Plant Communication

"An idyllic field of flowers can be a noisy place. It's just that we can't hear the sounds."

"Our findings suggest the world around us is full of plant sounds, and that these sounds contain information -- for example, about water scarcity or injury."

"We assume that in nature the sounds emitted by plants are detected by creatures nearby, such as bats, rodents, various insects, and possibly also other plants -- that can hear the high frequencies and derive relevant information." 

Lilach Hadany, School of Plant Sciences and Food Security, Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University

House plant enthusiast Drew Beaudoin is surprised to learn plants emit sounds. (Katerina Georgieva/CBC)

Scientists in Israel discovered that plants voice their discomfort and distress due to drought, neglect or disease. The human ear cannot detect these sounds that are high-pitched emergency signals of distress. But they recorded the sounds of tomato, tobacco, wheat, corn and cactus making occasional ultrasonic popping noises which the researchers likened to bubble wrap. Plants ramp these sounds up when they're suffering stress. The findings were published in the journal Cell.

 

Famously, other, previous studies showed that plants respond positively and tend to thrive when exposed to music and to being gently spoken to. Now, science brings us the news that plants also communicate in their very particular biological way that nature has endowed them with; plant speech. Water scarcity or injury provoke plants to distress they aurally broadcast.

The research team placed plants in an acoustic box that was placed in an isolated basement with no background sound. Microphones capable of recording sounds at frequencies of 20 to 250 kilohertz were placed four inches from each plant.The plants were then subjected to different treatments; some left unwatered for five days; others had their stems cut, and a control group was left intact. 

Subsequent recordings showed sounds were emitted by the plants at frequencies of 40-80 kilohertz. Unstressed plants produced barely one click every hour on average; the stressed plants emitted dozens of sounds every hour. The maximum frequency detected by a human adult is roughly15 kilohertz.

Noises were emitted by water-sressed plants before they were visibly dehydrated. The researchers found it was possible to identify the distressed plant along with the type of stress being experienced. A dehydrated tomato plant made a different pattern of clicks as compared to a dehydrated cactus. Happy plants on the other hand, had a tendency to be quiet.

The potential for monitoring plants to determine whether they are struggling, based on their noises is a potential for a new type of agricultural program the research team envisions emerging from this research. Sound recordings could conceivably be used in irrigation monitoring crop hydration to help distribute water more efficiently.

Tel Aviv University professor Lilach Hadany, right, led the study, working with Prof. Yossi Yovel, left. (Tel Aviv University)

Food Security as a Geopolitical Weapon

"They've just become so common. Every week, I would say, we are getting contacted by farmers or food companies. It's one of the soft bellies of our critical infrastructure."

"I think we are all waiting for disaster."

Ali Dahghantanha, Cyber Science Lab, University of Guelph, Ontario

"These are all systems that we explicitly depend on every single day, and they have become extremely vulnerable to manipulation of all sorts."

"They're vulnerable because we haven't thought carefully about the security of how we set these systems up."

"I mean, it's truly terrifying, to be honest."

Even Fraser, director, Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph

"The interruption of the global food supply is not collateral damage from the war in Ukraine."

"It is a planned hybrid weapon to further massively destabilize the global economy and political order."

Yulia Klymenko, Ukrainian MP, first deputy chair, Transport and Infrastructure Committee, Ukraine

"There is a lot of innovation happening in agriculture in Canada."

"So we are at risk from foreign-backed espionage."

Mohamad Yaghi, Agriculture and Climate policy lead, Royal Bank of Canada

Hackers could be waiting to cause disruption, or simply just monitoring and collecting data on foreign agricultural methods. Photo by Chung Sun-Jun/Getty Images

 

Last year Ali Dehghantanha's squad of engineers and computer scientists responded to dozens of reports from southwestern Ontario of hacks within farming and food production operations. Sometimes the incidents represent a bad link in an email with hackers demanding money to unlock a system or to return the farmer's data. In other instances hackers break into a farm system and threaten to kill livestock; chickens, cattle. 

In a third of the cases, investigators found evidence of state-sponsored hackers originating in
Russia, China, North Korea and Iran who have quietly gained access to control systems inside a farming operation. The University of Guelph is located close to Toronto in one of the province's most vital farming hubs. A group of specialists work out of the Cyber Science Lab, visiting banks, defence contractors, hospitals and farms. The lab received fifty calls from the food industry last year.

The realization dawned that the domestic food production system may be one of the most obvious cracks in Canada's national defences. Criminals or state-sponsored hackers breaking into systems to disrupt critical infrastructure like transportation or health care or food production only recently become plausible owing in part to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

 

 Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE) the country's signals intelligence agency, warned that Russian-backed hackers are "exploring options for potential counterattacks" on critical infrastructure in Canada and other NATO allies supporting Ukraine.

 

A computer monitor is seen inside a GPS-equipped John Deere tractor. As farm use of technology and smart devices grows, experts say more needs to be done to protect against cyberattacks that could threaten food security. (Seth Perlman/The Associated Press)

 

Farms have become complex technical operations using networks of remote monitors measuring soil moisture, or robotic milkers capable of detecting an infection in a single teat, or environmental control systems maintaining the precise indoor temperature and air filtration requirements of a poultry barn. All of which in theory could be commandeered and held for ransom by a hacker. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security identified several "hypothetical threat scenarios" in its 2018 report where hackers could compromise agricultural operations. 

