By 2050 the Food and Agri­culture Organization (FAO) anticipates food production must rise 60 per cent globally to feed a population projected by then at 10 million.

The good news is there have already been declines in hunger worldwide, even as world populations continue to rise, said Catherine Bertini, 2003 World Prize Laureate told the Agricultural Bioscience International Confer­ence last week.

Food and Agricultural Organ­ization (FAO) data from 2016 now pegs some 815 million in the world not having enough to eat. It’s a number that’s gone up since 2015 but down from 900 million in 2000. The trend lines for the numbers of hungry people or percentage of hungry people are generally going down, she said.

“We’ve had significant population increases, yet we have actually had decreases over all in the number of hungry people, which is really good news,” said Bertini.

The main reason for the declines is economic development worldwide, she said, and in her half-hour address outlined multiple areas she considers key in sustaining that trend line, including ways to tackle global poverty.

“It you’re hungry you’re poor, and if you’re poor you’re usually hungry,” she said. “And it is multi-generational. If a young woman is hungry when pregnant she is not going to give birth to a healthy child. That child gets a bad head start and is probably not going to live to full potential.”

World Bank studies show agricultural productivity to be two to four times as effective at alleviating poverty than other sectors.

Meanwhile, the FAO estimates by closing the gender gap in agriculture it would cut the present number of 815 million hungry in the world down by 100 to 150 million people.

Yet, women remain “invisible” from a policy perspective even as they are “ubiquitous in areas of preparing food, primary providers of meals, growing food, serving food, taking care of children and a large percentage are farmers,” said Bertini.

If she had her way every girl on the planet would go to school, she said. That’s because there would be so many positive outcomes.

“If women know how to count and read they’ll be more productive farmers,” she said.

That closure of the gender gap would also lead to great gains.

“And if women had access to land… access to landownership, if they could inherit land, take loans… all of this which now inhibits them… would give them more opportunities and then they could become more productive.”

Another action needed is a new focus on nutrition, said Bertini, who calls nutrition the “stepchild” of agriculture and health right now.

“I never believe there is enough discussion about nutrition in the context of agriculture or health,” she said. “It seems, bureaucratically almost forgotten. No one claims responsibility for working in this space, and yet it’s critically important.”

That’s because in addition to global hunger, food-related causes of death are rampant. Child malnutrition, anemia, and obesity are huge issues, she said. Non-communicable deaths take a huge toll when so many children and adults are now overweight and obese.

Seventy per cent of worldwide adult deaths occurring between the ages of 30 and 69 are due to non-communicable diseases.

Bertini was one of multiple speakers during the “Solutions Start Here” convention, with sessions focused on how to work within our existing footprint to feed nine billion.

Discussions throughout the three days ranged from reducing food waste, protecting pollinators, and building sustainability into animal systems, and a new vertical farm being developed in northern Manitoba to produce vegetables year round.

The post Multiple actions needed to address world hunger appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

In a report, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) said: “After decades of stagnation, much of Africa has enjoyed sustained agricultural productivity growth since 2005.”

That has helped push down poverty rates in places like Ghana, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, it added.

Countries that adopted the policies promoted by the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) not long after it was created by African Union governments in 2003 saw productivity on existing farmlands rise by 5.9 to 6.7 per cent per year, the report said.

That helped spur a 4.3 per cent average annual increase in gross domestic product (GDP).

By contrast, states that sat on the sidelines saw farm productivity rise by less than three per cent a year and GDP by only 2.2 per cent, said the Africa Agriculture Status Report 2016.

“The last 10 years have made a strong case for agriculture as the surest path to producing sustainable economic growth that is felt in all sectors of society — and particularly among poor Africans,” AGRA president Agnes Kalibata said in a statement.

Growth in agriculture is more effective at cutting poverty than growth in other sectors in sub-Saharan Africa because farming is a main source of income for more than 60 per cent of the labour force, and will continue to be a major employer in most countries for a decade or more, the report noted.

On malnutrition, countries that were quick to put the CAADP into practice experienced an annual average decline of 3.1 per cent, while those that did not sign up saw a drop of only 1.2 per cent.

The countries adopting the program early — between 2007 and 2009 — were Benin, Burundi, Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Togo, according to the report.

More needed

“Africa is no longer in the dark. It has done a lot towards agricultural transformation in the past decade,” said David Ameyaw, AGRA’s head of monitoring and evaluation and a lead author of the report.

“But there is a need to double the effort by 2030 for a meaningful agricultural transformation,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The report, released to inform discussions at the African Green Revolution Forum in Nairobi this week, noted that gains were made in early-moving African countries even if their governments did not hit a target set by the CAADP to allocate 10 per cent of national budgets to agriculture.

Only 13 African countries have met or surpassed that goal, the report noted. If others followed suit, public funding for agriculture across Africa would rise from $12 billion — the amount allocated in 2014 — to $40 billion, it added.

