A daily selection of news reports from the world's media dealing with hunger and responses to it.
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A mobile training team will be used in five East African countries to train World Food Programme mechanics in the most advanced maintenance and servicing techniques. On Saturday, Victoria Motors passed out mechanics after completing a week’s Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) training. The training was aimed at helping them acquire more knowledge about the new Renault Kerax trucks which the World Food Programme (WFP) will be using.
BOGOTA (AlertNet) - Around 1.5 million Haitians are going hungry because devastating floods caused by Hurricane Sandy washed away food crops and harvests and destroyed swathes of agricultural land, the United Nations said on Monday as it appealed for an additional $39 million to fund emergency aid programmes in Haiti.
WFP global partner Yum! Brands recently sent representatives from its Asia Franchise Businesses to the Philippines to visit some of WFP's school feeding sites in the country. Yum! Brands is supporting WFP's school feeding programme through its annual World Hunger Relief campaign.
WASHINGTON -- Today Secretary Clinton announced that the United States is providing $30 million in additional humanitarian assistance to help those affected by the conflict in Syria. With this new assistance, the United States is providing nearly $200 million in humanitarian aid to help those suffering as a result of the Assad regime’s violence inside Syria and in neighboring countries.In Syria, this funding will allow for the immediate procurement of food in local and regional markets to provide family food baskets to those in need, which contain vital necessities such as rice, beans, and cooking oil. In neighboring countries, this additional assistance from the United States will provide food supplies, hot meals, and food vouchers for families who have fled the violence in Syria. This additional assistance will be provided through the World Food Program (WFP), which is providing food aid to 1.5 million people in Syria and the refugees who have fled to neighboring countries. The United States is the largest donor of food aid for those affected by the conflict in Syria through WFP.
North Korea increased its production of staple foods for the second year in a row, thanks in part to better use of fertilizers and plastic sheeting to protect crops, but its citizens are still suffering from a serious lack of key proteins and fats in their diets, a U.N. report said Monday. A U.N. team visited all nine agricultural provinces of the communist state in September and October during the main cereal harvest and estimated that even with the increase — a 10 percent improvement over last year — North Korea will need to import 507,000 metric tons of cereals to meet its basic food needs in 2013 (…) And it recommended that North Korean farmers be allowed to sell or barter their surplus food at market, rather than turn their excess over to the state. Such incentives, which farmers recently reported were in the works, should encourage farmers to boost production, according to the joint report from the World Food Program and U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
ROME -- Global food prices dipped by 1.0 per cent in October after rising 1.4 per cent in September, due to a drop in the price of cereals and oils, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization said Thursday."The FAO Food Price Index averaged 213 points in October 2012, down 2 points (1.0 per cent) from September," it said in the monthly food outlook report. According to the FAO's index, a monthly measure of changes in a basket of food commodities, prices averaged 8.0 per cent lower during the first ten months of this year compared to the same period last year. The drop in cereals and fats "more than offset increases in sugar and dairy prices, while meat values remained unchanged," the Rome-based agency said.
The head of the United Nations food relief agency today expressed her thanks to the people and Government of Lebanon for their support of Syrians seeking refuge from the violence affecting their country.“We are grateful for the generosity of the Lebanese people and their Government for keeping an open door policy to displaced Syrians in search of safety and for facilitating WFP’s work in Lebanon to assist Syrian refugees,” said the UN World Food Programme’s (WFP), Ertharin Cousin.