4
Feedstuffs, March 9, 2015 • Feedstuffs.com
News
Satellite collecting
soil moisture data to
help gain more accurate understanding of
weather and climate.
R
IGHT now, orbiting the
Earth about 426 miles
above the planet’s surface is the National Aeronautics & Space Administration’s
(NASA) Soil Moisture Active
Passive (SMAP) satellite.
Its mechanical arm has extended, and it’ll start to spin
soon. This summer, the SMAP
satellite will begin tracking
the moisture content of soil
all over the world, laying the
groundwork for a better understanding of weather and
climate, especially as they relate to flooding.
Iowa State University associate professor of agronomy
Brian Hornbuckle helped
make it happen.
The SMAP satellite measures the moisture in soil by
monitoring the microwave radiation emitted by the Earth’s
surface, Hornbuckle said. Wet
soil emits less radiation than
dry soil, he explained.
The “active” capability hinted at in the satellite’s name
refers to its ability to emit radiation, which then bounces
off the Earth’s surface and is
collected by the SMAP satel-
lite’s instrumentation. The
feature, which previous satellites lacked, will yield richer
data, Hornbuckle said.
He has received three different research grants from NASA
over the years and worked on
similar satellites in the past,
including the European Space
Agency’s Soil Moisture & Ocean
Salinity (SMOS) satellite, which
launched in 2009. The technology is still developing in many
ways, but it’ll eventually have a
big payoff, he said.
“When this kind of technology advances beyond the
experimental stage into the
operational stage, we’ll see
better predictions for weather and our understanding of
climate,” Hornbuckle said.
University of Nevada
restores dairy research lab
DAIRY farming in Nevada
is seeing a resurgence, and
University of Nevada-Reno
assistant professor Antonio
Faciola is working to help the
industry be more efficient
and profitable by researching new feed sources, the nutritional value of plants and
the overall understanding of
ruminant nutrition.
Faciola moved to Nevada
in June 2013 to continue his
research and teach in the
University of Nevada-Reno’s
new agriculture, nutrition
and veterinary sciences department.
“Nevada has a growing
dairy industry and many
challenges and opportunities,” he said. “My work applies to the challenges ranchers face on a daily basis such
as forages’ nutritional value,
diet fine-tuning and optimizing new feed sources.”
Northern Nevada is expecting a five-fold to ten-fold increase in milk production
with a new milk plant in Fal-
lon, Nev., and research can
help the industry meet this
demand and be competitive.
Faciola’s Animal Nutrition
Research Laboratory is the
newest and biggest lab in
the animal, nutrition and veterinary science department.
The old dairy cattle research
lab closed 10 years ago, and
Faciola incorporated the
still-usable parts with new
equipment and processes to
bring the lab up to date with
the rest of the industry.
“The re-establishment of
dairy research is an important step for the college,” Bill
Payne, dean of the university’s College of Agriculture,
Biotechnology & Natural Resources, said. “This is a critical component of ag production in Nevada, and we must
do what we can to support
that industry.”
Since June 2013, Faciola
has secured more than $2.6
million in research grants as
the principal investigator or
co-principal investigator.
“I want to focus on the nutritional value of Nevada’s
forages,” he said. “That information is very scarce in the
literature, but research can
help us understand better
what cattle’s requirements
are, and that information can
help producers save money
on supplemental feed.”
Using laboratory equipment such as the dual-flow
continuous culture system
that simulates rumen digestion and working with cows
at the Main Station Field lab,
Faciola and his team can
measure the chemical composition of different forages,
feed ingredients, ruminal
fermentation, microbial protein production and nutrient
flow.
“As the dairy industry
grows in northern Nevada,
it’s our mission, as Nevada’s
land-grant university, to help
ranchers and farmers, so we
are taking some first steps to
get back in the dairy production game,” Payne said. ■
$50k donated to SDSU animal research facilities
HUBBARD Feeds Inc., a leading U.S. animal nutrition company, announced that it has
committed $50,000 toward
construction of the new cow/
calf and swine education and
research facilities at South Dakota State University (SDSU).
According to an announcement from the SDSU Foundation, the Cow/Calf Education
& Research Facility has an
expected construction cost
in excess of $6 million. This
unit will include a main building with offices, laboratory
space and a conference center; a multipurpose building
for maternity and/or livestock
evaluation pens; a monoslope
research building, and rep-
March 9, 2015.indd 4
licated pastures for grazing
management research. The facility is projected to be ready
for students, faculty and visitors in the spring of 2016.
