Subjects Archives: Agriculture

Big agribusiness and ‘philanthropic’ foundations position themselves as the saviours of humanity due to their much-promoted plans to ‘feed the world’ with ‘precision’ farming’, ‘data-driven’ agriculture and ‘sustainable’ production.

In 2021, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) noted that Argentina remains ‘a major exporter of agricultural products’, which, at that time, accounted for nearly two-thirds of the country’s exports (as of April 2023, agricultural goods accounted for 56.4% of the country’s exports).

An innovative form of food distribution has been key for schools and communes.

The recent Colorado River water deal reached between the three lower basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada is being celebrated by the corporate media as “historic,” although final approval by the Department of Interior is still pending.

When I sat down with Eric Huntley it was under the premise of interviewing him about the new community garden that he has established—along with filmmaker and organiser Sukant Chandan—in the London borough of Ealing, just minutes away from where he and his late-wife, Jessica Huntley, ran their bookshop and publishing house.

“Why did we choose to study in Nicaragua? Hunger, poverty, and illiteracy are major issues plaguing much of the world, and climate change is one of the greatest threats to humans on the planet. Nicaragua is setting an example for sustainable development that addresses all these issues.”

It may be recalled that after Japan alarmingly announced in April 2021 its plan to start releasing around 1.3 million metric tons of contaminated wastewater from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, countries in the rest of eastern Asia and the Pacific region protested. Environmental groups and even the Japanese people opposed it.

In an action that is a flat reversal of his election campaign pledge of “no more drilling on federal lands,” President Joe Biden decided Monday to approve an $8 billion oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, to be operated by ConocoPhillips.

There is an overwhelming asymmetry between the level of “development” and the possession of natural resources among countries of the world.

“It’s too late to avoid the climate storm altogether,” said a study co-author. “Our ability to steer out of the storm is frustrated by having to manage the impacts of the storm on the ship.”

Peru has large reserves of copper, gold, zinc, silver, lead, iron, and natural gas. After a coup overthrew left-wing President Pedro Castillo, the US ambassador, CIA veteran Lisa Kenna, met with mining and energy ministers to discuss “investments”. Europe is importing Peruvian LNG to replace Russian energy.

For peasant farmers, the battle over seed rights is critical to their livelihoods.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change went into effect in March 1994. Yet, of the twenty-seven meetings that the UNFCCC has held to date, the most recent one, in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt, was the most inconsequential.

We have to address the way that corporations create, shape, and control demand, leveraging the state as a tool.

THE crux of the issue is that non-fossil, or even a low fossil fuel path, will need grid-level storage costs to drop by a factor of 10 times what they are today!

Disaster capitalism and crisis narratives are currently being used to manipulate popular sentiment and push through a set of unpalatable policies that would otherwise lack sufficient political support.

Petro’s, Lula’s, and Maduro’s positions show South Americans are united about the Amazon; it may reintegrate Venezuela.

The dust has settled at the resorts in Sharm el-Shaikh, Egypt, as delegates of countries and corporations leave the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The only advance made in the final agreement was for the creation of a ‘loss and damage fund’ for ‘vulnerable countries’.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg was interviewed by ABC’s 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson on November 3. Below is a transcript of the interview.

In 1973-74 the Planning Commission in India had defined poverty as the inability to access 2400 calories per person per day in rural India (in practice however it applied a lower 2200 calories norm), and 2100 calories per person per day in urban India.