Hi Everybody

Harvest 2016 is in full swing in the Western Cape. In both the southern Cape and the Swartland the combines are running and feedback received thus far looks very promising. We have heard reports from the southern Cape of 2 ton/ha canola and 5 ton/ha barley in certain areas. From the Swartland reports of 4 ton/ha wheat, from a few different areas, has come in. On the Langgewens research Farm between Malmesbury and Moorreesburg the wheat harvest is a big surprise thus far. The best camp has yielded 5.2 ton/ha and quite a few of the other camps has given between 4 and 5 ton/ha. The historic worst camp on the farm has yielded 3.9 ton/ha. Following the drought last season in the Swartland these yields are amazing and we are thankful for the blessings received.

We can confirm that our 2017 Conservation Agriculture week will be held in the first week of August, with the lecture day on Tuesday 1st and the practical day on Thursday the 3rd. We are planning to present the practical day in such a way that there is a link between the two days. The moto will be - heard first, see later. We are also excited to announce that Dr Wendi Taheri will be returning next year. Her lecture at the 1st Soil Health day recently, was very insightful and practical and we feel that it is important for our producers to hear the message. The 2017 practical day will be held in the Swartland. Boland Landbou will be our host.

We hope you enjoy the latest newsletter. The article net was cast wide this time around and one or two of the articles might be a little controversial. We feel that it is important to get different views on subject matter.

RegardsThe editor

BLWK/CAWC: Your monthly guide

October 2016 Issue/Uitgawe 49

Newsletter

» Somer dekgewas toer – January 19th » CAWC Lecture day – 1 August 2017 » CAWC Practical day – 3 August 2017

Upcoming farmers’ days and events:

Somer groen en bruintoer vroeg Desember

Content• Word from the Editor ............... 1• Is Farming Ready for Robot

Tractors? ....................................... 2• Field to be farmed exclusively by

robots ............................................ 4• Tackle Herbicide-Resistant Weeds

with Cereal Rye .......................... 5• What is it about this soil that

protects plants from devastating disease? ........................................ 6

• Can we feed growing global population sustainably? With or without GMOs? ........................10

• Photos and CAWC Management Team ............................................11

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Is Farming Ready for Robot Tractors?

Nobody believed Eli Whitney. And then came the cotton gin. A single person plucked a pound of cotton lint free from seed in a day, and the gin pulled apart 50 lbs.

When doubt and technological change face off in agriculture, time tells the winner.

Is farming ready for robot tractors? Advocates of autonomous agriculture say the day of driverless vehicles is nearing. There is no slow train coming; the arrival is imminent, expected with a few short years. Whether in the planting or harvest window, time lost is painful and can’t be recovered. Could automation save time, create efficiency, and redeploy human labor? The concept of 24-7 operation in agriculture is no longer the realm of fantasy and the bare bones use-case scenario is beginning to unfold.

Historically, from mechanization to genetic modification, major changes in farming are met with long looks and a healthy dose of producer skepticism. Ultimately, no matter the potential or promise, acceptance of autonomous farming vehicles will be determined by performance in the field.“Technological change brings a range of reaction. Early adopter or hardline doubter, that’s normal human behavior. There’s no commercial production yet, but it’s coming,” says Matt Nielsen, director of marketing at Automated Solutions, Inc. (ASI).Starting as a spinoff company from Utah State University in 2000, ASI is at the vanguard of autonomous vehicle production, with roots in agriculture, but stretching to the mining, automotive, security and defense industries. Piggybacking on automation in the mining and automotive industry, driverless tractors are close to an on-the-shelf debut.

Is Farming Ready for Robot Tractors?

Published on AgWeb (5 October 2016) By Chris BennettFarm JournalTechnology and Issues Editor

Autonomous tractors have triggered a wave of producer reaction, from doubt to wonder.© Lindsey Benne

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Is Farming Ready for Robot Tractors?

In August 2016, Case IH and New Holland, collaborating with ASI, released autonomous concept tractors: Conventional engine, transmission, chassis, and couplings, but with the driver removed from the cab. The cabless Case IH Magnum concept tractor is packed with robot technology targeted at multiple tasks.

