Eideard

Harvesting dryland corn

Monsanto received deregulation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for MON 87460, the company’s first-generation drought-tolerant trait for corn.

Drought-tolerant corn is projected to be introduced as part of an overall system that would offer farmers improved genetics, agronomic practices and the drought trait. Monsanto plans to conduct on-farm trials in 2012 to give farmers experience with the product, while generating data to help inform the company’s commercial decisions…

…Hobart Beeghly, U.S. product management lead said, “This spring farmers in the Western Great Plains will have an opportunity to see how the system performs on their farm through on-farm trials…”

The drought-tolerant trait is part of Monsanto’s Yield and Stress collaboration in plant biotechnology with Germany-based BASF. The collaboration is aimed at developing higher-yielding crops and crops more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions, such as drought…

The USDA deregulation concludes the U.S. federal regulatory process. Import approvals in key corn import markets with functioning regulatory systems are in progress.

Most Americans stil don’t realize that the bulk of corn we read about being grown in the United States is there to feed cattle and hogs, poultry, critters we end up eating – who are fed in the first place with maize.

Dryland farming ain’t ever easy; but, developing drought-tolerant grains – for example – saves more money and energy in the long range than trying to keep land arable with irrigation and imported water.

Cellular-based automotive roadside assistance services like GM’s OnStar and BMW Assist allow remote unlocking of vehicles by communicating with remote servers via standard mobile networks. Now a pair of security systems engineers have managed to prove it takes just a few hours of clever reverse engineering to crack the in-car cellular network-based technology to gain access to vehicles. They call their method “War Texting.”

Don Bailey and Mathew Solnik of security company iSEC Partners set up an ad-hoc GSM network, which allowed them to communicate directly with the in-car system, posing as authorized servers. A proprietary protocol that is normally in use proved not be secure enough. All they eventually needed to do, was to send simple messages from a laptop to the car’s computer.

Bailey and Solnik will present their findings during the upcoming Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas in a briefing entitled “War Texting: Identifying and Interacting with Devices on the Telephone Network,” although they will skip the details regarding the attack, to allow manufacturers to fix vulnerable systems.

However, apparently not just car security technologies are defenseless against the “War Texting” hacking method, as cellular networks are also utilized by SCADA systems that monitor and control industrial infrastructure, or facility-based processes.

Isn’t it a little overdue to require manufacturers of systems like these to build-in security protocols to guarantee safety and security. I surely hope no one is counting on wireless providers to do it.

When production of the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic and Buick Verano kicks off this fall, 40 percent of the energy that powers General Motors’ Orion Assembly Plant will come from methane captured from a nearby landfill site. This use of the landfill gas will reduce GM’s energy costs by $1.1 million a year and cut the amount of greenhouse gases, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides released into the atmosphere.

Use of landfill gas is one of several methods GM is using to lessen the Orion Assembly Plant’s environmental impact. Others include: lighting system upgrades that will save an estimated 5,944 megawatts of electricity per year while also slashing CO2 emissions by 3,676 metric tons and an upgraded paint shop that’s heated by natural and landfill gas and uses approximately half of the energy (per vehicle) of the outdated paint shop that it replaced.

Maureen Midgley, GM’s executive director of global manufacturing engineering, says that these modifications will enable the Orion Assembly Plant to “reduce greenhouse gas production by about 80,000 metric tons at a full three-shift capacity.” That’s roughly equivalent to the combined annual emissions from 14,000 vehicles.

Hey, every little bit helps. Don’t discount GM’s “radical” conversion to energy [and cost] savings. There is no doubt that the loans to GM that brought them back from near-extinction included a lot of ear-bending and arm-twisting about entering the 21st Century.

Good sense and economics often isn’t sufficient to modernize politicians or capitalists.

GM, Ford and Chrysler showed much faster sales growth rates in April than Toyota and most other Japanese brands, in a sign that supply disruptions as a result of Japan’s March 11 earthquake are hitting Japanese manufacturers hardest.

