Latest news with #sustainable farming
Zawya
a day ago
- Business
- Zawya
AfDB offers Morocco $116mln loan to support sustainable agriculture
The African Development Bank said on Monday it approved a loan worth 100 million euros ($116.4 mln) to support sustainable farming led by women and young people in Morocco. The financing is intended to boost food security, and strengthen the resilience of small-scale farming against climate change, the AFDB said in a statement. "Women who have the ambition to undertake and succeed in agriculture are our priority," said Achraf Tarsim, the head of the AfDB office in Morocco. Over five decades, the AfDB has invested 15 billion euros ($17.46 billion) in projects, including transport, water, energy, farming, social protection, governance and finance. ($1 = 0.8590 euros) (Reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi, Editing by Louise Heavens)
BBC News
7 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
The 'world-first' plan to grow food above a Wiltshire landfill
Plans have been revealed to grow fruit and vegetables using "cleaned" carbon dioxide in greenhouses above a landfill in what it is claimed will be a "world first".The landfill in Wiltshire is run by Crapper & Sons Ltd, which is currently waiting to get planning permission for the company already captures methane coming off the waste to power its operations and send energy to the national grid, as well as producing now started a community interest company called Sustain Wiltshire, it has said it wants to use the site to grow food for the local area all year round. The plans involve using greenhouses on the site to take advantage of CO2 and heat to produce food such as avocados, which are not usually grown commercially in the produce would then be sold to people living in the local area in towns and villages such as Royal Wootton Bassett, Malmesbury and Brinkworth. Project Director Nick Ash said there are other similar projects across the world but the specific Wiltshire one is a world first."What comes out of the top of the gas engine [the one already generating energy] is quite clean CO2. In Europe, that's already used in greenhouses, so we would get that into our greenhouses."So you'd grow them [vegetables and fruit] in a rich CO2 environment so they'd grow better than in normal air," he explained."They [the plants] will be the using the heat, the light and the power, but they will have no contact with the ground at all."The system at the moment takes the gases from the landfill and extracts the methane for power and cleans the gases - for example, by removing hydrogen sulphide and using bacteria - with cleaner CO2 a by-product of the process. The project will involve flattening a large section of the landfill site to create pits - called "cells" - which will be lined with concrete and have waste put in them to produce gas will then be captured and cleaned so it can be used to produce electricity and pump the CO2 into the greenhouses which will sit above the cells."We plan to totally change the way that we effectively landfill," said Mr Ash."It [waste] would go into fast-reacting gas cells, which would produce gas very quickly, then have the rubbish taken out, then [go into] storage cells that would feed recycling." The company also plans to make the greenhouses portable which will allow the pits underneath to be emptied and have fresh waste put that cannot be recycled right away can have the organic matter rot and produce usable gas, and then that waste can also be processed Ash said that if granted planning permission, the project would change the appearance of the site, with more grass and trees added. The project overall is called the Super Midden, based on midden - a word mostly used by archaeologists to describe ancient rubbish & Sons Ltd said the development could produce 80% of the fruit and vegetable needs of the surrounding area, reducing emissions, food miles and improving food Ash told the BBC he does not think it will fail technically and that the biggest challenge will be "introducing something new".
BBC News
11-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
Teaching children about rural life in Jersey
A campaign group is teaching Jersey teenagers about what rural life is like in the island to encourage more young people to consider careers in the Jersey works with Jersey College for Girls (JCG) to take students to farms and producers to see how food is grown in the McGovern, who started Cultivate Jersey, has been nominated for a BBC Radio Jersey Make a Difference Award for her McGovern wants to expand the project to more schools across the island. Ms McGovern said "the programme is about seven to eight weeks long" and the children "are very passionate about this".She added: "It can make a huge difference because I was a teacher, a local girl, and a daughter of a farmer and I didn't know this kind of stuff until someone told me and that's my motivation for this".She has also taken students to the Sustainable Cooperative (SCOOP) to show students how the food is then sold in a sustainable way. Darcy, Ailee, and Hannah, all 17, were some of the students who visited SCOOP as part of the said "it's been amazing" and "I think it's important to learn how the environment changes because of locally sourced products".Ailee said "it's been really cool to see the different steps behind getting our food ready" and "it inspires people to be more creative about where we get our food".Hannah said "seeing this shows how much our land can produce for us".
