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Jillian Earley PD. 1

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Developing Sustainable Solutions to Food Crisis in East Africa

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Developing Sustainable Solutions to Food Crisis in East Africa

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Lana Wolfgang

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Hellen and her daughter Loreen live in Kenya. Hellen is working to finish school so she can become a doctor. But the drought's making it hard for her to do that. Because her family's crops are dying, the money Hellen and her mother earn from selling charcoal now goes towards buying food, instead of paying for school. She says:

"The water is cursed. We can't grow crops."

Across Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, millions of people are being forced to choose between putting food on the table today and investing in their futures as severe drought threatens to turn into famine. Years of low rainfall and changes in seasonal weather linked to climate change have dried up water sources, wiping out crops and livestock, severely disrupting farmers' lives.

Women and girls, who are expected to carry out most household tasks, face increased challenges. They have to walk longer distances to draw water, exposing them to greater risk of sexual assault, as well as the dangers of competing with elephants and other wildlife for water. And as food prices rise, many, like Hellen, have to spend their income solely on food.

Amidst these challenges, women are leading their communities' response to the food crisis.

Luijah, who has worked with ActionAid for 10 years, coordinated six food distributions in a region in Kenya that's been hit hard by drought. She oversees the Food for Assets program, where women can work up to 12 days a month on a community project, such as water conservation, and receive food to support their families.

Women run all aspects of Food for Assets: from Luijah coordinating the program and food distribution, to a group of local women logging the work carried out and measuring out the food, to a complaint committee that handles any issues that arise.

"I've seen lots of changes in the communities. Women are more empowered and able to support their families."
- Luijah, Food for Assets project monitor

While the food crisis is making life much more difficult, Food for Assets has built local women's networks that provide financial and emotional support. They even contribute what they can each week to a common pool of money that is given to those who need it most, to cover expenses such as urgent medical care, school fees, clothing, and chickens. Through these "table banking" groups, women have become more self-sufficient.

As of April 2017, ActionAid has supported more than 128,600 individuals in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somaliland with food and water. We're also distributing hygiene kits to women and partnering with schools to provide meals to students. As rainfalls are expected to remain low and food insecurity rises, we're continuing to work with our partners on the ground to reach more families.

We also know that local people don't want to rely on emergency aid to survive droughts and extreme weather. That's why we're investing in local water projects in northern Ethiopia and supporting local farmers across Africa to switch to climate-resistant, sustainable farming.

The women-led water projects reach thousands of people, dramatically reducing cases of waterborne diseases and time spent fetching water away from their homes. Together with local farmers, we're making sure people have the tools they need to adapt to more extreme weather brought on by climate change.

As we invest in local women leaders, we work towards a reality where young people like Hellen don't have to choose between breakfast and books - where they have the resources they need to thrive and pursue their goals.

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Food Crisis in East Africa - Developing Sustainable Food Solutions

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Hellen and her daughter Loreen live in Kenya. Hellen is working to finish school so she can become a doctor. But the drought's making it hard for her to do that. Because her family's crops are dying, the money Hellen and her mother earn from selling charcoal now goes towards buying food, instead of paying for school.

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Vertical Farming to Combat Overpopulation

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Vertical Farming to Combat Overpopulation

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Sarah Mostofa

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Take home messages:

Vertical farming is a system of food production in controlled, indoor environments

This allows factory style precision agriculture

This approach can reduce the environmental impact and the influence of environmental variability associated with future climate change on food production.

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA), more commonly known as Vertical Farming, is the process of growing food or other agricultural products within factory-style situations, without the typical natural resources associated with plant production, such as soil and sunlight. These resources are instead provided via the use of innovative lighting and nutrient delivery technologies.

Vertical farming is most commonly associated with urban farm production systems, as these can easily be integrated into urban landscapes, reducing the length of supply chains. However, this style of production may also have the potential to benefit general agricultural production outside of urban situations. Using controlled environments, crops can be cultivated which may otherwise be unsuited to UK climates, reducing reliance on overseas supply chains.

Food production systems also face numerous future challenges with regard to feeding growing populations. Vertical Farming allows for faster, more controlled production, irrespective of season. One acre of vertical farming can provide the produce equivalent to between 10-20 acres of conventional production. This system offers a model to enable greater future food security, as production through such controlled systems is not vulnerable to variability of factors such as climate or pests and pathogens. Furthermore, a vertical farm can take advantage of low value land otherwise unavailable for food production. Vertical Farming is thus regarded as a realistic future farming system, which may offer the stable model needed for future food production, to provide for the 3 billion increase in population predicted by 2050.
Current systems
There are three main systems utilised for CEA: hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics. All three are systems for the growth of vegetation using no soil, but instead nutrient rich water solutions, which plant roots access directly.

In hydroponic systems, the nutrient solution is pumped around reservoirs which the plant roots grow directly into, whereas in aeroponic systems, the plant roots grow free and a water and nutrient solution is sprayed directly onto them. This increases the degree of aeration of the roots, which can have favourable effects in terms of plant health and growth potential. Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics. Linking these systems means that the plants can use the fish waste as a fertiliser. Meanwhile, the hydroponic system filters the water before returning it to the fish. This can be an effective production system when crop/fish pairings requiring similar environmental conditions are chosen, as it reduces the cost burden for fertiliser and produces an additional crop in the form of fish.
Environmental Impact
Reducing the environmental impact of modern farming is important to achieve sustainability. Vertical Farming systems can offer a raft of potential opportunities to reduce environmental impact. This approach offers a system with no loss of nutrients to the environment, vastly reduced land requirement (10-20 times), better control of waste, less production loss to pests and diseases (~ 40% less), year round crop production, increased daylight hours or growing time per day, no variation in productivity due to weather variation, and no adverse effects of extreme weather events. Most vertical farms also use 70-80% less water than conventional growing. Globally, around 70% of the fresh water available for human use is used for agriculture, which is a major environmental and human health issue. In the UK, this figure is much lower (~10%); but this is likely to increase as a consequence of climate change.

A CE system can present a scenario where, in principal, all production factors can be regulated. The precise nature of this approach means that the use of expensive materials such as fertiliser can be targeted and limited to only what is necessary. This system therefore avoids costly and damaging losses to the environment. As a simple consequence of regulating all the inputs to plants, the potential for inadvertent contamination is also reduced. In typical field environments, heavy metals or pathogens can contaminate soils, both inadvertently through the application of soil treatments and fertiliser, or via natural processes. High levels of control therefore reduce the interaction between crops and pests or pathogens, increasing food security and safety. In extreme instances, should bio-security measures fail and disease outbreaks occur, then production can be resumed in the short term, whereas in typical agriculture the same effect is likely to mean a lost year.

Using life cycle analysis (LCA) it has been possible to assess the carbon footprint of food grown through CEA. This analysis shows that at the moment more carbon is emitted as a result of CEA production than conventional techniques. This effect may be offset by the application of renewable energy sources. The use of renewable energy could reduce the carbon footprint enough to equal or exceed conventional production. In addition, intensifying production in controlled situations such as this, which require a relatively small footprint in land terms, allows more land to be set aside for natural processes and ecosystem service provision. It has even been suggested that the land freed from agricultural production because of this approach, could be returned to hardwood forestry, which could actively mitigate against the effects of climate change.
Energy efficiency
The principal limiting factor for a CE system is the amount of energy required to grow produce, and thus the economic cost of production. This fact has drawn criticism from several areas with regard viability, and to whether CEA has merit in terms of reducing environmental impact and delivering food security solutions. However, modern renewable energy technologies may hold great potential in terms of converting sunlight and wind power into usable energy for internal heating and lighting. In addition, low energy lighting systems, such as those utilising LED bulbs, may limit the level to which energy is required. A study that modelled energy requirements indicated that solar panels could produce sufficient energy to meet lighting and water pumping requirements, suggesting a good degree of feasibility in production terms with the application of renewable energy technologies. Of course, this is likely to only be the case in areas with plentiful sunlight.

Furthermore, vertical farms have yet to be built taking advantage of developments in energy efficient architectural design, (i.e Passivhaus). By growing selected crops, a vertical farmer knows exactly what the internal environment is that they require, and therefore a building can be designed to maintain that environment with the maximum use of energy efficient technologies such as heat recovery, passive ventilation and advanced materials. Food production in controlled environments allows systems to be developed which can capitalise on all opportunities to recapture and re-use resources. This can come in both the recycling of building energy, or the recovery of energy from the non-used plant products, such as roots.

Vertical Farms have basic requirements for heat, energy, CO2 and nutrients and as such, represent an excellent opportunity for co-location with other systems. Any operation or process that generates a surplus of these resources is an opportunity to improve the economic potential of both that business and a vertical farm. Examples could be on-farm anaerobic digestion, renewable energy production, CHP plants, server farms or industrial food processing plants. This mutually beneficial economic model potentially allows value to be reclaimed from what would otherwise be wasted resources, and which would require further energy to generate anew.
Which crops to grow?
In simple terms, choosing crops which have a rapid growth potential and a high market value is likely to return maximum value. By virtue of not being limited by seasonal variation, crops can grow continuously. Thus, those that can be matured ready for sale in the shortest period of time, offer the greatest benefit in terms of financial return.

It is possible to argue that any crop has the potential for indoor cultivation, yet this is perhaps too simplistic a position to take. By the nature of the activity, CEA allows crops to be grown which may otherwise struggle in the UK climate, either at certain times or throughout the year. By focussing on crops which would only be available through importation, CEA can increase UK food security, reduce the environmental footprint of sizeable supply chain distances, and offer farmers the chance to grow premium crops locally, which would previously have been unfeasible for cultivation in the UK.

Furthermore, no crop as yet has been bred specifically for growth in controlled environments, representing an interesting new challenge for researchers and breeders. The use of artificial lighting can mean individual wavelengths of light can be controlled, which could improve plant growth and nutritional quality. New varieties specifically bred for these conditions (both environmental and physical) will need to be developed, which can fully capitalise on these new opportunities.
Summary
Global food production systems need to address significant challenges in the coming decades. Finding ways to feed a growing global population whilst reducing environmental impact of agricultural activities is of critical importance.

Vertical farming offers a realistic alternative to conventional production for some crops. It could help to achieve the necessary level of food production, whilst overcoming some environmental challenges. This approach may also allow for the production of goods which are highly desirable to UK consumers, but which can only be cultivated in climates warmer than our own.

These systems are at an early stage and more research is necessary to understand its environmental and economic impact. Yet, as we build more, and innovation continues to address the production problems, vertical farming is likely to become more commonplace, in both urban and more rural situations.
Click here to read a PDF version of this article

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Vertical Farming: A new future for food production?

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Take home messages: Vertical farming is a system of food production in controlled, indoor environments This allows factory style precision agriculture This approach can reduce the environmental impact and the influence of environmental variability associated with future climate change on food production.

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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2018/01/19/foresight-africa-viewpoint-fulfilling-africas-agriculture-potential-the-role-of-technology/

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improving nutrition and food security - global development professionals network

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Growing drugs in Peru: finding profitable alternatives for coca farmers

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Understanding and addressing the plight of impoverished farmers is key to solving the world's heroin and cocaine problem. Matthew Jenkin explains

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Ivory Coast and Ghana pushing for more sustainable Cocoa farming

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Ivory Coast and Ghana pushing for more sustainable Cocoa farming

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Aiden DeLong

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The world's leading chocolate and cocoa companies have backed plans released today by the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) to end deforestation and restore forest areas in the top cocoa-producing countries of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.

WCF's public disclosure is part of the implementation commitments of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI), which was launched in November 2017 at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.

The three-tiered plans by governments of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana focus on forest protection and restoration, sustainable cocoa production and farmers' livelihoods, and community engagement and social inclusion.

In a release, the WCF says the governments and companies have committed to no further conversion of any forest land for cocoa production and have pledged to eliminate illegal cocoa production in protected areas, in line with stronger enforcement of national forest policies and development of alternative livelihoods for affected farmers.

" These combined actions will play a crucial role in sequestering carbon stocks and addressing global and local climate change, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement ​," says the WCF.

Milestone

Each company will publicly disclose its own individual initial plan over the next three weeks, but a milestone has been reached in strengthening transparency and accountability in the cocoa supply chain to reduce its impact on West African forests.

The National Plan for Côte d'Ivoire builds on the new Declaration of Policy for Forest Preservation, Rehabilitation and Extension adopted by the government in May 2018. Key strategic priorities include passage of the new Forest Code (readied for final approval by the National Assembly in April 2019), creation of a National Forest Preservation and Rehabilitation Fund, development and implementation of the national cocoa traceability system, and implementation of pilot projects in five priority regions.

Companies that have signed the CFI

Companies that have signed the Framework for Action of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative are Arysta Callivoire, Barry Callebaut, Blommer Chocolate Company, Cargill Cocoa and Chocolate, Cémoi, Chocolats Halba, Cocoanect, Cococo Chocolatiers, ECOM Group, Fazer, Ferrero, General Mills Inc., Godiva Chocolatier Inc., Guittard Chocolate Company, The Hershey Company, Indcresa, Lindt & Sprüngli Group, Marks & Spencer Food, Mars Wrigley Confectionery, Meiji Co. Ltd., Mondelēz International, Nestlé, Olam Cocoa, PBC Limited, Sainsbury's, SIAT, Tesco, Toms Group, Touton, Tree Global, Unilever, Valrhona, and J.H. Whittaker & Sons.

The National Plan for Ghana leverages the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and enhance carbon stocks through sustainable forest management.

The WCF says priority actions are to scale up landscape approaches to end forest degradation in 'six Hotspot Intervention Areas', improve cocoa yields through adoption of environmentally sound climate-smart practices, and strengthen supply chain mapping.

Côte d'Ivoire Minister of Water and Forests Alain-Richard Donwahi said: " Ending deforestation is a complex social, economic, and environmental challenge. Our new Forest Policy adds momentum for sustainable management of Côte d'Ivoire's forests, and our National Plan for the Cocoa & Forests Initiative defines the key actions that the government will take. ​ We welcome the initial action plans of industry, and look forward to robust implementation of these public and private commitments to restore our forest heritage and ensure sustainable livelihoods for cocoa farmers ​."

Ghana Minister of Lands and Natural Resources Kwaku Asomah-Cheremeh said: " The Ghana National Plan for the Cocoa & Forests Initiative is a critical building block in our strategic framework for sustainable economic growth. We aim to secure the future of our forests and make the cocoa sector climate-resilient, whilst sustaining and enhancing income and livelihood opportunities for farmers and forest users. Partnership with the private sector is critical to unleash the financing and technical knowledge for climate-smart cocoa production and reduced emissions from deforestation ​."

Key significant steps outlined in the joint action plans include:

Government collection of land use and socio-economic surveys in priority areas to collect baseline data for the design of new agro-forestry and conservation programs;

Development of farm mapping and traceability systems to ensure cocoa is sourced legally from farms outside of protected areas and monitor where cocoa from deforested areas could enter into the supply chain;

Development of new landscape corridors to connect up fragmented forest reserves, and community-based landscape management to scale up conservation efforts through broader "jurisdictional approaches;"

Investments in sustainable agricultural intensification in order to "grow more cocoa on land," with a focus on climate-smart production techniques, farmer training, increased access to financing, and new government operational guidelines and company investment for agroforestry;

Launch of payments for environmental services contracts directly with farmers to promote environmentally sustainable agricultural practices and investment in ecosystem services;

Government land tenure reforms and tools that allow farmers to obtain official ownership of valuable non-cocoa trees on their farms and thereby encourage investment in agro-forestry; and

Use of satellite monitoring to track illegal deforestation in hotspot areas and issue deforestation alerts.

World Cocoa Foundation chairman Barry Parkin said: " The industry committed in 2017 to partner with cocoa producing governments to end deforestation in the supply chain. The disclosure of the initial company action plans is a major milestone to ensure transparency and accountability for our commitment. As we implement key actions on the ground, we look forward to partnering with international financial organizations to mobilize financing, garner knowledge, and technical assistance to scale up impact ​."

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Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire announce joint action plans to end deforestation in cocoa sector

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The world's leading chocolate and cocoa companies have backed plans released today by the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) to end deforestation and restore forest areas in the top cocoa-producing countries of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.

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Challenges of the cocoa economy in Ivory Coast

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Challenges of the cocoa economy in Ivory Coast

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Casey Shoff

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Cocoa economy production & cocoa child labor Ivory Coast

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Côte d'Ivoire, a country located in West Africa, is the world cocoa producer of cocoa beans with an average annual production of 1,200,000 tons, i.e., 41% of the world supply.

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TechNoServe Organization Attempts to Help the Ivory Coast in Cocoa Sustainability 

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TechNoServe Organization Attempts to Help the Ivory Coast in Cocoa Sustainability 

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Noah Loran

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Côte d'Ivoire | TechnoServe - Business Solutions to Poverty

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In 2013, TechnoServe signed a contract with the United Nations for Industrial Development (UNIDO) to improve the competitiveness of the cashew sector and facilitate its access to export markets in Côte d'Ivoire. The specific purpose of the mission is (i) to improve the productivity of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and cooperatives and (ii) initiate the process of establishing a quality label "cashew kernel of Côte d'Ivoire".

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Cocoa production in Ivory Coast and the challenge of sustainability

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Cocoa production in Ivory Coast and the challenge of sustainability

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Erin Harris

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In the Ivory Coast, cocoa is more valuable than gold. This isn't just a figure of speech: OEC reports that cocoa beans and related products, such as chocolate and cocoa paste, accounted for over 40% of the country's export values in 2015. This towers above the value generated from more conventionally sought-after commodities like petroleum, gold and rubber, and the proportion of Ivorian export value that comes from cocoa is believed to have only increased.

Clearly, cocoa production is right at the heart of Ivory Coast's economy. It is such a crucial national industry that the reverse is also true - Ivory Coast is the nerve of the globe's cocoa trade, supplying roughly a third of the world's total cocoa and leading the rest of the world by more than half a million tonnes. Therefore, it's in the best interests of not just the Ivory Coast but of those involved in the industry worldwide to keep Ivorian cocoa production healthy.

Manufacturers, retailers and investors in Western Europe and North America should pay particular attention, as countries in those regions import the lion's share of Ivorian cocoa. The Netherlands, United States and Belgium top the list, and have used cocoa beans from the Ivory Coast and turned them into chocolate empires.

Now, it's time for them to give back. The past several years has been highly volatile for the cocoa industry, with the international price of cocoa crashing by 30% between 2015 and 2017. As the largest cocoa producer in the world, this has been particularly harsh on Ivory Coast. Having previously forecasted a high international demand, the Ivorian government set the 2017 national price paid to cocoa farmers at a record high per kilo. After global demand was weaker than expected, the resultant overproduction and dramatic international price drop combined with higher national fees caused many cocoa buyers to pull out of their deals with farmers to avoid huge losses.

Port shutdowns in Abidjan and San Pedro during periods of military unrest and open gunfire also crippled the past season of cocoa production by stalling cocoa shipments. Cocoa being as important as it is to Ivory Coast, the falling prices, stagnating exports and security issues were impactful enough for the government to cut its 2017 budget and curb expected production figures this year.

