Free Republic

Zimbabwe militants seize farm of Commercial Farmers' Union president By Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg Last Updated: 1:43am BST 10/04/2008 Zanu PF militants have invaded the farm of Commercial Farmers' Union president Trevor Gifford, saying he is never to return home. Mr Gifford, who has spent a frantic week in Harare trying to assist at least 60 fellow farmers cope with their own invasions around the country was not at home near Chipinge, about 220 miles south east of Harare, when the mob of about 30 wearing Zanu-PF T-shirts arrived at his security gate. "They have left messages with staff for...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — Chicken farming in Iraq is moving toward pre-war levels, as Coalition forces work with farmers to overcome challenges. There are about seven functioning chicken houses in the region where 3rd Battalion, 7th infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division operates, and dialogue has begun with the owners on how to increase production. One of the first areas where the unit discovered chicken houses was the community of Abu Lukah. It has four chicken houses, three of which are functioning. The first visit by the unit was at the end of January during which...

South Africa may force more white farmers to sell in order to speed up the transfer of land into nonwhite hands, the agriculture minister said Thursday. Lulu Xingwana also said the government was considering new regulations for foreign land ownership. She said that black South Africans, who make up nearly 80 percent of the population, currently own just 4.7 percent of the land — even though land reform has been a key part of government policy since 1994 to right the wrongs of apartheid. Xingwana and other officials have repeatedly ruled out Zimbabwe-style land grabs, but the public's patience is...

Hugo Chavez leveled a threat against Venezuelan farmers over the weekend, another step in creating his socialist paradise. He called farmers who sell abroad to gain a better price for their goods "traitors", and told his ministers to identify them so that he could send the Army to confiscate their property: President Hugo Chavez threatened on Sunday to take over farms or milk plants if owners refuse to sell their milk for domestic consumption and instead seek higher profits abroad or from cheese-makers. With the country recently facing milk shortages, Chavez said "it's treason" if farmers deny milk to Venezuelans...

EL CAMPO, Tex. -- Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years. Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual "direct payments," because years ago the land was used to grow rice. Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do...

I really don’t understand what Marlys Miller is so upset about. Marlys is a writer for Pork magazine, which bills itself as “The Business Magazine of Professional Pork Producers”, and to her, Greg Niewendorp’s civil disobedience in refusing Michigan’s bovine TB test is an example of how “it's a few that create the greatest challenges for the whole.” In other words, if not for Greg, whom she references, and a few like him, we’d be rid of food contamination and, I infer, we’d have this beautiful wonderfully sterile country in which germs would go the way of…E.coli 0157:H7?

Farms seizure warning in South Africa By Mike Pflanz in Nairobi Last Updated: 2:30am BST 17/09/2007 Farmers in South Africa have been warned that they could have their land taken from them unless they stop "abusive" policies towards workers. Most highly productive farmland in South Africa is still in the hands of white farmers. While the government has enacted a "restitution" policy of handing plots to blacks under a willing buyer, willing seller system, critics have said progress has been too slow. While the situation is far from that witnessed in neighbouring Zimbabwe, tensions have soared recently over alleged illegal...

'Cool farms' mask the extent of global warming 13:33 14 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic You've heard of urban heat islands. Now researchers have confirmed the existence of their opposite: cool farm patches. Whereas urban development generates pockets of hot air, irrigated fields tend to cool things down, they say - and there is evidence that the effects have been felt in California for over a century. In areas of intensive irrigation, such as the Central Valley in California, US, these "cool farms" have counteracted global warming, say Céline Bonfils and David Lobell of the Lawrence Livermore National...

Zimbabwe farmers wait out Robert Mugabe By Stephen Bevan, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:52am BST 29/07/2007 For Rod Swales and many of Zimbabwe's 4,000 white farmers forced off their land by President Robert Mugabe's chaotic and violent land reforms, the chance to start afresh somewhere else was too good to pass up. Resilient: Rod Swales hopes to return his farm in Zimbabwe to profitable production Neighbouring countries welcomed them with open arms and furnished them with land, while the agricultural companies provided them with cash incentives. But five years later, 52-year-old Mr Swales is back in Zimbabwe at the forefront...

