The Michigan State University Gets USDA Grant to aid Michigan's Fledgling Farmers

                                                                  Image Credit: MSU
Michigan State University has long been a resource for small farms in Michigan. Thanks to a $750,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture, MSU will be able to help even more fledgling farmers get their start.

“This grant will enhance and create a vibrant network of farmer training across Michigan to help them negotiate the first five years of their endeavor,” said Mike Hamm, C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture and Director of MSU Center for Regional Food Systems. “Our programs will cater to different perspectives and needs while moving everyone who desires to farm along the path of building a viable business."

As part of the grant, the MSU Student Organic Farm will expand its Organic Farmer Training Program. Without programs like this, burgeoning farmers like Joannee DeBruhl, farm manager of Stone Coop Farm, may not have ever gotten her start.

DeBruhl, who spent much of her career in the insurance business, was laid off in 2009. Looking for a major change, she gravitated toward community gardening and eventually enrolled in MSU’s Organic Farmer Training Program.

“The program was great; it gave me lots of hands-on training and showed that it was possible and not just a dream,” DeBruhl said. “I think the USDA grant will be a huge benefit for small farmers because there’s not much money out there to help them get started.”

Training and help with startup costs are crucial, and this grant will be managed well by MSU, she added.

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Key to the project is MSU’s partnership with Michigan Food and Farming Systems, which runs the Women in Agriculture Collective Farming Initiative at Genesys Health System in Genesee County. This partnership will develop site- and people-appropriate training programs that help beginning women farmers build a successful business.

In addition to women, the grant also will develop training programs for Hispanic farmers. The number of Hispanic farms in Michigan continues to grow, and MSU will assist this historically underserved farmer population through training and site development assistance at the Farmers on the Move Cooperative in Battle Creek.

MSU also will launch new, and improve existing, programs that target the biggest challenges facing small-farm viability – land access, capital access, market access, business planning and strategizing for scaling up production.

Additional MSU contributors helping with this grant include: Jeremy Moghtader, Shakara Tyler. Michelle Napier-Dunnings, with Michigan Food and Farming Systems, also will be contributing to these efforts.

Source: Michigan State University

New Online Course Explores Social and Ecological Diversity of Himalayan Region

The conversion of forests into cropland worldwide has triggered an atmospheric change that, while seldom considered in climate models, has had a net cooling effect on global temperatures, according to a new Yale study.

Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, Professor Nadine Unger of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) reports that large-scale forest losses during the last 150 years have reduced global emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), which control the atmospheric distribution of many short-lived climate pollutants, such as tropospheric ozone, methane, and aerosol particles.

Using sophisticated climate modeling, Unger calculated that a 30-percent decline in BVOC emissions between 1850 and 2000, largely through the conversion of forests to cropland, produced a net global cooling of about 0.1 degrees Celsius. During the same period, the global climate warmed by about 0.6 degrees Celsius, mostly due to increases in fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions.

According to her findings, the climate impact of declining BVOC emissions is on the same magnitude as two other consequences of deforestation long known to affect global temperatures, although in opposing ways: carbon storage and the albedo effect. The lost carbon storage capacity caused by forest conversion has exacerbated global warming. 
Meanwhile, the disappearance of dark-colored forests has also helped offset temperature increases through the so-called albedo effect. (The albedo effect refers to the amount of radiation reflected by the surface of the planet. Light-colored fields, for instance, reflect more light and heat back into space than darker forests.)

“Without doing an earth-system model simulation that includes these factors, we can’t really know the net effect on the global climate.”— Nadine Unger

Unger says the combined effects of reduced BVOC emissions and increased albedo may have entirely offset the warming caused by the loss of forest-based carbon storage capacity.

“Land cover changes caused by humans since the industrial and agricultural revolutions have removed natural forests and grasslands and replaced them with croplands,” said Unger, an assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at F&ES. “And croplands are not strong emitters of these BVOCs — often they don’t emit any BVOCs.”

