Three Vietnamese scientists included in Asia’s top researchers list |
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Wednesday, 2020-06-17 16:01:55
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 Three Vietnamese scientists: Tran Thi Hong Hanh, Ho Thi Thanh Van and Pham Thi Thu Ha (from left to right)
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NDO - Three Vietnamese scientists, all female, have made it into the list
of Asia’s most outstanding researchers in 2019 as compiled by the
Singapore-based Asian Scientist magazine. |
|
They are Ho Thi Thanh Van at the Ho Chi Minh University of Natural
Resources and Environment, Tran Thi Hong Hanh at the Vietnam Academy for
Science and Technology and Pham Thi Thu Ha at Ton Duc Thang University. All three received the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science National Fellowship in 2019 for their research, the magazine noted. According to Asian Scientist, Van is working in the field of material science and is being honoured for synthesising novel nanomaterials to enhance the efficiency of fuel cells. Hanh is well known for her research on using finger chromatography to assess the quality of medicinal herbs sold commercially in Vietnam, while Ha is noted for using molecular markers to develop high-yielding salt-tolerant rice varieties in adversely affected areas along the Mekong Delta. This is the fifth time that Asian Scientist has compiled a list of Asia’s top researchers to celebrate the success of the region’s best and brightest, highlighting their achievements across a range of scientific disciplines. In the first list announced in 2016, Vietnam had two researchers included, namely Tran Lien Ha Phuong from the National University of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City and Dang Thi Oanh from the University of Thai Nguyen. |
Scrap planned rice importation, DA urged
2020 PLC/ARC Sign Up
Deadline June 30
WASHINGTON, DC -- Rice and other covered commodity
producers have until Tuesday, June 30, to enroll in the Price Loss Coverage
(PLC) or Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) programs for the 2020 crop year.
Producers must enroll for 2020 even if they have already
enrolled for 2019.
According to USDA, producers who do not complete enrollment by close of business local time on Tuesday, June 30, will not be enrolled in ARC or PLC for the 2020 crop year and will be ineligible to receive a payment should one trigger for an eligible crop.
"The 2018 Farm Bill reauthorized these crucial farm safety net programs, which included some modest improvements, and for that we are very thankful," said Nicole Montna Van Vleck, a California rice farmer and chair of the USA Rice Farmers. "We strongly encourage rice producers who have yet to enroll to contact their Farm Service Agency office earlier rather than later given the varying office situations due to the coronavirus pandemic."
Contact your Farm Service Agency office at your local USDA Service Center for more information.
According to USDA, producers who do not complete enrollment by close of business local time on Tuesday, June 30, will not be enrolled in ARC or PLC for the 2020 crop year and will be ineligible to receive a payment should one trigger for an eligible crop.
"The 2018 Farm Bill reauthorized these crucial farm safety net programs, which included some modest improvements, and for that we are very thankful," said Nicole Montna Van Vleck, a California rice farmer and chair of the USA Rice Farmers. "We strongly encourage rice producers who have yet to enroll to contact their Farm Service Agency office earlier rather than later given the varying office situations due to the coronavirus pandemic."
Contact your Farm Service Agency office at your local USDA Service Center for more information.
June 17, 2020
Healthier food can contain more contaminants – but there's a simple way to stay safe
Credit: Glynsimages2013
A recent
study found that brown and organic rice sold in the UK tends to
contain significantly more arsenic than white inorganic varieties that are
often considered less healthy. Arsenic is found in many foods but can be especially
concentrated in rice, particularly in the husk, which is removed to
produce white rice but retained in brown rice. Consuming too much arsenic over a long period is thought to be dangerous because it can cause cancer. Yet brown rice is usually considered healthier than white because of the extra fibre and vitamins it contains. Organic rice is less likely to have been exposed to pesticides.
Ascertaining exactly what a healthy diet consists of can be full of these apparent paradoxes. Should you eat brown rice for the fibre or white rice for the lower arsenic levels? The answer shows the potential difficulties of using studies like the one cited above to guide dietary choices and the need to fully understand the complexities of nutrition and dietary choices.
Arsenic in rice
For adults, the reality is that even eating one kilogram of cooked brown rice a day is unlikely to cause the consumption of too much arsenic. Also because brown rice is a wholegrain, eating it will also supply you with more fibre (a nutrient very few UK adults reach the recommended 30g per day of), as well as wide range of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids.
Children under five are more at risk of consuming too much arsenic from rice but a varied diet and avoiding rice drinks should mitigate this. You can also reduce arsenic in rice by up to 80% by rinsing it and cooking it in copious amounts of water.
Mercury in fish
Some varieties of fish can also contain significant amounts of mercury, specifically methylmercury, which can be toxic to humans, causing kidney damage and affecting foetal and infant brain development. Levels of methylmercury can be particularly high in fish that eat other fish, such as shark, swordfish, marlin and tuna.
The European Food Safety Authority says up to 1.3 micrograms of methylmercury per kg of bodyweight per week is a safe amount. For a typical 90kg adult that equals 117mcg a week. The amount of methylmercury in a single portion of fish in this category can vary hugely but EU rules mean 1kg should contain no more than 500mcg.
You’d have to eat a lot of tuna to
be harmed by its mercury content. Credit: Mikel Dabbah/Shutterstocks
For the most commonly eaten type of fish in this
category, tinned tuna, a 100g drained tin could contain as much as 50mcg of
methyl mercury. So eating more than two tins a week could theoretically put you
at greater risk. Shark, swordish and marlin tend to contain more mercury so
more caution is advised here, and you should avoid them if
you are pregnant. But most tins of tuna aren't likely to contain the maximum allowed amount of mercury and reports of bodybuilders and other tuna enthusiasts becoming ill with mercury poisoning are rare.
Meanwhile, fish contributes to a healthy Mediterranean-style diet linked to lower chances of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and raised cholesterol. Oily fish (such as sardines, mackerel, salmon, trout or herring) are particularly beneficial in this respect and contain nutrients important for foetal and early infancy brain development. So most adults who eat fish are advised to aim for at least two portions a week including at least one type of oily fish.
Pesticides in vegetable skins
It's well established that the peels and skins of fruit and vegetables are an important source of fibre, helping to maintain digestive health and control blood glucose levels. These outer layers also tend to contain more vitamin C, minerals and other beneficial "phenolic" compounds than the flesh.
But there is also some concern that pesticides used to treat seeds, growing plants or harvested crops can collect in particularly high concentrations in skins, although the actual amounts vary hugely. Some people argue you should peel your fruits and vegetables as a result.
But the actual amounts of pesticide residue that can be found in fruit and veg is limited. The UK government's most recent research on the issue only found samples that exceeded the maximum legal pesticide residue level in a small number of samples in four out of 14 types of fruit and vegetables tested.
The World Health Organization says: "None of the pesticides that are authorised for use on food in international trade today are genotoxic" (damaging to DNA, which can cause mutations or cancer).
Someone with a healthy or high bodyweight and/or a varied diet is very unlikely to be exposed to enough pesticide to breach this level. In contrast, the evidence for the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables including the skins is overwhelming. So it still seems prudent that we eat as much as we can and, where possible and palatable, consume the skins.
These examples underline why the "everything in moderation" we often see in healthy eating guidelines really does seem to be the best approach. The more types of food we eat, the less of each we consume and therefore we can reduce the chance of doing ourselves harm from either too much or too little of something. But knowing what the safe limits are can help answer some of the more difficult questions about what's the best food choice.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-healthier-food-contaminants-simple-safe.html
Milling in the South Pacific islands
FMF Foods Ltd.’s milling complex near the Walu Bay port of
Suva, capital of Fiji, is the oldest and largest in the South Pacific. Photos
by David Mckee.
06.16.2020
By David McKee
The lightly populated islands of the South Pacific cover a vast expanse of
ocean extending several thousand kilometers from Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the
east to Tahiti in the west. Even on the largest island groups of this “Blue
Continent,” almost no cereals are grown. Still, wheat-based foods and rice play
a big role in the diets of the 12 sovereign countries and 10 dependent
territories.Excluding Australia and New Zealand on its sub-tropical and temperate southern periphery, the population of Oceania is just 12.3 million, of which three quarters is PNG. Flour milling companies are found in only four larger countries: PNG, Fiji and New Caledonia with two each and a single small miller in Solomon Islands. Nevertheless, the region is largely self-sufficient in wheat flour production.
There is a smattering of subsistence rice farming and village mills in some countries, but the only commercial- scale milling is in New Caledonia of imported paddy.
Before the arrival of Europeans, easily cultivated taro and breadfruit as well as coconuts were the main sources of carbohydrates while fish and pork provided protein. Other introduced root crops like yams and cassava are now important as well.
In most countries, health indicators like longevity and infant mortality have improved significantly in recent decades, but modern diets and overnutrition pose a major challenge. The 10 countries with the world’s highest rates of obesity are all in the South Seas, ranging from 46% in Samoa to 62% in Nauru, leading to a growing incidence of diabetes and hypertension.
The South Pacific can be divided into three sub-regions that provide a framework for this survey: Melanesia in the east; the Polynesian triangle to the west and south; and Micronesia, much of which is north of the equator.
Melanesia
Thanks to its relatively large population, central geographic position and a pair of strong food companies, Fiji (896,445 people) is the linchpin of milling and trade in wheat foods in the South Pacific.
Fiji’s population is ethnically divided mainly between the indigenous people constituting 57%, officially known as iTaukei, and 37% Indo-Fijians introduced as plantation laborers by the British in the 19th century. The former group is still largely engaged in semi-subsistence farming. Rural families consume much of what they grow and adhere more to the traditional diet of taro, yams and breadfruit, while the latter, who are mostly urban dwellers, consume the largest amounts per capita of imported rice and flour.
Fiji’s annual rice imports, stable at around 40,000 tonnes, make up 80% of use.
Total wheat imports to Fiji in 2019 were 200,000 tonnes, about a one-third increase in a decade. All wheat comes from Australia with bulk vessels routinely discharging part of their cargo at mills in Indonesia and PNG before reaching Fiji.
Atta flour is
a newer product introduced to supermarkets by two Fijian milling companies. Three years ago, FMF followed soon after by Punjas introduced atta flour products to local supermarkets, a marketing success. FMF is publicly traded on the Fiji stock exchange. Total revenues for the year ended June 30, 2019, were Fiji dollars 190 million ($88 million), up slightly from the previous year.
Punjas Group is Fiji’s second, newer milling company. Its plant, supplied by Bühler, is located in Lautoka on the eastern side of the same island, near the main international airport at Nadi. Competition is fierce among the two companies both domestically and in the many Pacific island export markets where they dominate supply of flour and breakfast crackers.
Punjas is a diversified company, with 1,000 employees producing and distributing a wide range of food and household products to its importers and distributors throughout the Pacific.
PNG (8.9 million people) is an outlier from the rest of the South Pacific geographically, demographically and in other ways. Its rapidly growing population and land area is by far the largest. Culturally and linguistically it is one of the world’s most heterogenous nations. Three quarters of the population reside in villages, very often in isolated valleys.
Breakfast crackers, thanks to their long shelf life, are a dietary staple as in most other South Seas countries. However, in PNG the dry, hard biscuits may account for the highest proportion of wheat-based foods.
In 2019, PNG imported 300,000 tonnes of wheat, a 50% increase over 10 years before, according to the USDA, due to growing population and urbanization.
In PNG, whole villages close to cities specialize in bread baking.
Goodman Fielder, a diversified Australia-based food company, operates two flour mills of about 250 tonnes per day capacity in the capital of Port Moresby in the southeast and at Lae on the northern coast. Its PNG company started as Associated Mills in 1975.
Niugini Tablebirds Ltd., PNG’s leading poultry and crocodile meat processor, also has a mill in Lae that makes 3 Roses Flour and animal feed.
Goodman Fielder divested its flour mills in Australia and New Zealand but hung on to them in PNG and in New Caledonia (285,498), a self-governing French territory. Since 2015 Goodman Fielder has been a subsidiary of Wilmar International, Asia’s largest agribusiness company.
Locally owned St. Vincent Group operates the second milling company in New Caledonia, which started up in 1985 and is located outside Noumea, the capital. It imports wheat from Australia and Europe in bulk 20-foot containers holding 25 tonnes each. The company offers the largest assortment of flour of anywhere in the South Pacific, making possible a wide range of baked foods catering to a mostly middle-class population with sophisticated European tastes. Likewise, the company has a feed mill that predates the flour mill, with four lines making pelleted products for several types of livestock as well as shrimp feed. Finally, St. Vincent Group operates a rice mill processing paddy imported from southeast Asia.
Ah Pow Bakery
in Port Vila, the largest bread maker in Vanuatu, produces mainly baguettes and
other French style baked foods reflecting the country’s colonial heritage. Rice, mostly imported, is eaten much more than wheat flour. A law requiring vitamin and mineral fortification of all imported rice was passed in 2018.
Vanuatu (307,145) is the largest country in the South Pacific without a wheat mill. Distribution of flour to a population spread evenly over a large archipelago of at least 80 inhabited islands is an obstacle. Imported breakfast crackers are a staple food. Up until independence in 1980, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides) was jointly administered by the British and French. The influence of the latter is reflected in a strong preference for baguettes, the main output of the largest bread maker, Ah Pow Bakery in Port Vila, the capital. Ah Pow relies mainly on flour imported from Australia and Indonesia.
Polynesia
Samoa (198,414) does not have a flour mill. Rather its major food importers have strong alliances with the two Fijian millers to procure wheat flour for commercial bakeries, mostly attached to large supermarkets, and for retail sales in those stores. Large rectangular loaves of white toast bread are the biggest sellers, but a growing middle class and burgeoning tourism has spurred demand for a greater variety of bread and pastry types. Consumption of instant noodles, 30% palm oil and often eaten dry as a snack, is high. One company produces them locally, but most are imported from China and Southeast Asia. Rice consumption per capita exceeds wheat flour with most rice coming from Australia or China.
The Kingdom of Tonga (105,695) to the south of Samoa has healthy, small-scale commercial agriculture and even exports melons to Samoa and containerloads of taro to Australia and New Zealand, where there are large communities of Pacific Islanders sending home remittances that account for a big part of GDP in several countries.
A. Cowley and
Sons has a semi-automated tunnel oven for toast bread and other products. Several years ago, Cowley started a layer farm at first to provide eggs for his cake bakery. It has become the largest poultry operation on Tonga, with 8,000 hens requiring importation of a few containerloads of poultry feed from New Zealand every month.
Despite its remoteness, French Polynesia (280,908), centered on the largest island Tahiti, is politically integrated with France, in much the same way Hawaii is part of the United States. Government subsidized private flour imports of 6,000 to 7,000 tonnes per year are conducted through a highly regulated tendering process subject to much controversy.
Tuvalu (11,792) is known as the world’s least visited and one of the two smallest (26 square km) countries. The densely inhabited main atoll of Funafuti, with 7,000 people and almost no room for crops, has a single commercial bakery, Mils Fresh, founded by a retired seafarer, Teitimani Simeone, who was seeking something to do “for the rest of his time ashore.” Two employees make a single product — 800-gram loaves of toast bread selling for A$4. There are 30 to 40 Tuvalese households that bake daily buns, rolls, samosa, cakes, pastries and other products for sale in a nearby community bakery shop.
