News
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Pacific Rim leaders seek to fortify food security
"Asia-Pacific leaders focused their attention on rising concern over food security on Sunday, as they prepared to wrap up their annual summit with an agreement to slash tariffs on trade in environmental goods and a call to keep markets open even in hard times.
Food security "is one of the most acute problems of our time," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in convening Sunday's second and final "informal retreat" of the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum in this far eastern Russian seaport.
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US drought interactive infographic
An analysis by The New York Times looks at the widely varying effects of this summer’s heat and drought on crops critical to the nation’s farm economy. This summer’s heat and rainlessness, which rivals the devastating 1988 drought, has left crops withering in the fields and farmers trying to calculate their losses.
View infographic here.
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Administration Looking At Ethanol Rules
"The Obama administration is reviewing the country’s ethanol policy amid calls from both political parties and the United Nations to suspend annual targets as the worst drought in 56 years spurs corn prices.
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US biofuel policy a threat to global food supply
The UN’s Food Agency has stepped up pressure on the United States to change its biofuel policy due to fear over a World Food Crisis.
40 percent of the US corn crop is currently used for biofuel to meet renewable energy targets.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says the US should prioritise growing crops for food rather than for fuel as the US mid-West is facing its worst drought in over half a century.
Read More fom Euro News
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How to ensure the world’s food supply
Greg Page is chairman and chief executive of Cargill, an international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services.
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Scientists wins $10m Gates grant for self-fertilising cereals
"British scientists have secured a $10m grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop genetically modified corn, wheat, and rice that requires no fertiliser.
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Worst drought since 1956 threatens world food crisis
A month of scorching temperatures across the country's midwest has sent corn and soybean prices to record highs, while wheat prices have reached levels not seen since the last food crisis in 2008.
The severest drought since 1956 in America's agricultural heartland has dashed the hopes that were alive just a couple of months ago of a bumper harvest. Traders and economists warned that the effect will ripple out from the US because it is the world's biggest producer of corn and a major supplier of soybeans and wheat.
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Potash Producers Must Face Buyers’ U.S. Antitrust Lawsuit
Potash Corp. (POT)of Saskatchewan Inc.and six other producers of the fertilizer must face an antitrust lawsuit by buyers, a U.S. appeals court said in reversing an earlier ruling in the same court.
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Lawsuit filed over fertilizer pollution
A lawsuit has been filed against the Environmental Protection Agency for not doing enough to keep fertilizer pollution out of waterways. The Iowa Environmental Council has joined other groups in suing the EPA over its inability to set numerical limits on nitrogen and phosphorus in waterways under the Clean Water Act.
The current lawsuit stems from EPA’s rejection of a petition filed by the groups in 2008. The groups say the rejection of their petition was a violation of federal administrative rules and was arbitrary, the Des Moines Register reported.
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