ECHOcommunity Conversations

Resilient Relief | Emergency Food Boxes

Agriculture, Nutrition, & Health Food Emergencies
#1

Nutrition | Relief | Emergency Food

The impact of the war between Ukraine and Russia is causing prices to increase on Russia and Ukraine’s major exports -wheat and sunflower oil - internationally. This dramatically impacts the region of the world I am in (the ME) and numerous other regions of the world that rely on these imports. An immediate need is how it impacts traditional relief emergency food boxes that are often abundant in processed food that includes wheat and sunflower oil.

With that, if you were to design a nutrition-oriented emergency relief box (that minimized wheat and sunflower oil) what would you include? Remember, the longer these products can last the better.

#2

What about rape/canola oil or corn oil? There is also palm oil which has gotten a bad rap for health and deforestation. Millet and sorghum have higher nutritional regimes than maize and wheat. In the north we can grow huge quantities of rape and canola and millet and sorghum are more resistant to drought so creating demand for them is good. We should also consider adding dried fruit if it is available. And you will need some way to supply lysine to the diet and that comes primarily from beans so perhaps the beans can be cooked on the side or if they are precooked and dried they can be included in a mixed box with items that take significantly less time to cook.

#3

This is such a great question. With over 30,000 edible plants in the world, there must be lots of options… Dried seeds / legumes?