Many have called this a 'cocoa crisis' - a name earned not just because of the market downturn but due to environmental costs. Cocoa farming has influenced a particularly aggressive trend of deforestation in Ivory Coast, which lost 64% of its forest cover between 1990-2015. No doubt the recent season of overproduction has worsened this - now, under 4% of the country's forest land remains. If this pace continues, it is predicted that there will be no rainforest left by 2030, a devastating outcome for the stability of Ivory Coast's wildlife and ability to cope with climate change.

It is also impossible to ignore the humanitarian concerns. Falling prices have only amplified the poverty many in the Ivory Coast face; the income of cocoa farmers is thought to have decreased by as much as 36% as a result, with no reliable support being offered by the government or industry profiteers to ease the shock of falling wages. Overproduction has also fuelled the industry's troubling child labour rates - while there was a slight relative decline from the mid-2000s, Cocoa Barometer 2018 reports that the number of children labouring in the cocoa industries of Ivory Coast and Ghana alone has actually risen in absolute terms to 2.1 million. With around a quarter of the country making a living in cocoa production, one of Ivory Coast's most potentially prosperous industries is seriously paralysed in how it can boost sustainable business and the living standards of its workers.

So far this year, governments, corporations and NGOs alike have seemed more vocal than ever about the multi-faceted issues in the cocoa industry. Perhaps it's too optimistic to call 2018 an awakening, but noise is being made and initiatives are being theorised and implemented.

Ivory Coast and Ghana recently signed an encouraging agreement to tackle the challenges both have faced in the cocoa sector. Aiming to 'better defend the interests of cocoa producers, as well as the economies of both countries', both made a commitment with the Abidjan Declaration to a common sustainable strategy for improving prices for cocoa producers in both countries.

This involves a pledge to collaborate on cocoa marketing policies and to mutually decide on and announce cocoa pricing. Establishing a mutual price control seems like a smart move for both countries, as cocoa price fluctuations have led to farmers and traders smuggling to offset low incomes. It's estimated that Ivory Coast lost 125,000 metric tons of cocoa beans due to smuggling between October 2017 and February 2018, motivated by farmers and traders being paid better prices in neighbouring Ghana, Liberia and Guinea. Likewise, we wrote previously about how Ghanaian farmers have turned to selling their cocoa beans through illegal networks in Ivory Coast in periods when domestic prices had slumped. With that in mind, this initiative is sensible, and ideally will strengthen the economies of both countries by preventing any 'leakages' of cocoa beans due to smuggling, all the while leaving workers better off with more stable incomes.

The two neighbours also agreed to work closer together on scientific research with the aims of improving cocoa plant production techniques, discovering more suitable plant varieties and to support one another in implementing a programme to fight against the swollen shoot disease that has affected cocoa crops in the region. Ivory Coast had in fact already begun with the latter earlier this year, as the Ivorian Coffee and Cocoa Council set the target to remove 300,000 hectares of swollen shoot during the three-year scheme. According to a CCC source, 23,000 hectares had been uprooted in just two months, the programme so far seeming effective at restoring the land's health and reducing growth capacity. This is in line with the CCC's target to reduce cocoa output after the crippling overproduction season.

As for the other research pledges, their potential to influence more sustainable cocoa production and to empower workers in Ivory Coast depends on how committed the government is to supporting farmers. Provided that cocoa farmers and others in the industry are educated on any newly desirable production methodologies and given the resources they may need to implement them, such as more appropriate farming tools and fertilisers, then this initiative could be a good step towards making cocoa production in the Ivory Coast more sustainable.

Trickier to evaluate is the invitation of both governments for the private sector to invest heavily in cocoa processing in Africa. The call for more investment from Africa's private sector in particular is a logical step forward, as private entities native to Ivory Coast or others in Africa could well have existing contacts with farmers and traders to facilitate doing business. This could in turn boost the self sufficiency of Ivory Coast's economy if domestic private companies invest in cocoa and strengthen the cooperation of Ivory Coast with other African nations if members of their private sector invest in Ivorian cocoa.

This year has saw numerous announcements of private investment into cocoa production in Ivory Coast, though this is mostly from Western corporations. Recently, Hershey Co. announced a $500 million programme to boost sustainable cocoa production in Ivory Coast and Ghana. Cocoa for Good will see the company invest in four key areas: nourishing children, empowering youth education and employment, building communities and preserving Ivory Coast's natural ecosystems. More specifically, Hershey have pledged to tackle child labour and increasing shade-grown cocoa, which is believed to last up to 15 years longer than plants grown in full sun.

While Hershey has made gains in buying certified sustainable cocoa, which made up 75% of its cocoa purchases in 2017, there is still a way to go until the chocolate giant's cocoa purchases are totally sustainable. It's also worth noting that the company's plans to introduce a nutritional programme to feed children in Ivory Coast is contingent on implementation support from local governments. While this combines well with the desired strategy of Ivory Coast's trade minister, who stressed the importance of foreign investment into local cocoa production operations, much has been made of the difficulties farmers face in obtaining financing from local authorities, such as government grants and bank loans. For Ivory Coast's farmers and other cocoa workers to truly see the benefits of the scheme, Hershey will need to collaborate closely with local governments and both will need to negotiate a complementary framework of financial and resource investment.

How the chocolate giant plans to achieve the rest of their aims remains to be seen, but they are not the only company that has spoken up. Mars, Nestle and Cargill are among the world's largest chocolate makers that have joined with Ivory Coast and Ghana in an effort to curb deforestation. The will for companies and governments to collaborate on this is a good start, but, as IDH has outlined, Ivory Coast and its partners need to take care to effectively address the issue.

To better keep track of forestation efforts and land use, investing in new technologies that allow for monitoring would be a wise step. Ivory Coast is already working with corporate partners to develop a satellite-based tracking system which provides deforestation alerts. The Ivorian government and its industry partners will hopefully continue sharing relevant data and good practises, in turn enhancing technologies to the benefit of the cocoa industry.

One of the most important factors is policy. Clear and sensible policies on forest classification, land rights and the potential for farmer resettlement need to be settled on and implemented as quickly as possible. This is, of course, dependent on having a healthy policy environment where movements can be agreed upon and put into action. Chocolate makers and other companies have a responsibility to work with the Ivory Coast government, national institutions and other stakeholders in the cocoa industry to work towards and promote a rewarding environment for forest protection and sustainable cocoa production.

Finance is another area which demands a strategy. Corporate and government financing should attempt to treat deforestation by contributing towards sustainability and alleviating poverty. Finance models should aim to facilitate actions that protect and restore forests, develop sustainable production techniques that can boost farmers' incomes, and build social inclusion. Taking advantage of funding opportunities is key to this - Ivory Coast's receipt of $15 million this year from the World Bank Forest Investment Program, aimed to help conserve and increase forest land in the country, is a good start. But grants and funding opportunities should continue to be capitalised on. At a more grassroots level, Ivorian farmer organisations can work together with the government, companies, and development and commercial banks to drive investments that make smallholder farmers capable of branching out into land rehabilitation.

Ultimately, the success of any pledge to create more sustainable cocoa production in Ivory Coast lies with the cocoa farmers. It's all well and good for governments, NGOs and corporations to share the common goal of sustainability, but any efforts made need to guarantee the participation of cocoa farmers with clear benefits and support.

With that in mind, there are several areas that sustainability efforts need to address. As a consequence of forest regeneration, Ivory Coast may need to expel hundreds and thousands of cocoa farmers from illegal cocoa plantations. Here lies the problem: if the government doesn't provide these farmers with an alternative land or funding, farmers may just return after being evicted as in 2016. So, in that case, cocoa production is halted while no sustainable effort at forestation is achieved.
It's in the best interest of funding bodies and the Ivorian government to invest more in the cocoa farmers. The consequences of not doing so are damaging to the industry. As mentioned previously, what led Ivory Coast's farmers to smuggling during the last cocoa season was a combination of unfavourable cocoa bean prices and a lack of subsidies to offset the lower income.

Although cocoa prices have surged back up by a third this year, it's speculated that Ivory Coast's farmers won't enjoy a substantial increase in the farmer price thanks to the existing price control system, which uses forward sales to determine rates. Ivory Coast and Ghana's mutual price control scheme should certainly benefit workers in future situations like this, but farmers' income may still suffer until its implementation. Those in a position to fund cocoa farmers should be vigilant that a supposedly prosperous time for cocoa doesn't result in increased poverty. Such poverty is undoubtedly a fuel for the industry's child labour problem - low income and a lack of funding for farmers may force their hands to use children as the cheapest possible labour, a situation that all working for sustainable cocoa production in Ivory Coast should avoid.

While there are many challenges to making Ivory Coast's cocoa industry more sustainable, the solution might be a very accessible one if the right people reach it. Waystocap is a system that facilitates import-export business between African countries and the rest of the world. This system can also help improve the negative effects of the cocoa crisis and even end it. The main thing to consider is the help that Waystocap gives to foreign investors.

By accessing this system, foreign people in business can break into Ivory Coast's market and create their farming facilities for growing cocoa locally. This is a great step towards creating more sustainable cocoa produce. Waystocap can also create the right contacts between importers and exporters to develop the market of cocoa trading and keep it moving in the right direction. All these measures can be applied to reaching both farmers and investors and finding common grounds to work on.

Waystocap will clarify the bureaucracy for foreign exporters and investors as well as the right and shortest way to get started in the cocoa business. Not to mention that the potential scams and frauds will be kept away from such import-export business and the outcome can only be in the benefit of both parties involved.

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Cocoa production in Ivory Coast and the challenge of sustainability - WaystoCap

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In the Ivory Coast, cocoa is more valuable than gold. This isn't just a figure of speech: OEC reports that cocoa beans and related products, such as chocolate and cocoa paste, accounted for over 40% of the country's export values in 2015.

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Jackson Dusart

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Recent studies show that bamboo provides higher incomes and benefits for the environment.

Bamboo is a win-win solution for farmers and the environment (Credit: UNEP, Kibwege, 2010)

Tobacco is an important cash crop that provides steady income for communities in many low-income and bamboo-resource countries worldwide. At the same time, most of these countries, 168 to date, have signed the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, agreeing to actively reduce tobacco use in their societies.

In many locations, bamboo is an ideal development tool that governments can use to comply with this international agreement; and wean smallholder farmers off tobacco and into a range of new farming enterprises. This is good for people's health, good for their income, and good for the environment.

A number of initiatives and studies are in progress to provide evidence and promote the benefits of bamboo as a viable replacement crop for bamboo. In Kenya, the Tobacco Control Research Group (KTCRG), for example, is assessing the costs and benefits of bamboo over tobacco for rural development. Results emerging from this effort show that it brings a range of health, environmental and income advantages to families who switch from tobacco to embrace bamboo.

As always with cash crop replacement and alternatives, a key issue for a farming community is to find a replacement crop that retains the same income level, or increases revenue. Studies by the Kenyan team show positive results on this front, with bamboo having an earning potential that is much higher than tobacco, in ideal conditions. KTCRG project leader, Prof. Jacob Kibwage says that bamboo plants perform well under the same agro-climatic and soil conditions as tobacco, and the annual estimated income from bamboo farming will be 5-10 times higher than tobacco, depending on the use of the plants.

Reports of bamboo for tobacco replacement have also been found in Bangladesh, Brazil and Zimbabwe. Efforts are likely in progress elsewhere. A Bangladeshi rural development specialist comments that she does not see bamboo as an 'alternative' to a new crop, but instead perceives farmers returning to their original crop - bamboo.
Share your expertise:
-What is your experience with bamboo-tobacco replacement?
-What is needed for more countries to scale-up programmes to help their rural communities?
-Leave your comments here or contact the INBAR team.

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When will farmers replace tobacco cash crops with bamboo?- INBAR

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Recent studies show that bamboo provides higher incomes and benefits for the environment. Bamboo is a win-win solution for farmers and the environment (Credit: UNEP, Kibwege, 2010) Tobacco is an important cash crop that provides steady income for communities in many low-income and bamboo-resource countries worldwide.

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Ethiopia's possible solutions for their food crisis

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Ethiopia's possible solutions for their food crisis

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In the past four years, the rain fell in torrents, Demeke Hafiso's crops sprouted like clockwork, his three-acre plot filled the stomachs of his nine children - and millions of farmers like him powered the Ethiopian economy to double-digit growth.

This year the rain came too late, he has abandoned his field of dead maize, and is sitting by the bedside of his motionless son in a medical centre run by Médecins Sans Frontières. The 16-year-old's hollowed-out cheeks betray the starvation that has brought him here.

A drought in Ethiopia's southern highlands between January and May led to the failure of a harvest that has left 4.6m people needing emergency food aid and 5.7m in drought-affected areas requiring other handouts, according to the United Nations.

It is another of the hunger crises that have struck Ethiopia since the famine of 1984-85, but the rural country, with a population close to 80m, is not facing the starvation on the same apocalyptic scale.

The drought, however, has serious implications for politics and policy. It has punctured the hubris around the government's agriculture-led development strategy and made it defensive over its commitment to small-scale farming on state-held land.

Steady rain and bumper harvests helped the Ethiopian economy expand by an annual average of nearly 12 per cent over the past four years, a trend that the ruling regime presented as evidence of the agricultural sector getting stronger.

But the withering effect of this year's drought suggests it may have simply been getting lucky. "We were doing very well and all of a sudden we collapsed," says Tewodros Gebremichael, country health director of Merlin, a UK-based aid group.

One official at the Economic Commission for Africa, a UN body in Addis Ababa, describes the past four years of plenty as a "missed opportunity". Assefa Admassie, director of the Ethiopian Economic Association, says: "Ethiopian agriculture needs a structural transformation. If we depend on small farmers and a fragmented, rain-fed system, we'll always face this problem."

The government bristles at such criticism. Meles Zenawi, the prime minister, says the problems in the south are the result of a "freak event" and he rejects the assertion that the arable farming system has any flaws. The subject is sensitive for his government - which seized power as a group of bush fighters in 1991 and won a disputed election in 2005 - because it has pinned its legitimacy on agricultural development.

Several years before the global food crisis threw a spotlight on the low productivity of African agriculture, Mr Meles initiated a development programme founded on small-scale farms.

The government introduced improved seed varieties, set up a donor-funded welfare programme to help farmers accumulate assets, and built roads so food could be moved from regions with a surplus to those with a shortage. Productivity rose and so did rural incomes as farmers were encouraged to grow cash crops such as coffee alongside their food.

But observers say the official story of an agricultural transformation does not tally with what they see on the ground, where micro-irrigation systems are sparse and the distribution of drought-resistant crops poor.

One reason for the intractability of Ethiopia's hunger problem is the pace of population growth - estimated to be 2 to 3 per cent a year - as well as the custom of sub-dividing land between children. Over-cultivation in some areas has already damaged the soil irreversibly.

The government is criticised by liberal commentators for not allowing land to be privately owned, leaving farmers with little incentive to invest in improving their plots. It is a policy that can be traced back to the Meles regime's command-and-control instincts and its suspicion of market forces.

Eyessus Zafu, president of the Addis Ababa Chamber of Commerce, is one of several businessmen urging the government to go corporate. "Capital-intensive commercial agriculture would have given you the surplus you need," he says. Bigger farms would create opportunities for land consolidation and mechanisation.

But Mr Meles says it is "patently stupid" to advocate a wholesale switch to big farms.

"The problem that we face this year is not about production. It's about income distribution, and income distribution in Ethiopia is not going to be improved by abandoning small-scale farms," he says.

For Mr Demeke, the immediate priority is to avoid having to bring another child to the centre: "The government could give us cows and oxen and we hope God will give us enough rain so we can plant our own food again."

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Ethiopia hungers for food crisis solution

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In the past four years, the rain fell in torrents, Demeke Hafiso's crops sprouted like clockwork, his three-acre plot filled the stomachs of his nine children - and millions of farmers like him powered the Ethiopian economy to double-digit growth.

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For more than a billion people living in the world's poorest countries, agriculture and livestock are a "lifeline out of poverty," according to Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

On Friday, Gates headed to the University of Edinburgh for the unveiling of a "cutting-edge" crop research project that is set to help up to 100 million African farmers lift themselves out of poverty.

The aim is to develop more nutritious crops, that can also resist the challenges of disease and extreme weather conditions, that present an ever-greater threat globally.
Take action: Children Are Starving and They Need Your Help
The UK's international development secretary Penny Mordaunt announced the project, which has been supported by funding from both the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and UK aid.

"The science and research being led by the great minds here in Edinburgh are making huge strides in improving the health and productivity of livestock," said Gates.

The Microsoft founder added that it was "great" to have the chance to "see how the UK's leadership in research and innovation doesn't just benefit Britain, but also saves and improves lives in the poorest parts of the world."
Read more: This 'Super Bean' Is Feeding and Empowering South Sudanese Refugees
Research by UK scientists is identifying the specific genes that help crops become more nutritious, grow faster, and become more resilient to adverse weather conditions - such as flooding and drought.

In Kenya, for example, two years of failed rains have left 3.4 million people in need of food aid, and 480,000 children needing treatment for acute malnutrition. It's the worst humanitarian crisis the country has faced since 2011, and it's likely to continue claiming lives well into 2018.

British scientists are also working to tackle the diseases that cause devastating economic loss for farmers in Africa, including Animal African Trypanosomiasis (AAT) - which kills more than 3 million cattle a year, and is estimated to cost African economies more than $4 billion a year.

But, experts estimate, a drug to treat the disease will be available within the next 5 years.

The research - which received £90 million in government funding, and £28 million from the Gates Foundation - is also be a serious advantage for British farmers, because it is working to find solutions to these diseases before they reach the UK
Read more: How 2 Years of Drought Have Caused a Devastating Humantarian Crisis in Kenya
Mordaunt, who is announcing the research, said: "Unpredictable flooding, plant diseases, and drought are threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of farmers in Africa who struggle to grow enough crops to put food on then table - the urgency of the task is clear."

UK science combatting disease and building resilience. A win for the UK & a win for the developing world. @DFID_UK@DefraGovUK@beisgovuk#AidWorks https://t.co/eDBU40RMAK
- Penny Mordaunt MP (@PennyMordaunt) January 26, 2018

"That's why UK aid is supporting British scientists to develop new crops that are more productive, more nutritious, and more resistant to droughts and flooding, as well as creating new medicines to protect cattle and poultry from devastating disease," she added.

She said that new ideas and innovations such as this "will help Britain create a healthier, more secure, and prosperous world for us all."

Global Citizen campaigns to achieve the UN's Global Goals, which include actions against hunger, and climate change. UK aid plays a significant part in this effort, by working to help people lift themselves out of extreme poverty. You can join us by taking action here.

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How Bill Gates Is Helping Lift 100 Million Farmers Out of Poverty

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For more than a billion people living in the world's poorest countries, agriculture and livestock are a "lifeline out of poverty," according to Microsoft founder Bill Gates. On Friday, Gates headed to the University of Edinburgh for the unveiling of a "cutting-edge" crop research project that is set to help up to 100 million African farmers lift themselves out of poverty.

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Micah Collins:
Some farmers are switching from Poppies to Coffee to be rid of the stress of growing the illicit crop

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For 54-year-old farmer Long San, growing opium makes simple economic sense.

He started planting poppies - which produce the resin that can be manufactured into heroin - eight years ago when the market for his traditional cash-crop collapsed. Like most people in Long Tway village, in the steep hills of Myanmar's southern Shan State, he used to plant his fields with cheroot leaves, which are used to roll cigars.

