Maize is a critical food security crop in sub-Saharan Africa with more than 40 million hectares of farmlands dedicated to maize farming in at least 32 countries. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Dec 16 2021 (IPS)

Rahab Munene’s shoe selling business crumbled at the height of COVID-19 in 2020. She traded the enterprise for a mobile grocery along the Thika Superhighway, Kiambu County.

“My son and I buy fruits, vegetables and cereals directly from farmers. This worked very well in the beginning because people did not want to leave their homes for fear of coronavirus. Today, food prices are very high, and many households are buying directly from farmers because it is cheaper,” she tells IPS.

“A 90 kg bag of maize is now going for at least $27 – up from $23 a month ago. Our business is no longer breaking even.”

In October 2021, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics indicated that the cost of food in Kenya showed an unprecedented increase of 10.6 percent compared with the same month in 2020.

UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicates a similarly unprecedented increase, by over 60 percent, of acute food insecurity in Africa over the past year.

In Africa, there is a need to overhaul the food systems to include nutritious crops and diets that are climate and severe weather resilient.

“Global food systems present a complex and multi-faceted set of challenges from farm to fork,” the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BDFN) says. Using science and best practice, BCFN has developed a system of placing the Health and Climate Pyramids side-by-side. The Double Pyramid directly illustrates a balanced, healthy, and sustainable diet.

BCFN double pyramid highlights food systems that are both healthy and good for the planet. Credit: BCFN

Faced with food insecurity exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, BCFN has called for sustainable food solutions.

One of these solutions, says Desmond Kipkorir, a Kenyan-based seed systems analyst in East and Southern Africa, ensures that farmers have high-yielding seeds to match the myriad of challenges facing the African farmer.

The 2019 Access to Seeds Index notes that “less than 10 percent of the world’s smallholder farmers have access to improved and quality seeds that can halt and tolerate climate change impacts.”

Kipkorir tells IPS the most recent data shows despite a growing private seed sector to augment public seed sectors and extensive rural agro-dealers, farmers are still unable to access the high-quality seeds they need and on time.

“Seeds systems involve a lot more than the production of seeds. They include all the factors that lead to the timely delivery of produced seeds to farmers at an affordable price. As recent as 2016, up to 90 percent of farmers in Africa relied on informal seed systems,” he says.

He says that uncertified seeds cannot counter the threats posed by climate change and extreme weather, land degradation and reducing farmlands, water and energy constraints, and an ever-growing demand for food in tandem with a growing population.

“Informal seeds systems are outside the control of government agencies. The quality of unregulated and uncertified seeds is too poor to address today’s challenges. Seeds saved from previous harvests, borrowed from neighbours and those bought from local markets are lacking in many aspects,” Chelangat Ochieng from the Ministry of Agriculture tells IPS.

“Uncertified seeds are often available, accessible and affordable to farmers. But they are not adaptable. They lack germination vigour and disease resistance.”

Experts such as Kipkorir warn that the existing yield gap will only widen and, with it, a rise in food prices.

Ochieng says the Agricultural Commodity Price Index stabilized in the third quarter of 2021. All the same, the price index is 14 percent higher than it was in January 2021.

“Maize and wheat prices are 44 percent and 38 percent higher, respectively, than their pre-pandemic, January 2020, levels,” the index indicates.

Confirming challenges facing Munene’s mobile grocer, the index shows high retail prices. Similarly, other indices confirm high food price inflation at the retail level globally.

FAO’s Food Price Index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, released in November 2021, showed the fourth consecutive monthly rise in the value of the food price index.

Prices for cereals and dairy rose significantly, followed by sugar and that the November 2021 index was at its highest level since June 2011.

“Climate change is here with us, and population growth is placing a lot of pressure on available farmland. Governments and the private sector need to strengthen three pillars of food security, quality of seeds, input and good agricultural practices,” Kipkorir tells IPS.

Against this backdrop, the African Seed Access Index, a seed industry research initiative, indicates that national seed systems on the continent are at varying stages of development.

Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia have established mechanisms for seed inspection and that Mozambique, Malawi, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania are on track.

Kipkorir says this is a step in the right direction but decries the generally high cost of certified seeds. He urges governments to subsidize seed prices to ensure that farmers plant seeds that can withstand climate, weather risks and crop diseases.

He calls for maize seed subsidies in the region. He warns that even more severe food insecurity looms if farmers do not access quality, high yielding maize seeds.

According to the FAO, maize is a staple and a critical food security crop in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 40 million hectares of farmlands dedicated to maize farming in at least 32 countries in the region.

The African Seed Access Index shows that Western and Central Africa lag behind other regions of Africa in seed company presence and investments in local seed business activities, including seed breeding, production, and processing.

Overall, the Index notes significant progress in Kenya, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Madagascar, are notably lagging because they are characterized by “under-funded government seed agencies, poorly implemented seed regulations and a variety of weak private sector.”

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

ColdHubs installation at Relife Outdoor Food Market, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. The World Bank estimates that 40 percent of all food produced goes to waste in Nigeria. Credit: ColdHubs.

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Dec 14 2021 (IPS)

Food spoilage forced smallholder farmers out of pocket and out of business – until an entrepreneur came up with a cool idea.

Growing up on a farm in Southern Nigeria, Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu observed how smallholder farmers rushed to sell their produce before sunset to avoid spoiling or selling it at give-away prices. Ikegwuonu came up with a cool idea to save the produce from spoiling: solar-powered cold rooms.

Smallholder farmers in Africa experience high post-harvest food losses owing to poor handling, poor packaging and lack of storage for their produce before it reaches the market.

According to the World Bank, food loss accounts for 40 percent of all food produced in Nigeria.

ColdHubs Ltd is a Nigerian social enterprise that designs, installs, operates and rents walk-in cold rooms known as ‘ColdHubs’. The Cold Hubs can store and preserve fresh fruits, vegetables and other perishable foods, extending their shelf life from two to 21 days.

Describing spoilage as a wicked problem, Ikegwuonu’s ColdHubs concept is helping farmers and retailers preserve their produce for longer, reducing waste and ensuring farmers get better prices for it.

The mission is to reduce food spoilage due to lack of cold food storage at key points along the food supply chain, explains Ikegwuonu, who has won global recognition for his innovations in farming and entrepreneurship. In 2016 he was named a Rolex Award Laureate.

Social entrepreneur and farmer, Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu, posing in front of one of his solar-powered cold rooms. Credit: ColdHubs

In 2003, Ikegwuonu started the Smallholders Foundation. This non-profit developed rural radio services, delivering information to improve agricultural methods and conserve the environment to more than 250 000 daily listeners across the country.

During a radio roadshow in the city of Jos, the capital of Plateau state in central Nigeria, where he was doing a radio programme on cabbage, Ikegwuonu realised many farmers were throwing away their produce because it was spoiling before they could sell it all.

“At that point, it dawned on us that there is no form of cold storage which is an important infrastructure for any outdoor markets for fresh fruits and vegetables. After some research, we built solar-powered cold rooms, and these were well received by farmers,” Ikegwuonu told IPS in an interview.

“Spoilage entraps farmers into poverty cycle because, by the time the food arrives in the outdoor market, the value has reduced, economically and nutritionally.”

Farmers and retailers rent out the walk-in cold rooms for a low fee of $0.25 (100 Naira) per 20kg plastic crate for one day. Each cold room has a capacity of storing three tonnes of food with other storage units that can hold 10 tons and 100 tons of food at a time.

Ikegwuonu said in designing the cold rooms, emphasis was placed on the solar power generation capacity to run the cold rooms every day of the week. The units generate energy from rooftop solar panels during the day. The energy is transferred and stored in batteries that run the cold rooms at night.

Currently, 54 cold rooms are operating in 38 clusters across two states in Nigeria, and Ikegwuonu plans to double the number in 2022.

ColdHubs have created 66 jobs for young women by hiring and training them as hub operators and market attendants. The ColdHubs, located in outdoor markets, serve more than 5 000 smallholder farmers, retailers and wholesalers in Nigeria.

In 2020, the cold rooms stored more than 40 000 tonnes of food which helped reduce food waste and increased farmers’ profits, according to Ikegwuonu.

“Farmers had commended the technology and have increased their income by about 50 percent before we started deploying ColdHubs. Now they are earning about $150 every month from selling the products that used to be spoiled and thrown away or sold at ridiculous rock bottom prices.”

Food waste occurs during industrial processing, distribution, and final consumption of food, research by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition shows. In developing countries, food losses occur upstream in the production chain.

According to the Food Sustainability Index (FSI) developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit with the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, food loss and waste need urgent action given its environmental and economic impacts. The FSI, which ranks countries on food systems sustainability – is a quantitative and qualitative benchmarking model measuring the sustainability of food systems in the categories of food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges.

Nigeria was ranked five with a score of 74.1 for food loss and waste on the FSI 2018 results for middle-income countries.

Spoilage of fruit and vegetables robs farmers of income while contributing to food waste. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“Tackling consumer food waste and post-harvest waste (the loss of fresh produce and crops before they reach consumer markets) will involve everything from changing consumption patterns to investing in infrastructure and deploying new digital technologies,”  the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition report noted, emphasising that ending hunger and meeting rising food demand will not be possible without tackling high level of food loss and waste.

Fruits and vegetables have the largest losses across developing countries, accounting for 42 percent of the developing country loss and waste globally, a report by the Rockefeller Foundation found, noting that growth in the commercial sale and use of loss averting technologies among smallholder farmers and value chain actors was an opportunity to reduce spoilage.

An estimated 93 million smallholder farmers and food supply chain actors are affected by food loss in Nigeria.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has urged for accelerated global action to reduce food loss and waste, with less than nine years to the deadline for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  Seven years ago, global leaders agreed to the 17 SDGs, and Goal 12 specifically commits to halve by per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels by 2030.

Reducing food loss and waste contributes to the realisation of broader improvements to agri-food systems towards achieving food security, food safety, improving food quality and delivering on nutritional outcomes,” the FAO highlighted in marking the 2021 International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. The UN specialised agency has urged investment and prioritisation of new technology and innovations that directly address post-harvest food loss.

Investments to encourage African youth turning away from agriculture to reconsider opportunities in the sector is key given the need to generate jobs and repair food systems particularly impacted by the current COVID-19 pandemic, says Heifer International, which has promoted young, creative professionals deploying technology innovations to transform agriculture in Africa.

“Young entrepreneurs across Africa understand the struggles of their parent’s generation and have seen how this has discouraged the people around them from pursuing careers in the agriculture sector,” commented Adesuwa Ifedi, senior vice president of Africa Programmes at Heifer International.

With support from Heifer and the AYuTe Africa Challenge, Ikegwuonu predicts to expand from 50 to 5000 ColdHubs across West Africa in the next five years.

“Too many African farmers do not get the income they deserve because they have no way of keeping their produce fresh. We are revolutionising storage with our Cold Hubs and ensuring that farmers get value for their produce by avoiding spoilage,” said Ikegwuonu.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

UNEP estimates that 50 percent of post-harvest losses occur in vegetable and fruit crops. However, innovative agro-processors have found a way to process Morula fruit into jams and other products. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 23 2021 (IPS)

When Bonolo Monthe’s neighbours discarded bucketsful of fallen ripe morula fruit from their backyard, she saw food and fortune going to waste.

Monthe took a tasty interest in the fruit of the morula (Sclerocarya birrea), a hardy indigenous tree that grows naturally across Africa. The morula fruit is rich in vitamins and nutrients, with eight times the vitamin C of oranges.

Monthe – a serial entrepreneur and agro processor – has turned the morula waste fruit into award-winning, low to zero-sugar preserves and jams through Maungo Craft, a social enterprise co-founded by Monthe and Olayemi Aganga in 2017. In addition, the company makes marmalades and sugar-free onion and baobab chutney.

Maungo Craft is helping eliminate food waste while providing delectable food and creating jobs in the agriculture value chain.

“We saw a great opportunity and decided to make preserves with the morula fruit that typically goes unused in Botswana,” Monthe, the Managing Director of Maungo Craft, tells IPS.

“Too many people saw morula as a nuisance. We saw an opportunity to come together and have some fun cooking jam,” said Monthe explaining that they saw an opportunity to make a little money at the local farmer’s market in the capital city, Gaborone.

“We learned on our journey that when it comes to creating cosmetic morula oil, cosmetic processors go through 300 tonnes of morula fruit pulp to get to 12 tonnes of morula cosmetic oil. We thought to ourselves, what happens to all of that fruit,” Monthe recalls.

As the world battles food and nutrition insecurity – more than 280 million people were undernourished in Africa in 2020 – food loss and food waste are a growing challenge.

Food waste is a result of overproduced food during industrial processing, distribution, and consumption. The food is never eaten and thrown away. Food loss refers to food lost at the time of cultivation, harvesting and processing and preservation. This food doesn’t reach consumers.

Factors driving food loss and waste include the absence of or poor agro-processing skills and facilities by smallholder farmers and poor and inadequate storage facilities, which means farmers cannot store perishable food or preserve it for future use.

Hot Sauce made from underutilised morula fruit. Credit: Maungo Craft

Inefficient processing and drying, poor storage, and insufficient infrastructure are instrumental factors in food waste in Africa, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. The FAO estimates that in Sub-Saharan Africa, post-harvest food losses are worth US$ 4 billion per year – or enough to feed at least 48 million people.

In many African countries, the post-harvest losses of food cereals are estimated at 25 per cent of the total crop harvested. For some crops such as fruits, vegetables, and root crops, being less hardy than cereals, post-harvest losses can reach 50 percent, UNEP says.

Describing morula as an amazing fruit, Monthe said the fruit could be used for food and skincare products. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimates the value of the global morula oil market to be worth $56.9 million by 2025 on a return of 4.4 percent.

Food losses for perishable crops such as fruits and vegetables exceed 20 percent, while for certain leafy greens and tropical fruit, the figure is more than 40 percent, according to the projections by the FAO.

A small percent of morula fruit is processed or value-added in Botswana, contributing to food waste.

Maungo Craft works with local vendors, from suppliers of spices to suppliers of fruit pulp, creating jobs for more than 1000 fruit harvesters in the value chain. Aganga explained that the company has mutual relationships with companies that use the seed in the morula fruit to make cosmetic skin care oil, while they use the fruit that would otherwise go to waste.

“Morula is an underutilised fruit also known as ‘orphan crop’ once integral in the food system,” says Aganga, Head of Production at Maungo Craft which has received 13 awards, including an endorsement of one of its products by Martha Stewart’s kitchen, an International Food Celebrity.

“The reintegration into our food system of fruits and crops like morula is integral in fighting and adapting to climate change. This, along with the delicious taste of many underutilised fruits, meant that using such fruit is of prime importance to us.”

Double Pyramid for Africa, food choices and systems that are perfect for people and the planet. Credit: BCFN

The Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) advocates adopting healthier and sustainable diets at local and international levels while mitigating climate change and supporting food companies.

Researchers at BCFN have designed a Double Health and Climate Pyramid that communicates features of a balanced, healthy, and sustainable diet by advising on the appropriate frequency of consumption of all food groups, like prioritising vegetables and fruit adapted to local conditions.

The Double Pyramid highlights the positive impact of nutritional balance on people’s health and protecting the environment. The Double Pyramid shows that foods that should be eaten more frequently are also those that have a lower environmental impact on our planet. On the contrary, foods that should be eaten less frequently tend to have a greater environmental impact. Therefore, within a single model, the relationship between two different but equally relevant objectives can be seen: health and environmental protection.

“Food represents the second most important factor of global sustainability (following the energy industry): it is, therefore, a priority for all concerned in the food production chain to reduce its environmental impact since whoever does not take part in finding a solution is part of the problem,” the BCFN comments.

Monthe said the company is expanding into the local market and eying export markets in South Africa and the United States.

“We shall also create new products for our customers to experience those underutilised foods,” said Monthe. “We put our ‘Culture in a Bottle’.”

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Alia Chughtai (standing at the back), a journalist with filmmaker Akhlaque Mahesar (right, behind the table), and others in their team at Aur Chaawal (And Rice). Chughtai believes in using local fresh ingredients that are healthy and planet-friendly. Her method of cooking fits in with the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition’s Double Pyramid. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Nov 19 2021 (IPS)

Balance is the absolute key, says Alia Chughtai, a journalist who started a catering service with filmmaker Akhlaque Mahesar, by the name of Aur Chaawal (And Rice), two years ago.

She knows what she is talking about. Suffering from gastrointestinal issues, Chughtai’s journey towards healthy eating started a decade ago. Once she understood the science behind nutrition and what balance of eating meant, she understood what her body had gone through. And thus began her quest for cleansing it.

“I couldn’t have garlic or onions for eight straight weeks,” the two most essential ingredients one cannot imagine cooking desi (slang for Pakistani) food without, she told IPS.

Two years ago, Chughtai decided to turn her food journey into a small side business.

“I got into this because there was a personal need for clean desi food without the bad oil, chemical-laced spices and food colouring,” she said. Today her fight is against processed food which she believes is the reason behind the multitude of ailments in people, and she swears by “heartily grown vegetables and fruits”.

“But it’s not a solo ride,” she said. For a well-oiled business to run successfully and expand, the pair have divided their tasks. While Chughtai oversees the day-to-day operations and “menu ideation”, Mahesar looks after the background logistics.

Surmai (fish) korma and rice with crispy okra and fried chillies on the side. One of the balanced dishes found at Aur Chaawal. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

While navigating the ‘farm to fork’ path, trying to find the balance between sustainability, nutrition, and access, Mahesar said they try their best “to use locally grown, locally made products”.

In turn, the duo has become acutely aware of fairer returns for small businesses and farmers.

“Ours is a small business, and we are all for supporting other small businesses,” said Chughtai’s partner.

The pandemic also acted as a catalyst for many Pakistanis to think and produce locally.

“We try to source as much as possible from around Pakistan, including the different types of cheeses and even the pasta,” he said.

But looking for quality produce requires quite a bit of research, which they both enjoy doing.

“We get a month’s supply of spices from small towns in Sindh; a certain species of chillies from Muzaffarabad, in the Punjab province; saffron and buckwheat from Hunza, in Gilgit-Baltistan region and saag (mustard plant) from Lahore, also in Punjab. They substitute ghee (a type of clear butter) for oil to cook in, which they get from Matiari, also in Sindh, weekly.

Fayza Khan, president of the Pakistan Nutrition and Dietetic Society (PNDS), strongly feels those in the food business must preach and practice healthy and sustainable eating, advocate for science-based diets, recommend reduced intake of meat and highly processed foods and demand from the government better labelling on packaged food.

To “reduce the burden of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases”, those in the food business should “play their part” in promoting healthier ways of cooking food and minimizing food waste.

Frowning upon overconsumption of fat-laden food, including bakery products, fast food, and sweetened beverages, she said: “Nutrition and lifestyle-related chronic diseases in Pakistan among adults as well as in children including the prevalence of obesity and an onset of diabetes in young age is spreading fast.”

Khan, therefore, recommends “traditional foods” which are healthier if “home-cooked with better cooking techniques”.

Finding the balance between food systems and the planet. Credit: BCFN

And that is what the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) advocates: that healthy diets, especially traditional foods, play a significant role in food sustainability as they have a low environmental impact.

For example, the Mediterranean diet of fresh fruit, vegetables, fish rather than red meat, and cereal-based products, such as pasta, and cooked in olive oil, help prevent heart disease. Little wonder Italians are ranked healthiest in the world. Italy has the highest number of centenarians in Europe.

As Chughtai and Mahesar fine-tuned their business model, they have increasingly understood the integrity of sustainable food strategies and started employing caution to minimize any environmental or climate impact it may be causing.

“As an entrepreneur in the food business, it is our responsibility to reduce greenhouse emissions, of animal welfare and protection of small farmers and workers in the food business,” said Chughtai.

“We initially used bagasse bowls and containers,” she explained but had to opt for cheaper recycled packaging boxes because bagasse was too expensive.

