JUST AN HOUR from Madison, Wisconsin’s capital city, cows roam sloping hillsides and cornstalks line serpentine backroads. Loganville, a town of just 300 people, is farm country.

Enter Kiss the Ground. A film claiming that we can reverse climate change, fix our health, ease global tensions, and save farmers’ livelihoods by managing dirt — aka regenerative agriculture.

Zimbabwe faces the challenge of feeding its people against a background of scarce access to currency limiting its farming industry’s access to inputs and its processing industry’s access to imported grain. This year, adverse weather cut grain output, adding to the issues faced.

Across the globe the numbers of carnivore species such as leopards, dingoes, and spectacled bears are rapidly declining.

 In the sweltering mid-October heat of Matobo, one of Zimbabwe's hottest and driest districts, Spiwe Moyo tended her ripening tomato crop. Nearby, underneath a baobab tree, a few emaciated donkeys and a small herd of skinny cattle take shelter from the blazing sun.

Violent attacks on South African farms have again been in the headlines, following the murder of a young farm manager in early October 2020.

A lack of clear land ownership rights for farmers is hampering efforts to open up the region to the wider market.

Agricultural policy makers in the European Union tend to devote a lot of energy to worrying about the aging of the agricultural population.

European farmers, responding to urbanisation and growing demand for food in the 19th century, banded together to form not only agricultural co-operatives, but financial ones.

Though the lives of dairy farmers and ranchers may seem idyllic, not everyone is cut out for the hard work it requires. Knowledge and experience are important factors, but with typical working days lasting well beyond the average 9-to-5, it also requires a preparedness to spend long hours monitoring and moving one’s herd, which especially rings true for grazing operations.

The government is drafting a localisation strategy as part of measures underpinning its economic reconstruction and recovery plan.

Food. It’s all most consider when thinking about what a farmer’s job is all about Where are you going to locate your next supper and what amount of time will it require to get it? Getting comfortable at one spot for a really long time will prompt starvation if there were no farmers.

After months of negotiations, Congress passed a $900 billion COVID-19 stimulus package with much-needed financial relief for agricultural producers, funding for food assistance programs, enhancements to the Paycheck Protection Program and funding for enhanced broadband access, as well as additional financial resources for agricultural research and farmer stress assistance programs, among others.

SA does not have a shortage of farming skills. The country is among the world’s leading nations in producing several horticultural commodities and a continent leader growing field crops such as maize and soya beans.

In order to understand how digital technology will help farmers earn money from sequestering carbon in the soil, we take a look at two new projects in North America.

From the reconstruction and development programme of president Nelson Mandela to the accelerated and shared growth initiative of president Thabo Mbeki, the national development plan of president Jacob Zuma and most recently the economic reconstruction and recovery plan of President Cyril Ramaphosa, agriculture has long been tipped as a key generator of jobs and economic activity in rural SA.

Four years ago, Andrés MacGillivray took an unusual decision. He had a high-flying job as a project manager at a pharmaceuticals company in Canada and looked set for a cushy corporate career.

We have a new open access paper out in the Journal of Modern African Studies – “Medium-scale commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe:

Weeklikse Afrikaanse Landbou Nuusoorsig - Die Afrikaanse/Engelse Nuus is die afgelope paar dae op AGRI NEWS NET geplaas, saam met nog ander artikels.