Agriculture: The Unlikely Earth Day Hero

by: NourishingthePlanet

Tue Apr 19, 2011 at 11:32:21 AM PDT

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.

For over 40 years, Earth Day has served as a call to action, mobilizing individuals and organizations around the world to address these challenges. This year Nourishing the Planet highlights agriculture-often blamed as a driver of environmental problems-as an emerging solution.

Agriculture is a source of food and income for the world's poor and a primary engine for economic growth. It also offers untapped potential for mitigating climate change and protecting biodiversity, and for lifting millions of people out of poverty.

This Earth Day, Nourishing the Planet offers 15 solutions to guide farmers, scientists, politicians, agribusinesses and aid agencies as they commit to promoting a healthier environment and a more food-secure future.

1. Guaranteeing the Right to Food. Guaranteeing the human right to adequate food-now and for future generations-requires that policymakers incorporate this right into food security laws and programs at the regional, national, and international level. Governments have a role in providing the public goods to support sustainable agriculture, including extension services, farmer-to-farmer transmission of knowledge, storage facilities, and infrastructure that links farmers to consumers.

2. Harnessing the Nutritional and Economic Potential of Vegetables. Micronutrient deficiencies, including lack of vitamin A, iodine, and iron, affect 1 billion people worldwide. Promoting indigenous vegetables that are rich in micronutrients could help reduce malnutrition. Locally adapted vegetable varieties are hardier and more dependable than staple crops, making them ideal for smallholder farmers. Research organizations like AVRDC/The World Vegetable Center are developing improved vegetable varieties, such as amaranth and African eggplant, and cultivating an appreciation for traditional foods among consumers.

3. Reducing Food Waste. Experts continue to emphasize increasing global food production, yet our money could be better spent on reducing food waste and post-harvest losses. Already, a number of low-input and regionally appropriate storage and preservation techniques are working to combat food waste around the world. In Pakistan, farmers cut their harvest losses by 70 percent by switching from jute bags and containers constructed with mud to more durable metal containers. And in West Africa, farmers have saved around 100,000 mangos by using solar dryers to dry the fruit after harvest.

4. Feeding Cities. The U.N. estimates that 70 percent of the world's people will live in cities by 2050, putting stress on available food. Urban agriculture projects are helping to improve food security, raise incomes, empower women, and improve urban environments. In sub-Saharan Africa, the Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization (ECHO) has helped city farmers build food gardens, using old tires to create crop beds. And community supported agriculture (CSA) programs in Cape Town, South Africa, are helping to raise incomes and provide produce for school meals.

5. Getting More Crop per Drop. Many small farmers lack access to a reliable source of water, and water supplies are drying up as extraction exceeds sustainable levels. Only 4 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's cultivated land is equipped for irrigation, and a majority of households depend on rainfall to water their crops-which climate scientists predict will decline in coming decades. Efficient water management in agriculture can boost crop productivity for these farmers. By practicing conservation tillage, weeding regularly, and constructing vegetative barriers and earthen dams, farmers can harness rainfall more effectively.

6. Using Farmers' Knowledge in Research and Development. Agricultural research and development processes typically exclude smallholder farmers and their wealth of knowledge, leading to less-efficient agricultural technologies that go unused. Research efforts that involve smallholder farmers alongside agricultural scientists can help meet specific local needs, strengthen farmers' leadership abilities, and improve how research and education systems operate. In southern Ethiopia's Amaro district, a community-led body carried out an evaluation of key problems and promising solutions using democratic decision-making to determine what type of research should be funded.

7. Improving Soil Fertility. Africa's declining soil fertility may lead to an imminent famine; already, it is causing harvest productivity to decline 15-25 percent, and farmers expect harvests to drop by half in the next five years. Green manure/cover crops, including living trees, bushes, and vines, help restore soil quality and are an inexpensive and feasible solution to this problem. In the drought-prone Sahel region, the Dogon people of Mali are using an innovative, three-tiered system and are now harvesting three times the yield achieved in other parts of the Sahel.

8. Safeguarding Local Food Biodiversity. Over the past few decades, traditional African agriculture based on local diversity has given way to monoculture crops destined for export. Less-healthy imports are replacing traditional, nutritionally rich foods, devastating local economies and diets. Awareness-raising initiatives and efforts to improve the quality of production and marketing are adding value to and encouraging diversification and consumption of local products. In Ethiopia's Wukro and Wenchi villages, honey producers are training with Italian and Ethiopian beekeepers to process and sell their honey more efficiently, promote appreciation for local food, and compete with imported products.

9. Coping with Climate Change and Building Resilience. Global climate change, including higher temperatures and increased periods of drought, will negatively impact agriculture by reducing soil fertility and decreasing crop yields. Although agriculture is a major contributor to climate change, accounting for about one-third of global emissions, agricultural practices, such as agroforestry and the re-generation of natural resources, can help mitigate climate change. In Niger, farmers have planted nearly 5 million hectares of trees that conserve water, prevent soil erosion, and sequester carbon, making their farms more productive and drought-resistant without damaging the environment.

10. Harnessing the Knowledge and Skills of Women Farmers. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, women represent 43 percent of the agricultural labor force, but due to limited access to inputs, land, and services, they produce less per unit of land than their male counterparts. Improving women's access to agricultural extension services, credit programs, and information technology can help empower women, while reducing global hunger and poverty. In Uganda, extension programs are introducing women farmers to coolbot technology, which uses solar energy and an inverter to reduce temperatures and prolong the shelf life of vegetables.

11. Investing in Africa's Land: Crisis and Opportunity. As pressure to increase food production rises, wealthy countries in the Middle East and Asia are acquiring cheap land in Africa to increase their food productivity. This has led to the exploitation of small-scale African farmers, compromising their food security. Agricultural investment models that create collaborations between African farmers and the foreign investing countries can be part of the solution. In Ethiopia's Rift Valley, farmers grow green beans for the Dutch market during the European winter months, but cultivate corn and other crops for local consumption during the remaining months.

12. Charting a New Path to Eliminating Hunger. Nearly 1 billion people around the world are hungry, 239 million of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. To alleviate hunger, we must shift our attention beyond the handful of crops that have absorbed most of agriculture's attention and focus on ways to improve farmers' access to inputs and make better use of the food already produced. Innovations-such as the human-powered pump that can increase access to irrigation and low-cost plastic bags that help preserve grains-offer models that can be scaled-up and replicated beyond Africa.

13. Moving Ecoagriculture into the Mainstream. Agricultural practices that emphasize increased production have contributed to the degradation of land, soil, and local ecosystems, and ultimately hurt the livelihoods of the farmers who depend on these natural resources. Agroecological methods, including organic farming practices, can help farmers protect natural resources and provide a sustainable alternative to costly industrial inputs. These include rotational grazing for livestock in Zimbabwe's savanna region and tea plantations in Kenya, where farmers use intercropping to improve soil quality and boost yields.

