Sustainable development inseparable from peace, FAO DG

NaijaAgroNet:

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Director-General, Mr. José Graziano Da Silva has said at the ongoing United Nations Climate Conference (COP21) has lamented the increasingly hard meted by hunger and appealed to world leaders to show courage and resilience by opting for changes that promote a safer, fairer and more inclusive world, reports NaijaAgroNet.

He also said that there will be no peace without sustainable development and there will never be sustainable development while people continue to be left behind and while people are suffering from extreme poverty and hunger, stressing "we must demonstrate that we are not afraid" of promoting the changes needed to achieve this.  

Addressing participants in a COP21 High Level Meeting on climate resilience and adaptation, Graziano da Silva pointed out that the launch of  the UN Secretary-General's new “Initiative on Resilience: Anticipate, Absorb, Reshape  (A2R)” aimed at boosting countries' disaster risk reduction efforts.

According to him, climate change "affects all of us, but especially the poorest and hungry people," underscoring how smallholders and family farmers are in the front line.

The most vulnerable, he said, must be helped to adapt to climate change, pointing out that in relation to the agricultural sectors, this requires environmentally sound initiatives that must go hand-in-hand with mitigating climate change impacts.

 

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Zim Vice President appeals for cash to save vulnerables

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The Vice President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa has appealed for cash from development agencies and the private sector to ensure that the vulnerable are not exposed to hunger and starvation, NaijaAgroNet reports.

Nontheless, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Famine Early Warning System Network cautioned that, “the lean season humanitarian assistance is expected to be lower than average due to a challenging funding situation,” while the World Food Programme (WFP) said it will start distributing food at the end of September to recipients who will work on projects including building small dams, repairing roads and starting vegetable gardens.

IolNews quotes WFP information officer, Tinashe Mubaira as saying, “Because of the poor harvest this year, food security levels are deteriorating earlier during the lean season than usual. Consumption coping strategies at the moment are reduction of portion sizes and eating fewer meals. Communities in districts bordering neighbouring countries are crossing over to Mozambique and Zambia for casual labour.”

Recently, villagers in Zimbabwe began to skip meals and foraging for wild fruit as food stocks run out after a poor harvest blamed on drought and controversial land reforms.

A resident ofMusana district northwest of the capital Harare, and a mother of four, RabianChidamba, lamented that nowadays, even if the children complained of hunger, nothing could be done. She went on to say that when the children get hungry between meals they go and look for wild fruit.

“Our harvest came to 10 bags of maize instead of the 30 bags we usually get,” Chidamba decried, saying that normally, she could sell the surplus corn to raise money for her children's school fees among other necessities, but this year's harvest is not enough even to feed her own family.

NaijaAgroNet recalls that Zimbabwe was once a major producer of corn, and became a perennial importer of food in the wake of a fallin agricultural production blamed on President Robert Mugabe's land reforms, which saw the seizure of land from white commercial farmers for redistribution to landless blacks.

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE

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FAO launches digital one-stop-shop, lauds family farmers

NaijaAgroNet:

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Director-General, Jose Graziano da Silva has reiterated that family farmers are crucial allies in the fight against hunger and rural poverty through feeding the community and taking care of the earth, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The Director-General speaking at the launch of a new digital platform that aims to become a "one-stop shop" for information, data and legislation on the sector that produces some 80 per cent of the world's food, NaijaAgroNet gathered, recognized the contributions of family farmers to food security and poverty eradication worldwide.

The new digitized platform would gather information on family farming from all over the world, cutting across public programs, national and regional legislation and academic researches, thus creating an enabling environment for governments to build stronger policies in support of family farmers and farmers’ organisations.

Reiterating this stand, Chief of the Advocacy Unit in FAO's Office for Partnerships, Advocacy and Capacity Development, Francesco Pierri, noted that there was a need to share knowledge on family farming on the different kinds of policies that governments have implemented and the numerous activities of family farmers and their organizations in the field.

“There is a lot of information available on the web, but it's scattered -- we wanted one single access point for all the information out there, for anybody working in this field to use," he said.

The platform NaijaAgroNet learnt, would benefit diverse international entities including governments, family farmers' networks, United Nation agencies, Non Gonvernmental Organisations and research organizations. 

FAO maintained that with governments partnership, through the provision of large portion contents for the platform’s legal database that allows users to browse through a catalogue of family related policies and programmes per country, the UN agency aims at a second phase initiative to also host online policy dialogues after successfully establishing the platform.

