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
2022 Global report on food crisis
4/5/2022: The 2022 annual report of the Global Network Against Food Crises indicates alarming increases in the number of people in the most severe phases of acute food insecurity, recording unprecedented levels of hunger worldwide.
Source: Global Network Against Food Crises
Mixed reaction to Indonesia’s ban on palm oil exports
25/4/2022: The world’s biggest producer of palm oil will ban exports of the commodity from April 28 to address a domestic cooking oil shortage. Economists have criticized the action, noting that similar export bans of other commodities have aggravated global scarcity and rising prices.
Source: Mongabay
Alarm but little action as East Africa faces unprecedented drought
13/4/2022: Farmers and pastoralists in the Horn of Africa are facing an unprecedented fourth drought – a catastrophe that may tip more than 20 million people into extreme hunger. The current level of donor funding is woeful, well below the same stage in the drought years of 2016 and 2017, when famine was narrowly averted.
Source: The New Humanitarian
Spring Meetings will call for urgent action on food security
13/4/2022: Ahead of the Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group, leaders call on the international community to support vulnerable countries with emergency food supplies and grants to cover urgent financing needs. Sharply higher prices for staples and supply shortages are increasing pressure on households worldwide and pushing millions more into poverty.
Source: World Food Programme