Articles tagged with: Agriculture
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Archer Daniels Midland Company is one of the world’s largest agricultural processors and food ingredient providers, with approximately 31,000 employees serving customers in more than 170 countries. The company sports a …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) What are the strategic plans, progress and future milestones of BASF, a major stakeholder in the Advanced Bioeconomy?
In this slide deck, BASF gets into technologies, results, horizons, timelines, direct investments, partnerships and alliances …
(California Air Resources Board | California Environmental Protection Agency
California Department of Food and Agriculture | California Natural Resources Agency) This Concept Paper provides a proposed outline for the California Natural and Working Lands Climate Change Implementation …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Yield10 Bioscience is an agricultural bioscience company focusing on the development of disruptive technologies to produce step-change improvements in crop yield for food and feed crops to enhance global food security. Experts forecast that …
(Solutions from the Land) One of the three pillars of climate-smart agriculture is actions that farmers can take to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and simultaneously improve profitability. A principal means by which the agriculture …
(European Investment Bank/Biomass Magazine) The European Investment Bank, the EU bank, announced the launch of a new financing initiative April 16 that aims to unlock close to EUR 1 billion of investment in the agriculture and …
(Climate Smart Agriculture Youth Network) The Climate Smart Agriculture Youth Network is a group of volunteers (based in in the African continent and , also Asia, USA and Europe)- linked across the world via an online …
by Ernie Shea (Solutions from the Land/25 x ’25) Over the past 10 years, Solutions from the Land (SfL) and 25x’25, our clean energy platform, has been supporting a group of knowledgeable, experienced and visionary farmers, …
(Solutions from the Land) U.S. agricultural producers have long understood that healthy soil is a critical requirement for the production of our nation’s food supply. They also know that as the world’s population grows by more …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) The pace of invention and change is just too strong, we’ve realized, to highlight annual or even quarterly or monthly rankings and summaries of significant product and service advances. For now, …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) The pace of invention and change is just too strong, we’ve realized, to highlight annual or even quarterly or monthly rankings and summaries of significant product and service advances. For now, …
(European Investment Bank) New financing initiative targets investments by private cooperatives and companies in the agriculture and bioeconomy sector; The EIB financing will amount to EUR 400m and is expected to back close to EUR 1bn of …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) The pace of invention and change is just too strong, we’ve realized, to highlight annual or even quarterly or monthly rankings and summaries of significant product and service advances. For now, …
(25 x ’25/North American Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance) Last November, we wrote here of a major breakthrough occurring at the global climate talks in Bonn, Germany, where, for the first time, delegates approved plans to …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) If you haven’t been to Ankeny, Iowa in recent years — situated between Des Moines and Ames, which is to say between the political and financial capital of the state and …
by Helena Tavares Kennedy (Biofuels Digest) In Washington, DC, a study conducted by nova-Institute on behalf of the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC) showed for the first time which macroeconomic effects are generated by bioeconomy activities – those using …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Chloroplasts are in the news this week because St. Louis-based TechAccel made a science advancement investment with Plastomics, a biotechnology startup making better crops through chloroplast engineering.
Here’s the key
Chloroplast engineering is …
(VINCI Airports/NGV Journal) As part of its commitment to environmental responsibility, the Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport is launching of a fleet of biogas-powered shuttle vehicles and creating an agricultural club.
A fleet of seven shuttles, running exclusively …
(Xinhua) Farmers in the South Pacific island nation of Fiji have been urged to be mindful of the impacts of climate change and practice climate smart agriculture to address the challenge.
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The Fijian government has worked on …
(World Agroforestry Centre) While India has a world-first national policy for agroforestry, aka trees on farms, farmers in different agro-climatic zones need help with which trees to grow. A new book is now here to help.
“With …
(Silvacom/Canadian Biomass Magazine) Silvacom Ltd. and Alberta Innovates are pleased to announce that the Bio-Resource Information Management System (BRIMS) is now available for public use.
