You've Got to Bee Kidding?

Last week we talked about the stresses on young bees being blamed for accelerating the decline and collapse of their hives.

Keeping with the bee theme, new research shows that bees are thriving better in the areas we'd least expect - towns and cities.

The study found that bee abundance did not differ between three studied landscapes (urban, farmland, nature reserves), but bee diversity was higher in urban areas than farmland - read more.

Also this week...

While the numbers of the chronically hungry have been reduced by 100 million over the past decade, 805 million still go without enough to eat on a regular basis.

Increasing production has long seen as the natural pathway to ending hunger - but today, even though the world produces enough food to feed everyone, hunger remains a problem.

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva addressed delegates at the International Forum on Agriculture and Climate Change last week: "What we are still mostly seeing is a model of production that cannot prevent the degradation of soils and the loss of biodiversity - both of which are essential goods, especially for future generations." - read more.

Russia expecting big wheat exports despite restrictions

Despite Russia’s recently introduced restrictions on wheat exports for the remainder of the 2014/15 season, the country is still heading towards higher wheat exports than last season.

Russian agricultural consultancy SovEcon has indicated that it expects full season wheat exports to reach over 21Mt in 2014/15, compared with 18.3Mt last season and a near record.

~ Gemma