(February 18, 2014 at 11:57 pm)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Actually it is a big plus for big Ag. The fact that you like to have a vegetarian diet is secondary. The main issue is distribution so this may only be at a local/ national level but it does have promise if the concept can go global.

(February 19, 2014 at 12:37 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(February 18, 2014 at 11:57 pm)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Actually it is a big plus for big Ag. The fact that you like to have a vegetarian diet is secondary. The main issue is distribution so this may only be at a local/ national level but it does have promise if the concept can go global.

If it could be done on a big enough scale, it could see an actual transformation of the world. Clean water + free calories = win.

(February 19, 2014 at 12:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: As for big Ag-- I agree. I have no problem with new technologies providing both food and new jobs. As a vegetarian, it seems having an enclosed environment would (if it's actually completely enclosed) also allow more control over incidental impact-- voles getting chewed up by ploughs, etc.

(February 19, 2014 at 12:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: As for desalinization, I really think the filtering process is a dead end except for small-scale stuff. It seems to me that ocean winds and currents, as well as sun energy in those places that most need fresh water (read: Africa), should be able to generate enough energy for cooling to use an evaporation/condensation purification system. This kind of system would also allow for some climate control, allowing non-native crops to grow in hot regions.

Quote:19 February 2014, 6.12am AEST
Big Food lobbying: tip of the iceberg exposed
Direct lobbying is one of several tactics food companies use to shape regulation and public perception in their favour........
The influence of the food lobby has come into the public spotlight over the past week, with revelations that Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash’s chief-of-staff, Alastair Furnival, has strong links to the food industry. Furnival previously worked as a lobbyist for several food companies and is the co-owner of a firm that has represented the food industry.

The controversy came as Nash personally intervened to have health department staff withdraw a website launching a new government-approved health star rating food labelling system for Australia. Nash has since been accused of breaching ministerial standards for failing to declare Furnival’s conflict. And Furnival resigned from his chief-of-staff position on Friday.

This incident has exposed one of the many ways in which powerful food companies exert their influence over government policy. From a public health perspective, the major concern is that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Big Food tactics

(February 19, 2014 at 2:57 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Do you have any documentation/ information regarding evaporation/condensation purification system this is new to me. It would seem the particulate matter is the greater issue hence the filtration route to desalination.

Quote:PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: Australians aren't eating enough fish. As a nation, we consume about 40 per cent less seafood than recommended for a healthy diet.

The reasons for this are partly due to cost, but also perhaps a reluctance to eat farmed fish from Asia.

Seafood importers have now launched a campaign to correct what they believe are misconceptions about Asian aquaculture.

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SEAN MURPHY, REPORTER: Every weekday, about 50 tonnes of mostly Australian seafood is traded at the Sydney Fish Markets. Only Japan has a bigger marketplace. But the reality is that most of the fish and shellfish eaten by Australians wasn't caught or farmed here and won't be sold at places like this.

It's more likely to arrive by refrigerated container to cold storage owned by about 50 major seafood importers. This load is from New Zealand, but it could have come from anywhere.

HARRY PETERS, MARINE PRODUCT MARKETING: The majority of our seafood is coming out of South-East Asia - Thailand, Vietnam, also from South Africa, Norway, South America, the US, Poland, Spain, the UK and New Zealand, of course - New Zealand being one of the largest suppliers to our market.

SEAN MURPHY: And that's no bad thing, according to veteran importer Harry Peters. He says imports are more affordable at a time when budgets are stretched and Australians are eating 40 per cent less seafood than recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

HARRY PETERS: I'm extremely concerned that we're not eating enough seafood, particularly our children, and we need to educate families to get seafood back on the diet. And if Mum's just careful with her shopping, she can pick up some pretty good product at pretty good prices.

SEAN MURPHY: But even if it was more affordable, Australia cannot supply its own seafood needs. Local wild-caught and farmed fish accounts for just a quarter of national consumption and Australia now imports about 210,000 tonnes a year.

