Sunday 21 August 2011

Food crisis cuts calorie consumption


By IFPRI - From 2006 to 2008, the world experienced a dramatic increase in global food prices which especially affected the poor, whose diets depend on staple commodities such as maize, rice, and wheat. 
Studies in Latin America show urban and rural households have cut their calorie intake to cope with the price shock.
Data from national household surveys in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Ecuador, and Peru found that each country experienced an 8% average reduction in calorie intake after the food price crisis.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Invest in agriculture now or repeat crisis


Governments, UN agencies and international organisations meeting in Rome today warned that food producing farmers and herders need immediate help to prevent the crisis from deepening in the Horn of Africa.

Attending the meeting were agricultural ministers from countries in the Horn of Africa, ministers and representatives of FAO Member nations, the African Union, the Presidency of the G20 (France), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Secretary-General representative, Oxfam and many other international and civil society organisations.

The day-long meeting ended with a call for a twin track approach that involves both meeting pressing relief needs as well as addressing the root causes of the problem and strengthening the affected populations' resilience in the face of future shocks.

"Even as we deal with saving lives today, we should also go further and take steps to prevent future calamities. We have to start building for the future -- now. Comprehensive, government-endorsed investment plans are already available -- the funding gaps are clear and large. If governments and their donor partners do not invest in agriculture now, the appalling famine we are struggling to redress will return to shame us yet again," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.

"Feeding the hungry does not end hunger, unless we help people provide for their futures. If donors, development agencies and governments do not attend to the medium and long term, this kind of tragedy will happen again," said IFAD Vice President Yukiko Omura. "We cannot control droughts, but we can control hunger. To do so we must invest in the world's smallholder farmers so that they can feed their communities and their families."

WFP Deputy Executive Director Sheila Sisulu said: "By harnessing the power of regional institutions and of partnerships, national institutions, political will and international commitment, we can break this cycle by building household resilience, protecting productive assets, and putting in place measures to avoid a similar crisis when the rains, inevitably, fail in the future."

"What the Horn of Africa region is enduring today is a manifestation of the extent to which livelihoods in Africa are extremely vulnerable to shocks -- hence the need to address such extreme vulnerability of livelihoods, and of the economies of communities and nations," said Tumusiime Rhoda Peace, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture of the African Union.

Safeguarding local food production

While the food crisis in the Horn of Africa was triggered by drought, conflict and high food prices, the underlying reason for the region's vulnerability to such shocks is underinvestment in agriculture and inadequate management of natural resources.

Specific immediate-term measures that were flagged for priority action during today's talks include:

  • Ensuring that lifesaving food assistance needs are met and that nutrition support is scaled up
  • Saving surviving livestock to protect the food security of  pastoralists
  • Saving the forthcoming planting season starting in October ensuring that farmers have access to inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation water
  • Expanding cash-for-work programmes to allow people to buy food at local markets and prevent the sale of assets
The meeting also stressed the vital importance of supporting actions aimed at addressing the root causes of the problem in the Horn:
  • Protecting and restoring degraded land resources
  • Improving water management and expanding irrigation (only 1% of the land in the Horn of Africa region is irrigated, versus 7% in Africa and 38% in Asia)
  • Improving animal, plant, and range management practices of small scale farmers to make them less vulnerable to hazards and climate variability
  • Strengthening community-based animal health services
  • Identifying viable and acceptable alternatives to pastoral livelihoods
Support for such activities should be a sustained, multi-year effort and be linked to improvements in basic services including education, health and clean water, participants added.

The meeting recommended continued support for the African Union-sponsored Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which envisions investing more in supporting livelihood resilience in drought prone areas.

From crisis to recovery

The technical meeting was organized by FAO as a follow-up to the Emergency Ministerial-Level Meeting on the Horn of Africa, convened on 25 July 2011 at the request of the French Presidency of the G-20. The event aimed to review both immediate as well as longer-term responses to the crisis. Recommendations generated by the meeting will guide international response efforts and help prepare upcoming advocacy, fundraising and coordination events to support the affected population in the region.




Monday 15 August 2011

Plea from the head of the World Food Program


The following is an extract from the blog written by Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN's World Food Program

For the past few weeks, my tweets have been focusing on famine in South East Africa as I find the dire situation in Africa heartbreaking and requiring our utmost attention.  The shift is a necessary and important one to raise awareness and help facilitate donations to prevent the senseless loss of innocent lives.

When reading article after article, I find myself filled with many emotions. I get angry reading that some political groups deny their own people food and shelter in the name of an ideology which I find unacceptable and frustrating. I cry reading that a mother had to decide between her children and left her three year old on the side of the road to die to save the other two. I’m enraged to read six year old girls getting raped on their way to find food. I find myself very sad that as human beings we are failing at many levels. It is time to wake up and help our fellow brothers and sisters in the Horn of Africa, it is time to save children who are subjected to war, hunger, rape, disease, and we should not close our eyes and pretend it is not happening. We need to step up and help as much as we can.

To read more or to help, go to: http://bit.ly/pEpNXl

Thursday 11 August 2011

Food price monitor for Africa


FAO has released an updated edition of its monthly Food Price Monitor.

Highlights of the report include:

International prices of wheat decreased for the third consecutive month but those of rice continue to increase. Maize prices declined marginally, globally.

In Eastern Africa, cereal prices are at generally high levels, with new peaks reached in several countries. Prices of milk are at record or very high levels in most countries of the region.

In Somalia, prices of domestically produced staples, sorghum and maize, showed some signs of decline in July. However, prices of maize and sorghum remained at very high levels as compared to July 2010 -- up to 150 and 200 percent higher, respectively. Similarly, while prices of milk decreased or stabilized in several markets in July they remain well above the levels of the previous year  In the most affected south-eastern Somali region, milk prices in June were twice their levels of a year earlier.

In Kenya, prices of the main staple maize rose sharply in July, reaching new peaks.

In Ethiopia, prices of staple maize rose again in July in most markets. Prices of milk have surged due to the deteriorating conditions of the livestock in recent months.

Read the full report: http://www.fao.org/giews/english/gfpm/GFPM_08_2011.pdf  

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Billion year upgrade via UV?

Ultraviolet light exposure could kick-start the photosynthetic machinery in seedlings.
Senior lecturer at the Institute of Natural Resources Dr Jason Wargent, has found exposing lettuce crops to ultraviolet (UV) light in the early stages of growth leads to increased photosynthetic activity and increased yield.
His United Kingdom-based research team took two sets of lettuce seedlings and exposed one to UV-B light while still seedlings.
“Many crops are quite heavily protected from the sun when they are very young, via the use of poly-tunnels or glasshouses, but in this study we allowed the lettuce crops to be exposed to UV light earlier,” Wargent says. “Usually they are grown indoors until they are a youngish age then they get moved outside. In this study we put the plants into poly-tunnels which were covered in a film that allowed the UV light through.”
At harvest, the plants that had the early UV exposure were bigger.
“We examined photosynthetic capability in the plants, and our study shows the plants that were being exposed to UV had higher photosynthetic rates, and also seemed to be more robust against high temperature and light stress,” he says.
“What we think is happening is that the early period of exposure allows a plant to, in effect, build up a tolerance to UV so that when they get moved outside, they’re able to withstand sunlight better.”
Many crops in New Zealand are grown outdoors, and Wargent says if they were better prepared to make that transition, yields could increase.
“This has ramifications for most of the vegetable and some other crops grown in New Zealand, not just lettuces.”
Wargent says further research is being carried out to see what the New Zealand levels of UV can really do in terms of the potential to manipulate crop quality.