Topic description and stories

Boats Arch in the Eastern Sahara, site of recently identified Neolithic rock art

Discovering the artists of the Eastern Sahara

19 May 2014

The identification of rock art found in Farafra as Neolithic adds substance to the argument that Egypt drew on cultural influences from Africa as...

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Ship loading at the Cargill Elevator

Agricultural markets and the Great Depression: lessons from the past

07 May 2014

Seventy five years ago, the publication of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath shocked the world with its description of starvation in the...

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Agriculture is the backbone of India

New evidence of suicide epidemic among India’s ‘marginalised’ farmers

17 Apr 2014

Latest statistical research finds strong causal links between areas with the most suicides and areas where impoverished farmers are trying to grow...

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From athletes to couch potatoes: humans through 6,000 years of farming

08 Apr 2014

Research into lower limb bones shows that our early farming ancestors in Central Europe became less active as their tasks diversified and technology...

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Aphids

Crop-infecting virus forces aphids to spread disease

04 Dec 2013

Viruses alter plant biochemistry in order to manipulate visiting aphids into spreading infection

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How does your garden grow?

22 Aug 2013

A simple mixture of organic waste, such as chicken manure, and zeolite, a porous volcanic rock, has been developed into a powerful fertiliser which...

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Views of the landscape

17 May 2013

In a talk on Monday (20 May 2013) Dr Simon Nightingale will explore how painterly interpretations of the countryside were embedded into the...

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Yam market in Accra, Ghana

How do smallholder farmers fit into the big picture of world food production?

22 Jan 2013

Worldwide 500 million smallholder farmers support a total of 2 billion people. A debate taking place in London next Monday (28 January) will put...

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Amazon rainforest

Leading the battle to protect the Amazon

09 Jan 2013

A graduate of Cambridge’s fledgling MPhil in Conservation Leadership returned last month to speak to current students about his vital work to protect...

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Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, on the Kenya-Somalia border. The Horn of Africa frequently experiences severe drought and hundreds of thousands of people have trekked to Dadaab seeking food, water, shelter and safety.

Feeding seven billion

21 Nov 2012

With the world’s population already estimated to be over seven billion and rising fast, the challenge of how to produce enough food has never been...

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Oil palm plantation

Climate chemistry and the tropics

05 Oct 2012

New models are being developed to predict how changing land use in the tropics could affect future climate, air quality and crop production.

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Crops Growing

Unlocking the agricultural economics of the 19th century

03 Oct 2012

The Corn Returns – market data from the 19th century and beyond – represent a valuable resource for economic historians looking at the emergence of...

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