Even in these belt-tightening times, consumers worldwide are going green, showing with their wallets an increased interest in products that have been produced in an environmentally conscious manner.

Bhutan plans to become the first country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and farm waste for fertilisers.

A touch of tentative hope in the air surrounds the more than six year long battles in the Stellenbosch area by sensitive residents, who have and are suffering from the ill effects of toxic spray drift from neighbouring wine farms.

Organic farming is not for sissies. If your city neighbour doesn’t bulldoze your carefully planted cervitude road into oblivion, then too much work for one set of hands can challenge a strong woman even in this idyllic setting.

The January edition of Nedbank Capital’s African Agriculture Review examines the latest thinking from the FAO on how farmers must be put at the centre of future developments in agriculture. Here is a summary.

Factory farming is cruel, wreaks havoc on our bodies and accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all transport combined. Yet, in our profit-driven society, these methods still remain.

There’s a lot to be said about winemaking the way it used to be. There were no chemicals, no “technological advancements” that made the process a process, and natural balance was far more important than balance sheets.

Pregnant sows all over the world are being given the right at last to use the legs they were born with! Now 60 000 pregnant sows in South Africa need your voice to help them gain their freedom too.

While few people are fully ignorant of the damage done to the environment through the agricultural use of synthetic pesticides (and fertilizers), not many people have given much any thought to what will happen when we run out of these vital resources; which is nearing much faster than you might have guessed.

South African president Jacob Zuma urged millions of South Africans to return to the land as a way to augment income and reduce food insecurity. 

“One of the most revolutionary things we can do is take back control of our food," says Ric Buckman Coe, whose urban garden themed song 'Love For All Living Things' is available on his new EP.

This month I am up to my elbows in other people's business! Farm living is not strictly about farm life.

On a Sunday morning in July, Wendy Crawford set off for the farm Blue Sky Organics to present a practical session of Biodynamic applications. Here she shares some of her experiences.

This year's Green Wine Awards proved that green wines are rapidly moving form the fringe to standard practice - with you and I as consumers part of the team to demand and drink only what conserves the earth.

The future food security in our country this week received a great boost with the announcement that South Africa’s green bank Nedbank has invested R8.3 million into the WWF-SA Sustainable Agriculture Programme.

Angus McIntosh, biodynamic farmer at Spier Wine Estate, Stellenbosch, received a Good Earth Keeper Award for his humane treatment of farmed animals at a glittering Green Tie fund-raising dinner in Cape Town last month.