Developments
For the ten days of the World Summit in August and early September, dawn was like any other dawn in the swish suburb of Sandton in northern Johannesburg. Tidy streets, office blocks, a mall, a modest convention centre, omnipresent security, and the area's hillocks covered by a thin sheen of acrid smoke from the stoves of the nightwatchmen guarding its mansions, and the smouldering black township of Alexandria below. In this land of hope and guilt, scattered with paradoxes, little is simple. Solutions are at hand, but are complex and slow in the making...
The timetable is precise. Those attending the meeting speak succinctly and to the point. Is this a group of power-pointed presenters, electrical leads snaking out from every port on their computers in a high tech conference setting? By no means for today we are in the village of Rongai, in Kenya's Rift Valley, and we are attending a farmers' field school that is breaking new ground...
Biopiracy threat to traditional crops
Thousands of crop varieties grown for hundreds of years by the world's resource-poor farmers are under threat - not from new diseases or insect pests, but something much more insidious. They are being targeted by western companies, eager to develop new products...
"Never have I seen a stall at the weekly market or hat where nothing is sold yet so many people gather", says Babu, one of the project collaborators in Bogra, Bangladesh. Indeed, this is an exciting day for the staff and farmers of the project. We have decided to advertise our joint skills and knowledge at a local market. This 'Going Public' exercise is part of the innovative Seed Health Improvement sub-Project (SHIP) for...
Avoiding Famine in Southern Africa: Lessons from IFPRI Research
Today more than 10 million people in southern Africa are threatened with famine, with the crisis being particularly severe in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The immediate causes of the food shortage are drought, flooding, and low levels of crop planting. However, what has made these countries vulnerable to famine is...