“Without doing an earth-system model simulation that includes these factors, we can’t really know the net effect on the global climate. Because changes in these emissions affect both warming and cooling pollutants,” she noted.

Unger said the findings do not suggest that increased forest loss provides climate change benefits, but rather underscore the complexity of climate change and the importance of better assessing which parts of the world would benefit from greater forest conservation.

Since the mid-19th century, the percentage of the planet covered by cropland has more than doubled, from 14 percent to 37 percent. Since forests are far greater contributors of BVOC emissions than crops and grasslands, this shift in land use has removed about 30 percent of Earth’s BVOC sources, Unger said.

Not all of these compounds affect atmospheric chemistry in the same way. Aerosols, for instance, contribute to global “cooling” since they generally reflect solar radiation back into space. Therefore, a 50 percent reduction in forest aerosols has actually spurred greater warming since the pre-industrial era.

“[These emissions] don’t get as much attention as human-generated emissions... but if we change how much forest cover exists, then there is a human influence on these emissions.”— Nadine Unger

However, reductions in the potent greenhouse gases methane and ozone — which contribute to global warming — have helped deliver a net cooling effect.

These emissions are often ignored in climate modeling because they are perceived as a “natural” part of the earth system, explained Unger. “So they don’t get as much attention as human-generated emissions, such as fossil fuel VOCs,” she said. “But if we change how much forest cover exists, then there is a human influence on these emissions.”

These impacts have also been ignored in previous climate modeling, she said, because scientists believed that BVOC emissions had barely changed between the pre-industrial era and today. But a study published last year by Unger  showed that emissions of these volatile compounds have indeed decreased. Studies by European scientists have produced similar results.

The impact of changes to ozone and organic aerosols are particularly strong in temperate zones, she said, while methane impacts are more globally distributed.

The sensitivity of the global climate system to BVOC emissions suggests the importance of establishing a global-scale long-term monitoring program for BVOC emissions, Unger noted.

– Kevin Dennehy    kevin.dennehy@yale.edu    203 436-4842

Source: Yale University

Synthetic biology for space exploration

Microbial-based biomanufacturing could be transformative once explorers arrive at an extraterrestrial site. Credit: Image courtesy of Royal Academy Interface

Does synthetic biology hold the key to manned space exploration of the Moon and Mars? Berkeley Lab researchers have used synthetic biology to produce an inexpensive and reliable microbial-based alternative to the world's most effective anti-malaria drug, and to develop clean, green and sustainable alternatives to gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. In the future, synthetic biology could also be used to make manned space missions more practical.

"Not only does synthetic biology promise to make the travel to extraterrestrial locations more practical and bearable, it could also be transformative once explorers arrive at their destination," says Adam Arkin, director of Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division (PBD) and a leading authority on synthetic and systems biology.

"During flight, the ability to augment fuel and other energy needs, to provide small amounts of needed materials, plus renewable, nutritional and taste-engineered food, and drugs-on-demand can save costs and increase astronaut health and welfare," Arkin says. "At an extraterrestrial base, synthetic biology could make even more effective use of the catalytic activities of diverse organisms."

Arkin is the senior author of a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface that reports on a techno-economic analysis demonstrating "the significant utility of deploying non-traditional biological techniques to harness available volatiles and waste resources on manned long-duration space missions." The paper is titled "Towards Synthetic Biological Approaches to Resource Utilization on Space Missions." The lead and corresponding author is Amor Menezes, a postdoctoral scholar in Arkin's research group at the University of California (UC) Berkeley. Other co-authors are John Cumbers and John Hogan with the NASA Ames Research Center.

One of the biggest challenges to manned space missions is the expense. The NASA rule-of-thumb is that every unit mass of payload launched requires the support of an additional 99 units of mass, with "support" encompassing everything from fuel to oxygen to food and medicine for the astronauts, etc. Most of the current technologies now deployed or under development for providing this support are abiotic, meaning non-biological. Arkin, Menezes and their collaborators have shown that providing this support with technologies based on existing biological processes is a more than viable alternative.

"Because synthetic biology allows us to engineer biological processes to our advantage, we found in our analysis that technologies, when using common space metrics such as mass, power and volume, have the potential to provide substantial cost savings, especially in mass," Menezes says.

In their study, the authors looked at four target areas: fuel generation, food production, biopolymer synthesis, and pharmaceutical manufacture. They showed that for a 916 day manned mission to Mars, the use of microbial biomanufacturing capabilities could reduce the mass of fuel manufacturing by 56-percent, the mass of food-shipments by 38-percent, and the shipped mass to 3D-print a habitat for six by a whopping 85-percent. In addition, microbes could also completely replenish expired or irradiated stocks of pharmaceuticals, which would provide independence from unmanned re-supply spacecraft that take up to 210 days to arrive.

"Space has always provided a wonderful test of whether technology can meet strict engineering standards for both effect and safety," Arkin says. "NASA has worked decades to ensure that the specifications that new technologies must meet are rigorous and realistic, which allowed us to perform up-front techno-economic analysis."

The big advantage biological manufacturing holds over abiotic manufacturing is the remarkable ability of natural and engineered microbes to transform very simple starting substrates, such as carbon dioxide, water biomass or minerals, into materials that astronauts on long-term missions will need. This capability should prove especially useful for future extraterrestrial settlements.

"The mineral and carbon composition of other celestial bodies is different from the bulk of Earth, but the earth is diverse with many extreme environments that have some relationship to those that might be found at possible bases on the Moon or Mars," Arkin says. "Microbes could be used to greatly augment the materials available at a landing site, enable the biomanufacturing of food and pharmaceuticals, and possibly even modify and enrich local soils for agriculture in controlled environments."

The authors acknowledge that much of their analysis is speculative and that their calculations show a number of significant challenges to making biomanufacturing a feasible augmentation and replacement for abiotic technologies. However, they argue that the investment to overcome these barriers offers dramatic potential payoff for future space programs.

"We've got a long way to go since experimental proof-of-concept work in synthetic biology for space applications is just beginning, but long-duration manned missions are also a ways off," says Menezes. "Abiotic technologies were developed for many, many decades before they were successfully utilized in space, so of course biological technologies have some catching-up to do. However, this catching-up may not be that much, and in some cases, the biological technologies may already be superior to their abiotic counterparts."

This research was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Source: DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Sunlight, not microbes, key to carbon dioxide in Arctic

Terrestrial organic matter is shown spilling into a lake. Credit: Image courtesy of Oregon State University

The vast reservoir of carbon stored in Arctic permafrost is gradually being converted to carbon dioxide (CO2) after entering the freshwater system in a process thought to be controlled largely by microbial activity.

However, a new study -- funded by the National Science Foundation and published this week in the journal Science -- concludes that sunlight and not bacteria is the key to triggering the production of CO2 from material released by Arctic soils.

The finding is particularly important, scientists say, because climate change could affect when and how permafrost is thawed, which begins the process of converting the organic carbon into CO2.

"Arctic permafrost contains about half of all the organic carbon trapped in soil on the entire Earth -- and equals an amount twice of that in the atmosphere," said Byron Crump, an Oregon State University microbial ecologist and co-author on the Science study. "This represents a major change in thinking about how the carbon cycle works in the Arctic."

Converting soil carbon to carbon dioxide is a two-step process, notes Rose Cory, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Michigan, and lead author on the study. First, the permafrost soil has to thaw and then bacteria must turn the carbon into greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide or methane. While much of this conversion process takes place in the soil, a large amount of carbon is washed out of the soils and into rivers and lakes, she said.

"It turns out, that in Arctic rivers and lakes, sunlight is faster than bacteria at turning organic carbon into CO2," Cory said. "This new understanding is really critical because if we want to get the right answer about how the warming Arctic may feedback to influence the rest of the world, we have to understand the controls on carbon cycling.

"In other words, if we only consider what the bacteria are doing, we'll get the wrong answer about how much CO2 may eventually be released from Arctic soils," Cory added.

The research team measured the speed at which both bacteria and sunlight converted dissolved organic carbon into carbon dioxide in all types of rivers and lakes in the Alaskan Arctic, from glacial-fed rivers draining the Brooks Range to tannin-stained lakes on the coastal plain. Measuring these processes is important, the scientists noted, because bacteria types and activities are variable and the amount of sunlight that reaches the carbon sources can differ by body of water.

In virtually all of the freshwater systems they measured, however, sunlight was always faster than bacteria at converting the organic carbon into CO2.

"This is because most of the fresh water in the Arctic is shallow, meaning sunlight can reach the bottom of any river -- and most lakes -- so that no dissolved organic carbon is kept in the dark," said Crump, an associate professor in Oregon State's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. "Also, there is little shading of rivers and lakes in the Arctic because there are no trees."

Another factor limiting the microbial contribution is that bacteria grow more slowly in these cold, nutrient-rich waters.

"Light, therefore, can have a tremendous effect on organic matter," University of Michigan's Cory pointed out.

The source of all of this organic carbon is primarily tundra plants -- and it has been building up for hundreds of thousands of years, but doesn't completely break down immediately because of the Arctic's cold temperatures. Once the plant material gets deep enough into the soil, the degradation stops and it becomes preserved, much like peat.

"The level of thawing only gets to be a foot deep or so, even in the summer," Crump said. "Right now, the thaw begins not long before the summer solstice. If the seasons begin to shift with climate change -- and the thaw begins earlier, exposing the organic carbon from permafrost to more sunlight -- it could potentially trigger the release of more CO2."

The science community has not yet been able to accurately calculate how much organic carbon from the permafrost is being converted into CO2, and thus it will be difficult to monitor potential changes because of climate change, they acknowledge.

"We have to assume that as more material thaws and enters Arctic lakes and rivers, more will be converted to CO2," Crump said. "The challenge is how to quantify that."

Some of the data for the study was made available through the National Science Foundation's Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research project, which has operated in the Arctic for nearly 30 years.

Source:  Oregon State University

Kudzu can release soil carbon, accelerate global warming

This layer of decomposing knotweed will eventually form soil organic matter in invaded ecosystems.
 Credit: Image courtesy of Clemson University

Clemson University scientists are shedding new light on how invasion by exotic plant species affects the ability of soil to store greenhouse gases. The research could have far-reaching implications for how we manage agricultural land and native ecosystems.

In a paper published in the scientific journal New Phytologist, plant ecologist Nishanth Tharayil and graduate student Mioko Tamura show that invasive plants can accelerate the greenhouse effect by releasing carbon stored in soil into the atmosphere.
Since soil stores more carbon than both the atmosphere and terrestrial vegetation combined, the repercussions for how we manage agricultural land and ecosystems to facilitate the storage of carbon could be dramatic.

In their study, Tamura and Tharayil examined the impact of encroachment of Japanese knotweed and kudzu, two of North America's most widespread invasive plants, on the soil carbon storage in native ecosystems.

They found that kudzu invasion released carbon that was stored in native soils, while the carbon amassed in soils invaded by knotweed is more prone to oxidation and is subsequently lost to the atmosphere.

The key seems to be how plant litter chemistry regulates the soil biological activity that facilitates the buildup, composition and stability of carbon-trapping organic matter in soil.

"Our findings highlight the capacity of invasive plants to effect climate change by destabilizing the carbon pool in soil and shows that invasive plants can have profound influence on our understanding to manage land in a way that mitigates carbon emissions," Tharayil said.

