as big as unaltered salmon, and would grow to market weight in about 18 months, rather than the 18 months it takes to raise a regular salmon. Salmon growers would have a huge incentive to buy the eggs, but naysayers rebel at the introduction of yet another genetically modified organism into the world's food supply. To read more about the issue, check out Blumenthal's story here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/11/97277/fda-nears-approval-of-genetically.html#storylink=misearch

Beth Gugino talks veggies.

     Sunny days and high temps put a clamp on crop diseases this summer, but growers need to stay vigilant according to Penn State plant pathologist Beth Gugino. She made her remarks at a twilight meeting last week at the Kutztown Produce Auction. Bugs are bigger problem this year, she told her listeners, and the right kind of fleeting weather conditions can spark an outbreak of many crop diseases. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres travelled to the meeting and prepared a report which you can read in our current edition. Or you can read it here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/node/3087 


     This could give you nightmares: http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/headbangin-parrot/1jrmoh8yx