Nine more TEDx talks on food security

Last year we brought you six of our favourite TEDx talks on food security and since then we’ve discovered a whole lot more. Here are nine more interesting talks we think you might like.

Josette Sheeran, former head of the UN’s World Food Program, talks about why, in a world with enough food for everyone, people still go hungry, still die of starvation, still use food as a weapon of war. Her vision: “Food is one issue that cannot be solved person by person. We have to stand together.” Watch the video.

Mark Bittman, New York Times food writer, weighs in on what’s wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it’s putting the entire planet at risk. Watch the video.

Brian Halweil, publisher of Edible Manhattan, was on track to become a doctor until he realized that repairing the global food system could help to conserve people’s health and wellbeing more. Halweil believes that the local food movement is a truly powerful medicine. Watch the video.

La Donna Redman, Senior Program Associate in Food and Justice at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and long-time food activist, examines how the root causes of violence and public health concerns experienced by her community are strongly connected to the local food system, and are best addressed by making changes in that system. Watch the video.

Birke Baehr, at the time just 11-years old, presents his take on a major source of our food — far-away and less-than-picturesque industrial farms. Keeping farms out of sight promotes a rosy, unreal picture of big-box agriculture, he argues, as he outlines the case to green and localize food production. Watch the video.

Mark Post, a specialist in tissue engineering at Maastricht University in The Netherlands introduces Cultured Beef to the world and explains the process behind its growth and the future he envisions for in-vitro meat. Watch the video.

Global Multidimensional Poverty Index

Launched today, the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2014 (MPI) is designed to be a comprehensive measure of acute individual poverty across over 100 developing countries. Developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), since 2010 it has been published in the UNDP’s flagship Human Development Report. The MPI is said to be complementary to traditional income-based measures of poverty, capturing scarcities people face in terms of education, health and living standards.

The complete set of indicators includes nutrition, child mortality, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, water, electricity, floor and assets. If an individual is deficient in a third or more of these (weighted) indicators then they are defined as poor. The severity of poverty being a measure of the number of indicators for which they are experiencing deprivation. Income is not included as an indicator due to data deficiencies. The datasets that inform the MPI include the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), the Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS), and the World Health Survey (WHS).

The MPI can be used to compare between countries and within countries by ethnic group, location, and other key household and community characteristics. Thus the MPI is a tool for identifying the most vulnerable people, for understanding the drivers of poverty and to aid policy makers target resources and design effective poverty eradication policies. Case studies reveal the translation of measures of poverty into practical action, for example, Mexico’s poverty targeting programme and Colombia’s poverty reduction strategy are informed by nationally adapted MPIs.

ODI research: Climate change mitigation is development

In 2015 the international community will come together to discuss action that needs to be taken to address climate change and global development. The Overseas Development Institute has undertaken research on the impacts climate change will likely have on development efforts and the news is not good.

 
The progress the world has made in reducing poverty and hunger, improving access to water and health is at risk of being reversed. Between 1990 and 2010 the number of people in poverty declined by 700 million but many face the risk of falling back into poverty under conditions of climate change. As sea levels rise, temperatures increase and more frequent extreme events occur crops yields will decline and whole areas important for agriculture, many heavily populated, such as deltas in Bangladesh, will be lost. In Africa, crop yields are projected to be reduced by some 90% by 2080 and wheat production will disappear altogether. These changes to agricultural productivity are estimated to increase food prices, increase hunger (by an estimated 250 million people) and exacerbate poverty. Meeting the needs of a growing global population is an urgent challenge made significantly harder by these projected productivity declines. A 55% increase in global crop production would be required to meet increasing global population demand by 2030. By 2050 to 2100, an additional 165,000 to 250,000 children could die each year compared to a world without climate change.

 
Access to drinking water, which has been improved for some 2.1 billion people in the world in the last 20 years, will become more of a challenge. In Africa 350 million to 600 million people will be exposed to water stress by 2050. An extra 2.5 billion people will be at risk of dengue fever and an extra 40 to 60 million people in Africa alone will be at risk of malaria under climate change. Migration will also increase and by 2100, it’s estimated that climate change will cause annual economic of losses of between 5 and 20% of global GDP.

 

Much hope for the future rests on agreements met by the international community at the next Conference of the Parties in Peru of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last Friday, and in the Post-2015 development agenda. Mitigation is urgently needed if temperatures are kept below a 2C threshold, we are currently on a trajectory that will see far higher temperature increases, as too is adaptation, since we are committed to some degree of impacts of climate change.

 

A recent report explored options for how climate change could be included in the post-2015 agenda, in particular through mainstreaming climate change amongst all development goals or having a standalone climate change goal. How climate change will be addressed is important. That it will be addressed is vital, to the health, wealth, welfare and survival of people around the world.

