As global demand for animal protein surges, so do the environmental costs of producing it. Researchers in the Netherlands are exploring alternatives, from lab-grown burgers to edible insects to faux meat made from plants. But will people eat them?
Stir-fried vegetables with mealworms. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
As global demand for animal protein surges, so do the environmental costs of producing it. Researchers in the Netherlands are exploring alternatives, from lab-grown burgers to edible insects to faux meat made from plants. But will people eat them?
In Seattle and other U.S. cities, a movement is growing to bring foraging from the margins to the mainstream as a hedge against climate change and food insecurity.
Melany Vorass Herrera, a forager in Seattle, with wild nettles. Photo by Joshua McNichols.
In Seattle and other U.S. cities, a movement is growing to bring foraging from the margins to the mainstream as a hedge against climate change and food insecurity.
Farmers in India say a novel way of growing rice and other crops has quadrupled yields while using less seed, water, and fertilizer. But some scientists doubt the gains are real.
Farmer Sumant Kumar reported world record rice yields on his land in Bihar using a set of techniques known as the System of Rice Intensification. Many mainstream scientists are skeptical. Photo by Sam Eaton.
Farmers in India say a novel way of growing rice and other crops has quadrupled yields while using less seed, water, and fertilizer. But some scientists doubt the gains are real.
In India, some farmers are replacing chemical fertilizers with the contents of their latrines. It’s cheaper and produces less greenhouse gas. Is it safe?
A truck in Bangalore, India, collects human waste from local latrines and spreads it on farmers’ fields. Photo by Bianca Vasquez Toness.
In India, some farmers are replacing chemical fertilizers with the contents of their latrines. It’s cheaper and produces less greenhouse gas. Is it safe?
Growing more food with less water will be one of the biggest challenges in the coming era of surging populations and increasing climate disruption. In China, scientists say they’ve developed a new irrigation method that’s twice as efficient as today’s best technology.
Irrigation agronomist Kim Ji-Seok visits an experimental farm outside Beijing. Photo by Mary Kay Magistad.
Growing more food with less water will be one of the biggest challenges in the coming era of surging populations and increasing climate disruption. In China, scientists say they’ve developed a new irrigation method that’s twice as efficient as today’s best technology.
Since announcing that it would become the world’s first carbon-neutral country, Costa Rica has been a laboratory for reducing the climate impact of agriculture.
An industrial banana processing center in Costa Rica. Photo by Sam Eaton.
Since announcing that it would become the world’s first carbon-neutral country, Costa Rica has been a laboratory for reducing the climate impact of agriculture. Both small and large farms have been looking for ways to decrease emissions.
Aquaponics is a recirculating system for raising fish and vegetables that uses less land, water, and chemicals than traditional methods. For years it has attracted hobbyists but few others. A Ugandan entrepreneur thinks its time has finally come.
Engineer and entrepreneur Charles Mulamata (left) inspects a Nile tilapia from one of his tanks. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
Aquaponics is a recirculating system for raising fish and vegetables that uses less land, water, and chemicals than traditional methods. For years it has attracted hobbyists but few others. A Ugandan entrepreneur thinks its time has finally come.
Meat consumption in China is soaring, and so are the greenhouse gas emissions that meat production causes. But there is a nascent counter-trend – a small but growing vegan movement in the country’s big cities.
Vegan activist and singer Long Kuan and a friend enjoy meatless “lamb” kabobs at a Beijing restaurant. Photo by Mary Kay Magistad.
Meat consumption in China is soaring, and so are the greenhouse gas emissions that meat production causes. But there is a nascent counter-trend – a small but growing vegan movement in the country’s big cities.
Amaranth virtually disappeared from Mexican diets after the Spanish banned it because of its use in human sacrifice rituals. Now there are efforts to bring it back for its superior nutritional qualities and its hardiness in the face of climate change.
Amaranth seedlings being grown in southern Mexico’s Tehuacan valley. The plant’s seeds are high in protein and its leaves are high in iron, vitamin C, and calcium. Photo by Sam Eaton.
Amaranth virtually disappeared from Mexican diets after the Spanish banned it because of its use in human sacrifice rituals. Now there are efforts to bring it back for its superior nutritional qualities and its hardiness in the face of climate change.
In the desert of Qatar, scientists and engineers are working to transform “what we have enough of” – sand, sunlight, sea water, and CO2 – into “what we need more of” – energy, fresh water, and food. Does their idea hold promise for the world’s driest places?
The Sahara Forest Project is intended to mimic a natural ecosystem, with the waste product of one component serving as the fuel or fertilizer for another. The project’s designers say the concept should work in any low-altitude desert area near a large source of salt water. Above, an artist’s rendering shows a full-scale commercial facility. Graphic provided by Sahara Forest Project.
In the desert of Qatar, scientists and engineers are working to transform “what we have enough of” – sand, sunlight, sea water, and CO2 – into “what we need more of” – energy, fresh water, and food. Does their idea hold promise for the world’s driest places?
As U.S. demand falls, California dairies are finding new markets in China. That may make sense for the industry, at least for now. But what about the planet?
As U.S. demand falls, California dairies are finding new markets in China. That may make sense for the industry, at least for now. But what about the planet?
This story was produced by The Center for Investigative Reporting, edited by Richard C. Paddock, and copy edited by Nikki Frick and Christine Lee. You can see photos and read more here.
Scientists in the U.S. and Uganda have developed genetically engineered cassava plants that resist two devastating viral diseases. Is it a boon for small farmers or a Trojan horse?
Ugandan farmer Eva Mugalu samples cassava from her property north of Kampala. Cassava is an important food security crop for millions of Africans, but it is susceptible to viruses. Scientists say they are nearly ready with a genetically engineered virus-resistant variety. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
For years, proponents of genetic engineering have said that gene-splicing technology can help the world’s poorest farmers – making their crops more nutritious, or more productive, or protecting them against drought and pests and diseases.
But they haven’t had much to show for those claims. Even in developing countries, most of the land area planted in GMOs is devoted to commercial crops on industrial farms. Opponents of GMOs have included that fact among their many arguments against transgenics.
Today, though, there are dozens of genetically engineered crops in the pipeline that are specifically aimed at small-scale farmers in poor countries. In many cases, they are being developed by public sector scientists who plan to make them available at little or no cost.
In this story, we travel to Uganda to meet researchers working on a genetically engineered cassava variety that resists two devastating viral diseases. The scientists say it’s the best hope for saving a critically important food security crop.
But critics question whether the new variety is really necessary and suggest that the real goal is to break down resistance to GMOs on a continent that has been wary of the technology. Are GMOs a boon for Africa, or are they a Trojan Horse?
In India, climate change is forcing farmers to adapt to saltwater intrusion, flooding, and droughts. Scientists are racing to breed a new generation of climate-resilient crops that can survive these changes. But many farmers are turning to the seeds that sustained their ancestors.
Researcher Debal Deb has been collecting traditional seed varieties and testing them with farmers in northeastern India. He says some of the ancient rice plants will survive in 12 feet of water for up to three months. Scientists at the International Rice Research Institute and elsewhere are trying to breed traits like this into modern, high-yielding varieties. Photo by Sam Eaton.
When a cyclone hits India, the sea-drenched soil can remain salty for years. You can see the evidence in the Ganges River delta, packed with more than 4 million people, four years after Cyclone Aila hit the region.
Farmers are finding that new high-yielding rice varieties are not withstanding the salty onslaught. Vegetables are also nearly impossible to grow.
The problem is expected to get worse as climate change brings higher sea levels, stronger storms, and more frequent droughts.
Scientists are racing to breed a new generation of climate-resilient crops that can survive these changes. But many farmers are turning to the seeds that sustained their ancestors.
Producer, Reporter, Camera: Sam Eaton
Editor: Linda Peckham
Additional Editing: Adithya Sambamurthy
Transcription: Karishma Suri
Archival Footage: Oxfam International
Thanks to: Soma Saha, WWF-India Sundarbans Program
Senior Producer: Stephen Talbot
Executive Producer: Sharon Tiller
In Singapore, the challenge of feeding a growing population is pushing the concept of urban farming to new heights.
