Archive for category: Food & Hunger

Information and stories on food.

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The 5 W’s of Rural Morocco

Who?

Over 30 million people live in Morocco. The population is disproportionately young, and 4 million of the people are impoverished. Almost half, or 43 percent, of the population lives in rural areas. The rural population is made up of “people engaged in artisanal fishing, landless people, rural wage earners, unemployed young people and women in all categories.”

What?

Morocco has an income disparity between the richest 20 percent and the poorest 20 percent. The income disparity between rural and urban areas is also very significant. The poverty rate is almost 15 percent in rural areas, but in urban areas, the poverty rate is a third of that. Furthermore, illiteracy rates are nearly twice as high in rural areas as in urban areas.

Between 2003 and 2004, 12 percent of the rural population was underweight; this is double that of the urban population.

Maternal mortality rate is 130 per 100,000 live births, and the maternal mortality rate is almost twice as high in rural areas. A very small number of rural children receive an education. Compared to the 44 percent of urban children who attend secondary school, 16 percent of girls and 22 percent of boys attend secondary school. Amongst this percentage, over 300,000 children drop out every year, and almost half of the children must repeat a year.

However, the status of Morocco is rapidly improving. From 2000 to 2010, the poor population decreased by nearly half. A slowed population growth, improved economic growth, infrastructure development, microcredit and contributions from non-government organizations have reduced poverty rates.

When?

From the 1990s until the early 2000s, the Moroccan government engaged in economic reform and deregulation of the economy. Over 100 companies were privatized by 1998, resulting in a significant growth in the country’s gross domestic product. However, the population in rural areas still experiences high rates of poverty, which results in high levels of migration to urban areas.

Where?

The high poverty rates, as evidenced, are seen mostly in rural areas. Coastal regions tend to have lower poverty rates, while Morocco’s mountain and south regions have the highest poverty rates.

Why?

As detailed by the gaps in education and maternal mortality rate statistics, the cycle of poverty rages on in rural Morocco. According to the Carnegie Papers, Morocco faces high illiteracy, and its economic growth is inconsistent. If the economy continues to improve and extend development programs to the rural population, the rates of poverty will decline. Should access to education or economic opportunity decrease, rates of poverty, particularly in rural areas, will increase.

– Tara Wilson 

Sources: Rural Poverty Portal, UNICEF, Third World Centre for Water Management, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Photo: AdventureCompany

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Pakistan Women and Food Aid Violence

Over 40 tribal elders in the Bannu region of Pakistan voted to ban women from collecting food aid for Internally Displaced Persons fleeing the military offensive in North Waziristan, Pakistan. Witnesses report seeing men slap women who had joined the line for food rations. The women reportedly left quickly after experiencing such violence, but the question remains as to how widows or women unaccompanied by men will receive aid. One man distributed leaflets discouraging women from attempting to attain food rations with a warning to husbands who fail to keep their women at home. The Bannu region is especially conservative, where women wear full-length burqa robes and rarely venture outside their homes.

Violence and discrimination against women in Pakistan have plagued the country, as recently as on July 23 when unknown assailants threw acid at two women at a shopping center in Baluchistan. A similar attack occurred one day earlier when four women were attacked with acid. In both attacks, the perpetrators rode past on motorcycles spraying their victims with acid. Officials believe the crimes to be the work of religious extremists in the area.

In March, the Council of Islamic Ideology, a body that provides legal advice to the Pakistani government, said laws that ban child marriage are “un-Islamic.” Current laws require boys to reach the age of 18 before marriage, and girls the age 16. Chairman of the Council Maulana Mohammad Khan Sheerani continued, “Sharia allows men to have more than one wife, and we demanded that the government should amend the law.”

Child marriage in Pakistan, according to experts, explains the country’s high infant mortality rate, as early marriage results in frequent pregnancies with inadequate preparation. The country also has lower reproductive and maternal healthcare coverage for women than its neighbors India, Bangladesh or Nepal.

Over 990,000 people left the North Waziristan following the June airstrikes known as the Zarb-e-Azb operation, and 84 percent of these IDPs have fled to the Bannu District. North Waziristan has long served as a haven for militants in Pakistan and although the Pakistani government claimed to have targeted all militant groups equally, the U.S. and many locals say Pakistan protected the Haqqani group, which has been based in Waziristan for decades. Many accuse the Pakistani military of allowing Haqqani militants to escape before the operation began. The U.S. sees the Haqqani as a threat to stability in Afghanistan, and is withholding $300 million in aid to Pakistan until the Secretary of Defense determines Pakistan to have “significantly disrupted” the Haqqani network.

