toxification gmo
BASF to harvest seeds, herbicide businesses from Bayer for $7 billion.
BASF has agreed to buy seed and herbicide businesses from Bayer for 5.9 billion euros in cash, as Bayer tries to convince competition authorities to approve its planned acquisition of Monsanto.
businesses from Bayer for $7 billion
Maria Sheahan
4 MIN READ
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - BASF has agreed to buy seed and herbicide businesses from Bayer for 5.9 billion euros ($7 billion) in cash, as Bayer tries to convince competition authorities to approve its planned acquisition of Monsanto.
The logo of Germany's largest drugmaker Bayer is pictured in Leverkusen April 26, 2014. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender/Files
BASF, the world’s third-largest maker of crop chemicals, has so far avoided seed assets and instead pursued research into plant characteristics such as drought tolerance, which it sells or licenses out to seed developers.
SPONSORED
But Bayer’s $66 billion deal to buy U.S. seeds group Monsanto, announced in September 2016, has created opportunities for rivals to snatch up assets that need to be sold to satisfy competition authorities.
Bayer had offered to sell assets worth around $2.5 billion. The European Commission said in August that the divestments offered by Bayer so far did not go far enough and started an in-depth investigation of the deal.
Bayer has to sell the LibertyLink-branded seeds and Liberty herbicide businesses because they compete with Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and Roundup Ready seeds.
LibertyLink seeds, used by soy, cotton and canola growers, are one alternative to Roundup Ready seeds for farmers suffering from weeds that have developed resistance to the Roundup herbicide, also known as glyphosate.
The spread of Roundup-resistant weeds in North America has been a major driver behind Liberty sales.
“BASF’s decision to acquire seeds assets represents something of a change to its prior view on its needs to respond to recent industry consolidation in agriculture,” Morgan Stanley analysts said.
“Nonetheless, the proposed assets for acquisition are high margin and high growth and represent a sensible bolt-on addition,” they added.
The sale to BASF values the assets at around 15 times 2016 operating profit (EBITDA) of 385 million euros, which Bankhaus Lampe analyst Volker Braun said was “reasonable” considering the assets had to be sold anyway.
BASF will finance the acquisition through a combination of cash on hand, commercial paper and bonds. It expects the acquisition to add to its earnings by 2020.
A cyclist rides his bike past the entrance of the BASF plant in Schweizerhalle, Switzerland, July 7, 2009. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann/Files
Shares in Bayer rose 1.3 percent to the top of Germany’s blue-chip DAX index by 0845 GMT, while BASF fell 0.7 percent.
REGULATORY SCRUTINY
The businesses Bayer is selling to BASF generated 2016 sales of 1.3 billion euros.
While the Commission could block the deal, it has approved others, such as Dow’s tie-up with DuPont and ChemChina’s takeover of Syngenta - although only after securing big concessions.
Bayer said it continued to work with the authorities to close the Monsanto deal by early 2018.
As part of the asset sale to BASF, which is conditional upon the Monsanto acquisition going through, more than 1,800 staff, primarily in the United States, Germany, Brazil, Canada and Belgium, will transfer to BASF.
BASF has committed to maintaining all permanent positions, under similar conditions, for at least three years after the deal closes, Bayer said.
As part of the deal, BASF will acquire Bayer’s manufacturing sites for glufosinate-ammonium production and formulation in Germany, the United States, and Canada, seed breeding facilities in the Americas and Europe as well as trait research facilities in the United States and Europe.
Bayer said it would use the proceeds of the sale to partially refinance the planned acquisition of Monsanto. It would provide an update on expected synergies from the acquisition by the time the deal closes.
BofA Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse acted as financial advisors to Bayer. Its legal advisors are Sullivan & Cromwell, Dentons, Cohen & Grigsby and Redeker, Sellner & Dahs.
($1 = 0.8442 euros)
Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer and Keith Weir
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Farmers fear ‘political’ court ruling on plant breeding techniques.
EU farmers have expressed concerns about an ongoing court case on plant breeding techniques, saying it might end up being a “political” decision that does not take into account scientific and economic arguments.
Farmers fear ‘political’ court ruling on plant breeding techniques
By Paola Tamma | EURACTIV.com 03-10-2017 (updated: 03-10-2017 )
New plant breeding techniques modify plant genes to enhance certain traits. [IAEA Imagebank/Flickr]
EU farmers have expressed concerns about an ongoing court case on plant breeding techniques, saying it might end up being a “political” decision that does not take into account scientific and economic arguments.
The European Commission revived the debate on genetic engineering on 28 September, during a meeting on modern biotechnologies in agriculture focusing on New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBTs). But its stance is still unclear.
The term NPBTs describes a number of scientific methods that genetically engineer plants to enhance traits like drought tolerance and pest resistance.
The debate revolves on whether these techniques should be classed as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and should therefore fall under the strict GMO approval process.
The EU defines GMOs as “organisms, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination”.
Supporters of NPBTs argue that plants obtained through these techniques could also be the product of conventional cross-breeding techniques that mimic natural processes and hence cannot be considered GMOs.
The Netherlands says there is “no need to wait” for EU-wide regulation and would like to push forward the development of NPBTs.
Amsterdam wants to revive talks on new plant breeding techniques
The Netherlands believes the new plant breeding techniques should not come under the GMO legislation as they are as safe as traditional breeding. It also insists that a discussion on the issue should be launched soon, even before the EU Court rules on the issue.
On the other hand, sceptics contest the claim that NPBTs mimic natural processes because the end product could not be obtained naturally. They say there is no knowledge of what happens when combining multiple NPBTs and repeating this over time, hence the precautionary principle should be applied and NPTBs should be regulated under GMO rules.
Playing it safe
In 2016, the EU executive commissioned an up-to-date scientific overview on NPBTs. But the review, published last April, did not take a position on the legal status of NPBTs.
Speaking at an event on 28 September, Health and Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis said: “There is no single vision in the EU as to how far we could and should go to reap benefits from the use of human innovative interventions in agriculture.”
He said there is a need for further understanding of NPBTs: “In most science-related issues, people tend to look for ‘black and white’ answers where science is about risk and uncertainty.”
A European Commission spokesperson recently told EURACTIV that the executive’s legal interpretation is expected to facilitate harmonisation of EU member states’ approaches to new breeding techniques. “However, it is the sole prerogative of the European Court of Justice to provide a final and binding opinion on the interpretation of EU law.”
The court case
In 2016, France asked the European Court of Justice to clarify whether a variety of herbicide-resistant rapeseed obtained through NPBTs should follow the GMO approval process. The judgment is due in the first half of 2018.
