Trucks loaded with sacks of wheat are being smuggled across Pakistan’s borders into Afghanistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jun 4 2014 (IPS)

With its lush valleys and well-watered plains, Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province produces plenty of food for the local population, including 10 million tons of wheat every year. So why are the people of this bountiful mountainous region going hungry?

The answer lies just across the 2,400-km-long border that separates the country from neighbouring Afghanistan, in the food-stalls, shops and grocery stores where the bulk of the KP’s foodstuffs are sold for hugely inflated prices.

Locals and experts blame the massive smuggling network that whisks wheat out of Pakistan’s frontier province, leaving behind an unsustainable demand for – and unaffordable price tags on – the basic commodity, which 65 percent of the population relies on as a staple.

According to Zahid Shinwari, president of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chamber of Commerce and Industries, the KP loses some three million tons of wheat to smugglers every year, causing price spikes of over 33 percent.

“The problem gets particularly severe when the local harvesting season ends in June, because that’s when the aggressive smuggling begins,” the official told IPS.

While 50-kg bags of wheat cost nine dollars in 2013, that same quantity now sells for 11 and 12 dollars. At first glance the difference might not seem like much, but in a region where the average monthly income is 60 dollars, some families say the price rise could mean the difference between nourishment and hunger.

As it is, thousands here are walking a fine line. According to a 2008 survey conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 65 percent of children and 40 percent of women living in the KP are malnourished. Take away their basic foodstuffs and the situation will only get worse, experts say.

Muhammad Haroon, a shopkeeper in KP’s capital Peshawar, says the problem is quickly reaching a crisis point, with some 500 to 600 trucks packed with wheat leaving the province every single day.

“We are not getting enough stock from the flourmills for local consumption,” the disgruntled grocer told IPS.

No sooner is the harvest gathered than smugglers make off with the bulk of it, while the rest is immediately purchased and hoarded by the wealthy, in a bid to avoid the inevitable price hikes that accompany the shortages.

In the end, says Haroon, it is the poor who suffer; a full 40 percent of the KP’s population lives below the poverty line, and they are the ones most affected.

On the other side of the border, the smugglers are seen as a godsend.

According to Abdul Qadir, an Afghan trader, his landlocked country has traditionally been dependent on Pakistan for its food requirements, including 80 percent of its wheat needs. Rice, oil, soap and pulses also make their way through checkpoints and onto the shelves of Afghan shops.

Qadir told IPS officials on both sides are equally complicit in the illicit operation because of the high bribes offered in exchange for safe passage through the busy Torkham border crossing close to KP, and the Wesh-Chaman border, which links the Pakistani city of Quetta with the Afghan city of Kandahar.

These bribes, which can reach 100 dollars per truck, push prices of the smuggled goods even higher – up to 45 dollars for a 50-kg sack of wheat – “but still Afghans buy them” according to the trader. He blamed a lack of water, overuse of pesticides and three decades of war for Afghanistan’s perennial food shortages.

Meanwhile, other provinces in Pakistan are starting to feel the heat of the illicit activity.

Chaudhry Ansar Javid, who heads the Sindh chapter of the Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA), says his own province lost 800,000 tons of wheat to Afghanistan last year.

“The wheat flour produced in Sindh also reaches Central Asian states, as well as Iran, through the Chaman border crossing in Balochistan province,” he told IPS.

In the past 15 days alone, Javid said, the price of a 100-kg sack of wheat has soared from 20 to 25 dollars and could go on rising at a phenomenal rate unless the government takes immediate steps to curb the smuggling, or allows Pakistan to import enough wheat to account for the demand in neighbouring Afghanistan.

At present, Pakistan produces some 250 million tons of wheat per year, according to Anees Ashraf, president of the All Pakistan Flour Mills Association (APFMA).

“This includes 16 million tons in the Sindh province, 58 million in Punjab, 2.5 million in Balochistan and 10 million in KP,” he told IPS, adding that the latter has born the brunt of the smuggling operation.

Forced to seek alternative sources of this basic commodity, the KP government has come to rely heavily on some 400 trucks from the Punjab, which carry a daily supply of about 2,000 tons of wheat to the struggling region.

Now, even that lifeline is threatened by the fact that Afghan importers go directly to Punjabi wheat producers and buy up whatever stocks they can get, said Haji Musarrat Shah, vice president of the KP chapter of the APFMA.

Fearing its own shortages, the government of Punjab has imposed a ban on wheat stocks to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he told IPS.

Officials say this move is illegal and are now pressing the Punjab government to lift the ban and spare the people of KP from high prices and hunger.

“Under the constitution it is illegal to stop the supply of anything from one province to another,” KP Chief Minister Pervez Khattak told IPS, adding, “The federal government should intervene.”