“We’re getting this ready to scale,” says Leo Bose, Case IH’s Advanced Farming Systems (AFS) marketing manager. “Whether a 140-hp tractor or a 620-hp tractor, the autonomous technology can go either way and extend to harvesters as well.”Bose says the Case IH Magnum concept tractor introduction has triggered a wave of producer reaction, from doubt to wonder.“When farmers actually see this tractor perform in our video, they respond with all sorts of questions, because the savings in hours, fuel and efficiency are easy to see,” he says.Dan Halliday, Global PLM manager for New Holland, says flexibility is preserved for the producer with the NHDrive Concept Autonomous Tractor. Autonomous or manual cab control, the NHDrive Concept Autonomous Tractor provides producer options. The traditional inhibitors to production may be lack of sleep, darkness, or off-site duties, but Halliday says automation will change the entire dynamic of time and efficiency for farming.

“Fully automate a tractor and the operator can switch to another task out of the cab and wait on alerts as needed,” he says. “We’re talking about maximum production, the same rate as with any other automation.”Halliday offers a three year-plus time window until commercial production. Cost is a black box of grower dread, but Halliday says expenses will be tempered by the automobile industry’s move toward driverless sensors and technology.

“Communications, bandwidth, and software. We’re linking them all together and getting closer,” he notes.Nielsen says the possibilities for automation in agriculture are increasing with phenomenal speed, evidenced by savings in the mining and proving ground industry related to accuracy, efficiency and round-the-clock performance. Producers are waiting with a host of questions over cost, accessibility, and litigation, but the possibility of historical change and a reduction in farming pain points is enough to draw long looks from doubters and supporters. Essentially, the farming robot’s moment of truth is approaching.

“It’s difficult to describe how fast this is happening,” Nielsen says. “We’ve already seen it in mining and automotive, and it’s going to translate to agriculture.”

Links of the monthClick on the button to visit the website.

Please note you will need an internet connection

History keeps proving prophets of eco-apocalypse

wrong

Why Industrial Farms Are Good

for the Enviroment

17 Questions ABout Glyphosate

The Future of Farming is in the Soil

Banking on Soil Health for Long-Term Profits

Grazing forage brassicas

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Field to be Farmed exclusively by Robots

In a world-first, Harper Adams University staff, supported and led by precision farming specialist

Precision Decisions, are attempting to grow and harvest a hectare of cereal crops; all without stepping a foot into the field.The project entitled ‘Hands Free Hectare’ has recently got underway, with the team having to create their first autonomous farming machinery, ready for drilling a spring crop in March. Kit Franklin, one of the researchers, said: “As a team, we believe there is now no technological barrier to automated field agriculture. This project gives us the opportunity to prove this and change current public perception. “Previously, people have automised sections of agricultural systems, but funding and interest generally only goes towards one single area. We’re hoping to string everything together

to create one whole system, which will allow us to farm our hectare of cereal crop from establishment to harvest, without having to go into the field. Small-scale machinery, already available on the market will be adapted in the university’s engineering labs to make it ready for the autonomous field work.

Why is the project important?

Mr Franklin said: “Over the years agricultural machines have been getting bigger, increasing work rates. This has suited the UK’s unpredictable climatic working windows and reduced rural staff availability. “But with these larger machines, we are seeing a number of issues, including reduced soil health through compaction which hinders plant growth, as well as reduced application and measuring resolution, critical

for precision farming, as sprayer and harvesting widths increase. “Automation will facilitate a sustainable system where multiple smaller, lighter machines will enter the field, minimising the level of compaction. These small autonomous machines will in turn facilitate high resolution precision farming, where different areas of the field, and possibly even individual plants can be treated separately, optimising and potentially reducing inputs being used in field agriculture. “It’s not about putting people out of jobs, instead changing the job they do. The tractor driver won’t be physically in the tractor driving up and down a field. Instead, they will be a fleet manager and agricultural analysts, looking after a number of farming robots and meticulously monitoring the development of their crops.”