The case concerns one type of NPTBs (mutagenesis) and it is unclear whether the judgment will extend to other NPTBs and what would be the impact of a negative ruling on genetic engineering in general.
It is also being disputed whether EU judges have sufficient scientific understanding to legislate on the matter.
“I fear that the court will make a political decision,” Thor Kofoed, head of seed policy at farmer organisation Copa-Cogeca, told EURACTIV.
“The new mutagenesis technique is a normal and natural breeding technique. I really fear the court will make the decision that mutagenesis is part of the GMO directive. Then we really have a problem because you cannot do anything – you break down the whole industry. And I feel that lawyers don’t understand a thing about biology”, he said.
Speaking at the Commission’s conference, Kofoed stressed that “farmers and breeders need to be increasingly innovative to deal with the challenge of feeding a growing world population with limited resources and increasingly variable weather events, ranging from floods to drought.”
“We need to develop new plant varieties which are for example resistant to water and heat stress, as a way to adapt to climate change, as outlined in the IPCC report on climate change,” he added.
According to Luc Vernet of Farm Europe, an agricultural think tank, for certain NPBTs, “we are on the safe side politically to go forward”, for instance, if no foreign DNA is used.
The American seed manufacturing company DowDuPont voiced confidence that the EU will come around to allow innovation in the field of NPBTs: “We remain confident that European farmers will have access to very important tools like this one”, DowDuPont’s Neal Gutterson told EURACTIV.
But organic farming body IFOAM expressed a different view. Jan Plagge, its vice president, said: “All new genetic engineering techniques should be, without question, considered as techniques of genetic modification leading to GMOs and fall within the scope of the existing legislation on GMOs.
“There are no legal or technical reasons to exclude these techniques from risk assessment, prior authorisation and mandatory traceability and labelling, which apply to current GMOs.”
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The plan to feed all Russians hinges on homemade seeds.
Russia has transformed its agriculture industry since the Soviet era as imports of foreign capital, equipment and technology helped farmers create one of the world’s biggest crop producers. Now the country is targeting the next step in bolstering its agricultural muscle -- seeds.
Russia has transformed its agriculture industry since the Soviet era as imports of foreign capital, equipment and technology helped farmers create one of the world’s biggest crop producers. Now the country is targeting the next step in bolstering its agricultural muscle -- seeds.
Many growers use specialized seeds designed to resist pests, disease and drought, but more than half for some crops come from foreign producers including Monsanto Co. and Syngenta AG that dominate a global market valued at more than $58 billion. Russian firms including Ros Agro Plc and billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s farm unit want to reduce that reliance on imports by creating their own seeds for everything from corn to sunflowers and sugar beets.
“Food independence starts with seeds,” said Pyotr Chekmarev, head of the Russian Agriculture Ministry’s crop department. “We will reach a level where we won’t depend on anyone. Businesses are becoming more affluent, and they should move on into new technology.”
Russia’s vast energy reserves helped to boost the economy over the past 15 years, including investment in the food industry. While the country has become a major exporter of grain and is self-sufficient in sugar, President Vladimir Putin says it’s still too dependent on imported seeds. The domestic industry may take years to grab more of the market. Crops are planted and crossed with other varieties many times over before the desired seed traits emerge.
But the benefits could be huge. Foreign companies supply about 80 percent of Russia’s sugar-beet seeds and almost half of corn seeds, the Agriculture Ministry said. Developing better seeds domestically could eventually boost crop yields as much as 20 percent, according to Pavel Volchkov, head of genome engineering at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
Read more: Soviet-era grain record seen tumbling on bumper Russian crop
One difference between Russia and the big global seed producers is that it won’t be making seeds by splicing plant genes in a lab. The technology was popularized in the U.S., which now produces most of its corn and soybeans from genetically modified seeds. Russia bans GMOs over perceived risks to health, the environment and biodiversity.
Instead, Russia is working on seed hybrids that can mimic the yield-boosting traits of GMO products but can take as long as a decade to develop.
“Farm equipment has been more or less upgraded across the country, and new technologies have been mastered to reduce costs and losses,” said Vadim Moshkovich, chairman and main owner of agricultural firm Ros Agro. There isn’t much room for improvement in those areas of crop production, but “I see potential in seeds,” he said.
Seed firms earn much of their money through the patents on their technology. That means farmers have to buy new bags of seeds each time they plant rather than reproducing them from those already purchased. It also encourages competitors to create their own seeds, according to St. Louis-based Monsanto, which spends more than $2.6 million a day on research and development.
While Russian companies’ seed investments are still relatively small, the incentives for developing a domestic industry are increasing, said Salis Karakotov, director general of pesticide producer Schelkovo Agrohim.
A weak ruble -- the byproduct of low energy prices and foreign sanctions related to Russia’s actions in Ukraine -- has made all imports more expensive, including seeds. And research in Russia probably would be cheaper than what foreign producers spend developing their products.
Ros Agro and Schelkovo Agrohim will spend a combined 500 million rubles ($9 million) in the next five years on breeding and building a genetics center, Karakotov said. Ros Agro said it plans to invest in soybean seeds this year and in grain seeds next year.
Deripaska’s Kuban AgroHolding unit, which in 2015 teamed up with France’s Maisadour Semences SA to develop seeds for corn, sunflower and rapeseed, said it’s now testing the jointly bred corn seeds.
Industry Challenge
Still, the companies who control the bulk of Russia’s seed market shouldn’t worry too much yet, according to Volchkov.
“This probably concerns them, but it’s a light concern,” he said. “Success won’t come quickly to the Russian businesses. It’s like a race between a hare and a turtle.”
Another reason to try to develop more local seeds is that they may yield more than overseas products because they’re likely to be more resilient to Russia’s climate, pests and diseases, according to Ros Agro. Domestic breeders could help Russia add “tens of millions of tons” to its grain harvests, Ros Agro’s Moshkovich said in June.
“Despite a good pace of development in agriculture, we still continue to depend on imports” of seeds, Putin said in July when asked by a student to comment on Russia’s biggest problem in agriculture. “This is something that needs to be paid special attention to in the near future.”
— With assistance by Samuel Dodge
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UK College of Agriculture/flickr
Drowning in grain: How Big Ag sowed seeds of a profit-slashing glut.
Abundant supplies have helped lower food prices across the world, but the benefit to consumers and impoverished nations is muted by several factors.
