Dengue fever in Queensland is at a fifty year high with over 900 confirmed infections and one death from the mosquito borne fever this calendar year. Over 15,000 people were infected in the mid-1950s. The disease causes severe headaches and fevers that culminate in an intense rash on the skin and pain in the joints. This outbreak began last year but has been exacerbated by recent floods. Queensland Health said rainwater tanks in urban areas can also lead to the spread of the disease.
The hydrogen economy is officially yesterday’s future now that the US Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, has announced an end to funding for research into fuel cell vehicles. Mr Chu said that the funds would be diverted to projects that have a greater probability of producing results. Research will continue into stationary fuel cells. Funds will also be put into separating hydrogen and carbon dioxide from gasified coal and sequestering the carbon dioxide.
President of the United States, Barak Obama, has announced that the White House will not promote corn based ethanol as a future fuel source for American vehicles. Instead the government has backed the development of new bio-fuels that do not displace food production and which significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have been at odds with the corn growers because research indicates that growing corn to produce ethanol increases greenhouse emissions.
The Australian Conservation Foundation ACF will hold an emergency board meeting this week to resolve a split in the group over its president’s support for the Rudd governments carbon pollution reward scheme. The ACF was one of three well-funded environmental groups close to the government that announced support for the delay in an emissions trading scheme and further compensation for the polluters. Prominent members, including head of The Climate Group, Mark Diesendorf, resigned from the group last week.
From The Land
IDEAL growing conditions during two wet summers have kicked along stands of native Mitchell grass re-established by landholders on the north-west plains.
A number of farmers in the Walgett and Coonamble areas have restored Mitchell grass pastures to their properties, reclaiming in particular old farming country and weed infested areas.
The once-vast plains of Mitchell grass quoted in the diaries of explorers and settlers have diminished over the decades, thinned by heavy grazing, cropping, weed competition, drought and flood inundation.
The grass is well adapted to the 200- to 250-millimetre rainfall zones and heavy cracking clay soils.
The north-west plains lie at the southern extremity of its habitat, which stretches in a discontinuous band through western Queensland and the Northern Territory to the Kimberley in Western Australia.
Coonamble farmer and general manager of Castlereagh Macquarie Weeds County Council, Ian Kelly, said several thousand hectares of Mitchell grass had been resown in the area by landowners in recent years.
From The Land
WITH global raw sugar prices forecast to continue an upward trend on the back of what’s shaping up to be an international crop deficit of six million tonnes this financial year, interest in putting additional NSW northern coastal land under cane is growing.
World market raw sugar prices have traded between US12.5 and US14 cents a pound during the past four weeks, and analysts say ongoing reductions in crop predictions from key production countries, India and Brazil, is setting the scene for solid returns for Australian cane growers for the next two to three years.
While prices have not yet hit the dizzying US17.5c/lb heights of a short period less than three years ago, they are a long way from the bottoms of US4c/lb to US6c/lb cane growers suffered for the first half of this decade.
India has revised its 2008-09 production to 16 to 16.5 million tonnes, compared to the 26.5m produced last financial year, on the back of favourable soybean, rice and wheat prices and monsoonal conditions, Rabobank commodities analyst, Adam Tomlinson, Sydney, said.
And while sugar is offering better returns than ethanol in Brazil, there is a limit to how much of the South American country’s cane crop can be used to make sugar, Mr Tomlinson said.
Brazil has also been hard hit by the economic downturn, with expansion dampened by a lack of available credit and reports existing mills are even struggling to open for this season’s crush.