Pests And Pesticides

Hers was a landmark victory against the Government. Campaigner Georgina Downs on the importance of setting a policy precedent on pesticides

The fashion industry listens to shoppers, even if governments don't. Use your power as a consumer to make safer, organic cotton more widely available:

Is the light brown apple moth such a danger to crops both agricultural and financial that the US government will risk the health of its citizens to eradicate it? They spray, you pay, warns Claire Robinson

The pathways of contamination highlighted in Rachel Carson’s 'Silent Spring' are still being found, research shows

A weedkiller that kills a lot more than simply weeds? If it’s worse than the poison it’s no cure at all, says Pat thomas

Genetic modification can't deliver a safe, secure future food supply. Here's why...

Can organic farming feed the world? Ed Hamer and Mark Anslow say yes, but we must farm and eat differently

The British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) will this week call for for a five-year £8m research programme to save the insect from colony collapse disorder (CCD).

The link between exposure to chemical pesticides and Parkinson’s disease has become even clearer, following the release of data from two new studies, ENN reports.

Writing in the Guardian, Joanna Blythman has highlighted the environmental damage caused by intensive growing of oil-seed rape - the distinctive yellow-flowering crop which is now a major source of oil for biofuels.

The Environment Agency (EA) is within weeks of letting Monsanto escape its liability for dumping thousands of tonnes of cancer-causing chemicals – including all the ingredients of the DDT defoliant Agent Orange – in two quarries in Wales.

Antipodean winemakers are still breathing fresh air into the stuffy Old World of wine. Monty Waldin reports

In August 2006, German chemicals company BASF applied to start GM potato field trials
in Cambridge and Derbyshire as early as next spring. The GM industry is making many
claims about this product, but are these based on the truth? Andy Rees investigates

Is it worse than Mc Donalds? The BLT sandwich is an icon, the ultimate symbol of convenience culture. Tesco alone sells 5 million a year. This is what the £1.80 you pay for your BLT buys...

By radically changing the way we acquire our food, the development of agriculture has condemned us to live worse than ever before. Not only that, agriculture has led to the first significant instances of large-scale war, inequality, poverty, crime, famine and human induced climate change and mass extinction.
By Clive W. Dennis (winner of the Ecologist/Coady International Institute 2006 Essay Competition)

Jonathan Leake meets Georgina Downs, the one-woman whirlwind who’s holding the pesticide industry and politicians to account

We were sitting chatting outside our home when two small planes flew over very low. We went down to our fields to see what was happening. My husband said, “Look, they’re dropping poison on our land.”

This beautiful but deadly plant proliferates in lakes across Africa – choking everything in its path. Why, asks Tom Hargreaves, have all attempts to manage it failed?

If you want to understand why globalisation is so destructive, you need look no further than the invisible food giant Cargill. By Brewster Kneen.

Sir Richard Doll died in July 2005. Over a year later, evidence came to light that he was in the pay of major chemical companies when he gave the green light to their products. Eight years earlier, the Ecologist was threatened with legal action for running this story...