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Bayer’s “Backward” Claim: A Bid to Reap Control of Indian Agriculture
For some critics, if one firm tops a league table for anti-people, anti-nature business practices, it is Bayer (although there are many other worthy candidates). Nevertheless, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) signed a memorandum of understanding with Bayer in September 2023. Bayer’s approach to agricultural development involves promoting a model of industrial agriculture dependent on […]
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The Decline of Summer Festivals

Bonfire Night, St. John’s Eve by Jack Butler Yeats (Ireland) Traditional summer festivals have always revolved around the solstice and bonfires on the feast of St. John (24 June) in many countries. Maypole dancing was also an important aspect of some rural and agricultural summer events, and other summer festivals like Ferragosto (15 August), involved […]
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From Agrarianism to Transhumanism: The Long March to Dystopia
A total demolition of the previous forms of existence is underway: how one comes into the world, biological sex, education, relationships, the family, even the diet that is about to become synthetic. — Silvia Guerini, radical ecologist, in From the ‘Neutral’ Body to the Posthuman Cyborg: A Critique of Gender Ideology (2023) We are currently […]
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Amazon Gets Fresh, Bayer Loves Basmati: Toxic Influences in Indian Agriculture
The citizens of India have a problem. In what the media like to call ‘the world’s biggest democracy’, there is a serious, proven conflict of interest among officials in the areas of science, agriculture and agricultural research that results in privileging the needs of powerful private interests ahead of farmers and ordinary people. This has […]
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War on Farmers: World Bank Sowing Seed Colonialism in Africa
In Kenya, a law was passed in 2012 that prohibits farmers’ rights to save, share, exchange or sell unregistered seeds. Farmers could face up to two years in prison and a fine of up to 1 million Kenyan shillings (equivalent to nearly four years’ wages for a farmer). However, in 2022, Kenyan smallholder farmers launched […]
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At the Edge of Apocalypse
Biblical flooding, scorching heat, collapsing grid system, animals crumbling, waters rising, crops wilting, economy on the brink, and millions displaced. Welcome to the future of climate change… Pakistan. If one could classify a global warming beta test as a success towards an ultimate goal of apocalypse, unfortunately, it has turned Pakistan into a country populated […]
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GM Golden Rice Stopped
On 19 April 2024, the Philippines Supreme Court issued a cease-and-desist order on the commercial propagation of genetically modified (GM) Golden Rice and GM eggplant in the country. The Stop Golden Rice Network says that the court decision is a victory for farmers and consumers everywhere as the decision goes beyond Golden Rice and insecticidal […]
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Spring Traditions and Celebrations: The Past, The Present and the Future of Farming

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder Introduction Eleanor Parker writes in her book, Winters in the World, that “in Anglo-Saxon poetry winter is often imagined as a season when the earth and human beings are imprisoned, kept captive by the ‘fetters of the frost’. Naturally enough, then, spring is […]