Seaweed Farming Can Feed Fish and Address Climate Change
Seaweed farming has enormous potential as a tool to combat climate change.
The Conversation
Eating Insects is Good for You –– And the Planet!
To meet the considerable challenge of ensuring food security for the future, it is imperative to find alternative and sustainable sources of protein, both for direct human consumption and for animal feed. Insect-derived proteins are one possible solution. Insects, especially fly larvae, have many qualities that make them well adapted to animal feed.
Convicts Are Returning to Farming – Anti-Immigrant Policies Are the Reason
As current anti-immigrant policies diminish the supply of migrant workers, farmers are not able to find the labor they need. So, in states such as Arizona, Idaho, and Washington that grow labor-intensive crops like onions, apples and tomatoes, prison systems have responded by leasing convicts to growers desperate for workers.
Dwindling Agrobiodiversity: Fewer Crops Are Feeding More People Worldwide
Global shifts of urbanization, migration, markets and climate can potentially be compatible with agrobiodiversity, but other powerful forces are undermining it. The imperatives of producing food at lower cost and higher yield clash with efforts to raise high-quality food and protect the environment.
Why Reducing Post-Harvest Losses is a Priority for Africa
According to the FAO, 30% of food is lost or wasted along the supply chain every year. This is a whopping 1.3 billion metric tons of food that doesn’t ever reach the consumer. This lost or wasted food could be used to feed 1.6 billion people every year. In Africa, the losses are even higher: between 30% and 50%.
Annals of Bad Health Reporting: Ultra-Processed Food Linked to Cancer
Eating highly processed foods may be associated with an increased risk of developing cancer, according to a new study published in The BMJ. The study was widely reported in the media – mostly uncritically. But there are a number of problems with the study’s design …
Africa’s Smallholder Farmers Need Access to More Than Just Tractors
Instead of focusing on the supply of subsidised machinery, governments should provide public goods and services to support the emerging private markets. Such support includes strengthening the capacity of the education and training domain, improving the customs process, maintaining market stability, and focusing on institutional solutions for smallholders.
How to Make Sure We All Benefit When Nonprofits Patent Technologies Like CRISPR
GUEST AUTHOR Shobita Parthasarathy:The public partially underwrites nonprofit discoveries via tax breaks and isn’t seeing a lot of benefit in return. Non-profit patent licenses are one place where reforms can be made to put the public interest at the center.
The Protein Gap: Nutritional Science’s Biggest Error
Despite the fact that the protein gap theory has been thoroughly debunked, the focus on protein deficiency still persists in many minds.
Six Ways to Improve Meal Times With Your Children
Meal times with young children can be stressful, especially after a day at work or a day caring for them. And if they refuse to eat the nutritious dinner you’ve cooked, this can easily lead to frustration.
Here are six things you could do to make meal times a bit less stressful.
Domesticating Edible Insect Production in Africa and Marketing Insects Globally
Edible insects have long been a staple source of protein in many African countries. Domesticating production is now taking pressure of local ecosystems.
Crop Probiotics: How More Science and Less Hype Can Help Farmers
While crop probiotics offer an ecologically friendly option for farmers looking to improve and protect their harvests, the Australian market is far from reliable.
Our research group was asked to evaluate commercial crop probiotics. Over a year of experimentation on a sugarcane farm, we tracked the supposedly beneficial bacteria and fungi of two Australian probiotics products from soil to crop.
DNA analysis didn’t detect changes in root-associated bacteria, but the composition of root-associated fungi changed.
Defending Science: How the Art of Rhetoric Can Help
When scientists gather to march for science, we want them to know about this body of research. In addition to carrying signs, they can take up the toolbox of effective communication known as the rhetorical tradition. Rhetoricians will be marching by their side, allies in the battle to protect science from politically motivated attacks on one of the greatest treasures of the nation.
Ethiopia’s Vulnerable Tropical Forests Are Key to Securing Future of Wild Coffee
Wild coffee exhibits much greater genetic diversity than commercial varieties, which increases its chances of adapting to new challenges and reduces the possibility of extinction. It represents an insurance policy for plantation coffee, in case commercial strains are ever badly damaged.
Carbon Farming for Fun and Profit. Good Policy Can Help.
With shifting political winds and poor commodity prices, farmers may now be willing to consider new ways of generating income by adopting environmentally friendly practices, such as planting cover crops, extending crop rotations or eliminating tillage. Many farmers are already using these practices on a small scale. To combat climate change and stabilize incomes, farmers should look to policy to tackle both in tandem.
Why Farmers and Ranchers Think the EPA Clean Water Rule Goes Too Far
Reagan Waskom, Director, Colorado Water Institute and David Cooper, of Colorado State University discuss the ins and outs of the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule change and what it means for agriculture.
Four Threats to Global Food Security and What We Can Do About Them
Stuart Thompson, Senior Lecturer in Plant Biochemistry at the University of Westminster lays four key challenges to global food security: drought, emerging diseases, salty soils, and fertilizer dependence.
How GMO Crops Can Help Us to Feed a Fast-Growing World
Stuart Thompson, Senior Lecturer in Plant Biochemistry at the University of Westminster lays out three areas; disease resistance, improved photosynthesis, and improved nutrition; where breakthroughs in biotech crop breeding could go a long way to improving the impact of agriculture.
Why Giving Surplus Food to Charities is Not a Solution to Food Poverty
A key danger of charity food aid is the de-politicisation of hunger. As the charity sector mobilises to meet this need, there is less pressure on the government to address the root causes of food poverty, which are essentially income related.
Famine Doesn’t Just ‘Happen’ – Those Who Cause Famine Must Be Held to Account
The continued representation of famines as disastrous events largely sprung upon populations by the forces of nature, prevents us from understanding famine – and food insecurity – as a socio-political process, even though doing so is especially important for realising its future prevention.