Category Archives: Food security

Covid pandemic made poorest countries even worse off, World Bank warns

Posted on by

Poverty reduction drive all but halted across many nations as Bank calls for more money to tackle a ‘great reversal’

The devastating impact of the pandemic on the world’s poorest countries has brought poverty reduction to a halt and led to a widening income gap with nations in the rich west, the World Bank has warned.

In a report released to coincide with its half-yearly meeting, the Washington-based organisation said half of the world’s 75 poorest nations had seen income per head rise more slowly than in developed countries over the past five years.

Continue reading...

Onions sell for 50 times usual price in Gaza as Palestinians scramble for food

Posted on by

Reports of exorbitant cost of basic vegetables, as well as oil and flour, come amid warnings that Gaza is on the verge of famine

People living in Gaza are facing exorbitant food prices as more than 1 million residents of the Palestinian territory face famine.

Since Israel’s invasion in October, it has become common for Gaza’s displaced population to share pictures of their shopping baskets and document how high prices have risen amid food shortages.

Continue reading...

Seven times size of Manhattan: the African tree-planting project making a difference

Posted on by

Thousands of farmers have been persuaded by TREES scheme to replace barren monocultures with biodiverse forest gardens

In a world of monoculture cash crops, an innovative African project is persuading farmers to plant biodiverse forest gardens that feed the family, protect the soil and expand tree cover.

Could Trees for the Future (TREES) be a rare example of a mass reforestation campaign that actually works? The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) certainly thinks so and last month awarded it the status of World Restoration Flagship.

Continue reading...

Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians, UN rights expert says

Posted on by

Exclusive: UN special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri says denial of food is war crime and constitutes ‘a situation of genocide’

Israel is intentionally starving Palestinians and should be held accountable for war crimes – and genocide, according to the UN’s leading expert on the right to food.

Hunger and severe malnutrition are widespread in the Gaza Strip, where about 2.2 million Palestinians are facing severe shortages resulting from Israel destroying food supplies and severely restricting the flow of food, medicines and other humanitarian supplies. Aid trucks and Palestinians waiting for humanitarian relief have come under Israeli fire.

Continue reading...

We must act on Ethiopia food crisis, says UK minister

Posted on by

Andrew Mitchell warns of ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ triggered by El Niño-driven drought and conflict

The risk of a humanitarian catastrophe in northern Ethiopia is growing, Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s Africa minister, said on his return from a two-day trip to the region.

“We have an opportunity to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in its tracks. But we must act and act now,” Mitchell said on Monday.

The country is suffering from the impacts of long-term El Niño-driven drought and brutal conflict, including the two-year war in the northern region of Tigray that ended in November 2022.

Continue reading...

US-UK airstrikes force aid agencies to suspend operations in Yemen

Posted on by

Charities warns of ‘dire’ outcome for the impoverished country, where two-thirds of the population already relies on aid to survive

Aid agencies have begun suspending vital operations in Yemen after the recent US and UK strikes on Houthi targets, amid warnings that further military intervention risks deepening one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

A coalition of 23 aid organisations operating within the Gulf state issued a joint statement on Tuesday, warning that military escalation will further compromise their ability to deliver critical services while worsening living conditions for millions of people in Yemen.

Continue reading...

Africa’s ‘optimist-in-chief’ on the continent’s renaissance: ‘Don’t just believe me, believe the data’

Posted on by

In an exclusive interview, Akinwumi Adesina, head of the African Development Bank, says the outlook is good for a continent with the workers of the future and the best investment opportunities

Africa holds the future workforce for the ageing economies of the west, according to one of the continent’s leading financial figures, who also said it was time to ditch the myths around corruption and risk.

In an exclusive interview before this weekend’s World Bank meetings in Morocco, Akinwumi Adesina said there was a resurgence of belief in Africa’s economic prospects and attacked negative stereotyping, adding that there was “every reason to be optimistic”.

Continue reading...

Pakistan in uproar as protests over soaring energy prices turn violent

Posted on by

Traders close shops, electricity bills are set alight and utility firm staff are attacked as anger rises over living costs and political strife

Protests against rising electricity and petrol prices have rocked Pakistan over the past week, with thousands taking to city streets and setting their electricity bills alight.

The cost of electricity has doubled in the last three months to about 50 rupees (12p) a kilowatt. Petrol prices have shot up from 262 rupees a litre in June to 305 rupees this month.

Continue reading...

No sign of Black Sea grain breakthrough after Erdoğan-Putin talks

Posted on by

Turkish and Russian leaders hold talks as Moscow continues to attack Ukrainian grain-exporting ports

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has concluded face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin by claiming a deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea could be revived.

But there was no evidence of a breakthrough as the Russian leader again accused the west of reneging on promises.

Continue reading...

‘Dire crisis for children’ in Sudan, aid groups warn as millions more go hungry

Posted on by

Up to 17,000 more children a day lack food, Save the Children say, as global indifference to humanitarian crisis condemned as ‘racist’

The past four months of fighting in Sudan has pushed millions into food insecurity – with an additional 1.5 million children expected to fall into crisis levels of hunger by September – as aid agencies say they are struggling to reach people.

Up to 17,000 children a day have been falling into crisis levels of hunger, Save the Children warned on Tuesday. With 4 million people displaced so far, the charity said more people were facing hunger in Sudan than at any point since records there began in 2012.

Continue reading...

Global heating likely to hit world food supply before 1.5C, says UN expert

Posted on by

Water scarcity threatening agriculture faster than expected, warns Cop15 desertification president

The world is likely to face major disruption to food supplies well before temperatures rise by the 1.5C target, the president of the UN’s desertification conference has warned, as the impacts of the climate crisis combine with water scarcity and poor farming practices to threaten global agriculture.

