GM crops, developing countries and food security

The agronomic and economic performance of genetically modified (GM) crops relative to their conventional counterparts has been largely investigated worldwide. As a result there is considerable information to conduct a meta-analysis to evaluate the agronomic and economic relative performance of GM crops vs. non GM crops by crop, GM trait, and country’s level of development. Such meta-analysis has been recently conducted showing that overall GM crops outperform non GM crops in both agronomic and economic terms (1). This paper focuses on the agronomic and economic performance of GM crops in developing and developed countries as well as the potential implications for global food security of adoption of GM crops by developing countries. The presumption that technology only benefits the developed world is not supported by the meta-analysis conducted. No evidence that GM technology benefits moredeveloped than developing countries was found. Indeed, the agronomic and economic performance of GM crops vs. conventional crops tends to be better for developing than for developed countries. Although it is manifested that the conventional agronomic practices in developing countries are different to those in developed countries, it is also apparent that GM crop adoption in developing countries may help to tackle the growing concerns over the scarcity of food globally.

Climate change impacts on global food security

Climate change could potentially interrupt progress toward a world without hunger. A robust and coherent global pattern is discernible of the impacts of climate change on crop productivity that could have consequences for food availability. The stability of whole food systems may be at risk under climate change because of short-term variability in supply. However, the potential impact is less clear at regional scales, but it is likely that climate variability and change will exacerbate food insecurity in areas currently vulnerable to hunger and undernutrition. Likewise, it can be anticipated that food access and utilization will be affected indirectly via collateral effects on household and individual incomes, and food utilization could be impaired by loss of access to drinking water and damage to health. The evidence supports the need for considerable investment in adaptation and mitigation actions toward a “climate-smart food system” that is more resilient to climate change influences on food security.

Participatory scenarios as a tool to link science and policy on food security under climate change in East Africa

How effective are multi-stakeholder scenarios building processes to bring diverse actors together and create a policy-making tool to support sustainable development and promote food security in the developing world under climate change? The effectiveness of a participatory scenario development process highlights the importance of ‘boundary work’ that links actors and organizations involved in generating knowledge on the one hand, and practitioners and policymakers who take actions based on that knowledge on the other. This study reports on the application of criteria for effective boundary work to a multi-stakeholder scenarios process in East Africa that brought together a range of regional agriculture and food systems actors. This analysis has enabled us to evaluate the extent to which these scenarios were seen by the different actors as credible, legitimate and salient, and thus more likely to be useful. The analysis has shown gaps and opportunities for improvement on these criteria, such as the quantification of scenarios, attention to translating and communicating the results through various channels and new approaches to enable a more inclusive and diverse group of participants. We conclude that applying boundary work criteria to multi-stakeholder scenarios processes can do much to increase the likelihood of developing sustainable development and food security policies that are more appropriate.

Options for support to agriculture and food security under climate change

Agriculture and food security are key sectors for intervention under climate change. Agricultural production is highly vulnerable even to 2C (low-end) predictions for global mean temperatures in 2100, with major implications for rural poverty and for both rural and urban food security. Agriculture also presents untapped opportunities for mitigation, given the large land area under crops and rangeland, and the additional mitigation potential of aquaculture. This paper presents a summary of current knowledge on options to support farmers, particularly smallholder farmers, in achieving food security through agriculture under climate change. Actions towards adaptation fall into two broad overlapping areas: (1) accelerated adaptation to progressive climate change over decadal time scales, for example integrated packages of technology, agronomy and policy options for farmers and food systems, and (2) better management of agricultural risks associated with increasing climate variability and extreme events, for example improved climate information services and safety nets. Maximization of agriculture’s mitigation potential will require investments in technological innovation and agricultural intensification linked to increased efficiency of inputs, and creation of incentives and monitoring systems that are inclusive of smallholder farmers. Food systems faced with climate change need urgent, broad-based action in spite of uncertainties.

