Tag Archives: food shortages

Vice President Pence to visit Guatemala volcano victims: White House

Rescue workers continue to search for human remains, after the eruption of the Fuego volcano, in San Miguel Los Lotes in Escuintla, Guatemala June 14, 2018. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Mike Pence plans to visit volcano victims in Guatemala as part of a three-nation trip at the end of the month aimed at building Latin American ties and pressuring Venezuela, a White House official said on Thursday.

Pence is scheduled to head to Brasilia during the last week of June, followed by a stop in the northern Amazonian city of Manaus, which is grappling with refugees who have fled Venezuela’s economic crisis, the official said.

Rescue workers continue to search for human remains, after the eruption of the Fuego volcano, in San Miguel Los Lotes in Escuintla, Guatemala June 14, 2018. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria

Rescue workers continue to search for human remains, after the eruption of the Fuego volcano, in San Miguel Los Lotes in Escuintla, Guatemala June 14, 2018. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria

Pence has led the U.S. diplomatic push to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the socialist leader who the Trump administration blames for the deep recession and hyperinflation that have caused shortages of food and medicine in the once oil-rich

nation.

Washington has stepped up economic sanctions against individuals connected to Maduro and refused to recognize his re-election in a May 20 vote. Both countries have expelled each others’ diplomats.

Trump has considered more sanctions on services related to oil shipments from the OPEC member nation, but so far has not opted to act on those.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks before President Donald Trump during a rally with supporters at North Side middle school in Elkhart, Indiana, U.S., May 10, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks before President Donald Trump during a rally with supporters at North Side middle school in Elkhart, Indiana, U.S., May 10, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

During the past year, Pence has visited leaders in Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Panama and Peru. At the end of June, he will also visit Quito, Ecuador, before stopping in Guatemala.

At least 109 people were killed by a massive eruption of Guatemala’s Fuego volcano on June 3 that buried villagers in scalding ash and left nearly 200 missing.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Bill Berkrot)

A Venezuelan paradox: Maduro’s critics long for change but won’t vote

A motorcycle passes graffiti painted on a fence in Caracas, Venezuela May 12, 2018. Graffiti reads: "Do not vote, please I beg you". Picture taken on May 12, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

By Brian Ellsworth

CARACAS (Reuters) – Months before Venezuela’s opposition coalition called for abstention in Sunday’s presidential election, college student Ana Romano had already decided not to vote.

While volunteering as a witness in October’s election for state governors, Romano said, she lost count of the number of times activists for the ruling Socialist Party walked into voting booths on the pretext of “assisting” voters – a tactic the opposition says is illegal intimidation.

Romano said pro-government workers at the voting center in the rural state of Portuguesa also refused to close its doors at 6:00 p.m. as per regulations, keeping it open for an extra hour while Socialist Party cadres rounded up votes.

Her experience illustrates why some in Venezuela’s opposition say they will boycott Sunday’s presidential vote despite anger at the South American nation’s unraveling under unpopular President Nicolas Maduro.

“It was four of them against me and I was 20 years old: I couldn’t do anything,” Romano said, adding that she did not file an official report because the other poll center workers would not have signed it – and because there was no paper available to do so.

“I don’t want to have anything to do with this upcoming election,” Romano said. “We’ve already made that mistake.”

Reuters could not independently verify details of her account. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council – the government body in charge of organizing elections – did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

Venezuela, a once-wealthy OPEC nation, is suffering hyperinflation and widespread food shortages as its economy collapses, leading hundreds of thousands to flee into neighboring countries.

Yet, despite popularity ratings languishing around 20 percent, Maduro is expected to secure a second, six-year term in his deeply divided country, in part due to low opposition turnout.

Some opposition members say participation would be pointless in the face of efforts to tilt the playing field in favor of Maduro, a former union leader who was elected in 2013 after the death of his mentor, late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

They cite tactics ranging from the kind of small-scale election-center tricks described by Romano to the detention of the most prominent opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, the coercion of government workers to vote for Maduro and the heavy use of state resources in his campaign.

Many in the opposition say there are inadequate guarantees of a free and fair vote: they point to a ban on Western election observers. The government says they would violate its national sovereignty.

