Public release date: 18-Feb-2012

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Contact: John Bakum
jb755@cornell.edu
Cornell University

Innovative techniques in wheat breeding are necessary to meet the increasing population demand and overcome environmental challenges, said Ravi Singh at the 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, Feb. 16-20, in Vancouver.

Singh, Cornell plant breeding and genetics adjunct professor and distinguished wheat breeder at the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT), in Mexico, said that enhanced breeding techniques such as shuttle breeding are helping create new durably disease resistant varieties of wheat that will increase yields to better meet global demand.

Speaking as a panelist in the “Emerging Risks in the Global Food System,” a session organized by William E. Fry, Cornell professor of plant pathology, Singh noted that wheat yields need to increase one ton/hectare by 2020 to keep pace with the growing population. Rising global temperatures and new, virulent diseases will decimate yields even further. These pressures are especially felt in developing countries where wheat provides 20% of the daily protein intake for the average person, said Singh.

Wheat diseases, like Ug99, exert particular pressures on wheat in developing countries. Ug99, a stem rust first discovered in Uganda in 1998, attacks and destroys entire fields of wheat, overcoming the genetic resistance that protects a vast majority of the world’s wheat. The fungus spreads via wind currents and accidental human transmission. It has broken out of eastern Africa and is poised at the edge of the breadbaskets of Pakistan and India.

Norman Borlaug, Nobel Prize laureate and father of the Green Revolution, recognized the threat and convened a meeting of the world’s leading wheat researchers in 2005. Out of that meeting, the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project, administered by Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Science and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department of International Development, was created to organize and mobilize research to create new wheat varieties that are both resistant to Ug99 and provide increased yields. Singh collaborates with scientists in national programs around the world to breed new varieties of wheat that meet the threat.

Singh extends a method initiated by Borlaug, shuttle breeding, to identify and breed promising varieties of wheat more quickly. The process starts by planting seed in CIMMYT test fields in the irrigated Yaqui Valley, in Obregon, Mexico, and selected materials are then brought to test fields in Toluca, over 1000 miles to the southeast, outside Mexico City at high altitude and high rainfall There the plants are subjected to different soil types, temperatures, environmental and disease pressures. Because the growing seasons occur at different times of year Singh can subject his samples to two growing seasons in one calendar year, cutting the breeding time in half.

The selected plants in breeding populations are then grown at screening nurseries in Njoro, Kenya, administered by the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, for two generations under high Ug99 pressure and then brought back to Mexico. Selection in last breeding generations and testing for grain yield performance, tolerance to heat and drought stresses, bread quality, resistance to various diseases are then conducted in Mexico. . The end result is varieties well-suited to varied environments that offer good yield and strong disease resistance. More than 20 Ug99-resistant varieties have been released or are in advanced trials in eight countries, including India and Pakistan.

“We have made great strides in identifying new varieties that will provide durable resistance to stem rusts and increase yields,” said Singh, “but there is still much work to be done because of the importance of wheat and the ever-changing pressures it faces globally.”

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Article source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/cu-rsh021812.php

Tue Feb 21, 2012 6:34am EST

* Deputy minister forecasts “average” crop of 13-15 mln
tonnes

* Kazakh 2011 harvest post-Soviet record of 27 mln tonnes

* Sown area little changed at 16.3 mln hectares

(Adds quote, details)

ASTANA, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Kazakhstan expects its
grain harvest to revert to an average level of between 13
million and 15 million tonnes this year, a sharp decline from
the record post-Soviet crop of 2011, Deputy Agriculture Minister
Muslim Umiryayev said on Tuesday.

Central Asia’s largest wheat exporter harvested 27 million
tonnes of grain by clean weight last year, its largest crop
since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In drought-hit
2010, the harvest was only 12.2 million tonnes.

“We are forecasting the 2012 harvest at an average level of
13 to 15 million tonnes,” Umiryayev told a news conference. He
later specified this level as the average for the last 12 years.

The ministry said in a statement that the total area sown to
grain in Kazakhstan was expected to reach 16.3 million hectares
in 2012, slightly more than the 16.2 million hectares last year.

Within this total, the area sown to wheat in 2012 would
decline to 13.5 million hectares from 13.8 million tonnes last
year, the ministry said.

(Reporting by Raushan Nurshayeva; Writing by Robin Paxton;
editing by Keiron Henderson)

Article source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/21/grain-kazakhstan-idUSL5E8DL1HW20120221

BY RICHARD BARLEY

Greece is close to making bondholders an offer they probably can’t refuse. As part of its €130 billion ($172.1 billion) second bailout, Greece will launch a bond swap covering some €206 billion of debt. The deal isn’t great: Bondholders will be asked to write off more than half of their investment, accept low coupons and remain exposed to Greek risk. But there are still some sweeteners—and the alternative may well be worse.

…

Article source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204131004577237312701167668.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) – If upcoming earnings from U.S. retailers are as unimpressive as the rest of the profit season has been, Wall Street could face a tough time justifying a stock market at nine-month highs. Even with a Greece deal now in the works and the U.S. economic recovery showing stronger momentum, strategists think …

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/algeria-wheat-imports-56-pct-january-customs-133018812.html

Ukrainian grain exports fell 37
percent in this month’s first 15 days, ProAgro said, citing
figures obtained from ports.

Shipments dropped to 518,720 metric tons from 818,350 tons
a month earlier, the Kiev-based agricultural researcher said in
an e-mailed statement today. Deliveries slid 24 percent for corn
and 55 percent for wheat.

Corn exports declined to 417,210 tons from 547,390 tons a
month earlier, according to ProAgro. The grain was exported to
countries including Egypt, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany and
Iran.

Wheat exports fell to 86,480 tons, and the grain was
shipped to nations including Jordan, Italy and Israel, the
researcher said.

About 1.2 million tons of grain, including 835,900 tons of
corn, 344,800 tons of wheat and 47,500 tons of barley, will be
shipped soon, according to ProAgro.

Rapeseed exports tumbled 72 percent to 11,500 tons from
41,510 tons a month earlier, the researcher said. The oilseed
was exported to Portugal, and another 11,500 tons will be
shipped soon, the statement showed.

Sunflower-oil exports slipped 2.6 percent to 99,500 tons
from 102,120 tons, ProAgro said.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Kateryna Choursina in Kiev at
kchoursina@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Claudia Carpenter at
ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-20/ukrainian-grain-exports-decline-37-researcher-proagro-says.html

UK’s India-born beer baron Lord Karan Bilimoria, who brought his Cobra Beer to India and set up a $35-million production facility at Bihta near here, has urged the state to encourage farmers to produce quality barley and promised to buy up their entire produce if it is upto the

mark.

“We (now) have to get all our barley from Haryana because in Bihar barley grown is not of (high) quality,” said Bilimoria. “In beer, 75% ingredient is malted barley. It is unfortunate Bihar has only one brewery. If neighbouring Orissa can have five, why not 10 in Bihar?”

Bilimoria indicated that if farmers produce quality barley, Cobra Beer would take up the entire produce, which would directly benefit the farmers. “The state needs to develop a critical mass to make malt so as to encourage other beverage firms set up breweries in the state,” he said.

The joint venture of Molson Coors and Cobra Beer began production on February 15 after upgrading and expanding the brewery to double its capacity to four million cases a year.

The company produces three brands – Iceberg, King Cobra and Cobra. Molson Coors Cobra India bought out Iceberg Industries last July and took over its brewery.

Cobra Beers UK, which was going through financial problems, turned profitable last fiscal after 20 years with £4.9 million (Rs 3,821 crore) profits on sales of £48 million (Rs 37,435 crore).

The beer market in Bihar has grown approximately 10 times from annual sales of seven lakh cases to 70 lakh cases since November 2005, when Nitish Kumar took charge of the state. The state exchequer stands to earn Rs 50-60 crore per annum by way of excise and sales taxes from Cobra Beer.

Article source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Business/Billimoria-wants-Bihar-farmers-to-produce-barley-as-he-brews-beer/Article1-814393.aspx

For the second year in a row, Montana wheat values have
surpassed $1 billion, a high watermark achieved only four
times.

Analysts have put Montana’s 2011 crop values at $1.3 billion.
The numbers released late Thursday by the state bureau of the
National Agricultural Statistics Service are buoyed by strong,
lasting wheat prices, which kept values afloat despite a
weather-plagued crop year.

