This is of course a worldwide epidemic, and a big issue in Jakarta, Indonesia — a city in which “17 percent of children under the age of 5 suffer from acute malnutrition, while 12 percent are overweight” according to op-ed columnist Tina Rosenberg. A severe lack of kitchens and adequate sources of fresh, healthy food makes street vendors often the only viable source of daily meals.

Enter MercyCorps:

Mercy Corps couldn’t think of anything traditional that a nongovernmental group could do about this. So, it did something very untraditional: in April, 2009, it started a healthy street food business called Kedai Balitaku [KeBal], or My Child’s Café, that has since spun off into a for-profit company. “The idea was to provide access while raising awareness about healthy food and creating economic opportunity,” said Sean Granville-Ross, Mercy Corps’ Indonesia country director.
….

KeBal sells niche street food. Its clientele is children — and it focuses on those 5 years old and younger. The most popular meal is a chicken, rice and vegetable porridge, which costs the going rate of 20 cents. The leading snack is a 10 cent gelatin pop. Such pops are a common snack but they are almost always made with artificial fruit flavors; KeBal’s are made with real mango, strawberry, melon or other fruits. The menu also includes meatballs, macaroni and cheese and shu mai dumplings. The carts use food-grade materials and vendors get regular health inspections from KeBal’s management.

This is a classic — and very encouraging — example of an organization working within the community to address a problem head-on, by meeting people where they’re already going — in this case, street vendors. Rosenberg does a great job in this piece of clearly explaining a complex issue, not just in Jakarta but worldwide, and some of the challenges confronting a nonprofit working to fix a broken system.

What about this piece stood out to you? Curious to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Food prices are high again. In December 2010, prices — according the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s measurement of a group of food commodities — soared higher than the peak of the 2008 food prices. While new figures have not been released, reports are saying that prices for staple foods in developing countries like rice and wheat are climbing and the suspicious absence of rioting is starting to reverse. Riots in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen and Pakistan might just be the start for a tumultuous year. But while these riots were not triggered by high food prices -– high food prices certainly only add to citizens’ gripes with their governments.

There are a number of factors at play: Adverse weather is driving grim grain projections in South America and the US, increasing demands for biofuels made from food crops, oil surpassing $100 a barrel for the first time since October 2008, expectations that Russia’s export bans will be extended beyond 2011 and that others are starting to hoard or panic-buy. All this suggests that prices will continue to climb. And while the G20 debates the role of financial speculation in influencing food prices more hungry people could take to the streets.

But more importantly, hungry people don’t need to be hungry. Hunger is a symptom of poverty. First of all, there’s enough food in this world to feed everyone, it’s just not equitably distributed. Where food may be available, many people also just don’t have the money to buy enough to eat. Those that farm for a living often don’t have the resources to grow enough to sell to afford basic necessities, including food. Matter of fact, most people who experience hunger don’t have enough money to buy food, rather than that there isn’t enough food for them to eat. So, it’s not just about staving off hunger, but also promoting better nutrition where people are less vulnerable to disease and infection, and building rural economies. So, addressing the root cause of poverty will help solve the hunger problem along with many others.

Yet, “we” seem fixated on the causes of high and rising food prices and debating what to do about them, rather than enabling poor people’s economic development so that their pocketbooks can handle the ups and downs in food prices. Whether these high prices are here for the short or long-term, it pushes people into poverty and makes it just that much harder for others to climb out. In dire cases, particularly for children, it can lead to under-nutrition that has irreversible life-time consequences and even lead to death.

So, let’s put a little less effort into trying to point a finger at one price driver –- be it climate change, biofuels, trade measures, financial speculation or just good old supply and demand –- and put a little more effort in trying to do something about it. The food crisis in 2008 promoted global leaders to commit $22.5 billion to invest in agriculture and food security, a third of which was additional to existing aid budgets, but nearly 3 years later, what have they done? According to the donors themselves, without any third-party verification, they had disbursed only $6.5 billion of the $22.5 in April 2010. And now? It’s unclear. Especially with respect to European donors who haven’t been very forthcoming about their aid budgets for agriculture as of yet. And in the US, budget debates are very worrying. In a worst case scenario, budgets for the Feed the Future Initiative will drop dramatically and the funding that the US pledged to the Global Food Security and Agriculture Program, a newly created multilateral fund for agriculture, could disappear.

