Big Ag wielded its mighty stick again leading up to the passage of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, ensuring that the USDA will be in full control of all ag-based offset projects. How might this move influence future US greenhouse gas inventories?
H.R. 2454 the American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009 (aka Waxman-Markley) aims “to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.” H.R. 2454 is expected to be weakened significantly through the legislative process. One would expect Republicans and lobbyists to water down the bill, but farm state Democrats are also vying for home state protection for ethanol.
In much of Europe, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are not used in food production and are not grown as crops. In pretty well the rest of the world, they are both widely grown and widely utilised. Why is there such a division?
Vietnam faces a stark choice. Its farmlands are shrinking as government policy to achieve ‘industrialised nation’ status by 2020 continues. But national food security has always been a focus of Vietnamese political and cultural life. How is it to balance these two competing aims. One answer is through the use of atomic energy.
Transcript of Barack Obama’s introduction of Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary and Tom Vilsack as Agriculture Secretary, followed by Q&A. OBAMA: Earlier this week I announced key members of the team that will help us seek new forms of energy, to build a new economy, to enhance our security and to leave our children a […]
Korea’s Daewoo has just completed a deal to lease an area about half the size of Belgium in Madagascar for food production. The most surprising part of this lease is that the initial cost to Daewoo is nothing. That’s right, zip, nada, zilch.
Why is a South Korean company leasing so much land on another continent?
A new report says that global warming could cost the Californian economy billions of dollars each year, through a combination of rising sea levels, and the increased frequency of wild fires and extreme weather events.
Forget all the wars. The WWF says that what’s most threatening to the future of humans is climate change, natural resource exhaustion and ecosystem collapse, according to its recently released “Greenprint.”
A Government Accountability Office report explains that one facility can produce up to 1.6 million tons of manure each year, which causes 1.5 times more pollution to water and air than a city like Philadelphia.
Word has it that the farm bill congressional conferees hammered out at the end of last week would most likely be vetoed by President Bush. The ink has not dried on the agreement, and that is why Congress had to pass an extension of the existing farm bill last week. The extension gives lawmakers until […]
As I start to stockpile bourbon (it’s made from at least 50% corn) as an investment strategy, I wonder why we are doing this to ourselves. You practically can’t read a newspaper or news magazine without someone condemning the use of corn as an alternative fuel source these days. And who wouldn’t. The ethanol boom […]