Crops that can cope with sudden fluctuations in the weather could be developed, thanks to recent discoveries about the survival mechanisms of plants. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh studying how tiny algae renew old or damaged cell proteins say their findings could be useful in developing crops suited to climates in which weather changes quickly.

They found that the speed at which protein renewal takes place determines how fast they can adapt to environmental changes, such as a sudden frost or drought.

“Until now, we knew that plants replaced their old and damaged proteins, but we had no idea how long this process took for individual proteins, or how this varied between different parts of the plant. Our findings will be useful in understanding more about how plants are programmed for survival,” says Sarah Martin of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Systems Biology, who led the study.

Renewal rates vary between proteins according to their role and their location within cells. Proteins that carry out photosynthesis – the process that converts sunlight into energy – renew quickly because they are at risk of light damage. Conversely, proteins that protect DNA in plant cells are at little risk of damage, and renew slowly.

These findings could help breed crops incorporating proteins that respond quickly to changing conditions. Conversely, it could also assist development of high-yield crops in stable environments, where little adaptation to conditions is required.

Scientists made their discovery by developing a method to detect how quickly algae take up nitrogen – which is used to produce proteins – from their food. The study was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and just published in the Journal of Proteome Research.

Sergio Abranches

Looking at the sequence of extreme weather events from 2005 to the beginning of 2011 it seems clear that any trend analysis or future scenario has to look at climate change as a central driver.A few years ago a friend of mine, an economist who runs a successful consultancy business, asked for a meeting to discuss my view on climate change. He was intrigued by the fact that, knowing my work as a political risk analyst, I have started to write extensively about climate change. Especially my journalistic commentaries have centered, for several years now, on climate change and related issues.

I argued that looking at long range scenarios to assess forthcoming risks I realized that climate change had become a unremovable driver. In the 1980’s, one could still find 30-50 year scenarios that looked at climate change as a variable. At least one scenario would not feature climate change, and this absence would be one of the factors that would distinguish it from the other scenarios. From the 1990’s onwards one could not find any credible long-run scenario that did not take climate change into account. In other words no story about the next three or four decades would be credible if it did not include climate change. Scenarios can vary widely when other factors are examined. Climate change has to be in all, and can only credibly vary regarding its intensity, and the different solutions envisaged.

He told me that he was beginning to see it, when analyzing long-term agricultural trends.

Yesterday he coined a catch-phrase for one of his analysis looking at supply, demand and price trends: “extreme weather used to be a random factor, and has now become a permanent one because of climate change”. Maybe it has never been a totally random factor. But it is clear that it has been a permanent feature over the last few years.

I’ve looked at extreme weather events from 2005 to the beginning of this year, and was able to make an extensive list covering these seven years. For all of them I could list heavy storms; floods and landslides; anomalously cold or hot winters; heat and cold waves; severe droughts. Anomalies could be found in all years, and all around the world. A good aggregation from 2005 to 2009 here. For 2010, an year of extremes, two good sources are here and here. Another good source, from the insurance industry here. This year began with some deadly weather events in Sri Lanka, Australia, and Brazil.

This sequence of extreme events over seven straight years has had a disruptive effect on agricultural supplies. Demand continued to grow, but crop failures due to the weather has reduced global supplies. Prices have increased feeding a weather-related food price inflation. It seems sensible to admit that weather extremes have become a driver no mid to long-term agricultural scenario can disregard. it also means that agribusiness will have to invest in adaptation. Some migration of agricultural production from risky to safer areas is becoming likely. Obviously the reach of the climate driver goes far beyond agriculture. Loss of lives, infrastructure and property was widespread. Extreme weather raises the risk of disasters everywhere, and adaptation has become a general need. The insurance industry has introduced the climate driver in its calculus long ago. Cities are already preparing themselves for present and future events resulting of changing climate patterns.

No risk or trend analysis will make sense if it doesn’t take climate change as a permanent and ubiquitous driver.

