After learning conservation agriculture techniques, Asnakech Zema saw her corn yields increase more than tenfold.

Sustaining hope: Conservation agriculture making gains in Ethiopia

Norway partners with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank to continue to support east-African farmers

Each year, Ethiopian farmers lose 1.5 billion metric tons of topsoil, Frew Beriso said, quoting the number from a 2008 study. As a result, whatever investment of nutrients exceedingly expensive for smallholder farmers — are put into the soil are in vain. Moisture is the other top issue. This year the spring rains are delayed,


‘Calling this a challenging environment for investment would be an understatement. But going elsewhere is not an option, as that’s where hunger reigns.’ – Paul Hagerman, CFGB.

Comment: Dear Elon Musk – A Foodgrains response to Tesla founder

Just what would it really take to end world hunger?

Dear Elon Musk, Thanks for your Twitter offer of $6 billion to solve world hunger. Like the World Food Program (to whom you made the offer), Canadian Foodgrains Bank has a solid track record on overcoming hunger. Last year, nearly a million people affected by hunger in 33 countries ate better as a result of

Tech giants should join global land rights campaign

Treating land insecurity like a disease will help eradicate it in the same way

Global technology giants such as Google and Facebook must join the battle for land rights and help spearhead an international campaign to eradicate insecurity of tenure as if it were an infectious disease, land experts told a World Bank conference. Stig Enemark, professor emeritus of Land Management at Denmark’s Aalborg University, and British land reform

Italian pensioner Dino Impagliazzo, 86, serves food cooked with items saved from waste to a migrant at Rome’s Ostiense railway station, 
Italy, on Jan. 23, 2017.

Octogenarian Italian feeds the poor with food waste

For 10 years this Italian pensioner has aimed to feed those less fortunate 
than himself as an expression of his faith

It all started with a coffee. When a homeless man asked Dino Impagliazzo for an espresso, the Italian pensioner thought: “Why not help?” Soon he and his wife were making sandwiches for homeless people who hung around one of Rome’s train stations. As word spread, the lines for food grew longer. Eventually Impagliazzo switched to


Villagers collect their monthly food ration provided by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) near Masvingo, in drought-hit Zimbabwe January 25, 2016. Malnutrition and hunger could be quickly curtailed if more countries signed on to a plan to boost yields, says the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Agriculture investment yields growth and nutrition gains for Africa

Agricultural productivity gains of 5.9 to 6.7 per cent a year offer a bright ray of hope for the continent

African countries that took early action in the past decade to invest in agriculture have reaped the rewards, enjoying higher economic growth and a bigger drop in malnutrition, a major farming development organization said Sept. 6. In a report, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) said: “After decades of stagnation, much of

young African girl

In Zambia, investing in farmers keeps kids in school

Families who see improved yields under conservation agriculture use the extra income to pay school fees

Juliette, the eldest daughter of Olipa Tembo and her husband Dickson Nkata, came home from school early one day. She was crying. The child, who would have been about eight at the time, had walked the four kilometres to the local school, only to have the teacher promptly send her home again. The family had

vegetables in a store market

Small-scale farming at a crossroads

Is small beautiful or should the new motto be ‘move up or move out?”

As director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C., Shenggen Fan has come a long way from his roots in rural China, where he shared a one-hectare farm with his parents and two brothers. The agricultural economist, honoured earlier this year by the World Food Program’s Hunger Hero Award for his


Mature man speaking into microphone at a conference.

Doubling of food needs tied to poverty reduction

Cargill’s Greg Page says a 100 per cent increase in food production is doable, but it requires work, including more scientific research

Projections that world food production must double by 2050 hinge on a very big assumption — billions of poor people getting richer, says Greg Page, Cargill’s executive chairman and former CEO. “The only way for the… 100 per cent increase in food production is if the population grows by two billion and the proportion of

Haroon Akram-Lodhi speaks about the causes of world hunger.  
Photo: Shannon VanRaes

Population growth not the cause of world hunger: economist

For some the equation is simple — more people on the planet means more people go hungry. Not for Haroon Akram-Lodhi. The economist and Trent University professor who specializes in the political economy of agrarian change in developing capitalist countries, says equating a growing population with global hunger is not only incorrect, but creates a