The soil not the oil

“South Sudan has virgin land. Yet we import most of our food from neighbouring countries,” South Sudan’s finance minister, David Deng Athorbei, complained.  South Sudan has ignored agriculture since it achieved its independence in July 2011. Up to 75 per cent of the country’s land area is suitable for farming. During the first two years of independence, the country was producing nearly 245,000 barrels of crude oil per day, raking in billions of dollars in revenue annually. As a result, the elite saw no value in labour-intensive activity like farming. “The business of trade is over. We now need to embark on the business of production. We have to change our ways of doing business. Let’s start with agriculture,” Athorbei advised.

Before the fall of oil prices below $30 a barrel in the international market, oil-rich South Sudan used to import virtually all of its basic requirements from overseas. Chicken came from Brazil. Tomatoes, onions, maize flour, cooking oil, dairy products and beans are still being imported from neighbouring Uganda. China and Dubai export a variety of goods such as soft drinks, smart phones as well as construction materials. In South Sudan prices have continued to spiral beyond the reach of the poor. The crisis has prompted parliament to urge government to reduce inflation to mitigate the sufferings of ordinary persons.

Every year, South Sudan spends between US$200-300 million on food imports, according to estimates for 2013 provided by the Abidjan-based African Development Bank (AFDB). “South Sudan currently imports as much as 50 per cent of its needs, including 40 per cent of its cereals from neighbouring countries, particularly Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia”, according to AFDB.

Campaigners are now focusing on food production to mitigate the impact of a devastating civil war. South Sudan has vast fertile lands, abundant water and climate suitable for production of wide variety of food and cash crops. Experts estimate that up to 300,000 metric tonnes of fish could be harvested on a sustainable basis from its share at the River Nile swamps and tributaries. What food South Sudan produces often is left rotting in the bush due to poor road network to transport the commodities to the market.

Nigerians say no to Monsanto

GMO-advocates promote the biotechnology as not only safe for human consumption and the environment, it’s also a solution to malnutrition and global food security, as these crops have been genetically tinkered with to provide certain nutritional benefits and/or spliced-and-diced to resist certain pathogens and other roadblocks. For instance, Monsanto’s Water Efficient Maize for Africa, a five-year development project led by the Kenyan-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation, aims to develop a variety of drought-tolerant maize seeds.

But many Nigerians are urging the Nigerian government to reject Monsanto’s attempts to introduce genetically modified (GMO) cotton and maize into the country’s food and farming systems. One hundred organizations representing more than 5 million Nigerians, including farmers, faith-based organisations, civil society groups, students and local community groups, have submitted a joint objection to the country’s National Biosafety Management Agency (NABMA) expressing serious concerns about human health and environmental risks of genetically altered crops.

“We are totally shocked that it should come so soon after peer-reviewed studies have showed that the technology has failed dismally in Burkina Faso,” Nnimmo Bassey, the director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, one of the leading opposition groups, said in a statement. The Bt cotton is being phased out in Burkina Faso. “It has brought nothing but economic misery to the cotton sector there and is being phased out in that country where compensation is being sought from Monsanto.” He explains in a video “Genetically engineered crops are not engineered to help anybody. They are engineered to help the industry that produces the crops.” 

Monsanto’s crops are genetically enhanced to tolerate the use of the herbicide glyphosate which was declared as a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) last March. “Should commercialization of Monsanto’s GM maize be allowed pursuant to field trials, this will result in increased use of glyphosate in Nigeria, a chemical that is linked to causing cancer in humans,” Mariann Orovwuje, Friends of the Earth International’s food sovereignty co-coordinator, said in a statement. Nigeria doesn’t have a platform to test for glyphosate or other pesticide residues in food and food products, nor do they have an agency that can monitor the herbicide’s impact on the environment, including water resources.

Africa's Non Green Revolution

One of the major strategies to reduce poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is through policies to increase and modernise agricultural production. Up to 90 per cent of people in some African countries are smallholder farmers reliant on agriculture, for whom agricultural innovation, such as using new seed varieties and cultivation techniques, holds potential benefit but also great risk.

Agricultural policies aimed at alleviating poverty in Africa could be making things worse, according to research by the University of EastAnglia (UEA). The study finds that so-called 'green revolution' policies in Rwanda - claimed by the government, international donors and organisations such as the International Monetary Fund to be successful for the economy and in alleviating poverty - may be having very negative impacts on the poorest.

In the 1960s and 70s policies supporting new seeds for marketable crops, sold at guaranteed prices, helped many farmers and transformed economies in Asian countries. These became known as "green revolutions". The new wave of green revolution policies in sub-Saharan Africa is supported by multinational companies and western donors, and is impacting the lives of tens, even hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers, according to the study's lead author Dr Neil Dawson.

The study reveals that only a relatively wealthy minority have been able to keep to enforced modernisation because the poorest farmers cannot afford the risk of taking out credit for the approved inputs, such as seeds and fertilizers. Their fears of harvesting nothing from new crops and the potential for the government to seize and reallocate their land means many choose to sell up instead.

The findings tie in with recent debates about strategies to feed the world in the face of growing populations, for example the influence of wealthy donors such as the Gates Foundation, initiative's such as the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, and multinational companies such as Monsanto in pushing agricultural modernisation in Africa. There have also been debates about small versus large farms being best to combat hunger in Africa, while struggles to maintain local control over land and food production, for example among the Oromo people in Ethiopia, have been highlighted.

Dr Dawson, a senior research associate in UEA's School of International Development, said: "Similar results are emerging from other experiments in Africa. Agricultural development certainly has the potential to help these people, but instead these policies appear to be exacerbating landlessness and inequality for poorer rural inhabitants. Many of these policies have been hailed as transformative development successes, yet that success is often claimed on the basis of weak evidence through inadequate impact assessments. And conditions facing African countries today are very different from those past successes in Asia some 40 years ago. Such policies may increase aggregate production of exportable crops, yet for many of the poorest smallholders they strip them of their main productive resource, land. This study details how these imposed changes disrupt subsistence practices, exacerbate poverty, impair local systems of trade and knowledge, and threaten land ownership. It is startling that the impacts of policies with such far-reaching impacts for such poor people are, in general, so inadequately assessed."

The research looked in-depth at Rwanda's agricultural policies and the changes impacting the wellbeing of rural inhabitants in eight villages in the country's mountainous west. Here chronic poverty is common and people depend on the food they are able to grow on their small plots. Farmers traditionally cultivated up to 60 different types of crops, planting and harvesting in overlapping cycles to prevent shortages and hunger. However, due to high population density in Rwanda's hills, agricultural policies have been imposed which force farmers to modernise with new seed varieties and chemical fertilisers, to specialise in single crops and part with "archaic" agricultural practices.

Dr Dawson and his UEA co-authors Dr Adrian Martin and Prof Thomas Sikor recommend that not only should green revolution policies be subject to much broader and more rigorous impact assessments, but that mitigation for poverty-exacerbating impacts should be specifically incorporated into such policies. In Rwanda, that means encouraging land access for the poorest and supporting traditional practices during a gradual and voluntary modernisation.

‘Philanthrocapitalism’ - another word for global capitalism.

Colin Todhunter on the Countercurrents website reviews the latest report on the Gates philanthropy in Africa. He highlights one criticism - the foundation’s promotion of industrial agriculture across Africa, pushing for the adoption of GM, patented seed systems and chemical fertilisers, all of which undermine existing sustainable, small-scale farming that is providing the vast majority of food security across the continent.

According to the report, the BMGF is promoting a model of industrial agriculture, the increasing use of chemical fertilisers and expensive, patented seeds, the privatisation of extension services and a very large focus on genetically modified seeds. The foundation bankrolls the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in pushing industrial agriculture.

