“It’s thanks to the rain that the animals graze; it’s thanks to the rain that we have food,” says Koubra Hamid, who lives with her family in Bahr el Ghazal, Chad. But she is worried.

“This year, it has not rained much, so the pastures are not good enough,” says herder Etta Brahim Senussi. “When an animal dies, it really hurts.” Photo by Andy Hall/Oxfam.

The rains haven’t come. Not enough, and not at the right times. Across the Sahel region of Africa, poor harvests, erratic and inadequate rainfall, and rising food prices are harbingers of what many predict will be a severe food crisis. Already the poorest families are struggling with hunger, and their animals are visibly weakening.

Oxfam is supporting animal feeding and health care to enable farmers and herders to weather the lean season. Photo by Andy Hall/Oxfam.

A top priority now is to prevent farmers and pastoralists from losing their cows, goats, sheep, and camels – and with them their sources of both food and income. Oxfam’s emergency programs include providing livestock with improved water sources, fodder to supplement the dwindling pasture, and vaccinations to counteract the damage drought and hunger could do to their health. (View “ Taha vaccinates 1,000 goats per day.”)

“We’re tired and frustrated,” says Hamid. “But there are also moments when we laugh with our children.”

John Abdulla is a new media specialist at Oxfam America.

Ever wish you could just tweet the president that burning question about the state of our economy? Today at 2 p.m. EST is your chance; the White House will hold its first Twitter Town Hall. You can tweet your questions on the economy and jobs for President Obama by using the hashtag #AskObama and he will answer selected questions live via webcast at http://www.whitehouse.gov/live.

This is a great opportunity to directly ask the president how fighting global hunger, investing in resilience to climate change, and restoring our Gulf Coast can help create new jobs and improve our economy. Here are some suggested tweets that you can simply copy and paste into twitter or adapt as you wish:

• What investments would you support in food security and climate resilience to create millions of jobs and fight #hunger? #AskObama
• Why aren’t we investing in #ClimateChange resiliency to protect US businesses, deliver new consumers & create jobs here at home? #AskObama
• Do you agree that inclusive growth overseas helps America’s economic future by increasing markets for American goods? #AskObama
• Investing in Gulf Coast restoration will help the ecology and economy of the region recover. Are you on board? #AskObama

You can also visit us on Twitter and retweet your favorite question for the President!

To reach their fields, farmers must cross a seasonal stream in southern Ethiopia. Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America

We had a lot of rain here in the Boston area this spring. Endless rain, it felt like. Would it ever stop?

I’m embarrassed now to have whined about it when I think what some steady rain could do for people in the Horn of Africa. Many of them are desperate for it.

The late 2010 rainy season failed completely in many parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. And in some districts of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, the March through May rains have been only about 10 percent of average. For herders and farmers who depend on every drop, the consequences could be severe: Already there are reports of hundreds of thousands of animals having died.

Climate change is leading to longer, hotter dry periods, shorter growing seasons, and unpredictable rainfall patterns—all of which make it harder for farmers, both experienced and just learning, to decide when to sow and cultivate their crops. Read the rest of this entry »

Lili Polastri and Megan Ferreira, two volunteer members of the Oxfam Action Corps of San Francisco Bay Area, are in Cancun Mexico this week at the COP16,  the UN’s global climate talks.  Traveling under the auspices of LinkTV (Lili’s employer), they are equipped with media accreditation and a video camera to document the proceedings.

In Cancun, indigenous delegates gather in the “International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change (Indigenous Caucus). Credit: Ainhoa Goma/Oxfam.

They are interested in showing a ‘”ground-level” view of the role of civil society organizations, such as Oxfam, and particularly the efforts by indigenous communities to make their voices heard at the event.

Check out their latest blogs and video.

An Oxfam activist in Belgium holds a plant pot bearing a photo of Flemish Environment Minister, Joke Schauvliege. Photo credit: Tineke D'haese / Oxfam

We’re counting the days… and the actions leading up to the international climate change conference, COP 16, in Cancun. At this important summit, members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), international government officials, media and civil society leaders will come together to find solutions to climate change – and it’s urgent that we remind them about the ripple effect that our increasingly unpredictable climate has on poor and vulnerable communities – especially those dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods.

We’re adding up all of the online actions, Facebook ‘likes’, tweets, and pledges and tracking them right here and on the Sow the Seed website so that you can see the progress we’re making towards our goal!

