News and Events

Going Veggie Would Save Trillions of Lives, Not Millions

Submitted by monique on Tue, 05/03/2016 - 17:51

A recent study conducted at the University of Oxford concluded that adopting a vegetarian diet would save 5-8 million lives by 2050, amounting to a 6-10% drop in global mortality. The study joins a growing body of quality research suggesting that a global reduction in meat consumption can help prevent major problems in the near future. However, despite its important implications on the far-reaching impact of our eating habits, the study misses a crucial and obvious point. By only including human lives in its final figure, it ignores the trillions of animals whose lives would also be spared by a global shift towards meat-free diets within the same time-frame.

Removing meat products from our diets would not only save up to 8 million humans, it would also prevent the deaths of up to hundreds of trillions of other sentient beings. Reducing our civilization's meat intake is thus a matter of extreme moral urgency

Ecological Farming: the Seven Principles of a Food System that has People at its Heart

Submitted by belinda on Wed, 08/05/2015 - 16:17

Greenpeace’s Food and Farming Vision explains why Ecological Farming is the solution for a sustainable future and why we need to act now to hasten much-needed systemic change.

It needs no more than a few figures to see something is not right - almost one billion people go to sleep hungry every night. At the same time, the world produces more than enough food to feed all seven billion of us. Around one billion people are overweight or obese. A staggering 30% of the world’s food is wasted. Our problem today is not one of producing more food, but producing food where it is most needed and in a way that respects nature. The current industrial agriculture system fails to deliver this.

Meanwhile, the planet is suffering considerably. We are over-exploiting resources and reducing soil fertility, biodiversity, and water quality. Toxic substances are accumulating in our surroundings. Levels of waste are growing. And all this is occurring in the context of climate change and increased pressure on the Earth’s diminishing resources.

International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology's (icipe) climate-smart push-pull helping to stabilise cereal-livestock mixed production systems in East Africa

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 07/21/2015 - 01:17

A climate-smart version of the icipe push-pull technology is enabling farmers living in some of the East African regions most severely affected by climate change to stabilise their cereal-livestock mixed production systems.

In a paper published in the recent issue of Field Crops Research journal, icipe and collaborators show that the climate-smart push pull is not only enabling farmers living in such areas to continue cultivating cereals, but to also increase yields by 2.5 times, and in addition, integrate dairy farming into their production systems, despite challenges posed by climate of change.

Push-pull is a platform technology developed over the past 20 years by icipe in collaboration with Rothamsted Research, United Kingdom, and partners in eastern Africa. This simple cropping strategy simultaneously addresses the five key constraints of cereal-livestock mixed production systems in Africa - insect pests (stemborers), the parasitic weed Striga (and other weeds), poor soil fertility, soil moisture management, while also fulfilling the need for high quality animal feed.