Category Archives: Food security

Kyiv opens Grain from Ukraine scheme to get food to Africa’s poorest countries

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Programme to subsidise exports of grain to poor and hungry countries launched on anniversary of Ukraine’s Holodomor famine

Up to 60 Ukrainian grain ships can be sent by the middle of next year to some of the world’s poorest countries in Africa, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, said in a statement released to the Guardian.

In a move that challenges the Russian narrative that the west’s response to its war on Ukraine has aggravated pre-existing food shortages in Africa, Zelenskiy said ships moving out of the Ukrainian port of Odesa can reach humanitarian hotspots such as Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, but only so long as international funding comes forward to subsidise the grain.

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UK must act over poverty, housing and and equal rights, says UN body

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Human rights council makes more than 300 recommendations, with many coming from less well-off countries

The UK must tackle rising poverty, the United Nations human rights council has said in a report that includes demands from less well-off countries for the British government to act.

Amid worsening financial prospects for millions, the member states of the UN body also demanded action on housing to prevent homelessness, better food security for young children, and equal rights for people with disabilities.

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Russia will rejoin UN grain corridor from Ukraine in humiliating U-turn

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Moscow’s climbdown comes two days after large convoy of ships moved record tonnage despite warnings

The Kremlin has said it will rejoin the UN-administered grain export corridor from Ukraine, after pulling out over the weekend following a drone attack on Russian warships in the port of Sevastopol.

Moscow’s humiliating climbdown came two days after a large convoy of ships moved a record amount of grain in defiance of Russia’s warnings that it would be unsafe without its participation, and after high-level diplomatic contacts between Turkey – one of the guarantors of the scheme with the UN – and Russia.

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‘Overlapping shocks’ are undoing efforts to end hunger in Africa, UN warns

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Urgent aid response needed as climate crisis, Covid, local conflicts and soaring fuel prices push millions more into hunger

• ‘We need urgent help’: Somalis displaced by drought and famine fight to survive

Decades of work to reduce hunger in Africa are being reversed as the continent struggles to cope with conflict, climate crisis and the global economic downturn, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has warned.

About 278 million people in Africa – approximately one-fifth of the total population – went hungry in 2021, an increase of 50 million people since 2019, according to UN figures. Based on current trends, this is projected to rise to 310 million by 2030.

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US launches effort to end hunger by 2030 by expanding benefits and access to healthy foods

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Plan includes multiple ambitious proposals, such as expanding benefits like free school meals and food stamps

The Biden government has launched a new strategy to end hunger in the US by 2030 through the expansion of benefits such as free school meals and food stamps.

One in 10 households struggled to feed their families in 2021 due to poverty – an extraordinary level of food insecurity in the richest country in the world which has barely budged in the past two decades amid deepening economic inequalities and welfare cuts. Of those, children in 274,000 households went hungry, skipped meals or did not eat for entire days because there was not enough money to buy food.

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‘We need your help’: Bishops plead with UK to aid drought-ravaged Horn of Africa

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Open letter from 44 Anglican leaders contrasts ‘generous’ British response to Ukraine with ‘dire need’ still unmet in their countries

Dozens of bishops from drought-ravaged east Africa have appealed to the UK government to urgently get more funding to those in need, warning that Britain’s rapid response to the Ukraine crisis must not come at the expense of lives elsewhere.

As the worst drought for four decades tightens its grip on Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, with millions facing acute hunger, the group of 44 Anglican bishops criticised the international community for not paying attention to early warnings or backing up rhetoric with sufficient funds.

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First ship carrying grain from Ukraine docks on Horn of Africa

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Food experts say shipment is drop in bucket for drought-hit Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia but hope supplies pick up

The first ship carrying grain from Ukraine for people in the hungriest parts of the world has docked at Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, as areas of east Africa are badly affected by deadly drought and conflict.

Food security experts say it is a drop in the bucket for the vast needs in the worst-hit countries of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the country to which the shipment is going. But the flow of Ukrainian grain to other hungry parts of the world is expected to continue, with another ship leaving on Tuesday for Yemen. The UN World Food Programme has said it was working on multiple ships.

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Tigray: almost one in three children under five malnourished, UN says

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Urgent action needed to avert further disaster in war-torn country as funding ‘fast running out’

Nearly one in three children under five in the Ethiopian region of Tigray are malnourished and the UN said urgent action is needed to prevent them from dying.

According to a new emergency assessment carried out by the World Food Programme (WFP), 29% of very young children are suffering from global acute malnutrition (GAM). More than half of pregnant or breastfeeding woman are also malnourished.

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Karnal bunt and khapra beetle: seven threats to Australian biosecurity

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Along with foot-and-mouth disease, there are other pests and diseases that could damage our economy and rural communities

The tiny barbarians are at the gates and Australia’s biosecurity measures have been tested. First, the Covid-19 outbreak demonstrated the ease at which an incursion of a new disease or pest can cause havoc on livelihoods and the Australian economy.

Then foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) spread to Bali, elevating the threat of a virus that hasn’t been here since 1872. FMD is a highly contagious virus and an outbreak would be disastrous for our livestock sector, significantly affecting our ability to export meat, live animals, dairy products and wool.

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Halt use of biofuels to ease food crisis, says green group

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RePlanet calls on EU to ditch organic targets and for governments to lift bans on genetically modified crops

Governments should put a moratorium on the use of biofuels and lift bans on genetic modification of crops, a green campaigning group has urged, in the face of a growing global food crisis that threatens to engulf developing nations.