14. Improving Food Production from Livestock. In the coming decades, small livestock farmers in the developing world will face unprecedented challenges: demand for animal-source foods, such as milk and meat, is increasing, while animal diseases in tropical countries will continue to rise, hindering trade and putting people at risk. Innovations in livestock feed, disease control, and climate change adaptation-as well as improved yields and efficiency-are improving farmers' incomes and making animal-source food production more sustainable. In India, farmers are improving the quality of their feed by using grass, sorghum, stover, and brans to produce more milk from fewer animals.

15. Going Beyond Production. Although scarcity and famine dominate the discussion of food security in sub-Saharan Africa, many countries are unequipped to deal with the crop surpluses that lead to low commodity prices and food waste. Helping farmers better organize their means of production-from ordering inputs to selling their crops to a customer-can help them become more resilient to fluctuations in global food prices and better serve local communities that need food. In Uganda, the organization TechnoServe has helped to improve market conditions for banana farmers by forming business groups through which they can buy inputs, receive technical advice, and sell their crops collectively.

To purchase State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet please click HERE. To watch the one minute book trailer click HERE.

A Conversation About Organic Agriculture with Chuck Benbrook

by: borderjumpers

Fri Jul 16, 2010 at 07:36:33 AM PDT

Name: Chuck Benbrook

Affiliation: The Organic Center

Location: Enterprise, Oregon

Bio: Dr. Charles Benbrook is Chief Scientist at the Organic Center. He worked in Washington, D.C. on agricultural policy, science and regulatory issues from 1979 through 1997. He served for 1.5 years as the agricultural staff expert on the Council for Environmental Quality at the end of the Carter Administration. Following the election of Ronald Reagan, he moved to Capitol Hill in early 1981 and was the Executive Director of the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture with jurisdiction over pesticide regulation, research, trade and foreign agricultural issues. In 1984 Benbrook was recruited to the job of Executive Director, Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, a position he held for seven years. In late 1990 he formed Benbrook Consulting Services.

On Nourishing the Planet: Promoting agricultural and economic development in Africa requires intimate understanding of the resources people have to work with, and the factors shaping the decisions farmers make about what to grow and how.  Such understanding is a prerequisite to cost-effectively relax multiple constraints in unison.  The "Nourishing the Planet" project excels at gathering and sharing this sort of key information and, for this reason, has much to contribute in shaping development assistant programs that produce meaningful, sustained results.

Can you describe the possible ways that organic agriculture methods can help improve farmers' income, increase food security, and decrease world hunger?

If you dispassionately look at what is needed to promote productivity and food security in chronically food short regions, core organic farming principles and practices have much to contribute, and certainly far more than the GMO and chemical-intensive corn-soybean production system in the U.S. corn belt.   This is particularly true in restoring soil fertility and reversing the steady decline in soil organic matter.

Six core principles and objectives of organic farming must form the foundation of sustainable food systems, and hence food security in Africa -

   * Build the quality of the soil by increasing soil organic matter;
   * Promote above and below-ground biodiversity for its inherent, multiple benefits (biological control, more diverse diet, lessening risk of catastrophic crop loss, etc);
   * Integrate crop and livestock operations to exploit synergies between the two;
   * Use crop rotations, cover crops, multi-cropping systems, and agro-foresty to utilize available sunlight and moisture more fully, especially in the spring and fall months;
   * Avoid the use of toxic chemicals and hot fertilizers because of their potential to burn up organic matter, kill or reduce populations of non-target organisms that play valuable roles in food chains ultimately helping to feed people, and pose risks to people living in close proximity to treated areas; and
   * Produce high-quality, nutrient dense products that will hopefully command a premium price in the market place, reflecting their true value.

What are some specific innovations, policies and techniques that could be implemented to promote organic agriculture while also improving livelihoods?

Obviously, the combination of new practices, inputs, and technologies needed will vary tremendously based on local conditions.  Nearly everywhere, soil quality must be restored, a process that will require a number of years and a proper sequence of changes in management systems and inputs.  What a farmer does in the first three years of this journey will differ considerably from common practices ten years down the road.

Early steps will be dependent to a greater degree on fertilizer and organic soil amendments from outside the farm, and will often need to be shipped hundreds of miles into the region, while in later years, much more of the organic materials needed to sustain soil quality will be generated on the farm or locally.

Unfortunately, many projects and policy initiatives have delivered uneven, unsustainable results because they stopped at just subsidizing fertilizer, and failed to support the farmer's evolution toward more biologically-based methods to sustain soil fertility.

It is critical to support this incremental evolution, because the real and sustainable economic benefits to farm families kick in only after the transition is well along toward systems that have a high level of internal self-sufficiency, stability, and resilience.

It would be helpful for researchers and development organizations to provide recommendations for cost-effective trajectories of change in soil quality, including recommendations for the most cost-effective steps, and investments that will promote sustainable progress during each stage of the process.

More efficient capture and use of water, especially through micro-irrigation schemes, will also deliver significant benefits in many areas.  Diversifying rotations to include small plots of several short season vegetable crops in various combinations will also deliver multiple benefits.  Diversifying livestock enterprises to include more small livestock like chickens and rabbits is also a promising addition to the development assistance tool kit.

The lack of safe storage and markets for new crops, or difficulties in storing and utilizing new foods, often emerges as a major constraint to positive changes on the farm, and in terms of the diversity and quality of diets.  It seems to me that this is an obvious area for development assistance programs to target resources.

Why should wealthy consumers care about hunger in other parts of the world?

For the same reason that everyone should - helping assure everyone has enough to eat is a universal moral imperative.  There is no chance for peace and stability in a world where chronic poverty and hunger afflicts one-sixth of mankind. Hungry people are desperate people, and the actions they sometimes take, or embrace, to feed themselves and their families erode the fabric of civilization, just as erosion saps soil quality.

In your chapter, "Biotechnology: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem-or Both?" you make the point that developed nations should use biotechnology to better understand "the linkages between indigenous resources and knowledge and agricultural production and farm family well being." Can you elaborate on this statement?

Some people are convinced that breakthroughs in plant breeding in Africa depend on access to, and use of a set of genes, markers and molecular technologies discovered and now used in the U.S. and Europe by plant biotech companies. I doubt it.  I just don't see Roundup Ready or Bt GE crops making much of a difference on most of the African continent.

Instead, I think that the modern tools of molecular biology should be deployed to understand and better utilize the genetic diversity that exists on the African continent. These tools are also extremely valuable in rooting out the subtle interactions between soil microbes, plants, pests, and the environment that can make or break a crop, and turn a nutritionally deficient diet into one that is both rich in nutrients and robust across seasons and circumstances.

