Oxfam's work—whether helping Guatemalan women organize to fight gender violence, funding irrigation projects in Ethiopia, or standing with people in Darfur—is about building the resilience of local communities over the long haul. We cannot prevent shocks, but we can help our sisters and brothers access some of the same resources we have to cushion us when times are lean.

We cannot rush from crisis to crisis with short-term fixes. What more evidence do we need than what is happening in East Africa now? This is not the region's first famine, but imagine the headline: Africa's last famine.

It did not have to be this way.

About 190 miles east of Yabello in the Liben District of the Guji Zone, a group of people have managed to escape this horrible fate through a project that helped them create a new means of earning a living while maintaining their pastoralist way of life. A small-scale irrigation initiative, supported by Oxfam America and its partners, has allowed the dream of some of the people of Melka Guba and to become a reality: They are now growing enough food to ensure their families can eat.

Here, in late August, things look much different from the surrounding areas. Smiles brighten the faces of men, women and children, and healthy cattle graze on the dried corn stalks and leaves strewn across the fields from the recent harvest.

In response to a 2008 drought that hit this region hard, Oxfam America worked with a local partner and the regional government on an emergency and recovery project that helped link disaster relief to longer-term development. The first phase focused on saving lives and livelihoods. This was followed by steps that helped villagers analyze their situation and reorganize themselves with a goal of building their assets and strengthening their means of making a living. That is when the people of Melka Guba decided to diversify their livelihoods: In the face of a changing climate they determined to try farming with the help of the new small-scale irrigation network along the nearby Dawa River.

In spite of the fact that this herding community had little prior experience with irrigation, the 64 hectares of irrigated land have now become a life line for more than 201 households in the area.

Mero Abdo, a 30-year-old mother of three, said, “I thank the day I joined this irrigation project. We see how others are suffering everywhere, but my children go to sleep full. I feel really happy I can even help others who are not part of the irrigation community and are having a problem feeding their children.”

More than just food

Revered by her community, Abdo is a strong woman and one of the first 101 women selected to participate in the irrigation project.

“I was excited from the beginning since I used to hear about irrigation on the radio and I knew it would change our lives,” she said. Abdo not only serves as a member of the irrigation management committee as well as its treasurer, but she is one of the few women to take on all farming activity on her own.

For most of the participants, this third harvest was their best yet. Abdo managed to produce 14 quintals of corn on a quarter hectare of land (about .6 acres), more than from either of the previous two harvests.

“I used the line-sowing technique this year and produced more,” she said. “I plan to use seven quintals to feed my family and sell the rest to pay for my children’s school, buy cattle, or start a small trading business.”

Abdub Bora, a 40-year-old farmer and father of eight, proudly showed us his traditional storage silo filled to the brim with corn from his last harvest.

“This time I produced 15 quintals of corn on my quarter hectare of land,” said Bora. He told us he is planning to use eight quintals and sell the remaining seven quintals to meet the other needs of his family. “I have eight children and four are still in school. I will use the money to buy books and use some of it in case my family gets sick,” added Bora.

Bora’s wife lives in Melka Guba, about 10.5 miles from the irrigation site, where their children can attend school.

“We don’t mind the separation. The main thing is to have enough to eat and allow our children to finish school,” said Bora. “My wife brings me food I can easily cook here and she even comes and works with me during the busiest farming season.”

The reach of this irrigation project spans further than the community itself. Thanks to the river-fed harvest, the households participating in this project are one of the few sources of corn seed in the Liben District.

Double blessings

When the project started, each of the 201 households were allotted a quarter hectare of irrigable land in accordance with government regulations. But not everyone was convinced the irrigation would work and some abandoned their plots. To avoid wasting water, the irrigation management committee offered those plots to neighboring farmers who would be capable of using them.

Hussein Gufar, a 44-year-old father of six, was one of the lucky ones who received one of the adjacent parcels. During the most recent harvest, he produced 25 quintals of corn on a half hectare of land (about 1.2 acres).

“We said this could change our fate,” said Gufar, who is a member of a task force that ensures the daily operation of the irrigation system. “We were not sure at first but now we have more confidence and plan to work even harder.” A pile of corn sacks in the middle of his field is proof of his commitment and hard work.

Beyond the families the project has helped, it has also blessed the community’s most valuable asset—the cattle, which now feed on the stalks and leaves left after the harvest.

