By Timi Gerson, Director of Advocacy of American Jewish World Service. Cross-posted on Food Forever – The AJWS Food Justice Blog.

African countries aren’t spending enough on agriculture, IRIN reported last week. And that’s a bad thing:

“Spending money on food production is critical in Africa, where 70 percent of people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for food and income. There are also going to be more people to feed in Africa in the next few decades. Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is expected to grow faster than elsewhere by 2050, increasing by 910 million people, or 108 percent.”

It is a bad thing, but the article and cited reports don’t go into much detail as to why these governments aren’t investing in agriculture programs. One key reason is that they don’t always have the choice. Powerful International financial organizations (IFIs) like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund frequently required developing countries to cut back government spending – including farm programs – in order for countries to receive desperately needed loans while global trade rules enforced by the World Trade Organization make many types of domestic agricultural policies that protect local farmers from unfair foreign competition “illegal.” This was all done in the name of creating more “open” global markets, yet the United States and other rich countries still heavily support their corporate commodity sector, which then dump products on   developing countries – competing with local farmers who now find it harder to sell their locally-grown food.

Food and Water Watch describes the devastating consequences of this cycle in its report What’s Behind the Global Food Crisis? How Trade Policy Undermined Africa’s Food Self-Sufficiency:

“This low level of agricultural investment cannot generate sustained growth in the farm sector that can provide a base for broader economic growth. Countries reduced or eliminated support for farm credit, seed and fertilizer subsidies, and crop distribution and reserve programs. These programs helped farmers increase agricultural productivity, invest in their operations and promote their crops in regional and export markets. When African governments rapidly withdrew from supporting these farm programs, agricultural productivity declined, as farmers were unable to secure loans, afford high-value seeds and fertilizers, or deliver their crops to more distant markets.”

People in Africa and other countries around the globe aren’t hungry because the world isn’t producing enough food. Along with poor infrastructure and inefficient aid policies, decades of unfair international finance and trade deals are part of a flawed global system that prevents the world’s vast surplus of food from making it to the mouths of hungry families.

Cross-posted on Food Forever – The AJWS Food Justice Blog.

A piece recently published in Newsday(a Zimbabwean newspaper) poignantly expresses what we’ve been discussing a lot lately, particularly-with regard to sustainable agriculture in Haiti: that food aid alone does not alleviate poverty.

Though Zimbabwe has been plagued with food insecurity for quite some time, this year most farmers in northern Zimbabwe produced a bumper harvest of maize, while those in the southern region succumbed to a dry spell. The Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet)’s prognosis of Zimbabwean farmers’ 2010 harvest shows an increase in food production compared to 2009. That’s good news! Thankfully, the country is mostly out of an emergency phase and farmers hope to break the cycle of aid moving forward. As the article explains, this year’s bumper harvest has done a lot of good:

“The bumper harvest presents an opportunity to introduce ways that promote human dignity and economic development tapping from resources in the aid industry – Human beings are not engines that run on the same type of fuel and giving food aid in a situation where food is locally available is denying people the dignity of dietary choice and missing an economic growth opportunity. There is no doubt that food aid saves lives but doesn’t alleviate poverty or contribute to the economy. In fact it can be corrosive to the economy as it creates dependency. The money goes mainly towards consumption.”

So true! Check out the article to learn more.

Cross-posted on From the Ground–the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)

In Mogadishu, store shelves are full of food but the bellies of civilians are not. An article in IRN today reported that the Somali government has asked the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to release food stocks in Mogadishu for distribution to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who are chronically hungry.

Somalia is facing a serious humanitarian crisis. Forty-two percent of Somalia’s population—an estimated 3.2 million people—is in need of emergency humanitarian assistance and the situation has been severely aggravated by political violence. In and around Mogadishu, two Islamist groups have been fighting government troops and African Union peacekeepers, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians. In the past few months, the government has been reportedly planning an offensive against the insurgents, but this is yet to happen.

While the WFP is said to be providing daily hot meals to 80,000 people—mainly women and children—at locations across Mogadishu, WFP’s spokesperson Peter Smerdon isn’t so sure that distributing food from store shelves is the best idea. Check out this article to learn why.

