Urban Agriculture in Dakar

Even in the midst of supercities agriculture is thriving. In Senegal's Dakar over 6,000 people work in agriculture and the harvests are growing each year. Agriculture within urban areas does have its own set of unique challenges. Farmers are unable to expand their operations with more land. Loans are hard to come by for the farmers as some are working on land they do not own.

From the Inter Press Service, Koffigan Abigbli looks at one thriving farm. 

Watering cans in hand, men and women move back and forth between the wells and water storage tanks and the crops they’re watering: carrots, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and potatoes, as well as fruit trees like palm, coconut, papaya and banana trees. Growers like Ahmadou Sene are working tirelessly to produce vegetables in and around the Senegalese capital.

Sene, in his forties, has a one-hectare plot. For three months of the year, he has a dozen young people to hoe and weed the garden, and for four months a group of 20 women work to harvest and sell his produce.

“Vegetables make up more than 80 percent of my crops,” he said, gesturing towards his garden. He cultivates his field year round, and harvests nearly 12 tonnes of vegetables each quarter.

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But while urban farming is growing, farmers are facing difficulties linked to access to land, the marketing of vegetables, the recycling of water for irrigation, and access to financing.
Even as the cultivated area is growing, some farmers are struggling to find land to expand their operations.

“In 2010, I had an 800 square metre field. I was able to turn a profit of 600,000 CFA (about 1,200 dollars). But this year, I’ve only got 350 square metres to farm, because the government has taken over a large portion of my land for a dam to hold water,” said Cheikh Mor Ndiaye, a grower at Cambérène, one of the sprawling suburbs on the outskirts of the capital.

The president of the administrative council of the Federated Cooperative of Horticulturalists of Senegal (CFAHS), Cheikh Ngane, told IPS that while garden farming provides livelihoods for a good number of Senegalese, it is undermined by the recurring problem of access to land.

“Most horticulturalists are working with land that belongs to the state. To develop horticulture, it’s important to resolve the problem of land,” he said, adding that the problem is aggravated by competing claims from developers working on residential housing developments.

The issue of land ownership can also lead to problems obtaining credit. “For example, if someone has their own plot, assigned to them by the rural community, bankers are not confident when they ask for a loan,” said Cheikh Ngane.

Big Business, meet small farmer

 For most small farmers in the under-developed world the only maket they had access to was local. The fair trade movement began a process that helped small farmers gain access to worldwide markets. When it works right, it is supposed to be a win-win for the farmer and the market. The farmer should be able to sell more, and the world has another source for food.

What many are wondering is what this relationship would look like when big agri-businees begins to invest in the small farms of the under-developed world. Would the small farmer impove financailly, or would they be exploited? From the Guardian, writer Matthew Newsome attended a conference that covered this subject.

This month more than 500 private-sector representatives, government officials, donors, civil society representatives, farmer organisations and academics met in Ethiopia for a conference organised by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation. They discussed the role of the private sector in upgrading smallholder agriculture to meet demand from foreign and emerging markets in developing countries. Investment interest is underscored by the IMF's forecast of 5.7% economic growth in 2013 for sub-Saharan Africa, which is being driven by rising commodity prices.

Rising food prices suggest global demand is still outpacing farmers' productivity, and resource-constrained smallholders need greater market access, training and technology to increase their agricultural production, according to the experts at the meeting in Ethiopia.

Development organisations are promoting the merits of a mutual partnership between large corporations and small farmers. John Moffett, director of policy and strategy for Self Help Africa, has been working with small-scale cashew nut farmers and those who commodify the nut in Benin, with support from PepsiCo, to supply Europe's markets. "Strengthening smallholder value chains is really about helping farmers to move from being subsistence based to enabling them to make a better profit," says Moffett.

Moffett says the role of NGOs is starting to change: he sees them playing more of a temporary role in facilitating trade between small-scale producers and the private sector. Once the supply chain links are in place he says, "the NGO will shift to being a watchdog".

"Development is now really focused on the economic development of Africa through trade," Moffat adds. "It is moving away from the constant injection of aid funding into Africa and focusing on something which, over time, should be more sustainable." Africa's population is expected to reach 2 billion by 2050, so some argue it cannot afford to be short-sighted when dealing with investors.

Niger will pitch new food security plan to international investors

The country of Niger is about to present a new plan for agriculture to international investors. Titled 3N or Nigeriens Nourish Nigeriens, the plan includes 11 different programs to help the country feed itself. The programs range from improved irrigation, storage and transfer of milk, and diversifying seeds.

From the Guardian, reporter Liz Ford talked to 3N commissioner Hassane Mamoudou about the project.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels this week, Mamoudou said local civil society and grassroots organisations in the country's 266 municipalities can propose ideas for how the money is spent in their areas. "All actions will start at the grassroots," he said.

"We have to target where projects are implemented. Sorghum and millet will only grow in regions where there's enough rain. If a region does not have enough rain, we don't produce it [there]. Some areas will be for livestock breeding only. If fisheries are an activity in one region, we will focus on fisheries there. We won't do everything everywhere."

A proportion of the resources will be reserved for people from marginalised groups, who are sometimes excluded from programmes. All project proposals must come with an environment and social impact study, to prove sustainability and ensure they do not have a negative impact on the environment.

The 3N initiative has been in development since 2011, when the country's president, Mahamadou Issoufou, established an action plan and called on donors to help respond to the looming food crisis following a poor harvest. This swift action helped prevent a crisis becoming a famine.

Two-thirds of Niger is desert, and only around 11% of the land is suitable for farming. "The main problem is water. Water to drink, of course, water for agriculture, for animals. And now, we have food crises recurring [video]," said Mamoudou. "We used to have a food crisis every 10 years; now every seven, every five, every two years we have a crisis. They come closer and closer and are bigger and bigger."

A unique struggle for Palestinian farmers

We often talk about how agriculture needs to improve in many under-developed countries. Not only does more land need to be used for local farming, but governments must also put more resources into improving food supply.

