The second of the Sustainable Development Goal developed in 2015 aims to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. The Global Hunger Index combined the four component indicators of Undernourishment; Child wasting; Child stunting; and Child mortality to come up with accurate conclusions on hunger.

Countries’ hunger levels were rated as Low, Moderate, Serious, Alarming, and Extremely Alarming. Hunger levels were found still serious or alarming in 50 countries the highest of which are found in Africa south of the Sahara and South Asia. Highest hunger levels were found in Central African Republic (with a score of 46.1) followed by Chad (44.3); lowest hunger levels were found in Argentina (<5) followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina (<5). The regional countries of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda were rated Serious with Tanzania having the highest levels scoring at 28.4. Rwanda was at 27.4, Uganda 26.4 and the least being Kenya with 21.9.

The report notes that the decline in hunger must accelerate in these regions if the world is to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030.

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The research carried out in more than 30 districts of the country  by RECO, a nutrition food manufacturing company in collaboration with USAID reveals that children malnutrition in the country is high standing at 33% with malnourished children living with HIV being 5 times more likely to dies before their 2^nd birthday compared to non-infected children.

While presenting the finding, the chief of parties at RECO industries Brian Rwabogo says, breastfeeding mothers, pregnant women, children and those living with chronic illness especially HIV/AIDS, TB also suffer the most due to malnutrition.

With these alarming findings, USAID through its programme dubbed Uganda production for improved nutrition is aiming at producing and providing therapeutic and supplementary foods to treat malnutrition among children, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers as well as people living with HIV/AIDS to reduce the malnutrition burden in the country.

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A book published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development paints a vivid picture of an alternative future in which food, energy and water supplies are sustainable and in the control of local communities.

The book show how the linear systems that shape our world are flawed as they assume a limitless supply of resources and a limitless capacity for the environment to absorb waste and pollution.

The global food system’s dependence on fossil fuels that contribute to local pollution and global warming is just one example of an unsustainable system.

The authors call instead for circular systems that mimic natural cycles to produce food, energy, materials and clean water.

“Circular economy models that reintegrate food and energy production with water and waste management can also generate jobs and income in rural and urban areas,” says co-author Dr Michel Pimbert, a principal researcher at IIED. “This ensures that wealth created stays within the local and regional economy.”

One example is a system that recycles food waste and chicken manure to feed a worm farm. The worms in turn feed the chickens and farmed fish whose bones are used as fertiliser in a market garden. Human waste via a compost toilet also enriches the garden, whose crops — together with the farmed fish and meat and eggs from the chickens — feed the people.

The system is a closed circle with loops within it. All the nutrients stay in the system and just move about through the circle, rather than being pumped as sewage into the sea and leaving the soil forever poorer.

“A transformation towards re-localised food systems will significantly help to address climate change and other challenges,” says Pimbert. “Circular systems also provide the basis for economic and political sovereignty – the ability of citizens to democratically manage their own affairs and engage with other communities on their own terms.”

Dr Caroline Lucas, a member of parliament from the Green Party of England & Wales, has written the book’s foreword.

“I warmly welcome this book’s contribution to the debate on how food systems can be redesigned and re-localised to sustain diverse local ecologies, economies and human well being,” she writes.

“The authors rightly emphasise the need for a systemic and fundamental transformation of industrial food and farming in the face of peak oil, climate change, biodiversity loss, the water crisis, food poisonings, and the impoverishment of farmers and rural communities.”

“The challenge is to design resilient food systems with, by and for citizens – to reduce ecological footprints and foster local democratic control over the means of life. But rather than look at food and agriculture in isolation, we need to consider ways of re-integrating food and energy production with water and waste management in a diversity of local contexts in rural and urban areas, – and at different scales. “

 To mark the launch of the book – Virtuous Circles: Values, systems and sustainability — IIED invites bloggers to join a virtual circle to share their blog posts about the book (by emailing Suzanne.Fisher@iied.org). IIED will then profile the best posts on its own blog and via Twitter with the hashtag #vcircles.

