Standard Bank Africa announced a major private sector and purely Africa-based initiative for aiding African farmers with a $100 million pledge.   The pledge came is support of the goals of African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), which convened its inaugural session in Accra, Ghana, starting on Thursday.

“The scheme will hand out loans to some 750,000 smallholder farmers in Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda over the next three years, and the bank is keen on funding popular cash crops such as cocoa and cashew nuts.”

The African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), ” focuses on promoting investments and policy support for driving agricultural productivity and income growth for African farmers in an environmentally sustainable way.”  The initiative will be implemented by the bank and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an organization chaired by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and dedicated to bringing private sector investment to Africa to help initiate a new Green Revolution.

Posted by Michael Lucivero.

Anna Lappé is the co-founder, along with her mother Frances Lappé, of the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, an international network for research and popular education about the root causes of hunger and poverty. They have also founded the Small Planet Fund which has raised more than $500,000 for democratic social movements worldwide.

Anna’s first book Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet, co-written with her mother Frances Lappé, chronicles courageous social movements around the world. It won the Nautilus Award for Social Change. Anna’s second book Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen showcases the ecological and social benefits of sustainable food and brings this diet to life with the seasonal menus of chef Bryant Terry. In her latest book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What Your Can Do About It, Anna explores how our diet affects the climate and expounds her seven principles for a climate friendly diet.

[FPA Q1] In your book, “Diet for a Hot Planet”, you describe seven principles for a climate friendly diet. What are they and are they something that everyone can apply to their daily lives?

[AL] Reach for Real Food. Processed foods are chock full of ingredients that add a big emissions toll to our food, and they usually aren’t too healthy either!

Put Plants on Your Plate. Here are some of the reasons why putting plants in the center of your plate makes eco-sense:

• Global livestock production is responsible for as much as 18 percent of all emissions
• Half of all corn and 90 percent of soy is diverted to feed animals on factory farms^[1]
• Half of all fossil-fuel intensive synthetic fertilizer in the United States is used on livestock feed crops^[2]
• 70 percent of all agricultural land is now used for livestock^[3]
• Fossil fuel use can be as much as 50 times higher to produce meat protein than vegetable-based proteins

Don’t Panic, Go Organic. Support farmers who are getting off the chemical and fossil-fuel treadmill.

Lean towards Local. Support your regional food economy by visiting your locally stocked supermarkets, checking out your nearest farmers market, or becoming a member of a farm through community-supported agriculture (CSA).

Cut Out Food Waste. In the United States, 25 to 50 percent of all food that could be eaten never even makes it to our plates. A typical restaurant, for instance, wastes between 40 and 50 percent of its food. This food waste adds up big-time to landfills, another way the food has a climate impact.

Send Packaging Packing. Every year, Americans toss out as many as forty billion plastic water bottles, roughly 130 bottles for every single one of us.  Our food and drink’s paper and plastic, cardboard and bottles, cans and Styrofoam play a starring role in the impact the food system has upon global warming, from the emissions related to the production of packaging to those from the landfills which are clogged with their waste.

Got to get ourselves back to the kitchen. The best way to bring climate-friendly fare into your life is to reclaim your own power to cook, grow, and create your own food.

[FPA Q2] In the current economic climate, is there a way to eat sustainable and climate friendly food at a reasonable cost?

[AL] Definitely. Following most of the seven principles of a climate-friendly diet would mean saving money, not spending more of it. Let me offer a few examples:

• The average American wastes $600 worth of food every year. Cut back on food waste and you cut back on the money you lose every year.
• Cutting out expensive soda, bottled water, Vitamin water, etc, and going for free, municipal and better-for-you tap water can also mean huge savings.
• Compare public tap water with bottled water and you’d find that people are spending as much as 10,000 times more for every gallon of bottled water they drink than if they had gotten their water from a tap.
• Going for plant-based sources of protein can also be a much more affordable approach to getting the nutrition you need. For those of us who are eating a lot of hamburgers, steaks, hot dogs, and more, cutting back can also mean saving money.

[FPA Q3] Since farmers are ultimately businessmen, how can they be convinced to adopt more environmentally friendly agricultural practices if they are not economically beneficial?

[AL] First, let’s be clear that the typical American farmer is not making a killing. More than 80 percent of American farmers, in fact, must seek off-farm sources of income. Indeed, all but 11 of the 200 poorest counties in the country are non-metropolitan, rural counties. And although the federal government pays out billions in farm subsidies every year, three-quarters of them go to the top 10 percent of producers, based on size.