SPECIAL REPORT-Drowning in grain: How Big Ag sowed seeds of a profit-slashing glut
by Reuters
Wednesday, 27 September 2017 11:00 GMT
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Abundant supplies have helped lower food prices across the world, but the benefit to consumers and impoverished nations is muted by several factors
By Rod Nickel
CARMAN, Manitoba, Sept 27 (Reuters) - On Canada's fertile Prairies, dominated by the yellows and golds of canola and wheat, summers are too short to grow corn on a major scale.
But Monsanto Co is working to develop what it hopes will be North America's fastest-maturing corn, allowing farmers to grow more in Western Canada and other inhospitable climates, such as Ukraine.
The seed and chemical giant projects that western Canadian corn plantings could multiply 20 times to 10 million acres by 2025 - adding some 1.1 billion bushels, or nearly 3 percent to current global production.
The question, amid historically high supplies and low grain prices, is whether the world really needs more corn.
A global grains glut is now in its fourth year, with supplies bloated by favorable weather, increasingly high-tech farm practices and tougher plant breeds.
The bin-busting harvests of cheap corn, wheat and soybeans are undermining the business models of the world's largest agriculture firms and the farmers who use their products and services. Some analysts say the firms have effectively innovated their way into a stubbornly oversupplied market.
Never has the world produced so much more food than can be consumed in one season. World ending stocks of total grains - the leftover supplies before a new harvest - have climbed for four straight years and are poised to reach a record 638 million tonnes in 2016/17, according to USDA data.
Farmers and agriculture firms could once count on periodic bouts of crop-destroying weather to tame gluts and drive up prices. But genetically modified crops that repel plant-chewing insects, withstand lethal chemicals and mature faster have made the trend toward oversupply more resistant to traditional boom-and-bust agrarian cycles, experts say.
Another key factor: China - the world's second-biggest corn grower - adopted stockpiling policies a decade ago when crop supplies ran thin, resulting in greater production than the world needs.
"I think the norm is where we are now," said Bryan Agbabian, director of agriculture equities at Allianz Global Investors.
Allianz investors seem to agree: The value of two agriculture equity funds that Agbabian manages fell to $300 million this year from $800 million in 2011 as crop prices slid, he said.
Abundant supplies have helped lower food prices across the world, but the benefit to consumers and impoverished nations is muted by several factors, including problems with corruption and distribution of food in developing regions, said Sylvain Charlebois, professor of food distribution and policy at Canada's Dalhousie University.
The bumper harvests may actually harm poor communities more than they benefit their residents in food savings because lower prices depress farm incomes in the same areas, said John Baffes, a senior economist at the World Bank.
Even as farmers reap bountiful harvests, U.S. net farm incomes this year will total $63.4 billion - about half of their earnings in 2013, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast.
Lower incomes mean farmers cannot spend as much on seed, fertilizer and machinery, extending their pain to firms across the agriculture sector.
Potash Corp of Saskatchewan, the world's biggest fertilizer company by capacity, closed its newest potash mine last year, eliminating more than 400 jobs, and has seen its U.S.-listed shares fall by nearly half since the beginning of 2015. The drop erased $14 billion in value, and left Potash seeking to merge with rival Agrium Inc.
With profits under pressure, seed and chemical companies are scrambling to consolidate.
Monsanto's annual profit in 2016 was its smallest in six years. It agreed last year to combine with Bayer AG, which would create the world's largest integrated pesticide and seed company if the deal closes next year.
Grain handler Bunge Ltd said this summer it would cut costs, and left the door open to selling itself after posting a 34 percent drop in quarterly earnings.
Bunge CEO Soren Schroder sought to reassure investors in May by saying all that was needed to trim supplies was one bad stretch of weather in the U.S. Midwest.
But the glut pervades many major farming regions, making it unlikely that drought or floods in one region could wipe out the mounting global surplus. Even with dry conditions in North America, Europe and Australia, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that this year will bring the second-biggest global corn, wheat and soybean harvests ever.
Bunge's Schroder made his comment about bad weather less than three weeks before confirming an informal merger approach from commodities giant Glencore Plc.
"When prices tanked, farmers were no longer willing to pay more" for seed and chemicals, said Jonas Oxgaard, analyst at investment management firm Bernstein. "The mergers are absolutely driven by oversupply because their growth is gone."
Monsanto spokeswoman Trish Jordan said the company believes demand growth still justifies corn expansion, and she disputed the notion that crop science advances are backfiring on agricultural technology firms.
Monsanto rival DowDuPont Inc is making the same bet and currently sells the shortest-season field corn in North America, maturing in 70 days, spokesman Ali Aziz said.
Success in the lab and the field, however, has contributed to oversupply and may continue to sustain it, said Oxgaard, the Bernstein analyst.
"It's somewhat the seed companies' fault - they keep breeding better and better seeds every year," he said.
DARWIN, SEX AND CORN
Charles Darwin helped plant the seeds of the grain glut. The biologist and evolution theorist showed in the late 1800s that cross-fertilization of plants - in which sex cells are fused between crop varieties of the same species - creates a more vigorous breed than those that are self-fertilized.
His work and others' influenced successive generations of crop scientists and led to the development of hybrid corn, said Stephen Moose, a professor specializing in crop genetics at University of Illinois.
U.S. farmers started planting the first significant acres of hybrid corn in the 1930s, and by 1950 it made up nearly all the corn seeded in the United States.
Yields exploded. Farmers who reaped 20.5 bushels of corn per acre in 1930 harvested an average of 38.2 bushels in 1950, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Further hybrid breeding breakthroughs generated corn with leaves that grow more erect, allowing farmers to sow it more densely without starving plants of sunlight. Yields first topped 100 bushels per acre in 1978.
After conventional breeding breakthroughs became harder to find, corn gained new vigor through the 1990s with genetic modification.
In 1996, U.S. regulators approved corn that was genetically engineered to produce bug-killing proteins, accomplished by inserting a bacterium hostile to the corn borer insect into the plant genome.
Before the end of the 1990s, corn able to resist weed-killing chemical glufosinate or Monsanto's glyphosate hit the market.
Those modified varieties and others that followed proved pivotal in generating the abundant corn crops that have since become commonplace, Moose said.
"In the seed industry, it stimulated a whole other round of investment," Moose said.
In the 20 years since GMO corn reached U.S. farms, yields jumped another 37 percent to a record 174.6 bushels per acre last year.
Some experts believe the expansion of corn yields may soon hit a ceiling. The crop may be nearing the natural limit of its production potential, and crop yields will likely plateau in the next decade, based on how plants convert light to food and their ability to recover from heat, said Ken Cassman, agronomy professor at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Technology has also provided better defences against pests.
