You’re on top of it: Land Rights in Mozambique

When you read about Mozambique’s agricultural potential it’s hard not to get a sense that the projections are too optimistic. You read about the Beira and the Nancala corridors and their vast swats unused land and wonder why haven’t those corridors become the bread basket of the region already? Why is it that with the growing urban demand, the increasing international commodity prices and the improvements in infrastructure, Mozambique’s agriculture remains stuck on first gear?

It may be the soils – something must be wrong with the soils – you ponder. But then you cross the border into South Africa and the green revolution hits you in the face. (see Google maps for a satellite image). Literally less than a mile away from the border post, the grounds are green with sugar cane crops irrigated with center-pivot systems (those long skeletons that form perfect circles and that are easily confused with the work of a UFO when seen from above). You continue driving and then you see plantains stretching for miles in neatly organized rows. As if this wasn’t enough, suddenly the landscape gets peppered by orange dots on both sides of the highway: citrus season is at its peak and you can buy a whole sack for less than three dollars.

Soils, unlike Colombians, don’t need a visa to cross the border so the bottleneck keeping agriculture below its potential has to be something else. You think about water but then you recall the huge floods this country has faced in the past, so the rivers and their abundant water are definitely there. What about the war, or colonialism, or just culture – aren’t people ‘happy’ just being subsistence farmers? The answer is definitely no, otherwise you wouldn’t hear parent talk about how they want their kids doing something else. And sure, the war and colonialism did affect agriculture quite a bit.

However, you may be standing on top of a more satisfactory answer: the land and specifically its property laws. Well, it turns out that in Mozambique the land belongs to the Mozambicans (aka the government). Instead of buying land, you essentially get a permit to farm it for a fixed amount of years. If land is let fallow, the government has all the right to take it away from you. And even if you are growing bountiful crops, you don’t have legal ownership of the land.

So is that why land in Mozambique remains so underdeveloped? I think it’s definitely a big contributing factor. And it seems that USAID also agrees. Their new version of the Feed the Future Initiative – the so called “Agriculture and Food Security Alliance” is all about partnering with the private sector to give the extra incentive needed to invest here. Mozambique makes part of the second group of countries that will be joining the program. On top of that, the government is finalizing the PNISA, the operationalization document of the agricultural strategy and the action plan for the CADAAP.

Given this willingness to address the bottlenecks related to the disincentives the private sector faces when investing in Mozambique, it seems that the country is heading in the right direction. Although it’s not clear is the actual property law will change, there is definitely a lot of pressure to make it more investor friendly with amendments, tax breaks, and import waivers.

This, of course, has its critics. Chief among them is the Joseph Hanlon, an expert on Mozambique who argued in a recent Guardian article that the private sector approach is incompatible with one that promotes small holder farmers. Although he didn’t call it neocolonialism, he portrayed it as an unwelcome entrenchment of global agro-corporations, scrambling for the last swaps of arable land.

What the author forgets to mention is that an approach in which you incentivized agricultural investments, while supporting small holder farmers is exactly what Brazil did – one of the top five world agricultural producers nowadays and a success story in reducing rural poverty. While Mozambique is far from becoming a global agriculture player, it seems that the country is finally now heading in the right direction.

PBS's New Hour on Program to Help African Farmers Reach New Markets

Watch Business Fund Puts African Farmers on Road to Market on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

HIghlights from The Economist "Feeding the World" Conference

Find out more information about this great even HERE

Clemens' False Dichotomy about Debates in Development

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend  NYU's conference “Debates in Development.”
The agenda included Yaw Nyarko and William Easterly from NYU's Development Research Institute, Stewart Paperin, Open Society Foundations, Bernadette Wanjala, Tilburg University Development Research Institute; Andrew Rugasira, Founder and Chairman, Good African Coffee; Abhijit Banerjee, MIT's Poverty Lab, and others. 

