Conservacion de Frutas en Afghanistan

Los afganos conservan las uvas sellándolas en recipientes de barro durante meses. Al abrirlos, las uvas se mantienen frescas, dulces y llenas de sabor. pic.twitter.com/ZRdH8nF9jD

— Ciencia y tecnología (@CienciaTecg) March 13, 2026

USA - Arizona farmers forced to adapt as main water source dries up

Europa quiere devolver a su estado natural el 20 % de la tierra y el mar para 2030

Proteger la selva tropical - El futuro del aceite de palma | DW Documental

Casi la mitad de los productos del supermercado contiene aceite de palma. Para su cultivo se destruyen enormes extensiones de selva tropical. Pero las alternativas pueden poner fin a ese expolio de la naturaleza.
La expansión descontrolada de las plantaciones de palma aceitera destruye el hábitat de muchos animales, amenaza la biodiversidad de la Tierra y daña el clima. Pero ahora hay alternativas a la sobreexplotación. Una idea innovadora nació en Baviera: en las tahonas, entre ellas las del panadero y pastelero Ludovic Gerboin, día tras día sobra pan que no se vende. 

¿Qué hacer con él? Gracias a una casualidad, Gerboin conoció a Thomas Brück, profesor de Biotecnología Sintética en la Universidad Técnica de Múnich. Brück busca urgentemente una materia prima para crear un sustituto del aceite de palma. Y así, tras muchos experimentos, surgió una alternativa a partir de pan duro: aceite de levadura. Para ello, el panadero Gerboin tuesta y desmenuza su pan seco para luego fermentarlo en un proceso especial. "Nuestro aceite de levadura es más duradero que el de palma y puede reutilizarse hasta 60 veces", explica Thomas Brück. 

En la parte indonesia de la isla de Borneo, la agricultora Sulastri Rahmawati alimenta a su familia de seis miembros con su plantación de aceite de palma: "No podemos vivir sin aceite de palma". Como ella, millones de personas en todo el mundo dependen de esta planta. La palmera tiene un enorme rendimiento por hectárea, con lo que puede satisfacer la creciente demanda de grasas vegetales. Como parte de una cooperativa, Rahmawati lleva 20 años cultivando palma aceitera. Hasta ahora se talaba la selva, se utilizaban pesticidas y abonos artificiales. 

Pero ahora la cooperativa abre nuevos caminos: quiere producir de forma sostenible e introducir estándares sociales.
No obstante, aunque la palma aceitera se cultive de forma sostenible, en los campos se acumulan enormes cantidades de residuos de la cosecha. Junto con socios tailandeses, el empresario alemán Markus Matuschka von Greiffenclau ha desarrollado un proceso para producir una nueva materia prima a partir de los racimos de frutos vacíos de la palma aceitera que puede sustituir a la madera y el papel.

¿Por qué no podemos vivir sin las abejas?

Tres de cada cuatro cultivos para el consumo humano dependen de la polinización de las abejas. Pero, en varias partes del planeta, su población ha disminuido drásticamente. ¿Cuáles son las causas? En mayo se celebran el Día Internacional de las Abejas y el Día Internacional de la Biodiversidad, es por eso que dedicamos esta pieza a las abejas.

 

La cría de meliponas en Honduras

Las abejas meliponas son una de las riquezas ancestrales del territorio maya. En Honduras, su cría y manejo se han transmitido de generación en generación. Aquí existen numerosas especies de estas abejas sin aguijón. Sin embargo, están en riesgo de extinción, sobre todo por el uso de agroquímicos. Proyectos e iniciativas apuestan por el rescate de este tipo de abeja en el país centroamericano.

Reportaje: Carolina Quesada
Cámara: Kevin García / Carolina Quesada

Estas abejas sin aguijón están en peligro de extinción por el abuso de agroquímicos. Apicultores de la finca orgánica “El Nogal” en #Honduras producen su miel, rica en propiedades medicinales.

Environmentalists and activists work to boast bee population in Mexico

The United Nations has cited a global decline in bee populations as a serious threat to plants critical to people and their livelihoods. 
The threats against them are many, including climate change, pollution and pesticide use. 
Bees are a vital link in global food chains. 

Indeed, the founders of this organization estimate that 80% of all food crops in Mexico's Oaxaca State region are pollinated by bees. 
Quite simply, the agriculture industry would be in a world of trouble without them. 
But many environmentalists and activists are working to boost bee numbers. 
CGTN paid a visit to one such group in southern Mexico. 

Peruano promueve cuidado de distintas especies de orquídeas

Todo comenzó como una idea para paliar la tala indiscriminada. Hoy es un orquideario donde viven alrededor de 170 especies rescatadas.

