"The Asian stink bug has started its migration into North Carolina, and a team of researchers at N.C. State University have prepped their labs, set their traps and launched a monitoring website - all in an effort to stop the pest's spread. Their work is urgent. This insect, also known as the brown marmorated stink bug, has decimated crops in the mid-Atlantic states."
The U.S. and Australia have been the breadbasket that fed famine-stricken areas of Africa and Asia in recent decades. Global climate change may be weakening that foundation of world food security.
"U.S. farm income will soar past $100 billion for the first time in 2011 following rising cash receipts for everything from corn, wheat and cotton to soybeans, the Agriculture Department said on Tuesday. U.S. farm income is forecast at $103.6 billion for 2011, up $24.5 billion, or 31 percent from 2010. Much of the increase is the result of higher crop values, which are expected to rise by $33.6 billion.
"One year after 1,900 people were sickened and a half-billion Iowa eggs were recalled, government inspectors continue to find unsanitary conditions and inadequate protections against salmonella on Iowa’s egg farms. None of the violations have resulted in fines or penalties from state or federal agencies, and Iowa’s egg producers still aren’t required to tell state officials when they find salmonella on their farms."
"Widely grown corn plants that Monsanto Co. genetically modified to thwart a voracious bug are falling prey to that very pest in a few Iowa fields, the first time a major Midwest scourge has developed resistance to a genetically modified crop."
"The discovery raises concerns that the way some farmers are using biotech crops could spawn superbugs.
"STOCKHOLM — Population growth and water stress are driving Earth to a food and environmental crunch that only better farming techniques and smarter use of the ecosystem will avert, a UN report issued on Monday said."
"TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- Apple growers in the eastern U.S. have a despised enemy known as apple scab — a disease caused by a fungus that forms ugly brown or greenish-black pockmarks on the fruit's skin. A scabby apple is unfit for grocery stores because consumers are notoriously picky about blemished fruit."
"A third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China and may be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. A Food Safety News investigation has documented that millions of pounds of honey banned as unsafe in dozens of countries are being imported and sold here in record quantities."
"The famine in the Horn of Africa is manmade - the result of artificially high prices for food and civil conflict, the World Bank's lead economist for Kenya Wolfgang Fengler told Reuters Tuesday."
"Kansas farmer Larry Kepley is almost out of hope. After drought left the veteran wheat farmer with what he called the 'worst wheat harvest' he's ever known, the odds for next year's crop are looking just as grim.
Sun-baked fields are as hard as rock, and moisture levels deep into the soil are nearly nonexistent as drought persists throughout much of the U.S. southern Plains.
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