Sustainable Agriculture & Food Policy

Changing dietary preferences and population growth in South Asia have resulted in increasing demand for wheat and maize, along side high and sustained demand for rice. In the highly productive northwestern Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia, farmers utilize groundwater irrigation to assure that at least two of these crops are sequenced on the same field within the same year. Such double cropping has had a significant and positive influence on regional agricultural productivity. But in the risk-prone and food insecure lower Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (EIGP), cropping is less intensive.

While “U-pick” berries, Livermore wine grapes and Brentwood sweet corn may be most people’s mental image of East Bay agriculture, Contra Costa and Alameda counties produce a wide variety of crops and livestock — and in a wide array of settings.

Fellow Marissa McMahan is working with Maine locals and Venetian fishermen to turn the invasive green crab into a gourmet dish known in Italy as moleche.

Eager to help empower youths and families through gardening, two Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) seniors led a volunteer effort this spring to grow more than 1,000 seedlings to support the Regional Environmental Council's (REC) programs. ...

Alicia Harley co-authored the agriculture section of an invited perspectives piece in PNAS written by a number of experts from different sectors (energy, water, health, agriculture) on innovation. The article distills the most important insights from the broad literature on innovation systems (economics, organizational behavior, science and technologies studies, etc) to give insights to practitioners of sustainable development on how to best reorient innovation systems to meet sustainable development goals.

You could say that Amanda Beal, who was just announced as the new president and CEO of the Maine Farmland Trust, came by her interest in farming policy naturally.

Climate change-related food scarcity can lead to 500,000 deaths around the world by 2050, a new study has found. The research was the first to come up with an estimated number of deaths, based on changes in diet composition due to global warming.

Startups in the fields of edible crickets, the Internet of Things and durable women’s gear won this year's Pitch Oregon competition. The annual pitchfest hosted by the entrepreneurial support organization TiE Oregon was revamped this year with a more statewide bent. Now called Pitch Oregon, the event featured nine companies at different stages of life — concept, seed and mature — vying for a $5,000 cash prize plus smaller prize packages for the each stage winner.

A new report from Fellow Kendra Klein's organization, Friends of the Earth, examines how we can create a food system that feeds all people, now and into the future.