topic: Agrochemicals

topic: Agrochemicals

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Malawi agroecologists see opportunity in Gulf fertilizer supply disruption
- Geopolitics in the Middle East that has affected shipping through the Strait of Hormuz risk disrupting fertilizer supplies and drive-up prices ahead of the next planting season.
- Small-scale farmers are already dealing with effects of land degradation, and high input costs, with the cost of urea increasing from $96 to $103 for a 50kg bag in a matter of months, before planting season.
- Agroecologists say the instability is an opportunity for the country to refocus on manure, compost and crop diversification to reduce dependence on fertilizer and maize.
- Some farmers remain hopeful that the synthetic fertilizer, on which they rely for improved harvests, will be at least available.

Running on empty: How the gulf war is threatening Kenya’s food security
- Tensions in the Gulf that have disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, causing fertilizer prices to rise. Despite the Kenyan government’s subsidy program, farmers have to deal with high fuel and other input costs.
- At least 26% of Kenya’s fertilizer supply passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The government has, however, assured its citizens of adequate stocks of fertilizer, with plans to diversify imports.
- Meanwhile, farmers foresee reduced yields, despite government subsidy program, while commercial fertilizer prices continue to soar amid rising fuel costs.
- Kenya has to also deal with land degradation attributed to soil erosion, poor farming practices, overuse of synthetic fertilizers and climate change impacts such as floods.

Zambia’s bumper harvest masks likely food insecurity amid geopolitics and climate threats
- Zambia may seem food-secure now, with recent adequate rains and bumper harvests, but experts say it could be short-lived as global geopolitical tensions drive up fertilizer and fuel costs.
- Experts say the urban populations are the most likely to bear the brunt of the Gulf tensions, as they heavily depend on imported foodstuffs such as wheat.
- There are calls for the country to build long-term resilience through investment in irrigation, climate-smart agriculture, locally produced fertilizer, and diversified food systems.
- Zambia and the rest of Southern Africa is staring at another round of El Niño, which might disrupt rainfall patterns and affect food production.

Ancient Maya knowledge helps Guatemalan farmers cut agrochemical use
- Guatemalan farmers are turning to organic pesticides, rooted in traditional practices and sustainable ideas, to replace expensive synthetic alternatives.
- Using a mixture of locally available plants, and ideas about farming passed down by ancestors, they are creating natural pesticides to protect their plots.
- Cheaper than agrochemicals, these biopesticides are safer to use and don’t cause the ecological damage associated with chemical use.
- Although international interest in biopesticides is growing, agrochemicals still dominate the market.

It’s time to engage Mennonite communities in reducing deforestation across Latin America (analysis)
- Across 50 years and multiple countries, it’s clear that Mennonite colonies are systematic agents of deforestation in Latin America, yet they are seldom engaged by policymakers or NGOs seeking to reduce forest loss.
- In part this is due to the colonies’ closed nature but also because their habit of buying in frontier regions is effectively banned by law in Brazil — a nation which dominates the Amazon policy sphere — but a new analysis posits that engagement with these groups is necessary and potentially fruitful.
- “Mennonite pioneers have transformed the South American forest frontier with remarkable, and unfortunate, efficiency. The question now is whether the legal, regulatory, and civil society frameworks of the countries where they now reside can engage them as partners in a different kind of transformation,” the author argues.
- This article is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Household mosquito repellents may stop bumblebees from finding their way home
A chemical used in mosquito repellents may disorient bumblebees, stopping them from finding their way back to their nests, a recent study found. Researchers in Finland exposed 123 buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris), one of the most abundant bumblebee species in Europe, to a standard consumer mosquito repellent containing prallethrin, a type of pyrethroid insecticide. One […]
After quinoa’s boom, Bolivian farmers face degraded soils and climate stress
- Quinoa, a pseudocereal, has been grown in the Andes since pre-Hispanic times. The 2010-2014 quinoa boom benefited some farmers in the region, but intensified production also brought soil depletion, increased erosion and social conflicts.
- Climate change and shifts in regional weather patterns have also brought more frequent and irregular frosts, rains and heat, making quinoa production more difficult.
- Most of the Bolivian quinoa that’s exported is smuggled through Peru and sold as Peruvian, experts say, complicating efforts by Bolivian producers to benefit from using higher-quality seeds.
- Growers in Bolivia’s southern Altiplano, the Andean Plateau, are cultivating a premium variant of the crop in an effort to bypass middlemen and benefit from a price premium, but lack governmental support and direct access to markets.

Strait of Hormuz crisis should catalyze African biofertilizer production (commentary)
- As tensions disrupt food, fuel and fertilizers flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, Africa’s dependence on imported synthetic inputs is once again exposed, since up to 50% of its fertilizer supplies originate in Persian Gulf nations.
- While Africa’s largest chemical fertilizer manufacturer ramps up production to meet the continent’s acute need, a key question becomes whether biologically derived fertilizers created by small to medium enterprises — and by farmers themselves — can help fill the gap.
- “For the farmer standing in her field at dawn, the question is immediate: will she have what she needs to plant? The answer must be equally immediate and rooted in the strength and potential of our own solutions and soils,” a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

As EU-Mercosur agreement goes into effect, environmentalists raise red flags
- The EU-Mercosur trade agreement, between the European Union and many Latin American nations, is potentially worth trillions of dollars in transcontinental commerce, and it is about to be implemented on a provisional basis starting in May, 2026.
- But experts and environmental organizations are concerned about the risks that may arise across Latin America as the accord goes into effect.
- Indigenous organizations warn about the lack of consultation with potentially affected native peoples, and studies point to problems associated with increases in deforestation, mining, and the use of agrochemicals and pesticides.
- On the other hand, experts argue that some provisions, such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), could help reduce environmental damage in Latin America under existing trade dynamics.

Railroad & tariff war boost soy in Brazil’s Cerrado, endangering Indigenous lands
- Driven by the tariff war between the U.S. and China, soy production in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state is breaking records and encroaching on the Cerrado biome.
- Logistics projects such as the Ferrogrão railroad are expected to scale up production, further increasing the risk of deforestation.
- In the Tirecatinga Indigenous Land, amid still-standing Cerrado, Indigenous peoples are already feeling the impacts of pesticides and dams.

In Brazil, regenerative farming advances, but deforestation still pressures ecosystems
- Agribusiness accounts for roughly a fifth of Brazil’s economy and about 40% of exports. While it is a major economic engine, it is also responsible for over 90% of deforestation and about a quarter of national emissions, with cattle ranching and soy production the main drivers of deforestation.
- Agricultural innovation transformed states like Mato Grosso from non-arable land into global farming hubs. Now, agribusinesses and researchers in Brazil are exploring whether similar innovation can boost regenerative farming to restore degraded pasturelands and reduce further deforestation caused by agriculture.
- REVERTE, one of Brazil’s largest agricultural regeneration projects, led by Swiss pesticide producer Syngenta, aims to restore 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of degraded pastureland by 2030. Over the next decade, Brazil aims to restore 40 million hectares (100 million acres) of degraded land.
- Restoring degraded pasturelands will not be enough to halt deforestation for agriculture in the Cerrado and Amazon, experts warn. They say that without robust land-use governance, enforcement of forest protections and binding private-sector commitments, productivity gains risk fueling further expansion rather than reducing pressure on Brazil’s ecosystems.

The Dutch Nitrogen Crisis
What happens when biodiversity conservation and food systems collide? As the top meat exporter in the European Union, the Netherlands has become a case study in the ecological limits of industrial farming. When courts forced action to protect fragile ecosystems, it set off mass farmer protests, political upheaval, and a tug-of-war between regulation, technology and […]
Nations not on track to meet UN 2030 pesticide risk reduction targets: Study
- New research finds that most countries are trending in the wrong direction when it comes to meeting the U.N.’s 2030 global pesticide risk reduction target, with the goal unlikely to be met without substantial changes to agricultural systems worldwide.
- To determine global pesticide risk, researchers used data on pesticide use from 2013 to 2019 in 65 countries, along with data on the toxicity of 625 pesticides as related to eight different species groups.
- Researchers found that just one country, Chile, is on track to meet the U.N. target of reducing pesticide risk by 50% by 2030. The team noted that while overall ecological toxicity of pesticides is rising worldwide, just four nations — the U.S. Brazil, China and India — accounted for more than half of global total applied toxicity (TAT).
- The researchers also discovered that global pesticide risk is dominated by just a few highly toxic chemicals, and they suggest that if this finding is acted upon, targeted reductions in use of these particular chemicals could be one of the best opportunities for nations to get back on track to meet the 2030 pesticide risk reduction goal.

From chemistry to regeneration: Agriculture’s next transformation has begun (commentary)
- Just as the Green Revolution shifted farming from sun and soil to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, we are now seeing a new revolution, one of returning to an agriculture based on biology rather than chemistry.
- The current, chemically dependent model has produced a lot of food but at great cost to soil health, biodiversity and livelihoods.
- “Society must recognize the truth: we cannot continue to poison our environment in the name of food production, and regeneration is the only viable future,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Pesticides found in 70% of European soils, harming beneficial life: Study
- A new study found pesticide residues in 70% of soil samples across 26 European countries, making contamination the second-strongest factor shaping soil biodiversity after basic soil properties.
- The pesticides severely harmed beneficial organisms like mycorrhizal fungi and nematodes that help plants absorb nutrients, and disrupted critical soil functions, including phosphorus and nitrogen cycling.
- Pesticide contamination extended beyond farmland into forests and grasslands where pesticides aren’t applied, likely due to spray drift, with some chemicals persisting in soil for years.
- Researchers say current regulations are inadequate because they test pesticides on only a few individual species rather than examining effects on entire soil communities and the ecosystem functions they perform.

Why is a Philippine island now the Asia Pacific center for agroecology? Interview with Ramon ‘Chin-Chin’ Uy Jr.
- Ramon “Chin-Chin” Uy Jr., is a sustainable food entrepreneur based on Negros Island in the Philippines, which recently hosted the global “good food” movement Slow Food’s first-ever regional conference in Asia and the Pacific.
- The gathering last November brought together farmers, chefs, food artisans and policymakers from across the region to discuss agroecology, biodiversity and climate-resilient food systems.
- Mongabay reporter Keith Anthony Fabro sat down with Uy during the event to discuss agroecology in the region and what it means that Negros Island is being heralded as its “capital.”

Banned for years, dangerous pesticides persist in Nigerian farming
- Nigeria has banned a list of organochlorine pesticides since 2008 due to their potential health effects, but lab tests recently revealed the presence of such substances in farm soil, vegetables and animals.
- Farmers interviewed for this story say they use organochlorine pesticides, which are sold in the local market.
- Recent research points to the need for greater education among Nigerian farmers, as many are misusing pesticides — including banned chemicals — applying them without protective gear and suffering negative health effects.
- Experts emphasize the importance of adopting sustainable agricultural practices, such as integrated pest management (IPM), climate-resilient agriculture and agroecological practices to reduce dependency on synthetic pesticides and to promote soil health.

‘Silent epidemic of chemical pollution’ demands radical regulatory redo, say scientists
- An international team of 43 scientists has called for a “paradigm shift” in toxicology and chemical regulation globally after having found severe lapses in current regulatory systems for evaluating the safety of pesticides and plastics derived from petrochemical byproducts.
- The researchers note that the full commercial formulations of common petrochemical-based pesticides and plasticizers have never been subjected to long-term tests on mammals. Only the active ingredients declared by chemical companies have been assessed for human health risks, while other ingredients have not.
- The scientists found that synthesized pesticides and plasticizers contain petroleum-based waste and heavy metals such as arsenic that can make them “at least 1,000 times more toxic” than the active ingredients alone, posing chronic disease and health threats, especially to children — claims that the chemical industry denies.
- Researchers urge lowering the admissible daily intake, or toxicity threshold, for already approved chemical compounds; long-term testing on the full formulations of new pesticides and new plasticizers; and requiring all toxicological data and experimental protocols for approved commercial compounds be made public.

As Singapore heats up, pests are seeking refuge indoors
- In the past few years, previously spotless air-conditioned icons of Singapore such as Changi Airport and the Apple Store have experienced infestations and diseases on indoor greenery.
- Experts say the rise in extreme temperatures as the city-state loses forest cover explains the migration of flies, bees, butterflies and rats into cooler indoor environments.
- Singapore’s pest control industry is booming as a result, with the country’s National Environment Agency mandating tougher rules to curb vector-borne diseases.
- Methods used to control pest species are being challenged by animal welfare groups concerned over the growing use of glue traps, which catch protected as well as target species.

Burkina Faso’s women farmers reviving the land with fertilizer trees
- Land restoration in Burkina Faso’s Centre-Ouest and Kadiogo regions is women’s work.
- Here, women have made fertilizer trees their indispensable allies in reviving farmland.
- Thanks to these nitrogen-fixing and shade-providing trees, they’re bringing degraded soils back to life.
- In Cassou and Bazoulé communes in Centre-Ouest, local women are breathing new life into an ancestral technique that boosts productivity and enriches biodiversity.

Agroecological market gardening: Benin’s climate-resilient farming solution
- Young entrepreneurs from the Agro-Eco Cooperative are bringing fresh energy to market gardening in southern Benin.
- They have adopted environmentally friendly methods and techniques such as using fertilizer made from ash and animal manure, along with natural pesticides to protect biodiversity, while ensuring a healthy diet for local communities.
- They also face numerous challenges, including problems with irrigation, the lack of a dedicated market for agroecological produce and the limited effectiveness of organic pest control products.

Honey bees in Bangladesh suffer from indiscriminate pesticide use
Experts warn the indiscriminate use of insecticides by farmers in Bangladesh to protect their crops is harming beneficial honey bees, Mongabay contributor Sadiqur Rahman reported in March. Beekeeper Pavel Hossen, who set up an apiary on land next to a black cumin farm, hoped his honey bees (Apis mellifera) would feed on the flowers of the […]
Agencies race to prevent new food crisis as locusts return to northern Africa
- Swarms of desert locusts are moving across parts of North Africa following ideal breeding conditions in late 2024 and early 2025, raising fears of major locust infestations moving south into the Sahel later this year.
- The Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in the Western Region (CLCPRO) has conducted joint surveys and provided equipment and vehicles to strengthen ground response in countries like Libya and Tunisia.
- Mobile apps are helping to integrate Indigenous knowledge and local observations with enhanced satellite and remote monitoring of areas where desert locusts breed.
- These and other efforts are working to keep up with climate change, which has enhanced conditions that spur desert locust outbreaks, and regional insecurity which undermines already patchy monitoring of outbreaks on the ground.

South Africa to ban highly toxic pesticide Terbufos
In a decision welcomed by advocacy groups and researchers, South Africa’s Cabinet has approved a ban on the import of Terbufos, a highly toxic pesticide linked to the deaths of six children in a South African township in October 2024. On June 12, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, Minister of Presidency, said the ban will be accompanied by […]
104 companies linked to 20% of global environmental conflicts, study finds
A recent study has found that just 104 companies, mostly multinational corporations from high-income countries, are involved in a fifth of the more than 3,000 environmental conflicts it analyzed. The study examined 3,388 conflicts, involving 5,589 companies, recorded in the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas) as of October 2024. The atlas is the world’s […]
Invasive whiteflies pose a new threat to Bangladesh’s cash crops
- The invasion of sap-sucking whiteflies in Bangladesh’s agricultural farms, especially in those of coconuts, bananas and guavas, has become a serious concern among farmers as it can cause widespread damage.
- Farmers first noticed these insects in 2019 on coconut plants, and observed they affected the growth of the plants and yields. Research shows whiteflies have already made 61 types of plants as their hosts in Bangladesh.
- Though the researchers have yet to confirm how they entered the country, they suggest it could be via imported high-yielding coconut plants in 2014 and 2015.
- Researchers suggest deploying a parasitoid wasp, Encarsia guadeloupae, which is considered to tackle the invasion of the whitefly.

Solutions needed as climate change & land use fuel global crop pest menace
- Climate change is colliding with land use practices, deforestation and biodiversity loss to drive a rapidly growing threat of crop pests.
- Future warming of 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels (likely by the 2040s or 2050s, according to current projections) could see substantial losses of staple crop yields for wheat (an estimated 46% loss), rice (19%) and maize (31%) due to pest infestations, according to a recent paper.
- Temperate regions are likely to see the greatest increases in crop pests as warming creates conditions for migrating subtropical species to establish themselves in previously unhabitable areas.
- The authors underline the need for more pest monitoring, diversification of farmland crops and biotechnological solutions to meet this growing threat.

Earth Day check-in: Planetary boundaries in peril
Scientists have identified nine planetary boundaries that help regulate a livable planet. Human activities have pushed six of those nine critical Earth systems beyond safe limits, threatening the stability of life as we know it. Mongabay has consistently reported on all nine systems: Climate change, largely driven by fossil fuel emissions, is causing sea level […]
As US agroforestry grows, federal funding freeze leaves farmers in the lurch
- Agroforestry has been steadily gaining ground over the past eight years in the U.S., with the number of projects increasing 6% nationwide according to a new study.
- A federal funding freeze imposed on Jan. 27 put many agroforestry projects on hold pending a 90-day review.
- The freeze has had immediate impacts on farmers and the nonprofit organizations that support them, including a halt on reimbursements and stop work orders.
- Appalachian farmers and their communities are facing a loss in income and the dissolution of important community food resources.

Indiscriminate pesticide use threatens Bangladesh honey bees
- In Bangladesh, honeybee populations are dwindling as unaware farmers use insecticides, particularly neonicotinoids, which disrupt their foraging and survival.
- Experts are seriously concerned about the use of chemical cocktails comprising neonicotinoids without extensive research.
- Despite worldwide concerns over neonicotiniods, Bangladesh authorities are yet to address the issue due to lack of awareness.

