Course: Grand Challenges: Food for Thought

Dr Jessica Knapp talks to us about the pollination of courgettes. Plants in the Cucurbitaceae family provide a good example of crops benefiting from insect pollination. This diverse plant family …

Dr Juliet Osborne discusses the mechanics behind how insects pollinate the plants which produce our food. For the agricultural industry, insects can be pretty serious pests of crops: eating and …

A soil layer covers most of the land on the planet but the thickness of this layer is very variable. This soil layer would represent the ‘skin’ of the planet …

Is it possible that the age of ‘enlightenment’ began with the opening of coffee houses?! Some historians believe it’s no coincidence that productivity in industry began to rise as coffee …

Dan Ryan, a curator at the Eden Project, Cornwall explains the key issues surrounding the production of Palm oil. Palm oil is one of the world’s most successful foods and …

In this section we use the growth and consumption of bananas to highlight how our demand for a single crop has led to intensive land use, monoculture and pollution. The …

We have been using land for agriculture for around 8,000 years, starting in southwest Asia, China and India and later developing in Europe. As wild food crops were domesticated, land …

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), food consumption accounts for 28% of the world’s ecological footprint. The environmental impact of feeding our population is therefore substantial, is potentially long-lasting …

The benefits of a commodity that is supplied globally are obvious to many but it is important to point out that not everyone can access these. Food Equity reflects on …