POVERTY: India-Africa partnership to fight dryland poverty

Hyderabad, March 24: The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) today announced the formation of ICRISAT South-South Initiative (IS-SI) to boost India-Africa partnership on agriculture research aimed at tackling poverty in drylands.



Poverty-stricken: A farmer sits on his barren land in Punjab. (File photo)

Dr Nigel Poole, Chairman of ICRISAT Governing Board, in a statement said IS-SI will build upon ICRISAT's strong India-Africa partnership to scale up its role as the driver of prosperity and economic opportunities in the dryland tropics.
Addressing participants of the Indo-Africa roundtable on agriculture for development in New Delhi, Dr Poole explained that IS-SI will provide the platform for focussed and systematic international partnerships critical for a more effective and inclusive development cooperation between the two continents.
Every one dollar spent on international agricultural research leads to a return on investment of nine dollars worth of economic value in developing countries.
Dr William Dar, ICRISAT Director General, said “IS-SI will open more opportunities for increased and technical support and enhanced public-private people partnerships on research for development.”
“This initiative will also see better policies, more effective institutions, improved infrastructure and better access to markets and to higher quality inputs particularly for dryland farmers in India and Africa,” Mr Dar added.
Dr S.Ayyappan, Director General of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), expressed that this initiative will enhance South-South partnership between India and Africa.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/agri-biz/article1568693.ece?homepage=true

MALNUTRITION: Drip Irrigation

Instead of continuously providing food to the starving year after year, donors are looking at farming methods such as drip irrigation to instead improve agriculture. But getting the African farmers to think more like businessmen who want to improve yields not only for themselves but for their own self-interest will take years of changing mindsets.From Reuters, writer David Lewis tells us of one such farmer who has been successful with drip irrigation.
"With the watering cans, we couldn't do more than one harvest per year. With this innovation, we can do as many as three, so our earnings are multiplied by three," said Yamar Diop, a 73-year-old father of ten.During a visit to the region last week, U.N. aid chief John Holmes appealed not just for the tens of millions of dollars needed to keep people alive, but for more action to address the root causes of the recurrent food crises.Farmers like Diop say they are doing just that. He is one of about 2,500 farmers across the Sahel who, over the last few years, have taken part in the African Market Garden, an Israeli initiative to use low pressure drip irrigation to break dependence on rain and boost crops, nutrition and incomes.Diop's harvests will earn him 800,000 CFA francs ($1,624) over the year, while the U.N. will spend $190 million over the same period to get through the food crisis, prompting calls for the donorsto invest more on long term projects."Niger is going to have a big problem this year," said Dov Pasternak, the head of the Sahel programme at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), referring to the rush to bring aid into the land-locked nation."This will cost millions but how much is being spent on agriculture? I have a gut feeling the ratio is huge in favour of food relief," he said. "It is the poverty that we have to deal with, rather than providing food security."
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