News brief

Famine threatens southern Africa

Joint missions by the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation have confirmed that up to 13 million people in southern Africa face starvation unless emergency food aid can reach them. The missions, conducted in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Zambia have assessed this year's harvests of maize and other food crops, and found that in many areas supplies are already low. Around 4 million tonnes of food will need to be imported over the next year to meet the minimum needs of the population, and the FAO/WFP called on donor governments to respond to the crisis quickly and generously.

In Zimbabwe, it is estimated that over 5 million rural and urban people will need emergency food aid by August this year. The country is experiencing the longest dry spell in 20 years, combined with reduced grain production from the country's commercial farms, which normally supply one third of Zimbabwe's cereals. In Lesotho, a second year of severe weather, including heavy rainfall, frost, hailstorms and tornadoes have contributed to a second successive poor grain harvest, 60% lower than normal years. According to the FAO/WFP report, "agriculture faces a catastrophic future; crop production is declining and could cease altogether over large tracts of Lesotho if steps are not taken to reverse soil erosion, degradation and the decline in soil fertility."

Back to Headlines

Russian land reform

The biggest mass of farmland on the planet, worth $100,000 billion is for sale. The Russian parliament passed the bill for land reform legislation despite strong opposition from the Communist party. President Putin insists that land reform is essential to persuade investors to develop big, efficient farms. By owning land, farmers will be able to obtain credit for farm improvements, machinery, fertilizer and other inputs which, it is hoped, will give a much needed boost to productivity. Foreigners will not be allowed to buy land in Russia but may rent in some regions. The government has said there will be strict controls over how land is sold and used but many are concerned that the corruption associated with land sales in the 1990s may be repeated. The reform is significant, not only for Russian farmers and the Russian economy but, in the longer term, for its impact on world markets.

Back to Headlines

Record harvest - record hunger

In Argentina, soy harvests have reached record levels, but so has food insecurity, according to a recent Greenpeace case study. Since the introduction of genetically engineered (GE) soy in 1996, the area of soy cultivation in the country has nearly doubled, and the annual harvest has reached 30 million tonnes, much of this exported as livestock feed. However, according to the Greenpeace study, the period has also seen the concentration of land into far fewer hands. Small and medium sized farms disappeared in record numbers during the late 1990s, and large numbers of people have been displaced from rural livelihoods. According to official figures food insecurity in Argentina has risen such that 18 million people, roughly half the population, are unable to meet their basic needs.

"One of the great promises made by the GE industry is that GE crops will help to feed the world but experience in Argentina points to exactly the opposite conclusion," said Emiliano Ezcurra of Greenpeace Argentina, speaking in Rome during the World Food Summit.

Back to Headlines

Britain pledges more aid for Africa

British aid to Africa will increase to £1 billion per year by 2006, according to a statement made by Tony Blair to aid organisations. The announcement came on the eve of the G8 summit in Canada, and was seen as an attempt to put pressure on other rich-country governments to follow suit. Part of the increased aid will be targeted at health, education, conflict prevention and improved governance. Leaders at the summit confirmed an additional $1 billion in debt relief to Africa, and also established a mechanism to monitor the progress of a further aid commitment made at Monterrey earlier this year. The Monterrey agreement pledges up to £8 billion of aid to developing countries, half of which Britain would like to see going to Africa although this will depend on African governments being able to demonstrate that they are sufficiently well-governed to qualify. Mr. Blair described the summit's commitment to debt relief as a 'significant uplift' for the continent.

Back to Headlines

The end of the road for rinderpest?

Animal health workers operating in war-afflicted southern Sudan are increasingly confident that rinderpest, also known as cattle plague, has finally been eradicated from the area. The extreme south east of Sudan had been one of the last reservoirs of rinderpest on the continent, and reports had suggested it was present in the herds of at least two pastoralist tribes in the area. However, following an intensive vaccination campaign, the chances of the disease persisting are thought to be very small. Despite close monitoring, no clinical evidence of rinderpest in southern Sudan has been found for over a year.

The success of the vaccination campaign, called Operation Lifeline Sudan, has been remarkable. While civil war has restricted the role of veterinary staff, non-government organisations working in the area have used community-based programmes to distribute vaccines and syringes. Southern Somalia now remains the most critical area of rinderpest infection in Africa, with cattle exports from the region to Yemen creating a risk of wider spread. Officials from the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme are concerned that as the number of affected areas declines, eradication from remaining areas will be seen as having low priority, and support for the campaign may falter.

