This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
A United Nations conference on rising food prices ended with an agreement to invest more in agriculture.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said food production needs to increase fifty percent by two thousand thirty to meet rising demand. The cost, he said, could top fifteen to twenty billion dollars a year over a number of years.
About one hundred eighty countries were represented at the three-day summit meeting last week in Rome. The final declaration called for immediate support for agricultural production, including seeds, fertilizer and other supplies. It also urged countries to reduce agricultural trade barriers.
The delegates nearly failed to reach a final agreement. There were objections from Latin America on trade-related issues.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says agriculture is the main support for seventy percent of the world’s poor. Yet, the F.A.O. says, aid to agriculture fell almost sixty percent from nineteen eighty-four to two thousand four.
In nineteen eighty, seventeen percent of official development assistance went to agriculture. By two thousand six that share was three percent.
The meeting in Rome was officially called the High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy. Using food crops to make fuel was a major point of debate. In the end, Jacques Diouf, head of the F.A.O., said differences of opinion about biofuels were too wide to settle.
Some countries called for international guidelines on production. But the final declaration called only for in-depth study to make sure biofuels do not threaten food security.
The European Union and the United States both support biofuels. Before the conference, American Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said biofuels play only a small part in higher food prices. He said other causes include rising energy prices and poor harvests in major grain-producing countries. He also noted increased restrictions on food exports.
High food prices have increased hunger and poverty and produced rioting in some countries. In addition to short-term measures, countries are being urged to think of longer-lasting answers to feed a growing world.
The final declaration said eight hundred sixty-two million people are still undernourished in the world today. And it noted that food prices are expected to remain high in the years to come.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I’m Bob Doughty.

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
One cause of the current food crisis is drought. Food prices are high in part because of dry weather in places as far distant as Spain and Australia.
Around the world, the amount of land affected by drought has doubled in the past thirty years. So says the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States. And scientists concerned about climate change believe it will cause more drought in many areas in the future.
A lot of research is going into efforts to develop drought-resistant crops. One project involves tobacco plants genetically engineered to keep their leaves during water shortages.
Eduardo Blumwald and Rosa Rivero at the University of California, Davis, led a team from the United States, Japan and Israel. Rosa Rivero says they chose tobacco because it has big leaves. Also, it grows fast and has structural similarities with some other plants.
The researchers did an experiment with two groups of tobacco plants. They worked with a set of normal plants and a set of transgenic plants. These had a gene added to interfere with the biological causes of leaf loss during drought.
The researchers put all the plants in a greenhouse to grow under normal conditions for forty days. Then, for fifteen days after that, the plants did not receive any water.
The normal plants lost their green color. Finally, they lost their leaves. But the researchers say the transgenic plants kept their leaves and their color.
After the fifteen dry days, all the plants were watered again for a week. The transgenic plants returned to normal growth, and their seed production was close to normal. But the other plants all died.
Rosa Rivero says the transgenic plants kept a relatively high water level. They also continued to produce energy during the dry period, although at a reduced level. The amount of seeds they produced was close to normal.
In addition, the researchers found that the plants could survive on only thirty percent of the normal amount of irrigation water. Yield loss was minor, they said.
The findings appeared late last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The University of California has applied for patent protection for the technology.
The researchers expect to move forward with field testing of the transgenic tobacco in late August. They hope for similar results with crops like tomatoes, rice, wheat and cotton.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I’m Steve Ember.

Some governments and agricultural experts have this advice to help people deal with high grain prices: Eat more potatoes.
The United Nations has declared two thousand eight the International Year of the Potato. There is even a Web site to help bring more attention to the world’s third most important food crop, after rice and wheat: potato2008.org.
The world produced three hundred twenty million tons of the vegetable last year, about the same as in two thousand five. The top five producers were China, Russia, India, Ukraine and the United States. India hopes to double production in the next five years.
Officials in Bangladesh say that country produced a record eight million tons this season. Prices for rice, the main food crop, have doubled in Bangladesh in the past year. Potatoes now cost much less than rice.
Yet potatoes are not an especially popular food choice in Bangladesh. The government hopes that will change. And some Bangladeshis may have no choice. Soldiers are now being served potatoes as part of their daily food.
The International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, says potatoes could offer better food security for at least twenty Asian countries.
International trade in potatoes currently represents only about six percent of production, so prices are set locally. Potatoes are a good source of nutrients. And farmers can plant them in rotation with grain crops.
The United Nations World Food Program says potatoes can grow in almost any climate. They do not require very much water. And experts say potatoes can produce more food per hectare than wheat or rice.
Until the early nineteen nineties, most potatoes were grown in Europe, North America and the former Soviet republics. Person for person, Europeans still eat the most potatoes. But the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says production has increased sharply in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The F.A.O. says developing countries grew more potatoes than developed countries for the first time in two thousand five.
That same year, an American-led research team tried to settle the debate over where potatoes came from. They reported that all potatoes today have a single origin in southern Peru. The earliest evidence suggested that farmers developed potatoes from wild plants more than seven thousand years ago.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson.

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Cork is a light brown material harvested from the cork oak tree. Cork is lightweight, strong and resistant to water.
It is best known for keeping liquids from spilling. For thousands of years, people have used pieces of cork as closures for bottles.
Cork is made of small cells filled with air. This structure makes it elastic, so it can be pressed but later return to its full shape. It is said that no technology has been able to copy this unusual material exactly.
The cork oak tree is native to the western Mediterranean coast of Europe. The largest cork forests in the world are located in Portugal. In fact, Portugal produces more than half of the world’s cork supply.
Cork oak trees have to be at least twenty-five years old before they are ready for harvest. Harvests only happen once every nine years.
Cork is gathered by skillfully cutting off the outer layer of the tree with special knives. The harvest weakens the tree temporarily, but it soon starts to grow a new layer of bark.
Next, the cork harvest is set out in the open for six months. Then, the cork is boiled in order to clean it and make it softer. After drying, the cork is ready to be cut.
Because cork trees are not killed during harvest, they can live for as long as two hundred years. Also, used cork products can be recycled and used again. This makes cork a valuable renewable resource.
The wine industry has always been a major supporter of cork production. Wine makers say cork stoppers in their bottles let the wine age and improve over time. But now some wine producers are changing to plastic or metal closures.
Some environmentalists worry that if cork starts to lose its value, the cork oak forests of Europe will no longer be protected. These forests are rich with animal and plant life.
Cork bottle stoppers make up about sixty percent of all cork products. But many people are finding creative new uses for cork. A designer in Italy, for example, makes cloth out of cork. An American designer uses cork to make large storage containers for food. Cork can be shined and used to cover floors and walls.
Because it is fire resistant, cork has even found a use as a material in making rockets.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Dana Demange. Internet users can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Jim Tedder.

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Honey bees add billions of dollars in value to around one hundred thirty crops in the United States. But since the nineteen eighties, researchers have been concerned about the health of these valuable pollinators.
Worries grew after the winter of two thousand six. Some pollination services reported losses of anywhere from thirty to ninety percent of their hives. The beekeepers did not find dead adult bees as they often do after winter. Instead, the bees were gone. Experts gave a name to this mysterious situation: colony collapse disorder.
A report in Agricultural Research magazine, from the Department of Agriculture, takes a fresh look at C.C.D. It says the disorder is truly a serious problem. But it says there were enough honey bees to provide all the agricultural pollination needed last year.
Still, beekeepers reported losing about thirty-five percent of their hives in the fall and winter of two thousand seven. It two thousand six, it was thirty-one percent.
The United States has almost two and one-half million managed beehives. Experts from the Agriculture Department and the Apiary Inspectors of America did a study involving about one-fifth of them.
One finding was that beekeepers who found no dead adult bees were more likely to have the most severe losses. Also, a virus called I.A.P.V., for Israeli acute paralysis virus, was present in almost half the colonies studied.
But researchers say they do not know if this virus causes a colony to collapse. They say the lack of affected bees to examine makes it difficult to know exactly what the new disorder is.
Losses in honey bee populations can result from a number of causes. A big problem, for example, is the varroa mite, a deadly parasite. And experts keep looking for other answers for the current situation.
Scientists at the University of Virginia recently reported that air pollution may prevent bees from finding flowers to pollinate. They think ozone in the air is keeping bees and other pollinators from smelling the flowers. Bees feed on nectar and pollen from flowers.
Jose Fuentes and his team at Virginia studied how far the scent of flowers travels with the wind. Before the eighteen hundreds, they say, it was more than one thousand two hundred meters. Now, they say, the scent can travel only about three hundred meters at best. Their study is in the journal Atmospheric Environment.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. For more about bees, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Faith Lapidus.

