On February 23, 2010 was held in Constanta, Romania official presentation of the European Center for Premium Winter Wheat.

Along with famous actors of Constanta regional market, Mr. Mihai Berca, Professor and PhD and Mr. Ernst Grosslerher have brought to the attention of all those present some details on Premium varieties and modern farming techniques.

Premium wheat varieties are grown in countries that stretch along the Danube and beyond, as it can be seen in the map above.

A noteworthy detail is that Probstdorfer varieties are varieties developed in the Pannonian Plain in conditions similar to those in Romania. They hold in their genomes over 80% genoplasma Bezostoia, variety which was inexplicably abandoned in Romania.

Mr. Grosslerher has mentioned that Romania presents a huge agricultural potential, only if we judge in light of the fact that his home country, Austria, where drought conditions are much harsher than those in Romania, productions are significantly higher compared with those in our country.

Posted: 8 March 2010 under Agri solutions, Dana Bucur 2009 - conferences,fairs,workshops etc, Europe, Romania.
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Author: MATT CAWOOD
Source: http://fw.farmonline.com.au

SOME believe that dwindling supplies of potable water is humanity’s great resource challenge; others think it is the imminent prospect of “peak oil”.

But an equally important milestone in modern history will be an inevitable tightening of global supplies of phosphorus.

Phosphorus has underpinned the leaps made in agricultural productivity since World War II, and the world’s economies and population levels have become dependent on a continous supply of the element.

Unlike nitrogen, which can by synthesised from the air, or the use of renewable energy to substitute for fossil fuels, there is no substitute for phosphorus. All the world’s phosphate fertilisers come from mined phosphate rock, making it a finite resource.

Various analyses suggest “peak phosphorus” - the point at which supply falls behind demand - will occur around 2040, with all currently known reserves potentially exhausted within 50 to 100 years.

However, University of Technology Sydney researchers Dana Cordell and Stuart White warn that for most countries, a phosphorus squeeze is likely to come much sooner.

Demand for phosphorus is growing in line with population growth, and is being pushed higher by greater consumption of meat in countries like China and India.

(Based on European practices, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency estimates that a vegetable-based diet uses 0.6 kilograms of phosphorus per person per year, compared with 1.6 kg for a meat-based diet.)

Few nations have access to enough phosphorus to supply their own agricultural needs: in fact, most of the world’s known phosphate reserves are controlled by China, the United States and Morocco.

China has the largest reported reserves, but in 2008, at the height of the food crisis, China’s central government introduced a 135 per cent tariff on exports to protect domestic supply.

The US, historically the world’s largest consumer, importer and exporter of phosphate fertilisers, is now thought to have only about 25 years of domestic phosphate reserves left. US fertiliser manufacturers are importing large quantities of phosphate from Morocco.

Morocco supplies more than a third of the world’s phosphate, but it is an industry that stands on politically unstable ground. Much of Morocco’s phosphate comes from the disputed territories of the Western Sahara, an activity that has been condemned by the United Nations.

Phosphorus may be in finite supply, and that supply politically uncertain, but Australia’s agricultural and food systems remain highly inefficient users of the fertiliser.

Dana Cordell calculates that only two per cent of phosphate fertiliser applied in Australia is eaten in locally-consumed food.

Up to 75 per cent of P fertiliser is locked-up in agricultural soils. About 20 per cent of applied fertiliser is exported in farm produce, and a minor amount is leached into waterways, contributing to nutrient overload or carried out to sea.

One researcher has estimated that of the billion tonnes of phosphorus mined since 1950, about a quarter now lies in water bodies or landfills.

Each year, Ms Cordell says, humans eat about three million tonnes of phosphorus, and excrete close to 100 per cent of it.

In some countries, that has led to serious investigation of recycled urine as a source of agricultural phosphorus.

Urine is “essentially sterile”, and contains nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in the correct ratios for plant growth.

If all human urine was recycled, according to Jan-Olof Drangert of Linköping University in Sweden, where Dana Cordell also studies, it could supply half the phosphorus needs of the world’s cereal crops.

Two Swedish municipalities have mandated that all new toilets must divert urine away from solid waste. The urine is collected in tanks either at the house, or in a communal collection point, and picked up once a year by farmers who use it as fertiliser.

However, in countries like Australia, with a large land area and a relatively small population, nutrient recycling can at best provide five per cent of the nation’s phosphorus needs.

All article on http://fw.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/peak-phosphorous-mankinds-latest-threat/1729835.aspx?storypage=1

Posted: 25 January 2010 under Agri solutions, Agribusiness worldwide, australia.
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Author: Gregor Heard
Source: http://fw.farmonline.com.au

WITH a deregulated grains market, farmers are increasingly realising the vital importance of sound market intelligence when making marketing decisions.

If the first year of deregulation was the year of on-farm storage, the 2009 season saw a huge increase in the number of brokers and analysts providing that crucial information to growers.

The trend is only likely to increase, as farmers seek to find a marketing edge by assessing the micro and macro trends emerging within the market.

From supply and demand balance sheets within key domestic use regions of Australia, to a snapshot of the international situation, many farmers have decided it is worth the price of hiring an expert in these areas.

Contacts are also crucial, and middlemen, linking up producers with reliable domestic end-use customers, are also regarded as being worth their cut.

The other major growth area in 2009 was specialised marketing products, from Elders Toepfer’s on-farm storage accreditation program, to GrainCorp’s initiative to link warehoused grain with on-line trading house Clear Commodities, to the move by several bulk handlers to offer a warehouse cashflow option.

Marketers have realised the myriad of different requirements from customers in different zones and with different financial requirements and are working to fill the gaps, with a massive suite of products and tools flooding the market.

Look out for even more niche marketing products to hit the market next season.

Internationally, the market looks as tough as ever to predict.

On one side, there looks to be positive news, with a swing out of wheat in the United States, and the continued bullishness for soft commodities from the investment funds, but there is also the spectre of low cost grain out of the Black Sea region.

With its fertile soils and low cost structures, the Black Sea shapes as one of the key competitors for Australian grain.

While Australia continues to fill the quality sector of the market, there is only so much of a premium to the Black Sea product that the market will bear before the cheaper Black Sea product becomes attractive.

The freight advantage from countries such as the Ukraine into key Australian markets in the Middle East is also a concern.

Locally, expect plantings to remain stable to slightly lower next year.

Mixed farmers in high rainfall zones in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia have gone extensively into cropping in recent years, lured by high prices and dry years that made cropping possible, but a combination of a genuine wet winter, low grain prices and harvest downgrading may lead farmers in these areas to reconsider planting area.

On the flip side, the extensive moisture bank put under NSW’s central and north-west cropping zones may encourage farmers in marginal cropping areas there to have a crack next year.

Wheat plantings may finally be under the pump somewhat.

Farmers impacted by drought have been looking for the lowest risk crop for some years now, and wheat has filled that category, but the agronomists may finally put their foot down and urge farmers to implement their rotational crops in order to cut down on problem weeds and limit the risk of root-borne disease.

With wheat prices depressed, many growers may decide 2010 is the year to bite the bullet and go with the relevant break crops, especially in canola-growing regions, with canola prices holding up relatively higher than the rest of the grains industry.

The entire article on: http://fw.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/grains-and-cropping/grains/information-the-key-to-grains-success-in-2010/1715300.aspx?storypage=2

Posted: 7 January 2010 under Agri solutions, Agribusiness worldwide.
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