In general, with the exception of a handful of speakers, I found the conference to filled with silly generalizations about development work and a myopic need to compartmentalize development into artificial 'conflicting sides.' This was epitomized when CGD's Michael Clemens presented an artificial characterization of the debate  as a “Goal Movement” vs. “Evaluation Movement." 
First of all, his criticism of integrated development as something “we've tried and failed” is misdated and does not meet his own rigorous evaluation standards. Monitoring and evaluation techniques have evolved tremendously and are now an essential piece of development work, both at macro and micro levels. Therefore, suggesting that the misnomer “Goal Movement” is devoid of solid evaluation does not correspond with the realities of today’s development interventions.

One of the hallmark criticisms of Michael Clemens to the Millennium Village Project (MVP) is that Integrated Rural Development Projects (IRDP) have already been attempted and deemed a complete failure by a number of evaluations conducted by USAID, World Bank and others. However, Mr. Clemens fails to recognize that if he were to apply his evaluation standards to these reviews of IRDP, few if any will qualify. Most of these evaluations were conducted using ex-post assessments of macro-economic indicators. None used RCTs and few carried out the complex quantitative methodologies that he proposes to guarantee causality.

Fortunately, development M&E techniques have gained a tremendous amount of importance among academia and practitioners in recent years. Under pressure from both donors needing demonstrable impact for their constituencies, and practitioners needing more effective feedback mechanisms to understand program outcomes and impacts, today most development projects allocate a significant amount of program resources -10 to20%- to M&E. Also at their disposal, practitioners have a well-stocked toolbox of quantitative and qualitative methodologies to monitor and measure development outcomes. As argued by Dr. Woolcock and other, a ‘mixed method approach’ using qualitative and quantitative methods simultaneously, is the best way to understand project impact. 

Hence, suggesting the differences between the “Goal Movement” and the “Evaluation Movement” are 'irreconcilable' is simply baseless. Most bilateral and multilateral development interventions and even the initiatives by small NGOs and civil organizations considered evaluation essential to their programs’ successful implementation. Therefore, Clemens’ artificial grouping of the development debate is a false dichotomy: simply put the ‘evaluation side’ will be an orphan without having something to evaluate.

Moreover, the development community, or as he call it the ‘Goal Movement’ has made tremendous advances in strengthening institutions and policy, and developing tools and technologies since the 70s and 80s when IRDPs were commonplace (See other post about promising trends in Africa). These recent developments have enabled practitioners to fine-tune interventions by getting more accurate data and by addressing contextual issues (institutional support, local government etc.) that often impede the success of otherwise adequate interventions. Thanks to that work, today there is a robust body of evidence from development and other disciplines demonstrating the strong synergies created between economic, health, nutrition, and agriculture.

Finally, the issues Mr. Clemens list as the characteristics of the ‘Evaluation movement,’ namely; testing questions, failure is required, local outcomes, and clear accountability, are all part of the ‘Goal Movement.’ The early history of development is filled with examples in which development interventions have failed spectacularly and where local outcomes have been at the front and center of the projects.

Evidently, I was very disappointed with Mr. Clemens presentation. The language he used – calling MV’s Development Harvest 'a masterpiece of misrepresentation,' and his insistence on maintaining false dichotomies add little value to development debates. I'm not completely sold on the MV model. However, I truly believe that as African nations continue to experience economic growth and improvements in governance, they will need models on which to base interventions to attend the needs of their long-neglected rural communities. MV can play an important role in showcasing governments how to do this - the same way cooperation among nations and regions within countries have done for centuries. 


But instead of offering doable alternatives on how to tackle poverty, Mr. Clemens' contributions distract the public with hyperbole that can damage the credibility of very important and proven interventions that should instead be scaled up. 

Mozambique's Soybean Potential

As some of you know, I'll be traveling to Mozambique over the summer to work on a new UN initiative named REACH - Renew Efforts Against Child Hunger. The overall goal of REACH is to facilitate better governance and management of nutrition programs and ensure that UN agencies (FAO, WFP, UNICEF, and WHO) are coordinating their nutrition interventions.