“We are not only able to feed our animals but we sell the rest of the maize residue to the surrounding community for additional income,” added Gufar. The price of that fodder has increased four times in one year which reflects the desperate situation most of the surrounding community is in.

Ensuring sustainability and ownership

The irrigation effort is not without challenges and does not address all of the community’s needs. Community members are aware they will have to work together to reap the maximum benefit of this investment. Some of the concerns they have expressed include the high cost of transportation, which limits farmers to growing only longer-lasting produce, such as onions; the rising cost of generator fuel; and minimal support from the government in terms of providing training and helping connect farmers with markets.

“We are now only producing onions and tomatoes for home consumption. If we could reach the right market and access reasonable transportation, we could earn more money and increase our income,” said Gufar.

During the last harvest, the irrigation participants contributed 10,700 birr ($629) of which 10,000 ($588) was used for generator fuel and to pay for the seeds some had borrowed.

Many efforts are underway to improve the quality of life in the area. Among other things, this project fostered the construction of a three-room school that is managed by the pastoralist commission. In addition, a health post is also being planned for the site.

Food insecure no more

Melka Guba farmers are eager to start the next planting season. To use the irrigation system efficiently, all their plots need to be ready for sowing at the same time—so water isn’t wasted. Farmers are now working on that coordination.

And along with the irrigation has come something else: peace of mind. Project participants can now have access to food all year round. They will no longer suffer the harsh consequences of drought nor be dependent on others to feed their families.

Puddles swallow trucks to their underbellies. And everywhere, green sweeps the hillsides: delicate shoots of teff, so vibrant it looks lit from within, mix with fields of corn, the stalks thickening by the day and inching skywards.

But here in this village of about 1,100 households in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray, they’re holding their breath. Will the rain stay steady? Will it fall in enough abundance to fatten the grains and produce a bountiful harvest on which so many here depend?

At night, in my hotel room in Abi Adi, I listen as the rain pelts the metal roofs and pours into the courtyards and muddy streets below. I think about all the uncertainties farmers in Adi Ha face, and then I think about the south and what happens when those uncertainties become life-threatening. There, where southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and south-central Somalia meet, a severe drought and food crisis has snared almost 12 million people, farmers and herders both. The UN has already declared famine in two parts of Somalia. And some areas of the region are the driest they have been in six decades.

Though the rain in Tigray brings hope, nothing is certain. Not when the weather has become increasingly erratic. And not when the vast majority of farmers rely on rain to feed their fields. Countless families here—like those now struggling in the south—have known the ravages of drought.

But in Adi Ha, and a growing number of communities in Tigray, farmers now have a means of managing some of that unpredictability: weather insurance for their crops.

Initiated in 2007 by Oxfam America and a host of partners, including the Relief Society of Tigray and Swiss Re, a new program has found a way for even the poorest farmers to afford insurance. Instead of cash, these farmers can pay for their premiums with labor, a resource they have in abundance. If insufficient rain falls during a critical period of the growing cycle, and their teff, wheat, or barley suffers, farmers will receive a payout—an infusion of cash that can help them cover their losses and weather the rough times.

“This insurance is very good,” said Selas Samson Biru, who paid 200 birr ($11.75) this year to cover half a hectare of teff—a tiny grain that is a staple of the Ethiopian diet. “The insurance is good because it’s saving our assets in a bad year.”

As she spoke, a heavy sky pressed down on the fields of Adi Ha. Nearby, farmers coaxed their oxen through rocky fields, hurrying to plow and plant. It felt like rain. But Biru was worried still. She expected her corn would be OK, but the teff?

“We have some doubt,” she said.

Readings at a small rain gauge across the river from one of Biru’s fields showed that, on the Ethiopian calendar for July, rain had fallen on only seven days until a thorough dousing on July 24, when 50 millimeters (2 inches) soaked the fields. Before then, the heaviest rain measured just 30 millimeters (1.2 inches).

With the green that rain has brought to Adi Ha, it’s hard to fathom just how dry the south is. And in fact Biru, far from any access to the Internet or TV, said she had not heard about the drought and suffering there.

“We are sorry about that news,” she said, worry creasing her brow. “We feel that type of drought might come to us.” And then she brightened.

“Have they bought insurance?” Biru asked. “This is one of the most important things that needs to be scaled up.”

