Xinhua: The 75th International Green Week in Berlin, the world’s largest agricultural and food fair opened doors to the public Friday. Some 1,600 exhibitors from 56 countries will show visitors their best agriculture products, livestock, farm machines, garden tools and newly-developed technologies. Organizers of the fair were expected to receive 400,000 people over the next 10 days, with Hungary as this year’s guest of honor. Various sample foods and drinks, traditional and modern, …

div class=”track”img alt=”” src=”http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/87201?ns=guardianpageName=Country+diary%3A+New+Forest%3AArticle%3A1337656ch=Environmentc3=Guardianc4=Environment%2CRural+affairs%2CUK+news%2CNew+Forest%2CTravelc6=Graham+Longc7=10-Jan-16c8=1337656c9=Articlec10=Featurec11=Environmentc13=Country+diary+%28environment%29c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FRural+affairs” width=”1″ height=”1″ //divp class=”standfirst”New Forest/pp/ppMany eyes watch this landscape. A buzzard sits in a strategic tree. As motionless as a china ornament, it absorbs the snow-covered undulations beyond the hedge. Without doubt, the frosted surface carries the tracks of rabbits. These indentations, two alongside each other followed by a pair, one behind the other, slightly separated, show where they forage for food. For this bird, patience and stillness will deliver a warm meal./ppNot far away, a cormorant stands on the Avon’s bank, taking in every movement in the fast-flowing water. Displaced from its more regular feeding grounds in Blashford’s flooded gravel pits, now largely iced over, this piscatorial predator will diminish the river’s already depleted fish stocks. Close by one of the streams cutting through the water meadows, seven brownish-grey cygnets graze thawing grass. Though still drab-billed, already their sombre plumage is being replaced by maturity’s white. Soon they will be indistinguishable in the throng of swans that winter here./ppBut there are other observers too. Some, such as Clive Chatters, chairman of the New Forest national park authority, want people to notice and understand the floral riches of this important tract of countryside. His recent publication a href=”http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flowers-Forest-Plants-People-National/dp/1903657199″ title=”Flowers of the Forest”Flowers of the Forest/a guides the reader through the area’s many different habitats, drawing attention to the host of plants – both rare and common – that are here to be admired. All that is needed is an inquisitive mind, a little understanding, and the willingness to take time to stop and use one’s eyes./ppA few, however, view the scene with different intent. Even before last month’s diary had appeared, the ­berried female mistletoe on the hawthorn near Godshill had been cut away, leaving just a fragment of its once fine growth. What hope now that the male plant below can have a ­procreative year?/pdiv class=”related” style=”float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;”ullia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/ruralaffairs”Rural affairs/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/newforest”New Forest/a/li/ul/divdiv class=”guRssAdvert”a href=”http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Environmentspacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12636665579594833910217848762246″img src=”http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Environmentspacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12636665579594833910217848762246″ border=”0″ //a/divdiv class=”author”a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/grahamlong”Graham Long/a/divbr/div class=”terms”a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk”guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our a href=”http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html”Terms Conditions/a | a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds”More Feeds/a/divp style=”clear:both” /

