“We’re concerned that the budget seems to signal declining importance, I guess, for aid,” said Foodgrains Bank public policy director Paul Hagerman.

The budget, released Nov. 4, announced $2.7 billion in cuts to Canada’s international assistance over four years. The Canadian Foodgrains Bank, an organization founded in the 1970s by Canadian farmers aiming to relieve world hunger, is among the charities that could be affected by this reduction.

Hagerman said the cuts are unlikely to have major impacts on the aid organization in the short-term but could compound over the years.

“The only time international development and aid is mentioned (in the 2025 budget) is ‘we’re going to cut here, we’re going to cut there, we’re going to cut somewhere else,” Hagerman said.

“It signals a shift away from seeing aid as a key part of Canada’s identity, and I think in the long term, that’s more worrisome.”

The Canadian Foodgrains Bank was one of a coalition of over 100 NGOs that expressed concern over the government cutting international assistance back to what it described as a baseline, pre-COVID level.

In a Nov. 4 written release, Cooperation Canada CEO Kate Higgins said the cuts would “erode Canada’s credibility with our global partners and blunt our capacity to shape outcomes that affect Canadians at home.”

Potential fundraising setback

While the Foodgrains Bank does receive funding from the Canadian government, most of its support comes from Canadian donors, including many farming communities.

“Farmers, either individually or in groups, they volunteer time, they volunteer their equipment, they put in cash, and collectively are contributing millions of dollars to our global efforts to reduce hunger, and we’re so grateful for that,” Hagerman said.

He said in meetings supporters will often refer to Foodgrains Bank as ‘we’ rather than ‘you guys’ or ‘them.’

“There’s a strong sense of ownership there. And many people have been supporters for decades. You know, the older generations of a family tend to encourage the younger ones to support.”

“We are working on reducing hunger,” he said. “I mean, it’s our business. It’s their business as well. They’re growing food, not only for families but for Canadians and for export and just recognize the life-giving nature of food production and food systems.”

While that support has been strong, budgetary cuts could weaken it. Currently, the government matches donations to the Foodgrains Bank’s food assistance projects 4:1, up to $25 million a year.

“People know ‘I’m giving money, it’s been matched by the government, so it’s going to have a bigger impact,” Hagerman said. “I think if we were not to get money from government, it would be a setback in our fundraising.”

The current grant supporting this donation-matching will last four years, but Hagerman said the end of those four years could bring a “very different fiscal environment.”

Canada’s reputation abroad

Hagerman said charities like the Foodgrains Bank have the potential to have impacts on Canadian agriculture beyond charity, as their work could help to strengthen Canada’s reputation abroad.

“If you look at some of the places where Canada was contributing aid 20-30 years ago, a lot of them are strong trading partners now,” he said. “It’s because we’ve helped to overcome poverty and build up prosperity in those countries to the point where they’re now interested in buying what we have to sell.”

“If we all live in a world where there’s constant wars, where there’s diseases moving across borders, where there’s conflict moving across borders, it’s not good for any of us. And that’s the root that we’re trying to address as a development in the humanitarian organization.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which hurt some of the Foodgrains Bank’s partner organizations. Hagerman said it was disappointing to see the Canadian government not take the opportunity to step up and offer support where the U.S. had cut it.

“If you look at Prime Minister Carney, if you look at Minister Anand, who’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, they have been very vocal in the last few months … to say, as the U.S. retreats from the world, this is a good opportunity for Canada to step in and play a bigger role in the world stage,” he said. “We were hoping that we would see that in the budget, but it doesn’t look to be the case.”

The post Budget cuts may signal shift away from food aid says Canadian Foodgrains Bank appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

“Cutting aid in the way it’s been cut is going to cost tens of thousands of lives,” said Andy Harrington, executive director of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.

The U.S. government, in the early days of the Trump administration, put a 90-day freeze on funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development — the agency responsible for foreign aid, including funding humanitarian organizations.

While the U.S. State Department has given waivers to some groups for “lifesaving” humanitarian work, some organizations have said federal funding hasn’t arrived for exempted projects, the Associated Press reported on Feb. 12.