Tharayil estimates that kudzu invasion results in the release of 4.8 metric tons of carbon annually, equal to the amount of carbon stored in 11.8 million acres of U.S. forest.
This is the same amount of carbon emitted annually by consuming 540 million gallons of gasoline or burning 5.1 billion pounds of coal.

"Climate change is causing massive range expansion of many exotic and invasive plant species. As the climate warms, kudzu will continue to invade northern ecosystems, and its impact on carbon emissions will grow," Tharayil said.

The findings provide particular insight into agricultural land-management strategies and suggest that it is the chemistry of plant biomass added to soil rather than the total amount of biomass that has the greatest influence on the ability of soil to harbor stable carbon.

"Our study indicates that incorporating legumes such as beans, peas, soybeans, peanuts and lentils that have a higher proportion of nitrogen in its biomass can accelerate the storage of carbon in soils," Tharayil said.

Thrarayil's lab is following up this research to gain a deeper understanding of soil carbon storage and invasion.

Tharayil leads a laboratory and research team at Clemson that studies how the chemical and biological interactions that take place in the plant-soil interface shape plant communities. He is also the director of Clemson's Multi-User Analytical Laboratory, which provides researchers with access to highly specialized laboratory instruments.

Source: Clemson University

Ancient wisdom boosts sustainability of biotech cotton

The patchwork of 75 million acres of small farms in northern China includes insecticidal transgenic Bt cotton. Credit: Photo courtesy of Yidong Wu

Advocates of biotech crops and those who favor traditional farming practices such as crop diversity often seem worlds apart, but a new study shows that these two approaches can be compatible. An international team led by Chinese scientists and Bruce Tabashnik at the University of Arizona's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences discovered that the diverse patchwork of crops in northern China slowed adaptation to genetically engineered cotton by a wide-ranging insect pest. The results are published in the advance online edition of Nature Biotechnology.

Genetically engineered cotton, corn and soybean produce proteins from the widespread soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, that kill certain insect pests but are harmless to most other creatures including people. These environmentally friendly toxins have been used by organic growers in sprays for decades and by mainstream farmers in engineered Bt crops since 1996. Planted on a cumulative total of more than half a billion hectares worldwide during the past two decades, Bt crops can reduce use of broadly toxic insecticides and increase farmers' profits. However, rapid evolution of resistance to Bt toxins by some pests has reduced the benefits of this approach.

To delay resistance, farmers plant refuges of insect host plants that do not make Bt toxins, which allows survival of insects that are susceptible to the toxins. When refuges near Bt crops produce many susceptible insects, it reduces the chances that two resistant insects will mate and produce resistant offspring. In the United States, Australia and most other countries, farmers were required to plant refuges of non-Bt cotton near the first type of Bt cotton that was commercialized, which produces one Bt toxin named Cry1Ac. Planting such non-Bt cotton refuges is credited with preventing evolution of resistance to Bt cotton by pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella) in Arizona for more than a decade.

Yet in China, the world's number one cotton producer, refuges of non-Bt cotton have not been required. The Chinese approach relies on the previously untested idea that refuges of non-Bt cotton are not needed there because the most damaging pest, the cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera), feeds on many crops other than cotton that do not make Bt toxins, such as corn, soybean and peanuts. The results reported in the new study provide the first strong evidence that these "natural refuges" of non-Bt crops other than cotton delay evolution of pest resistance to Bt cotton.

Tabashnik used computer simulations to project the consequences of different assumptions about the effects of natural refuges in northern China. The simulations mimic the biology of the cotton bollworm and the planting patterns of the 10 million farmers in northern China from 2010 to 2013, where Bt cotton accounts for 98 percent of all cotton, but cotton represents only 10 percent of the area planted with crops eaten by the cotton bollworm.

