Food and agriculture blogs

A shopping trolley for change?

As a consumer you have the potential to promote development through your buying habits. But how effective are you?

Carbon and labels: an unhappy marriage?

Agriculture is just one of the sectors in which carbon labelling — the labelling of a product to show how much carbon (and other greenhouse gases) have been emitted during its ‘lifecycle’ — is being used to show how individual products contribute to climate change. The logic behind applying carbon labels to agriculture seems sound enough: agriculture accounts for 10 to 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and produces much of the food we eat and the products we buy. Finding a way to tell consumers how much individual agricultural products contribute to this should encourage them to choose those products with the lowest carbon footprint and help make agriculture more sustainable. But the truth is that it is very difficult to provide accurate carbon labels for agricultural products. And carbon labelling can impact farmers in the developing world in ways that don’t support development.

Climate change winners and losers in Sahel

Earlier this month, I spent a week in Mali, going back to the villages which I have studied for the past 30 years. While international climate negotiators met in Cancun, Mexico, for the UN summit on climate change, I was keen to catch up on how climate change was affecting livelihoods in the West African Sahel.

You are what you (m)eat

Understanding the impacts of meat and dairy production

The production of meat and dairy – particularly industrial and large-scale production systems - have numerous negative social and environmental impacts. Nevertheless these large-scale systems have been credited with producing 'affordable' animal protein for consumers. But a closer analysis of what affordable really means – and for whom – is vital.

The missing 't'

Seeking an easy way to prepare fish at home, many families in the developed world turn to fish fillets. Grilled, sautéed or fried, the fish is ready to eat in minutes, having been pre-scaled, pre-gutted, deboned and pre-packaged before it arrives at the local supermarkets. But what happens to those fish scraps that are stripped away?

Has agriculture been a winner in the economic downturn?

While the downturn has hit many economic sectors hard, have farmers prospered?

Turning the spotlight on agriculture

Have we glimpsed real signs of economic recovery?

The case of the coca leaf

The war on drugs in Mexico has intensified. A recent article in the Economist reports that drug-related killings have increased by almost 1000 since last year. Moreover, innocent people in Mexico are becoming victims, as drug gang shootings are no longer just targeting police and rival gangs.

Mexico and the US are working to eradicate the problem by investing US$1.3 billion in anti-drug aid, though only US$331 million is to be invested in social intervention. Yet the lack of intervention through social welfare programmes may be the underlying cause of the rapid growth of drug gangs and related violence.

How to manage our fish and chips

‘Mind-withering stupidity’ is how UK writer George Monbiot characterised the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) decision not to protect bluefin tuna.

The ‘absence of a ban’, he went on to say, ‘ensures that, after one or two more seasons of fishing at current levels, all the jobs and the entire industry are finished forever, along with the magnificent species that supported them’.

The Nazca's folly: a pattern that won't go away?

Some might say that archaeology is all about potsherds and old bones. But digging into the past can be a way of uncovering patterns of human behaviour with real relevance for our own time. And recently a group of archaeologists did just that, by unearthing an earlier culture that is an uncomfortable echo of our own.

A study by this University of Cambridge group claims that the Nazca — a people famed for creating the gigantic ‘Nazca Lines’, patterns on a Peruvian desert that can only be seen from a plane — precipitated their own decline through excessive deforestation.

Happy Mondays — saving the planet one day at a time

What do ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and American actress Gwyneth Paltrow have in common — beyond a place in the celebrity stratosphere?

Bushmeat stew: complexities of a shadowy trade

It’s hard for some to imagine sitting down to a meal of baboon, green monkey and warthog meat.

Farming, financial storms — and keeping a weather eye on volatility

Farming is usually seen as dicing with nature. So how has agriculture managed to weather the financial storms of the last year so well?

Christmas means consumption

To give and receive: it’s the essence of Christmas. Strip away the personal significance, though, and we’re really just looking at the process of consumption.

Eat your greens at Christmas

Will your last-minute shopping for holiday feasts bring peace, joy and livelihood security to the world’s poorest? Your Christmas dinner plate could be piled high with support for the poor.

Beyond buzzwords: making adaptation a development norm

Day 1 of IIED’s Development and Climate Days: Land, Water and Forests