Category Archives: Biodiversity

Africa is not spending enough on food

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This piece was posted by Hilde Faugli, Communications Intern at Find Your Feet. 

70 percent of people in Africa live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for food and income

While most talk about Africa these days centers on the World Cup in South Africa, sobering facts about the continent’s food situation have been presented in an International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI) paper entitled Public Spending for Agriculture in Africa: Trends and Composition. According to the paper insufficient spending on agriculture Africa means that the continent is “now facing the same type of long-term food deficit problem that India faced in the early 1960s.

 
70 percent of people in Africa live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for food and income. Spending money on food production is therefore critical. Regrettably, only eight African countries have reached the target adopted by the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in 2003. Back then, the continent committed to allocating 10 percent of their budgets to agriculture. The countries to reach the 10 percent target are Niger, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Senegal, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

 As a result of the inadequate investment in the African agriculture sector, the continent is vulnerable to frequent food crises and countries are dependent on emergency food aid and food imports. The paper argues that governments and donors in the past have devoted more resources to emergency aid than to long-term agricultural development, which further undermines the countries’ ability to generate economic and agricultural growth. “Consequently, poverty and hunger have persisted and threaten the likelihood that some countries will meet the MDGs”.  The authors recommend increased investment in what they call the prime movers – human capital, technology and institutional innovations – to increase farm production and accelerate agricultural growth. As climate change is likely to have an adverse effect on the continents food production, increased government spending will probably prove even more important in the future.

Meanwhile, donor funding for agriculture in Africa has dropped dramatically – from 15 percent in the 1980s to 4 percent in 2006- but the amount countries allocate from aid to food production also varies quite considerably. In 2007 Botswana and Nigeria spent less than 1 percent of all aid received on agriculture while Burkina Faso in 2006 spent 8 percent of its total aid on agriculture.

To be able to improve their food deficit, and stand strong against climate change, African countries will need to spend more of their budgets on developing their agricultural sector. However, just as important is that the agriculture is developed in a sustainable manner. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), increasing use of chemical fertilizers and intense industrialized agriculture are, by some actors, seen as the solution to the food crisis.  This approach to agriculture brings with it not only possible health risks, it is also likely to lead to a loss of biological biodiversity.

It is important to remember that this type of agriculture is not the only way to go. In Malawi, a return to age-old, chemical-free farming techniques is improving crop harvests for many poor farmers. Agriculture is the life blood of many small communities, and should be supported accordingly. The conservation of biological diversity that sustains agriculture is essential, and should be put at the heart of any national or local strategies to improve food security. Read more about Find Your Feet’s approach to agriculture.

Download the paper Public Spending for Agriculture in Africa: Trends and Composition.

And if you’d like to read about a global campaign to promote More and Better aid to agriculture, click here.

Sustainable agriculture and conservation of biodiversity will prove important in improving food production in Africa.

World People’s Conference on Climate Change

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This piece was posted by FYF Communications Intern Tahsina Rumman Khan.

I was glad to see that, at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba last week, the focus was finally being placed on listening to the voices of the poor.

After the deep disappointment of the Copenhagen Climate Summit which failed to delineate adequate policies for addressing some of the worst effects of climate change, and which was, arguably, merely a rich man’s club and a chance to burn air miles, last week’s conference and its wider movement comes at a welcome point in time.

For the 65% of people in sub-Saharan Africa who rely on agriculture to feed their families, issues relating to climate change and food security are critical in deciding what lies in store for them over the coming years.  

The World People’s Conference acknowledged the effects of agribusiness on climate change, and assessed all the methods and procedures used in agribusiness, underlining the need to respect Mother Earth and its resources. The ideas and visions came from the people themselves, illustrating the stark contrast to the top-down approach used by the UN Climate talks.

Visit the World People’s Conference website to read more.

Business as usual is not an option

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As the UK election is approaching, Find Your Feet is one of the 188 organisations that joined the Vote Global manifesto.

One of the key demands in the Vote Global manifesto is that the UK government support the poorest countries to adapt to and mitigate against climate change, ensuring that this funding is additional to official development assistance. 

Poor people living in rural areas, who depend on farming to feed their families, are already suffering the effects of climate change. Their crops are failing more frequently, meaning that they are seriously struggling to grow enough to survive.