Faith-based humanitarian groups like Catholic Relief Services have told staff to expect “drastic reductions in their workforce,” the Associated Press report said. USAID funded nearly half of that organization’s US$1.2 billion budget.

The U.S. is the largest single aid donor worldwide, according to the United Nations, giving US$72 billion in aid in 2023.

The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is a Christian relief and development agency originally established by farmers. It does not receive funding from USAID, said Harrington. However, it partners with organizations that do. Some of those groups are now ending programs and laying off staff.

The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is assessing how it might be able to fill gaps that open in its programs — such as when a partner organization can’t pay a staff salary. However, they can’t compensate for the withdrawal of billions in funding from the humanitarian ecosystem.

The recent weakening of the Canadian dollar has also reduced the Foodgrains Bank’s buying power as much aid spending is done in American dollars.

“You’re going to see massive, massive impacts,” said Harrington. “It’s not just going to be in the short term on humanitarian assistance, emergency assistance, urgent health programs, food security. It’s going to be in the longer-term impacts that you’re going to see across longer-term development programs as well.”

“What we can do will be a drop in the bucket, to be honest, but we do want to keep our programs running.”

Canadian cuts?

Earlier this month, federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said that, if elected later this year, he will cut “wasteful foreign aid” and would not allow funding to go to “dictators, terrorists and multinational bureaucracies,” the Canadian Press reported. Poilievre signaled he would divert those funds towards defense spending.

Canada in 2023 spent US$7.97 billion on international aid, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) statistics. This was 0.37 per cent of Canada’s gross national income. $1.5 billion supported refugees, asylum seekers and Ukrainians fleeing war during their first year in Canada, the Globe and Mail reported.

Harrington said many in the humanitarian community are concerned that people don’t understand how aid funding works.

“We don’t work through governments. Our money goes directly to our partners on the ground and local communities,” he said.

That’s not to say that there isn’t waste within the system, Harrington said. However, groups like his are subject to regular audits, monitoring and evaluation.

International aid also contributes to Canada’s influence around the world.

“It’s good to go around the world and see Canadian flags flying over great development projects that (local) people are extremely proud of,” said Harrington.

A call for advocacy

If supporters want to help, Harrington said they can contact their members of Parliament to tell them that Canadian aid and the work the Canadian Foodgrains Bank does is important — that it impacts nearly a million people per year and sees great results.

“In a backdrop where many voices are trying to tell us the aid doesn’t work, we’re telling you that it does, and we have the statistics, the facts.”

He also encouraged people to continue to do what they’re doing — praying, giving, learning and advocating.

“You’re making a difference, and it’s saving lives,” Harrington said.

The post Canadian Foodgrains Bank calls for supporters to advocate for international aid funding appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

The result: The United Nations says that, at best, it will be able to raise enough money to help about 60 per cent of the 307 million people it predicts will need humanitarian aid next year. That means at least 117 million people won’t get food or other assistance in 2025.

The U.N. also will end 2024 having raised about 46 per cent of the $49.6 billion (C$71.4 billion) it sought for humanitarian aid across the globe, its own data shows. It’s the second year in a row the world body has raised less than half of what it sought. The shortfall has forced humanitarian agencies to make agonizing decisions, such as slashing rations for the hungry and cutting the number of people eligible for aid.

The consequences are being felt in places like Syria, where the World Food Program (WFP), the U.N.’s main food distributor, used to feed 6 million people. Eyeing its projections for aid donations earlier this year, the WFP cut the number it hoped to help there to about 1 million people, said Rania Dagash-Kamara, the organization’s assistant executive director for partnerships and resource mobilization.

Dagash-Kamara visited the WFP’s Syria staff in March. “Their line was, ‘We are at this point taking from the hungry to feed the starving,’” she said in an interview.

U.N. officials see few reasons for optimism at a time of widespread conflict, political unrest and extreme weather, all factors that stoke famine. “We have been forced to scale back appeals to those in most dire need,” Tom Fletcher, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told Reuters.

