US Soybean Farmers Can Help to Feed the World

Stewardship efforts undertaken by US soybean farmers offer the kind of efficiency and sustainability we need to see to meet the world's food needs. Soybean farmers are contributing to a sustainable food supply that improves the environment. To help feed growing world population US soybean farmers are trying to increase food production by 50% by 2030, without expanding the land mass used. Biotech breeding advances are allowing farmers to produce more and healthier soybeans with existing acreage.

New soybean varieties use less water, pesticides and herbicides, yet produce significantly more crops. They do not require plowing, resulting in a 50% reduction in fuel use – a decrease in CO2 emissions equal to removing 6.3 million cars from the road. They also make healthier food products; food companies are now testing a reduced saturated fat and trans fat free soybean oil that will soon be in food products.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Related Posts
Population Growth and Global Food Production
Food Production and Climate Change
Breaking the Cycle of Famine
Food Production and UN Millennium Development Goals
There is Enough Water to Feed the World
Blog Action Day 2011: Food
The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity

Read More»

There is Enough Water to Feed the World

To feed the world requires sufficient water for agriculture and according to recent research there is enough water in the world's rivers to meet the demands of the expanding global population. According to a series released at the 14th World Water Congress in Porto de Galinhas, Brazil. if we are to feed the world, our rivers will have to be better managed than they are today.

According to a special issue of the Water International coordinated by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research's Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), The key issue for water use is not scarcity but inefficient use of supplies because of poor governance and regulation.

"The failures are institutional and political," said Simon Cook, leader of the CPWF Basin Focal Research Project, told SciDev.Net. The researchers found that, in many areas, water production can be substantially increased without harming the environment.

"Somehow, we have to get more food without taking more water — and the most promising way is through improving rain-fed agriculture," said Cook. But a lack of strong institutional arrangements limits access to resources, to finance, or the markets that prevent farmers from developing land to its full potential, the studies found.

To provide water for all, policies need to consider water as a holistic system. Policies should also look beyond crops and take into account water's often neglected role in livestock farming and fisheries.

The challenge of water in the short term is very much a political and social one. With improved governance most parts of the world could meet their short and mid-term water needs, however, global climate change is expected to create much more uncertainty with regard to the physical availability of water.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Related Posts
Population Growth and Global Food Production
Food Production and Climate Change
Breaking the Cycle of Famine
Food Production and UN Millennium Development Goals
US Soybean Farmers Can Help to Feed the World
Blog Action Day 2011: Food
The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity

Read More»

Population Growth and Global Food Production

There are currently almost 7 billion people in the world and by 2050 the world's population is expected to be around billion. With one billion people currently going hungry, it raises the question of how we can feed everyone. With slowing annual increases in agricultural yields food security is recognized as a major issue by the U.N. and the G20. Current methods of cultivating crops continue to degrade land, water, biodiversity, and climate.

Scientists have figured out how we can feed the world without destroying the planet. But we will have to drastically change the way we produce food. According to new research, we can feed them all if we make some radical changes in the way we grow our food. Here is the outline of how we can sustainably double our food production:

Halt farming in places like tropical rainforests and wild lands, which are ecologically valuable but have low food output.
Make underused expanses of land in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe more efficient, boosting current food production by nearly 60 percent.

Make better use of water, fertilizers, and chemicals
Stop eating so much meat, especially in developed countries.
Stop wasting food—about one-third of all food grown is either discarded, spoiled, or eaten by pests.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Related Posts
Food Production and Climate Change
Breaking the Cycle of Famine
Food Production and UN Millennium Development Goals
There is Enough Water to Feed the World
US Soybean Farmers Can Help to Feed the World
Blog Action Day 2011: Food
The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity

Read More»

Food Production and Climate Change

More frequent extreme weather events caused by climate change are expected to increase food price volatility. If we want to feed the world we need to pursue a course that includes environmental sustainability. Both mitigation and adaptation are required to address the impacts of climate change.Climate change is already having a major impact on agricultural yields. According to a paper published in journal Science and quoted in ENN, global wheat and corn output was reduced by more than 3 percent over the past three decades and these impacts translated into up to 20 percent higher average commodity prices. Higher prices lead to more starvation.

This is a foretaste of the agricultural declines due to climate change. "Climate changes are already exerting a considerable drag on yield growth," said the study titled "Climate Trends and Global Crop Production Since 1980." The study shows global falls in wheat output of 5.5 percent and 3.8 percent for corn as a result of climate change from 1980-2008.

However, scientists from Stanford and Columbia, have noted that there are things we can do to adapt to a warming climate. According to a study titled CO2 The paper, adaptation responses, such as advances in crop breeding, could soften the blow of future warming.

"Without successful adaptation, and given the persistent rise in demand for maize and wheat, the sizable yield setback from climate change is likely incurring large economic and health costs," it said.

Unless we act now, climate change risks the future food supply and this will be further exacerbated by increased prices.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Related Posts
Population Growth and Global Food Production
Breaking the Cycle of Famine
Food Production and UN Millennium Development Goals
There is Enough Water to Feed the World
US Soybean Farmers Can Help to Feed the World
Blog Action Day 2011: Food
The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity

Read More»

Food Production and UN Millennium Development Goals

Food crises are jeopardizing efforts to achieve the United Nations' millennium development goal of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015. According to an annual report on world hunger, food price volatility is likely to continue and perhaps even increase, making poor farmers, consumers and countries more vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity.

