Food & Agriculture

Can the World Tackle the Food Insecurity Crisis in 2021?

By Esther Ngumbi
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity and disrupted food systems and food supply chains in developed and developing countries alike. In the United States, millions of Americans struggle to put food on the table. Around the world, according to the United Nations over 270 million are hungry, and this is expected to continue to increase. 

Learning From Indigenous Peoples: My Morocco Diary

By Heike Kuhn
Once a year, on 9 August, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is commemorated, celebrating their unique culture and knowledge. This is done mostly from a distance, from our homes in (nominally) developed countries. But are we as developed as we pretend to be? On this question, I reflected for a while, still remembering a special and personal experience of having spent several days with an indigenous Berber family in Morocco.

Stand Tall, UN Humanitarians

By Trevor Page
Most people around the world were glad to see the back of 2020: From the devastating bushfires in Australia to the plagues of locusts through East Africa stretching across Arabia to Pakistan, extreme weather, melting ice sheets at the poles, and Covid-19 that still engulfs the globe.

This Is Not a Goodbye, Kenya – Asante na Kwaheri ya Kuonana

By Siddharth Chatterjee

 

Happy New Year, Kenya. Several milestones in my personal and professional life have made Kenya a cherished place for me. I started my UNICEF career in Rumbek, South Sudan in June 2000, and my rest and recuperation breaks were in Nairobi. In fact Kenya was the first African country I had ever visited and, frankly, it was love at first sight.

Mining giant Rio Tinto Face Environmental, Human Rights Complaint in Papua New Guinea

By Catherine Wilson
Local communities in the vicinity of the abandoned Panguna copper mine, have taken decisive action to hold the global mining multinational, Rio Tinto, accountable for alleged environmental and human rights violations during the mine’s operations between 1972 and 1989.

Tractors Can Change Farming in Good Ways and Bad: Lessons from Four African Countries

Agricultural mechanisation is on the rise in Africa, replacing hand hoes and animal traction across the continent. While around 80-90% of all farmers still rely on manual labour or draught animals, this is changing, driven by falling machinery prices and rising rural wages. During the last couple of years, tractor sales grew by around 10% annually.

Food Culture in Spotlight on UNESCO Heritage List

By SWAN / A.D. McKenzie
Cuisine formed a notable portion of the latest inscriptions on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, with hawker food in Singapore and couscous traditions in North Africa being celebrated.

2020: A Yet More Devastating Year Closes With At Least Some Signs Of Hope

By Farhana Haque Rahman
Despite its grim record of multiple natural disasters and a deepening climate crisis, one could be forgiven for looking back on 2019 with a degree of nostalgia. There is no disguising the extent of the calamity wrought this year by COVID-19, yet as we approach the end of 2020 we may also draw strength from positive developments emerging.

Why Transforming Our Food Systems Is a Feminist Issue

By Jemimah Njuki
In countries where women are most marginalized, discriminated under the law and where gendered norms prevent women from owning property and resources, people are also the hungriest. This is because gender equality and food systems are intertwined.

A Pakistani Farmer is Using Technology to Stop Agricultural Exploitation

By Rabiya Jaffery
Anas Shaikh is a Pakistani farmer on a mission to bring solutions to the many difficulties small and medium-scale farmer’s face in making a sustainable living.

San Salvador Steps Up Battle against Landslides and Floods

By Edgardo Ayala
The San Salvador volcano is a gift of nature for the inhabitants of the capital who live at its foot, a gigantic green lung that gives them oxygen and fresh air. But it is also a curse.

Aren’t We Missing Food Security Experts in the Incoming President-Elect Biden-Kamala Harris Administration?

By Esther Ngumbi and Ifeanyi Nsofor
Food insecurity across the U.S. continues to be on the rise because of the effects of COVID-19. According to Feeding America, over 50 million Americans will experience food insecurity, including 17 million children. 

R & D Expenditure: How to Raise It and Why

By Raghbendra Jha
Economic growth is the time-tested method of raising living standards and, if not accompanied by large increases in inequality, lowering poverty. Since World War II, economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, including in South Asia.

Can Agricultural Apps Bring Indonesia’s Farmers Back to the Fields?

By Kanis Dursin
When his friends prodded him to use an agricultural app in July, rice farmer Mustafa reluctantly downloaded RiTx Bertani into his smart phone. Four months later, he feels happy to have given the technology a try.

Choice and Opportunity for African Farmers Will Transform Africa

By Agnes Kalibata
’A hungry man is not a free man. He cannot focus on anything else but securing his next meal.’ So proclaimed the late Kofi Annan.

Fixing the Food System to Produce Healthy Diets

By Mantoe Phakathi
As the world accelerates towards achieving the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, it is time to replace the current broken food system. With only a decade left to reach the deadline, evidence shows that the way food is produced, processed and transported is not only destructive to the environment but it is also leaving millions behind.

How to Reap the Benefits of Food as Medicine

By Busani Bafana
COVID-19 has magnified global food insecurity and is driving unhealthy eating and worsening malnutrition, food experts say. They have called for deliberate global investment in food as medicine on the back of growing diet-related illnesses.

Digitisation Could Transform African Agriculture

By Mantoe Phakathi
Placing an online order for farming inputs saves Velebantfu Dlamini about USD12 in transport fees for a round trip of about 320 kilometres. The 26-year-old vegetable farmer from Nkhungwini in the Shiselweni Region, south of Eswatini, uses a portal to order from the National Agriculture Marketing Board (NAMBoard) Farm Store. NAMBoard then delivers his order leaving Dlamini with time to stay in the field and look after his crops.

COVID-19 an Opportunity to Build Resilience around Food Systems

By Mantoe Phakathi
The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) has appealed to the United Nations to educate citizens to use their roles as consumers to create a momentum for change. This was ahead of the 2021 Food Systems Summit which the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, will host on November 25 next year.

Securing Freedom to Eat

By Busani Bafana
For Zimbabwean organic farmer, Elizabeth Mpofu, access to healthy food is liberation.

Millions of people across the world go to bed hungry. Scores do not have access to nutritious food owing to an inequitable global food system focused on industrial mass food production. The food from this system is less nutritious, more expensive and less friendly to the environment.

Q&A: Next Decade Sufficient Time for a Food Revolution

By IPS Correspondents
In March, after the World Health Organisation first declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations activated a global corporate emergency mechanism for the first time. It had already written to all donor countries asking for $1.9 billion in front-loaded funding, and had begun emergency procurement. Its priority was to sustain life-saving assistance first.
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