GROW Garden

Food Prices in Somalia Soar on Drought, Conflict, and Displacement

 

WASHINGTON, August 15, 2011−Global food prices are at high levels and when combined with continued volatility, put the poorest people in the developing world at continued risk, according to the World Bank Group’s Food Price Watch released today.

 

While the emergency in the Horn of Africa was triggered by prolonged droughts, especially in areas struggling with conflict and internal displacement such as Somalia, food prices that are near the record high levels seen in 2008 also contributed to the situation, the report said. Over the last three months, reportedly 29,000 children under five have died in Somalia and 600,000 children in the region remain at risk in the ongoing crisis that is threatening the lives and livelihoods of more than 12 million people.

 

"Nowhere are high food prices, poverty and instability combining to produce tragic suffering more than in the Horn of Africa,” said World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick. “The World Bank is stepping up with short term help through safety nets to the poor and the vulnerable in places like Kenya and Ethiopia, along with medium term support for economic recovery. Long term support is also critical to build drought resilience and implement climate-smart farming."

 

The Food Price Watch says global food prices in July 2011 remain significantly higher than a year ago. Prices overall remained 33 percent higher than a year ago with commodities such as maize (up 84 percent), sugar (up 62 percent), wheat (up 55 percent) and soybean oil (up 47 percent) contributing to the increase. Crude oil prices are 45 percent higher from July 2010 levels, affecting production costs and the price of fertilizers, which increased by 67 percent over the same period. Prices from April through July settled roughly five percent below the recent spike in February 2011 due to modest declines in grains, fats and oil, and other foods such as meat, fruits, and sugar. However, prices of some commodities remained volatile during this period. For example, maize and wheat prices declined in June and then increased in the first half of July. The price of rice fell from February to May, but has since increased.

 

“Persistently high food prices and low food stocks indicate that we’re still in the danger zone, with the most vulnerable people the least able to cope,” Zoellick said. “Vigilance is vital given the uncertainties and volatility that exists today. There is no cushion.”

 

The quarterly report warns that vigilance is needed as global food stocks remain low and expected volatility in the prices of sugar, rice, and petroleum products could have unexpected effects on food prices in the months ahead. Uncertainties about the global economy combined with the political situation in the Middle East and North Africa region will likely to keep oil prices volatile in the short term, it added.

 

Domestic food prices continued to be volatile across countries. Maize prices, for instance, were up more than 100 percent in Kampala, Mogadishu and Kigali markets in the 12 months to June; while prices for maize fell 19 percent in Port-au-Prince and Mexico City. In the midst of these large price variations, domestic prices of key staples increased sharply in a number of regions in the past quarter, notably in Central and South America and East Africa. The report also says sustained increases in food prices are driving up inflation in a number of countries such as Ethiopia and Guatemala among others.

 

In Somalia, prices of locally produced cereals have continued to increase in all regions since October 2010 and have now exceeded their 2008 peak levels. Prices of the two major commodities that are domestically produced, red sorghum and white maize, have increased up to 240 percent and 154 percent respectively. Prices of imported commodities, such as rice, sugar, wheat flour, vegetable oil, and petrol, are also higher than a year ago.

 

Out of 3.7 million people in crisis in Somalia, 3.2 million are in urgent need and 2.8 million of these people are in the south. Poor farmers with no stock and no means to purchase food are among the worst affected, as are the displaced given their difficulties accessing food. The urban poor are suffering from increases in the cost of living and falling wages.

 

The World Bank Group is providing $686 million to save lives, improve social protection, and foster economic recovery and drought resilience for people in the Horn of Africa. Initially, the Bank will target the most vulnerable by enhancing safety nets. Economic recovery will be the focus over the next two years. In the longer term, the Bank will focus on building resilience to droughts, including investments in drought risk reduction and risk financing, as well as climate-smart agricultural practices.

 

“We are stepping up to address this crisis with a sense of urgency,” said Zoellick, who has been advocating for the G20 to put food first since the beginning of this year.