“We use regular reusable plastic boxes which we refill with food for 10% discount on the food,” she said, adding: “People don’t want to pay higher costs for desi cuisine!”

They also compost their wet kitchen waste and use it as manure for their vegetable roof garden, where they grow their red bell peppers, chillies, broccoli, tomatoes, eggplant, gourd, and some herbs.
But Chughtai, says Aur Chaawal, is not just a business; it is a quest for “clean food”.

It took her several years to find out that the root cause of her stomach issues, said Chughtai and said everything pointed toward the pre-packaged spices with their overdose of flavourings and colours. Averse to them, at Aur Chaawal, they use the old-fashioned pestle and mortar to pound fresh garlic, smash the ginger or chillies or grind the whole spices into powder.

“Our cooking may be labour intensive, alright,” she admitted, but insisted it was “clean and healthy”.

Chughtai may not be aware of it, but Aur Chaawal has uses Barilla Foundation’s Double Pyramid model of placing the health and climate pyramids side-by-side, encouraging healthy eating for humans and remaining respectful of the planet.

In a city like Karachi, which has a deluge of caterers, food joints and restaurants and a huge population of discerning gourmands, securing 10,000 followers on Instagram, and a steady daily clientele of between 35-45, in just two years, is no mean feat.

“We have to be innovative,” said Mahesar, but puts their success down to the awareness among their regular customers (that include many working women who want her to cook for their family), that the Aur Chaawal menu will be nothing but wholesome.

The business also caters to those who are counting their calories. But Chughtai insisted a one-size-fits-all formula does not work for here.

On average, she said, every body’s plate should be 1/4th filled with protein, 1/2 with greens and 1/4th with complex carbs”.

But she emphasized: “Everyone is different; you have to eat according to your health needs.”

For instance, on her plate, the portion of protein would be 1/3rd protein since she was low on iron. And this, she said, was the mistake many nutritionists in Pakistan make.

“You cannot apply the 1400/1500 calorie rule to everyone!” said Chughtai, who was fortunate to train under Adrian Leung, a certified nutrition coach and personal trainer and who helped “reconfigure my brain about good food and bad food”.

One day, when her inner writer gets restless, she plans to document her “journey”. She intends to travel from the coastal villages to the mountain peaks and include recipes she picks up “of the unconventional eats and the ones we’ve adapted because Karachi is such a smorgasbord of ethnicities” in a “beautifully designed” compilation.

Till then, having brought up eating home-cooked food made by her mother, she said, Aur Chaawal will continue serving “clean” meals using the healthiest, organically grown produce and spices for their customers.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

BCFN's double pyramid encourages the adoption of eating styles that are people and planet focused. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Nov 17 2021 (IPS)

For the last ten years, Angeline Wanjira’s food stall at Kirigiti Market in Kiambu County has featured the same foods, cabbages, potatoes and carrots, keeping with the community’s most preferred food types.

Over in the Lake Victoria region County of Homabay, Millicent Atieno has sold fish at the Mbita market since 2015. A pattern that Nairobi-based food safety and security expert Evans Kori says replicates itself throughout Kenya’s 47 Counties.

“Our food consumption patterns are in line with their respective food production activities. In Central Kenya, for instance, the community shuns nutrient-rich traditional vegetables in favour of cabbage. Among pastoralist communities, the diet is predominantly animal-based,” he says in an interview with IPS.

“The Lake Victoria region diet is centred on fish. All these foods are important, but we have to adopt diets that include more food types. Our current food habits are not balanced, healthy or sustainable.”

Kori says the imbalance is common the world over, hence the negligible progress towards eradicating global hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition.

UN experts, in the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report 2021, reveal that the world has not progressively moved towards ensuring access to safe, nutritious sufficient foods for all people or toward eradicating all forms of malnutrition.

The report cites climate variability as a key concern in slowing down progress towards access to healthy and sustainable diets for all people.

The double pyramid devised by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) recommends a diet that is good for people and good for the planet. Credit: BCFN

Using the latest evidence on food, health, and the environment to devise the Double Health and Climate Pyramid model, the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition illustrates that global food goals cannot be achieved within current broken food systems and ecosystems.

Until the escalating food and climate crisis is resolved jointly and not independently and in isolation, progress towards a sustainable, food secure and healthy planet will be slow.

Kori agrees, adding that current “food production systems are not sustainable because they accelerate climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation. Consequent outcomes affect our health and essentially, human survival”.

He stresses that people worldwide will not access the nutrients they need and sustainably within existing food systems.

In 2020, between 720 and 811 million people faced hunger, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Driving home the urgency for nature-positive food production systems because current systems are broken, FAO estimates show the agricultural sector accounts for one-third of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Food production accounts for the largest share of freshwater withdrawals at 70% on average and 90% of the water footprint of humanity, as well as 12% of land use.

Barilla’s evidence-based Double Pyramid illustrates the linking between climate change and food systems. This promotes health and longevity and reduces the impact of food choices on the ecosystem, and more specifically, on climate change.

The Health and Climate pyramids are placed side by side. The health side shows features of a balanced, healthy, and sustainable diet. The climate side shows the associated impact on health and the climate.

Based on scientific evidence linking food choices in the adult population to health outcomes, the health pyramid arranges food into 18 food groups across seven layers according to the recommended frequency of consumption for people’s health.

Foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole-grain cereals, which should be consumed most often, are placed at the bottom of the pyramid. The second layer includes nuts and seeds, non-tropical vegetable oils, refined low glycaemic index cereals and fermented milk. The third layer comprises pulses and fish as preferred sources of protein. The fourth food layer has poultry, eggs, milk and cheese. The fifth layer includes high glycaemic index foods like white bread, refined rice and potatoes. No more than two servings of this food should be eaten per week.

Animal fats, including butter, tropical oils like palm oil, red meat and sweets and baked goods made with refined flour and sugar are in the sixth layer of the pyramid because eating them is associated with a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular events. The advice is to eat these no more than once a week. There are foods like processed meat like sausages, bacon, and salami in the seventh layer, associated with a high risk of cardiovascular diseases and other chronic diseases and should only be eaten occasionally.

The climate pyramid then classifies different foods based on their carbon footprint or carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Again, foods are arranged into 18 groups and seven layers, starting with a very low carbon footprint to a very high footprint.

The pyramid shows animal-based products, especially red meat, followed by cheese and processed meat, which causes the highest GHG emissions compared to plant-based products.

As per research by FAO, “cattle raised for both beef and milk, and inedible outputs like manure and draft power are the animal species responsible for the most emissions, representing about 65 percent of the livestock sector’s emissions.”

Barilla’s Double Pyramid is, therefore, an illustration of how people can eat varied, balanced, and healthy diets and, at the same time, reduce their contribution to climate change.

The pyramid recommends a consumption frequency for all food groups and shows their impact on health and the climate.

Additionally, the Barilla Foundation devised seven cultural double pyramids in line with different geographical contexts, including Nordic countries and Canada, USA, South Asia, East Asia, Africa, Latin America and Mediterranean countries.

Each of the seven pyramids reflects and celebrate the global value of diversity while promoting healthy, sustainable eating and consideration for planet health.

On the one hand, the double pyramid summarises key knowledge gained from medicine, nutrition studies, and the impact of people’s food choices on the planet. And, on the other hand, a consumer education tool.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Efforts to improve nutrition of breastfeeding mothers has resulted in an innovative maize product which includes small fish which often go to waste. Credit: Zany Jadraque/unsplash

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 12 2021 (IPS)

During the COVID-19 lockdown in Uganda, a breastfeeding mother struggled to improve the health of her malnourished child. With the closure of her local health centre, she worried the child could die without urgent medical treatment.

Her child was saved. The mother was given a fish-enriched maize meal, developed by a local team of researchers under the NutriFish project and donated to the local Mulago Hospital in Kampala.

It is not hard to see why the food innovation was effective. The fish-enriched maize meal flour is packed with essential micronutrients and protein. A 200g serving of the fish-enriched maize meal, known locally as posho, provides up to 50 percent of a mother’s daily requirements in terms of calories, vitamin A, iron, and zinc.

“Posho is good for me even though its appearance can put one off, it is delicious,” a breastfeeding mother wrote in hospital comments after receiving the maize meal, developed to help tackle widespread nutritional deficiencies, particularly among women of reproductive age and children under five years.

According to the 2017 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey, 29 percent of children under five years are stunted while 4 percent are wasted, and 11 percent are underweight. Furthermore, about 32 percent of women aged 15-49 are anaemic, making it vital for them to access foods rich in micronutrients such as iron, zinc and calcium, which are found in fish.

A nutritionally enhanced maize meal suitable for breastfeeding mothers has been developed by the NutriFish project and donated to hospitals in Uganda. Credit NutriFish

NutriFish researchers developed the nutrient-enriched meal using under-utilized small fish (USF) species. The meal is created by blending maize with Silverfish – a small lake fish species locally known as “mukene”, which is less preferred despite being highly nutritious because of its pungent smell and grittiness.

Dorothy Nakimbugwe, one of the co-principal investigators in the NutriFish project, explained that the enriched maize meal had been developed with other products, including baby food, a seasoning, a snack, and a sauce. All the products contain under-utilized fish and Nile Perch by-products (NPB), rich in calcium, zinc and iron, making them ideal micronutrient deficiency busters for vulnerable groups in Uganda.

“The fish-enriched maize meal was evaluated by breastfeeding mothers to improve their ability to produce adequate breast milk to feed their babies,” Nakimbugwe told IPS.

NutriFish researchers are helping reduce losses of underutilized small fish and Nile Perch by-products through improved post-harvest and processing technologies such as solar tent dryers.

The NutriFish project is an initiative of the Cultivate Africa’s Future (CultiAF) Fund, a partnership between Australia’s Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and Canada’s International Development Research Centre. The project promotes the handling and processing of small fish to improve the quality and shelf life and avoid waste.

Researchers from the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRRI) estimate that up to 40 percent of the small fish caught in Ugandan lakes are lost due to poor handling and rudimentary processing methods.

These losses have negative implications for fish supply and the incomes of actors in the small fish value chains, particularly women who dominate fish processing, says Jackson Efitre, a senior lecturer in fisheries and aquaculture at Makerere University and the NutriFish project’s principal investigator.

Currently, the small fish are processed using open sun drying or on raised racks which take a long time, exposing fish to dust, insects, and bacterial contamination, Efitre said. He added there are persistent challenges with the current methods of processing and preserving fish to avoid loss.

Each Ugandan consumes between 10 and 12 kg of fish per year which is lower than the 25 kg per person per year recommended by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, according to Efitre.

Declining stocks of large fish species, coupled with high exports, gender inequalities, and post-harvest losses, have affected supply, Efitre said.

The Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) has developed the Double Pyramid Model to raise awareness of foods’ environmental and nutritional impacts. The Health Pyramid orders food according to the frequency of consumption with the base, including foods that should be eaten more frequently, such as fruit, vegetables, and whole grain.

Legumes and fish are recommended protein sources, while red meat and high glycaemic foods should be eaten in moderation. The Climate Pyramid indicates that animal-based products have the highest contribution to climate change while plant-based ones have the smallest.

Research by BCFN also notes that fish and legumes should be the primary source of protein in diets for many communities. The researchers note that sustainably increasing fish production also faces challenges related to large-scale exploitation and experience of domestic fish production and climate change, making it important for consumers to aim for a balanced and diverse diet.

“The Double Health and Climate Pyramid shows that all foods can be part of a healthy and sustainable diet when consumed with appropriate frequency. Typically, foods that have a low climate impact are also those that should be consumed at a higher frequency for personal health,” according to the report.

The report further notes that food waste occurs during industrial processing, distribution, and final consumption of food. In developing countries, food waste occurs mainly through losses upstream in the production chain.

BCFN has identified possible ways to prevent food waste through information, diet education, and the involvement of governments, institutions, producers, and distributors in the food value chain.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Food table banking is turning the tables on the systematic and systemic financial exclusion of women. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Oct 15 2021 (IPS)

Pascaline Chemutai’s five acres of land located in the country’s breadbasket region of Rift Valley recently produced 115 bags of maize, each weighing 90 kilograms. She tells IPS that of these, 110 bags will be transported to traders in Nairobi and neighbouring Kiambu County at a negotiated price of $23 per bag.

In all, she will have pocketed about $2,500, a significant amount in the village. Not only will she have enough to feed her family of five, but to pay for their school fees and other basic needs. Besides maize farming, Chemutai sells milk to residents in town.

The 45-year-old farmer widowed eight years ago with five young children says that her life as a farmer was made possible and is sustained through table banking.

“My husband was in charge of our farm and handled all business related to the farm. I knew how to farm because I grew up cultivating land, but I had no money to buy seeds and fertilizer or knowledge on the business side of farming,” she says.

Fortunately, a year before the demise of her husband, Chemutai joined a table banking group under the Joyful Women Organization (JOYWO), a registered NGO focused on the economic empowerment of women.

As the name suggests, women place their savings on a table and immediately loan each other accumulated funds.
“Women knew of village saving groups where contributions were spent on household items such as cups, plates and even beddings. We were now learning about saving and borrowing,” she says.

Sharon Alice Anyango says that the simple concept of table banking, where a group of 10 to 35 members use the group-based strategy to fundraise by saving, placing their savings on a table, and borrowing immediately, has turned tables on the systematic and systemic financial exclusion of women.

“Table banking is addressing the primary challenges that women face when dealing with banks and other financial institutions. Where they needed collateral that they did not have to access bank loans, today, they successfully fundraise amongst themselves,” says Anyango, a project officer at the Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender.

JOYWO, whose current patron is Rachael Ruto, the wife of Deputy President William Ruto, claims to have a revolving fund of at least $27 million in the hands of its estimated 200,000 members across 1,200 table banking groups in all parts of the country.

“Other estimates show that so popular is the table banking movement that cumulatively, table banking groups throughout the country circulate approximately $550,000 to $730,000,” Anyango says.

She explains that only women were involved at the start, but as they started to accumulate funds, men became interested.

“Men have seen the magic,” she says.

Now the table banking fraternity allows men to join, but the groups’ constitutions ensure that at least 70 percent of the members and all the leadership positions are women.

Chemutai says that their table banking group of 20 members currently has a revolving fund of $30,000. She has taken loans valued at $2,000 to fund various farming and animal husbandry ventures in the last year.

“Seeds, fertilizer, labour, tractors and veterinary services, salary for my farm boy and feeds for my cows cost a lot of money. I borrow from the group and repay, and this cycle repeats itself every year, and all my activities are running smoothly,” she tells IPS.

“Table banking has also linked me to a reliable market. We started interacting with other table banking groups from other parts of the country, and that is how I managed to find a market. I sell all my maize to other women in table banking groups within Nairobi and Kiambu counties. I would never have met these women if it was not for table banking,” she says.

Chemutai’s story is in line with research from the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition that points to “a high probability that any agricultural product that we buy has been produced by a woman. Women’s contribution is essential for the food security of entire communities and for the farming production of many developing and rural communities.”

The research further points to the many gender disparities that prevent women such as Chemutai from accessing financing. On paper, Chemutai does not own an asset to be used as collateral despite having access to five acres of land because the land is ‘ancestral’ land.

As per the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition and undoubtedly true for many women in agriculture, “when women are guaranteed the same access as men to community resources, services and economic opportunities, production increased, the economic and social benefits of the community improve, and malnutrition and poverty are reduced.”

Celebrated every October 16, as the global community marks yet another World Food Day under the theme “Our actions are our future. Better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life”, gender experts, such as Anyango, tell IPS that this is the level of access that women need to feed the global population.

Agriculture is still the largest employment sector for 60 percent of women in Sub-Saharan Africa. Women like Chemutai also make up two-thirds of the world’s 600 million small livestock managers, according to the U.N’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Despite their contribution to agriculture, financing is still largely not affordable, available, and accessible to women farmers. In this East African nation where the table banking movement is more concentrated in rural areas, women now have a lifeline to fund agricultural activities with loans taken under friendly terms and conditions.
Anyango asserts that women must be at the centre of World Food Day’s collective action across 150 countries to promote worldwide awareness of global hunger and the need to ensure healthy diets for all.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The global food system needs a massive overhaul – this was clear before the Covid pandemic and it is even more true today.

Feeding the world in a sustainable and healthy way is entirely possible but it is also inextricably linked to tackling the climate crisis by reaching net zero emissions, and to halting the dizzying decline in bio-diversity which is currently threatening the survival of one million plant and animal species.

Danielle Nierenberg

That reality, exacerbated by Covid-19, is a looming global food emergency, triggered by a combination of climate extremes, economic shocks of rising food prices and joblessness, as well as protracted armed conflicts.

The UN is warning that this year 41 million people across 43 countries are at imminent risk of famine. This compares with 27 million in 2019. Famine-like conditions are worsening in Ethiopia, Madagascar, South Sudan and Yemen.

More people are dying of hunger around the world each day than from Covid.

On the climate front, greenhouse gas emissions are rebounding after a relatively short hiatus caused by economic slowdowns, reaching new highs in 2021.

Transforming our food systems is thus not just about feeding people. Production and transport of food accounts for about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial animal agriculture and increased mono-cropping with over-use of pesticides and fertilizers are major drivers of biodiversity loss.

The UN Environment Program has recently issued its damning analysis of the industrial food system, with low retail costs in developed countries obscuring the massive damage caused to the environment, as well as epidemics of malnutrition and obesity and increased transmission of diseases between animals and humans.

We have to feed the world equitably in a sustainable way. Science, technology and more efficient market mechanisms are just one part of the solution. The greater challenge lies in addressing genuine land and agrarian reforms. Often it is the industrial food system and the corporate sector that holds the rights over the use of land, water, crops, plants and seeds – not those who produce and consume food.

Small farmers, pastoralists and indigenous peoples must be heard and respected, and the injustices of land grabbing must be reversed. Truly regenerative and restorative food systems cannot leave these people behind. Women, who produce much more food than recognised, and youth who struggle to access land need political empowerment.

The pandemic that has disrupted global food production has disproportionately affected women farmers and food producers who were already excluded from full participation in agricultural development. Food policies must not be gender blind and the needs of women should be at the forefront of responses to mass disasters. Imagine the changes that could really happen if we had women farmers running municipalities, towns and even countries.

Even during the depths of the pandemic, the threat for many people of poor nutrition and inadequate food was caused by loss of incomes and livelihoods, not shortage of food itself. But economic insecurity goes hand in hand with the climate crisis.

The world is facing radical choices. This decade must be one of decisive action as we strive to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030. New powerful and all-embracing alliances are needed to avoid a silo mentality that divides issues and communities. Governments, companies, institutions and citizens have to come together to reset food systems.

As members of civil society we have a responsibility to carry over the positive elements of the UN Food Systems Summit held in New York last week and make up for its deficiencies too. The issue of food must be addressed at the UN COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November and again at the UN biodiversity summit in Kunming next year.

We are on the cusp of a new era. The warning signals on climate, biodiversity and food crises have been repeatedly and clearly flagged by experts. If we have the individual and collective courage to act then our decisive responses to the pandemic can soon set us on the way to a more healthy, sustainable and just food system.

Danielle Nierenberg is co-founder and president of Food Tank, a nonprofit organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Climate finance can be channeled to sustainable agriculture at large through small-scale investments. Finance can help profitable businesses that promote biodiversity and conservation, improve productivity, nutrition, and resilience, while also benefiting farmers and their communities. Credit: Priscilla Negreiros/CPI - Climate Policy Initiative

By Barbara Buchner
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 22 2021 (IPS)

September 23, 2021 is the first-ever UN Food Systems Summit, convened to mobilize the highest-priority transformations needed to end hunger through the sustainable production and distribution of food. Transforming food systems to ensure food security for all has never been so urgent.

