Spring is a very busy season for Flitner, as he plans to wrap up the calving season, when he bands, vaccinates and tags the calves shortly after birth, brand near the end of April and prepare the horses for foaling and another round of riding before he trails the cattle to the mountainous pastures after branding. While the extra weight on the calves is nice, Flitner is somewhat concerned he has had to pull two to three sick calves from the pens this late in the season. Despite his efforts...

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here. For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it...

He said he was satisfied average paddy prices in the crop season this year are Bt300-400 higher than those of last year although there are droughts in many areas. Krirkkrai conceded that the problem of offering advance prices of crops to farmers at lower than market rates -- a kind of rice mortgage --are still being pressed by rice mills or other entrepreneurs. Regarding the farmers' call for the state to help oversee higher costs of fertilizers, insecticide and other related products, Mr....

It's a social, economic and cultural juxtaposition that sparks controversy in Illinois and other states: The rights of farmers to earn a living from "concentrated animal feeding operations," also known as factory farms, versus the rights of nearby residents to not have to face diminished property values and potential environmental and health problems such farms can pose. It's a social, economic and cultural juxtaposition that sparks controversy in Illinois and other states: The rights of...

Ecological sanitation is a new paradigm in sanitation that recognises human excreta and water from households not as a waste but as resources that can be recovered, treated where necessary, and safely used again. With this in mind, an international group of planners, architects, engineers, ecologists, biologists, agronomists and social scientists have developed an approach to sanitation that saves water, does not pollute and returns the nutrients in human excreta to the soil. About one...