div class=”track”img alt=”” src=”http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/92134?ns=guardianpageName=Touring+Rwanda%3AArticle%3A1336543ch=Travelc3=Guardianc4=Rwanda+%28Travel%29%2CAfrica+%28Travel%29%2CWildlife+holidays%2CSafaris%2CMountains+%28environment%29%2CMuseums+%28Culture%29%2CSwimming+%28travel%29%2CTravel%2CDemocratic+Republic+of+Congo+%28Travel%29%2CUganda+%28Travel%29%2CBurundi+%28Travel%29c6=Homa+Khaleelic7=10-Jan-16c8=1336543c9=Articlec10=Featurec11=Travelc13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FTravel%2FRwanda” width=”1″ height=”1″ //divp class=”standfirst”Rwanda’s silverbacks have been drawing a trickle of intrepid tourists for years but there’s more to the country than these magnificent beasts/pp”You cannot fall off, and if you do, I will catch you,” Imaani lied cheerfully. Celebrating my first day in Rwanda – and Africa – with my first ever motorbike ride, I was terrified. With a helmet that bounced off my head at every bump, I clung to the back of one of the two-wheeled taxis that ply the capital’s streets, shutting my eyes./ppLuckily, when I responded to Imaani’s pleas and looked around, the scenery was enough to distract even the most nervous passenger. Kigali, with its 1 million-strong population, creeps up four of the emerald ridges that give the country its nickname, “the land of a thousand hills”, before sinking into the mist-filled valleys between. Officially the most densely populated country in Africa, Rwanda’s small size (about half that of Scotland) means even its capital has a peaceful, village air. One sophisticated woman from the Ivory Coast who I met on the plane confided ruefully: “People stay at home with their families at night. We say it is a place for retired people.” Sure enough, it doesn’t take long for the shiny banks and tangled market streets to give way to lush farms, and neatly dressed office workers to women totingnbsp;hands of bananas on their heads./ppWe arrived in mid December – the tail end of the rainy season when bougainvillea and frangipani flowers stud the endless green of the hills. Now, with my sister bumping over the potholes on a motorbike next to me, we had an exhilarating drive along a steep mud road up the hill after which the city is named, Mount Kigali.nbsp;Whizzing past waving children, robed dancers and a church choir singing in the open air, we could only smile in delight at the postcard-perfect scenes of rural life./ppOur motorcycle ride provided a much-needed shot of holiday euphoria after an emotional morning. There are few unmissable sites in Kigali, but the a href=”http://www.kigalimemorialcentre.org/old/index.html” title=””genocide memorial centre/a is definitely one of them. Here, we wandered through carefully tended gardens and flowering trellises to the concrete-covered mass graves of a quarter of million genocide victims; with new bodies brought in every year. It’s a heart-stopping reminder of the scale of the violence in 1994 when more than 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis, were massacred in just 100 days in a a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/18/survived-rwanda-genocide” title=””campaign of organised violence/a, carried out largely by the majority Hutu population./ppAlongside an explanation of the history that led to the genocide (where the blame is squarely placed on colonial “divide and rule” tactics), one room documents the chilling fate of child victims: their names, ages and favourite foods all carefully noted next to the brutal ways they were killed. One Rwandan woman was so overcome with grief watching a video of the aftermath of the killings, she lay quietly sobbing on the floor./ppWith such a horrific recent past, it’s unsurprising that Rwanda is far from being a tourist hot spot. But in the last 16 years the country has been completely transformed, and this is finally being mirrored in the rising number of tourists willing to give it a try. Today it is taboo to talk about Hutus or Tutsis, and the push to enforce a sense of unity on the population is visible everywhere. Each place we visited had its own memorials to those lost in the violence. Road signs that elsewhere would caution against speeding, in Rwanda remind people to stand together for fear of another genocide. With the semi-traditional courts that tried most of those accused of the genocide due to be wound up this year, the country seems ready and determined to look to the future./ppMost importantly, perhaps, Rwanda is stable. Keen to cement this, the government has recently improved its relationship with the Democratic Republic of Congo, which it borders. And it’s not just local ties that have been strengthened. In November, Rwanda became the newest member of the Commonwealth – only the second country not formerly a British colony to be admitted to the association (after Mozambique). The move came after English became the official language for schools to teach in, a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/14/rwanda-france” title=””ousting French/a in 2008./ppThe sense of optimism created by the fast-growing economy, low corruption and decreasing crime rate has seen Rwandans from neighbouring Uganda and Burundi flooding home. The government seems