The Global Food Crisis

Ashley: The food crisis is leading to lack of food and high prices in communities throughout the developing world. Hi! Welcome to watchmojo.com. I’m your host Ashley and today I got the chance to talk with Emmanuel Isch about World Vision’s role for humanitarian aide in the world food crisis. What is the mission of World Vision’s food crisis and humanitarian aide? Emmanuel Isch: Our prime concern is to really to make sure that we are able to meet the needs of the children both on the short term and long term when a household earns couple of $3.00 a day, they are less and less able to feed themselves and their children, so that’s first the premise of this crisis. Ashley: How does world vision supply those in need? Emmanuel Isch: We have food aide programs in about 30 countries. Beyond those countries, we have our cultural and other programs that can also respond to this crisis. Ashley: Tell us about world vision’s short term and long term goals. Emmanuel Isch: From the short term, we need to make sure people have food to eat so we’re going to increase where we can food distributions or access to food will in some cases give food vouchers to people, in some cases even cash but that doesn’t solve the problem. On the longer term it’s about making sure that these communities can sustain themselves, that’s why we need to invest more under our cultural production capacity, in micro finance, in micro credit. Ashley: Do you monitor the progress of the children that you supply food to? Emmanuel Isch: Our local teams are there on the ground and over a number of years, we’re able to see the progress and the development, not just with children but with the community and other changes that are happening as a result. Ashley: Can you tell us a little bit about what just happened in Zimbabwe and how that country has dealt with world vision and other NGO’s? Emmanuel Isch: We’re referring to the government asking all the NGOs to shut down their operations. Over 2 million Zimbabweans have depended on world vision food assistance so now we have to cease all these activities. So it’s impacting a lot of people at the worst of times really. So we’re calling on the government Zimbabwe to really change their minds so to speak and to allow world vision and others to resume the crucial assistance that the people depend on. Ashley: What is the relationship between the current food crisis, poverty and access? Emmanuel Isch: It’s all interconnected. Globally, we’re still producing enough food to feed one half times the world’s population. At the end of the day, really, if we tackle the issue of access, then we’ll be able to tackle the issue of the food crisis. Then it’s also about being more aware of that and truly the food crisis and the energy crisis affects us here but affects more seriously a lot more people around the world. Ashley: Thank you so much for your time. Emmanuel Isch: Thank you.