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Food Crisis (food + crisis)
Selected AbstractsMOSAICS OF MAYA LIVELIHOODS: READJUSTING TO GLOBAL AND LOCAL FOOD CRISESANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009Rebecca K. Zarger The particularities of how residents in Southern Belize encounter the vagaries of what is commonly referred to as a "global food crisis" (between 2006 and 2008) are explored in this paper. Belize, like many other nation states around the globe, has been structurally (and sequentially) "readjusted" by transnational lending institutions over the last several decades. Cyclical shifts in agricultural practices have taken place in many Maya communities in Southern Belize in the last decade, partly in response to migration, a severe hurricane, land tenure conflicts, and within the last year, skyrocketing staple prices and food scarcity. The costs of basic staples such as corn, wheat, and rice have nearly doubled, in parallel with much of the rest of the globe during the same time frame. Shifts in subsistence strategies have significant implications for the power and politics of land use, access, and mobility. Furthermore, they reflect centuries-old ways of adjusting to changing circumstances in global markets and colonial and postcolonial realities. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of incorporating political and historical ecologies of land use and food production when considering the local impacts of global food crises. [source] FOOD CRISIS: Band Aid And BeyondAFRICA RESEARCH BULLETIN: ECONOMIC, FINANCIAL AND TECHNICAL SERIES, Issue 10 2009Article first published online: 27 NOV 200 No abstract is available for this article. [source] ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS: UNDERSTANDING AND ADDRESSING THE "SILENT TSUNAMI"ANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009David Himmelgreen The food riots and demonstrations that occurred in more than 50 countries in 2008 signaled the oncoming global economic recession. Skyrocketing food and fuel prices spurred on violence in poorer countries where there is no social safety net and in places impacted by food insecurity and malnutrition. Today, while the prices for some food staples have retracted a little, the deepening economic recession poses a threat in wealthier nations including the United States and members of the European Union. For example, the shuttering fall in the U.S. stock market in October 2008 resulted in the loss of billions of dollars not only to individual investors but also to states and local municipalities. In this environment, there is a potentially grave threat to the social safety net in the United States including food assistance programs. The World Food Program (WFP) has cited the increase in world food prices as the biggest challenge in its 45-year history, calling the impact a "silent tsunami" that threatened to plunge millions into hunger. In this volume, practicing and applied anthropologists examine the current global food crisis in a variety of settings including Belize, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania, and the United States. Further, they use a variety of theoretical orientations and methodological approaches to understand the chronic nature of food insecurity and the ways in which global food policies and economic restructuring have resulted in increasing food inequities across the globe. Throughout this volume, the authors make suggestions for combating the global food crisis through the application of anthropological principles and practices. [source] DEALING WITH THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS IN LOCAL SETTINGS: NONINTENSIVE AGRICULTURE IN LESOTHO, SOUTHERN AFRICAANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009Nancy Romero-Daza This article seeks to contribute to efforts toward the identification and critical analysis of sustainable community-based initiatives that could help to ameliorate the impact of the global food crisis in developing countries. To do so, we present a discussion of a sustainable agriculture program in Lesotho, in sub-Saharan Africa. We contextualize the discussion in the framework of both the food crisis and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, both of which are taking a major toll in Lesotho. We then present a brief discussion of some of our anthropological contributions to the work of an NGO that is implementing sustainable agriculture initiatives in periurban areas of Lesotho where households are at high risk for food insecurity. [source] LAVICHÈ: HAITI'S VULNERABILITY TO THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISISANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009John Mazzeo In April 2008, the global rise in food prices reached a breaking point in Haiti where a series of food riots swept across the country. The majority of Haitians depend on the marketplace for food, especially imported rice. The dependence on the marketplace for food and the rise in prices has caused households to reduce purchases leading to growing hunger especially among the rural poor. Haiti's vulnerability to the food crisis is not a problem of supply; it's because of the high cost of living, lavichè in Haitian Creole. This article poses the question, why is Haiti, a country rooted in peasant agricultural production, vulnerable to the rise in global food prices. I propose that answers to the current crisis come from an understanding of rural livelihoods, strategies for accessing food, and global food policies. Rural households are not subsistence producers. Ironically, they have suffered most from the rise in prices because of their dependence on the marketplace. Changing consumption patterns relying on imported rather than domestic staples have increased vulnerability to rising prices. Additionally, economic policies surrounding the import and marketing of food have further increased Haiti's dependence on imports. Understanding the trends leading to Haiti's current food crisis will help to inform policies and programs aimed at providing temporary food assistance and hopefully lead to more effective development programs. This article is based on research conducted in rural Haiti during the summer of 2008, part of which was for World Vision International as it prepared to mitigate the crisis through food assistance programs. [source] ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES FOR UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES OF THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISISANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009Sunil K. Khanna The current global food crisis can be, in part, described as an outcome of not only historical patterns of income inequalities and long-standing food trade policies biased in favor of wealthier nations but also in terms of significant reductions in food aid and other safety-net programs for people living in poor nations. Despite the serious nature of the problem of food insecurity, only a limited amount of reliable descriptive research, especially at the community level, has explored the causes and consequences of the current food crisis. Anthropology offers a unique set of methodological and theoretical approaches that can be useful for designing, implementing, and evaluating programs and policies aimed at alleviating poverty and reducing food insecurity. Anthropologically informed research can provide a dynamic understanding of food insecurity in terms of its causes and consequences and its local, regional, and global underpinnings. This information can be helpful in incorporating a community-level understanding of the "local" determinants of food insecurity for developing effective and sustainable food policy and intervention programs. [source] WEST AFRICA: Food CrisisAFRICA RESEARCH BULLETIN: ECONOMIC, FINANCIAL AND TECHNICAL SERIES, Issue 6 2010Article first published online: 3 AUG 2010 No abstract is available for this article. [source] Famine Intensity and Magnitude Scales: A Proposal for an Instrumental Definition of FamineDISASTERS, Issue 4 2004Paul Howe Ambiguities in current usage of the term ,famine' have had tragic implications for response and accountability in a number of recent food crises. This paper proposes a new approach to defining famine based on the use of intensity and magnitude scales, where ,intensity' refers to the severity of the crisis at a given location and point in time, while ,magnitude' describes the aggregate impact of a crisis. The scales perform three operations on ,famine': first, moving from a binary conception of ,famine/no famine' to a graduated, multi-level definition; second, disaggregating the dimensions of intensity and magnitude; and third, assigning harmonised ,objective' criteria in place of subjective, case-by-case judgements. If adopted, the famine scales should contribute to more effective and proportionate responses, as well as greater accountability in future food crises. [source] Consumers' everyday food choice strategies in FinlandINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 4 2006Katja Järvelä Abstract In developed countries, choosing and purchasing food is today perhaps more complex than ever. In recent years, European consumers have experienced several food crises. We face a rapidly expanding range of novel food products, the food chain has become longer, and the origin of food more anonymous. At the same time, consumers confront increasing amounts of information on food every day. Consumers build their conceptions of modern food-related risks on the basis of their everyday knowledge and coping strategies. Hence, the focus of this paper is on consumers' food choices and everyday practices in relation to food safety and quality as well as food-related risks. The paper is based on a Finnish study1 examining consumers' food choices. The data for the study were collected in September 2004 using an Internet-based food diary accompanied by open-ended questions on food-related views and strategies. Altogether, 92 consumers completed the diary. The method combining the tradition of dietary intake and food consumption surveys with open-ended questions was developed in order to gain an insight both on the types of foods purchased and on consumers' conceptions of food-related issues. In this paper, we focus on the key findings of the study as regards to consumers' notions on food quality and safety issues and the practices they use in their everyday lives. We found eight everyday strategies consumers use. We suggest, first, that the strategies are important in simplifying food choice and making daily life easier, and second, that consumers use food-related information flexibly in creating these strategies. [source] Consumer attitude and behaviour towards tomatoes after 10 years of Flandria quality labellingINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, Issue 9 2008Wim Verbeke Summary In recent years, trust in food safety and food quality has decreased as a result of consecutive food crises. Consequently, numerous quality labels signalling process-related credence characteristics have been established. One of these labels is the Belgian Flandria quality label for fresh fruit and vegetables. Based on cross-sectional data collected through a self-administered consumer survey (n = 373), this paper addresses consumer attitudes, behaviour and perception towards tomatoes in general, and the Flandria tomato label in particular. Buyers, who constitute 26.8% of the sample, perceive Flandria tomatoes as superior to other tomatoes because of their guarantee of origin, better taste and stricter production control. However, they also report the strongest perception of Flandria as an ordinary tomato as compared to non-buyer segments. Overall, findings indicate that the Flandria label , after being intensively used for 10 years for a wide range of other fruits and vegetables besides tomatoes , has become fairly standard for tomatoes with little perceived differentiation apart from its certified production and origin. [source] The need for integration of drought monitoring tools for proactive food security management in sub-Saharan AfricaNATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 4 2008Tsegaye Tadesse Abstract Reducing the impact of drought and famine remains a challenge in