A communal farmer harvesting her maize crop in Seke communal lands, Zimbabwe. In recent years, Zimbabwe has witnessed a rapid growth in digital agriculture. Credit: Tonderayi Mukeredzi/IPS

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
HARARE, May 27 2020 (IPS)

Shurugwi communal farmer, Elizabeth Siyapi (57) can no longer be scammed by unscrupulous middlemen to sell her crops cheaply. Nowadays, before she takes her produce to market she scours her mobile phone, which has become an essential digital agriculture data bank, for the best prices on the market.

“When my livestock are sick, instead of waiting for an extension officer to physically visit me for help, which may take days, I just consult my phone to look for information on what to do,” she told IPS.

Siyaphi is one of approximately 34,000 small holder farmers across the country collectively using two smart phone-based solutions, Kurima Mari and Agrishare, promoted by German development agency, Welthungerhilfe Zimbabwe, to find markets, extension services, weather information and hire agriculture equipment.

Tawanda Mthintwa Hove, the head of digital agriculture at Welthungerhilfe Zimbabwe, said farmers have been using Kurima Mari to learn good agricultural practices and link with markets since 2016.

“Kurima Mari is available offline which eliminates the need for buying data. An extension officer updates the application on a regular basis and the updates are shared using bluetooth making it costless to the farmer,” he told IPS. “Whilst Agrishare is an online-based solution, it enables farmers to secure the best equipment in their homes, which reduces mobility costs.”

Over the last three years Siyaphi has utilised digital agriculture to find good agricultural practices. And her maize yield has multiplied from two 50-kilogram bags of maize to over three and a half tonnes.

• Though during the current COVID-19 lockdown in this southern African nation, her yields have reduced because of water restrictions.
• She told IPS that while markets remain available through the app, mostly via farmer to farmer contacts, transporting her produce to market has become the biggest problem because of lockdown restrictions. The current lockdown is in place indefinitely, though reviewed every two weeks by government. 

Hove said that mobile digital technologies improve the quantity and quality of farmer’s harvests by giving them current information on production practices. They also facilitate linkages, weather advisory services, add efficiency to commodity systems, which in the long run help increase farmer’s yields and make them more profitable.

In recent years, Zimbabwe has witnessed a rapid growth in the use of digital agriculture.

• Other digital agriculture innovations include the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) and Econet Wireless championed, Ecofarmer Combo programme, which delivers weather-based insurance, real time location-based weather information and farming tips to over 80,000 communal farmers.
• Started by the churches in 2019, Turning Matabeleland Green, is another digital agriculture programme that uses satellite technology to send weather information and farming advice to over 2,000 farmers via the short message service.

Paul Zakariya, ZFU executive director, told IPS that mobile technology has enabled farmers to get farming advice in real-time, make online payments for inputs and services and access extension services from the tap of a phone, services that were previously available only through pamphlets and meetings.

According to the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN)  and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), “Precision farming and new digital tools can help, enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of farming, while improving yields”.

But Charles Dhewa, the chief executive officer of Knowledge Transfer Africa, an indigenous systems company that operates eMkambo, another digital agriculture solution, said mobile applications were not yet directly benefitting smallholder farmers here.

“A few elite farmers with appropriate android phones could be benefitting here and there. That is why we have not positioned eMkambo Nest as a lead solution in our eMkambo platform,” he told IPS. 

Dhewa stated that although content was important, many farmers and traders don’t have time and bandwidth to toy with many of the available mobile and digital farming applications. The channels have reached their limits and are disintegrated, in addition to causing information asymmetry amongst farmers.

Digital literacy and the high cost of mobile communication is also reversing gains that could have been made by digital technology.

“The high cost of mobile money is worsening the situation, rendering mobile technology more of a luxury than a necessity,” he said. “Paying for agricultural commodities through mobile money is now more expensive.” 

Zakariya said despite an increased deployment of digital technologies in agriculture, farmers were using ICTs much less to improve agri-business. Beyond mobile applications, the country has been slow in adopting other appropriate technologies and innovations crucial in commercialising the country’s agriculture, which remains mostly subsistence. 

There is little use of high-end technologies with potential to enhance production and value chain competitiveness such as crop protection technology, soil and moisture sensors, drones, precision farming, molecular technology, use of global positioning systems and geographic information systems (GIS).

Zakariya said the uptake of modern, sophisticated technologies was capital intensive for most farmers while many more farmers lacked knowledge on the use and efficacy of the newer technologies.

Dhewa said that GIS has a better future in agriculture than mobile applications sharing information.

• The Digitalisation of the African Agriculture Report 2018-19 said there has been a significant growth in digitalisation for agriculture across the continent during the past 10 years.
• The report, authored by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, said by 2019, there were about 390 distinct, active digitalisation for agriculture solutions, where 33 million small holder farmers were registered.
• But despite the impressive growth figures, only 42 percent of the registered farmers and pastoralists are using the solutions with any frequency.

According to Hove, it is rural farmers that have been hit hard by COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and prohibitive data costs, as such many can’t move their produce easily and have been deprived of income. This has forced some farmers to resort to middlemen.

Still, Hove said, some rural farmers have been able to find markets through the contact list (farmer to farmer) on the app as opposed to using the real-time markets list.

Meanwhile Siyapi said that she and other farmers struggle to buy data. As a lead and successful farmer, she requires about $16 a month in data but says other farmers can make do with $2.20 to download updates and peruse the marketplace.

Excerpt:

Sungai Nibung village chief Syarif Ibrahim (second from left) leads by example in planting mangrove trees in Kubu Raya regency, West Kalimantan province.

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 23 2020 (IPS)

Samsul sounded very happy last Monday (Mar. 16) when recounting his experience of catching crabs worth more than $60 in a single day. 

“I hauled over 12 kilograms of crabs on that day, which I sold to local traders,” Samsul told IPS during a phone interview from Sungai Nibung, a fishing village inside a protected mangrove forest in Kubu Raya regency, in the West Kalimantan province on Borneo Island. The island is a 90-minute flight north of the country’s capital Jakarta.

But that was some time ago.

Decades of overfishing and rampant use of fish bombs, poison, and trawls, combined with the rapid conversion of land into oil palm plantations in neighbouring villages, had severely depleted crab, shrimp and fish stocks in the area, resulting in dwindling catch and declining incomes for local residents.

To help make ends meet, Sungai Nibung residents would cut down mangrove trees to sell as firewood, often playing cat and mouse with law enforcers as the mangrove forests were protected areas.

But in 2017, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in Jakarta set aside 3,058 hectares of mangrove forest for the community to manage under a village forest scheme. Village residents were allowed to cultivate the mangrove forest to improve their economic circumstances but were not allowed to cut down mangrove trees.

Since then many fisherfolk like Samsul not only continue to have an income, but some have even doubled theirs.

“I have been a fisherman since childhood. Prior to 2017, my income was around $6 gross per day. Now, I take home an average of $18 daily,” Samsul, a father of two, said.

Muhammad Tahir, 47, another Sungai Nibung resident and a colleague of Samsul, also had a similar story.

“My income was uncertain before but now I get an average of $242 gross per month. With that income, I was able to send my second child to study at a university in [the provincial capital] Pontianak and my youngest to a junior high school. On top of that, we can also now save around $6 monthly,” the father of four told IPS.

• West Kalimantan’s minimum wage is currently around $140 per month. It was approximately $133 a month in 2019.  

Sungai Nibung, a fishing village located inside a protected mangrove forest in Kubu Raya regency, West Kalimantan province.

Dividing the mangroves for profit

Syarif Ibrahim has been the head of Sungai Nibung village since 2005. He told IPS that the village residents decided to divide the community forest, locally known as hutan desa, into zones for development, conservation, and sustainable agriculture.

“The development zone covers an area of some 1,800 hectares and is designated as fishing grounds, with 400 to 600 hectares of conservation area dedicated to mangrove research and education activities. The sustainable agriculture zone has some 600 hectares for dry-land paddy field and horticulture plants,” Ibrahim said.

“We also agreed that rivers and tributaries in the development zone are closed for fishing for three consecutive months at different times of the year to allow crabs, fish and shrimps to breed and replenish the stock,” Ibrahim said.

Riansyah, a Planet Indonesia Foundation activist who assisted villagers in the area with understanding sustainable fishery, said the first closures ran from August to October 2017, involving five rivers and tributaries.

“Since then, 11 of the village’s 21 rivers and tributaries have been closed and opened alternately for fishing at different times of the year. Each closure lasts for three months,” said Riansyah, adding that five rivers and tributaries were scheduled to be closed in the next round of closures from March 22 to June 22 this year.

During the closures, two fisherfolk are assigned daily to patrol the rivers and tributaries to ensure no one violates the agreement, Riansyah told IPS.

Entering its third year, the open-closed fishing system has proven to improve local people’s economic condition as reflected in both Samsul’s and Tahir’s experiences.

But more importantly, Sungai Nibung residents have learned to save the mangrove forests from destruction. In the conservation zone, for example, fishing is strictly prohibited except in designated areas. Local residents, including fishers, have also learned about the important role mangroves play for coastal ecosystems.

“Now fishers here know mangroves are very important for the sustainability of crab, shrimp and fish in the village and have agreed to stop using fish bombs, poison, and trawls,” Ibrahim told IPS.

According to the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Indonesia has a score of 61.1 out of 100 when it comes to sustainable agriculture, where 100 is “the highest sustainability and greatest progress towards meeting environmental, societal and economic Key Performance Indicators”. This is just below the average of 65 of other middle income countries.

Saving the mangroves for climate mitigation and sustainable food supply

But aside from the conservation and ensuring that fish stocks are allowed to replenish before fishing, residents have also participated in various mangrove campaigns, planting over 32 hectares of the village forest with mangrove trees since 2017, according to Riansyah.

West Kalimantan, with around 100,000 hectares of mangroves, is home to 75 percent of Indonesia’s mangrove species. Aside from Kubu Raya, mangrove forests are also found in other areas such as Ketapang, Kayong Utara, Mempawah, Sambas and in Singkawang municipality.

According to an international paper, mangroves capture four times more carbon than rainforests and store captured carbon in the soil beneath its trees. This ability to mitigate climate change is a key to a sustainable food system.

The FSI also notes that addressing deforestation is important for countries across the globe adding that, “climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies will be essential in creating a more sustainable food system since agricultural activities make a significant contribution to climate change, accounting for up to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to some estimates.”

Asep Sugiharta, director of Essential Ecosystem Management at the ministry of environment and forestry, told IPS that Indonesia recorded 3.3 million hectares of mangrove forests in 2019, almost 23 percent of the world’s total mangrove forests. At least 252,071 hectares are found in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo Island.

“At least 2.6 million hectares of the country’s total mangrove forests are located outside conservation forests and only 0.7 million hectares are in conservation forests,” Sugiharta told IPS during an interview in Jakarta.

• Indonesia recorded annual greenhouse gas emissions of 2.4 billion tons of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e) in 2015, around 4.8 percent of the world’s total global emission for that year, according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).  
• Indonesian President Joko Widodo has pledged to cut emissions by 29 percent without international support and 41 percent with international cooperation by 2030, compared to a “business as usual” scenario.

Environmental benefits aside, the open-closed fishing system has given new optimism to Samsul, particularly when it comes to the future of his two children.

“I was not able to finish my elementary education due to dire poverty. With the success of the open-closed system, I am optimistic my income will continue to grow and thus I can send my two children to higher education,” Samsul said. “More than that, I was told the system would ensure the sustainability of the coastal ecosystem for our great grandchildren.”

Meanwhile, village head Ibrahim breathed a sigh of relief that Sungai Nibung residents have bought into the idea of sustainable food production.