Some say the situation is creating a powder keg, with the local population growing ever more hostile towards their neighbours. Already KP is home to some three million Afghan refugees who have been dependent on limited local resources for the past 30 years, according to Khattak.

If prices keep rising, it will put undue pressure on a region that is already fraught with poverty and militancy.

(END)

Women plant rice in Nepal. More than 2.4 billion people get key nutrients from rice, wheat, maize, soybeans, field peas and sorghum. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 7 2014 (IPS)

Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels will make many key food crops like rice and corn less nutritious, a new study shows.

Important food crops will contain lower levels of zinc and iron by mid-century without major cuts in CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, an analysis of field experiments conducted on three continents has found.“Higher levels of CO2 helps plants grow faster but it is mainly in the form of increased starch and sugars." -- David Wolfe

“Two billion people already suffer from low levels of zinc and iron. It’s an enormous global health burden today,” said Samuel Myers of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, co-author of the Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition study published in the journal Nature Wednesday.

Deficiencies of zinc and iron have wide range of impacts on human health, including increased vulnerability to infectious diseases, anemia, higher levels of maternal mortality, and lowered IQs.

More than 2.4 billion people get these key nutrients in their rice, wheat, maize, soybeans, field peas and sorghum, Myers told IPS.

Myers and colleagues assessed new data from 143 experiments growing crops at CO2 levels that are 100 percent greater than the pre-industrial average. At current emission rates, CO2 in the atmosphere will be 100 percent greater around the year 2060. Wheat grown at those concentrations has 9.3 percent lower zinc and 5.1 percent lower iron than those grown at today’s CO2 concentration.

“We found significant effects from higher CO2 for all of these crops but some cultivars [seed varieties] did better than others,” he said.

The nutrition content of many food crops has already declined over the past 100 years, Myers acknowledged. One reason is that plant breeders have favoured rapid growth and yield while ignoring nutrition. Add to this the reality that CO2 levels today are 42 percent higher than 150 years ago.

“Higher levels of CO2 helps plants grow faster but it is mainly in the form of increased starch and sugars,” said David Wolfe, a professor of plant and soil ecology at Cornell University in New York State.

“There’s more carbohydrates [starch and sugar] but less protein, nutrients and other effects,” Wolfe told IPS. Wolfe was not involved in the Harvard study.

This is resulting in what some call “hollow food”, that is, food with insufficient nutrition. It is suspected of playing a role in the rapid rise in obesity, as people may be eating more in order to get the nutrition they need, said Ken Warren, a spokesman with The Land Institute, an agricultural research centre in the U.S. state of Kansas.

Crops take minerals, trace elements and other things from the soil every year. All that modern agriculture puts back into the land are some chemical fertilisers which do not replace all that has been lost, Warren previously told IPS.

A 2006 analysis of British government nutrition data on meat and dairy products revealed that the mineral content of milk, cheese and beef had declined as much as 70 percent compared to those from the 1930s. Parmesan cheese had 70 percent less magnesium and calcium, beef steaks contained 55 percent less iron, chicken had 31 percent less calcium and 69 percent less iron, while milk also showed a large drop in iron along with a 21 percent decline in magnesium.

Copper, an important trace mineral (an essential nutrient that is consumed in tiny quantities), also declined 60 percent in meats and 90 percent in dairy products.

Modern high-yielding crops and intensive farming methods were believed to be responsible, according to The Food Commission, an independent watchdog on food issues that published the study.

The measured impacts of high levels of CO2 on food crops in the Harvard study did not replicate the higher temperatures and extreme weather conditions expected mid-century. Other studies have shown that high temperatures stress plants and while the extra CO2 results in larger plants their yield was much lower, said Cornell’s Wolfe.

Growing food will be much more challenging with climate change, especially in California, the Southwest and parts of the Great Plains, according to the U.S. government’s National Climate Assessment released Tuesday.

Four years in the making, the assessment is the definitive scientific statement of current and future impacts of carbon pollution on the United States.

The projected increase in temperatures will dry out soils, making it impossible to grow food without extensive irrigation. The entire region is already in a decade-long drought that is likely to worsen. Warmer temperatures also increase evaporation rates, drying out soils even more and making irrigation less effective. Groundwater resources are also in serious decline throughout the region.

“California and the Southwest face huge water challenges,” said Wolfe, one of the 300 scientists who contributed to the assessment.

“California has the perfect climate for growing food right now but it won’t if gets hotter,” he said.

There is little doubt California and the rest of the U.S. will get hotter unless CO2 emissions decline there and around the world. While the western half of the U.S. gets drier the eastern half, and particularly the Northeast, will get heavier rains and more flooding.

