Nutrient Fortification Enriches the Lives of Egyptians and Others Around the World

The following video clip found courtesy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation highlights the importance of nutrient fortification in the country of Egypt.

Many poor people within the country can afford very little food to sustain themselves and the their families. As a consequence bread has become a staple food in their lives - for many it is the only food they can afford.

Bill and Melinda Gates have observed the importance of fortifying such foods with increased nutrients as a way of preventing the ill-effects of poor nutrition, including preventable miscarriages and birth defects.

Watch the video to learn more about what can be and is being done in the country of Egypt and elsewhere.

- Tiffanie Depew

SOURCE: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Prevent Malnutrition

According to Nicolas de Torrente, the Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders U.S.A, in a letter to the editor of the New York Times, the quality of food children intake after the age of exclusive breast-feeding is just as important as the quantity. To maintain health and spurn growth, children between the ages of 6 and 24 months need energy from grains and fats, along with essential nutrients found in animal-source proteins like milk.

“In ‘malnutrition hot spots' like the Sahel, East Africa and South Asia, where most of the world's five million malnutrition-related deaths occur each year, poor families already struggle, and often fail, to provide their children with such varied diets,” said Torrente.

The director of Doctors Without Borders believes it is critical to improve the World Food Program’s ability to distribute general food as the global food crisis carries on.

“But increasing the quantity of food aid is not enough,” said Torrente. “Stemming and reversing the high rate of malnutrition-related deaths in the young should be a top priority.”

By providing “ready-to-use” nutrient-rich and dense foods as well as other nutritional supplements targeted to the specific needs of small children, Torrente is convinced of a promising impact.

“Enhancing existing food aid with these supplements may increase the global cost of food aid, but if the world truly seeks to contain this growing crisis, this cannot be seen as a luxury,” said Torrente.

-- Jaimie Hwang

Source: Doctors without Borders

Treating Child Malnutrition Before it Starts

Two years ago, Doctors Without Borders implemented a new strategy in Maradi, Niger to combat childhood malnutrition. They distributed a nutritionally fortified spread to 60,000 children 6-36 months old each month. At the same time, they analyzed each child's growth and health. Findings showed that even at the seasonal peak in severe malnutrition, the distributions helped to significantly lower the rate of malnutrition among children. Previously, nutritional supplements have been given once a child was determined to be malnourished. The findings of this study suggest that it would be more beneficial to provide such supplements before a child reaches the point of malnutrition.
Source: PLoS ONE

The Problem about Hunger

In his weekly op-ed column, Nicholas D. Kristof discusses the misunderstanding that most people have about hunger. The issue is not just a lack of food, but rather a lack of vital micro nutrients. Without the necessary iron, zinc, or vitamin A, the body cannot function properly and begins to deteriorate. Americans get their micronutrients from fortified foods, and this could work for those in Africa as well. The cost for fortifying foods is incredibly small, yet it would make an enormous impact. Read the full article here.

Supporting Local Farmers

The United Nations World Food Programme has recently launched P4P, "Purchase for Progress." Under this new initiative, the organization has bought food from small-scale farmers for the first time in Kenya. The goal of the project is to support local farmers, but also to give the food to the community, especially people who can't afford it. It was launched in September 2008, but purchasing food in Kenya has been difficult to to drought and high food prices. The project has been made possible by contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard Buffet Foundation, and donor governments.

Source: UN News Centre

Increased Funding for Food Program

Several days ago, the Senate approved Sen. Herb Kohl's proposal to increase funding for the "Food for Peace" program by $400 million. This funding was included in the FY09 Supplemental Appropriations bill. The senator met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last month to discuss the growing issues of food relief.
Source: Press Release

Hunger Affecting More People Than Ever

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of hungry people will rise to a record-breaking 1 billion in 2009. If their projections are correct, one-sixth of the world's population will go hungry by the end of the year. The figure is staggering; never in history has hunger affected such a huge number of people. Read the full article here.

Increased Funding to Feed Children

Several weeks ago, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the US would be spending an additional $80 million to fund four projects to feed children in Africa. This funding is in addition to the $95.5 million allocated in December. All together, the programs are expected to feed 4.2 million children in 19 countries.
Source: Reuters

Peanut Butter Business

A group of four women in Zimbabwe decided that buying peanuts from local farmers and grinding them into butter would not only provide them with a great business opportunity, but it would give their community access to a cheaper source of the nutritious supplement. Starting a business in a developing country is difficult for numerous reasons, but this didn't stop the group of entrepreneurs. With the help of Practical Action, they were able to write a business plan and take out a loan. They quickly made a profit to repay the loan, and this enabled them to grow and get better equipment. Thanks to their new peanut butter business, these four women have financial stability, savings, and can now provide a better quality of life for their families.
Source: Practical Action

Zeer Pot Refrigerator

The dry heat of Africa makes it difficult for farmers to grow vegetables. Even more difficult, however, is the task of keeping those vegetables from rotting in the sun. The zeer pot refrigerator is a simple, inexpensive solution to this problem. It consists of an earthenware pot fit into a larger pot, with a layer of wet sand between the two. As moisture from the sand evaporates, it cools the inner pot, keeping up to 12kg of produce fresh for three weeks. For poor families in Sudan, this is the only available preservation method for their food. The ingenious clay refrigerator is the difference between starvation and having enough food to eat.
Source: Practical Action

Grow Your Own Garden

The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) has launched a one-year long agricultural project in Ecuador, teaching 400 families about effective gardening techniques. Participants get the chance to learn how to grow their own home gardens, and also take part in nutritional workshops. As a result, these families will have easier access to healthy food, and their incomes can be used for other necessities.
Source: AlertNet