The Pakistani military has used militants as proxies in Afghanistan and India for decades. Experts believe the operation — which has killed over 450 since June — is intended to primarily target Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, central Asian and Arab militants in the region that militants have traditionally used to launch attacks on Afghanistan.

The U.S. military has since joined Pakistan with its drone strikes on Saturday that killed 15.

– Erica Lignell

Sources: Reuters, International Business Times, Business Standard, New York Times, Wall Street Journal
Photo: Reuters

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New Purpose for the Irish Potato: Vita

Almost 170 years after the first crops began to rot in what is now the Republic of Ireland, an Irish nonprofit, Vita, hopes to give the potato a new purpose in alleviating hunger in the Horn of Africa. Working with Gama Gofa Zonal Administration, the International Potato Centre, Arba Minch University, Teagasc, Wageningen and the Irish Potato Federation, Vita founded the Potato Centre of Excellence in 2013. The Centre, based in Gama Gofa, Ethiopia, plans to help over 100,000 Ethiopian farmers grow potatoes as a staple crop within the the next five to 10 years.

Potatoes have long sustained the Irish population, and as Vita highlights, potatoes “use less water per nutritional output than all other major food sources and can be grown in Africa.” The Centre will give a bag of potato seeds to individual farmers with the idea that the farmers will return two bags of seeds the following year. Vita is in the process of introducing new strains of potatoes with the hope of increasing crop yields in the Horn of Africa.

Mother Teresa, Father Kevin Doheny and Father Norman Fitzgerald founded Vita in 1989 with the mission of tackling “…household food insecurity through community-led sustainable agriculture projects, which are scalable and replicable, with a special focus on women as the key enablers of sustainable development.”

The organization, located in Dublin, has also worked to further the efforts of the Potato Coalition of six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The United States Agency for International Development has help to fund the Coalition, which has already brought aid to over 10,000 farmers in Southern Ethiopia since its inception in 2013. The Coalition aims to eventually help four million potato farmers in Africa by connecting researchers, the private sector and local organizations.

The diversity of the new potato crops remains key to the success of potato farming across the region in order to protect against the Phytophthora infestans that causes the kind of potato blight seen in the 1846 to 1852 Irish famine. An estimated 1 million Irishmen died from starvation or epidemic as a result of the famine, and an additional 2 million left Ireland for better economic opportunity elsewhere.

Although the naturally occurring disease was disastrous on its own, many historians today point to the policies of the British government under Prime Minister Lord John Russell as massively negligent at best, genocide at worst. Influenced by new liberal ideas on the free market economy and long-held bigotry against the Irish, the Whig administration’s response was to introduce arbitrary public work projects and inadequate food rations via the Irish Poor Acts.

As then assistant secretary to the treasury, Lord John Russell claimed, “The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

In 1997, Prime Minister Tony Blair formally apologized for the British government’s role in the famine.

Even with continued tensions with the British over the status of Northern Ireland, the Irish now have the opportunity to evolve the potato from a painful reminder to a symbol of hope for a sustainable future.

– Erica Lignell

Sources: Vita, Vita’s Facebook page, Vita Annual Report, The Economist, University College Cork-Multitext Project
Photo: The Daily Spud

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Addressing Food Security In Ethiopia

Ethiopia, Africa’s oldest independent country, with roots stretching back to the 2nd century C.E., is also one of the modern world’s poorest countries. Home to Africa’s second largest population, with over 90 million individuals, Ethiopia suffers from widespread food insecurity.

Suffering from devastating droughts and famines in the 1970s and 1980s and a vicious war with Eritrea in the late 1990s, Ethiopia remains largely impoverished today. Two programs created by the Ethiopian government have been coordinated in an attempt to address this issue. The Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) was created in 2005, and the Household Asset Building Program (HABP) was set up in 2010.

Ethiopia’s troubles with food security are strongly related to its high poverty rates. In 2011, the national poverty rate was at 29.6 percent. This, while a drastic improvement from the country’s 38.9 percent poverty rate in 2004, still shows the high level of financial insecurity that over one-fourth of Ethiopians live with.

