Food and Agriculture

Market Lords, Much More than a War, Behind World’s Food Crisis

By Baher Kamal
While grain exports continue to regularly flow to world's markets since the July 2022 Turkey-brokered agreement between Russia and Ukraine to resume cereals and fertilisers shipments from both countries, food prices are still skyrocketing everywhere. How come?

Tackling Recurring Hunger Crises at the Horn of Africa – Beginning with Somalia

By Esther Ngumbi
The statistics are stark. The crisis is unprecedented. Yet again, according to the United Nations, famine looms in Somalia, with hundreds of thousands already facing starvation. In addition, droughts, and catastrophic hunger levels have left over 500,000 children malnourished and at risk of dying. This is already nearly 200,000 more than the 2011 famine. Urgent immediate actions must be taken now, both to address the crisis in the short-term and long-term.

Farm-Kids-Turned-Scientists Give Back on the Climate-Crisis Front Line

By Paul Virgo
Dr Alice Karanja knows from personal experience the tough choices the climate crisis is putting people before in the Global South. Choices such as whether to have a healthy diet or give your children an education. Choices such as whether to go hungry or allow your children to have any schooling at all.

Russian Dispute Over Drones Threaten to Escalate World Food Crisis

By Thalif Deen
A war of words between Russia on the one hand, and the US, Britain, France and Germany on the other—specifically on the deployment of drones in Ukraine -- has triggered an unintended consequence: a new world food crisis. The Western powers last week asked the UN to verify whether Iranian drones were being used “illegally” in violation of the 2015 Security Council resolution 2231 which endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s disputed nuclear programme.

Droughts Don’t Need To Result in Famine: Ethiopia and Somalia Show What Makes the Difference

The Horn of Africa is facing its worst drought in 40 years. Scientists suspect that a multi-year La Niña cycle has been amplified by climate change to prolong dry and hot conditions.

Will The Lettuce Outlast All This?

By Baher Kamal
No. No lettuce, no matter how British it may be, could outlast such a steady depletion of the very foundation of life.

Indian Village Unlocks Treasure of Organic, Indigenous Farming

By Umar Manzoor Shah
At Jhargram, a far-flung village in India’s West Bengal state, a group of farmers sit together in one of the open fields. They debate, deliberate, and confabulate about the marketing strategy they should use when selling their harvest on the open market.

Farmers in Laos Imagine Improved Livelihoods Thanks to New Cross-border Links

By Bridget Dooley
Mountainous terrain in northern Laos has until now restricted chances for farmers and producers in much of the nation to export their goods, limiting them primarily to subsistence farming and also curbing development, education and poverty reduction in their communities.

Bangladesh Coastal People Turn to Digital Devices to Succeed against the Odds

By Farid Ahmed
A barefoot young man in rolled-up jeans clutches a laptop as he slogs through a narrow muddy aisle between rice fields on a drizzling late September afternoon. He’s rushing to help a farm couple who are facing trouble with their ducks in a coastal village in southern Bangladesh.

Rural Women Work the Hardest, Produce the Most, Eat the Least

By Baher Kamal
Make no mistake. Violence against women has been perpetuated, specially when it comes to those who have already been deprived of their basic human rights, as it is the case of rural women in over two-thirds of the world.

Poverty Haunts Resettled Farmers in Zimbabwe

By Jeffrey Moyo
Edious Murewa has for years boasted of owning a 10-hectare piece of land, but now the 52-year-old is full of regrets. He faces poverty years after he invaded part of a farm once owned by a white commercial farmer.

Farmers in Bhutan Turn To Asparagus and Strawberries To Boost Incomes

By Chhimi Dema
Zam, 57, sits at her kitchen table looking out the window at her orchard of four dozen apple trees. In the past eight years she has sold only two crates (100 kilogrammes) of the fruit because of poor harvests. She turned her attention to vegetables instead but the production was low because of a water shortage.

WORLD FOOD DAY 2022

In 2022, an ongoing pandemic, global conflicts, climate change, rising prices and international tensions… …are affecting global food security.

How to Stop the ‘Hunger Pandemic’ Part 2: How to Reduce Food Loss

By Alissa Yoon, Alexander John Ham, Alex Yoon, Hyunsang "Sean" Cho, Karuta Yamamoto, Souta Oshiro and Sungjoon Ham
A group of middle school students living in Asia filmed this video on their campaign to reduce food waste. They learned many lessons: Only take as much food as you can eat; don’t waste, eat ugly fruit and compost. In this production, they spoke to experts about how to ensure that everybody has something nutritious to eat.

World Food Day 2022 Call to Action as 828M People Go Hungry

By Naureen Hossain
In this year alone, the global impact of compounding crises demonstrates, more than ever, why food scarcity must be addressed internationally and how there must be a shift in the food and agricultural systems.

Agroecological Women Farmers Boost Food Security in Peru’s Highlands

By Mariela Jara
Lourdes Barreto, 47, says that as an agroecological small farmer she has improved her life and that of Mother Earth. "I love myself as I love Mother Earth and I have learned to value both of us," she says in her field outside the village of Huasao, in the highlands of the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco.

His Zest For Mandarins Soured, Pakistani Producer Turns To Mushrooms

By Alefia Hussain
The zesty citrus whiff from the rows of trees boasting unripe kinnow (mandarins) freshens the autumn air in late September. Two deeply tanned men clear the ground under and between the trees to plant vegetables.

University Outreach Project Teaching Tissue Culture to Potato Farmers

By Maina Waruru
Until a few years ago, Kenyan potato farmer Richard Mbaria used to harvest just four tonnes of the crop from an acre of land thanks to poor quality seeds, combined with an attack on the crop by pests and diseases.

Bangladesh Reaching Out To Global Partners To Transform Agriculture

By Mosabber Hossain
Bangladeshi businessman Kazi Inam Ahmed is building his dream in a village near Rupsha River in Khulna, southern Bangladesh—to develop fish farming in the region, where climate change is reducing the ocean’s catch. He envisions creating small ponds, which would employ local climate affected fisherfolk, then exporting the international quality harvest to the Netherlands.

Delivering Quality Education in Small Island Developing States

By Simona Marinescu
With 147 million children around the world missing half of their in-person instruction over the last two years and around 24 million never returning to school, humanity is experiencing a deep learning crisis.

Addressing the Cow in the Room, Lowing for Nutrition and Livelihoods

By Busani Bafana
Meat, milk, and eggs are bad for you, and livestock is bad for the environment. Growing negative narratives about cattle’s contribution to climate change are shrinking the growth of the strategic livestock sector on which the livelihoods of more than 1.3 billion people in the world depend.
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