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
In South America, the fertile soil of the Amazon River basin in Brazil is known as “black gold.” Scientists found that the secret to this rich soil was charcoal. Tribal people made it from animal bones and tree bark. They mixed the charcoal with the soil about one thousand five hundred years ago.
Now, scientists in the United States have done a modern demonstration. They say charcoal fertilization offers a revolutionary way to improve soil quality for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Mingxin Guo and his team at Delaware State University heated tree leaves, corn stalks, small pieces of wood and poultry waste into “biochar.” They reported their findings at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans.
Biochar could be good news for farmers with poor soil and hungry populations to feed. Professor Guo says it could even help against global warming. Intensive farming and overuse of chemical fertilizer releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Biochar does the opposite, he says: it traps carbon in the ground.
The researchers planted winter wheat in containers of soil in a greenhouse — some with biochar, some without. Professor Guo says the wheat grew much better in the pots with biochar. The soil was amended with two percent charcoal. But he says even a one percent treatment would increase productivity.
The results demonstrated that biochar can increase organic matter in soil. Loss of nutrients in soil is an increasing problem worldwide as farmers try to grow more food for expanding populations.
Soils with less than three percent organic matter are generally poor and dense and unable to hold enough water and nutrients. Adding compost and animal manure and leaving crop wastes in fields has only a limited effect. The scientists say these added organic materials quickly break down into carbon dioxide.
Next the team will carry out a five-year study of biochar with spinach, green peppers and tomatoes.
Mingxin Guo says he learned about the “black gold” in Brazil from a magazine story. He explains that it was discovered in the jungle, in the area where waters flow to the Amazon, in the nineteen sixties. But it was not until recent years that scientists began to bring public attention to it.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. For more of our reports, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Jim Tedder.

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
The United States Department of Agriculture has a program called Wildlife Services. Its job is to help protect agricultural and other resources from threats and damage by wildlife. Often that means helping farmers deal with unwelcome visitors.
One example from Wildlife Services of its work involved a farmer in Washington state, in the Pacific Northwest. Several years ago, thousands of Canada geese landed on his fields. The geese began to eat his carrot crop.
Biologists from the program suggested that the farmer use noise-making devices and other measures to scare the large birds away. These efforts apparently succeeded.
Wildlife Services also has a livestock protection program. The agency kills foxes, badgers and other predators. Critics, however, say too many animals are killed that do not threaten livestock.
The Wildlife Services program is part of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS. APHIS offers some suggestions of ways to keep away predators.
For example, try to keep food and water safe from wildlife. Fences may help keep out coyotes, especially if the fences are at least two meters high. For best results, the bottom of the fence should extend about fifteen centimeters into the ground.
Provide secure shelter for poultry, rabbits and other animals that could be attacked.
The experts also suggest using lights above places where animals are kept. And they advise people who see coyotes around their property to chase them away by shouting, making loud noises or throwing rocks.
For home gardeners, a two-meter fence might help keep out deer. To keep out rabbits, a wire fence has to be only about a half-meter high. It should extend fifteen centimeters underground to keep rabbits from digging under it.
If snakes are a problem, remove dead trees and cut high grass to deny them places to hide.
And to protect livestock, consider using guard animals such as dogs, donkeys, llamas and even ostriches. The huge, flightless birds can get very protective of their territory.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. For transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports, go to voaspecialenglish.com. To send us e-mail, write to special@voanews.com.

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Bovine tuberculosis is a progressive wasting disease. It affects mainly cattle but also sheep, goats, pigs and other animals. People who get bovine TB have to take strong antibiotics for up to nine months to cure them.
Humans can get sick from infected cows by drinking milk that has not been heated to kill germs. Another risk is eating meat that has not been cooked to seventy-four degrees Celsius.
If an infected animal is processed, cutting through lung or lymph tissue can spread the M. bovis bacteria to other parts of the meat.
Bovine TB is a major problem in parts of Africa. Farmers in Canada and Britain have also lost many cattle in recent years. In Britain, debate continues about whether badgers pass TB to other animals.
Infected cows might lose weight and develop a cough, which spreads the bacteria through the air. Or they can appear healthy. Then, when they give birth, their calves can get infected by drinking their milk.
In the early twentieth century, bovine TB probably killed more animals in the United States than all other diseases combined. To control it, the government launched a highly successful testing program. Historians say animal doctors ordered the destruction of about four million cattle between nineteen seventeen and nineteen forty.
But currently, the state of Michigan in the Midwest is fighting an outbreak of tuberculosis in cattle. Experts identified wild deer as the source of infection. More recently the neighboring state of Minnesota has also had to deal with TB in cattle and deer.
Cows and wild deer can infect each other — for example, if they share cattle feed left in fields during winter. Possible solutions might include building fences or leaving smaller amounts of hay.
Michigan’s agriculture director announced this month that the state will receive more than three million dollars in emergency federal aid. Michigan will use the money to increase prevention and testing activities, and to pay farmers who have to destroy infected cattle.
Since nineteen ninety-four, the state has spent close to one hundred million dollars on control efforts. Michigan officials say no TB has been found in cattle outside the containment area.
Experts say the most effective form of control is to destroy cattle herds that have been exposed to bovine tuberculosis. This prevents any chance that infected cows might be moved to another farm.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I’m Bob Doughty.

