Podcasts about agricultural organization

We're off this week for the Memorial Day Holiday in the US so we present here one of our most popular episodes, a classic IF from August 13, 2021 with the incomparable marine biologist from Australia, Dr. Vanessa Pirotta. Take a deep breath and enjoy this deep dive! ---- WHALES spend their entire lives inside a medium, water, in which they can't actually breathe. So throughout the day, and the night, they have to swim to the surface to take a breath of that sweet, sweet ocean air… or they die! We humans, and other land lubber mammals like us, are spoiled, just inhale, anytime you want, and… problem solved. But — What The IF humans had to breathe by dunking our head in water? The amazing Dr. Vanessa Pirotta joins us from Sydney, Australia to take us into the wet and wild thought experiment, so we can learn real science! Imagine living the life of the whale, turned on it's head. What world would we have built if our bodies worked this way? It's like what if we emerged from the oceans, as we believe life did, but never adapted to breathing outside the water like we used to. Humans with gills? Are we wearing helmets on our head that are filled with water? Do we fill our *buildings* with water? Water the IF! — Dr. Pirotta is a wildlife scientist and a gifted science communicator. Her zoological background has taken her around the world for wildlife research. Vanessa is also a passionate and experienced science communicator who loves making science accessible. Her keen interests cover topics of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math, also known as STEAM. Vanessa has represented Australia internationally as the national winner of a world-renowned science communication competition known as FameLab, placing second in the world. Vanessa's efforts to communicate science has also seen her become a TEDx speaker, speak at the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and recognized as one of the top 100 Women of Influence judged by the Australian Financial Review. Learn more about Vanessa! Homepage: https://www.vanessapirotta.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/VanessaPirotta Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drvanessapirotta/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrVanessaPirotta YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIe3r09XA8BviNbVMtag2Q --- Like the show? Share your love for the IF by dropping a review on whatever podcast app you're enjoying, including Apple Podcasts! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com and never miss an episode! Keep On IFFin', Philip & Matt

In the 1960s, a deep anxiety set in as one thing became seemingly clear: We were headed toward population catastrophe. Paul Ehrlich's “The Population Bomb” and “The Limits to Growth,” written by the Club of Rome, were just two publications warning of impending starvation due to simply too many humans on the earth.As the population ballooned year by year, it would simply be impossible to feed everyone. Demographers and environmentalists alike held their breath and braced for impact.Except that we didn't starve. On the contrary, we were better fed than ever.In his article in The New Atlantis, Charles C. Mann explains that agricultural innovation — from improved fertilization and irrigation to genetic modification — has brought global hunger to a record low.Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I chat with Mann about the agricultural history they didn't teach you in school.Mann is a science journalist who has worked as a correspondent for The Atlantic, Science, and Wired magazines, and whose work has been featured in many other major publications. He is also the author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, as well as The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World.In This Episode* Intro to the Agricultural Revolution (2:04)* Water infrastructure (13:11)* Feeding the masses (18:20)* Indigenous America (25:20)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Intro to the Agricultural Revolution (2:04)I don't think that people realize that the fact that most people on earth, almost the average person on earth, can feed themselves is a novel phenomenon. It's something that basically wasn't true since as far back as we know.Pethokoukis: What got my attention was a couple of pieces that you've worked on for The New Atlantis magazine looking at the issue of how modern Americans take for granted the remarkable systems and infrastructure that provide us comfort, safety, and a sense of luxury that would've been utterly unimaginable even to the wealthiest people of a hundred years ago or 200 years ago.Let me start off by asking you: Does it matter that we do take that for granted and that we also kind of don't understand how our world works?Mann: I would say yes, very much. It matters because these systems undergird the prosperity that we have, the good fortune that we have to be alive now, but they're always one generation away from collapse. If they aren't maintained, upgraded and modernized, they'll fall apart. They just won't stand there. So we have to be aware of this. We have to keep our eye on the ball, otherwise we won't have these things.The second thing is that, if we don't know how our society works, as citizens, we're simply not going to make very good choices about what to do with that society. I feel like both sides in our current political divide are kind of taking their eye off the ball. It's important to have good roads, it's important to have clean water, it's important to have a functioning public health system, it's important to have an agricultural system that works. It doesn't really matter who you are. And if we don't keep these things going, life will be unnecessarily bad for a lot of people, and that's just crazy to do.Is this a more recent phenomenon? If I would've asked people 50 years ago, “Explain to me how our infrastructure functions, how we get water, how we get electricity,” would they have a better idea? Is it just because things are more complicated today that we have no idea how our food gets here or why when we turn the faucet, clean water comes out?The answer is “yes” in a sort of trivial sense, in that many more people were involved in producing food, a much greater percentage of the population was involved in producing food 50 years ago. The same thing was true for the people who were building infrastructure 50 years ago.But I also think it's generally true that people's parents saw the change and knew it. So that is very much the case and, in a sense, I think we're victims of our own success. These kinds of things have brought us so much prosperity that we can afford to do crazy things like become YouTube influencers, or podcasters, or freelance writers. You don't really have any connection with how the society goes because we're sort of surfing on this wave of luxury that our ancestors bequeathed to us.I don't know how much time you spend on social media, Charles — I'm sure I spend too much — but I certainly sense that many people today, younger people especially, don't have a sense of how someone lived 50 years ago, 100 years ago, and there was just a lot more physical suffering. And certainly, if you go back far enough, you could not take for granted that you would have tomatoes in your supermarket year round, that you would have water in the house and that water would be clean. What I found really interesting — you did a piece on food and a piece on water — in the food piece you note that, in the 1980s, that was a real turning point that the average person on earth had enough to eat all the time, and rather than becoming an issue of food production, it became an issue of distribution, of governance. I think most people would be surprised of that statistic even though it's 40 years old.I don't think that people realize that the fact that most people on earth, almost the average person on earth, can feed themselves is a novel phenomenon. It's something that basically wasn't true since as far back as we know. That's this enormous turning point, and there are many of these turning points. Obviously, the introduction of antibiotics for . . . public health, which is another one of these articles they're going to be working on . . .Just about 100 years ago today, when President Coolidge was [president], his son went to play tennis at the White House tennis courts, and because he was lazy, or it was fashionable, or something, he didn't put on socks. He got a blister on his toe, the toe got infected, and he died. 100 years ago, the president of the United States, who presumably had the best healthcare available to anybody in the world, was unable to save his beloved son when the son got a trivial blister that got infected. The change from that to now is mind boggling.You've written about the Agricultural Revolution and why the great fears 40 or 50 years ago of mass starvation didn't happen. I find that an endlessly interesting topic, both for its importance and for the fact it just seems to be so underappreciated to this day, even when it was sort of obvious to people who pay attention that something was happening, it still seemed not to penetrate the public consciousness. I wonder if you could just briefly talk to me about that revolution and how it happened.The question is, how did it go from “The Population Bomb” written in 1968, a huge bestseller, hugely influential, predicting that there is going to be hundreds of millions of people dying of mass starvation, followed by other equally impassioned, equally important warnings. There's one called “Famine, 1975!,” written a few years before, that predicted mass famines in 1975. There's “The Limits to Growth.” I went to college in the '70s and these were books that were on the curriculum, and they were regarded as contemporary classics, and they all proved to be wrong.The reason is that, although they were quite correct about the fact that the human race was reproducing at that time faster than ever before, they didn't realize two things: The first is that as societies get more affluent, and particularly as societies get more affluent and give women more opportunities, birth rates decline. So that this was obviously, if you looked at history, going to be a temporary phenomenon of whatever length it was be, but it was not going to be infinite.The second was there was this enormous effort spurred by this guy named Norman Borlaug, but with tons of other people involved, to take modern science and apply it to agriculture, and that included these sort of three waves of innovation. Now, most innovation is actually just doing older technologies better, which is a huge source of progress, and the first one was irrigation. Irrigation has been around since forever. It's almost always been done badly. It's almost always not been done systematically. People started doing it better. They still have a lot of problems with it, but it's way better, and now 40 percent, roughly, of the crops in the world that are produced are produced by irrigation.The second is the introduction of fertilizer. There's two German scientists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who essentially developed the ways of taking fertilizer and making lots and lots of it in factories. I could go into more detail if you want, but that's the essential thing. This had never been done before, and suddenly cheap industrial fertilizer became available all over the world, and Vaclav Smil . . . he's sort of an environmental scientist of every sort, in Manitoba has calculated that roughly 40 percent of the people on earth today would not be alive if it wasn't for that.And then the third was the development of much better, much higher-yielding seeds, and that was the part that Norman Borlaug had done. These packaged together of irrigation fertilizer and seeds yielded what's been called the Green Revolution, doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled grain yields across the world, particularly with wheat and rice. The result is the world we live in today. When I was growing up, when you were growing up, your parents may have said to you, as they did me, Oh, eat your vegetables, there are kids that are starving in Asia.” Right? That was what was told and that was the story that was told in books like “The Population Bomb,” and now Asia's our commercial rival. When you go to Bangkok, that was a place that was hungry and now it's gleaming skyscrapers and so forth. It's all based on this fact that people are able to feed themselves through the combination of these three factors,That story, the story of mass-starvation that the Green Revolution irrigation prevented from coming true. I think a surprising number of people still think that story is relevant today, just as some people still think the population will be exploding when it seems clear it probably will not be exploding. It will rise, but then it's going to start coming down at some point this century. I think those messages just don't get through. Just like most people don't know Norm Borlaug, the Haber-Bosch process, which school kids should know. They don't know any of this. . . Borlaug won the Nobel Prize, right?Right. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. I'll tell you a funny story —I think he won it in the same year that “The Population Bomb” came out.It was just a couple years off. But you're right, the central point is right, and the funny thing is . . . I wrote another book a while back that talked about this and about the way environmentalists think about the world, and it's called the “Wizard and the Prophet” and Borlaug was the wizard of it. I thought, when I proposed it, that it would be easy. He was such an important guy, there'd be tons of biographies about him. And to this day, there isn't a real serious scholarly biography of the guy. This is a person who has done arguably more to change human life than any other person in the 20th century, certainly up in the top dozen or so. There's not a single serious biography of him.How can that be?It's because we're tremendously disconnected. It's a symptom of what I'm talking about. We're tremendously disconnected from these systems, and it's too bad because they're interesting! They're actually quite interesting to figure out: How do you get water to eight billion people? How do you get . . . It is a huge challenge, and some of the smartest people you've ever met are working on it every day, but they're working on it over here, and the public attention is over here.Water infrastructure (13:11). . . the lack of decent, clean, fresh water is the world's worst immediate environmental problem. I think people probably have some vague idea about agriculture, the Agricultural Revolution, how farming has changed, but I think, as you just referred to, the second half, water — utter mystery to people. Comes out of a pipe. The challenges of doing that in a rich country are hard. The challenges doing a country not so rich, also hard. Tell me what you find interesting about that topic.Well, whereas the story about agriculture is basically a good story: We've gotten better at it. We have a whole bunch of technical innovations that came in the 20th century and humankind is better off than ever before. With water, too, we are better off than ever before, but the maddening thing is we could be really well off because the technology is basically extremely old.There's a city, a very ancient city called Mohenjo-daro that I write about a bit in this article that was in essentially on the Pakistan-India border, 2600 BC. And they had a fully functioning water system that, in its basics, was no different than the water system that we have, or that London has, or that Paris has. So this is an ancient, ancient technology, yet we still have two billion people on the planet that don't have access to adequate water. In fact, even though we know how to do it, the lack of decent, clean, fresh water is the world's worst immediate environmental problem. And a small thing that makes me nuts is that climate change — which is real and important — gets a lot of attention, but there are people dying of not getting good water now.On top of it, even in rich countries like us, our water system is antiquated. The great bulk of it was built in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, and, like any kind of physical system, it ages, and every couple years, various engineering bodies, water bodies, the EPA, and so forth puts out a report saying, “Hey, we really have to fix the US water system and the numbers keep mounting up.” And Democrats, Republicans, they all ignore this.Who is working on the water issue in poorer countries?There you have a very ad hoc group of people. The answer is part of it's the Food and Agricultural Organization because most water in most countries is used for irrigation to grow food. You also have the World Health Organization, these kinds of bodies. You have NGOs working on it. What you don't have in those countries like our country is the government taking responsibility for coordinating something that's obviously in the national interest.So you have these things where, very periodically — a government like China has done this, Jordan has done this, Bolivia has done this, countries all over the world have done this — and they say, “Okay, we haven't been able to provide freshwater. Let's bring in a private company.” And the private company then invests all this money in infrastructure, which is expensive. Then, because it's a private company, it has to make that money back, and so it charges people for a lot of money for this, and the people are very unhappy because suddenly they're paying a quarter of their income for water, which is what I saw in Southwest China: water riots because people are paying so much for water.In other words, one of the things that government can do is sort of spread these costs over everybody, but instead they concentrate it on the users, Almost universally, these privatization efforts have led to tremendous political unhappiness because the government has essentially shifted responsibility for coordinating and doing these things and imposed a cost on a narrow minority of the users.Are we finally getting on top of the old water infrastructure in this country? It seems like during the Biden administration they had a big infrastructure bill. Do you happen to know if we are finally getting that system upgraded?Listen, I will be the only person who probably ever interviews you who's actually had to fix a water main as a summer job. I spent [it at] my local Public Works Department where we'd have to fix water mains, and this was a number of years ago, and even a number of years ago, those pipes were really, really old. It didn't take much for them to get a main break.I'm one of those weird people who is bothered by this. All I can tell you is we have a lot of aging infrastructure. The last estimate that I've seen came before this sort of sudden jerky rise of construction costs, which, if you're at all involved in building, is basically all the people in the construction industry talk about. At that point, the estimate was that it was $1.2 trillion to fix the infrastructure that we have in the United States. I am sure it is higher now. I am delighted that the Biden people passed this infrastructure — would've been great if they passed permitting reform and a couple of other things to make it easier to spend the money, but okay. I would like to believe that the Trump people would take up the baton and go on this.Feeding the masses (18:20)I do worry that the kind of regulations, and rules, and ideas that we put into place to try and make agriculture more like this picture that we have in our head will end up inadvertently causing suffering for the people who are struggling.We're still going to have another two billion people, maybe, on this earth. Are we going to be able to feed them all?Yeah, I think that there's no question. The question is what we're going to be able to feed them? Are we going to be able to feed them all, filet mignon and truffled . . . whatever they put truffle oil on, and all that? Not so sure about that.All organic vegetables.At the moment, that seems really implausible, and there's a sort of fundamental argument going on here. There's a lot of people, again, both right and left, who are sort of freaked out by the scale that modern agriculture operates on. You fly over the middle-west and you see all those circles of center-pivot irrigation, they plowed under, in the beginning of the 20th century, 100 million acres of prairie to produce all that. And it's done with enormous amounts of capital, and it was done also partly by moving people out so that you could have this enormous stuff. The result is it creates a system that . . . doesn't match many people's vision of the friendly family farmer that they grew up with. It's a giant industrial process and people are freaked out by the scale. They don't trust these entities, the Cargills and the ADMs, and all these huge companies that they see as not having their interests at heart.It's very understandable. I live in a small town, we have a farm down there, and Jeremy runs it, and I'm very happy to see Jeremy. There's no Jeremy at Archer Daniels Midland. So the result is that there's a big revulsion against that, and people want to downsize the scale, and they point to very real environmental problems that big agriculture has, and they say that that is reason for this. The great problem is that in every single study that I am aware of, the sort of small, local farms don't produce as much food per acre or per hectare as the big, soulless industrial processes. So if you're concerned about feeding everybody, that's something you have to really weigh in your head, or heavy in your heart.That sort of notion of what a farm should look like and what good food is, that kind of almost romantic notion really, to me, plays into the sort of anti-growth or the degrowth people who seemed to be saying that farms could only be this one thing — probably they don't even remember those farms anymore — that I saw in a storybook. It's like a family farm, everything's grown local, not a very industrial process, but you're talking about a very different world. Maybe that's a world they want, but I don't know if that's a world you want if you're a poor person in this world.No, and like I said, I love going to the small farm next to us and talking to Jeremy and he says, “Oh look, we've just got these tomatoes,” it's great, but I have to pay for that privilege. And it is a privilege because Jeremy is barely making it and charging twice as much as the supermarket. There's no economies of scale for him. He still has to buy all the equipment, but he's putting it over 20 acres instead of 2000 acres. In addition, it's because it's this hyper-diverse farm — which is wonderful; they get to see the strawberries, and the tomatoes, and all the different things — it means he has to hire much more labor than it would be if he was just specializing in one thing. So his costs are inevitably much, much higher, and, therefore, I have to pay a lot more to keep him going. That's fine for me; I'm a middle-class person, I like food, this can be my hobby going there.I'd hate to have somebody tell me it's bad, but it's not a system that is geared for people who are struggling. There are just a ton of people all over the world who are struggling. They're better off than they were 100 years ago, but they're still struggling. I do worry that the kind of regulations, and rules, and ideas that we put into place to try and make agriculture more like this picture that we have in our head will end up inadvertently causing suffering for the people who are struggling.To make sure everybody can get fed in the future, do we need a lot more innovation?Innovation is always good. I would say that we do, and the kinds of innovation we need are not often what people imagine. For example, it's pretty clear that parts of the world are getting drier, and therefore irrigation is getting more difficult. The American Southwest is a primary candidate, and you go to the Safford Valley, which I did a few years ago — the Safford Valley is in southeast Arizona and it's hotter than hell there. I went there and it's 106 degrees and there's water from the Colorado River, 800 miles away, being channeled there, and they're growing Pima cotton. Pima cotton is this very good fine cotton that they use to make fancy clothes, and it's a great cash crop for farmers, but growing it involves channeling water from the Colorado 800 miles, and then they grow it by what's called flood irrigation, which is where you just fill the field with an inch of water. I was there actually to see an archeologist who's a water engineer, and I said to him, “Gee, it's hot! How much that water is evaporated?” And he said, “Oh, all of it.”So we need to think about that kind of thing if the Colorado is going to run out of water, which it is now. There's ways you can do it, you can possibly genetically modify cotton to use less water. You could drip irrigation, which is a much more efficient form of irrigation, it's readily available, but it's expensive. So you could try to help farmers do that. I think if you cut the soft costs, which is called the regulatory costs of farming, you might be able to pay for it in that way. That would be one type of innovation. Another type of thing you could do is to do a different kind of farming which is called civil pastoral systems, where you grow tree crops and then you grow cattle underneath, and that uses dramatically less water. It's being done in Sonora, just across the border and the tree crops — trees are basically wild. People don't breed them because it takes so long, but we now have the tools to breed them, and so you could make highly productive trees with cattle underneath and have a system that produces a lot of calories or a lot of good stuff. That's all the different kinds of innovation that we could do. Just some of the different kinds of innovation we could do and all would help.Indigenous America (25:20)Part of the reason I wrote these things is that I realized it's really interesting and I didn't learn anything about it in school.Great articles in The New Atlantis, big fan of “Wizard and the Prophet,” but I'm going to take one minute and ask you about your great books talking about the story of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. If I just want to travel in the United States and I'm interested in finding out more about Native Americans in the United States, where would you tell me to go?One of my favorite places just it's so amazing, is Chaco Canyon, and that's in the Four Corners area — that whole Four Corners area is quite incredible — and Chaco Canyon is a sign that native people could build amazing stuff, and native people could be crazy, in my opinion. It's in the middle of nowhere, it has no water, and for reasons that are probably spiritual and religious, they built an enormous number of essentially castles in this canyon, and they're incredible.The biggest one, Pueblo Bonito as it's called now, it's like 800 rooms. They're just enormous. And you can go there, and you can see these places, and you can just walk around, and it is incredible. You drive up a little bit to Mesa Verde and there's hundreds of these incredible cliff dwellings. What seems to have happened — I'm going to put this really informally and kind of jokingly to you, not the way that an archeologist would talk about it or I would write about it, but what looks like it happened is that the Chaco Canyon is this big canyon, and on the good side that gets the southern exposure is all these big houses. And then the minions and the hoi polloi lived on the other side, and it looks like, around 800, 900, they just got really tired of serving the kings and they had something like a democratic revolution, and they just left, most of them, and founded the Pueblos, which is these intensely democratic self-governing bodies that are kind of like what Thomas Jefferson thought the United States should be.Then it's like all the doctors, and the lawyers, and the MBAs, and the rich guys went up to Mesa Verde and they started off their own little kingdoms and they all fought with each other. So you have these crazy cliff dwellings where it's impossible to get in and there's hundreds of people living in these niches in these cliffs, and then that blew up too. So you could see history, democracy, and really great architecture all in one place.If someone asked me for my advice about changing the curriculum in school, one, people would leave school knowing who the heroes of progress and heroes of the Agricultural Revolution were. And I think they'd also know a lot more about pre-Columbian history of the Americas. I think they should know about it but I also think it's just super interesting, though of course you've brought it to life in a beautiful way.Thank you very much, and I couldn't agree with you more. Part of the reason I wrote these things is that I realized it's really interesting and I didn't learn anything about it in school.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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GUYS ARE MORE AFRAID OF THE DENTIST _ In a survey, 49 percent of dentists said males are more anxious when it comes to dental appointments, while only 15 percent thought females were the scaredy-cats.FOOD WASTE TOTALING 1.3 BILLION TONS ENDS UP IN LANDFILLS _ How much food are we wasting? Are you sitting down? According to a report (from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) every year nearly 1.3 billion tons of food ends up in landfills. That's close to $1 trillion worth of food. The U.S. wastes close to $190 billion in food each year.MATH – BY THE NUMBERS:A new poll says that one-third of adults experience anxiety when they're forced to – do math. The study of 3,000 adults in the UK found that almost a third (29%) actively try to avoid anything to do with numbers and data. And with recent inflationary pressures, and the increasing cost of living putting greater pressure on people's math skills in order to make ends meet, 29% also said this affects their mental wellness. And why do some of us find working with numbers so difficult? More than half said they stopped studying math in school as soon as they were allowed to. And 66% said they have to agree that you don't realize how important math skills are until you need them to navigate your daily life.Thousand IslandsLessons LearnedDrone footage for the first time - Thank you ChuckCreating a story for the video - And following the big video (21 day Challenge currently at 23K views)All similar lens' (wide shots)There's always a shot to get, so get footage. Enjoyed our friends

