Category Archives: Food security

The Indian state where farmers sow the seeds of death

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Cancer rates are the highest in the country, drug addiction is rife, and 900 farmers have killed themselves in two years. How did Punjab turn toxic?

The road to Langroya village weaves its way through fields rich with crops that offer a vivid snapshot of India’s kitchens. There is wheat, rice, sugarcane, maize, mustard seed and a rich variety of vegetables that have made this corner of the country India’s most important agricultural region.

Like the majority of their compatriots in Punjab, Langroya’s residents rely on farming for their existence. About three-quarters of the state’s 30 million-strong population is involved in agriculture, with wheat the number one commodity. But while Punjab is known as “India’s bread basket”, there are challenges amid the abundance.

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Yemen’s Houthi rebels accused of diverting food aid from hungry

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Head of UN’s World Food Programme threatens suspension of food aid if safe delivery not assured

The head of the United Nations food agency has accused Yemen’s Houthi rebels of diverting food from the country’s hungriest people and threatened to suspend food aid.

David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), said the agency had found “serious evidence” that food supplies had been diverted in the capital, Sana’a and other Houthi-controlled areas in the country, which is in the midst of a four-year civil war. He called on the Houthis to implement agreements that would allow the UN agency to operate independently.

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Two million people at risk of starvation as drought returns to Somalia

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Agencies sound the alarm over ‘climate crisis’ after devastation of crops and livestock

More than 2 million people could face starvation by the end of the summer, unless there are urgent efforts to respond to the drought in Somalia.

Mark Lowcock, the UN’s humanitarian chief, said the country is facing one of the driest rainy seasons in more than three decades, and a “rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation”.

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Nearly half of all child deaths in Africa stem from hunger, study shows

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Almost 60 million children deprived of food despite continent’s economic growth, in what is ‘fundamentally a political problem’

One in three African children are stunted and hunger accounts for almost half of all child deaths across the continent, an Addis Ababa-based thinktank has warned.

In an urgent call for action, a study by the African Child Policy Forum said that nearly 60 million children in Africa do not have enough food despite the continent’s economic growth in recent years.

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Childish Gambino choreographer urges fans to step up for young rural Africans

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Sherrie Silver, who was behind acclaimed video This is America, launches virtual dance ‘petition’ to promote investment in farming

She made a name for herself as the choreographer behind one of the most controversial yet critically acclaimed music videos of last year.

Now Sherrie Silver, the creative force behind the dance moves in Childish Gambino’s This Is America, is using her success to drive a social media campaign promoting investment in young people in rural Africa.

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Cyclone Idai: ‘My family needs to eat, I don’t know how we will survive’

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In Mozambique, where many people rely on crops to live, Idai’s impact on two key agricultural areas has been devastating

Marie Jose stares out at her field of broken maize stalks, the cobs yellow and mouldy from days of excessive water followed by weeks of extreme sun. She should have harvested them last month, but Cyclone Idai struck her village in Buzi district, in central Mozambique, and destroyed them all.

She is still dealing with the trauma of losing her grandparents and niece to the tropical storm. “They couldn’t hold on in the trees where we were sitting and the wind pushed them into the water,” she says. Their bodies are still missing.

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‘I don’t know how my children will survive’: Zimbabwe in crisis | Nyasha Chingono

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Cyclone Idai washed away the crops that survived a savage drought, leaving 70% of the population in dire need of food

Mutemarare, 61, walks through his corn field, desperately looking for remnants of maize.

He’s not expecting to find any, as most of his crop wilted before reaching maturity, the result of the devastating drought that has hit Zimbabwe.

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US-China soy trade war could destroy 13 million hectares of rainforest

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Study suggests Brazil likely to rush to fill China’s sudden soy shortfall by boosting farming

The Amazon rainforest could be the greatest casualty of the trade war between the United States and China, warns a new study showing how deforestation pressures have surged as a result of the geopolitical jolt in global soy markets.

Up to 13m hectares of forest and savannah – an area the size of Greece – would have to be cleared if Brazil and other exporters were to fill the huge shortfall in soy supply to China that has suddenly appeared since Donald Trump imposed hefty tariffs, according to the paper published in Nature.

US exports of the commodity, primarily used to feed livestock, to China plummeted by 50% last year, which the authors say is an unusually sharp level of decline between two trading partners outside wartime.

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‘The country could fall apart’: drought and despair in Afghanistan

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As a funding appeal languishes, conflict, poverty and the worst drought for a decade have left millions facing desperate hunger

Shafiqa watches closely over her six-month-old niece. Lying on a bundle of fabric, Maryam’s legs jut out, thin and pale. When they arrived at hospital two weeks ago, she could hardly breathe. Her body was swollen with malnutrition, her lips and fingers were blue.

There are 24 children being treated at Mofleh paediatric hospital’s malnutrition ward, on the outskirts of Herat city, western Afghanistan. Mothers and aunts lean next to hospital beds, some rocking tiny babies back and forth.

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World’s food supply under ‘severe threat’ from loss of biodiversity

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Plants, insects and organisms crucial to food production in steep decline, says UN

The world’s capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity, according to the first UN study of the plants, animals and micro-organisms that help to put meals on our plates.

The stark warning was issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after scientists found evidence the natural support systems that underpin the human diet are deteriorating around the world as farms, cities and factories gobble up land and pump out chemicals.

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The miracle method for sustainable rice that scientists dismissed | John Vidal

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A technique developed by a Jesuit priest is producing bigger harvests – and reducing emissions of a crop responsible for 1.5% of greenhouse gases

The fragrant jasmine rice growing on the left side of Kreaougkra Junpeng’s five-acre field stands nearly five feet tall.

Each plant has 15 or more tillers, or stalks, and the grains hang heavy from them. The Thai farmer says this will be his best-ever harvest in 30 years and he will reap it four weeks earlier than usual.

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