Each week we’ll round up the latest N.C. agricultural headlines from newspapers across the state and country, as well as excerpts from the stories. Click on the links to go straight to each paper’s full story.
- “Preserving open land,” Winston-Salem Journal: There are some beautiful places in New Jersey, but “the Garden State” is not what most of us envision for North Carolina’s future. It’s too crowded, too developed, too urban and suburban. But North Carolina is rapidly becoming many of those things. A report out this month from Environment North Carolina shows that more than one million acres of what had been undeveloped land fell to the bulldozers during the past decade. Ferrel Guillory, the director of the Program on Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill, has presented a population slide show for years. It consists of maps of North Carolina, through the past 15 or so decades, with little black dots covering the urban areas. The lesson is obvious. What was once a state of a few urban dots and much sparsely populated white space is now just the opposite. In broad expanses, the dots are so crowded together that they can’t be individually discerned. It’s getting harder and harder to find white spots to visit — actually, green spots — where forests and farmland predominate. …
- “Finding power in pig waste,” The News & Observer: In Eastern North Carolina, pig manure is serious business. Hogs outnumber people 3-to-1, and long-standing controversies about the environmental impact continue. Now, a UNC-Chapel Hill associate professor has come up with a way to eliminate the noxious odor and recycle the waste into fuel alcohol and gases that can be used to make electricity. The technology still is not cost-effective, but as the U.S. focuses on alternative sources of energy and utilities face requirements to tap renewable resources, the manure produced by 9 million pigs annually is looking, well, more attractive. “Here is a resource going to waste,” said Jeffrey Macdonald, a UNC associate biomedical engineering professor with a penchant for environmental causes. After Macdonald became co-scientific director at the marine research institute in Beaufort two years ago, an idea germinated during his weekly 3-1/2-hour drives to the coast as sweet-and-sour hog manure odor permeated his car. Barack Obama was running for president, and green technology was a campaign issue. Gas prices topped $4 per gallon, and the marine research institute was in need of research funds. …
- “Smoking China,” WGHP-TV: Despite laws banning smoking in many public places in North Carolina, tobacco remains a huge industry here. It’s still the state’s cash crop, only this time, the cash isn’t the American dollar. …
- “It won’t cluck, but state makes a buck,” The News & Observer: The state held a livestock auction that brought in more than $1,500 for a horse that can’t canter, a cow with no milk and three chickens that have no bones. The animals were the last of a fiberglass menagerie decorated by North Carolina high school students for an art contest in 2008 and displayed around the State Fairgrounds. Some of the other animals were reclaimed by the students who painted them. Others had weathered and been damaged beyond repair and had to be disposed of. The state is keeping a handful of stylized equines to display at the Hunt Horse Complex on the fairgrounds. The state sold the remaining five through closed bidding run by the State Surplus Property Agency. After the bidding closed Tuesday, Jill Lucas, spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration, said each animal drew about 50 offers and increased foot traffic to the surplus property office on N.C. 54 in Raleigh. …
- “Florida freeze makes price of produce skyrocket,” WCNC-TV: The big freeze that ended last week is going to affect your wallet. The prices of fruits and veggies from Florida are skyrocketing. For example, two weeks ago, buyers paid $10 a case for green beans and $7 for squash. Now, those numbers jumped to $47 for beans and $44 for squash. “It’s your beans, your tomatoes, squash, cucumbers,” said Frank Suddreth, manager at the North Carolina State Government Department of Agriculture: Charlotte Regional Farmer’s Market. He says it’s those veggies specifically because “most of those products are about 97 percent water anyway and cold weather just takes them. …