Subj:    Famine in Africa: Controlling their own destiny
Date:   02-12-04 06:29:48 EST
From:   [log in to unmask] (Laurel Hopwood)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
Reply-to:   [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
To: [log in to unmask]

The Guardian (London) November 30, 2002
Guardian Special Supplement
Famine in Africa: Controlling their own destiny
edited

If southern Africa is to improve crop yields, communities must take
control. John Vidal investigates how methods such as sustainable farming
are having a dramatic impact on people's livelihood.

Sam Togo has a small farm in northern Tanzania. He lives 20 miles from the
nearest large town and his wife and seven children are well fed on the
bananas, sweet potato, cassava, maize, a few cereals and fruit that they
grow on their 1.2 hectare patch. Hunger, he says, is something they do not
know.

Sam's community is remote, but information from around the world filters
through. He knows that small farmers
everywhere are under pressure from the global economy; he knows about
climate change and the great hungers in
neighbouring countries, and he has heard the debate about genetically
modified crops and the promises the companies offer. His community calls GM
crops "zinazobedlishwa viinitete" - literally "seed that have had their
yolks changed" - and Sam freely admits he does not understand them. His
instinct is to stay clear, because he is by nature cautious, he does not
want to go into debt and he thinks there are better ways to farm the land.

Sam represents the antidote to Africa's great hunger: a small farmer in a
vulnerable place who is not in trouble, can feed himself and who is happy
with what he has. He is not interested in going down the route of expensive
chemicals and pesticide sprays, nor does he want to buy more land. Instead,
with help from a local farm group supported by a western charity, he has
become one of tens of thousands of farmers throughout Africa who have
adopted what are known as sustainable farming methods.

Sam starts with the soil, which, after his family, he calls his most
important asset. Protecting it from erosion, improving its quality,
regenerating it with manures, rotating it, keeping it moist in the long,
hot months and nurturing it, he says, are an obsession. His neighbours have
flirted with pesticides, but he thinks they are bad for his family's
health. He has also weaned himself off fertilisers, which he says led him
to a dependence he does not want.

Sam is dirt poor, but he wants for little, he says. He reckons that since
1998, when he started to learn new ways to improve his soils, his crop
yields have improved dramatically. He also says the environment has
improved.

Sustainable farming like that practiced by Sam is very slowly coming into
the world's farming systems and is becoming popular in Africa and other
developing countries. It may have been born of poverty and lack of access
to expensive inputs, but both academic researchers and development groups
believe it is potentially a real alternative for millions of people, a
system of farming that is traditional yet modern and can improve yields
phenomenally.

Research by Professor Jules Pretty, director of the University of Essex
centre for environment and society, suggests some 8.98 million farmers in
Africa, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri
Lanka and Thailand have now adopted sustainable agriculture practices and
technologies on 28.92m hectares. Some of the most interesting results have
been from Africa.

Pretty found that in 45 sustainable agriculture initiatives in 17 African
countries, some 730,000 households have in the past 20 years substantially
improved food production and household food security. In 95% of the
projects where the aim was to increase crop yields, cereal yields have
improved by 50%-100%. Pretty also found that 88% of the projects made
better use of locally available natural resources, 92% said they have
improved human capital building through learning programmes, and in more
than half the projects, people were working together as groups. In
south-west Ethiopia, he found that the Cheha integrated rural development
project is making a substantial impact on regional food security.

Since the drought of 1984, it has introduced new varieties of crops
(vegetables) and trees (fruit and forests),
promoted organic manures for soil fertility and botanicals for pest
control, and introduced veterinary services. Crop yields have improved 60%
and nutrition levels 60%. An area once reliant on emergency food aid is
able to feed itself and produce surplus crops for sale at local markets.

In Kenya, the soil and water conservation branch of the ministry of
agriculture has helped 100,000 farms apply soil and water conservation
measures. In many of these areas, food production has been increased and
resource degradation reduced. In the drought-prone region of Yatenga,
Burkina Faso, soil and water conservation and land management programmes
have helped farmers develop low- cost, low-risk technologies that increase
food production, improve soils and require few external inputs. Some 12,500
farm households there have adopted sustainable agriculture, resulting in a
70% improvement of overall nutrition levels in the project area, along with
a 60% increase in crop yields.

"The conventional wisdom is that to increase food supply, we need to
redouble efforts to modernise agriculture," says Pretty. "After all, it has
been successful in the past. But there are real doubts about the capacity
of such systems to reduce food poverty. The poor and hungry need low-cost,
readily available technologies and practices to increase local food
production. "This is farming that makes the best use of nature's free goods
and services while not damaging the environment. It minimises the use of
non-renewable inputs such as pesticides and fertilisers, and it makes
better use of the knowledge and skills of farmers. What is remarkable is
that many of the improvements are occurring in resource-poor areas that had
hitherto been assumed to be incapable of producing food surpluses.

Clearly, sustainable agricultural systems can be economically,
environmentally and socially viable. But without appropriate policy
support, they are likely to remain localised or simply wither away."

COMMENT from laurel hopwood, GEC member:
Numerous articles are being published in the mainstream news claiming that
agricultural biotechnology is essential to feed the hungry world.  If you
see any such articles, you might want to write a letter to the editor,
refuting that ag biotech is the answer.  Or contact us for help to write a
LTE.

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