 

The G20 Agriculture Ministers meeting in June agreed to exempt humanitarian food aid from export bans and to pilot small regional emergency food reserves that could be used to replenish national safety nets. The ministers also agreed on more transparency, more coordination, stronger risk management instruments and more investment in production. The G20 Heads of State are due to meet on these issues in November.

 

How the World Bank Group is helping to put food first

·         The World Bank Group is providing $686 million to save lives, improve social protection, and foster economic recovery and drought resilience for people in the Horn of Africa. More than 12 million people are affected by the crisis.

 

·         A first-of-its-kind World Bank Group risk management product, provided by International Finance Corporation (IFC), will enable up to $4 billion in protection from volatile food prices for farmers, food producers, and consumers in developing countries.

 

·         The Global Food Crisis Response Program (GFRP) is helping some 40 million people through $1.5 billion in support.

 

·         The World Bank Group is boosting its spending on agriculture to some $6 to $8 billion a year from $4.1 billion in 2008.

 

·         Supporting the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), set up by the World Bank Group in April 2010 (at G20’s request) to assist country-led agriculture and food security plans and help promote investments in smallholder farmers. To date, six countries and Gates Foundation have pledged about $925 million over the next three years, with $520 million received.

 

·         The World Bank Group is coordinating with UN agencies through the High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis and with NGOs.

 

Contacts: 

In Washington: Michael Jelenic, (202) 473-2075, mjelenic@worldbank.org; 

In Australia: Camille Funnell, 0423 606 850, cfunnell@worldbank.org;

Aleta Moriarty, 0409 157 705, amoriarty@worldbank.org;

Broadcast Requests: Natalia Cieslik, (202) 458-9369, ncieslik@worldbank.org

 

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Large parts of East Africa are facing the world's worst food crisis, including much of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia. Across the region Oxfam's humanitarian response is aiming to reach approximately three million people.

Jeremy Hobbs, Oxfam International Executive Director, visited the region this week and reports on the desperate situation.

While it's too early to gauge the impact of Al Shabaab's withdrawal from Mogadishu, Mr. Hobbs explains that it is possible to work in Somalia despite the conflict -- with the help of local partner organizations. Oxfam is presently working with local partners to reach 300,000 people in the Somali capital with water and sanitation.

He also acknowledges that the East African crisis could have been prevented if longer-term development strategies had been in place, and governments had invested in pastoralists and small-scale agriculturalists to make them more resilient to the changing climate.

Please donate to help: http://www.oxfam.org/eastafrica

Oxfam is putting the world food crisis right under your mouse. The organization has just released an interactive map showing how countries the world over are being hurt by high and volatile food prices.

The Food Price Pressure Points Map is more than just a global snap shot of the food crisis. As part of Oxfam’s GROW campaign, the map helps illustrate which countries are at most risk and how users can help.

There are four main sections to the interactive map. A world map displays countries that are highly vulnerable to price spikes. Clicking on the red exclamation points brings up quick information on the area’s food-related problems, the causes behind them and what impact they’re having. A stats page compares malnourishment and dependency of imports. A photos page shows pictures from the ground, and the Act Now option redirects users to Oxfam’s food crisis support page for GROW.

Food prices have been hitting record peaks since 2010. The number of people without enough to eat is again rising and could soon reach more than 1 billion people globally, according to Oxfam. The food crisis is more than just poverty. Prices can spikes due to local violence, government inaction or increasingly extreme weather conditions.

Africa can feed not just itself but the world is a bold assertion to make at a time when famine stalks part of the continent.

But this is precisely the claim made by Kanayo Nwanze, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), a specialised agency of the UN. Nwanze gave a forceful intervention at Monday's emergency meeting in Rome to discuss the crisis in east Africa, where, according to the UN, an estimated 11.6 million people need humanitarian assistance in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

Nwanze drew a sharp contrast between Gansu province, in northwest China, and parts of Africa that cannot feed itself. He said like many parts of the world, Gansu suffers from frequent drought, limited water for irrigation and severe soil erosion. Yet despite the weather and the harsh environment, the farmers in the Gansu programme area are feeding themselves and increasing their incomes.

