The system would also have very little impact on the environment, in contrast to livestock farming, scientists say
Combining solar power and microbes could produce 10 times more protein than crops such as soya beans, according to a new study.
The system would also have very little impact on the environment, the researchers said, in stark contrast to livestock farming which results in huge amounts of climate-heating gases as well as water pollution.
Continue reading...Poor families cannot afford healthcare and schooling but good harvests offer some hope, World Bank finds
The number of Zimbabweans in extreme poverty has reached 7.9 million as the pandemic has delivered another economic shock to the country.
According to the World Bank’s economic and social update report, almost half of Zimbabwe’s population fell into extreme poverty between 2011 and last year, with children bearing the brunt of the misery.
Continue reading...Open letter backing UN call to action says Covid has exacerbated problems of conflict, climate crisis and inequality
World leaders are being urged to act immediately to stop multiple famines breaking out, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and caused by conflict, climate crisis and inequality.
In an open letter published on Tuesday to support the UN Call for Action to Avert Famine in 2021, hundreds of aid organisations from around the world said: “People are not starving – they are being starved.”
Continue reading...The pandemic, climate crisis and conflict combining to drive ‘alarming’ levels of global hunger, says report
Acute hunger is likely to soar in more than 20 countries in the next few months, the UN has warned.
Families in pockets of Yemen and South Sudan are already in the grip of starvation, according to a report on hunger hotspots published by the agency’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP).
Continue reading...Dr Agnes Kalibata responds to a report on the 2021 summit that she is leading as a special envoy for the UN secretary general
As you note in your article (Farmers and rights groups boycott food summit over big business links, 4 March), farmers have for too long been on the fringes of global discussions about hunger, poverty and climate change, despite being the frontline of our food systems and the custodians of our natural resources.
The UN food systems summit marks a momentous opportunity for farmers, producers and many others who support them to be at the heart of the year-long consultative process that has been launched to improve our shared food system.
Continue reading...Focus on agro-business rather than ecology has split groups invited to planned UN conference on hunger
An international food summit to address growing hunger and diet-related disease is in disarray as hundreds of farmers’ and human rights groups are planning a boycott.
Related: 'A shame for the world': Uganda's fragile forest ecosystem destroyed for sugar
Continue reading...We can rise to the challenge of a green, resilient and inclusive recovery from Covid, but only if critical changes are made
The numbers are well-publicised but bear repeating. Around 120 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020, a number that could rise to 150 million in 2021. An estimated 250 million jobs have been lost around the world, and the number of people affected by acute food insecurity was estimated to have doubled to 272 million by the end of last year. A decade of progress in the most fragile countries wiped out.
Let’s put a human dimension on these numbers. More than a billion children have been out of school during the Covid-19 pandemic, and girls are much less likely to return to the classroom.
Continue reading...Natural disaster compounded by the collapse of a lucrative export during the pandemic has thrust people into poverty
This time last year the west coast of Bangladesh was a thriving place for shrimp farmers. It was a decent enough living and there was a healthy export market.
Majnu Sardar, who lives in Koyra upazila (administrative region) in Khulna district, used to earn enough to feed, clothe and educate his family of six. Now they are living in a small mud hut, with a canopy of leaves as a roof, on the banks of the Kapotaksha River after Cyclone Amphan buried his house and land in May.
Continue reading...Exposure to the heavy metal from spice powders and car batteries is affecting child health across the subcontinent
An outbreak of a mystery illness over two days in early December in the south Indian city of Eluru saw more than 560 people hospitalised, most of them children, and baffled doctors. Symptoms were described as being similar to epilepsy, with convulsions and vomiting accompanied by burning eyes and loss of consciousness.
Recovery tended to be quick although the death of one man was attributed to the illness. In the midst of the Covid pandemic theories circulated that it was caused by too much disinfectant or vegetables washed in chlorine. Local traders saw sales slump.
Continue reading...Urgent alert issued over millions struggling with ‘catastophic levels’ of hunger as less than half of required aid received
The window to prevent the return of famine to Yemen is rapidly closing, UN agencies have warned, with a new assessment showing millions could head further into hunger in the coming months.
