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.

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Papaya mealybug attacks Tanzania

 NaijaAgroNet

The papaya mealybug, also called Paracoccus marginatus, has been detected in Tanzania’s coastal areas and in Zanzibar island; consequently igniting alarm among the region’s scientific and agriculture community, NaijaAgroNet.

 

Experts at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Tanzania fear that the endemic pest could put food security and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of farmers in jeopardy.

“The climates of coastal West Africa and coastal East Africa are similarly tropical and humid, and these conditions clearly favour the pest.”

James Legg, an entomologist with the IITA in Tanzania, who is leading the pest control initiative, toldSciDev.Net in a chat which was also monitored by NaijaAgroNet said “It is most likely that the insects that came to Tanzania arrived from South Asia, since their occurrence has not been recorded in central African countries and there is significant trade between Asia and coastal East Africa.

 

He added: “It is true, however, that the climates of coastal West Africa and coastal East Africa are similarly tropical and humid, and these conditions clearly favour the pest.”

According to Legg, who first detected the pest in Tanzania, the insect could spread to other parts of the East African coast, including the Kenyan coast in the coming two years.

Another expert, Douglas Miano, a lecturer at Kenya-based University of Nairobi’s Department of Plant Science and Crop Protection,NaijaAgroNet, suggested a way to help control the pest, which attacks the leaves, branches and fruits of the target plant: “Inspecting plant material would greatly help to control the spread of the pest,” Miano says.

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Investing in girls’ education, impacts child marriage - UNICEF

ITRealms:

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has identified investing in girls education as a step capable of impacting on child marriage, even as they are partnering with some other international agencies to ensure that 1 million more girls are in school by 2020, reports ITRealms. 

UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Jean Gough made this disclosure at the 2015 commemoration Day of the African Child with the theme “25 Years after the Adoption of the African Children’s Charter: Accelerating our Collective Efforts to End Child Marriage in Africa,” describing the theme as timely.

According to Gough, UNICEF is helping the government to address the challenge of ensuring all children especially girls have access to quality education, especially in Nigeria.

Lamenting that child marriage has increased in Nigeria, UNICEF noted that the Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS 4) 2011, showed that there is a five per cent increase in the number of girls married before age 15.

“It was 13 per cent in 2007 and MICS 2011 indicates it is now 18 per cent,” UNICEF said. 

Child marriage, as said by UNICEF official, denies children the attainment of their human rights as children. 

“It erodes the child’s rights to life, good health, education and dignity.  Studies link child marriage to maternal mortality, school drop-out, Virginal fistula (VVF) condition and malnutrition among others,” a press statement endorsed by Geoffrey Njoku of UNICEF Nigeria read.

Equally, UNICEF, he said, believes that investments in girls education and getting more girls into school delays marriage and impacts the incidence of child marriage. 

ITRealms that the Girls’ Education Project, funded by the UK’s Department of International Development (DFID) and implemented by UNICEF, aims to get 1 million more girls into school by 2020, while at the same improving the quality of education. 

The project, UNICEF pointed is helping to train female teachers through the female teachers’ service scheme and deploying them to rural areas, where the predominance of male teachers deters many parents from sending their girls to school. 

“Another intervention under this project is the conditional cash transfer scheme provides cash to girls to help defray some school-related costs like textbooks, uniforms and others.  The project, aims to encourage parents to send their daughters to school. It is expected to reach more than 50, 000 girls this year in Sokoto and Niger States. 

“Getting girls into schooling, and remain in school is particularly important in a country where 10.5 million children are out of school, and more than 60 per cent of them are  girls. It is a win for everybody and has an impact on child marriage,’ Gough said.

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) 

 

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Preventive measures to check child labour in agriculture

 NaijaAgroNet

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has designed new measures to checkmate the preponderance of child labour in agriculture, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Rob Vos, Director of FAO's Social Protection Division, in a press release in Rome said, "In recent years, we have seen an increase in awareness of child labour and its role in producing export crops such as cocoa, coffee and cotton." The implication of this, he said, “we see much more effective action to prevent child labour in these value chains. However, child labour on family farms not connected to international commodity markets has remained largely untouched. The new guide tries to fill this void”

The new guide, NaijaAgroNet gathered, is intended for use by agricultural organizations, NGOs, international organizations, agricultural ministries, policy-makers, and other actors involved in agricultural programmes, be they related to crop production, fisheries and aquaculture, forestry or livestock-raising.

