Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture

Photo: Loan schemes help entrepreneurial women like Amina in Kenya establish their own businesses. Credit: WFP/Edward Johnson

Global Food Crisis: Cash Offers Hope to the World's Most Vulnerable

By Edward Johnson | World Food Programme (WFP)

Amid an unprecedented global hunger crisis, cash offers one vehicle to reach the world’s most vulnerable people in ways that can lift communities and economies.

ROME (IDN) — While skyrocketing food prices have fallen recently, they still remain high, with the war in Ukraine driving up the cost of food, fuel and fertilizer. The fallout risks intensifying hunger among the world’s most vulnerable people—compounding the devastating effects of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic on their livelihoods and food security.

: Europe Editor; SUSTAINABILITY; Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture; 15 September 2022

Photo: In the Sea of Marmara, UN Secretary-General António Guterres observes the WFP ship SSI Invincible 2, headed to Ukraine to pick up the largest cargo of grain yet exported under the Black Sea Grain Initiative. UN Photo/Mark Garten

UN Chief Visits ‘Vessels of Hope’ Before returning to New York

By Radwan Jakeem

NEW YORK (IDN) — UN Secretary-General António Guterres oversaw on August 20 the departure of two ships involved in the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a UN-brokered operation to bring urgently needed hunger relief to the Horn of Africa.

Mr. Guterres flew into Istanbul on August 20 from Chisinau, Moldova—where he was hosted for a working dinner with President Maia Sandu the previous evening—and boarded a pilot boat in the Sea of Marmara.

: Radwan Jakeem; SUSTAINABILITY; Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture; 21 August 2022

Image: A general view of the new banknotes released in Sierra Leone on July 1, 2022. Credit: African News

Rising Prices, Low Incomes Bedevil Sierra Leoneans

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | FREETOWN (IDN) — Americans aren’t alone in turning purple over the car's skyrocketing costs for housing, food, medical care and fuel.

Last month in Sierra Leone, women street vendors gathered peacefully to protest the soaring cost of living. A few days later, the number swelled to the hundreds as many more protestors turned out, clashing with police and demanding the president’s resignation over the government’s perceived failure to address the rising prices.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 16 August 2022

Photo: Hungry kids in South Sudan. Credit: Siegfried_Modola | The Star

Humanitarian Food Grain on way to Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — A UN-chartered vessel has been loaded with humanitarian food grain for Africa, in a first step toward releasing much needed food aid that had been trapped in the Ukraine.

The vessel will carry 23,000 tons of grain for Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya as part of a UN-backed plan to move the grain trapped by Russia's war on Ukraine and help relieve a global food crisis.

: Global Information Network; SUSTAINABILITY; Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture; 15 August 2022

Millions of Lives in Peril in the Greater Horn of Africa

UN Health Agency Calls for USD 123.7 million Until December 2022

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA | NAIROBI (IDN) — The UN health agency, World Health Organization (WHO), has launched a funding appeal for USD 123.7 million to carry out urgent life-saving work in the greater Horn of Africa. The region also faces an unprecedented food crisis.

More than 80 million people in the seven countries spanning the region—Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda—are estimated to be food insecure. Over 37.5 million people are classified as being in IPC phase 3, a stage of crisis where people have to sell their possessions in order to feed themselves and their families, and where malnutrition is rife.

: Jaya Ramachandran; SUSTAINABILITY; Health & Well Being; 04 August 2022

Image: Oil exploration continues. Source: Euractiv

Congo Oil Auction Plans in ‘Last Refuge of Biodiversity’ Shocks Environmentalists

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — As massive floods and endless droughts, unleashed by global climate change, take lives and leave homes a twisted pile of sticks, the Democratic Republic of Congo will take a dangerous step backwards—opening up the Congo Basin to fossil fuel development.

Sections of a renowned tropical forest could soon carry the pounding of oil rigs, including in Virunga National Park, the world’s largest wetland. Created in 1925 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the park is also a sanctuary for endangered mountain gorillas and other endangered species.

: Global Information Network; SUSTAINABILITY; Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture; 02 August 2022

A New Study Tells Where Our Food Comes From

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) — Since the start of agriculture 10,000 years ago, many crops have been domesticated. However, not all are made equal as some play an important role in providing food and nutritional security globally, including wheat, corn, rice, and potatoes.

At the same time, the globalization efforts of the past century created a global food production system with agricultural products such as wheat, corn, and potatoes being cultivated worldwide.

: J Nastranis; SUSTAINABILITY; Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture; 30 July 2022

Photo: Farmer House—Indo-Fijian cane farmer's house (on top) and abandoned house and property (in foreground) after the expiry of the land lease.

Land Lease System Threatens Sustainability of Cane Farming in Fiji

By Kalinga Seneviratne

SUVA, Fiji (IDN) — Though sugar cane is thought to be indigenous to the islands of the South Pacific, it was the British who started to grow it as a cash crop in Fiji in the later part of the 19th century. In 37 years, beginning in 1879, they shipped some 60,000 Indians over 7000 miles from home to work as indentured labourers in the newly established plantation for very little or no salary on 5-year contracts.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 23 July 2022

Rise in World Population Derails UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — The UN’s 17 heavily-promoted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have long been undermined by the three-year-old Covid-19 pandemic and the devastation caused to the world economy by the after-effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

But now a third factor is threatening to derail the implementation of the SDGs: a projected rise in world population which is expected to reach 8 billion by November this year, according to the latest figures in a new UN report titled “World Population Prospects 2022” released July 11 by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).

: Thalif Deen; UN INSIDER; 11 July 2022

Photo: Final working session of the G7 summit. Credit: Federal Government/Steins.

G7 Carped for Failure to Tackle Hunger Crisis

By Jutta Wolf

BERLIN (IDN) — "Faced with the worst hunger crisis in a generation, the G7 have simply failed to take the action that is needed. Many millions will face terrible hunger and starvation as a result," declared Max Lawson, head of inequality policy at Oxfam International. "Instead of doing what is needed, the G7 are leaving millions to starve and cooking the planet," he added.

Lawson was responding to news of the $4.5 billion pledge made by the summit meeting of the Group of 7 (G7) consisting of Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States, concluded on June 28 in Elmau in the Bavarian Alps.