Dr. Bukar Ali USMAN, mni

It happens that once you specialize in a topic, you get a little jaded about ‘broad overview’ talks. Whenever I go to one of those now, I notice myself mentally playing the ‘food security bingo’ game – what doesn’t the presenter mention? What is emphasized? The point scale in my head looks somewhat like this:

• Mentions food waste as a problem: + 3
• Speaks about diet choice: + 3
• Mentions food sovereignty: + 2
• Has a differentiated opinion about GMOs: + 1
• Opens with “how in the world will we feed 10 billion people?”: – 1
• Speaks about the green revolution as something to emulate: – 1
• Doesn’t question the current feed vs. food vs. fuel distribution: – 2
• Speaks about “incredible unused land resources in Africa and Latin America” (which are mainly pastoral or rainforest land): – 3
• Speaks about multinationals as saviors or alternatively as THE ENEMY: – 3

Like…

The Panel of the CTA organized seminar on Scaling up ICT projects in Agriculture at the CWA 2014. Photo by Faumuina Felolini Maria Tafuna’i (@WIBDI_Samoa)

In the course of the activities of Tech4agri there has been heavy engagement with young entrepreneurs in the field that utilize a variety of ICTs in their agriculture projects. However they face challenges that prevent the progress of these projects.

Hurdles to overcome

Major amongst these challenges is lack of agri knowledge. While the majority of youth are tech savy and forward thinking, case in point the young developers of the Agrihack Talent Competition, a background in any field of study related to agriculture is missing. As a result apps, products and services that are developed using ICTs are not an exact fit for end users.

Who they are specifically, their problems,their needs and their capabilities in terms of understanding ICTs are all questions…

Click here to download the Leaping & Learning Report

October 16^th 2014 is World Food Day, and in line with this years International Year of Family Farming, the theme of this World Food Day is “Family Farming: Feeding the world, caring for the earth” aiming to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farmers. Across Africa, smallholders account for 80% of Africa’s farmland and produce 80% of the food in Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. However due to a lack of suitable infrastructure, access to inputs, technology and storage, the majority of smallholders farmers are not well connected to markets.

After a warm welcome and opening remarks from our very own Katrin Glatzel, and introductions from H.E. Ambassador Neil Briscoe, the UK Permanent Representative to the Rome-based Agencies the panellists shared some of their experiences, successes and challenges from their diverse fields of work.

We heard…

Together with a colleague  I am organising a section at the ECPR general conference, Montreal 2015 ( http://www.ecpr.eu/Events/EventDetails.aspx?EventID=94)

We welcome panel and paper proposals (until 10 November  2014) that are based on the section description below.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me: jessica.duncan@wur.nl

Cross-Disciplinary Issues for Food Policy and Governance: Challenges and Opportunities

Food has proven to be a complex, even wicked, policy issue which encompasses multiple policy domains. The call for a more integrated food policy away from mono-disciplinary focus on agricultural, international development, or health is  increasing. Food policy integrates nutrition and public health, agriculture, environment, ethics and social justice, trade, ecology, spatial planning, climate change, water management, and energy and therefore needs the analysis of all policy domains involved, as well as cross-policy domain research. The interconnectedness of  relevant policy domains means that food represents a policy challenge as well as…

Three new publications investigate proposed solutions to global food insecurity, exploring the potential consequences of liberalising trade, increasing crop yields and introducing biotechnology. The first, written by agricultural scientists Tony Fisher, Derek Byerlee and Greg Edmeades, Crop Yields and Global Food Security, investigates the rate at which crop yields must increase if we are to meet global demand for staple crops by 2050. They explore how such targets might be achieved and what the consequences would be for the environment and natural resources.