Worldwide, large numbers of children are involved in agricultural work. This is normal on family farms and - provided it stays within acceptable boundaries -- is not only beneficial for the farm but also allows children to acquire valuable knowledge and skills.

For about 100 million children, however, such work goes beyond what is acceptable - interfering with schooling or involving them in work that is hazardous and damaging to their development, NaijaAgroNet learnt.

The new guide highlights the need to address child labour in family farming in an appropriate and context-sensitive way that respects local values and family circumstances. Social protection and poverty reduction programmes can be particularly effective in helping poor families to send their children to school and to avoid exposing them to hazardous work on the farm.

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Da Silva outlines policies to eradicate hunger

 NaijaAgroNet

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Director-General José Graziano da Silva, has outlined policy direction that will become signpost of his current tenure at the helm of FAO affairs for another four years, NaijaAgroNet reports.

Graziano who recently received a total number of 177 out of 182 votes cast by FAO member countries which represents the highest number of favourable votes ever scored by a candidate for the FAO topmost job said, "I thank you for showing confidence in the Organization under my leadership," Graziano da Silva told members of FAO's governing Conference meeting in Rome this week,.

"You have given me a clear mandate to lead this Organization in my second term, pressing on the path that we charted together," he stated.

The FAO Director-General, in his address, underscored that the next step must be the complete eradication of chronic undernourishment. This, together with ending malnutrition has been included in the Sustainable Development Goals which will be finalized later this year setting the global development agenda for the decades to come, NaijaAgroNet learnt.

Raising levels of nutrition has always been "at the heart" of the mandate of FAO, Graziano da Silva hinted.

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ACP, FAO sign MoU to boost capacity building

NaijaAgroNet

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in collaborating with the African Caribbean and Pacific Group States (ACP), are intensifying efforts aimed at enhancing capacities to cope with the challenges of climate change, sustainable food production and security, NaijaAgroNet reports.

The Memorandum of Understanding to this effect signed by the Secretary General ACP Group, Patrick Ignatius Gomes, and the FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, NaijaAgroNet gathered, is intended towards supporting the 79 ACP member countries to work assiduously to achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals that will be agreed later this year.

The MoU commits both ACP and FAO to jointly promote and contribute to the implementation of activities planned within the Fund's framework.

It also factorizes procedures aimed at enhancing an -ACP South-South Cooperation programme for food security and agriculture, including technology sharing, knowledge exchange and policy dialogue between tropical countries.

Key areas under the expanded collaboration, NaijaAgroNet learnt, is to engage the private sector to support the development of efficient and inclusive agrovalue chains. The emphasis will be on targeted agricultural commodities, both food staples and cash crops, and on smallholders, farmer- and producer organizations and small and medium enterprises.

More so, the collaboration will be identified by ACP members which are likely to be projects to harness private-sector support in building efficient and inclusive agricultural value chains that will help smallholder farmers meet export market regulatory requirements, NaijaAgroNet reports.

Other measures will aim at hunger eradication, better nutrition and sustainable economic practices.

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Ghana scales MDG’S deadline

NaijaAgroNet

Ghana has scaled the hurdle of the 2015 deadline set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and World Food Summit (WFS) for countries of the world to bring down the proportion of those living without food by half, reports NaijaAgroNet.  

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Regional Representative for Africa,Mr Bukar Tijani, said around one person in four persons in Sub-Saharan Africa suffered from undernourishment, down from one in three persons 25 years ago.

This assertion was made recently by Mr.Tijani while speaking at the launch of the first edition of the FAO’s Regional Overview of Food Insecurity in Africa (SOFI) 2015 report, on the theme, “African Food Security Prospects Brighter than Ever” in Accra, Ghana.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that the report presented the key undernourished figures for Sub-Saharan Africa and examined the factors driving the progress made in food security in the Africa region.

The documents, NaijaAgroNet also reports, discussed successful experiences in African countries to institute and sustain policies, which have contributed to improve nutritional and food security.

It was also disclosed that Ghana was able to reach this far, because it has partnered with the private sector and civil society in implementing and reviewing policies and programmes to develop the agriculture sector.

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