Years of conflict and instability in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have taken quite a toll on the national population, particularly on nutrition. Experts believe the basic structural causes of malnutrition have been aggravated by high food prices and the global financial crisis which has shaken the mining industry in the west and southeast of the country. A recent IRIN article reports that half a million children and more than a million women in the DRC are in urgent need of nutritional support.

Victor Makwenge, the DRC’s Minister of Health, said that “at least 700 children under-five die each day in the five provinces where only 20 percent of children have a varied diet.” What’s more, a 2009 study by the national nutrition program in DRC provinces, which represent about half the national population, found global acute malnutrition rates above the 15 percent emergency threshold in children under five.

It’s no secret that women and children bear the brunt of malnutrition in the developing world and I’ve blogged before about the relationship between malnutrition and poor maternal health.

Fortunately, the DRC Ministry of Health officials are calling for more resources for prevention and treatment and for improvements in agricultural production. Learn more.

Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS).

“Kitchen gardens in Kenya” is not a phrase we hear often, but for many people, that phrase is the key to survival. In a country of nearly 35 million people, malnutrition and hunger are staggering problems, particularly for Kenyan children, orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS. In the rural, western regions of Kenya, sustaining basic nutrition is a chronic struggle in the face of food insecurity. Too weak to walk long distances or stand in lines waiting for food aid, those who live in rural areas and subsist on less than a dollar a day do not have access to the basics needed to live healthy, dignified lives.

Kisumu Medical Education Trust (K-MET), an AJWS grassroots partner, was founded in 1995 to address health, education and development issues in the rural areas of western Kenya. Through care-giving and capacity building, K-MET has developed programs to improve reproductive health, nutrition and the overall quality of life for vulnerable populations and people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). One sustainable innovation in the face of food insecurity is K-MET’s kitchen garden program. Learn more.

Today’s New York Times features several letters to the editor in response to “Experts Worry About Feeding the World as Its Population Grows,” an article published on October 22. The letter writers call attention to several issues: the political realities that perpetuate global food insecurity; the relationship between access to contraception and reduced food demand; and a desire for integrated farming strategies that combine conventional farming practices with agro-ecological approaches. What the letters do not include, however, are examples of grassroots organizations that are implementing many of the creative solutions the authors are seeking.

For the past decade, a community-based organization called GREEN Senegal has been helping rural populations reverse the hunger cycle by promoting small-scale farming. AJWS funds its Techno-Agriculture Innovation for Poverty Alleviation (TIPA) project, which trains farmers in “market gardening,” a unique method for making small family farms profitable. Farmers learn how to use simple, inexpensive techniques like crop rotation and Israeli-style drip-irrigation, maximizing output on formerly overtaxed or arid land.

The Lambi Fund of Haiti, a long-time AJWS grantee, is donating high-quality seeds to two women’s peasant organizations to help them build seed banks for their farming communities. After the initial input by Lambi Fund, from which the first harvest will be planted, farmers will replenish the banks each year with home-grown seeds. The annual crops will dramatically improve farmers’ ability to feed their families directly, and the surplus will be sold at the marketplace, generating capital to increase the community’s self-sufficiency. Paired with this project, Lambi Fund is holding a series of regional trainings to further empower rural communities to overcome stigma and discrimination, to fight for their rights and use their skills to change discriminatory government policies.

Visit Fighting Hunger from the Ground Up to learn more about the Lambi Fund, GREEN Senegal and other grassroots organizations that are developing sustainable solutions to food insecurity.

What if you knew that the organic vanilla that you were using in your recipe was not only kosher, but was grown by farmers who would not, under any circumstances, work in their gardens, harvest their trees or deliver their crop from 18 minutes before sundown on Friday until tzeit hakochavim (the appearance of three stars in the sky) on Saturday—with the same applying to all Jewish Festivals.

What if you knew that these farmers live in the deepest regions of  sub-Saharan East Africa in the area Mbale, Uganda, and that their farming cooperative consisted of Jewish, Muslim and Christian members called Peace Kawomera?

