Agricultural Value Chain Development: Threat or Opportunity for Women's Employment?

This document presents information on how agricultural markets are rapidly globalizing, generating new consumption patterns and new production and distribution systems. Value chains, often controlled by multinational or national firms and supermarkets, are capturing a growing share of the agri-food systems in developing regions. They can provide opportunities for quality employment for men and women, yet they can also be channels to transfer costs and risks to the weakest nodes, particularly women. They often perpetuate gender stereotypes that keep women in lower paid, casual work and do not necessarily lead to greater gender equality

Long-distance migratory shorebirds travel faster towards their breeding grounds, but fly faster post-breeding

Long-distance migrants are assumed to be more time-limited during the pre-breeding season compared to the post-breeding season. Although breeding-related time constraints may be absent post-breeding, additional factors such as predation risk could lead to time constraints that were previously underestimated. By using an automated radio telemetry system, we compared pre- and post-breeding movements of long-distance migrant shorebirds on a continent-wide scale. From 2014 to 2016, we deployed radio transmitters on 1,937 individuals of 4 shorebird species at 13 sites distributed across North America. Following theoretical predictions, all species migrated faster during the pre-breeding season, compared to the post-breeding season. These differences in migration speed between seasons were attributable primarily to longer stopover durations in the post-breeding season. In contrast, and counter to our expectations, all species had higher airspeeds during the post-breeding season, even after accounting for seasonal differences in wind. Arriving at the breeding grounds in good body condition is beneficial for survival and reproductive success and this energetic constraint might explain why airspeeds are not maximised in the pre-breeding season. We show that the higher airspeeds in the post-breeding season precede a wave of avian predators, which could suggest that migrant shorebirds show predation-minimizing behaviour during the post-breeding season. Our results reaffirm the important role of time constraints during northward migration and suggest that both energy and predation-risk constrain migratory behaviour during the post-breeding season

3. The Historical, Environmental and Socio-economic Context of Forests and Tree-based Systems for Food Security and Nutrition

3.1 Introduction Forests and trees outside of forests have ensured the food security and nutrition of human populations since time immemorial. Throughout the world, forests and associated ecosystems have been managed to enhance their production of a vast array of wild, semi-domesticated and domesticated foods, including fruits, nuts, tubers, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, honey, insects, game animals, fish and other wildlife (discussed in detail in Chapter 2). The development and spread of crop..

Post-Horse River Wildfire Surface Water Quality Monitoring Using the Water Cytotoxicity Test

Version 1.0 - External Review Draft. Supporting Dataset can be found at: Kinniburgh, David; Huang, Dorothy; Moe, Birget; Dey, Indranil; Luong, Jennie; Xie, Li; Tesfazgy, Milly; Demofsky, Paige; Parmentier, Spencer; Gabos, Stephan; Zhang, Weiping; Reichert, Megan; Wang, Nina Ching Yi; Ellehoj, Erik; Hatfield Consultants, 2023, "Dataset for: Post-Horse River Wildfire Surface Water Quality Monitoring Using the Water Cytotoxicity Test", https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/ICGLUE, Borealis, V1.The 2016 Horse River wildfire had a significant environmental impact on the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB) in Northern Alberta, with a burn area exceeding 580,000 hectares. To understand the impact of this unprecedented event on water quality in the RMWB, water samples were collected from surface waters, drinking water treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants, and taps over the three-year period immediately proceeding the wildfire, beginning in May 2017. Samples were collected from sites directly impacted by the Horse River wildfire (Fort McMurray), as well as sites upstream (Athabasca) and downstream (Fort McKay, Fort Chipewyan) from the impacted area. Each water sample was tested using the cell-based water cytotoxicity assay, an in-house developed bioassay with quality control criteria and previous application to environmental testing. The underlying technology of the assay allows for non-invasive and continuous monitoring of human HepG2 cells, providing more human health relevant toxicity information than traditional assays with non-mammalian targets. Comparative toxicity values incorporating both concentration and temporal cellular response data were determined for each sample, allowing for the identification of trends across geographic location, source (surface, treatment plant, tap), and time. Complementary chemical analysis, including routine water chemistry and trace element analysis, was also performed to evaluate chemical components that may have influenced the measured cellular response and to observe trends in contaminant concentrations across time and sampling location. The surface water samples with the highest measured cytotoxicity were collected in 2017 from Fort McMurray, which was directly impacted by the Horse River wildfire. Sites located further downstream in Fort McKay and Fort Chipewyan were less cytotoxic, indicating dilution may have impacted the distribution of the wildfire contaminants. Trace chemical analysis revealed elevated concentrations of sixteen trace elements in these samples, which were highest in samples from the impacted area and lower in sites downstream. A second spike in toxicity was observed in many surface waters and drinking water source locations in 2019, which may reflect other wildfire events that occurred in the province that year. Among the wastewater treatment plants evaluated, all four facilities demonstrated effective treatment across their treatment streams, but the effluent from Fort McMurray, the only facility to utilize clarifiers, was the least cytotoxic. Exceedances of Canadian drinking water guideline values were evaluated in all sample types. Linear regression analysis found positive correlations between 1) concentrations of routine testing parameters and cytotoxicity in wastewater influent and 2) concentrations of trace elements and cytotoxicity in surface and source waters. Many samples containing trace amounts of targeted chemicals still presented with high cytotoxicity, indicating that untargeted substances or mixture effects impacted the cellular response and bioassay testing can complement traditional chemical analysis approaches for environmental monitoring. The water cytotoxicity assay provides numerous advantages, including limited sample preparation, small sample volume requirements (< 10 mL), and simple testing procedures. The testing method is also data rich, providing quantitative information that can be used to compare samples exhibiting low or high cytotoxicity. The results of this three-year investigation indicate that the water cytotoxicity assay has strong potential for application to routine environmental monitoring (to complement chemical-based monitoring programs), and to identify high toxicity samples that require further assessment/remediation as part of the investigation of emergency situations (e.g. an industrial spill).Othe

Forests and Food

As population estimates for 2050 reach over 9 billion, issues of food security and nutrition have been dominating academic and policy debates. A total of 805 million people are undernourished worldwide and malnutrition affects nearly every country on the planet. Despite impressive productivity increases, there is growing evidence that conventional agricultural strategies fall short of eliminating global hunger, as well as having long-term ecological consequences. Forests can play an important role in complementing agricultural production to address the Sustainable Development Goals on zero hunger. Forests and trees can be managed to provide better and more nutritionally-balanced diets, greater control over food inputs–particularly during lean seasons and periods of vulnerability (especially for marginalised groups)–and deliver ecosystem services for crop production. However forests are undergoing a rapid process of degradation, a complex process that governments are struggling to reverse. Forests have huge potential to reduce global hunger and malnutrition. Forests and Food provides the evidence and insights necessary for harnessing that power. This timely volume is essential reading for researchers, students, NGOs and governments around the globe