NORM GRANT, AUSTRALIAN SEAFOOD IMPORTERS: The vast majority of seafood overall comes from South-East Asia.

SEAN MURPHY: What sort of product?

NORM GRANT: Shrimp is the number one species consumed in Australia still, but we eat a lot of basa, which is the Mekong catfish, from Vietnam predominantly, and we eat a lot of barramundi. A lot of people don't realise that barramundi's prolific throughout South-East Asia and it's growing in popularity as one of the main species eaten in Australia.

SEAN MURPHY: Norm Grant says cheaper doesn't mean poorer quality. But unfortunately, according to the executive chairman of the Australian Seafood Importers' Association, there's still market resistance in Australia to seafood farmed in places like Thailand and Vietnam, even though they've become global seafood producers.

NORM GRANT: There's been concerted campaigns in some quarters to destroy the reputation of the imported seafood. That partly comes from competitive interests, that is, people supplying other species into this market. A little bit from local producers who fear competition from imports.

And I think too some people just get the wrong idea. They visit countries like Vietnam, as tourists they see the small cage operations owned by family interests that are not built to any standard at all and assume that must be the export industry. And of course, plenty of people saying, "Well that's where your fish comes from," but of course that's not the case.

SEAN MURPHY: The Seafood Importers' Association is trying to educate Australians about sustainable aquaculture in places like Vietnam where companies are often vertically integrated, controlling breeding, feeding, processing and cold chain distribution.

Pangasius, more commonly known as basa, is now the second most consumed fish in Australia after Tasmanian Atlantic salmon. 20 years ago it was a staple for the poor throughout the Mekong Delta. Now Vietnam sells basa to more than 130 countries.

NGUYEN HUU DZUNG, VIETNAM SEAFOOD EXPORTERS' ASSOC. (subtitles): But after we can do the hatchery of Pangasius, the farming of Pangasius in 10 years increased very fast from 10,000 tonne a year to 1.4 million tonne a year and exports start from US$60 million per year to come to last year US$1.8 billion per year.

SEAN MURPHY: At last year's Vietfish Expo in Hanoi there were buyers from around the world. Vietnam now produces seafood worth close to $4 billion. Australia accounts for just 2.8 per cent of sales.

JEFF PETERSON, GLOBAL AQUACULTURE ALLIANCE: I would say that products from Vietnam, the ones that are from reputable companies, are without doubt among the best you'll find anywhere.

SEAN MURPHY: Jeff Peterson is the director of quality control for the Global Aquaculture Alliance. It's one of the world's biggest sustainability certifiers. He says Vietnamese companies have been keen to adapt best practice standards to satisfy markets in America and Europe where sustainability is a key demand.

JEFF PETERSON: Sustainability to some people means environmental responsibility so that you don't damage the environment where you work. We have strict metrics on effluent, water quality, for example. That may satisfy some people, but in others, sustainability means proper treatment of workers, that they're paid fairly, that they're given the proper training and so on and so forth.

To other people, food safety is all about making sure that the product is consistently not only wholesome and nutritious, but safe - no antibiotics, no hormones, no additives of any kind.

SEAN MURPHY: Vietnam is aiming to have all of its seafood exports third-party certified by 2015. Companies like Australis Barramundi, which moved to Vietnam five years ago, are now aggressively marketing their sustainability credentials.

DAN FISK, AUSTRALIA BARRAMUNDI: We have 150 hectares at this site, 750 metres wide and two kilometres long. So, right now we're only harvesting on about 10 per cent of the water that's available to us and we can produce over 2,000 tonnes per year from this site.

SEAN MURPHY: The one-time Australian company is aiming to produce about 6,000 tonnes by next year. Its main market is the US, but it's now also selling to Australian supermarket chains.

DAN FISK: Obviously we have discerned the difference between performance and sustainability and not only do we want to be a high-performing company, but we have to be here for a long time, and in order to do that well, we have to take care of our environment, obviously.

