Rt. Hon Patricia Scotland, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, visited the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu in April to discuss climate justice and witnessed the impacts of Cyclones Judy and Kevin in the country. Photo Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Jun 5 2023 (IPS)

In the Pacific Islands and many developing and emerging countries worldwide, the informal economy far outsizes the formal one, playing a vital role in the survival of urban and rural households and absorbing expanding working-age populations.

Informal business entrepreneurs and workers make up more than 60 percent of the labour force worldwide. But they are also the most exposed, with precarious assets and working conditions, to the economic shocks of extreme weather and climate disasters.

In 2016, Category 5 Cyclone Winston, the most ferocious cyclone recorded in the southern hemisphere, unleashed widespread destruction of Fiji’s infrastructure, services and economic sectors, such as agriculture and tourism.  And in March this year, Cyclones Judy and Kevin barrelled through Vanuatu, an archipelago nation of more than 300,000 people, and its capital, Port Vila, leaving local tourism businesses with severe losses.

More than 80 percent of people in Papua New Guinea live in rural areas and are sustained by informal business activities, especially the smallholder growing and selling of fresh produce. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

It is now three months since the disasters. But Dalida Borlasa, business owner of Yumi Up Upcycling Solutions, an enterprise at Port Vila’s handicraft market, which depends on tourists, told IPS there had been some recovery, but not enough. “We have had two cruise ships visit in recent weeks, but there have only been a few tourists visiting the market. We are not earning enough money for daily food. And other vendors at the market don’t have enough money to replace their products that were damaged by the cyclones,” she said.

Up to 80 percent of working-age people in some Pacific Island countries are engaged in informal income-generating activities, such as smallholder agriculture and tourism-dependent livelihoods. But in a matter of hours, cyclones can destroy huge swathes of crops and bring the tourism industry to a halt when international visitors cancel their holidays.

Climate change and disasters are central concerns to the Commonwealth, an inter-governmental organization representing 78 percent of all small nations, 11 Pacific Island states and 2.5 billion people worldwide. “The consequences of global failure on climate action are catastrophic, particularly for informal businesses and workers in small and developing countries. Just imagine the struggles of an individual who relies on subsistence and commercial agriculture for their livelihood. Their entire existence is hanging in the balance as they grapple with unpredictable weather patterns and unfavourable conditions that can wipe out their crops in a matter of seconds,” Rt. Hon Patricia Scotland KC, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, told IPS. “It’s not simply a matter of economic well-being; their entire way of life is at stake. The fear and uncertainty they experience are truly daunting. But they are fighting. We must too.”

The formal economy in many Pacific Island countries is too small and offers few employment opportunities. In Papua New Guinea, an estimated four million people are not in work, while the formal sector has only 400,000-500,000 job openings, according to PNG’s Institute of National Affairs. And with more than 50 percent of the population of about 8.9 million aged below 25 years, the number of job seekers will only rise in the coming years. And so, more than 80 percent of the country’s workforce is occupied in self-generated small-scale enterprises, such as cultivating and selling fruit and vegetables.

But eight years ago, the agricultural livelihoods of millions were decimated when a record drought associated with the El Nino climate phenomenon ravaged the Melanesian country.

“Eighty-five percent of PNG’s population are rural inhabitants who are dependent on the land for production of food and the sale of surplus for income through informal fresh produce markets. In areas affected by the 2015 drought, especially in the highlands, the drought killed food crops, affecting food security,” Dr Elizabeth Kopel of the Informal Economy Research Program at PNG’s National Research Institute told IPS. “Rural producers also supply urban food markets, so when supply dwindled, food prices increased for urban dwellers,” she added.

In Vanuatu, an estimated 67 percent of the workforce earn informal incomes, primarily in agriculture and tourism. On the waterfront of Port Vila is a large, covered handicraft market, a commercial hub for more than 100 small business owners who make and sell baskets, jewellery, paintings, woodcarvings and artworks to tourists. The island country is a major destination for cruise ships in the South Pacific. In 2019, it received more than 250,000 international visitors.

Highly exposed to the sea and storms, the market building, with the facilities and business assets it houses, bore the brunt of gale force winds from Cyclones Judy and Kevin on 1-3 March.  Tables were broken, and many of the products stored there were destroyed. Thirty-six-year-old Myshlyn Narua lost most of the handmade pandanus bags she was planning to sell. The money she had saved helped to sustain her family in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, but it would not be enough to survive six months, she stated in a report on the disaster’s impacts on market vendors compiled by Dalida Borlasa.

The country’s tourism sector has suffered numerous climate-induced economic shocks in recent years. In 2015, Cyclone Pam left losses amounting to 64 percent of GDP. Another Cyclone, Harold, in 2020 added further economic losses to the recession across the region triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“To address the climate emergency and protect the lives and livelihoods of people, particularly those in the informal sector, countries must fulfil their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement. They must work to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and provide the promised US$100 billion per year in climate finance,” said the Commonwealth Secretary-General. She added that climate-vulnerable nations should also be eligible for debt relief. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Secretariat is working with member countries to improve their access to global funding for climate projects. And it is calling for reform of the global financial architecture to improve access to finance for lower-income countries that need it the most.

At the same time, the International Labour Organization predicts that the informal economy will continue to employ most Pacific Islanders, and the imperative now is to develop the sector and improve its resilience.

In PNG, the government has acknowledged the significance of the informal sector and developed national policy and legislation to grow its size and potential. Its long-term strategy is to improve the access of entrepreneurs to skills training, communications, technology and finance and encourage diversity and innovation within the sector. Currently, 98 percent of informal enterprises in the country are self-funded, with people often seeking loans from informal sources. The government’s goal is to see informal enterprises transition into higher value-added small and medium-sized businesses and to see the number of these businesses grow from about 50,000 now to 500,000 by 2030.

In Port Vila, Borlasa and her fellow entrepreneurs would like to see their existing facilities made more climate resilient before they face the next cyclone. She suggested that stronger window and door shutters be fitted to the market building and the floor raised and strengthened to stop waves and storm surges penetrating.

Looking ahead, the economic forecast is for GDP growth in all Pacific Island countries this year and into 2024 after three difficult years of the pandemic, reports the World Bank. Although, the economic hit of the cyclones is likely to result in a decline in growth to 1 percent in Vanuatu this year. But the real indicator of economic well-being for many Pacific islanders will be resilience and prosperity in the informal economy.

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Ephraim Walters in his fishing shed. The father of nine has been a fisherman for 59 years. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
ROCKY POINT, Jamaica , Jun 2 2023 (IPS)

Long before the COVID-19 Pandemic, fishers at the Rocky Point fishing beach in Clarendon were forced to venture farther out to sea to make a living or find alternatives to make ends meet.

This once-prime fishing village attracted fishers from up and down the coast. Men like Ephraim Walters, travelled from his hometown in Belmont, 100 or so kilometres (62 miles), up the coast, to Rocky Point, some 30 years ago, and never left.

Rocky Point is Jamaica’s largest fishing community and was once a destination for south coast fishers. But decades of environmental neglect, mismanagement, and poor fishing practices are taking their toll, pushing fishermen into destitution.

In the old days, Walters recalls, fishermen went to sea every day and made enough to build homes, support their families, and school their children. Back then, one needn’t go too far because the 24-kilometre sea shelf at Rocky was the place to be: “We could drop the net in the bay, and we would pull it together with a whole lot of fish, but these days we have to go further out to sea for far less”.

“Sometimes you go out, and you don’t catch a thing, and you can’t buy back the gas you use to go out,” he says.

With too many fishers chasing too few fish, he now travels the 96.5 kilometres (60 miles) to the offshore fishing station at Pedro Banks, using hundreds of gallons of fuel and spending between three and five days to get a good catch. But even then, he says, the value of the catch may not cover the cost of the trip.

The challenges in Rocky Point are a snapshot of the Jamaican fisheries sector, where too many fishers chase too few fish. Former University of the West Indies lecturer Karl Aitken says Rocky’s problem began as many as 30 years ago. As a master’s student in the 1980s, he says he had been recording declining catch numbers even then.

Data from the National Fisheries Authority (NFA) show that only 26,000 of the estimated 40,000 fishermen on the island are registered. Marine catch data between 1986 and 1995 shows a downturn in catch rates from 9,100 metric tonnes to 4,200 metric tonnes per year. There are expansions of the commercial conch fishery that began in 1991 and the lobster fishery.

The consensus is that Jamaica’s fishing problems began with a series of natural and man-made events in the 1980s and 1990s, which resulted in the death of 85 per cent of the island’s reefs and a drastic decline in fish catches. As inshore areas became less productive, pressure mounted on the offshore resources at Pedro Cays.

The 2017 State of the  Environment report points to the growing numbers of fishers as a threat to the  environment, noting that the island’s nearshore artisanal fin-fish and lobster fisheries are potentially environmentally deleterious and associated with overfishing and harvesting.

“The greatest potential for environmental impact is in the fisheries sub-sector is associated with the marine fin-fish sector which continues to grow to supply domestic markets,” the report says.

Walters long for the promised fish sanctuary which he believes will minimise destructive behaviours and save the livelihoods of Rocky Point’s fishermen. Not only are fish stocks collapsing, but the high-value fisheries like conch and lobster are also vulnerable as more people go after the resource. Since 2000, the government has shuttered the conch fishery twice first, when a row over quota resulted in a lawsuit and again in 2018 after a collapse of the resource.

Former director of Fisheries Andre Kong explains that in both cases stocks were low. But in 2018, the fishery was on the verge of collapse. There are those who believe that the conch and lobster fisheries should remain closed for another few years, but fishermen believe that without proper protection, the resources would be plundered by poachers as happened during the Pandemic.

Fishing beaches around Rocky Point have already established sanctuaries which local fishers say have helped to boost their catch rates and the size of the fish they catch. In the neighbouring Portland Bight, three marine protected areas have been established across the parishes of St Catherine and Clarendon.

In the 73-year-old Walker’s birth parish of Westmoreland, the Bluefields Fisherman’s Friendly Society led by Wolde Christos, established one of the largest of the island’s 18 fish sanctuaries in 2009 to boost the falling catch rates, protect local marine life such as the hawksbill sea turtles that nest there, and reduce high levels of poaching.

The sanctuary covers more than 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres). It is working, Christos explains, noting that a government grant helps the fishermen who have been licensed as fish and or game wardens run a tight ship, keeping illegal fishers out.

The pandemic made things worse for many fishers due to the loss of markets. In a report to parliament last year, Minister Pearnel Charles Jr. said that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused disruption in fish production and value chains with the losses of markets locally and overseas, and higher input costs, resulting in significant increases in operational expenses. An estimated USD23 million in losses was sustained in the fisheries sector during 2020 alone.

On the beach, some fishers are doing anything they can to survive. Some are part-time boat builders/ repairmen, electricians, or even mechanics; others now clean fish for buyers to make ends meet. And if the whispers are correct, many have turned to illegal fishing.

Complicating the issue is the fact that aside from regulated fisheries of conch and lobsters, Jamaica has no limit on the amount or size of fish that can be taken. There is almost no data available for analysis, and mesh and net sizes have more or less no effect on the reaping of juvenile fish.

In keeping with commitments and international agreements, in 2018, the government unveiled a new Fisheries Act. It established the National Fisheries Authority to replace the Fisheries Division of the Ministry of Agriculture to strengthen the management and legislative framework of the sector. The act is expected to increase compliance in registration, increase opportunities for aquaculture and increase fines and prison terms for breaches.

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Jaggery making on a sugarcane farm in Mandla. Small-scale farmers in India are benefitting from a scheme where they are able to diversify their farms and get support through Farmer Producer Organisations. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

By Rina Mukherji
MANDLA, JHARGRAM & AHMEDNAGAR, INDIA, May 26 2023 (IPS)

Until a decade ago, marginal farmers Gangotri Chandrol and Sunitabai lacked livelihood options in the post-monsoon season.

With farm holdings of just 2-6 acres in Katangatola village in the tribal-majority Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh, they could only grow wheat, paddy, and sugarcane in the wet season for a living.

“Our earnings depended on price fluctuations in the market and the little paddy and wheat procured by the government.”

But now, they can sell their produce at higher than the prevailing market price to their farmers’ collective set up by Ekgaon Technologies, using existing women’s microfinance self-help groups (SHGs).

Furthermore, value-added products like flavoured jaggery obtained from sugarcane ensure a good income.  Farmers like Gangotri and Sunitabai, who were organised into clusters, and trained to form collective bargaining as buyers of agricultural inputs and suppliers of produce, are better off as a result.

While agriculture is India’s primary employment source, agricultural productivity has remained low. This is because the average size of an agricultural plot is less than 2 hectares (4.942 acres) (as per 2001 figures), with a quarter of rural holdings as low as 0.4 hectares (0.988 acres).

Furthermore, poverty and illiteracy make it difficult for most farmers to apply modern scientific inputs to enhance yield. Climate change has further added to the problem, with erratic weather, unseasonal rains, and frequent storms taking their toll on standing crops.

Realising this, India’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) developed its Producer Organisation Promoting Institution (POPI) scheme in 2015. This saw several Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) flourish around 2015, and farmers were inducted into registered companies, holding a certain number of shares, each priced at a nominal sum.

Women farmers in West Bengal buying inputs for their Farmer Producer Organisation. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

Ekgaon and its mission in Mandla

Once a single crop with migration-prone villages, Mandla district has seen a facelift ever since Ekgaon Technologies brought together its rural women and organised them into a Farmer Producers Organisation (FPO). Encouraged to buy seeds and fertilizer to distribute within their organisation, the women emerged as small-time entrepreneurs.

Traditionally, paddy cultivators, the farmers here, were trained to move to multi-cropping using natural organic farming methods. Local farmers now grow a mix of paddy, wheat, lentils (Masur), pigeon pea (arhar/tur), green gram (mung), and sugarcane on their marginal farms, using improved techniques and inexpensive homemade organic fertilizers.

Vidhi Patel, a widow and marginal farmer with a one-acre farm, tells IPS, “We were using 40 kg of seeds on our one-acre farm to grow paddy, besides spending on urea, which cost us upwards of Rs 1000. Under the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method, we now use only 25 kg of seeds, which has halved costs.”

Gangotri Chandrol, Sunitabai Chandrol, and Devki Uikey have not just learned to make optimum use of their marginal 2-6 acre farms to grow a variety of traditional crops such as wheat, paddy, sugarcane pigeon pea, masur (lentils), mung (green legumes), and millets, but have now ventured into cash crops like arrowroot, flaxseed, nigerseed, and marigold, which fetch them good returns.

Similarly, Laxmibai and Devki Uikey of the neighbouring Khari village grow sugarcane on one acre of their 3-acre farm and paddy, wheat, marigold and beetroot on the rest.  Besides operating as a small-time entrepreneur, selling agricultural inputs to other members of her FPO, Devki Uikey made organic yellow and maroon colours for the Holi (spring) festival out of beetroot and marigold with some other members of her collective.

“We procured 25 kg of marigold at Rs 40 per 250 g and 10 kg of beetroot at Rs 160 per kg. After making and selling the colours, we earned Rs 2300-Rs 2500 per member,” Devki Uikey told IPS

Besides selling premium varieties of rice such as Chindi Kapur and Jeera Shankar that are native to Mandla but not available elsewhere, Ekgaon has developed value-added products such as millet-ginger-raisin nutribars, millet noodles, amla ( gooseberry) candy, which it markets alongside ( collected) forest products like medicinal herbs, beeswax, and honey, on its e-commerce platform.

Since sugarcane is a major crop in the district and jaggery-making is an important enterprise, Ekgaon has developed ginger and tulsi (basil) flavoured jaggery cubes to brew flavoured tea.  Being part of the FPO has other benefits too. Farmers can access government funds for rainwater harvesters and borewells easily.

A tie-up with Rajdhani Besan, which markets gram flour, helped farmers who cultivate gram, while a tie-up with Lays saw the entire produce of white peas bought over in bulk for (Lays) chips and wafers. The FPO is also grading and procuring wheat for the government, earning the women farmers a small sum.

Consequently, marginal farmers who earned around Rs 50,000 (USD 608) per acre in the past are easily making Rs 3,00,000  (USD 3647) per acre now. Migration has stopped in most villages, and the literacy level has improved.

PRADAN’s initiatives in Jhargram and Bankura

Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) has also converted existing women’s microfinance self-help groups (SHGs) into FPOs in the resource-poor, tribal-majority Bankura and Jhargram districts of West Bengal.

Despite good monsoon rains, water scarcity is the norm in these paddy-growing districts, owing to rocky terrain. Of late, erratic rains have made matters worse, spurring out migration. To withstand the vagaries of the weather, the women farmer-shareholders of the Amon Mahila Chashi Producers Company Limited (Amon Women Farmers Producers Company Limited) and other FPOs now grow hardy, traditional paddy varieties using homemade organic fertilizers.

Sumita Mahato, whose family lives off a one-bigha (0.625 acres) farm, and  Swarnaprabha Mahato, whose three-bigha (1.875 acres) farm must provide for an eight-member family, told IPS: “Chemical fertilizers cost Rs 5000 per 0.625 acres, while homemade organic fertilizer costs us only Rs 80-90 for the same per bigha.”

It has helped them get organic certification for their produce, comprising traditional rice varieties like Malliphul, Satthiya  (red rice), and Kalabhat (black rice), earning them Rs 35 per kg (as against  Rs 12 per kg that rice grown with chemical inputs).  Rainwater harvesters accessed as members of the FPO, under the state government’s scheme for the region, have helped, too, increasing productivity from 25-30 quintals per acre to 40-45 quintals per acre.

As multi-cropping is impossible here owing to limited moisture in the rocky soil, the farmers grow turmeric as a cash crop on the village commons. In Jhargram, Sonajhuri (Acacia auriculiformis) and Cashew are grown for timber and nuts, while in Bankura, farms along the Kankabati River grow watermelons for collective profit.

Traditionally, women in these regions made plates from sal (Shorea robusta) leaves collected from the jungles. They now process and mould plates for urban markets using moulding machines, selling them with their other products online on IndiaMart, earning ample profits to lead well-settled lives.

Watermelon crop in Bankura. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

WOTR’s Efforts in Maharashtra

In Parner taluka (sub-division) of Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, the community-led Ankur Farmer Producers Organisation (FPO), facilitated by the Watershed Trust (WOTR), comprises 762 farmer-shareholders from the villages of Hiwrekorda, Bhangadevadi, and Dawalpuri, with farm holdings of 3-15 acres range, who supplement their incomes through dairy farming.

Being a rain-shadow, the drought-prone region with limited water resources, farming was always rainfed here, with large tracts of land lying barren.

Once Ankur was formed, the farmers could avail of Rs 80 lakh from the State Government (of Maharashtra) contributing the rest to lay a 7.5 km pipeline to bring water from the Kalu river and fill up a lined farm pond, and set up a pump-house for collective benefit.

This enabled them to bring 100 acres of farmland under cultivation to grow onions, marigolds, chrysanthemums, and other crops for the market. Their rainfed single-crop lands also grow two crops with the additional moisture available.

The farmers have opted for organic inputs like vermicompost, which they prepare and sell, both within and outside their FPO, although, as farmers Somnath Palwe and Chandrakant Gawde say, “Our members use both organic and improved seeds, as per preference.”

From growing a single crop of bajra (pearl millet), jowar (sorghum), and pulses, the farmers now grow maize, green gram, marigold, chrysanthemum, and onions, besides cauliflower and tomato. Incomes have grown from as low as Rs 50,000 ( USD 61) for an acre of cultivable land to as high as Rs 5 00,000 (USD 731).

Ankur sells its products online to Ninjacart and offline-in wholesale markets. In both cases, the sale is direct and without middlemen. Farmer Ashok Phalke, tells me. “Onions used to fetch us Rs 10 per kg, while the market price was Rs 12 per kg. We would lose Rs 2 per kg. Now that we sell directly in markets as a group, we earn more. The same goes for tomatoes and flowers.”

Besides promoting organic farming, the FPOs stress natural multi-cropping methods to control pests, such as growing horse gram in combination with maize or sorghum. This attracts birds, which, in turn, help control harmful pests naturally. Kitchen gardens are encouraged as they counter nutritional deficiencies in farming families.

Government Encouragement of FPOs

The Indian government intends to set up 10,000 FPOs all over India for Rs 6865 crore. Under this scheme, FPOs are to receive financial assistance of up to Rs 18 lakh for three years, with each farmer-member being eligible for an equity grant and credit guarantee facility. However, not all existing FPOs have been co-opted into the government scheme.

Since millets are hardy and impervious to erratic weather patterns, the government has been pushing for their cultivation in regions where they were traditionally grown. But the government’s dictum of “one District, one Product” has invited criticism, especially from grassroots organisations, who see multi-cropping as the only guarantor against natural disasters such as hailstorms and cyclones.

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Freshly slaughtered bush meat is being consumed even though it may have health risks.

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, May 18 2023 (IPS)

Meat from wild animals is relished across Africa and widely traded, but scientists are warning that eating bush meat is a potential health risk, especially in the wake of pandemics like COVID-19.

A study at the border settlements of Kenya and Tanzania has found that while people have been aware of the risks associated with eating bushmeat, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak, they don’t worry about hunting and eating wild animals that could transmit diseases.

On the contrary, the demand for bushmeat has increased, the 2023 study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and TRAFFIC and other partners found.

No Beef With Bushmeat

Bushmeat is a collective term for meat derived from wild mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and birds that live in the jungle, savannah, or wetlands. Bushmeat comes from a variety of wild animals, including monkeys, pangolins, snakes, porcupines, antelopes, elephants, and giraffes.

The study — the first ever to look at disease risk perceptions of wild meat activities in rural communities in East Africa — was conducted in December 2021, and 299 people were interviewed in communities on the Kenya-Tanzania border.

Key findings of the study revealed that levels of education played a critical role in understanding zoonotic disease transmission; a majority of the people interviewed who had higher levels of education were more aware of the risks of disease transmission.

Nearly 80 percent of the respondents had learned about COVID-19 from mass media sources, but this did not impact their levels of wild meat consumption. Some even reported increased consumption. Hoofed animals, such as antelopes, gazelles and deer, were found to be the most consumed species, followed by birds, rodents and shrews.

Scientist and lead study author at ILRI, Ekta Patel, commented that it was important to commence the study in Kenya given the limited information on both rural and urban demand for wild meat and the potential risks associated with zoonotic diseases. The Kenya-Tanzania border is a known hotspot for wild meat consumption.

Zoonotic diseases are those that originate in animals — be they tamed or wild — that then mutate and ‘spill over’ into human populations.  Two-thirds of infectious diseases, from HIV/AIDS, which are believed to have originated in chimpanzee populations in early 20th century Central Africa, to COVID-19, believed to have originated from an as-yet undetermined animal in 2019, come from animals.

Confirming that there is no COVID health risk of consuming wild meat, Patel said that given the COVID-19 pandemic, which is thought to originate from wildlife, the study was investigating if the general public was aware of health risks associated with frequent interactions with wildlife.

Patel said some of these risks of eating bush meat include coming into contact with zoonotic pathogens, which can make the handler unwell. Other concerns are linked to not cooking meats well, resulting in foodborne illnesses.

“The big worry is in zoonotic disease risks associated with wild meat activities such as hunting, skinning and consuming,” Patel told IPS.

Africa is facing a growing risk of outbreaks caused by zoonotic pathogens, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The global health body reported a 63% increase in zoonotic outbreaks in the region from 2012-2022 compared to 2001-2011.

Control or Ban?

Scientists estimate that 70 percent of emerging infectious diseases originated from animals, and 60 percent of the existing infectious disease are zoonotic. For example, Ebola outbreaks in the Congo basin have been traced back to hunters exposed to ape carcasses.  She called for governments to implement policies to control zoonotic disease transmission risks through community engagements to change behaviour.

The study, while representative of the small sample, offered valuable insights about bushmeat consumption trends happening across Africa, where bushmeat is many times on the menu, says Martin Andimile, co-author of the study and Research Manager at the global wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.

Pointing to the need to improve hygiene and standards of informal markets while at the same time providing communities with alternative protein sources, Andimile believes bushmeat consumption should be paused, citing the difficulty of regulating this source of meat.

“I think people in Africa have other options to get meat besides wild meat although some advocate that they get meat from the wild because of cultural reasons and that it is a delicacy, government systems cannot control the legal exploitation of wildlife,” Andimile told IPS. “I think bushmeat consumption should be stopped until there is a proper way of regulating it.”

Andimile said while some regulation could be enforced where the population of species are healthy enough for commercial culling to give communities bushmeat, growing human populations will impact the offtake of species from the wild.

“Bushmeat consumption is impacting species as some households consume bushmeat on a daily basis, and it is broadly obtained illegally (and is) cheaper than domestic meat,” Andimile told IPS.

Maybe regulation could keep bushmeat on the menu for communities instead of banning it, independent experts argue.

“Wild meat harvesting and consumption should not be banned as this goes against the role of sustainable use in area-based conservation as made clear by recent CBD COP15 decisions,” Francis Vorhies, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group (SULi), says.  He called for an enabling environment for sustainable and inclusive wild meat harvesting, which means better regulations and voluntary standards such as developing a FairWild-like standard for harvesting wild animals.

Another expert, Rogers Lubilo, also a member of the IUCN SULi, concurs that bushmeat consumption should not be banned because it is a major source of protein. He argued that local communities who live side-by-side with wildlife would like to access bushmeat like they used to before, but the current policies across many sites incriminate bushmeat when acquired from illegal sources.

“There is a need to invest in opportunities that will encourage access to legal bushmeat,” Lubilo said. “The trade is big and lucrative, and if harnessed properly with good policies and the ability to monitor, would be part of the broadened wildlife economy.”

Eating Species to Extinction

There is some evidence that the consumption of bushmeat is impacting the species’ population, raising fears that without corrective action, people will eat wildlife to extinction.

The IUCN has warned that bushmeat consumption and trade have driven many species closer to extinction, calling for its regulation. Hunting and trapping are listed as a threat to 4,658 terrestrial species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, including 1,194 species in Africa.

At least 5 million tons of bushmeat are trafficked every year in Central Africa. Africa is expected to lose 50 percent of its bird and mammal species by the turn of the century, says  Eric Nana, a member of the IUCN SULi.

Nana notes that bushmeat trafficking from Africa into European countries like France, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK remains a largely understudied channel. He said estimates show that more than 1,000 tons are trafficked yearly.

“Much of the reptile-based bushmeat trade in Africa is technically illegal, poorly regulated, and little understood,” Patrick Aust, also a member of IUCN SULi, said, adding that reptiles form an important part of the bushmeat trade in Africa and further research is urgently needed to better understand conservation impacts and socioeconomic importance.

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A farmer from a women-run vegetable cooperative grows cabbages in Sierra Leone. Credit: FAO/Sebastian Liste

By Danielle Nierenberg and Emily Payne
BALTIMORE, Maryland / DENVER, Colorado, May 1 2023 (IPS)

Studies consistently show that women have lower rates of agricultural productivity compared to men in the region, but it’s not because they’re less efficient farmers.

Women in sub-Saharan Africa often lead food storage, handling, stocking, processing, and marketing in addition to other household tasks and childcare. Yet they severely lack the resources they need to produce food.

A 2019 United Nations policy brief reports that giving women equal access to agricultural inputs is critical to closing this gender gap in productivity while also raising crop production.

And last year, the 17th Tanzania Economic Update showed that bridging the gap could lift about 80,000 Tanzanians out of poverty every year and boost annual gross domestic product growth by 0.86 percent.

This makes a clear economic case for investing in women, but public policies frequently overlook gender-specific needs and equality issues. Instead, organizations across the region have been stepping up to help break down the barriers that have traditionally held sub-Saharan African women back.

The West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF), Africa’s largest sub-regional research organization, runs a database of gender-sensitive technologies, ones that are low-cost and labor-saving for women across the region.

It also developed a series of initiatives to provide training in seed production, distribution, storage, and planting techniques for women. These programs are specifically designed with women’s needs and preferences in mind, such as prioritizing drought resistance or early maturity in crops.

This is an important shift. While we’re seeing an increasing number of exciting technologies and innovations tackling the food systems’ biggest challenges, unless these technologies are gender-sensitive—meaning they address the unique needs and challenges faced by women farmers—they will not be effective.

But empowering women means more than just facilitating access to technologies. Women must also be supported to lead the discoveries, inventions, and research of the future.

The West Africa Agriculture Productivity Program (WAAPP), a sub-regional initiative launched by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with the financial support of the World Bank and collaboration with CORAF, has specifically targeted initiatives for women farmers as well as women researchers.

Since 2008, 3 out of every 10 researchers trained under the WAAPP have been women.

And in just the past few years, more exciting networks are emerging to support women leading agriculture: In 2019, the African Women in Agribusiness Network launched to promote women’s leadership in African agribusiness. In 2020, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) launched the Women in Agribusiness Investment Network to help bridge the gender financing gap.

And in 2021, the African Women in Seed program was created to support women’s participation in the seed sector through training, mentorship, and networking opportunities for women seed entrepreneurs.

Empowering women in the food system is not simply a matter of social justice and equality; sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford to leave women behind.

Nearly a third of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is undernourished. Meanwhile, it’s one of the fastest-growing populations in the world, expected to double by 2050 and dramatically increase demand.

Women are the backbone of communities and the food system at large in sub-Saharan Africa, and the region’s future economic development and environmental sustainability depend on them. While women are now playing a more active role in the food system, we need more women in leadership at all levels.

Rwanda’s female-led parliament, one of the highest proportions of women parliamentarians in the world, has been instrumental in not only advancing women’s rights but promoting economic development and improving governance. We need more of this.

With the resources, recognition, and support they need and deserve, women will lead the region to a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient future.

Sub-Saharan Africa can achieve the transformation it so critically needs, but only if we support women in the food system now.

Danielle Nierenberg is President, Food Tank; Emily Payne is Food Tank researcher.

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Most vendor tables are empty in the large fresh produce market in Vanuatu's capital, Port Vila, due to the widespread devastation of food gardens and crops by Cyclones Judy and Kevin in early March. Photo credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT VILA, Vanuatu , Apr 4 2023 (IPS)

One month after the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu was hit by two Category 4 cyclones within three days, food scarcity and prices are rising in the country following widespread devastation of the agriculture sector.

In the worst affected provinces of Shefa and Tafea, the “scale of damage ranges from 90 percent to 100 percent of crops, such as root crops, fruit and forest trees, vegetables, coffee, coconut and small livestock,” Antoine Ravo, Director of Vanuatu’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development told IPS.

Vanuatu is an archipelago nation of more than 80 islands located east of Australia and southeast of Papua New Guinea. More than 80 percent of the population of more than 300,000 people were impacted by Cyclones Judy and Kevin, which unleashed gale-force winds, torrential rain and flooding across the nation on the 1 March and 3 March. Properties and homes were destroyed, power and water services cut, seawalls damaged and roads and bridges blocked.

In the aftermath, many households turned to their existing stores of food and any fresh produce that could be salvaged from their food gardens. But these have rapidly depleted.

In the large undercover fresh produce market in the centre of the capital, Port Vila, about 75-80 percent of market tables, which are usually heaving with abundant displays of root crops, vegetables and fruits, are now empty. Many of the regular vendors have seen their household harvests decimated by wind and flooding.

Susan, who lives in the rural community of Rentapao not far from Port Vila on Efate Island, commutes

Regular market vendor, Susan, lost much of her garden produce during the two cyclone disasters and is selling dry packaged food, such as banana chips, instead. Central Market, Port Vila, Vanuatu. Photo credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

daily to the market. “The cyclones destroyed our crops and our homes. We lost a lot of root crops and bananas. Today, I only have half the amount of produce I usually sell,” Susan told IPS. But, faced with the crisis, she quickly diversified and, alongside a small pile of green vegetables, the greater part of her market table is laden with packets of dried food, such as banana and manioc or cassava chips.

Agriculture is the main source of people’s income and food in Vanuatu, with 78 percent and 86 percent of households in the country relying on their own growing of vegetables and root crops, respectively, for food security and livelihoods.

But, as families grapple with increasing food scarcity, they have also been hit by a steep rise in prices for basic staples that are the core of their daily consumption. A cucumber, which sold for about 30 vatu (US$0.25) prior to the disasters, is now priced from 200 vatu (US$1.69), while pineapples and green coconuts, which could be bought for 50 vatu (US$0.42) each, also sell for 200 vatu (US$1.69).

Leias Cullwick, Executive Director of the Vanuatu National Council of Women, said that, in the wake of the cyclones, children were experiencing deprivation and anxiety. “Water is the number one concern [for families] and, also, food. And children, when they want water and food, and their mother has none to give, become traumatised,” she told IPS.

Lack of clean water and contamination by the storms of water sources, such as rivers and streams, in peri-urban and rural areas is also causing illnesses in children, such as dehydration and diarrhoea. Meanwhile, the current wet season in Vanuatu is increasing the risks of mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria and dengue fever, Cullwick added.

It will take months for some households to regain their crop yields. “Root crops have been damaged, and these are not crops that you plant today and harvest tomorrow. It takes three months, it takes six months, it will take a while for communities to get their harvests going, so it’s a concern,” Soneel Ram, Communications Manager for the Pacific Country Cluster Delegation from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told IPS in Port Vila. Although, he added that access to food at this time is easier in Pacific cities and towns.

“In urban areas, the main difference is access to supermarkets. People can readily access supermarkets and get food off the shelf. For rural communities, they rely on subsistence farming as a source of food. Now they have to look for extra funds to buy food,” Ram said. In response, the government is organising the distribution of dry food rations to affected communities, along with seeds, planting materials and farming tools.

The Pacific Island nation faces a very high risk of climate and other natural disasters. Every year islanders prepare for cyclones during the wet season from November to April. And being situated on the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’, it is also prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts that Vanuatu will experience increasingly extreme climate events, such as hotter temperatures and more severe tropical storms, droughts and floods, in the future. And, on current trends, global temperatures could exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming as early as 2030, reports the IPCC.

The impacts of Cyclones Judy and Kevin in the country follow damages wrought by other cyclones in recent years, including Cyclone Pam in 2015, which is estimated to have driven 4,000 more people into poverty, and Cyclone Harold in 2020. And the impacts of the pandemic on the country’s economy and local incomes, especially from agriculture and tourism, since early 2020. Agriculture and tourism are the main industries in Vanuatu, and agriculture, forestry and fisheries account for 15 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The most important cash crops are copra, cocoa and kava, with copra alone accounting for more than 35 percent of the Pacific nation’s exports. Now the environmental havoc and the sudden decline in international tourist arrivals following the cyclones threaten to hinder the building of recovery in the country.

The government reports that this month’s disasters will leave the country with a recovery bill of USD 50 million. And it predicts that the rescue of the agricultural sector will take years.

“It will take three months for immediate recovery of short-term food production, and six to nine months for mid-term crops, such as cassava, taro, yam and bananas. But it will take three to five years for coconut, coffee, pepper, vanilla and cocoa,” Ravo said.

With climate losses predicted to continue accumulating in the coming decades, the Vanuatu Government remains determined to pursue its ‘ICJ Initiative’, now supported by 133 other nations worldwide. The initiative aims to investigate through the International Court of Justice how international law can be used to protect vulnerable countries from climate change impacts to the environment and human rights.

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Mariyeti Mpala (56) runs a thriving vegetable garden on a former dumpsite and its proceeds assist the community in creating incomes of their own. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
Jan 10 2023 (IPS)

It’s a typical story in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city. With the failure to provide services such as refuse collection by the local municipality, township residents dump garbage wherever they fancy, and with time, dumpsites become “official.”

For 56-year-old Mariyeti Mpala, however, a community dumpsite on land that belonged to the local municipality a stone’s throw away from her residence presented an opportunity to turn what had become an accepted eyesore into a thriving greening project.

She purchased the land in 2006, and it is here on a section of the former dumpsite where she has grown indigenous wild fruit trees at the one-hectare piece of land and runs a thriving vegetable garden.

She rotates planting tomatoes, peas, cabbages, onions and lettuce, with aquaculture being the latest addition to her project.

“I have put up three thousand bream fishlings,” Mpala said as she explained her long-term ambitions for the local community.

“I decided to apply for this piece of land as it was clear no one imagined the land was of any use as it was being used as a dump site,” Mpala told IPS.

While she may not be aware of it, Mpala’s project fits snugly into the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Green Cities initiative, which among other things, “focuses on improving the urban environment, ensuring access to a healthy environment and healthy diets from sustainable agri-food systems, increasing availability of green spaces through urban and peri-urban forestry.”

“Urban agriculture is, therefore, an important part of the urban economy contributing significantly to urban food and nutrition security as the produce is less subject to market fluctuations,” said Kevin Mazorodze, FAO spokesperson.

And now, as more and more people in the country require food assistance, Mpala’s project comes as a relief for members of her community.

“I especially cater for the elderly who have no source of income and cannot fend for themselves,” Mpala told IPS.

“I sell some of the produce at low cost to those elderly women who buy in bulk so they can sell at a markup, so they raise funds for their own private needs,” she said.

FAO’s Green Cities Initiative seeks to promote more such activities, said Mazorodze.

“Urban and peri-urban agriculture is one of the key pillars of the initiative through which FAO intends to foster sustainable and climate-resilient practices and technologies to improve local food production,” Mazorodze told IPS.

Mpala sunk a borehole powered by solar energy in a country where abundant sunlight has been touted to promote clean energy.

Her work has not gone unappreciated by locals.

“She is a hard worker and has always looked out for us old people,” said Agnes Nyoni, a 70-something-year-old granny who lives not far from Mpala’s green project.

“I first knew her a few years ago when she collected our names to register for food parcels that included mealie meal, cooking oil and beans,” Nyoni told IPS.

Mpala’s work has also reached city offices, with the local councillor lauding her contribution towards uplifting the lives of the poor and food insecure.

“We actually need more of such initiatives being done by Mrs. Mpala as she is uplifting the lives of our people,” said Tinevimbo Maphosa, the local councilman.

“I understand she has also set up a fisheries project which I see as a sign of her community-building commitments. People need to be productive and stop complaining all the time about the situation in the country, and Mrs. Mpala’s work is part of what we need to see happening in our communities,” Maphosa told IPS.

The city already has numerous community gardens dotted across the city, with Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) supporting the municipality through the Green Cities Network.

The food she grows is organic, Mpala says, and local nutritionists believe at a time, food is becoming more expensive, and where people now eat whatever is available, consumers need healthier diets.

“Food grown in such nutrition gardens as that run by Mrs. Mpala is encouraged because it is fresh straight from the garden, and the elderly people she caters for certainly need healthier diets,” said Mavis Bhebhe, a government hospital nutritionist.

“What is required is to encourage such initiatives to spread the variety of the food they grow so that consumers get the most out of locally grown foods,” Bhebhe told IPS.

These sentiments come at a time when humanitarian agencies have raised concerns about levels of malnutrition across Africa as some parts of the continent battle acute food shortages.

In a country such as Zimbabwe, where formal jobs come far in between, homegrown initiatives such as the Dingindawo Gardens offer hope for young people seeking opportunities to take idle time off their hands, Maphosa believes.

“There is too much crime and drug abuse here, and with more projects from individuals like Mrs. Mpala, we could solve the community’s many problems,” Maphosa told IPS.
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Despite its dismal record, the Gates Foundation-sponsored Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) announced a new five-year strategy in September after rebranding itself by dropping ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.

Rebranding, not reform
Instead of learning from experience and changing its approach accordingly, AGRA’s new strategy promises more of the same. Ignoring evidence, criticisms and civil society pleas and demands, the Gates Foundation has committed another $200 million to its new five-year plan, bringing its total contribution to around $900 million.

Timothy A. Wise

Stung by criticism of its poor results, AGRA delayed announcing its new strategy by a year, while its chief executive shepherded the controversial UN Food Systems Summit of 2021. Following this, AGRA has been using more UN Sustainable Development Goals rhetoric.

Hence, AGRA’s new slogan – ‘Sustainably Growing Africa’s Food Systems’. Likewise, the new plan claims to “lay the foundation for a sustainable food systems-led inclusive agricultural transformation”. But beyond such lip service, there is little evidence of any meaningful commitment to sustainable agriculture in the $550 million plan for 2023–27.

Despite heavy government subsidies, AGRA promotion of commercial seeds and fertilizers for just a few cereal crops failed to significantly increase productivity, incomes or even food security. But instead of addressing past shortcomings, the new plan still relies heavily on more of the same despite its failure to “catalyze” a productivity revolution among African farmers.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The name change suggests the 16-year-old AGRA wants to dissociate itself from past failures, but without acknowledging its own flawed approach. Recently, much higher fertilizer prices – following sanctions against Russia and Belarus after the Ukraine invasion – have worsened the lot of farmers relying on AGRA recommended inputs.

It is time to change course, with policies promoting ecological farming by reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers as appropriate. But despite its new slogan, AGRA’s new strategy intends otherwise.

Last month, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa rejected the strategy and name change as “cosmetic”, “an admission of failure” of the Green Revolution project, and “a cynical distraction” from the urgent need to change course.

Productivity gains and losses
Despite spending well over a billion dollars, AGRA’s productivity gains have been modest, and only for a few more heavily subsidized crops such as maize and rice. And from 2015 to 2020, cereal yields have not risen at all.

Meanwhile, traditional food crop production has declined under AGRA, with millet falling over a fifth. Yields actually also fell for cassava, groundnuts and root crops such as sweet potato. Across a basket of staple crops, yields rose only 18% in 12 years.

Farmer incomes have not risen, especially after increased production costs are taken into account. As for halving hunger, which Gates and AGRA originally promised, the number of ‘severely undernourished’ people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries increased by 31%!

A donor-commissioned evaluation confirmed many adverse farmer outcomes. It found the minority of farmers who benefited were mainly better-off men, not smallholder women the programme was ostensibly meant for.

That did not deter the Gates Foundation from committing more to AGRA despite its dismal track record, failed strategy, and poor monitoring to track progress. Judging by the new five-year plan, we can expect even less accountability.

The new plan does not even set measurable goals for yields, incomes or food security. As the saying goes, what you don’t measure you don’t value. Apparently, AGRA does not value agricultural productivity, even though it is still at the core of the organization’s strategy.

Last month, the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA’s other founding donor and a leader of the first Green Revolution from the 1950s, announced a reduction in its grant to AGRA and a decisive step back from the Green Revolution approach.

Its grant to AGRA supports school feeding initiatives and “alternatives to fossil-fuel derived fertilisers and pesticides through the promotion of regenerative agricultural practices such as cultivation of nitrogen-fixing beans”.

Business in charge
AGRA’s new strategy is built on a series of “business lines”, e.g., the “sustainable farming business line” will coordinate with the “Seed Systems business line” to sell inputs. Private Village Based Advisors are meant to provide training and planting advice in this privatized, commercial reincarnation of the government or quasi-government extension services of an earlier era.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization successfully promoted peer-learning of agro-ecological practices via Farmer Field Schools after successfully field-testing them. This came about after research showed ‘brown hoppers’ thrived in Asian rice farms after Green Revolution pesticides eliminated the insect’s natural predators.

China lost a fifth of its 2007-08 paddy harvest to the pest, triggering a price spike in the thinly traded world rice market. Seeking help from the International Rice Research Institute, located in the Philippines, a Chinese delegation found its Entomology Department had lost most of its former capacity due to under-funding.

Earlier international agricultural research collaboration associated with the first Green Revolution – especially in wheat, maize and rice – seems to have collapsed, surrendering to corporate and philanthropic interests. This bitter experience encouraged China to step up its agronomic research efforts with a greater agro-ecological emphasis.

Empty promises?
The new strategy promises “AGRA will promote increased crop diversification at the farm level”. But its advisers cum salespeople have a vested interest in selling their wares, rather than good local seeds which do not require repeat purchases every planting season.

AGRA is not strengthening resilience by promoting agroecology or reducing farmer reliance on costly inputs such as fossil fuel fertilizers and other, often toxic, agrochemicals. Despite many proven African agroecological initiatives, support for them remains modest.

The new strategy stresses irrigation, key to most other Green Revolutions, but conspicuously absent from Africa’s Green Revolution. But the plan is deafeningly silent on how fiscally strapped governments are to provide such crucial infrastructure, especially in the face of growing water, fiscal and debt stress, worsened by global warming.

It is often said stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Perhaps this is due to the technophile conceit that some favoured innovation is superior to everything else, including scientific knowledge, processes and agro-ecological solutions.

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Workmen at a Dar es Salaam harbour loading bags of wheat destined for Central Africa. Credit: FAO/Giuseppe Bizzarri

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 2022 (IPS)

A war of words between Russia on the one hand, and the US, Britain, France and Germany on the other—specifically on the deployment of drones in Ukraine — has triggered an unintended consequence: a new world food crisis.

The Western powers last week asked the UN to verify whether Iranian drones were being used “illegally” in violation of the 2015 Security Council resolution 2231 which endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s disputed nuclear programme.

But Iran has denied it had supplied Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)—or drones– to Russia. So have the Russians.

Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, insisted last week that drones used in Ukraine were Russian-made — not Iranian.

He also warned UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his staff not to engage in any “illegitimate investigation” of drones used in Ukraine.

And Russia pushed back further — and said it will re-consider its cooperation with the UN on the Black Sea Grain Initiative, thereby barring Ukraine grain exports.

As expected, Russia pulled out of the deal threatening food security worldwide.

The world is facing a global hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions – we are at a critical crossroads. Up to 50 million people in 45 countries are on the brink of famine, says WFP. Credit: WFP/Eulalia Berlanga in South Sudan.

As of October 30, the total tonnage of grain and food stuffs moved from Ukrainian ports. under the Initiative, was 9.6 million tons.

UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said October 30 that the Secretary-General “is deeply concerned about the ongoing situation regarding the Black Sea Grain Initiative”.

“The Secretary-General continues to engage in intense contacts aiming at the end of the Russian suspension of its participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative”, he added.

The same engagement, Dujarric pointed out, also aims at the renewal and full implementation of the initiative to facilitate exports of food and fertilizer from Ukraine, as well as removing the remaining obstacles to the exports of Russian food and fertilize

Danielle Nierenberg, President Food Tank, told IPS Russia’s decision to halt grain shipments is using food as a weapon.

As a result, she pointed out, food prices across the world will increase and people, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, will suffer the most.

“There will likely be food riots and increased malnutrition,” she predicted.

The Russian war against Ukraine, she argued, demonstrates that our global food systems are fragile.

“What we need are more local and regional food and input production to ensure food security”, said Nierenberg, whose non-profit organization aims at reforming the food system with the goal of highlighting environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty.
www.foodtank.com

The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is quoted as saying that Russia has been “deliberately aggravating” the world’s food crisis.

“Russia is doing everything to ensure that millions of Africans, millions of residents of the Middle East and South Asia, will find themselves in conditions of artificial famine or at least a severe food crisis”.