Court orders Trump administration to address pesticide risks to endangered species
A U.S. federal judge recently ordered the Trump administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service to complete assessments on the impacts of six pesticides and the steps needed to protect endangered species from them. This isn’t the first time pesticide safety has come before the Trump administration. In 2017, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) conducted an […]
Solar farm expansion in India brings concerns of reckless herbicide use
As solar farms proliferate across the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, communities and experts are raising concerns about the indiscriminate use of glyphosate-based herbicides to clear vegetation around the solar panels, reports contributor Gowthami Subramaniam for Mongabay India. “We fear these chemicals will seep into our water. The effects may not be visible now, […]
Fossil fuel, plastic, and agrichemical companies coordinate social media on climate change, study finds.
A recent study reveals a strong connection between three fossil fuel-based industries — oil and gas, plastics, and agrichemicals — and their use of social media to deny climate change and delay climate action. Energy, plastics and agrichemicals all rely on the same feedstock: fossil fuels. The biggest energy companies sell oil and gas predominantly; […]
Petition calls on EPA to tighten pesticide rules to protect bees
Insect conservation NGO the Xerces Society recently petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to expand its requirement of data to evaluate pesticides can that hurt bees. Scientists say improving pesticide safety for bees would benefit many other pollinators, including the iconic monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), which was recently proposed for protection under the U.S. Endangered […]
Grassroots efforts sprout up to protect Central America’s Trifinio watershed
- A major watershed in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador has been so polluted, industrialized and interfered with that 20% of it could dry up in the next few decades, according to a U.N. report.
- The Trifinio Fraternidad Transboundary Biosphere Reserve, which covers the triborder region of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, suffers from a free-for-all of deforestation, chemical runoff and mining that threatens the existence of the watershed.
- If it dries up, millions of people could be left without water for drinking, bathing and farming.
- While conservation groups continue to lobby for funding, residents frustrated with government inaction have started to organize themselves to fight everything from mining and runoff to illegal building development.

Monarch butterflies proposed for U.S. federal protection
A recent proposal to protect the iconic orange-and-black monarch butterfly under the U.S. Endangered Species Act could make federal protections available to help the species avoid extinction and rebound. In a press release, Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, an NGO, said the ESA listing is a science-based decision and “a […]
Brazil natural landscape degradation drives toxic metal buildup in bats
- Bats play a crucial role in tropical regions as pollinators, seed dispersers and agricultural pest controllers. But they are exposed to a wide range of threats, pollution among them.
- Two recent papers show how natural landscape transformation and degradation, due to pasture and crop monoculture creation and mining in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, can increase bioaccumulation of toxins and heavy metals in bat populations, leading to potential health impacts.
- Over time, this toxic accumulation could increase the likelihood of local bat extinctions and the loss of vital ecosystem services. The toxic contamination of these landscapes also poses a concern for human health, researchers say.
- These findings are likely applicable to bats living in other highly disturbed tropical habitats around the world, researchers say.

Pesticide exposure drives up rural women’s cancer risk in Brazil farming belt
- A study has found that women exposed to pesticides during farm work in Brazil’s Paraná state have a 60% higher risk of developing breast cancer, and a 220% higher risk of metastasis.
- While they don’t typically spray the pesticides, these women are responsible for cleaning the equipment and clothing used to do it, during which they rarely wear personal protective equipment.
- The study found glyphosate, atrazine and 2,4-D in urine samples from rural women; health and regulatory agencies consider these three pesticides as possibly or probably carcinogenic.
- Brazil has one of the most permissive pesticide markets in the world, where levels of exposure to chemicals like glyphosate are several times higher than in more strictly regulated jurisdictions such as the European Union.

Six months after its worst floods, Rio Grande do Sul works to bounce back
- A combination of wet El Niño weather and human-induced climate change were key drivers of the worst flooding event in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state earlier this year.
- The flooding affected 90% of the state and displaced more than half a million people.
- Poor land management is also responsible for the region’s vulnerability to floods, as current agricultural practices in the highlands favor runoff and reduce the soil’s ability to soak up water, with lowlands particularly exposed to high waters.
- While some scientists are still deciphering the causes and behavior of the floodwaters, other experts are working to rehabilitate farmland, tackle soil erosion, and source native seeds for ecological restoration.

Climate change and agrochemicals pose lethal combo for Amazonian fish
- A recent study evaluates the impacts on the Amazonian tambaqui fish from simultaneous exposure to a mix of pesticides and an extreme climate change scenario.
- Researchers subjected the fish to higher temperatures and higher atmospheric CO2 levels, as well as a cocktail of two pesticides, a herbicide and a fungicide, all of which are commonly used in farms throughout the Brazilian Amazon.
- The tambaqui’s capacity to metabolize the agrochemicals was found to be compromised in warmer water, and they suffered damage to their liver, nervous system and DNA.
- The study also points to the risks to food safety in the region, where fish are the main protein source: some 400 metric tons of tambaqui are eaten every year in the city of Manaus alone.

EPA releases a strategy to protect endangered species from insecticides
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a draft insecticide strategy to identify protections the agency will consider when it registers a new insecticide or reevaluates an existing one. The goal is to help protects 850 endangered plant and animal species from going extinct as a result of exposure to the 450 million kilograms […]
Minerals for agricultural use can already be found in Amazonia
- Many fertilizers that ensure the world’s food security are supported by minerals. For years, these compounds came from various countries and have recently been discovered in the Amazon.
- The large deposits were discovered as part of other infrastructure work in the Amazon.
- Potash, phosphorus and agricultural lime improve the performance of farmland, but are also generating new demands and criticism from indigenous communities as well as environmental activists.

Study finds best plants for bee health and conservation in North America
- A new study analyzed pollen from 57 North American plant species, identifying those most nutritionally beneficial for bees, which could inform conservation efforts and wildflower restoration projects.
- Based on their findings, the researchers recommend emphasizing roses (Rosa sp.), clovers (Trifolium sp.), red raspberry (Rubus idaeus), tall buttercup (Ranunculus acris), and Tara vine (Actinidia arguta) in wildflower restoration projects, citing their ideal protein-to-lipid ratios in pollen for wild bee nutrition.
- The research found that bees require a diverse diet from multiple plant sources to obtain a balanced intake of fatty acids and essential amino acids, as no single plant species provides the optimal nutrition.
- With many bee species facing significant threats, the researchers say they hope these findings can inform conservation efforts from policy changes to individual actions like planting native flowers and reducing pesticide use.

Brazil’s new pro-agribusiness pesticide law threatens Amazon biodiversity
- A priority project of Brazil’s congressional agribusiness caucus, the so-called Poison Bill eases restrictions on the sale and use of a wide range of agrochemicals dangerous to humans and the environment.
- The bill went into effect as the use of pesticides banned long ago in the European Union exploded in the Brazilian Amazon.
- In the rainforest, use of the fungicide mancozeb skyrocketed by 5,600%, and the use of the herbicide atrazine increased by 575% in just over a decade.
- Experts warn that lax pesticide controls will worsen impacts at the edge of the Amazon, where the chemicals affect intact biodiversity and aggravate risks to Indigenous people, riverside communities and small farmers.

Kenyan farmers turn to WhatsApp & AI tools to combat crop diseases
- Farmers in Kenya and other countries are using online chat groups and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help combat crop losses due to pests and diseases.
- New research shows chat groups modeled on those used in human health care can offer benefits to farmers and enhance their communication with plant doctors.
- Organizations such as PlantVillage and CABI are using such digital tools and chat groups to expand their reach and augment the services offered through their extension agents and plant clinics; participating farmers say the knowledge they gain through digital tools can ultimately help increase their crop yields.

As coffee expands in Bangladesh hills, conservationists worry about ecosystems
- Though coffee is not a native crop in Bangladesh, in the last couple of years, Bangladeshi farmers, especially those living in hilly regions, have been cultivating coffee thanks to favorable weather conditions.
- The government has been promoting coffee cultivation as a cash crop in places where major crops such as rice, wheat or maze are less suitable.
- However, experts say large-scale coffee cultivation, especially in hilly areas, will damage the diversity of the ecosystems, as the area has historically been rich in biodiversity.

Beyond deforestation, oil palm estates pose flood and water contamination risks
- Clearing of forests for oil palm plantations can increase flooding risk and water contamination for downstream communities, a new study shows.
- The research focused on the Kais River watershed in Indonesian Papua, where about 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of forest have been clear for plantations as of 2021.
- For the Indigenous Kais community living downstream, this period has coincided with an increase in flooding and a decline in water quality.
- The raised flooding risk comes from the fact that oil palms aren’t nearly as effective as forest trees in slowing rainwater runoff, while the water contamination has been traced to the intensive use of agrochemicals on the plantations.

Afro-Brazilian communities fight a rain of pesticides & the company behind it
- Quilombola communities in the Sapê do Norte region of Brazil’s Espírito Santo state have been reporting toxic crop dusting by pulp and paper company Suzano on its eucalyptus plantations.
- Inhabitants speak of damage to their gardens, dried-up water sources, dead fish and diseases.
- The use of aerial pesticide application has been prohibited in the EU since 2009; in Brazil, the number of people affected by the practice increased by 86% between 2021 and 2022.

Uttarakhand limits agricultural land sales amid protests & tourism development
- Following widespread protests, Uttarakhand’s Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has issued orders to district magistrates to deny permission to sell agricultural lands to those outside the state.
- With just 14% of its land designated for agriculture and more than 65% of the population relying on agriculture, calls for legislation to safeguard residents’ land rights have intensified.
- With a lack of comprehensive, updated land records, monitoring the usage of farmlands for nonagricultural purposes has become challenging.
- Lack of employment opportunities and resources as well as shifting weather patterns and climate change have pushed numerous farmers to sell their land holdings.

Tapirs in Brazil’s Cerrado inspire research on human health & pesticides
- Recent research has revealed human contamination by pesticides in the Brazilian Cerrado, following a previous study that also found contamination in tapirs in the region.
- This research shows how animals are providing information and inspiration for research with humans, while emphasizing that the stress endured by South America’s largest terrestrial mammal is also evidenced in people.
- Despite inspiring research on human health, tapirs themselves are not free from the challenges to their survival imposed by human actions; the species is classified as threatened by the IUCN Red List and qualified as vulnerable to extinction.
- The former president of the Brazilian federal environmental protection agency, IBAMA, says the approval of a bill that made the use of pesticides more flexible in Brazil could worsen situations like those reported by the researchers.

New U.S. agroforestry project will pay farmers to expand ‘climate-smart’ acres
- The Nature Conservancy is leading the Expanding Agroforestry Project to provide training, planning and funds for 12,140 hectares (30,000 acres) of new agroforestry plantings in the U.S.
- Goals for the program include enrolling at least 200 farmers, with a minimum of 50 from underserved communities.
- Initial applications have surpassed expectations — 213 farmers applied in the first cycle with 93% coming from underserved populations.
- The first round of payments is set for distribution in fall 2024.

Fertilizer management could reduce ammonia pollution from 3 staple crops: Study
- Nitrogen fertilizers are applied to crops to increase yield, but some of that nitrogen is lost to the atmosphere in the form of ammonia. Ammonia is a major air pollutant linked to numerous health issues, including asthma, lung cancer and cardiovascular disease.
- Using published agricultural and environmental data, researchers employed machine learning to quantify global ammonia emissions from rice, wheat and corn cultivation at 10-kilometer resolution. This added up to a global estimate of 4.3 billion kilograms (9.5 billion pounds) of ammonia emitted from the three staple crops in 2018.
- The model also revealed that optimizing fertilizer management to suit local conditions could achieve a 38% reduction in global ammonia emissions from the three crops. Optimal fertilizer management and the associated emissions reductions depended on local climate and soil characteristics.
- The model, which utilized machine learning, found that under current fertilizer management practices, climate change will increase ammonia emissions from rice, wheat and corn by up to 15.8% by 2100. But this increase could be entirely offset by optimizing fertilizer management and adapting it to local conditions.

Pollution poses big risks to global clean water supplies, study shows
- Nitrogen pollution could intensify global water scarcity threefold by 2050, scientists warn in a recently published paper. In addition, “newly emerging pollutants,” such as microplastics, heavy metals, pathogens and pharmaceuticals, emitted into waterways could cause “severe water degradation in the future.”
- Modeling the escalating impact of nitrogen pollution on water quality, the scientists found that more than 3,000 river basins globally are at risk of water scarcity by 2050 in one future scenario. That finding comes along with concern that climate change could exacerbate water quality decline and increased scarcity.
- Nitrogen pollution and water contamination by heavy metals and pathogens have serious known public health consequences, while health impacts from microplastics and pharmaceuticals need far more research.
- The researchers suggest solutions that include curbing nitrogen pollution through better fertilizer management practices and improved wastewater treatment.

Scientists and doctors raise global alarm over hormone-disrupting chemicals
- Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which harm the human body’s regulation of hormones, have become ubiquitous in consumer products, food, water, and soil, says a new report, leading to serious global health impacts.
- There are some 350,000 synthetic chemicals and polymers used worldwide, and thousands may be endocrine disruptors. Most were not studied for their human health effects before being marketed. Known and suspected endocrine disruptors are found in pesticides, plastic additives, cosmetics, and waterproofing finishes.
- The new report examines four sources of endocrine-disrupting chemicals: plastics, pesticides, consumer products, and PFAS. Rising rates of cancer, infertility, and obesity are suspected to be at least partially attributable to the presence of endocrine disruptors in the human body.
- The Endocrine Society and International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), which co-authored the new report, are calling for legally binding global treaties to restrict and ban endocrine disruptor production and use.

Night light, habitat loss & pesticides threaten Brazil’s bioluminescent insects
- Brazil’s diverse habitats house a remarkable variety of firefly species, many of which are habitat specialists, thriving in unique ecological niches but vulnerable to environmental changes.
- A new study from the Cerrado shows a drastic decline in the diversity of fireflies and other bioluminescent beetles in areas affected by habitat loss and pesticide use over 30 years and suggests that ALAN — Artificial Light At Night — might also pose a threat to these insects in the future.
- Global research has also pointed to habitat loss, pesticide use and light pollution as the main threats to firefly populations, singling out the latter as the fastest-growing threat in southeastern Brazil.
- While protected areas offer some refuge against habitat loss and pesticide use, the subtler impacts of light pollution combined with a lack of fundamental knowledge about fireflies and other bioluminescent beetles remain ongoing obstacles to effective conservation efforts.

Agroecological solutions better than pesticides in fighting fall armyworm, experts say
- Fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) is an invasive agricultural pest, which first hit West Africa in 2016 and quickly spread across the continent.
- Experts have now found that the pest’s impact on maize yields is no longer as severe as initially feared.
- An integrated pest management approach, prioritizing nontoxic control measures, is the best way to tackle the infestation, improve yields and protect human health, according to experts.

‘Shocking’ mortality of infant macaques points to dangers of oil palm plantations
- As oil palm plantations encroach on rainforests, wild primates increasingly enter them to forage, where they face the threat of being eaten by feral dogs, killed for raiding crops, or caught by traffickers for the pet trade.
- A new study from Peninsular Malaysia finds that exposure to oil plantations also significantly increases the risk of death among infant southern pig-tailed macaques.
- In addition to known threats, researchers speculate common pesticides used in oil palm plantations might play a role in the increased death risks for infant macaques, but their study stops short of providing direct evidence implicating any specific toxic chemical in these deaths.
- Conservationists call for using environmentally safe and wildlife-friendly agricultural practices in oil plantations to minimize risks and establishing wildlife corridors and tree islands so that endangered primates, like southern pig-tailed macaques, can move freely without being exposed to threats.

Agrochemicals take a big toll on Global South, new Atlas of Pesticides shows
- Recently launched, the Atlas of Pesticides compiles work by Brazilian and foreign scientists on the impacts of pesticides on soil, water and society.
- Brazil tops the list of countries that import and consume the most agrochemicals in the world: There are more than 3,000 registered agrochemicals, 49% of which are considered highly dangerous to health.
- Although the European Union has approved measures to control the use of pesticides, the atlas reveals that toxic residues have been found in the food consumed there — a reflection of the contamination present in the commodities exported by countries like Brazil.

Herbicide used in Bangladesh tea production threatens biodiversity & health
- Tea is Bangladesh’s second-largest cash crop after jute, producing more than 60,000 tons (60 million crore kilograms) annually.
- To rid tea gardens of weeds, producers are using the harmful chemical glyphosate, mainly under the brand name Roundup, as an herbicide; the chemical is banned in 33 countries due to its negative impacts on biodiversity.
- Despite concern among agriculturists and environmentalists, the government has yet to take any initiative to control the use of harmful chemicals.

Climate change, extreme weather & conflict exacerbate global food crisis
- Global food insecurity has risen substantially since pre-pandemic times, exacerbated by extreme weather, climate change, war and conflict.
- What the U.N. World Food Program calls “a hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions” plays out differently around the world.
- In this story, three of Mongabay’s Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellows detail the local situation in their region – from rising inflation and flooding in Nigeria to diminished local food production in Suriname and the environmental and socioeconomic effects of commercial food production in Brazil.
- “If we do not redouble and better target our efforts, our goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 will remain out of reach,” write the authors of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2023 report on global food security and nutrition.

Agricultural nitrogen pollution is global threat, but circular solutions await
- Nitrogen is an essential element for living organisms, needed to build DNA, proteins and chlorophyll. Although nitrogen makes up nearly 80% of the air we breathe, it’s availability to plants and animals is extremely limited. As a result, nitrogen has been a limiting factor in crop growth since the dawn of agriculture,
- Humanity shattered those limits with the Haber-Bosch process to make ammonia and synthetic fertilizers, driven by fossil fuels, and now used in vast amounts on crops. But that nitrogen influx has disrupted Earth’s natural nitrogen cycle. Today, nitrogen pollution is causing overshoot of several planetary boundaries.
- Nitrates pollute waterways, causing eutrophication. Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas and an ozone-depleting substance. Ammonia is a cause of air pollution, with severe health impacts. Nitrogen is also used to produce potentially long-lived synthetic substances that themselves can become pollutants.
- Better agricultural management and technology could cut a third or more of nitrogen pollution. Circular economy solutions include better fertilizer efficiency, enhanced natural nitrogen fixation, and recovery and reuse of wasted nitrogen. Societal changes are also needed, including a shift in human diet away from meat.

Prevention is best defense against Bangladesh crop diseases, researchers say
- Two staples — paddy and wheat — and one cash crop, jute, are the major focus areas of researchers and scientists in Bangladesh due to their importance to food security and the economy.
- However, state research institutes say these crops are damaged by five main crop diseases, which could trigger a yield loss of up to 62% annually if outbreaks occur frequently.
- Researchers suggest various approaches, including natural pest control, that could ensure a healthy ecosystem for crop cultivation and reduce the cost of farm production.

Sumatra coffee farmers brew natural fertilizer as inflation bites
- Farmers in Indonesia’s Lampung province are making their own organic fertilizer in order to lessen reliance on volatile external supply chains.
- They’ve also diversified the number of crops they grow, interspersing avocado and candlenut trees among crops like coffee and vanilla.
- Advocates of organic farming maintain that techniques like those on display in Lampung can boost yields while countering some of the costs and negative impacts of chemical products.

Glyphosate leaves its mark even in protected areas of Brazil’s Cerrado
- A study found lichens dying as a result of exposure to glyphosate in an ostensibly protected area in Brazil’s Goiás state.
- Formed by interaction between fungi and algae, lichens are bioindicators of air quality.
- Glyphosate is the top-selling herbicide in Brazil and the world, used intensively in soybean, corn and sugarcane plantations; around 70% of pesticides sold in the country are applied in the Cerrado grassland biome.
- The study confirms the dispersion of the product into conservation areas from farmland, with aerial spraying a major factor for this so-called drift.

Circular economy poised to go beyond outdated oil, gas and coal, experts say
- The exploitation of oil, gas and coal is now destabilizing all nine planetary boundaries and driving a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. The solution, experts say, is to move from a hydrocarbon-based linear economy to a diversified circular economy. This is Part 3 of a three-part miniseries.
- To step back from dangerous environmental thresholds, humanity needs to cut its use of fossil fuels, petroleum-based synthetic fertilizers and petrochemicals (especially plastics), with many analysts unequivocal about the unlikelihood of utilizing oil, gas and coal resources to implement a global circular economy.
- To achieve a circular economy, fossil fuels need to be phased out and alternative energy sources put in place. Bio-fertilizers need to be adopted and scaled up, and nitrogen fertilizers must be managed better to prevent overuse. Plastic production needs to be curbed, with a ban of single-use plastics as a start.
- Unfortunately, the world isn’t on target to achieve any of these goals soon, with surging oil and natural gas production by the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia expected to push the planet past the maximum 2° C (3.6° F) temperature increase agreed to in the 2015 Paris Accord — putting Earth at risk of climate catastrophe.

Study links pesticides to child cancer deaths in Brazilian Amazon & Cerrado
- According to new research, for every 5 tons of soy per hectare produced in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, an equivalent of one out of 10,000 children under 10 succumbed to acute lymphoblastic leukemia five years later.
- The researchers estimate that 123 childhood deaths during the 2008-19 period are associated with exposure to pesticides from the soy fields, amounting to half the deaths of children under 10 from lymphoblastic leukemia in the region.
- Experts say that the research is just the tip of the iceberg, and many other diseases and deaths may be associated with chemicals used in crops; further studies are needed.

Battling desertification: Bringing soil back to life in semiarid Spain
- Southeastern Spain is experiencing the northward advance of the Sahara Desert, leading to declining rainfall, soil degradation, and climate change-induced droughts, threatening agricultural lands that have been farmed for many centuries.
- Local farmers recently began adopting regenerative agriculture practices to better withstand long, persistent droughts punctuated by torrential rains and subsequent runoff.
- Many farmers in the region have formed a collaborative group called Alvelal to address encroaching desertification, depopulation, and the lack of opportunities for youth.
- Alvelal members manage more than 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of farmland using regenerative agriculture techniques and aim to expand further, conserving more farmland against the onslaught of climate change, while restoring natural corridors and promoting biodiversity.

Meet the farmers in southeastern Spain fighting desertification
LOS VÉLEZ, Spain — Southeastern Spain faces a pressing environmental challenge: the encroachment of the Sahara Desert. This northward advance results in reduced rainfall, soil degradation, and severe droughts driven by climate change, jeopardizing centuries-old agricultural lands. In response to these challenges, local farmers are increasingly turning to regenerative agriculture practices. These innovative methods aim […]
The Netherlands weighs up its future amid farmer protests and dying ecosystems
LUNTEREN, Netherlands — With the highest livestock density in Europe, the Netherlands faces a serious environmental dilemma. Nitrogen emissions from livestock manure are damaging ecosystems, prompting urgent calls for reform. However, the proposed solutions have deeply divided the country, raising critical questions about the future of sustainable agriculture, food production, and environmental conservation. In this video, […]
Is the genetically modified, nutrient-rich Golden Rice as safe as promised?
- In April, the Philippines’ Supreme Court heeded farmers’ and activists’ calls to look into the safety promise of Golden Rice, a genetically modified grain created to tackle the vitamin A deficiency that impacts millions, over concerns about its potential impact to rice biodiversity, farmer livelihoods and human health.
- The debate over Golden Rice is long-standing and heated, spanning two decades and primarily centered in the Philippines, where it was initially approved for commercial release.
- As legal debates over its safety promise continue, the country’s Golden Rice rollout is on track and officials aim on cultivating 500,000 hectares (1.24 million acres) of the crop by 2028.
- Mongabay spoke with health experts, Filipino officials, conservationists, farmers’ groups and civil society organizations about the contentious issue.

In the clash over Dutch farming, Europe’s future arrives
- Despite months of protests by farmers and an electoral rebuke, the Dutch government has pressed ahead with an attempt to make its farming system more ecologically sustainable.
- But there are deep divisions in the Netherlands over how extensive any reforms should be, and clashes over the role that new technologies should play in them.
- This summer, talks over a potential consensus position between the Dutch government and the national farmers’ union collapsed in failure.
- The clash between the continent’s green movement and its agricultural industry is building steam, with the EU’s flagship conservation law barely squeaking through parliament in June.

In the Netherlands, pitchforks fly for an empire of cows
- In response to a court ruling, the Dutch government announced in 2022 that it would aim to halve emissions of nitrogen from livestock like cows, pigs, and chickens.
- The announcement enraged farmers in the country and sparked a massive protest movement that upended Dutch politics.
- For years, farmers in the Netherlands were encouraged to produce more milk, eggs, and cheese to meet Dutch export targets.
- The sudden u-turn and subsequent backlash gave rise to a new political party in the Netherlands, the Farmers-Citizens Movement, which swept provincial elections in March.

How manure blew up the Netherlands
- The Netherlands is one of the smallest countries in Europe, but also one of its biggest food producers and exporters, thanks to a wildly successful intensive agriculture sector.
- With the highest density of livestock in Europe, the Netherlands has been in the throes of a years-long crisis over nitrogen emissions from manure, which ecologists say are destroying the country’s ecosystems.
- When the Dutch government announced plans to buy out farms close to nature reserves and cut the country’s livestock herd by as much as one-third, farmers revolted, staging massive demonstrations and destabilizing politics in the Netherlands.
- The “nitrogen crisis” has become a flash point in Dutch society, raising difficult questions over how to reform unsustainable food systems and offering a preview of what’s to come for other countries as well.

Morocco rolls out a phosphorous-fueled plan to heal soils across Africa
- Farmers across Africa are faced with eroded, phosphorus-limited soils, leading to low crop yields, despite having some of the world’s richest phosphate deposits in Morocco.
- Soil scientists at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco are building a countrywide network of farmers and soil experts to routinely test soil for its nutrients and other properties, giving farmers more tailored fertilizer recommendations.
- Morocco is the first country in Africa to create soil fertility maps, a way to map out the productivity of arable land, with the practice now catching on in other countries.
- Researchers and others in the agriculture sector see Morocco as a potential leader in boosting soil productivity and revolutionizing agriculture in Africa to expand production beyond subsistence farming.

Agroecology schools help communities restore degraded land in Guatemala
- The transformation of ancestral lands into intensive monoculture plantations has led to the destruction of Guatemala’s native forests and traditional practices, as well as loss of livelihoods and damage to local health and the environment.
- A network of more than 40 Indigenous and local communities and farmer associations are developing agroecology schools across the country to promote the recovery of ancestral practices, educate communities on agroecology and teach them how to build their own local economies.
- Based on the traditional “campesino a campesino” (from farmer to farmer) method, the organizations says it has improved the livelihoods of 33,000 families who use only organic farming techniques and collectively protect 74,000 hectares (182,858 acres) of forest across Guatemala.

One seed at a time: Lebanese project promotes agroecology for farmer autonomy
- Lebanese organic seed farm Buzuruna Juzuruna is on a mission, part of a growing network of agroecological efforts in the country, to change conventional farming through seed sharing and communal education.
- Despite its location in the Fertile Crescent, Lebanon today relies heavily on imports to feed its population due to economic collapse, conflicts and political upheaval.
- Buzuruna Juzuruna is using multiple efforts, including free classes, festivals and even circus performances to expose local farmers to older, more ecological methods of farming.
- In its work, Buzuruna Juzuruna emulates the ecosystems it treasures, by being open-source and horizontal in design.

Sumatran farmers worry as government halts palm oil fertilizer subsidies
- Indonesia has removed palm oil from a list of commodities qualifying for subsidized chemical fertilizers.
- Farmers face an uncertain transition to using composting methods to boost nitrogen content in plantation soil.
- The government of Lampung province said it intended to offer support to farmers in the future.

Borders between Mercosur countries have become a hub for trafficking agrochemicals
- Seizures of counterfeit, adulterated and stolen agrochemicals in Brazil have grown with the global economic impacts since the COVID-19 pandemic, with much of the contraband originating in China and arriving via neighboring South American countries.
- The trafficking in agrochemicals has been co-opted by organized crime syndicates that control the routes from Paraguay to Brazil, with most of the crimes recorded with these products also linked to drug trafficking.
- Half of the pesticide seizures in Brazil involve illicit products, up from just 5% in 2010, and involve products banned in the country yet widely used for growing soybean, corn, cotton and bean crops.
- The Brazilian market for pesticides is valued at $14.4 billion a year, yet tax and economic losses due to crimes involving agricultural inputs was almost $4 billion in 2022.

Cycling oil palm biomass waste back into the soil can boost soil health, study says
- Oil palm growers in Indonesia can boost soil health and reduce their fertilizer use by adding waste biomass back to the soil, a new study says.
- Biomass such as pruned palm fronds and empty fruit bunches that have already been milled for their oil are rich in silicon, an important element in healthy oil palm plantations.
- Large palm oil companies already practice some form of this biomass cycling, but the high cost and effort means smallholder farmers are missing out on the benefits.
- There are 15 million hectares of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, with harvests taking place twice a week, which translates into an immense amount of biomass removal — and thus loss of silicon.

Ethiopia used chemicals to kill locusts. Billions of honeybees disappeared
- Kenya and Ethiopia sprayed millions of hectares of cropland and pastures with chemical pesticides in response to massive locust swarms that emerged between 2019 and 2021.
- In Ethiopia, around 76 billion honeybees died or abandoned their hives during this period, a new study estimates, arguing that chemical spraying was most likely to blame.
- The researchers said Somalia’s use of a biopesticide, on the other hand, was a better approach and that chemical pesticides banned in the EU and the U.S. because of harmful effects on the environment and human health cannot continue to be used in other parts of the world.
- Advocates for integrated pest management say that countries should track and manage locust upsurges before they reach threatening proportions.

For Dutch farming crisis, agroforestry offers solutions: Q&A with Lennart Fuchs & Marc Buiter
- The Dutch government aims to halve nitrogen emissions by 2030 by downsizing and closing farms, sparking a wave of farmer protests and a surprising win for a new agrarian political party.
- Agricultural and environmental experts are calling for the need to introduce food system solutions that both address farmer livelihoods while tackling the climate and environmental crises.
- Agroforestry, agroecology and silvopasture — climate change and conservation solutions that can be profitable — are among the solutions they say can contribute positively to the country’s nitrogen goals.
- Mongabay spoke with two Dutch agricultural experts — Lennart Fuchs from Wageningen University & Research, and Marc Buiter from the Dutch Food Forest Foundation — on how agroforestry could be part of a solution that works for both farmers and the environment.

Poisoned by pesticides: Health crisis deepens in Brazil’s Indigenous communities
- A recent report reveals communities in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region are contaminated by the agriculture industry’s increasing use of pesticides. About 88% of the plants collected, including medicinal herbs and fruits, on Indigenous lands have pesticide residue.
- Samples discovered high levels of pesticides in ecosystems and waters far from crop fields, including carbofuran — a highly toxic substance which is banned in Brazil, Europe and the U.S.
- Experts blame the lack of control by government officials for widespread environmental damage and an escalating health crisis among Indigenous populations, as communities report growing numbers of respiratory problems, acute poisonings and cancers.
- A spokesperson for the biggest agrochemical companies operating in Brazil disputes the findings of the report and numbers of people far from crop regions affected by pesticide usage.

Degraded soil threatens to exacerbate Bangladesh food crisis
- Excessive use of chemical fertilizers is causing soil health degradation in Bangladesh, putting the country’s food security at risk.
- The degradation of soil health has been attributed to higher crop removal due to increasing crop intensity, use of modern crops (high-yielding varieties and hybrids), soil erosion, soil salinity, soil acidity, deforestation, nutrient leaching and minimum manure application, according to numerous studies.
- Chemical fertilizers are mostly imported, and as a result of global price volatility, food prices have shot up in Bangladesh.
- Some farmers are now switching to organic fertilizers to improve the soil health of their agricultural land.

Photos: Newcomer farmers in Brazil embrace bees, agroforestry and find success
- New female farmers that are part of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) are embracing beekeeping and agroforestry on land that was previously unproductive and worn out by pesticides and fertilizers.
- The workers’ movement seeks to rectify land inequality by helping families occupy, settle and farm on land throughout the country.
- People are initially given unproductive land and are taught agroecological techniques based on organic and regenerative farming.
- In the past five years since they started tending to the land, the new beekeepers and farmers say there have been improvements in soil quality, reduced soil erosion and higher bird and native bee diversity in the region.

In Bangladesh, popular eggplant comes with a side of lead. And cadmium
- New studies have highlighted potentially cancer-causing levels of chemicals such as lead and cadmium in food crops grown across Bangladesh, and in particular in eggplants, one of the most widely consumed vegetables in the country.
- Researchers attribute the contamination to excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides by farmers, as well as industrial pollution.
- Also affected are fish caught in the Buriganga River in the capital, Dhaka, and cow’s milk sold in the city.
- Regulators have acknowledged the problem, and say they’re working on efforts to reduce agrochemical use across the country and crack down on industrial pollution.

Blue jeans: An iconic fashion item that’s costing the planet dearly
- The production of blue jeans, one of the most popular apparel items ever, has for decades left behind a trail of heavy consumption, diminishing Earth’s water and energy resources, causing pollution, and contributing to climate change. The harm done by the fashion industry has intensified, not diminished, in recent years.
- The making of jeans is water intensive, yet much of the world’s cotton crop is grown in semiarid regions requiring irrigation and pesticide use. As climate change intensifies, irrigation-dependent cotton cultivation and ecological catastrophe are on a collision course, with the Aral Sea’s ecological death a prime example and warning.
- While some major fashion companies have made sustainability pledges, and taken some steps to produce greener blue jeans, the industry has yet to make significant strides toward sustainability, with organic cotton, for example, still only 1% of the business.
- A few fashion companies are changing their operations to be more sustainable and investing in technology to reduce the socioenvironmental impacts of jeans production. But much more remains to be done.

Biofertilizers cut costs and GHG emissions for Brazilian soybean producers
- Brazilian scientists have developed biofertilizers with nitrogen-fixing microorganisms to replace the use of chemical fertilizers in the production of soybeans.
- Since the country highly depends on imports of fertilizers, the substitution has had a huge economic impact on the soybeans industry.
- Bio inputs are also more sustainable since they don’t require large amounts of energy for production, don’t pollute and are healthier for farmers and consumers.
- Pricing and supply constraints of chemical fertilizers due to the war in Ukraine are pushing for more R&D on microorganisms targeting different crops other than soybeans.

Trouble in the tropics: The terrestrial insects of Brazil are in decline
- New research from Brazil shows terrestrial insects there are declining both in abundance and diversity, while aquatic insects are largely staying steady.
- Given a dearth of long-term data on tropical insects, the scientists took creative means to collect data, including contacting 150 experts for their unpublished data.
- Scientists believe the usual global suspects are behind Brazil’s insect decline: habitat destruction, pesticide use, and climate change.
- Experts say tropical countries need more resources, including long-term funding, to discover with greater certainty what’s happening to insects there. Large-scale insect loss threatens many of Earth’s ecological services, including waste recycling, helping to build fertile soils, pollinating plants, and providing prey for numerous other species.

Drawing the wrong lessons from Sri Lanka’s organic farming experience (commentary)
- Long-standing organic farmers have performed well in the past two years even though conventional farmers in Sri Lanka suffered due to a sudden ban on the import of chemical fertilizers.
- The real lesson to be learned from the Sri Lankan economic crisis is that good governance matters for the health and nutrition of a nation.
- Researchers say that a more diverse set of farming approaches can make Sri Lanka less vulnerable to the next crisis.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Analysis: Pesticides are creating a biodiversity crisis in Europe
- We are in a biodiversity crisis with insects particularly in trouble. Insects that were once commonplace just a few decades ago are today a rare sight.
- After climate change, industrial-scale agriculture, with its heavy reliance on pesticides, must take much of the blame. One obvious solution is to make farming more sustainable.
- The EU had a plan – its Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy – that includes a new regulation to halve pesticide use by 2030. Then came the war in Ukraine, and with fears over food security politicians started to lose their nerve.
- Investigate Europe explored what happens when plans for sweeping reform come up against mighty business interests.

Lack of timely rains, fertilizer hits rice farmers in Nepal’s granary
- The annual monsoon rains have failed to arrive in Nepal as anticipated ahead of the rice-planting season, leaving farmers facing another season of loss and the country bracing for a food shortage.
- A senior government meteorologist says it’s still too early to link the lateness of the monsoon to climate change, but what’s certain is that climate change is already wreaking havoc with rainfall patterns in Nepal.
- Last year, a prolonged monsoon brought unexpected flash floods that cost farmers $93 million in damages.
- A decline in rice production this year could put Nepal’s already strained finances under even more pressure by forcing the country to import rice.

Farmer-to-farmer agroecology: Q&A with Chukki Nanjundaswamy of Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre
- The Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre in southern India is one of dozens of education hubs around the world providing a space for farmer-to-farmer training in agroecology.
- In a wide-ranging interview with Mongabay, the center’s Chukki Nanjundaswamy discusses their model of agriculture, its Gandhian roots, and how it grew out of the rejection of Green Revolution farming techniques that rely on chemical inputs and expensive hybrid seeds.
- Nanjundaswamy shares some of their innovative approaches to growing food without inputs, plus clever techniques to thwart notorious pests like fall armyworm, which is also prevalent in Africa.

From agribusiness to oil to nuclear power and submarines: welcome to anti-environmental Putin-Bolsonaro alliance (commentary)
- Brazil’s dependence on Russian fertilizers has contributed to Jair Bolsonaro’s friendly relationship with Vladimir Putin as well as environmental impacts in the South American nation.
- In this editorial Nikolas Kozloff, an American academic, author and photojournalist, reviews some of the implications of the growing ties between the two leaders, including deforestation in the Amazon, extractive industries, and infrastructure projects.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Is invasive species management doing more harm than good? (commentary)
- Conservationists may be thwarting their own efforts, as well as causing harm to wildlife, in their battle against invasive species, a new op-ed argues.
- In numerous cases, non-native species have been shown to benefit wildlife, while their management – from toxic chemicals to culling – may be causing more harm than good.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Study assesses wildlife exposure to rat poison on oil palm plantations
- Rodents can pose a financial risk to oil palm plantation managers as they can cause significant damage to crops, potentially reducing yields by up to 10%.
- Anticoagulant rodenticides are often used to eradicate or manage rodent populations.
- A recent study assessed the risk of exposure to wildlife species known to hunt on palm plantations.
- Little is known about exposure and the potential risk to a wide variety of species, the study warns, and more research is needed to fill these knowledge gaps.

High tech early warning system could curb next South African locust swarms
- The worst locust swarms in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province in 25 years (occurring in May 2022) is in the past. But the millions of eggs laid by the insects could hatch this September, the beginning of spring in the Southern Hemisphere.
- Grassy farmland in the vast region was only just beginning to recover from a devastating six year drought which struck between 2015 – 2021, when the locust swarms arrived earlier this year.
- Farmers are now pinning their hopes on new software that will track newborn locusts in real time, enabling them to target and exterminate the insect pests before they take to the skies and reproduce.
- The software has been used in seven countries in the Horn of Africa and East Africa and is seen as a vital part of minimizing the size of swarms, which can become an annual disaster if they aren’t targeted immediately after birth. South Africa favors chemical pesticides over non-toxic biopesticides for locust control.

A return to agroecology traditions points the way forward for Malawi’s farmers
- Malawi’s 3.3 million smallholder farming families are the backbone of the country’s economy, but many suffer poverty and food scarcity.
- For some farmers, agroecology has proved a lifeline, allowing them to boost yields and income while reducing the use of synthetic fertilizers.
- From 2012-2017, an initiative called the Malawi Farmer-to-Farmer Agroecology project, or MAFFA, trained 3,000 farmers in Dedza district in agroecology methods, including intercropping, composting, organic pest control and soil management. Years after the close of the program, many participants report ongoing success in using the techniques they learned.
- However, obstacles to wider adoption of agroecology remain, including the long lead time required before agroecology techniques yield results, and a policy framework that has traditionally focused on subsidizing synthetic fertilizers and hybrid seeds.

Push for potash mine in Brazil’s Amazon looms over Indigenous people
- A Canadian-backed company seeking to mine potash in the Brazilian Amazon has finally begun a consultation process with Indigenous inhabitants — more than a decade after it arrived and started prospecting.
- Potássio do Brasil has promised jobs and prosperity for the municipality of Autazes, but Indigenous Mura communities say they’re worried the mine could pollute their rivers, killing the fish they depend on.
- But their resistance is undermined by the government’s long-standing refusal to acknowledge their land claims; officially recognized Indigenous territories in Brazil are off-limits to mining.
- The proposed mine is part of a wider push to exploit the Amazon by President Jair Bolsonaro, who says the potash project specifically will ease Brazil’s reliance on fertilizers imported from sanctions-hit Russia.

Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ 60 years on: Birds still fading from the skies
- Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” catalyzed the modern environmental movement and sparked a ban on DDT in the U.S. and most other nations, though DDT has since been replaced by a growing number of other harmful biocides.
- Now, 60 years later, birds may face more threats than any other animal group because they live in — or migrate through — every habitat on Earth. Birds are impacted by land-use changes, pollution (ranging from pesticides to plastics), climate change, invasive species, diseases, hunting, the wildlife trade, and more.
- The 2022 update to the “State of the World’s Birds” report notes winners and losers amid increasing human alteration of the planet, but documents a continuing downward trend.

Tropical mammals under rising chemical pollution pressure, study warns
- Pesticides, pharmaceuticals, plastics, nanoparticles, and other potentially toxic synthetic materials are being released into the environment in ever greater amounts. A recent study warns that action is needed to better monitor and understand their impacts on terrestrial mammals in the tropics.
- Mortality and mass die offs could result, but sublethal effects — such as reduced fitness or fertility — are perhaps of greater concern in the long-term, warn experts.
- In the research, scientists raise concerns over an increasing load of chemicals released into the tropical environment, with little monitoring conducted to understand the impacts on wildlife.
- Another study released this year reported that the novel entities planetary boundary has been transgressed. Novel entities include pesticides and other synthetic substances. The boundary was declared breached because scientific assessments can’t keep up with new chemicals entering the environment.

For a beekeeping couple in Costa Rica, pesticides are killing the buzz
- For decades, Guillermo Valverde Azofeifa and Andrea Mora Montero have kept Melipona stingless bees in their garden, a task that is becoming more difficult.
- Their home has become surrounded by plantations growing monocultures of pineapple, oil palm and cassava.
- When these crops are sprayed with pesticides, the couple’s bees often die. They worry the fumes may also affect the health of their children.
- The two beekeepers have now initiated legal proceedings to save these native pollinators in Costa Rica, a country that despite its environmentally friendly reputation has one of the highest rates of pesticide use in the world.

In Indonesia’s Spice Islands, some farmers are going back to organic
- Kamil Ishak is one of the few organic farmers on the island of Ternate in Indonesia’s North Maluku province, part of the legendary Spice Islands.
- These organic farmers are moving away from agrochemicals and turning to organic fertilizers and pesticides, often making it themselves.
- Local authorities are supporting the organic farming initiative and encouraging more farmers to adopt the method.

Brazil agrochemical bill nears passage in Bolsonaro’s ‘agenda of death’
- A bill loosening regulations on agrochemicals has been approved by Brazil’s lower house of congress and now goes before the Senate, prompting concerns that it will unleash environmental destruction and threaten consumer health.
- The bill is one of several in the list of priority legislation for 2022 that environmentalists and Indigenous groups say underscore President Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous agenda.
- If approved, the slate of proposed bills would allow companies to exploit Indigenous territories for resources and further impede Indigenous people from staking a claim to their traditional lands.
- Other bills in the works include one that would effectively facilitate land grabbing, and another that would do away with environmental licenses. Bolsonaro has already issued a decree encouraging small-scale gold mining, raising further concerns for the Amazon and its Indigenous inhabitants.

In Nepal, a messy breakup with hybrid seeds is good news for organic farming
- Some farmers in Nepal are slowly returning to organic farming methods using native crop varieties, after more than a decade of hybrid seeds being available in the market.
- Critics say hybrids require more intensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and produce fruit and vegetables with less flavor than native or openly pollinated varieties.
- The government is also supporting the push for organic, including through subsidies for farmers, but acknowledges it’s difficult to change minds.
- Many farmers continue to prefer hybrids, despite the associated problems, because of their higher yields, which mean more income.

Air pollution makes it tough for pollinators to stop and smell the flowers
- Common air pollutants such as those found in car exhaust fumes react with floral scents, leading to reduced pollination by insects, according to new research.
- Researchers used a fumigation facility to control levels of pollution over an open field of mustard plants and observed the effects of these pollutants on pollination by local, free-flying insects.
- The presence of air pollution resulted in up to 90% fewer flower visits and one-third less pollination than in a smog-free field. The largest decrease in pollination came from bees, flies, moths and butterflies.
- The link between poor air quality and human health is well known, but this research points to another way in which air pollution may affect the systems that humans and all other life rely upon.

Polluting with impunity: Palm oil companies flout regulations in Ecuador
- Community residents and researchers alike decry what they say is dangerous pollution leaching into soil and waterways from oil palm plantations and palm oil extraction mills in Ecuador.
- In July 2020, Ecuador’s government passed a law to strengthen and develop the production, commercialization, extraction, export and industrialization of palm oil and its derivatives.
- The law also prohibits oil palm plantations from being established within zones where communities’ water sources are located, and requires the existence of native vegetation buffers between plantations and water bodies.
- But critics say the regulatory portion of the law has been largely toothless and that the government has turned a blind eye to the social and environmental costs of the country’s rapid plantation expansion.

Community in Ecuador punished for trying to stop alleged palm oil pollution
- A legal loophole allowed palm oil companies in Ecuador to establish plantations on ancestral land that belongs to small communities.
- Community residents say that agricultural chemicals and waste from plantations and palm oil processing mills is polluting the water sources on which they depend.
- In an effort to stop the contamination of their water and the degradation of their land, residents of the community of Barranquilla spent three months occupying the access road to plantations surrounding their village in 2020.
- In retaliation, the company that owns and operates the plantations, Energy & Palma, sued four members of the community for lost profits; in Sep. 2021, courts ruled in the company’s favor and ordered the four to pay $151,000 to the company.

Chemical defoliants sprayed on Amazon rainforest to facilitate deforestation in Brazil
- Chemicals created to kill agricultural pests are being sprayed by aircraft into native forest areas.
- Glyphosate and 2,4-D, among others, cause the trees to defoliate, and end up weakened or dead in a process that takes months. Next criminals remove the remaining trees more easily and drop grass seeds by aircraft, consolidating deforestation.
- Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, discovered that in addition to land grabbers, cattle ranchers use the method in order to circumvent forest monitoring efforts.

More trees means healthier bees, new study on air pollution shows
- 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
- The findings add to the growing scientific evidence about the importance of afforestation in urban areas, including creating ecological corridors to connect separate landscapes.
- Air pollution is the world’s top driver of illness and death from chronic noncommunicable diseases.

The complete guide to restoring your soil: Q&A with soil expert Dale Strickler
- Soil expert Dale Strickler’s new book, “The Complete Guide to Restoring your Soil,” covers why we should restore soil, what ideal soil looks like, practices that build better soil, and how to build better agricultural systems.
- The book is peppered with case studies from around the globe, including a section on Indigenous farming techniques, and includes many anecdotes from Strickler’s own life and experiences as a farmer.
- Strickler says many societal ills — malnutrition, disease, conquest, colonialism, warfare, famine, pestilence — can all be traced back to a root cause of soil mismanagement.
- The book offers farming techniques, strategies and practices that can be used to regenerate soil, remediate contaminated soil, and build thriving agriculture systems.

For Kenyan farmers, organic fertilizer bokashi brings the land back to life
- Farmers in Kenya’s arid Tharaka Nithi county are growing fresh vegetables thanks to the use of an organic fertilizer known as bokashi.
- Made from a mix of farmyard waste, bokashi adds both nutrients and microorganisms to the soil, unlike chemical fertilizers that add only nutrients that are quickly consumed or washed away.
- The use of bokashi is one of many agroecological techniques being shared with smallholder farmers here by the Resources Oriented Development Initiative (RODI Kenya).
- While the cost of initially applying bokashi can be prohibitive for many small farmers, the need for it diminishes each year, and farmers are encouraged to make their own rather than buy it.

For Indonesian farmers used to ‘instant’ results, going organic is a tough sell
- Encouraging greater take-up of composting and other natural farming techniques in South Sulawesi province is challenging due to a long-standing reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
- But farmers are increasingly looking to new methods owing to the scarcity and rising cost of agrochemical products.
- The South Sulawesi parliament is drafting new rules to nurture composting in the province’s agricultural production.
- Fieldworkers say farmers need government support as they adopt alternative methods.

Poisoned city: The story of Brazil’s forgotten environmental disaster
- Hundreds of tons of carcinogenic agrochemicals, including DDT, were abandoned by the Brazilian government at a factory near an orphanage on the outskirts or Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s.
- The factory had produced the pesticides as part of the government’s push to eradicate malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
- After it shut down, the residents, unaware of the dangers of the chemicals, continued to use them, even applying the dust directly to their children’s hair to kill head lice.
- More than half a century later, residents continue to suffer from the impact on their health, with 73% of those tested having high levels of contamination in their bodies.

Paraguay failed to stop soy farms from poisoning Indigenous land, UN says
- The U.N. Human Rights Committee says the Paraguayan government failed to stop the illegal use of pesticides being sprayed on the land of the Ava Guarani Indigenous community.
- For more than a decade, the fumigation from neighboring soybean plantations killed the community’s plants and animals, while creating health issues for many residents.
- As a result, younger generations of Ava Guarani were unable to learn the community’s cultural customs, and many moved away from the community.
- Paraguay has the laws and institutions in place to regulate commercial agriculture but has demonstrated an unwillingness to apply them, according to the committee.

Novel chemical entities: Are we sleepwalking through a planetary boundary?
- The “novel entities” planetary boundary encapsulates all toxic and long-lived substances that humans release into the environment — from heavy metals and radioactive waste, to industrial chemicals and pesticides, even novel living organisms — which can threaten the stability of the Earth system.
- Humans have invented more than 140,000 synthetic chemicals and we produce them in vast quantities: around 2.3 billion tons annually. Yet, only a few thousand have been tested for their toxicity to humans or other organisms. That leaves humanity essentially flying blind to potential chemical interactions and impacts.
- Global treaties such as the Stockholm Convention, Minamata Convention, and Basel Convention, limit production and/or trade of some environmentally persistent toxic and hazardous chemicals. But progress is slow: Decades after DDT’s impacts were reported, it is still regularly used in developing nations.
- NGOs call for an international tax on basic chemicals production, with the funds supporting countries devising and implementing regulations to protect human health and the environment. A 0.5% international fee could raise $11.5 billion yearly, vastly surpassing current global funding for chemicals management.

Nitrogen: The environmental crisis you haven’t heard of yet
- The creation of synthetic fertilizers in the early 20th century was a turning point in human history, enabling an increase in crop yields and causing a population boom.
- But the overuse of nitrogen and phosphorus from those fertilizers is causing an environmental crisis, as algae blooms and oceanic “dead zones” grow in scale and frequency.
- Of the nine “planetary boundaries” that scientists say we must not cross in order to sustain human life, the boundary associated with nitrogen and phosphorus waste has been far surpassed, putting Earth’s operating system at risk.
- Global policymakers are beginning to slowly recognize the scale of the problem, as climate change threatens to make it worse. Absent major reforms to agribusiness practices, scientists are aiming to convince the world to reduce waste.

In Kenya, push-pull method tries to debug organic farming’s pest problem
- Farmers in Kenya are experimenting with the “push-pull” method to deal with insect pests without having to use costly and polluting pesticides.
- The technology involves intercropping food plants with insect-repelling legumes to push the bugs away, and ringing the plots with plants that attract, or pull, them even farther out.
- Working with 642 farmers from 56 villages in eight counties, researchers found that farmers who applied the push-pull method nearly doubled their yields over those of their neighbors.
- While adoption of push-pull farming remains low, in part because of higher labor costs, proponents say it offers a win-win for farmers through higher yields and avoidance of chemical pesticides.

Nature takes a beating after chemical explosion in South Africa civil unrest
- Unknown quantities of toxic agricultural chemicals spilled into an estuary on the Indian Ocean following an arson attack on a warehouse during civil unrest and looting in South Africa in July.
- The fire burned for 10 days, exposing thousands of people to clouds of poisonous fumes and soot, with poor communication of the health risks to affected communities.
- Thousands of fish and other aquatic organisms were killed by a torrent of turquoise effluent that flowed from warehouse, which held as many as 1,600 different types of chemicals.
- The incident has exposed significant weaknesses in the regulation of hazardous installations, along with major flaws in emergency and pollution control response by South African authorities.

Swarm technology: Researchers experiment with drones to battle crop pests
- A June special edition of the Journal of Economic Entomology focuses on the potential for using drones in a number of different ways for pest management.
- Proponents of the strategy believe that drone delivery of biocontrols can be used to reduce or, in some cases, replace the use of pesticides, allowing growers to take advantage of the higher prices commanded by organic produce.
- Strict airspace regulations, limited payload capacity and high starting cost are some of the speed bumps to widespread drone usage in agriculture, but experts remain optimistic that drone-based pest management strategies will become more common in coming years.

Amazon palm oil has not lived up to its promise of sustainability (commentary)
- In this commentary, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler says a new investigation by Mongabay-Brasil casts doubt on the Brazilian palm oil industry’s promise to usher in a new era of sustainable palm oil in the Amazon.
- “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,” he writes. “We were told that by limiting oil palm plantations to low-yielding cattle pasture that was long ago carved out of the region’s forests, palm oil could increase carbon storage, create more economic activity and employment, and help restore ecosystem services — all without deforestation.”
- The investigation, led by Mongabay-Brasil’s Karla Mendes, found that the palm oil industry in the Brazilian Amazon has been using agrochemicals in concentrations that are considered unhealthy in other parts of the world, exacerbating land disputes, and engaging in deforestation. The sector has also been dogged by allegations of land-grabbing by local communities and even private landowners.
- This post is a commentary, the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Behind the scenes video unveils water contamination by ‘sustainable’ Amazon palm oil
- Brazil's official policy states that Amazon palm oil is green, but is that true? An 18-month investigation showed the opposite, with impacts including deforestation and water contamination, and it revealed 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.
- The Mongabay investigation will be used by federal prosecutors as evidence to hold a palm oil company accountable for water contamination in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve.
- Federal prosecutors have pursued Brazil’s leading palm oil exporters in the courts for the past seven years, alleging the companies are contaminating water supplies, poisoning the soil, and harming the livelihoods and health of Indigenous and traditional peoples, charges the companies deny.
- In this behind-the-scenes video, Mongabay's Contributing Editor in Brazil, Karla Mendes, takes us on her reporting journey as her team tracks how the palm oil industry is changing this Amazonian landscape.

Industrial diets are imprinting on human bodies, new study finds
- A new analysis shows that eating mass-produced food grown with the help of synthetic fertilizers, sourced internationally, is changing the chemistry of modern humans.
- It is especially true for urbanized and wealthier communities and nations where annual per capita income exceeds $10,000, where supermarkets supply most of the food.
- The isotope composition of nitrogen and carbon present in hair, nails and bones has changed, making present-day humans more similar to each other but very different from their ancestors who lived before the advent of industrial agriculture.
- The problem with these kinds of diets divorced from natural complex food chains is that the system is not resilient in the face of threats, study authors said.

Intimidation of Brazil’s enviro scientists, academics, officials on upswing
- Increasingly, Brazilian environmental researchers, academics and officials appear to be coming under fire for their scientific work or views, sometimes from the Jair Bolsonaro government, but also from anonymous Bolsonaro supporters.
- Researchers and academics have come under attack for their scientific work on agrochemicals, deforestation and other topics, as well as for their socio-environmental views. Attacks have taken the form of anonymous insults and death threats, gag orders, equipment thefts, and even attempted kidnapping.
- A range of intimidation is being experienced by officials, including firings and threats of retaliation for institutional criticism at IBAMA, Brazil’s environment agency, ICMBio, the Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity Conservation overseeing Brazil’s national parks, and FUNAI, the Indigenous affairs agency.
- “Whose interests benefit from the denial of the data on deforestation… from criminalizing the action of NGOs and environmentalists? What we are witnessing is a coordinated action to make it easier for agribusiness to advance into Indigenous territories and standing forest,” says one critic.

East Africa deploys huge volumes of ‘highly hazardous’ pesticides against locust plague
- More than 95% of pesticides now being used in East Africa to fight locust swarms are scientifically proven to cause harm to humans and other organisms such as birds and fish.
- Half of the anti-locust pesticides delivered in East Africa since the beginning of the infestation in late 2019 contain chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to brain damage in children and fetuses, which is banned in the EU.
- Experts including a former FAO official concede the pesticides being used “are not pleasant things,” but say the lack of safer alternatives and the intensity of the locust plague leave them with little choice.

New assessment shines a light on the state of North America’s fireflies
- For years, naturalists and conservationists have noted, anecdotally, that fireflies seem to be in decline, but little was known about their conservation status, until now.
- An assessment of the extinction risk for firefly species in Canada and the U.S. reveals that 11% are threatened with extinction, 2% are near threatened, 33% are categorized as least concern, and more than half are data deficient, according to IUCN Red List criteria.
- Fireflies need abundant food sources (like snails and slugs), plenty of leaf litter and underground burrows, clean water, diverse native vegetation, and dark nights. Protecting and restoring high-quality habitat is critical for the conservation of fireflies and other insects, which are seeing global declines.
- The article includes a list of things individuals can do to help fireflies including mowing less or replacing lawns with diverse natives, leaving leaf litter, and eliminating pesticides and outside lights.

Pension and endowment funds linked to conflict-plagued oil palm in DRC
- A new report from the Oakland Institute, a policy think tank, reveals that several well-known pension funds, trusts and endowments are invested in a group of oil palm plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo accused of environmental and human rights abuses.
- Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC) was recently purchased by two African private equity investors, and several European development banks have invested millions of dollars in the company’s operations.
- Accusations of abuses at the hands of police and plantation-contracted security guards have dogged the company, most recently with the death of a protester in February 2021.

Communities struggle against palm oil plantations spreading in Brazilian Amazon
- Palm oil, a crop synonymous with deforestation and conflict in Southeast Asia, is making inroads in the Brazilian Amazon, where the same issues are now playing out. Indigenous and traditional communities say the plantations in their midst are polluting their rivers and lands, and driving fish and game away.
- Federal prosecutors have pursued Brazil's leading palm oil exporters in the courts for the past seven years--alleging the companies are contaminating water supplies, poisoning the soil, and harming the livelihoods and health of Indigenous and traditional peoples--charges the companies deny.
- This video was produced as part of an 18-month investigation into the palm oil industry in the Brazilian state of Pará.

Can agroecology feed the world?
- Agroecology is an approach to sustainable farming that is quickly spreading around the globe, transforming the way food is produced.
- We're joined on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast by food systems expert Anna Lappé who discusses why the idea that agroecology is a "low yield" practice is a myth, and just how important the growing adoption of agroecological practices around the globe is to the future of life on Earth.
- We're also joined by behavioral scientist Philipe Bujold of the NGO Rare’s Center for Behavior & the Environment, who tells us about the organization's Lands for Life program, which employs behavioral science to encourage smallholder farmers in Colombia to adopt more sustainable, climate-friendly farming practices.

Getting hands-on with pollination can boost cocoa yields, study shows
- Less than 10% of flowers in a cocoa tree are pollinated in natural conditions. Efforts to bolster the yields traditionally involved breeding programs or the use of fertilizers and other chemicals.
- A new study on Indonesian cocoa farms took a different approach: pollinating by hand. Researchers compared cocoa yields using their hands-on process versus traditional farming practices.
- Hand pollination increased cocoa fruit yields by 51% to 161%. Even considering the cost of hand-pollination efforts, small-scale farmers had markedly higher incomes from the hands-on approach.

Death by 1,000 cuts: Are major insect losses imperiling life on Earth?
- New studies, featured in a recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, assess insect declines around the planet.
- On average, the decline in insect abundance is thought to be around 1-2% per year or 10-20% per decade. These losses are being seen on nearly every continent, even within well-protected areas.
- Precipitous insect declines are being escalated by humanity as soaring population and advanced technology push us ever closer to overshooting several critical planetary boundaries including biodiversity, climate change, nitrification, and pollution. Planetary boundary overshoot could threaten the viability of life on Earth.
- Action on a large scale (international, national, and public/private policymaking), and on a small scale (replacing lawns with insect-friendly habitat, for example) are desperately needed to curb and reverse insect decline.

One year on: Insects still in peril as world struggles with global pandemic
- In June 2019, in response to media outcry and alarm over a supposed ongoing global “Insect Apocalypse,” Mongabay published a thorough four-part survey on the state of the world’s insect species and their populations.
- In four, in-depth stories, science writer Jeremy Hance interviewed 24 leading entomologists and other scientists on six continents and working in 12 nations to get their expert views on the rate of insect decline in Europe, the U.S., and especially the tropics, including Latin America, Africa, and Australia.
- Now, 16 months later, Hance reaches out to seven of those scientists to see what’s new. He finds much bad news: butterflies in Ohio declining by 2% per year, 94% of wild bee interactions with native plants lost in New England, and grasshopper abundance falling by 30% in a protected Kansas grassland over 20 years.
- Scientists say such losses aren’t surprising; what’s alarming is our inaction. One researcher concludes: “Real insect conservation would mean conserving large whole ecosystems both from the point source attacks, AND the overall blanket of climate change and six billion more people on the planet than there should be.”

For European chemical giants, Brazil is an open market for toxic pesticides banned at home
- In 2018, Brazil used more than 60,000 tonnes of highly hazardous pesticides banned in the European Union.
- Three Europe-based multibillion-dollar companies control 54% of the world market.
- They include German agrochemical giants BASF and Bayer, as well as Swiss company Syngenta, one of whose pesticides still being sold in Brazil has been banned in its home country for more than 30 years.

Agrochemicals and industrial waste threaten Argentina’s Gran Chaco
- Farmers in Argentina are using increasing amounts of herbicides and other agrochemicals to boost their crop yields.
- In the country’s Gran Chaco region, the unregulated use of agrochemicals has had devastating ecological effects, including the contamination of water sources that residents depend on.
- The Gran Chaco’s waterways are also under pressure from industrial pollution, heavy metals, oil spills, and arsenic found naturally in underground reservoirs.

Bubbles, lasers and robo-bees: The blossoming industry of artificial pollination
- Ninety percent of flowering plants require the help of animal pollinators to reproduce, including most of the food crops we eat.
- But massive declines in the populations of bees, the most efficient pollinators around, and the rising cost to farmers of renting them to pollinate their crops, has spurred the growth of the artificial pollination industry.
- The technologies being tested in this field include the delivery of pollen by drones and by laser-guided vehicles and even dispersal via soap bubbles.
- Proponents of artificial pollination say it can both fill the gap left by the declining number of natural pollinators and help in the conservation of these species; but others say there may not be a need for this technology if there was a greater focus on conservation.

‘In the plantations there is hunger and loneliness’: The cultural dimensions of food insecurity in Papua (commentary)
- Sophie Chao is an anthropologist who has spent years studying the Marind people of southern Papua.
- As palm oil companies take over their land, the Marind, she writes, are struggling to feed themselves.
- Photographs in this article feature Marind, Mandobo and Auyu tribespeople in southern Papua and were taken by Albertus Vembrianto.

Brazil’s native bees are vital for agriculture, but are being killed by it
- Native Brazilian bees provide several environmental services, the most important being pollination of plants, including agricultural crops.
- Stingless beekeeping also helps to keep the forest standing, as honey farmers tend to preserve the environment and restore areas used in their activity.
- But food production based on monoculture and heavy on pesticide use is threatening native bee populations.
- The western honey bee (Apis mellifera), an imported species, dominates Brazil’s beekeeping and its research into the harmful effects of pesticides; but studies show that pesticides affect stingless bees more intensely.

Disaster interrupted: How you can help save the insects
- In a new paper, a group of 30 scientists offers suggestions for industry, land managers, governments and individuals to protect insects in the face of a global decline.
- Noting that invertebrates lack the “charisma” of larger species like pandas and elephants, the scientists call for spreading “the message that appreciation and conservation of insects is now essential for our future survival.”
- They suggest a list of actions that individuals can take to help, including planting native plants, going organic and avoiding pesticides, and reducing carbon footprint.
- “As insects are braided into ecosystems, their plight is essentially integrated with more expansive movements such as global biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and in an alliance with them,” the scientists say.

Indigenous Papuans initiate own lockdowns in face of COVID-19
- The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has prompted authorities and indigenous peoples in Indonesia’s Papua region to shut down air and sea traffic and lock down villages.
- There are fears that a COVID-19 outbreak here, particularly among the more than 300 indigenous tribes, could have a disastrous impact.
- While experts have praised local officials’ decisions, the national government in Jakarta has criticized it, citing dire economic impacts.
- Papuan authorities insist that their initiatives are legally valid and justified to protect public health in a region twice the size of Great Britain but with just five referral hospitals for COVID-19.

First COVID-19 case among indigenous people confirmed in Brazilian Amazon
- A 20-year-old Kokama indigenous woman in northern Amazonas state tested positive for the virus, according to the federal government’s body in charge of health services for indigenous people in Brazil (SESAI).
- She is one of 27 people who are being monitored after being in contact with Dr. Matheus Feitosa, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 last week. Feitosa is a SESAI doctor and he gave treatment to 10 indigenous people in a Tikuna village before developing a fever and going into voluntary isolation.
- Dr. Sofia Mendonça, coordinator of the Xingu Project at the Federal University of São Paulo fears that coronavirus could have a similar impact to the big epidemics of the past. “There is an incredible risk that the virus spreads through the communities and causes genocide,” she told the BBC.

Tax exemptions on pesticides in Brazil add up to US$ 2.2 billion per year
- Aside from saving from generous discounts or total exemptions on taxes, multinational giants in the pesticides sector also receive millions in public resources to fund research through the BNDES [Brazil’s National Development Bank]
- The amount that the Brazilian government fails to collect because of tax exemptions on pesticides is nearly four times as much as the Ministry of the Environment’s total budget this year (US$ 600 million) and more than double what the nation’s national health system [SUS] spent to treat cancer patients in 2017 (US$ 1 billion).
- Tax exemptions related to pesticides are upheld by laws passed decades ago, which view these products as fundamental for the nation’s development and that, because of this, need stimulus—like what happens with the national cesta básica [basket of basics] food distribution program.
- The scenario that benefits pesticide companies could change, as the Federal Supreme Court [STF] is expected to soon judge a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality comparing pesticides to categories like cigarettes, harmful to health and which generate costs that are paid by the entire population—and for which reason are subject to extra taxes instead of tax breaks.

Averting an agricultural and ecological crisis in the Philippines’ salad bowl
- Centuries of growing highland vegetables to sustain the Philippines’ food supply has taken a toll on the farms in the Cordilleras, a mountainous region in the country’s north, which supplies 80% of vegetables in the whole archipelago.
- Farms have expanded into forest areas and affected water supply. Soil quality has likewise declined over the decades because of heavy chemical use by farms gunning for high yields.
- Government agencies have proposed solutions including agroforestry, crop programming and organic farming aimed at limiting the heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides and preventing encroachment into forested areas.
- These interventions have yet to gain momentum, but the upswing of local tourism, and the success of a local coffee farmer, have motivated some farmers to diversify their crops and plant crops alongside trees.

Brazil sets record for highly hazardous pesticide consumption: Report
- An NGO report finds that Brazil is the largest annual buyer of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs), a technical designation by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. HHPs contain active ingredients with extremely acute toxicity and having chronic negative impacts on human health and the environment.
- The report also found that high HHP sales are not only seen in Brazil but also in other low and middle income nations, while sales to many high income nations, especially in Western Europe, are far lower. The trend is seen in sales by Croplife International trade association corporate members Bayer, BASF, Corteva, FMC, and Syngenta.
- A pesticide industry representative claims that this disparity in sales between high and low income nations is due to variability in “farming conditions” between nations and regions. However, environmentalists say that the disparity is due to far weaker pesticide regulations in low income nations as compared to high income nations.
- HHP use will likely continue rising in Brazil. In 2019, the Jair Bolsonaro administration approved 474 new pesticides for use — the highest number in 14 years. Pesticide imports to Brazil also broke an all-time record, with almost 335,000 tons of pesticides purchased in 2019, an increase of 16% compared to 2018.

Amazon’s Mura indigenous group demands input over giant mining project
- In 2013, Potássio do Brasil, a subsidiary of the Canadian merchant bank, Forbes & Manhattan, began drilling exploratory wells for a giant potassium mine — a highly profitable venture that would allow transport of potash along the Amazon and Madeira rivers. Potash is a vital fertilizer for Brazil’s rapidly growing soy agribusiness industry.
- One big problem: the company was reportedly drilling inside the Jauary Indigenous Reserve and directly adjacent to other indigenous reserves and communities. Indigenous people said that the ancestral lands being drilled, though sometimes not demarcated as being within their reserves, were vital for hunting and other livelihoods.
- The mine was licensed in 2015. However, legal irregularities resulted in the project stalling. Finally, a court settlement was reached in which the Mura communities would be given the legal right of consultation — a democratic process of self-determination guaranteed under international law rarely practiced in the remote Brazilian Amazon.
- How the Mura will vote — and whether that vote will be respected by municipal, state and federal governments; agribusiness; a transnational mining giant; and international investors — remains to be seen. However, analysts agree that the result could have far reaching consequences for rural traditional settlements across the Amazon.

Mega-mining project slated for Brazilian Amazon sparks controversy
- Potássio do Brasil, a mining company; Autazes municipal authorities; the federal and Amazonas state governments; and large-scale soy growers all want one thing: to open a potash mine in the town of Autazes that would supply soy producers with Brazilian fertilizer, so as not to buy and pay for imported potash. All stand to profit.
- There’s just one major roadblock: the potassium deposits are on indigenous land, and the mining company started off on the wrong foot in 2013 by digging exploratory wells in secret, without getting indigenous permission to dig on their land.
- Years of acrimonious conflict and legal battles followed. The municipality of Autazes includes 12,000 Mura Indians among its citizens, most of whom live in one of the 20 indigenous reserves that have been officially demarcated or are in the process of being demarcated. They fear the potash mine’s social and environmental repercussions.
- They have successfully stalled the US$2.5 billion mining project up to now. But under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, the possibility that the potash mine could go forward without indigenous consultation — as required by international law — is becoming a looming possibility.

As pesticide approvals soar, Brazil’s tapirs, bees, other wildlife suffer
- Brazil has been recognized as the world’s largest pesticide consumer since 2008, which has resulted in widespread application and in significant environmental contamination. Since then there has been an explosion of new pesticide registrations, first under President Michel Temer, now under Jair Bolsonaro.
- While research is scant, evidence points toward pesticide harm to Brazil’s wildlife, including the death of 500 million bees in four Brazilian states between December 2018 and February 2019. Another report found that 40 percent of samples collected from 116 tapirs were contaminated with insecticides, herbicides and heavy metals.
- High concentrations of the insecticide carbamate aldicarb were detected in 10 of 26 stomach content samples. Because the animals much prefer native vegetation to crops, this suggests that aerial spraying — with residue carried by wind — may be resulting in the spread of the pesticide from croplands into unsprayed natural areas.
- The Bolsonaro administration and bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby in Congress are moving rapidly to deregulate pesticides, especially pushing for passage of amendment 6299/2002, dubbed “The Poison Bill” by critics. It would transfer pesticide regulation to the Agriculture Ministry, a move that analysts decry as a serious conflict of interest.

UK supermarkets criticized over pesticide use, lack of transparency
- New research suggests UK supermarkets are not doing enough to protect human health and the environment from the most hazardous pesticides in their supply chain.
- An analysis of the top 10 retailers in the UK by the Pesticide Action Network UK criticized many supermarket chains for failing to be transparent about their use of pesticides.
- Pesticides found in supermarkets’ supply chains include carcinogens, reproductive toxins and endocrine disruptors that interfere with hormones.

‘Science prevails’ as suspension of award for herbicide research is reversed
- The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has formally named Sri Lankan scientists Channa Jayasumana and Sarath Gunatilake the recipients of its 2019 Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility.
- The pair had been named the recipients in February for their work linking glyphosate, the main chemical in the weed killer Roundup, to chronic kidney disease, but the decision was suspended before the award ceremony over concerns raised by other scientists.
- Jayasumana said at the time he suspected there had been pressure from the agrochemical lobby to undermine their research.
- He told Mongabay that the lengthy peer review ordered by the AAAS following the suspension had vindicated his and Gunatilake’s work and showed that “science has prevailed.”

Fighting Africa’s fall armyworm invasion with radio shows and phone apps
- The invasive fall armyworm is native to the Americas and was first found in Africa in early 2016. It has since spread to nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa.
- Fall armyworm is a voracious pest of over 80 plant species including maize, millet, rice, and sorghum and has been causing food insecurity among smallholder African farmers.
- Due to a lack of extension agents and the rural locations of many farmers, international organizations and governments are looking toward other avenues for communicating with farmers, such as radio programs and phone apps.

A scramble for solutions as fall armyworm infestation sweeps Africa
- An infestation of fall armyworm has spread rapidly across Africa since it first appeared on the continent in 2016; it’s now been reported in 44 countries, with 80 different types of crops affected.
- For farmers and policymakers, the go-to solution has been to spray crops with pesticides, but researchers have warned of harm to farmers from unsafe use of the pesticides, as well as impacts on other insects that would otherwise keep the pests in check.
- Researchers have suggested a biocontrol solution — releasing large numbers of a wasp species known to infest fall armyworm eggs — but doubts remain about how effective it will be in a region with small farms and high crop diversity.
- There are also calls for better agronomic practices, such as more regular weeding of farms and crop rotation, to deny the pest a year-round supply of its preferred food.

Popular pesticide linked to weight loss and delayed migration in songbird
- In a new study, wild white-crowned sparrows that were exposed to seeds treated with imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid insecticide, suffered considerable weight loss and delayed the timing of their migration.
- The delayed migration could in turn be affecting the birds’ survival and reproduction, the researchers say.
- The findings suggest that neonicotinoids could have partly contributed to the decline of several farmland-dependent bird species in North America as seen in the past few decades, the researchers add.

Half a billion bees dead as Brazil approves hundreds more pesticides
- Exposure to pesticides containing neonicotinoids and fipronil caused the deaths of more than 500 million bees in four Brazilian states between December 2018 and February 2019, according to an investigation by Agência Pública and Repórter Brasil.
- Both classes of chemicals are banned in the European Union, but the Brazilian government under President Jair Bolsonaro is clearing the way for their widespread use.
- With 290 pesticide products approved for use since the start of the year, beekeepers are bracing for an increase in beneficial insect die-off.
- The real toll on bees from pesticide use is likely much larger, given that no one knows how many wild bees have been impacted by indiscriminate spraying, including in areas beyond plantation borders.

Bolsonaro administration approves 290 new pesticide products for use
- In just seven months, the Bolsonaro government has approved 290 new pesticide products for use, at the rate of nearly 1.4 per day. Some of the approved chemicals are banned in the EU, US, and elsewhere. Brazil is one of the largest users of pesticides in the world, with utilization on its vast soy crop especially intensive.
- Most of the pesticides approved are not new individual chemicals, but toxic cocktails that combine a variety of pesticides blended for various uses. However, these combinations have rarely been tested to determine their interactions or impacts on human health or nature.
- In addition to the new products, a new regulatory framework to assess pesticide health risks was established in July that will reduce restrictiveness of toxicological classifications. Under Bolsonaro, 1,942 registered pesticides were quickly reevaluated, with the number considered extremely toxic dropped from 702 to just 43.
- Pesticide poisoning is common in Brazil, and on the rise. The full impacts of chemical toxins on wildlife, plants, waterways and ecosystems are not known. Agribusiness typically sprays from the air, a process that if not conducted properly can result in wind drift of toxins into natural areas and human communities.

Environmental justice and urban rat infestations
- Today we speak with Dawn Biehler, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, whose research focuses on the history and public health impacts of rats and other pest species in Baltimore.
- The issue of urban pests like rats in Baltimore has been in the news lately due to tweets sent by US President Donald Trump about the city being “rat and rodent infested.” Trump isn’t the first American politician to use this kind of rhetoric to target communities that are predominantly made up of people of color, while ignoring the fact that policies deliberately designed to marginalize communities of color are at the root of the pest problems in many cities.
- Biehler, who is also the author of the 2013 book Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats, joins us on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast to discuss how rat infestations in cities are actually an environmental justice issue and how they can be dealt with in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Snowy owl summer: Raptor rehabilitation center releases Arctic visitor
- A snowy owl injured on its Massachusetts wintering grounds was brought to Tufts Wildlife Clinic this spring.
- In nature, wildlife must heal fast or perish if they can’t find food or defend themselves from predators, but the lucky ones are brought to a clinic specializing in injured animals.
- Tufts Wildlife Clinic at Cummings Veterinary Medical Center at Tufts University is one such place.
- Mongabay interviewed the clinic’s assistant director about the healing path of “snowy 397” before his eventual successful release.

Amazon rural development and conservation: a path to sustainability?
- Oil palm production in Brazil continues to be conducted on a small scale as compared to the nation’s vast soy plantations. Total oil palm cultivation was just 50,000 hectares in 2010. Today, that total has risen to 236,000 hectares, 85 percent of which is in Pará state.
- While environmentalists fear escalated oil palm production could lead to greater deforestation, Brazil possesses 200 million hectares (772,204 square miles) of deforested, degraded lands, three quarters of which is utilized as pasture, most of it with low productivity that could be converted to oil palm.
- The Rurality Project offers an example of sustainable oil palm production through its recruitment of small-scale growers to boost local economies. But, the bulk of Amazon palm oil is produced on large plantations managed by big firms, like Biopalma, many of which have poor socioenvironmental records.
- If oil palm is to become a large-scale reality in Brazil, without major deforestation, growth will need to be backed by strong regulation and enforcement. But critics say the Bolsonaro government is backing weak regulation that encourages land speculation and deforestation.

Mongabay investigative series helps confirm global insect decline
- In a newly published four-part series, Mongabay takes a deep dive into the science behind the so-called “Insect Apocalypse,” recently reported in the mainstream media.
- To create the series, Mongabay interviewed 24 entomologists and other scientists on six continents and working in 12 nations, producing what is possibly the most in-depth reporting published to date by any news media outlet on the looming insect abundance crisis.
- While major peer-reviewed studies are few (with evidence resting primarily so far on findings in Germany and Puerto Rico), there is near consensus among the two dozen researchers surveyed: Insects are likely in serious global decline.
- The series is in four parts: an introduction and critical review of existing peer-reviewed data; a look at temperate insect declines; a survey of tropical declines; and solutions to the problem. Researchers agree: Conserving insects — imperative to preserving the world’s ecosystem services — is vital to humanity.

Innovative methods could transform Vietnam’s robusta farms into carbon sinks
- Vietnam is the second-largest producer of coffee in the world, and the largest exporter of robusta beans.
- Climate change poses a threat to the country’s coffee sector, while poor farming techniques cause environmental degradation.
- A new report has found that intercropping (agroforestry) and decreased fertilizer use can change robusta farms from carbon sources to carbon sinks.
- Such practices are present in Vietnam’s small specialty coffee industry, but large-scale commodity producers aren’t as innovative.

How to save insects and ourselves
- The entomologists interviewed for this Mongabay series agreed on three major causes for the ongoing and escalating collapse of global insect populations: habitat loss (especially due to agribusiness expansion), climate change and pesticide use. Some added a fourth cause: human overpopulation.
- Solutions to these problems exist, most agreed, but political commitment, major institutional funding and a large-scale vision are lacking. To combat habitat loss, researchers urge preservation of biodiversity hotspots such as primary rainforest, regeneration of damaged ecosystems, and nature-friendly agriculture.
- Combatting climate change, scientists agree, requires deep carbon emission cuts along with the establishment of secure, very large conserved areas and corridors encompassing a wide variety of temperate and tropical ecosystems, sometimes designed with preserving specific insect populations in mind.
- Pesticide use solutions include bans of some toxins and pesticide seed coatings, the education of farmers by scientists rather than by pesticide companies, and importantly, a rethinking of agribusiness practices. The Netherlands’ Delta Plan for Biodiversity Recovery includes some of these elements.

The tropics in trouble and some hope
- Insect species are most diverse in the tropics, but are largely unresearched, with many species not described by science. But entomologists believe abundance is being impacted by climate change, habitat destruction and the introduction of industrial agribusiness with its heavy pesticide use.
- A 2018 repeat of a 1976 study in Puerto Rico, which measured the total biomass of a rainforest’s arthropods, found that in the intervening decades populations collapsed. Sticky traps caught up to 60-fold fewer insects than 37 years prior, while ground netting caught 8 times fewer insects than in 1976.
- The same researchers also looked at insect abundance in a tropical forest in Western Mexico. There, biomass abundance fell eightfold in sticky traps from 1981 to 2014. Researchers from Southeast Asia, Australia, Oceania and Africa all expressed concern to Mongabay over possible insect abundance declines.
- In response to feared tropical declines, new insect surveys are being launched, including the Arthropod Initiative and Global Malaise Trap Program. But all of these new initiatives suffer the same dire problem: a dearth of funding and lack of interest from foundations, conservation groups and governments.

Vanishing act in Europe and North America
- Though arthropods make up most of the species on Earth, and much of the planet’s biomass, they are significantly understudied compared to mammals, plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish. Lack of baseline data makes insect abundance decline difficult to assess.
- Insects in the temperate EU and U.S. are the world’s best studied, so it is here that scientists expect to detect precipitous declines first. A groundbreaking study published in October 2017 found that flying insects in 63 protected areas in Germany had declined by 75 percent in just 25 years.
- The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme has a 43-year butterfly record, and over that time two-thirds of the nations’ species have decreased. Another recent paper found an 84 percent decline in butterflies in the Netherlands from 1890 to 2017. Still, EU researchers say far more data points are needed.
- Neither the U.S. or Canada have conducted an in-depth study similar to that in Germany. But entomologists agree that major abundance declines are likely underway, and many are planning studies to detect population drops. Contributors to decline are climate change, pesticides and ecosystem destruction.

A global look at a deepening crisis
- Recent studies from Germany and Puerto Rico, and a global meta-study, all point to a serious, dramatic decline in insect abundance. Plummeting insect populations could deeply impact ecosystems and human civilization, as these tiny creatures form the base of the food chain, pollinate, dispose of waste, and enliven soils.
- However, limited baseline data makes it difficult for scientists to say with certainty just how deep the crisis may be, though anecdotal evidence is strong. To that end, Mongabay is launching a four-part series — likely the most in-depth, nuanced look at insect decline yet published by any media outlet.
- Mongabay interviewed 24 entomologists and researchers on six continents working in over a dozen nations to determine what we know regarding the “great insect dying,” including an overview article, and an in-depth story looking at temperate insects in the U.S. and the European Union — the best studied for their abundance.
- We also utilize Mongabay’s position as a leader in tropical reporting to focus solely on insect declines in the tropics and subtropics, where lack of baseline data is causing scientists to rush to create new, urgently needed survey study projects. The final story looks at what we can do to curb and reverse the loss of insect abundance.

Former Brazilian enviro ministers blast Bolsonaro environmental assaults
- A new manifesto by eight of Brazil’s past environment ministers has accused the rightist Bolsonaro administration of “a series of unprecedented actions that are destroying the capacity of the environment ministry to formulate and carry out public policies.”
- The ministers warn that Bolsonaro’s draconian environmental policies, including the weakening of environmental licensing, plus sweeping illegal deforestation amnesties, could cause great economic harm to Brazil, possibly endangering trade agreements with the European Union.
- Brazil this month threatened to overhaul rules used to select deforestation projects for the Amazon Fund, a pool of money provided to Brazil annually, mostly by Norway and Germany. Both nations deny being consulted about the rule change that could end many NGOs receiving grants from the fund.
- Environment Minister Riccardo Salles also announced a reassessment of every one of Brazil’s 334 conservation units. Some parks may be closed, including the Tamoios Ecological Station, where Bolsonaro was fined for illegal fishing in 2012 and which he’d like to turn into the “Brazilian Cancun.”

Bolsonaro administration authorizes 150+ pesticides in first 100 days
- With Brazil’s Bolsonaro administration in power for just 100 days, it has already approved 152 new pesticides for use, a record in such a short period of time, while another 1,300 pesticide requests for authorization from transnational companies await action. Most requests are from U.S., German and Chinese companies.
- Brazil is already the world’s largest user of pesticides and has an acknowledged pesticide poisoning problem, with 100,000 cases reported annually, with likely many more not reported. Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina denies that pesticide fast tracking will cause any serious environmental or health problems.
- Newly authorized this year are the fungicide mancozeb (mostly banned in Canada), pesticide sulfoxaflor (associated with bee colony collapse disorder), and insecticide chlorpyrifos (banned in the U.S. in 2018 and associated with development disabilities in children).
- The control of both the executive and legislative branches of the Brazilian federal government by the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby means that it is very likely that bill PL 6299/2002 — called “the poison package” by critics — will be voted up this year. The legislation would greatly deregulate the approval process for pesticides.

‘It’s getting worse’: National parks in Honduras hit hard by palm oil
- Production of oil palm has risen by nearly 560 percent in Honduras over the past two decades, making the country the eighth-largest producer worldwide and number three in the Americas.
- By 2010, Jeanette Kawas National Park, which sits along the coast in northern Honduras, had lost approximately 40 square kilometers (15 square miles) to oil palm plantations. Nearby Punta Izopo National Park and Cuero y Salado National Park lost more than 8 percent and 4 percent of their tree cover, respectively, between 2001 and 2017.
- Small-scale farmers, some living legally within park borders, are clearing deeper and deeper sections of forest. A growing number of residents are cultivating small-scale oil palm plantations and have become off-the-books suppliers for companies operating in the area, which has become a source of serious concern for conservation organizations.
- Local officials say that due to bureaucratic red tape, cutting down even illegally planted oil palm trees can put them at risk of legal repercussions, making it difficult to restore forest after it’s been converted to oil palm plantations.

Bolsonaro government takes aim at Vatican over Amazon meeting
- The Catholic Church has scheduled a Synod for October, a meeting at which bishops and priests (and one nun) from the nine Latin American Amazon countries will discuss environmental, indigenous and climate change issues.
- Members of the new rightist Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro are eyeing the event with suspicion, seeing it as an attack on national sovereignty by a progressive church.
- To show its opposition to the Amazon Synod, the Brazilian government plans to sponsor a rival symposium in Rome, just a month before the Pope’s meeting, to present examples of “Brazil’s concern and care for the Amazon.”
- At issue are two opposing viewpoints: the Catholic Church under Pope Francis sees itself and all nations as stewards of the Earth and of less privileged indigenous and traditional people. Bolsonaro, however, and many of his ruralist and evangelical allies see the Amazon as a resource to be used and developed freely by humans.

New appointments, new policies don’t bode well for Brazilian Amazon
- Jair Bolsonaro took office on 1 January. Since then, he has made appointments to his government, and there have been statements by people in his administration, that are causing grave concern among environmentalists.
- New Environment Minister Ricardo Salles has come out strongly for an end to the demarcation of indigenous lands, and in support of entrepreneurs and companies being allowed to self-regulate the environmental licensing process for major infrastructure and development projects.
- Salles also wants to hire a satellite firm to monitor Brazil’s forest fires, drought and deforestation. Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE), a governmental agency, released a response explaining that it is already doing this work. While Salles plan isn’t clear, it could be a means of privatizing deforestation monitoring.
- Franklimberg Ribeiro de Freitas has been chosen to head Funai, Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency. However, some fear a major conflict of interest. Freitas was most recently a consulting advisor for indigenous, community, and environmental affairs with the Belo Sun mining company, where he sided against indigenous land rights.

Amazon soy boom poses urgent existential threat to landless movement
- Brazil’s 1988 constitution and other laws established the right of landless peasants to claim unused and underutilized lands. Thousands, with the support of the landless movement, occupied tracts. At times, they even succeeded in getting authorities to set up agrarian reform settlements.
- Big landowners always opposed giving large tracts of land to the landless but, until roads began penetrating the Amazon making transport of commodities such as soy far cheaper, conflict over land was less intense.
- As new Amazon transportation projects are proposed – like the planned Ferrogrāo (Grainrail), or the BR-163 and BR-319 highway improvements – land thieves increasingly move in to steal the land, with hired thugs often threatening peasant communities, and murdering leaders.
- An example: a landless community leader named Carlos Antônio da Silva, known as Carlão, was assassinated by armed gunmen last April in Mato Grosso state. The rise of Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly threatened the landless movement with violence, has residents of Amazon agrarian reform settlements deeply worried.

Bolsonaro shapes administration: Amazon, indigenous and landless at risk
- President-elect Jair Bolsonaro has chosen Ricardo Salles as Brazil’s environment minister. The former São Paulo state government environment secretary is under investigation for allegedly redrawing maps allowing protected lands to be developed for mining and factories. His statements are heavily pro-agribusiness and sometimes espouse violence.
- The selection of ruralist Tereza Cristina as agriculture minister, and Ernesto Araújo as foreign minister, also almost certainly signals difficult days ahead for Brazil’s environment. Cristina has pushed hard for fast track approval of toxic pesticides. Araújo calls climate change a “Marxist” conspiracy.
- Analysts say that, by choosing ministry appointees who hold extreme views on the environment, Bolsonaro is making Brazil vulnerable to economic reprisals from the international community – especially from developed nations and companies responding to voters and consumers who oppose harm to the Amazon and indigenous groups.
- Former army officer Bolsonaro has chosen six retired generals to head ministries; other military men join him as VP and chief of staff. Activists fear these appointments will have a chilling effect on Brazilian democracy, leading to repression. Deforestation and violence against activists since the campaign, including assassinations, continue rising in Brazil.

Pesticides could be painting black howler monkeys yellow in Costa Rica
- Mantled howler monkeys in Costa Rica are starting to appear with patches of yellow fur on their usually black coats.
- A team of scientists believes that the dappled monkeys are consuming sulfur-containing pesticides along with the leaves they eat.
- Sulfur from the pesticide ends up in the monkeys’ pigmentation, resulting in splashes of yellow on their coats.