Daniel Nsolibe/GEE

 

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Queen Letizia to mobilize government, CS to fight hunger

NaijaAgroNet

The new Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Special Ambassador for Nutrition, Queen Letizia of Spain said she plans to mobilize the will and collective action involving governments, the private sector, civil society, and individuals to eradicate hunger, NaijaAgroNet reports.

As Special Ambassador, Queen Letizia will engage in raising awareness of global hunger challenges and building public support for hunger eradication.

"My task is that of serving the objectives of this United Nations (UN agency) in the most effective way possible," the new Ambassador informed representatives of FAO's members present at the Organization's governing Conference, NaijaAgroNet learnt.

"In this day and age, we have the technical capacity to produce healthy food in sufficient quantities for all. Therefore what we must do is mobilize the will," she said, soliciting for "collective action involving governments, the private sector, civil society, and, of course, individuals. We need everyone on board," she stated.

The appointment was made in recognition of the Queen's personal commitment to building a world free from hunger and malnutrition, and Spain's efforts to promote global food and nutritional security

She added that the agro-food sector should participate in advancing toward these goals "in an active and responsible way, helping raise awareness of the need to support people in living healthy lives free of sickness," NaijaAgroNet gathered.

 Cyriacus Nnaji/ GEE

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Food security: FAO highlights need for strategic cooperation *43.7m undernourished in NENA region

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has highlighted need for strategic regional cooperation in the wake of conflicts, rapid population growth and urbanization, and a heavy reliance on food imports which are posing serious challenges for food security, NaijaAgroNet reports.

A press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet by officials of FAO, indicates that three countries in the region Near East and North Africa (NENA), namely the Algeria, Jordan and Kuwait; have met the hunger component of the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) by halving the proportion of their population experiencing chronic hunger.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that region-wide, the number of undernourished people remains high at nearly 43.7 million, or 10 per cent of the population, while 24.5 per cent of children under five are stunted due to chronic under-nutrition, according to an assessment presented at the start of the organization's  regional conference at the weekend.

Experts also said that micronutrient deficiencies are common in both affluent and less affluent countries, having a number of serious consequences for school enrollment, productivity and public health.

FAO further decried that conflicts and civil strife remained the driving factor for food insecurity in the region in recent years, just as the hotspots include Iraq, Sudan, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Yemen.

In Syria alone, an estimated 6.3 million people are in need of sustained food and agricultural assistance.



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UN launches Int’l Family Farming 2014

NaijaAgroNet:

The United Nations has launched the 2014 International Year of Family Farming to raise awareness on eradication of hunger and preserve natural resources, NaijaAgroNet reports.

NaijaAgroNet note that in both developed and developing countries, over 500 million family farms, defined as farms that rely primarily on family members for labour and management, produce the food that feeds billions of people. In many developing countries family farms represent up to 80 percent of all farm holdings.

The launch of the International Year in New York was attended by UN officials, ambassadors to the UN, government ministers and civil society leaders who will serve as special ambassadors for the year (names listed below).

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva pointed out to  NaijaAgroNet the huge productive potential of family farmers.

"By choosing to celebrate this year, we recognize that family farmers are leading figures in responding to the double urgency the world faces today: improving food security and preserving the natural resources, in line with the Millennium Development Goals, with the debate on the post-2015 development agenda and the Zero Hunger Challenge," Graziano da Silva said.

Speaking on behalf of FAO, which is the lead UN agency for the year, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme, he added:  "Nothing comes closer to the sustainable food production paradigm than family farming. Family farmers usually run non-specialized, diversified agricultural activities that give them a central role in securing environmental sustainability and preserving biodiversity."

He portrayed most family farmers, as well as fisher folk, pastoralists, indigenous people and traditional communities, as among the world's most vulnerable populations, a situation that the year will try to address.

"We need to reposition family farming at the centre of national and regional development programmes," he said. "Governments play a key role in leading the support so that family farming can reach its potential.

"This includes offering technical assistance and policies that support the productivity increase of family farms; placing appropriate technologies within their reach; improving their access to land and water, credit and markets; and creating an enabling environment for further investments," he added.

He said that everyone had a role to play in fulfilling the potential of family farming, including family farmers associations and networks, international and regional agencies, the private sector, civil society and academia.

Special ambassadors for the year include Ibrahim Coulibaly, from Mali, President of the National Coordination of Peasant Organizations of Mali; Mirna Cunningham, from Nicaragua, former Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; and Gerd Sonnleitner, from Germany, President of the European Farmers Association. 

