Food & Farming
The Swedes Choose Cattle for Stockholm’s Wetlands
SWAMP, wetland, marsh, marshland, everglade – there are a variety of different names for wet areas covered in native vegetation and the specific mix of reeds, grasses, shrubs and trees will of course depend on how the areas is managed, including whether it is regularly burnt or grazed – or not.
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Who’s Afraid of Genetically Modified Bread?
CANADIAN, US and Australian wheat organisations recently released a joint statement asking for the development and commercialization of higher yielding varieties through biotechnology – through genetic modification.
Clearly wheat farmers are feeling left behind with the statement including the comment: Lack of private and public investment in wheat research has left wheat development behind the advances in competing commodity crops, and has also led to a shortage of scientific expertise in wheat research generally.
I’ve been aware for some time of important research being conducted in South Australia, at the Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), focused on developing new drought and frost tolerant varieties of wheat and barley.
Frost tolerance has become an issue because plant breeders have been selecting for early maturing varieties in order to escape potential summer drought. But, this has now exposed crops to frost during flowering. There is apparently variation for traits for frost and salt tolerance in the “crossable” gene pool for wheat and barley, but there are far better genes in other plants and these would need to be transferred through genetic modification.
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How to Kill a Fox, to Save a Mouse and a Pademelon
A NEW paper by Mike Letnic from the University of Sydney adds more weight to the argument that the best way to save Australia’s small native rodents, in particular the dusky hopping mouse, is to protect the dingo because it also preys on foxes and foxes are more damaging to the small cute and furies than the dingo.
Landholder Jim Inglis reckons the scrub tick does a better job than the dingo at controlling foxes in higher rainfall regions – foxes that kill the pademelons on his property.
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It May Get Even Drier Along the Murray
THERE has been no general decline in rainfall in Australia due to global warming. But it is possible that the Murray Darling Basin, once regarded as the food bowl of Australia, will get even drier.
When farmers say that the region has never been as dry in their lifetime they are correct. However, the data clearly show that over south eastern Australia the first half of the 20th century was much drier than the second half and the recent ‘drought’ is a return to the conditions of the early 20th century. Also, the recent dry period is not yet as dry as the period from about 1935 through 1945.
Swine Flu and ‘Factory Farming’
The first known case of the current swine flu pandemic occurred amid a highly unusual outbreak of contagious respiratory ailments near a large factory hog farm in Mexico; and the public-health community had been warning for years that hog farms posed just such a threat. Read more here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.