organization:un food and agriculture organization

Day of Real Forests: A Photo Essay
▻https://towardfreedom.org/archives/environment/day-of-real-forests-a-photo-essay

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Monoculture tree plantations like these eucalyptus farms pictured here from South Africa are a big threat to forests and a driver of deforestation. Unlike natural forests which are biodiverse and provide a habitat to a web of life of many species of plants and animals, these monoculture plantations support barely any life. These are typically large-scale intensively managed plantations with endless rows of only one species- mostly exotic fast-growing trees like pine or eucalyptus among others, destined for industrial production of commodities like paper or palm oil. They suck the groundwater up, leaving barely anything for animals and people living nearby.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization considers such plantations to be forests, on a par with real forests (as its definition of forest only considers tree cover and height rather than the other critical functions). But people around the world are demanding that the UN reconsider its definition and stop incentivising commercial plantations which have been expanding rapidly under the guise of “reforestation” and “forest restoration” at the cost of real forests.

#forêt #plantation #définition #biodiversité

The Global Dangers of Industrial Meat | Civil Eats
▻http://civileats.com/2017/03/29/the-global-dangers-of-industrial-meat

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The world’s largest beef manufacturer is in trouble. Reports have emerged that employees in over a dozen plants knowingly packed rancid meat, covering up the smell with acid, slabs of which were then sold on to schools and Walmart.

All this happened not in the U.S., though, but in Brazil, headquarters to meatpacking giant JBS. Named for its founder, Jose Batista Sobrinho, the company turns over almost as much as the next three largest U.S. beef producers—Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef—combined.

In response, Egypt has already banned Brazilian beef, and U.S. Senator John Tester (D-Montana) recently introduced legislation to prevent Brazilian beef from entering into the country, even as JBS suspended meat production at 33 of its 36 Brazilian meatpacking plants.

But choosing “America First” for your steak misses two far larger points. The Brazilian giant is simply striving to adopt ideas from, and buy out companies in, the U.S. meat industry. Pilgrim’s, Cargill’s pork business and Smithfield’s beef operation have been acquired by what Bloomberg once called the world’s second largest packaged food company (behind Nestlé).

And even if you could stop the import of dodgy sausage, you still couldn’t avoid the bigger planetary impact of the beef industry, because it’s airborne. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), meat and dairy production alone now generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s transport combined.

#viande_indus #agro-industrie

How does the FAO Forest definition harm people and forests? An open letter to the FAO | WRM in English
▻http://wrm.org.uy/other-relevant-information/how-does-the-fao-forest-definition-harm-people-and-forests-an-open-letter-to

In September 2015, during the XIV World Forestry Congress, thousands of people took to the streets in Durban, South Africa, to protest against the problematic way in which the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), insists on defining forests (1). The FAO definition considers forests to be basically just “a bunch of trees”, while ignoring other fundamental aspects of forests, including their many other life-forms such as other types of plants, as well as animals, and forest-dependent human communities. Equally, it ignores the vital contribution of forests to natural processes that provide soil, water and oxygen. Besides, by defining ‘forests’ as only being a minimum area of land covered by a minimum number of trees of a minimum height and canopy percentage, FAO has actively promoted the establishment of many millions of hectares of industrial tree plantations, of mainly alien species, especially in the global South. As a consequence, only one particular sector has benefitted: the tree plantation industry. Industrial tree plantations have been the direct cause of many negative impacts on local communities and their forests; which have been well-documented

#forêt #plantation #définition #confusion