l'AFRiQUE...and other stories

dynamicafrica:

African countries have been urged to increase investments in agriculture to guarantee the continent’s food security.

Rwanda President Paul Kagame said more resources should be provided for research and new technologies that will in the long run ensure increased food production in the continent, especially for staple food crops like maize.

Small holder farmers in the continent, he added, should equally have access to essential inputs like fertiliser, improved seeds, professional advice, as well as markets for their produce.

The Rwandan leader further called on the countries in the continent to move away from rain-fed agriculture, and instead intensify their irrigation capacities.

“We must make available sufficient resources to strengthen rural financial systems for farmers,” said Mr Kagame while delivering a key note address at the opening of the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD) Governing Council meeting in Rome, Italy.

He was accompanied by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and IFAD’s President Kanayo F Nwanze. The meeting is also being attended by a number of world leaders including Microsoft owner Bill Gates, international policymakers, farmer representatives and government ministers.

The two-day meeting will discuss how to increase food production and promote sustainable use of the earth’s natural resources.

His call comes at a time when the East African region is still reeling from the effects of the one of its worst droughts in 60 years, which affected more than 11 million people in both the arid and semi-arid areas of Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Burundi, among others, being affected.

In Kenya, at least 3.5 million people were affected mostly in the counties of Garissa, Marsabit, Isiolo, Tana River, Tharaka, Wajir, Mandera, West Pokot, Samburu, Baringo, Kajiado, Makueni, Kwale, Kilifi and Turkana.

Mr Kagame said ultimately, long-term solutions to investment in agriculture will come from a greater involvement of the private sector - mostly in technology, production, marketing and research.

“And that is targeted support and investment in smallholder farming to raise agricultural productivity, contribute to food security and reduce poverty, while protecting our planet,” he said.

Statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) indicate that the world’s food production is not keeping up with the rapidly growing world population.

(cont. reading)

(Source: , via b-sama)

good:

To Fight World Hunger, the Secret Ingredient Could Be Bugs

The European Union is spending 3 million Euros to look at bugs’ potential to supplement the continent’s food supply. But insects already have a long history as culinary ingredient. If you grew up in the United States, you’ve already ingested a sizeable number of insect particles (and even some stray rodent hairs and excrement) in government-approved foods.

Read more on GOOD→ 

…it’s a thought. 

A year of record food prices has forced millions of parents in the developing world to cut back on food for their children, says aid agency Save the Children.

The agency surveyed families in India, Bangladesh, Peru, Pakistan and Nigeria.

One parent in six said their children were abandoning school to help out by working for food.

The agency said the price hikes had worsened child malnutrition and could hit progress reducing child deaths.

It warned that if no action was taken, half a billion children would be physically and mentally stunted over the next 15 years.

The survey was carried out in the five countries - where, Save the Children says, half the world’s malnourished children live - by international polling agency Globescan.

It found nearly a quarter of a billion parents had cut back on food for the family in the past year. A third of parents surveyed said their children complained about not having enough to eat, the agency said.

One in six said their children were missing school in order to work to buy food, the agency revealed in its report A Life Free From Hunger: Tackling Child Malnutrition.

“The world has made dramatic progress in reducing child deaths, down from 12 to 7.6 million, but this momentum will stall if we fail to tackle malnutrition,” said Save the Children chief executive Justin Forsyth.

The agency wants the UK to lead the way in reducing hunger and protecting children from food price rises - starting with a Hunger Summit when world leaders are in London for the Olympics.

Source : BBC 

dynamicafrica:

An exceptional harvest, good rains and food deliveries by numerous aid agencies have helped end famine in Somalia but food stocks could run out again in May, the United Nations has said.

“Famine conditions are no longer present,” said a statement released on Friday from the office of Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.

The famine, which was declared in July 2011, killed tens of thousands in south and central Somalia. More than 2.3 million Somalis, almost one-third of the population, are still in need of aid.

“Millions of people still need food, clean water, shelter and other assistance to survive and the situation is expected to
deteriorate in May,” the statement cited Bowden as saying. 