Detroit automakers were also helped by the spike in gasoline prices to near $4 a gallon which fed consumer hunger for more fuel-efficient cars… And trucks.

GM sales were driven by its fuel-efficient Chevrolet compact cars and compact crossovers: the Cruze, Equinox and Terrain.

In March, for only the second time since 1998, Ford Motor Co outsold the larger General Motors Co. But in April GM sold 18 percent more vehicles than Ford. Ford came in No. 2 after it showed a U.S. 16 percent sales gain compared with GM’s 26 percent rise…

It was the third straight month that U.S. auto sales topped 13 million on an annualized basis — which had not happened since mid-2008…

Gary Bradshaw, portfolio manager with Hodges Capital Management in Dallas, said that a general U.S. economic recovery will allow consumers to continue buying cars at a rate that will also mean a gradual recovery in the auto industry…

Another beneficiary of the desire for cars that can go far on a gallon of gas was Hyundai Motor Co, which posted a 40 percent sales gain for its best showing ever for April. The cars it sold in April carried an average fuel efficiency of 36.2 miles per gallon, the company said.

In another sign of strength of the Detroit manufacturers, Chrysler Group LLC, managed by Italy’s Fiat SpA, increased April sales 22 percent, its 13th straight month of year-on-year U.S. sales growth…

Sales in Canada reported on Tuesday also showed gains linked to sales of fuel-efficient vehicles.

In my neck of the prairie, significant to the process of good sense overcoming habit, Ford’s best-selling F-150 pickup matched national numbers in that half of the sales were with the smaller Turbo V6 rather than the less efficient V8. Good news all-round, though I’d still prefer the small turbo-diesel they offer outside the US. RTFA for details on each manufacturer.

Long range, we’re still waiting and hoping for the Ford Focus EV to get its electric butt to New Mexico before my wife’s ancient Volvo gives up the ghost.

DISCLAIMER: I own enough shares in Ford to buy a breakfast burrito for each of us.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Shanghai Convention Center was little more than a rice paddy, but this week, the sprawling facility will play host to what has rapidly become one of the world’s most important auto shows.

By a quirk of the calendar, this year’s big Chinese car show not only overlaps but threatens to overwhelm the New York Auto Show and its ability to garner valuable media time – a development that echoes the rapidly transformation occurring in the global automotive business.

Michael Dunne, the founder of Automotive Resources Asia – today a part of J.D. Power and Associates – recalls his first trip to China, barely two decades ago, when the roads were ruled by bicycles, motorbikes and buses, and the sight of an automobile was enough to draw everyone’s attention. Today, the most populous nation on Earth is also the biggest automotive market, having surpassed the U.S. two years ago, never to look back.

There will be a number of major launches that might have, until now, been steered to New York. Yet few could have anticipated that boom…Even as recently as 2007, skeptics wondered just how much more growth the Chinese car market could support. But that year was a milestone for a number of reasons. One that many initially missed was the decision by several major Western automakers to stage significant global previews at the Shanghai Motor Show for the first time. That included the debut of the BMW CS Concept car – which would only eventually return to the U.S. and a domestic preview at New York’s Jacob Javits convention center…

Few will downplay the significance of the 2011 Shanghai Motor Show. By one estimate, as many as 100 different electric vehicles will be displayed by the scores of manufacturers participating in the event. That’s no surprise considering the Beijing government’s increasing emphasis on battery power to help it overcome the country’s endemic pollution problems – and to reduce the Chinese dependence upon foreign oil…

But there’s no question that the days when the U.S. and Europe dominated the auto show circuit are over – much as the old, industrialized markets are no longer the drivers of automotive sales growth.

For Americans there even was a time back in the day when the European auto shows were meaningless. Volkwagen and Volvo changed that forever. The last people to respond were the Detroit Big 3.

