Women farmers in Africa produce over 60 percent of all food crops. CIMMYT (flickr)

Women comprise 43 percent of the world’s farmers. In Africa, it’s 80 percent. Women plant, harvest, process and sell their crops, but men continue to dominate agricultural science and research. This may be about to change.

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) is trying to close the R&D gender gap. Their program fast-tracks female science careers in agriculture, empowering them to contribute more effectively to hunger and poverty alleviation in their own communities - a model that could be replicated internationally.

Although African women produce 60 to 80 percent of food crops, they receive significantly less (5% as of 2008) of the agricultural training and tools available to men, says the United Nations. A 2010-2011 research report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization shows that women could produce 20-30 percent more if they had equal access. This creates a subsequent increase in household income, health, and community food supply. The East Africa Report emphasizes that research is also pivotal in fostering innovation. Without a seat at the table, women cannot influence practices. Who better to innovate than the farmers themselves?

View of the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region. Photo: Justin Cruanes

My cab driver was yelling something that sounded like "khows, khows!" I hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about until I saw the spotted figures in the distance and realized he was saying "cows."

I had asked the driver what people in the area do for a living. "Livestock agriculture," he said. We chatted a bit in what little words we had in common as I made my way to visit some Mercy Corps programs in the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region.

Sapara Monastery. Photo: Justin Cruanes

In Georgia, cows are something worth shouting about. Particularly in the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region, where agriculture is the main economic activity. However, 67 percent of the population lives in poverty and farmers struggle due to ethnic discrimination, small production capabilities, low quality goods and an inability to participate in market activities. Having 20 cows on hand makes little difference when you have no place to properly refrigerate the milk they produce. Furthermore, if farmers can’t store milk, they can’t age cheese, and fresh cheese is of much lower value than if let to age a bit.

The Mercy Corps programs train community leaders and small-scale livestock producers in improving business practices, animal care, food safety, hygiene and budgeting. Instead of supplying farmers with short-term solutions (such as handing them cattle and equipment), the projects are working to permanently improve weaker parts of the production chain — greasing the production chain without becoming a part of it. The programs are doing this through several means: improving accessibility and transport of goods, increasing the transparency of the market and creating an environment where these measures can eventually sustain themselves.

Sapara Barn. Photo: Justin Cruanes

My first order of business was to check out the Sapara Monastery, where the Mercy Corps is working with local community leaders to improve the capacity of the monks' barn. At the moment, the barn can only hold about five to seven cattle. The program is helping to double their barn’s capacity, enough to accommodate 12 to 14 cattle.

Most of the milk produced in the region is used to make cheese, but the farmers have been without a means to store it. Instead, they sell directly to the market for a low price. Mercy Corps has helped renovate a former Soviet cheese storage facility for local use. This new facility lets farmers allow their cheese to mature so it can be sold later for increased profits.

Tractor shop. Photo: Justin Cruanes

Afterwards, we made our way to the town’s tractor supplier, where the program has set up links between farmers and the shop. We arrived just in time to witness the purchase of a tractor by a local farmer. The program supplies farmers with about 30 percent of the funds needed to purchase tractors.

Eventually we made our way to the office, where Mercy Corps Program Director for Georgia, Davidson Highfill, highlighted the program's work to improve "market visibility" by feeding databases of price statistics to farmers.

The Mercy Corps programs in the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region are working from several different angles to improve the livelihood of many small-scale farmers. From the construction of milk storage facilities to access to important market information, these programs are supplying the means for long term improvements for the farming community and it's "khows."

Although Pakistani women have generally been excluded from land ownership, flood recovery is prompting the government to take action. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

Severe weather has proven to be a catalyst for women’s rights in rural Pakistan.

In July 2010, floods submerged nearly one-fifth of Pakistan, washing away cattle, infrastructure, and over 2 million hectares of crops. In a feudal country where landlords have strong influence, landless farmers face great difficulty in recovering their livelihoods. Because landlords have so much power, farmers have been forced to pay high interest rates while receiving small returns from crops. This system places many into a constant cycle of debt.

