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DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa farmers received a major boost Thursday after a Chinese delegation in Des Moines signed commitments to purchase nearly all of Iowa’s soybeans. The $4.5 billion deal to buy 460 million bushels of soybeans comes a week before Gov. Kim Reynolds is expected to lead an agricultural trade mission to China and brings tremendous value to the Iowa economy. Advertisement “As an Iowa farmer, this is huge,” said April Hemmes, a farmer who owns a 1,000-acre farm near Hampton in rural Franklin County. “They basically bought the entire production that we have in the state of...

Bunge North American is planning to build its first new U.S. processing plant in 15 years to meet growing demand for soy products. The company is considering locations in Ohio and Indiana for the plant, which is expected to go on line by the end of 2019. No cost estimates for the project were disclosed. Tim Gallagher, executive vice president, Oilseed Value Chain for Bunge, said the company saw a need to expand its footprint in the Eastern U.S. — a key market. "A state-of-the-art facility in the Eastern Corn Belt that incorporates the latest productivity, safety and sustainability features...

This intervention is not aimed at those with life-threatening food allergies or similarly grave medical conditions. I would never question people whose faces will balloon if they ingest trace amounts of shellfish. Or people who risk going into anaphylactic shock with a whiff of peanut dust. Those problems are very real, and everyone who is afflicted with them has my sympathy. I’m talking about the rest of you. Those of you who don’t eat garlic because you detest its smell or avoid cauliflower because it makes you fart or have gone gluten-free because you heard it worked wonders for Jennifer...

America's grain stocks running short By Robert Pore robert.pore@theindependent.com Print Story | e-mail Story | Visit Forums Global demand for grain and oilseeds is at record levels, causing the nation's grain stocks to reach critically low levels, according to Purdue University agricultural economist Chris Hurt. With a weak U.S. dollar and global demand so high, foreign buyers are outbidding domestic buyers for American grain, Hurt said. "Food consumers worldwide are going to have to pay more," Hurt said. "We ended 2007 with our monthly inflation rate on food nearly 5 percent higher. I think we'll see times in 2008 where...

The operation to remove hundreds of tiny stones took doctors around two hours Doctors in China have removed 420 kidney stones from a man's body, blaming an excessive amount of tofu in his daily diet. Mr He from Zhejiang Province in eastern China, checked into the Dongyang People's Hospital complaining of intense pain in his abdomen last month. A CT scan revealed that his left kidney was packed full of stones, most of them tiny. Doctors operated on Friday in an agonising procedure that lasted about two hours. Mr He said he had a history of suffering from kidney stones....

But the gene doesn’t seem to have always been a problem. If scientists had studied FTO just a few decades ago, they would have found no link to weight whatsoever. A new study shows that FTO became a risk only in people born after World War II. The research, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, raises questions that extend far beyond obesity. Genes clearly influence our health in many ways, but so does our environment; often, it is the interplay between them that makes the difference in whether we develop obesity or cancer or...

I mentioned two days ago the decision of schools to ban birthday cupcakes. Michelle Obama is essentially fighting with students to get them to change what they eat. But what is missing from this story is the proper context. The fact is that our bad eating habits are getting encouraged by taxpayer money. In fact, the government arguably changed our dietary habits to their present behavior. The Foundation for Economic Education came out with an article yesterday about dealing with “food deserts.”

fter years of starts and stops, the next frontier has finally arrived for biodiesel. Starting Tuesday, Minnesota will require all diesel fuel sold here to contain at least 10 percent biodiesel -- except during the winter, when the requirement will be 5 percent biodiesel. Currently, state law requires every gallon of diesel fuel to contain at least 5 percent biodiesel -- and 2 percent during the winter -- so supporters are excited to see Minnesota raise the bar to a highest-in-the-nation level.

Meal replacement drinks are nothing new. Jevity, Nutren are used primarily by hospitals and store shelves are full of supplemental drinks such as Ensure and MuscleMilk, but Soylent is something different in the sense that its creator, 24-year-old engineer Rob Rhinehart, wants it to test our perceptions of the sustainability of food. What are we truly putting into our bodies? To put it simply, bad stuff, that much is true. Soylent is full of good stuff. A vegan source of protein, and an assortment of carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins and dozens of other vitamins, Soylent is not exactly lacking in...

Don’t put it past our politicians to try it in a financial emergency. The breaking of contracts by the U.S. government, unfortunately, has happened before, and what’s under way in Cyprus shows that feckless politicos will continue to try such things. In 1933–34, amid the depths of the Great Depression, the U.S. government seized the American people’s gold holdings. From that point, until 1975, it was illegal for Americans to own gold, other than in some forms of jewelry or collectors’ coins. In the panic of the Depression years the courts upheld this unconstitutional confiscation. Yes, people received dollars in...