"I met one farmer whose income had risen from only $2 (£1.20) a day in 2006 to $35 a day last year," he exclaimed.

So when asked why this could be done in China but not Africa, Nwanze said the vital difference was government policy.

"What I saw in Gansu was the result of government policy to invest in rural areas and to reduce the gap between the rural and the urban and stem migration," he said in a telephone interview. "It has a very harsh environment, it has only 300 millimetres of rain annually, compared to parts of the Sahel which gets 400-600 millimetres, but the government has invested in roads and electricity. We found a community willing to transform their lives by harvesting rainwater, using biogas, terracing mountain slopes. There are crops for livestock, they are growing vegetables, wheat and maize, and generating income that allows them to build resilience."

While Somalia is a worst-case scenario, Nwanze continues, in Ethiopia and Djibouti there has been a lack of long-term investment that makes them vulnerable to climate change. "It is not enough to wait for crisis to turn to disaster to act. The rains will fail again, but governments have not invested in the ability of populations to resist drought."

Nwanze argues that Africa is facing the fallout of decades of neglecting agriculture, a fault that lies with African governments and aid donors.

"There was a shift in paradigm from agriculture to industrialisation," he said. "That's fine, but not to the extent where you neglect food and we are now facing the consequences. Even where farming is practised it's seen as a poor man's occupation. It is not seen as an attractive profession."

The figures back him up. In the mid-1990s, global official development assistance to agriculture reached $20bn before slumping to just $3bn in in the early 2000s. It is slowing rising again, reaching $9bn in 2009. In a recent report, ONE, the advocacy group, gave two reasons for the decline: complacency for the world's food supply after the dramatic improvement in food production in the 1960s and 1970s in Asia and Latin America, and the development doctrine that insisted developing countries dismantle state-owned and state-run enterprises, including agricultural research.

But, after decades of neglect, agriculture is fashionable again in development circles. Jolted by the surge in world food prices in 2009, the G8 group of rich countries and other donors committed to provide $22bn in funding for agriculture and food security. Those donors have some ground to make up to meet those pledges in the agreed three-year period, but agriculture is firmly on the international agenda. In June, G20 agriculture ministers agreed a plan of action in Paris that restated their commitments to the 2009 L'Aquila pledge and cited the importance of small farmers.

Nwanze, who welcomed the plan of action, sees small farmers as Africa's great hope. Agriculture, predominantly on a small scale, accounts for about 30% of sub-Saharan Africa's GDP and at least 40% of export value. In a number of small countries in Africa, agriculture plays an even greater role, representing 80% or more of export earnings.

The Ifad president says Africa could easily increase the use of fertilisers without making a dent on the environment, because current usage is so low. And he cites the potential to increase irrigation – only about 7% of land in the whole of Africa is irrigated, compared with more than 30% of land in Asia – and the scope for farmers to use improved seed varieties that would dramatically boost productivity.

If this seems pie in the sky, Nwanze cites a number of countries that are seeing success by focusing on agriculture – Tanzania, Rwanda and Ghana – whose governments, helped by the private sector, have made a big commitment to farming. "The potential is huge," said Nwanze. "With a little investment, Africa can feed itself and it has the potential to feed the world."

The United Nations is to convene an emergency meeting to discuss the response to Horn of Africa drought, which it says has already killed tens of thousands of people.

Famine was declared in two regions of Somalia on Wednesday – the first time this has occurred since 1992 – with 3.7 million people needing urgent humanitarian assistance. A further 8 million people require food in neighbouring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.

The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation said the meeting at its Rome headquarters on Monday would be attended by its 191 member countries, as well as NGOs, other UN organisations and the regional development bank. France, the current president of the G20 group of leading economies, called the meeting.

Topping the agenda will be discussions on how to deliver aid safely and effectively into Somalia. While the drought has been severe across the Horn, with some areas receiving the lowest rainfall for 60 years, Somalia has been worst affected because of conflict, lack of governance and the security risks facing aid groups.

