Hot News

1.15.2008

By SEAN CLOUGHERTY
Associate Editor

HARRINGTON, Del. — During the Delaware Friends of Agriculture Breakfast last week, farmers and ag professionals were told that agriculture research in America is heading for a “new paradigm.”
Gale Buchanan, USDA undersecretary for research, education and economics, was the featured speaker at the breakfast and said achieving sustainable energy sources, using water more effectively and understanding the world’s changing climate will be the three priorities for the country’s land-grant institutions and research stations under the new model.
Agricultural research benefits farmers through advances in production and crop and animal genetics, but Buchanan said the ultimate beneficiaries are consumers who enjoy the cheapest food in the world. Funding its land-grant research institution is “probably one of the most important investments a state can make in their economy,” Buchanan said.
Until recently, agriculture was responsible for the “four Fs:” Food, feed, fiber and flowers.
Now, Buchanan said, fuel is added to that list and “agriculture has a vital, important, critical role in this process.”
Demand for oil will only increase, he said, as China and other developing nations grow their industry and as supply tightens, price will become more volatile.
The answer is in the sun, Buchanan continued, through making biomass that can be converted to an energy source. He said the USDA’s Agriculture Research Service has begun a massive feedstock study that looks at all types of biomass sources to see which will make fuel the most efficiently. Buchanan also responded to claims that a single solution will emerge to solve our energy problems.
“That might happen, but I don’t know what it is,” he said, and we should think in terms of “buckshot solutions rather than a magic bullet.”
Buchanan said a sustainable fuel supply is just as important to our survival as a sustainable food supply and asked the crowd at the Harrington Fire Hall, “What if we treated food the same as we treat oil?,” reinforcing the point that our future energy sources must be sustainable and renewable and agriculture is the natural place to look.
“Sustainability has been part of agriculture for as long as I can remember,” he said.
As more biomass is grown for fuel, more water will be used to grow it and like food, there is also no alternative for water, Buchanan said. He added that agriculture is the largest and most important user of water and ag researchers will have to develop ways to use water more effectively so demand for the resource can be met.
The issue of water allocation was revisited in a panel discussion including Buchanan and other state ag leaders after Buchanan addressed the crowd. Former Delaware Agriculture Secretary Jack Tarburton said there is technology now that can clean water used in food production and processing, making it safe and potable, but the challenge is getting towns and cities to reuse it.
“We know how to clean it up. We don’t know how to convince municipalities to take it,” Tarburton said.
Eddie Jestice, Delaware Farm Bureau president, said farmers in the state are “fortunate that we have the amount of water we do,” but other states, like Georgia, are facing serious water use issues.
Buchanan called understanding global climate change ag research’s “grand challenge.”
Whether it’s global warming or cooling, he said, “we need to understand how the climate works. We know there are changes and we need to know what’s causing them.”
The panel discussion touched on several issues, from Farm Bill policy to immigration to biofuels. After many topics, the discussion gravitated toward effectively advocating the farm perspective to the public.