Perhaps the greatest change in mindset in human history was from the belief in a Ptolemaic or geocentric view of the universe (Earth at the orbital centre of all celestial bodies) to a Copernican or heliocentric (the sun at the centre).

Today the world is facing many threats not least the need to feed an ever increasing population amid severe resource constraints. World food production per capita peaked in 1984 and if we are to achieve global food security we require, according to Norman Uphoff, political scientist at Cornell University and lead of the SRI-Rice group, a similar paradigm shift.

Presenting his case for the use and adoption of Systems of Rice Intensification at the International Institute for Environment and Development on 4th July, Uphoff explained the dire need for a change in mindset in agriculture: from an egocentric view, placing humans as the producers of food and manipulators…

VIDEO : Google Alerts – desertification

http://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2013/06/at-deserts-edge-glimpse-chinas-massive-desertification-challenge/#.Uc6GA-sgBn4

Choke Point / Eye On:

http://vimeo.com/27031806#at=0

‘At the Desert’s Edge’ Gives a Glimpse of China’s Massive Desertification Challenge

By Luan “Jonathan” Dong

In may not be surprising that China, home to so many other superlatives, also faces desertification on a grand scale. According to China’s State Forestry Administration, over 27 percent of the country now suffers from desertification – more than 1,000,000 square miles, or about one-third of the continental United States – impacting the lives of more than 400 million people.

At the Desert’s Edge, a new short documentary from the Asia Society and filmmaker Jonah Kessel, explains these challenges and efforts to combat it in Kulun Qi, a dry area in northeastern Inner Mongolia.

The film focuses on the perspectives of small, local units of families and farmers. “When my mother was young,” Ma Enqi, a shopkeeper…

Read at :

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science_technology/The_creeping_disease_that_threatens_populations.html?cid=36153724

Turning to dust

The creeping disease that threatens populations

by Luigi Jorio, swissinfo.ch

For the past 20 years, more and more countries have been affected by desertification – and not just because of climate change. Experts say that some agricultural practices have also had disastrous effects.

It’s not the desert on the move but farming land that is slowly disappearing, contrary to what most people believe.

“The mental picture we have is one of a sandy desert and dunes swallowing up villages and fields,” Gudrun Schwilch, a researcher at the University of Bern’s Centre for Development and Environment, told swissinfo.ch. “But in most cases, it’s just not like that.”

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), desertification is “the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. It is caused primarily by human activities and climatic variations”. Altogether, these regions represent 40…

Read at :

http://practicalaction.org/blog/news/now-is-the-time-for-smallholder-farmers/

NOW is the time for Smallholder farmers

Chris Henderson

I am really pleased to see the UK Government and G8 focus on food and agriculture and to be invited by DFID to consult on the initiative. This focus is needed to strengthen the resilience and productivity of all farmers to meet the food and nutrition needs of themselves and the growing population.

I am anxious about what the DFID event (Promoting African Agriculture – The New Alliance for Security and Nutrition) will bring.

• Will it motivate investment in sustainable agriculture at all levels – smallholder farmers to large-scale agri-business?
• Will it enable smallholders to invest and grow their agricultural livelihoods, or will it just benefit the multinationals and big business?

Smallholders are key to success
You may ask, why the preoccupation with smallholder farmers? Simple:

• They produce food where it is needed.
• They depend on the…

“Innovation Key to Unlocking Africa’s Horticultural Potential”

African agriculture is at the crossroads. Persistent food shortages are now being compounded by new threats arising from climate change. But Africa faces three major opportunities that can help transform its agriculture to be a force for economic growth.

First, advances in science, technology, and engineering worldwide offer Africa new tools needed to promote sustainable agriculture.

Second, efforts to create regional markets will provide new incentives for agricultural production and trade.

Third, a new generation of African leaders is helping the continent to focus on long-term economic transformation. Agriculture needs to be viewed as a knowledge-based entrepreneurial activity.

Economic collaboration

The emergence of Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs) provides a unique opportunity to promote innovation in African agriculture in a more systematic and coordinated way.

The launching of the East African Common Market in July 2010 represented a significant milestone in the steady…

“Seeding New African Agricultural Universities”

Op-Ed, NAI Forum

March 6, 2012

Author: Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa

Belfer Center Programs or Projects: Agricultural Innovation in Africa; Science, Technology, and Globalization; Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Policy attention across Africa is shifting to fostering agricultural innovation through enhanced research support and entrepreneurship. This will require radical transformation of the system of higher agricultural education. The current separation between research in national institutes and education in universities is a major obstacle to innovation.

