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.

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Scene from Ndanifor Permaculture Eco-village in Bafut in Cameroon’s Northwest Region, the country’s first and only eco-village which is based on the principle that the answer to food insecurity lies in sustainable and organic methods of farming. Credit: Mbom Sixtus/IPS

By Mbom Sixtus
YAOUNDE, Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

Marking a shift away from the growing trend of abandoning sustainable life styles and drifting from traditional customs and routines, Joshua Konkankoh is a Cameroonian farmer with a vision – that the answer to food insecurity lies in sustainable and organic methods of farming.

Konkankoh, who left a job with the government to pursue that vision, founded Better World Cameroon, which works to develop local sustainable agricultural strategies that utilise indigenous knowledge systems for mitigating food crises and extreme poverty, and is now running Cameroon’s first and only eco-village – the Ndanifor Permaculture Eco-village in Bafut in Cameroon’s Northwest Region.

“Biodiversity was protected by traditional beliefs. Felling of some trees and killing of certain animal species in certain forests were prohibited. They were protected by gods and ancestors. We want to protect such heritage” – Joshua Konkankoh
Talking with IPS, Konkankoh explained how the eco-village organically fertilises soil through the planting and pruning of nitrogen-fixing trees planted on farms where mixed cropping is practised. When the trees mature, the middles are cut out and the leaves used as compost. The trees are then left to regenerate and the same procedure is repeated the following season.

“Here we train youths and farmers on permanent agriculture or permaculture,” he said. “I call it ‘permaculture the African way’ because the concept was coined by scientists and we are adapting it to our old ways of farming and protecting the environment.”

While government is keeping its distance from the project, Konkankoh said that local councils and traditional rulers are encouraging people to embrace the initiative, which is said to be ecologically, socially, economically and spiritually friendly.

“I was active during the U.N. Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. In studying the reason why many countries failed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), we realised that there were some gaps but we also found out that permaculture was a solution to sustainability, especially in Africa. So I felt we could contextualize the concept – think globally and act locally.”

The permaculture used at the eco-village makes maximum use of limited agricultural land, and villagers are taught how to plant more than one crop on the same piece of land, use a common organic fertiliser and obtain high yields.

Farmers, said Konkankoh, are encouraged to trade and not seek aid, to benefit from their investment and prevent middlemen and multinationals from scooping up a large share of their earnings. The organic agriculture practised and taught in the eco-village is a blend of culture and fair trade initiatives.

Joshua Konkankoh, founder of Cameroon’s first and only eco-village, shows off some nitrogen-fixing trees. Credit: Mbom Sixtus/IPS

“We encourage rural farmers to guarantee food sovereignty by producing what they also consume directly and not cash crops like cocoa and coffee.”

Farmers are trained in the importance of manure, of producing it and selling it to other farmers, as well in innovative techniques of erosion control, water management, windbreaks, inter-cropping and food foresting.

Konkankoh also told IPS that it was a mistake to have left the spiritual principle out of the MDG programme. “Biodiversity was protected by traditional beliefs.  Felling of some trees and killing of certain animal species in certain forests were prohibited. They were protected by gods and ancestors. We want to protect such heritage.”

The eco-village has started a project to replant spiritual forests with 4,000 medicinal and fruit trees in a bid to reduce CO2 emissions.

Fon Abumbi II, traditional ruler of Bafut, the village which hosts the Ndanifor Permaculture Eco-village, believes that the type of cultivation of fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants used by the eco-village will improve the health of local people.

He is also convinced that with many firms around the world producing health care products with natural herbs, the demand for the products of the eco-village is high, guaranteeing a promising future for the villagers who cultivate them.

Houses in the eco-village are constructed with local materials such as earth bags and mud bricks, and grass for the roofs. Domestic appliances such as ovens and stoves are earthen and homemade.

Sonita Mbah Neh, project administrator at eco-village’s demonstration centre, said that the earthen stoves bit not only reduce the impact of climate change by minimising the use of wood for combustion but the local women who make then also earn a living by selling them.

Lanci Abel, mayor of the Bafut municipality, told IPS that his council is mobilising citizens to embrace permaculture. “You know, when an idea is new, people only embrace it when it is recommended by authorities. We are carrying out communication and sensitisation of the population to return to traditional methods of farming as taught at the eco-village.”

Abel also had something to say about the performance of genetically modified plantain seedlings planted by the Ministry of Agriculture at the start of the 2015 farming season in Cameroon’s Southwest Region, which recorded a miserable 30 percent yield.

The issue had been raised by Mbanya Bolevie, a member of parliament from the region who asked Minister of Agriculture Essimi Menye about the failure of the modern seeds during the June session of parliament.

