We consume a fair amount of tea here in the office and this newsbit from Greenpeace East Asia had us a bit worried. “A Greenpeace investigation has found pesticides banned for use on tea in the products marketed by some of China’s top tea companies. Some of the firms, which include China Tea, Tenfu Tea and China Tea King, export tea products to Japan, the US and Europe.”

The link to the full report can be found on the Greenpeace website link below.

Read the full article at Greenpeace…

We  are aware of the complex issues confronting food, agriculture and rural development in the face of intensifying economic, social and environmental crisis Asian region and the world. The global capitalist crisis has caused worst suffering especially for many people in Asia, including small food producers, women and indigenous peoples.

Download the long version here….

Download the short version here…

FrankenThursday is back with this bit from Wired.  The cause of the recent bee colony collapse disorder continues to generate heated debates. And this new study will further ratchet up the discussions as everyone tries to figure out the cause and identify solutions to save our friendly pollinators .

A controversial new study of honeybee deaths has deepened a bitter dispute over whether the developed world’s most popular pesticides are causing an ecological catastrophe.

Researchers led by biologist Chensheng Lu of Harvard University report a direct link between hive health and dietary exposure to imidacloprid, a so-called neonicotinoid pesticide linked to colony collapse disorder, the mysterious and massive die-off of bees across North America and Europe.

Continue reading the Wired article here…

A clearer summary here….

Food is a key driver of climate change. How our food gets produced and how it ends up on our tables accounts for around half of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Chemical fertilizers, heavy machinery and other petroleum-dependant farm technologies contribute significantly.

The impact of the food industry as a whole is even greater: destroying forests and savannahs to produce animal feed and generating climate-damaging waste through excess packaging, processing, refrigeration and the transport of food over long distances, despite leaving millions of people hungry.
Continue reading “Food and climate change: the forgotten link” at Grain….

Here’s another take on the fair trade issue which of late has been under criticism for its less than convincing performance in helping out poor farmers

Today, on World Fair Trade Day, we have something else to feel guilty about. That fair-trade cup of coffee we savour may not only fail to ease the lot of poor farmers, it may actually help to impoverish them, according to a study out recently from Germany’s University of Hohenheim.

The study, which followed hundreds of Nicaraguan coffee farmers over a decade, concluded that farmers producing for the fair-trade market “are more often found below the absolute poverty line than conventional producers.

“Over a period of 10 years, our analysis shows that organic and organic-fair trade farmers have become poorer relative to conventional producers.”

continue reading fixing the fair trade coffee here….

Learn how to setup the Legowo System here….

read the full howto on Building a Biogas Plant to Supply a Farm Household at the FFTC archive….

Contact Info:

Department of Agriculture and Forestry Extension,
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam
Fax: (84 4) 823 6403, 2002-07-01

FarmFriday is back again after a long rest and today we feature this machine  developed by the Department of Agriculture of Thailand. We got this from our friends over at FFTC.

This machine attempts to resolve the following problem encountered using manual sowing “for a consistent spread, farmers have to constantly cast the seeds from their shoulders by hand. As a result, they suffer from extreme fatigue by the end of the day. Consequently, they are often unable to complete sowing on schedule, thus resulting in low yields and high costs.

To overcome this problem, the Agricultural Engineering Research Institute (AERI), Department of Agriculture, Thailand has successfully designed and developed a paddy seedling sowing machine that can be installed with a pesticide sprayer of any make, either a specific pesticide sprayer or a multipurpose sprayer.

Continue reading about the Multi-Purpose Paddy Sowing Machine here…

Contact Info:

Agricultural Machinery Development and Testing Group,
Agricultural Engineering Research Institute
Department of Agriculture, Thailand
Paholyothin Road, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900 Thailand
Tel: 66-2940-5582
Fax. 66-2940-5582
E-mail: aed@doa.go.th, 2005-12-01

In Climate Loan Sharks, the World Development Movement and the Jubilee Debt Campaign reveal that the UK is pushing $1.1 billion of climate loans, via the World Bank, on some of the poorest countries in the world.

For example Grenada’s debt is already 90 per cent of GDP, yet it is to be lent a further $22 million, over 3 per cent of the country’s GDP. Lending to such debt burdened country is at best irresponsible and at worst willfully dangerous.

The UK, and other rich industrialised countries in the global north, owe a debt to countries in the global south as compensation for the devastating effects of climate change they have the primary responsibility for creating. A key part of this compensation is providing finance to poorer countries to help reduce the negative impacts of climate change on their lives and livelihoods.

Continue reading and download the FREE ebook “Climate loan sharks: how the UK is making developing countries pay twice for climate change”…..

This week in Cape Town, the World Bank will decide whether to approve new climate adaptation loans for five countries. In Bangladesh and around the world, campaigners are resisting these loans and urging their governments not to accept new debt for climate change. More than 50 organisations from countries due to receive the loans recently signed a statement opposing the concept of climate loans, which was initially invented by the UK.

Continue reading Why Bangladesh doesn’t want climate adaptation loans…..