Day: August 21, 2022

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Ethiopia: WFP says almost half of people in Tigray in need of food aid

ADDIS ABABA— The World Food Program says that half the population of Ethiopia’s Tigray region need food aid after nearly two years of civil war. Aid agencies say Ethiopia’s federal authorities are limiting aid to the region, which the head of the World Health Organization calls the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.

On Friday, the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) said nearly half of Tigray’s estimated seven million people are in need of food aid. It also said that a fuel embargo on the region is hampering distribution of the aid that gets in.

The news comes after Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO) and an ethnic Tigrayan, made international headlines asserting that the humanitarian crisis taking place in the region is the worst in the world.

The crisis in Tigray, he said, is worse than Ukraine “without any exaggeration,” and suggested the neglect may have to do with the color of Tigrayan people’s skin.

Aside from claims of neglect internationally, the Ethiopian government has been accused of imposing a humanitarian blockade on Tigray, where pro-government forces have been fighting the rebel Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, the TPLF, since November of 2020.

William Davison is an analyst for The International Crisis Group, a research organization based in Belgium.

“The federal government clearly needs to take action urgently to restore the services and if there needs to be discussions with the authorities in Tigray about the logistics and the legalities of how that’s done, then those talks should be held, but this dispute should in no way prevent the convening of peace talks to try and reach a permanent ceasefire,” said Dvidson.

At a news conference Thursday, Billene Seyoum, an Ethiopian federal government representative, said some aid is reaching the Tigray region’s capital.

“Thus far, for the Tigray region, above 29,000 or close to 30,000 metric tons of food, 31,940 metric tons of nonfood items, 300,000,000 Birr [Ethiopian currency], above 66,000 liters of fuel, 23.63 metric tons of medicine, 2,096 metric tons of fertilizer have reached Mekelle, for distribution to beneficiaries throughout the region,” said Seyoum.

Humanitarian organizations say this aid is not enough to prevent famine-like conditions in some parts of the region.

The national government has said it is ready for unconditional peace talks with the TPLF, which could lead to restoration of aid and services.

However, a TPLF representative, Fesseha Asghedom Tessema, says the government is using the prospect of restored aid to force an end to hostilities.

He told VOA, “The Abiy government in Addis, its latest position, as you know, is that direct negotiations has to come first. That is, we have to have a direct negotiation and then agree on a cease-fire. Of course, if that materializes, if there is a positive outcome, they will resume the services. That is as conditional as you can get.”

On Thursday, the TPLF reported that the government attacked its troops in Tigray, in violation of a humanitarian cease-fire which has been in place since March. The government denied the accusation

Source: Nam News Network

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The world’s cotton supply is shrinking hit by drought and heat

PARIS— Extreme weather is wreaking havoc upon virtually all of the world’s largest cotton suppliers.

In India, the top-producing country, heavy rains and pests have cut into cotton crops so much that the nation is importing supplies. A heat wave in China is raising concerns about the upcoming harvest there.

In the US, the largest exporter of the commodity, a worsening drought is ravaging farms and is set to drag production to the lowest level in more than a decade. And now Brazil, the second-largest exporter, is battling extreme heat and drought that have already cut yields by nearly 30 percent.

This confluence of extreme weather events brought on by climate change has sent cotton prices soaring by as much as 30 percent.

Earlier this year, they touched the highest level since 2011, squeezing the margins of clothing suppliers around the world and threatening to raise the costs of everything from t-shirts, to diapers, to paper and cardboard.

The outlook for Brazil is anything but helpful. The drought there has already dried up an estimated 200,000 metric tons of supply, according to Abrapa, a group representing growers. With the nation’s 2021-2022 harvest close to complete, production is now seen at 2.6 million tons — or less.

Bom Futuro group, one of Brazil’s largest cotton producers accounting for about 10 percent of the nation’s planted area, has seen yields fall 27 percent compared with the previous season. Julio Cezar Busato, a grower in Sao Desiderio, Bahia state, has suffered from a similar decline.

Dryness is reducing the number of cotton bolls, making them lighter across all of the country’s main growing regions, he said.

Meanwhile, US output is set to plunge 28 percent in the season that began this month. The US expects production to hit the lowest level since the 2009-2010 season, sending stockpiles to near-historic lows, because of a drought that has become so extreme that the US government is rationing water from the Colorado River. Together, the US and Brazil account for half of the world’s cotton exports.

The decline in global supplies has become so steep that it’s overshadowing demand headwinds. The US government and analysts have been projecting a drop in demand due to a slide in clothing purchases and slowing economies, especially in Europe and Asia. And yet all signs point to “much higher cotton prices in the coming months with crops shrinking, said Andy Ryan, senior relationship manager for Hedgepoint Global Markets in Nashville.

Busato, who also serves as the head of Abrapa, sold 75 percent of what he expected to harvest in advance and ended up largely missing out on the big surge in prices. Because of the weather, he only produced enough to meet his already-existing contractual obligations. “I could have made a mountain of money,” he said.

The weather has created a secondary headache for the cotton buyers of the world. Untimely rains in regions including Australia, Pakistan and even Brazil have also diminished the quality of the stock, said Peter Egli, director for Plexus Cotton Ltd.

So as not to be blindsided for another season, Brazilian farmers are set to increase their cotton-growing areas by 100,000 hectares to 1.7 million hectares for the 2022-2023 season, with plantings beginning in January.

Now that most of the current crop there has been sold, farmers are looking to start hedging the 2023 harvest more aggressively. “We don’t want to lose Asian markets that we gained recently,” Busato said.

Source: Nam News Network