The objective of this study was to assess the burden of anaemia and its determinants among pregnant and non-pregnant women in Ethiopia. Researchers used data from the 2005 Demographic and Health Survey of Ethiopia. A total of 5,960 women of child-bearing age were included in the analysis. The general prevalence of anaemia among women was 27.7%, while the prevalence of anaemia was 33% and 27.3% among pregnant and non-pregnant women respectively. Analysis revealed a significant negative association between prevalence of anaemia and women’s educational status, grouped altitude of residential places and household wealth index categories. The authors found that anaemia is a moderate public health problem among women in Ethiopia but there exist significant differences in magnitude by socio-economic status of women and their families and where they live. They call for interventions designed to address maternal anaemia that pay attention to both nutritional and non-nutritional intervention strategies, including environmental sanitation, de-worming, and provision and promotion of family planning methods.
Poverty and health
In this article, the author, an environmental blogger, puts forward five reasons why urban farming is one of the major social movements in the world today. First, the urban farming movement has the potential to reinvigorate local commerce by encouraging local farmers to trade with one another. Second, urban farmers are usually better stewards of their land because they directly bear the ecological costs of their actions, whereas industrial agriculture usually manoeuvers to avoid paying for environmental costs. Rather than using chemicals that destroy soil biology, urban farming culture stresses sustainable organic techniques that enrich the topsoil. Third, urban farming makes it clearer and easier for people to be involved in local politics by bringing issues that directly affect communities to the fore. Fourth, urban agriculture can also bring about a revolution of health and nutrition because it supplies fresh, organic produce. And finally, urban farming is inherently an activity that helps build a sense of community. Growing food is, after all, a cooperative effort, as knowledge of how and what to grow is exchanged, seeds are swapped, labour is shared, and the harvest is traded. As urban farming grows, the author predicts a stronger interdependence within urban communities is likely to result as local food systems bring more community interaction into people’s daily lives.
This report raises that World Bank, USAID, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) are pressuring African governments into harmonising seed laws relating to border control measures, phytosanitary control, variety release systems, certification standards and intellectual property rights, and indicate that this is to the detriment of African small-holder farmers and their seed systems. Harmonised intellectual property rights over seeds are based on the 1991 Act of the International Union of the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV) as developed by industrialised countries, and the authors argue that this Act is inappropriate for Africa where 80% of all seeds are still produced and disseminated by smallholder farmers. The authors report that seed harmonisation efforts have excluded farmer and civil society participation and that the current practices of small-scale African farmers and their contribution to seed breeding, genetic diversity and food security are not recognised.
In this cross-sectional study, researchers screened 131 adults with or without pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) for HIV, wasting and disease severity using the 13-item validated clinical TB score and 24-hour dietary intake recall. Of the 131 participants, 61 were males and 70 females. Overall men and women had similar age. In average 24-hour nutrient intake, the following were low among patients with severe TB: energy, protein, total fat, carbohydrate, calcium, vitamin A and folate. Patients with moderate-to-severe clinical TB score had lower average energy intake than patients with mild TB scores (6.11 vs. 9.27 megajoules [MJ], respectively). The average 24-hour nutrient intakes of wasted and non-wasted TB patients were comparable. Nutrient intake among men was higher when compared to women regardless of wasting and severity of TB. Among those with wasting, men had higher average energy intake than women (8.87 vs. 5.81 MJ, respectively). Among patients with mild disease, men had higher average energy intake than women with mild disease (12.83 vs. 7.49 kcal, respectively). These findings suggest that severity of pulmonary TB and female gender were associated with reduced nutrient intake. Early diagnosis and nutritional support may be important in management of patients.
Neoliberal sanitation experts visiting Durban, South Africa for the Toilet Summit in early December 2012 may argue that South Africa should embrace low-water toilets, yet community critics regularly report that Durban’s water-less ‘Ventilated Improved Pitlatrine’ (VIP) and ‘Urinary Diversion’ (UD) strategies are failing. The author argues that middle- and upper-class South Africans could easily cross-subsidise their low-income fellow residents by paying more for the privileges of filling swimming pools and bathtubs, watering gardens and running washing machines, and that government can at the same time adjust tariffs downwards for poor people. If such reforms were made to water and sanitation prices, then better health and gender equity would result, and more funds could be raised for installing decent toilets in South African cities, as well as to repair sewage pipes whose cracks infect rivers and harbours. The construction capability and subsidised funding for projects is available in South Africa so that 'toilet apartheid' is argued to relate more to political choices in how these resources are used.
Four country case studies undertaken for this report provide examples of innovations in policy design and implementation that have improved the investment climate for smallholders, such as decentralisation of land management responsibilities in Tanzania. Implementation of progressive policies in the face of major power imbalances between beneficiaries and vested interests seeking to maintain the status quo remains a major challenge. There are six inter-related sets of conclusions from the study. 1. Policy is currently biased against smallholders. 2. The investment climates that support smallholder investment and corporate investments in agriculture, while having elements in common, are not the same. 3. Policies must respond to the diversity of rural societies. 4. Policy innovations in inclusive investment do exist and should be copied. 5. Effective implementation is vital. 6. Politics matter: Vested interests undermine socially optimal outcomes, yet without a political analysis there is a risk of assuming that politicians choose policy in a socially optimal way and of constructing a normative analysis that focuses on technical solutions to the challenges of economic liberalisation.
As the International Year of Cooperatives is being observed in 2012, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has said that one of the only chances small-scale food producers have to gain competitive access to local and global markets is by banding together in cooperatives. According to FAO chief, Graziano da Silva, cooperatives follow core values and principles that are critical to doing business in an equitable manner, that empower and benefit members and the local community. This is especially relevant in poor rural communities and in promoting sustainable local development. He said that the cooperative business model helps small- and medium-scale farmers add value to their production and access markets. Small scale food producers are also able to take part in policy discussions through co-operatives. Co-operatives help to generate employment, boost national economies, reduce poverty and improve food security. The FAO has pledged to foster the growth of agricultural cooperatives, including through their promotion by special ambassadors for cooperatives and by developing approaches, guidelines, methodologies and training tools for supporting policy on and organisational development of co-operatives.
Increased agricultural development in Zambia will compromise the country’s food security if peasant farmers continue to be driven off customary land to pave the way for large-scale local and foreign agribusiness, according to the University of Zambia’s Dean of the School of agriculture, Mickey Mwala. He argued that smallholder farmers are responsible for food security in Zambia. Land grabs and forced evictions of local farmers by both foreign and local investors are common, according to the Zambia Land Alliance, a land rights advocacy organisation. The Alliance blames the eviction of farmers on the cumbersome procedures involved in obtaining title deeds and “archaic” laws, which do not recognise customary rights as a form of land ownership. Under Zambian law, title deeds are the only legal proof of ownership of land. To get a title deed takes between two months and 10 years and is discouragingly complicated for illiterate applicants who cannot afford legal assistance.
In this paper the author proposes policy options to ensure that poor Zambian families do not lose their land rights in the face of trade policies. The proposals focus on addressing the obstacles that poor families face in accessing and obtaining legal title to land. Strengthening national land policy, the legal framework and investment guidelines would help to protect the land rights of poor families. A comprehensive pro-poor land policy needs to be developed to guide the review of legislation for land administration. For these proposals to work, local communities need to register as legal entities or trusts to legally own land.
In this report, IFPRI describes the evidence on land, water, and energy scarcity in developing countries and offers two visions of a future global food system: an unsustainable scenario in which current trends in resource use continue, and a sustainable scenario in which access to food, modern energy, and clean water improves significantly and ecosystem degradation is halted or reversed. The report provides on-the-ground perspectives on the issues of land tenure and title as well as the impacts of scarce land, water, and energy on poor people in Sierra Leone and Tanzania and describes the work of their organisations in helping to alleviate these impacts.