A NEW interactive Internet platform has been established in an attempt to create awareness of the food crisis gripping the world in an international effort to alleviate global hunger.
The Global Community of Practice of Food Loss Reduction* web portal allows users to reduce food wastage and loss. A report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation published in Rome says that enough food to feed two billion people for a year is wasted every year. An estimated 1.3-billion tons of food, that’s about 30 percent of global production, is lost or wasted every year.
Officials have said that awareness of the problem is a first step towards alleviating the crisis, and a crisis it surely is with about 800-milliion people around the world who go to bed hungry every night. That’s where the web portal comes in, hopefully creating awareness among people not to waste food.
I must say that very little goes to waste in this house. We were both war babies and grew up with food economy in mind and that has stuck with both of us. I remember food rationing in Britain until the mid-50s and my mother was brilliant at spreading a little a long way.
Moving on to frogs. A new species has been identified in the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area of the United States, one of the most densely populated (with humans, that is) areas in the world.**
It is the Atlantic Coast leopard frog, Rana kauffeldi, only the second new frog species to be discovered in mainland United States in some 30 years.
Teams from several government agencies and universities worked on the project for some time, separating the species from similar species in the area.
It has been pointed out that our new frog attracted a lot of attention to itself because it apparently enjoys commuting on the Interstate 95 highway that links Massachusetts and North Carolina, through New York and New Jersey, naturally, probably one of the busiest motorways in the world.
And finally, a wandering wolf. A grey wolf has been seen and photographed at the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona in the United States, the first such sighting since the species was shot out there in the 1940s.***
The visitor has only been seen a couple of times, but it has caused considerable excitement as it might have migrated southwards from the northern Rockies, the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming in fact, where the grey wolf was re-introduced in the 1990s.
The grey wolf was viciously persecuted in the United States right up to the middle of the last century, when it was gradually realised that far from being an environmental menace, it was a vital part of the natural food chain.
Its introduction to Yellowstone has made some remarkable changes to that park over the years, very positive changes, so our wandering wolf’s appearance in Arizona is only to be welcomed.
Generally speaking good news all round. Don’t forget that new web portal. Cheers!
*Natal Mercury.
**Christian Science Monitor
***Discovery News