There are many ways to work toward this goal that fully exploit cutting-edge science and technology.  We need to find the pathways that will deliver tangible results more quickly and cost-effectively than creating a new food like Golden rice, which remains after many years and millions of dollars an intriguing technical challenge, but not a sound investment if the goal is to promote food security where it is currently lacking.

Can biotechnology be used to improve sustainable agriculture and farming in the developing world?

Sure, but the biotechnology applications will be very different than the GE crops now planted around the world.

In the publication, "The Impacts of Yield on Nutritional Quality: Lessons from Organic Farming," you conclude that organic foods are more nutritious than conventionally produced fruits and vegetables. Can you give a few examples of why organic produce is more nutritious and how this knowledge can help farmers in the United States and Europe, as well as the developing world?

In the U.S. and Europe, there has been a steady decline over 40-plus years in the nutrient density of conventionally grown foods, driven largely by incrementally higher nitrogen fertilizer levels and crop yields.  Agronomists call this essentially unavoidable relationship between yields and nutrient density the "dilution effect."  Organic farmers do not have access to the cheap sources of readily available nitrogen that serve as the fuel driving the dilution effect.

On average across most plant-based foods, organically managed crops mature a bit more slowly and produce fruit and vegetables that are somewhat smaller. But in terms of nutrient content per ounce or gram of apple, lettuce, carrot, or grapes, smaller is better.

There is also convincing evidence supporting the conclusion that in some years for some organic crops, a higher level of pest pressure, coupled with the lack of conventional pesticide applications, forces plants to divert energy from growth to defense mechanisms, which typically entail increased biosynthesis of plant secondary metabolites.  Many of these are potent antioxidants and account for a significant slice of the unique health-promoting benefits - and flavors - of fruits and vegetables.

Supporters of biotechnology often make the argument GE crops are necessary to fight food insecurity as climate change and population growth put increased pressure on the food system.  Can you give your thoughts on why or why not biotechnology can feed the world?

Today's commercially significant GE crops are herbicide-tolerant corn, soybeans, and cotton, and Bt corn and cotton.  These crops are designed to simplify weed and insect pest management and are planted, for the most part, in specialized, chemical-intensive systems.  Alternative technology exists to produce the same amount of crops per acre, and likely a bit more at lower cost to the farmer.  Based on these realities, I conclude that today's commercial GE crops are making no unique contribution to world food security needs.

An argument could be made, in addition, that today's GE crop technology has actually undermined progress toward increasing production and meeting global food security needs.  The discovery and commercialization of today's GE crops have totally dominated public and private plant breeding investments for nearly 30 years in three major crops, slowing the pace of progress in other areas of plant genetic improvement that would likely be of more direct benefit to a wider range of farmers around the world.

No one technology or farming system will emerge as universally optimal.  Progress toward global food security will be accelerated by systemic efforts to promote diversity in farming systems and technologies.  A healthy measure of experimentation is desirable in searching for optimal cropping patterns and production practices in a given region.

We must resist the enticing prospect that science and technology will deliver a magic bullet, or even a magic arsenal, that will miraculously optimize yields, stop pests in their tracks, always build soil quality, and thrive despite climate change.  A sober reading of history suggests strongly that this is a pipedream.

Those arguing that global food security will be assured if we just unleash the powers of biotechnology are doing the world's poor a grave disservice.  I know that many biotech promoters feel the same way about people like me who feel just as strongly that the most rapid and sustained progress will come from agricultural development programs and investments grounded in the principles of organic farming and agroecology.

One would hope and expect that the World Bank, FAO, CGIAR, foundations, and development assistance programs will insist that fair and unbiased assessments are made of the net returns to alternative paths to development in the years to come, but thus far I see little evidence of this happening on the ground.  The "Nourishing the Planet" project should do all it can to encourage the major funders and development organizations to sponsor credible, independent assessments.  May the best approach emerge, and let's hope that funders have the courage and political freedom to put the dollars behind the best system, in the hope of accelerating progress toward a goal shared by all.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty. She has already traveled to over 18 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Togo next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates.  Please don't hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Beating the Heat to Reduce Post-Harvest Waste

by: borderjumpers

Wed Jul 14, 2010 at 11:05:12 AM PDT

For a farmer in a hot country like Sudan, a big harvest can end up being just a big waste. A fresh tomato off the vine will only last about 2 days in the stifling heat, while carrots and okra might last only 4 days. Despite being perfectly capable of producing abundant harvests, without any means to store and preserve crops, farmers in Sudan are at risk for hunger and starvation. They are also losing money that could be made by selling surplus produce at markets if they had a way to keep vegetables longer.

The organization, Practical Action-a development non-profit that uses technology to help people gain access to basic services like clean water, and sanitation and to improve food production and incomes- provides a simple solution to this problem in the form of homemade clay refrigerators.  Practical Action's clay refrigerators are called zeer pots and can be made out of mud, clay, water, and sand. To make one a farmer uses molds made out of mud to create two pots of different sizes. Once dry, the small pot is fitted into the larger pot and the space between them is filled with sand. By placing this structure on an iron stand so that air can flow underneath and all around, and by adding water to the sand between the pots daily, a farmer can use evaporation to keep the pots-and whatever is inside-cool.

In a zeer pot, tomatoes and carrots can last up to twenty days while okra will last for seventeen days. And this can make a huge difference for a small scale farmer who is trying to feed her family. One farmer, Hawa Abbas, featured in a Practical Action case study, used to regularly expect to lose half her crop to the inescapable heat. But now, "[zeer pots] keep our vegetables fresh for 3-4 weeks, depending on the type of crop," she said. "They are very good in a hot climate such as ours where fruit and vegetables get spoiled in one day."

Practical Action provides trainings and demonstrations to teach small scale farmers how to make and use the pots in developing countries like Sudan and Darfur. And an instruction manual about how to make the pots can be found on its website.

To read more about innovations that reduce crop waste to alleviate hunger and improve livelihoods see: It's All About the Process, Reducing Food Waste,  Investing in Better Food Storage, and In a World of Abundance, Food Waste is a Crime.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.  She has already traveled to over 18 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Togo next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.  

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on  Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates.  Please don't hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Turning the Catch of the Day into Improved Livelihoods for the Whole Community

by: borderjumpers

Mon Jul 12, 2010 at 07:06:26 AM PDT

Leaving Gambia's capital city, Banjul, you'll find a group of women standing road side offering up oysters for 15 dalasis a cup, or about 55 cents for approximately 75 pieces of oyster meat. These women in the community have been harvesting oysters from the extensive mangrove wetlands of Gambia for decades. Much of the harvesting is concentrated in Tanbi National Park, a Ramsar site, or wetland of international importance. Surprisingly, the mangroves themselves have undergone little change during the last thirty years, even as the population of the country, increasingly concentrated around Tanbi in the Greater Banjul Area, more than doubled during that period.