Financial pressures and shifting domestic politics are reshaping some wealthy nations’ decisions about where and how much to give. One of the U.N.’s largest donors – Germany – already shaved $500 million (C$719.5 million) in funding from 2023 to 2024 as part of general belt tightening. The country’s cabinet has recommended another $1 billion (C$1.44 billion) reduction in humanitarian aid for 2025. A new parliament will decide next year’s spending plan after the federal election in February.

Humanitarian organizations also are watching to see what U.S. President-elect Donald Trump proposes after he begins his second term in January.

Trump advisers have not said how he will approach humanitarian aid, but he sought to slash U.S. funding in his first term. And he has hired advisers who say there is room for cuts in foreign aid.

The U.S. plays the leading role in preventing and combating starvation across the world. It provided $64.5 billion (C$92.8 billion) in humanitarian aid over the last five years. That was at least 38 per cent of the total such contributions recorded by the U.N.

Sharing the wealth

The majority of humanitarian funding comes from just three wealthy donors: the U.S., Germany and the European Commission. They provided 58 per cent of the $170 billion (C$244.6 billion) recorded by the U.N. in response to crises from 2020 to 2024.

Three other powers – China, Russia and India – collectively contributed less than one per cent of U.N.-tracked humanitarian funding over the same period, according to a Reuters review of U.N. contributions data.

The inability to close the funding gap is one of the major reasons the global system for tackling hunger and preventing famine is under enormous strain. The lack of adequate funding – coupled with the logistical hurdles of assessing need and delivering food aid in conflict zones, where many of the worst hunger crises exist – is taxing efforts to get enough aid to the starving. Almost 282 million people in 59 countries and territories were facing high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023. Reuters is documenting the global hunger-relief crisis in a series of reports, including from hard-hit Sudan, Myanmar and Afghanistan.

The failure of major nations to pull their weight in funding for global initiatives has been a persistent Trump complaint. Project 2025, a set of policy proposals drawn up by Trump backers for his second term, calls on humanitarian agencies to work harder to collect more funding from other donors and says this should be a condition for additional U.S. aid.

On the campaign trail, Trump tried to distance himself from the controversial Project 2025 blueprint. But after winning the election, he chose one of its key architects, Russell Vought, to run the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, a powerful body that helps decide presidential priorities and how to pay for them. For secretary of state, the top U.S. diplomat, he tapped Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who has a record of supporting foreign aid.

Project 2025 makes particular note of conflict – the very factor driving most of today’s worst hunger crises.

“Humanitarian aid is sustaining war economies, creating financial incentives for warring parties to continue fighting, discouraging governments from reforming, and propping up malign regimes,” the blueprint says. It calls for deep cuts in international disaster aid by ending programs in places controlled by “malign actors.”

Billionaire Elon Musk has been tapped by Trump to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new body that will examine waste in government spending. Musk said this month on his social media platform, X, that DOGE would look at foreign aid.

The aid cuts Trump sought in his first term didn’t pass Congress, which controls such spending. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and close Trump ally on many issues, will chair the Senate committee that oversees the budget. In 2019, he called “insane” and “short-sighted” a Trump proposal to cut the budget for foreign aid and diplomacy by 23 per cent.

Graham, Vought, Rubio and Musk did not respond to questions for this report.

Olympics and spaceships

So many people have been hungry in so many places for so long that humanitarian agencies say fatigue has set in among donors. Donors receive appeal after appeal for help, yet have limits on what they can give. This has led to growing frustration with major countries they view as not doing their share to help.

Jan Egeland was U.N. humanitarian chief from 2003 to 2006 and now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, a nongovernmental relief group. Egeland said it is “crazy” that a tiny country like Norway is among the top funders of humanitarian aid. With a 2023 gross national income (GNI) less than two per cent the size of America’s, Norway ranked seventh among governments who gave to the U.N. that year, according to a Reuters review of U.N. aid data. It provided more than $1 billion.

Two of the five biggest economies – China and India – gave a tiny fraction as much.

China ranked 32nd among governments in 2023, contributing $11.5 million (C$16.5 million) in humanitarian aid. It has the world’s second-largest GNI.

India ranked 35th that year, with $6.4 million (C$9.2 million) in humanitarian aid. It has the fifth-largest GNI.

