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Following on from our recent series of posts about food security, hunger and waste, this is a guest post from Martin Bowman, founder of Bexley/Lewisham/Dartford Food Not Bombs, on how food waste in developed countries is contributing to global food insecurity.
‘Over half of the food produced today is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain.’
- Achim Steiner, Executive director of UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme)
The world is over-crowded – this is the message that resounds through the media. This was especially so in 2011, the year the world’s population passed 7 billion, which caused a worldwide panic – there is not enough to go round! One UN report cried that farmers must produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed our swelling population, which is tipped to hit 9 billion by that point.
Many solutions have been proposed, most notably from the GM lobby, trying to present their patented, privatized food as the cure for the world’s ills, although this is highly questionable. Moreover, the World Food Programme budget for 2009 was US$6.7 billion. That year, the number of hungry people globally reached a record 1 billion, and the WFP argued that it needed an extra $3 billion to counter a downward trend in food aid and growing need. Evidence is also mounting for the link between hunger, violence and conflict.
In short, we are bombarded with images of scarcity. But this is wrong. For we live in a world of unparalleled abundance.
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Here is a list of facts which are the antidote to “scarcity thinking”:
• All the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe.
• The irrigation water used globally to grow food that is wasted would be enough for the domestic needs (at 200 litres per person per day) of 9 billion people - the number expected on the planet by 2050.
• If we planted trees on land currently used to grow unnecessary surplus and wasted food, this would offset a theoretical maximum of 100% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. 10% of rich countries' greenhouse gas emissions come from growing food that is never eaten.
Tristram Stuart is one of a growing vanguard of food waste campaigners who have emerged in the past few years, which now includes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, This Is Rubbish, and Friends of the Earth. Their message is simple: throwing way food is damaging to people and the planet. That food (and the resources used to produce it) could be put to better use.
Food prices are also at record highs, which have pushed millions into malnutrition over the past few years. What is the cause of this which is constantly referred to in the press? Scarcity. Hence, the frequent explanation: that crops failures in countries such as Australia contributed to the various price rises, pushing up food prices globally. Other reasons for the record highs are the demand for biofuels and commodity speculation by investment banks and hedge funds. Food wastage is rarely mentioned, and yet throwing 30-50% of the world’s food away puts massive strain on the global food supply, driving prices up.
What is the solution? Food waste needs its own “reduce, reuse, recycle”. This is represented in the simple food waste flow chart – reduce (wasting less will relax the strain on the global food supply), feed to people in need (providing a much needed safety net, especially in the context the financial crisis and austerity programmes), feed to livestock (pigswill can help reduce the West’s reliance on soy, much of which comes from deforested land in Brazil), compost (reduces the need for energy intensive fertilizer), and finally, as a last resort, disposal. For an inspiring list of companies dealing with these different levels of food waste, click here:
If you feel inspired to join the growing food waste movement, here are some great campaigns to get involved with:
• Feeding the 5,000 Pledge: Pledge to reduce your food waste, and call on businesses to do the same.
• Hugh’s Fish Fight: Call for reforms to EU fishery policy, to stop half of the fish caught in the North Sea being discarded.
• Friends of the Earth’s “Feed farm animals, not incinerators” campaign: Call for food waste and pigswill to replace imported animal feeds, often soy grown on deforested land.
• WDM’s Food Speculation campaign: Call for banks to stop betting on food prices, which makes them more volatile and drives them up.
You can also find out more about Food Not Bombs from their facebook page here. |
Posted by Martin Bowman in Hunger for column Issue Analysis on Feb 2nd, 15:41 |
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I’m sitting in a lecture theatre at the London School of Economics, having just finished live-tweeting from the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassador initiative with Bill Gates and Hans Rosling.
You can check out the conversation stream from the event on our Twitter account at www.twitter.com/thegpp
Both are men I deeply respect, and they’ve just been having a fascinating discussion here with the audience about Bill’s Annual Letter – you can read the letter and see the discussion at www.globalpovertyproject.com/pages/launch
Released earlier today, the Annual Letter is an open letter that Bill Gates writes once a year about what he and his Foundation will do to fight extreme poverty in the year ahead. Focusing on innovation this year, he sets out a bold and challenging vision of how even in tough economic times, we can make huge progress in the fight against extreme poverty.
Agriculture is a central theme of the letter, and Gates urges governments to focus on agricultural innovation to ensure food security. He picks up on some of the themes we’ve been writing about in our series on the Never Again famine charter, and includes the challenging graph you see below around disparity in how much the extreme poor spend on food.
