Was this then the summer when Climate Change finally came to make itself at home in the consciousness of Western Europeans? In recent years, we have watched from a distance as extreme weather-related disasters have struck different regions across the planet in turn. Australia, Greece, and the West coast of North America have experienced devastating wildfires, and widespread death and destruction. Storms, severe floods, and landslides affected upwards of 30 million people in the Philippines and Vietnam in 2020 alone. While this year, in Africa, there is growing consensus that Madagascar is suffering through the modern world’s first climate change-induced famine. This new phenomenon compounds the already worsening conditions in much of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Continue reading “Alarms bells in Western Europe – has climate change just introduced itself to the continent?”Wheat Rust – How innovative technologies can mitigate the threat it poses in Ethiopia
The following blog post focuses on innovative and impactful uses of mobile technology to help mitigate the devastating impacts of wheat rust on crop yields in Ethiopia. This post owes to the work of Dr. Dave Hodson, and Dr. Diane Saunders and their various global partners, and relies on the references posted at the end of the page for its content. Any replication of their material is complimentary in its intention, and should only serve to highlight my own interest in the work carried out.
Part One: Wheat Rust – An Early Warning System
The world’s cereal and horticultural crops have always been threatened by the fungal disease rust (wheat yellow rust, stem rust, and leaf rust), a pathogen that can wreak havoc on croplands. Estimated global annual wheat losses due to rust are roughly 5.47 million tonnes (1). One country particularly vulnerable to wheat rust is Ethiopia, where the pathogen is considered the ‘key biological constraint to wheat production’ (Meyer et al. 2021). Wheat rusts have move quickly over land, carried vast distances by the wind, meaning epidemics take root quickly with devastating effects. These reduced yields pressurize the agricultural economy of Ethiopia, leading to annual wheat import costs of around $600 million, this in spite of them being the Sub-Saharan Africa region’s largest wheat producer.
Continue reading “Wheat Rust – How innovative technologies can mitigate the threat it poses in Ethiopia”