It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
• Farmers claim hundreds detained across Punjab, police say 46 people in custody
• Kissan Ittehad leader announces plans to block highways across province; PTI lends support
• Punjab likely to unveil wheat policy in assembly today
LAHORE: As farmers from across the province thronged The Mall to record their protest against what they believe to be an unfair wheat procurement policy, a heavy contingent of Punjab police in anti-riot gear rounded up scores of their number, on Monday.
The farmers had taken to the streets against an inordinate delay in the purchase of grain and the decision to reduce the provincial procurement quota from over 4 million tonnes to 2.3m tonnes.
Lahore: A protesting farmer is bundled into a prison van by police, on Monday night. —Murtaza Ali / White Star
The protesters, led by Kissan Ittehad Pakistan, managed to assemble at the GPO Chowk on The Mall and attempted to march towards the Punjab Assembly, where a heavy contingent of police intercepted them. Police not only blocked the road by placing containers, but also arrested several protesters.
Kissan Ittehad Pakistan General Secretary Mian Umair Masood, who led the demonstration, told Dawn that more than 250 farmers were arrested by police in Lahore. He, however, managed to evade arrest himself.
There were reports that arrests were also made in Rahim Yar Khan, Khanewal, Vehari, Kasur, Multan, Sadiqabad, Pakpattan, Muzaffargarh, and Sahiwal districts. Police sources, however, claimed 46 protesters were taken into custody: 30 from The Mall and 16 from Manga Mandi.
‘Province-wide protests’
Mian Umair said they were planning to block highways across the province with the help of their families and livestock, which would be brought to roads. The protesting farmers have also found their allies in the opposition, particularly the PTI and the Jammat-i-Islami, as well as in lawmakers from the treasury benches who are apprehensive about the procurement policy.
The farming community has found allies in the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Jamaat-i-Islami, whose farmer wing Kisan Board is scheduled to hold protests on Tuesday (today), while those ruling PML-N MPAs belonging to the countryside have also expressed their concerns at the present procurement policy.
The government, however, continued to play down the issue, with its spokesperson Azma Bukhari claiming that the police had not taken any protest leader into custody from anywhere. She said that the government was in contact with “real representative bodies” of the farmers and accused the workers of a political party of launching the protest for “political purposes”. Procurement policy faults
Punjab — the bread basket of the country — procured over 4 million tonnes of wheat every season to meet its yearly requirements. But, this year the authorities decided to slash the procurement target by half, claiming that there was a carryover stock of 2.3m tonnes already available.
The caretaker government — tasked with the day-to-day affairs and overseeing the elections — imported around 3m tonnes of wheat, which was more than the province’s needs and led to a huge carryover stock leaving little storage capacity.
Likewise, the government had also changed the procedure for applying to sell wheat to the food department. Unlike in the past when the growers were required to submit written applications to procure gunny bags used to pack and transport wheat to procurement centres, the government launched a mobile application for the purpose, conveniently ignoring the fact that a majority of the rural population is not well-versed in technology.
Even then, over 400,000 growers applied for gunny bags; but the government said it would issue six bags per acre and only to those who owned up to six acres of land.
Mian Umair said the government’s decision was mala fide. “Owners of up to six acres of land rarely sell their wheat to the government because they retain almost half of the produce for domestic use and the rest is meant for the aarti (middlemen), fertiliser, and pesticides dealers from whom they had made purchases for their fields on credit.
Similarly, the procurement campaign has also been unusually delayed this year, crashing the local wheat market with middlemen exploiting the situation by buying wheat from the growers at much less than the officially fixed minimum support price of Rs3,900 per 40kg.
These steps raised many an eyebrow even among the ruling party’s elected representatives. The issue also resonated multiple times in the Punjab Assembly and a general discussion was also held.
‘Above normal moisture’
Without clearly committing when to start the procurement drive, Food Minister Bilal Yasin defended the delay saying due to rains the grain carried above normal moisture up to 18 percent. “After drying up this produce will lose weight causing financial loss to the provincial kitty,” he claimed.
Meanwhile, the government is trying to appease the farming community by feeding information that it is considering a Rs130 billion package and also planning to give a subsidy between Rs400 and Rs600 per 40kg instead of increasing the procurement target.
But Kissan Ittehad leader Khalid Batth voiced his suspicion, saying the government would use this policy “as a ploy to relieve pressure” from the farming community for the time being.
Such dilly-dallying measures are disturbing even for the ruling party members, who are under pressure from their rural electorate. Punjab Assembly speaker Malik Muhammad Ahmed Khan refused to prorogue the ongoing assembly session, which was to be put off sine die on Monday, when the finance and food ministers said the government would give a wheat policy on Tuesday (today). The speaker suspended the proceedings till Tuesday morning, as some MPAs suggested that the government should pay for wheat in phases if funds were unavailable.
