More than 75% of people around the world use a smartphone, so it’s no wonder that website designers have grown increasingly concerned with mobile optimization in recent years. Mobile web design is essential since most businesses are discovered through online searches now. But what does it mean to have an effective mobile webpage, and how can you create one?
There are many facets to mobile optimization. Here are four tips to ensure that your website’s mobile experience is a memorable one.
1. Appeal To All User Experiences
Smaller screens may give you less space to work with, but that doesn’t mean a lower-quality experience compared to a desktop design. Mobile sites should prioritize navigation, readability and accessibility. These elements are universal no matter what device the user is browsing on, but these come into play more prominently on a mobile website.
Mobile website optimization is more than just having a solid design. Remember that clients may be viewing the website on different devices. Each device, whether it’s a smartphone or tablet, will have a specific aspect ratio, meaning your website’s content should be sized according to those dimensions. That way, none of your audience is left alienated by improperly working web elements.
2. Create A Responsive Design
A smaller screen means that content is scaled down. But you don’t want website elements to become hard to interact with. If a website is difficult to read or poorly structured, then the visitor will likely leave and look elsewhere.
When creating a responsive design, make sure every element works seamlessly. The customer journey starts when the visitor sees your page on the search engine results page, which provides organic search results for inquiries made on Google. Their journey continues while they use your website. As such, make sure every stage suits their goal, which is to learn whether your business offers the solutions they’re searching for.
Achieve a responsive design by using custom cascading style sheets (CSS). If necessary, make sure you have a developer that can tackle this for you. These determine how HTML elements will be displayed on a screen, giving you full control over a mobile site’s presentation.
Using CSS allows you to:
• Create a grid layout. CSS grid layouts allow you to adjust design aspects to suit different screen sizes. You can include the elements you want while configuring how they look depending on what device they’re viewed on. Using size percentages is recommended, so buttons and other elements adapt easily as screen size changes.
• Use media queries to adjust font sizes. Other than images and visual elements, text should also be responsive, or visitors may need to inconveniently scroll or zoom in to read it.
• Control the space between elements. When you use CSS, you can provide enough white space between all page elements, even when the pages are scaled down.
3. Decrease Loading Time
With the right mobile aesthetic, your website looks the part. But a responsive mobile web design goes beyond the visual aspects. When a webpage fails to load quickly or correctly, clients will likely leave the site without continuing to the next stages. In fact, most mobile users expect a page loading time of three seconds or less, or else you may fail to secure their attention.
A responsive mobile design shouldn’t have too many web elements. While you want the page to look interesting, overdoing the design is more than just overwhelming to visitors’ eyes; it also overwhelms the loading time and puts your conversions at risk. Aim for a compact design to minimize how long the website loads.
You don’t have to cut corners: Focus on the most important information and optimize images for your mobile layout. Use lazy loading, which allows elements at the top of the page to load faster than those at the bottom. That way, elements aren’t loaded until needed, reducing your page’s loading time.
4. Redesign Pop-Ups
Pop-ups are among the most effective ways to catch your audience’s attention and increase interaction with your brand—if they’re used carefully and sparingly. However, on a mobile site, pop-ups can compromise the customer’s experience if they are intrusive or don’t work properly. In many cases, even medium-sized pop-ups are far larger and more disruptive than how they look on a desktop since mobile devices are smaller.
Your pop-ups should adhere to the following guidelines:
• Pop-ups cannot be obstructive. Google has established rules to follow for pop-ups so they don’t negatively impact the visitor’s experience. On mobile devices, the pop-up should cover only a portion of the screen and must be easy to dismiss. Make sure your pop-up has a clearly marked button to close it. If your pop-up contains an age verification form, login dialogs, cookie notices and other eligible types, however, it is exempt from this rule.
• Focus on one goal. A successful pop-up drives home the point at a glance. Visitors shouldn’t have to read long paragraphs to figure out the message. Stick to one clear, concise purpose to prompt the viewer to act.
