Farmers seek organic fertiliser solutions
As CSIRO scientist Dr John Angus observes, oil-derived fertilisers “are the only flexible nitrogen option we have”.
But there are less flexible options, and some are proving to have advantages well beyond their role in replacing synthetic nitrogen.
After 12 years of research into legume rotations with cotton, CSIRO/Cotton Catchment Communities CRC scientist Dr Ian Rochester is confident that farming systems can be developed that won’t always need annual nitrogen fertiliser applications to be profitable.
Farmers want governments to keep out of trough
From The Land The best policy response to food shortages is to let the market do its thing, according to the National Farmers Federation. Responding to the release of a new report “High Food Prices – Causes, Implications and Solutions”, NFF president, David Crombie, said if the United Nations’ stated goal of a 30pc increase Continue Reading →
Fertiliser prices soar to $1600 per tonne
The Fertiliser price hike has continued apace – and the bad news for Australian growers is that international price rises are going up faster than domestic ones. With most farmers already sorted for their 2008 phosphate needs, the jump of close to $200/t in phosphate (P) products such as MAP and DAP in the past Continue Reading →
Fungus improves ethanol production
Growing a fungus in some of the leftovers from ethanol production can save energy, recycle more water and improve the livestock feed that is a co-product of fuel production, according to a team of researchers from Iowa State University and the University of Hawai’i.
“The process could change ethanol production in dry-grind plants so much that energy costs can be reduced by as much as one-third,” said Hans van Leeuwen, an Iowa State professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering and the leader of the research project.
The project is focused on using fungi to clean up and improve the dry-grind ethanol production process. That process grinds corn kernels and adds water and enzymes. The enzymes break the starches into sugars. The sugars are fermented with yeasts to produce ethanol.
The fuel is recovered by distillation, but there are about six gallons of leftovers for every gallon of fuel that’s produced. Those leftovers, known as stillage, contain solids and other organic material. Most of the solids are removed by centrifugation and dried into distillers dried grains that are sold as livestock feed, primarily for cattle.
Britain prepares for food crisis
From The Mail
The phrase ‘nine meals from anarchy’ sounds more like the title of a bad Hollywood movie than any genuine threat.
But that was the expression coined by Lord Cameron of Dillington, a farmer who was the first head of the Countryside Agency – the quango set up by Tony Blair in the days when he pretended to care about the countryside – to describe just how perilous Britain’s food supply actually is.
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| Crisis: Britain’s food supply is in peril |
Long before many others, Cameron saw the potential of a real food crisis striking not just the poor of the Third World, but us, here in Britain, in the 21st Century.
The scenario goes like this. Imagine a sudden shutdown of oil supplies; a sudden collapse in the petrol that streams steadily through the pumps and so into the engines of the lorries which deliver our food around the country, stocking up the supermarket shelves as soon as any item runs out.
WA wheat crop on knife edge
The potential for a record cropping season in WA this year is on a knife edge, with rain now needed urgently to realise the optimistic ProFarmer crop forecast released this week. While most of WA’s South West districts benefitted from heavy rain last weekend, to set up record canola and wheat plantings, the major broadacre Continue Reading →