What if you knew that these farmers were being paid two and a half times the fair trade price for their beans, because a volunteer organization run by a hazzan (cantor) in Los Angeles removes the middle-man and makes every attempt to allow the farmer to receive the most that he/she can?

What if you knew that this organization, Uniting Jewish Communities and Products, UJCP, is attempting to do this for as many communities as possible throughout the world, helping them become self sufficient, providing clothes, housing, health care and education.

Wouldn’t this be a recipe (excuse the pun) that would continue to elevate our kitchen table from the mundane to the mizbeach, the ordinary to the altar of values and holiness that we are meant to accomplish every time that we sit down to eat?

You probably expect me to end with a sales pitch for a product—that is not the intent of this blog. We don’t yet have a product to sell—we are just helping.  And have made a commitment to continue to help.  The company that has purchased 3.5 metric tons of dried vanilla (constituting 21 metric tons of raw beans purchased directly from the farmers) is called Natural Flavors, Inc. in Newark, New Jersey. They are using the vanilla as concentrate to use in various organic, kosher products.  It is my brother, Herb Stein’s company, and though he has all the vanilla that he can use from established sources in India and Madagascar, Herb is willing to continue the process of buying from the Peace Kawomera cooperative.  A company called AMFRI Farms in Kampala then dries the beans, bought directly by Herb from the coop.  This has been a cooperative effort that will end, hopefully in the PK farmers taking complete control of the process—growing, harvesting and drying all on their own.

Other agencies and organizations have been helping as well.  Kulanu (along with UJCP) has worked hard to get training and building a facility for the co-op.  Recently they have been awarded a grant to build a building that can be used to dry and store coffee and vanilla!

The purpose of my blog is to keep you informed of the progress that we are making in helping first the Ugandan Jewish communities, and then others, in finding ways to sell their products so that they can lead more self sufficient lives.  We are in need of volunteers—those with business, accounting, PR and website building (we don’t have a home page yet) skills.  Or those that know of a buyer for vanilla, coffee and the many other products that grow in the region.

We read in the Torah this week about treating the worker fairly—we as Jews should take the lead in making sure that no one is left without basic necessities in a world in which poverty is increasing at alarming levels.   When we prepare and partake of our food, think of how rewarding it would be to support those that grow and labor to support our needs.

We are in the middle of negotiations for December’s vanilla crop.  I’ll keep you posted.

The prophet Isaiah asks (58:6-7):

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the fetters of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house? when you see the naked, that you cover them, and that you hide not yourself from your own flesh?

If we are to “loose the fetters of wickedness”, what might our fasting have to do with Darfur?

To date, of the 1,686 published posts, only a dozen articles on the Jew and the Carrot mention “fasting“. Indeed, perhaps not surprisingly most of the articles on the Jew and the Carrot deal with eating more than not eating. Nonetheless, not-eating is a very Jewish way of approaching food. There are a variety of explanations that anthropologists and others offer for fasting. Perhaps the most accepted in classic Jewish circles is from Talmud Bavli Berachot 17a where fasting is compared to sacrifice: an offering up of our own blood and fat. Few of us remember our parents telling us to finish all the food on our plates because “children in Europe are starving.” This is parental advice from another generation. However, children all over the world continue to starve. Our finishing every carrot and pea on our plates won’t cause them not to starve, but there are ways that we can use our food to call attention to their plight. So, it is a bit sad that no more than 4 articles on the the Jew and the Carrot mention Darfur (one of which encourages supporting the Jewish World Watch Solar Project to protect and empower the women of Darfur).

Darfur is “durn far” away

Its geographical distance and our many other concerns conspire to push the genocide happening there further back on the stove. Few of us still wear our green plastic bracelets reminding us to “Save Darfur” and “Not On My Watch”. So, Ruth Messinger of AJWS and Rabbi David Saperstein of the RAC decided to call attention to the ongoing starvation by continuing the “water only” fast initiated by Mia Farrow.