A key area for AGRA is seed policy. The report notes that currently over 80 per cent of Africa’s seed supply comes from millions of small-scale farmers recycling and exchanging seed from year to year. But AGRA is promoting the commercial production of seed and is thus supporting the introduction of commercial seed systems, which risk enabling a few large companies to control seed research and development, production and distribution.

In order for commercial seed companies to invest in research and development, they first want to protect their ‘intellectual property’. According to the report, this requires a fundamental restructuring of seed laws to allow for certification systems that not only protect certified varieties and royalties derived from them, but which actually criminalise all non-certified seed.

The report notes that over the past two decades a long and slow process of national seed law reviews, sponsored by USAID and the G8 along with the BMGF and others, has opened the door to multinational corporations’ involvement in seed production, including the acquisition of every sizeable seed enterprise on the African continent.

At the same time, AGRA is working to promote costly inputs, notably fertiliser, despite evidence to suggest chemical fertilisers have significant health risks for farm workers, increase soil erosion and can trap small-scale farmers in unsustainable debt. The BMGF, through AGRA, is one of the world’s largest promoters of chemical fertiliser.

Some grants given by the BMGF to AGRA have been specifically intended to “help AGRA build the fertiliser supply chain” in Africa. The report describes how one of the largest of AGRA’s grants, worth $25 million, was used to help establish the African Fertiliser Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) in 2012, whose very goal is to “at least double total fertiliser use” in Africa. The AFAP project is being pursued in partnership with the International Fertiliser Development Centre, a body which represents the fertiliser industry.

Another of AGRA’s key programmes since its inception has been support to agro-dealer networks – small, private stockists of transnational companies' chemicals and seeds who sell these to farmers in several African countries. This is increasing the reliance of farmers on chemical inputs and marginalising sustainable agriculture alternatives, thereby undermining any notion that farmers are exercising their 'free choice' (as the neo-liberal evangelists are keen to tell everyone) when it comes to adopting certain agricultural practices.

The report concludes that AGRA’s agenda is the biggest direct threat to the growing movement in support of food sovereignty and agroecological farming methods in Africa. This movement opposes reliance on chemicals, expensive seeds and GM and instead promotes an approach which allows communities control over the way food is produced, traded and consumed. It is seeking to create a food system that is designed to help people and the environment rather than make profits for multinational corporations. Priority is given to promoting healthy farming and healthy food by protecting soil, water and climate, and promoting biodiversity.

Recent evidence from Greenpeace and the Oakland Institute shows that in Africa agroecological farming can increase yields significantly (often greater than industrial agriculture), and that it is more profitable for small farmers. In 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (Olivier de Schutter) called on countries to reorient their agriculture policies to promote sustainable systems - not least agroecology - that realise the right to food. Moreover, the International Assessmentof Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was the work of over 400 scientists and took four years to complete. It was twice peer reviewed and states we must look to smallholder, traditional farming to deliver food security in third world countries through agri-ecological systems which are sustainable.

Colin Todhunter concludes Bill Gates “is spearheading the ambitions of corporate America and the scramble for Africa by global agribusiness.”

Feeding Ourselves

Vegetables rich in protein and essential vitamins and minerals, perfectly adapted to Africa's soils and changing climate exist in Africa. They exist thanks not to the genius and beneficence of a foreign company, but rather through millennia of interactions between Africa's farmers and its landscape. And while their popularity waned in recent decades as urbanization has swept through the continent, they're gaining renewed interest from food-security experts. Unlike "exotic" (i.e., non-native to Africa) vegetables like kale and cabbage, these crops are adapted to Africa's soils and growing conditions. African vegetables like the leaves of amaranth, pumpkin, and cowpea (black-eyed pea) plants outshine rival western greens that have been introduced into African agriculture over the past century. Then there's the leaves of the moringa tree, native to Africa and parts of Asia, which deliver three times more vitamin A than carrots, seven times more vitamin C than oranges, and twice the protein of cow's milk, per 100 grams.

Of course, spiderplant and cowpea leaves are a long way from solving Africa's nutritional problems. As of 2013, indigenous vegetables accounted for just 6 percent of Kenya's total vegetable market. Despite growing demand production is constrained by the same factors that haunt African food security broadly: poor infrastructure (roads, rail, etc.) for bringing fresh food from farm to market, along with a dearth of investment in research and development. There are no simple answers, no silver bullets, to the problem of ensuring a robust food supply on a warming planet with a growing population. But it's important to remember that the best, cheapest solutions aren't necessarily the ones that emerge from patent-seeking laboratories.

From here 

Conservation Agriculture - The Pros and Cons

More than 80 per cent of the population depends on farming. Agriculture also makes up a significant proportion of their GDP: as much as 45 per cent in Ethiopia and 37 per cent in Malawi. (By comparison, two per cent of Canadians live on a farm and the sector accounts for eight per cent of this country’s GDP.) So the agricultural sector is critical. The foundation for real agricultural growth starts with healthy soils. The Montpellier panel, an elite group of European and African scientists commissioned to analyze development issues on the continent, published a report last December that characterizes two-thirds of Africa’s soils as degraded, along with 30 per cent of the grazing lands and 20 per cent of the forests. That degradation affects the food security of 180 million people and cuts productivity to the tune of US$68 billion annually. You don’t have to be a soil scientist to know Africa’s soils are in trouble.

"The burdens caused by Africa’s damaged soils are disproportionately carried by the continent’s resource-poor farmers," said the panel’s chairman, Sir Gordon Conway, in releasing the report No Ordinary Matter: Conserving, restoring and enhancing Africa’s soil. The Montpellier panel was critical of Africa’s continental agricultural strategy, the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program, and of international donors for not placing a high enough priority on soil health in their strategies to improve the continent’s food security.

"The decline in fertility exists everywhere," Sheleme Beyene, a soil scientist with Ethiopia’s Hawassa University, said in an interview. "In areas where there is a dense population, the land holding is so small that everything from that land is utilized — removed." Grazing animals are turned out after harvest to clean up anything that is left. From the road, they appear to be grazing on dust. We mine the nutrients from the soil. The assumption was that some amount would be returned to the soil through chemical fertilizer.” Beyene said. Across the continent, governments have initiated campaigns to encourage farmers to switch to improved hybrid seeds and use more fertilizer. The continental goal is to increase fertilizer use from an average of eight kilograms per hectare, which is the lowest in the world, to at least 50 kg/ha. “But chemical fertilizer will not return all the nutrients," she added.

The problem is badly degraded biological health in the soil, a declining capacity to bind and create humus, to absorb water and nutrients, and to build organic matter as evidenced by the washed-out roads, deep crevices dividing farmers’ fields, plants left dying with roots exposed after heavy rainstorms and rivers laden with rich, red silt. The Montpellier report identifies water erosion as the single biggest cause of soil loss on the continent, an irony every bit as sad as Africa’s hungry farmers. Rain, moisture so desperately needed to sustain life in this land, is simultaneously at war with its exposed and degraded soils. It pulverizes them before taking them hostage and carrying them away to the sea. All the fertilizer in the world won’t fix that.

The conservation agriculture message is, at its core, an approach which emphasizes minimal soil disturbance to prevent erosion and conserve moisture while employing strategies that support healthy soil biology. Some farmers use oxen and what is known as a "ripper," a device that slices a narrow opening for the seed, instead of a plough. While many use a combination of chemical and organic fertilizers, just as many produce some of their own fertilizer by growing nitrogen-fixing legumes, sometimes intercropped with staple cereal crops. Farmers typically farm with a hoe. They plant crops into rows and then pull those rows into ridges, like we would hill potatoes, sometimes a foot high, leaving deep gullies between rows. It’s back-breaking work. Under conservation agriculture, farmers do away with those ridges. They instead make planting basins into which they put a small amount of manure and later poke their seed in with a stick. Without the ridges, they can plant their rows closer together, which increases the ground cover, paving the way for higher yields. They use mulch made from past crop residues or composted plant material between the rows to help suppress weeds, hold in moisture and build organic matter. In this environment, higher-yielding hybrid seeds have a better chance of meeting their yield potential. The extra moisture and organic matter have resulted in a doubling of maize yields. More stable production of maize, the staple crop, means farmers can sow less of their farm to it, opening the door to better crop rotations.

