Let Haitians lead the effort, says Bread for the World analyst

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/22/1836044/let-haitians-lead-the-effort.html

Let Haitians lead the effort

BY DIANA AUBOURG MILLNER
www.bread.org

Haiti is attracting renewed international attention as it prepares to elect its next leader, thanks in part to the potential candidacy (ultimately ruled invalid) of Haitian-born musician and producer Wyclef Jean.

Also at the heart of the scrutiny are two important questions that the upcoming election raises: How do we keep reconstruction moving, and what type of leadership is required in Haiti to do so? The remaining candidates must consider these questions as they also prepare to inherit all of the problems that Haiti has faced for many years.

Even before the January 2010 earthquake, Haiti was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80 percent of the population living on less than $2 a day and the highest malnutrition rate in the region.

Despite these obstacles, this time of transition provides an opportunity to ensure that development assistance for Haiti is delivered far more effectively than before. Enter the United States and the international community. Since the January earthquake, the United States and other nations have shown unprecedented levels of goodwill, focus, and commitment.

Our commitment to Haiti must also be matched with consistent action, keeping the following goals in mind:

• Recovery must be led by Haitians. The Haitian government must reclaim its role and lead rebuilding efforts in Haiti. While we cannot discount the critical role of nongovernmental organizations in Haiti relief and recovery, the government of Haiti must increasingly be visible in the lives of its citizens. Undoubtedly the temptation has been to work around the beleaguered Haitian government to get results, but donors and aid groups must make it a priority to include Haitians -- and their government -- in accomplishing their tasks.

• Efforts should build -- rather than undermine -- the capacity of the Haitian government. Similarly, one of the most valuable ways we can support Haiti is by coordinating our relief efforts with the Haitian government so as to strengthen it and ensure future self-sufficiency. Through Feed the Future, the Obama administration's new global food-security initiative, the United States is making a concerted effort to work with the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture to revive Haiti's agriculture sector. We must do more of this.

• Aid must be accountable, transparent, predictable, and better coordinated. Haiti has suffered one of the largest urban disasters of modern times. People all over the world have responded to Haiti's needs by contributing billions of dollars to relief efforts. However, only a small percentage of the aid that has been pledged has been disbursed. To continue to support Haitians in rebuilding, we must respond quickly and effectively with resources to meet the needs -- not allow stalled legislative processes or stagnant bureaucratic structures to cloud our resolve.

• Haitian civil society, including members of the diaspora, must have a seat at the table. No one can rebuild Haiti more effectively than Haitians, with their concrete and intimate understanding of their own needs. The United States and the international community can provide resources, but Haitian civil society must have a seat at the table. Failing to engage the diaspora, which offers an enormous flow of financial support and a growing pool of professionals, would undermine the rebuilding efforts.

Haiti will need support and encouragement to continue rebuilding long after the elections are over and the international media stop reporting on the country's challenges. If we are serious about long-term recovery, we should work to harness the considerable energy around Haiti today to make aid more effective in building a better future for Haitians.

Diana Aubourg Millner, a Haitian-American, is a senior policy analyst with Bread for the World Institute.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/22/1836044/let-haitians-lead-the-effort.html#ixzz12szk62OE

hunger, immigration, and food (in)security

Illegal immigrants are critical to harvesting the country’s fruit and vegetables, working in meat-processing plants, and supporting the dairy industry. But that doesn’t prevent them from suffering some of the nation’s highest hunger and poverty rates.

Although national statistics are scarce, regional studies show that ffood insecurity surpasses 50 percent in some rural immigrant communities (compared to the U.S. national rate of 16 percent). A 2006 study in North Carolina found that 73 percent of the immigrant Latinos surveyed said they “worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more.”

Illegal immigrants and their children also suffer from high rates of poverty. More than one in five (21 percent) of all illegal immigrants live in poverty, and one-third of the children of illegal immigrants—most of whom are citizens—are impoverished.

http://www.bread.org/what-we-do/resources/newsletter/september-2010/hunger-and-immigrants.html

http://www.bread.org/institute/research/immigration/

Haitian Sustainability

What a good idea - a way to contribute to long term development in Haiti, and a positive way to counter the actions of Monsanto, which by some reports is using the current crisis to create a market for its GM seeds in Haiti.

http://seedsforhaiti.org/programs/seedbank/

What, exactly, do they think Haitians are going to use to pay Monsanto's prices?

But by contributing to get locally appropriate open pollinated corn and bean seeds to Haitian farmers, you improve local food security this season, and support long term development of food sovereignty in Haiti.

I just wish this web site had more links that actually worked and more information. And I wonder why, if the Presbyterian Church is a partner in this effort, Episcopal Relief and Development is not?

Food Security

State by state food insecurity

Why is it so high in states with moderate climates and long growing seasons?

