A solution is much needed to fight droughts and preserve crops. Researchers have now developed a device capable of checking the humidity in the soil, and releasing irrigation water as needed – just enough without wasting it .

Climate change and socio-economic factors are interdependent . If agriculture intensifies in a particular region, that would have an impact on water sector, resulting from the irrigation use.

Most of the animal proteins found in the meat industry waste have, until now, been underutilised. The challenge is to transform such waste into food of higher functionality and added value .

We know when something is valuable to our everyday lives. We do not need a price tag. This is precisely what the HighARCS project attempts to do:  to measure the socio-economic value of ecosystem services , but without counting in euros, renminbi or dollars.

Making food and drink production for more than 500 million people more eco-friendly is a key policy in Europe. About 99% of all agro-food companies in the European Union are small and medium size enterprises (SME).

The European Commission, on 29 th April 2013, slapped a two-year ban on insecticides suspected of killing off bee colonies. This follows the European Food Safety Authority finding that they pose a high acute risk to honey bees.

The amount of nitrogen that is excreted by livestock is directly proportional to the amount it is fed . This is according to Chris Reynolds a researcher in nutritional physiology of ruminants  at  the University of Reading , UK.

Food processing of cereal and fruits creates a rather voluminous amount of by-products . The London, UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers recently estimated that anywhere between 35% and 50%--or 1.

Designing environment-friendly compostable food packaging is the challenge that Daniel Ribera, the coordinator of the EC-funded Ecopack , tells youris.com about.

Sea bass or sea bream, by far the most consumed fish species around the Mediterranean area, increasingly originate from aquaculture.

British porridge, Dutch pea soup snert, Italian risotto or Spanish paella are only a small sample of the diversity of diets across Europe .

Nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are  a double-edged sword . As key components of fertilizers, they are  essential for life on Earth, but become a threat to human health and the environment when they are in excess and run off into water courses and wastewater.

The Earth is a sick patient, struggling to survive and feed its inhabitants.

“Wood may be present in people’s life more than we think”, says Mariana Hassegawa, a researcher at the European Forest Institute . She is one of the authors of a case study on new wood-based products by the BioMonitor EU project.

Even though people increasingly recognise the plastic pollution threat, we have used more plastic since the covid-19 pandemic began .

Hospitals generate huge amounts of rubbish. According to the World Health Organization , high-income countries produce up to 0.5 kg of hazardous waste per hospital bed per day.

Despite its splendour and beauty, nature is full of imperfections. Indeed, the process of natural selection relies upon minor errors in genetic duplication to produce new variants, better suited to a given environment.

Millions of people across Europe have enjoyed soaring temperatures in the summer of 2017 , with sizzling barbeques, good food, and fine wine.

The worst food crisis in 30 years looms for 50 million people across southern Africa from Mozambique to Angola. Two years without rain has destroyed harvests. Food prices have skyrocketed.

Approximately 8 million metric tons of plastic waste washes off land into the ocean each year. Bottle caps, toothbrushes, tiny plastic fragments, filaments, pellets, film and resin float about in the water columns.