And so part of what we do is to minimise the waste. We have cameras at eight metres below the surface, so that when we feed, we can see clearly when the fish have had enough food and they get a stop signal and so we can minimise the feed wastage that goes into the environment. On top of that, we have a fallowing system that basically allows us to use - only about 30 per cent of the water that Australis has here in our operation is used for farming at any one time. The rest of the water is used for fallowing and for resting those areas.

SEAN MURPHY: Australian seafood consultant John Sussman has been working with cobia farmers in Vietnam and has been introducing their product to some of Australia's best restaurants.

JOE PAVLOVICH, GLASS BRASSERIE: I think it's a fantastic fish. I honestly, you know - the perception of, you know, Vietnam and getting fish, it's all crap, look, this is just blowing it out of the water for me. It's consistent fish daily for me. Look, I run a 220-seat restaurant. I go through 10 to 15 kilos of fish a day of one type. You know, it's consistent and comes like this every time. You know, obviously, the sizes change a little bit, you're saying now.

JOHN SUSSMAN, SEAFOOD CONSULTANT: There are opportunities and I think that being able to come to the top end of the market, this is where the opinion leaders and the opinion formers are. People are looking to the likes of Joe and the guys working in the three-star restaurants to actually tell them what are the next trends and if these guys are using quality products, then it sort of - it really augurs well for broader markets.

JOE PAVLOVICH: So now it's just a taste test, I guess.

JOHN SUSSMAN: Alright, let's have a look.

JOE PAVLOVICH: So beautifully cooked.

JOHN SUSSMAN: Ooh, look at that.

JOE PAVLOVICH: Just slightly under.

JOHN SUSSMAN: Yes, that's perfect, isn't it?

JOE PAVLOVICH: Beautiful, look at that.

JOHN SUSSMAN: That's gorgeous.

JOE PAVLOVICH: Slightly under, so it should just be warming through now.

JOHN SUSSMAN: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

JOE PAVLOVICH: Alright, there you go.

JOHN SUSSMAN: Alright. Here we go.

SEAN MURPHY: John Sussman says there are big opportunities for Australians to help develop aquaculture in Asia.

JOHN SUSSMAN: I actually think that that's probably one of the big futures for our aquaculture industry is not necessarily growing product, but providing intellectual property through the chain, both from a production, post-harvest and marketing perspective. We definitely have the skills here in Australia to be able to provide to farmers throughout Asia to bring products into the Western markets.

SEAN MURPHY: While most of the fish brought into Australia is by big players such as Harry Peters, the Seafood Importers' Association says the growth of aquaculture in Asia has seen a growth in part-time operators importing product. The association is calling for a licensing system.

HARRY PETERS, MARINE PRODUCT MARKETING: If you want to become a bricklayer or a builder or an electrician or a plumber or a real estate agent, you have to be licensed, yet in our industry, anybody can import a container of prawns or a container of fish without any licence and nine times out of 10 the backyarders have no idea of the health controls required. And this is something that as an industry, we need to police very quickly.

NORM GRANT: Yes, we think the rules ought to be tightened for importers. To be an importer you need a lot of experience. There are a lot of rules in terms of the food safety requirements we have to meet and also the quarantine requirements and whilst most of the large companies can comply with that easily, we see an increasing number of new entrants into that market, particularly for small family businesses that may have relations overseas and we really are concerned that those people may not be completely knowledgeable about the rules.

SEAN MURPHY: And while the Government has no immediate plans for licensing importers, it says all seafood imports are subject to a range of tests at approved laboratories like this one. It's part of a two-tiered surveillance system managed by the Department of Agriculture.

RONA MELLOR, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE: Health specialists tell us to look at high-risk foods, which we do 100 per cent of the time, and then there are other foods, which we call surveillance foods, where we generally check them to see whether or not they contain anything that's harmful to human health.

IAN ECKHARD, ANALYTICAL CHEMIST: We test for a range of different contaminants that are present in seafood and it could be marine biotoxins or antibiotics or anything that can poison people in the food chain, including, of course, microbiological contamination.

