Free Republic

(The first eight foreign ships arrived at the ports of Ukraine to export agricultural products - units of the Navy of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are involved in ensuring transportation.) "The Armed Forces of Ukraine help in the export of Ukrainian agricultural products At the request of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine, the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine joined the organization of ensuring the transportation of agricultural products by civilian ships through the mouth of the Bystre channel of the Danube-Black Sea river. The first eight foreign ships have already arrived at Ukrainian ports. It is...

Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, has been revealed as the biggest private owner of farmland in the US, after buying up 242,000 acres in 18 states. The tech mogul, who is the fourth richest person in the world with a net worth of $121billion, according to Forbes, has quietly built up a massive agriculture portfolio. The 65-year-old's largest holdings include 69,071 acres in Louisiana, 47,927 acres in Arkansas, 25,750 acres in Arizona, 20,588 acres in Nebraska and 16,097 in Washington state.

China’s food supplies remain stable and consumers should not be “overly anxious” or even resort to “panic buying”, a senior agriculture ministry official said on Wednesday.

KIM JONG UN MAY HAVE CAUSED A PARASITIC WORM EPIDEMIC IN NORTH KOREA BY MAKING FARMERS SPREAD HUMAN FAECES ON THEIR CROPS The prevalence of parasitic worms causing health problems in North Korea may be the result of a personal intervention by Kim Jong Un, who urged farmers to spread human excrement on their fields to fertilize crops. The hermit nation’s leader issued an instruction to farmers in 2014 telling them to use human faeces with animal waste and organic compost on their fields. With a lack of livestock to provide animal fertilizer, agriculturists poured the human excrement, also known...

Not quite sure how I feel about these hydraulic tree shakers...

The corrupt ALRB is not only working overtime to deprive Latino farm workers their right to vote on labor union representation, it is now the state board where washed-up state legislators and useful idiots go to serve Removing all doubt that the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board is a Marxist tool for unionization, William B. Gould IV, Gov. Jerry Brown‘s appointed Chairman of the board, announced his resignation Friday, in a cranky letter complaining that farm workers don’t want to join the United Farmworkers Union. Gould’s resignation also proved that he never was an unbiased arbiter of the agency, despite...

WASHINGTON - Dairy farming became widespread in Britain as early as the new stone age — around 4,000 B.C. — a team of researchers at England's University of Bristol reports.Mark Copley, an archaeological chemist, said evidence of milk fats was found on broken pieces of pottery at several ancient sites in southern England.Using new methods of analysis, scientists have learned to differentiate between ancient residue from milk fat and other fats and oils in recent years, Copley and his team report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.Their findings provide evidence of "the earliest farming communities in Britain, though...

The farm-to-table process in China starts in villages like this one in the agricultural heartland. Food from the fields of Ge Songqing and her neighbors ends up in their kitchens or in the local market, and from there goes to other provinces. The foods are Chinese staples: rice, cabbage, carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes. But the fields are ringed by factories and irrigated with water tainted by industrial waste. Levels of toxic heavy metals in the wastewater here are among the highest in China, and residents fear the soil is similarly contaminated. Though they have no scientific proof, they suspect...

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. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. 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 Weekly Gardening Thread ... there is no telling where it will go and...

— Africa can feed itself. And it can make the transition from hungry importer to self-sufficiency in a single generation.The startling assertions, in stark contrast with entrenched, gloomy perceptions of the continent, highlight a collection of studies published December 2 that present a clear prescription for transforming Sub-Saharan Africa's agriculture and, by doing so, its economy. The strategy calls on governments to make African agricultural expansion central to decision making about everything from transportation and communication infrastructure to post-secondary education and innovation investment.

Israel is getting ready to share technology and skills with African countries struggling to sustain agricultural output due to increasingly unreliable rains, said Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon. Simhon said sharing know-how, especially in irrigation and water management, was his focus on a tour of Senegal, Ivory Coast and Gabon. His trip comes as some 10 million people in West and Central Africa face food shortages due to failed rains. "We are not arriving here in Africa to take resources from the African countries. We are coming here in order to give know-how and abilities to these countries to develop," Simhon...

WASHINGTON -- The long-simmering dispute over allowing Mexican trucks onto U.S. highways is escalating into a trade war that could cost Washington state agricultural interests millions of dollars in lost sales and present the Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress with an early test of their trade policies. Washington's pear, cherry, apricot and Christmas tree growers find themselves in the middle of a trade clash not of their own making and facing 20 percent tariffs on their exports to Mexico. The biggest impact, however, could be on the state's potato growers and processors. Mexico buys $83 million worth of frozen...

