What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Highlight: the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association (NASFAM) in Malawi, PAEPARD

FAO launches new standards for plant genebanks, FAO

Africa and India cultivate agricultural research ties, SciDev.Net

Who will pay for ecosystem services?, IIED

It’s not the ‘skipping’ three who should be questioned, it’s the wasteful supermarkets, The Independent

Pesticides halve bees’ pollen gathering ability, research shows, The Guardian

Natural Gas and Albacore: What Tuna Says About the Future of Mozambique, New Security Beat

Press Briefing of H.E. Mrs. Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, PAEPARD

Fertilizer nutrient imbalance to limit food production in Africa, IIASA

Genetic weapon against insects raises hope and fear in farming, New York Times

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

The global food fight: can agribusiness avert a crisis?, fDi Intelligence

While Global Bee Colonies Struggle, European Politicians Seem Determined To Kill Them Off, Forbes

Chief EU scientist backs damning report urging GMO ‘rethink’, EurActive

Is getting out of farming the best bet for smallholder farmers?, IRRI

Economic rewards of better land management: Estimated 2.3 billion tons of crops worth $1.4 trillion, EurekAlert

The Urgent Need for African Leadership in Science, Engineering and Technology to Transform African Agriculture into Agri-Food Value Chains, African Journal of food, agriculture, nutrition and development

Satisfy Your Curiosity with Our New E-Book, Can We Feed the World? The Future of Food, Scientific American

New technology and agriculture: A sluggish uptake, The Africa Report

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Europe set to ban bee-killing pesticides, Phys.org

Small farmers hold the key to tackling climate change, Thomson Reuters Foundation

The new geopolitics of food scarcity, Lester Brown

Plant biotechnology: Tarnished promise, Nature

G-8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture, USDA

Stewards of the natural world do not understand the precautionary principle, The Guardian

Cargill launches initiative to help food makers improve the nutritional profiles of products for kids, Cargill

Feeding 25 million Ghanaians, Ghana Web

Gene silencing set to boost agricultural yields, Murdoch University

New plant protein discoveries could ease global food and fuel demands, EurekAlert!

Open access is the future for Africa’s science media, SciDev.Net

Study links insecticide use to invertebrate die-offs, The Guardian

At-risk countries need shared climate solutions – experts, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Guest Commentary: The Challenge of Going Beyond Sustainability, Farm Journal

New Research Shows the Damaging Impacts of Pesticides on Bees

While modern synthetic pesticides are developed to reduce impacts on non-target organisms, two recent papers published in Science have brought to light new evidence of the damaging effects of pesticides on bee colonies.

Both papers investigated the impact of the use of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees. When sprayed on crops such as oilseed rape, maize and sunflower, these pesticides spread throughout plant tissues including into nectar and pollen, and as such are directly available to bees, although in trace amounts.

The first paper published in March 2012, found that bumblebee colonies exposed to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid suffered reduced growth rates and an 85% reduction in the production of queen bees.