POVERTY: Zambia: IFAD Eradicating Poverty

PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda has commended the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) for its commitment to ensuring that poverty is eradicated in Zambia by targeting the most vulnerable rural populace through various agricultural projects.
And IFAD president Kanayo Nwanze has said his organisation would pump in US$ 25 million for agricultural projects during the period 2010 to 2012.
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President Banda said at State House yesterday when he met Mr Nwanze that IFAD was one of the cooperating partners which worked with the Government to directly address issues that affected people especially in rural areas.
President Banda assured Mr Nwanze that the Government would do everything possible to ensure that IFAD established more of its activities in Zambia.
He said he was happy that the IFAD president had toured some of the projects in Southern Province which the organisation had undertaken and that the projects had been successful.
Mr Banda said Zambia was putting much emphasis on the diversification of the economy and agriculture was one sector, which was being strengthened.
As a result of unemployment, many youths had turned to agriculture for their livelihood.
He said women too, were also engaged in agricultural activities in order to look after their families and orphans.
As a result of the Government's commitment to strengthening the agricultural sector, Zambia had recorded a bumper harves of 2.8 million tones of maize the highest in the history of the country.
President Banda said Zambia also had surplus wheat, which it needed to export, but was facing stiff competition from South Africa which was selling the grain cheaper.
The other problem that the agricultural sector faced were cattle diseases in North-Western, Western and Southern provinces.
And Mr Nwanze said IFAD had been working in Zambia since 1981 and had supported 11 projects out of which eight were fully completed at a cost of US$155 million.
Mr Nwanze said once the three remaining projects are completed the investment portfolio in Zambia would go up to $285 million.
He said IFAD was designing a project with the ministry of agriculture and cooperatives, which would run for five to seven years at a cost of $66 million.
Mr Nwanze commended President Banda's Government for it's concentration on the agricultural sector as evidenced by the various gains that had been recorded.
He said conservation farming should also be encouraged to mitigate the effects of climate change.
He said he was happy to note that more than 250 households were now engaged in conservation farming in Zambia.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201007260277.html

MALNUTRITION: AFRICA: Bullish about the agricultural future

LONDON, 23 July 2010 (IRIN) - Suddenly, after 20 years of relative neglect, African agriculture is a hot topic, with a substantial growth in production and a new interest among major donors in funding the sector. That is the message emerging from a series of seminars now taking place in London looking at the constraints and opportunities facing Africa's farmers.The figures being presented are impressive and - according to Steve Wiggins, who leads the agriculture programme at Britain's Overseas Development Institute - confound the pessimists who assume the situation to be much worse than it is."I often hear it said that Africa is running out of food per head," he told the seminar. "Now unless these statistics are complete and utter junk, that just simply isn't true. The index shows 16, 17, 18 percent more food being produced per capita compared to the early 1980s."In particular, he said, two regions - West Africa and North Africa - were surging ahead, although there were signs that production in East Africa too might now be beginning to accelerate."For those of us working on Africa," said Wiggins, "people use Asia as a stick to beat us with. Well, as far as I can see, there are two bits of Africa there which have done every bit as well as Asia has done over the last quarter of a century."Wiggins's fellow speaker at the opening session was Ousman Badiane, the Africa director of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington. He put his finger on the mid nineties as the point when Africa really turned a corner.With no other overall change which could account for this recovery, Badiane attributed it to the structural adjustment programmes which so many countries had been persuaded to follow. "I believe it was the result of those strong and messy reform programmes of the 1980s. I remember the pain of it, but it completely changed the environment for agriculture."Challenges, opportunitiesBoth speakers were agreed that the food price spike in 2008 and the world economic crisis pose both challenges and opportunities for African farmers. They worried about a growing protectionism in Asia - a major potential market for African agricultural produce - and about the fact that the speed of Asian development may have closed a window of opportunity for African's own industrialization. Steve Wiggens made the point that "the single biggest stimulus to most farmers is a thriving local city."Above all they worried that the gains of the last 20 years might be reversed. Ousman Badiane referred to a new law passed in Kenya to restore price controls on agricultural produce. "That's where Kenya was 25 years ago," he said. "The danger is that the generation of leaders that went through the pains of those reforms are no longer active. So those leaders today can make the same mistakes as the leaders of 25 years ago."And he added: "It is just for me unimaginable that a farmer stands up every day, produces the food and someone claims that is a common good - "It's OUR rice, it's OUR maize." It's amazing. Nobody goes to the farm with them, but once they produce the product, everybody claims it as their own. That has to change. It's a private product; it belongs to the farmers. And they have to be able to sell it for the price that the market offers."CAADEPOusmane Badiane sees the African Union's CAADEP (Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme) project, in so far as it gives a voice to farmers, as an influence against this kind of reversal of policies. The first two seminars both sparked discussion of CAADEP, which obliges member governments to devote 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture and encourages them to produce a coherent plan to which donors can subscribe.But there was a considerable level of scepticism about CAADEP. One participant, currently working in Malawi, described the frantic rush to produce a programme to put before donors, and said he had seen no evidence of new money becoming available.This was echoed by Christie Peacock, chief executive officer of the NGO Farm Africa. "There's so little vision," she said. "I'm very sceptical about the CAADEP process. It's supposed to be African led, but it's often a very top-down process."She echoed the reservations expressed by several participants, that even if new money was now being offered for agricultural development, both through CAADEP and from the US government's Feed the Future programme, there was no well-thought-out plan about how it should be used. "I think we are visionless at the moment," Peacock said, "and after 20 years of lack of interest, we are in danger of reinventing the wheel all over again."But the keynote speaker at the second seminar, Professor Sir Gordon Conway, author of The Doubly Green Revolution, was more optimistic about funding: "I do think there will be money - about a billion dollars of USAID [US Agency for International Development] money this year, and a billion plus next. Not perhaps the 3.5 billion that has been talked about, but around 2.7 billion will be there.""Twenty years ago there was a view that African didn't need agricultural development, that the private sector would do it all, and among some donor agencies that view is still there. But as a result of the food price crisis we have things like the Feed the Future programme, which looks for countries' own plans. It recognizes that countries are different, asks what they intend to do, and acts accordingly, and I think that's quite a good approach."The African Seminar Series is organized by the Future Agricultures Consortium and the Overseas Development Institute. Further sessions on markets, land issues and agriculture-led development in an urbanizing world will take place between now and the beginning of September.