 

One scenario had a terrorist lift data on the health of a large livestock herd. "They modify the data to look like the herds have foot and mouth disease, and dump the data on the internet". In such an instance it could take weeks for lab tests to confirm the outbreak was in fact false -- in the interim causing trade issues and shaking public trust in the food supply. Another scenario had hackers manipulate moisture sensors in a farmer's soil, triggering watering systems to flood the fields and destroy crops.

 

In its invasion of Ukraine an effective part of the Russian playbook has been attacking agricultural infrastructure. EU trade counsellor Maud Labat warned that Moscow strategized how to wield food as a "geopolitical weapon". Its attacks on transportation and grain storage infrastructure, its months-long blockade of ports on the Black Sea choked off access to one of the world's most important bread baskets, driving up global grain prices last spring. Food shortage concerns intensified in developing nations depending on the region for imports. 

 

National Cyber Threat Assessment's latest report stated state-sponsored hackers are not likely to disrupt or destroy critical infrastructure unless Canada enters into direct hostilioties, leaving  hackers more likely to break into Canadian systems to collect information or "pre-position" in the event of a future conflict. Released last fall, the CSE report stated adversaries could use cyberattacks as a form of "power projection and intimidation".

 

 

"In the absence of a significant escalation in international hostilities, we assess it is unlikely that state-sponsored actors will intentionally seek to disrupt Canadian critical infrastructure and cause major damage or loss of life", advised CSE spokesperson Kyla Borden. "This is organized crime. These folks have HR departments. They have employees of the month awards. This is big business", explained John Hewie, a national security officer at Microsoft Inc., referring to sophisticated networks focusing on "big-game hunting" -- attacks where a hacker takes control of a system or data from a major business and asks for a steep ransom.

 

In fact, the Canadian food industry alone experienced a series of high-profile incidents late last year, a "cybersecurity incident" at Maple Leaf Foods Inc., one of Canada's largest meat packers. Empire Co.Ltd., Canada's second-largest grocery chain experienced a "cybersecurity intrusion" that snarled operations, expected to cost the company $25 million. According to Janos Botschner, lead investigator of the Cyber Security Capacity in Canadian Agriculture, approximately four to 11 percent of Canada's farms have had a cyberattack attempt on their operations. "This is very much an estimate, but it's probably also an under-report", he clarified. 

A farmer in a chicken barn in Ontario. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post files

Feeding the World

"I've not heard of other places where there's been a pollination shortfall."

"Beekeepers are having more problems maintaining their colonies and there's more demand for their colonies for pollination."

Robert Paxton, zoology head, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

 

"We've built this dependency on managed pollinators, specifically honeybees."

"We've created this demand for commercial pollinators that we move around in pollination units."

"That's pretty far from the natural environment where a honeybee could thrive."

Maggie Shanahan, bee-keeper, researcher, Spivak Laboratory, University of Minnesota 

Beekeeper Kevin Nixon inspects one of his hives near Penhold, Alta., on June 24, 2022. Photo by Gavin John/Bloomberg

When berry crops go into flowering, berry farmers are no longer reliant on the timely arrival of bees to pollinate the flowers so berries will be produced. What was once a routine natural occurrence has been imperilled by a global die-off of bees. Some are presumed to have died as a result of the use of pesticides, of loss of habitat, of naturally-occurring disease afflicting bees. And nor have bees belonging to hives maintained by bee-keepers for honey production been spared. 

"We probably haven't seen this high of losses since one of our early years to bee-keeping. I know some guys that lost 90 percent [of their hived bees]", said Kevin Nixon, in the business for close to three decades. Of the 10,000 hives he manages near Red Deer, Alberta, he has lost 40 percent. Across the entire country growers of blueberries face problems relating to a shortage of commercial hives they've become reliant on for the production of Canada's most valuable fruit crop.

 

In Canada, bee-keepers on average have lost half their colonies this year. Massive honeybee deaths have been reported worldwide by bee-keepers in the last several years. Canada is seeing catastrophic levels of bee hive losses. Its $274-million blueberry market  makes it the world's seventh-largest exporter. But the fragile pollination industry, facing a breakdown, is threatening that export crop.

 

There has been a boom in acreage devoted to fruit and vegetables throughout North America, even as the number of wild bees have diminished. Where once bee-keepers struggled to earn a living selling honey, they began renting out hives to farmers needing to boost their yields. This led to "pollination brokers" connecting growers with hives, an industry criss-crossing the continent on semi-trucks reaching destinations.

 

Beekeeper Kevin Nixon with some of his hives. Photo by Gavin John/Bloomberg

Bees' critical role in pollination of flowering plants to trigger reproduction benefits the world with nutritious and colourful foods like apples, cherries, melons and almonds. Over 100 crops in the United States are reliant on pollinators The added revenue brought to crop production is valued at $18 billion on an annual basis, according to the U.S.Department of Agriculture.

The very fact that bees have been overworked has helped to create the crisis in pollination. "The paradigm of bringing in honeybees is at a breaking point. Bees are not getting better; they are slowly getting worse", commented Mark Winston, a leading expert in bees and their pollinating role in agriculture.

In 2005, wholesale death rates in the United States among honeybee colonies were alarming, a phenomenon occurring in other countries as well, attributed to issues from extreme weather and chemical exposure, to parasites. Typically, bee-keepers in the U.S. lose on average 40 percent of their bees annually; losses in Canada on the other hand, average about 20 percent.

Studies suggest the number of managed honeybees rose over 80 percent since the early 1950s in tandem with beekeepers expanding to match rising demands of agriculture. In Canada, about 400,000 colonies of bees were lost this year, with few replacement options according to the Canadian Honey Council. Canada has sourced 85 percent of its imports of honeybees from New Zealand. A two-pound package of bees  holds about 8,000 bees. Australia and Chile provide the remainder of Canada's bee imports.

