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8 World January 2 2023 | World and Press New Zealand drowning in mānuka honey after a boom in beekeeping BUSINESS As demand for honey slows after the pandemic, stockpiles far exceed the amount usually sold in a year. By Tess McClure 1 NEW ZEALANDis drowning in honey after a boom in beekeeping collided with slowing international demand to create towering stockpiles. Over the past five years, global desire for mānuka honey and demand for home-based honey remedies during the pandemic helped push up prices, creating a kind of honey gold rush on New Zealand farms. 2 Now, however, demand is slowing, leaving New Zealand with reserves of honey far exceeding the amount it could usually sell in a year. Karin Kos, chief executive of Apiculture New Zealand, said there is a stockpile of 15,000 to 30,000 tonnes of honey. Typically, 11,000 to 13,000 tonnes would be sold in a year. She said the bumper 2020 season, plus years of newcomer beekeepers flocking to the industry, helped create the stockpile. 3 “We had a massive bumper crop in 2020 – there was a national honey harvest of about 27,000 tonnes – well above the average of 19,000. So that alone is a surplus of 12,000 tonnes,” Kos said. “Obviously, as we haven’t had the tourists coming into New Zealand, and so, you know, gate sales have been down as well.” 4 Around 2017, global interest in New Zealand’s mānuka honey and its purported health properties meant prices were soaring. The top price for bulk mānuka had gone from NZ.50/kg in 2010 to up to NZ0/kg, with the highest quality being sold for up to ,621 for a 230g pot. 5 The price boom helped fuel a | | Photo: Unsplash/Danika Perkinson 1 TANZANIA’S president has instructed the country’s women to have fewer children amid a baby boom in the East African country. During a visit to the western region of Geita, Samia Suluhu Hassan, 62, who took power last year after the death of John Magufuli, insisted that birth control would help save the country’s ailing economy. “I was told in a Buselesele ward in Geita region [that] one health centre produces 1,000 children a month,” she said. “How many classes will be needed after three years? How many tonnes of food will be needed? Let’s reduce the speed and have a control on this.” 2 Hassan’s comments mark the latest split from her predecessor, months after she reversed a controversial ban introduced by Magufuli, a devout Roman Catholic and COVID denier, on pregnant girls returning to school. Magufuli had openly dismānuka crime wave: hundreds of hives or honey stores were stolen over the course of the year, and there were reports of vandalism and mass poisonings of hives among fiercely competitive beekeepers. It also sparked a huge rise in people wanting to take up beekeeping – with some seeing it as an easy path to riches. 6 “People thought that mānuka would be the golden egg – lots and lots of money,” says Jane Lorimer, a Waikato beekeeper and president of New Zealand Beekeeping. By 2020, New Zealand had close to a million hives – up from 300,000 two decades earlier. “There was no doubt that people were getting into the mānuka honey industry,” Kos says. “[But] beekeeping is not an easy job. People think it’s quite simple – it requires a lot of skill.” 7 Now, some beekeepers are being faced with a decidedly bitter outlook. New Zealand agriculture newspaper ‘Farmers Weekly’ reported this month that for beekeepers, mid-range mānuka which would have sold for to a kg in 2018 is now struggling to make / kg. Lower grade South Island mānuka that once fetched /kg is down to /kg. 8 According to a Ministry for Primary Industries report, “demand soared after the onset of the pandemic as people sought health-boosting foods, and a record export volume contributed to a record total revenue of 2 million in 2021. However, those volumes could not be sustained … total export volume is forecast to fall by 15%.” … © 2022 Guardian News and Media Ltd The president of Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan, in April 2022. | Photo: Picture Alliance/EPA/Yuri Gripas Curb the baby boom and get economy booming, president urges women TANZANIA By Charlie Mitchell couraged women from using contraception, describing those who did so as lazy. 3 “You people … keep livestock. You are good farmers. You can feed your children. Why would you opt for birth control?” he said at a rally in 2018, adding that he had seen its harmful effects in Europe, where declining birthrates were leading to labour shortages. “Women can throw away their contraceptives. Education is now free!” he declared after introducing free primary and secondary education in 2016. 