Syngenta AG's Viptera and Duracade traits, used to control worms and beetles, launched in 2010 and 2013. SmartStax corn seed, introduced by Monsanto and Dow in 2009, brought twin benefits of insect protection and herbicide tolerance, said Paul Bertels, vice-president of production and sustainability at U.S.-based National Corn Growers Association.
The breakthroughs in seed and pesticide technologies have not come without problems. Monsanto is now embroiled in a controversy over dicamba, a big-selling chemical designed to kill weeds that harm Monsanto's genetically modified crops.
Many U.S. farmers say dicamba has drifted from its intended fields, damaging plants that are not resistant to the chemical. Monsanto believes the main causes of drifting are errors by farmers and applicators in deploying the herbicide, company spokeswoman Charla Lord said.
GROWING CORN IN ALASKA
As it grew stronger, corn grew faster. Corn that required 120 days to mature in the U.S. Corn Belt during the 1960s now needs only 105 to 115 days.
Farmers in northern North Dakota plant and harvest corn in 80 days, and have doubled the state's production in five years.
Fast corn is now stirring even the imaginations of researchers in the far north.
University of Alaska Fairbanks horticulture professor Meriam Karlsson grew hundreds of corn plants in the Arctic state in 2015.
The plants, germinated in a greenhouse before they were transplanted outside, grew from a short-season garden corn variety that matured in less than 60 days. Corn rose only four to five feet, allowing plants to spend maximum energy on growing ears, rather than leaves and stalks.
Karlsson had expected few corn plants to survive in Fairbanks - less than 120 miles (190 kilometers) from the Arctic Circle.
"It's much more adaptable than I expected," she said. "Amazing what breeding can do. It was kind of exciting that you could do it."
The lure of technology comes down to money for farmers.
Even with Chicago corn futures down more than 50 percent from their 2012 record high, the high-yielding crop offers one of the strongest returns to Canadian farmers, generating profits per acre four times that of canola, based on average prices and costs, said National Bank analyst Greg Colman.
As corn spreads across the Canadian Prairies, those robust yields are winning farmers over, said Dan Wright, Monsanto Canada's lead for corn and soybeans.
"Once you harvest corn at 140 or 180 bushels, it's something you want to do again," he said.
While corn compares nicely to some crops, it offers U.S. farmers marginal returns at current prices, Bernstein's Oxgaard said. Switching to other crops is not easy in areas like the U.S. Midwest, where farmers traditionally swing between corn and soybeans, and have invested in costly equipment to grow them.
GLUT TRACES ROOTS TO SHORTAGE
The problems of plenty were on nobody's mind less than a decade ago. In 2008, a dramatic food price run-up stirred riots from Haiti to Egypt.
Four years later, the U.S. Midwest, the engine of the global corn and soybean growing machine, suffered its worst drought in decades, opening gaping cracks in the soil and withering crops.
Chicago corn and soybean futures hit record highs as U.S. production fell to multi-year lows.
But high prices proved the cure for high prices.
Farmers in traditionally less productive corn-growing countries such as Russia, Argentina and Brazil expanded corn output to seize bigger profits.
U.S. farming quickly rebounded, reaping record corn harvests in three of the next four years.
New corn varieties have made global production more balanced than ever, with 12 countries producing at least 10 million tonnes of corn annually, up from 10 before the drought.
Even if U.S. or Brazilian corn crops suffered major weather damage, the world would still have the expanding Black Sea corn region to tap, not to mention China's enormous supplies, said Bertels, of the U.S. corn growers association.
China's stockpiling policies, enacted in 2007 when corn supplies were tight, also stimulated oversupply. Aiming for self-sufficiency in grains, Beijing bought virtually the entire domestic crop each year and paid farmers as much as 60 percent more than global prices.
The program stuffed Chinese warehouses with some 250 million tonnes of corn by the time Beijing scrapped it last year. China is now boosting incentives for farmers to switch to soybeans from corn.
"The world's corn is mainly in China," said Li Qiang, chief consultant at Shanghai JC Intelligence Co Ltd.
He said it will take three to four years for stocks to reach a "normal" level of around 40-50 million tonnes.
The Black Sea region, made up of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, has become a disruptive force with rapidly expanding exports. Moscow aims to drive grain production to 150 million tonnes by 2030 from 117 million in 2016 after increasing storage and export capacity in ports in the last couple of years.
Glut conditions are expected to ease modestly this year, amid dry conditions in China and the United States, but supplies are still so large that prices remain weak.
OVERSUPPLY OF EVERYTHING
In northern North Dakota, an expanding frontier for corn and soybeans, Paul Thomas started dabbling in both crops about a decade ago on his farm near Minot, seeking higher returns than wheat.
Both are now among his biggest crops, including short-season Monsanto corn varieties that have only been available for a couple of years.
Profits may be tougher for Thomas to eke out this year due to dry weather and soft prices, but he shrugs off the struggle.
"We're very capable of producing a large amount of bushels given an economic incentive," he said. "If we end up over-producing, then we shift to one that's more in need. That's just the way agriculture works."
Thomas acknowledged, however, that the traditional dynamic may be changing in this current glut.
"I don't know any single crop that isn't in oversupply," he said.
Seeding equipment is becoming more precise, and increasingly cost-conscious farmers are applying fertilizer and chemicals more intelligently, said Al Mussell, head of research at Canadian think tank Agri-Food Economic Systems.
Monsanto projects that corn will become by the mid-2020s one of the biggest crops produced in Canada, which is an agriculture-exporting powerhouse in canola, wheat, oats and pork.
Soybeans are also spreading across Canada. Farmers seeded a record high 7.3 million acres in 2017, up 75 percent in five years.
On Monsanto's research farm in Carman, Manitoba, the next target is marketing a corn variety that matures in 70 days within the next two years. After that: an even quicker plant to snatch DowDuPont's claim to North America's fastest corn.
It is ambitious but realistic, said Kelly Boddy, manager of Monsanto's research farm.
"Wind the clock back a few years," he said, "and breeders wouldn't have thought it possible."
(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Additional reporting by Polina Devitt in Moscow; Michael Hirtzer in Chicago and Dominique Patton and Jo Mason in Beijing; Editing by Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot)
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Why we should make room for debate about high-tech meat.
The burgeoning alternative protein industry is drawing new lines and making interesting bedfellows—all the more reason to stay engaged in the conversation.
Why We Should Make Room for Debate about High-Tech Meat
The burgeoning alternative protein industry is drawing new lines and making interesting bedfellows—all the more reason to stay engaged in the conversation.
BY GARRETT BROAD | Animal Welfare, Business, Climate, Commentary, Food Safety, HEALTH, Labeling
09.28.17
“We built a lab with glass walls. That was on purpose,” Ryan Bethencourt, program director for the biotech accelerator IndieBio, told me as we sat in the company’s wide open basement workspace in the South of Market district of San Francisco.
