May 16th, 2013

Water and agriculture in a changing Africa: What might be done?

Join us for our final Global Food Policy and Food Security symposium Thursday, May 23. John Briscoe, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Environmental Engineering at Harvard University will lead a lecture on water and agriculture in a changing Africa. FSE fellow Jennifer Burney will provide commentary.

• » Water and agriculture in a changing Africa: What might be done?
  
• » Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series

April 24th, 2013

Stagnation to modernization: How agriculture vitalized China's economy

Over the last thirty years, China’s rural income per capita has risen an astounding 20 times. Millions have been lifted out of poverty and have moved from the rural sector to China's thriving big cities. China expert Scott Rozelle credits this remarkable growth to the government's decision to put land in the hands of farmers, deregulate markets, and heavily invest in the agricultural sector. Read more »

February 13th, 2013

Debating the future of food in Africa

Africa owns 60% of the world’s uncultivated land suited for crop production, but accounts for 30% of the world’s malnourished and only 3% of global agricultural exports. If there is one thing global agricultural policy experts Paul Collier and Derek Byerlee can agree on, it’s that Africa’s food system is struggling. Read more »

October 19th, 2012

There is no food security without health and nutrition

Expanding food production and even alleviating poverty does not guarantee food security, health and nutrition. Food and nutrition policy expert Per Pinstrup-Andersen looks at the linkages between food systems and global health and nutrition at last week's Global Food Policy and Food Security symposium series. Read more »

May 14th, 2012

Stanford researchers question whether biofuel is the answer to U.S. energy independence

For the last four years, the costs of corn and crude oil have been intimately linked, and it was this relationship that Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment addressed in a panel discussion last month.

• » Biofuels: The changing nature of agricultural demand
  
• » Peninsula Press article

May 12th, 2012

An optimistic Indian future depends on a strong rural economy

Despite accelerating economic growth in India over the last thirty years, India’s structural transformation remains stunted, said economist Hans Binswanger-Mkhize at a May 10 FSE symposium on global food policy and food security. Improving rural incomes and supporting agricultural growth is essential to decreasing poverty and unemployment in India now and in the future. Read more »

April 19th, 2012

Biofuels have mixed impacts on food security

In the first decade of the 21st century, global production of ethanol and biodiesel increased nearly tenfold. If that trend continues, says Rosamond L. Naylor, director of Stanford University’s Center on Food Security and the Environment, national biofuels policies will have an increasingly powerful impact on food prices, food security, energy security, and rural incomes in the developing world. Read more »