Asif Chaudhry in Lahore also contributed to this report
THE crackdown on farmers protesting in Lahore and several other cities against the government’s ‘flawed’ wheat procurement policy and delays in the commencement of the grain’s official purchases in Punjab is deplorable.
Scores of farmers were manhandled and detained by police across the province on Monday, particularly in Lahore and south Punjab. The protesters appeared to have taken to the streets as a last resort after the authorities ignored their calls for help. Wheat rates have plummeted in the market, and are much below the support price of Rs3,900 per 40kg. The recent rains have added to the farmers’ woes.
And yet, the government continues to play down the problem, with its spokesperson dismissing the protests as politically motivated. This is not how governments treat those who grow food for the entire country, and the ruling PML-N may, sooner or later, have to pay a big political price for neglecting the plight of farmers, especially smallholders, who have already announced plans to block highways with the opposition’s support.
Indeed, the provincial administration has valid reasons for streamlining its wheat purchases through digitising the process, slashing the procurement target for the current harvest, and delaying official purchases far beyond the date announced earlier.
There are also no two opinions that the existing policy of excessive government intervention in the wheat market by fixing a minimum support price and procuring a larger portion of tradable surplus brought to the market by farmers each year has run its course and become a burden on the government budget. These interventions are ostensibly to support growers, and ensure price stability and food security.
In fact, they benefit only the middlemen, and flour millers, especially those who operate only for a few months, and that too on subsidised wheat quotas from official stocks. This policy must end.
However, a sudden curtailment of the government’s role will prove harmful for farmers amid collapsing wheat prices resulting from record production and unseasonal rains that are threatening the crop. The government should withdraw from the wheat trade gradually, replacing the existing market support mechanism with an effective new one over the next several years.
Many believe that the previous caretaker set-up’s reckless decision to import over 3.2Mt of grain when the harvest was approaching is responsible for the restricted official purchase target. This is largely true.
If the Punjab government did not have stocks of over 2Mt, it might have raised its procurement target for the ongoing harvest without much fuss to avoid protests. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal also blames unnecessary wheat imports for the present market volatility. The authorities, therefore, must investigate the motives behind this reckless decision and fix responsibility.
Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2024
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Revealed: Tyson Foods dumps millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into US rivers and lakes
Nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil and cyanide among the 371m lb of pollutants released by just 41 plants in five years
Nina Lakhani in Dakota City and Lexington, Nebraska.
Tyson Foods dumped millions of pounds of toxic pollutants directly into American rivers and lakes over the last five years, threatening critical ecosystems, endangering wildlife and human health, a new investigation reveals.
Nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil and cyanide were among the 371m lb of pollutants released into waterways by just 41 Tyson slaughterhouses and mega processing plants between 2018 and 2022.
GRAPHIC
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/06f8f332af7ca1b6cbc3e35cb7f2bfe85713ebb7/0_0_2640_2640/master/2640.jpg?width=620&dpr=1&s=none According to research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the contaminants were dispersed in 87bn gallons of wastewater – which also contains blood, bacteria and animal feces – and released directly into streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands relied on for drinking water, fishing and recreation. The UCS analysis, shared exclusively with the Guardian, is based on the most recent publicly available water pollution data Tyson is required to report under current regulations.
The wastewater was enough to fill about 132,000 Olympic-size pools, according to a Guardian analysis.
The water pollution from Tyson, a Fortune 100 company and the world’s second largest meat producer, was spread across 17 states but about half the contaminants were dumped into streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands in Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri.
The midwest is already saturated with nitrogen and phosphorus from industrial agriculture – factory farms and synthetics fertilizers – contributing to algal blooms that clog critical water infrastructure, exacerbate respiratory conditions like asthma, and deplete oxygen levels in the sea causing marine life to suffocate and die.
Yet the UCS research is only the tip of iceberg, including water pollution from only one in three of the corporation’s slaughterhouses and processing plants, and only 2% of the total nationwide.
The current federal regulations set no limit for phosphorus, and the vast majority of meat processing plants in the US are exempt from existing water regulations – with no way of tracking how many toxins are being dumped into waterways.
“There are over 5,000 meat and poultry processing plants in the United States, but only a fraction are required to report pollution and abide by limits. As one of the largest processors in the game, with a near-monopoly in some states, Tyson is in a unique position to treat even hefty fines and penalties for polluting as simply the cost of doing business. This has to change,” said the UCS co-author Omanjana Goswami.
The findings come as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must decide between robust new regulations that experts say would better protect waterways, critical habitat and downstream communities from polluting plants – or opt for weaker standards preferred by the powerful meat-processing industry. The EPA should listen to communities whose wells, lakes, rivers and streams have been contaminated and put people over corporate profitsOmanjana Goswami
A 2017 lawsuit by environmental groups has forced the EPA to update its two-decade-old pollution standards for slaughterhouses and animal rendering facilities, and the new rule is expected by September 2025. The agency has said that it is leaning towards the weakest option on the table, which critics say will enable huge amounts of nitrates, phosphorus and other contaminants to keep pouring into waterways.
“The current rule is out of date, inadequate and catastrophic for American waterways, and highlights the way American lawmaking is subject to industry capture,” said Dani Replogle, an attorney at Food and Water Watch. “The nutrient problem in the US is at catastrophic levels … it would be such a shame if the EPA caves in to industry influence.”
The meat-processing industry spent $4.3m on lobbying in Washington in 2023, of which Tyson accounted for almost half ($2.1m), according to political finance watchdog Open Secrets. The industry has made $6.6m in campaign donations since 2020, mostly to Republicans, with Tyson the biggest corporate spender.
“We can be sure Tyson and other big ag players will object to efforts to update pollution regulations, but the EPA should listen to communities whose wells, lakes, rivers and streams have been contaminated and put people over corporate profits,” said Goswami.
“Meat and poultry companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with EPA’s effluent limitations guidelines,” said Sarah Little from the North American Meat Institute, a trade association representing large processors like Tyson. “EPA’s new proposed guidelines will cost over $1bn and will eliminate 100,000 jobs in rural communities.”
Tyson did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The American Association of Meat Processors said the EPA’s one-size-fits-all approach could put its small, family-owned members out of business.
Nebraska is a sparsely populated rural state dominated by agriculture – an increasingly consolidated corporate industry which wields substantial control over the economy and politics, as well as land and water use.
Millions of acres in Nebraska are dedicated to factory farming, with massive methane-emitting concentrated animal feeding operations (Cafos) scattered among fields of monocropped soybean, corn and wheat – grown predominantly for animal feed and ethanol. Only a tiny fraction of arable land is dedicated to sustainable agriculture or used to grow vegetables or fruits.
Tyson’s five largest plants in Nebraska dumped more than 111m lb of pollutants into waterways between 2018 and 2022, accounting for a third of the nationwide total. This included 4m lb of nitrates – a chemical that can contaminate drinking water, cause blood disorders and neurological defects in infants, as well as cancers and thyroid disease in adults.
Tyson’s largest plant is located in Dakota City on the Missouri river – America’s longest waterway which stretches 2,300 miles across eight states before joining the Mississippi. It’s a sprawling beef facility, which generates a nauseating stench that wafts over neighboring South Sioux city, known locally as sewer city, where many plant workers live. (Another beef processing plant is located next to Tyson.)
Earlier this month, the Guardian saw multiple trucks waiting to offload cattle for slaughter – after which the carcasses are rendered, processed and packaged in different parts of the facility. The plant produces vast quantities of wastewater which is stored (and treated) in lagoons on the riverbank, before being released into the Missouri river which provides drinking water for millions of people.
The Dakota City plant is a major local employer and Tyson’s single largest polluter, dumping 60m lb of contaminants into waterways between 2018 and 2022, according to UCS analysis.
Every year in November around 30,000 Sandhill Cranes begin their annual migration from the North Platte River in Nebraska to Southern Arizona. Photograph: Christopher Brown/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
“This Tyson plant helped put me through college and supports a lot of migrant workers, but there’s a dark side like the water and air pollution that most people don’t pay attention to because they’re just trying to survive,” said Rogelio Rodriguez, a grassroots organizer with Conservation Nebraska, which is part of a coalition pushing for stronger state protections for meat processing plant workers.
“If regulations are lax, corporations have a tendency to push limits to maximize profits, we learnt that during Covid,” said Rodriguez, whose family works at the plant. A deadly Covid outbreak at the Dakota City plant in April 2020 sickened 15% of the workforce and led to substantial community spread.
A few miles south of the Dakota City Tyson plant, the Winnebago tribe is slowly recuperating and reforesting their land, as well as transitioning to organic farming.
“We’re investing a lot of money to look after the water and soil on our lands because it’s the right thing to do, yet a few miles north the Tyson plant lets all this pollution go into the river. Water is our most important resource, and the Missouri river is very important to our culture and people,” said Aaron LaPointe, a Winnebago tribe member who runs Ho-Chunk Farms.
The water problem – and lack of accountability – goes beyond Tyson.
Last year Governor Jim Pillen, whose family owns one of America’s largest pork companies, was widely criticized for calling a Chinese-born journalist at Flatwater Free Press a “communist” after she exposed serious water quality violations at his hog farms. Earlier this month, the Nebraska supreme court ruled that the state environmental agency could charge the same investigative news outlet tens of thousands of dollars for a public records request about nitrates.
Big ag’s influence on state politics is “endemic”, according to Gavin Geis from Common Cause Nebraska, a non-partisan elections watchdog.
“The big money spent on lobbying and campaigns by corporate agriculture has played a major role in resisting stronger regulation – despite clear signals such as high levels of nitrates in our groundwater and cancers in rural communities that we need more oversight for farmers across the board,” said Geis.
