Planet under pressure / Bits and pieces

This 6-minute animated film explains how we can feed the world by 2050; it was produced by CCAFS and first shown at the Planet Under Pressure conference in London, Mar 2012. In this last posting from the International Livestock Research … Continue reading

Planet under pressure / Where’s the beef?

‘The children of the corn’ (photo on Flickr by Andrés Thor). Conspicuous by its absence at the recent Planet Under Pressure (PUP) conference in London (26–29 Mar 2012) was the topic of livestock production. While several presenters, panel members and … Continue reading

Planet under pressure / Navigating the Anthropocene

Surviving The Drought from duckrabbit on Vimeo. Discussions on the second day of the four-day Planet Under Pressure (PUP) conference ending today (29 Mar 2012) in London focused on options and opportunities; this was something of a relief, following the … Continue reading

Planet under pressure / Agriculture (finally) at the global change table

The Banquet, by William Hogarth, 1755 (image on Wikipaintings; painting at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, UK). If discretion, as Falstaff frankly noted, is the better part of valour in field battle, perception might be said to be the better part … Continue reading

Planet under pressure / ‘Get out of the nerd loop’–NYT environmental reporter

Environmental journalist Andrew Revkin (photo on Flickr by AKM Adam). Andrew Revkin, environmental reporter for the New York Times, spoke this afternoon on day two of the Planet Under Pressure conference in London this week. The formal title of this session, … Continue reading

Planet under pressure / Food security policy brief

A series of nine policy briefs have been prepared as part of the scientific preparations for the Planet Under Pressure conference, now in its second day of deliberations (26–29 Mar 2012) in London. The briefs specifically target policymakers in the Rio+20 Earth … Continue reading

Planet under pressure / A numbers game–but which numbers are the numbers that matter?

Population of the Earth on 26 September 2004, last day of a Fòrum Universal de les Cultures event in Barcelona, where this counter was and this photo was taken (image on Flickr by Daniel Daranas, horitzons inesperats). Speaking on ‘Sustainable food … Continue reading

Planet under pressure / Livestock under the radar

One of India’s estimated 192 million, mostly household, goats and sheep (image on Flickr by Edo Bertran: Fotos Sin Photoshop)  The pressure is on to say something useful at the Planet Under Pressure Conference, which opened today (26 Mar 2012) … Continue reading

A few of our favourite (missed) livestock presentations in 2012

Here, for your New Year’s reading/viewing pleasure, are 20 slide presentations on 12 topics made by staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in 2012 that we missed reporting on here (at the ILRI News Blog) during the year. … Continue reading

Why livestock: The big picture

Cover of ILRI’s Corporate Report for 2010-11 (cover picture credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann). Positioned as we are now, squarely between a scientific ‘Planet Under Pressure’ conference held in London in March and a ‘Rio+20 Sustainable Development’ conference in Brazil this June, … Continue reading

Making Asian agriculture smarter

A cow feeds on improved CIAT forage grasses, in Kampong Cham, Cambodia (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT). Last week, coming on the heels of a Planet Under Pressure conference in London, which set out to better define our ‘planetary boundaries’ and … Continue reading

Growing more food using fewer natural resources: Pipe dream or the ‘only’ development pathway possible?

 Banalata Das, a dairy and shrimp farmer, feeds her cow in Khulna, Bangladesh (photo credit: WorldFish/Mike Lusmore). Ramadjita Tabo, a member of The Montpellier Panel and deputy executive director of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), recently described … Continue reading