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Progress towards affordable, sustainable food production will be made with successful partnerships, says Janet Allen.
On 10 February the UK’s major public funders of food-related research published their coordinated research plan to help the world avoid a food security crisis.
The UK Research Councils, Government departments and other public bodies are co-ordinating their research activities related to food and agriculture through the Global Food Security (GFS) programme, the blog of which you are reading.
The GFS programme aims to provide the world’s growing population with a sustainable and secure supply of safe, nutritious and affordable high quality food from less land and with lower inputs. A short video that encapsulates the problem can be seen on the front page of this website.
Continue reading Research strategy launched to help meet food security challenge
A paper that details the scope of the food security challenge provides useful insights, says Janet Allen.
An interesting and potentially very useful contribution to the thinking and discussion around food security has appeared in the form of an open access paper The top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture.
It is too easy to be sceptical and say what we need are 100 answers, but if you start with good questions you are more likely to generate good answers. The questions in this paper were produced by a wide consultation process involving 45 institutions and finally 55 authors based in 21 countries.
Continue reading 100 questions for global agriculture
We need to move toward more sustainable agriculture practices that use the best of all approaches – including organic, GM and non-GM biotechnology, says David Howlett.
In achieving global food security, agriculture is part of the problem and part of the solution to climate change.
While we need to better understand greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture we do know they are significant. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that direct emissions are about 14% of global emissions (similar to those from transport) and emissions from deforestation are 17% of global emissions – but because farming is a major driver of deforestation the majority of these are due to agriculture.
Continue reading Combining tactics for triple wins in agriculture
Improving the conversion of light into biomass will require thinking outside the box, says Riaz Bhunnoo.
It’s said that you can’t force people to have fun, but can you help a group of people to be creative?
The answer is yes. But it depends largely on the people present and the environment they are in.
The Ideas Lab on enhancing photosynthesis, jointly organised by BBSRC and the National Science Foundation in the US, and held at the Asilomar Conference Center, California, Sept 13-17 aimed to create an environment conducive to creative, ‘out of the box’ thinking. The idea was to bring together a diverse group of people from different disciplinary backgrounds and to use their unique perspectives and expertise to generate novel and potentially ground-breaking ideas in a similar format to a ‘sandpit’.
Continue reading The Ideas Lab on enhancing photosynthesis
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?