A large number of families keep pigs in stys with magnificent ocean views from a rugged strip of shoreline on the other side of the airport from town. The owners slop them with a mixture of coconut flesh, table scraps and Millmix, composed of bran and screenings imported from Fiji. They tote the slop across the runway in rectangular 5-kg plastic bread cracker pales.
Micronesia
The Marshall Islands (59,190), Kiribati (119,449), Federated States of Micronesia (FSM: 115,023) and Palau (18,094) are collections of mostly far flung atolls, while Nauru (10,824) is just one main island.
Container ship lines from Fiji serve most of them, enabling a reliable supply of breakfast crackers and wheat flour from FMF and Punjas. However, the relative proximity of Micronesia to Northern Hemisphere countries means rice and many processed foods also come from elsewhere. FSM gained its independence from the United States in 1986 but still has a special status thanks to a Compact of Free Association.
For animal feed, rice, wheat flour and many processed foods, FSM mainly depends on shipments from the American mainland on vessels that also serve US territories Guam (168,775) and Northern Mariana Islands (57,559).
David McKee’s grain industry consultancy, Key International LLC, provides market research, feasibility analysis, technical studies and project guidance to companies and organizations. He may be reached at davidmckee59@msn.com.
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News
Iran: Rice Price Rises Dramatically
Published: Tuesday, 16
June 2020
On
June 15, Iran’s state-run media reported that the rice price has skyrocketed in
recent weeks. “Rice, being the main dish for many Iranians, saw prices rise in
the weeks following the holy month of Ramadan.
The price
rise began with imported rice, mainly exported to Iran from the Indian
subcontinent, and continued with domestic rice,” the Eghtesad News
website wrote.
According to the rates announced by the Consumers
and Producers Protection Organization [CCPO], over the past month, the price of
Iranian rice has increased about 15 cents per kilogram and the price of
imported rice, including Pakistani-Indian and Thai rice, increased at least
16.6 cents per kilogram. However, eyewitnesses and field observations from the
markets and rice sales centers in the Iranian capital Tehran say the price
hikes are far higher.
Based on its statistics, the CCPO announced that
about a month ago Pakistan's Basmati rice was sold at an average price of 66
cents per kilogram. However, this type of rice was sold at an average of 70 to
85 cents per kilogram. Meanwhile, the price of a variety of Indian rice has
reached an average of about 45 cents per kilogram.
It is worth noting that the price of domestic rice
has increased by an average of 15 cents per kilogram prior to Iran’s harvest
season. In reality, Iran’s rice productions have been hampered by the price
shock after Ramadan and the increase in the average price of foreign rice.
The CCPO, as one of the authorities involved in
determining and announcing the prices of essential goods, registered the prices
of various types of Iranian rice from $0.85 to $1.30 per kilogram in April.
However, according to the same organization, the price of each kilogram of domestic
rice reached $0.90 to $1.40 per kilogram on the first day of June. Also, on
June 14, the CCPO announced the price of each kilogram of various types of
domestic rice at $0.92 to $1.40 per kilogram.
“Referring to some supply centers of Iranian rice
in Tehran, the price of consumed domestic rice, such as Tarom and all kinds of
domestic rice, is about $1.40 to $1.83 per kilogram. Also, imported rice,
including highly popular brands such as Pakistani rice and Indian rice, can no
longer be found in large stores,” according to a report wired by the Shahrvand
news agency on June 14.
Notably, foreign rice, which has a lower price
than Iranian brands, is welcomed by many in Iran’s lower and middle classes.
However, each kilogram of foreign rice is sold at different prices, ranging
from about $0.66 to $1.10. Of course, only where traces of these rice can still
be found.
Mohammad Reza Kalami, Deputy Minister of
Industry, Mine and Trade, explained the increasing price of rice. “Among 100
essential items, 41 have faced a price hike between one to five percent. For
instance, the price of domestic rice has risen due to the end of the harvest
season and the supply of rice last year, as well as the impact of change in the
foreign exchange rate of imported rice against the price of Iranian rice,” he
said.
Notably, on April 14, in the 2019 budget reported
provided by the Audit chief Adel Azar, more than $4.8 billion of the
$32-billion budget allocated to importing essential goods went missing.
In response to remarks made by Kalami, Abbas
Ghobadi, head of the Market Regulation Headquarters, acknowledged that an
adopted resolution is set to deter future price hikes. “The Foreign Currency
Exchange Committee is tasked to facilitate purchasing rice with the previous
dollar exchange rate,” Ghobadi claimed according to the mentioned resolution.
However, despite these reactions and comments,
there is still no tangible result in the prices of Iranian and foreign rice at
the market.
Read More:
On the other hand, rice sellers point out
systematic corruption and a market based on brokerage. “This price hike should
be sought in techniques of brokers, those who buy a brand of rice at the price
of about $0.45 and go on to sell it to us in the market at a price of $1.15,” a
rice seller said.
“Brokers also raise and lower the price of
Iranian rice at dollar
exchange rate … Currently, shopkeepers’ sales have decreased by more than
50 percent,” he added.
On the other hand, an official in the Agriculture
Ministry attempted to cease the people’s concerns about the rising prices of
rice. “About 2.5 million tons of rice, equivalent to 83 percent of the
country's needs this year, will be provided for,” said Aziz Karimi,
director-general of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Office of Cereals and Basic
Products.
However, besides comments by rice retailers and
determining the role of brokers in determining the price of rice, it seems that
the systematic mafia that dominates all of Iran’s industrial and agricultural
sectors are depriving the Iranian people from basic necessities. In this
respect, in recent months the regime has silently increased the price of bread
and electricity.
Previously, the administration Iranian regime President Hassan Rouhani
announced a gasoline price hikes off in November 2019, all under the
supervision of the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
In response to the gas price hikes,
hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens flooded the streets in protests.
However, the regime launched a brutal crackdown against empty-handed
protesters. As a result, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), along with the state
security forces, killed at least 1,500
demonstrators with snipers, heavy machine guns, armored vehicles, and
helicopters. The fate of over 12,000 detainees remains still unclear.
In
this regard, the Iranian regime faces a massive budget deficit and is
scrambling to compensate for it at the expense of ordinary people. Meanwhile,
it is possible that public ire will ignite at any moment. Officials are frequently
warning about the next round of protests. However,
regime authorities have been stuck in a tough dilemma, which will definitely be
the end to their detriment.
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Milling in the South Pacific islands
06.16.2020
By David McKee
The lightly populated islands of the
South Pacific cover a vast expanse of ocean extending several thousand
kilometers from Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the east to Tahiti in the west. Even
on the largest island groups of this “Blue Continent,” almost no cereals are
grown. Still, wheat-based foods and rice play a big role in the diets of the 12
sovereign countries and 10 dependent territories.
Excluding Australia and New Zealand on its sub-tropical and temperate
southern periphery, the population of Oceania is just 12.3 million, of which
three quarters is PNG. Flour milling companies are found in only four larger
countries: PNG, Fiji and New Caledonia with two each and a single small miller
in Solomon Islands. Nevertheless, the region is largely self-sufficient in
wheat flour production.There is a smattering of subsistence rice farming and village mills in some countries, but the only commercial- scale milling is in New Caledonia of imported paddy.
Before the arrival of Europeans, easily cultivated taro and breadfruit as well as coconuts were the main sources of carbohydrates while fish and pork provided protein. Other introduced root crops like yams and cassava are now important as well.
In most countries, health indicators like longevity and infant mortality have improved significantly in recent decades, but modern diets and overnutrition pose a major challenge. The 10 countries with the world’s highest rates of obesity are all in the South Seas, ranging from 46% in Samoa to 62% in Nauru, leading to a growing incidence of diabetes and hypertension.
The South Pacific can be divided into three sub-regions that provide a framework for this survey: Melanesia in the east; the Polynesian triangle to the west and south; and Micronesia, much of which is north of the equator.
Melanesia
Thanks to its relatively large population, central geographic position and a pair of strong food companies, Fiji (896,445 people) is the linchpin of milling and trade in wheat foods in the South Pacific.
Fiji’s population is ethnically divided mainly between the indigenous people constituting 57%, officially known as iTaukei, and 37% Indo-Fijians introduced as plantation laborers by the British in the 19th century. The former group is still largely engaged in semi-subsistence farming. Rural families consume much of what they grow and adhere more to the traditional diet of taro, yams and breadfruit, while the latter, who are mostly urban dwellers, consume the largest amounts per capita of imported rice and flour.
Fiji’s annual rice imports, stable at around 40,000 tonnes, make up 80% of use.
Total wheat imports to Fiji in 2019 were 200,000 tonnes, about a one-third increase in a decade. All wheat comes from Australia with bulk vessels routinely discharging part of their cargo at mills in Indonesia and PNG before reaching Fiji.
Atta flour is
a newer product introduced to supermarkets by two Fijian milling companies.
Three years ago, FMF followed soon after by Punjas introduced atta flour products to local supermarkets, a marketing success. FMF is publicly traded on the Fiji stock exchange. Total revenues for the year ended June 30, 2019, were Fiji dollars 190 million ($88 million), up slightly from the previous year.
Punjas Group is Fiji’s second, newer milling company. Its plant, supplied by Bühler, is located in Lautoka on the eastern side of the same island, near the main international airport at Nadi. Competition is fierce among the two companies both domestically and in the many Pacific island export markets where they dominate supply of flour and breakfast crackers.
Punjas is a diversified company, with 1,000 employees producing and distributing a wide range of food and household products to its importers and distributors throughout the Pacific.
PNG (8.9 million people) is an outlier from the rest of the South Pacific geographically, demographically and in other ways. Its rapidly growing population and land area is by far the largest. Culturally and linguistically it is one of the world’s most heterogenous nations. Three quarters of the population reside in villages, very often in isolated valleys.
Breakfast crackers, thanks to their long shelf life, are a dietary staple as in most other South Seas countries. However, in PNG the dry, hard biscuits may account for the highest proportion of wheat-based foods.
In 2019, PNG imported 300,000 tonnes of wheat, a 50% increase over 10 years before, according to the USDA, due to growing population and urbanization.
In PNG, whole villages close to cities specialize in bread baking.
Goodman Fielder, a diversified Australia-based food company, operates two flour mills of about 250 tonnes per day capacity in the capital of Port Moresby in the southeast and at Lae on the northern coast. Its PNG company started as Associated Mills in 1975.
Niugini Tablebirds Ltd., PNG’s leading poultry and crocodile meat processor, also has a mill in Lae that makes 3 Roses Flour and animal feed.
Goodman Fielder divested its flour mills in Australia and New Zealand but hung on to them in PNG and in New Caledonia (285,498), a self-governing French territory. Since 2015 Goodman Fielder has been a subsidiary of Wilmar International, Asia’s largest agribusiness company.
Locally owned St. Vincent Group operates the second milling company in New Caledonia, which started up in 1985 and is located outside Noumea, the capital. It imports wheat from Australia and Europe in bulk 20-foot containers holding 25 tonnes each. The company offers the largest assortment of flour of anywhere in the South Pacific, making possible a wide range of baked foods catering to a mostly middle-class population with sophisticated European tastes. Likewise, the company has a feed mill that predates the flour mill, with four lines making pelleted products for several types of livestock as well as shrimp feed. Finally, St. Vincent Group operates a rice mill processing paddy imported from southeast Asia.
Ah Pow Bakery
in Port Vila, the largest bread maker in Vanuatu, produces mainly baguettes and
other French style baked foods reflecting the country’s colonial heritage.
Rice, mostly imported, is eaten much more than wheat flour. A law requiring vitamin and mineral fortification of all imported rice was passed in 2018.
Vanuatu (307,145) is the largest country in the South Pacific without a wheat mill. Distribution of flour to a population spread evenly over a large archipelago of at least 80 inhabited islands is an obstacle. Imported breakfast crackers are a staple food. Up until independence in 1980, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides) was jointly administered by the British and French. The influence of the latter is reflected in a strong preference for baguettes, the main output of the largest bread maker, Ah Pow Bakery in Port Vila, the capital. Ah Pow relies mainly on flour imported from Australia and Indonesia.
Polynesia
Samoa (198,414) does not have a flour mill. Rather its major food importers have strong alliances with the two Fijian millers to procure wheat flour for commercial bakeries, mostly attached to large supermarkets, and for retail sales in those stores. Large rectangular loaves of white toast bread are the biggest sellers, but a growing middle class and burgeoning tourism has spurred demand for a greater variety of bread and pastry types. Consumption of instant noodles, 30% palm oil and often eaten dry as a snack, is high. One company produces them locally, but most are imported from China and Southeast Asia. Rice consumption per capita exceeds wheat flour with most rice coming from Australia or China.
The Kingdom of Tonga (105,695) to the south of Samoa has healthy, small-scale commercial agriculture and even exports melons to Samoa and containerloads of taro to Australia and New Zealand, where there are large communities of Pacific Islanders sending home remittances that account for a big part of GDP in several countries.
A. Cowley and
Sons has a semi-automated tunnel oven for toast bread and other products.
Several years ago, Cowley started a layer farm at first to provide eggs for his cake bakery. It has become the largest poultry operation on Tonga, with 8,000 hens requiring importation of a few containerloads of poultry feed from New Zealand every month.
Despite its remoteness, French Polynesia (280,908), centered on the largest island Tahiti, is politically integrated with France, in much the same way Hawaii is part of the United States. Government subsidized private flour imports of 6,000 to 7,000 tonnes per year are conducted through a highly regulated tendering process subject to much controversy.
Tuvalu (11,792) is known as the world’s least visited and one of the two smallest (26 square km) countries. The densely inhabited main atoll of Funafuti, with 7,000 people and almost no room for crops, has a single commercial bakery, Mils Fresh, founded by a retired seafarer, Teitimani Simeone, who was seeking something to do “for the rest of his time ashore.” Two employees make a single product — 800-gram loaves of toast bread selling for A$4. There are 30 to 40 Tuvalese households that bake daily buns, rolls, samosa, cakes, pastries and other products for sale in a nearby community bakery shop.
A large number of families keep pigs in stys with magnificent ocean views from a rugged strip of shoreline on the other side of the airport from town. The owners slop them with a mixture of coconut flesh, table scraps and Millmix, composed of bran and screenings imported from Fiji. They tote the slop across the runway in rectangular 5-kg plastic bread cracker pales.
Micronesia
The Marshall Islands (59,190), Kiribati (119,449), Federated States of Micronesia (FSM: 115,023) and Palau (18,094) are collections of mostly far flung atolls, while Nauru (10,824) is just one main island.
Container ship lines from Fiji serve most of them, enabling a reliable supply of breakfast crackers and wheat flour from FMF and Punjas. However, the relative proximity of Micronesia to Northern Hemisphere countries means rice and many processed foods also come from elsewhere. FSM gained its independence from the United States in 1986 but still has a special status thanks to a Compact of Free Association.
For animal feed, rice, wheat flour and many processed foods, FSM mainly depends on shipments from the American mainland on vessels that also serve US territories Guam (168,775) and Northern Mariana Islands (57,559).
