Archive for category: Food & Hunger

Information and stories on food.

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Benefitting from the Green Revolution in Africa

 

green_revolution_in_africa
A Green Revolution is the process of renovating agricultural practices, techniques and equipment that results in more prosperous and successful agricultural production. The first Green Revolution occurred in Mexico in the 1940s and the agricultural modifications used to spur the revolution spread worldwide in the following decades.

Green Revolutions are made possible through mechanized equipment and the use of irrigation and fertilization. Prior to many Green Revolutions countries such as Mexico and the United States were not producing enough crops to feed their citizens so they were forced to import products.

In the 1940s, the U.S. imported more than half of its wheat. However, after undergoing their Green Revolution they were able to produce a significantly greater supply and were not only able to stop importing wheat but also became wheat exporters. Cutting the cost of importing and generating a profit from exporting.

While Green Revolutions were sprouting up across the world, Africa became one area that was largely excluded from the benefits of revolutionizing agriculture. The lack of a Green Revolution in Africa can be directly tied to the overwhelming level of poverty throughout much of the African continent and especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Roughly 400 million people in Africa live in poverty and the majority of them live on farms. African farmers face poor soil, unreliable water supplies, restricted access to markets, insufficient access to finance and credit compounded by little government support.

Without a shift in the farming techniques and tools used throughout African countries, farmers will continue to struggle to grow enough crops to earn a living wage or feed their fellow countrymen.

Some countries are starting to show signs of Green Revolutions and there are many organizations, such as AGRA, that are working to assist in this process; but with so many people lacking food and an adequate income, an agricultural boost could be a major step towards decreasing the striking poverty levels throughout Africa.

AGRA is an organization that has developed and implemented several programs designed specifically to increase African agriculture. They currently work within 17 different African countries with programs to improve soil health, market access and policies and advocacy for farmers.

A Green Revolution in Africa could allow countries to gain economic stability, decrease food insecurity and empower farmers to not only feed their own countries but the world. Turning a country from an importer to an exporter can unlock potential and generate incredible economic progress.

– Brittney Dimond

Sources: AGRA, About, Huff Post,
Photo: thedailyeye

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Addressing Guatemala’s Food Emergency

Guatemalan Drought Creates Food Emergency
Over the last three years, Guatemala has experienced a drought that has taken a hungry nation and made conditions even more severe.

Before the drought, the nation experienced some of the highest levels of “inequality, poverty, chronic malnutrition and mother-child mortality in the region.” Almost 50 percent of children under the age of five suffer from chronic undernutrition; that is the highest number in their region and fourth highest in the world.

The drought has now taken what little bit of food supply the region can supply on their own and caused the crops to be stunted or not grow. Also, any food reserves have been depleted. Nearly one million hungry people are growing even hungrier with the drought.

The food emergency was an issue last year as well. On August 26, 2014, a state of emergency was declared in Guatemala after a particularly brutal drought was affecting the nation. The state of emergency was issued in 16 of the 22 provinces and at that time was affecting 236,000 families.

Currently, much of the nation’s population is relying on the government and U.N. handouts to feed their families.

Part of the reason that the drought is so devastating is the lack of improvements to the water infrastructure. The inefficiencies in collecting, storing and then irrigating the rainwater that does come expounds the problems that are associated with the drought.

Organizations are working to help those suffering most from the ravaging drought. The World Food Programme has created programs “geared towards reducing food insecurity, improving the nutritional status of mothers and children under 5 and living conditions of vulnerable groups by increasing agricultural productivity and farmer’s marketing practices.”

They cite two main programs they are conducting in Guatemala:

  1. Country Programme: 45,500 people will be given supplementary food in order to combat the chronic undernutrition, 12,000 subsistence farmers will be assisted and the program will help 3,000 farmers gain access to markets.
  2. Purchase for Progress: This program is working to link a much broader base of farmers and markets together. Also, guidance on best farming practices will be given to help grain quantity and quality.