• Target your prospects accordingly. Instead of attempting to target all prospects, consider the different types and focus on the one that is most profitable for your company. For instance, “hot” prospects are those looking to buy immediately, while “cold” prospects are still weighing their options. If you’re targeting hot prospects, consider including a limited-time deal in your pop-up for immediate action. For cold prospects, invite them to sign up for your newsletters or to receive special deals that can be used later on.
With these rules in mind, you can design your pop-ups without facing any penalties from Google.
Don’t Wait To Improve Your Mobile Design
As mobile browsing continues to increase, now is the perfect time to revamp your mobile design. Internet users depend on mobile websites, meaning you need to consider how your website works on small screens. By optimizing your mobile design, you can avoid Google’s penalties and increase conversion rates with your clients.
If only half of startups survive more than five years and only one-third make it to 10, what’s the one thing you could do to ensure your company is sustainable? The answer is to create a growth strategy for your business, of course.
A growth strategy involves more than simply envisioning long-term success. If you don’t have a tangible plan, you’re actually losing business — or you’re increasing the chance of losing business to competitors.
The key with any growth strategy is to be deliberate. Figure out the rate-limiting step in your growth, and pour as much fuel on the fire as possible. But for this to be beneficial, you need to take the following steps:
1. Establish a value proposition.
For your business to sustain long-term growth, you must understand what sets it apart from the competition. Identify why customers come to you for a product or service. What makes you relevant, differentiated and credible? Use your answer to explain to other consumers why they should do business with you.
For example, some companies compete on “authority” — Whole Foods Market is the definitive place to buy healthy, organic foods. Others, such as Walmart, compete on price. Figure out what special benefit only you can provide, and forget everything else. If you stray from this proposition, you’ll only run the risk of devaluing your business.
2. Identify your ideal customer.
You got into business to solve a problem for a certain audience. Who is that audience? Is that audience your ideal customer? If not, who are you serving? Nail down your ideal customer, and revert back to this audience as you adjust business to stimulate growth.
3. Define your key indicators.
Changes must be measurable. If you’re unable to measure a change, you have no way of knowing whether it’s effective. Identify which key indicators affect the growth of your business, then dedicate time and money to those areas. Also, A/B test properly — making changes over time and comparing historical and current results isn’t valid.
4. Verify your revenue streams.
What are your current revenue streams? What revenue streams could you add to make your business more profitable? Once you identify the potential for new revenue streams, ask yourself if they’re sustainable in the long run. Some great ideas or cool products don’t necessarily have revenue streams attached. Be careful to isolate and understand the difference.
5. Look to your competition.
No matter your industry, your competition is likely excelling at something that your company is struggling with. Look toward similar businesses that are growing in new, unique ways to inform your growth strategy. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice. Ask yourself why your competitors have made alternate choices. Are they wrong? Or are your businesses positioned differently? The assumption that you’re smarter is rarely correct.
6. Focus on your strengths.
Sometimes, focusing on your strengths — rather than trying to improve your weaknesses — can help you establish growth strategies. Reorient the playing field to suit your strengths, and build upon them to grow your business.
7. Invest in talent.
Your employees have direct contact with your customers, so you need to hire people who are motivated and inspired by your company’s value proposition. Be cheap with office furniture, marketing budgets and holiday parties. Hire few employees, but pay them a ton. The best ones will usually stick around if you need to cut back their compensation during a slow period.
Developing a growth strategy isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. In fact, due to changing market conditions, making strategic decisions based on someone else’s successes would be foolish. That’s not to say that you can’t learn from another company, but blindly implementing a cookie-cutter plan won’t create sustainable growth.
You need to adapt your plan to smooth out your business’s inefficiencies, refine its strengths and better suit your customers — who could be completely different than those from a vague, one-size-fits-all strategy.
Your company’s data should lend itself to all your strategic decisions. Specifically, you can use the data from your key indicators and revenue streams to create a personalized growth plan. That way, you’ll better understand your business and your customers’ nuances, which will naturally lead to growth.
