Better farm productivity is not enough – We need to “talk more about losing less”
If humanity is to continue to avert disaster and the Malthusian nightmare as growing populations exert ever increasing pressures on scarce earth resources, then we need some new solutions to old problems in agriculture, and we need to use some of the old solutions a lot better. In particular we need to recognise that we…
Food Security – helping to achieve MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Representatives from more than 40 countries have gathered today to attend a day of presentations and debate. In a highly stimulating first session, a number of global thought leaders gave their views on food security into the future: can this be achieved and if so how? CABI's Executive Director for International Development, Dr Dennis Rangi,…
Wallingford’s Part in the Revolution
If you walk just for a few minutes up the river from CABI’s headquarters near Wallingford, UK, you come across Jethro Tull Gardens. For people of a certain age this causes some confusion – why should the council have seen fit to commemorate Ian Anderson’s prog rock band with a street name? A little further…
World Rural Women’s Day – 15th October
(Credit: Paul Jeffrey/UMCOR) Did you know… Women make up 51% of the agricultural labour force worldwide. A study of the household division of labour in Bangladeshi villages found that women worked almost 12 hours a day – compared with the eight to ten hours a day worked by men in the same villages. In many…
The World’s Happiest City is even happier now – Rio will host the 2016 Olympic Games
Photo credit: oglobo.com A week ago, Brazilians were celebrating, after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced, in Copenhagen, that Rio de Janeiro was chosen as the city to host the 2016 Olympic Games, beating Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid. The Brazilian President Lula cried with emotion, as he heard the news, and so did many Brazilians…
How synchrotrons could aid crop protection
Image courtesy of Diamond (www.diamond.ac.uk) 2003 saw construction begin on a facility representing the UK’s largest investment in science for over 40 years. Diamond Light Source opened in 2007 and is an impressive structure on the South Oxfordshire landscape, 10 miles or so from where I’m sitting in CABI’s head office. It is a synchrotron…
How I lost my family to farming
At CABI we have a strong sense of the importance of agriculture, and also that the internet is a key medium for communicating the struggles of farmers to feed the world and survive economically in difficult times. I have to say that my wife and children have seemed largely indifferent to those issues until the…
Is it a bug’s life?
Avid followers of …handpicked and carefully sorted…. will recall my previous blog on bees and the debate on whether neonicotinoid insecticides should be banned or not. Well, unsurprisingly, the debate continues. A media release from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) on 11 September called for an “independent and comprehensive assessment of the impact of neonicotinoids”.…
PlanetCall.org – Copenhagen Climate Council campaign to gather 1 million signatures from youths around the globe
Credit: PlanetCall.org A website endorsed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, PlanetCall.org, aims to collect 1 million signatures from youth in the final 100 days to COP15. Read on to find out how.
Food Price Hikes – Crisis and Opportunity?
The drastic rises in prices of food during 2007-2008 had severe consequences, but could such rises present an opportunity? Antonio Martuscelli believes “High food prices in the short-run are very damaging for low-income groups of the population in developing countries. At the same time, high prices are an incentive for producers and extremely important for…