Land area under organic management in Wales increased by 15% in 2007 and now amounts to some 90,000 ha on 800 holdings, that’s 6.3% of Welsh agricultural area.
The sorry saga of UK incompetence in the administration of farm subsidy continues. The Farmers Guardian reports that a large number of payments made to farmers under Organic Entry Level Stewardship (OELS) are being reviewed after Natural England found that some had been overpaid by up to £25,000.
A new Defra –funded, Bristol University study says one in four battery-reared chickens has difficulty walking.
Finally supermarkets are properly investigated
This week The Times reported the findings of work in the United States on avian influenza which shows that in addition to the H5N1 strain, a few H7 strains of the virus have also started to evolve some of the traits they would need to infect people easily.
Paul van Aarle of Intervet says that after Bluetongue, we can expect to see Rift Valley Fever and West Nile-virus arriving in Europe before long.
The development of a complex legume based mixture for better fertility building is to become a reality in a new project, led by the Organic Research Centre, Elm Farm. The mixture will be designed to optimise the transfer of nitrogen from the fertility building ley to the subsequent crops in the rotation.
We are living in a changing world. Organic farmers, along with all farmers across the globe, are operating within a new order of global warming and apparent food shortage.
It’s official – scientists are now able to say with some certainty that the global climate change, observed over the past four decades, is not the result of natural phenomena. It is man made.
New report forecasts rising profits for UK organic arable
The charity Send a Cow has urged world leaders meeting in Rome to invest in small-scale organic farming as the best way out of the world’s food crisis for the poorest of the poor.
This week sees the first meeting of a new National Standing Committee designed to encourage the sustainable use and protection of the UK’s rich diversity of livestock breeds.
The gathering world food crisis is bad news for many of the world’s poor and for developing economies, but rather good news for others. Global agribusiness firms, traders and speculators are currently raking in huge profits.
Full details of ORC arable events 2008
The Netherlands Ambassador to London – Pim Waldeck – has taken the occasion of a brief speech at the Organic and Natural Products Show at London’s Olympia to outline some new organic market policies from the Dutch Government.
The future focus of European cereal production will be on low input (possibly organic) systems which deploy genetically diverse crops through either varietal mixtures or composite cross populations. These crops will contribute to a multifunctional agriculture.
Apocalyptic visions of a world fast running out of food have moved uncomfortably up the news agenda to present-day reality. The Financial Times reports that rice prices have hit the US$1,000-a-tonne level for the first time as panicking importers scrambled at auctions (April 17th 2008) to secure supplies.
2007 consumer survey from FSA
A re-vampled free information and advice service for English farmers thinking of converting to organic production has been launched by Defra Sustainable Food and Farming Minister Lord Rooker.
The UK Government should delay introducing road biofuel at the pumps.
The relentless spread of Bluetongue across the UK continues with at least 110 holdings now affected.
The Organic Center, based in Boulder Colorado USA has concluded that the conversion of all eight million acres of U.S. produce farms (horticultural land) from “conventional” to organic would reduce pesticide dietary risks by some 97 per cent.
