News

In the 2008/2009 agricultural season, Malawi is spending $186 million to subsidize fertilizer and seeds for poor farmers, tripling the previous year’s figure of $62 million. Malawi’s success in this program, against donor advice, has made the country a grain exporter and helped contain food costs. The emerging consensus is that such subsidies are essential […]

I’m sorely disappointed in George McGovern and Marshall Matz’s disturbing commentary piece, “Agriculture’s next big challenge” (Jan. 4), which makes a failed argument to continue with business as usual for industrial agriculture. Our current fossil-fuel based system has led to severe degradation of the land, while encouraging giant livestock feedlots and factory farms that severely

An assorted alliance of organizations published an open letter this Thursday, January 15, in the U.S. and internationally, warning of the dangers of industrially produced biofuels (called agrofuels by critics). The letter explains why large-scale industrial production of transport fuels and other energy from plants such as corn, sugar cane, oilseeds, trees, grasses, or so-called

On January 13th 2009 The European Parliament adopted by 482 votes to 24, with 59 abstentions, a resolution on the Common Agricultural Policy and Global Food Security. The resolution affirms that global food security is a question of the utmost urgency for the European Union and calls for immediate and continual action to ensure food

Don’t forget about agriculture in the upcoming global negotiations to combat climate change, experts warn. Not only is farming most at risk in an increasingly variable and tempestuous climate, it is also a major emitter of greenhouse gases. But with the right policies in place, agriculture could both continue to feed the world and play

As the world’s population approaches ten billion, issues like climate change, growing scarcity of oil and availability of quality land and water are challenging the planet’s capacity to produce enough food for everyone – a paradigm shift that could potentially pave the way for a new global ‘food crunch’.

At a World Food Programme summit, Gordon Brown said he will try to negotiate a new fund to help the world’s poorest through the economic downturn at April’s G20 meeting. Yet increased funding will not solve everything, says UNESCO’s Koichiro Matsuura. He outlines UNESCO’s efforts to inform decision-makers and explains what he thinks can create

Each month Andrew Simms is analysing how much closer the world has moved to catastrophic climate change. Desperate times might seem to call for desperate measures. And there is a tendency is to make a grab for the first and apparently the easiest solution to come to hand. In this context, magic-bullet technological fixes are

Organic and eco-friendly farming can feed the world, contrary to the common belief that biotechnology and chemical-intensive farming are indispensable, modern strategies to increase production, agricultural experts say.

WHAT do a student in New York, a farmer near Mexico City, a family in London and a nurse in Bangkok have in common? Increasing trouble paying their grocery bill. Since 2000, the average price of food around the world has nearly doubled. In the UK, food prices are rising at three times the rate