Agriculture

Agriculture

Nation by nation, evidence thin that boosting crop yields conserves land

Intensifying agriculture may not necessarily return farmland to nature without policy help.

Health & Medicine

Vinegar: Label lead-tainting data

Under California’s Proposition 65 law, products containing chemicals that may cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive toxicity must carry a warning label at their point of sale. Among such products: pricy balsamic and red-wine vinegars that contain lead. At least some California groceries apparently have taken a conservative approach and post labels suggesting all such vinegars are dangerously tainted. Although they aren't.

Agriculture

Report tallies hidden energy costs

The average retail cost of U.S. coal-fired electricity was 9 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2007 (the most recent year for which data are available). But there are health and environmental costs of that power that consumers don’t pay, at least as part of their electric bill. According to a new report, accounting for those costs would double the true cost of shooting some electrons through the nation's power grid.

Agriculture

Update: U.S. swine infected with swine flu

Well, it's official. Over the weekend, Agriculture Department scientists found evidence that at least one pig exhibited at this year's Minnesota state fair was infected with the pandemic H1N1 strain of swine flu.

Agriculture

Of swine flu, pigs and a state fair

To date, federal monitoring has yet to turn up any U.S. pigs infected with the killer swine flu strain known as H1N1. But Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack announced yesterday that his agency’s veterinary labs would be reexamining whether any of the apparently healthy pigs exhibited last August 16 to Sept. 1 at the Minnesota state fair might have been infected with the virus. Why? “An outbreak of 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza occurred in a group of children housed in a dormitory at the fair at the same time samples were collected from the pigs,” USDA notes

Ecosystems

Windy with a chance of weevils

Scientists have traced the reappearance of cotton pests in west-central Texas to a tropical storm.

Agriculture

Potato famine pathogen packs unusual, sneaky genome

DNA of infamous Phytophthora microbe reveals big, quick-changing zones, possibly the key to the pathogen’s vexing adaptability

Chemistry

Nitrous oxide fingered as monster ozone slayer

Nitrous oxide has become the leading threat to the future integrity of stratospheric ozone, scientists report.

Agriculture

Pesticide potency can depend on bug’s clock

The daily rhythms in gene activity can affect the toxicity of some poisons.

Agriculture

How weed killers might protect our eyes: It’s corny

Herbicides can boost trace-nutrient concentrations in sweet corn.

Agriculture

Pesticide may seed American infant formulas with melamine

An insecticide may underlie traces of melamine, a toxic constituent of plastics and other materials, now being found in infant formulas.

Climate

Cultivation changed monsoon in Asia

The loss of forests in India, China during the 1700s led to a decline in monsoon precipitation.