Although the mangroves remain healthy, the oyster harvesters have witnessed the effects of increased pressure on the oyster population first hand. The women report that oysters today are smaller and harder to find than thirty years ago or even ten years ago. Even with the increased effort required to harvest, more women are harvesting today than in the past. These women rely on oysters for their livelihoods and contribute to food security in a country that is heavily dependent on seafood for protein.

In 2007 a group of oyster harvesters organized themselves into a producer association called TRY Women's Oyster Harvesting Association. The first members decided to call the organization TRY, because it was an effort to do just that - try to improve the situation for oyster harvesters without much certainty that their efforts would pay off. After some initial success fund raising to buy boats, membership in TRY grew rapidly from fourteen women in just one village to 500 oyster harvesters from fifteen communities across the Greater Banjul Area today. This growth was no small feat. Although the women are all Jola, a minority ethnic group in Gambia, they are divided into different sects with distinct languages and heritages. Through TRY, the harvesters have been able to put aside these differences and work as a cohesive community making decisions by consensus and collectively prioritizing needs.

Two years later in fall 2009, TRY became linked with the USAID funded Sustainable Fisheries Project, Ba Nafaa. Ba Nafaa has helped TRY expand the scope of its mission and has worked to create a sustainable co-management plan for the oyster fishery that respects the needs of harvesters, consumers, and the environment.

In their short time together TRY and Ba Nafaa have already made some important strides in working toward improved livelihoods and fisheries practices. The women have collectively agreed to practices that may be difficult in the short run, but pay off over time. Traditionally, oysters are harvested during the dry season, with the wet months of July through December closed for harvesting. This year, the communities agreed to extend the closed season until March. When harvesting resumed in the spring, the women saw the benefits of the extended closure immediately, noticing a marked increase in the size of oysters for harvest. Additionally, each community agreed to close one bolong, or tributary, in their territory for the entire year to encourage regeneration of the oyster population there.

The women are also adopting practices to ensure that Tanbi remains a healthy mangrove ecosystem. Harvesters are learning about the ecological importance of mangroves and how destructive practices like cutting roots with machetes to collect the attached oysters damages the capacity of the ecosystem to support oyster populations and fish nurseries. They are sharing these lessons with one another and the Gambian public through short plays demonstrating proper harvesting techniques and sharing information about mangrove ecology. In a country stretched for resources, the oyster harvesters are also helping the Department of Parks and Wildlife Management police the wetlands by reporting observations of illegal fuel wood harvesting to local officials. The women are experimenting with shellfish aquaculture to help relieve pressure on wild stocks and limit the harm to mangroves.

One of the first accomplishments of TRY was to raise the price of oysters from ten dalasis per cup to fifteen. Customers have been willing to pay the new price, a partial acknowledgment of the value of these harvesters' effort. One of the big goals for Ba Nafaa and TRY, however, is to see that number grow exponentially by opening up new markets in the high end retail outlets serving tourists. This would be greatly aided by establishing a permanent market for harvesters who now must rely on customers stopping by the side of the road or at temporary markets in the major cities in the Greater Banjul Area. Eventually, the harvesters could develop an export market to the United States or European Union, which could yield prices high enough to create living wages for harvesters. In the meantime the oyster harvesters will continue to be found selling their catch along the road outside of Banjul, and working together to try to improve their situation.

Christi Zaleski is concentrating in environmental studies at Brown University and is spending the summer in Gambia working with the Gambia-Senegal Sustainable Fisheries Project Ba Nafaa.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.  She has already traveled to over 18 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Burkina Faso next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.  

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on  Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates.  Please don't hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Creating Food Sovereignty for Small-Scale Farmers

by: borderjumpers

Fri Jul 09, 2010 at 06:50:48 AM PDT

Name: Raj Patel

Affiliation: Visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for African Studies, Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a fellow at The Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First.

Location: San Francisco

Bio: Raj Patel has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and is an Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to the LA Times, NYTimes.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Mail on Sunday, and The Observer. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and most recently, The Value of Nothing.

Can you please explain the concept of food sovereignty, and what policies and programs will help encourage it?

Food sovereignty is about communities', states' and unions' rights to shape their own food and agricultural policy. Now that may sound like a whole lot of nothing, because you're actually not making a policy demand, you're just saying that people need to be able to make their own decisions. But, actually, that's a huge thing. Because in general, particularly for smaller farmers in developing countries, and particularly for women, decisions about food and agricultural policy have never been made by them. They've always been imposed.

That's why La Via Campesina, the organization that really invented the term, says that one of the visions behind food sovereignty is that food sovereignty is about an end to all forms of violence against women. That may sound something not at all to do with food, but of course, if we're serious about people being able to make choices about how their food comes to them and what the food system looks like, then the physical and the structural violence to which women are exposed in the home, in the economy and in society, all need to be tackled. Otherwise we will continue with a situation in which 60 percent of the people going hungry today are women or girls. So food sovereignty, to boil it down, is really about power - who has it in the food system, and how to redistribute it so that those who have concentrated it, have it taken away from them.

In terms of specific policies, what Via Campesina are calling for is for agriculture to be removed from the World Trade Organization, which is a way again in which local countries' sovereignty is already been given away. They also call for large corporations to be booted out of agriculture. There's strong opposition to Monsanto for example, and the way that they've been behaving in many developing countries, and many Via Campesina members are campaigning against Monsanto in their home countries.

Will another Green Revolution or more food subsidies help reduce hunger?

To answer the question, let's look at Malawi. It's the poster child for what a new green revolution in Africa might look like, with widespread subsidies of inorganic fertilizer for farmers. When I went there, late last year, what you found was long lines at the gasoline pump, because all Malawi's foreign exchange had been spent on importing this fossil fuel-based fertilizer. The country had bankrupted itself in order that it might be a showcase for the new green revolution in Africa. And of course, there are alternatives right there in Malawi, driven by farmers - invariably by women who are innovating around sustainable systems like poly-culture - growing lots of crops simultaneously together, building soil fertility for the long run.

What this shows is that there are some basic incompatibilities between varieties of ways of addressing agrarian problems in Africa. Some organizations, Worldwatch included, adopt a 'big tent' approach, in which solutions that keep the status quo but improve it marginally sit alongside far more radical approaches. Ultimately, you can't promote genetically modified monoculture or techniques that make large-scale commercial farming less destructive at the same time as wanting something like food sovereignty, which calls for much more of a deeper structural rethink of the way the food system operates. Food sovereignty is about democracy in our food system so that everyone gets to eat - industrial agriculture involves a food system run by technocrats for profit. At the end of the day, you can have one or the other -not both.

How does global agricultural policy affect small-scale farmers across the world?

In general the policies foisted on developing countries through organizations like the World Bank is that large scale agriculture is the way to go: that small farmers are a relic of the past. They are of purely cultural significance but economically, socially, and agriculturally, they stand in the way of development. So the policies that are essentially designed to increase farm size and kick off rural populations to the cities are ones that you see in pretty much every country around the world. And yet of course, it is the poor in rural communities that are being forced to bear the brunt of these policies and these are the communities that are least able to afford it. And again - you can never say it too often - it is on women's shoulders that the bulk of the pain of moving from agrarian society to a so-called modern industrial society one, falls.

Fighting Global Malnutrition Locally

by: borderjumpers

Wed Jul 07, 2010 at 07:21:26 AM PDT

Every year, 5 million children worldwide die from malnutrition-related causes, including immune-system deficiency, increased risk of infection, decreased bone density, and starvation. But a variety of local efforts are hoping to turn things around.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country struggling with internal conflict, food shortages, and poverty, thousands of lives are threatened by acute malnutrition. When a child is brought to one of the therapeutic Stabilization Centers at regional hospitals, run by the Congolese Ministry of Health with support from the organization Action Against Hunger, they receive rations of specially formulated Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF). RUTF-such as Plumpy'nut, a peanut butter-based food produced by the French company Nutriset-is infused with vitamins and minerals and is used to quickly rehabilitate children suffering from malnutrition.

RUTF is packaged and requires no preparation or refrigeration. It can be administered at home, allowing families to avoid having to travel to far-off medical centers or pay for long and expensive stays at hospitals. It is also very effective. After about 40 days of two or three servings of RUTF per day, a child can reach a healthy weight. During the 2005 food crisis in the Maradi region of Niger, the non-profit Doctors Without Borders treated 40,000 severely malnourished children using RUTF and saw a recovery rate of 90 percent.

In addition to obtaining Plumpy'nut from UNICEF or directly from Nutriset in France, Action Against Hunger purchases it from Amwili, a local producer that has partnered with Nutriset. By providing a local source of RUTF, Lubumbashi-based Amwili frees the treatment centers from dependency on supplies imported from Europe. Local production also improves livelihoods by creating jobs, and many organizations around the world are working to link local farmers to RUTF production in order to provide an improved and consistent source of income.

In Haiti, the Zanmi Agrikol Program, run by the organization Partners in Health, is improving agricultural capacity and household food security, in addition to treating malnutrition, by training and contracting with local peanut farmers who provide the ingredients for locally produced RUTF. Currently the project provides malnutrition treatment and prevention for 5,000 children; agriculture training and support to 1,240 families; and has contracts with over 100 local peanut farmers. Additionally, the organization Meds & Food for Kids relies on local ingredients and Haitian producers to make its own brand of RUTF, called Medika Manba or "peanut butter medicine." Meds & Food for Kids saw a significant increase in demand for Medika Manba after the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti earlier this year, and many malnourished children were treated with a locally made RUTF that provides the additional benefit of helping to restore the country's fragile economy.

Companies like Nutriset in France and Valid International in the United Kingdom offer instruction manuals for local production of their specific RUTF products and partner with local producers in countries struggling with malnutrition across sub-Saharan Africa. Action Against Hunger, for example, also purchases Plumpy'nut from a producer in Nairobi, Kenya, called INSTA-a partner of Valid International-to distribute RUTF to its programs throughout East Africa.

In Ghana, the New Frontier Farmers and Processor group is processing the leaves of moringa trees, which are high in protein and other valuable nutrients, into powder that can be manufactured into formula for malnourished children. This effort, along with other crop-processing projects, is helping to add value to small-scale farmers' crops and improve the livelihoods of the nearly 5,000 participating farmers.

To read more about how farmers can produce ingredients for local products to improve livelihoods, nutrition, and food security see: Locally Produced Products for Locally Consumed Products, Using Small Businesses to Create Local Markets, and Protecting Wildlife While Improving Food Security, Health, and Livelihoods.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.  She has already traveled to over 18 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Burkina Faso next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.  

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on  Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates.  Also, please don't hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you

Learning to Listen to Farmers

by: borderjumpers

Mon Jun 28, 2010 at 10:14:55 AM PDT

At the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension at Cape Coast University in Southern Ghana, learning takes place not only in classrooms, but also literally in fields  and farms all over the country. As part of a program to improve agricultural extension services, extension officers are working with professors to find ways to improve food production in their communities. The extensionists, who are already working with farmers, are selected by the Ministry of Agriculture and the University from all over the country to train at the University to help them better  share their skills and knowledge with farmers.

The program was started in the early 1990s after the Ministry of Agriculture found that its' extension workers were not communicating well with farmers, says Dr. Okorley, a  Cape Coast professor. The goal of the program, according to Okorley, is "to improve the knowledge of front line extension staff." Because the educational background of many extension workers is "limited" (many don't have the means to attend college) says Okorley, they "couldn't look at agriculture holistically."

But the university is helping change that problem. Students learn how to engage with farmers and communities by learning better communication skills. And they are trained to properly diagnose problems, as well as come up with solutions.

After attending a year of classes on campus, the students go back to their communities to implement what they've learned in Supervised Enterprise Projects (SEPs). The SEPs give the student-professionals the opportunity to learn that particular technologies, no matter how innovative they might seem in the classroom, don't always "fit" the needs of communities, says Dr. Okorley. The SEPs also help them implement some of the communication skills they've learned in their classes, allowing them to engage more effectively in the communities where they work. Instead of simply telling farmers to use a particular type of seed or a certain brand of pesticide or fertilizer, the extension workers are now learning how to listen to farmers and help them find innovations that best serve their particular needs. "One beauty of the program," according to Dr. Okorley, "is the on-the-ground research and experimentation." He says "it allows the environment to teach what should be done."

They have plans to scale up and improve the program by developing a "technology village" that will allow students to try out different technologies or practices before taking them back to their villages. And they hope to engage women in the program-currently, there are no female professors or students in the program. In addition, they're hoping to incorporate a value chain approach in the curriculum, helping extension workers and farmers alike find innovative ways to add value to and improve the quality of crops.

Listen below to Professor Festus Annor-Frempong discuss how the University is helping improve agriculture in Ghana and to Peter Omega, a former student, talk about his work with farmers in his community.

Using Digital Technology to Empower and Connect Young Farmers

by: borderjumpers

Wed Jun 23, 2010 at 06:58:01 AM PDT

At the Rural Development Foundation's (RDF) primary school in Kalleda, a small village in the Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh, India, students carry gardening tools, along with their notebooks and pencils.

All of the students work in the school's garden, cultivating and harvesting rice, lentils, corn, and cotton that is used to make the daily meals or sold to the village and to other schools. Students also take turns tending a field of marigolds and selling them in Kalleda. All of the profit goes back to the school.

And the students carry another important tool-a camera.

Cameras were provided by Bridges to Understanding (Bridges), a Seattle-based non-profit that uses digital technology to empower and connect children around the world. Students participating in the Bridges curriculum are taught to use cameras and editing software to develop stories about their community and culture. These videos, comprised of a photo slide show with a running narration, are then shared with the Bridges online community which is made up of schools in seven countries: Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Guatemala, India, Peru, South Africa, and the U.S.

