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food productionlatest news & developments

Irish business leaders: Africa key to increasing agriculture, food production

The continent imported more than $55 billion worth of food last year, projected to double to $110 billion in 2025

Botswana has lifted its ban on fresh vegetable imports from South Africa after it struggled to meet local demand solely from domestic production. (Rogan Ward)

Pay a fair price for food to support smallholder farmers and workers

They produce about a third of the world’s food and fair pricing is critical to secure their livelihoods, build resilience and tackle issues such as food security and climate change

The increase in, for example, white and yellow maize, us now at 7.75 million tonnes and 6.91 million tonnes, 16% higher than the 2023-24 season.

For better ways to produce food, look to the past

Answers to South Africa’s food system problems could lie in the pre-colonial epoch

Palestinian employees at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) wearing protective masks and gloves, prepare food aid rations to be henceforth delivered to refugee family homes rather than distributed at a UN a center, in Gaza City, on March 31, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

New strategies are required to control food-price inflation

Food-price inflation has a direct effect on people’s lives — and it hits the poor the hardest

TOPSHOT – Nono, an elderly maize farmer, inspects maize which has been hung out to dry in Qunu on June 28, 2013. Qunu is where former South African President Nelson Mandela grew up. Mandela, who turns 95 next month, was rushed to hospital three weeks ago with a recurrent lung disease. AFP PHOTO/Carl de Souza […]

Study: Bill Gates promoted fertilisers are more damaging than previously thought

No to ‘climate-stupid’ agriculture

Woman selling passionfruits at a local market on Septembre 21, 2018 in Entebbe, Kampala district, Uganda. (Photo by Camille Delbos/Art In All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images)

Small businesses need more climate financing

Small businesses are integral to climate-change mitigation, adaptation and resilience. But they need to be given the funds and support to succeed

A vendor inspects fresh produce on a stall at a fruit market as day breaks in the Lugbe district of Abuja, Nigeria. (KC Nwakalor/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

An African vision for our food systems

Young people, of which the continent has many, could be key to innovating intelligent technology solutions that help farmers produce food efficiently

The WHO and the United Nations (UN) celebrated World Food Safety Day on 7 June, with the 2022 theme, “Safer Food, Better Health”.

South Africa wastes 10mn tons of food a year

A new study shows how 45% of the available food supply is wasted in the country

The South African agricultural sector is on solid ground for now and we shouldn’t be worried — but we should be vigilant.

Climate crisis threatens future maize production in SA and Lesotho

Climate change not only affects the nutritional value of food crops, but also leaves the food supply system vulnerable to production shocks, study finds

We have wiped out 60% of wildlife in the past 40 years and more than one million species are threatened with extinction. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Unstoppable momentum of habitat loss could compromise sustainable life on Earth

Tough decisions ahead for humankind, if we hope to save the planet

El Niño is expected to cause a loss of rainfall

UN: North Korea food production ‘lowest for a decade’

Adding to the sanctions against them, North Korea’s struggle to feed itself has hit a new low.

Aerofarms in Newark, New Jersey, is the world’s largest high-tech vertical ‘farm’. It’s in a 9?144m2 warehouse, which has no sun or soil and uses less water

Turn Africa’s cities into vertical farms

Although the problems are enormous, cities can also offer unique opportunities to reduce poverty, deliver prosperity and economic development

Agriculture also faces a future in which the climate that it relies on is changing. More extremes, from floods to droughts, are already happening. (Sean Gallup/Getty)

Bigger farms needed to feed nine billion

That’s not the research findings the proponents of small-scale, organic agriculture want to hear

The world’s largest cocoa producer, Ivory Coast has emerged from a period of civil and political unrest in 2010-11 in which 3 000 people died to recorded annual economic growth rates of nearly 10 percent. (Issouf Sanogo/AFP)

Ivory Coast cashes in on the cashew

From tiny harvests two decades ago, the West African country now holds the cashew crown, supplanting India as the biggest producer of the nut

The well-being of pollinators like bees have a direct impact on our lives.

How barcoding is helping South Africa track its precious pollinators

Almost one third of the food we eat comes from animal pollination, but understanding the plants and pollinators relationship isn’t straightforward.

SA ‘must end this torment’ of high food prices

The fight against high and rising food prices will require the mobilisation of all social forces, the Gauteng Food Summit was told on Friday.

More home-grown veg as British, US belts tighten

Almost 70 years after Britons were urged to Dig For Victory to produce hearty home-grown food to help the war effort, domestic horticulture is coming back.

Zuma: Rising food prices a time bomb

The rising cost of food is a time bomb that could result in uprisings, African National Congress president Jacob Zuma told the World Economic Forum on Africa on Thursday.

World leaders grapple to agree food-crisis plan

World leaders will seek on Thursday to agree an action plan to tackle the global food crisis after three days of wrangling.