But a hungry child exists in a larger context: if we nourish communities, they can nourish their own children.
The woman on our cover, Fatou Doumbia, and other women in her village in Mali, pooled their resources last year. They set aside nearly a ton of millet as a defense against the hunger they’d seen as food prices spiked. Hers is another face of hunger: determined, resourceful.
After the last harvest, Oxfam reached out to supporters to respond to the food crisis. We’ve devoted much of this issue to looking at what communities have done to avoid the kinds of hardships they confronted. When people living in poverty are hit by a food crisis or natural disaster, they lack resources to tide them over.
Oxfam works to help people build their resilience. Let respect and hope fuel your efforts to support women like Doumbia.
]]>Achieving farm resilience requires building up the resilience of vulnerable farmers by developing their skills, expertise and voice while supporting their use of agro-ecological farming practices. Building resilience depends not just on how farmers manage resources, but on how well local, national, and global institutions support farmers. Agro-ecological practices can empower vulnerable small-scale farmers, offering them both greater control over their lives and an accessible means of improving their food security, while decreasing their risk of crop failure or livestock death due to climate shocks. Vulnerable farmers can use agro-ecological practices to build resilient farms and improve their livelihoods, achieving multiple benefits: 1. improved food security; 2. adaptation to a changing climate; and 3. mitigation of climate change.
People-centred resilience consists of five principles which should guide how investments in vulnerable farming communities are designed and implemented. They are:
Following these principles ensures that investments support farmers in their efforts to become food-secure and adapt to climate change. Four institutions central to delivering people-centered resilience are: secure land rights; dynamic farmer associations; responsive agricultural advisory services; and public support for environmental services.
]]>"Resuscitating Doha is essential to right the rigged rules of trade, but what's been simmering on the WTO stove will simply not deliver for poor countries, said Oxfam America president Raymond C. Offenheiser. "The financial crisis, which started in developed countries but is taking its worst toll on developing countries, should be the impetus for a change in course."
In a new report released today called "Empty Promises," Oxfam details how the Doha Round has become an exercise in prying open developing country markets rather than an effort to rebalance decades of unfair agricultural and industrial trade rules. In the midst of a global economic crisis, a food crisis, and a climate crisis, nations with the least blame and with the least capacity to cope with the consequent effects must not have to pay even more to enable their economies to develop, according to the report.
Over 50 million people stand to lose their jobs, remittances are collapsing, and growth in sub-Saharan Africa is predicted to fall by 70 percent this year trapping 90 million more people in poverty, because of the crisis. Food prices meanwhile remain high for poor consumers: by the end of 2008 a further 109 million people had been added to the ranks of hungry, topping 1 billion people worldwide. As the world experiences the sharpest drop in trade in 80 years, a "development" trade deal—as originally promised—remains crucial, according to Oxfam.
"Now is the time for WTO members to come back to the negotiating table, recognize that the current crisis provides an opportunity to address urgent development needs, and change the course of negotiations, much as they did nearly eight years ago in Doha," said Offenheiser. "At this time of desperate need for a change of course, the Doha Round has to step up to deliver on its development promise. There is little credit left for another failure."
The welcome political commitment from the G8 could lead to a fresh start to negotiations, but it cannot be business as usual. In the past eight years, developed countries have used the talks to continue to push to open up new export markets. Developing countries have resisted, saying they were promised a deal that would give them space to protect their farmers and new industries, an end to rich country trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, and more access to rich markets for their farmers and industries.
The widespread food price crisis has shown that food and livelihood security cannot depend solely on market forces. Development, rather than liberalization, has to be the central objective of negotiations and trade rules must respond to the needs of the most vulnerable people first and foremost, according to Oxfam. It is the responsibility of WTO member states to analyze the role of trade in the recent global crises so that the Doha negotiations take into account the new global context and contribute to a solution, rather than exacerbate the problem.
