Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Governor Baldacci Calls Attention to Asian Longhorned Beetle

AUGUSTA - Governor John E. Baldacci today joined officials from the Maine Department of Agriculture Maine Department of Conservation, United States Forest Service and Maine Forest Service to kick off an education campaign about the Asian Longhorned Beetle.

Association Between Sugar Consumption And Race/Ethnicity, Family

FSA - T[enant] P[urchase] borrowers? in their garden, by their house, Puerto Rico (LOC)The intake of added sugars in the United States is excessive, estimated by the US Department of Agriculture in 1999-2002 as 17% of calories a day. Consuming foods with added sugars displaces nutrient-dense foods in the diet. Reducing or limiting ...

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U.S. ready to help address Africa's food problems - Reuters AlertNet

NAIROBI, Aug 4 (Reuters) - The United States wants to cut Africa's dependence on food handouts and adopt a sustainable approach to tackling the continent's chronic food shortages, its agriculture secretary said on Tuesday. President Barack Obama said ...

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Forests fall to beetle outbreak

MEDICINE BOW NATIONAL FOREST, Wyoming (Reuters) - From the vantage point of an 80-foot (25 meter) tower rising above the trees, the Wyoming vista seems idyllic: snow-capped peaks in the distance give way to shimmering green spruce. But this is a ...

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Free Trade in Agriculture : a Bad Idea Whose Time is Done

Grain traders and food processing companies in both the United States and Europe saw the potential of multilateral rules to free trade in agriculture, as a way to lower commodity prices and to facilitate their move into increasingly ...

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Monday, August 3, 2009

History of lemonade

Lemon Tree in California
The very first uses for the lemon in the Mediterranean were as an ornamental plant in early Islamic gardens. Tracking the progress of the lemon tree from its origin in Assam and northern Burma to China, across Persia and the Arab world to the Mediterranean, is difficult because of the lemon’s adaptability to hybridization. This has caused problems for the horticulturist (a variety might not take to a new land), the food historian (unclear references--for example, the “round citron”), and the taxonomist (a proliferation of botanical terms). Although the citron--like a lemon but larger, with a very thick rind and very little pulp or juice--seems to have been known by the ancient Jews before the time of Christ, and perhaps dispersed in the Mediterranean by them, the lemon seems not to have been known in pre-Islamic times. Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa is wrong to claim in her book A Taste of Ancient Rome, that the Romans grew the lemon... source :

Pic :Lemonade Tree in California (credit : wselman)

Value of land for animals, agriculture creates issues

David Hedlin, a third generation Skagit Valley farmer, signed up for the experiment three years ago, covering three of his fields with salt water a few ...

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