The world has the power to protect people against this, he declared.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, beginning February 2022, exports of grain from Ukraine, as well as food and fertilizers from Russia, have been significantly hit, according to the United Nations.

“The disruption in supplies pushed soaring prices even higher and contributed to a global food crisis. The Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered by the United Nations and Türkiye, was set up to reintroduce vital food and fertilizer exports from Ukraine to the rest of the world.”

Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters, normally supplies around 45 million tonnes of grain to the global market every year but, following Russia’s invasion of the country, mountains of grains built up in silos, with ships unable to secure safe passage to and from Ukrainian ports, and land routes unable to compensate, the UN said.

“This contributed to a jump in the price of staple foods around the world. Combined with increases in the cost of energy, developing countries were pushed to the brink of debt default and increasing numbers of people found themselves on the brink of famine.”

On 22 July, the UN, the Russian Federation, Türkiye and Ukraine agreed the Black Sea Grain Initiative, at a signing ceremony in Türkiye’s largest city, Istanbul.

The deal allowed exports from Ukraine of grain, other foodstuffs, and fertilizer, including ammonia, to resume through a safe maritime humanitarian corridor from three key Ukrainian ports: Chornomorsk, Odesa, and Yuzhny/Pivdennyi, to the rest of the world.

To implement the deal, a Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) was established in Istanbul, comprising senior representatives from the Russian Federation, Türkiye, Ukraine, and the United Nations.

According to procedures issued by the JCC, vessels wishing to participate in the Initiative will undergo inspection off Istanbul to ensure they are empty of cargo, then sail through the maritime humanitarian corridor to Ukrainian ports to load.

The corridor was established by the JCC and monitored 24/7 to ensure the safe passage of vessels. Vessels on the return journey will also be inspected at the inspection area off Istanbul.

Meanwhile, a statement released on October 30 says the UN Secretariat convened all delegations earlier Sunday at the Joint Coordination Centre in a plenary format.

During the session, the delegation of the Russian Federation informed that while it suspends its participation in the implementation of the activities of the Initiative, including in inspections for an indefinite time, it will continue the dialogue with the United Nations and the Turkish delegation on pressing issues.

The Russian Federation also expressed its readiness to cooperate remotely on issues that require immediate decision by the JCC.

The Secretariat, in close cooperation with the Turkish delegation at the JCC, continues to engage all representatives to offer options on next steps regarding the JCC operations in accordance with the goals and provisions stated in the Initiative.

In order to continue fulfilling the Initiative, it was proposed that the Turkish and United Nations delegations provide by October 31 ten inspection teams aimed at inspecting 40 outbound vessels. This inspection plan has been accepted by the delegation of Ukraine. The Russian Federation delegation has been informed.

Currently, there are 97 loaded vessels and 15 inbound vessels registered for JCC inspection around Istanbul. There are an additional 89 that have applied to join the Initiative.

In addition, the Ukrainian, Turkish and United Nations delegations agreed on a movement plan for the maritime humanitarian corridor of 14 vessels, 12 outbound and four inbound.

The UN delegation, in its capacity as JCC Secretariat, has informed the delegation of the Russian Federation on the movements in accordance with the JCC established procedures.

As per JCC procedures, all participants coordinate with their respective military and other relevant authorities to ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

There was no movement of vessels in the corridor on 30 October. There are currently 21 vessels engaged in the Initiative that are in or near the three Ukrainian ports with a capacity of over 700,000 metric tons, including IKARIA ANGEL, a vessel chartered by the World Food Programme loaded with 30,000 metric tons of wheat for the emergency response in the Horn of Africa, the UN said.

According to the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP) last month, the world faces a global hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions.

In just two years, the number of people facing, or at risk of, acute food insecurity increased from 135 million in 53 countries pre-pandemic, to 345 million in 82 countries today.

Fuelled by conflict, climate shocks and COVID-19, the crisis is escalating as the war in Ukraine drives up the costs of food, fuel and fertilizers. Millions of people are struggling to put food on the table and are being driven closer to starvation in a storm of staggering proportions.

“We are at a critical crossroads. We need to rise to the challenge of meeting people’s immediate food needs, while at the same time supporting programmes that build long-term resilience”.

“The alternative is hunger on a catastrophic scale,” the WFP warned, long before the current grain crisis.

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At Jhargram in India’s West Bengal state, farmers have returned to indigenous and organic farming with promising results. Here women farmers prepare seed beds. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Jhargram, India, Oct 24 2022 (IPS)

At Jhargram, a far-flung village in India’s West Bengal state, a group of farmers sit together in one of the open fields. They debate, deliberate, and confabulate about the marketing strategy they should use when selling their harvest on the open market.

Two years ago, the scenario in the village was completely different. The farmers were perturbed by sudden market inflation—a price hike on seeds, fertilisers, and saplings. On top of that, they were worried about climate change and the damage that occurs with the changes in weather patterns—late monsoons, unseasonal rains, and extreme heat waves.

The state of West Bengal is located in the eastern region of India along the Bay of Bengal. It was in this Indian state that Britain’s East India Company started doing business before it went on to rule almost the entire South Asia.

West Bengal is primarily an agricultural state. Despite covering only 2.7% of India’s geographical territory, it is home to approximately 8% of its 1.3 billion population. There are 7,1 million farming families, with 96% being small and marginal farmers in West Bengal. The average land holding is only 0.77 hectares. The state has a broad set of natural resources and agro-climatic conditions that allow for the production of a wide range of crops.

However, over the past few years, farmers here have been reeling in distress.  According to recent research conducted to determine the intensity of the agrarian crisis in the region, agricultural produce returns for farmers were meagre.

The main reasons for low agricultural returns were a flawed marketing system; low agricultural product prices; price fluctuations of farm products; and crop loss due to disease, flooding, and heavy rains.

Jayanta Sahu, a farmer from Jhargram village, recalls how the drastic price rise of seeds and saplings put farmers like him in dire straits.

“We belong to the village, which is far away from the city. It takes hours of bus rides to reach the markets. Hardly a bus drones through this place. This was why we used to rely mostly on the middleman to supply seeds, fertilisers, and related entities required for farming. They used to take their commission from the supplies, and we were left with extremely high-priced material,” Sahu told IPS.

He adds that several issues have afflicted the farming sector in the past, including loss of agricultural land, a shortage of local seeds and seedlings, irrigation, and a lack of agricultural infrastructure, manures, fertiliser, and biocides.

But above all, said Sahu, the plummeting income from farming left them feeling “wretched” in more ways than one.

“We couldn’t even cover the basic expenses of our family through the meagre income from agriculture. Our finances were strained by inflation and climate change. We were really helpless before such a tumultuous situation,” Sahu said.

Another farmer, namely Mongal Dash, recalls how he was about to bid adieu to farming forever and instead do menial jobs like working as a daily wage labourer in the main town. “We were fighting a battle on multiple fronts—the low yields of our crops, the high cost of fertilisers and seeds, and climate change. The middlemen who used to supply us with the seeds raised the basic cost four to five times. We had no option left but to buy from them. The degraded quality of these seeds would result in low yields and, ultimately, low incomes,” Dash told IPS.

Witnessing insurmountable predicaments coming from all sides, the farmers last year sat together to decide a future course of action. It was like either they would perish or prosper. After hours of deliberations, they identified the key issues concerning them and how they should address them as a priority. One of the major hurdles was the involvement of middlemen or commission agents in procuring seeds. Another hurdle was the long distance to the city, which made it difficult to procure seeds and fertilisers for themselves.

At this time, they deliberated over a strategy to produce their own seeds and saplings that they could grow and make profitable yields.

The village, with more than 250 households, identified six veteran and experienced farmers who were tasked with producing their indigenous seeds and saplings. These farmers were trained in seed preservation, seed bed making, organic manure preparation, and pest control.

About an acre of land was identified. Seedbeds for Tamara, cabbage, cauliflower, and chilli, with an estimated 9000 saplings, were prepared there. The farmers resolved that no chemical fertilisers or pesticides would be used on seedlings or seed beds—everything was grown organically.

The saplings were distributed at a low cost to the farmers in the village based on their needs.

Now, when more than a year has passed, the endeavour these otherwise crisis-stricken farmers have made is beginning to yield the desired results.

“We are no longer dependent on the outside market for seed procurement. We do not use chemical fertilisers, nor are we importing any degraded saplings from outside. Our village is becoming self-reliant in this regard, and we are very proud of this,” says a local farmer Shyam Bisui.

The farmers, who otherwise had to invest about one-third of their yearly earnings on purchasing inorganic seeds and chemical fertilisers, now save most of their money because organic manures are used. Seeds are prepared in the village.

“The yields are subtly growing, and so are our hopes of good living. We are sure our earnest efforts will bring us prosperity, and we will never perish,” the farmer said.

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By External Source
Oct 14 2022 (IPS-Partners)

In 2022, an ongoing pandemic, global conflicts, climate change, rising prices and international tensions…

…are affecting global food security.

But we need to build sustainable access to enough nutritious food.

For everyone – everywhere.

No one should be left behind.

Leave No One Behind
World Food Day
16th October 2022

Enough food is produced today to feed everyone on the planet…

…but millions of people around the world cannot afford a healthy diet.

Ending hunger isn’t only about supply.

The problem is access and availability of nutritious food.

People around the world are suffering the domino effects of challenges that know no borders.

More than 80% of the extreme poor live in rural areas.

Many rely on agriculture and natural resources for their living.

They are usually the hardest hit by natural and man-made disasters…

…and are often marginalized due to their gender, ethnic origin, or status.

In the face of global crises, global solutions are needed more than ever.

A sustainable world is one where everyone counts.

Governments, the private sector, academia, and civil society and individuals need to work together…

…to prioritize the right of all people to food, nutrition, peace and equality.

We must all be the change.

By Alissa Yoon, Alexander John Ham, Alex Yoon, Hyunsang "Sean" Cho, Karuta Yamamoto, Souta Oshiro and Sungjoon Ham
Seoul, Tokyo, Boston, Oct 14 2022 (IPS-Partners)

A group of middle school students living in Asia filmed this video on their campaign to reduce food waste. They learned many lessons: Only take as much food as you can eat; don’t waste, eat ugly fruit and compost. In this production, they spoke to experts about how to ensure that everybody has something nutritious to eat.

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Leonida Odongo, an activist from Kenya’s Haki Nawiri Africa, and Global Development and Environment Institute fellow Dr Timothy Wise agree that Africa’s food systems revolution should not be based on costly imports. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
Kigali, Sep 12 2022 (IPS)

The 2022 Africa Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) Summit ended in Kigali, Rwanda, with policymakers, activists, researchers, business leaders, and agricultural experts divided over the right pace to build resilient agri-food systems on the continent.

While some believe that mobilizing private and public investments, innovations, and country-based solutions is still crucial to moving forward the transformation of Africa’s food systems, others observe that the agricultural revolution on the continent needs to start from the bottom up, from the inside out, starting with small-scale farmers.

“The Green Revolution is an imported, top-down approach reliant on imported fertilizers and other inputs,” Dr Timothy Wise, a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute of the US-based Tufts University, told IPS.

Wise adds that the bias in public policies toward the private sector works against small-scale farmers, even though they, too, are technically part of the private sector.

“Markets [in Africa] can benefit farmers, and farmers need fair markets, but they cannot be dominated by large corporations and middlemen,” he says.

Latest estimates by the African Development Bank (AfDB) show that for the green revolution to happen in Africa, there is an urgent necessity to increase productivity and to move up the value chain into processed foods. Africa cannot feed itself while getting only a quarter of its potential yields and without processing what it grows, the bank says.

Africa’s green revolution’s main purpose is to transform African agriculture from a subsistence model to strong businesses that improve the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers across the continent.

The ambitious plan, according to officials, aims especially at advancing the commitments made at the Malabo Heads of State Summit and working hard to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals with a focus on improving the income and productivity of farmers with concrete actions that can build sustainable and resilient food systems to feed nearly 256 million reportedly suffering from severe food insecurity on the African continent.

While the Malabo declaration, to be attained by 2025, stresses concerns over Africa’s growing dependence on foreign markets for food security, arguably due to changes in consumption patterns, some experts believe that African Governments need to promote territorial markets that provide a level playing field to small-scale agroecological producers and entrepreneurs.

The Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), one of the continental frameworks under Agenda 2063 of the African Union to help countries eliminate hunger and reduce poverty by raising economic growth through agriculture-led development, but activists say there remains much unexploited intra-African trade in agricultural commodities.

According to the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), an organization that brings together small-scale farmers from across Africa advocating for food sovereignty, seed and trade issues are highly politicized and complicated on the continent with a lot of baggage to unpack.

Africa is on the verge of losing its diverse crop varieties due to restrictive and draconian laws that prohibit the centuries-old free exchange of seeds between farmers, it said.

With the importation of seeds in the name of high-yielding and climate-smart varieties becoming common policy for most countries; activists point out that their performance is intricately and heavily dependent on the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

In a brief interview with IPS, activists from AFSA said the adoption of these solutions in most African countries has proved ineffective because they end up creating dependency among farmers, forcing them to lose their own farmer varieties, and forcing them only to plant monocultures, all of which contribute to food insecurity.

The most pronounced opposition came from Leonida Odongo, an activist from Kenya Haki Nawiri Africa, who observed that thousands of hectares of land in Africa are owned or leased to plantations that grow what is not eaten on the continent.

The major challenge, according to Odongo, is that most of the western companies producing seeds and agrochemicals come to convince African farmers to buy seeds and chemicals, and, in some cases, they get these as loans in form of these imported agricultural inputs.

“If Green Revolution is working for Africa, why are the rates of hunger soaring, and if climate-smart technologies are working, why does Africa continue to be ravaged by droughts?” she asked.

Both Odongo and Tim are convinced that the kind of intensification Africa’s small-scale farmers need is ecological, not based on the adoption of costly inputs.

This is because subsidizing purchases of expensive inputs, which are two to three times more expensive, and which are derived from fossil fuels, as is the current case in most African countries, is bound to fail.

While reacting to the current efforts to achieve food security in Africa, Hailemariam Desalegn, the former Prime Minister of Ethiopia and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) chair, noted that while some African countries have shown commitment to support food systems transformation, collective action would be needed to accelerate progress and real change.

“African governments should lead these efforts by prioritizing and integrating policies […] that call for healthy and nutritious diets, decent income for the farmers, and that address climate fragility,” Desalegn told delegates at the AGRF summit.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame agreed; he noted that Africa should not be struggling with food insecurity, given “our” natural endowments.

“By transforming food systems [in Africa], we can feed ourselves, and even feed others,” Kagame said.

With current preferential trade liberalization through the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA), some members of the business community observed that there were still challenges to linking food-deficit areas with food-surplus areas across the continent.

Latest estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that Africa is a net food-importing region of commodities such as cereals, meat, dairy products, fats, oils, and sugar, importing about USD 80 billion worth of agricultural and food products annually.

Gilbert Musonda, an agribusiness manager from Zambia who processes oil from sunflower, told IPS that in his experience, smallholder farmers are the first ones to be part of the solution, but also governments should support the private sector and ensure there are dynamic regional markets established.

African Heads of State and governments are committed in 2014 to triple intra-African trade in agricultural commodities and services by the year 2025. Recent evidence by the World Bank suggests that the export of agro-processed and other value-added goods made in Africa is greater in regional markets than in external markets outside Africa

“There is still an urgent need to invest in agribusiness in order to sustainable Africa’s food systems,” Musonda told IPS.

With a new five-year strategy adopted on the sidelines summit in Kigali to build Africa’s food system, activists say there is little attention to farmers’ needs.

“The anecdotal evidence from farmers in Africa shows that the promises of high yields distribution are not working,” says Odongo.
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Edward Mukiibi first worked the fields as punishment. Now he is a firm believer that the slow food movement can save the planet. He was recently named as the President of Slow Food International. Credit: Slow Food International

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

Edward Mukiibi was forced to do agriculture at school as punishment for misbehaviour.

Instead of hating the punishment, he loved it, especially when he realised farming was the future of good food, health and wealth.

Mukiibi is a farmer and social entrepreneur from Uganda on a mission to prove that sustainable farming is the foundation of all fortune and a solution to overcoming hunger, unemployment, and biodiversity loss. He is an advocate for food production based on using local resources,   knowledge and traditions to promote diverse farming systems.

Mukiibi is a member of Slow Food International, a global movement advocating for local food production and traditional cooking.

In July 2022, Mukiibi (36) was named as the new President of Slow Food International at its 8th International Congress in Pollenzo, Italy.

“I feel good and happy about this appointment and also happy on behalf of Slow Food, which is a strong international food movement that has become more established not only in the founding continent of Europe but across the world, which is why it was now possible for the network for finding more able and enthusiastic leaders like me,” Mukiibi told IPS during an online interview.

Founded in 1986 by Carlo Petrini, Slow Food International works to cultivate a worldwide network of local communities and activists who defend cultural and biological diversity. They promote food education and the transfer of traditional knowledge and skills.

Convinced of the untapped potential of farming and the need to make agriculture attractive for the youth, Mukiibi founded the Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC). The project works with students and communities to cultivate a positive attitude in young people towards agriculture and locally produced food.

Citing that 70 percent of the population in Africa is below the age of 40, Mukiibi said Africa has a large young generation that can be involved in agriculture. Mukiibi deplored the practice in schools where farming was used as a punishment in the same manner prisons have young offenders working on large-scale farms to provide labour as part of corporal punishment.

“This prevents many young people from loving agriculture and food production,” said Mukiibi. “I am a victim of this kind of practice. When I was in school, I always wanted to change this by working with schools in a participatory way and introducing children to farming in a more interest-oriented manner.”

Mukiibi has also championed the development of Slow Food Gardens, a global project that has created thousands of green spaces to preserve African food biodiversity and help communities access nutritious food. Mukiibi has created gardens in more than 1000 schools in Uganda.

“Slow Food gives you a 360-degree view of food systems because it covers everything that transforms the way we grow, eat, market, process and save food,” said Mukiibi, explaining that slow food is a movement and philosophy about clean, good and fair food.

Interview excerpts:

The slow food movement promotes biodiversity on the land and our plates. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

IPS: What is slow food? Is it the opposite of fast food?

Edward Mukiibi: The concept of slow food carries more of a responsibility than just literal meaning and the direct opposite of fast food. It carries more sense when combined with our philosophy of good, clean, and fair food for everyone. The concept means being responsible in everything we do when it comes to food, agriculture, and the planet. In being responsible for your food choices, you need to eat food and produce food that is good for the environment and good for the culture and the traditions of the people that safeguard it.

Another aspect of slow food is fairness. We need to ensure fairness when it comes to transactions. Openness and transparency when it comes to negotiations and working deals between the producers and consumers but also a declaration of information and the true identity of the producers of the food we eat. Sometimes people are not fair, especially big food chains, when they sell food produced by small-scale producers but brand it as their own production. We also need to ensure justice for smallholder farmers, justice for indigenous people and justice for the environment.

Slow Food is also a movement of actors and activists. We are a movement that involves everyone who thinks we need to urgently slow down climate change and the destruction food production is bringing to this planet. We need to slow down on policies that are against environmental equilibrium.

IPS: Is clean, good and fair food achievable, and are slow fooders meeting this goal?

Historically there have been a lot of ruthless, careless food production activities and cruel ways of production to the environment and to the people who are going to eat the food. A good, clean, and fair food system exists and is achievable. With all the challenges we are seeing, the conflicts, climate crisis and food insecurity created by the global food system can be reversed if everyone understands the concept of slow food, whose goal is to solve global challenges using local actions and activities done by the local communities.

We have many examples. So many communities in 160 countries are taking positive actions to regenerate the planet … It is not too late to regenerate the planet and rethink how food is produced, how food is handled and how food is consumed.

IPS: Climate change is impacting our food production. How do you see the Slow Food movement addressing this?

EM: Slow Food is promoting regenerative approaches to food production, including promoting agri-ecology, building traditional farming systems based on agroforestry, and preserving and protecting local food biodiversity and fragile ecosystems.

We are not only talking about climate change by going out to conferences. We are taking action through the thousands of communities taking practical work to promote agroecology, permaculture and traditional farming systems. In Africa, we count 3 500 agro-ecological gardens that have been created and managed in schools.

IPS: You mention Slow food in biodiversity protection. How and why?

EM: We have the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity because we are concerned about the rate at which we are losing biodiversity not only in the field but also biodiversity on our plates which makes our nutrition and diets dependent on a few highly controlled products.

We are working with cooks to bring back biodiversity on the plate. It is not enough to talk. We have to bring back what we are losing on the table and open the discussion from the dinner table about the wealth we are losing.

Slow Food has worked to create community value chains in different communities to protect food products at the risk of extinction. It means sharing knowledge about these products and that the community sits together to devise ways to protect and promote these food products.

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Community-led restoration of mangroves along Kenya's coastal shorelines is ongoing. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Jul 25 2022 (IPS)

The swish of calm waters followed by unexpectedly high tides and violent waves is now too familiar for the fisher community along Kenya’s 1,420-kilometer Indian Ocean coastline.

“When a very dark cloud hovers around the ocean, it is a signal that it is very angry, releasing very strong waves from its very depth. When this happens, the ocean will only calm down by taking a life. Fishermen are killed by sudden strong waves every year,” Aisha Mumina, a resident of Makongeni village in Kilifi County, tells IPS.

But even during such high tides, Mwanamvua Kassim Zara, a local fish trader, says the stock has significantly declined. Before, high tides meant more fish because they would run to the safety of thick mangrove roots for shelter, feeding and breeding.

Today, she says, fishers can no longer cast their net beyond the coral reef and expect a harvest. Even the popular Dagaa, a tiny silver fish and a most preferred delicacy in Vanga Bay in Kwale County with a population of over 8,700 households, has all but disappeared.

“I buy a bucket of fish from the fishermen at 40 to 45 US dollars, up from 20 to 25 US dollars. The high prices are then transferred to our customers who buy one kilogram of boiled, dried and salted fish at 3 US dollars up from 2 US dollars,” she tells IPS.

Kassim considered diversifying into rice farming, but even that presents a new set of challenges. While the tides are not sweeping fish to the shores and into the fishers’ nets, the high tides flood adjacent rice farms. This makes it impossible to access the farms, leading to the destruction of crops.

Kassim Zara says the fish population is on the rise in tandem with mangrove conservation and restoration efforts in Jimbo village, Kwale County. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

In Jimbo village, she says parents were afraid to send their children to Jimbo Early Childhood Education (ECD). In high tides, water from the adjacent Indian Ocean would flood the school, putting the lives of children at risk.

But Kassim says a promising community-led, community-driven initiative is progressively addressing their most pressing climate change-related concerns. This hope is to restore mangroves and unleash their hidden superpowers to store three to five times more carbon than terrestrial forests.

Once dismissed as dirty and swampy wetlands, the maze of lush green mangroves lining meandering water channels along Kenya’s coastline were extensively encroached upon, degraded and mangrove trees felled at a rate of 0.5 % per year from 1991 to 2016, according to the Kenya Forest Services (KFS).

Relying on indigenous knowledge, indigenous ethnic groups along Kenya’s coastline, including the Digo, Duruma, Shirazi, Wapemba and Wagunga people, discovered that the more they cut down mangroves for firewood, building material, fishing equipment and trade, the more fish disappeared. With these changes came higher and more powerful waves and floods.

“Even as various fish species such as milkfish, mullet fish and octopus slowly disappeared and fishermen could no longer cast their nets past the coral reef and catch a prawn, crab or other shellfish, it took time to see the connection,” Harith Mohamed Suleiman, a member of Kwale’s Vanga Bay indigenous communities tells IPS.

