All posts tagged: Agriculture

Greece’s deputy agriculture minister resigns over degree fraud  – POLITICO

Greece’s deputy agriculture minister resigns over degree fraud  – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

Lazaridis holds a diploma from the College of Southeastern Europe, a now-defunct private school whose credentials were not formally recognized as equivalent to a degree. When he left his position to work in the office of the now Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, it was filled instantly by his wife.  In a series of interviews this week, Lazaridis defended himself and said he wouldn’t justify his credentials to opposition parties and that he is not as lazy as “all left-wingers.” On Thursday, though, he offered to return any compensation he received improperly. Lazaridis on Saturday said he was resigning to ensure the government and the agriculture ministry could continue their work “without distraction” and accused opposition parties of “toxic attacks” and “slander.” The main opposition party, PASOK, was quick to criticize Mitsotakis’s administration. The resignation of Lazaridis “underscores just how weak the prime minister is,” PASOK said in a statement. “In the end, he opened the exit door himself, since his admission that he had defrauded the state was not grounds for dismissal in Mitsotakis’s eyes.” Source link

New ALIGN consortium to address governance issues in genomic techniques

New ALIGN consortium to address governance issues in genomic techniques

Published by skeptic

Coordinated by the University of Bayreuth, a new collaborative project will systematically address legal, societal and ethical issues around new genomic techniques (NGT) in plant breeding. As new genomic technologies and techniques, such as CRISPR/Cas are developed, new procedure and policies are required to ensure the science adheres to legal, ethical and social standards. This is especially the case in the ever-burgeoning agriculture and climate sectors, to respond the need for faster reactivity to changing pressures and rising demand. Over a three-year period, ALIGN (Advancing Legal, Innovative, and Governance Networks for NGTs in Plants) will develop governance both from and for an interdisciplinary audience of policymakers and stakeholders from industry and public perspectives. Part of a €1 million fund Funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, the University of Bayreuth has been allocated €485,000 of the total fund, as part of the funding programme ‘Ethical, legal and social aspects of future-oriented topics in the modern life sciences’. Other partners in the ALIGN consortium include the Julius Kühn Institute, the Federal Office for …

C-Lock builds universal livestock methane measurement framework

C-Lock builds universal livestock methane measurement framework

Published by skeptic

C-Lock Inc. discusses the urgent need for a standardised measurement framework in livestock methane research to enhance emissions reduction and address current inconsistencies. Livestock agriculture sits at the centre of one of the most urgent and contested conversations in climate science. Enteric fermentation, the digestive process by which ruminant animals break down plant matter in their stomachs, produces methane as a natural by-product, and that methane carries a global warming potential more than 80 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year horizon. With cattle populations expected to grow alongside global demand for meat and dairy, the scientific community faces enormous pressure to develop, validate, and scale solutions that meaningfully reduce these emissions. Billions of dollars are now flowing into livestock methane reduction – through feed additives, selective breeding programmes, rumen microbiome research, and precision farming technologies. Governments are introducing policy mandates. Carbon credit frameworks are expanding to cover agricultural emissions. The industry, by any measure, is mobilising. And yet, there is a fundamental problem undermining this entire body of work, one that sits not …

Epstein accusations fly in Senate after César Chávez Monument row

Epstein accusations fly in Senate after César Chávez Monument row

Published by Sam Flores

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah (left) and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) Chip Somodevilla | Kayla Bartkowski | Getty Images Jeffrey Epstein allegations flew during a spat between Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., over the fate of the César Chávez National Monument. Heinrich, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, objected to a bill on Tuesday to defund and close the monument after multiple women accused Chávez — an icon in the farm labor movement — of sexual assault. Heinrich objected to the bill, citing concerns that erasing the monument would diminish the work of other leaders in the farm labor movement. “I agree unequivocally that we should no longer have a monument named after Cesar Chavez,” he said on the Senate floor after objecting. “But we absolutely should not erase the monuments telling of the story of the farm labor movement. That is a story that belongs to many people, including the survivors of Chavez’s violence.” Chávez, who died in 1993, was accused by several women who …

Could the US oil blockade snuff out the Cuban cigar? | International Trade News

Could the US oil blockade snuff out the Cuban cigar? | International Trade News

Published by Sam Flores

New pressures on a straining industry Still, tobacco remains Cuba’s top export, and in 2024, its government reported record revenue from its sale: nearly $827m. Lloyd Smith explained that the demand is linked to prestige. Around the globe, Habanos are considered a symbol of luxury. “A lot of people, when they think of the cigar, they automatically think of Cuban cigars,” he said. That reputation for exclusivity has been bolstered, in part, by the fact that Cuban cigars are illegal in the US due to a longstanding embargo. The trade restrictions were largely a response to the 1959 Cuban Revolution, which ushered in the island’s communist government. The new regime quickly nationalised the island’s industries, much to the ire of US authorities. Traditional tobacco brands like Montecristo and Romeo y Julieta fell under state control, and new products were launched. They included the premium cigar brand Cohiba, a favourite of the late Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro. A Havana resident smokes a cigar while fishing on the Malecon, the Havana seawall [Euan Wallace/Al Jazeera] But experts …

