The Burness Effect Blog

Bamboo Charcoal: A Sustainable Energy Source for Africa

When we think of bamboo, we rarely think of Africa. Though most of us know the plant as panda food or as the backdrop of Chinese movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, it is also a source of alternative energy that can combat soil degradation and massive deforestation in Africa.

Arctic Seed Vault Receives Seeds from Syria, Trendy Amaranth and Barley, Plus High Altitude Wheat

The Global Crop Diversity Trust, a Burness client, maintains the seed vault in partnership with the Norwegian government and the Nordic Genetic Resources Center, as a back-up to the living crop diversity collections housed in “genebanks” around the world. “The incredible range and importance of the seeds that have been sent here this week for safekeeping provide vivid examples of why we need to carefully collect and preserve our planet’s crop diversity,” said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

Food and Farming at the Heart of Climate Discussion

Last week, a group of 14 international agriculture experts from around the world wrote an opinion piece in Science magazine urging the scientific community to address the importance of agriculture in the climate change debate.

Safe Farming: No More Praying for Rain

Traditional crop insurance relies on farm visits, a proposition which doesn’t add up for small farmers. Kilimo Salama uses creative, low-cost methods, such as weather stations and mobile money transfers, to remotely determine whether weather conditions justify a payout for farmers.

Insurance Payouts Help Herders Rebuild After Massive Livestock Losses

Around 650 herders in Northern Kenya signed up for insurance policies to protect them and their livestock investments from drought losses. At a time when global attention for the worst drought in half a century has waned, nearly all were compensated.

The Crisis of Withering Wheat and the Need for Crop Biodiversity

Roughly 90 percent of the world’s wheat varieties are defenseless against a virulent, fast-moving strain of stem rust fungus that is ravaging crops in parts of Africa, drifting into the Middle East and could soon threaten the breadbaskets of India and Pakistan. A key weapon in fighting the disease is crop diversity.

In Kenya, the M-Kilimo helpline has given agricultural advice to nearly 25,000 farmers during its 18- month pilot phase. The project, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the GSMA and managed by KenCall in Nairobi, uses a mobile helpline to provide thousands of small holder farmers in Kenya with specific, timely and accurate information, as well as tips to help increase their incomes and farm productivity.

How will the world feed 9 billion people? In a nine-part special report, The Economist’s John Parker scrutinizes the multi-faceted challenges facing the expansion of the global food supply—from science to culture to policy—and explores the seeds of solutions to … Continue reading The Economist: Special Report on Feeding the World →

“Today, 1.4 billion people around the world live in extreme poverty. Many of them are women and children. Most of them are farmers.” That’s World Bank President Robert Zoellick in a video address to the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), an unprecedented gathering in Montpellier, France that brought together researchers, policymakers, farmers, donors, and members of civil society from every region of the world.