Keyword: farming
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You hear the squeals of the pigs long before reaching a set of long buildings set in rolling hills in southern China. Feeding time produces a frenzy as the animals strain against the railings around their pens. But this is no ordinary farm. Run by a fast-growing company called BGI, this facility has become the world's largest centre for the cloning of pigs. The technology involved is not particularly novel - but what is new is the application of mass production. The first shed contains 90 animals in two long rows. They look perfectly normal, as one would expect, but...
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Salvage logging on lands burned by last summer's Douglas Complex wildfire in southwestern Oregon is in full swing on privately owned forests, but not on public lands. ... On BLM lands, federal environmental laws require a lengthy planning process that includes the public. The Douglas Complex fires burned through 76 square miles on a patchwork of public and private lands.
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'National emergency' declared in Costa Rica, one of the biggest suppliers Country produces 1.2 million tons of bananas each year - one in five could be ruined by plagues of mealybugs and scale insects Elsewhere, banana-eating fungus from Asia and Australia is spreading Plagues of insects and a spreading fungus are threatening the world's supply of bananas, researchers have warned. A state of 'national emergency' has been declared in Costa Rica, one of the world's biggest suppliers, while separately a banana-eating fungus from Asia is believed to be spreading. Officials in the Central American country of Costa Rica fear that...
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Past experience in Idaho, northeastern Oregon and Washington state illustrate that it's time to take gray wolves completely off the federal list of endangered species. The West’s wolf problem started in 1995 and 1996. That’s when 66 wolves from Canada were reintroduced in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. Those wolves multiplied and spread into Wyoming, Utah and Oregon. They also took up residence in Washington state and Montana, where other wolves from Canada already lived. Today at least 1,674 wolves live in 321 packs within the region, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That’s in addition to the...
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Nasa has announced plans to grow plants on the moon by 2015 in a project designed to further humanity’s chances of successfully colonising space. Plant growth will be an important part of space exploration in the future as NASA plans for long-duration missions to the moon. NASA scientists anticipate that astronauts may be able to grow plants on the moon, and the plants could be used to supplement meals. If successful, the Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team will make history by seeding life from Earth on another celestial body for the first time, paving the way for humans to set...
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An example of the tension between Western Democrats and the Obama administration surfaced Monday when Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper told a rural audience that Washington bureaucrats are pushing a “slanted version” of the sage-grouse issue to political decision-makers. Mr. Hickenlooper, a Democrat who’s running for re-election in 2014, said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is receiving one-sided advice from staff at the Fish and Wildlife Service over the issue of whether to place the Gunnison sage grouse on the endangered-species list. “She has an open mind, right, she’s not well-versed in this issue, and she recognizes that,” said Mr. Hickenlooper in...
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Wildlife lovers clamoring to bring gray wolves to Colorado may want to pay attention to those wooden outhouse-style structures in rural Catron County, New Mexico. They’re called “kid cages,” and they’re built to protect children waiting at school bus stops–from wolves. “The wolf issue is an example, especially with the kid cages, about how you’re putting the interest of wildlife over the interests of human beings,” said filmmaker David Spady. “Every American should be concerned about seeing kids in cages and wolves out wandering around freely.” Spady’s remarks came during a Tuesday screening of his film, “Wolves in Government Clothing,”...
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Organic farmer Don Kretschmann walked around his picturesque but ancient barn and stepped up to a rustic barrel root crop washer. It's a simple machine, he said, consisting of long, wooden planks that form a cylinder, which he uses to clean freshly harvested produce on his Beaver County farm. Soil-covered carrots and potatoes go in one end, the cylinder rotates, water sprays in and clean vegetables emerge. “But who knows if I'll be allowed to keep using it?” said Kretschmann, who has farmed about 15 acres since he and his wife, Becky, bought the land in 1978. “Or this barn,...
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Tennessee’s second poorest county will suffer even more if the federal government buys 120,000 acres of land in that area, near Memphis, all for the stated purpose of wildlife preservation, said that county’s mayor. Lauderdale County Mayor Rod Schuh told Tennessee Watchdog Friday that his county, while poor, relies on farming and agriculture as the primary drivers of its economy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s plan to expand the Lower Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge, assuming it buys out as many properties as it can, will rob the county of its most valuable commodity, Schuh said. Primarily, almost 60 percent of...
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Michigan has a diversified economic base and the relationships between one industry and the others can get complex. Perhaps the most commonly reiterated myth about the state economy is that agriculture is the state’s second-largest industry. That myth was recently repeated by Michigan Radio, which did a series that looked at the people providing migrant labor. While agriculture is important for the people who depend on it for their livelihoods, it's a relatively small part of the state economy. The state gross domestic product generated directly by farms, fishing and forestry accounts for just 1 percent of the state's total...
