G7 leaders’ declaration on food security and nutrition:

26 - 27 May 2016. Ise-Shima, Japan. Meeting of the G7 Ministers and high representatives, and the European Commissioner responsible for the environment. This meeting follows 2015 global commitments including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. The meeting covered seven themes: the 2030 Agenda, Resource Efficiency, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Chemicals Management, the Role of Cities and Marine litter. 

 G7 leaders’ declaration on food security and nutrition:
“Ending hunger and malnutrition is a fundamental element of the 2030 Agenda. As part of a broader effort to achieve the SDGs, we commit to engage collectively in concrete actions in collaboration with relevant partners and stakeholders towards the achievement of our aim to lift 500 million people in developing countries out of hunger and malnutrition by 2030. Building on the G7 Broad Food Security and Nutrition Development Approach, we endorse the G7 Vision for Action on Food Security and Nutrition"
The G7 Vision for Action on Food Security and Nutrition outlines collective actions in the priority areas of:
  1. empowering women; 
  2. improving nutrition through a people-centered approach that recognizes the diverse food security challenges people face across the rural to urban spectrum; and 
  3. ensuring sustainability and resilience within agriculture and food systems. 
We commit to enhance synergies with relevant international initiatives. We support the development of good practices for global food security and nutrition that are in line with the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on climate change. This could include expanding farming opportunities, revitalizing rural communities, and enhancing production, productivity, responsible investment, trade and sustainability in agriculture and food systems. We welcome the International Symposium on Food Security and Nutrition to be held in Japan and the Nutrition for Growth Summit.”
Extract of the V4a (Vision for Action) (page 4)
Enhanced synergies and engagement with broad stakeholders and other fora: 
The G7 will seek further synergies with the G20 and its efforts on food security and nutrition, as well as collaboration with regional efforts and fora such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), taking into consideration each region’s specific context and challenges and adjusting approaches where necessary, including by utilizing such opportunities as the Sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VI: 27 to 28 August 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya).

Recalling the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, the G7 emphasizes the critical importance of mobilizing multiple streams of financing to achieve the 2030 Agenda. The G7 will work with relevant stakeholders to more effectively and sustainably mobilize resources for food security, complementing a similar exercise by the SUN Movement for nutrition. The G7 welcomes further efforts in leveraging private investments such as that demonstrated in the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). 

The G7 will raise awareness on the issues that this V4A puts forward, and promote aligned actions and coherence in implementation, among all stakeholders including developing country partners, other donors, including through the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development (GDPRD), international and regional organizations, multilateral development banks, researchers and academics, and philanthropic organizations. The G7 will foster continued collaboration with the private sector and civil society, including through the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. The G7 will seek opportunities to engage in multi-stakeholder dialogue, making full use of relevant fora and platforms on food security and nutrition, particularly the CFS.

Forthcoming:
  • Symposium on Food Security and Nutrition Japan 
  • 4th of August 2016. The Second High Level Summit on Nutrition will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the biggest global event between now and 2020 to address the devastating burden of undernutrition.
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Awarded grants of the Dutch Food & Business Global Challenges Programme Call

20 May 2016. Five Integrated Projects have been awarded grants within the third Call of the Food and Business Global Challenges Programme (GCP). The theme of the NWO-WOTRO Call, selected and developed by the Food & Business Knowledge Platform (F and BKP), is “Transformation of food systems with a focus on sustainability and urbanization.”

Please find below a list of this month’s awarded Integrated Projects, linking to their own Research Projects page on this website.

Sustaining food supplies and improving health: Integration of small farmers into modern value chains with food safety standards in Kenya
Contamination with fungal toxins is a prominent food safety concern in tropical regions. Aflatoxin, a fungal toxin common in maize and groundnut, affects much of African produce. Besides exacting a significant health toll, it impedes farmers’ access to global food markets and high-value domestic markets. This project will develop and test business models to support the scale-up of a biocontrol product - Aflasafe, to combat aflatoxin among smallholder maize farmers in Kenya.

Cocoa crop improvement, farms and markets: a science-based approach to sustainably improving farmer food security in Ghana and Ivory Coast
Cocoa farmers in West Africa face poor productivity due to constraints at the crop, field, farm and sector level. To ensure farmers’ livelihoods, yields need to increase sustainably. This research will investigate the effect of field level practices on cocoa productivity. The suitability of different (combinations of) practices for different smallholder farm systems in Ghana and Ivory Coast will be explored. Effective delivery of the services supporting these practices will be co-developed with public and private partners.

