Displaying items by tag: food supplies

Drought is threatening the Iraqi tradition of growing amber rice, a key element in a struggling economy. This variety of rice, which takes its name from its distinctive scent, is widely used, but after three years of drought amber rice production will be only symbolic in 2022, forcing consumers to seek out imported varieties and leaving farmers pondering their future. Rice fields normally stay submerged all summer, but that’s a luxury Iraq can no longer afford. The country’s available water reserves are well below the critical level. Officials have limited total rice crop areas to 1,000 hectares; the normal quota is 35,000. The water shortages have also led to reduced quotas for wheat farmers. Last year, the agricultural sector contracted by 17.5%, according to the World Bank.

America’s food supply chain is breaking down due to coronavirus shutdown. Meat processing plants and retailers are closed; consequently farmers and ranchers have nowhere to take their pigs, poultry and cattle and face heart-wrenching decisions about what to do with surplus animals. One Nebraska pig farmer is euthanising 500 to 600 pigs a week. Poultry farmers and cattle ranchers face similar dilemmas. Vegetable and dairy farmers face similar predicaments. Ripe crops and filled milk containers which would have gone to schools, restaurants, hotels, etc. go nowhere. With increasing unemployment, food banks are reporting double the number of families needing food and food shops cannot keep their shelves stocked for lack of supplies. The demand is there and the food is there, but the connection from farm to retail has been interrupted as the debate about reopening continues in each state.

Save the Children (SCF), using UN data, have found that huge numbers of children under 5 perished from severe hunger. Some 84,701 children may have died between April 2015 and October 2018 because of a lack of food. Parents had to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it. Since the Saudi-Emirati military intervention in March 2015, commercial imports of food through the vital Hodeidah port have been reduced by more than 55,000 tonnes a month, enough to meet the needs of 4.4 million people, half of whom are children, SCF said. The World Food Programme says that up to 14 million Yemenis are now at risk of starvation as fighting rages on in Hodeidah. 'Any further decline in imports could well lead directly to famine,' it warned. Multiple past attempts to hold negotiations between the government alliance and Houthis have failed.