Check out this article published on FoodNavigator.com, in which Nourishing the Planet Director Danielle Nierenberg speaks about the importance of fostering global food security.
The food industry could be a powerful player in ensuring food security – and that makes sense from both an ethical and a business perspective, according to Nierenberg.
Read the full article here.
Nourishing the Planet was featured in a Forbes article, “Want More than Food Porn? Try These Info-Filled Sites,” published this morning. The article lists four websites that “help visualize serious issues for interested viewers.”
Nourishing the Planet, the article writes, “has an overall fresh new look and feel to their site and they run several informative food and agriculture blogs.”
Read the entire article here.
By Angela Kim
By the end of 2011, there were 6 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions in the world. Most of this growth was driven by developing countries, which accounted for 80 percent of new mobile-cellular subscriptions. Although this rapid expansion of technology has created advantages for rural farmers, including linking farmers to markets, improving transportation logistics, and greater access to videos via cellular devices, substantial challenges still exist in the use of video to teach and learn sustainable agricultural practices.
Videos can be used as a teaching method to share experiences in sustainable farming. (Photo credit: Naimul Haq/IPS)
Video has become an alternative medium for helping farmers learn to integrate crop and pest management. Instructional videos can overcome the problem of illiteracy among rural farmers—according to United Nations data, approximately 80 percent of those living in developing countries can’t read. Women in rural farming communities, in particular, who more often lack access to education, land, and capital, have benefited from video-based training, which has helped them to become rural entrepreneurs.
Despite several benefits of using videos to spread farmer knowledge, the quality of content has a major influence on farmers’ interest in participating. Digital Green, an India-based project that uses video to advance existing agricultural extension systems, has demonstrated that videos of classroom-style lectures were perceived by farmers to be monotonous. Instead, they like more intimate, diversified-content types that include concrete demonstrations, testimonials, and even entertainment. And according to Digital Green, the degree to which farmers trust the content of a video depends on the language, clothing, and mannerisms featured in the film. Farmers involved with Digital Green were more inclined to trust information in videos that featured their neighbors than those which featured government experts.
On Thursday, June 28, the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project and the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition will release Eating Planet–Nutrition Today: A Challenge for Mankind and for the Planet in New York City. Today, Nourishing the Planet highlights a contributing author of Eating Planet, and shares his views on how to fix the broken food system. The event is full but please tune in on the 28th via livestream: we will be taking questions in real time from the audience, from the livestream, and from Twitter and Facebook.
Marion Nestle discusses the power of food marketing in our society. (Photo credit: Food Politics)
In the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition’s new book, Eating Planet—Nutrition Today: A Challenge for Mankind and for the Planet, nutritionist and New York University professor Marion Nestle was interviewed for the section “Food for Health,” which explores the relationship between nutrition and health. Nestle’s central argument is the important role of prevention as a way for improving health and wellness. Nestle discusses different types of prevention policies, the challenges of changing personal behavior, and governmental actions that need to be taken in order to achieve public health goals.
Preventative policy
Nestle explains that there are two ways in which policy can prevent health issues: through changing the food environment or through changing personal behavior.
According to Nestle, policymakers need to think of preventative policies and messages that creatively aim to prevent illness or harm. “The message has to be ‘eat less’ or ‘eat this instead of that.’ And nobody wants to put the food industry out of business,” said Nestle. “We just want companies to behave better, make healthier products and stop marketing junk food as healthy or targeting children.”
Check out our latest op-ed about food waste, published in the Los Angeles Daily newspaper, one of the largest circulating newspapers in the country with a daily print circulation of 188,000.
In California, every year 6 million tons of food ends up in landfills. One reason so much food is wasted is that most Americans refuse to eat the less-appealing cuts of meat. But utilizing a variety of meat products can be a more sustainable way of cooking and eating that can ultimately reduce food waste. Many Los Angeles restaurants are now serving some of the most unusual, yet delicious dishes that highlight every part of the animal, to critical culinary acclaim.
Click here to read the full article.
To purchase State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet please click HERE. And to watch the one minute book trailer, click HERE.
