Opinions

Agriculture will drive Africa’s rise to economic power

by Agnes Kalibata The Guardian June 3, 2015

I was in Mali recently where I met a woman, Maimouna Coulibaly, who several years ago left her job in the United States and returned to her home country to start a seed company called Faso Kaba. She quickly and confidently ramped up production, from 100 tons per year to over 1,000. She is eager to k...

Fear of almonds

by Mark Bittman New York Times June 3, 2015

I can’t tell you how many times in the last month someone has come up to me and said something like, “Do you think I should stop eating almonds?” or “I really miss almond butter, but I just can’t bring myself to buy it anymore.”...

Increased agricultural research investment needed to meet future food demand

by Chicago Council on Global Affairs May 20, 2015

A new Chicago Council report, Leveraging Innovation to Feed the Future, says that innovation will be essential to meeting future food needs driven by urbanization and population growth, especially in the face of rising temperatures, resource scarcity, and the increasing volatility of climate events....

Wasting the savanna

by Tim Searchinger and Lyndon Estes Washington Post May 9, 2015

In recent years, as governments have begun to protect tropical forests because of the carbon they store, other vast tropical ecosystems have come under increasing threat. These are the wet savannas, which have a mix of grasses, trees and shrubs and receive enough rainfall to grow crops....

Let’s make food issues real

by Mark Bittman New York Times May 6, 2015

There is some talk about the food movement’s winning. I’m not even sure such a thing as a food movement exists....

Paul Ryan loves talking about poverty, but he keeps getting the basic facts wrong

by Dylan Matthews Vox May 5, 2015

is back to talking about poverty, taking to CBS's Face the Nation this past weekend to lay out his plans for tackling it. Some of his ideas on the topic are worthwhile — he's right that the Earned Income Tax Credit needs to be increased — and the fact that a major national politician has taken ...

The Global Food Security Act of 2015: What it is and why it matters

by Grace Burton and Louise Iverson Chicago Council on Global Affairs April 29, 2015

On April 23, the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously voted the amended Global Food Security Act of 2015 (H.R. 1567) out of Committee. Co-sponsored by 10 Democrats and 11 Republicans, the legislation is an effort to ensure the future of programmatic funding for food security efforts....

What Kansas gets wrong when it tries to control what poor people can do with welfare

by Emily Badger Washington Post April 17, 2015

Poverty looks pretty great if you're not living in it. The government gives you free money to spend on steak and lobster, on tattoos and spa days, on — why not? — cruise vacations and psychic visits....

Americans are spending $153 billion a year to subsidize McDonald’s and Wal-Mart’s low wage workers

by Ken Jacobs Washington Post April 15, 2015

The low wages paid by businesses, including some of the largest and most profitable companies in the U.S. – like McDonald’s and Wal-Mart – are costing taxpayers nearly $153 billion a year....

Unraveling the enigma of South Asian malnutrition

by Lawrence Haddad International Food Policy Research Institute April 14, 2015

The following post by IFPRI senior researcher Lawrence Haddad is part of an ongoing series of blog stories celebrating IFPRI’s 40th anniversary. Each story authored by current and former IFPRI research staff highlights a key research topic through the years from the personal perspective of the res...

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  • For the past 40 years, since its founding in 1976, the mission of World Hunger Education Service is to undertake programs, including Hunger Notes, that
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