Egeland noted that China and India each invested far more in the type of initiatives that draw world attention. Beijing spent billions hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics, and India spent $75 million (C$107.9 million) in 2023 to land a spaceship on the moon.

“How come there is not more interest in helping starving children in the rest of the world?” Egeland said. “These are not developing countries anymore. They are having Olympics … They are having spaceships that many of the other donors never could dream of.”

Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said China has always supported the WFP. He noted that it feeds 1.4 billion people within its own borders. “This in itself is a major contribution to world food security,” he said.

India’s ambassador to the U.N. and its Ministry of External Affairs did not respond to questions for this report.

To analyze giving patterns, Reuters used data from the U.N.’s Financial Tracking Service, which records humanitarian aid. The service primarily catalogs money for U.N. initiatives and relies on voluntary reporting. It doesn’t list aid funneled elsewhere, including an additional $255 million (C$366.9 million) that Saudi Arabia reported giving this year through its own aid organization, the King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Centre.

Restrictions and delays

When aid does come, it is sometimes late, and with strings attached, making it hard for humanitarian organizations to respond flexibly to crises.

Aid tends to arrive “when the animals are dead, people are on the move, and children are malnourished,” said Julia Steets, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a think tank based in Berlin.

Steets has helped conduct several U.N.-sponsored evaluations of humanitarian responses. She led one after a drought-driven hunger crisis gripped Ethiopia from 2015 to 2018. The report concluded that while famine was avoided, funding came too late to prevent a huge spike in severe acute malnutrition in children. Research shows that malnutrition can have long-term effects on children, including stunted growth and reduced cognitive abilities.

Further frustrating relief efforts are conditions that powerful donors place on aid. Donors dictate details to humanitarian agencies, down to where food will go. They sometimes limit funding to specific U.N. entities or nongovernmental organizations. They often require that some money be spent on branding, such as displaying donors’ logos on tents, toilets and backpacks.

Aid workers say such earmarking has forced them to cut rations or aid altogether.

The U.S. has a long-standing practice of placing restrictions on nearly all of its contributions to the World Food Program, one of the largest providers of humanitarian food assistance. More than 99 per cent of U.S. donations to the WFP carried restrictions in each of the last 10 years, according to WFP data reviewed by Reuters.

Asked about the aid conditions, a spokesperson for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which oversees American humanitarian spending, said the agency acts “in accordance with the obligations and standards required by Congress.”

Those standards aim to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian aid, the spokesperson said, and aid conditions are meant to maintain “an appropriate measure of oversight to ensure the responsible use of U.S. taxpayer funds.”

Some current and former officials with donor organizations defend their restrictions. They point to theft and corruption that have plagued the global food aid system.

In Ethiopia, as Reuters has detailed, massive amounts of aid from the U.N. World Food Program were diverted , in part because of the organization’s lax administrative controls. An internal WFP report on Sudan identified a range of problems in the organization’s response to an extreme hunger crisis there, Reuters reported earlier this month, including an inability to react adequately and what the report described as “anti-fraud challenges.”

The U.N. has a “zero tolerance policy” toward “interferences” that disrupt aid and is working with donors to manage risks, said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Solving the U.N.’s broader fundraising challenges will require a change in its business model, said Martin Griffiths, who stepped down as U.N. humanitarian relief chief in June. “Obviously, what we need to do is to have a different source of funding.”

In 2014, Antonio Guterres, now the U.N.’s secretary-general and then head of its refugee agency, suggested a major change that would charge U.N. member states fees to fund humanitarian initiatives. The U.N.’s budget and peacekeeping missions already are funded by a fee system. Such funding would offer humanitarian agencies more flexibility in responding to need.

The U.N. explored Guterres’ idea in 2015. But donor countries preferred the current system, which lets them decide case by case where to send contributions, according to a U.N. report on the proposal.

Laerke said the U.N. is working to diversify its donor base.

“We can’t just rely on the same club of donors, generous as they are and appreciative as we are of them,” Laerke said.

