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.

Example of a user-based interactive map. Photo: whiteafrican (flickr)

Imagine being an aid worker isolated in rural Zimbabwe, where the worst cholera outbreak in 15 years has claimed more than 4,000 lives in recent months. You and your relief network are sprinkled across the country and the epidemic is evolving every day. How do you decide where help is most needed and coordinate your response?

What if there were a way to connect almost instantaneously by sending a text message to a website that indicated your location, status and needs on a map available to anyone in the world? This is what organizations like WikiMapAid are trying to make happen. Many humanitarian organizations are considering these user-based mapping systems, some of which integrate Twitter, SMS, email and collaborative wiki software to create interactive maps that track everything from poverty and infectious disease to natural disasters and political protests.

Using mapping systems in aid work is nothing new — more complex systems like GIS have been used in both governmental and NGO aid work in the development field for years. But there are limits to these mapping systems: They often take a long time to generate and distribute, which means they are not always up-to-date, nor are they accessible or user-friendly to the general public — especially in the developing world.

More simple user-based mapping technologies may be able to solve some of these problems. Proof of the potential are successful projects like Ushahidi, a text message–based mapping website that was used to monitor post-election violence in Kenya last year, or Al Jazeera's similar "crowdsourced" website, the War on Gaza.

The technology is catching on in the relief sector. Last week Reuters AlertNet hosted a workshop to discuss "how the aid world can use maps to communicate, advocate and plan for disasters" — seeking advice from both aid organizations that have used complex mapping systems for a long time, such as Map Action, and new wiki user-based mappers like Open Street Map and InSTEDD GeoChat.

There are definitely problems with newer mapping systems. One big one is possibly unreliable information. Some websites are going beyond content moderation and developing algorithms to rate their users' integrity based on whether other users have tagged the information as bunk. Others, such as HealthMap, have tried to confront the problem of legitimacy by generating content from diverse sources — NGOs, the media, government and individual users — in the hopes of being able to cross-check information.

But these websites also take time to generate enough content to be useful. And while many people in the developing world have access to cell phones to send input to these websites, few have reliable access to the internet to view the maps.

Problems aside, user-based maps certainly hold appeal. Part of it lies in their ability to empower everyday people to connect and speak out in times of crisis. This technology can be — and already has been — incredibly useful for reporting on conflicts where the media is not allowed. And in the aid world, it offers the possibility of swift action, unhindered by bureaucracy or lack of infrastructure.

Like many young people who dream of coming to the wealthy Gulf States to find work, 27-year-old Anesu Gamba came here to Dubai three years ago to escape Zimbabwe’s crippling poverty.

I met Anesu, a soft-spoken man with a round face, at the Department for Naturalization and Residency in Dubai. He went there to cancel the visit visa he requested for his brother because he could no longer afford the ticket. “I wanted him to come and enjoy Dubai, he was so excited,” Anesu said, gazing sadly at the ground.

In the beginning, his new life in the Gulf was just as he had imagined. “In the first two years, I lived in a dream, I had friends, and I bought a car," said Anesu. He was also able to send money to his mother, father and younger brother in Zimbabwe, none of whom have jobs.

But last month, Anesu didn't send his family any money. He was among several laid off by the small public-relations company that hired him as a graphic designer. The company blamed the downsizing on the global economic downturn.

About a quarter of Zimbabwe's population has gone abroad, and together they send home anywhere from $360 million to $1 billion in remittances, reports the UN news agency, IRIN. These remittances are often credited for saving the country from complete collapse.

But the burden of supporting family members abroad is heavy for those in the Gulf. Many, like Anesu, have cut other costs to keep up the remittances. Anesu sold his car and moved into a shared apartment with three other migrants. “Sending money home is not an option, it’s an obligation," he told me. "I just can’t let my family down."

