Tag Archives: food supplies

North Korea trades with Russia ‘Food for Weapons’

Russia-North-Korea-Flags

Important Takeaways:

  • North Korea has sent 6,700 containers of munitions to Russia, South Korea says
  • North Korea has shipped about 6,700 containers carrying millions of munitions to Russia since July to support its war against Ukraine, in a sign of ongoing arms transfers, South Korean media reported on Tuesday, citing the defense minister.
  • At a briefing on Monday for local media, Minister Shin Won-sik said the containers might carry more than 3 million 152 mm artillery shells, or 500,000 122 mm rounds.
  • “It could possibly be a mix of the two, and you can say that at least several million shells have been sent,” Shin said, according to the Yonhap news agency.
  • Hundreds of North Korean munitions factories are running at around 30% of their capacity due to a lack of raw materials and electricity, but those producing artillery shells for Russia were operating “at full swing,” he added, without elaborating on the source of the information.
  • The U.S. State Department, in a fact sheet, opens new tab released on Friday, said that North Korea has delivered more than 10,000 containers of munitions or related materials to Russia since September.
  • In exchange, North Korea has received some 9,000 containers mostly containing food supplies, which Shin said has helped stabilize prices there.

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Haiti’s hunger crisis bites deeper after devastating quake

By Laura Gottesdiener

NAN KONSEY, Haiti (Reuters) – In a tent encampment in the mountains of southern Haiti, where hundreds of villagers sought shelter after a powerful earthquake flattened their homes this month, a single charred cob of corn was the only food in sight.

“I’m hungry and my baby is hungry,” said Sofonie Samedy, gesturing to her pregnant stomach.

Samedy had eaten only intermittently since the 7.2-magnitude earthquake on Aug. 14 destroyed much of Nan Konsey, a remote farming village not far from the epicenter. Across Haiti, the quake killed more than 2,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

In Nan Konsey, the earth’s convulsions tore open the village’s cement cisterns used to store drinking water and triggered landslides that interred residents’ modest subsistence farms.

Since then, Samedy and the rest of the community have camped alongside the main highway, about a 40-minute walk from their village, hoping to flag down the rare passing truck to ask for food and water.

“I’m praying I can still give birth to a healthy baby, but of course I’m a little afraid,” she said.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has long had one of the world’s highest levels of food insecurity. Last year, Haiti ranked 104 out of the 107 countries on the Global Hunger Index. By September, the United Nations said 4 million Haitians – 42% of the population – faced acute food insecurity.

This month’s earthquake has exacerbated the crisis: destroying crops and livestock, leveling markets, contaminating waterways used as sources of drinking water, and damaging bridges and roads crucial to reaching villages like Nan Konsey.

The number of people in urgent need of food assistance in the three departments hardest-hit by the earthquake – Sud, Grand’Anse and Nippes – has increased by one-third since the quake, from 138,000 to 215,000, according to the World Food Program (WFP).

“The earthquake rattled people who were already struggling to feed their families,” Lola Castro, WFP’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement.

“The compound effects of multiple crises are devastating communities in the south faced with some of the highest levels of food insecurity in the country.”

‘IN THE HANDS OF GOD’

Just off the highway leading to Nan Konsey, a few dozen men gathered at a goat market, where they sold off their remaining livestock to secure cash to feed their children or to pay for family members’ funerals.

Before the quake, farmer Michel Pierre had tended 15 goats and cultivated yams, potatoes, corn, and banana trees. He arrived at the market with the only two animals that survived the earthquake.

With his crops also buried beneath landslides, he hoped to earn about $100 from the sale to feed himself, his wife and his children.

When that money runs dry, he said, he isn’t sure what he will do. He is still in debt from when Hurricane Matthew ravaged Haiti in 2016.

“Day by day, it’s getting harder to be a farmer,” he said. “I am in the hands of God.”

Haiti was largely food self-sufficient until the 1980s, when at the encouragement of the United States it started loosening restrictions on crop imports and lowered tariffs. A subsequent flood of surplus U.S. crops put droves of Haitian farmers out of business and contributed to investment in the sector tailing off.

In recent years, climate change has made Hispaniola – the island Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic – increasingly vulnerable to extreme droughts and hurricanes. Spiraling food costs, economic decline and political instability have worsened the shortages.

For Gethro Polyte, a teacher and farmer living north of the town of Camp-Perrin, the earthquake decimated his two main sources of income: leveling the school where he taught fourth grade, and submerging his crops and livestock in an avalanche of earth.

Before the disaster, he and his family had been able to pull together two meals a day and draw water from underground springs, he said. But since then, his food supplies have dwindled down to a few yams and bananas, and the water has been contaminated with silt.

Polyte doubted the school would be rebuilt for classes to start in September and for him to receive a paycheck, given the chaos following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July. And with bank loans still to pay off, he doubted he’d be able to secure money to invest in rebuilding his farm.

“We are living now by eating a little something just to kill the hunger,” he said. “And, of course, things will only grow worse in the coming days.”

(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener in Haiti, additional reporting by Ricardo Arduengo and Herbert Villarraga in Haiti; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Rosalba O’Brien)

COVID-19 crisis has led to food crisis, says Italy’s Draghi

By Maytaal Angel

LONDON (Reuters) -The world must ensure access to food supplies as forcefully as it moved to ensure access to vaccines, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said at the opening of the United Nations Food Systems Pre-Summit in Rome.

“The health crisis (COVID-19) has led to a food crisis,” he said, citing data showing malnutrition in all its forms has become the leading cause of ill health and death in the world.

The U.N.’s first ever Food Systems Summit will take place in September, with the aim of delivering progress on the body’s 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs).

According to the latest U.N. data, the world’s food system, which involves cutting down forests to plant crops, is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it a leading cause of climate change.

“We are off track to achieve the SDGs,” said U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, who first announced his plan to convene the Food Systems Summit in October 2019, before COVID-19 dramatically slowed progress towards SDGs like zero hunger.

After remaining virtually unchanged for five years, world hunger and malnutrition rose last year by around 118 million people to 768 million, with most of the increase likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a major U.N. report.

On internationally traded markets, world food prices were up 33.9% year-on-year in June, according to the U.N food agency’s price index, which measures a basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar.

There is increased diplomatic momentum to tackle hunger, malnutrition and the climate crisis this year with summits like the current one, but the challenge is huge.

Guterres said the pre-summit will assess progress towards achieving the SDGs by transforming global food systems, which, he noted, are also responsible for 80% of the world’s biodiversity loss.

(Reporting by Maytaal Angel; Editing by Giles Elgood and Steve Orlofsky)

Investors seed indoor farms as pandemic disrupts food supplies

By Rod Nickel

(Reuters) – Investors used to brush off Amin Jadavji’s pitch to buy Elevate Farms’ vertical growing technology and produce stacks of leafy greens indoors with artificial light.

“They would say, ‘This is great, but it sounds like a science experiment,'” said Jadavji, CEO of Toronto-based Elevate.

Now, indoor farms are positioning themselves as one of the solutions to pandemic-induced disruptions to the harvesting, shipping, and sale of food.

“It’s helped us change the narrative,” said Jadavji, whose company runs a vertical farm in Ontario, and is building others in New York and New Zealand.

Proponents, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), say urban farming increases food security at a time of rising inflation and limited global supplies. North American produce output is concentrated in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, including California, which is prone to wildfires and other severe weather.

Climate-change concerns are also accelerating investments, including by agribusiness giant Bayer AG, into multi-story vertical farms or greenhouses the size of 50 football fields.

They are enabling small North American companies like Elevate to bolster indoor production and compete with established players BrightFarms, AeroFarms and Plenty, backed by Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos.

But critics question the environmental cost of indoor farms’ high power requirements.

Vertical farms grow leafy greens indoors in stacked layers or on walls of foliage inside of warehouses or shipping containers. They rely on artificial light, temperature control and growing systems with minimal soil that involve water or mist, instead of the vast tracts of land in traditional agriculture.

Greenhouses can harness the sun’s rays and have lower power requirements. Well-established in Asia and Europe, greenhouses are expanding in North America, using greater automation.

Investments in global indoor farms totaled a record-high $500 million in 2020, AgFunder research head Louisa Burwood-Taylor said.

The average investment last year rose sharply, as large players including BrightFarms and Plenty raised fresh capital, she said.

A big funding acceleration lies ahead, after pandemic food disruptions – such as infections among migrant workers that harvest North American produce – raised concerns about supply disruptions, said Joe Crotty, director of corporate finance at accounting firm KPMG, which advises vertical farms and provides investment banking services.

“The real ramp-up is the next three to five years,” Crotty said.

Vegetables grown in vertical farms or greenhouses are still just a fraction of overall production. U.S. sales of food crops grown under cover, including tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce, amounted to 790 million pounds in 2019, up 50% from 2014, according to the USDA.

California’s outdoor head lettuce production alone was nearly four times larger, at 2.9 billion pounds.

USDA is seeking members for a new urban agriculture advisory committee to encourage indoor and other emerging farm practices.

