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As the world reels from the deadly ravages brought by COVID-19, another plague – at least as old as mankind itself – is devastating huge swathes of east Africa and the Middle East, and is going largely unnoticed. Massed swarms of desert locusts,...
World Hunger Day which this year fell on May 28th, exists to draw attention to global poverty and food insecurity and to elicit a response from those who can help. For many years, NRI has been finding ways to tackle various issues within the food...
The UN has adopted by consensus, a resolution declaring that 20th May will become known as World Bee Day so that, “every year on this day, the attention of the global public will be drawn to the importance of preserving bees and other pollinators....
Lora Forsythe, June Po, Fiorella Picchioni | The significant impacts of COVID-19, accompanied by national policies for managing the virus – travel restrictions, home quarantine, non-essential business and school closures, and social distancing –...
The World Health Organization and the United Nation’s slogan for World Malaria Day 2020 is “zero malaria starts with me”. Described as a grassroots campaign to keep malaria high on the political agenda, the aim is to mobilise additional resources...
Queues, panic-buying and supermarket shelves stripped bare, anyone who has recently tried to do a weekly shop will have had something of a wake-up call. Here in the UK, the food systems that we take for granted are struggling, with a nation under...
Keith Tomlins, Professor of Food Science, NRI | How might COVID-19 affect food systems in LMICs (Low- and Middle-Income Countries)? Of the few published articles about food and pandemics, most refer to obesity or high-income countries. [1,2]...
Louise Abayomi, Senior Research Fellow – Postharvest Specialist, NRI | Nigeria is the most populated African country, with almost half the Nigerian population living in extreme poverty (WB, 2018). Food and nutrition security is therefore of...
Uche Okpara, Fellow in Climate Change and State Fragility, NRI | In Lake Chad, just over 85 soldiers involved in the fight against violent extremism were killed recently following a long battle with the Boko Haram sect. Much of North-eastern...
John Morton, Professor of Development Anthropology, NRI | As I write, the full impact of the new coronavirus and the associated disease COVID-19 on developing countries is yet to be seen, and is hard to predict in either scale or nature. Yet it is...
Judy Bettridge, Fellow in Biostatistics for Food and Agriculture, NRI | Hazelnut muesli bars, fresh mackerel, frozen mushy peas: the curious selection of scattered items among the desolation of empty shelves in my local supermarket in Kent, UK,...
Trees are important, as everyone should know, and since 2012, the UN General Assembly has named March 21st as the ‘International Day of Forests’. The theme for 2020 is forests are “too precious to lose”. The UN states that, “when we drink...
In the fourth and final article in this series on the prevention of food loss and waste, NRI’s Professor Steve Belmain outlines his work researching the ecology of rodents as pests in agriculture, and as disease vectors.
Valerie Nelson, Professor of Sustainable Development, NRI | Can the current health crisis lead to the kinds of changes we so urgently need to combat the interconnected climate and environmental crises we face? What does COVID-19 mean for food,...