From the United States comes this good news about a new rule that has gone into effect curtailing use of antibiotics in livestock production with the aim of reducing the rise of antimicrobial resistance to drugs of medical importance. Continue reading
Nathanael Johnson, a talented food writer at Grist, a non-profit environmental news and commentary site based in Seattle, has published a thoughtful special series of eight articles around a question seldom looked at squarely in the eye—that is: How can we eliminate absolute poverty from the world without destroying the environment in the process? Continue reading
No mean feat: Putting reindeer and goat and chicken (and parts thereof) on Christmas tables in the Arctic and Africa. Continue reading
‘. . . [A]ccording to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, . . . [Africa] will . . . need to dramatically increase its agricultural efficiency. Right now, Africa imports 20% of its cereal needs, despite having a quarter of the world’s arable land. . . . With a population expected to expand by another 1.3 billion people by 2050, Sub-saharan African countries will have to import half of all needed cereals in the next 30 years, if drastic changes to agricultural methods aren’t taken, the study concluded. Continue reading
There is a vicious circle of under-investment in research in developing countries, especially in the social sciences. To make matters worse, expenditure on social science research is generally less than 20% of gross expenditure on R&D Continue reading
Lethal bacteria are showing resistance to more and more antibiotics, and financial and legal hurdles are making it harder than ever for science to create effective new drugs. . . . The arsenal of antibiotics is nearly empty. And significant financial and legal hurdles are getting in the way of the already challenging process of discovering effective new ones. Continue reading
Vaccinating cattle in Kenya against East Coast fever sends more girls to school Continue reading
Researchers at the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment have used household census data to map smallholder farms in developing countries. Despite the fact that smallholder and family farms are crucial to feeding the planet, little is known regarding the location and size of smallholder farms. This study attempts to fill this knowledge gap. Continue reading
In Asia, milk production has almost tripled, from about 110 million tons in 1990 to nearly 300 million tons in 2013—accounting for more than 80 percent of the world’s increase in milk supplies during that time. Continue reading
Read and view the whole photoessay by Tess Riley in The Guardian: Using satellites to support Kenya’s drought-hit herders‚in pictures, 30 Nov 2016. Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 