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Research in Real Time
Dear Naresh,
Today is World Environment Day,
a day when millions of people around the world raise awareness of the
need to take positive environmental action to protect the future of our
planet.
We live in a world where nearly one billion people go to bed hungry each
night while another one billion suffer from health problems related to
obesity. And agriculture contributes to a third of global greenhouse gas
emissions. But sustainable food production and agricultural practices
can help mitigate climate change, provide nutritious food, and preserve
biodiversity—not only on World Environment Day, but every day.
Nourishing the Planet collaborated with the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition to produce Eating Planet–Nutrition Today: A Challenge for Mankind and for the Planet to
show agriculture’s potential, if done right, to address many of our
global problems. In this book, experts and activists around the world
suggest specific reforms to the food and agricultural systems that can
help nourish people and the planet.
We've attempted to bring our World Environment Day message from the
book to the general public in cities and states across the United
States. We've had op-eds that highlight local innovations published over
the last couple of weeks in major newspapers in the following states: Alabama, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, South Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin. You can also check out our World Environment Day themed-op-ed in Kenya’s The Nation, which is co-written with Founder of First Peoples Worldwide, Rebecca Adamson.
Today, as you take part in events across the globe,
remember that small steps, such as reducing food waste or buying food
from your local farmers’ market, can do a lot to help protect the
environment.
Happy World Environment Day from all of us at Nourishing the Planet!
All the best,
Danielle Nierenberg
Nourishing the Planet Project Director
Worldwatch Institute
Here are some highlights from the week:
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One
of the best ways to encourage economic growth in poor areas is to
provide affordable small loans to farmers and small business owners.
Called microcredit or microloans, these programs can inject capital into
communities that lack the collateral required by conventional banks. In
this post, we present five innovative microcredit programs that are
encouraging economic growth in poor communities.
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The United
Nations Development Programme has released its first-ever Human
Development Report focused exclusively on Africa. The report, Africa Human Development Report 2012: Towards a Food Secure Future,
argues that establishing food security must become a top priority among
governments to achieve sustainable human development in Africa. Despite
a wealth of natural resources and recent economic progress, sub-Saharan
Africa remains the world’s most food-insecure region. According to UNDP
Administrator Helen Clark, “the specter of famine, all but gone
elsewhere, continues to haunt millions in the region.”
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Senna obtusifolia is
a hardy and indigenous leafy vegetable that grows in the Sahel.
According to the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid
Africa (ICRISAT), concentrated, intentional planting can result in a
significant harvest during the “hunger period,” generally June–October,
when farmers have exhausted their store of grain and money, leading to
the threat of starvation. Interestingly, ICRISAT found that planting Senna with young Acacia trees improved yields substantially. This provides the farmer with both food and a potential source of revenue while his Acacia crop is still young.
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According
to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit science
advocacy group, current farming laws are the biggest obstacles in the
way of achieving healthier eating in the United States. In a
recent report, Ensuring the Harvest: Crop Insurance and Credit for a Healthy Farm and Food Future, UCS recommends reforming policies that make it more difficult for farmers to grow healthy crops like fruits and vegetables.
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The
world is still reeling and shaking from afterthoughts of what happened
in March 2011 when Japan was hit by a catastrophic earthquake and
tsunami, which exposed how vulnerable all basic institutions have become
when nature acts up—something bound to happen anywhere or anytime in
this era of climate change and global transmission of hard-to-treat
infectious diseases. Lessons from a tsunami are a terrible thing to
waste, so the Food Policy Research Initiative, based at the University
of Toronto, and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health recently
hosted a symposium of Japanese food and agricultural experts and Toronto
public health leaders to survey what others can learn from Japan’s
response to the crisis.
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Our
friend Roger Thurow, senior fellow for Global Agriculture and Food
Policy at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, recently released his
new book, The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change.
The book is an intimate portrait of the lives of four smallholder
farmers in western Kenya who are working with the One Acre Fund to move
from subsistence farming to sustainable farming, allowing them to move
from farming to live to farming to make a living.
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Social Science Research Network Lists Food and Agriculture: The Future of Sustainability in Top 10
Social
Science Research Network recently listed a paper co-authored by Daniele
Giovannuci, Sara Scherr, Charlotte Hebebrand, Julie Shapiro, Jeffrey
Milder, Keith Wheeler, and Nourishing the Planet’s project
director, Danielle Nierenberg, entitled Food and Agriculture: the Future of Sustainability as
a Top Ten Download for the Sustainability Research & Policy
Network. The paper, commissioned by the United Nations Department of
Social and Economic Affairs, highlights vital and up-to-date information
on the current and likely trends of our global food and agricultural
systems.
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We
received some exciting news coverage this past week. Our op-eds that
discuss how food and agriculture can address our most pressing
environmental challenges and features Eating Planet was published in Fort Worth’s Star-Telegram, the Boston Herald, the Providence Journal, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Tennessean, Detroit News, Northwest Indiana Times, the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal, and the Albuquerque Journal. You can also check out our World Environment Day themed-op-ed in Kenya’s The Nation, which is co-written with Founder of First Peoples Worldwide, Rebecca Adamson. |
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