Ongoing waves of Covid-19 and extreme weather events have exposed and multiplied the vulnerability of food systems across the globe, increasing food prices and food insecurity in every country, but especially in countries least equipped to handle multiple, ongoing crises. One-in-four people globally – 1.9 billion – are moderately or severely food insecure. A statistic that is sadly, and unnecessarily, increasing. And by 2050 the world will need to feed an estimated 9.7 billion people, all while protecting natural resources and biodiversity.

Ending hunger by 2030 is a core challenge set by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but food system transformation is not always high on the list of public funders and private investors. We need to rethink this priority because the potential benefits—economic, social and environmental—are huge. Agriculture, while both a contributor to and a victim of climate change, must and can be part of the solution. Improved climate action in food systems can deliver 20 percent of the global total emissions reductions needed to meet the Paris Agreement targets by 2050, along with other sustainability and resilience benefits.

How does this translate in practical terms?

Barbara Buchner

Climate finance can provide the means to accelerate this critical process, but the slow pace of climate finance is particularly true in the agricultural sector. Cumulative climate finance for agriculture, forestry, and land use represents only 3% of the total tracked global climate finance. This is a crisis, and a missed opportunity, but there are numerous next steps we can take to address these issues.

Use public finance wisely. Governments must make more effective use of public resources and policies targeting capacity building for climate-related finance and incentivizing conservation efforts, rather than on agriculture subsidies that support unsustainable crops and practices.

Channel climate finance to sustainable agriculture at large. We must enhance collaboration between the public and private sectors to mitigate the risk associated with investments in the agricultural sector. Blended finance mechanisms, including guarantees and first-loss tranches, can improve the risk-return profile of small-scale agriculture investments.

Invest with integrity. International and domestic climate flows should stimulate the transition of agri-businesses and its finance service providers towards low emission supply chains. Public, development, and private sectors must work together to further enhance their reporting of climate finance for sustainable foods systems under a common definition and set methodology.

By focusing on these priorities, we can finance profitable businesses that promote biodiversity and conservation, improve productivity, nutrition, and resilience, while also benefiting farmers and their communities.

The UN Food Systems Summit is a great opportunity to harness science, finance, and collaboration to make significant progress towards our 2030 food security goals.

Dr Barbara Buchner is an Austrian economist, with a doctorate in economics from the University of Graz. She specializes in climate finance, and is Global Managing Director of Climate Policy Initiative

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Food experts have many and varied expectations of the UN Food System Summit. It's hoped decisions made here will help the world get back on track for the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Sep 20 2021 (IPS)

Dubbed ‘the People’s Summit, the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) hopes to put the world back on a path to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, through food systems overhauling. From the tempered to the extremely optimistic, experts in various food system sectors share their expectations of transformation.

The world has been lagging on ambitious climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals, but the UNFSS is hoping that commitments to transform global food systems will get the world back on track to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

The inaugural UNFSS will take place virtually during the UN General Assembly High-Level Week, under the leadership of UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

It promises to bring together the public and private sectors, non-governmental organisations, farmers groups, indigenous leaders, youth representatives and researchers to outline a clear path to ensure that the world’s food production and distribution are safe, healthy, sustainable and equitable.

Learning from the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, the summit also hopes to make food production and distribution more resilient to vulnerabilities, stress and shocks.

Experts in sustainability and various food system sectors have been speaking about their expectations and hopes for a summit that is built on solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues such as land degradation, inequality, rising hunger, and obesity.

Panellists at a Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) ‘Fixing the Business of Food’ webinar held on September 16, 2021, were asked how optimistic they were, on a scale of 1 to 10, of real food systems transformation in the next 12 months, triggered by the private sector.

“I am going to give a full 10,” said Viktoria de Bourbon de Parme, Head of Food Processing at the World Benchmarking Alliance. “I am super optimistic,” she added. “I think we are there. Momentum is there, and it is going to happen.”

Executive Director of Food and Nature at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development Diane Holdorf is similarly optimistic.

“I would say an 8 out of 10, but I do have to preface this by saying that systems change is complex. With individual leading companies demonstrating what is possible and bringing others along, we are going to see for sure actual system changes,” she said.

Not all experts are optimistic that the UNFSS will bring about the urgent changes required for food systems transformation.

IPS spoke with Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) head, about his expectations for the summit.

Belay, who is also an advisory board member for BCFN and a food systems researcher, said that he and alliance members disagree with the summit’s agenda and structure. The alliance represents farmers, pastoralists, hunter/gatherers, faith-based organisations, indigenous peoples and women’s groups,

“The pre-summit has happened in Rome. During that presummit, we had our own summit, organised by civil society mechanisms, and it was clear that farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous people, local groups, and women’s organisations were all saying no, the UNFFS summit does not represent us. There is no reason to be part of that,” Belay said.

Belay believes that the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) should have been responsible for organising the Summit.

“This is a space where the civil society in general and the civil society mechanism and governments come together to negotiate about food-related issues, so the agenda should have been set there,” he said, adding that, “the UNFSS has set up a scientific body as part of the structure, but we already have a scientific body in the CFS, that is called the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition. It is a scientific body, and you can say that we need to beef up this body, but they have established a totally different scientific body.”

While expectations from the summit differ, the experts are unanimous in their view that the world is in urgent need of radical change in how food is grown, sold and distributed to tackle food insecurity, land degradation and rising poverty.

“(The Summit) is one step on a very, very long journey. Perhaps more than ever, as the UN General Assembly opens, we feel the weight and burdens of non-sustainability in the world,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

Sachs says the transformation to sustainable development will demand deep energy and fiscal policy change.

With land-use accounting for about 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and ensuing issues like deforestation and loss of habitat, he is calling for fundamental change in land-use policies across the globe, adding that current, unsustainable use is a ‘massive contributor to crises the board.’

Another aspect of the complex global food system that requires urgent attention is the need for healthy diets.

“About half the world does not have a healthy diet. Of the 8 billion people on the planet, roughly 1 billion live in extreme hunger. Another 2 billion live with one or more micronutrient deficiencies, anaemia, vitamin deficiencies or omega-three fatty acid deficiencies, which are absolutely debilitating for health. Another billion people are obese,” Sachs said.

This week’s UNFSS hopes to get commitments from governments, the private sector, farmers and indigenous groups to work together and change global food production and consumption.

By tackling the food crisis, organisers hope to address the climate, biodiversity, and hunger crises.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Women produce more than 50 percent of the food in the world but are disadvantaged when it comes to access to resources such as land and financial services. Credit: Busani Bafana, IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Sep 17 2021 (IPS)

Women, key contributors to agriculture production, are missing at the decision table, with alarming consequences, says Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg in an exclusive interview with IPS.

Giving women a seat at the policymaking table could accelerate Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and keep the world fed and nourished. This necessitates a transformation of the currently lopsided global food system, she says.

Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg.

Nierenberg, a top researcher and advocate on food systems and agriculture, acknowledges that women are the most affected during environmental or health crises. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global food production, affecting women farmers and food producers who were already excluded from full participation in agricultural development.

“We still have a long way to go in making sure that policies are not gender blind and include the needs of women at the forefront when mass disasters occur,“ Nierenberg told IPS, adding that policymakers need to understand the needs of farmers and fisherfolk involved in food systems.

“I think it is time we need more people who are involved with agriculture to run for political office because they understand its challenges,” she said. “If we had more farmers in governments around the world, imagine what that would look like. If we had women farmers running municipalities, towns and even countries, that is where change would really happen.”

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), women contribute more than 50 percent of food produced globally and make up over 40 percent of the agricultural labour force. But while women keep families fed and nourished, they are disadvantaged in accessing critical resources for food production compared to men. They lack access to land, inputs, extension, banking and financial services.

“Until we end the discrimination of women around the globe, I doubt these things will change even though women are in the largest part of the world’s food producers,” said Nierenberg, who co-founded and now heads the global food systems think tank, Food Tank.

Arguing that COVID-19 and the climate crisis were not going to be the last global shocks to affect the world, Nierenberg said women and girls had been impacted disproportionately; hence the need to act now and change the food system. Women have experienced the loss of jobs and income, reduced food production and nutrition and more girls are now out of school.

“It is not enough for me to speak for women around the globe. Women who are actually doing the work need to speak for themselves; they need to be included in these conversations,” Nierenberg said.

“What happens is that in conferences, there are a lot of white men in suits talking on behalf of the rest of the world. But we need the rest of the world, and women included, to be in the room.”

A food system is a complex network of all activities involving the growing, processing, distribution and consumption of food. It also includes the governance, ecological sustainability and health impact of food.

Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted invisible issues, like the interconnectedness of our food systems, she said it was urgent to invest in regional and localized food systems that included women and youth. Food Tank and the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) work collaboratively to investigate and set the agenda for concrete solutions for resetting the food system.

Divine Ntiokam, Food Systems Champion and Founder and Managing Director, Climate Smart Agriculture Youth Network Global (GCSAYN), agrees. While youth are ready to engage in promoting a just and inclusive transformation of rural areas, it was unfortunate they were rarely involved in decision-making, she said. They are excluded from the household level to larger political institutions and companies and need better prospects of financial security to remain in the farming sector.

“Young men and women need to be given special attention in formulating legislation to purchase land and receive proper land rights,” Ntiokam told IPS.

“International donors and governments need to invest in youth, particularly young women and girls, for their meaningful participation along with the food systems value network,” he said.

“Youth need to have a ‘seat at the table’, as they have at the Summit, in terms of decision-making on where governments and international donors invest their resources to make agriculture and food a viable, productive and profitable career.”

Researchers say current food systems are unfair, unhealthy, and inequitable, underscoring the urgency to transform the global food system. According to the FAO, more than 800 million people went to bed hungry in 2020, and scores of others are malnourished.

Jemimah Njuki, Director for Africa at IFPRI and Custodian for the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Lever of the UN Food Systems Summit.

For food systems to be just, there is an urgency to close the gender resource gap, says Jemimah Njuki, Director for Africa at IFPRI and Custodian for the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Lever of the UN Food Systems Summit.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will, on September 23, 2021 host the UN Food Systems Summit during the UN General Assembly High-Level Week. The Summit is billed as a platform to push for solid support in changing the world food systems to help the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic while spurring the achievement of the SDG by 2030.

The Summit, the UN says will “culminate in an inclusive global process, offering a catalytic moment for public mobilization and actionable commitments by heads of state and government and other constituency leaders to take the food system agenda forward”.

“They (food systems) must also transform in ways that are just and equitable, and that meaningfully engage and benefit women and girls,” Njuki told IPS. She added that harmful social and gender norms creating barriers for women and girls by defining what women and girls can or cannot eat, what they can or cannot own, where they can go or not go should be removed.

“This transformation has to be driven from all levels and all sectors in our food systems: global to local, public to private, large scale producers to smallholder farmers and individual consumers,” Njuki said.

Leaders should enact policies that directly address injustices – such as ensuring women’s access to credit, markets, and land rights, Njuki said, noting that individual women and men need to confront social norms and legal prejudices and demand changes.

Njuki believes that current food systems have contributed to wide disparities among rich and poor.

“These negative outcomes are intimately linked with many of the biggest challenges facing humanity right now – justice and equality, climate change, human rights – and these challenges cannot be addressed without transforming how our food systems work,” Njuki told IPS.

“We are at a pivotal moment on the last decade before the deadline for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This must be the decade of action for food systems to end hunger.”

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A new report, Fixing the Business of Food, advocates the aligning of business practices to the SDGs. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Sep 16 2021 (IPS)

In the backdrop of rising hunger, half of the world’s population living on unhealthy diets, a third of agricultural produce lost to postharvest events, and waste, poverty in farming communities, a pandemic that laid bare the vulnerability of food systems to external shocks and unsustainable food production, the Barilla Foundation for Food and Nutrition has published a report which introduces guidelines for the private sector to fulfil its role in transforming global food systems.

The Fixing Food Report was released September 16, 2021, one week before the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), the largest and most urgent forum to date, which brings together representatives in every sector of the food system to make food production, packaging and distribution more sustainable.

The report acknowledges that food companies are a part of a larger, complex system. However, while they cannot solve the food systems crisis alone, these businesses have an important role in food choices, reducing food loss and waste, sustainable food production and poverty elimination.

It adds that they can contribute to food systems transformation by integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) into their business practices through a 4-pillar framework. The framework includes beneficial products and strategies, sustainable business operations and internal processes, sustainable supply and value chains and good corporate citizenship.

“Integrating sustainability principles within business goals and activities is not easy. It requires a rethinking of corporate purpose, management systems, performance measurements, and reporting systems,” the report states.

As part of its release, BCFN officials hosted a webinar on fixing the business of food. It brought together some of the world’s leading research institutions and food experts, including the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) at Columbia University, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN) and the Santa Chiara Lab (SCL) of the University of Siena.

“To build back better, now is the time for a great reset, and in order to achieve that, we need to reset the agendas of the food industry and the finance sector to help the agri-food sector to become a game-changer for positive impact on the ecosystem and society as a whole,” said Guido Barilla, Chairman of the Barilla Group and the foundation the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN).

According to the report, while food businesses are now recognizing the magnitude of the global food crisis, many governments seem oblivious to this reality. It adds that the UNFSS aims to change this view “with all due urgency.”

“Companies should look inside and align themselves with sustainable practices, including the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity, should report on such behaviours, in detail, should adjust internal management systems, promotion systems, compensation systems, evaluation systems, to ensure not just rhetorical alignment in an annual report, but operational alignment in business practices,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

In addition to the 4-pillar framework, the Fixing the Business of Food report also lists 21 standards for more sustainable food systems. Those guidelines include measures for sustainable business operations and accountability.

Managing Director for Food and Nature at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Diane Holdorf, has encouraged food companies to commit to ambitious action on food systems transformation.

The CEO-led Council, which consists of 200 businesses working towards sustainable food systems, has challenged members to sign a business declaration towards this goal.

“For example, business leaders have committed to helping meet food system transformation by implementing actions in their companies, value chains, and the different parts of the sectors that are so important across food and agriculture. To, for example, scale science-based solutions, to provide investments into research and innovation that support the transformation that we need to see.”

Holdorf elaborated that the transformation included every part of the process, “from seeds to fertilizers, farming, processing, selling and trading, transportation, consumption, nutrition and ensuring access for farmers and others across the chain that leads into actions around contributing to improving livelihoods.”

The report makes a case for technical, financial, and other support for small and medium-sized enterprises.

International and European Affairs of the Food, Beverages and Catering Union head Peter Schmidt says this support is essential for the private sector’s successful alignment to the SDGs.

“Most of these initiatives are driven by the multinationals, and that’s okay, that’s great, and we appreciate it very much that is practice. I fully support them, but at the same time, we have real problems explaining SMEs. What does it mean when we talk about the problem of sustainability?” he asked.

“I invited several people from the business sector and asked one CEO from a corporate team, producing organic cheese, ‘Do you know something about the SDGs? The UN Agenda 2030? Do you know about the Code of Conduct that was launched within the Frankfurt strategy from the European Commission?’ and the answer was: not really. I think that shows how important it is that we go deeper in this level. That is the backbone of the food industry, of the processing sector. If we do not take them on board, I’m not sure whether we can have success in the transformation process,” he said.

For over ten years, the Barilla Foundation for Food and Nutrition has engaged in state-of-the-art research, hosted high-level think tanks, and contributed to discussion – and action – on food systems transformation.

Foundation representatives say during that time, they have witnessed a shift in the concept of sustainability, including steps by industry leaders to align with SDGs, but a lot more work is needed to achieve food systems transformation.

“Food is more than a commodity. It is a public good at the heart of our societies, our cultures, and our lives. Food actors can and must play a role in delivering this change,” said Barilla.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Kimani Mwaniki, an Irish potato farmer in Elburgon, Kenya tends to his crop after preparing land using a chisel plough and tractor that he acquired using AMS. Credit: Justus Wanzala / IPS

By Justus Wanzala
Nakuru, Kenya, Aug 13 2021 (IPS)

When 33-year-old Kimani Mwaniki, an Irish potato farmer in Elburgon, Nakuru County in Kenya’s Rift Valley, heard about a farmer’s virtual school, he didn’t hesitate to enrol. He was keen to learn how the programme will enable him to get higher crop yields for his market in the capital city Nairobi and elsewhere.

For years, the young farmer had been relying on the occasional visit of an agricultural extension officer for information about best practices on his five-acre land, but not anymore.

Now, armed with a smartphone, Mwaniki can connect with experts and farmers like him across the county for information about the right seeds, when to plant them and how to tend to his crops. It also tells him about the right machinery, where to find it and how to use it.

He says through the virtual school, he has been able to find the right machinery to prepare his land at a low cost.

The virtual school programme is supported by Nakuru Agri Call, an intervention of the County Government of Nakuru. It seeks to empower some 3,000 smallholder farmers in the area with information about competitive farming practices, including mechanisation, appropriate land preparation, seed sourcing, crop care and post-harvest management.

Just by logging in to Facebook and Twitter on the Nakuru Agri Call page, farmers get tips about soil analysis, collecting soil samples for analysis, and sending their samples for analysis. Users can also find farming tips on the school’s WhatsApp page.

The program’s focus is on mechanisation. Officials say it is set to spur smallholder farmers like Kimani to engage in agribusiness and improve their livelihoods while shoring up rural economies dependent on agriculture.

In the effort to reduce the usually high cost of production, every planting season, Irish potato farmers can use the platform to request government-owned equipment for preparing their land at a nominal fee.

Kimani is among the farmers who have requested a tractor and a chisel plough through the virtual school to prepare his land to grow Irish potatoes.

He says with the help of the school, he has learnt that the plough is better than the traditional disc plough that he and other farmers in his neighbourhood have been using for many years.

The chisel plough, he says, makes the recommended raised seedbeds without damaging the soil structure like the conventional hoe and the disc plough, which turn the fragile soil in a manner that leads to rapid moisture loss and erosion during heavy rains leading to reduced productivity of the soil.

He says a chisel plough is an efficient tool for eliminating weeds, thus helpful to farmers looking to minimise labour and time on crop production from planting to maturity.

Mwaniki says with just Kenya Shillings (Ksh.2, 800), around USD 28, a farmer can request a tractor and the plough to prepare an acre compared to the Ksh 5,000 (around USD 50) used to hire a disc plough and a tractor for an acre. He hopes to increase his yield from the current 50 to 60 bags an acre.

He commends the Nakuru County government’s Agriculture Mechanization Service (AMS) for easing the burden on farmers, saying with reduced costs of production, smallholder farmers can expand their margins of profit, create wealth and jobs.

The program has also enabled smallholder farmer’s access hay, wheat harvesting equipment and maise shelling machines to minimise post-harvest losses, which farmers say eat into their returns.

The Agricultural Mechanization Service Manager, Stephen Waithaka, says the scheme encourages the adoption of technology and mechanised farming among smallholder farmers to improve production and quality of their produce.
He says besides providing mechanisation services to smallholder farmers, the program aims to train farmers on the right choices of agricultural equipment and how to use them for better yield.

Waithaka says the County Government has bought equipment valued at KShs 25 million (USD 250 000) for distribution to small-scale farmer groups in the first phase of the Agriculture Mechanization Services project.

At a time when concerns about soil conservation are mounting, Waithaka is advising farmers to use the service for appropriate ploughing practices that protect the integrity of their soil.

He observes that with increased mechanisation, more youth are anticipated to practice agriculture and create jobs while ensuring the country’s food and nutrition security agenda.

However, he says the equipment available is not adequate with the rising uptake of machinery among farmers. He says more equipment will enable the service to expand its coverage and enable more smallholder farmers to improve their yield and livelihoods by mechanisation.

Mwaniki, like other smallholder farmers, is hoping to leverage the programme for better livelihoods. He hopes that the programme, through public-private partnerships, will expand the internet coverage in agriculturally productive areas to enable more farmers to tap into it.

The role of digitisation in enhancing mechanisation is earning accolades from various stakeholders in Kenya’s agriculture sector. According to Harriet Tergat, Digitization and Communications Lead, Farm to Market Alliance in Kenya (FtMA-Kenya), an alliance of Kenyan agri-focused organisations that supports mechanisation through digitisation, the technology is transforming agriculture. She says it has brought efficiency, decreased production and operations costs, optimisation, and transparency.

“The technology can be replicated elsewhere in Africa in boosting the agricultural sector, given the continent’s very young population, fast spread of ICTs due to improved infrastructure such as high ownership smartphones and internet connectivity. Digitisation is an enabler, not an end of its own,” she says.

Harriet adds that through digitisation, transformation in the agricultural sector has brought about increased access to mechanisation services, which has brought about an increase in productivity and a decrease in production costs.

Harriet explains that the Farm to Market Alliance works with partners using a mobile phone application to connect tractor owners to smallholder farmers in need of tractor services. “Hello Tractor is like the Uber for tractors. Through this partnership, necessary mechanisation services have been availed to 11,327 smallholder farmers and 3,800 acres serviced,” she observes.

In addition to the benefits digitisation brings to smallholder farmers, notes Harriet, it also opens up new opportunities for self-employment for the youth who work as Hello Tractor agents and earn commissions for every transaction they facilitate through the application.

Indeed, a study by Food Sustainability Index, global research on nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and food waste, developed by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) and the Economist Intelligence Unit, indicates that digitisation is a boon to agriculture in Africa. According to the study, emerging digital tools contributes to efficiency and sustainability of better farm yields.

Dubbed ‘Fixing Food 2018: Best Practices towards the Sustainable Development Goals, the study analysed social, economic and environmental aspects of food sustainability. It looked at the nexus between the key challenges like access to food, healthy and sustainable diets, and responsible food production and distribution.

The study collected data from 67 countries worldwide to highlight best practices and areas for improvement concerning food and the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Rwanda ranks high in the use of sustainable practices like agricultural water because it utilises renewable sources.

Other than Rwanda and Kenya, the report states technology is contributing to sustainable agriculture in countries like Mozambique and Tanzania, for instance, via the Connected Farmer Alliance—a TechnoServe which is using mobile technology to connect farmers to multinational agribusinesses and facilitate payments, thus improving productivity, incomes, and resilience of small-scale farmers.

Still, in the case of Kenya, the level of uptake is set to grow fast. In February this year, at the launch of the five mechanisation hubs in Nakuru County, the County Executive Committee Member for Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries, Immaculate Maina, said through the program the County Government had supported five registered farmer groups to the tune of Kshs 20 million (USD 200 000).

For Mwaniki, planting season was often a headache. He was often caught alongside other farmers in a mad rush for equipment as they prepared their land for sowing, but this is no longer the case.

Demand for harrows, planters and other farm machinery was high, meaning that farmers had to wait longer, slowing down planting in time for the rains.

“When every person wanted to have their farm planted, it became hectic since we had to wait for days to get access to a plough and other farm machinery. The costs of hiring the machinery were also prohibitive,” he says.

With the future of farming resting with the emerging small-scale and middle-class farmers, he says there is an urgent need to empower this group to ensure food security.

Mwaniki indicates that since he enrolled in the AMS program last year, his potato yields per acre had increased by over 50 percent. In contrast, costs of tilling and weeding through the use of modern machinery had dropped significantly.

“The equipment makes it possible for me to undertake more than one activity in the farm, thus saving the long-term costs and improving productivity,” he observes.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The UNFSS hopes to transform how food is produced, packaged, and distributed to tackle food insecurity and wastage. Credit: Alison Kentish / IPS

By Alison Kentish
Roseau, Dominica, Aug 10 2021 (IPS)

The world has been put on notice that there is no time to waste in achieving the goal of food systems transformation.

Through Pre-Summit and national dialogues, scientists, policymakers, farmers, NGOs, private sector representatives and youth groups have been building momentum ahead of the United Nations Food Systems Summit in September. The goal is to ensure that the world produces food with greater attention to climate change, poverty, equity, sustainability and waste reduction.

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food is one of the partners addressing the urgency of food systems transformation for food security, equity, the global economy and COVID-19 recovery. Since 2012, the alliance of philanthropic foundations has engaged in global discussions, supported and led global food transformation research and advanced initiatives in climate, health and agroecology.

The Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) collaborates with the Alliance to share ideas and knowledge to design projects capable of guaranteeing a more sustainable food system for future generations.

IPS spoke to the Alliance’s Senior Director of Programmes, Lauren Baker, about the urgent need to overhaul food systems, the impact of COVID-19 on those systems and why true cost accounting is essential to the international effort to revamp the production, sale and distribution of food.

Dr Lauren Baker

Inter Press Service (IPS): The Global Alliance for the Future of Food has been on a mission to make food systems more sustainable and equitable. The UN Food Systems Summit has the same goal. What do you want to see the Summit achieve?

Lauren Baker (LB): Through the summit process, we have been committed to engaging a network of champions in food systems. We are championing systems thinking, transparency and accountability. We uphold the need for diverse evidence and inclusive representation throughout the process.

Our goal has been to bring the focus of research on one issue, which we think is a significant lever for food systems transformation, and this is being echoed by many in the summit process. This is the issue of true cost accounting.

Over and over across the action tracks, we have heard people emphasize the need for measurable and transparent approaches like true cost accounting to move us forward. What true cost accounting is: we look at the negative externalities of food systems that are not fit for purpose. The industrial food system has several significant impacts on human health and the environment. We need to take these into account, use that information to think differently and make different decisions that advance and uphold the true value of food and bring the alternatives to light.

There are many food systems initiatives proliferating around the world that are healthy, equitable, diverse, inclusive, renewable and resilient. How do we shine a light on those integrated benefits of food systems when they’re managed properly, and they’re not extractive?

(IPS): What are some of the food systems lessons you think we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic?

(LB): I think the Summit comes at this time when everyone’s awareness of food systems issues is heightened, and this makes the work of the Summit even more critical.

One of the key lessons has been just how vulnerable equity-deserving groups are in the context of this kind of global emergency. If you extend that into future emergencies that will come our way because of climate change, then we need to address those issues of equity and the social systems that lift people instead of making them more vulnerable in the context of something like a pandemic.

We have seen essential workers continue to be stressed. We have seen the impact of COVID on migrant workers, farmers and supply chain resilience. We have seen that the global supply chain through COVID, on the one hand, has been very vulnerable. On the other hand, it’s been durable, but there has been increasing interest because of COVID on resilient local and regional supply chains. Throughout the Pre-summit, I heard government officials and other actors emphasizing the importance of building and strengthening local and regional supply chains.

I think it’s just highlighted resilience overall – the idea of resilience and how food systems are connected to our other crises, like our crisis of inequality globally, our climate crisis and our biodiversity crisis. We now see that those things are intimately connected, and the solutions will have to be interrelated as well.

(IPS): How important is indigenous knowledge to this mission of food systems transformation?

(LB): In our work on true cost accounting, I think indigenous knowledge is very undervalued if you consider the true value of food systems.

Indigenous people historically have managed and stewarded their food systems and have knowledge that they can offer to the world. Their knowledge is very place-based, and I heard throughout the summit process about how important place-based science knowledge innovation is. That type of knowledge provides a grounded perspective, a different worldview that connects us to the places we live in different ways than we are connected presently.

(IPS): Food systems experts also continue to push for agroecology to be at the centre of these discussions. What is your take on this?

(LB): For me, when you look across the food system, agroecology is a systemic solution that brings forward all of these values that I was talking about in a really clear way.

Agroecology can improve livelihoods in terms of shifting from a system that has negative impacts to positive benefits. It is creative and knowledge-intensive. It is also placed based and ecological. It is diverse, so we need to uphold the importance of agricultural biodiversity and agriculture as connected to, wild landscapes too. Agroecology connects in a nice way to our wild spaces, to agroforestry, where biodiversity and habitat can be preserved and enhanced.

We’re doing some great work right now to assess using a true cost accounting framework, all of these agro-ecological initiatives around the world to look at their positive impacts on the environment, socio-cultural impacts on human health and their economic impacts.

We are excited to be launching that work at that the food system summit in September. We think it’s an important way to hold up agroecology, indigenous knowledge and the creativity in urban communities that we see around food systems.

(IPS): What do you think is the key message ahead of the Food Systems Summit?

(LB): One key message for me is just the importance of transparency in all of this.

How do we ensure that our global leaders act boldly right now and embrace measurable transparent approaches, systemic approaches, that actually can facilitate inclusive transformation as quickly as possible? We just can’t afford to wait!

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Rwanda has introduced mobile dryer machines as part of an innovative solution to reduce post-harvest losses of food Credit: Aimable Twahirwa

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Rwanda, Jul 22 2021 (IPS)

Rwanda is trying to reduce post-harvest loss by relying on new technologies to increase the amount of food available for consumption and help smallholder farmers confront some challenges caused by the overproduction of staple crops.

For over 20 years, Cyriaque Sembagare, a maize grower from Kinigi, a mountainous village in Northern Rwanda, had survived on farming to feed his extended family but struggled with the loss of a significant portion of his harvest to rot. High levels of aflatoxin prevent farmers in remote rural Rwanda from selling maize to high-value buyers.

“I have been selling maize on the market, but I was given a low price because of the harvests highly perishable nature,” the 56-year-old farmer told IPS in an interview.

Post-harvest losses are high in Rwanda, with smallholder farmers losing an average of 27.5 percent of their production annually.

A comparison with the global and African scenarios indicates that Rwanda does well on preventing food loss and wastage (72.5 percent). The country is slightly lagging on average in sustainable agriculture (71 percent). It is among the lowest performers while tackling nutritional challenges (71.2 percent), according to the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) sustainability index.

To boost resilience and reduce post-harvest losses, the government and different development partners have supported thousands of farmers facing several barriers, ranging from a lack of knowledge to poor market access.

The initiatives include innovative solutions in post-harvest handling to improve food security in this East African country. The country is ranked 59th among 67 countries on the latest Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit with BCFN.

While Rwanda is ranked on top among nine low-income countries, especially in Sub-Saharan African, the country is lagging in addressing food waste.

FSI research by the Economist Intelligence Unit, based on data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), indicates that in terms of annual food waste per head, Mozambique comes on top of African countries with 1.2kg, followed by Rwanda (1kg).

This high level of waste has prompted the government and partners to promote modern technologies to tackle post-harvest losses, including two types of dryer machines: Mobile grain dryer machines and Cob Dryer machines that tested successfully on maize, rice and soybean.

“The aim was to reduce the risk of crop degradation or contamination by different fungi which occurred when dried naturally and affects the availability of food,” Illuminée Kamaraba, the Division Manager in Post-Harvest Management and Biotechnology at Rwanda Agriculture Board, told IPS.

During the implementation phase, Rwandan researchers had embarked on testing Cob dryer machines on other crops like Roselle (Hibiscus). Some 400kg were dried before samples were taken to the laboratory to verify if the nutrients remained intact. This method focuses on limiting the harvests’ exposure to aflatoxin.

Before expanding the technology countrywide, a study to measure the impact of these innovations, especially the use of dryer machines, is planned for testing this year.

“The new technologies are complementary with some traditional methods for food preservation,” Kamaraba said.

Currently, Rwanda has acquired ten mobile dryer machines for the pilot phase to process 57 to 84 tons of well-dried and cooled cereals per day.

The mobile grain dryers mostly use electricity but could be connected to tractors to run on its diesel-powered burner where there is no electricity supply system.

For the cob dryer machine, its burner and fan depend on the supply of three-phase electricity and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) gas, while the cob container (the wagon) is a tractor-drawn vehicle.

According to official projections, the new technology, promoted through private and public partnerships (PPP), aims to help Rwanda achieve 5 percent of post-harvest losses by 2024 – down from the current 22 percent for cereals and 11 percent for beans.

Jean de Dieu Umutoni, one of the experts from Feed the Future Rwanda, Hinga Weze, a non-government organisation working to increase the resilience of agriculture and food systems to the ever-changing climate in Rwanda, told IPS that the idea behind this innovation was to increase access to post-harvest equipment and solutions

“This has been conducted through different channels such as grants, especially for smallholders’ farmers,” he said.

Both Umutoni and Kamaraba are convinced that for Rwanda to implement the public-private partnerships to reduce post-harvest losses, gaps in knowledge of smallholder farmers, especially in remote rural areas, need to be filled.

So far, Hinga Weze and Rwanda Agricultural Board (RAB) have worked together in developing some guidelines that allow the private sector to use the new technologies. Experts say, however, that the biggest challenge for farmers is that they lack information on how to access suppliers. In contrast, the suppliers lack information on the growers that need the equipment.

Umutoni says that while public-private partnerships could introduce good practices, the government needs to support the technological innovations for them to be scaled up.

“There is a good start with on use of mobile dryers to address food waste reduction, but the private sector needs to be engaged in other crop value chains,” Umutoni told IPS.

While it is the task of the government to initiate solutions, experts argue that the private sector has a role to play in ensuring the technology is sustainable.

One such example is Hinga Weze’s ‘Cob Model’. This project has enabled a private sector operator to assist farmers by using the first sizeable mobile drying machine in Rwanda. It has a capacity for drying 35 metric tons within three hours or about 100 tons per day. The NGO developed guidelines with the Rwandan government for the machine’s use.

Already, there is some indication that these technologies will be successful.

Farmers, like Sembagare, are satisfied.

“Thanks to the adoption of smart post-harvest technologies, I was able to save half the crop that would otherwise have been lost,” Sembagare told IPS.

More than 1.3 billion tons of edible food is wasted annually, according the Food and Agriculture Organization. Credit: Busani Bafana / IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jul 15 2021 (IPS)

With its political and economic clout, the G20 should lead in delivering sustainable food systems as the world grapples with rising hunger, malnutrition and inequality.

That was the consensus of leading food and development leaders at a virtual conference on Fixing Food 2021: An opportunity for G20 countries to lead the way, hosted this week by Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) and the Economic Intelligence Unit.

The conference coincided with the launch of a new Food Sustainability Index (FSI) related to G20 countries, a collective of powerful economies.

The 2021 FSI measures the sustainability of food systems in 78 countries across the pillars of food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutrition. Food systems include the whole range of actors in the agriculture sector and their interlinked value-added activities, including production, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food products from agriculture, forestry or fisheries.

The G20 is a forum of 19 countries and the European Union bringing together leading economies whose members account for 80 percent of the global GDP and have 60 percent of the world’s population. They sit on 60 percent of agricultural land worldwide and are responsible for 75 percent of Green House Gas Emissions (GHG) that the Paris Agreement allocates to food production, thus risking the global climate agenda.

While it has the financial and political muscle in influencing global policymaking, the G20 group needs to lead the way in making food systems more sustainable owing to its big environmental footprint, the FSI noted.

“On a per-head basis, people living in the G20 consume three to five times the maximum optimal intake of 28g of meat per day and wasted 2,166kg of food in 2019 —which is greater than the weight of the average large car,” the report found.

It cautioned that “if all non-G20 countries adopted the food habits of G20 members, there would be not just higher environmental costs, but higher health costs too.”

The G20 has prioritised food sustainability and recently committed to addressing food and nutrition security at the recently opted Matera Declaration.

Italy, which takes over the Presidency of the group at its Summit in October 2021, is focusing efforts on people, the planet, and prosperity when the world is grappling with increased hunger and malnourishment. The G20 has an enormous challenge to help transform food systems in achieving the SDGs, especially SDG 1 of ending poverty by 2030.

Marta Antonelli, Head of Research, BCFN, said G20 countries have a strong responsibility to create the conditions for more equitable and sustainable food systems.

“G20 members’ actions, both domestically and globally, are critical for promoting sustainable growth in food and agriculture, fostering better nutrition, and building the world back better and more equitably,” Antonelli told IPS.

“We need the G20 to lead, to set forth a coordinated action agenda that builds upon a common sense of purpose for food system transformation that paves the way and inspires to new policies and approaches at the regional, national and local level.”

“We are at a crossroads that requires immediate action,” said Antonelli highlighting that the G20 can provide collective and coordinated leadership to tackle current food crises, boost investments in the transition towards more sustainable food systems.

The countries that performed well on the three pillars of the Index include Canada, Japan, Australia and Germany and France because of their robust policy responses. For example, Canada has strong national policies on food loss and waste and sustainable agriculture. Furthermore, most of the countries in the group have targets on addressing food loss and waste the need to improve on measuring it.

“Measuring is hard though and more needs to be done by countries to report levels of food loss and waste,” commented Diana Hindle Fisher, a Senior Analyst at EIU, calling for countries to adopt a target-measure-act approach on food loss and waste.

Policymakers are strategic in helping assess data on food loss and waste and developing binding legislation to commit to set targets. At the same time, the business community could form new schemes to reduce food loss and waste.

Fisher said that civil society could promote positive behaviour and launch information campaigns on reducing food loss and waste.

Barbara Buchner, Global Managing Director at the Climate Policy Initiative, noted that while all the countries had made progress on the three pillars of the Index, there was room for improvement through investment in climate action awareness and plugging knowledge gaps that hinder governments from making efficient policy decisions.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for the G20 not only to lead by example but to learn from and listen to the experiences of farmers and food eaters from the global south,” said Danielle Nierenberg, President and Founder of the Food Tank who commended the FSI for including new indicators on food availability and gender equality.

“The role of women in agriculture is important,” Nierenberg observed. “It is no secret that women are agriculture leaders, making up more than 40 percent of the agriculture labour force, and in many countries, they are the majority of farmers, Nierenberg said.

“Unfortunately, women are discriminated against and do not have access to the same resources male farmers have, including access to land, banking and financial services.”

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) laments that the world is not on track to achieve targets for any of the nutrition indicators in the SDGs by 2030.

More than 800 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020, 161 million more than in 2019, while nearly 2.3 billion others did not have adequate food in the same period, according to the FAO.

“Against this backdrop, the G20 group has the resources, power and influence to unlock the necessary transformation in food systems by providing real leadership and inspire action not only domestically but internationally,” Antonelli said.
Painting a bleak picture of global hunger exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic, the report said the pandemic had exposed the fragility of global food systems, but there was an opportunity to build forward better and get on track towards achieving SDG 2 of ending hunger.

“We are aware that transforming food systems so that they provide nutritious and affordable food for all and become more efficient, resilient, inclusive and sustainable has several entry points and can contribute to progress across the SDGs,” Qu Dongyu, FAO Director-General, Gilbert F Houngbo, IFAD President, Henrietta H Fore, UNICEF Executive Director, David Beasley WFP Executive Director and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus WHO Director-General, said a joint foreword to the report.

“Future food systems need to provide decent livelihoods for the people who work within them, in particular for small-scale producers in developing countries – the people who harvest, process, package, transport and market our food,” said the report.

It concluded that transformed food systems could become a powerful driving force towards ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Food systems, from farm to fork to disposal, account for 21-37% of anthropogenic GHG emissions. Fresh produce at a supermarket. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 9 2021 (IPS)

Before the COVID-19 pandemic upended every sphere of life, the world was lagging on a goal to end hunger by 2030. According to the United Nations, more than 820 million people had already been categorised as food insecure, meaning they lacked access to reliable and sufficient amounts of affordable, healthy food.

The impact of measures to contain the virus, land degradation, climate change and the global extreme poverty rate rising for the first time in over 20 years, make the need for a transition to sustainable food systems more important than ever.

The United Nations Food Systems Summit hopes to bring together the science, finance and political commitment to transform global food systems. The goal is to introduce systems that are productive, environmentally sustainable, include the poor and promote healthy diets.

The Barilla Centre For Food and Nutrition (BCFN) Foundation, a longstanding investor in research, education and high-level events on sustainable food systems has been actively involved in activities in the lead-up to the summit.

IPS interviewed the think tank’s Head of Research Dr Marta Antonelli and dietician Katarzyna Dembska about climate change and diets, successful food systems and the Foundation’s own initiatives to improve education, science and skills for healthy, fair and sustainable food systems.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

========== 

Inter Press Service (IPS):     The UN states that half of all agricultural land is degraded and that with climate change-fuelled desertification and drought, combined with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, 34 million people at risk of famine. How can food systems be protected within this grim context?

Katarzyna Dembska (KD): According to the IPCC, land-use change, land-use intensification and climate change have contributed to desertification and land degradation. At the same time, many land-related responses that contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation can also combat desertification and land degradation, as well as enhance food security. Examples include sustainable food production, improved and sustainable forest management, soil organic carbon management, ecosystem conservation and land restoration, reduced deforestation and degradation, and reduced food loss and waste.

Integrated crop and livestock systems are an example of sustainable food production, that increases efficiency and environmental sustainability with a truly circular approach: for example, manure increases crop production and crop residues and by-products feed animals, improving their productivity. Rice-fish integrated systems, with a long history in many Asian countries, are another example of very integrated systems that also contribute to increased food security.

In addition, sustainable land management practices, implementing a zero-expansion policy which do not require land-use change, especially of new agricultural land into natural ecosystems and species-rich forests, has been identified by the Eat-Lancet commission as a key action to achieve the so-called Great Food Transformation.

IPS:     What should the public know about the linkage between diets and climate change?

Marta Antonelli (MA): Food systems, from farm to fork to disposal, account for 21-37 percent of anthropogenic GHG emissions. The adoption of plant-based healthy and sustainable diets is powerful leverage for climate change mitigation, as well as to promote health, longevity and wellbeing. The Double Health and Climate Pyramid, developed as a tool to inform daily food choices, shows that all foods can be part of a diet that is good for us and the planet, with proper frequency of consumption and serving sizes. Vegetables, fruits and whole grains should be eaten daily; legumes and fish are the preferred sources of protein. There is a huge potential that still needs to be unleashed by establishing compulsory food education in schools; including sustainability concerns, besides health-related, in national dietary guidelines; ensuring enabling food environments that make it easy for citizens to adopt healthy and sustainable diets.

IPS: The UN Food Systems Summit in September hopes to help change the way food is grown, processed, packaged and marketed. What are your hopes for the landmark summit?

MA: The UN Food System Summit (FSS) provides an unprecedented opportunity to energise the global journey towards healthy, safe, fair and sustainable food systems, also to deliver the SDGs by raising awareness of citizens and landing concrete commitments. Agreeing upon a common purpose for global food systems is a fundamental prerequisite of any process of transformation. Nations, cities, municipalities, and communities will be enabled to build their own context and culture-specific vision, inspired by this universal purpose. Last but not least, the UN FSS is a unique opportunity to represent the voices of the millions of women who work throughout the food system from farm to fork, contributing to provide global food security, and to put agroecology and regenerative agriculture to the top of the agenda.

IPS:  The Barilla Foundation has been at the forefront of food systems research. Earlier this year, you unveiled the food systems model that incorporates nutrition and climate. Can you tell me about the Foundation’s participation in the summit?

MA: The Barilla Foundation has been actively contributing to the journey towards the UNFSS through different activities throughout the year, including the release of a report on the EU Food Systems; the launch of the educational hub Seeds; and the release of the Double Health and Climate Pyramid with seven cultural versions. In September, a high-level event on the role of food businesses in food systems transformation will be organised in the framework of the initiative Fixing the Business of Food, with the UN SDSN, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investments and the Santa Chiara Lab of the University of Siena.

IPS: What are some of the successful systems currently being implemented?

MA: The Farm to Fork Strategy, set by the European Commission in May 2020, can be seen as an attempt to create a more integrated food strategy in the European Union (EU). It presents a comprehensive approach covering every step in the food supply chain, for the first time in Europe. It recognises the large contribution that food system transformation can give to achieve the decarbonisation target set forth by the European Green Deal, by setting concrete targets by 2030 that seek to address both environmental and public health concerns. The involvement of farmers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers will determine whether the process set forth by the Farm to Fork Strategy will act as a game-changer in the EU.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The most important goal of a food system or of agricultural production is to increase food production for our increasing population, but nutrition is essential. Produce stall in Harlem, New York. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 6 2021 (IPS)

In three weeks, the United Nations will bring together farmers, scientists, policymakers and civil society for the last major event ahead of the September UN Food Systems Summit.

Billed as ‘the people’s summit,’ the Jul. 26 to 28 event will be hosted by the Government of Italy and adopt a hybrid model, with some delegates on-site in Rome and others online.

Its organisers say scientists will present the latest research in transforming global food systems, while policymakers are expected to discuss financing and action to tackle issues like land degradation, conflict and climate change, which are worsening global hunger and food insecurity.

Earlier this year, the Global Network Against Food Crises reported that acute hunger had risen to a five-year high. With the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, biodiversity loss and half of the earth’s land classified as degraded, the grouping warned that finance and urgent action were needed to reverse the rising trend of food insecurity.

General Coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) Million Belay believes that agroecology has a special role to play in hunger eradication.

Belay, a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the Barilla Foundation, researches the transformation of food systems in Ethiopia.

While AFSA will not participate in the UN Food Systems Summit, Africa’s largest civil society group has been organising its own events, based on sustainability, indigenous knowledge and science.

Belay spoke to IPS about the importance of agroecology and how systems such as the Barilla Foundation’s Food Pyramid can help to target hunger at its root.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Could we start with a brief introduction to the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa?

Million Belay (MB): The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa is a movement. It is broad-based – we have farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, women and youth networks, civil society networks, consumer networks and faith-based institutions.

Out of the 55 African countries, our members work in at least 50 of them and we work with two hands. On one hand, we fight the corporatisation of Africa. We fight for our lands, our seeds, our water and our lives. On the other hand, we propose a solution. Our solution is agroecology.

IPS: In the face of climate change, rising food insecurity and hunger, there has been a push to agroecology. How important is agroecology to tackling some of these critical issues of our time?

MB: Agroecology is a response to many issues on many fronts.

The most important goal of a food system or of agricultural production is to increase food production for our increasing population, but nutrition is essential. We must eat healthy food and this is an area which is very much impacted by climate change.

Also, when we produce food, the food system should not impact the biosphere, which includes our climate, our diversity, our water and our land. Food production should also be respectful of our culture. We have rich culture, which is the result of thousands of years of practices and traditions by our communities.

These are some of the important factors in the food system process.

The right to food is also very important. Everyone has a right to food.

The question is, therefore, what kind of system ensures this? Currently, unfortunately, the system is productivity-based, it is based on chemicals, on ownership of seeds and ownership of our land. Agroecology comes with a totally different paradigm. It ticks all the right boxes. It is basically based on the knowledge of people and the practices of the people, but it has a cutting-edge science to it as well.

Agroecology is also a social movement. That is why we are using it because at the center of agroecology is the right to food and human rights questions are intimately related to climate change, for example.  Climate impacts our food. Climate impacts our water, our land and our lives. So many things are happening because of the problem that we didn’t create.

Agroecology deals with the soil, it deals with biodiversity which is important for resilience, because it’s based on the diversity of crops and the diversity of practices.

I think what climate change brings us as well is unpredictability into the future. What kind of agriculture is important for an unpredictable environment? You have no idea what is going to come tomorrow. Agroecology helps to answer these types of concerns.

IPS: The international community is preparing for the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). As a food systems researcher, what are your hopes for the summit?

MB: We (AFSA) have already decided to organise a meeting outside of that food summit.

We do not agree with the process of the summit; how is it being handled or controlled or how the agenda is organised. We are not happy and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa has written a letter to the Special Envoy for the Food Systems Summit Dr. Agnes Kalibata with a range of demands and they have not been fulfilled.

We however have started our own food policy development process which involves a country-level dialogue in 24 of the countries. They are food systems dialogues that we started even before the UNFSS.

Also, at the African Union level, we are trying to develop a food policy framework for Africa which is based on sustainability.

IPS:  What is your role on the Barilla Foundation’s advisory board and how is the Foundation contributing to food system transformation?

MB: The majority of the board members are from Italy, but the issues that they raise have global impact. In addition to the scientific studies, they organise yearly global gatherings where critical issues about the global food system are discussed.

The outcomes of those global talks are very important to any part of the continent. My role primarily is to bring the African perspective, an African view, in my writings and discussions.

What is important to note is that it is not only the African perspective, but also the input of civil society which is not reflected in so many other spaces.

IPS: The Barilla Foundation continues to invest time and resources into the development of sustainable food systems. What are some of the food systems you think have been successful?

MB: The Foundation is forwarding a food pyramid. It is a very interesting concept that is in development. Previously, it was based on the Mediterranean Diet.

The food system indicators that they are developing are also noteworthy. In terms of a framework for the future, that pyramid and those indices are important for other regions. Other parts of the world can use these models to assess their own food systems.

After participating in one of the Foundation’s events, we organised our own event in Africa. We held the African Food System Summit last year. It was a very large activity and served as an example of what is happening in other parts of the globe.

What is really interesting is the composition of the board. There are people who are in touch with how the politics goes in Europe. There are scientists, really high-level scientists who are working on the impacts of a bad food system. There are university researchers who bring a different perspective and I bring the civil society and social movement side.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Justus Kimeu on his farm in Kithiani village, Makueni County, Kenya. By using the regenerative agriculture (RA) technique this farmer produced a bumper maize harvest during a very dry season. Almost 900 farmers in Kenya's two dryland counties of Embu and Makueni are participating in a pilot project to see how regenerative agriculture can be used to improve food productivity. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MAKUENI, Kenya, May 11 2021 (IPS)

It is an uncommon occurrence to see farms with flourishing healthy crops in Kenya’s semi-arid Makueni County. But in Kithiani village, Justus Kimeu’s two-acre piece of land stands out from the rest. After embracing the regenerative agriculture (RA) technique, the 52-year-old farmer is looking forward to a bumper harvest of maize as all his neighbours count their losses following this year’s failed season.

“I have been a farmer for many years, but I have never seen such a healthy crop during such a dry season,” Kimeu told IPS. “All the road users who pass by this farm can hardly go away without stopping to have a second look at a crop that has defied the prevailing tough climatic conditions.”

Kimeu is one of 900 farmers in Kenya’s two dryland counties of Embu and Makueni who are participating in a pilot project to see how RA can be used to improve food productivity.

The technique, which is being piloted by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is a dynamic and holistic way of farming that involves all the principals of permaculture and organic farming, such as minimum tillage, use of cover crops, crop rotation, terracing to reduce soil erosion, heavy mulching to keep the soils moist, use of basins to preserve soil moisture and the use of composted manure to give the topsoil the texture of a virgin fertile arable land.

“The main theory of this technique is actually to return the topsoil back to its original state,” Michael Mutua, an associate program officer in charge of RA at AGRA, told IPS. “Instead of feeding the crop, we concentrate on feeding the soil,” he said.

According the Food Sustainability Index created by Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and the Economist Intelligence Unit, increased adoption of regenerative farm practices reduces carbon emissions during cultivation and sequesters carbon into the soil.

In a proposal of 10 interdisciplinary actions to finding ways to nourish both people and the planet post-COVID-19, one of the suggestions by BCFN was that the world develop internationally agreed-upon standards for RA practices and agroecology, as well as common definitions for healthy and sustainable food systems and food.

BCFN experts further acknowledged that regenerative and agroecological agricultural practices have the potential to boost soil health, preserve water resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To popularise the new farming technique in Kenya, AGRA collaborated with the two county governments of Makueni and Embu, and with the Cereal Growers Association (CGA) to identify lead farmers.

The farmers were then trained on RA practices and were supported to create plots known as ‘mother demos’.

“A mother demo is actually a place for farmers’ practical lessons,” said Mutua. “It consists of four plots, where one plot is done using all the recommended RA practices, the second one using farming methods commonly used in the area, the third one is by using part of the regenerative agriculture principles, and the fourth one is the control plot, where the same crop is planted without any agronomic practice,” he explained.

Each farmer then recruited up to 100 smallholder farmers from the neighbourhood to teach them from the mother demo. Once the farmers felt confident, they returned to their own farms to set up a baby demo, which is a single plot using all the principles of AR.

“Nearly all our farmers are at the baby demo stage,” said Mutua. “But a few bold ones like Kimeu went straight to implementation without doing a small demo for the learning purpose,” he said.

According to Kimeu, the lessons at the mother demo stage were sufficient, “and doing a baby demo for him, would amount to a wasted season,” he told IPS.

“When I decided to implement this technique, my farm was bare without much vegetation. So I started by making terraces and after it rained, different weeds sprouted. Together with my household members we manually uprooted all the weeds and left them on the farm to dry and decompose before making small basins in which we were going to plant the crop,” explained the farmer.

The basins were then filled with organic manure and some topsoil. And when it rained for the second time, hybrid drought tolerant maize variety seeds were planted inside the moist basins and any weed that sprouted was manually uprooted and left to dry and rot on the farm.

“We try as much as possible to avoid tillage or any form of disturbing the soil for it to regenerate naturally to its original form,” Kimeu said, noting that he also avoided use of conventional fertilisers.

With regenerative agriculture, weeds are used to form part of the soil. Farmer Justus Kimeu produced a bumper maize harvest during a very dry season using this farming technique. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Almost 900 farmers from the two counties are expected to graduate from the baby demo stage and implement RA during the 2021/2022 season. “If well implemented, it will more than double food security among the participating households,” said Mutua.

Bob Kisyula, the Makueni County Minister of Agriculture Livestock and Fisheries, told IPS: “If our smallholder farmers could embrace these techniques and produce such healthy crops, then we will never need alms and food aid even in the toughest seasons.” 

Kisyula said that the County Government also invested in rippers, which are used to ensure that there is minimum disturbance of the soil as part of the RA approach.

Today, Kimeu has become a role model and a village hero.

“In this short period, I have been approached by hundreds of farmers from my village and other places who are seeking to understand how the technique works,” he said.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) has pioneered the food pyramid, which recommends both nutritious and good food for the planet. In its latest report, it makes recommendations for Africa. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Apr 13 2021 (IPS)

With the two extremes of global hunger and obesity on the increase, a new report suggests a radical reset for food and nutrition to ensure the long-term sustainability of livelihoods and the environment.

According to a new Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) report, 690 million people globally lack sufficient food. COVID-19 has worsened these conditions, and it’s projected that between 83 and 132 million more people will join the ranks of the undernourished because of interrupted livelihoods caused by the pandemic.

A BCFN report, “A one health approach to food – The Double Pyramid connecting food culture, health and climate”, raises concerns that in some African countries, the consumption of cheap sources of high-quality protein, vitamins, and minerals – such as eggs – remains low. The report will be launched on Wednesday, April 14, 2021.

The Double Pyramid combines a health and climate pyramid that “serves as a guideline for daily food choices in enhancing people’s awareness and enriching their knowledge about the impacts of food choices to encourage dietary patterns that are healthy for humans and more sustainable for the planet.”

According to aid agencies, the model will resonate with the needs of perennially food stressed countries in the Global South, where climate change and food security have affected the livelihoods of millions who have only one meal a day.

“The African Double Pyramid attempts to illustrate that it is possible to respect local traditions and preferences while recommending a frequency with which foods should be consumed to promote improved health and a low impact on the environment,” says the report.

The experimental African Double Pyramid covered five countries – Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. Researchers noted that while the African continent was diverse, “generally, some common traits can also be found, such as the single-course meal based on a starchy ingredient.”

But as Marta Antonelli, the Barilla Foundation’s head of research, told IPS, food politics have become a matter of different strokes for different folks.

“Different areas of the world have different priorities to look at. The principles of a sustainable and healthy diet can be applied in all contexts and inform a new approach towards food,” she said.

“Today, food systems fail to provide adequate and equitable food for all and pose an unsustainable burden on the environment. Health and the environment need to be considered together when addressing food systems, which are an extremely powerful leverage to improve both,” said Antonelli.

The report comes when the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says more than 3 billion people worldwide cannot afford a healthy diet. This is a paradox the Barilla Foundation has tackled in its past reports where it showed malnutrition in all of its forms – undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight/obesity was increasing. Its Global Nutrition Report showed that 88% of countries face a serious burden of either two or three forms of malnutrition, namely undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency or overweight or obesity. Recent findings include that child and adult obesity have increased in almost all countries, burdening already struggling global health care systems.

Still, some African countries present immediate challenges to meeting the Double Pyramid model.

In a news release dated March 29, the World Food Programme’s Zimbabwe country director Francesca Erdelmann said more than 2.4 million people in urban areas struggled to meet their basic food needs.

“Reduced access to nutritious food has resulted in negative impacts for many. Families will find it difficult to put food on the table. The fortunate ones will skip meals while those without will have to go to bed with an empty stomach,” Erdelmann said, adding that “for the most vulnerable people, hunger will have a lasting effect on their lives.”

The Barilla report notes that healthy diets’ affordability is “compromised especially in low- and middle-income countries” while also calling for the reduction in the cost of nutritious foods. It also calls for a reorientation of agriculture priorities towards more nutrition-sensitive food and agricultural production.

The call could prove difficult for African countries that include Zimbabwe, where agriculture remains underfunded. The government has long struggled to convince smaller holders to plant more nutritious and drought-resistant crop varieties.

“Our children do not like food prepared with small grains. They are used to maize meal. That is why we continue growing maize,” Fanyana Jamela, a smallholder in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, told IPS.

But Katarzyna Dembska, one of Barilla’s lead researchers, says governments must rethink food policies if healthy diets are to be successfully realised.

“Reducing the cost of nutrition foods and increasing affordability start with a reorientation of agriculture priorities towards more nutrition sensitive food and agricultural production,” Dembska told IPS.

“The Double Health and Climate Pyramid shows that through a varied and balanced diet, we can promote our health, longevity and wellbeing, while reducing our carbon foot print,” she added.

Nathan Hayes, a senior Africa analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, says more needs to be done if countries, such as Zimbabwe, are to meet the recommendations of international agencies regarding food and nutrition.

“Over the long-term, Zimbabwe must increase the volumes of domestic food production and improve the distribution of food to improve food availability and to allow Zimbabweans to meet their nutritional needs,” Hayes told IPS.

“Even with a good harvest this year, food insecurity will remain significant in Zimbabwe, and the country is a long way from achieving agricultural self-sufficiency,” he said.

Among other policy recommendations to promote the Double Pyramid’s success, the Barilla report says there is a need to “promote training and education programs to support smallholder farmers to grow sustainably and access markets for nutritious food,” which was found lacking in many countries surveyed for the report.

“The emphasis on input-intensive cropping systems has arguably lowered resilience of food systems in the global South, hence the utilisation of traditional indigenous food resources should be emphasised for achieving food security and nutrition,” Dembska told IPS.

Webinar Registration here.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The Barilla Foundation New Double Pyramid includes seven cultural pyramids including ones for specific regions like South Asia where these rice workers come from. Other cultural regions include Latin America, East Asia, Nordic and Canada, USA, Mediterranean and Africa. Credit: Deepak Kumar / Unsplash

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, Apr 12 2021 (IPS)

Following an extensive scientific review, the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) is preparing to launch a new food systems model which incorporates nutrition and climate.

Researchers from the Foundation teamed up with counterparts from the Frederico II University of Naples to produce the New Double Pyramid, to be unveiled at a virtual event on April 14. It builds on the Foundation’s previous model, which consisted of the traditional food pyramid, promoting the nutritional value of food and an environmental pyramid, exploring the impact of food production on the environment.

According to the researchers, the new model will consist of a health and a climate pyramid. The health pyramid has the most common foods globally, clustered in 18 groups of items that are similar in their nutritional features and impact on health. Researchers conducted a comprehensive search of scientific data linking the consumption of each food group to health outcomes. They paid particular attention to the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke, which are the leading causes of death and disability globally.

The climate pyramid traces the connection between animal-based products and climate change. It also lists foods, including plant-based products, which have a low climate impact.