BRIMS is a world-class, publicly available data and information management system that collates inventories …
by Jessie Stolark (Environmental and Energy Study Institute) New research from Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago at Illinois and the International Food Policy Research Institute shows that incorporating conservation practices can both increase soil …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) What are the true drivers of Innovation and what are the returns for investors — what’s up and what works? There is just not a more authentic authority on the subject …
by Louisa Burwood-Taylor (AgFunderNews) “A lot of what’s needed in African agriculture is quite low-tech if tech at all,” says Gary Vaughan-Smith, chief investment officer at SilverStreet Capital, the agribusiness private equity firm.
SilverStreet has been investing in African …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Last year, industry consultant Vonnie Estes — whose latest Digest column is here — picked up the Rosa Franklin Award for leadership in industrial biotechnology — and her most recent presentation decks offer a …
by Mitch Daniels (The Washington Post) Of the several claims of “anti-science” that clutter our national debates these days, none can be more flagrantly clear than the campaign against modern agricultural technology, most specifically the use …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … What are the top trends? Here are the 11 we see dominating the debate on the stage and on the floor.
Jet fuel deployment – how much, how soon, by whom? …
(CGIAR) Evidence-based science on the mitigation and socio-economic impacts of soil carbon sequestration is needed to support commitments to sustainable development goals and the Paris Agreement target.
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Soil carbon sequestration, they say, “can have equal or larger …
by James Ayre (Clean Technica) The true “social cost of carbon” is more than double earlier estimates — with even just an updated accounting of the agricultural sector on its own more than doubling earlier estimates …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … Agriculture, that is — our original industry, is being turned upside down. Data, genetics, intelligence, transmission, storage, processing, sustainability, and mobility are the drivers.
Not since the heady days of the Summer of …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Calyxt is pioneering a paradigm shift to deliver both healthier specialty food ingredients, such as healthier oils and high fiber wheat for consumers as well as agriculturally advantageous traits, such as …
(European Environment Agency) Only a decade ago, biofuel production from plants was hailed as an ecological alternative to fossil fuels. Recently, it has come to be seen as competing with food production and not always …
By Johnathan Hettinger and Robert Holly with additional reporting by Jelter Meers (Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting) In 2013, the Chinese firm Shuanghui received wide public attention when it purchased U.S. pork producer Smithfield Foods …
by Karen Batra (BioTech Now) Danone, the world’s largest yogurt maker, is making headlines again for another possibly well-intentioned, yet short-sighted, effort dubbed “One Planet. One Health.”
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Last year Danone announced it was “committing to getting …
by Tom Vilsack (The Hill/U.S. Dairy Export Council) This Earth Day, hundreds of thousands of people marched to “defend the vital role science plays in our health, safety, economies, and governments.” The March for Science …
by Amy Mayer (Iowa Public Radio) The agriculture sector needs to ramp up its response to climate change, especially in the Midwest, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of …
by Hiroko Tabuchi (The New York Times) … Here in north-central Kansas, America’s breadbasket and conservative heartland, the economic realities of agriculture make climate change a critical business issue. At the same time, politics and social …
by Chip Bowling (U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance/Washington Post) I consider myself an environmentalist, a conservationist and a farmer. This is an identity I share with many farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which spans …
by Bill Brandon (Washington Post) The Nov. 13 Business article “Mr. Business goes to Washington. Now what?” gave an analysis of how 15 business sectors, including marijuana and private prisons, would fare under President-elect Donald Trump. …
by Henry I. Miller (Forbes) … As economist Graham Brookes wrote about (Danny) Hakim, he makes “spurious comparisons that will mislead readers,” because he fails to understand that, “[t]here are numerous factors that affect yield such as …
(Biogenic CO2 Coalition) Today (October 6, 2016), a coalition of major agricultural groups launched a grassroots campaign to urge the Environmental Protection Agency to remove its regulatory roadblock to development of the emerging bioeconomy.
