Waterproofing Crops: Effective Flooding Survival Strategies. © 2012 American Society of Plant Biologists. All Rights Reserved. Julia Bailey-Serres*, Seung Cho Lee and Erin Brinton + Author Affiliations ↵*Corresponding author; e-mail serres@ucr.edu. Plant Physiology December 2012 vol. 160 no. 4 1698-1709 Extremes in water availability (droughts and floods) have increased in frequency and intensity over the past 50 years in farming regions throughout the world. Figure 1. Financial losses in crop production due to environmental stresses in the United States from 2000 to 2011. A major international goal is to increase overall crop production to meet the anticipated needs of the world’s growing population. A detailed understanding of the developmental, morphological, physiological, and molecular mechanisms that underlie flooding tolerance should enable the translation of flooding survival strategies to additional crops to stabilize yields of food, feed, fiber, and fuel.
Figure 2. Examples of survival traits displayed in flooded plants. Figure 3. Bread prices set to rise after bad weather hits UK wheat crop | Business. Flour mills have been forced to order the biggest wheat imports in more than 30 years after the spring weather hit British farmers' crops. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said millers were expected to import 2m tonnes of mostly German wheat to make up for a 13% shortfall in the homegrown crop. It will be the biggest wheat import since 1980, and is expected to lead to a substantial increase in the price of bread next year. The price of bread-quality wheat for delivery to the north-west, the worst-affected area of the country, rose by £5.50 a tonne last week to £261.50 a tonne, according to the Home Grown Cereals Authority (HGCA), a trade body.
The cost of basic feed wheat on the futures market rose to a record high of £227 a tonne, a 45% increase since January. Global wheat prices are also at near-record highs. Garbutt said much of the British wheat was so poor quality that it was not good enough to be used for milling into flour. Get used to 'extreme' weather, it's the new normal | Connie Hedegaard | Environment. School children encounter flood water after heavy rains in Jhabua, central India. Photograph: Sanjeev Gupta/EPA It has been a summer full of reports of extreme weather, of unparalleled scope and severity. Among the highlights: one of the warmest years on record in the US, record-high temperatures in central and eastern Europe, the wettest summer in the UK, the heaviest rainfalls in northern India and the Philippines and the most severe droughts in the US and east Africa. In short, climate change and weather extremes are not about a distant future. Formerly one-off extreme weather episodes seem to be becoming the new normal.
Weather extremes are not that extreme any more. And this should not come as a surprise. And although not every extreme weather event can be attributed to climate change, scientists are now much more confident about linking individual weather events to climate change. This summer continued the pattern. Wet Weather Requires Slurry Spreading Period Lengthened. News Wet Weather Requires Slurry Spreading Period Lengthened 14 November 2012 UK - The NFU's Environment Team has released their monthly newsletter.
Flood management and slurry spreading are some of the key issues discussed with the wet autumnal weather causing problems. Exceptional rainfall has caused many farmers difficulty regarding spreading sufficient slurry to empty their stores prior to the closed periods. Defra has extended the slurry spreading 'window' by 4 weeks on soil types other than sandy or shallow, but continued rainfall and waterlogged conditions over this period, together with the late stage of the season, makes it likely that there will be chronic slurry spreading issues for much of the winter period. Defra IS expected to issue advice to farmers on actions they should take in the circumstances, via its website.
Farmers who act responsibly and follow the advice should not be at risk of being penalised for doing so. Abstraction Licence Renewal Flood incident management. Letters: Learning lessons from the ashes | Environment. The UK boasts several internationally significant populations of ash that require the highest levels of protection. These will be lost if we do not urgently target resources to these areas to try to at least slow progress of the ash dieback disease (Most UK ash trees will be diseased 'within 10 years', 3 November). Top of the list must be those in the Lake District, which includes significant numbers of ash in ancient semi-natural woodlands and many hundreds of ancient pollards. Pollarding (lopping branches off trees at a height of 3-4m above ground on a regular cycle) is integral to the silvopastoral system practiced for centuries in the region.
In valleys such as Borrowdale there are specimens many hundreds of years old which provide vital habitat for rare lichens, birds, bats and invertebrates. They are as much part of the landscape as the lakes, Herdwick sheep and vernacular architecture. European countries have been asking for a ban on importation of sapling over the last two years. Ash dieback: This shambles fills me with fear for my beloved countryside | Comment is free | The Observer. News that a fatal disease has landed on British soil understandably causes alarm. Today, the disease in question – Chalara fraxinea – threatens trees, not humans, but it's a sign of the esteem in which we hold our ash trees that the alarm bells have been so loud.
