The continuing crisis in the dairy industry

By Elena Garcia

The dairy industry is in crisis and dairy sustainability is under attack.

In Victoria — where most dairy farms are — Australia’s largest processor, farmer-owned co-operative Murray Goulburn, allowed outside investors to become members, to get the funds to build more infrastructure to take advantage of export opportunities. Murray Goulburn prioritised paying returns to those investors out of their 2016 $44 million annual profit, rather than to the farmers who supply the product.

An overestimation of the global market price meant that when milk prices dropped, Murray Goulburn slashed its farm gate milk price without warning last April to $4.31 a kilo of milk solids or 33c a litre and told farmers they had to repay the higher price they had been receiving. Fonterra, the other major processor, matched the farm gate price drop.

As former chief executive Gary Helou left Murray Goulburn in May with a $10 million payout, farmers were left owing an average $120,000 “overpayment” debt, based on payments set at his promised and “achievable” $6 a kilogram milk price. A 38% rise in the board directors’ fees added insult to injury.

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Sustainable Agriculture versus Corporate Greed

Due out soon:

From the Introduction:

There is money to be made in farming, but not by the farmers. This pamphlet examines the reasons why farmers around the world are poor and there are a billion hungry people. The terms of trade for farmers continually declines and farmers are forced off the land. Governments and international bodies advocate further deregulation and trade liberalisation and greater use of technology, yet these policies have undoubtedly failed in their stated aims of increasing food security and rural prosperity. The beneficiaries have only been the agribusiness corporations which have been instrumental in the design of the new order of agricultural production.

...But farmers around the world are resisting...

PURCHASE YOUR COPY HERE.

Monsanto strategies for agricultural domination

By Alan Broughton 

 
Monsanto is one of the world’s biggest pesticide and seed corporations and the leading developer and seller of genetically modified crop varieties. The stock market value in 2014 was US$66 billion. It has gained this position by a combination of deceit, threat, litigation, destruction of evidence, falsified data, bribery, takeover and cultivation of regulatory organisations.

The rise and its torrid controversy covers a long period starting with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls, chemicals used as insulators for electrical transformers) in the 1940s and moving on to dioxin (a contaminant of Agent Orange used to defoliate Vietnam), glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide), recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH, a hormone injected in dairy cows to increase their milk production), and genetic modification. Its key aim in dealing with health and environmental issues of concern is to protect sales and profits and the company image. The latter though has been a monumental failure, making Monsanto the most hated corporation in the world. 

In order to better sell its GM technology Monsanto began acquiring seed companies in 1996 and within 10 years became the largest seed supplier in the world. If the planned merger with Bayer takes place they will have a third of the world’s seed market and a quarter of the pesticide market.

Harvesting Ferals

By Elena Garcia
Marginal country cattle grazier, Western Downs, Qld.
  
Australia is the most urbanised country on Earth, with 89% living in urban areas, and the continuing alienation of urban from rural means that most urban people have little knowledge and less experience of rural land management issues. Too many urban Australians believe that simply locking up key areas of our environment into National Parks is enough to protect them, and do not see that the underfunding of National Parks and State Forests means that their pristine nature and uniqueness is being destroyed by weeds and feral animals like deer, goats, pigs, rabbits, horses, camels, foxes, feral dogs, cats and buffalo.

Feral animal and weed control is left to landowners, with potential large fines for those who refuse or cannot cull, but the underfunding of crown land management means that feral animals breed on crown lands then raid farmlands and retreat back to Crown lands, and weeds spread from road verges and public land and wash down the catchments to spread. Not only is it a huge cost for farmers in multi-million dollar damage to crops and infrastructure, the cost of management in time and money is also huge. And the only use for the dead animals is either to let them rot and release carbon, or turn them into pet food, if they can be shot and transported to appropriate regional processing by licensed hunters. Most regional abattoirs have been closed or only handle cows, domestic pigs and sheep.

If setting up a feral animal harvest industry was subsidised federally, not only would controlling these destructive animals be affordable, it would produce a viable supplementary income for farmers instead of being a financial burden and a terrible waste of resources which could instead be a viable export industry.

AGROECOLOGICAL REVOLUTION The Farmer-to-Farmer Movement of the ANAP in Cuba

This  book  documents  the  experiences  encountered  during  the implementation   of   agroecology   and   sustainable   agriculture
in  rural  economies  and  cooperatives  in  Cuba.  It  is  offered  for reflection and learning.
I believe that our achievements speak for themselves. However, we are  aware  that  we  have  only  just  begun  the  journey towards  making Cuban agriculture more sustainable, ensuring the food security of the people,  and  reaffirming  our  sovereignty  over  the  most  essential  of human needs: food.
When  we  began  to  work  with  noble  intentions,  we  knew  only  that our  needs  were  many,  and  that  the  obstacles  were  countless.    During the  difficult  years  of  the  1990’s,  we  were  looking  for  alternative solutions, through the turmoil, economic, political, and environmental threats, which became even more brutal under the tightening of the US embargo, which is now approaching 50 bitter years of existence. These circumstances imposed  on  Cuban  peasants,  as  on  all  of  the  Cuban people, a difficult trial: to tolerate the embargo in order to preserve the \achievements of the Cuban Revolution.

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Our best shot at cooling the planet might be right under our feet

By Jason Hickel.