Irish government loses key rural voice in surprise resignation amid fuel-price fury – POLITICO

Irish government loses key rural voice in surprise resignation amid fuel-price fury – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

Rising to his feet from the government benches, Healy-Rae said he’d spent Monday night talking to aggrieved voters in the Plough Bar in his County Kerry constituency — and had come away persuaded he should stop supporting Martin. “I met tractor men, lorry men, farmers, telling me how unhappy they were. The leader of the country should have listened,” Healy-Rae told a hushed chamber. “Because I believe this government have let the people of Ireland down, I will be voting no confidence in the leader of the country, and I will be tendering my resignation as a minister of state from now,” he said. Healy-Rae accused the government of lacking sympathy for farmers and truckers struggling to pay runaway diesel prices. “People cried at the protests — and they were workers! They were respectable people!” he shouted. He then exited the Leinster House parliamentary building to cheers from the hundreds of fuel-price protesters, mostly middle-aged men, who had gathered outside behind security barriers. Healy-Rae — who invariably dons an Irish flat cap — is the …

John Deere Is Paying Farmers Million for Allegedly Monopolizing Repair

John Deere Is Paying Farmers $99 Million for Allegedly Monopolizing Repair

Published by skeptic

On Monday, farming equipment manufacturer John Deere announced it would pay $99 million in a settlement to a class action lawsuit brought on by its customers. The suit accused the company of restricting access to tools and repairs of its tractors and other farming equipment, effectively leveraging a monopoly on the repair market for its products. The money, if accepted by the farmer-aligned plaintiffs, will go into a fund, then eventually be distributed to Deere equipment owners who can prove they paid for dealership repairs sometime since 2018. In the settlement, John Deere also says it will make repair tools and services more widely available. For the next 10 years, at least. John Deere has kept tight control over how its customers can fix or tinker with its equipment by disallowing access via software restrictions or requiring machines to be brought to approved shops for repair. That has left thousands of farmers to deal with delayed harvests and millions of dollars in lost profits while waiting for an approved fix. The difficulty in repairing John …

Hungary and Russia struck 12-point plan for closer ties, documents show – POLITICO

Hungary and Russia struck 12-point plan for closer ties, documents show – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

While Orbán flaunts his close ties with the Kremlin, his electoral rival, Péter Magyar, has argued this is an Achilles’ heel, accusing the government of “outright treason” over its ties to Moscow. The December summit in Moscow was the 16th meeting of the Russian-Hungarian Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation (IGC), which according to Russian state media was launched in 2005. The commission has met on a roughly annual basis in either Russia or Hungary since then — with a break between the 14th meeting in November 2021 and the 15th in September 2024. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. According to one of the documents, Russia and Hungary “addressed current issues of bilateral trade and economic cooperation, joint activities in the energy sector, industry, health care, agriculture, construction, and other areas of mutual interest, as well as in the cultural and humanitarian sphere” at the meeting in Moscow on Dec. 9, 2025. They also underscored the importance of “developing long-term, mutually beneficial ties between the two countries in areas of …

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins sent staff Easter email about Jesus, God

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins sent staff Easter email about Jesus, God

Published by Sam Flores

Brooke Rollins, US agriculture secretary, speaks to members of the media outside the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, March 27, 2026. Aaron Schwartz | Sipa | Bloomberg | Getty Images U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sent USDA staff an Easter email that emphasized the story of Jesus being crucified and resurrected, a message that some Christians said alienated them for its overt religiosity. “Happy Easter — He is Risen indeed,” Rollins wrote in the email sent on Good Friday, which CNBC has reviewed and was first to report. “From the foot of the Cross on Good Friday to the stone rolled away from the now empty tomb, sin has been destroyed,” Rollins wrote. “Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life. And where there is life — risen life — there is hope.” The email included an illustration of a round stone rolled away from the entrance to Jesus’ tomb, with the words “Christ is Risen” written above the image. …

Are manure digesters a real solution to dairy farm emissions?

Are manure digesters a real solution to dairy farm emissions?

Published by skeptic

Digesters on dairy farms produce biogas from cow manure Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock When fuel ran out during the second world war, some farmers in Germany and France made their own fuel by covering cisterns of manure and capturing the methane that was generated. Now, governments are pushing an upgraded version of that technology, called an anaerobic digester, as a way to reduce dairy farms’ greenhouse gas emissions. But some researchers say spending on digesters could have unintended consequences for the climate and human health. “Is this money more effective in climate reduction than other strategies like building solar panels?” says Rebecca Larson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That’s something that should be examined… but in terms of livestock it’s one of the highest performing mitigation measures that we have.” Agriculture accounts for about one-third of human-caused emissions. In the US, about a third of this is from cows belching, but another 14 per cent is from manure. Industrial dairy farms have to continuously scrape and flush colossal amounts of manure out of vast barns full of …