POVERTY: Measuring women’s empowerment in agriculture

WASHINGTON, 28 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Kate Holt/IRIN
Sisters doing it for themselves

The global anti-poverty movement has added a new tool to its arsenal with the launch of an index that measures women’s empowerment in agriculture.
“Agriculture is the most effective way to drive inclusive economic growth of the poorest communities”, which too often include women and children, said Sara Immenschuh of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a partner in compiling the index.
The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index is a partnership between the US government’s Feed the Future initiative, US Agency for International Development (USAID), IFPRI and Oxford University’s Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI). It uses five criteria to measure the empowerment of developing country women in agriculture, and in their own households.
Pilot programmes in Bangladesh, Guatemala and Uganda studied how engaged women were in decision-making about agricultural production, what sort of access they had to resources and how involved they were in resource-related decision-making; the extent to which they controlled how income was used; whether they were able to have a leadership role in the community; and how they used their time.
If a woman scored well on four out of five indices, she was considered empowered. The results differed from country to country, and the reasons for low or high levels of empowerment also varied.
In Bangladesh, just less than a third of women were empowered, with lack of control over resources, weak leadership and influence in the community, as well as lack of control over income the main reasons.
In Guatemala, the number was less than 25 percent. The less educated a woman was and the younger she was, the more likely she was to be lagging behind in empowerment. On the other hand, the more empowered a Guatemalan woman was in agriculture, the greater the influence she had in other key areas of daily life.

Respect and resources
Lack of leadership in the community and control over use of income were the two biggest factors contributing to disempowerment in Guatemala, the report says.
In Uganda, 37 percent of women were empowered in agriculture and more than half enjoyed gender parity at home.
However, many women in Uganda said widowhood empowered them – because they did not have to waste time asking their husband’s permission to do things but just got on with them.
Ugandan women “who are empowered in agriculture also reported significantly greater decision-making and autonomy with respect to almost all domains”, says the report.
Surveys were conducted in 450 households in southern Bangladesh, and 350 each in the western highlands of Guatemala and northern, central and eastern Uganda, between September and November 2011.
One aim of the project is to help US government agencies and anti-poverty organizations to measure just how successful their programmes are at fighting hunger and poverty.
“We want to improve gender parity not by disempowering men but by bringing women up to the level of men,” said IFPRI senior research fellow, Agnes Quisumbing.
Although they make up 43 percent of the agricultural labour force, women in developing countries own less land, are limited in their ability to hire farm workers and have less access to credit, among other issues.
“Without addressing those inequities, women will be unable to effectively contribute to reducing global poverty and hunger,” said Immenschuh.

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index was launched on 28 February at the UN in New York.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94975

POVERTY: Gates Foundation unveils new agricultural policy

Yojana Sharma : 8 November 2011
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world's largest donors to international agricultural research for development, has announced tighter priorities for its funding for Africa and South Asia, concentrating on key target countries and crops.
In Africa the focus will be on Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. These countries will benefit from significant investment "to translate the movement [of research and development (R&D)] from the lab to farmers' fields," said Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of the foundation's Agriculture Development Division.
In India work will focus on the two poorest states, Bihar and Orissa, and there will be a separate programme in Bangladesh.
"This doesn't mean that we don't care about other countries but it certainly means that these are the areas where we would see significant investments from our side and see spill-over benefits to other countries," Pingali told a seminar on the foundation's agricultural policies portfolio at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the United States, last week (2 November).
Pingali said the country focus was part of a two-pronged approach, with the second prong concentrating on international research, policy and advocacy, and stepping up global funding for improvements in collecting and analysing data on agricultural production and improvements.
Funding for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme and some other agencies will also be strengthened.
The Gates Foundation's US$1.7 billion of agriculture research funding until 2010 had been geared towards smallholder agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. But Pingali said there was a need to be more targeted. In particular, he said, the foundation wants to understand the entire value chain "from molecule to mouth" and work out what are the necessary investments.
Within the selected countries, work on R&D, agriculture policy, and access to markets will be more closely interlinked on a crop by crop basis, he said. Grants made to these countries will be based not just on technological interventions to reduce productivity gaps in certain crops but also the infrastructures, institutional reforms and policy changes required to improve productivity.
"It's a much more proactive, bottom-up approach to grant-making," Pingali said.
Pingali said the foundation would be putting more money into country policy work, particularly in the target countries to improve agricultural productivity; in capacity-building, such as analytical capacity and overall capacity to manage and run large scale agricultural transformation; and in analysis and data, such as better metrics to analyse environmental consequences and the connection between agriculture and nutrition in poor communities and better post-harvest data.
But he stressed that funding would be based on the countries' own priorities and plans.
Pingali said the foundation had needed to 'recalibrate' its funding for agricultural research because of the entry of many new donors and players into the sector in the wake of the world food crisis in 2008.
"We also felt that countries themselves are beginning to have much sharper visions of what they wanted to see in their agriculture sectors and we wanted to make sure that our work complements the visions of the countries and supports their efforts."
But he admitted that many African countries had been excluded "because of governance issues".
"Governance did come into it as a criteria, initially at least, in excluding certain countries," he said. And some middle-income countries had been included as "you could be in middle income country status and still have enormously high levels of poverty".
He added that middle-income countries were important because of "spill-over benefits to other countries, which you would not be able to get if you targeted only the least developed and the low-income countries".
http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/food-security/news/gates-foundation-unveils-new-agricultural-policy.html

POVERTY: Nepal’s Monsanto debate spotlights seed sovereignty

KATHMANDU, 10 January 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: David Longstreath/IRIN
Agriculture drives Nepal's economy, but less so its research agenda

An effort by US donors and multinational agribusiness Monsanto to partner with Nepal to boost local maize production with imported hybrid seeds has met civil society opposition calling - instead - for home-grown solutions.
“If an organization like USAID [US Agency for International Development] wants to help us with a company like Monsanto, we would hope that they would help us to actually develop our own hybrids instead, not to import their foreign seeds,” said Hari Dahal, spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, at a recent parliamentary hearing on food sovereignty, as reported in local media.
USAID announced last September its intention to set up a pilot training partnership with Monsanto and the Nepali government, which promotes hybrid maize seeds to boost yields in a country where 41 percent of the population is estimated to be undernourished.
Maize is a staple of the local diet, especially in the maize-producing hilly central interior of the country, which suffers from chronic food insecurity.
In addition, Nepal grows only half of the maize demanded by the animal feed industry and imports the shortfall of 135,000 tons annually, according to USAID.
Demand for hybrid maize seeds, used primarily in the animal feed industry, has increased as animal feed has constituted a growing source of income for commercial farmers.
Opponents of the proposed partnership say it would substitute one form of dependence for another - from the currently imported maize to maize seeds from abroad.
According to the government, the country required 22,656 tons of maize seed in 2011* - less than 1 percent of which was supplied by registered imports.
Calling the US-headquartered Monsanto a “biotech Goliath”, local activists have taken to social media to block the company’s expansion in Nepal, citing concerns of loss of local seeds, dependence on seed imports and environmental damage to the land and surrounding communities.
Known for its genetically-engineered products worldwide, Monsanto has been sued - and settled out of court - in the Americas throughout the last decade multiple times for alleged health and environmental damages linked to its practices. It has also sued farmers whom it accused of patent infringement.

Silent entry
While this would be the first time a donor subsidizes the cost of hybrid seeds on such a large scale in Nepal - targeting 20,000 farmers in three commercial maize-producing districts of Kavre, Chitwan and Nawal Parasi along the southern lowland belt in the Terai region bordering India - Monsanto has been exporting hybrid maize seed to Nepal since 2004.

 Photo: Smriti Mallapaty/ IRIN
Hybrid maize varieties are filling more fields like this one in the lowlands of Nepal in Nawal Parasi

Kiran Dahal, Nepal country representative for Monsanto, said almost 100 percent of its seed is used to produce maize for the feed industry, but it is up to the farmers to decide where they sell their maize and for what purpose.
Monsanto’s presence was unheralded, unsubsidized and until recently, largely unnoticed, said Sabin Ninglekhu, an organizer of the Facebook campaign. “To be honest, we didn’t know Monsanto was in the country before the USAID announcement.”
Over the past decade commercial farmers in the lowlands have started using hybrid varieties, drawn by the potential of higher yields.
In hybrid breeding technology, strains are cross-pollinated to create offspring with combined strengths. Agronomists note that although first-generation hybrids produce higher yields, their offspring often may not give the same results, requiring farmers to purchase new seeds every season.
As yet, no comprehensive long-term report on the distribution and yield of hybrid seed application in Nepal has been produced, according to the Agriculture Ministry.
But preliminary findings in the lowland Nawal Parasi and Palpa districts in 2011 suggest almost doubled yields from hybrid seeds over openly-pollinated local varieties - from 0.8 to 1.5 tons per hectare - as reported by the South Asia office of the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) based in Kathmandu.