Christian Thierfelder, a senior agronomist, explained how the soil changes under conservation agriculture management. "When you look at the soil, the soil (under Conservation Agriculture) is very loose, and when you get a heavy rainfall, the water can infiltrate because there is a lot of biological activity — earthworms, beetles and ants and so on that create these bio pools, like a sponge," he said. "The rainfall hits the soil surface and infiltrates, whereas on the conventional system, it just runs off or stands there." The traditionally farmed soil was hard and gravelly. "The conventional system can only make use of the water that is in the ridge and not further down in the soil," he said. Plant roots grown using conservation agriculture techniques are able to penetrate deeper into the soil and reach for added moisture. "And also, because of the residues on top, there is less evaporation of water — it just has more water available for plant growth." That’s "climate-smart" in a region where sporadic rainfalls can wreak havoc with food production.

Despite the promotional efforts of hundreds of projects offered uptake of conservation agriculture by smallholder farmers in Africa has been slow — less than five per cent in most countries. That’s given rise to a debate over whether this approach, which relies on a complex understanding of how soil, water and plants interact, is the answer to productivity issues facing resource-poor farmers who have little education and a pressing need for immediate boosts in yield. In a 2009 study titled Conservation agriculture and smallholder farming in Africa: The heretic’s view, four U.S.-based researchers challenged the notion conservation agriculture is a solution for all sub-Saharan African farmers. In their view, the empirical evidence supporting these campaigns is lacking and contradictory. As well, they argue the claims for the potential of the technology in Africa are based on the experience in the Americas, "where the effects of tillage were replaced by heavy dependence on herbicides and fertilizers."

Yet, "it is actively promoted by international research and development organizations, with such strong advocacy that critical debate is stifled," wrote study authors Ken Giller, Ernst Witter, March Corbeels and Pablo Tittonell. "Concerns include decreased yields often observed with Conservation Agriculture, increased labour requirements when herbicides are not used, an important gender shift of the labour burden to women and a lack of mulch due to poor productivity and due to the priority given to feeding of livestock with crop residues."

Research published in the journal Nature in 2014 concluded that simply eliminating tillage from these systems might actually reduce yields and increase food insecurity. "The common assumption that no-till is going to play a large role in the sustainable intensification of agriculture doesn’t necessarily hold true, according to our research findings," said Cameron Pittelkow, who co-authored the Nature study as a post-doctoral scholar at University of California-Davis. These researchers concluded the only way conservation agriculture works is when it is part of a system that also includes crop rotation and mulches that retain water, suppress weeds and improve soil quality. Those aren’t always available to resource-poor farmers. The authors also pointed out some of the promised benefits, such as increased fertility and weed suppression, take years before they become noticeable.

In January, the Journal of Sustainable Development published an article documenting high abandonment rates of conservation agriculture once NGO support is withdrawn. Some have suspected smallholder farmers who participated in the projects were only there for the free fertilizer, seed and food served on the extension days. But that article also noted persistent adoption was more prevalent among the poor, which "supports claims that Conservation Agriculture is a pro-poor technology."

Chris Woodring, a researcher and small-scale farmer from Kentucky, was assigned to interview 50 farmers across five African countries about their experiences with conservation agriculture, documenting where it is working, where it is not and identifying the challenges smallholders face in adopting the soil-saving methods. Conservation agriculture proponents believe it offers the best opportunity to stave off a looming environmental and human catastrophe in Africa. But the diversity of these farmers, their remote locations and cultural and language barriers make theirs a difficult story to tell. People don’t necessarily measure the success of their farming in yield per hectare or map out their plots with laboratory precision. Rather, it is based on whether their farm produced enough to feed the family from one crop to the next, whether their diets have become more diverse and whether there is enough money to send the kids to school or buy sugar, soap or a cellphone. Understanding the cultural context and why there is a difference between what they say and what they do can also be difficult.

It is hard to find enough of the mulch they use to cover the ground between the rows of maize, especially in the early years. During the dry season, farmers with livestock often allow their cattle to roam freely looking for forage. Landowners have no fences to keep them from eating the mulch. As well, the decaying crop residues attract mice, which brings the "mice-catchers," children who set the field on fire so they can catch the rodents as they flee. Once caught and their entrails removed, the critters are boiled and roasted until they are crispy and consumed as a delicacy. Then there is what one farmer described as the "man problem," a gender-based competition within families over resource allocation. "It is customary here that the husbands are in control of the land, so they are the ones who share a portion for them to practise Conservation Agriculture," an interpreter explained. "Most of them are not interested, because they are not seeing instant benefits, so they just give small portions to their wives, because it is mostly the wives who have adopted the technology."

"In Malawi, food production is done by women, and so you find that food becomes a gender issue. Men would prefer to grow a cash crop where women would like to look after their families. So hunger becomes the main issue for the women,’ said Sain Mskambo, a project officer with the NGO Find Your Feet, based in Mzuzu, Malawi. The tobacco industry began contracting with smallholder farmers here in the early 2000s after large commercial tobacco-producing companies went bankrupt. Farmers are provided with inputs and advance cash payments to tide them over until their crop can be sold. Local extension workers say farmers sometimes don’t get enough from their crop to pay those loans back. But they also say that when prices are good, businesses and the booze halls in the region do a booming trade when the tobacco is sold in May. Cellphones, televisions and new clothes don’t do much for food security, and many of these families still struggle to find enough food to eat during the lean months. But they do bring with them a certain status. Hunger here is often hidden behind a flashy dress shirt. It’s a conundrum for NGOs that have been championing conservation agriculture as a means of improving food security. Helping farmers sustainably produce tobacco isn’t what most donors have in mind when they send cheques to help alleviate poverty and hunger.

Woodring’s work, now completed, reveals interesting patterns. Weeds are by far the biggest challenge for these farmers. Many have started using pesticides, but with mixed results.

"When they use mulching to control weeds or hand-hoeing to control weeds, then that really limits their adoption of conservation agriculture to the amount of labour they have to put the system into practice," Woodring said.

Consistent with the North American experience, pesticides offer a less labour-intensive alternative to hand-weeding, which makes them exceedingly popular with women, who do most of the weeding. But many smallholders can’t afford to buy pesticides, and if they do, they often don’t know how to use them safely. We watched as a young woman wearing no protection measured out the insect killer cypermethrin from a bottle of concentrate into a backpack sprayer to mix. When she donned the backpack sprayer and began spraying a field of cowpeas, most of her skin was exposed. As well, how well these products work depends on rainfall. Farmers can lose their investments — and their crop. That spells hunger. "If you spray and it doesn’t rain for five days, it won’t work," said Wilfred Hamakumba, who has been practising conservation agriculture on his farm near Choma, Zambia, for 13 years.

Woodring heard repeatedly from conservation agriculture farmers that their yields increased, which has improved the quality and quantity of the family diet, as well as their income. That has positive implications for child nutrition, the family’s overall health and access to education. It is an investment that pays off in spades. "I think the potential for CA is somewhat greater than actual adoption," Woodring said Woodring, who has been monitoring the progression of reduced-tillage agriculture across Africa for the past seven years, said the issue isn’t whether conservation agriculture is the right approach, it is how best to make it happen. The more we work the soil conventionally, the worse our soils will become, the less productive they become… With conservation agriculture, your soil improves, it improves dramatically in many cases."

