Foot-and-mouth disease virus is a highly contagious pathogen that spreads rapidly among livestock and is capable of causing widespread agricultural and economic devastation.
They said the crisis stems from an extraordinarily unlucky convergence of bad weather, poor agricultural policy, economic devastation and a deterioration in Indonesia's distribution network caused by last May's riots.
On October 17, a massive dust storm hit Lubbock, Texas, adding to already significant agricultural and environmental devastation across the South this year.
The devastation of agricultural industrialization spilled over America to Europe and the rest of the world.
Grasshoppers are capable of causing widespread devastation of the agricultural crops grown in many countries throughout the world.
Pollan's book reveals many disturbing things about modern agricultural practices, including the environmental devastation wrought by nitrogen fertilizers and the harmful health impacts of a diet based on foods processed from corn.
Faced with a 12-year-long drought, which brought fatal brush fires to its cities and devastation to its agricultural communities, Australia's state and federal governments agreed in 2007 to manage their water "in the national interest rather than on jurisdictional or sectoral based views," in the words of the federal environment minister.
Furthermore, they cause indirect devastation by significantly reducing agricultural productivity and nutrient availability, exacerbating poverty and deepening disparities.
This was notably a period in which the agricultural sector was recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Gilbert.
The truth is that the devastation that dams and wasteful agricultural policies have wreaked in the Sacramento delta ecosystem has produced an economic holocaust all its own, just conveniently out of sight of the valley farmers and their mouthpieces.
It assists advocates who have won the RFK Human Rights Award to boldly confront injustices such as modern day slavery in U.S. agricultural fields, torture in Darfur, and the devastation along the hurricane battered Gulf Coast.