Population growth, increasing demand from rapidly growing economies and biofuels will place additional demands on the food system, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad) and the World Food Programme (WFP) said in their joint report.

"Even if the MDG were achieved by 2015, some 600 million people in developing countries would still be undernourished," said UN experts. "Having 600 million people suffering from hunger on a daily basis is never acceptable. The entire international community must act today and act forcefully to banish food insecurity from the planet."

The report emphasized that investment in agriculture, particularly small farmers, remains critical to sustainable, long-term food security. Investment is required in irrigation, improved land-management practices and better seeds developed through agricultural research.

NGOs point out that developed countries have yet to live up to their pledge to invest $22bn in agriculture development. The money was promised at L'Aquila, Italy in 2009, following food crises that triggered riots in 30 countries across three continents.

The report said predictable policies and openness to trade were more effective strategies for governments than export bans and other restrictive policies, which risk increasing volatility and high prices on international markets.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Related Posts
Population Growth and Global Food Production
Food Production and Climate Change
Breaking the Cycle of Famine
There is Enough Water to Feed the World
US Soybean Farmers Can Help to Feed the World
Blog Action Day 2011: Food
The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity

Read More»

Breaking the Cycle of Famine

The famines in East Africa and elsewhere make food a critical issue in 2011. Small, import-dependent countries, particularly in Africa, are especially at risk, with many of them still facing severe problems following the world food and economic crises of 2006-2008. Much of East Africa is in crisis and the current famine is not its first. In some places this is the worst drought in 60 years. The result is that 13 million people at now risk and 1.8 million people have been displaced in Somalis alone.

Although aid agencies are doing what they can, we need to find better solutions than post hoc assistance. It cost less to avoid a crisis than it does to save lives after famine hits. Experts estimate that emergency relief in famines costs seven times as much as preventing the disaster to begin with.

As journalist Tina Rosenberg wrote in The New York Times earlier this year, "Out of fear, farmers do not try new methods that can bring them higher yields. They cannot take out loans to buy the drought-resistant seeds and tools to bring a bigger harvest, because they cannot be sure of repaying the loans. They need to know they will have money left over to feed their families and plant again should the harvest fail, so they invest less in farming. "

Recognizing this, several years ago Oxfam launched a program in Ethiopia to try to break this cycle, This insurance product is designed to be commercially viable (i.e., risk-based pricing) and to avoid subsidizing premiums as has been done in the past.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Related Posts
Population Growth and Global Food Production
Food Production and Climate Change
Food Production and UN Millennium Development Goals
There is Enough Water to Feed the World
US Soybean Farmers Can Help to Feed the World
Blog Action Day 2011: Food
The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity

Read More»

Blog Action Day 2011: Food

This year, Blog Action Day is on October 16, which coincides with World Food Day, so the 2011 theme is, quite naturally food. Since its inception in 2007, Blog Action Day themes have included water in 2010 and climate change in 2009. This year, in the short span of just two weeks approximately 1,500 bloggers from 80 countries registered to take part in Blog Action Day, 2011. Because of World Food Day, for Blog Action Day 2011, some bloggers are focusing on devastating famines, while others are addressing the abundance of food that is causing new health problems in the western world.

Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion around an important issue that impacts us all.

The thousands of bloggers addressing the same issue on the same day changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. Out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action.

On the first Blog Action Day in 2007, thousands of bloggers to wrote about the issue of Environment. Thousands of bloggers ran environmental experiments, detailed innovative ideas on creating sustainable practices, and focused on organizations and companies that promote green agendas.

In 2008, Blog Action Day covered the theme of poverty, and similarly focused the blogging community’s energies around discussing the wide breadth of the issue from many perspectives and identifying innovative and unexpected solutions.

In 2009, the conversation around climate change brought together voices around the globe to discuss an issue that threatens us all and mobilized tens of thousands of people to get more involved in the movement for a more sustainable future.

Last year, with the theme of Water, we saw 5,600 bloggers from 143 countries, reaching more than 40 million readers with discussions a broad range of water issues, from river conservation, to the ethics of bottled water, to the increasing privatisation of water access, to the water crisis in Africa, all eager to shed light on this often-overlooked topic.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Related Posts
Population Growth and Global Food Production
Food Production and Climate Change
Breaking the Cycle of Famine
Food Production and UN Millennium Development Goals
US Soybean Farmers Can Help to Feed the World
There is Enough Water to Feed the World
The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity

Read More»

The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity

Bono, George Clooney, Jessica Alba, Idris Elba and more unite behind ONE's new campaign to help focus the world's attention again on the famine and food crisis in the Horn of Africa. Click here to find out more.

Related Posts
Population Growth and Global Food Production
Food Production and Climate Change
Breaking the Cycle of Famine
Food Production and UN Millennium Development Goals
Blog Action Day 2011: Food
There is Enough Water to Feed the World
US Soybean Farmers Can Help to Feed the World

Read More»