This time around give credit where credit is due. Detroit iron – especially General Motors – were quick to respond and even quicker to profit from demand in China that still looks to the United States for economic guidance. Recognizing the difference between what’s good and what’s bad – but, not rejecting the knowledge from either.

Genetically modified dairy products that are similar to human milk will appear on the Chinese market in two years, an expert in biotechnology has predicted.

Li Ning, a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the State Key Laboratories for AgroBiotechnology at China Agricultural University, said progress in the field is well under way.

Li said Chinese scientists have successfully created a herd of more than 200 cows that is capable of producing milk that contains the characteristics of human milk.

He said the technology is at the cutting edge worldwide and will ensure “healthy protein contained in human milk is affordable for ordinary consumers”…

Human milk contains two kinds of nutrition that can help improve the immune systems and the central nervous systems of children. The components are not available in milk produced by goats or cows.

Li said the scientific world had not previously found a way to mass-produce those ingredients. The GM milk will be as safe to drink as that of the ordinary cows, he added.

The Ministry of Agriculture issued bio-safety examination certificates for the GM herd in March 2010, giving the scientific team a 22-month period during which the technology can be tested in laboratories.

The ministry will then evaluate the results of the tests before deciding whether to allow the milk to be sold.

Interesting. I’d find it more interesting if I drank milk.

I wonder if those of us who are lactose intolerant might not have a problem with the modified stuff.

I seem to have bumped into more than the usual number of looneybirds, dumb crooks and foolishly dangerous human beings in my reading around the world, around the Web, today. But, I think I’ll ignore ‘em for a nice guy-tale from General Motors.

Yes, you read that right. General Motors has indeed taken scrap battery covers that would otherwise have been discarded and, with the help of a team of youngsters from the Lasky Recreation Center in Detroit, turned them into duck houses.

Seems odd, no doubt, but we’d certainly rather see creative recycling such as this instead of sending off the scrap bits and pieces to rot for hundreds of years in a landfill or some other ignominious end-of-life scenario.

According to The General, these homes “will provide a safe place for wood ducks and even screech owls to lay their eggs.” For what it’s worth, this is the second such creative recycling project we’ve heard about from the team behind the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the first being the reuse of oil-soaked boom material from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico made into underhood plastic Volt parts. Nice work, GM.

I agree.

Mechanical harvesting of sugar beets

U.S. agricultural regulators…said despite a court ban, they would allow commercial planting of genetically modified sugar beets under closely controlled conditions while they complete a full environmental impact statement.

The move marks the second-such boost by the United States for contested biotech crops in a week, and underscores U.S. determination to expand the use of GMO crops amid rising global fears over food security and surging prices.

After approving genetically altered alfalfa last week in the face of bitter protest and after court rulings against an earlier sugar beet approval, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would allow Monsanto Co.’s “Roundup Ready” sugar beets back in the fields this spring.

Beet planting will be done under closely controlled conditions to prevent any potential plant pest risks, according to USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

“After conducting an environmental assessment, accepting and reviewing public comments and conducting a plant pest risk assessment, APHIS has determined that the Roundup Ready sugar beet root crop, when grown under APHIS imposed conditions, can be partially deregulated without posing a plant pest risk or having a significant effect on the environment,” said Michael Gregoire, deputy administrator for APHIS’ biotechnology regulatory services…

Monsanto’s biotech beets, engineered to tolerate the company’s Roundup herbicide and make weed management easier for growers, make up 95 percent of the U.S. sugar beet crop and are needed to avoid a steep drop in U.S. sugar production, officials have said…

Under the partial deregulation announced Friday, growers of the Roundup Ready sugar beet rootcrop will be required to enter into a compliance agreement that outlines mandatory requirements for how the crop can be grown. APHIS expects that sugar beet cooperatives and processors will be the only entities that will enter into compliance agreements on behalf of their respective members/farmers.

Why a diminishing crop isn’t explained well in the article; but, I felt it useful to keep our readers up-to-date with the processes in play. The organic-only crowd will have predictable answers. Sadly, often involving opposition to scientific study. For that reason alone, I have to admit to a bit of sympathy for corporations for whom I usually would have no warmish emotion.

