Agriculture

Food production rarely has anything to do with small-scale farming, traditional craftsmanship, or unspoiled nature. Today, it is primarily a lucrative business run by a few large corporations that divide the fields and markets among themselves.

While it is broadly recognised that hunger is a function of entitlements and not of food availability as such, there is still a vacuum in research and development education with regard to introducing a human rights and governance lens to teaching. This paper showes how this can be done.

More and more people want to know how their food, and especially the meat they eat, is produced. The new Fleischatlas 2016 – Deutschland Regional  takes a look at the federal states and shows how social demands and the reality of meat production in many places are far apart.

Many of the world's largest agro-industrial corporations are pushing forward the poorly-defined idea of "Climate-Smart Agriculture"(CSA) to re-market industrial agriculture as 'climate-ready'. This report uncovers how some advocates of CSA are embracing the extreme genetic engineering tools of synthetic biology ("Syn Bio") to develop a set of false solutions to the climate crisis.

What are the current developments in Foreign Direct Investment by EU countries in the agricultural sectors of Sub-Saharan Africa and India? This study gives detailed background information.

After more than fifty years of socialist regime, Myanmar opened up their land market with the modifications to their Land Laws and Foreign Investment Law in 2011. Since then, large land concessions have increased dramatically.

To mark the International Year of Soils, the Bodenatlas 2015 presents facts and figures on the importance and condition of land, soils, and arable land in Germany, Europe, and worldwide. In keeping with tradition, the Bodenatlas offers numerous graphics and articles providing up-to-date insights into the condition and threats to the soils on which we depend.

Through misuse, we lose 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil every year. For the International Year of Soils in 2015, this Atlas shows, why the soil should concern us all. Jointly published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies.

The Fleischatlas 2014 serves up twenty short essays on new topics related to meat consumption. It sheds light on the “big business” of meat and shows that alternatives to large-scale industrial production are possible.

Although the world's population has reached seven billion people, there is sufficient food in the world to feed the global population. Still about 1 billion are undernourished. How can we feed the world? And what role do environmental issues in agriculture play?