A group of leading soil scientists points out the precarious state of the world’s soil resources and the possible ramifications for human security in a paper published Thursday, May 7, in the journal Science.
About one in nine people globally still suffer from hunger with the majority of the hungry living in Africa and Asia. The world’s forests have great potential to improve their nutrition and ensure their livelihoods. In fact, forests and forestry are essential to achieve food security as the limits of boosting agricultural production are becoming increasingly clear.
Amidst fears that global warming could zap a vital source of protein that has sustained humans for centuries, bean breeders with the CGIAR global agriculture research partnership announced today the discovery of 30 new types, or lines as plant breeders refer to them, of “heat-beater” beans that could keep production from crashing in large swaths of bean-dependent Latin America and Africa.
Two UW-Madison graduate students are working to introduce highly productive kits for farming mealworms to regions such as sub-Saharan Africa where eating insects is already culturally palatable. They are just practicing what they are beginning to preach: insects, and mealworms in particular, are an overlooked, healthful, economically viable and sustainable source of nutrition for people.
Editor's Note: For more about the New Voices Fellowship, visit www.aspennewvoices.org or email [email protected]. Follow all the fellows on Twitter here and the fellowship at @aspennewvoices.
A new project at Humboldt State University is seeking ways to attack college food insecurity from all angles. That means providing food aid, offering health education and cooking lessons, conducting original research on college hunger, and seeking ways to change state and national policies that make it difficult for students to access help.
If natural or manmade disaster strikes, causing global crop failures, the world won't starve--providing they are willing to eat bacterial slime and bugs.
In honor of World Food Day on October 16, the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) is highlighting eight solutions for feeding the world from its FutureFood 2050 website. They include articles featuring Kofi Annan, M.S. Swaminathan, Sylvia Earle and more. Feel free to re-publish or share these links as part of your World Food Day coverage.
With a vision of “healthy communities, food systems and behaviors,” the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior (SNEB) has a long history of supporting local farmers.
A new University of Virginia study, published online in the American Geophysical Union journal, Earth’s Future, examines global food security and the patterns of food trade that – until this analysis – have been minimally studied.
Vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, ethnic minorities, and low-income households are disproportionately affected by food security, despite the extensive private and public food safety net in the United States, according to a new report by RTI International.
It may seem like a contradiction, but millions of American children are both hungry and overweight. During Kids Eat Right Month, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics spotlights the “hungry yet overweight paradox” and ways to ensure children meet their nutrient requirements and maintain a healthy weight.
To envision challenges and solutions we may face in feeding 9 billion people anticipated by 2050, we can look to developing economies and countries that epitomize the difficulty and reward of planning for the future of food security. Scientific solutions to food challenges in Africa are the theme of recent interviews from the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) as part of its FutureFood 2050 publishing initiative.
Food waste that is unused, yet nutritionally viable, may help to feed a growing and nutritionally “insecure” world population and minimize the impact of food production on the environment, according to Doug Rauch, former president of Trader Joe’s, Inc. and current CEO of the nonprofit Conscious Capitalism, Inc. Rauch was the keynote speaker during the opening session at the 2014 Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting & Food Expo® in New Orleans.
Researchers create model that can predict the effects of changing climate, planting and other agricultural variables. This could lead to optimized agricultural land use and improve regional food security.
Annual carbon emissions from global agriculture can be reduced by as much as 50 to 90 percent by 2030—the equivalent of removing all the cars in the world—according to a comprehensive new report released by Climate Focus and California Environmental Associates. The study highlights twelve key strategies—led by reduced global beef consumption, reduced food waste and better farm nutrient management and production—that can deliver big climate wins while maintaining food security and building resilience.
In the April issue of Food Technology magazine, published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), contributing authors write about how extrusion technology is a powerful food processing technique that can produce a variety of products made from locally grown grains, cereals and legumes while maintaining nutrient content and fighting off unsafe contaminants.
A new international partnership seeks to increase wheat yields by 50 percent by 2034. This will address demand for wheat – one of the world’s most important crops – that is growing much faster than production.
Several items at the grocery store will cost more this year, including beef, pork, vegetables and nuts. Most of the increase in price is because of extreme drought facing several states.
The rise of tuberculosis (TB) in Zimbabwe during the socio-economic crisis of 2008-9 has been linked to widespread food shortage, according to a new study led by Canadian researchers from the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health published in PLOS ONE.
Yields of rice, wheat and corn appear to have maxed out on 30 percent of the world's agricultural croplands, according to a University of Nebraska-Lincoln study published in Nature Communications.
