Give Food Waste a RED Card

Food waste is an insidious problem. 

It is not something many think about yet the data is staggering, and in westernised economies as much as 50% of food is wasted, based on losses from production through to food thrown out after use.

The UN has been developing a major effort about the problem, and help is coming from an unusual source.

One of Brazil's most popular soccer teams has joined the program with a slogan - "Give Food Waste a RED card".  Clever marketing!

Particularly so with the World Cup in Brazil next year [2014] and the Olympics in 2016.

Read more about the program here.
 http://www.environmental-expert.com//news/brazils-biggest-football-team-gives-food-waste-the-red-card-388477?utm_source=News_Waste_Recycling_15082013&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=feattextlink

Brazil - Compatriot of North Australia?

A recent article on the ABC web site about Brazil opens up some ideas about synergies between northern Australia and Brazil.


products of Brazil

The article is here - http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4768336.html .

Climatically, much of Northern Australia and Brazil are similar, especially the northern parts of Brazil, and the more southern area are maybe more similar to SE Queensland, as broad generalisations. 

Brazil agriculture

It is not without some strong parallels, that the Embraer aircraft of Brazil are well represented in commercial RPT fleets across north Australia, with Air North a significant operator of the aircraft - they are operationally designed to better suit tropical operational areas, and operate in remote and less technologically able areas; they are good aircraft.

The Brazilian mining giants including Vale are rapidly digging iron ore holes in Brazil, along with some in Australia, and looking at other mineral operations as well.  They are major competitors to Australian companies such as BHP Billiton and Rio, as well as Xstrata [ now Glencore] in international markets as well as emerging mining countries, eg Africa.

Both Australia and Brazil, are sized similarly, with large parts of the areas in the tropics.  Brazil is certainly a major cattle producer, even if less proportionally is exported than Australia, and disease issues also restrict options for export.  It would be a worry for Australian beef exports, boxed or live, if Brazil [as well as Argentina] ever got their act together and that region emerged as a serious, long term competitor.  They might in relation to China, still.

Australia's abattoirs have significant involvement by JBS, the Brazilian company that is probably the wold's biggest meat processing business.

There is a huge agribusiness system operating in Brazil, and Nufarm [ Australia's home grown agrochemical and seed company] is operating widely in Brazil.  It is likely that the r and D coming from Brazil in relation to variety development [ peanut,soybean, corn, sorghum etc],  seed technology may be applicable in Australia, or at least adaptable, and home grown technology including precision agriculture and controlled traffic systems are certainly of widening interest in Brazil and Argentina.

Socially the Brazilian economy is less endowed with support systems such as operate in Australia - with our social support, welfare and medical [ Medicare system] good examples where the Australian people are much better supported.

Should Australia, and north Australia especially, be seeking to improve and develop major interaction with Brazil?  Surely knowing much more about a competitor is useful.  It is true some activity is occurring, but increasing the tempo of those interactions might be considered a very smart option.

Updated Reports Seem to Confirm Mad Cow Disease [ BSE] in Brazil

A convoluted story some 2 years in gestation it seems, yet recent reports from a number of sources would seem to confirm that Brazil has some BSE in the beef herd.

Recently a number of SE Asian and Middle East countries have essentially banned further imports of Brazilian beef, and more countries seem to be joining the list.

A bit of a disaster for Brazil with suspected cattle in Parana state, in the rich agricultural areas of the SW of Brazil.

There are numerous media reports, many from December 2012 onwards when first indications of confirmation seems to have reached the media.  A lot more since then.

What might this mean for both Australia and the US in relation to Asian markets?

A relevant media release is here -
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/12/boys-from-brazil-kept-mad-cow-secret-for-two-years/

and here -
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/01/three-more-countries-place-restrictions-on-brazilian-beef-for-bse-concerns/

http://beefmagazine.com/foreign-trade/world-s-response-brazilian-bse-case-measured?page=1

This story is evolving steadily, with more information likely over coming weeks.  The next report is from OIE, and is less alarmist, but I am sure that many countries will still close off beef from Brazil.

http://www.oie.int/for-the-media/press-releases/detail/article/bovine-spongiform-encephalopathy-bse-case-in-brazil-frequently-asked-questions-and-answers/

Brazil is hoping the next meeting of OIE will clarify their status - hopefully as low risk.  But markets are funny at times, with customers maybe preferring non Brazilian beef........no matter what.  Perception is an odd characteristic. 