Having had no effective government since the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, the country is gripped by an Islamist insurgency led by the hardline Al-Shabab militia. The group, which controls much of southern Somalia, lifted a ban earlier this month on international humanitarian groups, including the World Food Programme (WFP), but aid organisations are seeking guarantees the food will not be diverted and aid workers will be safe.

About 135,000 Somalis have fled the country since January, mainly to Ethiopia and Kenya. In recent weeks, the exodus has increased sharply, with more than 3,000 people crossing the borders each day in search of assistance. Those arriving at refugee camps such as Dadaab in northern Kenya have described their harrowing journeys to get there.

Other Somalis have fled to the capital Mogadishu in search of help. On a visit to the city on Thursday, WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said the organisation would start airlifts of food within days and was "testing the ground" to find the best ways of getting life-saving assistance to people in famine-affected areas such as Bakool and Lower Shabelle, which used to be regarded as a breadbasket for the country.

"People in the south of Somalia are too ill and weak to go in search of food, so we must bring it to them," Sheeran said. "WFP is preparing to open up a number of new routes, by land and air, into the core of the famine zone to establish the necessary operating conditions, including those that will secure the safety of humanitarian personnel."

The American government designated al-Shabab as a terrorist group last year, meaning no US aid could flow to areas under the group's control. But the US Agency for International Development said this week that it would send assistance to areas held by the insurgents, but only if it was given assurances that the rebels would not hamper distribution, levy taxes or demand bribes from aid organisations.

The Kenyan government, which already hosts more than 370,000 Somalis in Dadaab, says the flow over its border is unmanageable. Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said on Thursday that aid drops were required to get food to those affected in Somalia and to slow the flow of refugees. He also called for feeding centres to be set up within southern Somalia.

Demographers aren't known for their sense of humor, but the ones who work for the United Nations recently announced that the world's human population will hit 7 billion on Halloween this year. Since censuses and other surveys can scarcely justify such a precise calculation, it's tempting to imagine that the UN Population Division, the data shop that pinpointed the Day of 7 Billion, is hinting that we should all be afraid, be very afraid.

We have reason to be. The 21st century is not yet a dozen years old, and there are already 1 billion more people than in October 1999 — with the outlook for future energy and food supplies looking bleaker than it has for decades. It took humanity until the early 19th century to gain its first billion people; then another 1.5 billion followed over the next century and a half. In just the last 60 years the world's population has gained yet another 4.5 billion. Never before have so many animals of one species anything like our size inhabited the planet.

And this species interacts with its surroundings far more intensely than any other ever has. Planet Earth has become Planet Humanity, as we co-opt its carbon, water, and nitrogen cycles so completely that no other force can compare. For the first time in life's 3-billion-plus-year history, one form of life — ours — condemns to extinction significant proportions of the plants and animals that are our only known companions in the universe.

Did someone just remark that these impacts don't stem from our population, but from our consumption? Probably, as this assertion emerges often from journals, books, and the blogosphere. It's as though a geometry text were to propound the axiom that it is not length that determines the area of a rectangle, but width. Would we worry about our individual consumption of energy and natural resources if humanity still had the stable population of roughly 300 million people — less than today's U.S. number — that the species maintained throughout the first millennium of the current era?

LAST MONTH, the Senate voted 73 to 27 for an amendment that would have immediately cut two indefensible federal ethanol subsidies. But the bill lawmakers attached it to failed. Now supporters of the policy are trying to pass it some other way, affixed to another bill or as part of the deal the White House and Republicans will eventually strike (we trust) on raising the federal debt limit.

Either way, the supports must go. Congress has protected ethanol three ways: with a $6 billion-a-year tax subsidy to those who blend it into gasoline, a tariff on competing imports and a mandate that billions of gallons enter Americans’ fuel tanks every year, which come on top of three decades of federal patronage of the industry. The Senate voted to get rid of the first two, which would still leave a federal mandate guaranteeing ethanol a market — a comfort that other businesses would be giddy to have.