Hunger and development

One of the main outcome of the “green revolution” is the industrialisation of agriculture in much of the Third World. This very process is embedded in the ideology of development, that was, not without reason, also referred as industrialisation or modernisation. Indeed, it was a quite successful attempt to export the American model of agro-industry to the third world. Besides that the flaws of the original model were ignored, the impact of the application of this model in the underdeveloped countries, without taking in to account the different environments and settings of the recipient states, led to several unintended consequences. However, what I intend to call into question is that the concentration of land ownership and the consequent increase in the gap of wealth distribution was inherent to the very strategy applied. The initial aim of reducing poverty was, if not abandoned, at least overcome in the very process of increasing
food production.

Keywords: Green Revolution, Development, Poverty, Hunger, Land Distribution

We have to worry about hunger? Europe and food security.

      The European Union is currently self-sufficient in food production. Nevertheless, in this area include the world's largest importer. Climate change may, however, with food prices in the EU move.

Much has been written and told about the child transports, the well-known Kindertransporte, related to the Nazi period and World War II. Yet, astonishingly little is known about the child transports related to Europe’s First World War. This article is aiming to fill this research gap on the historical landscape, telling the history of child transports during and after WWI from and across Central Europe. These child transports were originally meant to provide short-term relief, but they sometimes even resulted in children’s long-term placement abroad. The organizations’ and birth families’ primary interest in the child transports was to improve children’s physical well-being, ignoring their subjectivity to a great extent. The physical appearance of a child’s body, namely its underweight, sickness, or malnutrition was conditional for the participation in the child transports of the time. Visual imagery, including drawings, photography posters and everyday objects, were essential to justify, illustrate, and document children’s suffering and their geographic displacement. Paying special attention to the visual dimension of this particular relief activity, this article will uncover the transformation of early twentieth century child transports from the late Austro-Hungarian Empire to Europe’s humanitarian-internationalist post-WWI era.

This paper sets out to understand the Monga vulnerability in Rangpur region of northwest Bangladesh from the perspective
of affected households. The local term ‘Monga’ means a famine-like situation and it has caught public interest recently.
Based on empirical evidence from five villages in the Rangpur region using different qualitative methods, the findings
highlight that the Monga predisposes the households to multi-sphere experiences of hunger and poverty. It is not just one
consequence of income poverty; rather, the social and livelihood mechanisms of poor households are dysfunctional,
multiply rooted in their entitlements, capabilities, their ways of living, and the negotiations they have with the complex
network of institutions that affect households both singly and synergistically.

This paper examines the potential of geographic analysis to inform development policy that is capable of effectively empowering rural women working in agriculture and, in so doing, reducing local hunger and biodiversity loss. Despite decades of research documenting the importance of women’s work in maintaining food security and crop diversity, and despite over 15 years of renewed commitments to gender mainstreaming at national and international levels, women and gender currently remain at the margins of agricultural policy. Existing approaches to gender analysis, which lack a rigorous geographic approach, are largely inadequate to engage the increasingly globalized social and institutional structures that gender mainstreaming seeks to transform. This paper employs a ‘countertopographic’ methodology, developed by human geographers to trace structural similarities between disparate places, in order to analyze the mobile and dynamic connections between gender, food production, and development. Through the juxtaposition of rural women’s experiences in four distinct agricultural settings, this paper demonstrates how inequality and inequity in particular locales are produced in relation to broad-scale political and economic change. A geographic conceptual framework may thus have the fluidity to confront the disempowerment of rural women in a globalizing world.