With more than 40% of children under five stunted, Mozambique's government has prioritized the fight against chronic malnutrition. However, the integrated nature of nutrition programming makes it difficult to  operationalize, specially in Mozambique where there are so many development agencies and initiatives working at the same time.

Agricultural projects that can have a positive impact in reducing stunting are gaining traction in the development discourse.  Mozambique has an incredible potential to increase its food production and use agricultural development as an powerful engine for economic growth. The country has plenty of unused arable land, growing urban markets inside and abroad, cheap labor, and a great geographic location, with deep-water ports and infrastructure projects needing relatively little investments.

Can soybean lead the way in agricultural development? As the video below shows, the Northern part of the country has soils similar to those in the Cerrado - the Brazilian soy basket. According to the video, the Mozambique government recently signed an agreement with Brazilian soy farmers, allowing them to farm these lands in exchange for increased labor demand and technological advice on soy farming.

The initiative is also been supported by EMBRAPA, Brazil's agricultural research agency along with JICA and USAID. They are all working with government officials to adapt seed varieties to the Northern region and identify the steps need to develop soy's the value chain.

Similar, a World Bank study recently noted the following:

Soybean is a fairly new crop in Mozambique, but agricultural and market scenarios suggest a high potential in the northern Zambezia/southern Niassa area of northern Mozambique, and in Manica and Tete provinces in central Mozambique. In both production areas, improved soybean production can strongly benefit from a local good demand of soybean sub-products and investments in new industrial units, and from  already existing roads and railways linking to the important consumer markets of Beira  in the center and Nampula and Nacala in the north

More recently, Rei do Agro, a local agricultural firm, announced the plantation of 500 hectares of soybeans in the Zambézia province. This follows similar private sector initiatives that are taking advantage of the increasing world demand for soybeans to invest in Mozambique's crop potential.

At first look this makes sense. Soybean are one of the country's top 5 imports in terms of volume and value. With an increasing trade deficit, it makes sense to promote the crop as an import substitute and, in the future, as an export to satisfy growing world demand for the commodity.

Another good reason to promote soy is that the soil type in the north renders it unsuitable for other cash crops. Like the Cerrados in the 70's, these soils are consider wasteland.

In terms of nutrition, the high caloric and protein content of soybeans is also attractive given the country's high incidence of stunting. In theory, soybeans could play an important role in meeting the caloric requirements of Mozambicans while generating cash to access other products.

However, little evidence exist about the positive linkages between agricultural growth and reduction in chronic malnutrition. Although it may seem intuitive to think that higher food availability and/or increase incomes will improve diets, the link between those hasn't quite been demonstrated by robust studies. Moreover, most soybean production is used for livestock feed and the processing for human consumption requires a more complex value chain that the country currently lacks.

So the question remains: Would soybean serve as an engine of economic growth, providing much needed cash, calories, and employment for thousands of Mozambicans or would the project be added to the long list of failed mono-culture promotion initiatives in the past few decades? For now the jury is still out. Stay tuned.

ICT in Agriculture Sourcebook and M-PESA

Finals are coming up and this blog is suffering from lack of updates -sorry for that folks. I promise to catch up with my weekly 'Seeds and Leaves' list of resources and links. I will also be writing about the Integrated Rural Development Projects of the 60' and 70's and more recent efforts for integrated interventions such as the Millennium Villages and others. Also, tomorrow I will be attending a presentation on Food Security in Latin America: Trends and Prospects. I'll report on that as well.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you an excited series of online forums to develop resources for "ICT in Agriculture" that the The World Bank and the e-Agriculture Community have put together.

