On Sept. 20, 2016, FAO’s Director-General José Graziano da Silva addressed the United Nations General Assembly celebrating the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition. and said:
“The 10 years running until 2025 will be a critical time for action to build healthy and sustainable food systems and end malnutrition in all its forms. The purpose of the Decade of Action on Nutrition is to continue to draw the world`s attention to the importance of combatting malnutrition”.
Jojo ROM and his family (Davao City, The Philippines) harvesting a daily portion of fresh vegetables and herbs at the riser in his small backyard. All is growing in different types of containers (bottles, tetrapots, etc.) – Photo Jojo Rom 285968_2051946656569_1181604134_31935796_8041270_o.jpg
Knowing that CONTAINER GARDENING is one of the most effective tools for combatting malnutrition at home and in schools, the 71.000 members of this group are wondering if container gardening is really a part of the work plan of WHO and FAO, focusing their efforts on two main objectives: “One is assisting governments in building national policies and programs that advance nutrition. The other is to align the efforts of existing global initiatives and social movements towards common goals. To support concrete action on nutrition programs, both agencies will further organize special meetings to strengthen countries’ technical capacities to tackle new nutrition challenges”.
Am I blind or have I missed container gardening somewhere ?
Juicy lettuce growing in a kiddle pool, but it can also been growing in any container (pot, bottle, bag, sack, drum, tower of bottles or buckets, etc. – Photo Sonia Alejandra Gauthier – 483968_4316875042333_1291165749_n.jpg
It remains good to know that more and people on all continents are growing fresh food for daily consumption in a panoply of containers. It is a recognisable signal for governments and international aid organizations that this is the most direct road to solving the malnutrition problem, particularly for children.
Nutrition and Food Production in the Congo Basin (2014)
Posted by Prof. Dr. Willem VAN COTTHEM
Ghent University – Belgium
Having participated in all the meetings of the INCD (1992-1994) and all the meetings of the UNCCD-COP, the CST and the CRIC in 1994-2006, I had an opportunity to collect a lot of interesting books and publications on drought and desertification published in that period.
Plant scientists have made an important advance in understanding the natural diversity of a key plant enzyme which could help us address the looming threat of global food security.
AND WHAT ABOUT THE GROWTH OF OPUNTIA IN AND AROUND THE REFUGEE CAMPS ? IT’S A SUCCESS STORY. IT’S COMMON SENSE !
One can eat the Opuntia cactus pads (see “nopales”), drink pad soup, eat the fruits (barbary figs), make jam, use it as fodder for the livestock, ground the seeds to produce an oil, produce cosmetics and medicine against blood pressure and cancer.
Look at the nice picture above. It could have been taken in any desert or desertification affected country. What do you need more to be convinced ? Well, maybe first read about Morocco’s initiative below !
Prof. Dr. Willem Van Cotthem (Ghent University, Belgium)
Women farmers find cactus plants are a real money spinner
Cactus commerce boosts Morocco
By Sylvia Smith BBC News, Sbouya, Morocco
Opuntia in Yemen – Photo Yemen Times 1799-4117 – – get_img
It is just after dawn in the hills above the Moroccan hamlet of Sbouya and a group of women are walking through the thousands of cactus plants dotted about on the hillside, picking ripe fruits whenever they spot the tell-tale red hue.
But these woman are not simply scraping a living out of the soil.
The cactus, previously eaten as a fruit or used for animal feed, is creating a minor economic miracle in the region thanks to new health and cosmetic products being extracted from the ubiquitous plant.
This prickly pocket of the semi-arid south of the country around the town of Sidi Ifni is known as Morocco’s cactus capital.
It is blessed with the right climate for the 45,000 hectares (111,000 acres) of land that is being used to produce prodigious numbers of succulent Barbary figs.
Every local family has its own plot and, with backing from the Ministry of Agriculture, the scheme to transform small scale production into a significant industry industry is under way.