In this interview, Jose Luis Vivero makes a strong case for a narrative shift in the way we all perceive food: from being merely a commodity whose utility has to be maximized by all means towards the valuation of all food dimensions and its consideration as a commons, a natural resource that is a vital element for each human being. This narrative shall be the basis for a transition to a glocalised food system which is not only more sustainable but also much fairer to the millions of hungry.
The industrial food system only values food by its price in the market: the lower the better. This “LOW COST” FOOD SYSTEM requires full mechanization and neglects the nutritional implications of healthy food or the social spill over effects of local sustainable food production undertaken by family farming. As food is cheap, it can be wasted with no net losses. Food Security is a Global Public Good that is within the mandate of every state but surely not within the mandate of every food corporation. Big Food companies are aimed at maximizing profit out of food instead of producing healthy food sustainably. That’s why we need to reclaim the citizens’ spaces where civic collective actions for food can be carried out by self-organized groups of producers and consumers, outside traditional market rules or state-driven policies.
We need a different power balance between the State, the market and citizen's collective actions. For instance, a Universal Food Coverage for every citizen could be established in the most progressive countries. In every European country there is a minimum standard of health or education that every citizen is entitled to and that standard is guaranteed by the State. Why don’t we imagine a similar scheme for food? Would it be possible a Universal Food Coverage for every citizen in Europe? What about an international binding Food Treaty to regulate those minimum standards, outside the absolute primacy of WTO rules applied to commodities? There are thousands of growing examples all over the world where alternative food initiatives are being developed by committed citizens. This narrative could provide an ethical basis to coalesce the practical actions under a counter-hegemonic discourse. Food is not a commodity, food is a vital resource for human beings, a human right, a cultural determinant, a natural resource and it shall thus be treated as a commons.       

Este documento presenta un analisis del hambre estacional en Guatemala, que se manifiesta por una variacion regular y marcadamente estacional de la desnutricion aguda infantil, alcanzando picos todos los anhos entre los meses de mayo y septiembre. Se analizan nueve factores que inciden sobre el hambre estacional, indicando las causas de su variacion y su incidencia sobre el estado nutricional de los menores de cinco anhos. Se realizan calendarios especificos de cada zona biogeografica de Guatemala y se propone un Plan de Accion para combatir el Hambre Estacional. Adicionalmente, se presenta por primera vez una propuesta para dar seguimiento a la desnutricion aguda estacional a traves de la metodologia de Corredores Endemicos de Desnutricion Aguda. 

Este documento tiene como objetivo analizar el Pacto Hambre Cero de Guatemala a la luz de las experiencias latinoamericanas, para asi proponer opciones para mejorar el disenho y la ejecucion del Pacto. Se incluye un análisis institucional, legal y financiero de cuatro programas de lucha contra el hambre en Brasil, Colombia-Antioquia, Nicaragua y Perú, que llevan bastantes anhos de operacion y que han mostrado una reducción significativa de los indicadores de desnutrición crónica y pobreza. Además, el texto presenta un análisis de las fuentes de gasto público en Guatemala y propuestas para mejorar la cantidad y calidad de ese gasto.

Food, as a basic human need, should enjoy a similar consideration to health and education in our societies and yet it is not so. The former are basic rights, guaranteed by the state to every citizen in developed countries and in most developing ones as well, whereas food is largely provided in a monetary basis: your purchasing power determines your food access. Why is that? can we do it otherwise?

Este texto (y la presentación anexa) plantea una narrativa diferente para entender el alimento como un bien común, multidimensional, que es esencial para todos los seres humanos y que, por tanto, requiere ser gestionado de manera común. En esa línea, se propone considerar la Seguridad Alimentaria (y Nutricional) como un bien publico global ya que nos afecta a todos, no se puede conseguir aisladamente, todos los que no contribuyen se benefician y no se puede apropiar el beneficio por parte de un solo actor. Sin embargo no se gestiona como bien global sino como responsabilidad nacional o personal. He aqui la novedad y la propuesta para el Comite de Seguridad Alimentaria de FAO y para los debates post-2015 que tienen lugar este año y el siguiente.

Se presenta de forma didáctica una narrativa diferente para acercarse a los alimentos como un bien común, y no exclusivamente como un bien privado, y se describen aquellas características de los alimentos que son actualmente consideradas como un bien común, o bien público global. Finalmente, la seguridad alimentaria y nutricional de la población, entendida como una situación que nos beneficia a todos, de la que todos podemos y debemos ser partícipes y de la que todos se benefician aunque no contribuyan, es presentada como un Bien Público Global. Esta consideración no ha sido todavía considerada como tal en las reuniones post-2015 ni en los debates sobre bienes públicos globales.   

Este texto articula las narrativas de bienes comunes y de soberania alimentaria, proponiendo una dialectica entre ambos campos, hasta ahora notablemente disociados. Propone que el movimiento de soberania alimentaria podria beneficiarse mucho de la consideracion de los alimentos como un bien comun, que seria uno de los pilares teoricos, politicos y eticos de la transicion hacia sistemas alimentarios mas justos y sostenibles.