Food and Agriculture

These Urban Food Forests Do Double Duty

February 9, 2024 Max Graham, Next City. Create! Environment, Food and Agriculture, food forests, heat islands, Trees, Urban Farming

Below the red-tile roofs of the Catalina Foothills, an affluent area on the north end of Tucson, Arizona, lies a blanket of desert green: spiky cacti, sword-shaped yucca leaves, and the spindly limbs of palo verde and mesquite trees. Head south into the city, and the vegetation thins. Trees are especially scarce on the south side of town, where shops and schools and housing complexes sprawl across a land encrusted in concrete. On hot summer days, you don’t just see but feel the difference. Tucson’s shadeless neighborhoods, which are predominantly low-income and Latino, soak up the heat.

Arizona Court Cancels EPA’s Approval Of Dicamba Pesticide

February 9, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Resist! Arizona, Dicamba, Environment, EPA, Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Pesticides, Victory

In a win for farmers and endangered plants and wildlife, an Arizona district court has revoked the approval of the destructive pesticide dicamba, saying the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law when it allowed it to be on the market. Dicamba-based weedkillers have been widely used on soybean and cotton crops genetically engineered by Bayer (formerly Monsanto), a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity — who brought the lawsuit — said. “This is a vital victory for farmers and the environment,” said George Kimbrell, legal director for the Center for Food Safety and counsel in the case, in the press release.

Climate Denial Network Behind ‘Classic Astroturf’ Farmers’ Campaign

February 8, 2024 Clare Carlile, Adam Barnett and Phoebe Cooke, DeSmog. Educate! Astroturfing, climate crisis, climate denial, European Union (EU), Farmers, Food and Agriculture

A network of climate science deniers has been accused of “hijacking” rural concerns over a new social media campaign “to save the farming industry”. ‘No Farmers, No Food’ has gained over 50,000 followers on X in the fortnight since its launch, which was framed as a response to the widespread farmers’ protests sweeping across Europe. The campaign, which started in the UK, has rapidly won support from a number of international pundits, from Canadian climate science denier Jordan Peterson, to Fox News contributor and host Tomi Lahren, who has called climate change a “hoax”. Populist politicians in the UK and elsewhere have also declared their support.

Are Europe’s Farmers Protesting Green Reforms? It’s Complicated

February 7, 2024 Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. Resist! Belgium, climate crisis, Europe, Farmers, Food and Agriculture, France, Italy, Worker Rights and Jobs

Across France, Italy and Belgium last week thousands of farmers descended on capital cities to express their deep discontent with the European food system. The scenes were dramatic. Parked tractors brought traffic to a standstill in Paris, and on Thursday burning piles of hay and debris sent up huge, dark plumes of smoke in Brussels. The protests show no sign of slowing down and are expected this week across Italy, Slovenia and Spain. Farmers’ demonstrations have been portrayed as a revolt against net zero, by the media and far-right groups. This is the message received by governments – and they are acting on it. So far, the farmers have won key concessions.

Norway Farmed Salmon Industry Accused Of ‘Food Colonialism’

February 4, 2024 Michaela Herrmann, DeSmog. Educate! Africa, Colonialism, Fishing, Food and Agriculture, Food Colonialism, Food Insecurity, Norway, Salmon Farming, West Africa

Producers in Norway, the world’s top supplier of farmed salmon, are pushing up to four million people in West Africa into food insecurity and depriving them of critical nutrients, according to a new report. Published by food and farming campaign group Feedback Global, the research states that major farmed fish and aquafeed producers – including European transnational companies Mowi, BioMar, Cargill, and Skretting – are between them extracting nearly two million tonnes of whole, wild fish annually from the world’s oceans, according to 2020 data. The majority of these small, highly nutritious fish are being turned into fish oil, a key ingredient in salmon aquaculture feed, as well as fishmeal.

Prisoners Are A Hidden Workforce Linked To Popular Food Brands

February 3, 2024 Margie Mason and Robin McDowell, New York Amsterdam News. Educate! Big Ag, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Food and Agriculture, Prison Labor, Slavery, Wages, Worker Rights

Angola, LA - A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison. Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.

Why Fair Trade Produce Labels Are Bogus

January 16, 2024 Anna Canning and James Daria, Labor Notes. Educate! Fair Trade, Farmworkers, Food and Agriculture, Worker Rights and Jobs

Any U.S. consumer walking down the supermarket aisle will find berries, tomatoes, and other vegetables that are labeled “responsibly grown,” “farmworker-assured,” and “fair-trade certified.” But behind the labels, the Mexican workers who harvest these fruits and vegetables live and labor in conditions they call “twenty-first century slavery.” We interviewed 200 workers for our new report “Certified Exploitation: How Equitable Food Initiative and Fair Trade USA Fail to Protect Farmworkers in the Mexican Produce Industry.” They detailed widespread wage theft, sexual harassment, rampant retaliation, and, in the most extreme cases, forced labor.

Carbon Farming: A Sustainable Agriculture Technique

January 14, 2024 John J. Berger, Resilience.org. Create! Carbon sequestration, climate crisis, Farming, Food and Agriculture

What if there were a way to safely pull billions of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere to substantially reduce or even eliminate global warming? What if this approach costs relatively little and could be used around the world? What if it also put billions of dollars in cash into the hands of countless working Americans and people worldwide? What if it even slashed fossil fuel consumption and made the world more resilient to climate stress? Well, it turns out there is a system that can do all that. It’s called carbon farming, and it just might be key to restabilizing the climate. In the process, it can revitalize rural economies while also producing healthier, more nutritious crops. And amazingly, it’s also low-cost, low-tech, and low-risk.

