The wildfires that ravaged Canada this summer have some experts calling for a more aggressive approach than the country has applied in the past.
This year, nearly 30 million acres have burned across Canada. In eastern provinces such as Quebec, where blazes are less common, wildfire agencies that are equipped to fight fewer and smaller fires were largely unprepared for the circumstances.
All residential buildings in Montreal with under nine units now have brown bins—but only 63 per cent actually sort out their food waste, according to a 2021 survey conducted by the city. Meanwhile, the Lachenaie landfill in Terrebonne—the only landfill in the Montreal area—is set to reach its capacity in 2029.
The city says a large-scale food waste awareness campaign will launch later this year to try to boost citizens' participation in separating out organics.
Palm oil, which can be found in roughly half of all packaged supermarket products, is notorious for causing deforestation and biodiversity loss. Efforts to curtail the damage have largely focused on voluntary environmental certification programs that label qualifying palm-oil sources as "sustainable."
In a recent multidisciplinary study published in Advanced Science, researchers build upon the principles of biomimicry by drawing inspiration from the wing of a dragonfly to redesign that of a Boeing 777.
On May 31, 2023, McGill University’s Margaret A. Gilliam Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) and SOCODEVI, in collaboration with the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), held an event showcasing concrete actions to strengthen sustainable agriculture, improve the living conditions of smallholder farmers and increase the resilience of agri-food systems. This event also launched a new collaboration between IFAD and McGill IGFS, including an internship program and IFAD student group.
The impacts of climate change, rising fuel costs, geopolitical conflicts, and global supply chain snags make today's delocalized food system—and the 8 billion people who depend on it—increasingly vulnerable.
Part of the solution to building a more sustainable and resilient agrifood system is to improve local, indoor food production. Researchers in McGill’s Biomass Production Laboratory are doing just that, increasing access to fresh produce year-round.
Around the world, food is grown on land of all sizes and all types, but that diversity means farmers often fail to take into account landscape complexity and soil variability, according to Chandra A. Madramootoo, a professor of Bioresource Engineering at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada.
He says that one solution is precision farming, an approach that “enables the selection of crops, and chemical and water applications within spatially similar land and soil zones.”
Congratulations to two Macdonald Profs who have received funding through the New Frontiers in Research Fund Exploration stream, which supports high-risk, high-reward and interdisciplinary research: Hamid Akbarzadeh (BRE) for Origami-inspired deployable sensoriactuator soft robots and Mehran Dastmalchi (PltSci) for Plant-derived biosynergists to enhance pesticide efficacy.
On January 17, two McGill teams, InSpira Photobioreactor and the Cricket Rearing, Collection, and Transformation System (CRCTS) competing under the McGill Advanced Bio-Regenerative Toolkit for Long Excursion Trips (MARTLET) umbrella, presented their prototypes to the NASA/CSA Deep Space Food Challenge’s jury.
Read the story in the McGill Reporter.
The Government of Canada’s Environmental Damages Fund, administered by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), is investing more than $4 million in three McGill-led projects through the Climate Awareness and Action Fund (CAAF).The projects will fill knowledge gaps about the environmental and economic impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen Canada's capacity to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Three projects will fill knowledge gaps about the environmental and economic impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen Canada's capacity to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Hydroponic strawberry growers and Co-founders of Vertité, Ophelia Sarakinis (FMT’19) and Phillip Rosenbaum (B.Sc.(AgEnvSc)’19, MSc.’21) and their partners have just won the first phase of the Homegrown Innovation Challenge, a “six-year, $33-million initiative from the Weston Family Foundation to future-proof food production in Canada.”
Through the International Youth Internship Program (IYIP), a joint program with the Government of Canada and the United Nations Association in Canada, young Canadians are given the opportunity to gain professional experience in international development work. Natalie Wu, a Bioresource Masters student, was selected as part of the 2021 cohort. She was a Junior Professional Consultant (JPC) and was remotely placed for six months at the World Food Programme’s (WFP) headquarters in Rome.
In a new study, our team of climate scientists, economists and engineers (including BRE’s Mohammad Reza Alizadeh and Jan F. Adamowski]) found that the poorest parts of the world are likely to be two to five times more exposed to heat waves than richer countries by the 2060s. By the end of the century, the lowest-income quarter of the global population’s heat exposure will almost match that of the entire rest of the world.
