Rapid rises in temperatures worldwide may overwhelm farmers' efforts to keep up, say experts who want funds to breed new crops and freeze heat-resistant strains bred over past centuries.

A Stanford University study to be published on Friday estimates that African growing seasons for the continent's staple foods -- maize, millet and sorghum -- will be hotter in nine out of 10 years by 2050.

Sri Lanka can save USD 400 million annually in foreign exchange by becoming self-sufficient in fish while providing employment to thousands of people, Chairman Maubima Lanka Foundation Ariyseela Wickramanayake told Daily News Business.

Climate change could cost the African continent more farmland than the United States uses to plant its eight major field crops combined, according to a study published in the June issue of Environmental Science and Policy.

Germany's Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said on Monday she will allow test cultivation of a potato containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Open air trials of the GMO potato Amflora, developed by German chemicals group BASF presented no threat to public health or the environment, she said.

He said that maize is not one of our traditional food items but still Sri Lanka has been able to grow maize and become self-sufficient within one year.

The total production had been used to produce Thriposha and animal food.

This is a great achievement for the country as the belief earlier was that Sri Lanka cannot produce maize.

South African farmers have been offered 10 million hectares of farm land to grow maize, soya beans as well as poultry and dairy farming in the Republic of Congo, South Africa's main farmers union said on Wednesday.

Germany will ban cultivation and sale of genetically modified (GMO) maize despite European Union rulings that the biotech grain is safe, its government said on Tuesday.

The ban affects US biotech company Monsanto's MON 810 maize which may no longer be sown for this summer's harvest, German Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner told a news conference.

Maize farmers affected by the abrupt closure of the Triposha Factory in Ja-Ela would stage a demonstration this week demanding the reopening of the factory within this week. The demonstration would be held either the opposite of the Factory premises in Ja-Ela or opposite the Health Ministry in Colombo, they said adding that the decision would be finalized tomorrow (8).

Agricultural scientists at a farmers gathering here revealed that promotion of modern and developed technologies could help enhancing maize production.