1
Better data on how and where aid is spent is needed to make real progress on tackling hunger, argue Gordon Conway and Laura Kelly.
Holding global leaders to account has never been easy. But when they come together in the Muskoka region of Canada 25-26 June, G8 leaders claim they will report on their own progress on tackling global hunger.
Continue reading From pledges to progress: measuring agricultural development assistance
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
Through our understanding of how plants secure their own nutritional requirements, we can provide new solutions for sustainable food production for the world’s growing population.
Plants must secure high levels of nitrogen, and in conventional agriculture nitrogen is added at high concentrations in the form of inorganic fertilisers. Artificial nitrogenous fertilisers can increase yield by as much as 50% and the global farming system, and hence our own food supply, is now dependent on them. We would face very severe food shortages if nitrogen fertilisers were to become unavailable.
Continue reading Getting to the root of food security
Livestock species are an important part of the human food chain but their health and our agricultural productivity is challenged constantly by infectious diseases. The livestock sector in the UK is worth around £8Bn per annum and the overall costs of animal diseases during the past 15 years are an estimated £15Bn. These costs come from production losses, the eradication of pathogens whose arrival leads to restrictions in livestock trade, and the implementation of strategies to prevent potentially high rates of mortality.
Continue reading Infectious diseases: old enemies and new threats
In 1898, Sir William Crookes, then President of the British Association stated that: “England and all the civilised nations stand in deadly peril of not having enough to eat”. He was referring to Britain’s reliance on imported wheat and concerns that there was insufficient land to meet global demand when yields were around 1.5 tonnes per hectare.
Crookes was aware of the pioneering work of Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry Gilbert who showed that wheat yields of up to four tonnes per hectare could be produced year after year by application of nitrogen fertilisers. Crookes proposed that the power of Niagara Falls should be harnessed for “oxidating free nitrogen of the air” and thereby enabling “twelve million tons of nitrate of soda to be applied to the global wheat crop”.
Continue reading The need for nitrogen – is sustainable food production possible?