The ongoing soft engineering efforts to restore mangroves on the shorelines of Kwale’s Vanga Bay area. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Mangroves are the first line of defence against Indian Ocean-related catastrophes. Mangrove roots provide fish with feeding and breeding grounds. They enable close to all fishing activities to be carried out along shallow inshore areas within and adjacent to the mangroves, according to the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI).

“It took us many years to understand that mangroves are the breeding and nursery grounds for many fish species around here. By losing mangroves, we were losing our lifeline. We make money from fishing, tourism, bird watching, beekeeping and honey from mangrove forests is unique and valuable,” Suleiman expounds.

Oscar Kiptoo, a conservationist and researcher at KFS, says mangroves are government reserve forests under KFS either singly or in partnership with the Kenya Wildlife Service when mangroves grow in marine parks and reserves. The total mangrove cover in this East African nation, he says, is approximately 61,271 hectares.

Lamu County has 37,350 hectares, Kilifi 8,536 hectares, Kwale 8,354 hectares and 3,260 hectares in Tana River. Mombasa has 3,771 hectares of mangroves distributed along Port Reitz and Tudor Creeks.

An estimated 1,850 hectares of Mombasa County’s mangrove cover are degraded, with more than 1,480 hectares destruction reported in Tudor Creek, mainly because mangrove wood is resistant to rot and insects and therefore highly valuable for building material.

Suleiman explains how three adjacent villages in Kwale County formed the Vanga Jimbo Kiwengu (VAJIKI) Community Forest Association to restore, conserve and protect mangroves voluntarily.

Suleiman, the chair of VAJIKI, says the initiative was inspired by Gazi and Makongeni villages in Kilifi County. These communities pioneered the first of its kind carbon offset project in the world to successfully traded mangrove carbon credits. They worked under the Mikoko Pamoja Community group with support from the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI).

Ongoing soft engineering efforts to restore mangroves on the shorelines of Kwale’s Vanga Bay area. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Kassim, from the VAJIKI community, says the community initially did not succeed because they lacked knowledge about mangrove species and zoning. There are mangroves for the shoreline and those that do best on the mainland.

“Since 2016, educated people from the government have been teaching us how to plant and protect mangroves. They tell us mangroves are the roots of the ocean, the same way that a tree cannot grow without trees, so it is with the ocean. We cannot benefit from the ocean if we destroy mangroves. We learn how to use mangroves as a wall around the ocean to protect us from high tides, and we see the fruits of our work,” Kassim says.

Suleiman agrees, adding that the VAJIKI project is a 460 hectares mangrove initiative officially launched in 2019. He says 450 hectares (1,112 acres) will be conserved, protected, and allowed to rejuvenate naturally. The remaining 10 (25 acres) will be reforested over two decades.

Out of the 450 hectares (1,112 acres), he says 250 hectares (618 acres) are on the mainland and at significant risk of continued over-exploitation, and another 200 hectares (494 acres) are on the uninhabited Sii Island. Although unexploited, mangroves on Sii Island are at significant risk from loggers.

Suleiman says the VAJIKI community is committed to ensuring that the island remains free from all human activity, including illegal fishing and dynamite use. According to KFS, approximately 250 fish and 124 coral species are protected by the Sii Island mangroves.

“The VAJIKI community is in talks with government representatives to pioneer a transboundary mangrove conservation and restoration initiative that will start from Mombasa, through Kwale County and into Tanzania. We are in close proximity with other indigenous communities on the Tanzania side of the border. We have no language or cultural barriers,” he says.

Suleiman says they have learnt mangrove seedlings have a higher survival rate when prepared for planting in a seed nursery. Mangrove seedlings will have been collected in the expansive mangrove forest, packed in sacks, soaked in salty or marine water and stored for planting for six months. At least 100 community members volunteer for the exercise on seed planting days.

Mangrove seeds are seasonal, and their availability throughout the year varies from species to species. For instance, Ceriops Tagal seeds are available in February and March, Rhizophora mucronata seeds are available in March and June, and Avicennia marina seeds are available in April and May.

The VAJIKI community plants at least 3,000 seedlings of mangroves annually and targets to sell carbon credit worth 48,713 US dollars per year by accumulating 5,023 tons of carbon above ground. Their records show that the 2020/21 period brought carbon credits worth 44,433 US dollars.

This is where a private developer had once built a hotel on the shores of Vanga Bay in Kwale County, leading to significant deforestation of mangroves. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Suleiman says the VAJIKI Community sells above-ground carbon calculated using direct measurements of mangrove biomass. Kiptoo says these measurements are taken using traditionally established forest inventory techniques.

He says the process entails collecting tree measurements, including height, crown area or wood density, and diameter at breast height within the designated plots. These measurements, he says, are then used “as an input to the allometric equation, also known as biomass estimation equations, to provide biomass estimates.”

Suleiman says these calculations require technical know-how. The VAJIKI community relies on the Association for Coastal Ecosystem Services (ACES), a charity registered in Scotland, to coordinate the entire process, including the actual carbon trading, because they have access to viable international markets.

“Women in Kiwengu village delivered at home or in other villages because Kiwengu Dispensary did not have a maternity (ward). But we bought a bed using the money, and women are safe to deliver at the dispensary. Our children can go to nursery school because we built a barrier to prevent floods from entering the school. Rice farming is possible now because the floods have reduced in the last two years,” Kassim says.

In Makongeni Kilifi County, Naima Juma says her nine-year-old daughter was accosted and nearly assaulted on her way to fetch water; “we used to walk for two kilometres looking for freshwater because our waters are too salty. But now everyone in the village has water close to their homes through communal taps or own household taps.”

Providing clean water to the community, improved health care, sanitation, education and infrastructure to the benefit of Juma and 4,500 community members was made possible through the Mikoko Pamoja (mangroves together) initiative.

Records show the Mikoko Pamoja community-based group has 117 acres of mangrove plantation, restoring the degraded shorelines of Gazi bay by planting approximately 2,000 seedlings annually and another 2,000 on the mainland. The project captures an estimated 2,000 tons of carbon below and above ground. Records show the project currently earns at least 25,000 US dollars annually from carbon trading.

“Our community leaders and chiefs usually invite us to a meeting to discuss how the money should be spent. We usually choose projects that benefit all of us,” Juma tells IPS.

Community initiatives, Suleiman says, are so strong that a private developer who once destroyed acres of mangroves to build a beach hotel and restaurant just meters away from the shoreline demolished the facility due to community resistance. Other developers similarly deforested large chunks of mangroves to build salt pans – the projects have since been terminated.

Kiptoo says ongoing community-led initiatives are hitting all the right targets as they are a win for climate, biodiversity and communities.

Due to ongoing community-based and community-led initiatives, he says the country is successfully halting the degradation and deforestation of mangroves.

The dense mangrove forested area on the Tanzania side of the border. On the Kenyan side, communities are leading mangrove restoration efforts. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Keeping with the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to adopt the International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem proclamation marked annually on July 26, between 2019 and 2022, KFS says over 16.7 million mangroves seedlings have been planted.

Suleiman says community-led initiatives are not without their fair share of challenges. “A lack of understanding of various mangrove species available and where they grow best is the main problem as there are species that thrive on the mainland and others along the shoreline.

“A lack of knowledge on planting methods, either through a nursery or simply picking a seedling and directly sticking it in the ground, issues of seedling spacing, and all these factors affect the survival rate. VAJIKI started planting seedlings years ago, but until recently, when we started interacting with scientists, the survival rate was only 10 percent.”

He encourages coastal communities to partner with scientists and the government because with an increased understanding of mangroves, the survival rate will improve. Other benefits will follow – like increased carbon dioxide trapped in mangroves and money earned from carbon trading that can be used to support community projects. All these significantly improve lives.

Kassim says her beloved Dagaa, a staple in the Vanga bay community, is slowly returning to the shores and within reach of fishers. She says business is booming and that fish prices would have already gone down if it were not for ongoing inflation and the fuel cost.

This feature was reported with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

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A child eating WFP high-energy biscuits as part of WFP's nutrition assistance in Batangafo town, northern Central African Republic. Credit: WFP/Bruno Djoyo

By Alexander Müller, Adam Prakash and Elena Lazutkaite
BERLIN / TERNI, Italy, Jul 25 2022 (IPS)

A growing mountain of data and analysis points to an unprecedented global crisis in the making, due to the convergence of “Four Cs” (Conflict, Covid, Climate and Costs).

As most recently highlighted at the recent UN High-Level Political Forum on the Sustainable Development Goals (HLPF), the intersection of poverty, climate vulnerability and geopolitical dynamics could unleash the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.

Why is this crisis different?

All food crises are intrinsically linked to spikes in fossil fuel prices. Recent episodes (such as the food price crises of 2007-2009 and 2012) display several common characteristics: increased demand for biofuels as an alternative energy source; and the diversion of massive amounts of food grains to intensive, and unsustainable livestock sectors in countries with an already high and unhealthy consumption of animal protein.

However, until now, severe impacts on food availability have been avoided thanks to favourable weather conditions that have helped to quickly restore market equilibria.
Not this time.

While the root of the current crisis is strongly linked to incessant pressure on food systems to deliver energy and meat, high fertilizer prices mean that production costs are outpacing farmgate prices of food, discouraging farmers from maintaining or increasing production.

This adds yet another layer of complexity to the “perfect storm” that has already been gathering. Covid-19 looms large over the ability of supply chains to deliver food. Conflict (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) has siphoned-off enormous amounts of food destined for international markets as well as driving up the price of crude oil, which is highly influential in determining prices of fertilizer – the critical input in global agri-food value chains.

(Note: On July 22, The United Nations, Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine signed an agreement in Istanbul aimed at delivering Ukrainian grain to world markets. The deal was the result of months of negotiations as world food prices skyrocketed amid increasing grain shortages connected to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres heralded the agreement as a major diplomatic breakthrough. “Today there is a beacon on the Black Sea. A beacon of hope—a beacon of possibility, a beacon of relief—in a world that needs it more than ever.”)

Due to our energy-hungry and inefficient food systems, over seven units of fossil fuel energy are required to produce one unit of food – from farm to retail.

Adding to the complexity of these developments is the accelerated impact of the climate crisis on global agriculture. The upshot is that the world is facing record food costs in 2022.

These “Four Cs” are instigating a scenario that could be more severe than anything we’ve seen in the past five decades, mirroring the hunger crisis of the 1970s in which millions perished from hunger.

Moreover, overall prospects for a global bumper grain crop are increasingly dim. Recent satellite surveillance shows that excessive dryness and heat stress could lead to a five million tonne shortfall in the EU wheat harvest and a combined eight million tonne contraction of wheat output in the US and India.

This adds to uncertainty about continued blockage of wheat supplies from Ukraine, which had a pre-conflict capacity of storing 60 million tonnes of grains and oilseeds.

One hopeful sign is that Ukraine has begun shipping small but increasing quantities of food via land routes, with significant volumes also passing through the Danube River. Several international initiatives are also underway to unblock supply chains and compensate for storage infrastructure destroyed by Russia.

These include US support for new silos along the border with Romania and Poland, and Turkey’s offer to help reinstate Ukraine’s exports from the Black Sea. However, any delays to these initiatives could force many Ukrainian farmers into bankruptcy, jeopardizing global food security for years to come.

Can we crisis-proof our food systems?

The war in Ukraine has thrown into sharp focus – yet again – to just how vulnerable our energy and food systems are to shocks, including geopolitical tensions. Dependence on a few countries for energy and fertilizer needs, poses exceptional and unacceptable risks.

Faced with severe food shortages, many countries will undoubtedly turn to Russia, which is set for an excellent food harvest this season, raising prospects of “weaponizing grain” in retaliation against sanctions.

Behind the geopolitics of blockades on Ukrainian grain is an untold story of a fragile, overly-centralized global food system, constructed and promoted by the richer nations and their corporations, that was already vulnerable to shocks long before the tanks rolled in.

Added to these continuing uncertainties, is the increasing impact of climate extremes to global food production. Once largely associated with the African region, drought is wreaking havoc to food systems around the world. A record-breaking drought reordered plantings in the United States, heat stress in India has led to a reported 10-35 percent decline in crop yields with more heatwaves predicted prompting a ban on the country’s wheat exports, with restrictions on food shipments instigated by another 34 countries.

Devastating heatwaves and the worst drought in 70 years are also being felt in northern regions of Italy driving up prices by as much as 50% , while the Horn of Africa is being ravaged by the worst drought in four decades. With only one percent of arable land equipped for irrigation in the region, the longer-term prognosis for strengthening climate resilience is disturbing, to say the least.

Unfortunately, the global response so far has largely taken the same laissez faire approach that was proposed in the wake of previous crises. In Einstein’s words, it is tantamount to “doing the same thing(s) over and over again and expecting different results.”

To achieve the fundamental reform needed, our food systems need to be set on a transformative pathway, necessitating the redesign around intertwined action.

Restoring sanity

It would be wishful thinking to expect that the world will ever be free of multiple crises. The question, therefore, is how to construct a more resilient global food system to shocks from wherever they might arise.

In the short-term, emergency measures are needed to safeguard access to food for those who are hardest hit from high food prices. Moratoriums on the biofuel and livestock feed sectors would free up sufficient quantities of grain to avoid a hunger crisis. Food stocks, where abundant, should also be released to ensure that the most at risk have affordable and open access to food.

A communiqué issued at the close of the recent G7 Summit in Germany unveiled plans to boost fertilizer production and promote the supply of organic fertilizers. G7 leaders also encouraged the release of food from stockpiles and agreed not to introduce any new public subsidies for fossil fuel sectors, even as they called for additional temporary investment in the natural gas industry to mitigate current supply shortages.

In parallel to these emergency measures, we urgently need to embark a more resilient pathway in the medium- to long-term. Even were the war in Ukraine to end tomorrow and supply chains to return to “normal” we must shift the current paradigm of dependency on climate-destroying mineral fertilizers. We must make hard choices to wean ourselves off conventional monocultural agriculture towards more diverse, localized and ecosystem-sensitive food systems.

Science tells us that nitrogen-based fertilizers derived from fossil fuels, can contribute to 40 percent of cereal yields. Continuing to depend on fertilizer supplies from a few countries is therefore tantamount to holding nearly 8 billion people to ransom.

It is increasingly clear that to avert the impact of such geopolitics, policy makers must make serious attempts to delink world food security from fossil fuel-based and climate-destroying inputs. Incentivizing inexpensive and readily available and proven technologies – such as agroforestry and other agroecological practices – boosts soil health, improves the availability of nutritious food, and strengthens climate resilience.

Repurposing a mere fraction of current perverse subsidises for the fossil fuel sector, which amount to an astounding US$ 7 trillion per year, is a critical step towards enabling such a transformation.

Ultimately, however, we need to value our food systems differently by including their total footprint on human health and the environment. Ignoring the “true cost” of food production has led to a focus on cheap and non-nutritious food that is linked to the global obesity pandemic and a greater risk of zoonotic disease spillovers.

The benefits of such a True Cost Accounting (TCA) approach would be manifold: a reduction in food waste, a far more productive and sustainable agricultural sector that respects our natural capital, and a sense of realism in achieving greenhouse gas targets under the Paris Agreement.

Dismantling the 4 Cs

Decoupling the world’s food systems from fossil fuel-based inputs would be a major step forward in solving long-term global hunger. A necessary first step towards such transformation is to design pathways in which the global north shares its food stockpiles instead of diverting grains to fuel cars and promoting unsustainable livestock production.

Such repurposing requires immediate investment in renewable energy and the manufacture of bio-fertilizers. Organic fertilizers are integral to the circular economy, which is an increasingly important model for planetary sustainability.

Equally, the overuse of mineral fertilizers needs to be addressed, especially given their role in creating additional input demand, which in turn leads to higher prices, while compounding environmental degradation.

While the G7 Leaders’ communiqué is a refreshing breakaway from tradition, the world still has much to learn from history. The world was ill-prepared in the 1970s, the 2000s as well as today. Arguably, solutions to fix increasingly complex and intertwined food systems are difficult.

Vested interests, a lack of governance and a system of economic accounting that undervalues our natural and societal capital are challenges under which transformation of our food systems needs to happen. This task is by no means underestimated, but bold action is needed to ensure food systems become more crisis-proof.

As an emergency step, prioritizing food for people “over all else” would build up trust especially between developing regions in need and the G7. And trust is also a very scarce resource in the world of today.

Alexander Müller is Managing Director (based in Berlin), Adam Prakash is Research Associate (based in the UK), Elena Lazutkaite is Research Associate (based in Berlin)

Töpfer Müller Gaßner, a Think Tank for Sustainability, based in Berlin.

About TMG
TMG Research gGmbH is a Berlin-based research organization with an African regional hub in Nairobi and projects across several countries in Africa. Together with partners at the local, national and international levels, TMG explores transformative solutions for entrenched sustainability challenges, with a focus on four thematic clusters: Food Systems, Land Governance, Nature-Based Solutions and Urban Futures.

IPS UN Bureau

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A family shares a meal in Yemen with food provided by the UN World Food Programme (WFP). Credit: WFP/Saleh Hayyan

By Marco Ferroni
CHICAGO, USA, Jul 1 2022 (IPS)

From the worst drought in four decades threatening famine across the Horn of Africa to extreme heat in South Asia, the war in Ukraine and the unequal pace of pandemic recovery, global food systems are under extraordinary pressure.

The combined result is expected to leave more than 320 million people severely food insecure this year, compared to 135 million two years ago.

Until recently, efforts to bolster such an overstretched global food system have focused on a single aspect, such as developing hardier crop varieties, reforming subsidies or reducing food waste, but any system is only as strong as its weakest link.

New varieties, technologies or incentives to increase yields are meaningless if there is no water to irrigate the soil, or if the infrastructure is not there to get the harvest to market.

Policymakers and scientists are increasingly recognising the need for a new approach that considers all aspects from farm to fork, a philosophy that goes beyond individual commodities, and even beyond agriculture as a sector.

A “systems approach” allows for a greater understanding of the bigger picture by considering the broader context in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed, and how those systems function within related systems such as health and energy.

Just as the G7 agriculture ministers warned against short-term responses to the food crisis that come at the cost of medium and long-term sustainability, CGIAR believes a systems approach is necessary to minimise the trade-offs and unintended consequences that have contributed to food crises for decades.

Put simply, systems thinking is a holistic approach that accounts for the interplay of all elements, assessing and addressing both the potential benefits and harms of new developments.

For example, when applied to food, it raises questions such as: does this new seed or practice require additional natural resources and are they available? Is a particular innovation accessible and practical for women as well as men? What repercussions will it have for the environment, trade, food prices, livelihoods and nutrition?

Adopting such a framing can then inspire a so-called “innovation systems approach”, which fosters productive engagement between key actors, including farmers, governments, enterprises, universities, and research institutes, and directs more targeted investment towards effective innovations in line with the G7’s recommendations.

The major advantage of such a systems approach is that it can be applied at all levels.

At a global level, rebalancing food systems requires a complete understanding of our natural resources worldwide, and how they intersect with food production across different regions in different scenarios.

Research shows that agriculture, which produces fuel crops as well as food, is one of the major contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, meaning agricultural innovations must be considered alongside energy innovations to ensure one avoids jeopardising the other.

Understanding how innovations and decisions made in one country can have ripple effects thousands of miles away is made easier through models such as the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT), while connecting food systems with land and water systems through cross-disciplinary research can help manage agriculture’s contribution to climate change.

At a national level, addressing country-level priorities by understanding the different levers at play can unlock multiple benefits.

For example, when Bangladesh identified a gender gap in agriculture in 2012, the government worked with CGIAR scientists to develop the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) program to achieve its dual goals of greater women’s empowerment and improved nutrition.

The program featured agricultural training as well as nutrition behaviour change communication and gender sensitization trainings to increase women’s empowerment, diversify production and improve the quality of household diets.

Finally, a systems approach tackles localised needs more effectively by addressing the multiple factors that contribute to and compound poverty and hunger.

For example, bean breeders at the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) developed a demand-led research model that has resulted in more than 500 new varieties of beans according to the different needs, tastes and preferences of both farmers and consumers.

By refining agricultural research with an end-to-end approach, scientists developed the new varieties most likely to be successful with consumers and therefore adopted by farmers, doubling bean productivity in Uganda and Ethiopia between 2008 and 2018.

Ultimately, people do not only eat food: they grow it, sell it, buy it, cook it and share it. And so, food systems transformation requires dealing with such complexity by harnessing science and technology, learning from analysis and data, interpreting ambiguity and potential conflicts to develop multiple solutions to tackle interconnected challenges.

These benefits could be fully realised with greater investment into research across the agri-food system as a whole, which in turn starts with a shift in mindset towards more systemic thinking.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: FAO

By Jong-Jin Kim
BANGKOK, Jun 24 2022 (IPS)

It wasn’t that long ago that Internet connectivity faded the moment one left a populated area like a city or big town – “no service” was the take-away message back then. But thanks to 3G, 4G and now 5G mobile technology, coupled with widespread installation of cellular towers in rural areas region-wide, that little message shows up much less frequently.

Most importantly, the rapid spread of internet connectivity and mobile telephony, reaching into the most remote rural communities, has resulted in countless opportunities to help address chronic problems such as poverty, malnutrition and inequality.

Investing in an enabling environment to ensure equal access is key to ensuring the benefits of rural digitalization are enjoyed more broadly

From farmers to fishers to herders, digital technologies are increasingly relied upon to help transform and enhance livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people each day. From a smart phone in the hands of a woman or man checking optimal conditions to sow a field, or band together to rent a drone for aerial assessments, to a herder checking the weather, to fishers finding the best places to cast their nets, digital technologies are becoming increasingly accessible, useful and affordable for those in rural areas.

This paradigm shift offers great hope to get this region – and the world – back on track to meet the 2030 SDG deadline.

While this digital revolution sweeping rural areas of Asia and the Pacific holds great promise, not everyone is benefiting equally. Indeed, in some cases, digital technologies can even be disruptive, or lead to unintended consequences by widening, not reducing, the digital divide if their implementations result in a loss of decent work.

This needs to be addressed, and it’s in everyone’s best interests to do so. Policy makers in countries across the region do understand the added value, and they see the economic benefits digitalization of rural areas bring to their nations and people. Hence, investing in an enabling environment to ensure equal access is key to ensuring the benefits of rural digitalization are enjoyed more broadly.

Credit: FAO

Digitalization of rural areas needed now – more than ever before

Indeed, the move to accelerate implementation of digital technologies, equitably across the region’s rural areas couldn’t come at a more important time. The global pandemic hit rural communities disproportionately hard – particularly with respect to individual livelihoods. Now, as we try to recover from the devastation of COVID-19, we are facing the highest prices for many basic foods – the highest we’ve seen in decades. Higher food costs hit poorer and marginalized communities the hardest, particularly in rural areas, as they must spend a greater proportion of their disposable income to feed their families.

These challenges are compounding an already existing and alarming situation. Last year, prior to the inflation of food commodities, FAO and partners pointed out that many people – at that time – already couldn’t afford a healthy diet in Asia and the Pacific.

By leveraging the advancements offered by digital technologies we can find ways to counter some of these and other devastating negative effects that already existed such as severe weather related events, droughts and floods.

That is already happening in some countries in this region, and they are well on the road to digitalization of even the smallest and most remote villages and towns. And they have good examples to share with their neighbors.

At the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), we’ve been following these trends, policies and initiatives of our Member Nations in the Asia-Pacific region. We know the full scale of their desire and determination to embrace, and fully harness, the potential of digitalization.