MALNUTRITION: AFRICA: Help out small farmers,

NAIROBI, 2 July 2010 (IRIN) - Small-holder farmers, who make up almost all of Africa's agriculture sector, need more support to reduce over-dependence on increasingly costly food imports, states a new report.Policymakers should "strengthen the competitiveness of small-holder farmers, thus avoiding a rural exodus that would put pressure on the cities and lead to more food imports", according to the 2010 technology and innovation report [http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/tir2009_en.pdf] by the UN Conference on Trade and Development.Developing countries' net cereal imports rose from 39 million tonnes in the mid-1970s to 103 million in 1997-1999 and are expected to rise to 265 million tonnes by 2030, states the report. Countries also have to pay more for food: the price of Thai export rice almost tripled from US$362 per tonne in December 2007 to $1,000 in April 2008. Meanwhile, per capita food production in least developed countries (among which African countries are over-represented) has declined such that in 2003-2005 it was one-fifth lower than in 1970-1972.Cost barriers"When farmers are paying almost all their money in transaction costs there is no incentive to produce. There is a need to lower the barriers of cost for smallholder farmers," Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, director of the monitoring and research division at UN-HABITAT, the UN Human Settlements Programme, said during the report's launch on 1 July. Lack of organization is also a problem. "A small producer does not suffer due to size but due to isolation. If a hundred of you put your produce together you are much more likely to get a bigger market and better prices," said Oyelaran-Oyeyinka. Ethiopia recently launched a crop commodity exchange market to help farmers negotiate prices. "One of the reasons [African] agriculture has not moved is we don't have the surplus for value addition. We eat all [that] we produce," he said. "We simply just produce the raw material and ship it out to somebody. What remains is about 20 percent of the value."The bulk of the profit is at the end of the chain; the farmers who produce get the least [returns]," he said, adding that farmers require a supportive physical infrastructure, a regulated environment, training and improved farming and soil conditions. "Unless you have all these in place, the farmer will just work for nothing." He called for pro-poor public policy, including price stabilization, modern input availability, a ready credit and market supply and land policies guaranteeing property rights. "Volatility in prices creates uncertainty in the minds of producers. If you are expecting 20,000 shillings [$250] for your harvest [and] suddenly mid-year the harvesting price drops to 5,000 [$62.50] the farmer is crippled," he said. Challenges Land under irrigation remains low yet irrigation increases cropping intensity. "The 885 million hectares of currently available arable land in developing countries is as good as 1,770 million hectares, for instance, if it is used twice a year," notes the report, adding that only one-fifth of such land was under irrigation in 1997-1999, of which 2 percent was in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 40 percent in South Asia."It is a very dangerous thing to [just] depend on nature for your livelihood," Oyelaran-Oyeyinka warned of rainfall dependence.Guaranteed land tenure could be vital to helping farmers access credit and invest in the medium- and long-term productivity of the land, said the report.Among other challenges is the growing switch to biofuels and its effects on food security, diversion of cereals from humans to feeding livestock - conversion of grain to meat - and rural-urban migration. Oyelaran-Oyeyinka said: "There is no silver bullet - no quick fixes. There is a need to create an enabling environment for technology and innovation to decrease imports - through farmer support."Knowledge transfer and sharing is also important, he said. "We need to bring research out of the pilot stages and make it a business adapting it to Africa's conditions.""A country that does not feed its people is in very big danger of losing its sovereignty."