Camera-wielding robot records effects of pesticide on bees’ behavior
- Bee populations are on the decline, and studies have linked this to the use of pesticides containing neonicotinoid compounds, which can impact insect behavior.
- Researchers built a robotic platform that allowed them to observe the impacts of neonicotinoid compounds on bumblebee behavior inside bee colonies over a 12-day period.
- The robotic observation platform held computer-programmed movable cameras that could monitor up to 12 colonies at a time, which included foraging and nesting chambers with simulated “daytime” and “nighttime” conditions.
- The team found that bumblebees exposed to environmentally realistic amounts of neonicotinoid compounds reduced their nursing and caretaking activities at night and were less able to regulate the colony’s temperature, among other behavioral changes that may impact their population.

Bolsonaro pledges government shakeup, deregulation, Amazon development
- Events are unfolding rapidly in Brazil, as president elect Jair Bolsonaro selects members of his administration and continues to propose what many analysts see as sweeping and draconian changes to the Brazilian government and environmental regulations.
- Bolsonaro, while stepping back from plans for a merger of the Environment Ministry with the Agriculture Ministry, still plans major government reorganization. Paulo Guedes, his chief economic advisor, for example, could lead a super ministry merging duties of the Finance, Planning, Industry and Foreign Trade ministries.
- During the presidential campaign, Amazon deforestation rates rose by nearly 50 percent, possibly as Bolsonaro supporters and land grabbers anticipate government retreat from environmental protections. Analysts worry Bolsonaro will criminalize social movements and end the demarcation of indigenous reserves assured by the 1988 Constitution.
- Bolsonaro also chose Tereza Cristina as Agriculture Minister. She is known for her intense support of pesticide deregulation, and for backing a bill to fast track socio-environmental licensing of large infrastructure projects such as dams, railways, roads, industrial waterways, and mines – a position Bolsonaro also supports.

Merger of Brazil’s agriculture and environment ministries in limbo
- During his campaign, presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro repeatedly called for the merger of Brazil’s Ministry of Environment (MMA) and Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA). Bolsonaro strongly backs agribusiness, while seeing the work of environmentalists as undermining the Brazilian economy.
- However, the president elect was met in recent days by a firestorm of resistance against the merger from environmentalists, NGOs, scientists, academics, the environmental ministry itself, and from eight former environmental ministers.
- Even the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby has come out against the proposal, calling it unworkable, noting that the two ministries have different, incompatible missions and agendas that would be compromised by a merger. Others note that a spirited dialogue between the two ministries is politically healthy for the nation.
- Bolsonaro, in response to criticism, said he will reconsider his plan, making a final decision on the merger known after taking office in January. Despite being close during the campaign to extreme right ruralists (mostly cattle ranchers), Bolsonaro has selected Tereza Cristina, a somewhat less radical ruralist, as new agriculture minister.

Cerrado farm community fights for life against dam and eucalyptus growers
- A wealth of great rivers caused Brazil in recent years to pursue a frenzy of mega-dam construction in the Amazon and Cerrado, work that enthusiasts claimed would benefit Brazilians with cheap energy. Critics say otherwise, however, noting much of the power produced goes to large mining company operations.
- Analysts also point to completed projects, such as the Belo Monte, Teles Pires, Santo Antonio, Jirau and other dams, that have resulted in significant environmental harm, the displacement of rural indigenous and traditional populations, and to generating massive corruption.
- A case in point can be found in the small town of Formosa in Tocantins state. The building of the Estreito mega-dam, completed in 2008, flooded fields, pastures and homes. The most impacted half of the community was relocated by the consortium of companies that constructed the dam.
- The rest remained and were denied the social and economic benefits they’d been promised by either the government or the dam building consortium, which includes two mining giants, Alcoa and Vale, and Suez Energy and Camargo Corrêa Energia. Many Brazilian mega-dams were planned to offer energy to large mines.

Machine-learning app to fight invasive crop pest in Africa
- To monitor the invasive fall armyworm caterpillar in Africa, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and Pennsylvania State University have collaborated on an AI add-on to FAO’s existing phone app to help farmers detect agricultural pests.
- The fall armyworm, an invasive pest of over 80 plant species, is native to the Americas but reached Africa in early 2016 and has wreaked havoc on their maize, threatening food security.
- The add-on, called Nuru, identifies leaf damage in photos taken by farmers and sends information to authorities to help monitor the presence of the pest.
- Detecting the pest quickly can help reduce unnecessary pesticide use that can damage human and ecosystem health.

Jair Bolsonaro: looming threat to the Amazon and global climate?
- Jair Bolsonaro is poised to win the Brazilian presidential runoff on 28 October – currently polling with 58 percent of the vote. He holds strong policy positions in opposition to the environment, indigenous rights and traditional land claims.
- Bolsonaro has pledged to open the Amazon to economic exploitation, greatly expand energy production, abolish Brazil’s environmental ministry, relax environmental licensing and regulation, open indigenous reserves to mining, and back out of the Paris climate accord.
- Moreover, Bolsonaro’s once tiny PSL Party elected 52 new federal deputies and four senators in the 7 October election. It is very likely that these ultra-right PSL representatives will caucus with the right-wing bancada ruralista agribusiness and mining bloc in Congress, giving them a majority.
- As a result, analysts say that if Bolsonaro is elected president, he will probably have the full support of Congress in fulfilling his agenda, with only the Supreme Court likely standing in the way of significant Amazon deforestation and other environmental harm.

Land rights, forests, food systems central to limiting global warming: report
- In the wake of the dire, just released UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, a climate advocacy group known as CLARA (Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance) has published a separate report proposing that the world’s nations put far more effort into land sector measures to store carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- They suggest that these nature-oriented, land-based approaches could be far more effective, and more rapidly implemented, than relying on costly or largely untested high tech solutions such as bioenergy, carbon capture-and-storage, and geoengineering.
- Among the approaches CLARA proposes are the establishment of far stronger land rights for indigenous peoples (who are among the world’s best forest stewards), as well as a serious reduction in deforestation and the restoration of forest ecosystems worldwide.
- The CLARA report also calls for the transformation of agriculture (less tilling, less fertilizers, more support for small farms), and a global revolution in dietary habits, including a reduction in meat consumption and less food waste.

‘Predatory agribusiness’ likely to gain more power in Brazil election: report
- 248 candidates, about two-thirds of federal deputies seeking re-election to the Brazilian congress this October either introduced, or voted for bills harmful to the environment, indigenous peoples, and rural workers, according to a survey conducted by Repórter Brasil.
- The survey compiled the voting records of Brazilian deputies up for re-election, a record then assessed for negative or positive impacts by eight socio-environmental organizations. The results are presented online as the Ruralometer.
- Out of the 248 candidates running for re-election, 138 (or 55 percent) are part of the Parliamentary Agricultural and Livestock Front – the bancada ruralista agribusiness caucus, well known for its strongly negative socio-environmental agenda.
- Analysts say that the current Congress is the most conservative since the end of Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1985, but they expect it will move further right after the 7 October election. Experts blame the conservative makeup of Congress on the wealth and influence of ruralists and agribusiness, and on campaign finance laws.

Connect the dots: Cerrado soy drives inequality to provide EU with chicken
- For nearly a century, traditional communities in the Brazilian Cerrado raised small livestock herds and planted sustainably on lands to which they lacked deeds. The savanna was largely ignored by industrial agribusiness, which lacked the technology to farm and water the semi-arid land.
- That changed about 30 years ago, when agricultural advances made large-scale soy production possible there. Wealthy entrepreneurs flocked to the Cerrado and began laying claim to the lands worked by traditional communities. Deprived of their livelihoods, and sometimes forced from their homes, many people moved to cities newly built to service the soy boom.
- Campos Lindos was one of those new cities. While many large-scale soy growers say they’ve brought prosperity to the Cerrado, Campos Lindos has poverty levels far higher than the Brazilian average, lacks many basic social services such as clean water and basic healthcare, and suffers high infant and maternal mortality rates.
- Some blame these worsening social problems on the soy growers, whose crops analysts have traced to transnational commodities companies like Cargill and Bunge, and on to soy-fed chicken in the U.K., retailers like McDonalds, Tesco and Morrisons, and ultimately to consumers in the developed world.

Brazilian elections and the environment: where top candidates stand
- The Brazilian elections are just weeks away, scheduled for 7 October. The five leading candidates are Jair Bolsonaro, Marina Silva, Ciro Gomes, Geraldo Alckmin, and Fernando Haddad, though none appears to have sufficient voter backing to win on election-day. A runoff with the top two will occur on 28 October.
- This story offers an overview of the environmental stance of the top five. Jair Bolsonaro, leader in the polls, would pull Brazil out of the Paris Climate Agreement, abolish the Ministry of the Environment, and open the Amazon and indigenous lands for economic exploitation.
- Marina Silva, a former environmental minister, established policies that reduced Amazon deforestation. She would keep Brazil in the Paris Agreement and use it as a means of shifting the nation’s agribusiness sector to be more sustainable, competitive and equitable. Ciro Gomes supports hydroelectric dams and the Paris Agreement.
- Geraldo Alckmin supports agribusiness over environmental. Little is known of Fernando Haddad’s environmental positions, though he’s a strong proponent of bicycling to reduce car use. As important for the environment: the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby looks poised to grow stronger in congress in the coming election.

Brazil’s pesticide poisoning problem poses global dilemma, say critics
- Brazil is second only to the U.S. in its use of chemical pesticides, with many of the chemicals sprayed in Brazil on soy and other crops banned by the EU and the United States. Pesticide poisoning is a major Brazilian problem. In 2016, 4,208 cases of poisonings by exposure to pesticides were registered across the nation – the equivalent of 11 per day (killing 355 people).
- The ruralista bancada, the powerful agribusiness lobby, is currently pushing an amendment through congress that would significantly weaken Brazil’s 1989 pesticide law. Analysts say the legislation (6.299/2002), dubbed the “Poison Bill” by critics, would make the approval of new pesticides far easier.
- Brazil’s lax pesticide rules aren’t just a threat to farmworkers. Many toxins are persistent in the environment and in the food we eat. A Brazilian analysis of pesticide residue in foods such as rice, apples and peppers found that of 9,680 samples collected from 2013 to 2015, some 20 percent contained pesticide residues that exceeded allowed levels or contained unapproved pesticides.
- Transnational pesticide makers such as Syngenta, Bayer and BASF produce pesticides in the EU which are considered highly hazardous – so hazardous, they are banned in their countries of origin – but the firms also sell these pesticides in high quantities to Brazil and other developing nations. Experts say that sprayed Brazilian exports of fruit, vegetables and coffee could be contaminated.

Brazilian Amazon oil palm deforestation under control, for now
- Brazil’s Sustainable Palm Oil Production Program (SPOPP), launched in 2010, aims to prevent primary and secondary forest clearing for new oil palm plantations in Legal Amazonia. As part of the plan, a bio-physical suitability zoning map excluded legally protected parks, indigenous reserves and intact forest areas from those areas available for oil palm cultivation.
- With 31.2 million hectares (120,463 square miles) of degraded land existing in Legal Amazonia that could be put into oil palm production without severe ecological consequences, it was thought at the time that there would be no need for deforestation by the industry. A recent study gauges SPOPP’s success from 2006 to 2014.
- The study surveyed oil palm cultivation over a 50,000 square kilometer area in Pará state, finding that 90 percent of production expansion over that time occurred on former pasture, not forest. In fact, direct conversion of intact forest to oil palm declined 4 percent from 2006-2010, to less than 1 percent from 2010-2014 in the study area.
- Researchers fear that major deforestation due to an oil palm production boom could occur in the near future if transportation infrastructure is markedly improved, and if Brazil’s economy, political and institutional stability increases. The study didn’t address escalating conflicts between Amazon oil palm plantations and traditional communities.

‘A real surprise’: Study reveals low phosphorus doesn’t hinder rainforest growth
- Phosphorus is an important nutrient for plants and is required for protein synthesis and cell division, among other critical processes. But phosphorus is typically scarce in the soils underlying tropical forests.
- A group of researchers investigated this by looking at trees in the forests of Panama, where soil phosphorus levels vary considerably.
- The researchers were surprised to find that tree species in low-phosphorus soils grew faster on average than species in high-phosphorus soils. Their results also indicate the growth rates of tree communities comprised of a variety of species doesn’t change doesn’t change in relation to soil phosphorus amount.
- The authors and other scientists say the study’s findings further our understanding of the dynamics between tropical plants and phosphorus and could help farmers grow crops more effectively without having to use environmentally harmful fertilizers.

Carol Van Strum, crusader against Agent Orange, wins prestigious environmental award
- The international David Brower Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding environmental and social justice work was presented to Strum on March 1, 2018.
- Strum is the author of “A Bitter Fog,” which tells the story of the fight she helped lead against aerial herbicide spraying in the Five Rivers area of Oregon, which led to a temporary ban on aerial pesticide spraying on federal forests.
- Though the ban was rescinded, the work done by Strum and others on the issue contributed to a new national forest policy that favors selective harvests without herbicides.

Brazil’s fundamental pesticide law under attack
- In 2008, Brazil became the largest pesticide consumer in the world – the dual result of booming industrial agribusiness and ineffective environmental regulation.
- In 1989, the country established one of the then toughest pesticide laws in the world (7,802/1989), which included the precautionary principle in its pesticide evaluation and registration standards. However, limited staffing and budget has made the law very difficult to implement and enforce.
- With its increasing power after 2000, the bancada ruralista, the agribusiness lobby, has worked to overthrow that law, an effort thwarted to date but more likely to succeed under the Temer administration and the current ruralista-dominated Congress.
- Lax pesticide use regulation and education have major health and environmental consequences. Farmers often use pesticides without proper safety gear, while children are often in the fields when spraying occurs. Some experts blame pesticides partly for Brazil’s high cancer rate – cancer is the nation’s second leading cause of death.

Trumping Colombia’s peace: U.S. drug war threatens fragile accord, forests
- President Donald Trump has brought new tension to U.S.-Colombian relations, threatening to cut crucial funding at a pivotal moment in Colombia’s peace process and to decertify that agreement for a perceived failure to tackle the drug trade.
- According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Colombian coca production has risen to an all-time high, with around 90 percent of cocaine entering the U.S. coming from that Latin American country.
- U.S. officials blame the cocaine resurgence on Colombia’s decision to halt aerial spraying of Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide – a controversial tactic considered to have serious health and environmental impacts by some, but rejected by others.
- Now, with Colombia’s fragile internal truce taking hold, the Trump administration’s stance – reminiscent of the War on Drugs strategy of the 80s and 90s – could be a great hindrance to peace, with knock-on negative effects for Colombia’s rural population and world-renowned biodiversity.

‘Decimated’: Germany’s birds disappear as insect abundance plummets 76%
- A new study in PLOS ONE reveals a 76 percent reduction in Germany’s flying insect biomass over the past 27 years while another reports the country’s bird abundance has declined 15 percent in just over a decade.
- While the causes behind the insect decline haven’t yet been conclusively studied, the PLOS ONE study suggests agricultural intensification like increased pesticide use may be contributing to the decline.
- Neonicotinoid pesticides have been blamed for bee declines, and studies also link them to declines in aquatic insect communities. Many flying insects have aquatic life stages.
- More research is underway to better understand the causes and ramifications of such a big decline in flying insect biomass.

Philippine palm oil plan ‘equals corruption and land-grabbing,’ critics say
- With its renewed promotion of what it calls the “Sunshine Industry,” the Philippine government is looking to cultivate another one million hectares of oil palm, 98 percent of which would be on the island of Mindanao.
- Proponents say increasing palm oil production will alleviate poverty and armed conflict through large investments from Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean firms and other foreign and domestic companies, and tout potential revenue brought by palm oil’s increasing demand as a food and cosmetic ingredient and biofuel.
- But critics worry expansion of the country’s palm oil industry will benefit large companies at the expense of small farmers, forests, and water quality.

Ever wondered how much your pet’s diet impacts the environment?
- There are approximately 163 million dogs and cats kept as pets in the US, and it’s safe to assume even most vegetarians feed their pets some kind of non-vegetarian food product, given that dogs and cats are both carnivorous species.
- That got University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) geography professor Gregory Okin wondering: Just how bad is the production of pet food for the environment?
- Meat production has well-documented impacts on the environment, as Okin notes in a study he published this month in the journal PloS ONE: “Compared to a plant-based diet, a meat-based diet requires more energy, land, and water and has greater environmental consequences in terms of erosion, pesticides, and waste.”

‘Crunch time for biodiversity’: Farming, hunting push thousands of species toward extinction
- Eighty percent of threatened animals are losing ground – literally, in the form of habitat loss – to agriculture.
- Up to 50 percent of threatened birds and mammals face extinction at the hands of hunters.
- In a study published in the journal Nature, a team of scientists explores solutions to avoid destroying the habitats of these animals, such as increasing yields in the developed world and minimizing fertilizer use.

Rachel Carson: A sensitive soul who changed the way we see — and treat — the world
- Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz touted Rachel Carson as a heroine and role model for girls in his comic strips. That may well have been the case, but the more I learned about her as I matured and my interest in nature and the environment deepened, the more she became my hero, too.
- PBS recently aired a two-hour documentary on the life, times, personal struggles, and influence of Rachel Carson, the soft-spoken, retiring, self-effacing woman who became an unlikely champion for nature and helped launch the modern environmental movement.
- Carson’s seminal work, Silent Spring, represented a necessary rebuke to the ascendant hubris of the “Atomic Age,” one symbolized by radioactive fallout, “duck and cover,” and the arrogant slogan “better living through chemistry.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Trump administration delays listing of rusty patched bumblebee as endangered
- In January, 2017, the US FWS declared that it was placing the rusty patched bumblebee on the U.S. endangered species list.
- The listing would have taken effect today, making it the first wild bee species to be declared endangered in the continental US.
- But the USFWS has tentatively postponed the bee’s listing from February 10 to March 21.

Rusty patched bumblebee now first bee to be listed as endangered in continental U.S.
- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced the endangered designation on Tuesday.
- The final rule listing the rusty patched bumblebee as endangered appeared in the Federal Register the following day and will take effect on February 10.
- According to FWS Midwest Regional Director Tom Melius, the bumblebee is among a group of pollinators, which also includes the monarch butterfly, whose populations have declined sharply across the country.