FOB WARRIOR — The food that finds its way on to the tables of Kirkuk City residents has to start somewhere. Researchers from Team Borlaug wanted to see where the journey began, and they found some of those origins at one of the city’s animal processing plants and markets, March 18. Team Borlaug is taking a nearly six-month tour of northern Iraq to study the agriculture and offer guidance on how it can be improved. “Our mission is to assess agriculture in Multi-National Division – North’s area and provide recommendations to the command regarding project development and how to get...

Charles Russell, a member of the U.S. State Department Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team and an agricultural advisor, sprays 21-day-old chicks with a vaccine to prevent Gambaro disease, which attacks a chick's immune system, at the Poultry Agkardi Hatchery during an EPRT event in Mahmudiyah, Feb. 27. Photo by Jamie Vernon, 1st Armored Division Public Affairs. MAHMUDIYAH — The U.S. State Department’s Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team (EPRT) participated in a project inoculating and delivering chickens to the Mahmudiyah Poultry Association, Feb. 27. Charles Russell, an agricultural advisor for the EPRT, traveled to the Poultry Agkardi Hatchery here to assist local Iraqi...

Fortunately, we have Keith Olbermann to point out that Rush Limbaugh did not accurately quote the preamble to the Constitution in his CPAC speech last weekend. I'm not sure what scam Olbermann imagined Rush was trying to put over on the American people by saying conservatives believed in the "preamble to the Constitution" and then quoting words from the Declaration of Independence -- but Olbermann put an end to that cruel deception! These small-time opportunities to show off by correcting someone else's teeny-tiny mistakes are the lifeblood of Olbermann's MSNBC show, "Countdown." Olbermann is no more capable of not correcting...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23, 2008 – Missouri National Guard soldiers are overcoming one of the biggest hurdles on Afghanistan’s road toward self-sustainment, one of the state’s U.S. senators said here yesterday. Missouri U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond and Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, director of the Army National Guard, answer questions from the media during a Dec. 22, 2008, news conference in Bond’s Washington, D.C., office. Bond recently returned from Afghanistan, where he saw the work of Missouri Guard agriculture development teams. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Sen. Christopher Bond discussed the Missouri...

SAFWAN — A newly renovated agricultural center in Safwan, a town in southern Iraq’s Basrah province, was dedicated Dec. 7. Members of the Safwan Agricultural Society Board, the Agricultural Society president and Coalition representatives were on hand for the celebration. The newly renovated facility, seeds, tractors, generators, greenhouse kits and plastic sheathing were part of the $1.5 million investment the Coalition made to get the community’s economy back on its feet. “This project has jumpstarted the agro-business for farmers,” said Sgt. Adam Kirschner, project management officer for the agricultural center. “With 50 percent of the local population in the business,...

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, Nov. 18, 2008 – Multinational Division Center leaders met here Nov. 13 to discuss Iraq’s agricultural economy. Army Brig. Gen. Jefforey A. Smith, Multinational Division Center deputy commander for support, introduces Edwin Price, left, Team Borlaug leader, during an agriculture roundtable at Camp Victory, Iraq, Nov. 13, 2008. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Amber Emery  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The roundtable allowed attendees to measure progress since the last conference in August, officials said. "There are two important aspects of a conference like this," said Army Brig. Gen. Jefforey A. Smith, Multinational Division...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE HAMMER — More than 1500 Iraqi farmers attended the Mada’in Agricultural Technology Exposition in al-Wahida, Iraq, recently. The expo resulted from efforts by the embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team, attached to the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, to revitalize farming and agribusiness. The 3rd HBCT ePRT leaders emphasized agricultural initiatives in the qada to provide long-term economic stability in the primarily agrarian district east of Baghdad. Fifty-eight percent of the Mada’in citizens are farmers, and another 15 percent are in farm-related businesses, said Col. Bud Jameson, from Sherwood, Ark., ePRT deputy team leader. During the expo, Baghdad PRT...

CAMP FALLUJAH — Camp Corregidor and Combat Outpost were returned to the Government of Iraq during a signing ceremony held in the provincial capital of Ramadi Dec. 7. Governor Mamoun Sami Rashid Alawani, on behalf of the National Government, signed the documents and officially took possession of the property at the Provincial Government Center a few kilometers from the campus. Coalition Forces established Camp Corregidor on the abandoned campus of the Agricultural College in early 2004. Strategically located on the main highway connecting Baghdad to Syria, the outpost was under constant attack by Al Qaeda in Iraq foreign fighters and...