Freeze-Frames and Blanket Bans: The Unconstitutionality of Prisons’ Denial of Gender Confirmation Surgery to Transgender Inmates

It is long established that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against imposing cruel and unusual punishments requires prisons to adequately address their inmates’ medical needs. Inmates identifying with the LGBTQ+ community are not exempt from this constitutional mandate. Trans inmates with gender dysphoria require specific treatment, including, but not limited to, gender confirmation surgery. While courts acknowledge that prisons owe a duty to provide some transition-related care, the extent of that duty remains contested. With no guidance from Congress or the Supreme Court, the constitutionality of prisons’ denial of gender confirmation surgery is in the hands of the circuit courts, which have come to differing conclusions. This Comment examines the current legal landscape for inmates seeking to obtain gender confirming surgery under the Eighth Amendment. This Comment addresses not only the medical necessity of gender confirmation surgery but also whether the current guidelines outlining transition-related care are actually helping trans inmates obtain medically necessary gender confirmation surgery. Lastly, this Comment discusses the progress and trajectory of LGBTQ+ rights and the implications that it may have on trans inmates’ ability to obtain access to gender confirmation surgery through the Eighth Amendment in the future

Does it Make Sense to Store Fresh Roots?

This flyer is a brief description of a study undertaken to better understand whether fresh root storage might offer opportunities with the Kenyan OFSP supply chain. 59 stakeholder and focus group interviews were undertaken across eight focal counties in Kenya to understand existing sweetpotato value chains, their seasonality, farmers’ production trends and constraints, traders’ root sourcing and trading patterns, price dynamics, retailing behaviors and consumers’ preferences

Food security challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa: The potential contribution of postharvest skills, science and technology in closing the gap

More than half of global population growth between 2013 and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa and is projected to more than double from 1.1 billion to 2.4 billion people by 2050. Estimates suggest that globally, sustainable food production will need to increase by 70%. It is essential that postharvest loss (PHL) reduction occurs alongside this increase in sustainable food production and access to meet the enormous food demand. The paper examines the grain PHL levels in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and their implications. The PHL reduction strategies, their merits and limitations are analysed in terms of appropriateness to smallholder farmers, who form the majority of the farming community in Africa. The paper further identifies emerging postharvest research and development issues and the implications at various levels. The need to consolidate the understanding, approaches and metrics of PHL is highlighted. This will enable losses to be measured more quickly, objectively and comparably across commodities and geographical locations in Africa and beyond, and to assist in decision-making and measuring the impact of different initiatives. That PHL reduction is now an aspiration of many high-level development plans across SSA is a significant step forward. However, the challenge still remains of converting this attention into meaningful practical actions and increased knowledge and skills at the scale required to enhance food security across the region

Field efficacy of hermetic and other maize grain storage options under smallholder farmer management

Household grain storage continues to be of paramount importance in improving food security in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where maize postharvest losses of 10-20 % are reported. On-farm trials to compare alternative solutions for reducing household maize storage losses were conducted in the 2014/15 and 2015/16 storage seasons in two contrasting agro-ecological zones in Hwedza district of Zimbabwe. A wide range of treatments including a commercial synthetic pesticide (Shumba super dust®1), unregistered but commonly used botanical pesticides (Aloe ash, Colophospermum mopane leaves, Eleusine coracana (rapoko) chaff, and Ocimum gratissimum), hermetic storage facilities (metal silos, GrainPro Super Grain Bags (SGB) IVR™, Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) bags), and storage bags with pesticide incorporated into their fabric (ZeroFly® bags), were evaluated. The results demonstrated the superiority of hermetic storage facilities (PICS bags, SGBs, and metal silos) in suppressing insect pest build up, insect grain damage and weight loss in stored maize grain. A newly introduced synthetic pesticide on the Zimbabwean market, Actellic gold dust®, was also evaluated in the 2015/16 season and was found to be highly effective. The following grain storage technologies; hermetic metal silos, SGB bags, PICS bags, and Actellic gold dust® pesticide are therefore recommended for smallholder farmer use to reduce stored grain losses due to insect pests