The Road to the Horizon

[i-International food commodity prices]

The warning lights came on several months ago, and now we are at a point where the basic food commodity prices are at a new record high.

Prices on the international markets are even beating the prices of the 2008 food crisis, which caused severe unrest in many countries:

[i-FAO International food commodity prices]

For more details, check out the FAO World Food Situation page

While the record food prices have not hit the mainstream news, it is worthwhile considering that in the past centuries, many revolutions were rooted in the lack of food availability. Now relate that to the current turmoil in Libya, Egypt, Tunesia, Bahrain and Yemen. There seems to be a strong link between the food prices and the current civil unrest. In most cases, it was even predicted.

I think 2011 will be a tough year. But the situation is not hopeless. The Economist just published an article "What is causing food prices to soar and what can be done about it?", in which they highlight the importance of non-profit/non-commercial agricultural research, something which has come dear to our heart, here on The Road (read my earlier article "Cutting agricultural aid research or how to dig your own grave")


Check the latest articles about food prices on Humanitarian News, and get updates via a customized RSS feed.

More articles on The Road about the international food crisis

[i-IFPRI Global Hunger Index]
IFPRI, the International Food Policy Research Institute, released its 2009 Global Hunger Index report.
The report is the fourth in an annual series, that records the state of hunger both on a global level, as well as by country.

They conclude that in 2009, high and volatile food prices combined with economic recession posed significant risks to poor and vulnerable households, with often dire consequences for their food security. The 2009 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that the global economic downturn could make many countries even more vulnerable to hunger and that high rates of hunger are strongly linked to gender inequalities. In summary, they state "limited progress has been made in reducing hunger since 1990."

Between the 1990 and the 2009 GHI, Kuwait, Tunisia, Fiji, Malaysia, Turkey, Angola, Ethiopia (ED: not too sure if that takes into account the latest famine), Ghana, Nicaragua, and Vietnam saw the highest improvements in their scores.
Nonetheless, 29 countries have levels of hunger that are alarming or extremely alarming. Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone have the highest 2009 GHI scores. (Full)

[i-link]

Just watching the articles on AidNews flowing by, it looks like hunger in the world is still here, and it is not getting better. The alarm bells are ringing everywhere:

Kenya drought worsens hunger risk
Number of Kenyans in need of food aid jumps by over 50%
Hunger on the rise in Mexico as recession bites
Cameroon ups maize output to avert food crisis
Uganda faces a food shortage crisis
Nigeria may face food crisis
Water crisis to hit Asian food
India to import food amid drought
Hunger warning for South Sudan now at pre-famine condition.
Drought looming in Syria, 250,000 people at risk
Millions in Nepal facing hunger.

And that is just in the past days, not including those affected by violence or conflicts.
We are in for a rough couple of months to come...

Picture courtesy A.Chicheri (WFP)

The food crisis is adding to the misery of countries already crippled by other burdens like drought and HIV.

In Malawi people are turning to fish farming, not only for food and income but also as a way to cope with the challenges of HIV — in particular the orphans from AIDS.

This video takes a look at the World Fish Center's work with partners to reduce poverty and hunger in Africa through fish farming.

[Loband: Object Removed -]

Discovered via CGIAR's ICTKM blog

[i-countries affected by drought]

This is not a happy picture. Early warning of droughts in US, Australia, South America, Asia and the Horn of Africa are indicating a major drop of food production, which will have a direct impact on the price of food. (Full)

2008 was marked by a spectacular raise in food prices due to a combination of speculation, a push for biofuel production, and a shift of food consumption patterns in countries with a large population. World market food prices have dropped temporarily (see this example for rice market prices). Unfortunately, this drop did not have an immediate effect in the food prices on the market in developing countries, where food continues to be out of reach of the poor. And prices are raising again.

With the early indicators of droughts, we are in for a renewed hike in food prices, which potentially might dwarf the 2008 food price crisis.

