Floods destroy 1.1 million tons of rice in Bangladesh
Dhaka, Bangladesh Reuters Floods in Bangladesh have destroyed an estimated 1.1 million metric tons of rice, according to data from the agriculture ministry, prompting the country to ramp up imports of the staple grain amid soaring food prices. Floods brought by heavy monsoon rains and torrential upstream runoff struck the country in two major waves […]
Solar dry, soldier fly, AI: Africans fight hunger with home-grown innovations
From South African soldier fly farms to Kenyan AI pest-detectors, local innovators are pushing to make farming climate-resilient. KIM HARRISBERG, of Context, reports…
Torrential floods in West Africa hurt food security
Dana, Cameroon Reuters Souloukna Mourga plodded through his flooded millet and cotton field in northern Cameroon and uprooted soggy stems that had a few bolls on them. All six hectares of mostly dead crops were under water. The 50-year-old father of 12 is one of an estimated four million people, many of them small subsistence […]
Hit by coronavirus and wild weather, Italy now battles locusts
Rome, Italy Thomson Reuters Foundation Swarms of locusts have stripped thousands of hectares of pasture and cropland in Sardinia, devastating farmers already struggling from the coronavirus pandemic, farming groups said. Their numbers fuelled by rising temperatures, the pests have damaged nearly 15,000 hectares of grazing land in the central province of Nuoro, said Michele Arbau, […]
Somalia races to save livelihoods as new locust generation spawns
Nairobi, Kenya Thomson Reuters Foundation Somalia is deploying surveillance teams and specialised vehicles to prevent desert locust swarms ravaging crops and pastures, and destroying the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, United Nations and government officials said on Monday. The worst outbreak in a generation has seen hungry swarms – some the size of […]