"What's on the table is no silver bullet since it continues to favor the richest and biggest farmers and industrialists in the US and Europe and sidelines the needs of the poor," said Offenheiser. "We have seen what can be done when countries find the resolve to avert problems at home, and this resolve must be translated to the multilateral trade agenda so that the much-needed conclusion of the Doha Round can be achieved in a manner that addresses developing country needs first and foremost."
]]>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.
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."
]]>Rain has finally returned some green to the pastures on this broad lowland, and as the cows mow down the new blades and inhale them hungrily, Shitaye talks about her own hunger—months-long, paralyzing, intractable. Shitaye is not her real name. It has been changed to protect her security. Drought killed the harvest she had hoped to reap in June. Since January, family meals have consisted of a bit of corn and coffee in the morning with nothing else for the rest of the day. And some days there has been no food at all.
Here, in the West Arsi Zone of central Ethiopia, the convergence of failed rains, chronic poverty, and a wild spike in food prices, like those now roiling other parts of the globe, have left 320,000 people needing relief, according to government figures. Only some of them have gotten aid. Recently, the Ethiopian government more than doubled its figures for those requiring help as a consequence of drought that has gripped parts of the country. Now, the government says, 4.6 million people nationwide—up from 2.2 million earlier this year—need emergency assistance, and 75,000 children are suffering with severe acute malnutrition.
Aid workers report that in northern parts of Ethiopia's Somali region, where most people make their living as herders, rain has not fallen in two years. South, in the Dire district of Oromia's Borena Zone, the 45 days of rain that normally replenish the area between March and May dwindled to 15 last year, and just five this year, leaving pasturelands parched and fields too dry to produce the basic staples people depend on. According to the government, almost 62,000 people live in the district and 90 percent of them now need assistance.
Shitaye, a widow and grandmother of 10, says the current troubles are even worse than the hunger that killed about a million people in Ethiopia in 1984. This time, she says, there is no way families can supplement their meager household stocks by selling things in the market to buy food: Grain prices have climbed far out of reach.
In area markets toward the latter half of June, a quintal of corn was selling for 600 birr, or $64, and teff, a type of grain from which people make a pancake-like bread, had spiraled up to 1,100 birr, or $117, for the same volume—prices that are three times their normal amount.
In West Arsi, a major infusion of food for people and seeds for their fields will be essential to avoid an even deeper crisis next year. In its latest appeal, the Ethiopian government says it needs $325 million to meet the needs of beneficiaries across the country.
Oxfam International is responding to the crisis with a $2.42 million initiative aimed at helping 225,000 people in three regions—Oromia, Afar, Somali. Programs include the provision of clean drinking water for families and livestock, livestock vaccinations and feeding, the distribution of seeds to allow families to plant crops for the next harvest, and cash-for-work initiatives to help people earn some money.
"We're wondering if we'll survive until September," says a man sitting near Shitaye.
"We rest everything on our creator," she adds, cradling one of her grandchildren. "We beg him that everything will turn out to be good."
]]>In April, the Ethiopian government announced that 2.18 million people now need emergency food assistance. Citing the toll water shortages have taken on crops and pastureland, Ethiopia has asked donors for $67.7 million in aid to help it meet the nutritional needs of people in six of the country's nine states, as well as needs for emergency water provision, animal care, and seeds. The government has also said an additional 947,383 people would have their emergency needs met through Ethiopia's existing safety net.
Oxfam and the local groups with which it partners are responding to the crisis in the Somali and Oromia regions through a multi-pronged approach which not only addresses the immediate requirements families have for water, but also provides some help to reduce the risk of hardship during the next water shortage.
In Ethiopia, the daily chore of fetching water usually falls to women and children. In drought situations, when local sources such as shallow ponds or wells dry up, the trek for this essential resource becomes even more grueling.
The Liben Pastoralist Development Association, an Oxfam partner working in the southern part of the country, realized how acute the water shortage had become when it began receiving reports of women, some of them pregnant, walking more than 18 miles from their villages to the nearest water point. Laden with 20-liter jugs of water, some of those women miscarried. Others delivered their babies along the road.