More on The Road about the food crisis

Map courtesy Market Skeptics

[i-Drought in Karamoja - Uganda]

Myanmar faces food shortages in many parts of the country, largely because of last year's cyclone Nargis destroyed most of the delta's harvest and a rat infestation wiped out most of the remaining crops.
A total of 2 million acres (800,000 hectares) of rice paddy were submerged saltwater waves and 85 percent of seed stocks were destroyed. A shortage of labor - 130,000 were left dead after Nargis - higher fertilizer prices and lower rice prices have dissuaded delta farmers from planting, causing about 185,000 tons of emergency food aid needed this year. (Full)

There is a general alert going out for an upcoming wave of hunger due to a drought in the Horn of Africa:

In Uganda's Karamoja region 970,000 people are heading towards starvation. The Government declared the whole region as an emergency area and said "food must [quickly] be distributed to this area to avert this problem." Drought conditions will cause conditions unlikely to improve before October when the next harvest is due. (Full)

The same regional drought also hit Kenya hard. In the South-eastern regions, the third consecutive bad crop will force 3.2 million people to resort to food aid. (Full)

Since August last year, WFP, the UN's main food assistance agency, has lost 4 staff in Somalia due to security incidents. Last week they said if the situation does not improve, they will be forced to cut their food aid, which will affect 2.5 million people. (Full)

In Zimbabwe, the hunger figures are even worse. The prolonged political turmoil has turned Africa's former breadbasket into one of the continent's poorest countries. Currently 4.5 million Zimbabweans are fully dependent on food aid, a figure expected to raise to 6 million in the next month.
Due to lack of donor funding, WFP has been forced to cut core monthly maize rations from 10kg -already 2kg below the recommended ration- to 5kg a month for adults. That is just about 600 calories a day. (Full)

News discovered via NewsFeeds and AidNews.

Picture courtesy James Akena (WFP)

[i-sudanese girl]

With the international (press) spotlights on Gaza, one would forget these -ongoing- humanitarian hotspots:

Sri Lanka:
The Red Cross appealed to both the Tamil Tigers and the government to allow what they estimated at 250,000 people trapped in the northern war zone to flee to safety.
"People are being caught in the crossfire, hospitals and ambulances have been hit by shelling and several aid workers have been injured while evacuating the wounded," according to the ICRC.
"It's high time to take decisive action and stop further bloodshed," he said, warning there could be "countless victims" if nothing is done.
The government has called on civilians to gather in a small "safe zone" on the edge of rebel territory, but a health official said at least 300 civilians were wounded and scores feared killed by army artillery shells fired into the zone. (Full)

Somalia:
The United Nations will be forced to end food distribution in Somalia unless armed groups stop attacking U.N. staff, the World Food Programme (WFP) said.
Humanitarian workers have been targeted during a two-year-old rebellion by Islamist insurgents that has killed more than 16,000 civilians and uprooted one million others. Four WFP staff have been killed since August last year. (Full)

Kenya and Horn of Africa:
Large areas of Kenya and the Horn of Africa are facing "an exceptional humanitarian crisis" that requires "urgent food assistance and other interventions to combat high malnutrition levels", according to the IFRC's appeal.
The combination of high world food prices and a crippling drought is endangering as many as 20 million people in both rural and urban communities. (Full)

Sudan:
Clashes in Southern Sudan's Warrap state have left 41 people dead and displaced hundreds of others from their homes in the past two months. (Full)
Sudan's government accused Darfur rebels of planning to launch attacks if President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is indicted for war crimes and said that would bring a new round of bloodshed. (Full)

Philippines:
Flooding in some parts of Mindanao has exacerbated the humanitarian situation on the island after nearly five months of deadly fighting between government troops and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Floods affected 40,000 people. More than 300,000 people remain displaced in the conflict-affected areas, many of them living in shelters or with relatives outside government-designated evacuation sites. (Full)


News discovered via AidNews

Picture courtesy Finbarr O'Reilly (Reuters)

land for sale by Pernille[i-land for sale by Pernille]
I posted before about the new colonialism, when Western companies buy or lease large parts of arable land in Africa to grow food or biofuel for their own production.

Via For Those Who Want To KnowI just stumbled upon this article:

Daewoo Logistics of South Korea has secured a huge tract of farmland in Madagascar to grow food crops to send back to Seoul, in a deal said to be the largest of its kind.

The company leased 1.3m hectares of farmland - about half the size of Belgium - from Madagascar for 99 years. It planned to ship the corn and palm oil harvests back to South Korea. This deal will have half of Madagascar's arable land produce food for Korea. (Full)

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned this year that the race by agricultural commodity-importing countries to secure farmland overseas risked creating a "neo-colonial" system. A warning in the wind it seems, as more and more agro-companies make new land deals in Africa and Asia. (More)

Daewoo Logistics is not the only one leasing land in Madagascar: D1 Oils plc, the UK based producer of biodiesel, uses about 17,000 hectares of existing Jatropha plantations for its biofuel production since years. In addition to the 37,000 hectares of plantations in Africa, India and The Philippines. In addition to approximately 6,000,000 hectares of land available to the company in different countries under option to contract. (Full)

As a note worth mentioning: In Madagascar, some 50 percent of children under three years of age suffer retarded growth due to a chronically inadequate diet. (Source)

Picture courtesy of Pernille (Louder than Swahili)

rice drying in the sun - waiting for rats[i-rice drying in the sun - waiting for rats]

There are almost 1 billion people in the world suffering from hunger. Increasing the food production, improving the type of food we grow and controlling food prices is all one side of the equation.