While these programs may not directly stop the widespread hunger, it is putting food in the mouths of many who need it and creating an infrastructure to ensure that severe food shortages do not happen in the future.

They are also not the only programs that the World Food Programme is working on in Guatemala. There are long-term plans to help the country through future droughts and streamline food voucher distribution to help those hungry right now.

Guatemala has a long way to go. During this drought, so many people are suffering from worsening hunger. Unfortunately, this is not a new revelation or situation. The first area that has been addressed is the immediate need to feed the hungry.

But long-term action needs to be enacted. Thankfully, the Guatemalan government understands this and the World Food Programme has programs in place. Hopefully, in the future, a drought will not cause such widespread hunger again.

– Megan Ivy

Sources: Guatemala: WFP Country Brief, NBC, Trust, WFP
Photo: Flickr

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6 Reasons Breadfruit Can Solve World Hunger

Breadfruit Could Solve World Hunger
What is breadfruit? Although it sounds fictitious, it is actually a real food with the potential to contribute to the eradication of world hunger.

Breadfruit is shaped like a football and has a prickly texture. The fruit grows on trees and is highly nutritious. It is not well known because many people find it bland and tasteless.

However, there are 6 reasons why food critics should stop turning up their noses at this fruit and they all pertain to helping starving people.

  1. Breadfruit is native to the Pacific Islands and grows best in sunny and humid climates. About 80 percent of the world’s hungry live in tropical and subtropical regions. Because these regions are best for these trees, the fruit has the potential to feed thousands of hungry people.
  2. Breadfruit trees grow easily and begin to bear fruit within three to five years. They are not high maintenance and continue to produce fruit for decades. On average, larger trees can produce between 400-600 fruits while smaller trees can produce approximately 100 fruits.
  3. Breadfruit is nutritious. It is high in fiber, carbohydrates, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, potassium, thiamine, and niacin.
  4. Breadfruit can be prepared in a variety of ways including fried, frozen, fermented, pickled, boiled, baked, and roasted. It can also be ground into flour.
  5. Currently, there are pilot projects working to distribute the fruit to places in need such as Honduras and the Caribbean. The Breadfruit Institute in Hawaii is a member of the Alliance to End Hunger. With their hard work and the work of other organizations such as Trees That Feed Foundation, breadfruit has fed people in Jamaica, Kenya, and Haiti.
  6. There are many fans advocating for the fruit. Olelo pa’a Faith Ogawa, a private chef says, “I feel it’s the food of the future. If I were to speak to the breadfruit spirit, it would tell me: ‘Grow me! Eat me! It can feed villages!’”

– Kelsey Parrotte

Sources: Business Insider, National Tropical Botanical Garden, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post

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Social Entrepreneurs Fostering Feasible, Sustainable Change

social_entrepreneursThis year Echoing Green, an organization devoted to effecting long-term social growth, has partnered with USAID’s Global Development Lab to sponsor social entrepreneurs and projects in developing countries. This funding will lead to social growth, encourage investment in local individuals and create a more supportive environment for social entrepreneurship.

The projects will offer market-based solutions to provide resources for those in need, expand job opportunities and improve the well-being of local people and their communities.

The partnership, called Priming the Pump, is a global development network supported by General Atlantic, Newman’s Own Foundation, the Pershing Square Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Echoing Green.

With more than $4 million in funding, the partnership seeks out and invests in early development innovators for social change who pose solutions to issues present in developing countries.

Fellows receive $90,000 over two years to help advance their initiatives and participate in mentoring from international development professionals and global networking programs. So far, Priming the Pump has empowered 29 Fellows from 20 organizations in developing nations.

This year, USAID’s funding will help 15 entrepreneurs jump-start their visions.