The Politics of Food [and Agriculture]

A recent article that was reproduced in The Australian Financial Review in the Review section last Friday [ November 14] makes for interesting reading for anyone involved with agriculture and food production.

It was written by an eminent professor of economics at Oxford, so one could expect a fair bit of credence.

In the article he literally takes apart the spurious arguments over current thinking about food production and modern agriculture, and makes a seriously compelling case to jolt western civilisation out of the current complacency over world food production. Intertwined with this is a demolition of the current false thinking about GM crops, organic production and in which he pushes hard for some serious effort at improving food production in especially Africa. And of course he also berates the false and distorting subsidies given to agriculture in both Europe and the US.

Not too much gets away free.

BUT...........it is an excellent read and he makes some compelling issues.

The original full article is here -
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20081001faessay87605/paul-collier/the-politics-of-hunger.html
and it is definitely worth a read if you are even remotely interested in a role for modern agriculture.

As he sees it, agriculture in a number of countries is the industry to be in. Being an agricultural scientist, I would agree.

Glomalin - Not Heard of it Then Take Note - THE Soil Carbon Fixer

A soil constituent known as glomalin provides a secure vault for the world's soil carbon. That’s according to Kristine Nichols, a microbiologist at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory in North Dakota, USA.

Glomalin is a sticky substance secreted by threadlike fungal structures called hyphae that funnel nutrients and water to plant roots. Glomalin acts like little globs of chewing gum on strings or strands of plant roots and the fungal hyphae. Into this sticky “string bag” fall the sand, silt and clay particles that make up soil, along with plant debris and other carbon-containing organic matter. The sand, silt and clay stick to the glomalin, starting aggregate formation, a major step in soil creation.

On the surface of soil aggregates, glomalin forms a lattice-like waxy coating to keep water from flowing rapidly into the aggregate and washing away everything, including the carbon. As the builder of the formation “bag” for soil, glomalin is vital globally to soil building, productivity and sustainability, as well as to carbon storage.
Nichols uses glomalin measurements to gauge which farming or rangeland practices work best for storing carbon. Since glomalin levels can reflect how much carbon each practice is storing, they could be used in conjunction with carbon credit trading programs.

In studies on cropland, Nichols has found that both tilling and leaving land idle--as is common in arid regions--lower glomalin levels by destroying living hyphal fungal networks. The networks need live roots and do better in undisturbed soil.

When glomalin binds with iron or other heavy metals, it can keep carbon from decomposing for up to 100 years.
Even without heavy metals, glomalin stores carbon in the inner recesses of soil particles where only slow-acting microbes live.

This carbon in organic matter is also saved, like a slow-release fertilizer, for later use by plants and hyphae.

Glomalin is one of the factors that help build soil carbon stores. Othes include biochar or agrichar, another form of macro carbon materials, said to be the underlying factor aiding high productivity of terra preta soils in Brazil.

Terra Preta soils - can the NT reach this level of improved soil carbon

Terra Preta: Black is the New Green

Carbon sequestration faces some major hurdles. Technical geosequestration methods could pump large amounts of CO2 deep underground but are still under development. On the other hand, natural methods that store carbon in living ecosystems, such as trees, may be possible in the short term but require huge swathes of land and are only as stable the ecosystems themselves. An ideal solution, however, would combine the quick fix of biological methods with the absolute potential of technical ones. Terra preta [sometimes seen as terra petra] may do just that, as a recent article in the journal Nature reveals. Soil sequestration of carbon has many proponents, incluidng a number of very experienced and knowledgeable scientists, in numerous countries. Australia has been slow to solidly examine this option, yet our soils - some of the oldest and most depleted on planet earth, could really get a kick start with higher soil carbon levels.

