FAO World Summit on Food Security
Photo credit: FAO Over one billion people live in chronic hunger… Every six seconds, a child dies of hunger. World leaders convened at Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Headquarters for the World Summit on Food Security today adopted a declaration pledging renewed commitment to eradicate hunger from the face of the earth sustainably and at…
Legs-up-the-wall pose – Yoga’s cure for almost all complaints
I am a keen yoga follower, who practices yoga regularly, including Tuesday’s lunchtime class here at CABI. I also receive daily yoga insights from the Yoga Journal giving tips on poses to try at home. I thought I’d share today’s tip on Viparita Karani or ‘legs-up-the-wall pose’ with the 'handpicked' readers, as it is a…
Will London Olympics be bad for tourism?
It has been a recurring theme at many Olympic Games. A city spends several years and millions of pounds putting its bid document together, which to satisfy both the IOC and the host population has to include demonstrations of popular support, and projections of lasting economic, social and sporting benefits. But after the euphoria of…
Going Veggie to save the planet – does what you eat really matter to our planet?
According to Lord Stern of Brentford, what we eat does matter and we should be eating less meat or even becoming vegetarians to reduce greenhouse gases emissions and, therefore, stop global warming from increasing and climate change from happening.
International Day of Climate Action – 24 October 2009
“Scientists say that 350ppm CO2 in the atmosphere is the safe limit for humanity.” Read on to find out why.
Mobile phone technology rings true
In the West, we live in a world of information overload. At our fingertips we have instant access to a wealth of knowledge, and then some…We struggle to keep pace with rapidly developing technology but this is only a problem for the well heeled. In the developing world the story is starkly different. How we…
Climate change – the influence on food security
“When it rains, it does not rain on one roof only” This is a saying from the home village in western Kenya of my friend and colleague Dennis Rangi, CABI’s Executive Director for International Development. He said this in his introduction to the CABI Summit in London which I though was particularly apt as I…
Raisin questions.
Recently I read in an abstract in the CAB Abstracts Database that “Dog poisoning caused by grape or raisin consumption has been increasing recently. The first cases of poisoning were documented around 1989, several tens cases have been registered yearly in the world since 2003”. The author writing in a Czech veterinary journal is correct…
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…