TANZANIA has finally launched a food fortification programme aimed at adding value to food, in an effort to check health effects resulting from improper nutrition currently affecting 43 per cent of its children population.

President Jakaya Kikwete visited two popular processing factories in Dar es Salaam that have already kicked off the production of fortified food to officially launch the programme. He said at the events that starting the food fortification programme will help reduce — if not eliminating — health hazards grossly affecting stable growth of the children and the entire population.

“Food fortification will now achieve stable nutrition and not just eating for the sake of eating. Consuming food that is added with more value will equally eliminate health complications we now experience in our children,” Mr Kikwete observed.

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Kitui County’s Mui basin has recently gained fame for huge coal deposits but a woman farmer is giving the area a new facet as the home of rare giant cassava crop.

Although, Kitui is largely known for perennial hunger, 35-year-old Zipporah Kamwathi said she had stumbled on an effective way of keeping hunger at bay.

“I can comfortably fend for my family through the cassava which we consume as food and sell to earn income,” said Kamwathi. She admitted that whenever she takes her produce to the market place it usually becomes a crowd puller due to the extra-ordinary size of the cassava.

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FAO and CGIAR Conference to Address Research Priorities for Ensuring Food and Nutrition Security for the World’s Poorest

During the next 40 years the world’s population is projected to reach more than nine billion people. Demand for food is expected to increase by 60 percent under business-as-usual assumptions. Competition for land, water, and food could lead to greater poverty and hunger if not properly addressed now, with potentially severe environmental impacts.

The Food Security Futures conference will bring together senior researchers from the CGIAR and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), as well as representatives from the private sector, civil society and other research organizations to examine the contribution that public research must make to food security and nutrition, natural resource management, and climate change in order to meet the challenges of the coming years.

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YOU look as good as you eat”, researchers at the University of Nottingham UK revealed in a recent study. The scientists established that eating vegetables makes you appear better looking to others.

Despite the many advantages to eating fruits and vegetables, including living longer, being smarter, avoiding chemical exposure (with organic foods), results from the university’s study claim that eating carrots, tomatoes and mangoes improves your skin and makes your face glow naturally.

But when it comes to war against poverty it is no longer a matter of having a glowing face but rather struggle for survival. Nutritionists may preach about the advantages associated with proper vegetable diet but the supply might be out of reach.

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The Ministry of Agriculture, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO country office on Wednesday February 6th 2013, launched the technical cooperation programme on the emergency control of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP) in The Gambia, through an inception workshop held at Atlantic Hotel in Banjul.

The objectives of the workshop, among others, were to bring together all relevant stakeholders to share with them the rationale, implementation arrangements and the expected outputs and outcomes of the emergency assistance, in order to control the outbreak of CBPP in The Gambia, including the role of the various stakeholders in project implementation.

The project, designed for emergency intervention to control the CBPP outbreak and prevent its spread, while providing significant amount of capacity-building to lay the foundation for long-term actions and sustainable CBPP control, its target beneficiaries will be cattle farmers countrywide for the emergency assistance programme, who will receive CBPP vaccination for approximately 400,000 heads cattle.

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