Farm News

Growing, buying and selling locally meeting set Feb. 9

Sat, 4 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EDT

A meeting on growing, buying, and selling local agricultural products will be held at 7 p.m. on Thursday at the Hardin County Extension Office in Iowa Falls. Barb Ristau, Franklin County Extension families program assistant, will be the guest speaker. Ristau will speak on Developing a First Class Farmers Market. Also, Mary Herold will share information on a seed exchange she hopes to establish in Iowa Falls. Preregistration is not required. The meeting is free, open to the public, and sponsored by Hardin County ISU Extension and Iowa Valley Continuing Education. For more information, contact the Hardin County Extension office at (641) 648-4850 or toll free (888) 648-5005 or email xhardin@iastate.edu -30-

A space odyssey

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EDT

By DARCY DOUGHERTY MAULSBY Farm News staff writer DES MOINES - The invisible satellite signals that guide tractors, sprayers and other farm equipment through global positioning system technology have manifested themselves in a high-profile controversy that's reaching far beyond the farm. The issue revolves around the push to expand wireless broadband connectivity nationwide, including rural areas, which could come at the expense of GPS. The Virginia-based company LightSquared has applied for a waiver from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to deploy technology that would dramatically expand broadband access across the United States. As LightSquared builds its state-of-the-art open wireless broadband network, the privately-owned company is using a technology called Long Term Evolution, the most widely adopted 4G standard in the world. However, extensive testing has shown the technology causes significant disruption with GPS systems, which are well-integrated in the agricultural, construction and aviation industries. "Allowing LightSquared to implement its network will interfere with the use of GPS in precision applications in agriculture, where America farmers use the technology to restrain the costs of food production while feeding a growing global population," said Ken Golden, director of global public relations for Deere & Co. "It will also impact millions of Americans who use GPS every day for safe travel in cars and airplanes and it will disrupt the work of soldiers who use GPS receivers in the military." LightSquared could knock out thousands of receivers Deere & Co. has joined a number of other leading companies, including FedEx, Delta Airlines, Garmin, UPS, Caterpillar, Case New Holland, Ag Leader Technology, AGCO and Trimble, in the Coalition to Save Our GPS. Agriculture groups are heavily engaged on this issue because without a technical fix, LightSquared's technology would knock out most of an estimated 500,000 precision receivers used in farm equipment, according to the National Association of Wheat Growers. Coalition members emphasize they are not opposed to the expansion of broadband services. "We continue to be in favor of expanded broadband coverage for many more Americans, including those in rural America, but we firmly believe that objective should not be met by interfering with the use of GPS that is so vital to millions of Americans," Golden said. "We believe other proposals to expand broadband coverage and other technologies could make that happen." To understand how LightSquared's technology interferes with GPS signals, it helps to understand some GPS basics. GPS enables users on the ground to determine location by connecting to distant satellites using radio signals. The satellites are more than 12,000 miles away from the user and are solar powered, which necessitates a relatively low-powered radio transmission from space, and in turn drives a need for GPS receivers to be sensitive to the low-powered signals received on Earth, according to the Coalition. LightSquared's critics say the service's powerful signals from thousands of base stations would overwhelm faint emissions from satellites that feed GPS devices, and they charge that LightSquared is using powerful cell towers on frequencies that should only be used by satellites. LightSquared counters that GPS devices are improperly gathering signals from outside their designated frequency bands. "LightSquared doesn't think it owes anyone a fix," said Charlie Bowman, a GPS and machine control specialist with Star Equipment in Cedar Rapids, who recently spoke at the Iowa Land Improvement Contractors Association's annual meeting in Des Moines. LightSquared has one satellite in orbit already and is trying to put a second one in operation, said Bowman, who noted that the second satellite will cost $1.5 million. "No one really knows what will happen if the second one is launched, but it has the potential to block GPS signals." Tim Recker, LICA's state president who farms in northeast Iowa and owns Recker Excavating Inc., is concerned about the LightSquared controversy. "I can't afford not to have the sub-inch accuracy I've paid for with my GPS equipment." No resolution yet A year of testing by a federal interagency committee unanimously determined in mid-January that there "appear to be no practical solutions or mitigations" to GPS interference caused by LightSquared's broadband technology. The co-chairs of the interagency review panel, who are deputy secretaries of the U.S. Departments of Defense and Transportation, indicated in a letter to the Department of Commerce that the level of interference, even with proposed fixes, is so severe that "no additional testing is warranted at this time." The letter also noted that the Federal Aviation Administration has concluded the technology could interfere with flight-safety systems that depend on GPS. LightSquared reacted quickly, saying the review process was "fraught with inappropriate involvement of the GPS manufacturers, lax controls, obvious bias, lack of transparency and unexplained delays," and that its private tests have shown its proposed fix for the interference problem "works flawlessly." FCC officials have said they will not give LightSquared final approval to launch its network until the company can demonstrate that it has fixed the interference problems. While there is no certainty that LightSquared will get final FCC approval for its network, Golden noted that existing GPS receivers would have to be updated if this approval is granted. "This impacts what Deere would design for the future," he said, "but the most current issue is that there are millions of existing GPS receivers in the U.S. that are not protected and would be subject to LightSquared interference. "High precision receivers such as those used by Deere customers and others in precision applications are particularly sensitive to LightSquared interference. If current GPS receivers need to be modified to filter out interference from the LightSquared network, we believe the cost of such modifications should be the responsibility of LightSquared." The ag industry and others who rely on GPS technology are monitoring the LightSquared issue closely. "We will continue to work on behalf of our customers in opposition to this proposal until interference issues are resolved," Golden said. For more information on the Coalition to Save Our GPS, log onto saveourgps.org. Learn more about LightSquared by visiting: www.lightsquared.com. You can contact Darcy Dougherty Maulsby by e-mail at yettergirl@yahoo.com.

