Wasting Less of Africa's Harvest in Order to Prosper

Colombia’s National Development Plan for cattle ranching seeks to reduce pasture land from 94 million acres to 70 million acres while increasing cattle numbers from 23 million head to 40 million. The program focuses on planting trees on grazing land and the "cut and carry method," whereby farmers grow fields of shrubs and distribute the fresh cuttings to cows in pastures. The result is greater cattle productivity and a more eco-friendly farming system.

The United States has rising childhood obesity and schools deal with kids who are picky. Through innovative school gardens and kid taste testing food, entrepreneurs across the nation are getting children to eat vegetables at school and love it.

Activists in Berkeley, California, are filling in what they say is a gap in homeless services during the coronavirus outbreak. Volunteers are safely delivering food and other supplies to those without shelter.

The Women’s Collective is a nonprofit that works with more than 10,000 subsistence farmers in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to promote food security using millets, a crop resilient to drought and climate change. For Pavitra, one of those farmers, she began cultivating the ancient grains in 2015 and now has more than enough food to feed her family year-round. However, there’s a lack of public investment in millet production and machinery. And there’s no unified effort to create demand for millets: Some state governments lead the charge and in other states, it’s led by grassroots organizations.

A community organization in Indiana called Cultivate "rescues" food from local caterers, hospitals, casinos, and businesses to then be packaged into take-home meals for students at Woodland Elementary School that come from food-insecure homes. Cultivate is in its second year of existence, has three staff and 400 volunteers, and hopes to expand beyond their pilot program to reach all 21 schools in the district.

During the Industrial Revolution, farmers began harvesting monoculture crops which produced promising profits but proved harmful to the soil and weakened the immune capabilities of native plants. Lately, however, permaculture practices have been on the rise amongst farmers to better diversify their yields and reduce reliance on chemicals.

After years of drought and land-clearing that left Niger with few trees left, the country now boasts about 200 million trees, which have mostly been reestablished naturally. While the effects of climate change could threaten the future of these trees, this method has also increased crop yields in villages. This model of letting trees grow back with little human influence could be implemented in other countries.

Want to help fight food insecurity? There’s an app for that. Food Rescue Hero helps connect extra food with those who need it. Volunteers use the app to see if any food is available and when it is, they pickup and deliver the donation to a pre-approved recipient, all through the app.

Cornerstone Baptist Church is spearheading the redevelopment of Struggs’ Cornerstone Heights Neighborhood. In 2019, the church opened a laundromat and bike shop and last year the Cornerstone Community Kitchen began serving free hot meals to locals experiencing homelessness. The Church is soon launching a community market where local residents can access fresh, affordable food.

The Wyoming Stock Growers Land Trust uses conservation easements to conserve agricultural land in the state. These agreements happen when a landowner sells or donates the development rights to their land to the trust forever. They are allowed to keep farming the land, but it must remain undeveloped.