Agriculture

  1. Agriculture

    Spying Genetically Engineered Crops

    Environmental Protection Agency scientists are exploring the use of satellites to monitor genetically engineered crops. At ground level, genetically modified corn plants don’t look any different from conventional ones, but data suggest that satellite sensors may be able to read different spectral signatures from the two types of the crop. USDA Most of these genetically […]

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  2. Agriculture

    Fluid Security—Overcoming Water Shortfalls in the 21st Century

    About 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered with water, some 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of it. Too bad almost 96.5 percent of it’s salty, and another 2 percent is locked away as ice in remote places such as Greenland and Antarctica. All told, just a little more than 1 percent of our planet’s water […]

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  3. Agriculture

    Local Foods Could Make for Greener Grocers

    There was a time not so long ago when people tended to select the ingredients for their meals either from what was available that week at local markets or from out-of-season home-canned, -smoked, or -pickled goods in the family larder. No longer. Maryland cooks can pick up New Zealand lamb or Icelandic salmon any time […]

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  4. Agriculture

    Mad Cow Future: Tests explore next generation of defenses

    As Canadian health officials investigate mad cow disease within the country's borders, researchers are already working on the next generation of defenses.

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  5. Agriculture

    Global Food Trends

    Last year, for the third year in four, world per-capita grain production fell. Even more disturbing in a world where people still go hungry, at 294 kilograms, last year’s per capita grain yield was the lowest in more than 30 years. Indeed, the global grain harvest has not met demand for 4 years, causing governments […]

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  6. Agriculture

    How Olives Might Enhance Potatoes—and Strawberries

    Many people savor the flavor of olive oil. Few who have ever encountered the “cake” that remains after the oil is pressed, however, savor the experience. Thats because the pressed olive flesh ends up in unused, smelly heaps. In the European Union alone, olive processors produce some 8 million metric tons of these rank wastes […]

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  7. Agriculture

    Detoxifying Desert’s Manna

    Farmers need no longer fear the sweet pea's dryland cousin.

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  8. Agriculture

    Bt Cotton: Yields up in India; pests low in Arizona

    Two cotton-growing centers that could hardly differ more—small farms in India and industrial fields in Arizona—provide case studies that show the bright side of a widespread genetically engineered crop.

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  9. Agriculture

    Carnivorous fish nibble at farming gain

    Fish farming may ease pressure on wild stocks overall, but for certain species, farms mean a net loss of fish.

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  10. Agriculture

    Bt corn variety OK for black swallowtails

    The first published field study of butterflies and genetically altered corn finds no harm to black swallowtail caterpillars from a common corn variety.

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  11. Agriculture

    Downtown Fisheries?

    Advances may make fish farming a healthy prospect, even for inner cities.

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  12. Agriculture

    Toxic bugs taint large numbers of cattle

    U.S. cattle have dramatically higher rates of infection with a virulent food-poisoning bacterium than had been realized, a factor that leads to widespread carcass contamination during slaughter.

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