Look at some of the modules titles:

• Increasing Crop, Livestock and Fishery Productivity Through ICT"  
• ICTs As Enablers of Agricultural Innovation Systems
• Broadening Smallholders' Access to Financial Services Through 
• Farmer Organizations Work Better with ICT
• Strengthening Agricultural Marketing with ICT
• ICT Applications for Smallholder Inclusion in Agribusiness Supply Chains

I seems that every day there are new developments in the area of technology and its potentials to help farmers. I recently read a study conducted by The IRIS Center at the University of Maryland, College Park on the impact of M-PESA's mobile technology in rural transactions. The study, titled Transforming Mobile Money into Food in Kenya, states:

M-PESA (receivers) appears to increase the likelihood of  being able to pay for seeds, casual labor, and other inputs at the time it is  most needed, and allows them to plant more of their fields.  An M-PESA shopkeeper mentioned that many of her customers receive money quickly and plant early and fully.  In the past, they might have missed the best  quality seeds, fertilizers, or might not have had money in time to plant  their fields completely.  In addition, many M-PESA receivers reported a  savings in travel time and transport costs to obtain remittance money  that they now could effectively use on productive agricultural activities.   This has enabled them to plant their fields more fully and hire more labor  when it can be most productive.

Exciting and promising things happening in ICT. As always, comment or email interesting articles in international food security.

Prabhu Pingali Talks About Gates Ag Agenda

Last week I attended a presentation on Feeding the World organized by the Chemistry Heritage Foundation. The keynote addresses was be given by Calestous Juma, Harvard University who just published a book title: The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa. You can download a PDF copy HERE.

Other panelist included Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times, who maintain the awesome NYTimes blog Dot Earth, Nina Fedoroff, Pennsylvania State University and American Association for the Advancement of Science; Antonio Galindez, Dow AgroSciences; Rik L. Miller, DuPont Crop Protection; Prabhu Pingali, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Paul Rea, BASF Corporation; Gary H. Toenniessen, Rockefeller Foundation; and Jay Vroom, CropLife America.

Although Professor's Juma presentation was quite good, I was impressed with the insights of Prabhu Pingali, Deputy Director of the Agriculture Development Division at the Gates Foundation. I tried to record his presentation but the audio didn't come up very good. Instead, I found a much better overview of his strategy to fight global hunger using agriculture as the main weapon. Enjoy

Gordon Conway on the Legacy of Chambers and a must have Practicioner Guide

One of my many class assignments of my masters program, is a paper on a rural development theme. I decided to take a closer look to the issue of integrated development and its many semantic variations one comes across when reviewing the literature. I'm particularly interested in researching how the integrated approach to development has evolved since the post-war era.

Some questions I want to answer are:  why was big push for integrated development of the 70s, promoted by the World Bank and others, put aside for a more sectoral approach? What has changed in terms of technology, knowledge, governance, and other micro and macro factors that merit a closer reexamination to this approach as perhaps the most viable when implementing development interventions today? Has the debate followed a similar path in the humanitarian field? I'll be blogging about these questions and others, as I try to link my academic assignments to this blog. 

In any case, I wanted to share with you two things that I came accross today while doing research for the paper:

1) The first one is a wonderful guide put together by the Women's Refugee Commission, on Building Livelihood. This guide is one of the best toolkits practicioners working on both humanitarian and development context can use to access applicable information on steps to follow when implementing livelihoods strategies. One of the chapters is on supporting agricultural interventions. It describes the different assessments and analysis one must carry out to ensure a successful implementation of the program.

2) The second link I wanted to share is a lecture professor Gordon Conway, an expert on agricultural ecology and professor at the Imperial College of London, gave on the work of Robert Chambers. Chambers, one of the most renowned development scholars and author of the seminal "Rural Development: Putting the First Last" was one of the leading voices on the importance of engaging farmers in a significant way - one in which their voice shapes the nature of the intervention. In the video below,  Conway discusses the legacy to Chamber's work and presents the current challenges the world faces in issues of food security.