The Venezuelan Electoral Observatory, an independent local election monitoring group, has also flagged problems that include an inadequate timeframe to update the electoral register and develop a network of poll center witnesses, and a reduction in real-time audits of results.

Washington, which has imposed sanctions on Maduro’s government, has said it will not recognize the results of Sunday’s vote.

Breaking the opposition boycott is former state governor Henri Falcon. Opposition leaders have attacked Falcon – a former Chavez ally or ‘Chavista’ – as a stooge who is only running to legitimize Maduro’s reelection.

Falcon, an ex-soldier and two-time governor of Lara state, counters that they are ceding power to Maduro without a fight and insists he would win if discontented Venezuelans turned out to vote.

“So now I’m a ‘Chavista’ just because I have common sense, because I take a clear position and because I act responsibly toward my country?” Falcon said when asked recently by reporters about the opposition’s criticism.

Falcon’s camp was not immediately available for comment for this story.

Maduro and allies deny the elections are unfair and insist the fractured opposition was beaten in October because its voters did not participate – an argument supported by statistics showing low turnout in its strongholds.

“We have an advantage, which is the strength of the people. That can’t be called an unfair advantage,” Maduro said last month.

Participation forecasts vary but, in general, pollsters believe turnout for Sunday’s vote will be far lower than the 80 percent in the last presidential elections in 2013, when Maduro narrowly defeated opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, who is banned from running this time.

One survey by respected pollster Datanalisis showed that the number of people who said they were “very likely” to vote – its most accurate indicator of how many people will participate – had fallen close to 30 percent in March.

In the Caracas slum of La Vega, Jose Vasquez, 49, described the election as too unfair to warrant participation.

“It’s like a game in which the referee is a family member of the other team’s captain,” said Vasquez, selling 40 gram (1 oz) bags of coffee and sugar on a small table in the street. “Why would I waste my time?

ELECTORAL OBSTACLE COURSE

During his 14 years as president, Chavez racked up repeated ballot-box victories thanks to his charisma and generous spending of Venezuela’s oil revenues – much of it on popular health and nutrition programs, as well as on his own electoral campaigns.

The opposition has cried fraud in the past without demonstrating evidence of it, including after a 2004 recall referendum that Chavez won.

But October’s vote included one incident that some opposition sympathizers see as a tipping point: election officials manually changed results at several voting centers in Bolivar state to tip the result in favor of the Socialist Party candidate, according to election center witnesses.

The witnesses produced official poll statements from their voting centers showing that the number of votes for the opposition candidate was higher than those reflected in the National Electoral Council figures for those same centers.

The elections council – stacked with Maduro’s supporters – has never clarified the issue and did not answer Reuters questions regarding the incident.

Maduro’s government has never commented.

More commonly, the opposition has complained of obstacles that reduce the likelihood of their supporters voting but are difficult to classify as fraud in a traditional sense – such as last-minute changes to the location of voting centers.

In the central state of Lara, Alfredo Alvarez learned just days before the October vote that the elections council had changed his voting center – along with that of an estimated 700,000 Venezuelans in 200 voting centers in predominantly opposition areas.

Alvarez, a 62-year-old journalist, had to drive around the city of Barquisimeto for several hours because he could not get a clear answer on where he was supposed to vote.

“I had to investigate: I had to go to five different voting centers. Who can vote under those conditions?” asked Alvarez, who said he ultimately cast his ballot in a polling center run by Socialist Party activists that had no opposition witnesses.

“I’ve been voting since 1973, but I’m not voting in this election. Not under these circumstances.”

Election officials said the changes were necessary primarily because of security concerns, given that some of the centers were near the site of violent opposition protests. Those protests had ended nearly three months before.

Electoral Council officials were not immediately available to explain that discrepancy.

(For a graphic on ‘Latin America’s upcoming elections’ click https://tmsnrt.rs/2rAQ4l1)

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth, additional reporting by Miguel Angel Sulabaran, Maria de los Angeles Ramirez in Puerto Ordaz, and Vivian Sequera in Turmero; Editing by Alexandra Ulmer, Daniel Flynn and Rosalba O’Brien)

Aid reaches all besieged areas of Syria with latest delivery

A boy unloads aid parcels in the rebel-held besieged town of Zamalka, in the Damascus suburbs

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Trucks carrying medical and food aid entered two blockaded towns near Damascus on Wednesday, meaning that humanitarian agencies have now reached all besieged areas of Syria this year, the United Nations said.