Glass walls—it’s a design philosophy that many animal rights activists have argued could turn the world vegan, if only people could see into the slaughterhouses that produce their meat.
But IndieBio is taking a different approach. “If we put a lightning rod in the ground and say we are going to fund the post-animal bioeconomy,” Bethencourt, a self-described ethical vegan, explained, “then we’re going to create foods that remove animals from the food system.”
He pointed me to two examples currently in the accelerator: NotCo, a Chilean startup using a mix of plant science and artificial intelligence to create mayonnaise and dairy products, and Finless Foods, a two-man team using “cellular agriculture” to create lab-grown or “cultured” seafood. The latter is just one of several new products in development that creates meat without relying on actual livestock, using only a few cell tissues from animals instead.
While the number of alternatives to animal protein has been growing steadily over the last several years, it remains a relatively niche market. Bethencourt and his colleagues at IndieBio are eager to get their food into the hands of the masses. “If we don’t see our products used by billions of people, then we’ve failed,” he told me.
But it’s not just altruism that drives this emerging industry. There’s big money betting on a future of animal products made without animals.
Just look at IndieBio alum Memphis Meats, a cultured meat company that announced late last month that it had raised $17 million in Series A funding. High-profile investors have included Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and ag industry giant Cargill, none of whom seemed deterred by the fact that no lab-grown meat product has ever actually been made available to consumers yet.
Mempis Meats’ Southern fried chicken. (Photo courtesy of Memphis Meats.)
Major investment has also been pouring in for high-tech products made solely from plants. Hampton Creek, best known for its eggless mayo and dressings—and numerous controversies involving its embattled CEO Josh Tetrick—has been dubbed a “unicorn” for its billion-dollar valuation. (The company recently announced that it’s getting in on cultured meat innovation, too.)
Products from Beyond Meat are now in over 11,000 stores across the United States, supported in part by early investment from Gates and a 2016 deal with Tyson Foods. Gates is also a backer of Impossible Foods, which has raised upwards of $300 million since it launched in 2011 and has the capacity to churn out one million pounds of “plant meat” each month in its new Oakland production facility.
All of this big money, of course, has followed big promises. According to the innovators and investors involved, a sustainable, well-fed, economically thriving world that makes factory farming obsolete is now within our reach.
I’ve spent the last few months talking to scientists and entrepreneurs in the plant-based and cultured meat landscape. As a vegan since my college days, it’s been hard for me not to get excited by the vision they present.
Bu,t as someone who has spent the better part of the last decade working as a food justice researcher, author, and activist, lingering concerns have kept my enthusiasm in check. The truth is, food scientists, corporations and philanthropists have made big promises before, but the food system is still a mess. Farmers and workers continue to be marginalized, environmentally irresponsible practices remain the norm, animals are mistreated on a massive scale, rates of hunger and food insecurity are alarmingly high, and chronic diet-related disease is on the rise across the globe.
I find myself with mixed feelings about the whole enterprise. On one hand, I’m skeptical that these technological fixes will automatically lead us to some sort of agricultural utopia. But I’m also concerned that many who identify with the food movement might be missing out on the chance to shape the future of food because they’re turning their backs on food science altogether.
According to Professor Cor van der Weele, a philosopher of biology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who studies public perception of animal protein alternatives and has a book forthcoming on the topic, my reaction is far from unique.
“Meat has, for a long time, led to a very polarized debate—you were either a vegetarian or a staunch meat lover,” she explained. “Cultured meat has been very effective in undermining those polarities. It brings ambivalence more to the foreground, and it also makes possible the formation of new coalitions.”
Impossible Burger meat photo courtesy of @Impossible_Burger.
I’m interested in the possibilities these new coalitions present. But it’s hard not to wonder: Could what’s good for Silicon Valley really be good for eaters in South L.A., food entrepreneurs in Detroit, and farmers in Iowa? Could the “post-animal bioeconomy” bring us the kind of sustainable and fair food system we’ve all been waiting for?
Farming Beyond Meat
When I stepped into the El Segundo, California office of Ethan Brown, CEO of Beyond Meat, the writing was literally on the wall. Four stylishly designed posters outlined the company’s mission: improving human health, positively impacting climate change, addressing global resource constraints, and improving animal welfare.
“We’re lucky that for the first time in a long time, profit-seeking behavior and what’s good are aligning,” Brown told me.
“The whole genius of the thesis of what we’re doing is that you don’t have to have the mission in mind for it to be the right thing to do,” added Emily Byrd, a senior communications specialist at the Good Food Institute, a non-profit that promotes and supports alternatives to animal agriculture and works with companies such as Beyond Meat. “That’s why writing efficiency into the process is so important.”
Food-tech proponents insist that animals are really poor bioreactors for converting plants into protein. They suggest we simply skip that step—either by building meat directly from plant sources or using a laboratory bioreactor to grow meat cultures.
It would be a clear win for animals, and one that could mitigate the negative environmental impacts of factory farming at a moment of growing global demand. But what would it mean for farmers?
For one, it would require a lot less corn and soybeans—the two crops that currently dominate this country’s farm landscape. Shifting the commodity system wouldn’t be easy, but Brown argues that, “If you were to redesign the agricultural system with the end in mind of producing meat from plants, you would have a flourishing regional agricultural economy.”
By relying on protein from a wider range of raw ingredients—from lentils to cannellini and lupin—he says companies like his have the potential to diversify what we grow on a mass scale. It would be better for the soil and water, and farmers could theoretically benefit from having more say in what they grow with more markets to sell their goods.
Beyond Meat burgers. (Photo courtesy of Beyond Meat.)
When it comes to putting this type of system into practice, however, a lot of details still need to be worked out. Byrd pointed me to the writings of David Bronner, CEO of Dr. Bronner’s soap company, who envisions a world of plant-based meats and regenerative organic agriculture. He suggests that the soil fertility-boosting power of diversified legume rotations, combined with a modest amount of Allan Savory-inspired livestock management, could put an end to the factory farm and the massive amounts of GMO corn and soy (and the herbicides) that feed it.
Even cultured meat advocates see a future that is better for farmers once we move away from raising animals for food.
“In my mind, farmers are the ultimate entrepreneurs,” said Dutch scientist Mark Post, who created the first cultured hamburger, at the recent Reducetarian Summit in New York. “They will extract value from their land however they can. And if this is going to fly and be scaled up, we need a lot of crops to feed those cells. And so the farmers will at some point switch to those crops because there will be a demand for it.”
