Letters — for 2012-10-11 00:00:00

Government actions to blame Regarding the Sept. 6 story “Latest feed crisis may be too much for the battered hog sector, I believe there is another very important factor that should not be disregarded. For every action, there is and will be, an opposite and equal reaction. The final straw, in this most recent case,

Urgent action needed as Sahel food emergency grows

Reuters / As many as 18 million people are being hit by a growing food emergency in the Sahel region of Africa, international donors and campaigners said June 18, calling for urgent action to prevent mass hunger in the vast area south of the Sahara Desert. Leaders from Sahel countries and donors such as the


UN envoy says Canada needs a “right to food strategy”

The special rapporteur on the right to food's visit marks the first time the UN has 
dispatched an official to investigate food insecurity in a developed country

If everyone using a food bank in Manitoba lived in one place, it would be the province’s second-largest city. There are approximately 56,000 Manitobans who lack access to food because they either can’t afford it, or have nowhere to produce any themselves — or both. They are the Manitobans that Winnipeg Harvest has been trying

Closing gender gap seen key in food security fight

Apolicy aimed at ensuring future security of food supplies must centre around the world’s 500 million smallholder producers, many of whom are women who farm less than two hectares of land, a leading United Nations official said Dec. 14. “Unless they are at the centre of the future strategies for food security, we will not


New FAO chief says food prices may ease in 2012

Jose Graziano da Silva, the Brazilian who replaced Senegal’s Jacques Diouf at the helm of the FAO at the start of 2012, said volatility in food markets was likely to continue and that, “Prices will not be going up as in the sense of the last two to three years but will also not drop

U.S. Must Lead Fight Against Hunger — Bill Gates

Billionaire Bill Gates knows how to end the poverty and hunger that afflicts nearly one billion people worldwide – help them grow more food. At a food security conference May 24, Gates called for U.S. leadership in a global campaign to expand food production. Agriculture ministers of the Group of 20 major developing and emerging


UN Expert Urges Huge Investment In Small Farmers

Asenior United Nations food expert appealed June 20 for a massive investment in smallholder farming to end poverty and hunger. In an interview before the G20 meeting of farm ministers, Josef Schmidhuber, deputy director of the statistics division of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said local poverty was the root cause of hunger, not

Food Security Key To Global Peace FAO Candidate

The world has to act against hunger, which affects 13 per cent of the population, if it wants to strengthen global security, a candidate to run the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said April 27. Franz Fischler, an Austrian who is former EU agriculture commissioner, said during an interview the whipsaw effect of volatile food