This is also true of the Palestinian territory. According to the Palestinian Authority agriculture only makes up 5.8 percent of their GDP. The government also puts little effort into agriculture, only spending one percent of their total budget on it. The Palestinian authority has instead made security and institutions a spending priority

Farming is made more difficult in the Palestinian territory because of the watchful, untrusting eye of Israel. The Israeli settlements also take up more and more of the Palestinian land.

From the Guardian, writer Phoebe Greenwood gives us this struggle of one Palestinian farmer.
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Zuhair al-Manasreh, once the governor of Jenin and later of Bethlehem, is now a date farmer. He runs the largest date business in the occupied Palestinian territory. "I love the land. I'm the son of a farming family," says Manasreh. He lovingly describes the olive and almond trees of his childhood home in Hebron, but says it was too risky to cultivate there.

Hebron is among the most volatile areas of the occupied West Bank, distinguished by a strong Israeli military presence and frequent clashes between Israeli settlers and the Palestinian community. Olive trees are the mainstay of the Palestinian agricultural economy, but they are also the most frequent casualty of settler attacks. More than 7,500 olive trees were uprooted or destroyed by Israeli settlers between January and October this year, many in the southern Hebron hills.

In 2006, a year after retiring from politics, Manasreh hit upon the idea of dates. They take longer to spoil than olives and have a relatively high rate of return, he reasoned. The sweetest, plumpest majul dates flourish in the Jordan valley, not far from the Dead Sea. So he planted 7,000 trees there.

Initially, Manasreh relied entirely on his own capital but in 2011, when the bank refused to give him another loan, he merged with Palestinian business giants Padico, and Nakheel Palestine was born. The business now owns six farms, with 20,000 date palm trees, and employs 100 people (rising to 150 during the harvest). They also grow and export dates. They are yet to turn a profit. Manasreh's farms are surrounded by 28 Israeli settlements, occupying 90% of the Jordan valley.

A recent report by 21 NGOs found that the EU imports £185m worth of goods from Israeli settlements every year, mostly dates and citrus fruits – 15 times the value of European imports from Palestinians. Israeli dates are cheaper. Palestinian farmers aren't able to travel to Israeli ports to oversee their exports, so they hire Israeli middlemen. Their pesticides, boxes and shipping pallets are all bought from Israel.

Switching crops could help soften climate change threat to food

Agriculture must adapt quickly in order to meet the challenges of climate change. Studying what needs to be done might not cut it, as food production is already seeing big decreases.

A new report says that farmers in the regions prone to drought must diversify their crops. The report authors recommend changing to cowpea and lentils, and growing less corn. Maize suffers greatly with little rain, while the varieties of beans can still grow without much of it. 

From Reuters Alert Net, we read of more recommendations from this new policy brief.

Yields of the world's three biggest crops in terms of calories provided will decrease in many poorer countries as temperatures rise and rainfall becomes more unpredictable, according to a policy brief from the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

By 2050, climate change could cause yield declines of 13 percent for irrigated wheat crops and 15 percent for irrigated rice in developing countries, the study warns. In Africa, farmers of maize - which is not well-suited to higher temperatures - could lose 10 to 20 percent of their yields, it adds.

Feeding livestock with maize and grain will also become more expensive, and fish availability will be increasingly limited, warns the analysis, which studied the potential effects of climate change on 22 of the world’s most important commodities, as well as water, forestry and agroforestry.

“The problems that climate change produces in the fields will be tackled in industrialised countries. It is the smallholder farmers in Africa and South Asia and the urban poor who spend too much of their wages on food - these are the people who will have less to eat in the near future unless we adapt at a much faster pace,” Robert Zougmoré, CCAFS programme leader for West Africa, said in a statement. 

Hardier crops, including cassava, yam, barley, cowpea, millet and lentils, could fill the expected food gaps for poor communities, says the research.

Millet and lentils, for example, are highly nutritious and can withstand harsher growing conditions. Yet they are "not a bullet-proof adaptation option since certain climate stresses can reduce their yields as well", the brief notes.

"Ecosystem changes due to climate change may spawn shifts in the intensity of pests and diseases, including potato blight and beetles, that will further limit food production. Indeed, even if crops could withstand increased temperatures and decreased rainfall, their yields could drop because of these scourges,” said CCAFS scientist Philip Thornton, who authored the study.
Plant breeders are working to develop new crop varieties that are especially tolerant of heat, drought, flooding, salinity and crop diseases. But this effort is time-consuming, expensive and requires robust predictions of how growing conditions will change in different parts of the world in the next few decades, the research says.

Another problem lies in convincing people to switch from cultivating and eating a food staple such as maize to something new like cowpea - often described as "the poor man’s meat". "This cultural challenge is another facet of climate change adaptation that should get as much attention as plant breeding," the brief urges.

New drought resistant seed to be distributed in Zimbabwe

Predictions are for more dry conditions for the upcoming planting season in Zimbabwe. The country has suffered many poor harvests in a row due to low rainfall. With all of the
successive small harvests,  Zimbabwe is now producing less food than it eats.

After a long debate over using genetically modified seeds, the lack of food as prompted action in Zimbabwe.  A new drought resistant seed for corn will be distributed this year. Farmers say that it is about time, but worry if will be cheap enough to afford.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer Madalitso Mwando describes the seed.

The Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC), in partnership with the University of Zimbabwe and Biotechnology Research Institute (BRI) has developed a drought-resistant variety of maize seed called Sirdamaize 113.

Farmers have had to wait between 150 and 180 days before harvesting their traditional maize crop, but the centre says the new seed takes only 136 days to mature.

Thomas Ndlovu, a smallholder farmer in Nyamandlovu, some 60 km (38 miles) from Bulawayo, said the new seed was welcome news, as he has lost his crop because of successive poor rains.

“This is what we have always asked for,” Ndlovu said. “My only hope is that this seed variety is affordable to us. We have for some time now been buying seed maize outside the country because the locally produced type is expensive.”

SIRDC says research into drought-resistant maize began more than a decade ago and has cost around $200,000. The centre’s current research forms part of a policy on food and nutrition security adopted by government early this year.

