By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Jan 5 2016 (IPS)

2016 is the International Year of Pulses, and we at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture are proud to be organizing what promises to be the landmark event, the Joint World Cowpea and Pan-African Grain Legume Research Conference.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

The March event in Zambia should draw experts from around the continent and beyond and offer an opportunity to share ideas into the edible seeds – cowpeas, common bean, lentils, chickpeas, faba and lima beans and other varieties – now enjoying their well-deserved 15 minutes of fame as nutritional superstars.

Pulses may look small, but they are a big deal.

Nutritionists consistently find that their low glycemic profiles and hefty fiber content help prevent and manage the so-called diseases of affluence, such as obesity and diabetes. And the protein they pack holds great potential to assist the world in managing its livestock practices in a more sustainable way, so that more people can enjoy better and more varied middle-income diets without placing excess strains on natural resources.

First and foremost, we must make more pulses available. Global per capita availability of pulses declined by more than a third in the four decades following the 1960s. But production has been growing sharply since 2005, especially in developing countries. Cowpeas have been one of the specific leaders of this trend, which has been marked by very welcome increases in yield as well as more hectares being planted.

Importantly, almost a fifth of all pulses today are traded, up almost three-fold from the 1980s, a pace that vastly outstrips the growing trade in cereals. Moreover, while North America is an exporting powerhouse, so is East Africa and Myanmar; more than half of all pulses exports now come from developing countries.

There is a serious opportunity to scale up these protean protein sources.

The good news for the millions of small family farmers is that this may be more about reclaiming a traditional virtue than revolution. After all, the prolific Arab traveler Ibn Battuta wrote about Bambara nuts fried in shea oil while on a trip to Mali and the Sahel back in 1352. The cowpea fritters, known as akara in Nigeria and often seen at roadside stands around West Africa, are their direct descendants, and the elder siblings of acarajés, declared part of the cultural heritage of Brazil – where they are eaten with shrimp – and where their Yoruba name survived the dreadful middle passage of the slave trade.

We at IITA have been cowpea champions for decades. Just this month Swaziland’s Ministry of Agriculture released to local farmers five new cowpea varieties we developed – seeds that mature up to 20 percent faster and yield up to four times more. That latest success comes in great measure, thanks to IITA’s gene bank, which holds, for the world community, 15,112 unique samples of cowpea hailing from 88 countries.

Why so many cowpeas? Our question is why aren’t more being grown!

After all, cowpea contains 25 percent protein, is an excellent conveyor of vitamins and minerals, adapts to a broad range of soil types, tolerates drought as well as shade, grows fast to combat erosion, and as a legume pumps nitrogen back into the soil. We can eat its main product – sometimes known as black-eyed peas – and animals enjoy the residual stems and leaves.

So why don’t we hear more about it? Well, perhaps the world wasn’t listening, but it’s about to have another chance.

Seriously, though, cowpeas come with problems. First of all, the plant is subject to assault at every point in its life cycle, be it from aphids, mosaic virus, pod borers, rival weeds, or the dreaded weevils that fight with fungi and bacteria to consume the seeds while in storage. These are things IITA scientists try to combat, through seed breeding or spreading innovative technologies such as the PICS bags that keep the weevils out.

There is much more to learn, about the plant, how to grow it, and how to bolster its role in the food system. I’lll wager that in the Year of Pulses much will be learned about processing, a critical phase, and one that is already allowing many Nigerian businesses to prosper. Perhaps big global food manufacturers will find new ways to grind pulses into their grain products to produce healthier foods with more complete proteins.

As for farming cowpea, the plant can serve to reduce weeds and fertilizer for the cash crops. It is also harvested before the cereal crops, offering food security and also flexibility, as farmers can choose to let the plants grow, reducing bean yields but increasing that of fodder.

The plant’s epicenter – genetically and today – is West Africa. Nigeria is the big producer, but is also the main importer from neighboring countries. Niger is the world’s biggest exporter. But its ability to deal with dry weather and help combat soil erosion might be of interest elsewhere, such as in Central America’s dry corridor.

(End)

Excerpt:

Studies show that indigenous fish species in Uganda – here being caught on Lake Victoria – have shrunk in size due to an increase in water temperature as a result of climate change. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Aug 22 2015 (IPS)

Climate change is reducing the size of several species of fish on lakes in Uganda and its neighbouring East African countries, with a negative impact on the livelihoods of millions people who depend on fishing for food and income.

Studies conducted on inland lakes in Uganda, including Lake Victoria which is shared by three East African countries, indicate that indigenous fish species have shrunk in size due to an increase in temperatures in the water bodies.

“What we are seeing in Lake Victoria and other lakes is a shift in the composition of fish. In the past, we had a dominance of bigger fish but now we are seeing the fish stocks dominated by small fish. This means they are the ones which are adapting well to the changed conditions,” said Dr Jackson Efitre, a lecturer in fisheries management and aquatic sciences at Uganda’s Makerere University.

“So if that condition goes on, he added, “the question is would we want to see our fish population dominated by small fish with little value?”

“We need to provide lake-dependent populations with an alternative for them to survive … If measures cannot be agreed and implemented quickly, then we are condemning those communities to death” – Dr Justus Rutaisire, responsible for aquaculture at Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organisation (NARO)
In Uganda, the fisheries sector accounts for 2.5 percent of the national budget and 12.5 percent of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP). It employs 1.2 million people, generates over 100 million dollars in exports and provides about 50 percent of the dietary proteins of Ugandans.

Efitre was one of the researchers for a study on ‘Application of policies to address the influence of climate change on inland aquatic and riparian ecosystems, fisheries and livelihoods”, which examined the influence of climate variability and change on fisheries resources and livelihoods using lakes Wamala and Kawi in the Victoria and Kyoga lake basins as case studies.

It also looked at the extent to which existing policies can be applied to address the impacts of and any challenges associated with climate change.

The study’s findings showed that temperatures around the two lakes had always varied but had increased consistently by 0.02-0.03^oC annually since the 1980s, and that rainfall had deviated from historical averages and on Lake Wamala – although not Lake Kawi – had generally been above average since the 1980s.

According to the study, these findings are consistent with those reported by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 and 2014 for the East African region.

Mark Olokotum, one of the study’s researchers, climate changes have affected the livelihoods of local fishing communities.

“These are fishers who depend on the environment. You either increase on the number of times you fish to get more fish or get more fishing gear to catch more fish. And once that happens, you spend more time fishing, earn much less although the price is high, and there are no fish so people have resorted to eating what is available,” he said.

Olokotum told IPS that the water balance of most aquatic systems in Uganda is determined by rainfall and temperature through evaporation.

He said that about 80 percent of the water gain in Lake Wamala was through rainfall while 86 percent of the loss was through evaporation, resulting in a negative water balance and the failure of the lake to retain its historical water levels.

“Therefore, although rainfall in the East African region is expected to increase as a result of climate change, this gain may be offset by increased evaporation associated with increases in temperature unless the increases in rainfall outweigh the loss through evaporation,” Olokotum explained.

These changes have made life more difficult for people like Clement Opedum and his eight sons who have traditionally depended on lakes as a source of food and income.

Opedum’s living has always come from the waters of Lake Wamala. In the past, sales of tilapia fish from the lake to neighbouring districts were brisk; and some would be bought by traders from the Democratic Republic of Congo, sustaining his family and other fishermen.

Those days are now gone. Over the years, the lake has steadily retreated from its former shores, leaving Opedum and his neighbours high and dry, and faced with the prospect that the lake could vanish entirely.

Charles Lugambwa, another fisherman in the same area, has been obliged to turn to farming, and he now grows yams, sweet potatoes and beans on land that was previously under the waters of the lake.

Lugambwa told IPS that apart from tilapia fish, other species have started disappearing from the lake in 30 or so years he has lived there.  “In 1994, the lake dried up completely but came back in 1998 following heavy rains,” he told IPS. “We used to catch very big tilapia but now they are quite tiny even though they are adult fish.”

Scientists and researchers argue that the causes of lake shrinking include water evaporation, increased cultivation on banks, cutting down of trees and destruction of wetlands, while the reduction in the size of tilapia has been linked to increased lake water temperature as a result of global warming.

Dr Richard Ogutu-Ohwayo, senior research officer at the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFFIRI) told IPS that the response to the impacts of climate change in Uganda had been concentrated on crops, livestock and forestry with almost no concern for the fisheries sector.

“It is high time government took the bold step to bring aquatic ecosystems and fisheries fully on board in its climate change responses,” he said.

According to Ogutu–Ohwayo, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the East African Community Policy on Climate Change commit states to building capacity, generating knowledge, and identifying adaptation and mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change, however these have barely been implemented.

