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Agriculture

Beans climb to new heights in Rwanda
February 8, 2010 06:55 AM - Ochieng' Ogodo, Science and Development Network

Climbing beans suited to rainy high-altitude areas are being distributed in Rwanda after a decade of research. The fifteen varieties, developed by the Rwandan Agricultural Research Institute (ISAR) in collaboration with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), could benefit smallholder farmers in similar areas across Central and East Africa. Unlike the more commonly-planted 'bush beans', the beans are resistant to legume diseases such as anthracnose, root rot and ascochyta, which are found in damp, higher altitude areas.

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How to Feed the Billions
February 4, 2010 12:19 PM - Andy Soos, ENN

A Malthusian catastrophe was originally foreseen to be a forced return to subsistence level conditions once population growth had outpaced agricultural production. The catastrophe is that in doing so many people will starve. Sometime around 2050, there are going to be nine billion people roaming this planet two billion more than there are today. It's a safe bet that all those folks will want to eat. Still, not everyone's convinced that feeding nine billion people is a totally impossible task. A Malthusian catastrophe has been predicted before to happen and has not yet done so, A new paper published this week in Science written by Britain's chief scientific adviser John Beddington along with others, outlines a way this could actually be done.

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SPOTLIGHT

UK planning to reintroduce insects

Jeremy Hance, MONGABAY.COM
When one thinks of reintroducing wildlife, one usually thinks of big charismatic mammals, such as wolves or beaver, or desperate birds like the Californian condor. But the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) in Scotland is going one step further to save the UK's unique ecology with plans to reintroduce four species of dwindling insects.
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COMMENTARY

Biodiversity loss matters, and communication is crucial

David Dickson, Science and Development Network
Communicating why biodiversity loss matters for people is essential for reversing it. The failed UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December could hardly have been a less promising prelude to the International Year of Biodiversity, which opened last month (January). As with climate change, the threat of large-scale biodiversity loss — and the need for global political action to stop it — is growing every day.
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