Do it ourselves
But blocking seed imports is only the initial goal of local NGOs protesting against Monsanto: The end objective is to boost local seed use and production by investing more in agricultural research and development, said Facebook campaign organizer Ninglekhu.
“We have used this Monsanto movement as an opening to talk about the ministry’s agricultural vision, its understanding of food security and seed sovereignty and what policies are in place to address these. Monsanto is not the only option.”
Nepal’s political climate was still fragile in late 2011, five years after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord to end a decade of civil war, noted the Washington DC-based International Food Policy Research Institute.
Both the agriculture and science ministries “lack the power, capacity, and continuity to set the country’s long-term agricultural R&D [research and development] agenda,” IFPRI concluded.
The principal government agency devoted to such research - the National Agricultural Research Council - has produced only two hybrid corn strains since its establishment in 1991.
One type has not been taken up by private seed producers as it was deemed not commercially viable, and the other is still undergoing approval, said Chitra Bahadur Kunwar, a senior scientist at the council’s National Maize Research Programme.
Meanwhile, the increasingly scant availability of openly-pollinated local seeds, which can be reused from one season to the next, leave farmers vulnerable to the caprice of importation, said Durga Lamichhane, a commercial maize farmer from Gaidakot in Nawal Parasi District.

 Photo: Smriti Mallapaty/IRIN
Commercial farmer, Tilak Prasad Kandel, on his land in Nawal Parasi District in Nepal where he is growing hybrid maize

“Our local seeds are about to disappear. If for some reason these hybrid seeds do not come, we would be in a situation of emergency,” said Lamichhane, referring to a growing trend among commercial farmers not to save local seeds due to a preference to buy hybrids and other improved seed varieties.
But striving for no seed imports is not realistic, noted Andrew McDonald, a CIMMYT cropping agronomist for South Asia.
“Nepal is not alone: the food security of almost every nation is contingent on input supply chains that transcend national boundaries.”

Call for locally developed hybrids
For Tilak Prasad Kandel, a commercial farmer with a hectare of land in Nawal Parasi, the concern is not dependency, but rather lack of government spending to develop local hybrids. “There are alternatives to Monsanto.”
Though promoting maize hybrids is important to boosting maize production and profitability in Nepal, USAID’s decision to partner with Monsanto alone was questionable, said McDonald.
“I don't think USAID should be in the business of choosing `winners’ by working with a single seed company in a market environment where many private companies are active.”
The US ambassador in Nepal, Scott H. DeLilsi, noted on his own Facebook page on 2 December that “the critical discussion is not about the role of a single company but about the future of agricultural development in Nepal,” and in a 5 December statement USAID said project consultations are on-going.
“We have not worked out the details of the pilot as yet and are still consulting with a variety of groups including the private sector, academia, the MOAC [Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives] and Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC), civil society and farmer groups. We will take their feedback into account as we further discuss the form of partnership that best meets the needs of Nepali farmers.”
About 16 different maize hybrids from multiple companies are registered for sale by the government’s regulatory process.
No matter the source of seeds, the USAID pilot project would help farmers trying to grow hybrid maize, said Kandel. Not only would it subsidize seed costs, but also provide much-needed education on how to use the seeds, which is the biggest problem for farmers, he added.
According to farmers in Nawal Parasi, the subsidy would cover 75 percent of the cost of Monsanto seeds.
But for now the partnership remains a proposition as the government has not joined.
USAID has stated it “will not move forward independently to fund such a programme” and “encourages this dialogue, which underscores the critical need for Nepal to increase its agricultural production through improved seed technologies and cultivation practices”.
The government’s Natural Resources and Means Committee has requested a report addressing concerns about seed sovereignty from the Agriculture Ministry for a hearing expected to be held in January.

*this figure was incorrectly attributed to the animal feed industry in a previous version and has been corrected
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94611

POVERTY: New crop varieties can cut poverty, study finds

Bernard Appiah : 3 January 2012  Flickr/SwathiSridharan
The new groundnut varieties are resistant to major pests and diseases

The thorny question of whether improved crop varieties do, in fact, lift peasant farmers out of poverty has been answered positively in a study of groundnut varieties, according to researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in Kenya.
Evidence that new technologies improve small farmers' wellbeing is scarce because the impact of adopting technologies depends on many factors such as the existence of infrastructure, policies and institutions that are often not fully functional in developing countries. For example, technology that increases productivity may not reduce poverty if the farmers do not have access to markets to sell their extra crop.
In addition, some studies have claimed that building capacity is more important than technology for improving livelihoods.
Researchers from CIMMYT selected more than 900 households at random from seven major groundnut growing districts in Uganda and, in 2006, surveyed socioeconomic data and information related to the adoption of improved groundnut varieties. Groundnut is an important crop in Uganda.
Farmers who adopted any of four improved varieties resistant to major pests and diseases — developed by national and international organisations, and released in Uganda between 1999 and 2002 — were compared with non-adopters. The results of the study were published in the October 2011 issue of World Development.
"We found that the adoption of [improved] groundnut varieties significantly increased the net value of income by US$130–254 per hectare," said Menale Kassie, one of the authors of the study. "Adoption of groundnut varieties also significantly reduced poverty as measured by headcount index [the proportion of people below the poverty line] by 7–9 per cent."
In a related study, which has been submitted for publication, Kassie and colleagues found that adopting improved maize varieties also significantly improves rural households' food security and decreases the extent of poverty.
Richard Edema, a plant pathologist and senior lecturer in the school of agricultural sciences at Makerere University, Uganda, said: "Studies [such as this one] can serve as feedback for agricultural scientists to assess whether new [crop] varieties are making real impacts on farmers' lives".
Okello David Kalule, head of the Uganda National Groundnut Improvement Programme, said that, although the new groundnut varieties produce superior yields, some farmers are still growing low-yielding varieties. The reasons for this, he said, include poor agricultural extension services and a lack of access to information about the new varieties.
"Local institutions should be strengthened to collectively improve access to seeds, credit, and information to increase both the spread and intensity of adoption," he said.
http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/news/new-crop-varieties-can-cut-poverty-study-finds.html

MALNUTRITION: MADAGASCAR: The “less is more” philosophy of rice production

TALATA, 31 January 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN
A family prepares a rice field for planting in the Madagascan capital of Antananarivo

Ernest Rakotoarivony, 45, was teased by some members of the Talata community, a small town 30km north of Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo, after breaking with traditional rice cultivation methods and employing a technique taught to him by a Jesuit priest.
A decade ago the Dutch priest, Ed Mulderink, promised him that adopting the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) would substantially increase his rice yield, but warned it would also be more labour intensive.
“When you replant the rice, you have very small plants, and they need to be planted individually in rows [with SRI]. The others [traditional rice farmers] just take bunches of plants, beat the roots against their feet to get the soil off, and replant them. It takes them one hour to replant their field, while it takes me two days. People don’t want to use that much time,” Rakotoarivony told IRIN.
Other farmers were skeptical of the “less is more” approach to rice production. “They think that the more plants they put in the field, the more rice they’ll have. But the opposite is true. Even if they just used some parts of the method, like controlling the water, or not beating the plant roots, it would help,” he said.
“There were people who laughed at me, until they saw the harvest,” said Rakotoarivony, who was approached by the priest when he was earning his living as a bread vendor. “The priest asked me to work with him, using SRI. So we worked on my family land together, and we managed to double the yield, just as he had promised.”
During the lean season Rakotoarivony produces vegetables and now has enough cash to buy seed and fertilizer every three years. Although some of his family have adopted SRI, relatively few others in the area have, despite the best efforts of the priest preaching the benefits of the practice.
Rice is the staple for Madagascar’s 20 million people, and the average annual consumption is about 102kg per person; about 75 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Production has declined from 4.7 million tons in 2010 to 4.3 million in 2011 and prices have doubled in two years to about US$1 per kilogram. In the 1970s Madagascar was a rice exporter but has since become a rice importer, a consequence of outdated farming methods and poor infrastructure, but farmers still produce 80 percent of the country’s national rice requirement.

