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Hilal Elver is the third UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. Will she have sufficient clout to contribute to the transition towards a more sustainable food system?

In his 1963 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the late US president John F. Kennedy expressed two ambitions for that decade: to commit to a manned moon mission and to end world poverty and hunger. On 21 July 1969, Apollo 11 landed on…

The idea that there is a “land grab” taking place in developing nations began with the publication of a report,Seized!, by the NGO Grain. This rang an alarm bell about large-scale land acquisitions – particularly by a number of Asian countries and…

The recently published F&BKP report on food wastage shows that a significant decline in food wastage will not automatically improve food security. There may be a positive impact on resource efficiency and general food availability in the…

Treating food as a purely private good is denying millions of people access to this basic resource. Food should therefore be seen as a commons or public good. It could then be produced and distributed more effectively by a governance system combin…

If one message should be taken from the European Development Days it is that the world will not be able to tackle its many future economic, social and ecological challenges without sustainable development partnerships.

Foreign direct investment can become a catalyst for modernizing Africa’s low-technology subsistence agriculture if it is placed within a broader national strategy on rural development that gives priority to improving the productivity of local farm…

A new system is needed for global governance, in which there is harmony and balance between shared values.

A group of innovative organic farmers in the Netherlands want to change the Dutch export model of farming.

Halving extreme poverty and hunger is the aim of Millennium Development Goal one. Although this goal is in reach, feeding a growing world population with good quality food remains a major challenge. Especially if you take into account climate chan…

To feed the world’s growing population in a sustainable and inclusive way with good quality food is one of the main tasks for our time. The solution lies partly at the local level: the livelihoods, and the cultural, socioeconomic, and environmenta…

To achieve maximum impact on food and nutrition security, knowledge and research policy should focus on local agriculture and food sectors. This means including small-scale farmers in regional food chains as well as making investments in the food…

After our three-month debate on food security, the report with the main findings and recommendations is online. Over 90 international experts helped determine key challenges and offered answers on how a knowledge-based policy can tackle global foo…

Public private partnerships (PPPs) have become important means to pursue complex development goals, such as sustainability and food security. Recent examples include the German Initiative for Agribusiness and Food Security (GIAF) and the…

Improving market access, linking farmers to markets, developing inclusive value chains; these are popular but challenging activities among development practitioners. The challenges results from the limited capabilities of (small) farmers to produc…

Northern donors are more and more working on technical fixes to solve problems of malnutrition mainly in close co-operation with the food industry. Though this will not solve the causes that lead to malnutrition.

The right approach to solve food insecurity is a holistic approach, because otherwise you are likely to end up with large quantities of food lying around and rotting in the villages. 

New initiatives based on horizontally structured partnerships for rural development are more equal forms of rural development than traditional PPPs.

A new kind of entrepreneurs, capable to bet on innovation as a social and cultural shared practice to drive change, is needed for food and nutrition security. Some reflections from Latin America.

Many small-scale farmers look for opportunities out of agriculture. The only way by doing this without increasing their food insecurity is rural employment. Farmer organisations can help, to spur up specialisation.

The EU biofuels policy has missed it change to mitigate global inequality. Instead, it has negative impacts on food security, poverty eradication and the climate.

Corridors and their use of PPPs do seem to offer a range of opportunities – the challenge is to put in place policies that ensure the benefits are spread more widely.

The EU’s renewable energy policy, that brace food-based biofuels, is at the expense of food security, poverty eradication and the climate.

A top-down approach is unlikely to face the challenges of seasonal and poorly developed rural food markets. 

The role of small scale capture fisheries in rural livelihood, trade and food security remains critically unrecognized in development and poverty reduction approaches.

Organic farms in Africa, Asia and Latin America proved to generate higher yields, reduced labour costs, more variety in livestock, and more food security for small farmers.

More guidelines on food security include the Right to Food. At the same time donors and governments heavily support private sector development to increase agricultural investment and growth. The focus should be kept on smallholder farmers. 

Research showed that food security intervention in Ethiopia succeeds in improving food security and reducing poverty in rural areas. Preconditions for success include households’ asset ownership and improving alternative sources of income.

The Broker started several online debates on the Agri-Hub Forums in Rwanda and Uganda and on different LinkedIn Groups. Read here the update of what happens on these online platforms.

In the four weeks since the food security debate started, international researchers, politicians, practitioners and entrepreneurs have fed the debate from many angles. They have shed light on what should be key strategies, and what should not be o…

Land grab is rarely challenged through a food security and food sovereignty perspective in research and policy elaboration, in spite of its multifarious impact on both of such key dimensions of human livelihood. 

