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Protecting our land, soil and water resources for the future of our food. Soil, land, water. These are the basics, the building blocks of our agrifood systems, and supply over 95 percent of food consumed. Though there is much more to it than that, a new FAO report is reminding us of these foundations. And the foundations, it seems, are cracking. FAO’s new State of the World’s…

A massive line of vegetation in the Sahel may intensify the West African monsoon, simulations show. By Carolyn Gramling JANUARY 3, 2022 AT 9:00 AM Africa’s “Great Green Wall” initiative is a proposed 8,000-kilometer line of trees meant to hold back the Sahara from expanding southward. New climate simulations looking to both the region’s past and future suggest this…

Creating an enabling environment for land degradation neutrality—an approach that counterbalances the expected loss of productive land with the recovery of degraded areas—can help ensure food security, energy needs, land tenure, gender equality, access to clean water, and biodiversity are considered and meaningfully addressed together. Devotha Tumainieli farms on the steep western…

New research finds massive soil loss across the Midwest, which sends more pollutants into the water, dust into the air, and carbon into the atmosphere. Changing farm practices and improved technology could reverse the trend. Chances are, if you live in North America, you’ve eaten corn from the Corn Belt, a region in the Midwest that produces 75 percent of U.S. corn. Scientists…

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) called on Friday for concerted international action to end armed conflict in Africa’s central Sahel region, which has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee their homes in the last decade. Speaking to journalists in Geneva, the agency’s spokesperson, Boris Cheshirkov, informed that internal displacement has increased tenfold since 2013, going from…

Women make up 75 percent of the agricultural labour force in Kenya. Women are increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change, and a Commonwealth report shows that without their inputs, climate action policies compound inequality. Nairobi, Kenya, Jan 12 2022 (IPS) - Judy Wangari is one of an estimated 800,000 smallholder potato farmers who, according to the National Potato…