CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

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.

Banned chemicals and silent springs

Recently I have been removing an array of chemicals, from alpha-hexachlorocyclohexane to zeta-cypermethrin, from CABI’s compendia (Crop Protection Compendium, Forestry Compendium and Invasive Species Compendium) records, as these chemicals have either been banned or severely restricted in their use. This work was sponsored by Plant Protection Station, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Japan.

The seed of its own destruction? Seedborne diseases and the seed trade

In 1989, farmers in Florida, Indiana and South Carolina began noticing a disease that was rapidly spreading through their watermelon crops¹. Large, dark lesions and bruises appeared on the fruit and leaves exhibited brown discolouration; all that remained of severely infected fruit was a pulpy, inedible mess. In damp conditions the disease proliferated quickly and in some areas 100% of crops were destroyed. Economic costs have been difficult to estimate, but the damage wrought to farmers across significant parts of the US was devastating. The disease – named bacterial fruit blotch – was caused by the seedborne bacterium Acidovorax citrulli.

Recycling for Zero Waste

I believe that waste prevention, reduction, re-use and recycling are key measures to achieve sustainability in a world which is becoming depleted of natural resources. These measures will also reduce the environmental impact of pollution, by reducing carbon emissions and might even benefit economic growth. For this reason, I attended a seminar on waste recycling recently to find out the status of waste reduction through recycling in the UK.

Horse in burgers and the long tradition of adulterating food.

We don’t know yet how the horse DNA recently found in cheap burgers supplied by several supermarkets in the UK got there, whether by accident or deliberately but debasing or adulterating food by using something cheaper to bulk it out it is an ancient tradition. The incentive is great. A trader or producer who does this and gets away with it makes a profit. Recent high profile cases that were prosecuted include the case where melamine was discovered in milk in China in 2007. At least in the horse DNA case there is not a food safety concern as horse is deemed edible while melamine is definitely not.

Filling the yield gap - the answer’s in agroforestry

In his recent blog Three steps to bridging the yield gap, CABI author Prof. Roger Leakey, explains how agroforestry can help to sustainably increase the productivity of crops. In brief, these are as follows:

Step 1 – Adopt agroforestry practices such as improved fallows and relay cropping to enhance crop yields.

Step 2 – Diversify the agroecosystem by including fruits, nuts and other cash crops in plantings.

Step 3 – Encourage local communities to develop value-adding and processing technologies for new tree crop products.

If followed, the steps could provide not only increased income for local communities but also a more diversified diet with plantings of new crops and an increase in employment and trade.

This three-step model provides both a “simple and inexpensive process to fill the yield gap” says Prof. Leakey.

Prof. Leakey has recently published a book on this subject entitled Living with the Trees of Life: Towards the Transformation of Tropical Agriculture

Link to Prof. Leakey’s blog

It's a dog's life: capturing animal behaviour through the lens

Image from I, Jack Russell

Prior to his talk with world renowned author and academic Dr. John Bradshaw on Wednesday 16 January at Blackwell's Bookstore, Oxford , guest blogger and professional photographer Andy Hughes writes about the human-animal bond from a photographers perspective using images from his recent publication I, Jack Russell

Photographers, artists, writers and other ‘creatives’ are diverse in motivation, interests, experiences and insights. Much of my photographic practice deals with issues concerning the marine and coastal environment, however recently, I realized or perhaps discovered by accident that I had many more images of my two dogs than I did of my family and friends and this lead to a new field of research. I began this project about Jack Russell dogs by looking to find as many family snapshots, which included our dogs. I found a few and these are included in my recent book I Jack Russell which attempts to encourage readers to think about their own snapshots of dogs and about the dog human bond.

A new Food Tank for 2013

At the start of this new year (as at the start of many previous years), I am making the resolutions of improving my diet and getting fitter with the aim of ending 2013 healthier than my current state! From this personal level, I was interested to read about the launch of Food Tank: The Food Think Tank on January 10^th and their views on the state of the World population's food supply and health. Driven by the global situation in 2013 that sees nearly one billion people still hungry and more than one billion suffering from the effects of being overweight and obese, this Think Tank's goal is to be a clearing house and community to inform, share, and scale up innovations that are helping alleviate hunger and poverty while also protecting the environment. The forum aims to offer original research, share stories of success and impact, and highlight what's working on the ground. Of particular interest are the Food Tank’s 13 resolutions to change the food system in 2013: