Worldwatch presents 15 innovations to feed the planet

The Worldwatch Institute has released their annual flagship report on feeding the planet. This year's edition highlights five-teen different innovations in agriculture that could provide more food for the hungry. The innovations include micro-irrigation, "vertical" gardens for city slums, and empowering small farmers to do their own research.

From the Worldwatch Institute, this press release further explains the study. The entire report is available for purchase here, while a summary of the report is available here for a free download.

Report provides a roadmap for food security and agricultural investment, revealing 15 high- and low-tech solutions that are helping to reduce hunger and poverty in Africa

New York, New York (12 January 2011)--Worldwatch Institute today released its report State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet, which spotlights successful agricultural innovations and unearths major successes in preventing food waste, building resilience to climate change, and strengthening farming in cities. The report provides a roadmap for increased agricultural investment and more-efficient ways to alleviate global hunger and poverty. Drawing from the world's leading agricultural experts and from hundreds of innovations that are already working on the ground, the report outlines 15 proven, environmentally sustainable prescriptions.

"The progress showcased through this report will inform governments, policymakers, NGOs, and donors that seek to curb hunger and poverty, providing a clear roadmap for expanding or replicating these successes elsewhere," said Worldwatch Institute President Christopher Flavin. "We need the world's influencers of agricultural development to commit to longstanding support for farmers, who make up 80 percent of the population in Africa."

State of the World 2011 comes at a time when many global hunger and food security initiatives--such as the Obama administration's Feed the Future program, the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP)--can benefit from new insight into environmentally sustainable projects that are already working to alleviate hunger and poverty.

Nearly a half-century after the Green Revolution, a large share of the human family is still chronically hungry. While investment in agricultural development by governments, international lenders, and foundations has escalated in recent years, it is still nowhere near what is needed to help the 925 million people who are undernourished. Since the mid-1980s when agricultural funding was at its height, agriculture's share of global development aid has fallen from over 16 percent to just 4 percent today.

In 2008, $1.7 billion in official development assistance was provided to support agricultural projects in Africa, based on statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)--a miniscule amount given the vital return on investment. Given the current global economic conditions, investments are not likely to increase in the coming year. Much of the more recently pledged funding has yet to be raised, and existing funding is not being targeted efficiently to reach the poor farmers of Africa.

"The international community has been neglecting entire segments of the food system in its efforts to reduce hunger and poverty," said Danielle Nierenberg, co-director of Worldwatch's Nourishing the Planet project. "The solutions won't necessarily come from producing more food, but from changing what children eat in schools, how foods are processed and marketed, and what sorts of food businesses we are investing in."

Serving locally raised crops to school children, for example, has proven to be an effective hunger- and poverty-reducing strategy in many African nations, and has strong parallels to successful farm-to-cafeteria programs in the United States and Europe. Moreover, "roughly 40 percent of the food currently produced worldwide is wasted before it is consumed, creating large opportunities for farmers and households to save both money and resources by reducing this waste," according to Brian Halweil, Nourishing the Planet co-director.

State of the World 2011 draws from hundreds of case studies and first-person examples to offer solutions to reducing hunger and poverty. These include:

* In 2007, some 6,000 women in The Gambia organized into the TRY Women's Oyster Harvesting producer association, creating a sustainable co-management plan for the local oyster fishery to prevent overharvesting and exploitation. Oysters and fish are an important, low-cost source of protein for the population, but current production levels have led to environmental degradation and to changes in land use over the last 30 years. The government is working with groups like TRY to promote less-destructive methods and to expand credit facilities to low-income producers to stimulate investment in more-sustainable production.

* In Kibera, Nairobi, the largest slum in Kenya, more than 1,000 women farmers are growing "vertical" gardens in sacks full of dirt poked with holes, feeding their families and communities. These sacks have the potential to feed thousands of city dwellers while also providing a sustainable and easy-to-maintain source of income for urban farmers. With more than 60 percent of Africa's population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, such methods may be crucial to creating future food security. Currently, some 33 percent of Africans live in cities, and 14 million more migrate to urban areas each year. Worldwide, some 800 million people engage in urban agriculture, producing 15–20 percent of all food.

* Pastoralists in South Africa and Kenya are preserving indigenous varieties of livestock that are adapted to the heat and drought of local conditions--traits that will be crucial as climate extremes on the continent worsen. Africa has the world's largest area of permanent pasture and the largest number of pastoralists, with 15–25 million people dependent on livestock.

* The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) is using interactive community plays to engage women farmers, community leaders, and policymakers in an open dialogue about gender equity, food security, land tenure, and access to resources. Women in sub-Saharan Africa make up at least 75 percent of agricultural workers and provide 60–80 percent of the labor to produce food for household consumption and sale, so it is crucial that they have opportunities to express their needs in local governance and decision-making. This entertaining and amicable forum makes it easier for them to speak openly.

