Superefficient Frankencrops Could Put a Real Dent in Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Mark my words: we're watching here another ethanol fiasco in the making. Properly fed and raised livestock produce less greenhouse gases than intensive grain agriculture, and mucking about in the nitrogen chain is a sure fire way to initiate a bio-disaster of historic proportions.

If we keeping shooting from the hip and refusing to think about the long term, we're going to solve the greenhouse gas problem by writing ourselves and ou progeny right out of the equation.

Keeping 6 billion people fed boosts global warming more than all the world's cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes put together. Agriculture accounts for almost 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One response is to eat fewer of the two- and four-legged greenhouse gas factories known as animals. Before you send back that T-bone, though, call in the bioengineers.

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

06:35 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link


May 20, 1873: The Pants That Changed the World

If they didn't exist, I wonder what I'd wear every day?

Blue jeans assume their distinctive form when a patent is issued for the rivet process used to strengthen the pockets on what were then called "waist overalls."

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

06:18 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link


Farm moms may help children beat allergies

Well duh! There are very few allergies among farm kids as opposed to the general population. But I would like to suggest that maybe the answer isn't a vaccine - it's more farms and more farm kids, or at least a better urban lifestyle that doesn't try to prevent all exposure to all allergens for everybody.

Mothers exposed to farms, particularly to barns and farm milk, while pregnant confer protection from allergies on their newborns, according to a group of German researchers, who will present their findings at the American Thoracic Society's 2008 International Conference in Toronto on Wednesday, May 21

(link) [EurekAlert!]

06:04 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link