On the occasion of the last Brussels Briefing on “Agricultural resilience”, CTA Brussels met with Sir Gordon Conway, Professor of International Development at the Imperial College of London to discuss on what we know and what we need to know in order to increase Agricultural resilience in developing countries.

The European Parliament is debating a draft biopiracy law requiring industry to ask for the written consent of local or indigenous people before exploring their region’s genetic resources or making use of their traditional know-how and compensate them accordingly.

The EU biofuels policy may have a negative impact on developing countries, in terms of enjoyment of the right to food, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter,  wrote to the EU Member States and the European Commission on April 18th.

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA) and the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) signed on 18th of April in Brussels a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to foster greater cooperation between the two organizations.

Watch the interview with Christian Borgermeister, Director General of ICIPE - a pan-African research organisation focused on tropical insect science – to find out more about the way the two technologies that they have developed with support from the EU could dramatically improve the livelihoods of resource-poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the standard of living of East-Africa pastoralists.

Nanomaterials in food packaging are "safe and convenient" for consumers, a study commissioned by PlasticsEurope on the potential risks of nanotechnologies in the food chain shows.

The Kenyan government is negotiating with the EU over restrictions on the export of horticultural products from the East African country to European markets, after the EU put Kenya on the list of countries with 10 percent increased MRLs (Maximum Residual Levels) checks on exported beans and peas in pods, the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture Permanent Secretary Romano Kiome said.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) calls in its opinion on Prevention and reduction of food waste (adopted on 20 March 2013) on the European Commission to take steps to counter food waste, and to make the prevention and reduction of food losses and food an EU-wide policy.

‘The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 will certainly not be met by 2015. However, we have a lot of cases - close to 40 - of countries which approach to the goal.
Africa unfortunately is the region with the fewer number of good performers, and overall is not set to meet the goal’ (Kostas Stamoulis, director of the Agricultural Development Economics Division at FAO).

On 4th of March took place the 30th edition of the Brussels Briefing on “Agricultural resilience in the face of crisis and shocks”, organized by CTA in collaboration with the ACP Secretariat, the EC/DEVCO, Concord, and IFPRI at the European Economic and Social Committee, in Brussels.