Hunger-Undernutrition Blog

National Geographic and FAO Launch Food and Agriculture Series: Issues we Can’t Afford to Overlook

 

 

 

By Nabeeha M. Kazi, President & CEO, Humanitas Global & Chair, Community for Zero Hunger

 

Photo Credit:  National Geographic/Jim Richardson

This week, the National Geographic Society and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are launching an eight-month series titled "The Future of Food" to raise public awareness of food and agriculture topics, and the question of how to feed nine billion people by 2050.  

The May issue of National Geographic magazine kicks off the conversation with Jonathan Foley's article titled "A Five-Step Plan to Feed the World." In addition, you can join the National Geographic Society and FAO for a live-stream panel event from 2:00 - 4:30 p.m. US Eastern Standard Time on Friday, May 2 to learn more about what is in store and how communities can engage.

In the series' first feature piece, Foley, Director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, looks at where we are in our efforts to feed the world, what is required as we look ahead, and what is at stake if we simply keep doing more of the same.

The five steps, which he describes in detail in the article, are to:

1. Freeze agriculture's footprint
2. Grow more on farms, specifically targeting those that are unproductive 
3. Use resources more efficiently to reduce farming's environmental impact
4. Shift diets with a transition toward less-meat intensive diets in key regions of the world
5. Reduce waste and loss of food

I applaud the National Geographic Society and its collaborators for taking on this important topic. In reflecting upon Foley’s article and opportunities within the broader series, I felt that some critical additional issues should be elevated. Below is what stands out given what the food and nutrition security team at Humanitas Global is seeing in the field. 

1. Put nutrition front and center.

We cannot overlook the importance of nutrition. The conversation must extend beyond feeding more people and producing more food. Filling bellies is one thing, but nourishing the mind and enabling optimal development in children are another. The good news is that we have the tools and knowledge to create integrated strategies where feeding AND nourishing can co-exist. We must acknowledge that fighting hunger AND malnutrition go hand in hand, and demand that countries look at quality of food – not merely quantity.

2. Elevate the world’s farmers.

There is a well-documented farmer drain underway in much of the world – especially as it relates to young people. In Africa, for example, more than 70 percent of the population is under age 30. Instead of staying on farms, young people who have the ability to move to urban centers or select jobs in non-agricultural sectors are doing so in significant numbers.

This reminds me of something that young Eastern European teenagers told me a few years ago: the last thing they would choose to do would be to follow in the footsteps of their parents and be farmers. It was work that the poorest of the poor did, and despite long hours and tremendous efforts toiling the land, their families remained hungry, cold, sick and overlooked by the world. It was a miserable existence.

We have to incentivize, celebrate and exponentially improve the lives of the world’s farmers. We can have the best insights, systems and technology in the world, but if we don’t have the hand that wants to, and is celebrated for, turning that switch on, we are sunk.

3. Build enabling environments where feeding the world can flourish and tell us about them.

I’m astounded by the “soundbite” nature of how we illustrate success in fighting hunger and malnutrition. On the one hand it is powerful to hear of that inspiring story of the number of people fed through an intervention, percentage decline in nutrition-related diseases, etc. On the other hand it prevents us from emphasizing the story of systems, capacity and policies that were improved and required to deliver these results.

The National Geographic article highlights the Green Revolution. So much of the legacy of Dr. Borlaug and his Green Revolution is communicated as being defined by scientific and research innovations, agricultural technology and crop inputs, but these elements were actually only one part of the success that Dr. Borlaug and his team of scientists demonstrated in India and Pakistan. These elements also are not the main reasons why the Green Revolution failed in Africa.

The Green Revolution worked in South Asia because Dr. Borlaug was able to secure support from Indian and Pakistani leaders who committed to the Green Revolution's offerings through a mix of cross-cutting, comprehensive initiatives. In the 1960s these South Asian countries constructed an enabling environment that included an ideal policy landscape, engaged farmer and beneficiary communities, and mechanisms for scalable and seamless delivery of goods and services. How ironic that the darlings of the Green Revolution now demonstrate the world’s worst rates in hunger and malnutrition; the scenario reinforces that the goods may be at our disposal, but if our delivery systems, political will and country capacity to implement are weak, the goods can only get us so far.

We must be careful not to perpetuate an incomplete conversation that prevents us from highlighting the other elements that contributed to success. Building country capacity, an ultra-engaged consumer base, effective supply chains, accessible financial services platforms, mechanisms for market connectivity, advocacy programs, relevant public health, food and nutrition policy frameworks, better infrastructure, etc. are all part of sustainably ending hunger and malnutrition and feeding our growing world. These may not be the most exciting storylines to tell, but they are the storylines that ultimately transform communities.