Farmer Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the way of promising new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsanto’s pursuit of new products it says will “feed the world.” “Hell’s fire,” said the 75-year-old self-described “eccentric old bachelor,” who farms 300 acres of land passed down from his father. Bowman rested in a recliner, boots off, the tag that once held his Foster Grant reading glasses to a drugstore rack still attached, a Monsanto gimme cap perched ironically on his balding head. “I am less than a drop in the bucket.” Yet Bowman’s unorthodox soybean farming...

<p>MARSHALL, Minn. (AP) - China's recent purchases of more than $6.6 billion in U.S. soybeans is being called good for Minnesota, one of the largest soybean producing states.</p> <p>Jim Call, who grows soybeans near the southern Minnesota town of Madison, tells The Independent of Marshall it's a "huge deal" for Minnesota, which exported an estimated $900 million in soybeans to China last year. He says about half the U.S. soybean crop must be exported, so China is an important market.</p>

LAGOS, Nigeria — A private security official says pirates kidnapped two Russian sailors during an attack on a cargo ship off the coast of Cameroon. The official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the attack on the MV North Spirit occurred as the ship filled with fertilizer and soya beans was anchored off of Cameroon's commercial capital, Douala. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, says about 20 pirates stole the ship's equipment and the sailors' personal belongings during the assault Sunday. The pirates took the ship's captain...

Crops such as Corn, Cotton and Soybeans Affected If it has seemed like it has been raining unusually often and by quite a bit, you are right. The months during harvest time (August/September/October) are traditionally the driest of year for most locations east of the Rockies, especially across the corn and cotton belts. This season, though, has been an exception. Here is a slide show that shows how the precipitation of these months has compared to normal.

A compound found in soybeans almost completely prevented the spread of human prostate cancer in mice, according to a study published in the March 15 issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Researchers say that the amount of the chemical, an antioxidant known as genistein, used in the experiments was no higher than what a human would eat in a soybean-rich diet. Investigators from Northwestern University found that genistein decreased metastasis of prostate cancer to the lungs by 96 percent compared with mice that did not eat the compound in their chow - making...

Soybeans are a top crop in Ohio, but good luck finding any locally grown legumes to eat. Soybeans -- usually marketed under their Japanese name, edamame -- are an increasingly popular health food, but nearly all those sold in local grocery stores are grown in China. Ohio farmers do grow some soybeans to be eaten instead of processed for other uses, but the majority are exported and used to make products such as tofu. The problem for local diners with a taste for the bean, experts say, is that soybean farmers are not equipped to grow and harvest edamame, which...

China said Wednesday it had discovered many safety problems with soybeans imported from the United States, urging US authorities to deal with the problem. "Inspection and quarantine units in various areas have discovered a large number of quality and safety problems with imports of US soybeans," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said. "We have reported this to the US side, demanding that it look into the causes and adopt effective measures to ensure that a situation like this does not repeat itself," it said on its website. It detailed a series of safety problems, including the...

While some see algae as the ideal source for biofuels, industry watchers at ThinkEquity’s Greentech Summit in San Francisco on Thursday said the technology is likely to be years away. “Algae, as a biodiesel feedstock, is further out than cellulosic ethanol,” said Martin Tobias, CEO of biodiesel company Imperium Renewables, referring to ethanol from materials like wood chips, switchgrass, and corn stover. Algae simply aren’t available in large-enough quantities right now, he said. “We’re opening a 100-million-gallon facility in June, and there won’t be 100 million gallons of algae available next year,” he said. “It’s not about whether algae can...

Marijuana is now the biggest cash crop grown in the US, exceeding traditional harvests such as wheat, corn and soy beans, says a new report. The study shows that 10,000 tonnes of marijuana worth $35.8bn (£18.4bn) is grown each year; the street value would be even higher. This dwarfs the $23bn-worth of corn grown, $17.6bn-worth of soybeans and $12.2bn-worth of hay. Marijuana is the biggest cash crop in 12 states, with the value of pot grown outstripping peanuts in Georgia and tobacco in North and South Carolina. In California, the biggest producer, it is worth $13.8bn.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Greenpeace on Thursday said McDonald's was fueling Amazon rainforest destruction by using soybeans grown in the region as feed for chickens that end up served in the fast-food chain's European restaurants. In a reported entitled, "Eating up the Amazon," the environmental group said it has traced soy beans grown in illegally desforested areas of the rainforest to McDonald's Corp. restaurants, as well as other restaurant chains and supermarkets across Europe. "Fast Food giants like McDonald's are trashing the Amazon for cheap meat. Every time you buy a Chicken McNugget you could be taking a bite...