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Benno Hansen

Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People -- Godfray et al. 327 (5967): ... - 2 views

www.sciencemag.org/...812

food agriculture poverty

shared by Benno Hansen on 23 Feb 10 - Cached
  • more than one in seven people today still do not have access to sufficient protein and energy from their diet, and even more suffer from some form of micronutrient malnourishment
  • Increases in production will have an important part to play, but they will be constrained as never before by the finite resources provided by Earth’s lands, oceans, and atmosphere
  • a period of rising and more volatile food prices driven primarily by increased demand from rapidly developing countries, as well as by competition for resources from first-generation biofuels production
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • agricultural land that was formerly productive has been lost to urbanization and other human uses, as well as to desertification, salinization, soil erosion, and other consequences of unsustainable land management
  • the world will need 70 to 100% more food by 2050
  • Low yields occur because of technical constraints that prevent local food producers from increasing productivity or for economic reasons arising from market conditions.
  • In the most extreme cases of failed states and nonfunctioning markets, the solution lies completely outside the food system.
  • Food production in developing countries can be severely affected by market interventions in the developed world, such as subsidies or price supports.
  • the environmental costs of food production might increase with globalization, for example, because of increased greenhouse gas emissions associated with increased production and food transport
  • Food production has important negative "externalities," namely effects on the environment or economy that are not reflected in the cost of food.
  • superior technologies may become available and that future generations may be wealthier
  • The introduction of measures to promote sustainability does not necessarily reduce yields or profits. One study of 286 agricultural sustainability projects in developing countries, involving 12.6 million chiefly small-holder farmers on 37 million hectares, found an average yield increase of 79% across a very wide variety of systems and crop types
  • Unexploited genetic material from land races, rare breeds, and wild relatives will be important in allowing breeders to respond to new challenges
  • Fair returns on investment are essential for the proper functioning of the private sector, but the extension of the protection of intellectual property rights to biotechnology has led to a growing public perception in some countries that biotech research purely benefits commercial interests and offers no long-term public good. Just as seriously, it also led to a virtual monopoly of GM traits in some parts of the world, by a restricted number of companies, which limits innovation and investment in the technology.
  • Roughly 30 to 40% of food in both the developed and developing worlds is lost to waste
  • unwanted food goes to a landfill instead of being used as animal feed or compost because of legislation to control prion diseases
  • retailers discard many edible, yet only slightly blemished products
  • In the developing world, losses are mainly attributable to the absence of food-chain infrastructure
  • About one-third of global cereal production is fed to animals
  • the argument that all meat consumption is bad is overly simplistic
  • There is no simple solution to sustainably feeding 9 billion people
Brian G. Dowling

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty - 0 views

www.ifad.org/...poverty.htm

mdgs poverty UN millennium development goals

shared by Brian G. Dowling on 17 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Brian G. Dowling on 17 Oct 09
     
    The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations, was established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. The Conference was organized in response to the food crises of the early 1970s that primarily affected the Sahelian countries of Africa. The conference resolved that "an International Fund for Agricultural Development should be established immediately to finance agricultural development projects primarily for food production in the developing countries". One of the most important insights emerging from the conference was that the causes of food insecurity and famine were not so much failures in food production, but structural problems relating to poverty and to the fact that the majority of the developing world's poor populations were concentrated in rural areas.
Brian G. Dowling

UN Chronicle | A magazine for the United Nations. - 0 views

www.un.org/...2_308p14.html

mdg1 blogging hunger

shared by Brian G. Dowling on 30 Apr 09 - Cached
  • During the past two decades, population growth, improvement in incomes and diversification of diets have steadily increased the demand for food. Prior to 2000, food prices were in decline, largely through record harvests. At the same time, however, public and private investment in agriculture, especially in the production of staple food, decreased, which led to stagnant or declining crop yields in most developing countries.1 Rapid urbanization has led to the conversion of farmland to non-agricultural uses, and low food prices have encouraged farmers to shift to alternative food and non-food crops. Long-term unstable land use has also caused land degradation, soil erosion, nutrient depletion, water scarcity and disruption of biological cycles.
  • Brian G. Dowling on 30 Apr 09
     
    Losing 25,000 to Hunger Every Day. From the UN Chronicles
Brian G. Dowling

Committment to Global Food Security Sadly Lacking - 1 views

anewmillennium.blogspot.com/...t-to-global-food-security.html

FAO ONE AVAAZ change.org Food Security mdg1 UN

shared by Brian G. Dowling on 03 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Brian G. Dowling on 03 Jan 10
     
    I am going to be more outgoing (the word that more naturally arises is pushy) in support of the Millennium Development Goals by including posts from my blog Milestones for A New Millennium. This post is on Food Security. Give me a shout if you think that this is not a good idea.
Brian G. Dowling