Cost effectiveness of mitigation measures for water security and water quality in the River Thames catchment: impacts of changing climate, land use and water scarcity

The catchment of the River Thames, the principal river system in southern England, provides the main water supply for London but is highly vulnerable to changes in climate, land use and population. The river is eutrophic with significant algal blooms with phosphorus assumed to be the primary chemical indicator of ecosystem health. In the Thames Basin, phosphorus is available from point sources such as wastewater treatment plants and from diffuse sources such as agriculture. In order to predict vulnerability to future change, the integrated catchments model for phosphorus (INCA-P) has been applied to the river basin and used to assess the cost-effectiveness of a range of mitigation and adaptation strategies. It is shown that scenarios of future climate and land-use change will exacerbate the water quality problems, but a range of mitigation measures can improve the situation. A cost-effectiveness study has been undertaken to compare the economic benefits of each mitigation measure and to assess the phosphorus reductions achieved. The most effective strategy is to reduce fertilizer use by 20% together with the treatment of effluent to a high standard. Such measures will reduce the instream phosphorus concentrations to close to the EU Water Framework Directive target for the Thames.

The "value" of property rights in social security law

This article provides a critical examination of the way that property rules are applied judicially in the context of social security law concerned with the assessment of capital, and especially in connection with the determination of ownership and the valuation of assets, which can have a critical bearing on entitlement to various means-tested benefits.

A decade of plant proteomics and mass spectrometry: translation of technical advancements to food security and safety issues

Tremendous progress in plant proteomics driven by mass spectrometry (MS) techniques has been made since 2000 when few proteomics reports were published and plant proteomics was in its infancy. These achievements include the refinement of existing techniques and the search for new techniques to address food security, safety, and health issues. It is projected that in 2050, the world’s population will reach 9–12 billion people demanding a food production increase of 34–70% (FAO, 2009) from today’s food production. Provision of food in a sustainable and environmentally committed manner for such a demand without threatening natural resources, requires that agricultural production increases significantly and that postharvest handling and food manufacturing systems become more efficient requiring lower energy expenditure, a decrease in postharvest losses, less waste generation and food with longer shelf life. There is also a need to look for alternative protein sources to animal based (i.e., plant based) to be able to fulfill the increase in protein demands by 2050. Thus, plant biology has a critical role to play as a science capable of addressing such challenges. In this review, we discuss proteomics especially MS, as a platform, being utilized in plant biology research for the past 10 years having the potential to expedite the process of understanding plant biology for human benefits. The increasing application of proteomics technologies in food security, analysis, and safety is emphasized in this review. But, we are aware that no unique approach/technology is capable to address the global food issues. Proteomics-generated information/resources must be integrated and correlated with other omics-based approaches, information, and conventional programs to ensure sufficient food and resources for human development now and in the future.

Enhanced three-factor security protocol for consumer USB mass storage devices

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an extremely popular interface standard for computer peripheral connections and is widely used in consumer Mass Storage Devices (MSDs). While current consumer USB MSDs provide relatively high transmission speed and are convenient to carry, the use of USB MSDs has been prohibited in many commercial and everyday environments primarily due to security concerns. Security protocols have been previously proposed and a recent approach for the USB MSDs is to utilize multi-factor authentication. This paper proposes significant enhancements to the three-factor control protocol that now makes it secure under many types of attacks including the password guessing attack, the denial-of-service attack, and the replay attack. The proposed solution is presented with a rigorous security analysis and practical computational cost analysis to demonstrate the usefulness of this new security protocol for consumer USB MSDs.

Visual sensor fusion for active security in robotic industrial environments

This work presents a method of information fusion involving data captured by both a standard CCD camera and a ToF camera to be used in the detection of the proximity between a manipulator robot and a human. Both cameras are assumed to be located above the work area of an industrial robot. The fusion of colour images and time of light information makes it possible to know the 3D localization of objects with respect to a world coordinate system. At the same time this allows to know their colour information. Considering that ToF information given by the range camera contains innacuracies including distance error, border error, and pixel saturation, some corrections over the ToF information are proposed and developed to improve the results. The proposed fusion method uses the calibration parameters of both cameras to reproject 3D ToF points, expressed in a common coordinate system for both cameras and a robot arm, in 2D colour images. In addition to this, using the 3D information, the motion detection in a robot industrial environment is achieved, and the fusion of information is applied to the foreground objects previously detected. This combination of information results in a matrix that links colour and 3D information, giving the possibility of characterising the object by its colour in addition to its 3D localization. Further development of these methods will make it possible to identify objects and their position in the real world, and to use this information to prevent possible collisions between the robot and such objects.

