The name of a new global food security hub at McGill might be a mouthful, but the students behind it are confident their work will help get food into the mouths of people who need it.
“We want to be a place where students can get hands-on experience advocating for solutions,” said Efrata Woldeyohanes, the undergraduate student leading the recently launched Margaret A. Gilliam Institute for Global Food Security Student Nexus.
Plant diseases don’t stop at national borders and miles of oceans don’t prevent their spread, either. That’s why plant disease surveillance, improved detection systems, and global predictive disease modeling are necessary to mitigate future disease outbreaks and protect the global food supply, according to a team of researchers in a new commentary published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Bioresource Engineering professor Michael Ngadi has spent his career trying to help solve some of the world’s most pervasive food problems. Recently, Ngadi and his research team traveled to remote communities in Bolivia, Laos, Zambia, Malawi and Ethiopia to examine elements of the local diets, assess their nutritional status, and build programs that would introduce nutrient-dense foods into local cuisines.
Inter-provincial survey gauges how Canadians have accessed food during the pandemic and their perceptions of food systems
Shopping anxiety, higher food prices and individual income limitations are some of the factors making access to food challenging for Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study suggests.
Kate Sinclair is working at the World Food Programme, Sri Lanka while simultaneously finishing her PhD in Human Nutrition at McGill
December 10, was a typical day at the office for Kate Sinclair… Kind of, but not really. Not by a long shot.
Shopping anxiety, higher food prices and individual income limitations are some of the factors making access to food challenging for Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study suggests.
Researchers conducted an online inter-provincial survey with residents of B.C., Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces during the first wave of COVID-19. The survey assessed how the pandemic affected food access and behaviour in each region and how perceptions regarding the food systems may have been altered.
This year represents the first ever observance of the International Day of Awareness on Food Loss and Waste. The COVID-19 pandemic continues generating significant challenges to food security in many countries. These challenges include disruptions in supply chains, quarantine measures, and the closure of much of the hospitality industry and schools. All these measures have resulted in a loss of markets for producers and distributors, making the situation even more challenging. (United Nations)
"Our food supply chain is a highly efficient mature system, but it has been knocked off balance by the crisis... In a way, we went from being on cruise control to hitting traffic."
In recent days, we’ve seen major meat processing plants shutting down because of COVID-19 outbreaks. Farmers are struggling because foreign workers can’t come into the country to plant or harvest crops. Are Canadians facing shortages and rising prices at the grocery store?
If China is to achieve its target of 95% grain self-sufficiency by 2030 it will need to restrict the conversion of arable land to other uses say researchers from McGill. This may prove challenging in a country with a population of almost 1.4 billion, but with just under 13% of arable land, close to half of which is suffering from soil degradation. After analyzing the potential impacts of various current trade-related food policies, the researchers have arrived at the conclusion that the current Red Line arable land protection policy is insufficient to reach the government’s desired goal.
Today at a press conference in Quebec City, the Institut Nordique du Quebec (INQ) announced three Northern Research Chairs, as well as a newly recruited Science and Innovation Director, Louis Fortier.
Margaret A. Gilliam Fellowship recipient June Po is a PhD candidate in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences; June works on food security, focusing on the relationships between food security and women’s access to land resources in dryland Kenya. In early 2015, she returned to the rural communities in Kenya to report her research findings to smallholder farmers. This effort has so far been extremely valuable, as she learned multiple ways of translating research into practice.
Is biodiverse agriculture an anachronism? Or is it a vital part of a food-secure future?
