Agriculture, Beverages & Food

The Xavante tribe in western Brazil and the Parakana tribe in the north-east are separated by a thousand miles of the Amazon basin but they face a common threat: the sprawling global beef export empire controlled by the Batista family from the state of Goiás. Read More

Olam International, a Singapore based multinational, is growing coffee for export in Paksong, southern Laos. The land for the plantation was seized by Sonesay Siphandone, the district governor, from the upland Nha Huen/Yahern community who have been left without food to eat. Read More

Jean-Luc Dehaene, a Member of the European Parliament from Belgium, recently accepted shares worth $4.2 million in the company that makes Budweiser and Stella Artois. What's remarkable is that he forgot to mention this as a potential conflict of interest. Read More

Dalla Al Baraka, a major Saudi conglomerate, has acquired two million acres of farmland in eastern Sudan, to produce food for export. While the investors are hoping to wean Saudi Arabia off imports from South America, such agreements have also caused concern among local Sudanese farmers. Read More

Should lobbyists for biotech and food companies make the rules on what kind of food you have in your kitchen? Meet Mella Frewen, Suzy Renckens and Harry Kuiper: Three examples of how the industries take advantage of the European Food Safety Agency(EFSA) failure to properly regulate conflicts of interest. Read More

Puerto Rican citizen groups are protesting two renewable energy projects: a 30 megawatt solar energy project in Yabucoa by Western Wind Energy corporation from Vancouver and a 75 megawatt windmill array in Santa Isabel by Pattern Energy of San Francisco. The reason: these projects will threaten scarce farm land on the food dependent island. Read More

Chiquita, the global banana producer, was ordered to face a federal court over their role in paying off right wing death squads in Colombia that are alleged to have used "random and targeted violence" against villagers in exchange for financial assistance and access to Chiquita's private port. Read More

The European Food Safety Authority has approved new rules that will ban industry experts from serving on EFSA scientific panels related to their work. Corporate Europe Observatory says the rules are still not strong enough Read More

Karuturi Global and Saudi Star have leased thousands of hectares of land from the Ethiopian government for agricultural development. Critics says these projects have displaced traditional farmers and subsistence crops. Read More

Wilmar of Singapore, the world's biggest global processor and merchandiser of palm oil, has come in for harsh criticism for the environmental and social impact of its Indonesian plantations. The allegations also raise serious questions about the role of WWF and the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil. Read More