Food & Agriculture

India Promotes South-South Cooperation, but Key Questions Unaddressed

By Joydeep Gupta
At his speech at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) summit in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised South-South cooperation and technology solutions, but issues of land ownership dog the ongoing negotiations. As the second week of the UNCCD Conference of Parties (COP) kicked off in Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted South-South cooperation and issues of land degradation.

Achieving Global Consensus on How to Slow Down Loss of Land

By Ranjit Devraj
Expectations are high, perhaps too high, as the 14th Conference of the Parties (CoP 14) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), now into the third day of its two-week session, is being held outside the smog-filled Indian capital of New Delhi.

Ugandan Students Turn Waste to Wealth

By Melissa Kyeyune
Namugongo is a lush, forested community in central Uganda where tall trees are home to colourful birds and noisy monkeys. The community has a tragic place in history: on 3 June 1886, 22 Ugandan Christian converts were publicly executed, on the orders of King Mwanga II of the Buganda Kingdom, in an attempt to ward off the influence of colonial powers with whom the Christians were associated.

Our Food Systems Need Transformation

By Zoltán Kálmán
The right to food is a universal human right. Yet, over 820 million people are going hungry, according the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI 2019). In addition, 2 billion people in the world are food insecure with great risk of malnutrition and poor health” 1.

Let’s Walk the Talk to Defeat Climate Change – African Leaders Told

By Isaiah Esipisu
African leaders have been asked to walk the talk, and lead from the front, in order to build resilience and adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change on the continent.

TICAD7: PM Shinzo Abe says Japan will help double Africa’s rice production by 2030

By Nafissatou Diouf
The Sasakawa Association will work with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), to help double rice production to 50 million tonnes by 2030.  Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made the announcement at the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) symposium held on Wednesday during TICAD7.

Disaster Risk Resilience: Key to Protecting Vulnerable Communities

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought. Yet heat is only part of the picture. Tropical cyclones have struck new, unprepared parts of our region and devastatingly frequent floods have ensued. In Iran, these affected 10 million people this year and displaced 500,000 of which half were children. Bangladesh is experiencing its fourth wave of flooding in 2019. Last year, the state of Kerala in India faced the worst floods in a century.

Malaysia Vastly Undercounting Poverty

By Philip Alston
Malaysia lays claim to the world’s lowest national poverty rate by using an unduly low poverty line that does not reflect the cost of living and by excluding vulnerable populations from its official figures.

How to Bring the Indus Delta Back to Life – Give it Water

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Gulab Shah, 45, is having sleepless nights. He and his family are worried about their imminent migration from their village in Jhaloo to a major city in Pakistan, thanks to the continued ingress of sea water inland. 

Forests, Food & Farming Next Frontier in Climate Emergency

By Ruth Richardson
The special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)  on climate and land, launched last week, makes it clear that without drastic changes in land use, agriculture and human diets, we will fall significantly short of targets to hold global temperature rise below 1.5°C. 

Producing Energy from Pig and Poultry Waste in Brazil

By Mario Osava
Romário Schaefer is fattening up 3,300 pigs that he receives when they weigh around 22 kg and returns when they reach 130 to 160 kg - a huge increase in meat and profits for their owner, a local meat-processing plant in this city in Brazil.

Mexican Women Use Sunlight Instead of Firewood or Gas to Cook Meals

By Emilio Godoy
Reyna Díaz cooks beans, chicken, pork and desserts in her solar cooker, which she sets up in the open courtyard of her home in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of this town in southwestern Mexico.

Is India on Track to Beat the Perfect Storm?

By Manipadma Jena
“The Perfect Storm” was a dire prediction that by 2030 food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources together with climate change would threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration from worst-affected regions.

How India’s Indigenous Female Forest Dwellers Feel about Owning Their Own Land

By Stella Paul
Kumaribai Jamkatan, 51, has been fighting for women’s land rights since 1987. Though the constitution of India grants equal rights to men and women, women first started to stake their claim for formal ownership of land only after 2005–the year the government accorded legal rights to daughters to be co-owners of family-owned land.

India’s Indigenous Women Assert their Land Rights

By Stella Paul
Korchi a village of 3,256 people, most of whom are small and marginal farmers belonging to Gondi and Kawar indigenous communities, lies about 750 kilometres east of Mumbai, India. Here, women like Jam Bai, a 53-year-old indigenous farmer, have been leading a ground movement for years to own land.

Burning Forests for Rain, and Other Climate Catastrophes

By Miriam Gathigah
The villagers living on the foothills of Mount Kenya have a belief: If they burn the forest, the rains will come.

Desertification a Frontline Against Climate Change: IPCC

By James Reinl
A new United Nations report has described farming, land degradation and desertification as critical frontlines in the battle to keep the global rise in temperatures below the benchmark figure of 2 degrees Celsius.

Extreme Floods, the Key to Climate Change Adaptation in Africa’s Drylands

By Isaiah Esipisu
Extreme rainfall and heavy flooding, often amplified by climate change, causes devastation among communities. But new research published on Aug. 7 in the scientific journal Nature reveals that these dangerous events are extremely significant in recharging groundwater aquifers in drylands across sub-Saharan Africa, making them important for climate change adaptation.

Producing Clean Energy from Pigsties in Brazil

By Mario Osava
Pigs, already the main source of income in this small municipality in southwestern Brazil, now have even more value as a source of electricity.

Using Renewable Energy and the Circular Economy to Fight Poverty in Argentina

By Daniel Gutman
On the outer edges of Buenos Aires proper, where the paved streets end and the narrow alleyways of one of Argentina’s largest shantytowns begin, visitors can find the En Haccore soup kitchen.

Money Grows on Trees–Don’t Uproot Them

By Friday Phiri
Jennifer Handondo, a small scale farmer of Choma district in southern Zambia, plants food crops such as maize mostly for her family’s needs. Because of uncharacteristically high temperatures and low rainfall during the rainy season in March, the divorced mother who single-handedly supports her three children, has not been able to harvest as much as she usually does. So she has diversified into selling seedlings of neem, Moringa and other medicinal trees.
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