After years caught in the crossfire between the Taliban and security forces, farmers in Kandahar face a new threat, as water sources dry up
The war in Afghanistan might be over but farmers in Kandahar’s Arghandab valley face a new enemy: drought.
It has hardly rained for two years, a drought so severe that some farmers are questioning how much longer they can live off the land.
Continue reading...No cause for alarm now, says Kwasi Kwarteng as energy discussions are likened to early Covid crisis talks
The government was scrambling on Saturday night to reassure Britons that rising gas prices would not plunge the country into an energy crisis, as ministers held a series of emergency meetings with energy companies and regulators to establish whether the nation could keep the lights and central heating on this winter.
A senior industry insider likened the meetings held between the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, and energy industry leaders to the early crisis talks held following the outbreak of Covid-19.
Continue reading...Minister reveals plans to change laws inherited from EU, with rules on medical devices also in crosshairs
Rules on genetically modified farming, medical devices and vehicle standards will be top of a bonfire of laws inherited from the EU as the government seeks to change legislation automatically transferred to the UK after Brexit.
Thousands of laws and regulations are to be reviewed, modified or repealed under a new programme aimed at cementing the UK’s independence and “Brexit opportunities”, David Frost has announced.
Continue reading...National disaster declared as crops fail after poor rains and locusts, while ethnic conflicts add to crisis
An estimated 2.1 million Kenyans face starvation due to a drought in half the country, which is affecting harvests.
The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) said people living in 23 counties across the arid north, northeastern and coastal parts of the country will be in “urgent need” of food aid over the next six months, after poor rains between March and May this year.
Continue reading...Protein has gone from a niche bodybuilding supplement to a mainstream obsession – and is now added to a huge range of food and drink products. What led to the sudden growth of this multimillion-dollar industry?
At the Protein Pick and Mix store in Tunbridge Wells, you can have any snack you like, as long as it comes with extra protein. Protein pancakes, protein burger buns, protein muffins, protein nachos, protein croissants. Protein bars, of course, in every conceivable flavour: caramel millionaire’s shortbread, New York cheesecake, mint chocolate chip, double chocolate fudge, lemon drizzle, cinnamon swirl. White chocolate chip cookies that incorporate something called a “high protein lean matrix”.
I am being shown around the store and warehouse by the founder, Anthony Rodgers, 36, who has the well-defined musculature of a man who regularly eats three protein bars a day. He started the business, originally as an online shop, in 2013, after observing the trend for exotically flavoured protein bars in the US. “At the time I was an avid gym-goer,” he says, “and protein bars were just starting to be a little more creative, a little more exciting. People were putting actual effort into the flavours, and it started to transcend the boring, functional: ‘we’re just going to ram some protein in you.’”
Continue reading...In the developing world most people are not factory farming and livestock is essential to preventing poverty and malnutrition
The pandemic has pushed poverty and malnutrition to rates not seen in more than a decade, wiping out years of progress. In 2020, the number of people in extreme poverty rose by 97 million and the number of malnourished people by between 118 million and 161 million.
Recent data from the World Bank and the UN shows how poverty is heavily concentrated in rural communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America where people are surviving by smallholder farming. This autumn there will be two key events that could rally support for them.
Continue reading...First-half sales fall £2bn, says industry body, as barriers are compounded by staff shortages
Exports of food and drink to the EU have suffered a “disastrous” decline in the first half of the year because of Brexit trade barriers, with sales of beef and cheese hit hardest.
Food and Drink Federation (FDF) producers lost £2bn in sales, a dent in revenue that could not be compensated for by the increased sales in the same period to non-EU countries including China and Australia.
Continue reading...After a four-year legal battle, Helen Macdonald gave an emotional statement after her alpaca was forcibly removed from his home in Gloucestershire and put down.
Macdonald said the UK government did not engage in good faith and that 'all the time they were simply planning to murder Geronimo'.
She went on to accuse the government of falsifying Geronimo’s positive bovine tuberculosis test, and that she would not accept the postmortem results if there was not an independent witness present
As many as 70,000 pigs that should have already been taken to slaughter are stranded on UK farms, NPA says
Britain’s pig producers are warning that healthy animals may end up being culled if the government does not take urgent action to deal with shortages of workers at abattoirs and meat-processing plants.
As many as 70,000 pigs that should have already been taken to slaughter are stranded on UK farms, according to the industry trade body the National Pig Association (NPA).
Continue reading...They produce half the country’s sugar needs, but expect new trade deals to make their tough situation worse
In a field in Norfolk, the sight of lush green leaves sprouting from the soil are giving farmer Ed Lankfer cause for optimism. “I think this is one of the best crops we have ever grown,” he says, surveying one of his fields of sugar beet.
The signs are promising so far for this year’s harvest – known in the trade as a campaign – which takes place later than for other crops, during the autumn and winter. It would mark quite the turnaround from 2020’s terrible harvest, when bad weather and pests caused yields of the white sugar-yielding root to plummet by as much as 60%, leaving Lankfer with a £12,000 loss.
