By the summer of 2008, the price of rice had increased five times from the average price in 2005. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

The following post is from One Table, a Mercy Corps campaign to fight world hunger by investing in the world's women.

Today almost a billion people worldwide are unable to buy or grow enough food to avoid malnutrition. That's 120 million more than were hungry in 2006.

What happened? Basically, the world saw dramatic spikes in food prices. But there were many underlying causes of what's known as the global food crisis:

• Drought and other climate-related problems that resulted in smaller harvests
• Changing diets — rise of the middle class in India and China and an increased demand for food, especially meat, which requires large amounts of grain to raise
• Diversion of crops from food production to the production of biofuels
• High fuel prices during 2008 — if it costs more to transport food, prices go up
• Declining investments in agricultural productivity — total agriculture development aid to poor countries plunged from $8 billion in 1984 to $3.4 billion in 2004. At the same time, the developing world's cities have been ballooning with people who do not grow any of their food
• Export bans and restrictions last year in several major grain-producing countries like China as governments sought to lower food prices for their own citizens, with the result of reducing the global supply on hand.

While food prices have come down from their highs of 2008, they remain substantially above historic levels. Many economists feel this trend, which most severely affects those who can least afford it, is likely to continue for some time.

The economic, health and societal costs of the global food crisis have been severe. One of the first things Mercy Corps did to figure out how and where to direct our efforts was to survey the communities where we work. We discovered that within communities Mercy Corps serves, roughly 70 percent of income is spent on food, and 80 percent of the population had been affected by rising food prices over the past year. The survey also confirmed something we already suspected: that families were coping with higher prices by eating fewer meals, selling off household belongings, going into debt and removing children from school so that they can work.

In addition to being a record year for food prices, it's also been a record year for our food security team, allowing Mercy Corps to aggressively respond to this crisis. We now have 17 programs in 13 countries designed specifically to respond to this on-going problem. Through support from donors including USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gap Foundation, the Hunger Site, and private individuals, our Food Crisis Response employs a strategy designed to ensure that the groundwork for increased prosperity in the future is laid — even while addressing the immediate problem of accessing sufficient food.

Food distributions, much of which are specifically targeted to improve child nutrition, are taking place in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, in the Central African Republic, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Nepal, Niger, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Uganda and again Zimbabwe, Mercy Corps is helping hungry households to access food by providing employment opportunities, agricultural training and inputs (such as seeds and tools), and helping people establish and grow small businesses.

Combined, these programs are reaching almost 1.5 million individuals who have been directly impacted by higher food prices. Overall, Mercy Corps’ Crisis Response will lead to a sustainable increase in income for these people, leading in turn to greater food security over the long-term.

In some parts of Africa, cell phones are becoming essential tools for economic growth, bringing both information and prosperity. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), however, cell phone technology is helping fuel a deadly, decade-long civil conflict that has sharply escalated in the past week.

There are plenty of examples of how cell phone technology benefits national economies. A 2007 study suggested that a country's economy grows 1.2 percent for every 10 percent increase in the number of cell phone users. An analysis from Niger reports that cell phones triggered a fall in grain prices and a 20 percent reduction in geographical differences in grain prices after they were introduced in 2001. The researcher concludes that cell phones allow grain traders to collect information about market prices without the time and expense of travel, allowing them to respond to market shifts cheaply and efficiently.

The war in the Congo, however, illuminates the dark side of this technological success. Part of the battle is over resources, including a rare mineral called coltan used to manufacture small electronics. Eighty percent of the world’s coltan is in the DRC, and the world's rabid demand for things like laptops and cell phones has made coltan extremely valuable.

According to OneWorld.net:

Armed militias from Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi, along with local militias from the DRC, are exploiting most of the reserves and selling the product to multinational corporations that produce cell phones and other electronic devices.”

This battle over resources has led to rape, torture and death in the Congo. In introducing the history of this conflict, a reporter for The Independent admonishes, "No, this is not only a story about them. This — the tale of a short journey into the long Congolese war we in the West have fostered, fuelled and funded — is a story about you.”

The Green Wall for the Sahara Initiative will plant a wall of trees to stop the spread of the Sahara. Photo: Dale Gillard (flickr)

Ever heard of the Great Green Wall?

Concerns about the rapid southern spread of the Sahara desert have prompted African nations to build a wall – out of trees.

The Sahara has been moving south at a rate of almost a square kilometer a year, consuming villages and wiping out agricultural lands.

Slowing the desertification has become a huge priority — and a huge community effort.

International aid groups are helping build community gardens, institute new irrigation techniques, and teach sustainable farming. Projects are especially successful in the areas of the Sahara, like northern Burkina Faso, where new farming techniques are taking advantage of increased rainfall due to climate change.

The biggest project to date is the Green Wall for the Sahara Initiative. The $3-million, two-year initial phase will plant a belt of trees 7,000-kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide, and was formally approved at the Community of the Sahel-Saharan States in Benin last month.

The African Union says future phases will plant trees from Mauritania to Djibouti in two parallel belts, creating a strip of protected topsoil for high-yield farming. Nigeria has launched its own complimentary Desert-to-Food Program.

The AU hopes the Green Wall Initiative will arrest soil degradation, reduce poverty, conserve biodiversity, and increase land productivity in more than 25 countries. Others hope the project will create millions of jobs, promote ecotourism, alleviate the food crisis, and even introduce new fishing and livestock-breeding industries.

Who would have thought a wall of trees could have such a big impact?