October 14, 2016 | Abby Kellett

Field to be farmed exclusively by robots

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Tackle Herbicide-Resistant Weeds with Cereal Rye

Preliminary results from a Penn State study confirm just how effective cover crops, especially cereal rye, can be on tough no-till

weeds. We’ve often heard from no-tillers that one of the many benefits they see from cover crops is weed suppression, and a Penn State University study currently in progress is confirming just how effective they can be. In spring 2015, Penn State started evaluating how effectively 1- or 2-species mixes of grass (rye or oats), legumes (hairy vetch or crimson clover) and brassicas (radish) suppressed marestail at the time of a typical spring burndown application before planting. Preliminary results from the first 2 years of the study show covers provided at least a 75% reduction in marestail populations at the time of a spring burndown, with cereal rye providing the most suppression of the covers. The researchers note that sufficient fertility — especially nitrogen — allowed for vigorous cover crop establishment and growth, which helped suppress weeds. In addition to a reduction in population, they also found the marestail that was still present at burndown was a smaller size. They believe that spraying smaller-sized weeds will result in greater herbicide control, which could likely

reduce herbicide resistance. These results support what growers are witnessing on their own farms. According to the Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education’s 2015-16 Cover Crop Survey Report, 82% of cover crop users indicated that cereal rye helped reduce weed problems, while 26% reported that cereal rye helped improve control of herbicide-resistant weeds. Cereal rye has also shown promise in controlling Palmer amaranth. Researchers with the University of Tennessee looked at how cover crops suppressed glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth in cotton, and found a grass and legume combination provided the most biomass and reduced emergence by half compared to test plots with no cover crops. They also note that cereal rye and wheat provided the best control 28 days after a pre-emergence application. “While there was no single solution for season-long control of glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth, cover crops used early in the growing season in conjunction with pre-emergence herbicides can help growers diversify their weed management practices to improve sustainability,” says weed scientist Larry Steckel.

Tackle Herbicide-Resistant Weeds with Cereal Rye

September 20, 2016 | Laura Barrera

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What is it about this soil that protects plants from devastating disease?

September 21, 2016 — Plants around the world are constantly under attack — often with big implications for humans. In the 1960s, millions of elm trees in

Britain, France and the U.S. fell victim to Dutch elm dis-ease, which clogs the vessels that carry life-giving water to the trees’ leaves. Starting in the late 1980s, Brazil’s thriving chocolate industry crumbled when witches’ broom disease devastated its cacao trees. Lately, banana growers have be-come increasingly concerned about Panama disease, which is spreading rapidly and threatening to wipe out their crops. The attackers, like many of the infectious agents that harm humans, are tiny but devastating fungi, bacteria and other microbial parasites.

Now, global change is giving these parasites an edge, help-ing spread deadly diseases around the globe. Desperate to find a way to fight back, some scientists have turned their attention to a special type of soil known as “disease-sup-pressive soil.” The plants that live in it seem to magically

remain relatively free of disease, even if disease-causing parasites are present. These scientists hope to improve un-derstanding of this phenomenon so they can use it to help make agriculture more sustainable.

Perfect Combination

In the same way forts have armies to protect themselves against invaders, plants growing in disease-suppressive soil have beneficial bacteria to defend themselves against par-asites attacking them from the ground. While all soil has microbes living in it, disease-suppressive soil has certain types of microbes that can fight off disease.Not all soils are disease suppressive, and those that are weren’t always that way. In many cases, soils develop pro-tective qualities only after they host a single plant species and that species has experienced years of disease outbreak. It appears that, much as our bodies gain defenses in the form of antibodies after we get sick from the illnesses such

By Kayleigh O’Keeffe| Ecology Ph.D. student | Published online in Ensia

What is it about this soil that protects plants from devastating disease?

Figuring out why certain soils keep plant parasites at bay could be a boon for agriculture around the globe

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What is it about this soil that protects plants from devastating disease?

as chicken pox or measles, soils can gain defenses in the form of the perfect combination of microbes that fend off future attacks from the same pathogen.

Just as each human has a unique set of fingerprints, each type of soil has a unique signature based on the kinds and numbers of microbes present.

