Discoveries in Agriculture and Food Sciences

Combatting Hunger, Malnutrition and Food Insecurity - A Scourge of Global Drylands: A Narrative Review

Haiying Feng — 2025-02-15

This article is a Narrative Review that sieves through available information, summarizes trends and reports on published efforts to minimize the impact of factors contributing to food insecurity in the world’s drylands. Statistical data, comments by specialists (both foreign and domestic) and the results of our own observations are synthesized here. There are three main themes: 1. The policy and practice around the protection of agricultural land and national food security through a series of case studies from Africa. 2. Diverse responses to heightened food safety anxiety associated with climate change and an increasingly disembedded food system and disrupted supply chains. 3. The marginalization of small-scale, including subsistence farmers (and their knowledge) through the vertical integration and modernization of agricultural production. Food security is a major issue in the world’s drylands that occupy over 42% of the land surface. Multiple global stressors of climate change, drought, famine and war make it increasingly difficult to meet the dietary needs of large sections of the population. Here we discuss the nature of food security (and insecurity), its global drivers, and opportunities to enhance food security, with an emphasis on drylands. Examples are drawn largely from the African continent. We show that food security is complex, multi-faceted and largely intractable. Improved food security will require greater integration among sectors involved in food supply, access and availability, sustained involvement by governments and financial institutions to support existing food programs, and a greater emphasis on climate smart agriculture and indigenous knowledge, particularly at the local scale. A multidisciplinary approach is critical, with specialists in food science, agriculture, engineering, logistics and economics all playing a role in tackling this long-standing challenge.

Small Scales Food Milling Industries in Dschang-Cameroon: Socio-Economic and Technical Characteristics Assessment

Nsah-ko Tchoumboue — 2025-01-17

Food security in Africa mostly depends on Food milling industries. Until now lack of institutional rules and hygiene are some of the main causes responsible of low performances of food milling industries in Africa. The purpose of this work is then to analyze the socio-economic and technical characteristics of local mills in order to improve their performance. At this effect, a survey was conducted on 99 food milling industries randomly selected in Dschang city town. Direct measurements and observations were also carried out using specified tools. The collected data were codified using Microsoft Excel 2021. The descriptive analyses were performed using SPSS 21.0. The main results of this work were as follows: women are more involved in the food milling activities. Almost all the food milling industries (92.6%) possess Hammer mill and Flattener mill machine to grind dry foodstuffs and wet foodstuffs respectively. Machine capacities are still low which vary from the highest values of 30 kg per hour to the lowest value of 10 kg per hour. Based on number of working machines, 9 categories of industries were identified. The lifespan of those machines ranges from 5 to 7 years. None of the machines (0%) in industries possess the manual operation to carry out maintenance and provide healthy practices in food milling. Around 90% of the milling machines are made from metals and iron materials with industrial paints that could have negative effects on food quality. Law regulation related to lifespan and Machine’s design should be put in place in order to Protect consumers from food spoilage and intoxication by bacterial and ferrous contamination.

Assessment on Status and Challenges in Rabbits Farming in Rwanda

Jeanne Françoise Gatesi — 2025-02-09

The survey was carried out in all Provinces of Rwanda. Using a stratified sampling, one district was chosen from each Province and a purposive sampling was used based on the higher number of rabbits per District; those are: Gakenke, Muhanga, Ngororero, and Bugesera. To select the respondents, a snowball sampling method was used and rabbits farmers were interviewed if they possess at least 10 rabbits and have been in rabbit farming for at least a year. A set of questions were answered by the respondents and data on breeds, feeding, demand/supply, and challenges were collected using telephone/face to face interviews. Using SPSS software version 20, data from survey were analyzed by descriptive statistics. The study found out that respondents have few years of experience in rabbit farming and keep less number of rabbits because they are demotivated by some challenges like diseases and death of young rabbits. Most of respondents mainly raise crossbreeds from New Zeland white, Calfornia, American Chinchilla, Angora, Mini Lop and local breeds. The feeding is mostly based on local forage and kitchen residues and the maturity of rabbits among respondents varies from 4 to 12 months. The demand of rabbit products is higher than the supply and all respondents said that rabbit farming is a profitable business. Identification and training of rabbit farmers was recommended; import pure breeds and initiate specific programs that will work closely with rabbit farmers in the entire value chain was also recommended at the end of this study.