food security

The world needs a comprehensive and binding treaty to phase out the use of highly dangerous pesticides and to promote agroecology, which replaces chemicals with biology, as the sustainable method of food production, two UN experts recommended in a report to the UN Human Rights Council. "The assertion promoted by the agrochemical industry that pesticides are necessary to achieve food security is not only inaccurate but dangerously misleading," says the report.

Drought is depriving millions of Somalis of enough to eat, the nation's president said in an appeal for international aid. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, created by the USAID, said famine is possible in Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, all in East Africa. Armed conflict has aggravated the effects of drought.

Sub-Saharan Africa will likely need to boost food imports or expand its farmland if it is going to feed a population expected to increase 2.5-fold by 2050, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The other option – increasing yields on current farmland to reach self-sufficiency – should be pursued but is likely to fall short.

Crop production in the Philippines will drop by 1.7 percent and put an additional 2 million people at risk of hunger due to climate change, "particularly troublesome in light of the Philippines' growing population," forecast to reach 142 million by 2045, said the think tank International Food Policy Research Institute. "Research also shows that effective policies can reduce those impacts."

What you eat depends largely on where you live, despite the year-round cornucopia of food made available by international trade, says a team of biologists and economists.

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed an amendment to the California Seed Law, exempting “non-commercial seed sharing activities from industrial labeling, testing, and permitting requirements,” says Shareable.

Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University, says the school's newly dedicated Indiana Corn and Soybean Innovation Center "will play a big part" in helping to assure enough food for the rising world population. The center is the first field phenotyping facility in North America.

Even as China’s coal-fueled factories belch toxic smoke, the biggest abuse on China’s environment comes from agriculture, says Time. The country is trying to solve the problem with some of the most radical changes to its agricultural policy since Mao Zedong forced the People’s Republic onto collective farms in the late 1950s—and 30 million people died of starvation as a result.

With 65 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land and 10 percent of its renewable freshwater resources, “Africa’s immense agricultural potential has long been a keen point of discussion among agronomists and global decision-makers,” writes Quartz Africa. But the continent faces a host of issues in reaching its potential.

Food stamp enrollment dropped by nearly 2 percent in April, to 43.6 million people, the lowest number of recipients since 2010 as the nation began to recover from recession, said the think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. "In many states, the improving economy likely was a major factor," said the center, which also pointed to effect of stricter eligibility rules.

Global per-capita fish consumption surged beyond 20 kilograms (44 pounds) in 2014, thanks to the booming aquaculture industry in China and elsewhere, according to a report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture organization.

A report by the United Nations Environment Program says drought and higher temperatures, forecast as part of climate change, can trigger a build-up in crops of chemical compounds that are toxic to animals and humans. Nitrates can accumulate to dangerous levels in grain during drought, while carcinogenic fungal aflatoixins are expected to become an increasing risk in higher latitudes as average temperatures rise.

The food security situation in Ethiopia is worsening, says the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and as the main growing season approaches, 10.2 million people are affected by successive crop failures and livestock deaths caused by drought since 2015.

In their first meeting since 2009, agriculture ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations said they would "set up an international framework to smoothly share information on livestock epidemics, such as bird flu or foot-and-mouth disease, reports the Kyodo news service.

While the El Niño weather pattern is waning, an estimated 60 million people worldwide are suffering from the droughts, floods and forest fires linked to the phenomenon, says the United Nations.

President Xi Jinping has made food security a national priority since becoming China's leader a decade ago, with a multi-prong drive for self-sufficiency in food. It is "an improbable, if not impossible, goal," say analysts from the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a brief.