I Never Went to Market series

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EDT

By DOUG CLOUGH Farm News staff writer (Editor's note: This is an introductory article to a monthly feature called "I never went to market." Staff writer Doug Clough, of Ida Grove, a self-described city boy, will be spending some work time on area farms and writing about his experiences.) IDA GROVE - My favorite family photo is one taken in front of a white barn Grandpa Clough built in the early 1900s. Many of his barns and farrowing houses still stand in Hardin and Grundy counties, most between Union and Whitten along the Iowa River. My grandfather was a carpenter who, according to my father, headed up a poor family in a poor town. Charles Clough did rough carpentry and finish work when it was a tough man's job, a man who could build post-and-beam, wood-pegged, joint construction. Even then, his skill and toughness were often only rewarded with another neighbor's skill as barter during The Great Depression and then World War II. Even though I have no farm experience, writing for Farm News has taught me about the utility and importance of the multi-line farmer's barn and why, once built, they needed to last. Grandpa Clough, during the long Iowa unemployable winters, built farrowing houses for the area's hog farmers. My brothers and I were reared in northeast Des Moines, which may as well have been New York City in regard to our connection to Iowa's agriculture. And, like seeds of a dandelion, all of we brothers found our homes in different places than were our roots. For my own part, I took a teaching job in Ida Grove, becoming part of the town with a strong farming history. I'm still in Ida Grove 21 years later, although now I'm a customer service manager for a local manufacturer. In addition to being a father and husband, I am also a columnist, feature and travel writer, and staff writer for Farm News. It occurred to me a time or two that this gig as a writer for a rural publication is a gift I never realized I wanted until I got it. Frankly, the path was not scripted for me. I was not raised in a rural setting, I didn't go to school to become a writer, and - just like the second pig in the The Little Piggy rhyme - I never went to market, I just stayed home. In fact, the only connection I have to farming is that I ended up marrying a farmer's daughter. I've thoroughly enjoyed writing about barns, farm cooks, Century Farms, and other aspects of Iowa farming. Now I want to experience them. Therefore, I'm asking Cherokee, Woodbury, Plymouth, Ida, and Crawford County farmers to invite me to work with them for a few hours. Afterward, I will write about the experience as a feature for this publication. A few things you should know about my invitation: First, I enjoy trying new things and meeting new people. Second, your invitation can have anything to do with agribusiness. It does not have to be directly working with livestock or crops, although that's where the idea originated. Third, I'm not a farmer, but I'd like to think that I have the good sense of one; so I may turn down anything that I am not qualified to do without formal training. Safety first, period. You can contact Doug Clough at douglasclough@gmail.com

IT'S FRIDAY!

