The Executive Director of the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR), Mohammed Ishiyaku, has said he is collaborating with the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), to develop a new variety of maize with a high resistance to pests and tolerance to drought. This is the genetically modified variety known as Tela Maize. The head of the IAR said that this variety should increase maize crops by 50 percent.
Africa faces a future of more heat waves, drought and floods, and could lose many of its endemic species due to climate change. That is according to a Greenpeace study which shows how the continent could warm by an average of 2 to 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. With over half the world’s poor living on the continent, it is expected to be among the world’s hardest hit regions by climate change as people have few resources to adjust.
More than 250,000 Danes have returned to lockdown in the north of the country, due to a coronavirus mutation that has infected mink reared in the region. To contain the spread, the government has ordered the culling of all 15 million mink raised in Denmark's 1,139 factory farms, although there is currently no evidence that these mutations pose a major danger to people.
New research shows how the increase in greenhouse gases from worldwide food production will make it extremely difficult to limit global warming. This would require rapid and ambitious changes to the food system, including adopting diets that involve a low consumption of foods of animal origin, increasing crop yields and reducing food waste.
That is the warning from the United Nations, which says that areas of Burkina Faso, northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen are likely to face a famine due to various conflicts in those regions and the COVID-19 pandemic, which are restricting access to food. Food insecurity is growing globally and a further 16 countries are at high risk of acute hunger.
Proposed by Italy and led by FAO, the global alliance aims to put the “zero hunger” goal back on track after the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to prevent the COVID-19 health emergency from triggering a global food crisis with catastrophic effects. The alliance will be established on a voluntary basis and will support innovative initiatives that guarantee access to food, increase the resilience of agri-food systems and guide the signatories towards more sustainable paths.