industryterm:agricultural products

China retreats from U.S. #sorghum probe amid global market havoc | Reuters
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-sorghum/china-drops-anti-dumping-probe-of-u-s-sorghum-imports-idUSKCN1IJ06Y

China dropped its anti-dumping probe into imports of U.S. sorghum on Friday, beating a hasty retreat from a dispute that wreaked havoc across the global grain market and raised concerns about rising costs and financial damage at home.

The move was seen as a goodwill concession as Chinese Vice Premier Liu He was in Washington for talks aimed at resolving trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

The end of the investigation came as a huge relief to U.S. sorghum growers, who saw sales to the top grain buyer come to a halt and prices plummet over the past month.
[…]
“China has taught a lesson to the United States and showed how it can hurt U.S. exports,” said Ole Houe, director of advisory services at brokerage IKON Commodities in Sydney.

“Now they are showing goodwill by halting its anti-dumping investigation into sorghum imports, but it is a cheap way of showing goodwill as the U.S. does not have much sorghum left to export. The next U.S. sorghum crop will be harvested in August.”

Agricultural products are considered one of the most powerful weapons in Beijing’s arsenal because a strike against farm exports to China would hurt farmers in U.S. Midwestern states that backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

The United States accounts for more than 90 percent of total sorghum shipments to China, with the American imports worth just over $1 billion last year.

#sorgo #guerre_commerciale #guerre_douanière

Even Oxford University Is Mixed up With Corrupt Monsanto | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/food/university-oxford-has-disturbingly-cozy-connection-monsanto

https://www.alternet.org/sites/default/files/story_images/8861868426_8bd900092e_z_0.jpg

Food
Even Oxford University Is Mixed up With Corrupt Monsanto
An unscientific report completely discounts Monsanto’s role in climatic and ecological damage.
By John W. Roulac / AlterNet
November 4, 2017, 9:30 PM GMT

A University of Oxford thinktank, the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN), has come out with a report, “Grazed and Confused,” that likens 100-percent grass-fed beef to that produced on a 10,000-cow confined animal feedlot operation (CAFO) like Harris Ranch on Interstate 5 in Central California—calling them basically the same in climate impacts.

Think, for a moment, how absurd that is. One has to wonder why this Oxford thinktank is being so deferential to Monsanto and the GMO/fertilizer industry, which profits via the planet-killing, health-destroying CAFO model.

The Monsanto Connection to Oxford University

It seems that Monsanto has a deep and enduring connection to the University of Oxford (UO). Monsanto has paid out to UO through various business ventures more than $50M pounds ($75M US).

Also, Oxford University Press has published a flattering book, written by Robert Paarlberg, full of Monsanto puffery: Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know.

In 2006, the Guardian reported that UO professor and Oxford resident Dr. Richard Droll wrote and testified that Monsanto chemicals did not cause cancer, while he “was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from Monsanto, then a major chemical company and now better known for its GM crops business.”

Oxford University has advertised a Monsanto Senior Research Fellowship.

The distinguished and well-respected U.K. Sustainable Food Trust was also critical of the report, stating:

The report focuses exclusively on greenhouse gas emissions, and while it does accept that grassland can sequester carbon, it fails to understand the vital necessity of returning degraded cropland to rotations that include grass and grazing animals, in order to rebuild carbon and organic matter levels, and the potential of integrating grazing livestock production with crop production in genuine mixed farming systems, to address a wide range of the food system problems currently faced…The only sustainable way to obtain food from grassland is to graze it with ruminants. With the growing global population it would be irresponsible not to do that.

In one conclusion, the FCRN report states, “Grain-fed intensive livestock systems use less land and so cause less damaging land use change.” Yet the destruction of forest and savannah lands in South America for soybean farms to feed CAFO animals is in the millions of hectares. GMO corn and soy are two of the most damaging systems for land and habitat that the world has ever seen.

Cows eat grass; therefore they don’t need to consume vast amounts of GMO corn and soybeans. Less GMO corn planted means less cancer-linked, soil-killing RoundUp being sprayed. If consumers can understand that pasture-raised beef is better for them than CAFO meat, they’ll change their buying preferences and sales of beneficial pasture-raised beef will go up, while Monsanto profits from agricultural products with a multitude of negative impacts for animals, humans and the environment will go down.

Ces rapports payés par les industries sont en fait des supports pour la promotion cachée des médias. Il s’agit de se cacher derrière une « science » qui ne dit pas d’où viennent ses financemets et quelles sont ses allégeances. Et puis les rapports ne passent jamais devant des instances de contrôle...

After the “Grazed and Confused” report came out, it began spreading virally across the web. One headline in the New York Post read: “Your Grass-Fed Burger Is Making Climate Change Worse.”