“We’ve created a system with no accountability that doesn’t protect our ecosystem – which includes the land, water and people of Nebraska,” said Graham Christensen, a regenerative farmer and founder of GC Resolve, a communication and consulting firm. “The political capture is harming our rural communities, we’re in the belly of the beast and need help from federal regulators.”
Indigenous Americans lived and farmed sustainably along the Missouri River until white colonial settlers forcibly displaced tribes, and eventually dammed the entire river system – mostly for energy and industrial agriculture. Today, major river systems like the Missouri River – and its communities – face multiple, overlapping threats from dams, the climate crisis, overuse and pollution.
Oxygen depleting contaminants like nitrogen and phosphorus from Tyson plants in the midwest have been shown to travel along river-to-river pathways, causing fish kills and contributing to dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. When the river is drier due to drought or high temperatures, pollutants become more concentrated and can form sediments – which are then dislodged during floods and taken miles downstream.
Global heating is making extreme weather increasingly common, and as droughts dry up underground aquifers, tribes will probably need to turn to the Missouri for drinking water, according to Tim Grant, director of environmental protection for the Omaha tribe. “We’re very concerned about what’s in the river, it’s an important part of our culture and traditions,” said Grant, who has started testing the fish for toxins.
The UCS research also found Tyson plants located close to critical habitats for endangered or threatened species – including the whooping crane, the tallest and among the rarest birds in North America.
There are currently only 500 or so wild whooping cranes – up from 20 birds in the 1940s – which stop to feed and rest along a shallow stretch of the Platte River, a tributary of the Missouri in central Nebraska, as they migrate between the Texas Gulf coast and Canada. The majestic white birds feed in the cornfields that surround the Platte River, outnumbered by the slate gray sandhill cranes that also migrate through Nebraska each spring.
Tyson’s sprawling Lexington slaughterhouse and beef processing plant is situated less than two miles from the Platte River – among four federally designated critical habitats considered essential to conservation of the whooping crane.
“The cumulative effects of exposure to these industrial toxins could pose a long-term threat to the cranes’ food sources, reproductive success and resilience as a species,” said George Cunningham, a retired aquatic ecologist and Missouri River expert at Sierra Club Nebraska.
“Poor environmental regulation is down to the stranglehold industrial agriculture has on politics – at every level. It’s about political capture.”
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
UK Farmers warn of first year without harvest since Second World War
Emma Gatten 9 April 2024·
Record rainfall has meant that a lot of farmland is still under water, as on this farm near Bangor-on-Dee, Wales - Andrew McCoy /Getty Images
Farmers are warning of food shortages as record rainfall threatens to bring the first season without a harvest on some farms since the end of the Second World War.
Vast swathes of farmland are still under water following an unprecedented period of flooding, with 11 named storms since September and the wettest 18 months on record.
The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board has predicted that wheat yields will be down 15 per cent, winter barley down 22 per cent and oilseed rape down 28 per cent – the biggest drop since the 1980s.
Joe Stanley, an arable and livestock farmer at a research farm in Leicestershire, said he and his colleagues were facing the first year without a harvest since the land was first farmed after the war.
“Unless it basically stops raining today and then it becomes nice and sunny and windy, we’re not going to get any crops in this year. That’s a real danger,” he said. “Many farmers will be in the same situation.”
Waterlogged fields at a farm near Outwell, in Norfolk, earlier this month - Getty Images/Martin Pope
Farmers are also facing the prospect that crops planted during the autumn will not have survived the flooding brought by repeated storms, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) said.
It warned that households could feel the effects of low crop yields and reduced lamb numbers, because many lambs have not survived the unseasonably cold temperatures and heavy rainfall.
“It’s no exaggeration to say a crisis is building,” said Rachel Hallos, the NFU vice president. “While farmers are bearing the brunt of it now, consumers may well see the effects through the year as produce simply doesn’t leave the farm gate.”
She added that the situation was a “growing issue for UK food security”, and welcomed a new fund for farmers affected by flooding.
Mr Stanley said farms were facing “an existential moment” because of the changing climate, which could put many out of business, reducing UK food security.
“The problem that we’re facing is that weather is becoming so extreme that it is overwhelming our ability as farmers to continue to grow crops at all in some places,” he said.
Mark Chatterton, a director at business advisers Duncan & Toplis, has estimated that the impact on farm businesses could be significantly worse than the 2019 floods, which led to an 18 per cent reduction in profits.
Farms in areas around the Midlands and the South West hit by Storm Henk in January will be able to claim grants of between £500 and £25,000 under the new fund, three months after it was first announced.
Mark Spencer, the farming minister, said: “I know how difficult this winter has been for farmers, with extreme weather such as Storm Henk having a devastating impact on both cropping and grazing, as well as damaging property and equipment.
“The Farming Recovery Fund will support farmers who suffered uninsurable damage with grants of up to £25,000, and sits alongside broader support in our farming schemes to improve flood resilience.”
