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A Chef is Reviving the Ozarks Through Food

Chef Rob Connoley is working with farmers, archivists, and Indigenous communities to try to define and revive Ozark cuisine at his restaurant Bulrush in St. Louis, MO. Connoley hopes to increase biodiversity while connecting people back to the land.

French President urges global leaders to support agricultural development

In a move to sustainably address rising hunger and poverty, exacerbated by COVID-19, climate change and biodiversity loss, French President Emmanuel Macron called on global leaders to step up their commitments in support of long-term agricultural development.

Soil erosion control requires special attention

Soil is one of the most vital non-renewable resources that many organisms on the planet depend on, as it ensures food security of the nations; so that it needs urgent attention, ISNA quoted Seyed Mohammad Mojabi as saying on Sunday.

Best of Landscape News 2020: Food and Livelihoods

Food is central to our cultures, health and, indeed, life. But feeding the world is an immense industry that often depletes the planet’s resources through deforestation, soil degradation, loss of biodiversity and mass conversions of landscapes from their natural states to those designed to benef ...

Seed saving movement calls for seeds to be publicly owned

Seeds need to be brought back into public ownership, rather than belonging to a small group of agrochemical companies, say campaigners, after a year in which seed-swapping and saving has reached new heights of popularity.

The good old ways: can we still farm like our grandparents?

Mary Ankers is back on the farm. In every direction there is a memory of her childhood. Everything had involved being outside. Jumping on hay bales, bottle-feeding newly born calves and sitting on the back of the trailer with her two older brothers during harvesting.

Variety: Spice of life for bumble bees

The yield and quality of many crops benefit from pollination, but it isn't just honey bees that do this work: bumble bees also have a role. A team has used innovative molecular biological methods and traditional microscopy to investigate the pollen collecting behavior of honey bees and bumble be ...

Almost 90% of the world's animal species will lose some habitat to agriculture by 2050

Scientists know that biodiversity is declining across much of the world although less universally and dramatically than we feared. We also know that things are likely to get worse in the future, with a combination of habitat loss, climate change and overexploitation set to drive species and habi ...

Avocado farm a threat to Amboseli ecosystem

There are few places on earth where someone can enjoy the wonder of snowy mountain peaks, witness a herd of elephants at sunset and experience an ecosystem lush with wetlands, open grasslands and arid bush all in the span of a day. That is the wonder of the Amboseli ecosystem in southern Kenya.

A no-meat diet everywhere will not solve the climate crisis

People in industrialized regions like the United States of America or Europe are generally urged to eat less meat and animal-source foods as part of a healthier and lower-emissions diet.

The future of agriculture: why unis must prepare students to secure both our food and our planet

Agriculture will soon be worth A$100 billion a year to Australia. The industry employs more than 250,000 people, stewards 80% of our land area and drives world-class agribusiness and food sectors. In an uncertain employment market, every new agriculture graduate has a choice of six job opportuni ...

EU project will SHOWCASE the path to biodiversity-friendly farming

SHOWCASing synergies between agriculture, biodiversity and Ecosystem services to help farmers capitalising on native biodiversity (SHOWCASE) is a newly funded EU Horizon 2020 research project, dedicated to the integration of biodiversity into farming practices.

Importance of soil biodiversity remains ‘largely underestimated’

The importance of below-ground biodiversity, as well as its complex interaction with the above-ground world, is often overlooked, according to a recent UN report. Soil is not only vital to agriculture but essential for clean water and maintaining biodiversity.

Bringing together Agriculture and Biodiversity

Agriculture and biodiversity are currently both in the spotlights, but mostly as opposites. This must change, but how? A new EU project will investigate how agriculture and biodiversity can best go hand in hand and what this brings in return for the farmer as well as for biodiversity.