According to FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the world is wasting enough rice this year to feed 184 million people, about a fifth of those who are undernourished. The amount lost between harvest and consumers globally totals at least 48 million tons. Per year.

The waste goes from rodent infestations in the rice fields to primitive drying and processing techniques, poor storage, bad bagging and inadequate transport. (Full)

More on The Road about food aid, agriculture and the food crisis

Picture courtesy Enrique Soriano/Bloomberg News

UN faced with reality[i-UN faced with reality]
Two weeks ago, the UN asked for record budget of US$7 billion to help 30 million people recover from disasters and conflict next year. This was the largest appeal in its history. (Full)

This week the UN's boss asked for an infusion of US$30 billion to help restructure world agriculture and create long-term food security. (Full)

And to cap it all, yesterday, the UN's climate change body asked for US$130 billion dollars a year to help poor countries adapt to global warming and curb their carbon emissions. (Full)

You might ask yourself up to what point all of this continues to sound credible. And not in the least to donor countries. It might start to look like a void competition with senseless astronomical figures.

The UK, one of the UN's biggest funders (US$1 billion per year), is already raising the alarm flag. International Development Minister Gareth Thomas told UN officials yesterday: "Presently the UN is not fit to lead the world's response to eradicating poverty and tackling the climate crisis." (Full)

This is not the first time Mr.Thomas confronted the UN. A couple of weeks ago, he stated in a speech for UNHCR that "a lack of leadership in the UN's handling of humanitarian emergencies is costing lives". (Full)

This might be an early warning flag that in a time where governments are too preoccupied with bailing out their own economies, the aid-tap will be turned off. (More)

More on The Road about the UN

Picture courtesy The Comics Reporter

link[i-link]I might be bitching on the snowstorm or my flight delays yesterday, but this is nothing compared to the sad state of affairs in the world.

A grab out of the humanitairan turmoil today. Were you aware?

• The crisis in Congo starts taking the shape of a genocide (Full)
• Children dying in Haiti, victims of food crisis (Full)
• 5 million people in Afghanistan now dependent on food aid (Full)
• Jordan rings the alarm bell on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza (Full)
• Zimbabwe is on the virge of collapse (Full)
• 17 million people are in urgent need of food in the Horn of Africa. (Full)

Financial crisis causing a humanitarian crisis?[i-Financial crisis causing a humanitarian crisis?]

• The Belgian, French and Luxembourg governments put in US$9 billion to keep Dexia afloat. (Full)
• Previously Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg put up US$16.1 billion to save the Fortis bank. (Full)
• Britain is working on a US$87.7 billion bank recapitalization concentrating on Barclays, HSBC and the Bank of Scotland (Full)
• Spain announced a US$40.9 billion fund to buy up bank assets and maintain liquidity (Full)
• Sweden is given Iceland's biggest bank, Kaupthing, an emergency loan worth up US$702 million) to help keep it afloat. (Full)
• Germany has thrown a US$50 billion lifeline to struggling lender Hypo Real Estate. (Full)
• Italy is about to set up a rescue fund close to US$30 billion for the banking industry. (Full)
• Canada gave a US$25 billion "backstop" for there banks. (Full)
  
• Russia pledged to boost liquidity by more than US$100bn (Full), on top of a US$5.4 billion loan to Iceland (Full)
  
• And of course we all know about the $700 billion monster US bailout (Full)
  

Education_waterdrop[i-Education_waterdrop]
In the 12th century, Sri Lanka’s king Parakramabahu said: "not a single drop of water received from rain should be allowed to escape into the sea without being utilized for human benefit."

Thanks largely to unsafe drinking water, more than 2 million children die of diarrhea each year. Six hundred million subsistence farmers lack irrigation water and are mired in poverty. Wetlands have been decimated in Europe, North America, and Asia, and fish populations are collapsing. Drought caused a more than 50 percent drop in Australia’s wheat production in 2007 and sparked a ten-year peak in global wheat prices.