The 38-truck convoy carried aid for some 20,000 people the U.N. estimates are living in the rebel-held towns of Zamalka and Irbin, which are being besieged by the government side.

“Today is the first time we are able to move a joint convoy of the United Nations, the Red Cross and Syrian Red Crescent … to these two towns since November 2012, nearly four years ago,” the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator Yacoub El Hillo told reporters before the trucks headed in.

“It will mean that since the beginning of this year the U.N., the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent have been able to reach all the besieged areas of Syria,” he added.

The ICRC said the aid included food parcels and wheat flour, hygiene kits and medicine.

The U.N. says there are more than half a million Syrians living in 18 areas across the country that are besieged by warring sides in the five-year conflict. Aid agencies reported deaths from starvation in government-besieged Madaya earlier this year.

Hillo said the delivery to Zamalka and Irbin would last about a month, and called for sieges to be lifted and regular aid access granted.

Aid agencies have repeatedly called for regular access to areas under siege, saying that one-off deliveries quickly run out and that those in need remain blockaded.

(Reporting by John Davison and Firas Makdesi in Damascus; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Drought Protest Turns Violent

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine police opened fire as a protest by thousands of rice farmers who lost their crops turned violent on Friday, killing one and wounding about a dozen, a leader of a farming group said.

About 6,000 farmers blocked a portion of the main highway in North Cotabato province on the southern island of Mindanao, demanding government assistance after drought linked by some to El Nino hit hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland.

“Loud bursts of gunfire erupted,” Norma Capuyan, leader of a farmers’ group, told reporters. “There was heavy volume of fire. We ran to a church compound and the police surrounded us.”

A farmer died on the spot and about a dozen others were wounded in the legs and shoulders, Capuyan said, adding the police first tried to disperse them with water cannon but started shooting when they held their ground.

North Cotabato Governor Emmylou Mendoza said about 20 police were wounded when the farmers attacked them with sticks and stones. She said the first shot was fired by the protesters.

The police issued a statement saying it was investigating.

“Any violation of national police rules and regulations shall be meted (out) with the appropriate penalty,” national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wilben Mayor said in a statement.

The protest began on Wednesday when farmers barricaded the highway in Kidapawan, demanding a dialogue with the governor and the release of 15,000 sacks of rice she had promised to them as relief.

The agriculture ministry said more than 300,000 hectares of farmland had been affected by drought, causing loses of about 5.3 billion pesos ($115.09 million) in rice and corn. It said the effects of El Nino were minimal.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato and Enrico dela Cruz; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Famine threatens half of Yemen, U.N. agency says

SANAA (Reuters) – Nearly half of Yemen’s 22 provinces on the verge of famine as result of the war there and more than 13 million people need food aid, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) says.

Aid groups have blamed curbs imposed by the Saudi-led coalition on access to Houthi-controlled ports for the crisis and also accuse Houthis of preventing supplies from reaching some areas, including the city of Taiz in the southwest.

“From a food security perspective, 10 of Yemen’s 22 provinces are classified as emergency, which is one step before famine,” Adham Musallam, deputy director of the WFP office in the capital Sanaa, said as the agency launched a food voucher program to help the most needy.

Fighting over the past year has displaced about 2.3 million people and left more than half of Yemen’s 26 million population in need of food aid, Musallam said.

“This means that we must not wait until the situation reaches famine but must act now to provide humanitarian aid directly,” Musallam said.

The Houthis took over Sanaa in September 2014, ousting President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, then seized his temporary headquarters in the southern port city of Aden.

The Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in March 2015 to try to restore Hadi to power and roll back Houthi gains. More than 6,200 people have been killed in the conflict, half of them civilians.

To counter the food crisis, the WFP has launched a program of emergency food vouchers to provide up to one million people with basic needs eventually.

In Sanaa, which is still under Houthi control, hundreds of people queued for hours to register for the vouchers. Under the program a family of six receives wheat grain, pulses, vegetable oil, salt and sugar provided by the WFP through a local supplier.

But one Sanaa resident expressed concern that the aid might not be sustained.

“We would like to have rations provided for the entire month, not just for a week or five days,” he told Reuters TV.

