From survival to victory !

 

PHOTO CREDIT: WVC – 2002-07-OUALIDIA – MOROCCO 22 copy.jpg

Local farmers discussing the results of a scientific experiment on enhancement of food production by application of the soil conditioner TerraCottem

SURVIVAL OR VICTORY GARDENS

By Prof. Dr. Willem VAN COTTHEM – Ghent University, Belgium

In 2012 I read an article published by Dean FOSDICK in The Seattle Times, entitled: ‘Survival gardens’ can help save cash

Patches deliver high yields from small spaces and produce wholesome foods that store well

Food production by local farmers in small family gardens Guatemala – Photo Fincas Buenas – df74f7a7026b4f36e1d0173d27d84106.jpg

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I took note of the following important parts in this interesting article:

(1) Many cash-strapped families are turning to “survival gardens” to help dig out from the recession.

(2) ‘They were called ‘victory gardens’ during the world wars because they helped ease shortages, ‘…… ‘We call them ‘survival gardens’ now because they help families cut spending.’

(3) The term is part of a larger do-it-yourself trend toward growing more backyard veggies and eating locally grown food.

(4) Survival gardens are used mainly to raise the kind of produce that you can grow for less than what you would pay at a grocery store – …………..

(5) People new to gardening can get help from county extension offices, churches and community groups. Some offer training, others provide growing sites and a few distribute supplies — all for little or no charge.

(6) Survival gardens can do more than put fresh, nutritious food on the table, ……….  ‘Families have told us they sell some of their overage (from the starter kits) to pay bills and get medicines,’ ……….

(7) …………sells ‘survival seed’ packets, and said their sales have more than doubled in the past year. Each package contains 16 easy-to-grow heirloom vegetables, from beets to pole beans, cabbage to sweet corn. They come triple-wrapped in watertight plastic, designed to increase storage life.

(8) ………… gardening with seed is one way to save on food dollars, particularly if it’s the right kind of seed.

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The fact that more than 800 million people on this world are hungry or malnourished is generally attributed by the international media to the economic crisis (the food crisis), all those poor people supposed to be unable to afford the expensive food at the market. That’s probably why nowadays “Many cash-strapped families are turning to “survival gardens” to help dig out from the recession”.

During World Wars I and II, not the food prizes, but simply the lack of food caused huge hunger problems.  All the war-affected countries reacted on these emergencies in exactly the same way: by offering the hungry population small spaces or allotments for gardening.  Those allotment gardens or ‘victory gardens‘ helped ease the food shortages, people eating their locally grown food.  Do you know that most of those allotment gardens still exist all over the world and that millions of people still avoid malnutrition and hunger, producing fresh vegetables and fruits in their ‘victory garden’?  A success story, don’t you think?

I appreciate very much the term ‘survival gardens‘ used in this Seattle Times’ article, as these small patches really help families to cut spending by producing food in a cheaper way than the one at the market or the grocery store.

The applicability of this ‘survival garden strategy‘ at the global level is clearly shown (see above) by:

(5) People new to gardening can get help from county extension offices, churches and community groups. Some offer training, others provide growing sites and a few distribute supplies — all for little or no charge.

If county extension offices, churches and community groups can help these people, it should also be easy for international organizations and foundations to do this – all for little or no charge – for the 800 or more million hungry people of this world.

Let us keep in mind that ‘Survival gardens can do more than put fresh, nutritious food on the table, ...’, but that families can also enhance their annual income by taking their ‘overage’ of vegetables or fruits to the market, particularly in developing countries.

To offer a ‘survival or victory garden‘ to all the hungry families of this world, it’s such a noble task that no one can ever believe that aid organizations remain blind for the value of the experience of World Wars I and II, the extraordinary success of allotment gardens or ‘victory gardens’ to alleviate hunger and child malnutrition in times of crisis.

May the light come for hungry adults and undernourished children ….! From survival to victory !

El Niño, conflicts and food crisis

 

Photo credit: SciDevNet

Credit: European Union, 2016. Click image to enlarge.

El Niño and fighting leave 80 million in food crisis

Speed read

• Conflicts in places such as Syria and Yemen have led to food shortages
• El Niño has caused severe droughts in Africa, Asia and the Americas
• A total of 240 million people are in ‘food stress’

Armed conflict and the droughts caused by the El Niño effect have left 80 million people around the world in acute food crisis this year, reveals afood security report.

The report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme adds that a total of 240 million people are in food stress.

This corresponds to level two on a five-level international classification of food insecurity; food crisis is level three and famine is level five.

The situation is more serious than in previous years, coauthor François Kayitakire tells SciDev.Net. “Ethiopia, for example, was relatively fine in 2015,” he says. “But this year there are ten million people who are in food crisis, in the most severe drought in decades.”