Though, one thing we do know is that Africa hasn’t been hit as hard this time around by high prices -– at least not yet. Why? Well, the World Bank says that greater investments in agriculture that improve productivity so that African countries don’t rely so much on imported food have helped cushion the blow. Well, how do you like that? Investments in agriculture help poor countries deal with high food prices. Donors, national governments and private sector…are you listening? Smart investments in agriculture are what we need more of. While issues such as the impact of increased droughts, floods and changing rainfall patterns on food productivity or the behaviors of financial speculators will need to be addressed; we cannot ignore that no matter what, we need to invest in agriculture, in poor countries, and help the poorest of the poor if we’re going to reduce poverty and hunger.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the Bread for the World Institute released its timely 2011 Hunger Report, with an event Monday at the National Press Club, featuring USAID administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah and recent World Food Prize winner and Bread for the World President David Beckman.

As American families prepare to gather with friends and loved ones to share a large meal this week, the panelists helped to highlight the growing global food crisis, estimating that 925 million people worldwide will go hungry in 2010 due in large part to soaring global food prices.

Fortunately, the US government has recently stepped up its response to hunger and malnutrition, thanks primarily to the new Feed the Future initiative that focuses on “improving the productivity and livelihoods of smallholder farmers.” This initiative isn’t about handing out emergency food aid, but empowering farmers to get the support they need to respond to high food prices. Now, this is a cause that we at ONE can get behind!

The program, which is working in 20 countries including Rwanda, Ghana and Tanzania, works with national governments for in-country leadership and ownership, all of which involves sustainable agriculture-led development. As Dr. Shah says, this is the way “to help the most people help themselves out of poverty.”

The new USAID approach means focusing on women farmers, as women produce between 60 to 80 percent of food in developing countries. It also means putting to use new technology to help smallholder farmers “deliver results on a large scale,” whether this means using YouTube to help farmers in India communicate with each other, or creating a new variety of maize to resist drought in East Africa.

Programs like Feed the Future are more important than ever. Global food prices are thankfully lower than their peak in 2008, but they are still higher than pre-crisis levels. As a result, poor families are spending 60 to 80 percent of their income on food.

The US has committed $3.5 billion to the global hunger and food security initiative, but policymakers must make sure this promise is carried out over the next three years. Check out Bread’s new report as you head home for Thanksgiving and make sure you tell your representatives to support Feed the Future to ensure nobody has to go hungry this holiday season!

The answer is that farmers can use any type of seed they want in the field. Regardless of the type of seed, they end up using less because of the management techniques that the system recommends -– using compost and manure, growing seedlings to an ideal height for transplant, using less water and planting in orderly rows, among other ideas.

Because the system is precise, farmers plant less seeds (check out the difference in the image above!) and use less land than they would if they were flooding their fields and using lots of synthetic fertilizer. This means that their expenses are lower and their incomes are higher. Not to mention they have more land to grow the vegetables that help combat malnutrition in their children.

Innovations like SRI are a part of the U.S. government’s plan to end hunger and decrease childhood malnutrition. Congress is debating whether or not to fund it. For more on actions to take to convince them, stay tuned to ONE actions over the next couple of weeks.

Initiated by Norman Borlaug and supported by the Ruan company and others, the World Food Prize is the “Nobel” of food and hunger — and an entire week full of events has sprung up around the prize. Here are a few of the moments that stand out from the events I was able to take part during a packed week.

The Iowa Hunger Summit begins the week. Iowans gather to learn and act on hunger issues in the Hawkeye State, in the U.S. and around the world. Former Ambassador and Ohio Congressman Tony Hall gave the keynote remarks. For ONE members, his words about engaging elected officials stood out. The midterm elections “will make a decisive impact on progress on hunger,” said Amb. Hall. Referring to our engagement with candidates and elected officials, Tony said “put them on the spot, in a nice way.” If we do not bring issues like hunger to their attention, they will think that “it must not be important.”

The ONE panel discussion was a terrific part of the Hunger Summit. Led by U.S. Executive Director Sheila Nix, the speakers included Karey Claghorn, Iowa Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, Richard Mkandawire of Africa Union/NEPAD, and Julie Howard of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa. Secretary Claghorn described how passionate Iowans are about alleviating hunger. Mr. Mkandawire was clear that donor countries like the U.S. are becoming responsive to African voices that are charting the course of agricultural development. Ms. Howard called us to really get behind research based advocacy so that we focus on what works.

This year’s WFP laureates are Jo Luck, who leads Heifer Inernational, and David Beckmann, the head of Bread for the World. Both organizations are ONE partners. And both Jo and David played key roles in ONE’s launch and development. Congratulations to both! This is the first time that grassroots advocacy and direct help have been honored with the prize. In her remarks, Jo Luck related that Heifer “lives the success” of agriculture development. David Beckmann called what Bread and other advocates do as creating “organized give a damns.”