4. Our collective knowledge base is vast; let’s scale it.

We know that much of what stands in the way of progress in feeding and nourishing the world is linked to context-specific challenges. We also know that knowledge and solutions are plentiful, but they need to be scoped and curated to respond to regional and country-level barriers. By creating accessible mechanisms and platforms where context-appropriate knowledge, experiences and solutions are able to be credibly shared, communities will be better able to integrate available knowledge into their own responses to meeting food and nutrition needs.

5. Make it work for women.

She has a baby on her back, a hoe in her right hand, a water container in her left hand, and a bundle of freshly harvested vegetables balancing on her head. She is the one who is literally holding up and feeding our future. We need to build a kinder world for women. We must construct a world that gives a woman the right to own and inherit the land upon which she works, where basic health, financial and technical services come to her, and where women farmers are prosperous, protected and promoted as heroes.

I’d love to hear what else our readers think needs to be brought forward. Leave a comment below to tell us what else is needed to match the food and nutrition needs of our increasing population.

Aquaculture: Enabling Food Security, Oceanic Sustainability and Economic Growth in the Future

by Jorge Rojas-Ruiz, Humanitas Global

Ocean-source food production is crucial for future sustainable food supply around the globe because of its nutritional value, resistance to climate change and market accessibility. Currently, 20 percent of animal protein intake for 3 billion people throughout the world consists of fish. An estimated 10  to 12 percent of the world’s population depend on aquaculture as a source for food.

This week, global leaders from the private, public and civil sectors came together at The Hague for the Global Oceans Action Summit for Food Security and Blue Growth. These leaders discussed how to balance conservation efforts with the growth of fishing industries in order to ensure sustainable use of oceanic products. The summit was organized by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank and the Governments of Grenada, Indonesia, Mauritius, Norway and the United States of America.

Photo credit: www.animals.howstuffworks.com

One of the issues discussions focused on was how the world will ensure food security derived from the sea while maintaining healthy oceans and biodiversity. For example, insufficient monitoring was discussed as a source that threatens environmental sustainability in fish farming and aquaculture. Without monitoring, there is the risk of overfishing and the creation of lifeless regions in the oceanic ecosystem caused by fish waste using up the supply of oxygen in the water. However, fish farming is an asset to the fight for food and nutrition security and therefore we must identify comprehensive strategies that do not sacrifice the sustainability of the ocean’s ecosystem for food production—a crucial element for food security—or vice versa.

According to research from Harvard’s School of Public Health, seafood in general not only provides more protein than cattle, sheep or poultry but it is also rich in vitamins and minerals that help infant brain development and protect against heart disease and strokes. Moreover, as global population rises in the future and stress on land animal and crop farming intensifies due to climate change, land will become scarcer, and seafood sources may play an important role in the world’s capacity to feed over 9 billion people.

A report issued by the  U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that the world is headed towards a “breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding and precipitation variability and extremes”. Thus, focusing on fish farming as an alternative to land husbandry is critical for sustained global food and nutrition security in the future.

We must work together in order to protect the ocean’s biodiversity while taking advantage of the benefits it offers for our food and nutrition security. Perhaps there are insights we could learn from The World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture.

This initiative strives to “provide food security for all, in an environmentally sustainable way while generating economic growth and opportunity”. The New Vision for Agriculture has the vision of enabling farmers to feed their families and their communities without compromising the ecosystem. As production reaches consumers, the agricultural value chain allows individuals to make better choices for their diets while relying on biodiversity in the long-run and generating jobs along the production, transport and market stages of food supply. Such a holistic approach based on the three primary elements mentioned above is relevant to this week’s discussion as stakeholders develop a roadmap to sustainably increase aquaculture outputs without damaging the ocean’s ecosystem in order to meet global demand for nutritious food in the future.

The Global Oceans Action Summit for Food Security and Blue Growth provided a platform for engagement to occur and to help bridge gaps between fish farming industry growth and sustainability. Similarly to the New Vision for Agriculture and other cross-sector initiatives and conferences, there is agreement among stakeholders that if farmers, markets, governments and civil society join forces we might be able to maximize seafood yields while protecting our ocean’s biodiversity and generating regional economic growth. Success will be determined by the ability of stakeholders to cooperate with each other in the long-run; as American innovator and entrepreneur Henry Ford said, “coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success”.

Climate Change & Food Sustainability: The Case of Central America’s Coffee Industry

By Kiana Davis, Humanitas Global

Throughout Central America, coffee farmers are facing the very severe effects of climate change in the form of the roya, a rust fungus which causes leaves to fall from coffee plants and keeps them from producing full harvests. Many Central American governments have declared a “State of Emergency” due to the roya, as it affects the more than 351,000 coffee growers and two million citizens throughout the region whose livelihoods depend on coffee production. In the 2012-2013 coffee season, there was an estimated loss of 437,000 jobs, and that number is expected to continue rising this year.