Ending the EU’s requirement for biofuels alone would free up about a fifth of the potential wheat exports from Ukraine, and even more of its maize exports, enough to make a noticeable difference to stretched food supplies, according to analysis by the campaign group RePlanet.

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Ukraine restores Danube River ports in emergency effort to get grain out

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Soviet-era ports being resuscitated but officials say only way to mitigate global hunger is to end Russia’s Black Sea blockade

Ukraine is restoring and expanding some of its long-decommissioned river ports on the Danube to facilitate the exportation of grain due to Russia’s Black Sea blockade.

Before the war, Ukrainian river ports on the Danube were seldom used, with some of them in complete disrepair. But following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its control of exit routes to the Black Sea , Kyiv is resuscitating its old river harbours in order to avoid the sea blockade and accelerate the exportation of the country’s wheat.

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Lean times for Ghana’s yam traders as cost of living crisis bites

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People are buying less, costs are up, and profits are dwindling for traders at Kaneshi market in Accra

On a quiet stretch amid the sprawling buzz of Kaneshie market in Accra, a group of traders sheltering under canopies from the blazing sun sell yams stacked along the roadside.

Rita Oboh, 32, has worked the spot, or one nearby, since she was six, following in the footsteps of her mother who also traded yams. “My mother lived good, really good,” Oboh says with pride. “She built houses, she looked after everybody, her family, people who relied on her. She was successful.”

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Russia ‘turning wave of food crises into tsunami’ by blocking grain exports

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Germany’s foreign minister says preventing movement of 25m tonnes of supply is ‘using hunger as a weapon of war’

Russia has transformed an existing life-threatening wave of food crises into a tsunami by blocking the export of 25m tonnes of grain from Ukraine’s ports, the Germany’s foreign minister has said.

Speaking at the start of an inter-ministerial food conference in Berlin, a precursor to the G7 meeting in Germany starting this weekend where aid groups will demand a big financial commitment to help Africa, Annalena Baerbock said 345 million people worldwide were currently threatened by food shortages.

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Somalia: ‘The worst humanitarian crisis we’ve ever seen’

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Children starving to death ‘before our eyes’ say aid workers as G7 leaders warned only ‘massive’ and urgent funding will avert famine

Only a “massive” and immediate scaling-up of funds and humanitarian relief can save Somalia from famine, a UN spokesperson has warned, as aid workers report children starving to death “before our eyes” amid rapidly escalating levels of malnutrition.

In a message to G7 leaders who are meeting from Sunday in Germany, Michael Dunford, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) regional director for east Africa, said governments had to donate urgently and generously if there was to be any hope of avoiding catastrophe in the Horn of Africa country.

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‘Marching towards starvation’: UN warns of hell on earth if Ukraine war goes on

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Unprecedented food shortages could spark riots in dozens of countries as Black Sea blockade adds to pressures, says WFP chief

Dozens of countries risk protests, riots and political violence this year as food prices surge around the world, the head of the food-aid branch of the United Nations has warned.

Speaking in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday, David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said the world faced “frightening” shortages that could destabilise countries that depend on wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia.

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US announces plan to build silos on Ukraine border to export grain

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Joe Biden working with European governments to avert global crisis and help lower food prices

Temporary silos will be built along the Ukraine border, including in Poland, in an attempt to help export more grain from the country and avert a global food crisis, Joe Biden has announced.

The US president told a Philadelphia union convention on Tuesday that he was working with European governments on the plan “to help bring down food prices”.

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Millions at risk in South Sudan as Ukraine war forces slashing of aid

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Drastic cuts to World Food Programme assistance will leave people ‘looking death in the face’ unless global donors offer support

The World Food Programme has said it is suspending food aid to 1.7 million people in South Sudan, as the war in Ukraine sucks funding from the world’s crisis-plagued youngest country and causes the price of staples to soar.

The UN’s emergency food assistance agency said it had planned to deliver aid to more than 6 million acutely food-insecure people in South Sudan this year, as it did in 2021, albeit with smaller rations.

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‘You hear bullets, you run’: Congolese refugees stream over Uganda’s border

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As thousands flee the latest fighting in DRC to join 1.5m already in Uganda, the UN’s food aid agency is stretched as never before

The rain will determine what time Uwimana Nsengiyuava gets on the truck to Nyakabande transit centre, where Uganda is hosting 20,000 refugees who, like her, have fled fresh fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Since March, up to 500 refugees a day have been silently streaming into the east African country via Kisoro, a picturesque district in south-west Uganda dotted with endless hills, streams and a lake.

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Lithuania wants naval coalition to lift Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s grain

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Countries affected by loss of crop from Ukraine could help escort ships, says Gabrielius Landsbergis

Lithuania has called for a naval coalition “of the willing” to lift the Russian Black Sea blockade on Ukrainian grain exports.

The Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, proposed the plan during talks with the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, on Monday in London.

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India’s wheat farmers count cost of 40C heat that evokes ‘deserts of Rajasthan’

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The ban on wheat exports highlights the effect a rapidly warming planet has on food security – and livelihoods

It was his buffaloes that he was first worried about. As temperatures in the small village of Baras, deep in the Indian state of Punjab, began to soar to unseasonably hot levels in April, farmer Hardeep Singh Uppal noticed that his two buffaloes, essential for his family’s livelihood, became feverish and unwell.

A few weeks later and the buffaloes now seem fine, flicking their tails leisurely as an icy breeze blows down from an air conditioning unit, a luxury that once sat in Uppal’s parents house but now has been installed in an otherwise run-down cowshed, running all day at great expense. “The vet told me I need to keep them cool in this heatwave otherwise they will die so this is the only way,” said Uppal.

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