"After I switched to opium I could make about $2,500 (3 million kyat) a year," he said. "With cheroot leaves I was only making $250 (300,000 kyat)."

Despite the windfall, Long San and other farmers in this area interviewed by VOA now say that opium's inconsistent yields, the soil erosion caused by deforesting the hills to plant poppies, and the threat of government eradication programs mean they are willing to abandon the illicit crop.

Since late last year, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has been recommending coffee as the replacement. They hope the mountainous region's altitude will lend itself to producing high-quality coffee for export.

Golden Triangle's shade-grown coffee

Satellite imagery suggests that about 57,600 hectares of Myanmar's land was planted with poppy last year, producing the largest crop in the world after Afghanistan. Experts say the vast majority of that opium is refined into heroin elsewhere in Shan State and exported to China, where a domestic market for narcotics has boomed along with rising living standards.

Long San said he planted 0.5 hectares of his land with coffee, interspersed with silver oak trees for shade, last year. He said he planned to double that during the current rainy season.

Long San still grows opium on some of his land, but he said he was planning to abandon the crop completely when the coffee - which takes three years to reach maturity - begins to show profit.

"Next year these fields will be all coffee," he said.

The project is headed by Jochen Wiese, the UNODC's chief technical advisor for alternative development in Myanmar. The German national spent 28 years developing similar schemes in South America, and has come out of retirement to take on Myanmar's poppy problem.

Wiese said that the approach of the project was to focus on small areas in an attempt to wrest communities from the "distorting" economics of opium poppies. The UNODC is starting small, with just 450 farmers across a handful of villages planting half a hectare each of coffee and silver oak.

"We have to demonstrate to people that through income this will be a success, we can't go to a hundred different sites, we have to work in a very concentrated way," he said, adding that the farmers were "very enthusiastic" about the project,

"Everybody wants to have another half hectare," he said, predicting that 600 hectares of coffee will be planted by the end of this year. "This is a very good indicator of the interest and the real will of the people to change."

Opium profits drive Shan State fighting

The U.N. provides coffee seeds and fertilizer and gives other assistance to the farmers. It is also helping farmers to set up cooperatives to overcome the economies of scale required to export coffee beans to international markets.

But with the Chinese market's enormous demand for heroin, the situation in Shan State is further complicated by the lack of peace in the hills. Armed ethnic groups and the Myanmar government vie for territorial control. Despite a cease-fire agreement between the government and the biggest local group, the Shan State Army-South, small skirmishes frequently break out.

The U.N. estimates Myanmar's opium crop for the past two years combined could be worth $880 million, and Tom Kramer, a researcher with the Netherlands'-based Transnational Institute's drugs and democracy project, said that groups on all sides of the conflict rely on the drug trade's profits.

"Very few of the conflict actors in Shan State, including the Myanmar army, can claim to have clean hands when it comes to the drug trade. That's the reality," he said.

"They are involved in different ways, for some it's just tax, some maybe involved in production, some are involved to some extent in trafficking."

Kramer said that the Myanmar government's eradication efforts were a blunt tool with which to tackle opium production.

"There's is no evidence anywhere that eradication reduces opium production," he said, explaining that in Afghanistan, for example, farmers facing the threat of the government clearing some of their fields would simply plant more poppy as insurance.

Another farmer involved in the U.N. program, Sai San Oo, 48, said that in past years, some of his fields had been cleared by the government. He was forced to work as a day laborer to make up for the lost income, but returned to growing poppy the following year. Now, however, he says he want to switch all his fields to coffee.

"I have... high hopes that this will benefit my living standards," he said. "[I] believe that there is an international market for this, so I'm happy to be planting coffee."

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голос америки

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In Myanmar, Some Farmers Drop Poppies for Coffee Beans

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For 54-year-old farmer Long San, growing opium makes simple economic sense. He started planting poppies - which produce the resin that can be manufactured into heroin - eight years ago when the market for his traditional cash-crop collapsed.

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Brooke Bowen

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A new program has started this week to support Myanmar's law enforcement system to crack down on drug trafficking and transnational crime. The poverty stricken nation remains the second largest producer of opium, from which heroin is made.

The UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says criminal activity is discouraging the country's development, growing human insecurity, and threatening peace talks aimed at ending ethnic insurgencies.

To commemorate the UN's annual anti-drugs day, seized drugs were burnt in three places across Myanmar.

Over half a ton of opium and heroin was burnt along with just under a ton of methamphetamine and other stimulant drugs, in total worth around $57 million.

'Without cooperation from ethnic rebels, we cannot not have any success in the war on drugs'

Deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, Phil Robertson said he doesn't think this immense move will change anything.

"There's plenty more where that came from. Holding these kinds of drug burnings are primarily for the international community to feel good about Myanmar's efforts, with diplomats sending back positive cables from Yangon to their capitals, and encouraging more international aid to fund those efforts. It has only peripheral impact on the realities of politics and poverty that drive much of the drug trade".

Speaking at a ceremony in the capital Naypyidaw, Vice-President Myint Swe admitted the challenge to reduce drug production was far from being won. Home Affairs Minister Kyaw Swe said that drug eradication could not be implemented effectively without collaboration from ethnic rebels.

Robertson said he doesn't think that rebel groups in Myanmar will support the obliteration of the drugs trade.

"The ethnic rebels are not likely to cooperate in drug eradication unless they are certain there is a lasting peace that addresses their political and security demands, and that would require a commitment from the Tatmadaw (Burma Army) at the peace table that we have not seen so far. Per the requirement in the 2008 Constitution, the Home Minister is an active member of the military - so why isn't he saying what the military (and by extension, the government) are prepared to offer to get that cooperation rather than just pointing out the obvious and blaming the ethnic rebels for the problem," said Robertson

Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy government has a popular directive following elections last November. She has promised efforts to end several insurgencies.

Senior Lecturer in International Politics at London's Queen Mary University, Dr Lee Jones points to the central government.

"Kyaw Swe is right that eradicating drugs requires their "cooperation", but this cooperation will only be reliably secured if the central government addresses the grievances that fuel the insurgencies," said Dr Jones.

The Myanmar army and rebels are both suspected of buying weapons with drugs produced in the "Golden Triangle" - an area around the juncture of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos.

"People in very remote rural areas are trafficking drugs and cultivating poppies for a living"

While the heroin trade is worth billions of dollars to cross-border narcotics associations, opium growers are scraping by at the bottom of the drug chain.

Thousands of families earn a living farming the crop that feeds the heroin habit of the world's drug users. Opium is a lifeline for many farmers. They grow poppies because other crops don't grow well with the poor soil and weather conditions.

Dr Jones believes substitution is not the solution - "efforts at opium substitution have not been very successful, largely because it has been implemented in a top-down, forced manner, often involving landgrabs and the establishment of industrial agribusiness plantations, typically with Chinese and military involvement. For crop substitution to work, it needs genuine buy-in from farmers and a guarantee that new crops will actually allow them to earn a living".

According to the UNODC, farmers in Myanmar's poppy-field villages make less than other rural communities. The fight by villagers to make ends meet rather than greediness was fueling the illicit cultivation.

Robertson said "Perhaps the most important step - which is a viable peace agreement addressing political, social, human rights and security grievances in the drug growing areas - has not been concluded. Without that in place, it's hard to see how much progress can be made on the crop substitution programs that the UNODC and other international agencies want to pursue. But clearly any solution must place the rights and priorities of the farmers and other local producers first, and let them decide what to do since it is their lives who are most at risk from whatever decision that is taken".

The governing National League for Democracy is responsible for enhancing rural development to improve livelihoods and reduce opium cultivation, and they will need to deal with extensive drug abuse in some districts.

Many NGO's and activists say decreasing illicit cultivation can only happen when the socio-economic conditions and quality of life of rural households have been improved.

Dr Jones said, "I don't think it should be prevented; I think opium cultivation ought to be legalized along with narcotics consumption. The "war on drugs" has failed miserably - it is not possible to suppress the demand that will always drive supply. The best solution - as many experts now say - is legalization and regulation. An interim measure would be to permit the growing of opium for medicinal purposes".

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Myanmar: Drugs battle, what's the solution?

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A new program has started this week to support Myanmar's law enforcement system to crack down on drug trafficking and transnational crime. The poverty stricken nation remains the second largest producer of opium, from which heroin is made.

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Innovative use of fertilizers revives hope for Africa’s Green Revolution

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Innovative use of fertilizers revives hope for Africa’s Green Revolution

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Trent Y

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Phillip Tshuma is a happy farmer. Despite one of the worst droughts ever to hit his country, Zimbabwe, Mr. Tshuma's maize and small grains harvests this year are 50% more than they were in 2015, thanks to micro-dosing, the targeted application of small quantities of fertilizer in a field.

Using the micro-dosing method, farmers apply about 8 kg to 10 kg of nitrogen fertilizer per hectare, approximately a fifth of the recommended application rates.

Last season, Mr. Tshuma made about $350 in profits from his harvests, a decent amount in a country where most survive on less than $1.25 per day. He plans to spend a third of that on nitrogen fertilizer for use in the next season. If things go as anticipated, he will make more profit each season from his farm in the Hwange District in southern Zimbabwe.

It was only a decade ago that African leaders adopted, at a special summit in Abuja, Nigeria, a 12-point resolution on the use of fertilizer as part of efforts to achieve an African "Green Revolution." They acknowledged that inorganic fertilizer alone could not lift agricultural output, and requested countries to commit to increasing fertilizer use from an average of 8 kg of fertilizer per hectare in 2005 to 50 kg per hectare by 2015.

Both organic and inorganic fertilizers provide plants with the nutrients they need to grow healthy and strong. Organic fertilizers contain only plant- or animal-based materials, such as manures, leaves, and compost that are either by-products or end products of naturally occurring processes. Inorganic fertilizer, also referred to as synthetic fertilizer, is manufactured artificially and contains synthetic chemicals.

130%
percentage increase in fertilizer usage in Africa since 2008

Organic fertilizer releases nutrients only when the soil is warm and moist, while inorganic fertilizer provides this nutrition in plant-ready form immediately.

With a Green Revolution, Africa would be following in the footsteps of Asia and Latin America, where effective policies, new farming methods, improved inputs and high-yield seed varieties have improved harvests and reduced poverty.

Although no country has met the target for 2015, Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, the African Union commissioner for rural economy and agriculture, says there is no need to despair and that countries should instead continue to invest in improving access to fertilizer for smallholder farmers.
Increasing demand
Richard Mkandawire, the vice president of the African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) - an organization that promotes investment in commercial fertilizers in Africa - says that despite failing to meet the target, some countries made significant progress in increasing their use of fertilizer.

A World Bank report notes that between 2005 and 2015, Ethiopia recorded the highest proportional increase of fertilizer use per hectare, from 11 kg to 24 kg. Within the same period, Ghana's fertilizer use increased from 20 kg to 35 kg per hectare and Kenya's from 33 kg to 44 kg. As a result of the increase in fertilizer usage over the 10-year period, the countries recorded growth in farm yields and in the agriculture sector generally, with Ghana notching a 4.6% growth in 2014, according to the Ghana Statistical Service. In Kenya there was a 56% increase in smallholder fertilizer use, and maize yields increased by 18% between 1997 and 2007, according to data from a nationwide household survey.

In March 2016, Amit Roy, a former president of the International Fertilizer Development Center, told the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)'s regional conference for Africa in Côte d'Ivoire that while Africa had not achieved the fertilizer use targets set under the Abuja Declaration, it was on course to reach at an average of at least 17 kg per hectare by 2018. Although this will still represent a modest improvement, it will be double what it used to be when the declaration was made.

According to the International Fertilizer Industry Association, a global trading body representing over 500 fertilizer producers and distributors, the average fertilizer use in many countries in Africa today is still as low as 12 kg per hectare, compared to Asian countries like Malaysia, where usage averages 1,570 kg per hectare, Hong Kong (1,297 kg per hectare) and Bangladesh (278 kg per hectare).

Nevertheless, fertilizer demand in Africa has been rising since 2008, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where usage has increased by 130%, says the International Fertilizer Development Center, a group that seeks to increase agricultural productivity by promoting crop nutrition and agribusiness skills.

Mr. Roy reckons fertilizer demand will reach 7 million metric tons by 2018, although this figure will represent a mere 2% of global consumption. Brazil, China, India, and the US drive global fertilizer consumption collectively, accounting for 55% of global demand.
A bit of fertilizer goes a long way
The evidence that micro-dosing could be a breakthrough method in increasing fertilizer use in Africa is demonstrated by Mr. Tshuma, who is one of the 170,000 households in Zimbabwe giving it a try. His cereal production, which has since doubled, has significantly improved his family's food security. By promoting micro-dosing, Zimbabwe is already saving $7 million in food imports annually, according to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

Micro-dosing is affordable and, when adopted by smallholder farmers, enhances fertilizer use, says ICRISAT, adding that the returns on investment are still higher than before.

Mr. Tshuma maintains that the small amounts of fertilizer he uses in micro-dosing yield bigger returns without much money. He would need to spend over $300 per season on fertilizer alone if he applied the 50 kg per hectare that African leaders set as a threshold.

In Zimbabwe, ICRISAT used crop models to study the cost of micro-dosing and how the practice works. The study found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, even small amounts of fertilizer can increase yields significantly. Using micro-dosing, farmers apply about 8 kg to 10 kg of nitrogen per hectare, approximately a fifth of the recommended application rates.

Martin Moyo, a scientist at ICRISAT, says that despite obvious benefits, not many Zimbabwean smallholder farmers practice micro-dosing due to lack of knowledge, as well as difficulties with availability and affordability. There are also cultural and traditional beliefs that discourage farmers from the practice, such as the belief that fertilizers "burn" crops.
Dealing with soil fertility
A decline in soil fertility resulting from mono-cropping, degraded soils and other factors, often blamed for the drop in crop yields across Africa, ought to encourage African smallholder farmers to use fertilizers.

Fertilizer use supports soil quality and also helps mitigate the effects of soil erosion and nutrient depletion. A 2015 FAO report titled The Status of the World's Soil Resources urges countries to encourage farmers to return crop residues and other organic material to the soil, employ crop rotation with nitrogen-fixing crops and carefully use organic and mineral fertilizers.

"Fertilizer is key to Africa's food security and we need to keep pushing private-sector involvement in its development," said Ms. Tumusiime.

To boost agricultural productivity, African countries must embark on mechanized agriculture and increase fertilizer use, says Grace Akello, Uganda's ambassador to Italy and also representative to the FAO and the UN World Food Programme, adding, "We have to raise productivity of our agriculture by improving the health of our soils and increase fertilizer use because we are aware of the poor conditions of soils in many parts of Africa."
Financing fertilizer
There is a need for Africa to accelerate sustainable soil management practices and capitalise on the Africa Fertilizer Financial Mechanism set up by the AU at its Africa Fertilizer Summit in 2006 to promote fertilizer use, advises Mr. Roy.

Last July, a meeting organized by AFAP and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a global agricultural research centre, to review progress on fertilizer use in the region concluded that while several regional economic communities have established successful regional fertilizer markets, they still face poor infrastructure and distribution networks, as well as problems with storage and local blending facilities.

Smallholder farmers will increase their fertilizer use if they can get affordable access, said Mr. Mkandawire. "Limited fertilizer access leads to prohibitively high costs, resulting in smallholder farmers using less or not at all. This ultimately leads to the low-level productivity trap. In such a trap, constraints such as lack of fertilizer investment incentives [and a] stagnant rural economy reinforce each other," Mr. Mkandawire said.

Most smallholder farmers are already stuck in a low soil fertility-poverty trap, making it impossible for them to afford inputs needed to increase productivity and end hunger, Mr. Mkandawire explains.

Experts agree that micro-dosing, increased fertilizer use, private-sector investment, improved access to credit, reduction in import costs, smart subsidy programmes and accelerated sustainable soil practices will help Africa realize its Green Revolution dream. The challenge is for countries to work with the experts and follow through.

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Innovative use of fertilizers revives hope for Africa's Green Revolution

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Phillip Tshuma is a happy farmer. Despite one of the worst droughts ever to hit his country, Zimbabwe, Mr. Tshuma's maize and small grains harvests this year are 50% more than they were in 2015, thanks to micro-dosing, the targeted application of small quantities of fertilizer in a field.

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A Solution for Afghanistan’s Opium Crisis?

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A Solution for Afghanistan’s Opium Crisis?

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Lauren Halbruner

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A recent report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC 2014) has found that illicit opium production in Afghanistan not only persists, but has actually increased, with more hectares of land being used to grow the crop. For nearly 14 years, the Afghan government, with the help of the international community and aid agencies, has worked to eradicate opium production entirely. This recent UNODC report has shown that not only have these efforts been unsuccessful, but that the eradication programs may have actually pushed farmers to increase their outputs.

The report showcases the negative trends of the Afghan opium industry, in which 13 years of consolidated effort to eradicate opium crops, with millions of dollars spent, have been a failure. Compared to the other difficulties the country faces, from an active insurgency to widespread corruption and nepotism, the opium problem was understood to be relatively manageable. Yet the government and international community have not been able to deal with it.

So what is the way forward then for this growing problem, that for some marks Afghanistan as a narco-state? The answer lies in transforming Afghanistan's illicit opium production into a legal industry, as has been done in many states before that now produce opium for medical purposes.

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In fact, the idea of transforming Afghan opium into a source for the opiates industry has been discussed in the past. It should now be given serious consideration. The negative externalities of the conflict in Afghanistan have allowed the illicit opium industry to thrive - regions with the highest concentration of production correlate with the most insecure provinces. The implications reach far beyond the borders of Afghanistan. Transforming production into a legal industry would represent a real and lasting policy solution that would not only take control of the issue, but could also serve as a source of much-needed revenue for the government.

Afghanistan, Myanmar, Mexico, and Columbia account for nearly all of opium's underground production, with Afghanistan alone representing roughly 90 percent of output. Based on the UNODC 2014 report, the farm-gate value for cultivating the crop for Afghan farmers stands at $850 million, compared to $400 million in 2009 (UNODC 2010). Of course, given that the industry is valued at $60 billion a year, the vast majority of money is still being made outside the country.

The Golden Crescent refers to parts of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the countries most affected by the illicit trade. Two major corridors - The Balkan Route and The Northern Route - are used to transport Afghan opium to international markets. The Balkan Route sees opium move to Iran via Pakistan, before traveling west through Turkey and Greece, ultimately reaching Western Europe. The Northern Route mainly moves opium through northern Afghanistan into Central Asian for the Russian market. Clearly, as a member of the international community, Afghanistan has an obligation to prevent illicit narcotics produced inside its territory from creating problems for its neighbors.

Transforming Afghanistan's illicit production of opium into a licit industry for possible medical use would not be an easy task. But the risks of staying on the current course are even greater. Opium is a central ingredient in medicines such as painkillers, and is used in treatments for a wide variety of illnesses. The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) introduced the " Poppy for Medicine " initiative in 2007, which called for Afghanistan to be transformed into a global producer of opiates for medical purposes. This alternative solution was intended to address Afghanistan's continued reliance on the illegal drug trade, as well as to assist in the shortage in supply of opiate-based medicines as reported by the World Health Organization.