Agriculture in Africa is still threatened by low productivity due to limited use of inputs like improved seeds and fertilizers, rising water stress, and climate-related disasters such as floods and droughts that are affecting crop, livestock and fish production, according to the report.

A 2014 World Bank study found that around two-thirds of small-scale farmers surveyed in Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda did not use chemical fertilizers.

There is a need for such farmers to invest further in irrigation, both studies said, with the World Bank estimating that only one to three per cent of land cultivated by smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated.

Ameyaw said further agricultural progress in the region would require political will, the right policies and technology transfer to improve productivity and reduce post-harvest losses.

Linking small-scale farmers to markets and giving them access to finance are also key, he said.

Reforming the land tenure system is important in countries where arable land is inherited by siblings, the scientist added.

“When agricultural land is subdivided from generation to generation, it shrinks (and) thus becomes meaningless for agricultural production,” Ameyaw said.

The post Agriculture investment yields growth and nutrition gains for Africa appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The new occupants working the land, many of who had few farming skills when they were resettled, say they can barely make ends meet, let alone pay an extra levy.

Their agricultural output is a fraction of the level seen before 2000, when President Robert Mugabe — saying he sought to correct colonial injustices — introduced land reforms which led to thousands of experienced white farmers being evicted.

They are also being hammered by Zimbabwe’s worst drought in a quarter of a century and toiling under a stagnating economy that has seen banks reluctant to lend and cheaper food imports from the likes of South Africa undermining their businesses.

“Are farmers able to pay? I will say no. Is the land being productive? I will say no again,” said Victor Matemadanda, secretary general of a group representing war veterans who led the land seizure drive in 2000 and are now farmers.

He told Reuters that many farmers could not even meet water and electricity bills and that it was the government’s obligation — not theirs — to pay the compensation.

Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union president Abdul Nyathi also said his members would not be able to pay compensation. “Most of the farmers face viability issues, the government will have to look at other ways of raising money,” he added.

Mugabe’s land reforms have led to about 5,000 white farmers being evicted from their land by his supporters and war veterans over the past 16 years, often violently. More than a dozen farmers have been killed.

The land seizures, along with allegations of vote-rigging and rights abuses — all denied by Mugabe — led to Zimbabwe being targeted by sanctions from Western donors. This compounded the economic plight of the country, which saw financing from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and African Development Bank frozen in 1999 after it defaulted on debts.

The IMF’s head of mission to Zimbabwe, Domenico Fanizza, said this month that improving fiscal discipline and re-engaging the international community should be priorities for Harare. He said this would “reduce the perceived country risk premium and unlock affordable financing for the government and private sector.”

Divided opinion

In an attempt to woo back international donors and lenders, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced a package of major reforms on March 9, including the farm measure and a big reduction in public-sector wages. He said it had the full backing of Mugabe.

The farm plan involves 300,000 families resettled on seized land paying an annual rent — based on the size of their farms — toward a compensation fund for those evicted.

If they are unable to pay, however, it could be a major setback for the government’s plans to shore up an economy that is stagnating after a deep recession in the decade to 2008, which slashed its output by nearly half, drove hundreds of thousands abroad in search of better paying jobs and has left the jobless rate at around 85 per cent.

The finance ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the ability of farmers to pay the levy.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya told Reuters that the farmers’ situation should improve once the government grants them 99-year leases on their land, which he said would make it easier for them to secure financing from banks and to pay rent towards the compensation fund.

All agricultural land in Zimbabwe is owned by the government and, at present, farmers have no legal claim on their farms — which they say has made banks reluctant to extend loans to buy seed and crop inputs. But the government says it will imminently grant the leases.

“We are saying that the land should produce, but we also know what the constraints are to increase production,” said Mangudya. “That is why we need to finalize on the 99-year land lease agreements to make them bankable so that farmers have security of tenure. With that there is no reason why farmers should not be able to pay (rent).”

Mugabe’s land reform program is a highly emotive issue, which has divided public opinion. Supporters say it has empowered blacks while opponents see it as a partisan process that left Zimbabwe struggling to feed itself.

“The land revolution was a necessity and if the economy was running very well farmers would be able to pay the rent,” said Matemadanda of the war veterans’ group. “The prevailing economic conditions do not allow.”

The land seizures have led to a steep fall in commercial agriculture output; yields for the staple maize have fallen to an average 0.5 tonnes per hectare from eight tonnes in 2000 when white farmers worked the land.

Mugabe acknowledged the skills of evicted white farmers last week, saying they had helped neighbouring Zambia to produce excess maize, which Zimbabwe was now importing.

Elections

A treasury ministry circular said that compensation would be paid out of rent from black farmers who benefited from the seizures. Chinamasa has not said when farmers would be expected to start paying the rents, or at what level they would be set.

When announcing the measures, he said production on black-owned farms was “scandalously low” and that the economy was under siege from the drought.

The white Zimbabweans who accounted for the majority of those evicted will be compensated only for the improvements they made to the farms, while the foreign owners forced out will be paid full compensation for land and improvements, under the plan.

Chinamasa said Harare broke bilateral investment agreements with other countries when it seized farms owned by foreigners.

Tony Hawkins, professor of business studies at the University of Zimbabwe, said the government was “going through the motions to keep the IMF happy.

“They probably want the international community to see that they are doing something,” he said. “I doubt they will press with this ahead of the elections,” he added, referring to the 2018 general election. Farmers are an important voting bloc for Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party.

Hundreds of evicted white Zimbabwean farmers are now farming in Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Nigeria, while others migrated to Europe, New Zealand and Australia.

Hendrik Olivier, director at the formerly white-dominated Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), said the government had not yet approached evicted farmers to discuss compensation, and also cast doubt on the plan’s viability.

The CFU, which once boasted 4,500 farmers who produced 90 per cent of Zimbabwe’s export crops, including tobacco and horticulture produce until 2000, now only has 300 members.

“It’s a huge step forward, let’s acknowledge that. In the past the government has said that it won’t pay compensation,” Olivier told Reuters.

“But if you are talking about new farmers paying a levy, that’s not gonna work, that’s not gonna pay our compensation.”

— MacDonald Dzirutwe is a Reuters correspondent based in Harare.

The post Zimbabwe farmers resist compensating evicted landowners appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Or so you’d think about reading some of the national and international media coverage. Some of it made us think of the coverage of the Crow debate. As it went on (seemingly forever), journalists would dredge up phrases from old stories and start new ones about the “century-old” (it wasn’t) Crow Rate which “was promised in perpetuity” (it wasn’t) and how changing it would “reduce the price of land on the Prairies” (it didn’t).

So while they weren’t accurate, these phrases were repeated so often that they became accepted wisdom.

Similarly, as in reports from last week’s G-20 agriculture ministers’ meeting in Turkey, there were references to Canada’s reluctance to drop supply management because of the “powerful dairy lobby.”

The Dairy Farmers of Canada is pretty smart all right, but let’s think this through. There are about 12,000 dairy farms in Canada, so let’s assume each has an average of mom, dad and one child of voting age. That’s 36,000 votes spread across dozens of constituencies across the country. Let’s further assume the Conservatives drop supply management and every one of those voters decides to vote Liberal or NDP in protest. In that unlikely event, in how many constituencies would that make a difference?

Pressure to change supply management came last week from the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, which issued an opinion piece saying “the time is now” to get a deal. It didn’t mention the words “supply management,” but the unspoken undercurrent is that Canada has to drop it or there will be no deal, and Prairie grain and livestock producers will lose out.

That must have the Conservatives quaking in their boots — if we don’t get into the TPP, all the farmers on the Prairies are going to vote Liberal or NDP in protest. Given the NDP victory in Alberta, perhaps anything is possible, but this doesn’t seem too likely.

The focus on supply management diverts attention from the fact that there are other contentious issues in the TPP. Patent protection on drugs is one, especially for Canadian provinces trying to minimize their health-care bills. And of some 61,000 words in the Wikipedia entry on the TPP, the words “supply management” appear once. “Intellectual property” appears 20 times. Many countries are at odds with the U.S. on intellectual property and copyright law. And according to WikiLeaks, the accord would grant the power to global corporations to sue governments in tribunals organized by the World Bank or the United Nations to obtain taxpayer compensation for loss of expected future profits due to government actions. That information had to come from WikiLeaks, because the text of the deal is secret.

So there are certainly some powerful lobbies in the TPP negotiations, such as U.S. entertainment and Internet corporations and multinational drug companies. It’s odd that the “powerful dairy lobby” in Canada seems to get more ink than they do. Or than the much more powerful dairy lobby in the U.S., which wants access to the Canadian market.

There lies the real but so far mostly unspoken political issue in Canada. Much of the U.S. “dairy shed” in the northern U.S. is within a few hours’ semi-trailer ride to most of the Canadian population in Ontario and Quebec. Manitoba’s comparatively small requirement could probably be supplied from Minnesota.

So if supply management disappears and the border opens, U.S. milk would flood across the border unless Canada matched the U.S. dairy support program. Canadian producers would also be under pressure to adopt the same production model as some of the U.S. mega-operations, many of which have questionable labour and animal welfare practices. Canadian consumers would begin to see sharp fluctuations in prices, which they don’t now. Nothing strikes more fear into the heart of a politician than the prospect of a news report with a young mother complaining about the high price of milk.

So while supply management, especially for dairy, may be a sticking point in the TPP, it isn’t the only one, and it involves more than farmers. Other than Mexico, Canada is the only TPP country that shares a border with the U.S. If this deal is in fact “NAFTA on steroids,” it’s likely that there are more issues on the table than milk and eggs.

The post Editorial: More to TPP than milk and eggs appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

It was a sincere effort that raised millions and was part of a global response by governments and aid and development agencies that saved lives.

But it didn’t change lives. At the time, Ethiopia was one dry season away from another famine requiring global humanitarian response. The rural farming population had lost its resilience to withstand production shortfalls, which meant emergency food aid was going to people who had little hope of ever regaining their independence.

“We saved lives but we did not improve livelihoods because every year there were food shortages,” said Ato Berhane, the director of the food security co-ordination directorate with the Ethiopian government.

“Their land was not being productive, it was degraded, the forests are deforested and the land size was getting smaller as the population pressure increased,” he said in an interview.

That started to change in 2005. The Ethiopian government, with support from international donors, introduced the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) — a co-ordinated strategy to reach people before famine struck with support that would not only prevent a pending disaster, but would proactively shield them from future threats.

Although donors have continued to provide famine relief when disaster strikes, the focus of the Productive Safety Net Program is to proactively provide relief from famine. Its model of intervention — projects designed to build or restore community capacity before people are shut down by hunger — has been adopted by non-government agencies working in the country as well.

Rethinking approach

Chris Demerse, a program officer with Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD) based in Addis Ababa, said Canada has had a long-standing commitment to providing humanitarian support to Ethiopia.

“If you look at the history of Ethiopia, food insecurity has been a chronic issue,” he said. “It’s a country with very dense population with pressure on the land and historically in the broader aid community; this tended to be done on an annual basis.”

But he said world leaders began to rethink that approach in the early 2000s.

“There was a realization that a lot of the beneficiaries are the same people year after year,” Demerse said. “If it’s people who are year-in-year-out food insecure, then there was a realization that there should be a better, more predictable way of handling this caseload.”

Canada, which has identified Ethiopia as one of its priority countries for donor aid, is the fourth-largest international donor to the program, following the World Bank, the U.S., and the EU.

“It is not only the financial contributions that we are seeing from the Canadian government,” Berhane noted. “The good part for us is the technical support provided from the Canadian government through the DFATD office and the knowledge sharing.”

Canada has supported the program with training for government staff, assistance establishing efficient delivery mechanisms and monitoring how the program is working — all of which helps to ensure the targeted recipients receive the support to which they are entitled in a timely manner.

“This (program) is implemented by government officials and that requires a lot of logistics,” Demerse said.

“You are looking at very large sums of money, very large tonnes of food and so there is just a huge effort required for this,” he said. “So the capacity building was to ensure smoother implementation of the program.”

Berhane said the technical support has been invaluable.

“With this support there is really a good implementation arrangement and working relationships at the district level among different partners,” he said.

Food or cash for work

The PSNP started working with 15 million people in 319 districts in Ethiopia that were either chronically food insecure or in a transitory phase — facing the kind of temporary shortages that cause households to sell off assets and begin the downwards slide into permanent insecurity.

Able-bodied people living in the target areas are assigned to work on building community assets, such as schools, roads, clinics, bridges or improving access to water and reclaiming eroded landscapes in order to receive support from the PSNP, either in the form of cash or food.

The local communities identify their own priorities for labour-intensive public works.

Food-insecure people who are incapable of working because they are elderly or disabled, or women who are in their later stages of pregnancy or who have recently given birth, are supported with no labour requirement.

However, in the latest phase young mothers are required to participate in nutrition and cooking classes as a condition of receiving program benefits.

Unlike welfare programs in countries such as Canada, in which recipients are penalized if they work while receiving assistance, the PSNP is intended to assist recipients in regaining their productive capacity, and building up their household and community assets to where they “graduate” from a life of dependence. And it’s working.

“So far about 3.4 million people who were food insecure in 2005 have now become food secure,” Berhane said, noting that number is expected to reach 4.4 million by the end of June.

Infrastructure improvement

As well, the community infrastructure has been improved, which is enabling more local economic development.

Better roads mean easier access to markets and more communication and trade between communities. Access to water improves health but also allows for expanded agriculture, such as vegetable production, which improves nutrition and provides higher-value commodities for sale.

Although no one is allowed to graze or harvest wood from eroded areas that have been stabilized through terracing and then reforested and sown back to grass, Berhane said area residents are allowed to use those forests for beekeeping.

They will also be allowed to harvest hay for use in livestock feeding-fattening operations. Both of these uses provide a source of employment for the growing class of rural youth who don’t have access to farmland. As well, part of their role as sanctioned users is to protect those lands from illegal uses.

The program, now entering its fourth phase, is being scaled up and applied to a wider base. It is currently reaching about seven million people per year and is a key pillar in the Ethiopian government’s policy framework for transforming the country into a middle-income economy by 2025.

