POVERTY: SOMALIA: Yemen returnee numbers soar

HARGEISA, 1 December 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: UNHCR/J.Björgvinsson
Hundreds of families have returned from Yemen in the past two months, officials said (file photo)

Continuing unrest and xenophobia in Yemen have prompted an upsurge in the number of migrants and refugees returning to Somalia, with up to 6,000 reported to have travelled back across the Red Sea since the beginning of October.
"About 400 Somaliland families and 600 Somali families have returned to Somaliland in the last two months,” said Abdillahi Hussein Egeh, director-general of the Interior Ministry in Somaliland, which unilaterally declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991.
“Somalilanders stay in this country, while the Somalis continue their journey to Somalia," he said.
Despite the unrest in there, thousands of Africans continue to make the perilous crossing, in the other direction, to Yemen, many of them fleeing not only conflict but a widespread food crisis in south-central Somalia.
"Most of those fleeing [Yemen] are afraid of being the target of the two sides, due to their concern that [both] have accused Somalis of supporting their rival," said Mohamed Ahmed, a father of three who arrived in Hargeisa, Somalia, in late October.
"I have been captured twice, once by the government forces and again by the opposition. Electricity, water and other basic services are erratic due to the crisis,” he said. The final straw that had pushed him to return to Somalia was the bombing of the university in Yemen, where he used to live.
“My wife and children are still in Yemen, because I was unable able to pay for their transport,” he said, explaining that boat fares have risen significantly.

Livestock trade affected
Somaliland used to export about 15,000 head of livestock every month to Yemen but now only exports a third of that figure, according to local businessmen.
"This is because the livestock can't reach the remote places of Yemen," said Abdi Said, a livestock exporter in Somaliland.
"Our income has decreased. For example, one person used to send 500 head of cattle per month,” he said. “This has gone down to 100 per month.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94358

MALNUTRITION: ETHIOPIA: Golecha Deba, "If it rains, I will even crawl on my knees and plant"

DIKICHA (OROMIYA REGION), 21 July 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN : Golecha Deba

At 96, Golecha Deba, an agro-pastoralist from Dikicha village, in southern Ethiopia's drought-hit Oromiya region, about 20km from Kenya’s northeastern border, has seen several cycles of drought, but never as severe as this one. He spoke to IRIN about living in an area classified by the UN as one step away from famine:

"I have lived long enough, I never thought I would see a day like this. Even my father never told me of such a day. When I was a boy we had seasons of bad rains but never like this.
"My [five] sons and I lost 28 livestock in May this year. Our livestock is our savings, our life, and our children.

"We have not had a drop of rain for over a year. If it rains, I will even crawl on my knees and plant my seeds.

"I cannot think of migrating, if I do, I will become fertiliser for the land [will die]. My sons cannot think of migrating, as they will not leave me. This is our land; we were born here. We cannot think of doing anything else - if we do we will be like fish outside the water - helpless.
"We don't know what is happening, it is God's will. He has decided to have this drought - we wait and see. I cannot think what will happen if it does not rain in October.
"In the past we have always managed. We grow sorghum, barley and teff. We even managed to sell some in the neighbouring town [Hidi].
“Now we are getting some cereals as food aid. We are surviving on that but for how long we don’t know.”

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93282

MALNUTRITION: Pakistan: Loss of livestock, poultry results in malnutrition

Shahid Shah : July 08, 2011


 Loss of livestock and poultry in floods of last fiscal year has resulted in malnutrition of millions of people in the country.

Analyst and Head of Institute of Social Movements Pakistan Zulfiqar Shah told The News that there was not a situation of starvation as food was available to the flood-hit people, but there were cases of malnutrition as people were not receiving milk and its bi-products due to loss of hundreds of thousands of animals.
Livestock sector has emerged as a priority sector only recently. In the rural areas, livestock is considered a securer source of income for small farmers and the landless.
According to the latest Economic Survey of Pakistan, livestock is the best hope for poverty alleviation as it can uplift the socioeconomic conditions of our rural masses.
The livestock accounted for approximately 55.1 percent of the agriculture value added and 11.5 percent of GDP during 2010-11.
Official figures show that an estimated 187,000 large animals, 253,380 small ones (total 440,380 animals) and 9.94 million poultry were lost to the floods.
The total loss in livestock (large and small animals) and poultry stood at 0.3 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.
The steps taken by the government included establishment of emergency relief camps, treatment and vaccination of animals, and supply of fodder in the flood-affected areas. In these camps, 7.2 million animals were treated and 7.9 million animals were vaccinated.
One official document says that the overall thrust of the government’s livestock policy is to foster “private sector-led development with public sector providing enabling environment through policy interventions and capacity building for improved livestock husbandry practices”.
The emphasis will be on improving per unit animal productivity and moving from subsistence to market-oriented rearing and commercial livestock farming to meet the domestic demand and export surplus.
The objective is to exploit the potential of livestock sector and use it as an engine for economic growth and food security for the country, leading to rural population empowerment and rural socioeconomic development. Livestock sector’s prospective role towards rural economic development may well be recognised from the fact that 35-40 million rural people depend on livestock.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=56474&Cat=3&dt=7/8/2011

MALNUTRITION: KENYA-SOMALIA: Drought decimates livestock, hits incomes

NAIROBI, 4 July 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Umuro Godana/PISP : Pasture, grazing land and migration routes traditionally used in emergencies are no longer available (file photo)

A severe drought ravaging the arid and semi-arid parts of the Horn of Africa region is threatening the livelihoods of pastoral communities, with massive livestock deaths recorded amid an increase in deadly conflict over resources.
Pastoralists depend on livestock for all their basic needs and any losses undermine their economic and food security. Livestock sales are often used to buy grain and lack of milk and meat contribute to high malnutrition levels.
"The value of livestock – people’s main assets in many of the worst affected areas – has plummeted and livestock markets have collapsed, so people have much less purchasing power than before. People’s livelihoods have already been decimated, but there is now also a real risk of large-scale loss of life,” warns Oxfam in a 1 July statement, adding that in some parts of Kenya and Ethiopia, at least 60 percent of the herds have perished.
The perception that emergency relief often does not appreciate the importance of saving livestock assets in emergencies has prompted the development of initiatives such as the Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS), the equivalent of SPHERE in humanitarian circles. LEGS aims at improving relief programming with communities that rely heavily on livestock for their social and economic well-being.
According to a December 2010 International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) report, interventions to support livestock, such as supplementary feeding and commercial destocking (among recommended actions in LEGS), should be implemented before livestock are so weak they die.
In the 2008-2009 Kenyan droughts, truckloads of dead and dying heads of livestock were common.
“Supplementary feeding needs to target breeding stocks with sufficient time so that they stay healthy," states the ILRI report. "Conflict resolution to enable pastoralists to move to key grazing areas needs to be done in advance, before large numbers of animals need pasture. Late interventions are costly and unhelpful."

Falling prices
The weak condition of livestock has meant that the surviving cattle, for instance, have a far lower market value than normal – up to 40 percent less in parts of Kenya, says Oxfam, adding that “pastoralists in Somalia have also reported that their animals are now worth less than half of their value in late 2010”.
An oversupply of cattle in parts of Somalia due to destocking and restocking of small ruminants through cattle selling in Garissa, Kenya, meant that cattle prices were still 21 percent less in Somalia than in 2010, stated a 20 June Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit – Somalia (FSNAU) brief.
Increased camel exports - 7 percent of total livestock from January to May compared with 2 percent over the same period in 2010 at the Bossaso port - is an additional indicator of stress selling in drought-affected pastoral areas, notes FSNAU.
Northern Kenya, Somalia and southern Ethiopia, which are predominantly pastoral regions, are among the areas most affected by the drought. In Somalia, at least 65 percent of the population depends on the livestock sector; because of the effects of the drought, more people are sliding into food hunger and poverty.

 Photo: Mohamed Gaarane/IRIN
In some parts of Kenya and Ethiopia, at least 60 percent of the herds have perished (file photo)

FSNAU estimates that at least 2.85 million people are facing food insecurity in Somalia, a 19 percent increase from January. In Kenya, the food-insecure population is estimated at 3.5 million.
Large livestock migration from northeastern Kenya and Somalia's arid areas of southern Gedo to Juba and Bay regions in southern Somalia may lead to early depletion of pasture and water in these regions, according to FSNAU.

Destocking
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA Kenya), subsidizing livestock markets, commercial livestock destocking and destocking for meat sales remain priority concerns in northern Kenya.
A government-run buy-back programme has been halted in some parts due to a lack of funds.
"The amount of money allocated was small considering the large population of livestock in Isiolo, Marsabit and Moyale," Zachary Nyanga, the Upper Eastern director of livestock, told IRIN.
Nyanga said KSh37.7 million (about US$419,000) allocated in April had been used to buy 13,000 goats and sheep from herders but the funds ran out in May. He said the programme would resume once additional funding, which has since been allocated, was received.
According to a local aid worker, who requested anonymity, government and aid organizations’ activities in livestock emergency response had to be coordinated. "The whole [off-take] programme was a failure from the beginning; the government was buying animals at a higher price than us,” the aid worker said.
The government was offering about KSh3,000 ($34) for a goat/sheep, while NGOs were offering half that.
In addition, the programme did not target cattle, which are worst affected by the drought.
"My intention was to sell my 40 [head of] cattle, save the money in a bank and then buy livestock [with the money] after it rains," said Peter Lepertet from the Wamba area of Samburu in the north. “I was also only allowed to sell four goats but I have more than 150 [sheep and goats]; it is meaningless.”
Wario Jirma, a resident from Marsabit district, northern Kenya, said: “We are losing livestock, [our] source of livelihood. The issue is very serious.”
In some areas, pasture, grazing land and migration routes that have traditionally been used in emergencies are no longer available, having been sold off, or allocated for tourism and large-scale agriculture. This has undermined pastoralists’ ability to cope with recurrent drought, notes Oxfam.

Clashes and displacement
In Kenya, at least 113 people were killed in clashes over resources between January and end-May, against 106 deaths in the same period in 2008, 138 in 2009, and 68 in 2010. According to OCHA Kenya, the high 2008 and 2009 killings occurred during above-normal dry conditions, similar to the present situation.
Conflict- and drought-related displacement has also affected education. At least 10 schools in Isiolo, Samburu and Turkana areas in the north have been closed.
"Hundreds of children have quit learning, many have moved with their parents to look for pasture, some have been displaced by a lack of water,” said Dade Boru, the Isiolo Teachers’ Union Executive Secretary. Livestock deaths and the resultant financial losses have meant parents are unable to raise school fees.
A local leader from the Oldonyiro area of Isiolo, Nicholas Lesokoye, said insecurity had affected business activities too and there were fears of more conflict. "We have received reports that a large number of armed herders have arrived and are still streaming in towards Isiolo," he said.
With drought known to be an ever-present hazard in the dry lands of East and Central Africa, relief programming should focus on the whole drought cycle, including normal and recovery periods, rather than just alert and emergency, states the ILRI report. This is because “any given area or community is... always in some phase related to current, recent or impending drought”.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93142

POVERTY: Local wisdom key to combating animal diseases

NAIROBI, 21 June 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: IRIN
Global problem: foot and mouth disease affects every continent except Antarctica

Flush with success over the unprecedented eradication of rinderpest, scientists are setting their sights on the next big livestock disease to rid from the world. Experts are aligning their crosshairs over foot and mouth disease, which affects every continent except Antarctica.
“In my opinion foot and mouth disease is by far the most important socio-economic disease of livestock worldwide,” said George Saperstein, a veterinary medicine professor at Tufts University. “It is highly contagious, affects multiple species, is difficult to control, has a major impact on international trade of animals and animal products, and causes dramatic reductions in livestock productivity for farmers on a global scale.”
“Foot and mouth disease could be the next big target for the international community at large,” said Kazuaki Miyagishima, deputy-director-general of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE.) “There are still more than 100 countries suffering either endemically or periodically.”
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the OIE plan to hold a pledging conference next summer to motivate international donors to provide more funding for vaccine research to combat the disease.
But experts agreed that eradicating it would be an especially tall order.
There are several strains of food and mouth disease, so one vaccine will not protect against all types. The vaccination has to be kept cold, one of the most daunting challenges in administering it in remote locations. And the immunity it provides does not last very long; animals have to be vaccinated over and over again to keep them safe.

Eradication the goal?
Not everyone is on board with making eradication the goal. It took 50 years, hundreds of millions of dollars and a global effort to eradicate rinderpest, a relatively simple disease
“We should move away from the focus on eradication, which has had its day,” said Andy Catley, a Research Director at Tufts University. “It took us 50 years, hundreds of millions of dollars, and a global effort [to eradicate rinderpest]. And it was a relatively simple disease.
“Eradication is easy for the public and donors to understand. The question is, do you really need to eradicate any other disease in these pastoral areas? Technically it’s incredibly difficult and economically it might not be needed to get the trade benefits.”
Instead, Catley suggested bringing epidemiologists, economists, and livelihoods experts together to take a closer look at how to control diseases with community involvement, instead of bounding off on an overly-ambitious, and uncertain global eradication campaign.
Catley believed one of the reasons the rinderpest eradication worked was that it did not just involve local collaboration, it was based on it. But a community-based, culturally-appropriate local effort to control disease can be a hard sell and a long haul. “It’s a more complex, less sexy message to sell to donors,” he said.

Rinderpest lessons
When the highly contagious rinderpest virus was inadvertently introduced to sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1800s, it ruined pastoral economies and social structures, and left 90-95 percent of cows in Africa dead.
“It swept across the whole continent and all previously known livestock diseases paled into insignificance beside the trail of destruction left in its wake,” wrote IRIN journalist Louise Tunbridge in a 2005 book on animal health care in Southern Sudan. “Historians describe it as the greatest natural calamity ever witnessed in Africa.”
Once a vaccine was developed that could survive the scorching African heat without a cold chain, it took another decade for it to be deployed effectively to the desolate locales where the virus still lurked. Success started with 20 local herdsmen in Cameroon who were trained to vaccinate their own cattle and quickly proved they were able to access more cows than government veterinarians.
“The pastoralists knew how to inject their animals. They were also at home in the harsh terrain, wading up to their waists in swamps, clambering up rocky mountainsides and walking with heavy loads for days at a time,” wrote Tunbridge. “How many town-based professional veterinarians would endure such discomforts?”


 Photo: Catherine-Lune Grayson/IRIN
Local expertise: closely involving pastoralist communities is key to tackling animal diseases

Juan Lubroth, FAO’s chief veterinary officer, agreed that local wisdom was key to recognizing where to go to vaccinate in Southern Sudan and Somalia. But he said Western biotechnology and science still had a big role to play in combating diseases.

PPR
While the vaccines for foot and mouth disease are technically and logistically problematic, another livestock disease called Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) already has a successful vaccine. An acute and highly contagious disease that affects mostly sheep and goats, it is caused by a virus similar to rinderpest, and according to OIE’s Miyagishima, could be a more promising target for eradication.
“We have a relatively good and cheap vaccine for PPR. The problem is that small ruminants have less economic importance so it’s harder to get countries and governments engaged,” he said. Since cows are traded on the global economy while poorer people keep small animals for household use, diseases that affect them are paid less heed by scientists, researches and donors.
“Small ruminants are usually held by the poorest of the poor; they don’t have the same value as cattle,” said FAO’s Lubroth. “For PPR, we have similar tools that we had for rinderpest; it’s related to it; we know a lot about it and we have diagnostics. What we don’t really have is the political support.
Miyagishima said foot and mouth disease would probably be prioritized despite its technical problems, because governments are more conscious of it and see more economic benefit in its eradication.
“Certain wealthy countries with sophisticated surveillance systems and favorable geography can keep [foot and mouth disease] out, but it is in everyone’s best interests to eradicate it worldwide rather than exclude it from individual countries - usually the wealthiest countries,” said Tufts University’s Saperstein.
Meanwhile, the InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources warned: “Unless coordinated action is taken to control the spread of the disease, small ruminant plague [PPR] is likely to spread to most of Africa, bringing with it untold losses of livestock and endangering the livelihoods of millions of African farmers and herders.”
“You can’t just be in a comfortable chair in the capital and know what’s going on on the ground,” said Miyagishima. Locals are essential in watching out for signs of the disease and reporting them to the authorities. “If they start hiding the disease, it will be propagated,” he said.
Animal owners often do want to hide evidence of an outbreak, since authorities respond to some diseases by killing animals, even healthy ones. Some developed countries have financial compensation schemes, or even private insurance. “But in most of the developing world, there’s no incentive to report disease,” said Miyagishima. “This is something that’s really important to address since early detection is key.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93033

MALNUTRITION: AFGHANISTAN: Bracing for a reduced wheat harvest

KABUL, 23 June 2011 (IRIN)


 Photo: Akmal Dawi/IRIN
Afghanistan received inadequate or ill-timed rain and snow this year, and will affect the wheat harvest (file photo)

Afghanistan is likely to face a significant food shortage in the coming months, following poor rains which have affected this season’s wheat crop. Wheat is the primary food staple for most families.
“There have been problems with rainfall, so there will be a significant shortfall in the harvest,” Challiss McDonough, spokesperson for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said. “The Ministry of Agriculture is conducting an assessment to determine the numbers of those affected, but there are also concerns about livestock, especially in the northern and highland areas.”
The harvest season runs from May to late August, but according to the US Agency for International Development’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET), most of Afghanistan received inadequate or ill-timed rain and snow this year, which will lead to heavy losses as almost all wheat production is rain-fed. Pasture will also be affected. Livestock in the northeast and northwest have already begun to deteriorate, forcing families to sell at 30-50 percent below market prices.
Estimates by the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, it added, show that this year’s production would be about 3.256 million tons of wheat - 28 percent less than the bumper 2010 harvest. In the central highlands and Badakshan in the northeast, spring rain-fed wheat has not been cultivated because of abnormally dry conditions.
"In a year with a normal harvest, most households in the northern rain-fed and irrigated wheat growing areas can produce enough wheat to sell in the market while still meeting their food needs throughout the year," FEWSNET said in a 20 June statement. "However, due to the shortfalls in production this year, the reliance on purchases will increase and income from wheat sales and on-farm labor will decrease."

