Global Food for Thought

Big Ideas and Emerging Innovations

(Indian milkmen sit on top of a truck with milk containers in New Delhi. REUTERS/Kamal Kishore)

Saving Milk from Spoilage in Rural India
India is the world’s largest milk producer and consumer, yet a significant proportion of dairy goes to waste because of poor refrigeration and electricity. But a new thermal battery has helped create a Rapid Milk Chiller, which combines software and reconfigurable hardware to eliminate waste, drive up nutritional standards, and improve the livelihoods of dairy farmers.

Smart Sensors in Rwanda Warn Engineers in Oregon When Water Pumps Fail
Tens of thousands of water pumps are installed every year in Africa and other places, but 30% to 80% fail in their first couple years and often never get repaired. New sensor technology could improve pumps by using cell phone signals to transmit pump performance data to an online dashboard and sending text messages and emails to alert maintenance teams to problems.

How We Can Tame Overlooked Wild Plants to Feed the World
We need new crops. Breeding and genetic modification have made the crops we sow predictable, but they are also vulnerable. Humans rely on fewer than 150 plants for nourishment, and just three crops make up more than two-thirds of the world's calories. Those crops aren't suited to a changing world. That's the appeal of domesticating a new set of plants.

Drones at Work: Farmers Take Flight Into the Future
Big tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google may have made headlines for their recent forays into drones—but drones are already being used in agriculture. Drone features include GPS controls, stabilizers so the drone can fly in high winds, and a live camera feed so the farmer on the ground can inspect his fields in real time.

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Image: REUTERS/Daniel LeClair

Commentary - How to Make an Entrepreneur

By Emily Alpert, deputy director of Agriculture for Impact, an independent advocacy initiative that acts as the convener for the Montpellier Panel.

You can’t make an entrepreneur. They cannot be bought, packaged, or sold. Entrepreneurial spirit is something you are born with, but to flourish as an entrepreneur, it takes more than just good genes. It takes skills, business management training, affordable finance, and a nurturing business environment.

If Africa is to produce enough food to feed its booming population, it must learn to support entrepreneurs in the rural food sector, and fast. The latest report from the Montpellier Panel which launched this week, sets out a number of recommendations on where donors, governments, and the private sector can invest to nurture a generation of agricultural entrepreneurs, creating not only a more food secure future for the continent, but also an abundance of jobs.

Establishing a small or medium enterprise is often very difficult, particularly in the rural and food related sectors. This isn’t about the number of days it takes to register a business or to acquire utilities such as electricity or running water. These factors certainly discourage people from starting formal businesses, and should be improved, but the most cited challenge for small and sometimes informal businesses is actually access to finance; the second, good skills. But how do you acquire them?

New Report Finds Climate Change Poses Significant Economic Risks

The Risky Business Project released a new report that summarizes the findings of an independent assessment of the impact of climate change at the county, state, and regional level. Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change to the United States uses climate change projections with empirically-derived estimates of the fiscal impact of those changes on key sectors of the US economy and shows that communities, industries, and properties across the US face profound risks from climate change. The report concludes that the most severe risks can still be avoided through early investments in resilience and through immediate action to reduce the pollution that causes global warming.

The Risky Business Project is a joint, non-partisan initiative of former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., former Mayor of New York City Michael R. Bloomberg, and Thomas P. Steyer, former senior managing member of Farallon Capital Management.

Risky Business Committee member Gregory Page, former CEO and current chair of the board at Cargill, Inc., discussed the report’s findings in relation to agriculture and food. “The real value of the Risky Business conversation, even in the presence of all kinds of uncertainty, is that it encourages us to think long-term about what actions we can take today that put us in the best position to be prepared for the future,” said Page. “We need to invest in innovative technologies and practices today so that we’re in the best position to be prepared for the future.”



Last month, The Chicago Council released a new report, Advancing Global Food Security in the Face of a Changing Climate, which found US government action can curb the risks climate change poses to global food security. Building on the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change report and National Climate Assessment, The Chicago Council’s study explains how higher temperatures, changes in rainfall, and natural disasters caused by climate change could undermine food production and put food supplies at risk. In total, climate change could reduce food production growth by 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century.

Big Ideas and Emerging Innovations

We are launching a new series, Big Ideas and Emerging Innovations, to highlight approaches, technologies, and ideas that have the potential to radically advance sustainable and nutritious food security globally. The Global Food for Thought News Brief and blog will regularly feature the latest news and events regarding these big ideas and emerging innovations. Contact us to share your thoughts and ideas for this series.

