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News from the Minnesota Association of Wheat |
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COMMENTS ON CHINA'S WHEAT PURCHASE AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE FUTURE One newswire article suggests China's Vice Minister for Trade and Economic Cooperation feels their recent purchase of US wheat has a greater overall significance to future
sales than can be measured by its volume. Furthermore, the Vice Minster indicated that US meat and citrus provide the best possibility for increased farm exports to China, but he did not rule out additional US
wheat sales following changes in China's domestic farm policy designed to discourage wheat production. In addition, USDA Secretary Dan Glickman indicated he expected China to purchase additional quantities of US wheat
in the future, along with beef, pork and citrus. Testifying before the Senate Agriculture Committee, Glickman suggested China would very likely follow up their recent wheat purchase with larger, or more
"significant" quantities. At the hearing, Glickman and others were trying to stress how important the granting of Permanent Normal Trading Relations for China would be to the US agriculture
industry. Wheat producer representatives attending the hearing agreed, indicating that nothing on the immediate horizon could have as big an impact on US wheat exports as China's WTO accession.
IS BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE A WASTE OF TAX MONEY?
BIOTECH COMPANIES FINALLY PLANNING TO HELP IN GEO BATTLE "The ground that we've lost in the acceptance of biotechnology in the marketplace is a war that we have lost, because we didn't show up to fight the battle," John Sorenson, a
Novartis Seeds official, said last week in Washington. More at The first shipments within the food aid package are expected in Russia by late March or early April. An official with the Agriculture Ministry said last week the US had
already shipped the seeds, and the seeds are expected to arrive during the first half of March. "The cameras are used in site-specific pest management systems," says Ian MacRae. "German researchers at the University of Bonn's Institut Fur Pflanzenbau have successfully developed
a prototype onboard system to identify and treat weed species in the field." MacRae says the researchers, Roland Gerhards and Walter Kuhbauch, described the system at a recent international scientific meeting.
They use digital cameras mounted on a boom across the front of a tractor. The cameras photograph the plant canopy and send the images to an onboard computer. A database in the computer compares the plant canopy
images with 80 different weed images and decides if the photo depicts a weed or crop plant. If it's a weed, the computer signals the sprayer to open a nozzle and apply herbicide. Because the computer knows the camera's
location on the boom, only nozzles over the plant are opened. While all this is going on, the computer also logs the location of the weeds on an onboard geographic information system, creating a weed map of the entire
field. "The system is apparently about 80 percent efficient in identifying weeds, and will err on the conservative side," says MacRae. "In other words, if it can't identify a plant, it will not Web,V2,F4,R1 macrae
Source: Ian MacRae, (218) 281-8611 |
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