David McKee’s grain industry consultancy, Key International LLC, provides market research, feasibility analysis, technical studies and project guidance to companies and organizations. He may be reached at davidmckee59@msn.com.
https://www.world-grain.com/articles/13830-milling-in-the-south-pacific-islands
PITC asked to abandon planned G2G importation of 300,000 MT of rice
Published June 17, 2020, 10:00 PM
By Madelaine B. MiraflorAs it faces financial and legal issues for the overseas purchase of 300,000 metric tons (MT) of rice, the Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC) was told to just abandon the controversial government-to-government (G2G) importation plan.
In a statement, the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) advised the PITC and the Department of Agriculture (DA), the government agency that proposed the said importation, to not pursue such a plan even if the former already conducted the bidding.
Right now, the PITC is having a hard time withdrawing from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) the P7.45 billion that is needed to bankroll the importation. As a result, the PITC decided to withhold the award of winning bids.
The DBM said it still needs a formal instruction from President Rodrigo Duterte himself before it can release the funds.
To recall, FFF already questioned before the legality of PITC’s planned importation, citing the Rule 6.4 of the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL).
Such section indicates that for PITC to be able to proceed with the rice importation, there should be an official pronouncement of a rice shortage in the country as well as formal authorization of the President allowing Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and PITC to move forward with such a plan.
“In the event of rice supply shortage, the President may direct the Secretary of Trade and Industry and the Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC) to expeditiously participate in the rice industry thru contracts with private traders that would purchase the needed rice supplies from domestic and foreign sources to enhance market competition and stabilize rice prices,” the IRR states.
On Tuesday, FFF National Manager Raul Montemayor supported DBM’s position not to release the funds to PITC.
“Secretary Dar has insisted time and again that we have enough rice. Therefore, there is no rice shortage and there is no reason why PITC should import rice. That is the law and Secretary Dar, who has repeatedly referred to the RTL as ‘a good law’, should be the first to follow it,” he said.
Montemayor also said that the real reason behind the DA’s push for PITC imports may be the depletion of National Food Authority’s (NFA) stocks that were released for relief operations during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Three weeks ago, although the government has assured that there will be no rice shortage, the NFA has decided to “rationalize” its buffer stock and has told the local government units (LGUs) and Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to directly buy from farmers for their COVID-19 relief efforts.
“We have to move our inventories from surplus to deficit areas while the current good weather still allows us to transfer stocks between regions and ship to island provinces that are vulnerable to isolation during the rainy season,” NFA Administrator Judy Carol Dansal said.
She then said that LGUs and DSWD may source their rice requirements for relief operations directly from farmers, farmer cooperatives, or commercial rice traders.
Under a liberalized regime, NFA’s sole mandate has been reduced to buffer stocking for calamities and emergencies.
To perform this task, the agency buys locally produced palay from farmers, which it sells to LGUS and partner agencies like the DSWD.
NFA, which has an annual budget of P7 billion for palay procurement, has so far issued a total of 4.89 million bags of rice to LGUs, DSWD, legislators, and other relief agencies since March. This is 243 percent more than the 2.014 million bags distribution target for the period.
“The DA, which oversees NFA operations, should have properly calibrated the releases of buffer stocks in accordance with the law, knowing that unforeseen calamities can suddenly arise and that it cannot replenish inventories when the harvest season ends. It also appears that the DA did not do enough to comply with its mandate under the law to maintain buffer stocks equivalent to at least 15 days consumption. Maybe it was why they have been relying on the PITC imports all along,” Montemayor further said.
o the microRNAs we eat affect gene expression?
Studies have suggested that genetic material can be
transferred from diet. But some researchers have their doubts.
- By Kristina Campbell on June 17, 2020
Huang-Ge Zhang has shown that nanoparticles from grapes can
deliver therapeutic RNA. Credit: Univ. Louisville
Until September 2011, Janos Zempleni’s main focus was working out how the
bodies of mammals use chemical compounds such as vitamins. But new research
published online at the time changed that.Zempleni, a molecular nutritionist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, like many others in the field, was struck by the findings of an astonishing study published in Cell Research suggesting that food could provide something other than nutrients—information from ingested plants could switch mammalian genes on and off1. In the study, researchers reported that microRNAs (miRNAs)—very short fragments of non-coding RNA molecules — originating from plants such as rice had been found in the bloodstream of mice, cows and humans. And in a mouse model, one particular rice-derived miRNA seemed to reach the liver, where it directly inhibited the expression of a gene that normally serves to clear ‘bad’ low-density lipoprotein cholesterol from the blood. After learning about the work, Zempleni was keen to follow up on the possible transfer of genetic material from dietary components, and to determine how extensive this phenomenon might be.
When Kenneth Witwer, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, read the paper, he immediately realized the potential significance of the work. “I thought, wow, this is amazing. I want to do this, too.” He remembers thinking, “maybe this is some evolutionarily conserved way that we can extract something else from our food other than just nutrition.” He corralled some of his lab’s resources and set about trying to verify the findings in a small animal study of his own.
But misgivings about the Cell Research study soon began to surface. Not only were Witwer and several others unable to reproduce the findings, but some of its basic premises were also called into question. Scientists doubted that diet-derived miRNAs could make it into the systemic circulation of animal hosts at sufficient levels to have a meaningful impact. Follow-up work2 also revealed the strong possibility that the ‘diet-derived’ miRNAs were actually the result of contamination.
Initial excitement about the possible health effects of rice-derived miRNAs gradually tapered off. Some researchers, including Witwer, gave up studying it altogether. But others persevered with the idea that what we eat can directly affect gene expression. What’s at stake is a clearer understanding of how humans relate to, and derive benefit from, their food.
A tall glass of exosomes
Zempleni, after a brief and disappointing spell looking for broccoli-specific miRNAs in humans, turned his attention to miRNAs in milk. “We settled on milk because of the importance for infant nutrition and because Americans consume lots of milk,” he says.Zempleni wondered whether the miRNAs in milk go beyond the gastrointestinal tract. But he quickly encountered a problem: the miRNA molecules themselves rapidly degraded in the gut. “We realized what matters is really not just the miRNAs,” Zempleni says. “What’s at least equally important is the shell in which these miRNAs are packaged.” This shell is a bubble-like vessel called an exosome. “In order for miRNAs to be bioavailable and to be absorbed from the gut, they have to be encapsulated in these exosomes,” Zempleni says. As others had shown, fragile miRNAs need to be protected in these containers to be transported from cell to cell.
The exosomes accounted for how the miRNAs could remain intact in the host’s digestive tract, but the next challenge was to work out how they end up in different places in the body. As a way of testing whether the milk miRNAs could go beyond the mouse gut, Zempleni and his colleagues devised a method for labelling the miRNAs contained in cow’s milk exosomes with fluorescent compounds. These could then be tracked in animal models. “This technology confirmed that these microRNAs, if encapsulated in exosomes, accumulate in various tissues,” he says—mainly the brain, liver and intestinal mucosa3.
This established that the miRNAs could reach not just local sites (the gut wall), but also distant ones. Turning, then, to the question of how the miRNA-containing exosomes were affecting host health, Zempleni carried out various experiments in which he gave mice a diet deficient in both free miRNAs and miRNA-containing exosomes, and compared them with other mice consuming a diet that had normal levels of each. He found a range of effects, including a decrease in the cognitive performance4 of mice receiving the depleted diet, a decrease in fecundity5 and changes in muscular growth6.
Zempleni is now tackling the question of whether these health effects are conferred by the dietary miRNAs or something else, such as the entire exosome or a component of the exosome besides miRNAs. He and his colleagues are looking at a group of mice engineered to lack miRNAs in their milk. Initial unpublished results show that their offspring, whose diet consists only of their mother’s milk, have numerous health and developmental problems. If confirmed, this would specifically implicate the diet-derived miRNAs as major players in health—at least, those in milk during early life.
Zempleni says that “miRNAs and exosomes are way more bioavailable in milk than in plants”. He speculates that this might have evolutionary underpinnings: “Nature may have made them to be bioavailable because of infant nutrition,” he says. Zempleni is investigating other foods of animal origin, and, as part of an ongoing study, he is looking at whether he can track how dietary chicken-egg exosomes deliver miRNA cargo to mouse tissues.
A gut feeling
Some of Zempleni’s animal-model work is based on the idea that exosomes interact with the gut microbiota—the community of microorganisms involved in the health effects conferred by a host’s diet. This led to the hypothesis that the gut microbiota might mediate cell-to-cell communication between milk exosomes and mammalian hosts.It’s in this realm that Witwer predicts much of the progress in the field will occur over the next few years. “We can shift our focus from the circulation and the tissue of the animal, to the gut,” says Witwer. He thinks that interactions of diet-derived exosomes with gut epithelial cells or particular gut microbes hold promise.
The gut has also been a central focus for researchers studying the extra-nutritional health effects of dietary plants. Immunologist Huang-Ge Zhang at the University of Louisville in Kentucky is pursuing the question of how plant foods, such as grapefruit, carrots and mushrooms, might affect specific cells. He studies the plant equivalent of exosomes, entities called exosome-like nanoparticles, which are protective vesicles with similar precious cargo inside: protein, lipid and RNA. In 2018, Zhang reported how ginger exosome-like nanoparticles are stable in the intestine, and how they regulate gut bacterial composition7.
According to Zhang, when introduced into mammals, exosome-like nanoparticles can home in on different cells in the intestine with remarkable specificity. He has shown, for example, that exosome-like nanoparticles from grapes are taken up by gut stem cells8, and that nanoparticles from grapes, ginger, carrots and grapefruit target gut-associated macrophages9.
Zhang’s view is that the miRNAs in these exosome-like nanoparticles might have been incorrectly singled out in earlier work as responsible for host health effects. Because exosome-like nanoparticles consist of numerous proteins, lipids, RNAs and polysaccharides, says Zhang, they might do many things at once. “Multiple factors carried by a single nanovesicle can be taken up by the same cells,” he says. “Therefore, we can see multiple molecules as regulating multiple pathways.”
Zhang hopes that, by learning which host cells (in the gut and elsewhere) preferentially take up different plant-derived exosome-like nanoparticles, researchers could assemble new nanoparticles for use as drug-delivery vehicles to very specific cell types in the body. Having abandoned his own studies on milk exosomes around 2008, he says that plant nanoparticles have several distinct advantages over exosomes of animal origin. Not only are exosome-like nanoparticles safer because they avoid possible transfer of cow-derived pathogens, but they are also more versatile—drug developers looking to target a particular cell type can explore the exosome-like nanoparticles derived from thousands of different types of plant, each with its own target in the host. Furthermore, Zhang says, purification of milk exosomes is particularly challenging, and large quantities of exosomes are more expensive to produce than are plant nanoparticles.
Molecular biologist Jiujiu Yu, also at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, became interested in the therapeutic potential of plant-derived vesicles because they could be extracted in large numbers from various plant foods. In particular, she wanted to know how vesicles affected metabolic inflammation and obesity. Her lab developed a cell-culture system to screen dietary exosome-like nanoparticles from ginger or mushrooms to find out how they affected the cells implicated in inflammatory processes related to metabolic disease.
Yu is focused on identifying the part of the exosome-like nanoparticle responsible for anti-inflammatory effects. Her latest work, which has not yet been published, has shown that only in rare cases is the RNA component necessary for the anti-inflammatory effects of the vesicles. She wants to explore the possibility that, for a given food, any part of the exosome-like nanoparticle could be responsible for a health effect. “People try to focus on miRNA because it’s a new component,” Yu says. “Protein and lipids are not that exciting. But we should try to study all these components of the vesicles, not just focus on something that catches the eye.”
Yu thinks there is much more still to learn before exosome-like nanoparticles from plants are put to therapeutic use in humans. Her lab has found that ginger purchased from different grocery stores contains different exosome-like nanoparticles that yield different results10. The vesicles can have strong or mild anti-inflammatory effects, or even promote inflammation. “There’s inconsistency, so we need to be very careful if we want to just use those dietary vesicles for therapeutic use,” she says. “I really want to identify the active molecule.”
Zempleni, meanwhile, sees applications for milk exosomes on the horizon. “If you load milk exosomes with cancer drugs, you could deliver them to tumour sites in cancer patients — even if the drugs themselves are not very bioavailable or not very stable,” Zempleni says. “That’s a big story these days.” Indeed, Pure- Tech Health of Boston, Massachusetts, in collaboration with pharmaceutical giant Roche, is already working to advance technology that uses milk exosomes for drug delivery.
The ultimate goal is to learn the language in which our food speaks to us—and to discover whether miRNAs might serve as a Rosetta Stone.
home-cooking
Uncle Ben's to Evolve Brand Following Aunt Jemima Removal
- Lyndsay Burginger
- posted June 17, 2020
The History of Uncle Ben's Rice
Then in 1946, Forrest Mars, Sr. decided to partner with the scientists and open up a rice company in Houston, Texas. The company, named Converted Rice, Inc., moved on to sell its entire output to British and U.S. Armed Forces. But once the war was over, the partners saw they needed to market the long grain rice to consumers. All they needed was a name.
Since 1946, a smiling older gentleman named Uncle Ben has donned every bag of long grain white rice, wild rice, jasmine rice, and brown rice. But who is he?
Who is Uncle Ben?
According to Uncle Ben's website, Gordon Harwell was dining at a Chicago restaurant when him and his partner were discussing legendary Texan farmer, Uncle Ben (since then all history about him has been lost). The company decided to name their ready rice, Uncle Ben's Rice, and have Frank Brown, the head waiter at an exclusive Chicago restaurant pose for Uncle Ben's portrait.Back in 2007, the brand got together and "promoted" Uncle Ben to Chairman of the board, abolishing his bow tie that promoted a strong servant connotation. Both Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben have been strongly criticized of using the titles, "Aunt" and "Uncle," which were historically used by people unwilling to address African Americans by "Mr." and "Ms."
Watch: How Rice is Produced, Featuring Lundberg Family Farms
Uncle Ben's to Evolve Brand Following Aunt Jemima Removal
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Rice exports set to jump, renewable energy in
high demand: Vietnamese trade minister
16/06/2020 16:01 GMT+7
Vietnam may take a global lead in
rice exports in 2020, a trade report to the National Assembly on Monday
showed.
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Vietnamese rice being loaded for export.
High demand for food set the stage for Viet Nam to take the lead in global
rice this year.
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Viet Nam may take a global lead in rice exports for the year
2020, said Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh in a report to the
National Assembly on Monday.
Speaking to the NA, the minister said as countries were trying
to raise food stockpiles due to the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for Vietnamese
rice has been on the rise, pushing the country's rice exports in the first two
months of the year to increase by 31.7 per cent from the same period last year.
Adverse effects caused by climate change, such as droughts and
salinisation raised concerns over the country's ability to maintain its level
of rice export. As a response, the Government ordered a halt to rice exports
until May so that further studies can be done on Viet Nam's rice production and
stockpile.
After studies revealed large rice stocks in the Mekong Delta and
reviews done on the country's obligations with trade partners, Governmental
ministries and agencies have asked for the Prime Minister's approval to
continue Viet Nam's rice export activities.
Anh said the country maintained an export quota of 400,000
tonnes of rice in April and is set to resume its normal export level for May as
global demand for rice remained high while making sure there is ample supply
for the domestic market.
During the first five months of the year, Viet Nam exported over
three million tonnes of rice, an increase of 11.8 per cent from the same period
last year, reaching US$1.48 billion in value, a 25.44 per cent year on year
increase.
