Posts

, ,

IFAD’s Plans to Alleviate Poverty and Hunger

IFAD Plans to Alleviate HungerWith the new COVID-19 variants spreading in places such as Latin America and the Caribbean, poverty and hunger rates continue to increase. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has expressed its support for people suffering from these issues. It created a program with the main focus of providing money to businesses that depend on food systems. IFAD is also helping out by working with school programs. Here is more information about IFAD’s plans to alleviate hunger.

IFAD Helps Those Living in Poverty

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on more challenges to many people, but that has not stopped IFAD from helping those in need. Since 2020, millions of people have received assistance and several projects have emerged. With the challenges of the pandemic, IFAD has been working to support citizens who lack access to essential resources such as food. The Rural Poor Stimulus Factory emerged to help farmers who were not able to work effectively. IFAD has also provided some digital services to countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh. It also contributed to grass-root activities, along with encouraging more citizens to get involved in other activities.

IFAD Creates New Financial Program

One way issues such as poverty and hunger can undergo resolution is by prioritizing workers who make major contributions to food systems. IFAD recently launched a financial program aimed to help businesses responsible for working with food systems. The purpose of the Private Sector Financing Programme, also known as PSFP, is to give financial assistance to small-scale farmers who struggle to provide food due to a variety of barriers. Some of the benefits they will receive include loans and other financial assistance. The benefits from PSFP will also help workers reach their potential through job opportunities, which will open the door to more solutions for hunger and poverty.

IFAD Expresses Support for Farmers

While Latin America and the Caribbean continue to see the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, IFAD is working to help citizens who have suffered from pandemic-related challenges. IFAD has been supporting programs in Mexico that teach citizens about components such as economic development. It has invested a lot of money to help farmers in Mexico learn more skills and pursue their passions. In Guatemala, IFAD was able to help maintain the availability of school feeding programs during the lockdown. Farmers in Guatemala also had the opportunity to sell crops to citizens. The Rural Adelante Project, which received funding from IFAD, worked to guarantee citizens access to nutritious foods in El Salvador. IFAD also created a virtual marketplace to help farmers who lacked access to essential resources.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development has helped people living in poverty through a variety of ways, which includes expanding access to food and other resources. IFAD’s new financial program, the Rural Poor Stimulus Factory, aims to help workers suffering from pandemic-related challenges. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic taking a toll on Latin America and the Caribbean, IFAD made different contributions to serve those living in underprivileged communities.

– Chloe Moody
Photo: Wikipedia Commons

, ,

6 Facts About Hunger in Ghana 

6 Facts About Hunger in Ghana The Republic of Ghana is located on the West African Gulf of Guinea. Ghana is known for being a well-developed nation that is progressing more toward modernism every day. With a population of 28.8 million people, 24.2% or nearly 7 million people live below the poverty line. These are six facts about hunger in Ghana.

6 Facts About Hunger in Ghana

  1. Over the last 2 decades, Ghana has reduced hunger and poverty within its population. Poverty affects farmers in rural cities. In addition, most are living without clean water or access to healthcare. About 90% of families or 25.9 million citizens in Ghana rely solely on agriculture.
  2. Rural poverty is easily attributed to insufficient food systems. This is mostly due to Ghana being reliant on the rainy seasons. The south of Ghana gets two rainy seasons and the north only gets one. As a result of this, the north is often lacking in agricultural resources and goods more so than the south.
  3. Farmers in North Ghana tend to have unsustainable farming equipment. The equipment does not last from season to season. Poverty-stricken areas obviously struggle to sustain secure food supplies and often experience shortages, given all of the variables. Because of the food shortages, prices go up and the impoverished are in a harder spot than before to sell and purchase goods.
  4. The World Food Program (WFP) has been working to fight poverty and food insecurity in Ghana since 1963. Education, food security and sustainability training have been the main focuses of the WFP. Working alongside the Ministry of Agriculture, 1,500 farmers in small-scale areas have been able to participate in the Purchase for Progress program. Additionally, The Purchase for Progress program builds a sustainable future for rural farmers by building stronger markets. The program also brings communities out of poverty and contributing to the sustainability goals that will keep fewer people impoverished.
  5. While the numbers may seem grim, 4% of Ghanaians are at risk of being food insecure or undernourished. However, things seem more positive when you compare this to the entire African region, where 20% of citizens are at risk. In 2018, Feed the Future provided $9.3 million of loans to small businesses and farmers for quality equipment and supplies. Also, this keeps businesses from being unable to operate due to a lack of resources and funds.
  6. In 2018, Feed the Future supported the newly developed Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources. This allows the delivery services of the aforementioned goods to reach the small and rural communities that needed it most. Clean water and sanitation resources were distributed to 110,000 households in 1,800 rural communities.

While hunger in Ghana has been a struggle, that will not always be the case. Over the last 20 years, Ghana has progressed past mass food insecurity and malnourishment. Sustainability and persistent progress have allowed for the capital, Accra, to become metropolitan. The modernized version of Ghana includes less impoverished families and less food insecure communities.