Statistics on Hunger in the US

for 2008 were published last week.

In 2007 88.9% of households in the US were food secure - that is, they didn't worry that they were running out of food before they could afford to buy more, eat unbalanced meals because of a lack of food and the money to buy more, or skip meals because of a lack of food.

In 2008 it was 85.4% of households which could claim food security, with increasing food insecurity in middle income households.

Food insecurity among households with children is higher that the general numbers, particularly for single parent households. It was before the bottom fell out, and it probably will be if and when there is a recovery.

UK update

Seems to me the Brits are doing a better job of addressing food issues systemically - and getting the word out about it - than we are. And of course, they don't spend time proposing GM solutions to the looming global food crisis, but look at lower tech solutions to increasing productivity with less fossil fuel dependency and less water.

Here's a place to start with the latest from the BBC - with good links to earlier related items.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8189549.stm

G8 shifts focus from food aid to farming (FT.com)

G8 shifts focus from food aid to farming

By Javier Blas in London

Published: July 6 2009 00:08


The G8 countries will this week announce a “food security initiative”, committing more than $12bn for agricultural development over the next three years, in a move that signals a further shift from food aid to long-term investments in farming in the developing world.

The US and Japan will provide the bulk of the funding, with $3bn-$4bn each, with the rest coming from Europe and Canada, according to United Nations officials and Group of Eight diplomats briefed on the “L’Aquila Food Security Initiative”. Officials said it would more than triple spending. ...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/60720902-6992-11de-bc9f-00144feabdc0.html

%^)

Taro Aso: The world must learn to live and farm sustainably (FT.com)

The world must learn to live and farm sustainably

By Taro Aso (Japan’s prime minister)

Published: July 5 2009 20:08

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d6e93cf6-6995-11de-bc9f-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Food security will be the highlight of the discussion when the heads of 27 countries and 11 organisations meet on Friday at the Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila. I expect substantial progress to be made, particularly on aid to countries affected by the food crisis. I will also make a new proposal to promote responsible foreign investment in agriculture, in the face of so-called “land grabs” – the growing trend for large-scale investment in farmland across the developing world.

A year has passed since this phenomenon first gained attention, and new deals continue to hit the headlines. The United Nations special rapporteur called for a set of principles, and the African Union discussed the issue at its summit last week. What is needed now is for concerned parties to frame a co-ordinated global response.

Japan, as the world’s largest net food importer and a major donor in agricultural development, believes it has a role to play.

...


We believe non-binding principles would promote responsible investment and sustainable farmland management. They should include, among other things:

● International agricultural investments, particularly sovereign interventions, must be transparent and accountable. Investors should ensure that key stakeholders, including local communities, are properly informed. Agreements should be disclosed.

● Investors must respect the rights of local people affected by investments, in particular land rights. They should also ensure the benefits are shared with local communities in the form of employment, infrastructure, skills and technology transfer.

● Investment projects need to be integrated into recipient countries’ development strategies and environmental policies.

● Investors must take into account the food supply and demand situation in recipient countries. Foreign investment must not aggravate local food insecurity.

● Deals for land and products should adequately reflect market values. Trade arrangements must adhere to World Trade Organisation rules.

Japan will work with key partners to develop a global platform to agree on principles and compile good practices. We call on interested parties to meet in September. We need a grand coalition with a common vision, for our interests are all entwined.

%^)

food security, global stability ... this just in from Cison di Valmarino

Financial Times (ft.com) Monday April 20 2009

US urges food output boost to avert unrest

By Javier Blas in Cison di Valmarino, Italy

The US agriculture secretary has warned that unless countries take immediate steps to sharply boost agricultural productivity and food output and reduce hunger, the world risks fresh social instability. ...

"This is not just about food security, this is about national security, it is about environmental security," he said on the sidelines of the first meeting of the Group of Eight ministers of agriculture. ...

Last year's spike in food prices caused riots in about 30 countries, from Haiti to Bangladesh. Leading agricultural commodity exporters, including India and Argentina, imposed bans on overseas sales of food products. "I can figure out there are only three things that could happen if people do not have food: people could riot, that they have done; people migrate to places where there is food, which creates additional challenges; or people die," said Mr Vilsack.


This article can be found at:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4fe6b1fe-2d43-11de-8710-00144feabdc0,_i_email=y.html

Precedents for presidents

I might have to change the name of this blog to the Michael Pollan report...

He reprised and extended his NY Times article of last week on Fresh Air yesterday. If you prefer podcasts to reading on-line, you can download it here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=10-20-2008&view=storyview

Much of the interview is scripted from the article, but there are additional details. One factoid I liked especially was that during WWII Victory Gardens supplied 40% of our produce needs in this country. Wow! I knew it was good, but not that good. Pollan offered this while mentioning Eleanor Roosevelt's victory garden as a precedent for the next president tearing up the south lawn of the White House and getting planting. As he pointed out, this leading by example would be far easier to implement than changes requiring legislation.

