The recently approved plans to transform globally important and ecologically sensitive Tana Delta wetlands into vast fields of toxic, monoculture sugar cane and biofuel mill threatens the livelihoods of local farmers as well as 350 species including birds, lions, hippos, nesting turtles, elephants, sharks, reptiles and the Tana red colobus, one of 25 primates facing extinction globally.
What you can do: Visit www.climateark.org in order to ask the Kenyan Government to cancel the project in accord with its own environmental laws.
See also: Agrofuel company violently represses communities in Guatemala of 12 Jul 08, Public Hearing against Agrofuels in Valle del Cauca, Colombia of 25 Jun 08, Evo Morales re-nationalises energy and telecommunications companies, denounces biofuel-driven starvation of 12 May 08.
The mainstream media has given a great deal of coverage to the COVID-19 pandemic - as it should - but interwoven among the stories on poor vaccination rates, conspiracy theories, and the people ignoring quarantine, there is a consistent run of horror stories on the impact of lockdowns, often with a message that we must get back to the pre pandemic "normal" life. This is understandable, businesses are going broke, unemployment is rising, domestic violence and mental illness are increasing. It is an unpleasant situation, but returning to the old norm is not a solution. This, after all, was the lifestyle that created human movement into wilderness areas, bringing us into contact with pathogens that we have little resistance to combat.
To keep up with global food demand, the UN estimates, six million ha of new farmland will be needed every year. Instead, 12 million ha are lost every year through soil degradation. Australia lost 36 million ha of agricultural land in just the four years from 2005 till 2009. Some of this lost land has occurred because of urban sprawl which is swallowing up some of our best soils close to cities that used to supply the fresh fruit and vegetables. A scathing report by the Royal Commission has gone as far to accuse the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) of negligence and being "incapable of acting lawfully," apparently because they overestimated the amount of water returned to the river by a factor of ten.
The Stanley Plateau nestled in the foothills of the Victorian Alps, is fighting for the right to preserve its water resources from extraction by a company that transports the water to a plant in Albury, across the border in NSW, for bottling. The bottled water from Stanley and surrounding areas is for domestic and overseas distribution processed by a multi-national company. Stanley has commenced fund raising for the next stage of the Cue Springs Water Challenge - an appeal to the Victorian Court of Appeal. The website 
As human overpopulation in Victoria Australia fuels new sprawling suburbs, kangaroos are being continually deprived of habitat and pushed out into roads. There is an ongoing pantomime to pretend that it is not the human population, but the kangaroo population that is making new impositions on the environment. Culls are called for and, not unexpectedly, country MPs are trying to win votes from the fringes by calling for a commercial kangaroo meat processing industry. Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Counsel, has leapt into the breach to defend kangaroos. Among other things she has said that it is inappropriate for the Minister for Agriculture to make decisions affecting wildlife. She has also repeated her call for wildlife corridors.
Feed the world with Genetically Modified foods? The French Minister for Agriculture is preparing a new law to prevent GM crops in France as the European Court of Justice has questioned the health-risk basis of current French laws against GM. It probably suits GM patenters to keep the battle on this footing as a decoy because the major danger lies elsewhere - in loss of productive land tenure. In the US, meanwhile, the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) has filed suit against Monsanto Company to challenge the chemical giant’s patents on genetically modified seed. The organic plaintiffs were forced to sue preemptively to protect themselves from being accused of patent infringement should they ever become contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed, something Monsanto has done to others in the past. See film on-line inside.
Aussies take action! Lock the gate!" Australians to gather in Brisbane to defend water and land from coal and coal-seam gas fracking, which has already been 
This year many Australians may wish they had a backyard to grow food in. Already impoverished by rising costs for rent, land and power, this year we will see food go through the roof as the impact of the floods in Queensland and Northern New South Wales carries through to the supermarkets and then to interest rates on mortgages and other loans. And, since so many of us rely on jobs in the cities originally generated by the production, transport and packaging of food from the country, unemployment will make things worse. When Australians find that their wages no longer cover the cost of food this year, perhaps more will understand why there are so many articles on this website protesting about the loss of backyard and the rise of Food Inc.
Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a paradigm-shift. In this article, John Feeney manages to be both concise and comprehensive. So many shrill voices locate our problem in the capitalist economic system, in the paradigm of economic growth, in obsolete technology, in greed or selfishness, in irresponsible living habits, in organized religion and so forth. But it goes much deeper than that. Not only is industrial civilization unsustainable, but so is civilization itself. "Civilization is made possible by agriculture. Agriculture is unsustainable."
