Every so often you come across a single well turned phrase that you wish had come out of your own mouth. I did so this morning while checking out a blog in the Los Angeles Times regarding the latest over-blown information purporting links between fructose sweetener and cancer.
Tami Dennis, health and science editor of the Los Angeles Times wrote the article about the recent UCLA study linking HFCS to the spread of pancreatic cancer contending that it could be an “overstatement.”
But the best line from the piece is a cutline under a lab photo accompanying her blog which said: “The road between a lab experiment and public policy is long. Or it should be.”
Wow! Words to live by. The UCLA hype is just the latest effort to take a free-standing nugget of information and attempt to pawn it off as scientific gospel akin to Galileo’s observation that gravity works.
Dennis cites the blog Respectful Insolence in her argument. “I hate science press releases that hype a study beyond its importance. I hate it even more when the investigators who published the study make statements not justified by the study and use the study as a jumping off point to speculate wildly.”
She is right on in her assessment. However, the problem is the UCLA news release got huge national exposure, fructose got another undeserved whack, and a small percentage of people who read the original news story will ever see the much lower profile condemnations of this shoddy approach to research.
Gilbert Ross, M.D., Executive Director and Medical Director of the American Council on Science and Health had a similar reaction to the UCLA gambit saying, “Both the authors and the press need to retract these alarmist and unsupported claims — especially the authors, since such gross over-interpretation of a lab study is inexcusable among academic scientists. They seem to be grasping for headlines and promoting some anti-fructose political agenda.”
For more background on this issue you might want to check out a much more thoughtful piece here.
If you ever get a chance to watch a presentation by Fred Below, University of Illinois, then you should do it. You’ll not only be entertained and informed but come away energized. He is passionate about his work and you will have no doubts about that when he’s done. He says his work mainly consists in figuring out how to sustainably reach a 300 bushel of corn per acre yield.
At the Corn Utilization and Technology Conference his topic was “Genetic and Agronomic Contributions to More Efficient Corn Production.” One of the messages he wanted to impart was that due to improvements in corn genetics some of the standard use factors for nitrogen are a little high. He urges producers to look very carefully at their use of fertilizer because they can find ways to save which will benefit them financially while improving environmental impact. He thinks this efficiency will continue to improve too. So even as corn yields increase the amount of fertilizer and energy input will go down. This also helps those involved in ethanol production because it shows the EPA that “We actually produce ethanol with a lot less environmental impact.”
You can download (mp3) and listen to my interview with Fred here:
I previewed the keynote address to open the Corn Utilization and Technology Conference earlier today. Now here’s the full comments from Dr. Gale Buchanan, former USDA Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics.
Dr. Buchanan was introduced by NCGA President, Darrin Ihnen, and I’m also posting his welcome message. During the next couple days I’ll be doing a lot of interviews which will be used on Corn Commentary in coming weeks. I’ll also have more for you here so keep your eyes and ears open.
You can download (mp3) and listen to Darrin’s welcome here:
Dr. Buchanan devoted the theme of his speech to the need for a “new green revolution” and pointed to the work of Dr. Normal Borlaug and many of the things he said about the importance of good scientific agricultural research. He says all branches of science will be needed to create the new green revolution to feed the world in the future. Some of the concerns he has include the availability of fertilizer resources and global climate change.
One of my favorite remarks he made was, “At the time you need the results of research, it’s too late.” He used the problem BP is having with the Gulf oil spill as an example, saying they waited too long to do research on what to do if such a problem occurred.
You can download (mp3) and listen to Dr. Buchanan’s speech here:
You can watch a condensed version of his speech here:
It is pretty hard to improve upon corn-fed beef, but research coming out of the University of Illinois shows that there may be a way to maintain the delicious flavor and reasonable cost while improving farmer profitability.
Beef lovers know that high marbling makes a great steak. Just by looking at the cut in the butcher’s case, they can see the quality. Corn-fed beef offers better marbling than any alternative.
Now, farmers can achieve the same succulent steak by utilizing the ethanol co-product distillers dried grains. Created when starch is removed from corn to make ethanol, DDGs are rich in essential nutrients such as protein, fat, minerals and vitamins. As one bushel of corn produces 2.8 gallons of ethanol and 17 pounds of distillers grains, they offer an economical, environmentally friendly alternative.
The research indicates that beef produced using this product can improve farmers’ bottom lines without compromising quality. Following the feeding guidelines that the trial recommends even cuts the time needed to prepare the cattle for market.
