Current food systems have been focusing more on just a few major staples that are providing calories eg. major cereals, rice, wheat, and maze. Emile Frison,an expert on conservation and agricultural biodiversity and a member of International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), says agricultural biodiversity is absolutely key not only to providing nutrition because it provides for a diversity of micro-elements, mineral vitamins etc that are absent and very poor in the major staples. Irrigated field in Kakamas, South Africa. Credit:Patrick Burnett/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2020 (IPS)

Despite the World Food Programme (WFP) being awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in addressing global hunger, sustainable food systems expert Emile Frison believes a lot more needs to be done. This includes the rethinking of approaches to agricultural production, establishing deeper relationships between consumers and producers, and taking a wholistic approach towards socio-economic factors.

Emile Frison is an expert on conservation and agricultural biodiversity and a member of International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).

Frison, an expert on conservation and agricultural biodiversity and a member of International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), spoke with IPS a week after the Nobel committee acknowledged WFP for its rigorous approach to addressing the issue of hunger and, especially in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, “[demonstrating] an impressive ability to intensify its efforts”.   

“Unfortunately, this is not only looking at short term solutions,” he told IPS. “The WFP has been addressing the [coronavirus] crisis situation which of course is important but as is often the case, not enough attention is going into providing longer term solutions of developing sustainable resilient food systems and production systems. There’s always an emergency that keeps people away from thinking longer term.”

IPS publishes our interview with Frison on World Food Day. Excerpts follow.

Inter Press Service (IPS): In what ways could world leaders and local governments have been better prepared to address hunger issues before the coronavirus pandemic?

Emile Frison (EF): We know that on a global level, we produce enough food to feed everybody and even many more people than we are on the planet right now. The major problem of hunger is not of availability, but of access to food, the issue of quality and inequity in our society. That’s the important thing that has to be addressed if we want to really find long term solutions to the issue of hunger at the same time as poverty problems. 

IPS: You specifically work in the field of sustainable food systems and the deployment of agricultural biodiversity to improve nutrition and the resilience and sustainability of agricultural systems. What role does deployment of agricultural biodiversity have in improving nutrition?

EF: Our current food system has been, over the last 50 years, focusing more on just a few major staples that are providing calories: the major cereals, rice, wheat, maze, that have received the majority of the attention by research. This is leading certainly to providing calories but we know that calories are not providing health and nutrition. Agricultural biodiversity is absolutely key not only to providing nutrition because it provides for a diversity of micro-elements, mineral vitamins etc that are absent and very poor in the major staples, but it also provides for more sustainable systems from an environmental point of view. It allows us to address the climate crisis by being lower in emissions and fixing carbon in the soil and in the vegetation, in a more diverse vegetation including trees.

Agricultural biodiversity is really a key element of reversing the past trend of the last 50 or so years of ultra specialisation and focusing on just the production of these major staples at the expense of the rich diversity that used to be cultivated. It’s been more and more abandoned in development plans in efforts to so-called fight hunger.

IPS: Why has it been more abandoned in development plans?

EF: The whole education system has been focusing on trying to create an artificial environment that is ideal for production instead of understanding how nature is working. The so-called modern agriculture has been trying to create an environment where you see the plants, no longer the soil that feeds the plants. You put these synthetic fertilisers that are directly observed by plants and are actually killing the soil. So the soil becomes an inert substrate that is incapable of feeding plants. So you have to always put more and more fertilisers and because of the uniformity of the crops, the monocultures are becoming the norm. You have more and more pest diseases that are occurring, that are requiring more and more pesticides. And this is a situation not sustainable in the longer term.

We’re seeing decreases in productivity, in those areas that are using a large amount of pesticides and fertilisers. This is not an option and that’s why we have to rethink totally the agricultural paradigm from the one that creates this artificial environment where the fertilisers are feeding directly the plants, pesticides are protecting the plants rather than having an environment in which the diversity is responsible for the resilience. Because one crop will attract some pests and the neighbouring crop will attract others. So you never have the high density of pests in diverse systems that you have in large scale monocultures.

The whole production system has to be rethought in terms of using diversity as a major approach but also to think about rebuilding, and creating an environment where we don’t fight nature anymore, but we mimic nature. In natural forests, you don’t have to have fertilisers to have a very rich functioning natural system. What we have to do is learn the lessons from that through ecology. The approach, called agroecology, is applying these principles to make nature function through agriculture. This is a real rethinking of the production system as a whole using a certain number of principal that goes beyond cultural practices but also is also looking at social dimension of providing greater equity, empowering farmers in policies instead of having technology developed in laboratories that are often not answering the real problems of farmers, to have participatory research and co-innovation with farmers.

IPS: In what ways has this issue been affected by the coronavirus pandemic? 

EF: There have been many lessons: long value chains that have been developing over the last several decades, where ultra specialisation in commodities that are then being traded globally are the basis of the global food system. That has shown us vulnerability, especially in countries that were largely dependent on food imports. What has also been shown is that in areas where there are diversified production systems closer to the consumers and where there are direct links between producers and consumers, the food systems have been much more resilient. All over the world we’ve seen new connections with farmers being put in contact directly with consumers such as online purchase systems.

The COVID-19 situation has shown us what kind of options are there through shorter value chains and diversification of production, to make the whole system more resilient.

IPS: In light of the WFP being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, what role would you say  sustainable food systems play in efforts towards world peace?

EF: What is sure is that in areas where there is hunger, it has been leading to a lot of the conflicts that we are seeing in the last decade – especially ones causing large amounts of migration. What is also clear is that the industrial model of agriculture, with its specialisation and the power of a few major companies that control the input supply and the purchase and transformation of most of the food at the expense of a decent income for producers, is no longer a viable long term solution.

We must adopt a real, different model of agriculture including, bringing back diversity in the system, and applying the lessons we learn from nature and ecological science that teach us how soil is functioning and how the living microsms in soil play an extremely important role in having a productive system. We have demonstrated that agroecological systems are able not only to feed the world in quantity terms, but also doing it in much better quality terms. That is really the way forward and better recognised.

There’s obviously some vested interests that want to continue to sell their products and maintain the current system in place that are trying to fight the mainstreaming of agroecology and more sustainable production systems. But that has to be addressed and that’s a major responsibility for every citizen of the world but especially also civil society organisations that are really looking into these issues and putting these on the table of decision makers.

Excerpt:

Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi and Ifeanyi Nsofor
ILLINOIS, United States / ABUJA, Oct 16 2019 (IPS)

United Nations World Food Day is celebrated around the world on October 16 under the theme: “Our Actions ARE Our Future. Healthy Diets for a Zero Hunger World”. This theme is timely, especially, because across Africa and around the world, there has been a gradual rise in malnutrition and diet-related non communicable diseases, as highlighted in The Lancet study and a United Nations Report published earlier this year.

While 45 percent of deaths in children are from nutrition-related causes, mainly malnutrition, diet-related non communicable diseases like obesity is a fast-growing problem across the world causing low- and middle-income countries to face a double burden of malnutrition.

Globally, non-communicable diseases kill the most people every year. Based on 2016 data, out of 56.9 million deaths, 40.5 million were due to non-communicable diseases (30.5 million were in developing countries). Diabetes, one of the complications of obesity led to 1.6 million deaths.

While 45 percent of deaths in children are from nutrition-related causes, mainly malnutrition, diet-related non communicable diseases like obesity is a fast-growing problem across the world causing low- and middle-income countries to face a double burden of malnutrition

Obesity is ubiquitous – every country is dealing with this pandemic in one form or another. Rates of obesity among females aged 5-19 years is 59%, 42% 36%, 8% in U.S., South Africa, Brazil and India respectively.

Research in Ghana shows that children from poorer backgrounds are more vulnerable to food insecurity and narrow dietary diversity. In contrast, consumption of processed foods rich in sugar but poor in nutrients is common among all socioeconomic classes. Showing that obesity does not respect boundaries. In Scotland, about 30% of adults and 13% of children are obese – this is attributable to foods and drinks high in fat, sugar and salt.

It is said that; the youths are the future. However, if the present trends of diet-related non communicable diseases like obesity among youths fueled by unhealthy foods continue, the future would be unhealthy. This is how to make the future healthy.

First, focus on consumption of plant-based nutritious meals among women of child-bearing age. One way to achieve this is by civil society organisations working with government to identify locally available nutritious meals and training families on how best to prepare these meals.

Data shows that most important time for using nutrition to improve cognition and physical development of a child is the first 1000 days of life (from when the woman becomes pregnant, through-out pregnancy, birth and until the baby is 2 years old).

In addition to the woman eating nutritious meals, there are several nutritional interventions to achieving these, including – exclusive breastfeeding within one hour after birth until the baby is 6 months old; introduction of nutritious complementary meals at 6 months and continuing of breastfeeding until the baby is 2 years old.

The good news is that, the African continent is endowed with indigenous vegetable plant varieties such as amaranth greens, African nightshade, Ethiopian mustard and fluted pumpkins that are affordable, and highly nutritious and dense in essential micronutrients that are lacking in many of the foods African.

In addition, many of these vegetable plants are highly adapted to the African climate and can endure drought and pests. Further, women that grow these crops for consumption can also earn income by selling the excess vegetables.

In Nigeria, for example, women farmers growing these indigenous highly nutritious indigenous African vegetable plant varieties are reaping several benefits including earning income and boosting food security. Similar success stories are documented in several African countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.

Second, all nations should ban artificial trans-fat production and use. Globally, consumption of trans fat accounts for more than 500,0000 deaths due to heart disease every year, according to the World Health Organization.

The harmful effects of trans fat is by raising bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol levels. Therefore, increasing risk of heart disease, stroke and insulin-dependent diabetes. Already there are lessons from countries that have policies on artificial trans fats.

For instance, South Africa limits industrially produced trans-fat in foods, fats and oils; and U.S. and Canada bans the source of industrially-produced trans-fat and require trans-fat to be labeled on packaged food.

Third, reduce daily consumption of salt to less than one teaspoonful a day because the sodium contained in salt increases blood pressure.

Hypertension in turn, is implicated in 7.5 million deaths every year.  According to the U.S. Centres for Disease control, more than 70% of the sodium Americans consume comes from processed and restaurant foods. There are several ways to reduce salt consumption such as public education, front-of-package labelling, promotion of salt substitutes, industry reformulation of packaged foods, and intervention for restaurants.

The United Kingdom salt reduction program led to lower slat content in processed foods, resulting in a 15% reduction in population salt intake.

Lastly, countries must come up with comprehensive policy approaches or revise already existing national nutrition policies to address this growing diet-related non communicable diseases. Once they’re set, governments must place high priority on them to ensure that nutrition policies are implemented and followed and that citizens are aware of them.

The complex, widespread and global rise of diet-related health diseases demand that we re-assess the foods we eat every day. Doing so will pave the way to a world where people are healthy.

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the Entomology Department, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is a Senior Food security fellow with the Aspen Institute and has written opinion pieces for various outlets including NPR, CNN, Los Angeles Times, Aljazeera and New York Times. You can follow Esther on Twitter @EstherNgumbi.

Dr. Ifeanyi M. Nsofor, a medical doctor, the CEO of EpiAFRIC and Director of Policy and Advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch. I am a 2019 Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University, a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a 2006 International Ford Fellow. You can follow me on Twitter @ekemma. 

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Oct 14 2019 (IPS)

Globalization and urbanization have had a staggering impact on human history, especially over the last decade. 

The world’s population living in urban areas was less than 5 percent in 1800. According to the the United Nations, that number increased to 47 percent by the year 2000. In ten years time, that number is expected to reach 65 percent.

As these shifts have taken place, we have witnessed dramatic changes in our diets and eating habits. The world has begun to abandon the traditions of preparing meals at home, which have historically been seasonal, plant-based and fibre-rich.

Preferring convenience, the world has turned to refined starches, sugars, fats, salt, processed foods, meat and animal-source products. In urban areas especially, consumers increasingly rely on supply chains of supermarkets, fast food outlets, street food vendors and take-away restaurants.

Dietary choices and sedentary lifestyles have pushed obesity into epidemic proportions not only in developed countries, but in low-income countries too, where hunger and obesity can co-exist.

Currently, 670 million adults and 160 million children suffer from obesity worldwide.

Astonishingly, over 820 million people suffer from hunger.

And this dichotomy is taking a toll on national health budgets, costing up to 2 trillion us dollars per year.

Poor diets are now are a leading cause of illness, linked to one fifth of all deaths worldwide.

The annual celebration of World World Food Day is an effort to bring attention to these issues. This year, it aims to push people everywhere to take action, under the theme: “Our Actions Are Our Future.”

The celebration is intent on informing citizens, businesses and governments that dietary choices, from the products we consume individually, to planetary choices, including the reduction of our environmental footprints, can enable a movement of change.

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Oct 15 2018 (IPS)

According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), over 820 million people are currently suffering from chronic undernourishment across the globe. The reasons for the surge are complex, but are attributed to increasing conflict, economic slowdowns and the rise in extreme weather events related to climate change.

Furthermore, rapidly increasing obesity levels are reversing many years of progress in combatting hunger and malnutrition.

Indeed, today 672 million people suffer from obesity and a further 1.3 billion people are overweight.

However, change can happen.

This year’s World Food Day is being observed under the theme: “OUR ACTIONS ARE OUR FUTURE. A ZERO HUNGER WORLD BY 2030 IS POSSIBLE.”

70 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas where people’s lives depend on agriculture, fisheries or forestry. That’s why Zero hunger calls for a transformation of rural economy: through government to create opportunity and through Smallholder farmers engaging the future of sustainable agricultural methods.

But employment and economic growth aren’t enough, especially for those who endure conflict and suffering.

Zero Hunger moves beyond conflict-resolution and economic growth, taking the long-term approach to build peaceful, inclusive societies.

Reduced and insufficient rainfall as well as crop-damaging pests threaten to cripple the very backbone of African economies. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Oct 12 2017 (IPS)

A growing number of African countries are increasingly becoming food insecure as delayed and insufficient rainfall, as well as crop damaging pests such as the ongoing outbreak of the fall armyworm, cause the most severe maize crisis in the last decade.

Experts have warned that as weather patterns become even more erratic and important crops such as maize are unable to resist the fall armyworm infestation, there will not be enough food on the table."Even as we push for biotechnology, there is a need for regulations that guarantee the protection and safety of people and the environment." --Hilda Mukui, an agriculturalist and conservationist in Kenya

Confirming that indeed a severe food crisis looms while at the same time calling for immediate and sufficient responses, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) 2017 World Food Day theme is “Change the future of migration. Invest in food security and rural development.”

Over 17 million people in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda have reached emergency food insecurity levels, according to the UN agency.

“Maize is an important food crop in many African countries and the inability of local varieties to withstand the growing threats from the fall armyworm which can destroy an entire crop in a matter of weeks raises significant concerns,” Hilda Mukui, an agriculturalist and conservationist in Kenya, told IPS.

“Due to its migratory nature, the pest can move across borders as is the case in Kenya where the fall armyworm migrated from Uganda and has so far been spotted in Kenya’s nine counties in Western, Rift Valley and parts of the Coastal agricultural areas,” she said.

FAO continues to issue warnings over the fall armyworm, expressing concerns that most countries are ill-prepared to handle the threat.

