News

USDA investing $45 million to improve Lake Champlain

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that up to $45 million will be provided to protect and improve soil and water quality in the Lake Champlain Basin in Vermont over the next five years.

"We are dedicated to protecting and improving this beautiful and unique natural resource," Vilsack said. "This historic United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) investment will help improve water quality while assisting producers in establishing and expanding sound conservation practices."

In recent years, Lake Champlain has been plagued by blue-green algae blooms that periodically become toxic. The algae blooms are the result of degraded water quality primarily due to phosphorous pollution. Phosphorus can affect water quality by enabling excessive aquatic plant and algae growth, which can contribute to fish die offs and other environmental impacts.

Funding will be provided for conservation activities on and around farming operations in the Missisquoi Bay, St. Albans Bay and South Lake Watersheds. Over the past ten years, USDA, through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), provided about $46 million to help Vermont farmers address water quality issues in the Lake Champlain Basin, making this new five-year pledge almost double the historic investment in the area.

Also, in order to accelerate on-the-ground work this year, NRCS provided an additional $1 million of Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) funds to help producers plant cover crops on vulnerable soils and address conservation issues for livestock operations.

EQIP offers technical and financial assistance to help producers identify and implement conservation practices and systems that address natural resource issues. In Vermont, the program helps off-set the costs of conservation practices critical for water quality, such as conservation tillage, fencing to exclude livestock from water bodies, riparian buffers, stream crossings, and more.

"Vermont's farmers and landowners are committed to protecting and improving our precious water resources" said NRCS State Conservationist Vicky Drew. "An unprecedented surge in EQIP applications in the past year, speaks to producers' strong interest as stewards of the basin."

Additional efforts spearheaded by NRCS in Vermont include edge of field monitoring to demonstrate the effectiveness of key conservation practices, and a cooperative conservation effort with key partners to provide coordinated assistance to Lake Champlain producers.

A number of factors contribute to algae blooms. Warm water, lack of agitation, rainfall and runoff from farms, lawns, and other sources can all contribute to the problem. Some members of the scientific community believe that global warming is contributing to earlier blooms, not just in waterways in the United States but elsewhere. Conservation practices such as no-till reduce the amounts of sediment and nutrients in run-off, which is also influenced by the amount of precipitation and the time precipitation occurs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the USDA are working together to assist producers in efforts to reduce runoff by planting cover crops, controlling drainage and constructing systems like anaerobic digesters to reduce the amount of untreated effluent entering ditches, streams, rivers and lakes.

Plants can turn off virus DNA

A team of virologists and plant geneticists at Wageningen UR (University and Research centre) has demonstrated that when tomato plants contain Ty-1 resistance to the important tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), parts of the virus DNA (the genome) become hyper-methylated, the result being that virus replication and transcription is inhibited. The team has also shown that this resistance has its Achilles heel: if a plant is simultaneously infected with another important (RNA) virus, the Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), the resistance mechanism is compromised.

Antiviral defense via RNAi

Plant defence to viruses usually depends on RNA interference (RNAi). The genetic material of many viruses consists of RNA. A complex process in the plant causes the virus RNA to be chopped up into pieces, which means the virus can no longer multiply. In contrast to most other disease-causing plant viruses, the genetic material in TYLCV is DNA, not RNA. Therefore, antiviral RNAi defense to these viruses has to happen somewhat differently.

TYLCV is one of the most economically important plant viruses in the world; for this virus a number of resistance genes (Ty-1 to Ty-6) are available to commercial plant breeders. In 2013, the researchers in Wageningen succeeded in identifying and cloning the Ty-1 gene, which happened to present a member from an important class of RNAi-pathway genes. This led to a publication in PLoS Genetics. Their recent publication in the journal PNAS shows that although Ty-1 resistance depends on RNAi, instead of the genetic material being chopped up, it is being 'blocked' by methylation of the virus DNA.

For more: http://goo.gl/6HMIsD

Tomatoes reduce risk of prostate cancer

Research was recently announced suggesting that a regular diet of tomatoes may help in the fight to lower the risk of prostate cancer in men. A study out of the United Kingdom (UK) says that men who consume at least 10 portions of tomatoes in their diet each week reduce their risk for prostate cancer by nearly 20 percent.

Worldwide, prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among males. In the UK, there are around 35,000 new cases and nearly 10,000 deaths each year. Nutrition and cancer experts believe that a high-salt/high-fat Westernized diet is linked to the higher prostate cancer rate in developed countries like the UK and the United States. To lower the risk of cancer, health and nutrition experts state that a diet low in fat, salt, and processed and red meats and high in vegetables and fruits, including tomatoes may help.

Researchers from the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and Bristol studied the diets of 12,005 men without cancer and 1,806 men with prostate cancer between the age of 50 and 69. By following the diet and lifestyle of the 20,000 men, researchers were able to determine that a weekly diet that included 10 portions of tomatoes, along with other fruits and vegetables reduced the cancer risk in the cancer free men in the study.

For more: http://goo.gl/BNq9uF

Citrus greening spreading in Florida

Citrus greening, the insidious disease that is laying waste to Florida's signature agricultural industry, marches on with insect soldiers the size of a freckle that pass the lethal bacteria from tree to tree. There is no cure for the scourge that takes about five years to kill off a healthy tree and now has been reported in 37 of Florida's 67 counties, including Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk.

Last year, citrus greening was blamed for a loss of about 20 percent of the expected harvest, industry observers say. More worrisome, it's causing more and more citrus farmers to pull part of their groves out of production of Florida's iconic fruit — or get out of the business entirely.

Agricultural researchers continue to work to come up with a cure, which isn't on the horizon, or at least a way to control citrus greening, which every day seems more likely.

Preliminary predictions say that next season's yield will be down dramatically from years past, though some industry analysts dispute that. Over the past two decades, citrus growers have abandoned 300,000 acres, leaving a total of about 60 million trees on 500,000 acres.

Of that 300,000 acres lost, about 135,000 acres were abandoned because of citrus greening, said Mike Sparks, executive director of the Lakeland-based Florida Citrus Mutual, the largest citrus industry advocate in the state.

For more: http://goo.gl/5O7TRk

High-tech greenhouse starts planting tomatoes

After about a year, one of the largest high-tech greenhouses in North America is planting its first tomatoes in Dublin, Virginia.

One of the first things noticeable about the sprawling property is the nearly million square feet of glass covering nearly 20 acres of tomatoes.

Just off Route 100 in Dublin is where Mexico-based Red Sun Farms is staking its claim in America. That starts with planting nearly 30,000 hydroponic tomato plants on some 12 acres.

"Fifteen thousand today and 15 thousand tomorrow,” said John Secker, a Red Sun Farms’ master grower. Secker and his ''for now'' small crew are doing all that planting by hand.

"It's very technical. All the systems here are automated other than the plant care, that has to be done with people,” Secker said. “But all my irrigation, heating, ventilation and winter energy screens, that's all automated."

Red Sun says its tomato plants, when ready, will supply customers in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee.

For more: http://goo.gl/7ldwxH

USDA announces investment in rural businesses

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden announced that United States Department of Agriculture is investing in rural businesses and development organizations to spur economic growth in rural areas and in Tribal communities.

The funding is being provided through USDA's Rural Business Enterprise Grant (RBEG) and Rural Business Opportunity Grant (RBOG) programs. Rural Business Enterprise Grants help small and emerging rural businesses. Rural Business Opportunity Grants promote sustainable economic development in rural communities with exceptional needs.

The grants are being awarded in areas designated as Rural Economic Area Partnership (REAP) zones. REAP zones are areas that are considered economically distressed due to factors such as poverty, geographic isolation, declining populations or economic upheaval (such as the closing of a major job provider). The 2014 Farm Bill extends all current REAP zones through 2018.

Grants are also being targeted, predominantly through the Rural Business Opportunity Grant program, to Federally recognized Native American Tribes.

JCEO Food Service adding greenhouse to operation

JCEO Food Service could spice up its operation by making its own salsa.

The Malone food-growing and distribution program has an application before the North Country Regional Economic Development Council to fund a 20,000-square-foot greenhouse to grow tons of tomatoes for distribution to its existing food pantry and adult center partners.

But there would still be plenty of tomatoes to use in its commercial kitchen and packaging plant to make salsa, said Program Director Dick LaVigne.

"That would take us to a whole new level," he said.

The massive greenhouse would be built adjacent to the growing greenhouse JCEO uses now to get its plants started before they are transplanted into the 5 acres of land the agency uses for its gardens.

For more: http://goo.gl/CeX22K