When the food-strapped Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) appealed to the Mongolian government for food last month, it signaled a major turning point in the public image of this Central Asian country, which has long struggled to feed its own population of three million.

Transformed from a nation of nomads into an industrial agricultural exporter during its time as a Soviet satellite state between 1921 and 1990, the country’s food production systems suffered a sudden crash after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Families went back to subsistence agriculture, but herding under a privatised market economy created unsustainable livestock populations and overgrazing, as a result of which Mongolia now has an estimated 78 percent desertification rate.

As recently as 2008, the country imported two-thirds of its wheat, one third of its potatoes and most of its milk products in urban areas, according to a United States Department of Agriculture report.

But new initiatives by the government and private sector to revive food production here have taken Mongolians back to their roots as small-scale cultivators, utilising the short growing season on the Central Asian Steppes to plan trees and the nutritious sea buckthorn bushes to protect the topsoil.

Tuya, a member of the Mongolian Women Farmers Association (MWFA) told IPS that imported vegetables are too expensive for the rural and urban poor living in informal “tent cities” across the country. So the new cultivation initiatives offer a way out of malnutrition and food insecurity.

According to government studies, a full third (33 percent) of Mongolians eat no vegetables at all.  The poor suffer from heart disease, stunting in children, high blood pressure, obesity, malnutrition and alcoholism. The MWFA, a volunteer-led civil society organisation, has been teaching ger-district and rural residents how to grow and cook vegetables to improve both their income and health.

Paris and Benaiah are among a number of LGBTQ youth who have found transitional shelter at the Ali Forney Center in New York. Credit: Mathieu Vaas/IPS

In New York City, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) youth represent 40 percent of the homeless youth living on the city’s streets. The Ali Forney Center is a non-profit organisation that offers them services such as emergency shelter, transitional shelter, help to reach out to family, and more specific services depending on what is needed.

Eli, Dupree, Paris and Benaiah are four young residents at one of the Ali Forney Center’s transitional shelters, where they live with four other LGBT youth. They can stay up to two years, rent-free, and enjoy a safe and stable environment.

IPS reporter Mathieu Vaas met with the young people living in one of the shelter apartments of the Ali Forney Center to hear their stories.

Lloyd (left) and Fredwim (right) say the youth farm project has changed their lives. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Down the main road in Munda, a coastal town on the North Georgia Island of the Solomon Islands, past the wharf, the market and a small collection of shops, Patrick Arathe’s farm is reached by walking first across the runway of the local airport and finally along a dirt track that winds between residential buildings until it opens into a large clearing.

Here the crops are laid out in a pattern, with beds of cabbages and other vegetables in the centre, encircled by plantings of corn, banana and pawpaw trees. A group of young boys who have been abandoned by their parents tend to this small farm, performing every task from planting seeds to harvesting produce.

Although subsistence agriculture is the dominant livelihood for the 552,000 people in the Solomon Islands, urban agricultural enterprises like this one are becoming an increasingly rare sight.

Both the Ministry of Health for the Solomon Islands and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have reported that changes in lifestyles and eating habits have resulted in 93.6 percent of the population consuming less than the recommended five servings of fruit and vegetables per day.

Leslie Kiadapite, principal field officer at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in Munda, told IPS, “Eating patterns in the communities have changed.  People (consume) more imported foods and are moving away from gardening. People depend on rice, noodles and food (they can) buy in stores.”

Young people, in particular, regularly consume food products high in fat, sugar and carbohydrates.

Fifty-five percent of the population of the Solomon Islands is under 29 years, and only one in six students who complete school acquire formal employment

Thus the farm provides a much-needed alternative form of livelihood and income generation.

The Beitbridge area in southern Zimbabwe was hit by serious flooding earlier this year. Those affected are still trying to get back on their feet.

The fruit farmers in Njombe, a small town in the coastal Littoral Region of Cameroon, learned a life lesson about “making lemonade out of lemons” – or rather “dried fruit out of fruit” when their land was taken from them by the government and leased to an international farming company.

In 1998, 34 fruit farmers lost 70 hectares of their land to Plantation de Haut Penja (PHP), to which the Cameroonian government leased 4,500 hectares of land to grow bananas.

On Sunday,  Mar. 3, nongovernmental organisations working on women’s rights gathered in New York City for the annual meeting of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women.