Jason Smith is chair of the British Columbia Blueberry Council, which is the country’s largest blueberry producing province. Photo by Jennifer Gauthier/Bloomberg

The Symbiosis of Two Great Wheat Growing Nations

"Kyiv is the birthplace of the Slavs, and arguably, Ukraine is the starting point. It's really only when the Russian Empire captures this region and takes it over that it becomes a kind of colony of Russia."

"A lot of history is written about generals and battles and famous men who produced a new kind of stirrup or something like that in the Middle Ages."

"And it's really, I think, the men and women who experimented with wheat, seeds and cross-pollination hundreds and hundreds of years ago that are responsible for our survival."

"And the stirrup is not nearly as important in the long run than all that food experimentation that was done, particularly along the Black Sea."

"For Putin [whose master's thesis was on strategic resources in Russia and Ukraine], it's all about resources and always has been. [Russia's] elemental desire [to dominate the Black Sea is important to understanding the conflict]."

"Russia's future has always depended on control of the Black Sea region. When it was the Russian Empire, it was the foreign exchange Russia got from Ukraine that made it possible for it to expand. And then even in the Soviet period, it was Ukrainian grain that was a big part of what held the Eastern Bloc together."

Scott Reynolds Nelson, historian, author: Oceans of Grain

"[The single spring wheat plant Fife received] was not some mutant produced in Canada. It belonged to a variety cultivated in the middle of Europe and was accidentally present as a single grain in this shipment of winter wheat."

"Only because of a strange and very unlikely accident did Ukrainian wheat, in the form of a single grain find its way to Canada -- and not to the address of some experimental farm or famous breeder, but to the field of an ordinary farmer."

The late research biologist Stephan Symko

"The introduction of Marquis wheat is one of the greatest practical triumphs that Canada has ever had, one that is perennially fruitful, not impoverishing but ever increasing the wealth of our country and making it a better land to live in."

"But this is not all, for Marquis extends its blessings far beyond the bounds of this country, not merely to the United States of America where it is also grown on a large scale, but to the Old World. Especially in Europe, to which it is borne by a great fleet of ships across the broad Atlantic, it adds to the quantity and improves the quality of the daily bread of millions of toilers who have never herd its name."

A.H. Reginald Buller: Essays on Wheat

In 1842, David Fife developed Red Fife Wheat, the dominant wheat grown in Western Canada for 60 years – 1860 to 1910. Red Fife is the male parent of Marquis Wheat which, in 1915, supplanted Red Fife as the dominant Canadian wheat.  nGenium

 

In Africa and the Middle East up to 50 million people risk facing famine within months, deprived by the Russian military assault on Ukraine, of wheat grain from Ukraine. Canada stands prepared to send ships to aid export of Ukrainian grain; a metaphor for the grain that binds the two nations historically. Plant breeders and research circles are aware that Canada's famous wheat owes a debt of gratitude to Ukraine as an industry built upon a kernel of grain from Halychyna in Western Ukraine.

Red Fife -- Canada's oldest wheat allied with Slow Food International's Ark of Taste as a catalogue of endangered heritage foods, and its hybrids including Marquis were descended from wheat grown in Halychanka, Western Ukraine. Plant breeders created new wheat variations with the use of the hereditary base of Halychanka. There is an origins story associated with Red Fife relating to a few grains from a ship full of wheat docked at Glasgow that were tucked into a hatband.

Those grains were sent to a farmer whose name was David Fife who farmed in Otonabee, Peterborough County, in Ontario. A friend from Glasgow where David Fife was originally from, sent farmer Fife grains he took from a ship carrying winter wheat from Danzig, (now Gdansk, Poland). Farmer Fife planted the seeds in the spring of 1842. True to its name, winter wheat requires a cold winter; a single seed sprouted and matured out of which farmer Fife developed Red Fife, still valued today for bread.

Eventually Marquis was derived from Red Fife, a cross with an Indian wheat, Hard Red Calcutta, maturing earlier with a higher yield than Red Fife and with similar bread-making qualities. Marquis was released in 1911, and named the best wheat variety in Canada. Marquis took up 80 to 90 percent of total wheat acreage by 1918, from northern Saskatchewan to southern Nebraska, establishing Canada as a wheat export breadbasket.

 

Ukraine is usually a major producer of cereals such as maize and wheat    Reuters

 

Other Ukrainian grains; Odessa 4 and Myronivka 808 have as well formed a portion of Canadian wheat breeding programs. Barley from Brandon was shared with a Kharkiv research institute. Wheat has been sowed along Ukraine's Black Sea coast since 2700 BC, where the country's black soil lends itself marvelously well to the production of the staple grain. Its broad plains, deep rivers and fresh water from snow melt off mountains enabled wheat export from ports like Odessa.

Whether occupied by Russia, Austria or Poland, Ukrainian wheat obscured its origins, labelled for export under the name of the occupying power. For much of recent history Ukraine was not thought of as a separate region. Known as "Little Russia" in the 18th and 19th centuries, yet in the fifth century when the Ukrainian capital Kyiv was founded, the regional importance of Ukraine kept it a vassal state to whichever neighbour was most powerful at the time.

"Everything relates back to the backbone of Marquis. As a direct descendant of Red Fife [Halychanka], the [Ukrainian] contribution is there."

