Short Takes

A Saskatchewan farmer sued the company that refused him a refund on a corn and wood pellet stove because it wouldn’t work anymore, and lost.

The reason? In a Provincial Court of Saskatchewan Civil Division decision handed down in December, Justice J.A. Plemel wrote: “The plaintiff did not burn either wood pellets or shelled field corn” as per instructions in the owners’ manual. “He burned grain. He is of the view that the stove should not be sold in Saskatchewan if it cannot burn grain since Saskatchewan is not known as a corn-growing province.”

In January, the U.S. Department of Agriculture fined JBS USA LLC, the nation’s largest packer, US$175,000 for underpaying hog suppliers by a total of about US$350,000 in 11 months in 2007, according to a press release from the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration.

How many farmers are toting a “smart phone” and using them to surf the Internet?

Not that many, according to a study conducted by Guelph-based Stratus Agri-Marketing. The survey of 949 corn growers in Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec in August last year revealed that 11.6 per cent of corn growers had Internet-capable phones and 28 per cent of corn growers used their cell phones, Internet capable or not, to send text messages.

Stratus president Mike Weddel notes that a similar survey with western Canadian wheat growers revealed higher numbers – 15.7 carried Internet-capable phones and 47.9 sent cell phone text messages.

Ethanol is one reason for the high price of corn. Another reason is pressure for farming acres from an old competitor, cotton.

The Los Angeles Times reports that cotton-picking machines last fall chugged across fields that used to grow vegetables, vineyards or lay fallow. Growers were expected to plant 309,000 acres of upland and Pina cotton, up from 201,000 in 2010. Acreage is still far less than the one million planted in California in the 1990s. Acreage across the southern United States is expected to grow to 11.04 million acres, a 50 per cent jump in production.

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Slices of freshly cooked potatoes can provide electricity for remote, off-grid communities, says a research team at the University of Jerusalem. A slice of potato can generate light for 20 hours, and several slices could power simple medical equipment, or even a low-powered computer.

The work was described last year in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy and hinges on a recent discovery that electricity flows from membranes disrupted by boiling. Potato batteries are estimated to generate electricity at a cost of about US$9 per kilowatt hour, about the same cost as AA alkaline batteries. D cells generate electricity for about $50/kWh.

The outbreak started in late November. By mid-January, South Korea had culled about 15 per cent of the national livestock herd because of foot-and-mouth disease, along with three per cent of its poultry while fighting an avian influenza outbreak. Most animals killed were cattle. The beef supply was unstable because markets were closed and transportation restricted. South Korea was already a net importer of pork, beef and chicken.

An early January press release from the Canadian Beef Export Federation expounded upon the growth in exports “into key markets in Asia and Mexico in the first nine months of 2010,” but did not mention South Korea, where it also has an office.

Ever stiffer regulations and a strengthening currency are costly to agriculture in the European Union (EU), the Brussels-based farm union Copa-Coegeca warns and will result in imports taking the place of domestically raised meat on store shelves.

European meat exports are expected to decline 23 per cent by 2020, and imports are expected to rise by 15 per cent, but imported meats aren’t produced to as high a standard, warns Secretary-General Pekka Pesonen. In particular, Pesonen points to imports from the Latin America trade bloc Mercosur, where producers use growth promotants banned in the EU and only a poor animal traceability system exists.

According to a study by Oklahoma State University, most professional economists favour eliminating agricultural subsidies. Farm groups, however, like the status quo and environmental groups have their own view. President Obama wants to cut direct payments to “corporate megafarms” with more than $500,000 in annual sales. But nobody really asks taxpayers how they would prioritize spending at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Many dairy farmers, even in Wisconsin, depend upon immigrant labour to run their operations, according to a veterinarian in Waupun, Wis.  Dr. Al Mertens stepped into a contentious and divisive debate over how to deal with undocumented workers in a guest column that appeared in the The (Fond du Lac) Reporter, in early January. Mertens wrote: “Dairy managers would like to avoid the language barriers and constant worries about immigration issues. They have enough problems managing their farms without adding more problems. But the truth is they can’t find local Americans who want to fill the positions and show up to work . . .