A one-size-fits-all strategy implies vague indicators. But a specific plan is a successful plan. When you tailor your growth strategy to your business and customers, you’ll keep your customers happy and fulfill their wants and needs, which will keep them coming back.
Many people would be surprised to hear that grilling carries potential cancer risks. But each year, the American Institute for Cancer Research publishes guidance for “cancer-safe grilling,” cautioning consumers to avoid two types of compounds that have been tied to cancer. These compounds, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heterocyclic amines, get generated when food, especially meat, is cooked on a grill. They have not been proven to cause cancer in people, but lab studies have shown they alter DNA in a way that could lead to cancer.
“Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are formed when any kind of organic matter,” primarily fat that drips off meat and down into the grill grates, “gets burned, because the carbon inside is being combusted in the flames, and those hydrocarbons get carried up in the smoke,” said Rashmi Sinha, senior investigator in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute. The resulting smoke can envelop the meat and coat it in the potentially carcinogenic compounds.
The black char we’ve all seen on grill grates and grilled food? That’s the heterocyclic amines, or HCAs, which occur when high temperatures meet muscle meat, which includes red meat (pork, beef, lamb, goat), poultry (turkey, chicken) and fish. “Grilling — or even pan-frying — at these high temps causes amino acids found in the meat to react with another substance found in meat called creatine,” said Colleen Doyle, managing director of nutrition and physical activity at the American Cancer Society and a registered dietitian. Creatine is found only in muscle meat.
“It’s the reaction of those amino acids and the creatine that form the HCAs, which is why we don’t see HCAs formed when grilling asparagus, squash, peppers and other vegetables.”
As with most lifestyle choices related to dialing up or down one’s cancer risk, the dose makes the poison. Which means if you’re grilling once or twice a year, don’t sweat it. But if you plan to grill often — once or twice a week throughout the summer, say — experts suggest taking some small steps to make a big difference in lowering your exposure to these compounds.
1. Think outside the burger
Grill fish, seafood, poultry or plant-based foods rather than red meat and especially processed meats like hot dogs; the World Health Organization considers processed meats a carcinogen and red meat a probable carcinogen. While HCAs are still formed while grilling fish and seafood, Ms. Doyle pointed out that you typically don’t have to cook seafood as long as beef and chicken, which reduces the accumulation of the compounds.
2. Marinate first
Research suggests that marinating for at least 30 minutes can reduce the formation of HCAs on meat, poultry and fish. The reason for this is not entirely clear to researchers, but one possibility is a kind of shield effect. “If you put a barrier of basically sugar and oil between the meat and the heat, then that is what becomes seared instead of the meat,” said Nigel Brockton, vice president of research at the American Institute for Cancer Research. It also makes your meat more flavorful.
3. Make produce the star
Many kinds of fruits and vegetables are actually protective as far as cancer risk, and they don’t form HCAs when grilled. Several experts recommend using meat as a condiment. Think of alternating cubes of chicken with peppers and onions or peaches and pineapple on a skewer, for instance. This trick, which also works when pan frying, reduces the surface area of meat exposed to the hot surface, Dr. Brockton explained, since the meat is also touching other ingredients throughout the cooking process.
4. Leverage herbs and spices
According to Dr. Brockton, cooking your meat with herbs, spices, tea, chili peppers and the like — ingredients with phenolic compounds — can be a helpful approach because “it seems they quench the formation of the potentially carcinogenic compounds because of the antioxidant properties of those ingredients.”
5. Be mindful of the smoke itself
Try to minimize how much smoke you’re breathing in, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health recommends as part of a helpful resource on healthy summer picnic practices.
Progress in the field. In recent years, advancements in research have changed the way cancer is treated. Here are some recent updates:
Uterine cancer. Cancer of the uterus is on the rise, especially among Black women. Experts say the cancer will eventually become the third most common type among women, and recent studies show that it is not only more likely to strike Black women, but also more likely to be deadly.
