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: Biofuels targets are 'unethical', says Nuffield report

13 April 2011 .By Roger Harrabin

 

Demand for biofuels is changing the economics of growing some staple crops, including palm oil
EU biofuels targets are unethical, according to a report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
Its authors recommend the targets should be lifted temporarily until new safeguards are put in place for biofuels grown in Europe or imported.
But they stop short of calling for a complete halt to biofuels, which some environmentalists want.
And they hold out the hope that new technologies may be able to develop biofuels from cellulose.
Crucially, they hope this could be done in a way that does not damage the environment or compete with food crops.
However, they acknowledge that progress towards these new biofuels is too slow, and that the next-generation fuels available are too expensive.
They want governments to do more to encourage biofuels that use less land, fertiliser and pesticide.
The Council is an independent body that was set up 20 years ago to ponder ethical issues raised by developments in biology and medicine.
It has been studying biofuels for 18 months - specifically relating to the EU Renewable Energy Directive target that biofuels should account for 10% of transport fuel by 2020, a much-criticised mandate originally designed as part of Europe's strategy to combat climate change.
Based on what it says is a set of ethical values which will be widely shared, the report says biofuels should:
not be at the expense of human rights; be environmentally sustainable; contribute to a reduction of greenhouse gases (some currently increase greenhouse gases); adhere to fair trade principles; have costs and benefits that can be distributed in an equitable way.
These principles would be backed by a mandatory - and strictly enforced - EU certification scheme, a little like the Fairtrade scheme.
Prof Joyce Tait, "Multiple requirements for land use are not able to be met with current technology, current disturbances caused by climate change and current population growth requirements - we are going to have to improve”
The authors rehearse a familiar list of complaints about current biofuel production: it strips biodiversity when forests or peatlands are cleared to grow fuel crops; current biofuels produce too little energy; biofuels are imported from countries which often have low environmental standards; biofuels compete with food crops and contribute to pushing up food prices.
Currently 3% of UK road fuel is biofuel. The report notes that only a third of that met an environmental standard in 2009/2010.
The report's chair is Joyce Tait, scientific advisor to the Economic and Social Research Council's Innogen Centre at Edinburgh University.
Professor Tait told BBC News: "It is clear that current EU policies as currently produced and incentivised are unsuitable and unethical. We clearly need a new overarching ethical standard backed up by certification to improve the way the world produces biofuels."
Responding to the challenge from some campaigners that cropland should not be used to fuel the cars of the rich, she said: "There are numerous conflicts with food crops.
"There are ways of dealing with that through food prices. It's not controllable in the direct sense but it's controllable with the certification we envisage so that biofuels do not compete with food crops."

'Optimist at heart'
She admitted: "Multiple requirements for land use are not able to be met with current technology, current disturbances caused by climate change and current population growth requirements - we are going to have to improve."

Some environmentalists and campaigners want a complete halt to biofuels Her co-author Ottoline Leyser, professor of plant development at the University of Cambridge's Sainsbury Laboratory, said: "We have to have a sustainable supply of food and fuel.
"We need fuel to grow food. We have to consider it as a piece, and factor in ecosystems and biodiversity, too."
Professor Leyser said the report had not attempted to calculate whether the world had enough land to supply the needs of food, fuel and wildlife, but that she was optimistic that there would be enough.
"I'm an optimist at heart. We will have to reduce our use of fuel and reduce our consumption of meat - but we will have to do this to adapt to the future anyway."
Critics say the authors are naïve in thinking that certification schemes will work, and too wedded to technology solutions.
Kenneth Richter, Friends of the Earth's biofuels campaigner, told BBC News: "The Government must simply scrap biofuel targets and instead focus on greener cars and improved public transport, fast and affordable rail services, and incentives to get people cycling and walking."
Robert Palgrave from the Biofuelwatch campaign was scathing about the Council's conviction that certification would guarantee that agricultural land would not be swallowed by biofuels.
He told BBC News: "We have serious concerns that an Indirect Land-Use Factor, far from being a step towards stopping agrofuel use in the EU could potentially make things even worse.
"There is no scientific credible way of calculating the full climate impacts of agrofuels. Indirect impacts are not just about 'hectare for hectare' displacement; they are also about the interaction between land prices and speculation, about the impacts of roads, ports and other infrastructure on forests, about policy changes which affect land rights, about scarcely-understood interactions between biodiversity, ecosystems and the climate."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13056862

