Ireland has provided €20 million in humanitarian assistance to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), Agriculture Minister Michael Creed said yesterday.

World food prices rose slightly in April, up for the third month in a row but they remained almost 10% lower than a year earlier, the United Nations food agency said yesterday.

COP21 recently agreed targets to keep global warming below 2 degrees and the EU has formally set a 2030 target of reducing emissions by 40%, with member state targets not yet agreed.

World food prices stabilised in February near a seven-year low as rising vegetable oil and meat prices offset declines in cereals, sugar and dairy, the United Nations food agency stated.

World food prices fell sharply in August, dragged down by ample supplies and external factors, including a slump in energy prices and concerns about an economic slowdown in China, the United Nations food agency said yesterday.

Ireland’s low-carbon agriculture model puts us ahead of the field in managing harmful emissions, writes Simon Coveney.

The UN warned of the potential “massive destruction” of the world’s €3.6bn-a- year banana crop as a plant disease spreads from Asia to Africa and the Middle East.

Seafood organisation Bord Iascaigh Mhara hosts its annual conference today where about 300 delegates will participate in a group of presentations designed to provoke debate about the industry’s future.

AT LEAST 842m people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger — a nearly 1.5% decrease from the 854m estimated for 2010-12. Clearly, while some progress has been made, the world still has a long way to go to eradicate under-nutrition.

The health of the oceans is “spiralling downward” faster than previously thought as a result of climate change, pollution and over-fishing, scientists have warned.

One third of the food produced worldwide is wasted, costing the global economy around $750bn (€570bn) a year, said a report by the UN food agency.

A decline in the diversity of farmed plants and livestock breeds is gathering pace, threatening future food supplies for the world’s growing population, the head of a new UN panel on biodiversity said yesterday.

The UN has new weapons to battle hunger, boost nutrition, and reduce obesity and pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: Edible insects.

IF YOU are an Irish food or drinks company and you want to pitch your product to the likes of McDonald’s or Unilever, you will need to be able to prove that your business takes the concept of sustainability seriously.

Global food prices fell by 7% in 2012 easing worries a few months ago that the world could be heading for a food crisis.

I'M just back from the 2012 edition of the international Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre, Slow Food’s biannual event which brings together small-scale farmers, artisan producers, fishermen, experts, academics, chefs and young people from over 160 countries.

Realities of food production are hitting home.

An El Nino weather pattern is under way and will last until winter, Japan said yesterday, foreshadowing disruptive conditions that could harm crops from Australia to India at a time of rising fears about global food supplies.

The world could face a food crisis of the kind seen in 2007/08 if countries resort to export bans, the UN’s food agency has warned, after reporting a surge in global food prices due to a drought-fuelled grain price rally.

Ireland is at the forefront of a UN-led partnership to harmonise how the environmental performance of livestock is measured.

A new strain of foot and mouth disease has reached the Gaza Strip and threatens to spread further after first being detected in Egypt and Libya in February, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation has said.

Food

Dry weather in Kazakhstan, the second-largest wheat exporter in the former Soviet Union, may persist and threaten planting after a record crop.

The era of falling food prices has come to an end with the world’s population set to rise by 2bn people, according to US farm commodities trader, Cargill Inc.

The United Nations says Somalia's famine is over, but has warned that continued assistance is needed.

FOOD prices may ease in 2012 due to a slowing global economy, though no drastic drop from high levels is expected, the new director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said yesterday.

The good and great assembled in Dublin Castle, deliberating at the Global Irish Economic Forum, to conceive new ideas for our economic prosperity.

GENDER equality is shrewd economics as well as a human right, the World Bank said yesterday, in a report that showed countries with better opportunities for women can boost productivity and development.

CHILLED equipment developed by the Dublin wing of the temperature-control machinery group Ingersoll Rand is helping India to cut its food waste, through the enhanced transport of bananas.

At least 10 Somalis, among them refugees, were killed during a firefight that broke out in Mogadishu when troops and residents looted truckloads of food meant for famine victims, two witnesses said.

The UN declared three new regions in Somalia famine zones yesterday, expanding the area where the highest rates ofmalnutrition and mortality are taking place, including the refugee camps in the capital, Mogadishu.

AROUND one third of the food produced in the world every year — about 1.3 billion tons — gets lost or wasted, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said yesterday.

FAVOURABLE economic growth trends, and high-crop yields in the next harvest season, are needed to avoid a return to a global food crisis, said the head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation this week.

EUROPEAN policymakers should heed global political uncertainty and reaffirm food security within the EU, according to IFA president John Bryan.