Debt Distress and the Right to Food in Africa Co-organized by IFPRI and Welthungerhilfe (WHH) October 2, 2024 More than half of low-income countries are at risk of debt distress or have already defaulted. The debt crisis, while exacerbated by recent crises, has been looming for several years. According to the United Nations, 3.3 billion people now live in countries that spend more on interest repayments than on education or health, and in sub-Saharan Africa, governments are spending 53 percent of revenue on debt servicing. What do these debt trends mean for efforts to address food insecurity and uphold citizens' right to food? Twenty years after the adoption of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Food (RtF) by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, many countries that adopted RtF in their constitutions still face high levels of food and nutrition insecurity. Although the Guidelines incorporate clear guidance on pursuing debt relief to allow for the progressive realization of the RtF, debt repayments and austerity measures, combined with insufficient local revenue mobilization, force governments to re-prioritize scarce resources and undermine investments in food system transformation. In the run-up to the International Development Association (IDA) Replenishment Forum in October 2024 and the release of the African Union's post-Malabo agenda in early 2025, this policy seminar brings together speakers from international and African organizations to examine the impacts of the debt crisis on realizing the RtF in Africa and consider solutions to protect and progressively realize those rights. Opening Remarks Danielle Resnick, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI (Presentation) Panel Discussion Michael Windfuhr, Deputy Director, German Institute for Human Rights; Member of Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Presentation) Diana Gichengo, Executive Director, The Institute for Social Accountability, Kenya; Member of African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) Geeta Sethi, Global Lead for Food Systems, The World Bank Group Jennifer Clapp, University Professor & Canada Research Chair, IPES-Food and University of Waterloo, Canada (Presentation) Nick Jacobs, Consulting Director, IPES-Food (Presentation) Closing Remarks Michael Gabriel, Director of Strategic Partnerships, US and Canada, Welthungerhilfe (WHH) Moderator Charlotte Hebebrand, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, IFPRI Links: More about this Event: https://www.ifpri.org/event/debt-distress-and-the-right-to-food-in-africa/ Subscribe IFPRI Insights newsletter and event announcements at www.ifpri.org/content/newsletter-subscription

For the first time, farmers and ranchers bought crop insurance policies on more than 500 million acres last year, and the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization's Food Price Index stood at 120.4 points in May, up 0.9% from its April level.

For the first time, farmers and ranchers bought crop insurance policies on more than 500 million acres last year, and the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization's Food Price Index stood at 120.4 points in May, up 0.9% from its April level.

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization's Food Price Index stood at 120.4 points in May, up 0.9 percent from its revised April level. Increases in the price index for cereal and dairy products slightly more than offset decreases in those for sugar and vegetable oils. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When I'm eating blueberries from Chile here in California, I assume that they arrived by air after being picked a couple of days ago. That isn't necessarily true. Delivery by sea could take weeks from the time they are picked by the grower until they arrive on the shelf at my local grocery store.In this episode, I talked to Tristan Kaye, Director of Global Marketing and Business Development at It's Fresh about the challenges of shipping fresh produce across the planet while avoiding waste and spoilage. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, up to 45 percent of all fresh produce grown is never consumed. For two reasons. One is food loss. So this is through poor infrastructure, lack of appropriate cold chain, mishandling these sorts of things, or food waste. Another significant challenge in the supply chain is controlling the levels of ethylene, which is a signaling molecule produced in plants for many things, including maturation and ripening. And it doesn't take much to have an impact on fruit during shipping. …kiwi fruit can be sensitive down to four or five parts per billion. So to give that a sort of sense of context, a billion seconds is about 33 years. So it's lik if you're looking for ethylene in kiwifruit, that is the equivalent of trying to find five seconds of a 33-yearr period… But it fundamentally affects all of the elements in terms of the fruit and many vegetables that are developed.It's Fresh offers an interesting solution to this challenge. We didn't go deep into the chemistry of their ethylene control technology. It allows growers to pick fruit a little early and allow it to ripen slowly so that, ideally, it shows up on our local shelves ready to be consumed. Our conversation focused on all the other aspects of the supply chain that illustrate the challenge of getting fruit to market in a condition that consumers expect regardless of where they were grown:Growers get paid based on what arrives at the destination. They must decide when to harvest their fruit at some interval before ripening, yet they have no control over much of what happens or how long it takes before fruit arrives.Market pricing and seasonal demand influence the decision of whether to ship by air or sea.There can be tremendous uncertainties around the time spent in a warehouse at either end. Even shipping routes are facing uncertainty as there is a restriction on what can go through the Panama Canal due to a drought that has Lake Gatun at record low levels. Ships may have to wait in an anchorage at the canal, deliver some containers elsewhere or go around the tip of South America. Conflict near the Suez Canal, or the inability to access the Port of Baltimore might also be a factor right now.Damaged fruit produces ethylene as a stress response. To top it all off, there is ethylene in the exhaust of internal combustion engines. Warehouses that store fruit may use electric machinery like forklifts, but imagine the challenge of keeping motor exhaust out of your entire supply chain.The next time you grab a handful of blueberries grown out of season in the other hemisphere, give a thought to all the considerations and decisions that help preserve them from the moment of harvest to the moment you enjoy them.Your deepest insights are your best branding. I'd love to help you share them. Chat with me about custom content for your life science brand. Or visit my website.If you appreciate this content, you likely know someone else who will appreciate it also. Please share it with them. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cclifescience.substack.com

March saw a rise in food prices according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization's Food Price Index. This stopped a reported seven-month decline.

Proposition 12, the California law that prohibits the sale of whole pork that comes from pigs raised in gestation crates, is now in place, and the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization says world food prices dropped in December.

The USDA's National Ag Statistics Service is gathering information about farm economics and production practices, as they conduct the third and final phase of the 2023 Ag Resource Management Survey, and the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization says world food prices dropped in December.