Singapore has one of the highest population densities on the planet. More than five million people crowd into this small, wealthy island city. Land here comes at a premium, forcing people to expand up, rather than out. And it’s not just office towers and apartment complexes that are reaching skyward. Singapore now has one of the world’s first commercial vertical farms.
Petroleum-rich Qatar has welcomed innovators seeking solutions to the challenges facing desert areas worldwide, from renewable energy to fresh water to food production.
Petroleum-rich Qatar has welcomed innovators seeking solutions to the challenges facing desert areas worldwide – from renewable energy to fresh water to food production.
One of the most ambitious experiments is the Sahara Forest Project, which looks to transform seawater, sunlight and carbon dioxide into fresh water, vegetables, trees, electricity, salt, biofuel, and animal feed.
The technologies it uses – concentrated solar power, evaporative cooling, thermal desalination – aren’t new. The innovation lies in the combination of so many in one integrated system. Does this kind of complex, capital-intensive, high-tech solution make sense?
Reporter: Jonathan Miller
Producer and Camera: Charlotte Buchen
Sound: Shiba Ranjan Das
Editor: Linda Peckham
Additional Editing: David Ritsher and Adithya Sambamurthy
Additional Footage: Fay Abuelgasim, Elie Khadra, Fred de Sam Lazaro
Thanks to: Qatar TV, VPRO Television, Chad Heeter
Senior Producer: Cassandra Herrman
Executive Producer: Sharon Tiller
Agriculture is the third-largest emitter of global greenhouse gas pollution. Yet roughly one-third of what we produce is never eaten. Cutting down on waste is a major challenge in China, where a grassroots “Clean Your Plate” campaign is taking aim at deeply ingrained attitudes toward leftovers.
Marketing executives Zhang Ye and Xia Xue helped organize China’s “Clean Your Plate” campaign when they saw students at a Beijing university throwing away huge amounts of food. But they say the problem extends all the way up to government officials, who are notorious for holding lavish banquets. Photo by Mary Kay Magistad.
Agriculture is the third-largest emitter of global greenhouse gas pollution. Yet roughly one-third of what we produce is never eaten. Cutting down on waste is a major challenge in China, where a grassroots “Clean Your Plate” campaign is taking aim at deeply ingrained attitudes toward leftovers.
Scientists in Costa Rica are finding that biodiversity on and around farms can increase yields, lower input needs, and provide protection against environmental stresses.
Gretchen Daily (right) of Stanford University’s Center for Conservation Biology tags a bird caught in a drift net. Daily and her colleagues have been studying the contribution of birds to pest control on Costa Rican farms. Photo by Sam Eaton.
Scientists in Costa Rica are finding that biodiversity on and around farms can increase yields, lower input needs, and provide protection against environmental stresses.
Some of the biggest players in the sustainable food movement are food service companies with the buying power to change the way millions of people eat every day.
Helene York of Bon Appétit Management Company meets Jared Auerbach of Red’s Best Seafood at the Boston Fish Pier. Auerbach buys from small- and medium-scale fishermen around New England. York says smaller suppliers play a key role in a sustainable food system. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
Some of the biggest players in the sustainable food movement are food service companies with the buying power to change the way millions of people eat every day.
A new super-efficient vertical farming system is producing greens for Singapore’s 5 million residents. Inventor Jack Ng hopes to increase local food security while helping cut down on the climate impact of food production.
With a footprint of about 65 square feet, each SkyGreens tower is ten times as efficient per unit of land than conventional farming methods. Photo by Sam Eaton.
A new super-efficient vertical farming system is producing greens for Singapore’s 5 million residents. Inventor Jack Ng hopes to increase local food security while helping cut down on the climate impact of food production.
A video version of this story aired on PBS NewsHour.
Low-emissions cooking aims to slow global warming, one plate at a time. A celebrated Baltimore chef and an expert in climate-friendly cuisine join forces on a holiday meal.
