After a decade of steady decline, the number of people suffering from hunger in the world has been slowly increasing for several years in a row It is a bad trend, World Food Program boss, David Beasley, said during a press conference at United Nations (UN) headquarters. He warned: Without food security, we will never
Continue reading...
Contrary to the dystopian future drained of humanity that is imagined by many, the combined force of Personalised Optimisation and Farming Impossible Environments carve a path for how we can cut food waste, bring deserts back to life and celebrate our humanity through the act of eating. This will bring about a renaissance of planet
Continue reading...
Here is something to think about. Several studies have shown that current trends in yield improvement will not be sufficient to meet the global food demand by 2050. They suggest that a further expansion of agricultural area will be required. Agriculture however is a main driver of biodiversity losses and a major contributor to climate
Continue reading...
The current and traditional linear extract-produce-use-and-dump material and energy flow model of the modern economic system is anything but sustainable. In a linear system companies make products and the consumers use and dispose. Thus, the material flow is understood as the conceptual logic of value creation, with only virgin material entering the flow. Such a
Continue reading...
… Everything that has built modern human society is provided by nature and, increasingly, research demonstrates the natural world’s incalculable importance to our health, wealth, food and security… [Grooten & Almond 2018]. The World Wildlife Fund has released its annual Living Planet Report and it makes quite a depressing read. Wildlife populations, including mammals,
Continue reading...
This Latin expression ⎯ nihil novi sub sole, there is nothing new under the sun ⎯ appeared in the Vulgate Bible phrase, now in Ecclesiastes 1:9. I add a question mark to the quote. Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964) was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose writings are credited with advancing the global
Continue reading...
A really fascinating note at the forefront of the scientific news on October 4: Scientists call for “Noah’s Ark” of human microbes to prevent growing global health crisis. We owe future generations the microbes that colonised our ancestors for at least 200000 years of human evolution [https://www.independent.co.uk/] Are we losing this ? The most extraordinary
Continue reading...
Quand le lobby du patronat européen veut « minimiser » les efforts climatiques (When the European employers’ lobby wants to “minimize” the climate efforts): on September 19 Aude Massiot published a strikingly disturbing article in Libération . The original information is available on EURACTIV . Remember the summer of 2018. Looking at the average temperature measured by
Continue reading...
A recent article by Desforges et al. [2017] included some pretty surprising information: “In the present study, complex contaminant cocktails derived from the blubber of polar bears (PB; Ursus maritimus) and killer whales (KW; Orcinus orca) were used for in vitro concentration−response experiments with PB, cetacean and seal spp. immune cells to evaluate the effect
Continue reading...
Common plastic bottles roughly take 500 – 1000 years to degrade. Obviously, there is a complete mismatch between how long they are used for and how long the environment takes to decompose them. Transparent plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are recycled into new bottles, plastic containers for fruits and vegetables, textile fibres, carpets and stuffing for mattresses, jackets and sleeping bags [https://www.fostplus.be/en]1. However, tons of empty bottles are dumped every
Continue reading...