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Solving the Energy, Climate & Food Crisis: Why We Should Support the Revitalization of Small Farms in the Global South
The Via Campesina has long argued that farmers need land to produce food for their own communities and for their country and for this reason has advocated for genuine agrarian reforms to access and control land, water, agrobiodiversity, etc, which are of central importance for communities to be able to meet growing food demands. The Via Campesina believes that in order to protect livelihoods, jobs, people's food security and health, as well as the environment, food production has to remain in the hands of small-scale sustainable farmers and cannot be left under the control of large agribusiness companies or supermarket chains.
Sweet sorghum promoted as "smart" biofuel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A corn-like plant that can grow as
high as an elephant's eye on some of Earth's driest farmland
shows promise as a "smart" biofuel that won't cut into world
food supplies, an agriculture expert said on Monday.
The Perfect Food Shortage
The United Nations is calling the recent increase in world hunger a "silent tsunami," as if it was triggered by an event at the bottom of the ocean. I'd call the crisis a storm, brewed by several converging forces, all of which, it turns out, are man-made. It's a storm that some have been predicting for a long time, and now, finally, the U.N. is taking notice.
Genetic sleuths unmask secrets of big tomatoes
The secret behind growing large tomatoes lies not in the fertilizer or the perfect soil conditions, but in just a few genetic changes that over time have resulted in tomatoes 1,000 times bigger than their wild ancestors, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.
Without these changes, tomatoes would be little more than berries on a bush.
Conflicts with Cotton
Have you ever thought about your clothing and the effects on the earth? What if I told you that the way cotton is currently grown and harvested, it endangers lives? Conventional cotton is causing extreme concerns and here’s why.
Tons and tons of pesticides are sprayed on cotton fileds every year to eradicate a little bug known as the boll weevil. The problem with using poison to kill one bug is that it kills all the other beneficial insects that keep nature on track.
New Generation of Farmers and Farmers Markets in California
THERE'S been a changing of the guard at the Coleman Family Farm stand at the Santa Monica Farmers Market on Wednesday mornings. Ask Bill Coleman a question and he's likely to answer, "Ask Romey."
Romey -- Romeo on his birth certificate -- is Coleman's son and though his eventually becoming the boss was expected, it nonetheless comes as a bit of a surprise to longtime market shoppers who might still think of him as the kid they watched grow up.
In food price crunch, more Americans seek help
BALTIMORE (Reuters) - Carolyn Stanley, a single mother with five children, receives $327 in food stamps each month to feed her family. With prices for staples like bread and cheese going ever higher, each month is harder than the last.
She buys hot dogs over higher-quality meat and feeds her kids cereal, but even with other government support she often has to seek help from local churches and from friends.
New project targets post-harvest loss in Ethiopia
A new programme to develop low-cost technologies to reduce post-harvest losses will be launched in Ethiopia this year.
The six-year programme will run at Jimma University College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine (JUCAVM) in Ethiopia, with US$3 million funding from the Canadian International Development Agency.
Giant Food & Biotech Corporations Make Billions in Profit from Growing Global Food Crisis
Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.
The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor - who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food - into hunger and destitution.
Gene for yield, height in rice identified
Scientists in China have identified a single gene that appears to control rice yield, as well as its height and flowering time, taking what may be a crucial step in global efforts to increase crop productivity.
In an article published in Nature Genetics, the researchers said they were able to pinpoint a single gene, Ghd7, which appears to determine all three traits.
Rising Food Prices Hit Organics
Although shoppers have generally accepted that eating organic foods will be more costly, a recent and rapid rise in prices may force some consumers to alter their eating habits.
Food prices have been rising for several months now, and at first, organic prices stayed steady. But organic foods are catching up - and then some. A gallon of organic milk, for example, is now nearing $7.
Water looms as “The Next Oil,”� warns MIT Sloan professor
With U.S. gasoline prices edging toward the recently unimaginable price of $4 a gallon, consumers are beginning to drive less and energy efficiency is again a hot topic. But the pain caused by high oil prices is nothing like what looms as an even more basic and essential natural commodity — water -- faces dwindling supplies and growing demand. As essential as it is taken for granted, water is The Next Oil.
Farmers face climate challenge in quest for more food
If farmers think they have a tough time producing enough rice, wheat and other grain crops, global warming is going to present a whole new world of challenges in the race to produce more food, scientists say.
In a warmer world beset by greater extremes of droughts and floods, farmers will have to change crop management practices, grow tougher plant varieties and be prepared for constant change in the way they operate, scientists say.
Report Calls for Better Animal Waste Treatment
One step beyond her front door, Jayne Clampitt is greeted with the toxic fumes flowing from the roughly 1 million gallons of hog manure stored at her neighbor's farm. She no longer dries her family's laundry outside, her children avoid the nearby polluted stream, and she worries that their shallow drinking well will also be contaminated with toxins.
