agriculture

Victor_Nuno / Flickr

Chardonnay, Hermitage, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Merlot, Pinot Noir - France and the production of classic wines go hand-in-hand. The French combine the cultural sophistication, attention to gastronomic detail and philosophical sang-froid to be able to produce wine that many sophisticated wine buffs regard as still the best in the World. (I don't know what sang-froid actually means, but it sounds about right, I think you'll agree.)

Reyes works for Greenpeace's Research Labratories and is normally based in Exeter but she's just begun a year long project working with our office in India. Reyes already wrote for the blog relay last month but we convinced her to write a monthly update about her adventures in India and here's her first update.

In a new photo essay, rice farming in southern China is put under the spotlight to show how traditional methods are still working well without any tinkering from the GM industry.

Huge areas in the Amazon rainforest are illegally logged to clear land for soya plantations © Greenpeace/Beltra

Some good news just in from Brazil, where soya traders have reinforced their commitment to boycott soya grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon.

Clearing-cutting to make space for new soya plantations has been one of the main causes of rainforest destruction in recent years, which is why we campaigned successfully for a moratorium (temporary ban) three years ago.

The Philippine rice terraces, a UNESCO Living Cultural Heritage site, has been declared a genetically-modified organism (GMO) free zone

In the world of food staples, rice has a pretty iconic status. Over half of the global population eat it every day. It has been grown around the world for over 10,000 years. It's cultivated in 113 countries. If rice was a pop group, it would be the Beatles.

Fish? No thanks, I'm vegetarian... © CC Michelle Lyles

Sometimes, you are a bit dumbfounded by stories that make the news. Seriously, you couldn't make some of it up, could you? I couldn't let this one pass (so to speak) without comment.

Today's belter is the new study suggesting that feeding fish to cows will help climate change. Yes, you read that right. The theory is something like this – cows, which we farm for milk, meat and leather, produce methane. Most of this is by burping, not flatulence as the comics would prefer. Methane is a bad, nasty, evil greenhouse gas. And we want to cut those down, don't we?