4 Tanzania’s fertility rate was estimated at 4.8 births per woman by the World Bank in 2020, having fallen at a slower rate than nearby Kenya and Ethiopia. Almost half of its 60 million population lives on less than a day. Climate change, COVID-19, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have fuelled soaring inflation and sluggish growth in East African economies. © The Times, London/News Licensing This article originally appeared in The Times, London. 0 – 2 BEEKEEPING Imkerei; s.w.u. beekeeper Imker(in) — stockpiles; s.w.u. reserves Bestände — to exceed übersteigen — home-based remedy Hausmittel — apiculture Bienenzucht — bumper Rekord- — to flock strömen 3 – 5 surplus Überschuss — gate sales Direktverkauf von Agrarprodukten — purported angeblich — health properties gesundheitsfördernde Eigenschaften — to soar stark ansteigen — bulk … … in großen Mengen — to fuel; s.w.u. to spark (fig) auslösen — hive Bienenstock — over the course of im Laufe des — fiercely competitive erbittert konkurrierend — riches Wohlstand 6 – 8 golden egg (fig) unerschöpfliche Geldquelle — a bitter outlook schlechte Aussichten — mid-range … … im mittleren Preissegment — lower grade … … von minderer Qualität — to fetch einbringen — Ministry for Primary Industries Ministerium für Landwirtschaft — onset Ausbruch — revenue Einnahmen — to sustain halten 0 – 1 TO CURBbremsen — to urge drängen — to instruct s.o. to do jdn. anweisen zu tun — amid vor dem Hintergrund — ailing angeschlagen — ward h.: Entbindungsstation 2 split h.: Abkehr — predecessor Vorgänger(in) — to reverse aufheben — devout gläubig — contraception Verhütung; s.w.u. contraceptive Verhütungsmittel 3 – 4 livestock Vieh — to opt for s. entscheiden für — rally Kundgebung — labour shortage Arbeitskräftemangel — primary/secondary education Grundschul-/Sekundarschulbildung — fertility rate Fruchtbarkeitsrate — to fuel (fig) verstärken — soaring rasch steigend — sluggish schleppend
World and Press | January 2 2023 Protecting the peatlands of Ireland as fuel costs skyrocket IRELAND One in seven Irish households still burn peat for heat. Ed O’Loughlin in Lullymore 1 FOR CENTURIES,the Irish have used peat from bogs to fuel the home fires. Stories of families coming together to bring home “the turf,” as peat is called in Ireland, evoke idyllic memories of a poorer but simpler life on the land. But now the Irish government, in the name of fighting climate change, conserving habitat, and improving air quality, is moving to restrict the use of peat – and finding that it is not easy. 2 Ireland has more than half the European Union’s remaining area of a type of peatland known as raised bog, one of the world’s rarest habitats and, scientists say, the most effective land form on Earth for sequestering carbon. “The bogs are our Amazon rainforest. They are where most of our carbon is stored,” said Éanna Ní Lamhna, a botanist and author. 3 Yet despite domestic and European laws that now ban the cutting of turf on many bogs, Ireland has so far proven unable, or unwilling, to stop people who insist on exercising what they see as their traditional right to cut turf. 4 Last week, the European Commission warned Ireland that it must do more to protect peatlands, citing a discussion about regulations that began more than a decade ago. In a report, the commission said that Irish citizens were openly defying the laws that restrict cutting on protected bogs and that even those laws were too lax and failed to meet European goals. The Irish government now has two months to put teeth into the laws and say how it will enforce them, or face steep financial penalties in the European Court of Justice – a challenge that comes as European countries are struggling to keep heat affordable. Seamus Caulfield cuts peat using a traditional angled spade on his family’s land in Belderrig, Ireland. | Photos: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/The New York Times Machine-cut turf logs lined up along Trista Bog in County Mayo. 5 Meanwhile, on Oct. 31, new regulations designed to improve air quality will ban the sale of smoky fuels, including turf, a move that the government hopes will reduce public demand. But turf will remain freely available through informal channels, and rising fuel costs, due largely to the cutting of Russian gas supplies to Europe, have made peat even more attractive as a fuel source. 