MIT World » : The U.S. and the World's Recession - 0 views

mitworld.mit.edu/595

economicpolicy economics mdgs mit recession

shared by Brian G. Dowling on 06 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Some of Rigobon’s findings: In Chile, when the price of wheat goes up by 10%, the price of bread goes up by 5% 18 months later. In Colombia and Peru, it takes three years for this same percentage increase to occur, with these countries taking longer “to digest the international shock of commodity prices.” Not only do the prices of bread, cookies, meat, chicken, move in lockstep with wheat, but in some cases, so do housing, health and education. But Rigobon found that when the international price of oil increases, there is an immediate impact on all products related to oil. What’s worse, when the price of oil increases, the price of gas at the pump or for a rental car goes up disproportionately.
  • It’s been true for years, notes Rigobon, that “oil is unconditionally negatively correlated with cereals.” If oil is up, maize, sorghum and wheat prices are down. But this has recently changed, a sign “of the unique times we’re in, the policy challenges we’re facing.” We are simultaneously facing recession (due in large part to the sub-prime mortgage crisis), and inflation, in both food and oil prices. Central banks, he notes with scorn and wonderment, don’t include food and energy in their calculations of “core inflation.” If the job of these banks and government is to take care of their citizens, they must respond to this crisis along the lines of the response to 9/11 or Enron. Rigobon endorses well-communicated, transparent policies, and some tough measures like interest rate increases.
  • Brian G. Dowling on 06 Oct 08
     
    How we measure a problem will influence how we define that problem.
  • Brian G. Dowling on 06 Oct 08
     
    This is not directly related to the Millennium Development Goals, but the current state of the world's economy will have a direct impact on implementing those goals. It also has a relationship with concepts such as PSRP (Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers). One interesting fact, Central Banks do not include food or energy in their inflation measurements which impact the poor more than the rich.
Brian G. Dowling

MIT World » : Projects for Change: Bringing Management Tools and Ideas, Colla... - 0 views

mitworld.mit.edu/597

global health management mit systems design

shared by Brian G. Dowling on 04 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Sastry endorses David Kolb’s “learning loop” model: concrete experience, observation and reflection, forming abstract concepts, then further implementing and analyzing. She ponders if this cycle can transcend classroom learning to engender change in the world. Her own research and consulting in health care delivery are based on such a stepped method. She stresses that an integrated, holistic perspective is also required. For instance, a malnourished patient will be unable to absorb drugs administered for AIDS; medicine is insufficient without food. As to the larger picture, she says “obviously we’ve got to tackle global warming and carbon emissions, but we also need to tackle poverty.”
  • Brian G. Dowling on 04 Oct 08
     
    Sastry endorses David Kolb's "learning loop" model: concrete experience, observation and reflection, forming abstract concepts, then further implementing and analyzing. She ponders if this cycle can transcend classroom learning to engender change in the world. Her own research and consulting in health care delivery are based on such a stepped method. She stresses that an integrated, holistic perspective is also required. For instance, a malnourished patient will be unable to absorb drugs administered for AIDS; medicine is insufficient without food. As to the larger picture, she says "obviously we've got to tackle global warming and carbon emissions, but we also need to tackle poverty."
Benno Hansen

"We Made a Devil's Bargain": Fmr. President Clinton Apologizes for Trade Policies that ... - 1 views

www.democracynow.org/...clinton_rice

clinton rice free trade agriculture

shared by Benno Hansen on 09 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake.
  • you just can’t take the food chain out of production. And it also undermines a lot of the culture, the fabric of life, the sense of self-determination
  • We should have continued to work to help them be self-sufficient in agriculture.
Brian G. Dowling

Ending Poverty, But Only on Paper - The American, A Magazine of Ideas - 0 views

www.american.com/...ding-poverty-but-only-on-paper

development economics ideas international mdg mdgs

shared by Brian G. Dowling on 17 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Brian G. Dowling on 17 Oct 08
     
    The Millennium Development Goals actually increase rural dependence on knowledge and skills from urban areas-at the expense of community empowerment. It does not change my mind about the goal but it does give food for thought on how we achieve it. What I get out of this is an argument against Developed Nation's paternalism.
Benno Hansen

EU Ministers Link Post-2010 Biodiversity and Climate Change - Climate-L.org - 0 views

climate-l.org/...iodiversity-and-climate-change

EU biodiversity climate change

shared by Benno Hansen on 20 Mar 10 - Cached
  • the Council recognizes that climate change is increasingly among the strongest pressures on biodiversity
  • development and transfer of best practices and technologies will be essential to achieve a coordinated response
  • public and private finance, including innovative forms of financing, and finance associated with the Copenhagen Accord, should -based on appropriate criteria- include scope for payments for ecosystem services
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • the Council stresses the positive contribution of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture to food security and climate adaptation and mitigatio
Brian G. Dowling

FORA.tv - Meeting the Millennium Development Goals - 0 views

fora.tv/...e_Millennium_Development_Goals

fora mdgs millennium development goals development

shared by Brian G. Dowling on 02 May 10 - Cached
  • Brian G. Dowling on 02 May 10
     
    Summary The combination of food and financial crises trapped an estimated 50 to 90 million people in extreme poverty in 2009. How can the Millennium Development Goals for 2015 be met in the wake of the economic crisis?
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