Tag: farms

Down on the farm, UK energy crisis looms large

by Joe JACKSON Agence France-Presse MALDON, United Kingdom (AFP) – The tranquil landscape of flat farmland and small villages in the Essex countryside in southeast England seems a world away from Britain’s escalating energy crisis. But fertiliser and carbon dioxide shortages are beginning to bite at places like Wicks Manor Farm, which rears pigs for pork and grows crops. “We’ve got some real concerns (and) quite frightening consequences to farming, as an industry throughout the […]

After fire and floods, Aussie farmers suffer devastating mouse plague

  by Andrew LEESON Agence France Presse Dubbo, Australia (AFP) — After surviving years of crippling drought, farmers in eastern Australia are locked in a months-long battle with hordes of mice that are pouring through fields and devouring hard-earned crops. Farmer Col Tink uses a broom to skittle hundreds of roving mice toward a makeshift industrial trap — essentially a large tub of water where they drown. It is a brutally simple attempt to slow […]

Australia cattle giant warns of ‘extreme losses’ from floods

Australia’s largest cattle company has warned of “extreme losses” after record-breaking floods, as producers said more than 300,000 cows were drowned or washed away in the vast continent’s northeast. After more than five years of drought, heavy rains over an almost two-week period turned dusty and parched land in Queensland state into vast swathes of mud that bogged down already weakened cattle. Australian Agricultural Company Ltd (AACo) said Monday that four of its properties were […]

‘Hundreds of thousands’ of cattle feared dead after Australia floods

TOWNSVILLE, Australia (AFP) —  Hundreds of thousands of cattle weakened from a severe drought are feared to have died in record-breaking floods in northeastern Australia, authorities said Friday, as they stepped up efforts to feed surviving livestock. Incessant rains over an almost two-week period have flooded swathes of Queensland state, with the full scale of the devastation on drought-hit cattle stations becoming clearer as floodwaters recede. “We are expecting hundreds of thousands in terms of […]

Drought-stricken Aussie farmers now battered by floods

TOWNSVILLE, Australia (AFP) — Australian ranchers who struggled to keep their cattle alive during a prolonged drought last year are now battling to save herds from record-breaking floods inundating the northeast of the country, officials said on Wednesday. Australia’s military has been called in to drop fodder to cattle stranded by floodwaters in Queensland state to stop them from starving, Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said, with their owners still marooned in their farmsteads. “This is […]