For many students, it's the first time they have ever even held a camera. "When I first asked my students if they thought they could ever design, shoot and edit their own film they just shook their heads and said, 'there's no way," said Elizabeth Sewell, Bridges program coordinator at the RDF school in Kalleda.

But not only did her students successfully develop a concept for, shoot and edit a video about local water pollution, they are also participating in an online discussion about their school garden with another group of students at the Aki Kurose school in Seattle. Students at Aki Kurose are learning to grow corn, squash, and beans using traditional Native American practices. And they volunteer at a local food bank, a completely new concept to the students at Kalleda. "Thank you for your post about your school garden and information about your food bank," wrote Sewell's students. "We had never heard of a food bank before your post. We like the idea of a place where people can get free food."

Sewell explains that having a conversation about farming with students in Seattle helps students at Kelleda "realize what makes their community unique but also that there are other kids out there dealing with similar issues, providing a model or inspiration for alternatives and creating a global sense of solidarity in facing these problems."

And, according to Sewell, the Bridges video project gives students a concrete and achievable goal to strive towards as they grapple with larger questions about their role as "agents of change" in their community and the world.

"At first, the prospect of designing, shooting and editing a movie seems insurmountable but then they produce these beautiful films," says Sewell. "And then you knock down that barrier, you show them what they are capable of doing. And then they can start to approach other, larger and more institutional, problems the same way. Suddenly, in their own eyes, there are no limits to what they can achieve."

To read more about the use of storytelling and digital technology to connect and educate farmers, see: Acting it out for Advocacy and Messages from One Rice Farmer to Another.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoy our diary every day we invite you to get involved:
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Messages From One Rice Farmer to Another

by: borderjumpers

Fri Jun 18, 2010 at 07:38:25 AM PDT

Some 80 percent of the world's rice production is grown by smallholder farmers in developing countries, according to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). From Bangladesh to Benin, these farmers continue to develop different solutions to improve the process of rice production.  These methods include using flotation to sort seeds, and parboiling, which removes impurities and reduces grain breakage.  The Africa Rice Centre (AfricaRice) has developed a simple solution to help farmers share this knowledge: Farmer to farmer videos

Working with researchers, rice farmers and processors, they have developed a series of videos to instruct farmers, including, manual seed sorting manually and by flotation, seed drying and preservation in Bangladesh; rice quality and parboiling in Benin; land preparation for planting rice in Burkina Faso; and seedbed preparation, transplanting, weeding and soil fertility management in Mali.

Farmers in Guinea watched videos of Bangladeshi women creating solutions to improve the quality of farm-saved rice-seed. "The farmers pay a lot of attention to the quality of their seed that they store for the next season," said Louis Béavogui, researcher at the Institut de recherche agronomique de Guinée (IRAG). "Watching the videos on seed has stimulated them to start looking for local solutions to common problems that farmers face. It is by drawing on local knowledge that sustainable solutions can often be found at almost no cost."

To pique farmers' interest in the project, AfricaRice researchers approach them with videos on topics relevant to that particular region. And farmers are involved in the production of the videos from the very beginning, helping researchers decide which methods should be highlighted. Edith Dah Tossounon, chairperson from a rice processing group in Southern Benin, was one of the many women who demonstrated how to parboil rice in a video.

The strong presence of women in the videos also helps local NGOs and extension offices-which tend to be made up mostly of male agents-engage women's groups.  A survey of 160 women in Central Benin comparing the use of video with conventional training workshops showed that videos reached 74 percent of women compared with 27 percent in conventional training. Women who watched the videos worked with NGOs to formulate requests for training in building improved stoves and to seek financial assistance to buy inputs such as paddy rice and improved parboilers that allow rice to stay above the water during steaming, so more nutritional value is preserved.  More than 95 percent of those who watched the video adopted drying their rice on tarpaulins and removed their shoes before stirring the rice to preserve cleanliness and avoid contamination, compared to about 50 percent of those who only received traditional training.  In addition, illiterate woman could easily learn from the simple language and clear visuals of the examples shown in the videos.

"By giving rural women a voice through video, and disseminating these videos through grassroots organizations and rural radio stations," AfricaRice believes that they can "overcome local power structures and reduce conflict at the community level."

By 2009, 11 rice videos were available to communities in Africa.  AfricaRice partners translated various rice videos into over 30 African languages and held open air video presentations.  At least five hundred organizations and more than 130,000 farmers are involved.   Distribution has been most successful through farmer associations, where initial distribution to nine associations led to making the videos available to 167 local farmer organizations and their members. Farmers would spontaneously start organizing video shows, taking the initiative to find video and dvd equipment and gathering around an available television in a village.

AfricaRice also paid attention to how the videos could complement existing rural radio to enhance learning, build additional connections and share information.  In collaboration with Farm Radio International (FRI), the videos were also used for radio scripts, including information for listeners about how to obtain the rice videos.  The scripts were sent to more than 300 rural radio stations, making the videos more widely known and linking different stakeholders who were previously strangers to each other, allowing them to explore their common interests.

For more about innovative ways to share knowledge among rural populations, see Acting it Out For Advocacy.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoy our diary every day we invite you to get involved:
1. Comment on our daily posts-we check comments everyday and look forward to a regular ongoing discussion with you.
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Making a Living Out of Conservation

by: borderjumpers

Mon Jun 14, 2010 at 08:10:35 AM PDT

The farmers of the Neleshi Grasscutter and Farmers Association (NAGRAFA) consider themselves not only farmers and businesswomen and men, but also conservationists. Grasscutters, or cane rats, are found throughout Western Africa and, as their name suggests, they live in grasslands. But many poor farmers in Ghana use slash and burn methods on grasslands to provide short term nutrients to the soil, as well to drive out grasscutters and sell their meat, which is considered a delicacy. To help preserve the grasslands and help other farmers increase their incomes, NAGRAFA offers free trainings to farmers and youth about how to raise, slaughter, and process grasscuttter and rabbit meat.

The group is made up of about 40 active members-both men and women-who have been working together to find better ways to raise grasscutters and rabbits on a small-scale. Their biggest challenges, says Farmer Brown (which is the only name he gave us), the leader of the group is finding inexpensive ways of housing and feeding their animals,  finding better packaging for their products, and publicizing the health and nutritional qualities of their products.

NAGRAFA is also reaching out to youth to engage them in farming. Because the rabbits and grasscutters are cute, it's easy to get children and teenagers interested in them, according to Ekow Martin, one of the members of NAGRAFA. He's training 5 to 6 youth in his community about how to raise the animals-and earn money from the sale of the meat. And, Mary Edjah, another NASGRAFA farmer says that "we need more hands" to help raise rabbits and grasscutters. She and other members of the group are helping train 6 orphans about how to raise and care for the animals.

Ms. Edjah also says that raising grasscutters and rabbits helps "bring the family together" and "keeps the children at home." Raising these animals, says Mr. Martin, "changes everything." The family is happy, he says, because they're able to supplement their income, as well as improve the family's nutrition.

And like other livestock such as cattle and goats, grasscutters and rabbits are like walking credit cards, giving families the opportunity to sell them to pay for school fees or medicine, or eat them. Ms. Edjah says "that in times of need, women know they can slaughter the rabbits."

For more about NAGRAFA, check out the videos below.

A Conversation with Norman Uphoff, Advisor to Nourishing the Planet

by: borderjumpers

Fri May 14, 2010 at 07:16:20 AM PDT

Name: Norman Uphoff

Affiliation: Cornell University

Location: Ithaca, United States

Bio: Norman Uphoff is a professor of Government and International Agriculture at Cornell University and former director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development, 1990 to 2005. His work has focused on development administration, irrigation management, local participation, and strategies for broad-based rural development. His current development interests have expanded beyond the social sciences to include agro-ecology, particularly the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and its extrapolation to other crops beyond rice.

Published work:

-"System of Rice Intensification responds to 21st Century Needs, Rice Today 3 (3): 42-43
-Reasons for Success: Learning from Instructive Experiences in Rural Development (1997), with Esman and Krishna, Kumarian Press.
-Agroecological Innovations: Increasing Food Production with Participatory Development (2002), Earthscan Press.
-Biological Approaches to Sustainable Soil Systems, managing editor (2006), CRC Press.
-"An assessment of physiological effects of system of rice intensification (SRI) practices compared to recommended rice cultivation practices in India," with Thakur and Antony (2010) in Experimental Agriculture, 46:77-98
-"Learning about positive plant-microbial interactions from the System of Rice Intensification (SRI)," with Anas, Rupela, Thakur and Thiyagarajan (2009). Aspects of Applied Biology 98: 29-54.

On Nourishing the Planet: Nourishing the Planet is looking ahead at ways that we can, first, avert the most dire outcomes that will be the likely consequence of our present practices, and, second, reverse the present adverse trends by capitalizing on new opportunities. Both are necessary. Not enough people realize that we are 'in a hole,' and that continuing to 'dig deeper' will not get us out.

Our food production methods need to be reformulated and reoriented to approximate more closely the natural processes that have supported vegetation growth on the planet's surface for some 400 million years. All herbivores, carnivores and omnivores (including us) are supported by these photosynthetically-driven processes and their associated soil system dynamics.  Nourishing the planet in the decades ahead will depend on a profound understanding of ecological opportunities and limits.

The December 2009 issue of Farming Matters calls you "one of the most energetic and persistent promoters of SRI." Can you describe your evolution from being a skeptic of the technique to becoming one its biggest supporters? When I first learned about 'SRI' from the Malagasy NGO Association Teffy Saina in December 1993 it sounded fantastical. How could farmers, who had very poor soils, significantly improve their yields-by 5, 10, even 15 tons per hectare-without the use of new, improved rice varieties, and without the use of chemical fertilizer (just compost made from any available biomass), and with less water? This was not believable. Even though I was a social scientist, not an agronomist, I knew this was not possible.

But the Teffy Saina officers who offered to work with us were quite confident, and the Malagasy professional managing the project vouched for their character, so we signed the subcontracts with Tefy Saina to introduce SRI in the peripheral zone of the USAID-funded conservation and development projects intended to save the rainforest ecosystems around Ranomafana. After the farmers used SRI methods for three years, they averaged eight tons per hectare, and some reached 12, 14, and 16 tons per hectare in one case. I decided that I had better learn enough agronomics to figure out what was going on, and enough French so that I could understand the papers for the originator of SRI, Fr. Henri De Laulanié, S.J. He has spent 34 years of his life trying to help poor farmers in Madagascar raise their rice yields without depending on purchased inputs. To my everlasting regret, I never met him before he died in 1995, and because I was still to skeptical about SRI to realize what a remarkable innovator he was, in the tradition of Gregor Mendel.  

A Conversation with Dave Andrews

by: borderjumpers

Fri May 07, 2010 at 09:59:50 AM PDT

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.

In this regular series, we profile advisors to the Nourishing the Planet project. This week, we feature Dave Andrews, Senior Representative for Food & Water Watch.

Name: Dave Andrews

Affiliation: Food & Water Watch

Location: Washington, D.C., United States

Bio: Dave Andrews is Senior Representative for Food & Water Watch and a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross, an international Catholic religious order of men. Dave has over 30 years of work on sustainable development, food and water issues, and public policy both nationally and internationally. He was the Executive Director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference for 13 years. He has served on many Boards of Directors including the Organization for Competitive Markets, Heifer International, the Community Food Security Coalition, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. He has attended the last three World Trade Organization meetings, World Food Summits and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Can you describe your recent work and how it relates to Nourishing the Planet?: There are two major issues that have been the focus of my recent work. The first is the Global Food Security and Nutrition programs and the second is anti-trust efforts in agriculture. The global food security issue is one that has arisen from the recent food crisis and serving as I do on the steering committee for a Food Crisis Working Group as well as an Interfaith Working Group on the Food Crisis, two different efforts with a small amount of overlapping organizations, I am watching and writing regularly as these programs develop in Congress and in the State Department. Soon, I think the results will be announced but it has been a yearlong effort. My concern has been to try and influence the debate on behalf of Food & Water Watch, to keep the solutions proposed as sustainable as possible and to emphasize decision making power at the grass-roots level throughout the developing world. At the global level there is similar policy being articulated by the World Bank and by the United Nations. The World Bank has organized a trust fund for development, our work is to keep civil society in the process of decision-making, especially a farmer from the south. At the global level too, there is now a process for revising the Comprehensive Framework for Action (on the food crisis) with significant inclusion of civil society. My work has been to communicate and link US civil society efforts with global civil society. These are significant because the newly organized Committee on Food Security will be the major global actor dealing with the food crisis. These activities are time consuming, intense and involve detailed attentiveness. They are probably the most significant food and agriculture activities nationally and globally for the past 50 years and are meant to go into effect in the next 50 years.

Another serious effort at present is my involvement with the anti-trust work of the federal government. There is a historic effort by the Justice Department and the Department of Agriculture to explore anti-trust in agriculture. The series of workshops around the country are a first. I organized a reception to follow up the workshop held in Iowa and Food & Water Watch helped organize a highly attended pre-meeting which  educated the public about anti-trust in agriculture. I am currently helping to organize an independent effort in New York City soon as a teach-in on anti-trust. Soon there will be meetings on poultry in Alabama, beef in Colorado, and retail spread in Washington, DC. One issue I'm researching is the relevance of US anti-trust efforts in agriculture to European and other efforts and the relevance of anti-trust to development. Does the power of a few big companies and their influence impact development? That is a question that I'm currently exploring.