The Swine Education &
Research Facility Project
calls for the construction
of three new state-of-the-art
complexes, with expected
costs in excess of $7 million.
The new complexes will include a teaching, intensive
research and sow building, a
four-room wean-to-finish barn
and a commercial, 1,200-head
wean-to-finish barn that will
be located at a separate site
for biosecurity purposes, the
SDSU Foundation said. Construction also is expected to
wrap up by the spring of 2016.
“Hubbard Feeds and the
South Dakota State University
department of animal science
have a shared goal to improve
the health, performance and
well-being of food animals. We
greatly appreciate Hubbard’s
support in the construction of
both the SDSU Cow/Calf Education & Research Unit and
the SDSU Swine Education &
Research Unit,” Dr. Joseph
Cassady, SDSU animal science department head, said.
“These new facilities are critical resources for educating
students and conducting research necessary for achieving our shared goals.” ■
Photo: Iowa State University/Brian Hornbuckle.
Agronomist to help
NASA confirm
soil moisture data
IN ORBIT: Shown is a rendering of the National Aeronautics &
Space Administration’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite,
which is currently in orbit and soon will begin measuring the
moisture content of the Earth’s soils.
“We’ll have a better understanding of seasonal rainfall
and flood prediction as well.”
Launched on Jan. 31, the
SMAP satellite spent its first
few weeks in orbit running diagnostics to make sure everything was in working order.
Last week, its mechanical arm
extended for the first time.
Hornbuckle said the new
satellite will gather data on a
much finer level than previous satellites. For instance,
the older SMOS satellite took
about one measurement per
county in Iowa, while the
SMAP satellite will gather
measurements down to the
township level.
Part of Hornbuckle’s job will
be to keep the SMAP satellite
honest by validating the data
it collects. The new satellite is
programmed to make assumptions about cover vegetation
during Iowa’s growing season
that may introduce some errors into the data. Hornbuckle
and his team will compare the
satellite’s findings to actual
soil moisture at an experiment
site near Eldora, Iowa.
“We don’t always have a
good understanding of how
water moves between the
surface and the atmosphere,”
Hornbuckle said. “We’re just
kind of making guesses right
now, but satellites like this
will help us to fill in those
blanks and gain a more accurate understanding of weather and climate.” ■
COOL rehearing
• From page 1
THE U.S. continues to argue
that COOL is in compliance
with its international trade
obligations under WTO, but
WTO has ruled against the
U.S. three times.
Chandler Goule, National
Farmers Union (NFU) senior
vice president of programs,
said the public copy of the
U.S. statement “lays out strong
grounds for reversing the compliance panel’s findings that
the 2013 rule failed to bring
the U.S. into compliance with
its WTO obligations.”
In the most recent ruling
from October 2014, a WTO
compliance panel supported Canada’s position that
amendments to the U.S. COOL
regulation continue to discriminate against live imports
of cattle and hogs into the U.S.
marketplace.
The finding stated that “the
amended COOL measure has
increased the original COOL
measure’s detrimental impact
on the competitive opportunities of imported livestock,”
which CCA said affirms its
“position that the revised
regulation is worse than the
original.”
Goule said NFU believes
that the revised COOL regulations are WTO consistent and
looks forward to the Appellate Body’s ruling in this ap-
peal, which is expected later
this spring or early summer.
Until COOL comes into compliance with WTO rules, CCA
said it will continue to insist
that the government of Canada
prepare to impose prohibitively
high tariffs on key U.S. exports
to Canada, including beef.
The impact of COOL on the
combined Canadian cattle and
hog sectors was estimated in
2012 to be approximately $1.1
billion per year; however, the
impact has increased since
the U.S. Department of Agriculture amended the regulation in 2013.
CCA said it will work with
the Canadian government to
prepare to impose tariffs on
U.S. exports selected from a
list of targeted commodities
released in June 2013.
Those cost impacts may be
higher than warranted, according to NFU. Earlier this
year, NFU released a new
study conducted by Auburn
University showing that the
economic downturn since
2008 and other factors — not
COOL — have caused decreased demand for cattle imports into the U.S.
Goule said NFU will “continue to work closely with the
U.S. government and with all of
our allies who support COOL
as the case proceeds.” ■
3/6/2015 11:36:43 AM