David Phiri, FAO Sub-regional Coordinator for Southern Africa, says that this is “a new threat in Southern Africa and we are very concerned with the emergence, intensity and spread of the pest. It is only a matter of time before most of the region will be affected.”

The UN agency has confirmed that the pest has destroyed at least 17,000 hectares of maize fields in Malawi, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Across Africa, an estimated 330,000 hectares have been destroyed.

“To understand the magnitude of this destruction, the average maize yield for small scale farmers in many African countries is between 1.2 and 1.5 tons per hectare,” Dr George Keya, the national coordinator of the of the Arid and Semi-arid lands Agricultural Productivity Research Project, told IPS.

FAO statistics show that Africa’s largest producers of maize, including Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa, are all grappling with the fall armyworm outbreak.

Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture notes that the maize stalk borer or the African armyworm – which is different from the fall armyworm – cost farmers at least 25 million dollars annually in missed produce and is concerned that additional threats from the vicious Fall Armyworms will cripple maize production.

FAO and the government of Nigeria in September 2017 signed a Technical Cooperation Project (TCP) agreement as part of a concerted joint effort to manage the spread of the fall armyworm across the country.

According to experts, sectors such as the poultry industry that relies heavily on maize to produce poultry feed have also been affected.

Within this context, scientists are now pushing African governments to embrace biotechnology to address the many threats that are currently facing the agricultural sector and leading to the alarming food insecurity.

According to the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, a genetically modified variety of maize has shown significant resistance to the fall armyworm.

Based on results from the Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) maize trials in Uganda, scientists are convinced that there is an immediate and sufficient solution to the fall armyworm.

Although chemical sprays can control the pest, scientists are adamant that the Bt maize is the most effective solution to the armyworm menace.

Experts say that the Bt maize has been genetically modified to produce Bt protein, an insecticide that kills certain pests.

Consequently, a growing list of African countries have approved field testing of genetically modified crops as a way to achieve food security using scientific innovations.

The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) which is a public-private crop breeding initiative to assist farmers in managing the risk of drought and stem borers across Africa, is currently undertaking Bt maize trials in Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique and recently concluded trials in South Africa to find a solution to the fall armyworm invasion.

The African Agricultural Technology Foundation confirms that on a scale of one to nine, based on the Bt maize trials in Uganda, the damage from the armyworm was three for the Bt genetically modified variety and six on the local checks or the popularly grown varieties.

Similarly, Bt maize trials in Mozambique have shown that on a scale of one to nine, the damage was on 1.5 on Bt maize and seven on popularly grown varieties.

“These results are very promising and it is important that African countries review their biosafety rules and regulations so that science can rescue farmers from the many threats facing the agricultural sector,” Mukui explains.

In Africa, there are strict restrictions that bar scientists from exploring biotechnology solutions to boost crop yields.

According to Mukui, only four countries – South Africa, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Egypt – have commercialized genetically modified crops, while 19 countries have established biosafety regulatory systems, four countries are developing regulatory systems, 21 countries are a work in progress, and 10 have no National Biosafety Frameworks.

Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi and more recently Kenya are among the countries that have approved GM crop trials after the Kenya Biosafety Authority granted approval for limited release of insect resistant Bt maize for trials.

As Africa’s small-scale farmers face uncertain times as extreme climate conditions, crop failure, an influx of pests and diseases threaten to cripple the agricultural sector, experts say that there is sufficient capacity, technology and science to build resilience and cushion farmers against such threats.

“But even as we push for biotechnology, there is a need for regulations that guarantee the protection and safety of people and the environment,” Mukui cautions.

This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds launched by IPS on the occasion of this year’s World Food Day on October 16.

Land degradation, a reason for rural people to migrate, is a prominent problem in Senegal. Photo: M. Mitchell/IFPRI.

By Elwyn Grainger-Jones
MONTPELLIER, France , Oct 11 2017 (IPS)

We are at a moment of huge opportunity in the world’s food system. We can continue on our current trajectory of consuming too little, too much, or the wrong type of food at an unsustainable cost to the environment, health care and political stability. Or we can change course. Fixing the food system will help solve humanity’s greatest challenges – creating jobs, reducing emissions, and improving health.

Worryingly, new research shows that after a prolonged decline, world hunger is on the rise again, with some 815 million people acutely or chronically undernourished in 2016, up from 777 million in 2015. A further 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiency, also known as ‘hidden hunger’, whose effects can be damaging for life. In what seems to be an absurd twist, another 2 billion people are overweight or obese.

Food insecurity is a contributor in what has now become one of the world’s most vexing problems – that of forced migration. This year’s World Food Day takes the theme of migration, and the importance of investing in food security and rural development so that people no longer have to uproot their lives and take often perilous journeys into the unknown.

The 21^st century is proving to be an epoch of massive human displacement, with people leaving their homes and their homelands at a greater rate than at any time since World War II. Conflict, hunger, poverty, and an increase in extreme weather events all play a part in fuelling instability and driving forced migration. In 2015, there were 244 million international migrants – 40% more than in 2000. Between 2008 and 2015, an average of 26.4 million people were displaced annually by climate or weather-related disasters. In the same year, 65.3 million people were forcibly displaced by conflict and persecution.

Changing trajectory is possible, and will take a huge effort involving governments, civil society, companies and scientists. It is imperative that we rigorously engage with local scientists and research partners, who know best the conditions where deprivations are greatest, and on what emphasis should be placed. Simultaneous transformations in genomics, big data, communications, markets and understanding of nutrition can be harnessed to benefit the people who most need them.

Water availability and improved water management can significantly help smallholder farmers produce more and better food, as this farmer shows in Eastern Highlands on the Mozambique border, where she uses a sprinkler system to irrigate her farm. Photo: David Brazier/IWMI.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of agriculture and agri-business as an engine for growth and a contributor to stability. As the world’s single largest employer, agriculture provides livelihoods for 40% of the population –78% in developing countries – so advances in this sector will have a powerful knock-on effect on national economies and the prosperity of local communities.

New research shows that after a prolonged decline, world hunger is on the rise again, with some 815 million people acutely or chronically undernourished in 2016, up from 777 million in 2015
During my first year in CGIAR, I had the honour of seeing first-hand some of the inspiring and remarkable initiatives being undertaken by scientists in our 15 Research Centers across the globe, who are committed to finding and sharing new innovations to help successful agriculture catalyse successful rural economies.

To feed a population that is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050, our scientists are pioneering improvements in crops, animals, fish and trees to increase performance, nutritional value and resource use efficiency, and are building resistance in plants to drought, increased salinity and disease. Each year, around 200 new crop varieties with improved characteristics are released globally through CGIAR’s partners, with which we work closely to bring about transformation on the ground.

For example, CGIAR researchers have designed a field diagnostic tool kit for caprine pleuro-pneumonia, a deadly disease that causes major economic losses to goat production in Africa and Asia. In large swathes of South and Southeast Asia, 5 million farmers have seen their fragile livelihoods safeguarded by the introduction of flood tolerant rice, while in 13 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, the adoption of drought tolerant maize is estimated to have produced total benefits of US$395 million. Nutritious biofortified varieties, including vitamin A enriched cassava, maize and sweet potato, as well as iron beans, iron pearl millet, zinc rice and zinc wheat, are supplementing diets deficient in micronutrients that can cause irreparable damage, particularly in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life.

While recent studies undoubtedly show the numbers of hungry people going in the wrong direction, there is strong potential for reversing this trend. Science can and is producing solutions to the challenges of hunger and poverty, so it is critical to support innovation and research that can harness global scientific advances to address local challenges.

By 2030, the actions of CGIAR and its partners are expected to result in 150 million fewer hungry people, 100 million fewer poor people – at least 50% of them women – and 190 million hectares of less degraded land. That translates into real prospects for stemming the tide of poor and malnourished people on the move, offering them hope for a decent future without leaving home.