To quote from this article:

Environmentally conscious meat eaters have touted grass-fed meat as a solution to help negate the impact of cows on the environment. But unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Raising grass-fed cows also leads to deforestation—another big climate change issue—as farmers chop down forests in order to expand their pastures.

#Monsanto #Université #Conflits_intérêt

China approves 10 international agricultural parks
▻https://af.reuters.com/article/zambiaNews/idAFL4N1KT1P2

China has approved plans to establish international agricultural demonstration zones in 10 countries, the agriculture ministry said on Monday, as Beijing looks to extend its influence in the global farm sector.

The projects include an agriculture technology park in Laos, an agricultural products processing zone in Zambia and a fisheries park in Fiji, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

The demonstration zones are based on existing projects set up by Chinese firms, which will be given government backing to serve as platforms for other Chinese companies.

China also approved 10 pilot agricultural parks at home, which will be open to overseas investment. They are located in coastal, river and border regions to help encourage overseas cooperation and local connections.

The agricultural parks are part of China’s Belt and Road initiative, an ambitious plan to expand infrastructure and trade links between Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond.

#Chine #OBOR #agriculture

Europe’s contribution to deforestation set to rise despite pledge to halt it
▻https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/30/europes-contribution-to-deforestation-set-to-rise-despite-pledge-to-hal

But despite signing several international pledges to end #deforestation by this decade’s end, more than 5Mha of extra forest land will be needed annually by 2030 to meet EU demand for agricultural products, a draft EU feasibility study predicts.

[...] Land clearances for crop, livestock and biofuel production are by far the biggest causes of deforestation, and Europe is the end destination for nearly a quarter of such products – beef, soy, palm oil and leather – which have been cultivated on illegally deforested lands.

According to the draft EU feasibility study, which is meant to provide officials with policy options, the “embodied” deforestation rate – which is directly linked to EU consumption – will increase from between 250,000-500,000ha in 2015 to 340,000-590,000ha in 2030.

#Union_européenne

Groundwater depletion embedded in international food trade : Nature : Nature Research
▻http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v543/n7647/full/nature21403.html

Recent hydrological modelling1 and Earth observations2, 3 have located and quantified alarming rates of groundwater depletion worldwide. This depletion is primarily due to water withdrawals for irrigation1, 2, 4, but its connection with the main driver of irrigation, global food consumption, has not yet been explored. Here we show that approximately eleven per cent of non-renewable groundwater use for irrigation is embedded in international food trade, of which two-thirds are exported by Pakistan, the USA and India alone. Our quantification of groundwater depletion embedded in the world’s food trade is based on a combination of global, crop-specific estimates of non-renewable groundwater abstraction and international food trade data. A vast majority of the world’s population lives in countries sourcing nearly all their staple crop imports from partners who deplete groundwater to produce these crops, highlighting risks for global food and water security. Some countries, such as the USA, Mexico, Iran and China, are particularly exposed to these risks because they both produce and import food irrigated from rapidly depleting aquifers. Our results could help to improve the sustainability of global food production and groundwater resource management by identifying priority regions and agricultural products at risk as well as the end consumers of these products.

#eau #aquifère #irrigation #dataviz
téléchargeable ici
▻http://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nature21403

Downstream from a coal mine, villages in Indonesian Borneo suffer from water pollution
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2017/03/downstream-from-a-coal-mine-villages-in-indonesian-borneo-suffer-from

https://news.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/03/GP0STQ3HB.jpg

“The Santan River is the lifeblood of the people of Santan Ilir, Santan Tengah and Santan Hulu villages,” said student activist Taufik Inskander (26), sitting on the veranda of his parents’ home in Santan Ilir, in the Kutai Kartanegara district of East Kalimantan in Indonesian Borneo.

“This river has great historical value. Before there was a road, the people of Santan transported their agricultural products by river to be sold in Samarinda and Bontang,” explained Iskandar, who is a member of the local Marangkayu Student Association.

In addition to serving as a water transportation corridor, the Santan river was also used by residents to meet their everyday needs for clean water as well as to flood their fields and fishponds. Villagers “regularly hold traditional ceremonies to honor the river and the resources,” Iskandar added.

Now, Iskandar said, the people are abandoning the river because the quality of the river is deteriorating.

Ever since coal mining began in the headwaters of the Santan River, local activists say the water has become turbid, muddy, and prone to flooding when there is rain.

#eau #pollution #charbon #extraction #Indonésie #Bornéo

New Law Allows Foreign Agricultural Businesses to Lease Kazakh Land for 25 Years - The Astana Times
▻http://astanatimes.com/2016/02/new-law-allows-foreign-agricultural-businesses-to-lease-kazakh-land-for

http://astanatimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/pole_04.jpg

“Chinese companies are interested in establishing joint ventures in Kazakhstan for processing agricultural products (meat, oil, grains and tomato processing plants) and establishing feedlots, with further promotion of the Kazakh products for export,” noted the ministry.