The agribusiness bloc has staged a multi-targeted attack on environmental legislation over the last few months in the Brazilian Congress. It has recently become far more active and is visibly gaining clout in Brazilian politics. The core focus of this new attack on environmental laws has been forest protection, and the Amazon region is its main priority. The rural lobby associated to this Congressional bloc has successfully engaged several government authorities, succeeding in persuading the president to sign a series of presidential decrees. The ministers of Agriculture, Mines and Energy, and Transportation have been working actively both on the media and within Congress to support changes on the environment license legislation, on forest cover legal reserves, and several other areas of the environmental legal framework. The minister of Agriculture has been the most outspoken in favor of agribusiness interests, but the Minister of Transportation, while defending the end of environmental licensing requirements for road-building, was also defending lifting barriers to deforestation in the Amazon. There are several road-projects in the Amazon, pending license, that directly interest the region’s soy and beef producers. The same is true of the minister of Mines and Energy attempts to lift licensing requirements for large hydroelectric power plant projects in the Amazon region.

The first important victory of this concerted anti-environmental action came when Congress turned into law a presidential decree granting land rights to thousands of illegal settlers. A sizable portion of those benefitted were acting as front to large cattle and soybean producers. The new law grants tenure rights to holdings of land illegally occupied of less than 100 ha cost free; and authorizes the land authority to sell at highly subsidized prices holdings between 100 and 400 ha. Land-tenure rights of holdings larger than 400 ha will be sold at market prices, and of those larger than 1500 ha will be auctioned. Land-rights of holdings larger than 2500 ha will depend on Congressional approval. The immediate result will be a de facto amnesty for most land-grabbers. As land-tenure rights begin to be issued, land-speculation will very likely result, increasing the value of legal land, and generating strong incentives to grabbing and clearing of new areas.

This outburst of political action by agribusiness lobbies resulted from progress of the environmental and global-warming agenda and an increasing of government raids against illegal deforestation in the Amazon. Fiercer action against deforestation, and the success of social organization initiatives, such as Greenpeace’s campaign against soybean exporters that led to a soy moratorium, recently extended until 2010, have also contributed to induce this political offensive.

Over the last years there have been some important substantive gains in terms of tools and means to protect the Amazon. Satellite monitoring of deforestation has been very much improved, and today Brazil has first-class monitoring by both the official agency, INPE (National Institute for Space Research), and the independent “think-act” organization iMazon. The National Monetary Council banned financing by official banks and agencies of activities that are not fully certified and licensed. This means that illegal deforestation had been getting official subsidized financing. Figures for monthly and annual deforestation became part of routine media coverage. Although modest and falling short of meaning a permanent and irreversible gain of Amazon forest governance this surge of environmental concern and control was perceived as a capital threat by the more retrograde sectors of Brazilian agriculture.

This case came back to my mind when reading Dan Morgan’s piece published Sunday by the Washington Post, Prodding the Liberal Agenda With a Pitchfork. He argues that climate change legislation was moving along in the US, “when it ran into a tractorcade.” He describes the mobilization of rural interests, to prevent climate legislation from going too far. Dan Morgan says that the demonstration of their remaining political clout “may come as a surprise to those who thought the ‘farm bloc’ disappeared sometime around the end of the Eisenhower administration.” He claims that “its clout has been reshaping — and in some cases halting — the ambitious agenda of President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).”

From his story it seems that the action of the American Farm Bureau Federation, US’s largest farm organization, parallels that of the National Confederation of Agrilculture (CNA), Brazil’s largest farm organization. He says that the AFBF has vowed to kill the climate change bill in the Senate. In Brazil, the CNA has vowed to revoke all environmental laws today protecting forest cover, mandating the preservation or restoration of riparian vegetation, setting licensing rules, and many other aspects of environmental legislation, also having as an end-result crippling any serious climate change initiative. It is important to note that in Brazil by far the largest source of GHG emissions comes from land use change in general, and deforestation and forest degradation, in particular.

In Brazil, we call this new “farm-bloc” that is getting more powerful through clever political maneuvering the “ruralistas” (“ruralists”). Dan Morgan suggests “the US newly empowered farm-state lawmakers” should be called “the Agracrats.” They’re a “bloc of moderate-to-conservative rural Democrats in both houses.” The Brazilian ruralists, we could also call them Agracrats (agrocratas, in Portuguese), form a multiparty bloc, and although its core is on the opposition center-right “DEM” party it has spread even into pro-government and left-wing parties. Dan Morgan suggests that the Agracrats bloc might become influential in other than farm or climate related issues. The same is probably true for Brazilian ruralists.

Their political advantage, in both countries, also comes from the fact that they hold a tighter and more consensual view of the issues they prioritize. Those who defend climate change and environmental policies tend to have a more plural view of the issues and are often unable to consensually supporting a single position, when it comes to Legislative battles.