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Worth reading

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

18 June 2012

Insurance helps Kenya's herders protect against drought

Every time a drought has hit this elderly couple's village in northern Kenya they have had to rebuild their lives all over again. (..) By then Wacho and Dawe had lost 10 of their 15 cows, but they danced too. They knew they would struggle to support their nine children without these animals but this drought was different -- for the first time in their lives Wacho had taken insurance out on some of their cattle. (..) "Micro-insurance for agriculture is something that farmers in the rest of the world have had access to for sometime," says Challiss McDonough from the World Food Programme. (..) WFP and Oxfam America have their own micro-insurance initiative for agriculture in Ethiopia and it's now being expanded into Senegal.

CNN

18 June 2012

The global challenge of food and nutrition security

Seven billion people live on Earth, and the population is growing by 77 million every year. (..) Amid this rapid growth, more than 850 million people go to bed hungry. (..) Agriculture faces dual challenges: becoming more sustainable on a dwindling resource base while having to feed an increasing number of people. To provide food and nutrition security in the coming decades will require a major and sustained effort by all stakeholders, including business. (..) The good news is that food security is firmly on the political agenda of the Group of Eight, the Group of 20 and at this week’s U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). And business has been invited to contribute. Written by Paul Polman, chief executive officer of Unilever and Daniel Servitje, chief executive officer of Group Bimbo. They are co-chairs of B-20, the food security task force for the Group of 20.

The Washington Post

12 June 2012

Analysis: Aid work conundrum in unpredictable Yemen

In the sweltering port city of Aden, about 300km south of Yemen’s capital Sana’a, two dozen international NGOs are struggling to meet mounting humanitarian demands caused by a war raging in neighbouring Abyan Governorate where government troops have for a month fought to crush a local Al Qaeda ally, Ansar Al Shariah. Few aid workers have been granted access to the governorate and those in Aden face growing security constraints due to organized criminal groups.

IRIN

11 April 2012

The Other Arab Spring

All these tensions over land, water and food are telling us something: The Arab awakening was driven not only by political and economic stresses, but, less visibly, by environmental, population and climate stresses as well. If we focus only on the former and not the latter, we will never be able to help stabilize these societies.

New York Times

10 February 2012

Lessons Unlearned: Why Another Gigantic Famine Looms in Africa

Last year, around 13 million people in the Horn of Africa needed food aid. Now aid agencies warn failed harvests in the Sahel, the band of desert and scrub that runs south of the Sahara, mean 12 million more people require assistance. (..) The world has more than enough food to feed itself. Redistributing it to those who lack their share is the job of large and well-funded international aid agencies, particularly the World Food Program.

Time