In a wiser world, the term ‘treating someone like dirt’ would be a good thing. After all, 15 of the 18 nutrients essential to plants are supplied by soils and around 95% of the food we eat comes directly or indirectly from them,
according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
So dirt is actually a precious resource that deserves to be treated with respect, care and perhaps even a little love.
A campaign against hunger, a problem that affects 15.5 percent of the Brazilian population, seeks to mobilize society once again in search of urgent solutions, inspired by a mass movement that took off in the country in 1993.
Cuba, already beset by hurricanes, floods, droughts that deplete its main water sources, among other natural disasters, has seen its socioeconomic difficulties, similar to those faced by other Caribbean island nations, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A woman farmer in Samoa is using innovation and technology to overcome economic hardship as the Pacific Island nation seeks ways to adapt to the challenges resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Europe, the United States and other countries have made important progress in reducing the dramatic impact of COVID-19 in key sectors of the economy and population. However, in some parts of Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, the devastating effects of the pandemic continue to severely affect these sectors. One sector in particular, the food and agriculture sector, has been deeply impacted.
The COVID-19 pandemic has raised the spectre of food insecurity as countries and citizens fear a return to the conditions that roiled the international food markets during the 2008 economic crisis.
Aside from the seven hours Mantfombi Msibi (63) would spend daily during the Eswatini farming season planting, applying herbicides and weeding her 1.2-hectare maize field, she would also spend E1 750 ($125) on tractor services. It was a huge cost of both time and money. But this season, Msibi will be benefiting from climate-smart farming technology that has opened up a new world of farming to her, saving her time in the process.
It is early Saturday morning and Planeta Hatuleke, a small scale farmer of Pemba District in Southern Zambia, awakens to the comforting sound of rainfall. As the locals say, the “heavens have opened” and it is raining heavily after a prolonged dry spell.
Despite latest research showing Turkey lagging in overall food sustainability, progress in sustainable agriculture appears to be a bright spot in the country’s troubled agriculture industry.
Ibrahim Harouna and his neighbours sit under a tree at his uncle’s house, playing chess and chatting amid the simmering heat of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.
On 23 June 2019 Mr Qu Dongyu of China was elected as the new Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization. FAO is one of the largest UN specialized agencies with a budget for 2018-19 of US$2.5 billion, offices in over 130 countries and more than 11,000 employees.
Communication can be a key tool for the development of cooperation among the countries of the global South, but the ever closer relations between them do not receive the attention they deserve from the media.
Six years ago while wondering how best to use her engineering skills, Tanzanian ICT entrepreneur Rose Funja decided to enter an innovation competition. Years later she has turned a digital idea into a viable business that helps smallholder farmers across the East African nation access credit.
As he milks his cow, Salvadoran Gilberto Gomez laments that poor harvests, due to excessive rain or drought, practically forced his three children to leave the country and undertake the risky journey, as undocumented migrants, to the United States.
Women entrepreneurs are playing an important role in transforming global food security for economic growth, but they have to work twice as hard as men to succeed in agribusiness.
A landmark global migration pact provides dignity and rights to migrants in every situation and context, stressed representatives of non-governmental organisations in Latin America and the Caribbean, where some 30 million people live outside their countries, forced by economic, social, security, political and now also climatic reasons.
The changing climate and extreme weather events are affecting agricultural productivity in Africa to such an extent that a panel of experts are urging governments to prioritise and invest in irrigation to ensure food security.
The Blue Economy is becoming an ‘El Dorado’, a new frontier for traditionally arid and water-stressed nations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), according to Christian Averous, Vice President of Plan Bleu, one of the Regional Activity Centres of the Mediterranean Action Plan developed under the United Environment Regional Seas Programme.