After a seven-year battle, the East Gippsland community in eastern Victoria has defeated Kalbar Resources’ proposed mineral sands mine. Alan Broughton reports.
Alan Broughton
Alan Broughton and Elena Garcia argue that the Nationals' campaign to exclude agriculture from the 2030 emissions' cuts is not supported by farmers.
Kiss the Ground is well worth viewing for those who want a better understanding of what regenerative agriculture looks like, but not of how to achieve it, writes Alan Broughton.
Tom Doig's book is a highly-readable account of profiteering and denial at the expense of the health of tens of thousands of people, told by those affected, writes Alan Broughton.
Agro-ecologist Alan Broughton reviews a new film on lab-produced meat and challenges the claims made by its chief advocate and technology developer.
Virulent infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, have been predicted by disease ecologists because they are the result of the destruction of the world’s natural and agricultural ecosystems, writes Alan Broughton.
Livestock have been scapegoated for all agricultural greenhouse emissions. But, properly managed, their contribution is negligible for methane, and they can be key to tackling the climate crisis, write Elena Garcia and Alan Broughton.
Eliminating livestock farming is no solution to curb the production of greenhouse gases. However, supporting ecological agriculture and attacking the fossil fuel industry are, argues Alan Broughton.
East Gippsland is one region among many affected by disastrous bushfires. Three quarters of it — stretching about 250 km from west to east and 150 km from south to north — has been burned as I write this: about 700,000 hectares.
The debate on agriculture’s contribution to greenhouse gases has been perverted to deflect blame onto farmers and avoid talking about real solutions.
Zimbabwe’s former president Robert Mugabe is remembered for many things, including the successful struggle for black majority rule in the former Rhodesia. But his brutality against minorities and his manipulation of the desire for land led to one of Africa's richest countries becoming impoverished, writes Alan Broughton.
Alan Broughton takes a look at why the majority of farmers are still holding on to chemical methods and what can be done to increase the ecological uptake.
Lee Wengraf’s Extracting Profit shows in great detail that Africa is poor, not because of any innate inability of Africans to raise themselves up, but because Africa’s poverty is necessary for corporate profit, writes Alan Broughton.
Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth
By Charles Massy
University of Queensland Press, 2017
592, paperback
In Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth, Monaro farmer Charles Massy has written an excellent book on agricultural change to restore the environment.
Massy talks about his transformation from a land degrader to a land regenerator, and the inspiration he received from dozens of other Australian farmers who have done the same.
After decades of successfully avoiding responsibility for the consequences of its glyphosate herbicide, Monsanto has been ordered to pay US$39 million to cancer sufferer Dewayne Johnson by a San Francisco court, writes Alan Broughton.
Monsanto was also fined $250 million. This is the first of about 8000 such cases pending in the United States. Shareholders in Bayer, the huge German chemical company that purchased Monsanto in June for $60 billion, lost 10 billion euros as a consequence.
Poisoning Our Children: The Parent’s Guide to the Myths of Safe Pesticides, shows there is plenty of peer-reviewed science finding monumental faults with pesticide use and regulation — science ignored by regulators.
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