Under the ICOS plan, the Poppy for Medicine program for Afghanistan would, "Link the country's two most valuable resources - poppy cultivation and strong local village control systems - to secure the controlled cultivation of poppy for the local production of morphine. The resulting economic benefits would provide farming communities with access to the strategic economic assets necessary to end their reliance on poppy cultivation."

Locating the production process in Afghanistan would also provide for the creation of industry and much-needed jobs, which would in turn allow for greater economic profits to remain inside the country. These economic incentives could be a driving factor for both the government of Afghanistan and its international partners, as well as for the thousands of Afghan farmers who are dependent on the crop.

Australia and France are said to account for nearly half of the world's production of medical opiates, with strict control on pricing and supply. In 2010, the World Health Organization reported that six developed countries accounted for almost 80 percent of the consumption of opium-based medicines, while developing countries accounted for just 6 percent. The International Narcotics Control Board found that 80 percent of the world's population face a shortage of opium-based medicines.

Afghanistan could help resolve this global supply problem and become a valued source of affordable medicine. As the ICOS has found, "Afghanistan could supply this market with medical morphine at a price at least 55 percent lower than the market average." The initiative would have Afghanistan and its people helping to alleviate a global problem - a significant change from the many years of negativity associated with the country.

A recent policy brief published by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) has argued against Afghanistan entering the legal opium market. According to the USIP brief, Afghanistan would not be able to compete internationally and there would be a high risk of "leakage," namely opium finding its way back into the illegal drug trade. The report claims that Afghan farmers would not be incentivized to switch to legal production, since the profits from any legal licensing could not match those that could be earned from the illegal sale of opium. This is in stark contrast with the finding from the ICOS, which in its 2007 report found that Afghan farmers could see a potential 4000 percent price mark-up between the illegal farm-gate price and the finished medical product.

In the 1970s, Turkey was a major source of illicit opium for the drug trade. In just four years, and with the help of an American-led initiative, Turkey was able to transform its illegal opium trade into a viable and profitable legal industry. The Turkish government instituted a program that offered to license farmers' crops for medical purposes, resulting in Turkey becoming a leader in the opiates-based medical field. There is no reason why Afghanistan should not pursue a similar path.

The idea of using Afghanistan's opium output for medical purposes warrants serious consideration. For their own part, Afghans need to take on more responsibility in addressing this problem and create alternative policies designed to move Afghanistan away from "narco-state" status. Transforming its opium industry from an international drug problem into a viable licit drug export commodity for international markets is one approach, and a chance for Afghanistan to give back to the international community.
Sohrab Rahmaty has an MA in Political Science from the University of Guelph.

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A Solution for Afghanistan's Opium Crisis?

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A recent report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC 2014) has found that illicit opium production in Afghanistan not only persists, but has actually increased, with more hectares of land being used to grow the crop.

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Kevin Knott

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31 October 2012 - Opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar rose for the sixth consecutive year, despite a significant increase in Government eradication efforts, according to a new UNODC report.

The South-East Asia Opium Survey 2012: Lao People's Democratic Republic and Myanmar estimates that opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar jumped 17 per cent in 2012 to 51,000 hectares, up from 43,000 ha in 2011, in spite of Government figures showing that 23,717 ha of opium poppy had been eradicated, more than three times the 7,058 ha it eradicated in 2011.

While far smaller in quantity, opium cultivation in the Lao People's Democratic Republic increased 66 per cent in 2012 to 6,800 ha, up from 4,100 ha in 2011, nearly reaching 2004 levels. Thailand reported a 4-per-cent decline to 209 ha. Although poppy cultivation in the Lao People's Democratic Republic remains low compared with a decade ago, there are worrying indications that it is increasing significantly.

The report contains the results of UNODC-supported opium poppy cultivation surveys in the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Myanmar. In addition, it presents the results of opium poppy surveys implemented by the Office of the Narcotics Control Board of Thailand.

"The opium numbers continue to head in the wrong direction", said Gary Lewis, UNODC Regional Representative for East Asia and the Pacific. "However, we have seen more progress on responding to the root causes of opium cultivation in the past year than we have in the past decade. The international community must now ask 'how can we help?', and provide resources towards a solution."

Speaking from Bangkok, Mr. Lewis placed the report's key findings within the context of overall regional drug control: "The significant increase in opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar, coupled with significant increases in trafficking in methamphetamines and other illicit drugs, reflect a growing human security threat to the region," he said.

"Despite the increase in eradication, what really matters is the increase in cultivation. Cultivation indicates intention and, unless the farmers have a feasible and legitimate alternative to give them food security and reduce their debt, they will continue to plant poppy."

Myanmar is South-East Asia's largest opium poppy grower and the world's second largest after Afghanistan. According to UNODC, it currently accounts for 25 per cent of global illicit poppy cultivation and, together with the Lao People's Democratic Republic, a full 10 per cent of global opium production. UNODC estimates that Myanmar's total 2012 opium production is currently 690 tons, a 13 per cent increase from 2011 and the highest level since 2003.

The centre of Myanmar's illicit drug activities remains Shan State, which accounts for 90 per cent of opium poppy cultivation in the country, with the remaining 10 per cent mainly in Kachin State. In 2012, strong increases in cultivation were reported by UNODC in South, East and North Shan States, as well as in Kachin.

UNODC also estimates that 300,000 households in Myanmar engage in opium cultivation, a 17 per cent increase from 2011 (256,000 households). Both Shan and Kachin States have areas of ongoing instability.

Speaking from Naypyitaw at the launch, Jason Eligh, the UNODC country manager in Myanmar, noted: "Eradication alone is not an effective response to reduce opium poppy cultivation. We must remember why farmers grow poppy. In most cases it is because they need cash to buy food to feed their families. Growing opium poppy provides much-needed food security for many of them."

Mr. Eligh elaborated further: "In areas of instability like Shan and Kachin States, with poor access to markets, there are few employment alternatives to poppy. A sustainable long-term solution to poppy can only come through significant investment in stability, the rule of law and alternative development."

In Myanmar, opium cultivation took place in 37 per cent of villages surveyed in 2012, with relatively high concentrations in South Shan (48 per cent) and East Shan (43 per cent). When asked why they grow opium, 79 per cent of respondents said it was because of the high net income generated by poppy relative to other crops, while 45 per cent cited the need to buy food. In addition, 95 per cent of villages in Shan State said they received no agricultural assistance.

Opium prices increased in Myanmar in 2012 to $520/kg, a 15 per cent increase from 2011 ($450/kg). This reflects the strong appreciation of the kyat, Myanmar's currency, against the United States dollar. Overall, the report finds that the price of opium, adjusted for inflation, has remained stable since 2006.

Related Information:

South-East Asia Opium Survey 2012: Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar

UNODC Regional Centre for East Asia and the Pacific

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un un united united nations nations office on drugs and crime office on drugs and crime

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Long-term solution to poppy cultivation requires investments in peace, rule of law and alternative development

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According to a new UNODC report, opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar rose for the sixth consecutive year during 2012, despite a significant increase in Government eradication efforts, while in the Lao People's Democratic Republic, cultivation climbed to 6,800 ha, up from 4,100 ha the previous year.

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Molly Concannon

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The British Empire once fought a for the right to sell opium in China.

In retrospect, history has judged that war destructive and wasteful, a shameless battle of colonizers against colonized that in the end helped neither side.

Now NATO is fighting a war to eradicate opium from Afghanistan. Allegedly, this time around the goals are different. According to the modern British government , Afghanistan's illicit-drug trade poses the "gravest threat to the long term security, development and effective governance of Afghanistan," particularly since the Taliban are believed to be the biggest beneficiaries of drug sales. Convinced that this time they are doing the morally right thing, Western governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars bulldozing poppy fields, building up counternarcotics squads, and financing alternative crops in Afghanistan. Chemical spraying may begin as early as this spring. But, in retrospect, might history not judge this war to be every bit as destructive and wasteful as the original Opium Wars?

Of course, right now it isn't fashionable to argue for any legal form of opiate cultivation. But look at the evidence. At the moment, Afghanistan's opium exports account for somewhere between two-thirds and one-third of the country's GDP, depending on whether you believe the United Nations or the United States . The biggest producers are in the southern provinces where the Taliban is at its strongest. Every time a poppy field is destroyed, a poor person becomes poorer-and more likely to support the Taliban against the Western forces who wrecked his crops. Every time money is spent on alternative crops, it has to be distributed through a corrupt or nonexistent local bureaucracy. To date, the results of all this are utterly dispiriting. According to a U.S. government report from December 2006, the amount of land dedicated to poppy production grew last year by more than 60 percent. So central is the problem that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called opium a "cancer" worse than terrorism. Spraying may make things worse: Not only will it cause environmental and health damage, Western planes dropping poisonous chemicals from the sky will feel to the local population like a military attack.

Yet by far the most depressing aspect of the Afghan poppy crisis is the fact that it exists at all-because it doesn't have to. To see what I mean, look at the history of Turkey, where once upon a time the drug trade also threatened the country's political and economic stability. Just like Afghanistan, Turkey had a long tradition of poppy cultivation. Just like Afghanistan, Turkey worried that poppy eradication could bring down the government. Just like Afghanistan, Turkey-this was the era of -was identified as the main source of the heroin sold in the West. Just like in Afghanistan, a ban was tried, and it failed.

As a result, in 1974, the Turks, with U.S. and U.N. support, tried a different tactic. They began licensing poppy cultivation for the purpose of producing morphine, codeine, and other legal opiates. Legal factories were built to replace the illegal ones. Farmers registered to grow poppies, and they paid taxes. You wouldn't necessarily know this from the latest White House drug strategy report -which devotes several pages to Afghanistan but doesn't mention Turkey-but the U.S. government still supports the Turkish program, even requiring U.S. drug companies to purchase 80 percent of what the legal documents euphemistically refer to as "narcotic raw materials" from the two traditional producers, Turkey and India.

Why not add Afghanistan to this list? The only good arguments against doing so-as opposed to the silly, politically correct, "just say no" arguments-are technical: that the weak or nonexistent bureaucracy will be no better at licensing poppy fields than at destroying them, or that some of the raw material will still fall into the hands of the drug cartels. Yet some of these problems can be solved by building processing factories at the local level and working within local power structures. And even if the program only succeeds in stopping half the drug trade, then a huge chunk of Afghanistan's economy will still emerge from the gray market, the power of the drug barons will be reduced, and, most of all, Western money will have been visibly spent helping Afghan farmers survive instead of destroying their livelihoods. The director of the Senlis Council , a group that studies the drug problem in Afghanistan, told me he reckons that the best way to "ensure more Western soldiers get killed" is to expand poppy eradication further.

Besides, things really could get worse. It isn't so hard to imagine, two or three years down the line, yet another emergency presidential speech calling for yet another "surge" of troops-but this time to southern Afghanistan, where impoverished villagers, having turned against the West, are joining the Taliban in droves. Before we get there, maybe it's worth letting some legal poppies bloom.

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How to solve Afghanistan's drug problem.

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The British Empire once fought a for the right to sell opium in China. In retrospect, history has judged that war destructive and wasteful, a shameless battle of colonizers against colonized that in the end helped neither side. Now NATO is fighting a war to eradicate opium from Afghanistan.

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Jenna Archer

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For tens of millions of people in rural Africa, life has gotten harder in recent years. Reliant on erratic rains, working exhausted soil and hobbled by decades of underinvestment and neglect, many have sunk deeper into poverty as agriculture - the mainstay of the region's economy - continues to face neglect. A growing number of African governments and UN and non-governmental agencies argue that unless urgent efforts are made to raise crop yields, build transportation and marketing systems and adopt modern, sustainable farming methods, the continent will fail to reach its development goals and the rural majority will reap only meagre harvests.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of agriculture to Africa's economic prospects. Some 65% of Africa's labour force is engaged in agriculture, and the sector accounts for about 32% of the region's GDP, according to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an independent organization advocating for improvements in Africa's agriculture. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), growth in sub-Saharan agriculture employment accounted for half of all employment growth between 1999 and 2009.

In recognition of its importance, proponents of the continental development plan, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, released NEPAD's Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in 2003. Its goals are ambitious - to allocate at least 10% of national budgets to agriculture, to reach rural growth rates of 6% annually by 2015, integrate and invigorate regional and national agricultural markets, significantly increase agricultural exports, transform Africa into a "strategic player" in global agricultural science and technology, practice sound environmental and land management techniques, and reduce rural poverty.
'Mined of life'
However, the challenges to success are as large as the potential consequences of failure. The UN's World Food Programme estimates that more than 55 million Africans were in need of international food aid in 2012. Since 1993, according to researchers for the African Union, annual population growth has outstripped food production on the continent, resulting in a rise in the number of hungry people.

One important obstacle to increased productivity has been the steady deterioration of Africa's soils, noted Mr. Amit Roy, the head of the International Fertilizer Development Centre (IFDC), a US-based institute that promotes agricultural advancement in developing countries. "When farmers plant the same fields season after season and cannot afford to replace the soil nutrients taken up by their crops, the soil is literally mined of life," he says.

An estimated 8 million tonnes of nutrients are depleted annually. Replenishing the nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and other minerals absorbed by plants is therefore vital to keep crop yields from declining. Part of the answer lies in better farming methods, including expanding the range of crops grown, improving soil conservation practices and utilizing improved seeds and technology. But the key to launching a "revolution" in African agriculture, Mr. Roy told Africa Renewal, is much greater use of fertilizer.

"Traditionally, African farmers use the slash-and-burn method," he said. "They burn off a section of land and farm it for a season or two, then clear another plot and leave the old field fallow." But population increases and growing land shortages have forced farmers to cultivate the same fields repeatedly, stripping the land of nutrients and resulting in smaller harvests and less income. Such pressures have also led farmers to clear land poorly suited for cultivation, which contributes to soil erosion and yields only marginal increases in harvests. An estimated 50,000 hectares of Africa's forests and 60,000 hectares of savannah are lost to such methods annually - resulting in severe environmental degradation and contributing to the decline in agricultural production per capita.

According to the CAADP, African farmers currently use far less fertilizer than their counterparts in other regions of the world. "A strong relationship exists between the level of fertilizer use and cereal yield," notes the programme.
High costs, short supply
Heavy reliance on imported fertilizers, combined with high transportation costs and the absence of suppliers in the countryside, has meant that African farmers pay between two and six times the average world price for fertilizer. With millions of African family farmers surviving on less than a dollar a day, imported fertilizer is simply unaffordable.

Yet evidence suggests that even modest increases in the use of fertilizer - whether nitrogen, phosphorous or potassium - can have dramatic results. In Ethiopia, one study found that just one bottle cap's worth of chemical fertilizer on each plant increased millet yields exponentially. The technique, known as "micro-dosing," is regarded as particularly appropriate for Africa's small-scale farmers, because it reduces costs and avoids damage to fragile soils from excessive chemical use.

Citing the potential environmental risks to African soils and water sources from too much chemical fertilizer being applied to farms - as sometimes happened during Asia's "green revolution" - proponents of sustainable agriculture in Africa argue that farmers should use more animal manure, compost and other organic fertilizers. If farmers better integrate stock-raising with crop cultivation, cattle and other livestock could provide them with not only more manure but also with animal traction for ploughing fields and hauling crops after they are harvested.

While organic fertilizers are important, agrees Mr. Roy, he points to a serious limitation. "The quality of animal manure is dependent on the quality of the food the animals are fed." With much soil severely depleted, he says, "the fodder contains little of the nutrients needed by crops." Organic fertilizers alone "are simply not the answer to the crisis of Africa's soil fertility. We need to increase the use of both organic and chemical fertilizers."

The CAADP makes the same point. Under the new, integrated approach to African agriculture advocated by NEPAD, "mineral fertilizers and organic matter are treated as complements rather than substitutes."

One way to make chemical fertilizers more available and affordable is to increase local production. This can reduce costs, ease the pressure on foreign currency reserves and shorten the supply chain to farmers. Although Africa consumes only about 1% of global fertilizer production and currently produces even less, prospects for the commercial manufacture of fertilizers are good. Nitrogen is among the most common elements on earth, but converting it into use for plants is energy-intensive. West Africa's vast and largely untapped natural gas resources, notes Mr. Roy, therefore make the region ideally suited for the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer. Africa also has ample deposits of phosphorus and already exports the mineral to Chinese and Indian farmers. If these minerals can be utilized in local production, Africa would need to import only potassium fertilizer.

But investment in fertilizer production will only come in response to increased demand from farmers, Mr. Roy asserts. Persuading Africa's family farmers that purchasing fertilizer is worth the money and effort will require significant improvements in rural transport networks and infrastructure, an expanded network of rural farm suppliers and markets, and greater financial returns, including protection from price fluctuations and subsidized Northern competitors.
Fertilizer no 'silver bullet'
"Fertilizer is not a silver bullet for Africa's agricultural problems," Mr. Roy admits. "The fertilizer doesn't help if it arrives too late, or the crops aren't watered or you can't sell the harvest. Farmers know this. That is why CAADP is so important. It addresses the needs of farmers comprehensively."

In the face of erratic and unreliable rainfall in large swaths of East and Southern Africa, expanding the acreage of irrigated land is also urgent. Former UN Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Jacques Diouf once complained to a group of African agriculture ministers that only a portion (around 4%) of sub-Saharan Africa's arable land is irrigated, compared with 38% in Asia. Although much of Africa has abundant water supplies, he further added, "the region uses less than 3% of its water resources, the lowest percentage of the developing world." NEPAD researchers have estimated the initial investment of irrigating 20 million more hectares of African farmland at $37 billion, with an additional $31 billion in operating costs through 2015.

Rebuilding rural supply networks and marketing systems so farmers have the means and incentives to produce more is another major challenge. Government-run agriculture marketing boards used to perform some of these functions, providing stable prices, credit extension services, improved seeds and technology to local farmers.

Mr. Roy says that expanding private sector involvement in rural marketing and supply activities is a long-term solution. But he acknowledges that high poverty rates in the countryside and the need for "public goods" like roads and markets give African governments a key role in creating incentives for private investment.

Finally, Mr. Roy observes, "Africa needs to do a better job in applying science and technology to agricultural problems, and getting those advances to the farmer more quickly." Here too there are encouraging signs.

Expanded and more effective extension services can also bring big dividends by improving land- and water-management techniques, introducing new techniques (such as rotating crops and mixing different crops on the same farm) and bringing scientific expertise and new technologies to farmers quickly.

"The African farmer is primarily a woman farmer," Mr. Roy concludes. "And she is a good farmer who can feed her family and her continent if she is given the tools and the opportunities to do so."

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For tens of millions of people in rural Africa, life has gotten harder in recent years. Reliant on erratic rains, working exhausted soil and hobbled by decades of underinvestment and neglect, many have sunk deeper into poverty as agriculture - the mainstay of the region's economy - continues to face neglect.

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African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership

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African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership

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M.H. -- Organization could develop and distribute specific fertilizer mixtures that will meet the individual needs pertaining to the soil composition in each LDC. If the correct fertilizer is applied, then production yields would increase, allowing for more people to be fed (and meet nutritional standards) and would assist in further economic development [more food yield = more money from agriculture = more money put back into the economy and more jobs].

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About Us

The African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) is an independent non-profit organization founded in 2012 by a partnership of African development organizations. It was built on the work of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), a framework for achieving ambitious agriculture development goals set in place by African nations and leaders.