Carbon SequestrationCarbon sequestration is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide to slow the pace of climate change. There are two major types of carbon sequestration: geologic and biologic. Geological carbon sequestration injects carbon dioxide captured from an industrial or energy-related source into underground geologic formations. Biological carbon sequestration refers to the storage of atmospheric carbon in vegetation, soils, woody products, and aquatic environments. While carbon dioxide (CO2) is naturally captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical, and physical processes, some artificial sequestration techniques exploit the natural processes to slow the atmospheric accumulation of CO2.Soil Carbon Sequestration and Climate ChangeThe exchange of carbon between soils and the atmosphere is a significant part of the world's carbon cycle. Carbon, as it relates to the organic matter of soils, is a major component of soil and catchment health. However, human activities including agriculture have caused massive losses of soil organic carbon, leading to soil deterioration. California´s Healthy Soil Initiative is one program in the state working to promote the development of healthy soils in efforts to increase the state´s carbon sequestration, prevent soil deterioration and reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions.Soil carbon sequestration is a process in which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, primarily mediated by plants through photosynthesis, with carbon stored in the form of soil organic matter. Many scientists agree that regenerative agricultural practices can reduce atmospheric CO2 while also boosting soil productivity and health and increasing resilience to floods and drought.UC Berkeley researchers found that low-tech agricultural management practices such as planting cover crops, optimizing grazing, and sowing legumes on rangelands, if instituted globally, could capture enough carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil to reduce global temperatures 0.26 degrees Celsius – nearly half a degree Fahrenheit – by 2100. However, critics say that because biological sequestration isn't permanent and can be hard to measure, it's only part of the climate solution and not a substitute for reducing emissions. Whendee SilverDr. Whendee Silver is the Rudy Grah Chair and Professor of Ecosystem Ecology and Biogeochemistry in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at U.C. Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Ecosystem Ecology from Yale University. Her work seeks to determine the biogeochemical effects of climate change and human impacts on the environment, and the potential for mitigating these effects. The Silver Lab is currently working on drought and hurricane impacts on tropical forests, climate change mitigation potential of grasslands, and greenhouse gas dynamics of peatlands and wetlands. Professor Silver is the lead scientist of the Marin Carbon Project, which is studying the potential for land-based climate change mitigation, particularly by composting high-emission organic waste for soil amendments to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide. Continued ReadingThe potential of agricultural land management to contribute to lower global surface temperaturesTechnical options for sustainable land and water managementSoils help to combat and adapt to climate change by playing a key role in the carbon cycleThe solution to climate change is just below our feetSoil as Carbon Storehouse: New Weapon in Climate Fight? Soil Carbon Sequestration Impacts on Global Climate Change and Food SecurityOrganizationsSilver Lab, UC BerkeleyCarbon Management and Sequestration Center, Ohio State UniversityFood and Agricultural Organization, the United NationsRelated EpisodesCollaborating with farmers on climate-friendly practices, with Alameda County Resource Conservation District For a transcript, please visit https://climatebreak.org/sequestering-carbon-using-compost-and-grasslands-with-whendee-silver/

On the version of Hot off the Wire posted Nov. 20 at 7 a.m. CT: ATLANTA (AP) — Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has died at the age of 96. The Carter Center in Atlanta announced that the wife of former President Jimmy Carter died Sunday afternoon at her home in Plains, Georgia, with her family at her side. Rosalynn Carter was married to Jimmy Carter for more than 77 years, and both said she was the more political of the pair. Unlike many previous first ladies, Rosalynn Carter sat in on Cabinet meetings and spoke out on controversial issues. President Carter even sent her on a trip to Latin America to tell dictators he meant what he said on human rights. Together, Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter also co-founded The Carter Center to continue their work. KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made an unannounced visit to Kyiv. He arrived Monday in what is expected to be a high-profile push to keep money and weapons flowing to Ukraine even as U.S. and international resources are stretched by the new global risks raised by the Israel-Hamas conflict. Austin traveled to Kyiv by train from Poland. He is scheduled to meet with senior Ukrainian officials and publicly press Ukraine's urgent military needs as it enters another tough winter of fighting. U.S. officials said Austin intended to tell Ukrainian officials that American support for Kyiv's effort to defeat Russia's invasion forces is steadfast and will continue. KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces are pressing their offensive against Hamas in northern Gaza. They are battling militants around a hospital where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks, raising Palestinian fears of another painful standoff and evacuation of a medical facility. A medical worker inside the Indonesian Hospital and the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that a shell struck the second floor of the facility, killing at least 12 people. Both blamed Israeli forces. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. The advance came a day after the World Health Organization evacuated 31 premature babies from Shifa Hospital. At least 28 were transported to Egypt on Monday. Millions are expected to travel for the holidays. Wind, snow and rain could be problematic for travelers across the Northeast, according to the National Weather Service. WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is spending part of his 81st birthday observing the White House tradition of pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys. The gobblers receiving executive clemency at a ceremony Monday are named Liberty and Bell. The 20-week-old, 42-pound birds were hatched and bred in Willmar, Minnesota, by the Jennie-O turkey company for the occasion. The turkey pardon ceremony marks the unofficial start of the holiday season in Washington and it will be an especially busy day for the White House. In addition to celebrating the president's birthday, Jill Biden also welcomes delivery of an 18-and-a-half-foot Fraser fir from North Carolina as the official White House Christmas tree. LOS ANGELES (AP) — An elevated Los Angeles freeway closed by a Nov. 11 arson fire has reopened ahead of Monday morning's commute. That's at least a day earlier than previously announced and weeks ahead of the original estimate. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Sunday that inspections showed it's safe to reopen shortly after crews worked round the clock for days to shore up about 100 support columns. Newsom said the freeway would be “fully operational” before Monday's rush hour. An estimated 300,000 vehicles a day use the east-west freeway crossing the heart of Los Angeles. Vice President Kamala Harris joined Newsom and city Mayor Karen Bass for Sunday's announcement. SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea's military has warned North Korea not to go ahead with its planned spy satellite launch. A senior officer suggested Monday that South Korea could suspend an inter-Korean agreement to reduce tensions and resume front-line aerial surveillance in response. North Korea's first two attempts to put a spy satellite into space failed and its promised third attempt has been delayed. South Korean officials say the delay likely was because North Korea is receiving Russian technology assistance and a launch could happen in coming days. The U.N. Security Council bans any satellite launches by North Korea because it views them as a disguised test of its missile technology. Sugar prices are soaring in many places. That's largely due to production shortfalls in key exporters India and Thailand that are partly blamed on the El Nino. The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization is predicting a 2% decline in production this year. Increasingly, sugar is being used for biofuels like ethanol, so global sugar buffer stocks are at their lowest since 2009. The Lions rally from down two scores late to beat the Bears, Matthew Stafford's return helps the Rams end their three-game losing streak, the Broncos ends the Vikings' winning streak, a LeBron James free throw gives the Lakers a win over the Rockets, and Aaron Nola decides to stay with the Phillies. “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” tops the North American box office in its first weekend in theaters. The $44 million in ticket sales the film earned is a new low for the franchise. It always opened over $100 million in its Jennifer Lawrence days. The animated “Trolls Band Together” opened in second place with $30.6 million, while “The Marvels” fell a record 78% in its second weekend. Taika Waititi's soccer comedy “Next Goal Wins” and the slasher “Thanksgiving” also opened in wide release over the busy, pre-Thanksgiving weekend. NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs and singer Cassie say they have settled a lawsuit containing allegations of beatings and abuse by the powerful music producer. The settlement was announced on Friday in a statement from an attorney for Cassie, whose full name is Casandra Ventura. It comes one day after the lawsuit was filed. The statement says Combs and Ventura have reached a deal to their “mutual satisfaction." No terms of the agreement have been disclosed. Ventura and Combs both issued statements. The statement from Ventura's lawyer says no further statements will be issued. RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Taylor Swift has postponed a concert in Rio de Janeiro after a 23-year-old fan died during her Friday night show. The singer said in a handwritten note posted Saturday on Instagram that the decision was made due to the extremely hot weather in the Brazilian city. “The safety and well being of my fans, fellow performers, and crew has to and always will come first,” Swift wrote in the message posted on Instagram. The cause of death for Ana Clara Benevides Machado has not yet been announced. But concertgoers complained they were not allowed to take water into Nilton Santos Olympic Stadium despite the soaring temperatures in Rio on Friday. RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue was illuminated with a welcome to Brazil message for Taylor Swift. It was thanks to an act of charity by Swift fans orchestrated by the Catholic sanctuary that manages the world's most famous Christ statue. The colossal monument donned a projected white “Welcome to Brazil” T-shirt honoring the singer's latest leg of her Eras Tour. The initiative was launched after a request from Taylor Swift fans. The priest who runs the Christ statue then dared Swifties to donate for a good cause in return for their request. The statue was lit Thursday night after Swifties met the goal and helped fundraise for 20,000 panettones and water for the Catholic Church's World Day of the Poor, which will be marked on Sunday. NEW YORK (AP) — George Brown, the co-founder and longtime drummer of Kool & The Gang who helped write such hits as “Too Hot,” “Ladies Night,” “Joanna” and the party favorite “Celebration,” has died at age 74. A statement from Universal Music says Brown died Thursday in Los Angeles after a battle with cancer. Kool & The Gang has sold millions of records with its catchy blend of jazz, funk and soul, what Brown liked to call “the sound of happiness.” Brown helped launch the Grammy-winning group in 1964. Kool & the Gang broke through in the mid-1970s with “Jungle Boogie” among others songs and peaked in the late '70s and mid-1980s, with such hits as “Cherish” and “Celebration.” —The Associated Press About this program Host Terry Lipshetz is a senior producer for Lee Enterprises. Besides producing the daily Hot off the Wire news podcast, Terry conducts periodic interviews for this Behind the Headlines program, co-hosts the Streamed & Screened movies and television program and is the producer of Across the Sky, a podcast dedicated to weather and climate. Lee Enterprises produces many national, regional and sports podcasts. Learn more here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sustainable by AgriBusiness Global interviewed Roma Gwynn, Chief Scientific Officer for AgBioScout, Vice President of the International Biocontrol Manufacturers' Association and policy consultant for the Food and Agricultural Organization for the United Nations. In this episode, Gwynn shares how mindset changes are needed to increase successful biological creation and adoption.

We journey through time and across countries, tracing the story of a small but mighty grain: millets. These humble seeds are delicious, nutritious, drought-resistant, and healthy for us and the planet, but they have often been forgotten. 2023 is the International Year of Millets – a designation given by the United Nations. The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization is seizing that opportunity to promote what could be a powerful staple for people in an era of climate change. Join us as we explore millets' past heritage and future potential. An added bonus: a recipe from award-winner Chef Binta, a passionate advocate for millets. Interviewees: Vilas A Tonapi, director of the Indian Institute of Millets Research, Makiko Taguchi, Agricultural Officer at FAO, and Fatmata Binta, Chef and advocate for millets. Producer: Lis Sánchez Presenter: Njambi Gicharu Sound: Eric Deleu Production support: Ruki Inoshita, Denise Martínez, Aoife Riordan and Claudia Valdivieso. Editorial supervision: Michelle Hoffman

Who doesn't like to start the day with a cup of great coffee? But are you aware that your choice of coffee has the potential to positively impact the lives of coffee growers? In today's episode, we delve into the work being done by Dean Cycon's company to ensure justice and sustainability for coffee growers. Through his company, Dean's Beans, he has revolutionized our perception of coffee by highlighting the significance of ethical sourcing, fair compensation, and environmental sustainability. Tune in now to learn more! [00:32] - About Dean Cycon Dean is the founder of Dean's Beans Coffee Company. He earlier worked as an indigenous rights lawyer, an environmental attorney. Dean started the company as he wanted to use coffee as a vehicle for positive social, economic and ecologic change. The company designs fun projects in partnership with growers and they return a percentage of the profits to the growers as a social equity premium.  Dean has received “Best Practices Recognition” from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and a sustainability award from the Specialty Coffee Association, America.  He has also been a research fellow at Woods Hole in Massachusetts, the famous oceanographic institute. Dean is also an author of two books, “Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee” and “Finding Home (Hungary, 1945).” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tbcy/support

Carbon SequestrationCarbon sequestration is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide to slow the pace of climate change. There are two major types of carbon sequestration: geologic and biologic. Geological carbon sequestration injects carbon dioxide captured from an industrial or energy-related source into underground geologic formations. Biological carbon sequestration refers to the storage of atmospheric carbon in vegetation, soils, woody products, and aquatic environments. While carbon dioxide (CO2) is naturally captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical, and physical processes, some artificial sequestration techniques exploit the natural processes to slow the atmospheric accumulation of CO2.Soil Carbon Sequestration and Climate ChangeThe exchange of carbon between soils and the atmosphere is a significant part of the world's carbon cycle. Carbon, as it relates to the organic matter of soils, is a major component of soil and catchment health. However, human activities including agriculture have caused massive losses of soil organic carbon, leading to soil deterioration. California´s Healthy Soil Initiative is one program in the state working to promote the development of healthy soils in efforts to increase the state´s carbon sequestration, prevent soil deterioration and reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions.Soil carbon sequestration is a process in which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, primarily mediated by plants through photosynthesis, with carbon stored in the form of soil organic matter. Many scientists agree that regenerative agricultural practices can reduce atmospheric CO2 while also boosting soil productivity and health and increasing resilience to floods and drought.UC Berkeley researchers found that low-tech agricultural management practices such as planting cover crops, optimizing grazing, and sowing legumes on rangelands, if instituted globally, could capture enough carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil to reduce global temperatures 0.26 degrees Celsius – nearly half a degree Fahrenheit – by 2100. However, critics say that because biological sequestration isn't permanent and can be hard to measure, it's only part of the climate solution and not a substitute for reducing emissions. Whendee SilverDr. Whendee Silver is the Rudy Grah Chair and Professor of Ecosystem Ecology and Biogeochemistry in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at U.C. Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Ecosystem Ecology from Yale University. Her work seeks to determine the biogeochemical effects of climate change and human impacts on the environment, and the potential for mitigating these effects. The Silver Lab is currently working on drought and hurricane impacts on tropical forests, climate change mitigation potential of grasslands, and greenhouse gas dynamics of peatlands and wetlands. Professor Silver is the lead scientist of the Marin Carbon Project, which is studying the potential for land-based climate change mitigation, particularly by composting high-emission organic waste for soil amendments to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide. Continued ReadingThe potential of agricultural land management to contribute to lower global surface temperaturesTechnical options for sustainable land and water managementSoils help to combat and adapt to climate change by playing a key role in the carbon cycleThe solution to climate change is just below our feetSoil as Carbon Storehouse: New Weapon in Climate Fight? Soil Carbon Sequestration Impacts on Global Climate Change and Food SecurityOrganizationsSilver Lab, UC BerkeleyCarbon Management and Sequestration Center, Ohio State UniversityFood and Agricultural Organization, the United NationsRelated EpisodesCollaborating with farmers on climate-friendly practices, with Alameda County Resource Conservation District

Solar has trouble with the E in ESG – BlackRock CEO exposes ESG investing hypocrisy – How do we make the grid more sustainable?Bank Runs: When Banks Get Caught in a Spiral of FearMarch 21, 2023 Mariel AlumitThe collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the wider crisis that ensued has once again made clear that banking is a confidence game. Once that confidence is rattled and customers lose faith in a bank or the entire […]Solar industry feeling the heat over disposal of 80 million panelsMarch 21, 2023 Mariel AlumitNewswise — The renewable energy sector is facing a quandary: how Australia will dispose of 80 million solar panels in an environmentally friendly way when they reach the end of their life. Paradoxically, one of […]BlackRock CEO Lies to Investors, Says Oil & Gas Now OKMarch 21, 2023 Mariel AlumitBlackRock, the largest investment bank in the world with some $10 trillion in assets under management, is hurting. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink insists that public companies adopt ESG (environment, social, governance) policies that include reducing […]How Can We Update the Grid to Be More Resilient Against Natural Disasters?March 21, 2023 Mariel AlumitNatural disasters are becoming more frequent and intense, placing unprecedented pressure on a fragile electrical grid. According to a Food and Agricultural Organization report, climate and weather-related disasters have quadrupled from 40 events annually in the 1970s […]Report: Nearly Half of ‘Climate Change' Companies in U.S. Banked with Failed SVBMarch 21, 2023 Mariel AlumitHalf of the companies in the U.S. devoted to climate change and biotech banked with the now-failed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), leaving many of those companies looking for financial backers willing to take on the […]Global Layoffs Extend Far Beyond Big Tech – Amazon takes the top spot, and energy only looses 3,700March 21, 2023 Allen SantosMassive cuts at tech giants like Meta and Microsoft dominate headlines but don't tell the whole story. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has sent shockwaves through an economy already shaken by mass layoffs and […]Highlights of the Podcast00:00 – Intro02:35 – When banks get caught in a spiral of fear04:14  Solar Industry is feeling the heat over disposal of 80 million panels06:46 – BlackRock CEO lies to Investors says oil and gas is now okay08:16 – How can we upgrade the grid to be more resilient against natural disasters?10:56 – Nearly half of climate change companies in bank failed with SVB12:34 – Global layoffs extend far beyond big tech. Amazon takes the top spot and energy loses only loses 3700 worldwide14:29 – OutroFollow Stuart On LinkedIn and TwitterFollow Michael On LinkedIn and TwitterENB Top NewsENBEnergy DashboardENB PodcastENB Substack

In this episode of the Water for Food Podcast, DWFI Communications Specialist Arianna Elnes discusses exciting projects coming out of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute and what lies ahead in the upcoming year with Executive Director, Dr. Peter McCornick. McCornick leads the institute in delivering on its vision of a water and food secure world, building its partnerships and collaborations in Nebraska, nationally in the US, and other key food producing regions in the world. He is a tenured professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the Robert B. Daugherty Chair of Water for Food. McCornick was recently re-elected to the Board of Governors of the World Water Council; and is a member of the steering committee of the Water Scarcity in Agriculture (WASAG) initiative, a global partnership organized by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN (FAO). Prior to joining DWFI, Peter was the deputy director general of research at the International Water Management Institute. With an international career focused on improving the sustainable management of water resources, he has led inter-disciplinary research and development programs on water, agriculture and the environment in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Canada and the U.S. View DWFI's 2021-2022 Annual Report: https://go.unl.edu/annualreport Watch Peter McCornick's end-of-the-year video: https://go.unl.edu/2022year

Vanessa Coffman, Ph.D. is the Director of the Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness. She has a diverse background in food safety and sustainability, with a focus on environmental exposures across the food system. Dr. Coffman has conducted various research for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), on topics such as farming opportunities in post-war Sierra Leonne, occupational and residential exposures from large pork production operations in rural North Carolina, and the association between nitrate in drinking water from food animal operations and fetal health outcomes. Dr. Coffman previously worked at Stop Foodborne Illness as a policy analyst, and she has testified in front of U.S. government officials, authored peer-reviewed papers, and helped draft federal regulations. Dr. Coffman received a Ph.D. in Environmental Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an M.S. degree from the University of California–Berkeley in Global Public Health and the Environment. Sherry Brice-Williamson, M.B.A. is the Vice President of Global Quality and Food Safety at the Kellogg Company, where she oversees end-to-end food safety and quality for Kellogg's internal and external network. Sherry has over 20 years of experience in the industry and joined Kellogg in 2012 as part of the Pringles acquisition from P&G. She has served in numerous supply chain roles in the company, ranging from operations to quality. Sherry was promoted to Vice President of Global Food Safety and Quality in January 2020. Sherry is on the SSAFE board of directors and is affiliated with a number of other industry associations such as Stop Foodborne Illness, where she is an Alliance member. Sherry also co-chairs the national chapter of KAARG (Kellogg African American Resource Group). Sherry holds B.S. and M.B.A. degrees in Business Management and is a member of the Golden Key International National Honors Society. Megan Kenjora, M.P.A. is the Senior Manager of Food Safety Culture at The Hershey Company, where she leads a diverse global team to embed food safety in the hearts and minds of all Hershey employees. Megan has extensive experience building relationships among diverse groups, getting cross-functional support, and effectively communicating messages across cultures. Megan was an engaged member of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) Technical Working Group that authored the GFSI position paper, “A Culture of Food Safety,” and served as the inaugural chair of the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) Food Safety Culture Professional Development Group. Bringing a passion for food safety culture, she currently serves on the planning committee and numerous working groups as part of the Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness. A combat veteran who served eight years in the U.S. Army, Megan came to Hershey in 2014 from Raytheon, where she specialized in adult learning for various intelligence courses. She is a lifelong learner and an advocate for DEI, serving as a co-lead for the Hershey Veterans Business Resource Group. Megan is an M.B.A. candidate at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, and she holds an M.P.A. from Penn State University, B.A. degrees in Political Science and Classics from Bucknell University, and a Korean linguist certification from the Defense Language Institute. In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak with Vanessa, Sherry, and Megan [25:40] about: The history of Stop Foodborne Illness and the Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness, and how the Alliance leverages food safety culture as a vehicle for positive change in the food industry to make food safer for consumers The ways in which Megan's experience at Hershey informs the Alliance's work, such as bringing a proactive perspective to industry engagement and encouraging the adoption of best practices How Kellogg's and Hershey's memberships in the Alliance have helped both companies drive sustainable food safety cultures through collaboration and knowledge-sharing The resources included in Stop Foodborne Illness' Food Safety Culture Toolkit, which is tailored for small- and medium-sized businesses How the Alliance's work, such as advocacy for recall modernization, is steered by the needs and expertise of its members Why it is important for industry to understand the crucial need for food safety, and how resources such as video messaging and gamification frameworks can support that understanding The importance of clear and effective food safety communication from upper management, and how the Food Safety Culture Toolkit aids this objective The ways in which Sherry and Megan have established successful communication practices within their organizations to encourage robust food safety cultures. News and Resources Poisoned—Book on Prominent Foodborne Illness Outbreak—Getting New Edition, Netflix Documentary [2:08] FDA Submits FSMA Traceability Final Rule Ahead of New Era of Smarter Food Safety Webinar [7:26] 2020 Estimates Released: Food Types Associated with E. Coli, Salmonella, Listeria Foodborne Illness Outbreaks [14:46] Trust, Transparency Focus of Maple Leaf Foods' 12th Annual Food Safety Symposium [20:12] Ep. 128. Bill Marler: Perspectives on Poisoned and Food Safety Progress FSMA Proposed Rule for Food Traceability (FDA) Foodborne Illness Source Attribution Estimates for 2020 for Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157, and Listeria monocytogenes using Multi-Year Outbreak Surveillance Data, United States (CDC) We Want to Hear from You! Please send us your questions and suggestions to podcast@food-safety.com

This week on the Global Research News Hour, we are taking a look at the sudden threat to food security suddenly propping up everywhere, and whether or not there is an attempt to recreate food systems the way the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns was the start of restructuring the business sector via The Great Reset. In our first half hour, an expert with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Monika Tothova, offers up specifics surrounding the role of the pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine in accelerating the situation and about actions they recommend to nations to decrease the misery in the coming year. In our second half hour, we are joined by OFF-Guardian editor and journalist Kit Knightly, who articulates the numerous other ways by which the food security situation is deliberately being made worse and the individuals, corporations and systems that could stand to gain from the outcome.

Markus Lipp, Ph.D., is the Senior Food Safety Officer at the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Dr. Lipp leads the food safety work within the Food Systems and Food Safety Division at FAO, coordinating FAO's efforts to provide chemical and microbiological food safety risk assessments and capacity development to strengthen national capacities for food safety. Dr. Lipp previously worked in various public and private organizations focusing on a myriad of topics related to food safety, biotechnology, and standards-setting, including the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP), the International Bottled Water Association, Monsanto, Unilever, and the European Commission. Dr. Lipp holds a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak with Dr. Lipp [19:11] about: The ways in which a country's regulatory capacity and traditional cuisine determines its unique food safety challenges and priorities Some of the pressing chemical and microbiological hazards that are affecting food systems around the world The rippling effects of climate change, such as increased aflatoxin contamination, and how a nation's economic stability and geography relate to its climate resilience The balance between food safety and food security, including conflicting factors The importance of recognizing the boundaries of global food systems and collectively working to ensure food safety goals by engaging in nuanced discussions about such boundaries Reaching consumers through effective risk communication that considers the personal and emotional nature of food Why it is difficult to clearly define “food fraud,” and why international collaboration is important to combatting fraud in an increasingly complex, global food system FAO and the World Health Organization's (WHO's) joint work to achieve their overlapping goals, such as developing food safety standards through the Codex Alimentarius Commission. News and Resources: FSIS Reports 75 Percent Reduction of Salmonella in Poultry [2:28] Senate Mandates FDA to Ensure Infant Formula Safety, Supply [7:48] FSIS Releases HACCP Model for Raw, Liquid Egg Products [10:38] FDA Issues Final Guidance on Systems Recognition Arrangements [11:09] GFSI Exclusive Interview: FAO Food Safety Head Talks Collaboration, Sustainability FAO Publishes Paper on Regulatory Strategies to Counter Food Fraud Sponsored by: ActiveSense We Want to Hear from You! Please send us your questions and suggestions to podcast@food-safety.com

This week on the Global Research News Hour, we are taking a look at the sudden threat to food security suddenly propping up everywhere, and whether or not there is an attempt to recreate food systems the way the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns was the start of restructuring the business sector via The Great Reset. In our first half hour, an expert with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Monika Tothova, offers up specifics surrounding the role of the pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine in accelerating the situation and about actions they recommend to nations to decrease the misery in the coming year. In our second half hour, we are joined by OFF-Guardian editor and journalist Kit Knightly, who articulates the numerous other ways by which the food security situation is deliberately being made worse and the individuals, corporations and systems that could stand to gain from the outcome.

He was a scientist, a wildlife biologist, worked for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and conducted Sasquatch research out of the Comox Valley. Dr. John Bindernagel was known for his passionate dedication to researching the mysterious creature and was famously known throughout the Bigfoot community. His friend - and author - Terrance James recently completed his novel on his years of scientific research and passion to prove the existence of Sasquatch. James joins the podcast to reflect on his friend's life and legacy and his thoughts on how the existence of Sasquatch will one day be proven. To pre-order a copy of James' book, visit Hancock House Publishing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bhutan is a country that is very serious about the environment. In fact, it's the first country to become carbon-negative, and one of 3 countries who can claim that title. Unlike most countries who measure their success via GDP, this country has a measure known as GNH - Gross National Happiness. This is based on 4 different indicators: sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, good governance, and a healthy environment. Even the nation's constitution includes an article pertaining to the environment, where it states, ‘Every Bhutanese is a trustee of the Kingdom's natural resources and environment for the benefit of the present and future generations, and it is the fundamental duty of every citizen to contribute to the protection of the natural environment.' ·      00:39 – Intro  ·      01:39 – Bare Bones ·      03:35 – Heart of the Nation ·      01:01:10 – Who Is? ·      01:04:04 – Who Would've Thought? Find Nations of the World Podcast: Email now-podcast@heartsgroup.org Website https://nations-of-the-world.captivate.fm/ (https://nations-of-the-world.captivate.fm) Patreon https://www.patreon.com/nationsoftheworld (https://www.patreon.com/nationsoftheworld) Where is this information coming from? The Crazy Tourist  https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-bhutan/#more-24037 (https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-bhutan/#more-24037) Nations Online  https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/bhutan.htm#Government (https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/bhutan.htm#Government) Google Freebase sites  https://mobile.sites.google.com/site/theinternetnations/the-earth/asia/bhutan (https://mobile.sites.google.com/site/theinternetnations/the-earth/asia/bhutan) Travel.State.Gov (US Dept. of State) https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/bhutan-travel-advisory.html (https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/bhutan-travel-advisory.html) World Bank https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/poverty/987B9C90-CB9F-4D93-AE8C-750588BF00QA/AM2020/Global_POVEQ_BTN.pdf (https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/poverty/987B9C90-CB9F-4D93-AE8C-750588BF00QA/AM2020/Global_POVEQ_BTN.pdf) CIA World Factbook  https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/bhutan/ (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/bhutan/) OEC https://oec.world/en/profile/country/btn (https://oec.world/en/profile/country/btn) The Fact File  https://thefactfile.org/bhutan-facts/ (https://thefactfile.org/bhutan-facts/) Food and Agricultural Organization  https://www.fao.org/faolex/results/details/en/c/LEX-FAOC117663 (https://www.fao.org/faolex/results/details/en/c/LEX-FAOC117663) https://www.fao.org/fao-stories/article/en/c/1414264/ (https://www.fao.org/fao-stories/article/en/c/1414264/) The Global Economy https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Bhutan/imports_dollars/ (https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Bhutan/imports_dollars/) World Data  https://www.worlddata.info/asia/bhutan/index.php (https://www.worlddata.info/asia/bhutan/index.php) UN Data http://data.un.org/en/iso/bt.html (http://data.un.org/en/iso/bt.html) Worldometers  https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/bhutan-demographics/ (https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/bhutan-demographics/) Mission Panama http://missionpanama.gob.pa/panama-leads-new-coalition-of-carbon-negative-countries/ (http://missionpanama.gob.pa/panama-leads-new-coalition-of-carbon-negative-countries/) Devex https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-a-carbon-negative-alliance-to-tackle-climate-change-102204 (https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-a-carbon-negative-alliance-to-tackle-climate-change-102204) Global Citizen...

In this episode we discuss the Queen of Pentacles, a court card that is here to teach us how to find security, bring lushness to our world, and help us practice the delicious art of not giving a huckleberry about what the haters think. If you're ready to invoke the power of this card, join us!We discuss:Basic Witch meaning of the cardSymbolism and CorrespondencesQueen of Pents as a CapricornBoundariesDGAFingmythologies relating to the cardand so much more!To leave a review of the podcast on iTunes, open your Apple Podcasts APP and scroll down to the comments. Or you can try to click this link (sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't depending on your set up).Find us on Instagram at:Podcast: @BetweentheworldspodcastAmanda: @OracleofLACarolyn: @CarolynPennypackerRiggsNOTE: In this episode we mentioned that some people can't say no in relationships because they are threatened with violence or other forms of abuse. If this is you, please know that you are not alone and that there are resources available to you. If you're in need please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800.799.SAFE or text START to 88788. REFERENCES FOR THIS EPISODE:T. Susan Chang - “Tarot Correspondences,” book.Mary K. Greer - “Understanding the Tarot Court,” book.Akron & Banzhaf - “The Crowley Tarot,” book.Sally Gearhart (with a little help from Susan Rennie) - “A Feminist Tarot,” book.Mark Ryan and John Matthews, “The Wildwood Tarot Deck," book and deck. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. On Agriculture in Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt. Primary Homework Help by Mandy Barrow. Hapi the Nile god. Wikipedia. Rider Waite Coleman Smith Tarot DeckThoth Tarot DeckTarot of Pagan Cats by Magdelina Messina, with artwork by Lola Airaghi.Staci K. Haines, “The Politics of Trauma,” book.In Search of Diana of Ephesus Aug. 21, 1994, Section 2, Page 33.Diana of Ephesus: The Multibreasted Fertility Deity. Melvin A. Shiffman, M.D., J.D. Ayni, honoring the humanity in all.  Blog Post on GlobalVolunteers.orgAyni: Living Life in the Round  by Patricia Soledad Llosa  in ParabolaOtherwild the store with boobs. ********************************* WELCOME LOVERS: CARDS OF THE YEAR WORKSHOPIn this workshop, we'll look at the collective card of the year for 2022 –  the Lovers card – and discuss what it's offering us. We'll also look at your personal cards of the year, how they relate to the collective cards and to your soul card. CLICK HERE to register for Welcome Lovers: Cards of the Year Workshop.We've also got Candle Magick, we've got Empress Love Magick, we've got Ace of Swords protection magick and more. CLICK THIS LINK TO SHOPYou can also get your favorite witch a yearly subscription to our coven -- the gift that keeps on giving throughout the year, where you get workshops, monthly tarot studio classes, and lots of other goodies for a super reasonable price.Become a Between the Worlds Weird Circle Subscriber, click here. ********************************** Learn More About Your Host Amanda Yates Garcia, & Buy Her BookTo order Amanda's book, "Initiated: Memoir of a Witch" CLICK HERE.To sign up for Amanda's newsletter, CLICK HERE.Amanda's InstagramAmanda's FacebookTo book an appointment with Amanda go to www.oracleoflosangeles.com ********************************* Original MUSIC by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs ********************************** MIND YOUR PRACTICE PODCASTMind Your Practice - Carolyn's  podcast with arts consultant and author of Make Your Art No Matter What, Beth Pickens - is geared towards artists and writers looking for strategies and support to build their projects and practices (plus loving pep talks).There's even a club - “Homework Club” - which offers creative people support and strategies for keeping their projects and practices a priority with monthly webinars, worksheets, live QnA's, optional accountability pods, and ACTUAL HOMEWORK (that you'll never be graded on. Ever!)You can visit MindYourPractice.com for more details or listen wherever you stream Between the Worlds. ********************************** Get in touch with sponsorship inquiries for Between the Worlds at betweentheworldspodcast@gmail.com.**CONTRIBUTORS:Amanda Yates Garcia (host) & Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs (producer, composer). The BTW logo collage was created by Maria Minnis (tinyparsnip.com / instagram.com/tinyparsnip ) with text designed by Leah Hayes.

