food security

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We are desperate of food. Nowdays food comes from the city to be sold in the village and not vice versa as before. We could not afford to buy food because the wages we are paid was very little. We do not produce our own food as before because our land has been taken over by foreign  companies under privitasation policy  to produce biofuel farms. Everybody is talking of hunger as a consequence of mabadiliko ya hali ya hewa (climate change) but for me our reason is that we are farming in unproductive lands. Increased biofuel production has resulted in massive deforestation and has severe implications for our food security, as energy crops replace our normal land uses. Please tell the government we do not like this behavior of biofuel farms.”  - Asha Bakari (36) from Mavuji village in Kilwa district.

Farmland in Tanzania cleared for biofuels

Farmland in Tanzania cleared for biofuels

The impact of biofuel production on food security, the economic wellbeing of farmers and the environment is a silent catastrophe. Let me explain why.

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Mr. Simango holding baobab shell - for many people this is all they have to eat.

There is much talk lately about elderly citizens in Chamwino District (one of ActionAid Tanzania’s areas of operations in the Central part of Tanzania) having to survive by eating the produce of baobab trees alone.

As the world celebrated the 10th Anniversary of the international year of Older persons, under the theme “Towards the society for All Ages” last September, the elders in Chamwino District in Dodoma Region were in a bad state of affairs with unprecedented severe hunger to cope with.

Just recently I accompanied journalists to tour Chamwino district and see first hand the negative effect drought is having on the region.

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