food

July 12, 2011

Mobilizing Millennials through Food

The Christian Science Monitor writes about how “Gen Y becomes Gen G–the gourmet generation.” Perhaps one way to mobilize or at least interest Millennials in missions and other cultures is to introduce the foods of those cultures? Having a visiting missionary pair up with a Gen Y would-be cook to share a night of culture from a particular region of the world might be an interesting method for raising awareness. And end it with prayer for the country through Operation World! Updates: J.D. Payne blogged about this as well, and there are some good comments at his post. YWAM Strategic [...]

Read more →
June 7, 2011

Regional Food Trends

Terms Poor. Living on less than US$2/day. Absolute Poverty. Living on less than US$1/day. Food insecure. Unable to meet basic nutritional requirements for some or all of the year.   Global Trend Although the current projections of population growth carry with them ominous headlines, let us not forget the good news announced by the FAO in 2010: that the number of hungry people worldwide was estimated to have dropped from 1.2 billion in 2009 to 925 million in 2010.   Tier 1: Over a Billion People 1. China is self-sufficient for the moment. The World Food Program officially ended its [...]

Read more →
June 7, 2011

Recent Global Food Analysis

FOOD: Rice is king, but at a price: Rice could become 80% more expensive by 2020 (Oxfam) KENYA: Food crisis lands government in the dock: 2.4 million Kenyans are at risk of severe food insecurity. AID POLICY: New mechanism to boost food security FOOD: How to fix a “broken” supply system SOUTH AFRICA: Slumming it in Jo’burg: how many of the slumdwellers come from unreached people groups? Replanting Africa the Bill Gates way: why farming is now the Gates Foundation’s second biggest program

Read more →
June 7, 2011

Global Food Trends

1. The food is here—it’s just not equally distributed. In the wake of the recent UN Population Revision that projected growing, not declining, populations (to 9 billion in 2050 and past 10 billion by 2100), many keyboards have begun clacking about a potential global food crisis. The facts are simple and stark: there are already 1 billion hungry people in our world, and most of the projected population growth is in the poorer countries where much hunger already exists. Feeding additional people is a challenge that will require new efforts to meet. “Today’s food issues are not fundamentally about demand, [...]

Read more →
June 7, 2011

Does missions have anything to do with hunger, food, and famines?

The short answer: Maybe not with the immediate apostolic task of “cross-pollinating” the church from where it is to where it is not, in a language it is not, and in a culture it is not. But hunger has everything to do with the church, since after all we are told many times in Scripture to feed the hungry. Missions must be about transplanting a church that will obey the commands of Christ. Further, mission is about proclaiming the Good News (as Jesus did) and planting the church where it is not. When Jesus proclaimed the Gospel he did it [...]

Read more →
June 1, 2011

Food, Famine, and Rising Costs

When the 2010 Revision of the UN’s Population Prospects revised upward the 2050 and 2100 estimates for total global population, almost immediately it seemed pens began scritching and keyboards began clacking. Everyone has in mind what such a world would be like—from their perspective. Some believe that we can’t feed that many people. Others think we can: Oxfam’s Grow Campaign: a billion people already go to bed hungry every night. That’s 1 in 7. Global food prices will likely double by 2030: sparked by climate change, rising global population, changing diets, land shortages, water shortages, and the use of crops [...]

Read more →
February 21, 2011

The impact of water & food on unrest in the Arab world

What does the Arab world do when its water runs out? One of the less remarked upon causes of the current country-destabilizing protests in the Middle East is simply rising food prices, directly linked to a growing regional water crisis. Three major food-price rises in the last five years have sparked the unrest. The Guardian has an in-depth analysis. See also: Curated Collection on Unrest in Egypt

Read more →
March 7, 2010

Women: hungry food-makers

The World Food Program reports the majority of chronically hungry in the world are women, but they produce 50% of world’s food: http://bit.ly/ajoI9N

Read more →
March 6, 2010

Technology: feeding the world

Bill Gates reviews a provocative book, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food, about agricultural biotechnology.

Read more →