AGRIBUSINESS: Transforming our food system to ensure a sustainable future.

AGRIBUSINESS: Transforming our food system to ensure a sustainable future. By 2050, the world will have almost 10 billion people. It will be impossible to feed everyone without exacerbating poverty, accelerting deforestation and increasing GHG(Green House Gas) emissions unless we start making substantial changes to our food system now. 

 This issue is covered in a new report, Creating a Sustainable Food Future , published on December 5 in the World Resources Report series. The report was produced by World Resources Institute(WRI)in partnership with the World Bank, UN Environment, UN Development Programme, CIRAD and INRA. In the report, WRI suggests ways of feeding almost 10 billion people by 2050.

 Food demand is set to rise by over 50%, with demand for animal-based food products (meat, dairy and eggs) likely to grow by almost 70%. Hundreds of millions of people already go hungry, Farming uses around half the world's green areas and generates a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Unsurprisingly, the report says that there is no silver bullet. However, it does offer a menu of 22 options that suggests it is possible to feed everyone sustainably.

 "This resembles the "Healthy" scenario established by the CIRAD-INRA Agrimonde-Terra foresight exercise in many important ways. However, the two differ in terms of their initial objectives. WRI set out to increase food production while reducing GHG emissions and limiting the spread of agriculture. WRI estimates that feeding the world sustainably while reducing agricultural land use and GHG emissions by 2050 will mean the whole world: 

 (1) reducing demand by cutting food loss and waste, eating less beef and lamb, using crops for food and feed rather than biofuels, and reducing population growth by achieving replacement fertility levels; (2) increasing crop and livestock productivity to higher than historical levels but on the same land area; (3) stopping deforestation, restoring peat lands and degraded land, and linking yield gains to protection of natural landscapes; (4) improving aquaculture and managing wild fisheries more effectively; (5) using innovative technologies and farming methods that lower agricultural GHG emissions.

 Limiting global warming will mean acting on the food sector. Food lies behind most environmental and development issues: deforestation, malnutrition, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, climate change, water pollution and more. By improving how the world's food is produced and consumed, we can treat the cause and not just the symptoms.

AGRIBUSINESS: How to increase insurance adoption in developing countries.

AGRIBUSINESS: How to increase insurance adoption in developing countries.

Farmers in developing countries often rely heavily on their yearly harvest to feed their families. A bad crop can have severe consequences for their livelihood. Despite the significant advantages crop insurances would offer in alleviating this risk, only a small percentage of farmers insure their crops.

 A simple but effective solution tested by researchers from the University of Zurich has increased insurance adoption to over 70 percent. 

 For decades, companies, aid organizations and governments in developing countries have tried to increase the numbers of farmers who insure their crops. However, farmers' adoption remains stubbornly low. 

Lorenzo Casaburi from the Department of Economics at the UZH and his co-author Jack Willis identified a simple solution to increase the take up rates of these insurance. They found that, when it comes to crop insurance, timings and what economists call time preferences are crucial.

 In standard insurance products, premiums are paid at a time when farmers are cash strapped. In addition, as the potential benefit from the insurance, i.e. the payout in case of a bad harvest, lies in the future, its value is mentally discounted. This potential money in the future seems worth less than the price it would cost today. The farmer decides that it is therefore not worth the investment. 

 Timing of payment of insurance premiums is key. Usually, crop insurances have to be paid at the beginning of the season, just as the farmers need money for inputs, seeds, machinery and to feed their family until harvest, when they can sell their produce. 

 The researchers made a very simple change to the insurance policy: they shifted the payment date for the insurance to harvest time. 

In case of a good harvest, the farmer received the price for his harvest from which the insurance premium was deducted. In case of a bad harvest, the farmer received a price for his harvest and an insurance payout. 

 The researchers tested this innovation though a randomized controlled trial. "By simply moving the payment date to harvest time, we increased the pick-up rate for the insurance from 5% to 72%," says Lorenzo Casaburi and adds, "what's more, it was the poorest farmers that increased their demand the most."INSURANCE

VETERINARY MEDICINE: Canine 'aptitude test for working dogs.

