The pandemic of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-Cov-1, could almost double global hunger by the end of the year, putting an additional 130 million people at risk due to weaker trade flows and loss of income, the World Food Program has announced. Program WFO) of the United Nations.
Most of it will happen in Africa. In many places, farmers cannot buy seeds or fertilizer because of the gridlock or reach the market to sell their crops. In West Africa, traders said they had to throw away fresh produce because they could not export and sell it.
"If we can transport soldiers and ammunition, we can also transport food", appealed at the end of May 2020 and Idris Elba, British actor and UN goodwill ambassador whose father is from Sierra Leone and mother from Ghana, who is known, among others , and for the role of Nelson Mandela in the film Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), the films Thor, Avengers, the series Luther and The Wire...
In his appeal, Elba also assessed that governments should consider using military resources to help the most vulnerable.
National food security
IFAD has pledged $40 million to the new US fund and is providing cash transfers to farmers, distributing seeds and fertilizers and in some places negotiating with authorities to get food to market.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has pledged $40 million to a new United Nations fund and is providing cash transfers to farmers, distributing seeds and fertilizers, and in some places negotiating with authorities to get food to market.
"The combined effects of climate change, exacerbated by locust infestations, exacerbated by COVID-19, mean that there has been a complete disruption of all food supply chains," warned Sara Mbago-Bhunu, IFAD's director for Eastern and Southern Africa.
Michael Fakhri, the new United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, said that "people must regain control of the food supply chain after the coronavirus".
He says that "the problem has been and remains in distribution and sharing for decades." He believes that communities or individuals must have control and power over the way the food system is created and that system must be responsible towards the most vulnerable.
He warned of the importance of workers in the food industry, from farms to factories, and in an interview with Reuters expressed his hope that the COVID-19 pandemic "will build momentum that will give people more control over what they eat and how food is produced."
Marie Haga, a Norwegian diplomat and vice-president of IFAD, warned that "what started as a health crisis could become a food crisis if we do not act immediately".
"We've all seen the stories of heroic supermarket workers stocking shelves with food and risking their own health so that a population confined to their homes can still eat. What we don't see are the small producers working in remote areas far from the cameras, who still grow food that is crucial for national and food security in developing countries," Haga emphasized in the blog.
She pointed to the fact that a large number of these people, especially in developing countries, do not have access to healthcare, medicines, water and other sanitary needs, and today not even to seeds and fertilizers. As an example, she cited sub-Saharan Africa, where 80 percent are small farmers and where it is difficult to develop industrial agriculture. She cited Bosnia and Herzegovina as another example.
"For example, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, IFAD cooperates with the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry to protect local food systems by distributing packages to small farms. Support packages contain fertilizer, seeds and seed material from basic vegetable crops.
This enables small farmers to meet their own food needs as well as the needs of the local population. In total, it is expected that the initiative could reach 9.000 small farms", stated Haga in the blog.
According to the 2019 report Critical perspective on food systems, food crises and the future of the right to food, by the UN Human Rights Council, about 3,1 billion people live and survive exclusively from their own agricultural production.
About 15,8 million people around the world go hungry every day, while 113 million people in the world occasionally go hungry or are at risk of going hungry. About 1,3 billion people are employed as workers in the agricultural industry, and 80 percent of them work as day laborers, have no health and pension insurance, and are often paid only in food.
As much as 80 percent of the poorest people live in rural areas, and 20 percent of them do not have their own land on which they could produce some food, it is stated, among other things, in this report for 2019. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the prognosis has worsened.
The International Food Policy Institute estimates, for example, that an additional 140 million people could fall into extreme poverty this year as a result of the pandemic, while a recent United Nations University study said global poverty could rise for the first time since 1990.
Rising unemployment
IFAD states that the lives of rural women and men have already been deeply affected by the crisis caused by COVID-19 and that the situation is most difficult in Asia and the Pacific region, but that the situation is also worsening in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Europe as well as in South America. and in the Caribbean.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has estimated that 200 million people worldwide could lose their jobs as a result of the pandemic.
For example, the unemployment rate in the United States in September 2019 was about 3,5 percent, and according to data from May 2020, that rate would be about 14,7 percent, that is, close to 39 million Americans lost their jobs in just nine weeks , from the beginning of March to the end of April.
"The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is attacking the core of societies, claiming lives and livelihoods. The potential long-term effects on the global economy and the economies of individual countries are dire. I call on everyone to act together in order to solve this impact and reduce the impact on people", warned the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Program (WFP) and the World Bank (WB) called in a joint statement on April 21 for the coordinated action of all the countries of the world, especially the richest countries and the community gathered in the G20. Among other things, they stated that "agriculture and agriculture-related logistics should be considered key and efforts should be intensified to ensure that food production and distribution chains function well, as well as to promote the production and availability of diverse, safe and nutritious food products for all".
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