Showing results for: crop yield News
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Wild Bee Decline Threatens U.S. Crop Production
The first national study to map U.S. wild bees suggests they’re disappearing in many of the country’s most important farmlands — including California’s Central Valley, the Midwest’s corn belt and the Mississippi River valley. If losses of these crucial pollinators continue, the new nationwide assessment indicates that farmers will face increasing costs — and ...
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Syngenta submits legal challenge to EU suspension of thiamethoxam
Syngenta has submitted a legal challenge to the European Commission’s decision to suspend the use of thiamethoxam on bee attractive crops. The Commission took the decision on the basis of a flawed process, an inaccurate and incomplete assessment by the European Food Safety Authority and without the full support of EU Member States. Syngenta Chief Operating Officer, John Atkin, said: ...
By Syngenta
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EPA Awards Almost Half a Million in Funding to Three Universities for Projects to Reduce Pesticide Risk
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced agricultural grants for Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices to reduce the use of potentially harmful pesticides and lower risk to bees all while controlling pests and saving money. “These collaborative projects can provide innovative solutions to reduce pesticide risks to pollinators and crops,” said James Jones, ...
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Patches of flowers boost pollinator diversity and lead to higher crop yields
Falling levels of insect pollination are causing declining yields of important agricultural crops. However, new research from South Africa now indicates that planting small patches of native flowers in agricultural fields can be a profitable and sustainable method of increasing pollination and yield. Insect pollination is a vital ecosystem service as animal-pollinated crops form an essential ...
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Loss of wild pollinators would hit crops, finds study
The loss of wild pollinators from agricultural landscapes could threaten global crop yields, a study has found. Led by Lucas Garibaldi, an assistant professor at the National University of Río Negro inArgentina, a team of researchers compared fields containing many wild pollinators — mostly insects — with those containing few. They studied 41 crop systems across all continents ...
By SciDev.Net
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EPA Awards Almost Half a Million in Funding to Three Universities for Projects to Reduce Pesticide Risk Including Risks to Bees
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that Penn State University would be one of three recipients of agricultural grants for Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices to reduce the use of potentially harmful pesticides and lower risk to bees all while controlling pests and saving money. Penn State University will be receiving a grant for $159,632. " Protection of bee ...
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EPA Grant Will Help Univ. of Vermont Research on Reducing Pesticide Risks for Bees
EPA recently awarded an agricultural grant for $131,758 to the University of Vermont for a project to develop and promote Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices to reduce the use of potentially harmful pesticides and lower risk to bees all while controlling pests and saving money. Specifically, the UVM project is designed to reduce pesticide use and improve pest control, while increasing ...
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Feeding a growing population that relies on ecosystem services (Part II of II)
The future of farming, food supply, and protection of natural resources are utterly interdependent. While all economic sectors depend to some degree on ecosystem services, agriculture has the most intimate relationship with nature. Agriculture depends on healthy ecosystems for services such as pollination for nearly 75% of the world’s crop species, freshwater, erosion control, and climate ...
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Pesticides may harm wild bees but natural areas can mitigate effects
The use of pesticides in orchards may be threatening populations of wild bees, which are important pollinators that increase crop productivity, a new study concludes. However, the damage was mitigated in areas where the orchards were surrounded by natural landscapes, such as deciduous forests. Pollinators, such as bees, provide an important and often underappreciated ecosystem service to ...
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Some plants are more sensitive to herbicides during reproductive stages of life cycle
This study assessed the effects of herbicides on non-target plants in Denmark and Canada. The findings showed that some plants are more sensitive to herbicides in the reproductive stages of their life cycle and can experience delays in flowering and reduced seed production. The authors say future ecological assessments should consider reproductive outcomes. Herbicides are some of the most widely ...
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Bayer welcomes the U.S. National Pollinator Strategy as a concerted approach to improve pollinator health
Bayer welcomes the National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators published by the U.S. President’s Pollinator Task Force on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. “Bees are important pollinators in modern and sustainable agriculture. The U.S. strategy to improve pollinator health is a reasoned and multi-faceted approach,” said Annette Schuermann, Head of the Bayer ...
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European bees are at their best health level in years as overwintering losses of colonies sink to record low
European bees are much healthier than many recent media publications appear to suggest. New field data from nearly 400,000 bee colonies from 21 countries in Europe and the Mediterranean show that overwintering losses of honey bee colonies – an important indicator of general bee health – were at their lowest level in years in 2013/2014. “It is great to see that our bees have ...
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USDA and EPA Release New Report on Honey Bee Health
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today released a comprehensive scientific report on honey bee health. The report states that there are multiple factors playing a role in honey bee colony declines, including parasites and disease, genetics, poor nutrition and pesticide exposure. "There is an important link between the health of American ...
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Flexible management better for coexistence of GM and non-GM crops
Flexible measures, such as pollen barriers, for regulating the cultivation of GM and non-GM crops in the same landscape are more likely to encourage the adoption of GM technology by farmers than rigid measures, such as isolation distances, according to a recent study. The EU has recommended guidelines1 for developing national strategies by all Member States for the coexistence of genetically ...
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Powerpollen Announces Commercial License Agreement With Bayer for Innovative Corn Seed Pollination Technology Designed to Increase Yield
PowerPollen® announced a commercial license agreement with Bayer designed to help corn seed production growers increase their yields. PowerPollen’s Pollination-on-Demand technology gives farmers greater flexibility by allowing them to optimize the timing of pollinations. By accessing the Iowa-based ag tech company’s first scalable pollination technology for corn seed, Bayer will ...
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Loss of wild pollinators could substantially reduce soybean yields
Pollination by wild insects and honey bees improves soybean yield by 18%, new research has indicated. This equates to an extra 331.6 kg of seeds per hectare, boosting the value of the global crop by €12.74 billion. Encouraging insect pollination could therefore reduce the destruction of natural ecosystems to make way for soybean cultivation, the researchers say. The soybean is one of the ...
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Wild bees boost apple harvest
Orchards pollinated by a wide range of wild bee species grow more apples than those pollinated by fewer species, finds a new US study. Its authors suggest that farmers could consider investing in wild bee conservation to improve crop yield. Many farmers around the world hire or manage hives of honeybees to help pollinate crops including fruit and nuts. However, demand for pollinator-dependent ...
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Late-Planted Corn Can Still Reap Strong Yields
Growers worried about delayed planting for corn, take heart – late-planted corn sometimes has reaped better yields than early planted corn, says an agronomist in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University. It’s true that the optimal time to get corn planted in southern Ohio is between April 10 and May 10 and in northern Ohio between ...
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Battle over genetically modified foods in Oregon
Unable to find a good solution to protecting their certified organic seed crops from potential contamination from genetically engineered crops, small organic farmers in this Oregon valley are appealing to a higher power: voters. They wanted to protect their crops from being cross-pollinated by genetically modified ones, and asked voters in two counties to ban the cultivation of GMOs - a move ...
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EPA Finds Neonicotinoid Seed Treatments of Little or No Benefit to U.S. Soybean Production
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an analysis of the benefits of neonicotinoid seed treatments for insect control in soybeans. Neonicotinoid pesticides are a class of insecticides widely used on U.S. crops that EPA is reviewing with particular emphasis for their impact on pollinators. The analysis concluded that there is little or no increase in soybean yields using ...
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