Category Archives: Food crisis

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.

Back to Business? – the G8 Food Security Initiative

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It is expected that the G8 states will be signing up to a new food security initiative this Friday (10th July 2009), with the aim of replacing food aid with more sustainable aid to farmers in the developing world. The US and Japan will lead the way on this initiative, providing $6-8 billion of the proposed $12 billion fund.

At Find Your Feet we are really pleased to see this emphasis on providing more long-term funding for agriculture. However there doesn’t seem to have been any shift from a ‘business as usual’ approach to agriculture that relies on industrial farming methods and free-market agricultural policies. To quote Japan’s prime minister Taro Aso “recipient countries [must be supported] to develop growth strategies with renovated agro-industries.”

According to Olivier De Schutter, the OHCHR Special Rapporteur on the Right to food, the issue isn’t one of merely increasing budget allocations to agriculture, but rather “that of choosing from different models of agricultural development which may have different impacts and benefit various groups differently.”

This echoes our belief that, in the light of a changing climate and increasing pressure on the world’s resources, decision makers at the G8 must, as the IAASTD report puts it “dramatically increase their investments in smallholder ecological farming systems.” This could have a serious impact on food security in Africa because, as an important UNCTAD and UNEP study Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa showed, organic or near-organic agriculture practices in Africa outperformed conventional production systems based on chemical-intensive farming. (visit our website to read more)

The same goes for free-market agricultural policies. A recent report by Action Aid ‘Let Them Eat Promises: How the G8 are failing the billion hungry’ says that “developing countries must shift their focus away from export crops, back to sustainable local production for local markets.”

“If the G8 is indeed serious about its commitment to confront hunger,” writes Anuradha Mittal in Foreign Policy in Focus, “the member countries must stop the steady drumbeat of proselytizing for free markets and technological solutions to hunger.”

“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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Subsistence Culture

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While the world plunges into crises, subsistence farming in Africa holds the key to sustainable agriculture production, not only for the region but also other parts of the world.

By Tewolde B. G. Egziabher, Director General of the Environmental Protection Authority of Ethiopia, and co-founder of the Institute for Sustainable Development.

I am from Africa, and you also came from Africa, albeit generations before me. I bring you all masses of love from your original mother, Africa.

It is usual for the young, especially in Europe, to look at the old, including their parents, as if they are past it; as if they are ready to be buried and forgotten. Therefore, it is not surprising to me that other continents think of Mother Africa as hopeless and view Africans as permanently hungry.

Yes, there are hungry people in Africa. But there are also hungry people in Europe, and in every other continent, for that matter. And, yes, the proportion of hungry people is probably the greatest in Africa, but I want to tell you why.

Africa is where all humans came from. Therefore, Africa is the continent that has fed humanity the longest. Our lore regarding food and feeding is massive in Africa. Nevertheless, thanks to the centuries of colonial and neocolonial plunder of resources and people, Africa is the least populated of continents. So Africa, of all continents, has the greatest potential to feed her resident people. Why, then, does the image of hunger in Africa persist?

To answer this question, I want to take you back to the 1850s when the industrialisation of agriculture started in the violently dominant countries of Europe and then America. The in-dustrialisation of agriculture requires, among other things, a high population density. This is because of its need for both a large market and a well developed transportation and marketing infrastructure.

The low population density of Africa meant that, because of its less well-developed transportation and marketing infrastructure, small quantities of subsidised food “dumped” on Africa by Europe and America easily disabled its internal small food markets. Africa’s non-mechanised agriculture thus remained at a subsistence level and never developed intensive agricultural production.

Now, the industrial agriculture of Europe and America, and recently that of Asia, is increasingly in crisis. It is polluting the land, the water and the air such that agricultural land is degrading fast, water is becoming unsafe for humans and for most of other forms of life, and polluted air is trapping the sun’s radiation to the extent that the whole biosphere is warming up. Global food production risks failing to adapt to the changing climate.

This risk is growing in spite of the lure of “quick fixes” for all agricultural problems claimed by genetic engineers. Fossil fuels, on which the industrial culture, including industrial agriculture, depends, are running out. The rich banks of Europe and America are collapsing and governments have had to buy up some of their assets. The agreements of the World Trade Organization, which encouraged the dumping of subsidised foods in Africa’s urban centres, now, hold little authority. Indeed, negotiations on these agreements have been stuck since the Ministerial Conference in Seattle failed in 1999. I would not be surprised if the World Trade Organization were now to simply fade away.