That’s in the works. Through a new partnership, Oxfam America and the World Food Programme, together with Swiss Re, are helping to bring this insurance model—and a package of other resource-management techniques including savings, credit, and disaster risk reduction strategies—deeper into Ethiopia and across three new countries.

It won’t come in time to help families in the south, but the disaster there may finally spur some serious international interest in finding long-term solutions—like weather insurance—to the devastation drought brings.

To shed more light on the impacts of food price spikes, Oxfam has created an interactive map of Food Price Volatility Pressure Points. This map shows the impacts of price spikes in some of the countries where food prices have complicated the lives of poor people and offers a chance to take action on to help address price volatility.

The map shows are areas that are highly vulnerable to price spikes, countries that have had extreme weather events contribute to global price hikes and places that have seen price spikes contribute to violence or unrest that has shaken the foundation of global stability. While this map alone does not tell the full story of how price spikes have impacted our world, it offers a global snapshot to give us a better understanding of what is happening in communities near and far.

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What causes food price spikes?

Failed crops—often caused by our changing climate—hit food prices hard. So does the rising cost of oil—used to grow, fertilize and transport food.

Short-sighted biofuels strategies play a part too—taking food off of people's plates and putting it into car tanks. And dysfunctional commodities markets mean that food prices go up faster and higher than they should.

But despite all these complex causes, the effects on poor people are painfully simple. Parents choose between feeding their children and feeding themselves.

Whole communities face an uncertain future, because all anyone can think about is where their next meal will come from.

It's time to grow out of food price spikes.

The way to grow

Food price spikes happen because of things like climate change and rising oil prices—so a major part of the solution involves getting those root causes under control.

But what's also needed is more effective global handling of food price crises when they do happen. That way, the poorest families have somewhere to turn even when things do get desperate—and when they suddenly can't afford even the meager amount they could afford a week earlier.

For our world to grow together, we need to get food price spikes under control.

We know some aid, including from Oxfam, has been getting through in recent weeks and months. But we also know the international aid effort has been too slow – funds from donors have been committed late, and aid on the ground isn’t coming through fast enough. As the people here face their toughest three months until harvest time in October, there’s a desperate need for international political engagement to ramp up the speed and the scale of the response.

In Niger’s capital Niamey, a gentle-seeming city of  sandy-mud colored low houses and a population of around 800,000 people, there are few immediate signs of the food crisis. There are small food stalls along many of the tree-lined, dusty streets and the  “petit marche” – or small market – is crammed with stalls selling food and other items. But even in the capital, many people are too poor to pay for sufficient food and the picture in the countryside is much much worse.

Hunger in the countryside

We  drove two hours from Niamey, along a rough dirt track through the semi-arid, mostly flat and desolate landscape. It’s stony and sandy with a few short dry-looking trees and bushes, though some are turning green where a bit of rain has started to fall. We see painfully thin cattle, goats and donkeys, their ribs visible as we drive by. Men, women and children are hard at work in some patches of land, planting seeds by hand to take advantage of any rain that has fallen.  It’s hard work, and often undone again by sudden harsh desert winds.

We stop briefly in the main town in the area, Ouallam, and talk to a serious, welcoming official there, who explains that more than 200 of the 300 or so villages in this area are facing severe food shortages. Due to the drought, thousands of animals have died or are too thin to be sold for a decent price or even to provide a good meal for the herders.

The situation is as bad as the deep crisis of 2005, our host tells us—and worse, even, because people have less money now than they did then. But at least speculators have not managed to drive the prices as high as they did five years ago. And, importantly, this time around the new Nigerien government has recognized the crisis and invited donors and aid organizations like Oxfam to support them in tackling the problem. Now, some aid has arrived – but much more will be needed in the coming months.

Rains bring relief and new problems

Driving on to the nearby village of Tondi Kiwindi, we find a small muddy river flooding the road into the village. Our driver wades across to make sure our vehicle won’t get stuck and we plow through. Tondi Kiwindi is a small community of mud-brick rectangular houses, quiet in the midday heat. The local village leader welcomes us and tells us about the difficulties here and in the surrounding villages.

He talks about how many animals have died, about how little food villagers have, about the difficulties of surviving the next three months until the harvest. The rains here are a month late, though further north they have started.