This skewed subsidy system helps to ensure that it makes financial sense for farmers to pursue commodities and chemical farming, not agroecological practices and biodiverse production.

Environmentally friendly practices certainly could be economical, but that would require getting our agricultural policy in line with our stated commitments to help address global warming and improve the environment.

[FPA Q4] Have policymakers in Washington or in other countries done enough to address the relationship between the food we eat and climate change?

[AL] Unfortunately, policy makers in Washington have been dragging their feet on taking serious action on climate change, let alone the connection between the climate crisis and the food chain. Worse, what farm-state representatives succeeded in getting written into the stalled climate-legislation, Waxman-Markey, was actually exemption from emissions regulations for agribusiness as well as a continuation of business-as-usual for corn-based ethanol production level mandates, despite the solid evidence that this ethanol production leads to overall emissions increase, not reduction.

[FPA Q5] You co-founded the Small Planet Institute with your mother in 2001, to further the idea of a “Living Democracy.”  Could you explain this idea and how food security factors into the idea of achieving Living Democracy?

[AL] My new book “Diet for a Hot Planet” carries on a conversation my mother started nearly forty years ago with her book, “Diet for a Small Planet”. A core theme of our work is that the existence of hunger amidst plenty provides evidence of the lack of democracy. According to United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization figures, calorie availability per person today is sufficient for all humans to eat well. If democracy is defined as everyone having a voice – and few among us would choose to go hungry or make others go hungry - then the presence of hunger reveals a deep democracy deficit.

1. Pachauri, “Global Warming – The impact of meat production and consumption on climate change”. The USDA has slightly different figures, claiming at least half of all corn and 80 percent of soy is now diverted from human consumption to the livestock industry. United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, “Feed Grains Database: Yearbook Tables.”
2. Steinfield et al., Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options
3. Steinfield et al., Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options

Posted by Hallam Lyall Grant

The future of the world’s first seed bank, maintained by the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry near St. Petersburg, Russia, is threatened by real estate developers looking to build new homes on the prime real estate owned by the Institute.

According to the Washington Post,

The station was founded in 1924 by Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist and geneticist who created the idea of seed banks as repositories of plant diversity that could be used to breed new varieties in response to threats to food production.

The Institute grows the “…one of the world’s largest field collections of fruits and berries, …[and it] also has a rich variety of grasses and grains.”  Almost all of the plant varieties that are being preserved are not available anywhere else in the world.

This is not the first challenge to the survival of the seed vault.  During World War II, when St. Petersburg was known as Leningrad, the seed vault was threatened by a siege of the city.  As food became more and more scarce, 12 of the scientists continued guarding the seed vault and its contents, dying by starvation in the process.

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev weighed in on the seed vault, instructing that an investigation would be launched.  Activists started a Twitter campaign to draw the attention of Medvedev, who recently started using the service.

Posted by Michael Lucivero.

Photo credit: © RIA Novosti. Dmitry Astakhov

The Global Food Security blog will be running a “Five Questions for…” series
beginning with Anna Lappé, co-founder of the Small Planet Institute and author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of your Fork and What You Can Do about It.

The format will consist of a short profile of the interviewee and their work,
followed by five questions.

Other interviewees include Nick Cullather, whose upcoming book is entitled The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia.

“Five Questions for…” will be an occasional interview series where we hope to create a more immediate dialogue with those directly involved with global food security. Comments posted below the interview may be passed on to the author. Similarly, please feel free to make suggestions about potential interviewees.

Posted by Hallam Lyall Grant

The British research agency Maplecroft released a report ranking the countries most likely to experience food shortages.  The list is topped by Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Liberia, Chad and Zimbabwe.  In addition to taking 9 of the top 10 spots on the list, African countries come in 36 of the top 50 spots.

The report also predicts that a reduction in grain production caused by wildfires in Russia and floods in Canada will raise the price of food globally.  Reduced grain stores will also affect food aid available for countries, like Haiti and Pakistan, recovering from recent natural disasters.

Posted by Michael Lucivero.

Image Credit: © Maplecroft 2010

To date, over 1,600 people have died and around 14 million people have been affected by the floods in Pakistan which have followed the country’s worst monsoon rains in 80 years. Sir John Holmes, the Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN, has stated that “if we don’t act fast enough, many more people could die of disease and food shortage”.