The world's farmland is in crisis. The earth is not creating enough new fertile soil to mitigate what our agricultural activity is losing. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization, the world's topsoil could be depleted by 2080.   Scientists are urgently studying how to preserve the topsoil. They're delving deep into the microscopics of […]

The world's farmland is in crisis. The earth is not creating enough new fertile soil to mitigate what our agricultural activity is losing. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization, the world's topsoil could be depleted by 2080.   Scientists are urgently studying how to preserve the topsoil. They're delving deep into the microscopics of […]

POLICY SEMINAR Making agrifood systems more resilient to shocks and stresses Co-Organized by IFPRI and FAO in North America JAN 19, 2022 - 9:30 TO 11:00AM EST The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of agrifood systems to shocks and stresses, as it increased global food insecurity and malnutrition. Action is needed to make agrifood systems more resilient, efficient, sustainable, and inclusive. The FAO's The State of Food and Agriculture 2021 presents country-level indicators of the resilience of agrifood systems — these measure the robustness of primary production and food availability, as well as physical and economic access to food, and can thus help assess the capacity of national agrifood systems to absorb shocks and stresses. The report analyzes the vulnerabilities of food supply chains and how rural households cope with risks and shocks. It offers guidance for minimizing trade-offs as we develop policies to enhance food supply chain resilience, support livelihoods in the agrifood system and, in the face of disruption, ensure sustainable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food for all. The seminar participants will discuss these policy conclusions and how to act on them. Introduction and Context Setting Johan Swinnen, Director General, IFPRI and Global Director of Systems Transformation of CGIAR Presentation of The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2021: Making agrifood systems more resilient to shocks and stresses Máximo Torero, Chief Economist, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Panel Discussion Alexious Butler, Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Julian Lampietti, Manager, Global Agriculture Practice, World Bank Thomas Reardon, University Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University (MSU) Danielle Resnick, Senior Fellow at Brookings Institute and Non-Resident Fellow, IFPRI Closing Remarks Jocelyn Brown Hall, Director, Liaison Office, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (invited) Moderator Rob Vos, Director of Markets, Trade and Institutions Division, IFPRI LINKS FAO North America: https://www.fao.org/connect-private-sector/regions/north-america/en/ The State Of Food And Agriculture (SOFA) 2021: https://www.fao.org/publications/sofa/sofa-2021/en/ More on the seminar: https://www.ifpri.org/event/making-agrifood-systems-more-resilient-shocks-and-stresses Subscribe to IFPRI Insights newsletter and event announcements at www.ifpri.org/content/newsletter-subscription

Ein Standpunkt von Christian Kreiß.In den letzten Monaten erschienen mehrere Studien, die sich mit sozialen Auswirkungen der internationalen Coronapolitik beschäftigen.Zunehmende UngleichverteilungDer alle zwei Jahre erscheinende World Inequality Report stellte am 7.12.2021 fest, dass die weltweite Ungleichverteilung durch die Lockdowns dramatisch zugenommen habe und heute wieder auf dem sehr hohen Niveau von Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, „dem Höhepunkt des westlichen Imperialismus“ sei. (1) Wörtlich heißt es in dem Bericht:“Seit 1995 hat der Vermögensanteil, der auf Milliardäre entfällt, von einem auf über drei Prozent zugenommen. Diese Zunahme wurde während der Covid-Pandemie verschärft. In der Tat war 2020 der stärkste Vermögensanstieg von Milliardärsvermögen in der Geschichte.“ (2)Die untere Hälfte der Erdbevölkerung besitzt demnach 2 Prozent des globalen Vermögens, die oberen 10 Prozent 76 Prozent. Nach Zahlen der Allianz-Versicherung gehören 41 Prozent der Netto-Finanzvermögen den obersten ein Prozent, den obersten 10 Prozent 84 Prozent. (3) Die Covid-Politik hat demnach zu einer einzigartigen Zunahme der ökonomischen Macht bei einer ganz kleinen Elite der Weltbevölkerung geführt.Erhöhung der LebensmittelpreiseAm 2.12.2021 veröffentlichte die FAO, die Food and Agricultural Organization der Vereinten Nationen in ihrem monatlich erscheinenden Bericht über die weltweiten Preisentwicklungen der Lebensmittel, dass die Lebensmittelpreise im November 2021 um 27 Prozent teurer waren als im November 2020. (4)Verglichen mit den durchschnittlichen Lebensmittelpreisen der sechs Jahre 2015 bis 2020 (Indexstand 95,3) waren die Lebensmittel im November 2021 (Indexstand 134,4) um 41 Prozent teurer als in den sechs Jahren zuvor. (5)41 Prozent ist viel Geld für die ärmeren Schichten der Bevölkerung, v.a. in den Entwicklungsländern, aber durchaus auch für die Unterschichten in den Industrieländern. Die Lockdown-Politik hat also zu sprunghaft steigenden Lebensmittelpreisen geführt, was unmittelbar und massiv die Unterschichten benachteiligt. Grundnahrungsmittel sind heute nominal und real so teuer wie fast noch nie in der Nachkriegszeit. ... hier weiterlesen: https://apolut.net/rueckblick-2021-zunehmende-ungleichverteilung-armut-und-hunger-von-christian-kreiss/+++Apolut ist auch als kostenlose App für Android- und iOS-Geräte verfügbar! Über unsere Homepage kommen Sie zu den Stores von Apple, Google und Huawei. Hier der Link: https://apolut.net/app+++Abonnieren Sie jetzt den apolut-Newsletter: https://apolut.net/newsletter/+++Ihnen gefällt unser Programm? Informationen zu Unterstützungsmöglichkeiten finden Sie hier: https://apolut.net/unterstuetzen/+++Unterstützung für apolut kann auch als Kleidung getragen werden! Hier der Link zu unserem Fan-Shop: https://harlekinshop.com/pages/apolut+++Website und Social Media:Website: https://apolut.net/Odysee: https://odysee.com/@apolutInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/apolut_net/Twitter: https://twitter.com/apolut_netTelegram: https://t.me/s/apolutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/apolut/Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/apolut See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Afghanistan may have dropped out of the news headlines since the Taliban takeover in mid-August, but the situation there is heading towards catastrophe, UN humanitarians have warned.  What the country's most vulnerable communities need most urgently are food, and seed for next year's harvest and livestock, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), which is ramping up support to reach the poorest families there.  Here's the agency's representative in Afghanistan, Richard Trenchard, speaking from the capital Kabul, with UN News's Daniel Johnson.  

Afghanistan may have dropped out of the news headlines since the Taliban takeover in mid-August, but the situation there is heading towards catastrophe, UN humanitarians have warned.  What the country's most vulnerable communities need most urgently are food, and seed for next year's harvest and livestock, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), which is ramping up support to reach the poorest families there.  Here's the agency's representative in Afghanistan, Richard Trenchard, speaking from the capital Kabul, with UN News's Daniel Johnson.  

Tyler grew up in Philadelphia. She first learned about MSU when she was an undergrad at Penn State.“I came to MSU because I was looking for a grad program that really centered all my interests,” says Tyler. “At the time I was pursuing agrarian or agricultural literacies among inner-city and urban youth. And I also was really interested in Black farmers. I did a summer program for undergraduate students at MSU that trained you how to do research and navigate the graduate school process. I came to Michigan State for the summer prior to graduating Penn State. “MSU was a really good fit for me based on the curriculum of the department. And I had relationships with the faculty members and I was able to get funding for my graduate program. And so it was just a really good fit. Growing up in inner-city Philadelphia, I would consider myself to not be the prototypical urban child. I was very much into nature. I loved going to summer camp. I was that child who would run off into the forest to be with the trees instead of going to play basketball or jump rope or something like that. I was always drawn to the natural environment around me, hugging trees, digging in soil for worms, and studying the cycles of the moon. And I just stayed with that passion. I knew I wanted to do something related to food and the natural environment because that was my passion.”Tyler says coming to MSU was a transition “because I jumped into the water by working with farmers. I wasn't familiar with agriculture much growing up in the city. I didn't grow up on a farm. I didn't grow up with a garden in my yard. It was a really new experience that changed my life for the better from so many angles.”Part of what inspired her to learn more about where our food comes from was the birth of her daughter.“Being a person of color, particularly a Black woman in the agricultural sector, I was usually the only person of color and or the only woman of color in my agricultural classes. And I always wondered why and felt ostracized and out of place sometimes. I was always curious as to why people who looked like me or people who shared my cultural background were not interested in the same things that I was interested in, that is as an agricultural major and someone who was just really interested in the natural environment generally.“I was also really drawn to wanting to know more about where our food comes from. Because at the time I was a new mother. I wanted my daughter to have a more holistic lifestyle, particularly around the foods that we were eating because I grew up eating a lot of crappy foods. I wanted better for her. And so I started to learn how to grow my own food and just wanted to know more about the food system generally and why things were the way they were. And so I began to ask questions and one of my mentors told me that I should go to grad school because they didn't have answers to my questions and I needed to do research to get those answers. So that's what I did.”Tyler is president of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.“DBCFSN is the acronym. The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network is a nonprofit organization that has the mission to build self-reliance, food security, food justice, and more importantly, food sovereignty in Detroit's Black community by influencing public policy, engaging in urban agriculture, promoting healthy eating, and encouraging cooperative buying and directing youth towards careers in food related fields. We have the vision of advancing the movement towards food sovereignty throughout the entire African diaspora, not just for Black Detroiters. Because we understand that food is dignity. Healthy food is dignity and access to fresh, affordable, healthy, culturally appropriate food is a human right, which does not currently exist for everyone on this planet. And so that's what we're working towards.”How do you define food sovereignty?“Food sovereignty is the self-determining right to have a say in how your food is produced, how it is distributed, sold, and consumed, and even recycled back into the production process. It's really about a transference of power from the corporate food actors that dominate our food system to the people who are mostly the consumers of the food system and are generally most affected by food inequities and inequalities. We're demanding a complete transfer of power where we can have more say over our soil, our water, our air systems, and how that impacts us from a health standpoint. We want more control over these systems because seeds, water, soil, and ultimately the food that comes out of those three things intersecting is the essence of life. And currently there's a monopoly over food production, distribution, and consumption. And that's highly unethical. Food sovereignty is about changing that system where the people are in control and not corporate food actors.“Food justice is a similar concept and is focused on fresh, affordable, healthy, culturally appropriate access to food in the way that we would like to consume it and in the way that we would like to produce it. Food sovereignty takes food justice a bit further because it's about controlling those systems that bring the food forth. They're very similar terms, but food sovereignty is often considered to be a more radical orientation where it's about community ownership of the food system. I don't want to minimize it, but it's a concept and a practice that centers around generally getting better quality food that's self-identified for the people who are consuming it.”Tell me more about your work in Detroit.“I'm with the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund that is subsidiary organization of Keep Growing Detroit. We are a coalition of three long-standing Detroit urban farming organizations with a collective mission to rebuild intergenerational land ownership for Black farmers in Detroit. And those three organizations are the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network that I'm currently very involved in, the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, and Keep Growing Detroit. We are a coalition of organizations that are committed to being in right relationship with the land. And we believe in the transformation of our communities through food sovereignty and the revitalization of Detroit's agricultural landscape. We honorably steward this fund to support Detroit's Black farmers in land acquisitions and general farm support. We believe that land ownership is a huge strategic tool in building intergenerational wealth, which a lot of Black Detroiters don't have.”What's the state of, and potential for, urban farming in Detroit?“Detroit is often considered to be the mecca of urban agriculture, and I didn't really know that prior to moving here to Michigan from Pennsylvania. And it was just, I guess, the divine flow of things that I ended up where I was supposed to be. Because when I would first come to Detroit and visit for the day coming down from campus, I used to be in such awe of so much agricultural activity happening everywhere in the city. There's such a wealth of vacant land available.“People are growing in their backyards and their front yards and their vacant lots next to their houses and next to their businesses and even hydroponics and aquaponics in abandoned buildings. There's just so much energy around food production and growing your own food as a political power tool and taking back our voices and our power within the food system. We're planting seeds and nourishing them through production and cleansing the water and air in the process. And we're rebuilding our top soil that corporate agriculture has decimated over the course of a few decades.“Urban agriculture in Detroit represents a really vibrant movement of people, grassroots organizations, and just general everyday people coming together to build a better reality in the face of so much blight and devastation that the city was experiencing.”Can there be enough urban farming in Detroit to feed significant pockets of the community?“Yes, that is a desirable vision for many of us in Detroit. We would like to have self-sufficient and self-reliant communities where we are growing as much of our own food as possible. Of course, everything doesn't grow here in Michigan. So that's an obvious challenge. However, we do want to grow what we can, even if it's all the tomatoes that we can eat for the season and all the leafy greens, all the onions, garlic, and things that are more commonly grown here that are common staples in our diet. We believe that is possible, and that is what we're actively working towards every day. Detroit is a metropolitan area that's unlike many metropolitan areas where there are huge swaths of vacant land available.” From a 30,000-foot perspective, Dr. Tyler, is the world up to feeding its growing population?“A recent report by the Food and Agricultural Organization, or the FAO of the United Nations, states that by 2021, 30 percent of the world's population, or about 2.3 billion people, will not have access to adequate food. And I wholeheartedly believe that that's not because of a food shortage. It's because of the political policies that are in place that restrict food access for many people, particularly poor people, women, and people of color. Feeding people is political, just like growing food is political. So we have more than enough food. The world grows, I think, three to five times enough food to feed the entire world over and over and over again. The corporate monopoly over the food system causes hunger and poverty. I believe that there's enough land and resources to feed the world. Will the monopoly that has a choke hold on the food system be relinquished enough so that that can happen?”How does climate change impact the situation?“Again, because of the corporate monopoly of the food system, our land and water and air supply are at very dangerous toxic levels because of the complete raping of the land and resources and just putting profits over people at every sector of the food system and the environmental system generally, which is causing severe climate change on a global level. And it just so happens that those who are most affected are those who are growing much of the world's food. Small scale farmers around the world grow 80 percent of the world's food, according to certain sources. Yet we have the least amount of power in the food system. And those small-scale farmers who are growing most of the world's food are using what we consider to be agroecological growing methods where we grow in communion with Mother Nature. We grow in communion with the natural environment, and we don't use a lot of harmful growing strategies like over-tilling, pesticides, monocropping, etc.“We know that if we don't shift our growing methods rapidly within the next 10 to 15 years, there will be no more topsoil left. Topsoil is the quintessential ingredient in growing rich, nutritionally dense foods. Climate change intersects with food sovereignty and the food system generally. We know that industrial agriculture is a main driver of carbon pollution in our environment. They're a main contributor to climate change. The only way to change that is if we have a complete transference of power from corporations to people who are growing most of the world's food.”MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.