Amazonian Dark Earth, or "terra preta do indio", has mystified science for the last hundred years. Three times richer in nitrogen and phosphorous, and twenty times the carbon of normal soils, terra preta is the legacy of ancient Amazonians who predate Western civilization. Scientists who long debated the capacity of 'savages' to transform the virgin rainforest now generally agree that indigenous people transformed large regions of the Amazon into amazingly fertile black earth. The Amazonians' techniques remain an enigma but are believed to have used slash-and-smoulder to lock half of the carbon in burnt vegetation into a stable form of biochar instead of releasing the bulk of it into the atmosphere like typical slash-and-burn practices.

The difference between terra preta and ordinary soils is immense. A hectare of metre deep terra preta can contain 250 tonnes of carbon, as opposed to 100 tonnes in unimproved soils from similar parent material, according to Bruno Glaser, of the University of Bayreuth, Germany. To understand what this means, the difference in the carbon between these soils matches all of the vegetation on top of them. Furthermore, there is no clear limit to just how much biochar can be added to the soil.

Claims for biochar's capacity to capture carbon sound almost audacious. Johannes Lehmann, soil scientist and author of Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management, believes that a strategy combining biochar with biofuels could ultimately offset 9.5 billion tons of carbon per year-an amount equal to the total current fossil fuel emissions!

Indeed, there is profit to be made in this black earth, for if green is the new black, then black could be the new green. Biofuels are touted as 'carbon neutral', but biofuels combined with biochar [ now generally referred to as agrichar] together promise to be 'carbon negative'. There are a number of competing technologies and some have fuel oil as a potential product, with agrichar the byproduct.

One technology - the Eprida technology uses agricultural waste biomass to produce hydrogen-rich bio-fuels and a new restorative high-carbon fertilizer (ECOSS) . Trials in tropical or depleted soils with ECOSS fertilizer sustainably improves soil fertility, water holding and plant yield far beyond what is possible with nitrogen fertilizers alone. The hydrogen produced from biomass can be used to make ethanol, or a Fischer-Troupsch gas-to-liquids diesel (BTL diesel), as well as the ammonia used to enrich the carbon to make ECOSS fertilizer. Ecocarbons from Australia have another system, with Dynamotive Energy Systems of Canada also in the mix.

Terra preta's full beauty appears in this closed loop. Unlike traditional sequestration rates that follow diminishing marginal returns-aquifers fill up, forests mature-practices based on terra preta see increasing returns. Terra preta doubles or even triples crop yields. More growth means more terra preta, begetting a virtuous cycle. While a global rollout of terra preta is still a long way off, it heralds yet another transformation of waste into resources.

Major Innovation Excellence Award for Northern Beef Industry

The northern beef cattle industry is a major industry and income generator in tropical Australia, with pastoral activities the dominant land use across the region. Most of this beef is exported, some as live cattle, and the industry faces significant challenges from low cost producer countries [ including some from S America] in coming years. It will need to boost productivity to meet these issues and retain the excellent profile as a deliverer of excellent quality beef at a market leading price.........and it is generally an industry with very low to zero chemical input.

A groundbreaking new approach to boosting on-farm productivity and profitability that will meet this challenge, and which involves beef producers and pastoral companies from across northern Australia has been recognised with a national Excellence in Innovation award.

"Beef Profit Partnerships", initiated by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries and then further developed by Australia's largest integrated beef research program, the Beef Co-operative Research Centre (CRC) has been recognised with a Co-operative Research Centre Association (CRCA) Excellence in Innovation Award. The program is already operational across much of the major pastoral zone in the north.

Beef producer, Phil Chalmers, a Beef Profit Partnership participant accepted the award on behalf of the Beef CRC. Mr Chalmers anticipates his involvement in a Beef Profit Partnership will boost his on farm productivity by 20 per cent and double his farm income.

Beef Profit Partnerships use an approach called "Continuous Improvement and Innovation" which has been tailored to fast track the uptake of new technology for the thousands of beef businesses across Australian and New Zealand.