SEAN MURPHY: That's things like sewerage contamination?

IAN ECKHARD: That's right, E. coli, salmonella and the same sort of things that you find in fast food shops.

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SEAN MURPHY: The Department of Agriculture says better than 99 per cent of imports are deemed safe. Seafood importers say the public should have faith in their products because they're tested more than Australian seafood.

Quote:Recipes courtesy of Chaxiraxi Afonso Higuera

Talking out loud about how I would track down a chef to prepare and talk about mussels on camera, Spring Bay Seafood boss Phil Lamb said, "Oh there's a Spanish chef up the road who uses our mussels, and the Spanish know how to cook mussels better than anyone, maybe she's worth a call?"

Chaxiraxi Afonso Higuera proved up for it.

Chaxi (pronounced Sharsi) cooked a range of Spanish dishes showing mussels can be hearty or summery, part of a dish or a star on their own.

Quote:PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: They may be the butt of many jokes, but baked beans have been a staple in people's pantries for generations. However, while the market has remained steady, the local industry that produces the classic toast topping has faced many challenges since it was established during World War II. But, as Kerry Staight reports, with the owner of SPC Ardmona, the country's only baked bean cannery, threatening to shut down its Australian operations, this year could deliver one challenge too many.

KERRY STAIGHT, REPORTER: The tropical Burdekin region in North Queensland is classic cane country. But it's not the lush, elegant-looking crop Barry Breadsell has his sights on today. Instead, he's heading for the less attractive shrivelled-up patch of navy beans tucked in between.

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BARRY BREADSELL, DONGAMERE, NORTH AYR, QLD: Didn't know much at all about navy beans, but, yeah, I was interested in giving them a go. They're very similar, really, to just the green bean like you'd grow in your garden at home.

KERRY STAIGHT: The difference is these less familiar beans are turned into a very familiar product: baked beans. A no-fuss food on the table, but in the field, it's another matter.

BARRY BREADSELL: You have to harvest them about 15 per cent moisture. They will, if the sun comes out - with the wind we do have here, they will dry out fairly fast. If they get too dry, they'll crack in the header and crack the shell on them. But if they're too moist, they'll end up - they'll get a bit musty. So, yeah, we've got to wait until they're just right.

KERRY STAIGHT: With harvest up here coinciding with the start of the wet season, Barry Breadsell is keen to get the beans off before the heavens open. And it's not just maintaining the right moisture in the mature beans that's crucial. The crop also needs to be kept damp, but not drenched while it's growing.

BARRY BREADSELL: They're a bit fussy, so they don't like to be too wet at all. If they suffer water logging, they won't get over it' it'll set them back and they'll never recover, really. But they haven't got much of a root system, so they don't like to be too dry as well.

KERRY STAIGHT: Barry Breadsell has been growing the beans under centre pivot irrigation for three years, and after a bit of a learning curve the first season, the last two have been more successful, with yields of between two and 2.5 tonnes a hectare.

Another Burdekin grower, Mark Goos, will be hoping for a similar change of fortune.

This is his first go at navy beans, and with a fast-growing season of 12 to 14 weeks, they potentially fit in well with his rotation.

MARK GOOS, BURDEKIN NAVY BEAN GROWER: We're after a break crop from our corn, um, corn on corn and a millet crop grown over the summer. We don't change the monoculture, so we're just after a break crop. So, the opportunity arose, so we grabbed it and have learnt a few lessons from it.

KERRY STAIGHT: The trial crop has been planted on a block left fallow for three years, so weeds are more of a problem than normal. A lack of water after the irrigation system broke down has also taken a toll.

MARK GOOS: We had our issues with the irrigator at a very critical time which held the beans back. They were without water for 10 days. At that point we'd given up hope on the beans. We were just going to leave them there and treat them as a cover crop and plough them in, but once we got the water back onto them, they had recovered somewhat and I held a bit of hope.

