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The past six months have brought scenes from a hungry apocalypse, as at least 14 countries have been wracked by food-related violence. By mid-April UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon acknowledged that "the steeply rising price of food has developed into a real global crisis." It's the product, economists say, of multiple factors: high oil prices, prolonged drought, biofuel production, and burgeoning meat consumption. In the short term, food aid will help. In the medium term, market-distorting trade tariffs and farm subsidies must end. But the long-term task is monumentally harder: transcending the limits of today's global food production.

AGROVOC is a multilingual, structured and controlled vocabulary designed to cover the terminology of all subject fields in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and related domains (e.g. environment).

FSSC 22000 Food Safety Management System provides a framework for effectively managing your food safety and quality responsibilities. It demonstrates a company has a robust and effective system of food safety management ( FSMS) in place to meet the requirements of regulators, customers and consumers.

"The Institute of the Future will soon be launching what it calls the first massively multiplayer forecast game, billed as The Superstruct Game. According to the game's FAQ, the idea is to 'imagine how we might solve the problems we'll face.' Interestingly, the game itself is meant to be played 'on forums, blogs, videos, wikis, and other familiar online spaces.' From the IFTF website's sneak peak, the game is set in the year 2019, where the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has forecast the possibility of human extinction by the year 2042 as the result of five simultaneous 'super-threats:' Quarantine, which is a result from 'declining health and pandemic disease;' Ravenous, which relates to the global collapse of the world food system; Power Struggle, related to the flux of power 'as nations fight for energy supremacy and the world searches for alternative energy solutions;' Outlaw Planet, covering increased surveillance and loss of liberties; and, lastly, Generation Exile, which covers the massive increase in refugees."

The technology to make biobutanol, a non-food based biofuel, cost-competitive with gasoline isn't here yet, but companies in the know say that it could be by 2010.

The global spread of the H5N1 avian influenza has already extensively damaged economies worldwide and food security in developing countries. The spread of infection to new ecosystems results in viral adaptation to new hosts, including humans, which inevitably amplifies the potential for pandemic flu. H5N1 represents an unprecedented model of how influenza infections may become widespread. It is recognized that avian influenza viruses may be the progenitors of the next human pandemic virus, and for this reason their genetic evolution should be monitored and investigated in a timely manner. The full support of the international scientific community is therefore urgently required to better understand the spread and evolution of the virus, and the determinants of its transmissibility and pathogenicity in humans. This in turn demands that scientists with different fields of expertise have full access to comprehensive genetic sequence, clinical, and epidemiological data from both animal and human virus isolates.

Solving the "digital divide" in Africa will not put food in mouths, knowledge in heads, clean water in households, or make healthcare accessible to those who need it most. Leveraging knowledge, skills, and capacities holds out the possibility of doing all of these things. This is what extending knowledge infrastructure is about: building robust and sustainable networks and communities that mobilize a broad range of information practices, institutions, and technologies (old and new) - and put these in the service of locally-defined needs, aspirations, and broad developmental goals. This report summarizes current thinking and action around African knowledge infrastructures.

BiOS is a response to inequities in food security, nutrition, health, natural resource management and energy. Our goal is to democratise problem solving to enable diverse solutions through decentralised innovation. Open Source We promote an innovation paradigm that focuses on a distinction between the tools of innovation and the products. We promote licenses that couple rights with responsibilities to foster efficient development, improvement, sharing and use of technology. Open Science We create and share new biological enabling technologies and platforms that can be used to deliver innovations. We develop new licensing and distributive collaboration mechanisms that have resonance with the open source software movement, but are tailored for biological innovation. Open Society We enhance the transparency, accessibility and capability to use all the tools of science, whether patented, open access or public domain.

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

A future in saltwater: ways to adapt to a world with dwindling freshwater