Gower: areas of outstanding natural beauty: sometimes described as Wales in miniature due to the diversity of its landscape, Gower is one of the UK's most protected areas. Jo Sargent explores the peninsula as it celebrates 50 years of AONB status.
Standing on a sunny cliff-top in Rhossili, looking out over a sea as smooth as a millpond, it's easy to understand why Gower was picked to become Britain's first ever Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Worms Head, one of the most photographed locations in Wales and one of...

Young farmers forum considers options.
The inaugural Young Farmers Forum met in Canberra in September to consider ways of dealing with the problem of the declining rural population. One hundred young farmers aged 18 to 35 brainstormed with each other, with politicians and industry leaders. Queensland cane farmer Frank Mugica, 31, said that 65%...

Saving Vermont's family farms. (Vermont).
CLF-Vermont is working to develop and support policies that will make it easier for farmers to earn a living in the state. In March, we released a paper identifying key policies that we believe will strengthen agriculture here. Then we began working with interested citizens and organizations to clearly...

Alternative to pork factory farms garners support. (EH Update).
The Problem The environmental and humanitarian problems associated with industrial livestock operations are causing growing concern. Factory farms have largely replaced traditional family farms; over the past 15 years, the number of hogs raised in the United States has remained about the same, but the number of...

Globalisation, uneven development and marginalisation: dairy restructuring in New South Wales.
Social scientists have long been exploring the historical and comparative transformation and restructuring of agriculture in contemporary capitalism. At least three distinct yet related themes can be identified in the literature; the demise or decline of family farms and the rise of industrial-style corporate enterprises, uneven regional development and...

2002 Goldman Prizes awarded.
Three North American tribal leaders who have defended the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling, a Muslim woman who saved wartorn Somalia from the devastation of logging by charcoal exporters, and a Polish conservationist who is fighting to save Poland's family farms were among the eight recipients of the 13th...

Robin Hood in reverse: The relentless over-production of food in the US is destroying the rest of the world's agriculture. Anuradha Mittal takes a look at the subsidies driving it. (Subsidies).
THE 2002 Farm Bill can be best described as welfare with a difference, robbing the poor to pay the rich. While the Bill is a big bonanza for large producers of favored crops such as corn, soybeans and cotton, small family farms are shortchanged. Vast industrial farms...

Egg Aid 2001. (Veggie Bits).
Lundberg Family Farms, manufacturers of organic and specialty rices, enlisted the support of local schoolchildren to rescue duck eggs from a grain field prior to the arrival of farming equipment. Why were the ducks there? Natural organic farming methods allow geese, cranes, egrets, herons, and other birds, including ducks,...

Veinte años de apertura economica: el porvenir comprometido de la agricultura familiar en el norte de Costa Rica.
Abstract Northern Costa Rica was settled in the course of the last century, giving rise to many extensive livestock-raising farms and also to settlement by small-scale farmers. During the 1960s and 1970s, national policies fostered family farming. However, since the 1980s the gradual withdrawal of the State...

Why farm animals at all?
Concluding a very interesting and informative article on some of the horrors of factory farming in the developing world (May/June), Danielle Nierenberg concludes: "Preserving prosperous family farms and their landscapes, and raising healthy, humanely treated animals, should also be viewed as a form of affluence." Though in some ways...