During a U.N. Security Council meeting, Guterres urged Ethiopia’s government to allow “unrestricted movement of desperately needed fuel, cash, communications equipment and humanitarian supplies” into Tigray, Amhara and Afar.

“Our colleagues on the ground are sharing increasingly alarming eye-witness testimony of the suffering — including growing accounts of hunger-related deaths,” Guterres said.

“In locations where screening has been possible, we are seeing acute malnutrition rates that remind us of the onset of the 2011 Somalia famine,” he said.

The 15-member Security Council met after the Ethiopian government last week expelled seven senior U.N. officials for meddling in internal affairs. The United Nations has rejected the move and said there was no proof to back up the accusations.

Guterres it was “particularly disturbing” given the looming famine, while U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield described it as “reckless,” adding: “There’s no justification for the government of Ethiopia’s action, none at all.”

War broke out 11 months ago between Ethiopia’s federal troops and forces loyal to the TPLF, which controls Tigray. Thousands have died, millions have fled their homes and the conflict has spilled into neighbouring Amhara and Afar.

Guterres said up to seven million people in Tigray, Amhara and Afar need help, including five million in Tigray where some 400,000 people are estimated to be living in famine-like conditions.

“Ethiopian children are starving. People are dying because they cannot access food, water and basic health care. This is not a situation caused by natural disaster. It is caused by those who continue to choose the path of war,” Ireland’s U.N. Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason told the council.

Guterres urged the Security Council to back U.N. aid efforts. However, any strong action by the body — such as sanctions — is unlikely as Russia and China have made clear they believe the Tigray conflict is an internal affair for Ethiopia.

China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun on Wednesday called for “quiet diplomacy in order to prevent a deadlock” over the expulsion of the U.N. officials.

— Reporting for Reuters by Michelle Nichols at the U.N.

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“What’s the difference today?” Thomas-Greenfield said. “Today we should have better information… We can save lives if we know where to go and if we put the funding toward it.”

Thomas-Greenfield and Beasley both recounted these stories during a U.N. Security Council meeting on food security, where U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that more than 30 million people in over three dozen countries are “just one step away from a declaration of famine.”

“Famine and hunger are no longer about lack of food. They are now largely man-made — and I use the term deliberately. They are concentrated in countries affected by large-scale, protracted conflict,” Guterres told the 15-member body.

He announced the creation of a high-level U.N. task force on preventing famine, to be led by U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock.

“Parts of Yemen, South Sudan and Burkina Faso are in the grip of famine or conditions akin to famine,” Guterres said. “The Democratic Republic of the Congo experienced the world’s largest food crisis last year, with nearly 21.8 million people facing acute hunger between July and December.”

Guterres, Beasley and Thomas-Greenfield also raised particular concern about food shortages in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, where Ethiopian government troops began an offensive against Tigray’s former ruling party after regional forces attacked federal army bases in the region in November.

“Food stocks are depleted. Acute malnutrition is rising. The ongoing violence has prevented humanitarians from helping desperately hungry people,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

In war-torn South Sudan, Guterres said 60 per cent of people are increasingly hungry: “Food prices are so high that just one plate of rice and beans costs more than 180 per cent of the average daily salary — the equivalent of about $400 here in New York.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Michelle Nichols.

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Some $30 million will be spent in Yemen, $15 million each in Afghanistan and northeast Nigeria, $7 million each in South Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo and $6 million in Burkina Faso (all figures US$). Lowcock said $20 million had also been set aside in anticipation of a worsening situation in Ethiopia.

“The prospect of a return to a world in which famines are commonplace would be heart wrenching and obscene in a world where there is more than enough food for everyone. Famines result in agonizing and humiliating deaths,” Lowcock said.

“Their impact on a country is devastating and long lasting,” he said in a statement.

Nearly $500 million has been paid into the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund in 2020. It is used to enable the world body to respond quickly to new humanitarian crises or underfunded emergencies without having to wait for earmarked donations.

— Reporting for Reuters by Michelle Nichols.

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The country grew wealthy selling tulip bulbs in the 17th century during the so-called Dutch Golden Age and remains the second largest agricultural exporter behind the United States.

For decades the FloraHolland cooperative has acted as the hub from which planeloads of flowers from around the world are distributed from vast, air-conditioned warehouses in Aalsmeer, near Amsterdam airport.

The company says it distributes almost 50 per cent of all flowers sold worldwide and last year it reported sales of 4.6 billion euros (C$6.7 billion), mostly from matching growers and buyers at its famous early-morning daily auctions.

But worryingly for FloraHolland chief executive Lucas Vos, sales of flowers by growers directly to buyers have overtaken those sold through FloraHolland’s auctions.

