International Food Day

In this same day back in 1945 the United Nations founded the FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization. But the World Food Day (WFD) was only established in 1979 and started to have different themes since 1981.

As I was invited to make a presentation about World Food Day both for students and their parents I thought I could also make a hub about it.

If you ask me about international days in general I would say that I do not give them much attention most of the time. But in this case I believe that it is not only an interesting subject but also a very actual issue that must be attended urgently.

• 1981/2 - Food Comes First
• 1983 - Food Security
• 1984 - Women in Agriculture
• 1985 - Rural Poverty
• 1986 - Fishermen and Fishing Communities
• 1987 - Small Farmers
• 1988 - Rural Youth
• 1989 - Food and the Environment
• 1990 - Food for the Future
• 1991 - Trees for Life
• 1992 - Food and Nutrition
• 1993 - Harvesting Nature's Diversity
• 1994 - Water For Life
• 1995 - Food For All
• 1996 - Fighting Hunger and Malnutrition
• 1997 - Investing in Food Security
• 1998 - Women Feed The World
• 1999 - Youth Against Hunger
• 2000 - A Millennium Free from Hunger
• 2001 - Fight Hunger to Reduce Poverty
• 2002 - Water: Source of Food Security
• 2003 - Working Together for an International Alliance Against Hunger
• 2004 - Biodiversity for Food Security
• 2005 - Agriculture and Intercultural Dialogue
• 2006 - Investing in agriculture for food security
• 2007 - The Right to Food
• 2008 - The Challenges of Climate Change and Bio-energy
• 2009 - Achieving Food Security in Times of Crisis
• 2010 - United Against Hunger
• 2011 - From crisis to stability

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Today there are more than 150 countries participating in this event and there are thousands of organizations that help to spread the word all over the world.

Since 1997 TeleFood campaigns were brought to light and they have also helped the cause by raising over US$ 20 million in donations until now.

These project campaigns help funding small projects which are directed for small-scale poor farmers in order to allow them to produce more food, raise their revenues and make their access to food much easier.

Even though being very small scale projects they have been very useful for lots of small farmers around the world.

I have been making small loans through Kiva and I am sure this has been the best way for me to help poor entrepreneurs living in less fortunate parts of the world.

I choose this system because I believe that loans can encourage more accountability than donations where repayment is not expected. This make those projects possible and motivate the borrowers to achieve their goals at the same time.

It is somehow strange that although there is enough food produced in the world to feed everybody there are still so many people starving to dead.

It is estimate that at least 923 million people (mainly living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa) do not have access to enough food and this means that their productivity it is diminished and their children have under growing problems.

This is even worst if we think about the health problems that come along within those communities.

The Challenges of Climate Change and Bio-energy are subjects that have great influence in the food problematic as they cause even more difficulties to small farmers than everyone could imagine and that makes the need for solutions much more pressing.

With the energy crisis there was the need to start using more bio-energy sources but this also made food prices to grow immensely which put poor countries in an even worst situation.

Get to know more about FAO and World Food Day at their official site:

WWW.FAO.ORG

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Get Involved WFD 2010 Leaflet (pdf file)

Here you can also download the Get Involved WFD 2009 Leaflet (pdf file)

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