Baltimore chef and restaurant owner Spike Gjerde (left) and his colleague Ben Lambert prepare a meal based on local squash and farmed Maryland oysters. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
Low-emissions cooking aims to slow global warming one plate at a time. A celebrated Baltimore chef and an expert in climate-friendly cuisine join forces on a holiday meal.
China’s growing appetite for meat and dairy is driving big changes in everything from farming to food safety. For the country’s increasingly wary consumers, those changes can’t happen quickly enough.
Over the past three decades in China, meat consumption per capita has quadrupled. This rapid change in diets has paralleled the massive migration from the countryside to the cities. City dwellers eat twice as much meat on average as those back in the villages.
This has put a strain on the country’s land and water resources. Agricultural runoff, mostly manure from large-scale farms, is causing water pollution within the country. Because of water shortages, China imports 70 percent of its soybeans and increasing amounts of its corn from the United States, Brazil, and Argentina to feed its cows and pigs.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set up an office in Beijing to help train hundreds of Chinese companies, government inspectors and officials in food safety.
But some say the Chinese government is relying too heavily on inspections and needs to focus more on prevention.
Chinese fed up with waiting for government action have started to find other ways to access safer food – like buying imported, processed, or organic food.
With the increasing calls for more safe, affordable and environmentally friendly food, China’s leaders will need to show creativity and balance to meet those needs.
The traditional diet on the island of Crete is one of the healthiest in the world. Trouble is, almost nobody follows it any more. And obesity rates are soaring, especially among kids.
The UN estimates that more than 10 percent of the world’s population is chronically malnourished. Yet the number of overweight people is even higher. Over the last 30 years, the global obesity rate has doubled.
To find out why, I traveled to the island of Crete, in southern Greece. Since the 1950s, study after study has shown that the Mediterranean diet, and especially the diet of Crete, makes you live longer, protects you from heart disease and cancer, and keeps you from getting too fat. Look at lists of the world’s healthiest diets, and the one from Crete often ranks at the top.
Today, most Cretans shop at supermarkets, where processed foods predominate. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
Unfortunately, hardly anybody follows it anymore.
I met a 16-year-old I’ll call Eleni with her mother in Chania, a port city of about 50,000 in western Crete. Eleni’s grandparents lived in the countryside, but she and her parents grew up in town.
Eleni has struggled with her weight most of her life. Schoolmates have taunted her. Her mother told me she tries to lose weight, but then she lapses.
“Sometime she eats a lot,” she said. “Whatever you can imagine. But other times she’s okay. I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
She thinks her daughter’s weight issues have to do with lack of discipline and low self-esteem. But clearly there’s something bigger going on. Today Greece has the one of the highest obesity rates in the world. The proportion of overweight children – about 40 percent – may be the highest, except for some Pacific islands. The problem is especially bad in Crete, home to what could be the world’s healthiest diet. What gives?
Crete is one of Greece’s most productive farming areas. Fresh produce is readily available, but it tends to be more expensive than processed food. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
“It has to do with many factors,” said Christina Makratzaki, a local dietitian who also battled obesity as a teenager.
“In the ’50s and ’60s, the people, they were poor, but they were healthy,” she explained. “They were eating very good foods – the olive oil, the olives, the green leafy vegetables that are our treasure. But they were enforced in a way because of their poverty to use these things.”
Then people here got a little money – from tourism, from agriculture – and everything changed.
“Now, we have many choices,” she said.
Like processed food from the supermarket and fast food on the street. And soda and doughnuts and ice cream. All of it cheaper to buy, easier to prepare – and, especially for children, harder to resist – than what grandma used to make. And then there’s the marketing – a relentless bombardment of ads aimed at kids for products like soft drinks and breakfast cereal and processed meat.
It’s all part of what’s known as “the nutrition transition.”
“The nutrition transition happens very quickly,” says Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University whose books include What to Eat and Why Calories Count. “As soon as people get money, they start buying more meat and more processed foods. Well, that’s fine if you don’t eat too much of it. The problem is that we as humans, when we’re confronted with large amounts of delicious food, we eat large amounts of food.”