In line with the theme of the 57th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that will take place Mar. 4-15 at the United Nations, the central focus of this year’s NGO Committee was strategies to address violence against women.

Nearly 20 speakers, including civil society, diplomats and high-level representatives of UN Women, discussed trafficking of women and girls, the role of men, the best practices for prevention and the use of social media to spread campaigns and fight violence against women.

While tens of thousands of Indian farmers succumb to the pressures of debt, hunger and poverty by taking their own lives, members of the Bhumia tribe are simply falling back on a 3,000-year-old agricultural system to ensure a steady supply of healthy food.

Located in the eastern state of Odisha’s Koraput province, the tribe utilises sustainable farming practices to counter the impacts of deforestation and climate change.

Using local seeds from the Eastern Ghats, a discontinuous mountain range that runs parallel to the Bay of Bengal along India’s eastern coast at an average of 900 metres above sea level, farmers here plant “mixed” crops, barter their produce at the local market and save their traditional seeds.

Last year, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) accorded the status of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS) to the traditional agricultural system in the Koraput region. The status grants farmers the support they need to continue to nurture and adapt their ancient practices.

Karachi, a sprawling city of 18 million, is the country’s economic hub. It accounts for 95 percent of Pakistan’s foreign trade and contributes 30 percent of national industrial production.

If power outages don’t interrupt the day’s work, then one of the many transport workers’ strikes surely will, delaying the shipment of products abroad. When the strikers get back to work, extortionists come knocking, demanding huge sums in “protection money” from factory owners.

“If foreign businessmen cannot visit Pakistan, see our products and (engage) in joint ventures, how will our industries thrive?” asked Yasin Siddiq, president of the Sindh and Balochistan chapters of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association.

The many crises have pushed unemployment to roughly five percent, according to the World Bank’s most recent World Development Report.

The only bright spot on the horizon, experts say, is the potential impact of the European Union’s decision to grant Pakistan Autonomous Trade Preferences in 2013. The agreement allows duty-free market access to 75 textile items from Pakistan and is expected to boost production in this vital sector of the economy.

The European Union (EU) is Pakistan’s largest trading partner, with overall trade between the two countries topping eight million euros in 2011.

Pakistan enjoyed a one billion-euro surplus that year and stands to gain even more from the EU’s generous trade concessions, announced in the aftermath of the devastating floods that ravaged this South Asian country in 2010 and 2011.

Still, in order to fully benefit from these concessions, Pakistan will have to enforce stricter labour standards and comply with the terms and conditions of several international conventions on human rights, governance and environmental safety to which it is a signatory.

Currently, most workers in Pakistan’s export sector do not receive social security benefits, work in hazardous conditions and are paid on a piece-by-piece basis in lieu of a regular salary.

These hands that enable trade to the EU often go home empty, feeding into a cycle of poverty that continues to consume this country of 176 million people.

As one of the world’s 48 least developed countries (LDCs), Cambodia is afforded the most beneficial trade ranking to the European Union (EU) under the generalised scheme of preferences (GSP) known as the Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme.

The EBA allows those countries ranked as LDCs to export products duty-free to the EU, except arms and ammunition.

Cambodia’s largest exports to the EU are textiles, such as garments and shoes, comprising 89 percent of exports, valued at over 1.1 billion euros, according to a report released by the European Commission.

Agricultural products such as rice, sugar cane, fruits and vegetables, fish, peppers and cashews account for 5.8 percent of exports, valued at 75 million euros.

Introduced in January of 2011, the EBA has resulted in a 53 percent upsurge of exports to the EU from Cambodia in 2011, with the EU becoming Cambodia’s second largest export partner.

The intention of the agreement has been to elevate Cambodia from LDC status, encouraging the country to process its own products rather than have neighbouring countries benefit.

The trade treaty has boosted exports in various sectors, but experts have questioned the impact of increased trade on producers across this country of 14 million people. Of particular concern have been the rural peasants, considering that 92 percent of Cambodia’s poor live in the countryside.

For example, despite an increase in sugar cane exports to the EU, critics question the benefits to small-scale farmers, since land concessions to corporations have spiked and local farmers have been displaced from their land.  Activists have called for a sugar boycott to raise awareness.