The strongest El Nino weather cycle on record is likely to increase the threat of hunger and disease for millions of people in 2016, aid agencies say.The weather phenomenon is set to exacerbate droughts in some areas, while increasing flooding in others. Some of the worst impacts are likely in Africa with food shortages expected to peak in February. Regions including the Caribbean, Central and South America will also be hit in the next six months. This periodic weather event, which tends to drive up global temperatures and disturb weather patterns, has helped push 2015 into the record books as the world's warmest year. Source: BBC Continue ReadingRead more
by ricardo in Agriculture
Latin America and the Caribbean region can help feed a global population of nine billion people in 2050 provided the region implements key policy actions to bolster agricultural productivity, according to a new report released today by the Global Harvest Initiative (GHI) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Source agrolac2025.org: Continue readingRead more
PARIS, France (AFP) — Wild bees provide crop pollination services worth more than US$3,250 (2,880 euros) per hectare per year, a study reported Tuesday. Their value to the food system is "in the billions, globally," its authors wrote in the journal Nature Communications. Over three years, researchers followed the activities of nearly 74,000 bees from more than 780 species. The team looked at 90 projects to monitor bee pollination at 1,394 crop fields around the world. They found that on average, wild bees contribute US$3,251 per hectare (US$1,315 per acre) to crop production, ahead of managed honey bee colonies, which were worth US$2,913 per hectare.
Source: Jamaica Observer Continue ReadingRead more
The Earth has entered a new period of extinction, a study by three US universities has concluded, and humans could be among the first casualties.The report, led by the universities of Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley, said vertebrates were disappearing at a rate 114 times faster than normal. The findings echo those in a report published by Duke University last year. One of the new study's authors said: "We are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event." The last such event was 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs were wiped out, in all likelihood by a large meteor hitting Earth. "If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said the lead author, Gerardo Ceballos.
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Separated by over 10,000 km and the entire Atlantic Ocean, it may seem that Jamaica and Jordan have little in common apart from their initial letter. However, three young Jamaican companies got a big boost today following a significant investment by Jordanian enterprise Oasis 500.
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At the Start-up Jamaica headquarters in central Kingston, an entrepreneur pitches his idea to me. He runs through the business model and then ends with a flourish: his company is among a trio of local startups jetting off to Amman, Jordan, where tech accelerator Oasis500 will invest seed capital. The team is set to spend the next three months refining their business model in hopes of raising additional capital. Source: Forbes Continue ReadingRead more
A Jamaican-designed app that connects farmers to markets and helps them to plan their planting season has won funding from an investor after being shortlisted for the finals of the CTA Hackathon on Climate Smart Agriculture. Called RevoFarm, the app was developed by a team of three young Jamaicans and was one of eight finalists in the contest, jointly organised by CTA, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the International Potato Center (CIP). The hackathon was open to young people from Latin America and the Caribbean and was timed to coincide with the 20th Conference of the Parties (COP20) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Lima, Peru, December 2014. Teams were asked to develop an app that would provide practical help to small-scale farmers facing climate change. The challenge posed to contestants was to develop ways of turning existing data on climate-smart agriculture into an easy-to-use product that would enable farmers to manage climate variability, reducing the risk of crop failure and obtaining better yields. “We should be looking at ICT opportunities to address climate change challenges for farmers,” said Oluyede Ajayi, Senior Programme Coordinator, Agriculture and Rural Development Policy at CTA. “A great deal of information on climate-smart agriculture is available, but it needs to be converted into a simple format that can be used by farmers.” Source: ict4ag Continue ReadingRead more
CEO Ricardo Gowdie gets advice on his pitch on Revofarm from Brittany Davis and Chris Malone, Harvard Business School students.Read more
A Jamaican team of app creators participated in a recent 'hackathon' designed to provide farmers with information to help them adapt to climate variability. The 24-hour event, held November 29 to 30, 2014 at the International Potato Centre (CIP) in Lima, Peru, was organised by CGIAR-- a global partnership that unites organisations engaged in research for a food-secure future -- in association with the Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The Jamaican team, Revofarm, comprises CEO Ricardo Gowdie, Oshane Gooden, and Warren Robinson. They were the only invitees from the Caribbean and their participation was sponsored by CIP, a member of the CGIAR consortium.
Source: Jamaica Observer Continue ReadingRead more