Read the full article: SciDevNet

Campaign to boost drought-relief funding

 

Photo credit: UN News Centre

Sorce and her son Abdallah, one year and 8 months, in the Oromia region of Ethiopia. Abdallah doesn’t walk yet and is severely malnourished. Photo: OCHA/Charlotte Cans

Ethiopia: UN and partners launch 90-day campaign to boost drought-relief funding

To aid drought-affected people of Ethiopia, the United Nations and humanitarian partners have launched a 90-day campaign to raise awareness about the food crisis in the country and raise funds to bridge a $700 million gap.

“Ethiopia is currently contending with one of the most serious climatic shocks in recorded history with 10 million people facing lost harvests and livestock as well as severe water shortages and health risks,” said Ahunna Eziakonwa-Onuchie, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ethiopia.

Humanitarian needs in Ethiopia have reportedly tripled since the beginning of 2015 as the drought has led to successive crop failures and widespread livestock deaths. The drought is tied to one of the strongest El Niño events on record.

The drought response is not just about saving lives but also about protecting development gains which the Government and its development partners have worked tirelessly to build up over decades, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator added.

Read the full story: UN News Centre

Food crisis in South Sudan

 

Photo credit: FAO

Internally displaced women seeks refuge from the ongoing violence in the swamps of Unity state, cooking her last supply of sorghum.

UN agencies warn of escalating food crisis in South Sudan

Rise in hunger at harvest time; harsh and prolonged 2016 lean season approaching

Joint FAO-UNICEF-WFP News Release

South Sudan is facing unprecedented levels of food insecurity, as 2.8 million people — nearly 25 percent of the country’s population — remain in urgent need of food assistance, and at least 40,000 people are on the brink of catastrophe, three UN agencies warned today.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) stressed that these numbers are particularly worrisome because they show an increase in hunger during the post-harvest period — a time when the country is traditionally most food secure.

The number of food insecure people is expected to peak during the coming lean season — traditionally worst between April and July — when food availability is lowest.  Humanitarian partners have released an update to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, which projects that the lean season will start early this year, and the hunger period will be longer than in previous years.

The three UN agencies noted that the dry season, which is now beginning, could bring additional hardship to people facing the most severe levels of hunger. People displaced in conflict-affected Unity State, who have been living on fish and water lilies to survive, are running out of their only remaining sources of food as the floods recede. Livestock raiding has robbed many people of essential animal products like milk, which were their main means of survival during last year’s lean season. Unless humanitarian assistance can reliably reach them during the dry season, they face catastrophe in the coming months.

For this reason, the UN agencies are calling for a speedy implementation of the peace agreement signed last year, and for unrestricted access to conflict areas to deliver much needed supplies to the most affected areas.

Read the full article: FAO

Food crisis in Zimbabwe ?

Photo credit: IRIN News

Impact of a long dry spell on maize in Mhondoro-Ngezi district, about 160km south of the capital, Harare
© IRIN

Zimbabwe plunges towards a food crisis

EXCERPT

Many more farmers in the drought-prone south of the country are facing the same situation, with the April/May maize harvest – Zimbabwe’s staple crop – reportedly written off in entire districts.

An initial assessment in February estimated that 23 percent of cultivated land failed to produce a crop. But a new report by a UN and NGO consortium called the Food and Nutrition Survey Working Group says more than half of Zimbabwe’s farms could be affected.

Rural households in the south could produce “next to nothing this season,” according to the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Network (FEWS NET).

“In the absence of any assistance, households will likely be in ‘crisis’ [defined as at least 20 percent of households facing high or above usual acute malnutrition] from July through September,” FEWS NET warned.

Confirmation of the extent of the problem will come with the release of the joint government-UN agency Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment, due possibly as early as next month.

“We don’t have precise figures, but we do have indications of a looming food crisis,” World Food Programme spokesman David Orr told IRIN.

According to the Food and Nutrition Survey Working Group report, maize prices in the drought-hit south are already climbing – up 44 percent from February to March in Gwanda, Beitbridge and Mangwe.

After a good season last year, Zimbabwe’s farmers have been hit by a string of unfortunate weather events. First, the rains were late in coming, then there was bad flooding in western Mashonaland, and now an extended dry period in the south.

Trying to cope

With little to harvest, farmers in Mhondoro-Ngezi district hang around the town centre. The conversation inevitably revolves around how to make ends meet for the rest of the year.