To help rural families overcome this debt, the provincial government of Sindh has recovered 95,000 acres of its own land from the flood, distributing it to roughly 5,800 peasants. In an effort to target gender inequality, the government will allot another 92,000 acres solely to women.

While women are legally allowed to own land, Pakistan’s social obstacles have discouraged women from realizing these rights. In 2008, the Sindh government launched an initiative to advance the legal rights of women through land distribution. It would have been an important step in addressing gender inequality — but male opposition largely prevented the project from moving forward.

Now, Pakistan is trying again. Although women have generally been excluded from land ownership, flood recovery is prompting the government to take action. Equitable land distribution, the government and farmers hope, will allow more families to pay off their debts.

Despite Pakistan’s unsuccessful 2008 initiative, this new effort is showing hints of success.

“People realize they are receiving this because of the women,” Amil Khan, a spokesman from the charity Oxfam, explained to the Christian Science Monitor. As families receive the opportunity to achieve economic independence and a real prospect of debt relief, goals of shifting attitudes towards women don’t seem far off.

Although women’s rights remain controversial within a male-dominated society, the government may be learning from its disappointing 2008 failure to empower women. Hopefully this time around, Pakistan will successfully deliver greater economic opportunity to the country’s women, particularly during this vital time of recovery.

At Green School in rural Bali, K-12 students learn not only the staples of a traditional education — reading, writing and arithmetic — but also how to grow organic rice and build with sustainably produced bamboo. Students from the local community, as well as around the world come to receive a "green education." The holistic approach taken by the teachers is intended to develop the "whole person" in students, and helps them adopt a more responsible and sustainable lifestyle, Green School founder and Principal John Hardy explains in his TED talk.

Green school is a place of pioneers — local and global, and it’s a kind of microcosm of the globalized world. The kids are from 25 countries. When I see them together I know they’re working out how to live in the future.

In John Hardy's TED talk below he shares his inspiration for Green School, and what he sees for the school's future.

Haitians load bags of food donated by the United States onto a truck for distribution to earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince after the January earthquake. Photo: Jenny Vaughan/Mercy Corps

In Haiti, rice is king. It’s consumed at every meal and forms an important source of income for many people — wholesalers, street vendors, and farmers. But the January earthquake has left the rice market in shambles.

Cheap rice from the United States made up about 80 percent of all rice in Haiti before the earthquake. But Haiti’s ports were damaged by the earthquake and could only receive a fraction of the shipments they used to. Shipments of military and humanitarian supplies were prioritized above commercial shipments of rice, which led to rice shortages and huge price increases that many people couldn’t afford.

Foreign aid flowed in to make up the difference, but this has long-term consequences for Haiti's food supply chain, says NPR. Most people get their rice from street vendors, who get theirs from mini-wholesalers. These wholesalers buy from larger wholesalers, who buy imported rice. But the influx of donated rice means that many people have flat-out stopped buying rice.

The situation has become especially dire for the street vendors and mini-wholesalers. The large wholesalers have access to credit to help them survive the crisis, but small businesses aren’t so lucky, as NPR and Frontline explain in this video.

As commercial rice imports start to flow back into Haiti and supply increases, rice has become cheaper than it was before the earthquake. The plunge in prices is forcing rural farmers to choose between eating the rice that they grow and selling it to pay school fees for their children. To make matters worse, the rice-growing regions are largely outside the earthquake zone, where foreign food aid isn't being distributed. As a result, many farmers are going hungry to send their kids to school.

So what are aid groups doing to solve the free rice problem? Now that the rice supply is beginning to stabilize, the World Food Programme has begun distributing cash or vouchers that can be redeemed for rice. In the Frontline video, WFP analyst Ceren Gurken said that the voucher program was in the works; it has been implemented since the video was filmed. Because the WFP pays street vendors for the rice, who pay that money back up the supply chain, the economy gets a chance to recover. At present, it doesn't look like farmers are being included in the program, though that may change.

