Food & Agriculture

RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank

Gazans Dying to Enter Israel

By Mel Frykberg
Israel's crippling blockade of the coastal territory of Gaza is pushing desperate young Palestinians to ever more extreme measures in the search for livelihoods, despite an agreement granting Gazans greater access to their agricultural land.

Insects, from Delicacy to Tool against Hunger

By Emilio Godoy
The Food and Agriculture Organisation's recommendation to consider using edible insects as a food source to combat hunger may have particular repercussions in Colombia and Mexico, two Latin American countries that have a tradition of eating insects and a high degree of biodiversity.

Cuban Agriculture Needs Young People

By Patricia Grogg
When Gabriela Blanco tells other Cubans that she works in an organic vegetable cooperative and is getting ready to study agronomy at the university, she gets surprised looks.

Fresh Water “More Precious Than Gold” in Bangladesh

By Naimul Haq
Fahima Begum rises each morning at dawn and walks two kilometres to a small pond, the nearest source of fresh water. On her way she passes the rusty old hand-pumped tube well that used to supply water to her village in Bangladesh’s arid Barind region until the water table here dropped out of reach.

Growing Peas and Greens to Maximise Water Usage

By Miriam Gathigah
Amid warnings that Kenya’s agricultural water use is surpassing sustainable levels and adversely affecting food security, biodiversity researchers say that agrobiodiversity should be considered as a vital tool to combat this.

Water Flows Again in the Valley

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Staring out at his golden wheat field with satisfaction, 50-year old Alamgir Akbar says with a sigh of relief: "We've had a good crop this season.”

U.S. Strategy on Water, Development a “Major Advance”

By Carey L. Biron
U.S. officials Tuesday formally unveiled the government’s first comprehensive strategy aimed at integrating water into all U.S. development funding and programmes, a step long urged by advocates and development experts.

Stressed Ecosystems Leaving Humanity High and Dry

By Stephen Leahy
Everyone knows water is life. Far too few understand the role of trees, plants and other living things in ensuring we have clean, fresh water.

Organic Cooperative Proves that Agriculture Can Prosper in Cuba

By Ivet González
“The people are the only thing that matters,” says agronomist Miguel Ángel Salcines, who then goes on to list a series of other “secondary” factors that have turned Vivero Alamar, an urban farm on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, into a rare success story in the country’s depressed agricultural sector.

Indigenous Brazilians Learn to Fight for the Right to Food

By Clarinha Glock
Indigenous communities in remote areas of Brazil have begun to recognise that they have the right to not be hungry, and are learning that food security means much more than simply having food on the table.

Caribbean Farming Gets Its Roots Wet

By Desmond Brown
As Caribbean communities grapple with the entwined challenges of climate change and food security, modern technologies offer hope that the region's stagnating agricultural sector can be made more profitable.

Environmentalists See Seeds as Key to Agricultural Reform

By Silvia Giannelli
As the global agricultural sector is faced with ever-greater challenges, the question of how to reform and improve the sector is a controversial and difficult one. So Terra Futura, a three-day exhibition and conference on agricultural good practises held annually in Florence, brought the debate back to its roots: seeds.

How to Save a Fish … a Lake and a People

By Mabvuto Banda
Lloyd Phiri, a fisherman from Senga Bay on Lake Malawi’s shores in Malawi’s central region, knows that the lake’s water levels are dropping. He can see it in his catch, which has shrunk by more than 80 percent in recent years.

No Sweet Consolation for Women Diabetics

By K. S. Harikrishnan
The disease itself may not discriminate on the basis of gender, but when it comes to healthcare for patients with diabetes, women in India find themselves at a disadvantage compared to men.

South Asia in Search of Coordinated Climate Policy

By Amantha Perera
With a combined population of over 1.7 billion, which includes some of the world’s poorest but also a sizeable middle class with a growing spending capacity, South Asia is a policymaker’s nightmare.
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