What crops and what types of farms would feed those cells? Right now it’s unclear, since up to this point cultured meat has used a grisly product called fetal bovine serum to do the job. Along with the continued use of animal testing, it’s one of the few ways that these food-tech innovators have been unable to move beyond using animals completely. Several companies claim they’ve begun to find plant-based replacements for fetal bovine serum, assisted in the discovery process by complex machine learning systems like Hampton Creek’s recently patented Blackbird™ platform. But intellectual property keeps them tight-lipped on the particulars.
As for how those crops—and others used in the production of meat alternatives—would be produced, there’s not much more clarity. In my conversations with people in the food-tech world, the opinions on organic and regenerative agriculture ranged from strongly opposed to agnostic to personally supportive. But with the likes of Gates and Cargill playing an increasingly big role in the sector, it’s unlikely that a wholesale switch toward these practices is on the horizon.
It’s not surprising, then, that some food activists are not buying what the alternative animal product advocates are selling.
Big Questions About Big Promises
“We want to see a food system in the hands of people and not in the hands of profit-driven companies,” said Dana Perls, senior food and technology campaigner for Friends of the Earth (FOE).
She expressed a set of misgivings about the role of genetic engineering and synthetic biology in the plant-based and cultured meat space. Are these products really about sustainably feeding the world or are they more about investor profit? Are we sure we know the long-term health impacts?
Perls noted the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent decision to stop short of declaring that a key genetically modified ingredient in Impossible Foods’ plant-based “bleeding” Impossible Burger was safe for human consumption. That determination did not mean the burger was unsafe, however, and Impossible Foods stands by its integrity.
Impossible Burger photo courtesy of @Impossible_Burger.
Perls was encouraged by the fact that some plant-based products—like those produced by Beyond Meat—do not use GMO ingredients. And she recognized that, from a technical perspective, cultured meat does not necessarily use genetic modification either—although it could in the future. But she and others are still uneasy. “The fact that there is a lot of market-driven hype propelling these genetically engineered ingredients ahead of safety assessments and fully understanding the science is concerning.”
Other concerns have been raised about the healthfulness of highly processed alternative meats which often lack a strong nutrient profile. But food-tech advocates maintain that conventional meat products go through multiple layers of processing, too, even if the label doesn’t always reflect it. And they are quick to note that meat is a major source of foodborne illness and has been associated with cardiovascular disease.
“[Our] number-one driver is far and away human health,” Beyond Meat’s Brown explained. “It’s absolutely the number-one thing that brings people to this brand.”
Plant-based and cultured meat producers see themselves promoting sustainability, promising healthier options in a world that demands convenience and good taste. But it’s not clear yet how universally accessible these products will be. Plant-based burgers made by Beyond Meat are now for sale in a number of grocery stores (including Safeway), for instance. But at about $12 a pound, they’re still much more expensive than conventional ground beef, which costs around $3.50 a pound, and even more than some higher-end ground grass-fed and organic ground beef, which sells for around $10 a pound.
NotCo Mayo (Photo courtesy of TheNotCompany.com)
Residents and activists in so-called food deserts are still calling for investments that provide access to fresh vegetables and create local economic growth. Alternative meat producers insist prices will come down once their supply chain improves, but only a concerted plan to promote equity will stop the venture-backed food-tech industry from reinforcing these types of longstanding nutritional and economic disparities.
“The decision about what an equitable food system looks like shouldn’t be determined by biotech itself,” FOE’s Perls argued. “We need to move with precaution, with transparency, and with a full understanding of what we’re doing so that we can make sure that we’re moving ahead in a way that has more benefits than harm.”
It’s hard to disagree with those assertions. At the same time, groups like FOE have been locked in a battle with the biotech world that often doesn’t allow either side to engage in a genuine dialogue. I, for one, don’t want to see that happen with these high-tech meat alternatives. Precaution is an important value, but aren’t there also serious risks if we don’t boldly engage with these scientific endeavors?
An Appeal to Dialogue
IndieBio companies like NotCo and Finless Foods say they want to communicate more with the public, helping to demystify new food technology and get people to become participants in the process of innovation.
“You have to be very transparent when you are changing the way that people eat. And that’s what we’re trying to do here,” said Finless Foods co-founder Michael Selden. “I’ve always been a political activist. And for me this is part of my food activism.”
If there’s any hope to build solidarity between food scientists and food activists, now is the time for those talks to begin. Perhaps the bigger question, though, is whether anyone is willing to listen.
“Within the scientific community, there’s this idea that every innovation leads to a future world that’s better,” Christopher Carter, a professor of theology who studies food justice and animal ethics, said. “But for many people of color, innovation and science have sometimes been harmful, or even come at their expense.”
In other words, if the biotech boosters are really interested in dialogue, it’s important for them to engage with critical histories of food and technology, which will help them understand why earlier promises to sustainably feed the world have fallen short. Equity should be at the center of their work and addressing the concerns of the most vulnerable eaters and food producers must be part of their bottom line.
“If you have people at the table who are asking those kind of questions, and the people who are doing the innovation are actually taking them as valid questions, I think that could help mitigate some of the potential problems that are going to come up,” Carter argued.
On the other side, a necessary first step for the most diehard critics of genetic engineering would be to become more familiar with the basic biochemistry involved in these new products. Food movement advocates should also avoid knee-jerk reactions that romanticize “natural” foods while villainizing any and all food-tech innovation.
It’s clear that food tech isn’t a silver bullet, but I’m also optimistic about the new coalitions that could take shape between scientists, investors, farmers, entrepreneurs, and eaters. We might never come to a clear consensus, but progress is only possible if we channel our ambivalence into honest, evidence-based, and historically grounded dialogue.
So if, like me, you are interested in a future of food tech that promotes real sustainability and food justice, I hope you’ll join the conversation. I’ll see you there, behind the glass walls.
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What Germany’s election results mean for science.
A new coalition could face battles over gene editing and climate regulations.
A new coalition could face battles over gene editing and climate regulations.
Quirin Schiermeier& Alison Abbott
25 September 2017
Article toolsRights & Permissions
Omer Messinger/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Angela Merkel is set to continue as Germany's chancellor, but is negotiating to form a new governing coalition.
As Germany reels from an unexpected surge for the far right in the 24 September elections, researchers don’t expect much effect on the country’s generous support for science. But with smaller parties standing to gain political influence, battles over issues such as the regulation of gene-edited organisms and how to cut greenhouse-gas emissions could grow fiercer.
