Agriculture (General/Chat)
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Short video on why you should not eat the Chinese garlic..................
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A group of fishing associations is sounding the alarm about new plans from the Biden administration to industrialize the Gulf of Maine by leasing two million acres of area for wind farm construction, a move that fishermen say will be detrimental to their business and marine life.One large portion of the WEA is frequented by the endangered North Atlantic right whale, the groups said. Leasing the area to wind farming "is flatly inconsistent with a policy of endangered species protection."
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For thousands of years, farming was driven by the muscle of either animals or humans. With the invention of the steam engine, industrialists brought steam power to farms. The inventions of the reaper and steel plow began a rush to mechanize farming. In the early 20th century, hundreds of companies were experimenting with vehicles to bring power farming to agriculture. By 1929, Deere, Ford and International Harvester were among the few dozen companies that remained, but the tractor form we recognize today had finally emerged and began rapidly replacing muscle as the primary source of power on the farm.
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A plan to locate a massive field of silos that suck carbon dioxide out of the air is planned somewhere in central Wyoming, and $11 million has been raised so far. An illustration of what an "orchard" of silos to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and sequester it underground in central Wyoming could look like. (Spiritus Technologies) A venture capitalist with a pedigree in the startup world and a scientist who has a background in materials research on sensitive military projects have teamed up to figure out a new way of sucking carbon dioxide out of the air...
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VIDEO AT LINK........... March 19 (UPI) -- Beekeepers were summoned to a Mississippi highway to round up thousands of bees when the 18-wheeler hauling their hives overturned. The Adams County Emergency Management Agency said the truck overturned Sunday night on Highway 61, in front of Merit Health in Natchez. Beekeepers from Adee Honey Farms in Woodville were summoned to the scene to help round up the bees that swarmed around the overturned truck. Adams County EMA Director Brad Bradford said the scene was not cleared until 7 a.m. Monday. "This was my first bee catastrophe," he told WLBT-TV. He said...
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Drought is driving poor Indian women into exploitative sugar cane work in the central state of Maharashtra, with many of the migrant labourers opting to undergo unnecessary hysterectomies to work even harder, research showed on Feb 7. Years of failed monsoons, extreme heat and droughts have led residents of Beed, a district in the top sugar-producing state to leave and become day labourers on plantations, said the report by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a London-based think-tank. The research found more than half of the Beed women who had gone to work on sugar plantations had undergone...
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Scientists in Brazil have engineered a cow to produce human insulin in its milk, making history as the world’s first transgenic cow capable of such a feat. Though still a long way off, the researchers hope that this bovine breakthrough could open doors for sustainable insulin production and help tackle the world's insulin supply problems. For now, the achievement is just a proof-of-concept – but with additional testing and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, it could be scaled up to rival current insulin production methods, which involve genetically modified yeast and bacteria. "Mother Nature designed the mammary gland as...
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In the ongoing search for sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives to meat and other animal proteins, researchers have settled on a new product that only solidifies our descent into a dystopian science fiction story. Published in Nature Communications, this could be humanity’s new favorite food; genetically engineered mold. The study, led by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, demonstrates how the edible fungus, Aspergillus oryzae, can be bioengineered to enhance its nutritional value and sensory appeal as a meat substitute. By modifying the fungus’s genome using cutting-edge synthetic biology tools, the researchers were able to elevate the production of key...
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Australia-based Costa Berries broke a Guinness World Record by growing a blueberry that weighed .72 ounce. (Photo courtesy of Costa Berries) March 14 (UPI) -- An Australian berry company broke a Guinness World Record by growing a Ping-Pong-sized berry that weighs .72 ounce. A Guinness adjudicator examined the blueberry grown by Costa Berries in Corindi, New South Wales, and confirmed it was the world's heaviest blueberry. Brad Hocking, head of the team that grew the berry, said it was picked in November last year and kept frozen while the company communicated with Guinness World Records. The blueberry is the new...
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Pythons turn their food into meat pretty efficiently, a study finds, making them an intriguing alternative to climate-unfriendly cows. Put aside your chicken cutlets and meatloaf and say hello to python curries and satay skewers. Some snake scientists think eating these reptiles—already customary or at least acceptable in parts of the world—might help lessen the damage our food choices have on the environment. With some eight billion people on the planet today, all of whom require protein to stay healthy, finding new sources of these nutrients is a crucial issue. But how do you get from the challenge of providing...
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BILLINGS, Mont.—A Montana rancher illegally used tissue and testicles from wild sheep killed by hunters in central Asia and the United States to breed “giant” hybrid sheep for sale to private hunting preserves in Texas, according to court documents and federal prosecutors. Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 80, of Vaughn, Montana pleaded guilty to felony charges of wildlife trafficking and conspiracy to traffic wildlife during an appearance Tuesday before a federal judge in Great Falls. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Court documents describe a yearslong conspiracy, beginning in 2013, in which Mr....
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Some 39% of the United States is farmland. But, according to the Department of Agriculture’s recently published farmer census, there are fewer farms, and the ones that are surviving are bigger than before. Another statistic that’s worth pointing out: More than 150,000 farms and ranches use renewable energy, up 15% since the last census in 2017. Incorporating solar panels onto open fields or buildings was the most popular method. That’s progress. But the demographics reported in the census are less of a cause for celebration. People of color and women remain underrepresented. Despite diversity efforts in recent years, less than...
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Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said. Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy center, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel. The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share...
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EEEEWWW!....................................
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Please take a minute and think with me: what is it in this world that you value most highly? Many people might say it’s their husband or wife, their children or grandchildren…their loved ones. Others might immediately come up with a different answer related to their possessions. In my high school years, I had a friend who had a saying that he used to say often: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” He was referring to his love for snowmobiles, ATVs, motorcycles, cars, boats, trucks, things like that.
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Juice: Why Wind and Solar Make Our Power Grid Less Reliable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNS7Qojr1JQ John Stossel 920K subscribers 18936 views Mar 5, 2024 Politicians and activists tell how “renewable" energy will save us from the climate “crisis.” They don’t tell us about the real costs of green power.
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The MONTHLY Gardening Thread is a gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the...
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The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack...
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Understanding cloud patterns in our changing climate is essential to making accurate predictions about their impact on society and nature. Scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology published a study in the journal Science Advances that uses a high-resolution global climate model to understand how the clustering of clouds and storms impacts rainfall extremes in the tropics. They show that with rising temperatures, the severity of extreme precipitation events increases. Extreme rainfall is one of the most damaging natural disasters costing human lives and causing billions in damage. Their frequency has been...
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Cotton is a fiber grown on a plant of the Gossypium genus, which, once harvested, can be cleaned and spun into the fabric we know and love. Needing sunshine, abundant water, and relatively frost-free winters, cotton is grown in a surprising variety of locations with diverse climates, including Australia, Argentina, West Africa, and Uzbekistan. However, the largest producers of cotton are China, India, and the United States. Both Asian countries produce the highest quantities, mostly for their domestic markets, and the U.S. is the largest exporter of cotton with about 15 million bales each year.1 "Cotton: World Markets and Trade."...
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