Ogutu-Ohwayo who was part of the lake study research team, told IPS that Uganda has a water policy which provides for protection and management of water resources, and “we must apply these policies to manage the water resources of lakes Wamala, Kawi and other lakes through integrated approaches such as protecting wetlands, lake shores and river banks and controlling water extraction.”

Like other East African nations, Uganda has relied heavily on capture fisheries, or wild fisheries, with a tendency to marginalise aquaculture as far as resource allocation and manpower development is concerned.

With climate change leading to a decline in the size and stocks of wild fish and capture fisheries, fisheries experts are saying wild fish and capture fisheries from lakes alone can no longer meet the demand for fish, both for local consumption and export.

Fish processing plants around Lake Victoria, for example, are now operating at less than 50 percent capacity, while some have closed down.

Dr Justus Rutaisire, responsible for aquaculture at Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organisation (NARO), told IPS that aquaculture could be used as one of the adaptation measures to help communities that have depended on fish to supplement capture fisheries.

He noted, however, that the development of aquaculture in most Eastern African countries is constrained by low adoption of appropriate technologies, inadequate investment in research and inadequate aquaculture extension services.

“We need to provide lake-dependent populations with an alternative for them to survive and that is why we are asking government to invest in aquaculture,” said Rutaisire. ”If measures cannot be agreed and implemented quickly, then we are condemning those communities to death,” he warned.

Edited by Phil Harris   

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 7 2015 (IPS)

The traditions of Argentina’s gauchos or cowboys have joined together with modern agricultural technology in a unique alliance between stockbreeders and environmentalists aimed at preserving biodiversity in the pampas, boosting productivity, and enhancing the flavour of this South America’s country’s famous beef.

“National parks leave people out of the equation,” said Gustavo Marino, with the local environmental organisation Aves Argentinas (Argentine Birds). “We tried to come up with a way to integrate people, as well as human activity, as just another component of the ecosystem.”

Aves Argentinas and the Argentine Wildife Foundation (FVSA) are carrying out the project “Grasslands and Savannas of the Southern Cone of South America: Initiatives for Their Conservation in Argentina Project”.

“We also saw that the grasslands of the pampas are almost all privately owned, there is very little public land, and we necessarily had to work with producers,” Marino told IPS.

The project receives financing from the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility (GEF) and support from the National Institute of Agricultural Technology and National Parks Administration.

The initiative in Argentina forms part of the Southern Cone Grasslands Alliance. (The Southern Cone sub-region is made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.)

The grasslands “gave rise to a culture represented by the gaucho, but which permeates our entire society, with traditional meals like ‘asado’ (beef roasted over a wood fire) and the need we Argentines feel of open spaces, of being able to see the horizon and the sky,” said Marino.

The pampas are also at the heart of this country’s economy.

A typical snapshot of Argentina’s pampas: A small herd of cattle milling around a lone tree in natural grasslands in the rural municipality of Marcos Paz in the eastern province of Buenos Aires. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

“Grasslands provide a wide range of environmental goods and services, as well as the beef, milk, wool and leather produced by the pasture systems,” environmentalist Fernando Miñarro, the head of FVSA’s Pampas and Gran Chaco Programme, told IPS.

The pampas ecosystem, which is home to more than 370 species of gramineous plant species (mainly types of grass), 400 species of birds, and roughly 100 species of mammals – several of which are threatened, such as the pampas deer – is essential in maintaining the ecological balance.

“The pampas contribute to the maintenance of the composition of the atmospheric gases through the sequestration of CO2 (carbon dioxide) and soil erosion control, and they are a source of genetic material for a large number of plant and animal species which currently constitute the basis of the global diet,” he said.

They also play a fundamental role as a supplier of pollinating insects and natural enemies of crop pests, he added.

According to Marino, Argentina has lost 60 percent of its grasslands, due to the expansion of intensive agriculture (such as soy and rice production) and commercial forestry, and the urbanisation of the most valuable portions – the areas not prone to flooding.

The initiative, which involves 70 producers on 200,000 hectares of land, seeks to salvage traditional livestock-raising techniques of the pampas, perfected by means of new agricultural methods and ecological practices.

Marino mentioned rotational grazing and spelling of pastures for part of the peak growing season, and prescribed burning – practices that boost the growth of high-quality forage, he explained.

Another technique being used is the creation of small dikes, to retain water during the rainy season.

Using these methods they have curbed the growth of exotic plants and stimulated high-quality grass species for the cattle which, at the same time, attract birds like golden plovers (Pluvialis dominica).

“This is our most illustrative example. On one hand we are focusing on beef production and on the other we are thinking about the plovers’ quality of habitat,” said Marino, referring to precision livestock farming, adapted to each kind of pasture.

Marino, an agronomist and bird-watcher, said that when the project began eight years ago, stockbreeders looked at them as if they were oddballs.

But he said stockbreeders have increasingly turned to them for advice because “we offer a middle way where they earn money while maintaining biodiversity at the same time.”

Miñarro said that “When biodiversity is lost, the stockbreeder has to buy forage or nutrients. These inputs are expensive, and are tied to market prices. Preserving natural grasslands benefits breeders because it’s nothing short of the natural capital that their economic activity is based on.”

And thanks to the changes introduced, their products also fetch higher prices since they now have the grass-fed beef stamp, which open up export markets as well.

A local supermarket in Argentina promotes “grass-fed beef”, a label earned by the 70 stockbreeders participating in the project “Grasslands and Savannas of the Southern Cone of South America: Initiatives for Their Conservation in Argentina Project”, thanks to the changes they introduced. Credit: Courtesy of Gustavo Marino/Aves Argentinas

“Consumers increasingly want to know what the production system is like, and this stamp tells them that the beef is pasture-raised in an ecological fashion that respects biodiversity, and that it has the flavour of traditional Argentine beef, which made us famous around the world,” Marino said.

The participating stockbreeders also earn income from bird-watchers, as the programme advertises, provides advice, and trains guides for this ecotourism activity.

Tiziana Prada owns the San Antonio hacienda – a 4,918-hectare estate with some 2,000 head of cattle in the Esteros del Iberá wetlands in the northeast province of Corrientes, where she is practicing sustainable stockbreeding.

“We started out by converting old rice paddies to pasture land for cattle,” she told IPS. “We began seeing more wildlife; there are many more deer, and black howler monkeys, yacaré caiman, and many species of birds have come back.”

This was thanks to the new techniques introduced.

“If you know about the growth cycles of the good-quality grass species, you can manage them according to the seasons….always keeping in mind the nesting and breeding seasons of the birds and other animals that inhabit the grasslands,” she said.

She believes caring for the environment and keeping productivity up “go hand in hand.”

“Stockbreeders, especially now that they are moving into marginal areas, where the ecosystem is much more fragile, have to practice conservation because otherwise our resources are destroyed, our activity won’t be sustainable in time, and we also fervently believe that it is possible to produce sustainably without compromising our efficiency.”

Prada believes stockbreeders are increasingly interested because they can see “there is a growing urban market that is demanding that we preserve the environment so their kids will have a better world tomorrow.”

Moreover, it’s not just about business, she said. “Love of nature is something that rural people carry inside them,” she said.

Marino sums up that spirit with a stanza from a song, “El payador perseguido”, by legendary Argentine folksinger Atahualpa Yupanqui: “Estoy con los de mi lao cinchando tuitos parejos, pa hacer nuevo lo que es viejo y verlo al mundo cambiao” (I’m with those on my side all of us pulling together, to make the old new and see the world change).

“It’s about returning to traditional stockbreeding, but using today’s technologies,” he said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Sipian Lesan, a semi-nomadic pastoralist from Lekuru village in Samburu County, Kenya, taking care of one of his edible fruit-producing plants. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

By Robert Kibet
SAMBURU, Kenya, Jul 30 2015 (IPS)

Sipian Lesan bends to attend to the Vangueria infausta or African medlar plant that he planted almost two years ago. He takes great care not to damage the soft, velvety, acorn-shaped buds of this hardy and drought-resistant plant. ”All over here it is dry,” says the 51-year-old Samburu semi-nomadic pastoralist.

“We hope that every manyatta [homestead] will have a small food forest and that these will grow in concentric circles until they meet and touch each other and expand, creating a continuous food forest" – Aviram Rozin, founder of Sadhana Forest
Sipian is from Lekuru, a remote village located in the lower ranges of the Samburu Hills, an area dotted by Samburu homesteads commonly known as ‘manyattas’, some 358 km north of Kenya’s capital Nairobi. Here, the small villages are hot and arid, dominated by thorny acacia and patches of bare red earth that signify overgrazed land.

Samburu County is one of the regions in Kenya ravaged by recurrent drought, with most of the population living below the poverty line.

Climate change has made pastoralism an increasingly unsustainable livelihood option, leaving many households in Samburu without access to a daily meal, let alone a balanced diet.

“Animals have and will continue to die due to severe drought,” said Joshua Leparashau, a Samburu community leader. “The community still wants to hold on to the concept that having many livestock is a source of pride. This must change. If we as a community do not become proactive in curbing the menace, then we must be prepared for nature to destroy us without any mercy.”

As he looks after his fruit-producing sapling, Sipian tells IPS that some decades ago, before people he calls “greedy” started felling trees to satisfy the growing demand for indigenous forest products, his community used to feed on their readily available wild fruits during extreme hunger.

Now, through a concept new to them – dubbed food or garden forest, and brought to Kenya by Israeli environmentalist Aviram Rozin, founder of Sadhana Forest, an organisation dedicated to ecological revival and sustainable living work – the locals here are adopting planting of trees and shrubs that are favourable to the harsh local weather in their manyattas.

Community tree-planting in semi-arid Samburu County, Kenya. Robert Kibet/IPS

On a voluntary mission to help alleviate the degraded land and food insecurity in this part of northern Kenya, Rozin said that his vision would be to see at least each manyatta owning a food forest.

“The rate at which the community is embracing the concept is positive,” he said. “We hope that every manyatta will have a small food forest and that these will grow in concentric circles until they meet and touch each other and expand, creating a continuous food forest.”

However, the work of Sadhana Forest is not limited to forestation, as 35-year-old Resinoi Ewapere, who has eight children, explained.

“I used to leave early in the morning in search of water and return after noon. My children frequently missed school owing to the shortage of water and food.” But this daily routine came to an end after Sadhana Forest drilled a borehole from which water is now pumped using green energy – a combined windmill and solar energy system.

“Apart from the training we receive on planting fruit-producing trees and practising low-cost permaculture farming, we currently receive water from this centre at no cost,” Ewapere told IPS.

According to Rozin, Sadhana Forest’s initiative to help the Samburu community plant the 18 species of indigenous fruit trees which are drought-resistant and rich in nutrients is also part of a major conservation effort in that the combination of “small-scale food security and conservation of indigenous trees. will also create a linkage between people and trees and they will protect them.”

“We produce the seedlings and then supply them to the locals at no charge for them to plant in their manyattas,” said Rozin. Then, with careful management of the land and water-harvesting structures (swales or ditches dug on contours), water is fed directly into the plants.

The quality of the soil on the swales is improved by planting nitrogen-fixing plants such as beans, while the soil is watered and covered with mulch to prevent evaporation, thus remaining fertile.

One of the tree species being planted to create the food forests is Afzelia africana or African oak, the fruits of which are said to be rich in proteins and iron.  Its seed flour is used for baking. Another species is Moringa stenopetala, known locally as ‘mother’s helper’ because its fruit helps increase milk in lactating mothers and reduces malnutrition among infants.

“Residents here understand that their semi-nomadic life has to be slightly adjusted for survival,” noted George Obondo, coordinator of the NGO Coordination Board, who played a role in ensuring that Sadhana received 50,000 dollars from the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) to jump start its Samburu project.

The money was used to set up a training centre with over 35 volunteers from various countries, including Haiti, to train locals and at the same time produce seedlings, and to build the green energy system for pumping water from the borehole it drilled.

“Things are changing,” said Obondo, “and Samburus know that their lifestyle needs to be altered and also tied to greater dependence on plant growing and not just livestock.” This is why the Sadhana Forest initiative is important, he added, because it is training people and giving them the knowledge and ability to create the resilience that they will need to avoid a harsh future.

Edited by Phil Harris

Many Zimbabweans are turning to raising small livestock like goats which survive dry conditions to avert climate change impacts that have claimed their cattle over the years. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Jul 22 2015 (IPS)

With unusually hot and dry weather beating down on this Southern African nation, climate change and the accompanying drought have cost farmers much of their cattle herds. In response, many ranchers are turning to goats to preserve their livestock assets.

Climate change experts agree that breeding drought-tolerant animals like goats, which survive on shrubs and need less manpower to tend, is a better choice than high-maintenance cattle.

This is happening at a time the United Nations is urging nations the world over to take urgent action to combat climate change and manage its impact as part of the United Nations’ new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs are a universal set of 17 goals, targets and indicators that U.N. member states are expected to use as development benchmarks in framing their agendas and political policies over the next 15 years.“With rainfall patterns fluctuating in Zimbabwe, rearing cattle is becoming unsustainable. But breeding goats, which are drought-tolerant, can be much more rewarding” – Happison Chikova, an independent Zimbabwean environment and climate change expert

“With rainfall patterns fluctuating in Zimbabwe, rearing cattle is becoming unsustainable.  But breeding goats, which are drought-tolerant, can be much more rewarding,” Happison Chikova, an independent environment and climate change expert, who holds a degree in geography and environmental studies from Zimbabwe’s Midlands State University, told IPS.

“Plans are imminent to boost production of goats in Zimbabwe’s dry regions where small livestock like goats thrive and we have identified meat export markets in countries like South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria and the Middle East, where goat meat is a delicacy,” Chrispen Kadiramwando,  president of the Goat Breeders Association of Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Official statistics from the country’s Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises and Cooperative Development show that there are approximately 136,000 goat breeders countrywide, ranging from ordinary communal goat breeders to peri-urban goat breeders.

Livias Ncube, from the country’s Region 5, the hottest part of the country in Mwenezi district, is one of the Zimbabweans who have shifted to goat-breeding, raising and selling.

“There are hardly adequate rains in this part of the country, which is the driest area here in Zimbabwe, but I don’t use any stock feeds to nourish my goats as they adapt to the conditions, and they are even fatter,” Ncube told IPS.

Besides selling the goats locally, Ncube told IPS that he has now become an exporter of goat meat to neighbouring countries like South Africa and Mozambique.

“Although I maintain a sizeable herd of cattle after a series of droughts here which killed many cows, I now have a flock of 130 goats and I’m also earning money through selling these goats,” Ncube told IPS.

Ncube said he earns an estimated 1600 dollars each month through goat selling, with each goat trading at around 70 dollars.  His goats multiply at a faster pace than cows in spite of the dry conditions in this region.

Through the Zimbabwe Livestock for Accelerated Recovery and Improved Resiliency (ZRR) programme, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Ncube learned how to manage and market his goats to improve their livelihoods.

ZRR is a programme that provides farmers with training in goat husbandry and health management, and trains community livestock workers on preventative and curative animal health techniques.

According to a research paper by the Matobo Research station on goat breeding and development activities in Zimbabwe, there are already more than two million goats in Zimbabwe, with nearly all goats (about 98 percent) reared in communal areas.

However, agricultural experts fear that indigenous goat breeders are not realising the monetary value vested in their small livestock.

“Thousands of farmers are into goat breeding here, but few have been able to ascertain the value in their animals due to lack of adequate information flow between the goat producers and the market, resulting in rural farmers ending up engaging in barter trade thereby stifling the commercialisation of goats,” Leonard Vazungu, a government agricultural extension officer, told IPS.

At the beginning of this year, the Zimbabwean government distributed 10,000 goats for breeding stock and aims to increase the number to 44 million by 2018.

This comes at a time when this Southern African nation’s cattle population has declined from 6.8 million in 2000 to the current 5.2 million.

“Investing in small livestock like goats, which have higher chances of survival in drought-prone areas, cautions the country against livestock loss,” Barnabas Mawire, country director for Environment Africa, told journalists a climate change workshop held this month in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare.

But this may not be easy without a national climate change policy.

Earlier this year, citing Zimbabwe’s growing climate change effects, non-constituency parliamentarian Annastancia Ndlovu pushed a motion for the formulation of a national climate change policy in the National Assembly.

Ndlovu is chairperson of Zimbabwe’s Environment, Water, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Parliamentary Portfolio Committee.

For Zimbabwe, financial shortfalls have not made the war against climate change any easier.

“The drop in government funding for climate change means we must work with other partners to move the climate change agenda forward and we are currently developing the national climate policy – the country’s first for which we need as many resources as we can get,” Veronica Gundu, principal environment officer for Zimbabwe’s Environment, Water and Climate ministry, told IPS.

However, with or without the national climate change policy, many Zimbabwean goat breeders like Ncube say they have moved single-handedly to address climate change impacts.

“We have moved on with our lives in the face of deepening climate change impacts and through goat breeding.  For us life goes on although climate change effects have claimed most of our cattle,” said Ncube.

Edited by Phil Harris    

70-year-old Chiute Tamang, his wife, daughter and son-in-law lost their house when the earth shook on Apr 25, 2015 in Nepal. They now lives a one-room cabin made of a wooden skeleton encased in corrugated iron. Credit: Robert Stefanicki/IPS

By Robert Stefanicki
KATHMANDU, Jul 12 2015 (IPS)

70-year-old Chiute Tamang was working in his field when the earth shook on Apr 25. He grabbed a tree. His wife and daughter were inside the house at the time, but managed to run out. In the blink of an eye, the building turned into a heap of stones. They were the lucky ones.

“Earthquakes don’t kill, buildings do” – this otherwise common knowledge – had just reached Nepal. Almost all the victims were buried in the rubble of their houses made by untrained masons of stones barely stuck together with mud. It is a very popular method, because it is the cheapest – stones and mud are free, bricks and cement cost.

In Ramche, Chiute’s village scattered over the terraced hills of district Dhading, 38 km northwest of Kathmandu, 168 houses out of a total 181 are no longer inhabitable.”Only time will tell if, in the process of planning reconstruction, the government of Nepal will use an opportunity to find out why the Tamangs are so vulnerable to natural disasters and what can be done to protect them from future calamities”

According to the latest government report, the disaster damaged 607,212 buildings in 16 districts. Of them, 63 percent in areas dominated by Tamangs – the largest and the most destitute group among the Tibeto-Burman speaking peoples of the Himalayan region – although they constitute less than six percent (1.35 million) of Nepal’s population.

”Earthquakes don’t kill, inequity does” – out of 8,844 people who died in the earthquake, 3,012 were Tamangs. Over 50 percent of the victims belonged to the marginalised communities. More than half the victims were women.

Ramche is a Tamang village. Some of the people own small plots of land on which they grow corn and potatoes of walnut size, but crops can feed the farmers’ family only for two to three months. For the rest of the year they live on contracted labour.

The residents of Ramche admit they are very poor. Why? Because, their answer goes, their fathers were poor, as well as the fathers of their fathers. They accept this as a judgment of fate and do not feel discriminated against, only showing how inequity is grown into the tissue of the society, the result of concerted exploitation for centuries.

This brawny hill tribe has always provided a labour reserve pool for the rulers of Kathmandu. In the past, Tamangs were prevented from joining the administration and the military. Even today they may man the barricades but have little role in the upper hierarchy of the armed forces or police, and are unrepresented in the country´s national affairs.

Being Buddhists did not immunise Tamangs from the caste system evolved by ruling Hindus. Those who wield power belong to Brahmin, Newars and Chhetri people and these “well-born” elites look down on the Tamangs.

In the blink of an eye, houses turned into heaps of stones when the Apr. 25, 2015 earthquake hit Nepal. Credit: Robert Stefanicki/IPS

Economic deprivation has increased the influx of indigent peasants to the job markets of Kathmandu, where they make up half of the porters and the majority of three-wheeler tempo (”taxi”) drivers. Prison surveys have shown that a disproportionate number of Tamangs are behind bars for criminal offences.

They have never counted on any government’s help, and this time is no different. After the earthquake, the residents of Ramche helped each other, cooked meals together and joined hands to raise themselves up from the rubble. With a little help from NGOs, the situation was brought under control.

One week after the disaster, the residents of Ramche were given blankets, tarpaulins and mosquito nets funded by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO).

Today, the whole village is queuing at the barracks where ADRA, the Nepalese NGO, is handing out big plastic water jars with the blue logo of the European Union and “sanitary kits”: a few tubes of toothpaste, toothbrushes, water purification tablets, sanitary napkins and birth control pills. A young female activist tirelessly explains to one villager after another how to use these items.

Chiute Tamang’s family spent the first three days after they lost their house in a flimsy hut cobbled together with a few pieces of wood. Then made a tent of tarpaulin, where they moved together with goats, their most valuable asset. Livestock, the old man explains, must not be left outside at night because it could fall prey to tigers or leopards.

After one week, Chiute borrowed some money, bought materials and with the help of his neighbours put a house together for himself, his wife, their youngest daughter and her husband.

It has a simple design – a one-room cabin made of a wooden skeleton encased in corrugated iron, the floor covered with oilcloth, and equipped with simple beds, cupboards and a gas cooker.

”Even if this collapses,” says Chiute ironically, “at the worst, the corrugated sheet would pin us down, not stones.”

Construction took two weeks, because the wood had to be brought from a distance. When the house was already standing, the government finally sent some relief – any Nepalese family who lost a house is entitled to a 15,000 rupee (150 dollars) loan. Chiute could pay off half the loan.

Another Ramche resident, 29-year-old Deepak Bhutel, received 180,000 rupees but he had been less fortunate – his wife and 18-month-old daughter lost their lives under the rubble of their stone house.

The amount would be enough to buy a sturdy house, certain to survive any future earthquake but Deepak, together with his older and now only daughter, says he is also going to end up in a corrugated iron-clad cabin. Having lived from hand to mouth all his life, he says he does not want to spend all his wealth on the house.

Only time will tell if, in the process of planning reconstruction, the government of Nepal will use an opportunity to find out why the Tamangs are so vulnerable to natural disasters and what can be done to protect them from future calamities.

Past mistakes should not be repeated, warned Jagdish Chandra Pokhrel, former Vice Chair of National Planning Commission, quoted by ‘Nepali Times’.

Pokhrel recalled the example of the Tamangs displaced when the reservoir in Makwanpur was built in the early 1980s. Around 500 families whose lands were acquired by the authorities did not want cash compensation but resettlement elsewhere.

“But the government gave them money anyway, and very few bought land with that,” said Pokhrel. “Soon, the money was gone and they were destitute.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

The Dube AgriZone facility currently incorporates 16 hectares of greenhouses, making it the largest climate-controlled growing area under glass in Africa. Credit: FAO

By Kwame Buist
DURBAN, South Africa, Mar 22 2015 (IPS)

Agriculture is the major employer and a backbone of the economies of Southern Africa.

However, the rural areas that support an agriculture-based livelihood system for the majority of the nearly 270 million people living in the region are typically fragile and there is wide variability in the development challenges facing the countries of the region.

The agricultural sector is dominated by crop production, although the share of livestock production and other agriculture practices have been increasing.Chronic and acute food insecurity remain major risks and Southern Africa still faces enormous challenges in trying to transform and commercialise its largely small holder-based agricultural systems through accelerated integration into competitive markets in a rapidly globalising world

Chronic and acute food insecurity remain major risks and Southern Africa still faces enormous challenges in trying to transform and commercialise its largely smallholder-based agricultural systems through accelerated integration into competitive markets in a rapidly globalising world.

These and other challenges facing the sector were the focus of a three-day meeting (Mar. 10-12) in Durban of management and experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which ended with a call to prioritise broad-based partnerships and build synergies to provide countries with effective and efficient support in the agriculture sector.

In an annual event designed to provide a platform for discussion and exchange of information on best practices and the general performance of FAO programmes in the region, David Phiri, FAO Sub-Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa, reiterated the importance of different sectors working together.

“Achieving food and nutrition security in Southern Africa is a challenge far too great for any government or FAO to overcome alone,” he said. “As well as the governments of developing and developed countries, the civil society, private sector and international development agencies must be involved. Above all, the people themselves need to be empowered to manage their own development.”

Building on what works

As one example of the best practices under the scrutiny of the meeting, participants took part in a field visit to the Dube AgriZone facility – a high-tech agricultural development initiative pioneered by the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government.

The facility aims to stimulate the growth of KwaZulu-Natal’s perishables sector and aims to achieve improved agricultural yields, consistent quality, year-round production and improved management of disease and pests.

The facility – strategically located 30 km north of the important coastal city of Durban – currently incorporates 16 hectares of greenhouses, making it the largest climate-controlled growing area under glass in Africa.

Its primary focus is on the production of short shelf-life vegetables and cut flowers which require immediate post-harvest airlifting and supply to both domestic and export markets.

In addition to its greenhouses, the facility offers dedicated post-harvest packing houses, a central packing and distribution centre, a nursery and the Dube AgriLab, a sophisticated plant tissue culture laboratory.

Dube AgriZone is an eco-friendly facility, adopting a range of ‘green’ initiatives to offset its environmental impact, including rainwater harvesting, use of solar energy, on-site waste management, and the growth of indigenous plants for rehabilitation efforts.

Dube AgriZone provides growers with the potential to achieve improved agricultural yields, consistency of produce quality, close management of disease and pest infestation and year-round crop production with a view to improved sustainability and enhanced agricultural competitiveness.

“I could never have been able put up such a facility and produce at the current scale were it not for this innovative AgriZone,” said Derrick Baird, owner of Qutom Farms, which currently produces 150,000 cucumbers in the glass greenhouse leased from Dube AgriZone.

“This high-tech facility with all the necessary facilities – including transportation and freight – has allowed us to concentrate on producing cucumbers at much lower costs than in other locations where we had previously tried.”

The partnership between the provincial government and the private sector behind the facility was hailed as an example of a success story that could offer valuable lessons to others across Southern Africa.

“There is plenty we can learn from this facility and perhaps one of the more important ones is on forming partnerships and alliances,” said Tobias Takavarasha, FAO Representative in South Africa.

“We need to build on what is working by adopting and adapting technologies to the local situation, and then scaling them upwards and outwards to achieve even better results,” he added.

Edited by Phil Harris    

A woman planting a shea tree in Ghana to protect riverbanks, and for her economic empowerment. Much still remains to be done to overcome the difficulties women – particularly rural women – face in terms of mobility and political participation. Credit: ©IFAD/Dela Sipitey

By Valentina Gasbarri
ROME, Mar 14 2015 (IPS)

Rural women make major contributions to rural economies by producing and processing food, feeding and caring for families, generating income and contributing to the overall well-being of their households – but, in many countries, they face discrimination in access to agricultural assets, education, healthcare and employment, among others, preventing them from fully enjoying their basic rights.

Gender equality is now widely recognised as an essential component for sustainable development goals in the post-2015 agenda, with empowerment of rural women vital to enabling poor people to improve their livelihoods and overcome poverty.“To improve women’s social and economic status, we need more recognition for the vital role they play in the rural economy. Let us all work together to empower women to achieve food and nutrition security – for their sake, and the sake of their families and communities” – IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze

This year’s International Women’s Day, celebrated worldwide on Mar. 8, marked the 20th anniversary of the landmark Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995), which called on governments, the international community and civil society from all over the world to empower women and girls by taking action in 12 critical areas: poverty, education and training, health, violence, armed conflict, the economy, power and decision-making, institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women, human rights, the media, the environment and the girl child.

Despite that call, much still remains to be done to overcome the difficulties women – particularly rural women – face in terms of mobility and political participation.

“Too often, rural women are doing the backbreaking work,” Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), said on the occasion. “To improve women’s social and economic status, we need more recognition for the vital role they play in the rural economy. Let us all work together to empower women to achieve food and nutrition security – for their sake, and the sake of their families and communities.”

This year, the three Rome-based U.N. agencies – the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP) and IFAD – along with journalists and students from Rome’s LUISS, John Cabot and La Sapienza universities met to share testimonials of innovative interventions aimed at empowering rural women in four key areas: nutrition, community mobilisation, livestock and land rights.

A large body of research indicates that putting more income into the hands of women translates into improved child nutrition health and education in all developing regions of the world.

Explaining why women and men need to be involved together to move forward on nutrition, Britta Schumacher, a WFP Programme Policy Officer, described how the Renewed Efforts Against Child Hunger and Undernutrition (REACH) programme had been able to tackle malnutrition and health problems using an approach based on positive gender-oriented objectives.

The REACH programme – a joint initiative of FAO, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), WFP and the World Health Organisation (WHO) – is based on the human right to nutrition security and seeks to transform the way governments and donors approach investment in nutrition to leverage existing investments most effectively and systematically identify priorities for additional investments needed to scale up.

Noting that “the long girls stay at school, the better is their health” because “lack of awareness represents a concrete obstacle to good practices,” Schumacher said that in Bangladesh activities had been carried out under the REACH programme to transfer knowledge within and between members of communities and local authorities, boost rural women’s access to services and strengthen their self-esteem. 

Stressing the need for community mobilisation, Andrea Sanchez Enciso, Gender and Participatory Communication Specialist with FAO, illustrated one of the achievements of FAO’s Dimitra project, a participatory information and communication project which contributes to improving the visibility of rural populations, women in particular.

In Niger, she said, “the Dimitra project encouraged the inclusion of a gender perspective in communication for development initiatives in rural areas … taking greater account of the specificities, needs and aspirations of men and women” and “creating participatory spaces for discussion between men and women, access to information and collective actions in their communities.”

Leading a two-year small livestock project in Afghanistan during the Taliban period, Antonio Riota, Lead Technical Specialist in IFAD’s Livestock, Policy and Technical Advisory Division, said that the project was developed and implemented in a context in which 90 percent of village chickens were managed by women and poultry was the only source of income for the entire community.

According to Riota, the project showed how small livestock can make a difference in rural women’s lives because one of its major results has been that “now women can walk all together” whereas previously they were accused of prostitution if they did so. “Some 75,000 women benefitted from the project and profitability increased by 91 percent,” he added.

Meanwhile, Mino Ramaroson, Africa Regional Coordinator at the International Land Coalition, described two African experiences of women’s networks – the National Federation of Rural Women in Madagascar and the Kilimanjaro Initiative – advocating for their rights to land and natural resources.

In Madagascar, the National Federation of Rural Women, which aims to promote rural women’s rights, improve members’ livelihoods and increase their resilience to external and internal shocks, has been joined by more than 450 rural women’s groups from the country’s six provinces.

The Kilimanjaro Initiative, initiated by rural women in 2012 and supported by the International Land Coalition, uses women’s rights to land and productive resources as an entry point for the mobilisation of rural women from across Africa to define the future they want, claim lives of dignity they deserve and identify and overcome the challenges that hold them back.

Edited by Phil Harris   

These goats in the Caribbean seek out shade in a bid to ward off heat stress that is driving up livestock mortality rates in the region. Credit: Cedric Lazarus/FAO

By Jewel Fraser
PARAMARIBO, Suriname, Oct 8 2014 (IPS)

Livestock farmers in the Caribbean are finding it increasingly difficult and expensive to rear healthy animals because of climate change, a situation that poses a significant threat to a region that is already too dependent on imports to feed its population.

Norman Gibson, a livestock scientist with the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), says the effects of climate change mean that farmers must spend more money on feedstock to produce healthy animals, as well as coping with higher mortality rates among their flocks due to heat stress.Once an animal’s core body temperature goes above 45 degrees Celsius, its homeostasis is disrupted, eventually leading to death. So Caribbean farmers are now investing in ventilation systems to keep their livestock cooler.

Gibson was part of a panel discussion at the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)’s Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA), being held in Paramaribo, Suriname, Oct. 6–12. The annual event hosted by the CTA focused on promoting policies and practices that will help farmers to adapt to climate change.

Gibson pointed out that decreases in livestock production would have a significant impact on the Caribbean region, where meat forms a major part of the diet. The region imports 40 million dollars worth of meat annually from New Zealand and Australia, he told the audience, and “imports are growing faster than [local] production.”

At the same time, research has shown that climate change is resulting in higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere which “leads to changes in the nutritional status of plants”, he told IPS. He said that tropical grasses are not the most nutritious, and with increases in CO2 they become even less so.

“So animals would have to eat even more to get an acceptable level of nutrition. Because that is often impossible, if you want your animals to produce at a certain level you have to supplement with concentrated feed, which in the Caribbean is imported,” he told IPS, and expensive.

He added that in places like Guyana, that are below sea level and sinking further, salt water intrusion is further compromising the feedstock available for ruminants.

“Once salt water gets into pastures, most of the grass that we currently grow is not adapted to high levels of salts. Most of these grasses have low salt tolerance and therefore will not thrive or grow under those conditions. So scientists will now have to find new breeds of grass that are more tolerant,” he said.

He said a breed of grass from International Centre for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia was showing promise in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados and St. Kitts.

“A lot of the dairy production in Trinidad and Tobago is based on that particular grass…In St. Kitts, it is now the major grass of choice for small ruminant farmers.”

He also pointed out that temperatures were for a certainty increasing, though there was less certainty about increased precipitation. These higher temperatures lead to heat stress in animals that reduces their ability to reproduce.

Heat stress is leading to levels of mortality of up to 15 per cent among ruminants, the FAO’s Cedric Lazarus told IPS. Lazarus was also at the CWA and spoke of efforts being made around the region to reduce the heat stress being suffered by animals.

He explained that once an animal’s core body temperature goes above 45 degrees Celsius, its homeostasis is disrupted, eventually leading to death. So Caribbean farmers are now investing in ventilation systems to keep their livestock cooler, he said.

“It’s the only way you can keep those high-producing breeds of cattle and ensure they survive.” He said the use of ventilation systems was seen particularly in Barbados.

Planting more trees was also a viable—and simple—way of providing more shade for animals, he added.

He said studies showed heat stress also led to a precipitous decrease in milk yields, sometimes by as much as 33 percent, thus reducing the animal’s profitability.

Gibson added that because of the extreme heat the region has been experiencing and the resulting discomfort felt by animals, there were abnormalities in their sperm and a fall-off in vigour resulting in reduced conception rates.

“A livestock farmer’s success depends on how many animals he can get to the market each year, which is a function of how well his animals reproduce,” he told IPS.

Both Gibson and Lazarus said the impact of climate change meant that farmers would have to rely more on local breeds of ruminants to ensure they have hardy stock that can cope with the region’s increasingly intense heat, though there has been a tendency over the past 15 to 20 years to bring in foreign breeds to “improve” local livestock.

Farmers often see foreign livestock as a chance to improve their herd because it means introducing fresh blood without the problems that traditionally come with inbreeding, said Rommel Parris, a black belly sheep farmer and president of the Barbados Sheep and Goat Farmers Association.

However, Parris said, the benefits of a new genetic pool do not outweigh the disadvantages of the foreign stock in the hot Caribbean climate.

“Your cost goes up because you have to keep them in air-conditioned rooms or use fans to cool them down. You have to feed them with special feeds. You have to adjust to the diet they were receiving before. Caring for these animals is tougher than caring for those animals that are adapted to this region for years,” he told IPS.

He added that foreign stock tend to produce fewer offspring, as well, than the local breeds, and are more susceptible to the parasites in the region.

Though inbreeding of local stocks does bring a somewhat weaker herd, “farmers know how to treat their own animals. A lot of them are proactive and know what the signs are and how to prevent sickness in advance…They can pick up on them fairly quickly,” he said, thus reducing mortality rates and losses.

The majority of ruminants in the region are still the local, creole animals, Lazarus said, but the Caribbean needs to guard against the mistake made in other parts of the world, where the introduction of foreign breeds led to the extinction of local, more sustainable animals.

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at jwl_42@yahoo.com

A member of the Mundari tribe stands amongst cattle in Terekeka, South Sudan. Livestock outnumber the population in South Sudan and has led to increasing environmental degradation. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Charlton Doki
JUBA, May 12 2014 (IPS)

Twenty-year-old Wani Lo Keji stares at the sky as his herd of cattle drink water from the eastern bank of the Nile River, just opposite South Sudan’s capital, Juba.

“We bring our animals here everyday because the seasonal river near our village has dried. There were many herders fighting for water there,” he tells IPS.

Lo Keji’s problem is nothing out of the ordinary in a country where livestock outnumber the population. South Sudan has an estimated 11.7 million cattle, 12.4 million goats and 12.1 million sheep in a country of around 13 million people, according to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Tourism, Animal Resources, Fisheries.“Cattle in South Sudan are a curse. It is not a resource that benefits the people ... they are rearing it for prestige." -- Isaac Woja, natural resources management consultant

While South Sudan’s livestock population is estimated to have an asset value of 2.2 billion dollars — the highest per capita holding in Africa — Isaac Woja, a natural resources management consultant, tells IPS that these livestock are not being managed sustainably and are causing both water scarcity and environmental degradation.

“Cattle in South Sudan are a curse. It is not a resource that benefits the people because they are not rearing cattle for economic benefits or for food security benefits. They are rearing it for prestige.

“They just want to have many cattle so that they are respected in their communities on account for having the largest number of livestock in their area. That’s why in the dry season you find scarcity of water and pasture,” Woja adds.

In South Sudan, cattle are revered and there are communities where pastoralists won’t even contemplate slaughtering one of their cows for meat. So the country imports cattle, mainly from neighbouring Uganda, which is then slaughtered for meat.

According to the African Development Bank, 80 percent of the people here live in rural areas and rely on agriculture, forestry and fisheries for their livelihoods.

In many South Sudanese communities cows are mostly used to pay a bride wealth or dowry and as compensation in cases of murder or adultery.

“Cattle herders are proud of the quantity rather than the quality of the cattle they keep. This is leading to overgrazing on the land,” Justine Miteng of the Dutch development agency, SNV, tells IPS.

She explains that as a result water resources are also being misused.

“People come to water bodies to water their animals and cause damage to the river beds. The animals and the the pastoralists also defecate in the water, which in a way pollutes the water,” adds Miteng.

Woja adds that overgrazing and the resultant soil erosion is also an issue. “For example, if you can only graze three cows on half a hectare, you will find someone has 100 heads of cattle on that piece of land,” Woja explains.

To ensure animal resources are managed sustainably, Miteng says, there needs to be regulations about the number of animals pastoralists can own on a given piece of land.

“The most sustainable way is the reduction in the number of animals that we keep and introducing a settled way of farming. For example, if you have your own ranch you can keep your livestock on that restricted piece of land…

“You can at the same time harvest grass to make hay that you can use over a period of time when there is no live grass,” Miteng says.

Woja adds that to ensure sustainability, there should also be regulation in terms of how a specific piece of land should be used to rear cattle.

“If you have a big piece of communal land you should be able to divide it into paddocks so that you know this year you are grazing on this piece and the next year you will graze on another piece of land,” Woja says.

“If livestock is managed in a way that is profitable to the owners, then it will reduce cases of conflict over water and pasture, it will cause minimum damage to the environment and the quality of the livestock will improve.”

The unregulated exploitation of the land is due in part to a lack of clear policy from the government, according to Leben Nelson Moro, a professor of development studies at Juba University.

According to Moro, too much focus has been placed on the extraction of oil — oil contributes to 98 percent of South Sudan’s revenue — and the population pressure exerted by the large numbers of South Sudanese who returned from exile after the country’s independence.

“We need proper planning and policies. We should identify what natural resources we have and prepare good policies guiding how they should be used … to benefit the current and future generations. There should be a national plan to do that,” Moro tells IPS.

The government should also engage universities to carry out studies on how the country’s resources can best be managed in order to avoid exploitation, Moro adds.

“However, civil society should be there to check the government, which normally has its eye on the short-term benefits of exploiting natural resources rather than the long-term impact on communities,” Moro says.

But until this is done, people like Lo Keji and his family will keep procuring livestock for prestige.

“In our family we have four hundred animals and we are working hard to buy more,” Lo Keji says.

Livestock production has long been suspected as a key incubator of antibiotic resistance in the United States. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Mar 27 2014 (IPS)

Pharmaceutical companies have overwhelmingly agreed to new U.S. government guidelines aimed at decreasing the use of antibiotics in the raising of livestock, new data shows.

In December, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal government’s main regulator for these sectors, unveiled a new, voluntary programme to reduce the use of “medically important” antibiotics, the hundreds of drugs considered important for human health."Any time antibiotics are used for routine disease prevention, that’s a sign that something else is wrong with the livestock system.” -- Sarah Borron

The agency targeted 26 of the world’s largest manufacturers of livestock antibiotics, requesting their compliance. On Wednesday, the FDA announced that all but one of those companies, accounting for more than 99 percent of the supply, had agreed to the new guidelines.

“As of March 26, [25 companies] have agreed in writing that they intend to engage in the judicious use strategy by seeking withdrawal of approvals relating to any production uses and changing the marketing status of their products from over-the-counter to use by [veterinary] prescription,” the FDA stated Wednesday.

“FDA is encouraged by the response thus far and will continue to monitor ongoing participation and provide public updates on a periodic basis.”

The only targeted company not to agree to the new guidance is PharmaqAS, a Norwegian manufacturer of drugs used on farmed fish. A spokesperson for the company told IPS that its products are only used to treat diseased fish rather than to promote growth in livestock, and Pharmaq “interpreted the proposed voluntary program not to be relevant for our products.” However, it is currently reviewing the FDA request.

The U.S. meat industry has come under increased criticism in recent years over the widespread practice of feeding low levels of antibiotics to healthy livestock over an extended period, as a way of forcing animals to put on weight more quickly. Motivated by surging reports of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” around the world, public health officials have increasingly looked for ways to decrease this practice.

At base, the new guidance offers a simple tweak to labelling requirements for antimicrobial drugs intended for livestock. These 25 companies will no longer include reference to their drugs’ growth-enhancing potential on their labels, in effect outlawing the practice by farmers.

The use of antibiotics for truly sick animals will still be allowed, but only with a prescription from a registered veterinarian.

While public interest groups are supportive of the fact that U.S. regulators are finally taking action over growing antibiotic resistance, many are concerned that the FDA’s guidelines are too weak.

“We did some analysis of the drugs being affected by the guidance and found that of the drugs that will stop being used for growth promotion, 63 percent can still be used for disease prevention,” Sarah Borron, a researcher with Food and Water Watch (FWW), a watchdog group, told IPS.

“The problem is, that’s a very similar type of use. Farmers still give low doses of antibiotics to entire herds for long periods, and that still promotes the development of antibiotic resistance. Any time antibiotics are used for routine disease prevention, that’s a sign that something else is wrong with the livestock system.”

Concerns over the possibility of antibiotic resistance have been around almost since the discovery of antibiotics themselves. Credit: Bigstock

Some U.S. lawmakers are expressing similar concerns.

“This voluntary pro-industry approach is a step in the wrong direction,” Rosa DeLauro, a member of the House of Representatives, said when the plan was announced in December.

