CHAPTER 7. The Global Politics of Food and Hunger. From the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA) to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingzhi Lin ◽  
Anping Liu ◽  
Enjun Ma ◽  
Fan Zhang

An agroecological zone (AEZ) is a land resource mapping unit, defined in terms of climate, landform, and soils, and has a specific range of potentials and constraints for cropping (FAO, 1996). The shifting patterns of AEZs in China driven by future climatic changes were assessed by applying the agroecological zoning methodology proposed by International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in this study. A data processing scheme was proposed in this study to reduce systematic errors in projected climate data using observed data from meteorological stations. AEZs in China of each of the four periods: 2011–2020, 2021–2030, 2031–2040, and 2041–2050 were drawn. It is found that the future climate change will lead to significant local changes of AEZs in China and the overall pattern of AEZs in China is stable. The shifting patterns of AEZs will be characterized by northward expansion of humid AEZs to subhumid AEZs in south China, eastward expansion of arid AEZs to dry and moist semiarid AEZs in north China, and southward expansion of dry semiarid AEZs to arid AEZs in southwest China.


1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodomiro Ortiz

Cowpeas ( Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) are an important native African legume crop, whose seeds are sold in local urban and rural markets. West Africa is the main centre of diversity for cowpeas. Nigeria is the world's largest producer and second in acreage. The production trend shows a significant improvement of cowpea cultivation in this country from 1961 to 1995. In this period, Nigerian cowpea production increased by 441% according to available statistics of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This paper discusses the evolution of cowpea production from the early 1960s until recent years in Nigeria, along with new technology for cultivation (for example, improved cultivars) of this crop developed by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria.


MASKANA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Jan Feyen

The year 2021 is nearing its end when the online version of the journal MASKANA 12(2) is published. 2021, means that already one-fifth of the 21st century has passed. Since 2000 raised the world population from 6.1 to 7.9 billion, or 29.5%. Different models predict that the world population in 2030, the year that the world leaders in Glasgow (UK) during the GOP26 meeting agreed to limit global warming to 1.5°C, will increase to 8.5 billion. Wonder if the world possesses the capacity to secure food, given the continuing exponential growth of the population, and at the same time will be able to limit the warming up of the planet by 1.5°C? According to the yearly study of FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) on the state of food security increased the number of people experiencing undernourishment since 2014, and today the world experiences an unprecedented setback in its hunger eradication effort. The major drivers behind the decline in food security and nutrition are according to FAO: conflict, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns. The impacts the people experience are exacerbated by the levels of inequality in terms of income, productive capacity, assets, technology, education and health. The COVID-19 pandemic has been an additional factor that put the world off track to ending world hunger, malnutrition, climate change, immigration, that the rich are getting richer, and the poor are becoming poorer, among other phenomena of inequality. Parallel to these evolutions, democracy worldwide is in decline. According to IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), is the trend of democratic erosion ongoing since 2006 and is today worse than ever before.


1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
O. Lawrence ◽  
J.D. Gostin

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations (U.N.) Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career.


Author(s):  
Alain Noel ◽  
Jean-Philippe Therien

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