Topic description and stories

Wheat crops being sprayed with fertiliser

Carbon emissions from fertilisers could be reduced by as much as 80% by 2050

09 Feb 2023

Researchers have calculated the carbon footprint for the full life cycle of fertilisers, which are responsible for approximately five percent of...

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deep fried locusts

The future of farming: from eating insects to urban agriculture 

07 Dec 2022

The Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge Business School is supporting new ventures to improve sustainability in agriculture to meet the...

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Concentrate farming to leave room for species and carbon

06 Oct 2021

Farming should be as high-yield as possible so it can be limited to relatively small areas, allowing much more land to be left as natural habitats...

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European summer droughts since 2015 unprecedented in past two millennia

15 Mar 2021

Recent summer droughts in Europe are far more severe than anything in the past 2,100 years, according to a new study.

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Ecosystems Overload

10 Dec 2019

We are laying waste to the biosphere. If we're serious about saving millions of species, then it's our own that must change how it thinks about...

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The plant scientist with a practical vision for Africa (and who wasn’t content to sit and drink tea).

17 Oct 2019

Carol Nkechi Ibe discovered the hard way what it’s like to be bright and educated, and yet feel like you know almost nothing. The life science...

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A robot arm picking lettuces

Robot uses machine learning to harvest lettuce

08 Jul 2019

A vegetable-picking robot that uses machine learning to identify and harvest a commonplace, but challenging, agricultural crop has been developed by...

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Agta family relaxing in the late afternoon

Farmers have less leisure time than hunter-gatherers, study suggests

21 May 2019

Hunter-gatherers in the Philippines who convert to farming work around ten hours a week longer than their forager neighbours, a new study suggests...

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Harvest

‘High-yield’ farming costs the environment less than previously thought – and could help spare habitats

14 Sep 2018

New findings suggest that more intensive agriculture might be the “least bad” option for feeding the world while saving its species – provided use of...

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Commercial honeybee hives in the Teide National Park, Tenerife, Spain.

Think of honeybees as ‘livestock’ not wildlife, argue experts

25 Jan 2018

Contrary to public perception, die-offs in honeybee colonies are an agricultural not a conservation issue, argue Cambridge researchers, who say that...

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Cementing Ethiopia's progress

Opinion: Why Ethiopia is on track to become Africa’s industrial powerhouse

23 Jun 2016

Jostein Hauge and Muhammad Irfan (Centre of Development Studies) discuss Ethiopia's economics growth over the last decade.

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How 'more food per field' could help save our wild spaces

28 Jan 2016

Increased farm yields could help to spare land from agriculture for natural habitats that benefit wildlife and store greenhouse gases, but only if...

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