| June 1, 2009 | - American scientists promised to develop robot
farmers.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| August 21, 2008 | - Due to water shortages and rising fertilizer costs, 49 million acres of cropland were being treated with human sewage.
| Source:
National Geographic News
|
| May 24, 2008 | -
Fertilizer-company representatives, flush from last year's 300 percent increase in the price of potash, gathered in Vienna at the orangery of a Hapsburg palace, where they were heralded by trumpeters in green robes. “For the last 35 years, nobody noticed,” said one fertilizer executive. “I've waited my whole career for this.”
| Source:
Financial Post
|
| May 31, 2007 | -
Serb farmers were exchanging cows for penis-enlargement
surgery.
| Source:
Independent Online
|
| March 29, 2007 | -
China was considering using its vast harvest of rape to create biodiesel. “The government,” said Agriculture Ministry official Wang Shoucong, “should foster research work to nurture high-yield rape.”
| Source:
PTI via Hindu
|
| January 4, 2007 | - A two-faced calf was born on a farm in Virginia. “Genetically, this is one of my better calves,” said its owner.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| November 27, 2006 | -
South Korea's
Agriculture Ministry announced plans to kill all the cats and dogs in Iksan, Korea. Minister Kim Chang-sup defended the action, undertaken in response to an outbreak of avian flu, by saying, “Other countries do it. They just don't talk about it.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 2, 2006 | -
Corn
farmers in the Midwest were resisting bids for their ethanol plants by Wall Street firms.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 31, 2006 | - Three quarters of Africa's farmland lacked the basic nutrients needed to grow crops. "We must," said Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, "feed our soils."
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 23, 2006 | - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals criticized a teacher in Rosamond, California, for castrating a live pig in front of a high school group; a school superintendent countered that animal castration is an important skill for students to learn.
| Source:
LA Daily News
|
| February 2, 2006 | - A study found that the mineral content of meat and milk has dropped over the last 60 years due to intensive farming. The average rump steak, for instance, has only 45 percent as much iron as it did in 1940.
| Source:
The Guardian via Common Dreams.
|
| August 10, 2005 | -
Cream puffs with 560 calories and 47 grams of fat were selling briskly at the Wisconsin
State Fair.
| Source:
AZCentral.com
|
| July 28, 2005 | -
President Bush's
favorite dirty joke was reported to be: “The only time I ever hit two good balls is when I step on a rake.”
| Source:
The Fix
|
| April 25, 2005 | -
Israeli settlers were accused of spreading rat poison over the fields of Palestinian
farmers.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 6, 2005 | -
Geneticists bred blue roses.
| Source:
Biology News Net
|
| April 3, 2005 | - In France, radical wine producers threw sticks of dynamite at a state agriculture office and demanded that the state take action to stop the depression in French wine prices.
| Source:
Wine International
|
| March 16, 2005 | - The Department of Homeland Security was preparing for: the detonation of a ten-kiloton nuclear device; a biological attack with aerosolized anthrax; an outbreak of pneumonic plague; a flu pandemic starting in south China; the spraying of a chemical blister agent over a football stadium; an attack on an oil refinery; the explosion of a tank of chlorine; a 7.2-magnitude earthquake; a major hurricane in a metropolitan area; three Cesium-137 dirty bombs going off in three different cities, each contaminating thirty-six city blocks; the detonation of improvised bombs in sports stadiums and emergency rooms; liquid anthrax in ground beef; a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak; and a cyber attack on the nation's financial infrastructure.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 9, 2005 | - and police in York, Pennsylvania, arrested a fifty-three-year-old serial sheep
molester in a barn. The man said he was just petting the sheep, even though it was 3 A.M., it was not his barn, and he had baler's twine in his back pocket, which can be used to bind sheep.
| Source:
York Sunday News
|
| February 20, 2005 | -
Chinese scientists announced the development of a new process that turns sewage water and mud into organic fertilizer and pesticide.
