Friday, October 16th was World Food Day.  World Food Day is celebrated every year around the world on 16 October in honor of the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1945. It is also the Food Engineer day.  Food engineering is a multidisciplinary program which combines science, microbiology, and engineering education for food and related industries. Food engineering includes, but is not limited to, the application of agricultural engineering and chemical engineering principles to food materials.

The World Food Day theme for 2009 was “Achieving food security in times of crisis”.  With an estimated increase of 105 million hungry people in 2009, there are now 1.02 billion malnourished people in the world, meaning that almost one sixth of all humanity is suffering from hunger.

Let us work together to make sure hunger is recognized as a critical problem, and solve it.  The World Summit on Food Security is proposed by FAO for November 2009.

A massive amount of fish was found dead in Black River, St. Elizabeth this month. Up to 10 miles upstream dead fish were being found. Jamaica’s National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) was slow to act and has now admitted that its slow response may have prevented it from identifying the culprit(s) responsible for the environmental mess.

In a statement following the September 1 incident, NEPA said that it suspected that there was a release of dunder. Dunder is the yeast-rich foam leftovers from one batch of rum that is used to start the yeast culture of a second batch. It is the traditional yeast source in Jamaican rum and is known to be a critical step in achieving an authentic rum flavor. The dark-coloured leftover smells like stale sugar and is toxic to fish. Many people who live in the area claim that is an annual event and are concerned about the agency’s lack of power to stop or investigate it. (more…)

$10.2 million FAO/IFAD seed scheme yields results