Issue: February 2005 Behind the Lines Cover Story Letters Coming Events Short Takes Crops Business Letter From Europe Rural Roots   Contact Us

SHORT TAKES Canadian company trades emissions credits with Chilean food giant Chile may be a developing nation, but Agrosuper, the giant food producing company based there, is very advanced. Agrosuper, with 92,000 sows, claims to be the eighth largest pork-producing company in the world, and is also owner of a highly advanced anaerobic digester system. The $30 million US Peralillo digester located near Marchinae, south of Santiago, began operating in late 2000, taking over from a standard anaerobic lagoon system. The digester collects gases from 37,000 cubic metres of manure produced by 118,800 pigs. Collected gases are used to heat the digester and excess methane is burned off. (Agrosuper claims it can't compete with cheap electricity produced conventionally.) However, Agrosuper is collecting payments from companies in both Japan and Canada, allowing them to continue to emit greenhouse gases. Canada and Japan are both signatories to the Kyoto Accord, which mandates that signing countries reduce emissions of gases such as methane and carbon dioxide. Alberta-based TransAlta Corp. is this country's second largest carbon dioxide emitter, reports the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), and has contracted to buy 1.75 million global warming credits from Agrosuper. Since Chile is considered a developing country, it doesn't need to reduce emissions under the treaty. Agrosuper pigs emit methane but because of the digester and Chile's Kyoto status it's a trade-off. The WSJ quotes a TransAlta official as saying the company will buy credits elsewhere rather than reduce emissions at its own facilities. Agrosuper's report on its Peradillo project, available from the Internet, credits "Canada's Clean Development Mechanism/Joint Implementation Office, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, for providing monetary support for the development of the baseline and the project design document for this project. Their financial assistance has helped reduce specific transaction costs incurred while preparing this project for the CDM registration process." There is another Canadian connection as well. The company brokering the deal between Agrosuper and TransAlta was the cleverly named Toronto-based CO2e.com (Carbon Dioxide Equivalent). The business of buying and selling greenhouse credits is heating up, according to the WSJ. There is now a Chicago Climate Exchange where companies can buy and sell certified emission reduction certificates, but these are American credits and are discounted considerably from those traded in Europe because the United States is not a signatory to the Kyoto Accord. That could change, however. BF top Another knock against modern agriculture Have modern farming practices led to the production of nutritionally impoverished foods? There may be something to that claim according to University of Texas biochemist Donald Davis, as long as the modern farming practice that is referred to is plant breeding. In a study published by The Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Davis charges that there are significant changes in the nutritional value of garden crops over 50 years and he blames the changes on breeding selection for greater yields, resistance to pests, and adaptability to different climates. While plants grow faster, he supposes, they aren't necessarily better at making or taking up nutrients from the soil. Davis looked at analyses of 13 nutrients in garden vegetables and melons and strawberries in the 1950s and compared them to analyses from the same crops harvested in 1999. Six of 13 nutrients tested in 43 garden crops showed considerable decreases, Davis says, including a six per cent reduction in protein and a 38 per cent reduction in riboflavin. Content of calcium, phosphorus, iron, and ascorbic acid were also found to be reduced. Davis says grains, legumes, meat milk and eggs should also be tested and he wonders if the content of magnesium, zinc, vitamin B-6, vitamin E and dietary fibre has also changed. We may never find out because testing for these nutritional factors wasn't done in 1950, so there is no benchmark to use against using existing data. BF top Border opening: will new Canadian beef packers survive? If the border opens with the United States next month at least one Ontario beef packing proposal is in jeopardy. Investors are backing out of a plan to build a plant in Chatham-Kent, Kent County Cattlemen's Association president Frank Byrne told Better Farming in early January. Delays in getting a plan approved by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) haven't helped either, Byrne says. A group of beef producers in Kent County have been working on developing a plant that would slaughter young cattle for export markets. Byrne says he has travelled to Korea and he thinks there are opportunities for exporting there. Companies that had been importing Canadian beef were bankrupted when beef imports from this country were interrupted. Gencor Foods Inc. has a business plan for its Kitchener plant, which kills cull cows, that is based on the border opening, says Brian O'Connor, its general manager. Last