India vs. Monsanto: seeds of discord
France24 Focus, 21 Sept 2011. For the first time ever, a country – India – is accusing a multinational company of "bio-piracy". That means stealing indigenous plants, and then trying to develop genetically modified versions of them, without giving any compensation back to the local people or nation where the plant originally came from. […]
Organic farming is superior to conventional agriculture according to 30-year comparative study
Business Wire, 16 Sept 2011. Rodale Institute today announces the latest results of the Farming Systems Trial, America's longest running side-by-side comparison of organic and conventional farming practices. Originally created to study the transition from conventional to organic production, this 30-year study also examined productivity, soil quality, energy and economics. […]
Nestle, Glaxo lobby UN over biggest ‘Epidemic’ battle since AIDS
Jason Gale and Duane Stanford, bloomberg.net, 16 Sept 2011. Nestle SA (NESN), GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) and SAB Miller SA face health lobbyists next week in New York as the first United Nations General Assembly on disease since the 2001 AIDS summit tries to combat the world’s biggest killers. […]
Fruits of doing nothing
Aparna Pallavi, downtoearth.com, 31 Aug 2011 “My major work on the farm is just picking the harvest,” says Raghava with a straight face. It takes some time for the fact to sink in that this young farmer is not joking. One begins to believe him only after visiting his coconut plantation in village Mallanayakanahalli in Karnataka’s Devangere district. […]
Organic poultry farms have fewer drug-resistant bacteria, study finds
Eliza Barclay, NPR News, 10 Aug 2011 Proponents of organic meat often make the case that it's inherently better for people's health and the environment than meat raised by conventional farming methods. But the actual impacts of organic production can be tough for scientists to prove. […]