The Queensland Government has confirmed it will allow grazing in some national parks during droughts or other emergency situations. Legislation will be rushed through State Parliament next week to allow grazing in five national parks and eight reserves.
Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney says graziers are struggling to cope with drought, and the flow-on effects of the 2011 ban on live exports to Indonesia. He says grazing would only be allowed for six months to a year. Mr Seeney says the land was previously used for grazing and any environmentally sensitive areas will be fenced off.
Nestle has gone on record in South Africa as saying that “it took consumer preferences into consideration and therefore all its infant cereals in South Africa used non-GM maize”, the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) announced Friday. “This can only be a result of the action that so many…took last year after we released the results showing that Nestle’s Cerelac Honey contained 77.65% GM Maize. This is a victory indeed!” ACB continued.
ACB recently released results of tests conducted on 7 baby formulas and cereals, by an independent and accredited GM testing laboratory. The results reveal that Purity baby cereals contain extremely high levels of GM content whereas Nestlé’s infant formulas and cereal indicate that Nestle appears to be going GM free. Aspen’s infant formulas also indicate GM avoidance. Shockingly, comparisons also reveal that Purity’s GM baby cereals cost 250% more than non-GM cereals, exploding the myth that GM free food is an expensive and impractical luxury.
The season has broken - Adelaide gone from its warmest late autumn weather on record to its coolest, wettest week since winter, in just a few days. In the five days to last Saturday the city averaged a maximum of 28.5 degrees, nine degrees above average and the warmest it has been this late in autumn in 136 years of records.
Since a cold front arrived on Saturday it has cooled down significantly. The city only reached 15.8 degrees on Monday, its coldest day since spring. The cold front was strong enough and contained enough moisture for 14mm of rain to fall.
Most residents in Victoria woke to a dampened soil this morning, after many places saw their best rain in months. Rain developed in western parts on Sunday morning and spread east as a low pressure trough and cold front crossed the state.
There were widespread falls of 5-15mm over western and central parts of Victoria to 9am this morning, with even heavier falls in the southwest and northeast. This would have come as welcome relief for farmers, with many places sitting well short of their average rainfall over the first four months of the year.
In the three days until Sunday, Hobart experienced its warmest weather this late in autumn in 74 years, averaging a maximum temperature of 21.5 degrees. Nights have also been warm during the past few days with minimum temperatures coming in more than four degrees above the May average.
A strong cool change with a front and a low pressure system will see both the days and nights become cooler with widespread showers from Tuesday.
Carnarvon avocado growers have seen a production drop this year, with one grower reporting yields from his crop have been halved. A slower year was expected after a heatwave burnt ripening crops in February but strong prices have helped growers, up around 40 per cent on last year.
Wes Bassett, a biodynamic avocado grower in Carnarvon, says it's too early to tell if high prices will make up for the drop in production.
Farmers in southern NSW have had light falls of rain in the past 24 hours and say it could make all the difference to their seasonal outlook. There have been widespread showers in the Riverina, with reports of up to 20 millimetres at Wagga Wagga, and 14 millimetres at Holbrook.
Further north, at Lake Cargelligo in the central west of the state, farmer Peter McFadyen has had 11 millimetres and is hopeful of more.
Primary Producers SA said weekend rain would give little relief for many farmers across South Australia. It said most falls were fairly isolated across pockets of the south-east, Riverland and in Adelaide.
Warm and dry weather for early May saw some growers halt their seeding. Chairman of Primary Producers SA Rob Kerin said soil was dry and still needed a soaking.
Maranoa Mayor Robert Loughnan says some graziers in Queensland's southern inland are struggling to water their stock, despite relatively green conditions.
The region has experienced several floods in recent years but a lack of rain has put the western side of the shire in the grip of an undeclared drought. Councillor Loughnan says most farmers have feed but are running out of water.
In a monumental compilation of millions of never publicly available satellite images comprising trillions of pixels of data, Google and TIME Inc. have released their Timelapse project, a stunning portrayal of nearly 30 years of satellite images, stitched together to show the Earth like it has never been seen before.
Timelapse paints a telling picture of how Earth has changed over the last 29 years offering a look at deforestation, increasing populations, expanding cities, diminishing bodies of water and other changes to the planet. Google and TIME used data obtained from more than 2 million Lansat satellite images. Orbiting the Earth once every 85 minutes since 1972, the NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat orbiters have snapped millions of images of Earth.
