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 …
I’m sitting opposite the large Coca-Cola bottling plant next to the village of Plachimada in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Plachimada is a farming village of about 800 families, many of them tribal. The ugly factory looks rather out of place in such a beautiful setting, the Western Ghats mountains clearly visible in the distance.
… district, Chittur taluk, was known as the rice bowl of Kerala. We had the most fertile … in the state. But now the ground is dry, rice and coconut harvests across the taluk …
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 …
Ladakh is framed by the Karakoram mountains to the north and the Himalayas to the south. Yet even in this remote environment the forces of global consumerism are intruding. Nicola Graydon reports on the locals' inspiring defence of their culture
… the story is very different. Subsidised rice, sugar, wheat and other foodstuffs, … diet and, more importantly, undercutting the price of locally harvested produce. A … flour, for instance, sells for half the price of local flour and is destroying the …
Haiti is a failed state: one of those places that just can’t seem to get its act together, despite the best efforts of benevolent Western powers. Or so the mainstream media would have you believe. Yet history tells us a more complicated story.
… minister. Consequently, import tariffs on rice were eliminated, which led to a massive increase in subsidised US rice exports to Haiti and the devastation of Haitian rice growers. The US also demanded the right …
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 …
Wealthy countries and agribusiness want farmland, poorer countries need capital – but what happens to the locals? By Martin Large and Neil Ravenscroft
… Large and Neil Ravenscroft Rising food prices, the drive for food security, biofuels … The corporations sell the crops at high prices to the rich north. The result is that … plans for acquiring 500,000ha of basmati rice land in Indonesia. Middle Eastern states …
Ros Coward reports from Murcia in southern Spain, the driest place in Europe, where tourism and intensive agriculture is draining its meagre water supplies and causing a growing environmental crisis.
… What really makes your mind up though is the price of the flight – as little as £4.50. For … is still dependent on the river (for growing rice, fishing and transportation), walls in … and the flow of fresh water permits the rice cultivation. Its levels are already …
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 …
As the world’s poorest countries sink further and further into debt, Western corporations grow fat from government-backed projects that fuel conflicts, harm the environment and have built-in kickbacks.
… ‘Ex-Im can be a powerful ally,’ Edmund B Rice, president of the US corporate lobbying … people. Indeed, it is commonplace for the prices of projects that receive ECA funding to …
Since colonising Tibet in 1959, China has ripped out virgin forests, dug up minerals and metals, and dumped nuclear waste with little regard for the fragile ecology of the Tibetan plateau.
… the dams have a profound impact on the rice growers and fishermen of downstream …
‘This is the Indian dream!’ shouts Mohit, clutching a tattered plastic bag as he joins the impatient throng gathering at Hall A of the Auto Expo in New Delhi. Around us more than 100,000 Indians are aggressively jostling for space and a precious glimpse of the £1,200 Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car. It is a vehicle that, put simply, costs less than the optional DVD player on the new Lexus LX470 SUV.
… Small wonder since the Nano costs half the price of the cheapest car currently on the … at no more than 100,000 rupees ‘the new price point translates into a 65 per cent … for the global auto industry. As petrol prices continue to rise, consumer tastes around …
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 …