This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds launched by IPS on the occasion of this year’s World Food Day on October 16.

Excerpt:

Students at a school in an indigenous village in western Honduras work in the school garden, where they learn about nutrition and healthy eating. Since 2016 Honduras has a law regulating a new generation of school meals programme, which focuses on a healthy diet and serves fresh food from local family farmers and school gardens. Credit: Thelma Mejía/IPS

By Rod Brooks
RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA, Oct 11 2017 (IPS)

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently announced that the number of hungry people in the world has increased by 38 million in the past year due to climate change, conflict and slow economic growth. Given this setback, can we, in fact, end hunger in our lifetime? The answer is a resounding, Yes, we can. The first step is simply wrapping our minds around the reality that—yes—ending hunger is possible.

Tremendous strides have been made over the last two decades as the percentage of the world’s population suffering from hunger has decreased from 24 percent to 11 percent. We are on such a trajectory to end hunger that the United Nations established Sustainable Development Goal #2 – to achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture in our lifetime—by the year 2030.

Clearly, we have work to do to achieve this ambitious goal, which is not in some far distant future. Complacency and business as usual will not get the job done. To be successful, we must not perceive an end to hunger as one large and daunting task. Hunger should be examined as a group of problems that—when viewed as separate, smaller issues—can be tackled through multiple, obtainable goals.

The journey out of poverty and hunger for millions of people can come to a long-awaited end if we create the political and moral will to do so and we act strategically by nourishing lives, empowering communities, providing emergency relief during crisis and growing the movement to end hunger.

Nutrition serves as an incentive for parents in poverty stricken areas to send their children to school. For many kids, humanitarian meals become a physical symbol of hope.
One of the most effective ways to break the cycle of poverty is through school feeding programs. Hunger is a barrier to education, which is in turn a barrier to steady employment, health, infrastructure and economic growth. A school principal in Kenya summarized this best during a visit in his community: without the meals provided by organizations like Rise Against Hunger, kids don’t come to school.

If they fail to come to school, there is no education. Without education, there’s no hope for transformation, and the cycle of poverty continues. Nutrition serves as an incentive for parents in poverty stricken areas to send their children to school. For many kids, humanitarian meals become a physical symbol of hope.

We know that through providing nutrition today, we can change lives and build strong communities for tomorrow. We do so by empowering these communities to become self-sufficient, to learn sustainable farming practices and by stimulating economic growth that improves their resilience during times of strife.

Putting all these pieces into practice may seem staggering, but that’s why organizations like the UN and World Food Programme (WFP) are in place, to provide the data, science and international infrastructure needed to tackle this problem. But, I’m telling you—the ways to end hunger are scalable and it starts with each of us. There’s no need to purchase a plane ticket or even leave your hometown to participate in ending world hunger.

Local meal packaging events are the first step to providing nutrition to the world’s most vulnerable people. Your age, gender, faith, political affiliations—none of these preclude you from taking a small action—that when multiplied by individuals and communities around the world, will help feed the 815 million people who do not have enough food to live a healthy, productive life.

As October 16— World Food Day —approaches, let us be reminded of what we can achieve through working together, by becoming educated, participatory advocates for the world’s hungry. The world has enough production potential. Ending hunger by 2030 is at your fingertips. This is possible.

This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds launched by IPS on the occasion of this year’s World Food Day on October 16.

Excerpt:

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Oct 9 2017 (IPS)

Large movements of people is one of the most complex challenges the world faces today. In recent years there has been a huge increase in the number of people migrating around the world. Why is this happening and do they have a choice of staying in their own homes ?

Addressing migration is an important part of Agenda 2030 and is critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

About one-third of all international migrants are aged 15-34 years. Nearly half are women.

The United Nations estimates that more than 60 million, or nearly 1 in 100 people worldwide, have been forced to flee their homes due to increased conflict and political instability. That’s more than at any time since the Second World War.

Hunger, poverty, and an increase in extreme weather events linked to climate change are other important factors contributing to the migration challenge.

Almost three-quarters of the extreme poor base their livelihoods on agriculture or other rural activities. Creating conditions that allow rural people, especially youth, to stay at home when they feel it is safe to do so, and to have more resilient livelihoods, is an essential component of responding to the migration challenge.

Rural development can address factors that compel people to move by creating business opportunities and jobs for young people.

The international community can also harness migration’s potential by investing in rural development and building the resilience of displaced and host communities, thereby laying the ground for long-term recovery and inclusive and sustainable growth.

This year the theme for World Food Day, celebrated annually on 16 October – a date commemorating the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1945 – will focus on the link between migration, food security and sustainable rural development.

The drivers and impacts of migration are intimately linked to fighting hunger and achieving food security, reducing rural poverty and promoting the sustainable use of natural resources

Two farmers in Cobquecura in central Chile show visitors changes made in their subsistence crops to withstand the effects of global warming, with the support of public policies to strengthen food security in times of climate change. Credit: Claudio Riquelme/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Oct 12 2016 (IPS)

Climate change is leading to major modifications in agricultural production in Latin America and the Caribbean, and if mitigation and adaptation measures of the productive system are not urgently adopted, threats to food security will be exacerbated.

This could reverse the significant progress made in the region by means of plans to achieve the Zero Hunger goal, the experts told IPS.

For example, to maintain coffee yields, crops had to be moved from 1,000 to between 1,200 and 2,000 metres above sea level, while many Chilean vineyards had to be moved south, to get more sun and rain.

Large companies can afford to buy other land, but many family farmers find their livelihood at risk and wonder if the time has come to change crops or even to leave their land and move to a city, in order to survive.“If the climate is no longer suitable for production, you have to move to other areas where the agroecological and climate conditions are adequate. For large companies this is not a big problem, but it is for small-scale producers with less technology, lower levels of investment and a more reduced capacity for stockpiling.” -- Adrián Rodríguez

“Climate change puts us in a situation of insecurity. If in the past we were able to more or less estimate average temperatures or humidity for a particular area, now we have lost the capacity to make forecasts based on a certain degree of probability,” Jorge Meza, an Ecuadorian expert in the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) regional office, told IPS.

“Considering that the effects could be either positive or negative, it has been estimated that by 2030 the impacts from climate change on the regional economy could reach an average of 2.2 per cent of GDP in damage,” he said.

“Some of the effects could be beneficial, like an increase in rainfall that would mean more water for crops,” said Meza, the senior forestry officer in the Santiago office.

But in general terms, he said, if the losses amount to 2.2 per cent of GDP, “there will be countries with zero economic growth, and beyond the economic factor, there will be a strong social impact, of four to five per cent.”

FAO’s aim is to underscore the links between climate change mitigation and adaptation and food security, with the slogan “Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too”, for this year’s World Food Day, celebrated Sunday Oct. 16.

One example to be considered is the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) forecast for Central America.

If the necessary climate change mitigation and adaptation measures are not taken, production of basic grains could be reduced 25 per cent by 2050, the regional U.N. agency estimates.

“This is alarming for two reasons: first because it means a shortage of food, and second because the remaining food – that 75 per cent – will become more expensive. Both phenomena will have an impact on the poor: with less food available, and more costly food, there will be reduced possibilities of access to basic grains.” Meza said.

A family farm in the state of Rio de Janeiro,Brazil, with a planting system adapted to the manifestations of climate change in the area. Credit: Fabiola Ortiz/IPS

Viviana Espinosa, a 60-year-old Chilean woman, grows a variety of crops for family consumption.

At her home in the Cajón del Maipo region, in the foothills of the Andes mountains, about 17 km from Santiago, Espinosa plants food that she puts on her table and also distributes among her children and grandchildren.