Already, more maize hybrids are being tested across the country as farmers prepare for the planting season.

This fresh commitment to scientific research could just a significant help in a country where smallholder farmers, who produce up to 70 percent of the country’s food, continue to face severe challenges from lack of farming inputs, absence of irrigation schemes and poor weather-forecasting techniques.

New report says Africa could grow a lot more wheat

There is enough land in Africa to grow more than enough food for all of its people, but what they grow in reality is far behind their potential. A new study released today focuses on wheat production in Africa. The study claims that Africa is only growing 10 to 25 percent of its potential.

This echos what OXFAM said last week about Africa, but their report focused on how the land is misused by land grabs or investment speculators. A good proportion of farm-able land in Africa sits empty while a foreign investor holds onto it. Some land that is being farmed is not human consumption of food but for cars instead with Ethanol.

The authors admit that wheat is not a tropical plant, but maintains that it can be grown in the high elevation areas of Rwanda, Burundi and others. From Reuters Alert Net, writer Alister Doyle tells us more about why wheat is important for Africa.

The report, examining environmental conditions of 12 nations from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe, said that farmers south of the Sahara grew only 44 percent of the wheat consumed locally, meaning dependence on international markets prone to price spikes.

"Sub-Saharan Africa has extensive areas of land that are suitable for profitably producing wheat under rain-fed conditions," according to the study by the non-profit International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

It said countries in the region were producing only between 10 and 25 percent of the amounts that the Center's research suggested was "biologically possible and economically profitable" with a net return of $200 per hectare (2.5 acres).

The 89-page study, issued at a wheat conference in Ethiopia, said it aimed to identify ways to raise wheat production as "a hedge against food insecurity, political instability and price shocks."

"Wheat is not an African crop, it is not a tropical crop (but) many governments want to produce wheat locally instead of paying for imports," Hans-Joachim Braun, director of the Center's global wheat program, told Reuters by telephone.

The report estimated that African nations would spend about $12 billion to import 40 million tonnes of wheat in 2012, particularly for fast-growing cities. More wheat should not be grown at the expense of other more viable crops, Braun said.

Trees and food return to Kenya's Rusinga Island

Agriculture is being forced to adapt to changing weather patterns that bring us more droughts and floods. A lot of that change is beginning in the under-developed nations that have been hit by the severe weather the hardest. Non-Governmental Organizations have been leading the way in teaching small farmers who to adapt.

A story from Reuters Alert Net today shows us some of that change taking place on an island within Kenya's Lake Victoria. The majority of the people of Rusinga Island fished for a living. A problem began to develop for the island when most of the trees were cut down to smoke the fish caught in Lake Victoria. The loss of most of the trees made it impossible to grow any other food on the island.

Writer Pius Sawa tells us how some agricultural concepts borrowed from Australia have helped to grow food on Rusinga Island again.

“You can just see around. We don’t have any trees on the land,” said Evans Odula, the director of Badilisha, a local NGO whose name in Kiswahili means “change.”

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To deal with the worsening problems, Odula now trains farmers in permaculture (permanent agriculture), a concept that originated in Australia.

Odula describes it as “a way of farming where people are able to provide food throughout the year while protecting the environment.”

“We are trying to see people do farming that is eco-friendly and (with) no use of chemicals,” he said. “(We teach) eco-friendly activities that promote good soil, plants and organisms, and biological ways of pest control.”

On the compound where Badilisha trains farmers there are fodder trees, crops, animal sheds and water harvesting tanks. The shade of the trees is cooling and Odula points out the benefits of the lucerne tree.

“It provides shade (as well as) fodder for the animals, and at the same time firewood,” he said.
Shem Orwa Anditi, a member of one of Badilisha’s self-help groups for farmers, now practises permaculture.

“We are growing cabbages, kale and tomatoes,” the 63-year-old said. “We don’t use any chemical fertilizer, just compound manure. We don’t burn anything in the farm. We use (plant waste) for mulching which keeps water in the soil.”

Anditi, a retired civil servant, now is able to grow enough vegetables to sell as well as being able to feed his family.

How does the world best prevent against shocks to food prices?

Food and grain prices hit record highs over the summer. This was helped in part by the drought in the United States.  The record high prices is prompting an emergency meeting of G-20 agricultural ministers to discuss the issue. The cost of food has dropped since the summer. Still, world leaders are debating what should be done to prevent steep price increases for the future.

France proposes returning to a food stockpile system, similar to how the U.S. has "strategic" stockpiles of oil. Other countries in E.U. disagree and say we should concentrate in increasing crop yields.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer Silvia Aloisi looks into this debate.

Building strategic agricultural stocks to curb market volatility, as proposed by France, would not be the most effective way to tame food prices, EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said on Monday.

He said what was needed instead was an increase in food production in the world's poorest countries, which remain vulnerable to the threat of a new food crisis despite the recent easing in grain prices from record highs hit this summer.

Last month, French President Francois Hollande launched a global campaign to win support for creating strategic stockpiles of food commodities after a year of drought renewed fears of a new crisis in agricultural supplies.

Paris has also called an emergency meeting of G20 farm ministers for mid-October to discuss ways to curb price volatility.

"I believe it is one of the instruments but it is not the most effective," Piebalgs told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an international cooperation conference in Milan when asked about the French stockpiles proposal.

"The answer to food insecurity is sufficient food production in the world's poorest regions," he said, adding that increasing investments in agriculture was the best way to keep a lid on prices.

"Resilience in farming, access to water, fighting against climate change, crops, access to the markets - it's a lot of elements, one element does not help sufficiently," he said.

Rethinking Zimbabwe's ban on genetically modified food

Zimbabwe has imported food constantly over the last 15 years. Successive droughts and land seizures have contributed to the lack of food.

During this time of food shortages, the country has had a ban on growing genetically modified food. The only GMO food sold within Zimbabwe has been imported from elsewhere. Many are calling on the government to rethink this ban. Citing some of the drought resistant attributes of GMO seeds that could help Zimbabwe become food sufficient again.

