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Maine Farmland Trust creates farm climate change assessment tool
Maine Farmland Trust launched Climate Impact Assessment Mapping Tool, a new interactive tool that identifies climate risks and impacts to specific farms, helping producers plan for the future.
Using geospatial information, climate science and geological data, the new tool generates risk assessment reports showing water availability, floodplain risk, projected changes in temperature and rain, projected sea level rise and risk of soil erosion. Based on those factors, the property receives a weighted overall score indicating to what degree the farm might be affected by climate change.
As the impacts of climate change intensify, extreme weather events including harsh heat, heavy rain, and severe droughts, are likely to become more frequent.
“Farmers’ livelihoods, our food security and our economy depend on resilient farms that can minimize and more easily bounce back from the effects of a changing climate,” Tricia Rouleau, the trust’s farm network director, told Mainebiz. “There's a lot of appetite from Maine farmers to adopt climate resilient strategies, but planning and implementation take time and resources, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.”
The tool is part of the trust’s program helping farmers plan and implement new practices and infrastructure to become more resilient in the face of the climate crisis. The program is designed to support farmers with a variety of needs and goals, offering risk assessment tools, financial resources, and planning and technical assistance tailored to each farm.
The growth of the climate resilience program was accelerated by a $1 million, three-year grant from TD Bank Group. The trust also developed the mapping tool with support from the Land Trust Alliance and Open Space Institute’s Land and Climate Grant Program.
New study finds sunflowers can clean farm soil contaminated with heavy metals
Researchers at Lead City University in Ibadan, Nigeria say sunflowers have the potential to remediate cadmium from heavy-metal contaminated soil, making it arable once again.
Heavy metals, notably cadmium, lead, arsenic, mercury and chromium, are well-known pollutants due to their toxicity, longevity and ability to accumulate in the human body. When it comes to farmland, heavy metals can accumulate to toxic levels in agricultural soils, and can negatively affect crop health and productivity.
Despite the contamination, some densely populated cities have had no choice but to use the heavy-metal laden land, until now.
“In many developing countries, urban centers may appear indifferent to farming on lands contaminated with industrial wastes and heavy metals like lead and cadmium due to land scarcity,” the researchers in Ibadan wrote.
Creating bright yellow, orange, and maroon pigments, cadmium is a typical component of paints sold in Nigeria, and is used in the production of batteries, dyes, plastics, and more. It is also associated with a long list of health effects like heart disease and skeletal weakening, especially for children and other vulnerable groups.
Cadmium levels are higher in areas where some phosphate fertilizers are used, and where industrial processes occur. In the U.S., the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions see increased levels of cadmium and an FDA study found higher concentrations of the heavy metal in spinach, lettuce, sunflower seeds, potato chips and wheat cereal.
To conduct their study, researchers experimented with phytoremediation, a method that uses plants to remove pollutants from the environment. The researchers found sunflowers were able to remove 53% of cadmium from the topsoil and subsoil in the test plot.
Ohalo plant breeding discovery promises big boost in crop productivity
California-based Ohalo Genetics says it has discovered a new plant breeding technology capable of "unprecedented improvements" in crop yields.
The tech company's so-called Boosted Breeding system changes the way plants reproduce, which can accelerate and improve existing breeding techniques. Enabling two parents to pass on their entire genome to the next generation, the technology creates “boosted” plants with all the beneficial traits from each parent plant, instead of a random half of each parent’s traits.
The Boosted Breeding discovery comes from almost five years of research into plant reproductive biology, as well as a price tag of over $50 million dollars, according to AgTech Navigator. Ohalo developed several novel proteins and techniques that switch off reproductive circuits, and the resulting “boosted” plants are considered healthier and larger, with overall yield gains of up to 100%.
"After years of scientific discovery and many iterations, we have proven this technology will eliminate many of the challenges agriculture faces and believe this will unleash previously unimaginable benefits for farmers and consumers," Ohalo CTO Jud Ward said in a statement.
Because the entire genome is delivered from each of the "boosted" parent plants, every seed they produce is genetically identical. As a result, the technique unlocks the ability to produce uniform seed that farmers can use to plant their crops directly in the ground, replacing traditional methods of vegetative propagation used in many crop systems today, including potatoes.
These attributes, with typical crop breeding practices, would typically take years to achieve, and Ohalo’s breakthrough can be applied to nearly every crop, claims CEO Dave Friedberg.
"The demands on agriculture have never been greater, with estimates that global food production must increase by at least 50% over the next 25 years, according to the UN," Friedberg told Feed & Grain. "Boosted Breeding will accelerate agricultural adaptation and increase productivity, helping crops survive and thrive in new environments while reducing the cost and footprint of agriculture."
