On June 4, Ram Das, a 65-year-old farmer from India’s northern state of Haryana, was anxiously waiting for the results of the country’s general elections. It was early morning when he left his home and, along with his fellow villagers, congregated near a tea stall that had a transistor set playing the election results.
Sudan is the scene of unimaginable suffering. As war between army and militia continues, civilians are paying the highest price. Both sides are killing non-combatants and committing gross human rights crimes.
This summer is bringing an additional challenge to the public health front in Lebanon, along with higher-than-normal temperatures.
Immigrants are essential to Europe’s economic survival. They are needed for doing the jobs that most Europeans no longer want to do. Jobs that involve manual labor in agriculture and industry; or providing home help, care for the elderly; or working un-social hours in the catering business.
Global South countries did get one benefit from the COVID-19 pandemic. A professor at St. George’s University in Grenada describes it as the pandemic’s “silver lining." He was referring to the widespread use of next-generation genomic sequencing technology to identify, track, and trace the numerous variants of the Sars Cov-2 virus. Researchers and scientists in the Caribbean, Africa, and elsewhere have been eagerly harnessing genomic sequencing technology to develop resilience and greater self-sufficiency in numerous fields, ranging from health surveillance to agriculture and beyond.
On a scorching May morning, Gajendra Madhei, a farmer from Mamudiya village, arrives at the local bazaar in Udula, a town in Odisha's Mayurbhanj district. He displays freshly caught red weaver ants, known locally as kai pimpudi, in the bustling tribal market.
Thanks to the recent recognition of Mayurbhanj's Kai chutney, or red weaver ant chutney, with a Geographical Indication (GI) tag awarded in January, his business of selling the raw ants has seen a significant surge in profitability.
In Zambia, over 6.5 million people need humanitarian assistance because of the drought. 3.5 million of them are children.
Smelling the toxic smoke coming from burned powder kegs and helplessly watching fields turn into smoke and ash is traumatic. Rushing to the government's safe houses and leaving your homes, belongings and cattle behind whenever the armies of India and Pakistan trade fire is inexplicable. Then came climate-change-induced weather unpredictability.
As the school lunch bell goes off, 40 eager little bodies—41 if you count the school dog—burst out onto the veranda. Awaiting them are a stack of steel platters, into which will be ladled a nutritious and delicious lunch, all of it indigenous cuisine.
After El Niño-induced floods and devastating drought, roughly
two in five people in Malawi – a country of some 20 million people – are now facing the looming prospect of acute hunger by the end of the year.
This year, bee pollen has become a trendy superfood thanks to a wide range of
potential benefits. Last year,
sea moss led the superfood trends. Before that, it was
turmeric.
All news is local, they say. The same is true of innovations—those many new technologies, policies, and practices that steadily stream from research to enhance our lives.
Since 2008, farmland acquisitions have doubled prices worldwide, squeezing family farmers and other poor rural communities. Such land grabs are worsening inequality, poverty, and food insecurity.
Osmir da Silva Rubez refuses to join the drip system, and is the only one among the 51 families living in the Mandacaru Public Irrigation Project in Juazeiro, a municipality in the state of Bahia, in the Northeast region of Brazil, to maintain the furrows that carry water to their crops.
Jishuram Das, a sexagenarian who was born in Jelepara, located in Chattogram, has been catching fish from the Karnaphuli River since his childhood. But nowadays, he often sits idle without going to catch fish, as their catches have drastically fallen.
The area where land meets the sea, known as coastal ecosystems, could be the key to reducing the effects of climate change.
What is blue carbon?
Blue carbon refers to the carbon dioxide (CO2) stored within marine or coastal ecosystems
worldwide. These ecosystems include coastal plants such as mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes, which trap CO2 in their seabeds.
The Global South is crucial for ensuring aquatic food security to feed the growing world population. It is imperative that blue economy initiatives benefit fishing communities in developing and small island nations, which are facing disproportionate impacts of climate change, says Dr Essam Yassin Mohammed, Director General of WorldFish, an international non-profit research organization based in Penang, Malaysia.
Technology and innovation are at the center of the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s strategy to fulfill its global mission to eradicate poverty and hunger in the developing world, IFAD’s President Alvaro Lario told IPS in an exclusive interview.
Kaponde Likando does not know how his family will survive until the next farming season. “We are not going to have anything (to harvest),” said the 60-year-old from Chingobe village in southern Zambia after his maize, sorghum, groundnut and sweet potato crops failed. “This has been the very opposite of what we expected.”
Three years ago, 43-year-old Benard Munondo was an "ordinary" Zimbabwean teacher at a local primary school, but now he has turned maggots into gold.
Thanks to maggot farming, Munondo, who has never owned a home nor driven a car, now has both.
In 2020, a week’s training on maggot farming changed his world.
Food systems—how we grow, transport, prepare, and dispose of the food we eat—are responsible for roughly one-third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. And those gases are changing the climate, which in turn is disrupting the food supply. It would seem to be a classic vicious circle.