From here

Africa's Agricultural Accumulation of Capital

Countless reports by global and African agencies highlight the critical role for agriculture in African development. Almost all agree that small farmers are key to addressing poverty and food insecurity. But many policies lead in practice to empowerment of agribusiness giants rather than small farmers. By imposing legal frameworks based on Western industrial agriculture, powerful interests make a mockery of international pledges to help small farmers.

Such a policy is described in a report from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and GRAIN:

"The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was launched in 2012 by the eight most industrialised countries to mobilise private capital for investment in African agriculture. To be accepted into the programme, African governments are required to make important changes to their land and seed policies. ... [for example] Despite the fact that more than 80% of all seed in Africa is still produced and disseminated through 'informal' seed systems (on-farm seed saving and unregulated distribution between farmers), there is no recognition in the New Alliance programme of the importance of farmer-based systems of saving, sharing, exchanging and selling seeds."

The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was launched in 2012 by the eight most industrialised countries to mobilise private capital for investment in African agriculture. To be accepted into the programme, African governments are required to make important changes to their land and seed policies. The New Alliance prioritises granting national and transnational corporations (TNCs) new forms of access and control to the participating countries' resources, and gives them a seat at the same table as aid donors and recipient governments. As of July 2014, ten African countries had signed Cooperative Framework Agreements (CFAs) to implement the New Alliance programme. Under these agreements, these governments committed to 213 policy changes. Some 43 of these changes target land laws, with the overall stated objective of establishing "clear, secure and negotiable rights to land" -- tradeable property titles.

The New Alliance also aims to implement both the Voluntary Guidelines (VGs) on Responsible Land Tenure adopted by the Committee on World Food Security in 2012, and the Principles for Responsible Agriculture Investment drawn up by the World Bank, FAO, IFAD and UN Conference on Trade and Development. This is considered especially important since the New Alliance directly facilitates access to farmland in Africa for investors. To achieve this, the New Alliance Leadership Council, a self-appointed body composed of public and private sector representatives, in September 2014 decided to come up with a single set of guidelines to ensure that the land investments made through the Alliance are "responsible" and not land grabs. As to seeds, all of the participating states, with the exception of Benin, agreed to adopt plant variety protection laws and rules for marketing seeds that better support the private sector. Despite the fact that more than 80% of all seed in Africa is still produced and disseminated through 'informal' seed systems (on-farm seed saving and unregulated distribution between farmers), there is no recognition in the New Alliance programme of the importance of farmer-based systems of saving, sharing, exchanging and selling seeds. African governments are being co-opted into reviewing their seed trade laws and supporting the implementation of Plant Variety Protection (PVP) laws. The strategy is to first harmonise seed trade laws such as border control measures, phytosanitary control, variety release systems and certification standards at the regional level, and then move on to harmonising PVP laws. The effect is to create larger unified seed markets, in which the types of seeds on offer are restricted to commercially protected varieties. The age old rights of farmers to replant saved seed is curtailed and the marketing of traditional varieties of seed is strictly prohibited. Concerns have been raised about how this agenda privatises seeds and the potential impacts this could have on small-scale farmers. Farmers will lose control of seeds regulated by a commercial system. There are also serious concerns about the loss of biodiversity resulting from a focus on commercial varieties.

The changes to seed policy being promoted by the G8 New Alliance, the World Bank and others refer to neither farmer-based seed systems nor farmers' rights. They make no effort to strengthen farming systems that are already functioning. Rather, the proposed solutions are simplified, but unworkable solutions to complex situations that will not work -- though an elite category of farmers may enjoy some small short term benefits.With seeds, which represent a rich cultural heritage of Africa's local communities, the push to transform them into income-generating private property, and marginalise traditional varieties, is still making more headway on paper than in practice. This is due to many complexities, one of which is the growing awareness of and popular resistance to the seed industry agenda. But the resolve of those who intend to turn Africa into a new market for global agroinput suppliers is not to be underestimated. The path chosen will have profound implications for the capacity of African farmers to adapt to climate change. Subregional African bodies -- SADC, COMESA, OAPI and the like -- are working to create new rules for the exchange and trade of seeds. But the recipes they are applying -- seed marketing restrictions and plant variety protection schemes -- are borrowed directly from the US and Europe.

While there is a lot of attention focused on the G8's New Alliance for Food and Nutrition, there are many more actors doing many similar things across Africa. The greatest pressure to change land and seed laws comes from Washington DC -- home to the World Bank, USAID and the MCC [Millennium Challenge Corporation]. The World Bank is a significant player in catalysing the growth and expansion of agribusiness in Africa. It does this by financing policy changes and projects on the ground. In both cases, the Bank targets land and seed laws as key tools for advancing and protecting the interests of the corporate sector.

The Bank's work on policy aims at increasing agricultural production and productivity through programmes called "Agriculture Development Policy Operations" (AgDPOs).

Besides financing AgDPOs, the World Bank directly supports agriculture development projects. Some major World Bank projects with land tenure components are presented in Annex 2, with a focus on the legal arrangements developed to make land available for corporate investors. These projects are much more visible than the AgDPOs and their names are well known in each country: PDIDAS in Senegal, GCAP in Ghana, Bagrépole in Burkina.

Most of the initiatives to change current land laws come from outside Africa. Yes, African structures like the African Union and the Pan-African Parliament are deeply engaged in facilitating changes to legislation in African states, but many people question how "indigenous" these processes really are. It is clear that strings are being pulled, by Washington and Europe in particular, to alter land governance in Africa.

There are a host of reports on specific cases of land grabs. A battle is raging for control of resources in Africa -- land, water, seeds, minerals, ores, forests, oil, renewable energy sources. Agriculture is one of the most important theatres of this battle. Governments, corporations, foundations and development agencies are pushing hard to commercialise and industrialise African farming. Many of the key players are well known. They are committed to helping agribusiness become the continent's primary food commodity producer. To do this, they are not only pouring money into projects to transform farming operations on the ground -- they are also changing African laws to accommodate the agribusiness agenda.

Privatising both land and seeds is essential for the corporate model to flourish in Africa. With regard to agricultural land, this means pushing for the official demarcation, registration and titling of farms. It also means making it possible for foreign investors to lease or own farmland on a long-term basis. With regard to seeds, it means having governments require that seeds be registered in an official catalogue in order to be traded. It also means introducing intellectual property rights over plant varieties and criminalising farmers who ignore them. In all cases, the goal is to turn what has long been a commons into something that corporates can control and profit from.

Land certificates -- which should be seen as a stepping stone to formal land titles -- are being promoted as an appropriate way to "securitise" poor peoples' rights to land. But how do we define the term "land securitisation"? As the objective claimed by most of the initiatives dealt with in this report, it could be understood as strengthening land rights. Many small food producers might conclude that their historic cultural rights to land -- however they may be expressed -- will be better recognised, thus protecting them from expropriation. But for many governments and corporations, it means the creation of Western-type land markets based on formal instruments like titles and leases that can be traded. ... So in a world of grossly unequal players, "security" is shorthand for market, private property and the power of the highest bidder. Most of today's initiatives to address land laws, including those emanating from Africa, are overtly designed to accommodate, support and strengthen investments in land and large-scale land deals, rather than achieve equity or to recognise longstanding or historical community rights over land at a time of rising conflicts over land and land resources.

Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is a pan-African platform comprising networks and farmer organisations championing small African family farming based on agro-ecological and indigenous approaches that sustain food sovereignty and the livelihoods of communities. GRAIN is a small international organisation that aims to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

Full story

http://allafrica.com/stories/201502191072.html

Soiled Africa

Neglecting the health of Africa's soil will lock the continent into a cycle of food insecurity for generations to come, a report by the Montpellier Panel has warned. The Montpellier Panel - made up of agricultural, trade and ecology experts from Europe and Africa - warned that land degradation reduced soil fertility, leading to lower crop yields and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

"In Africa, the impacts are substantial where 65% of arable land, 30% of grazing land and 20% of forests are already damaged," it observed. The report said the panel's members believed that soil was the "cornerstone of food security and agricultural development and its care, restoration, enhancement and conservation should intuitively become a major global priority".