MALNUTRITION: AFRICA: Not spending enough on food

JOHANNESBURG, 21 June 2010 (IRIN) - "Africa is now facing the same type of long-term food deficit problem that India faced in the early 1960s", says a paper by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a US-based think-tank. In the early 1960s India faced a major food crisis. African countries are not spending enough on agriculture and the overall productivity of the continent has dropped since the mid-1980s, said the paper which looked at trends in public spending on agriculture in Africa. "Since the 1960s, Africa has lost ground in the global marketplace. Its share of total world agricultural exports fell from 6 percent in the 1970s to 2 percent in 2007," said the paper entitled, Public Spending for Agriculture in Africa: Trends and Composition. The paper was produced by researchers who work with IFPRI's Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS). Spending money on food production is critical in Africa, where 70 percent of people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for food and income. There are also going to be more people to feed in Africa in the next few decades. Sub-Saharan Africa's population is expected to grow faster than elsewhere by 2050, increasing by 910 million people, or 108 percent; East and Southeast Asia's population is set to rise by only 228 million, or 11 percent, according to UN projections. Ten percent target In 2003, the continent adopted the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and countries committed to allocating 10 percent of their budgets to agriculture. Only eight African countries have reached or surpassed the 10 percent target, according to CAADP. Erratic weather could be turning the screws on food security in Africa as well. Drought-hit Niger features in the eight countries to have allocated the required 10 percent of their budget to agriculture to become food secure, but failed rains have driven more than three million of its people into food insecurity and pushed Niger back onto the list of food aid dependent countries where it last featured in 2004. The other countries to reach the 10 percent target are Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Senegal, Zimbabwe and Malawi. There has been a 75 percent increase in the amount governments spend on agriculture from 2000 to 2005 but the CAADP target "remains unmet because of the very low initial base and the declining trends prior to 2000", says the IFPRI paper. The researchers used another measure - agricultural Gross Domestic Produce (GDP) - to assess the amount countries spend on agriculture. Babatunde Omilola, ReSAKSS coordinator explained how it was calculated. "This measure of government spending on agriculture weighs in the size of the sector in the overall economy and takes into account factors such as revenue generated and its impact on poverty reduction." "With the exception of Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, African countries have spent less than 10 percent of their agricultural GDPs on agriculture in recent decades." Africa spends 5-7 percent as a share of agricultural GDP on food production, whereas Asia spent 8-10 percent. But the range in spending in Africa is quite considerable. "For example, Botswana had the highest percentage in 2005 at 60 percent, while Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana spent less than 2 percent in the same year." Meanwhile, donor funding for agriculture in Africa has dropped dramatically - from 15 percent in the 1980s to 4 percent in 2006- but the amount countries allocate from aid to food production also varies quite considerably. In 2007 Botswana and Nigeria spent less than 1 percent of all aid received on agriculture. However, Burkina Faso in 2006 spent 8 percent of its total aid on agriculture.

POVERTY: Why is feeding the hungry so controversial?

