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."

Sollio Agriculture has partnered with McGill University to test the benefits of PurYield, a new coated fertilizer which enhances nutrient uptake by plants. Researchers will compare it to commonly used uncoated urea fertilizer to assess its impact on corn grain growth, yield, and quality, as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Previous trials showed a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The new study aims to validate these environmental benefits over five years, with funding from Sollio and a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.  

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.

Si vous habitez les alentours de la ville de Windsor, peut-être avez-vous remarqué des substances blanches semblables à du pollen amassé sur les trottoirs, les pelouses ou les terrasses. Ce sont des semences de peupliers. À l'émission Matins sans frontières, David Wees, enseignant en horticulture à l'Université McGill, explique l'origine de ces semences, leur importance et comment se comporter vis-à-vis d'elles.

The number of American kestrels has dropped sharply. That goes against the trend for birds of prey, broadly seen as a conservation bright spot.

Hypotheses about the decline abound. In a newly published special issue on kestrels in The Journal of Raptor Research, Dr. Smallwood and David Bird, an emeritus professor of wildlife biology at McGill University in Montreal, list seven possible factors for kestrel declines that they argue merit more research, in no particular order.