According to the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations global animal agriculture produces vast amounts of crops to feed billions of farm animals long before they are consumed themselves.
Raising animals for food also includes feed-crop production which requires extensive water energy and chemical use as well as energy for transporting that feed live animals and animal products.
but these liquors are made from the baked hearts of these crops not the sap.)Prior studies hinted that pulque might have helped keep people in Teotihuacan alive.
Improving crops through plant breeding has always been a core part of farming and gardening. Farmers would freely exchange their seed with others
In order to continually improve our crops to feed the world s rapidly growing population farmers and plant breeders need access to the best genetic resources.
farmers clear land for crops and hunters kill chimps for food. People have argued that these increasing human impacts could also be putting more pressure on chimpanzee populations leading to more chimpanzee violence Wilson said.
Legal innovation Hice expects the innovation surrounding marijuana to translate to other cash crops given the interest in urban indoor growing.
Since he was 15 Ray Gaesser has planted tended harvested and sold crops through all kinds of conditions good times and bad.
He's responded with a slew of new techniques from no-till practices to planting cover crops buying bigger machinery
or climate change they're battling it's coffee rust a microscopic fungus that's wreaking havoc on coffee crops in Central america.
Growing demand and limited agricultural land means that the only way to increase the amount of food we can produce is more crops per unit area of land.
Increasing the yield of all our major cereal crops maize rice and wheat in that order is vital
This means that the genome of wheat is restricted to a small pool compared to many other cereal crops.
In wheat like in other crops this process results in more energy-rich grains. The Rothamsted group aims to select wheat varieties with high photosynthetic rates in addition to traits which breeders conventionally look for such as healthy grains
More than ever we need crops that can resist fluctuating environmental conditions and maintain their yield. Rajaram s work has generated wheat varieties
hydroponics or aeroponics and environmental controls that regulate temperature humidity and light to produce vegetables fruits and other crops year-round.
Chungui Lu receives funding from the UK Technology Strategy Board to work on developing LED lighting for horticultural crops.
Erik Murchie receives funding from the UK Technology Strategy Board to work on developing LED lighting for horticultural crops.
The new fuel would put agricultural waste to work instead of diverting food crops to make biofuels.
But critics have said biofuel production causes food shortages by replacing edible crops with plants intended for use in fuels.
Meanwhile spikes in food prices over the past few years have tampered government enthusiasm for biofuels that divert food crops even as the European union intends to reach an annual output of 2 million tons of aviation biofuels by 2020.
No extra crops would need to be grown to make the biofuel and the dependability of the fuel source could insulate airlines from spikes in fuel prices c
They have suggested also new agricultural techniques and methods of crop production to the community. These new developments have been welcomed by the local people as they have seen their quality of life improve.
#In particular farmers may be able to sow summer crops and feed for livestock and a bit more water may be added to reservoirs that are significantly below normal.
Bees which play a critical role in the health of food crops and natural ecosystems have experienced rapid declines in population and diversity over the past several years research from NHAES shows.
In the bottom of an oxbow lake next to Cahokia Ill. which was the most powerful and populous city north of Mexico in A d. 1200 lie the buried remains of a flood that likely destroyed the crops and houses of more than 15000 people.
and residents transformed them into exquisite goods. Vast agricultural fields where farmers grew crops such as corn squash sunflower little barley
and how well particular crops grow. The report found that the production of key crops like corn soy
and wheat could decline by 14 percent by mid-century and up to 42 percent by the end of the century.
Some areas particularly northern states could actually see increased crop yields though. All of the committee members and the three co-chairs emphasized the need for businesses to start examining these issues
Those changes can in turn have economic and health consequences such as altering the crop yields in agricultural markets or providing a more conducive environment for the spread of malaria.
which come along with economic costs as well as impacting crop yields. If for example drought reduces the Australian wheat crop that can affect the availability of wheat in food markets as well as food prices Baethgen said in the IRI video
but too much can expose crops to disease. Excessive rains can also have health impacts: In Kenya during the 1998 El Niã o rains caused catastrophic flooding that seriously damaged health infrastructure and spread malaria and Rift valley fever.
