“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose…” We don’t even have to provide the score for you to hear this song clearly in your head. “The Christmas Song” written in 1945 by Bob Wells and Mel Tormé is a classic. However, by that time in history, the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) trees had almost completely vanished. They had fallen victim to an airborne fungus introduced by the import of an ornamental chestnut from Japan.
One gallon of water for every nut harvested/consumed-counter arguments from growers try to explain it away but no matter how we try to justify the growth/reach of this form of mono-culture tree farming-we’re doing it all wrong. Industrial agriculture in California has been facing one crisis after another for more than a decade. Water battles between cities and rural farming areas has escalated as populations in cities increases and new mega-farms spring up across the Central Valley.
The popularity of almonds with consumers has grown exponentially over the last few years. From the “milk” now sold on store shelves of large and small outlets to promotion by nutritionists citing it as a super food, supply has grown to meet the demand. Almond plantations began replacing conventional vegetable production as farmers try to cash in on the newest demands from the market. And at almost the same time severe drought hit the greater part of the state.”California’s drought-stricken Central Valley churns out 80 percent of the globe’s almonds, and since each nut takes a gallon of water to produce, they account for close to 10 percent of the state’s annual agricultural water use—or more than what the entire population of Los Angeles and San Francisco use in a year.” (New Republic)
On occasion of September 21st, International day of Struggle against Tree Plantations, women from several countries from West and Central Africa have taken the initiative to release simultaneously the petition we enclose below.
The petition is an urgent request from women in Africa to stop the suffering and the violent impacts the expansion of industrial oil palm plantations is creating on womens´ lives, that affect women in and outside the African continent: Violence, sexual abuses, rape, harassment, persecution, destruction of their means of livelihoods. – Click title to read more.
ArborGen, a leading biotech corporation specializing in supplying hybrid tree seedlings for the commercial forestry industry is ready to offer a genetically engineered freeze tolerant eucalyptus tree to their customers in the U.S. Southeast.
Even as the United States government continues to push for the use of more chemically-intensive and corporate-dominated farming methods such as GMOs and monoculture-based crops, the United Nations is once against sounding the alarm about the urgent need to return to (and develop) a more sustainable, natural and organic system.That was the key point of a new publication from the UN Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose…” We don’t even have to provide the score for you to hear this song clearly in your head. “The Christmas Song” written in 1945 by Bob Wells and Mel Tormé is a classic. However, by that time in history, the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) trees had almost completely vanished. They had fallen victim to an airborne fungus introduced by the import of an ornamental chestnut from Japan.