As part of a municipal anti-obesity campaign, the snack bar at Chania’s city hall now serves traditional baked goods instead of fast food and other snacks. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
It typically starts with the upper classes, who do less physical work and can afford to buy more fattening food. For a while, being plump is a sign of wealth and health.
But then, in most places, there’s a shift. People with money start to value thinness. At the same time, farmers move into the cities, women join the work force and have less time to cook, machines replace manual labor, kids watch more TV and packaged food becomes cheaper than fresh food. Pretty soon you have an epidemic, with the worst effects felt among those with lower incomes.
“Health officials and policy makers are realizing what the costs of obesity are likely to be not only to the individuals themselves but to the society,” Nestle says. “The question is what to do about it. People are trying lots of different things, and more power to them. But nobody really has an answer.”
The dietitian Christina Makratzaki showed me some of the things people are trying in Crete. A burger chain has started serving things like freshly squeezed juice and turkey wraps. The canteen at the local bus station is offering traditional Cretan dishes, bathed in olive oil. The association of school snack bar operators has told its members to cut out the sweets and sodas at the kiosks they rent, and most have complied.
She took me to see the mayor of Chania, Emmanouil Skoulakis. He happens to be a doctor who served several terms as Greece’s deputy minister of health. Skoulakis said the obesity crisis was of great personal interest to him – that was why he was willing to see me.
He told me the city sponsors exercise programs and a local food festival, where people could talk with chefs and sample traditional cuisine. Last spring, it helped organize visits by 14 dietitians to some of the schools. But money is tight. Beyond rallying volunteers, he said, there’s not much the government can do.
That’s especially true now, with Greece in crisis. Unemployment is 25 percent and people are marching in the streets. I asked everyone I met if they thought the economic troubles may have a silver lining, sending people back to the old ways, eating fruits and vegetables and dessert just on Sundays. They all shook their heads. With junk food so much cheaper than fresh food, they say, the lighter people’s wallets, the heavier they’ll get.
The spread of modern grocery chains could lift millions of African farmers out of poverty. Or it could ruin them.
A new Pick n Pay supermarket in Lusaka, Zambia. Local small-scale farmers can prosper if they find ways to satisfy the chains’ finicky buyers. But if supermarkets bypass local farmers in favor of cheaper and more reliable imports, farmers’ livelihoods could be threatened. Photo by Gretchen Wilson.
The spread of modern grocery chains could lift millions of African farmers out of poverty. Or it could ruin them.
About of one-third of all the food we produce is never eaten. In the developing world, losses tend to occur at the production end. In the U.S., it’s consumers who waste the most.
A “sharing table” at a Los Angeles-area elementary school. School officials are trying to teach students to waste less food. Photo by Adriene Hill.
We waste enormous amounts of land, water, labor, and fuel producing food that’s never eaten. How we limit the losses depends on where we live.
In this piece, Marketplace’s Adriene Hill visits a school in Southern California, where students routinely toss their unopened milk into the garbage.
This piece aired in tandem with Spilled and Spoiled in Senegal and was produced by Marketplace for the Food for 9 Billion series.
How we limit food waste and losses depends on where we live. Jori Lewis visits small-scale milk producers in Senegal.
Workers at La Laiterie du Berger in Senegal weigh and filter milk before transforming it into yogurt. The company collects milk from isolated herders who have no other way to get it to consumers. Photo by Jori Lewis.
We waste enormous amounts of land, water, labor, and fuel producing food that’s never eaten. How we limit the losses depends on where we live.
In wealthy countries, waste tends to occur at the consumer end. In poorer countries, most food is lost between the field and the market.
In this story, Jori Lewis visits small-scale milk producers in Senegal.
Americans love hamburgers. They’re tasty, filling, and cheap. But not if you consider the damage they do to the planet.
Americans love hamburgers – we each eat an average of three a week. They’re tasty, filling, and cheap. But what are the hidden costs? Learn more in this animated short.