Visual sensor fusion for active security in robotic industrial environments

This work presents a method of information fusion involving data captured by both a standard charge-coupled device (CCD) camera and a time-of-flight (ToF) camera to be used in the detection of the proximity between a manipulator robot and a human. Both cameras are assumed to be located above the work area of an industrial robot. The fusion of colour images and time-of-flight information makes it possible to know the 3D localization of objects with respect to a world coordinate system. At the same time, this allows to know their colour information. Considering that ToF information given by the range camera contains innacuracies including distance error, border error, and pixel saturation, some corrections over the ToF information are proposed and developed to improve the results. The proposed fusion method uses the calibration parameters of both cameras to reproject 3D ToF points, expressed in a common coordinate system for both cameras and a robot arm, in 2D colour images. In addition to this, using the 3D information, the motion detection in a robot industrial environment is achieved, and the fusion of information is applied to the foreground objects previously detected. This combination of information results in a matrix that links colour and 3D information, giving the possibility of characterising the object by its colour in addition to its 3D localisation. Further development of these methods will make it possible to identify objects and their position in the real world and to use this information to prevent possible collisions between the robot and such objects.

Seasonal intercomparison of observational rainfall datasets over India during the southwest monsoon season

The Indian monsoon is an important component of Earth's climate system, accurate forecasting of its mean rainfall being essential for regional food and water security. Accurate measurement of the rainfall is essential for various water-related applications, the evaluation of numerical models and detection and attribution of trends, but a variety of different gridded rainfall datasets are available for these purposes. In this study, six gridded rainfall datasets are compared against the India Meteorological Department (IMD) gridded rainfall dataset, chosen as the most representative of the observed system due to its high gauge density. The datasets comprise those based solely on rain gauge observations and those merging rain gauge data with satellite-derived products. Various skill scores and subjective comparisons are carried out for the Indian region during the south-west monsoon season (June to September). Relative biases and skill metrics are documented at all-India and sub-regional scales. In the gauge-based (land-only) category, Asian Precipitation-Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of water resources (APHRODITE) and Global Precipitation Climatology Center (GPCC) datasets perform better relative to the others in terms of a variety of skill metrics. In the merged category, the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) dataset is shown to perform better than the Climate Prediction Center Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP) for the Indian monsoon in terms of various metrics, when compared with the IMD gridded data. Most of the datasets have difficulty in representing rainfall over orographic regions including the Western Ghats mountains, in north-east India and the Himalayan foothills. The wide range of skill scores seen among the datasets and even the change of sign of bias found in some years are causes of concern. This uncertainty between datasets is largest in north-east India. These results will help those studying the Indian monsoon region to select an appropriate dataset depending on their application and focus of research.

Cashew cultivation, access to land and food security in Brong-Ahafo Region, Ghana: Preventing the intergenerational transmission of poverty

This research aimed to investigate the implications of changing agricultural land use from food production towards increased cashew cultivation for food security and poverty alleviation in Jaman North District, Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana. Based on qualitative, participatory research with a total of 60 participants, the research found that increased cashew production had led to improvements in living standards for many farmers and their children over recent years. Global demand for cashew is projected to continue to grow rapidly in the immediate future and cashew-growing areas of Ghana are well placed to respond to this demand. Cashew farmers however were subject to price fluctuations in the value of Raw Cashew Nuts (RCN) due to unequal power relations with intermediaries and export buyer companies and global markets, in addition to other vulnerabilities that constrained the quality and quantity of cashew and food crops they could produce. The expansion of cashew plantations was leading to pressure on the remaining family lands available for food crop production, which community members feared could potentially compromise the food security of rural communities and the land inheritance of future generations.

Bringing export performance metrics into Annual Reports: the APEV scale and the PERFEX scorecard

Annual company reports rarely distinguish between domestic and export market performance and even more rarely provide information about annual indicators of a specific export venture's performance. In this study, the authors develop and test a new measure for assessing the annual performance of an export venture (the APEV scale). The new measure comprises five dimensions: (1) annual export venture financial performance, (2) annual export venture strategic performance, (3) annual export venture achievement, (4) contribution of the export venture to annual exporting operations, and (5) satisfaction with annual export venture overall performance. The authors use the APEV scale to generate a scorecard of performance in exporting (the PERFEX scorecard) to assess export performance at the corporate level while comparatively evaluating all export ventures of the firm. Both the scale and the scorecard could help disclose export venture performance and could be useful instruments for annual planning, management, monitoring, and improvement of exporting programs.