Alain-Richard Donwahi, a former Ivory Coast defence minister who led last year’s UN Cop15 summit on desertification, said the effects of drought were taking hold more rapidly than expected.

Continue reading...

Turning food into a weapon: how Russia resorted to one of the oldest forms of warfare

Posted on by

With Russia blockading Ukraine’s eastern ports, an alternative route to the west is possible but faces serious problems

After failing to conquer Ukraine by conventional means, Russia tried an energy war, trying to hobble the power grid and freeze the nation into submission. Now it has launched a food war.

The mining of the Kakhovka dam in June threatens to turn southern Ukrainian farmland into a dustbowl. Since Moscow pulled out of an UN-brokered deal to allow Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea last month, it has announced a naval blockade of the country’s ports, and directly targeted food (destroying 220,000 tonnes of cereals awaiting export in silos) on the sea coast but also inland with attacks over the past two weeks on the Danube ports of Reni and Izmail.

Continue reading...

Vladimir Putin aiming for ‘global catastrophe’, says Volodymyr Zelenskiy

Posted on by

Russian drone attacks hit Ukrainian port, halting loading of ships for food exports and causing spike in grain prices

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has accused Vladimir Putin of trying to trigger a “global catastrophe” and the collapse of global food markets after Russian night strikes against a grain silo and loading facilities at an inland port on the Danube river.

Drone attacks early on Wednesday hit Izmail, Ukraine’s main inland port which is across the Danube from Romania, triggering a spike in global grain prices. Several buildings in Izmail were destroyed, halting the loading of ships that were being used to sidestep a de facto blockade on Ukrainian food exports Russia imposed in mid-July, when Moscow left a UN-brokered grain export arrangement and started targeting Ukrainian grain storage and export infrastructure.

Continue reading...

Russia says decision not to extend Black Sea grain deal is final

Posted on by

No more talks planned, says official, despite Turkish leader expressing hope of progress at UN meeting

The UN secretary general, António Guterres has said he deeply regrets Russia’s decision to terminate the Black Sea grain deal, saying hundreds of millions of people facing hunger as well as hard-pressed consumers will pay the price for the Kremlin’s move.

The deal was designed to alleviate a food crisis sparked by a Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports that had frozen millions of tonnes of grain exports around the world, much of it to developing countries.

Continue reading...

Maps show how Kakhovka dam collapse threatens Ukraine’s bread basket

Posted on by

Falling water levels in Kakhovka reservoir could imperil canals that feed some vital crop regions

The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam has led to fears that a depleted reservoir will leave three critical regions in Ukraine’s bread basket without a key water supply.

This has led to warnings about the region and wider world’s food supply, with Ukraine accounting for 40% of global trade in sunflower meal, 35% of sunflower oil, and 5% of wheat, barley and corn exports.

Continue reading...

No 10 food summit ‘no more than a PR stunt’ and failed to tackle key issues

Posted on by

Rishi Sunak’s Farm to Fork meeting, the first of its kind, failed to address solutions to inflation, soaring costs and food security, say attenders

Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street food summit has been described as “empty" by food and farming industry representatives, who rounded on the prime minister for failing to discuss soaring inflation or set out measures to safeguard British food production.

The Farm to Fork summit, the first meeting of its kind, brought together farmers, food producers and some of Britain’s largest supermarkets.

Continue reading...

UN ready for ‘heartbreaking’ decision to pull out of Afghanistan

Posted on by

Officials say it will leave in May if Taliban cannot be persuaded to let local women work for organisation

The UN is ready to take the “heartbreaking” decision to pull out of Afghanistan in May if it cannot persuade the Taliban to let local women work for the organisation, officials have said.

The warning comes after UN officials spent months negotiating with the group’s leaders in the hope of persuading them to make exceptions to a hardline edict this month barring local women from working for it, according to the head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Achim Steiner.

Continue reading...

Polish farmers threaten to ‘ruin’ Zelenskiy visit amid grain dispute

Posted on by

Grain producers say they are being undercut by tariff-free imports from Ukraine

Polish farmers are threatening to derail a visit to Warsaw by Volodymyr Zelenskiy over claims that Ukrainian grain is flooding their market, in a move that would provide Russia with valuable evidence of a crack in western solidarity.

Ukraine’s president is scheduled to visit Poland’s capital on Wednesday to express his gratitude for the country’s solidarity over the war with Russia, but Polish grain producers are warning they could take to the streets to “ruin” the occasion.

Continue reading...

Drought caused 43,000 ‘excess deaths’ in Somalia last year, half of them young children

Posted on by

New report uncovers tragic scale of climate-led crisis and warns of up to 34,000 more deaths so far this year

A new report released by the Somalian government suggests that far more children died in the country last year due to the ongoing drought than previously realised.

The study estimates that there were 43,000 excess deaths in 2022 in Somalia due to the deepening drought compared with similar droughts in 2017 and 2018.

Continue reading...

South Sudan ‘failed’ by international aid system as food crisis intensifies

Posted on by

Catholic charity Cafod says local NGOs are best placed to respond on the frontline but are being cut out of the process

South Sudan is facing the world’s most severe food insecurity crisis, yet the local groups most effective at delivering aid are not being directly funded, according to a new report.

Only 0.4% of humanitarian funding meant for food is directly channelled towards South Sudanese NGOs, despite them being the most effective at tackling hunger, according to the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod).

Continue reading...