Wheat and cattle, both weighing in at more than $1 billion in
2011, are the biggest single components of Montana’s economy.

“In 2010, prices were low through the first half of the year
before they picked up. In 2011, they started out higher and
maintained that,” said Lola Raska, Montana Grain Growers
Association executive vice president.

Crop values for 2010 were a record $1.4 billion, but prices for
the first half of the year were dismal given that costs associated
with growing wheat were rapidly increasing. In July Russia
announced that drought had clobbered its crop and it wouldn’t be
exporting wheat. That produced premium prices for Montana wheat,
which was just then being harvested.

Prices continued climbing into 2011 and then stayed strong for
months. That long stretch of favorable prices presented Montana
farms with months to lock in a good price.

Crop values for Montana wheat have only surpassed the $1 billion
mark four times, all in the last five years. The trend is supported
by demand for wheat in rapidly developing countries and weather
problems that have plagued the planet’s other wheat-growing
areas.

The 2011 crop values were more than double the value of
Montana’s wheat crop just seven years ago.

The average 2011 market price for all wheat was $7.75 a bushel,
up $1.47 from 2010. Still, crop values were down from 2010’s record
$1.4 billion. The difference is partly due to rough 2011
weather.

Record rainfall last spring kept farmers from planting much of
anything in May. Crops that farmers usually finish planting by
Memorial Day were still 70 percent unplanted heading into June. The
delay left many farmers short of growing days for the crop to
mature before harvest.

For some, mushy fields too soft to support a tractor never
firmed up in time to plant. A million acres of Montana farmland was
enrolled in the federal prevented planting program, which offers
last-resort insurance help to farmers who fail to plant anything,
according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Risk Management
Agency.

Crop insurance indemnity payments to Montana farmers for all
crops exceeded $133 million, according to RMA, and nationally set a
record $9.1 billion as farmers from Montana to the Gulf of Mexico
struggled with flooding and later drought.

Farmers like Tom Jurenka of Hingham, who managed to plant before
the May deluge, did very well.

“We finished seeding on May 10 and it turned out great, 13.5 to
15 percent protein and 40 bushels to the acre,” Jurenka said
Thursday as he window shopped farm equipment at the Montana
Agri-Trade Exposition in Billings.

There was wheat stem rust and fungus to battle, but once wheat
was planted, the war was won, Jurenka said.

Jurenka’s neighbor Alex Chvilicek managed to get his wheat
planted by May 16. Those who didn’t probably didn’t get another
chance to plant until June, said Chvilicek, who cut 45 bushels to
the acre.

“We would take these values every year, rather than farm
programs,” Raska said.

Other notable state crop values included $162.8 million for
barley, up 4 percent from the previous year. The season average
price was $5.25 per bushel, up $1.17 from 2010.

Sugar beets values, which are reported a year later, were also
significant. In 2010, the production value for sugar beets was up
50 percent from the previous year to $80.3 million. The season
average price for sugar beets jumped from $10.60 per ton in 2009 to
$64 a ton in 2010.

Article source: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/e2b59298-ea89-5021-bd1c-b39adab1040a.html

A year ago, when Tyler School of Art professor Gerard Brown was asked to curate a 25-year retrospective of the Wood Turning Center, which was soon to be renamed the Center for Art in Wood, he headed for the basement of what was then the center’s home, on a dead-end street at Fifth and Vine, to check out the collection.

He found a lot more than the “10,000 bowls” the center’s old image and origins might have suggested. “There are issues of gender and identity, pieces that have a kind of incredible sense of humor, work that has wit and charm about it, work that ties into the history of furniture and into contemporary aesthetics.

“It’s astonishing,” Brown said last week, three months into the exhibition at the center’s new space at 141 N. Third St., which already has been visited by close to 4,000 people. “The field came together in the ’70s out of a bunch of guys – mostly guys – working in their toolsheds and basements, and now can be taken seriously as a form of art and sculpture and craft.

“It’s something people discovered was incredibly basic,” he said, “a way of making something, like a kind of paintbrush.”