The Ministry of Agriculture is working to attract Chinese companies to Kazakhstan, in particular such large multinational corporations as Rifa Holding Group, CITIC, AIJIU and COFCO.

Rifa Holding Group will invest in the construction of the East Kazakhstan region meat processing plant. The facility will have an annual capacity of 17,000 tonnes of lamb and beef feedlots, while simultaneously feeding 50,000 head of sheep and goats and 1,000 head of cattle.

In total, 80 percent of the companies will be focused on exporting to China. The total project cost is estimated at 7.9 billion tenge (US$21.5 million), with Rifa Holding Group’s share amounting to 49 percent. The company also intends to cooperate with a number of Kazakh companies in beef production.

#Kazakhstan #Chine #terres #agro-industrie #viande

100,000-cow-power dairy farm in China to feed Russian market|William Hennelly|chinadaily.com.cn
▻http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-07/09/content_21229700.htm

A 100,000-cow dairy farm is being constructed in Northeast China to supply the Russian market with milk and cheese, in what can be construed as agricultural geopolitics.

Russia has extended an import ban of most agricultural products from the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and Norway until August 2016, in retaliation for recently renewed Western economic sanctions over Russia’s military moves in Ukraine and Crimea.

The new dairy site is in Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang province, Zhang Chuntszyao, chairman of the Association of Applied Economics of Heilongjiang province told Interfax on Monday.
Russia’s ban was originally scheduled to expire in August, but was extended in late June in response to the renewal of Western sanctionsthrough January.

It will be the world’s largest dairy farm and will be funded with 1 billion yuan ($161 million) from Russian and Chinese investors. China’s Zhongding Dairy Farming and Russia’s Severny Bur will work together on the project.

China already is home to the world’s largest dairy operation, a 40,000-cow unit of the Maanshan, Anhui province-based China Modern Dairy Holdings Ltd, which operates 24 farms throughout the mainland.
The largest US dairy farm is in Fair Oaks, Indiana, where 30,000 cows ply their trade.

Earlier this month, China’s Huae Sinban Co signed an agreement to lease 115,000 hectares (284,000 acres) in Russia’s Transbaikal region for feedstock, according to state-run Russia Today. The company is expected to invest about $450 million in the project over the next half century. Huae Sinban plans to lease up to 200,000 hectares in Russia if the first stage of the project from 2015-2018 works out.

Mansel Raymond, chairman of the Milk Working Party Copa-Cogeca, an organization representing European agricultural groups, said the ban and the Sino-Russian dairy venture are a concern for EU dairy farmers.
“The scale of Chinese investment in dairy production is vast,” Raymond told UK-based Farmers Weekly. "I wonder now whether we will ever get the Russian milk market back.
"Building a 100,000-cow dairy farm is simply mind-boggling. If the project goes ahead and the 100,000 head represents milking cows, this unit alone could produce 800 million liters a year (about 200 million gallons).
“In that case, it would equate to 100,000 tons of cheese – and that would mean this unit alone could produce about 30 percent of our previous exports to Russia,” Raymond added.

Tropical forests illegally destroyed for commercial agriculture | Global development | theguardian.com
▻http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/sep/11/tropical-forests-illegally-destroyed-commercial-agriculture

Increasing international demand for palm oil, beef, soy and wood is fuelling the illegal destruction of tropical forests at an alarming rate, according to new analysis that suggests nearly half of all recent tropical deforestation is the result of unlawful clearing for commercial agriculture.

The report, by the Washington-based NGO Forest Trends, concludes that 71% of tropical deforestation between 2000 and 2012 was due to commercial cultivation. Of that deforestation, 49% was caused by illegal clearing to make way for agricultural products whose largest buyers include the EU, China, India, Russia and the US.

The global market for beef, leather, soy, palm oil, tropical timbers, pulp and paper – worth an estimated $61bn (£38bn) a year – resulted in the clearance of more than 200,000 square kilometres of tropical forest in the first decade of the 21st century, the report says. Put another way, an average of five football fields of tropical forest were lost every minute over that period.

#déforestation #forêt_tropicale #soja #élevage #huile_de_palme

EU under pressure to allow GM food imports from US and Canada
▻http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/05/eu-gm-food-imports-us-canada

... documents from various US and Canadian government agencies and business trade bodies suggest strong pressure is being brought to bear from US industries to allow GM products and other foods into EU markets that would violate the EU’s current standards, in the name of free trade.

The US Department of Agriculture and Foreign Agricultural Service has explicitly identified “the EU’s non-tariff barriers to US agricultural products”, specifying in particular “long delays in reviews of biotech products [that] create barriers to US exports of grain and oil seed products”. The term biotech is generally used to refer to GM products.

