Mauritania is not new to food crises; in the last few years it has suffered from drought and swarms of locusts that have ravaged people’s cereal harvests. It is a land where water is scarce and where people suffer from chronic poverty.

In its latest emergency response, Oxfam worked to make the connection between emergency food aid, and disaster preparedness. We supported communities to develop ‘fallbacks’ through the formation of Cereal Banks and by encouraging community-level vegetable more...

The 16th Session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development was held in New York in May 2008. This year, the session was dedicated to reviewing issues related to Agriculture, Rural Development, Land, Drought, Desertification and Africa. Indigenous Briefs is a collection of issue papers examining these topics from African indigenous perspectives.

With the advent of supermarkets in urban centres in many developing countries, the question of their impact on access to food and food security for the urban poor has arisen. This paper examines the consequences, and also looks at the effect supermarkets can have rural agriculture and food security.

Supermarkets can provide better quality products to better-off consumers in developing countries, and thus contribute positively to their food security. With some food commodities, supermarkets ar more...

The objective of this paper is to highlight the contribution that inland and coastal small-scale fisheries can make to poverty alleviation and food security and to make practical suggestions on ways that this contribution can be maximised.

In particular the paper discusses:

* the concepts of poverty, vulnerability and food security, and how these concepts have evolved in recent years within the field of fisheries
* the actual and potential contribution of small-scale fisheries to more...

This report summarises the results of a study of the food security outlook for Southern Africa, highlighting the major threats to food security in the period October 2007 to March 2008. It incorporates the findings from six country outlooks, and aims to provide a basis for regional and global resource allocation and contingency planning, as well as in-country planning.

The following early warning priorities are highlighted:

* in Zimbabwe, food security has deteriorated in most of the c more...

The FEWS NET Outlook for Southern Africa incorporates the findings from six country outlooks for the period October
2007 to March 2008. This outlook provides a basis for regional and global resource allocation and contingency planning, as
well as in-country planning. This report summarizes the results of this process for Southern Africa, highlighting what FEWS
NET believes are the major threats to food security in the period October 2007 to March 2008.
The most likely regional food security more...

Outreach Contributions 2007/2008: (Activities listed as most recent from Sept 30, 2008 back to Oct 1, 2007)

OHANNESBURG, 20 June 2008 (IRIN) - With global high food prices apparently here to stay, economists in South Africa warn that despite a bumper maize harvest, worldwide demand and soaring agricultural input prices mean that even maize-meal, the country's staple, could be off the menu.

Food prices in South Africa have risen by 15.7 percent since April 2007, and maize-meal – a stiff porridge, the starch of choice - had gone up by over 25 percent, Patrick Kelly, Consumer Price Index Manager at more...

NEW YORK, 27 June 2008 (IRIN) - The worst floods in the Midwest in 15 years have helped maize prices surge to unprecedented levels, leading to calls for Washington to release more conservation land for cultivation and to reduce minimum ethanol production requirements.

But in a sign of the nervousness of a food commodities market already traumatised by relentlessly soaring prices, the latest hike came before any clear production figures were released.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA more...

ROME, 3 June 2008 (IRIN) - At least seven countries - almost all in Africa - are rated as highly vulnerable to rising food costs, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Gambia, Liberia, Mauritania, Niger, Zimbabwe, and Jordan and Moldova - which have all chalked up high levels of debt - could be forced to spend as much as two percent of their gross domestic product on importing food. Most of these countries are already struggling with chronic hunger, so soaring food cost more...