AFAP has since evolved into a social enterprise and service provider to the public and private sectors on sustainable development projects and policies focused on market-driven business solutions in the agriculture inputs and agribusiness value chain. AFAP combines technical expertise with entrepreneurial innovation.

AFAP adds value to the agriculture inputs and agribusiness value chain by building the capacity and linking African Hub-Agrodealers and smallholder farmers to global inputs and output market companies, promoting the use of high quality and affordable balanced crop nutrition products, partnering with technology and equipment providers, and facilitating trade finance for fixed assets and inventory via the Agribusiness Partnership Contract (APC) mechanism.

AFAP's public-private partnership strategy is ultimately designed to build the capacity of the African agriculture inputs and agribusiness SMEs, and increase agricultural productivity. The execution of that strategy with partners, results in increasing food security, income, job creation, and agriculture contribution to national GDPs.

Since 2012, AFAP has implemented projects/programs and advised public, private sector clients, NGOs, and donors in: Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, South Africa, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Senegal, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda. AFAP is committed to furthering social inclusion and gender equality throughout all its intervention with strategic partners across Africa.

To be an effective catalyst of agricultural productivity with smallholder farmers, governments, Regional Economic Communities and SMEs for a prosperous Africa.

To become the preferred technical partner to increase productivity in agribusiness value chain, and investments in the agriculture input and output market via innovation-driven solutions for smallholder farmers, public, private, donors and NGO stakeholders.

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Who we are The African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) is an independent non-profit organization founded in 2012 by a partnership of African development organizations.

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Tyler Schwarzman - providing African farmers with fertilizers suited for specific soil conditions to increase productivity and income

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Hub-Agrodealers Capacity Development

AFAP's strength is in the development or improvement of market-driven hub agro-input dealership networks. Those hub agro-input dealers must operate one or several warehouses to add value to smallholder farmers as:

1. input supplier before and during the planting season; and

2. output aggregator during harvest and post-harvest thereby reducing losses and increasing income.

That network benefits not only the agro-dealers and the smallholder farmers, but also fertilizer/seeds importers, local blenders, agro-processors, food companies, financial institutions, ICT companies, and government.

That market-driven network also provides one of the best career or entrepreneurship opportunities for youth and women interested in agribusiness.

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AFAP's strength is in the development or improvement of market-driven hub agro-input dealership networks. Those hub agro-input dealers must operate one or several warehouses to add value to smallholder farmers as: input supplier before and during the planting season; and output aggregator during harvest and post-harvest thereby reducing losses and increasing income.

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Changing crops, aiming towards human consumption

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Changing crops, aiming towards human consumption

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S.L.

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Consumers are confronting sticker shock at the grocery store, while farmers insist they are not getting rich because their own costs, like diesel fuel, are up. Wheat and soybean stockpiles have fallen in the last year, the government said in a separate report, meaning there is little buffer if the weather is not favorable this year and harvests are disappointing.

"We're hoping for good yields," said David Orden, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. "If we get bad yields and tight commodity markets are pushed even tighter, we'll get food prices skyrocketing, inflationary pressures and food riots in developing countries, and countries cutting off their exports."

Many of those unfortunate trends, Mr. Orden said, are happening already.

Soybean producers told the government they would plant 74.8 million acres, up 18 percent from last year and just below the record high in 2006. Corn growers said they would plant 86 million acres, down 8 percent from 2007.

The soybean number was a little higher than analysts had been predicting, while the corn number was a little lower. The 2007 corn crop was the biggest since 1944 as growers rushed to capitalize on the government-mandated demand for ethanol. Three years ago, before the ethanol mandates, the price was less than $2.50 a bushel.

"In February, we were thinking farmers would plant as much as 90 million acres of corn," said the Agriculture Department's chief economist, Joseph Glauber. But the relatively high prices of soybeans might have caused some of them to switch. Soybeans also require less fertilizer, another commodity whose prices have been breaking records.

Mr. Glauber cautioned that the planting report not only reflected the intentions of farmers, but could affect them too. Last year's report underestimated actual corn plantings by three million acres. A rise in corn prices and a drop in soybean prices might inspire other farmers to change their minds.

That is what the ethanol industry is hoping. "We do certainly use corn and it is going to have an impact," said Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association. "But I'm sure the marketplace will respond to this signal."

Joe Victor, an analyst with the market research firm Allendale, said he expected corn to rise as high as $7.50 by summer.

Farmers are not necessarily planting less corn for economic reasons, Mr. Victor said: "They're going back to a more normal crop rotation. They needed to give their corn acres a bit of a rest." Next year, he predicted, the ratio will shift again, and farmers will cut back on soybeans in favor of corn.

A handful of farmers, principally in Texas and California, told the government they were planning to grow more corn. But in the heart of the Corn Belt, it was a different story. Indiana is projected to be down 800,000 acres, Illinois 600,000, Nebraska 600,000, Iowa 1 million.

Ray Gaesser in Corning, Iowa, said he would devote about 48 percent of his 6,000 acres to corn, down from 52 percent last year. The rest would be soybeans.

"Last year, the price ratio of corn to soybeans was telling us we should plant more corn," said Mr. Gaesser, a former president of the Iowa Soybean Association. Now the ratio is more in line with historical norms. The result is that "many of the increased corn acres in 2007 are going back to soybeans," he said.

Mr. Gaesser sells his corn to the local ethanol plant, where he is an investor. "If corn prices get low, we make money at the plant," he said. "If they're high, we make money in our core business, which is agriculture." He had already contracted to sell his corn, he said, which meant he would not benefit from any further price rises.

For bakers worried about the price of flour, the plantings report offered a little relief. Wheat farmers said they planned to plant 63.8 million acres, up 6 percent, about what the commodities markets had been expecting. Cotton plantings are expected to fall 13 percent to 9.39 million acres. Cotton farmers have been abandoning the crop for corn and wheat.

The Agriculture Department said farmers would devote 323.8 million acres to 19 principal crops this year, up 3.8 million acres from last year and 7.8 million acres from 2006. Some of the increase has come from land pulled out of conservation programs, some from pasture, and some from the double-cropping of wheat and soybeans.

Despite the back-to-back increases, the number of acres under cultivation is still about six million below the level of a decade ago. The government is not entirely sure why that is happening, but one possibility is that some land has been swallowed up by suburban construction.

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Consumers are confronting sticker shock at the grocery store, while farmers insist they are not getting rich because their own costs, like diesel fuel, are up. Wheat and soybean stockpiles have fallen in the last year, the government said in a separate report, meaning there is little buffer if the weather is not favorable this year and harvests are disappointing.

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Morgan Bathgate

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Reform of international drug control is urgently needed. The war on drugs has left a trail of suffering and criminality in its wake and has manifestly failed to achieve its objectives. The UN special session of the general assembly (Ungass) this week presents an opportunity. Many reformers put drug users at the centre of changes to international drug policies, but the people growing the plants producing the substances they consume are often overlooked.

Farmers' livelihoods and their communities' sustainable development are inherently linked to reform of international drug policies. For hundreds of thousands of farmers' families, existing crop control laws and practices cause conflict and poverty (pdf), and crush hopes for economic improvement.

In January, representatives of cannabis, opium poppy and coca cultivating communities, from 14 countries, gathered in the Netherlands to discuss global drug control policies and the urgent need for reform (pdf). They soon discovered they had more than livelihoods in common.

Many had experienced criminalisation, forced eradication of their crops, and conflicts over land. They shared experiences of how drug policies stigmatise and brutalise farmers. But they also came with clear proposals to protect their rights and advance a viable and sustainable economic future for their communities.

Their demands were gathered together in the Heemskerk declaration, which will be brought to Ungass to make sure the voices of farmers are heard. Dionicio Nuñez Tangara, a farmers' representative from Bolivia, said the declaration is a demand "that all countries meeting at Ungass 2016 will hear the people and listen to the voices of thousands, millions of farmers of prohibited plants".

In many countries, farmers' communities live with absent or inadequate government services, as policymakers divert scarce resources to repress the drugs market while healthcare, education and public services are neglected. Where access to modern healthcare is limited, cannabis, opium and coca are often used for their medicinal qualities, which some countries legally recognise, but prohibition of these substances means alternative healthcare becomes less accessible too.

Development assistance has largely failed to help the cultivating communities too. Aid often comes with strings attached, and schemes open to growers of prohibited crops are no exception. Farmers are told their crops must be destroyed if they are to access such projects, leaving them with no source of income: they can take one step forward, but not before taking two steps back.

None of the participants in the Heemskerk meeting had been able to benefit from alternative development or other forms of assistance, either because they simply did not exist or because the programmes were ineffective. Communities have rarely been involved in the planning and execution of programmes supposedly designed to benefit them.

Worse, the methods used to eradicate their livelihoods are notoriously damaging. Wilder Mora Acosta, from Colombia, told the forum: "The environment suffers, water is contaminated and fish die." Forced eradication of crops produced by small farmers is contrary to human rights. It causes conflict and environmental degradation. Wiping out a farmer's livelihood increases poverty and can lead to displacement. "Families lose 70% of their incomes," said Sai Lone, another participant, from Myanmar.

Why then do farmers persist in growing forbidden crops? Cultivation is often tied to traditional, ceremonial and medicinal practices. In other cases, there simply is not much choice: where land or infrastructure is not suitable for cultivation of other crops, farmers often grow prohibited plants because the alternative is poverty.

So what do growers of prohibited plants want? They simply ask to be able to live off the land. They accept alternative forms of livelihoods, provided traditional uses are respected. They call for a holistic approach to drugs that protects human rights, encourages licit use of crops for traditional uses, and prioritises sustainable development. Like many civil society organisations and policymakers, they reject prohibition and the war on drugs. No plant should be a controlled drug under UN conventions or national legislation.

Crucially, they demand that affected communities should be involved in all stages of drug policies and development, from design to implementation and evaluation. They argue that the only durable way to tackle poverty and reduce harm from drugs must be based on the promotion and protection of the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and rural workers, and guaranteed access to and control over land and common goods.

The war on drugs has failed and will continue to do so unless all stakeholders are included in policymaking. Producers have mapped out a reasoned approach to an issue that has been characterised by moralistic, unscientific approaches and a total failure to address the needs of those involved in the production of prohibited plants. If Ungass fails to make any other real progress, let it at least signal the beginning of the end of the war on drugs.

Pien Metaal is a researcher at Transnational Institute, a thinktank in Amsterdam

Topics

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To win the war on drugs, stop brutalising farmers who grow them | Pien Metaal

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Reform of international drug control is urgently needed. The war on drugs has left a trail of suffering and criminality in its wake and has manifestly failed to achieve its objectives. The UN special session of the general assembly (Ungass) this week presents an opportunity.

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African countries together spend $35 billion each year importing food. Now a Cape Town startup is trying to cut that bill by developing smart drones to help farmers boost their harvests.

About 60% of Africans live in rural areas, and those communities depend heavily on agriculture. The African Development Bank is investing $24 billion over the next 10 years to "jump start the transformation" of farming.

Boosting productivity and improving access to modern tools and land management information is vital, it says. And that's where Aerobotics comes in.

Founded by James Paterson, the young company is hoping to fix some of these pressing problems using artificial intelligence.

Paterson grew up on a fruit farm near Cape Town before graduating with a Masters in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. In 2014, he started building drones in his garage with co-founder Benji Meltzer.

Their mission? To provide bird's eye surveillance for farmers, with the aim of optimizing crop yields and reducing costs. Aerobotics promises its clients that yields will increase by as much as 10%.

Related: Farmers spot diseased crops faster with artificial intelligence

They achieve this by using computers to interpret imagery from satellites, drones and mobile phones and provide predictive information on crop health. The results are presented in Aeroview, the company's app.

"The whole ecosystem feeds into Aeroview, which is centralized and derives insights," said Meltzer.

Satellite footage is used to highlight longer-term trends, while drones are flown at specific points during the season to get more detailed information.

Aeroview analyzes the data it receives to highlight poor performing areas for farmers to investigate. It can also diagnose problems caused by disease, pests, and a lack of water or nutrients.

Aerobotics now operates in 11 countries, including the United States, Russia and the U.K. With almost 200 clients across the world (about 85% are in South Africa), they're planning to expand their commercial and software development teams rapidly.

The early potential caught Google's eye. The young team of innovators has just returned from the company's Launchpad Accelerator program.

Now Aerobotics is working to improve its technology so it can promise clients even bigger harvests.

CNNMoney (Cape Town, South Africa) First published February 15, 2018: 12:22 PM ET

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South Africa: Aerobotics helps farmers beat disease and drought

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About 60% of Africans live in rural areas, and those communities depend heavily on agriculture. The African Development Bank is investing $24 billion over the next 10 years to "jump start the transformation" of farming. Boosting productivity and improving access to modern tools and land management information is vital, it says.

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Today's crops crisscross the globe: Mexico's tomatoes end up on your plate, our wheat heads to Africa. As a result, the challenge of growing twice as much food by 2050 to feed nine billion people-with less and less land-is everyone's problem. But scientists are hard at work fomenting a second green revolution. Here's how nitrogen-spewing microbes, underground soil sensors and fruit-picking robots will help keep food on our tables.

1. Farm the Desert

On frequent trips to Morocco, British lighting designer Charlie Paton was struck by the juxtaposition of sea and vast, sweeping desert. "You're on the edge of the Sahara but so close to the ocean," he says. After selling his lighting company, Paton set about designing something that brings the two together: the Seawater Greenhouse, a low-energy means of growing food in desert regions using abundant nearby saltwater. Three pilot greenhouses in Tenerife, the Canary Islands; Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates; and Oman use prevailing winds, fans and simple evaporators to convert seawater into fresh, and in the process create a humid environment in which just about any plant can grow.

The greenhouses, which will cost as little as $5 a square foot to build, get water from the sea, either by gravity or a pump. The water trickles down honeycomb-shaped lattices on the front wall and evaporates, cooling and humidifying the air inside. The air warms as it travels across the greenhouse-hotter air can hold more moisture-before reaching a second evaporator, which supersaturates it. From there, the air moves immediately into a condenser, which pulls out freshwater and sends it to an underground storage tank for watering the plants.

Paton is now scouting locations for the Sahara Forest Project, which will add a "concentrating solar power" plant to the greenhouse concept. Extra freshwater could then be used to run the facility (the sun heats water in pipes to make steam, which drives generators) and to clean the huge arrays of mirrors.

2. Growth with Precision

With today's "precision agriculture," GPS-steered tractors can apply fertilizer and water to seeds with sub-inch accuracy. Now farmers can be as exacting with the amount and timing of the application. Stuart Birrell, an associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University, teamed up with his colleague Ratnesh Kumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, to design a network of underground soil sensors that stay in the field year-round.

The sensors continuously measure moisture, temperature and nutrient data and transmit the information wirelessly back to a central computer. "There are some wireless systems out there," Birrell says, "but most of them need an antenna, so they're prone to being knocked down by farm equipment." Birrell and Kumar's sensors are planted in the field, a foot deep, in a grid 80 to 160 feet apart. They beam the data through the dirt using low-frequency radio signals. The iPod-size sensors will help farmers reduce fertilizer usage, because water and temperature provide clues to how nitrogen and carbon are cycling through soil. Planting four to six sensors per acre would cost farmers $20 or $30, Kumar says, but the savings on fertilizer, water and other resources could add up to $150.

3. Rebuild Rice

50%: Amount of the world's population that depends on rice as a staple crop
Solution Genetically engineer rice to change its photosynthesis, so we can grow more of it in any conditions.
Potential Increase rice yields by 50 percent per year,
and learn how to transform other plants as well.
ETA As soon as 10 years

To call what John Sheehy is doing to rice genetic modification is an understatement. Sheehy, the head of the applied-photosynthesis lab at the International Rice Research Institute in Manila, Asia's largest nonprofit agricultural research center, is changing the most fundamental quality of rice: He's altering the way it uses the sun's energy to make it grow faster. It's like making the human digestive system twice as efficient at processing food.

Sheehy and his team are engineering a super-rice by turning it into a so-called C4 plant. Most plants, including rice, perform a type of photosynthesis (the basic process taught in high school, in which plants use sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to make energy-packed carbohydrates) known as C3. But C4 plants, including corn and sorghum, build tissue more efficiently in warmer and drier climates by using a different process to create those carbohydrates that require less CO2. That reduces the amount of time the plants need to keep their leaf pores open to soak up the CO2, so they lose less water to evaporation.

As for how to make such a transformation, scientists know that C4 capability has evolved many times in the past, so the plan is simply to mimic nature. To do that, Sheehy and his team must determine which genes regulate C4 leaf anatomy and essentially evolve a more productive kind of rice. Once they crack the code, the same techniques could eventually be used to turn other crops into C4 plants-for instance, wheat grown in sub-Saharan Africa.

4. Replace Fertilizer

Fertilizer use has exponentially increased crop yields in the past 30 years. That fertilizer provides extra nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, which are essential for plants to build amino acids and cell walls. Soon, farmers may be able to get all the benefits of man-made fertilizer for hundreds of dollars less by using microbes instead. C.A. Reddy, a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Michigan State University, examined 300 naturally occurring soil microbes and assembled a cocktail that can simultaneously reduce the need for phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizers, protect plants against pathogens, and boost yields in virtually every type of crop.

In his experiments, field-grown tomato plants fed with his microbes produced nearly 90 percent more fruit, and greenhouse tomato yields were often even greater compared with using traditional fertilizer. He's also tried them on plants ranging from eggplant to switchgrass. Sold as a liquid soil additive called Bio-Soil Enhancers, Reddy's microbes are self-sustaining, unlike traditional fertilizer, which needs to be replenished every year. He's doing extensive field trials now.

5. Re-Map a Continent

Suppose you work for a large foundation trying to alleviate malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. You want your project to have the maximum impact. Are you better off funding irrigation projects, higher-yielding seeds or pest-resistant crops?

That question is why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $4.7 million to HarvestChoice, a massive open-source effort to gather and merge more data than ever before-archived government surveys on household composition, climate information to help map crop potential, theoretical models of development patterns. The goal is to create a complete virtual library of Africa's agricultural systems. As the data pours in, HarvestChoice generates maps layered with information and produces simulations of how different solutions might play out. "You wouldn't be investing in dairy farms where it would take six hours to get to market over bumpy roads," says Stan Wood, co-leader of HarvestChoice for the nonprofit International Food Policy Research Institute.

Meanwhile, NASA has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to use its Aqua satellite to monitor soil moisture around the globe. Crop yields are determined in part by how much water the ground holds. The satellite collects data on the amount of microwave radiation emitted by the land, which scientists combine with information about vegetation cover and soil temperatures to figure out how much of the radiation is coming from water in the soil. The USDA's Foreign Agriculture Service is using the data to help form more-accurate crop forecasts for the U.S. and for developing countries, where ground data is often sparse. In 2013, the project will get a boost from the Soil Moisture Active and Passive satellite, which will provide information at a much more detailed scale than Aqua.

6. Use Robot Labor

While the banking and automotive industries implode, fruit and vegetable growers are fending off a financial crisis of their own. Tough immigration laws, among other factors, are shrinking the labor supply for picking delicate crops, in some cases leaving millions of dollars of produce unpicked. As part of an unofficial bailout, the USDA recently awarded $28 million to Sanjiv Singh of Carnegie Mellon University and other researchers around the country in part to build automated farming systems that will improve fruit quality, shore up worker shortages and, it's hoped, keep American fruit farmers solvent.