Development of SRI
The SRI method was developed in the 1980s by the French Jesuit priest Henri de Laulanié, who challenged accepted norms of rice production. Traditional farmers flood their rice fields and plant bunches of mature rice plants, while SRI farmers transplant young seedlings with greater spacing on soil that is moist but not flooded. Proponents of SRI claim this system uses 25-50 percent less water, requires 80-90 percent fewer seeds, and can sometimes double or even triple the yields.
SRI has been promoted locally by NGO Tefy Saina (Change you Mentality, established by De Laulanié) and internationally, through the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD).
“The method has really taken off in Asia and is now practised in more than 30 countries. However, it has not been adopted on a wide scale in Africa or in Madagascar itself,” Winifred Fitzgerald, adviser to the Better U Foundation, told IRIN.
The Better U Foundation, funded by the Canadian actor Jim Carrey, has assisted in SRI’s implementation and dissemination at grassroots, institutional and policy levels.
However, there remains conjecture as to whether SRI methods are outpacing traditional methods. A 2005 report by Cornell University entitled Does the System of Rice Intensification Outperform Conventional Best Management? A Synopsis of the Empirical Record, says: “Aside from one set of experiments in Madagascar where SRI more than doubled rice productivity with respect to Best Management Practices, we found no evidence of a systematic or even occasional yield advantage of this magnitude elsewhere.”
In Asian countries, these researchers found, there could even be a negative impact when the system is used, the report said.
“This is a method that was discovered in the field, not in a laboratory. Some want to promote other systems. But I think that there is no competition. Some places are better for SRI than others,” said Better U adviser Rames Abhukara.
A recent progress report of the Better U Foundation cites the results of an evaluation with its partner, Catholic Relief Service (CRS) - an international faith-based NGO working in the Vakinankaratra highland region of Madagascar. In a sample of 120 households out of 600 beneficiary families, the average yields with SRI were 3.28 tons per hectare, compared to 2.87 tons per hectare prior to the project’s implementation. The regional average of rice production is two tons per hectare.
The study showed that families’ food stocks lasted on average 54 days longer as a result of their increased harvest, and helped to decrease vulnerability during the lean season.

Resistance to change
“For some farmers, they don’t see why they should change the way their fathers and grandfathers grew rice. To minimize risk, they may start practising SRI in one corner of the rice field,” Fitzgerald explained. “Others are interested in the method, but do not know how to start or have received insufficient training, so partners are working to address these gaps.”
For some farmers, they don’t see why they should change the way their fathers and grandfathers grew rice
“We don’t tell them to do this. We tell them: If you think it’s useful, we can help you with it,” Abhukara added.
At the institutional level, the Better U Foundation helped to create an association known as the Groupement SRI de Madagascar (GSRI).
GSRI has 267 members, including local and international NGOs, research institutes and private sector entities. In June 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture included SRI in its national strategy for rice development for the first time.
“We were also quite pleased that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, in his preliminary conclusions cited SRI as an important agro-ecological method that could contribute to the country’s food security,” Fitzgerald said.
Apart from increased productivity for farmers, the method has environmental benefits, its proponents claim. With increased yields and improved incomes, there is less pressure for farmers to cut down forests for agriculture purposes. SRI also contributes to a reduction in greenhouse gases, especially methane, because the rice fields are not continuously flooded as in traditional rice cultivation.
“Just producing more rice is not enough. For an effective SRI dissemination strategy, you have to consider the whole rice chain, such as farmers’ access to micro-finance as well as the storage, transportation and marketing of rice,” Abhukara said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94764

POVERTY: Analysis: Agriculture in a changing environment

JOHANNESBURG, 24 January 2012 (IRIN)


 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN

Cows release huge amounts of warming methane every year- Agriculture has been seen either as a cause or victim of global warming at the UN climate change talks over the past few years - something that has thwarted efforts to attract the investment it needs, say scientists.
Some at the talks see a more dominant role for agriculture - an emitter of major greenhouses gases such as nitrous oxide and methane - in reducing global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates agricultural emissions account for 13.5 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
At the same time, poor countries want more money and better technology to help farmers adapt to the impact of climate change such as frequent droughts, flooding and increased salinity.
“It is really a bad split for agriculture,” said John Beddington, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, and one of the authors of a paper calling for a more integrated approach, combining mitigation and adaptation efforts.
The paper, published in the current edition of Science with contributions from several scientists, calls for a better understanding of agricultural practices with the aim of delivering multiple benefits - reducing emissions, helping agriculture to adapt, and using limited resources (like water) efficiently.
One model to emulate could be Denmark, where one of the world’s strictest agriculture control systems is in place - including, for example, the use of environmentally friendly practices such as substituting pig slurry (pig waste and water) for artificial fertilizers. The country has managed not only to reduce emissions from agriculture by 28 percent but also increase productivity.
This kind of win-win agriculture would attract more funding from a wider range of sources, said Beddington.
Climate change’s impact is likely to be greatest in low and middle-income tropical regions, where pressure will mount to produce more food because of population and income growth, says agricultural economist Christopher Barrett, who teaches at Cornell University. The global focus, therefore, has to be on helping agriculture in those regions adapt, and not just produce more or reduce emissions. “And that agenda needs to encompass post-harvest storage, distribution and transformation.”
Despite growing support for an integrated approach to agriculture encompassing adaptation and mitigation efforts, policy actions have been slow to materialize in most countries and at the UN climate change talks, the paper says.
A first step, say the scientists, is to get commonly agreed definitions of concepts like “climate-smart agriculture” and “sustainable intensification”, which integrate the two approaches.
The authors of the paper include ecologist Bob Scholes of South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research; Mohammad Asaduzzaman, research director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies; and Judi Wakhungu, executive director of the African Centre for Technology Studies in Kenya.

“Climate-smart”
The “climate-smart” concept as developed by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) advocates practices which generate both adaptation and mitigation benefits such as the efficient use of organic fertilizers; the development of efficient seed systems which produce crops naturally resilient to climatic shifts; the harvesting of water for irrigation; the production of biogas from livestock manure; and greater reliance on forage from maize crops to feed animals.
Such initiatives would not only improve food production but also reduce harmful gas emissions, says FAO.
About 70 percent of agriculture-related emissions are associated with the manufacture and use of nitrogen-based fertilizers -in large part through the emission of nitrous oxide - according to a 2011 review by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
The livestock sector generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of carbon dioxide. Most of this comes from manure.
Belching cows, goats and sheep emit 80 million tons of methane into the atmosphere every year. Though methane remains in the atmosphere for a short time (9-15 years), it has 23 times the GWP of carbon dioxide. Irrigated rice farming is another major source of methane emissions.
Soil carbon sequestration
But the “climate-smart” concept was given another interpretation at the Durban climate change talks in December: The World Bank announced it had launched a “climate-smart agriculture” pilot project in Kenya. The project (which is still running) aims to get small farmers to adopt agricultural practices such as low-tillage, which trap carbon in the soil in such a way that it is not re-emitted into the atmosphere (soil carbon sequestration). The carbon is then sold as credits in carbon markets.
Think-tanks like the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), and scientists at BBSRC, point out that sustainable agriculture can increase the sequestration of carbon in the soil but it is difficult and costly to measure.
IATP’s senior policy analyst, Steve Suppan, said the very high transaction costs of converting Kenyan farmers’ work into carbon credits would be better spent on more rapidly adapting Kenya’s agriculture to climate change.
“Because the project's transaction costs are nearly half of the project budget, the main project co-benefit is not for the farmers but for the carbon accounting methodology that the Bank wishes to sell globally.”
Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, Africa’s chief negotiator at the climate talks, who had been lobbying for a stronger presence for agriculture in the adaptation track, said they wanted predictable funds for agriculture, and not from shaky carbon markets, which in this case - for credits based on soil carbon sequestration - did not exist. “Our farmers will also be told to grow certain crops which sequester more carbon rather than what the farmers need, compromising their security.”
NGOs like ActionAid warn of the possibility of “soil grabs” in developing countries by big business to offset their emissions. Mitigation cannot be the predominant objective of any project aimed at benefiting agriculture, said ActionAid’s Harjeet Singh.
“Mitigation projects in agriculture need to begin in industrialized agriculture and land-clearing for agribusiness. The agro-ecological techniques of climate-smart agriculture should be deployed for adaptation, not in the service of carbon derivatives markets,” said Suppan.
Beddington said linking “climate smart agricultural practices” with carbon markets was “unfortunate”. The Science paper he co-authored calls for unpacking the term in such a way that addresses concerns that it might be giving more weight to agriculture’s role in reducing emissions, rather than focusing on improving production and ways to adapt.
Leslie Lipper, a senior environmental economist with FAO, said soil carbon sequestration is one example of an integrated approach but she was not against sourcing finance from carbon markets. “Identifying, crediting and financing mitigation co-benefits that can be generated from improving agricultural systems offers the potential to open a new and additional source of finance to help meet the investment gap” in agriculture.

“Sustainable intensification”
In agriculture, the term “sustainable intensification” as defined by FAO, refers to an increase in production either by using more inputs such as labour, land, time , fertilizer, feed or cash; or the maintenance of production at a certain level with the effective use of smaller amounts of fertilizer, or mixed cropping in smaller fields.

“Sustainable intensification”, said Scholes, focused more on increasing production not by physical expansion but the efficient use of inputs.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has called for views on agriculture within the climate change context to be submitted to its Subsidiary Body for Science and Technological Advice by 5 March 2012.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94711

MALNUTRITION: Scaling up innovations to fight hunger

29 November 2011

 Flickr/Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) Source: Nature

Childhood malnutrition can be prevented using available knowledge to improve food security

Building sustainable food security, rather than concentrating on food aid, is a better way to help the people most vulnerable to food crises, says Josette Sheeran, head of the UN World Food Programme (UNWFP).
"Food aid has saved millions of lives, but it cannot, by itself, solve hunger," she says. The UNWFP is shifting its focus towards building local capacity to deal with future crises compounded by ongoing food price volatility, climatic changes and conflict.
Sheeran points to programmes underway in several countries that aim to "transform the fight against hunger" by developing and scaling up innovative ideas and tools at the grassroots level.
For example, in Cameroon — where 2.8 million people are food insecure — the UNWFP makes a one-time donation of ten tonnes of cereal to each community granary but also trains farmers in management and financial aspects of food storage. Community members can withdraw stocks with little interest and replenish them from their own crops, while funds from the interest and sales help with buying more stock.
In Pakistan, food technologists have created a chickpea paste fortified with micronutrients, which requires no water or cooking — helping to guard children from irreversible damage caused by malnutrition. And in Palestinian territories, 'digital food vouchers' delivered to mobile phones have helped increase local dairy production by 30 per cent, as well as helping people to buy nutritious food.
"Ending hunger does not require major scientific breakthrough," says Sheeran. "For the first time in history we have the scientific knowledge, programmes, tools and policies to defeat hunger but we need global political will".
http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/food-security/opinions/scaling-up-innovations-to-fight-hunger-1.html

POVERTY: LESOTHO: Pastoralists fear land “modernization” act

MASERU, 1 December 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Tomas de Mul/IRIN
A new land tenure system is raising concerns among pastoralists

Livestock herders in Lesotho are suspicious of the government’s motives for “modernizing” the land tenure system, fearing it will bring about a radical change in their way of life and deprive them of their birthright to land.
“This land act is not for us, it’s for people sitting in the highest seats of government and in the fancy chairs in the city,” Khotso Lehloka, secretary general of the Lesotho Herders Association (LHA), which represents between 17,000 and 20,000 livestock herders, told IRIN.
About three-quarters of Lesotho’s 1.8 million people derive their livelihood from agriculture, although only around 10 percent of the land is suitable for arable farming.
Constitutionally, all the land belongs to King Letsie III and is held in trust by all Basotho males or heads of household. Land acts passed in 1968 and 1979 did not contain a formal lease-based tenure system because land was regarded as communal.
The 2010 Land Administration Authority Act has broken from past practice by allowing security of tenure, in the hope of luring foreign direct investment to act as a stimulus for the rural economy. A growing population and land degradation are also putting greater pressure on a limited resource.
“The Land Act is part of an overall strategy to modernize the economy of Lesotho, so that investors can come, start a business and receive mortgage financing and insurance,” planning and finance minister Timothy Thahane told IRIN. “This is the kind of process that is necessary in a modern economy.”
The Land Act is part of an overall strategy to modernize the economy of Lesotho, so that investors can come, start a business and receive mortgage financing and insurance
The Human Development Index of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) ranks this mountainous country, which is completely surrounded by neighbouring South Africa, at 160 out of 180 nations.
Each year about 350,000 people routinely face food insecurity, and falling food production necessitates importing between 60 and 70 percent of the national requirement.
The Act establishes the Land Administration Authority (LAA), an autonomous agency of the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftainship that will be responsible for record keeping, the regulation and allocation of land and rentals, and the approval of foreign ownership, which will now be permitted in partnership with a local national holding at least a 20 percent stake.
The goal of these measures is to provide “secure land tenure for all citizens and promote economic growth”. Section 77 of the LAA says “A citizen of Lesotho shall be entitled to the lease free of ground rent of land, which he leases and occupies for his own residential use.”
The Authority has conducted pilot projects in a few selected villages and LAA leasing director Letele Mosae says the system will start rolling out in 2012.

Inefficient land management
Tsoeu Petlane, a researcher who works in Maseru, capital of Lesotho, for the Johannesburg-based think-tank, South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), told IRIN the traditional communal system of land ownership had led to inefficient land management.
“Every male Basotho is entitled to inherit plots of land, but while families expand, land does not, so the plots kept getting smaller and smaller. Because this was all done informally, eventually there were a lot of disputes” he explained.
The government is constantly involved in resolving land disputes, and the Act will ensure property is surveyed and documented, along with foreign ownership boosting investment, but there are concerns about how the new system will affect pastoralists.
“There are some unresolved questions,” Petlane pointed out. “What happens to traditional grazing lands? If those formerly communal grazing lands are bought up, where will herders without land feed their cattle?”
A SAIIA report in September 2011, Implementing the ARPM [African Peer Review Mechanism] Views from Civil Society, noted: “It remains unclear to what extent the new system will also address the conflict between chiefs and the state in regard to land allocation and management, as well as inter-communal conflict over land resources which are managed by chiefs.”

“Use it or lose it”
In a direct challenge to land as a Basotho birthright, the inclusion of a “use it or lose it” clause permits the authorities to take land that has not been cultivated for at least three years.
“Sometimes you cannot use land due to economic reasons - it’s not fair that it would be taken away from you just because of that. Governments are supposed to empower people to teach them to use the land to produce food more effectively, rather than enabling outsiders to come in and do it,” said Lehloka.
“The possibility of land being bought and sold, and the payment of ground rent, are highlighted as a possible cause of poverty and landlessness. Those who cannot afford the rent will be forced to sell, which will leave them landless and even more vulnerable. The ‘use it or lose it’ principle, which gives powers to authorities to dispossess lease holders of their right to land for not using it, is seen as another effect of the act that will promote poverty,” the SAIIA report said.
Mosae said it was wrong to term it a “use it or lose it” clause - it was a reference to “abandoned land”.
He said, “Where land is required for either public purpose or public interest, there is a stipulated procedure whereby, among others, the occupier of the land in question must be consulted and agreement must be reached. Thereafter, an amount of compensation must be agreed.”
News of the new land tenure system does not appear to have reached rural communities. Victor Letlaka, 33, a herder and subsistence farmer providing for his wife and five children, told IRIN he was unaware of the new Act and the changes it may bring.
“We were given this by our chief,” he said, pointing to his half-acre plot on the side of a hill in Mokhotlong, the main town in Mokhotlong Province, about 150km from Maseru. The local chief has the authority to dispossess Letlaka of his land at any time, but he is unconcerned.
People simply weren’t made aware of the Act and what its impact will be, so we feel the government may use these laws to hurt or take advantage of the very poor or marginalized
“We are grateful that he gave us this piece of land. If we had to move we would probably get given another... I don’t think there’s a problem with how this happens, it works fine without Maseru government rules.”
The LHA intends to raise greater awareness of the Act. “The government didn’t do enough to talk to people when they were debating and signing the Land Act. People simply weren’t made aware of the Act and what its impact will be, so we feel the government may use these laws to hurt or take advantage of the very poor or marginalized.” Lehloka said.
“The herdboys feel like their autonomy and freedom is jeopardized by this formalizing process, but the reality is we need to coordinate grazing and land recovery better,” said minister Thahane. “Land issues cast against so many vested interests is always controversial, but it is necessary for Lesotho’s modernization.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94364

MALNUTRITION: Revamp African ag policy to address hunger and poverty - experts

02 Nov 2011  Katie Murray

A worker prunes tomato plants in the Dube AgriZone greenhouse situated at King Shaka International Airport, north of Durban, South Africa,

LONDON (AlertNet) – New approaches to agricultural productivity could help alleviate widespread poverty, malnutrition and hunger in many African countries, international development and agriculture experts said at a conference this week in Ethiopia focused on boosting agricultural output in Africa.
In 2003, African heads of state agreed to allocate 10 percent of their national budget to agriculture and rural development policy within five years. That target was not reached, but as a whole African countries have since managed to double their spending on agricultural and rural policy from an average of 3 percent to 6 percent of national spending, said Shenggen Fan, the director of the International Food Policy Research Institute, an organization that works to find sustainable solutions to ending poverty and hunger.
The problem is “that is not enough,” Fan said in a telephone interview.
Agricultural productivity in Africa is particularly imperiled by climate change impacts, including more extreme and unpredictable weather. Reducing climate-changing emissions and finding ways to adapt to changes already underway will be key, Fan said.
African countries suffer disproportionately more from climate change than most places in the world, in part because many farmers are poor and lack resources to prepare for climate impacts or respond to setbacks from problems like crop failure, experts say.
African countries are very prone to weather shocks, Fan said, and these will continually happen “more often, more frequently than before.”
Fan stressed the importance of finding new crop varieties that are resistant to drought and more resilient when weather shocks occur. He also said unconventional approaches, like organic farming, should be looked into as potential farming strategies for some parts of the continent.
“Increasing agricultural productivity is not the panacea to all problems, but it can make a significant positive contribution to resolve issues of food insecurity in Africa,” he said.
The conference, which brought together policy makers, academics, member of private companies and representatives from farmer and trader organizations, aimed to help create a broad new policy framework for improving agricultural productivity in Africa.
“Increasing agricultural productivity in Africa calls for broader policy and strategic frameworks that encompass the whole agricultural value chain,” said Josué Dioné, a food security and sustainable development expert from United Nation’s Economic Commission for Africa.
Agro-businesses, as well as small-scale farmers, need to be taken into account and included in the new agricultural policy for it to be effective, he said.
Fan believes the five most effective approaches for African governments can employ to boost agricultural productivity are to increase investment in agriculture, ensure Africans – rather than outsiders – make policy for the continent, focus on the small-scale farmer’s role in the agricultural chain, promote trade and access to markets and enhance agricultural technology and infrastructure.
According to Monty Jones, executive director of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, “Strengthening extension services and infrastructure, and implementing policies that support agricultural productivity and increase rural incomes, will reduce hunger and poverty.”
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/revamp-african-ag-policy-to-address-hunger-and-poverty-experts/

MALNUTRITION: New ways needed to grow food

DURBAN, 28 November 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Agricultural production will have to be intensified, rather than expanded, says a UN report
 In another 40 years, many parts of the world will have run out of water for farming, say a new authoritative analysis of the state of the world's land and water resources.
"It is now estimated that more than 40 percent of the world's rural population lives in river basins that are physically water scarce," said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, which looked at land and water from a food security perspective. That is a lot, considering 75 percent of the population in developing countries is poor, lives in rural areas and depends on agriculture for income and food.
The report, the most comprehensive take on the health of the planet's land and water resources, contains plenty of bad news.
To feed a burgeoning global population, estimated to hit nine billion by 2050, we will have to produce another one billion tonnes of cereals and 200 million extra tonnes of livestock products every year. "The imperative for such agricultural growth is strongest in developing countries, where the challenge is not just to produce food but to ensure that families have access that will bring them food security," the report noted.
To do that we will need to increase agricultural water consumption by 10 percent until 2050. This might not sound like much, but it is "incredibly difficult" for water-stressed countries like South Africa, which can only dream of another one percent increase in the water channelled to agriculture, said Jean-Marc Faures, a water specialist with FAO.
A growing population will also put a squeeze on the per capita amount of land available in developing countries, which is expected to halve (to 0.12 hectare) by 2050.
But there is some light amid the gloom. Globally we may not have run out of food or land by 2050, said Hubert George, the editorial coordinator of the report.
There is agricultural land that can be used for expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, South America and parts of Europe, Russia, northern America and Australia.
But half of it is concentrated in just seven countries - Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Sudan, Argentina, Colombia and Bolivia. About 70 percent of that land suffers from constraints such as ecological fragility, low fertility, toxicity, high incidence of disease or lack of infrastructure.
There is no spare land for expansion in south Asia, east Asia, the Middle East and northern Africa, which are home to the largest portion of the world's population.
Currently, 25 percent of the earth's land is highly degraded, another 8 percent is moderately degraded, 36 percent is stable or slightly degraded, and 10 percent is ranked as "improving" in quality. The remainder is either bare (around 18 percent) or covered by inland water bodies (around 2 percent)
The land used to grow crops - about 1.6 billion hectares of the world's best - falls into the "improving" category, but some parts are being degraded by farming practices that result in water and wind erosion, the loss of organic matter, topsoil compaction, salinization and soil pollution, and nutrient loss.

Doing more with less
Various trade-offs will be required to help countries feed themselves: intensification of agriculture rather than expansion, and irrigation systems rather than depending on rainfall.
More than four-fifths of production gains will have to occur largely on existing agricultural land, but all will involve policy decisions that need to be grounded in an agricultural approach that is not only friendly to land and water resources, but also to the ecosystem at large, says the report.
Unsustainable approaches - present and past - have played a big role in putting world food security in a precarious position.
For instance, in countries like Bangladesh and China, where fertilizer is heavily subsidized, application rates tend to be higher than recommended, resulting in overuse. In 2008, Chinese farmers received a fertilizer subsidy of US$84 per hectare. In 2008-09, Bangladesh spent $758 million on urea support. Large adverse impacts on groundwater quality have been reported in both countries.
In Brazil, until the economic crisis of the early 1990s, credit subsidies and tax exemptions tipped in favour of clearing land in the Amazon region for often unsustainable crop production. The distorted incentive framework contributed to the permanent loss of forest ecosystems, but failed to encourage efficient, equitable or sustainable agriculture.
Worldwide, almost one billion people are undernourished today, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (239 million) and Asia (578 million). "In developing countries, even if agricultural production doubles by 2050, one person in twenty still risks being undernourished - equivalent to 370 million hungry people, most of whom will again be in Africa and Asia," the report said.

Action now
Climate change, which will affect the patterns of rainfall, temperature, and evaporation rates from rivers, is another risk driver of shrinking food output.
The world has not agreed on an integrated international framework within which major initiatives for sustainable land and water management can be formulated. Recent studies and programmes by UN agencies, among others, place agricultural production and land and water management in an ecosystems framework.
"But countries need to start taking action now, otherwise we will not have the resources we need," said editorial coordinator George.
 http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94315

MALNUTRITION: North Korea: Child malnutrition rising sharply in North Korea

Nov 25, 2011 : AFP


Three million people in North Korea will need food aid in 2012 and malnutrition among young children is rising despite bigger harvests, the UN said on Friday after a visit to the secretive communist state.
"Nearly three million people will continue to require food assistance in 2012," said the report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP), which are both based in Rome.
"Hospital staff told the assessment mission of a significant increase in malnutrition among young children," it said.
"Some paediatric wards indicated that cases admitted for malnutrition since April had doubled compared to the same period in 2010."
The report said that it expected this year's harvest to be around 8.5 per cent higher than last year but warned that domestic production and government food imports were not enough to cover needs.
"There remains an uncovered cereal deficit of 414,000 tons," it said.
It also called on North Korea to switch to more mechanised and more efficient forms of farming in order to increase productivity.
"Paddy yields at 4.3 tons per hectare in DPRK are about 60 per cent of those in neighbouring South Korea," said FAO economist Kisan Gunjal.
"This productivity gap represents a potential for the North to increase its farm output and eliminate chronic food shortages by adopting appropriate technology, inputs and measures," Gunjal said.
http://health.asiaone.com/Health/News/Story/A1Story20111125-312738.html

MALNUTRITION: UGANDA: Farmers battle uncertain weather patterns

ALERO, 20 July 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN

A farmer winnows her beans harvest in Nwoya district

 Having spent years uprooted by conflict, farmers in northern Uganda are again facing tough times – this time caused by the weather.

In late June, Joel Lacung and Margaret Ataro of Got-Ngur village in northern Uganda’s Nwoya district, laboured under the scorching sun as they drove two pairs of oxen to prepare their land for the approaching second rice-planting season.
They were among many rural farmers in Uganda whose livelihoods have been affected by increasingly erratic rainfall and high temperatures. Most were displaced by the years of conflict with the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and remain poor and unable to acquire farm inputs.
Jackson Odong, a research assistant with the Uganda Refugee Law Project, said helping these farmers was critical to restoring some normality in that part of the country.
"We no longer have enough food harvested compared to 30 years ago; these days when it rains, it sometimes falls too much, making the crops over-grow... [and not] germinate, and when the sun shines, sometimes it goes on for a long time, withering the crops."
Growing crops such as beans, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, sesame and millet had become difficult, he added.
For the past 20 years, the population in northern Uganda has depended on food aid because of the LRA conflict that forced about 1.2 million people into camps. The region, comprising savannah grass land and forests, is potentially very productive.
However, between May and June 2010, several farmers in the Acholi and Teso region in the north lost land to torrential rains that left fields water-logged, causing crops to rot.
In 2009, heavy rains in the first quarter and prolonged sunshine also left several farmers counting losses, undermining food reserves.

Uncertainty
"In the past, our grandfather could predict rain through cloud formations, direction of the wind and when certain trees begin to grow leaves," Lacung said.
Faced with the effects of the unpredictable weather, a group of 600 rural farmers in the districts of Amuru, Gulu, Nwoya, Pader, Kitgum and Lamwo are adapting to alternative farming methods.

The farmers, supported by the Catholic Relief Agency (CARITAS) in the Acholi sub-region through a community managed disaster risk reduction programme (CMDRR), are adapting by planting early and using quick maturing seeds.

 Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN : Growing crops such as beans, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, sesame and millet has become difficult in northern Uganda

Lacung said they also practised crop rotation, irrigation, inter-cropping and use of manure to help the soil regenerate.
Patrick Otto, a farmer from Kitgum, said the knowledge and support they had received had helped them improve their yields.
Jackson Lakor, an agricultural officer in Gulu, said farmers needed information on climate change to guide them in their daily farming activities.
He said the only way to minimize losses was to engage in activities that would help restore the environment, such as re-forestation and inter-cropping with perennial crops.
Longinous Olong Ogwang, CMDRR project officer, said the 300 million shilling (US$125,000) project would help farmers adapt to better methods through training and input provision.

