By LYDIA POLGREEN DAKAR, Senegal — A bizarre swarm of caterpillars is munching its way through the forests, cocoa and coffee fields of Liberia, threatening crops and forcing thousands to leave their homes because the bugs have contaminated the drinking water from rivers and lakes. Entomologists have identified the pests as a moth usually found […]
By Lucy Hornby LIDONG VILLAGE, China (Reuters) – China has declared an emergency over a drought which could damage the important wheat crop, threatening further hardship for farmers amid slumping economic growth. The dry winter gripping parts of central and northern China has sent Zhengzhou wheat futures up 5 percent this week but physical prices […]
Richard Van Noorden Liberia prepares for second plague of caterpillar pests. A plague of crop-eating caterpillars has struck Liberia and a second wave could spread across West Africa in the next few weeks, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has warned. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s president, has declared a state of emergency […]
David. S. Battisti1 and Rosamond L. Naylor2 Higher growing season temperatures can have dramatic impacts on agricultural productivity, farm incomes, and food security. We used observational data and output from 23 global climate models to show a high probability (>90%) that growing season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics by the end of the 21st […]
Monrovia (AFP) Jan 24, 2009 – Tens of thousands of Liberians face hunger owing to an invasion of crop-destroying caterpillars, local authorities said Saturday. "More than 40 towns and villages have now been affected by the army worms," Joseph Urey, the commissioner of Zota district, told AFP. The previous figure was around 20. The Zota […]
Charles Perrow GLOBAL CATASTROPHES AND TRENDS: The Next Fifty Years. Vaclav Smil. xii + 307 pp. The MIT Press, 2008. $29.95. Prolific writer Vaclav Smil characterizes his latest book, Global Catastrophes and Trends, as “a multifaceted attempt to identify major factors that will shape the global future and to evaluate their probabilities and potential impacts.” […]
Argentina’s beef industry and wheat and corn production have been devastated by the country’s most severe drought since 1961- a drought which has also affected agriculture in neighbouring Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil. REUTERS – Argentine rancher Gustavo Giailevra has seen 425 of his cattle, a quarter of his herd, die of thirst in the […]
Zimbabwean soldiers are being given elephant meat for their rations, a wildlife campaigner has told the BBC. Jonny Rodrigues from the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said that several soldiers had complained to him that was the only meat they were given. … Mr Rodrigues said that the use of elephant meat began last June but […]
AFP – Half of the world’s population could face food shortages by the end of this century due to climate change, a new study warned Thursday. According to researchers, there is a 90 percent probability that by 2100 the minimum temperatures in the tropics and sub-tropical regions will be higher than the maximums so far […]
