Word: soils
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...acre (177 hectare) Happy Valley tea estate in March, its tea bushes were old, its machinery was obsolete, and its workers had not been paid regular wages for months. Seven months on, the estate's new owners have hired new managers, started regular maintenance of the plants and soil and begun a move to organic farming. Perhaps most important, productivity is inching up. In addition to a guaranteed minimum daily wage of $1.38, workers get incentives to pick more. Darjeeling's oldest tea estate is turning its original factory into a working museum. "Innovation, along with quality and marketing...
Sensors--devices that detect environmental changes--have been around forever in analog form. Traditional thermometers, for instance, use mercury that rises and falls as it responds to temperature changes. More recently, in the information-technology age, network-linked digital sensors are starting to take note of everything from soil conditions to water pollutants to electricity usage. Measurement equals management. The idea is to get optimal use of such resources as fertilizers and energy. But one restriction on modern sensors is that they are built with rigid materials like hard plastic and metal, which give them shape and volume, restricting where...
Their company, Aresa, a Copenhagen-based biotech start-up, has genetically modified a common weed called thale-cress so that its leaves turn red when the plant comes in contact with nitrogen dioxide--a compound that naturally leaches into the soil from unexploded land mines made from plastic and held together by leaky rubber seals. Aresa is growing large patches of the stuff on old army shooting ranges that have been seeded with land mines...
...Last month Britain's Soil Association, which certifies produce as organic, toughened its rules for air-freighted food. Suppliers must show evidence that farmers in developing countries are being paid a fair price, and that there are no local markets for their produce. Anna Bradley, chair of the Soil Association standards board, explained: "It is neither sustainable nor responsible to encourage poorer farmers to be reliant on air freight, but we recognize that building alternative markets that offer the same social and economic benefits as organic exports will take time. Therefore, the Soil Association will be doing...
...planted roof usually comes in one of two varieties: extensive or intensive. The extensive type is wide and shallow, with a soil depth of less than 8 in. (20 cm), able to support smaller plants. The intensive type may be smaller, but it's deeper and home to larger plants. Whatever the design, green roofs are a lot more complicated than ordinary gardens. They have multiple layers beneath the soil, including a filter membrane, a drainage layer, waterproofing, insulation and structural support...