Category: RT Newswire

Farmers face climate challenge in quest for more food
Sun May 4, 2008 4:10am EDT  By David Fogarty

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – If farmers think they have a tough time producing enough rice, wheat and other grain crops, global warming is going to present a whole new world of challenges in the race to produce more food, scientists say.

In a warmer world beset by greater extremes of droughts and floods, farmers will have to change crop management practices, grow tougher plant varieties and be prepared for constant change in the way they operate, scientists say.

“There certainly are going to be lots of challenges in the future. Temperature is one of them, water is another,” said Lisa Ainsworth, a molecular biologist with the United States Department of Agriculture.

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-Over 350 dead as cyclone pounds Myanmar
Sun May 4, 2008 4:00pm EDT 
Cyclone devastates Myanmar

Myanmar damage will take days to assess: U.N.
3:48am EDT By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) – A cyclone killed more than 350 people in military-ruled Myanmar, ripping through Yangon and the Irrawaddy delta where it flattened at least two towns, officials and state media said on Sunday.

The death toll is likely to climb as the authorities manage to contact outlying islands and villages that felt the full force of Cyclone Nagris, a Category 3 storm packing winds of 120 miles per hour when it hit early on Saturday.

State television, which was still off air in Yangon more than 36 hours after Nagris slammed into the city of 5 million, reported 20,000 homes destroyed on one island alone, a government official in the remote capital, Naypyidaw, said.

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Small ethanol plants key to efficiency: Canada
Fri May 2, 2008 5:48pm EDT By Randall Palmer

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Building more and smaller ethanol plants could help overcome concerns that production of the biofuel consumes more in energy than it provides, Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said on Friday.

One of the reasons so much energy is used to make ethanol is that trucks travel long distances carrying corn, chaff or other plant material to ethanol plants.

“Smaller and locally owned I think are the right way to go,” Ritz said as he kicked off debate in the House of Commons on the final stage of a bill that would ensure that gasoline contains 5 percent ethanol by 2010.

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UN urges biofuel investment halt 
 
Palm oil is one of the biofuel crops stirring controversy.

The UN’s new top adviser on food has urged a freeze on biofuel investment, saying the blind pursuit of the policy is “irresponsible”.

Olivier de Schutter also wants curbs on investors whose speculation is, he says, driving food prices higher.

UN officials liken the rise in food prices to a silent tsunami, threatening 100 million of the world’s poorest.

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