A bugged life: Warm winter could mean more insects

Awakened from hibernation underground, in rotting wood and the cracks of your house, bugs are on the rise. Ants, termites, mosquitoes, ladybugs and ticks are up early and looking for breakfast.

Orkin, the pest control company, recently said its agents nationwide are reporting a 30 percent increase in calls to treat ant infestations compared with this time last year. Termite swarms do not normally show up until the end of March, but Orkin received 85 termite-control calls in February.

An Orkin branch in Montgomery County, which serves the District, has already responded to mosquito sightings this year. And the National Pest Management Association, based in Fairfax, issued an early warning of ticks, possibly carrying Lyme disease, lurking in back yards.

County agricultural extension agents across the country are sending out bug alerts to farmers.

“These things are coldblooded,” said Mike Raupp, a professor of entomology at the University of Maryland. “Whenever we have a warm winter, they’re going to be out earlier. How do you stop them? You pray for cold weather.”

A mild winter is not great for all bugs, including some highly beneficial insects. Some were up and about when they should have been idle and hibernating, burning less energy, experts say. When this happens, they gobble the food they stored for the winter and emerge into a world where food is scarce. Many starve.

Hawaii County police investigate theft of 1,200 pounds of longan fruit

Hawaii County police are investigating the theft of 1,200 pounds of longan fruit from several farms in Kurtistown on the east side of Hawaii island.

Twenty longan plants and more than 1,200 pounds of the fruit were reported stolen between Feb. 21 and Thursday, police said.

Anyone with information about the thefts is asked to call officers Scott Amaral or Sandor Finkey at 965-2718 or police at 935-3311. Anonymous tips can be made to Crime Stoppers at 961-8300 in Hilo or 329-8181 in Kona.

The fruit, also known as dragon’s eye, has a golden-brown skin with a translucent inner flesh, according to the website for Hula Brothers, which ships longan from Kurtistown.

Police didn’t give a value for the stolen fruit, but Hula Brothers is selling an 8-pound case of longan for $64.95 through its website. The price includes shipping.

Hawaii County police investigate theft of 1,200 pounds of longan fruit – Hawaii News – Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Saving desert tortoises is a costly hurdle for solar projects

Stubborn does not come close to describing the desert tortoise, a species that did its evolving more than 220 million years ago and has since remained resolutely prehistoric.

Its slowpoke take on biological adaptation has exposed modern vulnerabilities. The persnickety reptile is today beset by respiratory infections and prone to disease. Its only defenses are the shell on its back and the scent of its unspeakably foul urine.

At the $2.2-billion BrightSource Energy solar farm in the Ivanpah Valley, the tortoise brought construction to a standstill for three months when excavation work found far more animals than biologists expected.

BrightSource has spent $56 million so far to protect and relocate the tortoises, but even at that price, the work has met with unforeseen calamity: Animals crushed under vehicle tires, army ants attacking hatchlings in a makeshift nursery and one small tortoise carried off to an eagle nest, its embedded microchip pinging faintly as it receded.

History has shown the tortoise to be a stubborn survivor, withstanding upheavals that caused the grand dinosaur extinction and ice ages that wiped out most living creatures. But unless current recovery efforts begin to gain traction, this threatened species could become collateral damage in the war against fossil fuels.

South Africa’s last tea farm tries to bounce back after costly pay dispute

Thulami Mtembu has worked at Magwa tea farm for 33 years. For him it’s more than a job. “It’s the smell. Every day I come here I feel so refreshed,” he says. “I love the aroma of the tea bush. The conditions here make our tea special.”

The fragrant, lime-green bushes stretch away to the horizon at the biggest tea plantation in the southern hemisphere. It is a deceptively tranquil scene. Magwa has been racked by strikes, violence and financial strife that have brought production to a standstill and put its future in doubt.

The crisis encapsulates South Africa’s struggle to realise the potential of its wealth of natural resources. It is a story of low or unpaid wages, powerful unions, political inertia and allegations of financial mismanagement. It is a stark example of self-destruction.

The 1,800-hectare (4,450 acre) Magwa farm outside Lusikisiki in Eastern Cape province is blessed with an ideal climate and soil type for growing tea. At its peak five years ago it came close to profitability, producing 2.7m tonnes of tea in a season, sold in advance to countries including Britain, China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The farm employed 1,200 permanent and 2,300 seasonal workers.

But when the market shrank and the tea price declined, the problems began.

DESIGNATING FEBRUARY AS HAWAIIAN GROWN CACAO MONTH.

hawaii-agriculture-logoHOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 1589
TWENTY-SIXTH LEGISLATURE, 2011
STATE OF HAWAII
H.B. NO. 1589 H.D.1
A BILL FOR AN ACT

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. The legislature finds that cacao of the theobroma cacao tree, the dried and fermented seed from which chocolate is made, is native to the central and western Amazon region and is widely distributed throughout the humid tropical regions with commercial production concentrated in Brazil, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia, and Nigeria.

The legislature finds that the cacao industry in Hawaii is in its infancy stage with fewer than thirty growers and a total acreage of approximately fifty acres, but holds the promise of helping diversified agriculture markets. The University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources has conducted a series of meetings, including the one-day workshop entitled “Future of Cacao in Hawaii’ held October 23, 2008, involving key stakeholders in the local cacao industry and representatives statewide to strategize on methods for positioning Hawaii in the growing cacao market.

Safety concerns, industry changes push U.S. to rethink approach to food inspection

Every day, inspectors in white hats and coats take up positions at every one of the nation’s slaughterhouses, eyeballing the hanging carcasses of cows and chickens as they shuttle past on elevated rails, looking for bruises, tumors and signs of contamination.

It’s essentially the way U.S. Department of Agriculture food safety inspectors have done their jobs for a century, ever since Upton Sinclair’s blockbuster novel, “The Jungle,” exposed horrid conditions in a Chicago meatpacking facility and shook Americans awake to the hazards of tainted food.

But these days, the bulk of what Americans eat — seafood, vegetables, fruit, dairy products, shelled eggs and almost everything except meat and poultry — is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. And the FDA inspects the plants it oversees on average about once a decade.

These radically different approaches are a legacy from a time when animal products were thought to be inherently risky and other food products safe. But in the past few years, the high-profile and deadly outbreaks of food-borne illness linked to spinach, peanuts and cantaloupe have put the lie to that assumption.

The FDA’s approach is partly by necessity: The agency lacks the money to marshal more inspectors.

But it also reflects a different philosophy about how to address threats to the nation’s food supply: an approach based on where the risk is greatest.

The agency concentrates its limited inspections on food products that have the worst track record on safety — seafood, for example — and on companies with a history of problems. It puts most of its efforts into responding to outbreaks after the fact, using genetic fingerprinting and other scientific tools to track contaminants back to their source in hopes of stopping any further spread.