Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Negotiations over Britain’s future relationship with the EU appear on course for an acrimonious start after Michel Barnier poured scorn on Boris Johnson’s spokesman and suggested the new Northern Ireland secretary did not understand the withdrawal agreement.
Barnier said he expected the talks, starting on Monday, to be “very difficult” but pronounced Brussels as “ready” following the official sign-off by EU ministers of their instructions for their chief negotiator.
The Arctic global seed vault has reached the milestone of having 1m varieties stored in its deep freeze. The new deposits are being made after unexpected flooding of its entrance tunnel in 2017 prompted an upgrade.
Seeds from 60,000 crop varieties from across the world are being placed in the vault to back up those held in other seed banks.
Collapsing prices, the rise of mega farms in warmer states and fluctuations in demand have led to a spate of bankruptcies
The Goodman family has been milking cows in Wisconsin since 1889. Jim Goodman is the last of his line. The 66-year-old farmer has sold his herd and the land where they grazed. His children have chosen other careers.
Use of harmful chemicals is higher in poorer nations, according to data analysed by Unearthed
The world’s biggest pesticide companies make billions of dollars a year from chemicals found by independent authorities to pose high hazards to human health or the environment, according to an analysis by campaigners.
The research also found a higher proportion of these highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) in the companies’ sales in poorer nations than in rich ones. In India, 59% of sales were of HHPs in contrast to just 11% in the UK, according to the analysis.
Invasion is further food shortages in country struggling with drought and legacy of civil war
Swarms of locusts ravaging crops and grazing land across east Africa have reached South Sudan, already reeling from widespread hunger and years of civil war, the country’s agriculture minister said on Tuesday.
Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti are battling the worst locust outbreak in decades, and swarms have also spread into Tanzania and Uganda.
Government plans to take ‘full control’ of borders a disaster for economy and jobs, say industry leaders and Labour
Britain is to close its borders to unskilled workers and those who can’t speak English as part of a fundamental overhaul of immigration laws that will end the era of cheap EU labour in factories, warehouses, hotels and restaurants.
Unveiling its Australian-style points system on Wednesday, the government will say it is grasping a unique opportunity to take “full control” of British borders “for the first time in decades” and eliminate the “distortion” caused by EU freedom of movement.
The destructive migratory pest threatens catastrophe as it swarms through countries already plagued by food insecurity
A colleague at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tells a terrifying story about the desert locust.
In 2005 she visited farmers in Niger as they prepared to harvest their crops. Just hours later, a swarm of locusts swept through the area and destroyed everything. One month later, truckloads of families were forced to leave their homes because they had nothing to eat.
The Baftas awards frontrunner joins protestors on Tower Bridge in London to campaign for a meat-free world
Oscar and Bafta nominee Joaquin Phoenix has made a plea for people to “go vegan” as he led an animal equality protest in central London.
The actor gathered activists for a protest where he dropped a 390-square-foot banner from Tower Bridge that declared: “Factory farming destroys our planet. Go vegan.”
UN urges immediate action as east African nations already experiencing devastating hunger see large areas of crops destroyed
The worst outbreak of desert locusts in Kenya in 70 years has seen hundreds of millions of the insects swarm into the east African nation from Somalia and Ethiopia. Those two countries have not had an infestation like this in a quarter century, destroying farmland and threatening an already vulnerable region with devastating hunger.
“Even cows are wondering what is happening,” said Ndunda Makanga, who spent hours Friday trying to chase the locusts from his farm. “Corn, sorghum, cowpeas, they have eaten everything.”
Country’s lack of meat processing facilities means livestock must be shipped to international markets – at a high cost to both shepherds and welfare
Gheorghe Dănulețiu, also known as Ghiță Ciobanul (Ghiță the shepherd), has more than 500,000 followers on Facebook after he featured in an advertising campaign that went viral, but he leads the modest life of a traditional shepherd.
Looking after 1,500 sheep in western Romania, Dănulețiu’s life changes with the seasons. During lambing in spring, he barely sleeps four hours a night while in winter he leads his sheep in a three- to four-week journey from the mountains down to graze in the valleys.
Irrigation systems and oases in the arid south are failing to keep up with the demands of thirsty palm plantations
Mansour Rajeb is wrapping a plastic protective sheet around the branch of a date palm in his oasis near the village of Bchelli, in southern Tunisia. Tying it up, he lingers.
