Category: Agriculture

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A U.N. agency says 11 million people in Africas Sahel region still face severe food insecurity. At the same time, an emergency appeal for 113 million dollars has gone largely unmet.

De Capua report on Sahel food insecurity
The Food and Agriculture Organization says the Sahel has faced food insecurity crises in 2005, 2008 and again in 2012. Those crises, it says, have eroded the capacity of the poor to maintain or restore their livelihoods.

In Dakar, Patrick David, FAOs deputy coordinator for food security analysis for West Africa and the Sahel, said, There is still a lot of people in food insecurity. The people more and more find some difficulty to recover from the past crisis even if there is a good harvest because there have been pretty good harvests in 2012.

David said many people in the Sahel depend on a few cattle and a small piece of land for survival. So, its hard for them to stock up any reserve food or agricultural supplies in the event of drought, conflict or bad harvest.

While before it would take one or two years to recover, now its longer for those people to recover. Its difficult to restock cattle, for example. Its difficult for them to access agricultural credit to have good input[s] and to have fertilizer. And in some places in the Sahel, like in Burkina Faso and Niger, there [are] some dense populated area[s] where there is degradation of land and the loss of soil fertility. That means their agricultural
yield[s] are decreasing year by year, he said.

That compounds the problems they already face as the price for grains, such as sorghum, millet and maize, continues to rise.

David said, The poor and the very poor households, as soon as theyve exhausted their little harvest, totally depend [on] the market. So they have to buy the grain at higher and higher prices. So their purchasing power is decreasing every year.

Insecurity, such as the recent conflict in northern Mali, can also boost prices because agricultural products cannot get to market.

The FAO has appealed for $113 million for its programs in the Sahel. However, its only received less that $19.5 million so far.

The intervention of FAO strengthens the resilience of the affected households. But when the affected households cannot receive the good seeds and the good fertilizer or cannot recapitalize their livestock, they stay very vulnerable and its a problem for the next year. So we definitely need additional support for the farmers and agriculture in order to decrease the impact of the forthcoming crisis, he said.

Building resilience includes improving the storage, processing and transportation of goods as well as livestock food supplements, animal health campaigns and herd restocking. The Food and Agriculture Organization programs also include fixing irrigation systems.

The FAO said it would like these programs to be in place and making a difference during the next growing season which runs from October through April

Consumers would welcome anything that helps keep the weekly grocery prices under control as food prices continue to rise while incomes stagnate.

Farmers, also, have come under increasing pressure from volatile prices for their crops, the efforts of suppliers to keep prices low in the shops and the increasingly uncertain global weather.

At the same time they are asked to farm sustainably to protect the environment, produce more natural, chemical free food and equally to improve the yield from their land to meet the food needs of a larger global population.

In the UK, some East Anglian organic grain farmers have recently joined together in a contract with a company that needed a regular supply of food for its organically-reared pigs.

As one farmer said, it is very difficult to assess the market supply and demand particularly in the organic market and the arrangement they reached had several benefits.

It meant both buyer and sellers were no longer susceptible to the vagaries of the market and to stablise the prices right through to the retailer and share the costs. It also made it possible to make the whole supply chain from land to pig meat traceable and to reduce the carbon footprint by supplying to a local buyer.

It worked because all those involved knew each other and were in the same area, but there is no reason why the model could not be used by other farmers both in the UK and overseas.

Research in East Agnlia is also being carried out to identify the different genetic characteristics in various grain seeds. The aim is to find those that are better for growing in an area of increasing drought and are better protected against the new plant diseases that might arise. Cross breeding, for example, could then be used to produce a resilient variety suited to the local climate.

Other research that has been going on, mainly in the USA has been in providing better crop and land protection in a more natural way, as a substitute for the many now-discredited older generation of chemical fertilisers.

The range of innovations includes biopesticides, biofungicides and yield enhancers that are developed from natural sources and leave minimal residues in the land and in the crop. They will also help farmers to meet the growing demand for natural foods with less waste and less loss of the nutrition in their land

These new low-chem agricultural products are subject to careful testing and licensing before they are allowed onto the market and this can be an expensive and lengthy process, taking up to eight years in some cases because regulation is not yet standardised across individual countries, so they may need to be licensed separately in several places.

There are signs, however, that more effort is being put into innovation in the various aspects of food production to respond to the concerns of consumers on both price and food quality.

Copyright (c) 2011 Alison Withers

Olam International, a leading global processor of food ingredients with agricultural projects in Africa, has publicly endorsed the c-e-o water mandate of the u-n global compact. The mandate is a public-private initiative that helps companies develop and implement sustainable water policies and practices. The announcement came as the world observed World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden.

Olam International said the supply, quality and reliability of water resources are under pressure and the need to adapt to the impact of climate change is increasing.

The signing of the mandate underscores the companys commitment to vigorously and publicly address global water issues regarding agriculture and food supply.

If you reflect that water when you look at it as a hundred per cent value, 97-percent of water would be regarded as salty ocean water, two per cent is actually frozen, so were left with a one per cent marker of water basically for consumption and use in agriculture, explained Chris Brett, Olams head of sustainability, who added, and we split that one per cent, we get to point seven per cent for agriculture, just point three per cent is fresh water for basically human consumption.

Given this he stressed that water is a key issue for them when they see the way people are going to compete for water in the future. As a result the company made a public commitment to use water in more resourceful ways.

Making that commitment is not just a driver for change internally, or a driver for respect in use of water, as a resource, but it is also to communicate to all of our partners how serious we take water on the agenda, said Brett.

He gave an example of success that they were having with irrigation going into their vegetable supply chains in California. The method of irrigation that decreases the use of water is called more crop per drop. It proved to be such a success that it was applied to other Olam operations.

For example we are now undertaking irrigation of rice, and irrigation of coffee plantations in places like Tanzania and Zambia. As a global company we are transferring learning, noted Brett.

The sustainability expert said over the last two years Olam has been measuring its water footprint and communicating that measurement to the public.

He added as a leader in addressing the challenges of water supply, they hope others will follow them in the pursuit of water rationalization and use in agriculture.

The arrival of tropical storms, like this year’s Tropical Storm Barry, coincides closely with the typical date for onset of Florida’s so called ‘rainy season’ that generally runs from late May to October. Although Florida fishermen experienced a record ‘dry season’ this year, the occurrence of drought during the cooler winter and spring months was hardly unusual. Bass fishing in [tag-ice]Lake Okeechobee suffered as water levels reached all-time lows, exposing large areas of lake bottom and leaving many boat ramps high and dry.

There has been a silver lining to the drought for the Florida strain of largemouth bass living in Lake O, as some locals call it. The Army Corps of Engineers began a project last year to scrape decades of accumulated “muck” off the exposed lake bed. Phosphorus and nitrogen runoff from fertilizers used on farms, golf courses and lawns has been building up in Okeechobee ever since the natural flow of water out of the lake was reversed early in the 20th century to help retain a supply in Lake O for agriculture and drinking water. These chemicals generate unnatural spread of certain plants and algae which overgrow then die off and coat the bottom this the toxic “muck.”

The bass fishing in Okeechobee should benefit both from Barry’s rain and the new sections of the natural sandy bottom of Lake O revealed after the dredging. As the water levels rise, natural grasses will reclaim the cleaned areas, dissolved oxygen levels should increase in the absence of the artificial plant blooms, and much new spawning habitat will open to the monster bass Lake Okeechobee is famous for.

Bass fishermen headed to Lake O should expect to find the bass in heavy grass cover. Try the new Okeechobee Rig, a lure developed specifically for fishermen flipping for bass in dense brush or grass cover. You’ll need to be casting strong braid or mono to effectively haul out hooked bass – at least 20lb test, but 30-60lb braid is commonly used on the tournament trail. I set up with Power Pro rigged with a Seaguar Flourocarbon leader.