Security Concerns for the Agricultural Industry

Agricultural theft is on the rise according to the NFU Mutual rural crime survey.

In England agricultural theft cost farmers £42.8m during 2010. This represents a 26% increase on the previous year.

Scotland saw thefts totaling £1.4m an increase of 57% over the same period, and in Northern Ireland theft had risen by 28% to £3.8m. Theft in Wales was recorded at £1.7m a reduction of 48% over the previous year.

These figures do not include the cost of lost revenue, replacing stolen equipment, or increased insurance premiums. Often insurance companies will only offer the current market value of stolen equipment including depreciation leaving owners in the tough situation of having to make up for the shortfall to replace the machinery.

The survey found that most theft occurred from outbuildings during the night and early hours of the morning. In fact the most common time reported for theft was between midnight and 6am, although tractor theft was often reported during broad daylight hours. Read the rest of this entry »

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Reducing the Amount of Pesticide and Fertilizer Used On, And Leaving Our Landscapes

Here is an overview of how we can reduce the use of chemicals on the landscape.

Each of the subjects I discuss here is really a stand-alone subject so I encourage you to do further research.

Reduce the manicured lawn size.

Lawns consume a huge amount of resources.

Mowing uses gas and oil unless you use a push mower.

Lawns use more fertilizer, weed killer and insecticide than other landscape uses. Even organic lawns need to be mowed, and use fertilizer.

Lawns are also more likely to produce fertilizer runoff than tree, shrub and flower beds, or vegetable gardens.

Think about how much of that lawn you really use and how much is using you. Would some of that lawn better serve your landscape if it were converted to other uses like a flower garden or shrubs and trees?

Lawns are a huge source of the overuse of pesticides.

How many people use a grub control/fertilizer combo every year without knowing if grubs even exist? It takes between 8-12 Japanese beetle grubs per square foot to show any noticeable damage on a cared for lawn. If you don’t have this many then don’t treat. This is a simple test to do with a bulb planter. Simply calculate the area that the planter will remove and convert that number to Square feet. Take several plugs out of the lawn and count the number of grubs per square foot. This takes less time than running down to the garden store for unneeded grub killer. Read the rest of this entry »

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Climate Change Adaptation and Agriculture

Background:

Climate Change (CC) is the among the most important global environment concerns. CC is having significant impacts on the most vulnerable communities. Considering characteristics, agriculture can be considered as one of the most affected sector and thus most vulnerable to climate change. Susceptibility and sensitivity of agriculture to the variance of the climatic parameters is responsible for the fact. Agriculture having the significant contributor in national GDP, translates the susceptibility of national economy and growth to climate change. In context of India the GDPs 60% share is agriculture and approximately 60% population’s livelihood is depends on farming co emphasizing the need of resilient systems and strategies for agriculture sector and farming community. In which semi-arid regions are considered particularly most vulnerable to climate change.

Challenges:

Semi arid regions being particularly less resilient to the non favourable climatic conditions, lead to more negative impacts. Bundelkhand has faced severe drought years in recent past (five drought years in last seven years). Last year was not the hydrological drought but delayed monsoon resulted into the failed Kharif season in most part of the Bundelkhand region. Increasing frequency of the drought in the region is causing the farmers to take extreme steps in frustration. There have been incidences of farmers letting their in fields as the crops would not yield anything, in cases of delayed monsoon.

Even though farmers are facing these challenges, haven’t yet realized that these droughts are not incidental but reflecting the trend of reducing rainfall and erratic character and these are going to be more common incidents in future. Thus there is dire need not only of identifying strategies to fight climate change but also to make the vulnerable sections aware about the climate change and make them ready to adopt the strategies for adapting to climate change. Read the rest of this entry »

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