Tag: Developing country issues

Food price rises finally hit home in mainstream media

Going up: food prices set to soar by Richard Webb. The Sunday Age, Melbourne. April 3, 2011 “Higher world prices for commodities such as wheat and sugar will place pressure on related food prices”, says the Reserve Bank of Australia. With global food prices at record highs, a supermarket war isn’t enough to keep prices down… …In…

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Denialism at its best: “Greenpeace was never opposed to the use of DDT for malaria control.”

Patrick Moore – Rex Weyler Exchange about Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist Rex Weyler announces to Patrick Moore that he is about to come out publicly with a critique of Patrick’s new book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist. Here is Patrick’s response: RW:…

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Biofortification of cassava makes real progress thanks to SNP detection methods

A Single Nucleotide Polymorphism in a Phytoene Synthase Gene can Simplify Provitamin A Biofortification of CassavaRalf WelschISB NEWS REPORT MARCH 2011The need for biofortification of staple cropsMillions of poor people rely on staples to meet their daily calorie requirements. The existence of such energydense food is the result of genetic selection by humans since the…

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High wheat prices and Middle-East turmoil linked?

The global food crunch By Robert J. Samuelson, Washington PostMonday, March 14, 2011Here’s a question about the Mideast turmoil for future historians: How much did food inflation contribute? We know some basic facts. Middle East countries import 50 percent or more of their wheat, a staple food for many. Beginning in mid-2010, world grain prices…

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The Future of Food and Farming Priority 6: Promote sustainable intensification.

The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and choices for global sustainabilityUK Government Office for Science 2011Executive Summary From the IntroductionProject aim: to explore the pressures on the global food system between now and 2050 and identify the decisions that policy makers need to take today, and in the years ahead, to ensure that a global…

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Growing of transgenic crops can contribute in all three traditional pillars of sustainability — economic, environmental and social.

Review article The role of transgenic crops in sustainable development Julian Raymond Park, Ian McFarlane, Richard Hartley Phipps and Graziano Ceddia School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AR, UK Summary The concept of sustainable development forms the basis for a wide variety of international and national policy making. World population…

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Biotechnology is crucial to the growth of food productivity and security

Farming the Future: GM Crops Recommended as Key Part of Obama’s “Evergreen RevolutionScientific American posting A former Agriculture Department chief scientist weighs in on President Obama’s U.S-India plan, arguing that biotechnology is crucial to the growth of food productivity and security that is necessary to feed a surging global populationBy David Despain | December 9,…

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The man who saved a billion lives

Why Genetically Modified food is necessary to feed the planet by Jonathan Gray for The Toronto Globalist Saving the species. It’s the noblest goal any human can aspire to, and it is associated with figures who are the paragon of humanity. I do not wish to speak about ‘saving souls’ in a religious sense. Abraham…

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Biodiversity world tour event at Nagoya Japan –save forest for nature by working from the ground up not top-down

GMO Pundit participated in a session running in parallel with the conference of parties (COP) biodiversity discussions that occurred last week in Nagoya, Japan. He had an opportunity to frame some points to make to the delegates who are interested in conserving biodiversity, an issue the Pundit is passionate about too. He does worry that…

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Developing countries would not gain if they imposed bans on GM crop imports: the consumer loss to Asian and Sub-Saharan African farmers is far more than the small gain in terms of greater market access to the EU

Economic Impacts of Policies Affecting Crop Biotechnology and Trade – Kym Anderson, New Biotechnology (in Press), full paper athttp://web.services.adelaide.edu.au/cies/publications/present/CIES_DP1012.pdf Agricultural biotechnologies, and especially transgenic crops, have the potential to boost food security in developing countries by offering higher incomes for farmers and lower priced and better quality food for consumers. That potential is being heavily…

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