Sights, sounds and smells in a far-off land

The sun was just peeking above the horizon as the Boeing 777 banked south just over Cairo, Egypt and headed for Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital that serves as the hub for all of Africa. We’d been travelling ahead in time, losing a night as we left Washington, D.C. at around 11 a.m. on Saturday,

Tracking microclimates could help feed the world

Scientists in Israel have developed a way of using satellite images to help farmers detect small-scale changes in climate and improve their harvests, a method that could bolster food supplies for an increasingly hungry world population. Rather than analyze the weather and topography of large swathes of land, the new system divides fields into smaller


Without January rains, one of two heifers will be sold

Co-operator editor Laura Rance is travelling on a media food study tour with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Updates are being posted on the Co-operator website at www.manitobacooperator.ca. The highway southwest of Addis Ababa to Wolayto-Soddo is wide and smooth, but there is no such thing in Ethiopia as setting the cruise control and just cruising,



Closing gender gap seen key in food security fight

Apolicy aimed at ensuring future security of food supplies must centre around the world’s 500 million smallholder producers, many of whom are women who farm less than two hectares of land, a leading United Nations official said Dec. 14. “Unless they are at the centre of the future strategies for food security, we will not

Professor says farmers and ranchers are “an endangered species”

The rural landscape is changing, and not for the better. “Farm and ranch people are an endangered species, without the benefit of protective legislation,” Roger Epp told farmers attending a recent grazing conference in Winnipeg. “Their habitat has also become subject to persistent encroachment over time.” Agriculture and rural life on the Prairies were once


European agency launches food security initiative

London | Reuters — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development launched an initiative Nov. 28 to boost food security through private-sector investment to unlock the production potential of suppliers like Russia. The lending institution, which has traditionally focused on emerging European economies, announced in Novembera it planned to expand operations to the Middle East

European agency launches food security initiative

london / reuters /The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development launched an initiative Nov. 28 to boost food security through private-sector investment to unlock the production potential of suppliers like Russia. The lending institution, which has traditionally focused on emerging European economies, announced in Novembera it planned to expand operations to the Middle East and


Seven Billion And Growing

To me this is the major problem facing the world, said Michael Trevan, dean of the faculty of agricultural and food sciences at the University of Manitoba. Climate change may come and go… but we ve got a bigger problem on our hands. He noted world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion in the

Canada Well Positioned To Capitalize On Growing Food Demand

When, in 1965, Bob Dylan wailed, I ain t gonna work on Maggie s farm no more, he was echoing the mental picture almost all of us have about conditions on the farm. The dirty thirties largely spawned the identification of farming with grinding poverty, primitive technologies and capricious commodity prices, and the image has