Please note that this press release and the book are embargoed until Tuesday 22 November at 00.01 GMT

To request a PDF of the book, email mike.shanahan@iied.org

 For interviews in English or in French, contact:

Dr Michel Pimbert

Mobile no: 07525 069061

E-Mail: michel.pimbert@iied.org

 NOTES TO EDITORS

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is an independent, non-profit research institute. Set up in 1971 and based in London, IIED provides expertise and leadership in researching and achieving sustainable development (see: www.iied.org).

Sadly, this book was just about completed when its lead author, Andy Jones, met with a sudden death on 17th November 2010. Between 2008 and 2010 Andy was a much respected researcher associated with IIED’s Agroecology and Food Sovereignty Team.

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In the past decade, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have experienced historically rapid economic growth and notable social change, yet poverty, hunger, and malnutrition remain widespread problems. With a large proportion of the population living in rural areas and working in agriculture, the solution to these problems largely lies in increasing agricultural productivity. To achieve this African Heads of State and Government committed to “allocate at least ten percent of the national budgetary resources to agriculture and rural development policy implementation within five years” as part of the 2003 Maputo Declaration to accelerate six percent annual agricultural growth.  However, many countries have not put their commitment into practice.

As a first step, African countries need to gear their efforts to increase investment in agriculture.  But it is not sufficient, and right priorities and sequencing are equally important.Agricultural productivity can be achieved in many ways including spreading knowledge of improved practices to smallholders, increasing the use of high-quality seeds and fertilizer, properly irrigating land, developing strong institutions, linking producers to markets, and appropriately addressing disease and conflict. Urgent actions—especially improving capacity and farmer support systems—are needed among all competing tasks.

Research-based evidence is required to tailor these methods to specific needs. But then this evidence must be communicated to users. FARA’s executive director Monty Jones said, “We must go beyond just research to increase productivity. Strengthening extension services and infrastructure, and implementing policies that support agricultural productivity and increase rural incomes will reduce hunger and poverty.”

According to Josué Dioné, director of UNECA’s Food Security and Sustainable Development Division, “Increasing agricultural productivity in Africa calls for broader policy and strategic frameworks that encompass the whole agriculture value chain, including agribusiness and agro-industrial sectors as well as farming.” Sustainably meeting food demands in the future—despite a growing population and diminishing natural resources—will require a greater emphasis on productivity growth.

“Increasing agricultural productivity is not a panacea to all problems, but it can make a significant positive contribution to resolve issues of food insecurity in Africa,” said Shenggen Fan, IFPRI director general.

In order for agricultural productivity to improve the lives of the poor, it needs a supportive environment, particularly increased access to markets.

Markets in particular pose a major challenge to poor people in rural areas. “Improving rural infrastructure to facilitate trade of goods—both at the country level, and across borders—would serve as an opportunity to improve food security in Africa,” said Abebe Haile-Gebriel, director of the AUC’s Rural Economy and Agriculture Division.

Experts at the conference will also examine issues related to:

• science, technology, and innovation in agriculture;
• rural services and access to inputs;
• markets, trade, and regional integration and value chains;
• investments, institutions, and policies for supporting agriculture;
• agriculture, nutrition, and health linkages;
• agriculture and climate change mitigation and adaptation;
• capacity development for agriculture through education and training; and
• the nexus of agriculture and the rural nonfarm sector in growth and poverty reduction

“Innovations in investment, institutions, technology, strategy, and partnerships will enhance productivity and greatly enhance food and nutrition security in Africa,” said Fan.

For more information on the conference: http://addis2011.ifpri.info.

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Governments are ignoring a vast store of knowledge — generated over thousands of years — that could protect food supplies and make agriculture more resilient to climate change, says a briefing published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development.

It urges negotiators at the UN climate change conference in Durban later this month to give stronger support to traditional knowledge and address the threats posed by commercial agriculture and intellectual property rights.

The paper includes case studies from Bolivia, China and Kenya that show traditional knowledge and local farming systems have proved vital in adapting to the climatic changes that farmers there face.

This includes using local plants to control pests, choosing traditional crop varieties that tolerate extreme conditions such as droughts and floods, planting a diversity of crops to hedge bets against uncertain futures, breeding new varieties based on quality traits, and having systems in place to protect biological diversity and share seeds within and between communities.

