KENYA: International aid agency OXFAM lanches a food initiative aimed at raising production amid spiralling food prices and drought in Africa

Record ID: 361492

  • Title: KENYA: International aid agency OXFAM lanches a food initiative aimed at raising production amid spiralling food prices and drought in Africa
  • Date: 2nd June 2011
  • Summary: ACCRA, GHANA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF WOMEN SELLING GROCERIES AT A MARKET
  • Embargoed: 17th June 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Industry
  • Reuters ID: LVA6J8VTXRN7E21RF59P1U9SUPHK
  • Story Text: Oxfam has launched a global agriculture campaign aimed at overhauling the world's broken food systems. The initiative tagged "GROW" was launched on Wednesday (June 01) in Kenya, currently struggling with spiralling food costs and chronic drought.
    The programme aims to maximise Africa's agricultural potential by managing water and irrigation systems better and rennovating dry pastoralist drylands to make them more fertile.
    The international aid agency warned that decades of progress against hunger are being reversed by environmental crises with upto 1 billion people in the continent facing food shortage.
    "There is far more competition now for the limited natural resources that we all depend on in the planet and that means for us in Kenya it means for us across Africa and around the world rising food prices that are driving more people into hunger and poverty. So this campaign is about addressing that broken food system that is leaving people hungry, it is about ensuring that everyone has enough food to eat now and in the future. It is about producing that food in a way that is sustainable in the future," said Marc Wagerif, campaign coordinator speaking at the launch event.
    In many African countries prices of basic commodities are already at an all time high and even staple foods are unaffordable to many. The report warned of more unrest in the future if the problem is not addressed now with new research forecasting global food prices to double in the next 20 years.
    "Clearly not enough is being done because too many people are going hungry but many efforts are being made and we also see the Africa union with policy frameworks like the frameworks and guidelines on land policy which is trying to set a new path for better use of land use and better land rights for people in Africa but more must be done and in particular women need to get stronger rights to land so that they can produce more. Women need more investment so that they can realize their full productive capacity and contribute to feeding themselves, their families and ultimately the planet," Wagerif said.
    The report also laid blame on rich nations and the G20, whom it accused of vested interests in big business and powerful elites above hundreds of millions of people struggling to produce and afford food, and on a clique of 3-500 global companies who lobby and benefit from the world's broken food system.
    "At the moment the global food system is concentrated in enormous power in the hands of very few coooperations. It is estimated for example that as few as three major international cooperations are controlling close to 90% of the international grain trade and they are squeezing enormous profits out of the system even when people are going hungry. Its better to elaborate what needs to be done in terms of national policy and global frameworks," said Wagerif.
    In 2000, world leaders set a goal to halve the portion of the world population that suffers from hunger, reducing it to 7 percent. According to the Agriculture body of the UN (FAO), some 13 percent of people globally are now undernourished from roughly 14 percent when the goal was set.
    In May this year protesters took to the streets of Kenya's capital Nairobi to protest against rising food and fuel prices. The march was part of a wave of similar protests in countries across Africa including Burkina Faso, Uganda and South Africa.
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