Three conditions

Grainne Maloney, who works for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, told Al Jazeera that there has to be three outcomes for a famine to exist.

“The first is elevated mortality. At least two deaths per 10,000 people per day. Second, elevated malnutrition, meaning 30 per cent of children are acutely malnourished. And third, at least 20 per cent of population cant reach their food need,” Maloney said.

“So, although the magnitude and severity of the crisis have been reduced, we are still in an extreme crisis as 31 per cent of Somalia’s population continue to require some level of humanitarian assistance.”

The UN said the current harvest would provide just 10 to 20 per cent of this year’s food needs. It warned food stocks could run out in May, ahead of the main August harvest.

“We have less than 100 days to avoid another famine,” said Jose Graziano da Silva, director general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

“The crisis is not over. It can only be resolved with a combination of rains and continued, coordinated, long-term
actions that build up the resilience of the population and link relief with development.”

While aid deliveries to some 180,000 people in camps in the capital Mogadishu have improved the situation there, conflict in southern and central Somalia is still hampering aid deliveries to the worst-hit areas.

Read on here 

Source: Al Jazeera

(Source: )

niennaweeps:

This podcast is from last year, but the information presented and trends discussed are, unfortunately, still quite relevant.  Felicity Lawrence speaks with Duncan Green, Jayati Ghosh, Olivier de Schutter, and Raj Patel about the causes of and possible solutions to the global food crisis.

While acknowledging that domestic policies and inequalities play significant roles in food crises around the world, Lawrence and her guest speakers focus on the international trade and development issues that perpetuate global hunger.  In this thirty-minute podcast, they discuss trade rules that favor rich countries over poor, long-term neglect of agriculture in development work, food speculation, the growing Western preoccupation with biofuels, changing global dietary habits, and the impact of climate change on agriculture in the tropics.

*I took the title for this post from a letter to Paul Collier written by William Aal, Lucy Jarosz, and Carol Thompson.  Read it here.

(via developments)

In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what’s wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it’s putting the entire planet at risk.

Source: TEDTalks

I’ve been getting seriously into food security and the the idea of an American or Western diet completely based in fallacies and adherence to a misguided consumer culture. I liked this video a lot. Well I got bored and turned it off, but some of the things he said kept rolling around in my mind so I turned it back on and watched the rest. Please watch. Just listen to some new ideas. 

The deaths of tens of thousands of people during the drought in east Africa could have been avoided if the international community, donor governments and humanitarian agencies had responded earlier and more swiftly to clear warning signs that a disaster was in the making, according to a new report.

Figures compiled by the Department for International Development (DfID) suggest that between 50,000 and 100,000 people, more than half of them children under five, died in the 2011 Horn of Africa crisis that affected Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

The US government estimates separately that more than 29,000 children under five died in the space of 90 days from May to July last year. The accompanying destruction of livelihoods, livestock and local market systems affected 13 million people overall. Hundreds of thousands remain at continuing risk of malnutrition.

The authors of the report, published by Save the Children and Oxfam, suggest current emergency response systems, which they believe to be seriously flawed, will soon be tested again as new humanitarian crises loom in west Africa and the Sahel, where growing food shortages are reported.

“Early warning systems in the Sahel region show that overall cereal production is 25% lower than the previous year and food prices are 40% higher than the five-year average. The last food crisis in the region, in 2010, affected 10 million people,” the report warns.

A recent Save the Children assessment in Niger showed families in the worst-hit areas were already struggling with a third less food, money and fuel than is necessary to survive.

The report, A Dangerous Delay, concludes that although drought sparked the east Africa crisis, human factors turned it into a disaster.

“A culture of risk aversion caused a six-month delay in the large-scale aid effort because humanitarian agencies and national governments were too slow to scale up their response to the crisis, and many donors wanted proof of a humanitarian catastrophe before acting to prevent one,” it says.

“Sophisticated early-warning systems first forecast a likely emergency as early as August 2010, but the full-scale response was not launched until July 2011, when malnutrition rates in parts of the region had gone far beyond the emergency threshold and there was high-profile media coverage.