“I’m worried,” he says. “The quality is getting worse. The dates are getting drier.”
Bees are essential to the functioning of America’s titanic almond industry – and billions are dying in the process
Dennis Arp was feeling optimistic last summer, which is unusual for a beekeeper these days.
Thanks to a record wet spring, his hundreds of hives, scattered across the central Arizona desert, produced a bounty of honey. Arp would have plenty to sell in stores, but more importantly, the bumper harvest would strengthen his bees for their biggest task of the coming year.
For some farmers in New Zealand, Britain and Australia, drones are not just a toy – they’re an increasingly vital tool
A shepherd is out tending a flock when a presence appears above. It descends from the sky and communicates vital information. It may sound like a nativity scene, but for an increasing number of farmers it’s a daily occurrence – and that celestial being is a drone.
Corey Lambeth, a New Zealand farmer, originally purchased a drone for photography, but he quickly realised the device had more practical applications. “I thought ‘I’ll just give it a nudge on the sheep and see what that goes like’ and it actually worked out quite well,” he says. Now, Lambeth has been using a drone “pretty much as another dog” to muster sheep for three years.
Nicolas Bardy says decision by France’s highest court is ‘stupidity pushed to its limit’
A French farmer has been ordered to pay €8,000 (£6,835) after neighbours complained about the smell from his herd of cows, bringing to an end a 10-year legal battle.
Nicolas Bardy, whose family have farmed cattle at Lacapelle-Viescamp in the Cantal, in south-central France, for six generations, was accused of stocking bales of hay too close to his retired neighbours’ home, causing “strong irritating odours”.
British-backed plantation firm vows to address claims that underpaid palm oil workers have been exposed to toxic chemicals
The UK development bank has been accused of failing to protect workers from exposure to dangerous pesticides and paying “extreme poverty” wages on palm oil plantations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Human Rights Watch said the CDC group, along with three other European development banks, had failed to properly oversee its investments in Feronia, one of Africa’s largest palm oil companies.
Eco groups and global treaty blamed for delay in supply of vitamin-A enriched Golden Rice
Stifling international regulations have been blamed for delaying the approval of a food that could have helped save millions of lives this century. The claim is made in a new investigation of the controversy surrounding the development of Golden Rice by a team of international scientists.
Golden Rice is a form of normal white rice that has been genetically modified to provide vitamin A to counter blindness and other diseases in children in the developing world. It was developed two decades ago but is still struggling to gain approval in most nations.
Farmers given until 2022 to make changes or pay higher taxes as party of net-zero emissions by 2050 policy
New Zealand farmers have five years to reduce their carbon emissions before the government introduces financial penalties, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.
Ardern’s Labour coalition government has committed to making New Zealand carbon net-zero by 2050, with the PM likening the climate change battle to the previous generations’ struggle against the rise of nuclear power.
In Question Time, the prime minister says opposition are addicted to panic and crisis. All the day’s events, live
This is not a sight you will see too often – a LNP senator sitting with the crossbench, against the government.
Susan McDonald chaired the committee that recommended the additional maintenance requirements be removed from charity flight operators – which is what Rex Patrick is calling for.
And from this, I think you can infer from this answer on the voice to parliament, Ken Wyatt has set out that the government will be pushing to legislate, before heading to the referendum
Patricia Karvelas: You do know you’ll break a lot of hearts by not putting the voice to the people?
We also have to be pragmatic and that’s a reality.
Some people have told me it will break their hearts. We have to think about whether we want to be recognised in the Constitution.
Recognition was in section 127 in the Constitution but in the sense of not allowing us to be counted. 127 was struck out.
The 1967 referendum created a number of myths around what it really meant to people. The reality was, was the striking out of that and then the amendment, the 51-26.
I’m going to wait to see what comes out.
I’ve been meeting with people and there is a degree of willingness to have recognition. I think that once we work through whatever the voice is, and that may give us another option.
‘Perverse’ payments must be redirected to measures such as capturing carbon, report says
The public is providing more than $1m per minute in global farm subsidies, much of which is driving the climate crisis and destruction of wildlife, according to a new report.
Just 1% of the $700bn (£560bn) a year given to farmers is used to benefit the environment, the analysis found. Much of the total instead promotes high-emission cattle production, forest destruction and pollution from the overuse of fertiliser.