Deputy water minister Jack Bloom told a Nampo Cape seminar that Gauteng wastes as much water each year as the Western Cape uses, only 23 of 144 water service authorities earned clean audits, 47% of wastewater plants are critical and 96 criminal cases have been opened against local authorities — loss
Daily slots fell from 36 to 34 this month and to 32 this week, with more cuts possible without rain; Rabobank's Angus Gidley-Baird estimates that over 70% of Australia's US beef exports and 90% of its Canadian exports go to the east coasts, roughly 24% of national production, more than goes to China
On three hectares where a juice factory dumped its waste, tree biomass rose 176 per cent and the soil grew richer; the Princeton study suggests farm and food-industry waste can restore forest.
A new agreement will keep more than 50,000 legume seed samples at ICRISAT's genebank in India conserved and available to breeders, with support from the Crop Trust's endowment fund.
BigIron's Cody Holst and Van Wall Equipment's Mark See report buyers returning cautiously as commodity prices recover, favouring domestic used machines that carry no tariff over expensive new ones, after a 47-machine auction at the Farm Progress Show.
Chief executive Andy O'Brien says the difference was walking before running — sales matched to costs, growing rooms run like food factories, and a focus on what indoor growing does uniquely, such as microgreens ready in five days, 365 days a year.
Ahead of the Puja season, demand has pushed hilsa prices up in Kolkata, where fresh fish of a kilogram or more are in short supply.
Entomologist Letodi Luki Mathulwe reports the first South African isolation of Metarhizium rileyi infecting and killing armyworm larvae in kikuyu pastures — larvae that pyrethroids control only at 1–5 mm and whose feeding makes kikuyu release cyanide compounds that poison cattle; mass production and
Roe-laden hilsa landed at Bharuch is going to Bangladesh as a trial run, says Howrah Fish Importers' Association secretary Syed Anwar Maksud, whose association is meanwhile lobbying Dhaka for Padma hilsa before the Pujas.
For the first time, Gujarati hilsa has been imported into Bangladesh, with about 500 tonnes already sent, reversing the usual flow of hilsa from Bangladesh to India before Durga Puja.
A month after Indian fish traders wrote asking Bangladesh to lift its hilsa export ban for Durga Puja, about 500 tonnes of Gujarat hilsa have been sent into Bangladesh.
Kamal Uddin went to Riyadh as an agricultural labourer in 1998; today his rented farm at Hafirat Nisa grows brinjal, chilli, bitter gourd, tomato and gourds, and his workers say board, lodging and wages on time let them send remittances home.
Weeks of drought and temperatures 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit above normal have left more than a third of Kansas corn rated poor or very poor, and dryland growers say some fields will not be worth harvesting.
