News brief

Appeals for support following Kenya's crop failure

Over 3 million people in 26 districts in Kenya - approximately 10% of the country's population - are in need of emergency food aid following the failure of the long rains earlier this year. A dry spell in late April to May, a critical period in the growing season, has led to almost total failure of the maize crop in much of Coast and Eastern provinces. Grain prices are reported to have doubled in many areas, and despite a fall in livestock prices people are selling off breeding stock as they struggle to earn cash for food. In the eight most badly affected districts 37,000 children are facing malnutrition, according to a Unicef report, and if the short rains later this year also fail the total number of people depending on food aid is expected to rise to over 4 million. The Government of Kenya has been distributing food but stocks are reportedly running short. Both the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef have launched emergency appeals for funds; the British Government has responded with a £5 million pledge of which approx. £2.7 million will go to the WFP to support a school feeding programme. The money will be used to provide free meals to schoolchildren in 29 vulnerable districts and two slum areas in Nairobi, as part of a long-term programme supporting primary education in Kenya.

Locust threat from West Africa to India

credit: FAO

Locust swarms, originating in northwest Africa, have moved into Mauritania, Gambia, Senegal, Mali and Niger, disrupting the summer planting season and threatening food crops and pasture in the coming weeks. FAO is concerned that the swarms will spread to Chad, Burkina Faso, and to Darfur, Western Sudan, where there is already a food and health emergency. Donors have so far provided or promised a total of $37 million for control measures, but FAO believes that to control this unusually large plague, which is being favoured by good breeding weather, will require as much as $100 million. Clive Elliott, senior locust officer at FAO, predicts that unless prompt and effective action is taken the locusts will easily reach Darfur, and could then cross to Pakistan and India. www.fao.org

Meeting the water challenge

The Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), a CGIAR initiative, is to receive £2.5 million (US$4.5 million) from DFID. This makes DFID the largest single donor of the CPWF and demonstrates DFID's commitment to the urgent water and food issues that demand attention. Among the nine projects that are likely to benefit from this core funding in Africa, Asia and Latin America are: increased food security and income in the Limpopo basin through integrated crop, water and soil fertility; conservation agriculture for the dryland areas of the Yellow river basin; developing a system of temperate and tropical aerobic rice in Asia; and safeguarding public health, livelihoods and productivity in wastewater irrigated urban and peri-urban vegetable farming in Ghana. DFID will consider further contributions in the next two years.

GM go-ahead for Argentina but not in Thailand

Argentina's farmers, the world's second biggest exporters of corn after the US, have been given the go-ahead by their government to plant genetically modified corn. The approved variety is NK603, a glyphosate-tolerant variety from Monsanto. Argentinean farmers have lobbied their government vigorously and their persistence provides them with the opportunity to repeat the boom in soya production that followed the introduction of GM soya: in the past decade the area planted to soya has increased by 250 per cent, to 14 million hectares. At present corn is planted on a mere three million hectares.The Argentinean decision anticipated by a week approval by the EU to accept the GM product for use as animal feed, and the human consumption of GM corn will be debated at the end of September. The EU is Argentina's biggest market for corn.

In Thailand proposed field trials for GM crops will no longer take place in response to widespread public opposition to the government's recent decision to proceed with the trials. An expert panel has been established to determine whether GMOs should be partially or openly allowed in future.

Syngenta accused of code breaking

The Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP) has accused Syngenta of breaking its commitment to an international code that sets standards for pesticide marketing. The accusation relates to an advertising campaign in Thailand for the product 'Gramoxone Gold Cap', which uses a competition to encourage sales of the herbicide. Prizes include televisions, motorcycles and a truck. This, says PAN AP, breaks an FAO Code of Conduct, previously endorsed by Syngenta, that 'advertisements and promotional activities should not include inappropriate incentives or gifts to encourage the purchase of pesticides'. PAN AP has written a letter to the Director General of the FAO protesting about the advertising campaign. It is particularly concerned about Syngenta's marketing of the Gramoxone product to Thai farmers, since it contains paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide known to cause serious health problems if used without sufficient protective equipment and clothing.

World trade... a deal?

An agreement to liberalise world trade has been reached after tough negotiations but the details of the agreement have yet to be finalised. The deal, approved by all the 147 member countries of the WTO, majors on cutting farm subsidies in rich countries in exchange for the opening up of markets for manufacturers in the developing countries. Currently, the European Common Agricultural Policy takes half of the EU's total annual budget, while the US and Japan are also major supporters of their farmers. The US has been under fire from African countries for subsidies to US cotton growers in particular, and the EU for its subsidies to sugar beet producers. However, the new agreement has so many loopholes and exclusions that it may be rendered pointless. Further negotiations are scheduled to start in September, and it is hoped that crucial progress can be made before the US presidential election in November and forthcoming personnel changes in the European Commission.

Bird flu strikes South Africa...

The highly pathogenic form of avian flu that caused major losses in Southeast Asia earlier this year has been identified in South Africa. The outbreak on ostrich farms in the Eastern Cape has led to the culling of tens of thousands of the birds to prevent the disease spreading to the Western Cape. South Africa's ostrich exports are valued at SA Rand 1.2 billion, with the European Union a major importer. The concern is loss of South Africa's export status if the disease spreads to Western Cape, where some 70 per cent of ostrich products originate. Hong Kong and Singapore were quick to place bans on all South African poultry products.

...and lingers on in Asia

Outbreaks of the avian flu virus H5N1 in China, Thailand and Vietnam indicate that the disease is still endemic in the region. Latest reports also indicate that the virus can infect pigs and felines, adding to scientists fears' about the potential for the virus to 'jump' to humans.

At the end of July, FAO announced the launch of a veterinary network for Southeast Asia to strengthen the campaign against the disease. Two further networks for South and East Asia will follow, with FAO providing some US $1.2 million for these subregional platforms. The networks will provide training and information exchange facilities for national laboratories and surveillance teams in 23 Asian countries. Harmonised standards on disease detection and reporting will be applied throughout the three subregions.

Launch of Global University for agriculture

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is spearheading an exciting and innovative program to offer a high quality education to students in developing countries throughout the world. Called the Global Open Agriculture and Food University, it will use internet communications and other technologies to provide access to long distance learning to developing nations. The university will make available the knowledge developed from 35 years of CGIAR science research and from the work of its many partners and collaborators across the globe. By allowing professionals to enhance their skills without leaving their countries, the program will reduce both the cost and time required for schooling, and it will make learning available to many more people.

Arabica more robust than robusta

A switch of coffee type, from robusta and clonal to arabica, looks like it is succeeding in the fight against coffee wilt disease in Uganda. In a bid to save Uganda's coffee industry, the Uganda Coffee Development Association launched a campaign to promote the growing of wilt-resistant arabica - they have so far supplied over 200,000 seedlings to farmers and helped set up demonstration villages. Now the lowland arabica is fast replacing the two traditional types. As well as the advantage of wilt resistance, arabica provides two harvests a year, and can be intercropped with, for example, banana. Ironically, robusta is so named because of its normally high resistance to disease.

Biotech on hold in Uganda

Uganda is dragging its feet over a biosafety law that will allow biotechnology for crop improvement to go ahead. As a signatory to the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety, the country needs guidelines before it can continue with research, which is currently focused on banana and cotton. Work is on hold at the Kawanda Agricultural Research Institute, where last year President Yoweni Museveni opened a state-of-the-art biotechnology lab. The delay appears to be due to internal bureaucracy; the outgoing Agriculture Minister, Dr Kisamba Mugerwa, says that this will also delay field trials of much-needed disease-resistant plants.

Bangladeshi rice farmers see the LITE

The use of insecticides by Bangladeshi rice farmers appears, in the light of recent farmer-based research, to be a waste of time and money. Over the last 2 years, over 2000 farmers have been trained to carry out simple experiments in their fields to test the usefulness of insecticide and urea application. Their findings suggest that stopping the use of insecticides has no effect on yields. They also found that using a leaf colour chart to target urea application can reduce costs without reducing yield.

The farmers have been trained under the Livelihood Improvement Through Ecology (LITE) project, led by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and funded for Bangladesh by the UK Department for International Development. Scaling up the number of trained farmers, using a method called 'success case replication', has been a key priority. Relatively successful farmers are selected as 'lead' farmers, and trained to divide their field into quadrants and apply different management methods in each quarter. The lead farmers in turn teach other farmers in their own village and successful farmers from surrounding villages, who become the new lead farmers, continuing the process. If the spread of the cost-saving methods continues as it has started, it is estimated that within a decade most of Bangladesh's 11.8 million rice farmers will have eliminated insecticides and optimised their fertiliser use.

Smoke a turn-on for some plants

Seeds of a range of plant species germinate more quickly, when they are exposed to the smoke of bush fires. It has long been recognised that some species are stimulated by the heat of fires, but many non heat-dependent species appear to respond to the stimulus of a chemical present in smoke. Science reports that research at the Botanic Garden in Perth, Australia has identified a butenolide, new to science, which is present in smoke in minute quantities - as low as parts per trillion - and that a synthetic version of the butenolide stimulates germination of a number of plant species native to Australia, South Africa and the United States. It appears that the chemical can also improve seedling vigour.

High profits from butterflies

Butterflies are bringing in large sums of money for adventurous farmers in an unusual new venture in the East Usambara mountains region of Tanzania. After witnessing the spectacular success of the first man to try out butterfly farming, about 250 farmers are now bringing in profits that they could only dream of with their traditional work on tea estates and cutting timber. The idea came from American biologist Theron Morgan-Brown, who recognised the potential of the region to supply rare Africa butterflies for exhibits in the US and Europe. The butterflies are bred on the farms and shipped overseas as pupae. Farmers are reportedly earning about US$500 per month, a significant income for those who usually earn one or two dollars per day.

1^st September 2004