POVERTY: SOMALIA: Charcoal trade booming despite ban

 Photo: Contributor/IRIN: The charcoal trade is booming

NAIROBI, 20 January 2011 (IRIN) - Although the export of charcoal has been banned by Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the trade is booming in areas controlled by Islamist opposition groups, with locals saying volumes have risen sharply in past months.
"The trade in charcoal in [the port city of] Kismayo seems to be picking up every day, with the current level and intensity being the highest ever," a civil society source, who requested anonymity, told IRIN on 19 January. Previously cutting trees and burning charcoal was a low-key, low-technology affair, but "now they are using very sophisticated saws and equipment".
A Somali member of parliament, Ibrahim Habeb, appealed to Somalis "to think of the future and the best interests of the people". Decimation of trees, he added, was one of the causes of recurring droughts.
Trees and forests, according to the World Agroforestry Centre, play a vital role in regulating the climate since they absorb carbon dioxide – containing an estimated 50 percent more carbon than the atmosphere. Deforestation, in turn, accounts for more than 20 percent of the carbon dioxide humans generate, rivalling the emissions from other sources.
Trees are also crucial in providing a range of products and services to rural and urban populations, including food, timber, fibre, medicines and energy, as well as soil fertility, water and biodiversity conservation.

“More dangerous than piracy”
 A civil society source, who requested anonymity, said the charcoal traders were decimating the last remaining forested area in Somalia and, in the process, "destroying our future and the future of our children."
He added: "They must be stopped. This is more dangerous than the piracy problem."
Almost 80-90 percent of exported charcoal passed through Kismayo, 500km south of the capital, Mogadishu, the source added. In the past, ports in Mogadishu and Merka in the south were also used, but local authorities in other parts of the country had banned the trade.
Al-Shabab Islamist insurgents control Kismayo and much of the south of Somalia and have fought the TFG for the past three years. Charcoal export, the source said, was their biggest source of income.
Most of the charcoal is transported to the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, where a bag fetches about US$15. Traders paid about $5 to cut and burn the charcoal. A Kismayo resident, who declined to be named, said three to four vessels loaded with charcoal left the port every week.
Stopping the export of charcoal is a challenge, however, requiring the cooperation of the Gulf countries as well as the Somali business community, said the civil society source.
Somalia is one of 13 African countries that will face water scarcity by 2025, according to the UN Economic Commission for Africa, partly because of human activities such as deforestation for charcoal production, overgrazing or crowding around watering points and other inappropriate land use measures.
According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, overgrazing and uncontrolled harvesting of trees to make charcoal in parts of the north-west and the Kismayo area have led to environmental degradation in Somalia that may be difficult to reverse.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91679

POVERTY: Biodiversity and Poverty Reduction: Who Controls the Seeds?

ScienceDaily Oct. 27, 2010
 In many developing countries the right of farmers to use and exchange farm-saved seed is a form of life insurance. Ensuring that farmers have this right is an important means of alleviating poverty and is crucial to maintaining crop genetic diversity throughout the world.




Ensuring farmers’ rights enhances the ability of poor farmers to support themselves. (Credit: Development Fund, Norway)


Two thirds of the 1.2 billion poorest people in the world live in rural areas and are dependent on traditional agriculture. They do not have the financial means to buy commercially available seed or the input factors needed to cultivate them. However, they often have long experience with, and a profound understanding of, local plant diversity within crops such as grains, potatoes, vegetables and fruit. By cultivating and developing these crops they are contributing to the preservation and development of global plant genetic diversity, which constitutes the basis for the world's food production.
Regine Andersen of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute heads a project that analyses what is needed to ensure that the rights of farmers related to crop genetic diversity are implemented. Issues relating to biodiversity and poverty reduction comprise key components of the project.
Studying those who succeed
"Unfortunately regulatory mechanisms often complicate the realisation of the farmers' rights to the seeds they use," explains Dr Andersen.
Farmers' rights are addressed in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, also known as the Plant Treaty, adopted under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
"Our project has been studying successful examples that show what farmers' rights can mean in practice. In addition we are seeking to understand what NGOs and other relevant actors can do to ensure that these rights are realised, based on these examples" she says.
Regulations restrict rights
Dr Andersen explains that existing regulations affecting the management of crop genetic diversity increasingly favour the seed industry with the aim of creating new and higher yielding crop varieties.
"There are patent rights and plant breeders' rights to compensate plant breeders for their efforts and create incentives for innovation in the field of plant breeding, but in many countries these rights make it more difficult for farmers to conserve crop genetic diversity and use it in a sustainable manner," says Andersen.
In a number of countries these rules limit the farmers' legal space to exchange and sell seed among themselves. More and more countries are adopting rules of this type, often as a result of bilateral and regional trade agreements with countries and regions in the North. While traditional practices are still in place in rural communities in most developing countries, even where they have become illegal, it is only a matter of time before governments begin to enforce these rules more strictly.
"There are also regulations relating to the approval of plant types and seed quality. These are designed to safeguard plant health and seed quality in agriculture, but at the same time they prevent farmers in countries where they are in force from exchanging or selling the great diversity of plant varieties not covered by the regulations."
Rights lead to increased earnings
"Ensuring farmers' rights enhances the ability of poor farmers to support themselves. We are looking at how certain local communities have managed to deal with these challenges, and are trying to identify the factors that were crucial to their success," says Dr Andersen.
The researchers have visited local communities in Nepal, the Philippines and Peru and have via partners also gathered information in Ethiopia, Syria, Zimbabwe and Mali.
"One of the success stories comes from villages in Nepal, where the population has found new ways of developing and making use of the diversity of traditional crop varieties, enabling the farmers to increase their income and improve their livelihoods," Andersen states.
The world needs diversity
Protecting and promoting farmers' rights is not only crucial to reducing poverty, but also to maintaining the genetic diversity of agricultural plants and thereby ensuring food security throughout the world.
"Farmers need to exchange seeds among themselves to preserve and develop biodiversity," Andersen asserts. "Gene banks are not enough. The different plant species must be cultivated and continue to live so as not to lose their intrinsic properties. It is also important not to lose the knowledge relating to different plant varieties and their cultivation and use."
Dr Andersen considers it critical to develop the legal system in such a way that the farmers are rewarded for their contribution to preserving crop diversity, as is set out in the Plant Treaty.
"Crop diversity forms the basis of global food security and for all food production throughout the world. Farmers' rights are essential both for the preservation and sustainable use of global crop diversity," Dr Andersen stresses.
Working to change the rules
The researchers' conviction that seed regulations need to be made less stringent to ensure farmers' rights recently received support in Norway.
"As of 30 April this year Norwegian farmers may exchange and sell seeds from heritage varieties of crops, if it is not done commercially," says Dr Andersen. "Elsewhere in Europe this is not permitted, and only crop varieties approved in line with the regulations can be sold from seed shops."
As Dr Andersen explains, none of the Norwegian stakeholders is seeking stringent restrictions in this area, but Norway is obliged to adhere to EU regulations, as this is an area that is encompassed by the EEA Agreement.
The researchers are also working to ensure that the results of their research form the basis for the designation of policy at all levels. As part of this effort the results of the projects were included in a report on the right to food that was presented by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food at the United Nations General Assembly in autumn 2009.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101027091239.htm?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=480&width=650