In the wake of the World Food Crisis, over the past couple of years debates have raged as to how we can best feed the world.  A 2007 intergovernmental report, co-sponsored by 7 UN agencies including the Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Health Organisation and World Bank suggested that a ‘business as usual’ approach to agriculture was not sufficient. However there is little evidence that different approaches to agriculture are seriously being considered.

The approaches I am talking about are, in fact, centuries old. Early farming systems were characterised by diversity – depending on a wide range of plants and animals for food. In fact there is still there is successful farming going on in many countries that makes good use of polycultures; land husbandry practices such as crop and field rotation, composting and use of legumes; and of ‘traditional’ varieties of seed bred for resilience across a range of conditions. This agricultural approach, which is broadly termed ‘agroecology’ is productive, resilient in the face of environmental shocks, and less dependent on fossil fuels; it also offers consumers a source of good quality healthy food and offers farmers fulfilment as valued members of a community.

Whilst the industrial agricultural approaches regarded as exemplary in the twentieth century have reduced the drudgery of agriculture, and in many cases increased production, there have also been great environmental costs. Industrial agriculture, which is characterised by the use of non-renewable resources that deplete the environment, constitutes our recent past. It cannot, however, be our future.

Agroecology challenges us to move beyond the narrow focus of ‘Green Revolution’-type approaches that privilege production over all other criteria, to a more coherent, sustainable, vision for the future. It is both conservative when it comes to the potential over utilisation of environmental resources and radical in its protection of the rights of small family farmers and its promotion of a new paradigm for agriculture – one that recognises the interconnections between food, farm, family and notions of a just society, not just ever increasing production.

At this election we would like to see a real recognition of the fact that, in the light of the pressures of climate change, ‘business as usual is not an option.’ In considering how we are going to support the poorest countries to adapt to and mitigate against climate change there needs to be space for a serious consideration of how exactly this ‘additional’ funding will be used.

Dr. Dan Taylor is Director of Find Your Feet

Let farmers choose

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This piece was posted by Betty, Programmes Officer, FYF UK Office

Can we both intensify agriculture and preserve ecosystems?

Yesterday evening I attended a lecture on farming and sustainable environments at the Royal Geographical Society.

It was the first of two lectures organised by the Earthwatch Institute – the second will be on the subject of forests and climate change.

The Institute conducts research around the world to understand environmental challenges and find solutions that will conserve the diversity and integrity of life on earth. They work with volunteers, many of whom are from their corporate sponsors, encouraging them to leave their blackberries aside for a few days while they go outside and get their hands dirty. The idea behind this is to inspire them to take action in the workplace or community to promote sustainability and environmental awareness.

Increase profit at the expense of biodiversity?

The event was chaired by “Countryfile” presenter, Julia Bradbury and featured the research of Professor Ken Norris of the University of Reading and Dr Mark Chandler from Earthwatch. Julia Bradbury quoted David Attenborough, who recently said that there are now three times as many people in the world as there were when he made his first broadcast in 1952.  The billing for the event asked whether it was possible to reconcile the conflict between intensifying agriculture (in the context of the pressures on farmers to produce more food as population increases and climate change forces land use patterns to change) and conserving precious ecosystems.

I was interested to see whether the speakers would unpick the assumption that agriculture must be intensified or whether there are alternative approaches to feeding a growing population.

Short term profit = long-term loss

Will marginalised farmers benefit from payment for ecosystem services?

Will marginalised farmers benefit from payments for ecosystem services?

Professor Norris discussed his cocoa biodiversity project in Ghana, explaining three models of producing cocoa – a forest system which included cocoa bushes, traditional shaded agriculture where a large number of trees were preserved giving shade to the cocoa bushes and more intensive farming with few trees remaining. Whilst the latter stage gives increases yields and profit there is a decrease in biodiversity and the amount of carbon stored. And over the long term intensive cocoa farming reduces the nutrient content of the soil resulting in a decline in yields. As a consequence, land that had formerly been used to produce cocoa had become so unproductive that it had been abandoned.

Professor Norris discussed payments for ecosystem services as an approach that would both help preserve ecosystems and benefit poor farmers.

Whilst the reduction of poverty among the poorest farmers and the preservation of ecosystems are both issues that drive our work at FYF it remains to be seen how such a system would measure the carbon and biodiversity that a farmer is responsible for preserving. It is also unclear how the marginalised, often illiterate and largely women farmers we work with would benefit from schemes such as these.

