If you would like to have the Global Food for Thought news brief delivered to your inbox, please sign up here.

 TOP STORY

Pheromones to Fight Locusts

New research identified the pheromone in the migratory locust responsible for the swarms that can grow to include billions of locusts and reach hundreds of square miles. The pheromone called 4-vinylanisole (4VA) is produced when as little as four locusts congregate together, triggering swarm behavior. Scientists hope that the discovery will prompt new methods for suppressing locust swarms. If successful, it could provide a way forward to combat the desert locust as well, currently plaguing east Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

COUNCIL INSIGHTS

The Paradox of Hunger: How do we make sense of a world in which we produce record amounts of food, and yet people are hungry? Distinguished Fellow Ertharin Cousin points to the gap between sites of abundance and sites of scarcity—”where the food is grown is not necessarily where people are hungry,” she said in an interview recently aired on CGTN. The program also interviewed Senior Fellow Roger Thurow, who raised the clamor about the devastating lifelong effects of childhood malnutrition. Both Cousin and Thurow shared their personal experiences witnessing food security and shared the view that a hungry child anywhere should be a priority.

 UPCOMING COUNCIL EVENTS

LIVE STREAM: Idealist Lessons on American Leadership
Date: August 20
Time: 12:00 p.m. CDT

LIVE STREAM: Post-Pandemic Travel and Tourism
Date: August 24
Time: 10:00 a.m. CDT

LIVE STREAM: Resetting Global Supply Chains in a Post-Pandemic World
Date: August 26
Time: 12:00 p.m. CDT

Did you miss one of our previous livestreams? Don't worry! They are all available on our website to watch at any time. 

FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL ISSUES

Cocoa & Coffee Make a Comeback: Soft commodities such as cocoa, coffee, cotton, and sugar were hit hard in the early months of the pandemic, but their prices are now rising. Key producing countries such as Brazil and India have struggled with COVID-19, and buyers are anticipating future supply constraints.

Carbon Release: Carbon sequestration has grown in popularity amongst the agriculture community as a way for the sector to mitigate climate change. This will be harder as global temperatures rise—a new study has found that soils in the tropics could release 55 percent more carbon than soils in cooler regions. The tropics host one third of the world’s soil carbon and could be responsible for 65 billion metric tons of atmospheric carbon by 2100.

Vanilla’s Promise: Millennials in Indonesia are leaving the city for the land to grow vanilla, a highly profitable crop. Young farmers are learning from Youtube and Whatsapp, aiming for high quality over quantity.  McCormick & Co., the world’s largest spice company, has taken notice and partnered with vanilla farmers on the Indonesian islands of Papua and Sulawesi.

DEEPER DIVE

What is a soft commodity? Commodities are primary goods traded for processing into final goods. Primary goods that are mined or extracted, such as silver, crude oil, and natural gas are categorized as hard commodities. Soft commodities, by contrast, are grown—for example, cotton and sugar. Some traders differentiate between “softs” and other agricultural commodities, such as grain, oilseeds, dairy, and meat.

DATA CRUNCH

Seeds of Domestication: A new study finds evidence of ancient domestication of plants at a south China cave site. Researchers examined phytoliths, microscopic silica bodies that remains present even after plants have decayed, and have discovered that humans at the site had domesticated various plants at different periods in history, including bamboo, palm trees, and 16,000 year old Oryza, a genus of grass that includes wild rice.   

RESILIENCE

Leaving Labor Out: The majority of climate impact studies on agriculture have not considered how heat would affect farm workers, contends a new paper in Food Policy. Many researchers have modeled how higher temperatures will impact the yields of key staple crops, but this focus only accounts for 4 percent of the global economic value of farming. This has resulted in underestimates of the consequences of climate change.

BIG IDEAS

Algae for Growth: Scientists at the University of Essex in the UK have successfully improved photosynthesis in tobacco plants, with the help of algae. Using gene manipulation, an enzyme in tobacco was increased, alongside introduction of an enzyme from cyanobacteria and a protein from algae. Researchers discovered a bonus benefit as well: the modified tobacco used much less water to produce higher yields.

DC REPORT

International Food Security: USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) released their annual report assessing international food security this week. ERS reviewed 76 LMICs and estimated that nearly 20 percent of the population, or 761 million people, are food insecure. Shocks from COVID-19 are projected to increase the food insecure population by over 83 million people.

BIG ACTORS 

Parasite Fighting Genes: The prestigious Royal Society Africa Prize was awarded to Professor Steven Runo of Kenyatta University in Kenya for his work creating parasitic resistant cereals using plant nutrients to kill parasites. His method includes using the nutrients the parasite consumes to create a poisonous variety that is then injected in the host crop to enable it to become defensive against parasite attacks.

TRADE & COMMODITIES

Vertical Investment: Bayer is partnering with Temasek, a global investment company, to create and fund a new vertical farming venture, Unfold. Unfold will focus on developing seeds tailored to an indoor growing environment, an aspect of the industry which they contend has been underdeveloped.

 OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS

The Science of Scaling
Date: August 25
Time: 3 pm CEST 

Please share any tips or thoughts on what we can do better here.