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In an essay "Freedom of the Press" George Orwell wrote presciently about the dangers of a press too bound to prevailing orthodoxy to print anything else: "Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news -- things which on their own merits would get the big headlines -- being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that "it wouldn't do" to mention...
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The barriers to urban farming don't end at zoning ordinances and neighborhood politics. Not everyone has rooftop access, and arable lots can be far and few between. City soil often contains chemicals and contaminants, like lead. Sometimes the air is just as dirty as the dirt. And like traditional farming, there are seasons to deal with. You simply can't grow tomatoes in an outdoor garden in the middle of winter. Those aren't reasons to stop outdoor urban farming, but they do make it difficult to scale the model up. But what if you didn't need dirt? Or much water? Or...
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In his 63 years ranging cattle at Pine Butte Ranch in Wycliffe, Ray Van Steinburg has never had grizzly bears take down a cow. That is, until earlier this month, when he and other ranch workers found the carcasses of two cows about 100 feet apart on the 15,000 hectare property. The cows weigh about 1,400 pounds each. They set up a motion-detected camera at the site of one of the kills and caught amazing footage of not one but two grizzlies approaching the kill, feeding on it, and even wrestling with each other. Van Steinburg said that while his...
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We’re all paying more at the pump. It’s hurting consumers and dangerous for the fragile economy. And, it’s because of a Washington handout to corn farmers and big Wall Street banks – all disguised as a measure to promote renewable energy and clean-burning fuels. The Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) mandates an ever-increasing floor of ethanol be mixed with gasoline. The bill, which was expanded under President Obama, ensures a baseline level of demand for ethanol, distorting the market and sending the price of corn substantially higher. That’s because gasoline refiners have to purchase ethanol, regardless of the price. So, corn...
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While the nature and timing of the very beginning of the Neolithic in Ireland is still debated, our results -- based on new Bayesian chronologies of plant macro-remains -- are consistent with a rapid and abrupt transition to agriculture from c. 3750 cal BC, though there are hints of earlier Neolithic presence at a number of sites... Cereals were being consumed at many sites during this period, with emmer wheat dominant, but also barley (naked and hulled), as well as occasional evidence for einkorn wheat, naked wheat and flax. The earliest farmers in Ireland, like farmers elsewhere across NW Europe......
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California farmers feel more threatened by climate policy than they do by climate change, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis. The study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, found that the greatest climate risk Yolo County farmers believe they face in the future is not drought, water shortages, or temperature changes, but government regulations.
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Due to the rising cost of feed, many small scale pork producers are exploring alternatives in order to increase their profit margins. At Donnelly Farms, Jack Donnelly is producing hydroponically-grown green forage for his hogs, and has been able to reduce feed outlay and increase their bottom line. Donnelly Farms is a small, family-owned farm located in McClure, Ohio. The Donnelly family has been raising pork and goat meat for private buyers since 1981. They raise 25-45 hogs per month. The majority of their hogs are sold to private individuals, and a small batch is sold to Tyson Meats. Donnelly...
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Microbiologists are trying to work out whether use of antibiotics on farms is fuelling the human epidemic of drug-resistant bacteria. The sight of just one boot coming through the doorway cues the clatter of tiny hoofs as 500 piglets scramble away from Mike Male. “That's the sound of healthy pigs,” shouts Male, a veterinarian who has been working on pig farms for more than 30 years. On a hot June afternoon, he walks down the central aisle of a nursery in eastern Iowa, scoops up a piglet and dangles her by her hind legs. A newborn piglet's navel is an...
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One can’t get much more grass roots than this: Sarah Palin is the keynote speaker Thursday at an agricultural “field day” near Baltic, S.D. — population 1,090 — situated on the scenic banks of the Big Sioux River in the eastern corner of the state. The former vice presidential candidate/potential U.S. Senate hopeful is going no-frills, however, journeying to the heartland accompanied by her youngest daughter. “It’s an honor to get to travel with my entourage, er, that would be Piper, to be with those who are feeding the nation,” Mrs. Palin said in a Facebook post about the one-day...
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If it isn't torrential downpours, then it's too dry. If there's one thing U.S. farmers can count on, it's bad weather, and perhaps as a result, many of them don't think humanity is to blame for the long-term shifts in weather patterns known as climate change. But even though agriculture is a major contributor to global warming, it may not matter whether farmers believe in the environmental problem. Take, as an example of skepticism, Iowa corn farmer Dave Miller, whose day job is as an economist for the Iowa Farm Bureau. As Miller is happy to explain, it's not that...
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