“The challenging part was changing people’s paradigms. The villagers were so used to fishing anywhere throughout the year in the mangrove forest, taking big and small crabs, shrimps, or fish. Now, they have started thinking about their sustainability.”

Vegetable vendors in Zimbabwe. While the country is experiencing massive food shortages, many vendors say they are forced to throw rotting vegetables away as people don’t have the money to purchase their goods any longer. Credit: Michelle Chifamba/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Feb 6 2020 (IPS)

Piles and piles of rotting vegetables at food markets situated right in Zimbabwe’s central business district would elsewhere be viewed as a sign of plenty.

But this Southern African nation has not been spared the irony of food wastage at a time of food shortages.

In Bulawayo’s sprawling vegetable market in the CBD, which provides a livelihood for hundreds of vendors, rotting vegetables have become the norm.

With the country facing an ever-growing food crisis that has seen international appeals for humanitarian assistance, the lack of activity at vegetable markets in the country’s major cities highlights the challenges developing countries face with balancing food production and consumption.

“We cannot give away the vegetables just because we fear they will rot,” said Mihla Hadebe, who sells anything from tomatoes to cabbages to mangoes and cucumbers.

“Even if we lower prices, people just do not have money that is why you see a lot of vegetables rotting like this,” Hadebe told IPS from his vegetable stall.

And this is happening at a time vendors say there is a shortage of vegetables that range from staples such as African kale, cabbages and tomatoes, and whose shortages have pushed up prices.

While a bunch of kale sold for ZWD.2  (about 1 US cent) in December, the price has now shot up to ZWD5 (about 3 US cents), Hadebe said “because there is nothing [available] where we buy these veggies. The farmers say there is no water”.

According to the Southern Africa Media in Agriculture Climate and Environment Trust (SAMACET) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation it is difficult to quantify the losses but they acknowledge the wastage in Zimbabwe is quite huge.

Zimbabwe is one of many countries included in the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), and the country has become the focus of concerns about under-nutrition amid a crippling drought blamed on climate uncertainty.

Vegetables are thrown away despite reminders by nutritionists of their value in daily consumption habits.

The 2018 Barilla report titled Fixing Food, noted that Zimbabwe was one of 11 African countries still lagging behind in “implementing health eating guidelines at national level.”

“Given the fact that about a third of the food the world produces is lost or thrown away, sustainable agriculture can only go so far. 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. None of this is easy,” the report noted. 

“But while enough food is already being produced to feed the world’s population, ending hunger and meeting rising demand for food will not be possible without addressing this high level of food loss and waste,” the report says.

It comes at a time when Zimbabwe seeks to address the growing problem of under-nutrition. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has already raised alarm about high levels of poor nutrition in the country, noting that the problem is especially worse among children and women.

“In Zimbabwe, nearly 1 in 3 children under five are suffering from malnutrition, while 93 per cent of children between 6 months and 2 years of age are not consuming the minimum acceptable diet,” James Maiden, UNICEF Zimbabwe spokesperson told IPS.

“Across the country about 34,000 children are critically suffering from acute malnutrition,” Maiden said.

While in urban and rural areas, families have long produced their food in community gardens, the projects have suffered because of extreme weather despite being fed by boreholes.

“What is happening is terrible. We have borehole but as you can see our vegetables are suffering under this heat,” said Judith Siziba, one of many women who plants vegetables for domestic consumption in the city of Bulawayo.

“There is nothing we can do but watch. We thought even if there are no rains, the boreholes would offer us relief but no,” she told IPS.

This is at a time concerns have been raised that climate change has also affected groundwater levels when boreholes are expected to offer relief to the agriculture sector to ensure food security.

Zimbabwe is one of many countries that have seen record high temperatures, throwing agriculture activity into uncertainty as food insecurity worsens.

This has worsened everyday diets amid poor salaries despite full supermarkets in a country that falls under sub-Saharan African region where the Food Sustainability Index says is home to the world’s hungriest populations.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says the number of people requiring food assistance continues to rise in Zimbabwe, stating that half the population — nearly 8 million people — is now facing food insecurity. It has also raised concerns about under-nourishment for both children and adults.

“WFP is working towards doubling the number of people it assists in Zimbabwe. We aim to support 4.1 million people who are facing hunger,” said Isheeta Sumra, the WPF-Zimbabwe spokesperson.

“As things currently stand, we urgently need $200 million to see us through till mid-2020. The situation is dire, and we can foresee our needs growing over 2020,” Sumra told IPS.

Nathan Hayes, an analyst with the EIU, believes the country has been slow in responding to the food and nutrition crisis.

“Making matters worse, poor rains have exacerbated the food crisis. This ongoing economic crisis means that social safety nets have been cut, leaving many families vulnerable and unable to afford sufficient food each day,” Hayes told IPS. 

Excerpt:

One of the street markets where fresh produce is sold in Buenos Aires. The predominance of an agro-export model based on transgenic crops and the massive use of agrochemicals makes things difficult for those who produce food for local consumption in a sustainable manner. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 21 2019 (IPS)

“Our philosophy is based on two principles: zero tolerance of pesticides or bosses,” says Leandro Ladrú, while he puts tomatoes and carrots in the ecological bag held by a customer, in a large market in the Argentine capital, located between warehouses and rusty old railroad cars.

Leandro and Malena Vecellio are a young couple who come every Saturday to the Galpón de la Mutual Sentimiento, a wooden building with a sheet metal roof used by farmers and social organisations for products to be sold in the “social economy,” located in the Chacarita neighborhood, on the grounds of one of Buenos Aires’ main railway stations.

In the Galpón, family farmers sell their organic, pesticide-free products four times a week, with a share of their sales being discounted to pay the rent."We hand-pick everything. It's a lot of work and takes patience. A broccoli plant with agrochemicals is ready in a month, ours take several months to grow. But we know it's worth it.” -- Enrique García

In a country that in the last 20 years has devoted itself practically entirely to a model of agricultural production based on transgenic crops for export, with massive use of agrochemicals, this couple’s project, named Semillero de Estrellas (Seedbed of Stars), is an act of resistance.

Transgenic products, which began to be planted in this agricultural powerhouse in 1996, cover about 25 million hectares in the country – three-quarters of the total area devoted to crops.

Today, almost 100 percent of the main crops – soybeans and corn – are genetically modified, and most of the cotton is also transgenic.

The industrial agriculture model is taking stronger hold, and in late 2018, the government approved the commercialisation of a new genetically modified food product, fully developed in Argentina: the first transgenic potato resistant to the PVY virus.

In Argentina, transgenic agriculture is associated with a high level of agrochemical use. In fact, the use of herbicides, insecticides and fertilisers grew 850 percent between 2003 and 2012, the last year in which statistics were published.

“In the area where we live, most of the small farmers walk around with a backpack in which they carry the agrochemicals that they spray on the vegetables. We do something else: we let the plants grow at their own pace,” Vecellio told IPS.

The low level of sustainability of Argentine agriculture is reflected in the Food Sustainability Index, drawn up by the Italian foundation Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition and the Intelligence Unit of the British magazine The Economist.

The ranking classifies 67 countries according to the average obtained in three categories: food and water loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges.

Malena Vecellio and Leandro Ladrú, at their organic vegetable stand in the Chacarita railway station in Buenos Aires, where they arrive every Saturday from Florencio Varela, one of the poorest areas on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, with fresh produce they and their neighbors have grown. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Argentina ranks 13th in the ranking (ahead of the other three Latin American nations included: Brazil, Colombia and Mexico), but its score is very low in both sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges. Poor performance in these two areas is offset by good food and water waste ratings.

Initiatives such as Semillero de Estrellas try to offset these two deficits. They farm on half a hectare of land in Florencio Varela, a municipality just 30 kilometers south of the capital, one of the poorest in Greater Buenos Aires.

About four years ago, Ladrú and Veceillo began selling their organic products in the Galpón de la Mutual Sentimiento.

First they traveled by train with their backpacks loaded with vegetables and fruit, and now they make the trip in their own vehicle, also carrying the organic pesticide-free vegetables produced by neighbors.

Agrochemicals are generally associated with transgenic crops – most of which were designed to tolerate glyphosate and other herbicides – but they are also used in the production of fruit and vegetables by family farmers in Greater Buenos Aires.

In this South American country of 44 million people, where agribusiness has grown exponentially in recent decades, agriculture accounts for 20 percent of GDP, including direct and indirect contributions.

In addition, in the first half of 2018, soybean and corn exports alone contributed 9.7 billion dollars, or 32 percent of the total, according to official figures.

The challenges of family farming

But family farmers are hanging on, and play a decisive role in the local diet. And they are the battering ram for more sustainable agriculture and more responsible food consumption.

According to data from the 2002 Agricultural Census, there are 250,000 family farms that produce 40 percent of the vegetables consumed in the country and employ five million people – about 11 percent of the country’s population.

Enrique García grows vegetables ecologically on a four-hectare plot near Buenos Aires, and sells his produce in a social economy market that is shared by various social cooperatives in Argentina’s capital. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

One of the flashpoints is the sale of products in the market. Ladrú explains that small farms are often worked by tenant farmers.

“Tenant farmers work land that is not theirs. Then they give their harvest to the owner, who takes it to the Central Market and gives them half of what he earns,” Ladrú told IPS.

“The problem is that when the owner can’t sell the vegetables, he ends up using them to feed the pigs and the tenant farmer doesn’t get any money,” he added.

Access to land and credit is a huge obstacle for small farmers, despite the fact that in December 2014 Law 27.118, on the Historical Repair of Family Farming for the Construction of a New Rurality in Argentina, was passed, declaring the sector to be of public interest.

That law created a land bank composed of public property to be awarded to peasant farmers and indigenous families, which was never implemented.

State neglect has to do with the ideology that prevails in the government of center-right President Mauricio Macri, as noted in September by Turkey’s Hilal Elver, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, during a visit to Argentina.

“During interviews with officials at the Ministry of Agroindustry, I observed a tendency of support geared towards the industrial agricultural model with the Family Agriculture sector facing severe cuts in support, personnel and their budget, including the lay-off of almost 500 workers and experts,” she wrote in her report.

Elver urged the government to promote a balance between industrial and family farming. “Achieving this balance is the only way to reach a sustainable and just solution for the people of Argentina,” she said.

Family farmers, in that context, are looking for ways to subsist. In the Palermo neighborhood, in an old municipal market with sheet metal roofing, various cooperatives that emerged after Argentina’s severe 2001-2002 crisis sell their products in the Bonpland Solidarity Market.

“Our basic principle is that we are consumers of our own products. There is no slave labor, there is no resale, and everything is agro-ecological,” Mario Brizuela, of the La Asamblearia cooperative, which brings together some 150 families that produce everything from vegetables to honey and preserves, told IPS.

Another of those selling in the market is Enrique García, who arrives at the Palermo neighborhood with his truck loaded with vegetables from the Pereyra Iraola Park, an area of great biodiversity covering more than 10,000 hectares, some 40 kilometers south of Buenos Aires.

“We have about four hectares that we share with my brother and all of us who work in the fields are relatives,” he told IPS as he showed a stem of green onions several times larger than the ones usually found in the greengrocers’ shops in Buenos Aires.

Garcia added, “We hand-pick everything. It’s a lot of work and takes patience. A broccoli plant with agrochemicals is ready in a month, ours take several months to grow. But we know it’s worth it.”

Poor dietary intake and lack of food varieties affect huge numbers of children, who mostly hail from large, impoverished families in Nepal. Malnutrition is a significant concern in Nepal as around one million children under 5 years suffer from chronic malnutrition and 10 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 2018 (IPS)

A dramatic shift in the way we eat and think about food is more urgent than ever to prevent further environmental degradation and an even larger health epidemic.   