— Reporting by Jaimi Dowdell, Kaylee Kang, Benjamin Lesser and Raymon Troncoso. Additional reporting by Giulia Paravicini, M.B. Pell, Emma Farge, Gram Slattery, Michelle Nichols, Patricia Zengerle, Charlie Szymanski and Allison Martell.

The post Global hunger crisis deepens as major nations skimp on aid appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

“We are grateful, but the food will only be enough for one month,” said Mushaikwa, 71, who lives with her elderly husband, as she trudged away with her bag of grain. “My crops are wilted.”

Zimbabwe has failed to feed itself since 2000 when former president Robert Mugabe seized white-owned farms, disrupting production and leading to sharp falls in output, leaving many Zimbabweans reliant on food aid for survival.

The crisis has been exacerbated by an El Nino-induced drought that has hit many southern African nations. The government has estimated that 2.7 million people will go hungry this year, although the real number could be higher.

The government is considering whether to declare a state of emergency, a government minister told Reuters.

El Nino is a naturally occurring weather phenomenon associated with a disruption of wind patterns that means warmer ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific.

It occurs on average every two to seven years, typically lasts nine to 12 months and can provoke extreme weather such as tropical cyclones, prolonged drought and subsequent wildfires.

“When you drive around, you will see that many crops have wilted,” said World Food Programme acting country director Christine Mendes in Buhera, about 220 km (140 miles) southeast of the capital, Harare.

Zimbabwe’s staple maize harvest is expected to halve to 1.1 million tons this year.

WFP has helped 270,000 people in four drought-prone districts between January and March but will need additional funds to feed more, said Mendes.

In Buhera, 47-year-old Mary Takawira assessed her crop, which dried up before maturity.

“I do not remember the taste of (corn) anymore,” she said. “This is going to be a tough year.”

The post Zimbabwe goes hungry as crops wither amid El Nino drought appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

Wednesday, federal agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay announced up to $9.98 million in funding for community food projects through the fifth phase of the Local Food Infrastructure Fund, an outworking of the Food Policy for Canada.

The fund is geared toward “projects to improve food security across Canada, including community gardens and kitchens, refrigerated trucks and storage units for donated food, and greenhouses in remote and Northern communities,” a federal news release said. Since 2019, the Local Food Infrastructure Fund has committed $64.8 million to such projects, the release added.

The 192 projects approved for this installment of funding include:

• Solar panels for a vertical farm at a school in High River, Alta.
• Hydroponic tower gardens, potato farming equipment and gardening tools for Kawacatoose First Nation in Saskatchewan.
• A cargo van and power pallet truck for Greater Hamilton Food Share in Hamilton, Ont.
• A tractor, greenhouse and various gardening equipment for Le Conseil des Atikamekw d’Opticiwan in Quebec.
• A cargo van for a church in Edmonton, Alta.

“In communities of all sizes, we need to continue supporting service organizations aiding families,” MacAulay said in the release.

The post Feds disburse funds on community food security projects appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

“This year’s [Global Hunger Index report] reveals that 58 countries will not reach low levels of hunger, let alone zero hunger by 2030, which is a sobering thought,” said Stefan Epp-Koop, the Foodgrains Bank’s senior manager of humanitarian programs, in a news release today.

The Global Hunger Index is a tool that measures and tracks hunger at global, regional and national levels, “reflecting multiple dimensions of hunger over time,” the index’s website says.

This year’s index, released this fall, showed that progress on reducing hunger around the world has stalled, despite significant headway in some countries.

“The impacts of multiple intersecting crises have stalled progress in the fight against hunger,” Epp said. “Conflict, extreme weather, and economic challenges such as high inflation, have hit communities already vulnerable to food insecurity in a devastating way this year.”

Since 2017, undernourishment, one of the indicators used to calculate the Global Hunger Index, has risen. The number of undernourished people this year was about 735 million, from 572 million in 2017, the index report said.

South Asia and Africa south of the Sahara are the regions with the highest levels of hunger. Nine countries have “alarming” levels of hunger, the index report said–these are Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

A further 34 countries measured “serious” hunger, the report said.

There’s still good news, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank said.

