Every day cities in Europe discard a useful nutrient-rich resource that could be used to grow crops. Ironically, we treat and process human wastes while we mine non-renewable phosphate and potassium and we consume fossil fuel to make nitrogen fertiliser.

In Europe, irrigated agriculture is the chief water consumer for food production. Yet water resources are in limited supply.  One way out of this problem is to take more care with the water we use , and reduce the estimated 60% water waste.

Ton Baltissen , researcher at Wageningen University and Research Centre , in the Netherlands, who works  in the Applied plant research (PPO) department, gives youris.

In commercial nurseries, many different plant species are cultivated in the same irrigation sector. This means that the dosage of water and nutrients is often excessive for some of the crops’ requirement, as the most water demanding species set the standards.

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.

Marco Lodesani is the director of the honey bee and silkworm unit at the Agricultural Research Council (CRA-API) in Bologna, Italy. He coordinated Apenet , one of the first study highlighting the role of neonicotinoids in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

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.

Jaroslav Mysiak is a senior researcher in environmental economics at the Fondazione Eni Erico Mattei and the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change , both in Venice, Italy.

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 .

The fact that Finland has staged an annual herring festival ever since 1743 tells you something about the historical and cultural significance of the country’s most populous fish.

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.