Skip to main content

Home/ food crops vs. export crops/ Group items tagged Plants

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Arabica Robusta

Battling the 'Monsanto law' in Ghana -- New Internationalist - 0 views

newint.org/...plant-breeders-bill-ghana

food security international development agriculture crisis agribusiness foodsecurity biofuels monsanto ghana

shared by Arabica Robusta on 28 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 28 Oct 14
     
    "'The Plant Breeders Bill aims to replace traditional varieties of seeds with uniform commercial varieties and increase the dependency of smallholders on commercial varieties,' says the Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fishermen. 'This system aims to compel farmers to purchase seeds for every planting season.' Across the world, farmers have got in to dangerous levels of debt at the hands of companies which have come to control their seed supply. 'The economic impact on the lives of farmers will be disastrous,' says Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana. 'The origin of food is seed. Whoever controls the seed control the entire food chain.' "
Arabica Robusta

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis | Environment | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...biofuels.renewableenergy

bank biofuel crisis development food international security world

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 06 Jul 08
     
    Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants. "It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."
Arabica Robusta

BRAZIL: Agribusiness Driving Land Concentration - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/news.asp

brazil land corporate exploitation biofuels

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 06 Oct 09
     
    From the census figures by state, analysts observe that in areas like São Paulo, the planting of more sugarcane is associated with a 6.1 percent increase in land concentration compared to the previous census, thanks to incentives for the production of biofuels, like ethanol.\n\nThose responsible for the IBGE survey, presented Sept. 30, said the situation in the state of São Paulo shows that one of the main factors in the concentration of land ownership is the expansion of agribusiness and large monoculture crops for export, such as soybeans and maize.
geo hyd

Indian Agriculture - 0 views

www.nuziveeduseeds.com

Indian Agriculture Indian seeds industry

shared by geo hyd on 22 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • More ScienceCultivating best Technologies
  • bagged Public
  • geo hyd on 22 Aug 12
     
    Nuziveedu Seeds is one of the top seeds company in India and also the largest hybrid seed company in India.Nuziveedu Seeds is also a market leader in hybrid cotton seed and research paddy seed.Nuziveedu Seeds offers the strength and experience of being a major Seeds company with the aim to develop and supply quality seeds for the betterment of our farmers.
geo hyd

wheat - 0 views

Seeds suppliers India Plants

shared by geo hyd on 26 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • geo hyd on 26 Sep 12
     
    Nuziveedu Seeds is emerging as leading Seeds suppliers for field crops such as paddy, corn, sorghum, pearl millet, sunflower and vegetable crops.Nuziveedu Seeds is proud to possess the highest number of products in cotton in the country.
Arabica Robusta

AfricaFiles | Responsibly destroying the world's peasantry? - 0 views

www.africafiles.org/article.asp

food security international development crisis agriculture agribusiness foodsecurity trading carbon environment offset

shared by Arabica Robusta on 15 Jun 10 - Cached
  • It has been several years since private investors and states began buying and leasing millions of hectares of farmland worldwide in order to secure their domestic supply of food, raw commodities, and biofuels, or to get subsidies for carbon storage through plantations.
  • All too often, notions such as "reserve agricultural land," or "idle land," are manipulated out of existence, sometimes being used to designate land on which many livelihoods depend, and that is subject to long-standing customary rights. The requirement that evictions take place only for a valid "public purpose," with fair compensation, and following consultation of those affected, is honoured more in the breach than in the observance.
  • what is required is to insist that governments comply fully with their human rights obligations, including the right to food, the right of all peoples to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources, and the right not to be deprived of the means of subsistence.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Because the principles ignore human rights, they neglect the essential dimension of accountability. There is also a clear tension between ceding land to investors for the creation of large plantations, and the objective of redistributing land and ensuring more equitable access to it.
  • It should come as no wonder that smallholders and agricultural labourers represent a combined 70% of those who are unable to feed themselves today.
  • Smallholders, by contrast, produce at a higher cost. They are often very productive by hectare, since they maximize the use of the soil, and achieve the best complementary use of plants and animals. But the form of agriculture that they practice, which relies less on external inputs and mechanization, is highly labour-intensive. If smallholders compete in the same markets as the large farms, they lose. Yet they render invaluable services, in terms of preservation of agro- and biodiversity, local communities' resilience to price shocks or weather-related events, and environmental conservation. The arrival of large-scale investment in agriculture will alter the relationship between these worlds of farming. It will exacerbate highly unequal competition. And it could cause massive social disruptions in the world's rural areas.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Oil-dependency and food: Livelihoods at risk - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...66792

