Planting soy in the state of Paraná, Brazil (photograph via Flickr by Dami Izolan). Daniel Kfouri reports in the New York Times that Brazil’s ‘$7 billion agreement signed last month—to produce six million tons of soybeans a year—is one of several struck in recent weeks as China hurries to shore up its food security and offset … Continue reading
Slide in a presentation by Moses Nyabila on progress in the East African Dairy Development Project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in which Heifer International and ILRI are two partners; the presentation was made at a USAID Bureau for Food Security Webinar on 22 June 2011 in Washington, DC (slide credit: Heifer … Continue reading
Al Gore, in a scene from his documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ (image credit: Juampe López’s Flickr photostream). What’s the world coming to? Al (‘Albert Arnold’) Gore, the moderate poker-faced ex-politico, 45th vice-president of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, who was raised on a tobacco-and-hay growing/cattle-raising family farm in Tennessee, appears this month … Continue reading
Bruce Scott, director of Partnerships and Communications at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), was a main speaker at the launch of ‘Virtual Kenya’ at Nairobi’s iHub this week (photo credit: ILRI/Mungai). Spatial information—including where different populations live and where natural resources are located—is essential for sound development planning and decision-making. A new website launched … Continue reading
In ILRI’s Forage Genebank on the ILRI campus in Addis Ababa, Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and Jean Hanson, former head of ILRI’s Genebank, examine seed that was sent a few years ago for safe duplicate storage in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located in the Norwegian Arctic Circle (photo … Continue reading
Workers unload milk cans at a commercial dairy plant in Dimapur, Nagaland, India (photo credit: ILRI/Mann). A blog in the Guardian this week argues for the G20 agriculture ministers meeting this week to support ‘new investment in farming and vibrant, transparent markets to address food security.’ ‘As the G20 agriculture ministers prepare to meet for the … Continue reading
The tsetse fly, which spreads the livestock disease trypanosomosis (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth). Aid Netherlands has picked up news of a paper published last month in a leading scientific journal about a breakthrough in determining the genes responsible for controlling a tsetse fly-transmitted disease of livestock that has devastated Africa, and held back farming on the … Continue reading
The pathogenesis of Rift Valley fever. Viruses 2011, 3(5), 493-519; doi:10.3390/v3050493 (image credit: A J Cann’s Flickr photostream). Kenya’s Business Daily newspaper reports that Kenya is forging a new pact in an old war against the deadly mosquito-transmitted ‘zoonotic’—human plus livestock—disease called Rift Valley fever. ‘Kenya has partnered with neighbouring stats to boost surveillance on Rift Valley … Continue reading
ILRI scientist Polly Ericksen says that areas that will be hit hardest by climate change are areas where farmers are already struggling due to new weather patterns (image credit: ILRI/Anita Ghosh). Julio Godoy reported yesterday in Inter Press Service Africa (IPS) on the climate change meeting in Bonn, saying that climate change is putting African … Continue reading
The African Cape buffalo (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth). Is conservation of wild mammals and their environments in Africa at a crisis point? Are wildlife populations “crashing” in Africa’s most renowned wildlife reserves? Two new reports suggest that may be the case. The following was reported in the Guardian today. ‘The Okavango delta in Botswana has suffered … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 