“It is recognized as the best model for social protection programs in low-income countries — and so we are very happy to be a part of that,” said Demerse.

“We are not talking about large transfers. But it is enough that households don’t have to sell off their assets and find themselves in a worse position just because the rain didn’t come one year,” he said.

“Ideally when the program works well, they slowly build up their asset base so that they can then become a food-secure household and graduate in a sustainable way from the program,” he said.

“I think it highlights the developments in food assistance as a whole.”

The post Moving from famine relief to relief from famine appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The agricultural economist, honoured earlier this year by the World Food Program’s Hunger Hero Award for his commitment to fighting global hunger, identifies closely with the 84 per cent of the world’s 570 million farmers who survive on two hectares or less. He is well aware that small farmers produce 80 per cent of the food consumed in Asia and Africa.

“However, that does not mean small is beautiful,” Fan told a panel discussion at this year’s Borlaug Dialogue on the resources, technology and policies needed to make family farming profitable and sustainable. “In many cases, small means hungry.”

Fan considers himself fortunate that his family’s farm produced enough to feed themselves and others, but their meals often consisted only of rice. And as the brothers grew to adulthood, it became clear that when divided three ways, their small holding would be inadequate. So two brothers moved out, and the one brother who remained moved up by renting more land.

For Fan, “move up or move out” should be the mantra for reducing hunger and improving the profitability and sustainability of small-scale farming. “There are small farmers who simply cannot be sustainable,” he said, noting many of them are farming on eroded land in remote regions, which makes providing services and market access difficult. “It is not fair to keep smallholders hungry and malnourished.”

Most of the world’s farmers lack the amount of land they need to be viable, he said. In fact, in many countries, farmers lack clear rights to their land, which makes it difficult, if not impossible to properly manage what they do have or acquire more.

Fan said securing land rights is critical to empowering smallholders, but so are policies and programs that help farmers manage risk, improve market access and diversify into more nutritionally valuable crops.

Switch to vegetables

“The first step for smallholders is to diversify production away from rice, wheat and maize into more nutritious vegetables,” he said. “When they have enough to eat, they can sell nutritious food to the market.”

Fan said some countries are using subsidies to artificially promote the production of wheat and rice at the expense of more nutritious crops.

Not only would land tenure assist them in scaling up their operations, it could help them link with foreign investors, rather than being vulnerable to displacement by so-called “land grabs,” he said.

Faustine Wabwire, senior policy analyst for the Washington-based Bread for the World Institute, said agriculture in developing countries must undergo dramatic change if it is to appeal to the next generation, which is increasingly educated and has a taste for the comforts of urban life.

“Most young people, especially if they have been to school — they see their parents labouring all their lives and still be poor,” she said.

“There is a tendency for them to want to do agriculture, but it’s going to be agriculture that is mostly technology driven,” Wabwire said. “They are not attracted to agriculture with a hand hoe.”

Not so easy

But encouraging people to leave the land means having someplace better for them to go.

Ajay Markanday, senior economist and FAO representative at the World Bank, agrees farmers have to be able to achieve a profitable scale, but he noted the traditional model of development in which a growing manufacturing sector draws people off the farm with well-paying factory jobs no longer exists like it did when agriculture was scaling up in North America.

Economists have coined the expression “jobless growth” to describe the global trend towards measuring economic growth by returns to capital instead of jobs created. Manufacturing has become less labour intensive and the areas in which new jobs are being created, such as the digital and service sectors, are a poor fit with an agrarian-based labour force that has little education and few skills.

Markanday said the phenomenon of jobless growth is behind a widening gap between the rich and poor in industrialized countries as well, but the effects are most pronounced in less-developed economies.

“How you make growth inclusive is a policy decision,” he said, noting governments in the industrialized world have opted for competitiveness in the global economy over inclusive growth.

Small can be beautiful

Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), said investment in agriculture is an investment in jobs. He said for the foreseeable future, improving the productivity of small-scale farmers will be the best way to address both poverty and hunger. “For IFAD the answer is simple,” he said. “Invest in rural people; invest in smallholder farmers.”

Nwanze stressed the goal of feeding the world is achievable with the right policies, programs and partnerships with the private sector aimed at increasing the productive capacity of small farmers.

For example, between 1990 and 2013, China was able to reduce malnutrition from 23 per cent to 11 per cent and child stunting from 32 per cent to nine per cent.

“As we strive for innovation, there is nothing wrong with thinking small,” he said. “Sometimes, the technology farmers need is not a new seed, it is a smartphone or tablet.”

Such technology puts small-scale farmers on an equal footing with large operators because they can better access production information and extension support.

The post Small-scale farming at a crossroads appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Seed technology firm Kaiima Bio-Agritech says it has developed a way to greatly speed up the multiplication of the genome of crops, known as genome doubling, without changing their DNA, or genetic fingerprint.

It is as if a piece of string were thickened into a rope by adding more fibres of the same material, making it stronger and more durable. In agriculture, it means enhancing seeds so that they produce more plentiful and robust crops.

Kaiima has kept secret how it has achieved its breakthrough and says it has filed a number of patents worldwide. Independent experts contacted by Reuters declined to comment on the work, saying they did not have enough details.

In a tour of Kaiima’s experimental crop fields in northern Israel, company officials displayed examples of what they said were crops improved by its new technique.

Doron Gal, Kaiima’s chief executive officer, said that by 2050, farmers will need to meet the “daunting challenge” of producing 70 per cent more food than they do currently to sustain a growing world population.

Kaiima, the Hebrew word for sustainability, said that by 2016 it expects to be able to deliver to growers the basis for producing seeds for enhanced wheat, corn and rice for food and castor for biofuel and biopolymer production.

Israel is considered a world leader in agricultural technology development with irrigation techniques, hothouses and computerized animal feeding systems among leading exported products, the Israel Export Institute said.

Income from agri-tech exports in 2011 amounted to $3.4 billion, out of a total of $91.7 billion in Israeli exports for that year, according to official figures.

Kaiima, founded in 2007, said in September that it had raised some $65 million in equity from international investors. It does not have any plans for an IPO in the foreseeable future.

“Our plan is for this funding to finance our operation through 2016 when we are going to be able to bring our product to the market… we will produce seeds together with partners that will be similar in price to regular seeds,” Gal said.

Enhanced crops

Genome doubling evolves in nature, but only over thousands of years. Scientists have been trying since the 1940s to speed up the process, but had not been able to avoid damage to a crop’s core characteristics.

Gal said Kaiima had managed to achieve a crop’s stability by respecting the integrity of its original DNA. Kaiima expects that its technology will result in an initial 25 per cent improvement in crop yields.

Asked by Reuters about Kaiima’s breakthrough claim, five experts in the field of agricultural genetics at leading Israeli academic institutions declined to comment, saying they did not have enough information about the company’s work.

One scientist confirmed Gal’s statement that attempts to speed up genome doubling had been tried for decades, but added that neither he nor any other researcher he knew of had managed to unlock the secret for doing it successfully.

Stronger plants have been developed during genome doubling attempts in the past, but Gal said their lack of genetic stability meant they could not produce seeds for subsequent generations.

Kaiima’s main centre is based in a cluster of portable cabins in a farming community in northern Israel’s agricultural heartland. The company has taken over a number of fields at various locations in the area for its crop experiments.

In its rice crop trial, Kaiima planted seed variants and breeders picked out the best results to continue laboratory work on the most successful strains.

Alon Lerner, Kaiima’s senior breeder, displayed an enhanced yield of bigger plants and grains. He said they had received the same amount of water and nutrition as crops to which the technology had not been applied.

Kaiima’s recent injection of cash has come from three new investors: Horizons Ventures, which manages the private technology investments of Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, the World Bank’s private-sector arm International Finance Corp. (IFC) and Infinity Group, a China-focused private equity fund.

It also received new funds from existing investors that include DFJ, DFJ-Tamir Fishman, Mitsui, KPCB, Oberlee and Musea Ventures.

The post Israeli agri-tech firm aims for big boost in crop yields without GMOs appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

But things are changing.

“Kenyans need to do it themselves,” says Rien Geuze, agribusiness adviser for Agriterra, a Dutch organization working on agricultural business development in Kenya.

“What we have done for hundreds of years in Europe and North America, they have had to learn since independence in 1963. What can you do in a lifetime? You can do a lot but not everything.”

Agriculture is a primary driver of the Kenyan economy, accounting for 75 per cent of employment and 25 per cent of the GDP, with cash crops such as tea, coffee, and tobacco, as well as roses and other flowers, dominating exports. Smallholder farms remain key, producing 80 per cent of the country’s food.

But getting food to market is a challenge.

“If the western world didn’t want to give development aid anymore, if suddenly it was all too much, then just make roads,” says Geuze. “That’s the least you can do.”

Kenya also needs more reliable marketing systems, and organizations able to support farmers.

Farmer-owned co-operatives are increasingly being seen as one solution, and the model has worked particularly well in Kenya’s dairy sector.

The typical dairy farmer in Kenya has one to three cows, but dairy is still big business, contributing $2 billion a year to the economy. Of the 4.2 billion litres of milk produced each year, about 80 per cent comes from the one-million-plus farmers with fewer than 10 cows.

Dairy co-op success

Dairy co-operatives help organize and provide extension services for these small-scale farmers, as well as collecting and selling milk to the two dominant companies — government-owned New Kenya Co-operative Creameries and privately held Brookside Dairy.

