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Agriculture and Food Security

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Fri, 2009-05-08 10:00 — mdmcdonald

The mission of this Working Group is explore new directions in Agriculture and Food Security.

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This Working Group is focused on Agriculture and Food Security.
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DISASTERS: Smart Weather Data Can Make a Difference

Sat, 2012-02-25 10:50 — Kathy Gilbeaux

irinnews.org

NAIROBI, 15 February 2012 (IRIN) - “When should we plant?” is a question increasingly being asked by small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa who depend on rain-fed agriculture. To help answer such questions, climate scientists are being urged to provide more reliable and relevant local climate data, and better communicate their knowledge on climate adaptation techniques. 

"When we think about preparing for imminent disasters it is not possible to prepare for flooding, for example, just a few days in advance, which we get from the weather forecast. We need to think about preparedness further in advance and think in terms of what kind of decisions we can make, say, three months in advance, such as moving important resources away. We need a continuum of information,” said Simon Mason, the chief climate scientist at Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) in the USA.

According to Mason, more effective short, mid-range and seasonal weather forecasting is needed for the development of useful early warning systems. 

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The New Land Rush

Tue, 2012-01-31 21:01 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Janine Rees

      

Image Gallery - REUTERS / Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah

by Terry J. Allen, from In These Times - utne.com - January-February 2012

A 21st-century land rush is on. Driven by fear and lured by promises of high profits, foreign investors are scooping up vast tracts of farmland in some of the world’s hungriest countries to grow crops for export.

As the climate changes and populations shift and grow, billions of people around the globe face shortages of land and water, rising food prices, and increasing hunger. Alarm over a future without affordable food and water is sparking unrest in a world already tinder-dried by repression and recession, corruption and mismanagement, boundary disputes and ancient feuds, ethnic tension and religious fundamentalism.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Slow Response to East Africa Famine 'Cost 'Lives'

Wed, 2012-01-18 13:00 — Kathy Gilbeaux

BBC News - January 18, 2012

       

The US government says 29,000 children under five years old died between May and July 2011

Thousands of needless deaths occurred from famine in East Africa last year because the international community failed to heed early warnings, say two leading British aid organisations.

Oxfam and Save the Children say it took more than six months for aid agencies to act on warnings of imminent famine.

Between 50,000 and 100,000 people have died in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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With Work Scarce in Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land

Tue, 2012-01-10 22:43 — Kathy Gilbeaux

by Rachel Donadio - The New York Times - January 8, 2012

       

Vassilis Ballas and his wife, Roula Boura, extracted the gum from a mastic tree on their 400-tree farm in Chios, Greece.  Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times

CHIOS, Greece — Nikos Gavalas and Alexandra Tricha, both 31 and trained as agriculturalists, were frustrated working on poorly paying, short-term contracts in Athens, where jobs are scarce and the cost of living is high. So last year, they decided to start a new project: growing edible snails for export.

As Greece’s blighted economy plunges further into the abyss, the couple are joining with an exodus of Greeks who are fleeing to the countryside and looking to the nation’s rich rural past as a guide to the future.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Video - Dr. Upmanu Lall - Water Shortages

Fri, 2011-12-30 22:57 — Kathy Gilbeaux
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Will the Next War Be Fought Over Water?

Fri, 2011-12-30 22:49 — Kathy Gilbeaux

by Megan Erickson - bigthink.com - December 23, 2011

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The Earth Is Full

Thu, 2011-06-09 22:54 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Thomas L. Friedman - The New York Times - June 7, 2011

You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”

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Guardian -- "Food security: rising prices, climate change and a growing population"

Thu, 2011-06-02 08:33 — mdmcdonald

The Guardian holds a periodic news round up and forums under their "Poverty Matters" series.

Below is a sample of the issues now being discussed:

 

 

Rising commodity prices, a changing climate and a growing population have combined to push food security to the top of the international agenda, and have also dominated coverage on the Global development site this week.

 

Our Global food crisis interactive highlights the big issues in the current food debate, through blogs, features, video, galleries and audio reports.

 

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Science alone not enough to boost world farm output

Fri, 2010-04-23 08:28 — mdmcdonald

(Reuters) - Feeding a fast-growing global population in the face of climate change and stagnant funding for food aid and farm research will require a fundamental revamp of agriculture, agricultural experts said. GREEN BUSINESS | COP15 But unlike the "Green Revolution" that dramatically hiked agricultural output in Latin America and Asia from the 1950s, a new agricultural restructuring will need to focus as much on new seed varieties as on good governance, women's empowerment and things like curbing commodities speculation, they added. "We cannot address world food security risks effectively only through a science and technology agenda," Joachim von Braun, former director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), told a conference Sunday. "We need to get appropriate market regulations to prevent excessive speculation," he added on the opening day of the conference held in southern France to discuss a roadmap to reform agricultural research to meet development goals. Speculation in food markets contributes to fuelling price swings that can undercut the ability of farmers to plan, often leading them to over or under-produce.

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