Agriculture

ISSUES

Yield and environment don't necessarily go hand in hand

Agricultural practices vary a lot. Industrialised countries practice heavily mechanised and subsidized intensive farming Intensive mechanised farming also exists in emerging countries and in the 19 industrialised Cairns Group countries, but it is not subsidized and to a varying extent utilizes agricultural inputs (pesticides, fertilisers) In developing countries, farming is also slowly becoming mechanised ; but it does not use many agricultural inputs and in some countries, such as India, it may be subsidized, For major producers (wheat, rice, coffee, etc.), this very much depends on the fluctuation of world prices. In mountainous regions and in semi-arid areas, animal husbandry conducted responsibly presents many advantages such as : upgrading of a poor biomass which cannot be used for other activities ; production of high quality goods ; good landscape management and creation of jobs and thus income for the farmers

NEWS

Meat trade emissions equal to half of all Britain's cars

Tanzania: Salty Soils Drive Farmers Into Forest Reserve

Brazil to lead world in biotech crops: association

Univers GoodPlanet par Netvibes

DEBATES

Water is key to food security

FAO

The vulnerability of rain-dependent food production systems and the people who depend on them has been brought into stark relief...

Famine and Hope in the Horn of Africa

Yet again, famine stalks the Horn of Africa. More than ten...

FAO report makes strong business case for investing in women

If women in rural areas had the same access to land,...

FOCUS

2011, year of forests : Acid rain

In the 1970s and 1980s, tens of millions of hectares of forest in Canada and Europe were damaged by a phenomenon about which little was known at the time: acid rain. Even in France, notably in the Vosges Mountains, many trees were affected by this rain as acid as...

VIDEOS

08/02/2012	The mobile phone has revolutionised the lives of the rural poor across the...	27/09/2011	A surge in financial speculation on maize is causing vastly inflated...
02/08/2011	Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN's World Food Program, talks about why,...	15/02/2011	Tracy Worcester's film about factory pig farming, a system which abuses...

GREEN TIPS

Get women out of poverty

Women living in the countryside belong to the most vulnerable populations. They are the first victims of...

INDICATORS

Arable land
Undernourishment
Degraded soils
Pesticide use

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