Prices up
The negative perceptions in some provinces about the coming harvest have already pushed wheat prices up, according to WFP's price monitoring report for June. In March, FEWSNET said, wheat grain prices in Mazar-i-Sharif were 30 percent higher than at the same time last year, and in May prices for wheat grain were 85 percent higher than a year earlier.
"The poor harvests will increase the importance and influence of wheat imports from Kazakhstan, where prices are also high," it noted. "The poor wheat harvest will also limit the supply of on-farm labor opportunities in the north, an important income source for poor households."
Early this year, the government announced plans to stockpile up to 500,000 tons of wheat in different areas in anticipation of a mid-level drought later in the year to assist vulnerable communities, stabilize food prices and prevent shortages. By January, about 75,000 tons of wheat (surplus from 2010 domestic production procured by the government) was already in “strategic stockpiles”.
At least nine million Afghans (36 percent of the population) live on less than a dollar a day, and five million "non-poor" live on 2,100 Afghanis (US$43) a month, according to a 2008 National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment. Dry conditions have already affected income earning opportunities in northern Afghanistan and the central highlands because of reduced demand for farm labour.
Afghanistan produced 4.5 million tons of wheat last year (more than 80 percent of the annual 5.2 million tons required nationwide), but failed to offer adequate wheat flour to urban markets, which are dominated by imported flour mainly from Kazakhstan and Pakistan.
McDonough said WFP was refocusing its assistance, partly because of a funding shortfall of US$220 million. "We have a severe funding shortfall, but we are still making every effort to continue giving assistance to those in critical need," she told IRIN.
The agency had planned to support 7.3 million vulnerable and food-insecure Afghans in all 34 provinces, but the funding shortfall has forced it to scale back on some programmes including school meals.


Women wait for child vaccinations in Faizabad, Badakhshan


http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93048

MALNUTRITION: Somalia: Drought leaves one in four children malnourished

06 May 2011 : Source: Danish refugee council
Continued drought in large parts of the southern Somalia is forcing many to flee their homes. Livestock is lost and limited food resources are available. There is an alarming increase in the number of children suffering from malnutrition. The Danish Refugee Council is among the aid agencies struggling to address the massive humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa.
This is the time of the year where the Somali people would be busy working on their lands to secure their livelihoods for the rest of the year. But there is no water, and not much hope for this to change in 2011. Predictions of too little rain and continued drought, leave a bleak outlook for the Somali people already suffering from protracted war and extreme poverty.
Pasture and water supplies are in extremely poor condition and close to a complete depletion in most areas of key pastoral livelihoods across Somalia, according to report from UN agencies.
“Today, we are able to reach out to a large number of people in very difficult areas in Somalia where most other aid agencies cannot operate. We have been here for a long time and have a solid foundation for relief work also in the most difficult part so the country. But we need to reach out to many more as the crisis in Somalia is of a scale that is growing day by day,” says Ann Mary Olsen, head of the International Department at the Danish Refugee Council.
Civil war has ravaged in Somalia for two decades. But also drought represents a key reason that Somalia is the country in the world generating the highest number of displaced and refugees. People are trying to escape their areas of origin with many crossing the borders to nearby countries.
During the first three months of 2011, nearly 50,000 Somali refugees were registered as they crossed the borders to Kenya, Ethiopia, and Yemen. This is more than twice as many refugees fleeing compared to the same period last year. In Kenya, the world’s largest refugee camp is now housing more than 320,000 people. It continues to grow and has by far reached the limits.
The Danish Refugee Council is working in Somalia and the region since 1998 and has years of experience from the region and insight into how the crisis develops.
“We are following the recent developments as a result of the armed conflict and with even greater concern due to the current drought situation and the migration in the region. The scale of the crisis is still unknown to many people around the world, and we need to make an effort to raise awareness of the terrifying humanitarian conditions in the country. We are witnessing a situation that requires much more attention and support, so we can step up support for the Somali people and for the region,” says Ann Mary Olsen.
An estimated 1.4 million people are displaced inside Somalia while there are around 680,000 refugees in neighbouring countries.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/somalia-drought-leaves-one-in-four-children-malnourished

MALNUTRITION: Pakistan: The heedless rush towards cultivating biofuel crops

The heedless rush towards cultivating biofuel crops in Pakistan is quite liable to exacerbate malnutrition levels which, according to a recent World Food Programme report, have already reach the staggering figure of 21-23 per cent in rural Sindh, figures six to nine per cent above the internationally recognised emergency point of 15 per cent. It is higher than in the vast majority of African countries where globally recognised charities work around the clock struggling to alleviate horrendous nutritional shortcomings.

Malnutrition in Pakistan is not restricted to the millions of flood affected people throughout the country but is also clearly evident, and on the increase, amongst many millions of people with low or negligible incomes for both urban and rural dwellers alike.
According to the oft repeated mantra of the ministry of agriculture ‘there is no shortage of food’ in the country yet. Be this as it may, it is also true that a high percentage of the population can no longer, thanks to rampant inflation, afford to purchase the food on offer. However, this does not automatically give the government, along with indigenous and foreign investors and existing agricultural concerns, the right to switch over from cultivating food crops to crops solely intended for what is currently perceived as a lucrative biofuel market.
The ongoing energy crisis, further fuelled by the lure of carbon credit trading and dreams of profiting from funding promised to ventures intended to combat global warming, is encouraging Pakistani agriculturalists, often working hand in hand with corporate interests and government departments, to stop growing food which is a dangerous trend indeed.
The most talked about biofuel material at present is that of a tropical American plant called Jatropha curcas which is being planted, often illegally by using smuggled seed, by growers in Sindh, Balochistan and in the agricultural heartland of the Punjab with even Pakistan State Oil having jumped on the Jatropha bandwagon by setting up an experimental plantation outside Karachi in recent years.
Entrepreneurs claim that cultivating Jatropha does not infringe of food production in any way as it can be cultivated on marginal, waste and arid land of which, they claim, there is over 80 million acres in the country. What they do not say, quite naturally, is that there are vast numbers of people eking out some kind of living from these lands which are utilised in the production of subsistence crops and for the grazing of livestock. Neither do they publicise the hard fact that whilst Jatropha is claimed to have the ability to produce 10 times for oil than corn, this has not yet been proven on a commercial scale plus, even though it is drought tolerant once established, (this means irrigation is required for young plantations).
Moreover, it needs, according to a Dutch study, five times more water to produce a unit of energy than do either sugarcane or corn and 10 times more water than sugar beet making it, in fact, a rather thirsty crop which, if it doesn’t get adequate moisture, does not produce the anticipated oil for use in biofuels. Thus, it goes without saying, if water was available to be diverted to these 80 million acres of ‘waste’ land, it could be used for increased food production on all levels including that of meat and dairy which are often in short supplies.
There has even been talk of growing Jatropha with financial inputs from South Korea with the crop intended for export and processing there not here which is of no benefit to Pakistan, other than financially, whatsoever. The name ‘Jatropha’ may be familiar to some gardeners as members of this genus, dangerous attractive to mealie bugs which could spread on to other crops, were introduced as ornamentals many years ago.
Second on the booming biofuel cultivation list in Pakistan is the legumus tree Pongamia pinnata, an arid zone, drought tolerant species indigenous to tropical and temperate Asia and from which ‘hongo oil’ has been extracted for thousands of years. But, as with Jatropha, it is necessary to wait a number of years until harvesting can begin which is where other, ‘edible’ dangers arise.
The government is already evaluating the use of sugarcane as a biofuel and if this becomes a reality then sugar prices will surge as availability declines. Other important food crops with important biofuel potential include: canola, soy, rape seed, mustard, palm oil, wheat, corn, sugar beet and sunflower although as perennial grasses are also being examined; livestock and dairy production could also be adversely affected in the long term.
With global food prices at their highest ever, the price of American corn has increased by 79 per cent over the last year as a direct result of much of the crop is now destined for biofuel refineries, the immediate affect has been ‘to push another estimated 44 million people in low and middle-income brackets into poverty’ says the World Bank which is extremely concerned about the potential impact of biofuel production on world food stocks.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/04/17/food-production-the-hazardous-trend.html

AFRICA: Opposition building to Great Green Wall

NAIROBI, 8 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Wikimedia Commons: The Sahel region: The Great Green Wall project was originally proposed by Burkina Faso’s Marxist leader Thomas Sankara in the 1980s