It is clear that international response must focus on both immediate and long-term responses to the crisis. In the short term, Pakistan faces food shortages as well as a possible outbreak of diseases such as gastroenteritis, scabies, cholera and typhoid. In the long term, the floods have destroyed infrastructure, which will require a program of reconstruction once the floodwaters have receded.

Although the full extent of the damage is not yet known, the floods have destroyed crops such as wheat, cotton and sugar cane, which are vital to the Pakistan economy. The UN has reported that, in order to avoid a food crisis, up to 6 million people require food assistance, at an estimated cost of $150.5 million. In addition, shelter, clean water and emergency healthcare remain top priorities.

Sir John Holmes has called the international response thus far “encouraging”, but emphasizes the importance of the ongoing effort. In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, supports this by highlighting the nature of the crisis as a “rolling” one. In contrast to “sudden catastrophes”, Holbrooke argues that the danger of rolling crises is that they “grow and are initially underestimated”.

In addition to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, humanitarian assistance is being provided by organizations such as the World Food Programme, Mercy Corps, Action Against Hunger and USAID.

Posted by Hallam Lyall Grant

With Russia’s worst heatwave on record expected to last for the next ten days, experts begin to worry about the potential for devastating economic losses; in this case, a possible $14 billion off economic growth.

On August 5th, Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, announced a ban on grain exports after more than a third of Russia’s cultivable land was destroyed by a dreadful drought, caused by wild fires. Putin has suggested that Russia’s ban on exports could extend into 2011 as the damage to this summer’s grain output may reach nearly 40%.

Russia’s export ban has pushed wheat prices to a 23-month high on the commodities market raising concerns over an increase in food prices worldwide. On Tuesday, World Bank President, Robert Zoellick, responded by warning countries against compounding market uncertainty by implementing export bans similar to Russia’s.

For now, Russia waits in eager anticipation of autumn’s first heavy rainfall.

Posted by Emma Fursland

A recent BBC article reports that more people are classified as “poor”in India’s eight poorest states than Africa’s 26 poorest countries. In this case, an estimated 421 million Indians are in poverty.  Recently, many have argued that the Indian government should replace its inefficient social safety net of subsidized government food, cooking fuel and education with food coupons or cash, making food a fundamental civil right to all.

Proponents of this fight to change India’s constitution and declare food a “right” say that a new system could qualify every Indian family for a monthly 77-pound bag of grain, sugar and kerosene. Opponents cite the government’s renowned inability to combat official corruption as a risk to successful distribution of such cash programs.

Many social advocates assert that if India is to become a regional competitor with China, it must first fight poverty and malnutrition rates prevalent throughout the rural states.

Posted by Emma Fursland

As Russia fights to protect land sown with wheat, barley and other crops from record high temperatures, seventeen regions have declared emergencies because of the severe heat and drought.

Significantly, the drought puts a halt to Russia’s recent agricultural revival. Russia is home to some of the world’s most fertile land for grain crops, known as the black earth region. In recent years, Russia has tried to meet steadily rising global food demands by investing substantial efforts to increase machinery, silos, and grain-carrying railway cars to this region. However, vast irrigation throughout this land remained impossible, due to the areas sheer immensity, forcing farmers to depend on annual rainfall.

While this year’s late rainfall is expected to make little difference in overall agricultural production, attention now turns to Siberia where weather is considered “normal” and crop production may help compensate for the nations’ devastating loss.

Posted by Emma Fursland.

Photo Credit: ©  RIA Novosti. Andrey Archipov.

While tackling drought and famine may be some of the top concerns for today’s developing nations, the steady growth of the demand for specialty foods in the United States over the past decade may have the potential to assist in the growth of their economies.

Now making up almost 16% of U.S. food sales, the specialty food business has become a lucrative opportunity for firms in new or developing countries. At this summer’s Fancy Food Show in New York City, vendors from such locations as Kosovo, Georgia and Palestine competed with larger nations and with each other to introduce their products into the American market.

Recently, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has gotten involved with food shows by assisting producers in areas where they lack experience, such as effective advertising and navigating the American consumer market. USAID also actively seeks out new vendors to participate in the emerging business.

By taking advantage of the expanding tastes of America’s “culinary elite,” foreign producers can create the additional capital needed to expand their operations. The resulting job creation can be a benefit to both the local and national economies of developing states.

Posted by Lex Cardone

Photo Credit: Phoenix New Times