PLANT BREEDING MOVES INDOORS

Bayer, one of the world’s biggest seed developers, aims to provide the plant technology to expand vertical agriculture. In August, it teamed with Singapore sovereign fund Temasek to create Unfold, a California-based company, with $30 million in seed money.

Unfold says it is the first company focused on designing seeds for indoor lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, spinach and cucumbers, using Bayer germplasm, a plant’s genetic material, said Chief Executive John Purcell.

Their advances may include, for example, more compact plants and an increased breeding focus on quality, Purcell said.

Unfold hopes to make its first sales by early 2022, targeting existing farms, and start-ups in Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Greenhouses are also expanding, touting higher yields than open-field farming.

AppHarvest, which grows tomatoes in a 60-acre greenhouse in Morehead, Kentucky, broke ground on two more in the state last year. The company aims to operate 12 facilities by 2025.

Its greenhouses are positioned to reach 70% of the U.S. population within a day’s drive, giving them a transportation edge over the southwest produce industry, said Chief Executive Jonathan Webb.

“We’re looking to rip the produce industry out of California and Mexico and bring it over here,” Webb said.

Projected global population growth will require a large increase in food production, a tough proposition outdoors given frequent disasters and severe weather, he said.

New York-based BrightFarms, which runs four greenhouses, positions them near major U.S. cities, said Chief Executive Steve Platt. The company, whose customers include grocers Kroger and Walmart, plans to open its two largest farms this year, in North Carolina and Massachusetts.

Platt expects that within a decade, half of all leafy greens in the United States will come from indoor farms, up from less than 10% currently.

“It’s a whole wave moving in this direction because the system we have today isn’t set up to feed people across the country,” he said.

‘CRAZY, CRAZY THINGS’

But Stan Cox, research scholar for non-profit The Land Institute, is skeptical of vertical farms. They depend on grocery store premiums to offset higher electricity costs for lighting and temperature control, he said.

“The whole reason we have agriculture is to harvest sunlight that’s hitting the earth every day,” he said. “We can get it for free.”

Bruce Bugbee, a professor of environmental plant physiology at Utah State University, has studied space farming for NASA. But he finds power-intensive vertical farming on Earth far-fetched.

“Venture capital goes into all kinds of crazy, crazy things and this is another thing on the list.”

Bugbee estimates that vertical farms use 10 times the energy to produce food as outdoor farms, even factoring in the fuel to truck conventional produce across country from California.

AeroFarms, operator of one of the world’s largest vertical farms, a former New Jersey steel mill, says comparing energy use with outdoor agriculture is not straightforward. Produce that ships long distances has a higher spoilage rate and many outdoor produce farms use irrigated water and pesticides, said Chief Executive Officer David Rosenberg.

Vertical farms tout other environmental benefits.

Elevate uses a closed loop system to water plants automatically, collect moisture plants emit and then re-water them with it. Such a system requires 2% of the water used on an outdoor romaine lettuce operation, Jadavji said. The company uses no pesticides.

“I think we’re solving a problem,” he said.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Lisa Shumaker)

Somalia hit by worst desert locust invasion in 25 years

By Giulia Paravicini

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Desert locusts are destroying tens of thousands of hectares of crops and grazing land in Somalia in the worst invasion in 25 years, the United Nations food agency said on Wednesday, and the infestation is likely to spread further.

The locusts have damaged about 70,000 hectares of land in Somalia and neighboring Ethiopia, threatening food supplies in both countries and the livelihoods of farming communities, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

An average swarm will destroy crops that could feed 2,500 people for a year, the FAO said.

Conflict and chaos in much of Somalia make spraying pesticide by airplane – which the FAO called the “ideal control measure” – impossible, the agency said in a statement. “The impact of our actions in the short term is going to be very limited.”

Ashagre Molla, 66, a father of seven from Woldia in the Amhara region 700 km (435 miles) north-east of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, said he had so far received no help from the government.

“I was supposed to get up to 3,000 kg of teff (a cereal grass) and maize this year, but because of desert locusts and untimely rains I only got 400 kg of maize and expect only 200 kg of teff.

“This is not even enough to feed my family,” he said.

The locust plague is far more serious than the FAO earlier projected and has been made worse by unseasonably heavy rainfall and floods across East Africa that have killed hundreds of people in the past several months.

Experts say climate shocks are largely responsible for rapidly changing weather patterns in the region.

(Reporting by Giulia Paravicini and Dawit Endeshaw; Editing by Maggie Fick and Giles Elgood)

Malnourished Venezuelans hope urgently needed aid arrives soon

Yaneidi Guzman, 38, poses for a picture at her home in Caracas, Venezuela, February 17, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Carlos Garcia Rawlins and Shaylim Valderrama

CARACAS (Reuters) – Yaneidi Guzman has lost a third of her weight over the past three years as Venezuela’s economic collapse made food unaffordable and she now hopes the opposition will succeed in bringing urgently needed foreign aid to the South American country.

Guzman’s clothes hang limply off her gaunt frame. The 38-year-old is one of many Venezuelans suffering from malnutrition as the once-prosperous, oil-rich OPEC nation has seen its economy halve in size over the last five years under President Nicolas Maduro.

Yaneidi Guzman poses for a picture next to her daughters, Esneidy Ramirez (R), (front L-R) Steffany Perez and Fabiana Perez, at their home in Caracas, Venezuela, April 22, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Yaneidi Guzman poses for a picture next to her daughters, Esneidy Ramirez (R), (front L-R) Steffany Perez and Fabiana Perez, at their home in Caracas, Venezuela, April 22, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Venezuelans’ diets have become ever more deficient in vitamins and protein, as currency controls restrict food imports and salaries fail to keep pace with inflation that is now above 2 million percent annually.

Growing malnutrition is one of the reasons Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido has moved ahead with his plans to bring supplies of food and medicine into Venezuela by land and sea on Saturday, despite resistance from Maduro.

Maduro, who denies there is a humanitarian crisis, has said it is a “show” to undermine him.

On Thursday, crowds cheered as Guaido led a convoy of opposition lawmakers out of Caracas on a 800-km (500 mile) trip to the Colombian border where they hope to receive food and medicine. Guaido has not provided details on how they would bring in the aid.

In response, Maduro denounced the aid, saying in televised comments that he was considering closing the border with Colombia and would close the border with Brazil.

Aid has become a proxy war in a battle for control of Venezuela, after Guaido in January invoked a constitutional provision to assume an interim presidency, saying Maduro’s re-election last year was fraudulent.

“I hope they let the aid in,” said Guzman, who despite holding down two jobs cannot make enough money for the tests, supplements or protein-rich diet that doctors have prescribed her. She and her husband make less than $30 per month and prioritize feeding their three young children.

Maria Guitia washes her son Yeibe Medina at home near San Francisco de Yare, Venezuela, February 18, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Maria Guitia washes her son Yeibe Medina at home near San Francisco de Yare, Venezuela, February 18, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

While there is a vacuum of government information, almost two-thirds of Venezuelans surveyed in a university study called, “Survey on life conditions,” and published last year, said they had lost on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight in 2017.

On the wall of Guzman’s home in the poor hillside district of Petare in the capital Caracas, hangs a wooden plaque with the psalm “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”

Yet her fridge is empty except for a few bags of beans.

Sometimes she wakes up not knowing what she will feed her family that day. Mostly they eat rice, lentils and cassava.

While Guzman says she would welcome the aid, she is concerned the one-off shipment would be a drop in an ocean given Venezuelans’ needs. “You don’t only eat once,” she said.

Some political analysts say Saturday’s showdown is less about solving Venezuela’s needs and more about testing the military’s loyalty towards Maduro, by daring it to turn the aid away.

LENTILS AND PLANTAIN

Some aid agencies like Catholic relief agency Caritas are already on the ground providing what help they can.

In San Francisco de Yare, a town 70 km (45 miles) south of Caracas, Maria Guitia’s one-year-old baby’s belly is distended and his arms thin. The pair live with Guitia’s five siblings and parents in a one-room tin shed with a dirt floor and no running water.

Work is scarce and they live off payments for odd jobs and a monthly government handout of heavily-subsidized basic food supplies. They have taken to inventing meals with what little they have like lentils with plantain from the trees in their backyard.

Guitia, 21, said her son had lost weight over the past five months until Caritas gave them some nutritional supplements.

The United Nations and Red Cross have cautioned against the politicization of aid.

The United States, which is pushing Maduro to step down, sent aid for Venezuela to a collection point in neighboring Colombia in military aircraft, in a show of force.

Guzman dreams of living once more not off foreign aid or government handouts but her own work.

“It’s not that I want to be rich, or a millionaire,” she said. “But I do want to give my children a good future, to make sure I can take them to the doctors when they get ill … and that they eat well.”

 

(Reporting by Carlos Garcia Rawlins and Shaylim Valderrama in Caracas; Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Diane Craft)

Too little too late? No-deal Brexit planning shakes service suppliers

FILE PHOTO: Protesters demonstrate against the possible stockpiling of medicines and food in the event of a no-deal Brexit in London, Britain. Aug 22, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo

y Elisabeth O’Leary

LONDON (Reuters) – From Britain’s hospitals and schools to its prisons and armed forces, firms supplying essential public services have been asked by the government to outline plans for a no-deal Brexit.

But with exit day set for March 29, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May has yet to strike a deal to leave the European Union which is acceptable to parliament, leaving the companies worried that the government is doing too little too late.

“The government has written to some of us asking us ‘what are you doing in preparation for a no-deal?’ – which is timely, at eight weeks to go,” one industry source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“I have never been in such an unknowing place in all of my corporate life,” the source added.

Private firms including Babcock, Capita, Serco, G4S, Mitie and Compass play a central role in providing Britain’s public services, which means they have to procure medicines, toiletries, food, spare parts and labor, much of which come from the EU.

Britain began outsourcing in the 1980s and private firms now carry out work with contracts valued at 250 billion pounds ($324 billion) for the government each year.

But their role has come under scrutiny since the collapse of Carillion last year, sparking a debate about how much public work should be done by private contractors.

Britain’s government has allocated 2 billion pounds funding to support Brexit preparations for 2019/20 which reaches across 25 government and arms-length bodies for both “deal” and “no-deal” scenarios. 

NO-DEAL NERVES

While the government says it is confident it will strike a deal with the EU, companies worry that may not be the case. If Britain exits abruptly, new customs checks could lead to major delays at ports with a knock-on effect on the supplies needed for them to provide day-to-day services.

“Companies are getting more and more nervous (about a no-deal Brexit),” a second industry source said, echoing fears raised by Serco’s CEO Rupert Soames who in December described the British business climate as “bad and getting worse”.

“I am increasingly worried we are now in a place where people are talking about supply chains and trying to guarantee them. But beyond stockpiling, nobody actually knows what no-deal might mean,” another source in the sector told Reuters.

A survey last week showed that factories had stockpiled goods in January at the fastest rate since records began in the early 1990s in case of a chaotic Brexit.

“Leaving the EU with a deal remains the government’s top priority – but in December, we took the decision to step up no deal planning to ensure we are fully prepared,” a government spokesperson said of its plans.

Providers of services for the defense sector are among those who have been asked to share contingency plans.

Three sources said they had received a letter from the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Forzani last week asking about their efforts.

“As part of our no deal preparations, we are talking to suppliers to ensure any potential challenges or impacts are addressed. This is routine contingency planning,” an MoD spokesperson said.

($1 = 0.7710 pounds)

(Reporting by Elisabeth O’Leary; Editing by Georgina Prodhan and Alexander Smith)

Economic downturn, Islamist attacks cause hunger to spread in Nigeria

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Nigeria’s economic slowdown, compounded by Boko Haram attacks, could mean 5.5 million people needing food aid in the volatile northeast by next month, double the current number, the United Nations warned on Friday.

As government troops advance against the militants, the somewhat better access for aid workers under military escort to Borno and Yobe states has exposed “catastrophic levels” of suffering and a “vast regional crisis”, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

Inflation and soaring food prices come at a time when people have little left from the last harvest, the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) said.

“Because of Nigeria’s economic downturn, the number of hungry people could double in the northeastern states that are already so heavily afflicted by the conflict,” WFP spokeswoman Bettina Luescher told a news briefing.

“Our experts are warning it could go as high as 5.5 million people by next month,” she said. “The drop in oil prices and sharp rise in the cost of imported staples has compounded the years of violence that these poor people had to suffer.”

WFP has delivered food to 170,000 people in northeastern Nigeria, but hopes to reach 700,000 by year-end, Luescher said. It is also providing aid to 400,000 people in the three other Lake Chad Basin countries – Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Nigerian Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said on Thursday that the OPEC country’s crude output had fallen to 1.56 million barrels per day (bpd) as persistent militant attacks have taken out around 700,000 bpd.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said in late July that severely malnourished children are dying in large numbers in northeast Nigeria, the former stronghold of Boko Haram militants where food supplies are close to running out. The aid agency warned of “pockets of what is close to a famine”.

UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said on Friday the situation remains dangerous and volatile, following an attack on an aid convoy last month. “There have been frequent ‘hit and run’ incidents by militants, including suicide bombings, attacks on civilians, torching of homes, and thefts of livestock.”

Armored vehicles and military escorts are urgently needed to provide protection for aid workers, he said.

“We have seen adults so exhausted they are unable to move, and children with swollen faces and hollow eyes and other clear indications of acute malnutrition,” Edwards said.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)