In one part of the Somali region, Oxfam learned that people were selling jerricans of water for 30 birr, or about $3.20—a small fortune in a country where poverty is widespread. Some private businesses had even started importing water from Hargessa in Somaliland.
An assessment team that traveled to the Borena zone in southern Ethiopia reported in March that more than 17,000 animals had died since January in the 11 districts it visited. Herding families in the area depend on those animals—cows, goats, sheep, camels, donkeys—not only for food but also as a critical source of income. The team found that drought had prompted the closing of 29 schools in that area because there was no water for the students. And local officials told team members that many elderly residents were showing signs of malnutrition—a possible indication that the Borena people were using one of their traditional coping strategies. In their culture, the first priority of women during food shortages is to invest in the youngest generation: children eat before their elders do.
Families in these dry pastoral areas have developed a number of ways to cope with recurrent drought. Some of them have been able to keep reserves of hay on hand for their animals when the pasture dries up. Sometimes, people slaughter their cows and goats and use the meat to help feed their families. When they can, they hunt for wood to sell or to turn into charcoal. If families lose their entire herds, other families contribute animals to get a new herd started.
But over the years, the persistent crises have depleted the assets of many people and exhausted their ability to cope. For herders, their traditional means of managing are also running headlong into modern realities. For instance, the populations of both people and their animals are growing. The allocation of communal grazing areas to private investors and a system of regionalization is limiting the amount of land herders can have access to. And bush, once burned off by fires that have since been banned, continues to encroach on valuable pastureland.
One of the consequences of the current crisis is a plunge in the value of animals. Without enough water or pasture they become sick, and many die. The Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative, an Oxfam partner, reports that the drop in value of livestock has been extreme in districts such as Dire and Dillo in the Borena zone.
And herders are facing a double hit. As they are earn less for their animals, they are simultaneously confronted with spiraling costs for grain—a food staple. Gayo notes that grain prices have jumped by almost 100 percent in some districts.
To help ease some of the severe hardships caused by the drought, Oxfam is working with four local groups to distribute water, provide needy animals with feed and veterinary care, and rehabilitate a series of local ponds so they can provide water in the future.
With support from Oxfam, the Liben Pastoralist Development Initiative's plans have called for providing drinking water to 6,000 people in two areas in the Liben District of the Oromia region's Guji Zone. The water is being trucked in from wells about 28 miles away and stored in four large tanks—and providing enough to allow each person about 4 gallons a day.
The Liben group is also transporting hay and a wheat-bran feed into the region to help shore up the strength of the animals on which people depend. But in an indication of how challenging it can be to work in remote areas, the nearest place Liben can find the necessary fodder is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, more than 370 miles to the north.
In the Dillo and Dhas districts of the Borena Zone, Action for Development is restoring three wells that typically serve 4,000 to 5,000 head of livestock each day. But because of the drought and shrinking water supplies elsewhere, the number of animals relying on water from these sources could double. The plan calls for the purchase of generators and sub pumps to get these wells running at maximum efficiency.
Like the Liben group, Action for Development is also trucking water in to Dillo and Dhas to help more than 5,000 people with access to a clean supply. The trucks are transporting the water from wells up to 34 miles away.
An estimated 13,500 people and 2,500 head of cattle will benefit from a series of projects the Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative is also carrying out with Oxfam's help, including the restoration of two ponds in the Borena zone. Ponds provide one of the central sources of water for animals in the area, but during long dry spells they dry up, especially if silt has made them shallow.
By hiring local people to deepen the ponds, Gayo is able to provide families with an important source of income while also helping them to increase the holding capacity of these critical water sources.
"Rehabilitation of ponds during the dry season tremendously increases their capacities and enables them to serve for a longer period of time during drought," said Gayo in its grant application to Oxfam. Gayo pointed to its successes with three ponds in the Moyale area during the 2006 drought.
"The three ponds rehabilitated in response to the drought have still enough water and serve the community at the moment," Gayo said.