Sure, the vouchers have their downsides — hand out too many and demand spikes, bringing sky-high prices — but for now, they’re the best way for aid groups to make sure that Haiti’s food supply chain stays connected. If it breaks, there could be a whole new disaster.

After two boom years, The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. agricultural sector is expecting this year's profits to be below the 10-year average.

Many African countries, like Madagascar pictured here, are increasingly leasing land to foreign firms, but critics argue the deals are exploitative. Photo: goukley (flickr)

A million hectares in Uganda. Some 690,000 hectares in Sudan. And 500,000 hectares in Tanzania. These are just a few of the numbers that have appeared on the bargaining table in the past year as foreign firms scramble for land leases in Africa.

The Independent takes a look at the phenomenon known as "land grabbing," or the recent trend of foreign governments and corporations leasing or purchasing large swaths of land in poorer countries to grow food or other crops for export back to their home country. The phenomenon is most prevalent in Africa, but leases have been sought elsewhere, including the Philippines and Pakistan.

[The sudden increase in "land grabbing"] has its roots in the food crisis of 2007/8, when prices of rice, wheat and other cereals skyrocketed across the world, triggering riots from Haiti to Senegal. The price spike also led food-growing countries to slap export tariffs on staple crops to minimize the amounts that left their countries. That tightened the supply still further, meaning food prices were driven up more by a situation of policy-created scarcity than by supply and demand.

This situation also made many rich countries that are reliant on massive food imports question one of the fundamentals of the global economy: the idea that every country should concentrate on its best products and then trade. Suddenly having unimaginable quantities of cash from oil was not enough to guarantee you all the food you needed. The oil sheikhs of the Gulf states found that food imports had doubled in cost over less than five years. In the future it might get even worse. You could no longer rely on regional and global markets, they concluded. The rush to grab land began.

Investors say they will bring needed infrastructure, technology and employment, but in some cases, these investments have been met with resistance. Riots erupted earlier this year in Madagascar, where almost half the children under age five don't get enough to eat. The riots were driven in part by the news that the government had given South Korean firm Daewoo a 99 year lease over 1.3 million hectares of land. On an area amounting to half the island's arable land, Daewoo planned to grow maize and palm oil solely for export to South Korea. The deal fell through when the riots forced the president, Marc Ravalomanana, out of office, BBC News reports.

Nevertheless, land grabbing is poised to continue at a rapid pace, according to The Independent:

The government of President Ravalomanana became the first in the world to be toppled because of what the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization recently described as "land grabbing." The Daewoo deal is only one of more than 100 land deals which have, over the past 12 months, seen massive tracts of cultivable farmland across the globe bought up by wealthy countries and international corporations. The phenomenon is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe's farmland targeted in just the past six months.

Critics question the truthfulness of the investors' promises. The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf, warned that land grabbing is simply neo-colonialism, and Africa will again be exploited for its resources while seeing little direct revenue.

The Independent offers an analogy from international development policy consultant Mark Weston for understanding the current nature of the leases and what makes them magnets for controversy:

Imagine if China, following a brief negotiation with a British government desperate for foreign cash after the collapse of the economy, bought up the whole of Wales, replaced most of its inhabitants with Chinese workers, turned the entire country into an enormous rice field, and sent all the rice produced there for the next 99 years back to China.

Imagine that neither the evicted Welsh nor the rest of the British public knew what they were getting in return for this, having to content themselves with vague promises that the new landlords would upgrade a few ports and roads and create jobs for local people.

Land grabbing is just one aspect of the current discussion about agricultural development in Africa. When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Kenya earlier this month she voiced interest in Africa's agricultural potential: "More and more, the world will look to Africa to be its breadbasket, and I hope that when the world looks ... it is Africans and African farmers who will profit from becoming the world's breadbasket."

