Subjects Archives: Agriculture

I grew up in a small town in Vermont, and like many I learned to love the smell of fresh cow manure being spread on fields in the spring.

Scenes and pictures have been circulating of broken earth, lacking moisture, cracked and yearning. But these are not from traditional drought-stricken parts of the planet, where the animal carcass assumes near totemic power amidst dry riverbeds or desert expanses.

Reservoirs in the Rio Grande Valley are running dry—sparking emergency water conservation measures.

For most of human history, the oceans have been seen as a global commons, the benefits and resources of which belong to us all in equal measure. But our seas–and the marine environment as a whole–are being ravaged by exploitation for corporate profit. The result is a social, economic and ecological crisis that threatens the very life support system of the Earth.

The new climate package furthers the U.S.’ most profligate pastimes: drilling oil and driving big cars.

Cuba has more than 380,000 urban farms producing 1.5 million tons of vegetables each year.

Fossil fuel firm’s profits are ‘an insult to families struggling to get by,’ TUC says.

China has vowed to accelerate the installation of clean energy. Rooftop solar installations have emerged as a major force to achieve that. Nearly 53 gigawatts of solar capacity were added in 2021, with more than half coming from rooftop installations.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR. Like so many others, Africans have long been misled. Alleged progress under imperialism has long been used to legitimize exploitation. Meanwhile, Western colonial powers have been replaced by neo-colonial governments and international institutions serving their interests.

The core countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the rest of Europe (collectively referred to here as the Global North) use on average about 130 gigajoules of energy per capita each year, nearly ten times more than what low-income countries use (13·4 GJ/capita).

After Sakhalin-2, Moscow also plans to nationalise Sakhalin-1 oil and gas development project by ousting U.S. and Japanese shareholders. But Moscow will make an exception for India so that OVL which holds 20% stake will remain & continue to work.

The rulers of rich nations are like arsonists who, after lighting the fire, prevent anyone calling the fire brigade. An example of this took place at the Bonn Climate talks that finished on June 16.

Throughout their history, agricultural, chemical and food corporations have created and implemented tactics to marginalize the peasant farmer community and indigenous people.

The global food crisis has now grown to such proportions that everyone is talking about it (even though world leaders are doing relatively little about it).

In March 2022, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a ‘hurricane of hunger’ due to the war in Ukraine. Forty-five developing countries, most of them on the African continent, he said, ‘import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 18 of those import[ing] at least 50 percent’.

The labour relations on South African farms continue to maintain race, gender, and class inequalities as a central character of work and life.

If anything proves that famine and food insecurity are man-made rather than due to vagaries of nature and the weather, it is the current food crisis that is putting millions globally close to starvation.

The world faces a food crisis due to war, sanctions, and inflation. China has shown how to strengthen food sovereignty, while fighting poverty, with state-funded agricultural cooperatives, government crackdown on waste, and investment in technology.

This week President Joseph Biden stopped at an Illinois farm to say he’s going to help the  Ukraine ship 20 million tonnes of wheat and corn out of storage into export, thereby relieving  grain shortages in the international markets and lowering bread prices around the world. 

For years, the loss of land and livelihood has been upheld as the sacrifice people would have to make in order to get jobs and money later on. It does not seem to matter that any sort of prosperity has failed to trickle down to the people till date, barring those few who get to fatten their pockets.