Prototype technology could help alleviate growing shortage of human crop pickers
The job of harvesting cauliflowers could one day be in the mechanical hands of robots thanks to a collaboration between scientists and the French canned vegetable producer Bonduelle.
Fieldwork Robotics, the team behind the world’s first raspberry-picking robot, is designing a machine in a three-year collaboration launched on Monday.
Continue reading...Covid has got experts thinking urgently about the risk of diseases passing from farmed animals to humans. We examine the major outbreaks of the past two centuries
Continue reading...Beneath the veneer of Xi Jinping’s ambitious agricultural plan farming communities remain marred by homelessness, poverty and unstable markets
The official pictures tell a delightful tale. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is seen touring fish farms, rice paddies and vineyards in Ningxia, ambling through lily fields in Shanxi, and inspecting mushroom- and fungus-growing operations in Shaanxi.
The carefully choreographed images aim to create a vision of his latest signature policy – rural revitalisation. Billions of dollars will be spent on revamping the countryside – increasing prosperity, improving its ecology, and integrating it with the development of China’s shining cities, which had largely left rural areas behind.
Continue reading...Chinese investment in Argentina’s hog industry would boost exports, but environmentalists fear risk of pandemic
A government-sponsored plan to turbocharge Argentina’s hog industry with Chinese capital is generating unprecedented resistance among its supposed beneficiaries – the Argentinian general public.
Nearly 400,000 people have signed petitions opposing the move. “We never had such a huge response before,” said environmental lawyer Enrique Viale, one of the group who banded together last month to challenge the government’s initiative. His petition currently has 200,000 signatures; another on change.org has almost 120,000 additional signatures, and three separate petitions on the same platform have clocked up another 55,000 between them.
Continue reading...Estimated 120,000 hectares stripped bare by rodents and now browning in heatwave
Large swathes of Germany’s farmland are being decimated by plagues of field mice leading to significant crop loss, according to the country’s national farming association.
In some parts of the country, a quarter of the arable land is affected, leading to calls for compensation as well as a relaxation on rules governing the use of pesticides.
Continue reading... Enhanced photosynthesis holds promise of higher yields in a drought-afflicted future
Tobacco plants have been modified with a protein found in algae to improve their photosynthesis and increase growth, while using less water, in a new advance that could point the way to higher-yielding crops in a drought-afflicted future.
The technique focuses on photosynthesis, the complex process by which plants are able to use sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce nutrients that fuel their growth. Enhancing photosynthesis would produce huge benefits to agricultural productivity, but the complexities of the process have stymied many past attempts to harness it.
Continue reading...Nation is facing shortage of shearers for its 68 million sheep as hundreds are barred from taking their usual trip across the Tasman Sea
It’s a tradition that stretches back decades. Every year, hundreds of New Zealanders fly in to Australia for the spring shearing season – a huge mobilisation of workers essential to the success of the nation’s wool industry.
In dusty sheds on outback farms they join up with local shearers and, between them, relieve five million sheep of their fleeces over eight weeks.
Continue reading...Livestock, GPS equipment and quad bikes targeted as gangs took advantage of empty roads
Farmers are counting the cost of a sharp increase in countryside crime ranging from livestock rustling to the theft of tractors, quad bikes, GPS equipment and Land Rovers.
There was a spike in the theft of sheep during the lockdown as gangs took advantage of deserted communities, empty roads and concerns about food shortages during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...Global Witness campaigners warn of risk of further killings during Covid-19 lockdowns
A record number of people were killed last year for defending their land and environment, according to research that highlights the routine murder of activists who oppose extractive industries driving the climate crisis and the destruction of nature.
More than four defenders were killed every week in 2019, according to an annual death toll compiled by the independent watchdog Global Witness, amid growing evidence of opportunistic killings during the Covid-19 lockdown in which activists were left as “sitting ducks” in their own homes.
Continue reading...Henry Dimbleby’s national food strategy starts with review of ‘slow-motion disaster’ diet, poverty, and post-Brexit laws
It is a year since Michael Gove asked the businessman Henry Dimbleby to produce a national food strategy. In that time the coronavirus pandemic has brutally exposed the cracks in the British food system so the launch of part one of his review this Wednesday comes in a new and urgent context.
After only a few weeks of lockdown three million people in Britain were in households where someone was forced to skip meals and go hungry.
Continue reading...Top investment house delists world biggest meat producer over lack of commitment to sustainability issues
The investment arm of northern Europe’s largest financial services group has dropped JBS, the world’s biggest meat processer, from its portfolio. The Brazilian company is now excluded from assets sold by Nordea Asset Management, which controls a €230bn (£210bn) fund, according to Eric Pedersen, its head of responsible investments.