The village leader thanks us for the work we’ve done with a local aid group to buy sick and thin animals at better prices than villagers can get in the markets, and to provide animal feed and other support such as cash for work programs. He tells us that the women, especially,  have taken advantage of the opportunity to earn some income through the programs as many of the men have migrated away to towns to look for work. They’ll return to till and plant the fields when the rains start.

But when the rain really comes, says our host, the river we crossed to get into the village will rise and there will be no access to the community. Can we help, he asks us.
 
It’s a story across a lot of the region:  rains are desperately needed to ensure a good harvest this year, but until October when the crops are ripe, rains can block access and make delivery of aid much harder or impossible. And the rains lower the temperature a little—bringing death to thousands of weakened animals.

‘We are weak and dying like our animals’

In a five-mile ride across the desert from Tondi Kiwindi, we come to a smaller village called Ko Kaina. The situation we find here is utterly desperate: The villagers talk to us of famine and question whether they can survive to the autumn.

We sit with four women who tell us they have nothing left to eat at all. They say that this year is especially bad. Last year at least the animals had enough to eat, but now the cows and goats are dead or dying. In hard times, their tradition is to share—neighbors helping neighbors—but  now no one has anything to share.

“Everyone is down, down, down,” they say. “Our stomachs are empty.”

Their last source of food is a small, hard round green pea called  “wanza.” It has a bitter taste, but villagers eat it when there is nothing else to consume. To find the wanza,  the women set out from the village at 5 a.m. walking miles in their hunt. They ask me to taste one of the peas to see how bitter and sour it is; the unpleasant taste stays in my mouth for an hour. The peas first need drying in the sun then soaking several times in water before they become at all possible to digest.

They show us their only other food – a small bowl of cooked leaves from short small trees that grow in the dry earth nearer to the village. A woman puts a small amount in her mouth and mimics being sick, to show me how ill and malnourished they are on this diet. A short distance away, a small group of children stares at us hoping, I think, that we have brought relief. They are thin and listless.

The women explain that their animals have been weak and dying for months now and no longer produce milk. Some are even too thin to slaughter for food. A few days back, the women tell us, the villagers killed one weak calf before it died. They needed it for food. But four children became ill from eating the meat and had to be taken to a larger village nearby for medical attention. That cost money the families didn’t had and had to borrow—leaving them in debt, too.

People are so weak, the women explain to us, that after a few minutes working in the fields – vital work – they are already too tired to keep going.

“We are weak and dying like our animals,” they tell us.  “If it goes on like this, some of us will die and some God will keep alive ‘til the next harvest.”

Oxfam has launched an emergency program to provide support to 800,000 people across Niger, Mali, and Chad. In Niger, the organization is helping 400,000 people by distributing food and supplies to the poorest households. Oxfam is also buying weak livestock at above-market rates to help herders who need to sell some of their animals. Meat from the livestock is being distributed to some of the most vulnerable households. In Mali, the organization will help 200,000 people by distributing food as well as fodder for livestock.  And in Chad, distributions of food and seeds are accompanying agriculture support projects, with a goal of helping 200,000 people.

In a survey of the area in mid-October, Oxfam staff reported that many families had lost 80 to 100 percent of their harvest this year.

“There’s no food in this community,” Francisca’s aunt Margarita Rosales, 54, says.

Chronic food shortage

Lack of rain in Guatemala has reduced harvests this year, pushing up food prices in stores and creating a crisis in poor communities. The government declared a food emergency in September.

Malnutrition and chronic food shortages are not unusual in Guatemala. Lack of investment in small-scale agriculture has reduced food production over the years, and the country now has the highest rate of malnutrition among children under five in Latin America: nearly 50 percent, according to the World Food Programme. The malnutrition rate for indigenous children is higher; close to 70 percent. The Famine Early Warning System warns that 350,000 families in Guatemala are at risk this year, especially in the south, east, and central regions of Guatemala’s “dry corridor."

Many men will finish their harvest and migrate to coffee- or sugar-cane producing parts of the country to work on large plantations to earn extra money. This year such income will be more crucial than ever, for farmers in Baja Verpaz, in central Guatemala.

“We would like people to have more options than just migration,” says Gloria Gonzalez, who works with the Association of Community Health Services, known by its Spanish initials ASECSA. Oxfam is working with ASECSA and the Training Institute for Sustainable Development (IEPADES) to help farmers in Baja Verapaz survive the coming winter. Oxfam is helping these organizations in the following areas.