"For the longest time, the standard for winter hardiness in our winter wheat trials was a variety called Kharkov [named after the city of Kharkiv, home to one of the largest national plant gene banks]."

Dr. George Fedak, research scientist emeritus, Agriculture and AgriFood Canada

Pictured is a wheat field in western Ukraine   AFP via Getty Images

Fallout From Russia's Invasion of Ukraine on Food Accessibility and Prices

"Given what has been happening around the world over the last several months with supply chain issues, saying that food price inflation will stem from this conflict is an understatement."

"If you think Canada is immune to all of this, given our domestic agriculture production, think again."

"Agricultural commodities are traded on world markets. What happens in Ukraine and Russia affects us."

"The world, especially the agri-food world, is deeply interconnected."
Professor Sylvain Charlebois, senior director, Agri-Food Analytics Lab., Dalhousie University, Halifax

Farmers harvested wheat near Tbilisskaya, Russia, last year.   Credit...Vitaly Timkiv/Associated Press

Oil has been recognized as Russia's big stick. Its lockhold on energy shipments to Europe where many countries are highly dependent on the mercurial decision-making of Vladimir Putin, threatens those countries when he holds back supplies, as he indulges in from time to time. Security of supply for their own domestic market grinds the wheels of industry, heats homes and businesses, and is of vital importance for any country's economy.

The swift and direct result of the current situation with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has unleashed that insecurity, and it has imposed upon Europe as well as the global community energy destabilization in the steeply rising price of oil. A year ago there was an oversupply of oil, and it was being sold at $35 a gallon. It has now increased to a staggering $100 a gallon -- and rising. Inflation is on its way to a gallop overall, increasing the price of durable product shipments and food.

Under normal circumstances, Russia exports roughly five million barrels of crude daily and about half is piped to Europe. Making it extremely difficult for those countries hugely dependent on Russian oil to follow through on their intentions to punish President Putin for his irredentist inclinations, culminating in invasion with the intention to occupy Ukraine in the sense of installing a puppet government loyal to Russia.

Penalizing Russia's Putin regime comes with unpalatable risks on many levels, in an increasingly interconnected world of finance and trade. While expressing their displeasure with Mr. Putin's imperious move to break Ukraine of its intention to move ever closer to the West, aspiring to join NATO and the European Union, many countries are concerned over the disruption of Russian energy exports. Particularly at a time when the world is slowly recovering from the economic disaster that SARS-CoV-2 wrought globally.

 

Ukraine's highly fertile black soil makes it an important country for global wheat supplies. (Photo by Alexander RekaTass via Getty Images)

 

Transportation costs for all manner of goods, and most particularly food, will be increasing at an uncomfortable rate. The region under a state of conflict is an exporter of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus fertilizer. In response to the invasion fertilizer prices were increased by over $200 a ton overnight. Farmers hoping to increase their yields in response to higher prices now are viewing steeper operating costs. 

Ukraine, the second largest land mass in Europe, favoured by nature and geography with rich soil, has long been a breadbasket for Europe. Global commodity markets are responding with the onset of the conflict that Russia has brought upon Ukraine. It took no time at all to see wheat and corn futures reaching record-high levels. Canada is a world-class grain producer, the second-largest land mass in the world, after Russia. 

Ukraine, the ninth-largest producer of wheat in the world, has a production level marginally smaller than Canada on a yearly basis. It is also the fifth-largest world producer of corn with agriculture representing some 70 percent of the land in the country, reflecting the fact that about 25 percent of black soil reserves is in Ukraine, enjoying exceptional growing conditions. Ukraine and Russia together account for 25 percent of global wheat exports. The region also produces barley and rye in large quantities.

With the invasion, a ban on all commercial vessels has resulted in the inland sea of Azov -- the main connection to the Black Sea, the location of Ukrainian ports -- becoming inaccessible. Ukrainian grain exports are transported mostly by sea, and marine transport logistics have now been severely compromised in the region.

 

"Global wheat markets have been tighter this year than usual, and that is because there were reduced harvests,"

"At the same time, demand has been really strong, so that has made wheat markets really vulnerable to any – even potential – supply shock."

"With both Russia and Ukraine being major exporters of wheat, this is only going to add pressure to wheat markets."

Erin Collier, economist, trade and markets division, UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization

Agriculture and Species Protection

"I tell my students, it's like all the Saturdays for the rest of your life are gone. From my perspective, it's just a crime that we are destroying the biodiversity on the planet."                                                                                                                    "Of course, people need to eat and we have to have agriculture, but we were wondering if there was a way to arrange crop fields in a way that would reduce the impact on biodiversity."                                                                                          "Even when you have these very narrow bits between crops, that still represents a refuge. So that a species that's in a crop field when something's going on -- plowing, for example -- that's a place they can go to sit out the storm, so to speak, without having to go great distances, which many of them can't do."                         "People are worried right now about the crisis in the numbers of pollinators. The numbers of birds, frog and insects are all declining, and all of these actually do things for us without us being aware of it (eating pests in the fields, pollinating crops; roots reduce soil erosion]. Most of the things we do rely on natural species." "Many farmers really do love nature, so if they could be convinced that they could make their fields smaller, have this large benefit to nature and not reduce their profit, they would probably be pretty amenable to it."                                         "From my perspective, it's just a crime that we are destroying the biodiversity on the planet."                                                                                                         Lenore Fahrig, biology professor, Carleton University

Small strips of natural and semi-natural habitat, like this hedgerow, can provide wildlife with an area for food, breeding or an escape from farming operations. (Shutterstock)

 It has been estimated by experts in the field of biology and biodiversity that human activity has been the cause of an estimated 15 percent reduction in species; one in seven becoming extinct in the last century and a half. Studies have concluded that the bird population has been reduced by close to 30 percent in the past fifty years; amphibians are disappearing at close to four percent yearly, and insect decline stands at roughly nine percent every decade.

