Category Archives: Food security

‘Money is worth nothing now’: how Lebanon is finding a future in farming

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With food in short supply and prices rocketing, a wave of new farmers are growing produce on roofs, balconies and beyond

  • All photographs by Jenny Gustafsson

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.

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‘Operation empty plate’: Xi Jinping makes food waste his next target

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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.

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Pandemic has exposed Britain’s vulnerabilities says food policy review

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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.

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‘We had to eat our seeds for planting’: 10 million in Sudan facing food shortages

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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.

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‘Open your eyes’: Yemen on brink of famine again, UN agencies warn

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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.

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‘Rolling emergency’ of locust swarms decimating Africa, Asia and Middle East

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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.

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‘Make noise and don’t panic’: India tries to ward off locust invasion

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Delhi braces for swarm while farmers in badly-hit north play loud music and honk car horns to try to prevent decimation of fields

Residents of Delhi are bracing themselves for a possible invasion of locusts, which have been ravaging areas in the north of the country.

A change in wind direction could save the city, but Dr K L Gurjar, deputy director of the Locust Warning Organisation, has warned residents to be prepared to “make a lot of loud noise so that instead of settling, they keep flying and fly past the city. And don’t panic”.

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‘We can’t turn them away’: the family kitchen fighting lockdown hunger in Zimbabwe

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Samantha Murozoki bartered her jeans and sneakers to stop the food running out, inspiring others to pitch in

It is 7am and hundreds of children have come out on this chilly morning to queue for a plate of porridge.

With makeshift masks covering their faces, the children wait for Samantha Murozoki to start dishing up the warm food into whatever plastic tub, plate, tin cup – or even ripped-off corner of a cardboard box – is presented to her.

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Kenya’s pastoralists face hunger and conflict as locust plague continues

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As herds are devastated and crops destroyed across east Africa, there are fears of violence as competition for grazing increases

Tiampati Leletit had heard tales of massive desert locust swarms darkening Kenya’s horizon. But when they hit his farm the devastation was all too real. They ate everything.

“I have never seen anything like this. When the swarms of locust invaded, they consumed everything and all the vegetation was gone. The livestock had nothing to eat,” says the 32-year-old. In January, he had 80 goats. Today he has four.

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Malnutrition leading cause of death and ill health worldwide – report

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Coronavirus highlights weakness of food and health systems, as Global Nutrition Report finds one in nine of world’s population is hungry

An overhaul of the world’s food and health systems is needed to tackle malnutrition, a “threat multiplier” that is now the leading cause of ill health and deaths globally, according to new analysis.

The Global Nutrition Report 2020 found that most people across the world cannot access or afford healthy food, due to agricultural systems that favour calories over nutrition as well as the ubiquity and low cost of highly processed foods. Inequalities exist across and within countries, it says.

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‘Millions hang by a thread’: extreme global hunger compounded by Covid-19

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Coronavirus ‘potentially catastrophic’ for nations already suffering food insecurity caused by famine, migration and unemployment

The warning from the World Food Programme (WFP) that an extra 265 million people could be pushed into acute food insecurity by Covid-19, almost doubling last year’s total, is based on a complex combination of factors.

WFP’s latest warning underlines the increasing concern among experts in the field that for many the biggest impact will not be the disease, but the hunger hanging off its coat tails.

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‘Race against time’ to prevent famines during coronavirus crisis

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UN calls for international solidarity to ease effects of Covid-19 on food security

Vulnerable parts of the developing world, particularly in Africa, are at risk of sliding into famine as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, while humanitarian relief efforts are being hindered by lockdowns and travel restrictions, according to the UN.

Experts raised the spectre of unrest similar to that seen in 2007-08 when food price rises sparked riots around the world, destabilising fragile states and fuelling conflict in ways that are still being felt. They told the Guardian that the world could still avoid such a crisis, but time was running out.

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Food rations to 1.4 million refugees cut in Uganda due to funding shortfall

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World Food Programme announce 30% relief reduction, as farms and businesses shut in Covid-19 lockdown, fuelling hunger fears

Food rations have been cut to more than 1.4 million vulnerable refugees in Uganda by the World Food Programme (WFP) because of insufficient funds.

Announcing a 30% reduction to the relief food it distributes to refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from neighbouring South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, the WFP in Uganda warned that further cuts could follow.

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Second wave of locusts in east Africa ’20 times worse’, says UN

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UN warns of ‘alarming and unprecedented threat’ to food security and livelihoods in the region

A second wave of desert locusts is threatening east Africa with estimates that it will be 20 times worse then the plague that descended two months ago.

The locusts present “an extremely alarming and unprecedented threat” to food security and livelihoods, according to the UN. A swarm of just more than a third of a square mile can eat the same amount of food in one day as 35,000 people.

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Coronavirus could double number of people going hungry

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Exclusive: multinationals write to G7 and G20 urging leaders to keep borders open to trade and avert global food crisis

Food supplies across the world will be “massively disrupted” by the coronavirus, and unless governments act the number of people suffering chronic hunger could double, some of the world’s biggest food companies have warned.

Unilever, Nestlé and PepsiCo, along with farmers’ organisations, the UN Foundation, academics, and civil society groups, have written to world leaders, calling on them to keep borders open to trade in order to help society’s most vulnerable, and to invest in environmentally sustainable food production.

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‘We will starve’: Zimbabwe’s poor full of misgiving over Covid-19 lockdown

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Unable to access state benefits, food and even running water as the country shuts up shop, people in Harare fear the worst

Nelson Mahunde, 70, trudges along the deserted streets of Harare’s central business district to collect his monthly pension.

In one hand, he clutches a pension letter; with the other, he hold on firmly to his walking stick.

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Coronavirus measures could cause global food shortage, UN warns

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Exclusive: Protectionist policies and shortage of workers could see problems start within weeks

Protectionist measures by national governments during the coronavirus crisis could provoke food shortages around the world, the UN’s food body has warned.

Harvests have been good and the outlook for staple crops is promising, but a shortage of field workers brought on by the virus crisis and a move towards protectionism – tariffs and export bans – mean problems could quickly appear in the coming weeks, Maximo Torero, chief economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, told the Guardian.

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Locust crisis poses a danger to millions, forecasters warn

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Experts fear swarms like those seen in Africa will become more common as tropical storms create favourable breeding conditions

The locust crisis that has now reached 10 countries could carry on to endanger millions more people, forecasters have said.

Climate change created unprecedented conditions for the locusts to breed in the usually barren desert of the Arabian gulf, according to experts, and the insects were then able to spread through Yemen, where civil war has devastated the ability to control locust populations.

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UN under fire over choice of ‘corporate puppet’ as envoy at key food summit

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Organisation accused of kowtowing to big business by appointing former Rwandan agriculture minister with links to agro-industry

A global summit on food security is at risk of being dominated by big business at the expense of farmers and social movements, according to the UN’s former food expert.

Olivier De Schutter, the former UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said food security groups around the world had expressed misgivings about the UN food systems summit, which is due to take place in 2021 and could be crucial to making agriculture more sustainable.

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Scientists turn to tech to prevent second wave of locusts in east Africa

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Researchers use supercomputer to predict potential breeding areas as food security fears grow

Scientists monitoring the movements of the worst locust outbreak in Kenya in 70 years are hopeful that a new tracking programme they will be able to prevent a second surge of the crop-ravaging insects.

The UN has described the locust outbreak in the Horn of Africa, and the widespread breeding of the insects in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia that has followed, as “extremely alarming”.

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