Grown together, newly examined ‘lost crops’ could have produced enough seed to feed as many indigenous people as traditionally grown maize, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

But there are no written or oral histories to describe them. The domesticated forms of the lost crops are thought to be extinct.

Natalie Muellert, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences, describes how she painstakingly grew and calculated yield estimates for two annual plants that were cultivated in eastern North America for thousands of years – and then abandoned.

Growing goosefoot (Chenopodium, sp.) and erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum) together is more productive than growing either one alone, Mueller discovered. Planted in tandem, along with the other known lost crops, they could have fed thousands.

Archaeologists found the first evidence of the lost crops in rock shelters in Kentucky and Arkansas in the 1930s. Seed caches and dried leaves were their only clues. Over the past 25 years, pioneering research by Gayle Fritz, professor emerita of archaeology at Washington University, helped to establish the fact that a previously unknown crop complex had supported local societies for millennia before maize – a.k.a. corn – was adopted as a staple crop.

But how, exactly, to grow them?

The lost crops include a small but diverse group of native grasses, seed plants, squashes and sunflowers – of which only the squashes and sunflowers are still cultivated. For the rest, there is plenty of evidence that the lost crops were purposefully tended – not just harvested from free-living stands in the wild – but there are no instructions left.

‘There are many Native American practitioners of ethnobotanical knowledge: farmers and people who know about medicinal plants, and people who know about wild foods. Their knowledge is really important,’ Mueller said. ‘But as far as we know, there aren’t any people who hold knowledge about the lost crops and how they were grown. It’s possible that there are communities or individuals who have knowledge about these plants, and it just isn’t published or known by the academic community,’ she said.

‘But the way that I look at it, we can’t talk to the people who grew these crops. ‘So, our group of people who are working with the living plants is trying to participate in the same kind of ecosystem that they participated in – and trying to reconstruct their experience that way.’

That means no greenhouse, no pesticides and no special fertilisers.

‘You have not just the plants but also everything else that comes along with them, like the bugs that are pollinating them and the pests that are eating them. The diseases that affect them. The animals that they attract, and the seed dispersers,’ Mueller said. ‘There are all of these different kinds of ecological elements to the system, and we can interact with all of them.’

Her new paper reported on two experiments designed to investigate germination requirements and yields for the lost crops.

Mueller discovered that a polyculture of goosefoot and erect knotweed is more productive than either grown separately as a monoculture. Grown together, the two plants have higher yields than global averages for closely related domesticated crops (think: quinoa and buckwheat), and they are within the range of those for traditionally grown maize.

‘The main reason that I’m really interested in yield is because there’s a debate within archeology about why these plants were abandoned,’ Mueller said. ‘We haven’t had a lot of evidence about it one way or the other. But a lot of people have just kind of assumed that maize would be a lot more productive because we grow maize now, and it’s known to be one of the most productive crops in the world per unit area.’

Mueller wanted to quantify yield in this experiment so that she could directly compare yield for these plants to maize for the first time.

But it didn’t work out perfectly. She was only able to obtain yield estimates for two of the five lost crops that she tried to grow – but not for the plants known as maygrass, little barley and sumpweed. Reporting on the partial batch was still important to her.

‘My colleagues and I, we’re motivated from the standpoint of wanting to see more diverse agricultural systems, wanting to see the knowledge and management of indigenous people recognized and curiosity about what the ecosystems of North America were like before we had this industrial agricultural system,’ Mueller said.

Source: agtag.co.za

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Maize market trends

International maize market

US Kansas yellow corn prices decreased by 0.5% week on week. US corn prices were lower due to expectations that the delayed US harvest will advance during the week ending 22 November 2019. The cold weather conditions in the US which caused further delay in harvesting coupled with concerns that the freezing conditions in the US corn belt may cause significant corn crop losses is expected to provide some support to prices preventing further declines.

