American farmers expect to plant 88.8 million acres of corn — the second-largest acreage since 1946 — and a record 78.1 million acres of soybeans in response to high prices for the crops, the government said on Wednesday. While the survey results point to the prospect of bumper crops, the acreage figures were slightly below [...]
St. John’s Wort Collection Mined For Its Medicinal Value
March 31, 2010 By
A unique collection of St. John’s wort (Hypericum) curated by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Ames, Iowa, is providing university collaborators with genetically diverse, well-documented sources of this herb to use in studies examining its medicinal potential. In collaboration with Mark Widrlechner, a horticulturist with the ARS crop genebank at the North Central Regional [...]
Europe’s Largest Undersea Volcano May Flood Southern Italy Any Moment
March 31, 2010 By
Europe’s largest undersea volcano could disintegrate and unleash a tsunami that would engulf southern Italy “at any time”, a prominent vulcanologist warned in an interview published Monday. The Marsili volcano, which is bursting with magma, has “fragile walls” that could collapse, Enzo Boschi told the leading daily Corriere della Sera. “It could even happen tomorrow,” [...]
Tenant Farmers’ Credit Limit Enhanced To Rs.1 lakh
March 30, 2010 By
The District Consultative Committee of Bankers has decided to increase the credit limit to individual tenant farmers who come together in Joint Liability Groups from the existing Rs.50,000 to Rs.1 lakh. The decision comes after near 100 per cent recovery of credit from about 1,200 JLGs who had availed themselves of crop loans during Kharif-2009. [...]
Large Dams Can Help Cement Peace
March 29, 2010 By
Your informative report on the remarkable Gibe hydro-electric power project on the Omo river in Ethiopia (Report, 26 March) is of particular importance for a number of reasons. In a country which usually hits the headlines with news of droughts and famine disasters, the development of this massive potential source of energy is a great [...]
Oil Palm Farming Sustainable in M’sia
March 28, 2010 By
Oil palm cultivation in Malaysia is comparatively superior to any large-scale agriculture in the west in terms of sustainability, said Assistant Tourism and Heritage Minister Datuk Talip Zulpilip. He said that while trees were cut down for oil palm plantations, they did not cause permanent deforestation as planting was done to replace the fallen trees. [...]
Vanessa Hudgen’s Fashion Mistake
March 27, 2010 By