Read the full article: IRIN News

The future of rooftop gardens

Photo credit: Pictures.Dot.News

New York’s Riverpark Farm

Citizens Take Back Power in the Food System

EXCERPT

In their article entitled Deepening Food Democracy, Jill Carlson and M. Jahi Chappell highlight an innovative new take on democratic rule, known as deep democracy that is being used to address the problems in the food system. In theory, deep democracy is a system of governance in which all voices must be heard in order to fully understand and act upon a current issue. Instead of rule by a simple majority, deep democracy is accessible to everyone. It particularly ensures that marginalized and minority populations are involved and heard in the process of creating policy and implementing change. No issue, even the most divisive, is off-limits, according to the authors: in smaller, local contexts there is less emphasis on winning or losing, less expectation that everyone will agree. Instead, say Carlson and Chappell, the deep democracy formats allow for all citizens to share knowledge and experiences and engage in valuable compromises that result in the best scenario for the most people.

So while vertical farm concepts are to be applauded, their construction deserves much more.

New York has been the focus of intensive urban planning, especially in relation to urban farming. Fantastic concepts have been designed that create imagery of giant lush vertical forests, and amazing futuristic spaces, all of which have a very distinct focus on the US city. Perhaps because of its chic nature, stereotypically trendy population and dense population, New York has become something of a Mecca for urban farm concepts.

What some designers are missing in the maze of bright greens and blues of stylish concept images, is that for some time now, New Yorkers have been making the most of their extensive rooftop space and creating their own ground up rooftop farming systems.

http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/rooftop_farm_flickr_hello_foto.jpg?w=474

 

Read the full article: FoodTank

Strategic counter-attack against the actual food crisis

Photo credit: Eng. Taleb Brahim 2008-04

Vegetable production in a family garden

UNICEF project

Family gardens, school gardens and urban gardening against the actual food crisis

by Willem Van Cotthem – University of Ghent (Belgium)

EXCERPT

Application of water stocking soil conditioners, keeping the soil moistened with a minimum of irrigation water, and seeding or planting more drought tolerant species and varieties will definitely contribute to solve the food crisis. Scientists in China and the USA have recently discovered important genetic information about drought tolerance of plants. It was thereby shown that drought tolerant mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana have a more extensive root system than the wild types, with deeper roots and more lateral roots, and show a reduced leaf stomatal density. My own research work on the soil conditioning compound TerraCottem has led to similar conclusions : treatment with this soil conditioner induced enhancement of the root system with a higher number of lateral roots. More roots means more root tips and thus a higher number of water absorbing root hairs, sitting close to the root meristem. As a result, plants with more roots can better explore the soil and find the smallest water quantities in a relatively dry soil.

Read the full article : European Tribune

and

https://containergardening.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/alleviating-food-crisis-with-small-gardens/

How investment by private financial players can undermine food security and human rights (Food Crisis and the Global Land Grab)

Read at :

http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22644

Seeds of discontent

A powerful new documentary film, “Seeds of discontent”, has been launched today October 2, 2013 drawing attention to the role of a Swedish investment firm, Dutch pension fund and Norwegian church endowment in land grabbing in Mozambique. The film, released less than a week before the UN Committee for World Food Security meets in Rome, gives a compelling visual portrait of how investment by private financial players can undermine food security and human rights in developing countries. –

See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22644#sthash.abUdhxcU.NZv6stSD.dpuf

Many Bangaloreans (India) are turning to gardening to beat stress and veggie prices (The Hindu)

Read at :

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/dont-just-go-green-grow-green/article4943444.ece

Don’t just go green, grow green

TANIA SINGLA

Do tomatoes, instead of onions, bring tears to your eyes? Are you uneasy about all those chemicals in your veggies? Do you ache to bring a green relief from the concrete eyesores that hem you in? Perhaps a solution could be turning a corner of your home into a kitchen garden.

Garden City has always had gardening enthusiasts. But, as gracious homes with vast backyards make way for glass-and-chrome edifices, Bangaloreans are looking at more modest spaces to have a go at gardening. So today’s green thumbs have a go at it through vegetable and fruit patches they grow in their backyards, terraces and even balconies. Kitchen gardens don’t cost much and don’t require a lot of time too. Depending on the varieties you want to grow, just an initial investment of Rs. 2,000 can get to started.

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MY NEW EXPERIMENTAL PALLET GARDEN (Willem VAN COTTHEM)

A small kitchen garden for citizens with a small backyard, a tremendous tool to alleviate child malnutrition and hunger, a successful tactic to avoid high food prices. Fresh food growing in recycled boxes, pots and buckets.  For anyone anywhere !

