The adoption of new innovations such as irrigation systems, drought-resistant hybrid seeds or gaining access to asset-backed micro loans by smallholder farmers is a complicated issue. Nearly 60% of the global population live on less that $4 a day. Of this, 80% live in rural areas and agriculture is the primary source of income for over 80% of this huge rural population.

Adopting suitable innovations could improve the lives of the 2.5 billion people that rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. However, many innovative technologies remain widely inaccessible, typically in remote rural areas where governments and traditional aid has fallen short. In response to this, there has been an upsurge of start-up companies aiming to connect farmers to new innovations. By offering new products, services and markets to smallholder-farmers, farmers can increase their incomes and enjoy an improved quality of life.

Connecting farmers to innovations

Released on the 17th of November, managing…

(October was again a global temperature record setter. Image source: NASA.)

NASA’s monthly global temperature analysis is in and the results are once again record-making. For according to NASA’s global monitor, world temperatures were 0.76 degrees Celsius above the Earth average for the mid 20th Century.

This high temperature departure ties 2005 for hottest in NASA’s 136 year record. A temperature level that global ice core data points toward being hotter than at any time in the past 400,000 years. A record hot month in a string of record hot months for 2014. A resurgence to record high marks amidst an unprecedented spate of rising temperatures that has lasted now for more than a century running.

(Global temperatures have risen by more than 1 degree C above their low mark at the start of the 20th Century. It is a human-driven pace of warming 15-20 times faster than at…

This week’s blog comes from Sophie Towne and explores another exciting object found in the Collections Centre:

You are a refined and well-mannered lady quietly sewing by the fireside contemplating the latest family scandal, but you find your face is turning a rather un-dignified shade of pink because of the heat of the fire. So what do you need? A fire screen of course!

We have many fire screens within Norfolk Museums Service and several excellent examples live at the Norfolk Museums Collection Centre. These objects are the quintessential showcase piece for domestic history. They are beautiful objects and it’s not hard to imagine the gentle lady of the house reclining in front of the fire with the screen to protect her delicate skin.
These objects are at once practical and decorative. They range from simple wicker screens to sumptuous embroidered spectacles. They sit proudly but quietly in every country…

In 1995, after a local school had been destroyed in an arson attack, local MP Roy Hattersley dubbed the Manor Estate ‘the worst estate in Britain’ –quite a comedown for an estate which had once been one of Sheffield’s showpieces.  The truth, as ever, was more complex but the reality of decline on the now troubled estate was undeniable.

The Estate in the sixties (?): the image shows that the open layout of the estate could be bleak in its exposed setting

For those that moved to the greenfield estate from the slums in the 1920s and 1930s, it was a very different story: (1)

It were great – corn fields and then there were a farm further over and horses – we used to play with horses and run around fields with horses and there were a brook – we used to go paddling down in the brook

By…