CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Guaranteeing credit to coffee farmers in Ethiopia and Rwanda

At a time when the coffee sector is faced with many challenges, ranging from low productivity, high production costs, to the threat of climate change, it is crucial to remember those most affected. Approximately 25 million small scale coffee farmers and their families produce 70% of the world’s coffee and it is they who bear the brunt of these problems. - Robério Oliveira Silva, Executive Director International Coffee Organization.

1 October is International Coffee Day, a global celebration of coffee’s journey from farms to local shops around the world. It is a great opportunity to honour the men and women who grow and harvest the coffee we love. The 77 Member States of the International Coffee Organization and several coffee associations around the world will come together to celebrate the second annual International Coffee Day. We take a look at how CABI is helping coffee farmers improve their livelihoods.

Author of the Month: Plants and Planting on Landscape Sites, Peter Thoday

 

“Plant a tree in ’73, Plant some more in ’74”. Those slogans mark the start of the public’s awareness and many authorities enthusiasm for tree planting. Of course our love of and respect for trees  in both urban and rural landscapes, had been part of our culture  for centuries  but had somehow slipped out of the general public’s awareness over the 20^th century.

Those slogans along with other skilful promotions were hugely successful. Trees of various shapes and many sizes were planted everywhere and anywhere, many husbanded with care and sited in appropriate places but far too many were doomed through either going into impossible sites or being planted without skill or understanding. A sad story that moved one arboriculturalist  to add his take on the campaign slogan - “But are they alive in 75?”;  while another suggested putting the instruction “green side up” on each transplant when it left the nursery.

Why Latin America is nearer elimination of rabies than Africa

 
"World Rabies Day" is September 28th. Copyright: CC, Global Alliance for Rabies Control   
   
Rabies: a contagious and fatal viral disease of dogs and other mammals, transmissible through the saliva to humans and causing madness and convulsions. Rabies is fatal once symptoms appear.

Latin America is doing far better at managing, controlling and ultimately eliminating rabies from the region. Africa is failing to make the same gains and a rethink is required: can the lessons learned in Latin America be  applied or adapted to Africa?

At  the biennial RSTMH meeting “Challenges in Disease Elimination” held in Cambridge [September 12-16th, 2016], Katie Hampson [University of Glasgow] described the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO)'s surveillance & management framework operating in Mexico and Brazil,  and devised to support the elimination of rabies in 25 PAHO countries. She also described the work of Tanzanian colleagues who have developed a “pragmatic approach to surveillance” for the African setting where resources are constrained.

Current situation of rabies control in Latin America vs Africa

The short answer is that in Latin America, PAHO, which exists to “strengthen national and local health systems and improve the health of the peoples of the Americas”, has concentrated on vaccinating the dog population against rabies and interrupting transmission. African countries have no similar regional support structure for their health ministries and rely on post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP)  of humans bitten by dogs, to achieve a form of control of rabies. PEP vaccination only saves lives if the bitten person has timely access to a well-stocked clinic, and the money to pay for the shots. In remote and rural areas, this can lead to grim choices: which child do you treat if you only have money for one?  We heard at the RSTMH of an African mother with several children bitten by the “family dog”, who having travelled a great distance to reach the vaccine, was then faced with that very choice.

World Tourism Day: Tourism for All - promoting universal accessibility

World Tourism Day is celebrated on 27 September to foster awareness among the international community of the importance of tourism and its social, cultural, political and economic value. In 2016, the theme of WTD is accessibility, and how to make tourism something everyone can enjoy. While accessibility is most commonly discussed in relation to people with disabilities, it also affects many older people who may become mobility impaired, and also families travelling with small children, which brings its’ own challenges for transport and accommodation. As we will all get older, accessibility is an issue likely to affect us all at some stage in our lives. Reaching universal accessibility in tourism is a shared responsibility of all parties involved in the tourism value chain, as well as a business opportunity for companies and destinations. Official celebrations for WTD 2016 are taking place today, 27 September, in Bangkok, Thailand.