Panel chairman Sir Prof Gordon Conway, from Imperial College London, told BBC News: "Serious land degradation accounts for about a quarter of land area of sub-Saharan Africa - it is a vast area," he said. "There are about 180 million people who are living on land that is in some way or another degraded. It is really very severe." The problem threatened food production in a region that was already experiencing very low crop yields, he explained. "The average yield in sub-Saharan Africa is about one tonne per hectare. In India, it is about two-and-a-half tonnes, while in China it is more than three tonnes per hectare. So in Africa, we have the combination of land degradation, poor yields and a growing population."

Prof. Conway described the issue as a "crisis of land degradation and soil management", adding: "We have got to do something about it…Africa already imports US $40bn worth of food each year, it is an enormous amount. If we do not produce more food in Africa, that will get worse and worse, and the continent will suffer as a result. "Secondly, if we do not pay attention to land degradation in Africa then the land itself will continue to degrade and that will further reduce the yields we are getting at the moment. We know what you have to do to improve the quality of soil, but the big challenge is providing the finds and making sure that there are incentives for farmers.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30277514

We need to change to survive climate change

Changes in climate such as higher temperatures and reduced water supplies, along with other factors like biodiversity loss and ecosystems degradation, affect agriculture. According to Science, a leading international research journal, by 2030 Southern Africa and South Asia will be the two regions in the world whose crop production is most affected by climate change. Climate change comes with never-before-experienced impacts. For example, crop yields and growing seasons will decrease even as changing rain patterns will worsen people’s access to water. Yet Africa’s population is projected to reach 2 billion in less than 37 years, and in 86 years three out of every four people added to the planet will be African. That is why experts have warned that if the current situation persists, Africa will be fulfilling only 13% of its food needs by 2050. This situation will further threaten about 65% of African workers who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods including children and the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity. Hunger already affects about 240 million Africans daily. The situation will be dire for children who need proper nourishment to succeed in their education. The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has estimated that African countries could lose between 2% and 16% of gross domestic product due to stunting of children as a result of malnutrition.

Food insecurity will likely lead to social unrest, as has been the case in the past. For example, between 2007 and 2008, riots took place in many countries when prices of staples peaked. In 2010, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Mozambique after wheat prices went up by 25% due to a global wheat shortage. The increase in bread prices led to arson, violence, looting and even deaths.

 The Africa Adaptation Gap Report by the UN Environment Programme, the UN organ responsible for promoting sustainable use of the environment, confirmed the World Bank’s recent findings that with warming of about 2 degrees C, all crop yields across sub-Saharan Africa will decrease by 10% by the 2050s; greater warming (which is more likely) will cause crop yields to decrease by up to 15% or 20%. Further bad news for African agriculture is that by the middle of this century, wheat production could decrease by 17%, maize production by 5%, sorghum production by 15% and millet production by 10%. Additionally, if climate warming exceeds 3 degrees C, all present-day cropping areas for maize, millet and sorghum will be unsuitable for those crops. In the coming years, water for agriculture will be stretched to a painful extent. In Africa, 95% of agriculture relies on rainfall for water, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The World Bank notes it is very likely that by 2020 the total availability of blue and green water (from rains and rivers) in all of Africa could decline by more than 10%.

 Africa needs an approach that works with nature, not against it. The most pessimistic forecast about the impact of climate change suggests that Africa may lose 47% of agricultural revenue by 2100, while the most optimistic predicts a loss of only 6%. The latter scenario depends on the assumption that climate change adaptation practices and infrastructure are already in place. But the difference between 6% and 47% is huge.

There is a continuing argument as to whether the industrial agricultural revolution will solve some or all of Africa’s climate change problems. However, experts maintain that industrial agriculture currently accounts for one third of all greenhouse gas emissions—the very element most responsible for climate change. Additionally, they believe that the resources and infrastructure required to operate an industrial agricultural system in Africa are impractical for smallholder farmers. New machines also mean fewer hands, which may increase joblessness while reducing wages, affecting many who depend on agriculture. Because current practices cannot meet future demands, Africa must apply new and better approaches.

One of the options being advocated is the ecosystem-based adaptation,, which is to mitigate climate change impact through the use natural systems such as drought-resistant varieties, more efficient methods of water storage and more diversity in crop rotation, says UNEP. In Zambia, 61% of farmers who applied an ecosystem-based adaptation, such as natural resource conservation or sustainable organic agricultural practices, reported surplus yields. Some yields even increased by up to 60%, while sales of surplus crops grew from 25.9% to 69%. In Burkina Faso, farmers are using indigenous methods to rehabilitate land. By digging small pits (locally referred to as zaï) on barren plots and filling them with organic matter, some Burkinabe farmers are able to add nutrients to the soil while enhancing groundwater storage to improve crop productivity. These farmers have reclaimed 200,000 to 300,000 hectares of degraded lands and have produced an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 additional tonnes of cereal.

Other options include protecting watersheds and reinforcing their capacity to hold water and carry it to those who need it most; using integrated pest management, which is a natural and cost-effective way of protecting crops; using agroforestry, intercropping and crop rotation, which bring nutrient diversity to fields and ensure continued and improved production yields in a natural way; maintaining forests and using forest foods; using natural fertilizers like manure; and using natural pollinators like bees, which, according to a recent study, could increase fruit yields by 5%.

 Building on such good practices, and properly managing the unavoidable effects of climate change, will unlock Africa’s potential to feed itself. The future need not be a future of want.

http://www.spyghana.com/despite-climate-change-africa-can-feed-africa/

Kenya's Drought and Food Shortage

In 2003, Kenya was among the 53 African countries who signed the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme to accelerate growth and reduce mass poverty, food insecurity and hunger in Africa by allocating at least 10 percent of their national budget to agriculture. Oxfam International statistics show that only nine countries have met this threshold. In the 2012/13 financial year, the agricultural budget was 3.6 percent of the national budget, far below the 10 percent threshold. To bridge the gap, there has been an increased donor participation in the agricultural sector, according to ActionAid International Kenya. Yet the ministry of agriculture has been unable to utilise the funds; only 61 percent of its budget from the previous financial year was spent.

According to the regional Drought Management Authority, lower Mukurweini in Kenya has only been receiving 200 mm of annual rainfall, which has resulted in a dire food shortage. But Mukurweini is not the only region in the midst of drought and food shortages. Arid areas are the most affected, particularly Turkana County in Rift Valley Province, where half of the residents – about 400,000 people – are facing starvation.

The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) says that in total at least one quarter of the 41 million people in this East African nation lack sufficient food and 1.7 million are under threat of hunger and starvation. According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, aside from a few areas, no part of the country is food secure as this season’s harvest of maize – the country’s staple food – was not enough to feed the nation. The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations says the country is short of about 10 million bags of maize and warned that the drought is expected to reach its peak in August.

Agricultural researchers like Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango have blamed an over reliance on rain-fed agriculture for the shortage. According to the ministry of agriculture, less than seven percent of cropped land here is under irrigation and the government’s plan to place half a million hectares under irrigation, particularly in arid and semi-arid areas, has not made sufficient progress.
Abukutsa-Onyango, professor of horticulture at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, told IPS that in the arid Turkana County for instance, “the Todonyang irrigation scheme project, which was launched in 2009 and was meant to put 12,000 hectares of land under irrigation for agricultural production to solve food insecurity in the arid North Eastern Province, seems to have stalled.”
It’s a sad development as last September, the government discovered an estimated 250 billion cubic metres of freshwater – enough to supply the country for 70 years - in Turkana County.