Brown’s inventive, thoughtful show resolutely makes the case that Albert LeCoff, the center’s founder and heart, has been making for 35 years, the first 10 out of his Germantown home (where his dogs were trained not to gnaw on any wood objects). Wood turning – shaping blocks of wood on a spinning lathe – could find an identity in art.

LeCoff, 61, is now ensconced in the Center for Art in Wood’s sharp new digs in a former gym at Third and Quarry Streets, down the block from the original John Grass Wood Turning Co. founded in 1868, and surrounded by old machinery shops, new boutiques, and furniture-makers. He can hardly believe that his vision of wood turning as art, or art turning in wood, or wood in art, or however you want to spin it (the board debated which should come first in the new name, wood or art) has been so magnificently realized.

“I couldn’t be happier here,” he said. “We’re among boutiques and major galleries. I joke that the biggest unexpected bill is cleaning the windows from people leaning against us with their faces trying to see what’s inside.”

At the old location, near the egress from the Ben Franklin Bridge, LeCoff said, he was lucky to get 2,500 visitors in a year. It was mostly a twist on the joke – if wood turns on a dead-end street, does anybody notice? Not really.

A visit to the white-walled, large-windowed Gerry Lenfest Gallery facing Cafe Olé across Quarry Street reveals a collection that literally spins right off its lathe and works energetically as modern art, mostly out of wood.

Brown organized the exhibition of 100 objects (about 10 percent of the total permanent collection) around what he calls “conversations” – groupings of bowls or sculptures or tools, objects of one color, and even things that make little or no use of wood. There are botanical and natural works, human-anatomy-inspired pieces, furniture that dares you to sit, political works confronting war, and themes of memory.

There are provocative meta works such as Art Object to Be Destroyed, by Hilary Pfeifer, Dennis Carr, and Neil Scobie, a bowlish object stuck with match sticks ready for igniting. “Despite its Duchampian wit,” Brown wrote, the piece “suggests a desire to be kept apart from conversations that steer too deep into art territory.” And Joe Dickey’s Offering Bowl, made of weeping willow and almost totally open at the bottom, challenges the very definition of a vessel, not to mention the idea of an offering to God.

There are bowls that look like lace, wood sculpture from burls that evoke the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, pieces that take on gender and human form, bowls that show virtuosic forms of shaping and finishing, furniture that works as near-theater. The exhibition pops with the feel of a contemporary-art gallery.

Brown said he viewed the Center for Art in Wood as an example of how craft-based art was becoming more provocative and lively than more art-based art these days. He feels that the Art Alliance’s recent refocus on craft is an indicator of the liveliness of the field, not a retreat from more adventurous art forms.

“It’s a real interesting tension in the art world and the craft world,” he said. “I would say there are more exciting and vibrant things happening in the world of craft and design than in the art world right now. Craft and design are in many ways doing the work that art could be doing but isn’t because it’s pretending to be philosophy.”

Curating a show grounded in so traditional a craft as wood turning and finding so much modern sensibility was very satisfying, he said.

“As a culture, we make art. As a society, we make art. To that end, heck yeah, what’s going on at the center is art. It pays attention to ideas, craftsmanship, and intimate knowledge of the materials.”

Mark Sfirri, an artist with several pieces in the collection, credited LeCoff with the vision to turn the Wood Turning Center into something more ambitious.

“Once again, Albert is one who has always looked at people for new ideas and encouraged them,” he said. “Albert has this incredible vision. He’s taking on big tasks, going for it. There was a quantum leap from what was originally in his house to the Vine Street address. That was like, wow, I can’t believe it. Here, it’s even greater.”

Sfirri says the current exhibition has been provocative in seeing works from artists who don’t necessarily know one another displayed together. A grouping that pairs thick-walled bowls by Robyn Horn and Jim Partridge challenges the idea that the thinness coveted by turners is the only standard of excellence. “Both wrestle forms on the heavy side,” Sfirri noted.

Since 1995, LeCoff has brought artists together for two-month residencies at the University of the Arts. Many pieces in the current show grew out of those residencies.

In the new location, he’s seeing about 400 people on First Fridays, and is working with Cafe Olé on evenings of art and dinner. He’s planning future exhibitions (the current one runs through April 21) that play on traditional wood-turning forms and inspirations – “Hooked on Wood: The Allure of the Fish Decoy” and “Life Aquatic,” in which six artists will show work inspired by the sea.