sub-Saharan Africa despite ongoing drought relief assistance in recent decades. This is because drought and famine are primarily addressed through a crisis management approach when a disaster occurs, rather than stressing preparedness and risk management. Moreover, drought planning and food security efforts have been hampered by a lack of integrated drought monitoring tools, inadequate early warning systems (EWS), and insufficient information flow within and between levels of government in many sub-Saharan countries. The integration of existing drought monitoring tools for sub-Saharan Africa is essential for improving food security systems to reduce the impacts of drought and famine on society in this region. A proactive approach emphasizing integration requires the collective use of multiple tools, which can be used to detect trends in food availability and provide early indicators at local, national, and regional scales on the likely occurrence of food crises. In addition, improving the ability to monitor and disseminate critical drought-related information using available modern technologies (e.g., satellites, computers, and modern communication techniques) may help trigger timely and appropriate preventive responses and, ultimately, contribute to food security and sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. [source] MOSAICS OF MAYA LIVELIHOODS: READJUSTING TO GLOBAL AND LOCAL FOOD CRISESANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009Rebecca K. Zarger The particularities of how residents in Southern Belize encounter the vagaries of what is commonly referred to as a "global food crisis" (between 2006 and 2008) are explored in this paper. Belize, like many other nation states around the globe, has been structurally (and sequentially) "readjusted" by transnational lending institutions over the last several decades. Cyclical shifts in agricultural practices have taken place in many Maya communities in Southern Belize in the last decade, partly in response to migration, a severe hurricane, land tenure conflicts, and within the last year, skyrocketing staple prices and food scarcity. The costs of basic staples such as corn, wheat, and rice have nearly doubled, in parallel with much of the rest of the globe during the same time frame. Shifts in subsistence strategies have significant implications for the power and politics of land use, access, and mobility. Furthermore, they reflect centuries-old ways of adjusting to changing circumstances in global markets and colonial and postcolonial realities. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of incorporating political and historical ecologies of land use and food production when considering the local impacts of global food crises. [source] Livelihood diversification and implications on dryland resources of central TanzaniaAFRICAN JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY, Issue 2009Emma T. Liwenga Abstract The concern over sustainable livelihoods in African drylands is an issue that has received considerable attention from researchers and policy makers alike. Over the past two decades African rural areas have undergone rapid changes, whereby, rural income diversification has become the most salient feature. With a particular focus on dryland ecosystems, among the major challenges facing communities in these areas is recurrent drought leading to conditions of food insecurity. This paper draws on experience on coping mechanisms for food insecurity from an agro-pastoral community in Mvumi, located in the semiarid areas of central Tanzania. An understanding of livelihoods of people in this area has involved examining how communities have managed to adjust their livelihood in the midst of challenges resulting not only from drought but also from various forces such as socio,economic, political and ecological factors. It has been found out that, despite profound food crisis in this area, people are not always desperate and that there are possibilities for realizing some hidden potentials of dryland resources for livelihood diversification. The issue of sustainable natural resource management in such areas is, however, questionable because of some adverse environmental effects associated with some of the coping mechanisms. [source] Zimbabwe's Drought Relief Programme in the 1990s: A Re-Assessment Using Nationwide Household Survey DataJOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2006Lauchlan T. Munro Zimbabwe's Drought Relief Programme was hailed in the 1980s and 1990s as an effective response to a food crisis in a poor country. International observers in particular credited the Programme with preventing famine and protecting livelihoods. Even before the current political turmoil and the ensuing politicisation of Drought Relief that have afflicted Zimbabwe since 2000, Zimbabwean authors were more sceptical about the effectiveness of Drought Relief. Both sides in the debate, however, failed to substantiate their arguments with national household survey data on who got what kind of assistance from Drought Relief, but rather relied on administrative data, qualitative interviews or sub-national surveys. Drawing its inspiration from WHO's minimum evaluation procedure, this article uses data from four nationwide household surveys in 1992,1993 and 1995,1996 and various definitions of poverty to ask whether Drought Relief provided poor people with relevant, timely and adequate assistance in the 1990s. The analysis suggests that Drought Relief was effective in supporting drought-affected smallholders during the 1990s. Drought Relief generally had a slight pro-poor bias. Unfortunately, Drought Relief since 2000 has a very different character. [source] Introduction to the special issue on the world food crisisAGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2008William A. Masters Food prices; Food markets; Food policy; Poverty Abstract This issue of Agricultural Economics contains articles on the causes and effects of rising food prices. All papers were subject to full, double-blind peer review on an accelerated basis, in an effort to publish the best new research as quickly as possible. We received more