For our part, FAO has pledged to assist in bringing together these existing good practices of our Members, and to create a space for others to share their digital solutions as part of FAO’s 1,000 Digital Village Initiative. A key component of this initiative is the Digital Village Knowledge Sharing Platform for Asia-Pacific that can act as a one-stop village square, where those working in the food and agriculture sectors can share their innovations and technologies with us all.

A digital village isn’t necessary a small place. It is a concept – one that is inclusive, operational, country-led and fit-for-purpose to deliver solid benefits to people.

At the end of the day, the ultimate goal is to make things better for everyone.

Working together, and sharing together, this region’s digital village innovations and technologies can help lead us all to a world of better production, better nutrition, better environment and a better life – leaving no one behind!

Credit: FAO

More information on the Digital Village Initiative:

Join the Knowledge sharing and policy dialogue live (and recorded) – 27 June 2022, Bangkok, and more information about the Programme is here.

At G20, FAO’s Director-General calls for closing of digital divide.

FAO Video on Digital Village Centres empowering farmers in Bangladesh and a social media video here

For more information on FAO’s Digital Village work with our Members in Asia and the Pacific, see here.

For more information on FAO’s Digital Village work with our Members in Africa, see here.

For more information on FAO’ Digital Village work with our Members in Latin America and the Caribbean, see here.

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The World Food Programme (WFP) says 41 million people around the world, including in Nigeria (pictured) are at imminent risk of famine. Credit: UNOCHA/ Eve Sabbagh

By Danielle Nierenberg
NEW ORLEANS, Jun 24 2022 (IPS)

When I first met Dr. Roland Bunch, I have to be honest—he scared me. As one of the most well-respected leaders on agronomy and resilient land management, he offers extremely prescient predictions on how famines take root when soils fail—and also has an admirably clear-eyed view of what we need to do better.

When we first met in the mid-2000s, I was at the Worldwatch Institute and invited him to contribute a chapter to a book I was writing. He described how farmers in Malawi and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were noticing their soil was getting tired.

Maize yields were unpredictable and decreasing year to year—problematic when that’s the crop you depend on most for both consumption and sale to earn your livelihood. Droughts were a major concern, but Dr. Bunch understood that farmers were, rightly, more worried about loss of soil fertility.

Droughts and depleted soils can be difficult to distinguish. While fertile soils can soak up and retain what little rain does fall, depleted soils become compacted and water simply runs off, so each problem accentuates the other.

Plus, when farmers are facing infertile soils, they are more likely to move to new areas of land, which unfortunately eats up arable land without regenerating it. And in some cases, folks give up farming altogether and move to cities, where it’s difficult for them to find jobs that match their skills.

He wrote this warning right around the 2007–08 food and financial collapse, which stretched into riots and famines around the globe over the next half-decade. And unfortunately, we may be back where we were then.
Dr. Bunch warns that the coming famine will be a “hurricane of hunger,” which sounds ominous to me and so many of us who work in this space. But things are not hopeless.

Over the past 20 years, one of the so-called solutions that’s been heavily promoted in places like Malawi are fertilizer subsidies and artificial fertilizers—which are not the answer.

We forget that artificial fertilizer should be used sparingly like medicine, to help get farmers over a hump or temporarily boost soil quality to allow for better use of organic matter.

But unfortunately, subsidies have led to farmers becoming dependent on artificial soil amendments and have actively disincentivized growing a more diverse set of crops or using organics to fertilize soils in countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and more.

One of the answers to what we’re seeing around soil infertility are cover crops and ‘green manure’ (which refers not to colorful animal poop but rather the practice of growing certain crops to turn or incorporate back into the soil).

These can be things like bushes, trees, and vines that help improve soil quality, control weeds, and retain water. Other great options are crops like cowpeas and scarlet runner beans, which people can eat.

This is something else we often forget when we’re talking about how to keep folks from being hungry: The foods people have depended on for generations are not only regenerative but also delicious! Farmers have an opportunity,

Roland says, to return to growing these indigenous crops—sometimes called forgotten crops or orphan crops—that are resilient to droughts, have deep root structures to keep water and nutrients in soils, grow perennially so they don’t need to be replanted every year, and taste really, really good.

Between crises like climate change, soil depletion, global conflicts, and Covid’s supply chain fallout, the bottom line—and it’s a sobering one—is that we’re facing a massive famine and that “hurricane of hunger” over the next year.

I’ve talked before in this newsletter about the power of citizen eaters and the participatory democracies Frances Moore Lappé advocates for—but for these ideas to actually translate into powerful results, we need governments that are actively engaging in agriculture.

Roland says it’s possible to end hunger in one generation, and quite inexpensively, but only if we have the will to do so. We’ll need action from leaders in policy, business, and more to invest in helping farmers adopt greener, more regenerative soil practices.

As he says, better soils lead to better lives—which is more urgent now than ever before.

I want to thank and commend Dr. Roland Bunch for his leadership and—seriously—for scaring me. His predictions not only frighten me but also give me hope. He tells us how bad things can be—but also how good things can be if, again, we have that political engagement.

I’ve included more writing from Dr. Bunch and other luminaries in the Learn More section below, and as always, please shoot me an email at danielle@foodtank.com with your perspectives and ideas for how we move forward.

Danielle Nierenberg is President of Food Tank and an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues. She has written extensively on gender and population, the spread of factory farming in the developing world and innovations in sustainable agriculture.

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Salmon fishing. Credit: iStock

By Marla R. Emery, Jean-Marc Fromentin and John Donaldson
BONN, Germany, Jun 22 2022 (IPS)

You probably use wild species far more often than you realise. For many people, especially in more developed economies, the use of wild species sounds like something quite removed from their everyday lives – something perhaps more relevant to other people, in other countries.

It is a fact, however, that the use of wild species is a vital part of almost every human community. If you eat fish, they are most likely wild species. When you take cough medication, it’s likely to be derived, in part, from wild plants. Your wooden furniture may once have been a wild tree. Even the joy and inspiration you get from nature, such wildlife watching, is another use of wild species.

The 2019 Global Assessment Report by IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) alerted the world that direct exploitation is one of the main reasons that 1 million species of plants and animals now face extinction – many within decades. This should have been a wake-up call. Our human behavior is harming wild species, some of which we have relied on for centuries to provide nutrition, clothing, shelter, and more.

In other words, we use wild species to meet a wide range of human needs. By damaging them, we are also harming ourselves – and the policies and decisions we make about the use of wild species have consequences for our health, food security, livelihoods and general wellbeing.

This doesn’t mean that we have to stop eating fish entirely, give up on cough medication or find other materials for our homes – but what is needed, urgently, is better information and knowledge together with stronger institutions to ensure that our use of wild species is sustainable.

For this reason, four years ago, nearly 140 Governments tasked 85 leading experts, from every region of the word, with preparing a landmark new IPBES assessment report on the sustainable use of wild species – to help inform decisions about nature by governments, businesses, civil society, indigenous peoples and local communities – in fact by everyone whose choices and actions impact nature.

In the first week of July, this report – drawing on more than 6,200 sources, will be considered by the member States of IPBES. Once accepted, it will become the go-to resource to inform policy options and actions to promote the more sustainable use of wild species from the global to the national and even the very local scale.

One of the things that sets this report apart is the extent to which it draws on the expertise and experiences not only of the natural and social sciences – but also of indigenous peoples and local communities. For many local communities, the use of wild species is inextricably entwined with their culture and identity – with customs and practices evolved over millennia to ensure sustainable use.

The report will also have very immediate real-world relevance. Having been specifically requested by, among others, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), it will directly inform the decisions of the 19th World Wildlife Conference in Panama in November 2022.

Additionally, it will be taken up by the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in the negotiations later this year of the new global biodiversity framework for the next decade. The sustainable use of wild species is also closely related to our ability to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to deal with other global challenges such as land use and climate change.

Among the most important aspects of this new IPBES report is just how vital the sustainable use of wild species is to everyone – everywhere, in the face of multiple global environmental crises. It will offer better information and options for solutions that work – for people and the rest of nature.

Dr. Marla R. Emery is a Scientific Advisor with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and retired Research Geographer with the US Department of Agriculture.

Prof. John Donaldson is an independent biodiversity consultant and previously Chief Director Biodiversity Research, Assessment and Monitoring at the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

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Souta Oshiro, Seoul, Korea. “This is a meme that I created. It is about donating foods that you overbought to food banks. I tried to make it funny and effective.” Credit: Souta Oshiro

By Sungjoon Ham, Souta Oshiro and Alex Yoon
Seoul, Tokyo, Boston, Jun 13 2022 (IPS)

Johnny, living in the United States (US), goes to his school and gets free breakfast and lunch there. There may not be enough food for dinner at home. But he knows that he can get fed at school. Sadly, however, after the pandemic, schools were closed, which meant no breakfast and no lunch for him.

Living in the United Kingdom (UK), Peter faces the same problem. He is lucky because he has a caring teacher who painstakingly walks five kilometers every day to deliver his meals. But not everyone is as lucky as Peter.

Farmers produce about 4 billion tons of food globally, but 1.3 billion tons (about one-third) are wasted and lost. Can you imagine how much that is? 100 kg of food loss and waste for every person on the planet!

Are you surprised?

Did you think that the issue of hunger concerns children in developing nations only during COVID-19?

Hunger now extends to countries like the UK, South Korea, Japan, and the US.

In other words, especially during the pandemic, hunger is not their problem but OUR problem.

Therefore, the urgency in solving this issue has become more apparent to those living in developed countries. We hope to inspire a movement of change through our efforts and inspire others to fight hunger by stopping food loss and waste.

We have to ask a fundamental question: Why does Johnny have nothing to eat while Sam in the neighborhood has too much food to eat?

Extending this question to an international level, why are children in Somalia starving while children in the US have obesity problems for overeating? What causes such inequality? And what can we do about it? We know that it sounds like a daunting challenge. How can kids like us, young and inexperienced, make a difference in world hunger?

A contingent of adults thinks we have neither the experience nor the expertise to bring changes to the “real world”.

No one said stopping hunger would be easy, especially during this pandemic. But it’s necessary, and it’s worth it.

From our research, the solution to world hunger, especially during COVID-19, can be two-fold. Firstly, the redirection of excess foods towards those in need, and secondly, the ‘untact’ method.

Let us start with the redirection of excess foods. There is a saying: “Someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure.” In other words, the food that Sam wastes can feed Johnny’s entire family.

Let’s take it to a global level. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the food currently lost or wasted in America could feed 300 million people, and in Europe, 200 million people.

If food could be redistributed to people or nations in hunger before it is wasted or lost, we would end the hunger pandemic.

Indeed, many countries are running soup kitchens and making donations of food. But after the COVID-19, many countries closed their borders, banned social gatherings, and even eating-in facilities.

Furthermore, a survey from the Borgen Project revealed that half of the people surveyed had concerns about exposing themselves to the virus in these eating spaces.

So not only less economically developed countries (LEDC) but also more economically developed countries (MEDC) are facing a hunger pandemic due to COVID-19.

According to Feeding America, an estimated 42 million people, or one in eight Americans, faced food insecurity in 2021.

How can we solve this hunger crisis during the COVID pandemic? We are suggesting our second solution: using the ‘untact’ method.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, a new term, ‘untact’ (a combination of the prefix’ un’ and the word ‘contact’), has been floating around our society to indicate contactless movement in our daily affairs.

Can we somehow use the ‘untact’ method to redirect and redistribute foods before they are wasted or lost?

We find the answer in technology – in apps. For example, COPIA is an app created in the US to redistribute surplus food to feed the hungry.

This is how it works: Any restaurants, hotels, hospitals, cafeterias, and other businesses with food can use COPIA’s app to schedule pickups of their surplus food. Then a COPIA donation delivery driver picks up their excess food and delivers it safely to a local nonprofit recipient.

But COPIA’s job doesn’t stop there.

They track surplus trends for those donors so that they can reduce their food waste and loss.

Businesses can also get significant tax savings by using COPIA: For every $1 a company invests in food waste reduction, they can expect a $14 return on investment.

So, it is a win-win situation for all.

And this kind of ‘untact’ technology via an app is observed in other parts of the world: Wakeai app in Japan, Damogo in South Korea, Makan Rescue App in Singapore, Karma app in the EU and the UK, JustNow app in Africa, Flashfood app in Canada, Bring Me Home app in Australia and the list goes on.

We see this ‘untact’ technology as a possible solution that can reduce food loss and waste worldwide. We hope people try these apps and join our efforts to fight the hunger pandemic.

Besides the apps, there are practical solutions that we exercise in our daily lives as middle school students. We will share them here, hoping our actions can inspire others to do the same.

Alex Yoon inside the Stop and Shop, Massachusetts, USA. “I found these unwanted ugly fruits in this cart and decided to buy them to show that I am trying to reduce food waste instead of throwing them away. I blended them and made juice out of them.”

“When I go to a grocery store, I go for the unwanted ugly fruits because most people want to buy perfect-looking fruits only, and those ugly fruits end up in a trash can later because nobody wants them. I bring those ugly fruits home and make juice out of them. I find that they taste the same! So, I am holding up a sign in front of a fruit corner saying, ‘Aesthetics should not matter in produce selection!’, hoping to inspire people to buy all fruits regardless of their appearance,” says Alex Yoon.

Alex’s public campaign in the grocery store encourages many to follow suit by making mindful choices when choosing what to buy.

Souta Oshiro, Seoul (Raemian APT, Due Cose Hannam Branch, Shinsegae Department Store). “I am teaching food waste and loss to my friend. Some tips include buying food that has a shorter shelf time, eating everything on my plate, and planning for dinner to reduce food waste.”

Looking at Souta Oshiro’s efforts, we can see how beneficial food loss education can be on a personalized level.

“I run a private campaign with my friends. I go to their homes and educate them about food loss and waste issues in the world. In addition, when I go to a grocery store, I opt for foods that will expire soon and be wasted rather than freshly new products. When I come home with these foods, I feel so good because I saved them from going to a trash can,” Souta says.

“This feeling of satisfaction in preventing food from being wasted does not end here. As a household, when we purchase too much food during our weekly shopping, we choose to donate the extras to a food bank. This encourages us to not only be mindful during our shopping but also beyond the exit doors of the grocery store. The waste is not in landfills but in someone’s mouth. This simple redirection of excess foods means my family is relieved that our surplus will not end up in the trash.”

Sungjoon Ham, Seocho Middle School, Seoul, Korea: “I am holding up a large sign to passionately champion the increase of awareness on the severity of the hunger issue.”

Sungjoon Ham has chosen to participate in a public campaign in front of his school grounds so that his peers and teachers can be swayed to make mindful choices in their own lives. He aims to make students, who are hungry at lunchtime, think twice before piling up excess foods. These foods are not likely to be eaten because the students are too full. Furthermore, he hopes this can allow all those more fortunate to take a step back and reflect on being a part of the solution rather than the problem.

“During my campaign efforts, I hoped to increase awareness through my actions and artistic choices, which was why I decided to make my poster large with bold lettering. However, I did not want my efforts to end there. I hope that my actions can spread throughout social media with the help of my friends. Through inspiration from the Ice Bucket Challenge, I plan to upload this picture with the tag #NoFoodLoss. This process will allow many more people to join my campaign that will hopefully not end in Korea but spread worldwide,” says Sungjoon.

After looking at our efforts to end food loss and waste, we hope to encourage others to take part and spread awareness.

We agree that everyone should stop wasting food. However, this cannot be solved simply through a proclamation.

Therefore, we focused on compiling extensive research and explored the depths of this issue, which we found to be enjoyable.

Sadly, many people are not aware of hunger and food waste.

In conclusion, we hope that through reading this article, the depths of food waste and loss are understood and will encourage our audience to develop forward-thinking solutions for the betterment of our future.

Sungjoon Ham, Souta Oshiro, and Alex Yoon are middle school learners living in the USA and Asia. They participated in a joint APDA, and IPS training on developing opinion content. Hanna Yoon led the course and edited the opinion content. 

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Excerpt:

This is what happens when you starve. With no food, the body’s metabolism slows down to preserve energy for vital organs. Hungry and weak, people often become fatigued, irritable and confused.

The immune system loses strength. As they starve, people—especially children—are likelier to fall sick or die from diseases they may have otherwise resisted. Cholera, respiratory infections, malaria, dengue, and diphtheria kill more people in famines than starvation itself.

For the lucky (or unlucky?) ones who escape disease but still have nothing to eat, their organs will begin to wither and then fail. Eventually, the body starts to devour its own muscles, including the heart.

Many will experience hallucinations and convulsions before, finally, the heart stops. It is a terrible, agonizing, and humiliating death. It is nearly as terrible to watch – as I know from my own experience over nearly 40 years in Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere.

When I was young, many people—including researchers and scientists—thought famine was a permanent feature of the human experience. Famines are shocking, scarring events, the most extreme form of humanitarian disaster. They involve large-scale loss of life with a slow but visible prelude, a tipping point beyond which prevention is no longer possible, and then an explosion.

As an undergraduate, I went to Nobel-prize-winner Amartya Sen’s lectures on poverty and famine, and I wrote a masters’ dissertation on the use of food grain prices as an early warning of food crises.

For many of my friends and me, the Ethiopia famine of 1984 was a lightbulb moment. In previous eras, famine was a feature of the fragility of agriculture against the ever-increasing pressure of higher populations.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, in which he predicted that by the 1980s, four billion people would have been killed by famines. His opening sentences set the scene: “The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines in which hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.”

Ehrlich predicted that England would cease to exist by 2000 because the country would be consumed by hunger. Historical experience gave these dark warnings a degree of credence. Researchers think that famines may have taken more lives than war over the course of human history.

More than 120 million people are believed to have died in famines in the hundred years after 1870, a larger number even than those killed in that period’s uniquely bloody wars.

The doom mongers, though, were wrong. In fact, in the past 50 years, famine has become much rarer and much less lethal. So far this century, there has just been one real famine. That was in Somalia in 2011, when a quarter of a million people died.

Ehrlich and his ilk were wrong because they failed to see how the world was changing. Three main factors have combined to produce unprecedented advances in reducing large-scale loss of life through starvation over the last 50 years.

First was an exponential increase in agricultural output and productivity. Improvements in plant breeding, protection, storage, irrigation, harvesting, transporting, and marketing have contributed to a 300 percent increase in food grain production, using only 12 percent more agricultural land around the world.

The global spread in the use of nitrogen-based artificial fertiliser and the development through the Green Revolution of improved seed varieties for major crops explain most of the improvements.

Second, a spectacular reduction in global poverty has increased people’s ability to afford food. In the 60 years after 1960, the extreme poverty rate globally dropped from more than 50 percent of the total human population to less than 10 percent. In particular, the 25 years from 1990 to 2015 saw a reduction from 35 percent to less than 10 percent, even while the global population continued to grow dramatically.

So not only was there a lot more food available, but most people now had enough income to be able to buy it. Food security has been enhanced by the entitlements created by social safety net schemes established in dozens of the poorest countries over the past 20 years, including ones I have seen myself in countries including Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Pakistan, Uganda, Yemen, and Zambia.

Third, when famine does threaten, the response is now much more effective than it was 30 years ago. My first job was on the famine in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s. Then, the overwhelming focus of the relief effort was on food, water, and shelter. Now we understand that in a famine, starvation is not the main cause of death.

The real killers are those diseases that a healthy person can generally fight off but a starving one cannot. As a result, today’s famine responses include comprehensive immunisation programmes, primary healthcare, and nutrition interventions as well as food and clean water.

The result of all this scientific, technological, and economic progress is that modern-day famines are manmade – the result either of deliberate attempts to stave a population, or of wilful negligence.

That was true to a degree in the past: Mao Zedong’s Great Famine in China in the 1960s, generally believed to be the worst famine in history in terms of the total number of lives lost, arose largely from the authorities’ policy choices.

And the famine that some people claim took three million lives in North Korea in the mid-1990s—a repetition of which remains a risk, as I saw during a visit to Pyongyang and the south of the country in 2018—could have been forestalled had the regime been willing to accept the international help on offer.

Despite all the progress famine is now back. But so far in the 21st century, ignorant policy choices have not been what generated famine threats. Deliberate, concerted attempts to prevent aid reaching the starving, as part of the military or political strategy of states or armed groups, are now the only explanation for the failure to have eradicated famine from the human experience. In every single case of famine or near famine in the last ten years – including those I dealt with at the UN from 2017-21 – the fine line between, on the one hand, acute suffering and chronic hunger and, on the other, mass death through starvation and related causes, was policed by the men with guns and bombs. Pressure on them has meant the worst has been avoided.

The world now faces its most serious food crisis for many decades. It arises from the cumulative effects of a decade of spreading conflict, the repeated undermining by climate change of livelihoods based on increasingly volatile rainfall, and the economic crunch on the most vulnerable countries from the COVID pandemic.

And then on top of all that has come Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, disrupting global grain markets and taking the food exports of Russia and Ukraine – enough food for 400 million people – largely off the table this year.

The new global food crisis affects us all. Everyone going to a supermarket for weekly shopping is aware of prices rising. For most of us, the impact is manageable. Buying food is not the biggest call on our incomes. We can tighten our belts and adjust.

But for about 10% of the world’s population, mostly in the poorer countries of the Middle East (like Syria and Yemen) and sub-Saharan Africa, it’s different. Tens of millions of them are falling back into extreme poverty, where they barely have enough calories and nutrients to nourish their bodies properly and their children suffer stunting and life-long cognitive impairments.

However, it is the roughly 1% of the world’s population who faced acute hunger even before the Ukraine crisis, those who cannot survive at all without help from aid agencies, who will be the victims if today’s food crisis is allowed to deteriorate into multiple simultaneous famines.

They are mostly concentrated in relatively few countries, including in particular Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen and parts of the Sahel. Millions may starve to death. That is what policy makers should be really focused on.

So, what can be done? Simultaneous actions are needed in four areas.

First, a real effort needs to be made to get more grain onto the market in the very short term. There is plenty of food to feed everyone this year. Diplomatic efforts, which have become increasingly visible over the last month, to find a way to access the grain silos in the Black Sea ports and export the 20 million tonnes of wheat they contain should be intensified.

They may not work; if they don’t, those holding large stocks of grain for strategic reserves should be prevailed upon to release a modest proportion of them. That would ease the market and take the edge off price increases.

Second, because it seems unlikely that the underlying causes of this year’s crisis will be solved quickly, reducing medium term reliance on Russia and Ukraine is now a practical necessity.

Farmers around the world need greater help and encouragement to plant more wheat, maize, sunflower and other food crops, as well as better access to inputs, above all seeds and fertiliser. Diversification in the fertiliser market, in which Russia and its allies are dominant, is a particular priority.

Third, many low-income countries which do not produce enough food for their populations but do have the administrative capacity and institutions to run effective safety net programmes are constrained from importing food by fiscal problems and indebtedness.

Macroeconomic management matters, but some accommodation from the shareholders of international financial institutions led by the World Bank and IMF is necessary in the current circumstances.

And fourth, and most important of all in the next weeks and months, a substantial increase in emergency humanitarian aid to populations in clear and present danger of mass starvation is essential.

The Biden administration and US Congress package agreed a package of $5 billion for this in May. That shows the way. Others, especially the UK and the EU, should follow suit. The G7 summit in Bavaria this month would be a good time to do that.

Footnote: This article is adapted in part from Relief Chief: A Manifesto for Saving Lives in Dire Times, out now from the Center for Global Development.(CGD).

