Changes spare top birds of Britain and allows trapping and releasing protected species found on farmland
Landowners wanting to be allowed to shoot robins, pied wagtails, starlings and other favourite birds seen eating their crops have been rebuffed by the government. But shooters will be able to le...
About 60 percent of California is experiencing "exceptional drought," the U.S. Drought Monitor's most dire classification. The agency issued the same warning to Texas and the southeastern United States in 2012. California's last two winters have been among the driest since records began in 1879. Wit...
Here's a list of things that could now get you fined up to $500 a day in California, where a multi-year drought is sucking reservoirs and snowpacks dry:
Spraying so much water on your lawn or garden that excess water flows onto non-planted areas, walkways, parking lots, or neighboring proper...
An increase in marijuana growing on the West Coast is straining water supplies in drought-stricken California and imperiling the region’s salmon populations, environmental groups claim.
Prodigious Water NeedsMarijuana plants require up to six gallons of water per day, putting tremendous strain on w...
MANHATTAN — An interdisciplinary Kansas State University research group is turning garbage into gourmet food.
The researchers are taking used coffee grounds from a campus coffee shop and using them as compost to cultivate gourmet mushrooms at the K-State Student Farm. By composting alone, 50 p...
Depletion of groundwater in California's Central Valley for agriculture and other uses could be contributing to an increase in small earthquakes along the famed San Andreas fault, a scientific study published on Wednesday said.
But the phenomenon is not believed to lead to an increased risk of larg...
Ambitious mitigation efforts, however, could decrease the pollution by 50 percent. The analysis is the very first to quantify this.
"Nitrogen is an irreplaceable nutrient and a true life-saver as it helps agriculture to feed a growing world population – but it is unfortunately also a dangerous poll...
Article by: Helena Paul
The US looks set to approve GM crops that resist the ‘Agent Orange’ pesticide 2,4-D as well as glyphosate, writes Helena Paul. If it does, the toxic chemical – created in WW2 to destroy enemy food supplies – will soon end up in animal feeds, and the food we eat.
W...
Uncertainty over a new US Farm Bill is likely over as the House of Representatives, in a bipartisan move, passed the Agricultural Act of 2014. The Senate still has to approve it but the bill is expected to pass through smoothly. An earlier version of this bill passed the Senate in 2012 but...
Breakthrough Technology Enables Crops To Take Nitrogen From The Air — Effective Means To Replace Nitrogen Fertilizers Developed
A potentially “world-changing” technology has been developed by researchers at the University of Nottingham — a means of enabling any type of crop to take nitrogen from th...
Scientists have located this year's dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which is surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. Though the dead zone is big, it not as large as predicted earlier. Water drained from the Mississippi river into the Gulf is a major factor.
Hypoxic (oxyg...
Discover the real difference between organic foods and their traditionally grown counterparts when it comes to nutrition, safety and price.
Once found only in health food stores, organic food is now a regular feature at most supermarkets. And that's created a bit of a dilemma in the produce aisle. ...
How many mouths will the world be feeding by 2050? It is an estimated 9.2 billion, up from 7 billion today. To keep pace with this growing population, global food production will need to increase by 70 percent.
That means getting a lot smarter about how we raise crops. With 38 percent of the w...
The UK Government hopes to make Britain a world leader in agricultural science and technology following the launch of a new strategy to deliver sustainable, healthy and affordable food for future generations.
Breakthroughs in nutrition, informatics, satellite imaging, remote sensing, meteorology an...
It's cricket crumble for dinner. We should all be eating more insects, because doing so is better for the planet than tucking into conventional meat like beef.
In a new report entitled "Edible Insects: Future prospects for food and feed security", the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says...
Last Monday the European Union deputy ambassadors voted to accept evidence available that confirms the link between pesticides and bee deaths. The vote took place in Brussels, where they were forced to act quickly to set forth a ban for a minimum of at least two years on the pesticides that sc...
By Codi Yeager-KozacekCircle of Blue
When it became clear last August that crippling heat and dryness would severely curtail U.S. corn production, prices for the grain shot to record highs. Now, eight months later, consumers in the United States are looking at a 3 to 4 percent inflation rate for fo...
One quarter of the US' rivers and streams have fish with elevated mercury.
At least our rivers don’t light on fire anymore. Inspired by a well-publicized fire on the Cuyahoga River in 1969, the passage of the Clean Water Act in the US led to huge reductions in water pollution. Despite those positiv...
Which is more important, pandas or pinot? Researchers say that is a question conservationists and wine-growers will have to answer in the coming years as climate change sparks a hunt for cooler places to grow wine grapes, even if those places are home to sensitive animal populations.
Already, big p...