His proposed solution, and the area into which his Foundation are putting billions of dollars is scientific research to increase productivity, through things like improved seeds.
On global health, Gates focuses on vaccines and polio. He reminds us that polio eradication is the Foundation’s top priority – a commitment we’re proud to hear given our campaigning on The End of Polio. And, he congratulates donors and vaccine manufacturers for their efforts, calling the success of the GAVI pledging conference in June 2011 an “historic day for global health equity.”
On the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, Bill Gates is positive about progress that has been made.
At the same time, he expresses strong concern about donors falling short of their commitments. In his words, “Every $300 that’s not forthcoming will represent a person taken off treatment. That’s a very clear choice. I believe that if people understood the choice, they would ask their government to save more lives.” It’s a sentiment that we share at the Global Poverty Project, and is one of the reasons our UK team are working with Malaria No More to call on the government to Fund the Fund.
In closing, Gates recounts why it is that he remains so optimistic about our ability to fight extreme poverty:
“Whether it’s fighting plant disease, treating people with AIDS, or getting a measles vaccine to a child in a remote area—modest investments in the poorest make a huge difference.
Unfortunately, many people believe the opposite—that money spent on development is wasted, or that it doesn’t get lasting results. Melinda and I will spend a lot of time in the coming year explaining why they’re mistaken. The relatively small amount of money invested in development has changed the future prospects of billions of people—and it can do the same for billions more—if we make the choice to continue investing in innovation.“
Tell us what you think about Bill Gates’ Annual Letter by joining the conversation on Twitter with the #billsletter hashtag. |
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According to the UN Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit, the current situation in East Africa represents Africa’s worst food security crisis in almost 20 years.
Image source: WFP/David Orr
After bringing the crisis under the spotlight over the summer, media coverage has slowed down in the past few months. Despite this, aid is still sorely needed. As of 10 November 2011, 76% of the UN Flash Appeal has been funded. (UN OCHA).
Although international media have mostly focused on East Africa’s doom & gloom, neglecting altogether the positive impact of long-term development programmes in the region would mean providing only a partial picture of the situation. Some examples include the work carried out by Save the Children, UNICEF and Oxfam America. Here is a closer look:
- In Kenya, Save the Children has been working with communities to prepare for this drought – for example in Mandera (a heavily affected region) they have been giving 12,000 families cash to help build their resilience to the coming drought (Save the Children).
- In drought-affected northern Kenya, a solar powered water pump in Griftu Primary School provides a constant supply of water to a newly built water tank. That has allowed for the construction of segregated toilets for boys and girls, encouraging greater school enrolment and facilitating better hygiene and education (UNICEF).
- In 2008, when global food prices skyrocketed, famine swept across Ethiopia, threatening more than 14 million people in the Horn of Africa. Oxfam America, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, organised a two-step response to the crisis. The first focused on 225,000 of Ethiopia’s most at-risk farmers, and got them what they needed immediately: food. The second step was to organise cash-for-work projects that built dams, rehabilitated springs and constructed roads, thereby helping people to strengthen their small farms and improve their resilience to future droughts. When drought returned in 2011, these investments paid off. These kinds of investments not only save lives, improve livelihoods and promote stability, but also save money in the long run. Estimates show that emergency relief in famines costs seven times as much as preventing them (Taipei Times).
A representative from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has kindly provided an interesting first-hand update on East Africa’s crisis. Below is a transcript of the interview. You can click on the questions below to go directly to the answers.
- Has there been any progress in the region since the famine was declared in July 2011?
- Can you give me one or two examples of long-term development programmes promoted by
your organisation in East Africa in the past few years, which have had a positive impact in
the region?
- Is there anything you would change in the way that global media has covered the crisis?
1) Has there been any progress in the region since the famine was declared in July 2011?
About 13.3 million people are affected by the current drought crisis in the Horn of Africa. The situation is particularly dire in Somalia, where famine has been declared in six areas of south Somalia. In Somalia, more than 2 million people have been reached with food aid. From 1 to 14 October, humanitarian partners reached approximately 679,888 beneficiaries with food, and are on track to sustain or surpass the approximately 2,215,634 people assisted throughout September. The Agriculture & Livelihoods Cluster [a group of humanitarian teams which focus on farming and subsistence strategies] plans to assist 2.6 million people by the end of 2011 through multiple interventions including: restoring the crop production capacity of farmers; safeguarding the livelihoods and remaining assets of vulnerable small-scale herders and emergency disease surveillance; and treatment and vaccination of livestock. The WASH sector [a group of humanitarian teams which focus on water and sanitation] aims to reach 3.3 million people with sustained access to safe water, and 1.3 million with emergency sanitation by the end of 2011. As of mid October, the cluster had supported 1,190,016 people with sustainable water access since January. This is a critical area of intervention as due to the onset of rains, the risk of water-borne disease has increased. The challenge remains accessing all areas where affected populations are.
