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.”
Continue reading...The west is acting like the empires of old and failing to help poor people stand on their own two feet, says Benny Dembitzer
The debate in the Guardian (Outrage aimed at No 10 as MPs back £4bn cut to foreign aid budget, 13 July; Letters, 15 July) over the past few days has only contributed to the continuation of a fundamental error that is literally costing millions of lives in the global south. None of the politicians or correspondents who have intervened in the discussions have emphasised the profound conflict between aid and development. The two are usually presented as synonymous – they are not.
Because we have nurtured very little development to enable poor people in poor countries to stand on their own two feet, we have had to give them more aid. We have not helped them develop their own agency. We have not enabled them to develop agriculture to meet their own needs, encouraged governments to undertake land reform, educated women farmers, facilitated local seed multiplication or created local agricultural colleges.
Continue reading...Fears of growing urban/rural divide as workers take to tractors to protest against measures they say are unfair
Thousands of farmers have descended on dozens of towns and cities across New Zealand in their tractors in a nationwide protest against a swathe of new environmental regulations.
The Howl of a Protest event was tipped to be the largest of its kind for the rural sector, with motorcades expected in 51 towns and cities.
Continue reading...Investigation shows scale of big food corporations’ market dominance and political power
Continue reading...More than 60 urban farms have sprouted across space-starved Hong Kong since 2015 – on decommissioned helipads, shopping mall rooftops and public terraces – thanks to initiatives such as Rooftop Republic
Continue reading...Paul Crawford’s crops are dying. Salmon sacred to Frankie Myers’ Native American tribe are slipping away. Along the California-Oregon border, the climate crisis is worsening a water crisis decades in the making – leaving farmers and indigenous communities scrambling to keep their traditions alive.
Continue reading...Many people yearn to grow their own food and live a simpler life – but, when coronavirus hit, some decided it was now or never. Have their dreams of burgeoning veg patches and frolicking livestock come true?
On their one-acre plot of Hertfordshire countryside, Sarah Apps and Liam Armstrong live with three chickens, 59 tomato plants and – until this morning – three pigs. “It’s been an emotional day,” says Apps. They plan to get more pigs later in the summer, and next week more chickens are arriving; then ducks and a goat, a couple of turkeys for Christmas and, maybe next year, bees. Living on their own land, and becoming more self-sufficient, had been a bit of a dream for the couple, but it took the Covid pandemic to make it happen. “You just didn’t know what was going to happen,” says Apps. “Young people were dying, older people were dying … I think you really need to live for the days that you’ve got.”
When they spotted a run-down bungalow that came with an acre of land, they went for it. They had been living in Romford, East London. “We could hear the roar of the M25 and I could barely be bothered to mow the small patch of lawn we had,” says Apps. They moved in November and spent the winter creating raised vegetable beds, putting in fencing and making animal enclosures. It has been gruelling physical work – they have done it mostly by hand – moving around 30 tonnes of soil. “It was our fitness thing through lockdown,” says Apps. But now they have growing just about every type of vegetable you’d find in a well-stocked supermarket, eggs every day, and in a few days the pigs will return for the freezer. She breaks off to check on a chicken who is in their kitchen. “She’s just had a bath. She’s not very well.”
Continue reading...What should we be scoffing if we want to help fight the climate crisis from our kitchens? The question has never been more important or confusing – here is a guide to help you get started
Was ever a word so misused as “sustainable”? “Healthy” comes close, and indeed the two are often bandied around together, in trite “good for you, good for the planet” taglines that often appear on foods which are anything but. The question of what we should eat to help combat climate change and environmental degradation has never been more important – nor so confusing. In July, the government will publish its National Food Strategy, based on a year-long independent review, which should shed some light on the matter. In the meantime, there are some foods which, with caveats, you can scoff with a clear conscience.
“Good eating starts at home, and one of the most important things we can do for the future of the planet is to minimise food miles – so our staples should be foods that can grow perfectly well in this country,” advises Patrick Holden, chief executive of the Sustainable Food Trust. Another basic principle is to do your best to understand the story behind what you’re eating – be it plant or animal: “If you know who produced your food, they are accountable to you, and more likely to care.”
Continue reading...Combine the pandemic with rising raw material costs, stir in a labour shortage, a twist of Brexit, add a pinch of poor weather and voila …
Tinned tomatoes are a taken-for-granted store cupboard staple, relied upon by Britons to whip up home cooked favourites such as spaghetti bolognese. But the price could soon make you take notice, amid warnings of higher shopping bills, set against a backdrop of soaring global food prices.
From the packaging to the transportation and the energy used in manufacturing, nearly all aspects of the production of this popular ingredient now cost more. The crushed tomatoes alone are 30% dearer than a year ago, at €0.48 per kilo. The same pressures are driving the prices of many foods higher, meaning Britons will probably face bigger bills for groceries or meals out this autumn.
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