Mark Lowcock was appointed UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator in May 2017 and served in that role until June 2021. He was previously Permanent Secretary of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. As one of the most distinguished international public servants, Lowcock has spent more than 35 years leading and managing responses to humanitarian crises across the globe.

He has authored opinion articles for The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, Le Monde, CNN, and others. He was twice awarded medals by Queen Elizabeth II for services to international development and public service, including Knighthood in 2017. He is a Visiting Professor of Practice in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics, and a Distinguished Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development.

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Market in New Delhi. Credit: The Oakland Institute

By Frederic Mousseau
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, May 30 2022 (IPS)

India is being asked by the US government and the IMF to reconsider its decision to suspend wheat exports. Their cited concern is that export restrictions will exacerbate food shortages amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the argument does not stand ground technically or morally.

There is no food shortage. According to a May 6, 2022 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world enjoys “a relatively comfortable supply level” of cereals. This is confirmed by the World Bank, which noted that global stocks of cereals are at historically high levels and that about three-quarters of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports had already been delivered before the war started.

These numbers are consistent with data from the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture that reported on May 19 that the country exported 46.51 million tons of cereals in the 2021/22 season, versus 40.85 million the previous year.

In a repeat of 2007-2008 food crisis, it is speculation which is the key factor behind the current rise in food prices in international markets. As reported by the Lighthouse Reports, “speculators have flooded commodity markets in attempts to make a profit out of escalating prices.” A striking example are two top commodity-linked “exchange traded funds” (ETFs) which have received US$1.2 billion of investments – compared to just US$197 million for the whole of 2021 – a 600 percent increase.

According to the New York Times, “in April, speculators were responsible for 72 percent of the buying activity on the Paris wheat market, up from 25 percent before the pandemic.” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, has rightly observed that “speculative activity by powerful institutional investors who are generally unconcerned with agricultural market fundamentals are indeed betting on hunger, and exacerbating it.”

Maize harvest, Gambella, Ethiopia. Credit: The Oakland Institute

The US produces roughly 400 million tons of corn, but over 40 percent of this amount – 160 million tons – goes to ethanol production, while another 40 percent goes to animal feed, and only 10 percent is used as food whereas another 10 percent is exported. India was not expected to export more than 10 million tons of wheat in 2022-2023, which is insignificant in comparison to the US numbers.

The increasing amount of food diverted to the production of agro-fuels – again as in the 2007-2008 crisis – is another major factor fueling tension in the global cereal markets. As noted in a 2009 analysis, “although biofuels still account for only 1.5 percent of the global liquid fuels supply, they accounted for almost half the increase in the consumption of major food crops in 2006–07, mostly because of corn-based ethanol produced in the United States.”

In the US, ethanol production increased from 3.6 million barrels in 2001 to over 102 million in 2019. Despite the fact that ethanol is at least 24 percent more carbon-intensive than gasoline, under pressure from the Congress and the industry, the Biden administration has just taken steps to encourage further ethanol production while continuing to heavily subsidize it.

The US call against trade restrictions has been echoed by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Food Programme, and the World Trade Organization, who are urging “all countries to keep trade open and avoid restrictive measures such as export bans on food or fertilizer that further exacerbate the suffering of the most vulnerable people.”

But if governments and international institutions are serious about eliminating human suffering caused by high food prices, they should abstain from pressuring countries who are trying to maintain food supply at a level which will allow national food security. It is essential that they recognize and respect food sovereignty of all nations.

Immediate key measures that countries should be taking to relieve pressure on world markets are to reduce the amount of food used as fuel, curb speculation on food products – specifically restricting the so-called future commodity markets where speculators bet on future prices.

Both the US and the European Union have instruments and mechanisms in place that allow them to act, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). What is missing is the political will to act.

What is not missing is hypocrisy. The US government-funded ethanol industry uses the equivalent of 35 percent of the global world trade of cereals of 473 million tons. The Indian export ban set to prevent hunger will affect less than 2 percent of this amount.

Meanwhile, previous research on the 2007-2008 food crisis brings evidence that India and other countries were successful in preventing price transmission to domestic markets through trade regulation measures. For example, the price of rice actually decreased in Indonesia in 2008 while it was escalating in neighboring countries.

Public interventions to prevent this transmission were a mix of trade facilitation policies (for instance, cutting import tariffs or negotiating with importers) and trade restrictions or regulations (such as export bans, use of public stocks, price control, and anti-speculation measures).

The success of measures taken to limit domestic inflation depended primarily on governments’ ability to control domestic availability and regulate markets, often based on pre-existing public systems. Export restrictions possibly contributed to increased inflation in global food markets but they constituted a fast and effective way to protect consumers by mitigating the effect of global markets on domestic prices.

But regardless of the trade measures that some countries may adopt, even in the absence of a global food shortage, the food crisis is real. Droughts, conflicts, and now high food prices, are threatening to starve hundreds of millions of people.

Unfortunately, the massive human suffering and hunger that was affecting many countries even prior to the war in Ukraine was barely met with adequate response from rich nations. UN humanitarian appeals for acute crises are chronically underfunded. In 2021, only 45 percent of the UN appeal for Yemen and the Horn of Africa was fulfilled, only 29 percent for Syria.

The US Congress just approved an aid of US$40 billion for Ukraine, including over US$26 billion of military aid. This is US$12 billion more than the US$28 billion that the US will spend globally in 2022 on international assistance through USAID.

Amidst the war on Ukraine, given the chronic shortfalls of funding to international assistance, it is critical that all countries ensure their solidarity and adequate support is provided to all victims. But beyond aid, the only reasonable decision would be for them to act decisively on the broader causes of the high food prices and curb speculation on food commodities and diversion of food for the production of fuel.

Unfortunately, given measures were not taken following the 2007-2008 food crisis, how likely is it to happen now. High income countries and international institutions may rather repeat their motto of “keep trade open” and continue business as usual. It is therefore up to governments in the Global South, in particular food deficit countries, to recognize this harsh reality and act to reduce their dependency on food imports by supporting their own farmers and proactively regulating their food and agricultural markets.

The Oakland Institute is an independent policy think tank that conducts research and advocacy on issues such as international development, environment, land, food, and agriculture.

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Excerpt:

Food insecurity is affecting millions of people in Burkina Faso. Credit: UNICEF/Vincent Treameau

By Danny Bradlow and Magalie Masamba
PRETORIA, South Africa, May 19 2022 (IPS)

The COVID pandemic has had a profoundly negative impact on Africa’s sovereign debt situation. Currently, 22 countries are either in debt distress or at high risk of debt distress.

This means that African governments are struggling to pay the debts that they incurred on behalf of their states. For example, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are already in debt distress. Others at high risk include Malawi, Zambia and Comoros.

This situation is likely to be exacerbated by the war between Russia and Ukraine. The conflict is causing commodity prices, particularly food and gasoline, to rise. It is also disrupting the supply chains of critical goods like fertilisers.

The ability of countries to manage their debt is complicated by the changing composition of the debt. They now owe more money to a broader range of creditors.

In 2020, sub-Saharan Africa had a total external debt stock of US$702.4 billion, compared to US$380.9 billion in 2012. The amount owed to official creditors, including multilateral lenders, governments and government agencies, increased from about US$119 billion to US$258 billion.

Danny Bradlow

In addition, the amount of bonds issued by African states on international markets has tripled in the last 10 years. These bonds are held by a broad range of investors such as insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds, investment banks and individuals.

In our new book we address the challenges that these changes have created for sovereign debt management for the 16 countries in the Southern Africa Development Community.

We hope the book will stimulate debate among academics, activists, policymakers and practitioners on how Southern Africa Development Community should manage its debt. Five recommendations emerge from the contribution. These include the need for enhanced debt transparency and an approach to debt management that takes into account a host of factors beyond just finance.

The landscape

The book contains a series of essays initially presented in several virtual workshops held in 2020. The participants sought to understand the debt challenges facing countries in the Southern Africa Development Community. They also offered policy-oriented recommendations for dealing with them.

Magalie Masamba

They pay attention to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the debt situation but also recognise that it is only one factor contributing to the difficult debt situation in the region. Thus, they also focus on the broader domestic and international factors that are shaping debt management in the region.

In an effort to chart a way forward, the contributing authors addressed the following four themes:

• The impact of structural changes in the global economy on the Southern Africa Development Community debt landscape. An example is the increasing importance of finance in the global economy.
• The challenges of sovereign debt management and restructuring in the region;
• The implications of the lack of transparency on the accumulation and use of sovereign debt;
• Options for incorporating human rights and social considerations into sovereign debt renegotiations and restructuring.

Contributors make five key recommendations:

The first concerns debt transparency. The recommendation is that countries in the region should adopt comprehensive debt data disclosure requirements and state borrowing procedures that are transparent and participatory. The aim would be to facilitate holding relevant decision makers accountable.

Debt transparency is the cornerstone of reforming debt management. Sovereign debtors should follow well publicised, predictable and binding legal procedures in incurring new financial obligations. In addition, they should disclose the amount and contractual terms of their loans. This should include any arrangements for enhancing the security of the loan.

An example is resource-backed loans. In these loans repayment is either made in natural resources or is guaranteed by the revenues generated by the sale of the natural resource.

Sovereign debtors should disclose this information to their creditors, the multilateral financial institutions of which they are member states. They should also make the information publicly available through national platforms.

Good governance. This involves strengthening national debt management policies to deal with issues of governance.

Transparency on its own won’t ensure responsible borrowing. Debt management frameworks and practices should conform to all the principles of good governance. The list includes transparency, participation, accountability, reasoned decision-making and effective institutional arrangements.

Legal predictability. This involves strengthening contractual provisions in debt contracts.
Debt is a contractual relationship. It is therefore important – for debtors and creditors – to enter into contracts that are as comprehensive as possible. This means contracts should fairly allocate risks between the parties.

This would include, for example, accommodating who is better able and more willing to accept the risks. In addition, contracts should provide the parties with clear answers to issues that could arise between them.

This would require policymakers providing guidance to their debt managers on the terms and conditions they can accept in contractual negotiations.

Comparability of treatment during restructuring. This means that, when needed, all creditors should participate on comparable terms in any sovereign debt restructuring. Southern Africa Development Community sovereign debtors can improve creditor confidence by offering all creditors comparable treatment. This would give them comfort that any relief they provided would benefit the debtor rather than other creditors.

This should facilitate the debtor’s efforts to reach agreement with all its creditors.

A comprehensive approach. Sovereign debt is not just a financial issue. It has implications for the social, political, economic, cultural and environmental situation in the debtor country. It requires a comprehensive approach to debt restructuring that incorporates all relevant stakeholders.

This includes citizens of the debtor states, multilateral creditors, bilateral creditors, and private creditors such as bondholders, institutional investors of various sorts and commercial banks.
It also requires that all necessary issues are addressed. These range from financial sustainability to the social, human rights and environmental impacts of the restructuring.

The sovereign debtor and its creditors must therefore seek to effectively engage with each of these actors and with all of these issues.

These recommendations show that there is a need for more innovative approaches to sovereign debt. One possible approach is the DOVE (Debts of Vulnerable Economies) Fund. It will use funds raised from all the stakeholders in sovereign debt to buy the bonds of African debtors in distress and commit to only agree to a debt restructuring that complies with a set of published principles based on international standards that support a comprehensive approach to the debt restructuring.

Source: The Conversation which was founded in Melbourne, Australia in 2011 and now operates as a global network of sites with dedicated teams working in Australia, the US, the UK, France, Africa, Indonesia, Spain and Canada.
https://theconversation.com/debt-distress-in-africa-biggest-problems-and-ways-forward-182716

Danny Bradlow SARCHI Chair is funded by the National Research Foundation. He received funding from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) for this book project. Magalie Masamba receives funding from Danny Bradlow’s SARCHI Chair and Oxfam South Africa. Magalie is a co-editor and co-author in this book project funded by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).

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A variety of insect-based delicacies. It is estimated that 2.5 billion people around the world eat insects as part of their regular diet. Encouraging the eating of insects could have health and climate change benefits. Credit: icipe

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, May 6 2022 (IPS)

Growing up in Samoya Village of Bungoma County in the Western part of Kenya, Elvis Wanjala has fond childhood memories of the rainy season, chasing and catching black-bellied winged termites in the rain.

“The termites would also come inside the house, attracted by the light late in the evening. My mother would sun-dry the termites and pan-fry them. We would then eat the crunchy termites with ugali (posho) and a serving of traditional vegetables,” he recounts.

“I grew up believing that everybody ate termites. At 11 years, I visited my uncle in Nairobi and was shocked to find that termites were more of a nuisance than food. One morning after a heavy downpour, I watched in awe as women and girls swept termites from their doorsteps and threw them in the bin.”

Beatrice Karare from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries tells IPS termites, and other insects such as grasshoppers, locusts, black and white ants, and crickets are part of traditional diets in Western Kenya, but not so in other parts of the country.

But with rising inflation, scientists at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) say edible insects are a low-cost alternative to more expensive foods. The Kenyan ‘food basket’ indicates that food inflation rose by 20 percent in January 2022 compared to the same period in 2021.

These are pan-dried nsenene. Researchers say edible insects provide low-cost alternative protein. Credit: icipe

Dr Saliou Niassy, a scientist from icipe, tells IPS edible insects contain high-quality protein, vitamins, fibre, calcium, iron, B vitamins, selenium, zinc, and amino acids and are also an excellent source of healthy fats.

Insect oil produced through an icipe research project from two edible insects – the desert locust and the African bush-cricket – was richer in omega-3 fatty acids, flavonoids, and Vitamin E than the plant oil.

Niassy says as this East African nation grapples with increasing threats to food security such as “climate change, landscape degradation and pest invasion, edible insects are a viable and affordable alternative.” It is projected that Africa’s annual food import bill of  $35 billion could rise to $110 billion by 2025.

A survey conducted by icipe shows there are an estimated 500 species of edible insects in African communities. The Central African region is home to approximately 256 edible insect species. East Africa hosts about 100 species, and about eight species are available in North Africa. An estimated 17 primary species are used for feed and food in Kenya.

“We have had two main challenges as far as increasing consumption of insects is concerned, a lack of legislation around the production, packaging, and marketing of insects for food and strong perceptions that dictate what is culturally acceptable as food. There are also strong beliefs that you must be very poor to eat insects,” Karare explains.

Karare says some of these issues were resolved in December 2020 when Kenya became the first African country to develop national standards regulating the production, handling, and processing of insects for food and feed.

Included in the regulation are stipulations of the necessary minimum infrastructural and environmental requirements necessary for the ideal production of edible insects, including how they are packaged and presented.

Wanjala, now a teacher based in Nairobi, says communities that do not eat insects and children could be slowly introduced to insect products such as biscuits “so that the idea of eating insects can slowly sink in. When it comes to eating whole insects, I find that people are also more likely to try dry-fried, crunchy insects.”

Despite the challenges of creating a viable and attractive market for insects, Karare is convinced that insects can be part of the diet in many homes, drawing parallels with the journey of Kenyans embracing traditional vegetables.

“A few years ago, highly nutritious traditional vegetables were eaten by a few communities. In Central Kenya, for instance, Amaranthus was considered to be food for poor people. Today, Amaranthus is a popular delicacy and part of the menu in five-star hotels. The same with pumpkin leaves,” Karare observes.

“We need to educate the people that edible insects can add nutrients to a plant-based meal. More importantly, insects can even nutritionally replace meat.”

Pan-dried desert grasshoppers. Credit: icipe

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 2.5 billion people eat insects as part of their regular meals, whole or in processed food products such as snacks and pasta. Karare says the global edible insect market estimated at $112 million in 2019, could reach $1.5 billion by 2026.

There are approximately 1,900 edible species globally, including butterflies, cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, ants, bees, dragonflies, beetles, domestic silk moths, centipedes and locusts.

According to FAO, turning to insects is not only good for the body but highly environment friendly and could contribute to reducing the emission of harmful greenhouse gases. The livestock sector contributes significantly to climate change as total emissions from global livestock represent 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Cattle reared for beef and milk and inedible outputs such as manure and draft power account for 65 percent of the livestock sector’s emissions. Producing insects for food is yet another alternative to reducing the emission of harmful greenhouse gases, the FAO says.

Crickets need six times less feed than cattle, four times less than sheep, and half as much as pigs and broiler chickens to produce the same amount of protein. Additionally, insect-based products are found to have a much smaller carbon footprint in comparison to conventional livestock.

With these revelations, Niassy says there is a lot more to learn and benefit from, “we have just scratched the surface in terms of sustainable access to biodiversity for resilience, livelihood, food and nutritional security in Africa.”

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Amidst a backdrop of rising food insecurity worldwide and a global food supply chain crisis, many countries are attempting to increase the level of food self-production. One improved input for farming which is receiving renewed attention is improved seed. The two most populous countries in the world, China and India, have recently made ground-breaking moves to improve their competitive position by developing new seeds which will improve their food production and increase resilience to climate change. So far, in 2022, new regulations on using biotechnology (genetic modification and gene editing) have been put in place by both countries to ultimately allow smallholder farmers to benefit from these new seeds.

Paul Teng

The importance of having reliable supplies of improved seeds for farmers has been particularly highlighted in the world’s most populous country, China, where seeds are high on the policy agenda.

In early April 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for working toward food self-sufficiency and developing the country’s seed industry during a visit to a seed laboratory in Hainan Province, southern China. He noted that China’s food security could only be safeguarded when seed resources are firmly held in its own hands. President Xi’s comments come at a time when many countries aim to increase their self-production of food in anticipation of disruptions in supply chains such as those caused by the Ukraine-Russia crisis and the COVID pandemic.

Genevieve Donnellon-May

All the above background factors have led China and India to make important moves to tap a proven tool for developing new crop varieties, namely biotechnology.

In April 2022, China’s agriculture ministry announced plans for the first time after many years of deliberations to approve two new genetically modified corn varieties developed by the Syngenta Group. Earlier, In January 2022, China published new guidelines for the approval of gene-edited plants, paving the way for faster improvements to important food security crops. And this came amid a raft of measures to overhaul China’s seed industry, seen as a weak link in efforts to ensure it can feed the world’s biggest population. China’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tang Renjian, had likened seeds to the “computer chips” of agriculture.

In an unrelated parallel development, India approved a key change in rules at the end of March 2022 to allow genome-edited plants or organisms without any “foreign” genes to be subjected to a different regulatory process than the one applied to genetically engineered products. As in China, this is anticipated to lead to faster development of new crop varieties that can meet the challenges of climate change and higher yields.

However, not all interested parties support the use of biotechnology to develop new seeds or patenting new crop varieties. Although the evidence is strong that multinational and domestic seed companies have played a major role in lifting crop production through their improved seeds, this has also led to concerns about the control that the private sector may have over this important input for food production. And related to this issue of control of seeds is the patenting of new seeds.

There has been a rise in ‘seed activism‘ and interest in seed sovereignty as part of the pushback against the modern agricultural system that is supported by patented seeds such as hybrids. This pushback has been helmed by groups which exploit the fear (often speculative) that by having control over seeds, a handful of multinational companies, rather than farmers or countries, have control over the global food supply. This omits the reality that farmers have the right to choose whatever seeds to plant and even keep their own seeds if desired. These groups have also failed to recognize that investments to innovate and produce new seeds would not have been possible without adequate protection of seeds as intellectual property. Countries like China and India realise the importance of promoting innovations in the seed industry.

China, in particular, has announced that it aims to revitalize the seed sector, encourage germplasm collection, and strengthen intellectual property protection in the sector. In China, views on the importance of seeds in food security are reflected in various domestic policies such as in 2022’s “No 1 Central Policy Document”, the country’s agricultural blueprint. A top policy priority is the development of the seed industry in China.

The issues of seed sovereignty based on farmer-saved seed, when balanced against the track record of improved seeds from companies which give high yields, are complex. But in the final analysis, farmers will choose the seeds that give them the most assured yields under risky conditions, even if they have to pay for such seeds. This has been the case with almost all the developed and developing countries with food surpluses for export, such as the U.S.A., Canada, Brazil and Argentina. And consumers, as well as food importers are those who benefit by there being more food at affordable prices.

The first “Green Revolution” in Asia which took off in the 1970s was based on improved seeds of wheat and rice, bred using technologies which were novel at that time. However, towards the latter part of the last millennium, the need for more novel technologies to improve crops became obvious as yield gains were stagnating in many crops. The challenges facing all smallholder farmers arising from changes in climate, pests and natural resource depletion are becoming more intense and frequent. And unless new seeds are developed and made available to farmers in shorter timeframes, it is the consuming public that will suffer the consequences of reduced, unreliable food supply and higher prices.

The conundrum is how to balance local ownership of seed sources which are commonly unimproved and low-yielding with improved high-yielding seeds developed by seed companies (either domestic or multinational) using modern science. Ultimately, smallholder farmers worldwide deserve new “seeds of hope”.

Paul Teng is Adjunct Senior Fellow, Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. He has worked in the Asia Pacific region on agri-food issues for over thirty years, with international organizations, academia and the private sector.

Genevieve Donnellon-May is a master’s student in Water Science, Policy and Management at the University of Oxford. Genevieve’s research interests include China, Africa, transboundary governance, and the food-energy-water nexus.

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Food systems are under severe stress around the world now. The thresholds of tolerance are already exceeding limits with millions facing acute food and water scarcity throughout all continents. Over a quarter of Africa’s population are facing hunger and food insecurity. Conflict, droughts, flooding, rising unemployment, inequality, economic crises, and the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic have been ravaging the Continent on an unprecedented scale.

Menghestab Haile

Evidence points out that more than 50 million people are acutely food insecure, mostly women and children with 36 million of them in Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) 3 and 4. Weather extremes that disrupted recent growing seasons are again wreaking havoc. The last quarter of 2021 was one of the driest for 40 years in southern Madagascar, southern Tanzania, northern Mozambique, southern Angola, Namibia and most of Malawi. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s biggest hunger emergency, home to Africa’s largest population of IDPs and biggest source of refugees, a staggering 26 million children, women and men are acutely food insecure. The impact of the worst drought in four decades in Southern Angola has left 1.6 million in misery and destitution. In Mozambique 1.9 million are experiencing hunger and acute food needs. These statistics are based on the field assessments of international partners.

Rural and urban populations are equally affected. In Zimbabwe, severe poverty and food insecurity has increased in urban areas representing 2.4 million people or 42 percent of the urban population. There is an increase in internally displaced people within the region. In February this year we have witnessed how recurrent powerful storms have battered coastal areas on Madagascar and Mozambique causing dozens of fatalities, forcing hundred of thousands people from their homes, knocking out power and crippling other infrastructure. Added to these is recurring levels of acute and chronic malnutrition among children.

It has dawned upon us that there is a global food crises and supply chains are badly affected throughout continents. There is an awareness that food systems are interconnected between sectors- i.e, directly linked to energy supply (fuel, fertilizer), health, education, economy, water shortages, infrastructure, social services, climate adaptation and transportation. The Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGS) are challenged.

To address this unprecedented alarming situation, where needs are competing, this imperative must be addressed with focus on every continent equally. In the Southern Africa region we require immediate support to help the exhausted communities.

National governments are central to country both in humanitarian and development spheres. The best way is to support the government plans. This is the time to revisit and realign priorities with clearly defined goals. Strong political will and leadership are required. A combination of both international and national assistance should focus on supporting government priorities. Resources, both national and international are necessary. Impact can be better when International organizations, including UN agencies, regional financial and development institutions, together with NGOs commit to support national priorities with enhanced coordination and collaboration.

