Devex Dish: How farmers in climate-vulnerable Honduras are coping

When I was in Honduras last month, I was struck by the severity of the situation faced by farmers and a food-insecure population versus the international attention they get. Pitting hungry people against each other is not productive, but we rarely hear about the situation in Central America — except in the context of migration.

That’s why I was so eager to talk to farmers in one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries about how changing weather patterns have affected their yields and household food security.

I met farmer after farmer who told me unpredictability has become the norm in every growing season, making it nearly impossible to predict what kind of harvest to expect or to have a contingency plan for poor conditions. Sometimes they get too much rain. Sometimes they get too little. But without a doubt, climate change is wreaking havoc on smallholders.

“We don’t have any control,” Amílcar Antonio Zúñiga, 35, who grows corn, tomatoes, and coffee in the community of El Jícaro in the southern municipality of Oropolí, told me. His fields flooded in September, but now it’s too dry, and his crops are suffering. “We never know how the rainy season will go.”

Unpredictable weather affects farmers all over Honduras, from those who harvest staples such as corn and beans for household consumption to those like Zúñiga, who export tomatoes to neighboring El Salvador, and even the niche farmers exporting coffee to the international market.

With a government largely unequipped to provide meaningful support, international organizations are stepping in to teach climate-adaptive agricultural practices to help Honduran farmers build resilience and ensure their long-term livelihoods.

Visual story: Honduran farmers at the mercy of climate change-induced drought, floods

Less COP all the time

We’re going a little lighter on the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference content this week. I’ll bring you a wrap-up of all the announcements made in next week’s edition, but I want to be sure you see my colleague Rumbi Chakamba’s exclusive: Some countries in the Group of 77 and China have opposed the inclusion of a food-systems approach to a major agricultural pact being negotiated at the conference.

Those countries, the main group of low- and middle-income countries at the U.N., put the ongoing Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture in danger of being postponed until June — a delay the food system can’t afford, advocates say. João Campari, global leader of food practice at the World Wildlife Fund, tells Rumbi it would be a “major failing” if countries can’t agree that food systems should have a seat at the table in negotiations on agriculture.

Read: Some G77 countries oppose widening climate agriculture pact

I also want to make sure you see my interview with the founder of Clim-Eat, Dhanush Dinesh. After years of frustration in legacy food systems institutions, he set out to create an organization “designed for failure” and was willing to take big risks to spur climate action in food systems. His fledgling organization — it’s 1 year old — is already turning down funding, and Dinesh doesn’t want it to exceed $2 million per year.

“What we want to do is we want to take those big risks which established organizations are not willing to take, and if we fail, that’s fine. But something needs to change in the system,” Dinesh tells me.

Read: Meet the food and climate organization 'designed for failure'

Crossing the aisle

The U.S. has formally recommended two candidates to succeed David Beasley as executive director of the World Food Programme: Ambassador Cindy McCain and David Lane, former ambassador to the U.S. food agencies under former President Barack Obama.

My colleague Colum Lynch reports in this scoop that McCain, who is currently the U.S. ambassador to the Rome-based U.N. food agencies, is heavily favored by the Biden administration.

An American has headed the humanitarian organization for 30 years, but the role is technically selected by the U.N. secretary-general and the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization. Current head Beasley, a Republican appointee whose term was extended by a year due to the food crisis, will step down in April. McCain is the wife of former Republican Senator John McCain and has broad appeal in the U.S. Congress, which approves U.S. funding to WFP.

Exclusive: US proposes Cindy McCain to lead the World Food Programme

Verify this

Longtime Dish readers may recall our slight obsession with the Beasley/Elon Musk Twitter spat over funding to end global hunger last year. Beasley was essentially begging Musk on social media to put $6 billion of his fortune to good use to help the agency end hunger. Spoiler alert: It didn’t work out for Beasley.

Now, WFP has dived into the Musk-Twitter blue checkmark-verification drama by launching a fundraising campaign poking fun at Musk’s plan to charge $8 a month for the blue checkmark that’s supposed to verify Twitter users are who they say they are. They urge people to “become a verified humanitarian” by donating money to the agency — with all the amounts listed on the donation page in multiples of eight.

ICYMI: Climate change is pushing the humanitarian system to the brink, WFP’s director of climate and disaster risk reduction said last week at Devex’s COP 27 event. 

Farmers are fundamental

Leaders at COP 27 in Egypt must prioritize support for smallholder farmers — like those I spoke to in Honduras — who are hit hardest by climate change, write CGIAR Executive Managing Director Claudia Sadoff and FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo in this op-ed for Devex. They call for a common global framework to protect communities experiencing the worst, financing for vulnerable sectors such as agriculture, and real delivery on implementation.

Opinion: If COP 27 ignores farmers, global food security will suffer

Speaking of financing, Devex Pro members can check out my colleague Sara Jerving’s piece on how the Green Climate Fund — which works on global food security — seeks to unlock private capital to meet the massive climate demands.

Read: The Green Climate Fund strives for a more catalytic role (Pro)

+ Pro members also have exclusive access to our event on Nov. 22, which will lay out all you need to know after COP 27 wraps up. Register here for the conversation with Rumbi and a panel of experts.

Chew on this

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is “hopeful” the Black Sea Grain Initiative will be renewed. [Voice of America]

The Global Food and Nutrition Security Dashboard launched by the World Bank and Germany “will be the single biggest concentration of data on food and nutrition security.” [Devex]

The global food import bill is estimated to be higher than previously expected, hitting $1.94 trillion in 2022, a new record. [FAO]