By Professor Pete Smith, Professor of Soils and Global Change, University of Aberdeen We are nowhere near to achieving the Paris Agreement targets to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C, according to this week’s new IPCC report. Unless the world reduces emissions at a rapid rate, we’ll likely shoot past our remaining carbon budget to …
The ability to grow crops to provide food for your family, or for sale, depends directly on soil health – the ability of soils to retain water and to supply the essential nutrients required for plant growth and human nutrition. However, with increasing pressures from a growing population, intensive agricultural practices and climate change, soil …
Migratory crop pests such as desert locusts, fall armyworms and red-billed queleas are threatening food security across Africa. Both commercial and subsistence farmers can suffer huge losses, but so far, years of work has not yet managed to curtail the impacts of migratory pests. Unfortunately their combination of high mobility and high abundance due to …
The GCRF AFRICAP programme is coming to an end in March 2022. Helen Coskeran who worked as programme support officer from 2018 to 2020 before taking over as programme manager reflects on what she has learnt during this process. AFRICAP is the largest GCRF grant led by the University of Leeds. Even for an institution …
Stephen Whitfield attended COP26 and presented his ideas on transformation on food systems. In this excerpt from an article originally published on the University of Leeds site, he highlights the work done in this field and the long road ahead: Agriculture has risen the UNFCCC agenda in recent years, perhaps catalysed, to some extent, by …