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Today is World Food Day. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the world produces enough food to feed everyone. But who produces this food and who will feed us in the future, the industrial food chain or small-scale farmers? A new report from ETC Group, a Canadian-based international civil society organization, shows […]

Industrial food and farming systems are taking a heavy toll on human health and the environment, leading food experts have warned. According to a report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), launched on October 9 at the UN Committee on World Food Security in Rome, decisive action needs to be

The overuse of antibiotics in livestock farming is fueling a global health crisis in antibiotic resistance. A new study, published in the journal Science, says that limiting meat consumption and introducing regulatory caps and user fees on veterinary antimicrobial use could significantly slash farm antibiotic use. “The large and expanding use of antimicrobials in livestock,

The root causes of the 2007/2008 food crisis, which brought the number of hungry people in the world to a peak, are still there, according the “Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2017”. The report, launched on September 26 by a network of civil society organizations and social movements, warns that today, despite some progress,

A fundamental shift away from intensive agriculture is needed to halt and reverse land degradation, according to a new report. The Global Land Outlook, published by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on September 12, warns that consumption of the earth’s natural reserves has doubled in the last 30 years, with a third

The number of undernourished people in the world has increased to an estimated 815 million in 2016, according to a report released by five UN agencies on Friday. For the first time since the turn of the century, the number of hungry people is on the rise again, up 38 million from the previous year.

Soils on organic farms sequester more carbon and for longer periods of time than soil from conventional farms, new research suggests. A large-scale field study conducted in the United States shows that organic soils have significantly higher levels of humic substances, which are very effective in locking away carbon in long-term reserves. The study, directed

Export-oriented and industrial agricultural expansion in Africa could threaten the continent’s valuable tropical forests, researchers from Stanford University have warned. According to a study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters in April, multinational companies are increasingly looking to Africa to expand production of in-demand commodity crops such as soy, cocoa and oil palm as

High exposure to agricultural pesticides as a result of living close to fields increases the risk of adverse birth outcomes, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications. Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, have gathered new evidence on the negative effects of pesticide exposure on birth outcomes, such as weight,

The world’s soils have lost 133 billion tons of carbon from the top 2 meters of soil since the beginning of agriculture around 12,000 years ago, new research suggests. And the rate of soil organic carbon loss has increased dramatically over the past 200 years since the start of the industrial revolution, according to the