]]>In the camps for displaced people that stretch along Chad's border and across conflict-torn Darfur in western Sudan, the concept is hard to explain. In a world of want—where violence has forced more than two million people from their homes—how do you describe an abundance so great that it needs a cookbook loaded with directions to keep it all straight?
That experience helped define just one of the jarring truths about the global distribution of food that Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio explore in their new book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. A grand photo essay 288 pages long, the book took the couple on a journey to 24 countries where they got to know 30 families and the intricacies of each family's weekly food consumption. Family recipes accompany every profile.
Brand names and plastic packaging proliferate on some of the pages, testament to the global reach of processed foods and beverages. But on other pages, seeds and raw grains sit in burlap sacks—some more empty than full. A few of those limp sacks belong to the Aboubakars: D'jimia Ishakh Souleymane, who is a widow, and her five children.
The lessons Menzel and D'Aluisio learned from their visits with the Aboubakars are hard to forget, and they hope that readers who consume the stories and pictures in their book won't forget them either.
"What we really wanted to do was help people who didn't have a clue understand what was going on in the rest of the world," said D'Aluisio. "It's important—especially for Americans."
For starters, consider the water situation at the Breidjing camp in Chad where the Aboubakars have now lived for more than a year and a half. Their home is a small tent on a sandy plain crowded with countless others just like it. Oxfam has been providing water to thousands of people in the camp. The minimum provision in emergency situations such as this is just shy of 4 gallons per person a day.
"Water is one of the biggest problems," said Menzel. "Thirty thousand people use a lot of water. There's a big difference between having a faucet and carrying water and standing in line for water."
When the Oxfam water truck arrives to fill an empty bladder—a storage device that looks like a giant water bed—the relief that ripples through the blocks of tents is palpable, added D'Aulisio.
"The water is so precious," she said. "I do not turn a faucet on without thinking of all those people."
D'Aulisio's relationship with her garden has also changed since visiting the Aboubakars. Now, she wastes nothing from it, preferring to invest whatever time it takes to can the extra fruits and vegetables it produces.
D'jimia works hard for the little bit of extra food she buys for her family. She earns about $1.35 a day toiling in the fields of nearby villagers—when she can get the work. She uses the money to buy fresh tomatoes or dried okra. But the bulk of her family's diet—three meals a day—consists of the aiysh she stirs up in a big black pot over a fire outside her tent.
Aid groups provide the rations for the roughly 30,000 people in the camp. The allotments are far from lavish, and amount to about 2,100 calories per day per person in the form of a cereal, such as sorghum or millet, and small scoops of pulses and a corn-soy blend. The rations also include small amounts of sugar and salt.
"Most of everyone looks like they're on the minimum amount of calories needed," said Menzel. The rationing system takes into account only the numbers of people in a family, not the size of their appetites or where they fall on the growth charts.
"If you've got a lot of teen-age boys, you've got some difficulty," added D'Aluisio, speaking from her own experience mothering hungry boys.
D'Aluisio and Menzel learned about some of the ins and outs of camp management during their three-night sojourn in a tent at the Oxfam compound outside of Breidjing.
"Staying in the compound was great," said D'Aluisio. "We got to hang out with the people who were there."
One of the things that became clear to the couple during their stay at Breidjing is how complex the business is of feeding, sheltering, and providing water and sanitation for tens of thousands of people in a remote, arid place.
"Most people who see it from the outside don't see the difficulty," said D'Aluisio of the logistics in just getting enough food to people. "Sometimes there is a disconnect between the giving and the getting, and that disconnect is infrastructure."
For example, the camp was giving food out every 15 days instead of every 30 days—which would have been half the work—because it didn't have enough on hand. Food reserves were far away, and there was no guarantee when new supplies would arrive.
The difficulty in stocking Breidjing—or any of the camps in Chad and Darfur where hundreds of thousands of displaced Sudanese have lived in limbo since early 2003—is just the tip of a problem that affects millions of people around the world every day.
"Most hunger in the world is politics based," said D'Aluisio. "There is more than enough food on the planet to feed everybody. It's just warped in terms of who's getting the food and who already has the food. There needs to be more equality than there is."
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