By Isaac Hopkins
As modern technology is adopted in widespread regions of our planet, it can provide poor people with access to many forms of media. Innovations like the internet and satellite technology are changing the face of food system solutions in even the poorest countries.
Cell phones are providing increasing numbers people in developing countries with access to crucial information. (Photo credit: Affordable Technology)
Today, Nourishing the Planet introduces five forms of media that can use the power of information to combat hunger.
1. Television: Access to television is expanding all over the planet. In India, for example, half of all households have televisions, and even in the poorest countries in Africa, many villages have shared sets. Entire communities often gather around a car battery-powered TV to watch futbol matches or soap operas.
Television in Action: Started by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID), Makutano Junction is a soap opera, full of the drama and twisting plotlines that you’d expect, but also packed with valuable health and development information. Characters teach each other about vaccines, fighting political corruption, and even agricultural techniques. In the seventh episode of season 6, for example, one character teaches the rest of town the technique of soaking seeds before planting them to encourage a faster, healthier crop. The response from viewers of the show was strong, with thousands of people requesting more information about seed soaking from the show’s producers. They were sent illustrated pamphlets explaining the technique, so thousands of Kenyans have learned a new method of increasing production by watching a soap opera!
Check out this article in the Guardian about a Nigerian radio host, who uses his show to teach sustainable farming practices, including crop rotation and rainwater harvesting techniques, to smallholder farmers.
Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu (Photo credit: the Guardian)
“The most simple ideas can solve the greatest challenges,” said Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu, who also believes in locally applicable solutions, such as seed sharing between farmers. The station reaches about 250,000 listeners each day.
Click here to read the full article.
Holiday offer: To purchase a copy of State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet at a 50 percent discount, please click HERE and enter code SW1150. And to watch the one minute book trailer, click HERE.
This Friday, Kristin Canty’s film, Farmageddon, will open in Chicago.
Image Credit: Kristin Marie Productions
Kristin Canty’s son was healed of multiple allergies by farm fresh foods, among them raw milk. When she heard of the armed raids and seizures taking place on family farms she was horrified. And knew she had to do something about it. In this film, Canty lets these small farmers tell their stories.
On Monday, August 29th, there will be a special screening of this New York Times Critic’s Pick film, with Guy Meikle, the Executive Chef of Nana, Bridgeport’s first organic restaurant. In addition to drawing awareness to the healing power of food, the event will also highlight the ShowYourHearts.org campaign that is helping two boys who were orphaned and seriously injured by a car accident.
Click here for more event details.
To purchase State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet please click HERE. And to watch the one minute book trailer, click HERE.
By Molly Theobald
More trusted than the evening television or the internet, newspapers and radio broadcasts are consumers preference for their news. But what if it also helped put food on our plates and increased our incomes? Ottawa-based Farm Radio International is hoping that its radio programs will be able to do just that.
In Mali, farmers are benefiting from up-to-date information provided by various means of communication, including the radio. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)
Despite the fact that the number of hungry people worldwide is nearly 1 billion people, funding for agricultural development has been steadily declining. Much of the funding that does exist is directed towards ‘one-size-fits-all’ innovations that are often expensive and inaccessible to those most in need. But for the millions of farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, dependent on their small-scale farms to feed their families and bring in an income, there are a multitude of inexpensive and relatively easy steps that they could take to improve their harvest yields and their livelihoods.
Even more important than coming up with new agricultural innovations, is getting information about the agricultural innovations that work to the farmers that need them. What farmers in Africa might need turns out to be much closer to what we’ve come to enjoy in our homes every day.
Following the launch of State of the World 2011 in Finland, Nourishing the Planet has had some exciting coverage in the Finnish press.
Check out this article in Verkkouutiset on innovations in urban agriculture that are working to improve food security. This article on preventing food waste was published in Turun Sanomat, the country’s leading daily newspaper. Masseudun Tulevaisuus, or Rural Futures, an outlet that covers news in Agriculture and Forestry, writes about initiatives that are providing food to school children sourced from local farmers, improving both student nutrition and farmer incomes. And Iltalehti, the third largest newspaper in Finland, discusses simple solutions to post-harvest losses, such as air-tight storage bags that protect crops from pests and diseases and get them onto the dinner table instead.