Direct sales from members of the cooperative bypassing the auctions rose by 3.8 per cent to 2.3 billion euros last year.

Auction sales stood at 2.1 billion euros, down one per cent.

“We need to realize that if, for instance, we want to get flowers into China or India… the logistical system we have built for ourselves probably does not fit,” said Vos, who was brought in from shipping firm Maersk in 2014.

In response, FloraHolland is looking to make changes to an auction system that dates back more than 100 years.

It is investing up to 90 million euros over the next five year and plans to develop a 24-hour online dealing platform.

It will be like “a Tinder or AirBNB” for flowers, Vos said.

That could eventually lead to the Dutch auction halls, where some 3,000 work, falling silent, but change is already apparent; some 70 per cent of sales come from remote bidders.

Vos remains confident, however.

“Most producers grow one type of flower, and if you’re a consumer, you want a bouquet,” he said. “There will always be a need for a hub.”

Overseas sites

For European markets, it makes sense to gather flowers in Amsterdam before trucking them to Britain or Russia.

And for growers in Kenya or Ethiopia, for example, being among FloraHolland’s 4,600 members helps maintain stable prices in the face of powerful buyers such as Europe’s top supermarket chains.

Some 50 per cent of Kenya’s flower exports are sold via FloraHolland, and 70-80 per cent of Ethiopia’s.

But being members also means they must commit to sell all of their output via FloraHolland and that can be a handicap when trying to reach Chinese or Indian markets.

Vos said FloraHolland plans to open logistics sites overseas, either near growers in Europe or Africa or near Asian buyers, to preserve the company’s central role in a more devolved global flower trade.

At stake is the Netherlands’ dominance in the global flower trade, which is slipping.

The Netherlands exported 52 per cent of the world’s cut flowers in 2013, down from 58 per cent in 2003, according to Rabobank.

— Thomas Escritt is a senior Reuters correspondent based in Amsterdam.

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Ethiopians have been waiting for the spring rains to replenish water sources and to plant crops after the most severe drought in decades pushed more than 10 million people into hunger.

But many livestock, weakened by the drought, have died following heavy rains in Ethiopia’s remote Somali and Afar regions, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said Sunday.

“Not only are families losing their remaining livestock, but the heavy rain is making the roads inaccessible,” said Mohamed Hassan, who heads NRC’s work in the Somali region.

“Roads are turning into raging rivers and trucks carrying food assistance are unable to reach many communities.

“If people don’t get aid I am afraid that human lives might be lost,” he said in a statement.

Some 28 people were killed by flash floods in early April, the majority when a river passing through Jijiga, the capital of Somali region, burst its banks, the government said.

The two eastern regions, among the worst hit by the drought, are mainly home to herding communities. Cattle, sheep and goats often die after floods because infectious diseases increase and vegetation becomes toxic.

The government and aid agencies are revising upward a joint appeal in December for US$1.4 billion as the number of districts suffering a humanitarian emergency has widened.

The crisis is expected to deepen until August when people hope to harvest crops they will plant in June to catch the summer rains.

Floods can also contaminate water sources, causing diseases like cholera.

Ethiopia regularly suffers hunger crises as eight out of 10 people are farmers who depend upon the rains.

“We will see this situation again and again,” said Hassan. “We must not only hand out food, but also help people find alternative livelihoods.”

— Reporting by Katy Migiro for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change.

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Crop production has fallen up to 90 per cent in some regions and failed completely in the country’s east, a consequence of an El Nino weather pattern that has caused significant declines in rain in some parts of the world and floods in others.

The Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organization said the drought had decimated Ethiopian livestock and threatened food supplies for 10.2 million people. Access to pasture and water will worsen until the rainy season begins in March, FAO said.

“The outlook for 2016 is very grim,” said FAO’s representative for Ethiopia, Amadou Allahoury. “Food overall will become harder to access if we continue to see prices rise, food stocks deplete and livestock become weaker, less productive, and perish.”

Brought to its knees by famine in 1984, Ethiopia’s economy is now one of the fastest-growing in the world, leaving it better able to deal with such crises. Agriculture also plays a smaller role in the economy, but the FAO says it still provides half of gross domestic product and 80 per cent of employment.

The agency’s plan includes distributing seeds and animal feed, vaccinating animals, delivering 100,000 sheep and goats to vulnerable households and giving farmers cash for bringing weakened and unproductive livestock to slaughter.

Communities will be offered support with savings-and-loans schemes, irrigation projects, and education.

El Nino, marked by warming sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, causes both drought and flooding in Ethiopia. FAO said the latter was expected to be as destructive to agriculture as the lack of rain.

— Reporting for Reuters by Isla Binnie in Rome.

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