The Biogenic …
by Anthony Adragna (Politico’s Morning Energy) … YOU BUILD ME UP: The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate released a report today that found $90 trillion in infrastructure investments will be needed over the …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Late last week, the extended courtship between Bayer and Monsanto, which saw the dowry offer raised four times by Bayer, resulted in a $127.50 all-cash offer for Monsanto, which Monsanto’s …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Late last week, the extended courtship between Bayer and Monsanto, which saw the dowry offer raised four times by Bayer, resulted in a $127.50 per share all-cash offer for Monsanto, …
(The Financial) IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, will provide BRL 150 million of long-term financing to CerradinhoBio, an ethanol and biomass-based electricity producer operating in the state of Goias, in Brazil.
This investment …
by Sara Wyant and Philip Brasher (Agri-Pulse) Donald Trump’s campaign has set up a geographically diverse team of agricultural leaders that includes congressmen, governors, state agriculture commissioners, trade association leaders and producers of grain, livestock, …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Why do hot US agricultural technologies fail to get the explosive growth they deserve? BEE offers a new tech-to-market approach. — … Why think about the developing world at all? …
by Lais Thomaz* and Dan Quadros** (Advanced Biofuels USA) With diverse and dynamic programming involving agribusiness, food safety, nutrition, sustainability and bioenergy, the 2016 GAF achieved its mission to gather producers, companies and academia to discuss …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) AgSolver agronomic decision service products help increase profits by improving land management decisions, simplifying mandatory compliance and reporting activities, and maximizing returns for agricultural land investments.
AgSolver’s technology uses readily available …
by Erin Voegele (Biomass Magazine) The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers has completed a standard that establishes a framework for charting progress toward sustainable agriculture production.
According to ASABE, the standard is intended for …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … If you haven’t been to an LP meeting before, they are generally intimate gatherings of venture capitalists, their underlying investors (the Limited Partners), portfolio company CEOs, and some thought leaders …
(25 x ’25) The award of a $500,000 grant from the prestigious W.K. Kellogg Foundation to Solutions from the Land (SfL) this week (week of June 1, 2016) underscores the priority and responsibility that SfL …
by Geoffrey Carr (The Economist) If agriculture is to continue to feed the world, it needs to become more like manufacturing, says Geoffrey Carr. Fortunately, that is already beginning to happen — Tom Rogers is an …
(North American Climate Smart Agricultural Alliance) Solutions from the Land (SfL) is taking an active role in the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture (GACSA) summit underway this week in Rome, pressing business, government, NGO …
(U.S. House Committee on Agriculture) … (T)he House Agriculture Committee debuted a new blog, Homegrown, to chronicle daily life of American farmers and ranchers from the perspective of producers. The gap between urban and rural …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) For the advanced bioeconomy, the question remains and will remain for some time, where are the gallons? Specifically, projects that use biobased feedstocks that can be converted into renewable fuels, chemicals, …
by Louisa Burwood-Taylor (AgFunderNews) … “Ecological farming is ‘AgTech’ but of a different kind. It is a return to the original definition of ‘technology’, which comes from two Greek words: technis, which means art, skill, craft or the …
by Joseph Erbentraut (The Huffington Post) A new analysis finds potentially transformative agricultural research isn’t getting the level of funding it probably should. — Two years ago, when acclaimed food journalist Michael Pollan trumpeted “the most encouraging …
by Scott Canon (Kansas City Star) … The discussion of ethanol policy puts conservatives in an awkward spot — …Yet even in Iowa this year, Grain Belt concerns now draw less attention than in the past. …
(University of California Los Angeles) UCLA–UC Berkeley report finds that the state hasn’t taken full advantage of agricultural resources — California has not taken full advantage of opportunities to increase its in-state production of biofuel, …
(Oklahoma Farm Report) Leaders of the North American Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance (NACSAA) told policy makers and others attending climate talks here this week that agriculture can provide impactful and measurable contributions to global efforts …
by Tom Buis (Growth Energy/Ethanol Producer Magazine) Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders in agriculture, and no organization prepares them to rise up and meet the challenges that lie ahead like the National FFA Organization. Not …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)The production of Agrisoma’s Resonance Carinata is being expanded to multiple locations globally to provide a supply of sustainable, non-food oils for meeting the demand for sustainable biofuels. Resonance Carinata is …
(Food and Agriculture Organization/Ag Professional) All countries should strive to ensure an ambitious agreement to tackle climate change, putting food security and agriculture at the centre of debates on the issue, say FAO Director General …
(Stockholm Environment Institute) This brief draws together SEI research done between 2011 and 2014 on agribusiness developments – especially of oil palm – in Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
The brief presents overarching insights from …
Cracking the Nut is coming back to DC! After three years abroad, the 2016 Cracking the Nut conference will take place in Washington, DC on March 1-2, 2016.
