Catching up: Biotech sweet potatoes, meaty Mondays, land use

Here's a wrap-up of a few things for the week. Be sure to follow links for full details.

Biotech sweet potatoes
Dr. Florence Wambugu, CEO of Africa Harvest, will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath in the U.K. next month. She is a pretty amazing person who wrote a book in 2001 that sits on my desk today: Modifying Africa: How biotechnology can benefit the poor and hungry, a case study from Kenya.

She's receiving an honorary degree for all her work in making genetically modified sweet potatoes a success in Kenya - and the effect it had on agricultural biotechnology in Kenya and the African continent as a whole.

Today, some people cite the biotech sweet potato as a failure. Wambugu begs to differ - and you can read some thoughts on ths subject in a story on WhyBiotech.com.

Here are a few lines:

Perhaps the final nail in the frequent depiction of the GM sweet potato as a “failure” came when Kenya passed the Biosafety Bill early this year. Further afield, Africa is making giant moves to adopt biotechnology as a tool to raise agricultural productivity, farm incomes and cause economic development and social transformation. The debate in Africa is shifting from the safety of biotech to what crops and traits will be useful for the countries.


Meaty Mondays
Paul McCartney and some of his pals have started a campaign - "Meat Free Mondays" - because they believe it will reduce carbon emissions and save the world from climate change and other assorted ills. Here is the website. It's not the first time a group has pushed the idea of going meat free on Mondays. Here's another, brought to us by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Anyway, DTN's John Harrington had a great analysis of the idea and a few thoughts of his own. Importantly, he sets the record straight on carbon emissions and livestock production.

Here's a paragraph (find the full article here):

By equating deforestation and cattle raising in terms of greenhouse gasses, the U.N. study mistakes the true motivation of the former while exaggerating the environmental evil of the latter. Well-meaning Paul McCartney and his star-studded ilk display a sorry lack of critical insight in this regard, fecklessly championing a silly solution to an admittedly serious problem.

FYI: @cornfedfarmer on Twitter asked if we should start "Free Meat Mondays" and see if it was more popular. I'm thinking we know the answer to that.


Indirect land use and ethanol
Iowa State University economist Dr. Robert Wisner has compiled a very good analysis of what the state of California's Air Resources Board is attempting to do in relation to biofuels and greenhouse gas (GHG) legislation. He also discusses what the federal Environmental Protection Agency is doing.

He notes that the GHG legislation and biofuels legislation are two different mandates that may very well be on a collision course. Who will win?

Here are a couple of paragraphs from Wisner's conclusions:

California’s policies that are designed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are of vital interest to the U.S. biofuels industries. There is a strong chance that California’s proposed regulations for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from motor fuels will be applied nation-wide. The current version of California regulations as well as GHG reduction mandates from the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 and emerging regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are on a collision course with the ethanol blending mandates. The current direction of GHG emissions reductions policy will make it difficult to attain the sharply increased biofuels use levels that are mandated by 2007 energy legislation. ....

Indirect land use impact is an important component of the California estimated emissions disadvantage from corn-starch ethanol. Scientists and economists are not in universal agreement on ways of measuring this impact. Much more research is needed before universally acceptable indirect land use impact assessments are available. With the rapid rate at which GHG emissions policy is moving forward, there is an urgent need for more research on indirect land use impacts.