Abukutsa-Onyango added that there was also too much focus on maize as a staple crop.
“We are not growing other crops such as sorghum, finger millet, arrow roots, yams and bambara nuts as well as indigenous fruits and vegetables which can grow easily in many parts of the country, creating alternative sources of food,” she said. Although KARI received less than one percent of the national budget, the research institute has continued to release a variety of drought-resistant crops. But these have had low adoptive rates among farmers because, Abukutsa-Onyango said, “the cost of hybrid seeds is beyond the reach of most farmers.”

Food security expert Winnie Mapenzi told IPS that small-scale farmers, who produce three-quarters of the country’s food, have been unable to produce enough to feed the nation due to various challenges.
“They have little access to inputs and financial services, and poor infrastructure,” she said, explaining that this meant that smallholder farmers were unable to access markets to sell any surplus harvest. It also meant, she said, that they had “poor storage facilities which result in after-harvest losses.

Tanzania's Land Wars

Tanzania has approximately 21 million head of cattle, the largest number in Africa after Ethiopia and Sudan. According to the ministry of livestock and fisheries development, livestock contributes to at least 30 percent of agricultural GDP.

Tanzania's ministry for agriculture, food security and cooperatives says that small-scale farmers produce more than 90 percent of the country's food. Of the country's 94.5 million hectares, only half - 44 million hectares - is arable land.

 Of Tanzania's 42 million people, only 0.02 percent have traditional land ownership titles.

The disputes over land and water have also caused food insecurity among farmers, many of whom have been unable to harvest crops for fear of reprisals from enraged pastoralists.

On January 12, 2014, ten people were killed in Kiteto district in central Tanzania when Maasai pastoralists allegedly invaded villages in the disputed Embroi Murtangosi forest reserve and set homes ablaze. in December 2000 in Kilosa district, in the Morogoro region, where 38 farmers were killed. Hostilities reignited in 2008 and eight people were killed, several houses set alight and livestock stolen.

Experts say that these resource-based conflicts are also fuelled by ethnic hatred, dwindling resources, poor land management and population growth.

Yefred Myenzi, a researcher from the Land Rights Research and Resources Institute known locally as HakiArdhi, said that most of the fighting over land was the indirect result of decisions and actions taken by the state through its various agencies. "We have seen the influx of investors who take swathes of land to start commercial farming ranching or mining activities, in the process triggering conflicts with local people who are evicted from their land without due process," he added. He blamed the existing land tenure system for sidelining pastoral communities, since no land has been set aside for them. "Although land laws require every village to have in place a land use plan, many villages are yet to implement this due to conflict," he said.

Henry Mahoo, professor of agricultural engineering at Tanzania's Sokoine University of Agriculture, said that in order to resolve tensions between the two groups, a land use plan, which would clearly identify areas under pastoralists' ownership and those controlled by farmers, should be drawn up. "The problem [behind] these clashes is deeper than we think. All concerned parties must be involved in the negotiation process, and there must be a forum where farmers and pastoralists openly talk about their problems," he said.

Meshack Saidimu, a Maasai pastoralist in Mbalali, said that most of the disputes occurred because the government had not set aside areas for pastoralists. "I think we are being made scapegoats for all these problems. The Maasai are disciplined people, they don't just hurt somebody for the sake of it," he said.

Tapping into Africa's potential

 Africa’s expansive dry lands if harnessed sustainably could offer lasting solution to food, water and energy crises in the continent, the UN Dry lands Ambassador Dennis Garrity said. An estimated two thirds of Africa’s land mass is either arid or semi arid and its vast ecological treasures has the potential to transform livelihoods alongside accelerating low carbon development.

Garrity regretted that governments in Africa have given lip service to pastoralism yet it has potential to boost food security.

Seventeen African countries have  scaled up ever- green agriculture that integrates water harvesting, agro-forestry and bio-fortification to sustain food production.

“Climate smart agriculture underpins sustainable use of dry lands to enhance resilience among communities. Millions of African small holders have adopted effective and low cost land regeneration techniques,” said Garrity.

He noted that Kenya ranks among African countries that have established bold policies to regenerate dry lands and ensure communities are food secure.

“Kenya has a progressive policy to achieve 10 percent tree cover on farms. In the lower eastern Kibwezi region, small holders have scaled up rain water harvesting through terracing and planting the right tree species in the farms to capture water,” Garrity said.

He noted that 80 percent of Kenya’s dry land mass has a huge economic potential and could as well be used as carbon sink.

Malawi's Farmers Say No To Government Decisions

Lilongwe (Malawi), 18 August 2013

Peoples Dialogue, Via Campesina, the Rural Women Assembly, together with other movements, have met for two days, and came out with alternative practical solutions to end rural poverty and promote people-driven development in the Southern Africa Development Community region (SADC). These alternative solutions on issues that affect directly lives of the small-scale farmers and rural women movements from across the region were handed over to representatives of the Heads of SADC states on Saturday.

The SADC Heads of States gathered in Lilongwe, Malawi, at their 33rd ordinary Summit, from 16th to 17th August 2013.

The President of Malawi and incoming SADC chairperson, Joyce Banda, highlighted in her opening speech that agriculture and free movement of people will be priorities during her term, however, she also emphasized a focus on agribusiness . The statement of Joyce Banda tacitly implies that the very same model, which has been taking away peoples’ sovereignty and control over their seeds and food production systems, will be promoted in SADC and will provide more opportunities for GMO seeds to further penetrate  into the region. Such a false solution to food crisis in the SADC and Africa, imposed from above, will only worsen the situation.

Small-scale producers and the rural women know that programmes such as the Green Revolution, the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the G8-New Alliance for Food Security & Nutrition are and will continue to destroy peasants if they sit back and allow Government Heads to make decisions on their behalf. In countries such as Mozambique land grabbing by the “profit before people” investors, continues unabated with the blessing and cooperation of the government (e.g. ProSavana for Soya beans, agro-fuels and other export crops). Land grabbing of perceived “idle” and “underutilized” land must be stopped and investments, which are pro-poor, environmentally and ecologically should be promoted.

Thus, in the document delivered to the SADC Heads of States, farmers’ movements have demanded a GMO free SADC and that companies such as Monsanto and ProSavana MUST get out of Africa. The SADC governments should subsidize sustainable peasant agriculture production systems and develop local markets for their produce and be linked to home industries, thus creating employment for both rural and urban populations, if inclusive development is to be achieved.

The small-scale farmers and rural women from the region had an opportunity to meaningfully engage, share information and farming materials, with their Malawian counterparts during a farmers exchange field visit in Lilongwe South, organised by the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (NASFAM). They witnessed how the local small farmers organized the production and market systems of rice and groundnuts, which have evolved and became integral to their community livelihoods, including employment creation through value-addition processes.  This is a testimony that clearly illustrates that the small-scale farmers can produce food and contribute to wider development nationally if their social and economic endeavours are supported.

The SADC must implement the commitments of the Maputo declaration NOW and Food Sovereignty must be adopted as a policy by all SADC countries. Gender equity, particularly rural women and youths’ rights, control and access to arable land and natural resources must be enshrined in our countries’ constitutions and community ownership of natural resources should be promoted. Moreover, an integrated SADC mining charter to guide investment and stifle intra-competition by regional governments should be developed that would put an end to over-exploitation of mineral resources and labour within the region.

from farmlandgrab

GMO?

Growing GM crops to sell is currently legal in only four countries in the region: Egypt, Sudan, Burkina Faso and South Africa. Uganda is the latest country to consider a bill to allow GM crops.

Scientists, farmers and international organizations are pressuring governments to relax restrictions on the technology. They argue that engineered crops have the potential to alleviate some of the grave threats to food production, from plant diseases to climate change.

80 percent of Ugandans grow at least some of their own food, and depend on their own harvests for their livelihood. And so more people are vulnerable to the weather and pests. GM crops might be more reliable than what Ugandans currently plant.

