Eden Research Share Discussion Threads

[supersonico] 19/6/2020 08:30

EPA drops regulation for contaminant linked to infant brain damage

[supersonico] 19/6/2020 08:23

parked;
Sumitomo Corporation (Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Masayuki Hyodo), has decided as part of its strategy to grow its crop protection business in South America to establish Summit Agro Paraguay (Head Office: Ciudad del Este, Paraguay; hereinafter, “SAPY”) in August (date tentative) as an affiliate of Summit Agro South America SpA (Head Office: Santiago, Chile; Representative: Daniel Stante; hereinafter, “SASA”), a holding company that administers crop protection distribution companies in the region. This will be the first crop protection distribution company established in Paraguay by a Japanese corporation.

[paulpaolo] 18/6/2020 23:36

One question is, will we get decent mevalone sales this year ? I hope we do. If not is it because (a) French growers are slow to take up new stuff or (b) doesn't work that well ? Cedroz not really marketed until this year so can't moan there but would love to see some real promotion and sales. Sustaine, I am very hopeful.

[sortudo7] 18/6/2020 18:17

It's only important if you eat food': inside a film on the honeybee crisis
The Pollinators investigates the honeybee, which is essential to America’s agriculture and food supply, and dying by the billions in the process

Adrian Horton
Wed 17 Jun 2020 15.10 BST
Every February, Brett Adee joins a caravan of semi-trucks, bound for California’s Central Valley, loaded with millions upon millions of fragile, precious cargo: honeybees. In order for the state’s almond trees to bear fruit – and thus generate an $11bn industry supplying 80% of the world’s almonds – they must be pollinated during the brief window in which the trees flower, from late February through March. And that requires an army of pollinators: some 1.8m hives of honeybees, almost the entire commercial supply in the US, drafted into big agriculture and trucked into central California from as far as the Great Plains and the east coast.

The almond enterprise is cutthroat and risky, reliant on honeybees sent not so much to work as to war, which makes the European honeybee “a keystone species for us in the United States, even though they’re not native to the US, because of the way that they’re used in agriculture”, Peter Nelson, a 30-year beekeeper, told the Guardian. Which is why Adee monitors his hives so closely – the bees are the difference between an almond crop and a bust year. And the bees face increasing risks of disaster; in Nelson’s film The Pollinators, a 90-minute documentary on commercial beekeeping and its linchpin role in the American food supply, Adee assesses a field in Kern county, California, which appears hazy and idyllic – rows of white-bursting almond trees, dotted every couple of lines or so by palettes of Adee’s hives. But up close, it’s a scene of carnage.

Piles of dead honeybees pool around each hive like splotchy puddles; Adee reports a “mass die-off”, probably from acute pesticide or fungicide poisoning. It could have been a neighbor who sprayed their trees too soon, or used a legal chemical toxic to bees without knowing. Adee’s team inspects, collects samples, runs tests – for the bees, and because hundreds of thousands of dollars are on the line. “If we put the same economic value on a honeybee as cattle, we wouldn’t have a pesticide investigator out there for these kind of losses,” he says. “We’d have the FBI out there.”

The precarious state of the honeybee is not a new phenomenon, nor an understudied one, but its implication for American agriculture – and therefore America’s supply of produce in its bountiful supermarkets – is vast and undervalued by the general public. “Most of us are three or four generations off of the farm … for many people there’s not a real connection to who grows their food and how food is grown,” said Nelson. Disconnected from the massive farms which supply produce, most Americans are unaware of the honeybee’s essential role. “The farmers are using these bees essentially as an insurance policy to make sure that they have pollination,” Nelson said, “because if there isn’t pollination of something, you have no crop. It’s a necessity.”

The Pollinators follows the frenzied, relentless work of the commercial honeybees, whose biological stability is threatened by a host of interlocking factors, and the workers who ferry them across America’s ravenous agricultural expanse. These beekeepers, the “last of the cowboys” as Adee calls them, crisscross the country from bloom to bloom, lugging a cumulative 2m hives from the almond groves in California to blueberry patches in Maine to apple orchards in Virginia – some 22 moves a year, according to keeper Davey Hackenberg.

As numerous beekeepers, scientists and farmers explain, such harried movement – along with the pesticide use demanded by the market and American consumers, bee immune systems weakened from monocultural habitats, invasive mite species, and of course the exacerbating effect of climate change – has cultivated a beekeeping crisis. Between 2007 and 2013, more than 10m hives were lost worldwide – twice the normal rate – many from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a mysterious phenomenon with no known single cause in which a hive’s worker bees disappear. Where beekeepers used to expect about 5% hive losses a year, they now routinely see upwards of 30%. One survey found that commercial bee farmers lost 40% of their hives – some 50 billion bees – during the winter of 2018-2019. “People talk about the financial viability of the bee industry,” says Adee in The Pollinators. “But I think what I’m more concerned with is the biological viability of the bee industry.”

