Africa and Beyond

"For a long time, primates stuck by the old restaurants--leaves and fruits--but by 3.5 million years ago, they started exploring new diet possibilities--tropical grasses and sedges--that grazing animals discovered a long time before, about 10 million years ago," Cerling says, when African savanna began expanding.

"Tropical grasses provided a new set of restaurants. We see an increasing reliance on this resource by human ancestors, one that most primates still don't use today."

Grassy savannas and grassy woodlands in East Africa were widespread by 6 million to 7 million years ago. A major question is why human ancestors didn't start exploiting savanna grasses until less than 4 million years ago.

On 24th April 2013, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released the report Agricultural Innovation: The United States in a Changing Global Reality authored by University of Minnesota researchers...

New measures for global spillover potential presented in the report include:

The following datasets contributed to this analysis:

"Already 1.6 billion people rely on forests, which cover more than 30 percent of the world’s land surface, to eke out a livelihood, according to 2010 data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The upcoming FAO International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition in Rome will explore the important role forests play in the lives of rural people and the global economy.

Such dietary sources contribute to food security as well, said Powell, pointing to a recent global study done by CIFOR. It found that forests-related income contributed about one-fifth of the total income of rural households across 24 countries — money that, if used wisely, could then used to buy nutritious foods.

"The view that increased crop production is the strategy most likely to achieve global food security could in reality allow farmland to encroach on valuable ecosystems, have a disastrous impact on forests and might not solve food security and nutrition problems, scientists say.

Further research is essential for understanding the full impact forests and tree-based agricultural systems have on dietary and nutritional needs for at least 1 billion people whose livelihoods are directly affected by forests, the scientists said in a discussion paper released ahead of the International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition hosted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome.

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Since 1998, when the Niño climate phenomenon caused global temperatures to soar, the rate of increase in warming has slowed, causing some sceptics to suggest climate change has stopped or that the effect of rising carbon dioxide levels on climate is not as great as previously thought

Every unit of the U.S. military, immediately prior to combat deployment, spends three weeks at the National Training Centre at Fort Irwin, California. Scattered across a base the size of Luxembourg, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, the Department of Defence has built fifteen simulated towns populated by 350 civilian role-players, many of Middle Eastern origin.

CGIAR has just published a really useful snapshot of the world’s major food crops, animals and tree and water resources and what is likely to happen to them in the face of climate change, the effects of which on food production will require reexamining what’s in the cooking pot, especially in regions where people already do not get enough to eat.

Above, a worker on a small farm in Limuru, Kenya, pushes maize stalks (after their cobs have been harvested) through a pulverizer before feeding the stover to the cows; this is one way small-scale farmers can improve their dairy cow feeding and milk yields while reducing the amount of methane their cows generate per unit of milk produced. (Photo on Flickr by Luigi Guarino.)

There are real benefits to rituals, religious or otherwise. Recent research suggests that rituals may be more rational than they appear. Why? Because even simple rituals can be extremely effective. Rituals performed after experiencing losses – from loved ones to lotteries – do alleviate grief, and rituals performed before high-pressure tasks – like singing in public – do in fact reduce anxiety and increase people’s confidence. What’s more, rituals appear to benefit even people who claim not to believe that rituals work. While anthropologists have documented rituals across cultures, this earlier research has been primarily observational. Recently, a series of investigations by psychologists have revealed intriguing new results demonstrating that rituals can have a causal impact on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. 

We are not biologically identical to our Paleolithic predecessors, nor do we have access to the foods they ate.

 Even if eating only foods available to hunter–gatherers in the Paleolithic made sense, it would be impossible. As Christina Warinner of the University of Zurich emphasizes in her 2012 TED talk, just about every single species commonly consumed today—whether a fruit, vegetable or animal—is drastically different from its Paleolithic predecessor. In most cases, we have transformed the species we eat through artificial selection:

There are a lot of reasons that make animals hide. Some animals are trying to protect themselves from attacks of predators, while some are hiding

Recent news headlines, a plethora of scientific publications and the creation of new academic think tanks all reflect growing concerns over how to achieve global food security --

Food production need not be solely based on intensive agriculture focused on a few, high-yielding crops.

Estimates show that 40 percent of the food in the developing world is produced by smallholder farmers, often in complex multi-functional landscapes, which depend on integrated crop management.

In addition, recent estimates from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggest that around 1.6 billion people rely on forests and other natural systems in some way for their diets, health and wider livelihoods.

Forests, and the wider landscapes in which they occur, potentially have a considerable role to play in the emerging strategies to achieve global food security.

Forests not only contribute to diverse and nutritious diets, particularly for the poorest members of society, but also sustain agriculture through the provision of critical ecosystem services such as pollination, soil stabilization and watershed protection.

However, recognition of the role of forests in food security is not new: 1985 was designated the year of Forests and Food Security and a special issue of the FAO journal, Unasylva was subsequently published.

The forests and food security agenda was gradually replaced by other pressing development concerns. Until recently, it was off the agenda altogether.

However, with “mainstream” food security issues coming to the fore, the role of forests in securing nutritional and food security is back in the frame.

This week, the FAO International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutritionin Rome will feature discussion on how we can ensure that sustainable food production can take place without compromising the wider environment.

We seem to have come full circle. Given the evidence, we should not be surprised that the issue of forests and food security is once again at the forefront of the international development agenda: the challenge will be to keep it there.

 

"Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary," said John Cook of the University of Queensland, who led the survey.

Public opinion continues to lag behind the science. Though a majority of Americans accept the climate is changing, just 42% believed human activity was the main driver, in a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre last October.

"There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception," Cook said in a statement

Experts say a ‘total economic valuation’ is needed to fully appreciate pastoralists’ contribution to national economies NAIROBI, 16 May 2013 (IRIN) - Pastoralism is often regarded as an antiquated ...

Equatorial Guinea is not a country that stands very large in the American consciousness. In fact most Americans think you mean Papua New Guinea when you mention it or are simply baffled.

"The Bioko Island drills are one of the largest, rarest and least studied primates in the world. Other than captive individuals, little is known about the drills, their behavior and their ecology," Justin Jay of the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program'sDrill Projecttold mongabay.com.

Indeed, only the very basics are known about the Bioko drill, which is a subspecies endemic to the island. Although drills are related to baboons and look very similar, they are more closely related to mandrills. Once thought to be baboons, the drill and mandrill now occupy their own genus Mandrillus.

About the mandrill Charles Darwin said in The Descent of Man, "no other member in the whole class of mammals is colored in so extraordinary a manner as the adult male mandrills".