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Thought-provoking articles that deal with hunger and the issues involved in meeting the hunger challenge.

12 November 2009

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 Alertnet
9 November 2009

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.
Reuters
2 November 2009

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.
Associated Press (AP)
2 November 2009

Widows Support Themselves Selling Maize to WFP

Widows are often looked down on and pitied in Kenya. But the widows in the village of Angata Barakoi in the Transmara area of Kenya were determined to help each other (..) They were able to get loans from a local bank to buy seeds and other inputs. Finally, at harvest time, the World Food Programme (WFP) gave the group a contract to buy 250 metric tons of their surplus harvest through the Purchase for Progress programme.
All Africa
1 November 2009

Two years on, Katine offers much to celebrate – and much to feel frustrated about

Every time I visit Katine, in north-east Uganda, an image remains in the mind for months afterwards. In May, it was a long queue of girls laughing and chatting as they waited at a dirty water pump for hours to fill their jerrycans. In September, it was the eager face of an 18-year-old boy who proudly showed me his school report and told me how it took him three and a half hours to walk to school – and three and a half hours back. I looked with incredulity at the teachers' praise for his schoolwork. When could he find time to do his homework?
The Guardian

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