Singh and his team are field-testing future farmhands on a patch of ground just outside Pittsburgh. Autonomous four-wheelers rumble through apple orchards, using sensors to scan for things like fungus and growth rates. Separate sensors in the ground monitor soil moisture, humidity and light levels. "People who own thousands and thousands of acres simply can't monitor all of their crops," Singh says. In the future, farmers could micromanage every plant from a central station, and dispatch robots to deal with pest invasions or soil imbalances before any fruit starts dying.

But can robots roll up their figurative sleeves and pick fruit? Vision Robotics, a company in San Diego, thinks so. It's building scouting robots that use multiple stereo cameras to locate and size the fruit in the trees. The 'bots beam that info to robotic fruit pickers that look like mechanized octopuses on tank treads with long harvesting arms that gently pluck the produce. For now, the speed and accuracy of the machines still lag behind their human counterparts, and they still cost far more to employ. For Singh, that's a deal-breaker: "It would be 15 minutes before [farmers] would start asking, 'How much does it cost?' If a robot is 10 times as expensive or 10 times as slow as a human, then it won't work."

The near-term practical answer, he argues, is machines that allow fewer people to do more work-scissor lifts for better access to treetops, automated pruning devices, robots that stack and transport boxes and, of course, a sensor network to keep it all in sync. Old MacDonald, meet the
21st century.-Nicole Dyer

7. Resurrect the Soil

25%: Amount of land, globally, that's been degraded by human activities
Solution Add biochar, a form of charcoal that provides plants with vital nutrients while also sequestering carbon.
Potential Turn vast swaths of unfarmable land arable again, while locking away tons of carbon dioxide.
ETA Available now (see our recent report on homebrewing Biochar in Brooklyn)

Pre-Columbian Amazon tribes cleared and then slowly burned swaths of forest and mixed the charcoal into their soil, creating rich, dark dirt called terra preta. Today that charcoal is known as biochar (and is made from waste, not rainforests). It could simultaneously make farming more sustainable and turn agricultural fields into vaults for storing carbon. Biochar attracts microorganisms that help plants access nutrients in the soil, and it enables the ground to hold more water. Better yet, it locks the carbon in the biomass rather than letting it escape back into the air. Modern methods for making biochar decompose the plant waste by heating it at super-high temperatures in low oxygen.

The challenge for soil scientists is to determine the best raw materials and process for making biochar. Each yields its own type of charcoal with different nutrients. Some methods also produce bio-oil and "syngas" that could be sold
to offset the costs.

A handful of start-up companies are building equipment for making biochar at scales suitable for villages to industrial farms. One of the first to market is Biochar Engineering in Colorado. Its shipping-container-size machines are portable so that farmers can produce biochar onsite, eliminating the need to haul biomass to a central location. Gases containing hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon monoxide are fully burned in a separate process, generating heat to run the cycle. Eventually, add-on modules could produce liquid fuel, such as methanol, in addition to the charcoal.

8. Make Supercrops

Cassava root is cheap and grows in even the worst conditions. That's why 250 million people rely on it as their staple food. So scientists are aiming to make it the PowerBar of the vegetable world: everything a body needs in one bite. It's a big job. Cassava is deficient in iron, zinc, vitamin A and vitamin E. It also rots in two days, so farmers can't grow extra to sell.

BioCassava Plus is a $12-million effort at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis to develop a cassava with more nutrients, longer shelf life, extra virus resistance, and no cyanide-producing toxins in the root.

So far, scientists have produced individual strains with four times the protein, 10 times the vitamin E or eight times the zinc. The next step is to stack the genes together in a single plant, using the varieties that Kenyan and Nigerian farmers prefer. The program recently received approval for the first-ever field trial of a transgenic crop in Africa.

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The Future of Farming: Eight Solutions For a Hungry World

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Today's crops crisscross the globe: Mexico's tomatoes end up on your plate, our wheat heads to Africa. As a result, the challenge of growing twice as much food by 2050 to feed nine billion people-with less and less land-is everyone's problem. But scientists are hard at work fomenting a second green revolution.

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Agriculture in Developing Countries: Food Supply

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Agriculture in Developing Countries: Food Supply

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ARGOBA, Ethiopia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Armed with a spear and undeterred by the intense sunlight, Tarekegn Kareto meticulously plucks weeds in his maize field in Argoba village, in southern Ethiopia.

"With both dry weather and unusually heavy rains hitting us in the past year, I've lost over half of my harvest of maize and sorghum," he said, pausing to wipe sweat off his forehead.

"That means I've had to dip into my crop reserves - which I can no longer sell for extra income - or even rely on neighbors' charity for food," he added.

Prolonged drought and erratic rainfall across the country have hit harvests and livestock, eating into farmers' and herders' income and meals, experts say.

In the second half of 2017, at least 8.5 million Ethiopians needed urgent food aid, up from 5.6 million in January, according to an August report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

To remedy this, a project hopes to help Ethiopian herders and farmers access weather information to make more informed decisions and better absorb climate shocks.

It has set up 25 automatic weather stations across Ethiopia's Afar, Somali, and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' (SNNP) regions, which supply weather data to relevant government agencies and local communities.

The initiative, led by aid agencies Farm Africa and Mercy Corps, is part of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) program, funded by the UK Department for International Development.

The data helps herders and farmers predict the availability of water and grass for grazing, and allows government agencies to predict and track extreme weather events.

"Although Ethiopia already has automated weather stations, populations in these remote regions have little to no access to climate information," explained Dereje Agize, program coordinator at Mercy Corps.

Tsegaye Ketema, head of developmental meteorology at Ethiopia's National Meteorological Agency, said that "with millions of Ethiopians in need of food aid due to very dry weather, access to reliable climate information can literally be a life saver".

Setting up weather stations in rural areas is part of the government's Climate Resilient Green Economy strategy, which aims to achieve self-sufficiency in food by 2025.

RELIABLE CLIMATE INFORMATION

Ethiopia is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather, said Kareto, explaining that "in recent years I've witnessed several droughts during what was supposed to be rainy seasons and heavy rainfall at periods which are supposed to be dry".

That makes it difficult to know what to plant and when, he added.

Getu Guleya, chief administrator of Derashe woreda - an Ethiopian term for district - explained that "weather volatility in our area is a big challenge, even contributing to communal tensions and food insecurity".

Worsening drought has created increased competition for resources and land between ethnic groups, which can result in deadly conflict, he said.

The BRACED project aims to prevent this by providing communities with regular and reliable climate information. The Ethiopian met agency, which runs the weather stations, uses the weather data to share local information on air temperature, rainfall and wind direction - among other indicators - and produce regular climate reports.

The forecasts are then broadcast on community radios in local languages, which break down the technical terms into information that's easier to understand.

Guleya hopes that timely weather information will "reduce the need for pastoralists to migrate or raid neighboring communities in search of food and pastures".

MANAGING LIVESTOCK BETTER

Through the radio broadcasts, the program also encourages farmers and herders to diversify their sources of income and better manage their livestock.

Ketema believes "it is better to have a smaller flock of healthy livestock that you can rely on as a livelihood, rather than a large number of starving livestock that's hard to maintain".

"With timely climate information, you can prevent animals dying by stocking up on feed ahead of drought, for example," he said.

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Weather forecasts help Ethiopian herders, farmers fight climate...

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By Elias GebreselassieARGOBA, Ethiopia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Armed with a spear and undeterred by the intense sunlight, Tarekegn Kareto meticulously plucks weeds in his maize field in Argoba village, in southern Ethiopia."With both dry weather and unusually heavy rains hitting us in the past year, I've lost over half of my harvest of maize and sorghum," he said, pausing to wipe sweat off his forehead."That means I've had to dip into my crop reserves - which I can no longer sell for extra income - or even rely on neighbors' charity for food," he added.

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As the world's population surges to a forecasted 9 billion people by 2050[i], the agriculture sector faces enormous new challenges. Food grain requirements will jump from 3 billion tons to 4.5 billion tons to meet the projected populations' needs over the next 34 years, and agriculture leaders face the need to increase crop production to ensure food stability, even as soft commodity prices and high energy costs plague various markets. At the same time, they are also called upon to reduce costs and environmental impact.

Click on the red buttons to get more information!

Many of these seemingly conflicting challenges are even tougher in emerging markets. However, through a combination of innovation, communication and strategic partnerships, it's possible to better understand the obstacles faced by today's farmers and help them find solutions. Here, the world's third largest tractor manufacturer, Tractors and Farm Equipment Limited's (TAFE) Chairman & CEO, Ms. Mallika Srinivasan talks about the four important challenges and the possible solutions the tractor industry can provide.

1.) Increasing crop yields for food security

Roughly 11 percent of the world's surface is devoted to agriculture.[ii] Meeting food crop demands requires either increasing crop yields or finding more land to cultivate - a difficult task in many markets, as land is increasingly used for housing or industrial development. Mechanization can increase crop intensity by 5 to 20 percent, resulting in a 15 percent crop yield increase. Mechanization and the development of equipment in the range of 35 to 100 horsepower (HP) is particularly important, to meet the needs of independent farmers and those who need smaller equipment.

Mechanization will help farmers increase yield and also reduce the effort. Today, there are farm solutions that assist farmers to plant and harvest, remove weeds, and apply fertilizer more efficiently and effectively. Each of these mechanized solutions can further increase crop yields without the need for significant manual labor, which is especially pertinent for areas where there are labor shortages.

2.) Addressing high costs of doing business

Labor shortages and rising labor costs, the need for certified seeds, and higher usage of chemical fertilizers and pesticides have increased the farmer's cost of cultivation while crop prices have not kept pace. Increased farm mechanization can save approximately 20 percent on seeds and 20 percent of time and 30 percent of labor costs on fertilization. Lighter tractors equipped with hydraulics, high power density, efficient pipeline and braking systems, and fuel-efficient engines specifically designed for agricultural applications can all help cut costs and improve fuel efficiency.

3.) Renewing commitment to the farmer

As more people move to urban areas, there is an increasing disconnect between farmers and the people who rely on them for food. This needs to be addressed in two ways: Firstly, awareness needs to be raised in all quarters about the importance of farmers and they need to be given the respect and recognition they deserve for the service they render. In addition, farmers need support from manufacturers to help them manage and overcome the difficulties of the agriculture business, which can sometimes be daunting for the small and marginal farmer in emerging markets.

As other companies start working towards this, TAFE has been at the forefront with its JFarm program - an adaptive 200 acre agri-research center located in the outskirts of Chennai. Instituted five decades ago, it was created to educate farmers and increase awareness about the latest agriculture trends and technologies and provide advice on harvesting practices, seeds, crop protection, pest management and other issues to improve farm yield.

In 2015, TAFE also began its award-winning " Be a #FarmDost" initiative which aims to shed light on the farmers and their efforts to sustain the nation and the world at large among the urban populace. ("Dost" means "friend" in India.) The #FarmDost initiative wants to invoke a sense of gratitude among the people towards farmers and garner them the respect they deserve as like any other profession.

4.) Finding solutions through innovation

New solutions and efficiencies can be found through innovation. Tractors in the 30 to 60 HP range with adaptable transmissions and precision electro-hydraulics can cut operating costs while delivering better yield and productivity. Ergonomic and comfort features help farmer efficiency.

One such example is TAFE's new Massey Ferguson line of SMART tractors, which features all of those improvements and run-on technologies provided by Oerlikon, which include synchronizers, electron beam-welded clutch housings, gears, ring gears, swivel housing and carrier assembly.

By finding solutions to these four key challenges, farmers will be able to increase their yields and reduce costs. However, successful solutions require true partnership and collaboration between farmers, manufacturers and suppliers.

Be sure to watch for our next article on how TAFE is structuring such partnerships and alliances with remarkable results.

[i]Population Reference Bureau, http://www.prb.org/Publications/Lesson-Plans/HumanPopulation/PopulationGrowth.aspx

[ii] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y4252e/y4252e06.htm

By Gwen Moran

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4 Critical Solutions That Farmers Need - Oerlikon Blog - Without limits

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As the world's population surges to a forecasted 9 billion people by 2050[i], the agriculture sector faces enormous new challenges. Food grain requirements will jump from 3 billion tons to 4.5 billion tons to meet the projected populations' needs over the next 34 years, and agriculture leaders face the need to increase crop production to ensure food stability, even as soft commodity prices and high energy costs plague various markets.

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Rising food prices take a devastating toll on poor families who may already spend as much as 80 percent of their income on food. Copyright:WFP/Rein Skullerud

When food prices rise, almost everyone notices. But for a poor family struggling to make ends meet somewhere in the developing world, the effects can be crippling. It's not only that they have a lower level of income. There are other factors that come into play. Read the statement by WFP and sister UN agencies FAO and IFAD

ROME--A European shopper who buys a loaf of bread for one euro in a supermarket is probably paying about 14 cents for the actual food, with the rest of the cost going to packaging, transport, advertising and overheads. If the price of wheat doubles, that bread will cost just 14 cents more - a manageable increase.

Poor people in the developing world tend not to buy loaves of bread. They buy a bag of flour. If the price of maize doubles, the price they pay for that flour also doubles. That's hardly manageable if food already accounts for most of what you spend in a month.

Food prices

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In fact, the poorest households in the developing world may spend as much as 60-80 percent of their incomes on food. When prices go up, they must spend even more of their meager resources on food. That means they have less for their other needs, such as clothes, shelter, medicines, school books for the children. And little by little, non-essentials get cut.

Tough choices

To begin with, people start reducing the quality of the food they eat. That means less fresh fruit and vegetables, less meat. They will concentrate on staples, usually grain such as wheat, maize or rice. This impacts their intake of vitamins and protein, which can be harmful, especially when children are under two.

After that, families might start cutting the number of times they eat a day, from three to two and then even to one. Naturally, as things get tough, families start to look for other ways to make savings. If someone in the family needs costly medicine, that may be cut.

If a family has a couple of goats or a few chickens, for example, they may sell those. This brings in more money but it's disastrous for the future because it means they no longer benefit from the goat's milk and the chicken's eggs. Losing assets in this way pushes a family much closer to destitution.

Education also starts to seem non-essential. Parents may pull their kids out of school, setting them to work growing food or selling things on the streets for a few coins. Education is not as tangible a loss as a chicken or a goat, but the long-term consequences can be severe. Children may never go back to school. If that happens, their chances of pulling themselves and their families out of poverty are reduced - possibly forever.

WFP today joined its sister UN agencies FAO and IFAD in a call for "swift, coordinated international action" to prevent this scenario playing out again as it did in many countries in 2008.

Safety nets

"We need to act urgently to make sure these price shocks do not turn into a catastrophe, hurting tens of millions over the coming months," said the heads of WFP, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Read statement

One of the best ways of helping the poor avoid the worst effects of food price hikes is through so-called 'safety nets' - reliable systems providing food to the most vulnerable when times are hard. These include school meals programmes , assistance to smallholder farmers and nutritional support for mothers and children.

Working with local governments, WFP has already established many such programmes in poor countries around the world. In coming months, if prices continue rising, they could become vital lifelines for millions of vulnerable families.

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Rising food prices take a devastating toll on poor families who may already spend as much as 80 percent of their income on food. Copyright:WFP/Rein Skullerud When food prices rise, almost everyone notices. But for a poor family struggling to make ends meet somewhere in the developing world, the effects can be crippling.

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Her face shaded by a wide-brimmed straw hat, Olawumi Benedict is cheerfully tending to her "little babies" - kale seedlings growing in shallow wooden flats until they're hardy enough for transplantation into soil beds.

Three miles over the hills on another small farm, Jonnes Mlegwah is double-digging the soil with a spading fork, preparing to plant potatoes. Both are Africans, but these mini-farms are 140 miles north of San Francisco in Mendocino County, better known for the harvesting of redwood trees and marijuana plants than kale and potatoes.

Benedict and Mlegwah are a long way from home, and the biointensive farming system they're mastering is a long way from becoming the norm - in the US or Africa. Still, millions of small-scale farmers, especially in Latin America and Africa, are turning to it because it's low-cost and low-tech, and it produces far greater yields than conventional agriculture while using far less land and water.

Biointensive's key components besides transplanting and double-digging are on-site composting, close plant spacing, use of seeds from plants that have been naturally pollinated and specific food-to-compost crop ratios. These methods are rarely practiced on large farms, where mechanization is more profitable, but they can be life-changing for the 90 percent of the world's farmers who work 4 acres (2 hectares) or less by helping them to make the most of a given plot of land.

Research shows that biointensive farms use 50 to 75 percent less land, 50 to 100 percent less fertilizer, 67 to 88 percent less water and 94 to 99 percent less energy to produce a given amount of food than does conventional farming. Perhaps most intriguingly, biointensive methods "grow" farmable soil - at a rate 60 times faster than occurs in nature - while traditional farming methods tend to deplete farmable soil through wind and water erosion.
Much of the credit for biointensive's global impact goes to Ecology Action, which has brought Benedict, Mlegwah and about 100 other interns and apprentices to California mini-farms for internships since 2001. Headed by organic gardening pioneer John Jeavons in 1971 and funded by foundations and donations, the nonprofit teaches biointensive farming at three Mendocino County locations to agriculture activists and researchers from around the world who conduct research and then go on to teach others.
Sitting at a pine-shaded picnic table overlooking the one-third-acre Ecology Action farm where Mlegwah works, the neatly bearded Jeavons, 74, sounds professorial while rattling off numbers. But there's no hiding his passion for Earth-friendly farming or his concern for the world's growing water scarcity and rapid disappearance of farmable land.

"The main criticism of biointensive is that it requires too much labor," he says. "But it's really more skill-based than labor-based - you work smarter, not harder. When you miniaturize agriculture, you don't need as much land."

Support for the methods have come from many quarters, including the Peace Corps, UNICEF and the 2010 UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Former US Department of Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland has called biointensive farming a potential way out for malnourished people worldwide.

"That would be a remarkable development in this world, and would do more to solve the problems of poverty, misery and hunger than anything else we've done," Bergland says in Jeavons' book How to Grow More Vegetables.

Learning and Growing

Each year, Ecology Action staff members choose up to eight individuals from outside the US to participate in the internship program based on the food security needs of the interns' native countries and the interns' potential impact once they return home. Most in past years have been from Latin America, but biointensive has taken hold well enough there that 2016 interns are mostly from Africa. Interns attend one day of lectures and spend four nine-hour days per week learning on the farms. They stay from first planting in March to last harvest in November.

As they master biointensive techniques, each intern conducts experiments on a separate 300-square-foot (28 square-meter) plot - slightly larger than a bowling alley lane - with the research findings then used to advance biointensive farming knowledge. Benedict beams with pride as she describes her experiment: comparing the seed and biomass yields of millet when it's spaced in a hexagonal pattern at intervals of 5, 7, 9 and 12 inches (13, 18, 23 and 30 centimeters). Upon returning home to Ghana she aims to open a biointensive farming center with her husband. Ecology Action staff are helping her pursue funding.