“Food is increasingly expensive. For example, the cost of a kilo of tomatoes soared to 2,500 pesos (3.7 dollars) in September. If I plant at home, I not only save that expense, but in addition, I get a natural, organic product, free of pesticides,” she told IPS.

Apart from tomatoes, this married mother of three grows beets, lettuce, carrots and onions.

“My goal now is for everything that I plant to be organic, and I hope the weather will be favourable. In November 2015 heavy rains destroyed everything we planted,” she said.

Climate change is seen in Latin America in some 70 annual weather events, including hurricanes, drought, fires, landslides, and mainly floods, which affect an average of five million people.

Meanwhile, one third of the 625 million people in Latin America live in high-risk areas, exposed to climate events that pose a threat to their livelihood.

At the same time, climate change has more long-term effects, such as declining productivity in agriculture and a greater need to shift crop production areas.

“They say that if you don’t move and continue planting in the same area, you will probably have lower yields, and that could require more inputs or technologies and more resistant seeds,” Costa Rican economist Adrián Rodríguez, head of the Agricultural Development Unit in the ECLAC regional office, told IPS.

“From the point of view of family farming or the production of crops that play an important role in food security, an increase in food prices could affect farmers and consumers,” he said.

He added that there is another effect that has already been seen: the need for relocalisation of productive activities.

“If the climate is no longer suitable for production, you have to move to other areas where the agroecological and climate conditions are adequate. For large companies this is not a big problem, but it is for small-scale producers with less technology, lower levels of investment and a more reduced capacity for stockpiling,” he said.

In 2015, Latin America became the first region in the world to reach the two global anti-hunger goals: the prevalence of malnutrition fell to 5.5 per cent and the total number of malnourished people dropped to 34.3 million.

Thus, the region reached the target set in the Millennium Development Goals – which were replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals this year – and also at the last World Food Summit.

However, the challenge now is to reach zero hunger, a goal that could be affected by climate change, which has an impact on the four pillars of food and nutritional security: stability in food production, availability of food, physical access and affordability of food, and adequate use of food.

Meza called for mitigation actions that take into consideration a change in the energy sector towards renewable sources and, in agriculture, a shift towards organic practices, avoiding deforestation, the use of animal waste to generate biogas, and improvements in the diets of livestock with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, among other measures.

Rodríguez said mitigation should start by providing farmers with timely meteorological information while developing varieties of crops more resistant to drought, moisture and variability in availability of water and sunlight, and optimising the use of water with more efficient irrigation systems.

He also proposed strengthening research based on the knowledge of “family farmers and indigenous people, who have traditional varieties better suited to certain climates or soils…It is important to take this knowledge into account.”

Excerpt:

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 Busani Bafana
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe, Oct 12 2016 (IPS)

Elizabeth Mpofu is a fighter. She is one of a select group of farmers who equate food security with the war against hunger and shun poor agricultural practices which destroy the environment and impoverish farmers, especially women.

Mpofu grows maize, legumes and different beans on her environmentally-friendly 10-hectare farm in Masvingo Province, about 290 kms southeast of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare.“Pulses are the perfect food for Africa but their production is challenged by imperfect policies.” -- Charles Govati

Despite a region-wide drought in Southern Africa, she harvested 150 kg of dried beans this year. Although the number was still far less than what she harvests in a good season, dried peas and beans have armed farmers like Mpofu to battle food and nutritional insecurity at the household level.

The dried beans and peas belong to a class of food legumes known as pulses, widely considered a revolutionary food because of their many benefits. Pulses are rich in protein, drought resistant, offer an alternative cash crop and provide a fuel source. They are a perfect food in Africa, challenged by high rates of malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies, particularly among children under five years old.

The World Food Programme says the African region has the highest percentage of hungry population in the world, with one person in four undernourished, while over a third of children in Africa are stunted.

Celebrating the Year of Pulses

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) defines pulses as legumes with dry, edible seeds that have low fat content such as chickpeas, kidney beans, butter beans, black eyed peas, lentils, pigeon beans and cow peas among others.

Legumes used as vegetables such as green peas and beans or those used for oil extraction such as soybean and groundnuts are not classified as pulses.

“Pulses are the key to food security and nutrition in Africa, taking into consideration the climate crisis being faced on the continent,” Mpofu told IPS. “Pulses are providing a diversity of food for my family and also are important in improving soil health, especially in promoting an agroecology farming system.”

Pulses on display at a farmer’s market in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Pulses are power crops, offering nutritional and income security for farmers in Africa. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Mpofu, a member of the International Coordination Committee (ICC) and the General Coordinator of La Via Campesina, an international peasants’ movement with a membership over 200 million farmers, is one of six special Ambassadors for the Africa region nominated by the FAO raise public awareness about the contribution of pulses to food security, and the positive impacts they can have on climate change, human health and soil biology.

“Without these pulses a woman cannot call herself a mother of a family because you do not have a complete dish to feed your family,” said Mpofu, a mother of three. “There is need to create awareness of the importance of pulses to build a strong united voice which will enable women to lobby for policies that promote peasant agroecology and food sovereignty.”

Noting that farmers are challenged by lack of information, Mpofu says most have to make do with poor inputs, for example, growing commercial hybrid seeds rather than native varieties that have proven to be resilient for generations.

“The principles of keeping and producing native seeds is our way of advocating for food sovereignty through the promotion of our indigenous seeds and agroecology farming methods, and these principles can work in promoting the growing and consumption of pulses especially in Africa where we face challenges of food insecurity,” said Mpofu.

Recognising the importance of pulses to global food and nutritional security and environmental sustainability, the 68th United Nations General Assembly voted in 2013 to declare 2016 as the International Year of Pulses (IYOP).

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said at the 2015 launch of IYOP that pulses are important for the food security of millions, particularly in Latin America, Africa and Asia, where they are part of traditional diets and often grown by small farmers.

The IYOP is positioning pulses as a key contributor to meeting Sustainable Development Goal #2 of ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition while promoting sustainable agriculture.

In Malawi, farmers like Janet Mingo do not go hungry even when her maize crop fails — which it has done often owing to drought. The reason: protein rich pigeon peas (Cajanus Cajan) Mingo intercrops with maize on her quarter of a hectare plot in Chikalogwe village in the southern Balaka District, one of the driest regions of the country.

Pigeon peas are a nutritious legume which also improve crop yields by fixing nitrogen into the soil. More strategically for Mingo, pigeon peas are a key cash crop. Each season, Mingo harvests up to 1500 kg of pigeon pea from her plot, earning enough money to buy maize and cover other household needs.

“I now sell my maize crop and pigeon peas through the Agriculture Commodity Exchange,” said Mingo, who was introduced to pigeon pea by her local extension officer. “Life is hard but I do not feel the pinch.”

Mphatso Gama, the principal agricultural officer for Machinga Agriculture Development Division in Southern Malawi and a member of the National CA Taskforce, told IPS that farmers who used to rely entirely on maize have diversified into pigeon pea as a second crop. As a result, both their food security and income has improved.

“The drought-resilient pigeon has been a lifesaver,” Mphatso said. “While intercropping the nitrogen-fixing legume with maize has boosted yields, importantly pigeon peas have become a viable cash crop for farmers in Malawi, where it has a ready market and is a good source of protein for families.”

Tapping the trade power of pulses

Gavin Gibson, former executive director of the Global Pulse Confederation, told IPS that pulses are part of the traditional diets of the greater part of the world’s poorest population.

Gibson said of the 60 to 65 million tonnes of pulses produced annually, until very recently only around 7 to 10 million tonnes were traded between countries.  The rest were consumed domestically in countries where pulses are traditionally grown.