"We thought there was this unspoken connection between farmers, respect and stewardship. But we don't see that anymore," said Clampitt, whose family raises livestock in northwest Iowa. "I should not be forced to move out of my home."
Latest Developments on Farm Bill & Biofuels
At a White House press conference yesterday that focused on the U.S. domestic economy, President George W. Bush addressed food prices, the Farm Bill and biofuels.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David M. Herszenhorn summarized in today’s New York Times that, “With consumer confidence slipping and gasoline and food prices soaring, President Bush delivered an unusually dark assessment of the economy on Tuesday, saying the nation was in ”�very difficult times, very difficult.’”�
Climate modelers see modern echo in '30s Dust Bowl
NEW YORK April 30, 2008 — Climate scientists using computer models to simulate the 1930s Dust Bowl on the U.S Great Plains have found that dust raised by farmers probably amplified and spread a natural drop in rainfall, turning an ordinary drying cycle into an agricultural collapse. The researcher say the study raises concern that current pressures on farmland from population growth and climate change could worsen current food crises by leading to similar events in other regions.
What is the Real Cause of Agflation--Rapidly Rising Food Prices?
The old laws of the marketplace are no longer working. Food prices have been rising for six years because of surging demand, and increased production is not restoring the balance as it used to in the past. In fact, prices have been going up even faster over the last year.
The so-called "financialisation" of commodities markets, that is, the influx of investment funds seeking safer and more lucrative assets, has intensified the trend and "at the moment impinges more than the law of supply and demand," said analyst Fernando Muraro of AgRural, a consultancy firm in Brazil.
Making a Killing from the Food Crisis
The world food crisis is hurting a lot of people, but global agribusiness firms, traders and speculators are raking in huge profits.
Much of the news coverage of the world food crisis has focussed on riots in low-income countries, where workers and others cannot cope with skyrocketing costs of staple foods. But there is another side to the story: the big profits that are being made by huge food corporations and investors.
Key farm-state lawmakers shifting support to cellulosic fuel
The corn ethanol industry could take a nearly 12 percent hit in their subsidies in the next farm bill, as farm state lawmakers shift their support to new cellulosic ethanol.
The farm bill agreement that key House and Senate negotiators reached Friday would extend and reduce the tax credit for conventional ethanol and the tariff on imported ethanol. It would also give new subsidies for cellulosic ethanol -- derived from crop debris, woody plants and grasses.
Poor children main victims of climate change: U.N.
Millions of the world's poorest children are among the most vulnerable and unwitting victims of climate change caused by the rich developed world, a United Nations report said on Tuesday, calling for urgent action.
The UNICEF report "Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility" measured action on targets set in the Millennium Development Goals to halve child poverty by 2015. It found failure on counts from health to survival, education and sex equality.
California wildfire forces 1,000 to evacuate
A wildfire that began along a popular hiking trail forced 1,000 people to evacuate their homes in the hills northeast of Los Angeles on Sunday, officials said.
The cause of the nearly 400-acre fire, which started Saturday afternoon as Southern California logged near-record temperatures, was still under investigation, said Elisa Weaver, a spokeswoman for the city of Sierra Madre, California.
New Fish Farms Move from Ocean to Warehouse
Earlier this week, on a spring day in April, John Stubblefield walked past the blue tanks of striped bass, Atlantic sea bream, and cobia stored inside a Baltimore, Maryland, laboratory. "In this tank, it's spring in May. This tank it's spring in September," he said.
At the University of Maryland's Center for Marine Biotechnology, Stubblefield and his fellow researchers are not only altering nature, they are creating what may be the next generation of seafood.
'Era of cheap food is over,' says EU
EU consumers should get used to paying more for food as prices for meat, grain, cereal and a range of agricultural commodities are set to increase further, according to EU officials and MEPs debating the issue in Strasbourg yesterday (22 April). The EU's current push for biofuels came under repeated scrutiny during the discussion.
We won't see food prices going back down to former levels," EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel told a Strasbourg audience of MEPs convened to discuss the global food crisis.
US 'plans cut to global agricultural research funds'
Despite rising food prices and restrictions on food exports the United States is planning to cut funding to international agricultural research, scientists claim.
In February this year officials from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) warned that a cut in funding was likely. The actual figure is yet to be announced, but it could be as much as 75 per cent according to a spokesperson from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
The Food Crisis: Global Markets and Deregulation Strike Again
You wouldn't know it by watching Congressional debate on C-SPAN, but if you turn on the news, it's clear that the global food system is in crisis. Food prices globally have skyrocketed, in some cases 80%. Food protests and riots from Italy to Yemen have begun capturing worldwide attention, and policymakers are scrambling to point fingers at a litany of culprits-everything from climate change, high oil prices, a weak dollar and the biofuels boom, to meat eaters in China. All of these factors have played a part in the current crisis, but the blame game is also allowing one culprit-the principle protagonist in this story-to get away with not even a mention. It's a character you might have heard of recently for its role in that little unfortunate sub-prime mortgage mess. That's right, deregulation.
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