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World lags in breeding climate-proof crops: experts
Alister Doyle, Reuters
The world is running out of time to develop new seed varieties to confront climate change and head off food shortages that could affect billions of people, experts said.

Marking the first anniversary on Thursday of the opening of a "doomsday" seed vault on the island of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Arctic, they said that people in Africa and Asia were most at risk from a lack of climate-proof crops.
(25 February 2009)

Honeybees under attack on all fronts
Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist
THE world's honeybees appear to be dying off in horrifying numbers, and now consensus is starting to emerge on the reason why: it seems there is no one cause. Infections, lack of food, pesticides and breeding - none catastrophic on their own - are having a synergistic effect, pushing bee survival to a lethal tipping point. A somewhat anti-climactic conclusion it may be, but appreciating this complexity - and realising there will be no magic bullet - may be the key to saving the insects.

A third of our food relies on bees for pollination. Both the US and UK report losing a third of their bees last year. Other European countries have seen major die-offs too: Italy, for example, said it lost nearly half its bees last year. The deaths are now spreading to Asia, with reports in India and suspected cases in China.

But while individual "sub-lethal stresses" such as infections are implicated, we know little about how they add together.
(16 February 2009)

Women lead a farming revolution in Iowa
Mark Clayton, The Christian Science Monitor
Women own nearly half of Iowa’s farmland. But they find they have a common problem: The men they hire to farm their land often don’t treat it with the tender care they expect – and often won’t listen when they complain about it.

Women from three counties near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, discovered the shared view in a series of meetings on “Women Caring for the Land.” Dozens have turned out to learn more about farmland conservation – and to share tales of dealing with their tenant farmers.

Margaret Doermann’s Iowa farm has some of the richest soil in the state, which is why she insists it be farmed the way her husband did, using strong conservation practices to preserve it. So it was a shock to discover the tenant farmer she’d hired after her husband’s passing was treating her land like, well – a rental property.

... Doermann’s experience is hardly unique, experts say. Of Iowa’s 30.7 million farm acres, 47 percent are owned by women. But a growing share – 20 percent – is now owned by single women, many of them older, with a far different take on farming than their male counterparts. About three-quarters of the land owned by single women is rented out to mostly male tenant farmers.
(25 February 2009)
This issue hits home for me, literally. My late father and his father before him were passionate about land conservation techniques, having both lived through the damage of the Dust Bowl. However, now that my mother is renting out our Iowa family farm, she is deferring to the current trend of growing corn fencerow-to-fencerow, hacking down trees that were planted to hold down the soil, and ignoring the need for crop rotation. I am amazed that the lessons that were so painfully learnt in the 1930s are being tossed aside now when they are needed more than ever. (See the article below on soil degradation.) - KS

UN and Colorado State to develop land degradation strategy
Press release, Colorado State University
USA ranked Fourth Worldwide in Topsoil Degradation after #1 Russia, #2 Southern Africa, then #3 Canada by UN FAO
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A Colorado State University and United Nations led science group is convening in Washington, D.C. to better understand the affects of land degradation, an issue that impacts 30 million Americans.

Scientists and experts from more than 20 U.S. universities and specialized United Nations bodies will meet on Feb. 26 at the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, D.C. to discuss how U.S. scientific experts can support and provide scientific input in the worldwide struggle against land degradation.

"The United States is a severely affected country but it also has top scientists and world-class universities that have studied the problem since the time of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. We need the lessons learnt by the American scientists and we need to share that knowledge immediately," said Luc Gnacadja, the top UN official representing the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). "The American scientific community can play a critical role in establishing a strong framework for global indicators of land degradation and help build the bridge to scientists working on climate change issues."

The UNCCD and Colorado State University are leading an initiative to promote better communication and knowledge transfer between the scientific community and those who live in areas where degradation such as soil erosion, salinization and overgrazing occurs.

"The meeting provides the scientific community with an opportunity to influence how science should contribute to the international deliberations on land degradation and desertification in the coming years," said Michael Manfredo, head of CSU's Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources. "It will also foster a more comprehensive involvement of the U.S. scientific community that includes prominent universities in the United States with expertise in the environmental, social and economic causes of land degradation and desertification."

In the United States alone, more than 20 percent of the land surface is in varying degrees of degradation, which makes the country the fourth most severely affected by land degradation worldwide. According to the FAO's Global Land Degradation Assessment only Russia, African states south of the equator and Canada are ahead of the United States in terms of degraded lands. It affects about 30 million Americans - 10 percent of the population - which is equal to the population of the states of New York and Ohio combined.

Desertification and dustbowl-type soil erosion has historically been a problem and remains a concern across a large portion of the western United States. Recent droughts have increased U.S. vulnerability as desert areas have increased by about 2 percent. Some 20 million ha, or 50 million acres, of arable land are lost every year to desertification and land degradation. Globally an estimated 1 billion people are affected, particularly in Brazil, West Africa and India.

Land degradation costs $40 billion annually on the global scale, not including the hidden costs such as the need for increased fertilization, the loss of biodiversity, poor health and malnutrition.
(24 February 2009)
Suggested by Bob Shaw ("totoneila") who monitors soil/fertility issues for The Oil Drum. He recommends another article from FAO (Land degradation on the rise) and comments about the conference:

This meeting is just getting underway today. I hope EB will monitor and post more as this conf. might have a lot of news on biochar, the need O-NPK recycling, permaculture, etc.