The phenomenon was observed as early as 1931. Since then, scientists have tried to understand which specific microbes can defend plants against their attackers and how they do so. Today, advances in microbiological and sequencing technology are enabling researchers to tease apart the complexities of the microbes that live in soils — which organisms are they, exactly, and just what do they do? It turns out that, just as each human has a unique set of fingerprints, each type of soil has a unique signature based on the kinds and numbers of microbes present.A team of researchers based at Washington State Univer-sity has focused on the suppression of take-all disease in wheat for decades. Take-all, which destroys grasses’ roots, is caused by a fungal parasite. Even before this group started its research in the 1960s, it was clear that growing wheat continuously in an area that had experienced take-all would lead to a decline in the disease. Plant pathologist David Weller, a member of the research team, determined that these suppressive soils had greater amounts of a type of bacteria called pseudomonads. When research geneticist Linda Thomashow joined the group in 1985, she used mo-lecular methods to learn more about pseudomonads and how they produce antibiotics to fight off pathogen.In the 1990s, Linda Kinkel and Neil Anderson, plant pa-thologists at the University of Minnesota, went looking for a microbial explanation for an inexplicable decline in scab, a disease that disfigures crops like potatoes or radishes with dark, splotchy growths, in a potato field in Minnesota. Kinkel and her colleagues found that the soil contained greater amounts of a certain type of bacteria called Strepto-myces than soil that does not suppress disease. These bac-teria produce antibiotics used as weapons against parasites.Characterizing such “microbial signatures” is just the first step toward further harnessing soil microbes to prevent disease.

Understanding the soil microbes that protect plants from disease can be a matter of life and death — not just for the plants but for us as well.

“Technology provides a static picture,” says Kinkel, “but these systems are so not static. … We need to understand not just which species are present, but how they are inter-acting.” Translating their discoveries about disease-sup-pressive soil into management solutions, she says, will require a shift in thinking. While many researchers are searching for a “silver bullet” microbe that can be added to soil and fight off disease, the system is much more complex than that.

Food Security

Understanding the soil microbes that protect plants from disease can be a matter of life and death — not just for the plants but for us as well. Human population is growing, and plants are key to ensuring our future food security. Enlisting the help of microbes found naturally in the soil is critical, Thomashow explains, because “the agricultural systems are weakest in parts of the world where population growth is the greatest and the people can’t afford chemi-cals.”“It’s not this pie in the sky,” Kinkel says. “[These soils pro-vide] long-term, stable, virtually complete disease suppres-sion without any pesticide input.”So what do we need to bring disease-suppressive soil into management practices more widely?If scientists can learn more about how disease-suppressing microbes are functioning in this soil and how suppression originates, they can inform management practices to better protect plants against disease while reducing the need for artificial chemicals.However, Kinkel points out, for that to happen smoothly, communication will be key. Scientists may figure out ways to introduce disease resistance into soil, but that won’t do any good if their recommendations don’t mesh well with practices farmers use in real life such as rotating crops. “I may know things [growers] don’t, but they know a lot of things I don’t,” says Kinkel. In other words, successfully applying what has been learned about disease-suppressive soils to agriculture will require both scientists and farmers to listen to each other.As Thomashow puts it, “We have a big toolbox, but we are not yet employing all the tools we have.”

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Can we feed growing global population sustainably? With or without GMOs?

Critics and supporters of biotechnology are at odds of whether the world faces a genuine food shortage, and the role that genetically engineered crops could

play in addressing future challenges.Many genetic engineering advocates note that the world population is on course to exceed 9 billion by 2050. Most people agree that the rise in the sheer number of people along with the increased caloric demands of the developing world that is becoming more prosperous and more desir-ous of meat in their diet will stress the global food system. While not a silver bullet, GM foods are a key tool, argue most scientists and many science journalists, in helping to addressing this inevitable crisis.

Here is what the Washington Post has editorialized on this issue:

If GM food becomes an economic nonstarter for growers and food companies, the world’s poorest will pay the high-est price. GM crops that flourish in challenging environ-ments without the aid of expensive pesticides or equipment can play an important role in alleviating hunger and food stress in the developing world — if researchers in developed countries are allowed to continue advancing the field.

