AsiaDHRRA Online

Here’s a new twist on urban farming -hydroponics basically. An article in FastCo describes a rising business venture that grows organic vegetables in shipping containers using hydroponic farming technology. Awesome!!! Liotta decided to use recycled shipping containers as “grow pods,” which are outfitted with organic hydroponic nutrient solutions; computer-controlled environmental systems to regulate temperature, humidity, [...]

A very interesting reading about another reprehensible facet of the climate change issue. Essentially,  as  Rezaul Karim Chowdhury says “By pushing climate loans, the UK is making people in countries like mine pay twice for climate change, even though we played virtually no part in causing the problem.” In Climate Loan Sharks, the World Development Movement [...]

Guardian.co.uk This week in Cape Town, the World Bank will decide whether to approve new climate adaptation loans for five countries. In Bangladesh and around the world, campaigners are resisting these loans and urging their governments not to accept new debt for climate change. More than 50 organisations from countries due to receive the loans [...]

Some interesting insights from Harold James at Project Syndicate where he reflects on the possible directions that the looming global food crises may influence or lead to  – noting that “rising food prices have historically been the trigger for political revolutions”. He also points out this paradox: Higher food prices have had a major impact [...]

In this podcast from Guardian, “Madeleine Bunting takes a look at what needs to be done to stop millions more people going hungry. She looks at India, where more than a quarter of the world’s hungry people live and where the government is working on a new national food security bill, and examines the role [...]

HungerWednesday shares this interesting viewpoint on the issue of global hunger from Eldis Agriculture and Food Security News If, however, we look back over the past two decades, we can observe that except for the current downturn, hunger has been on the increase. Between the early 1990s and 2007, we had periods in which food [...]

An interesting read for your downtime. HungerWednesday it is… “The World Development Movement has compiled extensive evidence establishing the role of food commodity derivatives in destabilising and driving up food prices around the world.” click here to view the report  (issuu pdf)….

HungerWednesday shares this fascinating report from The Economist.com about the impending global problem on food scarcity This special report concentrates on the problems of feeding the 9 billion. It therefore gives greater weight to the first group. It argues that many of their claims are justified: feeding the world in 2050 will be hard, and [...]

Ms. Marlene Ramirez, Asiadhrra Secretary-General is participating in the Regional Consultation on Policy and Programmatic Actions to Address High Food Prices in Asia and the Pacific Region being held at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel & Towers, Bangkok, Thailand from 9 to 10 March 2011. “High level agriculture, trade and finance representatives from 20 Asia [...]

From NYT -IHT World food prices continued to rise sharply in December, bringing them close to the crisis levels that provoked shortages and riots in poor countries three years ago, according to newly released United Nations data. Prices are expected to remain high this year, prompting concern that the world may be approaching another crisis, [...]

An interesting newsbit from The Telegraph about how the massive kill-off of these pollinators may severely impact the already critical levels of global food supply…. Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees……  The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the [...]

Something we picked up while browsing The Economist. Food for thought when planning anti-poverty programmes The Economist CELIA ORBOC, a cake-seller in the Philippines, spent her little stipend on a wooden shack, giving her five children a roof over their heads for the first time. In Kyrgyzstan Sharmant Oktomanova spent hers buying flour to feed [...]

Something to read and think over during your downtime… The Rural Poverty Report 2011 is a comprehensive resource for policymakers and practitioners, especially those in developing countries.  The report looks at who poor rural people are, what they do and how their livelihoods are changing.  It explores the challenges that make it so difficult for [...]

Hunger Wednesday shares FAOs Second Report on State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture The Second Report on the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was published in 2010. The main objective is to update the First Report with the best data and information available, through [...]

an interesting read from IHT. i remembered intense discussions about this years ago. whaddya think of this? For more than 40 years, social scientists investigating the causes of poverty have tended to treat cultural explanations like Lord Voldemort: That Which Must Not Be Named. The reticence was a legacy of the ugly battles that erupted [...]