Iraq's most lucrative export after oil - dates - has seen declining production since the American-led invasion began in 2003. Photo: Ikhlasul Amal (flickr)

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent violence has left the country struggling to survive. Now, Iraq’s economy is suffering even more due to declining production in one of its most thriving exports after oil: dates.

Dates are highly nutritious and a staple food in Iraq. Before the war, a typical palm tree was yielding 130 – 175 pounds of dates per year, compared to only 30 pounds of fruit last year, reports the New York Times. The country used to produce about 75 percent of the world’s dates at one point, but today Iraq has fallen behind many other Arab countries leading in date production.

The lack of “sufficient electricity, machinery and a drought” has severely damaged the agricultural industry, says Iraqi economist Ghazi al-Kenan. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion, there were more than 150 date processing factories. Today there are six.

Another factor contributing to the decline in date production is that the country's trade ministry — which is responsible for buying agricultural products for export from farmers — isn't purchasing dates at a high enough price to cover production costs for farmers, reports the New York Times.

But the decline in date production is causing more than just agricultural and economic problems for Iraq. Public health and the environment are also feeling the effects. Baghdad has experienced more sand storms, increased asthma cases and respiratory illnesses due to the shrinking of depleted farms and orchards surrounding the capital.

With the global economic downturn affecting oil prices, prospects for the date industry are looking grim. The Trade Ministry tells the New York Times that "it cannot afford to raise payments to farmers.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has developed a new tool to measure the state of a country's food system and its ability to withstand global shocks. Rather than just predicting food crises through its current early warning system, the new tool will help to measure a region's resilience — defined, in humanitarian terms, as "the ability of a system to withstand stresses and shocks in an uncertain world."

Luca Alinovi, a senior economist at FAO, explains that the logarithm for measuring resilience was developed in the Palestinian Territory, which serves as an example of a vulnerable, but ultimately resilient society. "The Palestinians have been living under incredible stress for a long time; everyone is vulnerable there," explained Alinovi. "Despite that, they continue to live and work in that situation — they are a particularly resilient community."

Data is collected according to five pillars: existing social safety nets, access to public services, assets, income and food access, households' capacity to adapt, and the stability of food supply. The goal is that this data will complement the FAO's early warning system — which focuses mainly on immediate upcoming crises — and allow for more effective long-term aid and planning. For example, stronger public services in a country that is highly susceptible to annual drought might mean less personal hardship if and when such droughts occur.

While critics may dismiss the new tool as no more than semantic brouhaha, there are real signs that the notion of resilience suggests a genuine paradigm shift. Mafa Chipeta, a FAO Representative in Ethiopia, recently spoke much less theoretically about resilience by underscoring the need for improving access to water, protecting natural resources, and addressing land tenure. "We need to think beyond responding at the consumption end and start putting resources on the production end," says Chipeta. "Scarce resources are better spent on increasing production than on subsidizing food. If you subsidize grain, next year you have to subsidize it again."

In other words, we need to put aid money into developing successful food systems, rather than waiting to spend money on one-time aid when a crisis hits. After all, without investments into a resilient agricultural sector, an eventual crisis is inevitable. Seen in this context, the FAO's new tool is representative of recent major shifts in food policy — reflecting growing consensus that in the long run, food aid fails to address genuine need. For millions of vulnerable people who have seen the pattern of crisis hit time and time again, this may be one critical step toward breaking that cycle for good.

Photo: Geoff Oliver Bugbee for Mercy Corps

A few months ago, I wrote about a team of journalists reporting on water issues and conflict in Kenya and Ethiopia, where a tremendous drought is spreading across the region. Pastoralists — herders whose livelihoods depend on the animals they breed and tend — are running out of water and pasture land. As a result, they are crossing borders and traditional tribal boundaries in pursuit of water. This search for scarce resources is leading to tensions, as The East African Standard reports from Nairobi:

"There is already a build-up of inter and intra clan tensions over water and pasture," says the DO [District Officer]. In fact, he says, they have had to quell inter clan clashes at Sake, with the assistance of elders. Those far away from the Ethiopian border have been left at the mercy of nature, the Government and development agencies, to provide water.

In Ethiopia, the reporting team created a film that compellingly illustrates the oncoming crisis. “Pastoralists are more vulnerable to drought than they were 40 years ago," the film tells us. "Researchers predict that they will be some of the first people on Earth forced to abandon their way of life due to climate change.”

Photo: Jason Sangster for Mercy Corps

The UN head of food and agriculture, Jacques Diouf, is urging oil-producing countries to reinvest oil revenues into local agricultural programs out of concern for rising food prices. The oil-rich countries termed by the UN the Near East (which includes most North African and Middle Eastern countries) has seen steady declines in agriculture productivity during the last two decades, and external food aid has dropped significantly as well. However, according to the FAO, the number of undernourished people in the region has grown from 33 million in the early 1990s to over 100 million by 2004.

With plans to feed as many as 73 million people this year, the UN World Food Program is alarmed by recent price increases, according to the New York Times editorial, "Priced Out of the Market". Increasing food prices in themselves are not extraordinary, but the fact that grain and wheat producers, among others, are shifting their effort away from food to alternative energy production will dangerously complicate the situation - higher prices combined with a global food shortage will prove deadly.

The FAO's Hunger Map shows that most of the countries with the most dire need for food aid are not high producers themselves. While Near Eastern countries are still able to find enough food resources to feed their people right now, the Financial Times quotes Mr. Diouf's warning that “it is a difficult balance for governments to respond to the need of their populations by importing food at very high prices, and also to ensure that the poorest of their populations get access to food at reasonable prices.”