Food Fraud: Fighting for the Lives of Our Food!

According to FAO, food fraud occurs when a food supplier or producer intentionally deceives its customer about the quality, quantity or contents of the foods they are purchasing in order to make more profit. While food fraud is often motivated by...

Rethinking Agriculture: Leveraging on Communal Ties of Trust

A typical agrarian community is a rural area where people of similar cultural values live together; sharing ideas and information, producing similar crops and possibly carrying out similar agricultural practices. Dissemination of this information...

No climate neutral eggs or meat without data

Near the Dutch town of Venray, family-owned company Nijsen has been producing animal feed for about 35 years, initially for pigs. Since the pig has historically been a 'scavenger,' Nijsen somewhat accidentally rolled into processing food industry...

Food Inflation: Our Market Forces are Becoming Helpless

For every food sovereign nation, the market is a powerhouse that helps improve the food chains and its system, with a strong market structure that supports it and the market forces (the forces of demand and supply) that are self regulatory. Not...

Traceability: Building Transparency and Accountability into Our Food System!

In today's world, food production is no longer a hobby for the farmers but a business of wellness and satisfaction - where consumers have a preference for food that satisfies their needs (health, social and environmental needs). Thus, how food is...

Knowledge-Driven Agriculture: The Need for Private Agriculture Extension Services

Over the last 15 years working with smallholder farmers, I have come to terms with the increasing importance of private agricultural extension services after the demise of public agricultural extension services. This is necessary as farmers need...

The Right Food Only Comes From the Right Knowledge

Every farmer's goal is to improve his or her productivity and increase yield from the previous season. But how it is achieved differs from one farmer to another farmer.

The Future of Agriculture - Youth is a Constant Factor

Everyday, more people are being born to our world, and more food is required to sustain them - There are many mouths to eat, many stomachs to be filled with nutritious food - but only few farmers produce food. More sadly, the majority of these...

Wishful Thinking will not achieve Food Security!

The reality of today is that the agricultural sector is plagued with several challenges in different countries. Farmers are protecting, farmers bitterly complaining and farmers diverting in order to make ends meet.

Women Matter: Beyond the Buzz’, we Need to Genuinely Inspire Inclusion in Agriculture

Women grow food, women are involved in paid and unpaid labour on the farm, women are involved in trading and processing of food, women prepare food for the family and women cater for the overall well-being of the family. In more and more of these...

A Thriving Food System is Possible

Food security is a journey that no nation achieves overnight. This is because it requires consented efforts of many independent but key stakeholders coming together to have a common goal and to become dependent on one another.

Market Expansion: Let’s Respond Better to Food Safety

This morning, I sat down to reflect on the work I have done in the last 14 years working with farmers. One key component stood out - Food Safety (I want to be remembered as a strong advocate and supporter for food safety at the farm level).