Professor Fahrig has been leading research in Eastern Ontario and across Europe for the past decade, identifying strategies possible to  help in halting the purge of species. She identified important factors in an article published in the journal The Conversation; the sizes of agricultural fields, and crop variety, all contributing to biodiversity decline. Suggesting alternatives that could see farmers making changes to help emeliorate the identified biodiversity losses.

Pest-eating carabid beetle, can benefit crops. (Shutterstock)

As a landscape ecologist, Professor Fahrig zeroes in on factors like deforestation, urban buildup and roads affectng biodiversity. While all these issues play a negative role in diminished biodiversity there is no other issue that matches the effects of agriculture on species reduction worldwide as agriculture. With her colleagues, she examined 93 Eastern Ontario landscapes, each one square kilometre in measure, chosen as representing field size varieties and crop diversity.

 Sampling bird numbers, along with bees, plants, spiders, carabid beetles, frogs, syrphid flies, bats and butterflies in each of the fields and at their edges, they found that the loss of many of the species important for pollination and pest control would result in serious consequences should they be eliminated from the species pool thanks to the influence of agriculture on their habitat.

In their research, they found that where smaller fields were used, much greater biodiversity resulted, reasoning that some of the increased numbers would be attributable to fence lines, ditches and hedgerows that separate fields.  Professor Fahrig, however, argues that on the evidence greater biodiversity resulted by 50 percent, where average field sizes were diminished from eight to two hectares.

Similar fieldwork took place, led by Professor Fahrig in over 300 landscapes located in seven different regions and climates in Europe; England, France, Germany and Spain. Where findings were seen to be consistent with data resulting from the Ontario studies. This, at the very time when economy of scale and operational efficiency in larger fields on larger farms are currently the preferred norm.

Seeds of Unknown Provenance

“Do not plant seeds from unknown origins."

"Unauthorized seeds could be the seeds of invasive plants, or carry plant pests, which can be harmful when introduced into Canada."

Canadian Food Inspection Agency

"If you receive an unsolicited shipment of foreign seeds in the mail from China or Taiwan DO NOT plant or dispose of them."

"Call the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) at 519 691-1306 or 1 800 442-2342."

"Unsolicited seeds could be invasive & threaten our environment."

Ontario Provincial Police

Packages of unidentified seeds which appear to have been mailed to Canada Photograph:( Twitter)

"I've had people describe to me that the seeds are coated with something purple. I haven't had it in my hands yet, but it sounds an awful lot like a seed treatment."

"The a-ha moment I really had here is how much seed people are buying from other countries. I have been simply amazed, when I talk to people, how they say the other seed they’ve bought from China is fine."

Robin Pruisner, state seed control official, Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Iowa

The U.S.Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has instructed state agencies to collect seeds in their possession -- that individuals have sent to them after having received them unsolicited in the mail, their origin postmarked China -- and to send them on to it for analysis. To date, the agency has identified 14 various seed species. The seeds run the gamut from herbs to vegetables, grasses to flowering plants.

Experts have issued warning that seeds originating from areas of the world other than North America have the potential to harm commodity crops. This, resulting from households in the United States and Canada receiving envelopes from China addressed to their home addresses, and sometimes marked as containing "jewellery", for customs purposes, while containing mysterious seeds.

Iowa, the foremost American corn growing state's seed control official has received 297 reports from state residents of having received such seed envelopes. Nothing within the strange envelopes identifies the seeds, nor do the envelopes contain instructions or explanations.

The origin of the seeds is being investigated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, even while China's foreign ministry spokesman has stated that the packages appear to have been falsified, however that can be construed. In Canada, the Ontario Provincial Police issued a Facebook warning against "foreign seeds in the mail from China or Taiwan".

Elsewhere, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services stated 1,208 reports about the seeds had come in to their attention. On one day alone they had received 300 telephone calls from the public wanting to know how they should proceed after having received such packets. State agriculture departments have also reported packages postmarked from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The U.S. Agriculture Department conjectured the packages are possibly part of a "brushing" scam where people are sent items gratis from a seller, which then goes on to post false positive customer reviews to aid further sales.

A Solution To Every Problem

"We invented this technology to make  the apples safer -- and that's when our business grew substantially."
"We are not in the mask business. But when the news came out about a mask shortage we thought, well, if they need something to clean the masks -- we could clean them -- and because of all our work with food safety we had about a five-year running start at this."
"You never know where you are going to end up in life."
"It is kind of a simple story, really, about a guy who loved being a farmer, who had a farm selling candy apples and ran into a problem and fixed it -- for fruits and vegetables -- with something that also happened to work on viruses."
Paul Moyer, farmer, co-owner Clean Works

This man, 54, and his brother operate farms next to each other on land that has been in their family for the past 200 years, handed down from generation to generation. His is the most current generation to farm the land, a 130-acre piece of rural Ontario hard by Beamsville, Ontario. Aside from farming, Mr. Moyer produces a sweet-tooth favourite; candy apples. They're popular not just as traditional fare at fairs, but they can also be found, labelled as Moyers Apple Products, that retail what is called gourmet sweets products.

Back in 2015 a deadly listeria infectious outbreak made news in California. The listeria infection was traced back to candy apples, and although not directly implicating the Moyers Apple Products, publicity about the deadly infection threatened the thriving business, leading the Moyers family to consult with each other to find a solution to the problem of bacterial contamination. Although listeria can be found in any type of food, milk products, meat, processed meat and unpasteurized milk, it also infects fresh fruits and vegetables, picking up the bacterium from the soil.

Well, it might not be practical to try to sanitize whole arable fields, but focusing on the products out of the fields could work. They decided to consult with Professor Keith Warriner, a food scientist at University of Guelph, and with his help a purpose-specific mechanical device was designed and produced which would effectively sterilize fresh fruits and vegetables. The device makes use of ultraviolet light, hydrogen-peroxide gas and ozone.

Named the Clean Flow Mini the machine is 99.99 effective in killing pathogens, listeria included, along with mould and mildew. Out of its successful production came a new pathway for the agro-business-involved family. The Clean Flow Mini is in demand on other farms, having been given attention through awards causing it to be adopted by the industry. A decade ago, five employees prepared the Moyer products. At the present time, up to 30 people work at production.

Finally, while the world threatened to spin off its axis since the SARS-CoV-2 virus began haunting global populations and people were dying in untold numbers from a terrifying new global pandemic, amidst a frantic search for personal protection equipment for health workers vulnerable to the infectious disease in their physical proximity to sufferers, it occurred to Paul Moyer that he could offer help.

iStock.com/gpointstudio

His sanitizing machine, so proficiently effective with vegetables and fruits could also disinfect sanitary masks worn by health professionals, partially solving a critical shortage of the N-95 gold-standard masks. He and his team of employees began placing used masks well steeped in a host of viruses into the Clean Flow Mini to cleanse them. the mini has the capacity to clean 800 masks hourly, and it has been renamed appropriately enough, the "health-care mini".

It has been approved by Health Canada and now the production line that would spit out a single unit weekly for farmers, now produces 15 of the units every week, to fill a backlog of 75 orders with more expected -- to supply hospitals, long-term care homes and the Department of National Defence with the efficient and effective little cleansing machine.

The Clēan Flow Health Care Mini can sanitize up to 800 N95 masks per hour, the company says. (Clean Works)

"These guys at the NRC [National Research Council] and Health Canada, they worked the past two weeks, I would say 24/7, with us to validate and ensure that the technology provides the health-care workers with the solutions that they need."
"It was quite an extensive walk that we did but, again, it was to get a solution out there to health care providers."
"You can move it from boardroom to boardroom, if that's what's required, or from floor to floor in hospitals and institutions."
"It's not a big, bulky machine of any sort. It's very portable. That's the way that we designed it."


Mark VanderVeen, president and CEO, Clean Works

The Search for More Disease Resistance Citrus Species

"Much of the Florida citrus groves are already pretty inundated."{
"It's going to be hard because we didn't catch it [lethal pestilence] early enough."
Leah R. Johnson, assistant professor of statistics, Virginia Tech

"[Citrus growers] are resilient and optimistic about the future."
"Florida will continue to be a major producer of citrus for years to come."
Shelley Rossetter, spokeswoman, Florida Department of Citrus

"Some people believe that citrus in the Central Valley [California] might be spared because of the climate — that the winters are too cold and summers too hot for the insects that transmit the disease." "But it looks like the Central Valley temperatures are right at the threshold, so a few degrees warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer could change that"
"I think we’re at the tipping point. If people work together and nature helps us out, fresh citrus might be able to hold on."
UC Davis professor Neil McRoberts, plant disease epidemiologist, scientific advisor, Citrus Research Board of California

Credit: Joe Proudman/UC Davis

Workers rush to harvest oranges after a light rain in Exeter, California, just west of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California’s Central Valley.

A bacterium named huanglongbing which originated in China, has infected ninety percent of Florida's orange groves.A sage who enjoys tragedy might chuckle at the fact that oranges too originated in China, so it could be seen as poetic justice that China, currently embroiled in a heated trade war with the U.S. that has upset trade between the two countries and impacted economic trade globally as well, has its revenge. Not that the bacterium, (yellow dragon sickness) is sparing oranges in China.

The Asian citrus psyllid spreads a bacteria that causes citrus greening. U.Florida

HLB (short for huanglongbing) is "one of the most destructive foreign plant diseases imaginable [and] has decimated the state's iconic industry", according to the state's Department of Citrus, irrespective of what its spokeswoman optimistically stated. Researchers at rural Lake Alfred not far from Disney World, are frantic in their efforts to develop new root stocks hoping to create orange trees better able to tolerate disease, looking to engineer new orange types to replace varieties that are more vulnerable.

The HLB pathogen frequently has the effect of stopping green fruit from its ripening stage; the symptom named citrus greening, but even when the fruit does manage to ripen it will drop to the ground before it can be plucked off the tree, and under Florida law citrus untouched yet falls from a tree cannot be sold. Harvest time is November to May, but thousands of growers have abandoned their groves. In 2004, there were over 7,000 citrus farmers in Florida; close to 5,000 of those farmers have been forced to drop out of growing citrus.

California’s citrus industry has a total economic impact of $7.1-B. Credit: Joe Proudman/UC Davis

Factories processing fruit to juice have seen two-thirds closing down operations, while packing operations has gone from close to 80 operations to 26. In the ten years up to 2016, according to a University of Florida study, 34,000 orange-industry jobs have been eliminated. This loss in the citrus cultivation industry has the potential to destroy the second-largest industry in the state after tourism, which produces over 80 percent of the American orange juice supply.

"We're in a race right now to save the Florida citrus industry", noted director of the University of Florida's Citrus Research and Education Center, Michael Rogers, of the devastating effect of HLB, spread by yet another invasive species, a citrus psyllid, a tiny insect which sucks the bacteria into its gut while feeding on citrus leaves, then infects the next healthy leaf it feeds upon. The insect reproduces rapidly, developing a resistance to insecticides within a year.

A study by University of Florida and Virginia Tech researchers indicates climate change will permit the psyllid to spread to states north of Florida as temperatures continue to rise, creating further opportunities for the pest which thrives in temperatures between about 15 and 30 degrees Celsius; bad news for growers in Florida where that temperature range typifies a normal year-round climate.

Oranges being sorted before juicing at Florida Natural’s headquarters in Lake Wales, Florida.  ABC News

The disease was discovered in 1919, in China. Citrus psyllids were quick to spread when smuggled tree clippings from Asia brought the insects along to Delray Beach in 2005. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine feels that a breakthrough discovery for managing HLB is unlikely to surface in the near future, according to a study it produced last year.

Basking In Ignorance

"Any farm is completely artificial. Even with organic farms, you strip away all the native vegetation." "Organic farmers also have to use pesticides. Some of those can be especially harmful, even if they’re dug up from the earth."
"Most of us aren’t farmers…It’s so far out that people can’t really understand how important genetic improvement is to the livelihood and health of people."
"The poorest people, who most need the technology, may be denied access because of the vague fears and prejudices of those who have enough to eat."
"We must focus on how we can help children grow up healthy, we must ask if farmers in rural communities can thrive and if everyone can afford the food."
Pamela Ronald, plant geneticist, distinguished professor, University of California

"[People] envision that all of their food should come from a farm like their grandfather." 
"They don’t connect the fact that if you were to grow food that [old] way, you couldn’t grow enough and it would be incredibly expensive."
"Breeders were trying to do something about it [severe European corn worm infestation that destroyed corn ears and kernel] and finally a solution came along. That solution [Bt, where an organic insect controller, bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bacteria, is inserted into corn] still works." 
"The technology works. It’s low cost and it uses fewer pesticides than before."
Terry Daynard, Farmer, Guelph, Ontario

"This result is perverse, but is consistent with previous research on the psychology of extremism." "Extreme views often stem from people feeling they understand complex topics better than they do."
Phil Fernbach, lead author, professor of marketing, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado

"Our findings suggest that changing peoples' minds first requires them to appreciate what they don't know."
"Without this first step, educational interventions might not work very well to bring people in line with the scientific consensus."
Nicholas Light, study co-author, Leeds School of Business PhD candidate

Published in Nature Human Behaviour, in a collaborative research study between researchers at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Toronto and the University of Pennsylvania, over two thousand people in the United States and Europe were canvassed for their opinions about GM foods. The surveys queried respondents about how confident they felt about understanding genetically modified foods, and followed up by testing how much they actually knew, with a battery of true-false questions covering general science and genetics.

Over 90 percent were in opposition to the use of genetically modified foods, in stark contrast to the considered, scientific consensus of plant scientists, with close to 90 percent of that demographic believing that genetically modified organisms are completely safe and can be of great benefit to humankind. And then the other finding of the study was that those most opposed to genetically modified foods were strong in their belief that they were completely knowledgeable about the issue, even though they also happened to score lowest on actual tests of science knowledge.

The study was conducted in France, Germany and the United States, with equally similar results in all instances. This more or less ties in with the percentage of the public staunch in their belief that vaccines are dangerous to human health and well-being. This group of people, though smaller in number than the GMO adversaries, also labour under the delusion that they have superior knowledge than scientific experts in this area.

Dietary and vitamin supplements are casually accepted by many Americans for varied reasons, but their use is not necessarily linked to hard evidence of the consequences of their use. Most people who use supplements appear to be immune to any suggestions from dietary experts who contradict manufacturers' claims for superior health resulting from the use of the supplements. A quarter of those surveyed on this topic felt it reasonable to stop their use of supplements should experts prove them to be ineffective; the balance would not.

This phenomenon is considered to be in the realm of cognitive bias, related to the Dunning-Kruger effect which two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger outlined in their 1999 paper "Unskilled and Unaware of it". The reasons people who are most likely to appear to believe they know vastly more than they do is that their "incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it". In other words, a lack of knowledge renders them without the contextual skills required to recognize errors.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is credited as an explanation in part for why it is that efforts to educate the public tend all too often toward failure. Researchers in 2003 examined how communication strategies on GMOs -- with the intention to help the public understand that their beliefs failed to align with experts' opinions -- ended up backfiring; the results of all the efforts made consumers less likely to trust and accept GMO foods.

Anti-GM protestors: not the hottest chillies in the bowl?

Credit:  br-photo/getty images

The Farm Revolution

"They eat when they want, lie down when they want and feed when they want."
"And a happier cow produces more milk and better milk."
Christine Grady, general manager, Rivendale Farms

"You come away with a tremendous respect for farmers, and that the work is hard and complex."
"The key is getting the right mix of art and science."
Thomas Tull, entrepreneur, tech ventures investor, film producer

Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette

Just outside Bulger, Pennsylvania the 150 cows at Rivendale Farms are fitted with collars to monitor their movement, eating and rumination patterns and when they are milked there is no human hand involved, but rather robotic machines, not particularly new in itself, but upgraded, modernized, fully automatic. The milking machines used at the farm come with a steep price tag: $200,000 for each. They're part of the process, alongside the automated feeding system, without which the milking barn at this farm would have at least five workers, not the one currently employed there to oversee production.

