Food shortages are the root cause of poverty in Zimbabwe’s Gutu district. Rainfall is generally low and erratic. In most places the soil is sandy and over-cultivated. High population density means that the vast majority of the district’s 40,000 households are restricted to farming on small plots. By the mid-2000s the effect of an economic crisis on the government’s agricultural budget and an over-reliance on growing maize, a crop that requires high rainfall, had drastically undermined food security in Gutu. Following a severe drought in 2005, the Chinyika Communities Development Project was conceived to overcome the persistent threat of food shortages – and even famine – in Gutu. The objective was to persuade farmers dependent on maize production to plant finger millet, a neglected crop that is indigenous to Zimbabwe. Finger millet is drought-resistant and better suited to semi-arid and arid areas than maize. Although its cultivation is more labour-intensive, it requires fewer expensive inputs than maize. It is also highly nutritious and can be stored for up to 25 years. By 2014 almost every household in Gutu had participated in the project. Farmers with a nucleus of finger millet production each have 3-5 years of strategic food reserves and the collective capacity to produce a surplus of up to 2,000 tons a year. Accumulated reserves of finger millet exceed 20,000 tons. Families in Gutu now have a stable, dependable supply of food. This has been achieved without any external intervention or funding. The success of the Chinyika Communities Development Project was grounded in participatory research, community engagement and local ownership. The narrative is about much more than switching from one crop to another. A stable supply of food – and behavioural change – has imbued farmers with the confidence to pursue various income-generating activities. In Gutu, finger millet has been the key to the emergence of a diversified and innovative family farming system.
Poverty and health
According to this report by Oxfam, the global food system works only for the few but not for most of the world’s population. It leaves billions of consumers lacking sufficient power and knowledge about what they buy and eat and the majority of small food producers disempowered and unable to fulfill their productive potential. The failure of the system flows from failures of government – failures to regulate, correct, protect, resist and invest – which mean that companies, interest groups, and elites are able to plunder resources and to redirect flows of finance, knowledge, and food. Oxfam highlights the need to address the inequities which plague the food system. They argue that global agriculture produces more food than the world’s population needs, much of which is thrown away. Hunger and poverty are concentrated in rural areas, with smallholder food producers routinely deprived of the resources they need to thrive, like water, technology, investment and credit. Large areas of land in Africa and elsewhere are being sold off to foreign investors at rock bottom prices, in deals that offer little to local communities. The report presents new research forecasting price rises for staple grains in the range of 120–180% within the next two decades, as resource pressures mount and climate change takes hold.
This paper raises some critical issues in the economic analysis of growth, inequality and poverty. It explores the relationship between growth and inequality, and looks into policies and institutions that are causally related to equitable growth. The author argues that in as much as progress has been made by economic literature, relatively little is known about how a society comes to acquire good policies and institutions, and exactly what is being offered when accepting the Millennium Development Goal of halving the incidence of income poverty by the year 2015.
This report raises that World Bank, USAID, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) are pressuring African governments into harmonising seed laws relating to border control measures, phytosanitary control, variety release systems, certification standards and intellectual property rights, and indicate that this is to the detriment of African small-holder farmers and their seed systems. Harmonised intellectual property rights over seeds are based on the 1991 Act of the International Union of the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV) as developed by industrialised countries, and the authors argue that this Act is inappropriate for Africa where 80% of all seeds are still produced and disseminated by smallholder farmers. The authors report that seed harmonisation efforts have excluded farmer and civil society participation and that the current practices of small-scale African farmers and their contribution to seed breeding, genetic diversity and food security are not recognised.
The World Bank is preparing a new agriculture action plan to cover 2013-2015. This paper argues that its market liberalisation focus has been criticised, pointing to strongly critical reports on World Bank agriculture projects such as in Peru and Papua New Guinea, and crtique of its lack of gender focus. Critics argue that the Bank is too narrowly focused on private equity investment in agriculture, instead of taking an approach that includes local communities and smallholder farmers. At the same time, the Bank has failed to acknowledge the impact of financial speculation on volatility in food prices, despite many analysts suggesting this is a major contributor to food insecurity. By promoting investor access to land, the authors argue that Bank threaten rather than improve food security and local livelihoods in developing countries.
This paper presents a descriptive account of health and economic status in India and South Africa – countries in very different positions in the international hierarchy of life expectancy and income. It analyses the correlates of health and wellbeing in our sites.
According to this policy brief, significant gains for both health and climate can be attained by providing access to clean cookstoves and fuels for the 2.7 billion people still dependent on the use of rudimentary, traditional biomass and coal stoves. These stoves are estimated to directly cause about two million deaths annually, including over one million deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and almost another million deaths from pneumonia in children under the age of five. The World Health Organisation estimates that 11% of all chronic lung disease burden in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa among adults over 30 could be averted in less than a decade by the introduction of more advanced biomass or biogas stoves, in pace with United Nations targets for universal energy access, which would also help avoid 17% of all pneumonia deaths among children under five in the same regions. Recent evidence suggests that exposure to indoor air pollution is also associated with non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, cataract and cancers, notably lung cancer.
Recent evidence of the negative impact of household air pollution on health suggests that it is time to upgrade national surveys to inform decision-making on improved fuels and cookstoves. More than 40% of the world’s population rely on solid fuels such as wood, crop residues or dung for their cooking and heating needs. Household air pollution, caused by cooking indoors with solid fuels, is the third leading risk factor for morbidity and mortality globally. In 2010, 3.5 million deaths and 4.3% of global disability adjusted life years were attributable to household air pollution. Pollutants from inefficient combustion of solid fuels, especially black carbon particles, also contribute to global climate change. This study discusses the implications of cooking apparatus, fuel collection practices, air pollution exposure and fuels for other purposes. The morbidity and mortality linked to cooking with solid fuels are significant, with particular implications for women and children. The impetus for assessing new indicators is motivated by a need to more fully understand how the household energy sector is changing in low- and middle-income countries. The information gained from improved indicators has the potential to better inform the targeting of resources and design of strategies for reducing household air pollution.
This informal document aims at informing policymakers how best to consider the social determinants of health in the post-2015 global thematic consultations organised under the United Nations Development Group. It illustrates the concept of the social determinants of health as applied to the thematic groups, gives examples of why health is important to each theme and shows how each theme could contribute to health. In order to reduce health inequities, the UN Platform argues that there is a need to address the wider socioeconomic and structural factors that influence how people become sick, what risk factors they are exposed to, how they access services, and how they use those services. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels. Integrated policy approaches are necessary in order to address the complexity of health inequities, including through national social protection floors, which address income security and the goal to establish universal access to health care simultaneously.
In order to reduce health inequities, there is a need to address the wider socioeconomic and structural factors that influence how people become sick, what risk factors they are exposed to, how they access services, and how they use those services. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels. This joint statement argues that integrated policy approaches are necessary in order to address the complexity of health inequities, including through national social protection floors, which address income security and the goal to establish universal access to health care simultaneously. Health policy generally, and health equity in particular, to a large extent depend on decisions made in sectors other than health, and are fundamentally linked to several interrelated issues such as governance, environment, education, employment, social security, food, housing, water, transport and energy. It means that health outcomes cannot be achieved by taking action in the health sector alone, and that actions in other sectors are critical. Failing to address the social determinants of health has held back progress on existing global health and development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals. The joint statement outlines the actions to be taken to address the social determinants of health, sector by sector.