skippy the bush kangaroo: environmental news story sunday

Sunday, February 28, 2010

environmental news story sunday

back to the farm edition.

tracking a rising tide of waste. wisconsin is churning out permits for industrial-scale farms to spread millions of gallons of manure on state fields but provides little oversight after that, inspecting them only once or twice every five years, a wisconsin state journal investigation has found. - madison wisconsin state journal

melamine: the toxic legacy. - dairy giant fonterra is not providing any direct compensation to chinese victims of the contaminated milk scandal despite a new study which shows many of the affected children have ongoing health problems. - auckland sunday star times

warm winters distress reindeer herders. warm winters in recent years have forced herders here in the far northern kola peninsula to delay for months the rounding up of their reindeer from the vast tundra -- at great economic cost. - afp

unpredictable weather patterns hurting farming. a study indicates that on-going extreme changes and variability in zambia’s climate could bring losses of more than us$4 billion in agricultural income in the next 10 years, driving hundreds of thousands into poverty and food insecurity. - ndola times of zambia

animal tagging dropped. facing opposition, the federal government has dropped a six-year effort to get farmers nationwide to tag and trace the movements of livestock. the system was launched by the usda in 2004 after a mad cow disease scare in canada. - lancaster intelligencer

oregon oyster farms recalls oysters, 8 sickened as newport wine & seafood festival starts. the beds have been closed by the department of agriculture as food safety specialists investigate the source of the outbreak. water samples will be taken this weekend to test for norovirus contamination. - portland oregonian

california farms to get more water from u.s., state. drought-stricken farmers in california were granted a measure of relief on friday when federal and state officials said they expected to supply them with significantly more water this year than last. - reuters

monterey county awash in pesticides. pesticides are not sustainable. pesticides and fumigants are made to kill. they're also made of petroleum. corporations and corporate farming companies are using scare tactics to resist any change that affects profits. - salinas californian

savor taste of locally grown food. the benefits of supporting a local food system are enormous. economically, it would create living wage jobs revitalizing poor communities. societal benefits would include improved health and access to healthier food as well as increased food safety - fresno bee

italian oil slick reaches key farm center of parma. sludge from an oil spill snaked down the po river on thursday to reach the province of parma, raising fears that the home of italy's famed prosciutto, parmesan cheese and other agricultural staples might be at risk of water contamination. - ap

greenpeace denounces un support for gm crops in mexico. the united nations’ food and agriculture organization is supporting the introduction of transgenic, or genetically modified, crops in Mexico and other developing nations, the greenpeace chapter in that country denounced - efe

pesticide regs clean valley's air. pesticide emissions that contribute to smog in california dropped significantly in 2008, the first year restrictions on agricultural fumigant applications specifically targeting air quality were in effect. - modesto bee

the future of fish farming? recirculating aquaculture systems, or ras, are closed-loop production systems that continuously filter and recycle water, enabling large-scale fish farming that requires a small amount of water and releases little or no pollution. - christian science monitor

republicans bash usda's climate research. research on the effects of global warming on farmers seen as a waste. - greenwire

heritage hogs. variety isn't just the spice of life. you could say it is life. and you can't have variety without lots and lots of genes. farmers have spent thousands of years developing livestock that do well in different conditions. - environment report

plow shares. the crop mob, a monthly word-of-mouth (and -web) event in which landless farmers and the agricurious descend on a farm for an afternoon, has taken its traveling work party to 15 small, sustainable farms. together, volunteers have contributed more than 2,000 person-hours, doing tasks like mulching, building greenhouses and pulling rocks out of fields. - nytimes

Labels: california, drought, environment, farmers, farms, fish, food safety, italy, mexico, milk, pesticide, republicans, toxins, united nations, water