Some co-operatives are also pushing into yogurt production, a competitive market but one that pays premiums which allow them to maintain the price they pay for milk when big companies cut their prices.

“Sometimes the success of the co-operative will drive the competition to step up its act,” says Geuze. “Farmers do not realize they only get at high prices from the companies or the hawkers because the co-op created value and drove up the price. If you take away the co-op, the whole thing falls apart.”

It’s quite different in the cereals sector, which in Kenya means maize. It accounts for 90 per cent of production, with wheat, sorghum, barley, millet and rice making up the remainder. Unlike the dairy sector, small-scale maize growers have struggled to find a marketing system that works.

It’s partly a legacy of the colonial system, says Justus Monda, president of the Kenya Small Scale Cereal Growers and deputy chairman of the Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers.

After independence, the national government, like its colonial predecessor, played a major role in the markets. When the World Bank pushed for market liberalization in the ’80s and early ’90s, farmers simply weren’t prepared, says Monda.

“When the market opened in the name of liberalization, farmers didn’t understand the new marketing channels,” he says. “Farmers have not reconciled our thinking to see what we can do, how competitive we can be, how we need to organize in order to meet the current status.”

Supply chain

Canada is a model that Kenya wants to emulate, says Monda.

“We want to learn the models and see the technology in Canada,” he says. “Canada has good supply-chain management and a very strong system. It’s not that we lack resources in this country, but people need to link up and learn a successful model.”

Monda is attempting to pioneer his own version of a reliable supply chain. He grows maize and sorghum on his 2.5-acre plot, and has established contracts with three schools in his region to supply maize. He also works with other farmers in his area to ensure he can get the quality and quantity of maize required by the schools.

“If you produce first and then discuss price when the produce is ready, that’s not business, it’s subsistence,” he says. “This is the cycle we have to break.”

In the village of Engineer, 35 local vegetable growers have collectively marketed their produce since 2011 and improved productivity. Working with the faculty from Nairobi University, they have developed a demonstration plot and farmer field to teach their members new techniques in planting, production and pest management. Just by implementing proper crop rotation, they have more than tripled annual production.

They’ve also focused on seven high-value food crops, negotiated contracts, and, as a collective, obtained bank financing for inputs. They’re currently negotiating with three of the country’s top grocery chains to supply vegetables.

“Marketing is still the biggest challenge,” says Esther Waithira Chege, chair of the group’s marketing committee. “It’s better to be seen as marketing as a group because as individuals we are in the hands of the brokers.”

The post Step by step, Kenyan farmers are improving their lot appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Two million hectares are currently under zero tillage, making Kazakhstan one of the top 10 countries for conservation agriculture and helping to avoid severe wheat shortages.

“If no-till practices had not been used this period of drought, we would have gotten nothing. It would have been an absolute catastrophe,” says Valentin Dvurechenskii, director general of the Kostanay Agricultural Research Institute in Kazakhstan, giving his verdict on the 2012 wheat crop.

After farmers planted their wheat in April, Kostanay — the country’s main wheat-growing region — went two months without rain. Making matters worse, daily temperatures were several degrees above normal.

Farmer and director general of the Agrofirm Dievskaya, Oleg Danilenko said the harsh conditions highlighted the advantages of conservation agriculture, which involves reduced or zero tillage, keeping crop residues on the soil, and rotating crops. “No other results have been nearly as successful.”

Lack of rain darkens crop outlook

Wheat on Kazakhstani farms using conventional agriculture has been severely affected by 2012’s drought and high temperatures. According to farmer Idris Kozhebayev, wheat crops in Akmola Region normally average 42 grains per spike, but this year are producing only two to four grains per spike.

In the village of Tonkeris, 45 km from the capital Astana in the Akmola region, farmers’ fields had received no rainfall between May and September. According to farmers in the area, drought conditions used to be rare but are becoming more frequent. “I’ve been a farmer for 30 years,” said Idris Kozhabayev. “There was drought like this in 2000 and 2010. In recent years, it’s getting worse.”

Cultivated using conventional practices, the fields of Akmola were expected to produce only enough wheat for next year’s seed.

Meanwhile, in Kostanay, many farmers had adopted conservation agriculture techniques that protected them from drought’s worst effects. With these, farmers reported yields of two tons per hectare, while some farmers using conventional practices lost their entire crop.

Conserving where it counts

Wheat grown under conservation agriculture in the Kostanay region of Kazakhstan has stayed healthy and is set to give a good yield despite the year’s severe drought and high temperatures.

Kazakhstan is the world’s sixth-largest wheat exporter. More than 14 million of the country’s 15 million hectares of wheat is rain fed. Reports in January 2013 said the 2012 drought had shrunk the wheat crop 57 per cent from 2011’s record harvests.