The effects of fertilizer

Dr Chandler discussed how to produce the much sought after coffee from the Tarrazu region of Costa Rica while maintaining a healthy ecosystem.

Farmers here are reporting declining yields and increasing costs leading to falling incomes while soil erosion and landslides are on the increase. As well as decreasing yields in the long term through acidification of the soil, which reduces the nutrients available, excessive application of fertiliser has polluted water sources. Dr Chandler recommends that farmers decrease their use of synthetic fertiliser and replace it with organic fertiliser. His research is finding that this leads to a decrease in acidity of the soil and an increase in productivity.

This is very much in line with FYF’s approach although our farmers have not experienced the problems of excessive fertiliser use that he reported as this is beyond their means.

Dr Chandler was asked how farmers react to this advice and he replied that he convinces them by showing them the results of the soil analysis as evidence of the damage of long-term use of synthetic fertilisers.

Letting farmers choose for themselves

Letting farmers choose for themselves.

This contrasts with the approach used by Lomadef, one of our partners in Malawi.

Project Officer, Henderson, recently told me that Lomadef demonstrate as many different approaches as possible on their organic training farm and let the farmers choose for themselves which ones, if any, they will adopt.

Their Director, Mr Kanjanga said that they don’t try to persuade the farmers they work with to do anything different. But when they see the results obtained by farmers who have adopted methods learned from Lomadef, they persuade themselves to give it a try! 

It was a fascinating evening, and although the focus was on cash crops rather than subsistence crops, which are our main concern, it confirmed that by using compost rather than synthetic fertilisers, our farmers are improving their yields both in the short term and the long term as well as protecting the environment on which they depend for their livelihoods.

Re-evaluating tribal communities

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This piece was posted by Tahsina, FYF Trusts and Communications Intern in London:

Tribal women in Chattisgarh, India

Starting my voluntary position at Find Your Feet has been indeed inspiring. While I read about the key issues surrounding Find Your Feet’s projects, the programmes about Tribal People in India (adivasis) grabbed my attention, which is an issue very close to my heart.

I first started thinking about tribal people when I touched upon the topic in my Master’s course in Gender and International Development. Being someone who feels a strong connection and oneness with nature, I could understand their passion for their surroundings and their way of living. In a rapidly globalising world where cultures from most regions of the world are slowly coming together and meshing into one, where modernism has led to universalism, one learns to value diversity.

Besides their unique cultures and traditions, indigenous knowledge is something that is easily forgotten. The experience of the local people, along with the knowledge that has been handed down through generations can be easily overlooked by the desire to use the most technologically advanced techniques in managing natural resources. There is a clear need to open our minds to learning from tribal people and how they manage nature.

What seems to be problematic, however, is the injustice that the general disregard for the lifestyles and livelihoods of the indigenous people engenders. Indigenous people have been marginalised and their environments have been intruded upon by dominant socio-political groups in many parts of India, resulting in a lack of social, political, community and individual rights and trapping them into an inter-generational cycle of poverty. To break this cycle, it is crucial that they regain access to their rights and that they are able to reclaim their ownership.

Find Your Feet employs a bottom-up approach where individuals in tribal communities engage in making decisions that affect their lives, thereby returning power into their hands.

It is vital that the tribal communities are provided with access to safe drinking water, healthcare and education. But I have always wondered why tribal people are seen just as an ‘under privileged’ community. With the privilege of their breadth of knowledge passed on through the generations, isn’t it about time that they be supported to take matters into their own hands and get their voices heard?

On that note I wonder what the effect of global agreements like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of forests (REDD) will have on the ability of tribal communities to make sure their voices are heard. Will it have a positive or a negative effect on the poverty they face?

Bring Back the Bees

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Beekeeping Group, Rumphi, Malawi

“My group and I know the importance of honey in our daily lives. Honey can be sold to generate an income. It also acts as a source of food, has medicinal values, and we can use the wax to make candles.” Said Gondwe, Rumphi District.

“The Vanishing of the Bees.”

As the ‘buzz’ (bad pun – sorry!) in the news has highlighted recently, bees are vital to our food security. The documentary “The Vanishing of the Bees” stated that 80% of all fruit, veg, nuts, seeds, herbs and flowers rely on the bee – meaning that they play a role in one in every three mouthfuls of food we eat. The decline of the bee has therefore triggered alarm that our food supply could be in jeopardy.

