On Monday, EU environment ministers successfully blocked a move by the European Commission to force Austria and Hungary to lift bans on genetically modified corn. A German decision on the Monsanto product is expected soon, as well.
The European corn borer is a tiny, nocturnal moth. It likes to eat potatoes and sorghum, but -- as can be gathered from its name -- its food of choice is corn. There's only one kind of insecticide that is approved for fighting the flying scourge.
SAN FRANCISCO - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday declared a state emergency due to drought and said he would consider mandatory water rationing in the face of nearly $3 billion in economic losses from below-normal rainfall this year.
As many as 95,000 agricultural jobs will be lost, communities will be devastated and some growers in the most economically productive farm state simply are not able to plant, state officials said, calling the current drought the most expensive ever.
Now that we've decided
to "green" the economy, why not green homeland security, too? I'm not
talking about interrogators questioning suspects under the glow of
compact fluorescent light bulbs, or cops wearing recycled Kevlar
recharging their Tasers via solar panels. What I mean is: Shouldn't we
finally start rethinking the very notion of homeland security on a
sinking planet?
As our government enacts a stimulus package
and President Barack Obama announces bold initiatives to stem home
mortgage foreclosures, disaster threatens family farmers and their
communities.
When Abraham Lincoln formed the US Department of Agriculture in 1862
he referred to it as the "People's Department" because it served the
common interest of so many Americans. America's concerns about food and
the economy were addressed and investments in cutting-edge research
guaranteed the nation's food security.
On the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth earlier this month, the Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and his staff at the department’s Washington headquarters broke out its shovels and “
broke pavement” on a garden.
SACRAMENTO - Federal water managers said they may have to cut off all water to some of California's largest farms as a result of the deepening drought affecting the state.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials said Friday that parched reservoirs and patchy snow and rainfall this year would likely force them to cut surface water deliveries completely. It would be the first time in more than 15 years such a move was taken.
In the boom times of the 1980s, councils sold off allotments in their tens of thousands as it seemed no one in the Britain of conspicuous consumption could be persuaded to grow a single leek of their own. But as recession bites, the growing enthusiasm for homegrown veg has seen more than 100,000 people join waiting lists for a patch of land as demand hits an all-time high.
RENO, Nev. - Conservationists argue in a new report that U.S. taxpayers should stop subsidizing a $100 million program that kills more than 1 million wild animals annually, a program ranchers and farmers have defended for nearly a century as critical to protecting their livestock from predators.
BRUSSELS - The European Commission was foiled Monday in its bid to force France and Greece to allow genetically modified maize from US biotech giant Monsanto to be grown in their fields.
Food chain experts from the EU member states, meeting in Brussels, could not reach agreement on whether to back or oppose the French and Greek refusal to allow the maize, which has been given the green light to be grown in Europe.
