Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Agriculture”
The amount of meat humans eat is immense. In 1965, 10 billion livestock animals were slaughtered each year. That number is now over 55 billion. Factory farming is the fastest growing method of animal production worldwide. While industrialised nations dominate this form of farming, developing countries are rapidly expanding and intensifying their production systems. Violence on the farm A new virtual …
Hillary Clinton approved the construction in South Africa of the world’s two largest coal-fired power-plants, and helped them get Export-Import Bank financing (U.S. taxpayer backing); then, some of her friends received construction contracts to build them. This was revealed by Itai Vardi in a terrific investigative news report at the desmog blog, on March 7th. Here’s an abbreviated version of it, …
Life without bees isn’t life at all. Seriously, have you considered just how empty supermarkets would be if the tiny, bumbling insects went extinct? Since the 1980s, bee populations have diminished dramatically. At least 61 culprits – from viruses to pesticides – have been blamed, but scientists are still groping for answers. One culprit in particular – the mite – is thought to be a major …
The world’s workshop — China — surpassed the United States as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on Earth in 2007. But if you consider that nearly all of the products that China produces, from iPhones to tee-shirts, are exported to the rest of the world, the picture looks very different. “If you look at China’s per capita consumption-based (environmental) …
DURHAM, N.C. — Forests nationwide are feeling the heat from increasing drought and climate change, according to a new study by scientists from 14 research institutions. “Over the last two decades, warming temperatures and variable precipitation have increased the severity of forest droughts across much of the continental United States,” said James S. Clark, lead author of the study and …
In 1975, at the Mexico City First World Conference on Women, Vandana Shiva, the Indian scholar and environmental activist, introduced the issue of women’s relationship to the environment. At the time, concern was raised about the depletion of forestry resources and women’s role in agriculture, and a connection was made between the impact environmental development had on women. Over the …
Children exposed to insecticide and pesticides can be as much as 50 percent more at risk for cancer than other children, studies indicate. Data from 16 past studies comparing the link between pesticide exposure and the development of childhood cancer showed that kids exposed to insecticides or pesticides indoors were 43 percent more likely to have lymphoma and 47 percent more likely to have …
Just when the biotech companies that make transgenic seeds are merging, the corporate vision of biotechnology is showing up at FAO. At today’s opening of the three-day international symposium on agricultural biotechnologies convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, more than 100 social movement and civil society organisations (CSOs) from four continents have …
Consider that India had for generations sustained one of the highest densities of population on earth, without any chemical fertilisers, pesticides, exotic dwarf strains of grain or ‘bio-tech’ inputs. And it did it without degrading the soil. That is according to the evidence provided by Arun Shrivastava. What is truly impressive, however, is he then goes on to demonstrate that …
A new review of four decades of science has come to this conclusion: organic agriculture has a key role to play in feeding the world. To analyze the body of research, author John Reganold, Regents Professor of Soil Science and Agroecology at Washington State University, and doctoral candidate Jonathan Wachter compared conventional and organic farming using the metrics of productivity, environmental impact, …