Furthermore, in 2013 the World Food Programme reported that, “over 7.1 million people were estimated to live in conditions of crisis and emergency” in Ethiopia. While this figure is partially attributed to the conflict in South Sudan, it shows the necessity of promoting food security in a nation where poverty is so rampant.

Food insecurity in Ethiopia is often related to the over-reliance on rainfall-dependent agriculture. The World Bank reports that agriculture in this nation accounts for roughly 45 percent of its GDP and ensures the livelihoods of 80 to 85 percent of the nation.

Due to this, the World Bank reports that, “Any small variation in rainfall…affects the incomes of 30 to 40 million people and can mean hunger for 10 to 15 million people.” Clearly this over-reliance on factors outside the country’s control demonstrates the need for a safety net for the population.

A safety net is exactly what the PSNP provides. It gives out food or cash to roughly seven or eight million Ethiopians chronically suffering from food shortages. PSNP gives out the food or cash for six months a year as wages for work on small local public works projects. These public works projects are decided by the community and are aimed at strengthening economic development in the area.

Along with this, the program gives out food or money to Ethiopians who can’t work due to age, disability or pregnancy. PSNP, initially made available in the regions of Tigray, Amhara, Oromiya and the Southern Nations and Nationalities People’s Region, soon spread to Afar in 2006 and the Somali Region in 2007.

Due to the limited success of PSNP in providing actual food stability and security to the Ethiopians who have access to it, the government also created HABP in 2010. This program is a companion to PSNP and offers agricultural and entrepreneurial advice. It is designed to educate people in hopes that they can learn to create and maintain their own assets, without remaining perpetually reliant on wages from the PSNP.

Both PSNP and HABP receive 1.1 percent of Ethiopia’s GDP for funding. However, a large amount of their finances come from international donors. Notable donors include the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), UK Department for International Development and the World Food Programme.

So far, working together, these programs have shown success in combating the food insecurity that plagues much of Ethiopia. An evaluation by both the Institute of Development Studies and Dadias Consulting Ethiopia show significant improvements in food security in the regions involved from 2010 to 2012. Furthermore, they showed that, in 2010, PSNP and HABP together created food security 2.5 times more than PSNP alone.

Together, these two innovative and interrelated projects, designed to help promote food security and lower Ethiopia’s reliance on foreign aid, are doing just that. Gradually, Ethiopia’s survival is becoming less contingent on foreign food aid and favorable rainfall.

– Albert Cavallero

Sources: The World Bank 1, World Food Programme, Food Security Portal, IFPRI e-Brary, Institute of Development Studies 1, BBC News – Africa, The World Bank 2, Institute of Development Studies 2, IRIN
Photo: FAO

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Alpha Kappa Alpha Fights Global Hunger

Carrying on a legacy that extends over a century, Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) joined forces with Stop Hunger Now on July 12 to do their part in the fight against global hunger. Gathering at the Charlotte Convention Center in North Carolina, over 2,000 volunteers gave their day to put together packages of food to be sent to West Africa.

AKA is the oldest sorority in the nation, comprised mainly of African American women, and was established at a time when the workforce was male dominated and segregation was the norm. The sorority served as a network of support for women at the time and has gone on to make a difference in civil rights movements and philanthropic efforts since it was established in 1908.

Carolyn House Stewart, the international president for the sorority, remarked on the generosity and strength of these women, explaining, “All of them helped change the landscape. All helped humanity.”

The sorority stands by the theme “Global Leadership Through Timeless Service,” and the event on Saturday was the epitome of these words, as the women worked tirelessly to make a difference.

Over the course the day, the women worked in one-hour shifts in teams of six to package 100,000 meals that will be sent to West Africa. The packages contain “highly nutritious dehydrated meals comprised of rice, soy, vegetables, flavoring and 21 essential vitamins and minerals.” At the end of the day, the volunteers had handled 7.5 tons of food, food that will go on to help thousands of starving people.

The sorority was joined by Stop Hunger Now, an organization that has been helping the world for 15 years now. Since its establishment, Stop Hunger Now has distributed 140,000,000 meals and other aid to 65 countries around the world. It has been very successful as an organization, working hard to mobilize necessary resources to assist those most desperate for help.