Population growth, rising incomes per capita and growing biofuel usage mean we expect demand for staple crop products to increase by 60% between 2010 and 2050. This increase can either be met by expanding land area under agriculture or by increasing the yields of crops grown on current land. With land being in short supply and much potential agricultural land requiring deforestation and natural habitat clearance…

Gordon Conway will lead and participate in a series of high-profile discussions on the critical issues raised in his book, One Billion Hungry: Can we feed the world?at the three Rome-based UN agencies on the 27^th and 28^th February 2013.

The UN agencies – the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) – are critical to global thinking around agricultural development and as such their strategies have a far reaching impact on how we tackle global food security.

On 27^th February, the three agency principals, José Graziano da Silva (FAO), Ertharin Cousins (WFP) and Kanayo Nwanze (IFAD) will comment on Gordon’s vision of achieving food security, and will be inviting comments and questions from permanent representatives and staff at FAO. This high-level seminar will be webcast live here at 2:30pm GMT+1. Gordon will then lead…

Click to download the full report here

Released the 9th of October 2014, the latest Annual Trends and Outlook Report from the Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS)  ‘Promoting Agricultural Trade to Enhance Resilience in Africa’, assesses the structure and performance of trade by African countries in global and regional agricultural markets.

The food price crises of 2007/2008 and 2010/2011 highlighted how trade in agricultural products can have serious impacts on the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people in particular. For instance, some government responses such as safety nets for the vulnerable were instrumental in preventing people falling further into poverty, but protectionist measures restricting exports proved ineffective or costly for local farmers in terms of lost income.

This report highlights how trade is of particular importance as it affects the availability of and access to food and the rate at which the economy…

Read at :

http://africasciencenews.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=100%3Afemale-agriculture-scientists-to-fuel-africas-agrarian-revolution&catid=49%3Afood&Itemid=113&limitstart=1

Female Agriculture Scientists to Fuel Africa’s Agrarian Revolution

African must harness the potential of female agriculture scientists to revolutionise farming practices and rescue millions of citizens from hunger pangs.

Experts contend that African women contribute 70% of food produced yet they are grossly under-represented in research and policymaking as well as influential leadership positions in the agriculture sector.

An innovative professional development program funded by the Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) however aims to strengthen research and leadership skills of female agriculture scientists to enable them contribute to food security in sub-Sahara Africa.

The African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) has been strengthening the capacity of African women scientists engaged in pro-poor and cutting edge research in agriculture since its inception in 2008.

So far, the AWARD programme has benefited 250 women across eleven countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Read at :

http://www.scidev.net/global/gender/multimedia/investing-female-scientists-feed-africa.html

Investing in female scientists to feed Africa

In this interview, Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, director of the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development fellowship programme in Kenya, talks about AWARD’s work supporting the careers of female agricultural scientists across Sub-Saharan Africa.

She outlines the daunting challenge facing Africa: to rapidly expand agricultural production so that the continent can feed itself. Women currently produce the majority of Africa’s food but are severely underrepresented in agricultural research and development. Kamau-Rutenberg argues that it is therefore imperative to invest in female researchers.  Only by fully using this resource will Africa be able to meet its food needs.

(continued)

Fattened oxen buyers visiting producer farms in Gamogofa (Photo:ILRIYoseph Mekasha).

Cattle fattening is an important component of livestock farming in Gamogofa Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) of Ethiopia. The Zonal Bureau of Agriculture reports that there are about 3.5 million cattle in the zone. Although the area is agro-ecologically suitable for cattle fattening, smallholder cattle fatteners are not earning much from the sector. The beef value chain actors who attended the livestock commodity platform meetings organized by the Livestock and Irrigation Value Chains for Ethiopian Smallholders (LIVES) project identified the poorly developed cattle marketing system as the number one challenge in the zone. Smallholder fatteners sell their cattle individually in the nearby markets or to local traders in their villages. The smallholders have generally low bargaining power as they do not have market information and thus traders usually dictate the prices. Due to lack of good market and the unfair prices, a…

On the 29^th September 2014 two events laid out global and African strategies for agriculture and food security. At its 24^th session, the Committee on Agriculture (COAG), one of FAO’s Governing Bodies providing overall guidance on policies relating to agriculture, livestock, food safety, nutrition, rural development and natural resource management, met to discuss a wide range of issues, including family farming and sustainable agriculture.

