News brief

'Master plan' for Ethiopia's livestock	Supply supermarkets to survive - African farmers warned
Water management essential for agricultural development	Drought warnings in South Africa
US$6m project for Afghan farmers	Poverty on the map in Kenya
Cash boost for crop research	Food policy is the key to reducing hunger
Conservation farming success in Zambia	AGORA: opening up access to agricultural information
High yields - good news for GM supporters...	An insight into pastoral lives
...but some bad news for Monsanto?

'Master plan' for Ethiopia's livestock

Ethiopia is drawing up a livestock 'master plan' to help combat food shortages. The project which is being funded by the African Development Bank (ADB) is costing around US$35m and will focus on potential investment projects in the country. It will include collection of data on technical, social, institutional, political, environmental and economic issues.
It comes after one of the world's largest animal surveys to count all the animals as part of a massive census in the country.
Ethiopia is the biggest livestock producer in Africa and 25th worldwide. Livestock contributes 20 per cent of its total GDP and employs about 31 per cent of the agricultural labour force.
"The project aims to enhance significantly the contribution of livestock to the rural and national economy," said the ADB in a statement. "It will involve the preparation of a comprehensive livestock development master plan that will cover an investment period of 20 years."

Water management essential for agricultural development

The farming industry must manage water more efficiently to avoid a water crisis and to meet the world's growing demand for food, according to a new report.
The report by the WWF says that with an expected growth of 2 billion people over the next 50 years, world food production must be increased. Agriculture uses 70 per cent of the world's water and up to 90 per cent in some developing countries. But only 20 to 50 per cent of the water withdrawn actually reaches the crops, as most of it is lost during transfer to the fields.
Many big food producing countries like the US, China, India, Pakistan, Australia, and Spain have reached or are close to reaching their renewable water resource limits, it says. Water tables are dropping by as much as 10 metres per year in the worst cases, leading to a less reliable supply of water for drinking and sanitation.
"If we do not address the wasteful use of water in farming, this will have serious consequences for achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015," said Jamie Pittock, Director of WWF's Living Waters Programme.

US$6m project for Afghan farmers

More than 430,000 farmers in the mountains of the Hazarajat, one of the poorest regions of Afghanistan, will receive assistance over the next four years through a major development project.
The objective of the FAO project - which will be funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) - is to reduce hunger and malnutrition in the region, improve farm production, generate income opportunities and build up or strengthen institutions at community, district and provincial level.
The Eastern Hazarajat covers the mountains of north-west and east Kabul. It includes the Bamiyan province and high altitude areas of Wardak, Ghazni, Uruzgan and Ghor. More than 80 per cent of the population is living below the poverty line.
"The main objective of the UK/FAO project is to assist local communities to develop the skills to resolve their own problems," said Serge Verniau, FAO representative in Afghanistan. This will be done mainly through farmer-based organisations with education and training of farmers being a particular focus.

Cash boost for crop research

A global research initiative, which aims to develop micronutrient rich varieties of staple crops, has received a US$25m grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The grant will support HarvestPlus, a public-private initiative led by the Columbia-based International Centre for Tropical Agricultural Research (CIAT) and the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
The initiative is aiming to develop micronutrient rich or 'biofortified' varieties of rice, wheat, maize, cassava, sweet potato, and beans - in an effort to end illness and death as a result of malnutrition in the developing world.
The US$46m initiative (also funded by the World Bank and US Agency for International Development) begins with a four-year period focusing on conventional plant breeding. Some funds will also be allocated to exploratory research in developing biofortified GM crops.

Conservation farming success in Zambia

Small-scale farmers in Zambia are reporting record productivity after adopting alternative farming methods. According to the FAO, the bumper crops may be attributed to a steady move away from conventional tillage methods to conservation farming. FAO's Conservation Farming assistance programme in 2002/03 resulted in production of approximately 28,000mt of maize (valued at US$7m). The total cost of the programme was US$4.2m.
Conservation farming involves leaving plant residues from the previous crops on the land to minimise erosion and provide organic material thus reducing the need for chemical inputs.
"Conservation farming has become more popular with farmers who can see their yields, in some cases, increase five times over. But it is important that the results of this technique become more well known, so that other farmers can participate," said FAO's representative in Zambia, Tong Qing Song.
Richard Fowler, secretary of the African Conservation Tillage Network told New Agriculturist that there has been a major trend towards conservation farming in South Africa. He reports that there are some extremely successful commercial farmers growing maize, soya, wheat, sunflower and cotton. Conservation farming does not necessarily increase yields, he says, but it reduces and conserves natural resources like soil and water but also human labour, an important consideration in view of the impact of HIV/AIDS.

High yields - good news for GM supporters...

Trials of GM cotton in Australia are producing yields eight times those of conventional cotton, according to government researchers.
The trials were being carried out at Kununurra in the Ord River region on the far north of Western Australia State, by the government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
Yields for unsprayed conventional cotton were a bale or less per hectare, compared to 8.3bales per hectare for the GM Bollgard II variety of cotton, said the researchers.
About one-third of Australia's commercial cotton crop is produced using an earlier variety of GM variety produced by biotechnology giant Monsanto.

...but some bad news for Monsanto?