The search for accurate informed study – and that includes circumstances that change with time – achieves more than running and hiding. Even when the boogeyman is an agribiz Gargantua.

General Motors said on Thursday that it was withdrawing its application to borrow $14.4 billion from a pool of federal money intended to help automakers build more fuel-efficient vehicles.

G.M., whose request had been pending with the Energy Department for 15 months, said the decision was based on improved cash reserves and a desire to avoid more debt. The company was profitable in 2010 and had $33.5 billion in cash and marketable securities as of Sept. 30 — much of it the result of federal loans related to its 2009 bankruptcy filing — up from $22.8 billion a year ago.

“This decision is based on our confidence in G.M.’s overall progress and strong, global business performance,” Christopher P. Liddell, G.M.’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. “Withdrawing our D.O.E. loan application is consistent with our goal to carry minimal debt on our balance sheet…”

Congress created the $25 billion fund in 2008, and the Energy Department has lent about $8.5 billion of it so far. The Ford Motor Company received $5.9 billion — about half the amount it requested — with smaller amounts going to Nissan, Tesla and Fisker…

G.M. said that, even without the retooling loans, it had invested $3.4 billion in its American plants since emerging from bankruptcy, creating or retaining 11,000 jobs. Much of the upgrade was related to the manufacture of new high-mileage cars like the Chevrolet Cruze and Volt as well as batteries…

Separately Thursday, G.M. said it was accelerating the introduction of the Volt, a plug-in hybrid, in response to customer demand. Dealers in all 50 states will be able to take orders in the second quarter and start receiving the cars in the second half of the year. Previously, G.M. had said the Volt would not be available nationwide until mid-2012.

They’re also talking about doubling production of the Volt. Reception from retail customers has been better than anything they might have hoped for – at least what automotive journalists stuck into the carbon cycle thought they would get.

That’s right. #1 seller in the U.S. is still the F-150

Toyota’s U.S. vehicle sales fell in 2010 while industrywide sales rose 11 percent and every other major automaker reported gains. Ford moved up to second place behind only General Motors…Deliveries in December accelerated to the fastest pace of the year…

“The black clouds from Toyota’s recalls just don’t seem to go away,” said Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends for Santa Monica, California-based auto pricing website Truecar.com. “We saw Ford, GM and Hyundai-Kia come on strong. Brand loyalty isn’t what it used to be.”

Industrywide sales in 2010 totaled 11.6 million, according to Autodata Corp., based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. That’s up from 10.4 million the previous year for the first gain since 2005 and the largest percentage increase since 1984…

Like everything else associated with the Great Recession, you shouldn’t be surprised over dynamic percentage increases. Even the rate of jobs growth is larger than previous recessions – but, it doesn’t always feel like much since we’re starting back from the exceptional pit dug by neocon corruption and laissez-faire economics.

“This is a market that’s coming back significantly,” said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with IHS Automotive, a researcher in Lexington, Massachusetts. “And with really strong products coming from GM, Ford and Chrysler, there’s a lot of opportunity for change in the marketplace…”

Ford was the best-selling make in the U.S. in 2010, displacing Toyota’s namesake brand, which fell to third behind GM’s Chevrolet. Ford sold 1.76 million Ford-brand vehicles last year, while GM sold 1.57 million Chevrolets and Toyota sold 1.49 million Toyota cars and trucks…

Rising consumer confidence and retail spending bode well for car sales and may help boost 2011 industrywide sales, including heavy-duty trucks, to 13 million to 13.5 million vehicles, Don Johnson, GM’s vice president of U.S. sales operations, said today on a conference call.

RTFA for details on each marque. They all bode well. Well enough, I guess, for partisanship to resume among those of us who were cheerleaders for TARP and keeping an entire national industry from going down the tubes to satisfy those who base their dollar politics on redemption tales and the Kool-Aid Party.