• Family gardens: seeds and tools to help families grow winter vegetables to improve their nutrition.
• Veterinary medicine and feed to raise chickens, pigs, and ducks.
• Traditional agriculture: help farmers produce their own organic fertilizer and insecticides and select native seeds, to help reduce costs and increase production of corn, beans, peanuts, and other food crops.
• Training health promoters to provide nutritional counseling for families with young children, to improve diets and reduce child mortality.
• Community service: cash for work on local infrastructure like irrigation systems, production of organic fertilizer, and other ways to improve the community and increase the sustainability of local agriculture.

Oxfam is committing $269,000 to the project, which will assist nearly one thousand families in Baja Verapaz.

On a recent Wednesday morning in the West Arsi Zone, a large crowd of people gather outside the government offices in the Shalla district, where, according to government figures, 55,598 people have been identified as needy, but only 10,000—people with the most severe wants—are getting help. In this crisis, distinctions based on need have begun to blur.

"For us, it is becoming even more difficult to tell who is the poorest of the poor," says one man.

The faces of the people in the crowd are gaunt, their clothes are tattered. Suddenly, a low roar swells from their midst. They surge from the compound and out onto the road, surrounding a pair of aid workers in a dense, crushing circle. They are desperate to tell their stories, desperate for help.

A middle-aged man shouts out that local officials promised two weeks ago to support the people with wheat, oil, and corn, but so far he has received nothing. Instead, the crowd's vigil, now in its fourth day, is met only with this admonition: wait.

An elderly man adds that one of those in the crowd on the road couldn't wait anymore and died there the day before.

Others say they have been filling their stomachs with a leafy weed that has sprung up since the rains came. But the greens—boiled in water and salted—have made some of their children sick with diarrhea.

Weak from lack of real food and their stomachs filled with forage, the children of one mother sometimes faint on their way to school.

"Can you help me?" she asks, staring at the aid workers.

Lines at a feeding center

A short distance away, mothers rest on a long line of benches under the shade of a giant tree at the Shalla health center. Small children, unnaturally still, sit on their laps, their cries occasionally piercing the din. This is a feeding center where some of the weakest children come for a week's supply of Plumpy Nut—a nutrient-packed food supplement for malnourished children.

Not all hungry children qualify for the supplement. Some are deemed still well enough not to require it. One of them is the 11-month-old son of a single mother. He is her only child, and desperate to have him get more food, she offers to give him away to an aid worker—a gesture of hopelessness other mothers make, too.

A five-year-old girl holds the hand of her father as she limps slowly toward the packets of Plumpy Nut a worker is counting out for her. She has recently spent 15 days in a hospital in Shashemene because of severe malnutrition, and is now strong enough to rejoin her family. But her mother is sick following the delivery of a new baby, and the two-and-a-half acres of seeds her father just planted for the next harvest have all been washed away by a sudden heavy rain.

"We are facing so many disasters at the same time," says the leader of a local community, where he notes that one man died the day before and many of the women are sinking into exhaustion. "Drought, flood, disease."

Breakfast is no longer part of her children's morning routine. Alexandre can't afford it. Most of what she earns as a street vendor in the Carrefour-Feuilles district of Port-au-Prince she was already spending on food for her family. But the steep rise in the cost of rice, a Haitian staple, is pricing Alexandre and her family out of regular meals.

Less than 20 years ago, the country was nearly self-sufficient when it came to rice production. But in 1995, when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund pressured Haiti to cut import tariffs on rice from 50 percent to 3 percent, cheap subsidized rice from the US began to flood into the country. Urban consumers benefited for a while from the low-cost imports, but they caused national rice production to plummet. Today, Haiti is now importing 80 percent of the rice it consumes—just as world prices have doubled.

More than half the country's population is malnourished, and more than 80 percent of the rural population lives below the poverty line. Rising prices provoked riots in several Haitian cities earlier this spring and forced the resignation of the country's prime minister.

"If people are hungry, they have no stake in stability," said Hedi Annabi, the UN special representative in Haiti. "They will be ready for anything--for anarchy--because they have nothing to safeguard or to fight for."

While the entire country is affected, cities--where 40 percent of the populations lives--are especially hard hit.

Agriculture, which employs more than 60 percent of the Haitian workforce, is one of the areas most affected by trade liberalization policies. An estimated 830,000 jobs in Haiti have been lost in recent years, primarily in agriculture.

What is Oxfam doing?

