FARM NEWS - AFRICA DAILY

Understanding of global freshwater fish and fishing too shallow

Nov 06, 2014 (SPX)

Inland fish have to make a bigger splash. What sounds counter-intuitive to an activity commonly perceived as quiet is the broad recommendation of scientists at ...

NMSU professor experiments growing plants in highly saline water

Nov 06, 2014 (SPX)

As drought continues to plague New Mexico, alternatives such as using wastewater have been tested and used for agriculture and urban irrigation. In the quest to...

Genetic toolkit finds new maximum for crop yields

Nov 05, 2014 (SPX)

Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has announced a new way to dramatically increase crop yields by improving upon Mother Nature's offerings. A t...

Himalayan Viagra fuels caterpillar fungus gold rush

Oct 31, 2014 (SPX)

Overwhelmed by speculators trying to cash-in on a prized medicinal fungus known as Himalayan Viagra, two isolated Tibetan communities have managed to do at the ...

World losing 2,000 hectares of farm soil daily to salt damage

Oct 29, 2014 (SPX)

Every day for more than 20 years, an average of 2,000 hectares of irrigated land in arid and semi-arid areas across 75 countries have been degraded by salt, acc...

Salt-loving plants key to sustainable food production

Oct 29, 2014 (SPX)

Farmland is vanishing in part because the salinity in the soil is rising as a result of climate change and other man-made phenomena. In an Opinion piece publish...

No-till agriculture may not bring hoped-for boost in global crop yields

Oct 27, 2014 (SPX)

No-till farming, a key conservation agriculture strategy that avoids conventional plowing and otherwise disturbing the soil, may not bring a hoped-for boost in ...

Chewing too much hassle? Japan's got just the thing

Oct 21, 2014 (AFP)

Are you worried that you're just not chewing enough to keep your mind and body in tip-top condition? Then never fear: Japan has invented something to help you c...

Stomping out grape disease one vineyard at a time

Oct 20, 2014 (SPX)

Cracking the genetic code of a common disease affecting grape production could improve vineyard management and help protect the multibillion-dollar industry tha...

Plant communities produce greater yield than monocultures

Oct 20, 2014 (SPX)

Although monocultures can be cultivated efficiently, they are anything but sustainable: environmental damage to soil and water caused by monoculture cultivation...

Building a bridge from basic botany to applied agriculture

Oct 20, 2014 (SPX)

One of the planet's leading questions is how to produce enough food to feed the world in an increasingly variable climate. The Food and Agriculture Organization...

Are there enough fish to go around?

Oct 16, 2014 (SPX)

Scientists from the University of York have released a report highlighting the gap between declining wild fish supplies and healthy eating advice recommending m...

Centuries-old 'Chinese' fishing tradition fades on Indian shores

Oct 15, 2014 (AFP)

Tugging ropes and bellowing chants, five men hoist from the water a huge spidery frame gripping a web of fishing net -- a centuries-old custom on the southern I...

Money grows on trees with great walnuts of China

Oct 14, 2014 (AFP)

Grinning with pride, a Chinese farmer held out two precious walnuts -- globes so precisely symmetrical that consumers in search of hand massages value them more...

Drop in China, HK demand dries up Bordeaux wine sales

Oct 14, 2014 (AFP)

A dramatic decline in demand from China and Hong Kong has dried up sales of France's famous Bordeaux wine, data from the professional association published on T...

Price gap between more and less healthy foods grows

Oct 10, 2014 (SPX)

A new study, published in the journal PLOS One, tracked the price of 94 key food and beverage items from 2002 to 2012. Its findings show that more healthy foods...

Brazil beef exports soar on Chinese, Russian demand

Oct 10, 2014 (AFP)

Brazil beef exports jumped seven percent this year so far, in part due to rising Russian demand as Moscow turned away from US and European sources in retaliatio...

Automated imaging system looks underground to help improve crops

Oct 10, 2014 (SPX)

Plant scientists are working to improve important food crops such as rice, maize, and beans to meet the food needs of a growing world population. However, boost...

Malaysia's Sime Darby to acquire PNG palm oil leader

Oct 09, 2014 (AFP)

Malaysian palm-oil giant Sime Darby said Thursday it had made an offer to acquire Papua New Guinea's UK-listed New Britain Palm Oil (NBPOL) in a $1.7 billion de...

New estimates for carbon emissions from cropland expansion in China

Oct 08, 2014 (SPX)

The conversion of forests, grasslands, shrublands and wetlands to cropland over the course of three centuries profoundly changed the surface of the Earth and th...