The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization says 1.3bn tonnes of food are discarded every year, while over 820 million people worldwide go hungry. Now a US company has developed a liquid which can extend the shelf-life of fruit and vegetables.

WHALES spend their entire lives inside a medium, water, in which they can't actually breathe. So throughout the day, and the night, they have to swim to the surface to take a breath of that sweet, sweet ocean air… or they die! We humans, and other land lubber mammals like us, are spoiled, just inhale, anytime you want, and… problem solved. But — What The IF humans had to breathe by dunking our head in water? The amazing Dr. Vanessa Pirotta joins us from Sydney, Australia to take us into the wet and wild thought experiment, so we can learn real science! Imagine living the life of the whale, turned on it's head. What world would we have built if our bodies worked this way? It's like what if we emerged from the oceans, as we believe life did, but never adapted to breathing outside the water like we used to. Humans with gills? Are we wearing helmets on our head that are filled with water? Do we fill our *buildings* with water? Water the IF! — Dr. Pirotta is a wildlife scientist and a gifted science communicator. Her zoological background has taken her around the world for wildlife research. Vanessa is also a passionate and experienced science communicator who loves making science accessible. Her keen interests cover topics of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math, also known as STEAM. Vanessa has represented Australia internationally as the national winner of a world-renowned science communication competition known as FameLab, placing second in the world. Vanessa's efforts to communicate science has also seen her become a TEDx speaker, speak at the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and recognized as one of the top 100 Women of Influence judged by the Australian Financial Review. Learn more about Vanessa! Homepage: https://www.vanessapirotta.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/VanessaPirotta Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drvanessapirotta/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrVanessaPirotta YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIe3r09XA8BviNbVMtag2Q --- Like the show? Share your love for the IF by dropping a review on whatever podcast app you're enjoying, including Apple Podcasts! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com and never miss an episode! Keep On IFFin', Philip & Matt

Food is foundational to our experience as people, we also now understand its criticality in the future of our planet. Having recently completed a Regenerative Food Systems program, she is a Food & Climate Shaper at the Future Food Institute and FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) of the United Nations, while also supporting Charles Michel’ School of Conscious Eating Community. Eleni is currently looking at the centrality of gastronomy in regenerating the present for a sustainable future as part of her Master’s in Food Anthropology. I had an illuminating conversation with Eleni to understand what’s happening with food systems and sustainability. Eleni explains these challenges simply and clearly – this isn’t just a conversation for the food nerd, it’s important for all of us to start to understand what’s happening with our food systems. I ask the tough questions, like balancing personal needs vs environmental and we talk about some of the misconceptions around the relationship between our environmental crisis and food (hint hint: almond milk). There’s a lot to cover under this banner, but I think this conversation is a great starting point. Watch the full interview here or listen to the By Intent podcast on the following streaming platforms (Spotify, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Apple and Google). For more information, visit: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/regenerativenomad About By Intent: Website: www.byintent.com Instagram: instagram.com/byintent Facebook: www.facebook.com/byintent/ Youtube: https://youtu.be/0gG35KRh3eo Apple Podcast: apple.co/3hUo0RR DISCLAIMER The information provided in this video/audio is designed to serve as generally helpful information on the subjects discussed. We are not licensed medical professionals of any kind, neither psychologists nor therapists. The video/audio is not meant to be used, nor should it be used, to diagnose or treat any medical, psychological or behavioral condition/s. For any type of diagnosis or treatment, please consult a medical professional. We make no representations, guarantees or warranties that the information in this video/audio is appropriate for you or will result in an improvement of any nature in your life. Resources and links provided to third-party products, services, processes or other information in this video/audio are purely informational and do not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation with us. For more information, please refer back to the full terms and conditions on www.byintent.com.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, the average person consumes almost 50 kilogrammes of meat a year. Research shows that reducing the consumption of meat is crucial to combating the climate crisis. Recently Singapore became the first country to approve so-called 'cultured meat'. Also known as 'clean meat', it's produced in labs, using animal cells, but without slaughtering any livestock. Mustafa Fatih Yavuz takes a look at whether cultured meat is likely to end up on menus in Israel any time soon. #LabGrownMeat #CulturedMeat #SingaporeFoodAgency

This is the last in a mini-series about protecting the soils of the world from erosion and poisoning by agricultural chemicals. Industrial farming techniques along with climate change are causing the loss of 75 billion tons of topsoils each year. On May 4, 2020, Jesse Frost had a farmer to farmer conversation with Gabe Brown on Regenerative Agriculture. Jesse farms off grid in Kentucky and hosts the No-Till Market Garden Podcast. Gabe Brown’s 5,000 acre farm in North Dakota is now run by his son and his son’s fiancé. Most of the Brown Ranch is in crops and grazed by cattle, sheep and hogs with a small area in no till vegetables. Gabe Brown is now a pioneer of the soil-health movement and has been named one of the twenty-five most influential agricultural leaders in the United States. On November 10, 2020, Gabe Brown was interviewed by Dr. Shawn Baker. The 17 minute conversation is posted on YouTube under: Gabe Brown- let's fix agriculture - Here is an excerpt. This concludes - for now - a mini series on Soil as a Living Being, and the efforts to halt the loss of 75 billion tons of topsoil each year - that’s according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN.

This is the last in a mini-series about protecting the soils of the world from erosion and poisoning by agricultural chemicals. Industrial farming techniques along with climate change are causing the loss of 75 billion tons of topsoils each year. On May 4, 2020, Jesse Frost had a farmer to farmer conversation with Gabe Brown on Regenerative Agriculture. Jesse farms off grid in Kentucky and hosts the No-Till Market Garden Podcast. Gabe Brown’s 5,000 acre farm in North Dakota is now run by his son and his son’s fiancé. Most of the Brown Ranch is in crops and grazed by cattle, sheep and hogs with a small area in no till vegetables. Gabe Brown is now a pioneer of the soil-health movement and has been named one of the twenty-five most influential agricultural leaders in the United States. On November 10, 2020, Gabe Brown was interviewed by Dr. Shawn Baker. The 17 minute conversation is posted on YouTube under: Gabe Brown- let's fix agriculture - Here is an excerpt. This concludes - for now - a mini series on Soil as a Living Being, and the efforts to halt the loss of 75 billion tons of topsoil each year - that’s according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN.

This podcast is part of a series focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our food system. We're interviewing Caitlin Welsh, director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies based in Washington DC. Caitlin is a leading expert on global and US food security and particularly on the relationship between food security, urbanization, climate change, and conflict.    Interview Summary   How is the COVID-19 food security crisis different from others, such as the 2007, 2008 food crisis caused by the great recession?   What we're experiencing right now is a crisis that's not related to production levels, whether you're talking about food insecurity in our own country or around the world. The last global food crisis that we experienced was the crisis of 2007 and 2008 and the crisis was caused by low production levels and high prices. The crisis we're experiencing right now is not a crisis; it's rooted in low production levels. Instead, it's rooted in disruptions across food systems writ large.   In my analysis, I've seen at least six different types of disruptions: 1) the first being reductions in wages and job losses, which has widespread effects on food insecurity. 2) In some countries, you're seeing that lockdowns threaten the transportation of ag inputs like seeds and fertilizer to farms. 3) The third type of disruption I'm seeing is that lockdowns threaten the movement of labor to farms. As one example, there may be an estimated shortfall of about a million seasonal ag workers in Europe because of lockdown related to COVID. 4) A fourth type of disruptive that lockdowns may threaten the transportation of food from farms to markets. And in the United States, I think that we've done a very good job of preventing this from happening. Early on to the pandemic back in March, the Department of Homeland Security included truckstops as part of our critical infrastructure to make sure that food could be transported from where it's produced to where it's consumed. 5) The fifth type of destruction I've seen is when social distancing measures result in reduced access to urban markets on which many consumers rely to meet their food needs. It's frequently urban consumers who are hit first by disruptions at the market level. 6) And the six types of destruction are trade disruptions, and these happened early on in the pandemic. In some cases, you saw labor shortages and slowed operations at ports, which hindered the trade of food from producers to markets. So I see disruptions at many points in food systems and not a crisis of production as we saw the last time.   Caitlin, you spent a decade working in US government positions, including seven years in the Department of State's Office of Global Food Security, so you know an awful lot about this issue. Can you describe what you see globally relative to food insecurity?   We don't yet have a global assessment that's given us a very clear picture of food insecurity. But, we have estimates that are done by a few different organizations. The World Food Program has estimated that the number of people who could experience acute food insecurity this year could reach 270 million. They think that COVID will push an extra 120 million people into acute food insecurity. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization provides its estimate. The numbers are different but complementary. The FAO looking at best mid and worst-case scenarios, even in the best-case scenario, COVID-19 could increase the number of food-insecure people worldwide by 83 million.   Those are startling numbers. Should the global approach leaders take to improve global food security change in response to COVID-19? And if so, how would you suggest things be done?   That's a great question, and I think that because of COVID-19, we should be taking a different approach than the approach that we took in response to the last crisis. But I also think that even if this pandemic had not happened, we should be shifting our approach anyway, based on new data that we're seeing so I'll address both things.   Because COVID-19 is causing disruptions across food systems writ large. I think that the global food security community should renew its focus on food systems post-production. And on the importance of transportation mechanisms to get inputs and labor to farms, on transportation to get food from farms to markets, on the importance of markets, particularly in urban areas, on global trade. So I think that COVID-19 is underscoring for us the importance of all of these elements to global food security, all of these elements that happen post-production. I do think though, again, that even if this pandemic hadn't happened, data that we're seeing now is showing us that the approach that we were taking in response to the last crisis isn't necessarily improving global food security.    So in response to that last crisis, the global food security community coalesced around an approach that generally focused on increasing agricultural productivity of staple crops in developing countries. And for many years we were following that approach that had some positive benefits among some populations in some countries around the world. But just last month, the UN put out its annual report on the status of hunger and malnutrition worldwide. And this is the annual report that measures progress against the sustainable development goal on hunger, that is, SDG 2 with targets to end hunger and targets to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030. And the findings of this report were shocking to me. One of the main findings was that combining numbers, people experiencing moderate food insecurity and severe food insecurity have an estimated quarter of the world's population.   On top of that, it's very interesting that it calculated the average price of healthy diets around the world, a good healthy diet and the best healthy diet. And for both of those diets, the average costs around the world is greater than international poverty line. So essentially if you're living in poverty, you can't even afford the minimally healthy diet around the world. And people are saying as a result of that, should we be thinking of the international poverty line differently if it can't even buy you the cheapest healthy meal?   The WFPC saw the same numbers that you did and was startled by them just as you are. And it makes me wonder, and I'd be curious to see what you think, is there any hope at all of meeting that 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 2 of having no hunger around the world? I mean, that would have been a tall order even if things had been getting subtly better but they're getting steadily worse.   Yes, again, the targets are to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition. And as of this year's report, the UN is saying that that hunger continues to increase and that when it comes to malnutrition, the current level of effort is not anywhere near enough to end malnutrition in the next decade. I also see less attention to this issue politically. It's not high on US development agenda, I don't see it as high on the UN agenda around the world. We'll see what the do about it. I'd like to put some color around the approach that we devised in response to the last crisis, which was to increase the production of staple crops. In 2015, the entire intelligence community put together an assessment of global food security. And their bottom line judgment was that simply growing more food globally will not lead to more food secure countries. And I think that that's what we see around the world. It's very important to be investing in agricultural production of staple crops, but simply growing more food is not gonna lead to more food security and that's what we're seeing today.   Turning our focus to the US, how is COVID-19 affected food systems in America?   Happy to talk about that. When it comes to the United States, again, I think it's analogous to what we're seeing around the world, where we have relatively high and stable production of many different types of food around our country. At the same time, you see spikes in food insecurity by many different measures. You can look at the number of people who are utilizing food banks, and you can look at the level of food insecurity among children. All these numbers are spiking. I'll describe these disruptions that I've observed across US food systems. When it comes to food banks, we're seeing that in the pandemic, demand that us food banks has increased by an average of 70% compared to this time last year. A big spike across the board, about 40% of customers at food banks had never gone to food bank before the pandemic kicked, grocery store prices are increasing. You have had small upticks in prices of cereals and fruits and vegetables, but the biggest increase is in the price of beef. The beef index increased 20% in the three months of April, May, and June, and that's the largest increase in history.   Given what you've just said about food banks in particular, how would you characterize the state of food security overall in the United States?   Yes, the last nationwide assessment of food insecurity in the United States was in 2018. They haven't produced an assessment yet of this year that captures the effects of the pandemic. But we do have surveys that are done by the US Census Bureau, and their data is showing that we have historic levels of food insecurity among households with children, but they've updated the survey such that data is now showing that it's children's specifically. Highest levels on record in the United States it's 14 million children around the country experiencing food insecurity.   I would like to ask you about COVID food security and racial justice. Well, what is the relationship that you see among these, and what are your thoughts about how to best move forward?   Yes, that is an incredibly important question right now. I just mentioned that there were historical rates of food insecurity among children. Still, the rate is far higher among black and Hispanic households than white households. About three in 10 black households with children are experiencing food insecurity. It's about 30% of black households. About 25% of Hispanic households with children compared to the rate of only 10% for white households. And my experience in this community is that I think that before the pandemic, and before the racial reckoning that we're experiencing right now, people used to take for granted that you would experience higher rates of poverty and food insecurity among communities of color in the United States. And I'm seeing a really important and much-needed shift where we're not accepting that as given. And instead, people are saying, why is this happening? And what can we do about it? I look forward to those conversations, and I look forward to those solutions. There's no silver bullet to these things.   I'd like to switch to something related to this, which is the relationship of the pandemic to food insecurity and inter-race in the United States. I think that we've all heard that Black and Latino Americans have died of COVID-19 at two to three times the rate of white Americans. I think that it's important to note that among the factors that lead to morbidity and mortality rates from COVID, the second most important factor in age is obesity. And nationwide, the rate of obesity is higher among black and Hispanic adults than it is among white adults. I think that obesity, a manifestation of malnutrition, plays an important role in the impact of COVID-19 on people of color in the United States. I think it's important to look at the interplay of race, COVID-19, and food insecurity in the United States.    And then to get to your question about what to do about food insecurity among people of color, I think that there are a number of things for us to look at. It's not only about food access. The conversation often goes directly to a lack of full-service markets in communities of color. I think that it should go beyond that. It's strongly linked to income, so increasing wages, the importance of investments in infrastructure like public transportation. And I think there are other conversations that we need to be having as well. Right now, headlines are being made around the increase in evictions because of the lapse of federal benefits at the end of July. There are strong links between eviction rates and food insecurity. So I've been reading studies about the correlation between food insecurity at age five and eviction rates for children. So there are connections between being evicted and having high rates of food insecurity. So communities of color are hit hardest, and I think that the policy community needs to do this.   Interviewee bio: Caitlin Welsh is the director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she provides insights and policy solutions to global and U.S. food security challenges. She brings over one decade of U.S. government experience to this role. She served most recently in the National Security Council and National Economic Council as director of global economic engagement, where she coordinated U.S. policy in the G7 and G20. Prior to the White House, Ms. Welsh spent over seven years in the Department of State's Office of Global Food Security, including as acting director, offering guidance to the secretary of state on global food security and its relationship to urbanization, climate change, and conflict. Ms. Welsh served as a presidential management fellow at the U.S. African Development Foundation, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco. Her analysis on global and U.S. food security has been featured in The Economist, Foreign Policy, BBC, and other outlets. Ms. Welsh received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and M.P.A. from Columbia University's School of International Public Affairs. She hails from Erie, Pennsylvania, and speaks Arabic and French.   

