Cheap “ugly food” campaigns in supermarkets have been criticised as not really helping to cut food waste. But they do, by ensuring that more of what farmers grow actually makes it into the shops.
Sheep farming would be protected by an Animal Welfare Commissioner.
from en.wikipedia.org
Studying beads, shells and animal teeth – ornaments which carried deep cultural meaning to prehistoric man – reveals that northern Europeans resisted the spread of agriculture for centuries.
The Queensland government wants companies to use waste water from coal seam gas extraction for useful purposes such as recharging aquifers. New CSIRO research shows that, with careful monitoring, it can be done.
A conceptual variable-rate fertilization system that would use sensors to determine how much fertilizer to apply in real-time.
R Sui and J A Thomasson
New research upends the previous theory that tsetse flies – and the disease they carry – were the main reason the spread of livestock domestication in Africa stalled out for a thousand years.
Farming makes a huge contribution to global greenhouse emissions, mainly through methane from livestock.
Billy Hathorn/Wikimedia Commons
Meat uses a lot of resources - between three and ten times as much as plants for the same amount of protein. The rich world might be slowly losing its taste for meat, but the developing world isn’t.
The face of climate evil, or just a juicy steak?
Sheila/Flickr
Carbon dioxide is the “face” of the greenhouse gases, but nitrous oxide (N2O) merits its own spotlight. The same “laughing gas” once used by dentists as an anaesthetic and used today by people looking…
Put innovative farming techniques in the right hands.
CGIAR Climate
Africa will be able to feed itself in the next 15 years. That’s one of the big “bets on the future” that Bill and Melinda Gates have made in their foundation’s latest annual letter. Helped by other breakthroughs…
Is Daisy doomed to a life indoors?
Tanathip Rattanatum
The dairy sector in the UK is going through a period of high uncertainty. Not only are suppliers having to cope with retail price wars and the fact that milk prices are being reduced by the increasing…
Mountain Pygmy Possum numbers are declining due to environmental changes, including earlier snow melt.
AAP/Tim Arch/DSE
Every Spring, the blanket of Australian alpine snow starts to melt, and the Mountain Pygmy Possum wakes up from its seven-month-long hibernation. Naturally after so long under the snow, its first thought…
Harvesting a crop or mining the soil by taking out more than we return?
Flickr/Cyron
Most people understand the idea of a supply chain so that, for example, to make a car you need many thousands of different car components for assembly at the factory. If any of those components are no…
Rabbits can strip grasslands bare and chew through young woody trees.
John Schilling/Flickr
On Christmas Day 1859, the Victoria Acclimatisation Society released 24 rabbits for hunting, to help settlers feel more at home. Given the millions of dollars in damage to agricultural productivity that…
Eat greener greens, they’re better for the planet.
thebittenword.com/flickr
The unintended consequences of our agricultural food system – polluted air and water, dead zones in coastal seas, soil erosion – have profound implications for human health and the environment. So more…
Australian farmers apply nearly a million tonnes of nitrogen-based fertilisers every year.
Pete Hill/Flickr
Peter Grace, Queensland University of Technology and Louise Barton, The University of Western Australia
When we talk about greenhouse gases we usually talk about carbon dioxide. When media reports depict climate change, we invariably see the cooling towers of a coal power station. Which is fair, because…
Honeybees pollinate a third of Australia’s food crops. Losing them due varroa might would cost the economy billions of dollars.
David McClenaghan
A nationwide outbreak of foot and mouth disease; an invasion of a devastating wheat disease; our honeybees completely wiped out. These are just three possible disastrous scenarios facing Australia; they’re…
Managing Director, Triple Helix Consulting; Chief Executive Officer, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; Professorial Fellow, ANU Fenner School for the Environment and Society, Australian National University