Monday, April 01, 2024
Rice malt shows potential to play a bigger role in beer
Malted rice emerges as potential game-changer in beer brewing
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS SYSTEM DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Rice is showing potential to play a more prominent role in beer brewing, and it helps that Arkansas produces a lot of it.
Arkansas grows about half of the rice in the United States, mostly long-grain. Meanwhile, climate change and international conflicts are leading to a shortage of the raw materials traditionally used for brewing beer, especially barley.
A new study titled “Investigating the Malting Suitability and Brewing Quality of Different Rice Cultivars,” published in February by the Beverages journal, suggests the potential for malted rice to yield robust fermentations in gluten-free, all-malt beer and also in styles that use high adjunct inclusions. An adjunct is an additional source of sugar for beer fermentation.
Rice and corn have been used as an adjunct grain by American brewers since the 1860s. But the rice has been milled white rice, and not malted. Since the malting qualities of U.S. rice cultivars had not yet been evaluated for brewing qualities, one goal of the study was to identify rice cultivars with high malting potential.
University of Arkansas food science graduate student Bernardo P. Guimaraes was the lead author of the malted rice study, which provides the first publicly available data on 19 rice varieties important to the U.S. rice industry that were malted and analyzed for brewing qualities. Flavor chemist and assistant professor in the food science department Scott Lafontaine served as Guimaraes’ advisor on the research.
“Does rice have what it takes? Scientifically, yes, it is possible,” Lafontaine said.
They have found rice malts with enough enzymatic capacity to fully convert their starch source into fermentable sugar, also known as self-saccharifying malts, that produce a sugary liquid called “wort” in brewing. Lafontaine says the wort from rice malt “seems to yield healthy fermentations with a standard yeast, without adding enzymes or nitrogen supplementation.”
Lafontaine and Guimaraes are both part of the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas and the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station. The experiment station is the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
No extra vessel with rice malt?
Malting is the process of germinating a grain through hydration and then drying and heating it to halt germination. The process forms enzymes required to turn the starch into sugar when soaked in hot water for the phase of brewing called “mashing.” Where rice is concerned, brewers have typically used milled white rice, and not rice malt. Using milled white rice calls for an additional brewing vessel because it needs to be boiled to gelatinize the starch so it can be converted into that sugary liquid called wort.
Malted rice, on the other hand, may not require a second vessel. Guimaraes and Lafontaine showed the malted rice to be self-saccharifying with the appropriate mashing conditions. In other words, with the right temperature and time, the starch could be broken down to fermentable sugars that yeast can assimilate and turn into alcohol.
As wheat flour is to bread, malted barley is to beer, with recipes calling for varying levels of a barley as a base malt along with other grains like wheat, rye and oats for different styles of beer. Additional ingredients like roasted barley, and roasted malted barley, develop different flavors and aromas.
In the study, long-grain rice when malted showed the most promise as a competitor to malted barley for sugar content and other brewing qualities. The study looked at short, medium and long-grain varieties of “paddy rice,” or rice with the chaff removed but not the husk. Interestingly, wild varieties of rice that had purple-pigmented brans produced naturally colored gluten-free beers with hues similar to wine.
New findings
Previous public studies on rice malt were performed on Italian and Indian varieties, and the study of U.S. rice malts offered two interesting discoveries, Lafontaine said. For one, the rice varieties had different gelatinization temperatures and mashing parameters seemed to have an impact on the onset of gelatinization.
“While we are not sure exactly what is occurring yet, this is likely due to the unique enzymatic profile of the rice malts and shows that brewers just have to alter their mashing conditions to effectively leverage this material in the brewery,” Lafontaine said of the lower gelatinization temperatures.
The other unexpected finding was that the malted rice showed higher protein levels than previously reported, which offers potential applications as an alternative protein source in foods, Lafontaine said. The new study showed the protein content ranged from 7 to 10.5 percent, and some rice cultivars had protein content comparable to malted barley.
Depending on the variety of rice grown, the study indicates the potential for a value-added product for farmers whose rice turns up with a high level of chalkiness during milling. Chalky rice is opaque and tends to break when being processed, making it less valuable as a food product. However, chalkiness would not have as much of a bearing on quality if sent to a maltster and turned into rice malt. High nighttime temperatures during a rice kernel’s development have been shown to contribute to chalkiness. As the climate warms, this will be a continual issue for farmers and scientists to contend with, Lafontaine noted.
Economics and flavor
Although the chemical analysis of the malted rice is promising, Lafontaine is working with the agricultural economics and agribusiness department to conduct a feasibility study considering many economic factors that compare malted rice and malted barley.
One of the most pressing economic factors is the cost of barley, which has increased in the past four years. The increase has made long-grain rice “cost equivalent” to barley, Lafontaine said. Barley is grown in areas with cooler climates, while rice is grown in warmer climates. So, climate change and global warming are other factors for long-term economic impacts of barley and rice as beer ingredients, he added.
