MALNUTRITION: The Rats Have It

 Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 18, 2011 (IPS) - While floods and droughts are often highlighted in the media for devastating the world’s rice production, a lesser-known culprit has been able to scurry away without being fingered for causing damage - rats.
The rodents reportedly devour "millions of tons of rice each year" in pre- harvest losses across Asia.
"Rats are the number one pre-harvest pests of rice in Indonesia and the third most important pest in Vietnam rice fields," Grant Singleton, a rodent expert at the Manila-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), told IPS.
With an eye toward saving more rice for the hungry in the region, international researchers are training farmers in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam to combat this regular destroyer of the grain. Agriculture experts are viewing the eco-friendly rodent management message now taking root in the smallholder paddy fields in Southeast Asia as an efficient and safe alternative to the previously common use of toxic chemicals, such as rodenticides.
"This is the first time that ecologically-based rodent management has been promoted since the introduction of chemicals to kill rodents in the 1950s," said Singleton. "We now have a good understanding of when, where and how to conduct control of the main rodent species in two of the region’s largest rice producers.
Close to 200,000 rice farmers in Indonesia and Vietnam are part of an on- going campaign to arm farmers with environmentally friendly methods to save their crop from the rodents.
According to IRRI, pre-harvest losses of Asia’s staple have ranged from five percent of the grain in Malaysia to as much as 17 percent in Indonesia. A loss of six percent in Asia "amounts to enough rice to feed 225 million people - roughly the population of Indonesia - for 12 months," it adds.
The drive to combat the rodents comes in the wake of a challenge faced by agriculture research centres in the region to produce sufficient grain to feed the nearly 570 million people who are undernourished in the Asia-Pacific region.
Asia accounts for 90 percent of the rice produced globally, which topped 679.9 million tonnes for the year in un-milled paddy, according to recent U.N. figures.
The region’s major rice producers - home to the 250 million rice farms across the continent - are China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Burma (or Myanmar).
The new IRRI-led effort, places greater emphasis on community cooperation and management - including the simple message that farmers plant their crops within two weeks of each other - is already winning praise among farmers who have embraced this green solution.
"I now know how to manage rats better, working with my community so there are fewer in our fields and the rat damage is less," says Esmeraldo Joson Jr, a Filipino farmer, following his shift away from rodenticides, in an IRRI media release.
This is not the only attempt in the region to stop rats from depriving people from their staple diet.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has been helping farming communities in East Timor and Cambodia to save their harvested rice by storing it in small metal silos, considered more reliable and rat-proof than the traditional baskets and clay pots farmers have used for ages.
"These are small weapons against post-harvest losses," says Rosa Rolle, senior agro-industry and post harvest officer at the FAO’s Asia-Pacific regional office in Bangkok. "They offer long term solutions and are not costly to protect rice against rats and mice."
The twin efforts to combat the trail of grain losses caused by rats have gathered momentum following the global food crisis in 2008, when prices of grain rose to alarming levels and triggered concerns about millions affected by loss of staple meals.
"After the 2008 food crisis, saving rice from post-harvest losses are getting increased attention from all the stakeholders," says Subash Dasgupta, senior plant production officer at the FAO’s regional office.
Another spark to target rodents stemmed from the fears of famine that have spread through parts of northeast India, Bangladesh, Burma and Laos since the end of 2006, when a plague of rats ravaged rice in the fields and grains that had been stored.
"The rats were terrible. There was nothing the farmers could do," says Cheery Zahau, a human rights activist from Burma’s Chin ethnic minority who faced the brunt of the devastation from late 2006 through 2008.
Chin families normally eat two meals a day, but during the explosion of the rat population, they were reduced to eating only one meal, she told IPS. "The health consequences of that food crisis were very serious."
The explosion of the rat population was predicted though, coming once in nearly 50 years, when a local bamboo species starts flowering. The rats are drawn to its fruit and then multiply rapidly due to a hormonal change after eating the protein-rich fruits.
The rats ravaged all the grain in their path, prompting some farmers in the mountainous Chin State close to India and Bangladesh to stop growing rice in 2008. "They felt it was futile," says Cheery. "They were defeated by the rats."
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54158

POVERTY: Bamboo can capture carbon fast

Alex Abutu: 2 December 2010
  Flickr/ratamahatta: Bamboo grows more than a metre a day, faster than any other plant

[CANCUN, MEXICO] Bamboo, a wild grass that grows in Africa, Asia and Latin America, could help tackle climate change and provide income for local communities, a conference has heard. It can sequester carbon faster than similar fast-growing tree species such as Chinese fir and eucalyptus when properly managed, said Coosje Hoogendoorn, director-general of International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR), based in Beijing, China.
She was speaking today (2 December) at the launch of 'Bamboo and Climate Change Mitigation' — a report on bamboo's potential role in adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development — in a press conference held during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 16), in Cancun, Mexico.

Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet — with a growth rate of up to 1.2 metres a day. It is stronger than steel, weight for weight, and its roots can reduce soil erosion by up to 75 per cent.
"Although botanically bamboo is a woody grass and not a tree, bamboo forests have comparable features to other types of forest regarding their role in the carbon cycle," the report said. "They sequester carbon through photosynthesis, and lock carbon in the fibre of the bamboo and in the soil where it grows."
Under regular management practices, bamboo sequestered an equal or greater amount of carbon over the 60-year lifespan of a Chinese fir plantation. "If the bamboo forest wasn't managed through annual harvesting practices, it would be significantly less effective at carbon sequestration," the report added. Hoogendoorn said: "Bamboo is a remarkable resource for driving economic development, and is readily available in many of the world's poorest countries.
"One of the major ways bamboo can assist communities to cope with climate change is in low-cost, sustainable, climate-resistant housing," she said. "Its strength and flexibility make it one of the best materials we have to withstand floods, storms and earthquakes."
Alvaro Cabrera, INBAR's regional coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, said that the network is working to provide vulnerable people in the region with safer homes made from bamboo.
Apart from mitigating climate change effects, "people can make money by building sustainable industry that requires little investment", he said.
INBAR is also working with farmers in Kenya and Uganda to replace tobacco farming with bamboo cultivation. But work in Kenya is slowed down by legislation that mistakenly classifies bamboo as tree, which means it is forbidden to cut it down, Hoogendoorn said.
"Bamboo is different — the more you cut it the more it grows and authorities have to understand this."
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/bamboo-can-capture-carbon-fast-says-report.html

POVERTY: KENYA: Bamboo project to expand rural housing

NAIROBI, 28 May 2010 (IRIN) - Kenya should encourage the use of bamboo in building affordable shelters, especially for 60 percent of the population who live in poorly constructed dwellings in rural areas, says a specialist."Poor construction means they [houses] serve as breeding grounds for diseases including malaria, amoebic dysentery and respiratory conditions, which commonly claim the lives of many of their inhabitants," Jacob Kibwange, project director of an initiative at Maseno University that aims to encourage bamboo exploitation, told IRIN. The project, Tobacco to Bamboo, is pioneering the construction of cheap bamboo houses in the Mau and Kakamega areas of Western Kenya."If we improved bamboo housing, we could change the lives of many people," Kibwange said. "With about 15,000ha of mature bamboo ready to be used, particularly in the Aberdares, Mau ranges, Mt Kenya and Mt Elgon, [we have] viable and inexpensive housing material in Kenya."According to a 2007 study by the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan, nearly 60 percent of Kenya's 37 million people are rural farmers who live on less than US$2 a day and live in inadequate homes that are often made of mud and poorly ventilated. In the cities, the housing demand has reached 150,000 units per year against an annual production of about 50,000 units. According to the UN Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, the shortfall in the cities has led to overcrowding, slums and sub-standard housing. The tobacco to bamboo project was launched by Maseno University's School of Environment and Earth Studies in 2006. It began as a research activity to encourage the cultivation and utilization of bamboo as an alternative livelihood to tobacco farming in South Nyanza and Western Kenya and later set up nurseries in Migori, Kuria, Homa Bay and Suba districts. Maseno launched housing projects in Kisumu town and trained 240 bamboo small-scale farmers and set up 120 field experimentation sites. The aim is to train 20,000 farmers to exploit bamboo in the next 15 years."Bamboo is a remarkably fast-growing plant that thrives in a range of different climates," Kibwange said. "It can be planted easily in homesteads and harvested at the time of need without any additional expenditure."Because of its lightness, a bamboo house suffers very little damage from earthquakes and could serve as temporary and quick construction in disaster-prone areas in emergencies."After the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, about 4,000 bamboo houses provided shelter to thousands made homeless by the disaster, particularly in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It was also found that bamboo could resist heat of up to 55 degrees and unlike steel, was not vulnerable to rust and salty humidity. In Kenya, however, an existing ban on harvesting bamboo could affect plans for its use. A Kenyan Forestry Services source, who requested anonymity, said the ban restricts harvesting to some selected users and government institutions. Experts are lobbying for it to be lifted.