Fifteen years ago, in the bustling Fuchu-shi prefecture of western Tokyo, the government gave urban farmers Masahisa and Yoshi Yoshizu an ultimatum: agree to farm your 15,000-square-foot plot for at least 30 more years, or face a tax increase so great you will be forced to sell out to residential or commercial developers. Fifteen years ago, in the bustling Fuchu-shi prefecture of western Tokyo, the government gave urban farmers Masahisa and Yoshi Yoshizu an ultimatum: agree to farm your...

farmers produce more food than any other country in the world and are tops in corn, soybeans, milk and cattle, according to a United Nations agriculture census. Within the next decade those older farmers will be looking for someone to take over their operations and selling millions of acres of land. Many stay on because they don't have a retirement plan or because their children have no interest in farming. At the same time, it's becoming more costly for young people to go into farming,...

In 2004, a boom year when farmers averaged more than 190 bushels of corn per acre, the entire county produced 21 million bushels of corn, said Kirchhofer. The record for corn planting was set in 1944, as American farmers responded to demand for the crop in war-torn Europe and planted 95. While corn acreage is up, soybeans fields have shrunk around the country, down 15 percent from last year, according to the USDA. Department of Agriculture released its mid-season crop report Friday,...

The first surprise came with the increase in feed grain acreage and a bigger drop in soybean, cotton and spring wheat acres than what had been expected. More corn acreage next year will not be easy to pull out of these crops, and current $6 wheat futures will keep corn from pulling acres out of soft wheat in the eastern Corn Belt and along the eastern edge of the Great Plains. This year, farmers have boosted corn plantings by an incredible 15 million acres, but that has come at a cost for...

Weather remains the key for corn development as we get into the pollination stage of the corn market and current forecasts point to cool/wet weather for the next 7-10 days. Weekly export sales that we released on Friday morning were also supportive of the corn market as the actual sales were almost double the trade estimates. Technicians also talking about the market being oversold, but it was the hot/dry weekend and the much better export sales that helped corn make that extra push to...

At the same time, young farmer wannabes looking for land often get the cold shoulder from established farmers, who want to keep the property in the family. But his grandfather had to sell the family farm in the early 1980s to pay off debt, and Bluck is struggling to return to the land in a changing agriculture industry. The opportunities for beginning farmers are dwindling as the cost of farmland goes up -- it was a record high $1,900 per acre nationwide last year -- and established...

When the Live Earth global concerts kick off Saturday for a weekend of raising climate-change awareness, part of the focus will be on Africa, which is likely to be hit particularly hard by climate change, even though it is the lowest emitter of greenhouse gases. The rainy season in this largely poor southern African nation, a study shows, has been getting shorter, more intense and more erratic, especially over the last 20 years - symptoms of longer-term climatic changes occurring across Africa.

However, while supplies of the green fuel are set to surge, it is likely to remain marginal with just a 2% slice of the energy market, the IEA said. It also echoed warnings issued in an Organisation for Economic Development report that rapidly growing biofuel market will increase the price of certain feedstocks - such as sugar and corn - over the coming year. World oil demand will rise faster than expected, while supplies will remain tight, the latest International Energy Agency (IEA)...

In advanced capitalist countries like the United States, a deadly combination of economies of scale, capital-intensive technology, and the market led to large corporations cornering agricultural production and processing. At the same time, under the pretext of controlling the heavy subsidization of agriculture in developed countries, the AOA institutionalized the various channels through which subsidies flowed, such as export subsidies and direct cash payments to farming interests in the...