Tamale, June 7, - The World Food Programme (WFP) has over the last two years bought over 10 million US dollars of food commodities including locally grown rice, worth one million US dollars from Ghanaian farmers for the preparation of school meals.

The WFP is also working with the Ghana School Feeding Programme and the Ghana Education Service to support 130,000 school children in the three northern regions, with on-site meals and take home food rations. Madam Mei Yue, Head of the Tamale Sub-Office of the WFP disclosed this at this year's "End Hunger: Walk the World" organized by the WFP in Tamale on Sunday, to raise money to feed the hungry around the world. Earlier in the day, hundreds of people marched through some of the principal streets of Tamale to mark the day. The event which is an annual affair, is taking place in 70 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific to Latin and North America including Iraq for the first time this year. Madam Yue said the WFP was currently exporting 3,600 metric tons of maize worth 1.27 million dollars to Niger, to help with the food crises in that country, adding that, the organization had plans to buy more and would be working closely with small farmers in the Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative, which would soon take off.

She said a third of all deaths in children under the age of five in developing countries were linked to under nutrition. Mr. Joseph Dasana, the Northern Regional Coordinating Director (RCD), said in the face of advance technology, it was unacceptable that hunger and malnutrition should still remain a scourge of our times. He said it was in the light of this that the government had embarked on several interventions to help eradicate the problem of hunger and nutrition, by promoting agriculture production and encouraging the youth to engage in agriculture.

He said government was also encouraging farmers to adopt new mechanized ways of farming to help increase food production and asked all to help keep the environment safe and the soil fertile for farming.