In the capital, Port-au-Prince and the town of Jacmel in the southeast, Oxfam is helping families hardest hit by the rising food prices. Working through local partners, Oxfam is supporting subsidized community restaurants, school canteens, and helping parents pay off debts to schools. Cash-for-work community clean up activities are also planned for several neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince.

In rural areas in the north of the country, Oxfam is organizing a cash-for-work canal cleaning project, improving and diversifying crops and vegetables, and improving market links for small farmers.

It is through the community restaurant that Alexandre has found some relief from her hardship.

"I am the sole provider for my children," she said. "Their father dies a year ago and now I am alone. If he was here, it would be much easier to manage."

For just 13 cents, Alexandre and her children can now buy a daily subsidized hot meal at one of eight community restaurants supported by Oxfam.

"It's unthinkable that I would be able to buy a meal for my kids for 5 gourdes (13 cents)," says Alexandre, smiling. "It means that every day I have been able to save a little bit of money for other things. Now not all of my money must go on buying food."

Run by a local organization, the restaurants provide immediate relief to those families hit hardest by rising food prices. They are open from 10 a.m. to noon four days a week, and serve up to 200 meals a day, ranging from cornmeal and fish to bouillion, a hearty Haitian vegetable stew.

It's these experiences that have helped convince us that our current system of international food aid needs to be reformed. It needs to be faster, more flexible and cheaper. Instead of dumping surplus domestic production as "in kind" food aid, donors should provide cash for governments and aid agencies to buy food locally. This is usually more efficient and better for local agriculture.

Here are some examples of how this kind of aid can work during humanitarian crises.

Cereal banks

In the North Bank Division of Gambia food shortages are a constant threat as people struggle to manage the delicate balance between their needs and what the environment can provide. Will there be enough rain to allow crops to grow? Will locusts devour whatever villagers manage to coax from their fields?

A simple solution promoted by Oxfam's local partner, Agency for the Development of Women and Children, or ADWAC, takes the edge off those questions: If villagers had a way to save some of their food and seeds at the end of each harvest, they could have a reserve to fall back on during times of shortage. The trick was to get started.

ADWAC's plan called for building and stocking four cereal "banks"—tidy white structures the size of small houses which can hold up to 30 metric tons of cereals—located at strategic points around the communities. Villagers then formed committees to manage the stored supplies. Those who borrow from the storehouse during a food shortage are obliged to repay the loan and tack on a little extra, too, so that the project can grow.

Now, if drought should shrivel their crops or pests consume them, villagers can turn to that bank of grain, avoiding the need to eke what they can from an overstrained environment. The bank will help them weather tough times.

Inside the Dasilami storehouse one day last year, the sweetness of harvested grains filled the hot dry air. Heavy sacks—they weigh just under 200 pounds—stuffed with corn and millet were stacked nearly to the ceiling. Outside, in the shade of a tree laden with mangoes, Nyima Filly Fofana, a mother of nine children and an organizer for one of the cereal bank management committees, talked about what it was like one year recently when both locusts and drought hit the area.

"We experienced a very bitter time," she said. "The family was hungry." In times of food shortages, Fofana's family manages by selling the salt she harvests from mud flats near her home and by eating whatever vegetables they can grow in their garden. But if such trouble should strike again, this time Dasilami has the seeds of a solution—one that can now spread to other villages, too.

"Our worries will be temporarily solved," said Fofana, clapping her hands at the thought of the white building gleaming there in the sun, stocked with grain. "We'll have food. Therefore our families will not cry. Our stomachs will no longer go empty."

Vouchers revitalize markets

When a catastrophic earthquake hit northern Pakistan in the fall of 2005, it left three million people homeless and more than two million people needing food aid to survive the winter.

Around the devastated town of Balakot in the Northwest Frontier province, Oxfam organized a program that provided families with vouchers to use among a selected group of merchants. Not only did the vouchers offer earthquake survivors the chance to make their own choices about which goods would best meet their needs, they helped to revitalize local markets by boosting commerce and allowing traders to rebuild their businesses.

For one young boy, the program helped restore a sliver of normalcy to his life by allowing him to buy familiar goods.

"My father was killed," he told an Oxfam staffer at a general store in Balakot. "My mother is very ill. She has asked me to buy flour, black tea, and sugar."

The program, which also included the distribution of some cash and building materials, reached more than 48,000 people, giving them a real say in the kind of help they received.

