Food security: The West has it, most other places need it badly; World hunger - Two articles

Two articles, on agriculture and world's hunger count.
Agriculture being what it is in every society - a primary means for the tranquility of the people and the prosperity of the nation - why is it so underprioritized among the world's countries?

Excerpt from second article:

The FAO chief also warned that rising numbers of hungry people could spark
political instability, urging world leaders to remember that food riots erupted
in 30 countries last year. "The issue of world food security is an issue of
peace and national security," he told the paper.

Sources found here and here.

Food security still a problem as hunger rises -FAO

By Thin Lei Win

BANGKOK, March 30 (Reuters) - A fall in grain prices has led to the impression that food security is no longer a concern, but the number of people without enough to eat is still rising in a world facing recession, the United Nations said on Monday.

"The level of prices is still 19 percent above the average of 2006 ... so we're still in a period of high prices," Jacques Diouf, director-general of the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), told reporters at a conference in Bangkok.

In addition, recent FAO studies showed that even though prices had fallen in international markets, retail prices in most developing countries had not.

"Not only is the crisis here, but it's been worsened by the financial and economic crisis," Diouf said.

Stocks for cereals were at a 30-year low, and he described the situation as "very fragile".

"We're afraid that if there are any serious climate factors affecting production, we will be back to where we were in 2007. We've seen serious floods in north America and southern Africa," he said.

The FAO estimates that over one billion people in the world will go hungry this year because of the combined effects of the global economic crisis and high food prices.

The number of chronically hungry people has been rising steadily -- by 75 million in 2007 and an estimated 40 million in 2008. By the end of 2008, 963 million people were undernourished, almost two-thirds of them in the Asia-Pacific region.

Diouf said aid needed to be directed back to agriculture.

"The first and foremost important element is the need to invest in agricultural production (to combat hunger), and this would require $30 billion a year," he said.

That sum, enough to help around 500 million small farmers, would have been considered high in the past, but he put it in the context of the trillions of dollars that Western governments had poured into schemes to stimulate their economies.

Between 2006 and 2008, the FAO says, fertiliser prices rose 170 percent and seeds and animal feed by at least 70 percent, putting them out of the reach of small farmers.

Diouf said aid donors needed to ensure agricultural funding went back to the levels of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when 17 percent of overseas development aid went to agriculture, facilitating a "green revolution" in Asia and Latin America.

By this decade, that share had dived to a mere 3 percent. (Reporting by Thin Lei Win; Editing by Alan Raybould)

World's hungry exceed 1 billion, U.N. tells Financial Times

27 Mar 2009

Written by: Megan Rowling
REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman

The global economic crisis has contributed to pushing the number of hungry people in the world above 1 billion for the first time, the head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper.

The credit crunch is exacerbating the impact of soaring food price inflation in 2007 and 2008, which had already boosted the ranks of the chronically hungry from less than 850 million before the food crisis to 963 million by the end of last year.
FAO director Jacques Diouf told the FT on Thursday that number had increased, and "unfortunately, we are already quoting a number of 1 billion people on average for this year".
An FAO spokesperson was unable to confirm the figure, adding that no new official data had been produced since December.
Diouf told the newspaper the financial crisis is worsening the hunger situation through higher unemployment, falling remittances - which many poor people rely on to buy food - and a drop in credit to support agricultural trade. "We are in a very unstable situation," he is quoted as saying.
The double whammy of the food and economic crises has reversed progress in reducing the proportion of the developing world's population who are undernourished. According to the FT, the figure dropped from 20 percent in the early 1990s to 16 percent from 2003-2005, but has now risen again to almost 18 percent.
In his interview with the newspaper, Diouf proposed replacing the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people suffering from hunger by 2015 with a target of "eradicating hunger by 2025".
The FAO chief also warned that rising numbers of hungry people could spark political instability, urging world leaders to remember that food riots erupted in 30 countries last year. "The issue of world food security is an issue of peace and national security," he told the paper.

FOOD SUMMIT?

Earlier this week, the U.N. agency said the heads of Caribbean countries, together with Brazil and Chile, had given their backing to Diouf's proposal for a World Summit on Food Security in November in Rome. The African Union and League of Arab States also support the gathering.
"The Summit should lead to greater coherence in the global governance of world food security," Diouf said in a statement. "It will define how we can improve policies and the structural aspects of the international agricultural system by putting forward lasting political, financial and technical solutions to the problem of food insecurity in the world."
The FAO head has repeatedly called for a new agricultural world order, urging the international community to provide $30 billion annually to improve rural infrastructure and boost agricultural production in developing countries.
"It is only in this way that we will succeed to eradicate hunger and feed a world population that will reach 9 billion in 2050," he said.
Diouf will speak at an Asia-Pacific FAO conference in Bangkok on Monday, focusing on volatile food prices and market uncertainties.
This month, the FAO launched a tool that allows users to track staple food prices on national markets in 55 developing countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Senior economist Liliana Balbi told AlertNet food prices may have dropped on international markets, but the database shows they have fallen much more slowly in poor countries, if at all.

Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.

Agriculture: Holisitic Thinking Put Into Practice & a Cooperative Enterprise [AGRICULTURE], [SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT], [ENVIRONMENT]

Two articles: One a remarkable report about a sustainable agricultural enterprise in India; the other about the success of a cooperative in Malawi.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Women Farmers Ready to Beat Climate Change

By Keya Acharya

Dalit women in Zaheerabad intersperse crops and use farmyard manure with good results. Credit:Keya Acharya/IPS

ZAHEERABAD, Andhra Pradesh, Mar 17 (IPS) - A collective of 5,000 women spread across 75 villages in this arid, interior part of southern India is now offering a chemical-free, non-irrigated, organic agriculture as one method of combating global warming.

Agriculture accounts for 28 percent of Indian greenhouse gas emissions, mainly methane emission from paddy fields and cattle and nitrous oxides from fertilisers. The 2007 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says India's rainfall pattern will be changing disproportionately, with intense rain occurring over fewer days, leading directly to confusion in the agricultural scenario.

Decreased rain in December, January and February implies lesser storage and greater water stress, says the report, while more frequent and prolonged droughts are predicted.

The report cites, as example of impacts, that a 0.5 degrees Celsius rise in temperature will reduce wheat production in India by 0.45 tonnes per hectare.

Research at the School of Environmental Sciences in New Delhi projects crop losses of 10-40 percent by 2100 despite the beneficial effects of higher carbon dioxide on growth, with the dynamics of pests and diseases significantly altered.

Adaptation is both necessary and unavoidable, says the IPCC.

In Zaheerabad, dalit (the broken) women forming the lowest rung of India's stratified society, now demonstrate adaptatation to climate change by following a system of interspersing crops that do not need extra water, chemical inputs or pesticides for production.

The women grow as many as 19 types of indigenous crops to an acre, on arid, degraded lands that they have been regenerated with help from an organisation called the Deccan Development Society (DDS).

DDS, working in this area of India for the last 25 years, has helped these women acquire land through government schemes for 'dalits', and form 'sanghas' or local self-help groups that convene regularly and decide their own courses.

The women plant mostly in October-November, calling up the family's help for 7 days for weeding and 15-20 days for harvesting. Farmyard manure is applied once in two or three years depending on soil conditions.

In Bidakanne village, 50 year-old Samamma, standing in her field, points out the various crops, all without water and chemical inputs, growing in between the rows of sunflowers: linseed, green pea, chick pea, various types of millets, wheat, safflower and legumes.

The sunflower leaves attract pests and its soil depletion is compensated by the legumes which are nitrogen-fixing.

"In my type of cropping, one absorbs and one gives to the soil, while I get all my food requirements of oils, cereals and vegetable greens,'' says Samamma.

Samamma's under-one-acre plot produces, amongst other crops, 150 kg of red 'horsegram', 200 kg of millets and 50 kilos of linseed. She keeps 50 kg of grains and 30 kg of gram and sells the rest in the open market.

The 5,000 women in 75 villages are now in various stages of adopting this method of agriculture.

"In the climate change framework, this system of dryland agriculture has the resilience to withstand all the fallouts of elevated temperatures", says P.V. Satheesh, the director of DDS.

Multiple stresses from global warming in India and the Asian continent are foreseen in water scarcity, groundwater salinity, food insecurity and hunger, loss of livelihoods and problems in downstream agriculture that depend on glacial melts.

The women now run a uniquely evolved system of 'crop financing' and food-distribution that they have mapped out themselves.

Subscription to the Sangha is by a fistful of grain. Those borrowing grains from this community grain bank then pay back five times the borrowed amount in grain.

The collected grains are then sifted for good seed and the rest is either sold in the open market, sold to members in crisis at low rates, or distributed to poor families in the village.

"I check the earheads of grain for good seed", says 55 year old Akkama, seed bank manager in Hulugera village. "It's a system handed down to me from my ancestors." The women have stored over 50 different varieties of seeds from local cereals such as millets, wheat, red gram, linseed and sorghum.

The money collected from open market sales every year is deposited in regular banks and the interest earned from them is used to finance loans for members who again complete the cycle by paying back their loan in grain over five years.

DDS has now involved the women in a monitored system of organic produce that is certified by the global Participatory Guarantee Scheme (PGS)'s Organic India Council.

The method is a system of third party certification by organic growers themselves, initiated in India in 2006 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Indian ministry of agriculture in consultation with farmers and NGOs.

PGS groups are a worldwide phenomenon, operating in countries like the United States, New Zealand, Brazil and France. New initiatives are coming up in Vietnam and South and East Africa.

In Zaheerabad, the organically certified staples and grains are packed and labeled with the PGS certification, taken by a mobile van to be sold in retail to consumers in Hyderabad city 150 kms. Satheesh says the women are swamped with orders.

And yet, these women have come from the poorest rungs of society. Narsamma, 55, says she worked as a labourer 25 years ago, earning a pittance.

She heard about DDS's self-help group in a neighbouring village and approached the organisation for help.

She has now provided education for five children, two of whom work in NGOs, built a new house and bought cattle and land with DDS and government-support.

