African Project To Revive Depleted Soils
by Kimberley D. Mok, Montreal, Canada on 02. 3.08
A five-year, $180 million project to revitalize the soils and agricultural sector of sub-Saharan Africa has been launched in Nairobi, Kenya. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa's (AGRA) Soil Health Program will work with 4.1 million farmers to regenerate 6.3m hectares of farmland, which have been degraded by unsustainable farming practices in the last few decades.
"Currently, farm yield in Africa is one-quarter of the global average, and one-third of Africans face chronic hunger," says Dr. Namanga Ngongi, president of AGRA. "We know that the use of high quality seeds, combined with the rejuvenation of African soils, can begin to turn around this dismal situation."
The initiative will place a particular focus on women, who are the majority of small-scale farmers in Africa and other parts of the world. Other agencies have pointed out that assisting women farmers goes a long way to tackling social inequalities and a looming global food shortage crisis.
“Women produce more than half of all the food grown worldwide, yet own only two per cent of all land and get only one per cent of lending to agriculture,” said Gawain Kripke of Oxfam International in response to the World Bank’s “2008 World Development Report: Agriculture for Development” last fall. Though the report made a strong link between agriculture reform and poverty alleviation, it had omitted this important fact in its recommendations for improving agricultural policy.
The AGRA program plans to collaborate with local farmers for the best-adapted soil interventions, along with increasing educational resources, training and outreach to students, workers and researchers.
"AGRA's goal of enabling small-scale farmers to produce more on less land will have multiple social, economic and environmental benefits," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, which is one of the project's partners.
"It can reduce the pressure to clear new land for agriculture, which in turn can assist in countering deforestation, conserving biodiversity and triggering improved management of Africa's wealth of natural and nature-based assets."
::BBC
See also ::Agriculture for Development: World Development Report Gets It Half Right, ::Soil Health: You Can Help, ::Tanzanian NGO Boos GMOs on World Food Day, ::Plowing's Dark Secret, ::Arguments Against GMOs (and Industrial Agriculture)
Image: War On Want
I'm always interested in following the agricultural aspects of environmentalism and global warming. Partly because it's an area where my particular science/engineering background leaves me more dependent on the opinions of others.
I remember for years prior to when global warming and biofuels hit the front page, many organizations argued that U.S. and European subsidies to agriculture depressed world prices and had serious negative consequences on agriculture in developing countries. Now it seems people are arguing against biofuels because they increase prices of corn, grain and soy. Though having seen biofuels cited as a cause for rising tortilla prices in Mexico, I now see Mexican farmers protesting because of a new influx of cheap corn from the U.S. driving down what they can earn.
Is the use of biofuels really bad for developing countries and the worlds poor. Is there anything accurate in the older argument that increased world prices for agricultural products would help stimulate the economies of developing countries that are more agricultural than industrial? Might the better solution be to funnel money into projects such as the one mentioned in this article to help promote agriculture in these countries to boost production rather than shooting down biofuels?
I do realize the obvious argument that only a small percentage of the worlds liquid fuels could be replaced by first generation biofuels, and that deforestation for biofuels is crazy. I'm more interested in commentary about the apparent inconsistency of problems with rising food prices at the same time farmers in Mexico are claiming the prices are not at high enough levels that they can make a decent living.
What a great program. This can immediately improve the lives of millions of people, help them achieve food security, increase their economic stature, and it will protect the land.
A surprising amount of land throughout the world has low levels of farm productivity, salination and mineral buildup, depleted topsoil, erosion, desertification, all of which make farming and sustenance far more precarious, exacerbate the impacts of global warming, and increase political instability.
There was an article in the English version of Der Spiegel: 'The Choice between Food and Fuel'. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,530791,00.html
I think it says it all.
Chris,
That article does indeed say a lot (it's long), however, it certainly doesn't address the issue I raised... or perhaps you could point out how it does if you feel it says it all.
That article raises the issue of Mexican protests months ago when corn meal prices went up (presumably mainly consumers of corn meal), but obviously does not deal with the Mexican farmer protests now that import restrictions are bringing what they claim is a flood of corn from the U.S. at prices low enough that it makes it hard for them to earn a decent living. Perhaps the corn meal prices were just a temporary, localized problem because of government import restrictions.
The article's opening example of rising food prices, the cost of Muesli in Germany, is not necessarily going to reflect any realities in developing countries. Food in the EU and U.S. has been dropping in inflation adjusted terms for decades... likely contributing to huge overconsumption problems. An adjustment in 1st world prices for red meat and high fructose corn syrup would probably not have serious negative consequences.
The broader issue is how this will effect developing countries. This Treehugger post touches on this very issue. It points out that part of the problem in some developing countries has been the lack of investment in agriculture. There is land that is either unused or under utilized. There are credible arguments that have been made for years that the depressed world price of agricultural products caused by EU and U.S. subsidies removed the financial incentive to make the investments. The question thus being whether somewhat higher food prices in developed countries, coupled with lowering of trade barriers and targeted investment in developing countries might actually benefit these developing countries overall.