One project, developed by Jehiel Oliver in Nigeria and nicknamed the “Uber for Tractors,” allows farmers to order tractors through SMS texts. This allows farmers with limited access to labor to plow their fields quickly and more cheaply. It gives financial gain to small farmers as well as tractor drivers who are contracted to do such work.

Another project receiving funding is the Tujenge Africa Foundation created by Etienne Mashuli and Wendell Adjetety. Both survivors of the Rwandan civil war and genocide, Etienne and Wendell are living examples of how quality education can help people escape poverty and violence.

Through education, leadership programming and peacemaking, their organization helps post-conflict African youth excel and define their own futures.

There are many other groups receiving funding for change such as Love Grain, which builds farming co-ops and supports supply chains to connect teff farmers in Ethiopia with international markets.

Suyo is another initiative that helps low-income families in Latin America secure rights over their property and transforms economic security; while The Open Medicine Project uses mobile technologies to pair healthcare workers in South Africa, India and Pakistan with informational resources and support tools to help them improve their work and save lives.

Funding from organizations such as Echoing Green and USAID will provide developers and their projects with the resources to expand their technology and access to help create real change in their communities and nations.

– Jenny Wheeler

Sources: Echo in Green 1, Echo in Green 2
Sources: Flickr

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Malthusianism: Theories on Poverty and Aid

Malthusianism Theories on Poverty and Aid
Thomas Malthus was a clergyman and philosopher of the late 18th century. His ideas on the causes of poverty and the means by which it could be eliminated were controversial for his time and would probably have been unspeakable in ours. However, his work shaped England’s “Poor Laws,” influenced scientists and philosophers such as Charles Darwin, and remains pertinent today.

Malthus believed that the population would always increase more rapidly than food supply, which meant that large numbers of people would always suffer from starvation and poverty. His calculations demonstrated that while food supply grew at a linear rate, populations tended to grow at an exponential one.

The inspiration behind his ideas came from his work as a parish priest, where he noticed that the numbers of poor people he was baptizing far outstripped the number of deaths he was recording. As a member of a wealthy family himself, he was also struck by the abject poverty and miserable conditions the poor were living in. At the time, almost a seventh of England was on some sort of welfare, but its population was booming.

Carrying out more studies on England’s poor gave Malthus a clearer picture of the problem. Poor families showed a tendency to have more children when their economic situation improved, even slightly, as it had after the industrial revolution. This had the effect of again lowering the average living standard of the entire family.

In this sort of poverty trap, the poor would remain unable to escape their condition. A poor family was also generally more likely to have a greater number of children because some were always expected to die in their infancy. The solution, Malthus stated, was to encourage the poor to marry later and have fewer children, if any at all. By having children, they would be sentencing more people to live in poverty and starvation.

The way to encourage the poor to adopt this solution would be to eliminate all types of aid. While this would initially be very hard and even cruel, it would eliminate poverty and dismantle the poverty trap in the long run.

What welfare did, Malthus believed, was encourage the poor to marry earlier even when they could not support a family and have children they could not afford. The effect of this was that families continued to be poor and live on the very barest of necessities. England’s Poor Laws, which propped up people who suffered from bad harvests, was creating the very poverty it hoped to eliminate.

Once these practices were taken up, food supply could finally keep up with the lowered population growth. If food supply could not keep up, Malthus believed that three necessary and inevitable things would take place: plague, famine and war. These would once again balance out the population but at a much greater cost.

Critics have generally attacked Malthusianism from two different angles. One side believes that a small population is not good for a country. The Mercantilists argue that high population growth, even if it results in poverty, is good for the country. It would provide it with people to fight in the army, work in factories and provide cheap services.

Mercantilists did not want the population to earn very high wages or live far above the poverty line—this would stagnate economic growth and weaken the nation. Modern anti-Malthusians also believe that low birth rates are bad for the economy because the workforce would not be able to support its older population.