Farmers are initially attracted to zero tillage and conservation agriculture because the approaches dramatically cut costs: farming this way requires less labour, machinery use, fuel, water, or fertilizers. In rain-fed cropping, conservation agriculture can also boost yields.

Research has shown that conservation agriculture increases soil moisture by as much as 24 per cent on most fields. In Kazakhstan the practices capture snow on the surface and improve water retention under heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures. Zero tillage also augments soil organic matter and cuts erosion by 75-100 per cent.

All this has helped to nearly double average wheat yields, from 1.4 to 2.6 tons per hectare, according to Dvurechenskii. In December 2011 Dvurechenskii was awarded the “Gold Star” medal and the rank “Hero of Labour of Kazakhstan” by the country’s president, in recognition of his work to promote conservation agriculture.

The findings of a 2012 FAO-Investment Centre mission to Kazakhstan suggest that adoption of zero tillage and conservation agriculture had raised domestic wheat production by almost two million tons.

Pushing out with better practices

With the support of CIMMYT, FAO, ICARDA, the World Bank, the Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan, and other international organizations and donors, Kazakhstan went from practically nothing under conservation agriculture in 2000 to 0.5 million hectares in 2007.

In 2012, as a result of ongoing farmer engagement through demonstration plots, field days, and close work with farmer unions, conservation agriculture is now practised on two million hectares — 13 per cent of the country’s wheat-growing area.

“This amazing adoption is thanks to a few scientists who saw the potential, but more importantly to the pioneer farmers who perfected the techniques and put them into practice; farmers believe farmers,” says conservation agriculture expert Pat Wall, who, together with CIMMYT colleagues Alexei Morgounov and Muratbek Karabayev, initiated field trials with Kazakhstani scientists in the country’s northern steppes in 2000.

“The main achievement of CIMMYT in Kazakhstan has been the changing of the minds of farmers and scientists,” observes Bayan Alimgazinova, head of the Crop Production Department of KazAgroInnovation, a specialized organization created by the Ministry of Agriculture to increase the competitiveness of the country’s agricultural sector. Kazakhstan’s current state policy calls for every province to pursue zero tillage.

“Kazakhstan has a wheat-growing area of 15 million hectares presently and can increase it up to 20 million hectares,” added Murat Karabayev, CIMMYT representative in Kazakhstan. “This is extremely important for the food security of the country, the Central Asian region, and globally. There is a real opportunity to double yields using new advanced technologies and improved varieties. We’ve already seen this through conservation agriculture.”

The post Kazakhstan farmers reap benefits of conservation tillage appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Africa’s food market, currently valued at $313 billion a year, could triple if farmers modernized their practices and had better access to credit, new technology, irrigation and fertilizers, according to the new report “Growing Africa: Unlocking the Potential of Agribusiness.”

The World Bank said African farmers have a unique opportunity to tap into growing demand from a burgeoning middle class with more expensive tastes, an expected fourfold increase in urban supermarkets in Africa and higher commodity prices.

Rice, poultry, dairy, vegetable oils, horticulture, feed grains and processed foods for local markets were likely to be the most dynamic areas of agribusiness in Africa, the World Bank said.

Countries such as Kenya, Ghana, Cameroon, Malawi and Zambia were already tapping buoyant agricultural markets, the bank said.

“Africa is now at a crossroads, from which it can take concrete steps to realize its potential or continue to lose competitiveness, missing a major opportunity for increased growth, employment, and food security,” the report said.

Despite a decade of strong economic growth and a surge in private-sector investment in the region, Africa’s share of global agriculture exports has fallen. Countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Thailand export more agriculture products than all of sub-Saharan Africa, the bank said.

Meanwhile, the region is home to more than 50 per cent of the world’s uncultivated agriculture land, with as much as 450 million hectares that is not forested, protected or densely populated, the report said.

The bank said boosting agriculture should become the top priority of governments so that farmers can take advantage of the increase in global demand for food and higher prices.

They should also look at ways to boost regional integration to promote more cross-border food trade by reducing checkpoints, tackling bribery along main freight corridors, and cutting bureaucratic red tape and transaction costs. Harvests routinely yield far less than their potential and food is often spoilt because of poor storage facilities, it added.

But while there is a need to expand agriculture across Africa, the World Bank warned there needs to be careful analysis and governments should guard against land grabs for investment.

The 2008-09 global food price crisis prompted a scramble for land in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and widespread fears of land grabbing. Madagascar’s president was toppled in 2009 after he negotiated a deal with a South Korean company to lease half the island’s arable land to grow food and ship it to Asia.

“The challenge is to harness investors’ interest in ways that generate jobs, provide opportunities for smallholders, respect the rights of local communities, and protect the environment,” the report said.

“A key challenge is to curb speculative land investments or acquisitions that take advantage of weak institutions in African countries or disregard principles of responsible agricultural investment,” it added.

The post Policy shift needed to tap Africa’s farm potential appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.