Angela Merkel is set for a fourth term as Germany’s chancellor and will lead negotiations with other parties to form a coalition government, after her centre-right Christian Democrat Union (CDU) won the largest share of the seats in parliament, albeit with a diminished lead. Her coalition partner in the last government, the Social Democrats (SPD), came second, but it, too, lost support, and has pledged to move into opposition. Other minor parties are instead expected to enter government, in negotiations that Merkel hopes to complete by the end of the year.
Merkel has ruled out — as being too radical — partnerships with the far-right AfD (‘Alternative for Germany’) party and the socialist Left Party. Most expect her to strike an agreement with the Green Party and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP). That would form a ‘Jamaica coalition’, named as such because the parties’ colours match the green, yellow and black of the Jamaican flag. (A fourth party, the CSU, shares a platform with Merkel's CDU; it campaigns only in Bavaria).
The negotiations are expected to focus on hot political issues, such as Germany’s handling of the refugee crisis. All four parties strongly support science, but there are some key differences. The Greens want the same strict regulation for organisms that have been gene edited with precision technologies such as CRISPR, as has been put in place for those modified with conventional, less precise techniques. But the other three parties have hinted that they may support a more liberal form of regulation.
Overall, Germany already tightly regulates research on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and animals in general, and is unlikely to tighten that further under a new government, says Tobias Erb, a director at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg. “But I do expect that it will remain complicated, and might even get more complicated, to release GMOs — and in particular GM plants — if the Greens become part of the next government coalition,” he says.
Power struggles
Germany’s climate and energy policies could be another area of conflict within a future coalition, says Oliver Geden, a policy expert with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
The Greens want to shut down the country’s dirtiest coal power plants, and support a climate-protection law to help Germany meet its plans to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 80–95% from 1990 levels by 2050. But the FDP, a pro-business party in favour of free-market economics, advocates against detailed central planning to force cuts to carbon dioxide emissions — of the sort that has previously been proposed both by the Greens and by the outgoing CDU/SPD coalition. The FDP does favour eliminating “inefficient” subsidies in the energy sector and strengthening the European emissions-trading scheme. “We should expect a lot of ambiguity, even hypocrisy, when it comes to climate policy,” says Geden.
The strong presence of the AfD in parliament will make for noisy debates. Having won 13% of votes, the party is now the third largest after the SPD and CDU/CSU. The AfD did not make election statements on science, and declined to answer Nature’s questions before the election, but party leaders have previously expressed climate scepticism and distrust of genetic engineering.
The AfD’s rise means that for the first time, a party is represented in parliament that opposes Germany’s plans to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by moving to renewable-energy sources — termed the ‘Energiewende’, or energy transition. But its sceptical stance on climate and energy issues is unlikely to sway the next government, Geden says.
Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22667
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Quirin Schiermeier
Since 1999, Quirin has written for Nature about science and related policy in Germany, the European Union, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He is particularly interested in climate, oceanography, fisheries and the Earth sciences. Before joining Nature, Quirin worked as a cartographer. He …
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Alison Abbott
Alison has been with Nature in Germany since 1992, covering European science policy and a variety of scientific topics, mostly in biology. She also contributes to the Books & Arts section. Alison gained her first degree and PhD, both in pharmacology, at the University of Leeds. After a period of pos…
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Farmer wants a revolution: 'How is this not genocide?'
Health comes from the ground up, Charles Massy says – yet chemicals used in agriculture are ‘causing millions of deaths’. Susan Chenery meets the writer intent on changing everything about the way we grow, eat and think about food.
The kurrajong tree has scars in its wrinkled trunk, the healed wounds run long and vertical under its ancient bark. Standing in front of the homestead, it nestles in a dip on high tableland from which there is a clear view across miles and miles of rolling plains to the coastal range of south-east Australia.
Charles Massy grew up here, on the sweeping Monaro plateau that runs off the eastern flank of Mount Kosciuszko, an only child enveloped by the natural world, running barefoot, accompanied by dogs and orphaned lambs. Fifth generation, he has spent his adult life farming this tough, lean, tussock country; he is of this place and it of him. But when his friend and Aboriginal Ngarigo elder Rod Mason came to visit he discovered that a lifetime of intimately knowing the birds, trees and animals of this land wasn’t significant at all.
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The tree is probably a lot older than 400 years. Rod told him that when the old women walked their favourite songline tracks they carried seeds of their favourite food and resource plants, and sowed them at spirituality significant camping places. His front garden was one such ceremony place – there would have been a grove planted, and the women had stripped the bark from the tree to make bags and material. This old tree represented a connection to country “deeper than we can imagine, and linking us indivisibly with the natural world”, he writes in his book Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture – A New Earth.
Part lyrical nature writing, part storytelling, part solid scientific evidence, part scholarly research, part memoir, the book is an elegant manifesto, an urgent call to stop trashing the Earth and start healing it. More than that, it underlines a direct link between soil health and human health, and that the chemicals used in industrial agriculture are among the causes of modern illness.
It makes a world war look like a little storm in a teacup. And we are in denial
“Most of our cereal crops, the soybeans, the corn, are all predicated now on the world’s most widely used chemical which is glyphosate [Roundup],” Massy says. “There is mounting evidence that it is one of the most destructive chemicals ever to get into the system. Its main effect is on the human gut and our entire immune system.
“When you look at the As – autism, ADHD, all the other auto-immune diseases – their take off is a 95% correlation to these chemicals being introduced. The evidence is that it affects the gut and the immune system, though it is not the sole factor, and it is a complex thing. But it is that gut that drives our whole immune system, it is our second brain.”
Roundup in a supermarket
‘There is mounting evidence that it is one of the most destructive chemicals ever to get into the system,’ Charles Massy says of Roundup. Photograph: Rene van den Berg/Alamy
He says that when you spray insects with insecticides you kill off the predators so you have got to have more powerful chemicals next time because the pests come back stronger. “Roundup is now on its sixth or seventh phase.”
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Massy is among scientists who believe we have entered a new geological epoch, the life-threatening Anthropocene, where human impact has permanently altered the Earth’s geology and sustaining systems, causing ecological destruction and extinction of species. “It is the greatest crisis the planet and humanity has ever faced,” he says, sitting at his kitchen table in country New South Wales. “It makes a world war look like a little storm in a teacup. And we are in denial.”
Tall, lean, fit, with white hair crowning a face that has spent a life outdoors, Massy looks more like the establishment grazier he is rather than a powerful advocate for revolutionising everything about the way we farm, eat and think about food. We are at a tipping point, he says, and if we it ignore we are “history”.