Local maize market

South African maize future prices traded mixed this week. The spot price of white maize increased marginally by 0.3% and yellow maize spot price decreased by 0.8% week on week. The Eastern Free-State, Limpopo, KZN and Mpumalanga regions received some rainfall over the past two weeks. Producers started planting at full steam, follow-up rains will be critical to ensure that expected yields materialize. Ermelo region experienced hail which damaged some maize and soybean crops. Parts of the eastern Free State have received some rains, the optimal planting time for this region is from the mid to end of November. According to weather forecasts, rains are expected for the next two weeks, which will be beneficial for crop development and soil moisture.

Outlook

The US corn prices are expected to remain stagnant due to long-term trends indicating that yield increases will make-up for the lower planting area while the demand for US corn remains relatively flat. Locally, rains remain critical in the eastern, central to western summer crop growing regions. Prices are expected to trade sideways for the next two weeks.

Wheat market trends

International wheat market

Local wheat market

Prices in the domestic wheat market traded negatively this week. The wheat spot price decreased marginally by 0.3% week on week. The expected commercial wheat crop is estimated at 1,695,470 tons down by 6.1% from the previous forecast of 1,806,170 tonnes. Wheat production in the Western Cape, which makes up 40% of total South African wheat production, was estimated at 682,500 tonnes in October by the Crop Estimates Committee. The estimated wheat production may not materialize due the hot and dry conditions experienced in the dryland producing areas of the Western Cape. The harvesting process in the Southern Cape is complete and wheat yields were poor in some areas. Harvesting in the Swartland region will be completed in the next two weeks, and so far, yields are lower, therefore a smaller crop is to be expected from that region. The Northern Cape province which produces 7% of the country’s wheat had a hail occurrence a few weeks ago which caused some damage to wheat crops. The condition of the wheat crop produced under dryland in the Free State is also worrying.

Outlook

The US wheat prices remain capped by abundant global supplies and renewed competition from Russia and the Ukraine. The US/China trade war and ASF outbreak do not have a major impact on the US wheat and corn outlooks. However, the abundant US wheat supplies, flat domestic use, slow export growth and increased global trade competition, keeps a lid on prices. Locally, wheat prices are expected to recover from November onwards and follow international wheat prices. The grades of the local wheat are good despite the dry conditions (especially in the Western Cape). Because SA is a net importer, the potential smaller wheat crop will not influence local wheat prices. Instead local producers may get a premium on quality.

Soya bean market trends

International soya bean market

The prices of oilseeds in the US traded mixed this week. The price of soya beans in the US gulf decreased by 1.1%, the price of soya oil decreased by 2.5% while the price of soya meal increased marginally by 0.2% week on week. Soya bean prices declined this week on the US futures market and in the EU. Hope is shrinking that the US and China will be reaching an agreement soon, this coupled with the improved soya bean planting progress in South America added price pressure to the soybean market. The price of sunflower seed increased this week in parts of Europe and the Black Sea region underpinned by strong demand and tight supplies in the EU. The sunflower oil prices (FOB Black Sea) declined this week due to large crops harvested in the Ukraine and Russia weighing down on prices.

Local soya bean and sunflower seed market

There’s been a slight improvement in the crushing margin compared to the sharp declines seen a month ago, however the crushing margin remains negative. Year on year crushing margins are lower by 298.7%. Crushers remain under pressure. The soya bean spot price decreased marginally by 0.2% and the sunflower seed spot price increased by 0.3% week on week. The Eastern Free-State, Limpopo, KZN and Mpumalanga regions received some rainfall the past two weeks. Producers started planting at full steam, follow-up rains will be critical to ensure that expected yields materialise.

Outlook

The ongoing trade war between the US and China will continue to have an impact on US soya bean prices in the short to medium term. Even if an agreement is reached, the demand for US soybeans is expected to lag due to the effects of the ASF outbreak on the China pig herd. The sow herd rebuilding process in Southeast Asia and China could be slow and limited, therefore capping the import demand for US soya beans. The local oilseed prices are following the international oilseed prices. Prices are expected to increase from November onwards according to seasonal trends.

Source: AgTag

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These natural enemies keep pests under control, making it easier to grow the crops we depend on.