South Africa: Food and Clean Water Start With Soil Biodiversity - Learning More About It Is Urgent

Although soils are vital for agriculture, biodiversity and clean water, this below-ground world is often overlooked. The loss of life below the ground due to intensification of agriculture, climate change, erosion and compaction, among other things, is one of the biggest global threats to soils.

Pathways to sustainable land use and food systems

The findings of a new report by the Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-Use, and Energy (FABLE) Consortium, suggest that integrated strategies across food production, biodiversity, climate, and diets can meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

FAO to support Iran to ensure sustainable healthy biodiverse soils

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) representative to Iran Gerold Bödeker, reaffirms the Organization’s stance to support Iran in developing and adopting policies and programs promoting sustainable agricultural systems and nurturing soil biodiversity.

World Soil Day 2020

5 December 2020, Rome, Italy

World Soil Day celebration at Muresk

The Muresk Institute will host a free, farmer-focused event for World Soil Day this Saturday. A United Nations International Day of Significance, World Soil Day highlights the importance of healthy soil and advocates for its sustainable management.

165th session of the FAO Council

30 November - 4 December 2020, Rome, Italy

Biodiversity is crucial for South Africa’s food security

The Covid-19 pandemic is teaching us all some very important lessons. In particular, it is reminding us that our health, our economy and our way of life are built on a fragile foundation that is far too often taken for granted.

Namibia: Agriculture and the Ecosystems

Agriculture is concerned with rearing animals and the cultivation of crops whilst an ecosystem simply refers to a community of living organisms such as plants and animals together with the non-living components such as the air and soils, interacting with each other in their environment.

The State of Food and Agriculture 2020: Overcoming water challenges in agriculture

More than three billion people live in agricultural areas with high to very high levels of water shortages and scarcity, and almost half of them face severe constraints. Furthermore, available freshwater resources per person have declined by more than 20 percent over the past two decades, unders ...

Our Thanksgiving Menu has Lost a Few Crops

The modern Thanksgiving plate has turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and — of course — pumpkin pie. But long before Thanksgiving, there were other agricultural plants in the Americas. Those domesticated crops are now extinct. Scientists, like Dr. Logan Kistler, Curator of Archaeobotany at the Smi ...

The dark side of Italian hazelnut farming

As Italian hazelnut plantations expand to cater to our love of chocolate and nougat, they are leaving a bitter aftertaste on local soil, water and air.As the early morning mist clears to reveal the turrets of San Quirico Castle in central Italy, the greenery surrounding local farmhouses comes al ...

Eat like it matters: how your food choices can clean up the planet and feed the world

Food is why we’re all here. It sustains life, spreads joy and brings us together.But if we are to feed 10 billion people in a healthy way within planetary boundaries, the way in which we produce and consume food needs to change.

Why small farms are key to the future of food – and how we can support them

In the 25 years since Clayton Christensen coined the term “disruptive innovation,” much has been written about the benefits of shaking up established business practices. Even before the current pandemic, there was a growing recognition that our food systems, too, needed to be reimagined.

Table for 10 Billion? Leaders to Unlock More Sustainable and Equitable Food Future

The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated vulnerabilities in food systems – highlighting the insecurity of rural livelihoods, the tragedy of food waste, and stark inequities in access to healthy food. As the global population races to 10 billion, more needs to be done to feed the planet while tackling ...

Sustainable Soil Management with Spectroscopy

Modern agricultural research is focused on how to feed the future population of the world. Year on year, farmers aim to generate a greater amount of food from the same resources and quickly changing environmental conditions only increase the pressure for international food supply.

Kenya: Root Vegetables - Kenyan Schools Embrace Indigenous Foods

Today, when students file into the lunchroom at Mundika High School in western Kenya, they are greeted by a spread of nutritious local vegetables with exotic-sounding names, like spider plant. But that wasn't always the case. Just a few years ago, that fare had largely disappeared from Kenyan pl ...