Renewable energy
Viet Nam considered renewable energy, and solar energy in
particular, an important source of power, especially for the 2024-25 period in
which the country is forecast to face a severe shortage, according to Anh.
It called for adjustments made to the country's power production
planning including new policies and incentives to encourage investments in solar
and wind energy.
To date, the country has put into operation 90 solar energy
projects with over 5,000MW in output. The Government has also shown its support
with the approval of a plan to add over 11,000MW of renewable energy in the
future.
Key infrastructure
Over VND37.5 trillion, or US$1.6 billion, in funding was
earmarked for key infrastructure projects across the country in 2020, according
to Minister of Transport Nguyen Van The.
By the end of May, VND12 trillion has been disbursed, an
increase of more than 10 per cent from the same period last year, and reached
30.8 per cent of this year's target amount, said the minister in a report to
the NA.
On the national North-South Highway project, the ministry said
it has allocated nearly VND17 trillion to the project. Of which, VND2.7
trillion was set for the project's East sections.
Over VND17 trillion was also set for the Long Thanh
International Airport. In a recent meeting with southern Dong Nai Province -
the airport's location - the local authority has pledged to finish site
clearance by the end of 2020 at the latest to provide the project with more
than 1,810 hectares of land.
According to the minister, improving infrastructure networks
remained a top priority for the country, especially for the Mekong Delta.
The ministry said it has been working closely with local
governments in HCM City, Can Tho, Ca Mau and Kien Giang on the development of a
number of key projects including HCM City's Belt Road 3 and 4 as well as
inter-province roads connecting the Mekong Delta's economic hub with other
provinces in the region.
In the central and Central Highlands regions, the transport
ministry, in cooperation with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, is
working on a plan to add an additional 700km of road on top of the existing
654km to form a connection between Ha Noi and HCM City in the form of a highway
that spans over 1,700km in length. Other routes that were due for an upgrade in
the highlands include national routes 19, 24 and 25.
The Ha Noi region will also see the construction of Belt Road 4
and 5, connecting the capital city to surrounding northern provinces. A number
of highways including the Ha Noi-Huu Hghi-Chi Lang, Van Don-Mong Cai and Dong
Dang-Tra Linh, Hoa Binh-Moc Chau and Lai Chau-Lao Cai have been set as
priorities. — VNS
JUNE 16,
2020 / 11:41 AM / 2 DAYS AGO
Summer crop sowing speeding up as monsoon covers half of India
·
·
MUMBAI, June 16 (Reuters) - Indian farmers are set to speed up
the planting of summer crops as annual monsoon rains have covered more than
half of the country and delivered more rainfall than normal, a weather
department official and an agriculture analyst said on Tuesday.
Monsoons deliver about 70% of India’s annual rainfall and are
the lifeblood of its $2.5 trillion economy, spurring farm output and boosting
rural spending on items ranging from gold to cars, motorcycles and
refrigerators.
The monsoon has already covered all of southern and eastern
India and conditions are favourable for further advancement into northern India
this week, a senior official with the state-run India Meteorological Department
said.
Since the season began on June 1, the rains brought by the
monsoon have been 29% greater than normal, weather department data shows,
particularly as a cyclone, Nisarga, brought heavy rain earlier this month to
the west coast.
The early arrival of monsoon rains in many parts of the country
and higher water in reservoirs have accelerated planting of summer crops, said
Subhranil Dey, a senior research analyst at commodity brokerage SMC Comtrade
Ltd.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Timely arrival of the monsoon and a hike in crop prices could
lead to higher area this year,” he said.
India has raised the prices at which it will buy new-season
summer crops from local farmers.
ADVERTISEMENT
Farmers have planted summer-sown crops on 9.26 million hectares
(22.9 million acres) as of June 12, up 13.2% compared with the same period a
year ago, according to provisional data from the Ministry of Agriculture.
Cotton sowing was up 23%, while rice planting rose by 15% during the period.
India is the world’s biggest exporter of rice and the biggest
cotton producer. A rise in rice and cotton production could lead to higher
exports of the grain and fibre.
Oilseed plantings have risen 312% from a year ago, which could
help the world’s biggest edible oil importer trim overseas purchases.
(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; editing by Christian Schmollinger)
Rice Prices
as on : 16-06-2020 10:50:23 AM
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Rice
|
||||||
|
Durgapur(WB)
|
23.00
|
NC
|
946.25
|
2760
|
2760
|
-3.16
|
|
Asansol(WB)
|
21.00
|
-4.55
|
1014.89
|
3070
|
3070
|
2.33
|
|
Gazipur(UP)
|
19.00
|
5.56
|
1910.00
|
3210
|
3210
|
-1.53
|
|
Jayas(UP)
|
17.70
|
-1.67
|
662.90
|
2350
|
2350
|
17.50
|
|
Muzzafarnagar(UP)
|
17.00
|
-43.33
|
4121.00
|
2670
|
2665
|
-7.13
|
|
Pukhrayan(UP)
|
15.00
|
50
|
469.00
|
2550
|
2540
|
15.38
|
|
Rampur(UP)
|
15.00
|
25
|
441.00
|
2610
|
2590
|
2.76
|
|
Alibagh(Mah)
|
1.00
|
NC
|
73.00
|
4200
|
4200
|
NC
|
|
Murud(Mah)
|
1.00
|
NC
|
72.00
|
4200
|
4200
|
NC
|
Nagpur’s rice exports boom amid Covid-19 gloom
Shishir Arya | TNN | Updated: Jun 16, 2020, 05:36 IST
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NAGPUR:
Covid outbreak may have brought down volumes in other businesses but there has
been a sharp increase in export of rice from Nagpur. After business remained
dull in March and April, the inland container depot (ICD) of Indian railways’
subsdiary Concor has recorded a 50% jump in export traffic, surpassing even
pre-Covid times. This is only because of rice exports, said sources.
Mainly the thick-grain parboiled rice is exported from this region. Part of poor man’s diet, the rise in exports has also led to an increase of Rs 50 to 75 a quintal in the domestic rates.
Mainly the thick-grain parboiled rice is exported from this region. Part of poor man’s diet, the rise in exports has also led to an increase of Rs 50 to 75 a quintal in the domestic rates.
A senior
official in Concor said as against an average export of 2,000 containers in a
month before Covid, the ICD here has clocked a volume of over 3,000 containers
in May. The going continues to be strong in June. Imports remain down by 50%
but the increase in exports has balanced that, said the official.
Rice grown in Vidarbha and Chhattisgarh has a market in West Africa and Russia. Sources said the pandemic has hit business in competing countries and even other domestic centres. This has brought exporters to Nagpur which is considered a safer centre to operate from.
Shipping agent Shiv Kumar Rao from M/s R&Y Logistics said business was down in Vietnam and Thailand which are the other major rice exporters in the African market. The pandemic has hit operations in Mumbai and Visakhapatnam and other ports too. With this procurement and dispatch of consignments is now happening from Nagpur. Exporters have also increased their procurement from rice mills in central India compared to other parts of the country.
Umesh Motwani, the treasurer of Vidarbha Rice Millers Association, said Indian traders have an advantage of over $50 a tonne compared to rates offered in Thailand. As against of $500/tonne in Thailand, traders here are offering a rate of $410 to $425 for delivery at African ports. For Russia, it is $440to $450 a tonne till the port.
The rice harvested in April and May has a major demand in Russia, he said. The rates are expected to be higher in Thailand because unlike India the food industry has not been opened up entirely elsewhere. The logistics bottlenecks are expected to have led to the rates increase in other countries, he said.
Rice grown in Vidarbha and Chhattisgarh has a market in West Africa and Russia. Sources said the pandemic has hit business in competing countries and even other domestic centres. This has brought exporters to Nagpur which is considered a safer centre to operate from.
Shipping agent Shiv Kumar Rao from M/s R&Y Logistics said business was down in Vietnam and Thailand which are the other major rice exporters in the African market. The pandemic has hit operations in Mumbai and Visakhapatnam and other ports too. With this procurement and dispatch of consignments is now happening from Nagpur. Exporters have also increased their procurement from rice mills in central India compared to other parts of the country.
Umesh Motwani, the treasurer of Vidarbha Rice Millers Association, said Indian traders have an advantage of over $50 a tonne compared to rates offered in Thailand. As against of $500/tonne in Thailand, traders here are offering a rate of $410 to $425 for delivery at African ports. For Russia, it is $440to $450 a tonne till the port.
The rice harvested in April and May has a major demand in Russia, he said. The rates are expected to be higher in Thailand because unlike India the food industry has not been opened up entirely elsewhere. The logistics bottlenecks are expected to have led to the rates increase in other countries, he said.
La.
rice crop off to good start
·
Bruce Schultz LSU AgCenter
·
Jun 15, 2020
·
LSU AgCenter plant
pathologist Don Groth speaks at the Evangeline Parish rice field day on June
11. Groth, also the resident coordinator of the H. Rouse Caffey Rice Research
Station, announced he will probably retire this coming winter after 37 years
with the AgCenter. Photo by Bruce Schultz/LSU AgCenter
LSU AgCenter
·
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MAMOU — This year’s rice crop is progressing
well, and the recent Tropical Storm Cristobal had little effect, an LSU
AgCenter rice expert said at the Evangeline Parish rice field day on June 11.
AgCenter rice specialist Dustin Harrell said
March temperatures were warmer than normal and were ideal for young rice, but
April brought three cold fronts that stressed the plants.
“If that’s the worst thing we see, then we’re
going to have a great year,” he said.
The rice plants also benefitted from warm May
temperatures, although hail damaged fields in a few instances.
Rice in the flowering stage may have been
damaged by Cristobal, “but for the most part, we had very little impact from
that storm,” Harrell said.
The south Louisiana crop is about 10 days
ahead of usual.
“Don’t be surprised if you hear reports of
rice being harvested in the first part of July,” he said.
Farmers who anticipate growing a second rice
crop should start planning. Applying gibberellic acid at the soft dough stage
of development can give improve second-crop yields.
“Sixty percent of the time, we have seen an
increase with gibberellic acid,” he said.
Mowing rice stubble after harvest of the first
crop can improve second crop yields by 5 barrels.
AgCenter weed scientist Eric Webster said
recent cloudy weather could cause rice sprayed with the Provisia herbicide to
have signs of injury. Leaves could appear to be misshapen, but the plants will
recover in two to three weeks.
“It’s just something we’re going to have to
live with,” he said.
The second version of Provisia, PVL02, has
improved yield potential from PVL01. He said AgCenter rice breeder Adam Famoso
has three lines of Provisia that could have even better yields.
Webster said the herbicide Loyant can be
applied with fertilizer, but the best results are obtained when it is sprayed.
Loyant controls ducksalad for more than five
weeks because of its impressive residual strength.
A new product, a mixture of Loyant and Grasp,
will be available from Corteva.
AgCenter entomologist Blake Wilson said the
Dermacor seed treatment is providing 80% control against rice water weevils,
compared to 50% control from Cruiser and Nipsit.
Good results against the weevil can be
obtained with a new product, Fortenza, if it is used with Cruiser.
The Mexican rice borer is becoming more of a
consistent threat to rice in south Louisiana.
The apple snail, an invasive species, is
expanding its range, Wilson said. The snails interfere with crawfish
operations, but one farmer lost a stand of rice to the pest, and the farmer
resorted to treating the field with copper sulfate and replanting.
Stem borers can cause losses of 15% to 20%,
and currently only pyrethroids are labeled for control of the insects. But FMC
has applied for a label to use Prevathon on rice for stem borers.
Stink bugs in Louisiana fields have not shown
resistance to pyrethroids, but they have developed resistance in Texas, Wilson
said.
Farmers may have to spray up to three times
for stinkbugs because the available chemicals have little residual capability.
A new product, Tenchu, may only require one application, he said.
AgCenter plant pathologist Don Groth said
farmers should be ready for false smut and kernel smut. The diseases showed up
last year in the worst outbreak he’s ever seen.
Propiconazole and difenoconazole have the best
action against both smuts, he said, but they have to be applied at the boot
stage even though it’s a disease that shows up in the heading stage. Boot
fungicide applications also will control sheath blight and Cercospora. However,
blast disease is controlled by applications at heading.
The current cool spell will help suppress sheath
blight and bacterial panicle blight.
“This
weather is coming at a perfect time. It’s beneficial to fill the grain by
delaying disease development,” Groth said.
T cells need to ‘relax’ to work best
June 17th, 2020
"It is amazing how T cells are able to react so fast and so
selectively. This is one of the most important secrets of living
organisms," says Anatoly Kolomeisky. (Credit: Camilo
Hdo/Flickr)
Share this
Article
You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International
license.Article
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University
T cells need to “relax” to protect people from diseases, according to a new
study.Like finding that needle in the haystack every time, your T cells manage what seems like an improbable task: quickly finding a few invaders among the many imposters in your body to trigger its immune response.
The new study suggests that T cells’ speedy and accurate reaction has to do with how they “relax” in the process of binding to ligands—short, functional molecules—that are either attached to the invaders or just resemble them.
Scientists’ simple model of T cell
activation of the immune response shows the T cell binding, via a receptor
(TCR) to an antigen-presenting cell (APC). If an invader is identified as such,
the response is activated, but only if the “relaxation” time of the binding is
long enough. (Credit: Hamid Teimouri) The new research proposes a theory that the T cell’s relaxation time—how long it takes to stabilize binding with either the invader or the imposter—is key. The researchers suggest it helps explain the rest of the cascading sequence by which invaders prompt the immune system to act.
The inappropriate activation of a T cell toward its own molecules leads to serious allergic and autoimmune responses.
T cells operate best within the parameters that control a “golden triangle” of sensitivity, specificity, and speed.
The need for speed seems obvious: Don’t let the invaders infect. And it is important because T cells spend so little time in the vicinity of the antigen-presenting cells, so they must act quickly to recognize them. Specificity is most challenging, since self-ligand imposters can outnumber invaders by a factor of 100,000.
“It is amazing how T cells are able to react so fast and so selectively. This is one of the most important secrets of living organisms,” says Anatoly Kolomeisky, a professor and chairman of chemistry department and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice University.
The researchers’ approach was to build a stochastic (random) model that analyzed how T cell receptors bind step-by-step to the peptide major histocompatibility complexes (pMHC) on the surface of antigen-presenting cells. At a high enough concentration, the bound complexes trigger the immune cascade.
The mathematical model aligned with experimental results that suggest T cell activation depends on kinetic proofreading, a form of biochemical error correction.
Proofreading slows down the relaxation for wrong molecules, and this allows the organism to start the correct immune response.
While the theory helps explain the T cells’ “absolute discrimination,” it does not explain downstream biochemical processes. However, the researchers says timing may have everything to do with those as well.
In a “very speculative” suggestion, the researchers note that when the binding speed of imposters matches that of invaders, triggering both biomolecular cascades, there’s no immune response. When the more relaxed binding of pathogenic ligands lags behind, it appears more likely to reach a threshold that triggers the immune system. Kolomeisky says the concept could be validated through experimentation.
The researchers write that many other aspects of T cell triggering need to be explored, including the roles of the cellular membranes where receptors are located, cell-cell communications, and cell topography during interactions. But having a simple quantitative model is a good start.
“Our theory can be extended to explore some important features of the T cell activation process,” Kolomeisky says.
The research appears in the Biophysical Journal. The Welch Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at Rice supported the research.
Source: Rice University
Original Study DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2020.06.002
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Science X Account
June 17, 2020
Tomato's hidden mutations revealed in study of 100 varieties
After centuries of breeding, tomatoes now take all sorts of
shapes and sizes, from cherry-like to hefty heirloom fruit. Scientists are
teasing out at the level of genes how and why these physical changes show up.
Credit: Lippman Lab/CSHL/HHMI
DNA and all. After centuries of breeding, what was once a South American
berry roughly the size of a pea now takes all sorts of shapes and sizes, from
cherry-like to hefty heirloom fruit. Today, scientists are teasing out how these physical changes show up at the level of genes—work that could guide modern efforts to tweak the tomato, says Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Zachary Lippman.
He and colleagues have now identified long-concealed hidden mutations within the genomes of 100 types of tomato, including an orange-berried wild plant from the Galapagos Islands and varieties typically processed into ketchup and sauce.
Their analysis, described June 17, 2020, in the journal Cell, is the most comprehensive assessment of such mutations—which alter long sections of DNA—for any plant. The research could lead to the creation of new tomato varieties and the improvement of existing ones, Lippman says. A handful of the mutations his team identified alter key characteristics, like flavor and weight, the researchers showed.
Previous studies have long shown that these mutations exist in plant genomes, says Lippman, a plant geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. "But until now, we didn't have an efficient way to find them and study their impact," he says.
A window into the genome
Mutations, or changes, in the four types of DNA letters carried within an organism's cells can alter its physical characteristics. Scientists studying plants have generally focused on a small, tractable kind of mutation, in which one DNA letter is swapped for another.
The mutations Lippman's team studied are much bigger—they modify DNA's structure by copying, deleting, inserting, or moving long sections of DNA elsewhere in the genome. These mutations, also called structural variations, occur throughout the living world. Studies in humans, for example, have linked these variations to disorders such as schizophrenia and autism.
Researchers showed that structural variation, in this case
the number of copies of a gene, can alter fruit. Plants with three gene copies
(left) grew fruit 30 percent larger than those with one (right). Credit: M.
Alonge et al./Cell 2020
Scientists can identify mutations by reading out the letters of DNA using a
technique known as genetic sequencing. Limitations in this technology, however,
have made it difficult to decode long sections of DNA, Lippman says. So
researchers haven't been able to capture a complete picture of structural
mutations in the genome.Even so, plant geneticists have suspected that these mutations contribute significantly to plants' traits, says Michael Purugganan, who studies rice and date palms at New York University and was not involved in the new study. "That's why this paper is so exciting," he says. Lippman's team not only found these mutations in tomato and its wild relatives, but also determined how they function within the plants, he says.
A guide for future tomatoes
The new study, a collaboration with Michael Schatz at Johns Hopkins University and others, identified more than 200,000 structural mutations in tomatoes using a technique called long-read sequencing. Lippman likens it to looking through a panoramic window at large sections of the genome. By comparison, more conventional sequencing offered only a peephole, he says.
The majority of the mutations they found do not change genes that encode traits. But what's clear, Lippman says, is that many of these mutations alter mechanisms controlling genes' activity. One such gene, for instance, controls tomato fruit size. By modifying DNA structure ¬- in this case, the number of copies of the gene—Lippman's team was able to alter fruit production. Plants lacking the gene never made fruit, while plants with three copies of the gene made fruit about 30 percent larger than those with just a single copy.
Lippman's team also demonstrated how DNA structure can influence traits in an example he calls "remarkably complex." They showed that four structural mutations together were needed for breeding a major harvesting trait into modern tomatoes.
These sorts of insights could help explain trait diversity in other crops and enable breeders to improve varieties, Lippman says. For instance, perhaps adding an extra copy of the size gene to tiny ground cherries, a close relative of the tomato, could increase their appeal by making them larger, he says.
"One of the holy grails in agriculture is to be able to say, 'If I mutate this gene, I know what the output will be,'" he says. "The field is making important steps toward this kind of predictable breeding."
Explore further
More information: Michael Alonge et al. "Major impacts of widespread
structural variation on gene expression and crop improvement in tomato." Cell
(2020). DOI:
10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.021
Journal
information: Cell
Provided by Howard Hughes
Medical Institute
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Food for Thought: How to help picky eaters
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The study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics, found that about 15% of the children in the study fell into the “high” picky eater group — children who didn’t accept vegetables often or were highly nervous about new foods.
Here are a few ways to help your picky eater to be more comfortable with new or nutritious foods, according to Parents.com.
• Make a schedule: Children need to eat every three to four hours: three meals, two snacks, and lots of fluids. If you plan for these, your child’s diet will be much more balanced and they will be less cranky, because they won’t be famished.
• Plan dinners: Try to plan two or three days worth of dinners at a time. A good dinner should be balanced: whole-grain break, rice, or pasta; a fruit or a vegetable; and a protein source like lean meat, cheese or beans.
• Don’t become a short-order cook: Prepare one meal for everybody and serve it family-style so your kids can pick and choose what they want.
• Bite your tongue: Try not to comment on what or how much your kids are eating and be as neutral as possible.
• Introduce new foods slowly: Sometimes kids’ taste buds have to get used to a flavor before they like they taste.
• Dip it: Experiment with condiments and dips for vegetables.
• Get kids cooking: If your children become involved in choosing or preparing meals, they’ll be more interested in eating what they’ve created.
• Cut back on treats: By having fewer junk foods around, you’ll force your children to eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and dairy products.
• Have fun: Being more creative with meals and the greater variety of foods will gets your kids excited about the foods they eat.
— More Content Now
Asparagus and Rice Casserole
From SouthernKitchen.com. Serves: 6
Ingredients:
• 1 bunch asparagus, ends trimmed
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 cup sliced cremini mushrooms
• 1 shallot, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 cups half and half
• 2 cups cooked white rice
• 2 cups grated sharp white cheddar cheese
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Directions:
1. Turn the broiler to high. Grease an 8-inch baking dish with non-stick oil spray.
2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a large bowl with ice water.
3. When the water is boiling, add half of the asparagus and cook until the asparagus is tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to the prepared ice water and repeat with remaining asparagus. When all of the asparagus is cooked, remove from the ice bath, pat dry and cut into 3/4-inch pieces.
4. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the shallot and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until aromatic, about 1 minute. Add the flour and cook, stirring, until its raw flavor is cooked out, about 3 minutes.
5. Add the half and half, bring to a simmer, and cook, stirring, until the mixture has thickened, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the rice and asparagus and cook, stirring, just until heated through, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in 1 cup of the cheese until it melts. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. Transfer to the prepared baking dish and top with the remaining cheese. Broil until the cheese is melted and golden brown, about 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve hot.
Sugary drink warning labels
According to research of more than 20 different studies, warning labels on sugary drinks lead to healthier drink choices. Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health said warning labels have the potential to help inform consumers reduce the consumption of unhealthy beverages like sodas, energy drinks and fruit-flavored drinks. — More Content Now
Fun fact: Peanut butter
Each year, Americans consume enough peanut better to coat the floor of the Grand Canyon - about 500 million pounds. — More Content Now
DA distributes 1.7M bags of rice seeds under RCEF
By Filane Mikee Cervantes June 16,
2020, 6:16 pm
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MANILA – The Department of Agriculture on Tuesday said it has
distributed at least 1.77 million bags of certified inbred seeds to rice
farmers for this year's wet season planting.
In a virtual briefing, DA Assistant
Secretary Noel Reyes said a total of 313,617 farmer-beneficiaries have
benefitted from the seeds component under the PHP10-billion Rice
Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) as of June 7. This covered 55 provinces
and 843 municipalities.
For the credit component, Reyes said
the Development Bank of the Philippines has already released PHP463.5 million
in loans, while the Land Bank of the Philippines granted the loan applications
of 2,658 farmers and 21 cooperatives with a total loan amount of PHP484.29
million.
Reyes noted that farmers were also
provided with farm machinery and equipment under the mechanization component,
including 495 four-wheel tractors, 356 rice combine harvesters, 576 hand
tractors, 103 rice reapers, 52 precision seeders, 106 walk behind
transplanters, 118 riding type transplanters, 347 floating tillers, and 46 rice
mills.
Reyes said extension services were
also offered under RCEF to train specialists, farmers, seed growers,
inspectors, and analysts, among others.
Aside from the RCEF, Reyes
highlighted that the DA also has a rice resiliency project with a funding of
PHP8.5 billion, aimed at producing more rice to increase the country’s
sufficiency level.
He noted that this project is part
of the Duterte administration’s “Plant, Plant, Plant Program” or “Ahon Lahat,
Pagkaing Sapat (ALPAS) Laban sa Covid-19”.
"Ito ay tututok sa
malawakang paggamit ng mga teknolohiyang makapagpapataas ng ani at kita ng mga
magsasaka (This will focus on increasing the use of technology that could
increase the output and income of our farmers),” Reyes said.
This would include the distribution
of fertilizer for RCEF areas, inbred seed and fertilizer for areas not covered
in RCEF, hybrid seed and fertilizer for farmers who will try a hybrid, and
fertilizer for hybrid farmers. (PNA)
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The race is on to grow crops in seawater and feed millions
With the quality of arable land declining and seawater
encroaching on fertile cropland, researchers are trying to find a way to make
crops grow in seawater
·
·
Wednesday 17 June 2020
Chen Hanquan / WIRED
In December 2015, as representatives from United Nations member
states were finalising what would become the Paris Agreement on climate change,
Duncan Cameron stood before a crowd of delegates and warned them about an
environmental catastrophe happening right beneath their feet.
A soil biologist and co-director of the University of Sheffield’s
Institute for Sustainable Food, Cameron had long known that the amount of
farmland capable of growing nutrient-rich crops was shrinking, but he didn’t
know how fast. For the previous year, Cameron’s team had analysed the
scattershot data available on arable land loss, and what they found was
disturbing: in the past four decades, the world lost
up to one-third of its arable land to soil degradation and resulting
erosion. Without alternatives, already fragile agricultural systems are on the
verge of collapse, raising the prospect of a world filled with farms that can’t
grow enough food.
“It’s quite a terrifying amount,” Cameron says. “We hear that we
can solve a lot of these problems in terms of food insecurity by wasting less
and getting more efficient, but that isn't going to give us everything we
need.” Now, an emerging group of startups and researchers are convinced that
answers to the impending food crisis may not lie on land at all – instead
they’re looking to the ocean and to feed future populations with crops grown on
floating farms and fed by seawater.
These ambitious initiatives target a thorny mess of environmental
and humanitarian issues — freshwater and land scarcity, global hunger, crop
security, and agriculture’s enormous carbon footprint amongst others — but the
scientific and logistical challenges they face are enormous. In a field where
there are few easy answers, one problem looms above all others: what do we do
about all the salt?
Read next
The reason your hay fever is so bad? Blame botanical sexism
Soil scientists and farmers have waged war against salt for
decades. As sea levels rise, salt levels are creeping up in the rivers and
underground aquifers that irrigate fields – particularly those low-lying areas
close to vast river deltas. Across the world, farmland is drying out which
raises salt levels and interferes with nutrient uptake and damages tissues.
Excessive salt causes massive global crop loss — an estimated £21.7
billion each year — and that's expected to increase as factors like
sea level rise and higher-intensity weather events driven by climate change
push ocean water further into farmland, hitting the poorest coastal communities
hardest.
Once there, salt requires significant resources to remove from
soil — the most common methods involve large amounts of freshwater, which is
already scarce for an estimated
four billion people worldwide — sending researchers on a
long-running race to find staple crops that can grow despite constantly
increasing salinity. Several countries including China, India, the Netherlands,
and the United Arab Emirates have developed crop varieties that can withstand
some soil salinity, but the real white whale is a staple crop that can thrive
regardless of how much seawater is thrown at it.
“In principle, it could be done, but it's complicated,” says
Exequiel Ezcurra, a plant ecologist at the University of California, Riverside
who studies desert and ocean ecosystems. Ezcurra says that creating
seawater-tolerant crops would require at least one, and possibly both, of the
basic biological mechanisms plants like black mangroves have adapted to survive
in salty waters. One mechanism is freshwater filtration in the roots, which for
staple crops would require fundamentally altering the root’s dermal tissue to
keep salt out. The other is specialised glands in the leaves that excrete salt
as the plant pumps seawater throughout its system.
Changing a staple crop to have either mechanism is a challenge so
big, many researchers aim for far more modest gains in salt tolerance and
aren’t yet gunning for crops that grow in straight seawater. Plant breeders
have been working on salt-resistant crops for decades but in rice – a crop
notoriously sensitive to salinity – even the most salt-resistant varieties
can’t cope with anything like the saltiness of seawater. “I'm not saying that
nobody will be able to do it. Probably somebody will at some point,” Ezcurra
says. “I simply have never seen a patent or anybody being able to do that” now.
Luke Young and Rory Hornby filed for a provisional patent in
February for a technology they believe will break the seawater tolerance
barrier. Young and Hornby are the cofounders of Agrisea, a Canadian startup
that’s working to develop gene-edited salt-tolerant crops with the goal of soon
growing them in floating farms placed in sea-flooded plains or anchored
directly in the ocean.
Read next
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Agrisea’s proposed method involves first isolating stem cells
from crops like rice, then using CRISPR gene editing technology to insert a DNA
sequence specialised to the plant. The sequence targets one of eight different
genes, each chosen because the only place in nature where all eight are
“switched on” is in plants that have naturally adapted saltwater tolerance. The
sequence alters how the gene expresses, then stem cells are grown into a full
plant that produces its own seeds armed with the newly edited gene. Follow the
same process for editing the remaining seven genes, and the Agrisea team says
you’ll have a plant that can grow in the salty sea without fertiliser,
freshwater, or pesticides.
Many researchers have edited single genes for salt tolerance, but
editing a gene network is an approach Young and Hornby say are unique to
Agrisea. But they’re not at the finish line yet.
Thus far, Young and Hornby are working to grow rice plants in water one-third the salinity of seawater and plan to have small farms floating off the shores of Kenya and Grand Bahama Island by the end of the year. Young says that he’s confident the process will work because similar strategies have been used in the past to gene edit plants for other traits and “because I'm not proving something, I'm copying something. I'm copying what nature has already been able to do.”
Thus far, Young and Hornby are working to grow rice plants in water one-third the salinity of seawater and plan to have small farms floating off the shores of Kenya and Grand Bahama Island by the end of the year. Young says that he’s confident the process will work because similar strategies have been used in the past to gene edit plants for other traits and “because I'm not proving something, I'm copying something. I'm copying what nature has already been able to do.”
Julia Bailey-Serres, director of the Center for Plant Cell
Biology at the University of California, Riverside, studies crop resilience and
the molecular physiology of rice. She says that researchers routinely edit
plants to knock out a gene’s function, but editing in a way that changes
specific amino acids, which likely would be required for growing crops in the
ocean, has only been done by a few researchers worldwide and not yet for the
purposes of salt tolerance. That more granular type of editing will become more
feasible in the future, she says, ”but I don't know if that’s going to be in
two years or 10 years.”
Bailey-Serres adds that she would be excited to see Agrisea
succeed and that any tolerance increases beyond one-third ocean salinity would
be a huge win in places like Vietnam and Bangladesh where rice paddies are
bombarded with seawater.