Another issue to point out is that about 750,000 people are at a risk of death in the coming four months if efforts to respond to the famine are not scaled up. Child malnutrition rates in Somalia remain the highest in the world (one third of Somali children are malnourished – 450,000 out of about 1.3 million). Mortality in children under five years of age has reached 15.4 deaths per 10,000 people/day among Mogadishu Internally Displaced Persons, far above the emergency threshold (2 deaths/10,000/day). The ongoing conflict and prevailing drought has internally displaced 1.5 million Somalis and more than 917,000 are living as refugees in the neighbouring countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Yemen, meaning that one in three Somalis has been displaced. Refugee outflows continue, albeit at a reduced rate.
2) Can you give me one or two examples of long-term development programmes promoted by your organisation in East Africa in the past few years, which have had a positive impact in the region?
OCHA is not an operational UN body. It is mandated to work with humanitarian actors in responding to humanitarian needs. OCHA therefore works in emergency situations and situations where extreme vulnerability exists. It is not mandated to implement long-term development programmes for which UN agencies like UNDP are primarily responsible. For sometime now OCHA has been preoccupied with the need for closer collaboration between humanitarian and development programming, particularly in addressing recurrent humanitarian situations that emanate from development shortcomings or failures. An example of this is the recurrent food security situation in the Horn of Africa, with drought as the primary driver. OCHA is working with partners from the Inter-Agency Standing Committee [IASC, a forum involving the key UN and non-UN humanitarian partners] and UN Country Teams in the region to see how sustainable solutions that address the underlying causes of recurrent vulnerability can be implemented in this region. The IASC Horn of Africa Plan of action promotes a comprehensive strategy for engagement with national and regional counterparts to support and strengthen Government-led plans. The Plan of Action aims at strengthening the synergies and linkages necessary to address the continuum from humanitarian actions to long-term development with a three-pronged approach to:
- Respond to extreme food and nutrition insecurity of vulnerable people at risk, in the short term;
- Promote early recovery strategies, in the medium term; and
- Promote livelihood resilience, in the longer term.
3) Is there anything you would change in the way that global media has covered the crisis?
The international media has covered various aspects of the Horn of Africa crisis, ranging from the declaration of the famine in Somalia, the terrible situation faced by people having to walk for weeks to find help, the response by aid agencies and donors, to challenges around the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya, access in parts of Somalia and the impact of insecurity on humanitarian operations. Regional and local media also continue to cover the situation, impact and response, and awareness raising events in the region. As in all major humanitarian crises, the UN, Red Cross/Red Crescent and NGO partners have maintained a steady flow of information and advocacy, including through high-profile visits, summits and regional meetings, as well as press briefings, interviews and web/social media coverage. There are many aspects to the crisis in the region, including political and longer-term development dimensions, which are also of interest to the media.
For further information visit the website for OCHA. |
Posted by Martina Tomassini in Aid, Poverty, Hunger for column Issue Analysis on Dec 5th 2011, 17:00 |
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This post is part of the international Blog Action Day.
It takes a lot for a famine to be declared. According to the United Nations, it happens under three conditions:
- 20% of the population having fewer than 2100 kilocalories of food available per day,
- More than 30% of children being acutely malnourished, and
- More than two people per every 10,000 die every day.
In the World Food Day Message given by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the focus was on the accessibility of food, and the impact of political instability and price volatility. This is an important reminder that along with international aid to relieve famines, we should also focus on policies to prevent famine in the future.
Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asserts 'the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger'. The cruel reality is, this right has been undermined by political instability and failed governments. In Somalia, famine relief and the day-to-day operations of international humanitarian agencies are affected by the struggle between the government and the insurgent group Al-Shabaab. Political instability cripples the development of sustainable agricultural policies. Without these policies, the population is extremely vulnerable to the insecurities caused by natural disasters. Droughts or floods alone don’t have to lead to famines. It is time for governments to step up to their responsibilities.
Establishing effective preventive agricultural policies is essential to improving food security. One such policy is effective water sources management. Successful irrigation projects in Ethiopia helped to alleviate food shortages and encourage self-sufficiency. In Kenya, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is working with farmers to develop capacities for the better harvesting and conservation of rainwater. Sometimes the most basic infrastructure reform can make a huge difference. By strengthening delivery networks, food produced will become accessible to more people. Implemented effectively, these measures are steps towards building the populations’ resilience against disasters.
