Farm structure shift beneficial

January 9, 2012

Consolidation and the scale of modern agriculture have led to an abundant, efficiently produced food supply and other benefits.

Over time, American farming has consolidated into large-scale operations that have adopted innovation and technology considerably and have become very productive, benefiting farmers, consumers and the country, according to an analysis of farm structure by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS).

U.S. agriculture produces food for people across the U.S. and throughout the world, provides feedstocks for bioenergy production and provides ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration for a nation that's increasingly focused on environmental sustainability, according to the ERS report.

Agriculture does this on almost 10% less land than farming used 30 years ago, according to the report, written by James MacDonald, Erik O'Donoghue, Patrick Sullivan and Utpal Vasavada.

UK scientists urge balance on antimicrobials

Scientists at the University of Glasgow in the U.K. are urging policymakers to reconsider priorities in efforts to understand and control antimicrobial resistance.

In a new study, Dr. Alison Mather, working with an interdisciplinary research team within the University of Glasgow's College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences, used long-term surveillance data of Salmonella typhimurium DT104 from co-located humans and animals in Scotland, demonstrated how animal and human DT104 populations differ significantly in several ways such as prevalence, linkage, time of emergence and diversity.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that the local animal populations are unlikely to be the major source of resistance in people and questions policies that restrict the use of antimicrobials in local domestic animals.

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Compound discovered that controls listeria

Cornell University researchers have identified a compound called fluoro-phenyl-styrene-sulfonamide (FPSS) that is safe for mammals but stops listeria in its tracks.

FPSS interrupts a mechanism that controls genes that are expressed when Listeria monocytogenes experiences a rapid change in its environment, the announcement said.

The discovery, reported in the November/December issue of the American Society for Microbiology's mBio journal, offers new directions for basic research on how L. monocytogenes and other bacteria survive in a wide range of rapidly changing, hostile conditions, from fluctuating temperatures to the low pH levels found in the human stomach, the announcement said.

Also, there is a strong possibility that FPSS eventually may be developed as a drug to combat listeriosis and other bacterial infections.

For a foodborne pathogen to infect a person, it must be able to survive rapid changes in its environment, ranging from the cold of refrigeration or heat from cooking to highly acidic stomach conditions and osmotic and anaerobic states found in the small intestines.

In Our Opinion...

Opening the doors!

I have to admit that as the holiday season approached, there was something I was more excited about than Christmas: an ag display.

Not just any ag display, but one that will likely be viewed by a good percentage of the people who attend the 2012 Pennsylvania Farm Show. The audience for the Farm Show is mostly urban and suburban people - the same people who are asking questions about how food animals are raised.

'Today's Agriculture' is a 10,000 square foot exhibit coordinated by PennAg Industries Association on behalf of the Pennsylvania Alliance for Livestock Care and Well-Being and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

The display, subtitled 'Opening the Doors: Farming - Knowledge - Trust - was introduced to the media this week, and my expectation that the exhibit would accomplish its mission was confirmed when I overheard this conversation:

Young reporter, looking at a sow and her piglets as she asks the first question in an interview: "What's her name?"

Veterinarian: (silence) ... then, "She has an eartag number."

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Go vote, but don't screw it up

By Andy Vance

It is officially an election year, and with the passing of the "Hawkeye Cauci," a.k.a., the Iowa caucuses, presidential politics are likely to dominate the political news for the remainder of the year.

The occasion of Iowans casting their ballot for a Republican presidential candidate reminded me of two very important and seemingly contradictory truths.

One, the average person really hates politics (if not politicians as a social class); two, the average person really needs to pay a lot more attention to politics to be an informed, intelligent voter.

What specifically occasioned this intuition was a discussion on Facebook about GOP hopeful Rick Santorum, the former congressman and senator from Pennsylvania. After trailing a good number of the other Republican hopefuls in the major polls of 2011, Santorum somehow caught a tailwind in the weeks leading up to the Iowa sweepstakes and finished just eight votes behind winner Mitt Romney.

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What really fuels debate over raw milk?

By Mark Klaus

Consuming raw, unpasteurized milk is nothing new: My grandfathers' generation and even the following generation consumed raw milk, as did many people at that time. To my knowledge, they all led long lives.

Suffice it to say, raw milk is not a new idea. It is not cutting edge or part of any new research and development. In fact, the sale of raw milk has continued since the days of my grandfathers.

As of late, however, there has been much debate over the sale and consumption of raw milk. The media has latched on -- perhaps, at times, at the request of raw milk producers -- to better "enlighten" their audience about the "attacks" on such producers.

The general debate on the subject centers on the use of "facts" surrounding either the dangers or possible health effects of consuming raw milk. Many seem to think that's how the raw milk argument must play out.

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Natural molecules may fight salmonella

Researchers in the University of Connecticut's College of Agriculture & Natural Resources may have discovered a way to defeat salmonella one molecule at a time.

In the U.S., this tiny rod-shaped, Gram-negative bacterium annually causes more than 1 million cases of salmonellosis, a potentially fatal disease in the elderly, the very young and those with suppressed immune systems, the announcement said.

Commonly found in poultry and dairy products, salmonella can survive for relatively long periods of time in the environment -- from weeks to months -- and some serotypes have emerged that are resistant to many available antibiotics.

University of Connecticut animal science professor Kumar Venkitanarayanan and his post-doctoral fellow Anup Kollanoor Johny, funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture totaling nearly $1.4 million, have determined that natural food-grade molecules found in cinnamon, cloves, oregano and coconut oil seem to have the ability to shut down the genes that enable salmonella to colonize in the cecum of chickens.

"The bacterium colonizes the intestinal tract of chickens. It's excreted in droppings and contaminates the meat and the eggs. Within the bird, salmonella travels from the intestine to the ovaries and contaminates the yolk even before an eggshell is formed. So, an intact egg can have salmonella in the yolk," Venkitanarayanan explained.

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Food & Farm

with Ray Bowman

Food & Farm is dedicated to providing fact-based information about your food and those that produce it.

The Food Channel editor Kay Logsdon discusses the Top Ten Food Trends of 2012.

Click to listen

Part 2 of the interview with The Food Channel editor Kay Logsdon on the Top Ten Food Trends of 2012.

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Veteran broadcast journalist and media observer Al Tompkins of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies gives his take on the new McDonald's videos.

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Kentucky's new agriculture commission James Comer talks about agriculture.

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Fluid milk sales continue to decline

Fluid milk sales continued to decline last year and were under year ago for the second straight year and for the third of the last four years.

Sales were down 1.2 billion pounds last year from 2010 and were down 2 billion pounds from 2009, falling to a 25-year low, according to calculations by John Kaczor at the California Milk Producers Council.

His totals include organic milk sales, which, based on data at the end of October, he said will have increased 250 million pounds in 2011 and will have increased for four straight years.

A number of reasons have been offered for the decline in sales, Kaczor said in the council's weekly note, but importantly, the trend goes against conventional wisdom that food sales generally and dairy sales specifically are immune from the effects of economic downturns.

Other sources have suggested that other reasons for declining fluid milk sales include the extent to which cereal companies are promoting cereals as dry snacks and school districts are banning flavored milk.

Sources also said increased consumption of juices and sodas, of course, has been significant in the loss of milk sales.

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