The future of the world’s first seed bank, maintained by the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry near St. Petersburg, Russia, is threatened by real estate developers looking to build new homes on the prime real estate owned by the Institute. According to the Washington Post, The station was founded in 1924 by Nikolai Vavilov, a […]
The Global Food Security blog will be running a “Five Questions for…” series beginning with Anna Lappé, co-founder of the Small Planet Institute and author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of your Fork and What You Can Do about It. The format will consist of a short profile […]
The British research agency Maplecroft released a report ranking the countries most likely to experience food shortages. The list is topped by Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Liberia, Chad and Zimbabwe. In addition to taking 9 of the top 10 spots on the list, African countries come in 36 of […]
To date, over 1,600 people have died and around 14 million people have been affected by the floods in Pakistan which have followed the country’s worst monsoon rains in 80 years. Sir John Holmes, the Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN, has stated that “if we don’t act […]
With Russia’s worst heatwave on record expected to last for the next ten days, experts begin to worry about the potential for devastating economic losses; in this case, a possible $14 billion off economic growth. On August 5th, Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, announced a ban on grain exports after more than a third of […]
A recent BBC article reports that more people are classified as “poor”in India’s eight poorest states than Africa’s 26 poorest countries. In this case, an estimated 421 million Indians are in poverty. Recently, many have argued that the Indian government should replace its inefficient social safety net of subsidized government food, cooking fuel and education […]
As Russia fights to protect land sown with wheat, barley and other crops from record high temperatures, seventeen regions have declared emergencies because of the severe heat and drought. Summer heat may destroy crops in Russia With temperatures likely to remain as high as 36° Celsius (96.8° degrees Fahrenheit) for days to come, Russia’s Agricultural […]
While tackling drought and famine may be some of the top concerns for today’s developing nations, the steady growth of the demand for specialty foods in the United States over the past decade may have the potential to assist in the growth of their economies. Now making up almost 16% of U.S. food sales, the […]
This week, the highly controversial issue of genetically modified organisms (or GMO’s for short) was thrown into the limelight, when members of the European Union proposed a new policy meant to broaden the availability of such foods known to many Europeans as “Frankenfoods.” The flexibility of this new policy is aimed at enabling countries like […]
An AllAfrica.com article reports that state authorities and aid agencies in northern Nigeria are preparing to combat predicted food shortages. This follows poor and erratic rainfall in 2009 and predicted poor rainfall again this year. The Nigeria Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) warned that 12 million people across northern Nigeria could face a lack of basic […]
Recent studies undertaken by the University of Illinois state that new methods of crop development must be adopted in response to climate change if grain production is to meet future demand. Don Ort, a University of Illinois professor of crop sciences and USDA/ARS scientist argues that “global change is happening so quickly that its impact […]
At the 2010 G20 Summit held recently in Toronto, world leaders committed to more funding to address climate change and food security across the globe. Predictably, the global financial crisis has impacted those living in poverty the most, raising food prices above the reach of millions, resulting in an estimated addition of 109 million people […]
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