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SYRIA: Livelihoods at risk as UN appeals for US$20 million

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:52:11 GMT

Saturday, November 22, 2008

DAMASCUS Tuesday, October 07, 2008 (IRIN) - Some 150,000 farmers have lost their harvest this season, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) which has launched an appeal for US$20 million to tackle the worst drought in four decades. “150,000 farmers, representing 750,000 people, have completely lost their harvest,” Elizabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for OCHA in Geneva, told IRIN. “The impact is most serious for farmers unable to reclaim any seeds to plant in...

Source: http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=80782

ISRAEL-OPT: Palestinian farmers separated from their olive groves

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:51:37 GMT

Saturday, November 22, 2008

NI'LIN, WEST BANK Tuesday, October 07, 2008 (IRIN) - As the olive harvest gets under way in the West Bank, residents of the Palestinian town of Ni'lin say much of their land, where their trees are, is off limits because of Israel's Barrier. According to estimates by residents, some 5,000 olive trees sit on 270 hectares between the path of the Barrier and the border of the West Bank with Israel, known as the Green Line. "People depend on this land, especially because they have already lost so...

Source: http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=80785

CONGO: Disease devastates cassava crop, threatens widespread hunger

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:49:55 GMT

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Cassava is the staple food for most people in the Republic of Congo, but this main source of nourishment is being threatened by a disease that has spread to most areas of the country.

"We've been having problems for more than two years and it's getting worse with the mosaic destroying our crops," said Rose Ambeto, who has several cassava fields.

The virus, known as cassava mosaic disease (CMD), attacks the leaves of the plant and limits the growth of its roots. It is spread by insects or by diseased cassava being transplanted to new areas.

"Our harvests are getting worse and worse. That's why bags of fufu and roots are so expensive in the markets," she said.

Fufu is eaten across Africa and is made by boiling starchy roots like cassava, also known as manioc, in water and then pounding them until they reach a porridge-like consistency.

Veronique Okaka, who grows cassava in Ouesso in Congo's Sangha department, also complained of hard times due to the cassava mosaic.

"Before, we had enough to feed our children and to make some money for other things. But lately, because of this disease, we sometimes get fufu from Cameroon," she said.

The price of a bag of fufu has soared from 15,000 CFA (US$28.50) to 35,000 CFA ($67) in recent months in Congolese markets, partly because of the problems faced by growers and traders of cassava.
Specialists in Congo's agricultural ministry say the disease might lead to a drop of between 60 and 90 percent in harvests and could throw entire communities into a critical food situation.

CMD has been spreading throughout central Africa and arrived in the Republic of Congo in the mid-1990s.

Fighting back

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been at the forefront in the battle against the disease. The only known way to fight it is to develop varieties that are resistant to the virus and distribute them to farmers.

In Pool, one of Congo's worst-hit departments, the ICRC has been growing these resistant varieties. Over a two-month period last year, it took cuttings from these plants and distributed them to groups of cassava growers in the area.

The ICRC has handed out 330,000 cuttings to about 100 different groups, benefiting about 1,500 families. These groups received training in how to stop the spread of CMD, and were also given ploughing equipment.

In October, the ICRC joined the Congolese Red Cross and the agriculture ministry to provide training in Kinkala in the Pool Department on ways of fighting the disease.

The departments of Pool and Plateaux, also badly hit by the epidemic, recently received more than 330,000 cuttings of six different varieties of cassava developed in 2004 by the International Institute of Agricultural Technologies (IITA) in Kinshasa, in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Another 175,000 cuttings, taken from four new resistant strains, are being distributed in four other departments.

IRIN

MALAWI: Better roads lead to more money

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 09:42:59 GMT

Sunday, November 09, 2008

What lies under a Malawi farmer's feet that could boost food security? Try better roads.

Each year Wanangwa Munthali harvests at least 100 50kg bags of maize, plus sweet potatoes and beans. But he lives in the north of the country, 45km from the nearest town, Chitipa, and getting his produce to market is a real headache.

