Buyung Hadi

Buyung Hadi

Buyung, an Indonesian entomologist, is currently serving as the country representative for the International Rice Research Institute in Cambodia, a position he says gives him a ringside seat for observing how scientific innovation can play a role in national food security policy. “I believe in science-based advocacy,” Buyung says, adding that the challenges include how to …

Meet the Fellow

A Global Alliance to Stop Invasive Species

The sun was mid-way up when the car that carried me and a few local agricultural officers pulled up in front of a farmhouse. We got out and walked behind the house. There we found a heavily damaged field of corn. The farmer talked animatedly about a strange ‘hungry worm’. His corn was less than …

Read More

We Need More From Big Agri

If you were to drive through farmland in rural Java, Indonesia, on a recent morning and roll down your car windows, you probably wouldn’t take in the wet grass smell of the rice paddies. Instead, you might get an odor more like a chemistry lab.  Out in the fields, farmers are spraying chemical pesticides. It …

Read More

Giant Bee: What Can We Do To Keep It Alive?

It is somewhat counterintuitive to say that a giant bee, one the size of an adult’s thumb with large pincer-like mouthparts, is hard to spot. Yet this is precisely the case with Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto), which has only three documented live sightings in the last 400 years or so. That’s why the bee’s …

Read More