This article proposes an alternative approach involving the creation of agricultural universities under the relevant line ministries. The seed for such universities already exist in the form of national agricultural, livestock and fisheries institutes which can be upgraded to combine research, teaching, extension and commercialization under one roof.

Unlike…

Monday, 01 July 2013 – NewBusinessEthiopia.com

African Ministers and other senior officials meeting at the African Union in Addis Ababa agreed to achieve development and eradicate hunger.

The ministers met in the framework of the High Level Meeting of African and international leaders to end hunger in the continent. The meeting is conducted ahead of the meeting of African Union Heads of State and Government tomorrow, under the theme “New, unified approaches to end hunger in Africa”.

The will to promote food security in Africa motivated the African Union, FAO and the Lula Institute to partner for a unified approach to end hunger in Africa by 2025 within the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) framework. About 15 Heads of State and Government positively responded to the invitation from the AU, FAO and Lula Institute to participate in the event and add value to CAADP by…

Three weeks to go before the launch of the 6^th Africa Agriculture Science Week, and the energy among the ranks of social reporters is palpable. A very active community will support the efforts of those communicating from the event and its overall importance to African agriculture – and many of the members of this community have yet not even met! They are the virtual supporters of the social media efforts for AASW6 supported by CTA, GFAR, YPARD and the CGIAR Consortium.

The energy is palpable and contagious, the numbers speak for themselves. Three weeks to go and an army of over 140 social reportersfrom all walks of life and all corners of the world are already researching, preparing, writing… Some of them will travel to Accra and participate in person, others will be behind the scenes hard at work to ensure those not be…

At the beginning of 2013, a group of 17 high ranking individuals and 7 organizations deeply rooted in agriculture and food security have sent a ‘Communication for Discussion‘ to the FAO Director General, Mr. Graziano da Silva.

Under the title ‘Framing Hunger. A response to The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012‘, scientists, civil society representatives and policy makers alike raised concerns about the essential questions on food security.

Agricultural development depends on innovation. Innovation is a major source of improved productivity, competitiveness, and economic growth throughout advanced and emerging economies, and plays an important role in creating jobs, generating income, alleviating poverty, and driving social development. If farmers, agribusinesses, and even nations are to cope, compete, and thrive in the midst of changes in agriculture and economy, they must innovate continuously.

– The World Bank on Agriculture Innovation Systems (AIS)

Agriculture Innovation Systems (AIS) aim to improve farmers’ productivity.  Besides classical approaches like training and regular/systematic visits, there are several others like Farmers Field Schools (FFS), market access or market oriented approaches…

These new approaches also use several tools. Studies have proven that, using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as rural development tools can lead to good results: How can we uses mobile phones, internet, community radio and others in AIS? Here are my experiences in Cameroon.

For some 200 million Africans fish is the main source of animal protein. This is one third of the continent’s population.  10 million Africans, many of them artisans, are directly depended on fisheries for their livelihoods. On top of this, fish is one of Africa’s prime export products, contributing significantly to some of the national economies.

These facts alone should make evident that fisheries have a significant social and economic value. So, it is the more surprising, that scant attention is paid to how fisheries can push Africa’s agricultural development.

“But why is that?” That is the question I asked Msekiwa Matsimbe, Aquaculture and Fisheries Scientist, working with the NEPAD Regional Fish Node in Malawi. NEPAD is the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, a body of the African Union aimed to eradicate poverty and create economic growth.

Earlier this month we reflected on Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer” from 1978. Those values and characteristics of a farmer hold true today, just as they did when they were first recited at the National FFA Convention. Folks can pick them apart and ridicule, saying the modern farmer has changed, but I believe those characteristics are things we still strive to be more like. Have you ever heard of the Farmer’s Creed?

Looking back at the Farmer poem, reminded me of a portrait in the basement of a house I once lived in. On the back wall next to the cattle trophies and plaques from historical stock shows was a picture frame with a simple poem of 12 lines that describe the author’s belief in the capabilities of farming.

The Farmer’s Creed

I believe a man’s greatest possession is his dignity and that no calling bestows this…

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.” Leon Festinger

I’ve had many great opportunities in the past few years to speak with farmers and ranchers across the country, encouraging them to share their agriculture story and become involved in conversations about food production with their friends and neighbors. One recurring question I receive revolves around negativity in response to farming methods.

The quote above gives a brief insight to the frustrations we deal with when trying to engage consumers in food dialogues. Some folks are simply convicted in their stances, often based upon their first impressions. Farmers, ranchers, and those involved in food conversations from the agriculture point of view face an ever-growing, up-hill battle of preconceived notions. We’ve…

The indigenous, worm-resistant (and non-wool-producing) red Maasai sheep of East Africa (photo credit: ILRI).

SciDevNet reports on a ‘livestock genebank’ that’s needed to help conserve breeds and populations of farm animals, especially the wealth of diversity remaining in Africa and other developing regions, that are fast being eroded through cross-breeding and importations of exotic stock.

‘Speed read

• The genetic diversity of livestock is decreasing but there are no genebanks for it
• Hurdles to setting up a genebank to preserve the diversity include legislation and infrastructure
• The preliminary project needs more funding, but has the expertise

‘Researchers in Kenya are working towards setting up the world’s first genebank for livestock.

‘The genebank could help protect the biodiversity of threatened breeds and be a useful research tool, says the team, based at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya.

‘Collecting genetic samples of species into genebanks is not new―it has…

Domestic cavies (or guinea pigs) provide a high-quality meat source with high levels of protein in similar quantity as chicken meat. Here, Brigitte Maass explains how an innovation platform linking cavy producers and other organizations is helping to bridge molecular science with livestock production.

An Africa Biosciences Challenge Fund (ACBF) project (led by the BecA-ILRI Hub, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, the University of Dschang, and the Université Evangélique en Afrique) is looking at ways to improve alternative and rapid access to food and income in Cameroon and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by improving cavy production.

In a recent meeting of the Regional Cavy Innovation Platform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Bertin Bisimwa, a former BecA-ILRI Hub ABCF fellow, explained to farmers and other participants the consequences his molecular studies of cavies in the province should have for their keeping of this…

Photo credit: CIAT/Neil Palmer.

Last week, while leaders of CGIAR research program were meeting with donors and partners in Montpellier, France, to discuss progress and directions for their programs, gender specialists in agricultural research for development were also meeting in this Mediterranean coastal city. The gender experts came from the CGIAR Consortium, centres and programs, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the World Bank and universities. They described their successes and challenges in setting a tighter focus on gender equity, shared useful methods and proposed minimum standards for high-quality research in gender and agriculture.

Among the achievements the assembled gender experts described are:

• including women’s preferences for rice varieties and traits in breeding trials leading to the production of new rice varieties in the Philippines
  by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
• mainstreaming gender in collaborative forest management to give women and other marginalized groups opportunities to drive change in Uganda
  by…

Today, I watched as students in their fourth year in my university (Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria) picked up their log books for the six month SIWES program. This is generated some thoughts in my head as it relates to the development and sustainability of agriculture among young people especially those studying courses related to agriculture.

The Student Industrial Working Experience Scheme (SIWES) was established by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) in 1973 to solve the problem of adequate practical skill, preparatory for employment in industries by Nigerian Undergraduate and Diploma students of tertiary institutions. The scheme was designed for duration of six months for university undergraduates. During this period, every student is expected to acquire all necessary practical skill and orientation, as well as technical knowledge needed to adequately develop national man-power and human resources.

Based on these facts, I proffer the following suggestion to boost Agricultural Research…

Every year the Worldwatch Institute releases their annual State of the World report covering such previous topics as consumerism, climate change and food security.  In 2013, State of the World turns its attention to a popular topic, the concept of sustainability.

The report looks at the definition and use of the word sustainability, whether the concept has outlasted its usefulness and, if not, how we can measure sustainability? Practical approaches and policies for achieving sustainability, including geoengineering and corporate transformation, are investigated along with ways of coping with drastic environmental change and resource depletion, should we fail.

The term “Sustainability” is used frequently in our language today and with a myriad of different meanings, something the President of the Worldwatch Institute, Robert Engelman, calls “Sustainababble”. Its definition, in its original form is “capable of being maintained in existence without interruption or dimunition,” but since the release of the Brundtland Commission’s…