Produced by our partner, the Center for Investigative Reporting, with editing help from Homelands’ Jonathan Miller. Art and animation are by Arthur Jones. Visit CIR‘s story page to see an annotated transcript listing the sources for the information in the video.
More than half the seafood eaten in the world today is farmed, not wild. As demand for protein soars, scientists and fish producers look to lessen the impact of factory farming.
Hung Vuong Corporation is a vertically integrated operation, controlling everything from feed production to export. Fish farming is a booming industry, and businesses and scientists are working to find ways to operate sustainably at a large scale. Photo by Sam Eaton.
More than half the seafood eaten in the world today is farmed, not wild. As demand for protein soars, scientists and fish producers look to lessen the impact of factory farming.
In Niger, farmers race to reclaim the desert and break the link between drought and famine.
Perched on the edge of the Sahara Desert, Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world. As the desert moves southward, making the land ever less fertile, even a brief period of drought can lead to famine. Several efforts have sprung up in recent years to try to break the drought-famine link. One that has proven especially effective is Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, or FMNR, a system developed in the 1980s by an enterprising farmer in Burkina Faso, Niger’s western neighbor.
But for each step forward, population growth takes Niger two steps back.
Reporter: Fred de Sam Lazaro
Producer and camera: Cassandra Herrman
Editors: Cassandra Herrman and David Ritsher
Consulting producer: Stephen Talbot
Series producer: Cassandra Herrman
Executive producer: Sharon Tiller
As the average age of its farmers creeps into the 70s, Japan grapples with a question that many industrialized nations now face: Who will grow our food in the future?
A farmer in Japan prunes his fruit trees. Photo by Sam Eaton.
The average age of a farmer in Japan is roughly 70 years old. That’s not a problem in its own right. Unfortunately, though, few younger people are showing an interest in taking over. And that is forcing officials, and the farmers themselves, to make some tough decisions.
Reporter/producer: Sam Eaton
Camera: Sam Eaton and Irene Herrera
Editor: Charlotte Buchen
Local fixer: Winifred Bird
Additional field translation: Toru Seno, Yuko Ota, Lindee Hoshikawa
Series producer: Cassandra Herrman
Executive producer: Sharon Tiller
In Africa, a debate is raging over the best ways to make small farms more productive. Most people agree that soil is the key. But how to boost fertility? Farmers in Ghana face tough choices.
In Africa, a debate is raging over the best ways to make small farms more productive. Most people agree that soil is the key. But how to boost fertility? Some say farmers need to increase their use of synthetic fertilizers. Others say there are better ways to build soil health. Still others suggest that the answers will vary from place to place. Farmers in Ghana are facing tough decisions.
Fast-growing India is pumping its aquifers dry. Rajendra Singh says solutions will come from the ground up.
The average person drinks two quarts of water every day, but it takes more than a thousand times that to produce a day’s worth of food. That’s a problem everywhere, but especially in India, where scientists say nearly a third of the country’s underground aquifers are already in critical condition.
Rajendra Singh has become known as “The Water Man” for his efforts to engage communities in grassroots conservation efforts. Among his accomplishments: Seven dry rivers in his home district are flowing year-round again.
Rajendra Singh at the headquarters of the organization he directs, Tarun Bharat Sangh (Indian Youth Association). Since the 1980s, the group has focused on community-based water management.
Photo: Jonathan Miller
Singh at the first water harvesting structure he built in the Alwar District of Rajasthan state.
Photo: Jonathan Miller
A cloth map shows the locations of water harvesting structures in Alwar. Singh says there are now more than 10,000 structures in the area, all built by hand by community members.
Photo: Jonathan Miller
The most common type of water harvesting structure in Alwar is a “check dam,” known locally as a johad. Different types of structures are used in other places.
Photo: Jonathan Miller
Villagers move rocks for a new johad. Water harvesting goes back hundreds of years, but was largely abandoned with the arrival of tube wells and electric pumps.
Photo: Jonathan Miller
Harshaye, 65, says he is confident that this area will be green and productive by next year.
Photo: Jonathan Miller
Singh now spends most of his time on national and regional water policy issues. He says the Indian government is beginning to see the value of grassroots water management.