Chocolate on a Mission

Kuapa Kokoo is a co-op of cocoa farmers in Ghana, set up in the early 1990s. By pooling their resources, farmers were able to gain control of trading their own cocoa, managing the selling process more efficiently than government cocoa agents. One important aspect they oversee is measuring the crops, making sure that the scales aren't rigged at the expense of the farmer. In 1997, they decided to set up their own chocolate company to create even more benefits for cocoa growers. Divine Chocolate is now the most popular fair-trade certified chocolate in the UK, and it was recently introduced to the US. With a mission to empower their farmers to improve their livelihoods, Kuapa Kokoo has used its success to invest in building schools, digging wells for clean drinking water, providing mobile clinics for farmers in remote villages, and creating projects to help women earn money for their families when the cocoa season is over.

Digital Soil Map to Help Farmers

Uganda will be soon benefit from an $18 million digital map of Africa's depleted soil. The project, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, will collect samples of soil from different regions. Composite samples of 12 or more cores from one region will be analyzed for their pH content, levels of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, zinc and manganese. Knowing more about what kind of soil they are working with and what fertilizer would be best, farmers can be more effective with their agricultural techniques.
Source: allAfrica.com

Honey Business

Honey is one of the most valuable products of the driest parts of Africa. The climate, diversity of flowering plants, and easy access to freshwater contributes to the large number of bees in Kenya, making it Africa's biggest honey producer. Bee keepers make their own hives by hollowing out large logs, and carefully laying down beeswax to guide bees in making their honeycombs in neat lines for easy removal. A coffee mesh is used to keep the queen bee away from the honeycombs to keep her from laying eggs in there. In 2008, 8 tons of raw honey were harvested by 40 bee keepers. Making profit on the honey, the bee keepers also sell candles made from the beeswax.
Source: AfriGadget

Senate Proposes a New Bill

Last month, the Senate introduced bill S.384, "Global Food Security Act of 2009". This legislation proposes an increase in financial aid to developing foreign countries to improve agriculture, food security, rural economies, emergency response to food crises, and ultimately poverty alleviation. The proposed budget changes would take place throughout fiscal years 2010-2014. Read more about this bill and keep up with its status here. Make sure to call your congressional leaders and voice your support!

Organic Food Production Option for Improvement in Africa

According to a research note from UNCTAD, even as demand for most products is dropping fast in this current economic crisis, demand for organic products continues to grow, creating an opportunity for farmers in poor countries. "Studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America indicate that organic farmers earn more than their conventional counterparts," the note said, estimating that organic foods carry price premiums for farmers ranging from 30 to 200 percent. Drawing on a study of 331 Ugandan farmers, it concluded that "conversion to organic was fairly easy, involved little risk and required few, if any, fixed investments. The organic households became more food-secure due to higher incomes." In Africa, where agriculture accounts for 57 percent of employment but just 11 percent of export earnings, UNCTAD said ecological farming techniques could have an especially large impact.

Record- Breaking Grocery Bill

In 2008, the World Food Programme (WFP) has purchased a record-breaking 552,000 metric tons of food in southern Africa, spending US$190 million on cereals, pulses, vegetable oil, corn-soya blend, salt and sugar. This is the equivalent of providing 2.75 million hungry people with a full food basket for an entire year. The previous record was in 2005, when the WPF spent US$100 million on 500,000 metric tons of food. “At a time of high food prices, buying in southern Africa has still proven to be both cost efficient as well as extremely effective in supporting small farmers and traders and stimulating local agricultural economies,” said Mustapha Darboe, WFP Regional Director for Southern, Eastern and Central Africa.
Source: WFP.org

Floating Water Gardens

The Gaibandha district of Bangladesh gets covered by water during monsoon season, making it nearly impossible to plant crops. Using the hyacinth plant to create a floating raft, a creative solution has been made for this problem. Once topped with soil and seeds, the raft becomes a floating garden that can yield crops such as gourd, okra, and other leafy vegetables. The garden is inexpensive (hyacinth is available for free locally), and very versatile. It can be used in canals, ponds, and other water sources, and is easily transported. This innovative way to harvest vegetables provides families with food even in the worst rainy seasons.

Micronutrients Make a Major Difference

Executive Director of the UN's World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, has witnessed firsthand the effects of malnutrition suffered by 230 million people in India. During her visit, it shocked her that despite the simple solutions available, malnutrition is still responsible for taking countless lives. One kernel of fortified rice added to 99 kernels of regular rice, for example, could provide an undernourished person with all the micronutrients they need. Micronutrient powder sprinkled on food also provides people with essential vitamins and minerals. Such simple products can go a long way towards eradicating malnutrition throughout the impoverished world. "The point about malnutrition is that it is not like cancer. It does not need some new scientific discovery for us to tackle it. We already have the tools to eradicate hunger, and history will judge us if we do not use them, " Sheeran declares.
Source: Ideas for Development Blog

Fuel Efficient Stoves

In Darfur, Sudan, a shortage of cooking fuel is one of the major problems faced by women. Sources of firewood near the camps are practically nonexistent, and women often get attacked when they travel farther to find other fuels. An effective solution for this issue is improved woodstoves, affordable, and easy to use. The stove's high sides improves heat transfer, speeding up the cooking process, reducing indoor air pollution, and saving up precious cooking fuels. On the outskirts of Kassala, Sudan, 150 women have been taught how to use these stoves. Along with fuel-saving tips such as using dry wood or pre-soaking beans prior to cooking, the use of these stoves has cut fuel use in half, and reduced violence towards women.