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.

New Report Urges a U.S. Global Food Security Focus on Science, Trade and Business, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Pesticides Make a Comeback, The Wall Street Journal

The biodiversity challenge in Europe, Thinking Country

Q+A: Committee on World Food Security chair urges use of forest foods in diets, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Ghana hosts 6th Africa Agriculture Science Week, Joy Online

Trees on farms: challenging conventional agricultural practice, The Guardian

Disasters displaced over 32 mln people in 2012, rising trend forecast, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Feature: Curbing hunger, Ghana must go biotech, Ghana Business News

G8 under pressure to rethink biofuel mandates, EurActiv.com

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

Ghana’s Sustained Agricultural Revolution

Ghana is the only country in Sub-Saharan Africa likely to meet both the Millennium Development Goals of halving the proportion of people in poverty, and the proportion of people who are hungry, by 2015.

In a study of Ghana’s story IFPRI experts have called the country ‘a prime candidate to champion economic transformation in Africa.’ They state that Ghana should grab the ‘unique opportunity for the front-running African countries to set examples on how to achieve economic transformation and prosperity on the continent’.

But there is a side to this narrative that deserves even more attention: Ghana’s quiet and steady agricultural revolution.

According to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Ghana’s agricultural sector has grown by an average of about 5% per year during the past 25 years, making it one of the world’s top performers in agricultural growth. Further successes include:

• Between 1990 and 2004, Ghana cut hunger levels by 75%.
• Undernourishment went down to 8% by 2003, from 34% in 1991.
• Child malnutrition declined, with the proportion of infants underweight falling from 30% in 1988 to 17% in 2008.
  • Political and economic reforms reduced the percentage of the population living in poverty from 52% in 1991-92 to 28.5% in 2005-06.
  • Rural poverty fell from 64% to 40% between 1981 and 2007.
  • By 2005/07, staple food production per person was more than 80% higher than it was in 1981/83.