Help Yourself! Food Rights and Responsibilities

The second year results of a four-year study on how food price volatility affects everyday life uncovers the grassroots realities of the right to food. Most societies have shared understandings of the rights and responsibilities around protection against hunger. Customary rights and responsibilities, patchy and uneven at the best of times, are affected by rapid changes in food prices and responses to them; becoming less effective buffers against the global drivers of food insecurity. People at risk of hunger are keenly receptive to state and civil society action that strengthens their sense of right to food, but formal responsibilities for action are often unclear and monitoring systems rarely capture local realities. Food security programmes are often demeaning, divisive, unreliable, discriminatory and discretionary. This weakness of public accountability for food security would matter less if people felt that markets were doing the job of guaranteeing access to good food. However, complaints about volatile and rising food prices continue to be a feature of everyday life, contrary to the overall impression of falling prices on world markets

Food Rights for Real

Does more talk of the right to food and more action on food security amount to more accountability and effectiveness in tackling hunger? Not according to new findings from the Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility project. Research in 2013, published in the report 'Help Yourself! Food rights and responsibilities: Year 2 findings from Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility' found that while the drivers of food insecurity are increasingly beyond their control, people cannot rely on help when, how and for whom it is needed

Precarious Lives: Food, Work and Care After the Global Food Crisis

This report is the result of four years of collaboration between Oxfam GB, the Institute of Development Studies and qualitative and quantitative researchers in ten countries. It builds on a prior IDS-Oxfam study into the effects of the global food crisis on the lives of people on low and uncertain incomes, which ran between 2009 and 2011 in four countries. The longitudinal study synthesised here was carried out between 2012 and 2015 and involved annual visits to communities in rural, urban and peri-urban sites, along with commissioned reviews of national-level prices and policies over the period. With the help of the research partners and of Oxfam offices around the world, the findings have already begun to be disseminated and discussed with communities, government representatives and members of civil society at multiple levels. The research was funded by the UK Department for International Development, Irish Aid and Oxfam

Delicious, Disgusting, Dangerous: Eating in a Time of Food Price Volatility

The third year results of the study Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility uncover the realities of what people on low and precarious incomes are eating. For the consumer, there are undeniable benefits from the integration of world food trade: more stable supply, wider choice. Changes in food habits mean people are finding new ways to enjoy food and new foods to enjoy, often with greater convenience and ease. There is much to savour in the eating landscape as new markets for purchased and prepared foods open up. But the loss of control this brings has detrimental impacts on wellbeing. Most people feel they understand little about how new foods affect their health and nutrition; knowledge that they had accrued over generations and longer with respect to their customary cuisines. People have real worries about a new culture of fast food and fake food; they worry about additives, nourishment and food hygiene, and they feel that governments do too little to protect them from the risks

Seasonal variations in household food insecurity and dietary diversity and their association with maternal and child nutritional status in rural Ethiopia

Food availability and access are strongly affected by seasonality in rural households in Ethiopia. However, relationships between household food insecurity indicators and dietary diversity and nutritional status of reproductive age mothers and their young children are unclear. A longitudinal study was conducted among 800 farming households in lowland and midland agro-ecological zones of rural Ethiopia in pre and post-harvest seasons. A structured interview, which included measures of three food access indicators − household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS), household dietary diversity score (HDDS) and household food consumption score (HFCS) − was conducted. Additionally, a subset of 183 households was selected for assessment of indicators of nutritional status including maternal and child dietary diversity and anthropometric measurements for children 6–23 months of age. Magnitudes of household food insecurity indices were high by international standards, particularly during the lean season (pre-harvest). Using correlation, Chi square and multivariable regression models, HFCS in both seasons was related to maternal body mass index and haemoglobin, and weight-for-length of their children. HDDS was associated in the post-harvest season with haemoglobin level of the mothers, and weight-for-length of their children. HFCS was a better predictor of nutritional status of mothers and children in both the food surplus and lean seasons, while HDDS was a better predictor of maternal and child nutritional status post-harvest. It is recommended that nutritional interventions should therefore focus on household food insecurity as well as targeting the individual nutritional status of mothers and children

Disaggregated Analysis: The Key to Understanding Wellbeing in Kenya in the Context of Food Price Volatility

This article provides a national?level picture of food security and wellbeing in Kenya, focusing on the situation before the 2008 food price crisis, and the period after 2008. The extent and impact of food price changes differ spatially, and households have different ways of trying to respond. The major food price shocks in 2008 and 2011 impacted negatively on wellbeing, but even after 2011 prices continued to rise in most areas. Seasonal price movements also have adverse effects for resource?poor households. Food price rises have a particularly negative impact on the poorest households. Urban slum dwellers are vulnerable given their dependence on market purchases to meet food needs, but most rural households also have high dependence on market purchases. Current social protection programmes are piecemeal and unreliable. The article concludes with proposals on more effective social protection approaches and agricultural programmes which can address problems linked to food price rises

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements