Subjects Archives: Agriculture

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.

RUSSIA and Ukraine together account for 30 per cent of the world’s wheat exports. Many African countries, in particular, are heavily dependent on them for their food supplies, which are now getting disrupted because of the war; and this disruption would continue since the war is also affecting the acreage being sown under foodgrains there.

Lucidly argued and touching in its appeal, Corine Pelluchon’s latest book ‘Les Lumières à l’âge du vivant’ will be a theoretical source both for ‘green’ and ‘red’ movements alike.

KUALA LUMPUR: Capital flight from the global South is immense, with widespread adverse effects. A new book proposes measures to curb, even reverse capital flight from Africa. It also offers pragmatic lessons for many developing countries.

Importers must step up support for sustainable palm oil, and producers be bold in revoking the licences of illegal palm estates, writes Andre Barahamin.

The unfolding crisis is now a common—and effective—talking point for corporate interest groups seeking regulatory relief.

On April 17, 1996, 19 peasants of the Brazilian Landless Movement were assassinated in the municipality of Eldorado Dos Carajás, in the south of the state of Pará. The event took place during a peaceful mobilization organized to demand the expropriation of idle land from local landowners.

We propose a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for ecological breakdown by assessing nations’ cumulative material use in excess of equitable and sustainable boundaries.

Cuba has been revitalising its energy sector for the past 25 years. As a result, there has been a demonstrable rise in overall efficiency and a significant reduction in emissions.

Australian socialist Jeff Sparrow is a writer, broadcaster and Guardian Australia columnist. He spoke to climate activist Martin Empson about his book, ‘Crimes Against Nature—Capitalism and Global Heating.’

Salmon have shaped the lives and cultures of people in the Pacific Northwest since ancient times. These migratory fish who return each year from the deep sea to the rivers, where they were born to mate, give birth and die–then nourish the forests’ soil after death–are legendary.

Agrarian reform and agroecology were topics discussed during Lula’s visit yesterday to the Eli Vive settlement, belonging to the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), in Londrina (PR), the largest agrarian reform area in a metropolitan region of Brazil.

‘A brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future’