The WFP included some really great keynotes. Jeff Raikes, the CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, commented about the need to “tell the story in front of the numbers.” Because that leads to the easing of hunger, provides livelihoods and allows parents have the means to send their children to school. This was particularly striking to me as ONE embarks on our Living Proof campaign. Two comments from Howie Buffett’s keynote stand out to me: “Markets are the key to moving farmers out of poverty, to the economy and into the economy” and “You cannot create long term productive positive change without good, clear policies.

World Food Prize week had a whole lot more to it than what I’ve mentioned here here. Check out the other posts on the WFP on the ONE blog and visit the WFP site for more.

This may be a big “duh” for many of you, but malnutrition is a huge problem in the developing world. So, it’s a pretty big deal that PATH, an NGO that works to break cycles of poor health through sustainable solutions, is finally making their Ultra Rice technology available in Burundi.

Ultra Rice is like regular rice in shape and size, but that’s where the similarities end. The manufactured grain-like product is jam-packed with micronutrients like vitamin A, iron, thiamin, folic acid and zinc — allowing people to get the nutrients they need without having to change the way that they normally eat.

And the cool part is that PATH customizes each kind of Ultra Rice to fit the health needs of the population and mimic the look of the local rice. For example, in China, people receive a short-grained rice with one set of vitamins, while Brazil receives a long-grained rice with another set of nutrients.

To give you an idea of how important Ultra Rice will be for malnourished people around the world, let’s take a look at some numbers. According to UNICEF and the Micronutrient Initiative, severe iron deficiency anemia results in the death of more than 60,000 young women during pregnancy and childbirth per year. Folic acid deficiency is responsible for approximately 200,000 severe birth defects in 80 developing countries. And mild to moderate zinc deficiency affects more than a third of people worldwide and compromises growth and immune function in children.

Learn more about Ultra Rice on PATH’s website — and let us know what you think about sustainable, creative technologies like these in the comments below.

Sheila Nix, ONE’s U.S. executive director, was a fantastic moderator. She engaged each of the panelists on the importance of advocacy and the challenges we face. Sheila described how she saw firsthand “the catalytic effect of agriculture in Africa and the enormous impact that very simple, low cost solutions and investments in women can have on a community.”

Julie Howard speaks at ONE’s World Food Prize panel discussion

We had a great group of experts, including Iowa’s own Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Karey Claghorn, Julie Howard from the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa and Richard Mkandawire, Head of Partnerships, Resource Mobilization and Communication for the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development.

“Iowans, by nature, are a compassionate group of people. Living on such fertile soil, we don’t want to see anyone go hungry,” said Karey Claghorn. “Agriculture is a big deal in Iowa and we need to keep our leaders engaged and informed in efforts to help farmers in the developing world to feed themselves so that no one goes hungry.”

At the peak of the 2008 food crisis, world leaders signaled a renewed focus on investing in agriculture as a means of poverty reduction in poor countries with a focus on smallholder female farmers. Two years later, ONE is working to hold leaders accountable to their commitments and push for smart, cost effective policies to avoid future food crises.

Richard Mkandawire stressed that “combating hunger in Africa requires a focus on agriculture and that advocacy is critical in keeping this issue on the agenda so that agriculture does become another fad that comes and goes. We must call upon the global community to support the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP) as a vision for restoring agricultural growth and food security in Africa.”

The event was well received, and Libby Crimmings, one of our regional field directors in the Midwest, used the opportunity to recruit more Iowans to get involved with ONE. 

Tonight, we will be attending the 2010 World Food Prize Laureates Forum with Enough author, Roger Thurow, who will be moderating a discussion with this year’s honorees Jo Luck of Heifer International and Bread for the World’s David Beckmann.

Rising costs of bread in Mozambique last week spurred riots on the streets of Maputo, causing seven deaths. Massive floods in Pakistan affected 2.5 million people, says the BBC, leaving thousands food-insecure and homeless.

Russia has experienced severe droughts and has banned all exports of wheat, barley, maize and flour through the end of 2011. Global wheat prices have been on the rise since late June, notwithstanding that prices are much higher than historical averages, and over the long-term, predicted to keep going up.

According to the FAO food price index — at a score of 176 — wheat prices have reached their highest since September 2008. Does this raise cause for concern? It should.