Massy spent eight years going to his office in an outbuilding behind the house in the early hours of morning to write before a day of working on the farm; the 569-page book is his life’s work; the big picture, the long view both historical and into the future that pulls together the latest international scientific research and thinking on climate change, regenerative farming, industrial agriculture and the corporations driving it.
He writes: “While consuming more resources than the Earth’s systems can replenish, we are hurtling towards multiple calamities. We are degrading the air we breathe, denaturing the food we eat and water we drink and lacing them with a witch’s brew of deadly poisons.”
We have lost touch with the land, we manipulate the Earth to our own ends, we dominate it and are ultimately destroying it. Aboriginal people, he says, saw it differently, as something to be nurtured and nourished, a living entity. He calls their custodianship “one of the greatest ever sustainable partnerships between humankind and the ecosystems they occupied”.
Farmer and author Charles Massy
The farmer, scientist and author at home on his property, Severn Park. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
Then white Australians brought what he calls the mechanical mind and the European mind. “It is a totally different continent to anywhere else in the world. It works totally differently to that young landscape of Europe with humidity and rich soils. Until we throw off the European mechanical mind we are going to continue to stuff the joint. It is not something inanimate that you can belt. It is almost like being with a lover, you have got to nurture it and care for it.”
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Now 65 and “a fossil” Massy is, by his own admission, a “biophilia”, filled with the wonder and delight of nature. “I believe one cannot gain true ecological literacy without a great empathy with, and understanding of, nature and how it functions. Thus one’s heart also needs to be involved.”
But his own journey and awakening was slow and stumbling. He was at university when, at the age of 22, his father had a heart attack and he came home to manage the merino and cattle property. Well-intentioned and diligent he read the books, he sought advice, he learned. “I thought I was running a pretty good show.” His wool was being bought for fabric by “the top guys in Italy. We were the first group to breed animal welfare-friendly sheep.” But he now realises he was “blind” and “oblivious”, he saw the landscape “as if through a glass darkly”.
He writes: “I completely overlooked the most important of all factors, the keystone of the whole operation: that our farm was a complex and dynamic series of ecological systems, and that our landscape actually functioned in specific but sensitive ways.” He made mistakes; he assiduously ploughed a paddock just before a huge storm came and washed the topsoil away, “I had cost the landscape perhaps a thousand years of topsoil.” Like many other regenerative farmers he reached the conclusion he had to make a big shift when something “cracked” his mind open.
If people ate truly nutrient-rich food out of healthy soil, you would slash the national health bill straight away
For Massy it was the years of drought, 1979 to 1983, that plunged him into depression and major debt. He finally understood that he needed a completely different mindset and management approach if he was going to come to terms with the reality of drought. “The land, soils, micro-organisms and other creatures and vegetation are adapted to this,” he writes. And so he began his journey towards enlightenment. After 35 years he went back to university and completed a PhD in human ecology, consulting everyone from scientists to Aboriginal elders.
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We are driving in his ute across the plateau, cloud shadows dancing across the big-sky landscape, kangaroos and wallabies bouncing along, kelpies on the back to muster the healthy sheep. The paddocks are strewn with great monolithic rocks, 400m years old. There are birds and wildlife that have returned since he became a holistic farmer. Deep in the soil the bugs, microbes and fungi are sourcing nitrogen and nutrients. Change has to literally be grassroots, food health comes from the ground up, the health of people is entwined with the health of landscapes and soil. “The minute you fertilise and spray all that biology is gone. The vital thing about regenerative or organic farming is this healthy living dynamic soil. Landscapes with diverse arrays of plants are nutrition centres and pharmacies with vast arrays of primary and secondary compounds.”
As the dogs bound away to herd the sheep, he says, “One of the big ideas I discovered going back to uni was this concept which I came to, that our natural complex systems will self-organise themselves back to health. I think it is one of the biggest ideas. I think it is as big as evolution. It has only just emerged with physics and chemistry and computers and stuff. The Earth itself it is a self-organising regulating system.”
The human element is the problem, the learning how to live tuned to its rhythms, to get out of its way, to listen to the land. “I say confidently that not many farmers can read the landscape. For them to change they have got to admit they have been wrong for most of their lives. The thing that is challenging about it is that you have got to be totally flexible to adjustment and really get your mind into how nature works and be able to change tactics.”
He tells the story of the grasshoppers. Before he began holistic grazing the property was regularly hit by plagues of wingless grasshoppers. “They turned an OK season into instant drought. They thrive under degrading management, bare ground provides them with egg beds. But once we began our biodiverse plantings plus holistic grazing we have not had a grasshopper attack since.
The entrance to Charles Massy’s property
The entrance to Severn Park: ‘Now we have got 10 invaluable native grass species I never thought I would see on our property,’ Massy says. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
“Ecological grazing yields total ground cover, higher cover, deeper roots, more moisture absorption plus more biologically alive soils; it means nematodes and other creatures eat the grasshopper eggs. You get excited when you see a new plant species suddenly emerge again. Now we have got 10 invaluable native grass species I never thought I would see on our property.”
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The winter nights are cold on the plateau and, with a glass of red wine and before an open fire, Massy is unrepentant about criticising the big-end-of-town companies that promote chemicals in industrial farming, and the governments that don’t act. In the book he says unhealthy food “is not just poisoning us but is also, confoundingly, making us obese as well”. Now he says “when you are eating that McDonald’s crap even though you are bloated your body is still hungry because your organs are not getting nutrients.
“If people ate truly nutrient-rich food out of healthy soil, you would slash the national health bill straight away. The big chemical companies and big food companies know exactly what they are doing. It is now causing millions of deaths – tell me why that is not genocide?”
But just as nature find its own solutions, culling, reorganising, so too is Massy offering answers, a “toolkit” of how to change.
“This combines the best of Old Organic – namely its respect, empathy and reverence for Mother Nature – with the best of modern, ecologically simpatico science and Earth-empathic thought.” The kind of people who make the change, he found, were those with strong belief in community and healthy food that does not come from contaminated soil.
Call of the Reed Warbler cover
What lies beneath “is a burgeoning mass of life and activity that is 10-fold that above the ground; fungi bacteria, and other organisms have begun to create and sustain an entirely different, living absorbent soil structure; the very heart and essence of healthy farming and landscape function. The secret is to simply restore healthy landscape function and allow nature to do the rest.”
Massy agrees that he is “not naive enough to think it would be a nice seamless shift. I think we are going to see some pretty frightening stuff.”
But for him, a defining moment came when, while sitting against an old snow gum, he heard the “beautiful, piercing song of a reed warbler” returning after a long absence from this area. It was, he says, a “metaphor for us humans to once more become the enablers, the nurturers, the lovers of Earth”.
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