Industrial ag is failing badly in Africa

This is pretty awful, and very, very underreported.

On September 5, the annual Africa Food Systems Forum, organised by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), (launched) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Government officials, experts, policymakers and business leaders will come together to discuss – in their words – “building back better food systems and food sovereignty”.

Sponsored by international philanthropic and bilateral donors and agrochemical and biotech companies such as Yara, Corteva and Bayer, the forum promotes hybrid and genetically modified seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides used in the type of industrial-scale agriculture that has failed to deliver “better food systems” or “food sovereignty”.

This approach to growing food, involving problematic practices that harm soils, pollute the environment, and favour large landowners and big agribusiness, has been pushed on Africa in the past few decades. But it has not helped the continent overcome food insecurity.

AGRA’s work is a case in point. It has failed to deliver on its own promises to increase productivity and incomes for 20 million farm households while halving food insecurity by 2020. Of the 13 countries it has primarily worked with, three have reduced the number of malnourished people over the past 15 years: Zambia by 2 percent, Ethiopia by 8 percent and Ghana by 36 percent, still short of the 50 percent target.

In countries like Kenya and Nigeria, both of which have embraced industrial agriculture policies, the number of undernourished people has grown by 44 percent and 247 percent, respectively. Taken together, the population of undernourished people in the 13 states AGRA has primarily worked with has actually risen by 50 percent over the past 15 years. - IATP

Who's eating lots of beef?

I would need to see at least one more independent study that confirms these results, before I totally buy them. That said, it's encouraging data in a way, given beef's environmental/climate impacts among other things. Unfortunately consumption is only likely to keep rising, at least for a while yet, in some other countries like China.

A new study has found that only about 12% of people in the U.S. consume more than half of the beef eaten in the country on any given day. According to the researchers, the highest consumption was more likely to occur with men or people aged 50 to 65...

The survey collected information of what more than 10,000 adults ate within a 24-hour period. The researchers were surprised to find that so much beef consumption was coming from a small percentage of people.

“On one hand, if it’s only 12% accounting for half the beef consumption, you could make some big gains if you get those 12% on board,” Diego Rose, corresponding and senior author of the study and professor and nutrition program director at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said in a statement. “On the other hand, those 12% may be most resistant to change.” Rose also noted that beef is high in saturated fat, which raises health concerns. - EcoWatch

Will AI create or destroy jobs?

Heck if I know. I consider it impossible to predict with any confidence, at this time. This is from another take on the matter.

A new study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) has concluded that Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more likely to increase jobs than destroy them by automating some tasks rather than taking them over entirely...

The study, “Generative AI and Jobs”, argues that most jobs and industries are only partially exposed to automation and are more likely to be complemented than replaced by the latest wave of generative AI, such as chatGPT.

Therefore, he argues that “the biggest impact of this technology is likely to be not job destruction, but rather potential changes in the quality of jobs, in particular work intensity and autonomy”...

The study, released by the ILO from its headquarters in this Swiss city, documents notable differences in the effects on countries at different levels of development, linked to economic structures and existing technology gaps. - Pressenza