than 60 submissions; referees were given three weeks to respond, and authors of candidate papers had an additional week to revise their work before final acceptance. Articles published use descriptive, econometric, and simulation methods for both global overviews and case studies. [source] The Year of the Rat ends,time to fight hunger!PEST MANAGEMENT SCIENCE (FORMERLY: PESTICIDE SCIENCE), Issue 4 2009Bastiaan G Meerburg Abstract This paper investigates the importance of ecologically based rodent management in the light of the current food crisis, and the potential effects of this approach on the position of the undernourished. Hunger and food prices are on the rise owing to shortages that can be traced to reasons such as climatic extremes, use of crops for biofuels, reduced growth in yields which lag behind population growth, reduced world stocks and lack of sufficient investment in maintaining the irrigation infrastructure. For the undernourished this is problematic as they are most vulnerable to the rise in food prices. Very often, agricultural experts focus on an increase in agricultural production to reduce food prices. It is postulated in this article that almost 280 million undernourished could additionally benefit if more attention were paid to reducing pre- and post-harvest losses by rodents. Moreover, rodent-borne diseases would decrease, diseases that can be catastrophic to the livelihoods of the poorest of the poor. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry [source] ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS: UNDERSTANDING AND ADDRESSING THE "SILENT TSUNAMI"ANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009David Himmelgreen The food riots and demonstrations that occurred in more than 50 countries in 2008 signaled the oncoming global economic recession. Skyrocketing food and fuel prices spurred on violence in poorer countries where there is no social safety net and in places impacted by food insecurity and malnutrition. Today, while the prices for some food staples have retracted a little, the deepening economic recession poses a threat in wealthier nations including the United States and members of the European Union. For example, the shuttering fall in the U.S. stock market in October 2008 resulted in the loss of billions of dollars not only to individual investors but also to states and local municipalities. In this environment, there is a potentially grave threat to the social safety net in the United States including food assistance programs. The World Food Program (WFP) has cited the increase in world food prices as the biggest challenge in its 45-year history, calling the impact a "silent tsunami" that threatened to plunge millions into hunger. In this volume, practicing and applied anthropologists examine the current global food crisis in a variety of settings including Belize, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania, and the United States. Further, they use a variety of theoretical orientations and methodological approaches to understand the chronic nature of food insecurity and the ways in which global food policies and economic restructuring have resulted in increasing food inequities across the globe. Throughout this volume, the authors make suggestions for combating the global food crisis through the application of anthropological principles and practices. [source] DEALING WITH THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS IN LOCAL SETTINGS: NONINTENSIVE AGRICULTURE IN LESOTHO, SOUTHERN AFRICAANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009Nancy Romero-Daza This article seeks to contribute to efforts toward the identification and critical analysis of sustainable community-based initiatives that could help to ameliorate the impact of the global food crisis in developing countries. To do so, we present a discussion of a sustainable agriculture program in Lesotho, in sub-Saharan Africa. We contextualize the discussion in the framework of both the food crisis and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, both of which are taking a major toll in Lesotho. We then present a brief discussion of some of our anthropological contributions to the work of an NGO that is implementing sustainable agriculture initiatives in periurban areas of Lesotho where households are at high risk for food insecurity. [source] ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING AND URBAN FOOD ACCESS IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLICANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009Howard Rosing The article describes how economic restructuring in the Dominican Republic during the 1980s and 1990s established the basis for urban food access challenges during the 2000s. Primarily based on research in Santiago, the second largest Dominican city, the article provides insights into how export-oriented development strategies, expanding trade liberalization, domestic political struggles, and patriarchal relations influenced access to food for low-income residents. During the early 2000s, many Santiago residents were engaged in an elaborate, androcentric exchange network that linked gendered income-generating strategies to credit-bearing food merchants who were, in turn, conjoined to a sequence of brokers all of whom were eventually linked to domestic and international producers by credit relations. Analysis of these findings illustrates how and why this exchange network existed, the importance of credit relations to its maintenance, and the ways in which government and U.S. food policies influenced urban provisioning patterns among the most economically and socially vulnerable population of Santiago. I argue that the rapidly changing social and spatial configurations of Latin American and Caribbean cities calls for innovative applied anthropological research into the processes that structure access to food resources by food insecure groups. By focusing on household food procurement in conjunction with exchange relations for a key staple, the article highlights practices and policies that enable and constrain food access for such groups. The article provides empirical data relevant to