Farming

A new study has calculated that Brazilian farmers produced food for about ten percent of the world's population last year. The state agricultural research agency Embrapa has examined, among other things, grain and oilseed production and comes to the conclusion that Brazilian products fed almost 780 million people - on the one hand directly, and on the other hand by feeding grain or soy to animals that then ended up on the plate. Brazil is the world's largest exporter of soy, sugar, coffee, orange juice and beef and chicken.

Bayer has reached a compromise on a crucial part of its multibillion-dollar glyphosate settlement with U.S. plaintiffs. The agribusiness group announced Wednesday a breakthrough in negotiations over how to handle future lawsuits alleging cancer risks from Roundup, a weedkiller containing glyphosate. It said a formal agreement had been reached with plaintiffs' lawyers that included a commitment of up to two billion dollars (1.7 billion euros).

In protest against new agricultural laws, farmers in India have begun a hunger strike. The action, scheduled for one day, coincided on Saturday with the death anniversary of independence fighter Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948). The hunger strike is meant to underscore the peaceful element of the protests, farmer leaders said.

A new report has shown that 70% of the world's crop fields, ranches and orchards are operated by one percent of the world's farms, resulting in rising land inequality due to global farmland being increasingly dominated by a few major companies, a new research led by the International Land Coalition, alongside a group of partners including Oxfam and the World Inequality Lab, found.

"In the past, these instruments were only of concern to the markets. They didn’t affect us individually. But now they touch every aspect of our lives because they are linked to the environmental crisis and the pandemic,” so Ward Anseeuw, senior technical specialist at the International Land Coalition.

Investor Rain Makers Capital Investment and farming technology company GrowGroup IFS are cooperating with the government of Abu Dhabi in order to build the world's largest indoor farm for "spinach, rocket, herbs and kale".

The project costs €150 million and is expected to produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh vegetables per year at 5% of the water costs that would normally be needed for conventional growth in Abu Dhabi.

The locust plagues that have been terrorising East Africa, India, and Pakistan in the past few months have still not disappeared. The unusual amounts of precipitation have caused the insects to reproduce 400 times faster than normal. Many fear the plagues to continue as the monsoons seasons are beginning in Pakistan and India.

Since the swarms have already destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land, farmers in Punjab, the most important agricultural region of Pakistan, received ten euro cents for every kilogram of locust. The collected insects were then turned into chicken feed. Since this solution helps both to compensate farmers for their lost income and to eradicate the plague, the Pakistani government is now planning to expand the programme to the entire country.