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FAO advocates monitoring food loss, waste

Anthony Nwakaegho/NaijaAgroNet

The Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), José Graziano da Silva has advocated for innovative thinking to keep retailers and individual households from throwing away food in order to speed up efforts to eliminate hunger globally, NaijaAgroNet reports.

 Graziano da Silva told participants at the Global Green Growth Forum (3GF) in Copenhagen that FAO estimates shows that each year, one-third of about 1.3 billion tons food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted and stressed that this lost or wasted food costs around 750 billion dollars, about N119, 557,350,388,487.12 annually and if reduced to zero would give additional food to feed two billion people.

According to him most food loss takes place in post-production, harvesting, transportation and storage, and is primarily related to inadequate infrastructure in developing countries, while food waste is largely a problem in the marketing and consumption stages in more developed countries.

"One of my priorities in FAO is opening our doors to potential allies. Fighting food loss and waste is clearly one area in which partnership is needed. Developing a global protocol can help provide clear measurements and indicators on which we can base guidance on how to reduce food loss and waste.

“Zeroing food loss and waste is one of the elements of the Zero Hunger Challenge launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Rio+20 Conference last year. Because of all this, FAO has a huge vested interest in bringing about rapid reductions in food losses and waste," FAO Director said.

NaijaAgroNet recorded that FAO launched the SAVE FOOD initiative together with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Messe Dusseldorf while more than 150 public organizations and private sector partners are currently conducting case studies on food losses in specific chains that will help give guidance on strategies to upgrade the sectors concerned.

The organization also collaborates with UNEP, Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and other partners in the Think.Eat.Save  campaign designed to target and change wasteful practices, especially at the retail and consumer end of the food-supply chain. 

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Austria reiterates support for African farmers

Anthony Nwakaegho/NaijaAgroNet

Austrian State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Reinhold Lopatka has reiterated the support of the Austrian Development Cooperation’s (ADC) to fight against hunger in Africa.

Lopatka, in a public statement made available to NaijaAgroNet  pointed out that ADC supports African farmers to improve food security and provided Semien Gondar in north Ethiopia is worth more than 14 million euros about N3, 062,599,677.83 aimed at improving the living conditions of more than 500,000 small farmers in the area.

He explained that food shortages in the region have been caused by population growth, depleted soils, and overgrazed areas, while ADC came to assist in teaching farmers to adapt cultivation methods including the use of more resistant crop varieties and improved animal husbandry.

Through improved storage methods, he said farmers can also more easily store surplus crops through which later crop failures or droughts can be more easily overcome, and the additional income allows them to better finance the schooling of their children.

NaijaAgroNet noted from the release that despite the positive news, that one in eight people worldwide has too little available food, and while the number of hungry had decreased in most regions, it had increased in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and West Asia.

“Through sustainable resource management, Austria is trying to combat this development as effectively as possible,” he said.

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UNCTAD warns of rural poverty

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The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD's) has warned that continuous rural poverty, persistent hunger and growing populations, must be treated as a collective crisis, or the world will face economic imbalance, NaijaAgroNet report.

UNCTAD made this known in its trade and environment report 2013 sub titled, "Wake up before it is too late: Make agriculture truly sustainable now for food security in a changing climate" and said that urgent and far-reaching action is needed before climate change begins to cause major disruptions to agriculture, especially in developing countries.

The report pinpointed that vulnerability to increased frequency and intensity of droughts and floods in East Africa with a population of approximately 130 million people has continued to suffocate the region's economic growth due to the imbalance between climate change, food security and trade.

The Minister of State for Water and Environment, Flavia Munaaba, said that food availability is already being affected through reduced production, poor storage and inefficient processing and stressed that there was need to adapt policies that will mitigate the effects of climate change to prevent the disastrous effect of food security and livelihoods of rural people.

"It is not good for you to put a policy in place and don't implement it. A good policy is verified through implementation. We want policies that we can see on the ground. The EAC is not operating in utopia. We need a climate resilient EAC that will address climate change in the context of green economy, job creations, sustainability and inclusiveness," said Prof Godwell Nhamo, a Climate Change and Green Economy specialist from the University of South Africa.

NaijaAgroNet noted that the forum was organised under the Promoting Agriculture, Climate and Trade linkages in the East African Community (PACT EAC) project, a regional initiative led by CUTS International in collaboration with other partners and found that despite commitments to implement trade policy measures to ensure regional food security, government interventions often disrupt competitive market conditions and encourage corrupt practices.

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