'Super vegetable garden' enables Mauritanian refugees to run agribusinesses
Amanda Fortier
13th January, 2012
An innovative gardening project along the river basin in Northern Senegal is helping hundreds of Mauritanian refugees address issues of food and economic insecurity and allowing them to integrate into Senegalese society
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Supermarket food waste to power renewable energy instead of tackling food poverty
Matilda Lee
23rd December, 2011
Food aid charities argue supermarket food waste could help prevent hunger in vulnerable people. Yet supermarkets' anaerobic digestion plans may eclipse food redistribution says Matilda Lee
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Where will our milk come from: 'battery' farms or free range cows?
Rosie Shute
11th November, 2011
The recent axing of the Nocton 'super-dairy' renewed interest in how our milk and cheese is produced. The Ecologist visited two dairy farms - an indoor, intensive unit and a year-round outdoor operation - to assess their very different approaches
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Durban climate change conference: why farming is the biggest issue for Africa
Rosie Spinks
4th November, 2011
With little hope of a binding deal on climate change at the latest UN summit, campaigners are hoping that Africa's COP will tackle the issue that plagues the continent most: agriculture
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Exclusive film Mexico's poor suffer as food speculation fuels tortilla crisis
Tom Levitt
13th September, 2011
A surge in financial speculation on maize is causing vastly inflated prices for corn tortillas - a sacred staple in Mexico - and threatening the health and livelihoods of the country's poor. Tom Levitt investigates
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Sustainable food production and healthy eating strategies under threat
Nick Hughes
10th June, 2011
The Sustainable Development Commission has been axed, the Food Standards Agency has had its powers stripped and DEFRA appears to be stalling. Where then does this leave planning for a national sustainable food strategy - and healthy eating plan - asks Nick Hughes?
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Africa's Green Revolution 2.0: rejecting agribusiness, pesticides and GM greenwash
Chris Milton
26th May, 2011
A pioneering campaign is challenging industrial agriculture in Africa, returning food sovereignty to the people and empowering women to lead a new movement that rejects the 'pesticide and loan culture' of the first Green Revolution. Chris Milton reports more...
Why our growing taste for cheap Brazilian beef is devastating the Amazon
Chris Pala
5th April, 2011
Brazil’s cattle sector has become the largest driver for deforestation globally, overtaking palm oil plantations in Asia. With the UK sourcing 40 per cent of its processed beef from Brazil, campaigners are now calling for a consumer boycott. Chris Pala investigates
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Do indigenous peoples hold the key to tackling global hunger?
Peter Giovannini
22nd February,2011
Competition for land, water and energy are increasing, exacerbated by climate change and a growing population. But why does the Food and Agriculture Organisation now believe indigenous people could provide a solution? Peter Giovannini investigates
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Special investigation What's the real environmental cost of the French baguette?
Carolyn Lebel
8th February, 2011
Water in France's 'breadbasket' - where much of the wheat used to make the iconic baguette is grown - is under threat from industrial agriculture, with excessive consumption and contamination by pesticides and nitrates. Carolyn Lebel reports...
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Egypt's factory farming boom threatens stability of a hungry country
Joseph Mayton
23rd November, 2010
Increasing demand for meat in the land of the Pyramids is leading to more intensive farming, with serious consequences for food prices, the environment and animal welfare, reports Joseph Mayton in Cairo
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The shocking cost of US 'mega-dairies'
Jim Wickens
21st September 2010
With planning permission for Britain's biggest dairy at Nocton about to be re-submitted, The Ecologist travels to California to examine intensive milk production - and finds factory farms, conflict, intimidation, pesticides, pollution and small-scale farmers driven out of business...
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Will the UN's Codex Alimentarius make our food less nutritious?
Chris Milton
10th August, 2010
What started out as a conventional UN bureaucracy has become the subject of wild speculation and fear - just what is the UN's Codex Alimentarius, and what does it mean for our food and health?
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Eating insects: a solution to the meat problem?
Kurt Hollander
3rd August, 2010
The world's demand for protein will continue to rise, even as the environmental impacts of meat production become clearer. Could turning to commonly eaten insect species be the answer?
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Lab grown meat: a low-fat, low-carbon, cruelty-free future?
Matilda Lee
6th April, 2010
The technology isn't fully developed yet, but when meat really can be grown in a lab it's going to turn all our arguments about carnivorous diets on their heads...
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Peak phosphorus: our most important nutrient running out
Ewan Kingston
12th January, 2010
It has no synthetic alternative and some scientists believe supplies may already be in a terminal decline. But there is still no international effort to tackle the massive agricultural problems that will come when the phosphorus runs out
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Is this the future of fish farming?
Edward Helmore
20th October, 2009
Inside vast, 360-sided, 7000 cubic metre underwater cages off the coast of Panama, marine biologist Brian O'Hanlon is trying to solve some of the problems with large-scale aquaculture
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Killing fields: the true cost of Europe's cheap meat
Andrew Wasley
13th October, 2009
Cheap meat has become a way of life in much of Europe, but the full price is being paid across Latin America as vast soya plantations and their attendant chemicals lead to poisonings and violence
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Can cows help stop climate change?
Ed Hamer
15th September, 2009
Meat, dairy... in fact, livestock in general has in recent years joined the ranks of the 4x4 and the short-haul flight. But could a change in the way we graze animals not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but even remove them from the atmosphere?
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What if... Government bought green?
Maria Cross
14th July, 2009
Ask those involved in public food procurement if they would like to see fresh, local ingredients on menus and they will say yes. Then they will list all the reasons why it wouldn't work. Not so, argues Maria Cross - and here's how
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