Despite Canada’s riches, many Canadians are suffering from poverty, inequality and an inability to afford daily food needs, says a scathing United Nations report .
“What I’ve seen in Canada is a system that presents barriers for the poor to access nutritious diets and that tolerates increased inequalities between rich and poor, and aboriginal non-aboriginal peoples,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN right-to-food envoy. “Canada has long been seen as a land of plenty. Yet today one in 10 families with a child under 6 is unable to meet their daily food needs. These rates of food insecurity are unacceptable, and it is time for Canada to adopt a national right-to-food strategy,” said De Schutter.“This is a country that is rich but that fails to adapt the levels of social assistance benefits and its minimum wage to the rising costs of basic necessities, including food and housing,” De Schutter said.
Last year, he said, close to 900,000 Canadians were turning to food banks each month.
His report also described the situation in many of Canada’s aboriginal communities as desperate. “A long history of political and economic marginalization,” it said, “has left many indigenous peoples with considerably lower levels of access to adequate food relative to the general population.”
He also lamented growing obesity in Canada, saying more than one in four Canadian adults are obese.
While in Malaysia
Dr. Aalt A. Dijkhuizen, President and Chairman of the Executive Board, Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands said "It is certainly possible to double food production in Malaysia through techniques and technologies within the financial reach of all, coupled with training, management support and other capacity building measures,"
Specifically, the program includes:
Increased harvests per hectare, especially in rice, through plant species research and substitution to both improve salt tolerance and reduce water use. At the same time, the breeding efforts would improve food safety by reducing the need for fertilizers and pesticides;
Precision farming, using information and communication technologies to collect data from the field and better inform farming decisions such as when and what to plant, along with training to improve growing, harvesting and other management practices.
The Netherlands is relatively small in territory, he notes, but has become the world's second largest food exporter due in part to enormous investments in advanced systems such as greenhouse facilities with regulated temperatures and precise water and fertilizer conditions. In such circumstances, up to 20 times more produce results compared with traditional outdoor crop systems, and with less than half the fertilizer input.
Because food is perishable and expensive to transport, 85 to 90 percent of food is consumed within the country in which it is produced. So we must emphasise productivity growth in Africa and Asia, where most demand growth will happen, and where agricultural yields are only one-third those of the more developed nations.
Second, we must accelerate efforts to adapt agriculture to climate change, which will hit hardest in precisely those regions where food demand growth is expected to be greatest. Land use change due to agriculture currently accounts for one third of human-caused CO2 emissions. If food demand outstrips supply, higher food price rises will only add to the pressure to convert carbon-rich forests, wetlands and grasslands to crop and livestock production - accelerating greenhouse gas emissions, aggravating climate change, and putting further pressure on agriculture.
Third, we must reduce food loss and waste. As much as half of global food production is lost between the farmer's field and the dinner plate. Consumer food waste in developed countries equals the entire food production of sub-Saharan Africa. Reducing food waste, while simultaneously ending policies that divert agricultural output into biofuels production, will help alleviate the pressure to bring more land and water into food and feed production. In the developing world, by contrast, post-harvest losses occur primarily on farm as well as in processing, storage, and transport. Simple technological advances in physical transport and communications can sharply reduce spoilage rates.
Fourth, we need to conserve scarce soil nutrients and water. Managing natural resources in agriculture has taken a back seat compared to making genetic improvements in crops and livestock. But increasing natural resource scarcity will mean that natural resources management-based approaches will become increasingly important to stimulating productivity growth and resilience.
No magic bullet solution exists and a multi-pronged strategy is necessary, but changes must occur disproportionately in the under-developed but potentially productive countries in Africa and Asia. The argument is straightforward: Most people in Africa and Asia depend on agriculture, and better nutrition is good for human development. More food production means more food which is beneficial for health and education. The way forward would be to develop crops and technologies that both increase food production and reduce risk by conservation agricultural techniques.
With more than one in four of its 856 million people undernourished, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world's most food-insecure region yet it has the ability to feed its peoples. Africa has ample land, water and favourable climate to feed itself.