“The implementation of healthy diets within sustainable food systems is one of the most powerful tools to achieve the so-called “planetary health,” the understanding that human health depends on natural systems and can no longer be conceived independently from its impact on the planet’s condition,” Endocrinology and Metabolic Disease Professor at the Frederico II University of Naples, Gabriele Riccardi told IPS.

Riccardi, who is a member of the BCFN Foundation’s Advisory Board and a former President of the Italian Society of Diabetology, told IPS that in the past, the concept of health was applied to individuals, without adequate consideration for the impact of personal behaviours on the health of the general population. He said the COVID-19 pandemic was bringing a shift in perspective.

“Most people are now aware that wearing a face mask or undergoing vaccination is important not only to protect themselves but also to preserve the health of the general population. Within this context, health gains at the personal level cannot be achieved at the cost of depriving other people of some of their chances of being in good health,” he said.

“This is likely to occur if the health of a population group is based on an unsustainable lifestyle eroding the Earth’s natural systems that provide essential benefits like food, water and shelter on which all human beings depend.”

The new Double Pyramid launch collaborates with the non-profit organisation Food Tank, which promotes sustainable means of hunger, obesity, and poverty alleviation.

Food Tank President and Founder Danielle Nierenberg said that along with the health and climate pyramids, the Foundation had developed seven cultural double pyramids that investigate how people can eat healthily in different regions of the world.

“For example, the Mediterranean Diet is often lauded as sort of this perfect diet, but many cultures – indigenous cultures like those of Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa have diets that include pulses, legumes and healthy fats and oils. They are more culturally appropriate and can help farmers and eaters alike not only live better lives but make better incomes,” Nierenberg told IPS.

The seven cultural pyramids are Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, Nordic and Canada, USA, Mediterranean and Africa. The Foundation’s model is adapted to these food cultures, and the intention is to promote a balanced diet for health and longevity while reducing the carbon footprint to the world.

“We’re really excited to partner on another virtual event. Our first one was in December. This will kick off the sessions that will take place this year in the lead-up to the United Nation’s Food Systems Summit.”

The research findings bring a new angle to the issue of dairy product consumption. Riccardi says recent evidence “does not support different attitudes to the consumption of these products based on their fat content.” For example, comparing full-fat to reduced-fat dairy products. He says instead, the new pyramid concludes that overall moderate consumption does not increase cardiovascular diseases.

The new pyramid shows that fermented products, such as cheese and yoghurt, are associated with a reduced risk of those diseases in the dairy category. They should be the preferred option for consumers.

Riccardi told IPS that through the Double Pyramid, the research team would also present a major new finding of how different types of meat vary in their relationships with health.

Barilla Foundation Chairman Guido Barilla, President of the World Wide Fund for Nature Pavan Sukhdev, and Michelin Star Chef Chiara Pavan are among speakers scheduled for the April 14 event.

• The Double Pyramid will be launched on April 14. It promotes a one health approach to food by connecting food culture, health, and climate

Webinar Registration here.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Halima Elias Mtwethe from Mtepa Village in southern Tanzania is one of the smallholder farmers who borrowed from the Mahanje Savings and Credit Co-operative Society (SACCOS). Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADABA/MAFINGA, Tanzania , Mar 31 2021 (IPS)

Small agricultural loans, disbursed through mobile phones and targeting specific farming activities at different phases of production, have more than doubled food productivity among thousands of smallholder farmers in southern and central parts of Tanzania over the past three years, improving their livelihoods.

IPS travelled the region this month and spoke to many farmers who attested to how the new form of controlled village-specific lending resulted in their successful harvest.

Peter Lulandala, a smallholder farmer from central Tanzania’s Iringa Province, is one of those farmers.

Lulandala is servicing a TZS one million ($312) loan he borrowed from a local community bank. The problem was that once the money had been paid out to him in a single instalment he was unable to keep aside the funds for the various farming phases.

“We could borrow money, which was usually given in a single batch mostly during the planting season. For most of us, it was extremely difficult to keep part of the money in our houses or on personal bank accounts just to wait for the weeding or harvesting season.

“As smallholder farmers in the villages, we have many urgent things that always require cash. For example, it will be very difficult to see my children go to bed for the second day in a row without food and yet I have cash under my pillow or in my personal account,” Lulandala told IPS.

That was until three years ago when an innovative new money lending product became available in his village. Through the new model, smallholder farmers who belong to particular groups (like farmer groups or reside in certain villages), are expected to save some money with a targeted financial institution before borrowing three times their savings.

“This is an innovative product introduced to us by the Alliance for as Green Revolution in Africa in collaboration with the Small Entrepreneurs Loan Facility (SELF) project to help smallholder farmers access agricultural finance, and to help them use the money for the intended purpose,” said Khassim Masengo, the manager of Mahanje Savings and Credit Co-operative Society (SACCOS) in Madaba District, Ruvuma Province, southern Tanzania.

Farmers are guaranteed by two signatures of fellow group members. What makes the SACCOS lending different is that once the loan is approved, the farmer can only access it in phases.

“We disburse it in three phases so that the farmers can only access what they need during the planting season, then the second disbursement can only be released at the right time for weeding and top-dressing, and finally the last payment is for harvesting and post-harvest handling,” Masengo told IPS.

Lulandala said the new lending structure has worked for him.

“But since this particular cash is kept by the bank and with an agreement on how it will be disbursed, I will always look for an alternative way to feed my children as the money waits for the intended purpose,” said the farmer who hails from Itengulinyi village, 15 kilometres off the main highway that connects Makambako and Iringa towns.

The farmers are expected to pay back the loans after harvest.

“Once they harvest, we encourage them to keep their produce with particular warehouses, and based on the warehouse receipts, we can give them personal loans worth half of their produce for immediate domestic use or further investment as they wait for better prices,” explained Masengo.

According to Hedwig Siewertsen, the head of Inclusive Finance at AGRA, many African smallholder farmers fail to achieve their full potential because they have no access to agricultural finance.

She said that unless farmers have collateral to show that they can pay back loans, banks would not loan to them. Siewertsen noted that there was need to come up with innovative means through which smallholder farmers can access agricultural finance without necessarily offering collateral. 

“Our main aim is to improve the quality, cost-effectiveness, access and impact of financial and agribusiness products and services for smallholder farmers in Africa,” said Siewertsen.

Farm produce at the Igodikafu Warehouse in Mbuyuni village, Pawaga Ward in central Tanzania. Based on the warehouse receipts, the Mahanje Savings and Credit Co-operative Society (SACCOS) can give farmers personal loans worth half their produce for immediate domestic use or further investment as they wait for better prices. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

According to the Food Sustainability Index (FSI), created by Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and the Economist Intelligence Unit, increasing food productivity is vital, given the population growth and intensifying climate change. And this, according to the report, can only be achieved through new innovations.

It also notes that sustainable agriculture needs funding and this is particularly difficult in developing countries.

“It can be hard to funnel money in from investors, particularly for developing countries. In the FSI, the top ten countries most likely to attract investment in sustainable agriculture are all European, with the exception of the US and Israel. And while most countries in the index offer some form of public financing for agricultural innovation, 12 countries—nine of which are in sub- Saharan Africa—do not,” the report notes.  

Unlike MUCOBA Bank, which works with farmers in small groups of 10 to 15 members, Mahanje SACCOS works with villages. This means that SACCOS’s offerings are specific to members of these villages and it also allows for traceability and easy service provision.

It also gives SACCOS security because they are able to engage the borrowers in person and from their homes.

“For one to qualify for a farming loan from this SACCOS, the first requirement is that they must be descendants of one of the eight targeted villages, and that must be confirmed by the village elder of that particular village,” said Masengo.

“The main reason is that we need to work with farmers who are well known by the villagers, and whom we can access for extension services,” he said.

So far, 2,847 members of Mahanje SACCOS, among them 892 female farmers who hail from the neighbouring villages of Mahanje, Madaba, Lituta, Mtepa, Magingo, Mkongotema, Lukira and Kipingo in Madaba District, Ruvuma Province, Tanzania have become net producers of maize and beans over the past three years. They are now able to export their produce to neighbouring districts.

SACCOS has since been converted into a fully fledged bank registered by the Central Bank of Tanzania, and it is offering credit and savings services, but specifically for farmers from the eight target villages.

However, MUCOBA Bank, which is a community bank headquartered in Mafinga town in Central Tanzania, covers a larger area and targets smallholder farmers in far areas that do not have good infrastructural access to urban centres. It currently has some 50 farmer member groups.

“Our bank has agents who are also our agricultural extension officers on the ground whom we use to register farmers through farmer groups, then send us information via internet,” Philipo Raymond, the general manager for MUCOBA bank, told IPS.

With MUCOBA Bank, qualifying farmers are then given their money through mobile phones, and once they harvest, they can service their loans through the same digital channel.

With both institutions, farmers have been able to borrow as little as TZS200,000 ($87) or as much as TZS15 million ($6,520).

“Besides receiving the moneys in batches to serve specific needs, use of M-Pesa payment has made it easier for us because we do not have to travel all the way to town, and we have reduced the risk of carrying hard cash in our pockets,” Emanik Mgwiranga, the chair of the Nguvu Kazi Itengulinyi farmers group from Itengulinyi Village, 44 kilometres from the nearest town, Mafinga, told IPS.

The main crops grown are maize, beans and rice, but some farmers also include Irish potatoes.

In addition, the Mahanje SACCOS has introduced indigenous poultry farming to cushion farmers when farming seasons fail or when market prices for their produce are still low.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Mango farmers Susan and Batsirai Zinoro from Mutoko District, Zimbabwe are using Integrated Pest Management methods to control a fruit fly pest. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 23 2021 (IPS)

Every harvest season, Susan Zinoro, a mango farmer from Mutoko, Zimbabwe, buries half the mangoes she’s grown that season. They have already started rotting either on the tree or have fallen to the ground before harvest. It’s a difficult task for Zinoro because she knows she is throwing away food and income meant for her family.

But this has been happening for the last seven years, when she first began to notice that more and more fruit would rot and litter the ground.

Zinoro from Zinoro village in Mutoko, 143km north-east of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, has earned an average $400 per season from selling mangoes over the last five years. This is a shift from many years ago when she would earn more than $1,000 a season.

Another farmer, Pelegrina Msingwini, from Mhondiwa village in Murehwa, which neighbours Mutoko, remembers just two years ago when she harvested and sold 150 (20-litre) buckets of fruit from her plot. Half were rejected at the market because they were damaged. In 2020, she harvested even less mangoes, only 30 buckets.

Warming climate brings destructive pest

As the climate warms, a destructive pest is spreading its wings and damaging the livelihoods of fruit growers in southern Africa. The invasive fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis, is so small it’s often mistaken for a mosquito.

It has become is a serious impediment to mango farmers as it can cause total fruit loss, the ruin livelihoods and export prospects for the tropical fruit, Shepard Ndlela, an entomologist with the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), based in Nairobi, Kenya, tells IPS.

Mutoko, Murehwa and Zvimba are Zimbabwe’s top mango-producing areas.

“In Mutoko [Zimbabwe] only, about 55 percent of households produce and sell mangoes together with other fruits such as bananas, guava and citrus,” Ndlela tells IPS, adding that, “They call mango “the golden fruit” thus depicting the true value of the fruit for food, nutrition and source of income.”

But approximately half of the 400,000 metric tonnes of mangoes produced each year are lost as a result of the fruit fly, says Ndlela. Uncontrolled, the pest can inflict 100 percent yield loss.

Scientists at ICIPE, supported by various donors, have developed an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) package.

It’s an approach to crop production and protection which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) describes as combining different strategies and practises to grow healthy crops, minimising the use of pesticides. The environment-friendly methods, which include use of natural enemies of crop pests and bio-pesticides, discourage the development of pest populations by encouraging the natural pest controls.

According to the Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, best practice in sustainable food production also involves efforts to eradicate worst practices which include the overuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

In 2020, in Zimbabwe’s top mango producing areas, the farmer have started doing just that when a natural enemy to the fruit fly was introduced.

A farmer’s friend for a nasty fly

Parasitoids are small insects that are natural enemies of the fruit fly, which lay their eggs in the body of the insect pest, completing their development inside the host and killing it. They are naturally found in Asia where the fruit fly pest is indigenous.

Scientists from ICIPE imported parasitoids for the fruit fly from Hawaii in 2006 for multiplication. Since then parasitoids have been multiplied in Kenya and have been distributed in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Parasitoids have been successfully used in East and West Africa where the fruit fly has been controlled with an up to 33 percent success rate, Ndlela says.

“What we have done is to unite the pest (fruit fly) and its natural enemies (parasitoids),” Ndlela tells IPS.

“Once released into the environment in good numbers, they multiply themselves in the field and move around. This is a biological control programme where we release parasitoids and nature takes its course,” Ndlela says.

Ndlela explains that farmers do not have to buy the parasitoids because ICIPE is training its partners in Southern Africa to mass produce the parasitoids for release to farmers.

Wide-scale adoption of other IPM interventions such as baiting techniques, killing of male flies to reduce their population, using bio pesticides and orchard sanitation, are being promoted in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe under a four-year pilot project targeting 4,000 farmers across the region.

The project seeks to improve food security and nutrition, provide income-generation opportunities, and reduce the poverty of small- and medium-scale mango growers, particularly women and youth.

Zinoro and her husband, Batsirai, are part of 1,000 Zimbabwean farmers trained on IPM methods.

More than 1,500 parasitoids were released at Zinoro’s mango orchard during the launch of the project. Once established on the farm the parasitoids do not need farmer intervention and will populate and prey on the pest.

“We have learnt that these insects (parasitoids) are friends of the farmer but an enemy of the fruit fly which is the enemy of our mangoes,” Zinoro says.

“The programme is helping improve our livelihoods because we are eliminating a pest that has affected mangoes from which we get income,” Zinoro, tells IPS from outside her homestead overlooking a field of towering mango trees. Some of the fruit trees have bright yellow plastic buckets dangling under fruit-laden branches — fly traps.

Research by ICIPE has found that in East Africa, farmers using the IPM package spent 46 percent less on synthetic insecticides per acre, reducing rejection of their fruit by half. As a result, farmers earned 22 percent more income than those not implementing IPM.

“We want to get to a point where the fruit fly is not causing any economic damage,” says Ndlela, explaining that the project was inviting agro-dealers to supply traps, lures and bio-pesticides at affordable prices to farmers to promote the wide use of IPM methods.

Adding value

The use of IPM strategies will enable fruit growers from Zimbabwe to meet the phytosanitary requirements for both domestic and export markets like the European Union, said John Bhasera, Zimbabwe’s Permanent Secretary of Agriculture, at the project launch in Mutoko last December.

Bhasera commented that increased mango productivity and quality will support horticulture farmers and open opportunities for value addition of the fruit.

The European Union, a key market for fruit, including mangoes from Africa, requires a phytosanitary certificate from exporting countries to indicate the fruit is free from pests.

Horticulture farmer, Phineas Chinomora, from Chinomona village in Mutoko, grows tomatoes and green mealies and has 56 mango trees on his farm. He is excited about IPM and sees an opportunity to improve his mango production while doing away with commercial pesticides.

“Over the years, I have lost a lot of mangoes to pests and was not sure about the cause. This programme will help me improve my production as I have introduced a lot of grafted mango trees under the programme and reducing pesticides will cut costs,” Chinomora tells IPS.

“We have to send our mangoes to Harare, incurring huge transport costs and we get low prices, so improving production and the quality of my mangoes will help us make more money,” Chinomora says. “We can now look at adding value to our mangoes by making juice and jam.”

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Apple farmers in Kashmir package their crops to send to a mandi or market yard. According to policy, wholesale transactions between farmers and traders must take place in a mandi, yet the market yards have become hubs of widespread corruption where a small group of sale agents have taken control. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, Jan 27 2021 (IPS)

“This road is my home now and it will decide my future,” Sukhvinder Singh, a 27-year old farmer from the Moga district of Punjab, tells IPS. Last November, weeks after the government of India passed three farm bills he felt were anti-farmer, Singh travelled to Singhu, a village near Delhi, to demand the laws be repealed. Since then, he has been living in a tent he shares with five other fellow farmer-protesters.

On Sunday night the temperature dipped to 7°Celsius but Singh’s voice sounded warm and loud, betraying the cold. “Its like spending another night in the field, guarding my wheat crops,” he says.

There are currently an estimated 300,000 farmers protesting at Singhu, which has now turned into a tent city.

Though mobilised by 32 different groups, the farmers are unified in their demand: a total repeal of all three new laws:

• the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act,
• the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, and
• the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act.

Farmers protests: Outburst of years of anger

The farmers’ protest on the edge of New Delhi started on Nov. 26, but this has been a movement years in the making.

According to food and farm experts, uncertain and erratic pricing, lack of access to the market, low returns, recurring losses and debt burdens have been part of an average farmer’s life across the country, including Punjab, for a very long time.

While a section of the experts think that the state must accept responsibility for the well-being of farmers and compensate them for their losses, the other section believes that the government should just embrace and promote a free market policy with minimal interventions and regulations over the agriculture market.

The government interventions have, till now, included Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) — a system where the states announced MSP for 22 crops before their sowing seasons. This also included the procurement of grains and pulses from farmers by the government to run its subsidised food distribution to the poor (PDS system), the regulation of wholesale trade with farmers, control of stocks with traders, and control of exports and imports.

However, the new farm policies have sided with the free-market policy advocates and adopted exactly the opposite of what farmers want: strict enforcement of the MSP and greater intervention by the government in the procurement and wholesale trade. 

“Indian farmers have been protesting for years, but the country failed to take notice. For example, in recent years, we have seen milk farmers pouring pails of milk on the streets and vegetable farmers have crushed their fresh produce under bulldozers – all in a way to protest the volatile and erratic pricing that forced them to suffer huge losses,” Kavitha Kuruganti, a well-known activist and farm expert from Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture or ASHA-Kisan Swaraj network, a national network of organisations working on food, farmers and freedom, tells IPS.

“But every time, the protest ended with a verbal assurance by the government or a piece of paper saying their grievances would be looked into,” says Kuruganti.

Sandhya Mohite, a marginal cotton farmer in Maharashtra state’s suicide-affected Yavatmal region. Cotton is one of the crops where Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) system has worked but now, according to the country’s new farm laws, farmers will be no longer guaranteed a minimum price on produce. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

What farmers want vs what they are offered

In India, the wholesale purchase of produce from farmers is regulated by the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act 2003. According to the policy, wholesale transactions between farmers and traders must take place in a mandi — a designated market yard.The sale of produce under public scrutiny brought a level of protection from being cheated on weights and measures and price. There are hundreds of such mandis across the country, which are governed by an elected body of APMC authority. 

However, over time, the market yards have become hubs of widespread corruption where a small group of sale agents have taken control and influenced APMC officials with their economic power and ties to major political parties. Unable to stand up to these price fixers, the farmers have had no option other than to play along and bear the losses.

The government acknowledges the cartelisation and, as a solution, is allowing alternate channels such as privately-managed market places which can compete with the regulated APMC mandis for the farmer’s produce.

In addition, farmers will be able to sell directly to consumers. Large buyers, such as firms engaged in food processing, large scale retail or exports can also bypass the wholesale markets altogether and buy directly from farmers.

These ideas were first recommended by the Swaminathan Commission – an experts’ committee tasked by the government in 2004 to finding solutions to problems faced by farmers.

However, the Swaminathan Commission also recommended a higher MSP and protective regulations for farmers while doing contract farming for large private traders. But the new laws do not include either of these recommendations.

The farmers now fear that since the MSP is no longer mandatory, they will be forced to accept any price large firms offer. Food crop growers also argue that they cannot even transport their produce to the nearest market yard without incurring losses. And they question how can they reach and sell at markets faraway.