CABI joins the Africa Green Revolution Forum 2016

Image: The Plantwise stand attracts great interest from the AGRF audience

CABI was among more than 200 organizations that took part in AGRA’s Africa Green Revolution Forum 2016 in Nairobi on 5-9 September 2016. The forum, which brings together stakeholders in agriculture from Africa and other parts of the world, was themed ‘Seizing the Movement: Securing Africa’s Rise Through Agricultural Transformation’. AGRF 2016 was designed to showcase examples of transformation in agriculture in action and to promote efforts to drive and achieve scale and to foster accelerated impact. The forum took place at the United Nations complex at Gigiri in Nairobi, Kenya.

Stepping out in the countryside - how much is it worth?

 

Staff at the CABI HQ in Wallingford this week are making an extra effort to get up from their desks to walk around the building, and the surrounding paths and lanes may be seeing more groups of people than usual out for lunchtime walks. This is all down to a ‘wellness’ campaign in which pedometers have been made available to staff in exchange for a small charity donation, with those obtaining them recording their steps during the working week to meet a group target of one million steps. Also occurring this September is a national fundraising ‘Stepember’ campaign for the disability charity Scope, where participants are challenged to clock up 10,000 steps a day. Here at CABI we are fortunate to be in an area where lunchtime walks can take in fields, woods, and even the banks of the River Thames, making outdoor exercise a much more appealing idea than walking around an urban block. Thus it was timely today to read a story carried on various news outlets about the value of natural environments for health, when the benefits of exercise carried out in parks, woods and other open areas are converted to monetary value. The study by the University of Exeter and Public Health England, published ahead of print on the Preventive Health journal website, estimates that so-called ‘green exercise’ provides health benefits worth £2.2 billion a year to adults in England. 

Adapt – Amplify – Accelerate – recommends new report on rural development

According to a new report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) economic growth is not enough to transform rural areas in developing countries; governments need to develop inclusive policies and tailor investments if they want to make a fundamental change in rural peoples’ quality of life.

South-south and triangular cooperation leads to Rwanda soil health breakthrough

"As we embark on efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we need to accelerate development momentum across the South, including by building resilience and mitigating risk." - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Message for the UN Day of South-South Cooperation

12 September is the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation. South-south cooperation (the exchange of resources, technology and knowledge between developing countries) and triangular cooperation (southern-driven partnerships supported by a developed country) are important for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We take a look at how a CABI collaboration brought expertise from Africa, China and Europe to help a soil health breakthrough.

 

School expedition gathers data on biodiversity in Mexico

 Scuba quadrats. Image credit: David H. Williams, Rye St Antony

Our guest blogger this month is David Williams, who is the Head of Science at Rye St Antony School, Oxford. He recently led a group of schoolgirls on an Operation Wallacea expedition to Mexico, where they took part in a conservation project which involved conducting mammal surveys and assessing the impacts of tourism on turtle populations and coral reefs. David tells his story as a diary looking at events over the two-week expedition.

I was delighted to be asked to blog on this subject. One of my student’s parents works at CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International) – an organisation that focuses on the environment and biodiversity. As an editor at this organisation, she saw the opportunity to highlight the work of schools and conservation. I’m keen to promote science both as a career and as an interest for life, and feel that this is best done by encouraging an appreciation of science as a real, relevant and ongoing subject. My story starts here …

Global food security equals national security?

What motivates you to care for people and environments with whom you’re not in direct contact? That is the question I’ve been pondering today on the fourth International Day of Charity. The day was established by the United Nations to encourage people, NGOs and other stakeholders to help others through volunteer and philanthropic activities. Such activities naturally mean different things to different people – essentially they are actions through which you express care for humanity and the planet. Perhaps you donate money for a cause, participate in a demonstration, or create new information on topics related to agriculture and global health.

Interestingly, President Obama recently made a distinction between charitable purposes and global development efforts. When announcing the signing of the Global Food Security Act of 2016 (GFSA) in late July, Obama said, “Development isn’t charity; it’s one of the smartest investments we can make in our shared future, in our security and our prosperity.” Loosely summarised his message was that improving food security in developing countries is important not only because it improves the quality of peoples’ lives abroad – it also decreases conflicts and increases well-being globally, including in the United States.