Welcome to the Fair and Square website. Anyone can view the content of this site but you will need to register if you want to read or post comments.
information for the concerned consumer
Land use
Indian children in pesticide controversy
A group of villagers in northern Kerala have become the centre of a controversial battle between environmentalists and a major cashew nut plantation.
The villagers blame pesticides used by the plantation for causing widespread physical and mental illness in hundreds of children and adults.
Wish you weren't here: the devastating effect of the new colonialists
A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, says Paul Vallely, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs.
Countries with large populations such as China, South Korea and even India are acquiring swathes of African farmland to produce food for export. Thousands of protesters took to the streets, waving the orange flags of the opposition. Before long, looting began. Buildings were set on fire. But the turning point came when a crowd moved from the main square towards the presidential palace. Amid the confusion, someone panicked and gave the order to the troops guarding the palace to open fire. Scores died. The leaders of the army decided they'd had enough and stormed the palace, causing the president to flee.
Read more here.
Loss of soil threatens food production, UK government warns
More than 2m tonnes of topsoil from farms and forests is being eroded by wind and rain each year, jeopardising efforts to increase food production, the UK government said today.
The soil erosion is reducing the amount of food grown, increasing the risk of flooding and undermining efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
UK land has been steadily degraded by 200 years of intensive farming and industrial pollution, warned the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in a major study of soils. But it said the situation is not nearly as bad as in many Asian and African countries, where soil erosion due to overgrazing and poor farming practices is now seriously threatening food production.
Read more here
Malawi: The other side of the Africa's story
Malawi has turned itself from being a food deficit country to one producing surplus grain and overcoming food shortages. The Malawian government's grain subsidy programme; introduced in 2005, increased the provision of maize seed and fertiliser to smallholder farmers by more than 75 percent. As a result, Malawi has trebled maize production from 1.2 million tonnes in 2005 to 3.4 million tonnes in the 2007/2008 agricultural season.
The sucess of the programme has confounded economists and multilateral agencies who initially criticised the subsidy policy. The budget deficit has not worsened, and the programme has saved the Malawian government US$120 million/year on importing food aid. This success has shown how African states can become food secure, and encouraged members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to increase agricultural finance allocation to at least 10% of their national budgets.
The people of Swaziland are severely affected by environmental changes. 70% of the Swazi people live in rural areas ravaged by drought, overgrazing, soil depletion and the second highest per capita HIV/AIDS rate in the world. Male and female mortality is as low as 36 and 39 respectively and the country has 70,000 orphans.
The UK based charity, GardenAfrica, is working to establish home gardens to promote health and self sufficiency in Swaziland. GardenAfrica is training rural gardeners to enable them to teach others in their community how to grow food and healing herbs with the most effective use of water.
The project aims to support and enhance the sustainable management of natural resources, boosting the cultivation of food. Ultimately it will help establish plant-based livelihoods that will combat extreme poverty.
HOPE enterprises in Ethiopia assists drought affected smallholders to improve their self-sufficiency. They distribute livestock and seeds and promote harvested water-based intensive farming on areas less than a hectare. Using a variety of initiatives, 9000 farmers in three districts of the South Wollo region of Ethiopia are being assisted. HOPE is planning to extend the scheme to other drought prone areas.
"Though the rich world's governments won't hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership," says George Monbiot. This point reflects an unexpected discovery first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen which has since been confirmed by dozens of studies. There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.