Culling herds, helping traders

Before a lack of rain shriveled the pastureland in Niger and swarms of migratory grasshoppers stripped it clean, Koumba Yacouba's family owned a magnificent herd of cows that was 200 head strong. But drought and pest infestation wiped them out in 2005—a story repeated across Niger where untold numbers of herders all depend on their animals for food. The shortage of fodder was the worst in Niger's history.

High cereal prices and decimated herds combined to create a food crisis for 3.6 million people—nearly one-third of Niger's population.

In response, Oxfam and one of its local partners, the Association de Revigoration d'Élevage au Niger, or AREN, set up a $2 million program in southeastern Niger to help nearly 131,000 people. Their weakened herds figured prominently in the effort. The goal was to help reinvigorate the local economy by stimulating area markets.

For a fair price, Oxfam bought cattle that were too emaciated for herders to sell. Cattle prices had plummeted, falling to 90 percent lower than they had been before the crisis. Even healthy animals were fetching only a fraction of their former value: Strong bulls that once went for $500 were being sold off for as little as $18.

Oxfam began purchasing cows from local breeders for $53 a head. That money allowed people to buy food from local traders to feed both their families and their remaining animals.

In addition, Oxfam had the cows it purchased slaughtered in the villages and the meat inspected by vets to make sure it was fit for consumption. In exchange for some of the meat, village women worked to dry or fry the beef which was then made available to hungry families who traded their vouchers for it. People earned the vouchers by working on community improvement projects such as the construction of small reservoirs to catch and store rainfall.

"Oxfam's response is stimulating the economy by trying to use local markets," said Mike Delaney, Oxfam America's director of humanitarian response.

"We cannot believe that we are now able to eat meat," said Khadydiatou Labarang, whose daily diet had been a single meal of millet before Oxfam initiated the program.

That's what's has been happening this spring, 2008, in some of the world's poorest countries. A convergence of factors, including high energy and fertilizer costs, has sent food prices spiraling upward, forcing families to make excruciating choices. Do they send their kids to school or put them to work earning money to help feed the family? Do they cut down on the number of meals they eat? Do they plant fewer acres?

Those are the kind of questions that have been at the heart of food riots erupting in recent weeks in Haiti and Mexico, in Senegal and Burkina Faso. The World Bank estimated that the social unrest could spread to 33 countries. Already 840 million people around the world are chronically hungry, and the shock of high prices—in March, rice hit a 19-year high while wheat climbed to its highest level in 28 years—is deepening their suffering.

The Asian Development Bank predicts that the rising cost of cereals could put 300 million people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at risk of starvation. And Oxfam is concerned that families with no other options will be forced to sell productive assets, like their animals or land, so they can buy food today—even as that choice undermines their future ability to make a living.

The source of the trouble

Where does the blame lie? Broadly.

Analysts point to erratic weather, caused in part by climate change, as one of the factors affecting food supplies. Bad weather has lead to crop failures in some key grain-producing countries and exposed small-scale subsistence farmers to unpredictable harvests. Experts predict that climate change eventually could cause as much as a 30 percent reduction in Africa's agricultural productivity. And as food production shrinks, demand for it is growing, particularly in the booming economies of India and China, where in the past 23 years the annual per capita consumption of meat among the Chinese has more than doubled.

The switch to biofuels is correlated with food price rises over the past year, and, with consumption likely to grow, is expected to drive further food price inflation. Structural problems are also a culprit: the tendency of countries not to invest enough in agriculture, the dominance big companies hold over food supply chains, and the general mismanagement of food and agricultural policies.

With the cost of food rising, aid groups are also concerned about how they are going to meet global demands. The UN World Food Program estimates it needs a $500 million injection just to maintain its operations at last year's levels. And the US Agency for International Development predicts it will have shortfall of $260 million by the end of this year.

What does all of this mean for families struggling to survive?

It means that in Kabul, Afghanistan, the price of bread has risen by 90 percent since November. In Senegal, Oxfam staff are reporting that families are eating fewer meals and of a lower quality. In Indonesia, the price of soybeans has almost doubled, sparking a January protest in Jakarta by 7,000 tofu and tempe producers. In Thailand, small chicken farmers are going out of business as the cost of animal feed rises and they can no longer compete against large-scale producers.

What can be done?

