The famine spreading across the Horn of Africa is not principally the result of drought, but due to political and social circumstances that urgently need to be addressed, the author of this article argues. Global media reports attribute the main cause for the famine to successive seasons of failed rains, yet the author notes here that there has been only one failed rainy season in the Horn so far. The primary cause of the famine is war, the author argues, which has disrupted farmers in Somalia from their normal routines. In the past, a single rainy season failure was easily augmented by relying on stored food from surplus harvests, or from importing food from further south, but violence and fighting has kept farmers from their fields, even if the rains are good, as they were this year. And while there is surplus food, it isn’t getting to the famine area due to lack of infrastructure and local disruption of services. Tanzania, which has had a bumper harvest so far this year, has also banned agricultural sales to the north, for fear it will deplete its own surpluses.
Poverty and health
In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between maternal depression and child growth in developing countries through a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Seventeen studies were included, with a total of 13,923 mother-and-child pairs from 11 countries. The authors found that children of mothers with depression or depressive symptoms were more likely to be underweight or stunted. The selected studies indicated that if the infant population were entirely unexposed to maternal depressive symptoms, 23% to 29% fewer children would be underweight or stunted. The authors call for rigorous prospective studies to identify mechanisms and causes. Early identification, treatment and prevention of maternal depression may help reduce child stunting and underweight in developing countries.
East Africa is experiencing a severe food crisis, with at least 10 million people affected in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). And according to the Mubarak Relief and Development Organisation (MURDO), a local NGO working in the Lower Shebelle region of Somalia, the international community is not helping. The recent March to May "long rains" in Kenya were poor for the second or third successive season in most rangelands and cropping lowlands, with many of these areas receiving 10-50% of normal rains. The consequences include declining water and pasture, and high levels of livestock death. In the predominantly pastoralist north, a low milk supply has contributed to malnutrition levels soaring above 35%. Nationally, at least 3.2 million people are currently food insecure, and even in Kenya's coastal region, thousands are food insecure, says the Kenya Red Cross Society.
According to this report by Oxfam, the global food system works only for the few but not for most of the world’s population. It leaves billions of consumers lacking sufficient power and knowledge about what they buy and eat and the majority of small food producers disempowered and unable to fulfill their productive potential. The failure of the system flows from failures of government – failures to regulate, correct, protect, resist and invest – which mean that companies, interest groups, and elites are able to plunder resources and to redirect flows of finance, knowledge, and food. Oxfam highlights the need to address the inequities which plague the food system. They argue that global agriculture produces more food than the world’s population needs, much of which is thrown away. Hunger and poverty are concentrated in rural areas, with smallholder food producers routinely deprived of the resources they need to thrive, like water, technology, investment and credit. Large areas of land in Africa and elsewhere are being sold off to foreign investors at rock bottom prices, in deals that offer little to local communities. The report presents new research forecasting price rises for staple grains in the range of 120–180% within the next two decades, as resource pressures mount and climate change takes hold.
Oxfam has launched a global campaign, GROW, to combat global hunger. Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam, said that global agriculture is capable of feeding all of humanity yet one in seven go hungry. The GROW campaign will expose the governments whose failed policies are propping up the broken food system and the clique of 300–500 powerful companies who benefit from and lobby hard to maintain it. For example, four global companies control the movement of most of the world’s food. Three companies – Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill – control an estimated 90% of the world’s grain trade. Their activities help drive up volatile food prices and they profit from them. In the first quarter of 2008, at the height of a global food price crisis, Cargill’s profits were up 86% and the company is now heading for its most profitable year yet on the back of further disruptions to global food supplies. Oxfam is calling on governments - especially the G20 - to lead the transformation to a fairer more sustainable food system by investing in agriculture, valuing the world’s natural resources, managing the food system better and delivering equality for women who produce much of the world's food. It is calling on the private sector to shift to a business model where profit does not come at the expense of poor producers, consumers and the environment.