| Source:
Xinhuanet
|
| November 6, 2004 | -
Farmers in India were reportedly spraying their cotton and chili fields with Coca-Cola because it's cheaper than pesticides and kills pests just as effectively.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| July 10, 2004 | - Federal health officials were thinking about banning the practice of feeding pork, chicken, and other animal parts to cattle; the pigs and chickens eat rendered cattle and thus could transmit mad cow disease prions. There was apparently no plan to stop feeding cattle huge quantities of cattle blood, an obvious vector for the disease, and cattle will continue to enjoy the feathers and excrement of 8.5 billion chickens.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 29, 2004 | - Authorities in Texas killed 24,000 chickens after avian flu was found on a farm near Sulphur Springs.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 10, 2004 | - Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which produced three quarters of the world's opium last year, was said to be up 30 percent.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 9, 2004 | - A chicken
farmer in Alaska
injected eggs with dye to produce orange, red, green, purple, pink, and blue chicks. Colored ducklings were also available.
| Source:
BBC
|
| March 15, 2004 | -
Great Britain approved the commercial cultivation of genetically modified maize.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| March 8, 2004 | -
Avian flu was found on two more U.S. farms.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| December 11, 2003 | - A new theory was put forth that global warming began 8,000 years ago, when farmers began clearing forests for agriculture and grazing large herds of livestock, which increased carbon dioxide and methane levels; by AD 1700, according to the theory, human activity had increased the global temperature by 0.8 degrees Celsius, an increase roughly equal to that caused by industrial activity since then.
| Source:
Climatic Change, Nature.com, New Scientist
|
| December 10, 2003 | -
Elephants in Thailand were said to be hijacking
sugarcane shipments.
| Source:
Washington Times
|
| December 4, 2003 | -
President Bush signed a law that will make it easier to clear brush.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| November 12, 2003 | - Environmentalists and consumer groups sued the Department of Agriculture to prevent companies from planting experimental
crops that have been engineered to produce pharmaceuticals; they said that planting in open fields risks spreading the modifications to other crops.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 21, 2003 | - The United States was granted broad exemptions for the use of methyl bromide, a pesticide that damages the ozone layer; the chemical was supposed to be banned under the Montreal Protocol, which the U.S. signed. Strawberry and tomato farmers, as well as the owners of golf courses, will benefit.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 12, 2003 | - American soldiers bulldozed ancient groves of date, orange, and lemon trees in central Iraq because, the soldiers said, the farmers know who is in the resistance but refuse to tell.
| Source:
Independent
|
| September 20, 2003 | - A South Korean
farmer set himself on fire during a memorial for another Korean farmer who committed suicide (by stabbing himself in the heart with a Swiss Army knife) at the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 15, 2003 | - The World Trade Organization met in Cancun, Mexico, and much of the discussion concerned a demand by several poor countries that wealthy countries eliminate agricultural subsidies for their farmers.The talks collapsed after the United States and Europe declined to do so and delegates from several African, Caribbean, and Asian countries walked out.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 10, 2003 | - The Department of Agriculture proposed adapting its dietary advice to the fact that most American adults are overweight.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 5, 2003 | - A large silo filled with human excrement exploded in the Bronx.
| Source:
NY Post
|
| August 23, 2003 | - The European Commission reported that the August heat wave was consistent with predictions about the pattern of global climate change and warned that many farming areas in Europe and North America may soon be unable to support agriculture.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| July 19, 2003 | - A Belgian botanist announced that the banana as we know it will be extinct within a decade.
| Source:
BBC
|
| May 14, 2002 | -
German scientists announced that they had grown carrots genetically modified to produce the vaccine for hepatitis B.
| |
| December 18, 2001 | - The White House announced that the anthrax used in recent mail attacks probably originated in the United States; Army officials confirmed that the bacteria was a genetic match with anthrax in the Army's stockpile but pointed out that their supply had come from the Agriculture Department.