With a multi-dimensional and targeted approach gains can be achieved. The Southern Africa Development Agency (SADC) plays an important role both regionally and extending to the Continent. In this context, the African Union (AU) Heads of state has endorsed the outcomes of the Third Africa Rural Development Forum (ARDF-3) in Kinshasa held in January this year recognizing the imperative for a multi-dimensional and a holistic food systems approach. The Region is endowed with vast lands and water resources for agriculture and other natural resources. With urgent investments good gains can be realized in the immediate term in food production. In the medium to longer term, with climate adaptation and support to resilience building activities, there is hope for recovery and stability.

Prosperity and progress will show their full faces when the dignity of women, children and the youth, together with other vulnerable is recognized and accorded due place in the society. Development will be meaningful when their roles are accommodated into every activity. The future generation needs to be well nourished, preserved in an integrated and inclusive way.

Advocacy and a holistic engagement are the requirements to address hunger, food insecurity and nutrition with the provision of evidence based data and information in the Southern Africa region. Technical support to data collection and analysis through the use of latest technologies and tools will ensure evidence driven decision making. Strong political will can help formulate appropriate policies and programs that create conducive environment for development. Innovative solutions can be developed through South South collaboration building on good practices and with the support of development partners.

There is certainly hope in overcoming the current situation in the region by strengthening the nexus between humanitarian and development. To attain results a “Culture of Cooperation” must be forged.

Dr. Menghestab Haile, is the Regional Director for the Southern Africa Region for the UN World Food Programme. With a background in meteorology, Dr. Haile has been integrating climate and weather analysis into food security systems in many parts of the world.

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India began its journey as an independent nation in 1947 with fresh memory of the Bengal Famine of 1943 which claimed 1.5 to 3 million lives. Against this backdrop, the First Five Year Plan (1951-56) prioritized agriculture which, however, shifted to heavily industrialization in the second Plan.

Shyam Khadka

The success, however, has come with significant costs. The resource intensification that the Green Revolution requires has adversely affected natural resources and environment. India pumped 245 million cubic meters – about 25 percent of total groundwater withdrawn globally – for irrigation in 2011. As a result, ground water in 1,034 blocks (16% of total blocks) are over-exploited. Worse, ground water table has become critical in 4% and semi-critical in 10% of the blocks. Similarly, some 37% of land area in the country (120.4 mn ha) is affected by various types of land degradation. Subsidy policy-induced non-judicious use of fertilizers has led to the chemicalization of soil and pollution of water through leaching and run-off. Despite abundant supply of food grains, in 2020 41.7% of under-5 children suffered from stunting. India is home to 208.6 million – or over a quarter – of world’s undernourished people. Other challenges that Indian agriculture faces today include uneven regional growth, rising fiscal constraints, mounting and unsustainable level of subsidies, small holding size and further fragmentation of holdings and accompanying land tenurial issues, and low resource use efficiency, particularly of water. These factors act as serious impediments for sustained agricultural growth and farmers’ livelihoods.

Amidst the success and emerging challenges NITI Aayog, the apex public policy think tank of the Government of India and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) decided to facilitate a national dialogue among key stakeholders including government agencies, academia, civil society organisations, farmers, private sector, international organizations, media and others to articulate a vision for 2030 and pathways for the remandating of agriculture in India. To this end, 10 thematic papers were commissioned from distinguished professionals. A 3-day national dialogue entitled, ‘Indian Agriculture Towards 2030: Pathways for enhancing Farmers’ Income, Nutritional Security and Sustainable Food and Farm Systems” was held in January 2021. NITI Aayog and FAO have now come up with a publication with the same title (Chand, R., Joshi, P, and Khadka, S., Editors (2022), Springer).

In addition to the challenges enumerated above the books also deals with issues of climate change and its impact on agricultural production and farmers’ incomes and the strategies to mitigate such change; growing incidence of pests, pandemics, and transboundary diseases and threat to biosecurity affecting agricultural production; and alternative farming systems for transformative and sustainable agroecology and biodiverse future. The role of science, technology and innovation is identified as key to sustainable and resilient agriculture. Similarly, role of structural reforms and governance are discussed in detail and the role of price policies, market reforms and institutions are being highlighted for an efficient, inclusive and sustainable agriculture.

The National Dialogue identified pathways for transformation with emphasis on remandating Indian agriculture in a way that makes it more productive, efficient, resilient, resource conserving, nutrition centered and globally focused. These transformational outcomes are to be achieved by focusing on following pathways:

• Increasing investment in agriculture, first to reverse the declining trend and then achieving ‘efficient’ growth rather than growth alone, increased adoption of improved technology, reorienting agricultural science, technology and innovations, applying digital solutions and artificial intelligence, better use of information and communication technology, application of One Health concept;
• Making Indian agriculture globally-focused, shifting attention from self-sufficiency to adding value through increased processing and achieving a high rate of export growth
• Enhancing the efficiency of the water and other resources, mainly by correcting distorted water pricing, adopting water conserving technologies and agro-ecological approach, changes in the cropping pattern, and reversing neglect of rainfed areas;
• Making agriculture climate resilient, by adopting several no-regret technological and institutional options as well as by undertaking more targeted research, use of big data analytics, and adoption of a science-based and green growth approach;
• Tackling nutrition and food safety, by diversifying diet, reducing post-harvest losses, encouraging bio-fortifications, empowering women, enforcing food safety standards, improving water sanitation and hygiene, and promoting food safety awareness and nutrition education;
• Focusing sharply on innovations, incentives and institutions that contribute to enhance productivity, enhance resilience to climate change, incentivize water and energy conservation, and by adopting more conducive regulatory environment such as for exploiting ground water; and
• Adopting appropriate policies and improving governance such as by reducing distortion caused by the MSP, accelerating rural infrastructure creation, ensuring greater engagement of the state governments, enhancing access to credit and extension services, and expansion of contract farming.

As emphasised by Honourable M. Venkaiah Naidu, Vice-President of India in his foreword, the book ‘provides a sound basis for reflection because they distil important lessons and present an array of policy options for the government to choose from’.

Shyam Khadka is a former senior official of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations who served as representative in India (2015-18) and was Senior Portfolio Manager in United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (1997-2014). An international development professional, Khadka works on policies, programs and projects that aim at developing agriculture, ensuring food security, and reducing poverty globally.

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By Timothy A. Wise
BOSTON, Mar 23 2022 (IPS)

• A scathing new analysis of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) finds that the program is failing at its objective to increase food security on the continent, despite massive funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US, UK, and German governments.

• As fertilizer and food prices spike with rising energy prices from the Russia-Ukraine war, African farmers and governments need the kind of resilient, low-cost alternatives that techniques like agroecology offer, a new opinion piece argues.

A critical new donor-funded evaluation of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has confirmed what African civil society and faith leaders have claimed: “AGRA did not meet its headline goal of increased incomes and food security for 9 million smallholders.”

The evaluation should be a wake up call, and not just for the private and bilateral donors that have bankrolled this 15-year-old effort to the tune of $1 billion. It should also rouse African governments to repurpose their agricultural subsidies from the Green Revolution package of commercial seeds and fertilizers to agroecology and other low-cost, low-input approaches. They have been providing as much as $1 billion per year for such input subsidies.

Failing Africa’s farmers

Carried out by consulting firm Mathematica, the evaluation confirms that the Green Revolution has failed to achieve AGRA’s stated goal to “catalyze a farming revolution in Africa.”

Wambui Mwihaki, a farmer from central Kenya, takes stock of her thriving maize crop following adoption of agroecology. Credit: David Njagi for Mongabay.

The assessment was funded by AGRA’s primary sponsor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on behalf of other lead donors in AGRA’s Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa (PIATA): the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office; the Rockefeller Foundation; the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The evaluation includes a summary of findings, a statistical appendix, and AGRA’s formal responses to the findings, all available publicly.

Such transparency is welcome. AGRA has been plagued by a lack of accountability since its founding in 2006. I undertook my own assessment of AGRA in 2020 when I could find no comprehensive analysis, from AGRA nor its donors, of its progress toward ambitious goals to double yields and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming families while halving food insecurity by 2020. Using national-level data, I found little evidence of progress, with meager productivity increases, little progress on poverty, and a 31% increase in the number of undernourished people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries.

The new evaluation is far from comprehensive. It covers only AGRA’s last five years of work, ignoring its first 10. It reports on results in just six of AGRA’s current 11 focus countries. Its data on yields is almost exclusively on maize and rice, to the exclusion of the many other staple food crops crucial to Africans’ sustenance. And it fails to incorporate or address the concerns raised publicly by African civil society and faith leaders in public letters to AGRA’s donors.

Agroforestry is a kind of agroecology where crops are grown in combination with trees, like this pumpkin that Eunice Manyi raised among fruit trees in Kenya. Credit: David Njagi for Mongabay.

Still, the findings about poor outcomes for farmers should raise concerns for private and bilateral donors to AGRA’s PIATA strategy and for the African governments that are active partners – and funders – in that effort.

Quoting from the evaluation:

• “PIATA improved maize yields in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria, but not in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, or Kenya.” Maize is AGRA’s most heavily supported crop, so the failure to achieve yield growth in half the countries studied is alarming.
• “Across these six countries, only farmers in Burkina Faso experienced improved maize sales as a result of PIATA.” This raises serious questions about the Green Revolution “theory of change.” Even when yields rose, they failed to translate into rising incomes for farmers.
• “Farmers who adopted improved inputs and experienced yield increases were typically younger, male, and relatively wealthier…. productivity and income gains were also concentrated among these relatively high-resource farmers.” This finding directly contradicts the stated goals of USAID and other bilateral donors to ensure that their assistance programs benefit and empower women.
• “AGRA’s next strategy could formally recognize that agricultural technologies and practices—such as fertilizer use and rice cultivation—can negatively impact environmental conditions and greenhouse gas emissions.” Evaluators fault AGRA on a wide range of environmentally damaging impacts, including a lack of attention to helping farmers adapt to climate change.
• “AGRA surveys are currently not suited for rigorous impact analysis.” Evaluators offer many criticisms of the initiative’s poor monitoring and evaluation methods.

Time to rethink Green Revolution model

Evaluators gave AGRA credit for some of its work, saying it “was successful in developing key policy reforms, mobilizing flagships and partnerships, and reaching farmers with extension and seeds,” and it helped “incentivize private sector engagement in the production and delivery of improved seeds in some countries.”

But these intermediate objectives, carried out with substantial funding over 15 years, have thus far failed to further the goals of improving farmers’ productivity, incomes, and food security. When one’s development successes fail to produce the intended results, after 15 years and one billion dollars in donor funding, it is time to reconsider the efficacy of the initiative. It is time to rethink the Green Revolution model.

See related: Push-pull agroecology method debugs organic farming’s pest problem in Kenya

Farmers with seeds in West Africa. Image courtesy of Grassroots International.

AGRA’s management responded to the evaluation saying, “We must therefore rethink our models and focus our support, and that of our partners, on building resilience and adaptation specifically for smallholder farmers.” But there is little sign AGRA intends to pull back from its costly input-intensive Green Revolution model. AGRA president Agnes Kalibata recently defended the status quo in a Q&A with the East African.

Hopefully donors and African governments will take the new evaluation more seriously. African civil society and faith leaders have urged donors to shift their funding to agroecology and other low-cost, low-input systems, which were endorsed last year by the U.N. Committee on World Food Security as a key strategy for climate-resilient development. Such approaches have shown far better results, raising yields across a range of food crops, increasing productivity over time as soil fertility improves, increasing incomes and reducing risk for farmers by cutting input costs, and improving food security and nutrition from a diverse array of crops.

USAID was quick to reject any change in aid priorities. A spokesperson told US Right to Know, “USAID reviewed the findings and recommendations and is satisfied with the independence and rigor of the [Mathematica] evaluation. We appreciate AGRA’s response to the report conclusions and concur with their proposed next steps to improve performance outcomes.”

That will not satisfy African civil society and faith leaders, who were not consulted for the Mathematica evaluation. They plan to take their complaints to the U.S. Congress, which this year has to reauthorize funding for AGRA through its Feed the Future initiative. On March 30, they will brief congressional aides in a closed-door session to explain why the supposed beneficiaries think AGRA is doing more harm than good. As evaluators acknowledge, the main beneficiaries are wealthier male farmers, an outcome at odds with the stated goals of U.S. development policy.

As fertilizer and food prices spike with rising energy prices from the Russia-Ukraine war, African farmers and governments need the kind of resilient, low-cost alternatives agroecology offers. Kenyan farmers report today that the biofertilizers they make themselves from locally available materials cost one-quarter the price of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers.

African governments should recognize that continuing to subsidize increasingly expensive synthetic fertilizer is a losing proposition, especially when that and other Green Revolution inputs are producing such meager results.

It is time for private and bilateral donors – and African governments – to stop throwing good money after bad and recognize that their 15-year effort to “catalyze a farming revolution in Africa” through Green Revolution seeds and fertilizers has fallen short. Fortunately, more promising alternatives are proving their efficacy all over the world. They deserve support.

Timothy A. Wise is a Senior Research Fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute. A detailed analysis of the recent evaluation of AGRA is available from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), where the author is a senior advisor.

This story was originally published by Mongabay.

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Ambassador Cindy Hensley McCain, Permanent Representative of the United States to the food and agriculture organizations of the United Nations is pictured here with a community involved in an FAO climate smart agriculture project. Credit: FAO

By Farhana Haque Rahman and Sania Farooqui
Rome, Mar 21 2022 (IPS)

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Ambassador Cindy Hensley McCain, Permanent Representative of the US Mission to the food and agriculture organizations of the United Nations in Rome, Italy, shares her thoughts on food security, sustainable food systems, the impact of climate change on food production, conflicts and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and her plans while working with the Food Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and World Food Programme (WFP) with Farhana Haque Rahman and Sania Farooqui.

The Biden Administration swore in Ambassador Cindy Hensley McCain to serve as Permanent Representative of the US Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome on November 5, 2021.  She has dedicated her life to improving the lives of those less fortunate both in the United States and worldwide. She is the former Chair of the Board of Trustees of the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University, where she oversaw the organization’s focus on advancing character-driven global leadership based on security, economic opportunity, freedom, and human dignity, as well as chairing the Institute’s Human Trafficking Advisory Council.

In addition to her work at the McCain Institute, she served on the Board of Directors of Project CURE, CARE, Operation Smile, HaloTrust, and the Advisory Boards of Too Small To Fail and Warriors and Quiet Waters. She was the chairperson of her family’s business, Hensley Beverage Company, one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributors in the US.  McCain is the wife of the late US Senator John McCain.  Together, they have four children.

IPS: There has been a dramatic worsening of world hunger since 2020. While the pandemic’s impact is yet to be fully mapped, according to WHO, more than 2.3 billion people (or 30 percent of the global population) have lacked year-round access to adequate food, and malnutrition continues to persist in all its forms, with children paying a high price. What are your concerns on this crisis, and what can be done to achieve food security and improve nutrition within reach of all those impacted?

UN Mission Embassy, Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, Cindy McCain.
Credit: UN/Cristiano Minichiello.

Cindy McCain: In my new role as US Ambassador to the UN Agencies in Rome, my top priority is to bring high-level attention to the urgent food security crisis that you mention, one that is being felt particularly in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and now Ukraine. I also want to raise the alarm about the broader, far-reaching threats to our global food systems—and to work together with other members of the United Nations to build resilient, sustainable food systems for everyone.

IPS: The FAO has said that the land and water resources farmers rely on are stressed to a ‘breaking point’, and there will be two billion more mouths to feed by 2050. What are your thoughts on this, and what can be done to find sustainable solutions and adapt to these changing climate challenges?

McCain: To meet these challenges, we need to dramatically ramp up innovation and cooperation to both mitigate and adapt to climate change, particularly in agriculture.  Our food systems are vulnerable, and the sector must urgently adapt.

Agriculture must also be part of the solution to climate change.  Food production and food systems, in general, are responsible for a quarter to a third of greenhouse gas emissions. We need new technologies, products, and approaches to food production, consumption, and food loss and waste.

At COP26, the UAE and the United States announced the creation of the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate, or AIM4C, with the goal of accelerating the search for breakthrough solutions in the agricultural sector.  AIM4C is promoting significantly increased investment in support of climate-smart agriculture and food system innovation.

Already, more than 40 countries and over a hundred partners – including Lightworks at Arizona State University – my home state, and the FAO – have joined forces under AIM4C.

Additionally, President Biden launched the Global Methane Pledge at COP26 with the goal of reducing global methane emissions at least by 30% by 2030, the minimum required to keep 1.5C within reach. The Pledge now has over 110 country participants, including six of the top eight emitters of agricultural methane.

We can cut agricultural emissions through measures that also enhance agricultural productivity in developing countries—which has the added benefit of reducing global pressure to convert rainforests to farms. For example, typical US and EU dairy operations produce milk with 1/8th the emissions of typical Indian and African operations.  Increasing productivity in developing countries benefits farmers while tackling climate change by cutting methane emissions and deforestation – it’s a win-win.

IPS: Climate change is threatening food production, which means there is a need for more investments, including creating new jobs to adapt to climate change to help small-scale farmers currently producing food for 2 billion people – or global stability is at risk. What is your view about IFAD’s new investment programme to boost private funding of rural businesses and small-scale farmers?

Ambassador Cindy McCain with women at an IFAD financed women’s cassava cooperative. Credit: IFAD

McCain: Truly sustainable food systems must be economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.  IFAD is right to consider the private sector an indispensable partner in improving smallholder farmers’ access to markets, capital, technology, and innovation – the same tools producers in developed countries rely on.  These partnerships bolster rural resilience in the face of increased conflict, COVID-19, climate change, and other acute and systematic threats. The United States is proud to be IFAD’s largest current and historical donor.  We appreciate IFAD’s focus on the livelihoods of rural, smallholder farmers in the world’s least developed countries, who account for the majority of the world’s poor.

IPS: More than 800 million people across the globe go to bed hungry every night, most of them smallholder farmers who depend on agriculture to make a living and feed their families, many of whom are also women. What can be done to close the present global gender gap in agriculture and build sustainable futures for women farmers?

McCain: Women play a critical and potentially transformative role in agriculture, especially in developing countries where they make up over 48 percent of the rural agricultural workforce. They also make a crucial contribution to nutrition and food security by feeding their families and contributing to their communities.

Nonetheless, women continue to face persistent obstacles and economic constraints.  The FAO notes that, given the same tools as men, women could increase yields on their farms by 20–30 percent. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries up to 4 percent, and production gains of this magnitude could reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17 percent. That’s huge. We need to provide rural women and girls with greater access to the assets, resources, services, and opportunities that are available to men – especially land. Women still account for less than 15 percent of agricultural landholders in the world.

We know the promise women hold in agriculture, and we are acting on it.  Empowerment of women is a strong focus of Feed the Future, the US food security initiative with programs equipping women with the right tools, training, and technology to increase their production, improve their storage, and give them access to markets.

In the same way, all FAO, IFAD, and WFP programs have a strong focus on women.  Gender is an essential component of their work, providing extension services, technical and financial training, helping them to become successful producers, marketers, and entrepreneurs.  If we want to improve our food systems to be more productive and sustainable, we must invest in women farmers.

IPS: According to the World Bank, between 88 and 115 million people are being pushed into poverty due to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. In 2021, this number was expected to have risen to between 143 and 163 million. Millions of people worldwide have been suffering from food insecurity and different forms of malnutrition because they cannot afford the cost of healthy diets. What could be done to build resilience to such shocks?

McCain: To achieve lasting food security for everyone, even the world’s most vulnerable people, we must strengthen and safeguard the entire food system – the land, the local economies, the supply chain, the farmers, and the communities that all depend on one another to thrive.  And we must reach for all the tools in the toolbox to build resilience and give people a chance to not just survive the emergencies but also grow and thrive in their wake.

That includes investing in cutting-edge technology, promoting climate-smart and water-efficient agricultural solutions, capitalizing on private-sector resources, expertise, and partnership, and improving access to financing, training, and markets. Building resilience, making our food systems more sustainable, doing more with less: this is the challenge before us, and it demands a united, global effort.

IPS: Conflict drives hunger. According to WFP data, there are almost 283 million people marching towards starvation, with 45 million knocking on famine’s door. Why do we urgently need humanitarian action towards the ongoing conflicts around the world?

McCain: We must continue to provide urgent humanitarian action to save lives wherever they are at risk.  As you noted, conflict is the biggest driver of hunger around the world today.  Sixty percent of the world’s hungry live in conflict areas. The food security situation is particularly dire in Yemen and South Sudan and in the northern areas of Ethiopia and Niger, where people are facing starvation.  And now we have a rapidly unfolding crisis in Ukraine, to which USAID and the UN agencies are all responding with emergency assistance.

The Ukraine crisis also risks exacerbating hunger in other regions of the world as wheat supplies from one of the planet’s major breadbaskets are disrupted.  That means markets must adjust, driving up the cost of wheat and other staples, which will affect relief operations in other parts of the world where people are desperately in need of food assistance. We must do our best to address and help resolve these conflicts by joining forces with other countries and the UN to push for diplomatic solutions.

IPS: The ongoing crisis in Ukraine is worsening every day, which could push thousands into a state of poverty and hunger. What are your thoughts on this?

McCain: Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine was a flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.  It has unleashed a humanitarian crisis in the heart of Europe, with over 2.5 million refugees so far and probably many more to come. We have a longstanding partnership with the people of Ukraine and are very focused on the urgent humanitarian needs there.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team – our nation’s finest international emergency responders – to the region to support the Ukrainian people as they bear the brunt of Russian aggression.

On March 10, 2022, US Vice President Kamala Harris announced nearly $53 million in new humanitarian assistance from the United States government, through the USAID, to support innocent civilians affected by Russia’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine. This additional assistance includes support to the WFP to provide lifesaving emergency food assistance to meet the immediate needs of hundreds of thousands affected by the invasion, including people displaced from their homes and who are crossing the border out of Ukraine. In addition, it will support WFP’s logistics operations to move assistance into Ukraine, including to people in Kyiv.

The United States is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and has provided $159 million in overall humanitarian assistance to Ukraine since October 2020, including nearly $107 million in the past two weeks in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This includes food, safe drinking water, shelter, emergency health care, and winterization services to communities affected by ongoing fighting.

IPS: Lastly, what is your take (personal thoughts) on your appointment by the Biden administration? Do you plan to visit some countries where the FAO, IFAD, and WFP are currently working? What are your thoughts on the current crisis in food and hunger, and what do you see happening by the end of your term? Are you optimistic?

McCain: I am honored President Biden appointed me to this role and very proud to be serving my country in my capacity as Ambassador to the UN Agencies in Rome. The work we do on food security here in Rome is crucial, and we need food security to be in the spotlight because, the fact is, everything else depends on it. I will be doing my best to bring the necessary attention to the challenges we are facing.   It is time for food security to take center stage in global security discussions everywhere.

I do indeed plan to do many visits to the field to see FAO, IFAD, and WFP at work.  In fact, I just returned from Madagascar, where a sustained drought is severely affecting the population in the south of the country, and to Kenya to see the work of our UN partners there.

Am I optimistic?  Actually, I am. The momentum around food security right now gives me great hope. At the Munich Security Conference this year, food security was finally recognized as a crucial part of global security. I participated in a food security town hall – a first and definitely not the last – at the conference. The UN Food Systems Summit last fall was an important recognition that food security is a systemic issue, that we all must work together to ensure we have sustainable and equitable food systems. At that summit, the United States committed 10 billion US dollars towards food security efforts at home and abroad, 5 billion US dollars of which we’re investing through Feed the Future, America’s initiative to end hunger and malnutrition.