The U.S. farming industry has taken quite a hit recently.

Just a year ago, prices were reaching record-breaking highs. But the food-price boom has been followed by a bust, and for many farmers it's costing them more to run their farms than they are actually making by selling their crops, reports CNN.

Jimmy Wayne Kinder, a fourth-generation farmer in Oklahoma, lamented about crop prices to the New York Times. “The market says, ‘Here’s the price. You want to make any money, get below it.'" Jimmy's story is part of a New York Times series called "The Food Chain," which allows you to examine the shifting changes in global demand and actual food production through articles, video and slideshows.

Around 22 percent of the Brazilian Amazon is owned by various Indian tribes. Photo: leoffreitas (flickr)

The fate of the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, hangs in the balance. In the coming weeks, Brazil’s Supreme Court will hear a case that will set a major precedent and shape the country's policy with respect to development in the Amazon and the rights of the forest's Indian tribes.

The case centers around the territory of Raposa Serra do Sol, which is located in the northeastern Brazilian state of Roraima. Raposa Serra do Sol is home to 18,000 Indians from the Macuxi, Ingarico, Patamona, Wapixana and Taurpeng tribes. In 2005, this territory was declared a reservation site for indigenous tribes.

The conflict has quickly escalated in this region as some Brazilians have refused to leave the area, claiming their right to develop the land. Specifically, some of the local rice farmers have resorted to violence in order to keep their farms. The situation is quickly deteriorating and the Supreme Court warns that the conflict could soon turn into a civil war. The court will soon decide if the government can legally continue to evict the rice farmers.

The rice farmers argue that it is not right for the government to evict people from their own land and to stop Brazilians from developing this rich area. About 12 percent of Brazil’s precious land has already been given to the various indigenous peoples. They argue that Brazilian land should be used for the betterment of Brazilians. Especially with the world food crisis, expanding Brazil’s agricultural sector into this region could greatly help the poor afford food and help the expand the local economy through much-needed jobs.

The tribes and their supporters, however, argue that their concerns outweigh the settlers’ economic reasoning. As the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon plays a major role in the environment. The forest is a climate regulator that affects rainfall in Brazil and Argentina and, some claim, even in Europe and North America. The preservation of its trees is pivotal in the fight against global warming. Already the cutting and burning of Amazonian trees account for about half of the world’s green-house gas emissions from deforestation. If Brazilians are allowed to develop this land, not only will they be kicking the Indians out of their ancestral homes, but they will also be severely hurting the already-precarious environment.

Eating bugs is already a common practice in over 13 countries. Photo: Vilhelm Sjostrom (flickr)

Scientists are jumping on an underutilized protein source that is abundant and environmentally friendly.

Sounds great — until you realize that what the scientists from National Autonomous University of Mexico are suggesting is dining on insects.

Entomophagy, or eating bugs, is already a common practice in over 13 countries, including Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, according to this week's Economist.

And what better then bugs? Gram for gram, bugs provide more nutrients than beef or fish.

And while the Food and Agriculture Organization at the United Nations considers livestock “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global,” bug farming is a low-impact process.

Khon Kaen University in Thailand has already developed an inexpensive cricket-rearing technique and taught it to 4,500 families. On just a 100 square feet of land, a family can raise enough crickets to make a tidy profit. Or they can even be “grown” inside homes. Because bugs are a crop that doesn’t require much food or water, grows and reproduces quickly, the yield can be incredible.

The Mexican university researchers themselves cite numerous reasons for insect eating: the 75 percent rise in some food prices, the additional 100 million people pushed into poverty, and global warming as reasons to shift to these more sustainable sources of protein.

Of course, there are perils to introducing new species of insects to areas. And there are those who just plain won’t eat bugs.

A more palatable option suggested by the Economist might be to replace supplements in processed food or animal feed with insect-derived protein, which would still help make carnivorous habits a little more sustainable.