PepsiCo products in Indonesia tainted with worker abuses, report finds
- A two-month NGO investigation into palm oil giant Indofood’s plantations reveal numerous worker and human rights abuses.
- PepsiCo, which has licensed out its brand to Indofood in Indonesia, said it was taking steps to address the findings.
- Indofood is an arm of the Salim Group and one of the world’s largest palm oil companies.

Massive profiteering uncovered in Indonesian fertilizer distribution
- A yet-to-be published government report describes corrupt practices among state-backed retailers entrusted with selling subsidized fertilizers to small farmers.
- The retailers are also said to be colluding to sell the fertilizers at higher prices.
- The allegations were reported by Reuters, which claims to have seen parts of the government’s report.

To stop the Zika virus from spreading in Brazil, specialists call for an ‘environmental revolution’
- The spread of the mosquito is not only caused by weather conditions and by a lack of awareness, but by a deep and environmental problem in Brazil.
- Urbanization in Brazil has led to the deforestation of large green areas, destroying the ecosystems in which the mosquitos and its predators used to reproduce.
- An estimated half of the world’s population lives in areas where mosquitoes that can spread Zika are prevalent, and the WHO is concerned the number of cases could jump to four million this year in the Western Hemisphere alone.

Focus on breeding sites and biodiversity to control Zika, says leading entomologist
- Healthy landscapes that are rich in biodiversity and clean of plastic, rather than widespread spraying of pesticides, is the key to controlling mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and Zika virus, according to a leading epidemiologist.
- When present in healthy numbers, beneficial species such as bats, birds and geckos will consume vast quantities of adult mosquitoes, while birds, fish, dragonfly nymphs and diving beetles devour the larvae.
- People are working on solutions, and Cathy Watson runs down some of the most promising.

Industry wields too much influence over U.S. pesticide regulation, says study
- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) offers too much influence to industry over its risk-assessment process for pesticides, allowing manufacturers to design, fund, and conduct toxicity studies, according to a paper.
- In the case of the herbicide atrazine, the EPA accepted only one industry-funded study for review in its 2007 and 2012 risk assessments.
- A series of simple steps can improve the EPA process but they will likely require legislative action to implement, according to the paper’s authors.

‘Land sparing’ vs. ‘land sharing’: scientists weigh in on how to improve biodiversity on farms
Cornfields in Iowa. Photo credit: David Gonthier. To protect natural ecosystems in the long term, some conservationists advocate "land sparing," in which farmers intensify agricultural practices to boost yields, theoretically enabling them to forgo expansion into natural areas. Others advocate "land sharing," in which farmers take over more land but use low-intensity, more environmentally friendly […]
Monarch butterfly population rises a little, but still perilously low
Monarch butterfly population is second lowest on record The shrinking of the migrating monarch butterfly population. Image by: WWF. The world’s migrating monarch butterfly population has bounced back slightly from its record low last year, but the new numbers are still the second smallest on record. According to WWF-Mexico and the Mexican government, butterflies covered […]
Pesticides harm bumblebees’ ability to forage
Bumblebees exposed to pesticides suffered adverse effects to their foraging behavior, according to a new study co-authored by Nigel Raine and Richard Gill in the journal Functional Ecology. Bumblebees (Bombus terrestis) are essential insect pollinators that are vital to healthy crop yields and biodiversity, but their populations have been in decline. The loss of bumblebees […]
‘Canary in the cornfield’: monarch butterfly may get threatened species status
Species declined 90 percent in 20 years Monarch butterflies were once a common sight throughout the North American heartland. In Mexico, where they overwinter, single trees would often be covered in thousands. But declines in milkweed – their caterpillars’ only source of food – have led to a 90 percent decline in monarch numbers. Now, […]
China and Europe’s outsourcing of soy production impacts the Amazon
Forest and soybean fields in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photos by Rhett Butler. Soy consumption in China and Europe is having significant ecological impacts in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, finds a study published in Environmental Research Letters. The research, led by Michael Lathuillière from the University of British Columbia, used five footprint indicators — […]
‘Stop using the bloody things’: pesticides linked to bee collapse now blamed for bird declines
In recent years the evidence has piled up that neonicotinoids—a hugely popular group of pesticide—may be at least partly responsible for ongoing bee and pollinator collapse. But new research in the journal Nature find that these pesticides could also be taking a heavy toll on other species, in this case common birds. Using longterm data […]
Too much of a good thing: fertilizer ‘one of the three major drivers of biodiversity loss this century’
Excess nutrients impacting productivity, biodiversity, functioning of grasslands around the world The world’s grasslands are being destabilized by fertilization, according to a paper recently published in the journal Nature. In a study of 41 grassland communities on five continents, researchers found that the presence of fertilizer weakened grassland species diversity. The researchers surveyed grasslands in […]
More is better: high bee biodiversity boosts crop yields
Scientists have discovered that blueberry plants visited by more diverse bee species increased their seed number, berry size and fruit set, and quickened their ripening time. They hope their findings encourage farmers to help support local wild bee communities. Led by Dr. Shelley Rogers, researchers from North Carolina State University in the U.S. studied a […]
Bee-harming pesticides may impact human nervous system
Neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been increasingly blamed for the collapse of bee populations, may also impact human’s developing nervous system, according to a review of research by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The EFSA says that current safety guidelines for two pesticides—acetamiprid and imidacloprid—may be too lax to protect humans, especially the developing brains […]
Top 10 HAPPY environmental stories of 2013
Also see our Top 10 Environmental Stories of 2013. The discovery of a new tapir species is number seven in our first ever Top 10 List of Happy Environmental Stories. Pictured here is a pair of Kobomani tapirs caught on camera trap. The individual on the left is a female and on the right a […]
Amphibians evolve resistance to popular pesticide
Rachel Carson and, more recently, Sandra Steingraber have successfully drawn popular attention to the risks of pesticides on wildlife. Many of the environmental consequences of pesticides have now been well documented by scientists; however, studies investigating the evolutionary consequences of pesticides on non-target species are largely missing. Not surprisingly, most studies looking at how species […]
Pesticide problems in the Amazon
As the world’s population increases and agricultural frontiers expand into native tropical habitats, researchers are working furiously to understand the impacts on tropical forests and global biodiversity. But one obvious impact has been little studied in these agricultural frontiers: pesticides. However a new study in the journal Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B seeks […]
Zoo races to save extreme butterfly from extinction
In a large room that used to house aquatic mammals at the Minnesota Zoo, Erik Runquist holds up a vial and says, “Here are its eggs.” I peer inside and see small specks, pale with a dot of brown at the top; they look like a single grain of cous cous or quinoa. Runquist explains […]
Habitat loss and pesticides causing decline in Europe’s butterflies
Europe’s grassland butterfly population has plummeted in the past two decades, new research published on Tuesday shows, with a near halving in the numbers of key species since 1990. The precipitous decline has been blamed on poor agricultural practices and pesticides, by the European Environment Agency, which carried out the research. Falling numbers of butterflies […]
Losing just one pollinator species leads to big plant declines
A shocking new study finds that losing just one pollinator species could lead to major declines in plant productivity, a finding that has broad implications for biodiversity conservation. Looking at ten bumblebee species in Colorado alpine meadows, two scientists found that removing a single bee species cut flower seed production by one-third. Pollinators worldwide are […]
Pesticides decimating dragonflies and other aquatic insects
While recent research (and media attention) has focused on the alleged negative impacts of pesticides on bees, the problem may be far broader according to a new study in the Proceedings of the US Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Looking at over 50 streams in Germany, France, and Australia, scientists in Europe and Australia found that […]
EU labels another pesticide as bad for bees
A widely used insect nerve agent has been labelled a “high acute risk” to honeybees by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). A similar assessment by the EFSA on three other insecticides preceded the suspension of their use in the European Union. “The insecticide fipronil poses a high acute risk to honeybees when used as […]
Local economy ruined by pesticide pollution in the Caribbean
On 15 April more than 100 fishermen demonstrated in the streets of Fort de France, the main town on Martinique, in the French West Indies. In January they barricaded the port until the government in Paris allocated €2m ($2.6m) in aid, which they are still waiting for. The contamination caused by chlordecone, a persistent organochlorine […]
U.S. loses nearly a third of its honey bees this season
Nearly a third of managed honeybee colonies in America died out or disappeared over the winter, an annual survey found on Wednesday. The decline—which was far worse than the winter before—threatens the survival of some bee colonies. The heavy losses of pollinators also threatens the country’s food supply, researchers said. The US Department of Agriculture […]
Europe bans pesticides linked to bee collapse
The EU has banned three neonicotinoid pesticides (imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam) linked to the decline of bees for two years. The ban will apply to all flowering crops, such as corn, rape seed, and sunflowers. The move follows a flood of recent studies, some high-profile, that have linked neonicotinoid pesticides, which employ nicotine-like chemicals, to […]
Saviors or villains: controversy erupts as New Zealand plans to drop poison over Critically Endangered frog habitat
New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) is facing a backlash over plans to aerially drop a controversial poison, known as 1080, over the habitat of two endangered, prehistoric, and truly bizarre frog species, Archey’s and Hochsetter’s frogs, on Mount Moehau. Used in New Zealand to kill populations of invasive mammals, such as rats and the […]
Is it the end for Britain’s hedgehogs?
England’s dropping hog population begins to look dire. European hedgehog. Photo by: Gaudete. As hedgehogs all over the United Kingdom wake up from their winter hibernation, activists will be carefully counting their hogs. Every year, the hedgehog population in Britain’s rural towns declines by an estimated 5 percent. But between 2011 and 2012, a survey […]
Common pesticides disrupt brain functioning in bees
Honey bee (Apis mellifera) collecting pollen. Photo by: Jon Sullivan. Exposure to commonly used pesticides directly disrupts brain functioning in bees, according to new research in Nature. While the study is the first to record that popular pesticides directly injure bee brain physiology, it adds to a slew of recent studies showing that pesticides, especially […]
Planet organic: achieving sustainable food security and environmental gains
Organic vegetables for sale in Argentina. Photo by: René Piamonte. The global farmland area certified organic has expanded more than threefold to 37 million hectares since 1999, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute. The Institute argues that organic farming has the potential to contribute to sustainable food security by improving nutrition intake […]
Nitrogen pollution in China increased 60% annually between 1980 and 2010
Heavy air pollution, smog and deposition of N in the city centre of Urumqi, China. Credit: Mr. Liu Xuejun Nitrogen deposited on land and water in China increased 60 percent annually from the 1980s to the 2000s due to rising use of fertilizer, growth in livestock production, increased coal burning, and a sharp rise in […]
EU pushes ban on pesticides linked to bee downfall
Honey bee (Apis mellifera) collecting pollen. Photo by: Jon Sullivan. Following a flood of damning research on the longterm impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on bee colonies, the EU is proposing a two year ban on the popular pesticides for crops that attract bees, such as corn, sunflower, oil seed rape, cotton. The proposal comes shortly […]
Popular pesticides kill frogs outright
European common frog (Rana temporaria). Photo by: Richard Bartz. Commonly used agrochemicals (insecticides, fungicides and herbicides) kill frogs outright when sprayed on fields even when used at recommended dosages, according to new research in Scientific Reports. Testing seven chemicals on European common frogs (Rana temporaria), the scientists found that all of them were potentially lethal […]
New study adds to evidence that common pesticides decimating bee colonies
Honeybees in an apiary in Germany. Photo by: Björn Appel. The evidence that common pesticides may be partly to blame for a decline in bees keeps piling up. Several recent studies have shown that pesticides known as “neonicotinoid” may cause various long-term impacts on bee colonies, including fewer queens, foraging bees losing their way, and […]
Featured video: trailer for Living Downstream
After suffering from bladder cancer at 20, Sandra Steingraber began to study the links between toxic chemicals and deadly diseases. Her research led her to write the the much-acclaimed book Living Downstream, which combines her personal struggles with disease and the on-going contamination of our environment. Now, a new film based on the book, Steingraber’s […]
After damning research, France proposes banning pesticide linked to bee collapse
Following research linking neonicotinoid pesticides to the decline in bee populations, France has announced it plans to ban Cruiser OSR, an insecticide produced by Sygenta. Recent studies, including one in France, have shown that neonicotinoid pesticides likely hurt bees’ ability to navigate, potentially devastating hives. France has said it will give Sygenta two weeks to […]
Growing cardamom impacts forests for decades
Over 25 years after people stopped growing cardamom in Sri Lanka’s Knuckles Forest Reserve (KFR), the spice crop is still having an impact on the forest, according to a recent study in Forest Ecology and Management. The clearing of understory plants and the use of fertilizers continue to shape the forest in the protected area. […]
Organic yields lag behind industrial farming, but that’s not the whole story
Corn growing in Colombia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In general, industrial agriculture beats organic farming in yields, according to a comprehensive new study in Nature. The study adds new data to the sometimes heated debate of organic versus conventional farming. Proponents of organic farming argue that these practices are environmentally friendly, sustainable over the […]
David vs. Goliath: Goldman Environmental Prize winners highlight development projects gone awry
Right of left: Evgenia Chirikova, Edwin Gariguez, Ma Jun, Ikal Angelei, Caroline Cannon, and Sofia Gatica. Photo courtesy of Goldman Environmental Prize. A controversial dam, a massive mine, poisonous pesticides, a devastating road, and criminal polluters: many of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize winners point to the dangers of poorly-planned, and ultimately destructive, development initiatives. […]
Researchers recreate bee collapse with pesticide-laced corn syrup
Honeybees in an apiary in Germany. Photo by: Björn Appel. Scientists with the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid. Bee populations have been dying mysteriously throughout North America and Europe since 2006, but […]
Smoking gun for bee collapse? popular pesticides
A honeybee tagged with an RFID microchip for tracking its movements. Photo © Science/AAAS. Commonly used pesticides may be a primary driver of the collapsing bee populations, finds two new studies in Science. The studies, one focused on honeybees and the other on bumblebees, found that even small doses of these pesticides, which target insect’s […]
Eco-toilets help save hippos and birds in Kenya
The common hippo (this one in Botswana) is considered Vulnerable to extinction. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. It may appear unintuitive that special toilets could benefit hippos and other wetland species, but the Center for Rural Empowerment and the Environment (CREE) has proven the unique benefits of new toilets in the Dunga Wetlands on Lake Victoria’s […]
Study calls for REDD+ money to boost yields in West Africa using agrochemicals
Small-scale agriculture — including cocoa, cassava, and oil palm farming — has driven large-scale conversion West Africa tropical forests, reports new research published in the journal Environmental Management. The study found that most cocoa expansion in West Africa’s Guinean rainforest region occurred at the expense of forests. While production in the region doubled between 1987 […]
Growing Atlantic dead zone shrinks habitat for billfish and tuna, may lead to over-harvest
A dead zone off the coast of West Africa is reducing the amount of available habitat for Atlantic tuna and billfish species, reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in a study published in Fisheries Oceanography. The zone is growing due to rising water temperatures and is expected to cause over-harvest of tuna and billfish […]
Coral reef survival depends on the super small, an interview with Forest Rohwer
If you take a teaspoon and dip it into the ocean what will you have? Some drops of lifeless water? Only a few decades ago this is what scientists would have said, however, the development of increasingly powerful microscopes have shown us a world long unknown, which has vital importance for the survival of one […]
Nation’s wealth does not guarantee green practices
Brazil, the US, and China have biggest overall environmental impact. Developing countries are not the only ones that could benefit from a little environmental support. Wealthier countries may need to ‘know themselves’ and address these issues at home too. According to a recent study in the open access journal PLoS ONE, wealth may be the […]
New NASA image reveals the oceans’ dead zones
A new image by NASA reveals the extent of the world’s marine dead zones, which a study in 2008 found were doubling every decade. At that time 415 dead zones had been identified worldwide. Dead zones are regions of the ocean where dissolved oxygen has fallen to such low levels that most marine species can […]
Chinese farming practices are acidifying soils
A new study in Science shows that farming practices in China are acidifying the nation’s soils and threatening long term productivity at a time when food concerns worldwide have never been higher. The culprit is the increasing use of nitrogen fertilizer. “Chinese agriculture has intensified greatly since the early 1980s on a limited land area […]
Unique acacia tree could play vital role in turning around Africa’s food crisis

What is the crop productivity and environmental impact of too much or too little fertilizer?
While the use of synthetic fertilizer has greatly increased agricultural production globally—helping to feed a global population that is not slowing down—it has brought with it high environmental costs. Fertilizer runoff has polluted many coastal regions creating ‘dead zones’ where the ocean is starved of oxygen by the influx of nitrogen. Synthetic fertilizers have also […]
The long-ignored ocean emergency and what can be done to address it
This year has been full of bad news regarding marine ecosystems: one-third of coral species threatened with extinction, dead-zones spread to 415 sites, half of U.S. reefs in fair or bad condition, increase in ocean acidification, tuna and shark populations collapsing, and only four percent of ocean considered pristine. Jeremy Jackson, director of the Scripps […]
Marine ‘dead zones’ double every decade
Marine dead zones spread exponentially, doubling every decade since 1960 Marine ‘dead zones’ double every decade Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com August 14, 2008 The number of marine dead zones have doubled every decade since the 1960s and show no sign of abating, warn scientists writing in the journal Science. Dead zones have expanded across the ocean […]
Fertilizer prices increase 235% over past year
Fertilizer prices increase 235% over past year Fertilizer prices increase 235% over past year mongabay.com July 23, 2008 Fertilizer prices continue to surge according to data released by the World Bank. Prices for diammonium phosphate (DAP), Phosphate rock, Potassium chloride, triple superphosphate (TSP), and Urea were 235 percent higher in the quarter ending June 30 […]
U.S. dead zones may reach record levels this summer
U.S. dead zones may reach record levels this summer U.S. dead zones may reach record levels this summer mongabay.com July 15, 2008 “Dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay will likely expand to record levels this summer due to rising rising agricultural runoff in part triggered by large-scale flooding in the Midwest, […]
Corn ethanol is worsening the Gulf dead zone
Corn ethanol is worsening the Gulf dead zone Corn ethanol is worsening the Gulf dead zone mongabay.com March 10, 2008 Proposed legislation that will expand corn-ethanol production in the United States will worsen the growing “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico and hurt marine fisheries, report researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National […]

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