From Reuters Alert net, writer Madalitso Mwando looks into the debate.

Last month, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) announced it was asking the government to allow farmers to plant GMO crops to boost agricultural production after a succession of poor harvests.

 “We will continue pushing for the embracing of GMO production, using GMO technology,” the CZI said in a statement, noting that exporting such food would be a starting point.

Zimbabwe has long opposed the production of genetically modified crops, even though imported GMO products have flooded supermarkets since the easing of stringent import regulations in 2009, when the country suspended the local currency.

Agriculture minister Joseph Made has said previously that the country will not allow farmers to produce GMOs, claiming they contain toxic substances that are harmful to consumers’ health and that they are less nutritious than organic foods.

The minister’s position has been criticised as flawed since Zimbabwean farmers use pesticides and fertiliser, so locally produced food, while non-GMO, is not necessarily organic.

However, there remain policy differences within the troubled coalition government on this issue, as with others. Science and technology minister Heneri Dzinotyiwei said last month that the government was reviewing its anti-GMO policy.

According to Dzinotywei, the safety of GMOs has been confirmed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organisation, as well as the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, a non-profit research organisation.

African Farmers adapting to climate change

There is growing evidence that farmers in Africa are already adapting to climate change. They are beginning to change their farming methods on their own in order to keep harvests plentiful.

A development research conference in France touched upon that subject last week. Writer Christophe Assogba from Science Development.net relays what was said by one expert at the conference.

"Social adaptation to climate change has also been found in animals," said Abdoulaye Gouro, president of the scientific committee of the research network RIPIECSA (Interdisciplinary and Participatory Research on Interactions between Climate, Ecosystems and Society in West Africa).

He was speaking at a workshop last week (18–21 October) organised by France's Institute for Development Research (IRD) to obtain feedback on current RIPIESCA projects.

"Farmers are not inactive in the face of climate change. They are sowing second crops, and growing cassava, yams and so on in the lowlands. They have been able to increase their acreage in some areas because of the shifting seasons," Euloge Agbossou, head of the hydrology laboratory at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin,told the workshop.

"People are not waiting for engineers, scientists and researchers in order to adapt to climate change. They are aware of the phenomenon, they feel it around them and they have adapted to it," he said.

"Now it is up to us to improve on their methods, and see whether their approaches to adaptation are consistent with what science indicates."

IFAD says lack of ag investment contributes to high food prices

Food prices increased again in the month June. Many factors are blamed for the record high food prices such as climate change and biofuels. The United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development says today that a lack of investment in agriculture is also to blame.

From Bloomberg, writer Sungwoo Park relays the assessment from the IFAD.

“We are just depleting our stocks and now we have this high population growth,” Kanayo F Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, said in an interview. “Prices won’t come down overnight. They are going to stay high for some time to come.”

Global food costs tracked by the United Nations increased in June for the 10th time in the past 12 months, staying near a record on higher rice, sugar and dairy prices, while meat reached an all-time high. Aid to agriculture dropped to 4.3 percent of total assistance in 2008 from 18 percent in 1979, according to IFAD data.

“Food price crisis, food price hikes or food price volatility is not just a simple consequence of shortage of food because of weather conditions and climate change,” Nwanze said in an interview on July 22 in Seoul. “A primary cause is we’ve disinvested in agriculture over decades.”

Nwanze has urged the global community for more investments in rural development to help meet growing food demand led by emerging economies including China, India and Brazil. The 165- member nation agency works to combat rural poverty and hunger by providing low-interest loans and grants to developing countries.

New UN report calls for more support to small farmers

The United Nations has echoed the call for more support to be given to small farmers. A new report that looks at the world's economy says that small farmers need to increase output in order to control future food price shocks. The report calls on world governments to develop new loan and grant programs for the small farmer.

From Reuters, writer Robert Evans has this look at what is within the report.

In its annual World Economic and Social Survey, it said a transformation from large-scale and intensive systems of agriculture was vital if growing environmental and land degradation was to be avoided.

The food crisis of 2007-08 and a price spike this year "have revealed deep structural problems in the global food system and the need to increase resources and innovation in agriculture so as to accelerate food production," the survey declared.

Food production, it said, would have to increase between 70 and 100 per cent by 2050 to sustain a world population that would have grown by 35 per cent from the present 6.9 billion to around 9 billion by that time.

"With current agricultural technology, practices and land-use patterns, this cannot be achieved without further contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and land degradation," the survey argued.

In its turn, the resulting environmental degradation would undermine any growth in food productivity.

Of the nearly one seventh of the global population, some 925 million people who are undernourished -- or lacking access to enough food to make possible an active and healthy life -- 98 per cent live in developing countries, according to the survey.

Two thirds of them are concentrated in seven countries -- Bangladesh, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Overall, 578 million are in Asia and the Pacific and 239 million in sub-Saharan Africa.

Tackling aflatoxin - if the price is right in Kenya

From IRIN, a story about a new treatment for maize that is being tested in Kenya. The new bio-control agent is being introduced into maize fields can help the crop withstand a deadly fungus.

A treatment that could control a deadly fungus, aflatoxin, from infecting maize is being tested in Kenya in a project donors hope will result in a commercially viable product with regional application, officials say.

However, farmers expected to buy and use the bio-control agent, known as Aflasafe, want financial incentives to rid the market of what is often an invisible attacker.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that literally billions of people in the developing world are chronically exposed to aflatoxin, which causes cancer, suppresses the immune system, retards growth and causes liver disease as well as death in both humans and animals, according to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), a partner in the 18-month project.

Aflatoxin is not always obvious, and maize that looks normal could actually be infested with high levels of the fungus, which thrives under poor storage conditions.

Testing will focus on creating a locally successful hybrid of fungi, which, when applied to crops in the field, "crowd out" the toxins. Scientists expect to know by December 2012 which combination is best for Kenya, which has a particularly virulent strain found nowhere else in Africa.

But the project also needs to answer some key questions about how to market aflasafe.

"Can the farmer afford it? Can she see a return on investment? We need a mechanism by which she can recognize value,” said Prem Warrior of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is providing the project’s $1.2 million budget.