Continue reading...Defra agrees to hearing with owner of UK alpaca, which has twice tested positive for bovine tuberculosis
An alpaca that faces being destroyed after testing positive for bovine tuberculosis has been given a temporary reprieve, the animal’s vet has said.
The government had twice turned down requests to save Geronimo, but Dr Iain McGill said the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) had now agreed to a hearing with owner Helen Macdonald.
Continue reading...The makers of robot weeders say the machines can reduce pesticide use and be part of a more sustainable food system
In the corner of an Ohio field, a laser-armed robot inches through a sea of onions, zapping weeds as it goes.
This field doesn’t belong to a dystopian future but to Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer whose TikTok posts about farming life often go viral.
Continue reading...Analysis: fate of condemned camelid shines light on one of the UK’s greatest animal health threats
Long-necked, mop-headed and allegedly “a bit grumpy”, Geronimo the alpaca may seem an unlikely cause célèbre.
Yet the future of the eight-year-old camelid has divided experts, stirred some tabloids into indignant fury, and provoked campaigners – known as “alpaca angels” – to march through London.
Continue reading...About 1.35m Americans a year fall ill from the bacteria. Why are there still so many infections?
In my kitchen, I treat raw chicken as if it’s crawling with bacteria that could make me and my family sick. I use separate cutting boards for meats and produce; I wash my hands and disinfect everything that comes close to the bird, then cook it to 74C (165F). A little paranoid, but with good reason.
Chickens, turkeys and other fowl commonly harbour salmonella bacteria that are harmless to the birds but not to humans.
Continue reading...The ‘no-plough’ regenerative methods adopted in small vineyards have spread to olive groves and leading wine producers – boosting biodiversity and profits
They call it the sea of olives, 70 million olive trees that stretch to the horizon in every direction in the province of Jaén in southern Spain. It’s a spectacular landscape and yet, olives aside, the land is virtually dead, with scarcely a flower, bird or butterfly to be seen.
All this could be about to change following the remarkable success of a project that is raising new life from the dust of Andalucía.
Continue reading...Specialists including Defra bovine tuberculosis expert say positive tests indicate danger to public health
The row over his fate has captured the public’s imagination – with a petition to save him gathering nearly 100,000 signatures and his friendly, furry face splashing newspaper front pages. But vets have cautioned that the law is clear: Geronimo the alpaca must be put down.
The six-year-old animal is facing a death sentence after twice testing positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB), a deadly respiratory disease that has blighted the countryside for decades.
Continue reading...Environment secretary says bovine tuberculosis test used on animal ‘over 99% accurate’
Environment secretary George Eustice said it is an “arduous but necessary endeavour” to cull animals that test positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB), as he defended the decision to put down Geronimo the alpaca.
Helen Macdonald’s animal has been ordered for destruction after twice testing positive for the disease, but she has repeatedly questioned the tests used to condemn him.
Continue reading...Indigenous women in North and Central America are coming together to share ancestral knowledge of amaranth, a plant booming in popularity as a health food
Just over 10 years ago, a small group of Indigenous Guatemalan farmers visited Beata Tsosie-Peña’s stucco home in northern New Mexico. In the arid heat, the visitors, mostly Maya Achì women from the forested Guatemalan town of Rabinal, showed Tsosie-Peña how to plant the offering they had brought with them: amaranth seeds.
Back then, Tsosie-Peña had just recently come interested in environmental justice amid frustration at the ecological challenges facing her native Santa Clara Pueblo – an Indigenous North American community just outside the New Mexico town of Española, which is downwind from the nuclear facilities that built the atomic bomb. Tsosie-Peña had begun studying permaculture and other Indigenous agricultural techniques. Today, she coordinates the environmental health and justice program at Tewa Women United, where she maintains a hillside public garden that’s home to the descendants of those first amaranth seeds she was given more than a decade ago.
Continue reading...Exclusive: IPCC says gas, produced by farming, shale gas and oil extraction, playing ever-greater role in overheating planet
Cutting carbon dioxide is not enough to solve the climate crisis – the world must act swiftly on another powerful greenhouse gas, methane, to halt the rise in global temperatures, experts have warned.
Leading climate scientists will give their starkest warning yet – that we are rushing to the brink of climate catastrophe – in a landmark report on Monday. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its sixth assessment report, a comprehensive review of the world’s knowledge of the climate crisis and how human actions are altering the planet. It will show in detail how close the world is to irreversible change.
Continue reading...A resurgence in the traditional drink is offering rural communities independence and a sustainable alternative to industrial soy and cattle farming
Four men emerge from the intense heat and steam of the barbacuá into the cold winter’s night in the rural district of Edelira, southern Paraguay. They rest, leaning on pitchforks they have used to turn over the prized load of fragrant yerba mate leaves inside this traditional drying oven. The centuries-old design drives hot air from a fire on to the large wooden frame where the leaves sit.
“I control the leaf’s humidity through intuition,” says Lisandro Benítez, the group’s lead, or uru. “Too humid and it won’t have the right flavour, too hot and dry and it could catch fire.”
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