Connexus is working with the Inter-American Development Bank, USAID and …
(Global Renewable Fuels Alliance) The UN FAO has released data showing that global food prices have experience the steepest monthly drop since 2008, casting doubt upon concerns about the impact of ethanol production in food …
Theme for 2016: Rethinking Global Food Security. Collaborative approaches to sustainable agriculture innovation.
Providing enough safe, nutritious food to a growing population is one of the greatest challenges facing the world today. Food and agricultural sectors …
The World Agri-Tech Investment Series is held annually in London and San Francisco and is acclaimed as the most international gathering of agribusiness leaders, VC investors and agri-tech innovators.
In November 2015, the World Agri-Tech Investment …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) 1. What is Semios? The Semios platform allows you to view and control your ranch in real-time. … 2. Why is Precision Ag on the march? Using Semios’ portal, you can see …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) 1. Who is PrecisionHawk? PrecisionHawk customers, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and education institutions, regularly leverage significant amounts of data to support their day-to-day business practices and recognize that the …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) As America’s farmers hit retirement age and technology options explode, what comes next?
… The average age of the US farmer reached 58.3 years in the USDA’s 2012 Census of Agriculture. …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) 1. Huge deal volume. A site worth knowing is AgFunder, here — whose slide deck on the transformation of agricultural technology is digested here. Bottom line, whether it is drones & robotics, …
by Dinfin Mulupi (How We Made It in Africa) Africa is seeing a surge in mobile phone-based solutions promising to revolutionise the agricultural industry. Technology entrepreneurs have developed mobile platforms offering a variety of solutions, …
by Geoff Cooper (Renewable Fuels Association) A recent study published in Environmental Research Letters by authors at the University of Wisconsin uses error-prone satellite data to suggest that growth in U.S. corn and soybean production …
by Krista Eastman (Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center) Scientists at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) reported today (March 9, 2015) the discovery of a chemical compound called poacic acid that could eventually be …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Though representing just 1.3% of the US GDP, if the farm sector has a major impact on US economic health, it may tie back to what economists call “the wealth …
(National Farmers Union/Ethanol Producer Magazine) National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson recently expressed concern over the exclusion of the renewable fuel standard (RFS) in President Obama’s formal submission of a plan to the United Nations …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) To make fuel, chemicals, fiber, food more productively than ever before — it starts in the field with the New Agriculture. Here’s what’s happening as Silicon Valley converges with Silicon …
by J. Paul Lilly (North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services) In order to understand both agriculture and forestry as they are today, I believe we need to know what they have evolved from. …
by Vonnie Estes (Biofuels Digest) … AgTech did not receive much attention from venture capital prior to 2012. Investment in 2012 was around $150M – and then it exploded to $1.8 B in 2014. Investment momentum …
by Fiona Harvey (The Guardian) Lord Krebs claims that organic farming needs more land than conventional methods to produce the same yield
Organic farming could be worse for the climate than conventional farming methods, one of the …
(UK Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) Key Messages
An estimated 51 thousand hectares of agricultural land in the UK were used for bioenergy in 2013.