New research from Michigan State University by Nate Haan, Yajun Zhang and Doug Landis sheds light on how these natural enemies respond to large-scale spatial patterns in agricultural landscapes. These areas are made up of crop fields, forests and grasslands. It turns out their configuration, or spatial arrangement, can go a long way in determining how many natural enemies show up in a field to eat pests.

A new review article published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution summarises recent research into ways landscape configuration affects natural enemies and pest suppression.

‘One of the take-homes from our review is that natural enemies can be more abundant when agricultural landscapes are made up of smaller farm fields,’ said Haan, MSU postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Entomology and one of the study’s authors. ‘Some natural enemies need resources found in other habitats or in crop field edges. We think when habitat patches are small, they are more likely to find their way back and forth between these habitats and crop fields, or from one crop field into another.’

Haan emphasises that the exact effects of landscape configuration depend on the natural history of the critter in question.

‘A predator that finds everything it needs to survive within a single crop field might not need natural habitats outside that crop field, but there are lots of other insects that need to find nectar or shelter in other places,’ Haan said. ‘For these insects, the spatial arrangement of crop fields and those other habitats can become very important.’

This research will help scientists predict how future changes to farming landscapes will affect insect diversity and pest suppression, a service that is estimated to save farmers billions of dollars every year.

One expected change to landscapes in the Midwest will occur as farmers begin to grow more bioenergy crops. Farmers are likely to grow more crops that can be processed and used as substitutes for petroleum; these crops could be traditional crops like corn, but switchgrass, poplar trees and native prairie are promising alternatives. Depending which crops are used and where they are planted, future landscapes will contain new habitats and will likely be in new spatial arrangements.

The next steps for this research include learning more about whether life history traits of beneficial arthropods predict how they will respond to landscape change. Insects have different food requirements and strategies for moving around the landscape, Haan and colleagues are excited to learn how these differences can be used to predict how the insects will respond to future landscape changes.

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The application will be most valuable for the fruit, vegetable and grain crops that not only end up on our dinner table, but are also critical for global food security and human nutrition.

The new method is an extension of a tool known as GWA (Genome Wide Association). GWA studies use genetic sequencing technologies coupled with advanced statistics and computation to link differences in the genetic code with particular traits. When using GWA to study plants, researchers typically manage large sets of genetically identical plants. However, developing these sets of ‘inbred lines’is costly and time-consuming: it can take over six years of preparation before such a study can even begin. The new technique is modelled after an approach often used to study human DNA, in which DNA samples from thousands of individual people, who are certainly not identical, are compared.

The researchers wanted to discover whether this approach would be successful in plants. Since measurements of individual plants can be highly variable, the scientists developed a method that enabled them to combine the advantages of a GWA study with additional statistical analysis techniques. To test their idea, they investigated whether their combination of approaches could accurately detect genes involved in plant height, a trait that has been extensively studied in the scientific literature. The scientists planted four fields of an early variety of white maize (white corn) and measured the height of the plants. They identified three genes, from the potential 39,000 genes in the maize genome, which were controlling plant height. The effects of all three of these genes were supported by previous studies on other maize varieties. This showed that their method had worked.

‘Scientists usually have to measure huge numbers of genetically identical plants in order to have a powerful enough study for finding genes,’ says Professor Timothy Beissinger, head of the Division of Plant Breeding Methodology at the University of Goettingen, ‘but we used a diverse maize population and showed that our approach was powerful without relying on identical plants at all.’ Abiskar Gyawali, a University of Missouri (USA) PhD student who is the first author, went on to say, “This is great news for researchers interested in finding genes in crops where inbred lines are not available or are time-consuming to produce.’

Beissinger stated, ‘The exciting thing is that this study reveals the potential for our method to enable research in other food crops where research funding is not as high. Due to industry and government support, resources are already available to do large-scale studies in maize. But for scientists studying the countless vegetables, fruits, and grains that many communities rely on, funding for massive studies simply isn’t possible. This is a breakthrough which will enable cheap and quick identification of trait-gene associations to advance nutrition and sustainability in food crops world-wide.’

Sourced from agtag.co.za

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In order to meet the demands of growing human populations, agricultural production must double within the next 30 years.