But the paper warns that government policies tend to overlook such knowledge and fail to protect farmers’ rights to grow traditional crops, benefit from their use and access markets.

“Policies, subsidies, research and intellectual property rights promote a few modern commercial varieties and intensive agriculture at the expense of traditional crops and practices,” says the paper’s lead author Krystyna Swiderska, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development.

“This is perverse as it forces countries and communities to depend on an ever decreasing variety of crops and threatens with extinction the knowledge and biological diversity that form the foundations of resilience.”

The paper says that while modern agriculture and varieties may increase productivity, environmental stress and climatic variability mean the survival of poor farmers depends on more resilient and readily available traditional varieties.

“It is because of famers’ intimate knowledge of nature that traditional farming practices have persisted for thousands of years and overcome climatic threats,” adds Swiderska.

“To sweep away all of that knowledge and the biological diversity it relates to in favour of a limited set of modern seed varieties means putting the private interests of commercial seed corporations ahead of the public interest of sustaining food and agriculture.”

The paper says traditional seed varieties that have been developed locally are better suited to the prevailing local conditions – such as soils and pests — even with climatic changes like drought. They are also cheaper.

“In Guangxi, Southwest China, most farmer-improved varieties survived the big spring drought in 2010, while most of the modern hybrids were lost”, says Dr. Yiching Song from the Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Science.

Similarly, in coastal Kenya farmers have gone back to using traditional varieties to cope with changes in climate. “Traditional knowledge, crops and resource management practices are an essential element of local adaptive capacity, ”says Doris Mutta, senior researcher at the Kenya Forestry Research Institute.

More important, with traditional varieties farmers can select and save seed themselves for the next crop season, and this is a more self-reliant and sustainable farming system for adaptation.

Modern varieties on the other hand have to be bought each season, depend on market availability, and are often protected by intellectual property rights which can restrict their use. They also require costly inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides, which many indigenous farmers cannot afford.

“In the last few decades, there has been a rapid spread of hybrids at the expense of local landraces for most staple food crops in China,” says Dr Yiching Song, of the Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy. “In fact, modern agriculture, like hybrid seeds, has made poor farmers in remote areas more vulnerable by increasing their reliance on external resources.”

The paper adds: “The capacity of the world’s poorest and most affected communities to adapt to climate change ultimately depends not only on traditional knowledge or on individual ecosystems, but on both — on the interlinked bio-cultural systems from which new innovations can develop and spread, and on the landscapes, cultural and spiritual values and customary laws that sustain them.”

IIED

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The leaders want a bi-law requiring every home to grow a certain amount of food crops to avoid hunger.

Leaders are concerned that most of the land owners in Jinja have sold off or leased it to sugar cane factories for sugar cane growing living themselves with no land to grow food and some sale all the food they grow.

The leaders believe by the introduction of these bi-laws will restrain residents from selling off all the food they grow and renting of all the land to sugar cane factories.

The most affected areas are Butagaya, Busede, Budondo and Buyego sub-counties in Jinja.
Jinja farmers’ chairperson Daniel Mwanga says hunger has been increasing in most areas of Jinja due to land owners who resort to hiring out land to small amounts of money and selling all their harvest.
He says local leaders should call for meetings at village level and pass food ordinance on food growing and shortage as well as hiring off their land.
Godfrey Kyalo the Nabago village LCI chairman says most of the land owners in Jinja had resorted to hiring out their land in Nakabago village.
He however says several village meetings resolved that every household should plant 150 cassava plants which he thinks can also work in other areas to save people from hunger.

Jinja municipality mayor Muhammad Beswale Kezala says government should find a way of passing the laws through the local governments to control inflation in the country.

He says this will fulfill the Uganda national food and nutrition policy of 2003 which states that adequate food nutrition is a human right.
By Mugisa Isaac Mathias

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This follows floods seriously hitting the eastern districts of the country sweeping away all the gardens and at the same time making the crops that are in the gardens rot.

Speaking in the workshop geared at finding mitigation to the endless disasters that are befalling the country, Ecweru stresses that all this can be managed in case the country had a well built national emergency center to handle all these problems.

He further reveals that extending relief services to the affected people in the region are not as helpful due to blocked roads making it difficult for trucks to move to those affected areas.

