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"Conway, Gordon"
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One billion hungry : can we feed the world? / Gordon Conway with Katy Wilson ; foreword by Rajiv Shah
\"In One Billion Hungry, Sir Gordon Conway, one of the world's foremost experts on global food needs, explains the many interrelated issues critical to our global food supply from the science of agricultural advances to the politics of food security. He expands the discussion begun in his influential The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century, emphasizing the essential combination of increased food production, environmental stability, and poverty reduction necessary to end endemic hunger on our planet.\"--Back cover.
eBook
Food for all in Africa : sustainable intensification for African farmers
\"Describes how Africa's farmers can be helped not only to feed themselves and their families but also to gain income by producing food and other crops and livestock products for sale to Africa's growing urban and export markets\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
One Billion Hungry
Hunger is a daily reality for a billion people. More than six decades after the technological discoveries that led to the Green Revolution aimed at ending world hunger, regular food shortages, malnutrition, and poverty still plague vast swaths of the world. And with increasing food prices, climate change, resource inequality, and an ever-increasing global population, the future holds further challenges.
InOne Billion Hungry, Sir Gordon Conway, one of the world's foremost experts on global food needs, explains the many interrelated issues critical to our global food supply from the science of agricultural advances to the politics of food security. He expands the discussion begun in his influentialThe Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century, emphasizing the essential combination of increased food production, environmental stability, and poverty reduction necessary to end endemic hunger on our planet.
Beginning with a definition of hunger and how it is calculated, and moving through issues topically both detailed and comprehensive, each chapter focuses on specific challenges and solutions, ranging in scope from the farmer's daily life to the global movement of food, money, and ideas. Drawing on the latest scientific research and the results of projects around the world, Conway addresses the concepts and realities of our global food needs: the legacy of the Green Revolution; the impact of market forces on food availability; the promise and perils of genetically modified foods; agricultural innovation in regard to crops, livestock, pest control, soil, and water; and the need to both adapt to and slow the rate of climate change.One Billion Hungrywill be welcomed by all readers seeking a multifacted understanding of our global food supply, food security, international agricultural development, and sustainability.
eBook
Climate change and Africa
The impact of climate change on Africa is likely to be severe because of adverse direct effects, high agricultural dependence, and limited capacity to adapt. Direct effects vary widely across the continent, with some areas (e.g. eastern Africa) predicted to get wetter, but much of southern Africa getting drier and hotter. Crop yields will be adversely affected and the frequency of extreme weather events will increase. Adaptation to climate change is primarily a private-sector response and should involve relocation of people, changes in the sectoral structure of production, and changes in crop patterns. The role of government is primarily to provide the information, incentives, and economic environment to facilitate such changes. Adaptation will be impeded by Africa's fragmentation into small countries and ethnic groups, and by poor business environments. On the mitigation side, there is a need to design emissions-trading frameworks that support greater African participation than at present, and that include land-use change. Mitigation undertaken elsewhere will have a major impact on Africa, both positive (e.g. new technologies) and negative (e.g. commodity price changes arising from biofuel policies).
Journal Article
An end-to-end assessment of extreme weather impacts on food security
A series of simple and communicable risk metrics for agriculture are developed by integrating information on the interacting systems of climate, crops and economy under different climate and adaptation scenarios.
Both governments and the private sector urgently require better estimates of the likely incidence of extreme weather events
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, their impacts on food crop production and the potential consequent social and economic losses
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. Current assessments of climate change impacts on agriculture mostly focus on average crop yield vulnerability
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to climate and adaptation scenarios
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,
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. Also, although new-generation climate models have improved and there has been an exponential increase in available data
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, the uncertainties in their projections over years and decades, and at regional and local scale, have not decreased
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,
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. We need to understand and quantify the non-stationary, annual and decadal climate impacts using simple and communicable risk metrics
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that will help public and private stakeholders manage the hazards to food security. Here we present an ‘end-to-end’ methodological construct based on weather indices and machine learning that integrates current understanding of the various interacting systems of climate, crops and the economy to determine short- to long-term risk estimates of crop production loss, in different climate and adaptation scenarios. For provinces north and south of the Yangtze River in China, we have found that risk profiles for crop yields that translate climate into economic variability follow marked regional patterns, shaped by drivers of continental-scale climate. We conclude that to be cost-effective, region-specific policies have to be tailored to optimally combine different categories of risk management instruments.
Journal Article
Genetically Modified Crops
GM foods have the potential to provide significant benefits for developing countries. Over 800 million people are chronically undernourished, and 180 million children are severely underweight for their age. By 2020, there will be an extra two billion mouths to feed. Ecological approaches that underpin sustainable agriculture (e.g., integrated pest management) and participatory approaches that strengthen farmers' own experimentation and decision making are key. Biotechnology will be an essential partner, if yield ceilings are to be raised, if crops are to be grown without excessive reliance on pesticides, and if farmers on less favored lands are to be provided with crops that are resistant to drought and salinity, and that can use nitrogen and other nutrients more efficiently.
Over the past 10 years, in addition supporting ecological approaches, the Rockefeller Foundation has funded the training of some 400 developing-country scientists in the techniques of biotechnology. Most of the new crop varieties are the result of tissue culture and marker-aided selection. The Foundation also supports the production of genetically engineered rices, including a new rice engineered for beta carotene (the precursor of Vitamin A) in the grain.
Some specific steps can be taken by Monsanto that would improve acceptance of plant biotechnology in both the developing and the industrialized worlds: label; disavow gene protection (terminator) systems; phase out the use of antibiotic resistance markers; agree (with big seed companies) to use the plant variety protection system, rather than patents, in developing countries; establish an independently administered fellowship program to train developing-country scientists in crop biotechnology, biosafety, and intellectual property; donate useful technologies to developing countries; agree to share financial rewards from intellectual property rights on varieties such as basmati or jasmine rice with the countries of origin; and finally, develop a global public dialogue that treats developing-country participants as equal partners.
Journal Article
Public Sector Collaboration for Agricultural IP Management
The impact of public sector research is evident in many technology sectors, particularly in the agriculture field. The authors discuss the impact of public sector collaboration on agricultural intellectual property management.
Journal Article
Presidential Address: Building Resilience
Another aspect of the unknowns, first pointed out by C S Holling, who was the 'father' of the notion of resilience (Holling 1973 2004; Walker and Salt 2006), is that natural systems may exist in different relatively stable states and can flip from one such state to another - an idea now partly conceptualised in the term 'tipping points' (Gladwell 2000).
Journal Article