Every year roughly 100,000 cubic kilometers of rain fall on earth—some 15,000 cubic meters per person per annum. The total amount of water that evaporates also is more or less constant. Population, however, is not constant. It has doubled in the last fifty years, resulting in a 50 percent decline in water availability per person.

As people accept that climate change is real and here to stay, they are likely to realize that while reducing greenhouse gas emissions is all about energy, adapting to climate change will be all about water.

This article presents a holistic view on the importance of water management. It makes me think: In the whole discussion about the global food crisis, did we forget the global water crisis?


Thanks to my Friend E. for the link.

More posts on the Road about water management, pollution and the environment.

Picture courtesy sbwater.org

I have a Google News feed I monitor for key words. One of the key words is "food crisis". Most of the news feeds are about hunger in developing countries. I just came across a news article, titled "Storm leaves [name deleted] on the brink of a food crisis.

If I take pieces of the article, but delete the names, one would think it is about a place in Africa or Asia...

haiti rice farmer[i-haiti rice farmer]
Take the case of Haiti:

Rice is the staple food of Haiti and up until the 1980s Haiti was self-sufficient in its production. In the mid-1980s Haiti's domestic rice production decreased rapidly. By the 1990s rice imports outpaced domestic rice production. This displaced many Haitian farmers, traders, and millers whose employment opportunities are extremely limited.

Import tariff reduction is a critical piece of the trade liberalization policies that are strongly advocated and many times mandated by international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the loan packages they negotiate with developing countries. In 1995 Haiti agreed to the pressure of the IMF to cut on rice import tax from 35% to the current level of 3%.

Though it earned Haiti a score of 1 on the IMF's 1999 Index of Trade Restrictiveness, making Haiti the least trade restrictive country in the Caribbean, Haiti has also remained the least developed country in the Caribbean. It is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Three-fourths of Haitians live on less than $2 a day and 70 percent of the workforce is jobless or underemployed. More than half the country's children don't get enough to eat. The connection?

Following the adoption of the import policies local production of rice in Haiti dropped dramatically. Rice import tariff reductions in Haiti has made it more difficult for local rice producers to compete with imports.

haiti rice import graph[i-haiti rice import graph]

Some argue that the resulting flood of relatively cheap rice imports originating mostly from the United States has had a negative impact on Haiti. The decline in the demand for Haitian rice has been devastating to an already desperate rural population. Rice farmers are some of the most vulnerable members of the population; the alternative employment options for farmers in Haiti are extremely limited.

Furthermore, competition between Haitian and American rice growers is not exactly fair. While US rice production is "subsidized through a variety of mechanisms", the small, struggling domestic rice industry in Haiti receives no support from the government. Several Haitian and international NGOs have claimed that the US is guilty of dumping rice in Haiti. The US now dominates the rice market in Haiti. Most American rice exports are handled "by a single US corporation -- American Rice Inc. -- which has enjoyed an almost monopolistic position in Haiti." (Full)

Picture courtesy Newsday/Moises Saman. Graph courtesy american.edu

ethiopia hunger[i-ethiopia hunger]

A relative carries the body of four-year-old Michu Mohamed who died of malnutrition near Sheshemene, southern Ethiopia.

Recent crop failures, drought conditions and the current high price of food have plunged Ethiopia into another food crisis, reminiscent of the famines of 1984-85 which killed over 1 million. People have become so desperate for food, they are eating their next harvest's seeds. 4.5 million Ethiopians are in need right now. (Full)


More Pictures of the Day on The Road.

Picture courtesy Radu Sigheti (REUTERS)

link[i-link]

Venezuela, along with Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia, criticised the final declaration of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Summit in Rome on June 5, arguing that the document failed to identify the true causes of rising food prices, such as agricultural subsidies and unequal trade policies imposed by developed countries.

Venezuelan ambassador to the FAO, Gladys Urbaneja Duran, objected to the document saying it lacked a “genuine humanitarian spirit” and aimed to present world hunger as merely a circumstantial crisis, when in reality it reflects a structural problem linked to the capitalist system and its mode of production and consumption.

Urbaneja rejected the position of the US delegation, which claimed the reason for the current food crisis was rapidly increasing demand from India and China, stating “The main reason is that food has been turned into yet another object of market speculation.”

According to FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, between $11 billion and $12 billion a year is spent on agricultural subsidies and restrictive tariff policies. In the absence of “clear commitments”, the Venezuelan delegate feared that the final declaration could become a “significant setback.”

