Global Food for Thought

Global Agricultural Development Initiative Releases Summary of Proceedings for its May 2010 Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs' Global Agricultural Development Initiative today released a Summary of Proceedings for its "Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security: Progress to Date and Prospects for Success."

Held on May 20, 2010, in Washington D.C., the day‐ long symposium featured the official release of the Feed the Future Guide, the implementation strategy for the Obama Administration’s global hunger and food security initiative. It also provided a forum for discussion on U.S. efforts to develop a whole‐of‐government approach to advance global food security, policy barriers and market access challenges facing stakeholders across the agriculture and food supply chain, and obstacles and opportunities in formulating and implementing country-led strategies. 

For more information on the symposium, including links to all U.S. government materials released at the event, as well as keynote remarks, expert commentaries, and media and blog coverage, please click here.

This Week's Edition of the Global Food for Thought News Brief

Please click here to view this week's abbreviated edition of the Global Food for Thought news brief. 

If you have not signed up to receive Global Food for Thought by email, please do so by clicking here.

This Week's Edition of the Global Food for Thought News Brief

Please click here to view this week's edition of the Global Food for Thought news brief. This week's brief includes analyses on a newly-released global food insecurity index, as well as continuing coverage of the devastating impact of recent flooding on Pakistan's agriculture sector.   

If you have not signed up to receive Global Food for Thought by email, please do so by clicking here.

Roger Thurow - Outrage & Inspire - "Spreading the Revolution: South-South Cooperation at Work"

SPREADING THE REVOLUTION: SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION AT WORK

 A soybean field in Mato Grosso, Brazil with cerrado, a tropical savanna ecosystem, in the background. (Credit: Gillian Galford)

Accra, Ghana

It is no coincidence that a neighbor of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa here is Embrapa, the Brazilian agricultural research corporation.  For Embrapa was one of the main players engineering the green revolution in Brazil.

Embrapa was created in 1973 with a four-headed mission: guarantee food supply to Brazil’s teeming cities, where most of the country’s poor people live; help develop the rural areas; preserve Brazil’s natural resources; and, produce a sufficient surplus of food for export.  Its signature achievement so far has been developing the technology to bring vast stretches of savanna land, known as the Cerrado, into production; converting it from bush wasteland to fertile fields.  Agricultural researchers adapted sets of plants and animals to thrive in tropical conditions; it also introduced farming practices, management and mechanization to the region.  The Cerrado, benefiting above all from innovative soil research, is now a verdant blanket of crops.

Since then, Brazil has become a major force on world agricultural markets, particularly in soybeans, and it has made advances in corralling domestic hunger.  Brazil’s grain and cereal production has increased four-fold.  The principal scientists and administrators in developing the Cerrado won the 2006 World Food Prize.  Norman Borlaug, the Father of the original Green Revolution and founder of the prize, hailed the work of Embrapa as “one of the great achievements of agricultural science in the 20th century, which has transformed a wasteland into one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world.”

Can Brazil do the same for Africa in the 21st century?

This Week's Edition of the Global Food for Thought News Brief

Please click here to view this week's edition of the Global Food for Thought news brief. This week's brief includes continued coverage of the global impact of Russia's decision to restrict wheat exports, as well as the implications of Pakistan's recent flooding on the country's agriculture sector.   

If you have not signed up to receive Global Food for Thought by email, please do so by clicking here.

This Week's Edition of the Global Food for Thought News Brief

A field of grain burned near Voronezh. A drought has destroyed one-fifth of the wheat crop in Russia, the third-largest exporter. Mikhail Metzel / Associated Press

Please click here to view this week's edition of the Global Food for Thought news brief. This week's brief includes the latest coverage on the 2010 AGOA Forum, the global implications of Russia's export ban of grains, and Nature's special series on the role of science in feeding the future. 

If you have not signed up to receive Global Food for Thought by email, please do so by clicking here.

Roger Thurow - Outrage & Inspire - "Safe Farming"

SAFE FARMING

 

Asha Ahmed sells Kilimo Salama insurance at Bungoma Chemist in Kenya

Bungoma, Kenya

In the Bungoma Chemist shop, where you can get almost everything you need to battle a cold, de-worm your cattle or fertilizer your crops, something revolutionary is now on sale.

“Kilimo Salama available here,” proclaims a red and white display on the counter, beside a cash register.  In Swahili, Kilimo Salama means Safe Farming.  It is an agriculture insurance policy, the first of its kind offered to small-holder farmers in these parts.

“We want the farmers to have confidence that even if there’s bad weather, the risk will be covered,” says Rahab Karanja of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, which developed the program along with UAP Insurance and telecommunications company Safaricom.

Kilima Salama is “pay as you plant” micro-insurance that protects farmers’ investments in seeds, fertilizers and other farming inputs against loss from excess water or drought.  It is a simple and streamlined system: farmers who till only an acre or two of land need not visit insurance offices nor wade through mounds of paperwork; all they need is a mobile phone.