agriculture
What’s the greatest challenge to growing enough food to feed 7 billion – or even, eventually, 9 billion or more – people? The first problem is the question itself. There is no one challenge to overcome, but multiple challenges: for example, improving yields where it’s needed most, dramatically cutting food
agriculture
One of the latest WikiLeaks cables to be released highlights not only how adamant the US government is about promoting genetically modified (GM) crops around the world, but reveals what is possibly the worse use yet of the word, “sustainable.” As reported in the Guardian, the leaked cable from the
agriculture
Modern agriculture’s dependence on monoculture crops — vast fields of nothing but corn, wheat or soybeans — has been widely criticised lately for being unsustainable. However, a new study reports on how farming ants and termites have successfully used monoculture techniques far longer than we have. While humans have developed agriculture
agriculture
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn today launched the new Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) and opened its state-of-the-art facility in Sand Hutton. The new agency combines several parts of Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) science. Fera brings together Defra’s Central Science Laboratory, Plant Health Division, Plant
agriculture
Researchers at the universities of Leicester and Oxford have identified the gene that controls plant growth as temperatures increase — a discovery with potential benefits for agriculture in the face of ongoing climate change. “Exposure of plants to high temperature results in the rapid elongation of stems and a dramatic upwards
agriculture
Scientists do sometimes get it wrong, you know. If Greenbang has a pound for every time she’d found an error in Bunsen and Beaker’s calculations, well, she’d have a few more pounds than she does now. Bunch of muppets. Anyway, the latest public body to take a
agriculture
In the land of the long white cloud, the Emissions Trading Scheme that sprung from the loins of the Kyoto Protocol is about as popular as windypops in an enclosed lift. The country’s Sustainability Council has put on its thinking cap, chewed the end of its biro, done a