"Vehicles hardly use the [bad] road that runs through our village. We have to use oxcarts to ferry our produce to markets, and it's not easy," he told IRIN. "The situation is the same when we want to buy farm inputs, such as seed and fertiliser."

Transporters factor in the poor state of rural feeder roads, many unusable during the rainy season, and charge farmers accordingly. Where the road conditions are really bad they do not venture, cutting off communities from the markets they need.

A Public Expenditure Review (PER) on roads spending, with technical assistance from the World Bank, showed that funding for maintenance was inadequate.

"The official policy in the road sector is to first maintain the existing road network, followed by rehabilitation, upgrading and construction of new roads," the report noted.

"In practice, however, full maintenance has never been funded, and there continues to be a bias towards financing rehabilitation, upgrading and construction of new roads, at the expense of systematic underfunding of routine maintenance."

The cost

The PER pointed out that a poverty alleviation focus was also lacking in expenditure on roads, with access to decent roads heavily skewed in favour of wealthier areas in the country. The poor struggled with limited transport options, constraining their access to markets and opportunities.

The price tag for the maintenance and rehabilitation of Malawi's road network is estimated at US$50 million per year, covered by a Road Fund that raises money through a fuel levy, road taxes and donor aid.

Zeria Banda, communication manager at the World Bank country office, said the PER noted that while Malawi's main roads were in good condition, as much as 74 percent of the subsidiary road network was unpaved and mostly in poor shape.

Malawi's National Roads Authority estimates that it would take about US$500 million over the next five years to bring 70 percent of the country's road network up to standard, as about 11,000km of roads required rehabilitation.

The PER suggested that an increase to the fuel levy would be necessary to help pay for the work, in a country where over half the population live on less than a dollar a day and depend on subsistence farming for survival.

"The increase should be carried out gradually, however, and poverty and the social impacts of raising funding from the fuel levy should be assessed in comparison to alternatives," the PER said.

IRIN

Record harvest but troubles loom ahead

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:11:30 GMT

Friday, November 07, 2008

Financial crisis will hurt agricultural markets

World cereal production is expected to hit a new record this year as high prices boosted plantings under generally favorable weather conditions, FAO said today in the latest issue of its "Food Outlook", a bi-annual commodity publication. World cereal production is forecast to be large enough to meet anticipated utilization in the short-run, and help replenish much depleted global stocks.

But the agency warned that the current financial crisis will affect agricultural sectors in many countries negatively, including those in the developing world.

Greater uncertainty

This year's record cereal harvest and the recent fall in food prices should, therefore, not create a false sense of security, said Concepcion Calpe, one of the report's main authors.

"For example, if the current price volatility and liquidity conditions prevail in 2008/09, plantings and output could be affected to such an extent that a new price surge might take place in 2009/10, unleashing even more severe food crises than those experienced recently," Calpe said.

"The financial crisis of the last few months has amplified downward price movements, contributed to tighten credit markets, and introduced greater uncertainty about next year's prospects, so that many producers are adopting very conservative planting decisions," Calpe said.

The report stresses that most of the recovery in cereal production took place in developed countries, where farmers were in a better position to respond to high prices. Developing countries, on the contrary, were largely limited in their capacity to respond to high prices by supply side constraints on their agricultural sectors.

Implications for the poor

The sharp 2007/2008 rise in food prices has increased the number of undernourished people in the world to an estimated 923 million. Lower international commodity prices have not yet translated into lower domestic food prices in most low income countries.

"There is a real risk that as a consequence of the current world economic problems people will have to reduce their food intake and the number of hungry could rise further," Calpe said.

Long-term challenges

The report says that world agriculture is facing serious long-term issues and challenges that need to be urgently addressed. These include land and water constraints, low investments in rural infrastructure and agricultural research, expensive agricultural inputs relative to farm-gate prices, and little adaptation to climate change.

To feed a world population of more than nine billion people by 2050 (around six billion today) global food production must nearly double.

Population growth will take place mostly in developing countries and for the greater part in urban areas. A shrinking rural work force will thus have to be much more productive. This will require more investments in agriculture, machinery, tractors, water pumps, combine harvesters etc., as well as more skilled, better-trained farmers and more efficient supply chains.

FAO

Poems: Poor me

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:04:54 GMT

Monday, November 03, 2008

That my eyes will cease to see
The bright flowers of the spring

That my ears will deafen
To the music of the trodding herds

That my mouth will gape ajar
With flies to fly in and out

That my skin will stop to sense
The sweet burning rays of the noon sun

That my hands will be too frail
To ink the scrolls of my life

Seems to be myth to me
Till ‘tis demystified- poor me!

‘All is well that ends well’
So take this my kindmen:
When I cease to breath
Wrap me in white sheet
And lift me to the Silent Palace
To serve my lord worms
And don’t cry for me
For cries can never bring me back
I will be manure for the crop
Which you will eat in the harvest seasons.

Things, time & change

Things, time & change
Things, time & change
Kings beget servants
And servants kings

The laity & the lords
In chapels worship gold
The young & the elderly
Swim nude in one pool

The streams & the rivers weep
So the oceans sob
Because prophets lost their value
And man’s leader is lust

Things, time & change
Time & things change
Live & recall, the drama
Of climax is anti-climax

All poems from Juffureh: Kissing you with hurting lips. Reproduced with the kind
permission of the authors

Author: by Bamba Khan

SENEGAL: Government celebration of farming initiative "premature"

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:46:12 GMT

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Six months after President Abdoulaye Wade launched his agricultural growth initiative, small-scale farmers had mixed reviews even as the President on 27 October celebrated the initiative, touting record harvests for 2008.

The Grand Agricultural Offensive for Food Security, or GOANA, was launched by President Wade in May 2008, with the aim of reaching self-sufficiency in Senegal's food production by 2015.

Doubling rice production, and increasing maize and manioc yields to two million and three million tonnes respectively, is one part of the scheme.

Senegal imports 600,000 tonnes of rice a year, or three-quarters of the country’s food consumption, making its people vulnerable to high global rice prices.

Good harvest

Under GOANA the government subsidised seeds by 75 percent to 20 US cents per kilogram, and cut the price of fertiliser in half, making it $US17 for per 50kg.

Six months into GOANA, the Ministry of Agriculture predicts a harvest of 1.8 million tonnes of cereal, a 136 percent increase over last year’s yields. The government estimates yields of over 700,000 tonnes of millet, 500,000 tonnes of maize and 380,000 tons of non-irrigated rice in 2008.

At the 27 October event, thousands of supporters, farmers and members of agricultural organisations gathered opposite the presidential palace in the capital Dakar to showcase their produce. Farmers displayed peanuts, fonio, rice, millet, bananas and vegetables.

President Wade said to the crowd, “The GOANA results show that we have resources. If we’d had help from external donors, we could have done more… But you have achieved record harvests compared to last year. This means that one must always be self-reliant.”

Several factors contributed to the good 2008 harvest, said Oumar Samba Ndiaye, director of production at the government Market Regulation Agency. “The number of seeds and fertilisers distributed, the amount of rain and pest levels contributed to this year’s yield,” he told IRIN.

Senegal saw good rains in 2008 compared to a late, short rainy season in 2007.

Challenges

But Boubacar Cissé, spokesperson for the National Council for Rural Cooperation and Consultation -- a non-profit organisation representing small-scale farmers -- told IRIN that not all of the seeds distributed through GOANA arrived in time to plant, and some were of low quality.

“We find it difficult to take this [136 percent figure] at face value. Not all of the seeds distributed were sown, and not all of the fertiliser was used.”

Cissé added: “For one hectare, you need at least 150kg of seeds. But small farmers cannot buy this amount of grain, even at subsidised prices. Opportunists are cashing in instead by buying the reduced-cost seeds through farmers, and then selling it at higher market prices.”

As a result, not all of the small-scale farmers for whom the subsidies were intended have been able to plant seeds, Cissé said.
IRIN spoke with three small-scale farmers from different regions of Senegal about their experience growing crops post-GOANA.

Aliou Camara, from Kolda region, 335km south of Dakar, produces fonio

"With the lack of fertilisers and the jump in rice prices, things were really difficult at the beginning of the year. People were eating the seeds instead of planting them because they were hungry.

"GOANA is excellent because the small farmers are now able to produce on a larger scale. This year we produced 50 hectares of fonio, whereas before we were just producing for our families. The year before we didn’t even bother to count how many hectares we produced.

"Senegalese like to eat fonio because it contains no sugar, good for diabetics, and it’s rich in nutrients. But the problem with it is that converting it into food takes time if you don’t have machines. It takes us more than a week to process five hectares of fonio. We need machines if we are going to develop fonio production further."

Adama Ndao, from Tambacounda, 420km east of Dakar, is secretary general of regional banana producers group

“In Tambacounda we produce 95 percent of Senegal’s bananas. We had enormous difficulties earlier in the year, most of all regarding our marketing and sales. We had 1,000 tons of bananas in the production zone that we could not sell. We had difficulty with traders and people buying bananas on credit, because they didn’t have enough money.

“We are still experiencing problems with these supply chains. That is part of the reason that we are here at this event – to show our gratitude for the President’s initiative but also to explain our problems.

“It’s difficult to transport our product to market, so it is hard to sell. We sell to the local [Senegalese] market, but at the moment it is not profitable because we produce, but then are not able to sell our products.”

Abdou Salamy Barry, Casamance region, 450km south of Dakar, grows maize, millet, rice and beans

“For a long time many families here lived on the brink of starvation before the first crops are harvested in early September. We eat rice mostly and the price of a 50kg sack has doubled, so no father can assure his family’s food needs.

“We have not felt the effects of GOANA in this zone. We haven’t received any material from the government, nor any subsidies. Seeds arrived in August, halfway through the rainy season. So we just did what we could with our own seeds.

“The tractors, promised by the government, have not been distributed to the farmers so we planted with our normal hoes. We haven’t really profited enough from the rainy season. Many fields have been cleared but not cultivated.

“We are expecting high yields but this is a result of the good rains throughout the country, not of GOANA. And this doesn’t mean that people here are food secure. The amount harvested allows us to cover some of our food needs, but we will continue to buy rice and other cereals in the shops.

“If the government wants the people to achieve food self-sufficiency in Casamance, [the government] must equip small-scale farmers with modern agricultural materials. Above all, they must consider irrigated farming and not just farming that relies on rainy seasons.

“The good rains are often not on time. It is utopian to think that we can achieve self-sufficiency relying only on the rain.”

IRIN

NIGERIA: Food stocks low, prices high, despite good harvest

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:34:30 GMT

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Despite a good harvest in 2008 Nigeria’s grain stocks are running low causing cereal prices – which usually fall post-harvest – to climb, according to merchants and farmers in northern states.

The combination of low stocks and high prices could have dire consequences for the whole country, since northern states produce 70 percent of the food for Nigeria’s 131 million people, said Abdullahi Koya, head of Kano’s Dawanau market, the largest grain market in West Africa.

Grain merchants usually maintain strategic reserves from previous harvests, to release into country-wide grain markets when a new ‘lean period’ approaches, to send prices down.

But with 2007 yields drastically cut – some say by as much as half on previous years – by locust invasions and unusually brief rains, merchants’ stocks were near-empty by June 2008. This left merchants “in frantic competition to restock,” said Hakeem Ajeigbe, an agronomist with the Kano office of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA).

“The good yield recorded this season will hardly offset the food scarcity that we have been experiencing since last year because all the food stocks have been depleted, which puts a strain on new stocks collected [from this year’s harvest],” Ajeigbe pointed out.

The 2008 grain yield has been 20 million tonnes, double that of 2007, according to Sabo Nanono, Kano head of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Nigeria’s commercial farmers union.

Normally grain prices drop and remain comparatively low for several months following the September harvest, according to Koya. It is only after this that they start to rise as the dry season progresses, until they reach their peak in March, he said.

Farmers sell low, buy high

Merchants, desperate to re-stock, have been going village to village buying grains from cash-strapped farmers at very low prices, then stashing them in their warehouses rather than making available for sale, which also drives up prices, explained Sabo Nanono, head of the Kano chapter of AFAN.

Farmers are willing to sell cheap because they need immediate cash but are then forced to buy back grain weeks later at much higher prices.

“We need money to marry off our daughters, renovate our rain-washed homes and settle other domestic responsibilities,” farmer Usman Lawan from Badume village just outside Kano, told IRIN. “Our only source of money is our grains. We are desperate to raise money which is why we sell our grains cheaply.”

Most subsistence farmers in the north aim to grow enough grain to live off for approximately 12 months, selling off the surplus, according to Ajeigbe. But the 2007 yield lasted just three months, forcing farmers into debt.

According to residents of villages across Zigawa state, farmers there are leaving to find work in construction or casual labour in nearby cities, and more and more children from farming families are now seen on city streets begging.

Soaring prices “a bad omen”

A 50kg sack of millet which sold for US$25 in September 2008 now costs $38, a sack of maize has risen to $51 from $34, and cowpea has jumped to $59 from $42, Koya said.

“We are worried grain prices may not go down at all. Prices have started picking up just a month after harvest which is very unusual. It is a bad omen,” said Koya.

Farmers need credit

Not much has been done to alleviate farmers’ plight so far, Kano agronomist Ajeigbe said. “The Nigerian government is not seen to be doing anything to address the problem. It should have provided credit facilities to farmers through rural cooperative societies so they are not forced to sell their grains cheaply to merchants to raise immediate cash.”

This way, he said, farmers could repay the loans when prices rise, some months later.

But AFAN’s Nanono thinks a different strategy is needed. “Ideally the government should intervene by purchasing the grains directly from the farmers to keep as its own strategic reserve which it will resell to farmers at the same price when the food shortage bites before the next crop season.”

Currently the government runs a nationwide grain reserve, but individual states do not. Usman Bello, spokesperson with the Agriculture Ministry in Kano state, told IRIN this is set to change. “We have just concluded plans to set up our own strategic grain reserve, which we intend to re-sell at subsidised rates later on in the year.”

But they will still be buying the grain at market prices, rather than from farmers directly.

“In the long term, allowing merchants to have a field day grabbing grains from hapless farmers will lead to disastrous consequences,” farmers union leader Nanono warned. “If care is not taken, we will be faced with a worse food situation than last year.”

IRIN

ZIMBABWE: Survival recipe book

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:30:43 GMT

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Rural Zimbabweans have always turned to an emergency larder of wild foods to see them through hard times, but in this year of shortages and dizzying prices for all basic foodstuffs, the fruits and roots foraged from the bush are keeping many alive.

In the southern province of Matabeleland North, villagers are relying on a variety of wild fruits, tubers and okra-like vegetables, which become more abundant as the rainy season progresses.

"Everyday we eat the wild fruit that are available in the bush, but the fruits are not good to eat every day. And school children are no longer going to school but spend the whole day looking for the wild fruits," Samuel Ndlovu, from Dakamela village, told IRIN.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said in a recent statement: "A large number of farmers harvested little – if anything – this year, and have now exhausted their meagre stocks. Many hungry families are reportedly living on one meal a day, exchanging precious livestock for buckets of maize or eating wild foods such as baobab and amarula." About 28 percent of children under five are already chronically malnourished.

Esnath Nyoni, in the Lupane area of Matabeleland North, said her family had last eaten a decent meal in the previous week. They are now surviving on a bland porridge made from ground roots of the cassava tree, into which she squeezes the sweet juice of the brown plumb-sized cork fruit for flavour.

Households that still have maize-meal can stretch it by mixing it with the ground cassava tree roots. "The porridge doesn't taste good, but it gives people energy throughout the day when there is no food available; and for families with livestock, they then mix the meal with sour or fresh milk," said Nyoni.

Dried bean leaves (umfushwa in the Ndebele language) were a useful emergency ration when boiled, Nyoni said. "The advantage with dried umfushwa is that you can keep it for a long time from the last harvest, and it will still be fine until the next harvest, and it has a high nutritional value compared to some of the foods that people eat during droughts."
An alternative cookbook

The survivor's cookbook also includes, in the Shona language, the potato-like madhumbe and mufarinya, and several other edible and reputedly medicinal tubers, a range of berries, and wild vegetables such as derere - a type of okra - and nyeve, a bitter-tasting plant that can be boiled in a soup or eaten dried.

Care needs to be taken when foraging for wild foods: there have already been reported cases of accidental poisoning due to people picking the wrong plants, or preparing them incorrectly.

"This is now the time when the elderly, who have survived in previous droughts, play a crucial role, as the young people have no idea which trees have edible roots and which ones do not," said Themba Dlomo, another Lupane area villager.

A lack of inputs – seeds and fertiliser – drastically cut last season's harvest. The UN estimates that more than five million Zimbabweans - nearly half the population - will require emergency food assistance in the first quarter of 2009.

The hardship is exacerbated by an inflation rate of 231 million percent, which has pushed even price-controlled maize - in theory available from the state-run Grain Marketing Board (GMB) - way beyond the reach of rural Zimbabweans.

Villagers in Lupane alleged that maize delivered to the local GMB depot was finding its way onto the parallel market. "The maize arrives on a weekly basis but we do not get any, as it is transported to as far as Victoria Falls [on the border with Zambia], where it is sold in foreign currency, and we are left to scavenge for wild fruits with the wild animals," said Laiza Ncube.

For most Zimbabweans, eating wild plant foods is an indication of crisis, but since last year the University of Zimbabwe has tried to promote consumption as a sensible food security option.

"The nutritional properties and traditional knowledge of wild foods have been dismissed as 'old wives tales' or 'poor man's food'. Little is known about their health and nutritional benefits," Dr Maud Muchuweti of the Department of Biochemistry has maintained.

"We want to create more awareness of the value of indigenous wild plant foods and promote their effective utilisation."

IRIN

Slowly but surely

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:49:27 GMT

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The task of attaining food self-sufficiency no doubt remains a daunting one. But by the grace of the Almighty Allah we shall get there; slowly but surely. Already we have seen how responsive Gambians could be towards this call of wisdom in achieving this food self-sufficiency.

Thanks to the pioneering effort of the President of the Republic, Alhajie Dr Yahya A.J.J Jammeh, the whole nation, for the first time, probably in decades, braces itself with heightened enthusiasm for a bumper harvest. The level of fervor displayed suggests the intensity of appreciation on the part of Gambians. This leaves us all at quite a vantage point to capitalize and make the difference we have for ever been longing for.

The recently announced plan of action by the Gambian leader, as carried on our last edition, captioned: “President Yahya Jammeh: food self-sufficiency in 3 years”, explains it all. What is needed now is a concerted effort by the entire Gambian populace. The effort of the president is aimed at us Gambians and all those making a living in The Gambia; and surely not for him self or his family alone.

The Taiwanese might be wiling to help, as it really is the case, but the best way we could be seen helping them in achieving that goal of ours would be to get totally involved, ourselves. That way we can be sure to take over when they leave, as they certainly are not going to remain with us for ever.

Author: DO