NEW YORK , 14 June 2010 (IRIN) - The US Senate is expected to pass the Global Food Security Act, new legislation that would significantly expand the government's commitment to combating hunger worldwide with a broad range of measures and more money, and a special coordinator, or "food czar", to oversee implementation of these provisions across agencies. A proposed new fund would allocate several billion dollars over five years to research and development, to enhance "food security, agriculture productivity, rural development, poverty and malnutrition alleviation, and environmental sustainability".The proposed fund would be "in addition, and complementary, to food aid provided through the US Department of Agriculture", most of which is not permitted to be purchased in the areas where a food crisis is occurring. The legislation would also establish a US Emergency Rapid Response to Food Crises Fund that would authorize a $500 million appropriation for "local and regional purchase and distribution of food" and "provision of emergency non-food assistance, including vouchers or cash transfer, safety net programmes, or other appropriate non-food assistance"."The US, indeed all global donors, have been starving agricultural research funding for more than a decade," said Christopher Barrett, a food aid expert who teaches at Cornell University. "A huge body of evidence demonstrates extremely high rates of return on agricultural investment ... in the form of poverty and hunger reduction globally and ... economic growth, including for US and other high-income country farmers who benefit ... from research aimed at stimulating agricultural development in poor countries," Barrett commented."It's a smarter way to approach hunger and development assistance," the ONE Campaign, a grassroots advocacy organization, said in a statement. "With targeted investments in solutions like proven farming techniques, seeds, improved soils and efficient use of water resources, we can not only end chronic hunger and food shortages, we can help poor farmers and their families earn their way out of poverty."However, some organizations have objected to a sentence in the bill sponsored by Senators Richard Lugar and Robert Casey, which mandates funding for "research on biotechnical advances appropriate to local ecological conditions, including genetically modified [GM] technology". A letter signed by more than a hundred advocacy groups, scientists and development experts claimed that "The current language mandates one highly controversial type of technology - transgenics - dominated by two or three companies (most notably Monsanto), to get both taxpayer cash and ... favoured treatment under a bill ostensibly designed to help the poor and hungry," and asked that this section be stricken from the bill.If Congress "singles out one technology and attaches it to a pool of foreign aid money, the pressure on developing countries to ignore local priorities and other scientifically valid options - and to open their markets to that one technology - will be substantial", the letter noted.Annie Shattuck, of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, commented in an email to IRIN: "The bill puts needed resources to long-term agricultural development, but the essential question is: who will ultimately benefit from the development? She noted that "Both [the] State [Department] and USAID acknowledge that poverty, not scarcity, causes hunger, yet both focus on productivity and new green revolution technologies, to the exclusion of broader social factors like fairer trading arrangements, increasing the market power of small farmers, access to credit, stabilizing markets, rebuilding public extension, etc."Lugar responded: "The bottom line is that a provision of the Lugar-Casey bill directs US assistance in developing local technological solutions to advance agricultural productivity in countries suffering from chronic hunger - it does not require that these solutions be GM, but it does not preclude it where appropriate." He characterized as "gross misrepresentations" suggestions that "the bill would mandate that US assistance be used to promote genetically modified agricultural technologies, and that US food aid would be conditioned on recipient countries approving the use of GM products."Robert Paarlberg, author of Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept out of Africa, told IRIN: "This is a deeper matter than GM crop research, since most of the organizations that oppose the Lugar-Casey bill on these grounds also oppose its emphasis on spreading more traditional science-based 'green revolution' farming technologies."He pointed out that "There is not yet an example of any society lifting its farming populations out of hunger and poverty without introducing green revolution methods, such as the use of improved seeds and nitrogen fertilizers," and that using only organic and agro-ecological approaches had not yet worked anywhere. "It simply makes sense to keep all our arrows available in the quiver in the battle to reduce hunger and poverty," said Christopher Barrett. "It would make no more sense to exclude research based on genetic modification than to focus on it exclusively." After passage in the senate, the bill will move on to the House of Representatives; once the lower house grants its approval, President Barack Obama's signature will make it law.

POVERTY: Alleviation by aid to agriculture

President Obama is proposing $408 million as part of a multilateral fund to aid in agricultural development. The fund would be an important way to reduce global poverty and hunger.
WEALTHY nations should continue offering aid in times of economic crisis. More of that aid needs to be invested in agriculture to better reduce global poverty and hunger.
President Obama is proposing $408 million for the fiscal 2011 budget as part of a multilateral fund to stimulate agricultural progress in developing countries.
The United States has already contributed $67 million along with others who have made significant donations: Canada, Spain, South Korea and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The fund was created at last year's G-8 meeting from $22 billion in pledges from world leaders. Currently, less than $1 billion of the money has been paid in.
It is important to support aid in agricultural development, which would be used for projects such as improving irrigation or building roads that link farmers with markets. While 75 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas, only 4 percent of development aid is spent on agriculture.
It's even more imperative to support agricultural development during an economic recession.
The World Bank estimates that because of the recession, by 2015 there will be 53 million more people living in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $1.25 a day.
Improving agriculture will not only help spur overall growth, but also contribute to reducing poverty and increasing food security.
In Africa, Malawi recently doubled its food production by funding agricultural development projects.
It is likely President Obama will meet opposition to this proposal over the amount of national spending, but in a world with 1 billion suffering from hunger and extreme poverty, America must do its part.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorials/2011779148_edit05agriculture.html