By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, California, Jan 11 2016 (IPS)

Millions of African farmers don’t need to adapt to climate change. They have done that already.

Frederic Mousseau

Like many others across the continent, indigenous communities in Ethiopia’s Gamo Highlands are well prepared against climate variations. The high biodiversity, which forms the basis of their traditional enset-based agricultural systems, allows them to easily adjust their farming practices, including the crops they grow, to climate variations.

People in Gamo are also used to managing their environment and natural resources in sound and sustainable ways, rooted in ancestral knowledge and customs, which makes them resilient to floods or droughts. Although African indigenous systems are often perceived as backward by central governments, they have a lot of learning to offer to the rest of the world when contemplating the challenges of climate change and food insecurity.

Often building on such indigenous knowledge, farmers all over the African continent have assembled a tremendous mass of successful experiences and innovations in agriculture. These efforts have steadily been developed over the past few decades following the droughts that impacted many countries in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Kenya, the system of biointensive agriculture has been designed over the past thirty years to help smallholders grow the most food on the least land and with the least water. 200,000 Kenyan farmers, feeding over one million people, have now switched to biointensive agriculture, which allows them to use up to 90 per cent less water than in conventional agriculture and 50 to 100 per cent fewer purchased fertilizers, thanks to a set of agroecological practices that provide higher soil organic matter levels, near continuous crop soil coverage, and adequate fertility for root and plant health.

The Sahel region, bordering the Sahara Desert, is renowned for its harsh environment and the threat of desertification. What is less known is the tremendous success of the actions undertaken to curb desert encroachment, restore lands, and farmers’ livelihoods.

Started in the 1980s, the Keita Rural Development Project in Niger took some twenty years to restore ecological balance and drastically improve the agrarian economy of the area. During the period, 18 million trees were planted, the surface under woodlands increased by 300 per cent, whereas shrubby steppes and sand dunes decreased by 30 per cent. In the meantime, agricultural land was expanded by about 80 per cent.

All over the region, a multitude of projects have used agroecological solutions to restore degraded land and spare scarce water resources while at the same time increasing food production, and improving farmers’ livelihoods and resilience. In Timbuktu, Mali, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has reached impressive results, with yields of 9 tons of rice per hectare, more than double of conventional methods, while saving water and other inputs. In Burkina Faso, soil and water conservation techniques, including a modernized version of traditional planting pits­zai­ have been highly successful to rehabilitate degraded soils and boost food production and incomes.

Southern African countries have been struggling with recurrent droughts resulting in major failures in corn crops, the main staple cereal in the region. Over the years, farmers and governments have developed a wide variety of agroecological solutions to prevent food crises and foster their resilience to climatic shocks. The common approach in all these responses has been to depart from the conventional monocropping of corn, which is highly vulnerable to climate shocks while it is also very costly and demanding in purchased inputs such as hybrid seeds and fertilizers. Successful sustainable and affordable solutions include managing and harvesting rain water, expanding conservation and regenerative farming, promoting the production and consumption of cassava and other tuber crops, diversifying production, and integrating crops with fertilizer trees and nitrogen fixating leguminous plants.

The enumeration could go on. The few examples cited above all come from a series of 33 case studies released recently by the Oakland Institute. The series sheds light on the tremendous success of agroecological agriculture across the African continent in the face of climate change, hunger, and poverty.

These success stories are just a sample of what Africans are already doing to adapt to climate variations while preserving their natural resources, improving their livelihoods and their food supply. One thing they have in common is that they have farmers, including many women farmers, in the driver’s seat of their own development. Millions of farmers who practice agroecology across the continent are local innovators who experiment to find the best solutions in relation to water availability, soil characteristics, landscapes, cultures, food habits, and biodiversity.

Another common feature is that they depart from the reliance on external agricultural inputs such as commercial seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and chemical pesticides, on which is based the so-called conventional agriculture. The main inputs required for agroecology are people’s own energy and common sense, shared knowledge, and of course respect for and a sound use of natural resources.

Why are these success stories mostly untold, is a fair question to ask. They are largely buried under the rhetoric of a development discourse based on a destructive cocktail of ignorance, greed, and neocolonialism. Since the 2008 food price crisis, we have been told over and over that Africa needs foreign investors in agriculture to ‘develop’ the continent; that Africa needs a Green Revolution, more synthetic fertilizers, and genetically modified crops in order to meet the challenges of hunger and poverty. The agroecology case studies debunk these myths.

Evidence is there, with irrefutable facts and figures, that millions of Africans have already designed their own solutions, for their own benefits. They have successfully adapted to both the unsustainable agricultural systems inherited from the colonial times, and to the present challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. Unfortunately, a majority of African governments, with encouragement from donor countries, focus most of their efforts and resources to subsidize and encourage a model of agriculture, largely reliant on the expensive commercial agricultural inputs, in particular synthetic fertilizers mainly sold by a handful of Western corporations.

The good news is that an agroecological transition is affordable for African governments. They spend billions of dollars every year to subsidize fertilizers and pesticides for their farmers. In Malawi, the government’s subsidies to agricultural inputs, mostly fertilizers, amount to close to 10 percent of the national budget every year. The evidence that exists, based on the experience of millions of farmers, should prompt African governments to make the only reasonable choice: to give the continent a leading role in the way out of world hunger and corporate exploitation and move to a sustainable and climate-friendly way to produce food or all.

(End)

Excerpt:

A woman farmer using the treadle pump in Orissa. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Bijay Singh
LUDHIANA, India, Jul 15 2015 (IPS)

Long-term agricultural growth in India is slowing down. The lands that saw remarkable increases in productivity in the 1970s and 80s, thanks to the technology rolled out as part of the first “Green Revolution”, are not yielding the same results today.

India still has the second highest number of undernourished people in the world. To confront this problem, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for a Second Green Revolution on Indian soils. But what does this mean and what will it take to make this happen?The first Green Revolution did its job in an unprecedented way, averting a disastrous famine and preventing millions from going hungry. Now, we need an equally weighty intervention fit for the complexities of the 21st century.

The challenges Indian agriculture faces today are vastly more complex than those it faced 40 years ago. The technologies used in the first Green Revolution involved improved high yielding varieties of rice and wheat, irrigation, fertilisers, and pesticides.

But an increasingly varied climate and mismanagement of agricultural inputs are changing the agricultural landscape. Our Second Green Revolution needs to be refreshed to match this new complexity.

A data driven approach is going to be key. Sophisticated technology is now being developed to equip farmers with the information they need to protect their harvests in the face of scarce water and soil degradation.

So farmers in the North Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, who have access to the new tools like the Leaf Colour Chart and the handheld GreenSeeker optical sensor, can analyse the health of their crops, and apply the right amount of nitrogen to the soil to boost production of cereals like rice and wheat.

Land can also be levelled into a flat service, using last controlled devices that are mounted on tractors, to help farmers save up to 30 percent of water.

A considered plan for fertiliser use is also going to be essential. Just like humans, soils need a balanced diet of the right kind of nutrients in order to be healthy, a fact which has been overlooked by government subsidy programmes that only favoured urea for a long time.

The right kind of nutrients for the specific soil area needs to be applied, at the right rate, at the right time and in the right place for optimal soil health – we call this the 4Rs or nutrient stewardship. Modi’s call to reopen fertiliser plants in Sindri and Gorakhpur, and open new ones in West Bengal must take into account this need for a “smart” approach, and make optimal use of key inputs such as fertiliser.

We cannot feed India, or indeed the world, without mineral (man-made) fertilisers. Although the debate has raged for many years pitting organic and mineral fertilisers against one another, science tells us that there is no conflict between these nutrient sources; quite the contrary, their use is complementary.

Mineral fertilisers actually increase soil organic matter content as a result of the greater root growth you get when crop yields improve. For example, over a 25-year period in Punjab, where mineral fertilisers have been consistently applied, soil organic carbon content rose by 38 percent.

Fertilisers also encourage enhanced microbial activity – a process that is vital for the long-term productivity of the soil and its ability to process nutrients. The effects are even greater when mineral and organic fertilisers are used together.

More research into technologies like these, that will help farmers make the most efficient use of scarce resources, whilst leaving minimal impact on the environment should be an essential element of India’s Second Green Revolution.

Investment in rural infrastructure, improving market access and credit facilities will all need to be considered in conjunction with this. We cannot expect smallholders to take on new technologies without ensuring they can afford to use them, and get their increased amount of produce to market.

South Asia has long been a champion in the field of microfinance, that enables the rural poor to get access to credit and vital inputs like seed and fertiliser. Indeed, the 2015 World Food Prize Laureate, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed of BRAC in Bangladesh, has been awarded this prestigious prize for recognising that the poorest need an entire package of interventions in order to graduate to a sustainable livelihood.

Improved technologies must be distributed hand in hand with financing to buy them, training on how to use them, and encouragement to join farmer co-operatives and savings groups, both to improve their social standing and increase their bargaining power when selling their crops on. Without these supporting interventions, upcoming technologies cannot succeed.