Could we feed ourselves?

I've been searching for and working over some statistics with the question in mind: could we feed ourselves here in Sonoma County if we had to. This is part of some work with our ad hoc Food Systems Group, trying to get an accurate picture of where we are in resiliency, sustainability, worker justice, availability of nutritious foods - all those parameters of the food system.

It's not a pretty picture. In a few words - we might have plenty of dairy products and chicken and wine - but we'd suffer for grains and vegetables. And frankly, I'm not sure about where the feed for the chickens comes from. We have quite a bit of range land, and grow some feed grains, etc. - but I am not sure it is enough to support the poultry and grazing animals we have.

The black box, as far as getting a picture goes, is what happens in back yards and community gardens - and what might happen.

I suspect that we have have a fair amount of fruit in residential backyards: apples and lemons probably lead the pack, some pears and other citrus, persimmons and figs. This is the home of the Santa Rosa plum, and some California Italians still grow the plums that are used for prunes - though they have dropped off the radar as a cash crop. I'm also aware of kumquats and quinces - but those may be a bit fringy. And there are backyard berries - cultivated of various sorts - as well as the himalayan wild (invasive) blackberries everywhere.

If my trip to Imwalle's on Monday was any indication, more people are doing backyard gardening. There were a number of folks puzzling over the bedding plants. How many tomatoes and summer squash plants do I need?

And I'm still spotting vacant lots that could be turned into gardens, and wondering why there is no community garden as part of the plan for the vast sports fields being developed in northwest Santa Rosa, and wondering why there are so many lawns.

Today's NY Times contains an article on urban farming, on the turning of small plots into vegetable gardens, and of people supplementing their income and improving neighborhood access to fresh produce by taking back the vacant lots.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/dining/07urban.html?ex=1367899200&en=4081d4d0ad4b3af5&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

In fact, this article answered one of my questions. I was wondering why we are growing so many grapes here, when apparently small scale organic vegetable farming is more lucrative. In 2006 we grew about the same acreage of Sangiovese grapes and vegetables - just under 300 acres - but the market value of the vegetables was three times the value of the grapes! I couldn't believe this - until I read that a half-acre farm in Philadelphia "generated $67,000 from high-value crops like lettuces, carrots and radishes." Radishes?

Mapping Hunger

I have some found time today, so have been plowing through all my "read later" bookmarks. The New York City Coalition Against Hunger site is pretty impressive. The interactive map is fun to play with. You can almost read it backward - you know the areas with more small food stores, for example, are the lower income ones - but it's good that someone has demonstrated this.

http://www.nyccah.org/node/92

There are other features on the site, too - like downloadable neighborhood handbooks with information about eligibility for food stamps, where all the soup kitchens and food pantries (but not, I note, community gardens) are located, etc.

I don't think there is anything like this concerted effort in my city, but I think the Food Access group with whom I met on Tuesday does have it as a goal. (More about that later.)

If you cruise around the NYCCAH site you will also find news of research on hunger. Why are there more hungry US residents than Canadians at the same income level? One paper summarized here suggests that its partly due to the cost of medical care in the US. Makes sense - even when some basic care is offered to low income families it is for the children only, and doesn't cover those trips to ER. And I wonder what the dynamics are for those of us who are too old to get jobs with benefits, but too young for medicare (and senior feeding programs)? I suspect that there are people my age who are eating a less than wholesome diet because of their medical bills. What's wrong with this picture?

Biofuels and Food Security

I've been reading the UN report Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers and have been overwhelmed by the complexities of the issues.

Since the report is 60 pages and pretty dense, I'm going to focus on the implications for food security in these reflections.

The basic challenge is how to make the these three things - food, feed, and fuel - work together. (The report doesn't list fiber, as it might, or we'd be talking about the four Fs of crops.)

One thing I learned: as development increases, there is an increased demand for dairy and meat, which increases the need for animal feed production, thus causing even greater competition among the 3 Fs when we look at the global picture. Already 30% of the world grain supply is used to feed livestock.

Another framework to think about: food security involves four major dimensions: availability of enough food, access, particularly for low income people, stability of the food supply over time, and utilization, meaning people's ability to use the nutrients in the available food.

If land, water and other resources are used to produce biofuels rather than food, availability could diminish.

If the use of food crops for biofuels (corn) increases, commodity prices will increase, making these crops less accessible to the poor. And the poor depend on cereals and the like for most of their calories.

But it's also true that growing biofuel feedstocks could improve the income of rural folks and thus contribute to better food access. This may come into play more with second generation biofuels (not ethanol).

Stability is an interesting one. Apparently, and this makes sense to me as I thought about it, prices for biofuels move with petroleum prices. So volatility in biofuel prices could be one more variable affecting the agriculture sector, even when the agriculture in question is not dependent on inputs from fossil fuels. And of course, if you have less money and no wealth, as the poor do, you have a lot harder time adjusting to rapid shifts in prices.

Utilization is dependent on other health factors, particularly water supplies. Where biofuel feedstock production competes for water, health of people in those areas could be threatened.

BUT - if biofuels replace more expensive and more polluting fuels locally, cooking could be more efficient, and food utilization greater.

All this is just a taste of the no-simple-answers content of this paper.

Factoid - no - metafactoid: Even though the percentage of hungry people in the world has declined, the number has stayed the same. More people around the world die of hunger than of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

What are the new philanthropists doing about global hunger?

It appears that one key piece of biofuel development will involve how quickly we can move to the second generation of biofuels - away from the liquid biofuels being produced in quantity today.

There are even some possibilities of positive synergy, for example, if nitrogen fixing legumes used for biofuels production were to be rotated with food crops - enriching the soil over time. On the other hand, there could be a push to plow up rangelands and the like , to plant switchgrass and other proposed crops, with the attendant environmental damage. And, of course, those rangelands can feed livestock without additional feed, so the pressure on raising feed for meat would be greater.

Clearly a lot of analysis needs to happen to model and undertand the effects of biofuel production on food security. Will policy makers - in governments and global corporations - take the time to do this? know how to do this? care enough about the poor to do this? There is also a need to come up not with one plan or solution, but with a range of schemes that will suit different contexts, cultures, and environments.

Here's a loaded sentence from the report:

"Agricultural research aimed at improving productivity, conserving water, and building soil fertility can lessen the tension between food, feed, and fuel production by increasing overall agricultural output in a sustainable manner."

But will the research (increased funding for biofuel research is proposed for the Farm Bill) on biofuels proceed with sustainability as the highest value? or growth and profit?

And will the research funding be directed at small scale local possibilities - or only integrated agribusiness?

Silly footnote: When I was making some notes on "biofuels" in wordperfect, the spell check suggested "beefaloes" as the proper spelling. Let's use that rangeland for ruminants!

ancient food security

My book group is reading The Last Week by Crossan and Borg. I thought this was going to take me away from the science, environment and food related reading I'd rather be doing, but it brought me right back.

Reading the background on the temple-centered economic system in Jesus' place and time, I was reminded how much of that depended on agriculture. Consolidation of lands in the hands of a few because of debt is not a new thing. Shifting production from diversified basic agriculture to luxury cash crops is not a new thing. Subsistence then would have been barley or other grains, lentils or other legumes and vegetables, while the luxury crops would have been grapes, figs, olives, dates and the like. (Funny - as land prices go up here in Sonoma County its more and more grapes, and more olives.) Because large land holders tried to get away with as little labor as possible, many peasants, now landless, were forced to seek menial work in the cities, beg, or take up a life of crime, and buy their food.

Food security expressed in the language of the prophets:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.... Micah 4:3b-4

What's in a phrase?

Last evening I watched the web cast of a forum on the Farm Bill from UC Berkeley. It was definitely too Berkeley in places. It's an attitude of the privileged left that is every bit as anti-intellectual as the Bush right. Some of the statements some of the panelists made were self-congratulatory hyperbole, with a little food mythology thrown in.

On the other hand, it was good to see a leader among farm workers included.

One remark made by the last speaker was to the point. He mentioned that no one had brought up the matter of food security.

Food security seems to mean something different to each player or group of players in our food system.

To those who work with the poor in our communities, food security means knowing where your next meal is coming from, or knowing that if there is no food in the house, you have the means of getting some.

To the locavore movement, food security means that as oil is depleted and energy costs spiral upward, communities will be able to meet their basic food needs without imports.

Someone commented on my report of the ratio of acres in chardonnay to acres in vegetables in Sonoma County. Mono-cropping is not just an issue on the prairies, or in the global south. Land prices here where I live have pushed a single crop - grapes - to the point of challenging the food security of this rich county with a benign climate.

To some, food security means that the food they purchase, prepare and eat will not poison them. Whether it's spinach from Salinas or industrial cat food, we've seen enough to know that bigger isn't necessarily better in food safety.

At the national level, food security may mean simply can the United States feed itself? or are we relying too much on imported food? If terrorists disabled our ports how would we fare? We know some cities would be hungry in short order if our transportation systems were disabled. Las Vegas comes to mind. There are, of course, different solutions for these scenarios depending on where one is on the political spectrum.

And to ADM and Monsanto "food security" means something else. Like promoting GMOs among the global poor. It's a classic case of perverting language.