And, ironically, fingers have pointed at intensive farming as the main culprit for the decline in the bee populations. The modernising of farming included extensive monoculture. The pesticides needed to keep monoculture going are thought to be having unexpected negative effects on honey bees. In addition to this the land clearance associated with intensive farming has destroyed much of the natural habitat of wild pollinators.

Bees in rural India and Malawi

Beekeeping, Uttarakhand, India

“We know very well that bees not only act as a source of income but also sustain the forest. You find that where bee hives are hung and bees have colonized people do not cut down the trees.” Said Gondwe.

Our partners in India and Malawi are providing people in rural areas with training and equipment so that they can start beekeeping. As Said highlights, this often runs in parallel to important conservation and reforestation efforts – restoring the natural habitat of wild pollinators and helping to reverse some of the negative effects of intensive farming.

It costs £13 to provide training and equipment so that a farmer in Malawi can start beekeeping, providing them with an additional source of income and improving their food crop yields. Support our important work. Donate now.

Reflection on Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution

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Fascinating debate at Times Online about the merits and drawbacks of the Green Revolution.

“For someone of my generation, growing up under postwar food rationing, the idea that food would always be plentiful and cheap seemed about as likely as a portable phone that you could carry around with you.

For many of us the dire predictions of Thomas Malthus were all too credible. Malthus had advanced the dismal theory that human populations would always grow faster than their food supply. It meant you could forget all your grand ideas about progress. Every social advance was destined to be brought to nothing by famine.

The singular achievement of the agronomist Norman Borlaug, who died at the weekend, was to take away this age-old fear, at least for those of us in the rich West”…..

Read more

Blind Alley? DFID’s policy on agriculture

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Is DFID’s policy on agriculture is in danger of failing to deliver food and environmental security?

“The UK Government still sees a combination of intensive farming and GM crops as the solution to hunger and malnutrition in the Global South….[their] current funding policies for agricultural research, development and extension fail to match up to the International
Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development’s (IAASTD) key findings.

The agroecological approach to food production and land management needs considerable research investment to develop techniques and ensure that farmer-led extension services are appropriate and lead to the adoption of the best systems for each agro-ecosystem. DFID is
potentially in a very strong position to ensure that this happens.”

Download the GM Freeze report to read more.

Sowing Autonomy: Gender and Seed Politics in semi-arid India

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“Over the last five decades, seeds have slipped out of farmers’ control by gradually becoming the prerogative of breeders, genetic engineers, commercial seed growers, registered seed dealers and bureaucrats in charge of seed market regulations. Commercial seeds are developed against a background of technological control, economic efficiency and rational management. The commercialisation and adoption of new crop varieties is undermining women’s roles in the realms of seed and crop management, and has serious implications for the maintenance of agro-biodiversity.”

Carine Pionetti, Sowing Autonomy. Published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

“The time has come to regenerate ecosystems”

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Mount Kenya Declaration on the Global Crisis and Africa’s Responsibility – Statement from the African Biodiversity Network

“The time has come for national governments to prioritise the regeneration of ecosystems, self-reliant communities and diversified local economies over export oriented policies, free trade agreements and the current wave of expansion of the food system.”

From 23 – 31 May 2009, the African Biodiversity Network (ABN) have gathered together near Mount Kenya, 25 organisations from 10 countries that work with farmers and local communities on the issues of biodiversity, food sovereignty, livelihoods, climate change, traditional knowledge, culture and community rights in Africa.

We are deeply aware that the planet is facing multiple interconnected crises which will have an even bigger impact on Africa, even though Africa is not responsible for these crises. On the one hand, there is the stark and devastating impact of the food and financial crises, which will be compounded by the impact of climate change.

We are very concerned about the devastating impact that the food and financial crises and climate change is having on the people of Africa and their environment. People are losing their livelihoods, houses, jobs at an alarming rate and at the same time, farmers, pastoralists and local communities have to cope with unpredictable changes in their environment. We concur with the Indigenous Peoples , that the Earth is no longer in a period of climate change but in a climate crisis.

We are outraged at the financial crisis which was caused by global financial institutions accumulating unimaginable wealth while speculating with ordinary people’s hard-earned savings. This economic meltdown is now pushing many countries over the brink and is adding another estimated 104 million people to the 1 billion permanently hungry people in the world.