| |
| December 11, 2001 | - Believing that his penis was a “cobra” driving him to sin, a Filipino farmer lopped it off with his machete and cast it away. “He wanted to be nailed to a coconut tree,” his mother reported. Doctors reconstructed the penis, though at considerably shorter length, and said the man would still be able to have children.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - In Brazil, a farmer claimed that the explosion of two UFOs that crashed in mid-air blinded all his cows.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | -
Afghan
farmers were planting opium again.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | - The Bush Administration decided that farm subsidies should be eliminated.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | -
South Korea banned Japanese beef after a Holstein cow on a farm near Tokyo tested positive for mad cow disease.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | -
Chinese
farmers asked for 5,000 snakes, 20,000 sparrows, and 200,000 frogs to help them fight a plague of locusts.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | - In Zimbabwe, militants occupying white-owned farms freed from quarantine livestock infected with foot-and-mouth disease.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | - A thousand mink were missing after being released from a Dutch farm by animal-rights activists; 200 were killed in traffic.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | - In his last press interview before flying to the U.S. Wahid predicted dark times ahead for Indonesia but ended with a joke about the difference between American and Japanese
farmers.
| |
| June 26, 2001 | -
Farmers in Oregon were upset about suckerfish.
| |
| June 19, 2001 | -
Japanese
farmers were growing square watermelons.
| |
| June 5, 2001 | - A nominee to be an agriculture bureaucrat was in trouble for making an ill-considered remark linking economic success to race.
| |
| May 22, 2001 | - The leader of the research team that cloned Dolly the sheep warned against the premature cloning of farm
animals for meat and milk production; cattle
clones have suffered from severe defects such as diabetes, immune-system deficiencies, giant tongues, intestinal blockages, and squashed faces.
| |
| May 15, 2001 | - The United Nations
Food and Agriculture
Organization said that 550,000 tons of old, unused pesticides were threatening to poison food and water supplies worldwide.
| |
| April 24, 2001 | - Other scientists discovered that feeding antibiotics to animals, already known to contribute to resistant strains of salmonella and other gut bacteria, has led to the development of resistant strains of soil- and water-borne bacteria beneath farms that use such feed.
| |
| April 17, 2001 | -
Farmers in the Dutch town Kootwijkerbroek protested the slaughter of their cattle by authorities worried about foot-and-mouth disease; police used water cannons and bulldozers to clear roadblocks set up by the protesters.
| |
| April 10, 2001 | - An Algerian who tried to smuggle explosives into the United States from Canada was convicted of “an act of terrorism transcending a national boundary.” The Bush Administration proposed dropping a program of random salmonella testing of ground beef destined for school lunches; the public was not amused, and the secretary of agriculture withdrew the proposal.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | - After months of dithering, United States
agriculture agents seized a flock of sheep from Skunk Hollow Farm in Vermont that are suspected of having a form of mad-cow disease. Twenty-one cattle in Texas will be destroyed because of similar concerns.
| |
| March 6, 2001 | -
Agriculture Department bureaucrats announced that the government would continue to promote pork.
| |
| February 6, 2001 | - Mugabe and his followers were angry that the court had repeatedly declared the government's seizure of white-owned farms illegal.
| |
| January 16, 2001 | -
United States
agriculture officials continued to insist that Americans were at little risk from mad cow disease, despite the fact that testing has not been widespread. Loopholes still exist in regulations concerning feeding ground-up farm animals to other farm animals; deer in several western states are infected with another form of spongiform encephalopathy; an unknown number of sheep have scrapie, a form of spongiform encephalopathy; captive mink in eleven midwestern states developed spongiform encephalopathy after being fed untested “downer cows”; and beef byproducts such as milk, blood, fat, and semen are still imported from the U.K. and Europe. The prions that cause mad cow disease survive freezing, cooking, and incineration, which complicates disposal.
| |
| January 16, 2001 | - The Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics are given each year to healthy farm
animals such as cows, chickens, and pigs; the group warned that such practices encourage the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria.
