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Bloomberg
a day ago
- General
- Bloomberg
World Hunger Easing Despite Rise in Food Prices, UN Report Says
World hunger fell in 2024, as declines in Asia and South America offset an increase in the number of people who lacked adequate diets in Africa, according to a UN analysis released Monday. The share of the global population that couldn't afford enough food slipped to 8.2% in 2024 from 8.5% the year before, according to the report from the Food and Agriculture Organization. Improved food security in Southeast and South Asia and South America helped boost the global average.
Zawya
04-07-2025
- Business
- Zawya
World food prices up slightly in June, UN's FAO says
PARIS - Global food commodity prices edged higher in June, supported by higher meat, dairy and vegetable oil prices, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization said on Friday. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in a basket of internationally traded food commodities, averaged 128.0 points in June, up 0.5% from May's figure. In a separate report, the FAO forecast global cereal production of 2.925 billion metric tons in 2025, up 0.5% from the previous estimate of 2.911 billion. (Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide. Editing by MarkPotter)
Arab News
12-06-2025
- Automotive
- Arab News
Bangladeshi women break driving taboo on male-dominated roads
DHAKA: When Sharmin Akter Pinky sat behind the steering wheel for the first time, it was because of her aunt, who encouraged her to venture into a field which, in Bangladesh, had traditionally been dominated by men. 'She used to inspire me to be an independent woman and to do something with my own abilities,' Pinky told Arab News. Her aunt saw women learning to drive at a school in Dhaka and convinced the rest of the family that it would be the right path for her niece as well. 'She kept insisting that if the other girls could do it, I would also be able to do the same,' Pinky said. 'This is how I stepped into this driving career, with the support of my parents, uncle, and aunt.' Pinky was 20 at the time. Now, eight years later, she is a professional driver working with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. The all-female driving school she enrolled in was opened by BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee), Bangladesh's largest development organization, in 2012. Each year, more and more women have been taking the classes — making the wheel their tool for earning a livelihood and building a career. 'There was a time when people had a very negative mindset about girls entering the driving profession, but things have improved a lot since then. I would encourage more women to take it up. Girls should be independent and explore the world around them,' Pinky said. For her, it also comes with a personal mission to help empower others who may not have had as much support from their families as she did. In Pinky's village, it was not widely accepted that women could work. She said: 'In the early days, when I went back to the village during holidays, people would say things like 'This isn't a respectable job,' or 'You'll have trouble getting married,' or 'You might fall in with the wrong crowd.' 'But my father always stood by me. He told me not to listen to what people around us said. He encouraged me to focus on being a good human being, doing honest work, and helping others improve their lives. 'Later, I brought two other girls from my village, arranged driving training for them, and helped them find jobs. Now, people admit that driving can be a good job for women too. I feel proud I have started something.' For Sharmina Akter Banu, who now also works at FAO, driving offered a means of survival. When her father and husband passed away, she was left alone caring for her 18-month-old child, younger siblings, and mother. 'I received an offer from the BRAC Driving School to take driving training. I completed the training over a period of three months. After that, I got a job as a professional driver,' she said. 'At that time all of my siblings were still attending school. With the income from my driving job, I took on the responsibility of supporting my younger siblings. Thanks to that, all of them were able to complete their education.' Banu's younger brother is now pursuing his honors degree, and her son is completing high school. The job has become a source of pride for her. She has a stable profession, is financially independent, has been able to support her family, and feels like an equal member of society. 'I'm surrounded by many male drivers and, among them, I am the only female. It's a matter of pride for me, because as a woman I've been able to work in this challenging profession alongside men,' she said. 'Wherever I notice a female driver, it fills my heart with joy. More and more girls are coming into this profession. And they are doing well.' Banu and Pinky are among more than 3,500 professional women drivers trained by BRAC. They come from various parts of Bangladesh and different backgrounds. 'We have BRAC's network in the remotest parts of the country … We receive applications from minorities and underprivileged women,' Abdul Quddus, who is in charge of the organization's driving schools, told Arab News. 'After receiving training, the female drivers start working at different organizations, especially with international NGOs … To date, all the women who received professional driving training from us are doing well at their workplaces.' They are contributing not only to the workforce and efforts to change social norms, but also to improving road safety in a country where traffic accidents are common. 'The society has now mostly overcome the stereotype that driving is mostly a male job,' Quddus said. 'Women can play a significant role in ensuring road safety. They don't get involved in risky driving like men, and they are more respectful of the traffic rules.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
09-06-2025
- Science
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed
The amount of farmed seafood we consume -- as opposed to that taken wild from our waters -- is soaring every year, making aquaculture an ever-more important source for many diets, and a response to overfishing. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 99 million tons of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) were farmed around the world in 2023, five times more than three decades ago. Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing around the world -- but with large disparities from species to species. Fast-growing species The two biggest sellers on the market in 2023, carp and tilapia, mainly came from freshwater farming, while other widely-consumed fish, like herring, came just from deep sea fishing Thierry Laugier, a researcher at Ifremer, France's national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP that fish farmers choose species that grow quickly and with simple requirements, to be able to control the life cycle. Sales of the most widely farmed fish in Europe, Atlantic salmon, came to 1.9 million tons in 2023, 99 percent of which were farmed. "We know how to control the ageing or how to launch a reproduction cycle, through injecting hormones," Laugier said. Asia main producer Asia is by far the biggest producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 percent of the 136 million tons -- of both animal and plant species -- produced under manmade conditions in 2023. "For carp, it comes down to tradition, it has been farmed for thousands of years on the Asian continent," the Ifremer researcher said. At the other end of the spectrum, sardines and herring are just fished in the oceans, mainly for profitability reasons as some fish grow very slowly. "It takes around two years to get an adult-sized sardine," Laugier said. He said farming of some fish has not yet been started as, "for a long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible resource". Seaweed Little known in the West, seaweed nevertheless accounts for almost a third of world aquaculture production. Almost exclusively from Asia, seaweed production increased by nearly 200 percent in two decades, to 38 million tons. It is mainly used in industry, in jellies, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the expert said. He said seaweed also has the major advantage of absorbing not just CO2 in the oceans, but also nitrogen and certain pollutants. "And from an ecological point of view it is better to farm macroalgae than salmon," Laugier said.