A diverse group of experts from academia, civil society, and United Nations agencies convened at the sidelines of the General Assembly to discuss the pervasive issue of food insecurity and malnutrition and potential solutions to overhaul the system.“Sustainable food choices is starting to both look good and taste good which hasn’t been the story of the past.” -- founder of EAT Gunhild Stordalen

“It’s striking that we are still, despite all the advances we have seen in science and technology, we still have this big gap between those who eat too much and those who don’t have enough food to eat,” Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition Foundation’s head of media relations Luca Di Leo told IPS.

According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018, the number of hungry people increased to over 820 million in 2017 from approximately 804 million in 2016, levels unseen for almost a decade.

At the same time, and perhaps paradoxically, obesity rates have rapidly increased over the last decade from 11.7 percent in 2012 to 13.2 percent in 2016. This means that in 2017, more than one in eight adults, or over 670 million people, in the world were obese.

Adult obesity and the rate of its increase is highest in North America, and increasing trends can now also be seen across Africa and Asia.

Participants at the International Forum on Food and Nutrition stressed the need to deal with both forms of malnutrition, and pointed to the lack of access to healthy food as the culprit.

“It’s not just what’s in the food, it’s what’s in the discourse about food…there is more than one way to eat badly,” said director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Centre David Katz.

However, many noted that there is a lack of a unified, factual consensus on what constitutes a healthy diet from a sustainable food system.

“Without goals to mobilise collective action, and also no mechanisms to either coordinate nor monitor progress, it is really hard to achieve large-scale system change,” said founder of EAT Foundation, a science-based global platform for food system transformation, Gunhild Stordalen.

Katz echoed similar sentiments, stating: “You will never get there if you can’t agree where there is…we must rally around a set of fundamental truths.”

Fighting the System

Among these truths is the need to overhaul the entire food and agricultural system.

Despite the notorious and shocking findings from the 2004 ‘Supersize Me’ documentary, the consumption of unhealthy processed foods and sugar has only increased.

According to the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition’s Food Sustainability Index (FSI) 2017, the United States had the highest sugar consumption out of 34 countries in 2017.

The average person in the U.S. consumes more than 126 grams of sugar per day, twice the amount that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends for daily intake.

This not only leads to increasing obesity rates, but it has also contributed to a rise in levels of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

“The number of lost years to nutritional deficiencies and cardiovascular diseases has been going up very sharply in the United States,” said Leo Abruzzese from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which develops the index.

“One of the U.S.’ less impressive exports has been bad nutrition…people aren’t necessarily dying but they are living pretty miserable lives. Under those circumstances, wouldn’t you think there has to be something done?” he told IPS.

The FSI also found that the U.S.’ consumption of meat and saturated fat is among the highest in the world, contributing to unhealthy diets and even climate change.

According to U.N. University, emissions from livestock account for almost 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Beef and dairy alone make up 65 percent of all livestock emissions.

In fact, meat and dairy companies are on track to become the world’s biggest contributors to climate change, surpassing the fossil fuel industry.

However, Stordalen noted that delivering healthy and sustainable diets is within our reach.

Alternatives to meat have taken many countries by storm, and could slowly transform the fast food and meat industries. Consumers can now find the ‘impossible burger,’ a meatless plant-based burger, in many restaurants and fast food chains such as White Castle.

Recently, the U.S.-based vegan meat companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods was recently honoured by U.N. Environment with the Champions of the Earth award.

“Sustainable food choices is starting to both look good and taste good which hasn’t been the story of the past,” Stordalen said.

“Once people get the taste of better solutions, they not only start craving but even demanding  a better future. They come together to make it happen,” she added.

The FSI is also a crucial tool to guide governments and policymakers to pay attention to progress and weaknesses in their own country’s food systems.

“By collecting all of these [indicators] together, we essentially have a framework for what we think a good food system would look like,” Abruzzese said.

In some African countries even though there is enough food, it is the type of food that is available that counts. In Malawi, for instance, even though families had increased access to maize, nearly half the children are malnourished. In this dated picture, these children from south Madagascar are malnourished. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

A Problem of Power

The lack of access to healthy food and its consequences can also be seen at the other end of the food value chain: producers.

Women account for up to 60 percent of agricultural labour across Africa, yet still have poor access to quality seeds, fertiliser, and mechanical equipment. At the same time, they often look after the household, taking care of children and cooking meals.

Such gender inequality has been found to contribute to poorer household nutrition, including increases in stunting among children.

Forum participants highlighted the need to empower women farmers and address the gender inequalities in agriculture in order to advance food and nutrition security as well as establish sustainable societies.

“The opposite of hunger is power,” said University of Texas’ research professor Raj Patel, pointing to the case of Malawi.

In Malawi, more than half of children suffer from chronic malnutrition. The harvesting of corn, which is the southeastern African country’s main staple, is designated to women who are also tasked with care work.

“Even when there was more food, there was more malnutrition,” said Patel.

One northern Malawian village tackled the issue through the Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities Project and achieved extraordinary results.

Alongside actions to diversify crop, the project brought men and women together to share the workload such as cooking together and involving men in care work.

Not only did they achieve gender equality in agriculture, the village also saw dramatic decreases in infant malnutrition.

“We need to value women’s work,” Patel said.

Future of Food

Fixing the food and agricultural system is no easy task, but it has to be done, attendees said.

“We know what the problems are, we’ve also identified the potential solutions…and the main solution is each and every one of us,” Di Leo told IPS.

One of the key solutions is education and empowering people to be agents of change.

“Healthy production will come if the consumer ask for the healthy eating. And healthy eating will come if the consumer has the right education and information,” Di Leo said.

For instance, many do not see or know the link between food and climate change, he added.

In fact, a 2016 study found that there was a lack of awareness of the association between meat consumption and climate change and a resistance to the idea of reducing personal meat consumption.

“It’s a kind of change that needs a bottom-up approach,” Di Leo said.

Stordalen echoed Di Leo’s comments, calling for a global ‘dugnad’—a Norwegian word describing the act of a community uniting and working together to achieve a goal that will serve them all.

“The state of the global food system calls for new collaborative action,” she said.

“It’s time to officially ditch the saying that ‘the more cooks, the worse soup’ because we need everybody involved to serve our people and planet the right future.”

A farmer harvests amaranth in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. This grain, of which two of the varieties originated in Mexico, is part of the country's traditional diet and can help boost nutrition among Mexicans, who have been affected by skyrocketing consumption of junk food. Credit: Courtesy of Bridge to Community Health

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 2 2018 (IPS)

Manuel Villegas is one of the peasant farmers who decided to start planting amaranth in Mexico, to complement their corn and bean crops and thus expand production for sale and self-consumption and, ultimately, contribute to improving the nutrition of their communities.

“Amaranth arrived in this part of the country in 2009, and some farmers were already growing it when I began to grow it in 2013. It’s growing, but slowly,” Villegas, who is coordinator of the non-governmental Amaranth Network in the Mixteca region, in the southern state of Oaxaca, told IPS.

This crop has produced benefits such as the organisation of farmers, processors and consumers, the obtaining of public funding, as well as improving the nutrition of both consumers and growers."There was an increase in availability and accessibility of overly-processed foods. The State failed to implement public prevention policies. Children live in an obesogenic environment (an environment that promotes gaining weight and is not conducive to weight loss). It's a vulnerable group and companies take advantage of that to increase their sales," -- Fiorella Espinosa

“We have made amaranth part of our daily diet. It improves the diet because of its nutritional qualities, combined with other high-protein seeds,” said Villegas, who lives in the rural area of the municipality of Tlaxiaco, with about 34,000 inhabitants.

The peasant farmers brought together by the network in their region plant some 40 hectares of amaranth, although the effects of climate change forced them to cut back production to 12 tons in 2017 and six this year, due to a drought affecting the area. To cover their self-consumption, they keep 10 percent of the annual harvest.

Native products such as amaranth, in addition to defending foods from the traditional Mexican diet, help to contain the advance of obesity, which has become an epidemic in this Latin American country of nearly 130 million people, with health, social and economic consequences.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) states in “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018,” published in August, that the prevalence of overweight among children under five fell from nine percent to 5.2 percent between 2012 and 2017. That means that the number of overweight children under that age fell from one million to 600,000.

On the other hand, the prevalence of obesity among the adult population (18 years and older) increased, from 26 percent to 28.4 percent. The number of obese adults went from 20.5 million to 24.3 million during the period.

The consequences of the phenomenon are also clear. One example is that mortality from diabetes type 2, the most common, climbed from 70.8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013 to 84.7 in 2016, according to an update of indicators published in May by several institutions, including the health ministry.

Another impact reported in the same study is that deaths from high blood pressure went up from 16 per 100,000 inhabitants to 18.5.

Members of the Alliance for Food Health, a collective of organisations and academics, called in Mexico for better regulation of advertising of junk food aimed at children and of food and beverage labelling, during the launch of the report “A childhood hooked on obesity” in Mexico City in August. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

But the most eloquent and worrying data is that one in three children is obese or overweight, according to a report published in August by the non-governmental Alliance for Food Health, a group of organisations and academics.

What lies behind

Specialists and activists agree that among the root causes of the phenomenon is the change in eating habits, where the traditional diet based on age-old products has gradually been replaced by junk food, high in sugar, salt, fats, artificial colorants and other ingredients, which is injected from childhood through exposure to poorly regulated advertising.

The latest National Health and Nutrition Survey found low proportions of regular consumption of most recommended food groups, such as vegetables, fruits and legumes, in all population groups. For example, 40 percent of the calories children ages one to five eat come from over-processed foods.

For Fiorella Espinosa, a researcher on dietary health at the civil association The Power of Consumers, the liberalisation of trade in Mexico since the 1990s, the lack of regulation of advertising and nutritional labels of products, the displacement of native foods and the prioritisation of extensive farming over traditional farming are factors that led to the crisis.

“There was an increase in availability and accessibility of overly-processed foods. The State failed to implement public prevention policies. Children live in an obesogenic environment (an environment that promotes gaining weight and is not conducive to weight loss). It’s a vulnerable group and companies take advantage of that to increase their sales,” she told IPS.

The 2017 Food Sustainability Index, produced by the Italian non-governmental Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN), showed that this country, the second-largest in terms of population and economy in Latin America, has indicators reflecting a prevalence of over-eating, low physical activity and inadequate dietary patterns.

The index, which ranks France first, followed by Japan and Germany, analyses 34 nations with respect to sustainable agriculture, nutritional challenges and food loss and waste.

Obesity “is an epidemic that cannot be solved by nutrition education alone. It has structural determinants, such as the political environment, international trade, the environment and culture. It has social and economic barriers,” Simón Barquera, director of the Nutrition and Health Research Centre at the state-run National Institute of Public Health, told IPS.

Therefore, the Alliance for Food Health proposes a comprehensive strategy against overweight and obesity, which includes a law that incorporates increased taxes on unhealthy products, adequate labelling, better regulation of advertising and promotion of breastfeeding, among other measures.

The contribution of lifesaver crops such as amaranth

The organisations dedicated to the issue also highlight the recovery underway in communities in several states of traditional crops such as amaranth, a plant present in local food for 5,000 years and highly appreciated in the past because its grain contains twice the protein of corn and rice in addition to being rich in vitamins.

“We are looking for ways to generate changes at the community level in agriculture, food and family economy, focused on the cultivation of amaranth. We have realised that there has been a devaluation of the countryside and its role in adequate nutrition,” said Mauricio Villar, director of Social Economy for the non-governmental organisation Bridge to Nutritional Health.

Villar, also the coordinator of the Liaison Group for the Promotion of Amaranth in Mexico ,explained to IPS that “we are increasing our appreciation of peasant life and production, with impacts at different levels on nutrition,” to correct bad eating habits.

