What's New

FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) has recently released several new country briefs for the Africa South of the Sahara Food Security Portal’s prioritized countries. The country brief series provides information regarding countries’ current agricultural season and harvest prospects for main staple food crops, as well as estimates and forecasts of cereal production, cereal imports, and food prices and policy developments. This latest round of updates includes new information for Tanzania , Malawi , and Mozambique .

In 2011, agricultural ministers from the G-20 countries met in Paris to discuss how best to mitigate the adverse effects of price volatility following the food price shocks of 2007-08 and 2010-11.  One of the outcomes of the ministerial was the creation of the Agricultural Market information System (AMIS), which aims to provide better and more timely information on market supply and demand and thus to enable more informed policymaking.  Another outcome was the support of a pilot program to establish a regional humanitarian grain reserve in the ECOWAS countries of West Africa.&nbsp

The fertilizer industry is characterized by high levels of concentration along the supply chain. According to the International Fertilizer Development Center, nine countries control more than 50 percent of nitrogen (ammonia, urea) and phosphate (DAP/MAP) production capacity, while only five countries control 79 percent of potash (MOP) production capacity. Developing regions such as Africa south of the Sahara are also highly dependent on imported fertilizer. In addition, the level of fertilizer use in Africa south of the Sahara remains far below other developing regions (around 10kg.

According to FAO estimates, approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food gets lost or wasted every year around the world. These losses occur all along the food value chain, from farm to fork, and understanding exactly where they occur for specific commodities and in specific geographic locations can go a long way in helping researchers and policymakers design interventions to reduce them. Such a reduction in food loss is an important part of the Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG12.

According to a new technical report from IFPRI’s Malawi Strategy Support Program (MSSP), despite the fact that Malawi has exceeded the 10 percent agricultural investment goal set forth by the CAADP, the country’s agricultural productivity has remained stagnant in recent years and food insecurity and undernutrition remain rampant.