Many Yemenis have sought refuge in Sanaa after air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition destroyed their homes, especially in northern Yemen, where the Houthis, a Zaydi Shi’ite group, come from.

The United Nations, which had hosted two inconclusive rounds of peace talks in Switzerland last year, is pressing ahead on the diplomatic front for another round of negotiations. A senior Yemeni official said on Tuesday it might take place in Kuwait next month.

“The Yemeni people appreciate the need for humanitarian assistance but what they really need is an end to the war which is more important,” said Radman Hassan, a food voucher recipient.

(Writing by Sami Aboudi, editing by Sylvia Westall and Angus MacSwan)

WFP warns of serious food shortages in besieged Fallujah

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Humanitarian disaster is looming in the western Iraq city of Fallujah, an Islamic State stronghold under siege by security forces, where tens of thousands of people face food shortages, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

There is no flour, rice, sugar or oil available in Fallujah and the prices of the little food that is left have risen sharply, the agency quoted Fallujah residents as telling it.

Fuel and cooking oil are no longer available and the price of a kilo of flour leaped to $20 in January, up more than 800 percent from December, the WFP said.

The Iraqi army, police and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias – backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition – imposed a near total siege late last year on Fallujah, located 30 miles west of Baghdad in the Euphrates river valley.

“The humanitarian situation in Fallujah is dire and residents need immediate assistance,” WFP spokeswoman Marwa Awad told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We are aware that no food is going into the city and that militant groups are controlling the remaining food supplies.”

It has been too dangerous for the WFP to reach the area since September, when it delivered a one-month supply of food to 400 families in Garma, 6 miles from Fallujah, she said.

“We are deeply concerned about the worsening humanitarian situation inside Fallujah where many people require immediate food assistance,” Awad said. “We are ready to help but we are on standby until … the authorities give the green light to go in.”

Of the estimated 30,000 – 60,000 residents of Fallujah, a “significant number” are surviving on potatoes and other local food, after moving towards rural areas on the outskirts of the city, Awad said by phone from Iraq.

“We call on all parties to allow access to prevent a humanitarian disaster,” she said. “Sadly, everyone is focused on Syria and Yemen and the international community is no longer prioritizing Iraq, that’s the problem.”

In January, 32 people were reported to have died from starvation in Syria in areas that had been under siege for months.

Fallujah, a long-time bastion of Sunni Muslim jihadists, was the first Iraqi city to fall to Islamic State, in January 2014, six months before the group swept through large parts of northern and western Iraq and neighboring Syria.

(Reporting by Magdalena Mis, editing by Tim Pearce.)

Yemen’s food crisis deepens as banks cut credit for shipments

LONDON/ABU DHABI (Reuters) – Banks have cut credit lines for traders shipping food to war-torn Yemen, where ports have been battlegrounds and the financial system is grinding to a halt, choking vital supplies to an impoverished country that could face famine.

Lenders are increasingly unwilling to offer letters of credit – which guarantee that a buyer’s payment to a seller will be received on time – for cargoes to a country plagued by a civil war between the government and Houthi militia as well as an al Qaeda insurgency, say banking and trading sources.

“Western international banks no longer feel comfortable processing payments and are not willing to take the risk,” said an international commodities trading source active in Yemen.

“What this means is traders are saddled with even more risks and have to effectively guarantee entire cargoes, usually millions of dollars, before the prospect of getting paid,” said the source, who declined to be named, citing security concerns. “There are just more and more obstacles now to bringing goods into Yemen.”

Traders that procure food for Yemen are mostly smaller, private firms based locally or regionally that buy the goods from international markets. Reuters spoke to several sources who declined to be identified, also citing security concerns.

The situation has worsened rapidly in the past month after Yemen’s central bank stopped providing favorable exchange rates for local traders buying rice and sugar from global markets, say the sources, further hindering trading of food, which accounts for a large proportion of the country’s imports.

The decision to limit such rates to wheat and medicine – deemed more nationally crucial – was a bid to preserve fast-dwindling foreign currency reserves.

The financing difficulties have been one of the factors behind falling shipments to Yemen, according to the sources. In January, around 77 ships berthed at ports in Yemen, according to U.N. data, down from around 100 ships in March last year – when the civil war escalated – and a far cry from the hundreds of ships that called every month in previous years.

