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Archive for June 4th, 2011
The food chain is almost broken. Who will reforge the links of trust?
Posted by Observer: Joanna Blythman on June 4th, 2011
Observer: Our faith in the modern food system is touching. When a bag of salad leaves reads: "Washed and ready to eat", most people will consume the contents without a second thought. We assume that the leaves were grown safely, picked hygienically, then broken up, washed, dried and bagged in a factory so meticulously clean that we don't even need to rinse them under the kitchen tap.
And why shouldn't we? On the face of it, our food has never been safer. Growers, farmers and food processors all over the...
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United Kingdom: Crisis meeting is called as drought leaves crops dying in the fields
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 4th, 2011
Guardian: Ministers, farmers, supermarkets and utility companies will meet this week to assess a worsening dry spell in much of southern and eastern England that is threatening to become an agricultural and environmental disaster.
Britain's second-driest spring in 100 years and the warmest since 1659 has left soil in parts of East Anglia and south-east England concrete-hard, with many rivers shrunk to trickles and crops withering at critical times in their growth.
Some eastern counties have had only...
Damaging the Earth to Feed Its People
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 4th, 2011
New York Times: On a warming planet, humanity faces a great challenge in feeding itself at reasonable cost in the coming century, as I explain in Sunday’s paper. An issue I raise only in passing in the article is that agriculture itself is one of the earth`s greatest environmental threats.
To put a finer point on it, farming and livestock grazing are not just potential victims of climate change -- they are major causes of it.
Humans are cultivating almost 40 percent of the land surface of the earth, and nearly...
Britain’s hot spring could be result of shrinking Arctic
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 4th, 2011
Guardian: The weather that has brought drought and baking heat to much of Britain can be blamed on a block of high pressure air that has stubbornly refused to shift itself from the British Isles. Normally this block would have been restricted to the Azores and the mid-Atlantic, but it has spread to Britain. Wet winds have been deflected from the airspace above the nation, as a result, and farmers have been left to cope with dried-up rivers and parched soil – although forecasters warned on Saturday that the...
India: Climate change: Focus on water security issues
Posted by Assam Tribune: None Given on June 4th, 2011
Assam Tribune: The draft strategy and action plan on climate change prepared for the State by the Assam Science Technology and Environment Council (ASTEC), has recommended that the water security issues should be given priority over all other issues in case of hydro-power or storage reservoir projects.
“The State Government must negotiate the riparian and downstream rights of its people with neighbouring states upstream, with whom the State shares river courses and basins…” said the relevant recommendation of...
China: Drought raises questions about climate change
Posted by Reuters: Chris Buckley on June 4th, 2011
Reuters: A boat is seen stranded on the cracked bed of a dried area of Xieshan, which is part of Poyang Lake in east China's Jiangxi Province Lake Honghu, China - China's drought along its biggest river, the Yangtze, is for some scientists a demonstration of how global warming could increasingly disrupt the complex dance of air flows, rains and waterways that feeds dams and farming heartlands. Many older farmers around Lake Honghu, part of the drought-stricken Yangtze River basin, said summers and winters...
Forest: The one and only address of inhabitable world
Posted by Daily Star: Dr. Md. Mizanur Rahman on June 4th, 2011
Daily Star: Forest ecosystem provides benefits that support the livelihoods of countless human beings. Forests provide a number of components to the broad range of ecological services such as, regulation of rainfall and hydrological system; maintenance of soil quality, control of soil erosion, modulating climate; and being the habitat of biodiversity. Forests form the basis of different industries e.g. timber, wood processing, paper, rubber, paints, resin, gum, honey, food, medicines, building material, fodder,...
South Africa: Alarm raised over decline in maize crop
Posted by Mail and Guardian: Niren Tolsi on June 4th, 2011
Mail and Guardian: The production of maize, a staple for millions of South Africans, is predicted to plummet by 35% in Southern Africa by 2030 if climate change continues unabated, a report published this week by Oxfam warns.
The report, "Growing a Better Future - Food Justice in a Resource-Constrained World", also warns that the price of maize exports is likely to increase by 180% in the same period, exacerbating hunger and malnutrition.
"Higher prices will translate into a depressed demand for food in the [sub-Saharan]...
China Faces ‘Very Grave’ Environmental Situation, Officials Say
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 4th, 2011
New York Times: China's three decades of rapid economic growth have left it with a "very grave' environmental situation even as it tries to move away from a development-at-all-costs strategy, senior government officials said on Friday.
In a blunt assessment of the problems facing the world's most populous country, officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection delivered their 2010 annual report. They pointed to major improvements in water and air quality -- goals that the ministry had set for itself...