If the current trend in global meat demand persists, meat production will need to rise from 300 million tons today to 470 million tons by 2050. Climate and our natural resources would lose out, our author warns.

Nowadays it is hard to imagine European livestock production without soya-based feed. But this trend has had a massive impact on rural areas in the global South – the bulk of the soya fed to livestock in Europe is imported from Argentina and Brazil. That is not sustainable, says WWF’s Birgit Wilhelm, who advocates a change in mindset.

Converting from subsistence to market-oriented farming can increase income. Thanks to the ’Enabling Rural Innovation’ approach, family farmers in Uganda and Tanzania have succeeded in improving production and fetching better prices for their produce while safeguarding food security and sustainable management of natural resources. The recipe for success is that farmers take the development process in their own hands.

A series of five issue briefs based on CPWF research on agricultural and aquacultural production and food security in the Ganges coastal zone. The brief topics are: water smart communities; agricultural production and drainage; governance by small water management units; community approach to water management; and improved agriculture and aquaculture cropping systems.

The CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) has worked in the Ganges River basin since 2003. From 2010 to 2014, its research for development activities focused on the southwest and south-central coastal zone of Bangladesh with some additional work in the coastal zone of West Bengal, India. In most polders the primary limiting factors are poor water management due to the lack of systematic operation of sluice gates; lack of separation of lands of varying elevations; and siltation of the irrigation and drainage canals within polders.

Exploration and mapping of alternative land uses suggest ways to foster territorial development pathways that can coexist with a forest cover. As the Pampas and Chaco are becoming one of the most relevant global grain suppliers of South America, the fast expansion of crops over pastures (Pampas) and dry forests (Chaco), ongoing climate changes, and extremely flat topography, make these regions vulnerable to rapid and non-linear hydrological shifts, including long-lasting floods and salinization processes.

Conventional wisdom holds that
Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite
the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing
agricultural growth in the region is expected to come
largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved
technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and
other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet
following several years of high food prices, concerted

The conservation of biodiversity in intensively managed agricultural landscapes depends on the amount and spatial arrangement of cultivated and natural lands. Conservation incentives that create semi-natural grasslands may increase the biodiversity of beneficial insects and their associated ecosystem services, such as pollination and the regulation of insect pests, but the effectiveness of these incentives for insect conservation are poorly known, especially in North America.