Mildred Munjunga

Based in Zambia and part of the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Youth network, Mildred is a volunteer and National Disaster Response Team (NDRT) member. Her involvement in food systems has been to ensure food availability, access, utilization and stability before and after disasters for vulnerable families through livelihood support, food, non-food items or cash distribution. Mildred has attended capacity building trainings as an NDRT to make this possible.

Key issues for her include: Food insecurity ranging from community, national, regional and global level may be as a result of multiple effects which includes climatic hazards such as droughts and floods. Other hazards such as Pest infestation (army worms and Locust), and epidemics such as Covid-19 coupled with high poverty levels has negative impact on production, accessibility and availability. This can be improved through mechanising the agricultural sector, empower small scale farmers with irrigation in order to produce all year round as compared to rain-fed, agriculture diversification (small, medium and large livestock, aquaculture, gardening, crops, horticulture, apiculture), capacity building in climate smart agriculture, bulking and value chains.

The rationale behind this is that with proper nutrition poverty can be reduced as will be able to attain SDG 4, sustainable consumption will reduce wastage and pollution while remodelling of farming will reduce the environmental impact and loss of biodiversity.