In 2013, over 50% of the total coffee growing areas in Central America, including El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua were hit by the roya, costing the region around $500 million in coffee production loss. The fungushas destroyed the coffee plants such that it will take up to five years and extremely toxic chemical treatments for them to regain normal production.

Photo credit: bancaynegocios.com

Coffee production is extremely sensitive to temperature and rainfall, and grows best between 18-23° Celsius. The presence of the roya (scientific name: hemeleia vastatrix) throughout Central America has been attributed to the increasingly warmer climate; even higher altitude regions that were once protected are now susceptible. Unnaturally heavy rainfalls assist in the multiplication of the disease and heavy winds carry the fungus to once-unaffected areas. Once the disease has reached a new coffee plantation, the plants’ deterioration is certain and rapid. The coffee rust, once present on a plant, affects not only the immediate harvest but also the following season’s yields. Effectively combating the fungus in Central America could take up to $300 million, and that would not even begin to address the lasting effects on the population’s health.

As global temperature rises across the board, the overalleffects onagricultural production are detrimental, especially for the millions of people worldwide who rely on agriculture for both work and daily subsistence. The roya has been deteriorating coffee plantations throughout many countries in Central America since the late 1970s. In recent years, the problem has escalated to new extremes.

In both 2012 and 2013, over 70% of coffee production areas in El Salvador and Guatemala have been affected by the roya, with Costa Rica not far behind. The overall production loss across the region was 17% for the 2012-2013 season, and is expected to fall even more in this year’s harvest. Hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, who once saw coffee as their sole form of income, currently face severe hunger, undernutrition, and debt.

In Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America, coffee makes up 20% of the country’s GDP. One-third of Nicaragua’s working population, or about 750,000 people, make a living from the coffee industry. Over the next forty years, 80% of areas where coffee is currently the dominant crop is expected to be unusable for coffee production. As 75% of the Nicaraguan population currently survives on about $1.50 a day, coffee farmers are already struggling to provide food for their families in the non-harvest seasons. Similarly, in Guatemala, reports of chronic malnutrition among coffee worker’s children show the extreme consequences of the roya on the general population’s wellbeing. According to the International Coffee Organization, the loss of jobs and income to farmers poses a serious threat of food security in many areas throughout Central America.

According to an Oxfam report, climate change is setting the global fight against hunger back by decades as communities, who once survived on the sustenance or profit from crops such as coffee, are now incredibly vulnerable to the harsh realities of poverty and food shortages. Even Starbucks, fearing the loss of Central American coffee beans, recently urged the United States government to take direct action to address climate change in the areas where coffee is most heavily produced.

Some important measures have already been taken to address the problem of the roya in Central America. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has partnered with regional governments, coffee-grower associations, and the World Food Programme to develop responses to the challenges faced by the coffee sector. Short-term responses have included the deployment of mass aid and alternative food sources to affected Central American countries from the WFP. 

The roya is just one example of how climate change is affecting and will continue to affect global food and nutrition security. As the recognition of the importance of climate-smart agriculture continues to grow, it is important that hunger and nutrition considerations are incorporated into the discussions and planning.

Upwardly mobile: how cell phones are improving food and nutrition security

by Jorge Rojas-Ruiz and Anna Diofasi, Humanitas Global

An estimated 500 million small-scale farmers worldwide help feed nearly a third of the global population, about 2 billion people. However, farmers are often struggling to improve their efficiency, productivity and sustainability in the face of changing local and global conditions.   Mobile phones can support small-scale farmers overcome the many uncertainties and risks they face during and after production, and thus help boost their performance. They create access to  much-needed services on several fronts, from providing market and price information to knowledge sharing, insuring crop production and monitoring  children’s nutrition status.

Typically, small-scale farmers in developing countries face difficulties gathering information about the true value of their products and identifying a market for them. This leads to less bargaining power and inability to meet market demand.  Mobile phones can help farmers overcome these difficulties by making crop market components accessible to all through providing new marketing and trading opportunities as well as improved crop price information sharing.  Text messaging services are now being used to give farmers information about current crop prices. Such interventions reduce the asymmetry of information; therefore, leveling the playing field between producers and traders.  One illustration of the latter text messaging service example is Esoko’s experience in Africa.