According to Reuters, global leaders are called upon to heed this “wake up call.” Olivier de Shutter, the U.N. special rapporteur, says that “donors are not living up to their commitments” when it comes to a person’s right to food. In fact, the 2008 global food crisis is what promoted the G8 and others to reinvigorate investments in agricultural development.

We are now two years out from the height of the crisis and it’s not evident that a whole lot has been accomplished. Sure, there have been strong milestones, such as the U.S. Feed the Future Initiative and the creation of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, but what has been delivered so far? And better yet, has it been enough? Will it be enough?

The G8 Muskoka Accountability Report –- released by the G8 at the most recent summit in Muskoka Canada in June 2010 –- reveals that as of April 2010, L’Aquila Initiative donors have disbursed $6.5 billion and remain committed to disburse the full amount of the commitments by 2012.

Who has actually disbursed these funds and for what purposes remain a mystery. Even though the full $22 billion was not explicitly linked to the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to halve hunger and poverty by 2015, it certainly will not be enough to reach MDG1. And the global response looks unlikely to prevent another major global food crisis without a better plan and more resources.

Without more attention to sustainable and effective investments in agricultural development, the smallholder and women farmers — which the G8 and other donors promised to target their funds to — will be no more affluent to afford higher food costs, no more resilient to the deteriorating effects of food that stays out of reach and no more capable to take advantage of market opportunities.

Worse yet, the donor community is largely ignoring a massive and recurring food crisis in the Sahel. Arguably if it’s recurring, we can be smart enough to recognize the underlying causes and start to correct course. “Securing the Gains,” a new Oxfam report shows the damage that drought, flooding and climate change continually cause across the Sahel region. It calls on donors to “learn from their mistakes” and “provide greater financial and technical support to strengthen existing government agricultural policies and contingency plans” to begin building resilience to weather and economic shocks.

This seems like a sensible alternative to responding to the same humanitarian emergencies time and time again, especially when the emergencies go underfunded. Currently, the World Food Programme is experiencing a funding shortage of $80 million, limiting its food distribution to just 40 percent to those in need.

Surely as a global community we can do better. By investing in agricultural development, with a particular focus on women and smallholders, we can prevent another food crisis and should be at the top of global leaders’ priorities at the upcoming MDG summit in New York next week. If we can’t manage to meet MDG 1, how ever will we accomplish the other seven?

Recently, I met with Delaware Senator Tom Carper’s (D-Del.) State Director, Larry Windley, who was interested in learning more about ONE.

We spent a good amount of time discussing the Global Fund. Windley was intrigued to learn that the organization is delivering fantastic results on the ground in many of the poorest countries. I made sure to tell the Senator to support a commitment to the Global Fund — at least $6 billion dollars over three years — to help ensure that no child is born with HIV by 2015.

Windley informed me that international aid initiatives do not fall under the senator’s subcommittee assignments, but Sen. Carper would likely support President Obama’s stance on the Global Fund replenishment.

We also had a very productive conversation about the Global Food Security Act, and whether the senator would support the legislation. Windley informed me that Sen. Carper tends to be supportive of the long-term, self-sustaining agricultural development this bill promotes.

At the conclusion of the meeting I learned that the senator will be sending me a written response in the near future with his position on both issues. In the meantime, he now knows about ONE’s presence in Delaware and that his constituents expect their senator to lead by example and support the fight against extreme poverty on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Be sure to connect with other Delaware members on ONE’s Mid-Atlantic Region Facebook Group.

- Nicole Ferrari, ONE member, Delaware

With Russia’s announcement last week that it will prohibit all grain exports until the end of the year, it has become more important than ever to pass the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act.

Russia has experienced extreme drought and wildfires, leaving their wheat yield drastically low for the remainder of the year –- 20 percent less than what they expected. Their wheat shortage has caused wheat prices to increase to a two year high, potentially increasing world wheat prices.

Africans are particularly affected because they rely on grain imports for survival. The average African income is also lower, so an increase in food prices disproportionately affects them.

Many African families are unable to feed themselves and their communities because they lack the basic tools to work the land and harvest their crops. The Global Food Security Act would help Africans address this problem and support African farmers in their fight against hunger in their own villages, empowering Africa to feed Africa.

Supporting small farmers in Africa with seeds, fertilizer, successful farming techniques and basic infrastructure is an effective way to grow economies in poor countries.

These commonsense investments can help farmers earn their way out of poverty, providing families with sustainable incomes and giving local communities self-sustaining futures. But right now, the Global Food Security Act is stuck in the Senate. Get the bill moving and take action now. Tell your Senator to support a bill that will give Africa its best chance to feed itself.