Pulling at band-aids wrapped around her blistered fingers, Linda Buckham remembered how elated she had felt seeing a peacock and hearing cattle. "'All we're missing is a rooster crowing,"' she recalled telling a fellow prison inmate at the time. "And then a rooster started crowing." Buckham, incarcerated for embezzlement, is one of 15 prisoners at Pueblo's minimum-security La Vista Correctional Facility who plant crops and pull weeds as part of a new prison farm-labor program. Buckham, who spoke with reporters Tuesday on an onion farm outside Avondale, is so happy to leave prison each day that she doesn't mind rising...

AMARILLO - Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is planning a wind energy production project for the Panhandle that his people say would be the nation's largest. KVII TV in Amarillo reports Pickens outlined his plans to an invitation-only audience at a close-door meeting Tuesday in Pampa. Mike Boswell is a spokesman for Pickens' Dallas-based Mesa Group. He tells the station that Pickens told the select audience about the water rights Mesa owns in the Panhandle and the amount of wind that blows across the land. He says early plans are to develop most of the generator complex east and northeast...

Yuma, Ariz., farmers should exhale a small but short-lived sigh of relief over the news from Union Pacific that the railroad has backed off its initial plans to jointly bid with the Hutchinson Port Authority on a proposed port and rail line at Punta Colonet, Baja Calif., Mexico. The proposed gargantuan-sized port would, in part, import foreign-made goods for distribution by rail to stores across the United States. While Union Pacific had originally planned to bid on the railroad puzzle piece, the railroad focused, in part, on potential routes from Mexico into the U.S. through Yuma, Ariz. Unfortunately, among the...

The conversion of cornfields to subdivisions is a familiar phenomenon by now, as growth booms in ever-larger rings around Chicago. It means new housing for growing families, increased tax revenues for local government. But what does it mean for farmers? Will County is a good place to look for an answer. It is the second-fastest growing Illinois county, experiencing a 33 percent population increase from 2000 to 2006, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. So one might expect an outcry from the farming community over the loss of land. "When I started at Will County I thought I was going...

The real Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, and now he’s taking on rural California. Landowners are up in arms over a mostly overlooked provision in last week’s budget revise to terminate a 40-year-old environmental- and agricultural-preservation act, which critics say will negatively affect California’s heartland. The governor has eliminated state funding for the Williamson Act, which leaves California’s farmland and open spaces vulnerable to urbanization. “In my own county, for example, about 65 percent of the land is protected under the Williamson Act,” Assemblywoman Lois Wolk of Davis said. “So unless we want to see more houses instead of crops,...

Sallie James is a policy analyst with Cato’s Center for Trade Policy Studies and author of the Cato study "Milking the Customers: The High Cost of U.S. Dairy Policies." Daniel Griswold is director at the center and is coauthor of "Ripe for Reform: Six Good Reasons to Reduce U.S. Farm Subsidies and Trade Barriers."...... -------------- Agricultural policy in the United States is interventionist, expensive, inequitable, and damaging to American interests abroad.Over the last 20 years, the opportunity cost to American consumers and taxpayers of supporting agricultural producers has totalled over $1.7 trillion.The harm to agricultural producers abroad, including many developing...

For a split second, one can almost feel the horror in retired chartered accountant Natubhai Shah's calm demeanour as he placidly recollects eight years of his career during the murderous regime of Idi Amin. "Here I was, on an official tour with Idi Amin's entourage, trying to cross the Nile river when a military van stopped me from going ahead. One of the armymen discreetly handed me a pair of binoculars. It was a chilling sight. Amin was standing besides the river, cutting flesh off an Asian man and feeding it to crocodiles in the river," Shah says, sitting in...

Farming is a mystery to urban dwellers. When asked once where lettuce comes from, my old Manhattan friend Betsy replied, "Gristedes." [...] [Massachusetts] is the top state in the country for cash retail sales direct from farm to consumer. Who knew? The average take per farm is $24,876. (That's $151 million divided by the 6,075 farms.) [...] It means they are getting more of the consumer dollar at the expense of the dreaded middleman. It means our farmers -- boutique soil tillers to a Midwesterner -- have gotten smart about growing what consumers want. [...] Almost 90 percent of Iowa's...