Some 12m dirhams ($1.5m) have been pledged to build a state-of-the-art factory that will help local farmers process the ripe fruits.
The move is expected to help workers keep pace with the requirements of the French cosmetics industry which is using the cactus in increasing numbers of products.
Izana Marzouqi, a 55-year-old member of the Aknari cooperative, says people from the region grew up with the cactus and did not realise its true benefit.
“Demand for cactus products has grown and that it is because the plant is said to help with high blood pressure and cancer. The co-operative I belong to earns a lot of money selling oil from the seeds to make anti-ageing face cream.”
Stink bug could boost health and nutrition in Africa
“Our policy recommendation is that carbohydrate-based diets such as cereals and cassava can be fortified with powdered, processed edible stink bugs to improve their nutritional uptake.” Baldwyn Torto, icipe
Researchers assessed chemical components of an edible insect
They identified 12 amino acids, four flavonoids and ten essential fatty acids
Experts say identifying edible insects could boost health and food security
A new study has identified essential nutrients in an edible insect known as stink bug and suggests it as an alternative food source to help meet the dietary demands of an increasing human population.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), producing 70 per cent more food could help satisfy the estimated 9 billion human population by 2050
Edible insects could contribute to the world’s food security, says Baldwyn Torto, a scientist at the Kenya-based International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) and a corresponding author of the study.
Torto adds that most communities do not know which edible insects are truly nutritional and have beneficial effects on human health.
“This is what inspired our research to contribute to food security and income generation among the communities … across the African continent. Some of the traditional foods including insects consumed such as the edible stink bug are highly nutritious and beneficial to human health and should be promoted into mainstream diets,” Torto tellsSciDev.Net.
The study, published in the PloS ONE journal on 5 January, resulted fromfunding from the German Academic Exchange Service to aid postdoctoral fellowships in African centres of excellence.
Crops growing on the outskirts of Fayoume in Egypt.
Feeding the world’s cities: a critical challenge for sustainable development
Providing healthy diets for the world’s growing urban population requires forging stronger links between rural producers and urban markets and building food systems that are more socially inclusive, environmentally sound and less wasteful, FAO Deputy Director-General for Natural Resources, Maria Helena Semedo, said today.
Semedo warned of the difficulties that many cities face in ensuring regular and stable access to adequate food for all. “This will worsen as an increasing proportion of the hungry will be living in urban areas,” she said.
More than 50 percent of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas and this is expected to rise to 70 percent by 2050, particularly in developing countries.
Increasing effects of climate change, including storms, floods and other extreme weather events, pose an added threat to how people in cities, especially the poor, access food.
Re-shaping food systems and making them more sustainable
As schools reopen across Guinea, WFP is resuming its school meals programme in all four regions of the country. Photo: WFP/Sanoussy Barry
UN agency expands meals programme to more than 1,600 schools across Guinea
More than 240,000 children will receive daily hot meals in school this academic year in Guinea, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which is expanding its school meals programme from 735 to 1,605 primary schools across the country.
“When a nutritious hot meal is available at school, attendance rates increase significantly. School meals provide food security for children, keeping them in school and enabling them to concentrate on their studies,” Elisabeth Faure, WFP Country Director in Guinea, said in a statement released today.
As schools reopen across Guinea this week, WFP confirmed the resumption of its meals programme in all four regions of the country and also noted that the agency, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and partners, will provide daily hot meals to children in the most food-insecure areas of the country, where poverty and malnutrition rates are the highest.
Women, tech key to curbing food insecurity in Africa
Focusing on identifying and harnessing these social advantages could help in tackling the technological challenges faced by African women.
by Pauline Okoth
Every time I hear about hunger and malnutrition, my thoughts drift to the millions of African women who toil on farms, but see their children remain hungry.
At such moments of reflection, I often wonder how vulnerable African women and children can be rescued from this vicious cycle of food insecurity and malnutrition.
When I attended the 6th Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security in Uganda last week (28-30 October), the discussions around the theme “empowering our women, securing our food, improving our nutrition” gave me some insight into what needs to be done to address this issue.