Urban farming in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is providing a livelihood for thousands of city dwellers, with vegetables bringing in good money for small growers and helping to alleviate high levels of malnutrition, according to this article. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has noted that the demand for vegetables and the high prices they command in DRC cities has pushed many jobless residents into becoming small-scale growers. Most of the green spaces along the roadsides of the capital, Kinshasa, have been transformed into small farms. City farmers now grow 122% more produce than they did five years ago, according to the FAO, which is supporting gardeners in five main DRC cities with a US$10.4 million urban horticulture project. Although the project has contributed to improving nutrition in urban areas, the project manager cautions that there is still a lot of work to be done and malnutrition levels remain high: 24% of children in the DRC under five are underweight, 43% are stunted, and 9% are wasted.
Contrary to popular perception, the current high food prices will not see more money flowing into agriculture in the long term, according to this forecast. Input costs, including that of fuel and fertiliser, have risen significantly and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) anticipates global agriculture production to slow down in the next decade. The Outlook has forecast in its last three editions that food prices will remain high for the next few decades. Global agricultural production is projected to grow at 1.7% annually until 2020, compared to 2.6% during the previous decade. Slower growth is expected for most crops, especially oilseeds and coarse grains, which face higher production costs and slowing productivity. The FAO estimates that to meet projected demand over the next 40 years, farmers in developing countries need to double production.
Despite increased research interest on the social and economic determinants of health (SEDH), the vast majority of studies on this issue are from developed countries. The authors of this study set out to determine whether there are specific social determinants of health in the world's poorest countries, and if so, how they could be better identified and researched in Africa in order to promote and support universal health coverage. They conducted a literature review of existing papers on the social and economic determinants of health, finding that most of the existing studies on the SEDH studies did not provide adequate explanation on the historical and contemporary realities of SEDHs in the world's poorest countries. As these factors vary from one country to another, the authors argue that it is necessary for researchers and policy makers to understand country-specific conditions and design appropriate policies that take due cognisance of these country-specific circumstances. They call for further research in the world's poorest countries, especially in Africa.
Since April 2011, the humanitarian community has been gearing up to deploy a new mechanism aimed at combining expertise on food aid and agricultural assistance to boost food security and make food insecure communities hit by a disaster more resilient. The tool, which is deployed by aid workers in emergency responses, is the "cluster approach", first implemented in 2005. A "cluster" consists of groupings of UN agencies, NGOs and other international organisations around a sector or service provided during a humanitarian crisis. The cluster approach currently encompasses 11 clusters or sectors such as logistics, water and sanitation, early recovery and nutrition. Agriculture as a separate cluster will cease to exist under the new scheme. The new cluster is led jointly by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). The tool is aimed at implementing a proper `early recovery' approach by introducing recovery and development aspects into relief work as early as possible and strengthening transition.
Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) has proposed seven major issues that must be tackled by the G8 if it is serious about alleviating poverty. Public accountability, just governance and human rights should be enshrined in programmes financed by G8, with reporting that takes into account real prices (after inflation) and is based on consistent year-on-year calculations. The G8 must also place gender equality and empowerment at the heart of its development policies. It should reaffirm the Gleneagles, L’Aquila and Muskoka commitments in the G8 communiqué and set out an emergency plan to deliver the US$19 billion shortfall against commitments by 2012. In terms of debt cancellation, the G8 should endorse the formation of an International Debt Court to ensure a fair and transparent process that is independent of borrowers and lenders, based on clear rules, legally enforceable, comprehensive and mandated to assess the validity and legitimacy of all debt cancellation claims. The G8-Africa Declaration and related agreements must be based on fairness to both Northern and Southern countries, ensuring equitable trade conditions. Justice in terms of climate change agreements should be secured for developing countries, and peace and security should also be taken into account by the G8, as democracy is currently being undermined in Africa by continual armed conflict.