With the newly released Global Food Security Strategy to guide the United States’ efforts, we’re increasing investments in partnerships and innovation to catalyze inclusive agriculture-led growth, eradicate malnutrition, and help people adapt to the perils of climate change.  There is a renewed focus on the need to address food insecurity, and we are putting tools in place to do just that.

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS Noram; she served as the elected Director-General of IPS 2015-2019. A journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Sania Farooqui is a New Delhi-based journalist, filmmaker, and host of The Sania Farooqui Show, where she regularly speaks to women who have made significant contributions bringing about socio-economic changes globally. She writes and reports regularly for IPS news wire.

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A Liberian participant in BRAC’s Graduation pilot in her store. Credit: Alison Wright

By Adolphus B. W. Doe
MONROVIA, Liberia, Mar 15 2022 (IPS)

For the past three years, BRAC International has been piloting in Liberia an adaptation of its acclaimed Graduation approach, whose impact on reducing extreme poverty was first proven in Bangladesh. The success of the Liberia pilot, which I managed, provides not only further proof of impact but vital lessons that can enhance and accelerate scaling of the approach globally.

BRAC’s Graduation approach is a multifaceted, proven, researched set of interventions based on a deep understanding of the challenges faced by those living in extreme poverty. BRAC – one of the largest nongovernmental organizations in the world – pioneered the Graduation approach 20 years ago and is the largest-scale implementer, having reached more than 2.1 million households (approximately 9 million people) in Bangladesh alone.

The key pillars of the Graduation approach include a stipend to support participants’ basic needs; a productive asset such as livestock, equipment, or seed capital; training in life skills, finance, and business skills; and regular coaching and mentoring. A rigorous evaluation by the London School of Economics showed that 93% of participants experienced sustained benefits seven years after starting the program. This included a 37% increase in earnings, a 9% increase in consumption, a ninefold increase in savings rate, and a twofold increase in household assets and access to land for livelihoods.

The pilot in Liberia ran from April 2018 to September 2021 and was made possible by generous support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery. Through it, 751 women-headed households in two counties participated, and 85% graduated, climbing the ladder of economic self-reliance into a sustainable future.

According to the baseline assessment, these women earned barely $1 (US) per day before they joined the Graduation program, working as seasonal wage laborers, cassava pickers, and charcoal makers. Their low income – or no income – left them vulnerable, with little hope or confidence. Many had faced domestic violence and abandonment by their husbands and were the sole source of income for their children.

Now, they are micro-entrepreneurs earning their livelihoods through livestock rearing, vegetable farming, and running businesses like grocery shops. Of the pilot participants, 88% doubled their income sources, 96% had access to safe drinking water, 98% were regularly eating nutritional meals, 98% were practicing safe hygiene and sanitation, and 100% saved regularly (biweekly) by the end of the program. Households’ housing conditions also greatly improved, including 88% of beneficiary children attending school.

In making this transition, participants in the Graduation program demonstrated their ability to create pathways toward self-reliance, once they have access to the right resources and tools.

The lessons from the pilot in Liberia are considerable and can facilitate replication far more broadly. They are especially powerful, as Liberia is among the world’s 10 poorest countries.

First, the Graduation approach works in Liberia. Poverty likelihood declined sharply from 50% to 31% after program intervention. The food consumption score improved from 28 to 44.

This is consistent with a study of Graduation pilots in six other countries on three continents conducted by Nobel Prize-winning economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, among others.

Communities in Liberia are receptive to the approach and enthusiastic about participating. But implementers must be focused on ensuring that it serves those in greatest need. While more than half the population of Liberia lives in poverty, it’s the 16% living in extreme poverty that must be the focus.

Second, reaching those living in extreme poverty must be strategic. How do you find them? We first asked county-level leaders to identify locations of extreme poverty. We then used a “participatory rural appraisal” to map the size of those communities, the number of households, and specific clusters within them. From there we could create a list of households.

With households identified, we could rank them based on economic indicators and administer a questionnaire to those in greatest poverty to assess their assets, savings, and food security. Based on the results, a visit to individual homes confirmed their living conditions.

Third, the program design and research tools must be adapted for local circumstances. The assets that are transferred to program participants, for instance, must be suited to the local context. In Bangladesh, participants are typically given cows; in Liberia, that is not appropriate. A market study was, therefore, conducted to ensure that the assets to be transferred would be rightly marketable. Such adaptation is consistent with the Graduation program’s experience elsewhere.

Fourth, understanding and challenging traditional gender norms can be essential to breaking patterns of extreme poverty. In Liberia, the issue of women’s access to land – to raise livestock and produce crops – had to be addressed.

In rural areas of Liberia, land is typically owned by a few families, who are often initially willing to provide free access to facilitate poverty reduction. But once they see a woman increasing her income, they may demand rent. We learned, therefore, to confirm at the outset in writing that access to land would be free for at least five years.

Fifth, we fully expect that the cost of the Graduation approach in Liberia can be reduced over time. For this pilot, the cost per participating household was $2,000 (US). That is consistent with overall implementation costs per household of Graduation in other countries of between $300 and $2,000 (US). We estimate in Liberia that the future cost will be between $1,000 and $1,200 per household.

Cost reductions in Liberia are possible because initial research results can be applied more broadly, as can localized tools. Once an initial phase of the approach is complete, extending it is also less labor-intensive.

Academics outside Liberia estimate that for every dollar spent on a Graduation program there is a return of $2 – $5 (US) worth of benefits, depending on program design. The return is highly affected by the context, the specific program, and the particular time.

These lessons are affirming and instructive. They underscore the enormous potential for replicating the Graduation approach, and the opportunity to do so with increasing efficiency. They provide reason for optimism that this proven solution can soon be applied globally.

The author is Program Leader of Ultra-Poor Graduation and Interim Country Director for BRAC International in Liberia.

IPS UN Bureau

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Food security has long been a high priority for the Chinese central government and has been linked to China’s national security in recent years. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs recently released a national five-year plan under which China will seek to maintain a target to produce 95 percent of the protein domestically until 2025: China aims to become self-sufficient in poultry and eggs, 85 percent self-sufficient for beef and mutton, 70 percent for dairy, and 95 percent self-sufficient in pork. These targets intersect with many of the Chinese central government’s current aims to meet the growing demand for protein and dairy, safeguard food security, and other major policies.

Genevieve Donnellon-May

China is also the world’s fourth-largest dairy producer and the second-largest in Asia. However, it is still the largest importer of dairy products.

Dual circulation and self-sufficiency to safeguard food security

Increasing self-sufficiency in protein and dairy fits in with Beijing’s “dual circulation” development strategy and food security aim which seek greater self-reliance, including in agricultural production, to reduce external uncertainties.

Higher grain demand to feed China’s livestock

To achieve the self-sufficiency targets in protein, China will likely increase its animal feed. Currently, China holds significant quantities of the world’s grain reserves. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, by mid-2022, China is expected to have 69 percent of the world’s maize (corn) reserves and 37 percent of its soybeans. As an official from China’s National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration noted recently, supply in the domestic grain market is “fully guaranteed” while grain reserves are at a “historical high level”.

China’s push for greater self-sufficiency in protein and dairy may result in even greater imports of grains, potentially resulting in higher global food prices and China controlling a greater share of the global livestock feed. However, the Chinese central authorities are further encouraging domestic production through a new grain security law, annual grain production targets, planting acreage targets, and the expansion of growing areas.

Challenges

Aside from outbreaks of African Swine Fever, China is also facing many other pressures, leaving domestic food production unable to maintain current lifestyles and consumption habits. For instance, China is grappling with land, energy, and water insecurity issues. Such concerns are compounded by climate change impacts, extreme weather events, a smaller rural workforce, and shifting demographics. Noting China’s climate change commitments and green agenda, how much water and energy are needed for Chinese farmers to meet these targets? To what extent could the new self-sufficiency targets hinder China from reducing its carbon emissions?

Potential solutions

Cultivated (lab-grown) meat

One potential (partial) solution is the domestic production of cultivated meat. Lab-grown meat aims to overturn traditional animal agriculture by replacing slaughterhouses with laboratories. It could help meet growing consumer demand for meat while avoiding diseases, antibiotics, growth hormones, and greenhouse gases associated with livestock farming.

Despite regulatory approval for the commercial sale of cultivated meat in China having not yet been given, other alternatives (e.g. plant-based meat) are already available in China. Additionally, the inclusion of cultivated meat and “future foods” for the first time in the recently released five-year plan from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs suggests that regulatory approval may soon be granted.

Smart farming and agricultural technology (agtech)

Another potential (partial) solution is smart farming to increase both the quality and quantity of agricultural produce while optimising the human labour required by production. It is already in place in various parts of China, including in Heilongjiang Province, Chongqing Municipality, and Zhejiang Province.

Expanding smart farming practices and agtech would intersect with China’s other major aims, including agricultural modernisation and the national transportation networking planning outline (2021-2035). This may also reduce concerns brought on by the labour shortage while also meeting growing food demands.

Genetically modified (GM) crops

To meet increased demand for animal feed, the Chinese government may consider the commercial planting of GM crops. Although commercialisation has not been approved due to public opposition to GM food. Nonetheless, the country’s top policymakers have urged progress in biotech breeding. Announcements from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs further suggest that China is preparing to allow greater use of GM technology in agriculture.

Achieving greater self-sufficiency in meat and dairy is ambitious and intersects with many of China’s other significant policies. Increasing domestic production and reducing reliance on exporting countries also means that millions of tonnes of meat may be imported by other countries, potentially affecting both global market supplies and prices. However, these self-sufficiency targets may encounter difficulties from external factors, such as the higher cost of fertilisers, which could add to production costs.

Innovative solutions and technological developments in China, including lab-grown meat and other alternative proteins (e.g. insect-based ingredients and plant protein) may also help to satisfy consumers’ growing demand and domestic production. If regulatory approval is granted, China may become the world’s leader in this area, further supporting domestic production by establishing ‘agricultural Silicon Valley hubs’ for research and development. Nonetheless, concerns over the sustainability of innovative solutions and food safety may need to be addressed.

Genevieve Donnellon-May is a research assistant with the Institute of Water Policy (IWP) at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Her work has been published by The Diplomat, Inter-Press Service, and the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum.

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Fostina Kachimera in her maize garden that she planted under irrigation. Since she has started to use irrigation she no longer lives in fear of dry spells. Credit: Esmie Komwa Eneya/IPS

By Esmie Komwa Eneya
BLANTYRE, MALAWI, Feb 9 2022 (IPS)

In the past, the people of Sande Village in Chikwawa district, Malawi, would go to bed with empty stomachs even when the rest of the country harvested bumper yields.

This is because the area in southern Malawi is prone to both floods and drought – making rain-fed agriculture difficult.

One woman farmer, Fostina Kachimera, said that after practising rain-fed agriculture over several years without results, she stopped farming and was just sitting idle because agriculture was her only option for employment.

“When we try to do rain-fed agriculture is either the crops will be swept away by floods or burnt by drought before they even start to produce fruits,” she said.

Chikwawa and Nsanje districts are situated in the Shire River valley.

According to Shire Valley Agriculture Development Division (Shivadd) programme manager Francis Mlewah, the valley has 313 215 hectares of land, but almost half experiences prolonged dry spells.

“In addition to that, its annual rainfall falls between 400 to 1000 mm, and this is below the average annual rainfall needed by most of the crops grown in the country,”  Mlewah says, explaining that optimal rainfall was above 1 200mm.

Then there is flooding.

“One-third of the land is situated along the country’s biggest river, and indeed farmers who cultivate their crops in these areas face floods almost every year,” he explained.

Now, this has become a song of the past because Kachimera and her fellow 259 farmers can now harvest three crops a year through irrigation. This has enabled them to produce enough food for the year and a surplus to sell.

All the farmers had also managed to build substantial houses which withstand floods – unlike in the past when floods often damaged their homes.

The Evangelical Association of Malawi came to their rescue in 2007 and introduced irrigation farming.

“We started as a club, but by 2010 we transformed into a scheme known as Sande.

“When we were starting, we were using water canes to irrigate our crops, but right now we are using water pumps which we purchased through the profits from irrigation farming, and almost every one of us has managed to buy one,” said the scheme’s chairperson Samuel Wise.

Apart from growing maize, the country’s staple food, Wise explained that the system produces different crops such as legumes, tubers, and vegetables.

According to him, the idea is to have diverse foods available to combat malnutrition and fetch reasonable prices on the market.

Once the irrigation started, the families started to live healthy lives.

They no longer lack necessities such as clothes, soap and can pay school fees for their children.

“In the past, transportation was so difficult for us since we could not afford even the cheapest bicycle, but now we have motorbikes that we bought with the farm proceeds,” he said.

Malawi’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Agnes Nkusankhoma recently visited the scheme and praised it.

“Finding the big area like this green is rare especially considering that this is the dry season, and these farmers made this place look like we are in the rainy season.”

Nkusankhoma encouraged them to register in the livestock subsidy program to add to what they are already doing because livestock production does well in these districts.

While the farmers relish their success, they lament the rising fuel prices. The water pumps are reliant on fuel – shrinking their profits.

The community will benefit from the Shire Valley Transformation Programme – a government-led project financed by World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Global Environment Facility.

According to the project’s coordinator, Stanly Chakhumbira, the project put 43 370 hectares under irrigation using gravity to divert water from the river to the canals. Once this is completed, farmers will no longer need to rely on fuel.

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Safeguarding food security has long been a critical priority for the Chinese central government. President Xi’s latest comments and meetings demonstrate continued concerns at the top about China’s food security. Ahead of the 20th National Congress this year and the release of the No 1 policy document, there are already several hints regarding what the Chinese central authorities could prioritise in terms of food security for this year and beyond. Other factors, including the potential influences of gene-edited plants, commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) crops, and of a Russia-Ukraine conflict should also be considered.

Genevieve Donnellon-May

Similarly, the recent Central Rural Work Conference, which usually sets out agricultural and rural development plans and tasks related to “the three rurals” (“三农”) (agriculture, rural areas, and farmers), also emphasised the importance of safeguarding food security and achieving self-sufficiency.

Potential themes in 2022 concerning food security

1. Safeguarding food security
Safeguarding food security will likely remain a key objective as it is needed to ensure social stability and has also been publicly linked to China’s national security by President Xi. Food security is one of the six guarantees (六保) made in April 2020 in response to COVID-19 and changes to the global food supply chains. Recent public comments from China’s top leaders show that importance has not waned and that there is a more significant push to safeguard food security, which will continue in 2022 and beyond. For instance, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tang Renjian, called seeds “the ‘computer chips’ of agriculture” and cultivated land, the “‘lifeblood’ of food production.”.

2. Grain security and increased agricultural production
Grain security has long been a top priority for the central authorities in China. Indeed, “food security” (粮食安全) translates as “grain security” in Chinese. With grain self-sufficiency as the main overarching goal of China’s food security strategy, China has undertaken enormous political and fiscal efforts alongside spatio-temporal changes in China’s grain production patterns to strengthen its grain production. And these efforts have, to some extent, paid off. For instance, between 2003 and 2013, China’s domestic grain production rose from 430 million metric tons to over 600 million metric tons.

To encourage domestic production of grains, the Chinese central authorities have put forward various policies and plans. For instance, in January 2021, the National People’s Congress began drafting a new grain security law. Following this, grain security was also listed in the Chinese central government’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) draft with China aiming to meet an annual grain production target of more than 650 million metric tons. Additionally, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs’ current Five-Year Agricultural Plan (2021-2025) on crop farming, China will stabilise its annual grain output and beat a target of 700 million metric tons by 2025.

Two key areas of grain security in China are soybeans and corn:

A) Soybeans
Soybeans are used in animal food, human food, and industrial products. Meanwhile, soybean oil is the primary edible oil in China, accounting for about 40% of the total oil consumption in the country. Although China is the world’s fourth-biggest soybean grower, the country is also the world’s largest soybean importer. Statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs show that over 80% of domestic consumption relies on imports, reaching more than 100 million metric tons in 2021. The imported soybeans are GM and are mainly processed to produce cooking oil and the meal used in animal feed. Locally produced soybeans are non-GM and are primarily used for direct human consumption.

However, China’s reliance on foreign soybeans was viewed as a concern during the Trump-era trade war. China is likely to reduce its reliance on soybean imports by increasing domestic production to encourage self-sufficiency. In December 2021, Premier Li said that significant efforts must be undertaken to stabilise grain acreage and increase the production of soybeans and other oil crops. Following this, last month the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs announced China’s new 14th Five-Year Plan on crop farming. As part of this plan, by the end of 2025 China wants to have produced approximately 23 million tonnes of soybeans, up 40% from current output levels.

B) Corn
Although China is the world’s largest grower of corn by area, its total production falls short of its needs. In 2021, the country had to import more than 28 million tons of corn in 2021, up 152% from an annual record of 11.3 million tonnes in 2020. Most corn imports came from the US, Argentina, Brazil, and Ukraine.

Nonetheless, Beijing may continue to diversify its import sources of corn and encourage domestic production, where possible, to ensure a stable supply. Having launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, China’s interest in diversifying corn imports has grown. Before the launch of the BRI, the United States of America (US) was China’s biggest supplier of corn and accounted for almost all Chinese imports of corn. Nonetheless, this had changed by 2019 when Ukraine became China’s biggest supplier of corn, making up over 80% of corn imports in China for that year.

The implications of a Ukraine-Russia conflict
An external factor to consider is the current tensions between Ukraine and Russia. Much of Ukraine’s most fertile agricultural land is in its eastern regions, which are also vulnerable to a potential Russian attack. In the case of a Russian incursion or land grab, the flow of goods from Ukraine would likely be impacted, including Ukraine’s agricultural exports. As a major grain exporter (e.g. corn, wheat, and rye), Ukraine plays a crucial role in feeding populations worldwide. The implications of a Russian attack may well extend into the countries and regions that depend on Ukraine for food, exacerbating social and political instability as well as leading to food insecurity.

Genetically modified crops – game-changers?
Although China was the first country to grow GM crops commercially, commercialisation has not gone ahead, partly due to significant public opposition to GM food. However, recent moves from the Chinese government suggest that China will, at some stage, approve new regulations to allow the planting of GM seeds to boost the domestic production of these crops.

Announcements from China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs suggest that China is preparing to allow greater use of GM technology in agriculture and also support domestic biotech companies. Recently, the ministry published draft rules outlying registration requirements for herbicides used on GM crops, announced plans to approve the safety of more GM corn varieties produced by domestic companies, and announced plans to approve the safety of more GM corn varieties produced by domestic companies.

Gene-edited plants – another gamechanger?
China is also interested in gene-edited plants. In January this year, the Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs China published trial rules for the approval of gene-edited plants, paving the way for faster improvements to crops. Taking into account some of the many pressures China and other countries face, including water quality and quantity issues and climate change impacts alongside urbanisation and shifting demographics, China may also encourage the development of “climate-smart” seeds to help increase domestic production.

At present, the full socio-economic and environmental implications of China’s push to strengthen domestic production, of soybeans and corn, remain unclear. Questions may be asked about China’s climate change commitments, green agenda, and food security. How much water and energy are needed for Chinese farmers to meet these targets? With President Xi having promised that the country will reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, how could this impact China’s ambitions of increased domestic soybean and corn productions, while simultaneously trying to satisfy China’s food demand and ensuring that the country’s agricultural systems are environmentally efficient?

Genevieve Donnellon-May is a research assistant with the Institute of Water Policy (IWP) at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include China, Africa, transboundary governance, and the food-energy-water nexus. Genevieve’s work has been published by The Diplomat and the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum.

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Zimbabwe’s smallholder farmers are reliant on rain, which impacts the country’s food security efforts. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
Bulawayo, ZIMBABWE , Feb 1 2022 (IPS)

On January 10, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) arrested three men found with fertilizer worth about 130,000 US dollars.

The “loot” was identified as part of inputs provided by the government to smallholder farmers in the country’s efforts to boost food security.

The case was one of many that exposed the dilemma of the country’s food security efforts. The multi-million dollar government-financed scheme that provides seeds and fertilizer to smallholder farmers has fallen short in aiding food production.

The abuse of farming inputs has been a thorn on the government’s side, with officials seeing it as deliberate sabotage of the country’s ambitions to feed itself. At the same time, analysts contend that such government schemes are open to abuse by well-connected individuals.

In recent years, Zimbabwe has redoubled its efforts to boost the production of the staple maize, with the government last year aiming to provide 1,8 million rural households with maize seed and fertilizer.

The bulk of the southern African country’s maize production – up to 70 percent – comes from rural smallholder farmers, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), but it is also here where widespread poverty is rife, with the World Bank noting that almost 8 million people in Zimbabwe earn under USD1 per day.

Such conditions, analysts note, have led to the diversion of farming inputs for reselling, effectively slowing the country’s efforts to feed itself.

During the 2020-21 season, Zimbabwe produced 2.7 million tonnes of maize, triple the previous year thanks to above-normal rains, yet concerns remain about maintaining production levels.

“As the painful experience of the past 20 years since the land reform has shown so clearly, such gains are not necessarily sustained,” said Ian Scoones, an academic and researcher at the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies. He has written widely about agriculture in Zimbabwe.

This 2021-22 season, climate uncertainty has seen many farmers delaying planting as they keep waiting for the rain. The agriculture ministry reported early January that the country had missed its target of 2 million hectares of maize.

According to the ministry, only about 1 million hectares had been planted at the beginning of the year. Under the Agriculture and Food System Transformation Strategy, Zimbabwe targets 8 billion US dollars for agriculture production by 2025.

Grain production has fluctuated in the past two decades. For example, during the 2001 cropping season, about 1.5 million hectares were planted, which represented a 15 percent drop from the previous season according to FAO figures.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) noted that Zimbabwe’s 2021-22 maize harvest, which stood at 2.7 million tonnes, was the highest since the 1984-5 season.

These fluctuations highlight the country’s struggle to feed itself.

The USDA says the bumper harvest was due to “favourable weather conditions,” exposing the limits of government maize and seed subsidies in the largely rain-fed sector.

Analysts say it will take more for the country to realize its goals beyond providing inputs to farmers amid other challenges such as climate uncertainty.

“Government will need to provide incentives, such as food crop production quotas, to large scale farmers who tend to specialize on non-food cash crops, which worsens the food security situation,” said Stanley Mbuka, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

“An unstable currency also makes it hard for smallholder farmers to cushion themselves as they sell to the grain marketing board in the local currency, which loses value very quickly,” Mbuka told IPS.

Researchers have also noted that other innovations to encourage farmers to adopt new methods to boost food production, despite showing promise, have been abandoned for, among other reasons, being too labour intensive.

Much of rural agriculture in Zimbabwe is not mechanized and relies on rainwater.

Added to this is a combination of longer-term underlying factors, including macroeconomic challenges, increased occurrence of climatic shocks, COVID-19 pandemic, and the cumulative effects of two consecutive years of drought, says the World Food Programme (WFP).

“To break the cycle of relapses into food crises, stakeholders are increasingly aware that more investments are needed in resilience-building and early warning,” said Maria Gallar, WFP-Zimbabwe spokesperson.

“The chances that smallholder farmers fall into food insecurity repeatedly decrease if they have access to productive assets such as dams,” Gallar told IPS by email.

Despite last year’s above-average maize harvest, the WFP says the latest figures show that more than 5 million people are estimated to be food insecure. This includes 42 percent of the urban population – about 2.4 million people – where the government has promoted urban farming.

“Sustainable change, after so many years of setbacks, will require continued efforts and time,” Gallar said.

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