Rod Brooks, the president and CEO of Stop Hunger Now, explained the logic behind the organization, saying, “Hunger is solvable and is the common thread among the world’s most challenging issues. When hunger is targeted, you give leverage and hope to every other cause including poverty, disease, education and the welfare of women and children.”

Both organizations came together to honor Nelson Mandela for this event, and he will be internationally celebrated on July 18. Based on the success of their community service efforts, AKA and Stop Hunger Now suitably paid homage to Mandela’s memory.

Worldwide, almost 870 million people lack access to the food and other resources they need to survive on a daily basis, and every day, 25,000 people die as a result. These conditions are fueled by extreme poverty and are also difficult to overcome while poverty still exists. Organizations like Alpha Kappa Alpha and Stop Hunger Now are able to bring some relief to this vicious cycle. They have recognized a need for international support for those suffering around the world, and for the time being, their efforts will help keep thousands of people alive in West Africa.

– Magdalen Wagner

Sources: Q City Metro, Lake Wylie Pilot, News West 9
Photo: Q City Metro

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Six Ways to Improve Land & Food Security

The green revolution was a period of agricultural revolution that increased food production in the mid-twentieth century. It showed that a global effort can enlarge and develop food systems with new techniques and technology transfers. Lately, with rapid population growth, increasing food prices and climate change, there have been calls for a second green revolution. Here are a few ways that this revolution can be jump-started.

1. Land is at the center of these food security problems. 
While the relationship between people and the Earth has changed immensely, land remains an essential piece to the puzzle. Nate Kline, of the Enabling Agriculture Trade project at Fintrac, said he cannot think of another sector that is more tied to the land. “Land is the chief, primary input in all agricultural production,” he said.

2. More people live in urban areas than rural areas now.
Consequently, cities have to be connected to food distribution cycles that are reliable and can supply food to numbers of people at a dependable rate.

3. The method of organizing land will determine the answers to questions about future food security.
The way international organizations, communities, nations and families decide on organizing land, which will secure land rights and land ownership claims, will be important in answering questions about a food-secure future.

4. Food security is also about how the agricultural sector can become a more dependable way of income for people in rural areas.
The income of the poor is closely related to growth in the agricultural sector. Food security programs usually pursue raising incomes of those in poverty. When land users feel secure that their land will be in their possession however long they want to keep it, then they are more likely to finance the long-term development of their resources and land.

5. Food security often come with better land-use choices.
Conserving water and soil nutrients instead of exhausting resources will make food more secure for the future. It can also mean landholders are keener on paying the costs of equipment and fertilizers which can lead to higher incomes and more profitable crops.

6. When families sell more and better food, those yields generate income to spend for household food needs.
There is a direct connection between the access to land and willingness to make investments that may eventually pay off. With more money from profitable and nutritious crops, families have the option to invest in their nutrition as well as use the money from the crops to buy better equipment and use better management techniques. Food should be nutritious, affordable and part of a sustainable system.

In order to ensure food security, the world will need to engage with a comprehensive set of actors and work with numerous sectors.

– Colleen Moore

Sources: Devex 1, Devex 2
Photo: Eco Tope

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Hunger in Botswana

Botswana is undoubtedly one of Africa’s greatest success stories. After the country gained independence in 1966, it experienced robust economic growth and now boasts consistently high gross domestic product growth rates. Indeed, Botswana’s gross national income per capita for 2013 was $7,730, ranking it above South Africa and well above the average for Africa.

Although Botswana’s economic performance is relatively high, it is not without social problems. According to the World Bank, just under a third of the country’s population lives in extreme poverty, and much of the country’s wealth lies disproportionately with the richest 20 percent of the population.

Part of Botswana’s economic success since independence lies in the government’s pro-poor policy making.

“Each and every Batswana [citizen] has a right to land for residential and agricultural purposes,” said the Southern African Regional Poverty Network. “Within customary tenure areas,which comprise 79 percent of all land and which are controlled through a decentralized system of locally elected Land Boards, land is allocated for free.”

Botswana does not face extreme hunger problems due to its equitable land policies and extensive social safety programs.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, undernourishment, the measure of the shortfall of nutrition in the average adult’s diet, is measured from the number of kilocalories missing from the diets of undernourished people in a given country. In Botswana, the depth of hunger, measured by the average dietary energy deficit of undernourished people, is 240 kilocalories.

In other words, the average undernourished individual in Botswana needs an additional 240 kilocalories to maintain a healthy diet. Although Botswana does not suffer the severest form of undernourishment in the world, it ranks below average.

Moving forward, hunger in Botswana may deepen if not properly addressed, as several problems exist. For starters, rapid urbanization in Botswana means domestic food production is likely to decrease, as rural farmers move to urban areas for employment. Fewer domestic farmers mean the country will need to import more food to meet its nutrition demands, increasing the cost of food (the country already imports 90 percent of its food, a disastrous reality susceptible to global food price fluctuations.)

Furthermore, rising energy prices exacerbate the cost of food production, and infrastructure, including roads and power lines, could certainly be improved.

If current trends continue, Botswana’s hunger issues will worsen based on food prices and agricultural developments. However, like many other countries in Africa, Botswana will need to look inward to creative development solutions to propel its population forward out of food insecurity.

– Joseph McAdams

Sources: Aljazeera, BBC, World Bank 1, World Bank 2, UNDP, SARPN, UN, FAO
Photo: Aljazeera

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The Relationship of Hunger & Poverty

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The world currently produces enough food to sustain the entire global population, yet nearly a billion people around the world still suffer every day from hunger. The U.S. alone could end global hunger with only $30 billion a year — a mere fraction of the $530 billion the U.S. spends annually on the military.

If we have the power to feed the world, it begs the question — why is hunger still such a monumental problem?

The primary and most obvious cause of hunger is poverty. While enough food exists to feed the world, a significant portion of the population still live in such abject poverty that they cannot afford even the most basic food items.

This creates an incessant poverty trap. The global poor can’t feed themselves or their families, so they become weak and malnourished which makes them unable to work. In turn, they fall deeper into poverty. This phenomenon is affecting millions of people around the world. Any solution to hunger must also be in part a solution to poverty.

Another major cause of hunger is natural disasters and climate change. Storms and droughts — both of which are on the rise — damage crops and lead to massive food shortages. Often, the poorest countries are the ones least equipped to deal with these disasters, and the greenhouse gases that lead to climate change originate from the richest countries.

One way to remedy this problem is to increase foreign investment in agriculture. By establishing adequate infrastructure, cultivating the land properly, managing water usage and ensuring storage facilities are used effectively, the fallout from natural disasters can be handled much more easily.

Unfortunately, most poor countries lack the resources and the knowledge to shore up their agricultural sector by themselves. However, foreign investment in the agricultural sector of developing countries would go a long way towards helping them becoming self-sustainable. A U.N. study found that investments in agriculture reduce hunger five times more than investments in any other sector.

Finally, war represents another major cause of hunger. The most war-torn areas in the world also tend to suffer the most from hunger. In war, food is often used as a weapon. Farms and livestock are ravaged in an effort to starve the opposition into submission. In Africa, countries with the most conflict — like Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo — are often the hungriest. On the other hand, in more peaceful countries — like Ghana and Rwanda — hunger is on the decline.

There are a number of insidious causes to the problem of global hunger, but the good news is that all of them are preventable. First and foremost, the problem of hunger must be tackled by facing poverty head-on. From there, we should turn our attention away from feeding impoverished peoples through aid, and towards helping them become self-sustainable.

– Samuel Hillestad

Sources: WFP, Global Concerns Classroom, DoSomething, FAO
Photo: OoCities

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Truth Behind the Malnourished in India

162 million people represents almost half the recorded number of the United States population. This number also represents the number of children under the age of 5 who are diagnosed as malnourished in India.

Nearly 50 percent of stunted children in India being forced to defecate outdoors. This leads to children being “exposed to a bacterial brew that often sickens them, leaving them unable to attain a healthy body weight no matter how much food they eat.” This inability to reach a healthy standard of living leaves children stunted, permanently damaging their mental and physical healthy. These examples of stunted growth turn into disabilities that will impact millions for the rest of their lives.

According to data received in surveys from the District Level Health Survey (DLHS), “the proportion of underweight children was more or less the same in 2012-13 as it was in 2005-06 across the eight states.” The fact that there has been little to no change in the standards of living in over six years shows the dire situation that India is facing. As much as the country tries to implement aid tactics, the population is growing so quickly and in such remote areas that the aid can rarely reach those affected in time.

