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

MALNUTRITION: MALAWI: New farming practices grow healthier children

EKWENDENI, 8 April 2011 (IRIN) -

 Photo: Kristy Siegfried/IRIN
Lyness Mhlanga is now able to grow enough food to feed her family

Ten years ago Joyce Mhoni, head of the Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit at Ekwendeni Hospital in the Mzimba district of northern Malawi, would have been caring for up to 30 severely malnourished children at a time. Today, at the peak of the usually lean months between December and April, when farmers are waiting to harvest, the unit is empty, and in the whole of 2010 only 15 children were admitted, mostly from outside the hospital’s catchment area.
Mhoni credits the change to a room on the other side of the hospital, where a sign on the door reads, “Agricultural Office”. The connection between malnutrition and farming practices was made in 2000, when hospital staff, together with a Canadian researcher, interviewed the parents of children admitted to the nutrition unit.
They found that most of them were only growing maize on their small plots of land, and their children were eating little besides nsima - the local name for maize-meal porridge. Years of growing just one crop had also left the soil depleted and in need of more fertilizer than they could afford.
“We wanted a programme that would address food insecurity, malnutrition in under-fives, and soil fertility,” said Lizzie Shumba, project coordinator of the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities (SFHC) project, which started as a pilot scheme working with 83 farmers in 2000.
Drawing on research by agronomists, nutritionists and development experts, the project’s staff taught farmers how to grow different varieties of legumes such as soy beans, peanuts, and peas. They were encouraged to grow a deep-rooted variety of legume, such as pigeon pea, in the same field as a shallow-rooted variety like soy bean, a method known as inter-cropping.
Soy bean is high-yielding and a nutritious food source, while pigeon pea produces a large amount of leaves that can be dug into the soil to make an effective natural fertilizer. Having only one field to weed and maintain instead of two also reduces labour.

Changing lives
Enoch Chipetupetu joined the project in 2002. As chief of his village he had more land than most, but could only afford to grow maize on about half of it because of the high cost of fertilizer. He started tentatively by planting one or two varieties of legumes and had to wait two or three years before he started seeing results.

Photo: Kristy Siegfried/IRIN :  Enoch Chipetupetu with one of his fields inter-cropped with pigeon pea and groundnuts

After planting a mixture of pigeon pea and soy bean one year, he found he could grow a bumper crop of maize in the same field the following year, using little or no fertilizer.
Simply changing how and what he farmed has profoundly affected the lives of Chipetupetu and his family. He has doubled the land he cultivates, and grows enough to feed his family and sell the surplus.
The extra income has allowed the family to replace their old mud and thatch home with a larger, brick one, and pay the school fees of his six children. It has also completely changed their diet.
“Before, it was nsima, nsima, nsima,” Chipetupetu told IRIN. His wife had been advised by staff at the hospital to feed her children a healthier mixture of foods, but she had no idea how to prepare them.
Project staff started holding “recipe days” to teach participants how to turn the legumes into tasty meals and his wife now passes on seeds and recipes to her neighbours and relatives.
For others, joining the project has meant making it through the year without going hungry. Lyness Mhlanga, a widow who lives with her 12-year-old son and elderly mother on one hectare of land, started growing legumes in 2007.
Previously, she had struggled to grow enough maize to feed her children, and her son had become so malnourished that he had to be hospitalized. “Most of the time, I didn’t have money to buy fertilizer,” she said.
A national government programme that distributes subsidized fertilizer to needy farmers only provided Mhlanga with one or two 50kg bags a year, and this year she had to share one bag with a neighbour.
A successful maize crop requires about eight bags of fertilizer per hectare, at a cost of nearly 6,000 kwacha (US$39) per unsubsidized bag - a significant amount for a poor farmer.
Now, using the techniques the project taught her, such as incorporating crop residue into the soil, Mhlanga can get by with only one or two bags of fertilizer. With no one to help her in the fields, she cannot grow a surplus to sell, but harvests enough to ensure her family stays healthy.

Keys to success
Word has spread and every year more farmers ask to join the project. To be selected, “farmers have to have shown interest, be very food insecure, and we also target the HIV-affected households,” said Shumba.
The project now has 7,000 participants and has been able to add about 500 more every year because a seed multiplication programme distributes legume seeds to new farmers, who are then expected to return twice the quantity of seed when they harvest.
The selection and training of new farmers, as well as seed distribution and data collection, are all done by a group of volunteer farmers who make up the Farmer Research Team. “I think the project has been a success because of them,” said Shumba.
To expand the number of participants and lift them above subsistence, the farmers need to find markets for crops that are unfamiliar to most Malawians. “[They] think to be satisfied, they need to eat a big bowl of nsima and some relish,” said Mhoni of the Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit.
Shumba said some farmers had formed an association to search for markets for their legumes but they were struggling to find buyers. “They’re just selling locally to vendors for a low price,” she said.
At a recent annual Field Day, some project participants showed other farmers their fields and explained the inter-cropping method. Later they were invited to taste coffee made from roasted ground soy beans, fried soy meat, and bean fritters.
Joubert Soko, one of the farmers invited to the event, said it was the first time he had tried such foods. “Normally I eat nsima or rice; it’s really boring,” he told IRIN.
Soko said about three-quarters of the farmers in his community were already inter-cropping with legumes and he was keen to join them. “We still have malnutrition, but it’s going down because people in our area are trying this.”

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92425

MALNUTRITION: Dying from hunger in food-exporting Argentina

6 April 2011

Many of the communities have no sewage systems and limited access to clean water
At least 10 indigenous children have died from malnutrition in north-west Argentina this year. How could this be happening in one of the world's biggest food-exporting countries? BBC Mundo's Vladimir Hernandez travelled to the indigenous Wichi community in a remote part of Salta to find out.
A local elder greeted us politely, but his message was clear: "I'm done talking to journalists, it hasn't helped us one bit."
His words may seem harsh, but what his people are facing is much harsher.
At least 10 children in the Wichi community have died from poor nutrition or a lack of food this year. That is already double the number who died from malnutrition in 2010.
Argentina is one of the world's biggest food exporters and it has shocked the nation to discover that some of its population are not getting enough food.
Enrique Heredia, Director of social medicine"A bout of diarrhoea or dehydration can kill them in no time”
Almost 30,000 people live in this region of north-west Argentina, making up around 200 communities. The tribe we visited is known for its reticence. Its members are wary of contact with outsiders.
The areas where they live are a picture of desperate poverty. The houses are mostly wooden shacks, with blankets as makeshift walls, where there are any at all.
We found hardly any access to clean water or sewage systems in the communities we visited.
"When children who lack proper nutrients also face these sorts of sanitary hazards then the risk of disease increases," said Enrique Heredia, director of social medicine for the province of Salta, who regularly visits the indigenous communities to provide free medical attention.
"A bout of diarrhoea or dehydration can kill them in no time."
The local authorities often do not register the fact that malnutrition is the underlying condition that links these deaths. Instead, they note down only the disease that is immediately responsible.

Locals depend on government help, but that is not always enough But doctors admit that malnutrition is an important element in explaining these deaths.
"Undoubtedly the lack of proper nutrients is a factor that contributed to these children dying," said Mr Heredia.
Marcelino Pérez welcomes us to his community, called Lapacho II, just outside a small town called Tartagal, near the border with Bolivia. He introduces himself as the tribal chief, leading around 300 Wichi and several stray dogs.
Marcelino knows the problem well. His grandson died of malnutrition just a few weeks ago.
'Silent killer'
"All I know is that we don't have food. Sometimes we can't get enough work or money to cover our needs. And what we receive from the government is not enough either," he said.
In Lapacho II we see many children playing in the dirt, with torn clothes and telltale signs of extreme poverty.
But this is not Africa. They are not extremely thin and do not have protruding bones.
Malnutrition can be a silent killer, we are told, as it weakens the system until a minor disease can prove fatal.
This community is an image of the refugee camps you see in places hit by natural disasters. No earthquake or tsunami has hit Lapacho II, but Marcelino says their disaster is deforestation.

Large fields of soy beans have been planted where forests used to grow "We used to get our food from the forest and now we have had to adapt to the white man's food, which is not sufficient," he said.

Since ancient times the Wichi have been a tribe of hunter-gatherers. For centuries the forests in the area provided them with food high in protein, like fish and fruit, which kept them in good health. But all that has changed now.
The government of Salta says that between 2000 and 2006, at least 600,000 hectares of forest - an area four times the size of Greater London - was flattened in the region by farming corporations that harvest soy beans, corn or other grains and cereals.
Too late
Travelling to Tartagal this became evident.
The public road we took was flanked by miles and miles of soybean fields, which have replaced the forests that used to grow there.
However, these commodities are not going directly to the local communities, although they are what has kept Argentina's economy booming. Last year its GDP rose by 9.5%, a figure surpassed only by China and India.
"The deforestation was stopped a couple of years ago by a judicial ruling, but it has already changed the indigenous communities' way of life," said Claudia Lungu, a member of Asociana, a local organisation that deals with the social issues groups like the Wichi face in Salta.
"Although we see that these groups are now getting more help from the authorities, we believe that they are much poorer than before because of the problems created by deforestation, like malnutrition," she added.
“We have little ones dying here and next to us there are huge fields of food. All I ask is where is all that food going while we have this problem?”Marcelino Pérez
Some of the places we visited were tiny indigenous communities completely surrounded by crop, like little islands of human life in the middle of fields of soybeans. The only way in or out is along the farmers' roads.
In places like this, the Wichi depend on government help for food, but this has not been enough to end the malnutrition.
"We know about the problem. We acknowledge it, but we also think things are improving compared to previous years. It is a difficult situation as there are many factors at play," said Salta's health minister, Luis Gabriel Chagra.
In some cases the communities are in such remote areas that if a child has health problems the local doctors find out about it only when it is too late.
"Also, many indigenous mothers are very shy and reserved and not willing to talk to a white-skinned doctor, even if their child is dying. Therefore we are training people from their own community to become health officials," said Mr Chagra.
The local government has also called on the help of Unicef, the children's program of United Nations, to help the Wichi cope with this substantial change of life.
It might be too early to find out if these solutions will prevent further deaths.
In the meantime, the problem of malnutrition remains difficult to accept for the Wichi.
"We have little ones dying here and next to us there are huge fields of food. All I ask is where is all that food going while we have this problem?" said Marcelino with a stern face.
The answer is China. Most of the soybeans and corn goes there. But he could not care less about that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12973543

MALNUTRITION: GM crops to be allowed into Britain

 Jamie Doward The Observer, Sunday 6 February 2011
GM crops to be allowed into Britain under controversial EU plansUK to back imports of animal feed with traces of GM crops in move to benefit US exporters
 Photograph: Martin Argles for the Observer

The decision to allow feed containing traces of GM crops into the UK is likely to alarm environmentalists who have long resisted such imports.

Genetically modified crops will be allowed to enter the UK food chain without the need for regulatory clearance for the first time under controversial plans expected to be approved this week.
The Observer understands that the UK intends to back EU plans permitting the importing of animal feed containing traces of unauthorised GM crops in a move that has alarmed environmental groups.
Importing animal feed containing GM feed must at present be authorised by European regulators. But a vote on Tuesday in favour of the scheme put forward by the EU's standing committee on the food chain and animal health would overturn the EU's "zero tolerance" policy towards the import of unauthorised GM crops.
The move would mark a significant victory for the GM lobby, which has pushed for a relaxation of the blanket ban for years.Environmental groups claim the GM industry wants to use the presence of unauthorised organisms in animal feed as part of a wider strategy to promote its technology.
"The GM industry is pushing this proposal so it can wedge its foot firmly in the door and open up the British and European markets to food no one wants to eat," said Helen Wallace, director of GeneWatch UK, which campaigns against GM food. "Its long-term aim is to contaminate the food chain to such an extent that GM-free food will disappear."
Relaxing the EU's zero-tolerance position would greatly benefit US feed exporters. The push for Europe to drop its zero-tolerance policy began in 2009 after EU authorities found traces of GM maize in soy shipments from the US and refused to allow its entry. Such recalls are expensive and those affected are unlikely to receive compensation.
GM supporters warn that the current zero-tolerance policy could result in a dramatic shortage of feed for livestock. But critics dismiss the claims as scaremongering and say there is no evidence to back up them up.
"This is a solution without a problem, and the price could be very high indeed when unknown genetically modified organisms are let loose in the food chain," said Eve Mitchell, food policy adviser at Food and Water Europe, a campaign group.
"Rather than ignoring EU food safety laws to help the US soy industry cut costs, we should simply buy the stuff from countries that segregate their GM properly. If it hasn't been tested, why eat it?"
Many of the GM crops, notably soy and maize, that have been found in animal feed imported into Europe are resistant to multiple herbicides. Critics blame these new GM crops for the recent rise of "super weeds" across vast tracts of the US farm belt.
Friends of the Earth Europe said it had obtained expert legal advice questioning the legality of the EU's plan. But European regulators believe that allowing the import of animal feed containing no more than 0.1% of GM traces does not jeopardise food security.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/06/genetically-modified-crops-uk

MALNUTRITION: Argentine farmers halt grain sales

17 Jan 2011 Strike over export curbs rekindles a dispute that helped drive global grains prices to record highs three years ago.


Soybean group Acsoja has estimated that production would fall by 13 per cent as a result of water shortages [EPA]
Argentine farmers have halted sales of wheat, corn and soy in a strike over export curbs, rekindling a dispute that helped drive global grains prices to record highs three years ago.
The seven-day protest by growers, which started on Monday, could fuel supply concerns just as dry weather linked to the weather phenomena La Nina worsens the outlook for soy and corn production.
Farmers in Argentina, one of the world's biggest food suppliers, have been at odds with the government for years over export curbs aimed at taming inflation and guaranteeing affordable supplies of everyday staples.
They say the system of wheat and corn export quotas lets millers and exporters pay farmers low prices, and have urged the government to scrap the caps.
"These distortive, interventionist measures have been repeated for several harvests in recent years," Hugo Biolcati, leader of the Argentine Rural Society, said when the country's four farming groups announced the strike last week.
The protest is bad news for Christina Fernandez, the president, nine months from the October election in which she is widely expected to seek re-election.
The wave of farmer strikes that began in March 2008 over a tax hike on soy exports battered her popularity, hit Argentine asset prices and disrupted grains shipments at the height of the soy harvest.
However, the impact of this week's protest on grains prices will likely be muted because soy and corn harvesting has yet to begin.

La Nina effect
Government officials condemned the farmers for calling another strike, even warning of possible flour shortages, although Julian Dominguez, the agriculture minister, acknowledged wheat farmers' problems.
The government is taking steps to ensure mills and exporters paid fixed local wheat prices to farmers and punish those that did not.
Dominguez advocated an even stronger state role in the country's multibillion-dollar grains trade during a weekend newspaper interview.

La Nina
La Nina is a weather phenomena causing abnormal cooling of the central and eastern Pacific.
Generally, La Nina will mean that parts of the world that normally experience dry weather will be drier and parts with wet weather will be wetter.
La Nina translates from Spanish as "The Little Girl" and is meteorologically the opposite of the El Nino.
La Ninas occur on average every three to five years and will typically last for up to 12 months.
"What the grains trade needs in Argentina is the presence of the state in the market - going back to the model of the Federal Grains Agency or National Grains Board, a body made up of the grains exchanges, the state, the co-operatives, that can ensure the market works for farmers," he was quoted as telling Tiempo Argentino newspaper.
Low rainfalls began worrying the agriculture industry in December in response to La Nina diminishing rain over Argentina. Weather fluctuations have helped lift corn and soy prices close to their record highs of 2008 in recent weeks.
Soaring prices are good news for farmers, but the parched soils are worrying farmers across Argentina's famous Pampa plains.
Argentina is the world's leading exporter of soyoil and soymeal and the third-largest global supplier of soybeans. It is also a major wheat supplier and the second-largest corn provider.
Soy exports brought in $12.98bn in 2009, accounting for 23 per cent of total export earnings.
But this year, soybean group Acsoja has estimated that production would fall by 13 per cent as a result of water shortages.
La Nina, which affects weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region and in particular the amount of rainfall, is threatening to expand drought in the Americas while bringing more devastating rains to Australia, according to the US Climate Prediction Centre.
La Nina-inspired rainfall has pushed Australia into recording its third wettest year on record in 2010 while causing drought in grain-growing areas of the southern US as well as in Brazil and Argentina.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/01/20111175129401574.html