World Food Day 2018 – Feeding our appetite for food security
By Dr Dennis Rangi â Director General, Development at CABI based in Nairobi, Kenya On this World Food Day 2018 the issue of feeding the world has never been in sharper focus. By 2050, agriculture will need to produce almost 50 percent more food, feed and biofuel than it did in 2012 just to meet…
PRMP in Pakistan: perspectives of government officials of Balochistan
By Dr Umair Safdar, Development Communication Executive, CABI Pakistan A Phytosanitary Risk Management Program (PRMP)Â in Pakistan is implementing a biological control program for pests of concerns in the Sindh, Gilgit and Skardu regions – Â with the aim of helping farmers grow more and lose less to invasive species. In Balochistan, PRMP has established a Biological…
Sowing the âseedsâ for the agricultural scientists of tomorrow
By Professor Jozsef Kiss, Szent IstvĂĄn University CABI has a long history of nurturing talented scientists who will one day join the bank of researchers with the shared interest of trying to help farmers lose less of what they grow to agricultural pests and diseases. One only has to think of my colleague Dr Stefan…
Loved and loathed: the bitter-sweet attraction of the worldâs cacti in sharp focus
Depending on which side of the fence you sit, cacti, in all its various forms, are either loved or loathed as ornamental delights or prickly pests that can devastate ecosystems, wildlife, and livelihoods. The issue was in the spotlight recently when an article published on the BBC News Science & Environment website âPrickly cactus species…
Exciting imaginations: New media formats to reach women and young people with agricultural extension messages
Campaigns create greater equality of access to information across farming households, but formats are as important as channels, argue Duncan Sones of the Africa Soil Health Consortium (ASHC) delivery team⊠The ASHC campaign-based approach explored the use of a variety of channels to build multiple media campaigns. ASHC has been testing the hypothesis that the…
The impact of invasive species on human health
By Giuseppe Mazza and Elena Tricarico, UniversitĂ degli Studi di Firenze, Italy Invasive species are becoming a popular topic in newspapers: when articles appear, they mainly report the damages invasive species can cause to our ecosystems (e.g. reduction or disappearance of native species as well as habitat modification) or to our economic activities: fishing or…
Boosting cocoa production through improved pest management
Reblogged from ACIAR PNG is benefiting from integrated pest and disease management strategies that are reducing incidences of cocoa pod borer and ensuring profitable cocoa crops. More than 150,000 households in PNG depend on cocoa for their livelihoods. Families and communities rely on the income generated from their cocoa crops to buy food, making it…
Empowering marginalized communities: Success story of Mr Maula Dad, an apple grower from Balochistan
Balochistan province is famous for producing apples, contributing more than 80% to the total apple production in Pakistan, and therefore has a significant impact on the household income of farmers in the region. However, apples are also prone to infestation by a number of different pests, of which the apple codling moth (Cydia pomonella) is of…
âSwitchingâ onto ICT approaches to gender in extension services
Duncan Sones, of the Africa Soil Health Consortium (ASHC) delivery team, looks back on six years of concept and project development that could unlock changes in farmerâs ability to effectively access improved technologies⊠I donât know about you but when I hear about something for the first time, I rarely take in all the nuanced…