Home/Posts Tagged ‘agriculture’
Posts Tagged ‘agriculture’
Green living, Jan 11th, 2012,
Honey from Newcastle, vegetables grown in Nottingham and London cheese are just a few examples of urban produce now being grown and sold in British cities. All across the country, people are increasingly choosing to grow their own food for reasons of economics, health and in order to feel a connection to their food and the land. Sustain, a UK alliance for better food and farming, has launched an online project called City Harvest for ‘demonstrating and promoting the benefits of Urban Agriculture’. Sustain’s scheme Capital Growth, funded by the Mayor of London, includes some 1,500 growing spaces in London…
Tags: agriculture, farm, farming, food, london, sustain, UK, urban
Pollution, Science & Technology, Sep 27th, 2011,
Can a world with a growing, increasingly industrialized population be fed by organic farming? As the world population approaches 7 billion, there are rising uncertainties about the Earth’s capacity to sustain this unprecedented amount of humanity. Conventional approaches on international and national governmental levels have been along the lines of the Green Revolution, which increased food production in some developing countries like Mexico, India and the Philippines, with the use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and other technological advances in agriculture. Criticisms of the Green Revolution include concerns about pollution caused by pesticides and industrial fertilizers, as well as a belief…
Tags: agriculture, Germany, Green Revolution, industrial, industrialized, Löwenstein, organic farming
Green living, Health, Videos & Documentaries, Oct 5th, 2010,
According to a recent survey by food and grocery analyst IGD, 18% of consumers in Germany expect to buy more organic groceries in the future. FreshPlaza reports that despite the economic downturn of 2009, organic farming grew in the country: Taking into account the total agricultural area, the organic agriculture has a percentage of 5.6%. 5.6% of all farming companies are also organic farmers. –Freshplaza.com Since Germany’s reunification, most organic farmers – hitherto unheard of in the DDR – have moved to the former East and consumers in German cities are especially keen on buying organic. See the following Deutsche…
Tags: agriculture, Germany, grocery, organic, produce
Climate Change, Green living, Aug 25th, 2010,
Agriculture imposes a heavy and growing burden on Europe’s water resources, threatening water shortages and damage to ecosystems. To achieve sustainable water use, farmers must be given the right price incentives, advice and assistance. Food is intrinsically bound to human well-being. Besides the importance of good food for good health and the pleasure we derive from eating, agricultural production plays a vital role supporting individual livelihoods and the wider economy. But food production also consumes a lot of water – an equally vital resource. Agriculture accounts for 24 % of water abstraction in Europe and while that might not sound…
Tags: agriculture, crops, food production, growing food, irrigation, water consumption
Climate Change, Politics, Apr 23rd, 2010,
The Gates Foundation is a philanthropic organization founded by Bill and Melinda Gates with the principal aims of improving healthcare, fighting poverty and improving education. It has an endowment of over $30 billion (€22.5bn/₤19.5bn). On Thursday the foundation announced that it would contribute $30 million (€22.5m/₤19.5m) to the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, an international fund set up to aid for farmers in the developing world. From an AFP report: The fund was first discussed at the G8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy last year, where 14 wealthy nations committed to contributing some 22 billion dollars to invest in agriculture…
Tags: agriculture, bill, Canada, countries, farmers, foundation, fund, funding, G8, Gates, Korea, Melinda, philanthropists, poor
Climate Change, Feb 20th, 2010,
Typhoons in October devastated agriculture and caused heavy damages to infrastructure in the Philippines. Now a drought is destroying crops and threatening electricity supplies in the Southeast Asian nation, the New York Times reports. Nearly 400,000 acres of farmland have already been affected, and agriculture officials expect the drought to continue, perhaps until July. –New York Times The government of the Philippines is responding with monetary aid to farmers and fishermen; water rationing, drilling wells and even cloud-seeding. An AFP article credits the weather phenomenon of El Niño as the cause of the drought in the Philippines: El Nino is…
Tags: agriculture, crops, drought, El Nino, New York Times, Philippines, rice
Green living, Health, Feb 14th, 2010,
Guest post by Kelly Barrett If you are interested to guest post on our blog, click here to create an account or click here to contact us directly. — I have previously blogged about how agribusiness doesn’t necessarily have to have a negative connotation. I looked at the practices of my school’s dining service, Bon Appetit, and how they are making strides to be more local, healthy, ethical, and socially conscious. So what about fast food? Does fast food have to mean non-local, unhealthy, unethical, and not socially conscious? We are beginning to see some signs that maybe it doesn’t….
Tags: agriculture, chipotle, fast food, kelly barrett, local food, slow food, sustainable living
Climate Change, Green living, Videos & Documentaries, Feb 2nd, 2010,
The UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Agriculture and Food for Development issued a report criticizing the British government for cutting aid for agriculture in developing countries. An article from OneWorld UK describes the APPG report as detailing the link between food and security, especially in the developing world. Population growth, disease and climate change present challenges to keep up with global food production, yet so far the number and percentage of people going hungry are growing. The report stated that with the global population set to rise at 6 million per month and almost double from 1 billion…
Tags: agriculture, australia, Climate change, emissions, farming, food, global, production, UK
Uncategorized, Sep 24th, 2009,
While writing about Colony Collapse Disorder (the disappearance of the world’s honeybee population) I came across an article by Canadian investigative journalist Alex Roslin about monocrops and their detrimental effects on world hunger, biodiversity, nutrition, food supplies, water toxicity and soil quality. A sweeping change from traditional farming, with its fallow fields, crop rotation and varied selection of produce, monoculture techniques are not just linked to the transition from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture, but to the widespread shift from family-owned farms to massive industrial farming complexes driven by large corporations. “peak food is actually related to four other intertwined…
Tags: agriculture, farming, Green Revolution, India, millet, monocrop, monocropping, monoculture
Climate Change, ,
In the classic Charlton Heston movie Soylent Green, the world’s population explosion has caused food shortage and hunger. The only solution is processed wafers called “Soylent Green” and without watching the movie, you probably know the twist ending. But, Soylent Green’s “secret” ingredient aside, the dystopian future presented in the movie – people living in overcrowded conditions, extreme poverty, scarcity of fresh fruits, vegetables and meat and rioting over food – may not be quite far off in the future. Scientists have seen a threat to the world’s supply, and much like everything else that’s going wrong in the world,…
Tags: agriculture, Climate change, droughts, floods, global food supply