anxious to make sure that the rapid growth doesn’t damage the environment, and the country has a head start thanks to the Rwandans’ fierce sense of civic pride. On the last Saturday of each month, every citizen over the age of 18 has to take part in emumuganda (/emcommunal work). Businesses are closed, and everyone spends the day improving their neighbourhoods. As a result, Rwanda is remarkably litter free, and when our driver, Twalib, suspects I am about to drop a Coke can he almost wrestles me to the ground in horror. In a bid to sidestep one of the scourges of the modern world Rwanda has even banned plastic bags. At Kigali airport a polite security guard immediately spots our duty-free carrier and removes it to protect the country’s natural beauty./ppAnd there is a breathtaking amount of beauty to protect. It was worth our stumbling flight – from London to Nairobi to Bujumbura and Kigali – for the early morning drive to a href=”http://www.rwandatourism.com/parks.htm” title=””Volcanoes national park/a. At dawn, as the dark lifted, the mist remained, turning the hill tops into islands in a seascape of cloud. The red road coiled around the hills, passing terraced fields of beans, and roadside markets with men and women carrying baskets of pineapples, bushels of banana leaves, and even carpets on their heads. Our destination was the volcanic range the Virungas, home to Rwanda’s famous a href=”http://www.rwandatourism.com/primate.htm” title=””mountain gorillas/a. With around 750 left in the wild, they are carefully protected. Only about 50 people a day are allowed to trek to see them, with each group of visitors allowed an audience with the gorillas for one hour./ppOur walk started among the scented eucalyptus groves of the valley, where excited local children chased us along the road, taking time out from their chores to show us their tree-climbing skills. Our group of five was accompanied by a guide, trackers and a ranger with a gun to scare away any stray buffalo. Many rangers are literally poachers turned gamekeepers; in a bid to stop people from the nearby farms poaching the park’s animals, they were given jobs there./ppSlipping and sliding up the muddy hillside, we trudged through eerie bamboo forests and yelped in fields of vicious stinging nettles. The ground beneath us was a tangle of roots and stalks, and as difficult to balance on as a cat’s cradle. But the views were incredible. In the distance were the jagged edges of three of the volcanoes that give the park its name; below us the farmland with its black volcanic soil; and all around the changing green of the hills./ppThen suddenly, protruding from the greenery, appeared a massive head – the silverback, leader of the gorilla family we were tracking. We were still recovering from the shock of seeing such a huge, wild animal just feet away when there was a rustle from a bamboo clump and out plopped a baby gorilla, all fluffy fur and liquid eyes. Catapulting from another branch, his brother landed on top of him, and they beat their tiny chests in mock anger./ppScreams in the distance told our guide that two females were fighting. The wall of muscle that was the silverback immediately set off to sort it out. As we scrambled to get out of the way, the family haughtily stalked right through our group, close enough to touch but confident in the knowledge that we would not dare accost them. In a nearby clearing a youngster stretched out, arms behind his head, watching us as his mother groomed him. It’s possible to stay for days in the park, and many tourists spend their whole holiday visiting the gorillas and trying to spot the rare golden monkeys the area is also famous for./ppAnxious to see what else the country has to offer, we headed south to Gisenyi, on the edge of lake Kivu. As we approached, the evening sky was lit up by the beautiful but unnerving glow of Nyiragongo, an active volcano (it erupted again two weeks after we left).Lake Kivu is one of the African Great Lakes, running for 100km along the Congolese-Rwandan border. More like an inland sea, its shore is clustered with hotels offering windsurfing and kayaking. In the early morning we bartered with a sleepy boatman for a trip in his water-taxi, heading out towards Congo, whose chaotic presence (in 2009 it was fifth on the a href=”http://www.fundforpeace.orga’s index of failed states) dominates Gisenyi as much as the lake. With the terraced hills, coffee plantations and banana plants spreading out behind us, relaxing on the lake was just what we needed after our mountain trek. As we floated lazily to the shore, we saw a group of young dancers practising a routine: girls in red polka-dot skirts expertly balanced pots on their heads as they swayed while boys in colourful headdresses waited to join in./ppAway from the lake, Gisenyi is a busy, messy border town. Strolling through the market we bought beautiful printed cloth from traders who found our laboured attempts to speak Kinyarwanda so comic that they lowered their prices. The border itself was fascinating: laidback guards checking through the woven baskets of shoppers and waving through neatly dressed schoolchildren in spotless white shirts. Across from no-man’s land is the ramshackle city of Goma, where we glimpsed