In warmer world crops becoming more toxic

Staples such as cassava on which millions of people depend become more toxic and produce much smaller yields in a world with higher carbon dioxide levels and more droughts, Australian scientists say. The findings underscored the need to develop climate-change-resistant cultivars to feed rapidly growing human populations, said Ros Gleadow of the Monash University in Melbourne. Gleadow’s team tested cassava and sorghum under a series belong to a group of plants that produce chemicals called cyanogenic glycosides, which break down to release poisonous cyanide gas if the leaves are crushed or chewed. “What we found was the amount of cyanide relative to the amount of protein increases,” Gleadow said.

Agroforestry is the future of agriculture

Scientists have said that agroforestry is the future of agriculture, as it can create greater biodiversity, and improve soil, water and air quality on many sites. Agroforestry is an integrated approach of using the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock. It combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems. From large-scale installations of riparian buffers to family-scale forest farming, agroforestry is a technology that has truly “come of age”. According to authors of the book “North American Agroforestry: An Integrated Science and Practice,” published by the American Society of Agronomy, there is a willingness to adopt agroforestry practices more so than ever before. Agroforestry provides many opportunities to meet the landowners and natural resource professionals while keeping the family farm economically viable and the environment in which we live healthy.