Finding a new job in Dubai isn't easy these days, but returning to Zimbabwe isn't very tempting. Less than 6 percent of people living in Zimbabwe are employed, the UN said recently. At its peak last year, inflation reached 231 million percent and Save the Children reports that more than 75 percent of the population lives in abject poverty.

Anesu thinks his chances of finding a job are better in Dubai. "I have one month to find a job after the cancellation of my visa," he said. "I came to Dubai with hopes and dreams. I will try my best to find a job, even as a waiter, a dishwasher, I don’t care. At the end, I don’t have many options, do I?"

Zimbabwe's current hyperinflation rate sounds as flabbergasting as it is: 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent.

That's 65 followed by 107 zeroes, and the number is doubling nearly every day. Zimbabwe's Harare Tribune says that bank withdrawals are limited to an amount that won't even cover half a loaf of bread.

Staggering inflation has made the currency practically worthless — causing locals to turn to foreign currencies like the U.S. dollar, the South African rand, Botswana pula or Zambian kwacha and reviving bartering, reports the UN news service.

Robert Mugabe stoked the fire between Zimbabwe and the West at the UN food conference in Rome, blaming the West for his country's deteriorating economy and the opposition groups that seek to oust him from power. He specifically identified humanitarian organizations as culprits, and had already suspended CARE — one of the world's biggest humanitarian agencies — and several other organizations from working in the country.

CARE has worked in Zimbabwe since 1992 helping educate and feed thousands of people and assisting with disaster relief. According to the New York Times, the suspension will leave 110,000 people without food aid for the month. Mugabe says giving CARE the boot is justified because the organization has ulterior motives. In his speech at the UN conference Mugabe declared:

Funds are being channeled through nongovernmental organizations to opposition political parties, which are a creation of the West. These Western-funded NGOs also use food as a political weapon with which to campaign against government, especially in the rural areas.

With nearly half the population threatened by hunger, the decision to suspend humanitarian organizations is likely to lead to more hardship.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has declared that a recent shipment of arms from China to Zimbabwe is completely unrelated to the current post-election tension in the country and is part of “perfectly normal trade in military goods between China and Zimbabwe.” But this hasn’t stopped the 300,000 member South African Transport and Allied Workers Union from refusing to unload the shipment.

The South African workers refusal to accept the arms shipment has been publically echoed by the governments of Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania with their refusal to accept the arms and ship them overland to Zimbabwe. The U.S. has voiced its support of these countries on the matter and urged the Chinese government to recall the shipment. Although the South African government itself has not endorsed the refusal of the weapons, South African citizen action coupled with the support of neighboring countries has essentially created an informal embargo of the Chinese weapons. These actions contrast sharply with President Thabo Mbeki’s policy of quiet diplomacy, and refusal to deem Zimbabwe's current political and economic woes a "crisis."

I think this story is an incredibly powerful demonstration of the power individuals and governments have when they work together to take a stand on an issue.

Here's 60 million Zim Dollars, roughly the equivalent of US $400 (August 2007). Photo: GrahamKing (flickr)

Imagine a place where you would rather use a $10,000 bill to light a fire than actually try to purchase goods.

Today, The Washington Post provides an excellent look at the Black Market in Zimbabwe, a country where 80 percent of the population lives in poverty. The article puts a very real face on the black market industry as Craig Timberg follows a trader around for the day.

The economy began its free fall when landless black peasants invaded white-owned farms in 2000 with the support of Mugabe, who said the redistribution would undo colonial inequities. The often violent process decimated the country's most crucial industry and biggest earner of foreign exchange, triggering hyperinflation that has rarely paused on its staggering ascent.

Today, it's not unusual to see a wadded-up 10,000-dollar bill lying on Harare's filthy sidewalks. Though officially worth about 33 cents in U.S. currency, the real value is about one-tenth of a penny.

The BBC is featuring a diary written by a woman living and working in Zimbabwe in which she describes the challenges of living a normal day-to-day life in the face of economic crisis and rampant inflation.