How Six Families Joined Hands to Grow Their Own Organic Food in Noida.

How Six Families Joined Hands to Grow Their Own Organic Food in Noida. A healthy diet begins with lots of fruits and vegetables, but some of the shiny, ‘perfect looking’ veggies available in the market may not good for your health after all. A study by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India under the Union agriculture ministry threw up some unpalatable facts – vegetables and fruits on sale in the market may contain startling amounts of harmful chemicals. This is a result of the fact that, over the years, conventional farmers have been increasingly spraying synthetic pesticides on crops to kill insects and waxing the harvested produce to increase their shelf life. It’s time to take a closer look at what’s on our plates and where it comes from and what we are feeding our families. This is exactly what six families in Noida are doing, worried that the food their children were eating was laden with pesticides, chemicals and fertilizers, they decided to take up organic farming to source farm fresh vegetables for themselves.more

Female farmers in Kenya are collapsing gender and economic barriers.

Activities of 63-year-old Easther Tuiya and other members of the Elenarai Cooperative Women Society have turned the tide for Kenyan women farmers, in terms of economic opportunities and income generation in agriculture. This means good news for women empowerment, gender equality, and an overall balance of Kenya’s economic climate. The practice of conservation agriculture has become more prominent amongst female farmers in the country, and the Muchore Mutethia have made their way around middlemen to secure their income by being sole producers of food crop for a renowned brewery. All of these feats see Kenyan women farmers come a long way from agricultural restrictions that left them selling charcoal and firewood for a living, and arriving at a place where they make immense contributions to the country’s economy and environment. The frequent droughts and growing food insecurity in Kenya moved women farmers to discover other options to what was once a common trade for them. This was especially since the climatic conditions further prevent the business from thriving, and the journey to gather wood has become a risky venture for the women. To solve their problems, Easther Tuiya and her group of former charcoal and firewood traders started out with the vision to repair their landscape through the planting of trees and harvesting rain water. more

Federal Government to partner groups assisting start-up entrepreneurs.

FG to partner groups assisting start-up entrepreneurs. The Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo expressed the readiness of the Federal Government to work with groups assisting Nigerian start-up entrepreneurs. Osinbajo said this in Abuja when he visited the “Civic Innovation Lab”, a non-profit organization with offices and facilities set up to support Nigerians in implementing business ideas that they have innovated. The visit of the Acting President came on a day the Federal Executive Council approved a new “National Science, Technology and Innovation Roadmap”, designed to kick-start the engine of innovation and start-up in Nigeria. The acting president maintained that the Buhari administration was a government elected to serve and would do so by giving “support wherever possible to groups or organizations that are assisting fellow citizens to realize their dreams of owning their own businesses“. more

Nigeria: Customs, rice farmers sign MoU to curb smuggling.

In a bid to stop smuggling of rice and importation of substandard rice to Nigeria, rice farmers and customs sign an MoU. The Nigeria Customs Service and the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to stop rice smuggling through land border into the country. Alhaji Aminu Goronyo, President Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) who confirmed the development said even though the importation of rice through the land borders was banned since April 2016 with an extension to the restriction of rice into the Nigerian market from the Export Processing Zones (EPZ), smugglers still engaged in the unwholesome act. He warned Nigerians against the consumption of foreign rice, saying that most of the imported rice was stale and only meant for animal and fish feeds. He said result of test by NAFDAC through some samples of some of the rice seizures had ascertained that smuggled rice through the land borders was unfit for human consumption. more

Nigeria to launch yams export to Europe, US and China.

Nigeria to launch yams export to Europe, US, China, accounts for 61% of global production. Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh, has confirmed that the Federal Government will on Thursday (today) launch the exportation of yams to Europe, United States of America and China. The minister said according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, Nigeria accounts for 61% of the total output of yams in the world the rest is shared between some countries in the West Africa and the West Indies. He assured that yam exportation will not increase hunger in the land, rather yam exportation is an economic opportunity The minister stated that not all the yams produced here are consumed as most of it is lost to wastage's because of poor technologies in preservation,thus there are plans to install to solar coolers in yam markets and yam producing areas to keep the temperature at 14 degrees Celsius, not frozen but to keep it at that temperature so that it can be good all year round and can last up to two to three years in the containers. more

Action video games boost reading skills of children with dyslexia .

Action video games boost reading skills of children with dyslexia . A study appearing in the Cell Press journal Biology shows that time spent playing action video games can actually make dyslexic children read better. In fact, 12 hours of video game play did more for reading skills than is normally achieved with a year of spontaneous reading development or demanding traditional reading treatments. The action video games enhance many aspects of visual attention, mainly improving the extraction of information from the environment.The findings come as further support for the notion that visual attention deficits are at the root of dyslexia, a condition that makes reading extremely difficult for one out of every ten children. more

How smartphones reduces brain power.

How smartphones reduces brain power. The rave of the moment now is a smartphone and as the name implies its smart indeed,taking over so many functions at home and on the farms. The smartphone has become a platform for many smart solutions,linking sensors, robots and other agritech components together,the smartness of these phones seem to be robbing the owners of their smartness(cognitive) abilities according to a new research. A new study from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin shows that your cognitive capacity is significantly reduced when your smartphone is within reach . Researchers conducted experiments with nearly 800 smartphone users in an attempt to measure, for the first time, how well people can complete tasks when they have their smartphones nearby even when they're not using them. In one experiment, the researchers asked study participants to sit at a computer and take a series of tests that required full concentration in order to score well. The tests were geared to measure participants' available cognitive capacity -- that is, the brain's ability to hold and process data at any given time. Before beginning, participants were randomly instructed to place their smartphones either on the desk face down, in their pocket or personal bag, or in another room. All participants were instructed to turn their phones to silent. The researchers found that participants with their phones in another room significantly outperformed those with their phones on the desk, and they also slightly outperformed those participants who had kept their phones in a pocket or bag. The findings suggest that the mere presence of one's smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity and impairs cognitive functioning, even though people feel they're giving their full attention and focus to the task at hand. source