Haitians load bags of food donated by the United States onto a truck for distribution to earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince after the January earthquake. Photo: Jenny Vaughan/Mercy Corps

In Haiti, rice is king. It’s consumed at every meal and forms an important source of income for many people — wholesalers, street vendors, and farmers. But the January earthquake has left the rice market in shambles.

Cheap rice from the United States made up about 80 percent of all rice in Haiti before the earthquake. But Haiti’s ports were damaged by the earthquake and could only receive a fraction of the shipments they used to. Shipments of military and humanitarian supplies were prioritized above commercial shipments of rice, which led to rice shortages and huge price increases that many people couldn’t afford.

Foreign aid flowed in to make up the difference, but this has long-term consequences for Haiti's food supply chain, says NPR. Most people get their rice from street vendors, who get theirs from mini-wholesalers. These wholesalers buy from larger wholesalers, who buy imported rice. But the influx of donated rice means that many people have flat-out stopped buying rice.

The situation has become especially dire for the street vendors and mini-wholesalers. The large wholesalers have access to credit to help them survive the crisis, but small businesses aren’t so lucky, as NPR and Frontline explain in this video.

As commercial rice imports start to flow back into Haiti and supply increases, rice has become cheaper than it was before the earthquake. The plunge in prices is forcing rural farmers to choose between eating the rice that they grow and selling it to pay school fees for their children. To make matters worse, the rice-growing regions are largely outside the earthquake zone, where foreign food aid isn't being distributed. As a result, many farmers are going hungry to send their kids to school.

So what are aid groups doing to solve the free rice problem? Now that the rice supply is beginning to stabilize, the World Food Programme has begun distributing cash or vouchers that can be redeemed for rice. In the Frontline video, WFP analyst Ceren Gurken said that the voucher program was in the works; it has been implemented since the video was filmed. Because the WFP pays street vendors for the rice, who pay that money back up the supply chain, the economy gets a chance to recover. At present, it doesn't look like farmers are being included in the program, though that may change.

Sure, the vouchers have their downsides — hand out too many and demand spikes, bringing sky-high prices — but for now, they’re the best way for aid groups to make sure that Haiti’s food supply chain stays connected. If it breaks, there could be a whole new disaster.

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.

Rice is incredibly important for delta communities. Photo: Jeremy Barnicle/Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps has started an agency blog to give a glimpse into the work, thoughts and ideas of our team around the world. Here's a post I wrote yesterday that is really appropriate for Global Envision.

Farming communities in Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta have always followed a cycle of debt. Each year, wealthy land owners would lend farmers money, tools and cattle needed to till the soil. After the harvest, the debt is repayed and the cycle continues.

Farming is important for delta communities. The Irrawaddy Delta produces more rice than any other region in the country. Nearly everyone is employed through rice production or the fishing industry.

So when Cyclone Nargis hit the delta about a year ago, the storm not only destroyed homes, fishing boats and agricultural fields, it destroyed livelihoods.

Nargis was the worst natural disaster Myanmar has ever experienced and racked up about $4 billion in damage. Some say the damage sustained in the Irrawaddy Delta was as bad as the Indian Ocean tsunami. Emergency aid from the UN, the government and NGOs has helped shelter and feed the thousands of survivors but there's still a lot of recovery work to be done.

Today, farmers looking to start over are caught in an incredibly frustrating situation: the wealthy land owners that used to lend money and tools lost everything as well, so now there is nobody to lend. Without cattle, tools and seeds, the farmers have little chance of ever getting ahead. Adding to the situation, prices for crops are down from past years. This leaves farming communities with few options, therefore trapping them in poverty.

I first learned about this debt trap in the Al Jazeera video below. The situation is so heartbreaking, but also too common in poverty-stricken communities. Mercy Corps has helped more than 7,000 families rebuild their rice paddies in the delta. We've also given more than 25,000 people small grants to help them earn an income, which in turn helps restart the local economy and helps free these communities from the cycle of debt.

Around 22 percent of the Brazilian Amazon is owned by various Indian tribes. Photo: leoffreitas (flickr)

The fate of the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, hangs in the balance. In the coming weeks, Brazil’s Supreme Court will hear a case that will set a major precedent and shape the country's policy with respect to development in the Amazon and the rights of the forest's Indian tribes.

The case centers around the territory of Raposa Serra do Sol, which is located in the northeastern Brazilian state of Roraima. Raposa Serra do Sol is home to 18,000 Indians from the Macuxi, Ingarico, Patamona, Wapixana and Taurpeng tribes. In 2005, this territory was declared a reservation site for indigenous tribes.

The conflict has quickly escalated in this region as some Brazilians have refused to leave the area, claiming their right to develop the land. Specifically, some of the local rice farmers have resorted to violence in order to keep their farms. The situation is quickly deteriorating and the Supreme Court warns that the conflict could soon turn into a civil war. The court will soon decide if the government can legally continue to evict the rice farmers.

The rice farmers argue that it is not right for the government to evict people from their own land and to stop Brazilians from developing this rich area. About 12 percent of Brazil’s precious land has already been given to the various indigenous peoples. They argue that Brazilian land should be used for the betterment of Brazilians. Especially with the world food crisis, expanding Brazil’s agricultural sector into this region could greatly help the poor afford food and help the expand the local economy through much-needed jobs.

The tribes and their supporters, however, argue that their concerns outweigh the settlers’ economic reasoning. As the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon plays a major role in the environment. The forest is a climate regulator that affects rainfall in Brazil and Argentina and, some claim, even in Europe and North America. The preservation of its trees is pivotal in the fight against global warming. Already the cutting and burning of Amazonian trees account for about half of the world’s green-house gas emissions from deforestation. If Brazilians are allowed to develop this land, not only will they be kicking the Indians out of their ancestral homes, but they will also be severely hurting the already-precarious environment.

Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Rising rice prices have created new problems for those countries, mostly in Asia, which depend on a large, inexpensive supply of the food, according to the Financial Times. This week, prices hit a 20-year high, "prompting importing countries to seek assurances on supplies."

Analysts have attributed the surge in rice prices to bad weather that has hit supply; urbanisation that has cut the acreage given over to cultivating the grain; and strong demand on the back of rapid income growth in China, India and other Asian countries...Asia has not known famines since the 1970s, and recent price rises for rice and other basic foodstuffs have sparked unrest.