I realised that while the solution to the perennial food security and nutrition problem lies in the hands of women, major obstacles remain, particularly land security tenure.
I spoke to Josephine Kiamba, a senior technical adviser of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) — which organised the meeting — and the UK-based Partnership for Child Development, Imperial College, London.
“I think technology is an even bigger hindrance for women than land,” Kiamba told me, reasoning that more women have access to land for food production even if they don’t have ownership.
Kiamba says access to technology reduces the time women spend in farm-related activities, allowing them more time to take better care of their children.
However, as technology improves, she adds, the men tend to take over, noting that in the food system, technological innovations such as bio-fortification, mechanisation and information and communication technology do more than saving time: They produce better quality and quantity outcomes.
Mothers feed their children therapeutic food at MSF’s outpatient therapeutic feeding center in Bokoro, Chad, where MSF teams are responding to a fourth malnutrition crisis in five years.
Today, I wonder if any changes in that situation have been registered. Please read my former comments and today’s conclusions.
Which way would you go to stop an unfolding food crisis for children?
1997-12-02-General view 02 of a community garden in Niou (Burkina Faso) – (Photo WVC).
A food crisis can be stopped in different ways : with therapeutic food or with locally produced food. The former should certainly be used in cases of acute malnutrition, the latter needs to be more sustainable, e.g. by installing family gardens and school gardens. One can choose between expensive, curing emergency situations that don’t offer a sustainable solution and the much cheaper production of fresh food by the local people themselves. What would you choose?
In the publication mentioned above, UNICEF’s Executive Director Anthony Lake “called today on the global community to take action to prevent one million children in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa from becoming severely malnourished.“ He said: “We must begin at once to fill the pipeline with life-sustaining supplies to the region before it is too late.” and “underscored the urgency to act before the ‘lean season’ when food runs out due to inadequate rain or poor harvests, which can start as early as March in some of the countries across the Sahelian belt.“
I fully agree that UNICEF and its partners must be prepared to get sufficient amounts of ready-to-use therapeutic foods to treat severe acute malnutrition. I also agree on “each child has the right to survive, to thrive and to contribute to their societies. “
Indeed, “we must not fail them”!
However, the real question is if the best way of solving the problem of child malnutrition is getting sufficient therapeutic foods to intervene when the need increases. Or, could it be that a well-prepared programme of vegetable and fruit production by the Sahelian families themselves is a better cure?
2007 – One of the family gardens in a refugee camp in S. W. Algeria (Photo WVC)
One may doubt about the feasibility of such a programme, but knowing that UNICEF itself was very successful with its own “Family gardens project for the Sahrawis families in the Sahara desert of Algeria“ (2005-2007), there can’t be any doubt anymore. If family gardens, school gardens and hospital gardens can be productive in the Algerian desert, they can certainly be in the Sahel, where a better rainfall offers more chances to use the minimum of water needed (see the well-known best practices).
It should not be extremely difficult to accept that it is better to produce fresh food and fruits for the children in the threatened countries of the Sahel (like everywhere on this world!) than to have to spend billions of dollars at purchasing therapeutic foods for malnourished children.
Yes, “we must not fail them“, and we will surely not fail them by offering them chances to take care of their own kitchen gardens and school gardens.
1998-02-A school garden in Niamey (Niger) – (Photo WVC).
In the drylands, there are already lots of successful small gardens. One has the necessary knowledge and technical skills to duplicate these “best practices” wherever we want, even in the desert (see Algeria). Who would still hesitate to take initiatives to gradually “submerge” the Sahel with small family gardens, school gardens and hospital gardens? And let us not forget the successes booked at the global level with container and vertical gardening.
If there is “a pipeline to be filled”, it should not be filled with food, but with the necessary materials to create small kitchen gardens galore.