The consequences could be grave for the Arab peninsula’s poorest country, which the United Nations says is “on the brink of catastrophe”. It relies on seaborne imports for almost all its food and 21 million out of 26 million people are in need of humanitarian support, with over half the population suffering from malnutrition.

The war has seen a Saudi-led Arab coalition intervene in late March a year ago to seek to restore the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, battling the Iranian-allied Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Mohammed AlShamery, an official at Yemen’s sole sugar refinery, in the northern city of Hodaida on the Red Sea, said the credit and currency curbs had added to the problems of bringing cargoes into the country.

The process had already been complicated by deteriorating security as well as inspections of vessels by Arab coalition warships hunting for weapons bound for Houthi fighters.

“You have to be in constant touch with the shippers and reassure them that everything is fine and sometimes send pictures of the area so they know it’s safe,” AlShamery said.

PRICES RISE

A European banking source said some banks had decided to completely withdraw from offering credit lines on food trades to Yemen. “Even if a bank is willing to process a payment, which relates to food, they have to be careful,” the source added.

Trading sources said banks that had been involved in Yemen’s food trade have included Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank and HSBC as well as regional Middle East banks.

Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank declined to comment. HSBC said it continued to support customers trading across the Middle East and North Africa region including Yemen “subject to relevant regulatory and commercial controls”.

Yemeni banks are also feeling the pressure. Aidros Mohammed, an official with state-run National Bank of Yemen, said since the end of last year it had stopped opening letters of credit for the trade of goods in general “as outside banks have stopped dealing with us”.

Watheq Ali Hamed, the manager of a store in Sanaa, said the decision by the central bank regarding rice and sugar purchases would be felt by ordinary Yemenis.

“Prices are already going up because of the war and the rise in the cost of securing the goods,” he said. “The full effects of that decision will be felt going forward. Luckily, we still have some stocks.”

Slowing of imports and rising prices could pose grave problems for Yemen, where areas are at risk of famine.

The country lacks sufficient seasonal rains, has limited access to farming areas and facing rising costs of agricultural supplies, a report by a U.N. food agency said in January.

PORT FLASHPOINTS

More than 6,000 people have been killed – about half of them civilians – in the war, which has seen the Houthis gain control of the capital Sanaa.

Major ports have been flashpoints for fighting including the southern gateway of Aden, which has been gripped by violence since Hadi supporters seized it from Houthi forces in July. There have also been Saudi-led air strikes close to the port of Hodaida.

Adding to the turmoil, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been expanding its presence in Yemen; in February it took control of the southern town of Ahwar, months after seizing the major port city of Mukalla to the east.

Two banking sources in Yemen said restrictions on moving money abroad due to the conflict was adding to trade financing difficulties. “We have a big problem in transferring money abroad … so we cannot open letters of credit for traders to import,” one Yemeni banker said.

Trading and banking sources also said uncertainty over who was in control of Yemen’s central bank – given its headquarters in Sanaa – was adding to lenders’ caution. One Middle East banking source said some institutions were steering clear of transactions while Sanaa was still under Houthi control.

The central bank could not be reached for comment.

A Feb. 11 report by Yemen’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation showed total foreign reserves of Yemen’s central bank had slid to $2.1 billion by the end of 2015, from $4.7 billion at the same point in 2014.

The report said a “deterioration of the national currency value and scarcity of foreign exchange” were making it difficult to finance imports.

“In light of the ongoing conflict, the private sector has undergone painful shocks,” Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Mohammed Al-Maitami wrote.

“Hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs and source of income.”

(Additional reporting by Tom Arnold in Dubai, Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles in Geneva, Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Michelle Nichols in New York and Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt; Editing by Pravin Char)

Civil war fuels ‘dire’ food situation in Central African Republic

Millions of people in the war-torn Central African Republic are at risk of going hungry because the three-year conflict has disrupted food supplies, two United Nations agencies said Tuesday.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) issued a joint statement about their newly released report on food security in the African nation, where a civil war erupted in December 2012 and triggered an economic collapse the following year.

The report found that 58 percent of the country’s 4.6 million residents needed immediate humanitarian assistance, as crop production had improved last year but levels were still less than half of what they were before the crisis began. Prices of groundnuts, wheat flour, beef and fish had surged, and two-thirds of people surveyed reported they had less food than in 2014.