Julbert Konango, Littoral Regional Delegate for the Chamber of Agriculture, said the failure was due the fact that seeds are often old because “there is inadequate finance for agricultural research organisations in Cameroon as well as a shortage of engineers in the sector,” a sign that the country not fully prepared for second-generation agriculture.

Commenting on the incident, Abel said that citizens using natural seeds and compost would not have faced these problems, adding that “besides the possibility of failure of chemical fertilisers, they also pollute the soil.”

The eco-village, which would like to become a model for Cameroon and West Africa, is a member of the Global Ecovillage Network.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Claus Meyer (right) at the Copenhagen food event. Credit: A.D.McKenzie/IPS.

By A. D. McKenzie
COPENHAGEN, Aug 28 2013 (IPS)

For Denmark’s leading chefs, it’s not only the “taste” that counts. Many have an ambitious goal to “revise the relationship between people and food,” use local ingredients, produce less waste and go completely organic.

All this may seem elitist to the average consumer trying to cope with ever-rising food prices, but Denmark has shown that changing eating habits can have sustainable benefits. The country has the highest per capita consumption of organic produce in the world, its top chefs adhere to an environmentally-friendly Nordic food manifesto, and it has become a huge gastronomic destination in recent years.

The capital Copenhagen is currently sizzling with the ninth Copenhagen Cooking festival, a 10-day event running until Sep. 1 that has attracted a host of well-known chefs from Brazil, Singapore, Lebanon and other countries. They’ve come to share their experiences and provide meals within a community setting under this year’s theme of “social food”.

“The focus is to bring people together, to enjoy meals and to look at what cooks are doing to protect the environment and to raise awareness about food waste and other issues,” said Lonnie Hansen, the festival’s director.“Cooking can help to combat poverty and also to develop tourism when you have an outstanding national cuisine.”

“Denmark has a lot of initiatives involving organic food and locally grown food, and we provide a space for people to have a greater awareness about this,” she told IPS.

Copenhagen is where the New Nordic Food Manifesto was drawn up by Danish chef and entrepreneur Claus Meyer and signed by other leading cooks. The core values include using Nordic natural food resources such as fish caught locally, wild berries, and seasonal fruit and vegetables.

“In the sixties and seventies, I felt that Denmark had really lost something in the way we ate and was in a period of culinary darkness,” Meyer told IPS. “There was a need to restore and improve Danish food. Being a chef in the modern world meant taking responsibility, caring about the environment, working for biodiversity and being inclusive in your mindset. That’s the feedback I got from my colleagues when I launched the manifesto.”

Meyer is also the man behind Copenhagen’s iconic Noma, named several times as the world’s best restaurant by trade publications. He said that he and his fellow chefs wanted to set an example of putting the community back into cooking.

“It’s about reconnecting man with nature, localness, fresh ingredients and ethics. And it has been no surprise that producing better meals, better food, creates a different dialogue … and leads to greater production and entrepreneurship. We’re in a very dynamic stage of our food history right now.”

Meyer believes that sustainable cooking can also help to reduce poverty, and he has launched projects in countries such as Bolivia to underscore the role of biodiversity and traditional produce in cooking.

“I think that a rich country can help a poor country by giving away key competences and even by creating structures that could out-compete the donor in the future,” Meyer says. “Cooking can help to combat poverty and also to develop tourism when you have an outstanding national cuisine.”

His interest in sustainable world gastronomy has led him to create a Singapore-style restaurant in Copenhagen called Nam Nam, which has proved enormously popular with its spicy food and open kitchen where diners can watch the meals being prepared from fresh ingredients. Meyer has invited like-minded cooks from the Asian country to participate in Copenhagen Cooking and to share their expertise.

Bjorn Shen, a Singaporean chef on his first trip to Europe, is part of the Singapore street food presentation at the festival. He says that using local or organic produce in small, urbanised countries can be difficult, but that cooks need to try.

“We have to work with the existing farms and not only use the produce but highlight the process,” he told IPS. “We have to give organic food the awareness that it deserves and also hope that people see that it’s possible to use ingredients grown locally.”

Shen, who owns a restaurant called Artichoke, has been one of the leaders in Singapore’s ‘farm-to-table’ movement, working with the city-state’s limited number of organic farmers and producers to source ingredients. He also participates in a scheme known as the Edible Garden Project to grow greens in his restaurant’s kitchen garden.

“You can get really fancy tomatoes from overseas, but to me if you get a tomato grown in Singapore that was plucked just this morning, it’s better than any fancy tomato from half-way around the world that’s five days old,” he said.

At Copenhagen Cooking, Shen and his partner Roxanne Toh have served up a spicy bak chor mee sandwich – consisting of minced meat, shitake mushrooms and egg noodles in a Chinese steamed bun – along with a Singapore raw fish salad. He is conducting workshops on Singaporean cuisine and organic cooking as well.

Another of the festival’s key participants, Brazilian chef Alex Atala, has also made using native ingredients a cause célèbre in his business and at his famous Sao Paola restaurant D.O.M., where the menu includes insects such as ants.

The going-local movement makes economic and sustainable sense, says Atala, who is considered one of the most influential people in the gastronomy sector not only for his cooking skills but also for his work with Brazil’s indigenous groups.

“Food can be much more than you can imagine. Food can change our lives, can change the lives of millions of people,” said Atala. “My preparation starts on the ground, and involves people from the land, from the sea, from the forest.”

Like his Danish counterparts, Atala espouses a biodynamic approach to cooking and his presence at Copenhagen Cooking highlights the international nature of this movement.

Beyond the festival, Denmark has plans to increase the share of organic food served in public institutions to 90 percent by 2015, and municipalities have launched a wide-ranging re-education campaign in schools and other sectors to achieve this goal.

By Gunter Pauli
BERLIN, Jan 28 2013 (IPS)

When my children were born it was a clear commitment: all clothing would have to carry the “organic” seal. It was an expression of a lifestyle, a commitment to the Earth.

Gunter Pauli.

While in the early nineties I still had to search half the world to find certified organic children’s wear, today even mainstream shops carry organic clothing, especially for children.

I still have to pay a premium price like twenty years ago, but the products are easily available since an increasing number of brands pride themselves on offering natural products.

Whereas we have debated the use of biofuels that increase the cost of food, especially when subsidies divert corn from tortillas to gas stations, we have never debated the issue of fibres diverting land from food.

On a recent visit to China I learned that the government of the world’s largest cotton-producing nation decided to phase out cotton. The reasoning follows a clear logic: the land reserved to produce 32 percent of the world’s cotton should not provide a raw material for clothing. Land and its massive water reserve that made cotton viable and competitive should be reserved for producing food. Protein instead of fibres. The Chinese offer an insight into a logic that should prevail in all our production and consumption decisions: why waste water on clothing, when food is the priority?

All cotton, even organic cotton, requires excessive amounts of water. Eliminating chemicals is a great step forward, but is not enough to push society on a pathway towards sustainability.

There should be no doubt that by 2050 the additional two billion people on Earth will need to be dressed. However, the limited resources and the carrying capacity of our Earth need to be aligned with emerging demand.

While biologists have embraced chemicals, and even genetic manipulation to respond to growing needs, a smarter option emerges that goes beyond fiddling with nature through genetic control mechanisms, to searching for solutions within the regenerative resources that biodiversity offers.

After all, cotton originated from the Americas, but 63 percent is farmed in China and India, stressing the water reserves that even the United States does not have anymore. It is not good enough to have genetically modified cotton that requires less water: all water that is sustainably available should be dedicated to providing food security.

The question is: what else is available beyond hemp and kenaf? Time has come to create a portfolio of solutions. China offers once more an interesting strategy.

During the 2008 Olympics, the Chinese military was called in to clear two million tons of algae blooms from water bodies around Qingdao that were threatening the open water games.

This emergency situation provided an insight into the potential of algae. After all, these prolific protists feed on excessive nutrients and require no additional input. On the contrary, these grow in rivers and seas without ever needing fresh water as an input.

The processing is about removing water – not consuming water. It did not take long before motivated Chinese entrepreneurs and policy makers to join forces to create the first alginate-based textile fibre factory.

The conversion of 20 million tons, and the potential for farming beyond the harvesting of blooms, suggests that China could substitute all its fibre needs with these blooms. The cost to remove the bloom is converted into the generation of income without the need for additional land. The economics of new fibres could hardly be better.

A quick tour of the world confirms that Europe, Africa, the islands in the Chinese seas and Indonesia could provide a natural source for fibres that could release 25 percent of the world’s irrigation waters.

We should embrace a broader search and identify all the natural fibres that could meet demand without stressing this thin crust that sustains us. Regions characterised by temperate climates and void of rivers and seashores full of prolific algae growth seem to have forgotten another tremendous potential: nettle (Urtica dioica). Considered a weed around the world, this prolific plant thrives in poor conditions and could be part of the portfolio of fibres that will release water resources and dramatically reduce our dependency on chemicals to dress the world.

Nettles do not compete with food crops. Observing its presence, it does not even need to be planted. Since it is a perennial, once growing it only needs harvesting, no planting or nurturing. It is so easy to grow that it is embarrassingly simple compared to the industrialisation of cotton.

A piece of foul land the size of Belgium and the Netherlands is enough to provide a quarter of the world’s demand for fibres. We not only save the water, we save the chemicals and the seeds while generating jobs for producing a long lasting quality fibre that was the preferred raw material for the European royals in the Middle Ages, and remains the core fibre for men’s clothing in Bhutan and Nepal today.

We can continue to live on a beautiful blue Earth, provided we find out what we have. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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