scholars and practitioners concerned with understanding the structural origins of the present-day food crisis in developing countries. [source] LAVICHÈ: HAITI'S VULNERABILITY TO THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISISANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009John Mazzeo In April 2008, the global rise in food prices reached a breaking point in Haiti where a series of food riots swept across the country. The majority of Haitians depend on the marketplace for food, especially imported rice. The dependence on the marketplace for food and the rise in prices has caused households to reduce purchases leading to growing hunger especially among the rural poor. Haiti's vulnerability to the food crisis is not a problem of supply; it's because of the high cost of living, lavichè in Haitian Creole. This article poses the question, why is Haiti, a country rooted in peasant agricultural production, vulnerable to the rise in global food prices. I propose that answers to the current crisis come from an understanding of rural livelihoods, strategies for accessing food, and global food policies. Rural households are not subsistence producers. Ironically, they have suffered most from the rise in prices because of their dependence on the marketplace. Changing consumption patterns relying on imported rather than domestic staples have increased vulnerability to rising prices. Additionally, economic policies surrounding the import and marketing of food have further increased Haiti's dependence on imports. Understanding the trends leading to Haiti's current food crisis will help to inform policies and programs aimed at providing temporary food assistance and hopefully lead to more effective development programs. This article is based on research conducted in rural Haiti during the summer of 2008, part of which was for World Vision International as it prepared to mitigate the crisis through food assistance programs. [source] MOSAICS OF MAYA LIVELIHOODS: READJUSTING TO GLOBAL AND LOCAL FOOD CRISESANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009Rebecca K. Zarger The particularities of how residents in Southern Belize encounter the vagaries of what is commonly referred to as a "global food crisis" (between 2006 and 2008) are explored in this paper. Belize, like many other nation states around the globe, has been structurally (and sequentially) "readjusted" by transnational lending institutions over the last several decades. Cyclical shifts in agricultural practices have taken place in many Maya communities in Southern Belize in the last decade, partly in response to migration, a severe hurricane, land tenure conflicts, and within the last year, skyrocketing staple prices and food scarcity. The costs of basic staples such as corn, wheat, and rice have nearly doubled, in parallel with much of the rest of the globe during the same time frame. Shifts in subsistence strategies have significant implications for the power and politics of land use, access, and mobility. Furthermore, they reflect centuries-old ways of adjusting to changing circumstances in global markets and colonial and postcolonial realities. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of incorporating political and historical ecologies of land use and food production when considering the local impacts of global food crises. [source] FROM CRISIS TO CUMULATIVE EFFECTS: FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGES IN ALASKAANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009David V. Fazzino Recent increases in the price of fuel in rural Alaska, coupled with high prices of grocery store foods and decreased efficacy of hunting and fishing have led to a food crisis in many regions of rural Alaska. In the summer of 2008 it was predicted that these events would lead to an upswing in the number of individuals migrating to urban areas of Alaska, putting additional stress on the already dwindling resources of food assistance providers. Through discussions with food assistance providers in Fairbanks, Alaska, a research program was designed to assess how well recent migrants were able to meet their food needs. In total 39 individuals were interviewed in November and December 2008, using face-to-face, semistructured interviews. This article discusses a smaller subset of the overall interviews, namely the responses of Natives who currently live in Fairbanks, Alaska. Further, this article informs understandings of "crisis" in the global sense, highlighting the importance of placing "crises" into the larger context of cumulative effects which are long-term and differentially distributed, rather than treating them as discrete and individually mitigatable events. [source] ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES FOR UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES OF THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISISANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009Sunil K. Khanna The current global food crisis can be, in part, described as an outcome of not only historical patterns of income inequalities and long-standing food trade policies biased in favor of wealthier nations but also in terms of significant reductions in food aid and other safety-net programs for people living in poor nations. Despite the serious nature of the problem of food insecurity, only a limited amount of reliable descriptive research, especially at the community level, has explored the causes and consequences of the current food crisis. Anthropology offers a unique set of methodological and theoretical approaches that can be useful for designing, implementing, and evaluating programs and policies aimed at alleviating poverty and reducing food insecurity. Anthropologically informed research can provide a dynamic understanding of food insecurity in terms of its causes and consequences and its local, regional, and global underpinnings. This information can be helpful in incorporating a community-level understanding of the "local" determinants of food insecurity for developing effective and sustainable food policy and intervention programs. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||