Latest Land use Stories

The Agronomy Website of Dr. agr. Volker Kleinhenz features a paper on the effects of irrigation and fertilization on soil water and soil nutrient status, and on growth and yield of bamboo shoots published in the Journal of Bamboo and Rattan. The site also includes updated versions of his Curriculum Vitae. Phnom Penh, Cambodia (PRWEB) October 22, 2011 The paper on "A case study on the effects of irrigation and fertilization on soil water and soil nutrient status, and on growth and yield of...

As livestock deaths mount, a small group of herders in Northern Kenya’s Marsabit District is first to benefit from program that tracks forage conditions via satellite In the midst of a drought-induced food crisis affecting millions in the Horn of Africa, an innovative insurance program for poor livestock keepers is making its first payouts today, providing compensation for some 650 insured herders in northern Kenya's vast Marsabit District who have lost up to a third of their animals....

As the UN marked World Food Day earlier this week, international representatives convened in Korea to discuss ways to curb the loss of productive land to desertification. Satellites play an important role in the monitoring and assessment of drylands.   Desertification is the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. It is caused primarily by human activities and climatic variations because dryland ecosystems are extremely vulnerable to over-exploitation, inappropriate...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. and LUBBOCK, Texas, Oct. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Cresco Ag, LLC, a Memphis-based agricultural information management company, announced today that it has signed a regional license agreement with Smartfield, Inc., a Lubbock-based information technology company that provides in-crop analysis tools to enable crop management decisions. The collaboration will combine innovative in-field monitoring technologies developed by Smartfield and CrescoAg's information...

HARRISBURG, Pa., Oct. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Agricultural Lands Preservation Board has preserved an additional 1,788 acres on 19 farms in 12 counties for future generations through the state's nationally recognized farmland preservation program. The preserved farms are located in Berks, Blair, Cambria, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Monroe, Somerset, Sullivan, Union, Washington, Westmoreland and York counties. During the program's 23-year history, 455,208 acres on...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Jane Danowitz, Pew Environment Group's director of U.S. public lands, issued the following statement in response to today's House Natural Resources Committee 26-17 vote to approve H.R. 1505, the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act. The proposed legislation would waive 36 environmental and other laws for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol activities on public lands within 100 miles of U.S. borders. "This legislation represents a...

SWINDON, England, October 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Twenty-two food and drink producers from across England and Wales are celebrating after winning a prestigious Fine Farm Produce Award from the National Trust. The awards, now in their sixth year, celebrate the breadth and quality of produce grown, reared or made on land owned or managed by the National Trust, including tenant farms, orchards...

JUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Healthy plants begin with healthy soil. But what is healthy soil? Bio S.I. Technology, producer of beneficial microbes which restore, renew and rebuild soil, has spent years providing the solution to gardeners and home owners. They have helped transform the worst of soil conditions and know the answer lies with nature's tiniest helpers - micro organisms. Micro organisms such as fungi and bacteria help in the exchange of nutrients between roots...

  Grazing by wild animals like zebra doesn't always harm, and may help, livestock like cattle African ranchers often prefer to keep wild grazers like zebras off the grass that fattens their cattle. But a new study by Kenyan and University of California at Davis researchers shows that grazing by wild animals doesn't always harm, and may sometimes benefit, cattle. The results are published in this week's issue of the journal Science. "Although savanna rangelands worldwide are...

  The U.S. government announced on Thursday it has decided to add 26,000 acres to the National Park Service's Petrified Forest National Park. Congress expanded the boundaries of the park in 2004 from 93,500 acres to about 218,500 acres but did not immediately appropriate any money to buy the private inholdings. “The National Park Service and The Conservation Fund announced today the conservation of approximately 26,000 acres in northeast Arizona full of significant paleontological...