"We have to keep remembering that there is a huge private sector in Africa and Asia; is called farmers...and they deal in the private sector, and they need incomes. It's not just sustainable existence, it's sustainable development we are after" Gordon Conway 

Somalia and the Need for Agricultural Investments

The crisis continues to unravel in the Horn of Africa. A recent  NY Times piece, argues that 750,000 people could perish in the famine, and there seems to little resources, commitment, and coordination in the international community to prevent the crisis from reaching catastrophic proportions. In an excellent commentary from Project Syndicate, Sam Dryden, the Director of the Agricultural Development Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, argues that investments in small holders farmers can prevent future famines from happening again (the caveat being situations of extreme weather fluctuations and violence). 

Meanwhile, at an African Ministerial conference on climate-smart agriculture, in Johannesburg, Andrew Steer, World Bank's special envoy for climate change, articulated the importance of increasing investments in agricultural and food security research.  According to Mr. Steer, the WB is increasing its support for agriculture, from $4-billion invested in 2010 and previous years, to $6-billion earmarked for 2011, and plans to increase Ag investments to $8-billion in 2012.  See a clip of his speech below:

This comes at a time when the members of the G20 recently incorporated agricultural research as a center piece of their agenda to ensure global food security. The meeting took place in Montpellier, France from September 12 to 14. 

Three years have passed since the World Bank published its World Development Report on "Agriculture for Development." Now, funds are starting to trickle down to projects in the field. If there is anything positive from the horrendous tragedy unfolding in Somalia, it is the opportunity for governments and policy makers around the world to accelerate agricultural projects, and put on center stage the vital role of food security interventions in preventing future crisis. 

US Goverment Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative

We keep seeing more signs that the Obama administration is prioritizing their food secutity strategy, making sure it incorporates the views of a diversed group of stakeholders. This strong, well-funded global food security strategy seems to be the bargaining chip Obama will bring to the table at UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in early December, given that a comprehensive climate bill is not likely to pass (maybe a water-down version).  Below some info and good resources from USAID's FBCI on the global hunger and food security strategy:

More than one billion people — one sixth of the world's population — suffer from chronic hunger. Without enough food, adults struggle to work and children struggle to learn. Global food supplies must increase by an estimated 50 percent to meet expected demand in the next 20 years. Advancing sustainable agricultural-led growth increases the availability of food, keeps food affordable, and raises the incomes of the poor.

The U.S. is committed to working as part of a collaborative global effort centered around country-led processes to improve food security. We are working with stakeholders to advance action that addresses the needs of small scale farmers and agri-businesses, and harnesses the power of women to drive economic growth. We will increase our investment in agriculture development while maintaining our support for humanitarian food assistance.

Principles for Advancing Global Food Security
1.       Comprehensively address the underlying causes of hunger and under-nutrition
2.       Invest in country-led plans
3.       Strengthen strategic coordination
4.       Leverage the benefits of multilateral institutions
5.       Make sustained and accountable commitments

Key Documents and Websites:

• State Department Global Hunger and Food Security Website
• USAID Fact Sheet on Food Security
• U.S. Government Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative Consultation Document  - Input requested!

From the NGO Community:

•  Roadmap to End Global Hunger
  
•  Food Security and Agriculture Working Group Response to the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative Consultation Document by InterAction
  

Crop Profile: Maya Nut (Ojoche) Local Solutions to Hunger

Hola reader,

I'm finally back from a short trip to Nicaragua and after catching up with the usual work that piles up while abroad, I wanted to blog about some exciting things happening in agriculture and the food security debate, foreign aid, and my garden.

But first, I wanted to tell you about Ramon, or Ojoche as he likes to be called in Nicaragua. Ojoche is a tropical tree endemic to most areas in Meso America. The nut of this tree was used by the Mayas as a source of food rich in protein, fiber and vitamins. Today, organization such as The Equilibrium Fund are promoting the use of Ojoche -Maya Nut- as a local, sustainable solution to chronic malnutrition so prevalent in the many areas Central American Altiplano and as a economic alternative in underserved rural communities.

