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

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The anatomy of petal drop in sunflowers

Study finds cell division at abscission zone of short-lived cultivar occurs earlier than in long-lived variety

ITHACA, NY - Despite their consumer popularity as cut flowers, some sunflowers are difficult to market because of their tendency to lose petals soon after their flowers open. This characteristic, "petal drop", which in some varieties can occur within a day of the flowers' opening, ruins the appearance of sunflowers and damages their market value. Sunflower growers interested in finding cultivars that are less prone to this condition have had limited information about petal drop, but a new study in the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science contains findings can inform both sunflower breeding programs and consumers' choices.

Joyous Suiyigheh Tata and Hans Christian Wien from the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University studied the abscission zone, a differentiated region where petal drop initiates, at the base of petals of sunflower florets in two different cultivars. "We wanted to determine if differences in the abscission zone among sunflower cultivars were correlated with differences in timing of petal drop," the authors said. Two pollen-free hybrid sunflower cultivars were selected for evaluation: Procut Bicolor, which loses its petals easily, and Procut Yellow Lite, which holds its petals much longer.

For the first experiment, the researchers measured separation force for the two sunflower cultivars using a modified soil cone micropenetrometer, an apparatus that measures separation forces in the opposite direction. "The separation force experiments showed that detachment forces switched from an initial high to low in both cultivars because of the maturation of the separation layer. This maturation occurred earlier in the cultivar that is first to lose its petals (Procut Bicolor)," the authors said. They noted that there were no force readings for the short-lived cultivar on day 9 and day 12 because the flower had already wilted.

"In the second experiment, we studied the changes in the anatomy of the petal-achene juncture of the two cultivars," the scientists explained. Three stages from Procut Bicolor (PBC) and four stages from Procut Yellow Lite (PYL) were studied. These stages represent a time course with physiological relevance; when the flower just opens (anthesis), 8 days (the end of flower life for PBC), and 12 days (the end of flower life for PYL). The study also included analyses of petal anatomy at 4 days after harvest. The "end of flower life" was defined as the time when detachment force equals zero; when simply touching the petals caused them to fall off easily. Results of the analyses showed that cell division at the abscission zone of the short-lived cultivar occurred earlier than in the long-lived cultivar. "These results reveal that there was a difference in timing in the formation and maturation of the separation layer between the two cultivars," the authors said.

Interestingly, analyses showed that the mean "break strength" of cultivars in the yellow group was higher and significantly different from cultivars in the orange and bicolor groups, which were in turn higher than cultivars in the red group. Mean vase life (12 days) of the sunflowers in the yellow group was longer than cultivars in the orange group (10 days), while the vase life of the orange group was longer than cultivars in the bicolor group (9 days). The vase life of the red cultivars was shortest at 8 days. "We found that vase life has a strong relationship with flower color; the darker cultivars in the study had a shorter vase life compared with the lighter cultivars," the scientists remarked.

"The anatomy of petal drop in sunflower is similar to the majority of established descriptions in other species; the process involves the separation of four to five rows of smaller transversely oriented cells that lay horizontally across the diameter at the juncture between the petal and the achene, the separation layer," the authors said. "The concept that the timing of the maturation of the separation layer in the abscission zone helps determine the timing of petal drop is strongly supported by both the physical and anatomical investigations."

The authors concluded that the regression equation and results from the petal detachment force experiments can be used to screen sunflower cultivars in order to determine groupings of short-lived vs. long-lived cultivars. They said that the study contains beneficial information for sunflower breeding programs working to improve the breed's longevity, which can ultimately lead to increased sunflower sales.

Source: ASHS

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Home on the range: Cattle ranching in the Amazon

Rubber tapper children ride their steer home from school in the Brazilian state of Acre.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Santa Barbara

In a paper published in the current issue of the journal Human Organization, UC Santa Barbara anthropologist Jeffrey Hoelle takes a look at the rise of cattle ranching in the Brazilian state of Acre and the processes that brought it to one of the greenest corners of western Amazonia.

According to Hoelle, an assistant professor of anthropology, the Amazonian research on cattle usually falls into one of two camps: documentation of the environmental consequences of cattle raising -- the leading driver of Amazonian deforestation -- or analysis of the ways that policies and markets interact to make cattle and pasture more profitable than the standing forest. His article aims to expand the study of Amazonian cattle raising to include "cattle culture," the positive cultural constructions associated with a cattle-raising lifestyle that contribute to its appeal over other ways of using the land.