Each Ugandan eats about 1 pound of the fruit per day, on average. Bananas are the main source of starch in Uganda and many homes have banana trees. They are more important than wheat. But in the past decade, bacterial wilt disease has been cutting banana yields by 30 to 50 percent in some regions of Uganda. There are no pesticides or chemicals to stop the banana disease. But scientists at Uganda's National Agricultural Research Organization have engineered a bacteria-resistant version of the banana by putting a pepper gene into the plant. The scientists want to give away the GM banana for free to millions of Ugandan families.

The same with a transgenic virus-resistant cassava, a crop that may be more important for protecting families against famine than bananas.  The starchy cassava tuber is the go-to crop  when the cupboard is bare. It's resistant to drought, poor soils and climate change.

Cassava and bananas can both grow from clippings. So there's little risk of private corporations controlling the seed supplies for GM cassava or banana, like they do for corn and soybeans in the U.S.

Farmers are worried about the power to control the seeds. Farmers have been told that the GMOs are almost the same as non-GMOs. But they would have to go to a company to buy the seeds. Many farmers can't afford expensive seeds. They would have no rights. Many farm organically, without pesticides and fertilizers. But some GMOs encourage the use of extensive pesticides. These can damage other organisms, such as bees and could affect the fish population.

 Most of the people promoting the GMOs have a conflict of interest. Many foreign companies, like Monsanto, have funded the research on GMOs. They are not in a position to give an unbiased opinion on whether GMOs are good or not. Monsanto et al are unhappy with that closed market.

FAO research has identified approximately 250,000 plant species out of an estimated 300,000-500,000 in existence. Of that, about 30,000 are edible, and of these about 7000 plants and an additional 700 animal species have been used throughout the world’s history as food. Today, however, only 3 plants (wheat, rice, and maize) provide more than half of the global plant-derived energy. If we add six more crops (sorghum, millet, potatoes, sweet potatoes, soya beans, and sugar (cane or beet)) we cover 75% of the world’s energy. And, if we go a bit further, it is estimated that 95% of the world’s energy now comes from only 30 crops.

Will GMOs protect against empty bellies? Socialist Banner has no confidence in that claim. Hunger is caused by empty wallets and purses.

Food for the rich

East Africa was hit by its worst drought in half a century last year, leaving millions of people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia hungry and triggering an outpouring of emergency aid from the European Union and other major donors. Yet while relief workers fought to avert a drought-induced famine in Africa, packets of Kenyan green beans and avocados and buckets of decorative flowers from Ethiopia were available in European markets.

“It’s easier to know the demands of the market in Europe than we do in our own neighbourhood,” said Mohamed Ibn Chambas, who heads the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, known as the ACP, which works with the EU to coordinate trade and development assistance. “In a particular [African] region you can have an acute shortage of goods, whereas next door you can have a bumper crop,” Chambas said.

The south-north food flow has created willing foreign markets for African farmers, while home-grown goods aren’t getting to other Africans who are surviving on international relief aid flown in during food shortages.

The EU imports 40% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s agricultural exports – including nuts, fresh-cut flowers, tea, coffee, citrus fruits and vegetables

“It is difficult to imagine the sense in the system, because when we import, say, green beans from Kenya, we’re taking imbedded water from a drought-prone country, and then we’re putting into our supermarkets, into our fridges and then we’re throwing it way uneaten...But equally, when you talk to governments down there they say, ‘we need the money’. ” Tim Benton, a University of Leeds professor of population ecology said.

With nearly half of the more than 800 million Sub-Saharan Africans living below the UN’s poverty line of less than $1.25 per day, farming is seen as a way to providing lucrative exports of food and biofuel crops.

Africa can feed its people

Africa could feed itself if trade restrictions were reduced and fertile land was put to good use, according to the World Bank.

Just 5% of African cereal imports come from other African countries, it said. “The potential to increase agricultural production in Africa is enormous,” the bank said in the report. “Yields for many crops are a fraction of what farmers elsewhere in the world are achieving and output could easily increase two to three times if farmers were to use updated seeds and technologies.”

 "Too often borders get in the way of getting food to homes and communities which are struggling with too little to eat," said Makhtar Diop, World Bank vice-president for Africa.

Maize and the market

In a warehouse in the centre of one of Zambia’s farming districts, several kilometres away from Lusaka, thousands of bags of maize are stacked. All maize is rotten and will be destroyed. This destruction of food is a calamity for a country where the UN estimates 64 percent of its people are still incapable of placing two meals on the table. In Zambia, the average rural farmer is estimated to survive on less than US$2 (K10,000) per day.

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of maize are rotting away or being destroyed. Zambia simply does not have enough storage facilities nor is there an adequate road network to transport maize.

Vice-President Guy Scott recently said: “We have two million tonnes of maize against storage facilities that are meant for 300,000 tonnes of maize, so with poor storage, it gets rotten.” Even schools have reportedly been converted into makeshift warehouses to deal with the overflow.

A problem are the Government subsidies, a programme which provides cheap fertiliser to maize farmers and a government policy to then buy the crop at above-market rates. Zambia moved to increase its food production back in 2004 following a hugely problematic food crisis in 2002. Further hit by the spike in world food prices in 2008 when the cost of maize increased by more than 100 percent compared to 2006, the government again sought to increase production. The new government has continued to subsidise maize production Government subsidies, introduced by the late President Levy Mwanawasa around 2004 to ensure the country grew enough of its own food, have encouraged farmers to boost their maize production. The policy has been so successful that the country has turned itself from an importer of food to an exporter.

But the subsidies are also aimed at reducing poverty, and by this measurement, many argue they have failed.  The World Bank urged the Zambian government to stop subsidising the maize crop, saying it was unsustainable long-term and not addressing the core problem – feeding the poor.
“Current maize prices encourage mono cropping at the expense of crop diversification. Job creation through economic diversification, which is the goal of this government, is unlikely to be achieved if government pursues the same policy in the agricultural sector as that of the previous government. This old policy has not resulted in significant reduction in rural poverty and job creation...Lower prices will not only reduce the cost of living for the poorer Zambians but will also benefit the livestock industry. Low prices will also contribute to the development of a sustainable maize export business, which will allow Zambia to become the bread basket in the region.” Zambian maize bought above market value at about US$12 for a 50kg bag (US$300 per tonne) meant it off loads onto the local and export market at a loss.

Zambia has nearly 1.5m smallholder farmers. It is this rural population that makes up the majority of the country’s poor. But the study shows that the smallest farmers, those farming less than one hectare, increased their maize the least, by an average of just three 50kg bags. The farmers that benefited the most from subsidised fertilizer were those that farmed over five hectares. It is the same with the government’s policy of buying maize at a premium – as two thirds of smallholder farmers do not sell their maize crop there are few that benefit from this government handout. Money spent subsidising farming would be much better spent on other things targeted at the rural poor. With the same amount of money more than 50 new high schools could be constructed and 10,000 more teachers employed. The number of health workers could be doubled for instance.

Source

Is this really the future for Africa farming?

“Basically this is disaster capitalism. The disaster of hunger and drought, climate change and policy-related, is now a profit opportunity for Monsanto and Syngenta..." Joan Baxter, a journalist who has spent years reporting on climate change and agriculture in Africa. Baxter sees a problem in how GM technology is being marketed, and slowly introduced, into African countries, under the guise of ending famine. With climate change becoming an increasingly influential factor in the GM debate, Baxter said companies claiming to help are only looking for profit. "The farmers [in Africa] may lose their own seeds, perhaps be given GM seeds for a year or two, then have to purchase them and be stuck in the trap and in debt,” she said.