The Guardian

It’s getting hot out there. Every one of the past 14 months has broken the global temperature record. Ice cover in the Arctic sea just hit a new low, at 525,000 square miles less than normal. And apparently we’re not doing much to stop it: according to Professor Kevin Anderson, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists, we’ve already blown our chances of keeping global warming below the “safe” threshold of 1.5 degrees.

If we want to stay below the upper ceiling of 2 degrees, though, we still have a shot. But it’s going to take a monumental effort. Anderson and his colleagues estimate that in order to keep within this threshold, we need to start reducing emissions by a sobering 8%–10% per year, from now until we reach “net zero” in 2050. If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, here’s the clincher: efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies will only win us reductions of about 4% per year at most.

How to make up the difference is one of the biggest questions of the 21st century. 

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Are cows eating the Amazon?

By Gunnar Rundgren
Garden Earth - Beyond sustainability

Land clearing in tropical countries for production of export crops gets a lot of attention, and rightly so. However, the understanding of the mechanisms involved and how to allocate the effects of deforestation in terms of environmental damage or carbon emissions, is still very low. While it is true that exports are important for this, most deforestation are driven by domestic factors.  A study by Henders et al (2015) show that in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea one third of deforestation was embodied in exports in 2011, up from a fifth in 2000. This means that two thirds of the deforestation is driven by domestic factors.

In the study beef was identified as the main driver of forest loss in the seven countries, accounting for nearly 60 percent of embodied deforestation and just over half of embodied emissions. Soybean production was the second largest source of embodied deforestation area whereas oil palm was the second largest source of embodied emissions.

But one can argue against how to allocate emissions and land use changes. For instance, pasture areas in Brazil have been stable in the last decade, while grazing has moved towards the forested areas because it is more profitable to plow and farm crops in the pasturelands than to graze them. It might be more correct to allocate impacts of land use changes based on the relative expansion of agriculture area for different crops or production in a country. In the case of Brazil, it would mean that soy production would still be a major cause of deforestation, but sugar cane cultivation would carry 20 % of the burden of deforestation and associated carbon emissions while beef from pasture would carry almost none of this, This would be the case despite that there is very little sugar grown in the recently deforested zones and a there are a lot of animals grazing there.

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Millions face drought and famine in Southern Africa

Africa drought UN Food and Agriculture Organization

News Release, July 29, 2016

Worst drought in 35 years causes crop failures, widespread malnutrition in 10 countries. More than 640,000 drought-related livestock deaths have been reported due to lack of pasture, lack of water and disease outbreaks. 

With only a few weeks before land preparation begins for the next main cropping season, some 23 million people in Southern Africa urgently need support to produce enough food to feed themselves and thus avoid being dependent on humanitarian assistance until mid 2018, FAO said today.

A FAO-prepared response plan aims to ensure that seeds, fertilizers, tools, and other inputs and services, including livestock support, are provided to small-holder farmers, agro-pastoralists and pastoralists to cope with the devastating impact of an El Niño-induced drought in the region.

At least $109 million in funding is required to provide this urgently needed support.

Farmers must be able to plant by October and failure to do so will result in another reduced harvest in March 2017, severely affecting food and nutrition security and livelihoods in the region, FAO warned.

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Stopping land clearing and replanting trees could help keep Australia cool in a warmer future

By Clive McAlpine,  Jozef Syktus and  Leonie Seabrook .

In Queensland in 2013–14, 278,000 hectares of native vegetation were cleared (1.2 times the size of the Australian Capital Territory). A further 296,000ha were cleared in 2014–15. These are the highest rates of deforestation in the developed world.

Land clearing on this scale is bad for a whole host of reasons. But our research shows that it is also likely to make parts of Australia warmer and drier, adding to the effects of climate change.

Land clearing releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but the effect of land clearing on climate goes well beyond carbon emissions. It causes warming locally, regionally and even globally, and it changes rainfall by altering the circulation of heat and moisture.

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Venezuela: Slave labour or just growing more food?

Venezuelans taking part in a voluntary program to boost a slowly developing agricultural sector, described by the US media as "slavery".The United States media's latest offensive against Venezuela's socialist President Nicolas Maduro targets a new sustainability program that transplants urban workers to farmland. Some quarters of the mainstream media have equated it with slave labour.Passed on July 22, the decree sets up a voluntary program for public and private workers to cultivate organic food for 60 days on their normal salary before returning to their jobs.
Venezuela is suffering from a food shortage, largely caused by businesses hoarding food while stashing away government money reserved for imports. The Venezuelan economy largely relies on oil, the price of which has dropped dramatically, but Maduro has passed several measures to develop agricultural production.Head of the Bolivarian Socialist Workers' Centre Carlos Lopez, said the new program was planned alongside community organisers.
“The workers that want to move to reactive [agricultural] businesses can move and will have their rights guaranteed,” Lopez told Union Radio.Soundbites circulating in the US media are exclusively from Amnesty International, whose closest office is based in Mexico City. Amnesty's Americas division released a statement calling the program “unlawful” and saying it "effectively amounts to forced labour”. It added that Venezuela should seek humanitarian aid for a “workable long term plan” rather than develop its own agricultural sector.

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GALLERY: City Farming in Venezuela's Rooftop Gardens
Can Sustainable Agriculture Solve Food Problems in Venezuela?