The role of earthworms in sustainable agriculture
Sustainable agriculture means the production of food from plants or animals using different agricultural techniques that protect communities, the environment, and animal welfare. The extensive use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers to boost crop yields may have resulted in good yields and productivity, but it has caused the efficiency of the soil to deteriorate throughout the world day-by-day.…
The Bugs Are Coming, and They’ll Want More of Our Food
Reblogged from The New York Times Climate change is expected to make insect pests hungrier, which could encourage farmers to use more pesticides. Ever since humans learned to wrest food from soil, creatures like the corn earworm, the grain weevil and the bean fly have dined on our agricultural bounty. Worldwide, insect pests consume up to…
Future-proofing partnerships
The recent International Congress of Plant Pathology (ICPP) in Boston brought together members of the plant health community from all over the world. Large events are a great place to forge new relationships, strengthen existing ones, or simply get everyone together in one place. The importance of working together is always emphasised when all corners…
Test your plant health knowledge with the plant doctor quiz
Plantwise plant doctors are at the heart of our plant clinic network providing advice and information to farmers, logging their data for the Plantwise Knowledge Bank, and always adapting to new outbreaks and technologies. Think you’ve got what it takes to be a plant doctor? Take our online quiz and find out!
Does gender affect how farmers use rural advisory services?
In an article recently published in The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension, CABI authors set out to discover more about gender differences in access to rural agricultural information. The research was undertaken in Pakistan and found major gender differences regarding use and preference of agricultural information in relation age and literacy.
Investing in smallholder farmers for a food-secure future
Smallholder farmers provide the vast majority of the world’s food supply, and ‘small-scale farming’ is the largest occupation group of economically active people, 43% of which are women. Approximately 2 billion of the world’s poorest live in households that depend on agriculture in some form for their livelihoods, whether this is for market or subsistence.…