Small-scale dairy farmers in this remote area of Bolivia's northeastern Amazon region of Beni have a new hope for protecting their livestock from the fierce annual floods that start in December. The answer: artificial hills complete with grass and a feed storage shed, where the cattle can wait out the floods.
Small-scale farmers can double food production in a decade by using simple ecological methods, according to the findings of a new United Nations study released on March 8, 2011, which calls for a fundamental shift towards agroecology as a poverty alleviation measure.
The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade becomes international law and thus legally binding on its members today.