“We believe feeding a high-grain ration to cattle at a young age and finishing them on co-products is the most profitable way to produce high-quality beef,” said University of Illinois animal scientist Dan Shike.
Research from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln shows that feeding “reproducing cows corn co-products is beneficial to their post calving gain, reproduction and may improve beef production sustainability.” Again, corn co-products produce a win-win situation as growers can improve profitability implementing suggestions in the while increasing industry sustainability.
With growers increasing profitability and consumers enjoying the same corn-fed taste that they already love, everyone wins.
Some may argue that food and fuel are at odds, but DDGS provide a perfect example of how we can have domestically produced ethanol and a functional and efficient feed product. The more facts that emerge, the more evident it becomes that corn can meet these needs making both refiners and livestock growers profitable while sparing consumer pocketbooks.
Frank Sinatra once said “orange is the happiest color” – and Purdue University researchers are studying how making corn happier could make a better life for malnourished children with Vitamin A deficiencies.
The researchers have found that by manipulating a newly discovered gene in corn they can increase vitamin A content which could have significant implications for reducing childhood blindness and mortality rates. It also results in orange corn. The orange color comes from relatively higher levels of carotenoids, one of which is beta-carotene. Humans convert beta-carotene, which also is abundant in carrots, into vitamin A during digestion.
Purdue agronomy professor Torbert Rocheford found a variety of orange corn that likely originated in the Caribbean and is popular in some Asian and South American countries as well as in northern Italy. He is using simple visual selection for darker orange color combined with more advanced molecular natural diversity screening techniques to create better lines of the orange corn. “We’re sort of turbocharging corn with desirable natural variation to make it darker and more nutritious,” Rocheford said.
Between 250,000 and 500,000 children – mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia – go blind each year because of vitamin A deficiency, according to the World Health Organization. Half of those children will die within a year of going blind. Rocheford said increasing beta-carotene levels in cereal grains, such as corn, is an economical approach to addressing these deficiencies in developing countries.
If you’ve sort of forgotten about domestic ethanol as an alternative to imported gasoline, be assured that Tom Stephens hasn’t.
Stephens, who was in Orlando recently to speak at the National Ethanol Conference, is vice chairman of global product operations for General Motors. He knows as well as anybody that our gasoline supply won’t last forever, and we’re long past the point where we should be concentrating our efforts on weaning the U.S. from our dependence on oil. GM has lived by that philosophy and has been the automotive leader in offering up flexible fuel vehicles that run on gasoline, E85 or any gasoline-ethanol combo in between.
Despite all their efforts, those by NCGA and many others, there are only 7.5 million E85 capable FFV’s in operation today and 2,000 stations offering up the corn-based, eco-friendly fuel. Surely nothing to sneeze at but given our voracious appetite for gasoline in the U.S. we have plenty of room for improvement.
With that sobering assessment, let’s take a look at some signs of what the future might hold. The U.S. Department Energy projections say ethanol production is on the rise and we will make 800,000 barrels a day in 2010, up from 700,000 last year. Another 50,000 barrels a day will be added in 2011. The trend seems to document the buzz in the industry that ethanol makers are recovering from the sluggish economic conditions that have plagued every industry.
That’s a good thing considering the ethanol industry added $53 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product and $16 billion in U.S. household income last year even as the ethanol industry struggled. (more…)
Research by Purdue agronomist Tony Vyn has shown that corn plants are in a fierce battle with each other for resources.
“There is a hierarchy that is formed, even though the plants are genetically the same and should be equal in size and stature,” Vyn said about his findings, which were published in the early online version of the journal Soil & Tillage Research. “No-till corn yield reductions have little to do with an overall height reduction early in the season. They have more to do with height variability during vegetative growth.”
Vyn said yield losses of up to 14 percent can be attributed to this competition in no-till fields where corn is planted the year after corn. In those fields, the leftover corn residue creates patches of soil with lower temperatures and different water and nutrient content. Seeds planted there are at a disadvantage.
“No plant left behind” is the motto of Purdue University researcher Tony Vyn, who is working to increase grain yield for corn at higher plant densities.
“The only way to pursue and achieve higher grain yields on a per-acre basis at high plant densities is to make sure that every single plant has the opportunity to compete with its neighbor in the row,” said Vyn. “The only way to achieve this competition ability is to have the genetic resources, in terms of a hybrid’s ability to compete and gain access to nutrients and water.”
Vyn recently completed a three-year study, which looked at approximately 4,000 individual plants each of the three years to understand how individual plants compete with neighbors at three different plant densities and three different nitrogen rates.
“As we’ve tried to push yield barriers beyond 300 and 350 bushels per acre, it’s extremely important that we think about the ability of the plant to tolerate not just a single stress like high plant density, but also be able to tolerate lower nitrogen availability on a per-plant basis,” Vyn said. “Our results suggest that on the plant breeding side of the equation, more attention should be focused on the joint ability of new corn hybrids to tolerate combined stresses of both high plant density and limited nitrogen.
“If the new hybrids can better tolerate both, then it will be possible for those high-density, low-nitrogen situations to achieve an overall improvement in uniformity of grain yield on a per-plant basis.”
I want to see Oprah wax poetic about the nobility of science and the implications of the full exposure of the corn genome. Instead of Martha Stewart prattling on about the merits of a vegetarian Thanksgiving, and what is wrong with the family farms producing our food, I am waiting for a provocative look at what this understanding of our largest crop means for mankind.
The announcement today that a team of scientists led by The Genome Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has completed the corn genome is nothing short of monumental. But in this man bites dog world we live in the story will likely miss the evening news and the front page of your local paper.
While the glass half full crowd runs about blathering about how we can’t grow enough corn for all uses we are already doing it and the record crops grown in recent years is just a hint of things to come. (Anybody have any more clichés I can stick in this blog?)
The corn genome is a hodgepodge of some 32,000 genes crammed into just 10 chromosomes. In comparison, humans have 20,000 genes dispersed among 23 chromosomes. That officially makes a corn plant more complex than some people I know, but I digress.
This $29.5 million maize sequencing project utilized the collective expertise of 150 scientists and resulted in a road map scientists will explore for many more years to come. In these waning days of petroleum predominance this is welcome news.
Virtually anything made from oil can be made from corn today. Understanding the intricacies of the genome will allow us to make these emerging corn based products more efficiently and economically. Oh, and there is also that feeding the whole world thing. That’s a good idea too.
There’s a good chance that quite a bit of the corn about to be harvested in the Midwest this fall got its start in Hawaii.
According to the latest report from the the Hawaii Field Office of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) the value of Hawaii’s seed industry for the 2008/2009 season was a “record high” of $176.6 million. Seed corn accounts for $169.3 million, or 96 percent, of the total value. According to NASS, acreage devoted to seed crops will increase 12 percent from the previous growing season to a record of 5,930 acres.
In fact, a recent Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation study shows that seed crops have become the largest agricultural commodity in the state, exceeding the value of both sugar and pineapple by 180 percent and 90 percent, respectively.
All the major seed companies have operations in Hawaii on a total of about 6,000 acres. Syngenta Seeds Corn Product Development Lead Ben Hable says it allows them to get new products to market faster. “In Hawaii we can actually turn a crop every 3 and a half months so we can increase the seeds that we need to get back here to the mainland for seed production,” Ben told me during an interview at the grand opening of Syngenta Seeds new headquarters in Minnetonka, MN this week. “Syngenta now has over 300 full time staff in the state of Hawaii working on corn and soybean seed production.”
If you ever get a chance to watch a presentation by Fred Below, University of Illinois, then you should do it. You’ll not only be entertained and informed but come away energized. He is passionate about his work and you will have no doubts about that when he’s done. He says his work mainly consists in figuring out how to sustainably reach a 300 bushel of corn per acre yield.
I previewed the keynote address to open the 
Dr. Buchanan devoted the theme of his speech to the need for a “new green revolution” and pointed to the work of Dr. Normal Borlaug and many of the things he said about the importance of good scientific agricultural research. He says all branches of science will be needed to create the new green revolution to feed the world in the future. Some of the concerns he has include the availability of fertilizer resources and global climate change.
The 
Research by Purdue agronomist Tony Vyn has shown that corn plants are in a fierce battle with each other for resources.
“The only way to pursue and achieve higher grain yields on a per-acre basis at high plant densities is to make sure that every single plant has the opportunity to compete with its neighbor in the row,” said Vyn. “The only way to achieve this competition ability is to have the genetic resources, in terms of a hybrid’s ability to compete and gain access to nutrients and water.”
I want to see Oprah wax poetic about the nobility of science and the implications of the full exposure of the corn genome. Instead of Martha Stewart prattling on about the merits of a vegetarian Thanksgiving, and what is wrong with the family farms producing our food, I am waiting for a provocative look at what this understanding of our largest crop means for mankind.
According to