While the National Family Health Survey offers more comprehensive information than the DLHS by including nine pertinent states where malnutrition is at its worst, the information available gives a clear picture of the standard of health in India.

In defense of the claims of severely malnourished children, Nivedita Patil, a neonatologist in the Kolhapur state of India has insight into the mind of those she treats. Patil claims, “I have observed that parents give medicines to their children using older prescriptions. Every disease has separate medical treatment and instead of using old prescriptions, parents should visit the doctor whenever the child is ill. This can prevent malnutrition to some extent,” she said, pointing the finger at the parents of children that refuse medical care. While this may or may not have truth to it, it’s clear that there is lack of communication between doctors and patients, likely due to the separation of rural and urban lives.

Another astonishing insight is that Indian children have a higher chance of being malnourished that those of their sub-Saharan counterparts such as Somalia or Zimbabwe. India’s health of children ranks below some of the poorest countries on Earth — 65 million children under the age of 5 are impacted by growth stunting, a third of which are from wealthy families in India.

This difference between the two regions is due almost strictly to the issue that rural and poor Indians defecate outside, exposing themselves to a myriad of harmful and permanently damaging bacteria that affect their health.

The health issue of malnourishment in children affects nearly 20 times more people than the issue of HIV/AIDS in India, showing its all consuming wrath on those who suffer. Still, even with this information the government has little to show for the attempts at righting the many wrongs.

According to the New York Times, “India now spends about $26 billion annually on food and jobs programs, and less than $400 million on improving sanitation — a ratio of more than 60 to 1.” With so little attention focused on this health issue, it’s no wonder that millions of children continue to be wildly affected by the damages of rural life in India. Children are supposedly the future of every nation but with little will to change, it looks like India’s bleak future holds little for the younger, struggling generation to come.

– Elena Lopez

Sources: The New York Times, Livemint, Times of India
Photo: Newshopper

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Hunger in Malawi

It will prove to be (and has already been) a tough year for one of the poorest countries in the world, as more than 1.5 million people in Malawi will experience the adverse effects of food insecurity. Rural and refugee households are most at risk of the hunger and malnutrition caused by the alternating periods of drought flooding that periodically sweep through this landlocked African nation. Of Malawians, 90 percent live on less than the equivalent of U.S. $2 per day; this extreme poverty compounded by other social troubles such as rampant disease and a high illiteracy rate make hunger hard a difficult problem to fight.

It’s a problem that needs to be fought, though, and many aid organizations have turned their focus to Malawi since 2002, the year the country’s maize production decreased by nearly half. Malawi’s economy is highly dependent on agriculture and its primary crop is the grain plant, whose stalks grow in fields across Malawi. In 2002, though, budgetary cuts recommended by the International Monetary Fund forced the government to eliminate their seed and fertilizer distribution programs. The maize harvest has not yet recovered.

Though the feeding programs established in Malawi have the short-term goal of reducing hunger wherever it occurs in a nation of more than 16 million people, humanitarian organizations also aim to collaborate with the Malawian government to rebuild the country’s agricultural sector in a sustainable fashion. Efforts to achieve this goal include reinstalling fertilizer and seed programs, replenishing soil that has been drained of all nutrients after seasons and seasons of overuse, and encouraging farmers to diversify their harvest to include beans and nuts.

Other efforts to reduce hunger in Malawi include global health programs targeting the prevalence of AIDS and malaria in Malawi, as well as successful microfinance initiatives to get local entrepreneurs up and running. The combination of these programs has so far been successful, reducing rates of both hunger and illness. There is much to be done yet, but that fewer people are hungry in Malawi today than they were 10 years ago is promising.

Even more promising? The drive of Malawian farmers, who are determined to bounce back from natural disasters and diversify their fields. In fact, many people in Malawi – not just farmers – are bent on eliminating hunger in their country, so much so that they’ve sparked a movement called “the right to food.” Begun in response to the 2002 fertilizer crisis and subsequent famine, proponents of the movement urge their government to commit to feeding its people. Malawi’s government has now codified its obligation to ending hunger.

If progress continues at this pace, Malawians can expect to enjoy much more food in their stomachs in the coming years.

– Elise L. Riley

Sources: Global Post, UNWFP
Photo: CRS