Ojoche has many benefits. First, the trees already grow naturally in most Central American countries and its nut is consumed by some individuals. For those areas where there aren't any trees, seedlings can grow fairly quickly. Second, the nut can be grounded and its flour used to make bread, tortillas, cookies, and many more recipes. As mentioned above, Ojoche's nutritional content is quite high, serving as a viable solution to the food needs of families leaving in these communities. Finally, the nut is part of forest, protecting water basins, feeding wildlife, and supporting an endangered biodiversity.

In addition to these benefits, the nut can be sold in the form of flour, generating much needed income in communities left behind in the road to progress. I hope we can start promoting the use of the nut in the areas where Fabretto, the organization i work for, runs its programs. I envision a local women coop that collects and process the nuts and then sells it to the local school for its lunch program. In this model, one addresses some of the immediate food needs and perhaps more importantly, generates local revenue sources. This new income has the potential to fundamentally change the economic structure of these communities by generating revenue for poor families who often time have little money to meet their most basic necessities.


Anyway, i could keep going on about how this is the type of development approach that must complement, if not replace, the effort of those in power calling the foreign aid shots in Washington. By the way, If your are going to be in DC in November, make sure you stop by the World Bank's Development Marketplace awards to see the Equilibrium Fund showcase its support of grassroots organizations promoting the use of Ojoche Nicaragua.

Finally, for those Hispanoparlantes, below you will find a great video about the use of Ojoche in Guatemala

Episodio 45 from Caminos del Asombro on Vimeo.

Agirculture development in Morning Edition

Good series from NPR's Morning Edition. Broadcast by Dan Charles, the series explore different aspects of agriculture in Honduras: Ag Investment; Supermarket Revolution; and tmrw GMO's. Stay tuned

the 'Gates' are open

Hi there,
how is the new header? i took that picture a couple months ago in a village an hour away from Lome, Togo. Under the Neem tree, the women and the men had gathered to discuss with extension agents from IFDC the latest harvest and how it was affected by the use of Macuna, a legume grown as cover crop. They were very happy as their cassava yields were clearly increased. Cheap nitrogen and erosion protection for a depleted soil; a small solution to a big problem. This is an example of the type of projects that are been spread around Africa with new initiatives like AGRA , NEPAD and the amazing effort by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Gates have just announced that they will be boosting their agricultural aid by50%!. A small step in the right direction, as agricultural aid represents only 4% of the total global development aid.
Read article below to learn more about the increase in Ag aid.

Gates Foundation to Boost Farm Aid 50% as Food Crisis Deepens

By Christopher Swann

April 24 (Bloomberg) -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will increase spending on farming projects by 50 percent this year as surging food prices threaten starvation and social unrest in poor countries.

The world's largest charitable foundation will give grants for agricultural programs totaling about $240 million this year, up from $160 million last year, said Rajiv Shah, the foundation's director of agricultural development and a former adviser to 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.

``We are ramping up activity,'' Shah said in a telephone interview yesterday from Seattle, where the foundation is based. ``The focus will be on encouraging extra supply, which is one reason global food prices have climbed so high.''

New funding from Gates for agriculture in poverty-stricken countries comes as food prices soar around the world. The Gates programs aim to increase farm productivity, a task that has received less attention from larger aid institutions.

The proportion of global development aid devoted to agriculture is 4 percent, according to figures from the World Bank. The share of World Bank financing devoted to farming dropped to 12 percent in 2007, from 30 percent in 1980.

``The strength of the foundation is that because it is not constrained by politics, it can afford to take a longer view on food supply,'' said Ruth Levine, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, an aid research group in Washington. ``They are working on research and activities that have been very under-funded'' by other groups, she said.

Boosting Output
The foundation plans to plow the additional funds into existing projects, including developing more resilient crops, training farmers and helping small producers gain greater access to markets for their goods, Shah said.
For the past two years, the group has invested in seeds that better resist disease and drought, particularly in Africa, where productivity lags behind other developing nations. The effort has already led to more disease-resistant maize varieties for East Africa and sweet potatoes fortified with extra vitamin A, Shah said.

