http://www.enn.com/ ENN RSS News http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/36423 Bonn, Germany--Organizations and scientists from around the world spoke today about their opposition to genetically engineered trees which will be negotiated at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity's Ninth Conference of the Parties (CBD COP-9) beginning next week in Bonn. They are demanding that governments at the UN agree to accept the proposal to suspend all releases of genetically engineered (GE) trees into the environment, due to their extreme ecological and social threats. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/36414 The black truffle, one of the most exclusive and expensive delicacies on the planet, is under threat from climate change. A mysterious species of underground fungi with reported aphrodisiac and therapeutic properties, the aromatic truffles are also highly fragile and cannot withstand more than three weeks without water. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/36342 The Bush administration has slipped a controversial ingredient into the $770 million aid package it recently proposed to ease the world food crisis, adding language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries. The value of genetically modified, or bio-engineered, food is an intensely disputed issue in the U.S. and in Europe, where many countries have banned foods made from genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/36273 In recent years, scarcity and pollution of water have become the paramount environmental woe in China. Numerous reports and books have exposed China's water crisis, depicting a nation suffering in the face of black-running rivers and dried-up waterways. Nationwide, the per capita availability of fresh water is only one-quarter of the world average. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/36268 Some of the world's largest biotechnology companies have filed hundreds of patents on "climate ready" gene-altered crops, hoping to dominate a market expected to emerge as farmers respond to environmental stresses caused by global warming, an advocacy group for subsistence farmers said in a report today. BASF, Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Dupont and biotech partners have filed 532 patent documents around the world for crops genetically altered to adapt to rising temperatures, the ETC Group's report says. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/36264 A landmark assessment of global agriculture says industrial agriculture has failed and that genetically modified (GM) crops are not a solution for poverty, hunger, or climate change. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/36210 The Via Campesina has long argued that farmers need land to produce food for their own communities and for their country and for this reason has advocated for genuine agrarian reforms to access and control land, water, agrobiodiversity, etc, which are of central importance for communities to be able to meet growing food demands. The Via Campesina believes that in order to protect livelihoods, jobs, people's food security and health, as well as the environment, food production has to remain in the hands of small-scale sustainable farmers and cannot be left under the control of large agribusiness companies or supermarket chains. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/36161 <p> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A corn-like plant that can grow as high as an elephant's eye on some of Earth's driest farmland shows promise as a "smart" biofuel that won't cut into world food supplies, an agriculture expert said on Monday.</p> http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/36134 The United Nations is calling the recent increase in world hunger a "silent tsunami," as if it was triggered by an event at the bottom of the ocean. I'd call the crisis a storm, brewed by several converging forces, all of which, it turns out, are man-made. It's a storm that some have been predicting for a long time, and now, finally, the U.N. is taking notice. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/36104 The secret behind growing large tomatoes lies not in the fertilizer or the perfect soil conditions, but in just a few genetic changes that over time have resulted in tomatoes 1,000 times bigger than their wild ancestors, U.S. researchers said on Sunday. Without these changes, tomatoes would be little more than berries on a bush. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/36050 Have you ever thought about your clothing and the effects on the earth? What if I told you that the way cotton is currently grown and harvested, it endangers lives? Conventional cotton is causing extreme concerns and here&rsquo;s why. Tons and tons of pesticides are sprayed on cotton fileds every year to eradicate a little bug known as the boll weevil. The problem with using poison to kill one bug is that it kills all the other beneficial insects that keep nature on track. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35984 THERE'S been a changing of the guard at the Coleman Family Farm stand at the Santa Monica Farmers Market on Wednesday mornings. Ask Bill Coleman a question and he's likely to answer, "Ask Romey." Romey -- Romeo on his birth certificate -- is Coleman's son and though his eventually becoming the boss was expected, it nonetheless comes as a bit of a surprise to longtime market shoppers who might still think of him as the kid they watched grow up. http://www.enn.com/business/article/35942 BALTIMORE (Reuters) - Carolyn Stanley, a single mother with five children, receives $327 in food stamps each month to feed her family. With prices for staples like bread and cheese going ever higher, each month is harder than the last. She buys hot dogs over higher-quality meat and feeds her kids cereal, but even with other government support she often has to seek help from local churches and from friends. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35940 A new programme to develop low-cost technologies to reduce post-harvest losses will be launched in Ethiopia this year. The six-year programme will run at Jimma University College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine (JUCAVM) in Ethiopia, with US$3 million funding from the Canadian International Development Agency. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35871 Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry. The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor - who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food - into hunger and destitution. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35816 Scientists in China have identified a single gene that appears to control rice yield, as well as its height and flowering time, taking what may be a crucial step in global efforts to increase crop productivity. In an article published in Nature Genetics, the researchers said they were able to pinpoint a single gene, Ghd7, which appears to determine all three traits. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35810 Although shoppers have generally accepted that eating organic foods will be more costly, a recent and rapid rise in prices may force some consumers to alter their eating habits. Food prices have been rising for several months now, and at first, organic prices stayed steady. But organic foods are catching up - and then some. A gallon of organic milk, for example, is now nearing $7. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/35801 With U.S. gasoline prices edging toward the recently unimaginable price of $4 a gallon, consumers are beginning to drive less and energy efficiency is again a hot topic. But the pain caused by high oil prices is nothing like what looms as an even more basic and essential natural commodity &mdash; water -- faces dwindling supplies and growing demand. As essential as it is taken for granted, water is The Next Oil. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35777 If farmers think they have a tough time producing enough rice, wheat and other grain crops, global warming is going to present a whole new world of challenges in the race to produce more food, scientists say. In a warmer world beset by greater extremes of droughts and floods, farmers will have to change crop management practices, grow tougher plant varieties and be prepared for constant change in the way they operate, scientists say. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35646 One step beyond her front door, Jayne Clampitt is greeted with the toxic fumes flowing from the roughly 1 million gallons of hog manure stored at her neighbor's farm. She no longer dries her family's laundry outside, her children avoid the nearby polluted stream, and she worries that their shallow drinking well will also be contaminated with toxins. "We thought there was this unspoken connection between farmers, respect and stewardship. But we don't see that anymore," said Clampitt, whose family raises livestock in northwest Iowa. "I should not be forced to move out of my home." http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35644 At a White House press conference yesterday that focused on the U.S. domestic economy, President George W. Bush addressed food prices, the Farm Bill and biofuels. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David M. Herszenhorn summarized in today&rsquo;s New York Times that, &ldquo;With consumer confidence slipping and gasoline and food prices soaring, President Bush delivered an unusually dark assessment of the economy on Tuesday, saying the nation was in &rdquo;�very difficult times, very difficult.&rsquo;&rdquo;� http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/35643 NEW YORK April 30, 2008 &mdash; Climate scientists using computer models to simulate the 1930s Dust Bowl on the U.S Great Plains have found that dust raised by farmers probably amplified and spread a natural drop in rainfall, turning an ordinary drying cycle into an agricultural collapse. The researcher say the study raises concern that current pressures on farmland from population growth and climate change could worsen current food crises by leading to similar events in other regions. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35576 The old laws of the marketplace are no longer working. Food prices have been rising for six years because of surging demand, and increased production is not restoring the balance as it used to in the past. In fact, prices have been going up even faster over the last year. The so-called "financialisation" of commodities markets, that is, the influx of investment funds seeking safer and more lucrative assets, has intensified the trend and "at the moment impinges more than the law of supply and demand," said analyst Fernando Muraro of AgRural, a consultancy firm in Brazil. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/35510 The world food crisis is hurting a lot of people, but global agribusiness firms, traders and speculators are raking in huge profits. Much of the news coverage of the world food crisis has focussed on riots in low-income countries, where workers and others cannot cope with skyrocketing costs of staple foods. But there is another side to the story: the big profits that are being made by huge food corporations and investors. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/35508 The corn ethanol industry could take a nearly 12 percent hit in their subsidies in the next farm bill, as farm state lawmakers shift their support to new cellulosic ethanol. The farm bill agreement that key House and Senate negotiators reached Friday would extend and reduce the tax credit for conventional ethanol and the tariff on imported ethanol. It would also give new subsidies for cellulosic ethanol -- derived from crop debris, woody plants and grasses.