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 global explosion in food fraud is especially threatening in Africa, whose governments may not have the experience or resources to adequately police grocery sales: ‘In Nigeria there is milk powder with no animal protein. In Kenya there is vegetable oil made of recycled oil unfit for human consumption. In Ghana, the palm oil is laced with a food coloring called Sudan IV which is widely recognized as a carcinogen. In Uganda, formalin —an embalming agent—is used to keep meat and fish free from flies and seemingly fresh for days.’ A sobering article from qz.com.
An outbreak of PPR—peste des petits ruminants, in French—threatened to decimate Burundi’s goat population last year. This post explains how the World Bank and partner organizations quickly mobilized to vaccinate the country’s entire population of 3 million goats and sheep.
Famines are becoming more frequent in the Sahel, the Economist reports, with climate change, advancing deserts and low-tech farming all playing a role.
A plea from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)’s Antonio Rota to give smallholder livestock farmers of the developing world a chance: ‘Debate about environmental cost of livestock is legitimate but let’s not lose sight of needs in the developing world.’
Silicon Valley VCs are betting lab-grown meat could be just as big a deal as Uber was for taxis and have ‘huge disruptive abilities’ to a USD200 billion industry. So when will Americans start seeing lab meat on their grocery shelves? Maybe sooner than you think.
In related news, the Bill Gates-backed Beyond Meat, a vegan burger maker, has filed for an IPO.
A long article from Le Monde (in French) on the various threats facing pastoralists in the Sahel, from climate change to the widespread and age-old prejudice that they should simply settle—or be made to settle—an issue that I believe was addressed and refuted a long time ago.
For the fifth consecutive year, global agricultural productivity is not growing fast enough to sustainably meet the needs of a growing population, according to the 2018 Global Agricultural Productivity Index, an indicator of agricultural productivity growth.
In Hamnen, Sweden, is the perfect museum to visit with your kid sister, should you happen to be a 10-year old boy: The Disgusting Food Museum offers a collection of 80 ‘polarizing’ foods that the curators claim ‘will challenge your subjective notions of repulsion.’ But let’s be honest, most of these foods will just plain gross you out. I won’t spoil your lunch: Click on the link if you want details.
On an arguably related topic, customers in England will soon be able to buy smoky barbecue-flavoured crickets as part of their weekly shopping, as the British chain Sainsbury’s becomes the first supermarket in the country to sell edible bugs.
The challenges of sustainably intensifying (SI) agricultural systems are huge, but as this long article for Science Magazine makes clear, redesigning ‘agroecosystems around SI can achieve both yield increases and resilience.’
In November 2018, Swiss voters were asked via plebiscite to make a moomentous decision: Whether farmers should receive state compensation for letting cows and goats keep their horns, as ‘nature intended, for their well-being and happiness.’ The polls were neck-and-neck for a while, but in the end the ewes had it.
In the face of undeniable climate change, we need to fundamentally rethink how we provide agricultural assistance, says the World Bank: ‘We see growing demand from low- and middle-income countries for climate-smart solutions in agriculture projects that deliver triple-win benefits by simultaneously increasing yields, improving adaptation and enhancing mitigation.’
The Sahara Desert has gotten 10% bigger since 1920—just one of a multitude of ways that rising global temperatures are altering climatic zones around the planet, with consequences for food and water security, local economies, and public health. Good longform article from e360.com.
Bill Gates ♥s fertilizer. In this blog post, he explains why.
A long article from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) on how to get eggs—one of nature’s most nutritious foods—into the diets of more women and children worldwide. The article estimates current patterns and likely future outcomes under four alternative scenarios.
The most recent Global Burden of Disease survey finds that poor diets are behind one fifth of deaths worldwide.
Silicon Valley VCs are betting lab-grown meat could be just as big a deal as Uber was for taxis and have ‘huge disruptive abilities’ to a $200 billion industry. So when will Americans start seeing lab meat on their grocery shelves? Maybe sooner than you think.
In related news, the Bill Gates-backed Beyond Meat, a vegan burger maker, has filed for an IPO.
Random fact of the day: Here’s some info on agricultural land as a percent of a country’s total land area, drawn from World Bank data:
URU: 82.6% RSA: 79.8% NGR: 77.7% MGL: 72.7% UKR: 71.3%
GBR: 70.8% IND: 60.4% CHN: 56.2% TUR: 50.1% GER: 47.9%
PAK: 47.0% USA: 44.4% PHI: 41.7% BRA: 33.8% RUS: 13.3%
CAN: 6.9% EGY: 3.8%
When infographics go wrong: Some recent Twitter responses to a 1948 graphic:
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