As the global economy accelerated in the past five years, the number of people living on $1 or less a day declined by 150 million, according to the World Bank. Those gains may be reversed unless rich countries step up their donations, officials said.
Global food prices surged 57 percent last month from a year earlier, according to the United Nations, and the World Bank warns civil disturbances may be triggered in 33 countries.

Farm Subsidies
Governments from Guatemala to the Philippines to Indonesia are seeking to combat food inflation by curbing exports or removing import duties on basic food staples such as rice. Brazil called for an end to farm subsidies in developed countries that create price distortions and leave millions of agricultural producers in poorer nations unable to compete.

African countries are expected to be among the most vulnerable to rising food prices. About 70 percent of the continent's population works in farming, according to World Bank figures. Even so, Africa is dependent on foreign producers, importing a net $12.7 billion a year in food.

According to the Gates Foundation, 16 of the 18 most undernourished countries are in Africa. “The challenge is to ensure that they can sell enough of their goods so that they have an economic incentive to use better techniques,'' Shah said. ``We are helping them to meet formal food standards demanded by bigger food producing firms and also talking to these companies in order to link them up with smaller farmers.''

He declined to say which food companies the foundation is negotiating with.

Radio Waves
The Gates crop-improvement program encompasses 16 African countries that aim to give farmers access to better-quality seeds through a network of 9,000 seed dealers.
Gates is also funding projects to provide information through radio broadcasts to help train farmers in Mali, Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania. The foundation is funding the development of hermetic storage technology to protect cowpea -- one of the most important crops in West and Central Africa.

``Almost no country has achieved a rapid ascent from hunger and poverty without raising agricultural productivity,'' the foundation says on its Web site.

The charity, created in 1994 by the founder of Microsoft Corp. and his wife, focused initially on health and education. In May 2006 it created launched a drive for a ``Green Revolution'' in Africa, in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Gates Foundation's agriculture staff has only about 35 employees, compared with about 250 staff working on agriculture at the World Bank, the Washington-based lender and grant-maker that's owned by its 185 member countries.

Last year the World Bank devoted $3 billion to agriculture projects.
“The sums of money might be small compared to the World Bank but they get a very big bang for their buck because they are focusing on long neglected areas,'' Peter Timmer, a visiting professor at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment. ``They have chosen a perfect time to focus on this area.''

Agriculture in Dogon Country

Hello readers our there.
It has really been a long time since my last post and I'm not sure who or what to blame. I've come to realize that the nature of this blog fluctuates in relationship to the need I feel for sharing experience with you, and lately I've been pretty selfish.

But not anymore, I just came back from a very exciting trip to West Africa and had the opportunity to visit Dogon Country in Mali, close to the border with Burkina Faso. Surrounded by dessert, Dogon Country refers to a series of villages located along a 150km escarpment and plateau. This dramatic landscape shelters one of the most "intact" cultures I ever seem: walking around their narrow mud house is like going back to prehistoric time. Unfortunately, the only sign of modernity is plastic junk that one sees scatter around....not too much though, and really very little compared to other places in Africa.

Picture above are one of the most common pieces of Dogon architecture: the granaries, usually filled with millet, sorghum and other indigenous grains, these will guarantee the food supply for the family until next rainy season. Tall and thin and made with a mix of mud and straw, they have to be above the ground to protect the grains from vermin. Inside, they are divided into diferent compartments that according to our guide represent the pattern of the cosmos. Dogon culture is very unique partially due to the harsh environment they inhabit and the long distance needed to reach the closest town. Very few product are imported from the urban centers and the only export, besides tourist souvenirs, are onions.