Since 2000, the number of countries with measured ‘alarming’ hunger has dropped to nine from 38, the Foodgrains Bank said.

With a concerted, compassionate effort by individuals, organizations and governments, that number can continue to decline significantly in 2024, the organization added.

“It’s encouraging to see that almost every country our members and their partners are working in has improved during this period. There is still a long way to go to ending hunger, but knowing progress has taken place as a result of the work we’re doing motivates us to keep going,” said Foodgrains Bank executive director Andy Harrington.

The post Global hunger stalled well above pre-pandemic levels appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

Jon Driedger from Leftfield Commodity Research in Winnipeg said that while natural disasters like an earthquake can take on a significant human cost, there is often very little change on commodity markets.

“In the broader pulse market, it’s kind of a blip in terms of the actual area impacted,” he said. “Unless there were ports that were badly damaged with no easy alternative outlet or inlet, typically these sorts of things don’t have a large impact.”

However, Driedger cautioned that the long-term impact of the earthquake is still unknown and while there could be an increase in demand if pulses are used in food aid packages, he believes there would be little change in prices.

Driedger added that he is unaware of any international supply chain disruptions in the affected areas, but he thinks there are local impacts.

Meanwhile, prices are staying steady for the most part, according to Driedger.

“I think peas are holding steady, and probably red lentils. Steady to a bit softer is largely what we’re seeing here,” he said. “In the case of something like peas, if soymeal prices stay high, that maybe helps provide a bit of a floor, but probably not the sort of thing that drives the market higher. (For) red lentils, Australia’s exporting into new markets, so that maybe caps the ceiling a little bit.

“We don’t think prices will fall apart, but maybe steady to drifting lower as we go into spring.”

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) last Friday marked Feb. 10 as World Pulses Day for the seventh year in a row.

The UN first recognized the day in 2017 after the FAO marked 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. The UN believes pulses will be essential to fulfilling the organization’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

“This celebration presents a unique opportunity to raise public awareness about pulses and the fundamental role they play in the transformation to more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, leaving no one behind,” the FAO said on the World Pulses Day website.

— Adam Peleshaty reports for MarketsFarm from Stonewall, Man.

The post Pulse weekly outlook: Earthquake to have little effect on pulse markets appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

Before the coronavirus crisis, 135 million suffered from acute hunger worldwide, Corinne Fleischer, the WFP’s regional director, told Reuters. The numbers have climbed since and are expected to soar further because of climate change and conflict.

The impact of environmental challenges is another destabilizing factor that can drive food scarcity and lead to conflict and mass migration happening.

“The world just can’t afford this,” Fleischer said. “We see now 10 times more displacement worldwide because of climate change and conflict and of course they are inter-linked. So we are really worried about the compounding effect of COVID, climate change and the war in Ukraine,” she said.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the impact of the Ukraine crisis has had massive repercussions, she said, underlining both the import dependency of the region and its proximity to the Black Sea.

“Yemen imports 90 per cent of its food needs. And they took about 30 per cent from the Black Sea,” she said.

The WFP supports 13 million of the 16 million people who are in need of food assistance, but its assistance only covers half a person’s daily needs because of a lack of funds.

Costs had gone up 45 per cent on average since COVID and Western donors have faced massive economic challenges with the war in Ukraine.

For oil-exporting countries such as Iraq, which benefited from the surge in oil prices following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, food security is at risk.

Iraq needs about 5.2 million tons of wheat but only produced 2.3 million tons of wheat, Fleischer said. The rest had to be imported, which cost more.

Despite state support, severe drought and recurring water crises are endangering the livelihood of smallholders all over Iraq, she said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Amina Ismail and Charlotte Bruneau.

The post Acute food insecurity now touching 345 million worldwide appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

“The Ukraine crisis is creating shock waves when it comes to supply chain and especially food security and impacting the most vulnerable at the most difficult time,” said Harjit Sajjan, minister of international development.

“We are making adjustments to reflect this… People are going hungry because the prices of food have gone up,” Sajjan told Reuters in an interview in Jordan, the first leg of a regional tour that also takes him to Egypt and Lebanon.

