2 x 2 equals: a) 3, b) 0, c) 4, d) 2

If you can answer these questions, you can help feed the world’s poorest right now. No, really.

Today marks the start of the first-ever World Freerice Week, a campaign to help end global hunger through Freerice, an online game managed by the World Food Programme. For each correct answer on trivia questions like the ones above, you get 10 grains of real-life rice that end up on the plates of hungry people.

This year’s theme, “6 Degrees of Separation,” aims to exponentially increase the amount of donated rice. Play the game in teams of six and compete against Freerice players all across the world. Players have already helped donate 94 million grains of rice since the game first started — so just imagine how much more we could help give if we got more people to play?

Register or join a group now, and play Freerice like a madman until Friday, February 11. Let us know how you do, and good luck!

In a recent Facebook post, we shared a staggering statistic: Consumers in rich countries dispose of 220 million metric tons of food waste every year, equal to the entire food output of sub-Saharan Africa.

Like the farm ministers and policy makers who gathered last week to discuss this atrocity, our readers were infuriated, calling the waste “shameful” and “despicable” (and those were the nicest words).

Some of you wanted to know what’s being done to right this wrong and what you can do to help. Consider supporting and giving a shout-out to these five waste- and hunger-hating campaigns:

- The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Messe Düsseldorf joined forces last May to combat food loss worldwide. Through their brainchild, SAVE FOOD, the two organizations encourage dialog between industry, politics and research professionals on solutions to the waste problem.

- Stateside, Feeding America organizes a network of more than 200 local food banks, with at least one located in every state. You can donate your leftover food, volunteer your time, or make a donation. Find your nearest food bank here.

- Founded more than 20 years ago, the New York-based Rock and Wrap It Up! Program helps to stock food banks nationwide by collecting leftover prepared goodies from big events and delivering them to nearby charitable distributors. Instead of feeding a landfill, untouched meals from sports games, rock concerts, school cafeterias and political rallies help to feed America’s hungry. And if you make a mess while you snack, have no fear: Rock and Wrap It Up! also picks up unused cleaning supplies from hotels and re-purposes them, too.

- Try to limit your own household’s food waste by taking the Environmental Protection Agency’s WasteWise Food Recovery Challenge. Do your part by monitoring your throw away habits, reeling in your heavy hand at the grocery store, and donating your unwanted (but preserved) food stuffs to a local food bank.

- For our collegiate readers, consider pressuring your school to adopt best practices in preventing food waste. This could include loosening the grip on your dining hall trays. After nixing their plastic platters, colleges like Skidmore and Williams saw a reduction of waste in their cafeterias.

Let’s work together to finish the food on our plates — and help others fill theirs. And now it’s your turn: What do you do to curb wastefulness? Tell us in the comments below.

Developing countries consume much less than Western nations, particularly in times of crisis, like with what we’re seeing in Somalia. However, despite a lower caloric intake, these poorer countries’ citizens spend more than 50 percent of their income on food.

Food Service Warehouse (FSW) created the interactive infographic to the left (click to launch) to explore the caloric intake of the 20 richest and poorest countries. They were expecting to see a lower average calorie consumption between the two sets of countries, but were surprised to find that the poorer countries spent more than half of their income on food.

Since FSW works with a lot of different organizations in the food industry, they have access to large sets of data. They utilize this data to explore its customers and industry, and in the process, often make startling discoveries. This food consumption infographic was developed after analyzing data for a competitive eating infographic. While conducting research on calorie consumption in the US, FSW noticed there was a huge difference in calorie intake among US citizens. These differences — attributed to factors like height, gender, activity level and geography — result in an average daily consumption of 3770 calories per person.

This seemed like an astronomical amount, especially in light of the Somalia famine. Thus, FSW turned to the FAO and WorldSalaries.org (which compiled information from local governments) to explore the differences between the 20 poorest and 20 richest countries.

Since there was so much data, FSW decided to make it interactive in order to better visualize the information. The graph below the map defaults on the caloric consumption of each country, highlighting the recommended daily consumption. Notice that all of the richest countries are above that line, while all of the poorest countries are below.

If you click on the tab to the right of the graph title, you’ll see the percentage of income spent on food by country. Note that almost all of the 20 poorest countries spend more than 50 percent of their income on food, compared to less than 25 percent among richer countries.

Each country on the graphs is labeled numerically in order for readers to find it on the map above. When you hover over the country’s numerical marker it shows more detailed information above the caloric intake versus the income spent on food.

There are some very interesting highlights in the data. First, 14 of the 20 lowest-consumption countries are located in Africa, with Angola spending the most at 80 percent. Conversely, the US spends only 6.9 percent of its income on food, the lowest in the world.

So why does all of this matter? First, the obesity epidemic is spreading quickly, particularly in the United States. Obesity leads to heart disease, diabetes, and even death. While it is slowly being addressed, obesity is still the second most common cause of preventable death in the US.

The second reason this information is important is the fact that food shortage is becoming a global food crisis according to some experts. This results in millions of deaths across the world, and billions of dollars spent on aid relief.

- Adria Saracino, Head of Outreach, Distilled Creative

Date-filled sambusas. Photo credit: Sarah Commerford.

This year, ONE decided to put a spin on the holiday festivities by adding an African dish to your classic Thanksgiving spread. Enter Sarah Commerford, amateur cook extraordinaire and author of the blog, What’s Cooking in Your World. Sarah’s blog is a particularly interesting one: she is cooking up a drool-worthy dish from every country in the world! After watching “Julie & Julia” with her family, Sarah accepted a challenge by her son to cook a meal a week from a different country, effectively taking a culinary tour that has, in her own words, “taken over my life, in a somewhat obsessive, but fun way.” More than 19 months and 172 countries into the project, she has cooked up everything from wild boar native to Afghanistan –- her very first dish -– to poutine from my home and native land, Canada.

Taking a short break from her strict cooking schedule -– two new countries a week -– Sarah prepared a signature Somali dessert dish of date-filled sambusas just for ONE to help us raise awareness of the famine and escalating food crisis in the Horn of Africa. Using indigenous ingredients native to Somalia, Sarah chose a recipe that could also easily be recreated here using ingredients available in a grocery store near you. Besides looking absolutely delicious, these sweet treats offer a unique way to discuss the famine with those around the table and spread the word about the importance of supporting programs that are helping farmers feed their communities and prevent famines from happening in the future.

To make sure sambusas are a staple on everyone’s table this year, we’re taking Thanksgiving into the 21st Century with a virtual recipe card! Go ahead and print, email, tweet and blast out this tasty treat to your heart’s content. I’m definitely going to whip up a batch of these puppies on Thursday, I hope you will too.

Download the recipe card here.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

P.S. Stay tuned for more posts like this as we dive deeper into collaborations with the food blogger community. If you have suggestions of deliciously delectable blogs to check out, send ‘em our way!

Our new map offers an updated look on the growing crisis in east Africa, piecing together data on food security, drought conditions, food prices and the thousands of displaced persons in Somalia. However, each section becomes more interactive with links to zoom in for more detailed look in the famine zones, rollovers with data charts and a slider to view the effects of the drought and famine over time. These are more than fancy online gadgets; they are tools that tell the story of how dramatic conditions have led to the current famine and how we expect them to develop over the next three months.

Caused by drought and complicated by conflict, our map provides a story of a growing crisis affecting more than 13 million people in this 700,000 square mile area. So, take a look and share this map with your friends and colleagues, and let us know what you think in our comments below. We hope this story will continue offers to tell the story of why we must stop break the cycle of famine… for good.

In an open letter addressed to African and world leaders, 58 artists are appealing for the implementation of a three-part plan to beat the famine in the Horn of Africa and invest in long-term solutions to avoid future food crises.This prominent group of African voices together command an audience of more than 7 million people on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

This letter is published just before two crucial meetings:  the G20 finance ministers meeting in Washington DC this Friday, and a Ministerial Mini-Summit on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York this Saturday. ONE is campaigning to ensure that top of the agenda at both of these meetings are two key issues: ending the current famine and  avoiding future famines .