Forecast to improve beef business profits by at least five per cent in just two years, Beef CRC chief executive officer, Dr Heather Burrow, said the award officially recognised the Beef CRC's forward thinking in addressing the uptake of technology by beef industry end-users. "With so many new beef technologies in the pipeline, we need to make sure industry is ready and willing to implement these technologies which we predict will dramatically change the way producers and suppliers do global business in the future," Dr Burrow said. "With the help of extension staff from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, along with Meat and Livestock Australia and Meat and Wool New Zealand, Beef CRC Beef Profit Partnerships will bridge the research-industry gap by bringing researchers and producers together," Dr Burrow said.

"Beef Profit Partnerships will consist of cattle producers, feedlotters, processors working with Beef CRC extension specialists using their own beef businesses to measure, monitor and evaluate current practices and set new goals and objectives to improve profitability. "This approach will deliver clear communication up and down the beef supply chain, while at the same time improving business performance."

More than 40 Beef Profit Partnerships have been established to date and consist of more than 500 cattle producers, the major northern Australian pastoral companies and feedlotters and meat processors from throughout Australia. Plans are underway to extend to New Zealand in coming months.

In Queensland, Beef Profit Partnerships will be established with all major Northern pastoral companies as well as in more central regions of Bajool, Biloela and the Burdekin and Charters Towers regions. There are existing partnershps in most of the major Northern Territory beef production areas.

Beef Profit Partnerships will start soon in Moura, Mackenzie River and Nebo and across Southern Queensland. A Beef Supply Chain Partnership has also been established in conjunction with a Queensland based beef processor and exporter.

[ based on Beef CRC media release]

Watch out for beef from South America

South America's beef challenge escalates By VERNON GRAHAM - Australia, Tuesday, 13 March 2007

Brazil, the world's leading beef exporter, and neighbouring Argentina will emerge as major competitors in the lucrative Japanese and South Korean markets within a decade.That was the thrust of a chilling message delivered to last week's Outlook Conference in Canberra by Uruguayan meat industry chief and former Agriculture Minister, Roberto Vazquez Platero.

He told an audience that included Meat and Livestock Australia chairman, Don Heatley, that Brazil, in particular, was gearing up its beef industry to first gain full access to the US market which would then open a path to high-value Asian destinations. He said the five major South American beef exporters - Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile - grabbed 45pc of the world beef export market last year and their share would soon increase to more than 50pc.In contrast, Australia's share was static at about 20pc. He said the five countries had a total herd of 280 million (including Brazil's 200m) which dwarfed Australia's 28m. Brazil's beef production had rapidly climbed to nine million tonnes and was poised to reach 13 million tonnes during the next 10 years. This would make it the world's largest beef producer ahead of the US. Mr Platero said Brazil's beef exports were likely to reach three million tonnes during the next decade, which would include significant shipments to the key Australian markets of Japan, the US and South Korea. He said the South Americans were getting on top of Foot and Mouth Disease which had excluded them from the best export markets for some years. Argentina was also likely to reverse policies that virtually stopped exports in favour of domestic consumers.

These policies have reduced average steer prices to a paltry US76 cents per kilogram liveweight compared with $1.35 in Australia and $1.87 in the US. Argentina has the potential to export up to 2.5m tonnes of high-quality beef a year. At least Australia and South America will be fighting over a larger beef export pie. Mr Platero predicted world consumption would grow by 24 million tonnes by 2020 from the present level of about 60m tonnes. Most of the increased demand would come from cashed-up consumers in developing countries. MLA chief, Don Heatley, said Australia was ready to compete vigourously to protect its crucial export markets.

SOURCE: Extract from report in The Land, NSW, March 8.

Northern Australia needs to rapidly and cogently develop and improve links with these powerhouse agricultural countries of South America. Brazil especially, with great beef herds, a vibrant agricultural sector producing soybean, cotton and most major warm temperate or tropical crops could offer much to north australia - Senator Heffernan should maybe take note of this with his "develop the north" committee! Genetically, an argument could be made that select areas of South America may even have superior genetics in the beef herds now.

Twenty years ago soybean genetics from Brazil showed great potential in the Top End region, but before their potential was realised, the demise of the ADMA project scheme in the NT stopped further research. While currently being reassessed with newer genotypes, it takes time for the material to be grown and developed to a necessary volume to be tried at a realistic scale. Lets get it right.......or we will not have our markets in future - even our regional markets, as these South American countries rapidly develop.