Yet the health of today’s crops and the promise of their yield face a rising slate of threats – from pests to chaotic weather events – leading to an urgent need to identify effective, natural plant defence strategies.

Biologists have access to a wealth of genomic and biochemical data, but rapidly deciphering entire biochemical pathways that protect key crops of global significance remains a significant challenge. Scientists are peeling away at the layers of immunity in maize, a staple for diets around the world, to determine if there are key genes that enable surprisingly diverse antibiotic cocktails that can be produced as defensive blends against numerous disease agents.

Now, a systematic and combined approach to identifying such genes in crop defence has been developed by Yezhang Ding, Alisa Huffaker and Eric Schmelz of the University of California San Diego and their colleagues.

‘We need to know which crop defence mechanisms are effective and what we can do sustain or further improve them,’ said Schmelz. ‘Co-authors and collaborators in China are already taking some of the maize genes we characterized and are using them to significantly improve disease resistance in rice.’

Historically, defining a complete new biochemical pathway in crops has required stepwise progress and often the better part of an entire research career. In the new study, the UC San Diego biologists describe how they combined an array of scientific approaches to clearly define six genes that encode enzymes responsible for the production of key maize antibiotics known to control disease resistance.

Maize plants lacking small molecule antibiotic defences, derived from a skeleton of 20 carbon atoms known as diterpenoids, commonly suffer dramatic increases in fungal disease susceptibility.

‘Most people appreciate that pine trees are heavily protected by sticky acid resins that kill or deter a majority of microbes and insects,’ said Schmelz. ‘We describe a complete maize biosynthetic pathway that also makes acid resins on-demand at the site of fungal attack. Interestingly, almost the entire pathway is derived from evolutionarily recent gene duplications from diverse hormone pathways related to plant growth and human testosterone metabolism.’

One of the evolutionary steps was a comparatively recent gene duplication three million years ago from the hormone pathway responsible for plant growth called gibberellins. In a step not clearly borrowed from hormone biosynthesis, two highly promiscuous oxidative enzymes (with broad substrate and product specificity) termed cytochrome P450s were characterized to produce unique reactions different from known conifer pathways. In total, the effort leveraged more than 2,000 plant samples, each with 36,861 transcripts, spanning 300 different maize lines to systematically narrow candidates and define a maize pathway for antibiotics effective against fungal pathogens.

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But there is cause for hope for southern Africa’s 2020 agricultural performance. The news out of Luanda (Angola), where the 23rd Southern African Regional Climate Forum convened a meeting with Southern African Development Community meteorologists, points to a potential improvement in rainfall in the 2019/2020 production season.

If we zoom in on SA, the forum’s message concurs with the forecast of the local weather service, which indicated on August 30 that the central and eastern parts of SA could receive above-normal rainfall between November 2019 and January 2020. The weather outlook for the northwestern regions of SA are still unclear at this point, but I think there could be normal showers. It is quite rare to find a season where the northeastern parts of SA experience above-normal rainfall while the northwestern areas are dry, hence my optimism that the overall summer crop growing areas could receive sufficient rains in the 2019/2020 production season.

The summer grains and oilseed planting season is due to start about mid-October in the eastern parts of SA, but I believe there could be a delay of one or two weeks as some areas have lower soil moisture. Rainfall typically starts in November. Summer crop plantings in the northwestern areas should start on time, not only because of showers expected but due to generally improved soil moisture after the late 2019 summer rainfall and cool winter, which preserved it in some areas.

In the 2018/2019 production season SA’s major summer crops — maize, soybeans and sunflower seeds — were down year on year by 12%, 21% and 24% to 11.02-million tons, 1.17-million tons and 680,940 tons respectively. Assuming good weather conditions there could be a notable upswing from these levels. The International Grains Council’s recently updated preliminary estimates for SA’s 2019/2020 maize production are up at 12.8-million tons, which would be 16% higher than the current season and slightly above the five-year average production of 12.3-million tons.