month, Gencor Foods was busy promoting its hook lease program across Ontario. The hook lease program is important in two ways. Not only are producers committing to supply the plant; when they lease space they are also contributing to its financing by paying up front for a place to kill their cows. Ron Bonnett, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, wonders if producers will support these plants. Getting a commitment from them to supply domestic plants "will be the tough one," he says. They've suffered through two years of very poor prices during the BSE crisis, and prices in the United States are very strong. "They need to recognize that the U.S. market opening is not a complete, long-term solution. We need to rebuild processing capacity." Bonnett says his herd of 100 to 120 beef cows, located at Bruce Mines, culls 15 to 20 cows a year. He is looking at purchasing hook space at Gencor for half of that number. "As frustrated as people were with prices being paid in Canada during the BSE crisis...if we didn't have any packing plant, we would have been in even worse shape," he notes. Bonnett says he has been bending the ear of federal agriculture minister Andy Mitchell, in an effort to get clarification from the CFIA on what requirements a new plant can expect to face in order to open. Bonnett said opening of the Gencor plant appears to have been delayed because of changing rules from CFIA. O'Connor, however, denies that the CFIA has caused a problem. Federal food inspection officials have faced a tough challenge in dealing with food export issues. "Their world got turned upside down" by the BSE crisis, O'Connor says. "We recognize the challenging job that they have in setting down clear guideline. The CFIA are not the bad guys here."BF top Two neighbours, two different outcomes Larry Laidlaw and Nigel Eves are neighbours, who farm practically next door to each other in Peel Region. However, their two farms face a very different fate. Several years ago, Eves and some of his neighbours saw that a major developer was having his way with a nearby property that they felt should have remained designated agriculture. In fact, Eves says, it was better land than he was farming on. The farmers formed a local property owners' association and hired a lawyer to get their properties rezoned. The result? The properties were already designated for development when the province made its Greenbelt announcement last fall. Eves and his partner had already sold the farm where they grow apples. They leased back the orchards and buildings for another five years. Laidlaw, however, did not take part in the rezoning effort. His 98-acre property, which has cash crops, 14,000 units of broiler quota and a small pick-your-own operation, along with two other neighbouring farms, are now designated "heritage." What does that mean? "That means that down the road, we can't even cut a tree down," Laidlaw says. There will be subdivisions surrounding the farm. A branch of the Credit River crosses one corner of the property. "They have taken the whole farm land and left us with eight acres we can develop," Laidlaw says. "I don't know what we are going to do. You can't farm with all of the garbage and trespassing and theft. That is the big thing." Why Laidlaw's farm is designated as "heritage" is a mystery to him and to Eves. Laidlaw thinks it may be cut in half by a new 400-series highway that will be required in a few years. "It will put us out of business," he says. For his part, Eves wonders why the mapping was done the way that it is for the new Greenbelt scheme near Toronto. If a river runs through farmland, the property may be designated as heritage. If the property is scheduled for development, there is only a 100-foot-wide green corridor that can't be developed on each river bank.BF top Hemp growers in the United States seek a bigger victory Flushed with their victory over Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) rules that had banned hemp-based foods last year, the Hemp Industry Association is enlisting the support of the American Farm Bureau as it tries to make industrial hemp products legal as well. A year ago the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the DEA, blocking regulations that banned foods containing hemp seed and oils. Appeals to higher courts ran out in November. A ban on hemp grown for fibre remains. Now hemp growers are lobbying to change federal laws that prevent farmers from growing hemp and they went to the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau last month to do it. Automobile parts, paper, clothing, and personal care products made from hemp are available in the United States, but the hemp is grown in Canada and Europe and imported, says Eric Steenstra, president of Vote Hemp, a non-profit, advocacy organization that claims to represent 200 hemp manufacturing companies. Alexis Baden-Mayer, director of government affairs for Vote Hemp, says hemp oil and nuts contain omega-3 oils. The DEA's attempts to ban foods containing hemp were "misguided," Vote Hemp says, and now the organization is working with legislators to legalize hemp that contains insignificant amounts of Tetrahydrocannabis, the substance that gives marijuana, hemp's close cousin, its effect.BF top back