Since the start of the desert locust upsurge in the Greater Horn of Africa and Yemen just over four months ago, and the subsequent launch of FAO’s crisis appeal in January, a total of USD 130 million has been mobilized (85 percent of the requested USD 153 million). Together with …
A severe locust invasion has destroyed large tracts of cotton and grain crops in Uzbekistan's Kashkadarya province. All attempts by farmers and Uzbek authorities to contain the crisis have proved futile. Insecticides are being sprayed on farmlands from planes and farms are provided with the facility to use a special …
Never since the times of the Pied Piper of Hamelin were rats so dangerous. Only this time the menace is far greater. Thousands of hectares of China's major rice and cotton belt in Hunan province have been invaded by rats. The massive influx was caused by the rising water level …
vanilla growers in India's southern states are in deep trouble. They don't know what to do with the current season's crop because the buyers have disappeared from the market. The high price of vanilla in the international market had tempted these farmers to take up the cash crop's cultivation in …
the Punjab government has begun the administrative process of legalising the hunting of crop-depredating wild boars and blue bulls. A proposal for permit-based hunting of the two pestilent species in the state now lies with the state chief secretary for acceptance by the government. "Our survey shows that wild boars …
The Colombian government is caught between a rock and a hard place. A court has ordered the country's government to stop spraying Monsanto's glyphosate herbicides on coca and other crop plantations until more research is done on the chemical's possible ill-effects on health and the environment. But the us-backed glyphosate-spraying …
the sale of more than 5,000 hectares (ha) of land in the command areas of northern Karnataka in a span of just three years has made the state government sit up in alarm. It swung into action on June 6 notifying the Karnataka Irrigation (Amendment) Ordinance. The regulation bans the …
function openana1(){ var popurl="html/20030331_p28.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=610,height=460") } War zones Where battles rage in the evening By the time they killed it on June 25, 2002 the female elephant had killed 13 people over three days across the Indo-Nepal border. This much is known. The rest is a mix of half-truths, rumours, …
It's like killing two birds with a single stone. Researchers have found that African farmers are using bees to save their crops from elephants, and also making a fast buck from the honey. The bees attack anything that threatens their hives. Angry swarms are reputed to have chased herds of …
Despite environmental pressure against the use of chemical fertilisers, the deadly substances continue to be used unabated across the globe. At the end of the 20th century an average of 91 kgs of fertilisers were used for every hectare of cropland
jammu and Kashmir is reeling under a drought-like situation that has wrought havoc with crop yields in the Valley. While it had taken its toll on paddy earlier, the dry spell has led to the failure of saffron crop now. The state's farmers have suffered heavy losses with almost 60 …
If one goes by a recent study, there will be no tropical jungles left in Mexico by 2059. The study shows that Mexico lost an average of 2.72 million acres of forests and jungles each year between 1993 and 2000
A Rs 2-million project to develop an environment-friendly sprayer to combat insecticides in cotton crops has been launched by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST). Under the project, an adjustable height boom sprayer for cotton crop will be manufactured by the Pakistan Science Foundation. The execution, operation and maintenance …
banning logging is an important tool for halting the degradation of forests, but it seldom corrects the underlying causes of deforestation. This intriguing fact was recently stated in a report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (fao). Moreover, the report claims that ban on logging harms forests and local communities …
The us President George Bush’s obdurate stance on climate change has driven negotiations under the critical un Framework Convention on Climate Change (unfccc) to a feverish pitch. The world has now two options
Shrimp farming is not as bad as earlier thought, says a study sponsored by the Indian Council for Agricultural Research. Aquaculture has neither increased the salinity of land nor caused large-scale deviation from agriculture, suggest the findings. Researchers from the Central Institute of Fisheries Education (CIFE) conducted studies in shrimp …
measures to save China's ravaged environment finally seem to be underway. Even though the scale of penalties likely to be levied is not known yet, in March this year, China will make environmental pollution a criminal offence. In another move, nearly 57,000 small polluting units
in december 1984, the Telugu Desam (a regional party in Andhra Pradesh), came to power and introduced a scheme to provide the poor households of the state rice at a nominal cost of Rs 2 per kg (it has since been revised to Rs 3.50 per kg). The cheap rice …
