Food Production and UN Millennium Development Goals

Food crises are jeopardizing efforts to achieve the United Nations' millennium development goal of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015. According to an annual report on world hunger, food price volatility is likely to continue and perhaps even increase, making poor farmers, consumers and countries more vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity.

Population growth, increasing demand from rapidly growing economies and biofuels will place additional demands on the food system, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad) and the World Food Programme (WFP) said in their joint report.

"Even if the MDG were achieved by 2015, some 600 million people in developing countries would still be undernourished," said UN experts. "Having 600 million people suffering from hunger on a daily basis is never acceptable. The entire international community must act today and act forcefully to banish food insecurity from the planet."

The report emphasized that investment in agriculture, particularly small farmers, remains critical to sustainable, long-term food security. Investment is required in irrigation, improved land-management practices and better seeds developed through agricultural research.

NGOs point out that developed countries have yet to live up to their pledge to invest $22bn in agriculture development. The money was promised at L'Aquila, Italy in 2009, following food crises that triggered riots in 30 countries across three continents.

The report said predictable policies and openness to trade were more effective strategies for governments than export bans and other restrictive policies, which risk increasing volatility and high prices on international markets.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Breaking the Cycle of Famine

The famines in East Africa and elsewhere make food a critical issue in 2011. Small, import-dependent countries, particularly in Africa, are especially at risk, with many of them still facing severe problems following the world food and economic crises of 2006-2008. Much of East Africa is in crisis and the current famine is not its first. In some places this is the worst drought in 60 years. The result is that 13 million people at now risk and 1.8 million people have been displaced in Somalis alone.

Although aid agencies are doing what they can, we need to find better solutions than post hoc assistance. It cost less to avoid a crisis than it does to save lives after famine hits. Experts estimate that emergency relief in famines costs seven times as much as preventing the disaster to begin with.

As journalist Tina Rosenberg wrote in The New York Times earlier this year, "Out of fear, farmers do not try new methods that can bring them higher yields. They cannot take out loans to buy the drought-resistant seeds and tools to bring a bigger harvest, because they cannot be sure of repaying the loans. They need to know they will have money left over to feed their families and plant again should the harvest fail, so they invest less in farming. "

Recognizing this, several years ago Oxfam launched a program in Ethiopia to try to break this cycle, This insurance product is designed to be commercially viable (i.e., risk-based pricing) and to avoid subsidizing premiums as has been done in the past.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Blog Action Day 2011: Food

This year, Blog Action Day is on October 16, which coincides with World Food Day, so the 2011 theme is, quite naturally food. Since its inception in 2007, Blog Action Day themes have included water in 2010 and climate change in 2009. This year, in the short span of just two weeks approximately 1,500 bloggers from 80 countries registered to take part in Blog Action Day, 2011. Because of World Food Day, for Blog Action Day 2011, some bloggers are focusing on devastating famines, while others are addressing the abundance of food that is causing new health problems in the western world.

Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion around an important issue that impacts us all.

The thousands of bloggers addressing the same issue on the same day changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. Out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action.

On the first Blog Action Day in 2007, thousands of bloggers to wrote about the issue of Environment. Thousands of bloggers ran environmental experiments, detailed innovative ideas on creating sustainable practices, and focused on organizations and companies that promote green agendas.

In 2008, Blog Action Day covered the theme of poverty, and similarly focused the blogging community’s energies around discussing the wide breadth of the issue from many perspectives and identifying innovative and unexpected solutions.

In 2009, the conversation around climate change brought together voices around the globe to discuss an issue that threatens us all and mobilized tens of thousands of people to get more involved in the movement for a more sustainable future.

Last year, with the theme of Water, we saw 5,600 bloggers from 143 countries, reaching more than 40 million readers with discussions a broad range of water issues, from river conservation, to the ethics of bottled water, to the increasing privatisation of water access, to the water crisis in Africa, all eager to shed light on this often-overlooked topic.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity

Bono, George Clooney, Jessica Alba, Idris Elba and more unite behind ONE's new campaign to help focus the world's attention again on the famine and food crisis in the Horn of Africa. Click here to find out more.

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