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The Food Chain

Factual: Food & Drink

Examining what it takes to put food on your plate

The Food Chain examines the business, science and cultural significance of food, and what it takes to put food on your plate.

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The Food Chain: Disaster Food: Feeding a Country in Crisis

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Destroyed farm in Nepal

07/05/2016 GMT

Disaster Food: Feeding a Country in Crisis

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Disaster Food: Feeding a Country in Crisis

The impact of natural disasters on a country's ability to feed itself.

The impact of natural disasters on a country's ability to feed itself - from emergency supplies to repairing devastated farmland. Plus, where food aid can do more harm than good.

How does a country feed itself following an earthquake, flood or drought? 

The Food Chain looks at the role of food in disaster relief - from the emergency response to the longer-term efforts to restore devastated farmland.

We speak to Nepal's farmers to hear how they coped in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake. An aid worker scrambled to Kathmandu tells us how the World Food Programme hired 25,000 mountaineers to deliver food to remote communities cut off by the disaster. 

We go behind the scenes at a leading supplier of emergency food, Nutriset, which makes peanut paste and milk products for malnourished children and adults around the world.

Plus, how agriculture bears the brunt of the economic damage caused by natural disasters, but receives a tiny proportion of aid funding - the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations tells us the balance must be redressed.

And when food aid can do more harm than good - we hear how farmers in Haiti are angry about US plans to send 500 tonnes of surplus peanuts to help the country recover from a three-year drought, and how prime agricultural land was lost in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.

(Photo: A Nepalese earthquake survivor in front of a destroyed farm. Credit: Philippe Lopez, Getty Images)

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