“The situation is dire. Half of the population faces hunger,” Bienvenu Djossa, the WFP’s country director in the Central African Republic, said in a statement. “It is crucial that we continue helping the most vulnerable, who need emergency food assistance to survive.”

Total crop production stood at 838,671 metric tons last year, the agencies said in a news release, about 54 percent below its pre-civil-war average. The agencies added killings and lootings have cut the country’s cattle population in half in three years, and goat and sheep populations fell 57 percent in that time. Fishermen are also catching about 60 percent fewer fish than in past years.

The agencies said food prices in the Central African Republic surged even higher after the capital city of Bangui saw an uptick in violence last September. Groundnut prices in the city were up 74 percent from their 2012 levels, while fish prices were up 70 percent and the cost of beef doubled.

The prices of maize and cassava either dropped or remained steady, the report found, but that was largely because the violence disrupted trade activities and kept the products close to Bangui.

The U.N. Refugee Agency says more than 1 million people have been displaced in the conflict.

The WFP and FAO appealed for $175 million for humanitarian efforts in the Central African Republic, as well as nearby countries that are hosting some of the republic’s 470,000 refugees.

Vital to food output, bees and other pollinators at risk

OSLO (Reuters) – Bees and other pollinators face increasing risks to their survival, threatening foods such as apples, blueberries and coffee worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year, the first global assessment of pollinators showed on Friday.

Pesticides, loss of habitats to farms and cities, disease and climate change were among threats to about 20,000 species of bees as well as creatures such as birds, butterflies, beetles and bats that fertilize flowers by spreading pollen, it said.

“Pollinators are critical to the global economy and human health,” Zakri Abdul Hamid, chair of the 124-nation report, told Reuters of a finding that between $235 billion and $577 billion of world food output at market prices depended on pollinators.

The food sector provides jobs for millions of people, such as coffee pickers in Brazil, cocoa farmers in Ghana, almond growers in California or apple producers in China.

Ever more species of pollinators are threatened, according to the study, the first by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) since it was founded in 2012. It was approved in talks in Kuala Lumpur.

IPBES is modeled on the U.N. panel on climate change, which advises governments on ways to tackle global warming.

“Regional and national assessments of insect pollinators indicate high levels of threat, particularly for bees and butterflies,” it said. In Europe, for instance, 9 percent of bee and butterfly species were threatened with extinction.

The study pointed to risks from pesticides such as neonicotinoids, linked to damaging effects in North America and Europe. But it said there were still many gaps in understanding the long-term impact.

“It’s definitely harmful to wild bees, and we don’t know what it means for populations over time,” Simon Potts, a co-chair of the report and professor at the University of Reading in England, told Reuters.

The study also said the impact of genetically modified crops on pollinators was still poorly understood.

And it said the amount of farm output dependent on pollination had surged by 300 percent in the past 50 years. The western honey bee, the most widespread pollinator managed by humans, produces 1.6 million tonnes of honey every year.

Still, the outlook was not all bleak. “The good news is that a number of steps can be taken to reduce the risks,” Zakri said.

Planting strips or patches of wild flowers could attract pollinators to fields of crops, and reduced use of pesticides or a shift to organic farming could also restrict the damage.

“There are some things that individuals on the ground can do,” Potts said. Smallholder farmers in Africa could let wild plants grow on part of their land, people in cities could plant flowers in their back gardens or window boxes.

(Reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Alison Williams)

Egypt struggles to get subsidized food to poor amid dollar crisis

CAIRO (Reuters) – “Any rice?” says the woman, leaning into a shop in Cairo and brandishing a green smartcard that carries her family’s food credits. The shopkeeper shakes his head: “Only sugar.”

Behind him, more than half the shelves are empty. Rice and cooking oil are nowhere to be seen.

Tens of millions of Egyptians rely on state subsidies provided as credits on smartcards they redeem against household staples each month. But in recent weeks, imported commodities like cooking oil have been in short supply as a dollar shortage makes it harder for state importers to secure regular supplies.

Shortages persist across the capital and in cities from Alexandria in the north to Minya in the south.