* Uganda's Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC) program is integrating indigenous vegetable gardens, nutrition information, and food preparation into school curriculums to teach children how to grow local crop varieties that will help combat food shortages and revitalize the country's culinary traditions. An estimated 33 percent of African children currently face hunger and malnutrition, which could affect some 42 million children by 2025. School nutrition programs that don't simply feed children, but also inspire and teach them to become the farmers of the future, are a huge step toward improving food security.

The State of the World 2011 report is accompanied by other informational materials including briefing documents, summaries, an innovations database, videos, and podcasts, all of which are available at www.NourishingthePlanet.org. The project's findings are being disseminated to a wide range of agricultural stakeholders, including government ministries, agricultural policymakers, farmer and community networks, and the increasingly influential non-governmental environmental and development communities.

In conducting this research, Worldwatch's Nourishing the Planet project received unprecedented access to major international research institutions, including those in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research(CGIAR) system. The team also interacted extensively with farmers and farmers' unions as well as with the banking and investment communities.

The Worldwatch Institute and the Nourishing the Planet project are gratefully supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and additional foundations, governments, and institutions including the Rockefeller and Surdna Foundations, the United Nations Foundation, the Goldman Environmental Prize, the Shared Earth Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, the Winslow Foundation, and many more.

One bit of criticism has already been posted about the report. Duncan Green, head of research at OXFAM said the following on his From Poverty to Power blog.

Conclusion? ‘If each of their individual innovations were scaled up to bring food to the tables of not one farmer but 100 million or more, as well as to the consumers who depend on them, it could change the entire global food system.’

Wow, that is some ‘if’. And there, depressingly, the report leaves it – no discussion of how such good ideas might actually be adopted, whose interests they serve or undermine, what political or social processes have led to their adoption or abandonment in the past. I get hugely frustrated with this kind of ‘if I ruled the world’ environmentalism – surely we have to go on to think of how such changes might actually take place, rather than be content with ‘hey, we found some organic gardens in Senegal that are more productive than their non-organic neighbour. Job done.’

Cities key to tackling poverty, climate change

from The Jamaica Gleaner

Cities around the world have also begun to take climate change seriously, many in response to the direct threat they face.

WASHINGTON, D.C.:

If global development priorities are not reassessed to account for massive urban poverty, well over half of the 1.1 billion projected to join the world's population between now and 2030 may live in under-serviced slums, according to State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future, released January 10 by the Worldwatch Institute. Additionally, while cities cover only 0.4 percent of the earth's surface, they generate the bulk of the world's carbon emissions, making cities key to alleviating the climate crisis, notes the report.

As recently as a century ago, the vast majority of the world's people lived in rural areas, but by sometime next year more than half of all people will live in urban areas. Over 60 million people - roughly the population of France - are now added to the planet's burgeoning cities and suburbs each year, mostly in low-income urban settlements in developing countries.

Unplanned and chaotic urbanisation is taking a huge toll on human health and the quality of the environment, contributing to social, ecological, and economic instability in many countries. Of the three billion urban dwellers today, one billion live in 'slums', defined as areas where people cannot secure key necessities such as clean water, a nearby toilet, or durable housing. An estimated 1.6 million urban residents die each year due to lack of clean water and sanitation as a result.

The Commission for Africa has identified urbanisation as the second greatest challenge confronting the world's most rapidly urbanising continent, after HIV/AIDS. Only about 35 per cent of Africa's population is urban, but it is predicted that this figure will jump to 50 percent by 2030.

State of the World 2007 also described how community groups and local governments have emerged as pioneers of groundbreaking policies to address both poverty and environmental concerns, in some cases surpassing the efforts of their national governments. "The task of saving the world's modern cities might seem hopeless - except that it is already happening," said Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute. "Necessities from food to energy are increasingly being produced by urban pioneers inside city limits."

Cities around the world have also begun to take climate change seriously, many in response to the direct threat they face. Of the 33 cities projected to have at least eight million residents by 2015 at least 21 are coastal cities that will have to contend with sea-level rise from climate change.

In the United States, over 300 cities - home to more than 51 million Americans - have joined the U.S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, committing to reducing their emissions and lobbying the federal government for a national climate policy. Chicago, for example, has negotiated with a private utility to provide 20 per cent of the city government's electricity from renewable sources by 2010, and aims to become 'the most environmentally friendly city in America'. Not to be outdone, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced plans for his city to become the nation's leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

While no single set of 'best practices' would enable all cities to successfully address the challenges of poverty and environmental degradation, State of the World 2007 focuses on areas where urban leadership can have benefits for the planet and human development. These include providing water and sanitation services to the urban poor, bolstering urban farming, and improving public transportation. Additionally, the report recommends devoting more resources to information - gathering on urban issues so that city, national, and international entities can better assess development priorities.

The Worldwatch Institute is an independent research organisation based in Washington, D.C. that works on energy, resource, and environment issues. The State of the World Report is published annually.