FSE scholar Peter Timmer: "10 million could die prematurely from rising rice prices".

FSE Visiting Professor Peter Timmer calculates that 10 million people in Asian countries could die prematurely from the recent run-up in global rice prices. Says Timmer in a recent interview with the Center on Global Development: "This is the most serious problem facing the world food economy since 1973-74, when a million people in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh alone died prematurely as a result of a rice crisis. World Bank president Zoellick suggested last week that high food prices risked pushing 100 million people back below the poverty line, wiping out seven years of progress. In my view, the situation is actually much worse than that. Unless some way can be found to stop the explosive rise in food prices generally, and rice prices in particular, we will see sharply higher mortality....If current rice prices in world markets are actually transmitted into most Asian countries--and this is not yet a reality, but it becomes more likely every day the world price stays this high--then even conservative calculations suggest that upwards of 10 million people will die prematurely." Read the full Center For Global Development interview here.

Naylor discusses rising food prices on NPR, KQED Forum

Rosamond Naylor, director of the Program on Food Security and the Environment, discusses the global food crisis on NPR's Morning Edition and KQED Forum. She also was interviewed by ABC7, while program director Marshall Burke talked to NBC11.

• » NPR: Rising demand for meat takes toll environment
• » KQED Forum: Food prices and biofuels

FSE researchers receive grant from Rockefeller Foundation to study climate threats to African agriculture

Researchers at FSE have received a 3-year, $350,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study the potential effects of climate change on agriculture and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Rockefeller funded work will seek to assess climate threats to staple food crops at a country level, quantify the sources of uncertainty inherent in these assessments, and determine what implications shifts in crop climates have for agricultural adaptation and genetic resources preservation - with the end goal of helping prioritize investments in agricultural development and food security under a changing climate.

FSE researchers' study on climate change and hunger published in Science

Crops of central importance to many of the worlds poor could be greatly harmed by climate change within the next two decades, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE). The results are scheduled for publication on February 1st in the journal Science. "Understanding where these climate threats will be greatest, for what crops, and on what time scales, will be central to our efforts at fighting hunger and poverty over the coming decades," said lead author David Lobell, senior research scholar at FSE. The article has received extensive coverage in the popular press.

FSE and colleagues awarded $1.2 million for study of climate and biofuels production

Researchers at FSE and the Carnegie Institute at Stanford have been awarded $1.2 million by Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) for the study of the effect of biofuels expansion on climate.

December 3, 2007
Gates Foundation awards FSE and collaborators $3.8 million for the study of biofuels and food security

December 2, 2007
Lobell joins FSE as Senior Research Scholar

November 7, 2007
FSE welcomes Peter Timmer as Visiting Professor