»»>”Waiting for a situation to reach crisis point before responding is the wrong way to address chronic vulnerability and recurrent drought in places like the Horn of Africa. The international community must change the way it operates to meet the challenge of recurrent crises … Long-term development work is best placed to respond to drought.”

Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive, said: “We all bear responsibility for this dangerous delay that cost lives in east Africa, and need to learn the lessons of the late response.

“It’s shocking that the poorest people are still bearing the brunt of a failure to respond swiftly and decisively.”

Justin Forsyth, Save the Children’s chief executive, said: “We can no longer allow this grotesque situation to continue, where the world knows an emergency is coming but ignores it until confronted with television pictures of desperately malnourished children.

“The warning signs were clear and with more money when it really mattered the suffering of thousands of children would have been avoided.”

The report comes before a March summit on Somalia, to be hosted in London by the British government, which is expected to address aid and development as well as governance and security issues.

Somalia’s remains the most acute food crisis in the world, with hundreds of thousands of people still at risk. According to UN estimates, the rate of malnutrition, measured by the median global acute malnutrition (GAM) standard, increased in southern and central Somalia from 16.4% to 36.4% in 2011. The 15% “critical” threshold was exceeded early in 2011.

The report notes that the delays in activating relief operations last year massively increased the cost of subsequent assistance. “Trucking five litres of water per day as a last-resort lifesaving intervention to 80,000 people in Ethiopia costs more than $3m [£2m] for five months, compared to $900,000 to prepare water sources in the same area for an oncoming drought,” it says.

The report makes a series of recommendations, including improved risk-reduction strategies, greater funding flexibility, and preventative humanitarian work. “All actors and early-warning specialists need to develop a common approach to triggers for early action,” it says.

The report backs further reforms to tackle hunger crises such as the east Africa emergency, as set out in the Charter to End Extreme Hunger, a joint-agency initiative that urges governments to fulfil their responsibilities and take concrete steps to stop food shortages arising from drought and other causes from turning into catastrophes.

A spokesperson for DfID said: “Britain has led the world in tackling food insecurity in east Africa in the last year and we continue to urge others to prioritise this critical issue.

“British taxpayers’ generous support has helped hundreds of thousands of people in dire need in the Horn of Africa and longer term British assistance in Ethiopia and Kenya has meant that millions more were not caught up in this terrible tragedy.”

Source: The Guardian  

fyeahafrica:

Millions of people in up to five West African countries will face a food crisis in early 2012 if early warning systems are ignored, the United Nations and aid officials say.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), together with the World Food Programme (WFP) and British charity Oxfam, said this week that failed harvests and low food reserves in the Sahel, and particularly the countries of Chad, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Mali, would affect up to 11 million people.

Oxfam told Al Jazeera on Thursday that protective measures need to be installed as a matter of urgency.

Early estimates indicate that six million people in Niger and 2.9 million people in Mali are vulnerable; while up to a quarter of Mauritania’s population – about 700,000 people  - are reported to be at risk of severe food insecurity. In Chad, 13 out of 22 regions are expected to be affected adversely.

According to estimates, the “lean season”, when food availability is at its lowest, is likely to start two to four months earlier than normal, while in parts of Mauritania as early as January.

“Pastoralist [herder] farmers will certainly be hard hit, but there will be strong impacts beyond this group too,” Stephen Cockburn, Regional campaigns and policy manager at Oxfam, said.

“Among these, women, small livestock holders, poor households with limited access to productive means, households who used to rely on seasonal migration in conflict-affected areas and communities living in areas affected by insecurity are likely to be the most affected.

“High food prices - up to 40 per cent higher than the five-year average - will have a more general impact across the region.”

Early warning systems indicate that estimates for the 2011 harvest point to a dramatic decrease in cereal production in the Sahel, estimated at 25 per cent. But erratic rains and extended dry periods are expected to exacerbate lower production and lead to higher food prices.

(continue reading)

(Source: )