“We missed an opportunity to take a firm and clear step in the struggle against the scourge of hunger”, Urbaneja concluded. (Full)


More posts on The Road about The Global Food Crisis

Source: The Road Daily
Picture courtesy Handicap International, A.Sutton

bangladesh boys[i-bangladesh boys]
Poor Bangladeshi boys share a bowl of rice while in Rome, the world leaders assembled at the UN summit in Rome to find a solution for the food crisis.
The Guardian published a critical look at the summit titled "Hindering the Hungry".

Source: The Other World News
Picture courtesy Rafiqur Rahman (Reuters)

Work in rice paddy[i-Work in rice paddy]

1. The global export food prices have been skyrocketing since months (Post)
2. Combined with the raising fuel prices, it has caused - what is called - "A Global Food Crisis", urged by world leaders to be tackled urgently. (Post)
3. The crisis has sparked the question if the world can produce enough food to feed itself and how we can find ways to increase crop yields. (Post)


Yet, something is wrong with this picture... Take the case of Thailand:

1. 3 billion people worldwide rely on rice as a staple food (Source)
2. Thailand is one of the world's main rice exporters (Source)

thailand export[i-thailand export]
3. The price of Thai B grade rice, a widely traded variety, reached $795 per ton in April, an increase of 147 percent from a year earlier. Source)

rice price[i-rice price]
4. And yet, Thai rice farmers are getting a lower price for their produce, because of the highly successful crop this year (Source), urging the Thai government to bring in a subsidy scheme buying up 2.5 million tons of rice at a higher-than-market price. (Source)


Do you see the disparity?
- The world rice market soars, and yet the Thai rice farmers are getting less and less for their crop. Who picks up the profits of the high world market prices then?
- Even if the world would produce sufficient food to meet the demand, would that cause the food prices to drop? Or are they artificially kept high because of international profiteering on the financial markets?

You might think this is only the case in Thailand, but not so. Even in the US, farmers are complaining they only get 20 cents of every food dollar spent by consumers. Distribution and retailing account for 80 percent of retail prices. No surprise the world's farmers feel bypassed at the UN food summit. (Full)


More articles on The Road about the global food crisis

Graphs courtesy FAO and International Herald Tribune
Picture courtesy Wikipedia

For_Sale_sign[i-For_Sale_sign]

In The Global Food Crisis - A Perfect Storm, I outlined some causes of the global food crisis. One of them was the struggle for arable land, either through the increase 'need for food' to feed the increasing world population, and the decrease of available land through climate change and desertification.

Already several years ago, the "food crisis" alarm bells started ringing fearing the world is running out of fertile land.
Back in 2005, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison combined satellite images with agricultural data from every country in the world to create detailed maps of global land use. The maps showed roughly 40% of our planet was used for either growing crops or grazing cattle. By comparison, only 7% of the world's land was being used for agriculture in 1700. The research indicates that there is now little room for further agricultural expansion. (Full)

Amplified by the current food crisis, food-deficit countries (countries that can not produce sufficient food for their own production), are now looking beyond their borders for fertile or arable land, so they can grow their own crops abroad:

China has been eying leasing land in Russia (Full), and buying in Africa, Latin America, Cuba and Australia (Full)

Also Libya - eye-ing land in the Ukraine - and Saudi Arabia are scouting for arable land. (Full)

The United Arab Emirates is preparing to launch a large-scale agricultural project in Sudan to develop more than 70,000 acres of land to secure food supplies. Sudan has about 100 million acres of arable land, of which only 20 million is being ­utilised. (Full). Somewhere that begs to wonder why Sudan is still so dependent on food aid, but that is another question...

Makes you wonder if fertile land will soon become a precious commodity. My prediction is that soon, international land brokers will play on this market, fueled by the food crisis, and the prices of foreign fertile land will spiral up.

Somewhere I look at this with argus eyes: at what point will poorer countries give up their own land -and their own food production- for the short term cash gain in sales or leases of the little fertile land they have, to the decrement of their own food security?

Who - in the end - will be the winners and who will be the loosers in this battle for fertile land?


