Friday, April 19, 2024
News and Views from the Global South
Bringing Home the Bacon the Green Way
The world can satisfy its growing appetite for meat and animal-based products without upsetting livelihoods, especially of developing country farmers, or worsening climate change.
Corruption Eats Into India’s Food Distribution System
As India’s Parliament prepares to pass a bill to provide heavily subsidised food to 810 million people, there are misgivings over its implementation through a notoriously corrupt public distribution system (PDS).
MDGs Fund Boosts Food Security
Since its founding in 2007 to help developing nations fight poverty, hunger, illiteracy, disease and gender discrimination, the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F) has financed about 130 joint programmes in 50 countries.
Budget Is the Missing Link: FAO Director General
World food production in developing regions soared by up to 40 percent over the past decade, yet nearly a billion people continued to live with chronic hunger.
OP-ED: Social Protection Can Help Overcome Poverty and Hunger
The growing consensus, momentum and commitment to eradicate world hunger may seem overly ambitious in view of the slow progress in reducing the number of hungry people in the world in recent decades.
Ending Hunger Is Possible
Thirty-eight countries were recognised for the first time on Sunday by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation for cutting in half the prevalence of people suffering from undernourishment, one of three targets under the first Millennium Development Goal.
Feed the Hungry, Save the Planet
Humanity currently needs the resources of one and a half planets to support our lifestyles. But do we really need to burn out the earth in order to feed ourselves?
African Farmers Lead the Way
Development in Africa will only be led through agriculture, says the CEO of the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki.
Genes are Gems for Food Security
What can savvy global financial market traders learn from humble smallholder farmers in developing countries? Risk management in the face of climate change.
Award Spotlights Indian Women Helping Women
Jassiben, a self-employed potter from Nana Shahpur village in western India, loves summer despite the heat waves and frequent power cuts, because summer days always mean great business.
Small Farmers Buffeted by Climate Change
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has long warned that a quarter of the world’s farmland is “highly degraded".
In Swaziland, Seeds Beat Drought
The overcast sky is a sign that it might rain, and Happy Shongwe, a smallholder farmer from rural Maphungwane in eastern Swaziland, is not exactly happy.
Advancing the Development Goal Posts
With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expiring in less than 1,000 days, new goals are needed that prioritise support for smallholder farmers to better access markets and increase productivity, nutrition and incomes.
Sowing a Healthier Future
“If there was enough political will to defeat hunger, we would defeat it right now - immediately,” says Enrique Yeves, chief of corporate communications at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
TerraViva Comes to FAO
Dear Reader: TerraViva, a special publication of the IPS news agency, the leader in coverage of development issues, civil society and the emerging South, is once again circulating, this time in the meeting rooms and hallways of the FAO building.
Keeping Food Security Central to U.N.’s Post-2015 Agenda
As the United Nations prepares to launch an ambitious post-2015 development agenda, the message from one of its Rome-based agencies is unequivocal: the eradication of hunger and malnutrition should remain a high priority when the current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) end in 2015.
Indian Farmers Flex Collective Muscles
Chelmet Padmamma, 42, of Babanagar village in southern India’s drought-prone Medak district, is a happy woman: the rain has come earlier this year, thrice soaking the three-acre farm that she co-owns with four other women from her village.
Q&A: Of Riots and Rice in Africa
Thanks to food riots in several African cities fuelled by high rice prices between 2007 and 2008, sub-Saharan Africa is growing and eating more rice after governments were forced into ambitious production programmes.
Zimbabwean Farmers Adrift Amid Power Struggles
For the past five years, farmer Melusi Mhlanga has spent nearly 200 dollars each season for inputs, but the maize yields have not matched his investment.
The “Secret Treasure” of Food Waste
Twenty-nine-year-old Andrzej W. and his partner lived for almost a year off of food found in the trash bin of the upscale supermarket Piotr i Pawel in Muranow, a neighbourhood near the centre of the Polish capital Warsaw. And they ate in style.
Is the 2030 Goal for Hunger Eradication Realistic?
With less than three years before a 2015 deadline, the developing world is largely expected to miss one of the U.N.'s key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): halving the number of people living in extreme poverty and hunger.« Previous Page — Next Page »
BACKGROUND: One in eight people in the world, or an estimated 870 million, are undernourished. As the world is experiencing the longest sustained rise in food prices in 50 years, concerns are rising about the long-term ability of farmers to produce sufficient food to match demands and lower global prices. Empowering women producers –the backbone of the rural economy, with access to only a fraction of the land, credit and inputs compared to men– is an essential part of the puzzle. So is climate change adaptation. Without adequate intervention, additional stresses from changing weather conditions are expected to further bring down yields, while the world population continues to grow. Meanwhile, diminishing water supplies and corporate land grabs are putting further pressure on agricultural communities. Through its coverage of the 38th session of the FAO Conference in Rome, IPS TerraViva focuses on continuing challenges, emerging trends and innovations in building food security worldwide.