ONE’s members support these efforts, too. Nearly 220,000 supporters have signed a petition calling on leaders to urgently provide the full funding that the UN has identified as needed for the Horn of Africa crisis, and to keep their promises to deliver the long-term solutions which could prevent crises like this from happening again.

This is just the beginning of relentless campaigning on hunger and famine, and shining a spotlight on the opportunities of agriculture development in Africa, which ONE will be pushing throughout the next few months. Specifically, over the coming days and weeks, ONE will be advocating for three key promises from African and world leaders:

1. Fill the remaining financing gap for emergency assistance to help people in the Horn of Africa
2. Invest in longer-term agriculture and food security to stop the cycle of extreme hunger
3. Encourage a prominent and formal role for civil society in the peace-seeking process to stop the cycle of instability in the region

This will be tough given the state of finances of many economies. But what could be more important than preventing future  famines and ending hunger and its causes?

That’s why we at ONE are working with advocacy partners on a charter to end extreme hunger. This charter, along with the African artist letter, and ONE’s petition, will be presented to the gathering of leaders coordinated by the UN on Saturday.

80% of Africans depend on subsistence agriculture to ensure their families have something to eat. Investing in agricultural productivity in Africa gives Africans a real chance to lift themselves out of poverty. This is a cause worth fighting for!

The crisis in the Horn of Africa presents a major logistical challenge for the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and other international humanitarian organizations responding to the crisis. But moving emergency food to destinations in Somalia is particularly challenging. It requires procuring and moving large amounts of food from all corners of the globe through treacherous waters and vulnerable ports, roads and bridges, to incredibly hard-to-reach places in one of the most dangerous locations on earth.

Boxes of food aid from USAID. Photo credit: Josh Lozman/ONE

Food aid delivered by the WFP comes from large- and small-scale agricultural producers in Africa, North America, Latin America, Europe, Oceana and Asia (check out this map in the graphic).

The WFP is the United Nations’ organization designated by the international community to provide humanitarian food aid. Worldwide, WFP feeds 90 million people in more than 70 countries annually. According to WFP, “At any given time, [it] has 30 ships at sea, 70 aircrafts in the sky and 5,000 trucks on the ground, moving food and other assistance to where it is needed most.” Large storage facilities within proximity of the famine areas, like Djibouti, Kenya and South Africa, allow WFP to pre-position and stockpile food for a prompt response to the Somalia emergency.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia is an additional obstacle to food delivery for the famine. Humanitarian aid vessels are not exempt from the threat piracy poses to the global shipping industry traversing the coastline waters of Somalia. Food aid traveling from Djibouti to Mogadishu must traverse the narrow straits of the Gulf of Aiden and the long Indian Ocean coastline to the Somali harbors in Mogadishu and Bossasso.

The European Union Naval Force (EU NavFor) Atalanta Mission, in accordance with a UN Security Council mandate, is charged to protect shipments to Somalia from the WFP and the UN-backed peacekeepers, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM). The EU NavFor consists of available contingents from 29 countries. Most recently, a German Navy frigate joined EU NavFor for a three-month deployment to escort WFP and AMISOM vessels through the treacherous Somali waters. Earlier this summer, a Chinese warship escorted a WFP vessel through the Gulf of Aiden.

Once the food arrives at the Mogadishu and Bossasso seaports, it is up to AMISOM to protect the food as it is unloaded and stored for distribution. AMISOM also provides security for roads and bridges rehabilitated for key distribution corridors that allow humanitarian organizations to reach people in need.

Twenty years of internal warfare has left Somalia with little passable infrastructure and administrative capacity to manage food distribution. A country the size of Texas, Somalia has 13,732 miles of road of which approximately 1,621 miles are paved. Texas has 152,054 miles of road.