Lessons learnt
Ogwang added that CMDRR hoped to replicate the project in more areas to help farmers become self-reliant.
"Here the farmers identify risks and we support them on how they can address these risks.
"If they identify delays in rain as a risk, we support them with knowledge on alternatives so that they are in a position to use seeds suitable for a given condition, and how to plant, when to plant," he said.
"The farmers identified inadequate capacity to till larger portions of farm land and we provided them with oxen and ploughs," he added.
Paul Isabirye, coordinator of the climate change unit in the Water and Environment Ministry, said the only way to help farmers cope with unreliable weather was to have a comprehensive programme that catered for all the sectors to address the different challenges.
"All government ministries have a role to play," he said, referring to roads, health, education and disaster preparedness, among others. "Climate change is the main cause of the intense rainfall we are receiving, its poor distribution and erratic [patterns]."
He said addressing the effects of climate change varied according to the farming practice.
"There are different levels of adaptation depending on the availability of resources and geographical set-up of a place," Isabirye added.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93274

POVERTY: Ghana: Government must pay attention to agriculture to eradicate poverty – Kufuor

22 June 2011
 Former President John Agyekum Kufuor

Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has reiterated the need for government to attach utmost importance to agriculture if the country was to achieve its first Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme hunger and poverty by 2015.
According to him, Agriculture is the bedrock of the country's economy and if the government does not commit to sustaining and formulating new policies for the sector, the country may fall back into poverty.
Former President Kufuor, who was speaking on Dwaso Nsem on Adom FM on Wednesday from the United States, was commenting on a World Bank report that about 30% of the population is wallowing in poverty.
In his analysis of what could possibly account for that situation, Mr. Kufuor explained that the country’s farmers are growing old while the younger generation is not taking up farming and unless they embrace agriculture actively, there will be problems for the country.
He also attributed the poverty rate to the increasing population, explaining that if the pace at which the population increases outweighs productivity, then there is bound to be an increase in the poverty rate.
He therefore suggested that government should pay particular attention to the agriculture sector, stressing the need for farmers to be encouraged with policies that will benefit them and urge them on to do more.
President Kufuor emphasized the need for government to help farmers access loans to produce on large scale basis and boost productivity.
He said during his tenure, his administration put in place some initiatives which included providing fertilizers and pesticides for free to farmers while giving them extensive education on new farming trends through Agricultural officers.
He said through those policies, cocoa production increased from 350,000 tonnes when the NPP took over in 2000 to 750,000 tonnes and now production is at almost a million tonnes.
The former President also talked about the Presidential Special Initiatives on Oil Palm (through which over 600,000 hectares of oil palm trees were planted), cassava and others whose initiation, he said, people scoffed at but went a long way to encourage production on a large scale.
He said since times are changing and innovations are coming up, government should also study the new ways of doing things and implement them in the country.
He called for a critically look at planned parenthood to help manage the rate at which the population is increasing.
The World Food Prize Foundation honoured former President Kufuor, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil, for creating and implementing government policies that alleviated hunger and poverty in their countries.
President Kufuor while commenting on the honour said he had not expected to receive that honour although he had taken steps to help eradicate poverty.
He said he put in place policies especially in the Agriculture sector which went a long way to help halve extreme poverty adding that now Ghana is considered as a leading light in achieving the Millennium Development Goal 1 by 2015.
http://news.myjoyonline.com/news/201106/67963.asp

MALNUTRITION: Reimagining Food Systems in the Midst of a Hunger Crisis

Kanya D'Almeida : Jun 3, 2011 (IPS) -

Today one billion people are living in hunger, not because of scarcity of production or a shortage of food on shelves in the global marketplace, but because they "lack the most basic purchasing power needed to acquire it", Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, said Thursday.
Currently, 35-40 percent of harvests are lost due to inadequate transportation and storage facilities, while a further 35-40 percent goes to wealthy Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.
According to experts like De Schutter, the inability of 10 percent of the world's population to feed itself is also a reflection of unsustainable patterns of consumption and deeply flawed models of industrialised agricultural production which, if allowed to continue, will divert 50 percent of global cereal harvests towards feeding cattle by the year 2050.
"From the food crisis in 1974, to the crisis in 2007-2008, and even now during the food crisis of 2010-2011, governments have had the same Pavlovian reaction - to increase production in order to lower prices and alleviate the burden of food price inflation on the population," De Schutter said at a panel discussion in Washington.
He added that while the reaction was understandable, it has been undeniably proven to be incomplete, short-sighted and based on an inadequate diagnosis of the complexity of the problem.
"A food system that is increasingly industrialised and commodified is not the only one available to us," he stressed. "We can and must re- imagine other food systems that take numerous social dimensions into account."

Inter-connected crises
In his recent report "Agroecology and the Right to Food", which was presented to the Human Rights Council in March this year, De Schutter outlines the global hunger catastrophe as an amalgamation of three distinct but inherently inter-related problems.
These are poverty, caused by trade policies that dump heavily- subsidised produce from developed countries on third world markets, thus rendering local farmers jobless; environmental degradation brought on by industrialised farming, which now accounts for nearly one-third of global green house gas emissions; and an epidemic of malnutrition caused by the colonising effects of mono-crops and a flood of processed food from the global north to the global south.
Only by examining these three challenges together can a strategy for ending hunger be successfully designed and implemented, he argues.
A study released Friday by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)'s programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) bolstered this argument by identifying future climate change "hotspots" in countries already crippled by severe food shortages and chronic hunger.
By consolidating detailed maps of scores of different agricultural regions across the world, the seven scientists behind the study tracked the impacts of climate change on food security and identified highly-vulnerable populations - principally in Africa and South Asia, with dark clouds hanging over China and parts of Latin America as well - that would suffer the double blows of hunger and environmental crisis.
"When you put these maps together they reveal places around the world where the arrival of stressful growing conditions could be especially disastrous," Polly Ericksen, lead author of the study and a senior scientist at the CGIAR's International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya, told the press in Copenhagen Friday.
"These are areas highly exposed to climate shifts, where survival is strongly linked to the fate of regional crop and livestock yields, and where chronic food problems indicate that farmers are already struggling and they lack the capacity to adapt to new weather patterns," she said.
Swathes of South Asia, including virtually all of India's territory and vast areas of sub-Saharan Africa are home to 369 million food- insecure people, all of whom live in climate-vulnerable, agriculture- intensive areas.
Over 56 million hungry and crop-dependent people in West Africa, India and China inhabit areas which, in less than 40 years, will likely experience daily growing season temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius - virtually impossible conditions for essential crops like corn and rice.

Reimagining food systems
In 2006, a team of researchers from the University of Essex carried out a study on "agro-ecological" approaches to farming and development.
Spanning 57 developing countries and 286 different models of sustainable farming techniques in an area covering 37 million hectares - three percent of cultivated land - the study unearthed how low external-input farming that utilized surrounding ecosystems and cyclical practices resulted in a 79 percent yield increase, more than double the average yield under the normalised agricultural system.
Agro-ecology, which includes systems that produce their own fertiliser using materials and waste from the surrounding environment, is being increasingly viewed as the only viable solution to the hunger crisis. Since prices of fertiliser doubled during the 2008 food crisis, continents like Africa that import 95 percent of their chemical fertilisers could see radically different outcomes in production by adopting agro-ecological techniques.
Analysing the data from the 2006 study by region, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) found that in some parts of Africa the yield increase was a stunning 213 percent.
However, De Schutter warned, this agricultural "revolution" will not come about by chance but will require swift and determined government action.
In addition to investing in education, gender-sensitive solutions and public goods and services such as the infrastructure required to nurture farmers' unions and peasant cooperatives, De Schutter's recommendations to governments include an urgent appeal to revolutionize markets to reward best-practices rather than short-term profit.
"The market as it exists today is too focused on global supply chains and does not give enough importance to local farmers, and producers of diversified crops," De Schutter told IPS.
"Governments must move away from export-led supply models and reinvest heavily in regional, sustainable food systems."
He added that governments should set solid agendas, which development agencies and private sector actors would align with, that incorporate a cultural shift away from a broken structure and towards a visionary, resilient food future.

----------------------------------------
Reimagining Food Systems in the Midst of a Hunger Crisis
 Enter the Transnationals

At a panel entitled "Feeding the World While Caring for the Planet", representatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development joined with De Schutter to discuss the U.S. government's latest Feed the Future Initiative.
While seemingly aligned with the policies and recommendations of leading ecological and environmental experts, the initiative has generated tremendous controversy since Rajiv Shah, USAID's chief administrator, announced in January that "large-scale private sector partnerships" would lead the way to a world free of hunger.
Identifying 17 global "champions", Shah named transnational giants Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Bunge, Cargill, The Coca- Cola Company, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart Stores and Yara International as leaders in the fight against food insecurity.
Heavily featured on watchdog websites such as GRAIN, CorpWatch and Food and Water Watch, these companies have notorious track records in human and environmental rights violations.
"Feed the Future... needs to think a lot harder about what it will mean for small- scale farmers when they partner with transnationals to push GMO seeds, even drought-resistant varieties," Karen Hansen-Kuhn, international programme director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told IPS. "It's... almost certain that they would lock farmers into even more dependence on imported inputs, rather than building local self- reliance through agroecologal methods."
She added, "This [initiative] is funded by the U.S. government, so they need to make sure those public funds support public interests. We hear a lot about 'value chains' and relying on markets, but hardly anything about market failures, and the fact that supply chains are often rigged against small- scale farmers."
"De Schutter is right that what's important is to re- localise food systems, so that supply chains are shorter and geared towards local communities. It's hard to see how these corporate alliances can play any role in that process," Hansen- Kuhn concluded.