Can you describe the relationship between global agriculture policies and small-scale farmers? We have a global economy and in many ways are a global society. Most of the world's work is agriculture and most of that is done by women. The small holder farmer is the focus of much of development work today, having been ignored by governments and foundations in development work for the past 30 years. In the light of climate change, gender considerations, and effective pro-poor policies there have developed several policy preferences, one I call productivist and the other I call holist. One focuses mainly on increasing production, the other looks at the ecology, economy and social concerns of agriculture in development. My emphasis has been on the latter sustainable approach, whether focused on anti-trust or global food security, it fully appears to me that an appreciation of complexity calls for a long-term, nuanced approach. That approach has been articulated in the 2008 International Assessment of Science and Technology in Development (IAASTD) report of the United Nations and funding through the World Bank. It fully appears to me that the way forward requires action at every level: global, national, and grassroots. It is a time of challenge and it is a time that requires us to be nimble in our policy advocacy.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoy our diary every day we invite you to get involved:
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Giving Farm Workers a Voice

by: borderjumpers

Mon Apr 26, 2010 at 07:13:45 AM PDT

Gertrude Hambira doesn't look like someone who gets arrested regularly. Nor do the other women and men in suits who work with her at the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ), formed in the mid-1980s to protect farm laborers. But arrest, harassment and even torture have been regular occupational hazards for Gertrude-the General Secretary of GAPWUZ-and her staff for many years.

Unfortunately, things have not gotten much better since the 2008 elections when President Mugabe refused to cede power to the democratically elected Morgan Tsvangirai, a former union leader himself. The resulting power-sharing agreement has left the two sides battling for control as the nation plummets deeper into unemployment and poverty. At least 90 percent of the populati0n is not part of formal workforce.

Meanwhile, land reform policies have left many farm workers (about 1.5 million) without a source of income as farms are divided up-with many tracts given to Mugabe supporters.  While Zimbabwe's land reform was initially intended to decrease the number of white-owned farms in the country and provide land to the landless, it's done little to help the poor in rural areas. "Land was taken from the rich and given to the rich," says General Secretary Hambira. The rich farmers are, however, not utilizing the land, she notes, leading to lower agricultural productivity, higher prices for food, and widespread hunger.

Hambira says that as rural areas become a target for government reforms, "farm workers have become voiceless." But giving them back their voice is what GAPWUZ is trying to do by helping reduce child labor, by educating members about their rights in the fields and on the farm, by educating workers about HIV/AIDS , and by helping women workers gain a voice in decision-making. And, unfortunately, that's why General Secretary and her staff often get arrested.  Shortly after I met with her, the GAPWUZ office was raided by government police and she was forced to go in hiding to South Africa for several weeks.

But GAPWUZ isn't just working to protect the rights of farm workers in Zimbabwe, says Hambira.  By "looking at the plight of farm workers," the union is helping to build productivity on the farm and to build a strong agricultural sector-one that will be needed more than ever as Zimbabwe struggles to rebuild and restore democracy.

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Livestock Keepers' Rights: Conserving Endangered Animal Genetic Resources in Kenya

by: borderjumpers

Mon Apr 12, 2010 at 07:05:22 AM PDT

Maralal, Kenya, is mostly known for its wildlife. And as we made the seven hour, bumpy trek from Nairobi - half of it on unpaved roads - we saw our fair share of water buffaloes, rhinos, impala, and giraffes. But we weren't here to go on safari. We were here to meet with a group of pastoralists - livestock keepers who had agreed to meet with us and talk about the challenges they face.

We met in the community primary school and it was humbling to see so many people - many wearing traditional Maasai clothing, brightly woven clothe, beads, elaborate earrings - come through the door to greet us.

Over the years, pastoralists like the well-known Maasai here in Kenya have been pushed out of their traditional grazing lands to drier and drier regions, places where it was easy to ignore them. But as the effects of climate change, hunger, drought and the loss of biodiversity become more evident, it's increasingly hard to push livestock keepers' rights aside. Governments need to recognize that pastoralists are the best keepers of genetic diversity.

Anikole cattle, for example, a breed indigenous to Eastern Africa, are not only beautiful to look at but they're one of the "highest quality" breeds of cattle because they can survive in extremely harsh, dry conditions - something that's more important than ever as climate change takes a bigger hold on Africa.

Although most of the people we met don't have access to cable TV or even radios, they do have a good sense of the challenges their fellow livestock keepers face all over Kenya. They are aware that climate change is likely responsible for the drought plaguing much of East Africa, killing thousands of livestock over the last few months. They know that conflict with neighbouring pastoral communities over water resources and access to land makes headlines in Kenya's newspapers. And they know that many policy-makers would like to forget they exist, considering their nomadic lifestyle barbaric, as our guide Dr Pat Lanyasunya, a member of the Africa LIFE Network, explained.

Unfortunately, governments and agribusiness don't share the same viewpoint. They're increasingly promoting cross-breeding of native breed with exotic breeds - breeds that were designed to gain more weight and produce more milk. The problem is, however, that these newer breeds have a hard time adapting to sub-Saharan Africa's dry conditions, as well as the pests and diseases present here. As a result, pastoralists who adopt these breeds have to spend more on feed and inputs, like pesticides and antibiotics to keep cattle healthy.

One of the most serious problems we heard about was the effects that replacing indigenous breeds of livestock with mixed breeds of more exotic cattle have had during the drought. These livestock keepers began replacing their indigenous Zebu cattle with mixed breeds about 15 years ago after missionaries introduced them to the community. While the new breeds were bigger and could potentially produce more meat or milk, they aren't as hardy as native cattle that can travel long distances without much water.
According to one of the community elders, the "old breeds could go 40km [for food and water] and come back," but the new breeds can't tolerate the distance or the heat. In the past, water sources could be much farther away and the cattle could thrive, but now they need to be much closer.

That's one reason different pastoralist communities sometimes clash - when cattle can't travel far for water, livestock keepers have to find it elsewhere, often at sites that are traditionally used by different communities. A man wearing a Harley-Davidson hat along with his Maasai shawl acknowledged that although they fight with other communities over resources, "they're just like us", trying to survive with very little support from the government or NGOs. The conflict has not only effected the raising of livestock, but also forced schools to close and created more internally displaced people as they are driven off the land.

What surprised us most about these livestock keepers is their understanding that the world is changing. They know that many of their children won't live the same kind of lives that their ancestors lived for centuries. Many will choose to go to the cities, but they said if their children become "landed", they want them to maintain links to the pastoralist way of life. And they said that for some of them, livestock is what they do best and what they have a passion for - and that they should be allowed to continue doing it.

Dr Jacob Wanyama is a veterinarian and coordinator for the Africa LIFE Network.

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