Despite reforms, Cuba is growing less food than five years ago

Cuba is producing less food than it did five years ago despite efforts to increase agriculture production, the government reported Aug. 31. Some export crops and farm output aimed at substituting food imports registered minor gains, but overall output last year remained below 2007 levels, according to a report issued by the National Statistics Office.

Villagers kill cattle thieves in Madagascar

antananarivo / reuters / Malagasy villagers killed at least 67 cattle thieves when they attacked a number of villages in early September, the gendarmarie of the Indian Ocean island said on Sept. 4. General Bruno Razafindrakoto said about 100 cattle rustlers simultaneously attacked three villages in the southern region of the world’s fourth-largest island, prompting



Climate threat to world’s poor is underestimated

london / reuters Climate change will greatly increase the suffering of the world’s poor, says Oxfam. More frequent extreme weather events will create shortages, destabilize markets, and cause price spikes on top of projected structural price rises of about 100 per cent for staples such as maize over the next 20 years, the charity said


Even as war wages around them, Syrian farmers keep country fed

Prices are higher, but there remains enough food grown within 
the war-ravaged country to stave off food shortages

For the past six months, farmer Hisham al-Zeir’s wife and daughters have been up before sunset each day when it’s still cool, baking traditional tanoor bread in a century-old clay oven in their home in Syria’s rich agricultural province of Idlib. Rather than selling all his wheat to the state as he usually does, Zeir

U.S. Senate overhauls Farm Bill, but time running out

washington / reuters / The U.S. Senate has approved sweeping new farm legislation that would cut almost all traditional farm subsidies while expanding a costly crop insurance program. But chances are slim the bill will pass this year. The $498-billion, five-year Farm Bill, passed by a 2-to-1 margin, would compensate growers when revenue from a


Agricultural research funds escape austerity cuts

Reuters / Public spending on agricultural research is on the rise, despite austerity drives in many countries, as price spikes and problems linked with climate change propel food security towards the top of government agendas, the head of a leading research body said. “People have realized that feeding the world without destroying the environment is



Link builds between weather extremes and warming

Extreme rainfall, heat waves and increased pollen-induced allergies are to be expected as climate change unfolds

Reuters / Extreme weather events over the past decade have increased and were “very likely” caused by man-made global warming, a study in the journal Nature Climate Change said March 25. Scientists at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Research used physics, statistical analysis and computer simulations to link extreme rainfall and heat waves to global

Climate change blamed as hotter Australia faces more intense rains, droughts

(Reuters) Australia faces a quickening pace of climate change, according to a snapshot of the nation’s weather. A new government report says rainfall trends are changing and temperatures warming across the country. The report, compiled by the Bureau of Meteorology and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, comes after 18 months of record rains