Anti-GMO activists vigorously dispute this scenario. They claim, correctly, that there are currently enough calories created to go around: the issue they say, is waste. Distrib-ute food more fairly and efficiently, and the problem goes away. GE crops will help already bloated agri-businesses but not the neediest, they argue. Here is what an Environmental

Working Group argues in a press release entitled “GMOs Won’t Help the World’s Hungry.”The narrative that GMOs will help feed the world … ignores the fact that hunger is mostly the result of poverty. It’s true that about 70 percent of the world’s poor are farmers and that increasing their crop yields could help improve their lot, but what truly limits their productivity is the lack of ba-sic resources such as fertilizer, water and the infrastructure to transport crops to market. … When it comes to meeting the world’s future demands for food, GMOs are a red herring. They haven’t been shown to improve food security, and they distract from real solutions that can both lift people out of poverty and minimize the environmental impact of food production.Biotech opponents are factually accurate in their claim that the world produces enough food to feed everyone. Accord-ing to the United Nations and others, hunger that exists to-day—particularly in industrialized countries—isn’t due to an outright shortage of crops and animals, but distribution, storage, economic and political issues. So the problem could theoretically be solved—if we had a perfect distribution sys-tem, which we don’t and is impossible to achieve.So the real issue becomes: How do we produce more food in an environmentally sustainable way?

Knowing the limitations of farming

Is there a limit to how much we can farm? Are there lines in the loam beyond which the planet suffers, perhaps per-manently? Backers of the idea of “planetary boundaries” say “yes,” but it’s not like falling off a cliff—not yet.

Can we feed growing global population sustainably? With

or without GMOs?

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Can we feed growing global population sustainably? With or without GMOs?

By The Guardian

Johan Rockstrom, a Swedish environmental scientist who first introduced the idea of planetary boundaries, recently published a paper which argues that agricultural production must be intensified to produce more food. That intensifica-tion must also “deliver climate stabilization, food control, biodiversity enhancement, and so on,” said environmental activist, author, and former GMO opponent Mark Lynas in a review of Rockstrom’s paper:Sustainable intensification…would put agriculture at the center of a positive transformation rather than simply trying to limit its negative impact while still production sufficient crops to feed humanity.

But what are these limits? Are they scientifically based? And what about the economic, logistical and political issues we see now that probably won’t go away in two decades?Rockstrom introduced the idea of “planetary boundaries” in 2009. Much of the attention of “planetary boundary” devo-tees has focused on climate change. In that case, some real numbers appear (whether their goals will do what they’re supposed to is another topic): Carbon dioxide concentra-tions should be limited to 350 ppm to curb global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above temperatures 150 years ago.

Search for sustainability numbers

Rockstrom, Lynas and others say that agriculture can play a large role in controlling climate change. But other trends, such as those focused on biodiversity, land use, and chemicals, raise questions about the feasibility of plan-etary boundary goals:

• Land use. Today, 40 percent of the earth’s surface is farmed. Using today’s methods, farmed land will “over-shoot the preliminary estimate of the ‘safe operating’ space of 1,640 million hectares (6.3 million square miles) before 2050,” the paper’s authors write (citing a UNEP report).

• Open space. A proposal in Rockstrom’s paper calls for more than 75 percent forest cover for critical forest systems on a global level, and 85 percent rainforest and temperate forest cover—currently, that number is 62 percent.

• Water. Currently 2,600 cubic kilometers per year of freshwater is used, mostly for agriculture. The proposed planetary boundary limit is 4,000 cubic kilometers/year. This means that water productivity would have to increase 50 percent by 2030.

• Genetic diversity. The paper calls for zero biodiversity loss in agricultural areas, and keeping extinction rates below 10 extinctions per million species-years (E/MSY). Currently, that level is 100-1,000 E/MSY.

• Nitrogen/phosphorus. This paper proposed closing nutrient loops, and keeping overall phosphorus use flat, but raising nitrogen and phosphorus in developing countries. This, according to planetary boundary support-ers, reduces phosphorus flow to the ocean, especially from fertilizers and eroding soil.

