Web 2.0 and Social Media for Food Security
Authors
GROUP 2
2. ADEFIOYE ADEDAYO dydoc4real@gmail.com
3. TOKURAH MAJID jidkod@gmail.com
4. FOLASHADE MAKINDE sademakin@gmail.com
5. POPOOLA popoolakunvic@gmail.com
6. AKANDE JOHN akandenew@gmail.com
Web 2.0 and social media has helped to furnish world wide available information on food security (see Figure 1) and the impacts are seen in improved accessibility to food and enhanced availability of safe, sufficient and nutritious food to meet dietary needs. According to Ban Ki-moon (2014), all of these will have impact on water consumption over the coming decades.
Every year since 2009 CTA has successfully implemented a series of training events known as Web 2.0 and Social Media Learning Opportunities in 35 ACP countries. This has resulted in approximately 3,000 trained people, 38% of whom are women. Feedback from beneficiaries (individuals and institutions) has been extremely positive.
In May 2013 the project was awarded the WSIS Project Prize 2013 in the category e-agriculture. Each event lasts for 5 days and accommodates approximately 25-28 trainees who are selected on the basis of applications submitted after an open call. This allows trainees to perfect their skills through self-learning. This year CTA has extended the initiative to additional ACP countries in partnership with local host institutions. This very laudable initiative will in no small way help and assist farmers; and other agricultural development stakeholders especially in the area of food security.
As we know food security is a condition related to the ongoing availability of food. Concerns over food security have existed throughout history, but according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life"
Now how does web 2.0 and social media help to achieve this purpose and desire, since web 2.0 as well as the social media has to do with interaction facilitating communication as well as information sharing and collaboration, suffice it to say that this is a perfect medium to achieve this. Food security is the availability of food, if the rural farmers in our various communities have access to information and the tools of web 2.0, would be very easy to collaborate, interact, communicate as well as share ideas on their various and particular food or rather farm produce, it would create an enabling environment of work and fun as well as equality. Where farmers have access to proper information in real time which create the availability of goods, a particular food in scarcity would be no doubt available. In simple terms this is the required; to assuage the problems of food security that exist in our world today.
Also, the IFAD President on the occasion of the 33rd observance of World Food Day, said that he was not going to talk the world about the 842 million men, women and children who go to bed hungry every night. Appalling as that statistic is, because he felt people already know about the human suffering caused by poverty and hunger, and the role played by climate change and unstable economies.
“Today, what I want to talk to you about is not what is wrong, but about the steps we must take to set it right. I want to talk about three elements that are preconditions for sustainability. Three things that need to change because, without them, all of our well-meant efforts will not be generating the lasting benefits that 842 million people need.
The first thing that must change is government policy. It is time for governments to go beyond words to action. Every country needs policies for inclusive growth to maximize its food production potential, and in many countries that means supporting smallholder-led agriculture. This includes policies that offer incentives for investment in agriculture and reduce the risks for farmers and private sector partners alike. Policies that encourage inclusive business models. Policies that facilitate the ability of poor farmers to access finance and technology and to have rights to water and land.
We are starting to see progress, with national policies being tailored to local needs. In Burundi, for example, IFAD supported CAADP in lobbying for policy changes. As a result, the government has introduced fertilizer subsidies and increased the share of the budget to agriculture from 3.6 per cent in 2010 to 10 per cent in 2012; or in Panama, where an IFAD-supported project provided economic and logistic support for negotiating laws for indigenous peoples’ land rights.
And there are also encouraging developments with Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency, Tanzania’s Growth Corridor. And, of course, our own country, Nigeria, which has made agriculture a top priority of its Transformation Agenda.
Now to the second element – of effective institutions – because policies are only worth the paper they are written on if they are supported by strong institutions. We have seen the power of institutions to transform agriculture and economies in Brazil, where EMBRAPA, working jointly with other national and state level institutions, has contributed to an enormous transformation in just 30 years. Today, Brazil is no longer a food importer and becoming one of the biggest producers and exporters in the world.
The third essential element for sustainable food systems is infrastructure, from production to processing plants, warehouses, roads and ports. Today, more than one third of the rural population of sub-Saharan Africa lives five hours from the nearest market town of 5,000 people, making transport and marketing costs too high. Across the continent, badly maintained roads are the norm. Equally important are processing and storage facilities. An estimated 20 to 40 per cent of crop production is lost in sub-Saharan Africa because of deterioration after harvest. Post-harvest losses on this scale are scandalous, particularly on a continent where millions of people go hungry.
We know that smallholders can contribute to sustainable food systems if they have well-functioning infrastructure, supportive policies and institutions. We have seen it in Brazil, China, Malaysia, and Viet Nam.
Also, the World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”. Commonly, the concept of food security is defined as including both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs as well as their food preferences ("Food Security", 1996).
Food security is built on three pillars:
- Food availability: sufficient quantities of food available on a consistent basis.
- Food access: having sufficient resources to obtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet.
- Food use: appropriate use based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care, as well as adequate water and sanitation.
Social media and Web 2.0 tools are are strong and powerful technologies that offer unprecedented opportunities for engaging in two way dialogues with global audiences in tackling food security from these three identified pillars.
The Web offers new ways to interact with other people online and publish information with free, easy to use tools i.e being used to collect, transfer and share information (L’entrepreneur, blogspot). Web 2.0 is a term that people loosely apply to these web-based tools, which are often called Social media.
Social media allow organisations and communities to maintain small group communications even when they are geographically distributed. These tools make it easy to publish content which can be delivered to the audience in a variety of formats (via web browser, as email messages, mobile text messaging, and even audio and video files).
Web 2.0 and social media for food security for Agriculture
Food security may have different meanings for different people. The International Conference on Nutrition (ICN), held in Rome in 1992, defined food security as "access by all people at all times to the food needed for a healthy life" (FAO/WHO, 1992a). Essentially, in order to achieve food security a country must achieve three basic aims. It must: ensure adequacy of food supplies in terms of quantity, quality and variety of food; optimize stability in the flow of supplies; secure sustainable access to available supplies by all who need them. Food use (appropriate use based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care, as well as adequate water and sanitation)
The concept of using web2.0 tools for food security involves linking the food chain from production to consumption using remote collaboration and social media tools, the use of blogging helps to share information relating to whatever crops you produce and sharing of harvest periods when the farmers know such agricultural products would be available from ones farm. The media most certainly affects what we think about, and what people perceive about what we do. Modern communication media (Web2.0) now allow for intense long-distance exchanges between larger numbers of farmers and customers, one of them is using the RSS feeds and social bookmarking farmers can get latest information about harvested crops and access to farming inputs and herbicides for proper crop production process.
Community Participation: Households, and women and mothers in particular, usually have the desire and often also the knowledge to improve the nutrition of their vulnerable members. Success is impeded by a lack of resources, including the lack of a voice in relevant community decisions social media platforms like facebook, twitter and others gives the opportunity for for women to participate actively by writing blogs on nutrition.
Promoting healthy diets and lifestyles through education: Promoting better eating habits and positive healthy behavior is one of the most challenging tasks in overall efforts to improve nutrition. In addition to access to a variety of safe and affordable foods, people need accurate information as to what constitutes a healthy diet and how to meet their nutritional needs. The implementation of Social media programmes using web2.0 at all levels which should involve the mass media, primary and secondary schools, community participation programmes, extension staff and higher-level education as channels for communicating nutrition information.
I am therefore of the opinion that web2.0 tools is most important for greater reach and collaboration for farmers.
Examples of social networking sites: Facebook, twitter, blogspot, wordpress, youtube, google doc, wiki
Function of Social Networking sites
1.Work Connections: One form of social networking that’s growing in popularity is corporate social networking
2.Keeping in Touch:Social networking provides a great way for you to stay in touch with people who may have moved away.
3.Get Feedback:you can use social networking to get feedback on ideas immediately
4.Share Multiple Points of View:Different exposure can help you to learn to look at things from different angles, and be more tolerant of other people’s opinions, things that go a long way in the working world.
5.Talking to Students , Teachers , online forum: Many student organizations have specific social networks designed to help students connect.
Therefore, food security is measured through calorie consumption of the female household head in a 24 hour dietary recall, the calculation the World Food Program Food Consumption Score (WFP FCS), and the calculation of the percentage of energy sourced from staples in the diet. Worldwide approximately one billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition (FAO, 2010). Given the fact that there is sufficient quality and quantity to meet basic nutritional needs of the global population, the persistence of hunger has come to be identified as a leading political failure with an inherent moral obligation to correct. As evidence of this global prioritization, halving hunger and malnutrition by 2015 was identified as the first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. Two thirds of the way to this deadline, it has become clear that global efforts will fall far short of reaching this critical goal (FAO, 2010). This is especially true in Sub-Saharan Africa where extreme hunger is experienced by one-third of the population. Food security is obtained when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 2002). Conversely, food insecurity occurs “whenever the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways is uncertain” (USDA, 2000). As these definitions present, food security—and insecurity— is a variable, individually experienced state embedded within dynamic social processes.
Food security is measured through calorie consumption of the female household head in a 24 hour dietary recall, the calculation the World Food Program Food Consumption Score (WFP FCS), and the calculation of the percentage of energy sourced from staples in the diet. Worldwide approximately one billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition (FAO, 2010). Given the fact that there is sufficient quality and quantity to meet basic nutritional needs of the global population, the persistence of hunger has come to be identified as a leading political failure with an inherent moral obligation to correct. As evidence of this global prioritization, halving hunger and malnutrition by 2015 was identified as the first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. Two thirds of the way to this deadline, it has become clear that global efforts will fall far short of reaching this critical goal (FAO, 2010). This is especially true in Sub-Saharan Africa where extreme hunger is experienced by one-third of the population. Food security is obtained when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 2002). Conversely, food insecurity occurs “whenever the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways is uncertain” (USDA, 2000). As these definitions present, food security—and insecurity— is a variable, individually experienced state embedded within dynamic social processes.
Good job Group 2
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