Agrisea’s approach to arable land scarcity relies on cracking the
salt tolerance problem, but other teams are opting to sidestep the issue
entirely. Floating farms that reduce demand for arable land have long been key
to survival in many non-Western nations. These crops thrive in freshwater
bodies — like Myanmar’s Inle Lake, which locals have relied on for food
possibly since as early as the nineteenth century — in buoyant beds that bob
along the surface as monsoons and floods sweep through. Floating farms have
also gained interest in Western cities. Over the last few years, research
groups and architectural firms in the UK, Spain, and Italy amongst others have
produced designs for floating vertical farms and greenhouses that suck up
seawater from the outside and desalinate it to nourish hydroponic crops grown
inside.
Read next
Coronavirus shows the enormous scale of the climate crisis
These projects push crops out into the ocean, but Yanik Nyberg’s
strategy is to bring the ocean in. Instead of making new space for crops
offshore, Nyberg’s Scotland-based company Seawater Solutions
takes degraded coastal farmland, seeds it with naturally salt-tolerant herbs like
samphire and sea blite, then floods the area by removing seawalls or pumping in
water from the ocean to create an artificial salt marsh. In this new wetland
ecosystem, crops grow without fertilisers, pesticides, or freshwater. They also
hold soil in place, preventing erosion, and feed on nitrates and carbon, both
of which over-accumulate in waters near human populations due to factors like
agricultural runoff and CO2 emissions. A solar-powered irrigation system
recycles the remediated water back to its original source.
Seawater Solutions currently operates six marsh farms in Scotland
and a handful of developing countries, including a nascent initiative to create
a marsh farm in the middle of a desert in Malawi by tapping underground
saltwater aquifers. These projects are small – most around 10,000 square meters
— and are limited to global food markets that are much tinier than those for
staple crops.
Duncan Cameron says that there isn't one right answer. Since the
2015 Paris climate talks, Cameron’s team has attacked arable land loss from a
multitude of angles, including monitoring nutrients in soil, forecasting the
agricultural impact of urban green spaces, and building a hydroponic greenhouse
in Oman that relies on desalinated water pumped in from the ocean. Solving
arable land scarcity will require novel approaches all focused around giving
the world’s tired soil a much-needed break. “We've got to take pressure off it
somehow,” he says.
More great stories from WIRED
🦆 Google got rich from your data. DuckDuckGo
is fighting back
💰 The Animal Crossing fans running
in-game businesses
🤑 Inside the 'bullshit' get-rich-quick
world of dropshipping
🎵 The secret behind the success
of Apple's AirPods
🔒 The UK's lockdown rules,
explained
Share this article
·
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UC Cooperative Extension monitoring for
rice-eating pest
·
By Jake Abbott jabbott@appealdemocrat.com
·
Jun 10, 2020
·
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As pest populations
are expected to increase soon, the University of California Cooperative
Extension is monitoring the presence of rice-eating insects called armyworms
throughout the north state.
Luis Espino, a rice
farming systems advisor for UCCE, said the most recent numbers were low but are
expected to climb in the next few weeks.
Larval armyworms grow
from caterpillars into moths. The insects are considered agricultural pests
because they can defoliate rice fields, and the bigger they get the more they
eat. Espino said in severe cases, armyworms could eat all of a field’s
foliage down to water level. While the rice crop can recover, the pest’s
presence can lead to yield reduction.
“The defoliation
happens really quickly,” Espino said. “I’ve heard numerous stories where
growers were used to some defoliation and would go on vacation, and after the
weekend they’d come back and see full defoliation.”
The region had an
outbreak of armyworms in 2015. To help control pest populations, the industry
turned to an insecticide called Intrepid that has worked well since, Espino
said.
The biggest problem
areas in the north state where yield reduction has occurred have been in Butte,
Glenn and Sutter counties. Espino and his team set traps at 15 locations across
the valley to monitor pest populations weekly. The pheromone traps are small
buckets that attract male moths. They take the information collected from the
traps and notify farmers on whether or not they should begin examining their
own fields for the presence of armyworms.
“We usually start to
see numbers increase around mid-June and peak in late June or early July,”
Espino said. “Right now, numbers are very low but they will come up. Over the
years, we’ve learned that once we see the moth population peak, we see a peak
of the worm population a week later. Once we start seeing those go up, we begin
letting growers know to check their fields.”
Both Yuba and Sutter
counties have one monitoring site each. Espino’s team will visit each site once
a week and count the number of moths in each trap. They divide that number with
the number of days since the last check to determine the number of true
armyworm moths per night.
On June 1, Colusa
County had 0.1 armyworm moths per night at two monitored locations located at
Gibson and Marengo Roads and Maxwell and Four Mile Roads. Another monitoring
site located at State Route 45 at White Road had 2.1 armyworms per night.
Espino said a high number would be over 30, and the biggest peaks he’s seen are
as high as 80-90 moths per night.
“We will continue to
monitor and update growers. We also have some fields where we take samples to
assess how larva are growing, and we will have some trials for insecticide
products to see if we can get more options for control,” Espino said. “When
talking about pest management, we want people to make sure you don’t put a
pesticide down if you don’t have to, and our monitoring helps with that.”
To view the latest
numbers, visit http://rice.ucanr.edu/armyworm_traps/.
- 17 Jun 2020
- Chaudhry Fareed Naseem
- The shortage of food and food security is the biggest
scare and panic creator in the times of crises and difficulty and it gets
worsened over time. It may have been better in the previous decades but
currently, Pakistan is facing multi-faceted challenges due to the on-going
regional and international issues like LOCUST and COVID – 19. The
situation is being further worsened by the climate change and last but not
the least the rampant increase in population. Climate changes have
incredibly affected Pakistan’s agricultural productivity for the last few
years. The global analysis of climate change shows adverse impacts on
South-Asian economies including Pakistan. The climate-related natural
disasters have increased many times and there impacts on the economy of
Pakistan cannot be ignored. According to a UN report, Pakistan is at fifth
position of risk of being hit by climate change and it is, for sure, that
the climate change will leave no opportunity in impacting agriculture, and
it is doing so. Besides, with population increase, urbanisation is also
taking place at a fast pace; enormous growth in population is impacting
cultivable lands. Thus, cultivable lands are being converted to houses,
even though they also require food to eat.
- COVID-19 is upsetting activities of livelihood, agriculture
and supply chains. Prices have declined for various commodities,
vegetables, and other crops, yet consumers are often paying more. Media
reports show that the closure of hotels, restaurants, marriage halls, and
tea stalls during the lockdown is already depressing the consumption of
perishable commodities like vegetables, fruits and milk sales. Meanwhile,
poultry farmers have been badly hit due to misinformation, particularly on
social media, that chicken are the carriers of COVID-19. On the other
hand with COVID-19 now spreading, massive consequences to health and
livelihoods are feared. Further to add to the misery now the
government/ farmers have another firefight on their hands: THE LOCUSTS.
For farmers, locusts are the most destructive of insects. They feed
voraciously on almost all types of crops; the potential for locusts’
exponential growth and crop devastation can jeopardize the food and
economic security of arid and semi-arid regions as well as agricultural
hubs. Concerns are intensifying as the sowing period for Kharif or monsoon
crops like rice, maize, millet, pulses, soybean, and groundnut has
reached. In the midst of impacts by Covid-19 on health, livelihoods and
food security of the most vulnerable communities and populations of
Pakistan, it is imperative to contain and successfully control the Desert
Locust infestation.
- With COVID – 19 and LOCUST threat still spreading; it
is difficult to say when they would be contained. Contingency plans to
help tackle demand for essential provisions, with more sections of the
population – including vulnerable and low income population – preparing
for self-implementation of lock-down. So to ensure food security for all,
we need to take urgent actions at national, regional and global levels.
During the Second World War; in early 1940 the British established the
rationing system to deal with shortages of basic goods caused by wartime
disruption in supplies, to feed the troops on the war front and to
distribute the essential rations and nutrients equally o everyone. The
ration system, though far from perfect, nonetheless has a number of
attributes that recommend its preservation. These include its widespread
accessibility, its relatively low administrative burden on the government,
its flexibility, and the long-standing experience. Serious thought should
be given to improving its benefits.
- Food items are deemed critical to ration; they can be
either staples or luxuries. Staple foods—those vital to basic survival and
the central elements in a cuisine—often vary according to culture, region,
and tradition, and may include rice, flour, bread, milk, meat, cooking
oil, canned goods, and salt. Highly desirable, psychologically important
items such as cheese, butter, sugar, coffee, tea, and tobacco are arguably
as important as staples to ensuring public contentment and cooperation,
and thus are regarded as essential to ration. The success of rationing in
any country is highly dependent on efficient/effective administration and
on unyielding honesty of government officials, farmers, wholesalers,
grocers, and consumers.
- At the time of partition Pakistan inherited ration
system from the British, at that time, the ration shops handled wheat
sugar, eggs, tea, matches, kerosene, yarn, and cotton cloth. After
partition, Pakistan government; crippled as it was continued with the
same. Until 1960s when, as a result of several years of favourable
weather, the crop became plentiful. Rationing was abolished, but the shops
continued to sell atta (whole wheat flour), which the government obtained
through its guaranteed price support scheme, with no limitation on
quantity. In the mid-sixties, bad weather and the war with India again
resulted in scarce supplies. The system was re- implemented and continued
through the 1970s. In the later years, good weather along with various
agricultural development schemes resulted in abundant supplies of wheat,
putting Pakistan in the position of wheat exporter. At the same time,
ration prices were allowed to drift upward toward the free-market rate,
while the rise in free-market prices weakened because of increasing
supplies. Ration shops were used to ensure equitable distribution of
rations at subsidized prices during the severe shortage in 1972 and 1973.
Increasing domestic production of commodities was high on the priority
list of the government. The history thus demonstrates the long-standing
nature of the ration system and its flexibility to deal with changing
conditions of supply and its means of ensuring orderly provision for basic
rations to the general public.
- In our ration system, it was must that one applying was a resident of Pakistan with a fixed address. There was no income related criteria for eligibility. Users were to register with a particular ration shop in their area. Cardholders were issued with ration cards indicating the number of members in the household by age, since rations were determined on per person basis. Ration shops were privately owned, subject to licensing and regulation by the provincial government. Under the current circumstances where the agriculture output of the country is under threat due to the LOCOUST attack and COVID – 19 pandemic; moreover the FOREX is low for the imports even for the basic commodities; there is dire need for the planners, bureaucrats and political stalwarts, to develop a strategy to manage the adverse outcome of all the upcoming challenges and threats combined. However, if a consensus should be reached about the relationship between how to handle the up-coming challenges and to convince the public to reduce consumption in order to prevent further aggravating the situation.
Chaudhry Fareed Naseem is a
freelance writer on Pakistan and Regional Affairs, has worked in various
governmental and non governmental offices.
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The race is on to grow crops in seawater and feed millions
With the quality of arable land declining and seawater
encroaching on fertile cropland, researchers are trying to find a way to make
crops grow in seawater
·
·
Wednesday 17 June 2020
Chen Hanquan / WIRED
In December 2015, as representatives from United Nations member
states were finalising what would become the Paris Agreement on climate change,
Duncan Cameron stood before a crowd of delegates and warned them about an
environmental catastrophe happening right beneath their feet.
A soil biologist and co-director of the University of Sheffield’s
Institute for Sustainable Food, Cameron had long known that the amount of
farmland capable of growing nutrient-rich crops was shrinking, but he didn’t
know how fast. For the previous year, Cameron’s team had analysed the
scattershot data available on arable land loss, and what they found was
disturbing: in the past four decades, the world lost
up to one-third of its arable land to soil degradation and resulting
erosion. Without alternatives, already fragile agricultural systems are on the
verge of collapse, raising the prospect of a world filled with farms that can’t
grow enough food.
“It’s quite a terrifying amount,” Cameron says. “We hear that we
can solve a lot of these problems in terms of food insecurity by wasting less
and getting more efficient, but that isn't going to give us everything we
need.” Now, an emerging group of startups and researchers are convinced that
answers to the impending food crisis may not lie on land at all – instead they’re
looking to the ocean and to feed future populations with crops grown on
floating farms and fed by seawater.
These ambitious initiatives target a thorny mess of environmental
and humanitarian issues — freshwater and land scarcity, global hunger, crop security,
and agriculture’s enormous carbon footprint amongst others — but the scientific
and logistical challenges they face are enormous. In a field where there are
few easy answers, one problem looms above all others: what do we do about all
the salt?
Read next
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Soil scientists and farmers have waged war against salt for
decades. As sea levels rise, salt levels are creeping up in the rivers and
underground aquifers that irrigate fields – particularly those low-lying areas
close to vast river deltas. Across the world, farmland is drying out which raises
salt levels and interferes with nutrient uptake and damages tissues. Excessive
salt causes massive global crop loss — an estimated £21.7
billion each year — and that's expected to increase as factors like
sea level rise and higher-intensity weather events driven by climate change
push ocean water further into farmland, hitting the poorest coastal communities
hardest.
Once there, salt requires significant resources to remove from
soil — the most common methods involve large amounts of freshwater, which is
already scarce for an estimated
four billion people worldwide — sending researchers on a
long-running race to find staple crops that can grow despite constantly
increasing salinity. Several countries including China, India, the Netherlands,
and the United Arab Emirates have developed crop varieties that can withstand
some soil salinity, but the real white whale is a staple crop that can thrive
regardless of how much seawater is thrown at it.
“In principle, it could be done, but it's complicated,” says
Exequiel Ezcurra, a plant ecologist at the University of California, Riverside
who studies desert and ocean ecosystems. Ezcurra says that creating
seawater-tolerant crops would require at least one, and possibly both, of the
basic biological mechanisms plants like black mangroves have adapted to survive
in salty waters. One mechanism is freshwater filtration in the roots, which for
staple crops would require fundamentally altering the root’s dermal tissue to
keep salt out. The other is specialised glands in the leaves that excrete salt
as the plant pumps seawater throughout its system.
Changing a staple crop to have either mechanism is a challenge so
big, many researchers aim for far more modest gains in salt tolerance and
aren’t yet gunning for crops that grow in straight seawater. Plant breeders
have been working on salt-resistant crops for decades but in rice – a crop notoriously
sensitive to salinity – even the most salt-resistant varieties can’t cope with
anything like the saltiness of seawater. “I'm not saying that nobody will be
able to do it. Probably somebody will at some point,” Ezcurra says. “I simply
have never seen a patent or anybody being able to do that” now.
Luke Young and Rory Hornby filed for a provisional patent in
February for a technology they believe will break the seawater tolerance
barrier. Young and Hornby are the cofounders of Agrisea, a Canadian startup
that’s working to develop gene-edited salt-tolerant crops with the goal of soon
growing them in floating farms placed in sea-flooded plains or anchored
directly in the ocean.
Read next
Life is on hold in one of the last coronavirus-free places on Earth
Agrisea’s proposed method involves first isolating stem cells
from crops like rice, then using CRISPR gene editing technology to insert a DNA
sequence specialised to the plant. The sequence targets one of eight different
genes, each chosen because the only place in nature where all eight are
“switched on” is in plants that have naturally adapted saltwater tolerance. The
sequence alters how the gene expresses, then stem cells are grown into a full
plant that produces its own seeds armed with the newly edited gene. Follow the
same process for editing the remaining seven genes, and the Agrisea team says
you’ll have a plant that can grow in the salty sea without fertiliser,
freshwater, or pesticides.
Many researchers have edited single genes for salt tolerance, but
editing a gene network is an approach Young and Hornby say are unique to
Agrisea. But they’re not at the finish line yet.
Thus far, Young and Hornby are working to grow rice plants in water one-third the salinity of seawater and plan to have small farms floating off the shores of Kenya and Grand Bahama Island by the end of the year. Young says that he’s confident the process will work because similar strategies have been used in the past to gene edit plants for other traits and “because I'm not proving something, I'm copying something. I'm copying what nature has already been able to do.”
Thus far, Young and Hornby are working to grow rice plants in water one-third the salinity of seawater and plan to have small farms floating off the shores of Kenya and Grand Bahama Island by the end of the year. Young says that he’s confident the process will work because similar strategies have been used in the past to gene edit plants for other traits and “because I'm not proving something, I'm copying something. I'm copying what nature has already been able to do.”
Julia Bailey-Serres, director of the Center for Plant Cell
Biology at the University of California, Riverside, studies crop resilience and
the molecular physiology of rice. She says that researchers routinely edit
plants to knock out a gene’s function, but editing in a way that changes
specific amino acids, which likely would be required for growing crops in the
ocean, has only been done by a few researchers worldwide and not yet for the
purposes of salt tolerance. That more granular type of editing will become more
feasible in the future, she says, ”but I don't know if that’s going to be in
two years or 10 years.”
Bailey-Serres adds that she would be excited to see Agrisea
succeed and that any tolerance increases beyond one-third ocean salinity would
be a huge win in places like Vietnam and Bangladesh where rice paddies are
bombarded with seawater.
Agrisea’s approach to arable land scarcity relies on cracking the
salt tolerance problem, but other teams are opting to sidestep the issue entirely.
Floating farms that reduce demand for arable land have long been key to
survival in many non-Western nations. These crops thrive in freshwater bodies —
like Myanmar’s Inle Lake, which locals have relied on for food possibly since
as early as the nineteenth century — in buoyant beds that bob along the surface
as monsoons and floods sweep through. Floating farms have also gained interest
in Western cities. Over the last few years, research groups and architectural
firms in the UK, Spain, and Italy amongst others have produced designs for
floating vertical farms and greenhouses that suck up seawater from the outside
and desalinate it to nourish hydroponic crops grown inside.
Read next
Coronavirus shows the enormous scale of the climate crisis
These projects push crops out into the ocean, but Yanik Nyberg’s
strategy is to bring the ocean in. Instead of making new space for crops
offshore, Nyberg’s Scotland-based company Seawater Solutions
takes degraded coastal farmland, seeds it with naturally salt-tolerant herbs
like samphire and sea blite, then floods the area by removing seawalls or
pumping in water from the ocean to create an artificial salt marsh. In this new
wetland ecosystem, crops grow without fertilisers, pesticides, or freshwater.
They also hold soil in place, preventing erosion, and feed on nitrates and
carbon, both of which over-accumulate in waters near human populations due to
factors like agricultural runoff and CO2 emissions. A solar-powered irrigation
system recycles the remediated water back to its original source.
Seawater Solutions currently operates six marsh farms in Scotland
and a handful of developing countries, including a nascent initiative to create
a marsh farm in the middle of a desert in Malawi by tapping underground
saltwater aquifers. These projects are small – most around 10,000 square meters
— and are limited to global food markets that are much tinier than those for
staple crops.
Duncan Cameron says that there isn't one right answer. Since the
2015 Paris climate talks, Cameron’s team has attacked arable land loss from a
multitude of angles, including monitoring nutrients in soil, forecasting the
agricultural impact of urban green spaces, and building a hydroponic greenhouse
in Oman that relies on desalinated water pumped in from the ocean. Solving
arable land scarcity will require novel approaches all focused around giving
the world’s tired soil a much-needed break. “We've got to take pressure off it
somehow,” he says.
More great stories from WIRED
🦆 Google got rich from your data. DuckDuckGo
is fighting back
💰 The Animal Crossing fans running
in-game businesses
🤑 Inside the 'bullshit' get-rich-quick
world of dropshipping
🎵 The secret behind the success
of Apple's AirPods
🔒 The UK's lockdown rules,
explained
Share this article
·
·
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- 26 Aug 2019
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·
© Condé Nast Britain 2020
· We use cookies to personalise content and
ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share
information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and
analytics partners. You may read more about any of the purposes or vendors that
we use by clicking 'Show Purposes'. This preference center is accessible at any
time through the 'Manage Privacy Preferences' button located on every page. List of Partners (vendors) Huge Quantity Of Hoarded Commodities Recovered
2 days ago Tue 16th June 2020 | 07:52 PM 
Assistant Commissioner Sadr Umer Maqbool recovered 76,000 bags of rice, black grams and pulses from two godowns, hoarded for profiteering
FAISALABAD, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 16th Jun, 2020 ) :Assistant Commissioner Sadr Umer Maqbool recovered 76,000 bags of rice, black grams and pulses from two godowns, hoarded for profiteering.District administration sources said on Tuesday that on a tip-off, the AC along with his team conducted raids in Chak No.
67-JB Sadhar and recovered hoarded 65,000 bags of
rice from Khizar Traders.
Similarly, the AC Sadr recovered 11,000 bags of black gramsand pulses from
Ahmad Traders.Both the godowns have been sealed.
LT Foods launches cuppa rice; gets first order from
Indian Railways
2 min read . Updated: 16 Jun 2020, 04:34 PM IST PTI
- Indian Railways has placed an order for supply of 2,000 cuppa rice, which is being dispatched
- Indian Railways plan to sell the product on station and inside trains in north India amid COVID-19 crisis, where it has stopped selling cooked meals inside trains
NEW DELHI : Leading basmati rice firm LT Foods has widened its
offering of value-added foods by launching cuppa rice under 'Daawat brand' on
Tuesday, with the first order being dispatched to Indian Railways. The company
hopes that the instant rice will be an instant hit as it is healthier, tastier
and easy to prepare by just adding hot water.
After three months, LT Foods will
decide on production capacity and investment upon evaluating the market
response for the product, it added.
"We have launched 'Daawat Cuppa
Rice' to test the market today. We have got the first order from Indian
Railways," LT Foods Managing Director and CEO Ashwani Arora told PTI
in an interview.
State-run Indian Railways has placed
an order for supply of 2,000 cuppa rice, which is being dispatched, he said.
Arora said, "The new product is
just like any other cuppa noodles. Add garam pani (hot water) and it is ready
to eat. It's a very delicious product. We are confident this product will be an
instant hit".
Indian Railways plan to sell the
product on station and inside trains in north India amid COVID-19 crisis, where it has stopped selling cooked meals
inside trains.
The company has taken one and half
years to develop the product, which is now being tested in the market.
"After three months, we will
see the response and decide on the production capacity and investment,"
Arora said, adding that a large investment may not be required for this
product.
Besides, the company said it has two
more innovative products in its pipeline, which will be launched at an
appropriate time.
On other value-added products, Arora
said the company will market the premium rice snack 'Kari Kari', launched in
January this year, in more outlets in the coming months with relaxing of
COVID-19 lockdown rules.
"Initially, we had plans to
market the 'Kari Kari' product in 3,000 outlets. Unfortunately, we could not do
it because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that the lockdown rules are being
relaxed, we will start introducing this product in more outlets," he said.
Currently, the Kari Kari product,
made from rice and peanuts, is being sold in 150 outlets in metro cities
--Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Kolkata.
Daawat quick cooking brown rice,
fortified basmati rice, saute sauces are other value-added products of the
company.
Asked about any impact of COVID-19
crisis on LT Foods' business, Arora said there has not been much impact as the
operations were running in full capacity.
The home consumption of its products
has gone up but from food services has come down. However, the growth in home
consumption has offset fall in demand from food services providers, he said,
adding that the company is aiming to deliver a double digit growth in its
revenue this fiscal.
LT Foods has presence in over 65
countries with revenue of ₹4,183.99 crore in the 2019-20. It has five
manufacturing units in India.
The company's other brands include
Ecolife, Royal, Devaaya, Heritage, Indus Valley, Rozana and Daawat Chef's
Secretz.
We have been working on adopting new strategies in this ‘new normal’: LT Foods MD & CEO
Rahul
Wadke Mumbai | Updated on June 16, 2020 Published
on June 16, 2020
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- SHARE
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For FY20, overall sales were up 7 per cent to ₹4,184 crore; the April-June quarter of the current fiscal is also expected to be good. In an interview with BusinessLine, Ashwani Arora, Managing Director and CEO, spoke at length on the performance of the company and future plans. Excerpts:
How has the company faced the lockdown since March? What new strategies were adopted for coping up with the sudden business disruption?
Post the lockdown, the company took requisite permission from the authorities to run its operations as LT Foods is a consumer foods company and falls under the category of essential services. Following receipt of permission, the company’s primary focus was to service the customers, manage business operations in the changed scenario with agility, and yet maintain the safety of our colleagues and workers. The business was not disrupted in a big way as it has a robust supply chain and distribution network and a well-defined and structured procurement policy.
Nevertheless, the company did face a few challenges such as shortage of labour, arrangements of logistics and supply of packaging material for the first two-three days. But as the company has long-standing relationships with reputed shipping companies and packaging vendors, it was able to resolve these challenges very quickly.
The company has also been extensively working on adopting new strategies in this ‘new normal’. The primary focus is on ensuring the health and safety of the entire workforce and providing the products to consumers. To facilitate a smooth supply chain, the company has tied up with various delivery partners such as Swiggy, Zomato and Domino’s. The company has also formed a team headed by senior management that e-meets regularly to evaluate and respond to crises. It has also prepared a mitigation plan to resolve issues, if any, on immediate basis.
How has the company performed in the last fiscal?
The company saw a surge in demand for its products in India as well as international markets. Our consumer business has seen strong growth in all the markets, as the consumer demand for packaged rice has increased and is expected to increase further due to the rise in home consumption. Also, consumers are preferring branded packaged products, keeping in mind the safety aspect due to the pandemic.However, the HORECA (hotels, restaurant and canteen) business has seen a decline due to the lockdown. But with HORECA’s focus on online deliveries and with the government announcing opening up of outlets on selective basis in a few States, we have also seen some upswing in this category.
The company recently announced its results for FY20. Overall sales climbed 7 per cent to ₹4,184 crore. EBITDA margins also expanded by 140 bps to 12.2 per cent versus 10.8 per cent over the previous year. In absolute terms, EBITDA was up 21 per cent to ₹509 crore from ₹421 crore. Net profit also increased by 45 per cent to ₹199 crore.
Your company is primarily known for its basmati rice brands. Are you planning to expand your product portfolio based on rice varieties from various parts of the country?
The company has expanded its rice portfolio and has also ventured into the regional rice category with variants such as Sona Masoori and Kolam. It has also ventured into the health and convenience category based on the changing consumer needs and preferences. The health and convenience portfolio includes Daawat Quick Cooking Brown Rice, Daawat Sauté Sauces and rice-based premium snacks. All these products have been very well accepted by the consumers and have performed well in the initial launch phase.
It is also testing waters in the highly competitive North Indian market with wheat flour, which has a low shelf life. But it is still early days for this venture.
- Follow
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The race is on to grow crops in seawater and feed millions
With the quality of arable land declining and seawater
encroaching on fertile cropland, researchers are trying to find a way to make
crops grow in seawater
·
Agrisea’s proposed method involves first
isolating stem cells from crops like rice, then using CRISPR gene editing
technology to insert a DNA sequence specialised to the plant. The sequence
targets one of eight different genes, each chosen because the only place in
nature where all eight are “switched on” is in plants that have naturally
adapted saltwater tolerance. The sequence alters how the gene expresses, then
stem cells are grown into a full plant that produces its own seeds armed with
the newly edited gene. Follow the same process for editing the remaining seven
genes, and the Agrisea team says you’ll have a plant that can grow in the salty
sea without fertiliser, freshwater, or pesticides.
Many
researchers have edited single genes for salt tolerance, but editing a gene
network is an approach Young and Hornby say are unique to Agrisea. But they’re
not at the finish line yet.Thus far, Young and Hornby are working to grow rice plants in water one-third the salinity of seawater and plan to have small farms floating off the shores of Kenya and Grand Bahama Island by the end of the year. Young says that he’s confident the process will work because similar strategies have been used in the past to gene edit plants for other traits and “because I'm not proving something, I'm copying something. I'm copying what nature has already been able to do.”
Julia Bailey-Serres, director of the Center for Plant Cell
Biology at the University of California, Riverside, studies crop resilience and
the molecular physiology of rice. She says that researchers routinely edit
plants to knock out a gene’s function, but editing in a way that changes
specific amino acids, which likely would be required for growing crops in the
ocean, has only been done by a few researchers worldwide and not yet for the
purposes of salt tolerance. That more granular type of editing will become more
feasible in the future, she says, ”but I don't know if that’s going to be in
two years or 10 years.”
Bailey-Serres adds that she would be excited to see Agrisea
succeed and that any tolerance increases beyond one-third ocean salinity would
be a huge win in places like Vietnam and Bangladesh where rice paddies are
bombarded with seawater.
Agrisea’s approach to arable land scarcity relies on cracking the
salt tolerance problem, but other teams are opting to sidestep the issue
entirely. Floating farms that reduce demand for arable land have long been key
to survival in many non-Western nations. These crops thrive in freshwater
bodies — like Myanmar’s Inle Lake, which locals have relied on for food
possibly since as early as the nineteenth century — in buoyant beds that bob
along the surface as monsoons and floods sweep through. Floating farms have
also gained interest in Western cities. Over the last few years, research
groups and architectural firms in the UK, Spain, and Italy amongst others have
produced designs for floating vertical farms and greenhouses that suck up
seawater from the outside and desalinate it to nourish hydroponic crops grown
inside.
Coronavirus shows the enormous scale of the climate crisis
These projects push crops out into the ocean,
but Yanik Nyberg’s strategy is to bring the ocean in. Instead of making new
space for crops offshore, Nyberg’s Scotland-based company Seawater Solutions takes degraded
coastal farmland, seeds it with naturally salt-tolerant herbs like samphire and
sea blite, then floods the area by removing seawalls or pumping in water from
the ocean to create an artificial salt marsh. In this new wetland ecosystem,
crops grow without fertilisers, pesticides, or freshwater. They also hold soil
in place, preventing erosion, and feed on nitrates and carbon, both of which
over-accumulate in waters near human populations due to factors like
agricultural runoff and CO2 emissions. A solar-powered irrigation system
recycles the remediated water back to its original source.
Seawater Solutions currently operates six marsh farms in Scotland
and a handful of developing countries, including a nascent initiative to create
a marsh farm in the middle of a desert in Malawi by tapping underground
saltwater aquifers. These projects are small – most around 10,000 square meters
— and are limited to global food markets that are much tinier than those for
staple crops.