Cocina con Causa (TV Perú) - Cómo conservar los alimentos - 04/09/2018

Puno; La reserva alpaquera más grande del mundo

McCartney tips 'Meat-free Monday' to curb warming

Published: Friday 4 December 2009

In a drive to halt climate change and improve public health, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney has told Europeans to abstain from eating meat at least once a week.

The ex-Beatle hammered home his message in the European Parliament on Thursday (3 December) in the presence of the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri.

"Cutting down on meat consumption would be an extremely effective way of cutting down on global warming," said Pachauri himself.

Several other speakers pointed to recognised international statistics which show that agriculture contributes to 18% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions - 60% of which come from livestock - well above the 13% which come from the transport sector. In addition, methane is known to be 21 times more powerful a GHG than CO2 and stays in the atmosphere for longer.

Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, noted that the rapid expansion of pasture for livestock is also a major cause of deforestation, in particular in the Amazon, which further contributes to climate change.

Others highlighted the water intensity of meat production, which is said to account for 8% of global water use. Pachauri said that producing a kilo of beef takes 15,500 litres of water, while Paul McCartney, the initiator of Meat-free Monday , noted that one burger costs "a four-hour shower".

In a joint statement with Pachauri and McCartney, the organiser of the hearing, European Parliament Vice-President Edward McMillan-Scott (UK) called on governments and individuals to opt for at least one meat-free day a week to do their bit to fight climate change.

Food security

Reducing livestock would not only contribute to fighting global warming, but would also contribute to food security, the speakers noted.

They stressed that a third of all cereal and over 90% of the soya beans grown today are used to feed 20 billion livestock, despite the growing number of hungry people in the world.

"It take 10 kilos of feed grain to produce one kilo of beef," said Pachauri.

Health benefits

Furthermore, Alan Dangour, public health nutritionist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, argued that reduced meat consumption would lead to health benefits as well. He said that international dietary science shows that excess consumption of meat and dairy is related to poor health outcomes. This is particularly true for adults, he said, highlighting the increased risk of cardio-vascular diseases (CDV) caused by saturated fats.

Citing a UK study, Dangour said that if livestock were to be reduced by 30% in the UK, there would be a substantial decrease (17%) in adult premature deaths due to CDV and a £20 billion reduction in yearly healthcare costs.

Changing behaviour

Asked how people could be convinced to change their behaviour, McCartney referred to other tough behavioural changes that have taken place and said that eating less meat "would not be any harder than those".

"We did not recycle before - now we do. At first, we rejected hybrid cars and now they are becoming popular. Banning smoking in public places to protect passive smokers also faced great resistance and now we have such bans," McCartney said.

"A new ethical issue [climate change] has arisen and meat eating is no longer a personal choice but one that will affect the whole planet," he went on, describing a recent Swedish initiative to add carbon labels to food products as a good example of such guidance.

Increasing the price of meat

Asked whether increased taxing of meat products would be a way to induce changes in behaviour, as is already being done on the transport sector, Pachauri said that "a tax would make a lot of sense," but that one should not wait for such measures to change eating habits.

Olivier De Schutter also noted that the "modes of food consumption in rich countries have huge negative externalities that are not accounted in the prize of food".

Their views were echoed by Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness (EPP), who believes that "we don't pay enough for our food, nor to our farmers," forcing farmers "to produce more to earn less".

EurActiv

EU environment agency calls for 'ecosystem pricing'

Published: Wednesday 29 April 2009

With the EU failing to achieve its ambitious target of halting biodiversity loss in Europe by 2010, the bloc's environment agency is calling for protection measures to be integrated into agricultural, forestry and fisheries policies, and goods and services to be priced according to their true impact on the environment.

"External pressures on biodiversity are not uniform or held in place by geographical designations, and we must not focus all our efforts on preserving islands of biodiversity while losing nature everywhere else," Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), told a conference on biodiversity protection on 27 April.

The current price of goods and services "does not reflect their impact on the ecosystems that sustain them," according to the agency. The EEA believes "better ecosystem accounting, which indicates the real value of the natural capital that we deplete through our economic activity," is necessary. The agency is urging the EU to integrate biodiversity and ecosystems into key sectors like agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

At the conference, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso confirmed the results of last year's progress report on the implementation of the EU's Biodiversity Action Plan , which revealed that the bloc is not even close to achieving its target of halting biodiversity loss in the EU by 2010 (EurActiv 17/12/08).

According to the report, 50% of all species and up to 80% of habitat types in need of protection in Europe have "unfavourable conservation" status, which indicates species decline. The same goes for over 40% of European bird species.

