In Egypt, rising food prices have caused panic and hunger: Girl with koshary, Egypt’s national dish, consisting of rice, lentils, chickpeas and macaroni topped with salsa or, for the lucky few with more money, meat (photo credit: James Buck’s Flickr photostream). In the months of October and November 2010, Ellen Geerlings, then working for the United … Continue reading
Category Archives: Food Security
Africa / Asia / Caribbean / China / Egypt / Food Safety / Food Security / India / Indonesia / Kenya / Laos / Latin America / Livelihoods / Malawi / Nutrition / Pigs / Poultry / South Africa
Do a billion people really go to bed hungry? Or is a television more important than food?
Foods of Khulungira Village, in central Malawi: Fish stew (nsomba zophika), boiled maize (chimanga chophika), mixed beans with salt and oil (nyemba zophika), dried mushrooms with groundnuts (bowa wofutsa), pumpkin leaves with pumpkin blossoms and potatoes (nkhwani wophatikiza ndi maungu anthete ndi kachewere wophika) and boiled eggs with tomato, onions, oil and salt (mazira ophika ndi … Continue reading
Africa / Agriculture / Asia / Caribbean / Climate Change / Consumption / Environment / Food Security / Latin America / Markets
Lester Brown on ‘the new geopolitics of food’
Youth in window of a poor farm household in Milange, located in Zambezia, the most populous province of Mozambique (photo credit: ILRI/Mann). Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, writes in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy on ‘The New Geopolitics of Food: From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs … Continue reading
Burundi / Central Africa / East Africa / Ethiopia / Food Security / Kenya / Rwanda / Somalia / Uganda
As pump prices rise, so do the costs of basic foodstuffs across eastern and central Africa
Skyrocketing fuel and food prices are making Kenyans suffer; an undernourished child at the Kenya Coast drinks store-bought ‘maziwa lala’ (sour milk) (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth). A policy brief published earlier this year by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reports the following. ‘Three years after the 2007–08 food crisis, the prices of basic food items … Continue reading
Africa / Agriculture / Asia / Caribbean / Crop-Livestock / Food Security / Latin America / Malawi
No solution to food crisis without involvement of the world’s small-scale farmers
Regina Frazer: Maize, potato, cassava, chicken, dove, pig and vegetable farmer in central Malawi (photo credit: ILRI/Mann). A Guardian blog post today argues that the world’s many small farmers are critical to solving the world’s food, and food price, crises. The blog says, ‘We should celebrate one of the largest but least recognised groups in … Continue reading
Our food system is failing half the people, overfed and underfed, on the planet
The world’s food system is failing half of the people on the planet. That’s the disturbing conclusion of the Global Farming & Futures Report, which synthesizes findings collected from more than 400 scientists and 34 countries. The British government’s Department for Business Innovation & Skills published the document in January. ‘Economic inequality among nations and … Continue reading
Animal Breeding / Biotechnology / Canada / Environment / Fish / Food Security / North America / Pigs / Research
Eco-friendly GM pigs under development in Ontario
Min piglets at the experimental station at the Institute for Animal Science, in Beijing, China (photo credit: ILRI/Mann). Jeremy Cooke of the BBC reports in this video on a genetically modified pig, dubbed ‘Enviro-Pig’, being developed in Ontario that may be among the first of GM farm animals developed for human consumption. (Salmon genetically modified … Continue reading
Climate change, food security and sustainable development
Expectations were high when the United Nations General Assembly declared 2011 as “International Year of Forest,” having in mind the social, economic and cultural roles that the forests play in communities around the world in the context of global warming, climate change and agricultural development. As such, it was with strong determination that members of … Continue reading
Agriculture / Brazil / China / Consumption / Egypt / Food Security / India / Middle East / Philippines / Vietnam
The great global food crunch: Was scarce food the tinderbox for Middle East turmoil?
Ancient Egyptian cow relief (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth). The Washington Post’s op-ed columnist Robert J. Samuelson argued yesterday that the turmoil in the Middle East is related to a global food squeeze. ‘Here’s a question about the Mideast turmoil for future historians: How much did food inflation contribute? We know some basic facts. Middle East countries … Continue reading
Agriculture / CCAFS / Climate Change / Food Security / NRM / WLE
Some animals are more equal than others in their greenhouse gas emissions
The current essay published on the AgClim Letters blog of the ‘Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security’ Research Program this week praises the sensibleness of a recent background study for a Foresight report that ‘provides valuable insight into how our farming and food industry in the UK can contribute to the transition to a green … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 