Here is an old (July 2009) news item we missed. The dairy conglomerate Danone built a small factory in Bangladesh to make nutritional yogurt for the poor. Danone’s yogurt brand in Bangladesh is called Shoktidoi, which means energy in Bengali. ‘When French dairy food firm Danone ventured outside the troubled business climate of Europe and the … Continue reading
Author Archives: Susan MacMillan
Dairying / North America / USA
Dairy in the U.S. utterly transforms as family farms yield to mega-farms
First there were ‘family farms’, then ‘factory farms’, and now, as reported in a recent article in The Atlantic, ‘mega-farms’, which the article contrasts with family farming. Among the (astonishing) facts reported in the article regarding the speed of transformation of dairy in the United States are the following. ‘Until the 1970s, America’s milk products … Continue reading
Exceptional–dead–cattle now cloned in the US
‘Some of the cattle cloned to boost food production in the US have been created from the cells of dead animals, according to a US cloning company. Farmers say it is being done because it is only possible to tell that the animal’s meat is of exceptionally high quality by inspecting its carcass. ‘US scientists are … Continue reading
Large-scale American livestock farmers and animal rights activists agree to compromise
‘Concessions by farmers in this state [Ohio] to sharply restrict the close confinement of hens, hogs and veal calves are the latest sign that so-called factory farming — a staple of modern agriculture that is seen by critics as inhumane and a threat to the environment and health — is on the verge of significant … Continue reading
Why old (carnivory) habits die hard: Stone-tool butchery may be a 3.8-million-year-old affair
Reconstructed model of what Lucy looked like, from ‘Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia’, Houston Museum of Natural Science, July 2009 (photo by Trish Mayo) If something new is always coming out of Africa, something old is always coming out of the Middle Awash, a (once wet, now desiccated) region of the Great Rift … Continue reading
UN launches broad appeal to aid Pakistan flood victims
In light of the continuing floods in Pakistan — which have caused widespread devastation and affected some 14 million people — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on donors to support a broad and potentially unprecedented aid campaign. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesman Maurizio Giuliano says that the number of people … Continue reading
Africa / Agriculture / Farming Systems / Fish / ILRI / Livelihoods / Livestock / LIVESTOCKFISH / Research
Can smallholder farmers feed a growing Africa?—Yes, under the right conditions
Peter Karanja sells eggs in Nairobi (credit: ILRI / Mann) Intense proposal development work by the 15 centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and their many research partners is coming down to the wire this month, with the deadline for submitting these proposals, 1 September 2010, fast approaching. The proposals are … Continue reading
Living genebank in St Petersburg to be bulldozed for real estate profits just 60 years after Russian plant scientists starved to death rather than eat their seed collections
A Kenyan woman visits an exhibit on the importance of conserving Africa’s native livestock and forage resources. The livestock exhibit, along with other exhibits on the importance of conserving Africa’s food crop resources, was part of an event held in Nairobi at the National Museum to celebrate International Biodiversity Day on 22 May 2010. (Photo … Continue reading
Animal Diseases / Biotechnology / Disease Control / East Africa / ECF / ILRI / Pastoralism / Vaccines
Masai herders buy vaccine to protect their cattle from lethal disease
Photo credit: ILRI / Mann ‘When asked about the success of vaccination against East Coast fever (ECF) in northern Tanzania, Dr Lieve Lynen, is remarkably modest. And yet more than 500,000 animals have been vaccinated against ECF in Tanzania since 1998, largely due to the work of Lynen’s pharmaceutical company VetAgro Tanzania, which has led … Continue reading
Africa / Agriculture / Asia / Environment / Food Security / North America / NRM / WLE / Women
The sustainability problem: Is it too many people? Or too much consumption by a few?
The following statements are excerpted from All consuming, an article by David Biello on global consumption and population issues published in the current issue of Momentum, published by the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. > ‘Two German Shepherds kept as pets in Europe or the U.S. use more resources in a year … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 