Food Security

Cultivating Food Security in Their Own Backyards

By Kanis Dursin
Misradi, a 58-year-old farmer from the Jelok neighborhood in Pacitan, East Java, some 524 kilometres east of Jakarta, has found a way to reduce his monthly expenses by 30 percent: instead of buying produce from the local market, he and his family now harvest most of their vegetables from their own yard.
A farmer uses a hand-held sprinkler to water corn in Barbados. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Barbados Begins New Drive to Bolster Local Agriculture

By Desmond Brown
Mere weeks ago Arthur Smith, who has been farming here for more than 20 years, was dangling thousands of carrots in front of local consumers, but there were no buyers to be had.

MALI: Food Aid Taking Too Long to Reach Needy

By Soumaila T. Diarra
Her neat, bright yellow headscarf matches the rest of her outfit, but contrasts with her weary expression. Sokona Soumounou sits a little apart from the crowd queueing for assistance from the World Food Programme in the southern Mali town of Ségou.

Renaissance Rice Rises From the Debris

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
This April, a small rice paddy field in Minami Sanriku, destroyed by the massive earthquake and tsunami last year in Japan, provided one of its most fertile yields yet - bringing hope and joy to the devastated local community.

G8 Report Offers Worrying Look at Aid Accountability

By Carey L. Biron
Observers here on Tuesday lauded the newly released Group of Eight (G8) Camp David Accountability Report as a noteworthy step towards transparency and accountability, but warned that the data included suggest a looming shortfall in international agriculture-related foreign aid.

G8 Turns to Private Sector for Food Crisis Solutions

By Carey L. Biron
On the eve of the Group of Eight (G8) summit near Washington, President Barack Obama on Friday unveiled a major new initiative aimed at shoring up food security and combating global hunger.
Courtesy of Dickson Despommier

Q&A: The Future of Agriculture May Well Be in Cities

By Shari Nijman
In the coming decades, the world's population is expected to grow by at least another two billion people, 80 percent of whom will live in cities by the year 2050.
Everlyne Wanjiku, a single mother of five, has earned a living selling vegetables in the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, for 30 years. Credit: Brian Ngugi/IPS

Despite Economic Growth, Food Insecurity Lingers in Africa

By Brian Ngugi
Everlyne Wanjiku, a single mother of five, has earned a living selling vegetables in the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, for over three decades. And even though her earnings were meagre, she was able to provide all her children with a tertiary education.

ZIMBABWE: Farmers Tackle Water Problems Fuelled by Climate Change

By Ignatius Banda
Beauty Moyo’s desire for access to water has finally been met. The rains that fell in the past week after a long dry patch have awakened this small-holder farmer deep in rural Plumtree, Zimbabwe on the border with Botswana to the reality of sparse rainfall, climate change and how she and her fellow villagers can respond.

North Korea’s Pivot

By John Feffer
After three years of frozen relations between North Korea and the United States, the two longstanding adversaries are on the verge of a thaw.
Itamaraty Palace (Brazil’s foreign ministry), homebase for the country’s South-South development aid strategy.

Brazil, Emerging South-South Donor

By Fabiana Frayssinet
The Brazilian government is stepping up South-South aid, to strengthen the South American giant’s status as a donor country and its international clout. It now provides assistance to 65 countries, and its financial aid has grown threefold in the last seven years.
Forest elephants in the Mbeli River, Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, Congo. Central African countries are developing strategies against climate change. Credit: Thomas Breuer

CENTRAL AFRICA: Tentative Steps Towards Adaptation

By IPS Correspondents
Governments and civil society organisations in Central Africa are slowly developing strategies in response to global warming. But specialists say the steps being taken seem hesitant in the face of emerging realities.

Social Unrest on the Rise in Southern Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
The police have cracked down hard on demonstrators in the southern Chilean region of Aysén, who have been protesting the area's isolation and high local prices of fuel and food for the past two weeks.
Farmers

DR CONGO: Farmers’ Organisations Slam New Agriculture Law

By Emmanuel Chaco
Farmers' organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo say the country's new Agriculture Law – enacted last December – could lead to many smallholder farmers losing their land.

Drought in Sahel Affects Urban Cameroonians

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
Sala Aminata, a housewife from Logone and Shari Division in Cameroon’s Far North Region, looks at her six kids with apprehension as she tries to figure out how to feed them with her meagre salary.

Rural Women Are Leading the Way – Will the World Follow? – Part 1

By IPS Correspondents
Agriculture currently provides a livelihood for roughly 1.3 billion smallholder farmers and landless workers, of which nearly half – close to 560 million – are women.

Wanted: Climate-Smart Agriculture

By Sabina Zaccaro
As the links between food security and climate change become increasingly inextricable, the necessity for sustainable agriculture is now a universal concern.

North Korea on the Verge of a New Era?

By John Feffer
For the last two decades, U.S. administrations have come in like a lion and out like a lamb with their policies on North Korea. Determined to demonstrate Washington's resolve, U.S. presidents have played hardball with Pyongyang in an effort to precipitate regime change or at least bully the intransigent country into knuckling under.

Moving Towards a Food-Secure Ghana

By Isaiah Esipisu
In Dundo village in Nyankpala district, Northern Ghana, 10 women are busy weeding a rice field on a piece of land donated to them by the village chief.

HAITI: Open for Business – Part 2

By Correspondents
Ever since being elected earlier this year, Haitian President Michel Martelly and his team have been betting Haiti's reconstruction on foreign investors.
More than 70 percent of Africans – the majority of whom are women –rely on farming for survival. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

CLIMATE CHANGE: Waiting for the “Heavens to Weep”

By Ignatius Banda
Duduzile Sibanda takes a break from preparing her long stretch of land for her maize crop in rural Mberengwa, in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province. She wipes her brow under the scorching sun and looks upwards. The sparse clouds are a cause of concern as she studies the sky and wonders aloud when the "heavens will weep."
« Previous Page — Next Page »
*#*