AMISOM forces do not operate in the famine areas controlled by Al Shabaab, the armed insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda. AMISOM’s sphere of control is limited to the greater Mogadishu area. Somalis living in South Central Somalia are receiving minimal amounts of food and is the majority facing hunger and starvation.

Since 2007, the UN-backed African Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) has provided critical security for vital infrastructure including the airport, seaport, storage facilities and key humanitarian corridors in Mogadishu to aid local NGOs access feeding sites. Al Shabaab has posed a constant threat to AMISOM militarily and killed some of its troops as they battle to maintain access for humanitarian aid.

As the international community responds to the emergency in Somalia and the wider Horn of Africa, we must simultaneously begin efforts to build a sustainable food security system for the region. The droughts are predictable and need not result in the human devastation experienced in Somalia today.

Investments in drought-resistance seeds, agricultural risk management and agricultural development can secure a hunger-free and prosperous future for the people living in the Horn of Africa.

Stay tuned to ONE.org for more details about how you can help change this picture in the Horn of Africa.

I don’t know if you know this, but today is Ethiopian New Year — an important holiday in my culture that holds a deep meaning for me. It’s a day when Christian Ethiopians come together and celebrate the first day of the Julian calendar with food and coffee ceremony, music, arts and crafts, and gift-giving.

My family in Ethiopia will probably spend this special day eating food and getting together with relatives and neighbors. And for me, I’ll be celebrating it here in the States with my friends. While I am grateful that my family and I can afford to do this, this is not the case for all Ethiopians. There are a lot of people in my country who are not able to celebrate in the same way because of famine and high food prices engulfing the Horn of Africa.

It’s hard for me to watch what is happening from afar, but I am doing what I can to help my people. I am collaborating with other Africans living in the States to support Somalia in a project called We Are the Horn, and I am also encouraging people to sign our petition, too. As a member of ONE, you can make a lot of difference in this respect. It would mean so much to me, my family and those affected by the famine if you could add your voice to our petition on this special day:

http://one.org/us/actnow/

Happy 2004 for all Ethiopians and Eritreans out there who are celebrating the new year around the globe.

It’s over a month since famine was declared in Somalia and alarm bells clearly rung about serious food shortages across Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in desperate need of food, clean water and basic sanitation and we are all asking: how can this be happening again? In this past month we have seen differing responses locally, regionally and globally to the crisis. Already there are lessons we must learn about how to stop famine happening again.

As Richard Dowden noted previously on this blog there are many political factors that complicate the situation in Somalia. Any lasting solution will require a regional roadmap out of the Somali cycle of failed statism. Eritrea and others must be brought around a table with other regional governments, and representatives from wide cross section of Somali civil society. Maybe this famine will reenergise the too often stalled process. However politics is not the only factor here and there are other lessons to learn.

The response from the international community has been slow. As my colleague Adrian Lovett explained, in a recent Huffington Post blog, leaders such as the UK, US and Sweden have made substantial contributions to the appeal but other governments languish behind. The UN appeal remains $1 billion short of what is needed. Traditional European donors such as France and Germany are not pulling their weight. Nor are many of the Gulf States who have tremendous wealth generated from high oil prices and could fill the appeal gap with ease. That these global players drag their feet while children die is shameful, though the recent pledge from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to the Somalia appeal is a step in the right direction.

The response from Africa has been mixed. Last month ONE and Africa Gathering hosted an informal discussion with African diaspora leaders and international NGOs about the adequacy of the response to the crisis. The participants called for African leaders to step up more to lead the response. African countries and institutions including South Africa, the African Union (AU) and Kenya are contributing and yesterday’s AU pledging conference was unprecedented and raised a decent sum – though some nations could still do more. Donations from many African governments – Nigeria for example – or wealthy individuals have been modest. Africa has a number of billionaires these days as the advocates of the ‘Africa rising’ narrative rightly keep reminding us. African civil society also has a crucial role to play. Influential figures, not just from faith communities but also from the artistic, musical and sports world have real sway over the youth. The group AfricansAct4Africa is already bringing together many musicians and artists to bring attention to this issue, and leaders like Youssou N’Dour and Somalia’s own hip hop artist K’Naan are leading a new generation of African artists in this effort. This is a hugely positive development.