" Now, when landlords come to me for borrowing seed, now I can laugh,'' says the feisty woman who has traveled to London, Peru, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, talking to local farmers about the ecologically sound agriculture practiced by the women of Zaheerabad.

(END/2009)


AGRICULTURE-MALAWI: Water Makes the Difference


By Pilirani Semu-Banda

Irrigation and cooperative farming have improved the livelihoods for the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society Credit: Pilirani Semu-Banda/IPS

LILONGWE, Mar 20 (IPS) - Water has become the very essence of economic development for a rural community of Ngolowindo, in Malawi’s lake district of Salima, where households are reducing poverty thanks to irrigation.

Ninety percent of Malawi's agriculture is rain-fed but government is now pushing for more diversification into irrigation farming which allows farmers to grow crops even in the dry season and allows for additional harvests.

Taking advantage of the fresh water from Lake Malawi, the people of Ngolowindo are using simple irrigation methods to grow such produce as tomatoes, cabbages, mustard, onions, okra, green pepper, green beans, lettuce and maize on 17 hectares of land.

A vibrant agricultural cooperative, the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society, has since emerged in the area and 159 people are now members. Each individual farmer is allocated a small piece of communal land and assigned a specific crop to grow. The produce is collected into one lot and is put on the market.

Eluby Tsekwe, the cooperative’s chairperson, proudly told IPS that her community has become the largest supplier of fresh produce to the residents of the country’s capital city, Lilongwe.

"We supply all the main supermarkets and individual vendors in the capital city with fresh produce which they sell to residents of the city. We make a substantial sum of money from there and this sustains our livelihoods," she said.

Tsekwe said that members have to be 18 years and above. "We don’t want to get children into the cooperative since we believe they should be in school and not be involved in any type of child labour," said Tsekwe.

For Tsekwe, a single mother of five, the financial benefits of this collective endeavour are evident; all her children, aged between four and 19, are in school. Despite her divorce leaving her alone as head of her household, she is also able to provide three meals every day to all her children in a country where, according to the United Nations, seven out of 10 households typically run out of food before every harvesting season.

Tsekwe has also managed to build a house of bricks with an iron sheet roof and cement floors. "A typical house here is one with mud walls and floors with a grass-thatched roof but I can afford to live better and I am very proud of myself," she said.

But it has not been all rosy for the Ngolowindo project, according to Coordinator of Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society, Mercy Butao.

The cooperative coordinator explains that the agricultural initiative started at Ngolowindo in 1985 as an irrigation scheme and only became a cooperative in 2001. She said the project was initially driven by the government’s departments of water and agriculture through traditional leaders and community members.

"As a scheme, individual farmers worked in their own fields. They could only benefit from communal irrigation systems, but they were each others' competitors when it came to marketing their produce," Butao told IPS. During this time, the maintenance of irrigation structures such as drainage canals and irrigation canals was suffering.

The scheme was turned into a cooperative to improve marketing of the produce and for a more organized management of the project, according to Butao, but this also solved problems of maintenance.

"The farmers applied for funding from the European Union soon after forming the cooperative, and they used the money to upgrade their agricultural skills in irrigation farming and modern ways of crop production," said Butao.

The Ngolowindo farmers have also been trained in marketing fundamentals, financial management, organisation management and agro-processing.

The Cooperation for the Development of Emerging Countries (Cospe), an Italian non-governmental organisation, has also assisted the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society in the constructing irrigation structures and in human resources. Butao, for instance, is an agricultural expert, employed by Cospe since 2002 to provide technical support to the cooperative.

"The Ngolowindo project has grown so much and it is now moving into agro-processing," Butao told IPS. She said in the absence of a processing project, there had been a lot of wastage of produce since the crops being grown are perishables.

"The cooperative has now diversified into the production of tomato juice and tomato sauce," said Butao.

The project has 18 people working in agro-processing, using hand-powered machines to process the agricultural products. "We are yet to make it big in the agro-processing business. Our products are not developed enough to compete on market but we are working hard towards advancing further," said Butao.

The cooperative is also working towards diversifying into livestock farming so as to use excess produce from the farming to feed the animals. "We also want to promote the use of animal manure in our farm," Butao said.

Another member of the cooperative, Ginacio Kamoto, explains that he has benefited a lot from the cooperative. "I am able to provide employment to some people in my area. I employ them as casual labourers to assist me with farming. I employ up to six people per growing season," said Kamoto.

But people like Tsekwe and Kamoto are still the exception in Malawi where up to 65 percent of the 13.1 million people live below the poverty line of less than a dollar per day.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the country is only irrigating 72,000 of 400,000 hectares of irrigable land. The country is yet to fully utilise Lake Malawi, a fresh water length which stretches the length of the country is the ninth largest lake in the world.

(END/2009)



Focus quotation:

"...the following...constitute the fundamental principles for the administration of the affairs of men:
..."Fifth: Special regard must be paid to agriculture. Although it hath been mentioned in the fifth place, unquestionably it precedeth the others."

- Bahá'u'lláh