For those of us that grew up in the 1980s, the word “famine” is almost synonymous with Ethiopia. In 1984 to 1985, images of crowded feeding centers and emaciated babies from Ethiopia’s Tigray province were burned into the public memory.
Amy Spindler, winner of ONE’s World Food Day blog post contest, brings her story pitch to life in this piece on food security, empowerment and activism.
Amy checks out a greenhouse, a simple technology that allows for a longer growing season in the high mountains of Tajikistan.
It’s a moment that’s stuck with me. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan, when I first saw girls hauling metal canisters through the village, I assumed that they contained milk. How naive. I quickly learned that they contained river water for cooking, drinking and bathing. Of course milk was available, but only affordable in small glass jars. As I’ve gone on to work in food security in Tajikistan, that moment humbles me again and again. There’s so much to learn.
Bernadette with some of the fruits of her labor. Photo credit: One Acre Fund.
In Tyazo, located in Nyamasheke District, Rwanda, Bernadette is one of many smallholder women farmers receiving agricultural assistance through One Acre Fund (OAF). By participating, she received a “market bundle” of seed and fertilizer on credit, as well as technical knowledge on improved methods of planting, harvesting, storing and selling her crops.
Action: 18. Time: 20 minutes. Level of difficulty: Difficult. For the results of last week’s action, click here.
For this week’s ONE Act, we’d like for you to take this global hunger quiz. It’s a little harder than the famine quiz we gave you a few weeks ago, and you won’t find the answers as easily on ONE’s website.
These questions were taken from a quiz from our Agriculture Griot program, a six-week online course that trains advocates to become global hunger experts. Although some of these questions may be tricky, we’re confident that you’ll learn a lot about the subject as you take the test.
As you can probably tell, we celebrate a lot of “days” here at ONE — World Food Day, World Polio Day, etc. But, as a foodie and farm groupie, today is one that is especially near and dear to my heart. It’s the first annual National Food Day, a nationwide celebration of healthy, affordable and sustainably grown food, and a grassroots mobilization toward improved food policies across the nation.
As part of our new agriculture campaign, we’ve been working with leaders of the local food movement to raise awareness for our thriving local food scene here in the US, as well as to shine a spotlight on the need to help small-scale farmers in Africa working to feed their communities while living on less than $1.25 a day with few supplies or access to markets.
Thanks to the comprehensive property rights that we enjoy in the US today, our homes and livelihoods are protected from being seized by large corporations.
Unfortunately, throughout much of Africa, this threat is a daily reality. Although laws designed to protect individuals’ and communities’ land rights exist, governments are often too weak to properly enforce them, resulting in overrule by foreign investors and large companies looking to buy out farming areas with very little consideration for those who already inhabit them.
Though these land grabs are common in a number of countries, the attempt by US agriculture giant Agrisol Energy to acquire 800,000 acres of land in Tanzania is perhaps one of the most disturbing recent examples of the practice. Currently under negotiation by the corporation’s co-founder Bruce Rastetter and representatives of the Tanzanian national government, the proposed project would result in the devastating loss of 162,000 homes that have seen progressive agricultural growth for the past 40 years.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