This is an assessment of the emergency response but if we are to stop starvation returning we must find long-term solutions. The famine early warning system should have been noted earlier higher up the political food chain. Plainly it is media attention that gets political attention, and the media only tune in once the images are shocking enough – which is too late. Any review of this crisis has to factor in the role of the international media as watchdog in these situations and help them play a more proactive role. I could imagine an emergency-prevention TV team charged with finding ways to tell the stories of slow-burning crises for prime time, in ways the audience won’t tune out but before the children start dying. This may seem far-fetched but it’s a creative challenge many in the media industries might relish. Call it a global community service for recovering media hacks.

Long-term investment in agriculture is also vital. At L’Aquila in 2009, G8 leaders promised $22 billion to agricultural development but with just one year to go until the deadline only a fifth of the money has been delivered. African governments also made pledges at Maputo in 2003 to invest 10% of their budgets on agriculture. So far only seven African nations have kept the promise, including Ethiopia. This is part of the reason why the situation in Ethiopia while very serious, is not as bad as it could be, or as bad as it was back in the early 1990s or mid 1980s. If we are to prevent future droughts becoming future famines long term investment in farming and food security infrastructure across the continent is essential.

The famine we see today was avoidable but it could also have been even worse. While it is too late for tens of thousands of children, there are hundreds of thousands more who need our help right now. We can’t just blame politics for their fate while sitting by and doing nothing. We must deal with the politics embedded into the way we deal with the crisis – the local issues that turn drought into famine, the regional complexities that make response slow and difficult, and the global neglect that means promises are rarely kept. We must learn these lessons and in the name of those who have died, declare this time for real: never again.

Nefisa used to struggle to feed her family in July and August, two of the driest months in the highlands of Ethiopia’s Oramia region. They were usually able to borrow from neighbours, but Nefisa says her five children were often sick. Their farmland dry, she and her husband would travel from town to town looking for day labour.

July and August are still difficult for Nefisa and her family, but thanks to Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (known as the PSNP) they have now have a reliable supply of food during the months that used to be known as the “food gap.”

Ethiopia launched the PSNP in 2005 to help “chronically food insecure” people build resilience to the country’s recurring drought.

Each month for six months, families like Nefisa’s now receive either food transfers (15kg of wheat per person) or cash. This extra support means that those families don’t have to sell assets like livestock to make it through the dry months.

Ethiopia’s PSNP is now sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest safety net program, covering roughly ten percent of the country’s population (nearly 7.5 million people). In a year like this one, when the Horn of Africa’s worst drought in 60 years has left 12.4 million people in need emergency food relief, the impact of this program is huge.

The food provided through the safety net isn’t a handout. In exchange for their monthly transfers, Nefisa and her husband work on community projects that range from school and hospital maintenance to building irrigation systems. The benefits of these projects extend beyond safety net participants to reach entire communities. For example, terracing in the highest areas of Nefisa’s village has protected local farms against flooding and soil degradation, enabling some farmers to triple their incomes through increased production.

Higher incomes mean that families can now save and plan for the future. Nefisa is a committee member on her Savings and Internal Lending Community (SILC). The SILC’s 20 members (all of whom are women) have increased their weekly contributions from 2 to 5 Ethiopian birr. Collectively, they’ve saved 3,000 Ethiopian birr over the past year (roughly $176), money that can be lent to members to start small businesses or pay for education or health care.

Although the PSNP helps Nefisa “bridge the gap” during her family’s hardest months, she doesn’t have access to the capital and training she’ll need to graduate from the safety net. These are issues that the government and its partners are now tackling through programs like PSNPlus and PSNP Grad. Though challenges lie ahead, one thing is certain: alongside the tales of suffering and hardship coming out of the Horn right now, Nefisa’s story – one of remarkable resilience thanks to innovation and investment – deserves to be making headlines too.