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
Category Archives: USA
Article / Drylands / ILRI / Rangelands / Resilience / SLS / USA
Forestry, water and range management expert Tom Thurow dies
Staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) were saddened to learn of the death of Tom Thurow earlier this month. Thurow served as a science advisor for ILRI’s People, Livestock and Environment program from 2009 to 2011. Continue reading
Agri-Health / Agriculture / Consumption / Environment / Human Health / North America / Opinion piece / Policy / USA
Food and food systems thinkers advocate a national ‘food policy’ for the US–and maybe the rest of us?
Did you miss this call for a US national food policy by Mark Bittman, New York Times columnist and lead food writer; Michael Pollan, leading food, food systems and food science author; Ricardo Salvador, director of food and environment at the Union of Concerned Scientists; and Olivier de Schutter, former UN special rapporteur on the right to food. Continue reading
Animal Production / Cattle / Intensification / Livestock Systems / North America / Opinion piece / USA
Beef feedlots: Polluters or efficient use of resources?
There’s been an interesting debate published in the Wall Street Journal this week on whether feedlot beef is bad for the environment. Robert Martin, director of the Food System Policy Program at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, says the pollution spreads for miles. Jude Capper, a livestock sustainability expert based in Britain, says the beef industry keeps things safe Continue reading
Animal Breeding / Animal Products / Article / Books and chapters / Chickens / Consumption / Genetics / ILRI / Indigenous Breeds / Intensification / LiveGene / North America / Poultry / Trade / USA
How a ‘Chicken of Tomorrow’ breeding contest turned America’s backyard birds into a giant global industry
New Yorker cover by Tom Gauld (via Pinterest). The following fascinating recent history of the chicken in America is taken from a 2014 essay by Andrew Lawler published in Aeon (check out this online science and cultural magazine, founded in London in 2012, if you haven’t yet): Chicken of tomorrow: How a massive breeding contest turned … Continue reading
Article / Geodata / Goats / Livestock Systems / USA
Goats are ‘having a moment’–and making their mark in the United States
There were 2,621,514 goats in the United States as of 2012, the year of the most recent USDA Agricultural Census. If America’s goats were their own state, its population would be larger than that of Wyoming, Vermont, D.C. and North Dakota — combined. This is what all those goats look like on a map. Continue reading
Animal Feeding / Animal Health / Animal Production / Article / Cattle / Consumption / Environment / Farming Systems / Intensification / Livestock Systems / North America / USA
National Geographic weighs in on (several) inconvenient truths and (several different sides) of the ‘beef debate’
There’s a new feature article in National Geographic this month titled: Carnivore’s Dilemma. Written by Robert Kunzig and photographed by Brian Finke, the feature asks, and attempts to answer, the question: ‘Is America’s appetite for meat bad for the planet?’ Continue reading
A4NH / Agri-Health / Disease Control / Emerging Diseases / Environment / Food Safety / FSZ / Guinea / ILRI / Nigeria / Opinion piece / Pigs / Senegal / USA / West Africa / Zoonotic Diseases
Ebola: Three unpalatable truths
The district of Kailahun, in eastern Sierra Leone, bordering Guinea, is home to this 88-bed largest Ebola treatment and isolation centre set up by Médecins Sans Frontières (photo on Flickr by ©EC/ECHO/Cyprien Fabre). This opinion piece is written by Eliza Smith ‘By now, it seems we’ve heard everything there is to hear about the mysterious … Continue reading
Next-generation ‘cows of the future’
A White House climate initiative has boosted a quixotic search for the “cow of the future”, a next-generation creature whose greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by anti-methane pills, burp scanners and gas backpacks. Continue reading
Australia / Drought / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Event / ILRI / ILRIComms / Insurance / Kenya / Launch / Pastoralism / PIL / UK / USA
Shelter from the storm (literally): As remote herders get drought-related insurance payments, the heaven’s open
Livestock market in Wajir, where Kenya’s remote, never-before-insured livestock herders are getting their first protection from drought (photo credit: ILRI/Riccardo Gangale). ‘It was almost inevitable that the day chosen to make the first drought insurance payments in Wajir, in the arid north-east of Kenya, would be the same day the rains came. ‘Herders who lost sheep, cattle … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 