Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

#RegenesisFact 11: Across 7 years, the UK government spent £6 billion in foreign aid supporting farming overseas. NOT ONE PENNY of this money was spent on projects whose main focus was the development or promotion of agroecology. 🧵

In fact, no money was spent on organic farming of any kind: it was all poured into the kind of agriculture the private sector already promotes, consolidating the rise of the Global Standard Farm. This, the researchers found, was typical of the aid disbursements by rich nations.

While organic farming and agroecology are not always a formula for good practice, and can have major problems of their own, unless we can shift farming towards a low-impact, high-yield model (of the kind I explore in Regenesis), it's hard to see how we'll sustain our food supply.

We urgently need more research and funding to help develop a high-yield agroecology, especially in nations where yields are low, environmental damage is high and people go hungry. Rich governments are doing almost nothing to assist it. Instead, they promote the corporate model.

Source: Michel P. Pimbert and Nina Isabella Moeller, 2018. Absent Agroecology Aid: On UK Agricultural Development Assistance Since 2010. Sustainability, 10 no. 2: 505. doi.org/10.3390/su1002…