This would be a welcome development, not only for the summer crop farmers but also livestock farmers and agribusinesses. The livestock sector could benefit through potentially lower feed prices when the harvest increases. At the end of August 2019, SA’s yellow and white maize prices were up 15% and 22% respectively from the corresponding period last year because of the lower harvests in the 2018/2019 production season. The agribusinesses could benefit in various ways, from improved grain volumes for storage, and through lower prices in entities that use maize and other summer crops as inputs.

The optimistic outlook for SA’s agricultural economy does not only rely on the potential recovery of summer crop production but also on winter crops and the horticultural sector. The Western Cape, a key horticulture province in the country, received good rainfall in the past few weeks. This has improved soil moisture and water levels in dams. The province is set to receive additional rainfall, all of which is conducive to a good horticulture harvest in 2020, which will ultimately boost SA’s agricultural economic fortunes.

For the broader southern Africa region, improvement in rainfall would be a catalyst in breaking the cycle of food insecurity afflicting the likes of Zimbabwe. Most importantly, the agricultural sector still plays a huge role in the economy and labour market in a number of countries in Southern Africa, so an improvement in output would have much wider positive spin-offs. Farmers will have to closely monitor weather developments in the coming weeks and months, as the optimistic picture I’ve painted is still dependent on good rainfall.

This essay was retrieved from Agricultural Economics Today

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Making fields smaller is an effective way to produce greater biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, since farmed landscapes with smaller fields and more diverse crops harbour more species. This was the finding of an international team of scientists, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “Agricultural intensification and the destruction of semi-natural habitats (shrubland, hedges, herb-rich strips) is one of the principal causes of observed biodiversity loss,” the authors explain in the abstract of the study. Increasing agricultural landscape heterogeneity by increasing semi-natural cover can help to mitigate biodiversity loss. However, the amount of semi-natural cover is generally low and difficult to increase in many intensively managed agricultural landscapes. But there is another option: The researchers showed at a large geographical scale that increasing the complexity of the crop mosaic by making field sizes smaller is as beneficial for biodiversity as increasing the quantity of semi-natural habitats.

The researchers selected eight contrasting agricultural regions in Europe and Canada in which average field size, crop diversity and semi-natural habitat area varied. They collected data from three sampling sites (i.e. agricultural fields) within 435 different agricultural landscapes of 1 x 1 km, identifying more than 2,795 species spread across seven taxonomic groups (birds, butterflies, bees, hoverflies, spiders, ground beetles and plants). They found that a complex crop mosaic, with small fields and diverse crops – dubbed “crop heterogeneity” by the scientists – was associated with an increase in biodiversity. For instance, the effect of decreasing field size from 5 to 2.8 hectares was as strong as that observed when the cover semi-natural habitat rises from 0.5 to 11%. The study showed that small fields also had a positive effect on biodiversity even in the absence of semi-natural vegetation between the fields, such as hedges or grassy margins.

The scientists also found that increasing the number of crop types also had a positive effect on biodiversity. “Crop diversity also had a positive effect on biodiversity because different crop types often harbour different species, but also because different crops supply complementary and necessary resources to support certain species in farmed landscapes,” said team member Jordi Recasens from the Universitat de Lleida. However, the effect of increasing crop diversity in the landscape surrounding fields sampled depended on the amount of seminatural cover. “Increasing the complexity of crops therefore represents an as yet unrecognized but valuable measure to conserve and restore farmland biodiversity,” the researchers write in the abstract. They argue that agri-environmental policies favouring a reduction in the average size of cultivated fields and, in some conditions, more diverse cropping, make it possible to maintain high biodiversity as well as to maintain the existing surface areas under agricultural production. The researchers hope that their results will contribute to informing the ongoing debate around the reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. (ab)

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Maize market trends

Local maize market

South African maize prices traded positively this week. The spot price of white maize and yellow maize increased by 2.6% and 1.7% respectively week on week. The South African maize deliveries for the week ending the 2nd of August 2019, was 287,100 tonnes, consisting of 78,295 tonnes yellow maize and 208,805 tonnes white maize. This brings cumulative maize deliveries for the season to date to 7,140,477 tonnes. The September and December white maize contracts ended 3.8% and 3.9% higher respectively this past week. The Rand was weaker this week due to the escalating US-China trade war and the possibility of a credit rating downgrade by Moody’s. The weaker Rand and higher US corn prices supported the South African maize prices.

