Bienen, Ameisen, Libellen: Uno empfiehlt Insekten als Nahrungsmittel

 Wenn wir die Bienen in Zukunft essen, brauchen wir sie wenigstens nicht mehr zu vergiften! (hfk)

Date: 13-05-2013
Source: SPIEGEL

Insekten als Snack: Für Fachleute längst eine genießbare Alternative

Im Kampf gegen den Hunger haben die Vereinten Nationen einen neuen Vorschlag: Insekten passen wegen ihres hohen Nährwerts demnach gut auf den Speiseplan. Auch sei ihre Zucht klimafreundlich. Als essbar gelten Bienen und Zikaden. Forscher prüfen bereits weitere krabbelnde Alternativen.

Rom – Sie liefern wertvolle Proteine und Mineralstoffe, verbrauchen weniger Futter und schonen das Klima - Insekten könnten aus vielen Gründen eine echte Alternative zu Fleischlieferanten wie Schweinen oder Rindern sein. Weil die Krabbeltiere für mindestens zwei Milliarden Menschen ohnehin Teil ihrer täglichen Nahrung sind, stellt sie die Uno-Organisation für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (FAO) nun in einem umfangreichen Report vor. Als essbar gelten etwa Bienen, Ameisen, Libellen und Zikaden.

Inside the meat lab: the future of food

Date: 06-01-2013
Source: The Guardian

With billions of mouths to feed, we can’t go on producing food in the traditional way. Scientists are coming up with novel ways to cater for future generations. In-vitro burger, anyone?

Dish of the day: breeding and mutating food species may be the only convincing plan anyone has for feeding the world Photograph: Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library

The future feast is laid out around a cool white room at Eindhoven’s University of Technology . There is a steak tartare of in-vitro beef fibre, wittily knitted into the word “meat”. There are “fruit-meat” amuse-gueules. The green- and pink-striped sushi comes from a genetically modified vegetarian fish called the biccio that, usefully, has green- and pink-striped flesh. To wash this down, there’s a programmable red wine: with a microwave pulse you can turn it into anything from Montepulciano to a Syrah. For the kids, there are sweet fried crickets, programmable colas and “magic meatballs”. These are made from animal-friendly artificial meat grown from stem cells: packed with Omega 3 and vitamins, they “crackle in your mouth”. Yum.

None of this is quite ready to dish up. The meatballs at the Eindhoven future food show are made from Plasticine; the knitted steak, appropriately, from pinky-red wool. But the ideas aren’t fantasy. Koert van Mensvoort, assistant professor at the university, calls them “nearly possible”. Van Mensvoort – who is also the brains behind nextnature.net, a must-see website for technological neophiliacs – put his industrial design undergraduates together with bio-tech engineers, marketing specialists and a moral philosopher, tasking them to come up with samples of food that is, technologically, already on our doorstep.

Food shortages could force world into vegetarianism, warn scientists

Date: 27-08-2012
Source: The Guardian

Water scarcity’s effect on food production means radical steps will be needed to feed population expected to reach 9bn by 2050

Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world’s population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.

Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world’s leading water scientists.

“There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations,” the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.

Empört Euch!

Ziegler: „Seit der Finanzkrise haben die europäischen und amerikanischen Großbanken mehr als acht Billionen Euro erhalten. Im gleichen Zeitraum hat das World Food Programm die Hälfte seines Budgets verloren, es schrumpfte von sechs  auf 2,8 Milliarden. Als die UN einen Notappell herausgab, dass sie für den Monat Juli 180 Millionen Euro benötigen, haben sie 58 Millionen erhalten!“

Der Schweizer Soziologe Jean Ziegler über seine Ein- und Ausladung zu den Salzburger Festspielen und den Zusammenhang zwischen Bankenrettung und Hungerkatastrophe

Der Schweizer Soziologe Jean Ziegler,  77, war jahrelang UN-Sonderberichterstatter für das Recht auf Nahrung und ist  Vizepräsident des Beratenden Ausschusses des UN-Menschenrechtsrates. Als Autor des Buches “Der Hass auf den Westen” wurde er im Februar eingeladen, die  Eröffnungsrede bei den Salzburger Festspielen zu halten. Zwei Monate später  lud ihn das Land Salzburg wieder aus.  Ziegler hat nun trotzdem eine Rede geschrieben und sie im Salzburger EcowinVerlag veröffentlicht.

Connecting the Dots Between Global Risks

iMFdirect

Apr 21, 2011 5:20PM

Finance ministers and central bank governors from around the world, gathering at the Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington last week, identified a slew of continued and emerging risks to the global economy, including higher food and fuel prices, the disaster in Japan, unrest in the Middle East, lingering unemployment in parts of the world, and the risk of overheating in some dynamic emerging markets.

With the recovery solidifying but still fragile, ministers put the spotlight on how to strengthen the IMF’s surveillance—its economic assessment and analysis—to help countries take the action needed to address risks and avoid future crises.

The 9 billion-people question

The world’s population will grow from almost 7 billion now to over 9 billion in 2050. John Parker asks if there will be enough food to go round

A special report on feeding the world

The Economist, Feb 24th 2011 | from the print edition

THE 1.6-hectare (4-acre) Broadbalk field lies in the centre of Rothamsted farm, about 40km (25 miles) north of London. In 1847 the farm’s founder, Sir John Lawes, described its soil as a heavy loam resting on chalk and capable of producing good wheat when well manured. The 2010 harvest did not seem to vindicate his judgment. In the centre of the field the wheat is abundant, yielding 10 tonnes a hectare, one of the highest rates in the world for a commercial crop. But at the western end, near the manor house, it produces only 4 or 5 tonnes a hectare; other, spindlier, plants yield just 1 or 2 tonnes.

Broadbalk is no ordinary field. The first experimental crop of winter wheat was sown there in the autumn of 1843, and for the past 166 years the field, part of the Rothamsted Research station, has been the site of the longest-running continuous agricultural experiment in the world. Now different parts of the field are sown using different practices, making Broadbalk a microcosm of the state of world farming.

Droughts, Floods and Food

Date: 07-02-2011
 Source: PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT

We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on the world’s poor, who spend much if not most of their income on basic foodstuffs.

The consequences of this food crisis go far beyond economics. After all, the big question about uprisings against corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Middle East isn’t so much why they’re happening as why they’re happening now. And there’s little question that sky-high food prices have been an important trigger for popular rage.

So what’s behind the price spike? American right-wingers (and the Chinese) blame easy-money policies at the Federal Reserve, with at least one commentator declaring that there is “blood on Bernanke’s hands.” Meanwhile, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France blames speculators, accusing them of “extortion and pillaging.”

Soaring prices threaten new food crisis

   Date: 10-10-2010
 Source: The Financial Times

Fears of a global food crisis swept the world’s commodity markets as prices for staples such as corn, rice and wheat spiralled after the US government warned of “dramatically” lower supplies.

An especially hot summer in the US, droughts in countries including Russia and Brazil and heavy rain in Canada and Europe have hit many grain and oilseed crops this year. This has raising concern of a severe squeeze in food supplies and a repeat of the 2007-08 food crisis.

The US Department of Agriculture, in a closely watched report, predicted that the country’s stocks of corn would halve to their lowest levels in 14 years.