Perspective

A Remarkable Book on Africa: ‘Pathways to African Food Security’

A handful of trees per hectare in treeless farmland can increase atmospheric water capture five- to six-fold. Meanwhile, a healthy diet is unaffordable for around 80% of Africans, compared with a mere 1.2% in affluent nations. And for Europeans who...

The Future Crafted by Young Adults

September 21, the Leiden Campus of Webster University united young global students, young Africans and young European farmers in an effort to test a new world. Imagine young adults would step in to help crafting the world's future effectively. How...

India needs a fair farm data standard

According to the European Commission, the value of the EU data economy is projected to grow to 829 billion Euros by 2025. In the post-Covid world, data is at the centre of a new global economy: the data economy. Many consider data more valuable than...

COP27 in Review: Climate Talks Delivered Big Gains for Africa and Several Challenges

Africa has contributed negligibly to the changing climate, with less than 4% of global emissions. Yet it stands out disproportionately as the most vulnerable region in the world.

Half of wildfires result in dust events or storms

Wildfires affect large areas of the Earth’s surface and many of their effects occur at an alarming speed. The fires that consumed half of Australia’s Kangaroo Island in 2019 left a trail of animal corpses in their wake. In 2021, wildfires burned...

Earth is not the best of all possible worlds

Astronomers now routinely discover planets orbiting stars outside of the solar system – they’re called exoplanets. But in summer 2022, teams working on NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite found a few particularly interesting planets...

Sustainability isn’t what you think it is

Watching Hannah Ritchie make a meal looks like an environmental travesty. It looks like the opposite of what seems sustainable. But it's not. That's why we need to change our images of what really are 'environmentally-friendly’ behaviours, she...

Regenerative agriculture is a win for farmers, food companies and the environment

The evidence is clear. Conventional farming is one of the world’s greatest drivers of climate change and biodiversity loss, and we’re running out of time to reverse its adverse effects. With some big moves back to nature, however, and by looking...

‘Let’s build a better world where everyone can be a king’

Next to the pool on the rooftop of the Amsterdam W Hotel, Dick Veerman met with Nigerian-born and bred tech investor and CEO of an innovation-based oil and gas company Akintoye Akindele. Dr Akindele says he is an agnostic investor. He’ll invest in...

Seeds of Change: Opportunities for Improved Crop Genetic Diversity

With the climate changing drastically and agriculture contributing to a large part of the emissions responsible for these developments, rethinking the way we practice and interact with agriculture is a necessity. Therefore humanity needs to focus on...

‘Make sure consumer diets don’t become more unhealthy due to sustainability concerns’

How do you make an optimal food product that is affordable, sustainable and high quality? This question is central to the work of Dr. Peter de Jong, Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences. With his expertise and experience in modeling, de...

Professor Ken Giller on the Politicization of Agriculture

"For decades, little attention was paid to agriculture and to agronomy. Thanks to climate change, loss of biodiversity and the prospect of having to feed a few billion extra mouths in the near future, a golden age is dawning for the discipline," says...