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Food inflation has led to growing protests in developing countries. In Haiti, the government fell Saturday after riots in which several people died.
Some rice-producing countries have cut exports to protect their own supplies. World Bank President Robert Zoellick said last week that rice prices have risen around seventy-five percent in just two months, to near historical levels. Wheat prices have risen one hundred twenty percent in the past year.
Farmers are planting more wheat and rice. But population growth is raising demand. So is the use of food crops to produce biofuels. At the same time, record oil prices have meant higher costs for petroleum-based fertilizers and for energy and transportation.
Food also costs more because more people are eating meat and dairy products in growing economies like India and China. More grain is going to feed cattle.
Weather has also pushed up prices. For example, Australia, a major wheat exporter, faces a drought.
High food prices hit the poor the hardest. Agricultural economist Christopher Barrett at Cornell University says many poor farmers use more of their crops than they sell. He says more investment is needed in agricultural research.
What is needed, says another expert, Gerald Nelson at the University of Illinois, is another Green Revolution to increase productivity.
This past weekend, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held their spring meetings in Washington. The bank president said hunger, malnutrition and food policy were a central issue.
The United Nations World Food Program has appealed for five hundred million dollars by May first. Bob Zoellick said donor countries had promised almost half of the money, but that was not enough.
He said a doubling of food prices over the last three years could push one hundred million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty. And that could hurt future generations.
I.M.F. chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the real problem is a food deficit which will probably last for years. He says it can be argued that there are good reasons, connected to climate change, to try to push countries to substitute some kind of biofuel for oil.
But he says nations have to balance the production of biofuel from food crops with biofuel from nonfood resources. Some of the finance ministers in Washington said using food for fuel is a crime against humanity.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I’m Jim Tedder.

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Desertification is a process. It changes productive land into useless land. One example of desertification is when a desert spreads into nearby cropland. In time, the cropland becomes an extension of the desert.
But that is not the only way farmers lose fertile soil.
Long dry periods, warmer temperatures and the removal of trees can all lead to the loss of good cropland. Floods can remove fertile topsoil and begin a process resulting in the loss of planting areas.
Another danger to good land is poor farming methods. Farmers should avoid continually planting crops in the same places, or letting animals feed year after year on the same lands.
Countries from Guatemala to Greece to Vietnam are working against the loss of cropland. Africa especially faces the risk of desertification.
Nigeria, for example, says it loses three hundred fifty thousand hectares of usable land each year. Hills of sand now cover places where people once lived.
When cropland turns to desert, people move to other places for better land and better jobs. This migration can cause political and social tensions.
A nonprofit organization in Nigeria is working to bring public attention to the problem. The group is called Fighting Against Desert Encroachment, or FADE.
Newton Jibunoh is a retired soil engineer who started this group in the year two thousand. He says desert encroachment could cause widespread hunger.
Newton Jibunoh is currently leading a delegation to thirteen African countries to discuss the dangers of losing farmlands. In northern Nigeria, the group organized a competition between schools in seven areas. The goal was to see who could plant the most trees.
Trees are often cut down for fuel wood. But lines of trees around cropland can catch blowing sand. In addition, tree roots can hold soil in place. Even within a desert, trees can be planted as borders around grassy areas.
For many years, China has been building a wall of trees in the northern part of the country. The goal is to stop the Gobi Desert from extending toward Beijing. The Great Green Wall will extend about five thousand kilometers. Completion is expected in two thousand fifty.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. For more stories about agriculture, go to voaspecialenglish.com for transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports. I’m Bob Doughty.