Agric & Biotech

Cassava farmers in Nigeria and Zambia who have adopted mechanised production and improved farming practices reap up to four times additional yield and attract higher purchase prices through structured market linkages, according to the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF)   Farmers participating in the African Agricultural Technology Foundation’s (AATF) Cassava Mechanisation and Agro-processing Project (CAMAP) in Nigeria and Zambia realised ...

Two Nigerians – Dr Sunday Makinde of the Lagos State University, Ojo and Dr Godson Nwofia of the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike  – are among 21 senior plant scientists from sub-Saharan Africa who recently graduated as the first cohort to complete training with the African Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA) in Nairobi, Kenya. From 11 countries and 19 institutions, ...

In keeping with our tradition of seeking ways to build common understanding on critical issues, no matter how complex, today we are considering “The Food We Want” and the need to have wholesome food. It is a great honour to examine this topic with you, members of The Young Environmentalists Network (TYEN). Being children from primary and secondary schools we ...

US corn prices plummeted as China rejected all shipments containing traces of Syngenta’s MIR162. Farmers from five major corn growing states have filed three class action lawsuits against Syngenta, claiming damages of more than $1 billion. Syngenta released MIR162, trade name Agrisure Vipera, in 2009. It is engineered to make a Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) protein vip3Aa20 toxic to lepidopteran insect ...

H.A. Kwajaffa, Chairman of the National Cotton Association of Nigeria (NACOTAN), in a memorandum submitted to the Senate last week in Abuja during a Public Hearing on the Biosafety Bill, makes a case for the genetically-modified cotton (or Biotechnology Cotton), saying that its adoption will revive the presently moribund sector   Cotton is one of the most important commercial crops ...

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has recognised family farmers as central to solving global hunger and malnutrition. According to FAO, family farming includes all family-based agricultural activities. Family farming is a means of organising agricultural, forestry, fisheries, pastoral and aquaculture production, which is managed and operated by a family and is predominantly reliant on family ...

Experts at the Africa Climate Change conference in Marrakech, Morocco have restated Africa’s capacity to feed itself now and in the future without genetically modified organisms. They however warned that it would require increased investment in climate change research, development and innovation to make technology accessible and affordable for farmers, to enhance opportunities for easy access to agricultural finance and ...

Deputy Executive Secretary at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (NECA), Dr Abdalla Hamdok, laments on Wednesday in Marrakech, Morocco at the opening of the Fourth Annual Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-IV) that, of all the regions of the world, Africa remains the hungriest, producing only 10% of global agricultural output from farming systems that ...

A team of civil society organisations is kicking against the proposed Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, saying that it will not deliver the urgently-needed solutions   We, the undersigned civil society organisations, hereby manifest our rejection of the proposed Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture to be launched at the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Change Leaders’ Summit. This proposed alliance is a deceptive ...

As the sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) approaches, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has alerted African governments on the need to be wary of tobacco industry exaggeration of farmers’ gains. The undue attention of the tobacco transnational on so-called prosperous ...