But according to Yatziri Zepeda, founder of the non-governmental AliMente Project, these local experiences, no matter how valuable their contribution, are limited in scope.

“These initiatives may generate changes at the local level and address some of the problems, but they are not sufficient to protect the right to health, among others. Obesity is not a matter of individual decisions, but of public policy. It is a political issue, there are very important corporate interests. It is multicausal and systemic,” she told IPS.

A mother and a child in Melghat district, an area in India with high rates of malnourishment. The government’s new POSHAN campaign aims to curb malnutrition by a significant margin by also using smartphones to collect relevant data. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MAYURBHANJ DISTRICT, India, Sep 26 2018 (IPS)

Kanaklata Raula from Kaptipada village in India’s Mayurbhanj District is on duty 24×7. The 52-year-old community health worker from Odisha state rides a bicycle for hours each day, visiting community members who need nutrition and reproductive healthcare.

Raula’s main job is to ensure that the women and young children in her community are using the integrated free basic healthcare and nutrition services at the government-run community health and nutrition centre, locally known as Anganwadi.“Technology alone is not enough, we need to also reach the unreached population like the migrants who are too poor to afford a nutritious meal.” -- Laila Garda, the director of the KEM Hospital Research Centre in Pune city.

Raula monitors the health of all children under the age of six, checks their weight and their growth, ensures they are immunised and advises their mothers and other pregnant and nursing women on basic healthcare and nutrition. She then encourages them to regularly visit the Anganwadi.

But most important of all her duties, Raula is the record keeper of the community and notes, through numbers and statistics, the health of her patients. She then submits regular reports on the health of the community to the government.

“I am in charge of five villages. There are 300 families and more than 80 percent of them are poor tribal people. Without Anganwadi they will not be able to get proper nutrition for their children or necessary health supplements for themselves,” Raula, who received the best Anganwadi worker award in July by Plan India, the Indian arm of Plan International, tells IPS.

Life has gotten a little easier for Raula as the ministry of women and child development has decided to provide Anganwadi workers with smartphones or tablets with software especially designed to make their record-keeping and reporting easier.

India currently has the fourth-highest number of stunted people in the workforce in the world. Of these, 66 percent of  stunting is a result of childhood malnutrition, says a new World Bank report.

The recent National Family Health Survey 2015-2016 shows that while there is a declining trend in child stunting, the levels remain high at 38.4 percent in 2015/2016.

The survey noted increased levels of child wasting (where one’s weight is too low for their height); from 19.8 percent in 2005/2006 to 21 percent in 2015/2016. The country also has high levels of anaemia among children–58.4 percent of children under the age of six are anaemic.

To curb the alarming rate of malnutrition and stunting, India launched a new nutrition drive last November called Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonise Action for Nutrition (POSHAN). With a total budget of nine billion rupees (USD126 million), the campaign has an ambitious goal: to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anaemia and low birth weights by about two to three percent per annum.

According to information shared in national parliament by India’s minister of women and child development Maneka Gandhi, POSHAN is using:

• a mobile application that is made available to the community healthcare workers and is pre-loaded on mobile phones and,
• a six-tier monitoring dashboard for desktops.

IT for ground data

But how will smartphones be used by the Anganwadi workers while in the field?

Pramila Rani Brahma, the social welfare minister for Assam state, in north eastern India, explains that the phones will be loaded with software called the Common Application System or CAS, which was specially built for the POSHAN campaign and developed in collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Anganwadi workers will use the software to enter the details of their patients, including the number of children they see, their health updates, weight etc., and will send this report to headquarters.

Data on service delivery and its impact on nutrition outcomes will also be collected.

The desktop monitoring system will be used to monitor the delivery of services to children, pregnant women and lactating mothers. It will analyse the ground data and map the weight efficiency, height and nutrition status of children under five years.

“There are a total 11 registers which I have to regularly maintain. It [usually] takes many hours. I think it will save me a lot of time, which I can spend on serving the community better. I think it will also help send the information much more quickly to the higher officials,” Raula tells IPS.

According to Brahma, the 61,000-strong Anganwadi workers in Assam state have been struggling to submit their daily reports and even demanded computers or laptops.

There are currently nearly 1.3 million Anganwadi workers across India – all of whom will receive a simple, android data-enabled smartphone, according to the government. The phones will be distributed by the respective state governments, while the federal government and its ministry of women and child development will provide the funds.

“I was informed that, there are provisions to provide smartphones to the Anganwadi workers and several other states have already taken this initiative. We will provide the smartphones to the Anganwadi workers within a short period of time,” Brahma said to a group of journalists – which included IPS – at a state-organised workshop on nutrition in Guwahati, Assam.

An early success story

The IT-enabled nutrition campaign has already reaped some results, when it was first rolled out in June.

“We have given over 50,000 cellphones to Anganwadi workers through which they give us daily reports on how many children were provided food, how many were weighed, etc,” Gandhi said at press conference in New Delhi. “Until now, we have identified 12,000 children (as severely underweight) and we are following up on their status with the district officials,” she said.

Besides collecting numbers, Anganwadi workers are also using the smartphones for  surveying houses in their neighbourhoods and even sending photos of children eating a hot cooked meal at the Anganwadi.

An uphill task ahead

However, despite the new campaign, the road ahead for India to become malnutrition-neutral remains a difficult one.

One of the main reasons for this is that the country still has a huge population that continues to face acute hunger. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nation’s report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2018, some 159 million of the country’s 1.3 billion people are undernourished.

The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition’s Food Sustainability Index (FSI) 2017 ranks 34 countries across three pillars: sustainable agriculture; nutritional challenges; and food loss and waste. India ranks close to bottom on the index at 33. According to the index India ranks 32 in the world in food sustainability and human development. The centre will be hosting an international forum on food and nutrition this week as a side event to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday Sept. 28. One of the topics to be discussed is food and migration.

Kavita, a 22 year old domestic worker in Hyderabad’s Uppal neighbourhood, presents a perfect example of this.

She is a migrant labourer from Mahbubnagar—a rural district some 150 km away from Hyderabad—and despite labouring for nearly 12 hours each day, she is unable to afford a nutritious meal for her and her 18-month old daughter.

Every day Kavita cooks a simple meal of rice and tomato chutney for her and her child. Both the mother and daughter appear underweight and malnourished with a yellowish tinge to their hair and dark circles under their eyes. But the mother says that she has no time to visit an Anganwadi.

“I start working at 5 am and finish only at 4 pm. I have to work seven days a week. If I take one holiday, my employers will fire me. I heard that at the Anganwadi they give dhal, curry and even eggs to children. But I can’t afford to leave work and take my child there,” she tells IPS.

There are millions of poor migrants and floating workers like Kavita across urban India who are not aware of the government facilities or the POSHAN campaign and continue to be left out of these initiatives. According to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, there were 326 million internal migrants in the country as of 2007/2008.

Unless this huge population is covered, it will be difficult to achieve the targets of the POSHAN campaign, says Laila Garda, the director of the KEM Hospital Research Centre in Pune city, Maharashtra.

“Technology alone is not enough, we need to also reach the unreached population like the migrants who are too poor to afford a nutritious meal,” Garda, who has been working in community health for nearly two decades, tells IPS.

Chuna Ram, a community reporter and nutrition activist in Barmer, Rajastahan—one of the states in the country with the highest rate of malnutrition—says that government action must go beyond the rhetoric.

In Rajasthan, he says, the government has talked of providing smartphones  to the Anganwadi workers, but it has not happened yet.

“The general election is going to take place in 2019, so the government is making a lot of promises to woo the voters. But how much of these promises will actually be kept will decide how far the situation will change,” he tells IPS.

Fruit and vegetable prices in South Africa have increased to the point that poorer people have had to remove them from their grocery lists. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 10 2018 (IPS)

Every Sunday afternoon, Thembi Majola* cooks a meal of chicken and rice for her mother and herself in their home in Alexandra, an informal settlement adjacent to South Africa’s wealthy economic hub, Sandton.

“Vegetables is only on Sunday,” Majola tells IPS, adding that these constitute potatoes, sweet potato and pumpkin. Majola, who says she weighs 141 kgs, has trouble walking short distances as it generally leaves her out of breath. And she has been on medication for high blood pressure for almost two decades now.“It is precisely a justice issue because at the very least our economy should be able to provide access to sufficient and nutritious food. Because, at the basis of our whole humanity, at the very basis of our body, is our nutrition." -- Mervyn Abrahams, Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group

“Maize is a first priority,” she says of the staple item that always goes into her shopping basket. “Every Saturday I eat boerewors [South African sausage]. And on Sunday it is chicken and rice. During the week, I eat mincemeat once and then most of the time I fill up my stomach with [instant] cup a soup,” she says of her diet.

Majola is one of about 68 percent of South African women who are overweight or obese, according to the South African Demographic and Health Survey. The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition’s Food Sustainability Index (FSI) 2017 ranks 34 countries across three pillars: sustainable agriculture; nutritional challenges; and food loss and waste.  South Africa ranks in the third quartile of the index in 19th place. However, the country has a score of 51 on its ability to address nutritional challenges. The higher the score, the greater the progress the country has made. South Africa’s score is lower than a number of countries on the index.

Families go into debt to pay for basic foods

Many South Africans are eating a similar diet to Majola’s not out of choice, but because of affordability.

Dr. Kirthee Pillay, lecturer of dietetics and human nutrition at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, tells IPS that the increase of carbohydrate-based foods as a staple in most people’s diets is cost-related.

“Fruit and vegetable prices have increased to the point that poorer people have had to remove them from their grocery lists.”

The Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action (Pacsa), a social justice non-governmental organisation, noted last October in its annual food barometer report that while the median wage for black South Africans is USD209 a month, a monthly food basket that is nutritionally complete costs USD297.

The report also noted that food expenditure from households arise out of the monies left over after non-negotiable expenses, such as transport, electricity, debt and education needs have been paid first. And this resulted in many families incurring debt in order to meet their food bills.

“Staples are cheaper and more filling and people depend on these, especially when there is less money available for food and many people to feed. Fruit and vegetables are becoming luxury food items for many people given the increasing cost of food. Thus, the high dependence on cheaper, filling staples. However, an excessive intake of carbohydrate-rich foods can increase risk for obesity,” Pillay tells IPS via email.

Majola works at a national supermarket chain, with her only dependent being her elderly mother. She says her grocery bill comes to about USD190 each month, higher than what most average families can afford, but agrees that the current cost of fruit and vegetables are a luxury item for her.

“They are a bit expensive now. Maybe they can sell them at a lesser price,” she says, adding that if she could afford it, she would have vegetables everyday. “Everything comes from the pocket.”

Monopoly of Food Chain Creating a System that Makes People Ill

David Sanders, emeritus professor at the school of public health at the University of the Western Cape, says that South Africans have a very high burden of ill health, much of which is related to their diet.

But he adds that large corporates dominate every node of the food chain in the country, starting from inputs and production, all the way to processing, manufacturing and retail. “So it is monopolised all the way up the food system from the farm to the fork.”

“The food system is creating, for poor people anyway, a quite unhealthy food environment. So for well-off people there is sufficient choice and people can afford a nutritionally-adequate diet, even one of quite high quality.

“But poor people can’t. In most cases, the great majority, don’t have a kind of subsistence farming to fall back on because of land policies and the fact that in the 24 years of democracy there hasn’t been significant development of small scale farming,” Sanders, who is one of the authors of a report on food systems in Brazil, South Africa and Mexico, tells IPS.

According to the report, about 35,000 medium and large commercial farmers produce most of South Africa’s food.

In addition, Sanders points out that a vast majority of rural South Africans purchase, rather than grow, their own food.

“The food they can afford tends to be largely what we call ultra processed or processed food. That often provides sufficient calories but not enough nutrients. It tends to be quite low often in good-quality proteins and low in vitamins and minerals – what we call hyper nutrients.

