In The News

In Greenland, Potatoes Thrive as Seal Hunting Wanes

Colin Woodard October 8, 2007
Rising average temperatures may transform life for millions over the coming decades, and dramatic changes in Greenland, near the Arctic Circle, could foreshadow some of the turmoil for the rest of the world. For centuries, the island's residents lived off ice fishing and seal hunting, accessing resources by dog sledding across the frozen sea. Today, however, climate change has thinned the...

Number of Obese Growing on Global Scale

Stephen J. Hedges October 5, 2007
While some countries suffer from hunger, a growing part of the world struggles with the opposite problem of obesity. The problem is no longer confined to rich countries: Nigeria and Uganda struggle simultaneously with hunger and obesity. With a 2000 percent increase in the share of China’s population considered obese, the growth in waistlines outpaces the nation's economic growth. Obese...

Climate-Change Challenge for the Poor – Part II

Mira Kamdar September 28, 2007
Increased consumption by rich and newly rich nations combined with effects of climate change set the stage for a global food crisis. Decreased supplies of world dietary staples like wheat, corn and rice have already increased prices significantly this year, and a few nervous governments brace for possible social unrest by hungry citizens. In this second article of a two-part series that explores...

Biofuelling the Food Crisis

John Vidal September 10, 2007
The notion of an automobile powered by fuel produced from plants appeals to any nation worried about dependence on foreign oil or declining oil reserves. A biofuel boom presents ostensibly environmentally-friendly implications, yet leads some analysts to predict a food crisis for the world’s most vulnerable populations. Plants for fuel will inevitably compete with food-plants, prompting rising...

Mystery of the Vanishing Bees

Norman L. Carreck August 30, 2007
Honey bees contribute much to agriculture and the delicious variety of foods we eat. But the social insects are under stress. The reasons could be many: Mites that attack bees increasingly become resistant to pesticides; researchers have also theorized about modern society’s reliance on cell phones, insecticides and genetically modified crops. Policies to protect bees are in order, argues Norman...

Bee Decline Threatens Our Dinner and the Countryside

Jimmy Lee Shreeve August 30, 2007
Imagine a food market with fewer apples, nuts, soybeans, asparagus, squash, tomatoes, citrus fruit, strawberries or melons. People may not notice small insects in the course of daily life, but alarm would emerge if species of bees suddenly vanished. Wildflowers and many agricultural plants depend on bees for pollination and production of seed. “It's hard to believe that one small creature...

Like Wages for Chocolate

Humphrey Hawksley August 21, 2007
Exploited by capitalists of the West, some farmers of Africa may eventually be tempted by the Chinese communist model or even worse, radical Islam as their ideology, says Humphrey Hawksley, a BBC correspondent and the author of “The History Book,” as he presents a case study of cocoa production in African countries. With stagnant prices of cocoa in international commodity markets, the real...