This could be like Dutch elm disease all over again, an unstoppable plague that transforms the countryside. As someone who manages a 10-acre woodland in Somerset, I've always thought that Fraxinus excelsior, our native ash, is the most magnificent specimen in the woods. It's beautiful, with a smooth, honey-coloured bark and a clean, white wood. Its delicate, pinnate leaves let in the light and the tree is useful for almost anything: it's both strong and elastic, so we use it for making all sorts of furniture, anything from chairs to four-poster beds. So the news that they're now endangered fills me with melancholy and something close to fear: when you heat your house and your water with wood, ash is your oil. Fuel price rises. Winter wheat still an option for January and February drilling. If waiting to drill check the latest safe sowing dates for winter wheat varieties before switching to spring cropping advises NIAB TAG.
Many commonly grown winter wheat varieties can be sown until the end of January with some suitable for mid and late February drillings says NIAB TAG’s head of technical services Ben Freer. “It isn’t too late to drill winter wheat should the opportunity arise. Varieties such as KWS Santiago and JB Diego can be drilled until the end of January with some such as Conqueror suitable until mid-February. Only switch to a spring cereal, if seed is available, if the latest safe sowing date for your winter wheat variety has passed. “In the past NIAB TAG members have reported reasonable yields from very late drillings if it was done well.
On many soils there are few alternatives that can out-perform even December or spring-sown winter wheat. Full details are available to NIAB TAG members at www.niab.com. Tips on picking the right spring crop - 12/13. Next season's spring cropping area is set to be much larger than in recent years as the poor weather forces growers to abandon their autumn drilling plans and crops fail over the winter, but care is needed in selecting the right crop. AHDB/HGCA's Early Bird Survey of cropping intentions, conducted by Andersons and Association of Independent Crop Consultants (AICC), show planting areas are down an anticipated 12% for winter wheat, 9% for winter barley and 3% for oilseed rape. It is based on anecdotal evidence from agronomists responsible for nearly 240,000ha of arable land across England and Scotland. Added to this is the estimated 20% failure of oilseed rape crops, with an ADAS report estimating that one-fifth of crops are "of questionable viability".
About 7% of wheat is estimated to be at risk of failure. Barley "Spring barley seed without question has got very expensive and has nearly run out at £540/t," says Richard Carlisle, Openfield's regional manager in the south. Wheat Oats Linseed. Farmers count cost of wet weather - 11/26. Farmers are counting the cost of the wet weather after yet more heavy rain brought autumn drilling and cultivations to a standstill. Rural insurer NFU Mutual said it was dealing with more than 300 claims, ranging from flooding of homes, commercial premises and vehicles to farm buildings and workshops. "We have got three pretty big claims in Wales with an initial estimate of £50,000 each," said Tim Price, rural affairs spokesman, NFU Mutual. The worst affected areas were the South West, followed by Wales and the Midlands. "It's a very serious flooding event. For those people affected, flooding is absolutely devastating," added Mr Price.
Torrential rain has caused widespread flooding in the Somerset Levels over the past week, flooding farmland and main and rural roads. The Environment Agency warned farmers that heavy downpours were threatening further flooding in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and parts of Wales through Monday (26 November). Weather and feed costs denting farmer confidence. The effect of adverse weather conditions combined with concerns over feed bills have dented farmer confidence to invest according to a new survey. Farmers remain relatively optimistic about the future of farming over the long-term but confidence in the red meat and pork sectors looks to remain weak. NFU chief economist Phil Bicknell said the results came as “no surprise” given the exceptional year many farmers have experienced.
"The challenging year we’ve had makes it easy to forget that farming has been something of a success story in recent years, increasing its contribution to the economy, creating jobs, and seeing improvements in farm profitability, as well as underpinning one of the most successful British industries, food and drink" he said. This, combined with a relatively lethargic world economy, has weighed on prices across the globe.
Some 42 per cent of farmers told the NFU that their farm businesses were in for a tougher year, up from 30 per cent in 2011. NFU Mutual faces £20m flooding bill - 11/28. Rural insurer NFU Mutual is facing a £20m bill to cover the cost of flooding, with parts of the country braced for more heavy rain today (27 November). NFU Mutual is dealing with more than 500 claims from homes and businesses affected by the flooding, with most in the South West, followed by Wales and the Midlands. In Wales, three separate claims of £50,000 have been submitted for flood damage to farm buildings. "We have already received hundreds of weather-related claims from across the UK and expect more to come in during the next few days," said NFU Mutual chief claims manager Matthew Scott.
