CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

We're moving!

We’re moving!

After almost 12 years, the CABI blog is migrating to a new platform and a new URL: https://blog.cabi.org/ Our new blog will be built on WordPress, which means it’ll look better and load faster on mobile devices and feature better social media integration. The commenting system is also more robust, and the CABI blog is now better integrated with CABI’s other blogs (on Plantwise and Invasives).

 

If you currently subscribe to the blog via RSS or email you will no longer receive updates. To keep receiving alerts whenever we post a new article, please visit https://blog.cabi.org/ and re-subscribe. Don’t worry about losing your favourite article from the last 12 years – all of our archives have been migrated as well.

 

We look forward to sharing stories about our online resources, publishing products and our work in international development in our new home!

Phytosanitary Risk Management Programme - transforming livelihoods in Pakistan

Meet Rozina Babar, she is one of thousands of smallholder farmers in Pakistan whose livelihoods are threatened by agricultural pests and diseases that can devastate crops and ultimately have a severe impact on food security and profitability.

However, thanks to the CABI-led Phytosanitary Risk Management Programme – funded by USAID-USDA and working with partners including the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council – Rozina has seen increases in her income from Rs. 30,000 ($260) to Rs. 70,000 ($605).

The fruit and vegetable farmer from Rahimabad, a small village in the district Gilgit in the province of Gilgit Baltistan, has been trained by CABI to implement biological control methods to tackle the fruit fly pest which has been threatening her crops.

Cotton harvest picture special

 

The power of the image paints a picture that speaks a thousand words and that is certainly the case with these fantastic images taken by photographer Asim Hafeez.

Asim was commissioned by CABI to document the process of harvesting cotton in Pakistan – the country’s largest industrial sector – where more than 500,000 farmers rely on the crop for their livelihoods.

CABI is helping the country’s cotton industry reduce losses of around $350m a year by training thousands of farmers and workers about better production, transport and storage practices as part of the Better Cotton Initiative.

These photographs tell the story of how cotton farmers at five districts (Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Umer Kot, Tando Allah Yar and Matiari, of Sindh, Pakistan are learning to grow more and lose less of what they sow, thereby maintaining their livelihoods through increased profitability.

Women Authors with an Impact - Academic Book Week 2018

2018 marks one hundred years since women were given the right to vote. The implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 5, ‘Gender Equality’, which came into force in 2016 shows how far we have come in our progress towards giving women equal rights a hundred years later. What we now have to show for this call to action is nothing short of a social landmark, with more women in higher paid roles and senior positions, meaning women subsequently have more of a voice in decision-making units. On Academic Book Week 2018 we are celebrating our female authors who have set an example of how we can head in the right direction towards giving women a voice of authority.

Water, tourism and gender – how tourism can increase inequalities. From the work of Dr Stroma Cole

March 22 is World Water Day, designated to focus our attention on the importance of water. The theme for World Water Day 2018 is ‘Nature for Water’ – exploring nature-based solutions to the water challenges we face in the 21st century. But of course water is essential for life, and thus affects every aspect of human development, as well as the ecosystems that support us. Today, 2.1 billion people still live without safe drinking water at home; affecting their health, education and livelihoods. Earlier this week, on a visit to CABI Headquarters in Wallingford, CABI book author Dr Stroma Cole gave a talk on gender equality and tourism in which, with World Water Day this week, she focused particularly on water issues, and how women bear the brunt of the problems which can be created when tourism development increases demand for water. Dr Cole, a senior lecturer in tourism geography at the University of the West of England and a Director of Equality in Tourism, has worked on tourism and water inequality in Indonesia, Costa Rica and India, and in her presentation focused particularly on the situation in Labuan Bajo, a rapidly growing gateway town to Komodo National Park in Indonesia.

Family-centric cinema: a Q&A on changing the conversation for women in agriculture

Women need first-hand information and knowledge about new agricultural technologies to have a say on how family farms are run, according to Dannie Romney, Global Director, Development, Communication and Extension, CABI.

Dannie is currently Project Executive for the Africa Soil Health Consortium (ASHC) and Gender and the Legume Alliance (GALA) projects working jointly in Ghana. 

Understanding that families are a unit of production directs how the GALA project supports small-scale farming households to achieve sustainable legume intensification.

The project team recognise the gender issues involved and the constraints women may face in adopting a family-centric learning approach. The first step is to improve their access to information and knowledge on farming techniques.

Intra-household survey – Tanzania

This blog piece was originally posted on the ASHC blog

Over the past few months the GALA delivery team has been trying to understand how households in Tanzania obtained and share information on farming practices. This will help us to understand the effectiveness of different communication approaches in delivering agricultural information to small-scale farmers.  It will also help us to reflect on which currently change attitude and behaviour.