SOS Faim’ June 2013 newsletter has been published. With a focus on the global fight against hunger and rural poverty, the newsletter includes articles covering current issues of interest, such as: the vote in the Belgian Parliament on the resolution on financial food speculation (read here); the role of the Belgian government in global land grabbing (here); and the FAIR (Support Fund for Rural Initiative), which facilitates access to credit for rice farmers in Mali (here).

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 Commission and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) will organize on 28th May 2013 an event for the launch of the report 'Sustainable Intensification: A New Paradigm for African Agriculture', which aims to provide a new framework for understanding sustainable intensification and offers practical approaches to achieving it.

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 next Brussels Development Briefing will tackle the topic of ‘Food, geography, traditions: Protecting agricultural traditional products’, by looking at the challenges and opportunities for protecting traditional knowledge and registered agricultural products in a sustainable way.

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.

Mr Jerzy Bogdan PLEWA is the new Director General of the Agriculture and Rural Development Directorate-General (DG AGRI) of the European commission. The appointment took effect on 16 April 2013.

The newsletter from SOS Faim for the month of April 2013 is out. The newsletter includes among others articles on the 20 anniversary of SOS Faim Luxembourg, an analysis on the vote of the EU CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), as well as a piece on the importance of local partners in the food supply chain in developing countries.

A conservation agricultural approach known as 'Push-Pull' technology that exploits natural insect-plant and insect-insect relationships can be used to control pests as stemborers and striga weed in maize fields, and thus dramatically improve livelihoods of resource poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

During a two-day visit to Burundi (21 to 22 February) EU Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs is to announce an €18 million new project on food security.