"Although it's too early to put an accurate figure on the cost of claims, we could be looking at a total bill of up to £20m for NFU Mutual alone. " In addition to flooded farms, many rural businesses such as hotels, shops, offices and workshops have also suffered extensive damage, the insurer said. Vehicles have been hard hit, with claims for flooded cars, tractors and harvesting vehicles reported. As heat rises, rice pumps out more methane. UC DAVIS (US) — More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, coupled with rising temperatures, is making rice agriculture a larger source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, according to a new study.
But, the study’s authors say, relatively simple changes in rice cultivation could help reduce methane emissions. “Together, higher carbon dioxide concentrations and warmer temperatures predicted for the end of this century will about double the amount of methane emitted per kilo of rice produced,” says Chris van Kessel, professor of plant sciences at University of California, Davis, and co-author of the study published in Nature Climate Change.
“Because global demand for rice will increase further with a growing world population, our results suggest that without additional measures, the total methane emissions from rice agriculture will strongly increase.” Rice paddies are one of the largest human-made sources of methane, and rice is the world’s second-most produced staple crop. Source: UC Davis. Erosion’s hand in releasing buried carbon. UC DAVIS (US) — Erosion can bury carbon in the soil, acting as a carbon sink, but part of that sink is only temporary, a new study suggests. “It’s all part of figuring out the global carbon cycle,” says study co-author Johan Six, professor of plant sciences at the University of California, Davis. “Where are the sources, and where are the sinks?
Erosion is in some ways a sink, but, as we found out, it can also become a source.” The researchers estimated that roughly half of the carbon buried in soil by erosion will be re-released into the atmosphere within about 500 years, and possibly faster due to climate change. As a case study, the researchers used radiocarbon and optical dating to calculate the amount of carbon emissions captured in soils and released to the atmosphere during the past 6,000 years along the Dijle River in Belgium.
The study’s long time scope—from 4000 BC to AD 2000—allowed the researchers to notice the gradual reintroduction of buried carbon to the atmosphere. Is biofuel from algae ‘green’ enough yet? U. ARIZONA (US) — “Algal biofuels are not quite ready for prime time,” says Joel Cuello, co-author of a new report evaluating the alternative fuel’s current drawbacks and its potential. Increasing the production of biofuels made from algae to meet at least 5 percent of US transportation fuel needs would place unsustainable demands on energy, water, and nutrients, according to the report from the National Research Council, or NRC.
However, these concerns are not a definitive barrier for future production, and innovations that would require research and development could help realize algal biofuels’ full potential. “In other words, if scaled up today, the resources that have to go into production would not be sustainable,” says NRC committee member Joel Cuello, a professor in the University of Arizona department of agricultural and biosystems engineering. What will it take? The number of companies developing algal biofuels has been increasing, and several oil companies are investing in them. 306na1.pdf (application/pdf Object) 304na5.pdf (application/pdf Object) Africa: Locust Warning for Northwest Africa. Dakar — Swarms of desert locusts are likely to migrate to Algeria, Libya, Mauritania and Morocco in the coming weeks from West Africa and the Sahel region, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which urges the four countries to prepare for pest control.
Clouds of adult locusts are developing in Chad and are about to form in Mali and Niger after plentiful rains during the June-September rainy season favoured the breeding of two generations of locusts and increased their population 250 times. When they migrate to northwestern African countries, they are "expected to arrive in areas where there has been recent rainfall and with green vegetation... there could be impacts on associated livelihoods," Keith Cressman, FAO's senior locust forecasting officer, told IRIN.
Prevailing winds and past trends make it likely that the swarms, once formed, will fly to Algeria, Libya, southern Morocco and northwestern Mauritania, he said in a statement on 23 October. A Simple Fix for Farming. Capturing, Recycling Ammonia Emissions from Livestock. California blackberry grower takes soilless route. Drought concerns in Brazil; Argentina farms too wet to plant. Sunflower variety developed for biogas - 11/1. Big, Smart and Green: A Revolutionary Vision for Modern Farming | Wired Science. As planet heats up, fertile soil isn’t guaranteed. GCARD 2012. Australia and the global scramble for natural resources. 22,000 pigs create clean energy in Australia’s first carbon farming piggery :: SustainabilityMatters. UN warns of rising food costs after year's extreme weather | Environment.