The big player scare

In December 2020, even as their protests gathered steam, farmers across Punjab pulled down hundreds of mobile towers belonging to Reliance Jio Infocomm — India’s largest cellular service network. The protesters targeted the network after it was rumoured that large corporations like Reliance industries, along with Adani group, would be entering the contract farming business, potentially pushing independent farmers out of their livelihoods. After over 1,500 Jio telecom towers were damaged, the company finally approached the court and also clarified in a statement that it had no farm business plans. But the fear lingers.

Harmandeep Singh, a farmer from Tarn Tarn, Punjab tells IPS: “Today they are saying there are no plans. But tomorrow it may change. These companies are so rich, they can buy any amount of land and push us out of the business. Who will stop them?”

However, the entry of big corporations in agriculture happened well before a more corporate-friendly Modi government came in power, Subramaniam Kannaiyan, General Secretary of South Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers Movements (SICCFM), tells IPS.

“In 2011, the then Congress Government had allowed 100 percent foreign investment in several sectors of agriculture, so the corporates have been there for a long time already. In fact, since we joined World Trade Organisation (WTO), opening up of the markets has become inevitable. However, there should be a balance and ways to support and protect the local, small farmers and for that the APMC should play a stronger role, not be done away with,” says Kannaiyan, who is also a member of the global small farmers movement La Via Campesina.

No takers for a 3^rd party role

On Jan. 12, the Supreme Court of India formed  a 4-member committee to hold talks between the government and the farmers to resolve the protests over the farm laws. But the farmers were quick to reject the committee and refused to be part of it.

“When there is a dialogue underway between the government and the protesting farmers, there is absolutely no need for the Supreme Court to take on a mediatory role given that neither the government nor the union leaders have approached the Supreme Court and said, ‘please resolve this,” says Kuruganti, who is also a member of the 41-member farmers delegation that has been holding the talks with the government.

So far, there have been 11 rounds of dialogues which centre around not just ‘techno-legal’ issues but also on policy directions and policy implications — “areas where the Supreme Court has no role to play,” Kuruganti says, explaining why the farmers do not see any merit in joining the review committee.

“The problem today is, except for Punjab and Haryana, there is no large farmers union anywhere else in this country,” says Kannaiyan of SICCFM.

“This is why a movement of this magnitude can be led only by farmers from those states. But we stand by them strongly in solidarity.”

Digging their heels deeper

Yesterday, Jan. 26, India celebrated its Republic Day – the day the country’s constitution came into effect. The celebration usually includes a token display of the country’s military might by parading its nation’s defence weaponry.

But this week, the nation witnessed a different parade: a 100-km long tractor rally by the protester farmers. The government tried to prevent the rally by getting a court order and some of states also banned sale of fuel to tractors, but this failed to dissuade the farmers who were determined to carry out the rally. Many vowed to only return home after the 3 farm bills have been repealed.

Yesterday, thousands of protesting farmers marched to New Delhi’s historic Red Fort.

“The government is trying to show the world that it has done a great job by building weapons. Now we want to tell the world that a country that a country is not made great by making weapons but by respecting its farmers and by restoring its economic lifeline – the agriculture which is not happening right now,” Mandeep Kaur, a woman farmer with small land holding from  Punjab’s Ludhiana who has travelled to Singhu several times during the past two months to join the protests, tells IPS.

Indeed, the Food Sustainability Index, developed by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranks India 4th overall, behind Colombia and China, in a ranking middle income countries’ sustainability and greatest progress towards meeting environmental, societal and economic key performance indicators for agriculture.

On Jan. 22, after the 11th round of discussions, the government offered to delay the implementation of the farm laws for 12 to 18 months – allowing farmers the additional time to prepare themselves for the future.  However, as the farmers refused to settle for anything less than a full repeal of the legislation, the government declined to announce dates for further discussions. 

The impasse has failed to move the farmers from their stance, but some are asking the government to not make it a show of ego.

“Accepting the demands of the farmers and repealing the farm laws should not be seen as a victory of the farmers or the loss of the government; it should be seen as a victory of democracy,” Kuruganthi says.

Meanwhile, farmers from several states including Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Kerala and Telangana have lent their support to the protest movement.

And today, Jan. 27, a day after the Republic Day protest, Kuruganthi says “the protest movement will continue peacefully”.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

International Year of Volunteers: A volunteer ombudsman in Peru helps a local woman with her problem, 2001. Credit: UN Photo

By Carmen Arroyo
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2021 (IPS)

While the world is grappling with the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Peru is still dealing with an epidemic that it has not been able to control—the mosquito-borne viral disease known as dengue.

With almost 56,400 confirmed cases as of December, Peru is suffering the worst dengue epidemic since 2017, when the virus infected over 68,000 people. The illness, coupled with the novel coronavirus crisis, has left thousands of people exposed to malnutrition and water-borne diseases.

Although mortality rates are low for dengue cases, nutritious diets and immediate sanitary responses are needed to battle the condition. And, above all, prevention is key to handling future epidemics, given that the mosquito responsible for dengue, Aedes aegypti, is expanding to new territories in Peru. As informal settlements and urbanization increase, so do Aedes larvae, which grow in stagnant water accumulated in cans or pots.

“Dengue has become endemic to many regions in Peru whereas before it was mostly found in the tropical ecosystem areas,” says a researcher for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in Washington DC, pointing at the regions of Madre de Dios, Loreto, Ucayali, and San Martin, among others. “It’s normal to find dengue near the Amazon, but now we can find it in desert-type areas. It should be easier to control dengue, but it’s difficult to control urbanization.”

The epidemic

The Peru dengue crisis began in October of 2019 when the cases increased in the Madre de Dios region in the country’s southeast. The government soon sent the armed forces to fumigate people’s houses and kill the larvae while issuing recommendations to avoid the virus.

As a result, the spread of the virus slowed down in November, with the Minister of Health Elizabeth Hinostroza saying that dengue cases in Madre de Dios had decreased by 30%, as reported by local outlets.

But the respite was short-lived. In February, the government declared dengue a health emergency, ramping up the resources dedicated to fighting off the virus. By the time the coronavirus pandemic hit Peru, dengue had spread to 17 regions, including Junin and Ica.

Still, the country lacked the resources to face a pandemic and an epidemic simultaneously.

Protests broke out in early March in the region of Loreto, northeast Peru, due to a lack of medical attention to those infected. With air-borne COVID-19 assailing the country and mandatory lockdowns in place, fumigations became difficult if not impossible to conduct. Besides, some of the coronavirus symptoms, like headaches, were similar to those generated by dengue.

In October of 2020, Peru raised the alarm again by “reinforcing the sanitary response to dengue’s control and prevention […].” By the end of the year, the COVID-19 pandemic had left almost 38,400 casualties, high unemployment levels, and a growing informal economy. (The underground economy may have increased from 70% to 80% or 90% since the pandemic hit Peru, say local outlets.)

In the background, dengue kept spreading.

On December 9, The National Center of Epidemiology, Prevention, and Disease Control, tied to the Ministry of Health, sent out an alert, warning that Peru was the third country in the Americas region with the highest mortality rate due to dengue. The Dominican Republic and Venezuela came in first.

But what does dengue do?

Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease, widespread through the tropics as it is “influenced by rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, and unplanned rapid urbanization,” explains the World Health Organization (WHO). The species Aedes aegypti is also the vector for other viruses such as chikungunya, yellow fever, and Zika.

As climate changes and urbanization increases, the mosquito is finding new places to hatch. “If new areas get warmer, the vector Aedes will expand,” explains the PAHO researcher to IPS. “We can now find it in higher altitudes than before.”

The consequences of the disease vary, notes the WHO in a note on June 23, 2020. The symptoms may range from those similar to the flu to “severe bleedings, organ impairment and/or plasma leakage.” In either case, the virus can also affect women and anemics disproportionately.

“Dengue impacts on an individual’s platelet count, which can be especially crucial for pregnant women,” says Angel Muñoz, climate variability researcher at the International Research Institute, which is part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “Anemics are more likely to get the disease.”

Malnutrition

Dengue patients usually experience high levels of dehydration and lack of nutrients, so the intake of water and nutrients is essential.

Recommended diets are rich in vegetables with vitamin A, C, and K, such as spinach and beetroot, fruits with the latter two vitamins, such as citrus, and nuts with proteins.

However, in Peru access to clean water can be tricky in certain regions and marginal areas, where stagnant water abounds. For instance, in the region of Loreto, only 45.4% of the population consumed drinking water through the public infrastructure in 2019, notes the country’s National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI) in a 2020 report.

This lack of access to drinking water heightens the impact of dengue and results in other malnutrition problems. The Food Sustainability Index, developed by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit, notes “poor sanitation and a lack of clean water contribute to malnutrition resulting from diarrhea.” In contrast, the index says that “improved sanitation and better water services also help tackle world hunger.”

On top of these infrastructural problems, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns in its latest report that malnutrition increased in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deepening the pervasiveness of dengue. “During the last five years, the situation has worsened with an increase of 13.2 million people with undernutrition,” says the FAO.

How to prevent dengue

Prevention is essential to control dengue, both through forecasts and awareness campaigns conducted by public institutions.

Research has shown a relationship between climate patterns and the mosquito’s life cycle, as explained in the paper AeDES: a next-generation monitoring and forecasting system for environmental suitability of Aedes-borne disease transmission, authored by Muñoz and other researchers.

“There’s a relationship between environmental conditions such as temperature, rainfall and humidity, and the mosquito’s life cycle,” he explains to IPS. “It is possible to do reliable climate forecasts and predict the likelihood of the disease spreading.”

As a result of the paper, the team at IRI has designed a tool to monitor and forecast Aedes-borne environmental suitability, which could be used by policymakers to predict the potential impact of dengue.

However, predicting dengue’s probability is not enough, as the information must reach the population. Muñoz notes that awareness campaigns are essential to ensuring the public knows how the disease spreads. “Recipients with stagnant water or large landfills create the perfect habitat for the mosquito.”

Through the Ministry of Health, the Peruvian government has launched awareness campaigns in the past, its latest being “Dengue kills. Kill the mosquito!”

This campaign emphasized getting rid of breeding grounds for the species, both through preventive measures and fumigation. Some of its recommendations include:

● “If you have flowerpots or aquatic plants, clean the recipients every two days […].” every day you water the plants.”
● “Tightly close the recipients where you store water […].”

But fumigations and awareness campaigns require vast amounts of resources. While the regions have exclusive budgets to fight mosquito-borne diseases, in the past months a portion of that money has been used to face the pandemic, report Jorge Carrillo and Alicia Tovar for Peru’s investigative outlet Ojo Público.

As a result, populations with less access to information, healthcare, and lower socioeconomic conditions remain more at risk because they are more likely to preserve cans or planters to conserve water.

“We need tools to understand the impact of environmental factors on dengue’s seasonality. If we have a detailed system of who could be more at risk and where and when dengue could spread, we could reinforce prevention strategies,” concludes Muñoz.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Farmers in Indonesia’s West Java province. Indonesia’s agriculture sector is facing two major issues – decreases in both the number of farmers and irrigated rice fields. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Dec 10 2020 (IPS)

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.

“I started using the application in early September when I planted rice on 0.7 hectare of irrigated land,” the 41-year-old told IPS last month in a phone interview from Bondowoso regency in East Java, a one-hour flight east of the capital Jakarta.

“I cannot tell yet if it helps boost production or not, but I am very happy with the technology. It helped me detect and identify a rice disease in late September. We had always called rice diseases brown planthopper before and used the same medicines to control the disease. Thanks to the technology, we now know different rice diseases and can use appropriate insecticides to deal with them,” said the father of two.

Developed by start-up tech company PT Mitra Sejahtera Membangun Bangsa (MSMB), RiTx Bertani is designed to help farmers deal with climate change and other problems they may have through digital technology. RiTx comes from the words agriculture technology, while Bertani literally means farming.

Another farmer, Kurlufi, meanwhile, said he downloaded the application in 2018 but uninstalled it shortly after as he found it less helpful for his chilli crop. Earlier this year, he decided to reinstall it as the price of chilli suddenly dropped.

“The price of chilli has dropped sharply since the coronavirus hit the country in March. I looked for alternative crops when the application suggested that my field was suitable for cucumber,” the 42-year-old father of two told IPS from Banyuwangi regency, also in East Java.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 18,366 people as of today (Dec.10) has forced people to work from home and plant vegetables at their backyards, driving down the price of food crops due to low demand.

Kurlufi owns 0.95 hectares of farm land. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country, he has planted cucumber on 0.6 hectares of his field for two successive seasons, harvesting eight kilograms of cucumber seeds in the first season and 18 kilograms in the second. Each season last for almost three months.

“I sold the seeds for Rp450,000 (US$32) per kilogram to a local company,” he said.

“I find the technology very useful for people who have no prior or little experience in farming. In my case, it helps me decide what crops to plant and when to hire workers to do the pollination as it provides weather forecasts for the next six to seven days,” Kurlufi added.

Mustafa and Kurlufi are two of 11,000 farmers in eight provinces in Indonesia using RiTx Bertani, one of dozens of agricultural apps currently available as the government promotes Smart Farming 4.0 or digitised agriculture.

MSMB project manager Rizal Dwi Prastyo said they have both hardware — in the form of on-field sensors, which are connected to the internet — and software — in the form of the RiTx Bertani app.

“Users have to submit detailed information about their fields, including the size, borders, latitude, and longitude for the sensors to locate. Once the sensors detect the fields, they immediately measure the soil’s moisture and air temperature and feeds those information to the internet,” Prastyo told IPS from Yogyakarta, a 50-minute flight east of Jakarta.

One sensor, which costs approximately $2,700, covers an area of 10 hectares of land.

Based on the soil’s current moisture, Prastyo said, agriculture experts at the company provide suggestions to farmers through the app on what crops suit their land best for the next planting season.

“Throughout the season, the sensors measure soil moisture and air humidity every 10 minutes and upload them into the internet. Users can read the feeds through the app under the sensor menu. Farmers need this kind of information to apply fertiliser or spray pesticides, if needed,” he continued.

The application, Prastyo said, also allows farmers to record all farming activity and save them under a record menu so they know exactly when next to apply fertiliser or spray pesticides or insecticides. Farmers can also ask for additional assistance through the online forum.

Activist Said Iqbal of non-governmental organisation People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty welcomed the use of apps in farming but said he doubted that digitised agriculture would improve the welfare of farmers and help the country achieve food sovereignty in the immediate future.

“Digitising the agriculture sector is unavoidable now but the root of the matter is farmers find no incentive to boost production. Why? Because they control on-farm activities only, while upstream and downstream activities are controlled by big businesses. It has become a public knowledge that intermediaries or traders earn more than twice of farmers’ earnings,” he said.

He also said most farmers in Indonesia were small holders, with each owning an average of 0.2 hectares of irrigated land. “Because of that condition, many farmers choose to sell their productive land and work as cheap labour, further reducing irrigated fields, especially on Java Island,” Iqbal said.

Another activist, Tejo Wahyu Jatmiko of the Alliance for Prosperous Village, agreed with Iqbal, saying that Indonesia’s agriculture sector was facing two major issues – decreases in both the number of farmers and irrigated rice fields.

Quoting a report by the Central Statistics Agency or BPS, Jatmiko told a webinar in Jakarta that the country had only 33.4 million farmers in 2019, down from 35.6 million in 2015, while irrigated fields stood at 10.68 million hectares in 2019, down by 700 hectares from 2018.

These conditions have resulted in fluctuations in rice production, forcing the government to import rice to meet the needs of over 270 million people. BPS reports show that the country imported 444,508 tons of rice in 2019, down from 2.25 million tons in 2018, 305,270 tons in 2017, and 1.28 million tons in 2016.

However, in terms of sustainable agriculture, Indonesia has a score of 61.1 out of 100,where 100 is the highest sustainability and greatest progress towards meeting environmental, societal and economic Key Performance Indicators. This is according to the Food Sustainability Index, developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition. 

In a bid to increase farmers’ welfare, since 2017 President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has promoted farmer corporation, where farmers are organised into business ventures, founded and financed by farmers themselves, with the aim of controlling both on-farm and off-farm activities in the agricultural sector.

Dr. Syahyuti, a researcher with the Indonesian Center of Socio-Economic and Agricultural Policy of the Ministry of Agriculture, said under the corporation concept, farmers are also involved in the provision of seeds, fertiliser, agricultural machines, and capital with on-farm activities, and buying, milling, and selling rice in off-farm activities.

Based on experiences in some sub-districts, Syahyuti said farmers corporations increased farmers’ income by 72 percent.

While the government is working to organise farmers into business groups, Mustafa is upbeat that digitised agriculture will help increase the number of farmers in Indonesia.

“I notice the number of people tilling land in the district has increased since [using] the RiTx Bertani [app]. Many of them are young and unexperienced. I get the impression that with the technology arming is no longer a dirty job, but a lifestyle that more and more people embrace,” Mustafa said.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Family in a flooded village on the banks of the Atrato River in Chocó, Colombia. Credit: Jesús Abad Colorado/IPS

By Carmen Arroyo
NEW YORK, Dec 8 2020 (IPS)

After ten years without a strong La Niña weather phenomenon in Colombia, the climate pattern, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, could create a vacuum in food production and supply. Multilateral organizations, along with the Colombian government, are trying to implement measures to reduce malnutrition risk. Still, the population is already overwhelmed by a year of struggles that have deepened socio-economic differences.

Starting in March this year with the COVID-19 pandemic and followed by the hurricane IOTA in November, Colombia has seen its malnutrition levels rise dramatically. The pandemic has left over 37,000 deaths and an increase of 6.4% in unemployment in October compared to the same month in 2019. (This percentage doesn’t account for informal workers—47% of the population, according to the country’s statistics department DANE).

“[The socio-economic crisis] is coherent with a deepening poverty situation as highlighted by the latest official figures—35.7% of Colombian households were in poverty in 2019, already some 660,000 more than in 2018,” says Lorena Peña, the communications coordinator for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Bogota to IPS, going back to the numbers before the pandemic.

Those data points are likely to increase—especially in La Guajira, Norte de Santander and Bolivar,—as the country prepares for the expected La Niña-caused heavy rains, which the Colombian Weather Institute (IDEAM) estimates to last until May of next year.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), La Niña is a cooling of ocean surface temperatures that generates winds and rainfalls in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. In 2020-2021, the phenomenon is expected to be moderate to strong, as it was in the period 2010-2011. That time, La Niña claimed 300 lives and left an equal number of people injured.

This year, the phenomenon could lead to landslides, floods, diseases, and pests, say Jorge Mahecha, communications coordinator, and Martina Salvo, in charge of agricultural resilience, at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in Bogota to IPS.

A drawback in Colombia’s nutrition achievements

In the past five years, Colombia has established itself as the leading middle-income country in sustainable agriculture and food nutrition, according to the Food Sustainability Index, developed by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Colombia achieved top performances in the use of land, air, and water in the ranking. It was second, out of 23 counties, in tackling nutritional challenges, such as undernutrition and hidden hunger, notes the report. It was also well above some of its peers, such as Mexico, regarding food nutrition indexes.

The Colombian flag flying over the castle San Felipe de Barajas in Cartagena de Indias, Bolívar, Colombia

However, the pandemic has meant a drawback for Colombia. Before La Niña, WFP was already estimating that 52.6% of the population had problems accessing food “of which at least some 3.5 million people [were forecast to be] severely food insecure,” told Peña from WFP to IPS. She added that food insecurity was more prevalent in Arauca, La Guajira, Norte de Santander, and Bolivar.

Now that La Niña is reaching Colombia, food security could further deteriorate, depending on the intensity of the weather pattern.

“The La Niña phenomenon tends to be associated with heavy rainfall in Colombia, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the crops will be harmed,” says Carmen González Romero, country manager for Colombia in the ACToday (Adapting agriculture to Climate Today for Tomorrow) project. The project is led by the International Research Institute, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “If the intensity of the rain is high enough, yes, it could destroy them.”

