"LOCUSTS"

A large-scale locusts outbreak across eight provinces in North and Northeast Afghanistan poses enormous threat to the country’s food security, warns the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAO

The COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and conflicts have created significant food security challenges worldwide in the past years. Currently, millions of people around the world need urgent support in over 45 countries. But just providing food aid isn't enough to tackle the growing hunger crisis, explained Rein Paulsen, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) chief of Emergencies. FAO

Dr. Osama El-Lissy of the Food and Agriculture (FAO) said “plant pests currently destroy up to 40 percent of agriculture and crops,” including 80 percent of the global banana production, which “is currently under attack from a disease called banana fusarium.” UNTV CH

To help vulnerable farmers get through the worst drought in forty years, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has so far supported more than 138 300 households (comprising 691 500 people) in just the Somali region of Ethiopia with life-sustaining supplies and by the end of 2022 will have assisted a total of 1.5 million households in need (7.5 million people) across the entire country. FAO

The IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva raised the 2022 Spring Meetings curtain today (Thursday, April 14) in an event hosted by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where she stated that the world is facing a crisis on top of a crisis: First, the pandemic, and second, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. IMF

With the Horn of Africa experiencing one of its worst droughts in recent history and 12 to 14 million people severely food insecure in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs held on Wednesday a briefing to scale up support for the region. UNIFEED

Rein Paulsen, Director of Emergencies and Resilience at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said the drought situation in the Horn of Africa is “now sitting on the brink of catastrophe,” and stressed that there was a “narrow window” for urgent action to prevent a “worst-case scenario.” UNIFEED

Top officials from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) have just completed a visit to Kenya to raise awareness on the drought and see FAO’s vital response in action, including in Isiolo and Marsabit counties in the north. FAO

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today warned that the number of people teetering on the edge of famine (IPC4/Emergency or worse) in 43 countries has risen to 45 million, as acute hunger spikes around the world. This number has risen from 42 million earlier in the year and 27 million in 2019. WFP

As climate talks get underway in Glasgow, families in Southern Madagascar, where climate is driving famine-like conditions, brace themselves for yet another harsh year ahead as the ongoing drought shows no signs of abating, signaling deteriorating hunger. WFP