On the occasion of the International Day for Biodiversity and the start of UN talks on a possible sustainable development goal (SDG) on agriculture Brighter Green and the Global Forest Coalition have published a briefing paper to raise awareness of the negative impacts of rapidly expanding industrial livestock farming and large-scale cattle ranching on the world's forests and biodiversity. Industrial animal agriculture cuts across multiple sectors, affecting land use, water, food security, public health, and climate change. But too often these intersections are overlooked.

Brighter Green's Executive Director Mia MacDonald spoke about climate change and animal agriculture, and the ecological impacts of the global spread of factory farm operations, at the Seed Experience in New York City on May 18, 2013. She also screened Green's short documentary, "What's for Dinner?" Find out more about the film, including how to show it, here.

Executive Director Mia MacDonald's blog post on the U.S. National Climate Assessment and U.S. and global systems of food production was featured in the Huffington Post and was re-blogged on the American food system news website Civil Eats.

Brighter Green collaborated with Global Forest Coalition on an event and paper on the risks of industrial livestock production for the environment, communities (including indigenous communities), and animals at the World Social Forum in Tunisia.

Brighter Green guest blogger Wanqing Zhou's exploration of of the growing challenge of food waste in China ("Food Waste and Recycling in China: Too Easy, Too Hard"), including from animal agriculture, has been republished in English and Chinese on China Dialogue, an important, bilingual Web portal for global environmental news with a focus on China.

The winners of the two Katerva awards for innovation in sustainability have been announced. Mia MacDonald of Brighter Green served on the judging panel for the food security theme, and the project finalist she ranked highest, Backpack Farm, piloted in East Africa, came first in its category.

Brighter Green and Tribal Link hosted a successful fundraiser for the East African Girls' Leadership Initiative in December 2012. Over $3,000 were raised to help support two girls' education, living costs, rights training, mentoring, and leadership skill workshops for one year. Singer-songwriter Joy Askew performed at the event and Grace Koutimet, from SIMOO spoke about the role of Maasai women in the community and how educating Maasai women greatly assists the communities' progress.

Brighter Green's Mia MacDonald's blog post on COP 18 and the conference's failure to address the negative effects of industrial food systems, particularly industrial agriculture, on climate change appeared in the Huffington Post on December 6, 2012.

Brighter Green's Mia MacDonald participated in and moderated a side event to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP18) in Doha, Qatar in December 2012. The side event entitled "Climate Change & Ensuring Sustainable, Humane, Equitable Food Systems: Views from the North and South" focused on climate change and livestock farming. Xie Zheng, featured in Brighter Green's short documentary "What's for Dinner?" also spoke at the event. For more information on Brighter Green's research on climate change and the globalization of farming click here.

Executive Director Mia MacDonald attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 18) from November 26 to December 2, 2012. Mia shared Brighter Green's research on climate change and the globalization of intensive animal agriculture.

Brighter Green has just become a member of Climate Action Network-U.S. (USCAN), in the lead up to the COP18 climate summit.

Last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization held its first International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition in attempts to raise awareness of the contribution of forests to food security, economic development, and ecosystem services; an issue mostly overlooked by policymakers.

With edible plants, fruits, mushrooms, insects, and wild animals, forests are a substantial food source for more than a billion people. Ensuring forest conservation is vital in helping meet United Nation Millennium goals of reducing world hunger by 50 percent by 2015.

In addition to nutrition, forests play other significant roles in rural societies.

[Note: this blog was published originally on the Huffington Post.]

It's Earth Week, a good time to celebrate the natural environment and also examine some of the ways we use -- and abuse -- Earth's resources and climate. Food systems are an important area for scrutiny. New agricultural ideas and actions are essential amid rising climate stress, a growing human population, widespread degradation of ecosystems, and rampant food insecurity; nearly one billion people regularly don't get enough to eat.

Pastoralists in Kenya, rice farmers in India, and industrial feedlot operators in the U.S. are contending with increased frequency of drought and erratic weather. But agriculture isn't just affected by climate change. It's also a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. agricultural sector was responsible in 2011 for 7.2 percent of U.S. GHGs. This doesn't include emissions from indirect agricultural activities, like clearing grasslands or forests to create farmland, or the fossil fuels burned when transporting agricultural products.

