CAMBODIA: Mao and Bun, a couple in their 60s, are participating in an aquaponic pilot project in their village in Kratie province, Cambodia. Aquaponics is a system that combines aquaculture (raising fish) with hydroponics (growing plants without soil) as a means to reduce vulnerability to climate change. Focus area: Climate Action.
Patrick Moran/Oxfam
The world can produce more than enough food for all of us. Yet today, many people are hungry—and even at risk of famine.
The way the world produces food is touched by—and actively shapes—our most pressing global challenges. The climate crisis, conflict, and an unequal and unjust system for growing, processing, transporting, and selling food have eroded decades of progress in the fight against hunger.
At Oxfam, we are working with a global network of partners to create a better-functioning food system—one that prioritizes and values people and planet.
Whether it’s responding to the climate crisis to ensure communities can adapt and sustain their livelihoods or amplifying the voices and economic power of female food producers and smallholder farmers, Oxfam and our partners work alongside communities to address hunger and poverty, and to reduce inequality across our food systems—now and for the future.
These photographs show a few of the people and places involved in this reinvention of the global food system, and the work of Oxfam and our partners to support them. They encompass Oxfam's four program focus areas: Climate Action; Economic Justice and Equal Rights; Humanitarian Response; and Women's Rights and Gender Justice.
Jenniffer Kateeba is a member of the Ankole Coffee Producers Cooperative Union (ACPCU), which grows and sells organic coffee, earning a premium price. Because women participate in the organic coffee production, they earn a better income and have a voice in decisions about about how ACPCU reinvests its profits in education and other social programs.
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Marinel Ubaldo looks at replanted mangrove seedlings, part of an effort to reforest coastal areas near her village, Matarinao, which was damaged by Typhoon Hayan 10 years ago. Matarinao is vulnerable to dangerous storms; Oxfam is helping the community replant the mangroves as part of a project to reduce the risk of major climate shocks and to help communities prepare for disasters. Ubaldo is a prominent climate activist who collaborated with Oxfam on major campaign events at the United Nations in New York City in 2023, helping to raise awareness of how climate change is affecting vulnerable communities.
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Margarito López waters the family garden in Chiquimula, a region in southern Guatemala that is part of the notoriously arid Dry Corridor of Central America. Oxfam is working with partners Corazón de Maíz and ASEDECHI to introduce drought-resistant crops and farming techniques, as well as alternative sources of income, to help farmers in the Dry Corridor adapt to the climate crisis.
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Women plant vegetables in a greenhouse built by the Rural Women’s Business Network (RWBN) with support from Oxfam. RWBN is helping women in southern Ukraine, some displaced by the conflict now entering its third year, who are interested in growing vegetables to establish cooperatives and build businesses. “We support rural women, and we would like to strengthen their ability to be independent, to live in a safe society, [and] to have resources to develop their own businesses,” says Iryna Volovyk, project manager for RWBN in Ukraine.
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Fermina Alonzo (right) removes wax from a honey frame held by Magdalena Primero at a community apiary in Baja Verapaz. In response to drought, Oxfam partners Corazón de Maíz and ASEDECHI are introducing drought-resistant crops and farming techniques, as well as alternative sources of income such as beekeeping, to ensure farmers in arid areas known as the Dry Corridor can adapt to the climate crisis and maintain their livelihoods.
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Marwan (not his real name), a farmer in eastern Ghouta, receives seedlings from Oxfam. Marwan and his family lost their home during the 12-year conflict in Syria and depleted all their savings on rent and other expenses during the COVID pandemic, leaving them no funds to invest in farming. Oxfam distributed chickens, tomato and eggplant seedlings, and cucumber and zucchini seeds to around 2,200 people in eastern Ghouta in 2020. For Marwan, the seedlings and seeds have filled a crucial need. “Without them, our only option would have been to sell some of our land to survive,” he says.
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Community member Mirian Lizcano (left) and Linda Yulitza Serna Díaz at a garden plot in the town of Montañito in the Amazon region of Colombia. Serna Díaz works for Corpo Manigua, an organization that promotes women’s rights and leadership. The group is working with Oxfam to address gender-based violence and to reduce the risks women face from armed conflict, floods, and landslides. In Montañito, the project includes support for a gardening collective to help families improve their nutrition.
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Rice farmer Trinh Cong Minh (left) and Nguyen Ngoc Tram, a technical specialist from the An Giang province Agricultural Service, use a phone equipped with the Rice Hero app to track greenhouse gas emissions. Data collected by Rice Hero across Vietnam documents emissions from rice production, which account for nearly half of Vietnam’s agriculture-related emissions. The project is part of Oxfam’s work to encourage governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to help farmers adopt climate-friendly and sustainable practices that also increase their yields and income.