Commercial honeybees alone pollinate some $15 billion of produce each year according to the Associated press a number that doesn't include the economic impact of native bees that also pollinate crops.
and heat waves that wither crops in the field and heavy rains that drown out spring plantings.
To save Russia's breadbasket researchers are now working on sustainable farming strategies including rotating crops
Ancient people of Southeast asia didn't exactly replace their tropical forests with rows of cereal crops
In ancient Egypt hippos were considered nuisances as the animals ate crops at night. The young troops go out
and irrigating crops. I think it's appealing to think of Mummy Lake as a reservoir Benson told Live Science noting that the Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa verde lived in a region without any natural bodies of water.
when it's most needed for crops. The researchers then tested if a hypothetical feeder ditch could actually provide Mummy Lake with water.
because they rely on favorable weather conditions to grow crops and raise livestock.##But memories can only go so far to fill in data gaps
Without them for example those same farmers may have their crops overrun by hungry rabbits. Other resource i
Last summer for instance researchers from the University of Maryland and the USDA collected pollen from seven major types of crops along the East Coast where CCD has been especially destructive where bees had been in serious decline and fed
From October to December one of the rainy seasons the moths lay their eggs on grasses and crops in Kenya and Tanzania.
and crops, says Tucker. Government teams are now spraying pesticides imported from Accra in Ghana,
with a steady watering down of the rules in response to claims that they will lower crop yields and raise food prices.
The lobby group initially said that the new rules would lead to the withdrawal of so many pesticides that crop yields will fall drastically,
Crops that cool: Nature Newsa team of researchers at the University of Bristol, UK, is suggesting that changing the crops farmers grow might help to cool the planet by reflecting more sunlight.
Plants with waxy coatings on their leaves reflect more sunlight than their plainer-surfaced relatives.
Andy Ridgwell and his colleagues suggest that manipulating the waxiness of crops through traditional breeding techniques
however, hard to get farmers to plant crops that have lower yields than they are used to,
perhaps including fuel crops, and how they might be altered. They are also thinking of trying much higher resolution climate modelling to see
whether more-reflective crops could have specific regional benefits by reducing the likelihood of extreme events,
And as researchers push into other potential cash crops in the region including jatropha and palm trees for biofuels many worry that appropriate regulation and controls may come too late.
whether environmental regulations will be enough to compete with the lucrative rubber crops. We could make as many laws as we want,
Unless the market takes into account the value of ecosystem services lost owing to the cultivation of rubber and other crops,
Developing crops that are tolerant to heat and drought, building appropriate irrigation systems and creating jobs outside the farming sector in the regions likely to suffer the most could all help to adapt to climate change,
as even mid-latitude crops will suffer at very high temperatures unless adaptations are pursued there. Although temperate regions might benefit from some warming,
Ringler is working on a project to study the effects of climate change on actual crop yields.
They're also growing vegetables rather than crops like wheat on floating gardens. They use a bamboo frame and load it with water hyacinth,
and public reluctance about transgenic crops is likely to keep transgenic approaches off the table for some time.
Missouri, announced that it was halting development of transgenic herbicide-resistant strains of wheat after US farmers expressed concerns that they would not be able to export the crops to other countries.
has affected 20 million hectares of crops nationwide-an increase of 58%compared with the previous year.
European disarray on transgenic crops: Nature Newseurope has failed to reach a decision on whether France and Greece should be ordered to lift their national bans on cultivation of a genetically modified maize (corn) known as MON801,
soil and water and say farmers could cut their use of the fertilizers without compromising crop yields.
could maintain crop yields when properly managed. Most farmers believe that higher crop yields will be achieved with more fertilizer,
whereas our study shows that sometimes less is more, says Zhang. Other crops will have to be tested to determine the level of fertilizer that is optimal for them,
he adds. Timing is another crucial factor, says Zhang. Farmers apply 50 80%of the total amount of fertilizer around the time of planting.
And we are not compromising crop yields.
