Tag Archives: Farmers

Drug resistance in people and animals may push millions into poverty

The mcr-1 plasmid-borne colistin resistance gene has been found primarily in Escherichia coli, pictured.

By Alex Whiting

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – If drug-resistant infections in people and animals are allowed to spread unchecked, some 28 million people will fall into poverty by 2050, and a century of progress in health will be reversed, the World Bank said on Monday.

By 2050, annual global GDP would fall by at least 1.1 percent, although the loss could be as much as 3.8 percent – the equivalent of the 2008 financial crisis – the Bank said in a report released ahead of a high-level meeting on the issue at the United Nations in New York this week.

The rise of “superbugs” resistant to drugs has been caused partly by the increased use and misuse of antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs in the treatment of people and in farming.

“We cannot afford to lose the gains in the last century brought about by the antibiotic era,” Tim Evans, the World Bank’s senior director for health, nutrition and population, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“By any measure, the cost of inaction on antimicrobial resistance is too great, it needs to be addressed urgently and resolutely,” he said.

Greater quantities of antibiotics are used in farming than for treating people, and much of this is for promoting animal growth rather than treating sick animals, economist Jim O’Neill said in a report in May commissioned by the British government.

The O’Neill report estimated that drug-resistant infections could kill more than 10 million people a year by 2050, up from half a million today, and the costs of treatment would soar.

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Farmers too will be greatly affected. The bank estimates that by 2050, global livestock production could fall by between 2.6 percent and 7.5 percent a year, if the problem of drug resistant superbugs is not curbed.

“Investments are urgently needed to establish basic veterinary public health capacities in developing countries,” Evans said.

Improved disease surveillance, diagnostic laboratories to ensure a disease is identified quickly, inspections of farms and slaughterhouses, training of vets, and oversight over the use of antibiotics are also needed, he said.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates 60,000 tonnes of antimicrobials are used in livestock each year, a number set to rise with growing demand for animal products.

One of the most important ways to curb the spread of drug resistant microbes in food is to promote good farming practices, said Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer of FAO.

“I think this is where we can do most of our prevention – better knowledge on hygiene, vaccination campaigns, so these animals do not get sick and need antimicrobials (drugs),” Lubroth said in an interview from Rome.

Public demand for food that is uncontaminated, and better training of health professionals – doctors and vets – are also vital to help contain the problem, he added.

Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies also need to do more to treat their waste, he said.

The World Bank estimates that an investment of some $9 billion a year is needed in veterinary and human health to tackle the issue.

“The expected return on this investment is estimated to be between $2 trillion and $5.4 trillion … or at least 10 to 20 times the cost, which should help generate political will necessary to make these investments,” Evans said.

(Reporting by Alex Whiting, Editing by Ros Russell.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Monsoon rains arrive at India’s Kerala coast

A commuter jumps from a bus during a heavy rain shower at a bus stop in Kochi

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Annual monsoon rains arrived at the Kerala coast in southern India on Wednesday, a day later than forecast, a weather office source said, easing fears over farm and economic growth after two straight droughts hit rural income and agricultural output.

The monsoon delivers nearly 70 percent of rains that India needs to water farms, and recharge reservoirs and aquifers. Nearly half of India’s farmlands, without any irrigation cover, depend on annual June-September rains to grow a number of crops.

“We’ll soon make an announcement that the monsoon has arrived and it has already covered Kerala,” the source said.

After its April forecast of above average rains this year, the weather office on May 15 said the monsoon would arrive by June 7.

Despite the slight delay, the monsoon would not set back crop sowing and rains are expected to make rapid progress after their arrival, India Meteorological Department chief Laxman Singh Rathore told Reuters last month.

Farmers plant rice, cane, corn, cotton and oilseeds during the rainy months of June and July. Harvest starts from October.

Of its 1.3 billion population, more than 60 percent of people in India depend on agriculture to eke out a living.

Jettisoning a statistical method introduced under British colonial rule in the 1920s, India’s meteorology office is spending $60 million on a new supercomputer to improve the accuracy of one of the world’s most vital weather forecasts in time for next year’s rains.

(Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Biju Dwarakanath)

New Kind of Troubles for Drought Ravaged California

California is sinking because of the four year drought that has farmers digging deeper and deep down in order to find groundwater for their crops, resulting in a higher risk of flooding,

Nearly half of America’s fruits, vegetables and nuts are produced in California. As farmers dig deeper down to find water, the land gradually starts to cave in, an effect scientists refer to as subsidence. Some parts of California are settling lower at a rate of two inches a month

According to Michelle Sneed of the United States Geological Survey, the area being permanently affected by subsidence is enormous, stretching about 1,200 square miles, roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island.Because of this sinking  problem, when rains eventually do come the flooding will destroy the crops while also washing away more of the land.

Sinking land is not the only problem faced by California farmers.

Anger is building in central California at state and federal agencies, who are being blocked by environmentalists from pumping water from rivers onto their arid lands, farmers blame both regulations and the agencies and activists who go to court to enforce them.

“These are communities who rely almost solely upon agricultural production or agri-business activities,” Gayle Holman, spokeswoman for the nation’s largest agricultural water supplier, the Westlands Water District, told FoxNews.com. “If we continue down this path, we will most likely see our food production turn to foreign soil. We could lose the economic engine that agriculture brings to our nation.”

California continues to pray for rain and in the hopes that the forecasted El Nino this winter will offer relief, although many are concerned that too much rain could be just as much of a disaster as this historic drought.