foodsystems
By Aimee Gabay A new report has found that investors and agribusiness in Latin America are increasingly buying up small parcels of land with abundant water access, thus securing control over the vital resource. They’re also exacerbating water scarcity by planting water-intensive crops and expanding irrigated cultivation, according to the report by the Belgium-based International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). “It is becoming more and more difficult to produce food in rural communities through peasant farming because there is no water,” Viviana Catrileo Epul, director...
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By Sarjan Lahay POHUWATO, Indonesia — Moji Tiok has spent more than a decade casting off into the Gulf of Tomini, where he spends hours hunting with traditional fishing gear among a diminishing pool of octopus south of Indonesia’s Gorontalo province. “I’ve been an octopus fisherman since 2013, and back then it was very hard for us to find large octopus,” Moji Tiok, a member of the Indigenous Bajo seafaring tribe, told Mongabay Indonesia. “What we earn would just about cover our daily needs.” Moji Tiok’s forebears hunted octopus for far longer than a decade. The world’s largest collective of ma...
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By Niladry Sarkar KOLKATA — In the small village of Nagendrapur, located in the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) in the Indian state of West Bengal, a mere 6-foot-wide lane separates a vast wetland used for aquaculture from a cluster of poorly constructed shanties. One of these shanties is home to Roshanara Piyada, her husband, Saidulla Piyada, and their three children. “Every time it rains, saline water from the fishery overflows and floods our home,” said 31-year-old Roshanara while washing dishes at a freshwater pond next to the fishery. “We used to work as agricultural laborers before aqu...
Mongabay
By Elizabeth Claire Alberts The Chinese distant-water fishing fleet is a formidable force. For one thing, it’s the largest in the world, with at least 2,500 vessels — but likely many more. These vessels, many of which are propped up by government subsidies, are present in all of the world’s major oceans and countless coastal areas. The fleet’s sheer size and geographical span means it takes a sizeable volume of marine fish out of the sea: an estimated 4 million metric tons747900_EN.pdf) yearly\. Experts say the Chinese distant-water fleet also participates in a disproportionate amount of illeg...
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By Josef Skrdlik PORT LOKO DISTRICT, Sierra Leone — At 5 a.m., as the horizon brightens and waves start to subside, more than a dozen wooden canoes along the shoreline between the settlements of Mahera Beach and Banda in northern Sierra Leone set off into the ocean. Each canoe casts a net, one end tied to a pole on the beach, and traces a semicircle as it progresses into the water. Weights attached to the net fall to the ocean floor, trapping fish on the beach side. Once the semicircle is complete, the net’s other end is dragged to shore. Two groups of four fishers then take hold of each end a...
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By Philip Jacobson Four years of investigating jaguar parts trafficking rings in Latin America led Andrea Crosta to a grim realization: The same smugglers were often involved in a variety of illegal enterprises, including moving different kinds of wildlife products across national borders. Especially shark fins. “We kept stumbling upon shark fin trafficking — it was the same people,” Crosta told Mongabay. “And it happened everywhere: It happened in Bolivia, in Peru, in Ecuador, in Suriname.” The Italian-born, Los Angeles-based Crosta is the founder of Earth League International, a small conser...
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By Falahi MubarokYogi Eka Sahputra PULAU SERIBU, Indonesia — Mustaghfirin unmoors his boat every day in the Thousand Islands archipelago, two hours’ sailing from the Jakarta coast, and sets off into a sea filled with garbage. “This plastic waste is extremely annoying,” Mustaghfirin told Mongabay Indonesia in April. “The motor we use to propel the boat is small, so it often gets jammed.” In 1950, global production of plastic amounted to around 2 million metric tons per year. By 2019, the world produced more than 450 million metric tons, according to production figures compiled by Our World in D...
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By Abu Siddique Bangladesh plans to phase out diesel-powered irrigation pumps for solar ones to cut carbon emissions, but the country’s farmers have expressed concern about the availability of power during bad weather and the uncertainty of costs. The initiative is touted as ensuring the South Asian country will generate an additional 480 gigawatt-hours of clean energy annually, and is part of the government’s commitments to cut emissions under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Diesel-run irrigation pumps account for about 1.6% of Bangladesh’s total greenhouse gas emissions; the government has...
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By Marlowe Starling In 2015, smelly mats of a brown macroalgae called sargassum piled as high as 1.2 meter (4 feet) on the beaches of Barbados, recalls Joshua Forte. It was the fourth year in what has become an annual nightmare, with an estimated 18,100 kilograms (20 tons) of seaweed inundating Caribbean shorelines each year and wrecking the region’s tourism-centered economies. The onslaught of seaweed reeked of rotten eggs, but Forte smelled something else: opportunity. A year earlier, Forte founded an organic fertilizer company called Red Diamond Compost. He was already selling a soil additi...
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By Annelise Giseburt TOKYO — The train to the farm rose from Tokyo’s labyrinthine subway network, revealing a hodgepodge of gray and tan buildings stretched on either side. The world’s largest metropolitan area, better known for crushing rush hours and gleaming lights, seemed an unlikely place for anyone to be growing organic vegetables. But only a few minutes’ walk from the station, past apartment buildings and convenience stores, the Hasune Farm was buzzing with life (especially its beehives). The owners and volunteers moved between a produce stand-slash-workspace and rows of late-winter pro...
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