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Healthy soils are the foundation of global food production and ought to become a top priority on the political agenda. This was one of the key messages of the opening pannel at the Global Soil Week, which started in Berlin on Monday. „If humanity’s overarching need for food security and nutrition, climate change mitigation and […]

Brazil’s National Cancer Institute (INCA) has called for a substantial reduction in the use of pesticides, blaming the cultivation of genetically modified crops for the skyrocketing use of agrochemicals in the country. The institute, which is under the direct administration of the Ministry of Health, published a document last week, warning against the serious health

European citizens and small-scale sustainable farms are taking back control of the food system from large industrial businesses; this is the key message of a report released on Monday by Friends of the Earth Europe. According to the authors, the globalisation of food production has led to a monopoly within the agricultural sector, with just

Seed saving, a thousand-year-old practice which forms the basis of farming is fast becoming criminalised. A new report released by GRAIN and La Via Campesina on Wednesday shows how agribusiness and governments are moving to stop farmers from saving and exchanging their seeds and how farmers are fighting new seed laws. According to the booklet,

U.S. regulators will put new restrictions on glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, in an effort to address the rapid expansion of weeds resistant to the chemical. According to Reuters, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirmed it will require a weed resistance management plan for glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed-killer. The

The European Patent Office (EPO) has approved the controversial patenting of plants and animals derived from conventional breeding. In a long awaited decision on the precedent cases of broccoli and tomato, the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO in Munich ruled on Wednesday that plants obtained by essentially biological processes are patentable. The EPO

Europe’s wild bee population is declining dramatically. According to the first-ever assessment of all 1,965 wild bee species in Europe, 9.2% are threatened with extinction while another 5.2% are likely to be threatened in the near future. The study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was published last week as part

The world is projected to face a 40% global water deficit by 2030 unless we dramatically improve the management of this precious resource. This is the main message of the UN’s World Water Development Report 2015, launched on Friday two days before World Water Day. The planet has never been so thirsty: About 1.2 billion

Close to half of the world’s hungry, or 363 million people, live in just five fast-growing, middle income countries: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Mexico. At the same time, the levels of overweight and obesity are rising in these countries. This is why we must also pay attention to those living in the “economic middle”

The EU is one of the largest importers of commodities stemming from illegally deforested land, according to a new report published today by Brussels-based environmental group Fern: between 2000 and 2012, forests the size of a football field were illegally cleared every two minutes to supply European consumers with beef, soybeans, leather and palm oil.