We are also aware that the food crisis and recurring famines in Africa are not something new but is caused by basic structural injustices entrenched over decades, now reaching new levels of deprivation because of the speculative trading of food on international markets.

We find the current scale of ”crisis capitalism” intolerable and strongly reject the cynical attempts of corporates that target Africa for further exploitation of the food and climate crises by turning it into economic opportunities rather than trying to solve it.

We see the underlying cause of the crises as the globalisation of the industrial system which inevitably results in the concentration of capital and power in the hands of a few, generating ever growing poverty and ecological destruction resulting in global climate change. Now the same thinking that created these numerous toxic debts is promoting many “False Solutions” that are exacerbating the crises. There is an intensified scramble for Africa’s land and ecological wealth facilitated by governments who continue to be dominated by corporate interests.

We reject these False Solutions which include:

? Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), which, we are told will solve hunger and climate change, but have instead caused widespread contamination of farmers’ crops and our food while increasing the use of pesticides which destroy biodiversity and health. The ultimate aim of GMO companies is control over our seed and thus food system through the patenting of all forms of life. These crops require highly industrialised farming conditions, which release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, thus a major contributing factor to climate change. In spite of this, GMO proponents are now claiming that they can find GMO fixes for both the climate change and the food crisis.

? AGRA – A New Green Revolution is imposed on Africa by a collaborative effort between amongst others, the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, the World Bank, and agro-industries to replace Africa’s seeds, crops and knowledge with hybrids, GMOs, fertilisers and pesticides. Because this industrial system needs large tracts of land, AGRA is also funding the push to change land tenure systems, privatise land and so facilitating the rapid change of land from community custodianship to just another commodity in the pockets of investors. The sheer amount of money and political influence the Green Revolution push has behind it, is now dominating the debate on agriculture, pushing for stricter intellectual property rights on seeds, weak biosafety legislation, in the process narrowing Africa’s options for food sovereignty both on country and local level.

? Agrofuels (or biofuels) are promoted in Northern countries as the solution to climate change, as providing an alternative to fossil fuels. But they are driving an unprecedented land grab across Africa, and leading to forced evictions, deforestation, and rising food prices. We challenge the myth spread by corporations and corrupt governments that there is plenty of free land, going spare in Africa. We in Africa know of the challenges and conflicts we already face from the competition for land and water. A number of other solutions to climate change are also turning out to be little more than business opportunities, including biochar, carbon trading, geo-engineering.

It is clear that these proposed solutions by corporate interests are based on acquiring large tracts of land and cheap labour for industrial scale production, serving to maintain the lifestyle of societies of over-consumption thereby exacerbating the crises both in the North and the South. All of these developments claim that they bring progress to Africa. But not only will they fail to address hunger and climate change, they will make them worse. These false solutions are cynical attempts by the corporations to reach new markets, and to make a business out of a crisis

ABN’s Position

ABN believes that the solutions to climate change and hunger are the same: healthy resilient communities depend on healthy resilient ecosystems and biodiversity.

We are certain that the role of healthy, biodiverse ecosystems in maintaining a stable climate is critical, and that it is completely underestimated in most predictions and discussions about climate change. When dealing with climate change, we must both reduce carbon emissions and enhance biodiversity as equally important. Healthy soils built up by ecological agriculture and livelihood systems sink carbon as well as having more capacity to hold water in times of drought or flood.

Food sovereignty at local and national level requires locally adapted crop and livestock diversity and land tenure systems that will enable communities to produce and market food in a way that really feeds people, promote equity and at the same time deal with climate instability.

We also believe that local and indigenous ecological knowledge and governance systems must be urgently revived and enhanced to maximise Africa’s capacity to read, anticipate and adapt to climate change.

The time has come for national governments to prioritise the regeneration of ecosystems, self-reliant communities and diversified local economies over export oriented policies, free trade agreements and the current wave of expansion of the food system.

Africa needs to have the courage to free itself from its colonial legacy and build on its rich heritage through reviving the wisdom of its people as a responsibility to past and future generations. Based on this wealth, it has the capacity to take a lead in finding true solutions by disengaging from the very thinking that has created the crises in the first place.

Here, as the birthplace of the human species, African communities have adapted and evolved over 1000’s of years, without destroying their life support system. Africa needs to reclaim its responsibility and legacy as a basis from which to build a viable future for all.

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