Shall we continue to appeal on “solidarity” for raising billions of dollars for responding time after time to the successive periods of food crisis in the drylands? Or shall we, once and for all, spend a minor part of that money on enabling sustainable food production by the local people themselves?
Do we still have to confirm that we admire the nice work of UNICEF for children in real need? But, you Madame, you Sir, which way would you go?
——————-
Since the year 2011, a series of initiatives has been taken to alleviate hunger and malnutrition in the Sahel. However, the food and nutrition situation is not significantly improved.
in which we read: “Recurrent food crises over the past decade have coincided with periods of widespread malnutrition among children. It’s a region where, even in non-emergency years, diets are undiversified and children often don’t receive necessary nutrients.”
“One million severely malnourished children will be treated this year (2012) in the countries of the Sahel, according to UNICEF.Every year, the region faces a hunger gap between June and October, depending on the country, a time period between the depletion of the previous year’s food stocks and the next harvest. Malnutrition rates always hover near warning level in this mostly desert region, but during the hunger gap, the number of cases spikes and hundreds of thousands of children become at risk of death. “
“One million children suffering from severe malnutrition will be treated this year by governments and aid organizations across the Sahel. How should we interpret this number?*Susan Shepherd: It’s both a failure and a success. The failure is that each year, countries within the Sahel will face recurrent, large-scale nutritional crises that are growing even worse in some countries. One million malnourished children—that’s an enormous figure. But the most important take away from this year is how all of the aid actors—governments, United Nations agencies, and NGOs—have managed the crisis. Because of this, the major success is that for the first time, one million malnourished children will be treated in the Sahel, and the vast majority of these one million children will recover.”
How can we break the cycle?* Stéphane Doyon: Today, the management of this nutritional crisis is done in emergency mode. When we speak of an emergency, we are mostly referring to humanitarian interventions. This is where we run into one of the major challenges to enacting true change: for governments, these models of humanitarian action are difficult to repeat and to sustain over the long term. Therefore, we have to break out of this emergency response model and start developing a longer-term approach. Another challenge lies in understanding what exactly malnutrition is: a medical problem, related to a lack of food that satisfies the particular needs of children. Countries which have successfully addressed the problem of childhood malnutrition include nutrition in health systems. Long-term solutions should therefore include medical responses; development, agriculture and treatment of malnutrition are all complementary.
Today, one can rightly ask: Where are those long-term solutions including development, agriculture and treatment of malnutrition ? Is agriculture, including kitchen gardens and school gardens, really seen as a complementary component in the combat of malnutrition?
The Sahel continues to face a food and nutrition crisis which is compounded by the erosion of people’s resilience due to the quick succession of the crises, the absence of social services on and the ramifications of conflicts in the region.
As one of the largest contributors of humanitarian aid to the Sahel, the European Commission has assisted 1.7 million extremely food insecure people and 580 000 severely malnourished children in 2014.
The food and nutrition prospects for 2015 have not significantly improved. The past year has seen average harvests and food prices remain high. ……………….
Emergency needs in the Sahel will persist unless the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition are addressed and the resilience of the poorest people is strengthened. ……………..”
It becomes clear that food aid and nutritional programmes are necessary to tackle the emergent needs, but do not address the root causes.
If “in a region where, even in non-emergency years, diets are undiversified and children often don’t receive necessary nutrients” (WFP),we are tempted to think that creation of family gardens and school gardens will be a strong tool to address these root causes of food insecurity and child malnutrition. If families and schools, and why not the hospitals, grow their own fresh food, using existing, successful techniques to limit irrigation water consumption, the malnourished people would get their daily ration of diversified healthy food, full of minerals and vitamins.
Let us imagine for a moment that the decision-makers can convince all the key players in the prevention and treatment of malnutrition to reach hands to enact a true change by combining the traditional programmes of offering nutritious rations to supplement the normal diet with a programme of offering ways and means to install a kitchen garden for every family, for every school, for every hospital.
Wouldn’t that be a long-term solution that tackles the root causes, a “break out of this emergency response model and start developing a longer-term approach.”?
