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Archive for May 14th, 2011
Coming to a cornfield near you
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 14th, 2011
Scientific American: DROUGHT-RESISTANT CORN: Monsanto is seeking approval of the first strain of corn that tolerates drought. Climate change has yet to diminish crop yields in the U.S. corn belt but scientists expect drought to become more common due to global warming in coming years. That could impact everything from the price of food to the price of fuel planet-wide. As a result, for the last several years agribusiness giants like Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta have been pursuing genetic modification to enable the...
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Manitoba floods farms to avoid “catastrophic” breach
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 14th, 2011
Reuters: Manitoba opened its dike on the swollen Assiniboine River on Saturday, starting a slow creep of water across rich farmland to avert a potentially catastrophic, unplanned breach in the Canadian province.
Opening the dike will, over days, flood at least 225 square kilometers (55,600 acres) as well as 150 homes while taking the pressure off strained dikes.
The release will be initially "very gradual," a government spokesperson said, and is intended to fill fields and ditches behind roads with...
Aid scant in Somalia’s “worst drought in 20 years”
Posted by AlertNet: Katy Migiro on May 14th, 2011
AlertNet: A Somali refugee carries water at the Dagahaley camp in Dadaab, near the Kenya-Somalia border, April 3, 2011. Hunger in Somalia is likely to worsen as "one of the worst droughts in recent memory' intensifies and humanitarian funding is scant, aid agencies said on Friday.
"This drought is so serious, worse than others in recent years, that even the camels in some communities are dying,' said Geno Teofilo of Oxfam Novib, one of the 31 agencies issuing Friday's statement.
"Some of them (Somalis)...
Climate change and the flood this time
Posted by Lincoln Journal Star: Bill McKibben on May 14th, 2011
Lincoln Journal Star: Last week, at a place called Bird's Point, just below the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, the Army Corps of Engineers was busy mining a huge levee with explosives.
The work was made dangerous by outbreaks of lightning, but eventually the charges were in place and corps Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh gave the order: A 2-mile-wide hole was blasted in the earthen levee, and a wall of water greater than the flow over Niagara Falls inundated 130,000 acres of prime Missouri farmland.
The...