But we must, all the time, have food to subsist on, and the subsistence farming of Africa is now the most intact of all agricultural systems precisely because industrial agriculture has bypassed it. So, the more-or-less intact African subsistence agriculture can become a reference point from which to base sustainable global food production, whilst ensuring it is compatible with the health of the entire biosphere.

For a start, subsidised food dumping in Africa must cease. The dependence it creates by destabilising Indigenous agriculture is the main reason why the proportion of hungry people in Africa is now so high. But it will take only a few growing seasons for the rurally intact subsistence food production systems in Africa to fill in the gap created by the cessation of food dumping.

A new form of sustainable agricultural intensification is already taking place in Africa. This started in four local communities in the badly degraded north-eastern highlands of Ethiopia. Members of each local community met and analysed their environmental and agricultural problems. They then developed their byelaws to determine what each community would do, and elected their own leadership to oversee the implementation. They built terraces and bunds to prevent soil erosion; they restricted their animals to specific areas and fed them crop residues so as to allow grass, shrubs and trees to maximise growth in the rainy season, and vegetation cover improved dramatically in just one rainy season. They could then harvest the grass and add hay to the crop residues to feed their animals sufficiently.

The increased availability of animal dung and biomass waste made it possible for them to make and apply compost on their respective fields. Soil fertility improved and so did crop harvests. Rainwater percolated through he improved soil structure and began recharging the water table more fully. Springs and streams began to flow again and strengthen, allowing irrigation in the dry season, which increased food production further. Trees that had disappeared owing to land degradation began returning in subsequent rainy seasons. Farmers enriched the resurgent tree cover with the species of their choice, usually fruit trees and leguminous trees for both fodder and soil enrichment.

Starting from just these four communities, the practice is now expanding throughout Ethiopia. In November 2008, the African Union organised a conference in Addis Ababa, preceded by field visits, to extend these innovative and sustainable practices to the rest of Eastern and Southern Africa.

Of course, I am not implying that the corporations that have plunged the world into unsustainability will simply give up. They will not, but Africa’s subsistence agriculture could be the basis for the much needed intensification of sustainable food production, not only in Africa, but throughout the world.

The time has come to learn from the wisdom and practical knowledge of the people whose continent gave birth to humanity. We will then be able to incorporate the globally resynthesised industrial culture of its most impetuous species, Homo sapiens, into a more healthy form of development that will sustain life robustly to the end of time.

-ends-

With thanks to Third World Network Features. The above article is reproduced from Resurgence, No. 254 May/June 2009. It is based on a speech given at the opening ceremony of Terra Madre, Turin, Italy, October 2008.

A G8 on agriculture without farmers = more hunger and poverty

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(Treviso, 21 April 2009) The first G8 on Agriculture which ended yesterday in Cison di Valmarino produced a final declaration which not only admits its own failures in the past, but previews a future full of contradictions. The G8 will never be able to alleviate hunger in the world by making its decisions behind closed doors, in the absence of the main actors in the global debate on agriculture – the millions of peasants and family farmers, women and men, who feed the world.

The G8′s assertion that “farmers must be the main protagonists” rings particularly hollow when the meeting this weekend was explicitly designed to limit the access of farmers organisations and reduce their visibility. The G8 held their meeting in an isolated castle in the mountains, and the Italian Agricultural minister refused to meet representatives of Italian and International farmers organisations who wished to express their opinions.

Read more on the Via Campesina website

World Water Crisis

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“Mixed cropping is the best method. Every crop does something to the soil and helps others to grow, either by providing safety against insects or enriching the soil with leaf fall. Further, we feel secure in the thought that if one crop fails there others to sustain us.

The best thing about this method is that our traditional crops are very hardy and can survive under hostile conditions.” Gangwar, a 70 year old woman supported by DDS, India

Professor John Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Advisor , was on the BBC’s Today programme this morning.

He warned that a “perfect storm” of food shortages, scare water and insufficient energy resources mean that the world is facing imminent major upheavals, with things coming to a head in 2030. He placed a particular emphasis on the problem of water scarcity but remained relatively non committal on certain possible solutions to the crisis, even when John Humphrys pushed him to comment on the fact that GM had not yet delivered on its’ promises and on the need for a revision of our consumption patterns.

Water is, according to UNESCO’s Koichiro Matsuura the “principal medium through which climate change will affect economic, social and environmental conditions. There is an urgent need to strengthen capacity – especially in the poorest countries – to cope with more frequent and intense water-related disasters caused by climate change.”

So, if GM is failing to deliver on its promises, what are the alternatives?