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Can we feed growing global population sustainably? With or without GMOs?

Some beg to differ

Not surprisingly, the idea of planetary boundaries has its detractors.In a 2013 debate held by the Nature Conservancy, Erle Ellis, a geographer and environmental scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, compared local versus global issues:The evidence is incontrovertible that there are local tipping points — for coral reefs, for instance — but not so for global ones. It’s not a runaway train. Ecosystems change, but it’s not a domino effect. You can change all the systems on the planet. But does that constitute a global tipping point?

And in a commentary in Nature, Simon Lewis, a scien-tist at University of College London, pointed to some confusion between “tipping point,” “global boundary,” and “safe operating space.” While “tipping point” im-plies a hard line, others offer some wiggle room, and it’s hard to calculate the relationship between global and local effects:

Some parameters are fixed limits, not boundaries. Take disruption of the phosphorus cycle: this is represented in the planetary boundaries concept as the quantity of phosphates flowing into the oceans from crop-fertilizer run-off, which can cause algal blooms and an oxygen deficit for marine life. Framed in this way — ‘don’t de-stroy the marine environment’ — the boundary makes sense. But more serious for humanity is that phospho-rus is a key plant nutrient. Fertilizer is produced from rock phosphate, which forms on geological time scales. When it is gone, it is gone. This does not represent a threshold boundary: it is a depletion-limit. Humanity cannot use more rock phosphate than there is. Meanwhile, however we proceed, we need to produce enough food to support our existing and growing pop-ulation. A UN Sustainable Development Goal, devel-oped in 2015, is to eliminate hunger and poverty by 2030. This means that food production needs to in-crease by 50 percent worldwide, preferably before that date.

Another issue is the role of the small farmer—most agriculture is practiced by small landholding farmers (about 2.5 billion running 500 million small farms, ac-cording to the UN FAO). Channelling the right inno-vations and technology to these poor farmers, remains a major challenge. Philip Pardey, a University of Min-nesota applied economics director, and his colleagues commented in Nature that “Without efforts to improve the global spread and adaptation of locally relevant technologies, it is likely to get much harder for poor farmers to feed themselves, let alone their nations’ in-creasingly urbanized populations.”

What role does technology play in this? Both Lynas’ review and Rockstrom’s paper look at biotechnology and “GMOs” as part of making intensive agricultural production less environmentally harmful. A Genetic Literacy Project FAQ on sustainability reviewed the debate between organic and conventional, and the ac-cusations by organic farmers (and anti-biotech advo-cates) that conventional farming pollutes, depletes and reduces diversity:

That’s changing as conventional farmers focus more on best practices. Multiple studies show that non-organic farming yields considerably more food with lower costs and in some cases lower inputs per acre. It often uses less water; and some GM crops, such as insect resis-tant Bt corn, soybean, cotton and eggplant, require less chemical pesticides than their organic counterparts.

The sustainability farming and food debate remains highly complex. Studies focusing on the plusses and minuses of intensive farming may finally give some analytical heft to the term “sustainability,” which many critics claim means whatever its users want it to mean.Andrew Porterfield is a writer, editor and communica-tions consultant for academic institutions, companies and nonprofits in the life sciences. He is based in Ca-marillo, California.

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Photos

MG Lötter – devlei@whalemail.co.zaSakkie Rust – sakkie@rautenbachtransport.co.za Hoppies Uys – hoppies@swdconnect.co.za / hoppies@easycoms.co.za Pieter-Jan Delport – jpdelport@overnet.co.za Jakobus Mouton – andre@patat.za.netAmelia Genis – agenis@landbou.com Johann Strauss – johannst@elsenburg.comPieter Blom (SSK) – pblom@ssk.co.za Francois Human (Overberg Agri) - Francoish@overbergagri.co.za Wynand Heunis (Overberg Agri) - WynandH@overbergagri.co.za Louis Coetzee (Kaap Agri) - louis.coetzee@kaapagri.co.za

BLWK Bestuurspan / CAWC Management Team Lede

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