Being food poor

We are at day 12 of the 30 day blog challenge and if you missed day 11 you can catch up here .

Today’s challenge is about revisiting some old posts and bringing them into one post.

This is something I have done before in a couple of posts. I am not sure what methods other folk use but I prefer to bring together posts I have written on a given  subject matter. My most recent such was a collection of posts I wrote about International Women’s day  and gender equality

For this post, I have brought together the issue of  FOOD AVAILABILITY as it affects Africans in Africa.  Food availability and poverty are interlinked and in fact the poor are the most likely to go poor and therefore find themselves needing and or being given Food Aid.

Being Food Poor- I am not even  sure if this is correct terminology as in  the sense of say folk being described as being as  “cash poor but asset rich” or “time poor” but the posts I bring together here cover this very idea

matoke

Matoke

My first post on this matter is way back in 2008-  Food distribution in Uganda – in this post I covered to issues Food Aid to a school at the source of the Nile- at time of visiting the school had just been removed from the World Food Promgram and the school governors were not very happy.

A few days later I came across peas for sale in a Kampala market. These peas had been donated by the Canadian government to the people of Rwanda who had been deemed as in need of food Aid. The other point I cover is Food distribution. This plays out very well in Uganda, in some parts food is going to waste whilst in others parts folk are starving to death.

The story of the Canadian peas got even more interesting and in this post AN INCREDIBLE JOURNEY BY CANADIAN PEAS – the peas donated to Rwanda s food Aid made their way to a market stall in Uganda and finally to a Ugandan shop in Isleworth Middlesex  England.

I recently revisited the issue of  Food distribution in Uganda amidst reports of food shortages in North East Uganda and the big experiment by the WORLD FOOD PROGRAM

The issue of being food poor is one I will revisit from time to time because it has taken on an interesting twist. Europe fetching food from Africa- Yes Really.

With Europe running out of space to grow food for her growing population there is a new scramble for Africa called Africa Land grab. African land is being taken up by commercial farmers from Europe to grow food not for the Food poor of Africa but for Europeans, Arabs and Asians.

As if grabbing land from the food poor is not enough African waters have also been invaded. In this post SHOULD EUROPE BE TAKING FISH FROM SENEGAL I  discuss the tough choices that we have to make in order to ensure that we do not threaten the food and water security of the Food Poor.

As if that all that was not bad enough some staples  the food poor depend such as bananas have been hit by disease

So as you can see folk I am not quite done with this topic. I would appreciate your point of view on this issu of being food poor

 

 

Enhanced by Zemanta
Share

Food Shortages in Uganda?

Food shortages have made headlines in the news recently. The debates appears to be split into 2 schools of thought.

  1. Says that with need to grow more food as the population grows it is likely that there will not be enough for us all and that African countries and India are especially affected
  2. the other that we already produce enough food to feed double the current population we just need to get it to where it is needed! In addition that those pushing for more food are simply interested in promoting the GM agenda

I am not sure who is right or wrong here  but I found myself agreeing with the second opinion in relation  to yesterday’s headline on  Uganda specifically North eastern Uganda

I have to stress at this point that the only aspect of point I agree with in relation to Uganda at least is that there is plenty of food, however it does not get to where where it is needed. I don’t doubt that people in Karamoja are starving either. But I wonder why this is? Travelling through other parts of Uganda especially,  to the West, SW and centre of the country one notices the abundance of food.A quick visit to local food markets around Kampala – the capital of Uganda and you will note how much food is going to waste

The question is where is it all going wrong? Why isn’t all this food getting through to North Eastern Uganda? The region has it’s own Minister who happens to be the President wife, so I can’t imagine that it is due to lack of political will but then again I could be wrong.

What about the role of the World Food Programme? Are they doing the best they can do or simply pushing the FOOD AID AGENDA?

We debated their involvement in Zimbabwe and Kenya over at Africa on The  Blog.

Another interesting point of view that was put forward by the think tank CHATHAM HOUSE was that we need to work out how to secure the food we have- in the west food is wasted between the fridge and the plate whilst in developing nations food is wasted between the fields and the plate. In developing nations there is an urgent need to come with ways to preserve food once it leaves the fields/farms.  This is very true and it could be the answer to food problems.

What do you think? Do you agree with either opinion?

Share

Will Africa be the source of world food in years to come?

Yeah right! I can hear some say and you will probably be right after all we have all seen the headlines of starving children in Africa. Please bear with me whilst I explain.

The world is changing in ways we never imagined nor expected, folk in the developed world are living longer they are more single households, we use more energy and our eating habits have changed etc.

A consequence of this is that we are having to further for some of these resources including food and it would appear that Africa is seen as rich pickings for what The Guardian journalist called the AFRICA LAND GRAB

This reminds me of the O’level history lessons “The scramble and partition of Africa”, that saw Africa dived up and shared up amongst European nations only this time round there is more at stake as far as I can see any way.

If we agree generally, based on the what we see on television that some African countries can’t afford to feed themselves is it right that African politicians should be selling off land to the developed world for their food production? What is our role in all this? What about that of our politicians

And what continues to perplex me is the fact that none of this food actually ends up on the African market and some of those African countries that are short of food like Kenya have to rely on food Aid from the developed nations. Does this make sense at all?

An interesting story that will be worth keeping an eye on is developing on the coast of Ghana. This sees Tullow Oil “fighting2 it out with local fishermen who believe that Tullow Oil is ruining their livelihoods. But not everyone agrees with the fishermen’s point of view and in the words of one local man man “the fish only benefits the fishermen whilst the oil will bring revenue for the rest of the country” (source BBC Radio 4)

Who is right or wrong depends on your point of view!

But with European waters depleted of fish and those in the industry heading out to African waters for fish, how will this pan out?

Have you got a view on any of this? Looking forward to hearing it

Share