As American high school seniors around the United States are currently deciding where they are going to college, the Kenyan East African Girls’ Leadership Initiative students have been finding out about their end of year examinations. All five Kenyan girls, Ann, Hellen, Joyce, Sabina, and Elizabeth, sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) national exam, required for admission into university. Two girls, Elizabeth and Hellen received scores that qualify them to start university in the summer. Joyce, Sabina, and Ann will attend a one-year bridging certificate course before entering university the following year. Three of the Tanzanian girls finished their end of year exams and have been promoted to form four, their final year of secondary education. One girl, Rehema, finished her final year of studies and is waiting to enroll in an intermediary college. 

Adopting a meat-free diet has positive implications on the environment. We’ve seen how the increased consumption of meat around the world increases greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and is a major factor in climate change. But is adopting a vegan, vegetarian, or “sometimes” vegetarian diet a consumer trend to just “be healthy”? And can this trend be a gateway for more sustainable food habits?

By 2050, global meat and dairy consumption are projected to double and quadruple, with most growth seen in the emerging markets of developing nations. This unprecedented rise in animal agriculture will also bring an unprecedented rise in the use of animal pharmaceuticals. Brighter Green recently reported on the dangers of antibiotic resistant bacteria resulting from agricultural practices. Yet, pharmaceutical industries are eagerly anticipating a spike of farmed animal antibiotics in the near future.

Animal farms of all sizes are beginning to use biogas technology to create a form of non-fossil fuel energy. The use is controversial at the size of large-scale factory farms, where opponents argue that the technology perpetuates the factory farming problem as biogas revenue could encourage industry growth and is simply a means of greenwashing an inherently polluting and inhumane industry.

For smaller scale farms-namely village farmers of developing nations- controversy, thus far, remains unspoken. For small-scale village farmers, a biogas plant seems to bring nothing but benefits. But as with any newly implemented technology-questions remain.

The annual Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS), organized by The Energy and Resources Institute, provides an international platform for global leaders, Heads of States, policy makers, and academia to engage in dialogue on matters related to sustainable development and climate change.

Last week's 13th annual DSDS focused on the theme "The Global Challenge of Resource Efficient Growth and Development," and set forth a goal to advance the Rio+20 Conference resolutions outlined in "The Future We Want." Sub-themes included adapting to climate change impacts and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, with one official side event being "International Conference on Agriculture and Climate Change."

Climate Change and the Effect on the Maasai Community's Human Rights

Brighter Green's East African Girls' Leadership Initiative, provides nine Maasai girls from Kenya and Tanzania with leadership, rights training, and educational opportunities so they can attend college and become leaders of their community and spokeswomen for indigenous people. The Maasai community has historically been marginalized, and with the recent effects of climate change forcing the Maasai people, a mostly pastoral community, to move, they have encountered resistance, prejudice, and have been left with few options. They are being forced to move to different areas as a result of droughts and flooding and are concurrently being denied rights to live in these areas by the government. As a result, the communities are suffering, some are starving, and they do not have a sufficient voice to speak up for them in the government.

Kenyan and Tanzanian Girls' Progress

The end of 2012 marked huge accomplishments and milestones for the East African Girls' Leadership Initiative. All five Kenyan girls, Ann, Hellen, Joyce, Sabina, and Elizabeth, sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) national exam, required for admission into university. Three of the Tanzanian girls finished their end of year exams and have been promoted to form four, their final year of secondary education. One girl, Rehema, finished her final year of studies and is waiting to enroll in college.

India, now second in global seafood production, plans to double its marine exports within the next two years thanks to the introduction of an Aquaculture Quarantine Facility in the Northeastern city of Chennai. Aquaculture Quarantine Facility, AQF for short, is the marine farming industry's term for Shrimp Factory Farm.

A shrimp factory farm is the aquatic counterpart of the land factory farms we are all too familiar with. Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of these animals are confined to small enclosures, fed an unnatural diet laced with antibiotics, and produce exorbitant amounts of waste. Some marine life factory farms are built right into the ocean-providing a very convenient means of flushing the waste away into the sea. Chennai's Aquatic Quarantine Facility, however, as the name implies, is made up of isolated tanks that can house more than 2 million shrimp per year; in fact, it's stated to be the only one of its kind in the world.