KERRY STAIGHT: What do you reckon you actually have to get yield-wise to make a decent margin on this crop?

MARK GOOS: Oh, I think we need to look towards 2.5 tonnes to the hectare.

KERRY STAIGHT: Will you get that this year?

MARK GOOS: No, we won't get that this year, no.

KERRY STAIGHT: While navy beans are relatively new for some Burdekin growers, farmers near Kingaroy are more familiar with them. It may be known for its peanuts, but the South Burnett town is also considered the country's baked bean capital and this paddock at Kumbia just down the road is where the first crop was grown.

GARY TRUSS, KINGAROY NAVY BEAN GROWER: Well these are I think probably the first pictures that we ever had of harvesting navy beans on our property.

KERRY STAIGHT: Gary Truss owns that paddock. The 63-year-old whose brother is the National Party's leader, Warren Truss, has been in the beans business his whole farming life, taking over where his grandfather and father left off.

GARY TRUSS: There was no sort of hydraulics or mod cons like that in those days. It was all manual labour. ...

... Navy beans were grown firstly in Australia at the time of the Second World War. There was a lot of American troops in Australia, servicemen, and part of their staple diet was baked beans and so somebody had the idea, well, we should try and grow them here.

KERRY STAIGHT: The US Army provided the seed, the Federal Government contracted growers and production was controlled under the National Security Act. It didn't get off to a great start. The beans grew, but farmers hadn't worked out how to harvest them, so they were ploughed back into the soil. But after that problem was solved, the industry expanded with more than 100 growers in Queensland in the mid '40s.

GARY TRUSS: I admire the pioneers of the industry. The fact that they were prepared to tackle something that they knew nothing about, they really sort of had a tenacity that you can only admire.

KERRY STAIGHT: While today's navy beans may look like stubble from afar and can at times be tricky to get the header under, this is child's play compared to what farmers used to contend with.

The original Californian small white variety spread out over the ground and had to be windrowed, or cut out, before it could be picked up.

GARY TRUSS: The real turning point for the industry was when the upright variety came in and we could direct head them with our harvesters that we use for wheat, corn - all the other things.

KERRY STAIGHT: Unlike many of their neighbours, Gary Truss and his son Stephen, a fourth-generation navy bean grower, have not pursued peanuts, staying faithful to and good-humoured about the crop with a blustery reputation.

GARY TRUSS: People don't associate baked beans as being navy beans and usually once they do find out that they're baked beans, well then they give you a hard time! (Laughs) Either you love baked beans or you hate them. You know, there's sort of no middle ground. Very nutritious food and generally they're a cheap food and they keep as well, so they've got a lot going for them.

KERRY STAIGHT: Including a decent farm gate price that hasn't fluctuated in four years.

GARY TRUSS: The price at the present time is the best it's been for a while. All through the '70s and '80s, the price was in that $500 or $600 a tonne, which comparative wasn't bad at that stage as well. But $1,100, yeah, the price is really quite good.

KERRY STAIGHT: Unfortunately, many dry land farmers around these parts can't take advantage of the price this year.

While the Truss’s have planted some corn, they've ruled out sowing navy beans as Queensland's big dry continues to sap much-needed moisture from the soil. Still, despite two shocking seasons in a row, the family remains committed to the legume.

GARY TRUSS: Some say we're slow learners (laughs), but the industry's been very good to us over the years. There will be years when you lose them, like last year we lost our entire crop because of the wet weather, but then other years have been very good, so you've got to look at them over a period of time.

KERRY STAIGHT: When he does grow them, Gary Truss's beans are cleaned and colour sorted at this processing plant in Kingaroy. And, ironically, the local red soil creates something of a challenge.

LLOYD NIELSEN, BEAN GROWERS AUSTRALIA: In years gone by we actually had two qualities: we had a pink canning quality and a white canning quality and that was to fit the growers locally. But over time the pink canning quality has gone out of vogue, it's a lot harder to manage, although the product does go into, obviously, a red tomato sauce.