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

African farming: Cassava now the centre of attention, Financial Times

Why GMOs matter — especially for the developing world, Grist

Abundance Doesn’t Mean Health, New York Times

Monsanto Is Going Organic in a Quest for the Perfect Veggie, Wired

Global Food Businesses Support Climate Smart Agriculture through New Web App, Cool Farm Tool

Lant Pritchett on why we struggle to think in systems (and look for heroes and villains instead), Duncan Green

African Orphan Crops Consortium announces 100 crops for sequencing, UC Davis

Plant Genetic Resources and Climate Change, CABI

India needs to export excess foodgrains, Money Life

Hidden Hunger: Tackling micronutrient deficiencies

As we wait to hear from global policy leaders meeting at the Nutrition for Growth summit in London tomorrow, we have been thinking about all the different ways that malnutrition can be tackled, in particular agricultural measures than can be taken to boost nutrition.

In a new video story, Alina Paul of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) outlines the extent of micronutrient deficiency (termed hidden hunger) in India. Looking in particular at iron-deficiency, over 70% of children under the age of 3 and half of women in India suffer from anaemia, often linked to iron deficiency. Such deficiencies affect their development and survival.

In order to combat widespread deficiencies in iron, India is taking steps to promote iron-rich crops such as pearl millet, which is high in vitamin B, calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium and zinc as well as being well adapted to drought, poor soils and high temperatures. The Indian government is aiming to reverse the trend of declining millet production by incorporating the crop into school feeding programmes, thereby improving school children’s nutrition and creating market demand. Elsewhere the Home Grown School Feeding programme is making great strides in procuring traditional nutritious food for school children from local farmers.

International donors are also funding research into the development of higher yielding pearl millet with enhanced iron content. HarvestPlus and ICRISAT have partnered with Nirmal Seeds in India to develop and distribute a new conventionally bred, higher iron pearl millet variety. Since May 2012 over 25,000 farmers have bought and planted this seed.

But breeding more nutritious crops is only part of the solution to tackle hidden hunger. Growing a diversity of nutritious crops will help to boost household nutrition. Gordon Conway often references his experiences of Home Gardens in Java (see picture) that grow a wide variety of plants and crops and house different livestock, all of which can be consumed or sold. The M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation has recognised the importance of local people in fighting hidden hunger and has established a programme of Community Hunger Fighters, village volunteers who are trained to address the major causes of malnutrition within their community.

Taking action on malnutrition

A lack of sufficient nutrients in the diet is responsible for around 2.6 million deaths of children per year, the largest killer of children in the world. Those children that do survive will be stunted in their physical growth and mental development, which can not only cause health problems but will detrimentally impact their education and earning potential for the rest of their lives. This is a risk faced by some 165 million children across the world.

This year, high-level decision makers will come together on 8^th June for a Hunger summit, hosted by David Cameron, ahead of this year’s G8, and nutrition will likely be on the agenda. But what action can leaders, donors and people on the ground take to tackle undernutrition?

The Montpellier Panel, in their 2011 briefing paper on Scaling Up Nutrition, outlined the urgent need for children to receive adequate nutrition in the first 1000 days of their lives (from conception to 2 years old). It also detailed the measures the United Nations Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement was taking globally to combat child undernutrition. The SUN movement works with partner countries (35 to date) to integrate nutrition into development plans across sectors such as health, education and agriculture.

In particular the SUN movement supports the following interventions and policies:

Specific Nutrition Interventions

• Support for exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months of age and continued breastfeeding, together with appropriate and nutritious food, up to 2 years of age;
• Fortification of foods;
• Micronutrient supplementation; and
• Treatment of severe malnutrition.

Nutrition-Sensitive Approaches

• Agriculture: Making nutritious food more accessible to everyone, and supporting small farms as a source of income for women and families;
• Clean Water and Sanitation: Improving access to reduce infection and disease;
• Education and Employment: Making sure children have the energy that they need to learn and earn sufficient income as adults;
• Health Care: Improving access to services to ensure that women and children stay healthy;
• Support for Resilience: Establishing a stronger, healthier population and sustained prosperity to better endure emergencies and conflicts; and
• Women’s Empowerment: At the core of all efforts, women are empowered to be leaders in their families and communities, leading the way to a healthier and stronger world.

Recent interest has focused on the contribution of agriculture to ending hunger and malnutrition. Agriculture plays a crucial role in access to nutritious and diverse crops, affordable sources of foods and as an income source but the links between agriculture and nutrition are not always clear. Several recent reports have summarised how agricultural development can have positive outcomes for household nutrition.

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

After 2015 – Toward zero hunger and sustainable food production? SIANI

Science and NGO practice are closer than they appear, SciDev.Net

Sustainable Intensification: Getting the Most from the Land, Agri-Pulse

Scientists Unite to Share Ag Data and Feed the World, USDA

DNA double helix: discovery that led to 60 years of biological revolution, The Guardian

Genebank Standards for Plant Genetic Resources, FAO

Incremental change is not enough – climate, business experts, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions, PNAS

New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition: Part 2, ONE