Rivendale Farm is part of a new movement in farming, a similar move seen in all other methods of production where high-tech equipment is introduced and fewer human hands are required. Some deplore this, others celebrate it as the wave of the future. In some European countries up to thirty percent of cows are machine-milked; in the U.S. the share is still roughly two percent, according to Mathew Haan of Pennsylvania State University. The differential can be explained by programs supporting milk prices in Europe along with higher labour costs which combined encourage automation investment.

Investment is the word. In point of fact Rivendale Farm is an investment as much as an experiment for its owner, a wealthy man who has placed several million of his billions into modernizing Rivendale. Thomas Tull envisions his farm becoming totally self-sustained by 2020. What this investor and farm owner foresees for its future, experts recognize as a trend among small farmers purposing to raise healthy food and livestock with less reliance on fertilizer, fossil fuel and processed feed.

Rivendale Farms uses new technology in its operations, including a feed robot for its cows.   Credit Ross Mantle for The New York Times

Farms in the U.S. have joined another trend; consolidation, where smaller farms have been bought out and combined to make for bigger and sometimes very large acreage devoted to farm production on steroids, as it were. Rivendale's pasture land, crops and woods take up 70 hectares where the average size farm in the U.S. now being 180 hectares with over half of the agricultural value produced by a limited fraction of very large farms, averaging 1,080 hectares. These very large farms are highly mechanized; smaller farms are now joining that trend in their own way.

Rivendale's dairy barn is void of people, devoted only to the presence of its cows. In place of farm workers in the dairy farm there is the automated feed system and three robotic milking machines. Milked four times daily compared with the conventional twice a day when milking is done by hand, the Jersey cows have readily adjusted to the difference, producing 14 percent more milk than the breed's average production, and with a higher protein and butterfat content.

Close by the dairy barn is a greenhouse where kale, arugula and baby carrots thrive by automation where temperature, humidity and sunlight exposure are controlled by sensors and retractable metallic screens. Small robots are in the planning stages to roam about the three hectares of vegetable crops for the purpose of plucking weeds and identifying the presence of disease. Drones, satellite imagery, soil sensors and supercomputers are all deployed to assist in food production now, mostly at big industrial farms, but they're moving increasingly into small farm production.

The milk, eggs and produce from Rivendale Farms, which spans 175 acres, are sold to selected local restaurants and hotels.    CreditRoss Mantle for The New York Times

Agriculture, Climate Change, Insect Predation

"Insects have consumed something like one out of every eight loaves of bread before it even gets made [by consuming large amounts of agricultural crops]."
"If we warmed four degrees which is what climate models typically predict for the end of this century, then that amounts to insects eating two of our eight loaves of bread instead of one."
"If we think about food supply as the pie we all get to eat, some us of get smaller slices than others. If the pie begins to shrink, we need to find ways to stop it from shrinking and to carve it up more evenly so people aren’t left without."
"If you want to solve a big problem with a million tendrils, you have to go to the root of it, otherwise, you're manufacturing a million Band-Aids."
Curtis Deutsch, professor of chemical oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle

"[Beneficial insects thriving alongside the destructive ones could end up] offering some suppression of the pests, so that the damage may not be as great as they [researchers] are suggesting."
Michael Hoffman, professor of entomology, Cornell Institute for Climate Smart Solutions

Grasshoppers are among the insects predicted to grow hungrier and more populous in a warming climate, devastating U.S. corn crops.  James P. Blair/National Geographic/Getty Images

At  the present time insect predation on food crops worldwide means that pest insects competing with humans for the agricultural produce we depend upon to feed the world's population misses out on one loaf of bread from every eight loaves produced. Those insects consume up to twenty percent of the crop plants that we grow for our tables. With global warming that percentage of 'wasted' grain eaten by insect populations is expected to increase substantially, according to a study published recently in the journal Science.

This leads to a situation where farmers, in defence of their crops, will take to using more pesticides, a vicious cycle leading to further environmental degradation.  The amount of wheat, corn and rice consumed by insects is set to increase by ten to 25 percent for every heightened temperature degree above the global historical average, the study emphasizes. Its effect on  temperate agricultural regions such as the United States and Western Europe will see agriculture production especially hard hit.

Insects become hungrier the higher the temperature which causes their metabolism to react and this affects their life cycle which becomes faster, in turn causing them to reproduce more frequently, a set of circumstances that is certain to diminish crop yields at the very time that human population growth is on the upswing, requiring more food to be made available to maintain hungry people. Yet the global food supply will be stressed beyond its capacity to provide that food for a growing global population.

Dr. Deutsch and  his research colleagues made use of statistical models simulating the effects of global warming on insect feeding and reproductive patterns to arrive at their calculated conclusion. Corn and rice crops were the major focus since they represent 42 percent of calories consumed by humans. On the other hand, as Dr. Hoffman points out, beneficial insects could conceivably balance out the equation on a more optimistic note for the future.

But there are other, related issues involved, as pointed out in a study published in the journal Nature Communications, last year which found that projected pressures from increased summer temperatures could lead, in any event, to a reduction in agricultural yields, resulting from higher temperatures and fewer rain events. These researchers are in general agreement that prevention practised to reduce the level of greenhouses gases may hold the only hope for a solution.

New research suggests the risk climate change poses to agriculture is higher than scientists realized because of the way insects respond to warmer temperatures. Credit: Paul J. Richards/Getty Images