FARM NEWS - AFRICA DAILY

After mastering vodka, Poland takes on black caviar

Dec 30, 2014 (AFP)

Foodies, take note: After flooding the global market with its vodka, apples and berries, Poland has gone gourmet and is trying its hand at making black caviar. ...

China officials dismissed over diseased meat scandal

Dec 29, 2014 (AFP)

China has dismissed eight officials after pork from pigs infected with a "highly contagious virus" was found to have entered the market, state media said Monday...

Buffer zone may be inadequate to protect produce from feedlot contamination

Dec 29, 2014 (SPX)

The pathogen Escherichia coli O157:H7 can spread, likely airborne, more than one tenth mile downwind from a cattle feedlot onto nearby produce, according to a p...

Japan culls 42,000 chickens after second bird flu outbreak

Dec 29, 2014 (AFP)

Japan on Monday ordered the slaughter of some 42,000 chickens as officials announced the country's second bird flu outbreak in less than a month. DNA tests conf...

Study finds Illinois is most critical hub in food distribution network

Dec 26, 2014 (SPX)

Illinois is the most critical hub in the network of U.S. domestic food transfers, according to a new study by Megan Konar, an assistant professor of civil and e...

Oil palm -- a modeled crop

Dec 26, 2014 (SPX)

Australian scientists have developed a model for oil palm cultivation, aimed at helping growers of the crop maximize the yields of their plantations, while mini...

How will climate change transform agriculture?

Dec 26, 2014 (SPX)

Climate change impacts will require major but very uncertain transformations of global agriculture systems by mid-century, according to new research from the In...

Little Uruguay has big plans for smart agriculture

Dec 24, 2014 (AFP)

Uruguay, a country of 3.3 million inhabitants and four times as many cows, hopes to feed 50 million people thanks to drones, "smart" combines and other high-tec...

Rise of Brazil's ranching queen sparks green protests

Dec 24, 2014 (AFP)

Before her husband died, Katia Abreu was a housewife who didn't know a cow from a bull. Today, she is a powerful rancher and senator who was named Brazil's next...

Can returning crops to their wild states help feed the world?

Dec 23, 2014 (SPX)

To feed the world's growing population--expected to reach nine billion by the year 2050--we will have to find ways to produce more food on less farmland, withou...

From Vietnam with love: local caviar aims to make a splash

Dec 23, 2014 (AFP)

At a sturgeon farm on a pristine lake near southern Dalat town, a worker hoists a large white fish out off the water. "It's an albino," says Vietnam's eccentric...

Germany introduces bird flu test for ducks, geese

Dec 22, 2014 (AFP)

Germany said it would start testing ducks and geese for bird flu prior to slaughter, after two cases of the highly infectious H5N8 strain were detected in a wee...

Study: modern agriculture has weakened human bones

Dec 22, 2014 (UPI)

According to a new study, the ends of human bones became much lighter and less dense around 12,000 years ago -- a loose demarcation that corresponds with modern...

Chinese high rollers send pigeon prices soaring

Dec 18, 2014 (AFP)

As the price flew skywards, an audience of middle-aged Chinese men erupted into cheers before the auctioneer slammed his hammer down at a record-breaking two mi...

Ancient wisdom boosts sustainability of biotech cotton

Dec 17, 2014 (SPX)

Advocates of biotech crops and those who favor traditional farming practices such as crop diversity often seem worlds apart, but a new study shows that these tw...

Former Guatemala gum growers live off sustainable jungle

Dec 17, 2014 (AFP)

Waving his hands as if conducting an invisible orchestra, Juan Trujillo sings an old song known to Carmelita settlers living deep in northern Guatemala's Mayan ...

Home on the Range

Dec 16, 2014 (SPX)

With more and more rainforest giving way to pasture and grazing land every year, the practice of cattle ranching in the Amazon has serious implications on a glo...

Bird flu suspected in mass deaths of Scandinavian seals

Dec 16, 2014 (AFP)

An outbreak of bird flu has likely killed about 3,000 seals off the coast of Sweden and Denmark this year, Swedish authorities announced Tuesday, raising the al...

Global redistribution of phosphorus use could improve food security

Dec 16, 2014 (SPX)

If the use and reuse of the finite resource phosphorus as a nutrient for plants were to be handled with greater care worldwide it would become possible to produ...

New insights into the origins of agriculture could help shape the future of food

Dec 15, 2014 (SPX)

Agricultural decisions made by our ancestors more than 10,000 years ago could hold the key to food security in the future, according to new research by the Univ...