Duncan Cameron says that there isn't one right answer. Since the
2015 Paris climate talks, Cameron’s team has attacked arable land loss from a
multitude of angles, including monitoring nutrients in soil, forecasting the
agricultural impact of urban green spaces, and building a hydroponic greenhouse
in Oman that relies on desalinated water pumped in from the ocean. Solving
arable land scarcity will require novel approaches all focused around giving
the world’s tired soil a much-needed break. “We've got to take pressure off it
somehow,” he says.
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© Condé Nast Britain 2020
·
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DAILY SCIENCE
When fighting poverty yields more
trees
A cash transfer program for the
rural poor in Indonesia also reduced deforestation around participating
villages
June 16, 2020
Conventional wisdom holds that
alleviating poverty will inevitably result in greater strains on the natural
environment – that development comes at the expense of the natural world.
Recently, some scientists have begun to question that assumption, arguing that
carefully designed programs might be able to protect the environment and
improve human well-being at the same time.
Now, an analysis of a popular type
of antipoverty program in the world’s fourth most populous country brings even
better news: under certain circumstances, antipoverty programs can result in
environmental protection even if they’re not specifically designed to do so.
In the study, Paul Ferraro of Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, U.S., and Rhita Simorangkir of the National
University of Singapore analyzed data on Indonesia’s Family Hopes Program
(Program Keluarga Harapan, or PKH). The program provides cash payments to poor
households that meet certain educational and health-related obligations.
The researchers used satellite data
to track tree cover around rural forested villages that joined the program
between 2008 and 2012. Altogether they studied 7,468 villages across 15
provinces of the country.
“On average, exposure to PKH is
associated with a 30% reduction in forest cover loss,” the researchers report
in the journal Science Advances. Larger reductions in forest loss
occurred when more families in a village participated in the PKH program, and
when villages participated for more years.
About half of the forest saved by
the program was primary forest, the researchers estimate. That’s significant
because Indonesia is one of the world’s top 10 biodiversity hotspots, with the
third largest area of tropical forest. One in five hectares of tropical forest
lost between 2000 and 2012 were in Indonesia.
Forest loss is one of the main
drivers of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions. “Depending on assumptions
about the persistence of PKH’s effects on deforestation, the economic value
from reduced carbon emissions alone could cover the PKH implementation costs,”
the researchers write.
The magnitude of the program’s effect
is similar to that of programs that are designed specifically to pay people in
forested areas to leave forests intact – programs that “have been criticized
for not reaching the very poor,” the researchers add.
Because of the way the PKH program
was rolled out in forested areas, the researchers were able to compare
different villages to gain insight into the mechanisms by which the program
reduced forest loss. First, in the absence of the program, deforestation often
serves as a kind of insurance policy: “when the rice season rains are delayed,
poor farmers anticipate lower yields and deforest more land to compensate,” the
researchers explain. In this situation the PKH payments can help tide farmers
over instead. In addition, participants use the cash to purchase market goods
that they might have otherwise sourced from the forest, further reducing
pressure on forested areas.
These same mechanisms are likely to
be at play in other tropical countries, particularly parts of Asia where rice
is a staple crop and rural areas have increasing access to markets. This
suggests that similar poverty reduction programs could have positive effects on
environmental protection elsewhere too.
That’s important because right now,
globally speaking, biodiversity, deforestation, and poverty all tend to be
located in the same geographical areas. More than half of the 30 tropical
countries with the most forest cover have cash transfer programs similar to
PKH, and more are planning to develop them – which could spell good news for
both forests and families in the future.
Source: Ferraro P.J. and R.
Simorangkir “Conditional
cash transfers to alleviate poverty also reduced deforestation in Indonesia.”
Science Advances 2020.
Image: RF123
IIDC gears up to resolve issues of industries in UP
- Tue, Jun 16 2020 12:57:01 PM
Lucknow, Jun
16 (IANS): The Infrastructure and Industrial Development Commissioner
(IIDC), Alok Tandon, has directed all departments associated with industries to
resolve issues as per guidelines within a fixed time frame.
He said
industrial development was the priority of the government and Chief Minister
Yogi Adityanath had given strict instructions to settle all issues at the
earliest.
According to
a statement issued by the Udyog Bandhu, Tandon and other senior officials
reviewed 17 cases, including a complaint by the Rice Millers Exporters
Association of Ghaziabad. The association said it was not an getting exemption
from the mandi fee in import of paddy and export of rice out of the state.
The
association was informed that as per a notification issued by the state
government, mandi fee will not be payable in the trade areas outside mandi
yards and the scope of the mandi committees has been limited to the mandi
complexes.
On another
issue related to payment of stamp duty on the amalgamation of land, it was
clarified that stamp duty will be payable on the consideration of additional
processing fee deposited in cases of the amalgamation of plots.
If
amalgamation has been done without payment of processing fee, a stamp duty of
Rs 100 has to be paid in the supplementary deed.
Hathras
industries raised their concern regarding high monthly electricity bills as
billing was done on the KWH and KWA parameters.
The IIDC
directed the UP Power Corporation Ltd to find a technical solution to the issue
and make appropriate provision in billing software within a month.
Boro procurement: Building stock a must
Wasi Ahmed | Published: June 16, 2020 21:27:11
The food department has, so far, been able to procure very little quantity of the targeted purchase of paddy and rice this season in more than a month of the commencement of country-wide procurement programme. This, no doubt, speaks of the lacklustre nature of the procurement drive on one hand and failure to put in place effective measures to ease farmers' selling their produce to the government. The report published in a local daily quoting official sources says that until last week, the Directorate General of Food (DGF) purchased only 7,750 tonnes of Boro paddy from farmers, which is less than 1.0per cent of the target of 0.8 million tonnes. The drive, which began on April 26, would end on August 31. As for the purchase of rice from millers, the picture is equally depressing. The authorities succeeded in procuring only 6.0 per cent of the targeted 1.0 million tonnes of parboiled rice from millers since the drive began - that too more than a month ago, in the first week of May.
It may be noted that the agriculture ministry had said last month that the fairly good harvest of Boro paddy is capable of shedding worries about food security in the coming six months. Over and above, the next major paddy crop Amon which is set to be harvested in less than six months and that of Aus, a lesser yielding crop, coming up in 2-3 months from now make it a no-worry situation in so far as food security is concerned for the next one and a half year.
Amid the Covid-19-induced adversities in most sectors of the economy, food security does figure as a major concern given the requirement of massive quantities of rice under the subsidised open market sale (OMS), gratuitous relief operations for the poor and low income population across the country. Replenishment of stock has thus become crucially important. However, in view of the poor progress in procurement, things do not at all seem to be on the right tract.
It has been learnt from news reports quoting food officials that farmers are reluctant to sell to the government and are interested in selling their produce in the market as prices there are higher this season. Also, there is another problem for public warehouses to procure paddy from the farmers as the government's procurement specifications do not allow buying paddy having moisture content beyond a certain level - 14 per cent. If this is the case, one has reasons to believe that the authorities did not do their homework before planning the procurement drive. Clearly, there was deficient monitoring of market prices or speculative prices of paddy before setting the procurement price. Data of the Department of Agricultural Marketing show prices of coarse paddy rose 51 per cent to Tk 770 each maund (equivalent to 37.5 kilograms) on June 3 this year from a year ago. As regards moisture content, it is pretty well known that farmers do not bother to dry their paddy sufficiently enough to match the government's specifications for procurement. All they are interested in is fair price, where ever available. It is thus difficult to say how far the food department can go given the present pace of procurement.
The government started procuring paddy and wheat from April 26. The total target of procurement is 0.8 million tonnes of paddy and 1.15 million tonnes of milled rice. The government has the capacity to store 1.93 million tonnes of food grains in its warehouses. According to statistics, Bangladesh had a supply of 37.3 million tonnes of food grains (rice and wheat) from May 2019 to last month, and the country consumed around 35.8 million tonnes of food grains last year. According to food ministry data, food stock at the government warehouses dropped to 1.13 million tonnes on June 3, down 16 per cent from the same day a year ago.
The situation is far from rosy. The DGF office has directed its field offices to gear up efforts to achieve previously set target of buying 60 per cent of the Boro paddy by June, 90 per cent by July and 100 per cent within mid-August before the drive ends. It fixed the target last month and asked field offices to work to achieve the targets.
In this regard, one must not miss out the fact that although government procurement to build stock is not satisfactory as of now, farmers are getting fair prices, which is a good news. However, for the government to meet exigencies, building stock for the unforeseeable future is a must, and all out efforts should be in place to meet the target, if necessary, through readjusting prices and procurement specifications.
wasiahmed.bd@gmail.com
Huge Quantity Of Hoarded Commodities Recovered
2 days ago Tue 16th June 2020 | 07:52 PM Assistant Commissioner Sadr Umer Maqbool recovered 76,000 bags of rice, black grams and pulses from two godowns, hoarded for profiteering
FAISALABAD, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 16th Jun, 2020 ) :Assistant Commissioner Sadr Umer Maqbool recovered 76,000 bags of rice, black grams and pulses from two godowns, hoarded for profiteering.District administration sources said on Tuesday that on a tip-off, the AC along with his team conducted raids in Chak No.
67-JB Sadhar and recovered hoarded 65,000 bags of
rice from Khizar Traders.
Similarly, the AC Sadr recovered 11,000 bags of black gramsand pulses from
Ahmad Traders.Both the godowns have been sealed.
We have been working on adopting new strategies in this ‘new normal’: LT Foods MD & CEO
Rahul
Wadke Mumbai | Updated on June 16, 2020 Published
on June 16, 2020
- SHARE
- SHARE
- SHARE
For FY20, overall sales were up 7 per cent to ₹4,184 crore; the April-June quarter of the current fiscal is also expected to be good. In an interview with BusinessLine, Ashwani Arora, Managing Director and CEO, spoke at length on the performance of the company and future plans. Excerpts:
How has the company faced the lockdown since March? What new strategies were adopted for coping up with the sudden business disruption?
Post the lockdown, the company took requisite permission from the authorities to run its operations as LT Foods is a consumer foods company and falls under the category of essential services. Following receipt of permission, the company’s primary focus was to service the customers, manage business operations in the changed scenario with agility, and yet maintain the safety of our colleagues and workers. The business was not disrupted in a big way as it has a robust supply chain and distribution network and a well-defined and structured procurement policy.
Nevertheless, the company did face a few challenges such as shortage of labour, arrangements of logistics and supply of packaging material for the first two-three days. But as the company has long-standing relationships with reputed shipping companies and packaging vendors, it was able to resolve these challenges very quickly.
The company has also been extensively working on adopting new strategies in this ‘new normal’. The primary focus is on ensuring the health and safety of the entire workforce and providing the products to consumers. To facilitate a smooth supply chain, the company has tied up with various delivery partners such as Swiggy, Zomato and Domino’s. The company has also formed a team headed by senior management that e-meets regularly to evaluate and respond to crises. It has also prepared a mitigation plan to resolve issues, if any, on immediate basis.
How has the company performed in the last fiscal?
The company saw a surge in demand for its products in India as well as international markets. Our consumer business has seen strong growth in all the markets, as the consumer demand for packaged rice has increased and is expected to increase further due to the rise in home consumption. Also, consumers are preferring branded packaged products, keeping in mind the safety aspect due to the pandemic.However, the HORECA (hotels, restaurant and canteen) business has seen a decline due to the lockdown. But with HORECA’s focus on online deliveries and with the government announcing opening up of outlets on selective basis in a few States, we have also seen some upswing in this category.
The company recently announced its results for FY20. Overall sales climbed 7 per cent to ₹4,184 crore. EBITDA margins also expanded by 140 bps to 12.2 per cent versus 10.8 per cent over the previous year. In absolute terms, EBITDA was up 21 per cent to ₹509 crore from ₹421 crore. Net profit also increased by 45 per cent to ₹199 crore.
Your company is primarily known for its basmati rice brands. Are you planning to expand your product portfolio based on rice varieties from various parts of the country?
The company has expanded its rice portfolio and has also ventured into the regional rice category with variants such as Sona Masoori and Kolam. It has also ventured into the health and convenience category based on the changing consumer needs and preferences. The health and convenience portfolio includes Daawat Quick Cooking Brown Rice, Daawat Sauté Sauces and rice-based premium snacks. All these products have been very well accepted by the consumers and have performed well in the initial launch phase.
It is also testing waters in the highly competitive North Indian market with wheat flour, which has a low shelf life. But it is still early days for this venture.
Published on June 16, 2020
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https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/we-have-been-working-on-adopting-new-strategies-in-this-new-normal-lt-foods-md-ceo/article31839345.ece
LT Foods launches cuppa rice; gets first order from
Indian Railways
2 min read . Updated: 16 Jun 2020, 04:34 PM IST PTI
- Indian Railways has placed an order for supply of 2,000 cuppa rice, which is being dispatched
- Indian Railways plan to sell the product on station and inside trains in north India amid COVID-19 crisis, where it has stopped selling cooked meals inside trains
NEW DELHI : Leading basmati rice firm LT Foods has widened its
offering of value-added foods by launching cuppa rice under 'Daawat brand' on
Tuesday, with the first order being dispatched to Indian Railways. The company
hopes that the instant rice will be an instant hit as it is healthier, tastier
and easy to prepare by just adding hot water.
After three months, LT Foods will
decide on production capacity and investment upon evaluating the market
response for the product, it added.
"We have launched 'Daawat Cuppa
Rice' to test the market today. We have got the first order from Indian
Railways," LT Foods Managing Director and CEO Ashwani Arora told PTI
in an interview.
State-run Indian Railways has placed
an order for supply of 2,000 cuppa rice, which is being dispatched, he said.
Arora said, "The new product is
just like any other cuppa noodles. Add garam pani (hot water) and it is ready
to eat. It's a very delicious product. We are confident this product will be an
instant hit".
Indian Railways plan to sell the
product on station and inside trains in north India amid COVID-19 crisis, where it has stopped selling cooked meals
inside trains.
The company has taken one and half
years to develop the product, which is now being tested in the market.
"After three months, we will
see the response and decide on the production capacity and investment,"
Arora said, adding that a large investment may not be required for this
product.
Besides, the company said it has two
more innovative products in its pipeline, which will be launched at an
appropriate time.
On other value-added products, Arora
said the company will market the premium rice snack 'Kari Kari', launched in
January this year, in more outlets in the coming months with relaxing of
COVID-19 lockdown rules.
"Initially, we had plans to
market the 'Kari Kari' product in 3,000 outlets. Unfortunately, we could not do
it because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that the lockdown rules are being
relaxed, we will start introducing this product in more outlets," he said.
Currently, the Kari Kari product,
made from rice and peanuts, is being sold in 150 outlets in metro cities
--Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Kolkata.
Daawat quick cooking brown rice,
fortified basmati rice, saute sauces are other value-added products of the
company.
Asked about any impact of COVID-19
crisis on LT Foods' business, Arora said there has not been much impact as the
operations were running in full capacity.
The home consumption of its products
has gone up but from food services has come down. However, the growth in home
consumption has offset fall in demand from food services providers, he said,
adding that the company is aiming to deliver a double digit growth in its
revenue this fiscal.
LT Foods has presence in over 65
countries with revenue of ₹4,183.99 crore in the 2019-20. It has five
manufacturing units in India.
The company's other brands include
Ecolife, Royal, Devaaya, Heritage, Indus Valley, Rozana and Daawat Chef's
Secretz.
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