Blood tests. New blood tests that look for minuscule shards of DNA or proteins to detect a variety of cancers have won praise from President Biden, who made them a priority of his Cancer Moonshot program. Supporters say the tests can find tumors when they are still small and curable, but a definitive study to determine whether the tests could prevent cancer deaths has yet to come.
Melanoma. A large study found that participants who ate high quantities of fish each week had a greater risk of developing melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer. It is not clear what’s behind the surprising association between fish intake and melanoma, and the lead author of the study cautioned that the findings are not a reason to remove fish from a healthy diet.
Rectal cancer. A small trial that saw 18 rectal cancer patients taking the same drug, dostarlimab, appears to have produced an astonishing result: The cancer vanished in every single participant, undetectable by physical exam, endoscopy, PET scans or M.R.I. scans. Experts believe it to be the first time in history that a study has led to complete remission in every single cancer patient.
Breast cancer trial. A treatment with trastuzumab deruxtecan, a drug that targets cancer cells with laserlike precision, was found to be stunningly successful at slowing tumor growth and extending life in clinical trial participants who had metastatic breast cancer.
The effect of weight loss. A new study found that people who lost significant amounts of weight through bariatric surgery had a 32 percent lower risk of developing cancer and a 48 percent lower risk of dying from cancer, compared with people who did not have the surgery. According to the study, the more weight people lost, the more their cancer risk fell.
6. Avoid char
The black, crispy crust that you often see on the bony edges of ribs or steak is more likely to contain a higher concentration of potentially carcinogenic compounds. Ms. Doyle also recommends cleaning the grill grates ahead of time, to remove any previously generated char.
7. Cut time on the grill
“The longer you cook something, the longer the chemical reaction is happening, the higher the amount of HCAs are formed,” Dr. Brockton said. If you partially precook your meat, such as by baking or cooking in the microwave, the layer of HCAs that gets formed won’t be as thick. The same goes for meat cut into smaller pieces, such as with kabobs, because it cooks faster. Grilling in foil can also help protect the food from smoke and speed up the cooking time, according to the Harvard resource on healthy picnics.
8. Select hardwoods instead of soft woods
“Types of wood can influence HCA formation,” Ms. Doyle said. “Hardwoods, such as hickory and maple, and charcoal all burn at lower temperatures than soft woods, such as pine. Cooking with wood that burns at a lower temperature is desirable.”
9. Reduce fuel for the fire
To minimize your exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, experts recommend selecting leaner cuts of meat or trimming any visible fat, which can lower the amount that drips down through the grates and comes back up in the smoke. To minimize dripping, Ms. Doyle suggests not piercing your meats while they’re on the grill.
Australians are eating and inhaling significant numbers of tiny plastics at home, our new research shows. These “microplastics”, which are derived from petrochemicals extracted from oil and gas products, are settling in dust around the house. Some of these particles are toxic to humans — they can carry carcinogenic or mutagenic chemicals, meaning they potentially cause cancer and/or damage our DNA.
We still don’t know the true impact of these microplastics on human health. But the good news is, having hard floors, using more natural fibres in clothing, furnishings and homewares, along with vacuuming at least weekly can reduce your exposure.
What are microplastics?
Microplastics are plastic particles less than five millimetres across. They come from a range of household and everyday items such as the clothes we wear, home furnishings, and food and beverage packaging. We know microplastics are pervasive outdoors, reaching remote and inaccessible locations such as the Arctic, the Mariana Trench (the world’s deepest ocean trench), and the Italian Alps. Our study demonstrates it’s an inescapable reality that we’re living in a sea of microplastics — they’re in our food and drinks, our oceans, and our homes.
What we did and what we found
While research has focused mainly on microplastics in the natural environment, a handful of studies have looked at how much we’re exposed to indoors. People spend up to 90% of their time indoors and therefore the greatest risk of exposure to microplastics is in the home. Our study is the first to examine how much microplastic we’re exposed to in Australian homes. We analysed dust deposited from indoor air in 32 homes across Sydney over a one-month period in 2019.
We asked membersof the public to collect dust in specially prepared glass dishes, which we then analysed. We found 39% of the deposited dust particles were microplastics; 42% were natural fibres such as cotton, hair and wool; and 18% were transformed natural-based fibres such as viscose and cellophane. The remaining 1% were film and fragments consisting of various materials. Between 22 and 6,169 microfibres were deposited as dust per square metre, each day.
Homes with carpet as the main floor covering had nearly double the number of petrochemical-based fibres (including polyethylene, polyamide and polyacrylic) than homes without carpeted floors. Conversely, polyvinyl fibres (synthetic fibres made of vinyl chloride) were two times more prevalent in homes without carpet. This is because the coating applied to hard flooring degrades over time, producing polyvinyl fibres in house dust.
Microplastics can be ingested by various animals, ranging in size from tiny creatures like zooplankton to sharks and whales. The likelihood of microplastics being eaten is influenced by the amount in the environment and how closely they resemble food. Laboratory studies indicate that microplastics can potentially transfer through the food web when marine, terrestrial and freshwater species that have previously ingested microplastics are preyed on by other animals.
Microplastics eaten by larger marine animals will generally pass through their bodies. However, research does show that microplastics can be retained in the gut for extended periods where they may cause abrasion and damage to internal tissues. Nanoplastics can pass through the gut wall and travel to different parts of the body, such as the lungs and liver, where they can cause damage. Further research is required to understand the potential health implications from ingesting microplastics.
Microplastics can be toxic
Microplastics can carry a range of contaminants such as trace metals and some potentially harmful organic chemicals. These chemicals can leach from the plastic surface once in the body, increasing the potential for toxic effects. Microplastics can have carcinogenic properties, meaning they potentially cause cancer. They can also be mutagenic, meaning they can damage DNA.
However, even though some of the microplastics measured in our study are composed of potentially carcinogenic and/or mutagenic compounds, the actual risk to human health is unclear. Given the pervasiveness of microplastics not only in homes but in food and beverages, the crucial next step in this research area is to establish what, if any, are safe levels of exposure.
How much are we exposed to? And can this be minimised?
Roughly a quarter of all of the fibres we recorded were less than 250 micrometres in size, meaning they can be inhaled. This means we can be internally exposed to these microplastics and any contaminants attached to them.
Using human exposure models, we calculated that inhalation and ingestion rates were greatest in children under six years old. This is due to their lower relative body weight, smaller size, and higher breathing rate than adults. What’s more, young children typically have more contact with the floor, and tend to put their hands in their mouths more often than adults.
What is the World Economic Forum doing about plastic pollution?
More than 90% of plastic is never recycled, and a whopping 8 million metric tons of plastic waste are dumped into the oceans annually. At this rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans by 2050. The Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) is a collaboration between businesses, international donors, national and local governments, community groups and world-class experts seeking meaningful actions to beat plastic pollution.
In Ghana, for example, GPAP is working with technology giant SAP to create a group of more than 2,000 waste pickers and measuring the quantities and types of plastic that they collect. This data is then analysed alongside the prices that are paid throughout the value chain by buyers in Ghana and internationally. It aims to show how businesses, communities and governments can redesign the global “take-make-dispose” economy as a circular one in which products and materials are redesigned, recovered and reused to reduce environmental impacts.
Children under six inhale around three times more microplastics than the average — 18,000 fibres, or 0.3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per year. They would also ingest on average 6.1 milligrams of microplastics in dust per kg of body weight per year. For a five-year-old, this would be equivalent to eating a garden pea’s worth of microplastics over the course of a year. But for many of these plastics there is no established safe level of exposure. Our study indicated there are effective ways to minimise exposure.
First is the choice of flooring, with hard surfaces, including polished wood floors, likely to have fewer microplastics than carpeted floors. Also, how often you clean makes a difference. Vacuuming floors at least weekly was associated with less microplastics in dust than those that were less frequently cleaned. So get cleaning! Some pollutants and heavy metals can also adsorb or stick to plastic surfaces. As a result, plastics can act like sponges in the environment, passively collecting chemicals onto their surfaces.
