A biweekly round-up of recent articles, blog postings and tweets about livestock, aid and other topics that may be of interest to ILRI staff, compiled by David Aronson.

A new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) says that hunger is on the rise. A major cause? Climate variability and extremes.

Beautiful grassy ovals scattered across otherwise parched areas of the Masai Mara were ancient cattle dung heaps, say researchers from Washington University in St. Louis.

Scientific American says that genetially modified organisms (GMOs) aren’t the future of food—biotech is.

A skeptical take on the millennium development goals—from one of the world’s leading development economists.

More from Vox on the fight over lab-grown meat: ‘The lab-grown startups and their supporters believe that their products can one day make cows, pigs, and chickens — and even fish — obsolete…. And they have a compelling argument. If you could grow enough meat in a lab to satisfy at least some of the world’s meat demand, and if you could solve all the problems of animal welfare and environmental impact while you’re at it, why on earth wouldn’t you?’

Nteranya Sanginga, the director general of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), spoke on the occasion of accepting the 2018 Africa Food Prize on behalf of the IITA. He says that it’s not enough to cultivate better crops: ’We must also cultivate people – especially the 1.2 billion young men and women in developing countries.’

Some worrisome local reporting here: Kenyan butchers said to be adding a ‘killer‘ chemical to make meat look fresh. And some sad news from Nigeria, where a runaway train is reported to have killed 52 (!) cattle in Kaduna.

Fred Kucharski of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy says that covering the entire Sahara desert in solar panels and wind farms would not only help power the world, it would also improve the local climate: ‘Rainfall would more than double and there would also be a modest increase in vegetation cover.’ No word on where people would park their cars.

A new paper maps Nairobi’s dairy food system.

Obesity and malnutrition are two sides of the same coin, argues one researcher: ’The dramatic rise in childhood overweight and obesity is happening 30 percent faster in the developing countries than in richer nations.’

Prehistoric peoples in southern Africa avoided using the bones of carnivores as arrowheads, apparently for cultural or religious reasons rather than strictly utilitarian ones.

Or you could just give your kid milk?

Is it milk or isn’t it? Why the dairy industry is boiling over plant-based milks. Vox reports that ‘dairy milk producers want the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to stop soy, almond, and oat beverages from using the term “milk.”’

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has published its annual report on agricultural trends on the continent. This year it focuses on governance: ‘As with most development issues, it is not a question of what needs to be done, it is how. Too little attention is paid to capacity and how governments can implement reforms.’

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Kenya’s dairy farmers are using solar rays to keep milk cool:  ‘There are nearly 1 million dairy farmers in Kenya but only a small percent can connect to the national electricity grid to refrigerate their milk. Some of the rest rely on 50 solar milk-cooling plants to store their milk safely, which ensures more reliable profits.’

The Ikea Foundation is helping pastoralist refugees in Mali reconstitute their herds after a devastating drought.

How do you photograph indelicate subjects? This article in the New York Times focuses on how one photographer tackled the issue of open defecation. Relevant, of course, to our work at ILRI.

The death of the American family farm—and the concomitant rise in huge, industrial farms—is not a new subject, but this piece in The Atlantic manages to be sobering, nonetheless.

The UK Department for International Development (DFID) is touting its support for livestock: ‘The UK is leading groundbreaking research to keep African cattle healthy and pledging more support to ensure farmers are lifted out of poverty’ according to its Twitter feed.

Innovative ways of communicating agricultural information, like using music videos and comics, are getting young people in Tanzania interested in farming, says the CABI Foundation.