The area of crops grown for bioenergy equated …
by Milsa Vijayadharan (Advanced Biofuels USA) Bioenergy is considered to be an important source of energy for the next decades for several reasons. Most important reasons are: bioenergy can contribute to the reduction of CO2, …
by Danilo Gusmão de Quadros* (Advanced Biofuels USA) The substitution of fossil fuels by advanced biofuels per se has a huge impact on the environment through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, consequently mitigating global …
(25 x ’25) The U.S. agricultural and forestry sectors have drawn some questionable, if not contradictory, criticism for their production of renewable energy feedstocks. In some circles, for example, it is claimed that corn production …
by Jane Black (The Washington Post) In high summer, fields of wildflowers bloom at Tony Thompson’s Minnesota farm: gray-headed coneflowers, phlox and white prairie clover. Those plants are designed to do more than just beautify. …
The Keystone Farm Show is the fastest growing farm show on the East Coast! Started in January of 1998 to address the needs of agrimarketers in the Mid-Atlantic area, the show has nearly tripled in …
What issues will be covered in the 2013 agenda?
Shifts in trade flows and emerging trends in the global oilseed and grains supply chain
New developments in vegetable oil usage for food, fuel and industrial applications
New oil …
(25 x ’25) With global demand for food, feed, fiber and energy on the rise, the need for critical ecosystem services like flood control, water filtration, biodiversity and carbon sequestration is even greater. The development …
by Dallas Kachan (Renewable Energy World/Kachan & Co.) …In its new report on agricultural cleantech, Kachan uses the following criteria to differentiate cleantech developments from generic agricultural innovations:
improved efficiency of resource use
reduced ecological impact
smaller carbon footprint
sustained …
by Peter Hemphill (Weekly Times Now) …While ethanol production has become the largest use of the corn crop, it has also developed a high protein byproduct – dried distillers grains with solubles – now highly …
by Geoff Cooper (Renewable Fuels Association) …According to a landmark study by the Keystone Alliance (a group including both farm groups and environmental organizations, such as Environmental Defense Fund and The Nature Conservancy) the amount of …
(DuPont) DuPont and Rosetta Green Ltd. have entered into a strategic research agreement to identify drought tolerance genes in corn and soybeans.
“Drought can lead to losses for corn growers of up to $13 billion annually,” said John …
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) …Here is dilemma of agricultural prices. Reducing demand, and commodity prices, benefits meat and dairy producers, and oil & gas companies. High prices benefit farmers, and technology companies creating new …
by Ann Perry (USDA ARS) Pacific Northwest farmers could someday be filling up their machinery’s tanks with fuels produced from their own fields, according to ongoing research by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.
Since 2003, Agricultural Research …
(IEA Bioenergy Task 39) The outlook consists of a set of market and sector income prospects elaborated on the basis of specific assumptions regarding macroeconomic conditions, the agricultural and trade policy environment, weather conditions and …
Dean Taylor (Des Moines Register/Iowa Corn Growers Association) …Iowa farmers have made measurable progress in conservation and water quality. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, farmers’ use of nitrogen and phosphorus per bushel has …
by Julie (SoutheastAGNet) Florida Farm Service Agency State Director, Tim Manning, wants to inform and educate producers about the need to decrease our dependency on fossil fuels through their statewide “Feedstocks for Florida Biofuels” town …
by David Mercer (Associated Press) Advances in conventional agriculture have dramatically slowed the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, in part by allowing farmers to grow more food to meet world demand without plowing up …
by Jennifer A. Burney, Steven J. Davis, and David B. Lobell (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) As efforts to mitigate climate change increase, there is a need to identify cost-effective ways to avoid emissions of …
