Things I’ve been thinking about: May 1st, 2014

1. Can Elinor Ostrom’s work help us understand what to do about antibacterial resistance? I’ve been reading a lot of Ostrom in an attempt to develop an opinion, but it’s tough going for me.  Econ was never my strong suit. Anyone smarter than me want to chime in and explain it? 2. How do we… Read More »

Nutrition and Malnutrition

  This one’s for Glenna. There are lots of ways you can prevent or cure malnutrition. They come down to emergency feeding, supplementation, fortification, and changing food behaviors. Here’s a high-speed tour, in order of speed of impact and sexiness to donors. Therapeutic foods come in two forms: powders that are mixed with clean water… Read More »

Jargon of the Day: Food Aid

Jargon: Food Aid Translation: This isn’t exactly jargon, because food aid is exactly what it sounds like. Food, given away to people who need it. It may be given in a food-for-work scheme, where the donor has people do work for the common good such as digging latrines or rebuilding schools in return for the… Read More »

Jargon of the day: Monetization

Jargon of the Day: Monetization Meaning: Monetization means something slightly different in a humanitarian and development context than it does in social media. In this case, it means selling food aid commodities in order to take the money and fund non-food projects. Many, perhaps most, food aid projects are actually monetization projects. It’s often the… Read More »

Jargon of the day 7/8/08

This is a new daily feature: each day I’ll give you a jargony word or phrase I heard that day, along with my unscientific translation. So, today’s jargon: Private sector distribution system Translation: This was in the context of distributing food aid, so what it means is trucking companies. Businesses – not government or donor… Read More »

Food prices in Haiti

Impact of rising food prices on Haiti, here. This just keeps getting scarier.

Global food prices, this time in detail

Registan, one of my favorite blogs, has a nice post up on what the rising cost of food will mean in practice. Lesson: We’re still all connected.