In recent years, donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have invested millions of dollars into researching, developing and promoting genetically modified (GM) technology, including drought-resistant maize, within the country — and have found a great deal of success in doing so through partnerships with local NGOs and government bodies. Researchers and lobbyists argue that in a country so frequently stricken by food shortages, scientific advancements can put food into hungry bellies. Drought-resistant seeds and vitamin-enriched crops could be agricultural game changers, they say.

The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), a semi-autonomous government research institution, recently announced that after years of trials, genetically modified drought-resistant maize seeds will be available to Kenyan farmers within the next five years. Trial GM drought-resistant cotton crops are already growing in Kidoko, 240 miles southeast of Nairobi. African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), a massive NGO working on GM research and development in partnership with KARI, Regulatory Affairs Manager Dr. Francis Nang’ayo says GM crops are “substantially equivalent” to non-genetically modified foods and should be embraced as a solution to persistent drought and hunger. AATF received a $47 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This partnership involved the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and American seed giant Monsanto. Gates Foundation claim that biotechnology and GM crops would help end poverty and food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Gates Foundation had invested $27.6 million in Monsanto shares. Until 2008, South Africa had been the only country using GM technology. Now Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Mali, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Ghana are researching GM seeds and growing trial crops of cotton, maize and sorghum.

Monsanto-patented seeds are usually costly, which has led to numerous accusations of exploitation and contemporary colonialism. But how long will these particular strains of seeds last? What are the guarantees? Critics fear dependence on corporate fertilizers and pesticides, the emergence of super-weeds and pests that can no longer repel GM varieties, and terminator seeds that only last for one planting season.

AGRA Watch, a project of the Community Alliance for Global Justice, director Heather Day said  “Genetically modified crops actually haven’t been that successful,” Day added. “We’ve seen massive crop failure in South Africa, and farmers there couldn’t get financial remedies or compensation for their losses. There’s genetic resistance and super-pests, these things are happening now, and it’s not surprising. It’s what you would expect from an ecological standpoint."

In India, for example, farmers who purchased Bollgard I cotton seeds from 2007 to 2009 wound up spending four times the price of regular seeds, and paying dearly for it. It was believed that Monsanto’s patented GM seeds would be resistant to pink bollworms, which were destroying cotton crops across swaths of India, but by 2010 Monsanto officials were forced to admit that the seed had failed and a newer breed of far more aggressive pests had emerged. The solution? Bollgard II, an even stronger GM cotton seed. As of December 2011, Monsanto was actively promoting the latest Bollgard III cotton seed, stronger than ever before. Pesticide spending in India skyrocketed between 2007 and 2009, forcing thousands of farmers into crushing debt, and hundreds more into giving up their land. Some media outlets later drew a connection between the Bollgard debacle and a rash of suicides across farms that had purchased the seeds.

Agriculture dominates Kenya’s economy, although more than 80 percent of its land is too dry and infertile for efficient cultivation. Kenya is the second largest seed consumer in sub-Saharan Africa, and Nairobi is a well-known hub for agricultural research. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, farming is the largest contributor to Kenya’s gross domestic product, and 75 percent of Kenyans made their living by farming in 2006. Half of the country’s total agricultural output is non-marketed subsistence production — meaning farms where nothing (or very little) is sold and everything is consumed.

Kenya is a country where land-grabbing is all too common, be it on the coast to make way for new tourist resorts, or in Nairobi, where slum demolitions left hundreds homeless when the government bulldozed several apartment buildings to reclaim an area near the Moi Air Base.

Farmers here are skeptical of risking everything for a few seasons of higher yields.

Anne Maina, advocacy coordinator for the African Biodiversity Network (ABN), a coalition of 65 Kenyan farming organizations, said “Our public research institutions must shift their focus back to farmers’ needs,” she told The Indypendent, “rather than support the agenda of agribusiness, which is to colonize our food and seed chain. We believe that the patenting of seed is deeply unethical and dangerous.” Added to the potential problems with GM technology are health risks—the strains of maize that were illegally imported in 2010 had been deemed unsafe for children and the elderly. Maina also worries about animal feeding trials that showed damage to liver, kidney and pancreas, effects on fertility, and stomach bleeding in livestock that has consumed GM feed. A more recent study carried out on pregnant women in Canada found genetically modified insecticidal proteins in their blood streams and in that of their unborn children, despite assurances from scientists that it wasn’t possible. “Our key concern is that the development of insecticides and pesticides is primarily the emergence of companies getting farmers to buy highly toxic chemicals, which they will become totally dependent on. We don’t yet know the extent of the health risks posed, nor how we are expected to trust companies that have a record of putting small farmers out of business. It is time for sober second thought,” she said.

At the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in Toronto, researchers recently released a report titled “Factors in the adoption and development of agro-biotechnology in sub-Saharan Africa.”  and came to the conclusion that “poor communication is affecting agbiotech adoption,” and that “widespread dissemination of information at the grassroots level and can spread misinformation and create extensive public concern and distrust for agbiotech initiatives.” The report was financed by a grant by the Gates Foundation.

http://www.alternet.org/world/155376/frankenfoods%3A_why_is_the_gates_foundation_helping_monsanto_push_genetically_modified_food/?page=entire

Not profitting from farming

If growing up in an agricultural community were the key to health, the children of Kiamwangi would be thriving. While the farms grow fresh fruits and vegetables for export, health centers continue to treat diseases related to nutritional deficiency. Malnourishment causes stunting, a reduced growth rate. Data from the 2009 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey indicate that nationally, 35 percent of children under five are stunted, while 14 percent are severely stunted.

Jane Hunyu, who farms a quarter-acre plot here, says the children in her region are nearly as frail as their grandparents. "Children are malnourished," says Hunyu. "Recently, we are also seeing increasing cases of diabetes." She concludes that the children's families cannot afford the produce they harvest with their own hands. It's a dilemma facing millions of agricultural workers in Africa, and few know any other way of life. Hunyu also noticed that many small-scale farmers had started growing crop varieties like those produced by big commercial farms. "This required us to buy fertilizers, pesticides and other farm inputs to ensure a good harvest," says Hunyu, a mother of two. "But the crops started failing due to erratic rainfall and many farmers were left desperate."

Globally, a recent report from the Save the Children charity estimated that half a billion children could grow up physically and mentally stunted over the next 15 years because of poor diet. Most of these children live in developing countries where key food groups such as meat, milk and vegetables are becoming increasingly unaffordable for the poor.

"Kenyans should start reaching out to traditional staple foods such as finger millet, because our studies show that they are richer in nutrients for both mothers and children," says Clement Kamau, a researcher with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. Researchers are rallying behind this shift for an important reason. They say that historically these varieties have been considered the 'poor man's crops' such as sorghum.


http://allafrica.com/stories/201203270004.html

The "new oil"

With food expected to become the “new oil” of the 21st century, the Standard Bank Group says Africa’s agricultural output is set for explosive growth in the coming decade.

According to a research analyst at the South African-based bank, Simon Freemantle, “There could be a doubling in African agricultural output within the next decade.”

“In China, home to 20% of the world’s population and less than 8% of its arable land, total cropland is expected to decline from 135-million hectares today, to 129-million ha in 2020. Almost half of China’s cities face water shortages. Other areas in the emerging world are even more pressed. In 2011, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia were ranked as three of the four most water stressed nations in the world. Already, Gulf States import around 60% of their food, and natural water reserves are able to support only 30 more years of agricultural production.”

“Given these threats, attention is increasingly turning to Africa. It is estimated that over 60% of the world’s available and unexploited cropland is in Sub-Saharan Africa. Of Sudan’s 105-million ha of cultivable land, only 16% (or 16.6-million ha) had been cultivated by 2009. A similar ratio is evident in the DRC, where less than 10% of the country’s 80-million ha of cultivable land has been cultivated. The Congo River Basin alone holds 23% of Africa’s irrigation potential, with the Nile River Basin holding a further 19%,” he said.