The Chinese government has been trying to toughen product supervision amid mounting criticism -- at home and abroad -- that the quality of its drug, food and other products is poorly regulated. Columnists Alyce Faye Bragg. Sun Xianze, an official with the State Food and Drug Administration, called on his colleagues over the weekend to urgently step up food supervision, the official China Daily newspaper reported. In a seminar on Saturday, Sun said that future food safety accidents would...

As construction consortiums overpower the landscape of the city, urban farming or urban landscape management is emerging as a viable and practical tool to maintain the ecological balance of the expanse. According to cityfarmer.org, the most extensive online source on urban agriculture, this Caribbean island has what is believed to be the most extensive urban agriculture programme in Latin America, with more than 2,730 government-operated gardens. For these millions in urban areas, urban...

While the Ayars are establishing connections with their cows, the name of the game is still productivity, whether it be the amount of milk the cow produces, the productivity of its offspring or even the selling of its embryos. John is in the barn twice a day every day to milk the family's prized cows some of which have come from as far as California in a barn a few-hundred yards away from their home. But while the dairy farm named Land of Living after the original name John's parents gave...

Bio-Ethanol is a mix of ethanol, a highly flammable liquid which can be manufactured by fermenting a wide variety of agricultural produce, including forest residue, sugar cane, sugar beet or grain, and then mixed with normal petrol. This allows an optimum timing for engine ignition and has a fast flame speed in the cylinder, so the fuel burns faster, increasing the efficiency of the engine. Using such a high blended bio-ethanol fuel in specifically designed engine technology means that the...

Moving farmed salmon from freshwater lakes to land-based closed systems would reduce environmental pressures and increase Chile s competitiveness in the global salmon trade. Chile has become the world s second largest producer of farmed salmon but the industry must rapidly improve its environmental practices if it expects to survive in the global marketplace. In an effort to replicate salmon s natural lifecycle, the salmon industry has used Chile s freshwater lakes for the past 25 years to...

Campaigners scaled security fences in the early hours Saturday to get into the field between Girton and Histon, and pulled up the crop, which is being developed to be blight resistant by German-based company BASF. News of the action was posted on grass roots campaign website Indymedia UK by a correspondent known as "Digger", and it follows a protest march last week when two people were arrested. The company had stepped up security at the site, following threats to the trial, and obtained a...

They instruct residents to "save your neighborhood" and "block the project" that would allow a concrete company to build a railyard to transport construction materials and agricultural products in the middle of the residential area and farming community. Neal and a group of concerned residents plan to attend a public hearing on Tuesday to appeal a public and zoning decision to approve the planned unit development overlay zone and railway spur for Jobe Materials. It's dangerous and it's...

The big chemical company already produces many green products, such as plastics made from crops. He already sets the standards for everything from architecture to shampoo, so purchasing agents and suppliers are accustomed to heeding his recommendations. The titles vary, mixing and matching "chief" and "vice president," "sustainability" and "environmental," making it impossible to track how many people fill the role. They are exploring partnerships with vendors and customers to create green...

But, after the failure of several efforts to secure a breakthrough in the stalled global talks, Japan, like other countries, is pursuing bilateral free-trade agreements. According to Hirofumi Kobayashi, a trade-policy manager at the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives in Tokyo, lobbying groups used to be able to deliver a million or so votes in a voting population of some 100 million, but can now only manage 150,000 to 200,000. With a shrinking work force and growing number of...