farming
Mexican restoration dominated by non-environmental interests
With its towering natural walls, Sumidero Canyon National Park is one of the main tourist attractions in Chiapas state in southern Mexico. Protecting mostly dry tropical forest — one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world — the 22,000-hectare (54,360-acre) reserve is home to more than 1,700 species of fauna and flora, of which […]
Alternatives to farmwork empower communities and save forests, study finds
Protected areas are important for saving tropical forests and biodiversity, but for them to be effective, local communities living around the reserves need to have access to non-agricultural jobs, a new study says. The research shows that human activity, mainly agriculture, outside of forest reserves has a direct impact on forest cover within the protected […]
Regenerative agriculture in Mexico boosts yields while restoring nature
NUEVO MEXICO, Mexico — Standing in her cornfield in Chiapas state, surrounded by mountains and dry tropical forests, Maria Luisa Gordillo Mendoza looks concerned. “They said we were pigs for sowing like this,” she says of the other farmers’ reaction to her fields covered with sticks and old corn husks and dotted with lanky trees. […]
We’ve crossed the land use change planetary boundary, but solutions await
Just weeks after visiting a patch of Malaysian rainforest, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler learned it had been logged for wood chips to supply a paper plant. A teenager at the time, Butler recalls being devastated. “This place of wonder and beauty was lost forever,” he wrote in a 2018 story. “The orangutan, the hornbills, […]
Shade-grown coffee won’t support all birds, but adding a forest helps: Study
Organic, shade-grown, bird-friendly: coffee comes with a lot of labels these days, certifications that tell the consumer their beans were farmed in a way that supports the people who grow them and the ecosystems that sustain them. And with coffee now growing on more than 1 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) of agricultural land in some […]
Community-based seed banks in Nepal help conserve native species
MARAMCHE, NEPAL— The monsoon clouds that arrive in Nepal in the first week of June herald the start of the rice-planting season. The country’s hills, valleys and plains turn green as farmers take to their muddy fields to start sowing the crop that will feed them for the whole year. As most farmers turn to […]
Winter sanctuary in Nepal proves a killing field for yellow-breasted buntings
KATHMANDU — Ornithologist Hem Bahadur Katwal, who studies farmland birds, says he’s excited about an upcoming trip to visit Nepal’s plains when the monsoon rains end in September. This is the time when the cold starts creeping in over the lands farther north — Russia, Mongolia, China — and thousands of migratory birds flock to […]
Study: Regenerative farming boosts soil health, yielding more nutritious crops
Plants build themselves from sunlight, water, and soil. And, as it turns out, what crops “eat” can influence the nutrients on our own plates. A recent study, published in the journal PeerJ, compared the nutritional content of food crops grown using conventional versus regenerative farming practices — those that build the soil by using cover […]
Video: Indonesian villagers missing out on spoils from palm oil boom
One day in 2017, as a truck loaded with oil palm fruit drove down the main road in his village on the island of Borneo, Rita Dihales decided he’d had enough. He intercepted the truck, insisting that the company whose fruit it carried had failed to share the spoils of its plantation with the local […]
Farmers in Brazil’s Cerrado cotton on to the benefits of agroecology
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 46 cotton-farming families in Brazil’s Minas Gerais began practicing agroecology, a sustainable farming approach that works with nature.