It is crucial to be aware of deeply-rooted gender structures and to create gender-equity in land tenure, in order to guarentee both water and food security.

It is crucial to be aware of deeply-rooted gender structures and to create gender-equity in land tenure, in order to guarentee both water and food security.

Investing in the domestic agricultural and food sector automatically means investing in domestic entrepreneurship, in the development of local SMEs and in strengthening national economic and innovative capacities.

Africa has the potential to be an agricultural power. However, the components of the value chain are delinked from one another, and there is a lack of creative investments, which could have spark-plug and catalytic effects on rural lives.

Food security is about making the right choices for food insecure people. Many interventions have had an impact on these people’s lives, but with significant differences in costs and benefits.

Some African countries show that agricultural productivity and, thus, economic growth can increase significantly as access to knowledge improves and capacity strengthening activities are promoted, writes Myra Wopereis-Pura.

Fan Shenggen writes about advancing global food and nutrition security through an integrated approach with new players.

Food security is back on the political agenda. In recent years some important reports were published, of which a lot make references to the mulitdisciplinary task to secure good quality of food and nutrition for the growing world population. If yo…

Fantahun Wakie Birhanu observes that food security is locked into the function of global trade and profit-making. The solution is de-commoditized food to achieve truly sustainable food security at global level.

Urban agriculture is a priority strategy in tackling challenges to feeding the world’s population, regarding Diana Lee-Smith.

Feeding growing urban communities with healthy nutritious food may sound challenging but offers a tremendous opportunity for intra-regional trade, writes Ian Sayers.

New actors in the food security debate are communication specialists and software developers who are necessary for innovative ways to ensure that information reaches farmers and villages, says Bruce Campbell.

This consultation on food security should shed light on who are the key and new actors in the global food security debate and how can they be better included? Does existing knowledge exchange increase innovative capacity?  

Dutch food security policy builds on the expertise and knowledge of an active public and private agri-sector to enhance Dutch and global development through partnership.

The Broker dossier on food security is an interactive platform with the aim of publishing and debating innovative ways to secure good quality food and nutrition. It also identifies new actors in the food security debate and looks at how knowledge…

Experts will debate tough questions on how to feed the world’s population. It shed light on how effectively global knowledge and expertise on food security are being used.

This blogpost is about the master class Agriculture Beyond Food that took place the first week of December in Indonesia. One of the main challenges discussed is how to choose for the food and fuel option, rather than food or fuel. 

De contouren van het nieuwe kennisbeleid voor OS zijn vastgesteld en de details zullen de komende maanden worden uitgewerkt.

Ten eerste ben ik blij met het heroverwegen van het kennisbeleid door DGIS en het opengooien van het debat zelf. Dit vooropgesteld. Ik denk dat er mooie kansen liggen, als verschillende kennisinstellingen, ministeries en het bedrijfsleven kunnen s…

“Wie niet sterk is moet slim zijn”, dat is volgens mij voor DGIS de kern van het WRR-rapport “Minder pretentie, meer ambitie”. Slim zijn in het omgaan met schaarse middelen, maar ook beseffen hoe een klein en van het buitenland afhankeli…

Ik zie inderdaad het nut in van een kennisplatform dat zich richt op water en ontwikkelinghulp. Mijn verhaal heeft betrekking op waterbeheer en bescherming tegen overstromingen. Niet op drinkwatervoorziening en afvalwater behandeling.Zo’n 6000 jaa…

Het feit dat minister Uri Rosenthal en staatssecretaris Ben Knapen van Buitenlandse Zaken vijf kennisplatforms willen instellen waaronder een kennisplatform voedselzekerheid is zeer positief. Immers het is zeer verstandig om in het buitenlandbelei…

Dit is de blog over het voorgenomen kennisbeleid van BuZa. Laat je mening horen!

Susan George, (2010), “Whose Crisis, Whose Future? Towards a Greener, Fairer, Richer World”, Polity Press, Cambridge. The book is published as well in French and Spanish, see details below. Here is a book that attempts to explain how high finances…

The global ‘It’s Down 2 Earth’ conference on agriculture, food security and climate change was held in The Hague, the Netherlands, from 31 October to 5 November 2010. The Broker hosted an online discussion blog where participants agreed that agric…

I have had some trouble visualising what a degrowth future could actually look like. Yesterday Richard Register from the NGO EcoCity Builders, helped me out. The title of the session was ‘making it real. Practical transformations towards degr…

 Ellie Perkins of York University talks to Louise Stoddard about the possibilities for greener cities.