dusty, corrugated roofs next to huge white mansions./ppMy first trip to Africa wouldn’t have been complete without a safari, and luckily Rwanda’s eastern border provided the perfect opportunity. Through valleys where tiny children herded goats as big as themselves, past houses with mud walls and groves of banana plants, we arrived at the savannahs of the a href=”http://www.rwanda-direct.com/rwanda-akagera-park/” title=””Akagera national park/a. Famous for its birds, crocodiles and hippos, the park has been protected since 1934 – although it has shrunk since the genocide, with land commandeered for returning refugees./ppDespite the array of wildlife, there are few visitors. At the Akagera Lodge in the heart of the park – with staggering views – we met a contented couple who told us they were the sole guests. Driving through the high grass we saw only one other car, and the sense of isolation just added to my mounting excitement. We saw a herd of bouncing impala deer – affectionately known as the McDonald’s of Africa because they are so common every predator eats them – and when we finally spotted a giraffe I could hardly stop myself from jumping out of the car to get a closer look. Five minutes later we were staring awestruck at a grazing group of zebras who stared calmly back. The bad-tempered buffalo were less impressed by our 4×4, pawing the ground until we moved off, their ungainly shapes thrown into relief by the slim, white egrets at their feet. On our way to the park’s lake Ihema we passed baboons and bushbucks, and even spotted a warthog./ppThis lake, set among papyrus swamps, is home to huge a href=”http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/nile-crocodile.html” title=””Nile crocodiles/a, which can reach 20ft, which made our boat ride across it slightly nerve-wracking. We didn’t spot any quite that big, but it was pretty hair-raising to see them swish into the water after our tiny craft. Floating past a pod of hippopotami skulking in the shallows, it was hard to imagine they could do any damage until one yawned, displaying its massive teeth. The lake’s delicate beauty is mirrored in the dazzling array of birds. On an island in the centre we spotted fish eagles and herons, while the shores are home to the ugly “undertaker bird”, an alarming mix of stork and vulture. Stay for longer and you may be rewarded with a glimpse of the park’s tiny lion, leopard or hyena population./ppBut for us it was back to Kigali, and one final night to find out if my Ivory Coast informant was right about Rwandan nightlife. Sadly, with the main nightclub closed for the night, it turned out that she was, but with the scenery I’d found, I wasn’t complaining./ppstrongGetting there/strongbr /emAn 11-day Rwanda tour with /ema href=”http://www.rainbowtours.co.uk/index.php?id=14″ title=”Rainbow Tours”emRainbow Tours/em/aem (0845 277 3330) costs from £2,985 per person. The price includes return flights to Kigali from London via Nairobi, three nights in Nyungwe national park, one night in Kibuye on Lake Kivu, two nights at Hotel Gorillas in Ruhengeri, two nights in Kigali and two nights at Akagera Game Lodge, a private vehicle and driver/guide throughout, all meals, park entrance fees and gorilla permit. /ema href=”http://www.kenya-airways.com/home/” title=”Kenya Airways”emKenya Airways/em/aem flies to Kigali via Nairobi from £540 rtn inc tax./embr /strongFurther information/strongbr /emThe /ema href=”http://www.ambarwanda.org.uk/” title=”Rwandan High Commission”emRwandan High Commission/em/aem, 120-122 Seymour Place, London, W1 (+44 (0) 20-7224 9832)./em/pdiv class=”related” style=”float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;”ullia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/rwanda”Rwanda/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/africa”Africa/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/wildlifeholidays”Wildlife holidays/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/safaris”Safaris/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/mountains”Mountains/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/museums”Museums/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/swimming-holidays”Swimming holidays/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/democraticrepublicofcongo”Democratic Republic of Congo/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/uganda”Uganda/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/burundi”Burundi/a/li/ul/divdiv class=”guRssAdvert”a href=”http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Travelspacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12636665579665989133062455557651″img src=”http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Travelspacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12636665579665989133062455557651″ border=”0″ //a/divdiv class=”author”a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/homa-khaleeli”Homa Khaleeli/a/divbr/div class=”terms”a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk”guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our a href=”http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html”Terms Conditions/a | a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds”More Feeds/a/divp style=”clear:both” /

div class=”track”img alt=”” src=”http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/35700?ns=guardianpageName=British+supermarkets+at+root+of+vegetable+supply+problem%3AArticle%3A1337913ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Food+%28Environment%29%2CFood+safety+%28News%29%2CUK+news%2CPolitics%2CGordon+Brown%2CEnvironmentc6=Felicity+Lawrencec7=10-Jan-15c8=1337913c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FFood” width=”1″ height=”1″ //divp class=”standfirst”Demand for carrots shoots up due to panic buying as Downing Street warned about crop shortage/pp/ppIn a busy week for the Chilcot inquiry and with an election campaign looming, you might think the prime minister would have more to worry about than the nation’s vegetables. Since the food price spikes of two and a half years ago, however, Gordon Brown has been known to keep a close eye on the country’s shopping baskets, and on Monday morning root veg took its place alongside the prime minister’s presentation of his election campaign team. Carrots and some green vegetables might run out because of the snow, Downing street was warned. There were also problems with the national supply of milk./ppJust a week after the publication of the government’s report on UK food security, the record cold snap brought the fragility of our hi-tech food system into sharp focus. By today, as the ice continued its rapid thaw, it was clear that the system had held – just – but the cracks bad weather could cause had been exposed and the disputes about whether the powerful retailers or the farmers at the bottom of the chain should pick up the bill were beginning./ppAbout 80% of all supermarket supplies of carrots now come from just 10 major packers in East Anglia, Scotland and the north of England. At this time of year, more than half the carrots the UK eats have to make their way from north-east Scotland, where the fields over the past fortnight have been frozen, to centralised distribution depots and back out again to stores./ppThe UK’s milk supply has become very concentrated too: some 60% of our fresh milk has to travel from farms around the country to six locations for processing before being trucked back hundreds of miles up and down icy motorways to customers./ppIn Inverness-shire this week, one of the largest suppliers of organic carrots to the big retailers and a key Tesco contractor, Tio Ltd, battled the elements to get each day’s supermarket orders out “by the skin of our teeth”, according to senior manager Stephen Ryan./ppWhereas in the recent past the carrot harvest would have been lifted at the end of the autumn and stored, now the carrots are kept in the fields through the winter, covered with thick layers of straw and dug up just in time to meet supermarket orders day by day, Ryan said./pp”They’ve got 2ft of snow on top of them and it’s taking twice as long to harvest them,” Ryan said. “It’s a challenge to keep the water in the factory flowing to wash them with temperatures of minus 12 degrees. We’ve had lots of breakdowns.”/ppA mixture of panic buying and demand for warming meals saw orders double just when conditions were harshest. The company brought in 25 agency workers and ran extra night and weekend shifts to cope./pp”We’ve managed to get all the deliveries to the depots, though some have been running hours late. There’s not as much slack in the system as there used to be, especially from Scotland, because the distances things have to travel are so big,” Ryan said. The thaw promises to bring just as many problems with harvesting as fields become waterlogged./ppIn East Anglia, growers have also had to throw labour at the problems to keep up. Sarah Pettitt, chair of the National Farmers’ Union board of horticultural growers, estimates that her brassica company has seen a 100% increase in its costs in the cold weather, like most other vegetable growers she knows./ppFor two weeks, Pettitt’s broccoli could not be lifted. Extra workers, mainly Lithuanian and Bulgarian migrants, have been needed across East Anglia to harvest in snow-covered fields where mechanical harvesters have been unable to work, and to run thawing lines in packhouses. Extra shifts have been on grading machines to pick out damaged and rotten vegetables./ppShe said there was “absolute frustration” among producers that the costs of keeping supply lines going were not being shared by supermarkets, which set prices up to a year in advance. “We’ve been blowing our brains out to keep continuity of supply to them, but there’s no suggestion that the costs will be repaid. Bring on the supermarket ombudsman.”/ppAsda’s main carrot supplier, MH Poskitt, in Yorkshire, also reported “huge operational difficulties”. It managed to keep up, but with a 40% increase in labour costs, most of which it expected to absorb itself. “You have to take the rough with the smooth – it’s a long-term, very good relationship with the retailers,” Guy Poskitt said. “Transport has been very tough,” he added. “We’ve all become a bit complacent because we haven’t seen weather like this for a long time.”/ppFor the dairy sector, which has seen many farmers giving up their herds in the face of persistently low supermarket prices, losses resulting from the weather have been a particularly hard blow./ppNick Tyler, a large-scale dairy farmer with 600 cows in Wiltshire, lost £11,000-worth of milk last week when the processor’s tanker failed to turn up and he was forced to throw it away. He is contracted to Dairy Crest, one of the big processors for the supermarkets, which in turn contracts its haulage to Wincanton./pp”They didn’t even phone, they just didn’t turn up,” Tyler said. “We’d salted the road to the dairy, and the feed lorries managed to get in, but they didn’t come to collect.” He woke to face four to five inches of fresh snow on Wednesday and a fight to work out which of the companies, if either, would pay. His local supermarket, meanwhile, was repeatedly out of milk and rationing customers to one loaf of bread./ppThe structure of today’s milk industry has made it more vulnerable to bad weather. The milk travels further to fewer, larger processors, which use larger articulated lorries that are less able to cope with even a slight deterioration in weather than the smaller tankers the Milk Marketing Board used to operate. “It can be mayhem even when conditions aren’t really that bad,” Tyler said./ppHuw Bowles, director of the organic co-operative OMSCO, agrees. “Forty years ago milk was processed closer to where it was produced and delivered back to the same area.” The drive to make industry logistics as economically efficient as possible has also removed any slack. OMSCO has cut the cost of collection by 30% in recent years with these efficiencies but at the price of less resilience. “There are no spare vehicles any more. If the driving speeds are reduced by just 10mph on a nine-hour shift because of snow, they just can’t get round the whole collection; the whole route is affected,” Bowles explained./ppThe lack of collection has hit Liz and Chris Best, organic dairy farmers in the Cotswolds: “The yard’s been freezing, you start at 5.30am and go right through to 8pm at night before you’ve finished, checking water for the cows, defrosting machinery. You clear your driveway so the tanker can get to you and then you wait. Then you get a call saying, sorry he can’t come, and you’ve got to throw everything away before you start milking again in the afternoon. It doesn’t feel right,” Liz Best said./ppSir Don Curry, formerly the government’s top adviser on ­sustainable farming and now the chair of the Better Regulation Executive, hopes that the strain a couple of weeks of cold weather can inflict on the food system will give greater urgency to calls to make it more sustainable./pp”Most retailers have adopted a just-in-time supply chain, so there is not a lot of slack,” he said. “They allow for some variation, but three to four weeks of difficult weather, and suddenly supplies are under threat. That ought to be an early warning for government and the industry. Disruptions to supply are a serious risk and they need to build a cushion.”/ppThis week the government finally announced its delayed decision to set up an ombudsman to tackle abuses of power in the supermarket chain. However, the structure and scope of the new ombudsman’s office is to be the subject of further consultation./pdiv class=”related” style=”float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;”ullia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/food”Food/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/foodsafety”Food safety/a/lilia href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/gordon-brown”Gordon Brown/a/li/ul/divdiv class=”guRssAdvert”a href=”http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Environmentspacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12636665579708872658984495545212″img src=”http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Environmentspacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12636665579708872658984495545212″ border=”0″ //a/divdiv class=”author”a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/felicitylawrence”Felicity Lawrence/a/divbr/div class=”terms”a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk”guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our a href=”http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html”Terms Conditions/a | a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds”More Feeds/a/divp style=”clear:both” /