The impact could be felt throughout the food production system. “On the one hand, heavy rains could destroy the crops of subsistence farmers. This would not only impact their access to food in the present but also in the near future threatening their basic grain reserves,” explains González Romero. “On the other, large producers, associated with a guild and higher technological capacity, could also see their business endangered. This would generate a vicious cycle, laborers that work for them would lose their jobs and their income. Additionally, heavy rains could impact civil infrastructure, limiting the access to markets, which are essential for food security in the country.”

The FAO predicts that among the crops to be impacted by the torrential rains are the “pancoger crops [crops that meet a family’s nutritional needs] such as plantain, corn, yuca, and beans.” Other crops that Colombia exports, such as cacao and coffee, could also be harmed by the changing weather forecasts, add Mahecha and Salvo, from FAO.

Farmers and institutions prepare for La Niña

The Colombian government, its weather institutions, and farmers will have to face the consequences of La Niña soon.

Asked how farmers can prepare themselves for weather patterns, González Romero responds: “Farmers need access to climate services to optimize crop management and resources.” She adds that their capacity to prepare themselves for weather patterns also depends on their economic resources and the time they have to prepare.

Moreover, explains González Romero, there are financial instruments for climate risk transfers, such as index-based insurances, that could mitigate the harm of adverse climate events, be it floods or droughts. “They exist, but they are not widely available in Colombia, nor South America.”

At an institutional level, the government could create forecast-based financing systems that would trigger cash transfers to impacted workers if droughts or floods harm their crops, notes González Romero.

Multilateral organizations are also preparing for La Niña while they still try to alleviate the pandemic’s consequences. To ensure that malnutrition is not widespread, the FAO argues that food supply systems should be prioritized. However, some roads have become unusable, tells Peña from the WFP to IPS, adding that, for example, in-kind food transport to Alta Guajira was delayed in October.

The population that is expected to be impacted by La Niña is the most vulnerable, say the FAO representatives, adding that the same sector has also suffered the most during the pandemic.

The WFP is mobilizing “cash-based transfers where possible, and in-kind is also planned for areas where markets are not fully functional,” says the institution. They are working in Arauca, Bolívar, Chocó, La Guajira, and Norte de Santander, where food insecurity is widespread.

On its part, UNICEF is prepared to provide nutritional supplements to children under five years of age in the sites where WFP delivers food support.

As institutions and farmers try to grapple with the possibility of La Niña, stakeholders fear the weather phenomenon will deepen the socioeconomic differences already sharpened by the pandemic—especially in rural areas.

Still, it’s hard to predict the consequences of the phenomenon until it hits the country. “We have yet to see what La Niña brings,” concluded González Romero on a cautionary note.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A young boy cooks food at his home in Masunduza, Mbabane, Eswatini. Experts say the current food system does not promote or produce healthy diets. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Dec 3 2020 (IPS)

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.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) The State of Food and Nutrition in the World 2019 report, over 820 million people across the world are hungry. In the meantime, the World Health Organisation states that in 2016, 1.9 billion adults were overweight and, of these, 650 million were obese.

Moreover, in 2005 the agriculture sector accounted for more than half of the global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic showed that an already fragile system was not resilient as more people were left hungry as lockdowns imposed by governments across the globe exposed a system that relies on transporting food for several miles across the world.

Farmers in African countries grow what they do not eat and eat what they do not grow. Eswatini, for instance, does not grow enough maize to feed its 1.1 million people but it exports tonnes of sugarcane to Europe each year. It does not help that more than a billion tonnes of food are wasted globally each year.

As experts observed during the one-day Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork summit hosted by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN), on Dec. 1, the food system is incapable of taking the world to the promised land – Zero Hunger by 2030.

This is because despite the lack of access for many people and the negative impact agriculture has on the environment, most of the available food is not healthy.

According to Jeffrey Sachs, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University and director of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the world needs a new food economy.

“Food is overly processed with too much sugar added to it, leading to unhealthy diets,” said Sachs. He blamed this on companies who are obsessed with profit to the point of feeding people with “highly addictive” processed foods and poor regulation by governments to ensure a change of behaviour.

Sachs said while diets will differ based on cultural context but, generally, healthy diets have more fruits and vegetables and are based more on plant protein rather than animal protein.

“Changing the food system is a complex challenge, but the first step is to know where we want to go, and that’s toward a healthy diet produced with sustainable agriculture,” said Sachs.

While many of the speakers during the event lamented a broken system, Chris Barrett, professor and co-editor-in-chief of Food Policy at Cornell University, said it is not all gloom and doom. He said the system has been phenomenally successful in 2020 such that the world is seeing a record high cereal harvesting despite the pandemic and climate change. He also said about 5 billion people will have access to affordable healthy diets this year.

“How do we combat the challenges while acknowledging the successes?” he asked.

As other speakers noted, it is a system that was designed many years ago and it has served its purpose. The current cracks to the system are a sign that it needs to be replaced with one that is compatible with the “new normal”.    

While technological advancement and innovations are part of the proposed solutions to change the system, policy formulation and education for behavioural change are equally important. Protecting the rights of the marginalised such as indigenous people and ensuring that they have access to land are part of the game-changers.   

Elly Schlein, the Vice President Emilia-Romagna, Italy, observed that political will and resources are needed to create the right incentives to change the system.

A timely discussion as the world gears for the U.N 2021 Food Systems Summit which the U.N Secretary-General, António Guterres, will host on November 30 to December 04. The objectives of the U.N. Summit are:

• Ensuring access to safe and nutritious food for all 
• Shifting to sustainable consumption patterns
• Boosting nature-positive production at sufficient scale 
• Advancing equitable livelihoods and value distribution 
• Building resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress

The Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork summit produced five recommendations for the U.N. meeting, which Dr Agnes Kalibata, the Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit, gladly accepted. She said the summit presents an opportunity to evaluate progress towards 2030 and shift things around to ensure that the SDGs are met.

A decade is enough to shift things around as suggested by Guido Barilla, the Barilla Group and BCFN Foundation chair. He said only doubters would want to languish in their comfort zone claiming a decade is too short to change the status quo.

While bringing issues to the table and discussing them during a summit it important, the real test is in the implementation of strategies that such meetings produce.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Guido Barilla, Chair of the Barilla Foundation, says the future of food is in our hands if we act to fix the problems in our food system. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

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.

How to achieve just, equitable food systems where more people do not only have enough to eat but have nutritious food was the central question food experts sought to answer at the one day ‘Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork’. The international dialogue was co-hosted by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutirition (BCFN) and Food Tank and forms a critical part of the discussions ahead of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit.

“We should not be talking about food security in the world today but about food sovereignty, if we are seeking to end hunger and malnutrition,” Mpofu told IPS in a telephonic interview from her farm in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province. It is here that where she grows drought-tolerant sorghum and finger millet, cowpeas, groundnuts on ten hectares of land.

“Food sovereignty is about giving farmers control over how they grow food, what food they grow, what seeds they use and how they consume that food because it is food grown in a sustainable way,” said Mpofu. This is a subject close to her heart as she doubles as the general coordinator of the international peasant movement, La Via Campesina, which advocates for an agroecological approach to farming. The methodology promotes resilient and sustainable farming and food systems through agroecology, diversified health and nutritious food systems.

Farmer Elizabeth Mpofu on her maize plot. Courtesy: Elizabeth Mpofu

A sustainable food system

The world needs a new food system where all actors from farmers, civil society, researchers, chefs, policymakers and business leaders act together to create a more sustainable food future for all, was a crucial message in Tuesday’s dialogue.

Guido Barilla, chairman of BCFN, said the Covid-19 pandemic had shown how interconnected we all are with each other and the planet.

“This crisis is the latest example of the increasing pressure and expectations being put on the world’s food system – not only to keep us all fed but to ensure we are all nourished and to do so while looking after the environment tackling the climate crisis and ensuring people’s livelihoods continue to be met,” Barilla said calling for a fundamental shift in attitude and making radical choices to build a transformative agenda for a sustainable and equitable future.

“I am not afraid of the change we need to make, the future of food is in our hands, said Barilla. “Let’s make the future grow. And the list of potential improvements, from farm to fork, could be long and exciting.”

Asma Khan, an Indian-born British chef and owner of the Darjeeling Express Restaurant in London, called for a shift in eating patterns of buying and eating less to cut food waste. 

“COVID was a lesson that food systems are vulnerable and that we are all connected,” Khan said urging that restaurateurs can promote food equity by respecting food and seeing food as an opportunity to make a difference.

“Let us not use food as our right … you don’t have a right to eat as there are many people waiting to eat …  Hunger is relentless,” said Khan.

“It is important that we respect the fact that we have a privilege to eat. I really would want to honour the food we eat because there are many people who do not have this opportunity and we should be responsible. There is no justification to throw away food.”

Khan’s comments led to a discussion by farmers who outlined the the myriad of challenges – from access to land, land grabs, poor skills, climate change and impact of COVID-19 that they face.

Speaking at a panel session on Farmers Feed the World, Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black, said land was a vital issue in empowering farmers in the United States. She called for reparations for indigenous communities and black communities who lost their land through expropriation.

“When we talk about reparations, we really need to look at land reform and distribution, and there are models such as the North East Farmers of Colour and the Black Family Land Trust which have ways of putting land into permanent protection so that it can be used for full developing agriculture,” said Penniman. She noted that the US government realised the need to put land in trust to ensure that people dispossessed of land could have the chance to return to farming.

In Africa, land grabs have affected farmers and the agriculture sector.

Land grabs are some of the biggest injustices are farmers have faced, said Edie Mukiibi, vice president of Slow Food International. He advocated the building of a movement to ensure that farmers are recognised for their roles in food production and that agroecological approaches be prioritised.

James Maes, president of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), agreed that farmers across the world faced similar challenges. However, contexts were different, he said, and there was a need to uphold the farmers’ rights to produce food. A change of narrative was needed on food systems debates.

“I would question the need to reset food systems. I believe resetting comes at a huge economic and social cost for those already involved in that food system,” Maes said, noting that the perspective should be on improving and empowering farmers to build resilience and to enhance their production.

As a farmer, Mpofu had a positive perspective on sustainable food systems:

“We have been talking about food security year in year out. We need to stop filling bellies and start promoting nutrition, and this lies in agroecological approaches.”

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Protecting and improving food systems will be vital to reduce the risk of people falling into food insecurity, the United Nations says. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
BONN, Germany/BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

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.

And as the world’s countries began unprecedented nationwide shutdowns, including international travel bans, the closure of schools, shops, and indirect restrictions on local transport and food supply chains, WFP aimed to keep open transport corridors for passenger and cargo movement.

The U.N. agency, which won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its response, had already estimated that some 270 million people — increased from 135 million pre-COVID-19 — would become acutely food insecure if not assisted. In addition, 690 million people do not have enough to eat.

But responding to the development emergency, WFP noted that in addition the pandemic was placing significant stress on existing food systems.

Protecting and improving food systems would be vital to reduce the risk of people falling into food insecurity and will enable “quicker and more inclusive recovery”, the agency noted.

Addressing “the impending global food emergency and avoid the worst impacts of the pandemic, while seizing upon the opportunity of resetting food systems,” is a focus of the upcoming online dialogue, ‘Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork’, which will be hosted by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and Food Tank on Dec. 1.

“The current crisis is showing us we went wrong somewhere along the way. We need to rethink the whole food system to move forward,” said Edie Mukiibi, Vice President, Slow Food International and participant in the event.

Chair of the Barilla Group and BCFN, Guido Barilla. Courtesy: Barilla Group

Chair of the Barilla Group and BCFN, Guido Barilla, believes that resetting food systems is possible in less than a decade: “We need a positive movement to accelerate, empower, refine, and design a more sustainable future, and raising awareness in people – companies, citizens, institutions- that another future is possible.”

“If there’s one thing the current situation has taught me is that no one wins alone and that it is necessary to build new powerful alliances,” Barilla said, adding, “Another very important aspect is related to the individual commitment of each and every one of us.”

Danielle Nierenberg, a food systems advocate and founder of Food Tank, a U.S. think tank for food, said that in doing this smallholder farmers play a key role as well.

“We need farmers in decision making roles and policies that affect them whether it is dealing with the pandemic, climate crisis or how to create more equity in the food system, especially for women and girls.

“We need participatory research where farmers work with economists, researchers and extension workers to do the research that will help them improve yields or develop their practices and use different kind of technologies. Innovations are not often taken up because farmers are not involved in them,” Nierenberg told IPS.

Excerpts of the interview with Barilla follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the further strain it has placed on the the global food system, how can we move forward to ensure that the world’s people are fed in a sustainable way?

Guido Barilla (GB): The COVID-19 pandemic shows just how interconnected we all are, not only with each other but also to the planet itself. This crisis is the latest example of the increasing pressure and expectations being put on the world’s food system – not only to keep us all fed, but to ensure we are well nourished and to do so while looking after the environment, tackling the climate crisis, and ensuring people’s livelihoods continue to be met.

Faced with this situation, we must have the courage to change – agri-food companies, retailers, institutions, chef, citizens – because there is no alternative to sustainability. We need to make radical choices and today we are here to build a truly transformative agenda for a sustainable and equitable future (contributing with our ideas and recommendations to the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit).

IPS: We only have 10 years to reach the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Is this enough time to change global food systems? And how can we do it in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic?

GB: From my point of view, 10 years is rather long enough to generate a revolution, and the next 5 years will be crucial. If there’s one thing the current situation has taught me is that no one wins alone and that it is necessary to build new powerful alliances:

• between the generations, to find a common language and common objectives to pursue;
• among the actors along the agri-food chain, to find joint solutions to build a truly regenerative, restorative, and resilient food system;
• between rich and poor countries to call Governments for a global partnership for agriculture, food security and nutrition in order to promote better coordinated and coherent global action;
• between civil society and private sector, to never lose sight of people’s real needs.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Transforming food systems means farmers producing adequate and nutritious food for consumers. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

A world free from hunger is possible but only if we change how we grow and eat food. And resetting the food system — including all aspects of production, processing, marketing, distribution and the consumption and nutrition of food — is key to securing a sustainable food future post COVID-19.

“We need not return to the normal we had before COVID-19 but we need to create a new food system that has opportunities to make changes.

“There is a real commitment from all sectors now not just looking at food security but nutrition security too. For a long time we have focused on quantity and calories. COVID-19 has exposed that we also need to focus on quality. Diet-related diseases are a major risk factor for mortality from the virus,” says Danielle Nierenberg, a world-renowned researcher, activist, food system expert and co-founder of the United States think tank, Food Tank.

The global food system is under strain. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) projects that agriculture production needs to grow by 70 percent to feed more than 9 billion people in the world by 2050.

But hunger, malnutrition, obesity, and food waste and loss are on the rise. There are increasing impacts of climate change and now COVID-19.

“We have seen supply chain disruptions as a result of COVID-19 and how our global food system is fragile and vulnerable. Farmers have had to pivot and make changes after supply chain disruptions that have seen schools, restaurants, and hotels close down. Farmers have had to find new markets,” Nierenberg, who is also recipient of the 2020 Julia Child Award, tells IPS.

Resetting the food system is everyone’s business, she adds. This includes farmers, policy makers and researchers to ensure sustainable and resilient ways of growing healthy and abundant food for all.

“We need a food revolution in agriculture now. We need agriculture that is more sustainable and more resilient and that prepares us for shocks, climate crisis and global pandemics,” Nierenberg tells IPS in an interview ahead of the ‘Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork’, an international dialogue co-hosted by the Barilla Foundation and Food Tank that will take place online on Dec. 1.

The high level dialogue will highlight the critical role of farmers in feeding the world and managing natural resources, food business in progress towards the 2030 Agenda as well as chefs in redesigning food experiences.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Danielle Nierenberg, a food systems advocate and co-founder of Food Tank. Courtesy: Food Tank

Inter Press Service (IPS): Food systems is the buzz word on the global food agenda, why food systems?

Danielle Nierenberg (DN) : You have producers, farmers, civil society groups, key decision makers and business leaders all looking at issues of food and agriculture holistically. Food systems are complex because they are interlinked to everything else that goes on in the world.

Food impacts everything we do; from the economy to social, racial, [and] cultural equity. So looking at food through a systems lens, we can see the interconnections and how much our daily existence is linked to how we produce and consume food, hence the interest in food systems.

IPS: How do we transform food systems to deliver what we need rather than what we are getting now?

DN: We need commitment and unity from all sectors. Policy makers will have to be enlightened, businesses will have to change and produce farmers will have to diversify. That will be the key outcome from COVID-19. We cannot rely on mono-culture systems because they are fragile. Eaters too have to change some of their practices. More people are cooking from home because they have to and are learning how to eat better, nutritious food but they will have to demand that change. Food Tank has been using the term ‘citizen eater’ – someone who votes with their fork as well as their vote. They vote for the kind of food system they want, this is one way to go. Consumers have a lot of power that they have not used effectively.

IPS: Are we on track to meet the SDGs? 2030 is 10 years away but we still grappling with  hunger, malnutrition and under nutrition, especially in the developing world.

DN: Absolutely. The poorest and most vulnerable are suffering not because of COVID-19 but due the climate crisis. I tend to be an optimist. The SDGs set out some major commitments which I think are achievable over the next nine years. We need real commitment. COVID-19 has set us back with hunger on the rise and there will be likely 80 million hungry people this year than they were last year. More needs to be done to make sure these people are getting the food and nutrition they need.

The problem has always been one of distribution and not of lack of food. There is now attention being paid to food loss and food waste. We are foreseeing a lot of food going to waste this year as farmers produced but they have had no markets. For farmers to gain markets we need better technology and innovation to help them to do that.

What is different this year is we are seeing increased hunger in the global north countries too. There are massive lines at food banks in United States and parts of Europe where so many people are affected who never experienced hunger before. This is a wake-up call to the world to act if we are to achieve the SDGs.

Zimbabwean smallholder farmer, Kwanele Ndlovu, shows part of her produce at her farm in Nyamandlovu district, Zimbabwe. Danielle Nierenberg, a world-renowned researcher, activist, food system expert and co-founder of the United States think tank, Food Tank, says that because of COVID-19 people are now concerned about their health and are looking for nutritious foods, instead of processed foods. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

IPS: The theme for this year’s dialogue, ‘resetting the food system from farm to fork’. Tell us more.

DN: This is one of the very first events leading up to the U.N. Food Systems Summit that will take place in the fall of 2021.

We are bringing together leading thinkers from around the world on food and agriculture. The topics we have outlined are some of the biggest issues that need to be addressed at the U.N. Food Systems Summit. We are setting the stage for what happens next year. Inclusivity is needed and farmers should be part of these discussions.

We have farmers like Edie Mukiibi, the Vice President of Slow Food international; Leah Penniman, an author, educator and farmer in the U.S. doing a lot to improve the lives of black farmers; chefs like Massimo Bottura who is interested in reducing food loss and food waste and another chef, Dan Barber, who has achieved significant results in creating regenerative agriculture system at his farm and restaurant. 

Bobby Chinn, a TV personality and chef from Cairo teaches students about sustainable agriculture practises. We have economists too, like Jeffery Sachs and Chris Barrett, who are thinking about how to create a new food economy.

We also have experts looking at the intersection between food and technology and how technology can help farmers produce better quality food and a more democratised food system where everyone has access to food.

Agnes Kalibata, the U.N. special envoy for the Food Systems Summit and President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) will close the event and talk about where we go from here over the next ten months before the summit happens.

IPS: Lastly, how would food systems transformation look like for smallholder farmers, who keep the world fed?

DN: Gosh. If we transform the food system, we should be recognising farmers. Farmers lack the respect all over the world. They are not honoured for the work they do, not just as producers but as stewards of the land and business people. They are the ones who keep us fed but we think of them as second class citizens, people who are not smart enough to do anything else. If we can honour the brilliance of farmers that will go a long way in transforming our food and agriculture system.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau