POVERTY: Malawi: Subsidies not the only answer for farmers

EKWENDENI, 19 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: IITA
Farming subsidies have improved food security in the short-term

 It is almost harvest time in Mzimba district, northern Malawi, but Saliet Nyasulu's maize crop looks dry and stunted and it will be hard to feed herself and her three children this year. "[The maize] won't last until next harvest," she told IRIN. "I'll have to do piece-work and grow some vegetables by the river."
Nyasulu was among the 1.6 million smallholder farmers who received government coupons to buy maize seed and fertilizer for the 2010/11 farming season at a tenth of what they would normally cost.
"The soil is good only if you use fertilizer," she said, but the two 50kg bags of subsidized fertilizer allotted per household were not nearly enough to get a healthy crop of maize from her one hectare of land, especially after a dry start to the year. "I had to use less than recommended."
The government's farm input subsidy programme was first implemented in 2005 after several years of drought and chronic food shortages left nearly a quarter of the population in need of food aid.
Most small-scale farmers, who account for about 80 percent of the country's agricultural production, grow maize, Malawi's main staple crop. President Bingu wa Mutharika hoped to avoid the need for future food handouts by distributing coupons for maize seed and fertilizer to the poorest 50 percent of farmers.
The government has since credited the programme with several years of bumper maize harvests that have given the country a surplus and contributed to strong economic growth. There is little doubt that the subsidies have greatly improved food security and helped reduce the number of Malawians living below the poverty line from 60 percent in 2004 to less than 45 percent in 2009.
However, a number of smallholder farmers IRIN spoke to in Mzimba district said they either did not qualify for the programme, or did not receive enough subsidized fertilizer to make a significant difference to their yields. Several said they received only one 50kg bag this year and had to share it with a neighbour.
As the programme goes into its sixth year, there are also growing concerns about long-term sustainability and the extent to which it has diverted attention and resources from other initiatives that could help farmers like Nyasulu.
"It has really taken people out of hunger," said Elizabeth Sibale, a consultant at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Malawi, "but it's not a lasting solution."

A costly "band aid"?
The cost of fertilizer and transporting it to farmers all over the country has risen steeply in recent years and by 2008/09 the programme was draining 16 percent of the national budget and nearly 7 percent of GDP.
The government has scaled down the programme in the last two years, but it still cost 23 billion kwacha (US$152.3 million) in 2010/11, according to the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), which is providing 5 percent of funding. In total, about 10 percent of the programme is donor funded.
"Other programmes are not getting as much attention and funding," Sibale told IRIN. "We're forgetting all the other problems that affect farmers and putting a band aid on them."

 Photo: Kristy Siegfried/IRIN
Saliet Nyasula did not receive enough subsidized fertilizer to grow a healthy crop of maize

One of the main problems faced by farmers in Malawi is an increasingly unpredictable climate. Lake Malawi, several other lakes and hundreds of rivers cover a fifth of the country, but only 3 percent of land is irrigated. Most smallholder farmers depend on a good rainy season for their one harvest of the year.
"If the rains are good, I get a good crop," said another farmer in Mzimba district. "If the rains are not good, then it's a disaster."
Sibale said the government had made some efforts to expand irrigation in the last five years by distributing treadle pumps to farmers. However, the Green Belt Initiative, an ambitious plan to irrigate one million hectares along the Shire River in the south of the country has yet to be implemented.
There are other problems too. When Malawi was less densely populated, farmers could leave a field fallow for a year so the soil could recover. But with increasing pressure on land and easier access to fertilizers, “People have completely forgotten how to keep soil healthy," said Sibale. "Now it's so degraded, they have to use more fertilizer every year."
She added that many officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food security shared her concerns about soil health.

Looking for alternatives
Victor Mhoni of the Civil Society Agriculture Network (CISANET), a local NGO, said long-term fertilizer use actually contributed to soil degradation by making it dry and acidic unless combined with measures that can restore fertility such as planting nitrogen-fixing trees or growing legume crops.
Programmes promoting agroforestry and growing legumes have already shown impressive results, and farmers eventually need much smaller quantities of fertilizer to produce good yields.
In the last five years, the World Agroforestry Centre, in partnership with government and NGOs, has reached nearly 200,000 farmers with tree seeds and training on how to grow nitrogen-fixing trees, as well as fruit trees and fast-growing trees for firewood.
Mesha Khongolo planted gliricidia, a type of nitrogen-fixing tree, using seed he was given by the Ministry of Agriculture's local Extension Development office. He estimated that incorporating the leaves and branches into his soil had increased his yields by more than 50 percent.
Nyasulu tried planting some tree seeds but they failed to germinate and she is now growing pigeon pea, a tall, leafy legume with a similar effect but quicker results. By 2012 she should see an improvement in her soil and get a healthier crop of maize.

Politically sensitive
DFID's five year commitment to the input subsidy programme ends in June 2011. "We are currently considering options for new support to agriculture in Malawi," wrote Malawi-based Communications Officer Andrew Massa, in an emailed response to questions.
"We believe that Malawi needs a range of programmes that promote economic growth and poverty alleviation," he added.
Attempts to reach the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security for comment on this story failed. Malawi's input subsidy programme has become politically sensitive, and reports of pockets of food insecurity, especially in the south, have been met by angry denials by Mutharika.
"There's been a lot of rhetoric about food security being solved in Malawi with the input subsidy programme and I just don't think that's true," said Rachel Bezner-Kerr, a Canadian researcher who has worked on a project to promote legume inter-cropping in Mzimba district.
"It's a short-term solution, but in the long term you're really not any further ahead after spending millions of dollars if you haven't found alternative solutions to improving soil fertility."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92520

POVERTY: Soaring Food Prices Hit Poor Countries, Spur Farmers

John Ydstie : February 27, 2011

 Seth Perlman/AP
A farmer harvests a corn crop near Monticello, Ill., last September. The price of wheat and corn jumped 70 percent in the second half of 2010.


Sharp increases in food prices helped spark the political upheaval gripping northern Africa and the Middle East. Bad weather in key growing regions was among a confluence of factors driving prices to record levels, a U.N. analyst says. But the price spikes are giving U.S. farmers an incentive to boost production.
Underlying the food inflation is a more than 70 percent increase in the price of wheat and corn in the second half of last year.
Elevated food prices are hitting hardest in poor countries such as Haiti, Bolivia and Mozambique, where people spend more than half their income on food.
"People who are already undernourished may have to forgo a meal. It does add to the number of hungry people," says Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist for the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization.
He says the situation is alarming, but not yet a food crisis like the one the world faced three years ago.

Demand, Diversion And Drought
He says many factors have contributed to the upward pressure on food prices. There's demand for more varied diets in emerging economies such as China. And crops are being diverted for use in biofuels such as ethanol.
But the primary cause of the big spike in fuel prices is last year's bad weather: Russia's drought; rains in Pakistan, norther Europe and the U.S.; rains and floods in Australia; and dry conditions in Latin America.
"It looked like Mother Nature picked up the worst months to behave very bad," Abbassian says.
Russia's wheat-growing region was hit by the worst drought in 100 years. The huge wheat exporter halted shipments to foreign customers, including Egypt. Last week, Russian officials said they may extend the ban.
U.N. Food And Agriculture Organization's Food Price Index Hits Record Level

Annual, adjusted for inflation



Source: U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization: Credit: NPR
The ruined harvest left global wheat stocks very low and pushed prices up sharply.

Investment Lags
A decade ago, that might not have happened because government crop subsidies in the U.S. and Europe produced huge stockpiles. But a change in world trade rules ended those subsidies and the stockpiles disappeared. It was hoped investment in Third World farmers would take up the slack. But Abbassian says governments, including the U.S., have invested just a fraction of what was pledged.
"In spite of the declarations and statements made, really the investment in agriculture is lagging behind," he says.
Smaller stockpiles have led to more volatile prices. That volatility has attracted speculators who profit from rapid price changes. But, so far, there's little evidence that speculators are significantly boosting overall prices.
Bad weather may have set the stage for this spike in grain prices, but Greg Page, president of the global food giant Cargill, says that while supplies are tight, prices have risen more than was necessary. He says that's partly because of instantaneous global communication.

A Hoarding Instinct
"People read stories about food prices going up and/or food being short and there's a natural hoarding instinct, I think, wired into all of us and people buy that extra 5-pound bag of flour or 2-liter bottle of vegetable oil," Page says.
OrganizationMultiply that by 100 million households, he says, and concern about a food shortage becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Governments got into the hoarding act, too, he says.
"The Saudis have made a public announcement about their intention to double their strategic reserve," he says. "The Algerians have made a similar statement in the last several weeks."
Other nations are buying up grain stocks, too. All of this has pushed prices higher. Luckily, Page says, those high prices are a signal for farmers.

An Incentive To Boost Production
Greg Westland produces hard red spring wheat and soybeans on about 5,600 acres in Cando, N.D. The snow is still deep in North Dakota, but Westland is preparing for planting, spending days in his shop with his sons, prepping equipment. The high prices have convinced him to try to boost the number of bushels he produces per acre.
"We're adding more fertilizer, shooting for a 60-bushel hard red spring wheat crop up here and a 42-to-45-bushel soybean crop," Westland says.
Those yields would be about 20 percent above average. Cargill's Page says brisk fertilizer and seed sales indicate that farmers are responding.
"If nature gives them any collaboration at all I think we are clearly in a position to feed the world handsomely and actually to build some stocks this year based on the number of acres we would predict will be planted," he says.
As long as the weather cooperates. The U.N.'s Abbassian agrees. Both also acknowledge that climate change adds another level of uncertainty. Another wild card: the recent run up in the price of oil, which, if it persists, could boost already high food prices.

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/27/134069431/soaring-food-prices-hit-poor-countries-spur-farmers

POVERTY: Ending Hunger and Poverty in Africa

Coulibaly Maimouna Sidibe on February 07, 2011


So much has been said about Africa’s potential to feed itself, but unless we help the millions of smallholder farmers to actually grow more food, we will never go from potential to reality. And farmers cannot increase their yields without better inputs.



Building a Business

It is for this reason that I am extremely passionate about the issue of getting seeds into poor farmers’ hands. I believe that farming starts with a seed, and we cannot eradicate poverty in Africa unless we deal with the challenges millions of farmers face in trying to get seed to plant on their farms. Allow me share my own personal experience because it demonstrates this fact.
I started selling seed out of my house after many of my neighbors kept coming to ask for some of my seed. Here in my country, Mali, it has always been difficult for farmers to get good seed, and yet one cannot increase production without better seed. The sad news is that though better seeds are being developed by our national research institutes, we have no structures to get these seeds into the hands of farmers. This is one of the biggest problems faced by farmers across Africa.
I built up a seed company on that very demand from farmers in Mali. My company, Faso Kaba, has grown since those days of selling seed out my back door. I realized then that to be successful, I had to move closer to farmers, and so I opened a shop in a rural area. The first year, I sold just less than 10 metric tons of seed compared with around 300 metric tons sold last year. Five years down the line, my company has grown from one shop to two retail outlets, 150 resellers, 20 certified seed producers, 6 full-time and 30 part-time employees that sells 200 tons of seeds. We currently supply 35-40 percent of the private certified seed in Mali. The secret of my success is that I made sure that the seeds were packaged in quantities that a farmer with a hectare or less of land could afford.
I know I am helping people. Indeed, just the other I was very humbled when one farmer said to me the other day; “Madame Coulibaly, before you were here with your seed company, we always had to buy food, but now with your seed we can grow enough food and sometimes we even have extra to sell.”

Putting High-Quality Seed in the Hands of Farmers
I believe that it is that extra bit of produce to sell that will move Africa’s small-scale farmers out of poverty, enabling them to change from subsistence farming to profitable farming. The impact will be great as it will ensure that farmers will be able to feed their families and send their children to school.
But this has not been possible in Africa because of our lack of support systems – access to high-quality seed that will produce a good crop despite pests and drought, access to fertilizer to improve soils that have been degraded over the years, access to a loan to buy seed and fertilizers at planting season, and access to a market and a fair price for any surplus left over.
Through our business, we are trying in our own small way to make a lasting difference to poor farmers in our locality. We not only provide the best products to farmers but we also help farmers to understand how to use such products. Further, part of our business strategy is to promote new varieties with better qualities through field demonstrations – then farmers can see for themselves.
Companies like Faso Kaba are critical if Africa is to feed itself. It is important for our leaders to remember that farmers want to improve their lives and like everyone else, they want a better life for their children. And it is that extra bit of produce going to a market that will feed others. The demand for seed from farmers is there. Imagine if our governments and development partners would provide the support needed to enable us meet the growing demand across Africa. Only then would we beat hunger and poverty for good. It can be done.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/foundationnotes/pages/coulibaly-maimouna-sidibe-110207-ending-hunger-and-poverty.aspx

POVERTY: NAMIBIA: When we have food, we are rich

 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Evard Haukongo with a millet plant in the test patch where he used conservation agriculture techniques

JOHANNESBURG, 7 February 2011 (IRIN) -
In the deep north of Southern Africa’s driest country, Namibia, about 10km from the Angolan border, live an elderly farming couple and their 10 adopted children, who watch the sky every day for rain. If the heavens do not open in another three weeks, they will not have enough food this year.
Pearl millet, the staple grain in northern Namibia and known as mahangu in the local language, is a drought-tolerant grain grown in semi-arid and arid areas.
But Evard Haukongo, 67, wants just the right amount of rain. In the past four years, he and other farmers in the Omsati region have struggled with floods. In the years before 2007, dry spells claimed their precious millet and many of their livestock.
“Farming is very hard now, it is a tough job - they say the climate is changing,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead as he pulled weeds from the sandy soil of his five-hectare smallholding.
It is early in the morning but you can almost bake a loaf of bread in the heat. The tender green millet plants, only 60cm high, growing out of the dry ground do not really stand a chance.
“Me and my wife are the last of the farmers in our family - this will die with us,” he said. Their own five children have all grown up and “found their own ways”, as his wife, Mirjam, put it, and settled in towns.
“Maybe if they [the adopted children] want to farm they will divide our land into 10 pieces and grow vegetables,” he said, laughing.
He looked on fondly as five of his adopted children set off for school. Despite not being related by blood, the children are close and share everything - from wild berries picked after school to every slice of bread.
Evard and Mirjam converse in English because they trained as teachers.
The goal was to return to their village to farm their land, and teach in the neighbouring school.
“We are farmers by birth - it is what we are - but we also loved to teach. We were teachers for some hours every morning [for two decades] and then farmers for the rest of the day,” said Mirjam, digging her spade into the ground. “If we did not plant we did not eat.”
The money they earned as teachers was not enough to feed and clothe their five children. Now, retired and living on a monthly pension of about US$137, they barely have enough to cover the needs of 10 children.
All the children - from the eldest, who is 20 years old, to the youngest, just three years old - spend most of their day tending the millet plants. “When we have mahangu we feel we are rich, even if we do not have money,” Evard said.
The subsistence farmers gave a home to the 10 children, passed on by dying or poor parents who were either friends or distant relatives.
They also opened their home to me for a day and a night.



 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Children in the Haukongo household share their food

“Maybe it was HIV [that claimed some of the parents], I am not sure, but there are many children in our village [Ohendjeno]. Every house has many children - you do not leave them like that [orphaned].”
Namibia has an HIV prevalence rate of about 13 percent among adults aged 15 to 49 years, according to 2009 figures from UNAIDS.
The children either want to be nurses, teachers or doctors. Rachel, their eldest daughter, who works part-time as a shop assistant, loves farming. “When you see the mahangu on the field it is very beautiful,”
she said.
Things might be looking up for small-scale farmers. The Namibian government, with the help of a pilot climate change adaptation project run by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), is providing improved millet seeds that fruit earlier, and teaching water conservation farming techniques. Evard’s family is among 3,200 households who have been targeted.
He has tested the techniques on a small patch of his land, where the millet started fruiting within a month. “You can see the difference - the millet was planted in the furrows, so the roots have better access to the moisture and can survive in the heat.”
He was also given fertilizer, which he used to enrich the barren soil in the test patch. “I have no money to buy fertilizer for all the plants - but any little help is good,” he commented
Andreas Shimbolweni, manager of the UNDP project said the government provided subsidized fertilizer and seeds, but "The rains are extremely variable in this part of the world and the climate change trends predict they will continue to become even more variable."
Weather is king, said Kaunapawa Shapenga, the government’s agricultural extension officer for the region, on a visit to the Haukongo smallholding. “We never know what to expect - we have tried so many things… but we are giving out [seeds for] faster maturing varieties of millet, so at least the farmer does manage to grow something.”
Farmers have also experimented with cultivating rice in the some of the flood plains, or oshanas, found in the midst of the arid land, which remain flush with water for most of the year. “You cannot grow anything else in these plains but rice,” Shapenga said.
However, many of these farmers faced opposition from communities because the oshanas were communal land used for grazing, so “very few continue to grow rice.”
Evard and Mirjam said a solution would have to be found, if not for them then for their children, and perhaps rice was an option. “We will need to barricade the oshanas, protect them from animals, convince communities,” Shapenga suggested.
“But we cannot live without mahangu,” Mirjam said. Later that night, after a dinner of mahangu and a chicken killed in this reporter's honour, Evard pointed to a group of stars, the position of which tells them when to plant. “The stars are midway in the sky, which means half the rainy season is over and we just have two more months.”
Everyone looks up at the night sky in silence. The next morning an excited Evard wakes me up at the crack of dawn. “I saw a dark line in the sky above Angola, which means the rains will be here soon - maybe another three weeks." He took a deep breath. "Maybe we will be okay.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91843

POVERTY: UGANDA: Rubbish revives Mbale region

 Photo: Charles Akena : Turning garbage into fertilizer

MBALE, 11 January 2011 (IRIN) - A compost-processing plant in Mbale, along the hilly slopes of the Mt. Elgon region in Uganda, is helping to boost declining crop yields through organic farming and aiding environmental conservation by cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions.
"Here we are turning garbage into fertilizer instead of leaving it to rot, emitting methane," Rhoda Nyaribi, an officer at the project, told IRIN.
Rubbish, Nyaribi said, is a big contributor of methane gas emissions. Methane traps heat in the atmosphere, warming the Earth's surface. Human activities such as farming and other land-use changes supplement the natural levels of these gases.
The Mbale plant, which is funded by the World Bank and managed by the Uganda National Environment Management Authority, under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), is helping to provide cheaper fertilizer - about 15 to 20 tonnes per day - to farmers.
The CDM allows developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more cheaply by financing emission-reduction projects in developing countries, where costs are lower.
A kilogramme of the dry compost manure sold at the plant costs 100 Ugandan shillings (about US$0.04) compared with USh3,000 ($1.30) for a 500ml foliar fertilizer spray.
Farmers come from as far as northern Uganda to buy the manure, said Nyaribi, adding that the sales help sustain the project.
Improved fertilizer availability is expected to boost food production in areas where crop yields have been adversely affected by declining soil fertility.
The Nabika Village, in Mbale, is one such place, according to 65-year-old farmer, Wasagani Wambale.
Wambale says his two-hectare field is now producing half the banana, potato, tomato and onion crops it did in the past.
"This place [Nabika] was wonderful. I could harvest 150 bunches of bananas on average from each hectare but in the late 1990s my crop yield started falling," he told IRIN.
"The banana quality got bad; the suckers starting growing stunted and even the vegetables didn’t do well."
In the past, his crop earned him on average USh300,000 (about $140).
Agriculture and environmental officials attribute the poor yields to, among other causes, deforestation, which, spurred by a rising population, has exposed the fertile top soils to erosion.
Field terracing and the use of manure and compost as well as crop rotation are being encouraged.
"This is the best way farmers can sustain their production," said Joseph Wesuya, an official with the African Development Initiative, a community-based environmental conservation organization.
According to Bernard Mujasi, a Mbale District official, the compost project, established in January 2010, is also helping to clean up Mbale Town.
"We have lorries collecting [organic] garbage in the town and market places. This garbage is taken to the compost plant for producing the compost fertilizers," said Mujasi.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91602

MALNUTRITION: India: Organic farming can't augment food supply

BS Reporter / Chenai/ Dharwad December 28, 2010
Though organic farming has its own advantages, depending solely on it will not help augment food requirements of the country, said director general of ICAR S Ayyappan.
“Organic manures can augment the microbial activity, prevent environmental deterioration and restore soil health. It can reduce the chemical load in soil and farm produce. But at this juncture, when quantum of food is close to deficit, one cannot truly identify with the sole purpose of environmental resurrection alone. The fields around the world will be burdened with the responsibility of supplying grains to this oversized population. Organic farms alone cannot bear this responsibility,” he said while delivering the convocation address at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad on Monday.
Ayyappan who is also secretary, department of agricultural research and education, Government of India said the precision that manufactured mineral fertiliser offers helps overcome limitations of organic fertiliser.
“Chemical fertiliser will remain the key inputs in agriculture. It has time and again been proved that they can augment production levels and can help fill the granaries,” he asserted.He called on agricultural scientists and the agricultural universities to develop location and situation-specific strategies for adapting rain-fed farming to emerging climate patterns as the global climate change is now a reality and there is a need to address the issue on a mission mode.
He also stressed the importance of low cost agricultural technologies as there has been a decline in profitability of agricultural sector due to fragmented holdings, an increase in input prices and the reduced ability of farmers to invest.
In future, growth in agriculture productivity can be sustained only through low-cost agricultural technologies, Ayyappan asserted.