Australian bushfires rage: Nature Newsaustralian firefighters are desperately trying to extinguish the worst bushfires that the country has seen in decades, causing more than 170 deaths so far in the state of Victoria.
and the creation of genetically engineered crops, observers say. The technique relies on enzymes called zinc-finger nucleases,
and costs could be higher for other labs. The technique could also assuage a common concern about transgenic crops.
Despite intense opposition from the US corn (maize) ethanol industry, the rule takes into account agricultural expansion abroad caused by rising grain prices as food crops are diverted for biofuels.
is because California assumes that half of the food crops that are redirected towards energy will not be replaced because of rising prices,
and so could take advantage of crops grown there. Luigi Guarino one of the study's authors and a senior science coordinator at the Global Crop Diversity Trust a foundation based in Rome that aims to improve food security says that the results will allow researchers
Warming is expected generally to cause reductions in rain-fed crop yields and crop suitability in Africa,
so that simply shifting areas where crops are grown will be limited a adaptation strategy. Instead adapting crops in their current locations will be critical,
the study says. Using historical climate-change data, the researchers calculated average temperatures over the past 40 years for the maize-growing areas across all countries in Sub-saharan africa.
which to seek crops with heat-tolerant traits, the study says. The researchers suggest that one consequence could be that farmers may no longer be able to grow maize,
which is more heat sensitive than other crops. Instead, they may have to switch to sorghum and millet,
But he says he is disappointed that the study did not highlight the need for farmers to increase the diversity of crops they grow as a means of adapting to climate change.
So this is not just about having one or two high-yielding crops but lots of different crops.
More variability means greater resilience, he says.
Patchy pig monitoring may hide flu threat: Nature Newspublic-health experts are warning that a lack of surveillance may be allowing the 2009 pandemic H1n1 flu virus to go undetected in pigs.
The results, published today in PLOS Biology could bring plant breeders a step closer to generating crops that produce their seeds completely asexually a process called apomixis1.
Such crops have long been sought because harnessing apomixis would dramatically accelerate plant breeding. The hybrid offspring of crosses between two different cultivars of a crop plant often tend to produce higher yields.
Some plants, such as grape vines, can be propagated asexually using cuttings but not crops such as corn or wheat.
and blackberries few are crops. The concept of engineering apomixis in crops is so enticing that it was featured in a 2007 mystery novel called Day of the Dandelion by Peter Pringle,
in which a secret agent-cum-botanist hunts for a missing researcher believed to have discovered an apomixis'supergene'.
and those that have ratified it are legally bound to pass on genetic information about the world's 64 most important food crops,
This information might be held in gene banks or in the form of crops growing in a farmer's field, for example.
more genetically diverse crops instead of abandoning them in favour of modern and improved but also more uniform varieties.
and plant breeders who are searching for crops that can withstand the effects of climate change or emerging diseases.
Nature Newsfarmers in the Ethiopian village of Adi Ha have been busy sowing fresh crops of grain in recent weeks,
as is customary when their maize crops struggle because of drought. But this year, they have a second backstop against hunger:
In Adi Ha, farmers can pay a onetime fee of US$5 to $30 to cover their crops of the grain teff,
which need different associations of crops. There is a need for research also in sociology to find ways of packaging innovations
Food crops are produced mostly by women and male extension agents cannot meet with women to transfer knowledge to them as easily.
men are more likely to be involved in cash crops. So male extension agents tend to focus also on these cash crops.
What is the place of biotechnologies in Africa? In today's African agriculture, biotechnologies are not crucial.
especially if better systems mean you do not move your crops on to new land every two or three years.
when developers are racing to create crops that produce many different pesticides. Insects can become resistant to individual insecticides in much the same way as bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics.
and create crops that produce multiple toxins that target the same pest. This is the current trend of all the companies,
One of the most common'pyramided'crops on the market is cotton that produces two different'Bt'toxins made naturally by the bacterium Bacillus thuringensis.
The researchers were studying pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella) a particular nuisance in the cotton fields of the southern United states. Crops expressing Cry1ac have held thus far largely the pest at bay,
and Snorkel genes can now be crossed into common rice varieties to protect crops exposed to different flooding scenarios.