“By offering a more locally sourced grain for Southern and U.S. brewers, despite paddy rice being proportionally more carbon dioxide intensive to grow than malted barley, the lack of international shipping may potentially make up the difference in carbon dioxide,” the study notes. “Additionally, rice is a gluten-free source of starch for brewers and beverage/food producers.”
Lafontaine intends to conduct a sensory panel with the various beers produced from rice malt. He and Guimaraes have noticed, for example, that some aromatic varieties of rice produced elevated levels of diacetyl, which has a buttery popcorn aroma often considered an off flavor in beer.
“As a sneak peak of the next part of this study, I can say that the rice varieties had many different and interesting aromas and flavors,” Guimaraes said. “I firmly believe they have great potential either as a standalone raw material or in conjunction with barley malt.”
The rice varieties were malted in small quantities during the study using techniques comparable to industry standards. With each small test batch, the researchers measured protein content, enzyme levels and other characteristics important to brewing. Lafontaine’s lab is licensed and bonded as the U of A Beverage Development Facility with an electric, 15-gallon brewing system to provide hands-on experience to students in the University of Arkansas Certificate of Proficiency in Brewing Science program.
Collaborators on the study included rice breeders at the Division of Agriculture’s Rice Research and Extension Center, researchers with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station’s Rice Processing Program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, and Versuchs-und Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin, Germany.
The authors recognized the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board for supporting the research.
To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow us on 𝕏 at @ArkAgResearch and Instagram at @ArkAgResearch.
To learn about Extension Programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit https://uaex.uada.edu/. Follow us on 𝕏 at @AR_Extension.
To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on 𝕏 at @AgInArk.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs and services without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
TEST BATCHES — Beers made with malted rice are part of a study led by the University of Arkansas System to test the malting qualities of 19 U.S. rice varieties.
CREDIT
University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture photo by John Lovett
Investigating the Malting Suitability and Brewing Quality of Different Rice Cultivars
Researchers Look to Rice for ‘Clean Label’ Ingredients
Using polyphenol-protein interactions can provide foods with clean label characteristics
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS SYSTEM DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Naturally occurring polyphenols and proteins from pigmented waxy rice may help starch ingredients improve texture without any chemical modification — a change some consumers may welcome, said Ya-Jane Wang, professor of carbohydrate chemistry.
Chemically modified starch is a common thickener in soups and other foods. Without modification, starch breaks down during high-temperature and high-shear food processing and no longer functions properly as a thickening agent.
As consumers express concerns over chemically modified ingredients, Wang is looking at alternatives. With the help of a $400,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant awarded in 2023, Wang is exploring how to use polyphenols and proteins naturally present in pigmented waxy rice as a natural starch strengthener.
Polyphenols are a micronutrient that naturally occur in plants. She used pigmented waxy rice because the presence of polyphenols in the rice and the polyphenol-protein interaction that arises. “Waxy” rice is also known as “sticky” or “sweet” rice due to its low level of amylose, one of the ingredients that make up starch. Higher levels of amylose cause the rice to separate and become fluffy, whereas lower levels of amylose produce higher viscosities. Polyphenol-protein interactions naturally present in the pigmented rice aid in retaining a food’s viscosity, or thickness, during the cooking process.
Wang conducts research for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Her collaborators on the research include Annegret Jannasch, a doctoral student in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, who works under the direction of Wang; Anna McClung, a recently retired research geneticist at the Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center; Sun-Ok Lee, associate professor of nutrition for the experiment station; post-doctoral researcher Zeina Alraawi; and Suresh Thallapuranam, Cooper Chair of Bioinformatics Research and professor of biochemistry.
Wang, Jannasch and Lee work in the food science department in the Bumpers College. Thallapuranam is joining the team from the chemistry and biochemistry department in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.
McClung provides the researchers with pigmented waxy rice samples.
“We propose that pigmented waxy rice can function like chemically modified starches but without the use of chemicals, so it will be a clean label ingredient,” Wang said.
“Clean label” is not a scientific term, but the food industry, academics and consumers define the phenomenon as choosing foods with easy-to-recognize ingredients and no artificial ingredients or synthetic chemicals, according to the Institute of Food Technologists.
Consumer perception
In recent years, consumers have raised concerns about ingredients used in food production, Wang noted. Some consumers aim to consume only minimally processed food.
The idea of minimal processing varies from person to person, Wang said. Some consumers prefer wheat flour, but others might consider wheat flour too processed and consume whole wheat flour instead.
“A lot of processed food is really for preservation or convenience,” Wang said. Food products such as ham, pickles and TV dinners, for example, are processed to help simplify food preparation for the consumer and to extend shelf life.
Wang’s research may alleviate these concerns related to modified starch.