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

A year ago when Oxfam colleagues and I took the long and only road from Ethiopia’s capital—Addis Ababa—toward the country’s southern border with Kenya, the landscape was parched and dusty. The corn had shriveled on its stalks, people fretted about failed harvests, and everywhere water seemed to be in short supply.

 But today, as we roll south dodging goats and cattle, waves of green—corn green, teff green, banana green–wash by our car.

“Oh my god,” says my colleague Selome Kebede, her eyes glued to the window, “I love the green. I love the color of teff.”

Luminous under the gray sky, fields of Ethiopia’s staple grain stretch along both sides of the road. Among the furrows, puddles lay still, evidence of a fresh rain—rain that has come in startling abundance this year, rain that Oxfam’s Tibebu Koji says hasn’t fallen like this since 1974.

We pass the Awash River, so full it has spilled its banks and spreads in a thin sea across the fields that farmers will plant with watermelons and tomatoes when the dry season comes.

But in this topsy-turvy time, when rain continues to fall weeks past normal, when will that dry season arrive?

Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that women produce 60 to 80 percent of the food in developing countries, but own just 2 percent of the land? That water shortages and drought affect women first? Or that women farmers have fewer opportunities than men to start businesses or reach new markets where they can sell their crops?

Emelina Dominguez is a farmer and agricultural technician from La Paz, Honduras, who trains other women in farming techniques. Photo: Gilvan Barreto / Oxfam

I didn’t know any of this myself until I started writing Oxfam America’s latest fact sheet, Fight hunger: Invest in women farmers. As I gathered the facts from Oxfam research and outside sources like the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, I began to get a clearer picture of the connection between women’s efforts and the world’s food supply.

Basically, hunger is not about too many people and not enough food. It’s about power, and inequalities in access to education and resources. If you’ve ever been to an Oxfam America Hunger Banquet, you might remember the MC saying those words… maybe right around the time you realized that not everyone at the banquet would be eating the same meal.

I ended up using those words on the fact sheet, too, because they seemed to sum up the whole problem: Women’s hard work feeds millions, and women produce the world’s staple crops, but they’re often battling against deep-rooted inequalities. Add in the consequences of climate change (droughts, floods, and unpredictable rainy seasons) and you’ve got a true threat to our global food supply.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a fan of Oxfam America on Facebook, you might have seen our album of recent photos from the 2010 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, TN.

Over 80,000 people attended Bonnaroo this year, and our dedicated group of Oxfam volunteers and staffers set out to reach as many of those concert-goers as possible. Together, we collected 3,000 signatures for a petition calling on our leaders to take action on climate change; screened Oxfam films in the video tent; canvassed during shows by Oxfam supporting artists LCD Soundsystem, Aziz Ansari, OK Go, and more; and organized group activities, like our famous water bucket carrying contest, to raise awareness of poverty and hunger issues.  At the end, we celebrated with a dip in the infamous “hippie fountain” (don’t ask).

Here’s a quick look at three photos that I think best capture the spirit of our efforts:

Photo: Bob Ferguson/Oxfam America

Members of our crew—left to right: Oxfam Action Corps volunteer Mark Fangmeier of Minnesota; Oxfam Boston staffer Katie Stuart; former Oxfam America CHANGE Leader Paul Gallegos of Wyoming; and Oxfam’s Clara Herrero—get ready to go out and start another day of canvassing. Read on for more photos…

Read the rest of this entry »

Natalie Brook  is a Climate Change Campaigner for Oxfam.

Those of us calling for world leaders to take climate change seriously were heartened to hear that the Canadian government bowed to pressure from environmentalists, Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and more progressive countries early last week to include climate change on the G8 and G20 agendas .

At a street stunt in Toronto, Oxfam campaigners call on G8 leaders to"Invest in the future. Now." Photo credit: Oxfam Canada.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ketele Pond serves as a source of drinking water for herding famlies in southern Ethiopia. Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America

When I saw the headline in the New York Times yesterday morning—“Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons”—the first thing that popped into my head was a man I had encountered as I left work on a recent evening: He was one of the doubters, I’m sure of it, one of those who question (or, more likely, never even considered) the idea that us humans are helping to heat the planet up unnaturally fast.

How else do you explain the absurdity of trying to clear gravel off a path with an energy-guzzling leaf blower? That’s what the man was doing outside the rail station, creeping along inch by inch, his machine roaring louder than the rush hour traffic on the highway next to us as he tried to blast the sharp little chunks out of the way of commuters so they wouldn’t trip (and sue?) as they raced to catch their trains home.

The chunks barely budged. But he persisted.

What was he thinking? Read the rest of this entry »