Bhutan is well on its way to becoming the greenest nation on the planet. In his Special Report for the Ecologist, photojournalist MICHAEL BUCKLEY explores the reasons why the country's ecosystems and dazzling biodiversity remain intact - and highlights the one thing that threatens this admirable integrity...
… Dekalb Vietnam. In 2012, the International Rice Research Institute and Monsanto spent US$2 billion to develop a GM rice that is iron-fortified to deal with the … in India and Bangladesh. The resulting GM rice was found to pale in comparison with …
The shadowy parallel court system of major trade agreements makes it difficult for countries to ban broad-spectrum insecticides.
… International Trade Editor’s Picks village-rice-fields-japan-cut.jpg The shadowy parallel … ongoing worldwide insect extinction event, rice-field insects such as dragonflies that …
The new People Need Nature report - published to coincide with this week's annual Oxford Real Farming Conference - warns that modern farming practices are not good for wildlife. But they're not good for humans either. And with predictions that we will need to produce 70 per cent more food to feed a third more mouths by 2050 the question of seed ownership and diversity cannot be ignored. KATHRYN HINDESS reports
… have become homogenised. Three crops - wheat, rice and corn (also known as maize) - account … seeds include staple food crops like maize, rice, wheat, potatoes and teff (in Ethiopia). …
A recently discovered peatland in northeast Peru contains two years worth of US carbon emissions, writes Joe Sandler Clarke, but it's under threat from the rapidly advancing 'palm oil frontier'. Now scientists are calling for the wetland's immediate protection - before it's too late to save it.
… the Pastaza-Marañón Foreland Basin peatlands, rice paddies and plantations have begun …
Investigative reporter, TOM FAWTHROP has just returned from the site of the Don Sahong - a hydrodam being constructed in the middle of an eco-paradise of wetlands in Southern Laos where over 200 fish species have been recorded.
… consumed by Lao people. Based on first-sale prices and the Mekong River Commission's … go ahead, then Vietnam will cease to be a rice exporter, and the delta denied sediment … UNDP, FAO and WFP that regularly buy Mekong rice for humanitarian missions would be …
India's Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee stands accused of Contempt of Court for evading Supreme Court orders to carry out full biosafety tests on GM crops and publish its data, writes Colin Todhunter. The immediate issue is a herbicide tolerant GM mustard now approved for large scale trials, while earlier findings remain under an impenetrable veil of official secrecy.
… his work here . Also on The Ecologist : ' Rice, wheat, mustard ... India drives forward …
For decades Israel has been driving Palestinian farmers off their land by imposing restrictions on agriculture, writes JONATHAN COOK. But one company, Canaan Fair Trade, has found an innovative way to resist peacefully, increasing resilience and prosperity in rural West Bank communities, and forging international alliances in the global movement for good food and farming.
… buys their products at above-market prices to ensure farming families can make a … a way to bypass Israeli control and to raise prices. Staff have nick-named their approach … of Israel and the occupied territories, prices fell. Olive farmers found it …