What are the implications of one of societies most important, yet underfunded and undervalued systems. Waste management and recycling centers and how they're trying to innovate on behalf of the rest of the world. To save it.What’s new in waste conversion technology?Waste to BiofuelsTechnologies to convert MSW to renewable transportation fuels, primarily cellulosic ethanol and diesel, have long captured the eye of visionary entrepreneurs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) can provide indirect subsidies approaching $200 per ton of MSW for cellulosic ethanol. Some federal loan guarantees can significantly lower a facility’s cost of capital, which is important as waste-to-biofuels facilities are very capital intensive. A 1,000-ton-per-day waste-to-biofuel facility can cost over $500 million to construct, so these technologies are generally economically feasible only at sizes of 1,000 tons per day or more.Chemical recycling of plastic wasteA relatively new strategy for waste conversion is the chemical recycling of plastic waste. Chemical recycling of plastics involves the conversion of plastic waste into a liquid hydrocarbon that can then be used to produce new products. The conversion process typically involves a pyrolysis technology, which is akin to gasification. With the heightened visibility of the impact of single-use plastics on the environment, this is a sorely needed technology in the current market.Conversion to electricityNoticeably absent from any list of projects coming online are those deploying high-temperature processes, such as gasification or pyrolysis, to generate electricity. This is a reflection of electricity being a relatively low-value product that does not support the capital intensity of these complex technologies at the moment. As long as fracking continues to provide an abundant supply of inexpensive natural gas for electricity production in the U.S., this fact is unlikely to change.Now South Korea is taking a lead, recycling 95% of its food waste.It wasn’t always this way in the country. The mouth-watering array of side dishes that accompany a traditional South Korean meal - called banchan - are often left unfinished, contributing to one of the world’s highest rates of food wastage. South Koreans each generate more than 130 kg of food waste each year.By comparison, per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95 to 115 kg a year, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. But the South Korean government has taken radical action to ensure that the mountain of wasted food is recycled.Smart BinsTechnology has played a leading part in the success of the scheme. In the country’s capital, Seoul, 6,000 automated bins equipped with scales and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) weigh food waste as it is deposited and charge residents using an ID card. The pay-as-you-recycle machines have reduced food waste in the city by 47,000 tonnes in six years, according to city officials.Urban farmsThe number of urban farms or community gardens in Seoul has increased sixfold in the past seven years. They now total 170 hectares - roughly the size of 240 football fields. Most are sandwiched between apartment blocks or on top of schools and municipal buildings. One is even located in the basement of an apartment block. It is used to grow mushrooms. 

The animals of the world, especially the urban world, seem quite happy that all the humans are suddenly staying inside! Outside, it's a party and they're livin' it up... all the way down the food chain! Dr. Vanessa Pirotta joins us from Sydney, Australia (via Bostwana!) and helps us see today's world under human quarantine... through the eyes and ears and furry paws and flappy fins! Dr. Pirotta is a wildlife scientist and science communicator. Her zoological background has taken her around the world for wildlife research. Vanessa is also a passionate and experienced science communicator who loves making science accessible. Her keen interests cover topics of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math, also known as STEAM. Vanessa has represented Australia internationally as the national winner of a world-renowned science communication competition known as FameLab, placing second in the world. Vanessa's efforts to communicate science has also seen her become a TEDx speaker, speak at the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and recognized as one of the top 100 Women of Influence judged by the Australian Financial Review. Learn more about Dr. Pirotta! Homepage: https://www.vanessapirotta.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/VanessaPirotta Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drvanessapirotta/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrVanessaPirotta YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIe3r09XA8BviNbVMtag2Q --- Special thanks to Kyle Crichton, Howard Zheng and Illia Zheng for their help with the show. --- Like the show? Share your love for the IF by dropping a review on whatever podcast app you're enjoying, including Apple Podcasts! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com and never miss an episode! Keep On IFFin', Philip & Matt

Global food prices have fallen for a second straight month in March. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says its food price index was down more than four percent last month, triggered by worldwide lockdowns over the coronavirus pandemic. With restrictions on their movements, many people are stocking up on long-life products, and demand for fresh fruit and vegetables is dropping off. As Sibel Karkus reports, that's posing a problem for French strawberry producers. Abdolreza Abbassian spoke to us from Rome. He is a senior economist at the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization. #UN #FoodPrices #PanicBuying

Find out more about the Ocean Lovers Festival, a celebration of sustainability, science, arts & culture all on Australia's iconic Bondi Beach. We chat with founders Anita Kolni & Carolyn Grant as they describe the huge variety of free activities, workshops, installations and science talks that are happening between March 20 & 22. Dr Vanessa Pirotta also drops by to describe her whale research and the use of drone technology, as well as shares her thoughts on helping students get into STEM. Hosted by Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education About the Ocean Lovers Festival The Ocean Lovers Festival is an annual celebration of Ideas, Art+Music and Actions, showcasing some of the latest innovations, science, state-of-the-art technology and cool ideas for helping the oceans. Staged at Sydney's iconic Bondi Beach, the Ocean Lovers Festival provides 6 days of free entertainment and events. Be inspired and entertained with art, films, music, food, talks, stalls, workshops and more. Come and Sea Change! Fizzics Education is working with the Ocean Lovers Fesitval to curate science talks & workshops throughout the event in the Ocean Lab. This initiative is supported by Inspiring Australia. https://www.oceanloversfestival.com/ About Dr Vanessa Pirotta Dr Vanessa Pirotta is a wildlife scientist and science communicator. Her zoological background has taken her around the world for wildlife research. Vanessa is also a passionate and experienced science communicator who loves making science accessible. Her keen interests cover topics of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math, also known as STEAM. Vanessa has represented Australia internationally as the national winner of a world-renowned science communication competition known as FameLab, placing second in the world. Vanessa's efforts to communicate science has also seen her become a TEDx speaker, speak at the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and recognized as one of the top 100 Women of Influence judged by the Australian Financial Review. https://www.vanessapirotta.com/ About the FizzicsEd Podcast Hosted by Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education With interviews with leading science educators and STEM thought leaders, this science education podcast is about highlighting different ways of teaching kids within and beyond the classroom. It's not just about educational practice & pedagogy, it's about inspiring new ideas & challenging conventions of how students can learn about their world! https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/ Know an educator who'd love this STEM podcast episode?  Share it! The FizzicsEd podcast is a member of the Australian Educators Online Network (AEON ) http://www.aeon.net.au/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN recently reported that 20% of the world's estimated 7,600 livestock breeds are at risk of extinction. Similar to what’s happened to crop varieties, domesticated animal breeds are getting narrowed down to just a few types that produce the most food. To avert this dilemma and preserve genetic variation, the Ugandan government has opened a gene bank.

Have you ever considered plant biodiversity through the lens of your taste buds? On this 22nd episode of Foodie Pharmacology, I chat with Drs. Rachel Meyer and Dr. Ashley DuVal about their work in the world of bitters and other botanical beverage ingredients. Along with Dr. Selena Ahmed, they are co-founders of Shoots and Roots Bitters and co-authors of their new book “Botany at the Bar: The Art and Science of Making Bitters”. We discuss the pharmacology behind some fascinating botanical ingredients that span the food-medicine continuum and offer some simple recipes on how to make your own non-alcoholic vinegar “shrubs” at home! About ‘Botany at the Bar” Botanists Selena Ahmed, Ashley DuVal and Rachel Meyer from the New York based craft bitters-making company, Shoots & Roots Bitters, take us on an enlightening trip throughout the plant world as they share their unique expertise on the ecology, cultural practices, and medicinal properties just waiting to be discovered at the bottom of your glass.

Notes on the origins of bitters, the science of taste and phytochemistry are followed by a neat guide on how to extract and make herbal infusions at home. Add enlightening plant profiles with a mix of unique botanical drink recipes, and this is a truly fascinating experiential insight into the vital meaning of biodiversity today. Twitter: @ShootsnRoots Instagram: @shootsandrootsbitters About Rachel Meyer Rachel Meyer is an adjunct assistant professor at the University of California Santa Cruz in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She's been directing the UC Conservation Genomics Consortium running a citizen science program to use DNA to catalog California's biodiversity, and working on oak and rice genomics. Her PhD was at City University of New York and the New York Botanical Garden where she studied the domestication of eggplant. About Ashley DuVal Ashley DuVal has worked as a scientific consultant on management and use genetic diversity for UNESCO, Bioversity International, and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Her research focuses on domestication and use of cultural keystone tree species. She currently works as a Cacao Geneticist in Davis, California. About Cassandra Quave Prof. Cassandra Quave is best known for her ground-breaking research on the science of botanicals. Scientists in her research lab work to uncover some of nature’s deepest secrets as they search for new ways to fight life-threatening diseases, including antibiotic resistant infections. Working with a global network of scientists and healers, Cassandra and her team travel the world hunting for new plant ingredients, interviewing healers, and bringing plants back to the lab to study. Besides research, Cassandra is an award-winning teacher, and has developed and taught the college classes “Food, Health and Society” and “Botanical Medicine and Health” at Emory University. @QuaveEthnobot on Twitter @QuaveEthnobot on Instagram @QuaveMedicineWoman and “Foodie Pharmacology with Cassandra Quave” on Facebook

Listen in as we discuss the history of monopolization and corporate influence in our agriculture system, the decline of the family farm and rural America, the rise of private funding for agriculture research at public universities, his work on the new film Right to Harm, and my favorite part - how we can work together to fix our food system, support our farmers, and how if we each work on our little piece of the world we can work together towards a better one. About John: John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri, Columbia. John was raised on a small dairy farm in southwest Missouri and received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri. He worked in private industry for a time and spent thirty years in various professorial positions at North Carolina State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Georgia, and the University of Missouri before retiring in early 2000. Since retiring, he spends most of his time writing and speaking on issues related to sustainability with an emphasis on economics and agriculture. He is author of six books which are available through Amazon.com via http://johnikerd.com/books. In 2014, Ikerd was commission by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations to write the regional report, “Family Farms of North America,” in recognition for the International Year of the Family Farming. He currently resides with his wife, Ellen, in Fairfield, IA. More complete background information and a wide selection of writings are available at http://faculty.missouri.edu/ikerdj/ or http://johnikerd.com.

The FAO is the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations working towards #zerohungerIn this episode I speak with FAO commodity market analyst Harout Dekermendjian to talk about the impact businesses can make in the world by making corporate social responsibility (CSR) part of their business DNA.You can connect with Harout on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hdekermendjian/And find out more about the FAO and the work their doing to end world hunger here http://www.fao.org/home/en/ #zerohungerBe sure to subscribe to our podcast to never miss an episode of #theoyster where we ask our expert guests to share their pearls of wisdom about the Science Behind Better Business.

Key Scripture: Genesis 25:29-34 If God is love, then why are people all over the world starving to death? According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, malnourishment and starvation affect more than 800 million people every year. This tragedy is even greater in light of the fact that there is enough food in our world to feed them all. The problem isn’t a lack of resources, but a deeper problem of the human heart. Hunger is the brain’s response to detecting a need for nourishment. It indicates an emptiness. This emptiness can be physical, but it can also be emotional or spiritual. We can hunger for food, or for acceptance and social validation. Before we can solve the problem of hunger in the world, we must satisfy the starvation of the human soul. Only then will we learn to be contributors in a world of consumers and to give of ourselves to those in need. Other Scripture References: Philippians 3:17-21; Matthew 5:6; 1 John 2:15; Ecclesiastes 1:1-8; Ecclesiastes 2:1-11; 1 Timothy 6:6-7; Philippians 4:11

John was raised on a small dairy farm in southwest Missouri and received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri. He worked in private industry for a time and spent thirty years in various professorial positions at North Carolina State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Georgia, and the University of Missouri before retiring in early 2000. Since retiring, he spends most of his time writing and speaking on issues related to sustainability with an emphasis on economics and agriculture. He is author of six books which are available for purchase online. In 2014, Ikerd was commission by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations to write the regional report, “Family Farms of North America,” in recognition for the International Year of the Family Farming. John is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Socially Responsible Agricultural Project. Heritage Radio Network On Tour is powered by Simplecast

IntroductionIn this episode, Dr. Beverley Henry talks about why the opinions about the sustainability for fibres varies so much and how we can find common grounds through the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). She shares with us the latest findings on LCA research for wool and how this is integrated into the textile supply chain. Beverley explains how individual companies can use the available research on LCA to improve their product footprint. About Dr. Beverley HenryDr Beverley Henry is a member of the IWTO Wool Life Cycle Assessment Technical Advisory Group, an Adjunct Associate Professor with Queensland University of Technology, and a consultant to agricultural industries. For over 30 years she has conducted research on agricultural systems focusing on profitability and sustainability especially in variable climates and markets. Beverley is particularly interested in the integration of grazing in extensive pastoral regions with effective environmental management and in communicating the value of these systems. She is a member of Australian Government technical groups on climate change and research issues and a member of several national and international Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Standards bodies, including roles with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and International Standards Organization.

