The borders between the countries that make up the South American trading bloc Mercosur (or Mercosul in Brazil) have an economic life of their own, where different characters subsist. An…
A new study recommends returning oil palm biomass to planting areas to maintain soil health — specifically, by replenishing the soil with silicon. The research was published in April by…
Between 2019 and 2021, swarms of desert locusts̨ swept across the Horn of Africa and East Africa. In response, the worst-affected countries, Kenya and Ethiopia, sprayed millions of hectares of…
Last year, farmer protests erupted throughout the Netherlands, riding a wave of rural anger at government plans to drastically halve nitrogen emissions by downsizing and closing farms. This quickly swept…
Brazil’s use of pesticides has spiked in recent years, growing by over 300,000 tonnes since 2010, according to experts. A recent report, published by the NGO Operação Amazônia Nativa (OPAN)…
In an effort to feed 170 million people in a rapidly growing economy, Bangladeshi farmers rely on the widespread use of chemical fertilizers to boost production, leaving the country’s soil…
Food safety in Bangladesh faces a serious threat from heavy metal contamination, according to recent studies, with one of the country’s most widely consumed vegetables, the eggplant, containing potentially cancer-causing…
Brazilian soybean producers have been highly successful in using genome technology to benefit their crops, with huge economic and environmental gains, a new paper highlights. Currently, the growers are using…
Nestled in a verdant valley in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, about a four-hour drive southwest of Bengaluru, the agroecology learning center Amrita Bhoomi is one of dozens of…
If locusts return by the millions this September, as forecasted, South African farmers hope to follow their movements via a state-of-the-art tracking system, allowing for targeted elimination with pesticides.
Despite some amazing rebounds, six decades after Rachel Carson’s call to curb pesticide use, the world’s birds are in deep trouble — assaulted by toxic chemicals, lost habitat, hunting, invasive species, and climate change.
Primates and other tropical wildlife are increasingly being exposed to pesticides pharmaceuticals, plastics, nanoparticles and other synthetic materials, but adverse impacts on these animals have been little studied.
Brazil’s lower house of congress has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would loosen regulations for the use of pesticides, raising concerns that approval in the Senate would unleash further environmental…
KAVREPALANCHOK, Nepal — Ram Shrestha is spraying pesticide on his potato plants next to a paved road. The cracked earth seems lifeless here in this part of Kavrepalanchok district, a…
This is the second in a two-part series. Read Part One. Palm oil, a popular cooking oil as well as an ingredient in an ocean of products ranging from cookies to cosmetics,…
This is the first in a two-part series. Read Part Two. San Javier de Cachaví is a small village of some 120 families in Ecuador near the Colombian border. The…
Scientists analyzed levels of chemical pollutants in native jataí bees across eight landscapes in Brazil’s São Paulo state. They found that in landscapes with more vegetation, the bees had fewer pollutants, at lower levels, indicating that the plants act as a filter and protective barrier
Son of a sharecropper and lifetime farmer, Dale Strickler has lived his life by the soil. Strickler grew up in an impoverished area near the Ozarks in the U.S. Midwest,…
KARUNGARU, Kenya — Karungaru village in eastern Kenya’s Tharaka Nithi county is dry — so dry that even the resilient acacia trees have shed their leaves to cope. But amid…
A fading, yellow, Mexican-style gateway separates Cidade dos Meninos from the rest of the world. Built in the 1940s, the arched structure marks the boundary between the state of Rio…
In the early hours of July 13, a group of unknown people set fire to a massive warehouse full of agrochemicals in the Cornubia area of Durban on South Africa's…
In some places in North America, the sound of buzzing above fields and forests may no longer foretell trouble, but rather, an innovative solution to a centuries-old problem. Drones are…
In the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the Brazilian palm oil industry told us that oil palm plantation expansion would take a different path than in Southeast Asia, where…
During 18 months, Mongabay investigated allegations challenging the “sustainable” status of the Brazilian palm oil supply chain, unveiling the opposite, with impacts including deforestation and water contamination, discovering what appears to be an industry-wide pattern of brazen disregard for Amazon conservation and for the rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities in northern Pará state.
Well-known investment funds in the U.S., Europe and South Africa are financing a set of oil palm plantations that have been at the center of more than a century of…
For the past 18 months, Mongabay has investigated allegations of widespread abuses by palm oil companies in Brazil, discovering what appears to be an industry-wide pattern of brazen disregard for…
Today we’re taking a look at agroecology, an approach to sustainable farming that emphasizes working with and even enhancing local ecosystems. Agroecology is changing the way food is produced, especially…
This article is a one year follow up to the award-winning series, The Great Insect Dying published in June, 2019 on Mongabay. The original series documents insect losses in Europe, the U.S. and the tropics — here’s what we know today.
Reports show that BASF, Bayer and Syngenta take advantage of permissive legislation to reap huge profits from highly hazardous pesticides banned in Europe.
Carolina Cendra owns a small field about 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, from the town of Napenay, in Argentina’s Chaco province. On her 10 hectares (25 acres), she grows squash,…