Photo: Jonathan Miller
An employee of Singh’s nonprofit leads a field trip for university students from the central Indian city of Bhopal. Rainwater harvesting is enjoying a resurgence, but groundwater withdrawals still far outpace deposits.
Photo: Jonathan Miller
In Lapuria village in central Rajasthan, local leader Laxman Singh (right) listens as villager Chhotu describes his work planting trees. Singh says water conservation has revitalized the village.
Photo: Jonathan Miller
A girl draws drinking water from a well in Lapuria. The water table had dropped to more than 200 feet below the surface. Now it is 20 to 30 feet down, thanks to a range of conservation measures.
In 2003, the Brazilian government declared that food was a basic human right. Then it found that ending hunger takes a lot more than a declaration.
Government-run Popular Restaurant No. 2, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, was an inspiration for former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva’s Zero Hunger campaign. Photo by Cecilia Vaisman.
In the 1990s, the city of Belo Horizonte, in northeastern Brazil, was a hunger disaster area. Although Brazil produces more than enough food to meet the needs of its population, roughly one-fourth of Belo Horizonte’s children were malnourished.
Since then, though, hunger has virtually vanished. The municipal food security agency has promoted low-price farmer’s markets, encouraged urban farming, established school gardens and school lunch programs, distributed food baskets to poor families, and linked the region’s “landless peasant” movement (which occupies and farms on abandoned lands) to consumers in Belo Horizonte’s favelas, or slums.
Belo Horizonte’s program has become a model for Brazil’s national “Zero Hunger” program, based on former President Ignacio “Lula” da Silva’s declaration that food would henceforth be a basic human right. The national program has been remarkably successful, but it hasn’t been as easy as idealistic planners originally hoped.
Lesson number one: There’s no simple formula. It takes imagination, flexibility, local leadership, and plenty of boots on the ground.
A start-up in East Africa aims to give small-scale producers the tools they need to compete – and business is booming.
In Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi, a new service for small-scale farmers has spread to more than 100,000 families in just four years. An organization called One Acre Fund brings struggling farmers together to establish a market community and offers them a unique investment package of seeds, fertilizer, training, loans, and market access.
To provide a hedge against drought or disease, One Acre’s “market bundle” includes crop insurance. Ninety-nine percent of the farmers repay their loans, and many double their income per planted acre. Could this sort of integrated development be a model for the rest of Africa?
Reporter: Fred de Sam Lazaro
Producer and camera: Cassandra Herrman
Editors: Cassandra Herrman and David Ritsher
Consulting producer: Stephen Talbot
Series producer: Cassandra Herrman
Executive producer: Sharon Tiller
A controversial resettlement program in Ethiopia is the latest battleground in the global race to secure prized farmland and water.
A controversial resettlement program in Ethiopia is the latest battleground in the global race to secure prized farmland and water. In this story, members of the Anuak ethnic group accuse the government of forcing them off their land to make way for a large Saudi-owned rice farm.
Bangladesh has made dramatic progress in feeding its people. Can it stop a changing climate from erasing the gains?
Muhammad Salauddin helps his father, Muhammad Sekendar, shore up the earthen platform that elevates their new house in southeast Bangladesh. Their old house was wiped away by a cyclone, and their land was saturated with salt. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
Bangladesh has made dramatic progress in feeding its people. Can it stop a changing climate from erasing the gains?
Once a leading rice producer, the Philippines can no longer feed itself. That leaves two options: increase supply or try to do something about demand.
In the 1960s, the Philippines was one of the world’s leading rice producers. Since then its population has more than doubled and the country can no longer feed itself. Not only has demand for food shot up, but farmland has been lost to development. This has put pressure on all the country’s basic life-support systems. It is felt most acutely by the poorest families.
While most of the countries in Southeast Asia have taken decisive action to slow population growth, the Catholic Church in the Philippines has resisted any form of population control. But some politicians are responding to a clamor among their constituents for family planning services.
The Philippines has one of the highest population growth rates in all of Southeast Asia. Its population, today just shy of 100 million, is expected to double by the end of the century.
