Investing in school meals ‘win-win’ for West African nations – UN

NaijaAgroNet:

The United Nations food relief agency has urged governments in West Africa subregion to spend more money on school meal programmes as these investments not only contribute to children’s better future but also create local jobs around agriculture, reports NaijaAgroNet.

“It is a win-win opportunity which governments must seize,” said Abdou Dieng, UN World Food Programme (WFP) Regional Director for West and Central Africa. “Children enjoy healthy meals that make it more likely that they will stay in school and learn for a better future, while jobs are created and businesses develop.”

The call was made on African Day of School Feeding, annually observed on 1 March.

Increasingly, the food for the meals is sourced from smallholder farmers within the community. The idea is that home-grown school meals provide local farmers and businesses with a predictable outlet for their products, leading to more stable incomes, more investment, higher productivity and the creation of jobs for youth and women in the communities concerned.

In Burkina Faso, the introduction of yoghurt in school meals has had multiple benefits – a women’s group that collects milk locally has recently set up a processing plant for yoghurt that is now delivered to schools by young people on motorcycles.

Some governments in the region are showing a growing interest in investing more in national school meals programmes. The Government of Benin has allotted $47 million to feed 400,000 children over the course of five years in partnership with WFP, using a home-grown school meals model.

WFP’s regional school meals programme, which aims to assist about 2.7 million children this year, faces a $60 million funding gap. Without proper financing, the programme will fall short, leave many vulnerable students hungry and at risk of dropping out of school.

 Correspondent/GEE

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Over $20m needed to rescue Nepal farmers – FAO

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Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) as part of the revised United Nations (UN) Flash Appeal for Nepal has said over $20 million is urgently needed to support farmers in earthquake-hit Nepal to resume agricultural activities, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The organization seeking to starve off the threat of prolonged food insecurity facing an estimated one million people, NaijaAgroNet learnt has received only 13 per cent of the $23.4 million emergency agricultural assistance.

The disaster, according to an FAO-led Agricultural Livelihood Impact Appraisal, has disrupted agricultural activities threatening the livelihoods of rural families, hitting hard in six Nepal districts causing half of all farming households to lose nearly all of their stored crops of rice, maize, wheat and millet, with some 16 percent of cattle and 36 percent of poultry lost in the disaster creating a detrimental effect on rural household consumption and income.

A representative of FAO in Nepal, Somsak Pipoppinyo told NaijaAgroNet that two-thirds of Nepalis depend on farming for their livelihood, "agriculture is a critical priority because two-thirds of Nepalis depend on farming for their livelihoods,’ he added that,’current levels of international assistance for Nepal's earthquake-affected farmers will deliver ‘only a fraction’ of the assistance urgently required."

Somsak also stressed that there is limited window to act, noting how rice seeds have to be distributed urgently before the start of the heavy monsoon rains which are expected to arrive in the coming days.

In addition, FAO’s appraisal team, noted that the repair and functioning of irrigation systems will be critical for the winter cropping season, as well as barley and wheat seeds and recommends that the most urgent needs for the current cropping season are seeds and fertilizers, followed by irrigation, tools and technical support, as well as urgent shelter, feed water, medicine and vaccinations, for livestock breeding.

NaijaAgroNet learnt that the organization has received around $3 million for emergency relief from Belgium, Italy and Norway; which has aided it to distribute 40,000 (5 kilogram) bags of rice seeds to the six most-affected districts of Dhading, Dolakha, Gorkha, Nuwakot, Rasuwa and Sindhupalchowk, in time for farmers to plant before the monsoon.

Daniel Nsolibe/GEE

  

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Cousin wants increase support for smallholder farmers

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 The Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme,Mrs Ertharin Cousin, has decried the impact of climate change and called for increased incentive for smallholder farmers to scale up yields, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Cousin, a former supermarket executive and diplomat, in an interview monitored by NaijaAgroNet,said the damage caused by climate change, coupled with a lack of development both in agricultural and economics perpetually keep small-scale farmers on the edge.

She noted for instance that in woefully underdeveloped nations like four-year-old South Sudan, conflict feeds into that downward spiral.

"The global community is well aware that climate change is impacting sub-Saharan Africa. Erratic rains have become more of a reality for across the entire continent... The vulnerable people around the world need a strong global response to address the issues of climate change to ensure that we can minimize the impacts in the future. But today, what we must do is implement disaster risk mitigation strategies that will support vulnerable populations…” she said.

70 per cent of the people who are food insecure in the world today, she said, live in rural areas, noting that if this is not addressed the challenges of unproductive agriculture, then, the issue of food security or the issue of hunger cannot be overcome.

“So we must increase the ability of smallholder farmers to scale up their agricultural yields and provide markets for them to sell those yields to ensure that we can create sustainable and durable agricultural value chains that support the food security of families, as well as the economic viability of those families. That is the only way that we are going to make progress," Cousin said.

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE

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