Rice blast disease destroys around 10-30%of global rice crops enough food to feed about 60 million people each year.
and are failing to provide sufficient water for crops. The main alternative to these old irrigation systems is allowing farmers to tap directly into groundwater themselves known as atomistic irrigation.
so that more crops get to market. The authors also suggest involving the private sector in managing the irrigation systems to take some of the burden off governments.
Nature Newsdeveloping countries could see large drops in crop yields by 2050 if climate change is unchecked left, according to a US report,
The report forecasts the effects on crop yields and agricultural supply and demand under the A2 scenario of the fourth report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is that by 2100 the temperature will rise between 2. 0 °C
If left unchecked, climate change will reduce wheat yields from irrigated fields by 20-35%by 2050 compared with the potential yields for these crops under a no-climate-change scenario.
and will face bigger reductions in crop yields than industrialized countries, says Nelson. The results show that southern Asia will be hit particularly hard by climate change, with some of the largest losses in crop production.
In a worst-case scenario, the models show that farmers in this region could see a nearly 50%drop in wheat production by 2050 compared with potential production with no climate change.
Nelson says that the biological effects of climate change on crops will work their way through the agricultural market,
such as climate change effects on crop production by regions, and on world prices for livestock products and major grain, don't take into account gains in crop yields
and production from a possible carbon fertilization effect increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere may be beneficial to some crops,
he says. Taking carbon fertilization into account could give a more optimistic outcome, he says.
But Goulding adds that the models also do not include loss of land to bioenergy crops
the leading producer of genetically engineered seed, on transgenic crops. The Danforth Center was founded with grants from Monsanto's philanthropic arm among others,
including rotating strawberries with crops such as broccoli that contain natural pest deterrents, or using steam to fumigate soils.
which a team led by Arjen Hoekstra at the University of Twente in The netherlands suggested that jatropha needs more water than other bioenergy crops, such as maize (corn),
which is wild, with crops such as maize that were domesticated for optimal use thousands of years ago.
where it provides jatropha seeds for farmers to plant among other crops or on spare land that is unsuitable for food crops.
the jatropha they planted reached harvest at the same time as the rice crops. Farmers neglect their jatropha seeds
and will monitor the experimental crops closely before considering requests from agribusiness for full-scale GM maize planting.
which allow crops to be planted where they could not be sustained previously. More trees are cleared then for agriculture,
Developing countries could see crop yields fall dramatically by 2050 if climate change is unchecked left, according to a study released on 30 september by the International Food Policy Research Institute in WASHINGTON DC.
There is no way to stop gene flow to the native crops, says signatory Montgomery Slatkin, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley.
which favours organic crops and transcendental meditation. Â lvarez Morales says the firm was chosen because of its widely known analytical techniques.
and should look for alternative solutions such as persuading farmers to grow crops other than coca. Despite this, a spokesman from the US state department says that the United states will support Colombia's government
Apart from the initial destruction of a few tree crops like cocoa, coffee and plantain, Achaea did not pose any threat to food crops like rice,
and other cash crops). By contrast, soil left to its own devices would take at least 100 years to acidify by this amount.
The acidification has lessened already crop production by 30-50%in some areas, Zhang says. If the trend continues,
and policy infrastructures required to encourage farmers to adopt these crops. There is some truth in Pingali's criticisms,
Proposals to focus research on maize (corn), rice and wheat would be broadened to include other crops such as beans and cassava.
The appeal of Arabidopsis is as a stand-in for unwieldy food crops that grow slowly
but it is often more difficult to characterize the function of genes in biofuel crops.
A new dawn for transgenic crops in Europe?:Nature Newsthe European commission last week approved Amflora a genetically modified (GM) potato developed by German chemical company BASF.
But getting crops approved requires a'qualified majority'of the 27 member states that make up the European council in favour at least 255 from a total of 345 votes
if they claim to have some evidence that the crops might pose a risk to human health or the environment.
whether to grow the crops or not. This sort of approach could take the heat out of the EU debate on GMOS
Environmental groups and some countries have had longstanding concerns about the risk of genes spreading from crops to bacteria and increasing bacterial antibiotic resistance.
since 1996 so crops such as corn and potato can produce the crystal proteins, protecting themselves from insects without any pesticides.
