A peek at global ag issues

Apr 16, 2024

Plans are underway in Ukraine to demine affected farmland

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Farms.com is again taking an opportunity to highlight the issues affecting farmers around the world.

In Ukraine, for example, work is underway to remove landmines from farmland.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), along with other industry partners, are running the program.

The project uses satellite imagery to identify potentially mined land, then specialized teams survey and clear the land.

The demining work is starting in Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Kherson, three of Ukraine’s top farming regions, and will focus on smaller operations.

“By restoring mined land to productive use, we can help restore agricultural livelihoods – and, in doing so, phase out the need for humanitarian assistance for thousands of rural families,” Marianne Ward, the WFP’s Ukraine country director, said in a statement.

HALO Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to removing landmines from warzones, estimates around 2 million landmines have been placed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion started in February 2022.

In Kenya, a fertilizer scandal is gripping the ag sector.

KEL Chemicals, a local fertilizer producer, is alleged to have produced substandard fertilizer under government subsidy programs.

Local media reports the fertilizer came in government bags but lacked a standardization seal.

Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mithika Linturi ordered the plant’s closure and referred to it as “a crime scene,” the Kenya News Agency reported.

Company officials attribute the substandard product to a mistake in production.

For some farmers, the damage is already done.

“I no longer trust fertilizers being sold by the government,” George Agutu, a local grain farmer, told The Africa Report. “I’m focusing on poultry this year. I’m not ready to lose my money and time.”

Some Kenyan lawmakers want Secretary Linturi to resign over this scandal, but the secretary says the issue is being blown out of proportion.

And in Nepal, beekeepers are upset with honey import levels while domestic honey goes unsold.

Around 4,000 metric tons of domestic honey remained unsold in the past three years.

Honey producers are frustrated with Indian honey dominating the local market and may begin pouring honey in the streets in protest.

"We discussed the challenges faced by honey producers, proposed solutions, and emphasized the role of the government in production and marketing," said Shiva Prasad Paudel, the outgoing president of the Federation of Nepal Beekeepers, local newspaper República reported. "The influx of Indian honey into our markets has pushed local farmers to the brink."

Beekeepers have asked the minister of agriculture to impose a 60 percent import tax on honey and to ban Indian honey imports between October and April to support local honey producers.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”