While plastics can remove some persistent organic pollutants (POPs) from the surrounding water, there is concern about what happens when plastics containing these adsorbed pollutants are ingested by animals. The ability of some POPs to bind to plastics is particularly concerning due to their toxicity at low doses. These toxic and persistent chemicals are widely distributed in the marine environment and are readily concentrated onto plastic surfaces at up to 1 million times the concentration than in the surrounding water.
Studies have shown that these chemicals can transfer from ingested plastics to animal tissue where they can become concentrated within the animal and transfer through the food chain. Plastics are beneficial to human health through their use in medical applications and for protecting our food and beverages. Plastics have revolutionized healthcare through improving sterility by the use of disposable syringes, gloves, IV tubes and catheters and providing increased comfort with hypoallergenic medical devices, heart valves, and flexible prosthetics (artificial body parts).
Plastic bottles and containers provide a way of distributing water that is safe to drink in locations where there are major issues of water contamination. Plastic packaging limits food and beverage spoilage through microbial contamination. It is likely that we are ingesting some level of plastics in our diet. A rapidly growing body of research is showing that ongoing accumulation of toxins associated with plastics poses a risk to our food safety and public health. However, the levels of plastics and associated chemicals we are exposed to in our diet compared with other everyday activities has not been assessed.
Tens of millions of people, from Europe to Asia, Africa to the Middle East, are expected to go hungry this year due to a grim combination of factors made significantly worse by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war in Ukraine.
The conflict, which involves two countries that together produce nearly one-third of the world’s wheat, helped push the grain’s global price up 21% in just the 10 days that ended March 3. Extreme weather, such as persistent drought in North America, high fuel costs, fertilizer prices through the roof and the need to feed an increasing number of refugees displaced by war and climate change will contribute to the menace of growing hunger in 2022.
“The situation is in many ways bordering on catastrophic, and without substantial and immediate assistance, it will get worse,” said Eric Muñoz, senior policy advisor for agriculture at Oxfam, the Nairobi-based charity. “There’s no better wake-up call than the current moment, with sky-high food prices and skyrocketing hunger, to have a serious conversation about rethinking global food systems.”
Short-term solutions are hard to come by. American farmers, hobbled by what some observers are calling the driest weather in 1,200 years, can’t be depended on to make up for the shortfall. Nutrien, the world’s biggest fertilizer maker, has said it plans to ramp up production by 20%, but prices have been so high that a lot of the world’s growers still won’t be able to afford it.
A more permanent way out of chronic world hunger would be creating more options in more places to grow and access food. Organic farming also shows glimmers of growth, but still accounts for less of 1% of agricultural acreage in the U.S.
Then there’s the problem of getting food to people who are in some cases so hungry they’re starving. Before the war in Ukraine, 26 million refugees, the highest level in history, relied on a network of aid and government organizations for food. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has displaced or made refugees of another estimated 10 million.
The World Food Programme, the UN’s food-assistance branch, expects its costs to rise $71 million a month due to the conflict alone. The organization says it has already had to reduce rations in hunger-stricken Yemen, where it says more than 16 million people are food insecure and “there are pockets of famine-like conditions.”
The Middle East and North Africa are particularly vulnerable to higher food prices, according to the World Food Programme. Lebanon imports about half its wheat from Ukraine, the organization said. For Tunisia, the percentage is 42% and for Yemen 22%. Food prices worldwide are already at an all-time high, and buyers that need to shop around to replace Ukrainian wheat would pay even more, the organization said.
Russia has already curtailed wheat and maize exports, and Ukraine’s agricultural minister said Tuesday that its spring crop could be as small as half what the country expected before the invasion. Ukraine has suspended exports of meat, livestock, salt, sugar, buckwheat, oats, millet and rye.
In 2010, skyrocketing bread prices contributed to the political uprisings of the Arab Spring, which swept through some three dozen countries and forced regime change in Egypt and Libya. Protests against high food prices also played a part in the rise of the violent Islamic State extremist group. The current global food supply is not as bad as in 2010 — when total food supplies were even lower — but the global grain supply is now in a critical situation.