Globe and Mail
06-06-2025
- General
- Globe and Mail
Eid al-Adha celebrated globally with less spending, high prices and fewer animal sacrifices
Less spending, higher prices and fewer animal sacrifices subdued the usual festive mood as the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha was celebrated in many parts of the world. Eid al-Adha, known as the 'Feast of Sacrifice,' coincides with the final rites of the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. It's a joyous occasion, for which food is a hallmark, with devout Muslims buying and slaughtering animals and sharing two-thirds of the meat with the poor. Palestinians across the war-ravaged Gaza Strip marked the start of the three-day feast with prayers outside destroyed mosques and homes early Friday. For the second year since the war with Israel broke out on Oct. 7, 2023, no Muslims in Gaza were able to travel to Saudi Arabia to perform the traditional pilgrimage. With much of Gaza in rubble, men and children were forced to hold Eid al-Adha prayers in the open air, and with food supplies dwindling, families were having to make do with what they could scrape together. 'This is the worst feast that the Palestinian people have experienced because of the unjust war against the Palestinian people,' said Kamel Emran after attending prayers in the southern city of Khan Younis. 'There is no food, no flour, no shelter, no mosques, no homes, no mattresses ... The conditions are very, very harsh.' The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome said Thursday that Gaza's people are projected to fall into acute food insecurity by September, with nearly 500,000 people experiencing extreme food deprivation, leading to malnutrition and starvation. 'This means the risk of famine is really touching the whole of the Gaza Strip,' said Rein Paulson, director of the FAO office of emergencies and resilience. Our life in Gaza is hungry and sleep-deprived under Israel's blockade The war in Gaza and the struggle to celebrate were at the forefront of the minds of Muslims in Kenya, Imam Abdulrahman Mursal said as he led Eid prayers in the capital, Nairobi. 'We ask Allah to hear their (Palestinian) cries. We feel their pain, as much as we are far from them,' Mursal said. 'But what unites us is our Muslim brotherhood, so we ask Allah to give them victory and to give victory to all the other Muslims wherever they are, if they are facing any kind of oppression.' Eid al-Adha commemorates the Quranic tale of Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail as an act of obedience to God. Before he could carry out the sacrifice, God provided a ram as an offering. In the Christian and Jewish telling, Abraham is ordered to kill another son, Isaac. South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh will celebrate Eid al-Adha on Saturday. Ahead of the festival, many Muslims in the region were turning to livestock markets to buy and sell millions of animals for sacrifice. In New Delhi, sellers were busy tending to their animals and negotiating with potential buyers. Mohammad Ali Qureshi, one of the sellers, said this year his goats were fetching higher prices than last year: 'Earlier, the sale of goats was slow, but now the market is good. Prices are on the higher side.' Festival preparations also were peaking in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where many Muslims dye sheep and goats in henna before they are sacrificed. 'We are following the tradition of Prophet Ibrahim,' said Riyaz Wani, a resident in Kashmir's main city of Srinagar, as his family applied henna on a sheep they plan to sacrifice. In Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, Muslim worshippers were shoulder-to-shoulder in the streets and the Istiqlal Grand Mosque was filled for morning prayers Friday. Outside Jakarta, the Jonggol Cattle Market bustled with hundreds of traders hoping to sell to buyers looking for sacrificial animals. While sales increased ahead of Eid, sellers said their businesses have lost customers in recent years due to economic hardship following the COVID-19 pandemic. A foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in 2022 and 2023 significantly dampened the typically booming holiday trade in goats, cows and sheep, though Indonesia's government has worked to overcome that outbreak. Rahmat Debleng, one of the sellers in the market, said before the pandemic and the FMD outbreak, he could sell more than 100 cows two weeks ahead of Eid al-Adha. But on the eve of the celebration this year, only 43 of his livestock were sold and six cows are still left in his stall. Though the threat of a foot-and-mouth outbreak looms large, declining sales are mostly because of economic hardship, Debleng said. Jakarta city administration data recorded the number of sacrificial animals available this year at 35,133, a decline of 57% compared to the previous year. The Indonesian government will make Monday an additional holiday after Friday's festival to allow people more time with their families. Eid momentum is expected to support economic growth in Indonesia, where household consumption helps drive GDP. It contributed over 50% to the economy last year, though analysts expect more subdued consumer spending in 2025.