REUTERS/Jim Young

How Cows Are Becoming Smart Connected Products
A Texas-based startup wants to bring universal connectivity to cows by feeding them electronic pills that will sit in their stomachs and transmit their vital signs to farmers, heading off costly livestock illnesses or death. Electronically checking cattle’s vitals could cut down on what the USDA estimates is nearly $2.4 billion a year in losses from animal illnesses that lead to death.

The ‘Super’ Banana that Fights for Truth, Justice and Healthy Levels of Vitamin A
Each year, vitamin A deficiency inflicts between 250,000 and 500,000 young people with early-life blindness, and in half of those cases, it also brings death. Scientists are now genetically engineering “super” bananas that are fortified with alpha- and beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A. The project is backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Young Foresters Help Improve Forests' Food Access, Economic Influence
Patches of trees outside of forests, even in urban areas, can be important ecosystems, providing many of the same resources and opportunities as large forested areas, especially in terms of food sources. Young foresters, especially in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, are taking the lead in studying how these patches can improve food and nutrition in communities.

Global Land Prices and the Future of Farming
We already produce enough food to feed 9 billion people, but an estimated 40 per cent of it is lost in the production chain. Clearly, there is room for efficiency. And that has less to do with land purchasing and more with investments in farming like sustainable irrigation systems and the adoption of military-led technology in drone surveillance and remote soil monitoring.

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Image: REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

Secretary Kerry Highlights Chicago Council Report

On Wednesday, June 18, during his remarks at the World Food Prize Ceremony announcing the 2014 World Food Prize Laureate Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram, Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the threats of climate change on global food security.  In his remarks, he highlighted The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the recent report from the Global Agricultural Development Initiative, Advancing Global Food Security in the Face of a Changing Climate:

Now, as all of you know, there is a lot of work left to be done. Just last month, the Chicago Council released a study showing how hotter temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and more intense weather events could slow food production by 2 percent a decade for the rest of the century. That report came on top of findings from an elite group of retired US military leaders who said that because of frequent drought and depleted crop yields, climate change is already, now, a catalyst of global conflict. People fighting over water; it’s already happening. In some parts of Africa you can find tribes that fight over water, and this will grow worse if that water supply grows – diminishes.

Now, frankly, we shouldn’t need to be told what happens when food becomes scarce and food prices spike. It obviously can plunge millions of people into poverty. It can feed vicious cycles of desperation and violence. And that is why the struggle for food is truly the struggle for life itself. Because when access to food is limited, so is what we can achieve by investing in public health, which we try to do. So is what we can accomplish by investing in schools or in infrastructure or in conflict prevention. That’s why the work to promote food security is, in fact, so vital to every single thing that we try to do here at the State Department and at USAID.

To read and view a video of Secretary Kerry’s complete remarks, visit the State Department website.

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Roger Thurow - The Lessons of Aboke

By Roger Thurow

Aboke, Uganda – At St. Mary’s secondary school for girls, lessons literally grow on the trees.

Philosophical statements and encouraging aphorisms, painted in white letters on green pieces of sheet metal, hang on the trees that ring the central courtyard: “Trees make our environment beautiful”; “Be proud of your school and environment”; “Learning to know is my dream and pride.”

Then there are the lessons of basic humanity:

“Stop Violence!”

“Promote your rights.”

“No Justice, No Peace.”

“If we promote peace we shall make a difference in the world.”

These are the lessons of Aboke for the world.

Before the recent abductions of the schoolgirls in Nigeria by the marauding forces of Boko Haram, and the global campaigns of outrage (#BringBackOurGirls) that have followed, there were the raids against schools and villages in northern Uganda by the ruthless followers of warlord Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army, who captured children to serve as soldiers and sex slaves. One night in October 1996, the kidnappers barged into some of the dormitories of St. Mary’s and fled with 139 schoolgirls.

One of the nuns at the school pursued them deep into the bush. The kidnappers had also stolen bags of candy and snacks from the school; the trail of empty wrappers led the way to their camp. The Sister demanded the return of the girls, but the leader of the abductors insisted on keeping 30 of them. She was told that if she persisted on the return of all the girls, she would leave with none; they would all be killed. So 30 remained in the bush; most of them eventually escaped.

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Image: REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton