Motley Moose – Archive

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Food prices have soared to record highs and are projected to increase further in the coming decade, pushing millions of people into hunger – and fueling political unrest around the world.

But diversifying food production to include local and indigenous vegetables can help communities boost their self-sufficiency and protect vulnerable populations from price shocks.

Abdou Tenkouano, director of AVRDC– The World Vegetable Center’s Regional Center for Africa in Tanzania, highlights important policy recommendations in his chapter, “The Nutritional and Economic Potential of Vegetables,” in the recently published State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet. The accompanying policy brief is available here.

Vegetables can offer a sustainable solution for a diverse and balanced diet. Growing vegetables can help address the “hidden hunger” of micronutrient deficiencies that affects some 1 billion people worldwide, and also brings multiple benefits for farmers. “Vegetables have shorter cycles, are faster-growing than cereal crops, and require little space,” says Tenkouano.

Today is the Worldwatch Institute’s 15th Annual State of the World Symposium, hosted at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. It is being live streamed on the Nourishing the Planet blog at 1:15PM (EST) for those unable to join the event in person. Bringing together leading thinkers in agricultural development, hunger, and poverty alleviation, the symposium takes place following the release of Worldwatch’s flagship publication, State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet.

Symposium keynote speakers and panelists include Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World; Hans Herren, President, Millennium Institute; Sara Scherr, President and CEO, Ecoagriculture Partners; Catherine Alston, Cocoa Livelihoods Program Coordinator, World Cocoa Foundation; and Stephanie Hanson, Director of Policy and Outreach, One Acre Fund.

Also participating, in keeping with the project’s emphasis on ‘voices from the field,’ are two on-the-ground innovators from sub-Saharan Africa: Edward Mukiibi, co-founder and Project Coordinator of Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC) in Uganda and Sithembile Ndema with the Food and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) in South Africa. The DISC project instills greater environmental awareness and understanding of nutrition, indigenous vegetables, and food culture in Uganda’s youth by establishing vegetable gardens at pre-school, day, and boarding schools. FANRPAN’s Women Accessing Realigned Markets (WARM) project recently launched a series of Theatre for Policy Advocacy (TPA) campaigns in rural Malawi, using an interactive model to strengthen the ability of women farmers to advocate for appropriate agricultural policies and programs.

State of the World 2011 is full of similar stories of success and hope in sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. The report draws from hundreds of case studies and first-person examples to offer solutions to reducing hunger and poverty. It’s nearly a half-century since the Green Revolution, and yet a large share of the human family is still chronically hungry. Since the mid 1980s when agricultural funding was at its height, the share of global development aid has fallen from over 16 percent to just 4 percent today. Drawing from the world’s leading agricultural experts and from hundreds of innovations that are already working on the ground, State of the World 2011 aims to help the funding and development community reverse this trend.

In Kibera, Nairobi, the largest slum in Kenya, for example, more than 1,000 women farmers are growing “vertical” gardens in sacks full of dirt poked with holes, feeding their families and communities. These sacks have the potential to feed thousands of city dwellers while also providing a sustainable and easy-to-maintain source of income for urban farmers. With more than 60 percent of Africa’s population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, such methods may be crucial to creating future food security. Currently, some 33 percent of Africans live in cities, and 14 million more migrate to urban areas each year. Worldwide, some 800 million people engage in urban agriculture, producing 15-20 percent of all food.

In 2007, some 6,000 women in The Gambia organized into the TRY Women’s Oyster Harvesting producer association, creating a sustainable co-management plan for the local oyster fishery to prevent overharvesting and exploitation. Oysters and fish are an important, low-cost source of protein for the population, but current production levels have led to environmental degradation and to harmful land use changes over the last 30 years. The government is working with groups like TRY to promote less destructive methods and to expand credit facilities to low-income producers to stimulate investment in more-sustainable production.

State of the World 2011 provides new insight into the often overlooked innovations that are working right now on the ground to alleviate hunger and deserve more funding and attention. Its findings will be shared in over 20 languages with a wide range of global agricultural stakeholders, including government ministries, policymakers, farmer and community networks, and the increasingly influential nongovernmental environmental and development communities.

Connect with Nourishing the Planet on Facebook by clicking HERE.

Today the Worldwatch Institute launches its flagship publication, State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet in New York City. The report spotlights successful agricultural innovations and unearths major successes in preventing food waste, building resilience to climate change, and strengthening farming in cities. The press launch-the first of several release events being held in New York and DC this month-will feature remarks from Nourishing the Planet co-Directors Brian Halweil and Danielle Nierenberg; contributing authors Stephanie Hanson of the One Acre Fund and the  Small Planet Institute’s Anna Lappé; as well as Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin.

It’s nearly a half-century since the Green Revolution and yet a large share of the human family is still chronically hungry. Since the mid 1980s when agricultural funding was at its height, the share of global development aid has fallen from over 16 percent to just 4 percent today. Drawing from the world’s leading agricultural experts and from hundreds of innovations that are already working on the ground, State of the World 2011 will help serve as a road map for the funding and development communities.

Over the last year, the Nourishing the Planet project has traveled to 25 sub-Saharan African nations-the places where hunger is the greatest and rural communities have struggled the most-to hear people’s stories of hope and success in agriculture. Africa has among the most persistent problems with malnutrition, but it also a rich and diverse breeding ground for innovations in agriculture. From oyster farmers in The Gambia to school gardens in Uganda to rotational grazing in Zimbabwe, State of the World 2011 draws from hundreds of case studies and first-person examples to offer solutions to reducing hunger and poverty.

In The Gambia, some 6,000 women organized into the TRY Women’s Oyster Harvesting Producer Association, creating a sustainable co-management plan for the local oyster fishery to prevent overharvesting and exploitation. The 15 communities, comprising nearly 6,000 people, agreed to close one tributary in their oyster territories for an entire year and to lengthen the “closed” season in other areas. They are also working together to educate the community about the benefits of mangrove restoration and building hatcheries to boost wild stocks. The improved quality and size of the resulting harvests are garnering higher prices at local markets, and the association is working on developing relationships with upscale hotels and restaurants that are interested in buying wholesale.

In Uganda, Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC) program is integrating indigenous vegetable gardens, nutrition information, and food preparation into school curriculums to teach children how to grow local crop varieties that will help combat food shortages and revitalize the country’s culinary traditions. As a result, these students grow up with more respect-and excitement-about farming. At Sirapollo Kaggwass Secondary School, Mary Naku, a 19 year-old student, who is learning farming skills from DISC, said that she has gained leadership and farming skills. “As youth we have learned to grow fruits and vegetables,” she says, “to support our lives.”

And in South Africa and Kenya, pastoralists are preserving indigenous varieties of livestock that are adapted to the heat and drought of local conditions-traits that will be crucial as climate extremes on the continent worsen. In Maralal in the Northern region of Kenya, one group of Maasai pastoralists is working with the Africa LIFE Network to increase their rights as keepers of both genetic diversity and the land.  Jacob Wanyama, coordinator for the African LIFE Network and advisor to the Nourishing the Planet Project, says Anikole cattle-a breed indigenous to Eastern Africa and traditionally used by pastoralists in the area for centuries-are not only “beautiful to look at,” but they’re one of the “highest quality” breeds. They can survive in extremely harsh, dry conditions-something that’s more important than ever as climate change takes a bigger hold on Africa. “Governments need to recognize,” says Wanyama, “that pastoralists are the best keepers of genetic diversity.”

Launched today at WNYC’s The Greene Space, the report includes a chapter on reducing food waste written by food activist Tristram Stewart, as well as chapter on how addressing the unique needs of women farmers, who in many parts of the continent represent 80 percent of small scale farmers, can improve livelihoods and diets for entire communities, written by Dianne Forte, Royce Gloria Androa and Marie-Ange Binwaho. State of the World 2011 provides new insight into the under-appreciated innovations that are working right now on the ground to alleviate hunger and deserving of more funding and attention.

Connect with Nourishing the Planet on Facebook by clicking HERE

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Between the years of 1975 – 1976, the Cambodian farmer, Name Name, like most farmers in the country during that time, grew vegetables and rice to feed the soldiers of the Lon Nol regime.

Using his bare hands, Name mixed the chemicals DDT, Folidol, Phostrin and Kontrin in order to keep the pests away from his crops. As a result, he suffered from strange and uncomfortable physical symptoms. Sometimes he was unable to move or feel his hands and lower arms, and he experienced pain in his lungs and heart. His short term memory was also affected. All of these symptoms often persisted for up to six months after exposure to the chemicals.

When the regime ended, Name went back to farming for himself and his family, and decided that he would do so without the use of any of the harmful chemical fertilizers that he realized are so dangerous to his health.

With training from organizations supported by the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its Regional Vegetable IPM Program in Asia – in addition to some of his own research –  Name learned how to prepare botanical insecticides and organic composts from animal wastes and other materials already available on his farm. Now he is now able to avoid expensive and dangerous insecticides almost completely.

This alternative approach is called Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and it combines various strategies and practices to grow healthy crops, reduce damage from pests and minimize the use of artificial inputs. The FAO Regional IPM Program uses informal farmer training schools, facilitated by extension staff or other local farmers, to help train and implement field experiments.  Local farmers learn new techniques from each other – as well as develop their own methods through facilitated field experiments – to minimize the use of chemical inputs on their farm.

In addition to raising animals and growing vegetables and rice, Name also produces several varieties of mushrooms organically which he sells at local markets. Though he does not yet receive a higher price for his organic produce, his crops are marketed to an increasingly conscious consumer base as being chemical free. And Name hopes that as awareness about the dangers of many chemical fertilizers increases, so will the value of his crops.

For now, he is happy to be producing enough food to feed his family and earn a significant portion of their income, without endangering his own health, or the health of those that enjoy his crops.

To read more about how farmers can reduce the financial – as well as environmental and health – costs of chemical inputs, see:  and For Pest Control, Following Nature’s Lead, Tiny Bugs to Solve Big Pest Problem, In Botswana, Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture and Wildlife Conservation, Malawi’s Real Miracle, Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops, and Finding ‘Abundance’ in What is Local.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.  She has already traveled to over 19 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Gabon next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.  

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on  Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates.  Please don’t hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

This is the first part in a series about our visit with ECOVA MALI.

It’s not a new concept-farmers learning from other farmers about different agricultural techniques-but it’s one that can be difficult to execute. Foreign NGOs often offer trainings, but they don’t always fit farmers needs. But at ECOVA MALI‘s training center, 35 kilometers outside of Bamako, Mali’s capital, farmers are getting the skills they need to be better stewards of the environment, as well as better business women and men.

ECOVA was started by former Peace Corps Volunteers, Gregory Flatt and Cynthia Hellman. Along with Yacouba Kone, a Peace Corps program assistant and trainer for agriculture and natural resource management and Madou Camara, ECOVA’s Country Director, they’ve created a training center-and testing ground-for environmentally sustainable agricultural techniques. They want to encourage “home grown knowledge” by building local expertise. The facility, near the village of Terenabougou, uses local experts to teach farmers how intercropping, water conservation, agroforestry, seed saving, processing shea butter, and other practices can help both protect the environment and increase farmer income. ECOVA also instructs farmers about basic business, accounting, and marketing skills and provides small loans and “mini-grants” to allow farmers to buy tools and equipment they need and to start businesses.

ECOVA holds workshops based on requests from farmer communities-for example, they’ve worked with women’s groups from nearby communities, teaching them how to process shea butter. ECOVA hopes to eventually start training farmers about small-scale livestock production, including raising poultry and goats.

Listen to Madou Camara talk about ECOVA’s farmer to farmer training method:

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.  She has already traveled to over 19 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Gabon next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.  

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on  Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates.  Please don’t hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet

By Alex Tung

This interview with Shenggen Fan, Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is part of a regular interview series with agriculture and food security experts.

Name: Shenggen Fan

Affiliation : Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Location : Washington, DC

Bio: Shenggen Fan is Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).  He has over 20 years of experience in the field of Agricultural Economics. He is currently an Executive Committee member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. He has worked in academic and independent research institutions, including Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at the University of Arkansas and the National Agricultural Research in the Netherlands.   Fan received his Ph.D. in applied economics from the University of Minnesota and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Nanjing Agricultural University in China.

Fan’s work in pro-poor development strategies in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East has helped identify how to effectively allocate public spending in reducing poverty and generating agricultural growth.

About “Halving Hunger:”

Currently, 16 percent of the world is undernourished.  In his recently published report, Halving Hunger: Meeting the First Millennium Development Goal through “Business as Unusual”, Fan voiced his concern that efforts to meet the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of undernourished people by 2015 are “moving in the wrong direction.”  Taking projected population growth into account, the number of undernourished needs to fall by an average of 73 million per year in the next five years. Continuing to conduct “business as usual” will clearly not suffice in meeting this goal. As such, Fan outlined five innovative approaches to go about “business as unusual:”

1. Investing in two core pillars: Agriculture and social protection
2. Bring in new players
3. Adopt a country-led and bottom-up approach
4. Design policies using evidence and experiments
5. “Walk the Walk”

According to Fan, these “unusual” approaches are already showing success.  The next step is to apply them on a larger scale in new locations to have a real impact on reducing global hunger.

In your report, you called for countries to “Walk the walk.” What are key factors hindering countries’ progress in fulfilling their commitments?  What could be done to encourage them to do so?

Failure to summon political will and resources is one of the key factors that hinders countries from fulfilling their commitments. To ensure the commitment of policymakers, the general media and popular communication sources should provide the public with evidence-based information and knowledge. In addition, strong institutions and governance should be promoted to support the implementation of commitments both by governments and donors. To add accountability and keep progress on track, timely and transparent monitoring of implementation is required.

Regarding “new players in the global food system” or emerging donors – What are essential elements of a fair, “mutually beneficial” relationship?  Is there any danger of partnership become exploitation, and where do you draw the line?  What measures can be taken to ensure foreign investment generate real results that benefit the local community?

A mutually beneficial relationship between emerging donors and recipient countries needs to enhance long-term benefits and minimize any potential harm, particularly to vulnerable groups. The essential elements of such a relationship include: fair competition with local enterprises; strong linkages of investments with domestic markets; engagement of the local workforce; and the adoption of higher environmental and labor standards.

Many emerging donors, such as China, place the bulk of their investment in areas like infrastructure or construction. Considering the goal of eradicating hunger, do you believe aid should continue in this direction? How can emerging donors synchronize their work with providers of more traditional or “mainstream” development aid?

Indeed, emerging donors need to diversify their investments into other areas such as agriculture and rural areas to have an impact on decreasing hunger. Emerging donors should increase transparency and cooperation in aid delivery. Through dialogue with traditional donors, common standards in the aid system should be set. This will help to avoid duplication and create synergies with other donors.

These emerging donors should also ensure that their trade with and investments in developing countries will benefit other developing countries and bring win-win opportunities.

Many of the hungry are located in countries with unstable political environment, where a country-led approach may be difficult to achieve. What is the best course of action for those providing aid to these countries?

Fan: While humanitarian aid is important for countries with unstable political environment, aid for long-term country-led development is also needed. Aid donors should support the building up of country capacity for setting investment priorities and designing investment plans. Increased investment is needed for domestic institutions such as universities and think tanks that can provide evidence-based research for policymaking and strategy formulation.

In your report, you mentioned the success of “positive deviance” in designing sound policy solutions – why do you think this approach works compared with traditional approaches?

Positive deviance in policy making can be achieved through experimentation. This approach increases the success rate of reforms since only successful pilot projects that have been tried, tested, and adjusted are scaled up.

Finally, let’s talk about IFPRI’s work; What role does IFPRI currently play or plan to play in the future in helping donors (countries, private, multilateral agencies) effectively direct their aid and shaping programmatic response in developing countries to meet MDG1?

IFPRI will continue to provide evidence-based policy research as an international public good which is relevant for decision makers at all levels. Our research on public spending, for example, has been and will be guiding investment priorities and strategy formulation for effective poverty and hunger reduction in developing countries. Through its country support strategy programs which are located countries, IFPRI will also continue to help to build their own capacity to drive their own investment plans and strategies.

Alex Tung is a research intern with the Nourishing the Planet project.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.  She has already traveled to over 19 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Gabon next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.  

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on  Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates.  Please don’t hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you.

You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

It might feel counterintuitive, but the more varieties of vegetables, plants, and insects that are included in a garden, the less vulnerable any single crop becomes. Mans Lanting of ETC Foundation India wrote in LEISA Magazine in 2007 that the best method of approaching pest control is to learn to live in harmony with pests instead of trying to fight them. By harnessing the natural state of vegetation and pests, a farmer can create “a system in which no component can easily dominate” and in which soil and crop quality is greatly improved.

In other words, the tendency for traditional farming to give preference to specific crops, to plant in clean rows, to weed out any invasive plants, and to use chemicals to prevent pests and disease is actually creating a need for these pesticides and fertilizers. Soil fertility decreases when crops are harvested, and growing a single crop means that the soil is further stripped of nutrients with each season, requiring the use of inputs that, according to Lanting, lead to an imbalance in plant nutrition and increase vulnerability to pests and diseases. This introduces the need for pesticides, which cost more money and create toxic runoff that can damage the local environment.

The result is a self-perpetuating war against infertile soil and a burgeoning pest population.

Instead, Lanting recommends taking an alternative approach, mimicking the diversity that takes place in nature and creating a garden that relies on natural systems to provide nutrients as well as pest and disease control.

Farm biodiversity can be improved by integrating border crops, trees, and animals. Farmers can also include trap crops-crops that attract insects away from the main crop-which include Indian mustard, sunflower, marigold, soybeans, and French beans, as well as crops that promote insect predators such as pulses for beetles, okra for lace wing, and coriander, sorghum, and maize for trichogramma (small wasps). Visual barriers can be used to help “hide” crops from pests. The diamond backed moth, for example, has to be able to see cabbage in order to find it-and destroy it before a harvest.

Nourishing the Planet saw some of these techniques being implemented at Enaleni Farm, a demonstration farm run by Richard Haigh in Durban, South Africa. Haigh cultivates traditional maize varieties that are resistant to drought, climate change, and disease, and he practices push-pull agriculture, which uses alternating intercropping of plants that repel pests with ones that attract pests in order to increase yields. He also applies animal manure and compost for fertilizer. Haigh likes to say that his farm isn’t organic, but rather an example of how agro-ecological methods can work. (See Valuing What They Already Have)

Using these methods, a farmer will have a garden with at least 10 crops, creating an ecosystem that resembles one found in nature. The soil is more fertile, and the insects and diseases are distracted and preyed upon so that their impact is less concentrated. In a sense, a farmer needs to let the garden get wild in order to protect it from the wild.

To read more about chemical-free farming practices see: In Botswana, Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture and Wildlife Conservation, Malawi’s Real Miracle, Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops, and Finding ‘Abundance’ in What is Local.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.  She has already traveled to over 18 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Benin next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.  

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on  Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates.  Please don’t hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Welcome to the Nourishing the Planet project diary on Motley Moose. As world hunger numbers top 1 billion, we are reporting from on the ground in sub-Saharan Africa to both inform global efforts to eradicate hunger and raise the profile of these efforts. Meeting with farmers, farmers groups, NGO’s, journalists, funders, and policy makers, the Nourishing the Planet is assessing the state of agricultural innovations-from cropping methods to irrigation technology to agricultural policy-and highlighting the all too often untold stories of hope and success. To read more, previous Motley Moose entries by Nourishing the Planet can be found here and to find out more about the project see our blog. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Questions? Comments? Please contact Worldwatch Senior Researcher Danielle Nierenberg at dnierenberg@worldwatch.org.