(American Chemical Society) A team of scientists in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are reporting disturbing evidence that soil microbes have become progressively more resistant to antibiotics over the last 60 years. Surprisingly, this trend continues despite apparent more stringent rules on use of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture, and improved sewage treatment technology […]
By MICHAEL BURNHAM AND NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of GreenwirePublished: May 4, 2010 NAIROBI, Kenya — It’s the rainy season, but the sun is still baking the Mathare Valley slum. A half-million people live in this warren of shacks clustered amid 10 square kilometers of the Mathare River. When the rains fall, drops spill like marbles on […]
May 4, 2010 – 4:50PM (AAP) Work has begun on planting more than 1 million native seedlings in the exposed beds of South Australia’s lower lakes. Federal Water Minister Penny Wong and South Australian Environment Minister Paul Caica said the hand planting would vegetate more than 2300 hectares of exposed lake beds across Lake Alexandrina […]
By Lester Brown12 Feb 2010 4:51 AM …World food production continues to increase, yet the rate at which it is increasing has slowed. From 1970 to 1990, world grain production grew by 64 percent. From 1990 to 2009, it increased by only 24 percent. Past growth in agricultural production was fueled in part by expanding […]
By Zara Maungguardian.co.uk, Monday 19 April 2010 12.35 BST A report co-written by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and HSBC Climate Change Centre of Excellence claims that food supply chains in India and south-east Asia are under serious threat from changing climatic conditions. Aquaculture in the region, including farmed Thai shrimps and Vietnamese catfish are […]
Arable land expansion has slowed down substantially in the last 50 years. This implies that much of the best arable land is already in use. Land Commodities: Investment Fundamentals Technorati Tags: soil degradation,desertification,agriculture,deforestation,habitat loss,drought,freshwater depletion
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (AFP) – The desert is making a comeback in the Middle East, with fertile lands turning into barren wastes that could further destabilise the region, experts said at a water conference on Thursday. “Desertification spreads like cancer, it can’t be noticed immediately,” said Wadid Erian, a soil expert with the Arab League, at […]
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2010) — Twenty years of field studies reveal that as the Earth has gotten warmer, plants and microbes in the soil have given off more carbon dioxide. So-called soil respiration has increased about one-tenth of 1 percent per year since 1989, according to an analysis of past studies in the journal Nature. […]
ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2010) — Climate change and environmental degradation are likely to trigger increased migration in Sub-Saharan Africa with potentially devastating effects on the hundreds of millions of especially poor people, according to a paper in the International Journal of Global Warming. Environmental changes are especially pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), explain Ulrike Grote […]
Nearly 30% of the Earth’s terrestrial ice-free surface is devoted to livestock production, while 8% is devoted to production of crops that are directly consumed by people. As livestock production shifts to more intensive systems, it will place more pressure on arable land for the production of feed. Over-grazing has resulted in loss of biodiversity […]