The alert came as a World Health Organization food security assessment showed thousands of people are slipping into famine – a number that is predicted to triple in the first half of next year – while millions more have seen declining access to food.
Continue reading...Food security crisis means acute malnutrition among under-fives at highest levels since war engulfed the country
Almost 100,000 children under the age of five are at risk of dying in Yemen as the country slides back into a hunger crisis.
An analysis by UN agencies says the coronavirus pandemic, economic problems and conflict have led to the highest levels of malnutrition ever recorded in parts of the country.
Continue reading...Rural women in Tamil Nadu are mostly excluded from land ownership, but collective farms can offer self-sufficiency
When all the shops closed due to the coronavirus lockdown, small collectives were key to remaining self-sufficient for marginalised farmers in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu.
“We had sufficient grains and vegetables at home, while others in the village were seeking government support,” says 46-year-old Poongani, one of the widowed Dalit women among the nine members of the Sivanthi Poo farming collective in the village of Thottampatti.
Continue reading...During South Africa’s strict lockdown, groups of activists decided to distribute parcels of vegetables as wells as seedlings and gardening materials as well as to hundreds of vulnerable households
Photographs by Miora Rajaonary
Race against time to save plants and fungi that underpin life on Earth, global data shows
Two in five of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction as a result of the destruction of the natural world, according to an international report.
Plants and fungi underpin life on Earth, but the scientists said they were now in a race against time to find and identify species before they were lost.
Continue reading...With food in short supply and prices rocketing, a wave of new farmers are growing produce on roofs, balconies and beyond
On the side of the Baanoub valley in southern Lebanon, half an hour’s drive from the coast, Yasmina Zahar stands surrounded by olive trees with thick, sturdy trunks. Planted in Roman times, once tended by monks, they are now cared for by Zahar and her husband, Jean-Pierre, who also grow vegetables, fruit and flowers.
“It’s beautiful to see the result of what you produce, to hold it in your hands and taste it,” she says.
Continue reading...Restaurant diners told to order one dish less than number of people under new system criticised as overly controlling
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has launched a campaign targeting a new enemy of the country: food waste.
“Waste is shameful and thriftiness is honourable,” Xi said in a speech published on Tuesday, describing the amount of food that goes to waste in the country as “shocking and distressing”, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
Continue reading...Henry Dimbleby’s national food strategy starts with review of ‘slow-motion disaster’ diet, poverty, and post-Brexit laws
It is a year since Michael Gove asked the businessman Henry Dimbleby to produce a national food strategy. In that time the coronavirus pandemic has brutally exposed the cracks in the British food system so the launch of part one of his review this Wednesday comes in a new and urgent context.
After only a few weeks of lockdown three million people in Britain were in households where someone was forced to skip meals and go hungry.
Continue reading...UN warns coronavirus restrictions prevent access to most vulnerable and rising prices are leaving many going hungry
Almost a quarter of the population of Sudan are going hungry as conflict, rising food prices and the coronavirus take their toll.
About 9.6 million people now face severe food shortages, the highest number recorded in the country’s recent history.
Continue reading...Millions face devastating hunger if relief efforts are not stepped up in a country ravaged by war, locusts and now Covid-19
Yemen is in danger of an imminent return to devastating levels of hunger and food insecurity, according to new analysis released by UN agencies.
The World Food Programme (WFP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Unicef say that the percentage of the population predicted to face acute food insecurity in southern areas of the country will rise from 25% to 40% by the end of the year.
Continue reading...Unseasonal rains have allowed desert pests to breed rapidly and spread across vast distances leaving devastation in their wake
Locust swarms threaten a “rolling emergency” that could endanger harvests and food security across parts of Africa and Asia for the rest of the year, experts warn.
An initial infestation of locusts in December was expected to die out during the current dry season. But unseasonal rains have allowed several generations of locust to breed, resulting in new swarms forming.
Continue reading...