Reuters: U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Friday that the process for approving federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants has become quot;complicated,quot; but the department still expects to issue its first loan deals very soon. quot;It was more complicated than I thought…these are multibillion dollar loans,quot; Chu told reporters at a lunch briefing at Energy Department headquarters, when he was asked why it was taking so long for the department to make a decision on the loan …

Mongabay: A company in Uganda is pressuring the environment ministry to allow it to log a protected forest reserve to establish a palm oil plantation, reports The New Vision. BIDCO, a Kenyan company, has been lobbying since 2006 to log the forest reserve on Bugala island in Lake Victoria, but has face stiff resistance due to environmental concerns, including deforestation, sedimentation, and biodiversity loss. This time, in a letter written by the agriculture minister, Hope Mwesigye, and …

Mongabay: REDD, responsible logging could help preserve Congo forests, reduce poverty, says report Payments for ecosystem services and sustainable forest management may be key components in maintaining Central Africa’s rainforests as healthy and productive ecosystems, finds a comprehensive assessment of the region’s forests. The review, entitled State of the Forest 2008, was released Thursday at an event hosted by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). …

BBC: Rising sea levels and more storms could mean that parts of at-risk cities will need to be surrendered to protect homes and businesses, a report warns. The authors say that quot;radical thinkingquot; is needed to develop sea defences that can cope with the future threats. About 10 million people in England and Wales live in flood risk areas. The project, launched on Friday, is a joint venture between the Institution of Civil Engineers (Ice) and the Royal Institute of British …

