Joining a high-yield pepper plant sapling to the roots of a strong and resistant variety could help pepper farmers cope with lower rainfall, a study has found. Peppers grown in many developing countries Grafter plants yield 40 per cent more, tests show Helps increase resilience against drought An…

Long seen as poverty traps, rural areas are in fact key to economic growth in developing countries when pegged to food production, according to a new United Nations agriculture agency report released Monday. With 'sweeping transformations' that can unlock the potential of rural areas to help feed…

After steadily declining for over a decade, global hunger appears to be on the rise once more, with multiple forms of malnutrition threatening the health of millions. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World warns that the greater number of conflicts, whose impacts are often exacerbated…

The food security–climate change nexus rapidly gains momentum. Soil degradation plays an important role in this context while dealing with, for example, the productive capacity of our soil resources or carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation. However, little has been done to assess the…

Land Degradation Neutrality is one of the Sustainable Development Goal targets, requiring on-going degradation to be balanced by restoration and sustainable land management. However, restoration and efforts to prevent degradation have often failed to deliver expected benefits, despite enormous…

Global drylands face a host of urgent human and environmental challenges with far-reaching impacts. Improving smallholder agriculture remains a key development pathway to tackle these challenges. The dryland development paradigm (DDP), introduced in 2007, presented a highly influential framework for…

A new study has assessed the value of ecosystem-based approaches to mitigating climate changes and conserving biodiversity in Germany. The researchers highlight the trade-offs and synergies between climate adaptation and nature conservation and suggest that effective ecosystem-based climate policy…