Posts Tagged ‘farming’

Growing your food in another country (largescale)

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

A trend is emerging that make people sit back and think some.

Many firms and some states are now renting or acquiring farmland in countries away from home, and starting to do agriculture the way they do it at home, i.e. in a very modern way with GM seeds with resistances built in and high yields, the best equipment and even their own people.

This is a fairly recent phenomenon and lately it has attracted some attention. Local people are  starving in some of these places, farmers don´t like being pushed away, methods have been criticized, there is doubt where the money goes, food markets are disrupted.

Examples are Madagascar where South Korea have come in (causing the overthrow of the president), Ethiopia where India, Saudi Arabia have interests, Kina in Angola etc.

Food security for the locals is also an issue. Legal systems in some countries are such that the ownership of land is a common good. Some nomads are also hurt when large areas are put to these uses.

Water is often an additional issue as farming needs lots of water.

Environmental note about fish farming

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Emissions from a medium-sized fish farming installation in the sea with a production of about 3000 tons of fish per year equals the total emissions from about 50000 people. This can “kill” the sea in the area if care is not taken. Primarily this consideration is taken care of by locating fish farms in robust and open areas. Danger signals are posted in Norway, and the Norwegian Pollution Control Authority is warning that stricter measures are coming.

In Asia this problem is well known in shrimp-farming, but dealing with it is not so easy. Pricing of environmental costs must become an issue again.