Seaweed, which requires neither fresh water nor fertilizer, is one of the world’s most sustainable and nutritious crops. It absorbs dissolved nitrogen, phosphorous, and carbon dioxide directly from the sea—its footprint is negative—and proliferates at a terrific rate. Smith’s kelp can grow as much as three-quarters of an inch a day, maturing from pinhead to ten-foot plant in the course of a winter, between hurricane seasons. It is resilient, built to take a lashing, but if a storm wipes out the crop he can just start over. Every year, he harvests between thirty and sixty tons of it, about the same per-acre yield as a potato farmer. Plentiful, healthy, and virtuous, kelp is the culinary equivalent of an electric car. “You’re not just gaining nutrition, you’re also gaining absolution from guilt,” Mark Bomford, the director of the Yale Sustainable Food Program, says. “This is your get-out-of-anxiety-free card.”
As industrial land-based agriculture becomes increasingly untenable—environmentally destructive and at the same time vulnerable to drought and changing weather—we are being pushed out to sea. Smith says, “The question is, Are we going to do it right or wrong?” He calls his system, which uses the entire water column, a “3-D farm,” and he would like to see it become the dominant form of aquaculture. He would like to see kelp—a potential source of human food, biofuel, and animal feed—supplant crops like corn and soy. In October, his farm design, which he has made open-source, won a prize given by the Buckminster Fuller Institute for innovative solutions to urgent global problems. Not long before that, he was honored by Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, where he showed up without realizing that he had a twelve-inch fillet knife in his backpack.
But Smith’s ambitions extend beyond reshaping an industry. In his vision, kelp farming can rehabilitate the ocean’s threatened ecosystems, mitigate the effects of climate change, and revive coastal economies. With thirty thousand dollars of start-up money and a boat, he figures, an out-of-work fisherman can make seventy thousand dollars a year. “There are no jobs on a dead planet,” he likes to say. Two years ago, he started GreenWave, a nonprofit through which he trains fishermen to be kelp farmers. Smith plans to form a twenty-five-farm co-operative revolving around a seafood hub near New Haven, with processing equipment, a seed bank and hatchery, value-added venders making kelp smoothies, and a Beyond Fish market, where the only fish available will be barramundi, fed on seaweed. In the often overwhelmingly grim conversation about ocean health—some scientists predict fishless oceans by 2050—Smith’s hopeful narrative is good for morale, promising that we can eat and thrive in an ever more populous and warming world. “It’s important to know that there’s a way to still sustainably work within the ocean,” May Boeve, the director of the climate-focussed advocacy group 350.org, says. “It’s not a lost cause.”
Women in rural Chad make a wind-breaking fence to protect a nearby river.
Global accord demands new approach to hunger and nutrition in protracted crises
Framework for Action seeks coherent humanitarian and development efforts
The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has approved the world’s first global agreement involving all stakeholder groups on coordinated action to combat hunger and undernutrition among people living in protracted crises.
The Framework for Action on Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises is a voluntary agreement offering guidance to address food security and nutrition needs in these challenging contexts. It also outlines how to adapt to specific challenges in areas persistently wracked by natural calamity and civil conflict.
The Framework comprises 11 principles that recognize the need for coherent and integrated humanitarian and development efforts to address both the immediate and the longer-term food security and nutrition needs of people in protracted crises.
Protracted crises result in disrupted livelihoods and food systems, higher illness and mortality rates, increased displacements, hunger and severe undernutrition.
“More comprehensive and effective policies and action will emerge as the result of the high-level political commitment the Framework mobilizes”, said Dominique Burgeon, FAO’s Strategic Programme Leader on Resilience.
“Building resilience is a critical element of the Framework for Action. Resilient communities have a greater capacity to absorb, prepare for and prevent crises and long-term stresses,” he said.
That’s a marked shift from focus on short-term solutions, often humanitarian funded, to address long-term problems.
DESERTIFICATION 
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