World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

"If we do not invest in our smallholder farmers, then poverty will always be around us. I believe you can have a vibrant small farming sector underpinned by the commercial sector," said Emerson Zhou, the executive director of the Beira Agricultural Growth Corridor (BAGC), the body tasked with building a relationship between smallholder farmers and big food purchasers, like the World Food Programme (WFP). (..) He believes that the Beira corridor experiment he heads, if successful, will spawn the growth of a commercial farming services sector that will ultimately do away with the need for government to distribute inputs – such as seed and fertiliser – to smallholders.

Researchers from the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have joined hands with the United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) to take a closer look at how climate change could affect roads in the developing world, using Mozambique as an example. Food supply in Mozambique is already constrained by the lack of adequate roads linking the big commercial farms in the north to markets in the south. Climate change threatens what roads exist with frequent and intense flooding and high temperatures, researchers said.

The World Food Programme (WFP) will give emergency food to more than 80,000 people in Mozambique after twin cyclones left 32 dead in the impoverished country in January, officials said Tuesday. Mozambique's government requested help for 16,000 families in flood-hit central province Zambezia, said WFP spokeswoman Naomi Scott. "Approximately 16,000 families -- that's what we've been asked to supply for and that will be in Zambezia tomorrow," Scott told AFP. "That's over 80,000 people."

One of the main challenges facing farmers is a lack of money to survive from one crop cycle to the next. (..) A two-year project co-funded by EuropeAid with €1.3 million in the provinces of Cabo Delgado and Nampula has focused on “better access to quality seeds, increased yield of seeds and food crops and reduced storage losses for farmers.” In all 38,000 rural farming families have been affected with 150 farming councils trained in “post-harvest technologies, quality seed production and seed bank management.” All of this works towards increasing food security in the region.

A couple weeks ago, the government of Mozambique offered farmers from Brazil 50-year leases on 15 million acres of land: an area equivalent to a bit more than half of the acreage under cultivation in Iowa. (..) Most of the nation lives in poverty. According to the World Food Program, "54 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line; 63 percent of rural children live in absolute poverty; and 34 percent of households are food insecure and face perpetual hunger."

Up to 44 percent of children in Mozambique suffer from chronic malnutrition, according to an official study released on Monday. The conclusion was made by the World Food Program (WFP) representative in Mozambique, Lola Castro, and the deputy representative of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) in Mozambique, Roberto de Bernadi said.

Thousands of frustrated Ethiopian and Somali asylum seekers trying to make their way to South Africa have been marooned in overcrowded camps in northern Mozambique since the government introduced measures limiting their movements. (..) UNHCR and INAR are also appealing for help to deal with the food, shelter, water and sanitation needs of the new arrivals in Maratane and Palma. So far the World Food Programme and the Mozambique Red Cross have stepped in with contributions of tents and food.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will provide over the next few days a further ten tonnes of food to the Maratane refugee centre in the northern Mozambican province of Nampula, following hunger-related deaths, notably among Ethiopian refugees.

The World Food Programme (WFP) tries to help small farmers in developing countries increase their agricultural output. It's a program called Purchase for Progress. WFP just issued a press release about a great development in this program taking place in Mozambique.

The UN has called an urgent meeting on rising global food prices in an attempt to head off a repeat of the 2008 crisis that sparked riots around the world. (..) In Mauritania in west Africa, rice prices doubled over the first three months of the year, according to the World Food Programme. Over the same period, the price of corn rose 59% in Zimbabwe and 57% in Mozambique.