Back to Headlines

Tomatoes could help to fight mosquitoes and cancer

An entomologist from North Carolina State University has recently patented an insect repellent based on tomato protein. Michael Roe realised the potential for a tomato-based repellent while studying other proteins that can kill mosquito larvae. Seeing the similarity of the proteins to those found in tomato stems, he tested stem extract and found it to be just as effective as DEET at repelling the adult insects. It outperforms other non-toxic repellents such as citronella, and is also effective against ticks.

And scientists from Purdue University and the US Department of Agriculture have inadvertently developed a tomato with three times the normal amount of lycopene, a cancer-fighting antioxidant. The increased lycopene is an unintended by-product from work to develop genetically-modified tomatoes that ripen later, for use in food processing. The discovery provides a new example of how genetic technology may be used to make foods more nutritious.

Back to Headlines

Tobacco and trees to clean up TNT

Transgenic tobacco plants, with an added gene for a bacterial enzyme, have been shown to decontaminate soil polluted with the explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT). TNT pollution is widespread not only from the manufacture of explosives but also through its use in the chemical industry. Both TNT and its natural breakdown products are highly toxic to humans, animals and plants. The bacterial enzyme breaks TNT down to harmless compounds.

Tobacco has been used as a model system but Dr Neil Bruce, of the Cambridge Institute of Biotechnology, is now developing transgenic poplar trees with the clean-up enzyme, which he thinks could be in widespread use within five to ten years. Fast-growing poplars are expected to be able to decontaminate land fast enough to make their use commercially viable. It would certainly be much cheaper than the only proven TNT decontamination technique in use today, heat treatment, which costs around $ 800 per tonne of soil. Low capital and operational costs and high levels of public acceptance together with the huge diversity of enzymes available, make 'phyto-remediation' using trees increasingly attractive, particularly to the developing world.

Back to Headlines

Modified maize?

Researchers from Rutgers University in the USA have improved the quality of maize so that it contains more methionine-rich protein. Methionine is one of the essential amino acids that our bodies are unable to synthesise. Although it is present in meat and other protein-rich foods, it is often lacking in maize or bean-based diets. Improving the methionine content could also save farmers the considerable sums they spend each year on methionine supplements for maize-fed animals.

The Rutgers scientists took the maize plant's own gene for a protein that is rich in methionine and altered the DNA on either side to boost production and then inserted this modified gene back into maize. They claim this is likely to present fewer safety issues than adding foreign genes. The arguments continue as to whether or not methionine-rich maize should be classified as a GMO.

Back to Headlines

Endowment to support global seed collections

Collections of plant genetic material across the world, many of which struggle for finance from year to year, may need to struggle less in future, thanks to a proposed new endowment fund. The fund, being established by a partnership that includes the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the 16 Future Harvest centres, will be used to support national agricultural genebanks and their staff, many of which have suffered declining support in recent years. The endowment partners are seeking to raise US$260 million in order to establish the fund, which is intended to protect agricultural bio-diversity, regarded as vital to future crop breeding and development. The announcement of the new fund was made at the FAO's World Food Summit in Rome, and will support a number of international agreements on plant protection, such as the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which has been signed by about 40 countries.

And those who use the Internet to search for information on agriculture and development may benefit from another joint venture. A new 'Info Finder' research tool has been launched by the Future Harvest centres in partnership with the FAO's World Agricultural Information Centre, which links information produced by the centres on a single network. The search tool can be accessed at infofinder.cgiar.org.

Back to Headlines

Chilean herb source of new insecticides

A small, yellow-flowered herb found in the Chilean highlands could provide the essential ingredients for a new generation of commercial insecticides based on natural compounds. The herb, Calceolaria andina, naturally produces the compounds, known as naphthoquinones, to protect it from insect attack. Naphthoquinones are effective against a wide range of pests including some, such as the 'B' biotype of the tobacco whitefly, which are resistant to most commonly used insecticides. The compounds are active against both egg and adult stages of whitefly, yet are harmless to some beneficial insects such as ladybirds, and toxicity to mammals is low. They could be produced botanically, which would be an advantage in countries lacking an established chemical industry, or synthetically.

The insecticides have been developed at the Institute of Arable Crop Research (IACR) in the UK and at least two commercially viable compounds, named BTG 514 and 522 by the British Technology Group, which is working with IACR to promote naphthoquinones, have already been identified.

