Farmers from Eastern and Central Kenya counties of Embu, Kirinyaga, Kitui, Machakos, Makueni, Meru, Murang'a and Tharaka Nithi have written a communiqué to the Kenyan president demanding for Bt cotton seeds and calling for the lifting of the ban on GM food imports in Kenya.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences in cooperation with ISAAA, held a conference on February 3 in Hanoi on the Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2014 (ISAAA Brief 49). Dr. Clive James, author of the report and Founder and Emeritus Chair of ISAAA presented the highlights of the ISAAA Brief 49,

IFAD's annual meeting of Member States comes at a critical juncture, as the process of defining a post-2015 global agenda provides opportunities for more inclusive, sustainable development.

With hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers producing food and other agricultural products in the tropics, there is an urgent need to help them adapt to a changing climate, which is already impacting food production systems and farmer livelihoods. In this interview, Dr. Ruben Echeverría, Director General of CIAT,

9 February 2015, Rome – The European Union and FAO have stepped up efforts to assist countries to prepare for any possible outbreaks of devastating foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in cattle, sheep, goats and other animals, including in the Balkans.
 

Genetically modified crops with increased vitamin and/or mineral content have the potential to improve public health, but their availability for consumers is still hampered. Research from Ghent University, recently published in Nature Biotechnology, has shown that these crops have a promising market potential.

A staggering 2.5 million people – about one-fifth of the population – remain in either Crisis or Emergency level food insecurity as fighting continues in South Sudan, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, released this week.

Bill and Melinda Gates, in their annual letter, stated that Africa will be able to feed itself in 15 years time and this is considered to be one of the big bets on the future. This can be achieved through breakthroughs in health, mobile technologies, and education. In African agriculture, this bet may only reflect that African farmers, both men and women, have gained access to technical expertise for proper crop production and management systems.

The importance of the genome in trying to understand diversity and how organisms evolved, as well as the genetic basis for the diversity of life on the planet was highlighted by Dean of Science and Professor of Biology at New York University (NYU) Dr. Michael Purugganan in a seminar titled "The Evolution of Plant Genomes". The seminar was held on January 28, 2015 at the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA),

Women account for 45 to 80 percent of all food production in developing countries depending on the region.

Gelia Castillo has had her fair share of challenges as a female scientist. Now aged over 80, she remembers when, as one of the earliest pioneers of the social sciences in the patriarchal agricultural system, she was greeted by astonished colleagues: “Hello, but where is Dr. Castillo?”