“So the latter situation results in quite a lot of people becoming overweight and obese. And yet they are poorly nourished,” Sanders explains.

The Sugar Tax Not Enough to Stem Epidemic of Obesity

In April, South Africa introduced the Sugary Beverages Levy, which charges manufacturers 2.1 cents per gram of sugar content that exceeds 4g per 100 ml. The levy is part of the country’s department of health’s efforts to reduce obesity.

Pillay says while it is still too early to tell if the tax will be effective, in her opinion “customers will fork out the extra money being charged for sugar-sweetened beverages. Only the very poor may decide to stop buying them because of cost.”

Sander’s points out “it’s not just the level of obesity, it is the rate at which this has developed that is so alarming.”

A study shows that the number of young South Africans suffering from obesity doubled in the last six years, while it had taken the United States 13 years for this to happen.

“Here is an epidemic of nutrition, diet-related diseases, which has unfolded extremely rapidly and is just as big and as threatening and expensive as the HIV epidemic, and yet it is going largely unnoticed.”

Overweight people have a risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and hypertension, which places them at risk for heart disease. One of South Africa’s largest medical aid schemes estimated in a report that the economic impact on the country was USD50 billion a year.

“Even if people knew what they should eat there is very very little room for manoeuvre. There is some, but not much,” Sanders says adding that people should rather opt to drink water rather than purchase sugary beverages.

“Education and awareness is a factor but I would say that these big economic drivers are much more important.”

Sanders says that questions need to be asked about how the control of the country’s food system and food chain can “be shifted towards smaller and more diverse production and manufacture and distributions.”

“Those are really the big questions. It would require very targeted and strong policies on the part of government. That would be everything from preferentially financing small operators [producers, manufacturers and retailers]…at every level there would have to be incentives, not just financial, but training and support also,” he says.

Pillay agrees that the increase in food prices “needs to be addressed as it directly influences what people are able to buy and eat. … Sustainable agriculture should assist in reducing the prices of locally-grown fruit and vegetables and to make them more available to South African consumers.”

Mervyn Abrahams, one of the authors of the Pacsa report, now a programme coordinator at the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group, tells IPS that the organisation is campaigning for a living wage that should be able to provide households with a basic and sufficient nutrition in their food basket. The matter, he says, is one of economic justice.

“It is precisely a justice issue because at the very least our economy should be able to provide access to sufficient and nutritious food. Because, at the basis of our whole humanity, at the very basis of our body, is our nutrition. And so it is the most basic level by which we believe that the economy should be judged, to see whether there is equity and justice in our economic arena.”

*Not her real name.

The weakness of poor farmers and the growth of low-nutrition crops have been, until now, some of the deterrents of efficient agriculture. Esmilda Sánchez picks string beans on the Finca de Semillas farm. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Carmen Arroyo
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 24 2018 (IPS)

Significantly more investment is needed to lift hundreds of millions rural poor out of poverty and make agriculture environmentally sustainable, according to Rob Vos, director of the markets, trade and institutions division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

With a growing world population, hunger and undernutrition are on the rise, and governments are looking for private alliances to alleviate these issues.“The world has over-invested in low-nutrition staple crops, driving up the relative price of nutrition rich-foods. Empty calories is the food system of the poor." -- John Coonrod, executive vice-president, the Hunger Project.

During the 2018 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, this July, IFPRI organised a side event called “Investing for Reshaping Food Systems”.

Speakers included Claudia Sadoff, director general for the International Water Management Institute; Nichola Dyer, from the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme at the World Bank; Gerda Verburg, coordinator at the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement (SUN); and Chantal-Line Carpentier, chief at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

They all emphasised the urgency of investing in sustainable agriculture, defined by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition as “the efficient production of safe, healthy, and high-quality agricultural products, in a way that is environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable.”

While the world population will reach over eight billion people in 2025, the amount of cultivable land will remain the same. Decimated by pesticides, non-sustainable agricultural techniques, and water waste, healthy nutrients will become harder to access for the growing population. This issue, along with food waste (20 percent of every food purchase is wasted), is a major concern for Verburg, who highlighted the need to rethink food systems and stop blaming agriculture.

The relationship between the private sector and agriculture isn’t new. On the contrary, many farmers-especially the poorest ones-are members of the private sector.

“The majority of poor and hungry people are small-scale farmers. They are in fact members of the private sector, albeit the weakest. And some corporate investments in agriculture can hurt them,” John Coonrod, executive vice-president at the Hunger Project, told IPS.

The weakness of poor farmers and the growth of low-nutrition crops have been, until now, some of the deterrents of efficient agriculture.

“The world has over-invested in low-nutrition staple crops, driving up the relative price of nutrition rich-foods. Empty calories is the food system of the poor. To overcome malnutrition, we need to increase the dietary diversity of the poor to include many more fruits and vegetables, which means increasing their local production and reducing their price to local consumers,” Coonrod explained.

How can private investment develop sustainable agriculture? Vos from IFPRI said that a first priority should be to provide incentives for investments beyond farms “in infrastructure like roads, electricity and cold transportation and agri-food processing.”

“This will help provide better and more stable market conditions for farmers, create lots of new jobs, and limit the risks of investing in agriculture itself,” he said.

He also added that “the second priority is to provide incentives for investing in sustainable practices and crop diversification, including towards fruits and vegetables.”

Brian Bogart, senior regional programme advisor for South Africa to the U.N. World Food Programme, agreed with Vos.

“Key areas for investment to equity in food systems include rural infrastructure, access to markets, knowledge and technology, and improved storage and transport capacity to reduce post-harvest losses,” Bogart said.

What about governments?

During the event, Verburg, from SUN, pointed out the importance of political commitment and leadership within countries to reduce hunger and reshape food systems.

When asked about the role of national governments, Bogart said: “Member states have a responsibility to lead such efforts by developing effective partnerships with the private sector and fostering an enabling environment for investment.”

“With shrinking public investment in agriculture (according to the Secretary General’s progress report on the SDGs, government expenditure as a percentage of GDP declined from .38 to .23 between 2001 and 2016 and international aid allocations for agriculture declined by 20 percent between the mid-1980s and 2016), the question is how public-private partnerships can unlock opportunities for private investment to complement public resources and capacity to generate improved food security, particularly for the most vulnerable populations,” he added.

Some countries are already doing this. The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition’s Food Sustainability Index on sustainable agriculture; nutritional challenges; and food loss and waste which ranks 34 countries according to eight categories, which are in turn divided among 35 indicators, reveals that France, Japan, Germany score highest.

However, responsibility does not lie solely with the state, but with civil society also. Coonrod, from the Hunger Project, explained what his organisation does in this regard: “We promote good nutrition through education, promoting better local farming methods, increasing local food processing and, in indigenous communities of Latin America, we’ve opposed junk food and helped communities reclaim their nutritious traditional foods.”

Finally, Vos highlighted the importance of research in reducing hunger.

“We undertake research to better understand the causes underlying the deficiencies in the present food systems and test out the effectiveness of interventions that aim to overcome these shortcomings. We know far too little on what is driving food system change, not just in agriculture, but in all stages of the food chain, from farm to fork.”

A soybean plantation in Tocantins, a state in central Brazil, where this monoculture crop is beginning to cover the best lands, following in the footsteps of the neighbouring state of Mato Grosso, the largest producer and exporter of soy and maize in the country, which "imports" the food it consumes from faraway areas. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 16 2018 (IPS)

Brazil is one of the world’s largest agricultural producers and exporters, but its food supply has become seriously deficient due to food insecurity, unsustainability and poor nutrition, according to a number of studies.

A week-long nationwide strike by truck drivers, that began on May 21, revealed the precariousness of the food supply, which practically collapsed in the large Brazilian cities, at least in terms of perishable goods such as vegetables and eggs, said the National Agroecology Alliance (ANA).

Brazil ranks 28th out of 34 countries in the Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by the Italian Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition, together with the British magazine The Economist’s Intelligence Unit."Monoculture agriculture, without interaction with the ecosystems, is based heavily on imports of inputs, including oil; it degrades the environment, causes erosion and deforestation, in contrast to agriculture as it was practiced in the past, which valued soil nutrients." -- Paulo Petersen

In Latin America, Colombia (13), Argentina (18) and Mexico (22) are the best rated, according to this index based on 58 indicators that measure three variables: sustainable agriculture, nutritional challenges and food waste.

But the United States, the world’s largest producer of agricultural products, also ranks only 21st in the FSI, reflecting the same discrepancy between agriculture and sustainable food, which is also not directly related to the countries’ per capita income levels.

“The Brazilian food system is unsustainable in environmental, social and economic terms,” said Elisabetta Recine, head of the National Council for Food and Nutritional Security (Consea), an advisory body to the president of Brazil, with two-thirds of its 60 members coming from civil society.

“Production has become increasingly concentrated, as well as trade. This means food has to be transported long distances, driving up costs and increasing the consumption of durable, industrialised and less healthy food in the cities,” Recine, who teaches nutrition at the University of Brasilia, told IPS.

This is well illustrated by the four supermarkets of the Kinfuku chain in the region of Alta Floresta, in the northern part of the state of Mato Grosso, located on the southern border of the Amazon rainforest.

They sell food transported weekly by truck from the southern state of Paraná, more than 2,000 km away, owner Pedro Kinfuku told IPS at one of their stores.

Mato Grosso is the country’s largest producer of maize and soy, monoculture crops destined mainly for export or for the animal feed industry, which monopolise local lands, driving out crops for human food.

This “long cycle of production and consumption” is part of the system whose insecurity was highlighted by the truck drivers’ strike over the space of just a few days, said Recine.

A group of children eat lunch at a school in Itaboraí, 45 km from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where thanks to the National School Meals Programme (PNAE) the students in public schools eat vegetables and fresh food from local family farms. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

This phenomenon also concentrates wealth, generates little employment and increases social inequality in the country, while environmentally it exacerbates the use of agrochemicals, she said.

Brazil, which had managed to be removed from the United Nations Hunger Map in 2014, has once again seen a rise in malnutrition and infant mortality, in the face of “budget cuts in social programmes, growing unemployment and the general impoverishment of the population,” the nutritionist lamented.

At the same time, “obesity is increasing in all age groups throughout the country, directly related to the poor quality of food and the lack of preventive actions, such as the creation of healthy food environments, with regulations that restrict certain products,” said the president of Consea.

“We have to consider the food system from the soil and the seed to post-consumption, the waste,” she said.

The “structural problem” of the mode of production, the transport, distribution and consumption of food in the world today, particularly in Brazil, is the result of “two disconnects, one between agriculture and nature and the other between production and consumption,” said agronomist Paulo Petersen, vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Agroecology.

Monoculture agriculture, “without interaction with the ecosystems, is based heavily on imports of inputs, including oil; it degrades the environment, causes erosion and deforestation, in contrast to agriculture as it was practiced in the past, which valued soil nutrients,” he said in an interview with IPS.

For Petersen, consumption is increasingly moving away from agricultural production in physical distance, and also because of the processing chain, which is generating waste and “homogenising habits of consumption of ultra-processed foods and excess sugar, sodium, fats and preservatives, leading to obesity and non-communicable diseases.”

A large line of trucks slows down traffic in Anápolis, a logistics hub in central Brazil, at an intersection, where thousands of trucks circulate daily transporting food, industrial products and supplies, in all directions in this enormous country. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

All of this, he said, has to do with climate change, the loss of biodiversity, growing health problems, the concentration of land ownership and the dominant power of agribusiness and large corporations.

“It is necessary to reorganise the food system, to change its logic, and that is the State’s obligation,” said Petersen, also executive coordinator of the non-governmental organisation Advisory Service for Alternative Agriculture Projects (ASPTA)- Family Agriculture and Agroecology, and member of the executive board of the National Agroecology Alliance (ANA) network.

