Tag Archives: Feature

  Hiroki Chiba, 57, a cattle breeder in Tome, Miyagi Prefecture who owns 60 Japanese breeding cows, keeps 50 rolls – weighing roughly 20 tons – of packaged pasture grass harvested in 2011 on a 50-are land next to his cowshed. The grass contains 8,000 becquerels or less per kilogram of radioactive fallout from the March 2011 triple meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The grass rolls are estimated to weigh around 400 to 500 kilograms each. Each of the rolls gained at least 100 kilograms more weight while left out in the open, as rainwater sank into the grass through the deteriorated plastic … Continue reading →

  Yuu Kawasaki Between the 1940s and 1960s, the Asian and African countries succeeded in largely increasing grain yields through introduction of new varieties and improving cultivation methods, thanks to the so-called Green Revolution, a series of research and technology transfer initiatives to save people from starvation. The International Rice Research Institute based in Los Banos, located 65km southeast of the Philippines’ capital city of Manila, is one of the major contributors to this movement. The institute is an agricultural research and training organization and a member of the CGIAR consortium, a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research to fight poverty and hunger. Along with other rice varieties, … Continue reading →