"We are running up debts against the future of the planet that we will never be able to repay," said Barroso, referring to the destruction of nature as "the ultimate toxic asset".

Barroso presented the EU executive's new "seven-point plan for nature protection," which highlights the need to better communicate why biodiversity and healthy ecosystems matter, and how they underpin economic, social and cultural well-being.

The Commission president also urged member states to implement existing EU legislation, citing the Birds and Habitats Directives as examples. The EU must also "agree on new policies to address deforestation and to reduce the EU's ecological footprint," he added.

BirdLife International welcomed "the strong calls made by key decision-makers" to put an end to the loss of animal and plant species, but lamented the apparent "huge gap between aspirations and real action". It also deplored the fact that the conference's message remained "vague", and was not ambitious enough regarding the policy reform required.

The 'European Habitats Forum' - comprising 17 conservation NGOs - presented the conference with its recommendation for the EU's 'post-2010' biodiversity policy. The forum is calling for a complete reform of all EU sectoral policies which have adverse effects on the environment, to support the resilience of ecosystems. It is also urging the bloc to adopt new legislation on soil conservation and reducing invasive alien species.

EurActiv

EU survey reveals poor state of biodiversity

Published: Tuesday 14 July 2009 | Updated: Wednesday 22 July 2009

Only a small proportion of species and habitat types protected under EU law have 'good' conservation status, a European Commission report shows, urging member states to strengthen their efforts to protect biodiversity. Meanwhile, NGOs are pointing the finger at the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the current state of affairs.

The EU executive described the report , which covers the conservation status of over 1150 species and 200 habitat types for the period 2001-2006, as "the most comprehensive survey of EU biodiversity ever undertaken," providing "invaluable reference point for measuring future trends".

Grasslands, wetlands and coastal habitats are the most threatened, the report reveals. While coastal habitats are under increasing strain from tourism, wetlands are being converted to other uses and are suffering the effects of climate change.

The conservation status of grasslands, mainly associated with traditional agriculture, along with other agricultural habitat types fared "significantly worse" than other habitats. 76% of agricultural habitats were given an 'unfavourable' conservation status (of which 54% were given 'bad') compared to 60% (of which 30% 'bad') of habitats not associated with agriculture.

Only 7% of farm-related habitats were described as 'favourable' compared to 21% for non-agricultural habitats. According to the Commission, this is "mainly due to the decline of traditional patterns of agriculture," the shift towards more intensive agriculture, land abandonment and poor land management.

Poor reporting

While the Commission hailed national reporting as "a great success", the status of some 13% of regional habitats and 27% regional species remains 'unknown'. Cyprus, Greece, Spain and Portugal reported that over 50% of the species recorded in their territories are of 'unknown' status.

Assessing the marine environment proved to be particularly tricky, with 57% of the marine species assessments and about 40% of the marine habitats assessments classified by the EU executive as 'unknown'.

Environmental NGO WWF stressed that "you cannot protect what you do not know," urging the Commission to take effective sanctions against "massive under-reporting," delays and misreporting at national level.

CAP to blame?

According to environmental NGOs, the report shows that decades of intensive agriculture and effectively unregulated fisheries are responsible for the critical state of Europe's natural resources.

Ariel Brunner, agriculture policy officer at BirdLife International, regretted that despite recent major reforms, the CAP is still failing to support so-called "high natural value" traditional farming, instead primarily subsidising intensive cereal farming and livestock factories. "We need to get more farmers to adopt sustainable farming models," he said.

He further stressed that the post-2013 CAP reform needs to link the system of direct payments to public goods. Even the most intensive farms can benefit from a little more biodiversity, as squeezing the land only leads to soil erosion and depletion of groundwater, jeopardising overall food security, Brunner argued.

Debate over rewarding farmers for the public goods they deliver (landscape, pollination, biodiversity) is set to figure in negotiations on the future CAP (EurActiv 03/06/09).

EurActiv

Nature 'services' undervalued, EU report finds

Published: Monday 16 November 2009

The cost of nature conservation is by far outweighed by societal and economic benefits, argues a new report supported by the European Commission and published on Friday (13 November).

The report urges international policymakers to scale-up investments in the management and restoration of ecosystems and to value the economic capital of nature in decision-making.

It was prepared by the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB ) initiative, which is hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The report stresses that destruction of nature has direct economic repercussions which are systematically underestimated, and that valuing ecosystems makes "economic sense".

To increase protection of biodiversity, it argues that a price tag should be put on nature's different ecosystem services to make them visible to economies and society as a whole.

According to the authors, the lack of market prices for ecosystem services and biodiversity means that the "benefits we derive from these goods [which are often public in nature] are often neglected or under-valued in decision-making," leading to policies that result in biodiversity loss and negatively affect human well-being.

Country-specific policy mixes

The report underlines that there is no one solution, as each country's economy relies on nature in a different way and countries already have different sets of policies in place.

Meanwhile, "the policy response should not be limited to environmental policymaking processes, but should also come from other sectoral policies," the report stresses.

It invites politicians to first consider what ecosystem and biodiversity means for a given economy and then evaluate current policies to identify potential improvements.

Reforming global subsidies to reward ecosystem services

The report stresses that it is necessary to rethink the allocation of the one trillion dollars or so of annual global subsidies that are handed out to the agriculture, fisheries, energy, transport and other sectors.

Some of these subsidies, which together represent over 1% of global GDP, are inefficient, outdated and harmful to the environment and should be freed up to reward "the unrecognised benefits" of ecosystem services and biodiversity, it argues.

Protecting the seas

Study leader Pavan Sukhdev, a senior banker at Deutsche Bank who is currently at the UNEP leading the agency's Green Economy Initiative, said the report shows that societal benefits of nature conservation and protected areas far outweigh the cost of conservation.

He stressed the need to improve protection of marine environments in particular. Currently, under 0.5% of open seas and under 6% of territorial waters are protected, compared to 13% of land-based protected areas.

While mankind has learned to manage land, "we still behave like hunter-gatherers at sea," he said, with annual losses of potential fisheries output estimated at $50 billion due to unsustainable fishing.

Sukhdev argued that protected area networks should be expanded to cover 15% of land and 30% of seas.

While this would cost some $45 billion a year in management, compensation for direct costs and expenditure on acquiring new land, the areas "would deliver goods and services with a net annual value of $4.5-5.2 trillion," he said.

The report offers evidence that protected areas are "in society's best interests." Local, national and global public benefits outweigh by far the costs and opportunity costs of conservation, it says, making "a compelling economic case for conservation for world governments to consider," said Sukhdev.

Addressing losses through regulation and pricing

However, expanding protected area coverage with payments for ecosystem service schemes and reforming subsidies "will never be enough to halt continuing losses," reads the report.

These measures need to be accompanied by "a coherent strategy to make the full costs of loss visible and payable" for all.

The basic principles of such a policy design should be based on the two key principles of 'polluter pays' and 'full cost recovery', the report notes.

For this, the potential of environmental regulation needs to be fully exploited in the form of "prohibitions, standards and technical conditions" and the value of ecosystem services need to be accurately priced through "taxes, charges, fees, fines, compensation mechanisms and/or tradable permits" as part of wider fiscal reform in favour of biodiversity.

EurActiv

$1 M-plus ready to expand Neb. organic agriculture

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska organic producers wanting to do more planting or those wanting to get in the game have until May 29 to apply to be first in line for federal funding.

U.S. Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan recently announced $50 million has been made available to encourage more organic agriculture production. That includes $1.8 million available in Nebraska.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service will begin taking applications Monday. Producers can apply after May 29, but their applications won't get priority.

State conservationist Steve Chick says the initiative is an opportunity for Nebraska farmers and ranchers who have considered making the transition to organic agriculture or for those who want to expand their acres.

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Organic Products Market Grows to $24.6 Billion

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Sales of organic products were up 17% in 2008, reaching $25.6 billion despite the recession that began in the last quarter of the year, the Organic Trade Association's annual Industry Survey reveals.

The data covers not only organic food, but organic fibers, personal care products and pet foods.

Organic food sales were up 15.8% to $22.9 billion; organic food now accounts for 3.5% of all food sold in the U.S. Non-food categories grew 39.4% to $1.6 billion.

The association attributes the growth in the organic food sector, despite the recession, to two things: One, people who are committed to buying organic produce don't let money pressure stop them, because they are committed to environmental protection and health; and two, the proliferation of organic foods available at traditional grocery stores has increased retail competition and driven down prices.

The Obama administration is also poised to help the organic food industry grow further. The most extensive survey of organic farming is planned for this year, as part of the annual agricultural census, and the USDA's deputy secretary for agriculture, Kathleen Merrigan, an organic and local food advocate, recently announced a new $50 million program to encourage organic farming. A new USDA division will focus exclusively on organic farming for the first time.

Why should we care? Organic farming uses no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, no genetically modified seeds and makes enhancing soil health as a fundamental goal. It's a big step toward sustainability, compared to traditional agriculture which, in the past few decades, has involved lots of harsh chemical poisons and a heavy reliance on fossil fuels, both of which have the potential to harm longterm soil health, and jeopardize the viability of agricultural lands.

There are also indications that organic produce may be healthier, and that it comes with less pesticide residue.

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