Source: Audiencescapes

Esoko has developed software that enables information to be shared across different parties in the agricultural sector, making real-time market information available.  Demand, crop prices and seed and fertilizer location information is sent to farmers via text messages.  Agricultural apps are not limited to crop management, however.  ICow, a Kenyan mobile phone service, sends SMS reminders to farmers about their cows’ expected date for calving as well as tips on milk production efficiency and best dairy practices.  Farmers can also trade livestock and livestock-related products using their handsets.  Such systems empower farmers, improve their efficiency and so help increase their income. 

In addition to providing market information, mobile phones are now also improving smallholder farmers’ food security through delivering innovative financial products, such as crop insurance.   Farmers in Kenya can purchase insurance from Kilimo Salama, a crop insurance developed by Syngenta Foundation.  Small-scale producers can purchase the insurance as they buy agricultural inputs and receive a receipt and a copy of their policy via SMS immediately. Insurance payments are also all automated: the system relies on information transmitted by a network of weather stations. If they signal irregular rainfall, a payment is automatically sent to farmers’ phones via M-Pesa. This eliminates paperwork and reduces transaction costs, making insurance affordable for small-scale farmers.  With their crops insured, farmers can more readily experiment with higher-risk, higher-yield crops and rest assured that regardless of the weather, they will be able to feed their families.

Food production is not the only aspect of food and nutrition security that can be aided through mobile phone technologies.  In many rural areas it is difficult to frequently monitor a child’s nutrition status, so organizations like Tigo Foundation in Guatemala have developed a nutrition monitoring system using SMS technology.  Health promoters in rural communities are able send real-time nutritional data of children via text message to health information centers.  Then, the nutrition status of the children is diagnosed and information on how to care for the child is immediately sent back to health promoters. Such a system promotes efficient monitoring of nutrition, which facilitates healthier children who will be able to collaborate in the food production of their family’s farm in the long-run.

As producers look to meet global demand for food, mobile phones and other ICTs should be leveraged for both information sharing and productivity, as they will help small-scale farmers reach a level they have never reached before. With the use of smart phones predicted to grow exponentially in developing countries, the impact of mobile services and applications is also likely to be felt beyond food security and nutrition. Mobile health initiatives are being piloted worldwide to help with the diagnosis and treatment of chronic and non-communicable diseases. Cashless transactions using mobile money are already transforming the way business is done in many Sub-Saharan African countries. Mobile technology is quickly becoming one of the most important agents for change. 

Development to Delivery: Bringing Biofortified Crops to Scale

By Priya Bapat

During the first week of April, HarvestPlus held its 2nd Global Conference on Biofortification, co-hosted by the government of Rwanda in Kigali.  The 1st Conference, held in Washington, DC in 2010, served as a bridge between the first two of three planned phases for HarvestPlus – Discovery and Development. The 2nd Conference marked the transition from the Development phase to Delivery – how to integrate and scale nutrient-rich, biofortified crop varieties to ensure they reach people most in need.

By the end of 2013, 1.5 million farmer households in Africa, South Asia and Latin America planted at least one variety of biofortified crops. As this figure continues to grow, it is essential that governments, companies, international organizations, and NGOs work together to plan how biofortified, nutrient-rich crops can be integrated within national food and nutrition security strategies to ensure a focused, effective approach toward creating a zero hunger world.

At the Conference, more than 250 attendees from across sectors with diverse areas of expertise in food and nutrition security, including World Food Prize Laureate Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, Prime Minister of Rwanda Pierre Habumuremyi, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources for Rwanda Dr. Agnes Kalibata, and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development for Nigeria Dr. Akin Adesina, discussed how best to take on this challenge.  Through panel discussions, keynote speeches and participatory sessions, leaders from around the world discussed issues related to nutrition-sensitive agriculture and malnutrition in general as well as those specific to biofortification.

In order to bring nutrient-rich crops to scale, participants emphasized that similar to other interventions to reduce malnutrition, biofortification interventions need to take into account related issues and initiatives. This includes the need for a gender-sensitive approach and the importance of also recognizing the 1,000 Days window of opportunity.

Beyond discussing the challenges at hand, conference attendees also highlighted activities to expand the use of biofortified crops in national food systems, such as:

• Improving inter-sectoral, national-level collaboration
• Creating demand for biofortified crops
• Increasing investments in crop development and research
• Building the evidence base

Sector-specific calls to action were also identified, outlining specific steps that national governments, donors, the private sector, international organizations and the research community could take to leverage their skills and expertise to scale the use of biofortified crops.

At the end of the Conference, participants drafted Kigali principles coming out of the conference, outlining the opportunities and the way forward to bring nutrient-rich crops to more people. While the discussions and steps outlined during the Conference show a promising path forward, the true test is whether these strong ideas and commitments are translated into action. 

For more information, all conference information is available online, including links to videos from keynote speeches.