India: a vegetarian's mecca. This seems to be the stereotypical image envisioned when thinking of this culturally Hindu society. But are globalization, a growing middle class, and the urge to emulate western ways eroding this traditionally ethical lifestyle?

As people of developing nations ascend the socioeconomic ladder, the tendency is to want what the western world has- name brand clothes, fast food restaurants, big box shopping malls, and meat at every meal.

India's non-veg population is growing rapidly with meat consumption more than doubling over the last decade This trend is namely seen among the urban youth, who regularly frequent one of the many American fast-food chains across India, and who feel eating meat is a modern, contemporary activity. One journalist has even gone as far as describing traditional vegetarians as India's new social "pariah."

But is there more than meets the eye?

The East African Girls' Leadership Initiative fundraiser on December 6th was a success.  We have almost reached our goal of $3,000, enough money to support the education, living costs, rights training, mentoring, and leadership skill workshops for two girls for one year.  We thank those who came to the fundraiser and those who donated.  If you would like to contribute, you can do so through our Crowdrise website. Thank you!

The United States’ ethanol policy has been identified as a major contributor to the global spike in food prices in recent years, accounting for 20 to 40 percentof the price surges in 2008. The issue isn’t simply our food supply being used as fuel, instead it is the competition for arable crop land that is contributing to price spikes. Land that could be used to grow corn for animal feed is instead being used to grow corn biofuel.

However, in addition to crop land competition, a diet high in animal products also contributes to price spikes. Nearly all corn exported from the United States is in the form of animal feed, and competition for arable land results in a surge of feed export prices. Higher feed prices then lead farmers to seek alternative forms of feed such as wheat, sorghum, or food corn. This increase in demand then drives up local market staple prices, predominately in developing countries. In other words, animal feed is competing with the human food supply, causing the price of generally affordable grains and pulses to surge. In fact, this competition was responsible for the Mexico tortilla crisis of recent years in which tortilla prices rose by nearly 70 percent.

The latest advancement in animal agriculture: offering cows the ability to send text messages to farmers when they are, uh, feeling amorous.
A newly developed sensor-activated device, being used by some Swiss dairy producers, is implanted into the uterus of dairy cows. As the cow goes into heat, the device sends a text message to the farmer, alerting that it’s time for artificial insemination. New York Times Swiss Cows Send Texts to Announce They're in Heat

But why the need for such intrusive technology? The stress on cows resulting from their forced-overproduction of milk, a characteristic of today’s dairy industry, has upset cow’s metabolism, causing the animals to show fewer signs of ovulation. This is leading the traditional ”visual inspection” method to become obsolete.

The use of this device is disconcerting on many fronts. It is indicative of the stress these animals’ bodies are forced to endure. Perhaps their lack of reproductive signals is a biological protection mechanism; nature has responded and their bodies are saying, “No more!” But rather than reducing the stress placed on the animals, the industry ignores nature and simply creates ways to work around it.

Another reason the texting device is so disconcerting is its symbolism: of an industry that commodifies fertility, disparages nature, and objectifies femininity.

Photo courtesy of The Digital Story

Here's what's been happening in Kenya and Tanzania with the East African Girls' Initiative over the last few months. Daniel Salau, the program coordinator, and Julie Ojiambo, a Brighter Green intern who traveled to Kenya in August, helped update Brighter Green on the girls' progress.

June

At the end of June, the Kenyan girls finished their second academic term and the Tanzanian girls finished their first academic term of the school year.  Throughout June, the girls progressed well in their studies without any interruptions.

The Kenyan girls happily reported no health problems throughout June.  During the short midterm break, four of the girls received productive mentoring and counseling from Daniel Salau, the program coordinator.  The girls developed a good attitude towards their future. They were willing and ready to study, despite the challenges, for their university examinations. Elizabeth has aspirations to be a doctor and help her community. She says, "After my degree in medicine I would like to work only for three years in my community and then go back to school and do my second degree not in medicine but in social work which will enable me to mingle with my Maasai community as I [have a] passion to uplift my community, especially the Massai girls and women."