National Public Radio: The further north an arctic shorebird flies, the less likely it is that a foxy predator will gobble the eggs in its nest. A new study suggests that’s one reason why some migratory shorebirds like the white-rumped sandpiper are willing to make exhausting annual journeys that can be more than 18,000 miles round-trip, from their wintering areas at the southern tip of South America to their breeding grounds in the Canadian Arctic. quot;Their migration is a pretty amazing feat,quot; says …

Reuters: Green technologies posed the investment opportunity of our lifetime said Deutsche Bank’s global head of asset management, in a study published on Thursday. A Deutsche Bank report found that companies specialising in energy efficiency and renewable energy such as wind and solar power outperformed peers across the wider global economy last year and expected more to come in 2010. Clear proof of the threat posed by climate change meant that governments will only ramp up steps to …

Guardian: The water level of the river Nile – crucial to the economy in many parts of Uganda, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia – is dropping. Film-maker Andrew Johnstone follows the course of the Nile to discover how climate change is already affecting the river’s farming communities.

Reuters: The European Union’s conditions for moving to a 30 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions over the next decade have not been met, an informal European Commission position paper says. The EU has already set its own internal target of cutting CO2 to 20 percent below 1990 levels over the next decade. It promised ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen in December that it would deepen those cuts to 30 percent if other countries followed suit. quot;In particular due to the insufficient …

Reuters: Japan, one of the world’s top shipping operators, will submit details of its proposal for an international levy on marine fuel ahead of a meeting of the U.N.’s shipping agency in March, a government official said on Friday. Under the proposal, which was first touted last year as an alternative to an idea supported by some European countries to introduce an emissions trading system in the sector, money raised would be used to help cut carbon dioxide emissions relating to shipping in …

Associated Press: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed the first numeric limits in the nation for farm and urban runoff polluting Florida’s waterways, limits supporters say could set precedent and lead to similar federal standards in other states. The agency released its proposed rules after reaching a settlement last year with environmentalists who sued EPA in 2008. They claimed the agency was failing to force Florida to meet requirements under the Clean Water Act, and sought …

Guardian: In a busy week for the Chilcot inquiry and with an election campaign looming, you might think the prime minister would have more to worry about than the nation’s vegetables. Since the food price spikes of two and a half years ago, however, Gordon Brown has been known to keep a close eye on the country’s shopping baskets, and on Monday morning root veg took its place alongside the prime minister’s presentation of his election campaign team. Carrots and some green vegetables might run out …

Scientific American: Researchers have for the first time found a connection between exposure to certain chemicals and insulin resistance, according to a study published in the online edition of Environmental Health Perspectives. A group of European scientists examined whether exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) contributed to insulin resistance, which has been increasing around the world. More than 25 percent of U.S. adults suffer from metabolic conditions stemming from insulin resistance …

Associated Press: A thick layer of smog stubbornly lingering over parts of Utah has fouled the state’s air so badly this week that health officials warned people not to exercise outside and some schools kept children inside for recess and sports. The haze that has obscured Utah’s picture-perfect mountain views for the last several days is blamed on a weather phenomenon called an inversion that pins pollution to the valley floors and doesn’t relent until a major storm blows through. The smog …

Public Agenda: Ghana is positioning herself for a share of the billions of dollars expected to flow to African states, small island nations and other developing nations as a result of the commitments made in the Copenhagen Accord adopted at the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) last December. Under the accord, global leaders committed themselves to provide amounts in the region of $30 billion for the period 2010-2012 …

Business Green: The debate surrounding the relative merits of carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes heated up today after Connie Hedegaard, leading nominee for EU climate commissioner and the chair of last year’s Copenhagen Summit, rejected calls for the introduction of a carbon levy. However, she did not rule out the idea of a carbon tax completely, raising the possibility that an EU charge on carbon emissions could be introduced at a later date. quot;It would be wrong timing at this stage …

Guardian: It’s taken some time to realise that I don’t like to make things easy for myself – but I do like to make things right. A year ago we moved into a detached 1960s four-bedroom house in Brighton. Hardly the designer home one might expect for a man who enthuses about good sustainable design on TV, but it took a year and a half to find this ugly house on a nice streetand I really believe this 1960s-style house offers us a golden eco-friendly opportunity. On the plus side it’s something of …