NewsTrust - Farming - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides, say NGOs

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By John Vidal - Oct. 19 (News Report) - Report finds genetically modified crops fail to increase yields let alone solve hunger, soil erosion and chemical-use issues Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of "superweeds", according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people. The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises. The report claims that hunger has reached "epic proportions" since the technology was developed. Besides this, only two GM "traits" have been developed on any significant scale, despite investments of tens of billions of dollars, and benefits such as drought ...

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Wafting poison makes fertile ground for suit in Stearns County

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Minneapolis Star Tribune - By Josephine Marcotty - Jul. 26 (News Report) - Court rules pesticide drifting onto organic farm constitutes trespass.

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Crops outlook gloomy

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - Jun. 20 (News) - Interest in long-range weather forecasts has always been high. But it is likely to intensify as weather conditions continue to threaten crops in many parts of the world including China, North America and Europe. Whilst crops in the southeast of China [pr

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Death wish: Routine use of vital antibiotics on farms threatens human health

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Jeremy Laurance - Jun. 16 (Investigative Report) - The use of modern antibiotics on British farms has risen dramatically in the past decade, fuelling the development of resistant organisms and weakening the power of human medicine to cure disease.

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Growth promoters: If you can’t convince them, sue them

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Maryn McKenna - May. 25 (News Report) - Several environmental groups filed a lawsuit today that alleges the FDA has acted unlawfully, ignoring its own statutory authority, by failing to curb growth-promoting antibiotic dosing despite decades of evidence that it stimulates the emergence of antibiotic resistance, undermining medical treatment and harming human health.

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Honeybees 'Entomb' Hives to Protect Against Pesticides, say Scientists

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Fiona Harvey - Apr. 06 (Special Report) - Honeybees are taking emergency measures to protect their hives from pesticides, in an extraordinary example of the natural world adapting swiftly to our depredations, according to a prominent bee expert. Scientists have found numerous examples of a new phenomenon – bees "entombing" or sealing up hive cells full of pollen to put them out of use, and protect the rest of the hive from their contents. The pollen stored in the sealed-up cells has been found to contain dramatically higher levels of pesticides and other potentially harmful chemicals than the pollen stored in neighbouring cells, which is used to feed growing young bees. "This is a novel finding, and very striking. The implication is that the bees are sensing [pesticides] and actually sealing it off. They are recognising that something is wrong with the pollen and encapsulating it," said Jeff Pettis,

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How Carrots Became the New Junk Food

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Fast Company - By Douglas McGray - Mar. 22 (News) - Jeff Dunn believes he can double the $1 billion baby-carrot business -- and promote healthy eating -- by marketing the vegetable like Doritos. His secret weapon? He knows every snack-marketing trick in the book.

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Corn May Be More Vulnerable to Warming, Stanford Study Shows

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By Rudy Ruitenberg - Mar. 14 (News) - Corn, the world’s second-most- widely grown grain, may be more vulnerable to global warming than previously thought, based on a study led by Stanford University that examined data from field trials.

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The Secrets Behind Your Flowers

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Smithsonian Magazine - By John McQuaid - Feb. 15 (Special Report) - In 1967 david cheever, a graduate student in horticulture at Colorado State University, wrote a term paper titled “Bogotá, Colombia as a Cut-Flower Exporter for World Markets.” The paper suggested that the savanna near Colombia’s capital was an ideal place to grow flowers to sell in the United States. The savanna is a high plain fanning out from the Andean foothills, about 8,700 feet above sea level and 320 miles north of the Equator, and close to both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Those circumstances, Cheever wrote, create a pleasant climate with little temperature variation and consistent light, about 12 hours per day year-round—ideal for a crop that must always be available. A former lakebed, the savanna also has dense, clay-rich soil and networks of wetlands, tributaries and waterfalls left after the lake receded 100,000 years ago. And, Cheever noted, Bogotá was just a three-hour flight from Miami—closer to East Coast customers than California, the center of the U.S. flower industry. After graduating, Cheever put his theories into practice. He and three partners invested $25,000 apiece to start a business in Colombia called Floramérica, which applied assembly-line practices and modern shipping techniques at greenhouses close to Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport. The company started with carnations. “We did our first planting in October of 1969, for Mother’s Day 1970, and we hit it right on the money,” says Cheever, 72, who is retired and lives in Medellín, Colombia, and New Hampshire.