The most urgent thing Congress can do is reform food aid programs.

President Bush's move to release an additional $200 million in emergency aid is a good first step. What Congress needs to now is reform food aid policies to allow for food to be purchased where it is needed rather than shipping it halfway around the world.

Americans now provide half of the world's food aid, but the current law requires that it be purchased from American farmers, processed and bagged in the US, and shipped on US vessels. All of that adds a huge amount of time and expense. It can take up to four months before those critical supplies of food reach the people who need it and it costs twice as much. For every dollar Americans spend on food aid, only 50 cents worth actually reaches hungry people. Congress is still debating the Farm Bill, the legislative package that governs our food and farm policy, including international food aid programs. A simple change the law to allow some cash for local purchase of commodities would immediately increase the efficiency of food aid programs and feed more hungry people.

Congress should also take a hard look at policies that continue to subsidize biofuels production. Recently-passed energy legislation and provisions in the Farm Bill continue to encourage greater production of fuels from corn and soybeans. Sufficient concern has been raised about this food to fuels policy as well as questions about corn-based ethanol's real contribution to reducing carbon emissions, to warrant evaluation of the current biofuels incentives and to spur further research into the possibilities of non-food-based biofuels, such as switchgrass.

Over the longer term, governments around the world need to work together and develop a system of global safety nets so that poor families faced with fluctuating prices can survive price shocks and meet basic needs. Our humanitarian response strategies need to be revamped to include a broader range of interventions and better preventative actions.

A greater investment needs to be made in small-scale sustainable agriculture in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Malawi and Zambia are good examples of what's possible. They have moved from dependence on food aid to become food exporters.

Not far from where the Nyantang Dundula River slips by the village of Dasilami in Gambia, there rises a stand of giant baobab trees. Branches bristle from the tops of their stout trunks and beneath the canopy, pools of shade cool the air and ground. The houses of one of the largest clans in Dasilami once stood here in the stillness of this glade. But now, they cluster near a sun-scorched road, their owners having traded the comforts of the baobabs for the convenience of being close to a major transportation route.

Gambians have a saying about their baobab trees: "If you want to lean, make sure you lean on something strong to avoid being pushed down." It's a bit of wisdom that informs their approach to hard times, too, even as they leave the baobabs behind. What it means is that with some support, people can help themselves overcome hardships.

That's the idea behind a $65,000 grant Oxfam America has provided to help people in 51 villages—including Dasilami—in Gambia's North Bank Division. Here, food shortages are a constant threat as people struggle to manage the delicate balance between their needs and what the environment can provide. Will there be enough rain to allow crops to grow? Will locusts devour whatever villagers manage to coax from their fields?

A simple solution promoted by Oxfam's local partner, Agency for the Development of Women and Children, or ADWAC, takes the edge off those questions: If villagers had a way to save some of their food and seeds at the end of each harvest, they could have a reserve to fall back on during times of shortage. The trick was to get started.

ADWAC's plan called for building and stocking four cereal "banks"—tidy white structures the size of small houses which can hold up to 30 metric tons of cereals—located at strategic points around the communities. Villagers then formed committees to manage the stored supplies. Those who borrow from the storehouse during a food shortage are obliged to repay the loan and tack on a little extra, too, so that the project can grow.

Now, if drought should shrivel their crops or pests consume them, villagers can turn to that bank of grain, avoiding the need to eke what they can—as the woodcutters in Janack do—from an overstrained environment. The bank will help them weather tough times.

Inside the Dasilami storehouse one recent day, the sweetness of harvested grains fills the hot dry air. Heavy sacks—they weigh just under 200 pounds—stuffed with corn and millet are stacked nearly to the ceiling. Outside, in the shade of a tree laden with mangoes, Nyima Filly Fofana, a mother of nine children and an organizer for one of the cereal bank management committees, talks about what it was like one year recently when both locusts and drought hit the area.

"We experienced a very bitter time," she says. "The family was hungry." In times of food shortages, Fofana's family manages by selling the salt she harvests from mud flats near her home and by eating whatever vegetables they can grow in their garden. But if such trouble should strike again, this time Dasilami has the seeds of a solution—one that can now spread to other villages, too.

"Our worries will be temporarily solved," says Fofana, clapping her hands at the thought of the white building gleaming there in the sun, stocked with grain. "We'll have food. Therefore our families will not cry. Our stomachs will no longer go empty."