Other critics of Malthusianism believe that his proposed solutions are not the best way to tackle poverty. They are needlessly inhumane. Human ingenuity can come with solutions to expand food supply to meet population needs. Norman Borlaug, the mind behind the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, is cited as an example. He created strains of corn and wheat that had much higher yields than before, saving millions from starvation.

Neo-Malthusians, as modern proponents of Malthus are called, say the current statistics speak for themselves. Populations in almost every developing country are growing rapidly as they become wealthier and advancements in medicine keep more children and older people alive. In the last 110 years, the world’s population has grown from 1.6 billion to 7.2 billion.

But 805 million worldwide go to bed hungry, and most are from developing countries. A fourth of people in Sub-Saharan Africa are chronically malnourished. More than 750 million lack access to clean water, which leads to 850,000 deaths per year. In major cities, such as Mumbai, half the population are living in wretched and slum-like conditions. In Sub-Saharan Africa, this number reached 61 percent. Most poor people continue to have more children than they can afford to take care of.

While the poor continue to have high fertility rates, they will continue to be poor. Neo-Malthusians advocate for better family planning, a change in societal expectations and norms, greater access to contraceptives and more education about conception to reduce the poor’s fertility rates.

– Radhika Singh

Sources: Orion Magazine, Population Connection, Economist, BBC
Photo: Flickr

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Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Conference

Ecosystem Based Food Security Conference 2015
More than 1,400 participants gathered in Nairobi, Kenya for the second annual Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Conference. This year’s theme is “Re-imagining Africa’s Food Security Now and into the Future under a Changing Climate,” and the conference included round tables, discussions and plenary sessions that explored how to sustainably use African soils.

The overarching idea behind the conference was to generate discussion and propose solutions to Africa’s food crisis by focusing on using the resources at hand and capitalizing on existing adaptations in the food production chain that may aid food producers in the face of impending climate change.

The conference did not just focus on food production, however, but also addressed the labor behind food production, including supporting the expansion of local agricultural businesses and employment for women and youth in Africa.

Building on the thematic discussions throughout the conference, attendees had the opportunity to discuss how to maximize policy framework and develop an action plan to ensure not only food security, but livelihood security as well.

Organized in collaboration with a number of United Nations agencies, the conference took place July 30 and 31, 2015, at the U.N. Complex in Nairobi, Kenya.

– Gina Lehner

Sources: International Policy Digest, 2nd Africa Food Security Conference
Photo: EBASouthE

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How the UN Fights Global Poverty

How the UN Fights Global Poverty2015 represents an important year for the United Nations to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

Among the goals that the United Nations has to eradicate poverty and hunger are: to reduce by half the amount of people that make less than $1 per day, accomplish employment and work for everyone including minorities such as women and to reduce by half the amount of people who are suffering from hunger.

The United Nations partners with different organizations and foundations in order to achieve these goals to eradicate poverty.

The Zero Hunger Challenge, the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement and the UNDP-IKEA Foundation are three movements that the United Nations are partnering with.

1. Zero Hunger Challenge

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gives the invitation to every country to work for the future, a future in which every person has adequate nutrition and doesn’t lack food.

The Zero Hunger Challenge involves having no stunted children, 100 percent access to adequate food, sustainable food systems, 100 percent increase in smallholder productivity and zero food waste.

According to this challenge, the investment in agriculture, rural development and equality of opportunity helps to eradicate hunger.

This challenge promotes different strategies and cooperation in order to strive for results that combat hunger.

2. Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement

The principle of this movement is that everyone has the right to good nutrition and food. This movement is supported by donors, people from the government, the United Nations and various others.

This movement seeks to address malnutrition by activities such as implementing programs and collaborations.

The principles of engagement are to be transparent and honest about the impact that collective action has, bring solutions that can be proven and interventions to scale, have a commitment to support the rights and equity of all human beings, resolve conflicts if they arise, be responsible so stakeholders can feel collectively accountable to the commitments, establish priorities and be communicative toward what works and what doesn’t.