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Exclusive: Bees facing a poisoned spring

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Michael McCarthy - Jan. 20 (News Report) - A new generation of pesticides is making honeybees far more susceptible to disease, even at tiny doses, and may be a clue to the mysterious colony collapse disorder that has devastated bees across the world, the US government's leading bee researcher has

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Biofuel Grasslands For the Birds

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Discovery News - By Tim Wall - Jan. 10 (News Report) - A diversity of grasses is better than a monoculture of corn for wildlife, making biofuel friendlier than ethanol for the environment.

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African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Neil MacFarquhar - Dec. 22 (News) - Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come.

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None flew over the cuckoo's nest

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Kate Ravilious - Nov. 15 (Special Report) - Could we be facing a future without birds? Our reliance on pesticides has cut a swathe through their numbers. We must act now.

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Earth Is Parched Where Syrian Farms Thrived

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Robert F. Worth - Oct. 14 (News) - The farmlands spreading north and east of this Euphrates River town were once the breadbasket of the region, a vast expanse of golden wheat fields and bucolic sheep herds. Now, after four consecutive years of drought, this heartland of the Fertile Crescent — including much of neighboring Iraq — appears to be turning barren, climate scientists say.

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Honeybee Killer Found by Army and Entomologists

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Kirk Johnson - Oct. 06 (News Report) - Since 2006, 20-40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States have suffered “colony collapse.” Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough ... it may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own.

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Colbert appearance causes mixed feelings

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Hill - By Christina Wilkie - Sep. 24 (News) - Comedian Stephen Colbert’s scheduled appearance on Capitol Hill to testify about immigrant laborers elicited mixed reactions from lawmakers.

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Senate Bill Addressing Food Safety is Stalled

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Gardiner Harris - Sep. 18 (News Analysis) - After his mother died from eating contaminated peanut butter, Jeff Almer went to Washington to push for legislation that might save others from similar fates. And then he went again. And again. And again.

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Mississippi River pours as much dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico as BP

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The New Orleans Times-Picayune - By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune - Aug. 11 (News Report) - Every day during the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, contractors sprayed an average 140,000 pounds of Corexit dispersant onto oil slicks on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and into the oil being released a mile below.

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For Oysters, a 'Remedy' Turned Catastrophe

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By John Collins Rudolf - Jul. 21 (News Report) - Diversions of freshwater from the Mississippi are said to have killed as much of 80 percent of the oysters in some Louisiana fisheries.

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Farmers Tackle Immigration Issues

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Miriam Jordan - Jul. 10 (News Report) - In a summer campaign, the United Farm Workers of America is challenging unemployed Americans to harvest the grape, peach and lettuce crops.

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How Goldman gambled on starvation

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Jul. 01 (Investigative Report) - By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all.

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This time, will we end the water war?

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Matt Jenkins - Jun. 13 (News Analysis) - In the grand Western tradition of fistfights down at the water hole, no fight has quite rivaled the one over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

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Oil Spill Idles Many Louisiana Fishermen

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. - Jun. 03 (Special Report) - As vast sections of the sea and coast have been closed off to fishing because of the gushing oil leak, the normal haul of oysters, blue crab and finned fish has been halved, and shrimp production is about a quarter of what is usually is. The exceptions are tuna and red snapper, which are caught far out at sea.

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China pins food-security hopes on humble potato

Mon, 31 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Lauren Keane - May. 31 (Special Report) - In the land of rice, China is looking at an unlikely tool for maintaining growth and social harmony: the potato.

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Blight destroys large part of Afghan poppy harvest

Thu, 13 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. - May. 13 (News Report) - In recent weeks Afghan farmers have started blaming the American and NATO militaries for spreading the disease, United Nations officials say.

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