“When we ask the grocer he says there’s nothing but sugar. Every day he says, tomorrow, tomorrow, but we are half way through the month now and it’s not resolved,” said Samia Mohamed, a housewife, at a grocery in southern Cairo.

“Prices elsewhere are expensive. We don’t know what to do.”

Affordable food is an explosive issue in Egypt, where millions live a paycheck from hunger and economic discontent has helped unseat two presidents in five years.

The dangers are not lost on President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose government has sought to protect poor Egyptians from the worst effects of double-digit inflation.

The smartcards are accepted at a network of government-run supermarkets as well as 26,000 privately owned grocers and grant each family member 15 pounds ($2) of credits a week plus five loaves of bread a day from participating bakeries.

The Supply Ministry also oversees a network of stores and kiosks offering subsidized food outside the smartcard system.

Goods of all kinds are available at ordinary supermarkets not participating in the smartcard scheme but poor consumers would have to fork out market prices that many can ill-afford.

But even at the discount shops, stocks are low.

At a kiosk, emblazoned with the Egyptian flag and the words “together against high prices” in a historic part of Cairo, a shelf labeled “local rice, 3.25 per kilo” is bare.

“Oil is in short supply. The supplies of oil aren’t stable,” said the manager of the kiosk, which opened in December as part of a government effort to ease food inflation. “Sometimes we are short of rice, sometimes sugar … Sometimes people don’t like the variety. We don’t get enough.”

Supply Minister Khaled Hanafi said on Thursday that stocks at state food companies were being replenished with dozens of products which would be available to smartcard-holders in March.

“LIKE BEGGARS”

Though essential foods are high on the priority list, a foreign exchange shortage has made it more difficult for Egypt’s state food importers to pay promptly over the past year. Worst affected by the shortages has been cooking oil, with payment problems putting suppliers off bidding in state tenders.

Egypt’s state importers have canceled three cooking oil tenders in the last three months alone after not receiving enough offers or because prices were too high.

Traders say they now have to factor in the cost of expected delays, particularly after the government brought in measures which mean they are not paid for up to six months.

“You are talking millions of dollars here. These delays are costly,” said one trader. “They make you feel like a beggar when you chase your money, not answering calls, not responding.”

Egypt has struggled to revive its economy since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising drove away tourists and foreign investors. Foreign exchange reserves have more than halved since then, leaving Egypt with scarcely enough to cover three-months worth of imports.

Pressure has mounted on the central bank to devalue the pound but it has resisted a major adjustment for fear of stoking inflation. Instead, it has imposed strict limits on dollar deposits and transfers, making it harder to clear shipments.

A lack of clarity on rice policy has also caused confusion in the market. Egypt banned rice exports in 2008 but lifted the ban in October after a bumper harvest. It issued a rice import tender last month only to cancel it again and grocers say there is not enough rice in state stores.

BREAD RATIONS

Occasional shortages have been the norm for the past year, but supply issues were compounded in recent weeks by a change in the rules surrounding unclaimed bread rations.

Participating grocers source most of their goods from the state-run Food Industries Holding Company (FIHC) but until this month would receive cash from the Supply Ministry equivalent to any unclaimed bread credits. They would then use the cash to buy other goods on the open market to meet the demand.

Since Feb. 1, they have been refused cash and been offered goods supplied by the FIHC instead.

But grocers say the FIHC is unable to meet demand.

“The issue is not one of oil and sugar. We used to buy 100 products and now we can’t find 10 … More than 50 percent of the supply stores are empty and there are no goods,” said Majed Nadi, spokesman for the General Grocers’ Syndicate.

“They expected to be able to meet all the needs but they couldn’t.”

Hanafi, the Supply Minister, said 2,000 tonnes of rice and 2,500 tonnes of oil were being supplied daily to replenish stocks in addition to goods including pasta, tea, and canned tuna, which have not been in short supply.

FIHC bought 42,000 tonnes of sunflower and soy oils on Wednesday. A previous shipment was due to arrive on Feb 10-20.

Supply Ministry spokesman Mahmoud Diab said the change was intended to reduce prices because FIHC could secure economical bulk deals that individual grocers could not.

“The idea is to bring citizens higher quality goods at lower prices,” he told Reuters. “It is for the good of the people.”

(Additional reporting by Eric Knecht; Writing by Lin Noueihed; Editing by Giles Elgood)