) Business watch Genetically engineered crops offer significant environmental and economic advantages over non-transgenic varieties,
transgenic crops now make up more than 80%of soya bean, maize (corn) and cotton grown in the United states or about half the nation's cropland.
According to the report, farmers who grow Bt crops, which are engineered to produce pest-killing toxins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, use less insecticide.
Increased planting of herbicide-tolerant crops may also have reduced the use of many herbicides that linger in soil and waterways
Farmers growing transgenic crops are more likely to practise'conservation'tillage, which reduces soil erosion. They have seen also economic benefits,
But the report warns that the risks of genetic engineering may multiply as the technology is applied to more crops
but there are others in particular some crops engineered to be resistant to this or that herbicide for
The presence of new forms of Ug99 in South africa makes wheat crops in areas including the Middle east
resistant varieties to ensure crops are protected against the fungus. The reddish-brown, wind-borne fungus was discovered first in Uganda in 1999
Outbreaks of larvae of the cotton bollworm moth in the early 1990s had hit crop yields and profits,
covering 3 million hectares of cotton and 26 million hectares of various other crops. Numbers of mirid bugs (insects of the Miridae family), previously only minor pests in northern China, have increased 12-fold since 1997,
The insects are also emerging as a threat to crops such as green beans, cereals, vegetables and various fruits.
an entomologist at the University of Minnesota in St paul. The finding reminds us yet again that genetic modified crops are not a magic bullet for pest control,
and trying to reduce mirid damage to cotton by growing crops the pests prefer nearby.
and two alternative realities in which crop yields were kept at the levels of decades ago. Published on 14 june,
The notion that increasing crop yields preserves forests and other native lands dates back to the father of the green revolution, the late US plant scientist Norman Borlaug,
threatening crops in areas including the Middle east and south Asia. See go. nature. com/flsdmx for more.
and 16 other crops are still awaiting final approval. The new measure, announced on 13 july,
the new arrangement should make it easier to secure EU-wide approval for crops. Several companies said that
Nature Newsa wave of up to 6. 7 million migrants from Mexico could head to the United states to escape the ravages of climate change on crops,
In this way, they estimated the sensitivity of Mexican emigration to alterations in crop yields due to climate change.
The resulting figure that a 10%reduction in crop yields leads to an additional 2%of the population emigrating was applied then to
In the worst-case scenario of no adaptation, crop yields dropped by 48%;%in the best-case scenario, with major adaptations, crop yields fell by 10%.
%The authors estimate that this would spur the emigration to the United states of between 1. 4 million and 6. 7 million adult Mexicans (or 2-10%of Mexico's current adult population.
says the study does not consider the possibility that crop yields in the United states could also be reduced drastically by climate change.
%cut yields of some crops, including maize (corn) and wheat, by 5-15%;%and increase the area burned by wildfires in the western United states by 200-400%.
and synchronize crop production with the climate by ending the cultivation of winter wheat and growing maize for more of the year,
where soya-bean crops (known as Roundup Ready) expressing the glyphosate-resistance genes can be cultivated without a licensing agreement.
and processed from these crops to Europe, especially The netherlands. In an attempt to recoup payments it has managed not yet to get from Argentinian growers,
and that 2 million hectares of crops are still underwater. Farmland will likely not be ready for rice planting later this year,
respectively, sued the USDA in 2008 for approving the sugar beet without adequately assessing the effects that it could have on weeds and nearby conventional crops.
the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs added that the floods would have a catastrophic effect on agricultural livelihoods, with extensive damage to standing crops 墉 such as maize (corn),
Last year, nearly half the world's transgenic crops were grown in US soil Brazil the world's second heaviest user, grew just 16%.
and proliferation of feral transgenic crops are ineffective. Current tracking and monitoring of GM organisms are insufficient
A major advantages of herbicide-resistant crops is that non-selective herbicides can be used, reducing the number of applications needed.
But if transgenic crops escape and breed with related weed species, then that advantage could be eroded,
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