Strong Government Action

De Schutter believes that even the problem of corporate interests can be overcome if governments seize the opportunity to assert their influence in prioritising sustainable systems.
"One problem that has existed since the 1980s is the weight that international trade has exercised on the development of policies," De Schutter told IPS.
"Though it concerns only 9-10 percent of the food that is produced globally, international trade has had a decisive influence on the way decisions are made, on the way infrastructure develops and on how farmers are being supported - but governments can change that."
He added that another part of the problem has been the political disenfranchisement and disempowerment of the majority of small-scale farmers.
"This is why it is key in my view that Feed the Future should include a specific focus on the organisation of farmers into cooperatives that can have a stronger bargaining position on the food chains, and that it should address the problem of concentration and abuse of buyer power in the food chains, in particular by a more assertive use of the powers that the authorities have under existing antitrust legislation," De Schutter told IPS.
"Today, too many policymakers still see hunger as a problem of supply and demand, when it is primarily a problem of a lack of access to productive resources such as land and water, of unscrupulous employers and traders, of an increasingly concentrated input providers sector, and of insufficient safety nets to support the poor."
He added, "Empowerment of farmers and the strengthening of their position in the food system is vital, and I do hope that the Feed the Future initiative will not ignore this issue simply because of those companies which contribute to funding it."
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55924

POVERTY: India: Oxfam drive to fight poverty

STAFF REPORTER Guwahati, June 1:

Oxfam, an international confederation of 14 organisations working worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice, launched its anti-poverty campaign, Grow, in the state today.
Talking to the media, Oxfam’s national humanitarian hub manager, Zubin Zaman, said the organisation would work for food sovereignty of the small farmers and try to explore the factors that contribute to hike of food prices in Assam, as a part of the campaign.
Oxfam has undertaken sanitation works in disaster-prone areas of Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Majuli and Morigaon, along with the local NGOs.
Grow, a global campaign, aims to fight poverty in collaboration with governments, companies and international bodies like G20.
In India, the campaign was simultaneously launched today in Guwahati, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai and Patna. Zaman said the campaign has been launched for four years initially.
Oxfam observed that despite Indian economy having grown considerably between 1990 and 2005, the number of hungry people increased by 65 million, more than the total population of France. This was because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them
“Around 60 years later, unfortunately, hunger and malnutrition remain major issues in India. About 44 per cent of children under the age of five are underweight and 48 per cent are stunted. Because of the country’s large population, India is home to 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children and 31 per cent of stunted children,” Zaman said.
He, however, said the condition of Assam was not as bad as the other states of the country in terms as food availability. However, continuous erosion and population increase point to tough times ahead. Zaman said in the agricultural field, they would give emphasis on research activities in a bid to make farmers dependent on their own seeds rather than imported ones. Besides, they would also examine the role of the imported cost factor in increasing food prices in Assam.
Zaman said Assam would be affected by the imminent global food crisis in the coming days. According to the projection of Oxfam, demand for food will rise by 70 per cent by 2050 globally while food production capacity will steadily decline.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110602/jsp/northeast/story_14059288.jsp

POVERTY: Sustainable agriculture key to green growth, poverty reduction – UN officials

1 June 2011 – United Nations officials today called for boosting support for sustainable agriculture, including smallholder farmers, as a way to drive green growth and reduce poverty.
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the challenge of feeding more than nine billion people by 2050, along with tackling climate change and maintaining productive land and sufficient water resources require a “more intelligent pathway” for managing the world’s agricultural systems.
“Agriculture is at the centre of a transition to a resource-efficient, low-carbon Green Economy,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. “The challenge is to feed a growing global population without pushing humanity's footprint beyond planetary boundaries.”
Mr. Steiner called for galvanizing support for smallholder farmers, who are an “untapped resource” in addressing food security and today’s environmental challenges.
Investments through official development assistance (ODA) are one way of stepping up support for this important group, as is scaling-up and accelerating government policies for unleashing investment flows from the private sector, he noted.
“Well-managed, sustainable agriculture can not only overcome hunger and poverty, but can address other challenges from climate change to the loss of biodiversity,” said the UNEP chief.
“Its value and its contribution to multiple economic, environmental and societal goals needs to be recognized in the income and employment prospects for the half a million smallholdings across the globe,” he added.
The world’s rural poor and especially farmers of the 500 million smallholdings in developing countries feed one-third of the global population and account for 60 per cent of global agriculture.
Smallholder farmers also provide up to 80 per cent of the food consumed in Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Smallholders in developing countries – the majority of them women – manage to feed 2 billion people, despite working on ecologically and climatically precarious land, with difficult or no access to infrastructure and institutional services, and often lacking land tenure rights that farmers in developed countries take for granted,” said Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of IFAD.
“Right now, we are squandering the potential of rural poor people to contribute to global prosperity. Investing in sustainable smallholder agriculture is a smart way to right this wrong,” he stated.
IFAD also stressed that investments in sustainable smallholder agriculture must go hand-in-hand with policy and institutional reforms, investments in infrastructure and improvements in market access. They must also be informed by the knowledge and needs of the rural poor.
On 5 June, UNEP will celebrate World Environment Day (WED) in India with one of the fastest growing economies in the world and whose 1.2 billion people continue to put pressure on land and forests, especially in densely populated areas where people are cultivating on marginal lands and where overgrazing is contributing to desertification.
This year’s theme – ‘Forests: Nature at Your Service’ – underscores the intrinsic link between quality of life and the health of forests and forest ecosystems.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38565&Cr=agriculture&Cr1=

POVERTY: BANGLADESH: Indigenous farmers face seed crisis

CHTBANGKOK, 12 May 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Courtesy of Christian Erni/IWGIA
Growing food is getting tougher in Bangladesh's

Farmers in parts of Bangladesh's southeastern Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) face a seed crisis that is undermining the food security of thousands, the World Food Programme (WFP) says.
"The challenge that the villagers are now facing is the lack of available seeds due to non-cultivation for two years," Christa Rader, country director of WFP in Bangladesh, told IRIN from Dhaka.
Seed prices in Sajek Union - about US$11 per kilo - have increased more than five times since 2006, while interest rates are up to 100 percent.
These two factors are contributing to CHT's food insecurity - estimated at more than 30 percent - according to the UN food agency.
"Over the last four years, the frequency of crises in Sajek has been intense" - starting with crop damage by the rodent attack during 2007-2008, restrictions on Jhum cultivation since 2009 and communal conflict in 2010, which continues in 2011, reports a WFP assessment conducted at the end of April.

No Jhum for Jummas
The seed crisis started when the region was infested by a rat population that bred four times faster than normal during the bamboo flowering season from 2007 to 2008.
The rodents consumed all the grains and cash crops from the fields and in storage, forcing people to eat seeds they would normally save for cultivation.
The following year, in 2009, the indigenous Jumma people, comprising 11 different ethnic groups, were forbidden from farming in forest areas of Sajek Union using their traditional shifting cultivation methods, also known as Jhum cultivation.
The United People's Democratic Front (UPDF), a political party based in the CHT, enforced the ban to protect the land from over-cropping resulting from an influx of Bengali settlers over the past three decades.
"What [the UPDF] did is to discourage Jhum cultivation in certain specified areas to protect the environment and animal habitats," Sachib Chakma, a member of the UPDF's central committee, explained.
But Jhum farming is also central to the way of life of the one million indigenous people living in the CHT.
"The very name of these people, Jumma, comes from their cultural tradition of shifting agriculture, locally known as Jhum. They were able to sustainably live for years using Jhum cultivation," Sophie Grig, senior campaigner at Survival International, a London-based indigenous rights NGO.
According to Survival, it was not possible to keep the land fallow for the five to eight years as required for soil to regenerate in shifting cultivation, but was instead cropped every two to three years. Moreover, the most fertile land was taken by Bengali settlers, further affecting the Jummas' ability to farm.
"The Bengali settlers took the most arable land away from the Jumma, internally displacing them further north into Sajek Union," Grig said.
Nearly 600,000 Bengali settlers have arrived in the CHT since the 1980s leading to land theft and forced relocation of more than 90,000 Jumma families as of 2000, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
"The illegal taking over of indigenous peoples' land by Bengali settlers and the inclusion of their land in forest reserves [has led] to a decrease in the land available for doing shifting cultivation," said Christina Nilsson from the CHT Commission International Secretariat based in Copenhagen.

