Posts Tagged ‘Food Security’
During COP 17, the UN’s latest round of climate talks, civil society organizations – including 4 IDEX Partners – are mobilizing from all over the world to put pressure from the outside on the government negotiators on the inside.
Katherine Zavala – IDEX’s Program Manager, Grassroots Alliances – is in South Africa on a site visit to our partners and to support their activities at COP 17. She reports from Durban.
Today was an important powerful day as it was symbolically the day of the launch of Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).
AFSA is a new continental alliance of African networks that have come together to form a united African voice on key issues affecting the continent’s peoples, in particular issues concerning farmers, food systems, forests and other ecosystems.
Promoting African Solutions for Food Sovereignty
AFSA aims to strengthen the already existing and growing food sovereignty movement in Africa.
Their objective is to create a strong voice that calls for effective policies in the interconnected areas of family farming and food systems; promotion of traditional and indigenous knowledge systems; and regeneration and protection of ecosystems, community rights, and ecological governance systems in Africa.
Last week, IDEX and the work of our partner Biowatch were featured in an article in the The Huffington Post. The article is reprinted below.
A small community garden, situated in a remote rural backwater, is breaking new ground towards sustainable, organic, healthy food production. Twenty-one women have converted their subsistence gardens that once barely produced enough to feed their own families into a robust community garden producing a surplus for sale at the local market.
In the words of the group’s treasurer, “Many of our neighbors use artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides, but we now have the skills to be able to produce naturally and successfully.” Her name is Mrs. Mncube. She and her neighbors live in the KwaHhohho region of South Africa.
To counter rural South Africa’s ongoing food crisis, Biowatch has established indigenous seed banks to empower Ms. Mncube and other farmers to preserve local “food sovereignty” with sustainable, organic food production methods. You can watch a video about Mrs. Mncube and her campaign for food justice below.
“The reason people go hungry today has nothing at all to do with a gap between the amount of food in the world….There’s more than enough food on earth today to feed the world one and half times over,” according to Raj Patel in the Value of Nothing. The challenge, Patel concludes, is lack of economic and political empowerment.
One out of seven people in the world is slowly starving to death — a de facto global concentration camp of hunger. One billion people lack the basic daily calories needed to survive. This is what the policy wonks mean by “food insecurity.”
Casting aside the sterile language of the economic development geeks, imagine if one out of seven people lacked “clothes security” and walked around nearly naked part of the year. Global hunger should make you sad or mad.
Consider Biowatch’s American collaborator, IDEX (International Development Exchange). Recently awarded a coveted Fellowship to the 2011 Opportunity Collaboration, IDEX is not your typical top-down, know-it-all economic development nonprofit. Started in 1985 by a handful of ex-Peace Corps volunteers who believed “small grants targeted to grassroots groups — who had the trust of their neighbors and the knowledge of what was needed in their own communities — [would be] more effective than traditional large scale philanthropy.”
Biowatch is one example of IDEX’s commitment to nurturing innovation and problem-solving at the village and community level. IDEX currently works with grassroots partners in Guatemala, India, Mexico, Nepal, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
None of us wants to get tricked or trapped into responding to a genuine problem, like mass hunger, with phony philanthropy. None of us wants to go through the senseless activity of appearing to help people without taking into account the “unseen cemetery of invisible consequences.”
Want to make a growing difference? IDEX is your answer.
What do you think? Read the original here, and please share and comment.
This past weekend, October 16 and 17, marked both World Food Day and International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
While designating official dates for raising awareness of these critical global issues is important, more so are the steps taken throughout the year to combat hunger and poverty.
IDEX partners in Nepal are working with groups of women to create seed banks, and to revert to organic farming methods and develop their income.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that there are about 925 million undernourished people in the world today. While the figure indicates a decline from last year’s 1 billion hungry, the situation is no less dire. Regardless of this modest decline, there are still more hungry people in the world today than there were prior to the global economic crisis of 2008-2009.
It is not surprising that Poverty and Food Security are linked, as the world’s poorest countries are often among the world’s hungriest. Hunger, in turn, contributes to poverty, facilitating a devastating cycle. According to a recent report released by the international poverty agency, ActionAid, persistent hunger results in reduced worker productivity, poor health and lost education, costing poor countries billions every year.
While international food aid functions as a short-term solution, facilitating economic independence among the world’s small-scale farms and local economies will yield lasting results.
At IDEX we believe that the key to lasting economic and social change lies within local communities. Many well-meaning poverty alleviation projects have short-lived results when the solutions and motivation do not come from the communities themselves. Empowering and investing in communities at a grassroots level is crucial to eradicating poverty and hunger.
Whether it’s IDEX partner ASHA’s work with subsistence farmers in Nepal, or IDEX partner APROSADSE’s economic development and food security programs in rural Guatemala, IDEX is committed to tackling poverty and hunger on a local level, one community at a time.
Social change is also a critical component in the fight against poverty and hunger. The International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) 2010 Global Hunger Index cites the low educational and social status of women as a contributing factor to malnutrition in children. According to IFPRI, poverty-reduction strategies focused on gender inequities are a crucial part of the solution for improving early childhood nutrition.
Many IDEX partners support women’s empowerment initiatives. Hlomelikusasa, for example, provides economic development and capacity-building training for 400 women in 13 communities of rural KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape Provinces in South Africa. IDEX partner Ñepi Behña works with more than 650 indigenous women in Hidalgo, Mexico to promote gender equity and empower women to build strong livelihoods.
World Food Day and International Day for the Eradication of Poverty may occur annually, but the issues of hunger and global poverty persist throughout the year. Fortunately, there are small steps that can be taken each day to alleviate hunger and poverty. Thanks to our staff, board, partners and donors, we are helping thousands of women, children and communities forge a path to prosperity and health.
Blog post by Erin Zaleski, Journalist & IDEX Volunteer.
Mrs Mncube of Biowatch in her garden.
In the rural community of KwaHhohho, South Africa a group of 21 women have pooled their resources to start a community garden. Thanks to training from IDEX partner Biowatch, the garden both generates income to support group members’ families and encourages shared information regarding traditional agricultural methods. In addition to the community garden, each woman also maintains a household vegetable garden.
One group member, Mrs. Mncube, lives with her husband and her four children in KwaHhohho. She spends her days tending to the community plot as well as her own household garden, which greatly contributes to the family’s food security. When her children come home from school, they assist her in the household garden. As Mrs. Mncube wants to pass down her knowledge to her children, each child has a small plot to tend to alongside her own.
In recent decades, farmers throughout South Africa have been persuaded to adopt industrial farming methods, including the use of genetically modified (GM) seeds. In addition to many negative environmental and health consequences, GM seeds and industrial farming threaten indigenous seed varieties, ultimately diminishing food security for rural farming families.
To counter rural South Africa’s ongoing food crisis, Biowatch offers education and training programs for farming communities. Biowatch’s programs also provide schools, households and communities with alternative approaches to food production.
To revive the loss of the traditional seed varieties, Mrs. Mncube and her fellow group members grow traditional seed multiplication plots. Households are encouraged to plant at least 10 traditional seed varieties to encourage crop diversity. As the group’s treasurer, Mrs. Mncube is responsible for keeping track of the collective income earned by the group’s surplus vegetable production.
Mrs. Mncube and other group members travel 35 kilometers by public transportation to the nearest town to sell surplus produce from the community garden. Although it is sometimes difficult to sell produce in town due to the saturated market, Mrs. Mncube reports that she is nonetheless able to earn additional, much-needed income for her family.
Previously, Mrs. Mncube only planted a small plot, but with help from Biowatch she maintains a large diverse garden as well as a seed plot. She says that after receiving training from Biowatch, she has a newfound appreciation for traditional agriculture methods such as composting. These methods, she notes, have improved the soil on her land. Biowatch has also educated Mrs. Mncube and the group members on the negative impact of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
“Many of our neighbors use artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides but we see the negative impacts of chemicals on the soil and we now have the skills to be able to produce successfully and naturally.”- Mrs. Mncube, treasurer of the KwaHhohho community garden.
Mrs. Mncube says that she enjoys being a part of the committee because it allows the members to share information and gardening practices. Moreover, since the group works cooperatively, production yields have increased. Having realized that she can make a living from farming, Mrs. Mncube’s dream is to one day live completely off her garden.
One of our newest partners, Biowatch is a small South Africa-based NGO that for the last decade has been advocating for local food sovereignty through community training programs in sustainable, organic food production methods.
Story by Deborah Goldberg, IDEX Development Associate, adapted for the blog by Erin Zaleski, IDEX Volunteer & Journalist.
IDEX Executive Director, Rajasvini Bhansali, is currently traveling in India on evaluation field visits with IDEX partners, and potential catalyst grantees.
A biodiverse household garden in Rajasthan
After a 4-hour journey from Jodhpur, Shashi Tyagi, Rahul Mishra, Abdul (all GRAVIS employees) and I arrive in Kolu Nimbyat village in Western Rajasthan’s rural desert area. It’s good to be back in my home state. I’ve spent most of the trip marveling at the effects of abundant rainfall this July and August. For the first time in almost 3 years in Rajasthan the monsoon has brought enough water. While I cannot describe Jodhpur’s landscape as “lush,” relative to past years there is green everywhere. Cows, buffalos, goats and even dogs that are usually skin and bones in drought-ridden Rajasthan now have some fat on their bones.
Sandstone mines abut the road in Kolu Nimbyat. Each mine has a long line of daily-wage workers mining, cutting and shaping stone with their bare hands. Village women walk in groups wearing bright orange, pink, red and yellow ghagras. But they are no longer carrying pitchers of water on their heads. After many years their homes now either have a taanka (underground water storage container) or are built close enough to a neighbor’s taanka. IDEX supported taankas have been built, and horticultural gardens with drought tolerant crops have been planted by GRAVIS in this village since 2007.
GRAVIS works with the Village Development Committees (VDCs) in this area. With the guidance of the VDCs, GRAVIS works to support local households with food and water security.