Bad decisions about agriculture have defined government policy for the last century; 70 percent of our nation’s farms have been lost to bankruptcy or consolidation ... Now, after the uprooting of a thousand years of agrarian wisdom, we chefs have discovered something really terrible — no, not that the agricultural system we help support hurts farmers and devastates farming communities, or that it harms the environment and our health. What we’ve discovered is that the food it produces just doesn’t taste very good. This is a sweeping bill, omnibus in every sense — nutrition, conservation, genetic engineering, food safety, school...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is looking more and more like the Big Brother government that has infected Washington in recent years. The "2006 Agricultural Identification Survey," recently mailed to thousands of private landowners, is a good example. The instructions for the questionnaire say "Response to this survey is legally required by Title 7, U.S. Code." Title 7 of the U.S. Code is an enormous document, containing 105 chapters, each of which is a lengthy book unto itself. To find the specific requirement, a person would have to read all the way to Chapter 55, Section 2204g, to discover that...

LAKEPORT, Calif. — The pear growers here in Lake County waited decades for a crop of shapely fruit like the one that adorned their orchards last month. Pears rotted on the ground of Nick Ivicevich’s orchard. He lost about 1.8 million pounds of them. Lake County lacked fruit pickers for this year’s harvest. “I felt like I went to heaven,” said Nick Ivicevich, recalling the perfection of his most abundant crop in 45 years of tending trees. Now harvest time has passed and tons of pears have ripened to mush on their branches, while the ground of Mr. Ivicevich’s orchard...

Nature-deficit disorder is ruining our kidshttp://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20060816/OPINION/108160053 http://tinyurl.com/zchy3 by jim stiles August 16, 2006 No matter how old I live to be, there will never be a place so full of mystery and adventure as a place of my childhood called The Woods. The stories that grew out of those trees still kindle powerful feelings, even after all these years. My friends and I knew the place was haunted. It had no boundaries, and in our 10-year-old minds, it went on forever. Jump ahead a few decades to a familiar topic: the commercialization of wilderness. What created the demand for such...

WOODLAND --- A third of Jerry Dobbins' 155-acre strawberry crop rotted on the vine this year. His blueberry bushes are so heavy with fruit that the branches are hanging near the ground. There is no one to pick them. Dobbins Farm in Woodland is one of many farms across the state facing a huge labor shortage this growing season, as tighter security along the U.S.-Mexico border has crimped the supply of Latino migrant farm workers. The strawberry harvest, one of the hardest fruits to pick because of it's low proximity to the ground, has already come and gone at Dobbins'...

(NOTE: Online version not available) Jim Salenski is a dairy farmer about 8 miles from the [Catholic] church in Rugby, [North Dakota]. He echoes a complaint heard from coast to coast that the federal government’s farm subsidy program is driving small farmers out of business. Studies show that as much as three-quarters of the federal support goes to the top 10 percent of the producers, which include Fortune 500 companies, celebrities, and other “hobby farmer” investors. “The more you farm, the more you get,” Salenski sums up the government policy. His German-Russian parents bought the farm in 1932. Jim, the...

Environmental activists are teaming up with state attorneys general and trial lawyers to bankrupt the nation's livestock farmers -- in the name of saving the environment. If the situation wasn't so serious, it would be hilarious.     The activists -- including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists -- are trying to convince Congress the nation's farms should be treated as industrial waste sites and therefore subject to severe penalties under the federal Superfund law. Some state attorneys general, supported by trial lawyers, have filed lawsuits to the same end. Why? They argue, animal manure...

Mugabe seizes black farms to drive his maize economy By Daniel Pepper in Zhampali, Zimbabwe (Filed: 28/05/2006) For years, Zimbabwe's white farmers have felt the wrath of Robert Mugabe, as they have been thrown off their land to make way for soldiers and ruling party cronies. Now, black farmers have also become the focus of his unwelcome attentions. Lot Dube's crops of onions, tomatoes and sweet potatoes were growing nicely when soldiers marched into Insiza district, in the south of the country, set up camp and declared that all crops other than maize would be destroyed. Robert Mugabe has ordered...