The Pollinators argues that CCD as a term masks a network of threats to the honeybee exacerbated by several interconnecting, preventable factors. “It would be nice if there was a tidy answer, like ‘bees are dying because of X,’” Sally Roy, Nelson’s wife and a producer on the film, told the Guardian. “But it’s more than one thing that’s causing the losses for bees.” Individual factors such as Varroa mites or overwork in monocultural fields would be more manageable in isolation but are compounded by a staple of American agriculture: pesticides. From the Central Valley’s toxic soup of chemicals to apple orchards’ crop-beautifying sprays, America’s agricultural industry runs on chemicals. Since 1996, farmers have shifted from a class of chemicals called organophosphates, which were dangerous for humans, to neonicotinoids, which take years to decay naturally and ravage bee health. And in a cruel irony, the chemicals stick around best in fatty substances, such as honeycombs.

A still from The Pollinators
Photograph: Peter Nelson
America’s current pesticide model – spray everything preventively – is “kind of like taking an aspirin in the morning because you might have a headache in the afternoon”, said Nelson, “whereas a much better approach would be integrated pest management”, a more labor-intensive method that targets certain pests in limited populations as they appear. “I don’t think it’s realistic to think we can live in a world without pesticides,” he said. “But it’s how we use them and the type that we use that really makes a difference.”

While it may seem daunting to think of taking on entrenched and, as farmers testify in the film, economically necessary pesticide use, much of beekeeping and apiary science and improvement is “completely actionable”, said Nelson. “There are some global issues that we’re facing that can sometimes seem overwhelming … but with this problem, we can all do something.” He proposed a “scale of actionable things that people can do, from supporting your local beekeeper and buying local honey, support local CFAs, farmers’ markets”, to political action, such as advocating ending pesticide use on local roadsides. Even growing a pollinator garden, with a window box in cities, or not using herbicides or pesticides on your lawn – “lawns in America are essentially a giant monoculture that is everywhere,” said Nelson – can improve a local ecosystem, itself a smaller web of America’s food ecosystem dependent on strained populations of pollinators.

“You can really participate in making a change, through education, through action, through becoming a beekeeper, through gardening – all of those things are super important to this issue and really can make a difference,” said Nelson. After all, Roy added: “this film,” and the health of the honeybee, “is only important if you eat food.”

The Pollinators is out in the US digitally with a UK date yet to be announced

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[supersonico] 18/6/2020 16:54

Because imo I'm unlikely to get a meaningfull answer.

Been there done that..

I'll just wait until the Rice related RNS drops ;)

[investingisatrickygame] 18/6/2020 16:50

Why not submit your questions as per the RNS to the email [e-mail].

[supersonico] 18/6/2020 16:13

I'd be interested in the answers to the questions...

..why two Rice specialists?

..what does 'consolidator' mean?

what does short order mean?

is it longer than in the coming five years?

which School?

[investingisatrickygame] 18/6/2020 15:52

With no traditional AGM this year, I am interested to see the questions submitted by shareholders and the subsequent answers provided.

If anything, with a non-physical AGM, I am hoping we get more questions submitted and ones that I haven't thought of so that the outcome is a more detailed understanding for all.

[supersonico] 17/6/2020 20:53

Air pollution /Glyphosate /Cov19

5 Qs with Zach Bush & Sacha Stone

[supersonico] 17/6/2020 16:33

Blend each bad Dicamba or neonicotinoid head line with the following paragraph and decide for yourself if you were Bayer what 'challenge' is top of the big genie wish list?

I think Mrs75K has worked it out.

2017 Eden Reset UMMS commercial terms.

Sean Smith, Chief Executive of Eden, said: "We are pleased to announce the re-setting of some of the key commercial terms of our licence agreement with UMMS. We believe that the new terms reflect both the long term potential of our next-generation encapsulation technology whilst also reflecting the current stage of technology development. We look forward to the ongoing collaboration with UMMS which is, in part, focussed on the further development of this technology with the objective of creating a next-generation encapsulation system to help us solve a broader set of challenges for our partners."

[investingisatrickygame] 17/6/2020 15:04

Super,

The blog is most helpful as it explains processes, something I know has been asked for before and in doing so, this eliminates the need for such questions and therefore, investors are better educated and less prone o be nervous about timelines and unexpected events e.g. France and Cedroz recently.

[supersonico] 17/6/2020 13:29

Eden Research plc

@edenresearch
Our most recent blog explores Emergency Use authorisations for plant protection products in the EU. Read about why they're granted and what Eden's perspective is.

[supersonico] 17/6/2020 08:21

Croatia region declares natural disaster after 50 million bees were poisoned

[supersonico] 16/6/2020 21:21

Complete and utter Scum Bayer cancels nearly $1 billion expansion in Luling.

