• FOOD SECURITYTaking Illinois’ Center for Digital Agriculture into the Future

    By Lauren Quinn

    The Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a new executive director, John Reid, who plans to support CDA’s growth across all dimensions of use-inspired research, translation of research into practice, and education and workforce development.

  • FOOD SECURITYNorway's Seed Vault Protecting Africa's Food Supply

    By Ludger Schadomsky

    African scientists have preserved precious seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, deep in Norway’s Arctic permafrost. The vault preserves food for disaster scenarios.

  • FOOD SECURITYExperts Warn of Risk of Civil Unrest in U.K. Due to Food Shortages

    Food shortages—especially a shortage of popular carbohydrates such as wheat, bread, pasta, and cereal — caused by extreme weather could lead to civil unrest in the U.K., according to a new study, which has surveyed some of the country’s leading food experts.

  • FOOD SECURITYSecuring the Food Pipeline from Cyberattacks

    By Jesenia Hernandez

    Sensors detecting the amount of food that herds of cattle are eating. Machines taking thousands of photos of fruit per second to detect their defects and sort them by quality. Robots packing fruit and vegetables into bags and boxes for purchase at grocery stores: Researchers are protecting the food and agriculture sector.

  • FOOD SECURITYClimate Intervention Technologies May Create Winners and Losers in World Food Supply

    By Kitta MacPherson

    A technology being studied to curb climate change – one that could be put in place in one or two decades if work on the technology began now – would affect food productivity in parts of planet Earth in dramatically different ways, benefiting some areas, and adversely affecting others.

  • FOOD SECURITYMore U.S. Crops to Require Irrigation

    With climate change, irrigating more crops in the United States will be critical to sustaining future yields, as drought conditions are likely to increase due to warmer temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns. Yet less than 20% of the nation’s croplands are equipped for irrigation.

  • NUCLEAR WINTERNuclear War Would Be More Devastating for Earth’s Climate Than Cold War Predictions – Even with Fewer Weapons

    By Mark Maslin

    A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could kill 130 million people and deprive a further 2.5 billion of food for at least two years. A global nuclear war including the US, Europe, and China could result in 360 million people dead and condemn nearly 5.3 billion people to starvation in the two years following the exchange.

  • WATER SECURITYNew Tool Optimizes Irrigation

    By Adam Hadhazy

    A new tool for designing and managing irrigation for farms advances the implementation of smart agriculture, an approach that leverages data and modern technologies to boost crop yields while conserving natural resources.

  • DROUGHTS“Flash Droughts” More Frequent as Climate Warms

    ‘Flash droughts’ have become more frequent due to human-caused climate change, and this trend is predicted to accelerate in a warmer future. Flash droughts, which start and develop rapidly, are becoming ‘the new normal’ for droughts, making forecasting and preparing for their impact more difficult.

  • AGRICULTURE SECURITYIt’s Time to Talk about Food and Agriculture Security

    By Krista Versteeg

    When large scale threats affect food and agriculture supplies, they become matters of national security. Many different threats to our food and agriculture sector exist, and any disruption to the supply chain can cause shortages at your local grocery store and limit the availability of food.

  • FOOD SECURITYPredicting Threats to Food Security

    Pests and diseases remain one of the biggest threats to food production, increasingly destabilizing food security and livelihoods across climate-vulnerable regions around the world,” says one expert. Mathematical modelling can prevent crop devastation and preserve livelihoods.

  • FOOD SECURITYFew Island Nations with Potential to Produce Enough Food in a Nuclear Winter

    New Zealand is one of only a few island nations that could continue to produce enough food to feed its population in a nuclear winter, researchers have found. The term “nuclear winter” refers to reduced sunlight and cooler temperatures caused by soot in the atmosphere following a nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere.

  • FOOD SECURITYAchieving Foundational Security for Food Systems

    U.S. cereal crops such as corn, rice, and wheat feed hundreds of millions of Americans and millions more around the world. Ensuring active defense of these and other staple food grasses is a critical national security priority. New DARPA project seeks advanced threat-detection and warning capabilities for crop defense.

  • FOOD SECURITYPhosphorus Supply Is Increasingly Disrupted – We Are Sleepwalking into a Global Food Crisis

    By Julia Martin-Ortega

    Without phosphorus food cannot be produced, since all plants and animals need it to grow. Put simply: if there is no phosphorus, there is no life. All farmers therefore need access to it, but 85% of the world’s remaining high-grade phosphate rock is concentrated in just five countries, making the global food system extremely vulnerable to disruptions.

  • FOOD SECURITYNuclear War Would Cause Global Famine

    More than 5 billion people would die of hunger following a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, according to a global study that estimates post-conflict crop production. Even a regional nuclear conflict would devastate crop production.