U.S. farmers are hamstrung when it comes to filling the gap in food production. First, there’s the historically lousy weather. Thirty-five states, or 61% of the total acreage of the lower 48 states, were in drought last week, according to government calculations. Extreme or severe dry conditions persist from the Pacific coast in the West to as far as Louisiana and Arkansas in the East.
Then there’s the availability of land. Farmers in places like the U.S. and Brazil are already farming as much as they can. Agriculture requires long-term planning far ahead of a planting season, and companies and organizations purchase food months if not years in advance. Direct contracts with suppliers give growers even less leeway on what crops to raise. That’s why ending the global food shortage is far from as simple as American or Brazilian farmers planting more wheat or corn.
The high cost of fertilizer has also put a drag on global agriculture. Nitrogen fertilizer prices have increased four-fold, while phosphate and potash prices have climbed more than three-fold since 2020. Nutrien said it’s expanding its mining in Southern Canada for potash, an essential source of potassium, to help offset what could be a gaping global shortfall due to sanctions on Russia, a big exporter.
Proponents of industrial agriculture say chemical fertilizers are necessary to harvest large yields and feed a growing global population. Fertilizer overuse, however, is a leading cause of waterway pollution and dead zones like the massive one in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as soil degradation and erosion. Those are all factors which will challenge access to food in the future, and advocates of sustainable agriculture say now is the time to make the transition to more resilient systems.
“These are all price signals that show the world is telling us to change,” said Sanjeev Krishnan, the chief investment officer at venture firm S2G, which is backed by Walmart heir Lukas Walton and has invested in food and agriculture since 2014. “Is this cyclical or structural? In my opinion, it’s structural.”
Just as fertilizer prices were starting to spike, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would create a $250 million fund to invest in alternative and U.S.-made fertilizers. The government of Brazil, which has imported a lot of fertilizer from Russia, is also investing in alternatives. Meanwhile, earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron signaled support for more investment in food infrastructure.
“Europe and also Africa will be very deeply destabilized in regards to food because of what can’t be planted right now in Ukraine,” Macron said March 11. “We will have to prepare for that and reevaluate our production strategies to defend our food sovereignty, but also to be able to define a strategy concerning Africa.”
Food security should have the same priority as energy security, said Graham Gordon, U.K.-based head of policy at the nonprofit Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, the world’s second-biggest humanitarian network after the Red Cross.
“We’ve had two years where supply chains haven’t been working,” Gordon said. “How can we rethink food and how can we push for more food sovereignty?”
Chloe Sorvino leads coverage of food and agriculture at Forbes. Her seven years of reporting at Forbes has brought her to In-N-Out Burger’s secret test kitchen, drought-ridden farms
The war in Ukraine grows worse by the day, with an estimated 1,500 civilians killed and more than 3 million forced to seek refuge in other countries, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Stopping the war as soon as possible is essential for saving lives, protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty, and curbing global repercussions.
In particular, the war has had a devastating impact on local food production. Since the global food system is a fragile web of interconnections, many countries dependent on Russia and Ukraine for food and agricultural supplies now face immediate and looming food shortages that will inevitably worsen the global hunger crisis.
“I am deeply concerned that the violent conflict in Ukraine, already a catastrophe for those directly involved, will also be a tragedy for the world’s poorest people living in rural areas who cannot absorb the price hikes of staple foods and farming inputs that will result from disruptions to global trade,” said Gilbert F. Houngbo, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), in a statement.
“We are already seeing price hikes and this could cause an escalation of hunger and poverty with dire implications for global stability.” IFAD, a Global Citizen partner, has teams worldwide working to support small-scale producers and improve food security in rural areas of developing countries that have documented the ways in which the war in Ukraine has worsened existing food crises.
The impact has been particularly devastating in agricultural contexts, where the ability to acquire and distribute food is always a vexed ordeal due to chronic underfunding. But new crises are emerging as a result of the disruptions caused by the war…..
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