food supply

See the following -

Beepocalypse Redux: Honeybees Are Still Dying — And We Still Don’t Know Why

Bryan Walsh | Time | May 7, 2013

More than five years after it was first reported, colony-collapse disorder is still killing honeybees around the world. If scientists can't pinpoint the cause, the economic and environmental damage could be immense Read More »

Mobile Learning: How Smartphones Help Illiterate Farmers In Rural India

Hendrik Knoche | National Geographic | June 5, 2013

Small farmers are some of the most important people in the world – as Hendrik Knoche explains in today’s ‘Digital Diversity’, they provide over half of the world’s food supply. Helping such farmers improve their methods through innovative and efficient agriculture has long been an aim of development projects [...]. Read More »

No Longer ‘Publishing As Usual’

Piers Bocock | ICT Update | June 1, 2013

Despite the spread in use of ICTs in agricultural research (see ICT Update 70) information is still constrained by the way it is published and the degree to which it is open. Piers Bocock of CGIAR shares how his organisation is addressing this. Read More »

Open Data And Open Science

Carlos Morais Pires | ICT Update | June 1, 2013

The G8 International Conference on Open Data in April 2013 aimed to make agricultural research more widely available to improve global food security. Carlos Morais Pires from the European Commission discusses the EC’s effort to increase access to data and reviews the G8’s plans. Read More »

Open Source (Seeds) Under Threat

Glyn Moody | Computerworld | May 3, 2013

[...] Just as there is free software that anyone may use and share, there are free seeds - those that are part of the ancient seeds commons, created over thousands of years, available for use by anyone. And just as free software is threatened by software patents, so seeds are equally endangered by seed patents. Read More »

The Open Source Solution To The Bee Colony Collapse Problem

Tristan Smith | OpenSource.com | December 11, 2013

Last year, a third of honeybee colonies in the United States quite literally vanished. Commercial honey operations, previously abuzz with many thousands of bees, fell suddenly silent, leaving scientists and beekeepers alike scratching their heads. The reasons remain mostly a mystery for what is called Colony Collapse Disorder—a disturbing development of the drying up of beehives throughout the industrialised world. Read More »

US Honeybee Population Suffers 'Unsustainable' Death Rate Over The Winter

Staff Writer | RT | May 16, 2014

Nearly one quarter of the US honeybee population died over the winter, according to an annual survey. Beekeepers report the losses remain higher than they consider sustainable, and the death rate could soon affect the country’s food supply. Read More »

Why Are We Ignoring The Role Of The Food Industry In Healthcare Reform?

The epidemic rise in the number of Americans young and old who are either overweight or obese account for 67% according to the NationalCenter for Health Statistics. The number of obese people has more than doubled since 1980. When you take into account the number of diseases like breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes and osteoarthritis to name a few that are linked to obesity it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the link between healthcare costs and obesity is strong, and changes can go a long way to both bringing down the costs and helping us live longer healthier lives.

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