Sharing the Ascension Experience
In Somalia, the first shipment of food was delivered Wednesday to Mogadishu, the first shipment since the official declaration of a famine just over a week ago. But the U.N. said it cannot get aid to more than two million people who are unable to flee the country’s south – territories controlled by rebels linked … Read more
An unfortunate mix of drought, failed harvests and rising food prices have brought severe food shortages to the east and the Horn of Africa. The severe food crisis is already affecting around 10 million people in parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Rains have failed over two seasons, with a strong La Niña event … Read more
Managing the Mautam The predator satiation hypothesis holds that by fruiting at the same time, a plant population increases the survival rate of their seeds by flooding the area with fruit so that even if predators eat their fill, there will still be seeds left over. Certain species of bamboo, for instance, have a flowering … Read more
The cricket ball-sized flowers have sprouted along entire lengths of bamboo stalks to produce a huge volume of seeds that attract thousands of rats, which feed on them as they are very nutritious, say agriculture and forest experts.And the flowers are threatening to create a famine, a phenomenon the district has witnessed every 50 years … Read more
Nearly 500,000 Indian farmers are facing the prospect of famine as a plague of rats that strikes once every 50 years threatens to destroy their crops, rice paddies and village granaries. Efforts to control the rodent plague in the north east Indian state of Mizoram have led the local government to offer a reward of … Read more
When mautam struck Mizoram last during 1959, the unofficial figure for the death toll was between 10,000 and 15,000A bamboo shoot flowers only once during its lifetime, after which the plant dies. Gregarious flowering – when large clumps of the plant spread over a vast area bloom simultaneously – occurs every 48 years or so, … Read more