Maine a hotbed of crop legislation
Portland Press Herald - 4/16/2009.By Beth Quimby – Nobody knows just how many acres of genetically altered crops are grown every year in Maine. A bill being proposed by Rep. Benjamin Pratt, D-Eddington, would change that. "We need to know what we are dealing with," Pratt said. |
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Honeybees continue to vanish
Alternet - 4/16/2009.By Evaggelos Vallianatos – When I was teaching at Humboldt State University in northern California 20 years ago, I invited a beekeeper to talk to my students. He said that each time he took his bees to southern California to pollinate other farmers' crops, he would lose a third of his bees to sprays. In 2009, the loss ranges all the way to 60 percent. |
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Maine legislators seek solution to milk prices
Bangor Daily News - 4/15/2009.By Sharon Kiley Mack – All 186 Maine state legislators have signed a resolution asking Congress to fix what they call a broken federal milk pricing system. The resolution maintains: “The recent operation of the federal milk pricing program largely ignores the regional character of the nation’s primary fluid milk markets, including the different regional costs of production…” |
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A red LED light to turn greenhouses greener … and more effective
TreeHugger - 4/15/2009. By April Streeter – Japanese chemical and consumer goods company Showa Denko claims to have come up with a red LED that is "optimized to accelerate plant photosynthesis" (fancy speak for making the plants grow faster) at the same time that it can cut energy use by up to 70 percent - compared to 'regular' or current use red LED lights. There's no doubt that LEDs bring down the energy consumption of greenhouses - but the lamps themselves run two to three times more expensive than the type of sodium lamps or fluorescent lamps most commonly used at present. |
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