Agriculture
-
World’s farms at a breaking point
Almost 10% of the 8 billion people on earth are already undernourished with 3 billion lacking healthy diets, and the land and water resources farmers rely on stressed to “a breaking point.” And by 2050 there will be 2 billion more mouths to feed, warns a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Continue reading
-
Against Enclosure – The Commoners Fight Back
In 1542, Henry VIII gave his friend and privy councilor Sir William Herbert a gift: the buildings and lands of a dissolved monastery, Wilton Abbey near Salisbury. Herbert didn’t need farmland, so he had the buildings torn down, expelled the monastery’s tenants, and physically destroyed an entire village. In their place he built a large… Continue reading
-
Living in Epoch-Defining Times: Food, Agriculture and the New World Order
Farmerless farms manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce commodity crops from patented genetically engineered seeds for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be processed and constituted into something resembling food. Data platforms, private equity firms, e-commerce giants and AI-controlled farming systems. Continue reading
-
Bill Gates and the Uncertain Future of Food Security
As we approach a winter of discontent and Global food systems go from bad to worse, there’s trouble in paradise. At the root of these problems, Government responses to COVID-19 have contributed to a six-fold increase in famine-like conditions as global supply chains collapse, and field trials for gene-edited crops and farm animals begin in… Continue reading
-
UK Action Alert: Ask your MP to ensure your voice is heard
14 October 2021 — GMWatch The vast majority of 6,440 submissions to the consultation on gene editing deregulation said NO to the proposals – but Defra is going ahead regardless Environment Secretary George Eustice plans to ignore the results of his own public consultation and push on with proposals to dismantle GM safeguards, warns GM… Continue reading
-
Global Breaking News on GMOs and Pesticides 15 October 2021
15 October 2021 — Sustainable Pulse Editors’ picks Expert Groups Urge European Health Commissioner to Base Glyphosate Assessment on Independent Science 41 civil society organizations, including several of the organizers of the successful European Citizens’ Initiative #StopGlyphosate, have urged the EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides to guarantee that the ongoing assessment of glyphosate is based… Continue reading
-
UK: The Dirty Dozen
Concerned about pesticide residues in your food? As featured in the Guardian, The Independent and the Daily Express our list of the ‘dirtiest’ fruit and vegetables reveals the 2020 produce most likely to contain cocktails of multiple pesticides. Continue reading
-
Eustice goes ahead with unpopular plan to dismantle GM safeguards
Earlier this week George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, revealed plans to stop the likes of me being able to object to field trials of experimental genetically engineered crops. At least, I think that’s what he announced. The details of what is actually going to change were both vague and downplayed, occupying a mere 65 of the 1200-odd… Continue reading
-
Global Breaking News on GMOs and Pesticides 24 September 2021
24 September 2021 — Sustainable Pulse Editors’ picks Protests Around the World Target Global Corporate Food Empire Street and online people’s protests against the ‘global corporate food empire’ greeted the opening of the UN Food Systems Summit (UN FSS), as the Global People’s Summit (GPS) on Food Systems launched a Global Day of Action on… Continue reading
-
Groups slam Commission plans to deregulate new GMOs
Commission reportedly aims to exempt some new GMOs from safety regulations within four years and change regulation for all new GMOs within 10 years Continue reading
-
Global Breaking News on GMOs and Pesticides
3 September 2021 — Sustainable Pulse Editors’ picks Breakfast at Monsanto’s Sheds Light on Health Dangers of World’s Most Used Weedkiller: Exclusive Interview Sustainable Pulse interview with Lee A. Evslin, M.D., author of the new eye-opening book Breakfast at Monsanto’s and board-certified pediatrician and Fellow in the American Academy of Pediatrics. What led to your… Continue reading
-
Saving the climate with agriculture
Many of us are worried that industrial agriculture is fueling the climate crisis. We are losing fertile soil, and pesticides are killing bees, butterflies and birds. I’ve received many questions asking what a better agriculture system could look like. Continue reading
-
Robbing the Soil, 2: ‘Systematic theft of communal property’
In 1549, tens of thousands of English peasants fought — and thousands died — to halt and reverse the spread of capitalist farming that was destroying their way of life. The largest action, known as Kett’s Rebellion, has been called “the greatest practical utopian project of Tudor England and the greatest anticapitalist rising in English… Continue reading
-
Global Breaking News on GMOs and Pesticides 20 August 2021
20 August 2021 — Sustainable Pulse Editors’ picks US EPA Bans Use of Neurotoxic Insecticide Chlorpyrifos on Food Crops In a historic victory for farm workers, environment, and public health, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today it will be revoking all tolerances of chlorpyrifos, effectively banning all food uses of the toxic, brain-damaging pesticide in… Continue reading
-
How to improve pesticide regulation
Concrete steps to improve pesticide regulation are proposed in a new open-access commentary, “Novel strategies and new tools to curtail the health effects of pesticides”, published on August 3, 2021 in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health. Continue reading
-
The stories we trust: Regulating genome edited organisms
EXCERPT: In repeating industry narratives, decision-makers (and the media) pave the ground for a handful of corporations to advance false solutions that serve their encroachment of food systems. To help clarify valid claims from technological bluff, we recommend institutions, regulators and funders to carry out a ‘hype test’ by asking: What makes gene editing superior… Continue reading
-
The Gates Foundation’s “Corporate Merry-go-round”: Spearheading the Neo-liberal Plunder of African Agriculture
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is dangerously and unaccountably distorting the direction of international development, according to a new report by the campaign group Global Justice Now. With assets of $43.5 billion, the BMGF is the largest charitable foundation in the world. It actually distributes more aid for global health than any government.… Continue reading
-
Book Review: Imperial roots of the global food system
Why do we eat what we do? This is the question Chris Otter seeks to answer in Diet for a Large Planet. It is very timely. In recent years there has been growing anger and horror at a food system that delivers both unhealthy and environmentally destructive diets. Food has become deeply politicized. Continue reading
-
Toxic Corporations Are Destroying the Planet’s Soil
A newly published analysis in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science argues that a toxic soup of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides is causing havoc beneath fields covered in corn, soybeans, wheat and other monoculture crops. The research is the most comprehensive review ever conducted on how pesticides affect soil health. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 