Nutrition Security Act
Ayyappan stated that India needs a Nutrition Security Act to help the Nutrition Security Mission and Nutrition Policy become effectively functional. “Just a Food Security Act will not help eliminate malnutrition.
There has to be a coordinated effort between departments which can directly or indirectly influence nutrition security, by means of exhaustive research and by making use of the latest advancements in science and technology.
By breeding highly nutritious and fortified foods, it would be easier to combat issues of food scarcity and malnutrition at the same time,” he said.Expressing concern over the low per capita consumption of fruits and vegetables in India though India stood second in the world in the production of these, Ayyappan advocated the need to identify crops which have lesser demand for water and other inputs besides being more remunerative than field crops.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/%5Corganic-farming-can%5Ct-augment-food-supply%5C/419779/

POVERTY: How can Africa grow more food?

Madeleine Bunting 3 December 2010
 
How can Africa grow more food?
Rising food prices are focusing minds on Africa's agricultural output, and on whether or not technology is the best way to boost production


 Photograph: Howard Burditt/Reuters: Food production in Africa is 10% lower than it was in 1960.

African agriculture has become the focus of extraordinary attention and interest. Yesterday a big report was launched by the Harvard academic Calestous Juma with the backing of several African presidents, and next week Chatham House in London is hosting a major conference on food security where the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (Ifad) is launching a new report on rural poverty.

Meanwhile Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, warned that the current UN climate summit in Cancun needs to launch a "Green Marshall Plan for Agriculture" or risk a possible 40% increase in emissions by 2030 if current agricultural methods are extended.
Rising food prices and terrible future scenarios of the impact of climate change on food production, are focusing minds on what is perceived as Africa's huge untapped potential for agriculture. This week yet another report from the International Food Policy Research Institute warns that climate change could push prices up by 130%, and calls for unprecedented human ingenuity to meet the challenge of feeding a burgeoning population.

Some of this renewed interest from around the world is self interest; countries eyeing Africa as a source of food, which is prompting an unprecedented rush to buy or lease land. But the foreign interest is matched by that of many African countries keenly aware that improving agricultural productivity is key to entrenched problems of poverty – on average 64% of Africans depend on agriculture for their income – and hunger.

Central to all the discussion is the assertion that Africa could produce far more food than it currently does. In contrast with Asia, which has seen huge increases in agricultural yields in the last 40 years, sub-Saharan Africa's track record has been abysmal. Food production is actually 10% lower today than in 1960, yet over this time period the aggregate world food production has increased by 145%.

The reasons are not hard to find. The use of fertiliser is strikingly low – only 13kg per hectare in sub-Saharan Africa compared with a north African average of 71kg. Only 24% of cereal is using improved seeds compared with 85% in east Asia. The lack of investment in nutrients has led to a catastrophic depletion of soils; 75% of farmland in sub-Saharan Africa has been degraded by overuse. As soil fertility has fallen, farmers have expanded into forests to maintain incomes, leading to deforestation – which in turn leads to more problems, for example with soil erosion such as I saw in my visit to Mali recently.

But if there is widespread agreement on the causes of the problem, there is an extraordinarily polarised debate about the best strategy to tackle the problem. On one side there is a powerful lobby which argues that biotechnology, massive investment in irrigation and mechanisation are the way forward, and on the other side are those who argue that these kinds of investments are usually tied up in big corporate deals in which local smallholder subsistence farmers lose out – either they lose their land or access to water, and often both.

Juma and his prestigious panel of international experts have attempted to pick a politically feasible path between these two positions. His report, A New Harvest, is being launched with the backing a clutch of presidents, including those of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

Inevitably, his enthusiasm for biotechnology will trigger anxieties among that alliance of European and African activists who believe that this entails Faustian pacts with multinational corporations. Another constituency will also be doubtful on the grounds that this kind of emphasis on biotech and science as the way forward in Africa lacks understanding of how development is largely a political process and crucially depends on the effectiveness of institutions – it is a weakness of westerners to believe that clever technology can sort any problem out.

One old hand in the field told me the other day that, on average, it takes 46 years for agricultural innovations to get from the laboratory to widespread use in the field in Africa; it's not lack of technology that is the problem but effective means to disseminate practical solutions. Technology might be able to achieve quick fixes in health on the continent, but they might be elusive in agriculture because it entails much more complex issues of land rights and power.

