BOSTON and KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 20 2021 (IPS)* – Since the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) was launched in 2006, yields have barely risen, while rural poverty remains endemic, and would have increased more if not for out-migration.
Timothy A. Wise
AGRA was started, with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, to double yields and incomes for 30 million smallholder farm households while halving food insecurity by 2020.
There are no signs of significant productivity and income boosts from promoted commercial seeds and agrochemicals in AGRA’s 13 focus countries. Meanwhile, the number of undernourished in these nations increased by 30%!
When will we ever learn?
What went wrong? The continuing Indian farmer protests, despite the COVID-19 resurgence, highlight the problematic legacy of its Green Revolution (GR) in frustrating progress to sustainable food security.
Giving a voice to soil organisms – our silent allies in the fight against hunger. FAO-hosted Global Symposium on Soil Biodiversity kicks off
Closeup of worm culture. Worms are used to improve soil quality.
ROME, 20 April 2021 (FAO)* –– The Global Symposium on Soil Biodiversity hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 19 April 2021 kicked off with a call to preserve this vast community of living soil organisms and the vital ecosystem services they provide.
(UN News)* — Although they represent the greater part of the world’s cultural diversity and speak the major share of its languages, indigenous people are three times more likely to live in extreme poverty, the UN chief told the opening session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on Monday [19 April 2021].
El Origen Foundation | Indigenous students from the El Origen Foundation in La Guajira, Colombia.
And as their languages and cultures remain under constant threat, indigenous peoples have taken a major blow from the COVID-19 pandemic. “An already vulnerable group risks being left even further behind”, warned Secretary-General António Guterres.
Rome/Lima (FAO)* – Latin America and the Caribbean “are truly a pillar for world food security,” QU Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), on 16 April 2021 said in an address to more than 30 ministers from the region and North America.
Growing potatoes in Peru.
Addressing the Third Hemispheric Meeting of Ministers and Secretaries of Agriculture of the Americas, the Director-General hailed the region’s contribution to preventing the COVID-19 health crisis from becoming a food crisis. “Now you need to be the architects of recovery, a recovery with transformation,” he urged.
In this video Sam Olukoya interviews a young woman who was trafficked from her home in Nigeria after recruiters promised her a better life in Europe. Instead she was abandoned in Libya and sexually assaulted and abused.
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Apr 16 2021 (IPS)* – Sandra* had a baby born of rape. The young Nigeria woman had plans of a better life in Europe, but when her ‘recruiters’ abandoned her in Libya she was sexually assaulted and abused.
But after being deported back to Nigeria Sandra and her young son face daily discrimination and abuse about the boy’s parentage, even from her own mother and friends.
But we need only look around us to see that hysteria has never been more alive – just consider the run on toilet paper at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Or the consumer hysteria every Black Friday, or the overheated discussions taking place on Facebook and Twitter every day.
15 April 2021 (FAO)* — In 1826, the genial French gastronome Brillat-Savarin penned the phrase “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”
Two hundred years later, pathbreaking research suggests that what we eat doesn’t just give us fuel and pleasure but also feeds the trillions of microbes in our gut microbiome, and thus constitutes one of the most consequential interactive exposures we have to our environments.
16 April 2021 (UNEP)* — Deepika Hemrom’s parents pay her school fees with plastic. Not Master Card or Visa but actual plastic waste.
Photo: Akshar Foundation / 16 Apr 2021
They are participating in a ground-breaking scheme in Assam, India, that allows low-income families to use single-use plastic in lieu of money to pay for private schooling.
Deepika’s parents are manual labourers and this unique payment method means the 13-year-old, who dreams of becoming a doctor, can access a quality education, which would otherwise be out of her family’s financial reach.
NEW YORK and NAIROBI, Apr 15 2021 (IPS)* – Last week Ministers of Finance met virtually at the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to discuss policies to tackle the pandemic and socio-economic recovery.
Map of countries with projected austerity cuts in 2021-2022, in terms of GDP, based on IMF fiscal projections. Credit: I. Ortiz and M. Cummins, 2021
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 