He did not give the new aid figure but the Ottawa-based Canadian International Development Platform said there was a 27 per cent rise in foreign aid last year to around $6.6 billion.

The United Nations has said a global food crisis fuelled by conflict, climate shocks and the COVID-19 pandemic is growing because of the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine driving rising prices of food, fuel and fertilizer.

Over 50 million people in eastern Africa will face acute food insecurity this year, according to a new study backed by the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Sajjan said Canada is boosting aid to the WFP, whose annual requirements have reached an all-time high of $22.2 billion, without taking away from other development programs.

“We have increased our support for the Middle East region when it comes to food,” he said citing as one example Lebanon, which has a significant reliance on Ukraine wheat and is facing bread shortages.

He described as a positive step an agreement brokered with Russia and Ukraine last month by the United Nations and Turkey to unblock grain exports from Black Sea ports but said the few shipments so far were not enough to ease the crisis.

Canada was also increasing aid to Egypt, typically the world’s biggest wheat importer, and to Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria that have been riven by conflict.

Canada was also looking at how to help improve resilience in African countries, noting in particular the continent’s shortage of food storage.

— Suleiman Al-Khalidi is Reuters’ chief correspondent for Jordan and Syria.

The post Canada seeks to boost foreign aid for food security appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

India, the world’s second biggest wheat producer, is prepared to meet any extra demand for wheat from buyers in south Asia and Southeast Asia, and also from countries further afield in Europe, West Asia and North Africa. Ukraine is a major producer of grains but exports have been disrupted since the Russian invasion in February.

“The Indian market has sufficient stocks, and India is in a comfortable position to meet requests from wheat-importing countries,” Sudhanshu Pandey, the most senior civil servant at the ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution, told Reuters in an interview.

India’s new season wheat harvest is underway, with this year’s production pegged at a record 111.32 million tonnes — making it the sixth season in a row that the country has produced a surplus.

India needs at least 25 million tonnes of wheat each year to run a food welfare program.

Last year, the government bought a record 43.34 million tonnes of wheat from domestic farmers, substantially higher than the amount it needs for the welfare program.

This year government purchases are likely to fall because private traders are offering farmers a higher price for wheat than the government’s price of 20,150 rupees (C$336) a tonne — leaving a bigger surplus for export.

“We have to meet our own requirement for the PDS and then the rest is available for global exports,” Pandey said, referring to the public distribution system, or food welfare program that supplies around 25 million tonnes of subsidized wheat to the poor.

Pandey said if there is enough wheat for the poor, the Indian government is “happy” to see farmers getting attractive prices from private traders who have been actively buying from growers to meet rising global demand.

Wheat stocks at government warehouses totalled 19 million tonnes on April 1, he said, significantly higher than a target of 7.46 million tonnes.

Pandey said the government was encouraging wheat exports by asking port and railway authorities to give priority to outbound wheat cargoes.

India’s wheat exports hit 7.85 million tonnes in the fiscal year to March, an all-time high and a sharp increase from 2.1 million tonnes in the previous year.

Sugar surplus

Pandey said India’s sugar exports are expected at a record 8.2 million tonnes in the current 2021-22 season, higher than last year’s 7.2 million tonnes.

Indian sugar mills have already contracted to export around seven million tonnes in 2021-22, he said.

Still, India’s sugar inventories on Oct. 1, 2022, when the next season begins, are expected at around seven million tonnes, Pandey said, against 8.2 million tonnes on Oct. 1, 2021.

“This year’s (sugar) production is at a record of almost 35 million tonnes, and our domestic requirement is about 26-26.5 million tonnes, so you can very clearly see that we have a surplus from the current year’s production. And then we have stocks of 8.2 million tonnes from last year,” Pandey said.

Explaining New Delhi’s efforts to cut its reliance on expensive vegetable oil imports, Pandey said the long-term solution lies in raising India’s domestic output, and the government is working on a plan to encourage farmers to grow more oilseeds.

— Reporting for Reuters by Mayank Bhardwaj and Rajendra Jadhav.

The post Record wheat crop, high stocks to help India meet rising export demand appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.