Add your news
You can add news from your networks or groups through the website by becoming an author. Simply register as a member of the Generator, and then email Giovanni asking to become an author. He will then work with you to integrate your content into the site as effectively as possible.
Listen to the Generator News online
The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
As well as Giovanni’s articles it picks up the most pertinent articles from a range of other news services. You can publish the news feed on your website using RSS, free of charge.
Farmers wanting to know more about rainfall and climate will find it much easier, thanks to two new tools released today as part of a Bureau of Meteorology upgrade. The first tool shows a range of rainfall scenarios for most rainfall recording stations in Australia. Farmers can also use a new online product to find Continue Reading →
STRYSZOW, Poland: Depending on your point of view, Szczepan Master is either an incorrigible Luddite or a visionary. A small farmer, proud of his pure, high-quality products, he works his land the way Polish farmers have for centuries.
He keeps his livestock in a straw-floored "barn" that is part of his house, entered through a kitchen door. He slaughters his own pigs. His wife milks cows by hand. He rejects genetically modified seeds. Instead of spraying his crops, he turns his fields in winter, preferring a workhorse to a tractor, to let the frost kill off pests residing there.
While traditional farms like his could be dismissed as a nostalgic throwback, they are also increasingly seen as the future – if only they can survive.
Master’s way of farming – his way of life – has been badly threatened in the two years since Poland joined the European Union, a victim of sanitary laws and mandates to encourage efficiency and competition that favor mechanized commercial farms, farmers here say.
By Javier Blas in Nairobi and Roel Landingin in Manila – Financial Times
Rice prices rose more than 10 per cent on Friday to a fresh all-time high as African countries joined south-east Asian importers in the race to head off social unrest by securing supplies from the handful of exporters still selling the grain in the international market.
The rise in prices – 50 per cent in two weeks – threatens upheaval and has resulted in riots and soldiers overseeing supplies in some emerging countries, where the grain is a staple food for about 3bn people.
The increase also risks stoking further inflation in emerging countries, which have been suffering the impact of record oil prices and the rise in price of other agricultural commodities – including wheat, maize and vegetable oil – in the last year.
Janet Raloff – Science News
 |
| BETTER THAN BEEF? This smorgasbord offers ant pupae and yellow bamboo caterpillars around a pile of ordinary scrambled eggs. Meyer-Rochow photographed this platter of appetizers during his foreign travels. He and other researchers have shown such bugs to be nutritious. Many researchers argue that their harvesting can also be better for the environment than is the production of conventional meat animals. Meyer-Rochow |
"Can Meat and Fish Consumption Be Sustainable?" That’s the provocative title of a press release just sent to us by the Worldwatch Institute, a small but venerable think tank that focuses on natural resource issues.
It’s also the theme of a chapter in Worldwatch’s 2008 State of the World report, its 25th annual book-length analysis of resource trends and economics. Here, its analysts take on the substantial—and often hidden—costs of producing animal protein to satisfy human hunger.
In 2006, "farmers produced an estimated 276 million tons of chicken, pork, beef, and other meat—four times as much as in 1961," Worldwatch has just reported. As for fish, some 140 million tons were hauled in globally during 2005, the most recent year for which data are available. "That was eight times as much as in 1950," note Brian Halweil and Danielle Nierenberg, the chapter’s authors.
Part of the growth in production reflects a growing demand, fueled by world population and increasing wealth that allows increased consumption of animal protein, even within formerly impoverished nations. For meat, it has doubled over the past 45 years; fish consumption quadrupled over a 55-year span.
Fri, 2008-03-28 15:49 — admin
Listen to Podcast Scott Bilby: This morning on the show we are very pleased to be interviewing S.David Freeman; American engineer and attorney. He has had a 50 year career in the US energy industry, holding key positions in power utilities and helping successive US administrations develop and implement energy and environmental policies. He is also the author of Winning our Energy Independence and has been called an energy visionary. Good Morning Mr. Freeman.
David Freeman: Good morning to you, it’s afternoon here but there’s a morning in Australia.