India, where pulses have been consumed for thousands of years as a staple food, is the biggest producer and consumer of pulses.  Africa is still finding its feet in ramping up its production of pulses, but is making progress.

“We think that this is likely to change quite quickly for a number of reasons, not least of which is the rapid emergence of new origins in Northern Europe and Africa,” Gibson said.

“We strongly believe — and will be forcefully promoting and driving — the view that increased demand from new market sectors that will rapidly emerge from the work of this group will of necessity force measures to be taken by governments and local communities alike to overcome present logistical and educational barriers in developing countries.”

Pulses, a climate-smart food

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), which has developed more than 80 percent of cowpea varieties released to farmers in Nigeria through its breeding programmes, says pulses such as cowpea are an alternative source of protein from the expensive animal sources.

Cowpea – a widely grown food and animal feed legume in the semi arid tropics in Africa and Asia – is one of the most drought-tolerant crops adapted to the dry areas of poor soils. But there is more. Pulses helping fix nitrogen in the soil thrive under uncertain growing conditions, making them climate smart.

“There is no doubt that pulses are very important in food and nutrition security in Africa,” says Christian Fatokun, a cowpea breeder with IITA. “However, they are a part of the solution to food and nutritional security in Africa. Apart from being good sources of plant based protein they also help in providing nitrogen in the soil for companion or following crops because they are capable of fixing atmospheric nitrogen.”

Radical policies for pulse production

While strategic to ensuring food security in Africa, pulses are not being prioritised as an important crop, argues Charles Govati, a development specialist and chair of the Agriculture Supply Services Consortium (ASSC) in Malawi.

“Pulses are the perfect food for Africa but their production is challenged by imperfect policies,” Govati told IPS. “There too much lip service paid to pulses yet there are challenges of low production, poor soils, pests and diseases which affect their production. Farmers focus on growing more for income and less for food and nutrition, besides we need structured markets in Africa to boost production if we are serious about pulses in ensuring food security.”

Excerpt:

As part of Milan’s drive to promote a sustainable urban food policy, schoolchildren are being encouraged to take home leftovers of non-perishable food, armed with doggy bags bearing the slogan “I DON’T WASTE”. Credit: Municipality of Milan

By Maurizio Baruffi
MILAN, Apr 28 2015 (IPS)

How can we provide healthy food for everyone, without threatening the survival of our planet? This is the fundamental issue at the centre of Expo 2015 – which has ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’ as its central theme – and a huge challenge for cities. 

More than 50 percent of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas – a proportion that is projected to increase to 66 percent by 2050 – and ensuring the right to food for all citizens, especially the urban poor, is key to promoting sustainable and equitable development.

As the city hosting Expo 2015, Milan has great visibility and an extraordinary political opportunity for working to build more resilient urban food systems. This is a vision that the City of Milan has decided to fulfil by formulating its own Food Policy, and by bringing together as many cities as possible to subscribe to an Urban Food Policy Pact: a global engagement to “feed cities” in a more just and sustainable way.

How we can provide healthy food for everyone, without threatening the survival of our planet, is the fundamental issue at the centre of Expo 2015 and a huge challenge for cities
The food policy, which will be implemented by Milan’s city government over the next five years, is being drafted through a wide participatory process, starting with an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the city’s food system.

This is a complex picture with some bright spots and some shadows highlighting several thematic areas that the food policy should take into consideration: from access to food to the environmental and social impact of food production and distribution, from food waste to education.

Milan has more than 1.3 million inhabitants, but almost two million people come to the city every day for work, study, leisure or, health care.

Through its public catering company Milano Ristorazione, the City of Milan prepares and delivers more than 80,000 meals each day for schools, retirement homes and reception centres. Thus, there is a lot the City can do to enhance and spread good practices – for example, by tackling food waste and improving the sustainability of the food supply chain.

Many projects are already in place. More than one-third of the fruit and vegetables served by Milano Ristorazione is organic, 57 percent is supplied from short distance, and children at school are encouraged to take home a doggie bag with leftovers of non-perishable food.

Every year, families in Milan still waste the equivalent of one month of food consumption, but several non-profit organisations are saving the food surplus from supermarkets and cafeterias and delivering it to more than one hundred of the city’s charities.

Meanwhile, with poverty on the rise as a result of the prolonged economic crisis, civil society and public institutions are working actively to help those in need. Soup kitchens offer around two million meals each year and the City of Milan itself delivers almost 250,000 meals to the elderly and the disabled.

The Office of the Mayor is currently asking citizens, civil society organisations, scholars, innovative entrepreneurs and chefs, among others, to have their say on the issues that the city’s food policy should address. The purpose is to draw up a strategic document that will be discussed in a town meeting in May, when a number of planning panels (Food Malls) will be launched. Their task is to turn the guidelines into pilot projects.

The process will culminate in the adoption of the food policy by the City of Milan and the launch of a number of pilot projects that will address some of the issues outlined in the food policy over coming years.

In the meantime, progress on the Urban Food Policy Pact is proceeding swiftly. The idea of an international protocol on local food policies was launched in February 2014 by the mayor of Milan, Giuliano Pisapia, at the summit of the C40 (Cities Climate Leadership Group) in Johannesburg.

A few months later, Milan and more than 30 cities around the world started to discuss the Pact, exchanging data, goals and best practices through webinars carried out under the Food Smart Cities for Development project financed by the EU Commission-DEAR (Development, Education, Awareness Raising) programme.

It is thrilling to see very different urban areas such as New York, São Paulo, Ghent, Daegu, Abidjan and Melbourne sharing projects, ideas, problems and solutions with a common goal: to build  a network of cities willing to work together to transform their future, placing the issue of food high on the political agenda.

A group of international experts is currently working on a draft of the Pact’s protocol that will be submitted to an advisory council and cities. The task of the advisory council – which is made up of international organisations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Health Organisation (WHO), World Food Programme (WFP) and the European Commission – is to review the pact and ensure that it is consistent with other international initiatives on the similar subjects.

Many cities have expressed their interest in subscribing to the Urban Food Policy Pact – to be signed in October this year on the occasion of World Food Day – and its proponents expect it to be one of the most significant legacies of Expo 2015.

Looking forward, the Pact will also feature at the U.N. Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris in December.

Agriculture and food production are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and our ability to produce food will be highly affected by climate change – building a more resilient world, where the right to food is ensured for everyone, is a process that need to start from cities, and from their ability to develop sustainable policies.

Edited by Phil Harris    

More information about Milan’s Food Policy and the Urban Food Policy Pact can be found at www.cibomilano.org/

Excerpt:

"Who is more concerned than the rural family with regards to preservation of natural resources for future generations?" – Pope Francis. Credit: By CIAT [CC-BY-SA-2.0] via Wikimedia Commons

By Gloria Schiavi
ROME, Oct 17 2014 (IPS)

“Who is more concerned than the rural family with regards to preservation of natural resources for future generations?”

Pope Francis posed the question in a message read by Archbishop Luigi Travaglino, Permanent Observer of the Holy See for the celebration of World Food Day on Oct. 16 at the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The Pope’s message went to the heart of this year’s World Food Day theme – Family Farming: Feeding the Planet, Caring for the Earth – as part of the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF).

The celebration of World Food Day offered an opportunity to share experiences and steps forward towards the eradication of hunger in a way that is sustainable for the future.

“Family farming is key in this effort”, said FAO Director-General José Graziano Da Silva, praising the contributions of farmers around the world. “For decades they were seen as a problem to be dealt with. The truth is that they are an important part of the solution to sustainable food security.”"For decades they [family farmers] were seen as a problem to be dealt with. The truth is that they are an important part of the solution to sustainable food security" – FAO Director-General José Graziano Da Silva

Food insecurity within the context of a growing world population, increasingly disruptive climate change and environmental destruction, scarce access to land and resources, discrimination against women and lack of financial support for smallholders and youth were some of the problems that were recognised as crucial in the global struggle to feed all.

