A worker dries coconuts on a roadside at the coastal region of Chellanam, about 30 km (19 miles) from the southern Indian city of Kochi. REUTERS/Sivaram V
E-Platform a Game-Changer of Country’s Agricultural Market
Krishne Gowda, a 27-year old farmer in India, grows coconut palms on three acres in a remote village in India. Thanks to the Unified Marketing Platform, a model initiative of his regional government, he is able to sell his produce online after browsing through prices quoted by traders, clicking the best price, and receiving payment. This platform is changing the lives of farmers like Gowda like no other venture, and it's expanding by the day, making it India’s most ambitious rural initiative.
Poo Power: Dutch Dairy Industry Launches €150 Million Biogas Project
The Netherlands has begun a national experiment to encourage farms to convert manure into biogas. Farmers lease an anaerobic digester and are given a 12-year fixed price for the biogas they produce, subsidized by the government. About 10% of the Netherlands’ greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, mostly methane as a result of the dairy industry—this scheme is an attempt to mitigate these impacts.
How Blockchain Could Help to Make the Food We Eat Safer... Around the World
IBM is using blockchain to make the global food chain more transparent, authentic, and trustworthy. Blockchain is like a computer’s operating system, regulating interactions. Because it creates an immutable digital record of these transactions, it is ideal for tracing the safety and authenticity of goods as they move from food suppliers to store shelves and consumers.
Guest Commentary – Cooking Up Solutions to Forest Sustainability
Experts say that by mid-century, Latin America will have to provide half of the world’s new cropland to keep pace with the demands of the world’s growing population. The Yucatan Peninsula is at the very center of this challenge. It loses more than 80,000 hectares of forest each year, mostly to inefficient conversion to cropland. But take a peek under the Yucatan forest canopy and you’ll find that it is indeed possible to scale up food production while preserving the landscape, and delivering opportunities for farming communities to thrive in the process.