Many foods contain modified starch, which is chemically altered to improve processing and storage stability, Wang said. Starches function as thickening agents to improve the texture and consistency of food products.
The inspiration for this project came from Wang’s recent research that explored the possibility of utilizing the interactions among polyphenols, protein and starch in pigmented waxy rice to increase satiation, the feeling of fullness. In that original project, Wang found that the pigmented waxy rice’s unique interactions between polyphenols and proteins allow starch to swell more in an acidic condition that simulates gastric environments.
“Starch, when it swells, is like a balloon — it becomes bigger and bigger,” Wang said. During food processing, “the temperature, the shear, the high acidity will completely break down the balloon. You want the balloon to swell more — that is how you create the viscosity — but you don’t want it to swell too much. The polyphenol-protein interactions help to maintain the starch structure so it will stay at that stage.
“That is why you can use starch to thicken any soup because the starch can swell more than 10 times its volume, but once it gets to that stage, it becomes very fragile,” she said.
Outside of consumer perception, Wang said that applying this pigmented waxy rice, as opposed to using modified starch, could provide additional environmental and health benefits.
With any chemical modification comes a residue, Wang said, so using a naturally occurring starch with these properties eliminates that concern. Polyphenols are present in many berries and vegetables, and a high amount of polyphenols are known to have anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and antidiabetic properties.
The next phase will determine the nature of the polyphenol-protein interactions in pigmented waxy rice. Interactions between polyphenols and proteins involve chemical bonds linking two molecules, and it is important because a strong bond helps maintain granule integrity under high shear, temperature and acidic conditions, Wang said.
Finally, the researchers will apply thermal processing conditions to alter the extent of polyphenol-protein interactions so the resulting products will produce a wide range of viscosities for different applications.
“We really want to see the possibility of commercializing the resulting technology,” Wang said. “We want to see if any companies are interested and work with them.”
Companies using this to make cereals, pudding, or pasta is something that Wang hopes to see.
Wang will share an update on this research at the USDA-NIFA project director meeting in Amherst, Massachusetts, on June 17-18.
To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow us on 𝕏 at @ArkAgResearch and Instagram at @ArkAgResearch.
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About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
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Elucidating the effect of polyphenol-protein interactions on rheological properties of purple waxy rice
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Cocoa breaks US$10,000 record, with pricier chocolate to follow
Megan Durisin and Áine Quinn, Bloomberg News
Cocoa futures surged above an unprecedented US$10,000 a ton, extending a historic rally that’s already seen prices double this year and which is raising the cost of chocolate.
The market is being rattled by poor crops in key West African growers that has put the world on course for a third straight annual supply deficit. The industry is grappling with the legacy of poor returns paid to cocoa farmers and fears are mounting about being able to source enough beans.
As well as concerns about scarce physical supplies, pressures are also building in the financial market, where some traders have sold futures to hedge against physical holdings. But as they wait for the contracts to mature they need cash to meet margin calls on losses on derivatives, and in a rising market can be forced to close out short positions, helping to fuel the rally.
Futures jumped as much as 4.5 per cent to $10,080 in New York on Tuesday — a level that seemed unthinkable only a few months ago. The rally has pushed a technical gauge of prices into overbought territory for much of the last couple of months, though cocoa has continued to soar.
“When we’re at this price, it’s hard to tell whether these prices are justified,” said Paul Joules, an analyst at Rabobank in London. “Whenever we have a dip in the market, it seems to shoot straight back up, which is more to do with the commercials, they’ve been net buyers.”
Cocoa’s advance is bad news for consumers if chocolatiers keep passing on costs or sell bars that are smaller or have less chocolate in them. The looming Easter holiday is a peak period for chocolate consumption, and the lag between commodity and retail markets mean the brunt of the impact for shoppers still lies ahead.
There’s a risk the supply situation may worsen. Incoming European Union rules — aimed at stopping products that destroy forests from being sold in shops — may make it even harder for the bloc’s chocolate makers to secure supplies.
New harvest
Focus is now turning to West Africa’s upcoming mid-crop, the smaller of two annual harvests. Top grower Ivory Coast’s regulator expects that to shrink this season, Bloomberg has reported.
“The West African supply situation remains extremely tight going into the start of the mid-crop harvest next week, and that continues to underpin cocoa prices,” The Hightower Report said in a note.
Other growers, like Brazil and Ecuador, are seeking to ramp up production, but it takes a few years before newly-planted cocoa trees bear beans — delaying the relief to strained global supplies. A ratio of stockpiles-to-grindings will fall to the lowest in more than four decades this season, the International Cocoa Organization has forecast, reflecting the market’s precarious position.
Cocoa was up 3.5 per cent at $9,991 in New York on Tuesday. In other softs markets, raw sugar rose one per cent and arabica coffee edged higher.
In London, most-active cocoa futures have also more than doubled this year.
