#agricultural policy

[fragariavescana]

@argumate, in re ecological jianghu

Is prev looking for the Agricultural Science department? They're the ones who get their hands dirty on university-owned research farms looking for ways to e.g. breed chickens with better welfare without compromising meat output, and how to make mobile slaughter units cost-effective.

And they take people from farming backgrounds as well as science and policy.

[farmerstrend]

Civil Society Calls for the National Government to Enforce a Ban on Hazardous Agri-inputs

Civil society groups at the First National Agroecology Symposium call for a ban on harmful agricultural inputs in Kenya, urging the government to prioritize safe, nutritious food for all. At the agroecology symposium in Nairobi, civil society organizations advocate for a ban on unsafe farm chemicals, emphasizing the need for government action to protect public health and promote sustainable…

[trendynewsnow]

Christophe Hansen Approved as EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Food

MEPs Approve Christophe Hansen as EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have officially endorsed Luxembourg’s Christophe Hansen as the new EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Food. This decision comes after a thorough and comprehensive hearing, where Hansen committed to championing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget. Sources present at the…

[kesarijournal]

Legalizing Minimum Support Price (MSP) in India: A Multifaceted Analysis

## IntroductionThe debate around the legalization of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and its implications on Indian agriculture has gained unprecedented momentum in recent years. This discourse is set against the backdrop of global pressures, including World Trade Organization (WTO) scrutiny, domestic agricultural challenges, and the socio-economic fabric of rural India. The conversation encompasses…

[meadowslark]

Finally....

[harriswalz4usabybr]

Speech Governor Walz Gave in Louisville, KY!

~BR~

[queen-boudicca]

Me when doing my environmental science homework, at every available opportunity:

[girderednerve]

The AP found that U.S. prison labor is in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world via multinational companies, including to countries that have been slapped with import bans by Washington in recent years. For instance, the U.S. has blocked shipments of cotton coming from China, a top manufacturer of popular clothing brands, because it was produced by forced or prison labor. But crops harvested by U.S. prisoners have entered the supply chains of companies that export to China.

While prison labor seeps into the supply chains of some companies through third-party suppliers without them knowing, others buy direct. Mammoth commodity traders that are essential to feeding the globe like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland and Consolidated Grain and Barge – which together post annual revenues of more than $400 billion – have in recent years scooped up millions of dollars’ worth of soy, corn and wheat straight from prisons, which compete with local farmers.

...Incarceration was used not just for punishment or rehabilitation but for profit. A law passed a few years [after the formal end of the convict-leasing system in 1928] made it illegal to knowingly transport or sell goods made by incarcerated workers across state lines, though an exception was made for agricultural products. Today, after years of efforts by lawmakers and businesses, corporations are setting up joint ventures with corrections agencies, enabling them to sell almost anything nationwide.

Civilian workers are guaranteed basic rights and protections by OSHA and laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act, but prisoners, who are often not legally considered employees, are denied many of those entitlements and cannot protest or form unions.

“They may be doing the exact same work as people who are not incarcerated, but they don’t have the training, they don’t have the experience, they don’t have the protective equipment,” said Jennifer Turner, lead author of a 2022 American Civil Liberties Union report on prison labor.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Government of Brazil and FAO sign alliance to support vulnerable populations in urban and peri-urban areas of Latin America and the Caribbean

The project in the framework of the Brazil-FAO International Cooperation Program aims to enhance food security and reduce poverty in the region.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Brazilian Cooperation Agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (ABC/MRE), and Brazil’s Ministry of Social Development, Family and Fight Against Hunger (MDS) signed the project Strengthening the regional agenda of food systems for the urban-rural continuum in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicates that 81% of the region’s population lives in urban areas, posing challenges for access to healthy food and the inclusion of family farmers in value chains. Therefore, this project seeks to enhance food security and reduce poverty among the most vulnerable populations in urban and peri-urban areas of cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. It also aims to promote urban food systems that are more efficient, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient. 

Continue reading.

[theburialofstrawberries]

So grateful for my earth systems science class this semester I just did not know how to read or think about climate I was so pedagogically impoverished

[farmerstrend]

Empowering Youth in Agriculture: How Digital Agripreneurs Are Revolutionizing Extension Services in Kenya

Discover how Kenya’s new agripreneurs model is empowering youth to provide digital extension services to farmers, revolutionizing agricultural productivity and market access. Learn how the Ministry of Agriculture is leveraging technology and digital platforms to enhance agricultural extension services, bridging the gap between research and farmers. Explore how digital agripreneurs are…

[probablyasocialecologist]

What was needed, then, was not merely land redistribution but also economic independence, such that farmers could actively engage and defend a democracy that reflected the range of their interests. To avoid authoritarian control, new states would need to create opportunity rapidly, and this required economic planning—especially the coordination of prices and markets and programs to teach peasants about technology. Warriner and Yates recommended a system of cooperatives and shared technology supporting small, economically independent farmers who could then make up their own minds about politics. Such plans would provide new states with comprehensive economic programs for both cities and towns, ensuring the “economic conditions under which the peasants can greatly increase their outputs,” and that both urban and rural workers could look for “a steadily rising level of incomes.”

