Keyword: agriculture
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They’re almost like a hired gun’. Armed Rangers were brought in from out of state by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to assist in security surrounding the Bundy Ranch, according to the family. A heated confrontation on Wednesday resulted in Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon being tasered by BLM officials and a 57-year-old protester being shoved to the ground. Stetsy Bundy Cox, Cliven’s daughter, told the Washington Free Beacon that some of the rangers had Oregon and California license plates. “You know, some of these guys don’t even know why they’re here,” she said. “A few people have talked to...
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<p>WASHINGTON — Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo is pushing a bill in Congress that would shift responsibility for any labeling of genetically modified foods to the hands of the federal government, potentially stopping the efforts underway in many states to mandate labels on such foods.</p>
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According to a fact sheet published by the White House late last month, part of the Obama Administration’s effort to curb greenhouse gases involves cutting “cow emissions.â€The executive announcement has since boosted an interest in researching technology to accomplish the Administration’s environmental goals.The Financial Times reports that scientists now have a renewed interest in developing “a next-generation creature whose greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by anti-methane pills, burp scanners and gas backpacks.â€The Cow of the Future Project, directed by Juan Tricarico, is looking for a “star athlete†of the bovine world, says FT. He says the Administration’s latest environmental...
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WASHINGTON — Colorado officials warned a House committee Tuesday that a lack of transparency in the Obama administration’s efforts to protect the sage grouse as an endangered species threatens the scientific validity of the process. Rob Roy Ramey of Nederland, an independent biologist whose career has focused on species protection, told the House Natural Resources Committee that the process has been closed to the scientific community and that federal officials refuse to share certain data being used to make a final determination. “It can be like pulling teeth to try and obtain that data,” Ramey said. “The (information) is shared...
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Essayist Gerald Early said that the history of the United States will one day be reduced to the Constitution, jazz, and baseball. If someone had made the same summary of Chinese history 30 years ago, the trio would likely have been the Great Wall, Maoism, and famine. Over the past 2,000 years, China has suffered almost one famine per year. Severe drought killed as many as 13 million Chinese in the two-year famine beginning in 1876. The 1927 famine killed as many as 6 million. There were significant famines in 1929, 1939, and 1942. The Great Famine, which began in...
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An ancient flood some say could be the origin of the story of Noah's Ark may have helped the spread of agriculture in Europe 8,300 years ago by scattering the continent's earliest farmers, researchers said on Sunday. Using radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence, a British team showed the collapse of the North American ice sheet, which raised global sea levels by as much as 1.4 meters, displaced tens of thousands of people in southeastern Europe who carried farming skills to their new homes. The researchers said in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews their study provides direct evidence linking the flood...
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For thousands of years, different groups of people have lived in the Negev desert, building stone walls and cities that survive to this day. But how did they make their living? The current thinking is that these desert denizens didn't practice agriculture before approximately the first century, surviving instead by raising animals, said Hendrik Bruins, a landscape archaeologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. But new research suggests people in this area, the Negev highlands, practiced agriculture as long ago as 5000 B.C., Bruins told LiveScience. If true, the finding could change historians' views of the area's inhabitants, who lived...
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A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found. The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently....
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(Phys.org)—As a young archaeologist, Peter Bogucki based his groundbreaking theory on the development of Western civilization on the most ancient of human technology, pottery. But it took some of the most modern developments in biochemistry—and 30 years —finally to confirm he was right. While working as director of studies at one of Princeton University's residential colleges in the 1980s, Bogucki theorized that the development of cheese-making in Europe—a critical indicator of an agricultural revolution—occurred thousands of years earlier than scientists generally believed. His insight, based on a study of perforated potsherds that Bogucki helped recover from dig sites in Poland,...
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Charred grains of barley, millet and wheat deposited nearly 5,000 years ago at campsites in the high plains of Kazakhstan show that nomadic sheepherders played a surprisingly important role in the early spread of domesticated crops throughout a mountainous east-west corridor along the historic Silk Road... "Ancient wheat and broomcorn millet, recovered in nomadic campsites in Kazakhstan, show that prehistoric herders in Central Eurasia had incorporated both regional crops into their economy and rituals nearly 5,000 years ago, pushing back the chronology of interaction along the territory of the 'Silk Road' more than 2,000 years," Frachetti said... ...several strains of...
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The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...
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A decision pending with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could have huge ramifications for rural Kansans living in the western third of the state. In limbo is the question of whether the lesser prairie-chicken should be listed as a “threatened” species under provisions of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The species inhabits land spanning Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. ... Kansas, in cooperation with the four other states affected by the issue — a coalition known as the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies — has attempted to stave-off such a decision with the development of...
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As part of its plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the Obama administration is targeting the dairy industry to reduce methane emissions in their operations. This comes despite falling methane emission levels across the economy since 1990.(The White House has Proposed) cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. Although U.S. agriculture only accounts for about 9 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it makes up a sizeable portion of methane emissions — which is a very potent greenhouse gas. Some of these methane emissions come from cow...
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Will Obama use two small birds to limit oil drilling in the West? Almost half the land west of the Mississippi belongs to the federal government, including 48% of California, 62% of Idaho and 81% of Nevada. No surprise that the Obama Administration wants to control more. But the result could be to suppress the country's booming oil and gas development. In partnership with green activists, the Department of Interior may attempt one of the largest federal land grabs in modern times, using a familiar vehicle—the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A record 757 new species could be added to the...
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As part of its plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the Obama administration is targeting the dairy industry to reduce methane emissions in their operations. This comes despite falling methane emission levels across the economy since 1990. The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. Although U.S. agriculture only accounts for about 9 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it makes up a sizeableportion of methane emissions — which is a very potent greenhouse gas. Some of these methane emissions come from cow...
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LOGANSPORT, Ind. - A fast-moving virus that has infected hogs across half of the nation since it was first detected in the U.S. less than a year ago has become rampant in Indiana, agriculture officials say. Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, or PED, has infected farms in 43 of Indiana's 92 counties, according to March 14 data from the Indiana State Board of Animal Health. Twenty-six other states have reported cases of the virus as of March 12, the National Animal Health Laboratory Network indicates. While the flu-like sickness doesn't affect people and is not a food safety concern, it can...
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The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...
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Wyoming has spent $7.9 million on sage grouse conservation since 2005. That was the finding of a new report by the Western Governors Association, which inventoried the efforts of 11 western states to protect the bird and its habitat. The report comes in advance of an expected 2015 ruling by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over whether to add the species to the endangered species list. The sage grouse's listing could curtail energy development throughout the West. ... Utah, by comparison, spent $8.8 million on improvements to sage grouse habitat in 2013 alone.
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TEHRAN -- Archaeologists digging in southern Iran have found a pool and pots that they believe were used some 1,800 years ago for large scale wine production, reinforcing the now-Islamic nation's status as the cradle of wine drinkers. "We have found an almost intact pool with a canal in the middle of it. This is where the juices from crushed grapes would flow and be collected later in pots for fermentation and turning into wine," said Ali Asadi, the head of the excavation team. The team, which includes a group of Polish archaeologists, is digging at a site called Tange...
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TEHRAN: Archaeologists digging in southern Iran have found a pool and pots they believe were used some 1,800 years ago for large scale wine production, reinforcing the now-Islamic nation's status as the cradle of wine drinkers. "We have found an almost intact pool with a canal in the middle of it. This is where the juices from crushed grapes would flow and be collected later in pots for fermentation and turning into wine," Ali Asadi, the head of the excavation team said. The team, which includes a group of Polish archaeologists, is digging at a site called Tange Bolaghi, near...
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