In Acre, Hoelle writes, "the rubber tapper movement protested the arrival of cattle ranching in the 1980s, capturing worldwide attention with a message of sustainable forest-based development. Across Amazonia, groups who once opposed or were displaced by cattle are now adopting it, including Acrean rubber tappers and colonists."

Using primary data he collected among rural and urban groups in Acre, Hoelle demonstrates, through a discussion of two processes that result in very different types of cultural expression, how cattle culture emerged in this unlikely place.

On the one hand, he notes, the subsistence uses of cattle led to cultural beliefs that were based on interdependence and resembled cattle complexes from other parts of the world. Yet local economic relationships with cattle could not explain the explosion of a "cauboi" (cowboy) model in which human control of cattle and nature was celebrated by men and women with shiny belt buckles, tight jeans, boots and a love of rodeos and "sertananeja" or "contri" (country) music.

Rubber tapper Jatobá Rocha was hesitant about cattle when Hoelle first met him in 2007. A year later, however, he bought a young bull named Tchoa, who quickly became a member of the family, pulling his own weight -- literally, with an oxcart -- and serving as a means of transportation for the Rochas.

Hoelle explained that people raise cattle all over the world in different ways, from subsistence pastoralism in East Africa to large-scale capitalist ranching in the Americas, with smallholders who fall somewhere in between these economic and ecological systems. In traditional nomadic pastoralism, humans regarded their cattle as individuals -- as the Rochas do Tchoa -- and develop an emotional connection with them. With large-scale ranching, cattle are a nameless commodity.

"For the cowboys and ranchers, the objective is to raise cattle as if they were a crop to be harvested at the right time," Hoelle said. "You don't want to hurt the herd to the extent that you'll jeopardize your investment, but you do need to dominate it." This economic relationship is recreated symbolically in rituals such as rodeos, he noted.
"If, however, you're relying on a cow for its milk, or if you're going to ride it to the store, you have to establish a relationship with the animal," he continued. Deep cultural connections form from that relationship, such as India's "sacred cow" or the cattle complex in East Africa. Hoelle argued the same thing happens deep in the heart of capitalist ranching in the Amazon.

He emphasized that it isn't necessarily ranching/pastoralism or capitalism/subsistence that explains the type of cattle culture that emerges, but rather the type of relationship that humans have with animals to secure products or services from them. "This really became apparent when I stopped looking at the ways that cowboys roughed up the cattle and focused instead on the affection they showed their horses," Hoelle continued. "They'd name their horses, hug them around the neck and nudge them playfully, and probably punch you if you asked about eating their beloved equine."

For the cowboys, horses were essential economic tools for securing the production of cattle; whereas for smallholders, the cattle served a similar function in terms of daily reliance. In both cases, cultural beliefs develop to protect vital resources.

Since the arrival of cattle in Acre, Hoelle said, these animals have been surrounded by violence, deforestation and displacement. "It is surprising that cattle raising and cattle culture have expanded across Amazonia, and especially in Acre," he commented. "It is also troubling for those of us concerned with sustainable alternatives to cattle raising. My point is that you have to put that aside for the moment and attempt to understand why it makes sense for those adopting it."

Understanding the appeal of the cowboy in the Amazon rainforest is critical to understanding the appeal of cattle raising, he noted. "The cowboy persona is something people strive for. It's very strong there, and really important in terms of the way people interact with nature," Hoelle said. "Being the strong manly type who can face the forest and transform it into this nice uniform pasture full of big domesticated animals is very powerful in the way it communicates ideals of masculinity, modernity and development."

From a distance of thousands of miles, it's easy for us here in the U.S. to decry the Acreans' decimation of the rainforest to expand cattle-grazing land. Our instinct is to preserve the rainforest because of its vital contribution to the world. "But those who are living it see themselves in the same way pioneers and settlers have throughout history. There is a drive to tame the frontier -- to control or cultivate nature," Hoelle explained. While this tendency has declined in the U.S., it remains front and center for those attempting to make a living in a place where people really do feel that they are under constant assault from the forest, he noted. In this context, the cowboy is an appealing figure, while here it might be more common to romanticize the Indians.

Hoelle, the author of the forthcoming book, "Rainforest Cowboys: The Rise of Ranching and Cattle Culture in Western Amazonia," emphasized that crafting appropriate policy solutions requires an understanding of the interlinked political, economic and cultural features of Amazonian cattle raising.

Source: University of California - Santa Barbara

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