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Oxfam hosts online debate on future of agriculture

Submitted by Teresa Buerkle on December 7, 2012

Oxfam will host a virtual roundtable conversation about the future of agriculture December 10-21.

Over 20 thought leaders on agriculture from around the world, including FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, have written short essays that will be posted over the next two weeks. Roger Thurow, Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, will provide a mid-event analysis and final summary remarks.

Two new essays will be posted daily, and readers are encouraged to respond to the experts’ ideas and share their own. All essays and comments will inform an Oxfam discussion paper to be published in 2013 and feed into Oxfam’s long-term project, research, and advocacy planning.

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CASTing a wide net for communicators

Submitted by Teresa Buerkle on December 5, 2012

The Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) is calling for nominations for the 2013 Borlaug CAST Communication Award, an honour that recognizes professionals actively working in the agricultural, environmental or food sectors who are promoting agricultural science in the public policy arena.  The annual award  celebrates efforts to keep agricultural issues and programmes in the public eye and in front of policy makers.

The 2012 prize winner, University of California–Davis Professor Dr. Carl Winter, uses humour and music to communicate important messages about food safety and agriculture.

Other recent winners include Professor Catherine Bertini, former head of the World Food Programme, and Dr. Akin Adesina, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development for Nigeria.  

Bull’s-eye target on hunger and poverty

Submitted by Teresa Buerkle on November 27, 2012

Last week the Bread  for the World Institute launched its annual Hunger Report. The report argues that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are within reach by 2015, and that achieving the hunger and poverty targets depends on investments in smallholder agriculture and social protection.

Calling the MDGs “the global community’s most holistic approach yet to human development”, the report looks ahead to the international development agenda beyond 2015, saying that the eradication of hunger and extreme poverty is possible within a generation:

“Whatever agreement emerges should have a bull’s-eye target of ending hunger and extreme poverty by 2040.”

The Greener Revolution

In a guest contribution to this year’s report, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva writes that the world will not end hunger if we do not shift towards more sustainable patterns of production and consumption.

“We cannot separate agriculture from the management and preservation of our natural resources, from food security and from sustainable development itself…. In agriculture, as soon as you pull on something, you find it is connected to everything else.”

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Good ideas get a second chance

Submitted by Teresa Buerkle on September 17, 2012

A new contest from Africa Rural Connect – a global online network run by the National Peace Corps Association – invites participants to share their ideas on new ways to engage sub-Saharan Africans through educational projects, community-building initiatives, and social programmes, all centred around agriculture and farming.

The “Second Chance Ideas Contest”, which runs from September 15 to November 30, seeks to encourage collaboration by rewarding remixes of previously submitted ideas. Ideas submitted to the contest run the gamut from improving agricultural education and training, to increasing farmers’ access to finances and land, to supporting people in farming organizations.

A panel of judges will evaluate the top remixes endorsed by the Africa Rural Connect community. Awards will be given to those ideas deemed the most original, creative, practical, scalable and likely to be successfully implemented.

Learn more about the contest rules and selection criteria.

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If it’s broke, fix it

Submitted by Teresa Buerkle on August 3, 2012

Wondering what you can do to fix the broken food system? Oxfam’s Grow Campaign suggests five simple things we can all do every day to help tackle hunger and make the food system work better for everyone. Check out their new report, The Food Transformation: Harnessing consumer power to create a fair food future.

The also have a cool new video:

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Innovation Friday

Submitted by Teresa Buerkle on August 3, 2012

Africa Rural Connect – an online global collaboration network run by the National Peace Corps Association – recently announced the winners of its Young Farmers Idea Contest, designed to find new ways to engage young farmers in agricultural development in rural Africa.

The grand prize went to Backpack Farm and its mobile app – KUZA Doctor – to help smallholder farmers in Kenya manage their production from ‘farm to fork’ with information on crop management and irrigation, crop calendars, the value of biodiversity and conservation agriculture, and tutorials about farming and business. The group’s $5,000 prize will support development of a smartphone app to expand on their work promoting agricultural education through SMS messaging.

“What this contest showed is, in many ways, Africa is ahead of the United States on mobile computing,” said Molly Mattessich,  who manages the Africa Rural Connect project.

Second prize ($2,500) went to the One Hen Campaign, a micro-lending project to give one hen and one cage to women and youth in rural Africa. In exchange, recipients will return two young hens after six months. The program is designed to help get farmers started on their way toward owning a goat or a cow.

Third prize ($1,000) went to the Green Living Planet, which proposed a “keyhole garden” project to create a sustainable school lunch program for Tanzanian students.

In other innovation news, the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet blog this week highlights 12 innovations it says will help make U.S. and global agriculture more drought resilient and sustainable.

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New study on climate change impacts on tropical agriculture

Submitted by Teresa Buerkle on August 2, 2012

Photo: N. Palmer (CIAT)A new study just out from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security shows that there are some crucial gaps in our understanding of the likely impacts of climate change on many key food staples and natural resources in developing countries.

The study, “Impacts of climate change on the agricultural and aquatic systems and natural resources within the CGIAR’s mandate”, contains summaries for 22 commodities and for agroforestry, forests and water.  These summaries, written by CGIAR scientists, outline the importance of each commodity for food and nutrition security, its biological vulnerability to climate change, and the likely socio-economic vulnerability of the people affected.

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Monitoring global trends towards development goals

Submitted by Rachel Friedman on May 9, 2012

A report released by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund last month suggests that good progress has been made on reaching some of the Millennium Development Goals, such as reducing extreme poverty, while progress on other targets, such as those related to child and maternal mortality, has been much slower.

Global Monitoring Report 2012: Food Prices, Nutrition, and the Millennium Development Goals places particular emphasis on high food prices as a significant contributor to continued poverty and undernourishment.

Read the blog post and press release on the report.

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New global food policy report

Submitted by Rachel Friedman on May 4, 2012

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has just released its 2011 Global Food Policy Report, the first in a new annual series looking at the state of food policy around the globe. The report highlights important developments and events in food policy that occurred in 2011, discusses lessons learned, offers policy recommendations, and takes a look forward into 2012. Food price volatility and nutrition figured prominently in the publication as well as during the launch event, at which Kathy Spahn of Helen Keller International spoke on nutrition in early childhood development.

Looking ahead, the report calls for capitalizing on the links between agriculture and other sectors, including health, nutrition, water and energy. More immediately, it recommends that the G20 take steps to curb food price volatility and that the international community strengthen institutions and build capacity for implementing agricultural growth and development strategies. The report calls for participants in the upcoming Rio+20 conference to integrate economic, social, and environmental sustainability efforts and commit to concrete action to meet the long-term challenges of development, including poor nutrition, degraded soils and scarce water.  Overall, the report was optimistic about the increased attention given to agriculture and food security in the development and political agendas, but found much room for action and improvement in the year ahead.

 

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Sharing knowledge for food security and agriculture programs

Submitted by Rachel Friedman on March 20, 2012

From 20 to 22 March, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Food Security is holding an “AgExchange” on current practices, challenges, tools and approaches in knowledge sharing for food security and agriculture programs. Weigh in with your perspective and experiences on the USAID Agrilinks website (registration is required to comment).

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