Cost

For farmers, the question of affordability and added value is central, and could determine whether or not they use the product, no matter how effective it is.

There is currently no quote for the cost of Aflasafe, since no one is producing it at scale, Ranajit Bandyopadhyay, a principal investigator with IITA, told IRIN.

However, Bandyopadhyay estimated it would cost a farmer US$10-12 per hectare. The average farm in Kenya is just less than 2.5 hectares, according to Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture firm.

Steve Collins, chief of party for the Kenya Maize Development Project, said Kenyan commercial farmers could afford to pay but small-scale farmers would require subsidies to get started.

Wilson Songa, the permanent secretary in Kenya's Agriculture Ministry, said there needs to be a plan to take Aflasafe from a handout to something farmers can buy on their own.

He said the Aflasafe project would immediately "touch the lives" of the 46 percent of Kenyans who live in poverty. "Some of the farmers are too poor to buy the product," said Songa. "We will ensure that the product gets to them free of charge initially."

Songa said 450 trainers would be sent out to provide education and information to farmers.

"We needed a project like this yesterday," said Songa. "The whole region is waiting."

The Ministry of Agriculture also promised to buy up 2.3 million infected bags of maize last year, but did not, saying it did not have the funds. It is unclear where it will find the money to pay farmers to start using Aflasafe.

If farmers do not get higher prices for treated crops, some may not be willing to pay out of pocket for Aflasafe.

"The farmers take on the cost and yet they don’t always benefit in terms of market price," said Paula Bramel, IITA's deputy director.

Better yields

"We have been going out and talking to farmers to see what they’d be willing to spend," said Collins, whose organization surveyed 2,300 farming families in eastern and western Kenya. “They would be prepared to pay if they could get a better price.”

Collins said there was a good chance they could do so because protecting maize from aflatoxin also results in a better product, less likely to be rejected by traders.

Fungus-free crops will also yield more grain. Collins said yield per unit could be doubled, tripled, or maybe even quadrupled.

Paula Bramel, IITA's deputy director, said there is currently no low-cost testing method in Kenya, and the government does not regularly test maize for aflatoxins. For the 70 percent of farmers in Kenya who trade informally, even government testing might provide little incentive to pay out of pocket for Aflasafe.

"The only way it will get to scale is if famers have a direct financial incentive," said Kola Masha, the managing director at Doreo Partners, a venture capital and consultancy firm tasked with developing a commercial strategy for Aflasafe.

Regulating the market is key for this to succeed, he said, because it is the only way farmers would be able to profit from compliance. The only other way to create incentive is to turn Aflasafe into a product that also increases yield, for example by bundling it with fertilizer, he said.

Masha said a "very aggressive outreach programme" would be the final step in ensuring farmers grow and consumers demand aflatoxin-free crops.

Farmer Henry Zoka and his wife Patricia Maitha grow maize, beans, kale, and other crops on their farm 50km west of Nairobi. They are not sure if their maize has ever been infected with aflatoxin.

Zoka said the decision about whether or not to buy Aflasafe “would depend on the cost.” He said he would spend 1,000 shillings ($11.4) a season on the treatment. "We feel if we could get assistance it would be better."

But Aflasafe alone might not even be enough to combat the deadly fungus.

"There's no silver bullet in terms of a solution," said Collins. "That’s why you have to take a holistic approach."

Education, training, and communication about correct farming and storage practices are just as important as bio-control agents like Aflasafe, he said.

Video: Makueni farmers become self sufficient

From NTV Kenya, a story about how small farmers are becoming self-sufficient by switching from maize to the pigeon pea.

Guest Voices: Harvesting Momentum to Improve Nutrition in Zambia

Continuing with our series of guest posts from Concern Worldwide, is a profile of another farming program that Concern operates in Zambia. Country Director Rakesh Katal tells us about how the program protects crops from natural disasters such as flooding and drought.

Zambia’s economy continues to show encouraging growth, which now stands at seven percent. And in the past year, Zambia’s agricultural sector produced a record food surplus, with a grain harvest of 2.8 million tons that literally overwhelmed storage capacity. This surplus was underpinned by subsidies for small-scale farmers, generous minimum price guarantees offered by the Zambia’s Food Reserve Agency and good rainfall in previous years. Nonetheless, the very poorest and most vulnerable families are still struggling to survive.

The terrain in remote areas of Zambia is rough; to reach communities you must cross rivers, wetlands and vast swathes of sandy territory. Concern is the only development organization working in some of these remote areas, such as districts in the Western Province.

These districts are characterized by poor infrastructure, few or no services, and high dependency on natural resources for livelihoods. The soil and forests are under tremendous pressure from very heavy use, as well as from droughts and flooding.

Reaching marginalized groups and implementing programs at the required scale to alleviate poverty is a challenge: our human and financial resources are stretched to capacity. But we have evidence of what works—and we know that adequate investment in interventions in nutrition, livelihoods, and agriculture would significantly reduce poverty and hunger.

Concern is showing farmers how to restore the soil and at the same time diversify their crops to provide better nutrition for their families and produce a surplus that they can sell in the marketplace. We work with communities to set up natural resource committees and natural resource “user groups,” whose initiatives—in conjunction with efforts by local state officials—include canal clearing to prevent flooding. We have also prioritized establishing disaster management committees in communities to protect against future damage from droughts and floods.

We face significant obstacles, but I see signs of progress and momentum every time I visit a farming village. I know that what we’re doing works when a farmer shows me how his harvest and income have improved, and when a person living with HIV is no longer isolated because she has access to support groups and a source of income to live a healthy and productive life. I have seen communities minimize their vulnerability to disasters, and begin to view themselves as participants in development, rather than as passive recipients.

As I prepare to attend the upcoming “1,000 Days to Scale Up Nutrition for Mothers & Children: Building Political Commitment” meeting in Washington, D.C., I am excited to join civil society leaders and government officials to rally greater investment to save lives. I welcome this opportunity to share experiences and ideas for supporting the SUN Roadmap.