The Brown Revolution-rebuilding soil ecology-is helping farmers feed communities. The methods restore land depleted from overuse, and are easily replicated in various geographic areas.
In The Noodle Narratives: The Global Rise of an Industrial Food into the Twenty-First Century, Amherst College professor Deborah Gewertz and her co-authors examine the history, manufacturing and consumption of instant noodles and argue that the food will play a more vital role in the world’s future.
With fewer than a dozen flowering plants out of 300,000 species accounting for 80 percent of humanity’s caloric intake, people need to tap unused plants to feed the world in the near future, claims Cornell University plant geneticist Susan McCouch in the Comment feature of the July 4 issue of Nature.
A special section in the Journal of Environmental Quality details the challenges China faces today in managing nutrient losses from crop and livestock production, and how the country must shift from a sole focus on food security to a triple emphasis on food security, efficient use of resources, and environmental protection.
Like a stealthy enemy, blast disease invades rice crops around the world, killing plants and cutting production of one of the most important global food sources. Now, a study by an international team of researchers sheds light on how the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae, invades plant tissue. The finding is a step toward learning how to control the disease, which by some estimates destroys enough rice to feed 60 million people annually.
North America isn’t known as a hotspot for crop plant diversity, yet a new inventory has uncovered nearly 4,600 wild relatives of crop plants in the United States, including close relatives of globally important food crops such as sunflower, bean, sweet potato, and strawberry.
In low doses, hydrogen sulfide, a substance implicated in several mass extinctions, could greatly enhance plant growth, leading to a sharp increase in global food supplies and plentiful stock for biofuel production, new University of Washington research shows.
Climate change, water scarcity, increasing world population, and rising food prices are only some of the socioeconomic factors that threaten agriculture and food security worldwide, especially for disadvantaged populations that live in arid and sub-arid regions. In the May issue of Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), researchers looked into how millet grains serve as a major food component for millions of people in these countries, as well as for people with special diet needs and those seeking foods high in nutrients.
Consistent access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and water is a fundamental human right, and is particularly important in helping developing nations to achieve food and nutrition security, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in its newly updated position paper, Nutrition Security in Developing Nations: Sustainable Food, Water and Health.
Food insecurity, or an inadequate intake of food due to lack of resources, affected almost one in six U.S. households in 2011. Overall, more than 50 million people, including almost 17
million children, suffer from food security issues at some time each year.
In Ohio, more than 2 million residents are experiencing food insecurity.
In this white paper, we examine the extent of hunger in America, the inextricable links of hunger to poor health, and the need to consider hunger as a health issue to make the changes needed.
A new study currently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science provides the first global quantitative assessment of land and water “grabbing” for food production by wealthier nations in generally poorer countries.
Daphne Hernandez, assistant professor of health and human performance at the University of Houston, urges all to be mindful of those who live with need all year, particularly families who are “food insecure.” According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Core Food Security Module, “food insecurity” reflects rationing, portion control and inability to offer families balanced meals.
A new study co-authored by the Wildlife Conservation Society identifies countries most vulnerable to declining coral reef fisheries from a food-security perspective while providing a framework to plan for alternative protein sources needed to replace declining fisheries.
Although many U.S. consumers were alarmed to see news reports this summer of droughts leaving shriveled crops dying in the fields, John Stanton, Ph.D., professor of food marketing at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, warns other factors will have a greater effect on Americans’ wallets. “Price increases from the droughts are likely to have short-term effects, but global issues can have a longer and greater impact,” Stanton explains, citing increasing demand from the rest of the world for crops like corn.
More than 30,000 children under the age of five have perished in Somalia in the last two months as a result of the famine that has stricken the country. With the tenth anniversary of September 11th approaching, the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) wants to bring a global focus to its annual Commitment to the Community day and has decided to address one of humanity’s basic needs—adequate and quality nutrition. GW SMHS is pleased to be partnering with the DC chapter of Kids Against Hunger to provide 60,000 meals to feed the famine-stricken families in the Horn of Africa.
Christopher B. Barrett, professor of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, comments on the impact of record global food-price levels.
More than seven in 10 low-income families in a new University of Nebraska-Lincoln study struggled to reach adequate levels of nutrition in their diet, researchers said.
Scientists have reviewed state-of-the-art association mapping of maize, and the factors that will allow for the maximum impact of this new tool in gene discovery studies and practical maize improvement programs.
As food suppliers attempt to meet the growing demand for local products, a new study finds it’s not always economically or environmentally viable for multi-product industries to focus heavily on local sales.