"The need is great because climate change has affected the rain pattern," she says. "But farmers can get through famines by preparing the soil deeper so it can retain more water." She is referring to double-digging - the aeration, or loosening, of soil down to 24 inches (61 centimeters) rather than the 6 inches (15 centimeters) or so customary on most farms - which makes roots longer, stronger and healthier; quadruples nutrient availability to plants; and permits closer plant spacing.

Sammy Kang'ethe, a Kenyan who is planting potatoes alongside Benedict at the Golden Rule Community mini-farm, is also a serious student of agriculture. Less ebullient but just as driven, he taught HIV patients in Nairobi slums to grow food on small communal plots of donated land before starting this internship.

"I saw that the HIV drugs didn't work if patients didn't also eat healthy food, so I came here to learn more about growing it in a small space," he says.

Kang'ethe's experiments involve amaranth, artichokes and beets. "The goal is to empower people to grow enough food with less land and water so they can feed themselves and their families and even sell some in the city for income," he says.

Common Ground

Mlegwah, also a Kenyan, interns at the nearby Common Ground Garden. Common Ground has been here since 1982, when Jeavons broke ground at the first of three Ecology Action mini-farms in the county (backyard gardeners and schoolchildren are taught at a fourth farm in Palo Alto).

"If you give the soil what it needs - the nutrients in compost - it gives you what you need to eat," Mlegwah says. "If the soil is healthy and strong, the plant is healthy and strong, and the people are healthy and strong who eat the plant. Too many chemicals are used in Kenya, which suffocate and poison the soils, causing a chain reaction that leads to polluted soil, water and air."

Mlegwah notes that key to biointensive's success is to provide the right water, soil, organic-matter, biological and mineral conditions for plants to thrive. Through Garden of Hope, a nonprofit he founded in Kenya, he aims to teach this approach to children beginning at age 5. "We will start by teaching them the value of preserving the environment and sustainable growing," he says, "and to analyze what they eat."
Fellow intern Jean Apedoh is from Togo, where he was raised on a rice farm. For his experiment, he is growing rice with minimal water.
"Rice doesn't need that much water, or any chemicals, to grow well," Apedoh says. Through a nonprofit he founded in Togo, the agricultural engineer trained 2,000 farmers in 2015 before coming to Mendocino County to enhance his knowledge of sustainable practices.

Like the soil at the farms, Jeavons' spirit is constantly renewed by the interns who have come and gone, scattering the seeds of biointensive knowledge to small-scale farmers around the globe. He learned biointensive methods from British horticulturist Alan Chadwick - and notes that they were used for centuries in China, Japan, Korea, Greece, Guatemala, the Philippines and Iran. His mission is to bring them back to the world, which he's done by establishing the intern program, writing a book and leading multi-day "Grow Biointensive" mini-farm workshops that have been completed by more than 2,000 people.

Another Way

While the Common Ground farm is at the end of a dirt road where the only sign at the turn reads "Another Way," the nearby Golden Rule farm is less remote, on land owned by a back-to-the-land commune that dates to the 1960s. Ecology Action staff and interns help commune members farm the land and in return are given accommodations in an old bunkhouse and nightly dinners at the communal dining room. This model, with staff and interns all working, eating and living in close proximity, also applies at Common Ground and a third mini-farm at a Mendocino County coastal resort. That's where a diet was designed that can feed one person on as little as 1 percent of the land that's currently required to feed one average American.

"We're like a family, so it's sad each year when the interns leave," says Golden Rule co-field coordinator Rachel Britten. Gazing over the crowded crop rows that emit the fragrance of new grains, vegetables and seeds, Britten notes that much thought goes into what's planted.

"Carbon-and-calorie" plants such as corn, sorghum and barley - which offer high yields, calorie density and lots of stored carbon from which to make compost for soil replenishment - are a critical part of the system," she says. So is balance, with a goal of 60 percent carbon-and-calorie plants, 30 percent root crops (such as potatoes, parsnips and leeks) and 10 percent traditional vegetables and fruits for dietary variety, vitamins and minerals. All edible and biomass yields are measured and soil tests ensure closed-loop soil fertility.

Global Impacts

The successes stemming from mini-farm visits by agriculture students from abroad are legion. Juan Manuel Martinez returned home to Mexico to found the sustainable-agriculture organization ECOPOL in 1992, which has delivered instruction to a large portion of the estimated 3.3 million farmers who have adopted biointensive practices throughout Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Boaz Oduor returned to Kenya in 2008 to help found Organics 4 Orphans, which trains farmers in Africa. In 2012, siblings Julio Cesar Nina and Yesica Nina Cusiyupanqui went back to Peru to train hundreds of farmers in the Andes. Four Sri Lanka interns visiting between 2012 and 2014 have gone on to spread biointensive practices throughout South Asia.

"With biointensive, we could sustainably produce food for everyone on Earth and still leave half of the farmable soil untouched." - John Jeavons Ecology Action is increasingly using the internet to spread information, with numerous free and low-cost videos, webinars and instructional materials in multiple languages at its website and educational portal, plus a growing presence on social media. But the heart of its efforts to plant the seeds of sustainable farming on every continent is still found at the mini-farms in the big-hearted zeal of the interns.

"With biointensive, we could sustainably produce food for everyone on Earth and still leave half of the farmable soil untouched," says Jeavons. It's a big goal, but devotees of these farming methods believe they if they can convince enough people that it's practical and essential, they can achieve it, one plant at a time.
This story was first published by Ensia, an environmental news magazine based at the University of Minnesota.

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Small farmers from around the world learn how they can grow far more food

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Her face shaded by a wide-brimmed straw hat, Olawumi Benedict is cheerfully tending to her "little babies" - kale seedlings growing in shallow wooden flats until they're hardy enough for transplantation into soil beds. Three miles over the hills on another small farm, Jonnes Mlegwah is double-digging the soil with a spading fork, preparing to plant potatoes.

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Sam Neua (Lao PDR), 1 August 2017 - The districts of Xamtai, Xone and Kuan in Lao PDR have begun planting coffee seedlings in a culmination of over an year of work between UNODC and local authorities in the Huapanh province to introduce coffee as an alternative cash crop to opium. To commemorate the occasion, local authorities from each district arranged planting ceremonies where farmers, project officials and local government officials held discussions and jointly placed seedlings into the ground.

In November 2015, approximately 250 farmers initiated the transition from opium to coffee by establishing coffee nursery beds. Since then, these farmers have nurtured their nurseries and prepared plots under the guidance of technical experts from the project. Local governments are actively supporting UNODC, with local staff from the District Agriculture and Forestry Offices working side-by-side with project extensionists to provide daily supervision and guidance to farmers.

"Coffee is a high value cash-crop with a potential to replace opium cultivation in these areas", explained Mr. Phath Marnachith from the Provincial Commission for Drug Control and Supervision (PCDC). "Farmers in the Golden Triangle currently produce around one-fifth of the world's opium. In Lao PDR, opium production uses almost 6000 hectares of land and is concentrated in the highlands of northern districts."

"Opium farmers are generally poor and marginalised," said UNODC Programme Manager Erlend Audunson Falch. "They severely need alternative and sustainable sources of income, and we are trying to help them with that."

"We believe coffee has great potential not only for the villages that are already included in the project, but also for other villages in our district," said Ms. Sengphet Lukham-in from the Xamtai district party standing committee, at the ceremony. Similarly, Mr. Voneseng Houangphanxay from the Xone district party committee emphasised that coffee is strategically prioritised because of its international market and use of production methods that depart from the environmentally-destructive cultivation currently practiced by many. In Kwan, District Governor Mr. Maikham Phimmasone urged farmers to follow technical advice given by coffee experts. Consistent with local socio-economic development plans, all districts identified coffee as a priority crop.

Coffee was selected as a key intervention in the project due to its local suitability and income-generating potential. Furthermore, southern Lao has already established a substantial coffee industry that can provide expertise and infrastructure, as well as facilitate market access. Accordingly, the project has the cooperation of the National Coffee Research Centre (NCRC) to ensure that farmers have access to the technology and knowledge required to produce high-quality beans.

The project is funded by the United States and Luxembourg, and provides each farmer with the material inputs and technical guidance needed to establish one hectare of coffee plantation. It also plans to help the farmers establish organisations to ensure long-term sustainability. Through this cooperative, farmers would be able to process their products and create their own links to national and international markets. In addition to coffee, the project also works with local authorities to treat drug users and introduce improved livestock management techniques.

Click here to learn more about UNODC's work on sustainable alternative development.

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Former opium farmers begin planting coffee as alternative crop

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Sam Neua (Lao PDR), 1 August 2017 - The districts of Xamtai, Xone and Kuan in Lao PDR have begun planting coffee seedlings in a culmination of over an year of work between UNODC and local authorities in the Huapanh province to introduce coffee as an alternative cash crop to opium.

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By Charles Mkoka

DEDZA, Malawi, Feb 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Armed with fish soup and neem leaves, as well as chemical pesticides, Malawi's drought-hit farmers are fighting a caterpillar that is devouring their crops and putting them at risk of hunger.

The fall armyworm, an invasive Latin American species that is harder to detect and eradicate than its African counterpart, has attacked maize plants covering one fifth of Malawi's arable land, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Agricultural researchers and farmers are fighting back with both imported and local approaches, while also attempting to combat the effects of a prolonged dry spell.

Farmer Joyce Thom, for instance, from Dedza district in central Malawi, is applying crushed neem leaves to her maize stalks to kill the armyworm.

"Some farmers are also using sugar mixed with soup made from fish called usipa, which is applied on the affected stems," Thom said.

"The sugar and soup attract ants which later feed on the fall armyworm themselves. Finally, (there is) the use of soil applied on stems where the worm hides, to suffocate it and break the cycle," Thom said.

Nearly 2 million people are at risk of food shortages because of the effects of armyworms and drought, Agriculture Minister Joseph Mwanamvekha said earlier this month.

In response to the crisis, the government banned the export of maize earlier this month.
'A THORN IN THE FLESH'
Several African countries, including South Africa, have managed to contain the pest using chemical pesticides. Kenya made major steps to control it last year by training farmers to use pesticides correctly and to alternate them to prevent the caterpillar from developing resistance.

Malawi is testing the effectiveness of chemicals such as Deltanex 25EC to control the armyworm, and researching which crop varieties are more resistant to the pest, Osborne Tsoka, a spokesperson for Malawi's agriculture ministry, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Although farmers in Malawi are already using pesticides against the pest, researchers are also exploring other techniques, he said.

These include the effectiveness of using enemies found in nature to attack the armyworm, scent traps armed with deadly chemicals, and pheromone traps that can render the worms infertile, he said.

The government is also training its field officers, farmers and communities to identify and manage the pest, Tsoka said.

"The government has generally been on top of the issue of fall armyworm, providing resources and technical support to ensure that farmers effectively deal with it," said Florence Rolle, representative of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Malawi.

Sosten Alfred is a farmer in Dedza district, where weeks of drought combined with the fall armyworm attacks have caused most of the standing maize to wilt.

"Fall armyworms are a thorn in the flesh of farmers," he said of the pest, which first threatened African crops late in 2016.

He showed how lack of moisture and the crushing of stems by the grown worms badly damaged the leaves, preventing the plants from growing.

But it's not just the staple crop of maize that is under attack.

"(The fall armyworm) is attacking beans, groundnuts, cotton and cereals," Tsoka said. "It has now turned into a regional problem."
DROUGHT HITS HARD
Severe drought in recent years has pushed many farming families in southern Africa deeper into poverty. At the start of 2017, about 6.5 million Malawians, more than a third of the population, were dependent on food aid.

This year, more than 700,000 farming families are affected by dry spells, according to an assessment carried out by the government and FAO.

Climate change is expected to bring more drought and less predictable weather conditions over the coming decades, according to the government's Malawi 2015 Floods Post Disaster Needs Assessment Report.

Farmers in parts of the country are being trained to build deep trenches, and plant trees and vetiver grass, to help trap and hold water for their crops.

To help her fields cope with the shortage of rain, farmer Thom uses mbeya, a fertiliser made locally from chicken and goat droppings, ash, maize bran, chemical fertiliser and water which are left to mature for 21 days.

The fertiliser improves the texture of soil and its ability to hold water during dry spells, she said.

"As such, my maize field looks more healthy and robust compared to other gardens that never applied it," Thom said.
(Reporting by Charles Mkoka, Editing by James Baer and Alex Whiting.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)

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southern africa: armyworm infestation - jan 2017

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Drought-hit Malawi farmers use sugar and fish soup to battle pests

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By Charles Mkoka DEDZA, Malawi, Feb 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Armed with fish soup and neem leaves, as well as chemical pesticides, Malawi's drought-hit farmers are fighting a caterpillar that is devouring their crops and putting them at risk of hunger.

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How GIS is enabling the agricultural sector

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By using GIS in agriculture, the risk of marginalization and vulnerability of small and marginal farmers, who constitute about 85% of farmers globally, is reduced. Know the benefits of using GIS in agriculture

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On a recent trip to Tanzania, I met a group of women who farmed vegetables for a living near the village of Mlandizi on the country's east coast. As they were telling me about their operation, the unexpected ring of a cell phone interrupted us.

In a village where most people live below the poverty line, all 11 women reached into their colorful kangas to check their phones. The caller was giving an update on seed prices-vital information in a country where seeds are often hard to come by.

Forget satellites, drones or other high-tech innovations. For small-scale farmers across the globe, a simple cell phone has become one of the most powerful tools for boosting one's harvest and, along with it, his or her family's and community's food supply.

Farmers like the women I met are using cellular technology to share crucial information about weather, rainfall, and market demand, along with seed prices, empowering millions of them to grow more food at a time when the world needs it most.

This kind of information can be crucial during the rainy season, the period from March to May when farmers in Tanzania begin to plant next year's crop.

Other information that's shared via cell phones, including weather forecasts, fertilizer prices and more resilient seeds, could mean the difference between a successful harvest and a lean one, after which the number of daily meals dwindles to one.

And scientific advances on nutrition and agriculture remain the most effective tools to grow more food. Yet SMS technology provides a unique solution for delivering word of these breakthroughs to subsistence farmers, especially since the communities that would benefit most are often the most remote.

Organizations like World Food Program USA, the U.N. World Food Programme and U.S. Agency for International Development need support from governments as well as the private sector to invest in more research and smarter programs to help small farmers succeed.

More than half of the planet's arable yet unused farmland can be found in Africa, where millions of small farmers lack access to basic infrastructure and information. By empowering small farmers like the women I met in Tanzania with information, and with cell phone technology, we can raise millions of families out of hunger and poverty.

Dan Glickman served as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1995 to 2001. He currently serves on the board of World Food Program USA, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C., that builds support and resources for the mission of the U.N. World Food Programme.

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How Cell Phones Can Help End World Hunger

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On a recent trip to Tanzania, I met a group of women who farmed vegetables for a living near the village of Mlandizi on the country's east coast. As they were telling me about their operation, the unexpected ring of a cell phone interrupted us.

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Watering crops has traditionally been a massive burden on poor farmers, requiring hours of hauling buckets from the nearest water source. Solar pump technology presents an opportunity for these farmers to harness the energy of the sun and pump water to their crops. But this technology is still too expensive to impact rural poverty.

By cutting the cost by 80% small farmer incomes would be transformed, tens of thousands of jobs could be created, and carbon emissions would be significantly reduced. If solar water pump was affordable at $2-a-day, small plot agriculture could become more profitable and many farmers could be raised out of poverty in India and Africa. But, how can this feat be achieved?

Through the work of iDE and their small farm drip irrigation systems, this cost cutting has already been drastically reduced. By using thin walled, lay-flat hose to convey irrigation water from sources to rows of plants and using filters to improve water flow, reducing pressure on the system, the cost of a drip irrigation system goes from $1,200 per acre to less than $600 per acre.

The greatest challenge is the reduction of the cost of the pump motor combination from $7,000 to $2,500. Traditionally diesel powered pumps are utilized to transport water form the source, through the pump, and into the crops in unlined channels. Water is delivered to the plants by flooding the field with a loss of 60 to 70 percent of the water lost to seepage before it even gets to the plants.

By using a zero-based design, one where everything begins from scratch as if it were the invention of new technology, iDE is able to create SunWater,an affordable PV solar irrigation system. A motor that is powered by electricity generated through photovoltaic panels would replace the diesel motors and efficiency is achieved by utilizing mirrors, which are much cheaper than photovoltaic. They are able to generate 2,000 watts off 10 - 15 mirrors. The water is then delivered to the plants via the thin walled, drip irrigation system already in place.

This simple, affordable change in the way water is delivered to plants will allow more diversification of crops by giving farmers a way to irrigate through the dry season. This means they can sell their high value crops when prices are highest (dry season) to sustain them through the wet season when farming is much more abundant and prices significantly drop. Educating farmers about how to optimize their incomes is the second phase of this valuable, life changing project.
- Shawn D. Ross

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Watering crops has traditionally been a massive burden on poor farmers, requiring hours of hauling buckets from the nearest water source. Solar pump technology presents an opportunity for these farmers to harness the energy of the sun and pump water to their crops. But this technology is still too expensive to impact rural poverty.

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By now, it is a well known fact that clean water is necessary for drinking and hygiene. About 1.1 billion people go without clean water every day and must rely on polluted or infected supplies to survive. Even more than that go without basic sanitation. But, water is not just for human consumption and cleanliness. Access to good water can be the difference between eating and starving for rural farmers throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to grow sufficient crops, farmers need water and frequently must rely on sparse rains and transporting water on their own to provide for the plants they are attempting to grow.

Only four percent of rural farmland is irrigated, even though up to 40 million hectares are proven to be appropriate for irrigation. Farming in Africa has proven to be a difficult endeavor at the best of times. Rainfall has become unpredictable and crop yield is often too low to feed a family, let alone to sell in a market. The frustrating part is that there is plenty of water available underground, but the farmers lack an affordable way to actually obtain it.

Large, centralized irrigation schemes are usually built around a major dam and were very successful, especially during the so-called Green Revolution. Millions of people were brought out of hunger as a result. But they often proved to be environmentally destructive and tend to be very expensive to build and use, especially for those living in Africa.

The answer to providing access to crop irrigation for poor rural farmers in Africa could be much smaller, like the treadle pump. The pump is used by stepping up and down with the long poles, or treadles, that activate the suction and pump water out of the ground. One family told Sandra Postel, who of the National Geographic Freshwater Initiative, that their $35 investment brought them $100 in revenue the first year they used it.

The downfall of a pump like this is that it requires a lot of physical work to use and ends up taking time away from other important activities like schooling and harvesting. Nonetheless, several companies such as KickStart have created variations of the treadle pump to help spread the use of irrigation. With their affordable irrigation pumps, KickStart has been able to help 750,000 Africans pull themselves out of poverty. Groups like FarmAfrica have gone in and taught the farmers how to use the pumps and what crops to grow to get the best yield. Until small motorized pumps are more universally available and affordable, the benefits of being able to grow enough food to eat and sell seriously outweigh the issue of having to operate to pump manually.
- Chelsea Evans

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Irrigation Could End Poverty | The Borgen Project

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By now, it is a well known fact that clean water is necessary for drinking and hygiene. About 1.1 billion people go without clean water every day and must rely on polluted or infected supplies to survive. Even more than that go without basic sanitation. But, water is not just for human consumption and cleanliness.