More articles on The Road about the global food crisis

• ►  2012 (3)
  • ►  March (2)
    • Our microfinance team allocated its 1,666th loan
    • KONY2012: Can Social Media Capture a War Criminal?...
  • ►  January (1)
    • Monsanto Go Away

• ▼  2011 (81)
  • ►  December (4)
    • Happy 2012 everyone. Now start changing the world,...
    • Looking for a job as an aidworker? Here is a good ...
    • Teased bull frog eats finger
    • Where the hell is Matt?
  • ►  November (1)
    • Hans Rosling: The only way to stop population grow...
  • ►  October (4)
    • The UN debate of the day: Where is the 7 billionth...
    • Video: Wear your seat belt
    • The status of the world, according to the Global H...
    • Steve Jobs: Lessons on life
  • ►  August (2)
    • Calling on the good and willing
    • The importance of bio-diversity.
  • ►  July (8)
    • A move towards ethical advertising?
    • So who is the dude in the suit?
    • Another drought. Is the development failing?
    • Dog and man: "I ate it all"
    • The worst photoshopped press pictures
    • The world at 1,000 frames per second
    • So why did the West push for South Sudan's indepen...
    • How egoistic can people be?
  • ►  June (6)
    • Yeaah, It's a Party in the CIA
    • Which countries are the happiest?
    • Video: The Girl Effect
    • US, UN and the Taliban: An invitation to dance.
    • Sri Lanka's killing fields. The video.
    • Khadaffi's daughter launches law suit against NATO...
  • ►  May (6)
    • Multi Millionaire, several times a day.
    • How NOT to moor a yacht. Take 3
    • Living in Italy - Part 18: Mobile phones
    • A historic overview: The US involvement in Iran
    • Civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and 9/11
    • Libya and bin Laden,... is the West on a new killi...
  • ►  April (2)
    • Breaking news: Obama is an American Citizen
    • Three cups of tea. And a lot of bullshit?
  • ►  March (14)
    • Song of the Day:Lotus Flower by Radiohead
    • About adaptation, mitigation, floods and the need ...
    • Aid-y-Wood: Celebrities' Good Intentions Are Not G...
    • US military hijacks social media
    • You have been an aidworker for too long (Part 14)
    • You've been an aidworker for too long (Part 13)
    • In the shadow of the news: 1940's US syphilis expe...
    • Teak trees or food crops: Will climate change forc...
    • Climate change, smallholder farmers and the cycle ...
    • Pimp my aid worker
    • Wanted: humanitarians with a conscience- About the...
    • The subjectivity of war hunger
    • Musing on India - Part 5: Faces from Bihar
    • Predicting revolutions in Arab countries
  • ▼  February (18)
    • Khadaffi: Born to confuse
    • "Inside Job", a must see documentary
    • Cartoon: Khadaffi's political system
    • Libya: American Neo-con see opportunities for a ne...
    • Musing on India - Part 4: Faces of Punjab
    • Food prices are at a record high again.
    • After Tunesia, Egypt and Libya, is the US next?
    • Musing on India - Part 3: Four sisters
    • Musing on India - Part 2All that glitters is not g...
    • Why it is important to improve your English...
    • Picture of the day: Libya - The last glimpses of a...
    • Musing on India - Part 1
    • Google: Don't be evil...
    • More precious than gold:Preserving biodiversity at...
    • About Super Chickpeas and Silent Heroes
    • "Changement" by Sodre Ousmane and Isaka Belem
    • Wanted: a government for Belgium...
    • Back from India
  • ►  January (16)

• ►  2010 (165)
  • ►  December (9)
  • ►  November (6)
  • ►  October (6)
  • ►  September (12)
  • ►  August (22)
  • ►  July (21)
  • ►  June (35)
  • ►  May (17)
  • ►  April (9)
  • ►  March (7)
  • ►  February (5)
  • ►  January (16)

• ►  2009 (445)
  • ►  December (33)
  • ►  November (32)
  • ►  October (25)
  • ►  September (27)
  • ►  August (24)
  • ►  July (30)
  • ►  June (39)
  • ►  May (38)
  • ►  April (34)
  • ►  March (53)
  • ►  February (39)
  • ►  January (71)

• ►  2008 (572)
  • ►  December (72)
  • ►  November (73)
  • ►  October (66)
  • ►  September (39)
  • ►  August (37)
  • ►  July (27)
  • ►  June (33)
  • ►  May (41)
  • ►  April (52)
  • ►  March (54)
  • ►  February (34)
  • ►  January (44)

• ►  2007 (315)
  • ►  December (37)
  • ►  November (19)
  • ►  October (21)
  • ►  September (19)
  • ►  August (23)
  • ►  July (10)
  • ►  June (23)
  • ►  May (33)
  • ►  April (35)
  • ►  March (37)
  • ►  February (17)
  • ►  January (41)

• ►  2006 (16)
  • ►  April (4)
  • ►  January (12)