A soil scientist, Nkiruka Odoh, has discovered the use of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF), a natural-occurring soil organism to enhance drought tolerance of yams in the face of climate change.
In her research findings, she noted that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi help yam to absorb more water and nutrients from the soil.
The University of Abuja lecturer noted that her research work assessed the contribution of moisture stress and AMF inoculation and their effects on drought-tolerance of yam (D. rotundata).
She revealed that moisture stress imposed at tuber initiation stage significantly resulted in the reduction of the growth factors particularly fresh and dry tuber weight.
According to Odoh, the research was carried out at the instance of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), a career-development programme for women agricultural scientists across sub-Saharan Africa.
The two-year fellowship is awarded annually to African Women in the field of agriculture through a highly competitive process.
In 2014, Odoh was among the 70 selected African agricultural women scientists out of 970 applications on a two-year fellowship awarded annually to African women.
President Obama’s trip to Cuba this week accelerated the warming of U.S.-Cuban relations. Many people in both countries believe that normalizing relations will spur investment that can help Cuba develop its economy and improve life for its citizens.
But in agriculture, U.S. investment could cause harm instead.
For the past 35 years I have studied agroecology in most countries in Central and South America. Agroecology is an approach to farming that developed in the late 1970s in Latin America as a reaction against the top-down, technology-intensive and environmentally destructive strategy that characterizes modern industrial agriculture. It encourages local production by small-scale farmers, using sustainable strategies and combining Western knowledge with traditional expertise.
Cuba took this approach out of necessity when its economic partner, the Soviet bloc, dissolved in the early 1990s. As a result, Cuban farming has become a leading example of ecological agriculture.
But if relations with U.S. agribusiness companies are not managed carefully, Cuba could revert to an industrial approach that relies on mechanization, transgenic crops and agrochemicals, rolling back the revolutionary gains that its campesinos have achieved.
The shift to peasant agroecology
For several decades after Cuba’s 1959 revolution, socialist bloc countries accounted for nearly all of its foreign trade.
The government devoted 30 percent of agricultural land to sugarcane for export, while importing 57 percent of Cuba’s food supply. Farmers relied on tractors, massive amounts of pesticide and fertilizer inputs, all supplied by Soviet bloc countries. By the 1980s agricultural pests were increasing, soil quality was degrading and yields of some key crops like rice had begun to decline.
When Cuban trade with the Soviet bloc ended in the early 1990s, food production collapsed due to the loss of imported fertilizers, pesticides, tractors and petroleum. The situation was so bad that Cuba posted the worst growth in per capita food production in all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
But then farmers started adopting agroecological techniques, with support from Cuban scientists.
Thousands of oxen replaced tractors that could not function due to lack of petroleum and spare parts. Farmers substituted green manures for chemical fertilizers and artisanally produced biopesticides for insecticides. At the same time, Cuban policymakers adopted a range of agrarian reform and decentralization policies that encouraged forms of production where groups of farmers grow and market their produce collectively.
Havana market.Julia Dorofeeva/Shutterstock
As Cuba reoriented its agriculture to depend less on imported chemical inputs and imported equipment, food production rebounded. From 1996 though 2005, per capita food production in Cuba increased by 4.2 percent yearly during a period when production was stagnant across Latin America and the Caribbean.
In the mid-2000s, the Ministry of Agriculture dismantled all “inefficient state companies” and government-owned farms, endorsed the creation of 2,600 new small urban and suburban farms, and allowed farming on some three million hectares of unused state lands. Urban gardens, which first sprang up during the economic crisis of the early 1990s, have developed into an important food source.
Today Cuba has 383,000 urban farms, covering 50,000 hectares of otherwise unused land and producing more than 1.5 million tons of vegetables. The most productive urban farms yield up to 20 kg of food per square meter, the highest rate in the world, using no synthetic chemicals. Urban farms supply 50 to 70 percent or more of all the fresh vegetables consumed in cities such as Havana and Villa Clara.
The risks of opening up
Now Cuba’s agriculture system is under increasing pressure to deliver harvests for export and for Cuba’s burgeoning tourist markets. Part of the production is shifting away from feeding local and regional markets, and increasingly focusing on feeding tourists and producing organic tropical products for export.
President Obama hopes to open the door for U.S. businesses to sell goods to Cuba. In Havana last Monday during Obama’s visit, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack signed an agreement with his Cuban counterpart, Agriculture Minister Gustavo Rodriguez Rollero, to promote sharing of ideas and research.
“U.S. producers are eager to help meet Cuba’s need for healthy, safe, nutritious food,” Vilsack said. The U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba, which was launched in 2014 to lobby for an end to the U.S.-Cuba trade embargo, includes more than 100 agricultural companies and trade groups. Analysts estimate that U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba could reach US$1.2 billion if remaining regulations are relaxed and trade barriers are lifted, a market that U.S. agribusiness wants to capture.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell tour a Havana farmers' market, November 2015.US Department of Agriculture/Flickr, CC BY
When agribusinesses invest in developing countries, they seek economies of scale. This encourages concentration of land in the hands of a few corporations and standardization of small-scale production systems. In turn, these changes force small farmers off of their lands and lead to the abandonment of local crops and traditional farming ways. The expansion of transgenic crops and agrofuels in Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia since the 1990s are examples of this process.
If U.S. industrial agriculture expands into Cuba, there is a risk that it could destroy the complex social network of agroecological small farms that more than 300,000 campesinos have built up over the past several decades through farmer-to-farmer horizontal exchanges of knowledge.
This would reduce the diversity of crops that Cuba produces and harm local economies and food security. If large businesses displace small-scale farmers, agriculture will move toward export crops, increasing the ranks of unemployed. There is nothing wrong with small farmers capturing a share of export markets, as long as it does not mean neglecting their roles as local food producers. The Cuban government thus will have to protect campesinos by not importing food products that peasants produce.
Cuba still imports some of its food, including U.S. products such as poultry and soybean meal. Since agricultural sales to Cuba were legalized in 2000, U.S. agricultural exports have totaled about $5 billion. However, yearly sales have fallen from a high of $658 million in 2008 to $300 million in 2014.
U.S. companies would like to regain some of the market share that they have lost to the European Union and Brazil.
There is broad debate over how heavily Cuba relies on imports to feed its population: the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that imports make up 60 to 80 percent of Cubans' caloric intake, but other assessments are much lower.
In fact, Cuba has the potential to produce enough food with agroecological methods to feed its 11 million inhabitants. Cuba has about six million hectares of fairly level land and another million gently sloping hectares that can be used for cropping. More than half of this land remains uncultivated, and the productivity of both land and labor, as well as the efficiency of resource use, in the rest of this farm area are still low.
We have calculated that if all peasant farms and cooperatives adopted diversified agroecological designs, Cuba would be able to produce enough to feed its population, supply food to the tourist industry and even export some food to help generate foreign currency.
President Raul Castro has stated that while opening relations with the U.S. has some benefits,
We will not renounce our ideals of independence and social justice, or surrender even a single one of our principles, or concede a millimeter in the defense of our national sovereignty. We have won this sovereign right with great sacrifices and at the cost of great risks.
Cuba’s small farmers control only 25 percent of the nation’s agricultural land but produce over 65 percent of the country’s food, contributing significantly to the island’s sovereignity. Their agroecological achievements represent a true legacy of Cuba’s revolution.
Barcelona
— By eating less meat and more fruit and vegetables, the world could
avoid several million deaths per year by 2050, cut planet-warming
emissions substantially, and save billions of dollars annually in
healthcare costs and climate damage, researchers said.
A new study,
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, is the first to estimate both the health and
climate change impacts of a global move towards a more plant-based diet,
they said.
Unbalanced diets
are responsible for the greatest health burden around the world, and our
food system produces more than a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions,
said lead author Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the
Future of Food.
"What we eat greatly influences our personal health and the global environment," he said.
The Oxford
University researchers modelled the effects of four different diets by
mid-century: a 'business as usual' scenario; one that follows global
guidelines including minimum amounts of fruits and vegetables and limits
on red meat, sugar and total calories; a vegetarian diet; and a vegan
diet.
Adopting a diet in
line with the global guidelines could avoid 5.1 million deaths per year
by 2050, while 8.1 million fewer people would die in a world of vegans
who do not consume animal products, including eggs and milk.
When it comes to
climate change, following dietary recommendations would cut food-related
emissions by 29 percent, adopting vegetarian diets would cut them by 63
percent and vegan diets by 70 percent.
Dietary shifts
could produce savings of $700 billion to $1,000 billion per year on
healthcare, unpaid care and lost working days, while the economic
benefit of reduced greenhouse gas emissions could be as much as $570
billion, the study said.
REGIONAL DIFFERENCES
The researchers
found that three-quarters of all benefits would occur in developing
countries, although the per capita impacts of dietary change would be
greatest in developed nations, due to higher rates of meat consumption
and obesity.
The economic value
of health improvements could be comparable with, and possibly larger
than, the value of the avoided damage from climate change, they added.
"The value of those
benefits makes a strong case for increased public and private spending
on programmes aimed to achieve healthier and more environmentally
sustainable diets," Springmann said.
The study looked at
regional differences which could be used to identify the most suitable
interventions for food production and consumption, Springmann said.
For example, lower
red meat consumption would have the biggest effect in East Asia, the
West and Latin America, while boosting fruit and vegetable intake was
found to be the largest factor in cutting deaths in South Asia and
sub-Saharan Africa.
Lower calorie
intake, leading to fewer overweight people, would play a key role in
improving health in the Eastern Mediterranean, Latin America and Western
nations, the study said.
But it will not be
easy. To achieve a diet that sticks to common guidelines would require a
25 percent increase in the number of fruits and vegetables eaten
globally, and a 56 percent cut in red meat.
Overall humans would need to consume 15 percent fewer calories, it said.
"We do not expect
everybody to become vegan," Springmann added. "But climate change
impacts of the food system will be hard to tackle and likely require
more than just technological changes. Adopting healthier and more
environmentally sustainable diets can be a large step in the right
direction."
Reporting by Megan Rowling, editing by Tim Pearce.
When visiting the volcanic islands of São Tomé and Príncipe off the coast of West Africa, one is immediately struck by how unusual these tropical islands are. The steep, volcanic mountains seem to be swathed in impenetrable, story-book jungle. But, as ecologists know, first impressions can be deceiving.
When São Tomé and Príncipe were discovered by Portuguese navigators in 1470 the land was entirely covered by forest. In more than five centuries of human occupation, most of this native forest has disappeared. Indeed, most of the green one sees from the air today comes from shade plantations and degraded forests.
A biodiversity hotspot
The islands have been called the “African Galápagos”, in reference to the Pacific island archipelago famous for its high level of endemism. But, though they are nowhere near as famous as their South American counterpart, they win hands-down when it comes to unique biodiversity: São Tomé and Príncipe are home to more endemic species in an area that is eight times smaller than the Galápagos.
This is perhaps no surprise, as tropical forests are biodiversity hotspots that hold far more species than any other terrestrial biome. They also provide key ecosystem services like food, timber and climate regulation.
But forests are being lost at an alarming rate. Between 1990 and 2015, 129 million hectares of forests were lost in the world – an area similar to that of South Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa itself registered some of the highest deforestation rates: up to 14% in the south and east, and 10% in central and west Africa.
The situation in São Tomé and Príncipe
The last national forest survey for São Tomé and Príncipe was conducted in 1999. According to those estimates, 10% of the country comprised non-forest land-use, and 61% was covered by forests and 29% by shade plantations. The shade plantations constitute agro-forestry systems that produce coffee and cocoa, the country’s key export crops.
The numbers might suggest that there is little cause for concern, but they do not account for more recent trends of forest loss. They also don’t account for whether forests are native or not. In addition to the shade plantations, much of the islands are covered by “degraded” forested ecosystems like secondary forests. These are dominated by introduced and invasive species like the breadfruit, the African nutmeg and the oil palm. Native forests are largely restricted to some remote valleys and inaccessible mountain areas.
The islands’ fast-growing economy and human population have had a significant effect on the native forests. The islands’ populations have increased by more than one-third since the turn of the century. As land has become scarce, people have turned to the forest to sustain their livelihoods. At the same time, the government has licensed large areas of forest to commercial interests. In the past seven years, it has handed 5% of the country to oil palm production and 5% to commercial cocoa producers.
Scarce land has forced many people to live in the forest for their livelihoods.Ricardo Lima
Differences in conservation practices
On paper, São Tomé and Príncipe are well provided for in terms of conservation. Both islands have protected areas: the Obô Natural Park in São Tomé and Natural Park in Príncipe. Each covers nearly one-third of the islands’ areas.
Despite there being similar legal protection for their natural forests, the reality of conservation is very different on the islands.
Príncipe has a period of three months during which it is forbidden to cut trees. Most available timber is imported from certified producers and it is unlikely to find illegally felled trees. In contrast, illegal logging is rife on the larger and more populous São Tomé.
Illegal logging
is a problem in São Tomé.Ricardo Lima
One explanation for the difference between the islands is that the United Nations Educations Scientific and Cultural Organisation classified Príncipe as a biosphere reserve in July 2012. The regional government now promotes the island as an example of sustainable development in action.
The implications
Forest loss and degradation are leading to a scarcity of forest resources. In addition to loss of habitat through deforestation, native species are faced with degraded forest systems that offer poor habitats. This poses a measurable threat to biodiversity.
The well-being of future generations is also at stake.
The people of São Tomé and Príncipe rely heavily on forest resources. Nearly all houses are made out of wood. Giant land snails caught in the forest are an important source of protein, as are fish from inshore fisheries that are caught in dugout canoes. Both are usually cooked over charcoal or firewood obtained from the forest.
These resources have become difficult to access, and there is insufficient timber supply to meet the islands’ growing needs. The timber that is available is of a low quality, lasting for only about five years, and is unsuitable for construction.
Authorities are not indifferent to the situation. The timber shortage has become so bad that government is planning to import timber from Equatorial Guinea. The hope is that a cheaper supply will provide a temporary market solution for the current crisis, and allow Santomean timber stocks to recover.
But much of the timber sector operates outside the law. The Forestry Directorate is short of money, vehicles and manpower. It cannot begin to address the complaints of illegal activities it receives. Moreover, when the authorities do try to act, they are frequently met with hostility on the ground, with people routinely blocking roads to hinder law enforcement.
The situation in Sao Tome and Principe mirrors worrying global trends in forest degradation and loss. Finding solutions is imperative, and hopefully some of the experiences from this small island nation will provide useful lessons for other parts of the world.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest level of food insecurity in the world. An estimated 220 million people lack adequate nutrition. The nature of the problem is shifting rapidly, with overweight status and obesity emerging as new forms of food insecurity while malnutrition persists. But continental policy responses do not address this changing reality.
Food insecurity is the outcome of being too poor to grow or buy food. But it’s not just any food. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation’s definition, people need:
… sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.
Current policy focuses on alleviating undernutrition through increased production and access to food. It does not focus on the systemic issues that inform the food choices people make. This may result in worsening food insecurity in the region.
The thinking around food security in Africa is stuck, even though there are calls for a more nuanced understanding of the problem. The common thought is that the food insecure are poor, hungry people who don’t have the means to grow or buy enough food.
The other misconception is that obese people are overweight or unhealthy because of what they eat; that they are at fault for making bad choices. This leads us to believe that people need nutrition education to help them make better choices, and that they deserve a healthy portion of blame if they make poor ones.
Both understandings are wrong. Food insecurity is driven by the economics and the geographies of the food system.
A poverty related obesity epidemic
In the region, 33% of adults are overweight and a further 11% are obese. The levels of diet-related non-communicable diseases are rising as a result of rapid urbanisation, the urbanisation of poverty and rapidly changing food systems.
Obesity affects both rich and poor people. In the developed world obesity rates are levelling off. But they continue to climb in the developing world. This has significant developmental outcomes. In 2010 overweight status and obesity caused about 3.4 million deaths, 3.9% of years of life lost and 3.8% of disability-adjusted life-years – a calculation of the number of years of life lost to ill health, disability or early death. Obesity rates have not doubled and tripled in recent decades because people have spontaneously and collectively started to make bad food choices.
The poor eat badly because it makes economic sense for them to do so. South Africa’s food system, for example, is one in which corporate power is concentrated. The system is dominated by “Big Food” – large commercial entities that control the food market. The South African experience mirrors global trends in which food markets have been deregulated and liberalised.
For example, the liberalisation of trade has opened up imports of highly processed, cheap food, and large private companies that sell highly processed foods are able to exert pressure on national governments. This has handed power over nutrition to food processors and retailers.
Healthier alternatives like low-fat foods are generally more expensive than less healthy options because they are “value padded” with sugars and refined carbohydrates. At the same time, the price of fresh produce has increased at a faster rate than that of processed foods.
This economic logic is reinforced by marketing and advertising that sends conflicting health messages. For example, soft drink companies or fast-food chains associate themselves with sports events and healthy lifestyles; and schools advocate healthy eating but also have on-site tuckshops that sell junk food.
Poor people also have limited access to storage and refrigeration, which affects their options.
What the response should be
Blaming the poor for a logical response to a systemic problem is not helping the situation, and nutrition education alone will not change what people eat.
Governments must shift their attention from the individual to the system when considering why people eat what they eat. Governments must also consider the effects when good food policy is overridden by economic growth imperatives that support a food system dominated by highly processed foods.
South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan recently announced that the country will implement a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages from 2017. The sugar industry argues that this will harm businesses and negatively affect the poor. It is, in part, correct.
Regulation of unhealthy foods without corresponding incentivisation of healthier foods is regressive. Likewise, if issues like access, storage, refrigeration and transport are not addressed, efforts to moderate food choice through pricing will only be an additional tax on the poor. It will not remedy food insecurity of either kind.
Food insecurity in Africa needs to be understood in the context of the wider food system, as well as in the way that food connects to economic and other practices. There needs to be a radical reconfiguration of food security policy that moves away from focusing on production and household poverty alleviation to consider the nature and dynamics of the food system.
Failure to do so will simply accelerate the transition from one form of food insecurity to another. Jane Battersby, Researcher in Urban Food Security, University of Cape Town
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Much of the talk around urban agriculture in Africa deals with poverty, hunger and accessing food. And rightly so, as 40% of Africa’s urban residents practice some agricultural activity. These activities include producing eggs, fruit or milk, but the majority farm vegetables.
In countries like Cameroon, Malawi and Ghana at least one in four urban households grows vegetables. Doing so helps to buffer these households against seasonal shortages or food price hikes. But for real, long-term sustainability, households need to have strong community networks and relationship bonds, also known as social capital. Social capital is the networks and relationships among people in a society, enabling it to function effectively. Urban farmers build social capital by sharing produce with those around them, and then draw on these relationships when they need labour, food items or favours. So it is the social benefits of urban agriculture that really help the poor bounce back from economic shocks like drought, retrenchment or illness.
These social benefits are particularly relevant to the women who make up the majority of Africa’s urban farmers. The historically economic focus on urban agriculture is too narrow. An exaggerated focus on maximising economic efficiency may disempower women. So, social capital formation is a particularly important benefit for low-income female urban cultivators. It requires greater attention when including urban agriculture in community development initiatives.
South Africa’s coastal city, Cape Town, provides a prime example of a municipality that recognises the benefits and challenges unique to female urban farmers. The city has drawn up an urban agriculture policy that specifically supports female farmers through allowing the municipality to donate infrastructure, inputs and equipment to urban farmers, most of whom operate on the Cape Flats.
The Cape Flats is an area that experiences higher unemployment and lower access to basic services than its neighbouring northern and southern suburbs. Pervasive social ills like domestic violence are a part of life for many of the women living there.
Women make up the majority of the estimated 6000 urban farmers operating on the Cape Flats. Most of these women farm on a very small scale in their own backyards, and some are part of formal groups that make a living by selling surplus. The prevalence of women in Cape Town’s urban agriculture sector is important for family food security and for strengthening social capital.
Food security
Research about urban agriculture in Cape Town has found that female farmers use more of their produce to feed their families than male farmers do. Additionally, female farming groups contribute more towards local food security by giving away rather than selling a notable portion of their surplus.
For example, female-only cultivation groups give away about 25% of their produce to crèches, clinics and school feeding schemes, and take about 40% home to their families. By contrast, members of one of the few male groups take home only 20% of the food they grow. They prefer to sell the bulk of their produce. This means that the food grown by women is more accessible to those without the money to buy it.
Networks of female farmers empower them to fight patriarchy.Green Renaissance
Social capital
Sharing food in this way is a powerful contributor to the formation of social capital. It plays a vital role in community development. For urban farmers, social capital reduces vulnerability by increasing their networks of support as well as by expanding their opportunities - like additional training, land access or inputs from NGOs. These farmers gain friends and build important links with organisations in their areas through such networks.
When female urban farmers group together, they gain power to challenge pervasive patriarchal norms. These include gender-based violence and unequal access to resources. In Cape Town, one such group helped a member to pursue legal action against her sexually abusive husband.
Even in a gender-mixed agriculture group, where men tried to bully the women into obeisance, the women rallied to drive the men from the group. These examples indicate both the generalised patriarchal oppression that men accept as the norm and the capability urban agriculture instils in women to oppose it through strengthened social capital.
Urban agriculture provides a means to improve women’s access to their rights and their ability to raise a healthy family. This is only possible in contexts where institutional backing specifically targets women. In Cape Town, the support female urban farmers receive from NGOs and local government includes land access, inputs, training and extension services. This makes it possible for even the most economically marginalised women to use urban agriculture for building sustainable livelihoods.
The City of Cape Town and local NGOs have made much progress towards increasing support for female urban farmers. Since government first took note of urban agriculture on the Cape Flats in 1984, an urban agriculture policy has been written. As a result, thousands of women have been trained and supported to get involved in urban agriculture. A number of NGOs have also been established on the Cape Flats to support sustainable urban agriculture.
These NGOs employ primarily local women, notably in key leadership roles like extension officers, project managers, agriculture group leaders and programme directors.
The future of urban agriculture in Cape Town, and its continued success in empowering women, depends on overcoming key challenges. These include the volatility of donor-dependent NGO budgets and land access limitations caused by red tape. These can be achieved by facilitating land access, particularly for those with limited education and literacy, as well as by stabilising the budgets of NGOs supporting urban agriculture in Cape Town.
There exists real potential to create resilient livelihoods among some of Cape Town’s most economically marginalised households, if urban agriculture could just be scaled up. David Olivier, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Global Change and Sustainability Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Climate change has already been imposing a significant impact on ecosystems, economies and communities. The rising average temperatures do not simply mean balmier winters. Some states will experience more extreme heat while others may cool slightly. Flooding, drought and intense summer heat could result because of the alarming climate change problem.
Almost all effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring. Loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves are becoming visible globally more than ever before in history.
Being part of the globe, Ethiopia also couldn't be free from impacts of the climate change. In more naturally arid areas, droughts and rain inconsistency is being intensified. Effects of such climate change are also being visible in terms of diminishing of crops in some areas, which is also making millions vulnerable food shortage.
The same is true for the current drought being noticed in some areas of the country which resulted in crop failure. This phenomenon has been attracting attention of development partners and non-government organizations across the world to contribute to the solemn efforts of the government in tackling both short and long term impacts of the drought.
According to the information released by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), some organizations operating in Ethiopia, USAID, and CIMMYT partner for rapid help to drought-hit farmers.
According to this source, as government and external agencies marshal food relief for millions facing hunger from Ethiopia's worst drought in decades, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) is leading a major, one-year push to provide drought-hit maize and wheat farmers in Ethiopia with urgently needed seed to save their next harvest.
With a 3.97 million dollar grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, CIMMYT is rapidly procuring emergency supplies of maize and wheat seed for free distribution to more than 226,000 households in 67 drought-affected counties of Ethiopia, benefiting more than 1.35 million people who have lost their seed from the lack of rains.
According to the information, building on pre-existing efforts funded by USAID under the U.S. government's global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future, and involving CIMMYT to strengthen maize and wheat seed production and distribution systems in Ethiopia, the project will obtain seed from areas favoured by recent good harvests.
Therefore, it is planned that needy farmers will receive enough seed to sow from quarter to half hectare of land - a quarter or more of the typical farmer's landholding along with instructional materials about the varieties and best farming practices.
Likewise, for maize, the project will distribute seed of high-yielding, broadly adapted, drought tolerant varieties developed by CIMMYT and partners in Ethiopia as part of another, long-running initiative whose seed production and marketing efforts are being massively scaled up with USAID support.
According to press release distributed by CIMMYT, the wheat seed for distribution is of high-yielding varieties able to resist Ethiopia's rapidly evolving wheat disease strains. According to Dr. Bekele Abeyo, CIMMYT wheat breeder/pathologist for Sub-Saharan Africa, who is also coordinating the seed relief initiative, procurement will benefit from recently begun CIMMYT led work, also with USAID support, to multiply and spread improved wheat seed.
"While addressing the pressing need to have seed before the spring rains, when many families sow, the work also promotes more widespread awareness and use of the latest improved varieties and farming practices," said Bekele, who added that all the varieties had been developed using conventional breeding and that most of the seed was being sourced from Ethiopian farmers and seed enterprises.
Why wheat and maize to meet rising challenges and demand? According to the source, maize and wheat are strategic food crops in Ethiopia, grown on more than 3 million hectares by nearly 14 million households.
High yielding, resilient wheat varieties from CIMMYT and the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), along with supportive government policies and better cropping practices, have caused Ethiopia's wheat production to more than double in just over a decade, rising from 1.6 million tonnes during 2003-04 to around 3.9 million tonnes over the last few years.
"Food security has measurably improved in households that have taken up the improved wheat technologies," according to Bekele, who also cited rust resistance research led by Cornell University and involving CIMMYT, as instrumental in developing and spreading disease-resistant improved varieties in Ethiopia and in supporting the creation of a global wheat disease monitoring and rapid-response system.
Similarly, maize was originally a subsistence staple in Ethiopia, but government policies and research investments have pushed it to become the nation's second most-widely cultivated crop and the most important source of calories in rural areas. Average national yield has doubled since the 1990s to surpass 3 tonnes per hectare, the second-highest level of productivity among nations in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Having worked in Ethiopia since the 1970s, CIMMYT has contributed many improved varieties, including maize with enhanced protein quality that can increase height and weight growth rates in infants and young children. Seed of this maize will also be distributed through the relief initiative.
Seeding a food-secure future
"The partnership with USAID for future food security, livelihoods, and nutrition in Ethiopia perfectly fits CIMMYT's mission and the aims of long and valued collaborations in the country," said Martin Kropff, CIMMYT director general. "With partners' help, we will monitor the uptake, use, and impact of the maize and wheat seed distributed through the initiative."
"Through years of USAID support and most recently through the U.S. government's Feed the Future initiative, we've worked hand-in-hand with the government of Ethiopia and partners like CIMMYT to build the country's capacity for lasting food security and resilience to recurring drought," said Beth Dunford, Assistant to the Administrator for USAID's Bureau for Food Security and Deputy Coordinator for Development for Feed the Future.
"As the current crisis outstrips Ethiopia's ability to cope on its own, USAID is committed to helping the country meet immediate needs as well as protect hard-won development gains and speed recovery through efforts like this emergency seed support."
According to the release, partners involved in the seed relief initiative include: Amhara Seed Enterprise, the Agricultural Transformation Agency, Ethiopia, Regional Bureaus of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Ethiopian Seed Enterprise, Farmer cooperative unions, Federal and regional research institutes, Oromia Seed Enterprise, Private seed companies, and Southern Seed Enterprise.
Yaoundé — Nigeria's war against Boko Haram is finally swinging in the government's favour, but it's going to take much longer for food production to recover in the country's northeast. The same is true in neighbouring Cameroon, which has also felt the impact of the violence.
According to the Famine Early Warning Network, FEWS NET, the conflict has scared farmers off their land, closed roads and markets - which means higher food prices - and squeezed income-earning opportunities.
Though the army's gains may slowly begin to revitalise rural areas, enabling some who fled to return to their homes, "this will not completely offset the negative impacts that conflict has already had on household food and income sources," FEWS NET said.
The USAID-funded agency is predicting a food "crisis" for poor households in the worst-affected areas of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states between February and September this year, with much of the rest of the three states food "stressed" - meaning people have the barest minimum.
A malnutrition survey of children in December found a rate of 15 percent - the internationally recognised emergency threshold.
A regional problem
Across the border, in Cameroon's Far North Region, some 1.4 million people are estimated to be food insecure - one third of the population, according to Felix Gomez, World Food Programme country director.
That's a doubling of the figure since June 2015, he told IRIN. Some 200,000 people are "most at risk", facing "severe food insecurity", with over 150,000 children under five and more than 30,000 mothers in need of emergency nutrition assistance.
Cameroon's remote north has traditionally struggled to feed itself. But the Boko Haram conflict - expanding out of Nigeria - has exacerbated the problem.
Cross-border attacks, beginning in 2013, have so far claimed more than 1,200 lives, according to government spokesperson, Issa Tchiroma Bakary. Boko Haram regards the governments in both Nigeria and Cameroon as secular and illegitimate.
In the growing insecurity, farmers have cut their risk by reducing the size of the plots they cultivate. The crucial commodity trade with Nigeria has also dried up as the authorities seek to limit cross-border movement, and food prices are rising.
The strain felt by poor households is reflected in the growing number of admissions into nutrition programmes "in districts affected by the Boko Haram crisis", said Gomez. At the same time, health facilities are being forced to close as a result of the unrest.
"This situation could continue to deteriorate, if an adequate response is not provided, due to insecurity, poor harvests and increased pressures caused by population displacement," Gomez warned.
It's not just Boko Haram violence that's causing hardship. Cattle rustling and kidnapping by armed groups from across the border in unstable Central African Republic is also disrupting farming and the agro-business in Cameroon's Adamawa region (not to be confused with Nigeria's), a major beef producer.
A report by the local association of cattle breeders, known by the French acronym APESS, said cattle owners paid $170,000 in ransoms to kidnappers in 2015, and lost thousands of cattle.
"We have noticed a deteriorating food security situation in the Adamawa region in 2015," said Gomez. "Ongoing criminal activities such as kidnappings, stealing of cattle and crops have exacerbated the situation and impacted the farmers as well as cattle headers in the region."
Key to future food security is whether Cameroon's farmers will feel safe enough to plant in the next few months.
Cameroon's meteorological services are predicting delayed rains, but are acknowledging incomplete data as Boko Haram has scared its officers from the field.
Meteorologist Gervais Didier Yontchang told IRIN that if any weather measuring equipment breaks down now, "things get more complicated, because no one will be ready to risk his life going to repair it."