Opening the event, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, emphasised the broad range of options needed to transform global food systems and that a paradigm shift is needed to make agriculture sustainable. In particular a departure from “an input intensive model”. We need to reduce the use of agricultural inputs such as water and fertilizer and look to new solutions. Such approaches as agroecology, climate-smart agriculture and biotechnology were used as examples of alternatives to the current system but that their use…

Value chain interventions are rarely evaluated as rigorously as interventions in agricultural production or health. This is due to various reasons, including the intrinsic complexity of value chain interventions, intricate contextual support factors, presence of multilevel system actors, constant adaption to market and nonmarket forces and the cost associated with conducting an evaluation.

This ILRI discussion paper discusses a range of approaches and benchmarks that can guide future design of value chain impact evaluations.

Twenty studies were reviewed to understand the status and direction of value chain impact evaluations. A majority of the studies focus on evaluating the impact of only a few interventions, at several levels within the value chains. Few impact evaluations are based on well-constructed, well-conceived comparison groups. Most relied on the use of propensity score matching to construct counterfactual groups and estimate treatment effects. Instrumental variables and difference-in-difference approaches are the common empirical approaches used for…

Pastoralism is a farming system practised in arid and semi arid lands by societies that derive most of their food and income from livestock production. About 70% of the land mass in the Horn of Africa is dry land. In Kenya 80% of the land mass is classified as arid and semi-arid while approximately half of Tanzania consists of dry land. These dry lands can only be effectively used for livestock rearing, supporting wildlife resource harvesting and tourism.

The poster below, prepared for the Tropentag 2014 conference, presents findings of a situation analysis of animal health and its implication on food safety in Kenya and Tanzania. The study reports on livestock diseases with high prevalence and their likely effects on food safety and food security in pastoral communities in the two countries. The extent of species rearing diversification, pastoralist trade orientation and practices that may expose the community and their trading partners to animal and zoonotic infections…

A report based on a two day workshop held in January 2012, part funded by the UK Government’s Foresight Programme, was recently published by the Food Climate Research Network and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food. The workshop brought together key thinkers to discuss sustainable intensification and more specifically its definition as well as the challenges facing it and the role of sustainable intensification in relation to environmental sustainability, animal welfare and human wellbeing.

The report concludes with a summary of the key insights from the workshop, summarised here:

By Lindiwe Majele Sibanda and Katy Wilson.

Reblogged from AlertNet

Today, the world is searching for solutions to a series of global challenges unprecedented in their scale and complexity. Food insecurity, malnutrition, climate change, rural poverty and environmental degradation are all among them.

A recent meeting hosted by the Irish government and the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice (MRFCJ) in Dublin convened experts and practitioners from around the globe to discuss how the next iteration of development goals following the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can respond to this set of challenges, as part of the so-called “post-2015” development agenda.

Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable to these threats as both supply-side and demand-side challenges are putting additional pressure on an already fragile food production system. Indeed, current systems of production will only be able to meet 13 percent of the continent’s food needs by 2050, while three out of four…

A recent paper, No Dominion over Nature, authored by UK ecologists, Professors Mark Huxham, Sue Hartley, Jules Pretty and Paul Tett, describes how current approaches to food production are damaging the long term health of ecosystems, hampering their ability to provide ecosystem services and leaving them vulnerable to collapse. Focusing on continual (and unsustainable) increases in agricultural productivity, for example through intensive monocultures, will inevitably lead to a “boom and bust” cycle.

The “dominant narrative” in meeting the ever increasing demand for food (some estimate we need to increase food production by 100% by 2050 to meet this demand) is to intensify agricultural production, an approach, such as the Green Revolution, that has so far allowed food production to keep pace with population growth. Such a pathway, as authors argue, is causing ecosystem deterioration, eroding the ecosystem services we rely upon such as pollination, climate regulation and water purification…

Goats being herded near a water point in Wajir, northern Kenya (photo credit: Riccardo Gangale).

‘Livestock production in smallholder systems exists throughout the developing world in a great variety of forms. Farm animals contribute considerably to the livelihood strategies of the poor and can be an important source of income.

‘Livestock keeping can also make a vital contribution to household food and nutritional security. The value of production of different livestock species in different production systems varies considerably. Due to a range of constraints, most small-scale livestock keepers are operating at levels of productivity well below their potential. Livestock investment must consider the positioning of small-scale livestock producers within the whole value chain.

‘Research shows the developing world undergoing a ‘livestock revolution’ characterized by accelerating demand for livestock products due to increasing populations and incomes. This livestock revolution is creating new opportunities for rural producers to participate in income-generating livestock enterprises…

Africa is often referred to as a continent of opportunity, economic or otherwise. In part because of the progress made – since 2000, rates of extreme poverty and hunger have dropped as have the number of new HIV infections, and access to education and health care is increasing. But also due to the predicted changes to take place over the next few decades – 6 of the 10 fastest-growing economies are in Africa, and a growing youth population means that the continent will have a working-age population bigger than that of China or India by 2035.

Indeed the theme of the first ever US-Africa Leaders Summit which recently drew to a close, was “Investing in the Next Generation.”. 40 or so heads of states and government from across Africa joined President Obama in Washington to discuss the opportunities for developing sustainable African economies. A key message from the summit…

At Agriculture for Impact we talk a lot about resilience and in particular how farms and rural economies can become more resilient to shocks and stresses like climate change, pests and diseases and food price fluctuations. In the new UNDP Human Development Report 2014 released recently, the concept of resilience in terms of individuals, communities and of global political systems is explored. As the report states, “resilience is about ensuring that state, community and global institutions work to empower and protect people”.

In particular the report highlights the precariousness with which we view advances in human development, improvements in peoples’ welfare and the state of the environment and global governance. Corruption, environmental and humanitarian crises, crime, changing leadership, negligence of key sectors such as health and civil unrest can all spell disaster for progress made in tackling poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity, environmental degradation and poor health. As the report states…

As the threat of climate change, natural resource scarcity and declines in the provision of the majority of ecosystem services continue, agroecology is increasingly being explored as an option for addressing the stress conventional farming systems put on the environment. To date, however, agroecology is still a niche farming method, relatively underutilised in agricultural development, policy and research despite growing evidence of its benefits for both productivity and sustainability. A new paper by Laura Silici at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) explores what agroecology is, why it is not yet being scaled-up to any significant degree and recommends future action for integrating this social and ecological movement into modern farming systems.

Agroecology is defined as “an ecological approach to agriculture that views agricultural areas as ecosystems and is concerned with the ecological impact of agricultural practices”. The paper explains that it consist of three facets:

1)      The…

In the wake of the 2008 food price crisis, which exacerbated food insecurity and increased smallholder farmers’ vulnerability to shocks and stresses, recognition of the barriers smallholders face in becoming more productive and developing their farms as commercial businesses has been growing. In 2010, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation implemented the Multidisciplinary Fund (MDF) project to help develop policies supportive of smallholder commercialisation in Africa, in particular identifying the heterogeneity amongst smallholders in terms of their attitudes to commercialisation.

A new report, Understanding smallholder farmer attitudes to commercialisation – the case of maize in Kenya, by the FAO, focuses on maize producers and rural youth in Kenya by investigating “attitudes, strategies and opportunities related to maize commercialisation” in Meru and Bungoma regions in the country. The report is based on key informant interview, focus group, farmer survey and stakeholder workshop data.

At present farm management is not undertaken…