Tag: agro

LORD Nicholas Stern, author of an influential 2006 report on the economics of climate change for the United Kingdom, has advocated vegetarianism as a way of tackling climate change. "Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases,” The Times of London reported Lord Stern as saying “It puts enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better." The author of the Stern Review, who is not a strict vegetarian himself, believes that the economics of tackling climate change will mean meat prices will rise substantially, forcing people to evolve toward a more vegetarian diet. The United Nations attributes 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions to meat production, including forest destruction for ranching and production of animal feeds. Predictably, UK vegetarians have welcomed Lord Stern’s comments, and UK farmers have in turn been angered. Lord Stern is a former chief economist of the World Bank and now the I G Patel Professor of Economics at the London...

IF the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) goes ahead as planned, a carbon price of $30/t will produce a direct cost of $3000 every year for a family of four. That was the warning from Professor Bob Carter when he addressed a public forum at Bunbury on Monday. Prof Carter, who is an experienced geologist and environmental scientist from James Cook University in Queensland, said the reduction in global temperature would only amount to one thousandth of one degree Celsius by the year 2100, a "pretty poor return on the $270,000 these families will have paid by then". "In other words, the effect will not be measurable, a fitting verdict for a scheme that appears to be deliberately misnamed, just to confuse the public," Prof Carter said. "In the first place, the legislation should refer to carbon dioxide (CO2), not carbon, plus it is blatantly inaccurate to claim that carbon is a pollutant. "Doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere would increase wheat yields by 60...

CSIRO researchers have identified wheat and barley lines resistant to crown rot – a disease that costs Australian wheat and barley farmers $79 million in lost yield every year. Crown rot, which is a chronic problem throughout the Australian wheat belt, is caused by the fungus fusarium. Dr Chunji Liu and his CSIRO Plant Industry team in Brisbane are using sophisticated screening methods to scan more than 2400 wheat lines and 1000 barley lines from around the world to find the ones resistant the fungal disease. "The wheat and barley lines showing resistance to crown rot are now being used in pre-breeding programs to incorporate the resistance into adapted varieties for delivery to the wheat breeding companies," Dr Liu said. Crown rot infects many grasses and weeds found in wheat growing regions. However, minimum till cropping encourages fusarium which survives in cereal stubbles. Minimum till cropping minimises soil disturbance and retains plant stubble from previous crops in order to promote soil health and limit erosion. This means...

A growing global appetite for agricultural assets is revolutionising farming in Australia and spawning new investment models that depart from the traditional family-run farm. The Australian Financial Review reports that even as the most talked about model for city investors to take a stake in agriculture - through managed investment schemes - is under challenge after high-profile collapses, new alternatives are emerging. NFF president David Crombie told AFR that "there's a lot of interest at the moment from funds from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, the United States. They're all looking at Australian agriculture." A partner at business advisory firm PKF, John Kelly, said this interest was motivated by the opportunities for long-term capital growth, the sense that global food security concerns supported a positive future for farming and that Australia was a stable investment environment. "On the one hand, you've got capital circulating around looking to land on a farm. Then on the other hand, you've got a farmer who may need some...

Author: GREGOR HEARD IT’S BEEN a tough few months for grain prices, but the last two weeks have seen a rebound from Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) December 09 futures contract lows. Futures had slipped by early October to US456 cents a bushel, but have risen sharply to US520c/bushel this week. This has resulted a mild rebound in Australian contract prices, although the sky-high Aussie dollar has absorbed much of the CBOT rise. Nominally, the spike is due to weather concerns in the US. “The weather hasn’t been great in the US, and the production estimates have come off from that real top-end scenario,” said Australian Crop Forecasters’ managing director Ron Storey. “There’s also a bit of an issue with the winter red wheat plant in southern areas through the Mississippi Delta, due to wet conditions.” He said the wet, combined with pricing, has steered southern US growers out of cereals and back into soybeans. AWB acquisitions manager, Jon White, said his company’s take on the situation...