Word: farm
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...rare for a farmer to appreciate the predators that eat the animals he raises. But Miguel Medialdea is hardly an ordinary farmer. Looking out on to the carpet of flamingos that covers one of the lagoons that make up Veta la Palma, the fish farm in southern Spain where he is biologist, Medialdea shrugs. "They take about 20% of our annuel yield," he says, pointing at a blush-colored bird as it scoops up a sea bass. "But that just shows the whole system is working...
With wild fish stocks declining precipitously around the globe, thanks to overfishing and climate change, aquaculture has emerged as perhaps the only viable way to satisfy the world's appetite for fish fingers and maki rolls. In the next few years, consumption of farm-raised fish will surpass that caught in the wild for the first time, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. But most fish farms - even ones heralded as "sustainable" - create as many problems as they solve, from fecal contamination to the threat that escaped cultivated fish pose to the gene pool of their wild...
Veta la Palama is different. In 1982, the family that owns the Spanish food conglomerate Hisaparroz bought wetlands that had been drained for cattle-farming and reflooded them. "They used the same channels built originally to empty water into the Atlantic," explains Medialdea. "Just reversed the flow." Today, that neat little feat of engineering allows the tides to sweep in estuary water, which a pumping station distributes throughout the farm's 45 ponds. Because it comes directly from the ocean, that water teems with microalgae and tiny translucent shrimp, which provide natural food for the fish that Veta la Palma...
...bill gives the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) broad new powers to regulate produce at the farm level and review corporate records on activities ranging from food-processing to pathogen-testing. Inspections that now occur an average of once every 10 years would take place as often as once every six months for certain items. Foreign governments whose companies send high-risk products to the U.S., like seafood from China, would be required to certify that those exports comply with U.S. health standards. (See pictures of urban farms...
...people of Muslim nations on Thursday in Cairo, his visit to the Saudi capital was confined to private meetings with the King - although before beginning his private meetings, Obama did try to connect the two. "We'll be visiting Cairo tomorrow," he said upon arriving at Abdullah's private farm. "I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek His Majesty's counsel and to discuss with him many of the issues that we confront here in the Middle East...