Back to Headlines

Taking out tsetse and tryps

Control of trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in cattle) has been promised co-ordinated support by four leading international organisations: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The two areas to be targeted by the Programme Against African Trypanosomiasis (PAAT) and the Pan-African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Campaigns (PATTEC), are the so-called 'cotton belt', which straddles Mali and Burkina Faso, and has great potential for mixed arable and livestock farming, and an area in the southern Rift Valley of Ethiopia, where rural livelihoods are under extreme pressure from tsetse-related diseases.

This joint initiative will support an 'area-wide integrated pest management' approach to tsetse control. This will combine proven anti-tsetse agricultural practices with targeted and selected use of chemicals to confine and then reduce tsetse populations. Numbers may then be reduced still further, potentially to the point of elimination, by using SIT (the Sterile Insect Technique) which has proved successful in Zanzibar. In addition to the control of tsetse flies, the PAAT initiative will also support other measures to improve socio-economic development and human health in areas currently infested by tsetse.

Back to Headlines

Call to phase out Paraquat

Five public interest organisations, including branches of the Pesticide Action Network from Asia Pacific and the UK, have called on Syngenta, the world's largest agro-chemical corporation, to phase out sales of its non-specific herbicide, paraquat, to developing countries. The call comes following several studies of paraquat poisoning which reveal the dangers of the herbicide when used without proper protection, as is often the case in poor countries. Continued exposure to paraquat can affect the skin, eyes, nose and fingernails, and recent studies from South African fruit farms suggest it can also cause lung damage. Acute exposure is known to cause lung congestion, and in some cases death by respiratory failure.

Studies in Malaysia showed that herbicide sprayers working in plantations, who are mostly women, average 262 spraying days per year, and the majority do not have protective clothing. A Costa Rican study found hundreds of reported paraquat injuries every year, mostly in the banana producing Atlantic region. Of those reporting poisoning, 60% suffer skin burns, and 26% had eye injuries. Syngenta have refused to discuss a ban on the product, pointing out its many benefits and that it can be used safely if instructions are followed. However, currently at least ten countries have imposed either bans or restrictions on paraquat, and in others, such as the United States, its purchase and use are restricted to certified applicators.

Back to Headlines

An explosion in demand for Sorghum?

Thanks to some innovative crop breeding, African towns and villages may soon see a new snack to rival popcorn: pop sorghum! Almost all sorghum varieties can be popped when heated in cooking oil, and they are reputed to taste just as good as popcorn. In a bid to make the new snack even more popular, crop breeders at ICRISAT in Nairobi have developed a range of quick-popping, extra-expanding varieties, suitable for cultivation in a range of environments. Lack of demand is a problem facing sorghum farmers everywhere, but the breeders are hopeful that promoting new uses and new varieties will give farmers the incentive to increase their production. Other uses being promoted by the team include sorghum-based malt for breweries and sorghum-wheat composite flour for bakeries.

Back to Headlines

New sesame on the street

A new high yielding sesame variety released in Uganda is set to have a major impact on production. Sesim-2, released by the National Agricultural Research Organisation, is drought resistant, quick-maturing and resistant to most sesame pests and diseases. In addition, farmers can expect to achieve yields of 800kg per hectare, 300kg more than Uganda's traditional varieties, with each seed containing up to 20% more oil. The variety has been undergoing trials by scientists and farmers over the last five years, and is set to replace varieties released in the 1970s which were subsequently crippled by inadequate research during years of political turmoil.

According to agricultural scientists, Uganda has enormous sesame production potential that could supply cooking oil to the entire southern African region. In addition to their work on the new variety, the NARO scientists have also been developing pest and disease interventions for sesame, and are proposing a campaign to educate farmers on modern planting techniques.

Back to Headlines

Agriculture - engine for growth

Strong agricultural growth reduces poverty and, for many African countries in the foreseeable future, represents a more realistic avenue for growth than manufacturing. Based on this premise, the Rural Livelihoods Department of the UK Government's Department for International Development has issued a consultation document, 'Better livelihoods for poor people: The role of agriculture', which is shortly to be published in its final form.

The document proposes that DFID and other development agencies should adopt a new role; one that emphasises realising rights through creating opportunities for the poor. It sets out the challenges for the future and what needs to be done at local, national, regional and international level, including by the developed countries, to allow agriculture to fulfil its potential to improve the livelihoods of the poor.

Back to Headlines