What’s green, controversial, 15km wide, 7,775km long, cuts across 11 African countries and is designed to reduce livestock deaths and boost food security for millions of people? Nothing yet, but the Great Green Wall project, a pipe-dream for decades, was recently endorsed by a swathe of African states stretching from Senegal to Djibouti.
An estimated 10 million people faced severe food shortages due to recurrent drought and climate change in the Sahel region last year. In Niger alone, the famine in 2010 left half the country’s population needing food aid and one in six children suffering from acute malnutrition. Some villagers in Niger described 2010 as worse than the 1973 drought that killed thousands of people, according to Malek Triki, West African spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP).
The Great Green Wall (GGW) project, originally proposed by Burkina Faso’s Marxist leader Thomas Sankara in the 1980s, was later resurrected by former Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo in 2005 before receiving approval by the African Union in December 2006. In June 2010, 11 countries involved signed a convention in Chad to further the development of the project, but the plan remained on standby until February when it was officially approved at an international summit in Bonn, Germany.
During the summit, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) set aside US$115 million to fund the wall. Mohamed I Bakarr, a senior environment specialist with GEF, told IRIN the wall “is in reality a metaphor to reflect the vision of African leaders for an integrated land-use system that addresses environment and development needs across all affected countries”. The GEF foresees the wall adopting a “mosaic” of “sustainable land-management systems with stakeholders, including grassroots communities, in all 11 countries implementing options that are appropriate to the local context”.
The plan entails each country implementing its own land, water and vegetation-management projects on up to two million hectares of land, under the framework of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Monique Barbut, CEO of the GEF, said in a statement it would not fund “an all-out tree-funding drive from Dakar to Djibouti”, but rather, would allocate the funding according to national priorities, which have yet to be finalized. In a paper adopted by the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) in 2008, alleviating poverty is said to be one of the wall’s principal objectives.
The paper outlines national and regional objectives, including consolidating and expanding existing greenbelts of trees, conserving biodiversity, restoring and conserving soil and promoting income-generating activities, as well as carbon capture and storage of 0.5-3.1 million tons of carbon per year.

Indigenous communities "threatened"
The project has faced opposition, despite its stated commitment to combating drought and desertification, which have exacted a heavy toll on the region as a whole. Wally Menne, a member of Timberwatch, the African NGO focal point for the Global Forest Coalition, told IRIN the organization was sceptical. “In our view it seems poorly conceived in terms of both ecological and socio-economic considerations. Its chances of being a success could be limited, and it may even cause more harm to the environment,” he said. The Global Forest Coalition campaigns for the rights of indigenous and forest people and for socially just policies.
An estimated 10 million people faced severe food shortages due to recurrent drought and climate change in the Sahel region last year
Menne added that the inclusion of carbon sequestration activities and the potential future development of REDD projects (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) as components of the GGW would require converting suitable land within the belt to fast-growing foreign species of monoculture tree plantations and carbon sinks opposed by many indigenous groups in the Sahel. Growing plantations would also require displacing people living on land earmarked for the GGW and would lead to further depletion of scarce water sources.
A concept paper on the kinds of vegetal species to be included in the GGW states that the wall will run through both inhabited and uninhabited areas, but will be located in areas where the average annual rainfall is higher than 200mm. It also stated that the only species to be adapted to the wall would be "primarily those that are found, live and develop there".
However, in a statement to the Indigenous People’s of Africa Coordinating Committee, IPACC, Sada Albachir, director of Association Tunfa, a Tuareg human rights group in Niger, said that “international agreements in the past introduced alien invasive species into the Sahara, without tackling the root problems of poor governance, dangerous uranium mining, and a failure to conserve biodiversity and water security in the arid region. I think the idea of planting a Green Wall across Africa is not to be entertained by indigenous people living in the proposed sites, unless the project has been studied in collaboration with them and they are also involved in the implementation.”
The programme coordinator for the OSS, Jihed Ghannem, told IRIN such concerns were baseless. “The full participation of communities is essential,” he said.
Timberwatch’s Menne told IRIN: “In my experience, ‘consulting’ local communities usually means misinforming them about the potential impacts of a project by exaggerating how they will benefit, whilst neglecting to inform them of the negative impacts. When they say that local communities will be an integral part of the project, it normally means that they will be used to provide cheap labour.”
Part of the GGW concept plan includes a section on “Food for Work” designed to recruit unemployed workers in each country to help with the planting of the greenbelt in the Sahel. According to OSS, under the scheme, “members of the communities assuming responsibilities are paid in part at the time of planting. The remainder is paid two years later on the basis of the plant growth scale.” The plan also indicates that private businesses, including “initiators of safari parks, modern farming, ecotourist sites” will find “some economic opportunities” in the wall.
Menne said the wall could be a useful tool to combat desertification only if “viewed as an exercise in adaptation, rather than as an opportunity for climate change mitigation and making money from CDM/REDD carbon offsets as presently envisioned”.
According to Khadija Hassan*, representative of an indigenous people’s organization, the GGW might also interfere with migration patterns of pastoral communities and instead should incorporate ancestral systems of land management. “It would be best to protect what already exists in the region, stop the felling of trees in valleys and oases, repair damage caused by climate change, educate communities about REDD and restore livestock that has been lost,” she said. “I find the project is good, but too ambitious.”


Greenhouse farming in semi-arid Isiolo is helping improve the production of food crops


http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92422

POVERTY: KENYA: Livestock dying as drought deepens

ISIOLO/MANDERA, 6 April 2011 (IRIN) -

 Photo: Melvin Chibole/ActionAid : Acoording to a recent UN assessment, the drought ravaging East Africa has left eight million needing food aid

Thousands more heads of livestock have died in Kenya’s arid Northeastern province as La Niña drought conditions worsen and water shortages become more acute.
Drought monitoring and assessment reports indicate that the hardest-hit areas are Marsabit, Moyale and Mandera. Livestock farmers in the three regions have lost more than 17,000 animals since January, according to officials from the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) and the government’s Arid Lands and Resource Management Project (ALRMP).
Mass deaths of livestock began in February, but the average daily loss of animals has risen in the last three weeks as crucial water sources dried up. Many of the remaining water sources are contaminated, leading to increased incidents of water-borne diseases such as typhoid, amoeba and diarrhoea.
A recent assessment by the UN found that the drought ravaging East Africa had left eight million needing food aid, 1.2 million in Kenya.
KRCS Marsabit coordinator, Abdi Malik, told IRIN that many families are becoming increasingly vulnerable to hunger and hardships related to the crisis. “The most recent assessment conducted on the drought clearly shows that the situation is very serious compared to conditions in January,” he said. “More than 70 percent of an estimated 300,000 people are affected now and the figure will rise unless it rains. We expect more animal deaths. Thousands are weak and the few water sources are drying up. Pasture everywhere is exhausted.”
He added that the water shortage and depletion of boreholes had led to a mass migration of pastoralist families from Marsabit and Moyale to Forole in Ethiopia. He said the Red Cross was providing water to primary schools to prevent their closure and to support supplementary feeding programmes.
Jirma Duba, a resident from Marsabit, said water shortages had caused deadly conflicts. Fighting between the Rendille, Borana and Gabra communities over scarce water sources and grazing areas have resulted in the deaths of 12 people. A number of resource-related killings was also reported along the Isiolo and Samburu borders.
Thousands of residents from Mandera have also migrated from grazing areas and trading centres, according to the Rural Agency for Community Development and Assistance (RACIDA). Mohamed Dualle, coordinator of RACIDA, fears the situation will be even worse in April.
“We have not received a single drop of rain and yet the rains were expected two weeks ago. We are faced with a humanitarian crisis. A significant number of deaths, mainly of children, pregnant women and elderly people can be attributed to hunger, dehydration and lack of water,” he said. “Banisa, a rich grazing area and a trading centre with more than 18,000 people and surrounded by 16 villages, is almost deserted now. The only dam which has served the whole population for last seven years dried up last week.”
He added that livestock owners with large herds of animals had migrated to the nearest water point, 123km away, and livestock traders that have lost their businesses are also likely to move.

 Photo: Anthony Morland/IRIN :
Migration of pastoralists with their livestock has led to a shortage of animals in local markets

Rising prices
The World Food Programme (WFP) has appealed for more funds to deal with the crisis in the coming months. Josette Sheeran, the director, said WFP “has only 44 percent of the resources it needs to feed 5.22 million people in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and the Karamoja region of eastern Uganda from April to September”.
An increase in staple food prices, particularly in far-flung areas, has worsened the situation in Kenya, according to ALRMP: 1kg of beans in Sericho, Isiolo, has increased from 50 shillings to 80 shillings (US60 cents to about $1) since January and milk has risen from 40 shillings (50 cents) per litre to 60 shillings (72 cents) per litre.
Mass migration of pastoralists with their livestock has led to a shortage of animals in local markets, triggering a price increase and a loss of income for those whose livelihoods depend on the trade. In Mandera, Wajir and Garissa, households have had to sell three to four goats to purchase a 90kg bag of maize, rather than the average of one or two goats.
Hussein Ali, a local leader and an elder from Jericho, said water was even more costly than food in the area. “A 20l can of water is selling at 60 shillings. It’s more expensive than a kilo of maize flour,” said Ali. “A number of families have sent their children to the Daadab refugee camps to be registered as aliens from Somalia in order to get relief food.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said drought conditions, once periodic in nature, had now become a “predictable emergency” and an emergency response was no longer sustainable. Pastoralist leaders said large-scale measures adopted by the government to address the crisis were insufficient and unsuccessful.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92393

MALNUTRITION: NIGER: it's still a problem

 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Ayesha Yaou with her family’s evening meal

MAGARIA, 6 April 2011 (IRIN) - The evening meal will be stewed leaves tasting somewhat like spinach, which the women pick every morning, yet crops were standing tall before the leafhoppers flew into Zinder in Niger and devoured anything green. The official response to a region on the edge of survival has been slow, but then the women went to see the Prefect.
It is after 6.30 in the evening in sandy and hot Dan Gouchy Haoussa, a village about a 1,000km east of Niamey, capital of Niger, and about 20km from the border with Nigeria. Nine children - the youngest about four years old and the oldest a teenager doing his homework - sit around a pot that Salamatou, one of their two mothers, has placed on the fire.
The stewed leaves of a wild bush called leptadenia hastate will be served when the tenth child, who is queuing at the only tap in the village, returns with water. It will be the family's first meal of the day.
More than 200,000 people in the district of Magaria have been living on meals like this for almost six months, but aid agencies warn that the worst is yet to come.
The traditional lean season, when farmers run out of previously harvested stocks of staple cereals like millet and sorghum, only starts in May, said Sylvain Musafiri, humanitarian officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
It will be some time before the rains come, new crops can be planted, then harvested, and there will be food again. Help will not be on the way anytime soon. Pleas for assistance, sent to Niamey by a variety of local authorities, have so far gone unanswered.
The national administration is in transition - a military junta-backed government makes way for an elected civilian government this week - but Musafiri said he was concerned that an adequate response by the authorities would take longer.
Mamamadou Baraze, governor of Zinder Region, where Magaria is located, told aid workers he feared the situation could get worse than the crisis in 2010 if help did not arrive in time.
How did Salamatou's family and the residents of Dan Gouchy Haoussa end up in this situation? IRIN found a chasm between the people of rural Niger and the policy-makers and implementers in Niamey, but also discovered a group of people led by women fighting enormous odds for the right to food.
There is a strong case for the incoming government to address the structural causes of food insecurity in Niger: a rapidly expanding population, lack of rural infrastructure and agricultural support to boost food production in a country increasingly affected by uncertain weather.
A recent food security conference in Niamey discussed the gap that needs to be bridged if the nation's development goals are to be achieved, but which keeps getting wider because the country constantly has to tackle emergencies.

Was it the rains?
Niger produces about four million tons of cereals, so it has to import about 20 percent of its cereal needs, 10 percent of which is brought in by traders and the remainder by aid agencies, said Prof Maxime Banoin, an agronomist.
Magaria district is a tiny green belt in the Zinder Region along Niger's border with Nigeria, where the people, mainly small-scale farmers, produce crops of millet and sorghum that account for most of the semi-arid region's cereal production when rain falls for the expected two-month period.
"In 2010, the rains were good our crops were going very well," said Abdou Gibada, the headman of Dan Gouchy Haoussa. The men in the villages constructed additional storage bins in anticipation of a bumper harvest.
When my father was alive, the produce from the land was sufficient to feed all of us [including my two wives and five children], but when he died, the small patch of land I inherited was not adequate
Banoin noted that in 2010 the country had produced five million tons of cereals, including millet, sorghum and cowpeas - more than enough for its needs until the next harvest in 2011.
Gibada holds his composure as he talks about the misfortune that struck them in August 2010, when hordes of leafhoppers (of the family cicadellidae) flew in and ate the standing crops in more than 300 villages across the district.
Nouri Habsou, the agricultural extension worker based in the neighbouring village of Dan Tchiou, had not seen crop destruction on this scale in more than 20 years of experience. "I was helpless; I had no pesticides to offer." She informed her superiors in Magaria town, who alerted Niamey.
Disbelieving authorities in the capital dismissed the calls for help. "They said this particular species of the insect, which usually attacks sorghum plants, is never known to have attacked millet," said Ahmadou Ama, head of agriculture in Magaria.
Months later, towards the end of 2010, an agriculture official turned up to make an assessment. "He was shocked by what he saw, and in subsequent investigations agriculture scientists in Niamey have offered us a possible explanation for the change in the behaviour of the insect," said Ama.
"They said the rains were unseasonably heavy, which led to a very good millet crop attracting the insects, who would have usually gone for the sorghum crops, which would normally have been standing then." The explanations made their way back to Magaria, but no aid.

 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Elders of Dan Gouchy Haussa: the villagers have struggled to be heard

Ayesha Yaou and the women
In the affected villages people had already eaten the previous harvest's reserves and started crossing the border to Nigeria in search of food. In October 2010 an assessment by local authorities found that more than 15 percent had fled with their families, and the household head of almost 50 percent of families had migrated.
By December all the able-bodied men in Dan Gouchy Haoussa had gone to Nigeria. The women, children and elderly, left behind, struggled on until February 2011.
"We just could not sit and wait to die, we had to get help," said Ayesha Yaou, 33, who has seven children. She decided to organize the women.
"Each family contributed 50 CFA [about US$0.11] towards the fare to hire a taxi to Magaria [town] to make representation to the Prefect [administrative head] of Magaria district." They warned him that mass migration might be imminent.
"We were moved by the plight - we calmed the people, tried to convince them not to leave,"´ said the Prefect, Inoussa Garba. "I then managed to get some rice, maize and millet for the people, but it was not enough."
In March 2011, Garba approached UN agencies and international and national NGOs working in the neighbouring town of Zinder for help. He said Care International, the aid NGO, would begin a cash-for-work programme in a few villages in April, and the World Food Programme (WFP) intended to start blanket feeding in the area but only in May, when the traditional lean season began.
Staple grains are readily available in the markets along the road between Magaria and Zinder, but few farmers have the money to buy. Most have eaten or sold their livestock, although some still have a few goats, chickens or ducks.
The children in Magaria village were healthy because the medical NGO, Médecins Sans Frontières-Switzerland, had been treating them, said Ayesha Yaou.
Olivier Bonnet, project manager of MSF-Switzerland in Magaria, said their organization, whose mandate was to respond to emergencies, had been forced into a developmental role because of a lack of resources at the local level and was providing some free essential medicines, and training personnel at primary healthcare centres.

Returning men
Violent flare-ups linked to the upcoming elections in Nigeria forced some of the men to return at the beginning of April 2011, but they brought little or no money.
In Nigeria many saved rice or millet from their meals, or odd bits of food they received while begging. The food was dried in the sun and sent back to their families with returning Nigeriens. At home the dried food is soaked in water and cooked with the leaves.
"There is no charge for this service [carrying food]," said Zakaria Yaou, 25, who came back to his village, Kinoma, in the last week of March. "One day the carrier might need to ask me to take food for his family." He spent three months in Nigeria ferrying water in a cart, but managed to bring home only about 3,000 CFA (almost $7) for his five children and two wives.
A big family has its drawbacks - one with 12 members would need at least 1,000 CFA (about $2) worth of millet every day. "When my father was alive, the produce from the land was sufficient to feed all of us [including my two wives and five children], but when he died, the small patch of land I inherited was not adequate," said Yaou.
Sanousi Atta, a professor of agriculture who led discussions on food supply at the conference in Niamey, identified large families, which split the limited ancestral agricultural land into plots as small as two hectares, as the biggest obstacle to achieving food insecurity in Niger.
The villagers in Kinoma do not want to talk about family planning, but IRIN met a group of women from Yaouri Kaba, a village near Magaria town, who said their local primary health centre was offering information on contraception.

Next season?
Ama, the head of agriculture in Magaria, said the rainy season was approaching and they needed a supply of seeds and fertilizer as incentives to make the demoralized men stay to plant for the next season, "otherwise we will enter a cycle of endless emergency".
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said it intended distributing seeds ahead of the rainy season, which usually starts sometime in May or June.
Fertilizers are imported into the land-locked country mainly from Nigeria. The price of a 50kg bag used for growing millet is about 13,000 CFA ($30) and the ideal amount is about 100kg per hectare, but in Niger affordability limits the average application to just 2kg per hectare.
But for now, if anyone is listening, said Garba, the Prefect of Magaria, "We need food most urgently."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92387

POVERTY: SOMALIA: Drought-displaced "in tens of thousands"

HARGEISA/NAIROBI, 30 March 2011 (IRIN) -  Photo: Mohamed Amin Jibril/IRIN: "There is not a single region from the south to the north that is not suffering [from drought],” Abdi Haji Gobdon, spokesman for Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), told IRIN

With drought spreading to almost all regions of Somalia, officials and aid workers have expressed concern for those affected, saying drought was now a major cause of displacement.
"Drought, not insecurity, is now the main reason for new displacement in Somalia," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA Somalia) said in a March update. "More than 52,000 people have been displaced due to drought since 1 December 2010, many of them moving to urban areas in search of assistance."
In particular, the capital, Mogadishu, had experienced an increased influx of drought-affected pastoralists, said OCHA.
"Although migration of people and livestock is not unusual during the dry season, this appears to be the first time ever pastoralists and their livestock have migrated into the capital, a situation that portrays the severity of the drought situation in the country," OCHA said.
Abdi Haji Gobdon, spokesman for Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), told IRIN on 30 March: "The drought is spreading and getting worse. We are getting reports not only of livestock dying but people too.
"There is not a single region from the south to the north that is not suffering,” he said.

Aid appeal
Gedo in the southwest, parts of southern regions and the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, as well as central Somali regions, are the worst affected, according to Gobdon.
"Livestock are dying in their thousands, with families losing everything," he said, adding that the drought had forced many pastoralists into camps for the displaced. "They have lost everything and they think they may get help if they reach the camps."
Gobdon said the TFG could not address the situation alone and appealed to the international community for assistance.
"The problem with this drought is how long it has been going on," he said.
Gu rains should have started in most parts of the country. Gobdon said: "In a good year, it should be raining by now, but we have not seen a drop yet."
Targeting livelihoods
In response to the drought, the Common Humanitarian Fund for Somalia allocated US$4.5 million in March in emergency funding, targeting agriculture and livelihoods; water, sanitation and hygiene.
In the self-declared republic of Somaliland, more than four months of drought have led to disease outbreaks and severe water shortages, with government officials appealing for help for the most drought-affected populations.
"The government of Somaliland has appealed for support; so far we have collected about $500,000 from the public, which we spent on water-trucking to the drought-affected in remote areas," Hussein Abdi Du'alle, Somaliland's Minister for Water and Minerals, told a press conference in the capital, Hargeisa.
"Initially, only three regions were affected but now the drought has reached everywhere," Mohamed Muse Awale, the chairman of Somaliland's National Environmental Research and Disaster Preparedness Commission, said.
Mohamed Abdillahi, an elder in Hudun, 83km northeast of Las-anod district in Sool region, told IRIN: "The biggest problem is water shortages; water is trucked from Burou in Togdheer region, 260-270km away, and its price keeps rising. For example, a barrel [200l] of water was only $8 three months ago, now it is $15."

Deaths reported
In Sool region, eastern Somaliland, officials have reported four deaths following an outbreak of diarrhoea. Ali Bile, head of Awr-Bogeys health post in Sool, 50km northeast of Las-anod, said all four deaths - a man and three children - occurred in the past week.
Ali Bulale, mayor of Hudun district, said at least 40 people in the district had contracted diarrhoea, mostly children.
"The district was one of the few places which enjoyed the Deyr [long] rains; this caused many people from Sanag, Sool, Togdheer and even from Puntland to gather here in search of pasture," Bulale said. "Now nothing of the pasture is left."
Ahmed Abdi Bile, coordinator of the Red Crescent in Somaliland, said: "There are six mobile health-sector teams giving food to malnourished children in the regions of Sool, Sanag and Sahel. With the collaboration of UNICEF [UN Children's Fund], there are also seven more teams doing the same job in the regions of Sool, Sahel, Togdher, Awdal and Sanag."
Mark Bowden, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, has called for humanitarian access to support Somalis affected by drought.
"I am extremely concerned about the impact of the current drought on the well-being of children, women and the general population in Somalia," he said in a statement. "Severe water shortages require collective efforts and further cooperation at all levels to deliver a well-coordinated response to mitigate the consequences of the drought on the lives of the Somali population."

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92323

MALNUTRITION: Niger: Between two seasons of hunger

PHILLIPPE LATOUR Feb 23 2011

 A woman collects water for her family’s animals in Gadabeji, Niger. Here the grass is meager after a drought killed off the past year’s crops. Aid groups warn 2011 will be another difficult year. (Sunday Alamba, AP)


Despite the large-scale response to the nutritional crisis from Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and other aid organisations, tens of thousands of children suffered from malnutrition in Niger in 2010. Despite better harvests, 2011 also looks set to be a critical year.
Around 100 years ago the father of Salouf Kina (80) founded the small village of Gueza, three hours' drive east of Zinder, the former capital of Niger. "He took his cows to a new grazing ground and decided to settle here with his family. There was plenty of greenery and water here at the time. I've always lived here, but last year [2010] was the worst I've seen", he says with a faltering voice.
Today Gueza, with 2 000 inhabitants, is a patchwork of mud huts built along sandy streets, where the odd tree provides some rare shade. In the surrounding area a few scrubby fields of millet left over from the recent harvest give the hills an air of neglect.
Kina's son, Aboukar, who is more than 50 years old, is also a neighbourhood chief and tells of the lean period that the inhabitants of Gueza experienced in 2010: "At the end of 2009 the harvests were very bad and some families harvested nothing at all because of the drought. When people's stocks ran out and they could no longer borrow, they had to leave the village -- young men at first, to go and work in Nigeria, then whole families. Between May and September more than half the village fled, leaving behind only women, young children and the elderly," he says.
"We're a long way from everything and few people are interested in us. If MSF hadn't set up a feeding centre at the health centre, all of us would have left and the village might have died completely."
Gueza's Integrated Health Centre is one of the few concrete buildings in the village. There are few consultations and MSF has packed up its outpatient nutrition education and rehabilitation centre for cases of severe malnutrition.
It is hard to imagine that three months ago some 300 children were treated by the MSF team here. It is the young Mamane Bashir, the centre manager, who greets me.

Malnutrition exacerbated by malaria
"The rains came very early this year and the malnutrition situation was exacerbated by malaria, which hit the weakest children. Last August we treated around 600 children, compared with just a hundred or so in August 2009. This is also linked to MSF's presence, which ensured that the medicines and therapeutic foods didn't run out," says Bashir.
In Zinder and Magaria, the main towns in this region of Niger, at the end of December, there were still some 200 children in the intensive hospitalisation centres set up for the serious cases of malnutrition. However, these facilities -- rows of beds under large tents -- now seem relatively empty. At the height of the nutritional crisis, in August and September, more than 800 children were treated there, the majority of them on the brink of death.
Kelima, 32 years old and a mother of four, took her youngest child, Djamilou, aged 15 months, to the Zinder centre in early December. The MSF doctor diagnosed him with severe anaemia combined with malaria. After being given a drip and then fed therapeutic foods, he gradually gained weight. Two weeks later he is smiling and waving his hands when spoken to.
"Soon we'll be able to go back to the village" says Kelima. "But this year, it was really too difficult to feed the children; there were only a few handfuls of millet for the whole family."
"Unfortunately, 2010 was the year that broke every record," says Dr Moïse Moussa Gabrial, head of the Magaria centre. "Since January 2010 we've seen more than 6 200 children. At the end of August, we had around 500 hospitalised children. We had planned to recruit and train medical staff, but the situation was so bad that we had to hire people locally and train them on the job.
"At the height of the malnutrition crisis, 280 people were working for MSF at the intensive malnutrition centre. And tragically, we saw the deaths of many children -- 133 in September alone -- who had arrived in a desperate nutritional state and were often suffering from malaria."

Fighting famine
However, 2010 was also the year of unprecedented mobilisation to fight famine in Niger. The government, born of a coup d'état at the beginning of the year, made food security one of its central causes and called upon international organisations to help.
A number of organisations provided extensive support for care facilities and implemented large-scale prevention strategies, based on appropriate food supplements, making it possible to limit the damage.
"We dare not imagine what would have happened if no one had rallied to help," says Patrick Barbier, MSF's head of missions in Niger." But what worries us today is that despite some good harvests at the end of 2010, 2011 still risks being a very difficult year, in a context that remains one of extreme poverty, often combined with a lack of access to care.
"In nearly all the country's regions, families are heavily in debt and must now, after the harvest, pay back three or four measures of millet for every two borrowed. Added to which, many families' livestock assets have been reduced from a whole herd at the start of the year to just a few goats and sheep. International organisations and aid agencies must remain extremely vigilant and prepare to intervene on a large scale again in 2011."
In Gueza Kina's grandson and Aboukar's son has just turned 20 and already has the face of an old man. In a few days he will set off for Nigeria to sell tea in the street so that his family can survive in the village and keep the hope alive that life there is still possible.
http://mg.co.za/article/2011-02-23-between-two-seasons-of-hunger/

MALNUTRITION: Eating insects 'could cut greenhouse gas emissions'

Benjamin Kolb: 17 January 2011
 Eating insects is common in many parts of the world: Flickr/katesheets

Dining on crickets, locusts, or even cockroaches, instead of cattle or pigs, could ease both food insecurity and climate change, according to researchers.
Insects caught in the wild are already eaten widely in the developing world. Now a study says that farming them on a large scale for food would damage the environment far less than equivalent livestock production.
Scientists compared emissions, by livestock and by insects, of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, which have a greater warming effect than carbon dioxide. They also measured ammonia production, which harms the environment by acidifying soil and water.
They reared mealworms, locusts and crickets, all of which are consumed around the world, as well as sun beetles and cockroaches, which people do not eat, despite their potential as a protein source, while monitoring the amount of gas produced per kilogram of insect growth.
Compared to cattle, weight for weight, insects emitted 80 times less methane — a gas with 25 times more impact on global temperature levels than carbon dioxide.
And crickets produced 8–12 times less ammonia than pigs.
According to the study's lead author, Dennis Oonincx, an entomologist from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, 80 per cent of the world's population eats insects, particularly in the developing world.
"It's a normal part of the menu there," said Oonincx. "If you look at the mopane ['worm' or edible caterpillar] industry in Africa, it's a million dollar business."
Most of these insects are harvested live in the wild, so collection is subject to seasonal variation — they are only farmed in a few countries, he said.
Arnold van Huis, the paper's co-author and professor of tropical entomology at Wageningen University, helped formulate the Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) policy on edible insects.
He said they are an "excellent food source ... that should be nurtured" and taken up as an alternative to cattle.
"I don't think we can continue eating beef like we did in the past and the FAO has already predicted that in 2050 it will become so expensive no-one [will be able to] pay for it any more."
In Kenya, Monica Ayieko, a family and consumer economist at Maseno University, is studying insect production but said the 'Westernisation' of diets could pose an obstacle to encouraging consumption.
A spokesperson for the International Livestock Research Institute, in Kenya, which published a paper last year on improving the carbon efficiency of cattle farming, said that it recognises the value of widening the use of nutritious insects in poor communities. But "no one solution — livestock or otherwise — is going to provide sufficient food and do so sustainably".
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/eating-insects-could-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions-.html

POVERTY: SRI LANKA: Food security and livelihoods hit in flood-affected east

 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN: A farmer holds a destroyed paddy plant

MANAMPITIYA, 24 January 2011 (IRIN) - Food security and livelihoods have been severely hit in Sri Lanka, specialists say, after heavy rains caused widespread flooding and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes, left 43 people dead, and damaged or destroyed close to 30,000 homes.
According to the UN, agricultural production is the main source of livelihood in the affected area and this season's rice harvest has been badly damaged, leading to increased food insecurity.
The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates about 500,000 residents are food-insecure.
In the worst affected districts of Ampara, Batticaloa, and Trincomalee in Eastern Province, heavy rains between 8 and 12 January left more than 101,171 hectares of paddy fields damaged, of which more than 81,000ha suffered moderate to severe damage, initial estimates suggest.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates a loss of about 450,000 tons or US$120 million.
"The potential loss has been calculated to be in the region of 15.5 percent," Calvin Piggott, FAO's senior northern recovery coordinator in Sri Lanka, told IRIN.
The flooding, some of the worst in 100 years, came just two months before fields were to be harvested for the Maha - the principal growing season in the island nation. More than 607,000ha are cultivated during this time, with over one-fifth of that in the four districts hit by the floods.

Fields destroyed
In some towns such as Manampitiya, along the border between Polonnaruwa and Batticaloa districts, hundreds of hectares were affected.
Here, water hyacinth - regarded as the world's worst water weed - was washed into the fields with the flood waters, covering 81ha of paddy land in one stretch, Manhina Banda, the government agriculture officer for the area, said.
"You can't do anything but wait for the weed to die. Taking it out will be a colossal expenditure," he said.
Elsewhere, when the paddy was under water for two to three days, the harvest was either destroyed or will be woefully low.
"The paddy can look fine, but if it was under water for over a day there will be no harvest," farmer Sarath Weerasinghe from Kirimitiya, an interior village in the Polonnaruwa district, explained.
Weerasinghe is typical of many small-time paddy cultivators in Sri Lanka who depend on rice as their primary source of income. He cultivated 1.2ha, spending around $600 per 0.4ha, and hoped to make about $1,000 per 0.4ha from the harvest.
Weerasinghe financed the cultivation from a small loan obtained from a local businessman. He has no insurance and no way of recouping his losses unless he receives direct assistance.

Livestock losses
But rice farmers are not the only ones reeling; other small crops have suffered losses, though estimates have yet to be finalized.
"There will be multiple effects felt right across the country," Seenithamby Manoharan, a senior rural development specialist with the World Bank Sri Lanka office, told IRIN, warning that in addition to the losses suffered by farmers, there were likely to be price rises when the harvest fell short of expectations.
Since the rains began at the end of 2010, the Economic Centre in central Dambulla, the country's main bulk vegetable distribution centre, has recorded price increases of more than 80 percent, the UN said.
Another area of heavy losses is likely to be livestock. In Verugal, a village in the Trincomalee District with 12,000 people, the loss of livestock was over 10,000, Ponnambalam Thanesveran, the divisional secretary for the village, said. So far no figures have been established for the total loss of livestock due to the flooding.
The FAO is conducting a detailed study of the flood damage, Piggott said, with initial assistance likely to begin in the next three weeks targeting the most vulnerable.
The government has held talks with the World Bank on how to assist the famers, but so far there has been no concrete assistance targeting the destroyed crops or livestock. In most areas, local officials were gathering information last week to be sent to government authorities in the capital Colombo.
"Something has to be done fast, some of these people have lost their only means of income," Thanesveran said.
On 20 January, the UN and its partners launched a $51 million appeal to assist more than one million people over the next six months. Of this, $22 million is designated for food security, agriculture and livelihoods.
The appeal is expected to be revised within the next month to reflect needs as the situation changes and assessments are made available.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91709

POVERTY: KENYA: Act now to mitigate drought effects

 Photo: Ann Weru/IRIN: On the water trail...again

NAIROBI/ISIOLO, 19 January 2011 (IRIN) - Kenya can best mitigate the devastating effects of recurrent drought by strengthening the livestock sector so that it becomes a viable money-based economy, and improving pastoral food and water security, say aid officials.
“Responding to drought has largely remained a reactive mechanism over the years,” Enrico Eminae, Action Aid Kenya’s Northeast Regional Coordinator, told IRIN. “There is also a lack of a coordinated approach by CSOs [civil society organizations] and government in addressing drought-related issues at all levels.”

According to the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) Secretary-General, Abbas Gullet, drought mitigation should focus on addressing vulnerability factors through activities such as dam construction and investments in irrigated farming in marginal areas.
The prevailing drought is expected to hit an estimated 1.8 million people, says the KRCS, mostly pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and those in marginal agricultural areas in the Coast, Eastern, North Eastern and the North Rift of Kenya.
In the northern Isiolo, Marsabit, Moyale and Samburu districts, at least 150,000 people urgently need food aid, most of them women, children and the elderly. Long distances to relief food centres and the inability to secure manual work have added to their vulnerability.
"The situation is tough, but most families have taken different steps to cope with the hardships. Some are skipping meals; some have taken their children to school so that they can get food under the school-feeding programme. In some cases, families are [eating] wild fruits," Bitacha Sora, a KRCS officer in the north, said.
The story of drought and famine is almost becoming a cliché in Kenya
Food and milk prices have risen, driven by reduced availability as herders migrate. A lack of water for domestic and livestock use is also forcing residents to rely on water vendors, who are charging exorbitant prices - 60 shillings (US$0.75) per 20-litre water can.

Conflict concerns
In the coastal Tana River region, drought could lead to conflict between residents and migrating livestock herders, some of whom have come to the more fertile Tana Delta area from northeast Kenya and neighbouring parts of Somalia, warned the Assistant Minister for Information and Communication, Dhado Godana.
"We have lost most of our livestock due to the lack of pasture and water," Abdallah Musa, a herder in Tana River’s Bangale area, told IRIN.

On 14 January the KRCS launched a KSh1.5 billion ($18.75 million) appeal for about 1.8 million people over six months. The response will focus on water provision and livestock destocking programmes - an estimated 20 million heads of livestock are judged at risk.
“Water trucking is no real solution and it is very costly, but it must be done,” said KRCS’s Gullet. “We need to operate before things happen. We shouldn’t wait until people die to call it [drought] a national disaster.”
But on 18 January the government said the drought did not qualify as a disaster, adding that there were sufficient food supplies to meet the present needs.
Farmers in regions that enjoyed bumper maize harvests, such as parts of Rift Valley and Western Kenya, following favourable rains in 2010, are demanding higher prices. The government has set the price at KSh1,800 ($2.25) per 90kg bag, but farmers are demanding KSh2,200 ($2.75).
In the 2005-2006 drought, livestock worth more than KSh70 billion (about $0.9 billion) was lost in the North Eastern Kenya region alone; a subsequent drought in 2008-2009 resulted in the belated trucking of thousands of dying livestock to the Kenya Meat Commission, noted the officer in charge of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Kenya, Choice Okoro.

"The story of drought and famine is almost becoming a cliché in Kenya," noted Damaris Mateche, environmental security analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi. "Despite the existing drought early warning systems in the country, drought disaster response mechanisms and coping strategies remain miserably wanting. More often, drought and famine situations degenerate into dire humanitarian crises before the government takes substantial action."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91666

POVERTY: 25% of UK farmers 'below poverty line'

(UKPA) – 5 days ago

A quarter of farming households live below the poverty line, the Government's rural watchdog said as it urged ministers to help farmers access benefits and develop their businesses.
The poorest 25% of farms have a household income of less than £20,000 a year, and a third of those failed to make a profit over the past three years, the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) said.
The CRC said many farmers in the UK had diversified or found ways to earn money away from the farm to survive, with 17% of farms making more money from their additional enterprises than from traditional farming activities. But some do not have the skills or opportunity to branch into new businesses such as farm shops, producing food or letting out farm buildings.
Struggling farmers are more likely to be older people grazing livestock in upland areas including the South Pennines, the South West moors such as Exmoor and Dartmoor, the North Pennines, the Borders and the Lake District.
The problems are particularly acute for tenant farmers, because they do not own their land, can be prevented from diversifying under the terms of their tenancy or find it difficult to access the capital to set up new ventures as the banks view them as having no collateral.
A report by the CRC also said that while farmers are able - like anyone else - to claim benefits when times are tough, the take-up of welfare payments was lower in rural areas than in towns. Around 11% of working-age adults in rural districts claim out-of-work benefits, compared with 16% in towns, the report said.
Just 23 of the 601 Jobcentre Plus offices are in rural areas and the lack of information, transport and internet access makes it hard for people in the countryside to make the most of welfare services. Many farmers feel reluctant to take benefits because they are independent and there is a social stigma attached, the report said.
In addition, some households find it hard to provide up-to-date accounts and tenant farmers struggle to access housing benefit because their tenancy agreements do not separate the rental costs of their home from the land.
The CRC called for the Department for Work and Pensions to actively promote the take-up of benefits for farming households and for the Department for Business Innovation and Skills to support farmers to develop their businesses.
CRC chairman Dr Stuart Burgess said: "While many farming households have successfully increased production, resilience and farm incomes, one in four are living in poverty. These struggling farms are likely to have grazing livestock and be located in upland areas. Many are left trapped in poverty without the resources or support to earn a living wage. Tackling poverty among farming households is long overdue. The Government should actively promote farm business support and the take-up of income-related benefits to eligible farming households."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gVvNrjakWi5R6KI5FtQBJeT-VOIA?docId=N0337391291036598683A

POVERTY: AID POLICY: Giving livestock LEGS

Photo: Catherine-Lune Grayson/IRIN
Livestock market in Diffa, southeastern Niger
,
13 October 2010 (IRIN) - When clashes broke out in Yemen in 2009 thousands of displaced people turned up at camps with their animals, seeking shelter. But UN agencies and NGOs were providing tents for people - not animals. “They had no idea what to do,” said Nacif Rihani, animal production officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “They needed to know about LEGS [Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards].”
Released in 2009 to improve the quality and professionalism of emergency livestock responses, LEGS outlines minimum standards in how to distribute animal feed, water, shelter and veterinary services; how best to destock flocks; and the right conditions for distributing livestock.
The idea for LEGS started in 2000 when aid workers in Darfur, Sudan, realized there was a disconnect between the type of help communities needed and the response aid agencies were providing, said veterinary consultant and one of the LEGS handbook authors David Hadrill.
If livestock interventions are not done properly, they can cause more harm than good, said FAO’s Rihani. “Helping animals that are sick in the wrong way can help spread diseases to healthy animals... or destocking in a culturally inappropriate way can create conflict,” he told IRIN. “For instance, in the past some animals have been killed in ways that are not acceptable to Muslims, meaning they rejected the meat,” he said.
Emergency and development responses often clash. “When emergency livestock assistance is done badly, it can disturb long-term livestock development projects,” Rihani continued. In northern Kenya, a long-term community-led veterinary scheme which took a cost-recovery approach to animal health care, was disrupted when emergency agencies gave free medicines to herders using “a truck and chuck approach, giving communities mixed messages”, said Rihani. This undermined the long-term scheme, and communities started to abandon it, he said.
The LEGS training team are rolling out six training for trainer workshops in Southeast Asia, the Horn and East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa and Southern Asia, this year. Next year they will target the Middle East, Caribbean and Latin America, said LEGS trainer Sylvie Robert.
Rosters of respondents for livestock emergencies are being developed in tandem with the training which, said Robert, showed the LEGS team had learned lessons from the Sphere emergency response guidelines. “LEGS has been much quicker to be implemented,” she told IRIN.
All types of emergency practitioners are encouraged to undergo LEGS training, not just livestock specialists. Participants in a September 2010 West Africa training session in the Senegalese capital Dakar included food security, nutrition and emergency response managers, as well as donors.
Still slow
Despite steady progress in rolling out training and developing rosters of qualified staff, launching quality livestock responses in crises is still slow, admits Hadrill, given experts were calling out for a greater livestock focus in East Africa pastoralist crises in the 1980s.
The complaint that aid agencies and donors have been slow to respond to livestock needs in the current food security and water crisis across the Sahel, is not a new one.
In the current humanitarian coordination system, livestock interventions come under the agriculture cluster (led by FAO), which, aid workers say, is not known for its speedy emergency response.
But with more aid agencies taking a “saving lives and livelihoods” approach, NGO and UN interest in quality response is increasing, said Rihani.
The next step is to spread the word, he says, and to get more government practitioners and donors on board.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?Reportid=90754

MALNUTRITION: HORN OF AFRICA: Livestock trade booms in borderlands

Photo: Nur Ali Farah/IRIN Radio
Hundreds of animals change hands in the Mandera livestock market, northern KenyaNAIROBI, 5 October 2010 (IRIN) - A booming trade in livestock has thrived for more than two decades between Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, despite rampant insecurity in the former and drought in the latter two, a testimony to resilience in extreme circumstances.
"I have been at this [trade] for over 20 years; I have seen good times and bad times," Abdi Mahmud Farah, chairman of the Mandera Livestock Market Association, told IRIN.
He said the association had 24 members from all three countries.
"The trade fluctuates, depending on the rains but also on the availability of foreign markets," he said. "The Middle East used to be the biggest market and we still send livestock there but it is not as big as it used to be."
He said Kenya also bought a lot of livestock for local consumption.
Farah told IRIN hundreds of animals change hands in the Mandera livestock market, the second-largest after Garissa, also in northern Kenya.
"On an average day, 300-400 heads of goats and sheep, 120-150 heads of cattle and about 50-60 camels are sold," Farah said.
He said a camel fetched between KSh50,000 and KSh60,000 [U$625 to $750], while a cow sold for KSh20,000-25,000 [$250-$312] and a goat or sheep cost KSh2,500-3,000 ($31-$37).
Savings
Gregory Akall, a Turkana pastoralist from northwest Kenya, who specializes in pastoralist and climate change issues in the Horn and East Africa, told IRIN on 5 October that livestock production was central to pastoralists’ livelihood and food security.
"Livestock trade enables pastoralists to diversify their income and reduce risk or losses during drought by having ‘bankable’ savings in the form of money, which cannot be wiped out by the drought but they can use it to restock after the drought."
The trade injects money into the local economy and gives pastoralists power and influence to pay for basic services such as food, education and health. "In addition, it reduces their vulnerability during droughts and natural disasters," Akall said.
Growth area
Choice Okoro, advocacy and outreach officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Kenya, told IRIN: “Cross-border livestock trade represents perhaps the highest growth area for regional trade in the Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia border areas. But this can only be realized with more robust support. Well facilitated cross-border livestock trade serves as a critical strategy for poverty alleviation for the majority of pastoralists who are the predominant livelihood group in these border areas.”
Okoro said the annual profit from livestock trade was estimated by the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa at more than $60 million, including along the border between western Ethiopia and eastern Sudan.
Conflict resolution
Abdiladif Haji, who heads a committee of traders charged with security and conflict resolution, told IRIN that despite the civil war in Somalia, the trade in livestock never stopped.
"There was not a single day when the trade stopped because of problems on the Somali side," he said, adding, "traders face difficulties and have their share of problems, but we always manage to resolve them. We are faced daily with problems ranging from stolen animals to money disputes. Not once in my 20 years have we involved authorities. We resolve it.
We have developed very close links between traders from all three countries

"No one wants to spoil the trade," Haji said. "It is a thriving business and we want to keep it that way.
"We have people across the border; for example, if someone took livestock from Kenya and crossed into Somalia, our members there will make sure that the problem is resolved," Haji said. "The same is true for the Ethiopian side and the Kenyan side.
"We have developed very close links between traders from all three countries. The members all have clans and sub-clans but we have a common denominator - trade - and we don’t want to see it destroyed."
Social benefits
In a recent briefing paper for the international think-tank Chatham House, Hussein A Mahmoud said despite political and security problems in Somalia over the past 20 years, "the Kenya-Somalia-Ethiopia borderlands constitute a dynamic livestock trading zone that supports the livelihoods of thousands of people".
He said the trade also had social and political benefits.
"The cross-border clan relationships that always underpinned the trade are increasingly giving way to multiple clan business enterprises," Mahmoud said, adding that this helped to build trust and integration.
However, Mahmoud said the cross-border livestock trade also posed some challenges to authorities, in terms of "development and revenue collection and for border security management. The key challenge is to find ways to attain safe and secure borders that will also contribute to sustaining and enhancing this valuable trade and its benefits.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=90678