A Canadian company has developed a new, more efficient process to make the alternative fuel ethanol from farm waste. With today's high oil prices, experts hope the new technology could reduce demand on fossil fuels and increase energy security. "In the past, ethanol fuel use has been limited, because the cost of production was too high," said Jim Easterly, a Washington, D.C.-based bioenergy consultant. "Ethanol produced from corn kernels and wheat grain has historically been more expensive than gasoline produced from oil." Producing corn-based ethanol, for example, uses energy from oil and electricity for everything from growing the corn to...

Thirteen and a half million servings of organic romaine, radicchio and baby greens. That's how much Earthbound Farm, the biggest organic produce company in the country, sends out across America from its gigantic San Juan Bautista processing plant every single week. That's one big bowl of salad -- way bigger than when Myra and Drew Goodman started Earthbound Farm in their Carmel Valley living room in 1984. They now farm 26,000 organic acres. This is the yin of the organic food movement as it plunges headlong into the American mainstream. The yang is County Line Harvest farmer David Retsky, steering...

Fears that chicken farm's 'safe' bird flu virus could mutate By David Sapsted (Filed: 28/04/2006) As ministry vets prepared to gas 35,000 chickens to curb an outbreak of bird flu, a prominent virologist warned the government not to be sanguine over this supposedly "safe" strain of the disease. Prof Albert Osterhaus, a Dutch virologist, said that the H7 strain found in the flock just outside Dereham, Norfolk, had the potential to mutate into a form just as hazardous as the H5N1 strain, which has killed more than 100 people in Asia. The farm in Hockering, Norfolk, where 35,000 chickens are...

EU to help stricken poultry farms France is the biggest poultry exporter in the EU European Union agriculture ministers have approved a subsidy package for poultry farmers hit by falling sales and prices due to bird flu. The European Commission will cover half the costs incurred by EU governments. Farmers will be eligible if they can prove that bird flu led to a slump in demand for their poultry. EU data show that poultry sales have fallen by up to 70% in some EU countries, while prices have slumped by 13% on average. Poultry sales are especially weak in Italy,...

If you've been wondering where the insanity masquerading as our federal government "food safety" and animal health protection regulations and laws are coming from, you can now say, with certainty, that they descend from the organizations within, and tied to the United Nations. Before you throw a conditioned response out, that this is all just "conspiracy theory" propagated by right-wing nut-cases, you had best be able to understand the impact on trade of the SPS and TBT agreements made through the WTO (World Trade Organization), and be able to relate the position of the United States in the OIE and...

Given the sad state of affairs in today's affairs of state — record federal budget deficits, record trade deficits, illegal domestic eavesdropping, the sale of key U.S. ports — one would think the U.S. House of Representatives has more important problems to address than a proposal to virtually wipe out state food labeling laws. Well, no actually; the biggest fish fried by the House March 8 was just that: the National Uniformity for Food Act of 2005. The uniformity act is a fat, old carp multinational food firms have been selling Congress for years. The goal is to override nearly...

Wisconsin has served as a model for the first step in developing a national livestock identification system. Now it's time for the state to set an example on step two. That will require Wisconsin farmers to voluntarily participate in identification plans and to reject misdirected concerns that livestock identification is a Big Brother invasion of a farmer's liberty. At stake is not farmers' freedoms but rather the ability to track and contain bird flu, mad-cow and other farm animal diseases. Also at stake is public health and Wisconsin's competitiveness in the global economy. Wisconsin was the first state to require...

That Gut Feeling : Scientists at St Georges hospital in London are claiming there is a link between Crohns disease - a debilitating digestive problem that affects more than 40,000 people in the UK - and drinking milk. Professor John Hermon-Taylor, a surgeon, and his team have reported finding minute traces of an organism known as myco-bacterium paratubercolosis in two thirds of the intestinal tissue removed from Crohns patients after surgery and although the National Dairy Council has disputed such claims on the basis of its own studies, the hospital researchers say they have also found the organism in supplies...

A lone milkman is delivering misery to the doorstep of the giant dairy industry. Hein Hettinga was once a simple dairy farmer who sold raw milk from his farm in Chino, Calif. Today the Dutch immigrant has expanded his operation so much, so fast, that some of the biggest dairy companies and cooperatives in the U.S. have banded together against him. They are lobbying for federal laws to close loopholes they claim he exploits. Mr. Hettinga counters that the only purpose of the proposed legislation is to kill competition -- and keep milk prices high. "That's not right," says the...

