“Missing from this IPS report is all the research on expanding the human food system, currently perilously relying on the planet’s 3% of freshwater, while overlooking the hundreds of nutritious salt-loving “halophyte“ plants thriving in 22 countries for centuries, with no fertilizers, pesticides and on the planet’s 40% of unused, degraded and desert lands. Co-benefits for human health and efficient capture and sequestering ambient CO2 in their long roots! See our Green Transition Scoreboard report:
“Capturing CO2 While Improving Human Nutrition & Health, 2018“ free download from www.ethicalmarkets.com
~Hazel Henderson, Editor“
VIDEO: World Food Day 2019 – “Our Actions Are Our Future”
IPS World Desk
Globalization and urbanization have had a staggering impact on human history, especially over the last decade. The world’s population living in urban areas was less than 5 percent in 1800. According to the the United Nations, that number increased to 47 percent by the year 2000. In ten years … MORE > >
Ghana’s Grains and Groundnuts Face Increasing Contamination Amid Increasing Temperatures
Albert Oppong-Ansah
Adwoa Frimpomaah, a smallholder farmer from Dandwa, a farming community in Nkoranza, in Ghana’s Bono East Region, and her two children have been consuming insect-infested and discoloured grains produced from their three-acre farm. “Just look, I harvested this maize a week ago and after … MORE > >
Let Plants be Thy Medicine – You Are What You Eat
Esther Ngumbi and Ifeanyi Nsofor
United Nations World Food Day is celebrated around the world on October 16 under the theme: “Our Actions ARE Our Future. Healthy Diets for a Zero Hunger World”. This theme is timely, especially, because across Africa and around the world, there has been a gradual rise in malnutrition and … MORE > >
Global Challenges for the ‘NextGen’
Lindsay Falvey
Success has many parents – so the saying goes. In the case of the massive successes of international agricultural research, no one person can claim parentage. There are heroes along the way such as Norman Borlaug and his early cereal breeding, and the team that eliminated the cattle disease … MORE > >
A Major Step Forward in Reducing Food Loss and Waste is Critical to Achieve the SDGs
A new FAO report launched today by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization provides insights into how much food is lost – as well as where and why – at different stages of the food supply chain, calls for informed decisions for an effective reduction and offers new ways to measure … MORE > >
Stop the Waste: UN Food Agencies Call for Action to Reduce Global Hunger
With one-third of food produced for human consumption lost or wasted, and millions still going hungry, the UN’s food-related agencies are shining a spotlight on the issue: on Monday, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published its annual State of Food and Agriculture report with findings … MORE > >
Rural Poverty Is Still a Scar on the Soul of Colombia, but a New Program Supporting Agri-Entrepreneurship Can Help Heal the Wounds
Jesus Quintana
Rural poverty and inequality continue inflicting large swaths of population in Colombia, especially in rural areas. This situation, endemic since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, was at the root of the 50-year long conflict that shattered the country, leaving 220,000 deaths and 5.7 … MORE > >
The Superfoods of the Andes and the Himalaya
Sonia Awale
The nutritious grain that mountain peoples of the Americas and high Asia cultivated were displaced by wheat and rice, but they are staging a comeback thanks to growing public consciousness about health. Food items like pickled potato, roasted corn, tomato in curry and chilli paste are as Nepali … MORE > >
‘Salty’ Concern: Tackling High Salt Consumption in China
Veena S. Kulkarni and Raghav Gaiha
China’s almost meteoric transition from a being a low income to a middle income country within a span of four decades is often perceived as a miracle analogous to the post Second World War Japanese economic development experience. China’s GDP rose from 0 current United States dollars (US$ … MORE > >
Q&A: Holistic Land Management – Only a Movement can Prevent Desertification
Busani Bafana
Desertification is not cheap. It has social, cultural, environmental and of course economic costs to reverse what it destroys. According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) the scourge of desertification is costing the global economy up to 15 trillion dollars … MORE > >
Can We Feed the World and Ensure No One Goes Hungry?
Enough food is produced today to feed everyone on the planet, but hunger is on the rise in some parts of the world, and some 821 million people are considered to be “chronically undernourished”. What steps are being taken to ensure that everyone, worldwide, receives sufficient food? Thanks to … MORE > >
Combining Biogas and Solar, the Best Energy Deal in Brazil
Mario Osava
“Biogas is the best energy, it has no contraindications,” and if you combine it with solar it becomes “the best energy business,” at least in Brazil, says Anélio Thomazzoni. His enthusiasm is not merely rhetorical. He raises about 38,000 pigs on his property, Gavea Farm, and uses their manure to … MORE > >
How to ‘Fix the Business of Food’ and Save the Planet
Samira Sadeque
With up to one billion undernourished people around the world, and agriculture and land use systems increasingly vulnerable to climate change and land degradation, more companies within the global food industry need to start aligning their operations with the United Nations Sustainable Development … MORE > >
Fighting Climate Change: We Must Not Forget the Soils
Esther Ngumbi
Around the world, citizens took to the streets to demand their governments address climate change. In the U.S., this widespread activism illustrates the findings of a newly released report by the Chicago Council on Global affairs which found for the first time that the majority of Americans … MORE > >
We Need Biodiversity-Based Agriculture to Solve the Climate Crisis
Vandana Shiva
The Earth is living, and also creates life. Over 4 billion years the Earth has evolved a rich biodiversity – an abundance of different living organisms and ecosystems – that can meet all our needs and sustain life. Through biodiversity and the living functions of the biosphere, the Earth … MORE > >
In Southern Brazil, Need Becomes an Environmental Virtue
Mario Osava
The state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil is the largest national producer and exporter of pork and this year it also leads in exports of chicken, of which it is the second-biggest producer in the country. Economic and productive success, as is often the case, brought serious environmental … MORE > >
A Brief Guide to the Impacts of Climate Change on Food Production
Daisy Simmons
Food may be a universal language – but in these record-breaking hot days, so too is climate change. With July clocking in as the hottest month on Earth in recorded history and extreme weather ramping up globally, farmers are facing the brunt of climate change in croplands and pastures around the … MORE > >