Remember the great bacon shortage of 2012? No? What about the one earlier this year? Still no? Well maybe that’s because they didn’t happen. The Oxford English dictionary defines post-truth as: "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief". This week we're looking at why stories about food shortages take hold so quickly – whether they are true or not. We’ll start with a popular food story from recent weeks, which warned the US could be running out of bacon. Brad Tuttle, journalist with Time Magazine separates the facts from the fiction. But why do stories like these spread like wildfire? We speak to Michaela DeSoucey, Assistant Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University, who says it’s not just our brains that react to food shortage scares – our behaviour changes too. And Paul Buckley, a psychologist at Cardiff Metropolitan University in Wales in the UK, explains why an abundance of information leaves the consumer confused. What can be done about all this confusion in a world where we are bombarded with information - and increasingly hear that we shouldn't believe much of what we are told? In a post-truth world, are we even more susceptible to exaggerated or untrue stories? We speak to Dominique Brossard, professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Information at the University of Wisconsin. Finally - in a week where famine is officially declared for the first time in six years by the United Nations (UN) - we turn to the most worrying headline of all: that the world could run out of food. We speak to Joel Cohen, professor of populations at the Rockerfeller University and Columbia University in New York and Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. (Image: A long-nosed figure with a carrot dangling off the end leading people off a cliff. Credit: wildpixel/ Thinkstock)

The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization hosts World Food Day every year to raise awareness for the plight of the hungry and malnourished around the world.

The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization hosts World Food Day every year to raise awareness for the plight of the hungry and malnourished around the world.

完整文稿看周六微信第三条，你懂得This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.A total of 9.4 million Chinese high school students have sat for the Gaokao, the annual national college entrance exam which fell on June the 7th to 9th this year as always.The test is often called a battle to determine a student's future, as the results can decide whether a student goes to college, back to school for another year, or starts a career.Because the stakes are high, cheating is a recurring problem.During the first day, two hours after the test began, media reports alleged a surrogate exam-taker in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi Province in east China, have been detected.The provincial education department immediately investigated and apprehended the suspect in a high school exam room with the police in attendance, less than half an hour before the first test ended.The suspect admitted to being a stand in, and further investigations are under way.The Ministry of Education, meanwhile, says it has asked the public security ministry to oversee the investigation. Cheating in the Gaokao can amount to a punishable crime in serious cases.Though the scams will never disappear, the Gaokao has become a fairer game since last year with new rules being enforced. It was the biggest change since the exam was reintroduced in 1977.This is NEWS Plus Special English.As the rainy season arrives, local authorities in China have been urged to give more attention to protection and safety efforts.A government statement has called on local governments to carry out thorough safety inspections on reservoirs, building sites, roads, railways and tourist attractions. The joint notice has been issued by the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters and the State Administration of Work Safety.Priority should be given to formulating emergency plans, rescue and relief work, and the preparation of relief supplies.China's National Meteorological Center has issued a yellow alert for storms in southern China. China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe weather, followed by orange, yellow and blue. This is NEWS Plus Special English.The National Health and Family Planning Commission has issued a manual on Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, for health departments and hospitals.It contains a detailed introduction to the history of the disease, its symptoms, laboratory testing, preventative measures, treatment and care.Control measures at hospitals will be heightened and patients complaining of fever will be screened.The organization has promised to keep the public well informed and give timely warnings.China reported its first MERS patient a week ago in Guangdong Province, southern China. It is a traveler from South Korea.MERS is a respiratory illness caused by a coronavirus, similar to Sever Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS. The first human case emerged in Saudi Arabia in 2012. It has a fatality rate of 40 percent.There is no effective treatment for MERS and medical care just focuses on alleviating the symptoms.According to the manual, person-to-person transmission of MERS is limited.You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging onto NEWSPlusRadio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues.Chinese scientists and the European Space Agency have decided that their joint space satellite program will focus on an X-ray imaging satellite to study the Earth's magnetosphere.The project, known as SMILE, was selected from 13 proposals and is due to launch in 2021. It will study the effects of the Sun on the Earth's environment. The study aims at creating images of the interactions between solar winds and the Earth's magnetosphere with innovative X-ray and ultraviolet technology.Previously, the European Space Agency contributed to China's Double Star, similar satellite mission launched in 2003 to focus on the impact of the Sun on the Earth's environment.SMILE will be the first comprehensive collaboration between China and the European Space Agency with joint efforts in definition, implementation and data utilization. The next step will be a project feasibility study.This is NEWS Plus Special English.China and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization have signed a 50-million-US-dollar agreement to support developing countries in building sustainable food systems in the fight against extreme hunger and poverty.The effort is a new contribution to the FAO-China South-South Cooperation Trust Fund. It will support the exchanges of Chinese agricultural experts with countries in the southern globe, particularly in low-income food-deficient areas, over a period of five years.Chinese officials said that since 1990, China has successfully lifted 138 million of its people out of chronic hunger.China is the leading agricultural producer among the developing countries. It is ready to enhance cooperation with the FAO. The effort will not only benefit agricultural development, but also the poor and hungry people of the world.You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. A student in Shanghai Jiaotong University has made a cockroach move using the human mind.Li Guang-ye, a postgraduate student of the university, implanted live cockroaches with microelectrodes that stimulate certain nerves in the insects' antennae, allowing him to control the insect using a remote control.To achieve this, the controller needs to wear a portable wireless brain wave collecting device to ensure the controller's directional intention is recognized by a computer.Then the computer transfers the directional intention into controlling signal and sends it to the electronic backpack receiver on the back of the cockroach; then according to the commanding signal of the controller, the electronic backpack sends specific pulse to the nerve of the cockroach's antennae which has been implanted with a microelectrode.By virtue of the Bluetooth communication technology, the controller can form a wireless communication link between the computer and the electronic backpack through intrusive electrical nerve stimulation techniques. This enables the control of the cockroach by human beings.The invention won a second prize in a nationwide students' video contest earlier this year and will be displayed in one of the top-level technology conferences in China later in 2015.This is NEWS Plus Special English.Two grocery stores with unmanned checkouts have completed a one-day trial in Beijing and the eastern city of Hangzhou, with the intention of testing the integrity of customers.A QR code and guidance were placed in a cashier-free outlet belonging to the Vanguard supermarket chain in downtown Hangzhou.Customers assume the job of the cashier by scanning bar codes themselves. They have been able to pay via mobile phone or put cash in an honesty box.The grocery store sold products worth 16,700 yuan, roughly 2,700 U.S. dollars, but only received payment to the amount of 13,700 yuan from customers. In the Beijing outlet under AMPM, a convenience store chain, staff said some customers stole products or paid less. A Vanguard executive said cashier-free supermarkets reduce queuing time and are developing fast abroad. With an improved credit system, the Vanguard executive expects more cashier-free grocery stores to open in China.There are cashier-free stores in other parts of China including the northeastern province of Jilin and eastern province of Shandong.The trial was jointly run by the two store chains and Sesame Credit, a credit scoring service introduced by a financial affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba. This is NEWS Plus Special English.Twenty-six Chinese students studying in the United States have received an annual Chinese government award.The award-winning ceremony has been held at the Chinese Consulate General in Houston. Consul General Li Qiang-min handed out the National Scholarship for Outstanding Self-Financed Chinese Students Abroad.The recipients came from more than 10 colleges in the southern United States, and their majors covered physics, chemistry, biology, medicine and electronic engineering.The scholarship award was set up in 2003 by the China Scholarship Council to honor overseas Chinese students with outstanding academic accomplishments. It aims to encourage research excellence and to recognize the achievements among Chinese students abroad. The award consists a 6,000 U.S. dollar prize and a certificate.More than 4,000 overseas Chinese students have received the award. A total of 500 students received the award this year.You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging onto NEWSPlusRadio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues.The State Forestry Administration of China has published guidelines on protecting the country's desertified land.The guideline advised more than 1.2 million square kilometers of desertified land in China be closed off as a protection zone so as to control drifting sand and improve the environment.The guidelines will be effective from July this year to the end of 2020. The guidelines ban activities including cutting down trees, cultivating land, animal grazing, and misuse of water in the protected zones. Construction of railways and highways is forbidden. No immigrants should be settled in the zones.According to the guidelines, the protected areas should be important locations that have an impact on regional and national ecology and have suffered from frequent human activity.Desertified land, which is land that has become barren due to constant water shortages and excessive exploitation, makes up more than half of the total desert area in China.China had a desert area of around 2.6 million square kilometers, accounting for 27 percent of its total land mass.This is NEWS Plus Special English.China will launch a five-month campaign to regulate the online market and protect the rights and interests of online consumers and operators.The campaign will be effective from July to November, and will target fake and inferior commodities that have been widely complained about by consumers and dealers, as well as dishonest shopping websites.The State Administration for Industry and Commerce said the items being checked include electronic products, car accessories, clothing, electrical materials and other important commodities.The market regulator will strictly supervise the rules and standards of E-commerce platforms, make sure sales promotion rules are transparent to consumers, and market rules are well implemented.A real-name registration system will be established for online stores in an effort to combat illegal trade activity and fake shopping sites.China's online sales volume surged 50 percent year on year to reach almost 2.8 trillion yuan, roughly 450 billion U.S. dollars, last year, accounting for almost 10 percent of the country's total retail sales.This is NEWS Plus Special English.

Held from 12:00 - 1:30pm. The UN FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) projects that the greatest number of people in history will be starving this year, with over 1 billion going to bed hungry. In Eastern Africa, this reality is exacerbated by persistent drought. In a world threatened by simultaneous economic and ecological crises, thousands of billions of dollars are made available on short notice for banks and financiers. Should the poorest of the poor suffer even more because of financial profligacy of the moneyed elite? Justin Odera will talk about the plight of his Acholi people in the Sudan, displaced by civil war and now coming home after 15 years from the Kenyan and Ugandan refugee camps to face hunger, and a void in education and medical care. Justin will also speak about those of his people who have come to Alberta and how they are faring in this time of crises. In our interconnected world, this is a story we should be told. Speaker: Justin Odera Justin Odera was born in 1973, during a period of civil war. His Acholi family hometown was Pajok in the Magwi district, eastern Equatoria province, Southern Sudan. Justin lived through twenty-nine brutal war years as well as the fragile life in refugee camps, before arriving in Canada in 2001. The Acholies have been living along the shores of East Africa's rivers and lakes for the past six centuries. The traditional territories of his Luo speaking tribe are the borderlands of western Uganda, north-western Kenya and Sudan's Eastern Equatoria province. Justin is the Program Director of Southern Sudan Canada Acholi Progressive Education Association (SSCAPEA), an Alberta based, non-profit organization dedicated to health, education, economic aid and community development amongst war weary families hailing from the refugee camps of East Africa.

Held from 12:00 - 1:30pm. The UN FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) projects that the greatest number of people in history will be starving this year, with over 1 billion going to bed hungry. In Eastern Africa, this reality is exacerbated by persistent drought. In a world threatened by simultaneous economic and ecological crises, thousands of billions of dollars are made available on short notice for banks and financiers. Should the poorest of the poor suffer even more because of financial profligacy of the moneyed elite? Justin Odera will talk about the plight of his Acholi people in the Sudan, displaced by civil war and now coming home after 15 years from the Kenyan and Ugandan refugee camps to face hunger, and a void in education and medical care. Justin will also speak about those of his people who have come to Alberta and how they are faring in this time of crises. In our interconnected world, this is a story we should be told. Speaker: Justin Odera Justin Odera was born in 1973, during a period of civil war. His Acholi family hometown was Pajok in the Magwi district, eastern Equatoria province, Southern Sudan. Justin lived through twenty-nine brutal war years as well as the fragile life in refugee camps, before arriving in Canada in 2001. The Acholies have been living along the shores of East Africa's rivers and lakes for the past six centuries. The traditional territories of his Luo speaking tribe are the borderlands of western Uganda, north-western Kenya and Sudan's Eastern Equatoria province. Justin is the Program Director of Southern Sudan Canada Acholi Progressive Education Association (SSCAPEA), an Alberta based, non-profit organization dedicated to health, education, economic aid and community development amongst war weary families hailing from the refugee camps of East Africa.

Held from 12:00 - 1:30pm. The UN FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) projects that the greatest number of people in history will be starving this year, with over 1 billion going to bed hungry. In Eastern Africa, this reality is exacerbated by persistent drought. In a world threatened by simultaneous economic and ecological crises, thousands of billions of dollars are made available on short notice for banks and financiers. Should the poorest of the poor suffer even more because of financial profligacy of the moneyed elite? Justin Odera will talk about the plight of his Acholi people in the Sudan, displaced by civil war and now coming home after 15 years from the Kenyan and Ugandan refugee camps to face hunger, and a void in education and medical care. Justin will also speak about those of his people who have come to Alberta and how they are faring in this time of crises. In our interconnected world, this is a story we should be told. Speaker:Justin Odera Justin Odera was born in 1973, during a period of civil war. His Acholi family hometown was Pajok in the Magwi district, eastern Equatoria province, Southern Sudan. Justin lived through twenty-nine brutal war years as well as the fragile life in refugee camps, before arriving in Canada in 2001. The Acholies have been living along the shores of East Africa's rivers and lakes for the past six centuries. The traditional territories of his Luo speaking tribe are the borderlands of western Uganda, north-western Kenya and Sudan's Eastern Equatoria province. Justin is the Program Director of Southern Sudan Canada Acholi Progressive Education Association (SSCAPEA), an Alberta based, non-profit organization dedicated to health, education, economic aid and community development amongst war weary families hailing from the refugee camps of East Africa.

Held from 12:00 - 1:30pm. The UN FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) projects that the greatest number of people in history will be starving this year, with over 1 billion going to bed hungry. In Eastern Africa, this reality is exacerbated by persistent drought. In a world threatened by simultaneous economic and ecological crises, thousands of billions of dollars are made available on short notice for banks and financiers. Should the poorest of the poor suffer even more because of financial profligacy of the moneyed elite? Justin Odera will talk about the plight of his Acholi people in the Sudan, displaced by civil war and now coming home after 15 years from the Kenyan and Ugandan refugee camps to face hunger, and a void in education and medical care. Justin will also speak about those of his people who have come to Alberta and how they are faring in this time of crises. In our interconnected world, this is a story we should be told. Speaker:Justin Odera Justin Odera was born in 1973, during a period of civil war. His Acholi family hometown was Pajok in the Magwi district, eastern Equatoria province, Southern Sudan. Justin lived through twenty-nine brutal war years as well as the fragile life in refugee camps, before arriving in Canada in 2001. The Acholies have been living along the shores of East Africa's rivers and lakes for the past six centuries. The traditional territories of his Luo speaking tribe are the borderlands of western Uganda, north-western Kenya and Sudan's Eastern Equatoria province. Justin is the Program Director of Southern Sudan Canada Acholi Progressive Education Association (SSCAPEA), an Alberta based, non-profit organization dedicated to health, education, economic aid and community development amongst war weary families hailing from the refugee camps of East Africa.