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World markets are better placed than before to brace poor harvests, say Steve Wiggins and Sharada Keats.
It’s more than two years since the peak of the last spike in world grain prices, back in mid-2008. Since then prices have been drifting back to the levels last seen in 2005, or earlier.
Then suddenly this July all hell breaks loose in the world wheat market with prices up more than 50% from late June and analysts predicting increasing food prices.
The cause? Reports from Canada that harvests will be low on account of too much rain early in the season; while in Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine drought has cut the forecasts for the harvest. These countries feature amongst the top eight wheat exporting countries, shifting around one third of wheat traded globally in the mid-2000s. Failing harvests in these countries hits world markets hard.
Continue reading Will wheat prices spike in 2010?
Let’s understand, utilise and conserve the indigenous cattle breeds, says Oliver Hanotte.
Livestock is and has been intertwined with African societies for centuries. They provide nutrition, labour, transport and fulfil major socio-cultural roles. It is estimated that 70% of Africa’s rural poor keep livestock and some 200M people rely on these animals for their livelihoods. Indigenous livestock are not only adapted to diverse African agro-ecological production systems – they are also unique and responsive genotypes shaped by the needs of African farmers.
Continue reading African livestock for Africa
When it comes to food and farming, Mother Nature does not always know best, says Ottoline Leyser.
© The University of York
No one says to their children, “Go into the woods and eat anything you can find. It is all natural, so it must be good for you.” But for some reason when we walk into the supermarket ‘natural’ is a key selling point for all kinds of foods.
My favourite example is a sweetcorn you can buy that claims to be ‘naturally sweet’. This is an absurd idea.
Continue reading What is ‘natural’ food?
Put focused, transparent and accountable food security initiatives first for sustainable development, says Morgane Danielou of the Farming First coalition.
Last year in L’Aquila, Italy, G8 leaders pledged US$20Bn (since revised to $22Bn) to address global food security.
Since the food crisis erupted in 2008, a large number of global and regional food security initiatives have been launched or strengthened in response.
Continue reading A message to G8 leaders
The needs of food security require that food production be increased on a relatively fixed amount of land but in a sustainable way. How can this objective be achieved?
In particular how can we protect plants against pests and diseases in a sustainable way? Many consumer and environmentalists would like
Continue reading ‘Green’ pesticides and a greener revolution
At the launch of the book Science and Innovation for Development on 19 January, co-author Sir Gordon Conway said: “It doesn’t matter where the technology comes from, it matters that it is appropriate.”
Too often international development researchers, policy makers and practitioners get caught up in the source of a technology, and use this as the metric for whether it will be successful.
Continue reading What is an appropriate technology?
The UK has imported food for well over a thousand years. During the industrial revolution, we lost self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs and have never regained it.
We have always been able to buy food from elsewhere and the global food market has become so efficient that the proportion of UK average income spent on food has fallen from 33% in 1957 to 15% in 2006. If food is cheap, reliable, safe and globally abundant, why should the UK worry about local production?
In my view, there are three main reasons why we should not assume that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.
Continue reading Why should the UK grow food?
Produce more, impact less. This is the challenge that the NFU’s farmer and grower members have set themselves. It’s a big ask for farmers anywhere and at any time.
But as we prepare to enter the second decade of the 21st century, we are in what the Government Chief Scientist John Beddington famously called ‘the perfect storm’: farmers have to grow their crops and livestock in a way that achieves bigger yields and better quality. But we can’t massively increase our use of fertiliser, pesticides, water, energy. Using these inputs certainly has an impact on the farm balance sheet but it also has an impact on soils, air, water courses and biodiversity.
Continue reading A great opportunity for British farmers
