At the beginning of the rains, both food crops and leguminous trees are planted.
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"They pollinate at least 30 per cent of the food crops we consume, " he said.
Biofuels are clearly going down a route that is bringing it into conflict with food crops and biodiversity.
Now the EU is trying to shift biofuel production from food crops to farm waste, algae and straw.
Its form usually depends on the region it comes from and the food crops that are locally available.
The EU is changing its policy on biofuels to encourage energy production from waste rather than from food crops.
Many of these new approaches move beyond the now-traditional problem of the diversion of food crops to produce fuel.
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Using inedible inputs avoids fights about diverting food crops for fuel, and frees the industry from reliance on a single commodity.
This process is exacerbated when insects attack food crops, opening wounds in the plant that provide an opportunity for pathogen invasion.
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The Tennessee team is now working with food crops as well as tobacco, and to extend its studies on gene transfer.
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They can grow in the most hostile of regions such as deserts so don't infringe on land set aside for food crops.
"There's been lots of genetic improvement on food crops for post-harvest handling and that's essentially what we're doing for Christmas trees, " Mr. Frampton said.
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Ethanol produced from food crops is an economic monstrosity that would require far more space than available here to spell out in proper detail.
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In the tropics, the higher temperatures could be expected to cut yields of the primary food crops, maize and rice, by 20-40%, the researchers said.
But the alternative, growing those crops on existing farmland, would encourage the clearance of more land to grow the food crops that had been displaced.
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Food crops, animal feed crops, and cotton all have experienced declines.
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The weather, the decline in food crops, weakened the population certainly.
So-called ornamental crops are a popular alternative to conventional food crops.
He added that the increasing cost-effectiveness of the sequencing process was making it easier to choose strategically informative species rather than focusing on economically important ones, ie food crops.
That means more nutrients in the soil, where it feeds food crops, and less in lakes and streams, where it feeds algae that sucks up oxygen and kills fish.
This opened the door to so-called advanced biofuels that use easy-to-grow, non-food crops to produce fuels that, if they can ever be commercialized, will produce drastic greenhouse gas reductions.
The pesticides, known as organophosphates, are commonly sprayed on food crops and can be found in trace amounts on berries, green beans, and other fruits and vegetables sold in stores.
They argue that it drives up food prices by turning over land that would have been used to produce food crops to those that can be turned into fuel for transport.
Over the past few years, it has convened a series of meetings that brought together leading experts for each of the main food crops, such as wheat, rice, lentils and maize.
In industrialised nations, such as the US and in Europe, many farms employ the services of commercial hives to pollinate fruit trees and food crops, and ensure they harvest adequate yields.
Some scientists have criticized genetic engineering of food crops on both scientific and ethical grounds for many years, but the Cornell study represents some of the first evidence of possible problems associated with genetically engineered food crops.
Although the process to produce ethanol from switchgrass was more complex than using food crops such as wheat or corn, the so-called "second generation" biofuel could produce much higher energy yields per tonne because it utilised the whole plant rather than just the seeds.
If you look at the projections of how much ethanol Congress would like to have made, if we make it from food crops - which is what we're doing right now - we're going to have the price of food pegged to the price of energy.
"The drive for more biofuels means more investment is going into those crops, meaning less land and less investment going in for food crops, causing a massive conflict and resulting in rising prices, which is having a huge negative impact, especially on developing countries, " said Clare Oxborrow, food campaigner for Friends of the Earth.
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