Touch the Soil News #1605 (Feature Photo – Director Generals of WHO, FAO & WTO – By M. Jacobson – Gonzalez – ITU Pictures from Geneva, Switzerland – https://www.flickr.com/photos/itupictures/36433272494, CC BY 2.0, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic,By The White House from Washington, DC – President Trump at Davos, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86339937https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65393569 While shutting the…
Touch the Soil News #1584 (Feature photo – Map of Nations Facing Acute Food Insecurity – courtesy of the Food and Agriculture Organization) While the Coronavirus takes international headlines, the 4,100 flu deaths from coronavirus pale in comparison to some 450,000 other flu deaths that happen every year. More pressing are the acute food insecurity…
Touch the Soil News #1444 (Feature photo – Canola Field – CCA SA 3.0 Unported – John O’Neil) The Financial Post of Canada reveals the dramatic financial collapse that has visited Canadian family farms – primarily from trade reversals with China. Net farm income has fallen in half from 2017 to 2018. How many of…
Touch the Soil News #1435 (Feature photo – Pork Meat – CCA SA 3.0 Unported – Rainer Zenz) China continues to struggle with supplies of pork, since the African Swine Fever has wiped out roughly one third of China’s pigs. This is no small problem as pork is the favored meat for China’s 1.4 billion…
Touch the Soil News #1401 (Feature photo – African Swine Fever Virus – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18630318) Confinement animal feeding operations (where there are concentrations of pigs), the global pork meat trade and the spreading African Swine Fever are creating an unprecedented food tremor. News about how African Swine Fever is not contagious to people…
Touch the Soil News #1365 (Feature photo – North Korean Farm Without Adequate Equipment – Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (Stephan) at Flickr and http://nk.subnetwork.org/) While the news on North Korea is generally about potential armed conflict and weapons, North Korea is facing a food crisis. While trying to wave military threats to the…
Touch the Soil News #1323 (Feature photo – Palm Oil Plantations in Indonesia –USDA Public Domain) What shows up in our grocery stores is having an increasing negative effect on the world’s rainforests and indigenous peoples. The demand for food and the opportunity for profit are forces driving rainforest destruction and externalization of indigenous people.…
Touch the Soil News #1320 (Feature photo – Heirloom Tomatoes – CCA SA 2.0 Generic) There was a film made a few years ago called the Future of Food (http://thefutureoffood.com/) that revealed how the few dozen varieties of apples eaten today is the sign of failure from the 6,000 to 7,000 varieties of apples that…
Touch the Soil News #1318 (Feature photo – Pig Farming –USDA Public Domain) In a stark wake-up call, estimates are that China’s pork producing mother pirgs have fallen by 21 percent over the last year. Due to the African Swine Fever and economic pitfalls, estimates are that China’s pork production may fall 13 million tons…
Touch the Soil News #1280 (Feature photo – Piglets on a Hog Farm – Public Domain) Reuters News reports that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has called on Vietnam to declare a national emergency as relates to outbreaks of African Swine Fever. Vietnam has been on the edge of food shortages for years.…
