Agriculture in the national news - November 13

13 November 2009

A DAILY look at how agriculture has caught the headlines across the country (Friday, November 13).

Farmers v greens
The biggest obstacle to a climate-change bill is rural America.

America will not pass a cap-and-trade law in time for the global climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month. To understand why, it helps to ask a farmer.

Take Bruce Wright, for example, who grows wheat and other crops on a couple of thousand acres near Bozeman, Montana. His family has tilled these fields for four generations.

The Economist
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14844977

Hill farmers fear for traditional landscape
Hill farmers fear the traditional landscape of the British uplands will be lost because of Government agency plans to transform the environment.

Natural England have set out a vision for areas like the Lake District, Exmoor and the Yorkshire Moors over the next 50 years.

‘Vital Uplands: 2060’ calls on hill farmers to consider environmental schemes like tree planting, managing peat bogs and letting grazed areas go back to nature. Renewable energy schemes like wind farms and producing energy from farm waste should also be looked at.

Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6553855/Hill-farmers-fear-for-traditional-landscape.html

David Dimbleby to miss Question Time after encounter with bullock
Broadcaster knocked out by rearing animal as he tried to load it on to a trailer.

David Dimbleby has grown used to the rough and tumble of dealing with politicians – including the BNP leader, Nick Griffin.

But the veteran broadcaster is to miss tonight’s edition of BBC’s Question Time after being knocked out by a bullock when it reared as he tried to load it on a trailer yesterday.

The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/12/david-dimbleby-question-time-bullock

South Downs becomes national park
A new national park in the South Downs has been officially confirmed more than 60 years after the area was first earmarked for protected status.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn signed the order to create the park, stretching from Beachy Head in Sussex to the edge of Winchester in Hampshire.

BBC Online
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8357025.stm

EU grain sowings to fall by 1m hectares
Farming’s sagging fortunes will prompt a cut in Europe’s cereals plantings for a second successive year, driven by a drop in barley sowings, Strategie Grains has said.

European Union farmers will plant 56.97m hectares of cereals for harvesting in 2010, down 1.07m hectares year on year.

Barley plantings will slide by 830,000 hectares to less than 13.1m hectares, with farmers also putting an extra 300,000 hectares of land into set aside.

Agrimoney
http://www.agrimoney.com/news/eu-grain-sowings-to-fall-by-1m-hectares—980.html

UN food summit ‘fails before it begins’
A UN food summit aimed at helping the one billion people worldwide suffering from hunger has been declared a failure a week before it has even begun.

The leaked World Food Summit draft declaration falls short of a UN goal of eradicating hunger by 2025. Instead, leaders are expected to to sign a watered down declaration in Rome next week that calls for vague increases in aid for farmers in poor countries but sets no targets or deadlines for action.

Leaders are expected to reaffirm their commitment to the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of hungry people by 2015 - a target that is unlikely to be reached.

Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/6554952/UN-food-summit-fails-before-it-begins.html

Climate change ‘sceptic’ Ian Plimer argues CO2 is not causing global warming
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a natural phenomenon caused by volcanoes and is not responsible for climate change, a scientist has claimed.

Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist from Adelaide University, argues that a recent rise in temperature around the world is caused by solar cycles and other “extra terrestrial” forces.

He said carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, widely blamed for global warming, is a natural phenomenon caused by volcanoes erupting.

Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6553592/Climate-change-sceptic-Ian-Plimer-argues-CO2-is-not-causing-global-warming.html