Breederville.com Enjoys a Successful Year with Online Animal Auctions Just over a year ago, a fledgling concept entered the Internet. Online animal auctions. Breederville.com has proudly proven the concept a success with sales ranging from pets to livestock. Breederville.com Enjoys a Successful Year with Online Animal Auctions December 21, 2005 --(PR.COM)-- Breederville.com had its successful launch November 26, 2004. It’s main focus, Online Animal Auctions. Since their sole focus is classified and auction format listings for live animals, the staff is able to spend considerable amounts time with screening users and lending personal assistance. Successful sales have included, pets such...

RUSSIA/UNITED STATES: Meat-processing giant Tyson Foods could soon start growing and processing broilers in Russia. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reports from Russia indicate that the U.S. meat-processing giant Tyson Foods, Springdale, Arkansas, may start production of broilers in the country. The agricultural group Euroservice, which is Russia's largest importer of U.S. chicken is expected to help in the project. According to the Russian Business Monitor, Tyson Foods and Euroservice are negotiating on joint projects in retail business and production. Tyson Foods is believed to have been studying possibilities of work in Russia for a long time including ventures with Elinar Broiler Co. and...

Some lawmakers believe consumers have the right to know they're eating meat produced in America, and are trying to re-instate a law --- included in the 2002 Farm Bill but never implemented --- to do just that. Supporters of country of origin labeling, otherwise known as COOL, say it will boost consumer confidence and fatten the wallets of livestock farmers by creating more demand for U.S. meat. Opponents believe COOL will cost too much money for little or no benefit. They don't believe most consumers are willing to pay the cost of program, which will be passed on by processors....

AMES, Iowa, Nov. 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- All those dried up stalks, husks and cobs left in corn fields after every fall's harvest could be a key to enhancing the environment, say Iowa State University researchers. They say partially burning some of the residue left in corn fields produces products that can be used to improve soil fertility, boost in-soil storage of greenhouse gases and reduce the amount of natural gas used to produce anhydrous ammonia fertilizer. Robert C. Brown, Iowa State's Bergles Professor in Thermal Science, will lead a team of researchers studying the idea. The team includes Randy...

WASHINGTON – Wander down the aisles of most American grocery stores and you'll find a surprising choice of foods from foreign countries - ripe blackberries from Mexico, capers from Morocco, hearts of palm from Costa Rica, sweet peppers from South Africa. The list goes on. While all these foreign imports may be a boon for consumers, they're one reason the once-huge US agricultural trade surplus is rapidly deflating. It's down from $9.6 billion just last year to only a projected $1 billion in 2005, raising the possibility of a deficit in the future. NEW RIVAL: The US Department of Agriculture...

As APK-Inform has learned from Ukrainian Centre for Hydro-Meteorology (weather centre), on the second ten days of October the conditions for growth and development of winter crops in Ukraine slightly improved, but in most of the cereal growing regions (most of the areas in central, eastern and southern Ukraine) the state of the crops is still assessed as poor. Good and fair state of the crops was said to have been noted only in the west of the country. The weather specialists confirm that the plants will not acquire enough strength until the frosts and will enter winter in a...

A number of factors have combined to bring Ukraine to the verge of a major farming disaster, according to a number of agricultural leaders who say that the drought during a critical growth stage of winter wheat that will be harvested in late summer 2006 means a bad year next year for farm income, grain exports and the state budget, according to a story by Oksana Bondarchuk, FirsTnews. After a summer with little rainfall, soaring gas prices and political instability, representatives of agrarian enterprises voiced their concerns Tuesday about the state of Ukrainian agricultural. They assert that the situation needs...

DUMAGUETE CITY—The Philippine National Police is looking into the possibility of stamping out the marijuana problem by replacing marijuana plantations with another addictive but equally lucrative substance—coffee. PNP Deputy Director General Ricardo de Leon, commander of the anti-illegal drug operations task force, said they are studying what coffee varieties would grow in areas formerly planted to marijuana. “Marijuana is so toxic that after the soil is planted to it, no other crop can grow there,” De Leon told reporters Friday while on a visit to this city and Negros Oriental, where he was provincial commander of the defunct Philippine Constabulary-Integrated...