Brazil launched positive actions in the food sector, such as the government’s School Meals Programme, which establishes a minimum of 30 percent of family farming products in the food offered by public schools to its students, thus improving the nutritional quality of their diet.

In addition, family farming was recognised as the source of most of the food consumed in the country, and a low-interest credit programme was created for this sector.

The problem, according to Petersen, is that this financing sometimes foments the same vices of industrial large-scale agriculture, such as monoculture and the use of agrochemicals.

There is a growing awareness of the negative aspects of agribusiness and the need for agro-ecological practices, as well as initiatives scattered throughout the country, but the dominant agricultural sector exercises its power in a way that blocks change, he said.

The bulk of agricultural credit, technical assistance, land concentrated in the hands of a few large landowners, and influence on state power all favour large-scale farmers, who also have the largest parliamentary caucus to pass “their” laws, Petersen said.

A vegetable garden in Santa Maria de Jetibá, of the 220-member Cooperative of Family Farmers of the Serrana Region, the largest supplier of vegetables and fruit to schools in the municipality of Vitoria, in the southeast of Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

In Brazil, there are 4.4 million family farms, which make up 84 percent of rural establishments and produce more than half of the food, according to official figures.

But they have little influence in the government in the face of the power of a few dozen large producers.

Food banks are also an example of good, albeit limited, actions to reduce waste and the risks of malnutrition in the most vulnerable segments of the population.

They emerged from isolated initiatives in the 1990s and were adopted as a government programme in 2016, with the creation of the Brazilian Network of Food Banks, under the coordination of the Ministry of Social Development.

In 1994, the Social Trade Service (SESC), made up of companies in the sector, also began to create food banks in its own network, which it named Mesa Brasil (Brazil Board). By the end of 2017, it had 90 units in operation in 547 cities.

That year, the network served 1.46 million people per day and distributed 40,575 tons of food.

It is the largest network of such centres in the country, but it has proven insufficient in a country of 208 million people and 5,570 cities.

Mesa Brasil makes use of food that would no longer be sold by stores, because of commercial regulations, but which is in perfect condition, and delivers it to social institutions.

“It also promotes educational actions for workers and volunteers from social organisations and collaborators from donor companies,” on food and nutritional security, according to Ana Cristina Barros, SESC’s manager of aid at the national level.

“One of our biggest difficulties is the legal obstacles that prevent food companies from making donations, which are increasingly interested in doing so,” she told IPS.

A Greek flag waving in the locality of Oia, Greece. Credit: Matt Artz on Unsplash

By Maged Srour
ROME, Jun 8 2018 (IPS)

Seven years after being on the verge of a financial collapse, Greece is now seeing better times. Its economic accounts have clearly improved but what is not under the spotlight is how the Greek people are still paying for the effects of the crisis.

During these past years, the country has achieved some partial gains. It is the first time, since 2011, that economic accounts of Greece are so encouraging that the country is looking with some optimism to the month of August 2018 when the last phase of European aid will be over definitely.

The purchasing power of the people has fallen by approximately 29% and unemployment has reached 23% for adult workers and, a stunning 40% for young people

The surplus during the first nine months of 2017 was 2.2% higher related to the 1.75% imposed by the European Union. The GDP growth was 1.9% in 2017 and estimates show it will reach 2.5% in 2018.

Among the most significant levers of the Greek recovery is the increase of its exports. In particular, the production and sale of liqueurs, as well as the car industry are both stimulating growth. Tourism remains a pillar of the Greek economy. In 2017, it was 17% higher than the year before.

However, despite these positive signs, the reality on the ground is bitter sweet. The purchasing power of the people has fallen by approximately 29% and unemployment has reached 23% for adult workers and, a stunning 40% for young people. Greece might not risk that default that was feared a few years ago but the ordinary people are facing tough challenges even to meet some basic needs such as covering rents and paying bills.

The people in general are far from being out of the crisis. However, while living this situation of high unemployment and uncertainty about their future, the Greeks have started, during these past few years, to turn back to the land in order to earn money.

Agriculture is the main sector that has not suffered in a substantial way and, has been constantly showing (relatively) positive signs. According to the Panhellenic Confederation of Unions of Agricultural Cooperatives, during the first years of the crisis, between 2008 and 2010, agriculture created 32,000 new jobs and the majority of these jobs were taken up by Greek nationals.

Those who owned a plot of land, in some cases inherited, on a small island or in the countryside, decided to leave the dramatic situation in Athens and return to their lands to work on ecotourism or farming.

Credit: Vesela Vaclavikova on Unsplash

Additionally, many young people started to show interest in the faculties of agriculture, as applications for such courses tripled in the past few years. However, among those who decided to abandon the urban areas to live and work in the rural ones, the majority are aged between 40 and 60 years old. The majority of these people had lost their jobs just before retirement, waiting to receive their pension.

According to the Food Sustainability Index (FSI) 2017, which was developed in collaboration between the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and the Economist Intelligence Unit with the objective to “promote knowledge on food sustainability”, Greece earned a positive score in sustainable agriculture.

The FSI ranks 34 countries according to their food system sustainability. It aims to highlight issues across three pillars: food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges. Despite having only a mid-level score for food loss and waste, and minimal scores for the policy response to food loss, “Greece earned a high score for sustainable agriculture, with a strong performance for the air category (GHG emissions), and for sub-indicators such as diversification of agricultural system, land ownership and sustainability of water withdrawal serving to bring up the score in the land and water categories”.

When considered in conjunction with the water scarcity situation of the country, this high score in the agricultural sector gains an additional prize. Indeed, according to the FSI, the average number of months of freshwater scarcity in Greece is six and despite that, the country has been able to maintain a high level of performance in the sector.

Not surprisingly, Greece has recently showed interest in sharing its high expertise and level of innovations in agro-technology with Qatar in a bid to develop and support the tiny Gulf country’s agriculture sector and self-sufficiency initiatives.

Greece’s third bailout is due to expire in August 2018 and the Hellenic country aims to return to a path of growth after years of crisis and uncertainty. During the Fourth Agricultural Business Summit, which took place in Larissa on May 3, 2018, organized by The Economist under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Rural Development and Food, experts and policymakers gathered to discuss the priorities and challenges that need to be resolved as of 2018 and beyond in the field of agriculture in relation to business.

The analysts discussed if Greece could play a leading role in South-East Europe and whether the Greek Agribusiness sector will be able to transform uncertainty into stability, competitiveness and growth.

It is hard to forecast with accuracy the outcome of the next following months and years but, the fact that the Greek establishment (academia, businesses, policymakers, etc.) is showing its willingness to act and implement a concrete roadmap to end the crisis through the SDG Agenda, means that the country strongly believes in Agenda 2030which is the driving force to start growing again.

In addition, a study, published by SEV Business Council for Sustainable Development and conducted by the Climate Change and Sustainability Services Practice of Ernst & Young in Greece highlighted “to identify the current status in Greece, regarding the level of awareness, readiness and willingness of Greek companies towards integrating the SDGs in their strategy”. One of the key findings of the study brings some optimism for the future of Greece.

For example, regarding awareness and readiness on SDGs among Greek companies, the study revealed that “senior executives, regardless of company size, have a high level of knowledge of sustainable development issues related to the Goals. The engagement and awareness of middle management executives on sustainable development issues related to the Goals constitute a crucial factor for their successful implementation”.

Beginning in August 2018, the economic system of Greece will once again have to walk on its own legs. Many analysts believe that the commitment of Greek authorities in the past few years in planning and implementing a sustainable agenda will help Athens to develop in the next future without the support of the EU and IMF.

By the end of 2018, we will undoubtedly have the first answers to this dilemma and the 2019 elections will also tell us if the Greek people view the government’s efforts of the past few years as the best it could do and achieve.

Pulses are good for nutrition and income, particularly for women farmers who look after household food security, like those shown here at a village outside Lusaka, Zambia. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Daan Bauwens
BRUSSELS, Jun 8 2018 (IPS)

Lawmakers at the highest levels urgently need a “revolution in thinking” to tackle the twin problem of sustainable food production and migration. Starting with an inaugural event in Brussels, then travelling on to New York and Milan, an international team of experts led by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) is urging far-reaching reforms in agricultural and migration policy on an international scale.

“We should be scared about the situation that is in front of us, but we should also be fascinated by the solution,” Paolo Barilla, BCFN Vice Chairman, said at the start of the first International Forum on Food and Nutrition which took place June 6 in Brussels."As we see it right now, there is no strategy at all at governmental levels in the EU to deal with migration, let alone how food policy might help.” --Lucio Caracciolo

Barilla and several experts speaking at the event pointed out the many problems lying ahead involving world-wide sustainable food production.

“One third of all food worldwide is thrown away, nearly one billion people go to sleep hungry every night and in the meantime, 650 million are obese. We urgently need new comprehensive, multi-stakeholder food systems to fix this situation,” said Andrea Renda, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, organizer of the event together with BCFN and the United Nations Sustainable Solutions Network (UN SDSN).

“In thirty years we will need to feed nine billion people. But at the same time, because of climate change the arable land is diminishing. The Sahara desert has increased ten percent in size the last decade and the South of Italy and Spain are drying up. How will we feed everyone?” asked Lucio Caracciolo, geostrategist and President of research company MacroGeo.

The experts called on all states that are signatory to the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda to urgently establish an Intergovernmental Panel on Food and Nutrition, modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who succesfully achieved international consensus on how to tackle climate change.

Moreover, they called upon the EU to change the focus of its agricultural policies from simply increasing production to focusing on new systems that assure healthy, nutritious, affordable diets for everyone. Instead of a “Common Agricultural Policy,” the EU should shift to a “Agri-Food Policy.”

“In the current EU Common Agricultural Policy, two-thirds of the subsidies have nothing to do with sustainable development,” Andrea Renda tells IPS, “and one third is spent on innovation in agriculture, in a broader, more holistic approach. This must at least be reversed.”

Throughout the event, hunger and food insecurity were repeatedly cited as the long-term drivers of migration across the Mediterranean. For the occasion of the event, MacroGeo launched a 109-page report on the nexus between migration across the Mediterranean and food security in Africa.

The authors state that there is a particularly strong link between migration, food and conflicts. “Refugee outflows per 1000 population increase by 0.4 percent for each additional year of conflict and by 1.9 percent for each percentage increase of food insecurity,” the MacroGeo authors write, referring to recent research by the World Food Program.

“That might not seem a lot but in a country of fifty million that amounts to one million refugees per year,” said Valerie Guarnieri, assistant executive director of the World Food Program who repeated the statistics in front of the audience of 600 attendees on Wednesday.

“The connection between migration and food is heavily neglected in policy, this is a way to push it into the agenda,” Lucio Caracciolo told IPS, “because as we see it right now, there is no strategy at all at governmental levels in the EU to deal with migration, let alone how food policy might help.”

The contentious matter of dumping of European surplus produce – often named as one of the causes of hunger, food insecurity and migration – in Africa was accordingly dealt with in a talk with EU Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan, not coincidentally just ahead of long-awaited negotiations on the reform of the EU’s agricultural policy. The Commissioner pledged that the new Common Agriculture Policy 2021-2027 program will reduce spending on production of commodities often dumped in the developing world. At the same time, he said Europe was ending trade barriers on imports of food from the developing world.

As part of its ambitious list of policy recommendations, BCFN also calls for more awareness of the illegal exploitation of migrants in EU agriculture. According to the experts, specific EU programmes should provide funding for the fight against unethical practices. And spreading a message which does not go well with the current Italian government, MacroGeo’s Lucio Caraciolo called for a “normalisation of the presence of migrant labour. European agriculture in the South cannot survive without their help. So it is up to us to assure that their rights are respected,” he told IPS.