I hope to act as a voice for people like Wamunyima Iluya, an extremely poor farmer in rural Senanga District. He shared his story of change with me, saying, “Before, we were farming according to tradition, but we have learned ways to improve harvests and make farming a more profitable business.”

Beyond the June 13th meeting, my team and I will continue to work at national level in Zambia, collaborating with Government agencies such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, the Ministry of Health, and the National Food and Nutrition Commission (NFNC). For instance, the NFNC is developing Zambia’s new Food and Nutrition Strategic Plan, a policy dialogue in which Concern actively participates.

These are exciting and encouraging times in Zambia in terms of nutrition. Under the Sixth National Development Plan, the Zambian Government aims to “improve the nutritional status of the Zambian population through the provision of quality nutrition services and increased availability, access and utilization of quality and safe foods.” Concern is committed to playing its part in making this aspiration become a reality.

In collaboration with local partners, the Government, and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Concern has launched the “Realigning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition (RAIN)” project, which targets women farmers and will help improve their nutritional status, as well as that of their families. The project is directly linked to the interventions outlined in the SUN Roadmap: working to prevent undernutrition and stunting by focusing on the critical 1,000 days from pregnancy to age two. We will share learning and evidence from this project on how best to link agriculture and nutrition with the international community.

My hope is that Concern’s programs contribute to efforts that make the growing international commitment to scale up nutrition a reality.

Guest Voices: The Enemy is Hunger: Women Fight Back in Malawi

Next up in our series guest posts from Concern Worldwide, we read about a farming irrigation program in Malawi that is helping women to provide enough food for their families. Country Director Anita McCabe says the program not only provides food year round, but the women can also sell the surplus for income.

As the hot, dry breeze wafts through the lakeside district of Nkhotakota, Malawi, a group of women sing as they take turns to water their near-ripe crop of maize. Further downstream, another group is busy making seed beds in preparation for another crop.

Like many women in developing countries, these women face a particular set of responsibilities and vulnerabilities when it comes to providing food for their families. Not only are they the primary caregivers, they are also the producers of food and the income earners. Women farmers in rural areas of Malawi grow, buy, sell, and cook food in order to feed their children. In fact, in all the countries in which I’ve worked during my time with Concern Worldwide, I’ve seen how very hard women must work to ensure the survival of their families, and the burdens they bear.

Women produce between 60 and 80 percent of food in developing countries, and they hold the key to tackling hunger and malnutrition. A woman’s nutritional status is critical not only to her own health but also to her ability to work, and her ability to ensure that her children are properly nourished and healthy.

Nkhotakota has suffered from recurring drought and flooding, and the people here know the consequences. “As a woman, it hurts to see my children cry with hunger” says Grace Kalowa from Thondo village. “It’s more painful as a mother to tell them that I don’t have any food to give them. In their eyes I am supposed to provide for them but knowing that I can’t do anything is heartbreaking. That feeling of desperation is what brought us together as women to drive hunger away from our families.”

Grace is the chairperson of the twenty-member Kathyothyo Women Irrigation Club. They are part of a program run by Concern Worldwide to help poor farmers to tackle hunger by improving their agricultural practices, including irrigation. Having seen the potential of the Kathyothyo Women Irrigation Club to increase the food and nutrition situation in the area, Concern offered to help them find their feet by giving them both the start-up resources, and the necessary training on irrigation.

“We spend most of our time here in the field” Grace told us. “Every member of the group now knows that to defeat hunger, we should be at the forefront of fighting it. Begging for food when we have the resources is degrading. No one would like a repeat of the past hunger experience, and that’s what keeps us going.”

For the first time in many years, Biacha Jefuri, a member of the group, has managed to harvest twice in one year. She believes that hunger is no longer a problem in her home: “I got five bags of maize after the group shared the harvest. I no longer have sleepless nights thinking about what to eat the next day.”

The group, which now has about 19.7 acres under cultivation, feels they have defeated hunger once and for all.

“I can now see a big change in our lives. Currently, we are harvesting some of our maize and the other crop will be ready in a few weeks time. We have already sold part of the crop and the money has been deposited in our village savings and loan account. Concern taught us how to save money after selling our surplus crop. We use part of the money to lend each other as capital for small businesses. As women, we know that in the household, so many things are needed.”

The Kathyothyo Women Irrigation Club has helped to transform the food situation for families in the region. Tackling hunger requires more than just increasing farm output. But empowering women to take control of their own food production is a vital step. There are many challenges ahead, but Grace now has aspirations for a better future: “Our experience has also taught us that our enemy is hunger and this is what keeps us going.”

Grace’s is not just an isolated story of change. In the past few years, Malawi has made great progress in improving food and nutrition security. This is due to political commitment to prioritize nutrition, including the government’s engagement in the international Scaling up Nutrition movement. It is also due to initiatives such as the Women’s Irrigation Club that integrate nutrition and agriculture. Sustaining this progress will of course require huge commitment and continued effort over the long haul. I know this from my work with Concern in many other extremely poor countries such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Sudan. I have seen the effects of acute and widespread child hunger, and I know there are no quick fixes. But I’ve also seen the courage of mothers like Grace who sacrifice to feed their children.

As Grace said, “Hunger is our enemy.” We know we can defeat this enemy by investing in interventions that improve nutrition for mothers and children, and that empower women to produce food and earn an income.

A roundup on the launch of "Grow"

OXFAM launches a new targeted campaign today that focuses on growing more food and removing the barriers that contribute to starvation. The campaign called "Grow" is being compared to previous high profile  efforts such as "Make Poverty History"  

OXFAM says that the system that controls the food growing process is broken and unfair. They say that examples of the broken system show up in the problems of climate change, land grabs, food price hikes and intensive farming. "Grow" hopes to get people involved to speak up against the vested interests that are behind these problems. 

OXFAM hopes that "Grow" will spur change in three areas; sustainable production, equality and resilience of the food system. A sustainable food system has to be created to meet the growing demand for food and with less farm land and water to meet that demand. They also hope to make the system more equitable as the rich world throws away too much food. Finally, OXFAM hopes to improve the resilience of farming as a single flood can lead an entire nation to starvation.