The First Vice-Prime Minister of Ukraine Anatoly Kinakh has disapproved the preferences, provided to the state companies on Ukrainian grain market speaking to a press conference Friday. He said that the recently released ruling of the Cabinet of Ministers broke the rules of fair competition on the grain market and contradicted to the legislative norms of Ukraine. "We suggest making amendment into the ruling, in order that the measures for increasing competitiveness should be applied to all the economic subjects, irrespective of the forms of ownership", Mr. Kinakh said to the media. According to him, the decision, providing such preferences...

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia's agriculture ministry said that the deadly bird flu virus had been found in a third Siberian province, as officials began a mass cull to contain its spread and three ex-Soviet countries imposed poultry import restrictions. ADVERTISEMENT In a written statement the ministry said the virus had been found in the west Siberian province of Tyumen, following an earlier announcement of outbreaks in the Novosibirsk and Altai provinces. Novosibirsk's governor, Viktor Gergert, said on national television that the slaughter had begun of some 65,000 birds in the affected areas of Novosibirsk, adding that farmers would receive compensation....

Jason McKenney of Half Moon Bay wanted to make a political statement. Not by marching in the streets. Not by boycotting big business. Not by signing a petition. But by growing fruits and vegetables naturally. In this day and age of mega-scale corporate farming, 34-year-old McKenney, who studied environmental studies and biology at Brown University, ekes out a living growing organically on all of three leased acres along the coast. There, among the rows of potatoes, garlic, onions, kale, chard, arugula, mustard, parsley and Forellenschluss (an heirloom lettuce with green leaves speckled with burgundy), McKenney makes his point. ``This is...

Operative data show crude sunoil production in June as 91,000 tonnes, down 8 percent from May production and 31 percent from June last year, informs State Statistics Committee of Ukraine. Some oil extraction plants did not work in June staying closed for preventive repair. APK-Inform estimates total crude sunoil production at 105,500 tonnes in June, which is more compared to the estimates of the Statistics Committee. In June stocks of crude sunoil in plants declined. Official statistics reports carryover stocks of crude sunoil as 11,800 tonnes, having decreased 6 percent. Stock-to-production ratio made 11.2 percent. In total for September-June period...

Prime Minister of Ukraine Ms. Yulia Timoshenko has called upon the agricultural producers not to sell grain under cash deals. Speaking to a prime-time news programme at Ukraine's main state-controlled TV channel "Inter" on July 3 she applied to the "simple rural workers" with a request "to take under their control managers of farming enterprises, who conclude sales/purchase deals for grain". "The tradition, which was established in Ukraine in the previous years, looked like that: the grain is bought form the head of farming enterprise for certain money, brought in a "case"… When grain is paid out-of-the-pocket the price is,...

ELISTA, June 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russia needs independence from the foreign market but transition to it should be very careful, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the meeting with agrarians in Kalmyk capital Elista (southern Russia). According to him, the state gives much attention to agricultural problems. "We are ready for further steps to protect and support Russian producers. However, they should be very careful not to inflict damage on the consumer market and prevent growth of meat prices," the head of state said. He spoke about "the great dependence on meat imports." "Last year imported meat prices grew...

Interest grows in digesters that turn manure into energy, fertilizer and bedding for cows Chilton - The manure management side of farming is far less smelly and far more profitable when the animal waste is converted into a power source. Such a biomass process is up and running at farms across Wisconsin and other states. Although the basic technology isn't new, it's generating attention for a local company, GHD Inc. Company owner Steve Dvorak has run a farm implement dealership for 27 years. The farm boy turned engineer kept hearing farmers complain about manure management, and ended up developing his...

ROME -- North Korea is sending millions of people from its cities to work on farms each weekend -- another indication that the risk of famine is particularly high this year, a U.N. official said yesterday. The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) is the only aid organization that has a presence outside the North Korean capital,. "It's not a new phenomenon, but it certainly caught our folks' attention in terms of the size and the scale," she said. "I suppose also we're so worried about the situation, it's one more sign that things aren't going well." The isolated North has...