3. UNDP-IKEA Foundation

This is a foundation that is benefiting 50,000 women from India.

This foundation has helped 9,000 dairy producers to form a company through provided financial literacy training. Profits also double within a year through the participation of the members.

The United Nations also contributes with other organizations, such as the UNDP and Brazil’s Natura Cosméticos, which brings training to beauty advisors in areas that vary from direct sales to customer training.

It is clear that the United Nations uses different methods to obtain results in the different humanity issues that it focuses on.

While they address different issues such as climate change, terrorism, food production, human rights, health emergencies and many others, global poverty and the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger is under the Millennium Development Goals that the United Nations has, and partnering with different associations, movements, organizations and foundations has resulted in a way to reach for success in addressing these issues in the year of 2015.

– Diana Fernanda Leon

Sources: United Nations 1, United Nations 2, Scaling Up Nutrition
Photo: Flickr

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Feeding Children in Egypt to Boost Attendance Rates

Attending School = Having Food in Egypt
In June 2015, the European Union funded a project for the World Food Programme (WFP) that encourages 100,000 children in Egypt to attend school.

The four-year project, called Enhancing Access of Children to Education and Fighting Child Labour aims to offer children, especially girls, incentives to pursue education.

Fifteen percent of children in Egypt eventually end up working to help support their families. The WFP’s goal of feeding children in Egypt to boost attendance rates involves providing snacks and take-home rations for children who maintain an 80 percent school attendance rate.

The daily in-school snack, date bars, offers valuable vitamins and minerals for students. For most children, the bars are their first meal of the day. The take-home rations of rice and oil equal the value of what children could earn from a month of work.

By using food incentives, WFP hopes to encourage parents to send children to school instead of out to work. In addition, they hope to break the patriarchal idea where young girls are solely expected to stay home and be married.

“The concept they have is the girl is going to get married and stay home, so if they need to get one of their children educated, they’re going to focus on the boys. With our project, we focus on the girls because we feel we are their chance to get an education,” says Amina Al Korey, communications officer for WFP in Egypt.

The girls get first priority registering for the community schools supported by the WFP and supervised by the Egyptian Ministry of Education. Boys can be admitted but only if spots still remain.

Larry Summers, former World Bank chief economist says, “Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world.”

Girls who attend school will make up to 25 percent more in wages in the future, be healthier and more capable of supporting a family, and could even save malnourished children, simply by being given a secondary education.

Al Korey says, “Whenever I speak to the girls, they’re always just so enthusiastic about actually going to school. They don’t just feel good about getting an education and getting a chance to take a different path.”

WFP also plans to support mothers with income-generating projects, such as breeding goats, making soaps and selling and growing vegetables.

Lubna Alaman, WFP’s representative and county director in Egypt, says, “Through partnerships like this, WFP hopes to make a child’s simplest dream come true.”

At the conclusion of the four-year project, WFP hopes to see more girls excited about pursuing an education and bettering their future.

– Kelsey Parrotte

Sources: Takepart, WFP
Photo: Flickr

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Heat-Mapping for D.C. Food Insecurity

Heat-Mapping for D.C. Food Insecurity- BORGEN
The federal capital of one of the most powerful nations in the world is unfortunately also home to some of the worst food insecurity in the nation.

According to D.C. Hunger solutions — an initiative of the Food Research and Action Center — one in eight households, or 13.4 percent, in the District of Columbia struggles with hunger. In the surrounding suburban areas — one of the richest in the country — the number of people facing food insecurities has risen considerably in the past 8 years. Almost 346,000 residents in the DMV suburban area now live in suburban poverty.

These statistics have fed an exigent need to find new and improved methods to document, plan and combat hunger in the Greater Washington metropolitan area. The Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB) serves the food security needs of this area, including the District of Columbia as well as counties in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. One of the largest obstacles in allocation of resources in this area is the disparity within the regions, as well as the undocumented presence of poverty and food insecurity.

