Free Republic

Kenya: Some Starve, Others Enjoy Bumper CropPosted by Janis Esch on September 2, 2011 11:25 AM NAIROBI, Kenya - In central and western Kenya, farmers have had a bumper crop of plump ears of corn and earthy potatoes. Yet in the north, skeletal children wait for food aid amid a growing emergency. Kenya is supposed to be East Africa's economic powerhouse but a drought has sharply highlighted the historical neglect of northern Kenya, where 3.75 million Kenyans need food aid. Many Kenyan critics are blaming the situation not just on the weather but also on corrupt and negligent politicians. **SNIP**...

A spell of unusually cold weather in northern Mexico has severely damaged the maize crop in the state of Sinaloa. Officials estimate the losses could amount to four million tonnes of corn - 16% of Mexico's annual harvest. President Felipe Calderon said everything possible must be done to re-sow the fields over the next two weeks. There are fears the losses could force up the price of the corn tortillas that most Mexicans eat with every meal. Officials say up to 600,000 hectares (1.5m acres) of maize have been lost to frost in Sinaloa, which is home to some of...

The crispness is in the air and frost has already been on the pumpkin this fall. It's harvest time in Indiana. But for farmers, this has not been a good year. A shortened planting season because of rain is now mixed with a late harvest because of rain. Some reports have the moisture content as high as 35 percent in some areas. This has posed a problem for the wheat industry in Indiana.

Changes in the sun is shortening growing season while credit crunch leaves farmers unable to purchase fertilizer at a time when world food supplies are at all time lows. Crop failures around the world are snowballing into a dangerous climax that may lead to social unrest and famine. Suggest reading entire article and links within it. Very scary... and this is happening... it is not conjecture. A mini ice age may be on the way because of sunspot cycles and already existing empty grain, coffee, et al silos.

FOSSTON, Minn. — The first reports of something amiss in the wheat fields east of here came early Sunday from barking dogs and bawling cows, but no livestock is missing — no people, either — so locals seem inclined to doubt that alien spaceships made a stop at Dean Sorgaard’s place. Still, after a UPS driver passing through the area relayed sightings of mysterious “crop circles” to Fosston Mayor Jim Offerdahl, the mayor drove out to check for himself. “I’m no expert,” Offerdahl said, trying to sound both skeptical and open-minded, “but either somebody was out having some fun or...

Government plans clampdown on vandalism after lobbying from biotech firms Genetically modified crops may be grown in hidden locations in Britain amid fears that anti-GM campaigners are winning the battle over the controversial technology, the Guardian has learned. Officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed they are looking at a range of options to clamp down on vandalism to GM crop trials, after intense lobbying by big crop biotech companies. The firms have warned that trials of GM crops are becoming too expensive to conduct in Britain because of the additional costs of protecting fields...

Impoverished Areas Of Africa And Asia Face Severe Crop Losses From Climate Change In 20 Years ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2008) — Many of the world's poorest regions could face severe crop losses in the next two decades because of climate change, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE). "The majority of the world's 1 billion poor depend on agriculture for their livelihoods," said lead author David Lobell, a senior research scholar at FSE, which focuses on environmentally sustainable solutions to global hunger. "Unfortunately, agriculture is also the human enterprise...

Thousands Of Crop Varieties Depart For Arctic Seed VaultPackaging seeds. Thousands of Crop Varieties from Four Corners of the World Depart for Arctic Seed Vault. (Credit: CIMMYT, Mexico.) ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2008) — At the end of January, more than 200,000 crop varieties from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East—drawn from vast seed collections maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)—will be shipped to a remote island near the Arctic Circle, where they will be stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), a facility capable of preserving their vitality for thousands of years. The...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — The fruits of the past month’s labor were reaped when the Al Rasheed Land Owners Association took a major step in becoming a self-sufficient entity, Dec. 17, providing for the welfare of the farmers. The organization was originally formed a few months ago, to help unionize local farmers and allow them to increase their harvests. During the event, 250 rolls of plastic were distributed, one per farmer. “They are totally in charge. We are just here to observe,” said Capt. Ken Guglielmina, Civil Affairs Team 11, currently attached to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd...

Millions face famine as crop disease rages Scientists say wheat blight that ravaged Africa is set on a course for Asia Robin McKie and Xan Rice Sunday April 22, 2007 The Observer (UK) Scientists say millions of people face starvation following an outbreak of a deadly new strain of crop disease which is spreading across the wheat fields of Africa and Asia. The disease, known as black stem rust, has already destroyed harvests in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. Now researchers report that stem rust spores have blown across the Red Sea into the Arabian peninsula and infected wheat fields in...

ROME (AFP) - Despite projections of a bumper grain crop this year, 33 countries will not have enough food, with Iraq and Zimbabwe among the hardest hit, the UN food agency said Tuesday. Countries with "widespread lack of access to food" include Afghanistan, North Korea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Liberia, Mauritania, Nepal, Niger and Sierra Leone, according to the April issue of the Food and Agriculture Organisations "Crop Prospects and Food Situation" report. Hardest hit, with an "exceptional shortfall" in food production and supplies, are Iraq, Lesotho, the Philippines, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, the FAO said. In eastern Africa, millions "still depend...

Mummy’s amazing American maize The far-reaching influence of Spanish and Portuguese colonisers appears not to have extended to South American agriculture, scientists studying Andean mummies up to 1,400 years old have found. The University of Manchester researchers working with colleagues in Buenos Aires compared the DNA of ancient maize found in the funerary offerings of the mummy and at other sites in northwest Argentina with that grown in the same region today. Surprisingly, they found both ancient and modern samples of the crop were genetically almost identical indicating that modern European influence has not been as great as previously...