Plant biodiversity suffers without livestock grazing, says expert

On the back of a recent European Commission-funded report which called for nuance in the livestock vs environment debate, EURACTIV took a look at the importance of EU grasslands and the role of livestock in maintaining them.The report, published in October, comes amidst increasing debates over t ...

Assessing agroforestry practices and soil and water conservation for climate change adaptation in Kenya: A cost-benefit analysis

The study was carried out under the Integrating Agricultural Sectors into National Adaptation Plans programme, with the aim of capacity building, generating evidence-based results for selecting adaptation options, and informing adaptation policy dialogues on adaptation in agriculture.

What the limits of traditional accounting mean for the future of food

Traditional accounting methods do not fully capture the externalized costs of economic activities in the food and agricultural space, and this shortcoming is becoming more apparent because climate change is intensifying the focus on sustainable development. Against this backdrop, some industry o ...

Nature-inspired solutions to sustainably increase crop yield

GAIN4CROPS is developing novel disruptive technologies to overcome one of the main constraints of photosynthesis: the photorespiration, a process that reduces CO2 assimilation efficiency, and thus biomass yield and agricultural productivity.

FAO to help farmers acquire land titles for food production

Farmers especially those on customary land, have failed to get access to capital from financial institutions, due to lack of security such as land titles, to boost their agricultural ventures.

Wild Olives Provide a Healthy Oil Source

The oil obtained from the fruit of wild olive trees has excellent sensory, physicochemical and nutritional stability characteristics, according to an article published in the journal Antioxidants.

Mind-boggling variety’: the food crusaders preserving India’s heritage

A small army of botanical heritage enthusiasts is spearheading a m ovement in India for the revival and preservation of the country’s rapidly vanishing food biodiversity by bringing back the rich crop varieties that thrived in the past, but are now on the verge of extinction.

Statement by Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity, on the occasion of World Food Day

Statement by Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity, on the occasion of World Food Day

World Food Day 2020

16 October 2020, Rome, Italy

11th session of the Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITWG-AnGR/11) at FAO

1 - 3 July 2020, Rome, Italy

164th Session of the FAO Council

8 - 12 June 2020, Rome, Italy

8th session of the Global Soil Partnership Plenary Assembly (FAO)

4 - 5 June 2020, Rome, Italy

Global Symposium on Soil Biodiversity (FAO)

1 - 3 June 2020, Rome, Italy

A Light at the End of the Covid Tunnel?

In farming and food systems, as in every other avenue of public life, context is everything, as I said during a discussion on Al Jazeera’s ‘Inside Story’, this past Thursday.

Experts apply microbiome research to agricultural science to increase crop yield

The global demand and consumption of agricultural crops is increasing at a rapid pace. According to the 2019 Global Agricultural Productivity Report, global yield needs to increase at an average annual rate of 1.73 percent to sustainably produce food, feed, fiber and bioenergy for 10 billion peo ...

The pandemic is just another sign of our broken food system

As many as 265 million people around the world are suffering from food insecurity and possible starvation, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Food Programme has warned of widespread famines “of Biblical proportions” and its latest report is a stark reminder of the disconnects in our ...

Crops sown in a uniform spatial pattern produce higher yields and reduce environmental impact

Higher yields and fewer weeds are possible if farmers sow wheat, maize, soy and other crops in more uniform spatial patterns, according to University of Copenhagen researchers. More precise sowing can also help reduce herbicide use and fertilizer runoff.

Fairtrade Africa supports alliance on climate action and living incomes in cocoa regions

This year, as the world celebrates World Earth Day on the 22nd April 2020, Fairtrade Africa is highlighting its stakeholder collaboration towards climate action. Environmental degradation and climate change in the last couple of decades have reached alarming levels and global action is urgently ...

Agricultural economist evaluates research results on food security

Plant breeding has considerably increased agricultural yields in recent decades and thus made a major contribution to combating global hunger and poverty. At the same time, however, the intensification of farming has had negative environmental effects. Increases in food production will continue ...