KERRY STAIGHT: Lloyd Nielsen runs Bean Growers Australia, a former farmers' cooperative turned company that has been at the heart of the industry for 50 years as the major navy bean supplier in the country. While it used to source most of its beans from local producers, it's now cast the net much wider to reduce the risk of running out, contracting growers in mainly irrigated areas like the NSW Riverina and the Burdekin. Even so, Australia's annual navy bean production is only about 3,000 tonnes - a third of what it was at its peak and a drop in the bucket compared to the world's biggest producers, the US and Canada, which together average more than a quarter of a million tonnes.

LLOYD NIELSEN: Their weather is much more suitable. They start off with maybe a metre of snow, so they have significant amount of subsoil moisture, so droughts are very rare for them. On top of that, because of their severe cold, they don't have the insect problems. In Australia, obviously, we're challenged with our water and our irrigation and also with our insect and our climate, which we're trying to grow a temperate crop in generally a semi-tropical area.

KERRY STAIGHT: The climate hasn't been the only challenge the supplier has had to weather. The company has also been forced to diversify into other legumes like mung beans after major navy bean buyer Heinz moved its canning operations offshore in the late '90s.

LLOYD NIELSEN: It became essential that we looked at other bean crops. Obviously that's our expertise to try and survive because you cut your production by two thirds and it has a significant effect on your bottom line. At one stage we really only had one or two customers, whereas now we have a customer base of many hundreds.

KERRY STAIGHT: But when it comes to navy beans, it's putting pretty much all its faith in a company that's in danger of going under.

LLOYD NIELSEN: We're wholly and solely fully supporting SPC. We want them to succeed in what they're doing.

KERRY STAIGHT: SPC Ardmona owns Australia's largest remaining fruit and vegetable processor at Shepparton in Victoria, which employs between 800 and 1,200 people, depending on the time of year. While packaging fruit is the main game here, baked beans and spaghetti account for 15 per cent of the business. And it's no secret this business is in the red.

PETER KELLY, SPC ARDMONA: In 2011 and 2012, we bought $100 million worth of stock and wrote it off. So, massive - two massive losses, $200 million in those two years and an operating loss this year. So, it's a severe problem.

KERRY STAIGHT: The company is a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Amatil. The food and beverage giant was prepared to spend more than $90 million upgrading the old factory if the federal and Victorian governments contributed $25 million each. This week, cabinet ruled that out. And Coca-Cola Amatil isn't throwing the ailing company any more lifelines until a review into SPC Ardmona has been carried out.

PETER KELLY: I've got to show that we can turn the business around, that we can start to improve the performance, the bottom line performance. So there's no strict deadline, but I can tell you, making a bigger loss would be a bad thing. I've got to get things turned around quickly.

KERRY STAIGHT: If SPC does shut that plant down, what does that mean for the navy bean industry in Australia?

LLOYD NIELSEN: The reality is that the navy bean industry would close, would finish.

KERRY STAIGHT: This is one of SPC's strategies to stop that from happening. In the middle of last year it launched a 100 per cent Australian-grown baked bean line, boycotting cheaper imports from North America. It costs more to produce, so the shelf price has also gone up around 10 per cent. Sales haven't shot up, but they've remained steady, despite the price hike. And the company says it is heading in the right direction.

PETER KELLY: I think the consumer will appreciate what we've done. They understand that we're promoting more jobs in Australia, more jobs in agriculture in Australia, stronger growers, stronger food industry in Australia and they'll give us some loyalty for that. We think that it's a good formula for success, actually.

KERRY STAIGHT: Producers certainly hope he's right and that Kingaroy won't have to cross out one of its claims to fame.

With all the challenges ahead, is it still worth pursuing?

LLOYD NIELSEN: I think it is from a historical point of view. I guess you ask yourself in business if something's still relevant. It certainly fits into our system, fits into the growers' systems and I think that's something that we'd really like to see continue.