Food

BARAA AL-HALABI via Getty Images

There were challenges due to conflict, insecurity and deliberate obstructions.

huffingtonpost.com - AP - by Edith M. Lederer - August 26, 2015

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accused all parties in the Syrian conflict of "indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks" on civilians and said the U.N. and its partners couldn't deliver food to 422,000 people in besieged areas in July.

Ban said in his monthly report to the U.N. Security Council circulated Tuesday that access to the 4.6 million Syrians in hard-to-reach areas - most controlled by Islamic State extremists - remains a critical concern with extremely limited humanitarian access.

He said U.N. agencies and their partners reached only 29 of the 127 hard-to-reach locations last month, and in the besieged areas, the only aid that arrived was a trickle of health assistance to 1.8 percent of the population.

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Image: A hunter in camoflauge, sitting next to another hunger, takes aim with a firearm.

slashgear.com - August 21st, 2015 - Chris Burns

A ten-year study is published on "the unique ecology of human predators", showing mankind to be an unsustainable threat to all wildlife on our planet. This paper, authored by C. Darimont, C. Fox, H. Bryan, and T. Reimchen, compares the predatory patterns of humans to all other predators on the planet. They show that humans kill adult prey at a median rate up to 14 times higher than other predators, with "particularly intense exploitation" of terrestrial carnivores and fish.

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The most promising soil and water management practices will be scaled up. Photo: N. Palmer (CIAT)

ccafs.cgiar.org - by Mathieu Ouedraogo, Sibiri Jean Ouedraogo, Sekou Toure, Maimouna Fane - August 11, 2015

A collaboration among regional research institutes and National Agricultural Research Systems establishes strong partnership for upscaling the “farms of the future” approach.

In West Africa, climate change brings new challenges to agriculture. Among other things, it is straining the livelihoods of the rural population, given their high dependence on the climate.

Because these challenges cannot be addressed by one research institution alone, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) tackles the problem through an intervention approach based on a worldwide strategic collaboration between CGIAR and Future Earth.

fao.org

Introduction

The FAO has always been concerned with agricultural development and food security. Recent disease epidemics, in both developing and industrialised countries, have once again focussed attention on livestock disease and their potential to harm development. In the context of developing countries, disease epidemics do four things:

They reduce herds and flocks dramatically, which, in the case of pastoral peoples, is a major blow to food security and the ability to survive;

They cause trading partners to - quite understandably - put trade barriers in place in order to protect their own countries from infection. Where livestock or meat exporting countries are affected by epidemics, their "pariah" status can cost millions of dollars in terms of foreign exchange losses, and drive farmers and the local meat industry to the wall.

They are a deterrent to sustained livestock production.

They add significantly to the cost of livestock production through the necessity for the application of costly disease control measures.

(CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW - FAO - Manual on Livestock Disease Surveillance and Information Systems)