Scaling-up nutrition-sensitive agricultural initiatives in poor mountainous areas in Vietnam and Lao PDR
Food insecurity and malnutrition remain persistent challenges among upland populations in Asia. Interventions are often fragmented and address immediate rather than underlying causes. Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture (NSA) is a relatively new inter-sectoral, multi-level food system approach aiming to maximise agriculture’s contribution to improved food security and nutrition. Building upon existing interventions in Vietnam and Lao PDR, this project generates evidence on the effectiveness of, and best way to scale-up, NSA amongst ethnic minorities in mountainous areas.

Fish for food security in city regions of India and Ghana: an interregional innovation project (Fish4Food)
Seafood is vital to the health and food security of millions of poor consumers in rapidly expanding city regions in the global south. This project aims to understand how low-price fish chains contribute to urban food security in India and Ghana and to identify policy and business interventions that have potential to improve them.

Horticultural food systems based on ecologically intensive production and socio-economically sustainable value chains in the transition economies Chile and Uruguay (HortEco)
While consumption of vegetables in emerging economies falls well short of dietary recommendations, vegetable production contributes to environmental pollution and health risks. This project will engage with small farmers and organizations involved in low-or-no-pesticide production methods in Chile and Uruguay to develop more effective production, knowledge sharing methods and collaborative value chains.
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Ghana Launches US$113m Agric Project


NaijaAgroNet:
A six-year project worth US$113million, about N22.4bn to promote and scale-up agricultural value chains tagged ‘Ghana Sector Investment Programme’ (GASIP) has been launched in Tamale, Ghana, NaijaAgroNet reports.

The project which is being funded by the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) – a United Nations Food Agency – and implemented by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) is aimed at supporting infrastructure development, technology transfer, conservation farming and research to ensure the production of quality food crops to meet demands of the market.

GASIP, NaijaAgroNet gathered is anticipated to help about 12,000 rural households, especially women and young people to improve their economic activities and livelihoodsand is a great step towards realising Ghana’s medium-term agricultural sector investment (METASIP).

The implementation of GASIP is intended to drive its policy to enhance the economy and was designed differently from past projects wherein supply-driven projects such as roads, irrigation schemes and warehouses were pre-determined at the design stage — which resulted in several “white elephants” because the project designers assumed they knew what the people wanted.

Okoli Vincent/GEE

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Exclusive: Nigeria, 36 other countries need external food assistance

Some 37 countries globally including Nigeria are in need of external food assistance, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisaton (FAO), reports NaijaAgroNet.

Other countries comprised of Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Haiti, Iraq, and Kenya.


Equally affected based on FAO outline include Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe.


Also, FAO raised its forecast for global cereal production in 2016 to 2,539 million tonnes, up 17.3 million tonnes from its previous May projection and up 0.6 percent from last year's harvest. 

Aggregate cereal production in Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDCs) is also forecast to increase to 420 million tonnes in 2016, led by a recovery in rice and wheat production in India after last year reduction due to El Niño-related drought.  That would be a 2.5 percent increase from last year's "sharply reduced" level.


NaijaAgroNet, in spite of the improved world production prospects in 2016, output would still fall slightly short of the projected demand in 2016/17, meaning global stocks would need to be drawn down from their near-record level.


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Conflicts, Droughts Exacerbate Food Insecurity

Drought linked to El Niño and civil conflict has pushed the number of countries currently in need of external food assistance up to 37 from 34 in March, according to a new FAO report.

The new edition of the Crop Prospects and Food Situation report sighted by NaijaAgoNet, adds that Papua New Guinea, Haiti and Nigeria to the list of countries requiring outside help to feed their own populations or communities of refugees they are hosting.


In Haiti, NaijaAgoNet gathered the output of cereals and starchy roots in 2015 dropped to its lowest level in 12 years. Around 3.6 million people, more than one-third of the population, are food insecure, almost half of them "severely", while at least 200 000 are in an extreme food emergency situation.

According to the report, Haiti's woes are largely due to El Niño, which has also exacerbated the worst drought in decades in Central America's dry corridor.


In Southern Africa, El Niño impacts have significantly worsened food security and the 2016 cereal harvest currently underway is expected to drop by 26 percent from the already reduced level of the previous year, triggering a "substantial rise" in maize prices and import requirements in the coming marketing year.


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