The Northeast will see increasing droughts in the summer. But when the rains come it will be in form of deluges, Wolfe said. Over the past decade the region has experienced wildly erratic winter weather. In 2012, an extremely warm winter allowed fruit crops to bloom four weeks early, only to later have a hard frost that killed the blooms, resulting in losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Unpredictability is the biggest challenge for farmers,” Wolfe said.

He added that he’s an optimist but sees a future with higher food prices, beyond what the poor can afford, and a great deal of disruption in farm communities. U.S. farmers are going to need help to adapt, in terms of education and funding.

“We have to get beyond crop insurance. Change is risky for farmers and many don’t have the funds to adapt to what is coming.”

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which works to end malnutrition among more than two billion people worldwide, is expressing strong support  for enriching the micronutrient content of plants.

Cassava is a staple crop in Africa. The new variety promoted by CGIAR is more nutritious, contaning higher amounts of vitamin A, zinc, or iron. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

In technical terms, it is called biofortification: a nutrition-specific intervention designed to enhance the micronutrient content of foods through the use of agronomic practices and plant breeding.

The breeding is taking place at HarvestPlus, an international programme supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and at national agricultural research centres, mostly in developing countries.

The first nutritious crop, developed by African scientists and released in partnership with the Internal Potato Center (CIP), was the orange sweet potato, which has been effective in providing up to 100 percent of daily vitamin A needs for young children, according to CGIAR.

Six additional nutritious crops are now being developed through the use of conventional breeding methods: vitamin A-rich cassava and maize, iron-rich beans and pearl millet, and zinc-rich wheat and rice.

The first three crops are targeted to Africa and the rest to South Asia.

New varieties of the first four crops were launched in 2012, says CGIAR, with wheat and rice expected to follow later this year.

While it takes time to produce the amount of seed necessary to meet demand, up to half a million farmers will be growing these nutritious crops by year end, it predicts.

Asked how far plant breeding can go in resolving hunger and nutrition problems worldwide, Dr. Erick Boy, head of nutrition at HarvestPlus, told IPS, “Our focus is on hidden hunger, caused by not getting enough minerals and vitamins in the diet – that is the major hunger problem the world faces today.

“The six new varieties of staple crops we are developing are more nutritious—they contain higher amounts of vitamin A, zinc, or iron,” he added.

Lack of these nutrients is what causes widespread suffering and health problems, especially for women and children.

Boy said these crops will be distributed to more than three million farming households in seven countries in Africa and Asia by 2015.

“Not bad for a programme that started from scratch to develop these crops beginning only in 2003,” he noted.

When eaten regularly, these nutritious crops could provide on average 50 percent of vitamin A, zinc, or iron requirements. According to CGIAR, more than two billion people worldwide do not get enough of these crucial nutrients in their diets.

Deficiencies can lead to lower IQ, stunting, and blindness in children; increased susceptibility to disease for both children and adults; and higher health risks to mothers – and their infants – during childbirth.

According to the World Bank, malnourished children are more likely to drop out of school and have lower incomes as adults, thus reducing overall economic growth.

In its latest annual flagship publication The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) released here, FAO explains that unlike food fortification, which occurs during food processing, biofortification involves enriching the micronutrient content of plants.

Questions remain about the readiness of consumers to purchase biofortified foods, especially when they look or taste different from traditional varieties. But, FAO says, early evidence suggests that consumers are willing to buy them and may even pay a premium.

In Uganda, FAO discovered consumers were willing to pay as much for the orange-fleshed varieties of sweet potato as for the white varieties, even in the absence of a promotional campaign.

Similar results were found for nutritionally-enhanced orange maize in Zambia, where consumers did not confuse it with ordinary yellow or white maize. They were also willing to pay a premium when its introduction was accompanied by nutrition information.

Asked why the project targets Asia and Africa and not Latin America, CGIAR’s Dr. Boy said, “Our focus is on subSaharan Africa and South Asia because if you look at any map of hidden hunger, these are the regions marked in red.”

Latin American countries have done a better job of improving nutrition over the past two decades, he added. There are still, however, pockets where hidden hunger is a problem.

“So we are also working in this region. In fact, I am in Guatemala now to work with stakeholders to buy in to our high-iron beans and high zinc-maize initiative there. We anticipate that we could have varieties of two to three crops that are rich in iron and zinc to LAC farmers by 2015,” Boy added.

Meanwhile, in early June, the UK government granted £30 million [46.4 million dollars] to HarvestPlus to develop and deliver six nutritious crops to several million farming households in Africa and Asia.

The grant was announced at a high-level international meeting in London that brought together a range of partners to make strong political and financial commitments to improve nutrition globally.

In his opening remarks, British Prime Minister David Cameron said, “It has to be about doing things differently…For science, it’s about harnessing the power of innovation to develop better seeds, [and] more productive and nutritious crops.”