Jakarta - Govt due to introduce trade system

The government plans within weeks to introduce a new trade system for horticultural products, which will include an import arrangement, in a move to increase protective measures within the domestic market, an official says.

Deputy Trade Minister Bayu Krishnamurti said on Friday the new system would ensure the quality and security of imported products for local consumers as well as guarantee the sustainability of local agricultural businesses.

A trade system to protect local products is commonly applied to a country’s essential food commodities, which in Indonesia’s case are rice, salt and sugar.

“We are trying to safeguard the local market from risky products and, for that reason, we will conduct a risk assessment regarding such products with this new system,” Bayu said on Friday.

Read full article: The Jakarta Post

NEF's new planting system speeds up miscanthus development

Energy crop developer New Energy Farms says it has developed a new system for establishing miscanthus that takes one-third the time of previous planting methods.

Paul Carver, NEF co-founder and CEO, who holds a PhD in miscanthus physiology and has been working with the crop for more than 15 years, said he believes the company can address the challenges that have been hindering the expansion of energy crops during the past decade. Of those barriers, establishment costs has been one of the most significant. “Grants and BCAP [Biomass Crop Assistance Program] won’t always be around—they are intended to start the market, not keep it going forever—so we’re very focused on providing systems that allow people to plant crops effectively without grant support,” Carver said. “It needs to end up being half the cost of what it is today.”

Carver said the new system, which he describes a second-generation method of planting energy crops, has three components. The first is a bulked up miscanthus breed that can reproduce rapidly. “The second part is development of uniform propagules that you can auto-drill with no hand labor,” Carver said.

Read full article here: http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/5957/nefs-new-planting-system-speeds-up-miscanthus-development/

Link to November issue of BioMass Magazine.