Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time. Or sometimes a little bit later if the diarist is me. I have a terrible habit of cutting things close.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
Pictures of the week come from CNN, The Guardian (wildlife), BBC, BBC Africa, and Yahoo.
This week the news that is perhaps the most important in the sense of its long-term impact is from NBC:
Historic vote to redefine the kilogram changes forever the way we measure mass
Scientists around the world hail "measurement revolution."By David FreemanTalk about massive change. After meeting the needs of science, industry and commerce for more than 130 years, the kilogram has just been fundamentally reinvented.
At a meeting Friday in Versailles, France, representatives from the U.S. and 59 other nations adopted a resolution to define the familiar unit of mass in terms of the Planck constant, an unvarying and infinitesimal number at the heart of quantum physics.
We begin with stories about agriculture, as Thanksgiving is a harvest festival of a sort. This first story comes from Channel News Asia:
New blow to China as African swine fever found in wild boar
BEIJING: China's efforts to stem the spread of African swine fever were dealt a fresh blow on Friday when the agricultural ministry confirmed it had found the first case in a wild boar, deepening a three-month-old crisis for the world's top pork producer.
The country also confirmed the first outbreak in the southwest province of Sichuan, the country's leading pig-herding region, raising the likelihood of a major impact on pork supplies in coming months.
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Honey being sold in Australia could be bulked up with sugar syrup but there is no reliable way to find out, the consumer watchdog has concluded, prompting it to call on the government to develop a new testing regime to protect consumers.
The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission launched an investigation into a number of brands of honey, including one made by Australia's biggest honey producer Capilano, in September following a joint Fairfax Media - ABC investigation.
Also from Australia, this comes from ABC (the Australian version):
Australian-led farming project changes lives in tsunami-ravaged Indonesia
By Rosie KingWhen the world's deadliest tsunami ravaged Indonesia's northern coastline on Boxing Day in 2004, it claimed the lives of almost 170,000 people.
The natural disaster left 62,000 farmers displaced.
Their fields were in ruins, swamped by debris, sediment and salt water, and stripped of vital nutrients.
Bapak Rahmad Kurniadi, an agriculture trainer in the hardest-hit region of Aceh, said the rice fields were covered in sand and mud.
"The biggest challenge we faced after the tsunami was returning the fertility to the soil," he said.
Following the tsunami, foreign aid poured into Indonesia from all over the world.
Non-government organisations were also quick to lend a hand.
But 14 years on, only one organisation remains: the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
From The South African:
Food security in Africa depends on rethinking outdated water law
The study examined water permit systems in Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
A new study has found that outdated, colonial-era water permit systems across Africa are unintentionally criminalising millions of small farmers who can’t obtain permits. This undermines efforts to boost farming production and meet economic growth goals.
The study examined water permit systems in five African countries: Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The permit system was introduced by colonial powers in the 1920s. They were designed to regulate water use in the interests of the colonial project by granting permits only to white settlers.
These systems established minority ownership of a natural resource that was vital for economies dependent on agriculture. African customary water arrangements were ignored and over-ridden.
And from CNBC Africa:
Autonomous farming has arrived, what Africans should know
With Africa on the precipice of its own agriculture revolution it is technologies like these that could speed up the process of putting the continent’s 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated arable land to use
Leah Olson (42), CEO of SeedMaster, Mfg and DOT Technologies is not your typical woman CEO. She is a farmer, hails for Saskatoon, the largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, has an MBA, she is a level two certified rugby coach and is not afraid to apply the principles of rugby in her leadership style. Just like in rugby where you often have the right person in the wrong role and have to move them around, so she does this in the corporate world, Olson tells CNBC Africa during the 2018 Farms.com Precision Agriculture Conference, where she is speaking, a week after getting married. But what is most remarkable about Olson is she is heading up a revolution in farming that will likely have the same impact Ford Motor Company, had on the horse-drawn carriage. She is spearheading the charge into autonomous farming and she says she will do so safely.
One last Agriculture story, this one from December’s edition of The Atlantic (thus new on the news stands this week):
The Great Virginia Grape Heist
And other tales of agricultural banditry
Tuesday, september 11, 2018, was supposed to be harvest day for David Dunkenberger, a co-owner of Firefly Hill Vineyards, in Elliston, Virginia. He got to the fields early, eager to get this year’s grapes picked before the backwash of Hurricane Florence rolled in. As he scanned the vines, though, he began to feel queasy. His entire crop, about 2.5 tons of grapes, had vanished.
In the days that followed, Dunkenberger grieved the loss of his 2018 vintage and considered the ramifications. Factoring in sunk labor costs and lost sales, he figured he was out $50,000. He thinks that the job was planned by professionals—amateurs could never have snipped three acres clean so quickly—and that it likely would have required a crew of seven pickers, aided by headlamps and two pickup trucks. As for who would be motivated to carry out such a theft, Dunkenberger says he is reluctant to accuse a fellow grower, but can find no other logical explanation. Wine grapes are too sweet to eat. They perish quickly, so they are typically crushed or pressed within 24 hours. “A lot of people are under contract to grow grapes,” he told me, adding that this year’s wet weather had led to disappointing harvests. “If you can’t fulfill that contract, you don’t get paid.” When I spoke with Lieutenant Mark Hollandsworth of the local sheriff’s department, he supported Dunkenberger’s theory: “The rain this year did spoil a lot of grapes.”
More news below the fold.