food crisis

Farmers Not Invited to Food Summit?

Activists from the International Peasant Movement (La Via Campesina) take part in a demonstration outside the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) headquarters in Rome November 16, 2009. (REUTERS/Giampiero Sposito)

ROME - World farmers are not part of the official delegations at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food summit on food security that opened here Monday. But they came anyhow to express their views, since, they say, it is their communities that are most impacted by the food crisis.

Small-scale producers from the Amazonian rainforest, from Africa, the Pacific islands and the Himalayas gathered in Rome for the Peoples' Food Sovereignty Forum (Nov. 13-17), held in parallel to the FAO meetings, to discuss the serious effects of the crisis in their communities.

Hunger’s Solution Might Not Be Found at the FAO World Summit on Food Security

Big news came on Friday, when the USDA announced that Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan would lead the United States delegation to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations Ministerial Conference in Rome, Italy, taking place this week from November 18-23. She will chair the conference, the first time a woman has done so. In the press release, Merrigan had this to say:

UN's Ban to Fast in Solidarity with World's Hungry

Children look out as they play inside an auto rickshaw in a shanty area in Hyderabad, India, Thursday, Nov, 12, 2009. Nearly 200 million children in poor countries have stunted growth because of insufficient nutrition, with South Asia accounting for 83 million hungry children under five. Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, called on the world to join him in a day of fasting Saturday to highlight the plight of 1 billion hungry people.
(AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.)

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will join a 24-hour fast called by the U.N. food chief to show solidarity with the world's 1 billion hungry ahead of a food security summit next week, a spokeswoman said on Friday.

U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General Jacques Diouf said on Wednesday he would not eat for 24 hours starting Saturday morning, and called on people around the world to follow suit.

UN Food Summit 'Fails Before It Begins'

Head of the Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) Jacques Diouf, seen here addressing the press at the FAO headquarters in Rome, launched an on-line petition to enable people to show solidarity with the world's one billion hungry ahead of a world food security summit next week. (AFP/Alberto Pizzoli)

The leaked World Food Summit draft declaration falls short of a UN goal of eradicating hunger by 2025. Instead, leaders are expected to to sign a watered down declaration in Rome next week that calls for vague increases in aid for farmers in poor countries but sets no targets or deadlines for action.

Leaders are expected to reaffirm their commitment to the UN's Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of hungry people by 2015 - a target that is unlikely to be reached.

Posted in food crisis, hunger

Millions Will Starve as Rich Nations Cut Food Aid Funding, Warns UN

A woman and a child suffering from Acute Water Diarrhea in the Wanleweyn district, southern Somalia, April 5, 2009. (Photograph: Abdurashid Abikar/AFP/Getty Images)

Tens of millions of the world's poor will have their food rations cut or cancelled in the next few weeks because rich countries have slashed aid funding.

The result, says Josette Sheeran, head of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), could be the "loss of a generation" of children to malnutrition, food riots and political destabilisation. "We are facing a silent tsunami," said Sheeran in an exclusive interview with the Observer. "A humanitarian disaster is unrolling." The WFP feeds nearly 100 million people a year.

Posted in food crisis

Food Supply Hangs in the Balance

A farmer carries dried corn outside Jalapa, Guatemala September 26, 2009. Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom declared a state of \"calamity\" over food supply in Guatemala, where a prolonged dry spell has reduced the harvest of staples like maize and beans by up to 50 percent. Not isolated to Guatemala, the food supply crisis is a global, and without radical improvements in the food supply system, things could get much worse. (REUTERS/Daniel LeClair) UXBRIDGE, Canada - Rocketing food prices and hundreds of millions more starving people will be part of humanity's grim future without concerted action on climate change and new investments in agriculture, experts reported this week.

The current devastating drought in East Africa, where millions of people are on the brink of starvation, is a window on our future, suggests a new study looking at the impacts of climate change.

By 2050, 25m More Children Will Go Hungry as Climate Change Leads to Food Crisis

A malnourished boy at a feeding centre in Ethiopia. Sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia will be most vulnerable to food shortages, the IFPRI report found. (Photograph: Jose Cendon/AFP/Getty Images)

Twenty-five million more children will go hungry by the middle of this century as climate change leads to food shortages and soaring prices for staples such as rice, wheat, maize and soya beans, a report says today.

If global warming goes unchecked, all regions of the world will be affected, but the most vulnerable - south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa - will be hit hardest by failing crop yields, according to the report, prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

Global Harvest Initiative Seeks Not to Feed People, But to Bolster Big Ag Profits

The Global Harvest Initiative, founded by agribusiness interests DuPont, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, and John Deere, will meet today beginning at 9:00 am for a daylong symposium at which the focus is said to be on finding “ways to sustainably double agricultural output to meet rapidly growing global demand as anticipated by the United Nations.” Are big corporations finally seeking to do what is right by the nearly billion p

NGOs: 'Mini-Ministerial Meeting Should Change WTO Tack on Food,' Promote Food Sovereignty

Indian farmers hold on to a railing as they watch their fellow farmers take out a protest rally against World Trade Organization (WTO) in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009. Trade officials from 35 countries are meeting in New Delhi for a WTO informal Ministerial meeting being hosted by India. (AP Photo/Mustafa Quraishi)

GENEVA - A group of 125 non-governmental organisations from 50 countries is calling on the governments participating in the mini-ministerial trade talks in India over the next two days to reject the further liberalisation of food and rather promote policies that will achieve food security and rural development and safeguard farmers' livelihoods.

Why Food Sovereignty Is the New Food Security

Most of us would agree that there is a serious problem vis-a-vis access to food in the developing world. According to the UN food agency, there are now more than one billion undernourished people worldwide. The need to do something about the broken food system is especially apparent in Haiti, where I have been on a working assignment with Grassroots International for the past few weeks.

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