News

Drought-Stricken Kenyans Struggle For One Meal A Day

In Kenya’s Rift Valley, crops have failed and people are lucky if they eat even one meal a day. Many now face a choice between migrating to urban slums in search of food and work or staying put and breaking stones to earn enough to survive.

Responding to Emergencies

8 September 2009

Food Rations Delivered To West African Flood Victims

WFP has started distributing vital food rations to the victims of widespread flooding across West Africa, launching emergency operations in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania for thousands of people in the worst affected areas.

Food Security Analysis

7 September 2009

Financial Crisis Eases But Leaves Hunger Legacy

A year after the start of a crisis that rocked the global financial system, there are signs in the developed world that the economy is recovering. But elsewhere the crisis has left a "hunger legacy" which will not go away any time soon.

Fight Against HIV/AIDS

7 September 2009

Food Rations Start To Dry Up In Southern Africa

Food assistance enables millions of people in southern Africa to cope with the impact of HIV/AIDS, high food prices and natural disasters. But with WFP facing an unprecedented budget shortfall, many risk losing this critical support.

Climate Change

4 September 2009

WFP And WMO Step Up Collaboration On Weather Data

GENEVA -- WFP and the World Meteorological Organisation are stepping up collaboration on climate and weather data, boosting the amount of information that the food assistance agency has available to help it fight hunger ...

School Meals

3 September 2009

Beating All Odds, Refugee Girl Shines At School

As teenagers around the world think glumly about the return to school, there’s one in Kenya who sees her return as a triumph. And it is. After being raised in the world’s largest refugee camp, Fatuma Omar beat the odds to win a scholarship to Nairobi’s best girls’ school. Watch video

Preventing Hunger

3 September 2009

Uganda: WFP Funding Cut Makes Hard Times Harder

This has been a tough year for formerly displaced Ugandans trying to rebuild their lives in their northern homeland. Helen Oyela and her family are already facing drought and soaring food prices. A cut in WFP food aid because of a funding crunch has made matters worse.

Focus on Women

1 September 2009

Poor Bangladeshi Women Learn To Start Food Businesses

Marginalised women in Bangladesh are receiving food and a sense of empowerment thanks to a programme run by WFP and the government of Bangladesh. Alongside monthly wheat flour rations, it offers business training and teaches participants about their rights.

Climate Change

1 September 2009

Climate Change: “We See Its Human Face Every Day”

For more than 40 years, WFP has been helping people whose lives depend on the vagaries of the weather. For these people, nature is both a friend and a foe. If it brings just enough rain, then crops will thrive and families will be fed. Too much rain - or too little - and disaster strikes.

Food For Assets

28 August 2009

WFP v Man-Eating Crocodiles 1-0

A novel food assistance program in southern Somalia has succeeded in helping a poor community on the Juba river to protect itself and its cattle from voracious crocodiles. It's also creating more land for farming.

BBC News

Hard choices over food versus education in Malawi

Food or education? Public spending choices are never easy. But in Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, the choices are particularly stark. The government has made "food security" - which means making sure people have enough to eat - the top priority for government spending.

New York Times

No Shortage of Blame as Haiti Struggles to Feed Itself

With its rich delta soil and a year-round growing season, Haiti's famous agricultural region seems capable of feeding the entire Caribbean. But Haiti is a net importer of food, spending about $400 million last year on purchases from abroad. The World Food Programme runs child nutrition and "food for work" operations.

Reuters Alertnet

Solutions to global hunger are within our reach

Technological advances in rice production have enabled China to feed an additional 60 million people per year since 1978, while investments in agriculture by farmers in Niger have revitalised an estimated 5 million hectares of land and improved access to food for at least 1 million people.

Reuters

Special report -The fight over the future of food

At first glance, Giuseppe Oglio's farm near Milan looks like it's suffering from neglect. Weeds run rampant amid the rice fields and clover grows unchecked around his millet crop. Oglio, a third generation farmer eschews modern farming techniques -- chemicals, fertilizers, heavy machinery -- in favor of a purely natural approach. It is not just ecological, he says, but profitable, and he believes his system can be replicated in starving regions of the globe.

Associated Press (AP)

Devastating Drought Alters Life For Kenya Nomads

When 64-year-old Jimale Irobe was a young man, he guided his herds of cows and camels through knee-high grass. These days the scrubby blades barely reach his ankles even in the rainy season, and there is never enough grass to go around. The cattle cannot feed, and the nomadic families that depend on them for milk and meat cannot survive.(..) Aid agency Oxfam says 23 million people need food aid this year after the drought that swept across eastern Africa and the Horn region. Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia have been particularly hard hit. And a September report by the International Food Policy Research Institute predicted that the worldwide effects of climate change will lead to twenty-five million additional children becoming malnourished by 2050.

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