Clustering to make a difference

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Claire Beverley from the Plantwise knowledge bank has been visiting Kenya, find out what she has been up to in her latest blog post! ———————————————————————————————————————————————————- I imagine there are few sights as breath-taking as the Rift Valley, so on Thursday I was pleased that we stopped for a few minutes on our way to Nakuru.…
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Shouting out about plant clinics

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Plantwise works with in-country agencies to set up plant clinics, which farmers can attend with a sample of their affected crops to obtain a diagnosis and treatment advice. Plant clinics are often run in larger towns or villages, and farmers can travel many miles to talk to a plant doctor to solve their crop problems.…
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Increasing Food Security and Empowering Women

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Efforts to help developing countries increase their food security and to empower women should be considered together as both are dependent on one another. The FAO has said that if women had the same resource access in agriculture as men then food output in developing countries would increase by enough to pull 100-150 million people…
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Do you like your coffee wilted?

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According to CABI’s Peter Baker at the recent ISEAL Conference the International coffee community may be failing farmers in providing them with support in adapting to upcoming climate risks. Changes in the climate can have dire consequences for farmers within developing countries. They can change the distribution ranges of insect pests, causing pests to migrate into…
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New global plant health resource to improve food security

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From the devastating Coffee Wilt Disease to the infectious Wheat Stripe Rust: for the first time ever, distribution maps, diagnostic support and treatment advice for thousands of the world’s most damaging pests and diseases of plants and crops are being made available free of charge on the new Plantwise website, www.plantwise.org, launched today. The Plantwise…
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Call for support for sustainable smallholder agriculture

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Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), last week called for a dramatic increase in support for sustainable agriculture, including smallholder farmers, as a way to drive green growth and reduce poverty. This is…
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Plant clinic planning underway

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Putting Plant Clinics to work Plantwise is already looking towards 2012 and is organising its resources in preparation to expand the numbers of plant clinics and countries in which they operate.  Delegates made up of CABI staff from all over the globe met up at the Swiss ski resort of Engelberg (23rd-28th May) to discuss…
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Plant Clinics boost fight against diseases and pests

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“Plant clinics boost fight against diseases, pests” – this was the title of a story that appeared in the newspaper Business Daily last week. It was one of many positive articles that were written after a group of journalists were taken to visit some Plant Clinics in Kenya. The article includes examples where the Plant…
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1000 new ‘Plant Doctors’ trained in Karnataka

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Nearly 1000 farmers in Karnataka are set to be trained as ‘Plant Doctors’ in a major programme funded by the Karnataka State Department of Agriculture and Bio-Control Research Laboratories (BCRL), part of Pest Control India Ltd. (PCI), and supported by CABI. By the end of March 2011 there will be enough trained plant health workers…
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Can science feed the world?

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This was the question posed by Nature’s Special recently. In other words, how can we feed the Earth’s growing population in such a way that no-one goes hungry and nature is left with some land and water of its own? Their answer can be broadly summed up by what Britain’s Royal Society call “sustainable intensification…
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