Here is some commentary from a few bloggers about the launch of Grow. First, the pro side from OXFAM consultant Alex Evans who blogs at Global Dashboard.

For one thing, the campaign marks a major break with traditional single issue campaigning. This isn’t just a campaign about biofuels, or landgrabs, or making agricultural trade fair, or climate change, or competition for land and water, or women’s rights. It’s about all these things, united beneath the overall banner of ‘food justice in a resource constrained world’. I’ve felt for ages that NGOs need to move on from single issue campaigning towards ways of pushing for whole system change – and Oxfam are going for it in a big way.

For the con side, Ranil Dissanayake from Aid Thoughts has the following critique.

This wouldn’t be Aid Thoughts if I didn’t have some gripes, though. There are two big areas where I’m doubtful. The first relates to one of the good things about the report: it recognizes that there are really powerful vested interests aligned against the changes the report calls for. The problem is that I don’t see a clear strategy for dealing with these interests beyond ‘naming and shaming’ and advocacy for better practices. I suspect this will only make private vested interests (normally corporations) change just enough to buy breathing space. Real success in the sphere depends on changing the incentives at work for these vested interests, by changing their risk/reward/cost ratios. This is the hardest thing to do, but ultimately it’s the one with the biggest potential. How do we go about it? I’m not sure, but I’d like to see an attempt at a strategy.

The other major concern I have with the report is the high regard it has for smallholder farming.

It is true that some countries have made amazing advances in smallholder agriculture, and a couple have even developed or gone very far down that road on the back of smallholdings. These are outliers, and Vietnam is one of them, though in part attributable to the fact that there are over 2000 rivers in the country over 10km long – that’s a lot of available water. Grow goes so far as to smash some myths about smallholder farming, that they are unproductive and averse to risk, markets and technology. They are correct to do so. However, one thing they don’t address is that smallholder farms have a far, far tougher job colluding to take advantage of the massive economies of scale available to large farms. Irrigation, mechanization, crop rotation, research and development, fertilizer purchase, agri-processing: all are far easier for a larger agricultural unit.

Finally, a detailed account of the launch and why OXFAM thinks the campagn is important from their press release.

A broken food system and environmental crises are now reversing decades of progress against hunger according to new Oxfam analysis. Spiralling food prices and endless cycles of regional food crises will create millions more hungry people unless we transform the way we grow and share food. Tomorrow, Oxfam launches a new global campaign to ensure everyone has enough to eat always.

Oxfam’s GROW campaign is backed by high profile supporters including former President Lula of Brazil, Archbishop Emeritus Tutu and actress Scarlett Johansson.

A new report, ‘Growing a Better Future’, catalogues the symptoms of today’s broken food system: growing hunger, flat-lining yields, a scramble for fertile land and water and rising food prices. It warns we have entered a new age of crisis where depletion of the earth’s natural resources and increasingly severe climate change impacts will create millions more hungry people.

New research predicts that the price of staple foods such as maize, already at an all time high, will more than double in the next 20 years. Up to half of this increase will be due to climate change. The world’s poorest people who spend up to 80 percent of their income on food will be hardest hit.

Eight million people face chronic food shortages in East Africa today. Increasing numbers of regional and local crises could see demand for food aid double in the next 10 years.

By 2050 demand for food will rise 70 per cent yet our capacity to increase food production is declining. The average growth rate in agricultural yields has almost halved since 1990 and is set to decline to a fraction of one percent in the next decade.

Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam said, “Our world is capable of feeding all of humanity yet one in seven of us are hungry today. In this new age of crisis, as climate change impacts become increasingly severe and fertile land and fresh water supplies become increasingly scarce, feeding the world will get harder still. Millions more men, women and children will go hungry unless we transform our broken food system.”

Oxfam’s GROW campaign will expose the governments whose failed policies are propping up the broken food system and the clique of 300 – 500 powerful companies who benefit from and lobby hard to maintain it. For example:

India: Despite doubling the size of it economy between 1990 and 2005 the number of hungry people in India increased by 65 million - more than the population of France - because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them. Today one in four of the world’s hungry people live in India.

United States: US policy ensures 15 percent of the world’s maize is diverted to engines, even at times of severe food crisis. The grain required to fill the petrol tank of an SUV with biofuels is sufficient to feed one person for a year.

Traders: Four global companies control the movement of most of the world’s food. Three companies - Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill – control an estimated 90 per cent of the world’s grain trade. Their activities help drive volatile food prices and they profit from them. In the first quarter of 2008, at the height of a global food price crisis, Cargill’s profits were up 86 percent and the company is now heading for its most profitable year yet on the back of further disruptions to global food supplies.

Oxfam has been responding to food crises for 70 years. Now it is calling on governments - especially the powerful G20 - to lead the transformation to a fairer more sustainable food system by investing in agriculture, valuing the world’s natural resources, managing the food system better and delivering equality for women who produce much of the world's food. It is calling on the private sector to shift to a business model where profit does not come at the expense of poor producers, consumers and the environment.

Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam said: “For too long governments have put the interests of big business and powerful elites above the interests of the seven billion of us who produce and consume food. G20 Governments meeting in France this year must now kick start the transformation of our global food system.

"The G20 must invest in the 500 million small scale farms in developing countries which offer the greatest potential for increasing global yields – and they must help them adapt to a changing climate. They must regulate commodity markets and reform flawed biofuels policies to keep food prices in check.

“Governments must also ensure that women, who produce much of the world’s food, have the same rights to land, resources and opportunities as men – with equal rights women producers could feed themselves, their families, and up to 150 million additional people,” said Hobbs.

Former President Lula of Brazil said: "We can't wait anymore. Political leaders and global companies must act now to ensure that all people can put food on their table. There are no excuses. We have the capacity to feed everyone on the planet now and in the future. If the political will is there no one will be denied their fundamental human right to be free from hunger."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: "Many governments and companies will be resistant to change through habit, ideology or the pursuit of profit. It is up to us – you and me – to persuade them by choosing food that’s produced fairly and sustainably, by cutting our carbon footprints and by joining with Oxfam and others to demand change.”