Land tensions
In a further shock to local livelihoods, recent clashes at the end of April over land led to nearly 100 Jumma houses being burned down.
"All their movable assets, including rice and seeds, perished in the fire, leaving them without food," said Chakma.
And with the price of seeds increasing, many farming families could well find themselves in greater debt if they borrow at today's interest rates, resulting in what WFP warns could become a "famine-like situation" unless livelihood options improve.
"The situation is critical," Rader said. "People may have to sell all their livestock and other assets in order to eat."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92692

MALNUTRITION: Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister says SA farmers should expand into other African countries.

BEKEZELA PHAKATHI phakathib@bdfm.co.za
2011/05/04



 Photo: Financial Mail

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson.
CAPE TOWN — South African farmers should expand their business interests into other African countries, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said yesterday.
Speaking during a press briefing after a conference on rural poverty hosted by the United Nations’ International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), Ms Joemat-Pettersson said expanding into Africa would enhance food security on the continent, not compromise it.
"We are not saying that our farmers should relocate or move their business operations from SA to other countries; they should use SA as a base and then expand their business operations into the rest of Africa," Ms Joemat-Pettersson said.
In her keynote address during the conference, Ms Joemat-Pettersson said an equitable ownership of land remained essential to safeguarding democracy in SA.
"Our government has tried to bring in this balance between land reform and food security and it’s a very tight balance — it’s like walking on a tightrope."
The minister also said it was not sustainable for the country to rely on a small group of farmers for its food requirements .
She said the continent was capable of improving food security and boosting economic growth through increasing support for smallholder farmers.
While Africa was still facing challenges in reducing poverty, "a vision of economic renaissance" led by smallholder farmers was beginning to take hold.
"There is a growing belief that Africa can produce enough not only to feed its own citizens, but to export a growing surplus to the rest of the world," Ms Joemat-Pettersson said.
She said SA was in the forefront of developing a railway system that would link the entire continent and allow farmers to take goods from road to rail across Africa.
The agricultural value chain had been identified in the New Growth Path as one of the key sectors to grow the number of jobs, she said.
Speaking at the same conference, the Ifad fund’s president, Kanayo Nwanze, said the African Union had recognised the central role of agriculture in reducing poverty when its members pledged to increase spending on agriculture to at least 10% of national budgets.
"This pledge was made in 2003 in Maputo. By last year, eight countries had met or surpassed that target; the continent as a whole has not," Mr Nwanze said.
To grow the agricultural sector, African countries also needed to maintain political stability, encourage more youths to turn to farming and, importantly, invest more in rural infrastructure, he said .
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=141630

POVERTY: 'Push–pull' pest control to reach more African farmers

Mercy Adhiambo : 26 April 2011
Flickr/ILRI
Napier grass produces a gummy substance that traps freshly hatched stem borers



[NAIROBI] A farming technology that uses intercropping to repel insect pests from food crops has been given a new lease of life by a programme to expand its uptake.
The 'push–pull' strategy intercrops cereals with a repellent plant bordered by an attractive trap plant. For example, maize can be intercropped with desmodium, which repels ('pushes') pests such as the maize stem borer away from the crop, and bordered by Napier grass, which lures ('pulls') stem borers so they lay their eggs in the grass instead of the maize.
Napier grass also produces a gummy substance that traps freshly hatched stem borers so only a few survive to adulthood.
Since its development in 1997, the technique has helped nearly 40,000 farmers in East Africa. Maize yields have increased by up to 3.5 tonnes per hectare, bringing 300,000 people out of hunger and poverty, according to the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology.
The centre has now launched a project to disseminate the technique more widely and to find new push and pull plants with drought and temperature tolerance.
The Adaptation and Dissemination of Push–Pull Technology (ADOPT) initiative, launched last month (30 March), will benefit a further 50,000 farmers living in dry areas vulnerable to climate change in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. ADOPT has received €2.9 million (US$4.2 million) from the European Union.
"Push-pull is a modern conservation agriculture technology that does not require the use of insecticides or pesticides," Zeyaur Khan, the project's principal investigator, told SciDev.Net. "We hope to have about one million households benefiting from the technology by 2020."
Khan and colleagues developed the low-cost technology in collaboration with Rothamsted Research, United Kingdom, and various national programmes in East Africa.
Kenyan farmer Remjus Bwana said the technology has made his farm more productive. "After adopting this technology, I have seen a remarkable improvement," he said.
However, both desmodium and Napier grass struggle in dry conditions.
"We have started doing new research that will enable us get new species of trap and repellent plants that can withstand high temperature and drought conditions in arid and semi-arid areas of Africa. We are collecting desmodium seeds and grasses from different parts of Africa to see which ones are more resilient," said Khan.
But Ken Giller, a plant scientist at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, said that claims about the push–pull system are overstated. "I do not think that they have yet seen sustained adoption — just farmers experimenting with the technology," he told SciDev.Net.
"Climate change in East Africa is indicating a wetter climate, rather than drier," Giller said. He added said that rigorous adoption studies should be carried out before promoting such technologies.

(Informed) Comment
anjorin, Unibuja, nigeria ( Nigeria ) 4 May 2011
Do not be deceived. This cultural method is an insufficient and unreliable method of insect pest management. Integrated Pest management is more sustainable.
DR .S.T. Anjorin: Plant Pathologist, University of Abuja. Nigeria
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/-push-pull-pest-control-to-reach-more-african-farmers-1.html

POVERTY: Nepal: Climate Change: Community-based adaptation in action

26 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Peter Murimi/IRIN
Sujit Kumar Mondal and his wife Rupashi Mondal of Gopalgonj district in southern Bangladesh working in their floating garden

Nepal has become one of the first countries to consider scaling up community-based adaptation (CBA) to climate change and making it part of national development policy.
Nepal is vulnerable to rising global temperatures and has already been dealing with the impact of erratic rainfall, frequent droughts and floods, which have been affecting food security. In response the country decided to experiment with a bottom-up approach using Local Adaptation Plans of Action, or LAPAs, in 10 districts across the country in 2010.
In a joint paper on local adaptation plans, Bimal Raj Regmi, a researcher, and Gyanendra Karki, a government official, said the idea of drawing up LAPAs came out of the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) process.
They noted that Nepal, as one of the last of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to develop its NAPA, was able to incorporate elements omitted from the adaptation plans of other countries.
These include better links to climate change planning processes and mainstreaming national adaptation goals down to the local level, so that the NAPA process moved beyond regional and national consultation to include the input of vulnerable communities in the LAPAs.
The LAPAs are developed by people from various sectors in a village or district who identify local climate risks, vulnerability and needs, and focus on increasing resilience based on the geographical location and assessments made by the community using their knowledge of the local environment.
"This is particularly critical because if communities are unable to distinguish climate change risks from other risks they face, then efforts to develop adaptive capacity might become unfocused or ineffective," said Regmi and Karki.
Nepal's approach and pilot programme were cited at the recent fifth International Conference on Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change in Bangladesh, which discussed scaling up CBA.

Two ways to scale-up
Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow of the International Institute for Environment and Development, a UK-based policy think-tank, which organized the conference, said there were two ways to scale-up: vertical - up the policy chain from the community level to higher levels of decision-making as in the case of Nepal; and horizontal - by replicating projects or initiatives thousands or even hundreds of thousands of times.
Communities have been adapting to climate variability for centuries, sometimes using home-grown and sustainable methods. These measures are known as "autonomous adaptation".
In flood-prone southern Bangladesh, communities grow food on floating islands made of paddy straw and water hyacinth in the waterlogged fields.
On the edge of the Sahara, people bury staple grains in storage pits in the ground to eat in times of drought, while in other areas traditionally nomadic pastoralists are adopting a partially sedentary lifestyle as the spreading desert wipes out grassland.
NGOs have developed a number of CBA initiatives, all still in the pilot phase, but Huq noted that "quite a few NGOs like Oxfam have begun to scale up their pilots".
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has launched pilot CBA projects in Namibia, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
Huq, who is part of the academic team working on the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said inputs from the conference would inform the adaptation chapters of the assessment to be published in 2014.
African countries focused on bottom-up approaches and scaling up community-led responses to adaptation at the recent AfricaAdapt symposium held in Ethiopia.
"With up to 40 million pastoralists across the African region, each pastoralist has to be an innovator to some degree to adapt to climate variability," Fatema Rajabali, the climate editor of Eldis, an online knowledge service provided by the Sussex-based Institute of Development Studies, reported.
At the symposium, Yohannes GebreMichael of the Addis Ababa University "asserted that local innovation needs to be recognized, as it provides an entry point for communities with a bottom-up approach to support climate change adaptation, starting with local capacities and ideas".
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=92585