In the new location, the permanent collection is housed on shelves in on open-walled mezzanine, a huge upgrade from the basement on Vine Street. There’s room as well for an extensive library and archives. In connection with the current exhibition, the center has produced a handsome portfolio with individual plates of every object. Metal garage doors in the front will be replaced, soon, by wooden ones.

“The space is really museum-quality space,” says LeCoff, who like many of the artists was first exposed to wood turning in a shop class. “We truly are a destination within the heart of the gallery district.”

The Center for Art in Wood

141 N. Third St., Philadelphia

Article source: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20120219_Against_the_grain.html

Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz addressed the Western Barley Growers Association’s 2012 Annual General Meeting to highlight the economic benefits of marketing freedom for the barley industry.

“Our government has delivered on our long-standing commitment to give western Canadian barley farmers the marketing freedom they want and deserve,” said Minister Ritz. “With the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, western Canadian farmers can now decide how to market the crop based on what is best for their own business, all the while strengthening Canada’s economy.”

The Government of Canada remains focused on the economy, and strengthening Canada’s barley industry will help create jobs and keep our economy strong. An open grain market attracts investment, encourages innovation, creates value-added jobs, and builds a stronger economy for all Canadians.

“The Harper Government’s top priority continues to be the economy, in which the barley industry plays a vital role,” said Minister Ritz. “With the global economy still very fragile, we continue to work on strengthening the agriculture industry, a significant driver of jobs and economic growth.”

The Canadian Wheat Board is preparing for an open market and will be a viable marketing option for farmers. Western Canadian farmers now have the freedom to choose how to sell their products, whether that means selling on an open market or to the Canadian Wheat Board.

The Western Barley Growers Association has been a leader within the Canadian agricultural sector in support of marketing freedom and continues to work toward strengthening the barley sector.

Article source: http://www.mysteinbach.ca/newsblog/14525.html

Prices for wheat, corn and soybeans have risen on worries that bad weather may have damaged crops in Europe and South America.

Investors on Friday speculated that demand for all three crops will improve. Wheat prices rose 2.4 per cent, while corn and soybeans were up nearly 1 per cent.

Global wheat supplies are plentiful so far but there has been speculation that freezing winter weather hurt crops in parts of Europe, which could cut into stockpiles.

Corn and soybeans supplies are already tight worldwide. Investors are speculating that inventories will shrink even more as details become available about potential crop damage from hot weather in Brazil and Argentina, Telvent DTN analyst Darin Newsom said.

In a report issued last week, the US Agriculture Department estimated global wheat stockpiles at 213.1 million metric tons by the end of the summer. Global corn supplies were forecast at 125.4 million metric tons and soybean stockpiles were estimated at 60.28 million metric tons.

“The market itself believes it’s much tighter than what the government said and so that would indicate subsequent reports will show further tightening,” Newsom said.

Other commodities were mixed as investors re-evaluated their holdings as a precaution in case there are developments in the Greek debt crisis over the President’s Day weekend.

Negotiations over the best way to fix Greece’s financial troubles have weighed on the market most of the week. Finance ministers from countries that use the euro will meet Monday to discuss another bailout package for Greece. US markets will be closed Monday for the Presidents’ Day holiday.

Investors have been concerned that Greece could default on its massive debt if the funding isn’t available before a deadline next month. That could cause slower economic growth and less demand for commodities.

In metals trading, gold for April delivery fell $2.50 to finish at $1,725.90 an ounce. In March contracts, silver declined 15.4 cents to end at $33.216 per ounce, copper decreased 8.3 cents to $3.708 per pound and palladium ended down $8.50 at $688.10 an ounce. April platinum rose $7.80 to $1,633.90 an ounce.

Oil prices rose on prospects for slower deliveries from the Middle East if Iran continues to clash with Western nations over its nuclear program.

Benchmark oil rose 93 cents to finish at $103.24 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Heating oil fell 2.08 cents to end at $3.1889 per gallon, gasoline futures declined 3.15 cents to $3.0156 per gallon and natural gas rose 11.7 cents to $2.684 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Article source: http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/world/12945222/wheat-beans-rise-on-hopes-for-demand/