By Geoffrey Holland, guest writer for Transition Earth. As I sit here isolated from the pandemic at home, I’ve been thinking a lot about the bigger picture.  The world we know has been set back on its keister by a global-scale force of nature.  It wasn’t done to us. We ourselves are responsible for its unleashing.
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By Geoffrey Holland, guest writer for Transition Earth. All humans require nourishment. No exceptions. The future of food may reside in multi-story urban structures, built out with hi-tech hydroponic or aeroponic crop growing systems. Another name for this is vertical farming. There’s a lot to like about vertical farms. They require about 90% less water
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By Joshua Mironda, youth writer for Transition Earth. You may have heard that plagues of locusts have descended upon East Africa.  This is not a biblical story, but real life, with serious implications for people and nature. Here in Uganda, at the beginning of February, desert locusts invaded the country through its Amudat district and
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By Julian Cribb FRSA FTSE*, guest writer. The fate of human civilization in the mid-21st Century turns critically on food. Success in overcoming the intersecting challenges of climate and resource scarcity will bring peace, plenty and a chance to repair the Planet. Failure will bring war. Food or War (Cambridge University Press 2019) presents compelling evidence
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By Suzanne York. We live in an increasingly urbanized world. The growth of megacities – urban areas with a population of over 10 million – is a reflection of the rapid pace of urbanization in countries across the world. In 1990, there were 10 megacities across the globe. By 2030, the number is expected to
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Africa is a rich continent, where the land and its people have been plundered for centuries.  Despite pockets of economic growth and improved living standards, most news from here is of conflict, poverty, environmental degradation and corruption. And it is growing. There are currently more than 1 billion people in Africa. 
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, warned that battles over water and food will erupt within the next five to ten years as a result of climate change.  As he was talking of the risks of climate change, the UN announced that food prices had risen to their
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org As the world recognizes the 103rd International Women’s Day on March 8th, it is a good time to consider the role of women as an answer to improving food security, particularly in the face of global climate change. A recent report found that the narrowing of diversity in crop species contributing
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org A United Nations report titled Assessing Global Land Use: Balancing Consumption with Sustainable Supply highlights the pressing need to cope with changes in a growing and consuming world that is shifting quickly from the one we’ve known for decades. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the need to feed a
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Alarmingly, food insecurity in Africa’s Sahel belt continues to worsen. This week the United Nations reported that 16 million people in the region are at risk of going hungry in the next year due to violent conflicts and rapid population growth. The Sahel encompasses a semiarid strip of land in Sub-Saharan
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