In focus

• Recent or ongoing harvests are generally contributing to greater food security in most parts of East Africa, West Africa, Central America and Asia while food insecurity levels are reaching their annual peak in Southern Africa.

01/12/2013 05:29 GMT

by Madeleine Coorey

SYDNEY, Jan 12, 2013 (AFP) - Firefighters were battling scores of wildfires raging in Australia Saturday, as a government commission warned that climate change had raised the risk of scorching heatwaves becoming more frequent.

In the eastern state of New South Wales, some 1,000 firefighters were attempting to douse about 94 wildfires, about dozen uncontained, while fires were also burning in neighbouring Victoria and Queensland states.

0 . MAJOR CHANGES SINCE PREVIOUS VERSION OF THE HIP

As funds for this HIP had been completely allocated, an additional amount of EUR 800,000 has been added to enable response to valid and urgent funding proposals submitted to DG ECHO under this HIP.

1 . CONTEXT

The nutrition cluster is a very important entity to coordinate actions during emergencies. It is important that the nutrition cluster know in advance which institutions work where and what kind of inputs are pre-positioned. Risk management plans need to be ready at the local level in advance of emergencies. Although emergencies occur every year in Guatemala, the emergency response often fails to incorporate the management of malnutrition among its priority actions.

An earthquake with magnitude 5.6 has hit South Khorasan province in Iran, killing at least eight people and injuring 12. As of 6 December, no further information available

Key messages:

• In West Africa, food prices were stable or decreased in October as the availability of staple foods continued to improve with ongoing harvests and the start of the marketing season. Some price increases occurred in region’s urban centers and structurally deficit zones due to limited commodity flows from surplus-producing areas.

Average postrera harvest expected following favorable rainfall

KEY POINTS

• Rainfall in October is expected to favor the production of average yields for the national harvest of postrera season crops of both maize and beans, which will stabilize market prices. In addition, food availability will improve for extremely poor households dependent on subsistence farming in the extended dry corridor (an area that includes parts of the western region of the country) that suffered losses during the harvest of primera season crops.

PROJECTED FOOD ASSISTANCE NEEDS FOR APRIL 2013

By Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 29 2012 (IPS) - “I heard about the Zero Hunger plan on television, but unfortunately it has not arrived here,” complained Elías Ruíz, a small farmer in the southern community of Santa Odilia, about the Guatemalan government’s flagship programme to end poverty.

“Projects to increase production would benefit us, because without them, we have no way to support ourselves. They could help us with maize seeds, plantains (starchy bananas for cooking) and fertilisers, and techniques to improve production,” said Ruíz.