(...)

Mute Schimpf, food campaigner at Friends of the Earth in Brussels, told the Guardian that the EU had shown itself too willing to give in to such #lobbying, despite protestations to the contrary, because in a new deal with Canada – outside of the TTIP but related to it – the two have agreed to have a “shared objective” of minimising the disruption to trade from their different GM rules. “Politicians have been trying to reassure citizens that public safeguards will not be traded away behind closed doors in free-trade deals with the US and Canada. It is therefore deeply alarming that evidence now emerging from a pact with Canada shows that Europe has willingly made an agreement that undermines its own safety regime for genetically modified foods. Citizens must demand that protecting public safety and the environment come before the profits of big business. Europe’s safety-first policies are a fundamental cornerstone and must not be traded away to please industry.”

#ogm

Mapping the extent of abandoned farmland in Central and Eastern Europe using MODIS time series satellite data - IOPscience

▻http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/035035/article

Etude très intéressante sur l’abandon des terres agricols en Eurpe de l’est

The demand for agricultural products continues to grow rapidly, but further agricultural expansion entails substantial environmental costs, making recultivating currently unused farmland an interesting alternative. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to widespread abandonment of agricultural lands, but the extent and spatial patterns of abandonment are unclear. We quantified the extent of abandoned farmland, both croplands and pastures, across the region using MODIS NDVI satellite image time series from 2004 to 2006 and support vector machine classifications.

http://ej.iop.org/images/1748-9326/8/3/035035/Full/erl476053f4_online.jpg

Abandoned farmland was widespread, totaling 52.5 Mha, particularly in temperate European Russia (32 Mha), northern and western Ukraine, and Belarus. Differences in abandonment rates among countries were striking, suggesting that institutional and socio-economic factors were more important in determining the amount of abandonment than biophysical conditions. Indeed, much abandoned farmland occurred in areas without major constraints for agriculture. Our map provides a basis for assessing the potential of Central and Eastern Europe’s abandoned agricultural lands to contribute to food or bioenergy production, or carbon storage, as well as the environmental trade-offs and social constraints of recultivation.

#agriculture #terres_agricole #europe_est #ex_urss #russie #europe_orientale

One Step at a Time With Iran - FAS Strategic Security Blog
▻http://blogs.fas.org/security/2013/11/one-step-time-iran

In exchange, Iran will receive a pause on future sanctions to further reduce revenue from oil exports and sanctions relief on precious metals and petrochemical exports. The P5+1 also agreed to several other measures that can best be described as humanitarian. These include the licensing the supply of parts that will help improve aviation safety in Iran and establishing financial channels to open up trade in food, agricultural products, and medicine. In total, the package is estimated to be worth about $7 billion to Iran. Far from a windfall, that represents about a 1.3% boost to an Iranian economy that has an annual GDP of $548.9 billion, according to the CIA.

In a historical perspective, the opportunity is indeed a golden one. Although the great attention paid to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation may make it seem otherwise, occurrences of it are rare. Since the conclusion of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), only three countries have developed and tested nuclear bombs. Promising opportunities to address acute proliferation risks diplomatically are even rarer. Make no mistake: the P5+1 and Iran are making a history right now that will be studied by social scientists for years to come.

The question is now this: What story will they tell? Will they tell the story of an agreement that set the stage for a groundbreaking, precedent-setting arrangement for nuclear transparency and nonproliferation? Or will they tell the of the United States and Iran acting in bad faith, and blowing yet another opportunity to settle and move beyond the questions surrounding Iran’s interest in nuclear weapons?

(...)

(...) the key to addressing concerns about its use and Iran’s nuclear destiny over the long term is a matter of addressing political issues, not technical ones. (...)

Shanghai begins culling poultry ; one contact shows flu symptoms - Xinhua | English.news.cn
▻http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-04/05/c_132285203.htm

SHANGHAI, April 5 (Xinhua) — Authorities in Shanghai on Thursday closed a live poultry trading zone in an agricultural products market and began slaughtering all birds there after detecting #H7N9 bird flu virus from samples of pigeon from the market.

Meanwhile, a person who had close contact with a dead H7N9 bird flu patient in Shanghai has been under treatment in quarantine after developing symptoms of fever, running nose and throat itching, the Shanghai Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission said late Thursday.

China’s Ministry of Agriculture said Thursday it found the H7N9 virus from pigeon samples collected at the Huhuai wholesale agricultural products market in Songjiang district of Shanghai.

After gene sequence analysis, the national avian flu reference laboratory concluded that the strain of the H7N9 virus found on pigeons was highly congenetic with those found on persons infected with H7N9 virus, the ministry said.

(la source, un peu plus détaillée, de ce que je rapportais ici ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/127599#message127842 )