“Companies will either disregard the plan altogether or simply switch from using antibiotics for routine growth promotion to using the same antibiotics for routine disease prevention. For the good of public health, FDA should step up and implement tighter restrictions on antibiotic usage.”

DeLauro said that 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States are given to healthy animals, often to “overcompensate for crowded and unsanitary conditions”.

23,000 deaths annually

Concerns over the possibility of antibiotic resistance have been around almost since the discovery of antibiotics themselves, a breakthrough that many say is among the most important of the modern age. Yet such reports have spiked in recent years.

While this resistance is a growing problem in countries on every continent, governments outside of the United States have taken more proactive steps. The European Union, for instance, has banned the use of antibiotics to fatten livestock since at least 2006.

Data from E.U. countries suggest that overall antibiotics use for livestock can be reduced fairly easily, through simple yet often cost-ineffective changes to farming practice.

The United States, meanwhile, has seen major outbreaks of food-borne illness with resistance in recent years.

In 2011, for instance, the U.S. company Cargill was forced to recall 36 million pounds of ground turkey, over concerns that it may have been contaminated with an antibiotic-resistant form of salmonella. Hundreds more became sick from similar infections this past October, reportedly traced to a chicken farm in California.

Also last fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a federal agency, estimated that some two million people in the United States are getting sick from antibiotic-resistant infections every year, causing some 23,000 deaths. Further, the agency cautioned that those numbers were minimum estimates based on conservative assumptions.

In April, CDC director Dr. Tom Friedman told the U.S. House of Representatives that antibiotic resistance constitutes one of the country’s “most serious health threats”.

Livestock production has long been suspected as a key incubator of antibiotic resistance in the United States. Yet the FDA ultimately decided to make its new programme voluntary rather than mandatory.

The agency says it took this decision in order to speed up what would otherwise have been a long and likely contentious regulatory process. But analysts like FWW’s Borron say this is cause for concern.

“Whenever there’s voluntary guidance, we worry about whether companies will follow,” she notes. “In this instance, there’s the sense that the FDA has been working on something that the industry can accept.”

In this approach, the FDA appears to have been successful. Both the animal pharmaceuticals manufacturers and the meat industry appear to be backing the new guidelines, though some express some reservations.

“The response to FDA reflects the shared commitment of those who raise poultry and livestock to the judicious use of medicines for the care and well being of healthy animals,” Keith Williams, a spokesperson for the National Turkey Federation, a trade group, told IPS.

The pork industry, meanwhile, is warning that the new guidelines will mean “real changes” for producers. Liz Wagstrom, the chief veterinarian at the National Pork Producers Council, told IPS that “farmers will need to work with their veterinarians to come up with alternative strategies to keep their animals healthy.”

Pharmaceutical manufacturers will now have three years to phase in the new labelling requirements.

Melting glaciers are wreaking havoc in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

By Malini Shankar
UTTARKASHI, India, Jul 27 2013 (IPS)

Over a month after flash floods in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand in north India left 1,000 dead and 6,000 missing, the government has yet to release a full agricultural impact assessment, sparking fears about the extent of damage to the region’s farmland.

Questions remain as to how soon soil restoration efforts will fructify and when the farm economy, which accounted for just under 11 percent of the state’s 160-billion-dollar gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012-2013 will be restored to functionality.

Heavy flooding on Jun. 15-16, the result of torrential rains and glacial leaks in the Himalayas, wreaked havoc on Uttarakhand, as the headstreams of the holy River Ganga swelled and swept away roads, homes, scores of pilgrims, cattle and buildings.

With the government focusing its efforts almost entirely on an emergency rescue and relief operation coordinated by the armed forces (with over 42,000 rescues under its belt to date), the plight of farmers has been largely ignored.

Experts from the region say the summer crops have been washed out and the farms are in no shape to yield a winter harvest this year; the sowing season for rice, which coincides with the height of the monsoon (June to September) has been delayed as a result of heavy inundation of paddy fields caused by downpours and landslides.

Though agricultural fields are routinely inundated with the clay that runs down surrounding mountains during summer glacial melts and the annual monsoon, this latest calamity has created a disaster zone in what is frequently referred to as the “land of the gods”.

“It is possible that the top soil may have been altered for a considerably longer duration of time than expected,” Ram Kishan, regional emergency manager of South Asia for the UK-based NGO Christian Aid, told IPS.

This Himalayan state, irrigated naturally by perennial glacier-fed rivers, boasts a high degree of agricultural diversity. Rajma, or red kidney beans, and potatoes comprise the staple diet of the majority of Uttarakhand’s native population of 10 million people, according to the 2011 census.

Crops like rice, wheat, barley, millets, lentils, pulses, potatoes, fruits, vegetables, flowers, spices, herbs and mushrooms have been drowned by the floods, while debris from landslides has also compromised the grazing pastures of the state’s roughly 11.9 million heads of livestock, including cows, bullocks, buffaloes, sheep, goats, horses, pigs, hens, chickens and other birds like geese.

“Initial estimates suggest that 25 to 30 percent of cultivation has been affected,” said Kishan; this represents a huge chunk of the state’s average annual production of 8.2 million tonnes.

NGOs like Christian Aid fear that the resulting price rise in all essential commodities, like vegetables, fruits, milk, dairy products, cereals, lentils and pulses, in the near term will adversely affect the average farming family.

Over 65 percent of Uttarakhand’s residents, most of them subsistence farmers with small landholdings of less than a single hectare per family, are dependent on agriculture, according to Aide et Action.

Farmers and tourism

Farmers dependent on seasonal tourism to supplement their incomes during the monsoon months are particularly affected.

Uttarakhand is a popular destination for foreign tourists and local pilgrims alike: “Forty-seven million domestic tourists and (half a) million foreign tourists were expected in the current fiscal year”, according to Shekhar Ambati at Aide et Action. But the flash floods, he said, eroded this economic base.

The tourism industry is one of the largest employers in the region, hiring locals as porters, guides, drivers, naturalists and translators. Others rent out their mules, offering tourists rides on rocky terrain in order to earn their daily bread.

The tourist economy also supports local artisans and makers of traditional handicrafts, opens up jobs as caterers and cooks through the hospitality sector and enables families to establish small businesses like tea stalls, souvenir shops or grocery stores.

Ambati fears that the destruction of the “lifeline of religious tourism” will snowball, affecting the number of tourists arriving in the region and further endangering farmers’ incomes.

Quoting small business owners and vegetable sellers at the main market in the town of Rudraprayag, Eila Jafar of Care India told IPS that farmers are already starting to feel the crunch of scant agricultural yields.

“The number of daily wage labourers coming to the main market has reduced to a great extent,” Jafar told IPS.

Road conditions have deteriorated significantly since the floods: some roads were washed away altogether and others have been made impassable by debris, which is having an extremely “negative impact on the market and economy,” Jafar added.

Farmers who relied on the tourist infrastructure to sell their produce are among the worst affected.

“The state’s chamber of commerce and industry estimates that Uttarakhand has lost revenue earnings of over 20 billion dollars from its tourism sector alone in the current fiscal year on account of torrential rains that devastated the state,” says Ambati.

With tourism unlikely to recover for two to three years at least, the situation calls for “intervention” from the government to ensure that farmers have food and livelihood security in the short term.

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Goats like the ones raised on the Carolina farm are becoming an increasingly frequent source of income and food in Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
CIENFUEGOS, Cuba, Mar 20 2013 (IPS)

Goat farming is becoming popular among farmers given land to use as part of the economic reforms implemented in Cuba since 2008. The increase in goat rearing, in provinces like Cienfuegos on the southern coast, could help expand the limited range of basic food products available to Cubans.

“The goat is an animal that requires abundant food and care, but its meat and milk are highly nutritious,” Dayamí León, a veterinarian who looks after 512 goats on the 26-hectare Carolina farm near the city of Cienfuegos, 230 km southeast of Havana, told IPS.

León left her job in a state company to work on the farm, which was created in 2008 when her husband applied for some of the unproductive land being redistributed as part of the government’s strategy to increase domestic food production.

The farm now gives work to 12 people, including 10 family members, and it produces some 51,000 litres of goat milk annually. León and her husband also have cows, bulls and pigs, and they grow a few crops as well.

León is responsible for the health of the animals, the births, and the slaughtering.

Small livestock rearing is the third most popular activity for which people in Cienfuegos are applying for land under the redistribution programme.

In this province, some 78,000 hectares were distributed as of February to 8,200 people since the approval of decree-laws 259 and 282 in 2008, which stipulated that idle state land was to be distributed under usufruct to people who would farm it. In June 2012, 975,000 hectares, out of a total agricultural area of 6.6 million hectares, were still available for redistribution, down from 1.8 million hectares when the strategy went into effect.

Decree-law 300 replaced the two previous laws in December, expanding the amount of land granted to each beneficiary from 40 to 67 hectares. It also included fruit production and forestry on the list of permitted activities and allows beneficiaries to build housing and other production-related infrastructure on the land. In addition, the usufruct rights can be renewed after 10 years.

In 2010, the government announced massive lay-offs of public employees, which were to potentially affect one million people by the end of 2011. But the government has slowed down the pace of the reforms, to make them less traumatic. Prior to the slashing of the public payroll, the government employed more than 80 percent of the workforce in Cuba.

Thousands of the people who have lost their jobs in the public workforce have applied for land under the redistribution programme.

“Small livestock rearing has become popular among the people granted usufruct rights,”
Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, provincial director of land control in Cienfuegos, told foreign correspondents. The sector has grown 60 percent in the province since the redistribution began. There is still land available for redistribution in Cienfuegos.

León said the success of small livestock farms depends on good design and planning. After receiving advice from an agronomist, her family farm began to grow white mulberry (Morus alba) bushes for animal feed. The berries are also a tasty addition to the family diet.

“The bushes make the animals grow faster, due to their high protein level,” she said.

The Carolina farm, considered the best producer of goat milk in the country, has milking machines and produces hay with a recently acquired hay-making machine.

The farm also uses animal manure as compost on the plants grown for animal forage, including white mulberry, king grass (Pennisetum purpureum) and the moringa tree (Moringa oleifera).

The aim now is to maximise production. Of the 380 adult goats on the farm, only 30 are milked twice a day. “We have to make more stands to be able to milk the rest of the goats. The ones that are only being milked once a day are being underused,” said Regino Rodríguez, León’s husband.

Rodríguez, who used to work as a technician at the Camilo Cienfuegos oil refinery, is grateful for the new family business, which brings them a higher income.

He also said it feels good to provide goat’s milk for local children who are intolerant of cow´s milk.

“Our city is small. We generally provide milk for around seven kids,” he said. In Cuba, children up to the age of seven are guaranteed a daily ration of milk at subsidised prices. Youngsters who can’t drink cow’s milk are given a substitute, like goat’s milk.

Carolina and other farms must sell most of their output to state-owned companies at pre-established prices. But thanks to the reforms, they can sell the surplus production to businesses catering to tourists, or can take it directly to farmers markets, where prices are set by supply and demand.

But the changes in agriculture, which were given priority in the economic reforms adopted by the government of Raúl Castro, have so far fallen short of the hoped-for results.

Cuba continues to import 1.8 billion dollars annually in food. Nor have there been significant improvements in the cost of food.

Local officials in Cienfuegos acknowledged that food prices have not been brought down far enough.

The government especially wants to reduce imports of milk, due to the high international prices.

Goat milk production rose between 2006 and 2011, particularly thanks to non-state production, according to the national statistics office. But it went down by 0.2 million litres, or 8.3 percent, in the period January-September 2012, with respect to the same period in 2011.

The fall was partly offset by an increase in cow milk production in the same period.

The man behind the counter at a state-run shop in Havana told IPS: “The bags of goat’s milk assigned to the children who need it are always available, but it’s been a long time since I have received enough for temporary diets (for people with special health needs). Nor is it a product that’s easy to get, especially in the cities.”

Pablo, a two-year-old boy with a cow’s milk protein allergy, has been drinking goat’s milk since he was seven months old. His mother, Lilian García, told IPS that the amount of milk she receives for her son from the ration card is sufficient.

But García, who lives in the Havana neighbourhood of Cerro, said the goat’s milk is harder to find than other products. “A farmer sells it to me, along with the meat, but not everyone has someone nearby who they can buy from.”

She also said many people in Cuba don’t consume products from goats because they are not familiar with them.

Local communities fear mining projects will heighten the southern Gobi desert's water shortage and threaten livestock. Credit: Linh Vien Thai /CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Michelle Tolson
ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia, Nov 30 2012 (IPS)

The Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in the southern Gobi desert in Mongolia has become a symbol of a looming crisis: a limited water supply that could be exhausted within a decade, seriously threatening the lives and livelihoods of the local population.

Oyu Tolgoi is one of the largest copper deposits in the world and has attracted major investors over the years, from Robert Friedland of Ivanhoe Capital Corporation, to the mining giant Rio Tinto, which now holds a majority stake in the investment, while the Mongolian government controls just 34 percent of the project.

Now, local communities fear that returns on investments will take precedence over their own subsistence, while simultaneously heightening the region’s acute water shortage.

A 2010 World Bank water assessment report for the southern Gobi region projected a “lifespan” for water resources based on the number of mining projects in the pipeline, as well as a study of the region’s growing population whose primary occupation is herding and rearing livestock.

The sparsely populated region, which consists of three aimags (provinces) occupying a combined area of 350,000 square kilometres, is home to 3.8 million livestock: 120,000 camels, 260,000 horses, 100,000 cows, and 3.4 million sheep and goats. Together these animals require an estimated 31,600 cubic metres of water daily.

Human consumption among the 150,000 residents in rural and urban settings across the southern Gobi is estimated at 10,000 cubic metres per day.

Subsistence herders must share a limited water supply with numerous mines. A 2009 World Bank report found that mining exploration licences cover 55 percent of this area. Omongovi province, for instance, “has 63 licences issued for extraction and 400 licences for exploration.”

Though not all these licences will be granted, the copper extraction process guzzles so much water that locals have good reason to worry: the World Bank assessment found that in 2010, Oyu Tolgoi used about 67,000 cubic metres of water a day, while the government-owned Tavan Tolgoi coal mine consumed 76,000 cubic metres daily.

D. Enkhat, director of the ministry of environment and green development, told IPS that Oyu Tolgoi’s water usage is closely monitored and does not exceed the maximum allowance of 870 litres per second for the construction phase.

But the fact remains that each mine’s water consumption was more than double that of all the livestock in the entire region.

Basing its projections on the total number of mines in the area, World Bank researchers concluded that current known water resources could last just 10 to 12 years, unless additional sources are promptly located and utilised.

Another option would be to divert water from the Orkhon River, considered a “partially renewable” source, experts say.  The Environment Ministry has clarified that the “first priority is for drinking water supply for locals, herders and mining workers”, but others fear that the mines will consume more than all these three combined.

Alternative water sources

In 2003, managers of the Oyu Tolgoi located a saline aquifer some 35 kilometres away from the mine. The pipeline connecting this aquifer to the project is already going through the commissioning stage.

Mark Newby, principal water resources advisor for Oyu Tolgoi, said that national authorities gave the miners permission to use just 20 percent of the water over a 40-year period, thus ensuring that 80 percent of the aquifer remains, as per regulations set by the Mongolian Water Authority.

The aquifer is not expected to impact the shallow herder wells that dot the desert, nor the large fresh water aquifer on which the nearby town of Khanbogd relies.

The government-owned Tavan Tolgoi, on the other hand, does not have access to a saline aquifer and might initially use fresh water sources such as Lake Balgas, also used by herders, or else rely on the river diversion project until other sources are located.

Mining and human rights

A recent mining and human rights conference held last month in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, provided a platform for herders, NGOs and local officials in the southern Gobi region to voice their concerns about the project to the central government.

Chondmani Dagva, governor of the Dungovi province, which lies directly north of the Omnigovi aimag, lamented his inability to halt the rapid clearance of mining licenses. He complained that local authorities have little power to protect their constituencies, given that mining licences are issued in the capital.

Herders, whose voices have been almost completely silenced in the rush to develop the region’s mining sector, simply expressed disbelief at the scale and possible impact of the projects.

One herder, representing 4,000 people from his soum, or sub-district, where four mines are already operating, said he fears not being to retain his camels and his livelihood.

“If that fifth mine opens, there will be no more livelihoods in my soum,” he said.

Sara Jackson, a PhD candidate in Geography at the Toronto-based York University, who is currently researching the impact of the Oyu Tolgoi on herders in the Gobi, told IPS, “(One of the herders told me) ‘the mining companies are telling us to have fewer animals, so basically they are telling us to be poor’.”

Herders have also hinted that the governor has been taking bribes from the mining companies, which comes as no surprise to experts familiar with the inner-workings of the Mongolian government – in 2011, Transparency International ranked the country 2.7 out of 10, two places away from “highly corrupt”.

But the mines are lucrative enough to drown out locals’ concerns. Oyu Tolgoi alone is expected to contribute about 30 percent of Mongolia’s gross domestic product (GDP) by the time the project is up and running in 2013.

It is unlikely that residents in the southern Gobi region will share in the spoils of these extraction projects. Khanbogd, the soum located closest to Oyu Tolgoi, is very poor in comparison to Ulaanbaatar, which has been the recipient of generous government funding.

In fact, according to local researchers, Khanbogd receives the smallest revenue from the central government of any soum or aimag.

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