VETERINARY MEDICINE: Canine 'aptitude test for working dogs.The canine labor market is diverse and expansive. Assistance dogs may be trained to work with the visually or hearing impaired, or with people in wheelchairs. Detection dogs may be trained to sniff out explosives, narcotics or bedbugs. Other pups even learn to jump out of helicopters on daring rescue missions. VETERINARY MEDICINE: Canine 'aptitude test for working dogs. A canine cognition test could help organizations that train working dogs identify the dogs that are most likely to succeed, according to new research. If organizations could better predict which dogs will succeed in working roles, it could save thousands of dollars in training costs and ensure people in need get dogs faster.

RESEARCH: Sniffer dogs could detect malaria in people.

RESEARCH: Sniffer dogs could detect malaria in people.Dogs detect malaria by sniffing socks worn by African children. As the global battle against malaria stalls, scientists may be adding a novel tool to the fight: sniffer dogs. In recent tests trained sniffer dogs successfully diagnosed malaria infections simply by sniffing samples from socks worn briefly by children from a malaria endemic area of West Africa, according to a new study presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Meeting. "People with malaria parasites generate distinct odors on their skin and our study found dogs, which have an incredibly sensitive sense of smell, can be trained to detect these odors even when it's just on an article of clothing worn by an infected person," said Steven Lindsay, a public health entomologist at in the Department of Biosciences at Durham University in the United Kingdom and the lead investigator on the study. The research was conducted with colleagues from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), the Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and experts from a charity, Medical Detection Dogs. The charity has trained dogs to detect a variety of maladies, including prostate cancer and people at risk of slipping into a diabetic coma.

VETERINARY MEDICINE : Glyphosate found in cat and dog food.

VETERINARY MEDICINE : Glyphosate found in cat and dog food.A new study finds that glyphosate, the active herbicidal ingredient in widely used weed killers like Roundup, was present at low levels in a variety of dog and cat foods the researchers purchased at stores. A new Cornell study published this month in Environmental Pollution finds that glyphosate, the active herbicidal ingredient in widely used weed killers like Roundup, was present at low levels in a variety of dog and cat foods.VETERINARY MEDICINE : Glyphosate found in cat and dog food. The study grew out of a larger interdisciplinary research project led by Brian Richards, senior research associate in biological and environmental engineering, and supported by the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future's Academic Venture Fund, which sought to reassess glyphosate mobility and impacts in several contexts: movement from crop fields in surface water, impacts on soils and on animals consuming it in their feed.VETERINARY MEDICINE : Glyphosate found in cat and dog food.

AGRIBUSINESS: Tanzania Orders Destruction of Monsanto/Gates Foundation GMO Trials.

AGRIBUSINESS: Tanzania Orders Destruction of Monsanto/Gates Foundation GMO Trials. Tanzanian civil society organisations (CSOs) welcome the decision of the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Mathew Mtigumwe, to bring an immediate stop to all ongoing GMO trials taking place in the country. These are under the auspices of the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project which includes Monsanto, the Gates Foundation and national research centres.

Agribusiness: French Government Starts Phase-Out of Glyphosate with Online Farmer Platform and Herbicide Tax.

Agribusiness: French Government Starts Phase-Out of Glyphosate with Online Farmer Platform and Herbicide Tax. French Government Starts Phase-Out of Glyphosate with Online Farmer Platform and Herbicide Tax.The French government has released its glyphosate ‘phase-out’ online platform, in an attempt to help farmers across the country to stop using the world’s most used herbicide before 2020. French President Emmanuel Macron’s office stated that the online platorm has been designed “to have a declarative site where every farmer who wishes can commit themselves either to say that they have already stopped using glyphosate, or to say that they have committed to stop its use in three years.” Macron himself stated that the platform is for “all farmers who are ready to go sign up, make it visible, put pressure on others, create traceability to say everything is done without glyphosate.”