Our first stop is at the home of Poonam Kanwar. Poonam planted her garden in 2007 with sesame, lemons, watermelons, cucumbers, moong (a nutritious Indian lentil), moth (another Indian lentil), cluster beans or guar, bor (desert fruit) and millet or bajra. She demonstrates her homegrown drip irrigation system made with earthen pots. Poonam also uses natural pesticides that she makes with cow dung and indigenous herbs. The garden is beautifully tended to and the whole family has seen their health improve since they started eating this nutrition rich diet from their garden.
The Government of India has many agricultural programs for desert areas. One of which is to provide families with 50 units of seedlings and plants. This can be counter-productive for many rural families who simply do not have access to sufficient water to take care of household needs. Let alone tend to animals, and manage a large food garden.
GRAVIS supports families with 4 main crops and no more than 16 seedlings. This is a more manageable amount. It allows families to experiment with growing drought tolerant and indigenous crops. As they adopt more sustainable farming methods they are able to yield more food for their families. They can also use conserved water to gradually increase the size of their gardens. It’s another indication of how holistic, integrated approaches to rural development recognize that water and food security are deeply connected.
Next I joined a meeting of the Ramdevji Self-Help Group (SHG). 14 women were meeting to go over the group’s finances. Not only has this multigenerational group saved over 30 Rupees ($0.65) each per month from their meager earnings, but they have also managed to support 2 women in the group to buy goats. The women have been able to increase their earnings from selling dairy products from the goats.
The women also save seeds. I am struck by the connection of ecology and economy in this group. They explain to me that financial self-sufficiency and food security go hand-in-hand. They can’t possibly save money to give to their daughters and pay for household goods, if they can’t save seeds, that which gives sustenance to their entire household. They delicately undo the lids of their earthen pots, sealed to keep out insects, and show me watermelon, sesame, moong and moth seeds. These were saved from the recent crop and will be planted next season. In the meantime, the president of the group proudly explains how the group has saved over 7000 Rupees ($150US) this past year from their own earnings. They plan to support more members to buy goats.
Right as the sun is setting, we arrive at the tail end of a Village Development Committee meeting in Hempura Village. The 11-member committee is comprised of 5 women and 6 men. I sit with the visionary chairman, dynamic vice-chairwoman and quieter secretary as they share their recent victories.
I am told how the 11-member committee protested the lack of electricity in their village even after pre-paying three months of bills for non-existent electricity. They also share with me how they joined forces with GRAVIS field workers to build water taankas for the most vulnerable in their communities.
Finally they introduce me to the poorest couple in the village. This is a disabled woman in her thirties who used to depend on neighbors to fetch water for her family having been struck by polio in her childhood. Her husband cannot look for daily-wage work since he has to care for her. She is unable to do much more than sit and cook or walk to the tiny shack’s outdoor seating area. One night, while trying to make the most of the rains, her husband went out to collect water and was bitten by a snake. He too is now disabled. The VDC has decided to support this couple in soliciting a pension from the government due to their disability and has plans to build them a water taanka.
The members of the VDC are not that much better off, but I am struck by the kindness, resilience and universal love that they exhibit to ensure that those who are even worse off, have a way to live with dignity.
A timely discussion of the problems with the global food system, and solutions created by ordinary citizens around the world.
When: Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 6:00pm
Where: Goldman Theater, The David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley
What: An insightful discussion on the global food system, the challenges and innovative solutions local communities are initiating.
Who: Dr. Raj Patel (Author & Activist), Brahm Ahmadi (The People’s Grocery), Jeff Conant (Food & Water Watch), and Rajasvini Bhansali (IDEX). Moderated by Pete Stanga (IDEX)
Join us for this eye-opening panel to learn how communities around the world, from Brazil, India, South Africa and Oakland are facing the challenges posed by the current food system. Find out how people are organizing and creating local alternatives. Learn what you can do.
Everyone is welcome. Recommended donation of $10, no one turned away for lack of funds.
For more details contact Gillian Wilson at IDEX – (415) 824-8384 | idexevents@idex.org
We hope to see you there!
IDEX invites you to join us at The Solarium on 55 Second Street for a very special evening!
What: IDEX Annual Event and Silent Auction
When: Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 from 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Where: The Solarium, 55 Second Street, San Francisco (See map.)
Featured Speaker: Claire Hope Cummings
Tickets: $60 includes appetizers and host bar. Catering by Jane Hammond Events.
RSVP: Tickets are $60 each.
Bring your friends! Buy 3 tickets and get 4 tickets for the special price of $180. Reserve your tickets online, or phone Gillian Wilson at (415) 824-8348.
Celebrate the success of our local partners, in Guatemala, Mexico, India and Nepal that are using sustainable agriculture to build food security and mitigate the impact of climate change, while developing flourishing livelihoods and communities.
We are delighted to have Claire Hope Cummings, farmer, environmental lawyer, journalist and author of the critically acclaimed book Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, as our Guest Speaker. Claire is well known in the Bay Area as food and farming editor for KPFA where she hosted a weekly radio program.
Learn about IDEX’s current partners. Bid on incredible gifts at the IDEX Silent Auction. Enjoy tasty appetizers, wine, music and reconnect with your friends at IDEX.