Warriner and Yates theorized that planned economies were most vital for rural workers due to the nature of the agricultural cycle. Peasants, they argued, were economically vulnerable in an industrial economy where workers with wage increases were likely to spend more of their money on manufactured goods than on food. Modern states could cushion peasants from the inherent vulnerability of agricultural enterprise, which, unlike manufacturing, couldn’t be planned several months or even years in advance and couldn’t be easily scaled to adjust to new information from the market.

State programs could ameliorate human misery, they argued, and governments should adopt measures to protect agricultural workers; such sound engagements, they reasoned, could inoculate peasants against the political promises offered by would-be despots. They wrote: ���Man is beginning to realize that he can exercise control. . . . Peasants in their economic lives are still at the mercy of the rest of the community which exploits them, but this state of affairs need not continue for ever.” Coordinated expenditure and management by a centralized bureaucratic state could enable a new economy—one marked by “economic conditions under which the peasants can greatly increase their output,” even supplying a “steadily rising level of incomes.”

Economic planning thus lay at the root of a general revolution to increase prosperity and economic security while ensuring a path to democracy in which peasants would not be easily wooed by authoritarian forces. According to Warriner and Yates, by setting farmers up with individual plots of soil, land redistribution would be a key element of economic planning in most nations. In a later book published in 1955, Warriner laid out a plan premised on recent UN reports that, in her words, “put forward the contention that land reform . . . must be regarded as a condition of economic development.” Soon after describing these schemes in print, Warriner and Yates would each have opportunities to realize them. While Warriner went on to advise a variety of postcolonial nations, Yates would help to found the FAO, working alongside John Boyd Orr, another veteran of the British crusade against hunger.

Unlike Yates the activist, Orr was a professor turned adviser to the state. Experiments published by Orr in 1927 proved that Scottish schoolchildren given milk grew stronger than their peers. He was the veteran of a campaign to remedy the condition of Britain’s working classes by providing cheap access to food. His 1936 report, Food, Health, and Income, argued for an increased role by the state in the nutrition of the poor. In the decade that followed, Europe was wracked by food shortages, and Orr’s work offered a model for European policy.

In 1945, Orr appeared in Quebec at the FAO conference as an unofficial adviser. Despite having been excluded from the official British delegation, Orr electrified the conference with a sermon in which he condemned political inaction about nutrition in vivid terms. “The people wanted bread,” said Orr, “but were given statistics.” The next year, Orr was selected as the FAO’s first director general.

Orr, like Yates and Warriner, believed that state planning could level human disparities. Orr had already spent a decade publishing books that envisioned a top-down food board for Britain that would collect information on where food was grown and where it could be sold and then advise farmers about what to grow. At the FAO, Orr would style the same dreams on a global scale. Orr’s agenda was threefold: establishing the FAO as an independent, policymaking institution capable of recommending global strategies; combating the worst consequences of poverty by supporting a worldwide food program (a “World Food Plan”); and challenging the long-term consequences of racism in Europe’s former colonies.

Orr’s view of how a coordinating institution could support society was, if anything, even grander than that of Warriner and Yates. He wished to level the short divide not merely between rich and poor or rural and urban, but also between different races and different experiences of empire.

[kesarijournal]

The Great Green Rebellion: Farmers' Uprising Against the Quest for a 'Greener' Tomorrow

In a stunning turn of events that you might have missed (because let’s face it, it’s not on mainstream media, and who reads past the headlines these days?), farmers across Europe have decided they’ve had enough. No more Mr. Nice Farmer. From the picturesque fields of Germany to the romantic vineyards of France, the agricultural proletariat is rising against what they perceive as the tyrannical…

[exopelagic]

this election feels so hollow even though it’s likely ostensibly gonna be a good outcome. labour really just sucks fucking ass rn huh

[observatoiredumensonge]

Agriculteurs : la révolte s’étend en Occitanie et Macron a raison d’avoir peur

La déliquescence de notre société est résumée dans la condition tragique de nos agriculteurs et de nos policiers, abandonnés de tous. Par Frédéric Sirgant Soutenez notre travail, abonnez-vous à Semaine du MENSONGE au tarif préférentiel de : 1,50 € par mois pendant un an,envoi chaque lundi par mailPaiement sécurisé en cliquant ICI Agriculteurs : la révolte s’étend en Occitanie et Macron a…