In its report, MacroGeo proposes a circular and seasonal migration model, in which temporary workers are contacted directly from their country of origin on a yearly basis and for determined periods. The workers are granted permits and ensured that they can return to their home country. “Intended results include disincentivizing unregulated economic migration, ensuring employees are granted work conditions as per the law, and the possibility to return to the same farms, enhancing human resources effectiveness,” the report says.

Bob Geldof, musician, activist and organizer of 1984’s Live Aid. closed the event with an at times bitter speech broadening the discussion. “We had a 1200 percent increase in consumption in the last eighty years and we’re talking about sustainability?” he asked. “Sustainability is simply impossible with this irrational economic logic, which boils down to ‘more for ourselves all the time.’”

In September, the International Forum will travel to New York to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly. In November, it will hold a third and final event in Milan.

Food security plays a role in managing migration.

By Eva Mach
Jun 6 2018 (IOM)

Global migration figures are certainly striking. If current patterns continue, the number of international migrants in the world could surpass 400m by 2050, up from 244m currently, while an estimated 740m are internal migrants (within countries).

With heightened awareness of the manifold implications of unmanaged migration, human mobility has become an important global public policy issue. With this has come the need to understand the links between migration and other policy areas, such as those related to food security. Indeed, food security in the context of rural development and agriculture has been a central part of the broader analysis of the links between migration, environment and climate change.

Climate change, environmental degradation and food insecurity

The adverse effects of climate change can contribute to the movement of people, with estimates that this could bring about the migration of 143m people within their countries by 2050. Environmental factors, including climatic changes, have long had an impact on global migration flows. Several studies, including the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, indicate that climate change will reshape current migration patterns as more people flee the cumulative impacts of climate change: water scarcity, extreme temperatures, extreme weather events and rising sea levels, among others.

Eva Mach, environmental sustainability programme officer, International Organisation for Migration (IOM); the author would like to thank Dina Ionesco, head, Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division, IOM, and Daria Mokhnacheva, programme officer, Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division, IOM, for their contributions.

Climate change will be primarily manifested through local changes in the water cycle, with uneven impacts across the globe. Livelihood-sustaining activities like fishing, farming and herding are all affected by decreased or fluctuating rainfall, especially in rural areas where agriculture and fishing are likely to be a key source of revenue. Rural populations can therefore be especially affected due to their vulnerability to natural hazards (like drought and desiccation of freshwater systems), their dependence on natural resources (like rain water or freshwater habitats), and limited capacity to cope with and manage risks (related to social and economic factors).

At the same time, the unsustainable use of resources and man-made degradation add to the problem: deforestation, over-fishing, overgrazing and industrial activities contribute to an alarming loss of biodiversity and deterioration of terrestrial and marine ecosystems that ensure essential food-security services. At the local level, such changes in the availability of natural resources can lead to food shortages and loss of livelihoods, potentially resulting in people migrating to other rural areas or cities in search of better opportunities.

Rapid urbanisation

Population movement from rural to urban areas contributes to the challenge, particularly in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s fastest urbanising region, with 472m people currently living in urban areas, a figure set to double over the next 25 years. This phenomenon brings with it challenges, such as the loss of agricultural land due to urban sprawl, food shortages and the rising cost of household food supplies.

Countries undergoing rapid urbanisation often find it harder to produce food sustainably, as highlighted by The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed in partnership with the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation. Apart from Ethiopia (12th) and Turkey (16th), most of the top ten fastest-urbanising countries rank in the lower half of the FSI. By contrast, France, the top-performing country overall, ranks just 26th in terms of the pace of urbanisation.

How can the EU respond?

In addressing the challenges related to the migration-food security nexus, the EU can play a number of roles. Recognising that there is no silver bullet, policies must consider both the realities of migration and the need for environmentally sustainable solutions.

The EU is one of the world’s largest providers of humanitarian food assistance, having responded in the past two years to food crises in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen—all on the brink of famine—amongst others.

In addition to its humanitarian role in crisis situations, the EU also has a role to play in addressing food insecurity as a root cause of forced migration in countries of origin. The inability of farmers in developing countries to adapt to a changing climate and to continue to make a living and ensure food production through rain-fed agriculture may force them to migrate in search of alternative livelihoods. Providing agricultural education and training in sustainable and environmentally friendly farming methods and supporting infrastructure development are part of the solution.

A communication adopted by the European Commission in 2017, The Future of Food and Farming, includes a proposal to “seek a coherent action among its policies in line with its global dimension, notably on trade, migration and sustainable development”.

In addition, the European Commission recently launched the Task Force Rural Africa. Designed to promote sustainable farming in Africa through increased co-operation between the EU and African countries, the initiative reveals a growing recognition that, for Europe, food security is more than a global sustainable development goal. It also plays a role in managing migration in a safe and orderly manner by reducing forced migration.

Need for strategic investments

Although this approach is key to addressing migration pressures in some rural communities, it is important to note that overly simplistic interpretations of the relationship between food security and migration can be detrimental.

Investments in agriculture and fishing, for example, must be strategic. Not only should investment be focused on areas from which migrants originate, but it should also be directed more broadly towards countries where food insecurity is most acute, keeping in mind that the most vulnerable people cannot afford to migrate across borders. In addition, it is important to ensure that such investments are not detrimental to local livelihoods. In particular, measures to prevent land grabs for large-scale agriculture must be strengthened in order to protect smallholder farmers and to guarantee food sovereignty and access to land for local communities.

Development assistance and humanitarian aid are important; however, they cannot be the sole responses in the age of globalisation. Well-designed migration frameworks are direly needed.

Migration can be part of resilience building. For instance, rural-urban links created by migrants can foster the ability of rural households to survive and manage risks through cash and food remittances. The quest for quick solutions to manage migration flows should not hinder this process.

Further possible migration solutions include seasonal labour migration frameworks, which provide safe opportunities—respecting human and labour rights—for rural-urban and rural-rural migrants while benefiting both host and sending communities.

A new global compact

Beyond individual solutions, the new global compact for migration represents an exceptional opportunity for a more comprehensive approach to international migration governance that could also address migration challenges related to food insecurity, a changing environment and depletion of natural resources.

Finding truly sustainable solutions will not be easy and will require policy innovations across different domains. However, with increased cross-border co-operation and a closer focus on the complexities of migration and agricultural policies, the EU could play a critical role in ensuring the fulfilment of the human right to food while supporting sensible migration management policies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eva Mach works as an environmental sustainability programme officer in the Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). In this capacity, she contributes to IOM’s global work on migration, environment and climate change, in particular, on water- and energy-related topics. She is also responsible for IOM’s institutional environmental sustainability programme, which aims to connect environmentally sustainable development with migration governance and migration management.

Under the hot sun of the Pacific Ocean coast, in the department of Piura, 25 women farmers undergoing training in the Agroecological School return from a technical assistance activity in the province of Morropón, in northern Peru. Credit: Courtesy of Sabina Córdova

By Mariela Jara
CHULUCANAS, Peru, Apr 26 2018 (IPS)

Getting children and adolescents to replace junk food with nutritious local organic foods is the aim of a group of women farmers in a rural area of Piura, on Peru’s north coast, as they struggle to overcome the impact of the El Niño climate phenomenon.

“We have given talks about healthy eating in schools, because in today’s times we have forgotten what it means to eat healthy, nutritious food, and everything is fried or sweets, which is why there is malnutrition and obesity,” one of the women, Rosa Rojas, who has an organic garden in the community of Piedra de Toro, told IPS.

She is one of 25 women farmers trained in agro-ecological techniques by the non-governmental Flora Tristán Centre for Peruvian Women. They are engaged in small-scale agriculture in the valleys and highlands of Morropón, one of the eight provinces in the department of Piura, whose capital is Chulucanas."I feel that I contribute to the well-being of my family and my community. With the other women we are constantly working to eliminate malnutrition, anemia and obesity from our lives because these cause other ills. If we sit idly by, what future are we going to have?" -- Jacqueline Sandoval

The department of Piura was hit between December 2016 and May 2017 by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a complex weather pattern resulting from variations in ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific.

During that period, heavy rains and flooding affected more than one million people, left 230,000 without homes, and destroyed 1,200 hectares of crops, according to the governmental National Information System for Disaster Prevention and Response.

Rojas, 53, remembers those terrible months when many families were torn apart with the departure of parents or older siblings, forced to go abroad to make a living and to support those left behind in their communities.

“Women were left in charge of the homes and the plots of land, worrying about how to put food on the table for our children and grandchildren,” she said.

“We had to eat the beans that we had kept for seed, and supporting each other among all the neighbours, we have recovered little by little to be able to plant again on the land that had been washed clean by the rains,” she said.

Almost a year later, she has replanted her vegetables, including coriander, lettuce, carrots, beets, cabbage, leeks, tomatoes, yellow peppers and cucumbers, using organic fertiliser that she makes herself.

“My family’s diet is enriched with these healthy and nutritious organic fruits and vegetables. My community is waking up to what is natural food, we are learning the importance of eating vegetables daily, and that is what we are sharing at schools with teachers, mothers, fathers and students,” she said.

Yaqueline Sandoval, 42, a farmer in the community of Algodonal, in the neighbouring municipality of Santa Catalina de Mossa, is also recovering from the ravages of the coastal El Niño.

Rosa Rojas (2nd-R), stands with other women farmers participating in the Agroecological School of the Flora Tristán Peruvian Women’s Centre, where they were trained in organic production techniques that they have been applying in their gardens, in the rural area of the department of Piura, in Peru’s northern coastal region. Credit: Mariela Jara / IPS

She says she has resumed planting in her organic garden, together with her family, where the star product is the cowpea bean or black-eyed pea, which they call the “bean of hope” as it is ready for eating in a short time.

“Just 40 days after planning we are eating our beans. It is a very generous plant, it feeds us and it is a seed for the future because it adapts to different conditions and is very strong, something vital now we are facing climate change,” Sandoval told IPS.

Changing school habits

This is one of the inputs that the farmers use to create “healthy lunch boxes,” for students to carry their meals to eat in the public primary and secondary schools in the urban centres of the municipalities.

The lunches include meals prepared with local produce, to replace what schoolchildren were buying in the kiosks at their schools, such as cookies, crackers and chocolate, sugary drinks and other industrially processed sweets.

“We make tortillas with our vegetables and beans, we prepare passion fruit (Passiflora edulis) soft drinks, and we accompany it with a banana,” Sandoval said, describing what the children are now carrying in their lunch boxes.

“They are healthy and nutritious fruits of our land, free of chemicals, that nourish and do not damage the children’s health,” she said proudly about the initiative she is carrying out with other mothers of schoolchildren at the local “Horacio Zevallos” school.

This experience began last year with talks in the high school classrooms on the benefits of a healthy diet and the negative effects on their bodies and health of fast food or junk food.

“There was so much interest that this year in the Science, Technology and Environment course they are working in a small garden that they have set up on the premises of the school, where they are planting lettuce, carrots and other vegetables,” she added.

Sandoval, who considers herself an activist and entrepreneur, said agroecology is a tool that has allowed her to improve her relationship with nature, to make better use of the soil, water and seeds, and consequently, to improve her diet and health.

“I feel that I contribute to the well-being of my family and my community,” she said. “With the other women we are constantly working to eliminate malnutrition, anemia and obesity from our lives because these cause other ills. If we sit idly by, what future are we going to have?”

Sandoval’s concern is well-founded.

The governmental Observatory of Nutrition and the Study of Overweight and Obesity indicates that more than 53 percent of Peru’s population has excess body fat and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) ranks the country as the third in Latin America in terms of overweight and obesity.

Escolástica Juárez, 57, stands on her family farm where she grows organic fruits and vegetables in the village of Chapica, Morropón province, in the northern coastal department of Piura, Peru. She is involved in the effort to promote healthy eating at the local school. Credit: Courtesy of Sabina Córdova

For its part, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) has warned that one in five children under ten is already experiencing this problem due to the combination of factors such as inadequate diets and low levels of physical activity. And in Piura, three out of ten children under five suffer from anemia.

Eating healthy and nutritious food in a region rich in biodiversity could seem normal. But it is still a pending objective due to a lack of public investment in small-scale agriculture, training for rural populations and attention to the problem of water shortages.

In this context, taking advantage of traditional knowledge and using new know-how acquired in training and thanks to technical assistance puts women farmers in a better position to face the permanent challenges of climate change in order to achieve food security.

“Knowing about agroecology helps us use water more efficiently, irrigate our crops without wasting, replace crops that need a lot of irrigation, and choose beans that adapt to droughts. This knowledge is important for our food security,” said Escolástica Juárez.

Juàrez, a 57-year-old farmer, lives in the village of Chapica, in the municipality of Chulucanas, where the temperature reaches 37 degrees Celsius.

She has taken the healthy lunchbox initiative to the local “Colegio de Fátima” school.

“The school principal has called us back to continue with the talks this year,” she told IPS. “My grandson tells me that more of his classmates are eating healthy meals, it’s a matter of persistence, it takes time to bet families to change bad habits but it can be learned.”

She added that she feels grateful for the “bean of hope”, which like other farmers she has learned to cook in different ways, based on knowledge they have shared among themselves.

“We can eat them fresh from the pod, store them to cook later, and select some for seed. Even if there is a shortage of water, we know that it will feed us. We return the plant’s generosity sharing what we know with other neighbours and at the schools,” Juárez said.

Credit: Riccardo Gregori – Penumbria Studio #ijf18

By IPS World Desk
PERUGIA, Italy, Apr 13 2018 (IPS)

The twelfth International Journalism Festival on April 12-15 has drawn 710 speakers from 50 different countries, becoming the biggest journalism festival in Europe.

A panel discussion titled “End poverty, protect the planet, ensure prosperity for all? Food is the answer” took place on the opening day in the Sala del Dottorato hall in the center of Perugia, held under the auspices of the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN).

Lucio Caracciolo, President and Director of MacroGeo and Limes, presented a report prepared by the BCFN Foundation in collaboration with MacroGeo and CMCC (Centro euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici). The report “Food & Migration: Understanding the geopolitical nexus in the Euro-Mediterranean” , is a research tool “to explore through a geopolitical perspective, flows and trends of the current and future nexus of migration and food in specific areas, particularly the Mediterranean countries.”

Caracciolo emphasized the deep links between migration flows and food security in the Mediterranean region and how addressing the latter could be part of the solution to the former.

Luca di Leo, Head of Communications at BCFN, highlighted the crucial importance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN, shedding light on the clear linkages between the 17 SDGs and food choices.

The Director General of IPS Farhana Haque Rahman and IPS Data Analyst Maged Srour participated as panellists.

Food systems are facing the enormous challenge of feeding increasingly growing and urbanised populations generally demanding a more environmentally intensive diet, while restoring and preserving ecosystems for the health of the planet.


Haque Rahman spoke about the urgent need to enhance the capacity of developing country journalists for them to be able to write analytical commentary to enhance awareness of communities on food sustainability and climate change and influence the food choices of the general public while also drawing attention of decision makers to take the right measure on policies.

She highlighted media capacity building and training undertaken by IPS on the SDGs in both developed and developing countries. The IPS Director-General shed light on the importance of giving access to ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) to poor farmers to enable them to better manage planting and marketing their products.

Maged Srour explained the nexus between water and security (the latter in terms of geopolitical security). Srour shared data on water insecurity, specifically in the Mediterranean region, and went on to explain how the increase in variability of water resources also affects the way countries interact.

“Most of the water in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region is actually shared by two or more nations. So, at the moment we also have climate change hitting this area and consequently an increase in water stress. This obviously increases tensions among those states,” he said.

“Climate change, in combination with the increasing population of the world, is definitely a source of instability which could exacerbate migration flows, and could become fertile grounds for extremism and for conflict,” he warned.

The Mediterranean region was at the heart of the panel discussions with most of the speakers discussing the nexus of food security, water security, climate change, migration and geopolitical security in the region.

Ludovica Principato, a researcher at the Barilla Foundation, presented data and in depth analyses on the Food Sustainability Index, which was developed in collaboration between the BCFN Foundation and the Economist Intelligence Unit, to promote knowledge on food sustainability. The index is a global study that measures facts on nutrition, sustainable agriculture and food waste, collecting data from 34 countries across the world.

“Food systems,” said Principato, “are facing the enormous challenge of feeding increasingly growing and urbanised populations generally demanding a more environmentally intensive diet, while restoring and preserving ecosystems for the health of the planet.”

IPS Director General Farhana Haque Rahman spoke about IPS’s work since it was founded in 1964, especially capacity building activities across the world to raise awareness of communities on topics such as food sustainability and climate change. She shed light on the importance of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in the enhancement of sustainable farming and in the overall communication among smallholder farmers to become more productive and consequently climb out of poverty.

Laura Garzoli presented an innovative project which won the 2017 BCFN YES! (Young Earth Solutions) award granted by the BCFN Foundation to encourage innovative projects in the field of food sustainability.

Garzoli’s project, YES!BAT, “promotes Integrated Pest Management strategy to enhance ecosystem services provided by bats in rice agroecosystems”. Employing bat boxes in rice fields, it encourages insect-eating bats into areas where there are few roosting sites.

For those who missed the conference, it was live-streamed and is available here:

The United Nations, which is battling some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, still remains focused on one of its equally daunting undertakings: how to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030.

UN’s zero hunger challenge.

But the latest figures released in a joint study by the European Union (EU), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) highlight the gravity of the situation just last year alone when some 124 million people in 51 countries faced acute food insecurity — 11 million more than in 2016 (even while the number of people living on the edge of starvation and hunger remains at 815 million worldwide).

The 2017 increase, according to the ‘Global Report on Food Crises’, is largely attributable to new or intensified conflicts and insecurity in Myanmar, north-east Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan and Yemen.

Prolonged drought conditions have also triggered poor harvests in countries already facing high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, both in eastern and southern Africa.

And UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres warned last January that hunger is on the rise the world over, with Africa registering the highest rates.

The Secretary General said agricultural and livestock productivity in Africa was under threat largely due to conflict and climate change. He added, “climatic shocks, environmental degradation, crop and livestock price collapse and conflict are all interlinked”.

Still, the United Nations seems determined to work towards its targeted goal of Zero Hunger by 2030. But how feasible is this?

Asked about the impediments facing that goal, Dr Marta Antonelli, Research Programme Manager at the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation (BCFN), told IPS reducing the number of chronically undernourished people in Africa is one of the most urgent challenges that the world needs to face.

She pointed out that food insecurity, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, is related to a variety of interconnected factors, such as extreme poverty, un-diversified livelihoods, weak institutions and governance, and, especially, adverse climatic conditions and social conflicts.

“Climate change and severe extreme weather events could have a tremendous impact on crop yields, livestock, fish stocks and therefore affect farmer’s incomes (especially subsistence smallholder farmers) who become more vulnerable to food insecurity.”

Dr Antonelli said measures to tackle hunger in Africa include the harmonisation of governance of food security, sustainability and nutrition; building institutional responses to reduce extreme poverty and inequalities; supporting more efficient agricultural systems; ICTs and technology innovation.

Additionally, it also includes supporting farmers to diversify livelihoods and reduce vulnerability; restoring land and increasing integrated land and water management to improve harvests; identification of strategies for building resilience to shocks through adaptation to climate change, institutional response mechanisms; and finally monitoring and reporting of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through generation and sharing of reliable data.

The BCFN Foundation, a non-profit, independent think tank working for food sustainability, addresses today’s major food related issues with a multidisciplinary approach — from the environmental, economic and social perspective. That goal is to secure the wellbeing and health of people and the planet.

Asked what role BCFN can play, as part of its contribution to a resolution of the food crisis, Dr Antonelli said the coexistence of hunger and obesity, the overexploitation of natural resources and food loss and waste: these are the three paradoxes identified by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation.

According to BCFN, it recognises three imbalances that beset the global food system: food waste (nearly 1/3 of world food production), hunger in the face of epidemic levels of obesity (2.1 billion people impacted), and unsustainable agricultural systems (1/3 of world grain production is used for animal feed, foodstuffs are used for first generation biofuels instead of feeding people.

Dr Antonelli said: “Since 2009, we use a multidisciplinary approach to study and analyse the relationship between food and scientific, economic, social and environmental factors. Through research, dissemination and public engagement, our contribution to shift towards more sustainable food systems includes the Nutritional and Environmental Double Pyramid, the Milan Protocol, the publication of Eating Planet.”

Moreover, in 2016, BCFN launched the Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit with the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition. The FSI analyses, ranks and maps 34 countries worldwide on a range of indicators, from food waste per capita to agricultural biodiversity and CO2 emissions from agriculture, to determine the sustainability of their food systems.

“We fund young research through the ‘BCFN YES!’, a contest open to PhD candidates and young research fellows around the world. The award is given in recognition and support of innovative projects on food and sustainability. We also believe that involving media and journalists is also pivotal to shed a light simultaneously on local and global food sustainability, inform people on supply chains and inform their choices.”

For this reason, the BCFN launched in 2016 the Food Sustainability Media Award, which invites journalists, bloggers, freelancers and individuals to submit work, either published or unpublished, on food safety, sustainability, agriculture and nutrition. (www.goodfoodmediaaward.org).

BCFN has also developed a series of educational programmes for school children and the MOOC on “Sustainable Food Systems: a Mediterranean Perspective” realised in collaboration with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Mediterranean with SDG Academy and The University of Siena, with a major educational purpose.

It consists of a series of pre-recorded lectures, readings, quizzes, discussion forums and deals with environmental and climate-related challenges basing upon Mediterranean experience, how sustainable farming systems is being utilized as a roadmap for positive action and implementation of Sustainable Development Goals.

Asked about the importance of food sustainability– including eliminating waste and reducing obesity – as a key factor in reaching the 2030 goal, Dr Antonelli said the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs establish a global set of objectives for all countries in the world to be achieved by the year 2030.

SDGs range from the eradication of poverty and hunger, to the need to act for climate mitigation, to the promotion of education and gender equality, to preserving natural resources such as water in sufficient quantity and quality for human needs.

Food access, utilisation, availability, quality and sustainability are at the core of all SDGs and represent a pre-requisite to implement the 2030 Agenda in all countries in the world.

Agriculture accounts for one third of global GhG emissions, cover 38% of the world’s land surface (an area still in expansion), accounts for 70% of water withdrawals and 80% of desertification.

The number of hungry people, she pointed out, is rising again and exceeded 815 million in 2016; overweight and nutrition challenges affect two billion people both in the North and the South of the world; and about one third of the food produced for human consumption gets lost or is wasted.

“We cannot transform our world without fixing the food system first.”

Asked about the countries making the most progress in the Food Sustainability Index, she said the FSI Index shows that, when defining food sustainability by looking at country’s performance in sustainable agriculture, nutritional challenges and food loss and waste, the top scoring countries are France, Japan, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, Italy, South Korea and Hungary.

The presence or absence of sound and well-implemented policies is fundamental in shaping the score of the countries analysed. Generally speaking, high human development is moderately correlated with higher sustainability of food systems.

The analysis performed in 2017 on the Mediterranean countries revealed that the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries are those struggling the most in achieving sustainable food system, especially in the area of food loss and waste, whereas they perform relatively better across the nutritional challenges indicators.