| | 31/October/24
| | Glyphosate levels decline in oats After years of being detected at alarming levels, the pesticide glyphosate is being found at lower levels, on average, in cereal and other oat-based products that children and adults enjoy, according to tests by the American nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG). EWG believes its calls for an end to the pre-harvest use of glyphosate on oats may have helped drive change. However, EWG reports that this toxic chemical is still showing up in popular brands of cereals and other oat-based products. Thirty percent of items tested showed high amounts of the pesticide. It's possible that the decline in glyphosate levels that EWG is seeing is the result of pressure on farmers by grain traders to grow their crops without glyphosate and certain other pesticides of concern. A farmer based in Canada circulated a document that the Canada-based leading agricultural processing and distribution company Adroit is asking its supplier farmers to sign. In signing, the farmer promises not to use certain agrochemicals that, while approved for use in Canada, “may result in residues that are not acceptable in certain export markets”. The banned chemicals include glyphosate when applied to oats. Most US imports of oats come from Canada. So it's possible that drop in glyphosate levels seen in oats bought in the US are being driven by enforced farmer abstinence in Canada. GMWatch A tale of two CBDs – trick or treat at COP16 It's Halloween 2024 and the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Cali, Colombia is wrapping up. There was not one, but two different ‘spirits’ occupying the Cali COP during this season of spooks and spectres. First, there’s ‘good old-fashioned COP’ – the spirit of CBDs past. This spirit embodies the values that many CBD old-timers know well. The ‘CBD classic’ agenda has the precautionary approach baked into its DNA – along with a sensible preoccupation of scanning for new threats and emerging issues. But there was a different kind of COP going on in Cali; a Davos-style neoliberal eco-trade fair mixed with norm-setting committees for enabling emerging biodiversity markets and next-generation high-tech gadgets. ‘CBD 4.0’ sums up a new spirit – a new crowd of younger, better funded ‘green’ NGOs, financiers and philanthropists that have seemingly ‘discovered’ the CBD as if moving into a run-down but pleasant neighbourhood they hadn’t noticed before. They condensed around a biodiversity financialisation agenda of ‘nature positive’ biodiversity offsets, 30×30 conservation targets, debt for nature swaps and shiny new digital and genomic technologies (or “innovative solutions” as some prefer to tag them). A Bigger Conversation We hope you’ve found this newsletter interesting. Please support our work with a one-off or regular donation. Thank you! __________________________________________________________ Website: http://www.gmwatch.org
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