Food security now top priority for G20 cooperation
5/6/2022: Many countries have panicked in the face of global food shortages, restricting trade in essential produce in defiance of lessons learned in the 2008 crisis. The G20 summit meeting in Bali in November will be an opportunity to restore global coordination and roll back trade restrictions.
Source: East Asia Forum
Overlapping crises raise risk of famine in six countries
6/6/2022: UN food agencies are concerned that the perfect storm of global crises is undermining relief operations in the world's hunger hotspots. Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia all have areas at risk of the most catastrophic conditions, with up to 750,000 people facing starvation.
Source: UN News
Investors cash in on food commodities as the poor go hungry
2/6/2022: A significant increase in speculative investment in food commodity contracts could see prices decoupling from the fundamentals of supply and demand. Experts have called for measures to protect food systems against speculation. According to the World Bank, every one percentage point increase in food prices pushes 10 million more people into extreme poverty.
Source: DW
Food crisis underscores urgency of system-wide transformation
1/6/2022: International conflicts have been the primary cause of famine during the last half-century. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the World Food Programme reported that 45 million people were on the brink of famine. The global community has a moral imperative to ensure that its response to the current crisis promotes a more resilient food system.
Source: Devex
A global food crisis: shortage amidst plenty
30/5/2022: As India and other countries suspend wheat exports, old policy disagreements from the 2007-2008 food crisis may resurface. Is there a real shortage of food or is the global price increase caused by financial speculators and excessive US subsidies for the use of crops in ethanol production?
Source: Inter Press Service
East Africa and Ukraine: two very different responses
19/5/2022: East Africa faces its second famine in a decade but barely registers in the news. Funds and equipment pour into the war effort in Ukraine whilst only 3% of the total UN 2022 appeal for Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya had been funded to date.
Source: FP2P
Nations must act together to end crisis of food insecurity
18/5/2022: The number of severely food insecure people has doubled to 276 million in just two years, with more than half a million experiencing famine conditions. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that there is no effective solution to the food crisis without reintegrating Ukraine’s food production, as well as the food and fertilizer produced by Russia and Belarus, into world markets.
Source: UN News
World Bank allocates $30 billion to global food crisis
18/5/2022: New financing announced by the World Bank will encourage food and fertilizer production, facilitate trade, and support vulnerable households and producers. The Bank calls on countries to increase the supply of energy and fertilizer, help farmers increase plantings, and remove policies that block exports and imports, divert food to biofuel, or encourage unnecessary storage.
Source: The World Bank
One billion hectares under threat of dryland status
13/5/2022: One billion hectares of land, additional to the 6.1 billion hectares of official drylands, are under threat from unsustainable use. These areas are home to a large number of people who rely on the land for their livelihoods, as well as containing significant biodiversity.
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
No country can afford to ignore desertification
12/5/2022: The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, whose latest conference is under way in Abidjan, has long been the poor relation of environmental conventions. The issue of land degradation needs far more attention if we are to avoid a hungrier, more unstable world.
Source: The Third Pole