January 18th, 2011 By Adriana Velez
We’ve started 2011 with a lot of bad news. But the newest Worldwatch Institute report, State of the World 2011, has a lot of good news: agricultural innovations that address hunger and protect our ecology are working and they are scalable. We don’t have to choose between food or the environment. In fact, the most effective strategies address both. Read More
September 28th, 2010 By Jim Goodman
The food crisis of 2008 never really ended, it was instead ignored and forgotten. The rich and powerful are well fed; they had no food crisis, no shortage. So in the West, it was little more than a short lived sound bite, tragic but forgettable. To the poor in the developing world, whose ability to afford food is no better now than in 2008, the hunger continues.
Hunger can have many contributing factors; natural disaster, discrimination, war, poor infrastructure. So why, regardless of the situation, is high tech agriculture always assumed to be the only the solution? Read More
July 10th, 2009 By Paula Crossfield
Today, the Group of 8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy pledged 20 billion dollars in agricultural aid, responding to a request made yesterday by President Obama. For the first time, instead of being given directly as food aid, these funds are set to be allotted for building an agricultural economy in nations in need, specifically in Africa. Just what this agricultural infrastructure entails (the fine print mentions fertilizer and seed, grain storage vessels and plant variety research) could be the key to whether the plan actually seeks to feed many of the billion people on earth who are now hungry, or whether the U.S. and other nations will, instead, further fuel the food crisis. Read More