HERE IS MY ALBUM : CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO READ THEIR CAPTIONS

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.620400821325635.1073741827.342950872403966&type=1

My new experimental pallet garden in Zaffelare, Belgium, with various containers and a lot of vegetables – Check out my album, see link above this photo  (Photo WVC)

An experimental greenhouse with the promise of solving the world’s food problems (OurWorld 2.0)

Read at :

http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/growing-food-in-the-desert-is-this-the-solution-to-the-worlds-food-crisis/

Growing food in the desert: is this the solution to the world’s food crisis?

by Jonathan Margolis

The scrubby desert outside Port Augusta, three hours from Adelaide, is not the kind of countryside you see in Australian tourist brochures. The backdrop to an area of coal-fired power stations, lead smelting and mining, the coastal landscape is spiked with saltbush that can live on a trickle of brackish seawater seeping up through the arid soil. Poisonous king brown snakes, redback spiders, the odd kangaroo and emu are seen occasionally, flies constantly. When the local landowners who graze a few sheep here get a chance to sell some of this crummy real estate they jump at it, even for bottom dollar, because the only real natural resource in these parts is sunshine.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that a group of young brains from Europe, Asia and north America, led by a 33-year-old German former Goldman Sachs banker but inspired by a London theatre lighting engineer of 62, have bought a sizeable lump of this unpromising outback territory and built on it an experimental greenhouse which holds the seemingly realistic promise of solving the world’s food problems.

Indeed, the work that Sundrop Farms, as they call themselves, are doing in South Australia, and just starting up in Qatar, is beyond the experimental stage. They appear to have pulled off the ultimate something-from-nothing agricultural feat — using the sun to desalinate seawater for irrigation and to heat and cool greenhouses as required, and thence cheaply grow high-quality, pesticide-free vegetables year-round in commercial quantities.

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Kerala’s growing obsession with vegetable farming in homes (The Caravan)

Read at :

http://caravanmagazine.in/lede/terrace-farming

Terrace Farming

Kerala’s growing obsession with vegetable farming in homes

By LEENA GITA REGHUNATH

ON A RECENT TRIP to my hometown Thalassery, in Kerala, I set out of my parents’ house to do the rounds of my relatives’ houses, as one is expected to do on such visits. At the house of one aunt, I enquired politely after the health of the flower garden in her front yard. “This is nothing,” she said, before grabbing me by the hand and leading me up the stairs behind the house. “The best things are here now,” she declared when we had reached the back terrace. On the cramped terrace lay 25 white sacks filled with fresh amaranthus, green chillies, tomatoes, brinjal, ladies’ fingers and green beans. “Try my vegetables,” my aunt said. “After that, your Delhi vegetables won’t suit you.”

My aunt’s pet project had always been her flower garden; this passion for homegrown vegetables was new. But she wasn’t alone—I found that everyone I visited either had a vegetable garden, or was planning to start one. Vegetable plants had even become a hot topic of conversation, their growth, health and, sometimes, death discussed with the kind of excitement usually reserved for the rise and fall of gold prices.

This was surprising, since Kerala has over the past few decades moved away from its traditional farming culture. A 2001 report of the state’s Department of Agriculture had noted that 68 percent of vegetables traded in the state came from the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Many men and women of my parents’ generation had worked in white-collar jobs, and let their ancestral land lie fallow, never really seeing farming as a source of a regular food supply. The occasional household terrace garden was enough of a novelty to feature as a story in Grihalakshmi or Vanitha, popular fortnightlies aimed at women. In the last few years, these gardens appear to have become commonplace.

The present change has its origins in a Rs. 7 crore project run by the central-government-funded State Horticulture Mission (SHM), termed ‘vegetable initiative for urban clusters’. In Kerala, the project aims to produce, in the current financial year, 22,500 tonnes of vegetables, worth Rs. 33.75 crore, through rooftop cultivation in urban areas, and an additional 18,698 tonnes of vegetables, worth Rs. 28 crore, in peri-urban areas.

– See more at: http://caravanmagazine.in/lede/terrace-farming#sthash.ot4J7GAy.dpuf

No feed and no water in Namibia (IRIN News)

Read at :

http://www.irinnews.org/report/98126/responding-to-namibia-apos-s-drought-crisis

Responding to Namibia’s drought crisis

Namibia, already the driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, is experiencing a severe drought, with some regions receiving the lowest seasonal rainfall in three decades, according to figures released by the country’s meteorological service this week.

President Hifikepunye Pohamba declared the drought a national emergency on 17 May, following an Emergency Food Security Assessment that found that 331,000 people – over 14 percent of the total population – were in need of food assistance.

“Because of the climate conditions in Namibia, there’ll always be pockets of food insecure communities,” UN Resident Coordinator Timothy Bandora told IRIN. “Government has declared an emergency not because the situation is dire now, but because down the road [it will worsen].”

Cereal production for 2013 is expected to be down by an estimated 42 percent compared to 2012, according to a government forecast. Pastures for grazing have also been severely affected in six regions where many households rely on livestock production, with 4,000 livestock deaths already recorded.

“There’s no feed and no water,” said Bandora, adding that the government is encouraging households to sell off livestock as animals lose weight and prices fall rapidly.

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