Sustainable development and smart agriculture, climate change mitigation and adaptation to changing and more extreme conditions were raised as necessary strategies.

FAO figures show that increasing production is not the silver bullet – the world already produces 40 percent more than is needed.

Leslie Lipper, Senior Environmental Economist at FAO’s Economic and Social Department, raised the problem of access: “Today there is enough food in the world for everybody to be food secure, and we still have over 809 million people that are food insecure.”

“They don’t have the means to either buy or in some way get the food they need. We are looking at the need for an agriculture world strategy that increases income, not just production”, she added.

From a social perspective, Giuseppe Castiglione, Undersecretary at the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policy, highlighted the role of family farmers in terms of employment and social inclusion, saying that they offer the opportunity of involving vulnerable people in a familiar working environment that is more welcoming than other forms of employment.

The International Year of Family Farming has been a demonstration of what the United Nations system does well: gathering people, starting dialogue, creating platforms for discussion, raising awareness and sharing knowledge.

In this context, many speakers called for policy-makers to follow up and implement strategies that permit the creation of supporting infrastructures. In fact, farmers’ challenges include distributing food efficiently, gaining access to markets and financial investments, reducing waste and improving quality.

“Financial services enable farmers to generate income and insulate themselves from income shocks”, said Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development.

“Even a small amount of savings can mean that a mother does not have to sell her chickens or other income-earning assets in order to pay a doctor’s fee,” she added.

The crucial role of women as the backbone of agricultural production was not forgotten, and every speaker called for recognition of their role and for gender equality.

Santiago Del Solar Dorrego, Argentine agronomist and former president of a farmer group, suggested that while innovation is crucial, farmers should not go down that path alone if they do not have the scale to absorb the shock of failure. “Go together,” he said.

Jorge Anrango, responsible for food in rural and indigenous communities in the Ecuador delegation to FAO, talked to IPS about the experience of his country. “Everybody wanted to study, study, study. Nobody wanted to cultivate land”, he said, explaining that the IYFF has raised awareness of the importance of farming and has spurred people to return to the fields.

John Kufuor, former President of Ghana, highlighted the need for political leadership in policy-making for agriculture. He said that the 30 percent increase in rice production in his country had been made possible through offering landless people, women and youth degraded but usable land plots.

By providing them with access to training, markets and services, it had been possible to involve them in a system of plantation development and profit sharing and this programme had created jobs and improved income, food security and nutrition.

In a reference to the recent natural disasters that have hit the host country, Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, a movement promoting local food systems, said that the floods and landslides that affected parts of northern Italy earlier in the month were the result of terrible hydrogeological conditions.

This, he explained, was because while family farmers used to clean canals and rivers and to ensure that the land was looked after, their role had been weakened, negatively affecting the public service they had once provided.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Poland wastes at least 8.9 million tonnes of food every year. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Marina Lalovic
ROME, Oct 17 2013 (IPS)

If all food loss and waste around the world could be recovered, half the world’s population, or 3.5 billion people, could be fed. Yet people throw away a third of food produced globally, an issue that inspired the theme of these year’s World Food Day, sustainable food systems for food security and nutrition.

While World Food Day, held Oct. 16, set the goal of completely eliminating food waste before increasing food production, much of the global population remains uneducated and uninformed about the problem, so many obstacles must be overcome before such a feat can be attained.

“I come from a country where people don’t even try to harvest agricultural products because the price of these products is so low and the work is too hard,” Albanian chef Fundim Gjpali told IPS while working at the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s World Food Day event organised at EATALY, a slow food hub in Rome.

Today, Gjpali is fighting food waste in the land of abundance: Europe. For World Food Day, he specially prepared a dish of recovered food. “I took tomatoes, bread and Italian ricotta cheese that were about to be thrown away, and I made a very decent dish,” he said."In Cuba...until you have eaten everything you've bought, you don't go to the market."
-- Lesmer Oquedo Curbelo

Other countries, such as Cuba, represent the land of food recycling. “With the embargo in Cuba, we don’t have other choices,” Lesmer Oquedo Curbelo, a Cuban chef, told IPS. “A Cuban toreja, fried bread, is an example of how people could use stale bread.”

He compared food-buying practices in Cuba to those in Western countries. “In Cuba we buy food day by day,” he described. “Until you have eaten everything you’ve bought, you don’t go to the market.”

According to research by the FAO, nearly 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night. Even though food production will have to increase by at least 70 percent in order to feed a population that will reach 9 billion in 2050, the world wastes more than a third of the food that it is producing. And this waste affects everyone, regardless where they are born or live, and covers the entire food supply chain from the farm to the table.

According to FAO estimates, in developing countries, food waste tends to occur upstream of the food chain (six to eleven kilograms per capita in 2010), meaning that the food is lost just after production. In developed countries, however, loss occurs downstream, or in distribution, catering and domestic consumption (95-115 kilograms per person).

“While in the western world we only talk about the waste, in the developing countries the buzzword is the food loss,” Andrea Segrè, director of the Department of Agro-Food Science and Technology, University of Bologna and president of Last Minute Market, told IPS. Food waste differs from loss in that waste is literally throwing away food, while loss is due to a lack of storage. Many developing countries have plenty of food but no way to preserve.

“In India, for instance, the problem is not the lack of food but the storage,” explained Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Emma Bonino. She stressed that regardless of personal habits, people must be aware of different ways to reduce food waste.

“On an individual level, we are supposed to think about the size of our food portions. We should also think about what and where we are buying food,” José Graziano da Silva, director-general of FAO, told IPS.

Filling the gap

Andrea Segrè described to IPS a Last Minute Market, a spin-off society founded in 2000 that implemented the first professional system of recycling the unsold food of big distributors by filling in the gap between supply and demand. LMM doesn’t directly manage unsold food, instead offering services to prevent and reduce the production of waste.

“But our goal is to close the LMM, because we want to reach zero food loss,” Segrè added. “In that kind of world, we are not going to need projects like LMM.”

Federico Spadini from OXFAM Italy, offered IPS five ways people can help alleviate this issue: reduce the consumption of meat and dairy products, reduce food waste, be aware of how much water and electricity one uses while cooking, eat seasonal products, and sustain small farmers instead of corporate agriculture.

An estimated 800 million people working in agriculture around the world live below the poverty line, and approximately half of the world’s inhabitants who suffer from hunger are smallholder farmers.

“Supporting smallholder farmers will go a long way toward alleviating food insecurity and increasing incomes where most needed,” says Ellen Gustafson, co-founder of Food Tank, a non-profit working in environmentally sustainable ways to alleviate hunger and other food-related ailments.

Unique efforts to eliminate loss

Peruvian chef Elsa Javier, who deals primarily with ethnic food, has been devising creative ways to reduce food waste, such as by combining Italian Mediterranean food and Andean biodiversity.

“If we add Andean quinoa to Italian vegetable soup, you’ll have a perfect combination and this dish might last much longer than an ordinary one,” she explained to IPS. “In order to fight food waste, we have to unite gastronomic cultures. Ethnic food in developed countries is completely wasted and underestimated by the locals. So by unifying food cultures, we might help stop this kind of food waste.”

Others have turned to technology to combat food waste. ICT4G (ICT for Good), an Italian group that uses technology to foster economic and social development, has developed a smartphone application called “Bring the Food” that facilitates food donations.

“If I have a restaurant, thanks to this application, I can spread the word that I have, for instance, ten boxes of unsold pizza,” Pietro Molini, an  ICT4G collaborator, told IPS. “Our app users are mostly charity associations but also individuals not necessarily belonging to lower classes.”