In the midst of one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the country is what has been labelled as pockets of hunger. Establishment of food banks and food distribution programs in one part of the county or city is not enough to reach out to the entire population in need of assistance, particularly children.

The solution to this problem has been the heat mapping technology for hunger in the Washington metro area. Designed by Michael Hollister for the CAFB, the technology maps the amount of food distributed in every part of the Greater Washington region; the amount of food needed is layered on the map as well.

The data is obtained through census statistics, USDA records, Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap and food assistance programs’ inventories. The hunger map then shows the areas in greatest need with calculated food insecurity rates. The layered statistical data is color-coded, as in a heat map, for easier visual interpretation.

The meticulously worked out data and the subsequent mapping technology have allowed for more uniform distribution of food resources. In the District of Columbia, the heat map has allowed for a partnership between the CAFB and another D.C. nonprofit, Martha’s Table, to prioritize school locations in the area for provision of healthy lunches.

In Virginia, the heat mapping visualization has helped the CAFB’s northern Virginia branch to access mobile home parks. These mobile home parks, like Marumsco in Woodbridge, had been long overlooked by the food distributors as they are not very visible or well-known, in-need areas.

The map of the region with visually obvious red zones brought the needs of this community to the attention of CAFB. Thanks to the heat map, there is now a food bus at Marumsco distributing nutritious lunches to kids in need.

The objective of the heat mapping method is to effectively visualize the areas with unmet food needs. The misled perceptions of affluence — in the suburban areas especially — have in the past hindered the efficient distribution of food to areas in actual need. But with the contrivance of heat mapping, the food banks in the capital area will be able to extend a helping hand to everyone in need.

– Atifah Safi

Sources: Washington Post, Capital Area Foodbank, WAMU, Huffington Post, FRAC
Photo: Flickr

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Town Installs Outdoor Refrigerator to Feed the Hungry in Spain

Town Installs Outdoor Refrigerator to Feed the Hungry in Spain
There are 795 million people worldwide who do not have the resources available to them in order to lead a healthy lifestyle. That means that one in nine people in the world do not have enough food and often live in hunger.

UNICEF estimates that 20 percent of the children in Spain are living below the poverty line and hunger is becoming a more relevant problem in the country. In 2013, Spain distributed breakfast and snacks for 50,000 kids at risk of exclusion.

Seventeen percent of Spanish children are obese and living below the poverty line and do not have access to fresh food, fruit or vegetables.

Unemployment has been climbing since the 2008 financial crisis and Spain was one of the hardest-hit countries. People who once held regular jobs are out of unemployment benefits and are turning to squatting and collecting food from the garbage outside of stores.

In Galdakao, Spain, people are putting leftovers in a fridge on the street in order to feed the hungry.

The city has a population of 30,000 and created a communal refrigerator to help eradicate hunger in their town. After Alvaro Saiz, who ran a food bank in Galdakao, saw starving people digging through trash outside of stores and restaurants he decided there was a better way to not waste unused food through a new organization called Solidarity Fridge.

People in homes, people on the streets, and restaurant owners now take their unused food and put it in the communal fridge for the people who need it most to eat.

The project cost $5,500 and they had to change the law to prevent any legal action against the city if someone got sick. However, no raw meat or eggs are allowed in the fridge and anything in the refrigerator after four days must be thrown out. Solidarity Fridge says no food remains more than a few hours before it is taken by someone who is hungry.

Solidarity Fridge has become a learning experience for children as well. Schools organize field trips to visit the fridge and teach children about sharing and not wasting food.

One-third of food produced is wasted or lost every year, which is 1.3 billion tons. The entire net production of food in sub-Saharan Africa is 230 million tons. Solidarity Fridge may be a future model for other cities around the world wanting to feed the hungry while cutting down on wasting food.

– Donald Gering

Sources: Good News Network, New York Times, Revolting Europe, UNEP, WFP
Photo:  Flickr