The federal government instituted crop insurance in 1938 in an attempt to end the need for ad hoc aid to farmers following disastrous droughts or floods. But ad hoc aid has not ended in the past seven decades, and the insurance program that was intended to replace it has transformed into a massive, poorly disguised crop subsidy program that provides few benefits to farmers who practice good risk management. Instead, the program rewards poor risk managers with generous subsidies at the expense of taxpayers, contrary to the fundamental principles of insurance. To be sure, lawmakers have made several efforts to...

Opium production in Afghanistan, which provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, broke all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing U.S.-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported yesterday. In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year -- for a total of 5,644 metric tons -- the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent.

Eric Julien, a former French military air traffic controller and senior airport manager, has completed a study of the comet 73P Schwassmann- Wachmann and declared that a fragment is highly likely to impact the Earth on or around May 25, 2006. Comet Schwassman-Wachmann follows a five-year orbit that crosses the solar system's ecliptic plane. It has followed its five year orbit intact for centuries; but, in 1995, mysteriously fragmented. According to Julien, this is the same year that a crop circle appeared showing the inner solar system with the Earth missing from its orbit. He argues the "Missing Earth" crop...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (Oct. 6, 2005) -- For the Corona family, flying flags just wasn’t enough to show their support for America’s military. Instead, the Corona’s chose to show appreciation with an 8-acre corn crop formation, which displays all the armed forces in action from an aerial view. The formation, which doubles as a maze, was unveiled in Temecula, at its official grand opening Monday. The maze depicts the Marines flag raising at Iwo Jima, the Army in an M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank, the Navy’s Battleship BB-63 Missouri, and the Air Force in an F-16 Fighter...

Rats haunt central China cropland www.chinaview.cn 2005-06-17 22:51:48 CHANGSHA, June 17 (Xinhuanet) -- The rising water level in China's second largest freshwater Dongting Lake, in the central Hunan Province, since late May has driven a massive field rats migration from their living islets to the southern cropland, bringing about the area's gravest rat crisis in the last ten years. The rats rampantly nibbled the roots and stems of the crops, making thousands of hectares of farmland useless. The climate in the Dongting basin is temperate and rainfall is plentiful. The alluvial plain around the lake makes it one of China's...

ROCHELLE, Ill. (Reuters) - Golden mountains are rising out of the fertile farmlands of the U.S. Midwest, a changing landscape formed by huge piles of corn from the most bountiful harvest in U.S. history. As farmers run out of space to store crops at home, they are bringing corn to country elevators, which are now bursting at the seams with grain. The excess is piling up on the ground in farm communities across the Midwest as this year's harvest surpasses available storage space by about 10 percent. American farmers are expected to harvest 11.7 billion bushels of corn and more...

First Significant UK formation of 2004 spotted On May 3, near Deacon Hill in Bedfordshire, UK, the first significant formation of the year has been spotted in a flowering field of oil seed rape. The formation is similar in design to the 2003 Locust Grove, Ohio formation that appeared close to the Serpent Mound earthwork. Although it has been raining rather steadily, since being spotted, the formation has been inspected, and there have been some details that have emerged which may indicate the formation may be not have been a human mechanically-made one.

Filipino islanders blame GM crop for mystery sickness Monsanto denies scientist's claim that maize may have caused 100 villagers to fall ill John Aglionby in Kalyong, southern Philippines Wednesday March 3, 2004 The Guardian (UK) The recently planted rows of pineapple plants in the four-acre field on one side of the Malayon family home look neat and well-tended, but are otherwise not really worth a second glance. But what occurred last year on and around this plot in Kalyong village, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, is threatening to turn this unremarkable field into a battleground in the war...

<p>ROCKVILLE, Calif. (AP) - Throngs of UFO enthusiasts, new age followers and assorted believers in the paranormal have been flocking to the Sacramento Valley to take in the dozen or so crop circles that mysteriously appeared in a wheat field two weeks ago.</p>

<p>True believers, visionaries, psychics and people in purple robes lay down Wednesday in the middle of a Solano County wheat field where vortexes were converging and all things were possible.</p> <p>"I feel like I'm melting right into the earth," said Lily Kyle. "It's intense. There's a coalescence, no doubt about it."</p>

UK tries to bury devastating GM crops report December 30 2002 at 06:41AM London - Alarming results from official trials of genetically modified (GM) crops are severely jeopardising plans for growing them commercially. The findings, in a new government report, show for the first time in Britain that genes from GM crops are being passed on a large scale to conventional crops and weeds. The finding is so devastating to the government's case for GM crops that ministers sought to bury it by publishing the first information on it on the department of the environment, food and rural affairs website...

GM crop mishaps unite friends and foes 17:10 18 November 02 NewScientist.com news service Friends and foes of the use of genetic engineering in US agriculture have united in criticising two accidents in which a food crop was contaminated by a crop from the previous year designed to yield pharmaceutical products. The US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration announced last week that they had found such genetically modified corn growing in two soybean plots in the states of Iowa and Nebraska. The GM corn had germinated from seeds left from 2001 plantings by the Texas-based company...

Thunderstorms may have caused crop circles Meteorologists are investigating whether fierce thunderstorms caused crop circles in parts of Canada. Environment Canada officials say swirling vortices of air or downbursts may be behind circles in fields in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The severe weather on Thursday and Friday also uprooted hundreds of trees and damaged a number of buildings. Canada.com reports that Environment Canada's Mike Campbell said: "What we believe is a lot of air had rushed out of the thunderstorm and when it hit the ground it swirled around. It just whipped up the crops and flattened them...

First nice crop circle in UK for this year. http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2002/Normanton/Normanton2002a.html