Food

Encouraging youth to pursue farming may be the answer to both unemployment issues and fading crop yields. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gatesfoundation/5075935331/in/photostream/">Gates Foundation (Flickr)</a>

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Youth Skills

Rural youth seek greener pastures in the city, but farming could get hot

Even on the farm, it pays to be young, but every year, young people are "escaping" their hometown rural communities to seek the "greener pastures" of city life. Meanwhile, global buyers of commodities such as coffee and cocoa beans worry about the aging farming workforce.

Kenyan dairy farmers using iCow saw an increase in profits and milk production. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gatesfoundation/6775839248/">Gates Foundation (flickr)</a>

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In Kenya, a mobile dairy app drives profits skyward

A relatively new mobile app has helped dairy farmers in Kenya increase their profits by 42 percent.

Koblah Agbeta holds up rice seeds from his farm in Abutia Kpota, Ghana. Quality seeds are critical for a good harvest. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/48639212@N02/4775000120/">Gates Foundation (Flickr)</a>

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Value Chains

GMO wars should take back seat to other farm issues, says DuPoint Pioneer

A corporate seed manufacturer is suggesting that slowing the spread of genetically modified crops would be acceptable, if that's what it takes to keep industrializing Africa's farms.

Crops resilient to climate change are especially important to farmers in developing countries. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cimmyt/5210265334/">CIMMYT (Flickr)</a>.

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Value Chains

As climate becomes a moving target, 'virtual crops' aim for the future

Climate change is threatening crop survival. Some researchers believe the solution lies in "virtual crops."

Africa should be able to grow enough staples to feed itself. Why isn't it? <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/7826351630/sizes/z/in/photostream/">World Bank (Flickr)</a>

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Value Chains

How broken value chains prevent Africans from feeding Africa

Africa has plenty of rich agricultural land but millions of starving residents. The problem is that too much money is going to the wrong places along the way.

Left: Patricia Wolff, founder and executive director of Meds and Food for Kids. (Photo: MFK.) Right: Paul Farmer, founder and executive director of Partners in Health. (Photo: <a href="http://flic.kr/p/csKJu9">Nyaya Health, Flickr</a>.)

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Social Enterprise

Devil take the hindmost? Haiti peanut battle puts NGOs head to head

When antipoverty nonprofits compete, it's not always clear who will lose more: the one whose business is threatened, or the people both nonprofits set out to serve.

Filipino farmers plant rice. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/20119750@N00/2680751025/">Schubert Ciencia (Flickr)</a>

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Social Enterprise

On World Food Day, praise for a humble business structure: The co-op

For agriculture cooperatives, this year’s World Food Day has been a day in the sun.

Rainforest advocates in Indonesia. One thinker claims the modern environmental movement has played little role in staving off the catastrophes it predicted in the 1970s. Photo <a href="http://flic.kr/p/aaj1bD">Rainforest Action Network (Flickr)</a>

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Sustainable Energy

Don't panic, environmentalists: A richer world can be a better one

Forty years ago, a shocking report tagged economic growth as the catalyst for environmental collapse. Now, a new article claims the world's responses to that forecast failed to make things better.

A Jakarta street vendor sells fried tofu. Informally employed tofu and tempeh workers are a major force in Indonesia's economy. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tommyna/5311474069/in/photostream/">Tommy N. Armansyah (Flickr)</a>

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Better tofu and tempe labels give Indonesian food firms a reason to clean up their act

<a href="http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1105/african-farmers/flash.html">Infographic by GOOD in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. </a>

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INFOGRAPHIC: Better info, seeds, tools and storage - What any farmer needs to thrive

Falling into the "easier-said-than-done" infographic category, The Gates Foundation and GOOD do have a point: straightforward solutions can often yield high returns.

With just a few simple materials, a community can map boundaries and see how they fit within the larger city. Photo courtesy "Design With the Other 90%: CITIES"

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Portland hosts the West Coast Premier of "Design With the Other 90%: CITIES"

Of the world’s 7 billion people, 1 billion now live in urban slums.

As the world gets richer, competition for resources like water and livestock will likely increase. Photo: Erin Gray for MercyCorps

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Extreme poverty could end by 2030, but the planet might pay for it

The world’s soaring wealth will nearly wipe out poverty worldwide by 2030, according to the National Intelligence Council.

In Uganda, dairy farmers are on the hunt for affordable energy sources. One might be their own cows. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/59367690@N00/4157487541/">Neiljs (flickr)</a>

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A dung-powered milk chiller could power profit at small dairies

Warm milk spoils—and millions of the world's energy-poor rural farmers have no way to keep it cool.

If only the bovine digestive system also produced some sort of vast and seemingly endless flow of energy-rich sludge.

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TV makeover show shapes up East African agricultural economies

Edutainment company Mediae's latest recipe to revive rural livelihoods in Kenya mixes agricultural education and reality TV, with a pinch of celebrity and a dash of drama.

A child squeezes the last bit of Medika Mamba ("Peanut Butter Medicine") out of its wrapper. Photo: <a href="http://mfkhaiti.org/">Meds and Food for Kids.</a>

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'The only sustainable way to improve poverty is to educate and employ': 8 questions for Patricia Wolff

Over 23 years volunteering in Haiti, Dr. Patricia Wolff has seen the hemisphere's poorest country at its most hopeful and in its deepest despair.

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