The popular obsession with foreign land grabs is wrong-headed, says Isaac Minde of Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro. If there is a land grab in Africa, it is being done by African urbanites. Continue reading
Using the state-of-the-art laboratory established in 2015 in Nairobi called the Mazingira Center, scientists are measuring greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in Africa, key to improving the accuracy of emissions data for both national reporting and mitigation. Already, scientists found that Tier 1 emission factors established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) overestimate both methane and nitrous oxide emissions from cattle excreta, given typical smallhoder practices in Eastern Africa. Continue reading
A great new book, ‘The End of Desertification? Disputing Environmental Change in the Drylands’, edited by Roy Behnke and Mike Mortimore, has 20 top quality chapters from all over the world, documenting why the term desertification has passed its sell-by date, if it ever had one at all. It is an impressive and timely synthesis. Continue reading
NEWS HACK: Our (very) foreign food plate | China’s exploding soybean futures | Kenya’s northern frontier push Continue reading
The following is an unusually sane and well communicated multimedia primer on the sustainability of the global food system. Food Matters, republished here in full with permission, is published by the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. Continue reading
Sourcing fodder poses a big headache to many dairy farmers. Brachiaria, a grass repatriated to Africa from Brazil, is good for grazing, can be baled as hay, and increases milk production. Continue reading
Vincent Ngari and Richard Githaiga of the Departments of Livestock and Agriculture, while making presentations during the Technical Workshop on Agriculture Index Insurance at the College of Insurance, Nairobi, on Friday, advised farmers to take up the new Kenya Livestock Insurance Programme (KLIP). Continue reading
The ever-estimable Atul Gawande has published in The New Yorker this week the commencement address he delivered on 10 Jun 2016 at the California Institute of Technology. It’s worth a close read. Continue reading
Our foundation is betting on chickens. Alongside partners throughout sub-Saharan Africa, we are working to create sustainable market systems for poultry. It’s especially important for these systems to make sure farmers can buy birds that have been properly vaccinated and are well suited to the local growing conditions. Our goal: to eventually help 30 percent of the rural families in sub-Saharan Africa raise improved breeds of vaccinated chickens, up from just 5 percent now. . . . Continue reading
The following opinion piece by World Bank livestock advisor François Le Gall was published last week on the launch of an advocacy brief by an alliance of leading organizations in global livestock issues. Chaired by Le Gall, the Livestock Global Alliance aims to bring the often overlooked livestock sector to the forefront of solutions to global development challenges such as food security, health, economic growth and climate change. Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 