Blog for People, Food and Nature

Before it was on the shelves of Whole Foods, quinoa was being abandoned in most parts of the Andes as an unwanted “food of the poor.” However, the Lake Titicaca region of Peru endured as a hotspot of quinoa cultivation and diversity. Why? According to the Food and Argiculture Organization of the United Nations, q…

E.F. Schumacher, an economist who founded Practical Action, wanted to help expand aid programs through technology. Fueled by the idea of developing and promoting appropriate technology to reach a greater segment of the underprivileged population of the world, he published an article in The Observer, on August 29, 196…

A wide range of Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative partners are celebrating International Women's Day with powerful stories of women's empowerment. We've gathered them all in one place here on the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Blog. Read on, and happy #IWD2016. Challenges to improving equity …

In an unused school classroom in the dry, dusty village of Sekoti, Ghana, 11 community members gathered to learn how to make a video. Many of them had never even used a camera before, much less operated a microphone. Participatory video is an empowering and creative process that allows those who understan…

There is no consensus about the practical implications of the concepts “climate-smart landscapes” and the “landscape approach.” Global challenges of poverty, food security, environmental degradation, and climate change are in the limelight. Recent high-level conferences—the Global Landscapes Forum, the Unite…

When it comes to eating sustainably, beans, peas, lentils, chickpeas, and other pulses are hard to beat. A staple of many traditional diets around the globe, high-protein, low-fat, high-fiber pulse grains have been shown to fight disease and malnutrition. In farming systems, pulses ‘fix’ atmospheric nitrogen, addi…