Photo: Sam Eaton
Government warehouses, like this one, store imported rice. The Philippines imports more rice than any other nation on the planet in order to feed its growing population.
Photo: Sam Eaton
Scientists at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines are scrambling to introduce higher-yielding rice varieties.
Photo: Sam Eaton
Many farmers in the Philippines are poor -- with few tools at their disposal to boost rice yields.
Photo: Sam Eaton
Rice is the staple food of the Philippines.
Photo: Sam Eaton
The maternity ward at the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila is packed beyond capacity with new mothers who have no choice but to share the limited number of beds. More than 2 million babies are born every year in the Philippines.
Photo: Sam Eaton
Population growth among the poor in the Philippines, where birth control remains largely out of reach, is about four times higher than the rest of the country.
Photo: Sam Eaton
The price of rice remains high, with poor Filipinos spending as much as 70 percent of their income on food.
When Filipino fishing families got access to birth control, the effects were dramatic: more food, kids in school, and a new will to defend their reefs.
The Philippines’ swelling population is causing fishing villages to embrace birth control for the first time, and not just as a means to plan their families. They also see it as a path to long-term food security, ensuring that future generations enjoy the same abundance of fish.
Reporter/Producer: Sam Eaton
Camera: Sam Eaton
Editor: Charlotte Buchen
Local fixer: Carlos Conde
Additional field translation: Mercy Butawan
Consulting producer: Stephen Talbot
Series producer: Cassandra Herrman
Executive producer: Sharon Tiller
More than one million Egyptian farmers have quit the land in the last 20 years, reshaping the country’s physical and political landscape.
This Cairo family is part of a wave of Egyptians who have left their lands and moved to the cities. Many blame high food prices on the government’s policies that promote export agriculture. Photo by Charlotte Buchen.
One of the most potent sources of the Egyptian revolution was the fury of the poor who demanded economic security – including sufficient and affordable food. Fresh in the minds of the throngs in Tahrir Square was the food crisis of 2008, when sharp price hikes put many basic foods out of reach for the estimated 40 percent of Egyptians who live on less than $2 a day.
In the wake of the revolution, some experts in Egypt say the country is setting itself up for future food crises, and needs to protect itself by becoming more “food sovereign.” In recent years Egypt has accelerated its export-oriented agriculture, using its precious (and possibly soon-dwindling) Nile waters to grow high-value crops like strawberries and table grapes for the European market, while relying on the international market for staples like wheat.
These policies have brought in foreign exchange, but they have also forced more than a million poor peasant farmers off their land and into the cities. And, opponents argue, they have made the country as a whole more vulnerable to forces beyond its control.
Now, as Egypt prepares to elect new leaders, the country finds itself at a crossroads. Should it integrate more fully in the global economy, as the IMF recommends, or should it seek to become more self-reliant?
This piece aired on the eve of presidential elections in December 2011.
Egyptians used to grow nearly all their own food. Today, the country relies on imports. The people on the street aren’t happy.
Anger over food prices helped contribute to the toppling of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Through the story of one migrant family, we explore how displaced farmers, angry about agricultural policies that favor “crony capitalists,” now struggle to put food on the table.
Reporter: Sandy Tolan
Producer: Charlotte Buchen
Senior Producer: David Ritsher
Executive Producer: Sharon Tiller
Production Assistant: Mary Jirmanus
Camera: Charlotte Buchen
Editor: Charlotte Buchen
Local Fixer: Madiha Kassem
Additional field translation: Magdy Kassem
Nearly every prescription for feeding the world says we need to invest more money in science. What’s that money going to get us?
The sorting room at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico. The center ships experimental grain to plant breeders around the world at no cost. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
Nearly every prescription for feeding the world says we need to invest more money in science. What’s that money going to get us?
In this story we travel to Mexico, birthplace of the Green Revolution, where international scientists are working on a wide range of interventions, from hardier crop varieties to better ways to manage the soil. And we go into the field with a Mexican scientist whose grassroots work aims to put the knowledge of millions of farmers to work on improving yields.