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource food security foodsecurity agribusiness agriculture miles sovereignty

shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Food sovereignty, the political project put forward by the international peasant movement Via Campesina, offers a promising road map.
  • Industrial agriculture may be more ‘efficient’ in terms of labour (output per worker), but its productivity is achieved through massive applications of fossil fuel-based inputs such as tractor fuel and agrochemicals. Small organic farms, however, are generally more efficient in terms of land (output per acre), since they grow a variety of plants and animals, taking full advantage of each ecological niche.
Arabica Robusta

Reality Check - 0 views

www.realityofaid.org/rchecknews.php

shared by Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08 - Cached
  • the WDR 2008 correctly stresses the need to promote farmer-led technologies and calls for extending the Green Revolution to subsistence farmers in less favorable regions yet avoids grappling with the increasing monopolistic control of biotech firms and agrochemical TNCs over genes, seeds, plant varieties, fertilizers and other associated inputs for their propagation. It acknowledges the importance of improving poor farmers’ access to productive assets but favors market-based land reform and water management which more often than not has resulted in increasing, rather than decreasing, inequities and further marginalization of subsistence farmers. It stresses the state’s role in providing core public goods such as infrastructure and research and development but does not consider how the benefits of such “public goods” are disproportionately captured by richer farmers and agribusiness corporations while the social and environmental costs are disproportionately borne by landless and subsistence farmers, indigenous people and rural women.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08
       
      World Bank failure to reconcile proclamations of 'poverty alleviation' with free market economic ideology.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Successful African alternatives to corporate 'green revolutions' - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...71991

food security international development agriculture crisis agribusiness foodsecurity pambazuka biofuels biopiracy

shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • AGRA proposes exactly the kind of agriculture the panel of agricultural experts (from South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China and more) rejected: Monoculture of one or two crops with the goal of increasing yields through the high use of fossil fuels, chemicals (fertilisers, pesticides) and biotechnology (patented genetically modified seeds).
  • As the demand for agrofuels seems to be insatiable, global corporations are noticing Africa for its extensive land masses, while not seeing the hungry. Calling Africa the ‘green OPEC’, they assert that 15 countries in Africa have a total combined land area greater than all of India ‘available’ for agrofuel production, not bothering to explain what ‘available land’ means in the context of a food deficit continent.[2]
  • the amount of plant material needed is massive. Lester Brown offers the comparison that the amount of grain required to fill the 90-litre petrol tank of a 4 × 4 vehicle once with maize ethanol could feed one person for a year. The grain it takes to fill the tank every two weeks over a year would feed 26 people.[3]
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Exporting crops for overseas consumption while Africans go hungry is a historical pattern all too familiar on the continent. It is certainly not the hope of 21st century African agriculture.
  • Both Namibia and South Africa are moving towards expropriation of land as a necessary means to correct this economic apartheid. Southern Africa is learning from the negative experience of land grabs in Zimbabwe, yet the commodity market approach can be similarly inequitable and destructive of livelihoods.
  • ‘Agroecology [sustainable mixed cropping] is a knowledge-intensive approach. It requires public policies supporting agricultural research and participative extension services. States and donors have a key role to play here. Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds.’[7]
  • There are about 18 recognised farming systems in Africa that can be grouped as a maize-dominated system, a cereal/root crop system, a root crop system and an agro-pastoral millet/sorghum system, all within overall mixed cropping. Part of Africa's food heritage, this genetic wealth offers important contributions towards making Africa a well-nourished continent.
  • Stories of stolen genetic treasures echo across the continent. Like traditional story tellers, when a botanist or agronomist ends his or her account of the latest theft, another joins in to give yet another account, often in voices of anguish and despair.
  • Today, the North American Tuli Association promotes the breed as follows: ‘NATA intends to expand their activities by spreading the benefits of the Tuli cattle to many countries within the Western hemisphere….the Tuli breed can provide the missing link to bridge the gap in cattle genetics, the gap being adaptation to heat and nutritional stress combined with carcass merit.’[10] Neither the government of Zimbabwe nor the foreign cattle associations consulted with the local communities or recognised their contribution in any way. NATA has even usurped the name of ‘tuli.’
  • A major discussion in the process of domesticating farmers' rights will be determining the relationship between individual rights of private property and social rights of farmers.
  • The WTO gives no recognition to social rights, only to private property rights, while the CBD, the ITPGRFA and the AU Model Legislation all recognise the rights of groups (farmers and communities) as equal to those of individuals (persons and corporations).
  • The AU model legislation also directly addresses the issue of biopiracy, such as the Tuli cattle case, by adopting the CBD principle of prior informed consent (PIC)
  • Because the wealth of the existing biodiversity is the basis for the future of agricultural Africa, it is essential that those who care about this wealth, and work toward improving its potential for use, are acknowledged.
1 - 9 of 9
Showing 20▼ items per page