Farmland up in smoke

Smallholder farmers have been blamed for starting the fires that are continuing to devastate large areas in Brazil's northern Amazon. Officials said the fire was started in early January by farmers burning their fields to prepare for planting new crops. Because of the drought conditions caused by El Niño, the blaze quickly spread and has destroyed areas of rainforest, normally too wet to burn. Latest estimates say 2.2m acres of farmland have gone up in smoke

The forests of Indonesia are in flames again, destroying wildlife, farmland and livestock, and raising air pollution to hazardous levels. Severe drought conditions have fuelled the fires and devastated crops. In the province of East Kalimantan, almost 95% of this year's rice crop has been lost. The crisis is exacerbated by Indonesia's economic slump: the price of the few staples still available has doubled in the cities and more than tripled in rural areas.

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Bad news for "Asia's milkman"

New Zealand's dairy board is having to search for new markets in the face of falling demand in Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines and Malaysia. The New Zealand Dairy Board, which likes to call itself "Asia's milkman" is a leading supplier of dairy products to Asia and the region's financial problems are likely to cost it at least US$ 41m this season. Neville Martin, of the New Zealand Dairy Board says that despite the difficulties, New Zealand is better placed in Asia than many of its competitors. Its brands, such as Anchor, are market leaders in most countries and whole milk powder, the dairy board's biggest selling product in the Asian region, is considered a staple food for infant nutrition.

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Agricultural shake up

The European Commission has unveiled its proposals, known as Agenda 2000, to revolutionise farm policy. The commission argued that a far-reaching overhaul of EU finances was needed if the community was to fulfil its ambition to admit up to 10 former Communist countries of central and eastern Europe into the EU early next century. Announcing the plans, Jacques Santer, President of the European Commission, said the proposals for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and regional funds were a crucial package for the future of the EU. But he admitted the negotiations over the next year with ministers and heads of governments would be tough, as all would be reluctant to make sacrifices.

The Commission is proposing a cut in support payments but national governments will be free to determine how to allocate the funds made available to compensate for the cuts. It is also proposed that the intervention price for beef, arable and dairy, should be cut by 30%, 20% and 15% respectively.

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Seeds of change

The United States Department of Agriculture and an American seed company have patented a genetic technique that prevents seeds from germinating when replanted. The company, Delta and Pine, has the exclusive right to issue or deny licenses. So far only tobacco and cotton are affected but scientists believe that staple crops could follow - and this could lead to seed costs rising for farmers worldwide.

CIMMYT, the International Centre for Improvement of Maize, and ORSTOM, the French National Research Institute for Development Co-operation, have developed a high yielding maize that farmers can plant year after year, from saved seed, without loss of yield and without having to buy new seed grain. The new plants have been derived from crosses between maize and the wild grass tripsacum.

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Caffeine-free coffee beans

The world's first caffeine-free coffee plants will be planted this summer in a green-house in Hawaii. If all goes to plan, beans from the plants will not need to be decaffeinated chemically in processes which can damage beans and spoil their flavour. John Stiles, who developed the beans at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, identified the master gene that governs caffeine production and used a bacterium to silence it. Although some wild species of coffee contain no caffeine, Stiles is the first to make a virtually caffeine-free variety of the commercial species - Coffea arabica - and he hopes to take his first sip of the decaffeinated coffee in around 20 months' time.

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International convention for chemicals

After two years of negotiations, the latest intergovernmental meeting in Brussels has resulted in 95 countries' unanimous agreement of a new legally binding Convention which will limit the trade in hazardous chemicals and pesticides. The trade in these extremely hazardous products is currently subject to the voluntary Prior Informed Consent procedure in which 154 countries are participating. The new legally binding procedure will help to protect farmers from exposure to highly toxic pesticides and empower governments to monitor and control cross-border trade.

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Going organic

The first centre for organic agriculture in the UK has been given financial backing by the supermarket giant TESCO. Over the next four years the supermarket will commit £250,000 to the Centre for Organic Agriculture which is based at Aberdeen University in Scotland. Consumption of organic produce has increased and British producers have been unable to meet the growing demand. Only 0.3% of farmed land in the UK is currently managed organically, while 70% of organic products sold in shops are imported. The Aberdeen University Centre for Organic Agriculture aims to develop the methods and organisational structures to successfully scale-up organic crop and animal production and to provide research and development support.

Although many chemicals have been banned, the FAO estimate that up to 10,000 tonnes of obsolete pesticides remain in the developing world. The majority of the chemicals are stored in hazardous conditions and the cost of dealing with these, in Africa alone, could be as much as $80 million.

The global market for pesticides continues to grow and was estimated at $30 billion for 1996. Although western European companies are still the largest producers of chemicals, the fastest growing markets are in developing countries, particularly Latin America and Asia. Africa is increasingly using pesticides on export crops.

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Some like it hot - and healthy!

The widespread belief that spicy food is not just enjoyed for flavour, but has devolved from a desire to kill off undesirable pathogens has finally been put to the test. Paul Sherman, a behavioural ecologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and undergraduate Jennifer Billing have searched out 4500 traditional meat-based recipes from cookbooks covering Scandinavia to South-east Asia. "If spices are primarily anti-microbial agents", reasoned Sherman, "their use should be more common in hotter countries." The study found that recipes from hotter countries did include a larger variety of spices, particularly those with a more potent anti-microbial effect. This can not simply be attributed to the fact that more spices are available in the tropics, because even onion and garlic, potent anti-microbials and grown in every country studied, still appeared more often in recipes from warm countries.

Sherman agrees that we now add spice to food for taste but that the taste may have developed out of necessity, as a preventative against possible infection from food-borne pathogens. Humans are not the only organisms to gain as the original beneficiaries are the plants from which the seasoning originated: the anti-microbial chemicals are used by the plant to keep away herbivorous insects, parasites or pathogens.
(New Scientist 7 March 1998)

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Trading disease

The FAO is urging European countries to tighten legislation on the movement of animals and the improvement of farming practices, and has warned that devastating epidemics amongst farm animals may result as trade barriers are lowered and livestock farming continues to intensify. Particular concern has been drawn to movement of animals between eastern and western Europe and to intensive pig farming (up to 9000 animals per km²), which could see an increase in the incidence of diseases such as swine fever and foot and mouth.

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Crop rotation gets to the root of the problem

Nematodes, which attack banana roots and cause plants to topple over as the roots degenerate and the pruned plant becomes unstable, are generally prevalent in the soil wherever bananas are grown. But researchers in Uganda have now identified cassava and sweet potato as potential rotation crops which are non-susceptible to banana nematodes. On-farm trials have demonstrated that these crops should significantly reduce banana nematode populations previously present in the soil, if grown for at least two years. Once the soil is clear of these populations, clean planting material, in the form of micro-propagated bananas certified free of disease, can be used to avoid further problems with banana nematodes. However, only a limited number of cultivars of bananas have currently been taken into tissue culture and farmers may still want to grow traditional varieties.

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Kenya grabs share of macadamia market

Kenyan macadamia nut producers look set to benefit from the shortfall in Hawaii's production which has suffered at the hands of El Niño. Hawaii and Australia are the two biggest producers of the highly priced macadamia nuts. With Hawaiian production predicted to be down by as much as 50% this year, Australia is likely to become the world's biggest producer, but the Kenya Nut Company is in a strong position to take advantage of the possible shortfall. The KNC - a joint venture between Japanese and Kenyan entrepreneurs - is supplied by smallholders, who collectively have 2m macadamia trees under cultivation. The KNC is exploring hybrid cultivation, which it hopes will nearly double yields and boost Kenya's onslaught into the European supermarket trade.

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Guatemala - set to double coffee production

Coffee growers in Guatemala plan to double the country's production within the next six years and dramatically raise domestic consumption. The country also wants to diversity sales into new markets, such as eastern Europe and China. Guatemala is Central America's biggest coffee producer and its coffee exports are worth about $600m, making it the country's most important crop. William Stixrud, president of the Asociacin Nacional de Caf (Anacaf) the association of coffee growers, said Guatemala could raise production by encouraging small producers in rural areas to turn to coffee cultivation from crops such as maize and beans, which are grown principally for domestic consumption and which cover 30% of agricultural land.

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Farmer ideas, scientific innovation and the finance to take them further - the essentials for agricultural progress

Twenty years' investment to benefit 30 million farming families in 111 countries is no mean achievement. But IFAD, the International Fund for Agricultural Development wants to do even better. At its 21st Governing Council meeting held in Rome in earlier this year, as well as renewing commitment to the approaches that work best, the organization revealed several new initiatives to invest in marginalised farmers. For the Middle East there is a new fund for Gaza and the West Bank which will provide loans to farmers under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority in accordance with Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Another new investment is the Trust Fund for the Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries which pays off some of the loan repayments still owed by the poorest countries so enabling them to channel more resources to their most needy communities. Early beneficiaries of this Fund include Uganda and Burkina Faso.

In celebration of progress made - and lessons learned - over the last twenty years, IFAD held an exhibition called 'From Hope to Harvest'. With more than 40 individual displays, it illustrated that the essentials for solving agricultural problems are farmer invention, or scientific innovation, and the finance to take these ideas further.

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One tool: 18 functions

The largest idea on display was a bullock-drawn multi-purpose tool bar. Capable of 18 separate functions, from soil preparation, planting and weeding to harvesting, it is the invention of a farmer in western India. His modifications to traditional tools were discovered by the Honey Bee Network, an Indian NGO supported by IFAD. Now the improved tool bar is in production and on sale to farmers.

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River energy takes water uphill to crops

Mangal Singh, an IFAD Innovative Farmer prize-winner from Uttar Pradesh in India, has developed a technique to harness the energy of the river flow to lift water for irrigation. A model of the invention showed how a waterhead of just 1 metre, easily built up behind a low-cost check dam, drives a water wheel. A centrifugal pump lifts the water while a pulley is used to derive the power to operate the machine. Highly energy-efficient, the amount of water lifted with the Mangal Water Wheel Turbine is much greater than by the fuel-driven pumps commonly in use.

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Biocontrol: nature's answer

The many exhibits dedicated to pest control confirmed that IFAD will continue to support the scientific search for biological solutions to the most serious pest problems. Exhibits from 'From Hope to Harvest' showed how the Andean Potato Weevil can be controlled by storing potatoes in diffused light; how, in Suriname, traps have proved effective in protecting tropical fruits from damage by the carambola fruit fly; and how a predator of the cassava green mite, newly discovered in Brazil, is already having an effect in West, eastern and southern Africa.

Delegates and visitors from 162 countries browsed the 'Hope to Harvest' exhibition. "The challenge is to keep innovating and replicate" said IFAD President Fawzi Al Sultan, "We have to keep ahead. That's what all our work to date will help us to do".

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