Homeless people in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in Washington DC, waiting for shuttles that will take them to food shelters. Credit: Ramy Srour/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Oct 17 2013 (IPS)

Near the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in downtown Washington, just a few blocks away from the federal district, dozens of homeless men and women wait for the evening shuttles that will take them to their dinners at one of many food shelters around the city.

They can get by during the day with the few dimes and quarters spared by passersby, but the only daily meal they can really count on is the one they will get at the local food shelter, and so for them, hunger is a very real problem.

Two weeks before federal legislation that will cut funding from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, goes into effect on Nov. 1,  thousands of families around the country wonder how they will put food on the  table, while the homeless wonder about meals from shelters, because the one meal they used to count on is no longer a guarantee. "The bill comes at a terrible time, when the needs in this country are tremendous."
-- Josh Protas

Last month, the Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Frank Lukas (R-OK), introduced new legislation that will cut almost 40 billion dollars from the SNAP programme, the main source of food funding for thousands of struggling families across the country.

According to a statement released by Lukas after the bill was narrowly approved in the House, the new bill “encourages and enables work participation, closes programme loopholes, and eliminates waste, fraud and abuse while saving the American taxpayer nearly 40 billion dollars.”

‘This is not right’

But while the SNAP cuts may save the U.S. government budget billions, the effects on millions of struggling Americans will be catastrophic, critics say.

“The bill comes at a terrible time, when the needs in this country are tremendous,” Josh Protas, the director of government affairs at Mazon, a Jewish advocacy group that fights hunger in the United States, told IPS. He said the cuts will have a devastating effect on people struggling economically and on food banks and shelters across the country.

“The new cuts will not be able to compensate for the high demand at food banks and shelters, which are already incredibly stretched,” he said.

Bread for the World, a Christian advocacy group, has been pushing Congress to protect the SNAP programme since the new cuts were introduced last September.

“Any kind of cut is really going to hurt families,” Christine Ashley, an analyst at Bread for the World, told IPS. “We estimate that the new cuts will take as much as 36 dollars a month from each family…Think how [many] groceries you can buy with that amount.”

Feeding America, one of the largest hunger-relief organisations in the country, noted in a recent report that up to 75 percent of SNAP households include a child or an elderly or disabled person, all of whom will be affected by the cuts.

Mr. Valentine, 52, is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served for eight years. He is now homeless and unemployed, and he told IPS that he relies on food stamps for all his meals. When asked about the upcoming cuts, he expressed desperation and much frustration.

“These cuts, this is not right,” he told IPS. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if they take this money away from me. I have a wife and an 11-year old daughter. We live off food stamps.” He cannot hide his exasperation as he awaits the daily 6:15 pm van that will bring him and others like him to Adam’s Place Emergency Shelter in northeast Washington for a hot meal.

Valentine also believes that a consequence of the cuts will be an increase in crime. “If people get their stamps cut off, you’re going to see more desperate people committing robberies and things like that. Crime is just going to go up.”

Increased demand on charities

The SNAP cuts come at a critical juncture, as federal employees are still trying to recover from a government shutdown that left them without income for over two weeks. In fact, those federal workers with lower incomes have turned to community shelters to get food on their tables.

“With the government shutdown, we have seen a huge increase in people coming to us for food,” David O. Treadwell, executive director of Central Union Mission, Washington’s oldest social service agency, told IPS. “The SNAP cuts are only going to exacerbate this situation.”

The Central Union Mission is one of several non-profit organisations that provide food for people who do not receive food stamps. Located in the Chinatown district, the Mission runs a Food Place Centre in northeast Washington, where volunteers give away up to 125 food bags per day.

According to Jeff, the food service manager at the Mission, people who come to the Mission simply cannot make it from one paycheck to the next. “It’s already a bad situation,” he said. “It’s only going to get worse.”

As the cuts go into effect, organisations like the Central Union Mission will face considerable increase in demand as people turn to organisations that will feed them without stamps.

Room for hope

The SNAP cuts are part of the larger Farm Bill that was approved by a small majority in the House last month. The new bill is likely to penalise millions of unemployed Americans who cannot find work and who will be immediately removed from the SNAP programme.

“Rather than help unemployed workers who have been hit hardest by the recent economic downturn, this bill would penalise many of those who can’t find jobs by throwing them off SNAP,” Bread for the World and Mazon said in a joint statement with other hunger-relief organisations.

“We will continue to push Congress to protect the SNAP programme in any budget bill,” Bread for the World’s Ashley told IPS. “The bill passed only by a seven-vote margin. This means that there is still enough bipartisan support to keep SNAP alive.”

Despite a sudden increase in July this year, prices of cereals on world markets remained fairly stable. But there are no grounds for complacency, as cereals markets remain vulnerable to supply shocks and disruptive policy measures. In this context, the good harvests that are expected in the Southern Hemisphere are important.

José Graziano da Silva, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Credit: FAO News

In the last ten years we have seen major changes in the behaviour of food prices. Up until around 2002 real food prices were falling but they have now been above trend for longer than at any other time in the previous forty years.

Food prices have also been volatile and the combination of high and volatile food prices will continue to challenge the ability of consumers, producers and governments to cope with the consequences.

All this makes it timely to reflect on recent price events and the reactions of the international community, especially since price volatility is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Set against this backdrop, the Ministerial Meeting on Food Price Volatility held on World Food Day on Oct. 16 was particularly relevant.

Twenty-five ministers and 13 deputy ministers met to discuss the issues and exchange views on how to strengthen measures to contain food price volatility and to reduce its impact on the most vulnerable populations.

The meeting recognised that a lot was learned from the 2007-8 and 2010-11 price hikes about appropriate responses at international, regional and national levels. They also agreed that much more could be done based on the Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture that was adopted by the G20 leaders in November 2011.

This action plan launched major international initiatives, in particular the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), hosted at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). AMIS monitors developments based on the latest available information, analysing the global supply/demand situation and providing objective assessments.

Born just one year ago, AMIS is already a fully functioning mechanism and played a key role this summer in calming markets and preventing the deterioration of a vulnerable food market situation into the potential crisis that countless commentators were so quick to predict.

AMIS is providing an objective assessment of the market situation and risks, while calling on G20 member states to refrain from adopting policy measures that might further destablise markets.

This experience shows that coordinated international action and enhanced transparency and information on agricultural markets can make a difference in limiting food price spikes and excessive volatility.

Even when they are affected by adverse weather conditions that reduce production and export capacity, it is important that governments of exporting countries act transparently and dialogue with commercial actors to assure local availability of cereals without creating uncertainty in international markets.

This coordination is crucial because it can stop a drought or a flood from becoming a crisis.

Other actions to limit price spikes and excessive volatility ­ adjustments to trade rules, the creation of emergency food reserves, reform of biofuel policies and control of speculation ­ are all still works in progress. ‘Excessive’ is the keyword, because some degree of volatility is a characteristic of agricultural markets.

Action also needs to be taken to build resilience to that volatility in the medium-term.

This requires substantially increased investment in agricultural production with a particular emphasis on support to smallholder farmers.

Financing will need to come primarily from the private sector including smallholders themselves and major companies. This is a controversial area and concerns, especially over large-scale land investments, are well founded.

It is vital that any investment is made responsibly and for the benefit of all stakeholders. This is where the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture, which will be discussed by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), and the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure previously endorsed by the CFS, have an important role to play.

FAO is prepared to assist governments in implementation of these safety measures. AMIS, Voluntary Guidelines and the Principles for Responsible Investments are all elements of the new global governance on food security that we are building, and that has the CFS as its cornerstone. We are making up for lost time, as food security governance was neglected until a few years ago. Fortunately we are learning that, in a globalised world, it is impossible to ensure food security in a single country or region. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

*Jose Graziano da Silva is the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).