"Because nearly all of the cotton is Bt cotton, the simulations without natural refuges predicted that resistant insects would increase from one percent of the population in 2010 to more than 98 percent by 2013," said Tabashnik, who heads the UA's Department of Entomology and also is a member of the UA's BIO5 Institute. "Conversely, resistance barely increased under the most optimistic scenario modeled, where each hectare of the 90 percent natural refuge was equivalent to a hectare of non-Bt cotton refuge."

In a third scenario, the researchers used field data on emerging cotton bollworms from different crops to adjust the contribution of each hectare of natural refuge relative to non-Bt cotton. These data were provided by co-author Kongming Wu of the Institute of Plant Protection in Beijing. By this method, the total natural refuge area was equivalent to a 56 percent non-Bt cotton refuge, and 4.9 percent of the insects were predicted to be resistant by 2013.

To distinguish between these possibilities, a team led by co-author Yidong Wu of China's Nanjing Agricultural University tracked resistance from 2010 to 2013 at 17 sites in six provinces of northern China. Insects were collected from the field and more than 70,000 larvae were tested in laboratory feeding experiments to determine if they were resistant. This extensive monitoring showed that the percentage of resistant insects increased from one percent of the population in 2010 to 5.5 percent in 2013.

The field data imply that the natural refuges of non-Bt crops other than cotton delayed resistance with an effect similar to that of a 56 percent non-Bt cotton refuge, just as the model predicted.

"Our results mean we are getting a better understanding of what is going on," Tabashnik said. "We'd like to encourage further documentation work to track these trends. The same kind of analysis could be applied in areas in the U.S. where the natural refuge strategy is used.

"Natural refuges help, but are not a permanent solution," he added. "The paper indicates that if the current trajectory continues, more than half of the cotton bollworm population in northern China will be resistant to Bt cotton in a few years."

To avoid this, the authors recommend switching to cotton that produces two or more Bt toxins and integrating Bt cotton with other control tactics, such as biological control by predators and parasites.

"The most important lesson is that we don't need to choose between biotechnology and traditional agriculture," Tabashnik said. "Instead, we can use the best practices from both approaches to maximize agricultural productivity and sustainability."

Source:University of Arizona

The Loss of biodiversity limits toxin degradation

You might not think of microbes when you consider biodiversity, but it turns out that even a moderate loss of less than 5% of soil microbes may compromise some key ecosystem functions and could lead to lower degradation of toxins in the environment.

Research published today in the SfAM journal, Environmental Microbiology, reports that without a rich diversity of soil bacteria, specialized functions such as the removal of pesticide residues are not as effective.

Dr Brajesh Singh of the University of Western Sydney led the work, he said "If the ability of the ecosystem to remove toxins from the environment is reduced, there will be higher toxicity risks in the environment and for non-target organisms, including humans, from agricultural chemicals. It is likely that these contaminants will remain at higher levels in surface and underground water, as well. It is vital to gain a better understanding of the extent to which soil bacteria are involved in the removal of contaminants."

The reasons for, and extent of, the decline in microbial diversity in agricultural soils is likely to be complex. The team has looked specifically at long-term heavy metal pollution where metals such as cadmium, zinc, and copper build up in the environment, usually as a result of industrial use. Another source is from digested sewage sludge, which is spread in agriculture fields to supply nutrients to crops and improve soil fertility; the sludge has historically contained some heavy metals, which can become concentrated in the soil.

Although the concentration of heavy metal used this study was higher than the current EU limit, this study has confirmed that long-term exposure to such contaminants does reduce the diversity of bacteria in the soil.

With the global population set to reach nine billion by 2050, we face a challenge to feed an extra two billion mouths using the same resources that we have at present. Crop losses to pests and disease account for a large percentage of under-production and so giving up pesticides will be difficult. Similarly, the use of sludge as a fertilizer is likely to become more prevalent. Research like this allows us to understand better how to use important agrichemicals and waste products in a sustainable way and so will contribute to future food and environmental security.

Source: Wiley