The decision was taken about a month ago, over the meat giant’s links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation, its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, past corruption scandals, and frustrations over engagement with the company on such issues. “The exclusion of JBS is quite dramatic for us because it is from all of our funds, not just the ones labelled ESG,” Pedersen said.
Continue reading...Photographs by employee appear to show company trucks being used to transport cattle from allegedly prohibited cattle farm
New evidence appears to connect JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, to cattle supplied from a farm in the Brazilian Amazon which is under sanction for illegal deforestation.
This is the fifth time in a year that allegations have surfaced connecting the company to Amazon farmers linked with illegal deforestation.
Continue reading...It may be best near-term way to remove CO2, say scientists, but cutting fossil fuel use remains critical
Spreading rock dust on farmland could suck billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air every year, according to the first detailed global analysis of the technique.
The chemical reactions that degrade the rock particles lock the greenhouse gas into carbonates within months, and some scientists say this approach may be the best near-term way of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Continue reading...Ongoing destruction of nature will result in stream of animal diseases jumping to humans, says report
The world is treating the health and economic symptoms of the coronavirus pandemic but not the environmental cause, according to the authors of a UN report. As a result, a steady stream of diseases can be expected to jump from animals to humans in coming years, they say.
The number of such “zoonotic” epidemics is rising, from Ebola to Sars to West Nile virus and Rift Valley fever, with the root cause being the destruction of nature by humans and the growing demand for meat, the report says.
Continue reading...Facing the prospect of rotting crops and ruined livelihoods, Indian farmers have embraced virtual marketplaces to sell produce
When the call finally comes, the connection is so poor that Silme Marak can barely catch the words. After running upstairs to the roof of her house for a better signal, the 39-year-old farmer finally hears the first piece of good news to come her way in months: an order for 600 pineapples from a harvest that she had feared might have to be left to rot.
Marak lives in the Tura town of Meghalaya, a hilly place in north-east India whose name translates as “the abode of clouds”. She is among millions of farmers in India – agriculture contributes nearly a seventh of the country’s GDP – in despair at the prospect of seeing their produce rot as the country entered a severe lockdown in the third week of March. According to a Credit Suisse report, vegetable farmers alone have lost upwards of Rs 20,000 crore (£2.5bn).
Continue reading...Extremists exploit rural nostalgia and farmers’ anger at globalisation to smuggle in ideology
The poster advertising the evening of debate and organic canapés in Halle’s university district looked familiar to environmentally conscious Germans: a rugged pair of hands, cupping fertile brown soil, underneath the slogan “Farms instead of agricultural factories”, written in a font mimicking that of a popular biodynamic food brand.
The only hint the event wasn’t organised by sandal-wearing good-lifers but a local group of far-right nationalists was in the subtitle: “Let’s chase the globalists off our acres!”
Continue reading...Experts call for legislation and trade deals worldwide to encourage green recovery
Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.
The illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade as well as the devastation of forests and other wild places were still the driving forces behind the increasing number of diseases leaping from wildlife to humans, the leaders told the Guardian.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Milk giants’ climate impact rising and production caps needed, say researchers
The biggest dairy companies in the world have the same combined greenhouse gas emissions as the UK, the sixth biggest economy in the world, according to a new report.
The analysis shows the impact of the 13 firms on the climate crisis is growing, with an 11% increase in emissions in the two years after the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, largely due to consolidation in the sector. Scientific reports have shown that consumption of dairy, as well as meat, must be reduced significantly in rich nations to tackle the climate emergency.
Continue reading...Changes could introduce gluten-free wheat and disease-resistant fruit and vegetables, say peers
Peers are preparing plans to legalise the gene-editing of crops in England, a move that scientists say would offer the nation a chance to develop and grow hardier, more nutritious varieties. The legislation would also open the door to gene-editing of animals.
Continue reading...Greenpeace report shows cattle indirectly sold to JBS, Marfrig and Minerva came from protected Serro Ricardo Franco park
Three international meat companies have indirectly sourced cattle from farms that deforested a unique, protected Amazon reserve, a new report from Greenpeace has found – and two of them later sold meat from the area to the UK.
The revelations come as the Brazil-based companies involved, JBS, Marfrig and Minerva, are under increasing pressure to come clean about their Amazon supply chains. They are now known to have broken commitments made to Greenpeace and Brazilian federal prosecutors more than a decade ago.
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