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EDT

Cartoonist Rick Friday's submission for Feb. 3, 2012.

POET, DSM partner for Project Liberty

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EDT

By DAN VOIGT For Farm News EMMETSBURG - It's official. Project Liberty, the long-awaited commercial scale cellulosic ethanol production facility in Emmetsburg, will break ground for construction on March 13. The announcement came during a conference call Jan. 23 sponsored by POET and Royal DSM, of the Netherlands, which originated from Washington, D.C. The call announced the joint venture between POET and Royal DSM to build and operate the Project Liberty facility in Emmetsburg, with a targeted start-up in the second half of 2013. Announcing the venture were POET Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Broin and Feike Sijbesma, CEO/chairman of the DSM managing board of directors. DSM will be providing the enzyme technology that will be the key component of the cellulosic process. With the Jan. 23 announcement, POET notified the U.S. Department of Energy that it would not be using a federal loan guarantee granted for the construction of Project Liberty. "Quite frankly," Broin said, "with the new joint venture and the investment that we are making together, the loan guarantee would no longer be necessary. "Therefore, we would be turning down the loan guarantee." "You know everyone is talking about advanced biofuels - by making this a reality by 2013, we are no longer talking, we are getting this done," Sijbesma said. "DSM and POET are determined to deliver the key to unlock the cellulosic bio-ethanol opportunity, the next step in the development of biofuels." Sijbesma said DSM chose to partner with POET due to its' leadership in the ethanol industry, along with its research in the cellulosic ethanol field. "Together, we are going to produce cellulosic ethanol on a commercial scale from corn crop residue through a biological process using enzymatic hydrolysis followed by fermentation," Sijbesma said. "DSM and POET will each hold a 50 percent share in the joint venture. The initial capital expenditure ... will amount to $250 million." "To summarize, this is a joint venture of two innovative leaders with one shared vision," Sijbesma said. "It is very important step for both companies in establishing a leading position in cellulosic bio-ethanol." A decade goal "This is an exciting day for POET," Broin added, "and this is something we have been working on for a long time." The joint venture has two objectives. First, is to finish the construction of Project Liberty in Emmetsburg, demonstrating cellulosic ethanol technology on a commercial scale. "The joint venture anticipates that we will complete construction of Project Liberty and start producing cellulosic ethanol in the second half of 2013," Broin said. "We'll have a formal ground breaking on March 13. The initial capacity of the plant will be 20 million gallons and is designed to increase to 25 million gallons per year in the future." The second objective is to take the combined technology of POET and DSM, develop it and license it to 26 other ethanol plants in POET's network, as well as the third parties in the U.S., and throughout the world. "If the technology is successfully replicated at our other 26 plants, it will produce up to 1 billion gallons of ethanol per year," Broin said. "The opportunity here is substantial." The Environmental Protection Agency projected 7.8 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol from corn crop residue. "We have the raw materials to make it happen," Broin said. "There's more than 1 million tons of biomass available every year in the U.S. to produce enough ethanol to reduce a third of America's gasoline usage. "This is what POET has been working toward for about a decade. Now, we have a new partner that can help us make it a reality. We chose DSM because of their extensive experience and leadership position in biotechnology. "Their enzyme and yeast technologies are robust and allow the conversion of the C5 and C6 sugars simultaneously. They also have experience in scaling up industrial operations. In short, their technological capabilities compliment ours and make them an excellent strategic partner for POET. "Together, we will produce a homegrown, renewable fuel that can create jobs, clean our environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. This partnership has the potential to change the world." When asked what the $250 million investment would cover, Broin said it would cover the actual construction of the plant and manufacture of the enzymes. "We are planning forward to license these technologies," Broin saidd. "Our country is going to have to look at higher levels of ethanol if we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil." "This is a very important venture, sales-wise, for both parties," Sijbesma said. "Sales will grow through licenses as well as the sales of the cellulosic ethanol. It is hard to predict exact figures, but this could bring substantial growth to us." With around 200 bio-ethanol plants in operation in the U.S., Sijbesma said the U.S. is the acknowledged world leader in the field. "Ethanol is big, but if you look at the cellulosic aspect, you can see the huge growth potential for the industry," he said. Contact Dan Voigt at dvoigt@emmetsburgnews.com