But what will delight these very critics is Juma's championing of the smallholder farmer – not as an encumbrance to development but as central to its achievement. At the very beginning – the first page of chapter one – he throws his weight behind the example of Malawi, which in 2005 defied USAid (and initially the World Bank) to put major investment into subsidised fertiliser and improved seeds in an attempt to boost maize production. Yields doubled and Malawi was meeting domestic need and exporting surplus maize within a year. Malawi became a poster-girl for western NGOs because it successfully challenged the best part of two decades of a consensus on aid in Africa – namely that the state should not subsidise smallholder agriculture.

The second example Juma chooses to highlight is even more striking. He argues that China's dramatic reduction of poverty has been achieved by growth primarily in the agricultural sector, not the industrial. Since the late 1970s, improvements in technology and infrastructure helped boost production in smallholder agriculture, with farmers' incomes rising at more than 7% a year. The result is that 200 million small-scale farmers working an average of 0.6 hectare of land are now feeding a population of 1.3 billion.

China offers a fascinating model for Africa that is radically different from the western model of high-investment, export-orientated agriculture – the carnations from Kenya model. The key to China's success, argues Juma, is "a strong, competent, developmental state". Unfortunately, that is what has often been lacking in sub-Saharan Africa. And to be fair, the desperate state of African agriculture is also a product of a history of structural adjustment programmes, which insisted on cutting back the role of the state in funding research and agricultural extension services of many countries.

This report clearly draws a line under that history of neglect. But the question is whether it can really mobilise the kind of investment it believes is urgently needed. The political rhetoric surrounding its launch is warm, but a note of caution. We have been here before: the Maputo declaration of 2003 pledged African countries to 10% of government spending for agriculture. Seven years on, many countries have not even reached 4%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/dec/03/africa-agriculture-food-boost-production

MALNUTRITION: NEPAL: Lack of fertilizer hampers food security

21 September 2010 (IRIN) - Farmers in Nepal face an acute lack of fertilizers that could aggravate food insecurity, experts warn.

"There is definitely a shortage of [chemical] fertilizers. This will have a direct impact on the food security situation," Hari Dahal, a senior government official with Nepal's Ministry of Agriculture, told IRIN. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates 3.6 million people are food insecure in Nepal.

While usage of chemical fertilizers is growing, budget cuts have limited Nepalese farmers to only a fraction of what their regional counterparts depend on.

Two thirds of paddy farmers in Nepal use fertilizers, and about half of wheat farmers, according to The Food Security Atlas of Nepal released in July by the government, WFP and the Nepal Development Research Institute. But on average Nepalese famers use 400 grams per hectare compared to 40kg in Japan, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The ministry's budget for this year is about US$100 million - barely 2.5 percent of the national budget - a dramatic decrease in 15 years from when a quarter of the budget was dedicated to agriculture - the livelihood of more than three-quarters of the nation's households.

In recent years fertilizer usage has risen 10 percent annually. In 2004, 285,000 tons was used compared to more than 500,000 tons this year, the Central Bureau of Statistics said. The government has provided only 100,000 tons of this amount.

"We have been asking the government to increase our budget - not just for supplying enough fertilizer but also to provide fresh crop seeds to farmers and [to] invest in irrigation development," the Agriculture Ministry's Dahal said, noting improvements in these three components could greatly help ease food shortages.

Experts say food shortages in the Terai region, the country's breadbasket, have been worsening over the years, with farmers depending heavily on chemical fertilizers to increase productivity.

"The shortage of fertilizers is now a growing problem and is quite seriously affecting the farmers of the Terai - unlike in the hills where farmers have almost given up hope of getting the fertilizers; especially because it is both inaccessible and unaffordable for them," agricultural expert Krishna Raj Aryal of the NGO Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal, said.

Imports

As Nepal does not produce its own chemical fertilizers, it purchases them under a special bilateral agreement with neighbouring India.

The government then sells the fertilizers at a highly subsidized rate, based on its formal fertilizer trade deal with India, to farmers who otherwise would not be able to afford them.

According to the Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Unit of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, in places where fertilizers are not available or not used, there is an urgent need to train farmers how to best utilize the soil and fresh seeds.

Apart from the need for fertilizer, the Food Security Atlas cites lack of irrigation, soil erosion, limited mechanization and poor usage of improved seeds and pesticides as the primary barriers to agricultural production.


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