HLPE says one in three persons suffer micro-nutrient deficiencies - NaijaAgroNet

NaijaAgroNet:

Malnutrition has many forms - including micronutrient deficiencies - and affects one in three people today, a figure that may rise to one in two by 2030 if nothing is done, according to the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) at the 2018 Committee on World Food Security (CFS) session in Rome, reports NaijaAgroNet.

As said by them, evidence increasingly suggests that economic growth alone will not fix the problem - which impacts rich and poor countries and households alike - and that new policies are needed.

Increasing international concern led to FAO's hosting of a conference that led to the 2014 Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the UN decision to declare a Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025).

The CFS guidelines will seek to help governments "operationalize" the recommendations agreed at those fora.

They expressly aim to "address the key causes of vulnerability to all forms of malnutrition in different types of food systems in both rural and urban areas, with special attention to the poorest and most nutritionally vulnerable people.

While global in scope, they aim to offer actionable advice for all the world's food systems, which include traditional systems where processed foods are rare to advanced ones where they can crowd out healthier alternatives. They will address areas ranging from supply chains to consumer behavior, and recommend ways to boost nutrition literacy and implement effective food-packaging labels.





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7m people may suffer severe hunger in Lake Chad Basin region

NaijaAgroNet:

Estimated 7 million people may suffer severe hunger in the Lake Chad Basin region, including northeastern Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Speaking during a visit to Lake Chad Basin, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Mr. José Graziano da Silva, this region requires immediate food and livelihood assistance.

"The situation we have now is largely due to the conflicts and armed groups that have devastated the lives and livelihoods across the whole of Lake Chad region. It is like an opportunistic infection, which is largely taking advantage of an already weak body from underlying problems of environmental degradation, related droughts, low investment in rural development and limited employment and livelihood opportunities for young men and women. We need to work on the symptoms by restoring peace and treat the disease by making the body stronger. This is all about resilience," Graziano da Silva said.

In addition, NaijaAgroNet reports that over 1 million returnees and the majority of internally displaced people in areas which have recently become relatively strife-free, have access to land and may benefit from the forthcoming rainy season starting in May 2017 should sufficient agriculture support be provided.

"Protracted conflict has eroded coping capacities, exhausted livelihoods and left people with no way to feed themselves and their families.  Agriculture cannot be an afterthought. More than 80 percent of people rely on farming, fishing and herding for their livelihoods," the FAO Director-General said.

NaijaAgroNet reports that Graziano da Silva during his visit, met local farmers on several FAO supported farms in Gongolong and Old Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria's Borno State.

He was accompanied by the Federal Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh.

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7.3m Yemenis suffer food insecurity, nutrition deterioration - UN

NaijaAgroNet:

The Yemen’s food crisis has deteriorated, according to the United Nations (UN) agencies who are not calling for urgent assistance to avert reaching a catastrophic situation, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The number of food insecure people in Yemen, NaijaAgroNet gathered, has risen by 3 million in seven months, with an estimated 17.1 million people now struggling to feed themselves, according to a joint assessment by three UN agencies.

Of the 17.1 million food insecure people, about 7.3 million are considered to be in need of emergency food assistance.

The preliminary results of the Emergency Food Security and Nutrition Assessment (EFSNA) show that food security and nutrition conditions are deteriorating rapidly due to the ongoing conflict.

More than two-thirds of Yemen's population of 27.4 million people now lack access to food and consume an inadequate diet. 

The EFSNA is a joint survey conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in cooperation with the authorities in Yemen. It is the first national, household-level assessment conducted in the country since the escalation of the conflict in mid-March 2015.

Rates of acute malnutrition were found to have passed the "critical" threshold in four governorates, while agricultural production is falling across the country.

"The speed at which the situation is deteriorating and the huge jump in food insecure people is extremely worrying," said Salah Hajj Hassan, FAO Representative in Yemen. "Bearing in mind that agriculture is the main source of livelihood for the majority of the population, FAO is urgently calling for funds to scale up its agricultural livelihoods support to farmers, herders and fishing communities to improve their access to food in 2017 and prevent the dire food and livelihood security situation from deteriorating further."

"We are witnessing some of the highest numbers of malnutrition amongst children in Yemen in recent times. Children who are severely and acutely malnourished are 11 times more at risk of death as compared to their healthy peers, if not treated on time. Even if they survive, these children risk not fulfilling their developmental potentials, posing a serious threat to an entire generation in Yemen and keeping the country mired in the vicious cycle of poverty and under development," said Dr Meritxell Relano, UNICEF Representative in Yemen.

"The current level of hunger in Yemen is unprecedented, which is translating into severe hardship and negative humanitarian consequences for millions of Yemenis, particularly affecting vulnerable groups," said Stephen Anderson, WFP Country Director in Yemen. "Tragically, we see more and more families skipping meals or going to bed hungry, while children and mothers are slipping away with little to sustain themselves. WFP is urgently calling for support to provide food for the seven million people who are severely food insecure and may not survive this situation for much longer."

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Denting youth unemployment through agriculture in Africa thumbnail

Agriculture is not glamourous. It suffers from entrenched negative perceptions. In the minds of many African youths, a farmer is someone like their parents, doing backbreaking labour in the fields and getting little to show for it. Nonetheless, agriculture is the engine driving many African economies. If it were to get the same political support and financial investment as the mining sector, agriculture would be capable of providing more decent jobs and filling millions more stomachs with nutritious meals.

Francisca Ansah, an extension officer with expertise in agriculture and rural services, works with farmers in the upper west regions of Ghana. At a farmers’ conference in Ghana last year, she said the image of poor, ragged and weather-beaten farmers puts off many young people. Having seen their aging parents go through the traumatic experience of farming using basic equipment, these young people opt to settle in urban areas in search of employment. “Young people have second thoughts about agriculture as the source for jobs,” said Ms. Ansah.

Despite the negative perceptions, the agricultural sector employs as much as 60% of Africa’s labour force, according to the Africa Economic Outlook Report 2013, published jointly by the African Development Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the UN Development Programme. Yet because of low productivity, the sector accounts for only 25% of the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP).

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