Feeding your neighbor in a complex world
"We live in a world that is capable of feeding every person that lives on the planet." - Abhijit Bannerjee, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
They peer at us from the pages of our newspapers and television screens – the haunting images of starving children in East Africa who are the innocent and silent victims of famine.
They are among the millions affected in this current crisis, which is testing the limits of people’s compassion as we worry about systemic corruption, which, in addition to ongoing conflicts, makes us wonder if our donations of food will reach those needing it most.
Why, we might also wonder, if we are born equal in the eyes of God, are so many left to die of starvation while we in the West tuck our expanding waistlines up to the table for our daily bread?
In a recent special report on feeding the world, The Economist posed The 9 billion-people question, a comprehensive overview of the complex issue of food security* and the various factors contributing to rising fears about providing food for a burgeoning global population.
For city dwellers increasingly isolated from modern farming, it offers an eye-opening look beyond our daily headlines about rising food prices in our local supermarkets and food riots in developing countries.
If the world cannot feed its current population, how can we possibly meet the nutritional needs of the nine billion expected by 2050? And how is MEDA’s work contributing to global food security?
At its simplest, the solution is to boost yields and reduce waste. Through our work in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Peru and other countries, MEDA is encouraging small farmers to adopt modern farming practices that will help them move away from merely subsistence toward a more prosperous future.
Small farmers learn how to boost yields through …
- Use of better seeds that produce more vigorous plants
- Sowing in rows versus broadcasting
- Judicious use of fertilizers and pesticides
They are using their resources more efficiently through …
- More intensive use of their land
- Adoption of simple technologies such as drip irrigation and treadle pumps to make best use of available water supplies
Farmers in developing countries are reducing waste through …
- Improving distribution systems so food gets to market before it rots in the field
- Better storage to protect produce from the elements
They are also learning to work more collaboratively with each other to create distribution systems to better link them to markets, respond to modern market demands and changing consumer preferences.
Relief organizations provide food aid that fills empty stomachs and saves lives. We need food aid to respond to a crisis such as we are seeing now in East Africa, but we also need to look to the future.
MEDA is helping to provide longer-term solutions to the question of food security by working with small farmers in their communities – to ensure that more food, and more nutritious food, is grown to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding population.
We also want to ensure that not only is more and better food grown, but also that people have the resources to access food by working to improve incomes.
Only through creating greater self-sufficiency and producing a surplus to small farmers’ needs can we hope to achieve that.
* The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.”