I was pleased to come across an Inter Press Service article today, posted on the Agricultural Biodiversity weblog, about the Deccan Development Society, a partner we worked with for seven years. The article states that in Zaheerabad, dalit (the broken) women forming the lowest rung of India’s stratified society, now demonstrate adaptation to climate change by following a system of interspersing crops that do not need extra water, chemical inputs or pesticides for production.

Dialogue between science and traditional knowledge

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I came across this really interesting article by UNESCO’s Koichiro Matsuura.”G20 nations must address the most pressing issue of our time.”

At a World Food Programme summit, Gordon Brown said he will try to negotiate a new fund to help the world’s poorest through the economic downturn at April’s G20 meeting. Yet increased funding will not solve everything, says Matsuura. He outlines UNESCO’s efforts to inform decision-makers and explains that a viable solution will include a true dialogue between science and traditional knowledge systems and a reflection on how to capitalise on local cultures in a context of agriculture for development.

Read the article

Read about Put People First, the march for Jobs, Justice and Climate change that will be taking placeo on 28th March, ahead of the G20 in April.

Organic Production….where’s the profit in that?

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Christina Gomba

Originally uploaded by Find Your Feet

“I like using compost because it’s cheaper than fertiliser. The manure helps to keep the nutrients in the soil. I like to farm organically. I think it’s better for the health of my family.

When I compare the yields before I learnt these new techniques from (FYF partner) LOMADEF with yields afterwards – things have improved so much!” Christina Gomba, Ntcheu, Malawi

Organic Production……

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued a briefing paper earlier this month titled “Sustaining African Agriculture: Organic Production.”

As the paper states, a Green Revolution “cannot be sustainable in Africa, a continent that imports 90 percent of its agrochemicals, which most of the small-scale farmers cannot afford. It will increase dependencies on foreign inputs (agrochemical and seeds of protected plant varieties) and foreign aid.”

Meanwhile UNCTAD’s research reported field trials finding that organic agriculture’s production was equal to or better than conventional systems. UNCTAD’s analysis looked at 114 cases in Africa that had converted or near-converted to organic and saw an overall increase in agricultural productivity of 116 percent. The brief also cites a number of other benefits of organic agriculture for Africa.

Despite this organic agriculture faces a number of important challenges. A lack of government investment, policies that support agrochemical subsidies, the lack of extension services and general misinformation are all preventing African countries from seizing the opportunities that organic agriculture presents.

…Where’s the profit in that?

Maybe the biggest challenge of all has not been explicitly cited here however. As Ben Lilliston puts it in the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Blog ‘Think Forward’, a major obstacle to organic agriculture in Africa is the fact that “the big agrochemical and biotech companies haven’t figured out how to profit from it.”

It is possible that this is pure cynicism. However the fact that, whilst the food crisis last year was spiralling, the share price of two of the world’s biggest agribusinesses – Monsanto and Syngenta AG – almost doubled, would seem to suggest that something is not quite right.

Let us explain

A brilliant NI spoof ‘advertorial’ gives ‘voice’ to agribusiness arguments in favour of increased external inputs such as fertilizers and GM seeds. With the Green Revolution “small, inefficient farmers gave way to fewer, more efficient farmers who could afford the chemicals and irrigation our Green Revolution package demanded.”

Is driving farmers off the land and increasing use of external inputs really the way to produce food?

What about the fact that increased fertilizer use over the past century has actually prevented us from confronting the key issue – namely the erosion of the natural productivity of the soil as a result of industrial agriculture: “while fertilizers can temporarily offset the effects of soil erosion, the long-term productivity of the land cannot be maintained in the face of the reduced organic matter and thinning of soil that characterize industrial agriculture.” (NI 418)

Meanwhile, as the UNCTAD briefing paper showed, small-scale organic agriculture can actually be more, not less productive than industrial agriculture.

Food sovereignty

La Via Campesina, asserts the right of peoples to define their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems, in contrast to having food largely subject to international market forces.

Organic agriculture is, as the UNCTAD briefing paper states, a production system through which Africa can “build on its strengths—its land, local resources, indigenous plant varieties, indigenous knowledge, biologically diverse smallholder farms and limited use (to date) of agrochemicals.”

Visit our website to read about how we are supporting poor farmers in Malawi to become independent of external inputs such as fertilizers.

Feeding the world – Thinking about the ways forward

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Lead farmers

Originally uploaded by Find Your Feet

I recently came across an article on povertynewsblog that made the following stark statement: “the government of Malawi clams the country grows enough food to feed their people. However, studies show that hunger is increasing in the country…. A recent nutritional survey says approximately 30 percent of Malawi’s rural population consume less than the 2,200 kilocalories per day, needed to stay healthy.”

The Malawian agricultural policy of defining ‘food security’ in terms of the availability of hybrid maize does not seem to be working. Despite promises of high yields hybrid maize is not drought tolerant, depends on expensive chemical fertilizers and cannot be saved, meaning farmers are forced to buy new seed every year

Meanwhile certain small-holder farmers are employing agricultural techniques that are enabling them to feed their families throughout the year. A week ago our Malawi office sent us a report on the progress of lead farmers that are being trained in Mzuzu. The simplicity of some of the techniques through which farmers are improving their harvests was striking. In this particular case it was ‘contour ridge marking,’ the practice of growing crops in pits. The ridges retain water, which then seeps into the ground, giving the plants a good drink. See our website to read more.

Little or large…..

This example points us towards a larger issue: Which agricultural model will enable us to grow the food needed to feed a swelling world population and respond to climate change?

Industrial models of agriculture are highly mechanized. They replace labour with capital through the purchase of machinery and are dependent on regular supplies of high yielding seed varieties, fertilisers, insecticides and herbicides.

Organic agricultural models on the other hand utilise no farming inputs which are not ‘natural’. Composting springs to mind as characterising organic farming but the use of mined phosphates, crop rotation, contour-ridge marking and intercropping also form a part of organic production systems.

Clearly the latter model is labour intensive. However, as George Monbiot writes “there is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.” This is because, as Monbiot suggests, small-holder farmers “ spend more time terracing and building irrigation systems; they sow again immediately after the harvest; and they might grow several crops in the same field.”

Monbiot concludes the article by warning that “a shift from small to large farms will cause a major decline in global production, just as food supplies become tight.”

Seed Conservation

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Seed Conservation

Originally uploaded by Find Your Feet

After a ride across London in the wind and rain to work yesterday morning, it was good to arrive to a colourful story from one of our partners in India. Being a new member of the FYF team, I love these little sources of inspiration.

Our partner Sabla works in Rae Bareli, (Uttar Pradesh) one of the poorest districts in India. Sabla is empowering 1,500 women in Rae Bareli to bring about lasting changes to their lives by supporting women to organize themselves into self-help groups and to engage in environmentally sustainable horticultural activities which boost their income and increase the food available to their families.

Recently Sabla organized a procession to raise awareness around the importance of organic fertilizer and the conservation of seeds. It sounds like the women had a really great couple of days!

What can be a better way other than a procession on brightly painted bullock carts for creating awareness among the people?

The participants started gathering early for the activity and there was enthusiasm and excitement among us all. We then set off on a two day procession to nine villages in Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, talking about the importance of organic fertilizers and the conservation of seeds. Over 600 women joined the procession along the way and over 1500 people came to see the video shows and plays we were putting on.

Articles on the procession were published in national newspapers like Hindustan, Dainik Jagran, Amar Ujala and Aaj.”

I have learnt a lot about sustainable agriculture since I started working at Find Your Feet. Dan, our Director, is an agronomist (as well as an anthropologist.) He recently completed a number of position papers for FYF and I think it might be useful to quote his paper on ‘sustainable agriculture and agricultural biodiversity’ to give a bit of context to the Sabla story:

“Whereas once husbandry methods such as time of planting, crop rotation, field rotation, intercropping or polycultures based on natural biological process were the predominant means of maintaining soil fertility and reducing pest infestation and the spread of diseases, this has been largely replaced by quick response external inputs in the form of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides together with higher yielding crop varieties bred for yield potential.

We have clearly prioritized production potential over systemic resilience with all its concomitant risks.”

In a nutshell biodiversity and the conservation of seeds is vital in ensuring the production of food now and in the future. For smallholder farmers living in developing countries, the loss of local crops represents a loss of choice that further heightens their vulnerability to food shortages.

The Sabla procession does not stand alone. I read an interesting article recently in Pambazuka by Astrid von Kotze: ‘The world food crisis: a ‘silent tsumami?’
“There has has been nothing silent,” she writes, “about environmentalists’ and farmers’ vigorous protests against the ‘green revolution’ with its dwindling of crop-biodiversity, against corporate agriculture based on GM technologies that prevent farmers from saving seeds for future years, against the partnership of Monsanto and Cargill as they began to control seed, fertiliser, pesticides, farm finance, grain collection, grain processing and livestock production.”

Clearly there are voices that need to be heard in the debate about responses to the world food crisis. Which is why it is maybe apt that I have kicked off this blog with an awareness raising procession involving 600 marginalised Indian women…!