Ultimate Media

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The African Union (AU) and the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency, convened a special consultation of the Steering Group of the Africa Food and Nutrition Security Day as part of a plan to firm up the implementation of activities that will lead up to the continent-wide commemoration of the Day on October 30^th. The statistics of Africa’s food insecurity and compromised nutritional status are staggering and well known. Over 200 million Africans are undernourished and an even greater proportion suffers from vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

 However, there is hope that the fight against malnutrition can be won.

 The opportunity for intra-African trade of agriculture food commodities that are of high value and nutritionally sound is immense. What needs to be done at the earliest opportunity is to apply some of the more relevant indigenous knowledge systems around the best nutrition, as has been done for generations. But more importantly, the time is ripe for scaling up proven interventions.Therefore, one of the main goals and objectives of Africa Food and Nutrition Security Day is to ensure that information and knowledge is transmitted and communicated to all the different levels of consumers – policy makers, progamme implementers and all the vulnerable households.

 Given the challenges of poor research and policy translation into action and tangible results coupled by weak capacity in many member states and the evidently low investments in nutrition programmes, this can only lead to malnutrition. So, the Africa Food and Nutrition Security Day provides an opportunity for changing the status quo and ensuring a robust accountability mechanism. The Day will showcase the potential for adequately linking agriculture and nutrition value chains. Therefore, recognising the richness of Africa’s traditional and indigenous nutritious food commodities, educating the public on the best utilisation, sharing success stories on progress in reducing hunger and malnutrition in Africa is imperative.

 While there may be challenges, there clearly are models to be learnt from and emulated. This will take a concerted effort across all Government sectors, Private sector, Civil Society Organisations, Development partners, Institutions of Higher Learning and the average African to commit and contribute towards delivering and attaining the best nutrition for all.

 The commemoration will be at two levels, continentally and at the level of member states.   The activities will focus on 4 main flagship areas; dietary diversity, homegrown school feeding, maternal and child nutrition and food fortification.

 “If Africa does not invest in food and nutrition security, the consequences will be big…” says Boitshepo Bibi Giyose, Senior Advisor for Food and Nutrition Security at the NEPAD Agency.

 “This is the time for Africa, the energy is palpable, the momentum and support is promising, hence, let’s seize the DAY! “, she adds enthusiastically

Ms. Boitshepo Bibi Giyose is the Senior Advisor for Food and Nutrition Security at the NEPAD Agency

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He says that farmers in different parts of Uganda have started harvesting and that the yields are good.

“Farmers are the cardinal factor in the food production and security and that if they decided to sell everything then problems would come,” Bucyanayandi said.

The Minister’s statement follows a warning on Monday by the UN that Uganda could be next in line for a severe food shortage hit countries, after other Horn of Africa states including East Africa Community member neighbour Kenya experienced severe food shortages.

Some 12.4 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti are already in dire need of help to meet their food needs due to the worst drought in 60 years, U.N. under-secretary-general and emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos said in New York.

The UN warned that famine has been declared in two regions of southern Somalia but may soon engulf as many as six more regions of the lawless nation.

By Baingana Samuel

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These districts include Namutumba, Ibanda, Amuria, Moroto, Katakwi, Nakasongola Moyo among others.

Uganda's DIsaster Preparedness Minister, Musa Ecweru

The state minister for disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru attributes the looming hunger in most parts of the country to the ongoing dry spell and hailstones that affected crops in the field.
Ecweru says most crops that were planted where destroyed by the hailstones and sunshine leaving people in those districts with failed crops and no harvest for food.

In the related development Namutumba district is one the districts that have been hit by unidentified cassava disease that attacks the cassava roots living many families with no food. This has caused most children develop kwanshako due to malnutrition.

The minister however says government is doing all it can to curb the alarming hunger situation. He says they have plans of storing grains and other food staffs as a move of rescuing the situation.

At the beginning of this week, President Yoweri Museveni directed the ministry of agriculture animal husbandry and fisheries to look into introducing irrigation schemes in the most areas that are being hit by droughts and directed the ministry to find ways of compensating the farmers whose crops have been affected by such calamities.

By Mugisa Isaac Mathias

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