CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Going Direct2Farm

Carmen Thönnissen, Programme Manager from the Swiss Agency for Development and Coopertation, recently visited CABI’s Direct2Farm project with her colleagues in Meerut, India. Read Carmen's report on her visit and the impact of mobile technology on Agriculture.

On 23 April 2013, we - from the Swiss Agency for Development and Coopertation (SDC) - had the pleasure to visit one site of the Direct2Farm projects in Meerut, India. Direct2Farm is a mobile-enabled agriculture infomediary service aimed at making high quality information readily accessible to farmers. Accompanied by Mr. Sharbendu Banerjee and Ms Priyanka Anand of the D2F CABI team in Delhi, we visited the Farmer Call Center that serves more than 30,000 farmers; an Airtel phone company selling stand in a nearby market; met with famers in their fields; and visited one farming family’s home near Meerut.

Attack of the 340 million propagule timebomb! Stories of Phytophthora

 

Welcome to a new monthly series called CABI Author Focus. Each month one of the many talented authors or editors of books published by CABI will be writing about an element of their research. This month Kurt Lamour, editor of Phytophthora: A Global Perspective, writes for us on his experiences of this plant-damagng pathogen. As well as Phytophthora, Kurt co-edited Oomycete Genetics and Genomics: Diversity, Interactions and Research Tool with Sophien Kamoun.

Potato famine! Starvation and emigration! For many folks the only Phytophthora they’ll ever hear of, albeit tangentially, is through tales of the infamous potato blight that occurred in mid-1800 Ireland.  I’ve often used the famine as a reference point to help answer questions concerning what it is I do for a living; although I’ve learned this conversational strategy can be tricky.

Reducing hunger and undernutrition - how are we doing?

Hunger and undernutrition are amongst the most persistent global development challenges. Part of Millennium Development Goal 1 is to ‘Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger’ (UN, 2012). With global numbers of undernourished people static at 870 million for the past 5 years and undernutrition contributing to the deaths of 2.6 million children under five each year (FAO, 2012), at the global level, clearly insufficient progress has been made towards achieving this target. But, at a national level, how are governments doing?

A green future? 3 experts give their views on the future of the world's forests

To mark International Day of Forests, we brought together three experts in the field to suggest their own thoughts on what lies ahead for forests. Below they offer their hopes, and fears, for these vital ecosystems in the years to come.

Day 2 of the ‘Rachel Carson & Ruth Harrison 50 Years on Conference’

Rachel Carson has sparked the modern day environmental movement with her book Silent Spring published 50 years ago and Ruth Harrison’s book Animal Machines, also written 50 years ago, alerted the public to the undeniable suffering of calves living in veal crates and birds in battery cages. The second and final day of the conference revisiting these two books was about the current challenges of conservation and animal welfare and what the future holds. The two sessions comprised five presentations:

Schmallenberg - the impact of the virus hitting UK farms

Schmallenberg virus was first reported in in cattle the summer of 2011 near the town in Northern Germany that gives it its name. Since then, the spread of the virus has been rapid. In the UK, it was first reported on 11 farms in January 2012, and has grown month-on-month since then. It is spread by midges (Culicoides), and so can easily be transferred between animals. It has also been found in wild deer, which could be a reservoir of infection.

It causes stillbirths in lambs and calves, and fever, reduced milk yields and loss of appetite in adult cattle. Schmallenberg virus has now been confirmed at over 1500 farms in the UK, and has been detected throughout northern, central and eastern Europe.

Chocolate Made in South Africa for homesick Brits?

This blog is about the weirdness of global trade… and the lengths (literally) we go for chocolate.

The wrapper on my Marks & Spencer (M&S) valentine chocolates read: “Made with our exclusive British Milk chocolate recipe, Made in South Africa”.

Incredibly, it seemed that a firm in South Africa (SA) was targeting local people with a taste for British chocolate, and somehow M&S sourced them for sale in the UK! 

Was this I wondered another example of fuel miles not being built into food production costs (see “food miles”), like apples  from the Cape or Kenyan flowers at petrol stations?

How alien species cost Europe €12bn a year

 A report from the European Environment Agency (EEA) sets out the staggering cost of alien species - animals and plants brought to Europe from other parts of the world. The cost, and the threat to health and the environment, is said to be greater than expected, costing at least €12bn (£10bn) a year.

More than 10,000 "alien" species have gained a foothold in Europe, from Asian tiger mosquitoes to North American ragweed, and at least 1,500 are known to be harmful, the EEA said. And the real cost could be even greater than quoted.

Urban agriculture - why is it important?

Today is the second day of the Urban Agriculture Summit 2013 ’Transformative solutions on how we feed people in the urban era’ currently being held in Linköping, Sweden (29-31 January). So why this specific gathering on urban agriculture? A recent UN report estimated that the Earth’s population will increase by 40% and exceed 9 billion people by the year 2050. Simultaneously, 80% of the world’s population will live in cities. This rapid urbanization goes together with a rapid increase in urban poverty and urban food insecurity. With traditional farming practices and increases in consumption, the Earth’s arable land will soon no longer be sufficient to produce enough food for the growing population. Urban agriculture can provide a complementary strategy to reduce urban poverty and food insecurity and enhance urban environmental management.

A sweeter future for bee farmers

Whilst tuning into the BBC’s Great Comic Relief Bakeoff last week I was interested to hear about TREE AID and their honey project in Ghana.

TREE AID supports villagers to produce and market honey so that they can generate income to provide their families. The villagers are encouraged to farm bees during the dry months when there is little else to harvest. The honey is collected at night when the bees are more drowsy from hives placed in suitable trees. Funds raised by TREE AID, along with Comic Relief, will provide suits to protect from bee stings enabling the farmers to extract the honey safely.

Forest honey is produced across the world, from the eucalypt honeys of Australia to the acacia honeys of the Ukraine. A quick look on CAB Abstracts reveals over 450 papers on honey as a non-wood forest product. Some interesting papers include:

Paumgarten, F.; Kassa, H.; Zida, M.; Moeliono, M.; 2012. Benefits, challenges, and enabling conditions of collective action to promote sustainable production and marketing of products from Africa's dry forests. Review of Policy Research, 29, 2: 229-250.

Shackleton, S.; Paumgarten, F.; Kassa, H.; Husselman, M.; Zida, M.; Pottinger, A. J.; Mwangi, E.; 2011. Opportunities for enhancing poor women's socioeconomic empowerment in the value chains of three African non-timber forest products (NTFPs). International Forestry Review, 13, 2: 136-151.

TREE AID works to unlock the potential of trees in dryland regions Africa and has further projects in the following countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, and Niger.