Oxfam global ambassador Scarlett Johansson said, “Sharing food is one of life’s pleasures. On a global scale, we don’t share fairly. Close to a billion people go to bed hungry every night. The fact is: the global food system is a broken one. All of us, from Kentucky to Kenya, deserve enough to eat. That’s why I’m joining Oxfam’s GROW Campaign.”

Another reason to improve small farm output

A lot of emphasis has been put on small farmers in the aid world lately, and for good reason. Small farmers grow food for themselves, but any surplus they can later sell to market for extra income. When their yields are bad they can't make any money from their work; or worse yet, they will not be able to feed their families for the year. United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development says that two billion people depend on the crops coming from 500 million small farms.

So the aid world has put a focus on improving the technology, the seeds used and more in hopes to end hunger. We discovered another reason why this is important today from a post at the From Poverty to Power blog. Writer Duncan Green introduces us to a small farmer in Tanzania by the name of Thelezia Salula. She says that it is important to improve the yield and income of small farmers so that future generations can be attracted to farming as a vocation. Without such improvements, they will instead migrate to the cities for work.

More farmers arrive and we move to the partial shade of a leafless tree. The conversation turns to their hopes for their children. Most of them, like poor farmers everywhere, want their kids to study and escape from farming to a ‘good job’ in an office, or for the government. ‘The world is changing, but if they stay in farming their lives won’t change.’ None of their children want to be farmers: ‘no-one will farm when I am old and I will suffer the consequences’, says Thelezia ‘My children will have to pay for labourers to work the farm.’ Farming, it seems, is the last resort when you fail your exams.

But one woman, Salome Luboja, does want her kids to be farmers, and sets out three things that would have to change for that to happen. Firstly, education and knowledge about modern farming methods; second irrigation to safeguard farmers from the vagaries of the newly unreliable rains, and third improved markets and prices. I’m not convinced – towns are just so much more fun than farms, especially for young people – but the women insist that if the facilities were there, the work would not be such a grind, and if the incomes were higher than in the town, the kids would stay on the farm.

I still think many of them will chose to migrate, but if governments and aid donors invest properly in small farmers like Thelezia, (which is one of the things Oxfam is pushing for in the impending Grow campaign, launching on 1 June) at least her children will have a dignified and genuine choice between staying and leaving. That’s only the start though: the flatness of this plain, under a huge sky and scorching sun, seems especially vulnerable to the whims of an increasingly harsh climate. Unless climate change can be controlled too, and people helped to adapt to it, any progress is likely to be short-lived.

Coconut, cashew projects offer hope for small farmers in Mozambique

From IRIN, a story about a small coconut plantation that is being revitalized to provide incomes for a community in Mozambique.

A colonial-era coconut plantation is being revived in southern Mozambique to provide small incomes to a largely cashless rural community, and is being viewed as a pilot project that could be rolled out across poor isolated communities to generate work for hundreds if not thousands of people.

A year after winning independence from Portugal in 1975 the country descended into a 16-year-long civil war, and emerged from the conflict as one of the world’s poorest.

Some colonial-era plantations have survived charcoal burners or other methods of destruction, but remain under-utilized through a lack of investment or the handicaps of poor road and transport infrastructure.

South African farmer Graham Ford has teamed-up with US NGO TechnoServe, with the consent of the Inhambane provincial government - as all land in Mozambique is owned by the state - to revive an abandoned coconut plantation, about 10km from Maxixe.

A small processing factory in the community extracts the meat and oil from coconuts collected by local people and is then transported to the highway by 4WD vehicles where it is loaded onto trucks bound for South Africa.

Coconut products have a ready market in the food and healthcare sectors.

The factory accepts two sacks of coconuts - stripped of their husks - from one person a week, which translates into a monthly income of about 1,000 meticais (US$33.50)

"Until now the local people have not really availed [themselves of] the natural resources around them on a commercial level because they had to take them all the way to the highway [about 10km away]. Here they were only given small sums of money by men who took the coconuts to Maputo," TechnoServe agricultural consultant Rizwan Khan told IRIN.

He said the key to replicating such an initiative, so the poor derived greater commercial benefit, was to situate factories in or near communities.

Khan said the long-term plan was to support the establishment of similar factories across Inhambane Province that would mirror the Maxixe pilot programme - such is the international demand for coconut oil.

A 2002-2003 government survey identified Inhambane as the poorest of the country’s 11 provinces, with about 80 percent of the population living below the poverty line. However, a survey conducted in 2008-2009 found poverty levels had decreased to 60 percent in the province which was rated as the seventh poorest.

Cashew nuts

Mozambique's cashew nut industry was severely affected by the civil war and outbreaks of fungal infections among its ageing cashew tree population led to a decline in both quality and quantity.

NGO CARE International is attempting to revive the cashew trade in Inhambane Province through its SEED (Sustainable Effective Economic Development) programme.

CARE's acting project manager based in the Inhambane coastal town of Vilankulos, Michaela Cosijan, told IRIN cashew nut production was one of the focus sectors, as the resource was being under-utilized.

In partnership with the provincial authorities, a campaign has been launched to plant a new generation of cashew trees across the province, and an insecticide programme introduced to protect the remaining productive trees.

The NGO is also organizing cooperatives for farmers to achieve greater value for their products.

Paulo Johaui Murrouibe, a cashew nut farmer in the Inhambane village of Tsumbo, which has about 3,500 residents, told IRIN: "Previously we sold things as individuals at a low price, and had no ability to negotiate a better deal with the buyers. But now, with CARE's help, we have become organized as a community, negotiating better sales prices and using better farming techniques."

Filomena Maiopue, director of the Mozambican Cashew Institute, told local media recently: "Over the last five years, the average amount of cashew nuts marketed has fluctuated between 70,000 and 90,000 tons. But this year's figure of 112,000 tons is a great victory for the country, since it is the highest figure attained since independence."