SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is in the midst of a severe drought, its state news agency reported, raising fears of worsening food shortages in the impoverished country, where child malnutrition is a persistent problem.
Author: WHES
Why does almost half of America’s food go to waste?
JUDY WOODRUFF: Next, we launch an occasional series we are calling Food, Glorious food, reports about what we eat, how our food is grown, and the economics of putting a meal on the table.Tonight, we begin with food waste. Much of what is grown on American farms never gets to market.
Researchers: Five ignored factors affect outcomes for poor children. Paper argues that child-rearing style, single parenthood, shift work, lack of health care and lead pull down scores.
See Report
Inequality blocks further reduction in child mortality in Latin America
The progress that Latin America has made in reducing child mortality is cited by international institutions as an example to be followed, and the region has met the fourth Millennium Development Goal, which is to cut the under-five mortality rate by two thirds.
Beyond Boko Haram: Nigeria’s hidden crisis
The violence has driven at least 1.5 million people from their homes in the three conflict-affected northeastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. The vast majority have been taken in by friends and relatives in the main cities, but the hospitality has imposed a significant burden on their hosts.
Picking peas should bring a better life
I’m Triqui, from Rio Venado in Oaxaca. I’ve been here 7 years, working in the fields all the time. Right now I’m picking peas. Other times in the year I work in the broccoli.
Triqui farmworkers struggle to survive and organize in California
Pedro Alvarez was born in the Triqui-speaking town of Santa Cruz Rio Venado in Oaxaca, and came to the U.S. in 1985, after his father was murdered. He was one of the first Triquis to migrate to the U.S., and today is a respected elder of a community that has grown to many thousands of people, spread through the farm worker towns of the Salinas Valley, Sonoma County and beyond.
Thousands of farmworkers in California can’t make a living
At the end of the 1970s California farm workers were the highest-paid in the U.S., with the possible exception of Hawaii’s long-unionized sugar and pineapple workers. Today their economic situation is not much different from that of their coworkers elsewhere around the country. California’s agricultural laborers are trapped in jobs that pay the minimum wage and often less, and are mostly unable to find permanent year-round work.
WIC experienced largest decrease in participation in program’s history in 2014
USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides supplemental food, nutrition education, and health care referrals to low-income, nutritionally at-risk pregnant, breastfeeding, and postpartum women as well as infants and children up to age 5. In fiscal 2014, an average 8.3 million people per month participated in the program, 5 percent fewer than the previous year. This was the largest 1-year decrease since the program’s inception in 1974. Since peaking in fiscal 2010, the number of participants has decreased by almost 10 percent.
Replanting America: 90 percent of what we eat could come from local farms. Changing what’s grown where could provide Americans with vegetables from close to home.
Eating a local diet—restricting your sources of food to those within, say, 100 miles—seems enviable but near impossible to many, thanks to lack of availability, lack of farmland, and sometimes short growing seasons. Now, a study from the University of California, Merced, indicates that it might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. “Although we find that local food potential has declined over time, our results also demonstrate an unexpectedly large current potential for meeting as much as 90 percent of the national food demand,” write the study’s authors. Ninety percent! What?