6 One in seven Irish families still rely, at least in part, on peat for heat. Luke Flanagan, an Irish member of the European Parliament, gathers his own turf from his family plot after a contractor cuts it with a machine. He said he can have a winter’s worth of turf cut for 500 euros: “I literally carry the bags on my back out of the bog.” 7 Although the trade is largely unregulated, turf cutting was widely reported to be at a high this summer as families and private contractors hurried to stockpile turf in advance of the October ban, which many had feared would be even stricter. 8 Peatlands, including bogs, cover less than 3% of the world’s surface, but they store twice as Turf logs stored in a shed in Kilsallagh. much carbon as all the world’s woodlands. “They sequester carbon five times as efficiently as forest,” said Matthijs Schouten, a Dutch ecologist who studies Ireland’s bogs. “So cutting bogs for fuel is not a very wise thing to do.” 9 The very word bog derives from the Irish bógach, or “soft place,” and 17% of Ireland’s 27,000-square-mile national territory was originally covered in peatland. The majority was drained for pasture and forestry or cut for fuel, leaving only onequarter in a state fit for conservation or restoration. This includes Ireland 9 both raised bog, common in the flat Midlands, and the “blanket bogs” that form on uplands and shorelines. Ireland has less than 0.5% of the Earth’s land surface but up to 2.6% of its blanket bog. … 10 The culture of cutting turf is ingrained in older generations as an emblem of rural self-sufficiency. At Belderrig, County Mayo, in the far west of Ireland, Seamus Caulfield, a retired archaeology professor, showed how turf was traditionally cut. Using a traditional sleán, or right-angled spade, he cut long, heavy rectangles, or sods, of muddy turf from an open bank on his family’s blanket bog, throwing them up on the higher ground to be repeatedly turned, dried, and stacked until ready for burning. “My son and myself are the few who still cut by hand around here,” Caulfield said, taking a break from the heavy labor. 11 Faced with the threat of EU penalties for failing to adequately protect its bogs, the Irish government says it “strongly contends” that the EU has not fully considered the investment and resources that it is putting into bog conservation, which it says have already greatly reduced the amount of turf cut since 2011. 12 At Lullymore in County Kildare, the Irish Peatland Conservation Council has been restoring the historic Lodge Bog, damming the drains that had dried it for cutting. The bog, which first started to grow 10,000 years ago, is home to more than 150 different kinds of plants and 186 types of birds, mammals, and insects – mountain hares, foxes, butterflies, skylarks, and roughly 47 species of spiders. 13 The council’s education officer, Paula Farrell, stood on a wooden walkway built over the bog’s surface and pointed out the signs of a healthy, living peatland: bright tufts of yellow bog asphodel, the purple flowers of crossleaved heath, tufts of white bog cotton. “Drained peat dries out and leaks carbon, but once we rewet it, we can take live moss from donor sites and replant bare patches of bog with it,” Farrell said. “Once it takes hold, the bog will start to grow again.” © 2022 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times. 0 – 2 PEATLAND; s.w.u. bog Moor — to skyrocket in die Höhe schnellen — peat Torf — to evoke heraufbeschwören — to restrict beschränken — raised bog Hochmoor — to sequester carbon CO 2 speichern 3 – 4 to insist on doing darauf beharren zu tun — to defy s.th. s. etw. widersetzen — to put teeth into a law (fig) e-m Gesetz Geltung verschaffen — to enforce durchsetzen; Geltung verschaffen — steep heftig — financial penalties Strafzahlungen — affordable bezahlbar 5 – 8 smoky Rauch verursachend — family plot familieneigenes Grundstück — contractor beauftragte Firma — to stockpile horten — surface Oberfläche — woodlands Wälder 9 to derive from abstammen von — 27,000 square miles ca. 69.930 km 2 — to drain trockenlegen — pasture Weideland — forestry Forstwirtschaft — conservation Naturschutz — restoration Sanierung — blanket bog Deckenmoor — upland Hochland — shoreline Küstenstreifen 10 – 11 ingrained (fig) tief verwurzelt — emblem Sinnbild — self-sufficiency Selbstversorgung — right-angled rechtwinklig — spade Spaten — rectangle Rechteck — sod Sode — to stack stapeln — to contend argumentieren; einwenden 12 to dam stauen — drain Entwässerungsgraben — mammal Säugetier — mountain hare Schneehase — skylark Feldlerche 13 education officer Bildungsbeauftragte(r) — walkway Steg — tuft Büschel — yellow bog asphodel Gelbe Moorlilie — cross-leaved heath Glockenheide — bog cotton Schmalblättriges Wollgras — to leak freisetzen — to rewet wiedervernässen — moss Moos — donor Spender- — bare patch unbedeckte Stelle
