Sudan’s war risks creating the world’s largest hunger crisis
6/3/2024: Following her visit to South Sudan, the World Food Programme's Executive Director, Cindy McCain, has compared the crisis in the region with the Darfur emergency 20 years ago. Right now, 90 per cent of people facing emergency levels of hunger in Sudan are stuck in areas that are largely inaccessible to food aid because of the relentless violence and interference by the warring parties.
Source: World Food Programme
Rethink the way we grow food
22/2/2024: There is something fundamentally broken in the world’s agricultural system when you see images of rich European farmers and their poorer counterparts in India straddling tractors to block highways to make their anger heard. Producing cheap food without damaging the environment and without generous subsidies is proving too challenging.
Source: DownToEarth
Warning that that hunger catastrophe looms in conflict-hit Sudan
13/12/2023: Nearly 18 million people across Sudan are facing acute hunger, more than double the number at the same time a year ago. Many of these people are cornered in areas where humanitarian access has been intermittent or impossible due to ongoing fighting.
Source: World Food Programme
FAO’s net-zero plan for food systems lacks ambition
11/12/2023: Agrifood systems contribute about one-third of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Experts are concerned that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's road map to 1.5 degrees Celsius calls for marginal changes at a time when wholesale transformation is needed. The road map hardly mentions fossil fuels, upholding a status quo in which global industrialized food systems are highly energy intensive.
Source: Devex
FAO launches roadmap to eradicate hunger within 1.5°C limits
10/12/2023: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has laid the foundation for a roadmap to eliminate hunger within the constraints of the 1.5°C climate threshold. Against the backdrop of a projected 600 million people facing chronic hunger by 2030 and rising greenhouse gas emissions, the roadmap calls for a transformative shift in agrifood systems.
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Financing agro-ecology to cut emissions from food systems
5/12/2023: A policy brief from the Research Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University calls on governments to mobilise finance for the transition to climate-friendly food and farming. This will involve switching subsidies away from fossil-fuel intensive agri-food systems.
Source: Third World Network
Rice export bans are a food crisis risk for Asia
19/9/2023: Global rice prices have risen to a 12-year high since India, the world’s largest rice exporter, embarked on a policy of reducing exports. Across Asia, nations are attempting to control the cereal grain’s prices, sowing the seeds of a potential food crisis
Source: CNA
A plea for a UN summit on the global food crisis
25/8/2023: Launched by Hungry for Action, a coalition of civil society organizations is calling for an emergency meeting of world leaders to address the global food crisis during the UN General Assembly next month. The campaign argues that a combination of conflict, climate change, rising food prices and punishing debt burdens has led to 735 million people going hungry, 122 million more than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Source: Inter Press Service
Does India’s rice market disruption threaten food security?
20/8/2023: The general election in India scheduled for the spring of 2024 has politicians’ eyes focused on stabilising staple food prices, a probable explanation of the rice export ban in July. It is uncertain if India, the current G20 chair, can provide leadership on calming an increasingly turbulent world food economy.
Source: East Asia Forum
We need a new recipe to combat hunger
7/8/2023: The UN has reported that 122 million more people are going hungry than in 2019, erasing years of progress. It’s time to admit that the industrial food system is starving people. Half the calories consumed around the world come from just three staple crops, shipped around the world by a handful of powerful trading firms. This is profitable, but it is not robust.
Source: Inter Press Service