Wheat market trends

Local wheat market

Prices in the domestic wheat market traded positively this week, supported by the weaker Rand. The wheat spot price increased marginally by 0.1% week on week. The price for new season (Dec 2019) wheat increased by 1% week on week. The current import parity is 1.8% higher compared to last week. A weaker Rand provided underlying support to the wheat market. Locally South Africa has imported 945,668 tonnes of wheat for the season to date. Some good widespread rainfall was seen in parts of the Western and Southern Cape. The much-needed rain was necessary to replenish soil moisture and to benefit wheat crop development. Weather forecasts indicated more rainfall in the Western Cape over the long weekend.

Soya bean market trends

Local soya bean and sunflower seed market

The domestic soya bean spot price increased by 2.7% week on week and prices are 25.4% higher compared to a year ago. High prices continue to put pressure on the local crushers. The domestic sunflower seed spot price increased by 3% week on week with the current price 10.4% higher compared to prices a year ago. Imports of vegetable oils have increased to a seven-year high due to SA’s lower oilseed production this season and the subsequent lower crushing for the past months. Sunflower oil imports were the largest component amongst the vegetable oils imported. South Africa’s sunflower seed production fell to a 6-year low, down 24% this season. Dry conditions during planting season lead to late harvesting this was coupled with very low old-crop supplies in storage. This resulted in limited volumes available for crushing throughout March-June 2019. This has led to a record influx of sunflower oil imports of 75,000 tons originating mainly from Argentina and the EU.

Read a full report on AgTag.

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The CEC’s forecast showed a 0,42% increase in maize and a 7,28% increase in sunflower seed yields from the fifth estimate, while its latest figures for soya bean, groundnut, sorghum and dry bean yields were revised down by 3,79%, 8,26%, 4,65% and 0,26% respectively.

The report revealed a 1,53% increase in the white maize crop to 5,57 million tons, and a decrease of 0,7% in the yellow maize crop to 5,41 million tons. This resulted in an increase in the total maize estimate to 10,98 million tons.

This figure was just over 12% smaller than 2018’s final harvest of 12,51 million tons.

The expected sunflower seed crop was revised up to 655 640t from the previous estimate of 611 140t.

In contrast, the soya bean crop was revised down from 1,22 million tons to 1,17 million tons, groundnuts were revised down from 20 580t to 18 880t, sorghum was reduced from 161 450t to 153 950t, and dry beans were from 66 530t to 66 355t.

The CEC also revised its expected average per-hectare yields to 4,29t/ha for white maize (1,3 million hectares planted), 5,4t/ha for yellow maize (one million hectares planted), 1,27t/ha for sunflower seed (515 350ha planted), 1,6t/ha for soya bean (730 500ha planted), 0,94t/ha for groundnuts (20 050ha planted), 3,05t/ha for sorghum (50 500ha planted), and 1,12t/ha for dry beans (59 300ha planted).

Commenting on the impact of the CEC’s latest figures, Paul Makube, senior agricultural economist with FNB Business, said that carryover stocks of key grains and oilseeds from the 2017/2018 summer harvests would help moderate local consumer and animal feed prices for the remainder of the year.

Read more at www.farmersweekly.co.za

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Published figures of the South African Grain Information Services (SAGIS) of actual deliveries of production for the basis of calculation, as well as figures from the wheat utilisation survey,  conducted by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), were added to calculate the final crop production figures.

Comparing the final calculated crop figures with the numbers set by the CEC during February 2019, the size of the commercial wheat crop is now 1 868 000 tons, which is 26 950 tons or 1,46% more than the final crop estimate figure of 1 841 050 tons. For malting barley, the recalculated crop size is 421 500 tons, which is 290 tons or 0,07% less than the final crop estimate figure of 421 790 tons. The final recalculated canola crop estimate figure is 104 500 tons, which is higher (550 tons or 0,53%) than the final crop estimate figure of 103 950 tons.

Click here to view the full article: crop estimates

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