"It is a harsh paradox that in a world of food surpluses, hunger and malnutrition remain pervasive on a continent with ample agricultural endowments," said the Director of United Nations Development Programme's Africa Bureau, Tegegnework Gettu
“What I’ve seen in Canada is a system that presents barriers for the poor to access nutritious diets and that tolerates increased inequalities between rich and poor, and aboriginal non-aboriginal peoples,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN right-to-food envoy. “Canada has long been seen as a land of plenty. Yet today one in 10 families with a child under 6 is unable to meet their daily food needs. These rates of food insecurity are unacceptable, and it is time for Canada to adopt a national right-to-food strategy,” said De Schutter.“This is a country that is rich but that fails to adapt the levels of social assistance benefits and its minimum wage to the rising costs of basic necessities, including food and housing,” De Schutter said.
Last year, he said, close to 900,000 Canadians were turning to food banks each month.
His report also described the situation in many of Canada’s aboriginal communities as desperate. “A long history of political and economic marginalization,” it said, “has left many indigenous peoples with considerably lower levels of access to adequate food relative to the general population.”
He also lamented growing obesity in Canada, saying more than one in four Canadian adults are obese.
While in Malaysia
Dr. Aalt A. Dijkhuizen, President and Chairman of the Executive Board, Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands said "It is certainly possible to double food production in Malaysia through techniques and technologies within the financial reach of all, coupled with training, management support and other capacity building measures,"
Specifically, the program includes:
Increased harvests per hectare, especially in rice, through plant species research and substitution to both improve salt tolerance and reduce water use. At the same time, the breeding efforts would improve food safety by reducing the need for fertilizers and pesticides;
Precision farming, using information and communication technologies to collect data from the field and better inform farming decisions such as when and what to plant, along with training to improve growing, harvesting and other management practices.
The Netherlands is relatively small in territory, he notes, but has become the world's second largest food exporter due in part to enormous investments in advanced systems such as greenhouse facilities with regulated temperatures and precise water and fertilizer conditions. In such circumstances, up to 20 times more produce results compared with traditional outdoor crop systems, and with less than half the fertilizer input.
Because food is perishable and expensive to transport, 85 to 90 percent of food is consumed within the country in which it is produced. So we must emphasise productivity growth in Africa and Asia, where most demand growth will happen, and where agricultural yields are only one-third those of the more developed nations.
Second, we must accelerate efforts to adapt agriculture to climate change, which will hit hardest in precisely those regions where food demand growth is expected to be greatest. Land use change due to agriculture currently accounts for one third of human-caused CO2 emissions. If food demand outstrips supply, higher food price rises will only add to the pressure to convert carbon-rich forests, wetlands and grasslands to crop and livestock production - accelerating greenhouse gas emissions, aggravating climate change, and putting further pressure on agriculture.
Third, we must reduce food loss and waste. As much as half of global food production is lost between the farmer's field and the dinner plate. Consumer food waste in developed countries equals the entire food production of sub-Saharan Africa. Reducing food waste, while simultaneously ending policies that divert agricultural output into biofuels production, will help alleviate the pressure to bring more land and water into food and feed production. In the developing world, by contrast, post-harvest losses occur primarily on farm as well as in processing, storage, and transport. Simple technological advances in physical transport and communications can sharply reduce spoilage rates.
Fourth, we need to conserve scarce soil nutrients and water. Managing natural resources in agriculture has taken a back seat compared to making genetic improvements in crops and livestock. But increasing natural resource scarcity will mean that natural resources management-based approaches will become increasingly important to stimulating productivity growth and resilience.
No magic bullet solution exists and a multi-pronged strategy is necessary, but changes must occur disproportionately in the under-developed but potentially productive countries in Africa and Asia. The argument is straightforward: Most people in Africa and Asia depend on agriculture, and better nutrition is good for human development. More food production means more food which is beneficial for health and education. The way forward would be to develop crops and technologies that both increase food production and reduce risk by conservation agricultural techniques.
With more than one in four of its 856 million people undernourished, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world's most food-insecure region yet it has the ability to feed its peoples. Africa has ample land, water and favourable climate to feed itself.
"It is a harsh paradox that in a world of food surpluses, hunger and malnutrition remain pervasive on a continent with ample agricultural endowments," said the Director of United Nations Development Programme's Africa Bureau, Tegegnework Gettu
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