Agriculture’s success in feeding the world for several decades has had its drawbacks.

As farming became boringly efficient, research funding dried up, business looked elsewhere for high-yielding investment and the best and brightest students looked for more exciting fields to study.

Since the food price shock of 2008, those attitudes seem to have changed.

Last week, for instance, The Economist’s cover story was ‘How to feed the world’, in which the magazine noted that soaring levels of investment in agriculture are in conflict with a new era of protectionism based on food security concerns.

(Time magazine’s cover was ‘Banking on trees’, a crop that may also play a big part in the farms of the carbon-conscious future.)

The Economist’s weighing into the discussion is part of a global reawakening to the central importance of agriculture to human affairs.

This fresh appreciation is bringing a flood of new investment to the area (if not yet a flood of new profits to farmers) – but with the rewards of the stardom also come some downsides.

For farmers, the downside is likely to be increased environmental scrutiny and red tape.

In September, the science journal Nature published an article arguing that humanity had corrupted three “planetary boundaries” so badly that they could affect the future habitability of the earth.

The boundaries are climate change, biodiversity and nitrogen usage.

Writing for the journal Yale Environment 360, journalist Fred Pearce pointed out that “today, much of the nitrogen in our bodies comes not from biological sources but from giant chemical factories. We are, in a real sense, as much chemistry as biology.”

Addressing our fixation with nitrogen, which one researcher has described as “an immense and dangerous experiment”, will ultimately deliver better productivity, as will addressing climate change–but not before farmers experience a whole new level of unwelcome interest in how they do what they do.

Source: Farm Weekly

Posted: 8 December 2009 under Agri solutions, Agribusiness worldwide, Global cooling.
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GLOBAL temperatures could rise 4 degrees in the next 50 years - faster than previously predicted - if greenhouse gas emissions increase unchecked, according to a report for the British Government.

The climate science update, prepared by British Met Office scientists, found that the increase this century could top 15 degrees above pre-industrial levels in the Arctic and be up to 10 degrees for parts of Africa.

In Australia, rainfall is projected to decline by at least one-fifth along parts of the coastline, worsening drought.

The Met Office Hadley Centre’s head of climate impacts, Richard Betts, said the most severe scenarios outlined in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report now looked conservative.

Pleaseread more on http://fw.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/climate-update-points-to-2060-nightmare-rise/1635657.aspx?src=enews

Posted: 30 September 2009 under Agribusiness worldwide, Global cooling.
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By carefully selecting which varieties of food crops to cultivate, much of Europe and North America could be cooled by up to 1°C during the summer growing season, say researchers from the University of Bristol. This is equivalent to an annual global cooling of over 0.1°C, almost 20% of the total global temperature increase since the Industrial Revolution.

The growing of crops already produces a cooling of the climate because they reflect more sunlight back into space, compared with natural vegetation. Different varieties of the same crop vary significantly in their solar reflectivity (called ‘albedo’), so selecting varieties that are more reflective will enhance this cooling effect. Since arable agriculture is a global industry, such cooling could be extensive.

To read more please go on http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2009/6091.html

Posted: 20 July 2009 under Global cooling.
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