The food race is a race that humanity cannot afford to win. We must restore the balance between birth and death by shifting our efforts from preventing death toward preventing births. To reach that conclusion, we must think outside the box. 
This story is based on a report on France2 television news about growth in public and private stock of photovoltaic panels in France, payments by Electricite de France (EDF)for contributions to the electricity grid, tax rebates available, income from providing electricity to the grid and prospect of funding retirement through this for farmers and others with roof and other space. The bottom part of the article contains comments about the situation of rebates etc in other countries. Readers are asked to add comments about their own experiences. We can build up an international policy data base here.
Help End Factory-Farming at AnimalsAustralia.org
Among many frightening problems posed by the scale of industrialisation and mass production in the world is "bee colony collapse" syndrome (BCC). This condition where bee populations suddenly die off in massive numbers, endangers a large part of world food production, both large and small-scale. As such it literally threatens 'life as we know it'. A bee-less planet would be nearly unrecognisable, with the disappearance from the earth of many familiar kinds of trees, fruits, flowers and vegetables and the birds and other animals that depend on them. Now there is a new film out, made by apiarists, the humans first in line to suffer when bees do. The syndrome has been linked to particular pesticides. There is a comprehensive 
“Today’s successful disallowance motion in Parliament highlights the overwhelming opposition to the Government’s attempts to loot water from food producers and the environment because it has failed to plan for Melbourne’s future water needs,” Mr Ryan, Liberal Nationals Coalition.
Listen to 
This document is republished to give background dating from 2003 as the Victorian government began to take control away from citizens and locals over water, land and government, and to assume more and more control, in public-private associations. It was the beginning of overt attempts to promote private profit from induced scarcity. The induced scarcity was created by the government policy to grow Victoria's population and economic activities. At the time few Victorians had the faintest idea of what was going on. I was one of few environmentalists to question the authority of the government's actions.
Yes, most of these farmers are irrigators, whereas environmentalists prefer dryland farming to irrigation, and permaculture and relocalisation to broadacre. Some environmentalists consider that cropping is better than grazing for water use, value and animal rights. Others consider that cropping is intolerant of any wildlife, whereas grazing can co-exist with wildlife. These differences withstanding, the political reality we all face is that the private/public group the Plug the Pipe people are fighting proposes far worse than what we have now, with massive intensification of irrigation for crops and feedlot farms, total intolerance of wildlife, and no democratic input at all. Comments welcome.
After breaking ground on the new, 1100 square foot White House garden, Michelle Obama named chef Sam Kass to head the White House Food Initiative. And Kass isn't a fan of big agriculture and mass fertilisers. All of this positive PR for organics feels very threatening to Big Ag. So one group, the Mid America CropLife Association, has sent an email defending chemical ag to Mrs. Obama. See the letter inside.
"If you purchase two copies of The Age this Saturday, soak one in the bath overnight and read the other. Think of the copy coming out of the bath, as the landscape prior [to the impact of repeated fires] and the dry paper, as the landscape is today." (Article by Duane Norris for Natural Sequence Farming)
This book paints a picture of the ecological mechanics of this continent, using clear, concise prose. It is a painlessly educative book. The bold claim of its subtitle, "How Australia's landscape can be saved," stands up to scrutiny.
Mother cows are known to have highly developed maternal instincts and can bellow for days for their stolen babies! We kill over one million new-born calves each year. the dairy industry accounted for 39% of the total irrigated area of pasture in the Murray Darling Basin.
What do rural areas in Japan 'look like'? What are the main features of Japanese agriculture that make it different from agriculture in other countries? This article includes photographs of a rural city in Japan as well as a "food and energy crisis survival guide" survey for the city.
Could this be happening in the Land of MORE, MORE, MORE? Bloomington, Indiana supports a steady-state economy! You heard it right….
The Internet enables consumers and farmers to sort through the claims and counter-claims about Genetically Modified (GM) foods in order to understand the threat they pose to our health and our control of our food supply.
Over 500 farmers have turned out in force to protest at Parliament in Canberra in a last ditch attempt to persuade the Government not to ditch the single desk marketing of Australian wheat.
South Australian Farmers call urgently for fair market forces so that producers can earn a fair return for their effort and ensure their future viability in face of "peak oil prices". 
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