Environmental campaigners believe that American biotechnology giant Monsanto's decision to partially withdraw from Europe, will boost a campaign to free a wheat variety patented by the company.
According to oneworld.net, the New Delhi based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE) and global campaigning organisation Greenpeace, claim that a Monsanto patent for a strain of wheat it claims to have invented is derived from a traditional Indian variety.
"We expect Monsanto's withdrawal from Europe to strengthen our case," said Afsar H. Jafri, director for the RFSTE which, with Greenpeace, is planning to challenge the patent in the European Patent Office in Munich before the end of 2003. "The Monsanto patent pirates the collective cumulative innovation of Indian farmers," alleges the RFSTE.

Supply supermarkets to survive - African farmers warned

African farmers must form co-operatives to meet new challenges brought about by rapid expansion in supermarket retailing if they are to survive, the FAO has warned.
Globalisation and urbanisation mean that the rise of supermarkets across the developing world was an inevitable reality said Kostas Stamoulis, a senior economic analyst with the FAO.
"A steep increase in the pace of urbanisation, combined with globalisation and the influx of foreign direct investment, mean that Africa will see far more dramatic changes in its food supply system than we have seen in developed countries," he said.
Supermarkets already account for more than 55 per cent of food sold in South Africa and around 30 per cent in Kenya. Kenyan supermarkets are already buying three times more produce from local farmers than the country exports to the rest of the world.
To avoid being left out of the domestic market, farmers needed access to resources and improved training, Mr Stamoulis explained. Potential assistance might include organising effective cooperatives and associations to supply supermarkets and creating credit programmes to buy the technologies needed to upgrade output.
"If we don't help small farmers tap into the supply game and become major players in this new market, they will be left on the sidelines," said Mr Stamoulis.

Drought warnings in South Africa

Satellite imagery has revealed that South Africa may be heading for a prolonged drought, which researchers warn could be the most severe in decades.
The 1982-83 and 1991-92 droughts were the most severe meteorological droughts of the 20th century over Southern Africa, according to the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). In the 1991-92 drought, 70 per cent of the crops failed and it was estimated that half of the population in the affected area was at risk of malnutrition, other related health problems, and even starvation, it says.
"Satellite imagery is indicating very similar results when comparing the 1992 and 2003 October vegetation condition maps," The imagery shows shocking similarities with the disastrous drought year of 1992. If current dry conditions prevail for the next two months, South Africa can expect one of the biggest drought disasters in 100 years."

Poverty on the map in Kenya

State of the art mapping and statistical modelling has led to the first in a series of reports planned for understanding the geographic dimensions of well-being in Kenya. The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in collaboration with the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) has compiled a book of high resolution maps and statistics to provide poverty estimates for all administrative areas down to the Location-level within rural and urban Kenya. Comparative data was previously available for major urban centres and for rural areas at district level only. The results of the poverty mapping will be made available to government officials and NGOs, civil society organisations, economic and social researchers, educational institutions and development partners to assist in better targeting of resources for pro-poor development strategies. This report builds on previous work by ILRI in the development of models and collection of data for Mapping Poverty and Livestock in the Developing World.

Food policy is key to reducing hunger

Policy is the key to reducing the number of hungry children, but can also worsen the situation if mishandled, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
In a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research last month (October 29), IFPRI said that it may be possible to reduce malnutrition among children from the current 31 per cent to 11 per cent, if progressive policy action is taken in the near future.
This action would need to include increased public spending on agricultural and rural development by both developing and industrialised countries and expanded investment in agricultural research. It would also require high levels of investment in education, social services, and health; and improved irrigation efficiency.
"We have come to a major crossroads for the world food situation. Fifty years from now, one child in four could be suffering from chronic hunger, or it could drop to one child in ten. The outcome depends on decisions made now and in the next few years," said Joachim von Braun, director general of IFPRI and lead author of the paper.

AGORA: opening up access to agricultural information

Students, researchers and academics in developing countries will have free or low-cost access to more than 400 scientific journals from ten leading international publishers under a new initiative launched at FAO. AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture) aims to increase the quality and relevance of information available to developing countries and will include information on food, nutrition, agriculture and related subjects. New articles will be added each week and additional publishers will be invited to participate. This new initiative follows on from the success of TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library), a collection of key agricultural journals available on CD-ROM and HINARI of WHO, which was launched in January 2002 with over 2000 journals from leading biomedical publishers.
For further information see: http://www.aginternetwork.org

An insight into pastoral lives

credit: CAPE/AU/IBAR

An exhibition featuring photographs taken by pastoralists of their lives, is to open in Kampala in January 2004. The images and testimonies of more than 15 community members from the Karamajong Cluster in Eastern Africa have already been shown in Kenya and have formed the basis of a book Pastoral Visions, which is also available online. The photos have all been taken by amateurs. The purpose of the project is to challenge commonly held perceptions, particularly at policy level. Physically, economically and socially isolated pastoralists are affected by many issues, which are poorly understood by policy-makers. By giving pastoral communities a voice, it is hoped that communication between pastoralists, governments and international organisations will be improved and policies formulated to resolve transboundary issues. From Kampala, the exhibition will travel throughout the Greater Horn region.

1^st November 2003