Food early warning systems can stave off famines

30/11/2022 0 Comments read Climate Change, Health & Science

Conflicts, climate change flip food security. Photo Credit ©Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 30.11.2022 (SciDev.Net): As reliable sources of quality food diminish and record numbers of people are driven to hunger due to conflicts, climate change and economic downturns, feeding the global population of eight billion poses a major challenge that demands better food early warning information systems.

Conflict is the biggest driver of hunger, with 60 per cent of the world’s hungry living in areas affected by war and violence. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) simulations indicate that the war in Ukraine could result in 19 million more people facing chronic undernourishment globally in 2023 — if reduced food exports from the breadbaskets of the Russian Federation and Ukraine continue to impact world food availability.

Acute food insecurity is likely to get worse in many parts of the world during the October 2022 to January 2023 outlook period, requiring urgent targeted humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods, according to the 2022 Hunger Hotspots report of FAO and World Food Programme (WFP).

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Agri-food R&D spend ‘falling’, say experts

19/08/2022 0 Comments read Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 19.08.2022 (SciDev.Net): Investments in agriculture and food research are declining at a time when these sectors are facing significant risks arising from climate change, biodiversity loss and the spread of pests and diseases that affect plants, animals and humans, an international conference heard.

“As a single and sobering example of the shift in investment in agricultural research, the spending of CGIAR, the world’s largest global agricultural innovation network, has declined in inflation-adjusted terms by almost 40 per cent since 2014,” said Philip Pardey, co-director of the GEMS agro-informatics initiative and director of global research strategy at the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.

Speaking at The Crawford Fund annual conference held in Canberra, Australia on 15 and 16 August, Pardey said that all available evidence supports a doubling of agri-food R&D spending. “For every dollar invested in agricultural R&D, there is a return of US$10 in social benefit, and this level of return has been consistent over many years,” he said. “Yet, agri-food R&D spending is a declining share of total R&D spending.”

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Scientists develop wheat types to resist heat, drought

21/03/2022 0 Comments read Climate Change, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 21.03.2022 (SciDev.Net): Australian scientists have identified a novel combination of genetics that may help wheat survive in hot and dry conditions, thereby increasing yields and assisting farmers to adapt to climate change-induced heat and drought stress.

Wheat is the third-largest grain crop in the world, supplying about 20 per cent of the total calories and protein in the human diet worldwide, notes the research by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, published in Nature Climate Change on 7 March.

Researchers have identified three novel alternative dwarfing genes that enable wheat seeds to draw moisture stored twice as deep from the soil than current varieties. “We have genetics that can allow us to sow earlier and deeper up to 120 millimetres while keeping the plants short and allowing for very long coleoptile, which is the shoot that grows from the seed to the soil surface,” says Greg Rebetzke, co-author of the study and chief research scientist at CSIRO Agriculture and Food.

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