Darfur Fast for Life is asking the Obama administration to ensure the return of 13 humanitarian aid agencies that were expelled from Sudan on March 5, following the International Criminal Court’s issuance of an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The group’s website also directs visitors to an April 30 letter to President Barack Obama from the Enough Project, the Save Darfur Coalition, and the Genocide Intervention Network containing detailed policy and strategic recommendations. The letter, President Obama and Sudan: A Blueprint for Peace, asks for commencement of a formal Darfur peace process; full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the governments of southern Sudan and Khartoum; and negotiations leading to agreements for peace in Chad and eastern Sudan.

To end his fast R. Saperstein invited rabbis and cantors from all the religious movements to join him by refraining from all food on 26 Sivan: from sundown Wednesday June 17 till sundown Thursday June 18.

Fasting Religious Leaders

I was among more than 80 rabbis and cantors from all over the world who participated. Those who know me understand that this is not a difficult task. I enjoy food and do what I can to make my eating meaningful. Even so, while I would hardly count as a hunger artist, I can easily go without food and often forget to eat a meal. So, many might ask, if I am not starving myself in public, what is gained by fasting for Darfur? Indeed. Therefore this posting. I often do wear the green bracelet and oddly enough, I am not aware of any lapel buttons produced by the Jewish community using Jewish imagery and calling for an end to the genocide in Darfur.

Is there anything more…?

Whenever you are on a call with a service representative from any company, and, at the end of the call he or she asks:

Is there anything else I can do for you?

Answer:

Yes, since you ask, please encourage President Obama to do even more than President Bush did to stop the genocide in Darfur. The phone number is: 202-456-1111. Please leave a message.

You will likely receive one or another of the following responses:

• painful silence [the service rep does not even know what Darfur is]
• uncomfortable laughter [the service rep knows about Darfur but is so surprised and embarrassed by your request that the best s/he can do is laugh]
• understanding consent [the service rep knows and understands what is involved and may actually follow through].

In any one of these cases you have done well. You have raised awareness of the situation in Darfur with someone for whom it has most likely not been on the front burner.

Meaningful Non-Eating

And I ask you to join others in spending some of your time focusing your attention on a problem far away, and over which you have little control. Make your eating and your not eating as meaningful as possible.

This may not be the fast, but it is certainly a worthy one.

Mark Bittman’s recent call to eat more sustainable fish included the instruction to eat more herring, a fish that is near and dear to Ashkenazic cuisine. What would kiddush in synagogue be without plates of this tasty, flavorful fish? Well, maybe herring is a little too flavorful–while I love herring, I find that many younger Jews find it too strong or fishy tasting. For those whose taste buds were raised on bland farmer salmon or other milder fish, herring seems to only be on the menu if you eat it at a trendy Scandanavian restaurant.

But there is hope for the herring-skeptic. I first had this delicious herring salad in London, at the Shabbat table of a cousin from South Africa. In my family, while we eat it all year, it has become an important part of our Yom Kippur break-fast. The sweetness of the pineapple and the acid in the mayonnaise are a wonderful balance to the full-flavored herring. The matjes herring is wonderfully delicate, and is a good introduction to herring for those who are used to tart, briny fish pieces from a jar.

Check out the recipe after the jump!

South African Herring Salad
3 to 4 herrings, filleted, cleaned, soaked (I use matjes herring fillets)
1 medium to large onion, peeled and sliced finely
1 to 2 cans drained pineapple pieces (reserve the syrup)
Good thick mayonnaise

Using scissors, cut up the herring into bite size pieces. Place in a bowl with the sliced onion. Add the pineapple pieces (if you use pineapple rings, just slice them into pieces before adding to the salad). Blend about 1/2-3/4 cup mayonnaise with some of the reserved pineapple syrup, adding the latter slowly to the mayonnaise to avoid lumps. When the consistency is to your liking–rather like a thin cream or buttermilk–pour over the herring mixture and gently mix everything. Adjust the quantity of mayo/syrup as needed or to taste.

With thanks to Marianne Cobb for wonderful hospitality and this recipe!

Photo credit: The Blue Cafe