Deregulation Is Turning Oklahoma Into A Factory Farm Sacrifice Zone

January 2, 2024 Ben Felder, In These Times. Educate! Deregulation, Factory Farms, Food and Agriculture, Oklahoma, sacrifice zone

As Barbara Dozhier prepared a ham before the arrival of her great-grandchildren and the rest of her family last Christmas Eve, she prayed for a weather forecast with wind out of the south. A breeze in the opposite direction meant her home four miles outside the east Oklahoma town of Kansas would be overcome with the stench of chicken litter. Ever since a six-building poultry farm opened across the street in 2018 — where 336,000 birds are raised at a time — family gatherings at the Dozhier home have been forced inside. “Sometimes the wind is out of the north and you just hurry up, get in the house and shut your door,” Dozhier said. “At first I was upset all the time but after all these years there is nothing you can do.”

Sustainable Food Systems Need Intergenerational Cooperation

January 2, 2024 KatrĪNa Idū, Resilience. Strategize! Food and Agriculture, Multigenerational, Sustainability

“There is a growing fear of insecurity about food in our societies. We fear losing control of what we will be able to eat in the future. But we also see many local initiatives across Europe working on new food systems. However, to be honest, real change is coming too slowly. One important reason seems to be an absence of exchange, understanding and trust between generations. Elders tend to hold on to their habits, the younger generation wants to try out and take risks. We need to overcome that gap in order to move on to common action on our farming and food systems of the future. We work for a new intergenerational agreement. Food must come back to the centre of our lives”, says Katrina Idu (age 33), President of Forum Synergies, a partner organisation of ARC2020.

War In Sudan Engulfs Agricultural Heartland Amid Record Hunger

January 1, 2024 Pavan Kulkarni, People's Dispatch. Educate! Food and Agriculture, Hunger, Sudan, Wars and Militarism, World Food Program

Agricultural production has come to a halt in Sudan’s breadbasket, Gezira. This is at a time when hunger in the war-torn country is at the highest level ever recorded during the harvest season between October and February, with nearly 40% of the population facing “acute hunger.” The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) are on the retreat after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed across Gezira last week, disrupting harvest in this State which produces half of all the wheat grown in Sudan. Farmers are too terrified to return to their fields, and have in some areas “gone so far as to flood canals and sacrifice their harvest in order to make it difficult for RSF to enter,” said Jamal (name changed), spokesperson of the Resistance Committees (RC) in Hasahisa city.

Animal Pharma Industry Resists Curbing Overuse Of Antibiotics

December 23, 2023 Michaela Herrmann and Clare Carlile, DeSmog. Educate! Animals, antibiotics, Food and Agriculture, Health Care

Two years after landmark European Union legislation designed to curb the overuse of antibiotics on farms came into force, new analysis from DeSmog reveals eight key narratives the veterinary medicine and farming lobbies deploy to defend the billion-dollar market for the drugs. Aiming to combat the emergence of deadly treatment-resistant bacteria in humans, known in medical jargon as “antimicrobial resistance,” or AMR, the new rules are the world’s most rigorous legislation governing farm antibiotics. The regulations banned the “routine” use of antibiotics on farms for whole herds of healthy animals, including outlawing the practice of using antibiotics to compensate for illnesses caused by poor animal welfare and hygiene.

At COP28, Family Farmers Who Feed The World Went Unheard

December 19, 2023 Ibrahima Hathie, DeSmog. Educate! Big Ag, COP28, Farmers, Food and Agriculture

In the run-up to this year’s COP28 summit in Dubai, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres railed against the scourge of global hunger and climate devastation fuelled by farming. “Global food systems are broken, and billions of people are paying the price,” he said – and he was right. Our food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet fails to feed the world, with a tenth of humanity experiencing hunger. For years, this issue has been sidelined at climate summits, but at COP28 it was catapulted to centre stage, with an entire day of the agenda dedicated to food and agriculture.

Big Meat And Dairy Delegates Triple At COP28

December 9, 2023 Rachel Sherrington, Clare Carlile and Hazel Healy, DeSmog. Educate! Big Ag, climate crisis, COP28, Corporatism, Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Lobbyists

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - Lobbyists from industrial agriculture companies and trade groups have turned out in record numbers at COP28, which this year has a strong focus on tackling emissions from the food sector. Attendees are present from some of the world’s largest agribusiness firms – such as meatpacker JBS, fertiliser giant Nutrien, food giant Nestlé and pesticide firm Bayer – and powerful industry trade groups. Meat and dairy interests are especially well represented with 120 delegates in Dubai, triple the number that attended COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Overall the analysis of the delegates list by DeSmog shows that the total number of people representing the interests of agribusiness has more than doubled since 2022 to reach 340.

COP28: Seven Food And Agriculture Innovations To Protect The Climate

December 4, 2023 Paul Winters, Scheer Post. Create! Carbon emissions, COP28, Food and Agriculture, Hunger

For the first time ever, food and agriculture took center stage at the annual United Nations climate conference in 2023. More than 130 countries signed a declaration on Dec. 1, committing to make their food systems – everything from production to consumption – a focal point in national strategies to address climate change. The declaration is thin on concrete actions to adapt to climate change and reduce emissions, but it draws attention to a crucial issue. The global food supply is increasingly facing disruptions from extreme heat and storms. It is also a major contributor to climate change, responsible for one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

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