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Djelika (right) grows trees on her farm to reverse land degradation and improve soil quality. Oxfam has been working with Sahel Eco, World Agroforestry Center, and World Vision on Regreening Africa, a project designed to improve 390,000 acres farmed by 80,000 households. Projects like this are designed to help farming families protect the environment and thus reduce their vulnerability to climate change.
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Marites Montajes, a member of a women’s self-help group in Quezon City, checks peppers in the Garden of Hope. Her group is part of an Urban Food Hive, a network of growers, processors, distributors, and vendors committed to producing healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. Oxfam and Second Muse, working with local partners, have helped establish Urban Food Hives in five countries. In the Philippines, Oxfam’s partner AGREA is supporting women farmers to form cooperatives, build entrepreneurial skills, increase economic opportunities, and advocate for government support for urban farmers.
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Oxfam staff member Paola Bohorquez (right) consults with Julio, a farmer in Beni, who is struggling to grow crops in an area badly affected by forest fires and increasingly hotter temperatures. Oxfam and partner organization CIPCA are advising farmers like Julio on the varieties of fruit trees and vegetables they can plant to reforest areas that have been affected negatively by climate change, including by fires. This project is an example of Oxfam’s efforts to help farmers adapt to climate change and make a decent living while protecting the environment.
For more, click here.
A family displaced by conflict in southern Gaza bakes bread in a make-shift oven they built. After months of fighting, more than a million people in Gaza are at risk of famine. Oxfam is working with partners to deliver water, sanitation services, hygiene items, food, cash, and other aid—but the work to rebuild the capacity of local agricultural production in Gaza will take years.
For more, click here.
Martin Komu is an early riser. “I’m usually up around 4 a.m., and I’m here by around 5,” he says, standing at his market stall, where he sells vegetables. “This is where I sell my wares.”
Today he has carrots, onions, and green bell peppers, known as capsicum here in the Korogocho Market in Nairobi, Kenya. “These are third-grade capsicum,” he says. The highest-grade peppers are sold at a higher-end supermarket, but he can still sell these at a decent price.
Same with the carrots , which may not look perfect. “A deformed carrot is not a bad carrot, and by selling them at an affordable price, I am also avoiding food losses.”
Komu’s vegetable stall is a link in a chain of businesses in Kenya that are reinventing the way food is produced and sold, to take advantage of more climate-friendly and equitable ways of bringing food to urban areas. People here are coming up with ways to reduce food waste, or use it to create new products and opportunities for young people.
It’s part of what’s called an Urban Food Hive, which in Kenya is centered around Nairobi, an area with a rapidly growing population. Urban sprawl is invading arable farming zones, and an inefficient market is leading to wasted harvests, and food waste clogging landfills and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. In Nairobi, Oxfam and partners are supporting women- and youth-led green businesses that grow, transport, process, and sell food in ways that reduce waste and create opportunities.
In the Korogocho Market, a group of young people are making soap from discarded potatoes, and oil from overripe (but not quite yet rotten) pressed avocadoes – a low cholesterol alternative for cooking. By partly burning discarded banana leaves to create a charcoal, and combining them with avocado waste as a binder and compressing, they create a low-smoke briquette for fuel people can use for cooking at home and in schools. Others gather different forms of food waste from the market, mainly fruits and vegetables, and use different techniques such as combining with worms to produce very rich organic compost. They then sell this to the farmers that supply the market.
While learning to make these products, youth are also being trained by Oxfam’s partners in collaboration with the Nairobi County Government authorities in business planning and other entrepreneurial skills. They are also learning how to make their needs clear in decision-making spaces where policies are developed – essential skills for advocating for more and better government support for their business and environmental goals.
The Urban Food Hive initiative, which Oxfam has undertaken with Second Muse, is now also established in Nigeria, Uganda, the Philippines, and Colombia. Its goal is to help improve access to affordable, nutritious food in urban areas, create opportunities for new businesses run by women and young people, and generally improve food security for the most impoverished people in urban areas. The Urban Food Hive initiative is now reaching thousands of people in these five countries.
There’s a river near Korogocho that has been clogged with garbage. Martin Komu says he is happy to eliminate wasted vegetables that might otherwise end up there. “When I take something that was supposed to go in the river or a dump site, and I use it to make these products or compost, it’s very fulfilling.”