Considering their potential in ensuring food security, you would think these policies deserve more attention. Unfortunately, these disaster risk reduction measures accounts for only 0.5% of official global aid. This lack of attention is almost counterintuitive, because these policies are much more cost-effective than disaster relief measures.
It is estimated that women produce between 60% and 80% of the food in most developing countries. However, less than 2% of land is owned by women. Promoting equal opportunities for women to own land and gain access to resources to produce food is critical. So is ensuring their access to education and an equal level of income. Women’s purchasing power and their ability to make decisions in the house are important aspects in achieving long-term food security.
World population affected by hunger in 2010
A big challenge in ensuring food accessibility is reducing the sheer amount of food that is wasted before consumption. Up to 37% of food harvested is wasted due to insufficient processing, storage and transport. In a world where nearly 1 billion people are affected by hunger and malnutrition, this is simply unacceptable. Other than developing scientific solutions to increase production, it is equally critical to tackle these distributional problems.
Preventive measures are largely neglected in global aid. Thanks to an array of short-sighted policies and a global media that only focuses on disasters after they’ve occurred, the daily struggle with food insecurity is too often pushed to the background. In the midst of global efforts to relieve the famine in the Horn of Africa, we should call attention to establishing sustainable and preventive policies, so that we never have to use the phrase 'too little, too late'. |
Posted by Katy Ho in Hunger for column Issue Analysis on Oct 16th 2011, 09:00 |
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Guest Blogger Tom Murphy discusses the exciting new project from USAID and why focussing on the Horn of Africa Crisis is as crucial now as it was a month ago. What do you think? Is this transparency in action or a distraction from the severe gravity of the situation? See the original article by Tom Murphy at A View from the Cave here.
The numbers are big when talking about the crisis in the Horn of Africa. Recent estimates say that 750,000 lives are at risk largely due to the drought in Somalia with sum of 13 million people impacted by the drought in some way.
The need is clear, the response it happening, but the buzz is low. The earthquakes in Haiti and Japan showed how quickly people can act in response to a crisis, but the same enthusiasm and financial support has not come to the Pakistani flood victims the past two years and people in the Horn of Africa.
USAID is trying to change that. On Monday, USAID Administrator Shah announced that USAID would be launching the FWD (Famine, War, and Drought) campaign to focus on the Horn of Africa Crisis. The site features quick hitting infographics and maps of the Horn of Africa. Ranging from rainfall to staple prices, people can be informed with what is happening in the region.
Shah, in his talk and later comments, reiterated the importance of providing this information. Coupling that with the ability to make a text donation, he believes that this can be a way to grow support. This is also seen as a step in the direction of providing more open data. When going to the site, you can click around the map to pull up constantly updated information. Explaining part of his motivation, Shah said:
“If I am seeing this information on my desk, why am I not sharing it with all of you?”
This got some excitement from the crowd and the administrator was clearly pleased with the effort, but the discussion of what USAID was actually doing in the Horn of Africa was missing from the conversation. Transparency efforts had been tried before and are still a work in progress from USAID.
“We have to really get good at what we are doing on the Horn. If we can use GIS to map where the programs, projects, vulnerabilities, key issues and learn how to do that and learn how to get people to engage on that data platform and see how we can get people to engage in that.”
Shah acknowledged that some of the information was not completely ready and can be accessed through more traditional means such as PDF documents. The decision was made to put together the site sooner and without all of the data filled out rather than later.
When I followed up with how they were partnering with other organizations to pull data, it became clear that transparency is something that Shah hopes to be a USAID leadership opportunity.
“What we have tried to do is make our data systems more transparent. I think we are just on the cusp on this. There is no reason why we can’t have a Google maps platform that shows where the problems are, where the solutions are, and what we are doing as a global community. Not just have the United States government but have it be everyone working together. There is no reason why it can’t be one systematic presentation.”
The promise of greater transparency is certainly exciting, but it will be important to see if the data is updated and what is shared. Right now, the FWD site only lists bubbles of where projects exist and what kind of projects are being implemented based on a series of categories. That is a far cry from transparency and the mapping integration that Shah hopes to accomplish. However, it was evident in the way that he spoke about the potential for the tool that Shah aspires to push forward.
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Posted by Tom Murphy in Hunger for column Issue Analysis on Sep 28th 2011, 20:41 |
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