Higher chocolate prices part of wider trend as climate, other factors disrupt supply
Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press
Higher chocolate prices this Easter after bad crops on the other side of the world are just the latest example of disruptions in the food supply chain, a trend experts say consumers are noticing in growing numbers.
“I think people are becoming more interested in where their food comes from,” said Sophia Carodenuto, a professor of geography at the University of Victoria whose research specializes in global food systems.
The past few years have seen a number of high-profile disruptions including a spike in lettuce prices due to flooding in California, rising orange juice prices because of bad crops and higher wheat prices linked to the Russia-Ukraine war.
These kinds of disruptive events feel like they’re becoming more common, said Graeme Crosbie, senior economist at agriculture lending firm Farm Credit Canada.
Cocoa futures have “gone vertical” this year, especially in the last four or so months, said Crosbie.
Futures are a way of measuring commodity prices based on contracts for future delivery, a common way to track prices for commodities like wheat, gold and oil.
A February report by agriculture-focused co-operative bank CoBank said cocoa prices were nearly 65 per cent higher than a year ago, and New York futures prices were at a 46-year high.
Bad weather and disease in West Africa have damaged crop yields, said Crosbie, hurting supply for the product that goes into Halloween, Valentine’s Day and Easter candy.
“The confection business is going to bear the brunt of the margin impact due to cocoa,” Hershey chief financial officer Steven Voskuil told analysts on a conference call in February.
Most cocoa, especially the cocoa found in many popular chocolate products, comes from West Africa, Carodenuto said. Côte D’Ivoire, which she said produces about 40 per cent of the world’s cocoa, saw a 30 per cent decline in production over the past year due to climate change and disease, she said.
“That’s one of the main drivers of ... this huge rise in prices on the commodity markets,” she said.
“I think we're seeing this all over the world, that the rainy season and the dry season are no longer predictable the way that they had been.”
Unlike some crops, cocoa production is highly concentrated, meaning huge portions of the world’s supply are grown in a handful of areas, said Crosbie. This makes the crop and its supply chain more vulnerable to disruptions.
Cocoa prices don’t directly translate to retail prices, since there are many things other than cocoa that make up a chocolate bar, Crosbie said. But they do have an effect, and he expects retail prices to increase.
According to Statistics Canada inflation data, the price of confectionary items rose more than nine per cent between January 2023 and 2024, compared with overall inflation for food purchased from stores of 3.4 per cent.
Michael Medline, the chief executive of Sobeys parent company Empire Co. Ltd., told investors earlier in March the grocer is seeing “sizable” price increases from some of its suppliers that will “inevitably affect the customer.”
“This is largely driven by some commodities like sugar and cocoa continuing to be very volatile due to ongoing climate and geopolitical factors impacting global supply,” he said.
Higher cocoa prices are an obstacle for manufacturers who have already been struggling with higher sugar prices over the past three years, said senior food and beverage economist Billy Roberts in the CoBank press release.
“That could lead to a further erosion of chocolate volume sales and begin to impact dollar sales as well,” he said.
Consumers are becoming more aware of these kinds of disruptions as food prices have risen across the board, Crosbie said.
“I think people are certainly paying more attention to the prices themselves, and even how their food is produced.”
In a 2021 survey by Deloitte, almost three-quarters of respondents said it’s important for them to understand where their food comes from.
And cocoa is one of many food products that consumers are eyeing more critically.
Cocoa is indigenous to Central America, said Carodenuto, and naturally grows under a canopy of rainforest trees in a diverse ecosystem. But large swaths of rainforest in West Africa have actually been wiped out to make room for cocoa farming, meaning less ecological diversity and more vulnerable crops.
Higher commodity futures also don’t necessarily dictate the prices farmers are being paid in real time, noted Carodenuto.
In Ghana and Côte D’Ivoire, the largest-producing countries for cocoa, the government creates a minimum price for farmers for the season, she said. But the large multinational companies buying and trading cocoa enter into forward contracts, meaning prices are agreed upon in advance.
It takes a lot of manual labour and investment to build a cocoa farm, so farmers need support, especially financially, Carodenuto said.
There’s hope that the higher futures prices will lead to more income next year, but it’s not a guarantee, she added — cocoa prices are cyclical, meaning there will likely be a price crash at some point.
Consumers looking to make ethical spending decisions face a difficult choice, said Carodenuto, especially given the price gap between premium and ethically sourced chocolate and popular, mass-market confections.
Carodenuto said shoppers don’t need to stop buying chocolate, but they should educate themselves and seek supply chain transparency by looking for the origin of the cocoa in a product.
Shoppers who can afford to spend more can also seek out businesses that specialize in sourcing ethical cocoa products, she said.
In the long term, there is lots of potential for cocoa to be grown in a more sustainable manner, she said, but it could mean lower production in the short term.
“It's just that, who's going to pay for that? ... It shouldn't be the most marginalized actor in the system. It shouldn't be the smallholder farmer who has to pay for that.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 25, 2024.