If you’re on a diet in 2016, restricting your carb intake might be on your list of New Year’s resolutions. But around the world, demand is on the rise for starch and other forms of carbohydrate, as incomes rise and consumer preferences change. It might seem strange that demand for a starchy root crop would increase with higher incomes.Read More …
You may never have heard of it before. A globetrotting crop by all accounts, it’s thought to have been introduced into Southeast Asia in the Philippines from Mexico in the 19th Century. As our diet becomes ever more complex, cassava – or tapioca – a root crop like sweet potato originally from South America, has been transformed far from it’s center ofRead More …
An environmental disaster is unfolding in Asia. The “haze” plumes of smoke from Indonesia, where El Nino has stirred up more peatland fires, have since September topped average daily emissions in the US, with the smog stretching to nearby countries. During 1997, one of the worst years on record, the annual fires cost the government an estimated US$20 billionRead More …
Ellen Tuyisenga has the answer. It came to her one day in the field, as she talked with friends about earnings from the previous bean harvest. One lady recounted that she had made more than US$1,000. Then her husband took the money away, leaving her with nothing. “I saw how hard the women worked, but they could not makeRead More …
New drought-resilient white beans – most commonly used to make baked beans – will be deployed to Ethiopia, as erratic weather threatens national production and farmers’ incomes. Severe drought in Ethiopia, Africa’s largest exporter of the bean used to make baked beans, could hit production for millions who cultivate and rely on income from the bean. The droughtRead More …
Seeds of change In Southeast Asia, cassava is grown by over eight million farmers as a primary source of income and calories, especially among poor, rural upland communities. Despite years of research neglect and stagnating yields during the 1980s, cassava has had a dramatic come-back as a popular cash crop – but it still needs to be coupled withRead More …
Efforts to contain and control a devastating threat facing cassava farmers and industry in Cambodia will be ramped up this week. A regional taskforce brings together local and international cassava researchers, local government officials and extension officers to hammer out an emergency action plan to tackle a deadly cassava disease and stamp it out. Cassava, cultivated by many poor farmers in Cambodia, is threatenedRead More …
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