– Kim Elsey
Photo: Flickr

, , ,

How to End Hunger

Saharan African
Between 2015 and 2016, world hunger rose by 20 million people, according to most recent estimates released in a 2016 U.N. report. This issue affects 815 million people worldwide. The single biggest cause of hunger is poverty, but there are also other heavily contributed factors. Since the turn of the century, food production has outpaced population growth, and the world now produces enough food to feed 1.5x the global population. The question of how to end hunger stretches beyond simply farming more effectively. To end hunger, we have to address the issue as more than a supply-demand deficiency.

Poverty

Only 11 percent of world hunger comes from developed countries; by far, the regions most afflicted by hunger are middle- and lower-income. In 2016, 22.7 percent of Sub-Saharan Africans were reported as malnourished. For those living on less than $2 per day, food can be too expensive to maintain a healthy diet. Economic hardship is further expounded by a lack of education and inadequate access to basic needs such as food, potable water and shelter. In this context, poverty and hunger have a cyclical nature. To reduce poverty, you have to reduce hunger and to reduce hunger, you have to reduce poverty. Take a look here to see how the Borgen Project plans to end poverty.

Armed Conflicts and Political Instability

Poverty is not the only factor in global hunger. Armed conflicts and political instability play a major role in keeping food out of hungry mouths. In recent years, conflicts have been rising, which may correspond to the increase of worldwide malnourished people.

War has also increasingly occurred in regions already vulnerable to disease and malnourishment, such as sub-Saharan and Eastern Africa. For example, South Sudan has been the site of a civil war since 2013. In 2017, the fighting played a major role in South Sudan undergoing the first declared famine in six years. Six million people (one in three residents of South Sudan) have been declared severely food insecure.

Violence takes away human capital, removing productive people from countries that need this capital the most. War destroys infrastructure, disrupts children’s schooling and creates more refugees. Peace is no easy task, but it’s a necessary one to achieve food security for all.

Steps Toward Ending World Hunger

The search for how to end hunger continues, despite the recent setbacks. Humanitarian organizations, such as Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) have worked hard to fight hunger and alleviate the problems associated with it. CARE works in 94 countries and impacts 80 million people worldwide.

Other organizations have developed more atypical answers of how to end hunger. Freedom From Hunger, a charitable organization dedicated to ending world hunger through economic empowerment, has instituted savings and micro-financing programs to people at risk of food insecurity. The goal of these programs is to help people plan for the future and pull themselves out of poverty through education, financial services and monetary savings.

The road to ending hunger will be long and hard. There will be more setbacks, but at the end of the day, it’s up to the world to pave a better future.

– Peter Buffo
Photo: Flickr

Why People are Still Hungry

why_poverty_is_an_issue

Poverty and hunger are often accepted as issues that have little hope of going away completely because they are so widespread. In reality, however, it is quite the opposite. For example, the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone, which could, in turn, lead to dissolving global hunger and some aspects of global poverty.

The World Health Organization reported that between 2006 and 2008, there was enough food available to feed everyone in the world 2,790 calories each day. This amount increased from the 1960’s by 570 calories person/day.

The availability of food to those in poverty has decreased the percentage of chronically malnourished people from 34% in the 1970’s to 15% at the turn of the 21st century.

Despite this increase in available calories and decrease of impoverished people, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization found in studies from 2012 to 2014 that “805 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, were [are] suffering from chronic undernourishment.”

Of that 805 million still undernourished people, 11 million reside in developed countries; however, the other 794 million people are from developing countries.

With enough food available to feed everyone, the question remains: why is the food not being distributed more equitably to those suffering from hunger and malnutrition?

A multitude of reasons go into why the food available is not reaching those who need it. The ability (or lack thereof) to mobilize the food is at the forefront. The cost of shipping food can greatly restrict its ability to be transported to areas in need. However, developed countries waste 222 million tons of food each year. That wasted food requires transportation to landfills. Rather than moving food to landfills, the money to move it could be directed to transporting it to people in need.

The 222 million tons of food wasted each year by developed countries is equal to “the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa,” according to World Environment Day. Making that wasted food available to those impoverished and hungry would drastically improve lives around the world.

A lack of healthcare and education also impacts the poverty rates around the world. Entering the 21st century with a billion people unable to read makes the possibility of rising out of poverty more difficult for individuals.

In a similar way, healthcare hinders the ability of individuals and families to rise out of poverty. When that individual or a family member is sick and unable to work and help the family, it makes feeding the family that much more difficult.

Food, education and healthcare all come back to one another in the world of poverty. As they each improve, it allows for people to worry less about where they are going to get their next meal. As long as food that could feed those in need is going to waste, and the healthcare and education the poor deserve is not being provided, poverty will continue to exist.

– Katherine Wyant

Sources: Global Issues, 2015 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics
Photo: Pearls of Profundity