The first Green Revolution did its job in an unprecedented way, averting a disastrous famine and preventing millions from going hungry. Now, we need an equally weighty intervention fit for the complexities of the 21^st century, and India could lead the way.

As one of the most populous nations, with a high percentage working in agriculture, the time is now. If we follow these steps diligently, a Second Green Revolution for India is not out of reach.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Eight decades ago, during the Great Depression, newly elected U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the New Deal consisting of a number of mutually supporting initiatives of which the most prominent were:

• A public works programme financed by deficit financing
• A new social contract to improve living standards for working families, and
• Regulation of financial markets to protect assets of ordinary citizens and to channel financial resources into productive investment.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram. UN Photo/Mark Garten

Today, we are in the midst of another protracted economic slowdown. The world needs a New Deal, which is both global and sustainable. The current system and crisis are global in nature, requiring a corresponding response.

It also has to be sustainable. We are in the midst of economic, social and environmental crises, with global warming looming larger. We are also threatened by pollution, natural resource degradation, loss of forests and biodiversity, as well as socio-political instability due to growing disparities.

The Global Green New Deal (GGND) should move all to a different, sustainable developmental pathway – in the spirit of Rio. The GGND should have ingredients similar to the original New Deal – namely public works employment, social protection, and increased productive investments for output and job recovery.

After half a decade of economic contraction and stagnation, with even developing countries slowing down recently, it is urgent to prioritise economic recovery measures, and not to expect recovery at the expense of others. The GGND should be part of a broader counter-cyclical response with three main elements.

First, national stimulus packages in developed and developing countries aiming to revive and green national economies. Second, international policy coordination to ensure that developed countries’ stimulus packages generate jobs in the North and strong developmental impacts in developing countries. Third, greater financial support for developing countries, as with the Marshall Plan.

Such investments should lead to the revival of growth that is both ecologically sustainable and socially inclusive. Support for agriculture should be an important feature of national stimulus packages in developing countries, with special attention to promote climate smart and ecologically sustainable agriculture.

After a half century of decline, except in the mid-1970s, real agricultural commodity prices were rising from about a decade ago. The recent price trend reflects yield growth slowing in recent years, while demand continued to grow rapidly. Rising incomes have increased food demand for humans and animal husbandry, while demand for biofuels has expanded rapidly in the last decade.

Higher and more volatile food prices threaten the food security and nutrition of billions. Prices were increasingly volatile for over half a decade, with successively higher peaks in 2007-08, 2010-11 and 2012. “Financialisation” – linking markets for commodity derivatives with other financial assets – also worsened price volatility.

Coordination and collaboration

Creating jobs in developed countries with strong developmental impacts should be part of developed countries’ stimulus packages. Over the longer term, reforms of the international financial and multilateral trading systems should support sustainable development.

Until recently, official development assistance for agricultural development in developing countries had declined for decades. Meanwhile, rich countries have continued to subsidise and protect their farmers, undermining food production in developing countries.

Food security should be treated as a global public good since the political and social consequences of food insecurity has global ramifications. Hence, there should be a multilateral response to ensure food security.

The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s – with considerable government and international not-for-profit support – greatly increased crop yields and food production, reducing hunger, starvation and poverty. However, efforts for wheat, maize and rice were not extended to other food crops.

We need a second generation Green Revolution to promote sustainable, including ‘climate smart’ agriculture, especially for water-stressed, arid areas. Public investments – with international assistance – must provide the incentives and other support needed to increase family farm investments.

Many other complementary interventions are urgently needed. Food security cannot be achieved without much better social protection. Resources are needed to strengthen social protection for billions in developing countries to ensure decent employment, food security and more sustainable development.

But sustainable social protection requires major improvements in public finances. While revenue generation requires greater national incomes, tax collection can still be greatly enhanced through improved international cooperation on tax and other international financial matters.

Clearly, the agenda for a Global Green New Deal requires not only bold new national developmental initiatives, but also far better and more equitable multilateral cooperation offered by a strong revival of the inclusive multilateralism of the United Nations system.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram is Assistant Director General and Coordinator for Economic and Social Development at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.

That smallholder farmers hold the key to Africa’s agricultural potential is widely recognised. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Sabina Zaccaro
ROME, Sep 21 2012 (IPS)

As the world searches desperately for ways to boost food production by at least 70 percent by 2050 to feed an increasingly hungry planet, many are looking to Africa as the place where a large part of this potential can be realised, mainly for its huge portion of arable land.

Arusha, Tanzania, will soon become the site of a major brainstorming session on this very topic, when it plays host to the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) from Sept. 26 to 28, which is aimed at developing African-led food security solutions.

At the recent G8 Summit, global leaders including 21 African countries and 27 private sector companies committed three billion dollars to a new alliance for food security and nutrition.

Their goal is to raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years. AGRF is designed to encourage African leaders’ commitments by promoting ad hoc investments and policy support to increase agricultural productivity and income growth for African farmers – primarily through environmentally sustainable methods and innovative agricultural finance models.

The President of IFAD, Dr. Kanayo F. Nwanze, will address these issues at the Arusha Forum in a panel focusing on how to make African national and regional markets work.

Tanzania’s recent agricultural growth represents a case study of what is possible, forum organisers say. In the Kilombero district of Morogoro, the yields for maize have recently increased for some smallholder farmers from 1.5 to 4.5 tonnes per hectare; the yields for rice have increased from 2.5 to 6.5 tonnes per hectare.

That smallholder farmers hold the key to Africa’s agricultural potential is widely recognised, and activists hope the forum will “explore new ways to provide resources, overcome challenges and improve yields for the millions of farmers who are working less than two hectares of land across the continent”.

According to Carlos Seré, chief development strategist of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), increasing agricultural investments is a key factor. “We haven’t invested in agriculture since the green revolution as much as we should have, because it was basically felt that this was something that the market would take care of.”

“Now we realise that we have small stocks. The big stocks, for example of cereals, kept by the government agencies in the past have now been reduced significantly. So when drought in the United States or in Australia, or problems in Russia hit these markets, then prices go up rapidly because there isn’t a big buffer of these stocks like the ones of the past.”

Agricultural investments have a huge direct impact on the lives of smallholders, who manage a large proportion of the land in the developing world.

“They need more public goods in terms of research, extension and a conducive policy environment,” Seré told IPS.

“IFAD is fully involved in helping governments to do that. Our work is about increasing the supply of food, and helping build the resilience of smallholders and their organisations to become more efficient, using land more efficiently, sharing knowledge, getting better organised, and increasing their production in a more cost effective manner, getting food to the cities and markets without incurring high transaction costs.”

Many of the world’s poorest people spend more than half their income on food, making them vulnerable when food prices rise.

The FAO food price index, which measures monthly price changes for a food basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar, averaged 213 points in August, unchanged from July. Although still high, the FAO index currently stands 25 points below its peak of 238 points in February 2011 and 18 points below its August 2011 level.

According to FAO, the index is reassuring and, although vigilance is needed, current prices “do not justify talk of a world food crisis”.

“This is a very different situation from what we had a couple of years back,” Seré told IPS. “We do realise that this situation has to be monitored carefully, but we clearly don’t see it as being as serious as what we had before.”

Food security experts believe that the international community is now better prepared to deal with global food price shocks than it was in 2007 and 2008. “We have stronger mechanisms for coordination, analysis, and information sharing,” according to Seré.

Many challenges still remain. “There is need for productivity growth, particularly in smallholder agriculture systems, better climate-adapted farming, better functioning and integrated markets, and higher and more stable incomes for women and men living in poverty,” Seré said.

All these issues should be part of a continuing agenda, which goes beyond specific instances of global price spikes.

What is troubling to some experts is the lack of global awareness of the interconnected outcomes of food insecurity. But when the international price of cereals began to rise to record levels in June this year, following one of the worst droughts ever to hit the U.S. – the world’s largest producer of maize and soybeans – it sent a strong message about an interdependent global food system.

“I think it is vital to make the link between the food crisis at home and what happens in the rest of the world,” Seré said. “People often don’t have a clear understanding of how interconnected these issues are. For example, soybeans for pig feed in Germany come from Brazil, (which is) affected by rain forest clearing there and then there are jobs attached to producing these commodities in (various) different places.”

Only a holistic analysis of the food system can lead to concrete, global solutions.

(END)

A successful women’s farming project in Ethiopia is a model for training other urban farmer groups all over Africa on how to adapt to climate change. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
ADDIS ABABA, Aug 24 2012 (IPS)

Eight years ago Kenbesh Mengesha earned an uncertain income collecting firewood from local government forests and selling them to her fellow slum-dwellers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She would earn on average about 50 cents a day, if she was lucky.

But now she is part of a successful women’s farming project that is a model for training other urban farmer groups all over Africa on how to adapt to climate change.

According to the World Bank, Ethiopia is extremely vulnerable to drought and other natural disasters such as floods, heavy rains, frost and heat waves. Global warming has worsened this, as global circulation models predict a 1.7 to 2.1 degree centigrade rise in the country’s mean temperature by 2050.

This is expected to have a significant impact on food security. As recently as 2011 the country and the entire Horn of Africa were hit by the worst drought in 60 years. It resulted in a severe food crisis, with the United Nations declaring famine in the region.

The World Bank estimates that food insecurity will cost Ethiopia 75 to 100 billion dollars each year to adapt to climate change from 2010 until 2050.  

So when Mengesha and 29 other women who also used to earn a living collecting firewood formed a local community organisation, it became the start of a safer and more sustainable way of life.

“Collecting firewood was and still is a risky job. I know of several women who have been raped by men who take advantage of them while in the bush collecting the firewood,” she says.

But today life is less uncertain for Mengesha. And she is no longer cutting down the country’s natural resources in order to get by.

Known as the Gurara Women’s Association, which now has a membership of 200, the group farms almost two hectares of free government-leased land near Gurara slum in Addis Ababa by practicing what it calls an integrated bioeconomy system.

Community self-help groups here are allowed to apply for government land through the local government and the sub-city administration – if the project is to be implemented within city environs. The women’s group has a five-year renewable lease.

This group of women has discovered innovative ways of handling the ever-changing climatic conditions and combating food insecurity.

They were trained by the non-governmental organisation Bioeconomy Africa, which runs the Africa Bioeconomy Capacity Development or ABCD Institute. The women underwent two weeks of training on different integrated techniques in small-scale agriculture.

And it has proved successful as it has earned the members of this association enough money to feed their families, pay school fees for their children and even create employment opportunities for others.

This in itself is a significant feat in this East African nation, which has a population of 82 million people and is the second-poorest country in the world. According to the Multidimensional Poverty Index, developed by Oxford University, 90 percent of Ethiopians live in utter poverty, with 39 percent surviving on 1.25 dollars a day.

“We learned how to utilise the least space whether fertile or not, for maximum agricultural production,” said Fantanesh Atnafic, one of the founding members of the organisation.

“In the recent past, we have seen environmental conditions change – drastically. Rainfall is no longer reliable as it was some 20 years ago. Yet when the dry spell comes, it is usually more prolonged than normal, which has a negative effect on agriculture in general,” she said.

But a changing climate does mean defeat for smallholder farmers, according to Dr. Getachew Tikubet, the director of operations at Bioeconomy Africa.

“It is true that the climatic conditions are changing, which is a huge setback for many African farmers. But the truth is that all problems have solutions. And that is what we are trying to address with African smallholder farmers,” he said.

The women’s association uses different methods of intensive farming that create an ideal environment for their crops.

“We usually blend indigenous knowledge of farming, such as use of manure, with scientific techniques learned from different organisations and individuals, which include extraction of biogas and methane gas from the cow dung before using the residue as manure,” said Atnafic, a mother of six whose husband was killed in the military 20 years ago.

The gases are used as fuel to replace the use of firewood.

“We have learned many things. For example, during hotter climatic conditions like what we are experiencing at the moment, we construct structures that are roofed using black nets in order to keep moisture in the soils,” explained Ihite Wolde Mariam, the association’s chairperson.

Black net roofing has been shown to reduce the amount of heat on the ground.

“Naturally, the black colour absorbs heat. And when we make a greenhouse with a black net, or make ordinary farm roofing using the black net above the crops, we actually reduce the heat underneath by 40 percent. This eventually reduces the evaporation rate, hence saving the soil moisture for the crops,” explained Tikubet.

The women’s group has managed to purchase 10 Friesian dairy cows for milk production.

The members currently grow various types of vegetables such as spinach, kale, tomatoes and carrots, as well as crops for commercial purposes. The fresh produce is used in the kitchen of the on-site restaurant they opened to the public.

“We also use cow dung to produce biogas that is used in the restaurant for cooking. After that, the dung is then converted into organic manure to be used for horticulture,” explained Mariam.

For further income generation, the group has started a poultry project, with 500 laying hens. It also has 12 beehives for honey production and four commercial bathrooms where slum-dwellers shower for a fee.

“This is one of the most successful urban farmer projects that has benefited from our training programme. They have become a model for training other farmer groups from all over Africa,” said Tikubet.

“They have clearly demonstrated that small-scale farming is the way to go, in order to achieve the much desired green revolution in Africa,” he said. “Unfortunately, modernisation neglects smallholder farmers.”

And each member of the group earns between 300 and 350 Birr (16 to 19 dollars) in dividends every month, in addition to the three dollars a day that they are paid for working on the farming project.

“The dividend is already good enough. It has enabled me to see my last-born son through secondary school, and it allows me to afford basic necessities and provide for my grandchildren as well,” said Mengesha, a mother of five.

*This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.