Environmental News Network

Grain Farmer Percy Schmeiser Claims Moral Victory in Seed Battle Against Monsanto
Percy Schmeiser's decade-long legal odyssey has finally come to an end - and he's got a cheque for $660 to prove it. The 77-year-old Saskatchewan farmer and his wife, Louise, became international folk heroes for their legal struggle with agribusiness giant Monsanto Canada Inc., after the company sued them for violating its patent on genetically engineered canola seeds in 1997. >> Read the Full Article
Melting glaciers will shrink grain harvests in China and India.
The world is now facing a climate-driven shrinkage of river-based irrigation water supplies. Mountain glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau are melting and could soon deprive the major rivers of India and China of the ice melt needed to sustain them during the dry season. In the Ganges, the Yellow, and the Yangtze river basins, where irrigated agriculture depends heavily on rivers, this loss of dry-season flow will shrink harvests. >> Read the Full Article
Panel Backs GMO Taro Ban
WAILUKU - A resolution urging a hold on research involving genetic modification of taro was advanced Wednesday by the County Council Public Works and Facilities Committee. The resolution supports a bill pending before the state Legislature that would put a 10-year moratorium on developing, testing and growing genetically modified taro plants. Supporters in the audience, many of them taro farmers from East Maui, applauded as the committee voted to recommend the resolution with a 5-0 vote. >> Read the Full Article
French state body upholds decision on GM crop ban
PARIS (Reuters) - France's top legal authority on Wednesday upheld a government decision to ban commercial use of the only genetically modified (GM) crop grown in the country by rejecting an emergency injunction filed by the pro-GM camp. France issued decrees banning the use of MON 810 maize seeds in February after a government-appointed committee said it unearthed new evidence of damage GM products could inflict on the environment. >> Read the Full Article
Expect Food Prices to Go Higher and Higher
With respect to food costs, Andrew Martin and Michael M. Grynbaum reported in today's New York Times that, "The government announced Friday that the cost of food had gone up yet again. This came as no revelation to Bruce Newton, a single father of two children. "As he wheeled a cart full of groceries out of a Stop & Shop supermarket in Bloomfield, N.J., on Thursday night, Mr. Newton complained that the price of chicken had become 'outrageous,' and eggs were so costly his mother sent him from store to store hunting for the cheapest ones. Essential breakfast items like milk, cereal and orange juice have become 'so expensive, but what are you going to do?'" >> Read the Full Article
$6 million research lab will produce ethanol and other biofuels from grasses and biomass
A former agricultural engineering, power and machinery lab at Cornell is being gutted to make way for a state-of-the art Biofuels Research Laboratory that will convert perennial grasses and woody biomass into cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels and will occupy the entire east wing of Riley Robb Hall by January 2009. The $6 million lab is being constructed thanks to a $10 million grant awarded to Larry Walker, Cornell professor of biological and environmental engineering, from the Empire State Development Corp., and will include analytical equipment, incubators, fermentors and other state-of-the-art biotechnology equipment. >> Read the Full Article
Farm-Fresh Eggs: Standing up for goodness, straight from the coop
Long before I began wading through labels like â€œcage-free,â€ â€œorganic,â€ and â€œfree-rangeâ€ and shelling out $4 for one dozen farm-fresh eggs at a specialty grocery, my grandmother was selling them out of her Iowa farmhouse for 50 cents a dozen. >> Read the Full Article
Water for Fuel
Geneva, 10 March 2008 - As demand for biofuels increases, industry will face additional questions: How can the water be equitably shared? Is biofuel a practical energy solution? What are the options? These questions and others at the water and energy nexus will be the focus of a new WBCSD water and energy workstream of the Councilâ€™s Water Project. >> Read the Full Article
Corn-based ethanol could worsen "dead zone"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Growing more corn to meet the projected U.S. demand for ethanol could worsen an expanding "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico that is bad for crawfish, shrimp and local fisheries, researchers reported on Monday. The dead zone is a huge area of water -- some 7,700 square miles -- that forms above the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico every summer. It contains very low levels of oxygen. >> Read the Full Article
Corn is King -- and Therefore a Growing Problem
Corn is a key element of the U.S. food supply. It is what dairy cows eat to make milk and hens consume to lay eggs. It fattens cattle, hogs and chickens before slaughter. It makes soda sweet. As the building block of ethanol, it is now also a major component of auto fuel. And that may signal trouble ahead. >> Read the Full Article