Officials with Bayer Crop Science, a division which acquired Monsanto Co., confirmed this morning that the major nearly $1 billion expansion at its Luling chemical plant has been cancelled.

Set to open in 2021, the expansion was tied to production of dicamba, an herbicide used as part of Roundup Ready Xtend Crop System products.
Through a statement released Tuesday, the company said the decision will not affect current operations at the site.

“The decision has no impact on our current manufacturing operations on site, nor on our commitment to St. Charles Parish and the Luling community. While a difficult decision, this enables us to preserve cash and prioritize our investments in new innovation for farmers,” the statement noted. “The team at the Luling site has a long history of working with employees and the community to manage through challenges such as this. We will be assessing our options for the plant over the upcoming months.”

Bayer does not currently produce dicamba but was constructing the facility to do so in the future, officials said.
“We have decided to stop the construction of a new dicamba plant on our site in Luling,” Kyel Richard, corporate senior external communications manager, said. “This decision has no impact on our farmer customers. We will simply continue to buy the active ingredient and produce the final product XtendiMax in our plant in Muscatine, Iowa.”

The decision does however have an impact on the River Region, as the expansion was expected to bring 120 new full-time jobs with an average annual salary of $76,500. At peak construction, the project was expected to generate 1,000 jobs.
“We remain fully committed to the Xtend System and will continue with innovation in dicamba formulation and development, as well as new traits with tolerance to dicamba,” Richard said.

Richard said the move enables the company to preserve cash and prioritize investments in new innovation for farmers.

“Bayer has been a part of the Luling community for more than 60 years, and throughout that time, we have remained committed to our employees, the surrounding community and St. Charles Parish,” Richard said. “We will be assessing our options for the dicamba plant over the upcoming months, and transitioning Bayer site employees affected by this decision to other roles within our organization. And, our commitment to the community will continue – including the completion of the walking and biking park that was initiated as part of this expansion.”

On June 8, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an order in response to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s June 3 ruling that vacated current U.S. registrations of certain low-volatility dicamba products, including those produced by Bayer. The Court ruled in favor of a petition challenging the EPA’s 2018 registration decision.

Richard said the timing of the court’s ruling is coincidental and unfortunate, but emphasized it was not a factor in reassessment of the Luling plant.

Through a statement released Tuesday, the company said the decision will not affect current operations at the site.

“The decision has no impact on our current manufacturing operations on site, nor on our commitment to St. Charles Parish and the Luling community. While a difficult decision, this enables us to preserve cash and prioritize our investments in new innovation for farmers,” the statement noted. “The team at the Luling site has a long history of working with employees and the community to manage through challenges such as this. We will be assessing our options for the plant over the upcoming months.”

[supersonico] 16/6/2020 20:37

33Mick,
Thanks for posting.. great expose .. further evidence that..

There is a dark evil lurking.

Interesting commentary on irrigated rice fields. see post 7722

[33mick] 16/6/2020 19:56

Interesting German DW utube vid.

Doesn' Show Bayer in a good light at all !!

[supersonico] 16/6/2020 15:29

Perhaps those with unanswered questions should look at an example of a company with game changing IP that did not get taken out for pence.

ARM ….Softbank why did it take so long?

Thanks in advance for the hotly anticipated detailed answers.

[2 risky] 16/6/2020 14:06

In that case, we can all look forward to erinvale's initial question being answered and a great big takeover at some point in the dim and distant future.

[investingisatrickygame] 16/6/2020 13:49

2 risky,

If you ask Corteva that question I imagine you will get 40 million reasons per annum as to why Eden tech is a game-changer.

There you go, independent verification. Not your opinion, not mine, not Eden.

[2 risky] 16/6/2020 13:05

erinvale,

My thoughts exactly, at market cap approx 30 million that is loose change for the likes of Bayer etc.Eden at present is one of the following;a game changing company with disruptive technology,a pedestrian middle of the road nothing special plodder,or a carefully constructed ruse to benefit the directors at shareholders expense for as long as possible.
But which is it? at the moment its anyones guess, buy the dips and sell out for a few pence profit if lucky.

[erinvale] 16/6/2020 12:48

It is puzzling why, given Eden’s unique and world-beating product portfolio, not a single offer for the company - even at 4-5P - has been tabled. If the hype is true, the company is a steal at 9p. Perhaps its uniqueness is in doubt, or the lead time for decent sales is over long. Can anyone who follows Eden offer a credible explanation.

[supersonico] 15/6/2020 20:47

Investing,
I'm assuming SustainE is working well and baked in by the way Lykele and SSmith are describing 'the coming short order five years' . That along with the Sipcam recent £1M share top up ..and.... the IP has been enhanced/ developed imo as detailed in post 7722.

The other way to look at your T/O question is to reverse the telescope and ask yourself what has stopped Eastman/ Bayer / Dow / Sumitomo etal from buying EDEN already? for peanuts?