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Biotechnology -- A Solution to Hunger? | UN Chronicle

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A segment of the scientific community often proposes that export earnings from higher agricultural yields can contribute to reducing food insecurity and hunger in developing countries. However, there are many issues and challenges that beg the practicality of this proposal.

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Jim Brandenburg/Minden Pictures/Newscom

Cloud seeding-sowing clouds with small particles to make them rain or snow-has a reputation as dodgy as the weather. That's because even though scientists have been seeding clouds since the 1940s, there was precious little proof the technique worked. Now, researchers flying two small planes through a bank of clouds in Idaho have shown, for the first time outside the lab, that humans can artificially turbocharge snowfall.

"What they've done is identify the chain of events from seeding to precipitation on the ground, which has been sorely needed for the last 80 years," says William Cotton, a former professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who was not involved with the research.

In the 1940s, atmospheric scientist Bernard Vonnegut found that particles of silver iodide can cause supercool clouds of water vapor to freeze into snow in the lab. (He is the brother of writer Kurt Vonnegut, whose fictional ice-nine was partially inspired by the discovery.) Particles like silver iodide can provide a scaffold on which water molecules can align themselves into a crystalline structure or, in other words, freeze. The technique has been used by militaries and civilian governments on and off ever since.

But despite decades of cloud seeding operations, proof that the technique works outside miniaturized clouds created in the lab has been elusive. One reason: Instruments of decades past couldn't measure water droplet size in clouds in real time. Without knowing how a cloud evolves after seeding, scientists were unsure whether the silver iodide was doing anything at all. Another: The chaotic nature of weather makes controlled, natural experiments almost impossible. "Once you seed, you're contaminating the cloud. You can't repeat the experiment because you'll never have the same atmospheric conditions again," says Katja Friedrich, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

But newer instruments convinced Friedrich and her colleagues that the time was ripe for another approach-and the National Science Foundation and Idaho Power provided the funding. The team took its experiment to the mountains of southwestern Idaho, where it waited until supercooled clouds appeared in the sky. At temperatures of 0°C to -15°C, they are cold enough to freeze, but are at low odds of doing so.

When the right clouds came along, the team sprang into action. It launched one aircraft that made laps between two ground-based radars, dropping canisters that spread silver iodide into the clouds. The same plane also flew through the cloud while streaming silver iodide from its wings. Another plane loaded with cloud measuring equipment paced a perpendicular path to take readings.

At first, there was nothing. "The radar can only see [water] particles that are big enough, and these clouds had tiny droplets not detectable by radar," Friedrich says. "Suddenly, we saw lines appear. It was really astonishing." The zig-zagged lines matched the flight path of the first plane. Within these lines, the cloud's water particles were getting bigger as they hit the silver iodide and froze. After a couple of hours, the snowflakes had grown from a few microns in diameter to 8 millimeters in diameter- heavy enough to fall to the ground, Friedrich and her colleagues report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We were super, super excited. Nobody had seen that before," she says.

The experiments have also been met with enthusiasm from cloud seeding companies. "Those of us working on cloud physics for a long time have felt that [cloud seeding] was working," says Bruce Boe, a meteorologist at cloud-seeding company Weather Modification in Fargo, North Dakota. "This verification and incontrovertible evidence this is occurring is really, really nice for us."

Still up for study is whether the approach is economical. "Does it make enough snow to make an impact on a water budget?" Friedrich wonders. "We still have to answer those fundamental questions."

doi:10.1126/science.aat0854

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Does cloud seeding really work? An experiment above Idaho suggests humans can turbocharge snowfall

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Cloud seeding-sowing clouds with small particles to make them rain or snow-has a reputation as dodgy as the weather. That's because even though scientists have been seeding clouds since the 1940s, there was precious little proof the technique worked.

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An international team of researchers have sequenced the complete genome of African rice, enabling the development of new rice varieties that are better able to cope with increasing environmental stresses to help solve global hunger issues.

The genetic information will also enhance understanding of the growing patterns of African rice.

The effort to sequence the African rice genome was led by Rod Wing, director of the Genomics Institute at the University of Arizona.

"Rice feeds half the world, making it the most important food crop," Wing said, as reported in Science Daily.

"Rice will play a key role in helping to solve what we call the nine billion people question," he added, referring to predictions of what the world's population will increase to - many of whom are likely to be living in areas where food is scarce - by 2050.

The question lies in how to grow enough food to feed the world's population and prevent the health, economic and social problems associated with hunger and malnutrition.

The research allows scientists and agriculturalists to search for ways to cross Asian and African species to develop new varieties of rice with the high-yield traits of Asian rice and the hardiness of African rice.

"African rice is once more at the forefront of cultivation strategies that aim to confront climate change and food availability challenges," said co-author Judith Carney, a professor of geography at at the University of California.

The African rice genome is important because many of the genes code for traits that make African rice resistant to environmental stress, such as long periods of drought, high salinity in the soils and flooding.

"The idea is to create a super-rice that will be higher yielding but will have less of an environmental impact -- such as varieties that require less water, fertiliser and pesticides," said Wing.

Hardy, high-yield crops will become increasingly vital for human survival as the world faces the environmental effects of climate change and an ever-growing global population.

In analysing the 33,000 genes that make up the African rice genome, the researchers discovered that during the process of domestication, Africans and Asians independently selected for many of the same genetic traits in the two species, such as higher nutrition.

"By understanding the entire genus at a genome level, we have a whole new pool of genetic variation that can be used to combat pests and plant pathogens," said Wing.

"After decades of promoting high-yielding Asian varieties, the emphasis now is on developing types that combine the former's higher yields with Oryza glaberrima's (African rice) tolerance of environmental stress," Carney told Science 2.0.

The research was published online in Nature Genetics.

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Solution to World Hunger? Scientists Sequence Genome of African Rice to Solve 'Nine Billion People Question'

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An international team of researchers have sequenced the complete genome of African rice, enabling the development of new rice varieties that are better able to cope with increasing environmental stresses to help solve global hunger issues. The genetic information will also enhance understanding of the growing patterns of African rice.

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Fredrik Renander/Redux

A Nebraska Cornhusker frets as he surveys his drought-stunted crop. A Nigerian yam farmer digs up shrunken tubers. A Costa Rican coffee baron lays off hundreds of workers because a fungus has spoiled his harvest. I planted cherry trees in upstate New York last spring. One summer morning, they were denuded by Japanese beetles.

Such disasters are increasingly common on a planet buffeted by climate change and worldwide commerce, where heat burns crops, soil has been ruined by over-farming and drought, and bugs ride across oceans to feast on defenseless plants. Agronomists have been working on these problems for years, but the rapid population growth of humans makes overcoming these challenges increasingly urgent. If we can't feed the world, it will eventually feed on us.

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The United Nations and experts say global food production will have to double by 2050, at which point the world population is expected to have grown from 7 billion today to well beyond 9 billion. That's just 35 years away, and there will be no new arable land then. In fact, there probably will be less. For example, 73 million acres of arable land in the U.S. were lost between 2002 and 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA); more was certainly made fallow during the last several years of severe drought. Looking ahead, growing conditions will only get harsher.

The solution, though, appears to be on the way: In 2012, a new tool was invented that revolutionizes how scientists can examine-and manipulate-plant genetic processes. It's called CRISPR-Cas9, and unlike its predecessors in the world of genetic modification, it is highly specific, allowing scientists to zero in on a single gene and turn it on or off, remove it or exchange it for a different gene. Early signs suggest this tool will be an F-16 jet fighter compared with the Stone Age spear of grafting, the traditional, painstaking means of breeding a new plant hybrid. Biologists and geneticists are confident it can help them build a second Green Revolution-if we'll let them.

"We now have a very easy, very fast and very efficient technique for rewriting the genome," said one of its inventors, Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, when the Innovative Genomics Initiative was launched in 2014. "[It] allows us to do experiments that have been impossible before." The speed and simplicity of CRISPR have momentous implications for agriculture: The process could lead to plants that can withstand what an increasingly overheated nature has in store. It could also result in a more nutritious yield, from less plant. Researchers have glommed on to it-they've already published more than 150 related scientific papers, and the publication rate is accelerating. "It's tough to keep up with all the papers that are coming out," says Joyce Van Eck, who runs a lab focused on the study of genetics-based crop improvement at Cornell University's Boyce Thompson Institute. "The field is exploding."
Pull on DNA's Zipper
stands for-brace yourself-Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. The name comes from a trick that bacteria use to protect themselves from lethal viruses and phages, little cellular saboteurs. The "palindromic repeats" (gene sequences that read the same from either end) are immune response elements, genetic code the bacteria copy and incorporate from invading viruses so that, if they return, they can be easily identified. It's a bit like posting an FBI wanted poster or splashing enemy soldiers with glow-in-the-dark paint.

The technique requires two accomplices: molecules called guide RNA and a protein from a class labeled Cas. The most effective one found so far is Cas9. RNA has long been known to be the vehicle DNA needs to convey its message. In a cell, Cas9 prepares the chemical environment around a DNA molecule for interaction, then spurs RNA to find the selected section of DNA. Once it does, the RNA will guide the Cas9 into the DNA, where the Cas9 unzips DNA's double helix and does one of three things, depending on the chemical instructions scientists provide: It blunts this section's ability to work, stimulates it to go to work or excises selected genes. Then the cell's repair crew zips the DNA back up.

The process can easily modify plant DNA without changing the plant's essence-except to make it tastier, more nutritious, quicker to market, easier to ship, machine-pickable, less needy of water and/or able to flourish in a heat wave. And we can do it for big companies and small, the world at large and isolated communities.

In the old days, relying on hit-or-miss natural processes to breed plants took many years. Norman Borlaug, father of the first Green Revolution-a hugely successful effort to improve food-crop productivity in poor countries that began in the 1940s and eventually doubled or even quadrupled what many plants could produce-needed almost two decades to create a better wheat variety. With CRISPR-Cas9, we can compress that development cycle to a few days or weeks.

This is partly because we can now process, store and compare vast quantities of genetic data quickly and cheaply. The upshot for scientists has been the rapid growth in knowledge of cell chemistry and genes, and most important, our ballooning database of many species' genomes.

Ideally, we would know everything about the genome of all our favorite produce staples, down to the placement of every single gene. And this cataloging is happening with astonishing speed. Researchers at Kansas State University have sequenced the first and toughest of wheat's 20 chromosomes-and that one chromosome is far more complex than the entire rice genome. They say they'll be able to do the next 19 in three years. The result will be complete knowledge of the genome of the world's third-most cultivated crop, the one with the most protein and arguably the grain that is most versatile as a food and cooking source.

Then, the amazing flexibility of CRISPR-Cas9 can be brought to bear. The idea is to use the process to replace a segment of a plant's genetic sequence entirely, a bit like exchanging a chunk of Lego blocks, to improve specific plant behavior. Imagine a wheat strain that thrives at the edge of a salt marsh in tropical Ecuador. Compared with Iowa's amber waves of grain, it's a runt that produces small, bitter kernels. But by adding bits of the Ecuadorian genome to the American variety, scientists make a strain that is more salt-tolerant and still provides a big yield. Both dry, salty Ecuador and dry, salty America would gain a better plant.

It's critical to note this has nothing to do with creating a new species. CRISPR-Cas9 is a tool that helps us adapt plants to new environments by fine-tuning their own genetic traits, using their own genes from plants they'd naturally breed with, such as their wild versions. As the tool targets a tiny segment of a plant's DNA, the plant stays the same species-technically, even the same genotype. As scientists see it, the technology respects a plant species for its evolutionary capacity to thrive over eons, while helping it evolve more quickly to adjust to today's environment. We are only putting our foot to the accelerator of natural plant processes.
Beautiful Tomatoes
Caution and guidelines are certainly called for. The early results of CRISPR-Cas9 tests have not been completely predictable. A published number is up to an 80 percent success rate, high for experimental stuff but not high enough for commercial applications. What can happen is "off-target DNA interactions," where "you accidentally modify a very similar sequence elsewhere in the genome," says Cornell's Van Eck. This was also a big problem in earlier genetic engineering technologies, which basically flooded a plant's genome with compounds, trusting that some would stick. CRISPR-Cas9 is comparatively precise, but some scientists remain cautious. The technology could and probably will get better; different versions of CRISPR-Cas9 could be developed, or scientists could find a new enzyme that does what CRISPR-Cas9 does more precisely.

On the other hand, Van Eck and her colleagues have proved that what they already have works beautifully with the tomato, a plant that's become "a model species, like the white rat in animal studies," she says. Soon she and others in the field will be working to improve the tomato's hardiness and disease resistance, with results that will come with what she terms "drummer-like precision"-the exactitude of, say, Elvin Jones or Charlie Watts-"because we can go in and target exactly the areas we want." Other early advances include a new version of rice that is more adaptable and has the ability to photosynthesize faster and more efficiently. That portends a future where, thanks to CRISPR-Cas9, scientists are at the rice control console, able to consider the available inputs-water, soil nutrients, temperature-and make adjustments to better control the outputs: productivity, nutritional value, resilience. All that's needed is for consumers to buy in.
Suspicions Trump Science
Biotech crops are already well-established around the world. The U.S. has approved about 100 genetically modified plants for use in agriculture. Virtually all cotton in India, a vital economic staple for the country, is GM, as is 90 percent of cotton grown in China. Four out of every five harvested soybeans on earth are genetically modified. Corn worldwide is 35 percent genetically modified. Bangladesh is considering a GM eggplant that could double its harvest by protecting it from worms. Food writer Mark Bittman recently pointed out that we've been happily eating harmless genetically modified, virus-resistant papayas for years, and that's Mr. Natural talking.

But some countries are balking. Mexico, where maize was first domesticated, must now import it to meet local demand because activists there will not allow genetically modified organism hybrids. Mexico's maize growers get yields 38 percent lower than the world average and three times below the U.S., where 90 percent of the maize crop is an insect-resistant GMO hybrid. Mexico's fields are beset by such crop ravishers as the corn earworm, black cutworm and fall armyworm, which cost the country up to half its crops and incite farmers to spray their land with thousands of tons of chemical insecticides.

The European Union has approved just one genetically modified crop, a type of maize used for animal feed. The reasons are political and bureaucratic: A majority of member countries must approve a biotech plant, and anti-GMO sentiment runs strong in places where phrases like naturel and natürliche are more about what's been done for centuries than what it actually means for something to exist in or be caused by nature.

This genetic work has not just found detractors but also aroused fierce partisans. Take Golden Rice, for example. It's basic rice, but modified to produce its own vitamin A, potentially saving up to 2.8 million children a year from blindness and a million of them from death. Yet it sits in labs, unused. The notion of GMOs has spooked environmental groups such as Greenpeace, which has resisted GMOs with violent action, including destroying an experimental Golden Rice field last year in the Philippines. This despite the fact that Golden Rice is being offered to the world by a nonprofit, with no commercial stipulations, and is likely to save many lives.

The scientific consensus for the safety of GMOs is overwhelming. A recent Pew poll found that 88 percent of U.S. scientists think GMO technology is harmless. By contrast, only 33 percent of civilians agreed. A recent 7-1 U.S. Supreme Court decision concurred that genetically modified alfalfa is safe. The USDA, after arduous review, has allowed genetically modified sugar beets. Several independent studies so far have tested the effects of varieties of genetically modified crops on animals. In 2012, a meta-analysis of 12 long-term studies and 12 multigenerational studies was published in Food and Chemical Toxicology; it concluded "that GM plants are nutritionally equivalent to their non-GM counterparts and can be safely used in food and feed." And according to the independent organization Biofortified, more than a hundred such studies have been performed, with no harmful results found.

Anti-GMO activists tend to cite two scientific studies, which both involve rats, GM corn and the pesticide Roundup. Both were undertaken by French scientist Gilles-Éric Séralini and found that the rats fed the GM corn were more likely to die prematurely than a control group. But the journal that originally accepted the studies, Food and Chemical Toxicology, withdrew them, and every major scientific and food-safety organization in Europe has condemned them. Among the problems with the studies was that the strain of rats used in the test are cancer-prone-80 percent routinely develop tumors. "All we are seeing in these results is due to random variation in a poorly controlled experiment," Ian Musgrave, of the University of Adelaide, in South Australia, told Forbes when the studies were retracted.

Chances are, you've heard of Roundup (active ingredient: glyphosate). That's because it's the second in the supposed double punch that agrochemical company Monsanto has allegedly been throwing for years to create a cycle of financial dependence among farmers worldwide. Monsanto produces Roundup. Since 1996, it has also produced Roundup Ready crops, including soy, corn and alfalfa, all genetically modified to be resistant to the herbicide-which means it can be used on fields to get rid of encroaching plant life without harming the crops. That's great for farmers. But these Roundup Ready seeds have a dark side: farmers who buy them sign an agreement saying they will not save any seeds from the resulting crop. In other words, they have to buy new seeds every year from Monsanto. This has all been incredibly lucrative for the company; it currently has a third of the $40 billion global seed business. The Monsanto/Roundup controversy continues to inflame passions: Among the many concerns that have been raised is the possibility that genetically modified DNA from the Roundup Ready plants might be contaminating non-GMO food supplies. Then there's the fact that glyphosate might be a health hazard-the World Health Organization says it is a probable carcinogen.

Meanwhile, "No GMO" is now being embraced by consumer brands; the ascendant "fast-casual" chain Chipotle posts just such a sign in its restaurants. It makes sense: If over two-thirds of Americans think GMOs are unhealthy, declaring yourself GMO-free is a lucrative proposition. Local governments are also weighing in. Vermont now demands that all GMO foods sold there be labeled as such. Two rural counties in Oregon have banned GMO crops within their borders.

Yet despite the conventional wisdom, startup money for GMO development in the U.S. and elsewhere is flowing like it's coming out of a fire hose, first for biomedical applications, from venture capitalists as well as traditional pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Celgene and Novartis. U.S. startups include Caribou Biosciences, Editas, Intellia Therapeutics, CRISPR Therapeutics and CRISPR-Plant.

In China, where rural populations react to GMOs with dread and anger, the only genetically modified crop currently grown is Bittman's papaya. But China's mighty science establishment has thrown its weight behind genetic work, with 400 labs and 30,000 researchers. Labs there have already sequenced the genes of 3,000 varieties of rice, in preparation for matching them against one another to find the best traits for nutrition, yield and resistance to environmental stressors. One result someday soon will be what researchers have dubbed "green super rice." Even if the Chinese government can't sell genetically modified crops to its own people, there's a good chance the poor populations of Southeast Asia, Africa and India will welcome the nourishment. Gengyun Zhang, head of life sciences for BGI, China's giant state-sponsored genetic engineering center, recently said, "With today's technology, I have no doubt that we can feed the world."

Correction: This article originally incorrectly stated that today's world population is 2 billion. It is 7 billion. It also incorrectly suggested that "Bt" stands for "biotech." "Bt" actually stands for bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium whose genes are often used in the development of genetically modified crops. It also incorrectly stated that Roundup Ready seeds are sterile.

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GMO scientists could save the world from hunger, if we let them

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Fredrik Renander/Redux A Nebraska Cornhusker frets as he surveys his drought-stunted crop. A Nigerian yam farmer digs up shrunken tubers. A Costa Rican coffee baron lays off hundreds of workers because a fungus has spoiled his harvest. I planted cherry trees in upstate New York last spring.