crops

‘We wanted to find out the true risk’

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Bird poop on your lettuce might not be as risky as you think. Researchers at the University of California, Davis found that small bird droppings aren’t much of a food safety risk for crops, pushing back against long-held fears that wildlife near farms could spread harmful pathogens such as E. coli, as reported on Phys.org. … Read more

Pay attention to perennial crops’ sustainable development potential, urge scientists

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A cocoa plantation in Cameroon. Photo by Ollivier Girard / CIFOR-ICRAF Perennial woody crops—that is, those with a life cycle of at least three years, such as coffee, cocoa, grapevines, olive trees and oil palm—span about 183 million hectares across the planet, produce about a gigaton of food per year and are critical to diets … Read more