As vast extensions of arable land in poor countries are leased or sold to agribusiness companies for a low price, government officials in charge of the deals claim that they will benefit the local people. In reality, these neocolonial deals end up hurting the poor as competition for land increases its price and as local [...]
Archive for the ‘agriculture’ Category
Oxfam exposes the truth on the global rush for farmland
Posted in agriculture on November 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Climate change can turn chocolate into a costly luxury
Posted in agriculture on October 13, 2011 | 1 Comment »
This is the general conclusion of a report from the Nicaraguan International Center for Tropical Agriculture on the impacts of climate change on cocoa production in Ghana and the Ivory Coast (PDF). These two regions were chosen for their importance to cocoa supply. Using data from 19 climate change models, the researchers predicted what would happen [...]
Land grabbing in the neocolonial order
Posted in agriculture on October 11, 2011 | 1 Comment »
One of the most tragic examples of how neocolonialism is still pretty much alive is land grabbing in less developed countries. The food crisis, caused partly by climate change, water depletion, soil erosion and the biofuel craze, has made things worse, as companies and even countries buy up cheap land where it is cheapest to [...]
Eco-farming can feed the world
Posted in agriculture on March 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Again, the UN stresses how converting all agricultural production to ecological farming can assure the end of world hunger. In a report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter (PDF), it is stated that reinvesting in agriculture is essential to assure that everyone has access to food, yet, given [...]
Day 6 – Farmers against agro-corporations
Posted in agriculture, tagged cop-15 on December 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Pigs eat GMO soy, under a corporate driven globe Today was the farmers action day. In front of a agro-corporation’s headquarters, via Campesina defended the role of small farming in the struggle against climate change. More concretely, they were denouncing the ecological madness of creating animals in factory farms fed with Latin Amercan soy. A [...]
Feeding factory farms
Posted in agriculture on November 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
To lower the meat production costs, agribusiness corporations have increasingly used soy grown in Latin America to feed cattle. The cheap soy usually comes from deforested areas, namely in the Amazon, and the production methods envolve GMO’s and large doses of pesticides. This is the story of “Killing Fields”, a docummentary made by Friends of [...]
Biopirates loom from climate chaos
Posted in agriculture on July 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
As the dangers for agricultural production from climate change become more evident, biotechnology giants are developing genetically modified crops resistant to changes in temperature and rain patterns. But, as Vandana Shivam from Navdanya (link) emphasizes, “Climate resistant traits that the agricultural biotechnology giants have been patenting have been evolved through centuries of farmers’ breeding” (IPS). [...]
Climate change endagers agricultural production in South Africa
Posted in agriculture on April 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A recent study by South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), presented at the conference of the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU), in Durban, predicts dire consequences for food production over the next 70 years. Agricultural production in South Africa is projected to decrease by half, which is bad news for [...]
