World Food Program USA Blog

When It Comes to Climate Change, Every Day Should Be Earth Day

The dry ground is cracked and parched; the crops have mostly failed. When the rain comes, it is expected to come in torrential amounts. After three seasons of drought, El Niño brings with it rain that will wash the newly planted crops right off of the dry land. 

 

In areas like Mombasa, in the coastal region of Kenya, these are the signs of climate change.

 

These extreme weather patterns are affecting a population that relies on agricultural productivity: a population that is already poor, hungry and barely making ends meet. The unpredictability of the seasons is pushing more people into poverty. This is what I saw when I travelled to Kenya in November 2009. This is the story of people who rely on the land, whose livelihoods are at risk as the number of natural disasters increases dramatically. And while this story is a memory of Kenya, it is a story that resonates in many places around the world. For example, thousands of people in Guatemala are also experiencing the effects of climate change as failed harvests leave people food insecure.

While Earth Day has come and gone, we can still pause to think about our environment and how it affects us on any day of the year. How are we using our environment and how is climate change affecting the lives of people around the world? Research suggests that climate change will dramatically impact the number of people who experience hunger in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) will provide food assistance to more than 90 million people in 73 countries this year - which means that its humanitarian workers on the ground are directly seeing the effects of droughts, hurricanes and flooding on impoverished communities.

 

With WFP’s expertise in vulnerability mapping, information technologies and locally driven interventions such as water harvesting, WFP can provide important support and resources as countries look at how to tackle these problems.  According to a WFP policy document, the agency has already helped governments and communities plant billions of trees and build flood defenses, dams and terracing, all of which have ultimately saved lives by minimizing the effects of extreme weather.

 

Just yesterday, the Huffington Post ran a story about new stoves in Haiti that produce biochar, which will help replenish the country’s barren topsoil. The story highlights how environmental sustainability can be woven into helping people feed themselves. It is innovative tools such as this one that will help people deal with climatic shocks in the future.

 

If the predictions turn out to be true, droughts and storms will become more frequent, sea levels will rise and ruin land for harvest and more areas of the world will experience the devastating effects of climate change. Those who are already poor and hungry will be the worst affected. Addressing the impact of climate change today with creative and critical thinking is vital to saving lives in the developing world tomorrow. 

 

-Jessica Alatorre
Outreach Associate
Friends of WFP

Update on the Food Crisis in Niger

With a severe hunger crisis rapidly approaching in Niger, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has now more than doubled its assistance to those suffering from the region's recent drought. 

"By almost any measure, [Niger] is the world's poorest country," WFP spokesperson Jennifer Parmelee told Voice of America. "Years and years of deprivation have left them extremely vulnerable to any crisis that could come along. The last time, it was a plague of locusts, and this time it's drought. Any crisis at all can tip over millions of people."

The drought, which may leave nearly 60 percent of the population suffering from food shortages, is already causing displacement from the worst-affected areas. Hundreds of people from rural areas are walking long distances to seek refuge in the capital city of Niamey, according to Reuters.

"The rainy season was bad and we didn't have enough food," said Hadidja, a 40-year-old woman who walked about 43 miles with her family to reach Niamey. "We finished the little food we harvested within 45 days. That is why we all left and moved to town."

WFP needs $182 million to provide food assistance to more than half of the country's population of 13.5 million, but it still faces a significant funding shortfall. The agency will target Niger's most vulnerable populations, such as pregnant and nursing women, young children and patients already weakened by tuberculosis or HIV/AIDS. Some 500,000 infants under two will also receive supplementary feeding because they are in the stage of life when nutrition is most critical.

Read a recent blog post about the food shortage in Western Africa's Sahel region.
Learn more about WFP's operations in Niger.

-Alli Bailey
Communications Assistant
Friends of WFP

Why Nutrition is Important...

After  a two-day meeting in Halifax, the Development Ministers of the G8 (a group including  France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the United States, Russia and the EU) have pledged to make hunger issues a key focus during the upcoming G8 Summit in June.  The plan is to increase efforts in nutrition, disease prevention and improving maternal and infant health starting before pregnancy and ending in early childhood.  In order to implement these goals they will focus on integrated health systems and work multilaterally (at local, national and global levels.)
 
This begs the question: why is nutrition so important?

Annually, 3.5 million children die from diseases like tuberculosis and malaria that could have been cured if they were not suffering from poor nutrition.  In addition to the high mortality rates associated with undernutrition, it stunts growth both physically and mentally, particularly within the first two years of life.
 
Though the numbers may seem daunting, it is entirely possible to prevent child undernutrition in developing countries.  If addressed in a preventative way, complementary food intervention costs only $40-80 per child annually in comparison to the $200 it costs to treat a single episode of severe malnourishment.  The economic impact of having a healthier youth population is enormous because it not only increases overall productivity, but also results in a 50 percent increase in wages as an adult.

Though the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has programs that address this issue for 100 million people a year, an international and multilateral effort is the only way to solve the issue of undernutrition.  The G8 has an incredible opportunity to substantially decrease infant and child mortality and improve developing economies by focusing on nutrition in the next few years.

-Kate Stritzinger
Outreach Intern
Friends of WFP

Pregnant woman walks for days to reach refugee camp in Yemen, may lose food rations

Abeer Etefa, a World Food Programme officer from Cairo, met with people displaced by the conflict in Northern Yemen. Among those was Aicha, a pregnant woman who was forced from her home by the fighting. With her six children she fled to the Al Mazraq Camp for displaced persons, and later delivered a boy at the camp without even seeing a doctor.

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100 Terrific Twitter Feeds for Humanitarians

Twitter is fast becoming the best way to receive up-to-the-minute updates on the news that is most important to you or your organization. Only hours after the earthquake in Haiti, four out of the top ten topics on Twitter were about Haiti or earthquake relief. Twitter was receiving so much traffic that it went down for periods of time on Wednesday, January 13.

For those of you interested in getting frequent updates about global hunger, poverty or other issues, onlinedegreeprograms.org has compiled a list of 100 terrific Twitter feeds for humanitarians.

Here are some of the feeds from their list that we follow:

@AlertNet: This news feed focuses on covering wars, conflict, natural disasters, and food and health emergencies.

@wfp: This is the official World Food Program Twitter page, an organization dedicated to fighting hunger worldwide

@JosetteSheeran: Here you’ll get access to the head of the World Food Program.

@Heifer: Check out this feed to learn about the work of this group to empower people to bring themselves out of hunger and poverty.

@AkshayaPatraUSA; Learn more about the work of this group that feeds millions of hungry children in India each year.

@womenadvocates: Lys Anzia provides news and information on women around the world on this feed.

And our own feed is listed under “Charitable Groups”:

@FriendsofWFP: Read this feed to learn ways you can help support the World Food Program.

If you choose to follow us on Twitter, we look forward to seeing you online!

- Jason Corum
Online Communications Manager
Friends of WFP

Hunger crisis escalates in Yemen, U.S. needs to show leadership

The UN World Food Programme (WFP), facing huge budget shortfalls, is being forced to reduce rations for over 250,000 Yemenis who have been displaced by the conflict in the northern part of the country.  On Wednesday, WFP and the Government of Yemen will host a press conference urging donations to avert a large-scale tragedy.

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World Food Program appeals for support to stop hunger crisis in Yemen

Low funding for the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has devastated its relief efforts in Yemen. WFP and the Government of Yemen are holding a press conference tomorrow calling for help from the international community. With rations being cut in half for Yemenis displaced by conflict and other food programs suspended, there is an urgent call to action. See also the article How You Can Help Save Yemen from Hunger and Suffering.

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The Media Can Play a Role in Fighting Global Hunger

H. George Franks was a Dutch journalist with a mission. It was late April, 1945 and millions of people in his homeland were starving under Nazi occupation. General Eisenhower had set in motion plans to bring in food via air drops by British and American planes.

Henri Van Der Zee, the author of The Hunger Winter, wrote about how Franks went to Royal Air Force bases in England to tell crew members of the suffering in Holland. Franks even went on one of the first food drop missions over Holland.

Van Der Zee wrote, “It was a great moment for Franks when at a signal from the commander he pushed out the first parcels, which tumbled through the sky, ‘like confetti from a giant hand.’” Food by air, and later by truck, continued to stream into Holland to save millions of lives as World War II came to a close.

keep reading,....

International Community Looks to Help Small-Scale Farmers

On Friday, the Obama administration released its proposal of funds that it would like to contribute to a global fund that aims to help small-scale farmers with agricultural development. The fund was created after the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. The United States’ funding proposal is set at $408 million. This proposal comes after the United States has already donated $67 million to the fund. Currently Canada ($230 million), Spain ($95 million) and South Korea ($50 million) have donated to the fund and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also donated $30 million. 

This is a big step for the administration’s Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative (GHFSI), which looks to address global hunger comprehensively. Small-scale farmers can be the key to helping communities become sustainable. If these farmers have more incentives to grow crops, they will produce more food for the community. The funds are meant to be invested to improve land use planning, irrigation and farm machinery, to provide technical help to farmers and to build better roads linking farmers with their markets. Ideally this fund will help build capacity for farmers to help themselves and their communities.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) is already helping out with these efforts with its pilot program called Purchase for Progress (P4P), which looks to give small-scale farmers access to reliable markets that they never had access to before. 

With this new dedication to small-scale farmers and building sustainability for these communities, this is just one part of a whole comprehensive strategy to end hunger. 

Read More

-Brian J. Ward
Outreach Associate
Friends of WFP

New Treaty Can Help Get Foreign Policy Priorities in Order

The resolution states "the savings generated in the long term by significant reduction of nuclear armaments will be appreciable, with estimates as high as $13,000,000,000 annually.....Whereas the World Food Programme and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations estimate that an additional $5,000,000,000 annually in global assistance for school feeding and other food supports could eliminate hunger and malnutrition among the world’s school-age children."

We should focus more on the less expensive task of fighting global hunger. Right now, this issue is not given enough urgency in the halls of government, despite the fact that hunger could ruin our foreign policy goals in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Haiti, and so many other countries.

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