Solving Africa's Hunger: Industrial Free, Small Ecological Farming Approach

For the first time, African farmers are being consulted to help solve one of the continent's greatest concerns.

Africa is hungry - 240 million people are undernourished. Now, for the first-time, small African farmers have been properly consulted on how to solve the problem of feeding sub-Saharan Africa. Their answers appear to directly repudiate a massive international effort to launch an African Green Revolution funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Instead of new hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, family farmers in West Africa said they want to use local seeds, avoid spending precious cash on chemicals and most importantly to direct public agricultural research to meet their needs, according to a multi-media publication released on World Food Day (Oct. 16).

"There is a clear vision from these small farmers. They are rejecting the approach of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa," said report co-author Michel Pimbert of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit research institute based in London.

"These were true farmer-led assessment where small farmers and other food producers listened and questioned agricultural and other experts and then came up with their own recommendations," Pimbert told IPS.

Serving the wrong master

"Food and agriculture policy and research tend to ignore the values, needs, knowledge and concerns of the very people who provide the food we all eat — and often serve instead powerful commercial interests such as multinational seed and food retailing companies," he said.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, backs the need for a fundamental shift in food and agricultural research to make it more democratic and accountable to society.

STOPPING MONSANTO

Dear Friend,

Although it was reported as a wholesale victory for Monsanto¹, the recent Supreme Court decision on "Roundup Ready" alfalfa has actually put food activists in a good position to maintain the ban on Monsanto's genetically engineered GMO seeds.

The court ruled that the planting of GMO alfalfa is still illegal, but it assigned authority to the USDA to determine whether to allow some provisional planting to go forward as soon as next spring. The responsibility for maintaining a total ban on the GMO seeds — and protecting organic crops from likely contamination — falls squarely on the shoulders of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Tell Secretary Vilsack to stand up to corporate agribusiness and protect organics for future generations. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

The court supported farmers' claims that the USDA illegally allowed Monsanto to sell its seeds before a full environmental review could be completed, but Monsanto knows that it can use its power within the USDA to speed up the review process. The company has already requested that the USDA permit a so-called "partial deregulation" that would allow some plantings of Roundup Ready alfalfa before we know the full risks.

A landmark element of the recent Supreme Court ruling was its recognition that the USDA must take into account economic harms from genetic contamination of conventional seed by genetically engineered seed — things like the loss of export markets or loss of organic certification, as well as the risks to the environment of this "gene flow" effect. Monsanto wants the agency to ignore those risks and let them plant now.

We can't let them. Senator Patrick Leahy and Congressman Peter DeFazio delivered a letter signed by over 50 lawmakers demanding that the USDA not legalize GE alfalfa.² Over 83,000 Credo members added their voice by calling on their members of Congress to sign on to the letter.

Click here to automatically sign the petition and tell Secretary Vilsack to maintain the planting ban on GMO alfalfa, now and in the future.

Thank you for standing up for safe and healthy food.

Adam Klaus, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

1 The Bite Blog, June 24, 2010
2 Leahy-DeFazio "Dear Colleague" letter

Price increases fuel fears of food ‘crises’

By Javier Blas in London

Food commodity prices will increase more than previously expected in the next decade because of rising energy prices and developing countries’ rapid growth, two leading organisations said on Tuesday, worsening the outlook for global food security.

“A return to higher global economic growth . . .  together with continuing population gains, are expected to increase demand and trade and underpin prices,” the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in their annual agricultural outlook.
Higher crude oil prices would add force to rising agricultural commodities prices, particularly in those regions – including Europe and the US – where energy inputs such as fertilisers were used intensively, said the report.
For the next 10 years the FAO and OECD forecast that significant food prices, with the exception of pork, would remain above the 1996-2007 average, in both nominal and real terms – adjusted for inflation. Although prices were unlikely to surge back to the record levels of early 2008, they warned that “if history is any guide, further episodes of strong price fluctuations . . . cannot be ruled out, nor can future short-lived crises”.
Angel Gurría, secretary-general of the OECD, said all indications pointed to a “period of high prices”, although these would be below the peaks of the 2007-08 food crisis when prices spiked to record levels, triggering riots in countries from Bangladesh to Haiti.

Supreme Court’s ruling on Monsanto’s GE alfalfa: Who won?

The sustainable agriculture world is abuzz today with news of the Supreme Court's ruling regarding an earlier lawsuit, brought by alfalfa farmers, that sought to stop any planting of Monsanto's genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa seed. While the press coverage heralds the ruling as a decisive victory for Monsanto, a close reading shows that, in fact, it's a fairly significant win for opponents of biotech crops.
Hay dudes, not so fast
The background: As the fourth most-planted U.S. crop behind corn, soybeans, and wheat, alfalfa is worth $9 billion a year -- the dairy industry is the biggest consumer -- with annual seed sales valued at $63 million, according to a USDA study. Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa seed has been genetically engineered to be tolerant of glyphosate, the active ingredient of Monsanto's herbicide Roundup.

Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds

DYERSBURG, Tenn. — For 15 years, Eddie Anderson, a farmer, has been a strict adherent of no-till agriculture, an environmentally friendly technique that all but eliminates plowing to curb erosion and the harmful runoff of fertilizers and pesticides.
But not this year.

On a recent afternoon here, Mr. Anderson watched as tractors crisscrossed a rolling field — plowing and mixing herbicides into the soil to kill weeds where soybeans will soon be planted.

Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.
To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

Super-Weeds and Sub-Par Sollutions: The Case for More Labour in the Fields.

There has been a recent development within agriculture causing a bit of a stir: super-weeds. Super-weeds, "arewild plant that have become a virulent weed as a result of acquiring resistance to herbicides through pollination with a genetically modified plant". Much like the "use of of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant super-germs", American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup--a product of Monsanto Company--has led to the rapid growth of a tenacious new super-weeds. That become harder to kill-off and require an increasingly potent and increasing amount of pesticide. Now, many environmentalists and environmental groups have been warning about this development (which is more accurately described as a counter-to-development) since Monsanto Corporation's introduced the genetic modified roundup-ready-seeds and Roundup Herbicide in 1979 ( as well as Monsanto's AgentOrangein 1969 and rBGH in 1994).

The complaint from many farmers to the super-weeds is of economic concern, strong weeds means weaker crops and less money."To fight them, farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, a farmer who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”

I am not sure if the "problem" is being properly defined. For one, perhaps it is not the super-weed that is the troubling factor, but rather industrial agriculture, as a total system failure. It is not sustainable, in most understandings of the concept, and any use of herbicide is a temporal solution. I am not sure what makes any chemical company think that the next line of more toxic herbicides and more genetically altered seeds will render a future without a subsequent generation of customized super-weeds? However, the lack of foresight and sustainability in this particular philosophy and practice of agriculture is not the purpose of this writing, nor is it the logic in creationing a solution that is very similar to the problem in the first hand. I feel these topics are fairly well laid out by people, much more articulate and informed than I, I also feel that a bit of  personal reflection and reading could convince someone of these points quite easily. Now that I have avoided "beating a dead horse", I wonder why more labour is a bad thing. For one the population of our earth is increasing, despite what Garrett Hardin concludes, we can sustain an earth population with some changes. But, with more people we may need more jobs, if we didn't use Chemical poisons to kills seeds and instead used, fair, labor in the fields that could be a solution, in a holistic sense, to two problems. And on top of the climate of today's recession economy, and the double digit unemployment rate, as high as 20% in some states, more labor many not be a bad things. Less environmental destruction, pollution and consumption and more work, more jobs and better standards of living (if done fairly, of course).

“The biotech industry is taking us into a more pesticide-dependent agriculture when they’ve always promised, and we need to be going in, the opposite direction,” said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety in Washington."

Monsanto, which once argued that resistance would not become a major problem, now cautions against exaggerating its impact. “It’s a serious issue, but it’s manageable,” said Rick Cole, who manages weed resistance issues in the United States for the company.

Clear Cut and Kimberly- Clark

What's the problem?

Kleenex, one of the most popular brands of tissue products in the world, contributes to the destruction of ancient forests. Its manufacturer, the Kimberly-Clark corporation, has been unwilling to improve its practices, continuing to rely on paper and pulp made from clearcut ancient forest including North America's Boreal forest. Kimberly-Clark clears these ancient forests, essential in fighting climate change and providing home to wildlife like caribou, wolves, eagles and bears,into products that are flushed down the toilet or thrown away.

Forest Stewardship Council is the "Enron of Forestry" ( aka STOP buying Forest Products, especially from Kimberly Clark)

An interview with Simon Counsell, Director of Rainforest Foundation UK:
The FSC is the 'Enron of forestry' says rainforest activist
Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com
April 17, 2008

On April 7th, Mongabay printed an interview with FSC International Communications Manager, Nina Haase, in which she defended the FSC against criticism leveled at it by various environmental organizations, such as The World Rainforest Movement and Ecological Internet. The interview drew strong reactions on both sides, and Simon Counsell, director of the Rainforest Foundation UK, requested a chance to respond to the FSC's interview in-depth. In his response, he states that the FSC has created a "'race to the bottom' of certification standards", alleging that the "FSC really has become the 'Enron of forestry'".

Zambia's farming revolution poster boy

By Kieron Humphrey
Lusaka, Zambia

Elleman Mumba makes an unlikely celebrity. He is not a singer nor a footballer - he is a 54-year-old peasant farmer from southern Zambia.
Yet he has appeared on the front page of a national newspaper and been interviewed for numerous radio and television programmes.

What explains his fame?

Mr Mumba grows maize and groundnuts on his small plot of land in Shimabala, just south of Lusaka.
Feeding his family used to be a problem.
"The yield was very little. We were always looking for hand-outs; we had to rely on relief food."

Quiet agricultural revolution
Like many farmers, Mr Mumba had no oxen of his own to plough his field.
He had to wait in line to hire some, which meant he often failed to plant as soon as the first rains fell - with disastrous consequences.

Researchers say that for each day's delay, the potential yield shrinks by between 1% and 2%.
Then, in 1997, Mr Mumba suddenly found himself in the vanguard of a quiet agricultural revolution.
His wife had been given free training in a system called conservation farming, and persuaded him to try it.
Conservation farming is about doing less to get more. Instead of ploughing entire fields, farmers till and plant in evenly spaced basins.