| |
| January 9, 2001 | -
United Nations investigators discovered significant radioactivity in Kosovo, in villages and on farms and in the groundwater.
| |
| December 26, 2000 | - The Supreme Court of Zimbabwe ordered President Robert Mugabe to come up with a viable land-reform program, declaring his ad hoc policy of evicting white
farmers illegal; Mugabe's spokesmen dismissed the decision, saying it was “of no consequence.”
| |
| December 19, 2000 | - Two days after a white farmer was ambushed and murdered, Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe urged blacks “to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy.”
| |
| December 12, 2000 | - The United States Department of Agriculture was developing (with a company called Future Segue) a computerized collar for cows that whispers commands such as “gee” and “haw”; if the cow ignores the whisper, the collar can inflict an electrical shock.
| |
| December 12, 2000 | - The European Union decided to stop feeding ground-up farm
animals to other farm animals for at least six months in an attempt to stop the spread of mad cow disease; all cattle over the age of thirty months must be either tested or destroyed.
| |
| November 14, 2000 | -
Zimbabwe's supreme court declared that the recent seizures of white-owned farms were illegal and ordered the government to evict black squatters occupying the farms; the government, which has ignored two previous court orders on the subject, said there was “no going back.” Indonesian troops in Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, were killing civilians suspected of collaborating with rebels; bodies of men arrested by security forces routinely turn up dead, mutilated, dismembered.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | - State agricultural agents were storming homes in Florida and chopping down citrus trees in an effort to eradicate the citrus canker virus; Agriculture Secretary Bob Crawford ordered sensitivity training to help soothe homeowners who were upset at having their property destroyed.
| |
| October 24, 2000 | -
Farmers who planted StarLink, a type of genetically modified corn
sold by Aventis CropScience, said they were not told the corn was unfit for human consumption; millions of bushels of the corn may have contaminated the nation's corn supply.
| |
| October 17, 2000 | - The National Grain and Feed Association demanded the names of some 2,000 farmers who have planted StarLink crops; the manufacturer, Aventis Crop Science, refused to provide the names.
| |
| October 17, 2000 | - The United States
Food and Drug Administration imposed a mandatory salmonella testing program on egg farms.
| |
| October 10, 2000 | - It was revealed that Britain was again experimenting with genetically modified crops, though the agriculture ministry had repeatedly denied it was doing so.
| |
| September 19, 2000 | - José Bové, the French
farmer who vandalized a McDonald's while protesting globalization, was sent to jail for three months.
| |
| September 19, 2000 | - Honey-bee farmers in Macedonia sued NATO because its bombing campaign against the former Yugoslavia put their bees under “a terrible stress” and ruined this year's honey crop.
| |
| September 5, 2000 | - Some 7,000 Chinese
bears were being farmed for bile on 247 licensed bear farms: farmers insert a tube into a live bear's gall bladder to extract the bile, which is sold as a traditional medicine.
| |
| September 5, 2000 | -
Agriculture department inspectors were asked to spend more time looking for rotten meat and less checking to make sure that Italian sausage was properly spiced with either fennel or anise.
| |
| September 5, 2000 | - Unusually tall corn was causing automobile accidents in Iowa.
| |
| August 29, 2000 | -
Scientists and farmers in China discovered that simply planting several varieties of rice together doubles the crop's yield and eliminates rice blast, a fungus that destroys millions of tons of rice each year.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - After an outbreak of swine fever in Britain, the United States and other countries banned the importation of porcine semen and other pork products; a National Pig Association spokesman said that pig farmers were “at their wits' end.”
| |
| August 1, 2000 | - A family of Vermont
sheep
farmers vowed to prevent the government from slaughtering their flock of Belgian dairy sheep; four sheep descended from the flock tested positive for an ovine form of mad cow disease; “this is just like trying to take Elian Gonzalez all over again,” one neighbor said.
| |
| August 1, 2000 | -
Zimbabwe's state television station reported that President Mugabe has decided to seize 3,000 farms as part of a land redistribution program.
| |
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