POVERTY: Poverty and Lack of Research Block Path to a Well-Fed World

I’m catching up with a great package of reports, commentary and analysis in the July 28th edition of the journal Nature on the challenging, but entirely doable, task of feeding roughly 9 billion people by midcentury (and doing so without using up the last patches of arable land). One of the best things about the package is that most of the content is freely accessible, as was the case with an important paper on feeding the world in the competing journal Science in February.
The Nature reports explore the vital role of advancing and disseminating useful agricultural practices and technologies, including but hardly limited to genetically modified crops, but also the simple reality that poverty is the main source of hunger now, not a lack of food. A central theme is efficiency, getting higher yields on small plots with fewer inputs of water and fertilizer. There’s a nice downloadable summary poster of some of the main findings.
The journal also points out the glaring lack of government investment in basic research and development on agriculture, a remarkable parallel to the other area of science that sees scant government investment despite its importance in the next few decades — energy. This Nature graph says it all (graphic by Nik Spencer, data compiled by Declan Butler):

Here are just a few of the bullet points:
1. Where the hungry people are
In 2009, more than 1 billion people went undernourished — their food intake regularly providing less than minimum energy requirements — not because there isn’t enough food, but because people are too poor to buy it. At least 30 percent of food goes to waste. Although the highest rates of hunger are in sub-Saharan Africa — tracking closely with poverty — most of the world’s undernourished people are in Asia.
2. Hunger isn’t going away
The percentage of hungry people in the developing world had been dropping for decades even though the number of hungry worldwide barely dipped. But the food price crisis in 2008 reversed these decades of gains.
3. It’s not about the bomb
Scientists long feared a great population boom that would stress food production, but population growth is slowing and should plateau by 2050 as family size in almost all poorer countries falls to roughly 2.2 children per family. Even as population has risen, the overall availability of calories per person has increased, not decreased. Producing enough food in the future is possible, but doing so without drastically sapping other resources, particularly water, will be difficult.
4. And it’s not about land
An outlook published in 2009 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (http://go.nature.com/DdNYvk) says that current cropland could be more than doubled by adding 1.6 billion hectares — mostly from Latin America and Africa — without impinging on land needed for forests, protected areas or urbanization. But Britain’s Royal Society has advised against substantially increasing cultivated land, arguing that this would damage ecosystems and biodiversity (http://go.nature.com/YJ2jsB). Instead, it backs “sustainable intensification,” which has become the priority of many agricultural research agencies.
There are pieces focused on sustaining the Amazon rain forest as pressures for farmland rise, the importance of root research, gauging whether today’s big agricultural corporations are up to the task, assessing restrictions on genetically modified crops and much more. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/poverty-and-lack-of-research-block-path-to-a-well-fed-world/