Onion were introduce by Marcel Griaule, a french anthropologist who exposed the Dogon to the rest of the world in the 40's. After living with them for 15 years, his studies concluded that the Dogon culture is extremely complex, a needed reputation for the people who many considered primitives. Among other things, he also taught them how to utilize their sandy soil to grow onions and helped them set up dams for irrigation. Today, the onions are sold throughout Mali and Burkina Faso. The picture above was taken at the village of Nombori, which is located at the bottom of the escarpment. For this reason, they have easier access to water allowing for thirsty vegetable to be grown. Up in the plateau, is really remarkable how as you walk from one village to another you see every little piece of land being utilized, with small plots of onions.

Women take the green part of the onions and smash them into balls. Gender roles are extremely important in Dogon society, and women are not in the best place, at least in comparison to western society. For instance, when women have their period, they're isolated in little huts; they have no say in all village affairs, and genital mutilation is still widely practice. During the days that we spend trekking around the villages, we saw women do most of the work: they look for wood and collect water, they pound the millet and work the fields. Men would spend a lot of time at the villages' meeting place, the Togu-na or Case a' Palabras. Here is where all the village affairs are discussed, not surprisingly women are not allowed. Something neat about these Togu-na is that they are very low, about 3ft to 4ft high. The idea is that you cannot stand so arguments always remain at the same level, calmed.

Getting back to the onion, the balls are then place in the roof of their huts. Once dry they are preserved and used for sauces. Other foodstuff are also dry in the roof to protect them from hungry goats and sheep that are commonly seem grazing around.

I had the opportunity to try millet fufu (boiled flour) with baobab sauce, made with dry onion leaves, fish powder, and baobab leafs, which if it wasn't for the slimy texture i would eat it everyday. Besides millet, eaten at all meals and in different ways, there is not much else. Those villages that have good access to water grow eggplants, squashes, tomatoes, and lettuce. But there is little meat, eggs, and milk. The tourist usually get a choice of beans and rice, couscous, or pasta, with a tomato based sauce a some chicken. Even though the food was ok, visiting latrines constantly and unwillingly became a big part of my trip.





For the Dogon, agriculture plays an essential role into their lives. Every year as the rain comes, sprouts of life pop up from the soil signaling a good crop. The harvest will determine their imminent future. Once the rain has gone elsewhere, houses will have to be rebuilted and gods called upon for the next drop of water. This continuous cycle has kept pristine a culture that rejects the values of the many in other parts of the world. So different, so wrong and so right, it is difficult to predict their future: undoubtedly a very uncertain one, with a climate that seems to get hotter and hotter, plastic that remains in the ground after the rain is gone and a dessert that keeps covering the little top soil left with infertile sand.

World Development Report 2008; Agriculture for Development

Finally, after decades of diminishing budgets towards agriculture and rural development, Ag Dev is back on the donors' agenda with the seminar publication of World Bank's WDR Agriculture for Development. Last time a WDR had Agriculture as a main topic was back in 1982!. It's hard to tell if the rhetoric will translate into concrete action and funds from the donor community. Yet, one can perceive in the Washingtonian atmosphere the smell of agriculture. Due in part to the discussions on the Farm Bill due before the end of next year, agriculture has been occupying a lot of headlines lately. Lets hope policy makers use the report as a basis their foreign assistance approaches. Mas vale tarde que nunca.



Click on picture to get full PDF, or click HERE to get the reports' official website. See interesting article of the report on NYtimes

Get your copy!!

this will be my nightstand for a while, so stay tuned for some commentary

Food Cirsis in Lesotho

The picture that lies behind the title of this blog was taken a couple year ago while touring the mountains of the kingdom of Lesotho. Despite its breathtaking beauty, this picture encompasses the hardship on which the people of Lesotho- the Basotho- have to live in. If you look closely into the photo, you’ll see small patches of grass, surrounded by growing gullies, worrying signs of erosion. Yet, astonishingly you will also find goats and other grazing animals in those remaining green patches. Initially I couldn’t understand the rationality behind such act: in a couple years there won’t be any grass left, translating into no milk for the family, not traction for the fields, no fertilizer for the land and no food. However, once we started walking around the village with the extension agent I was traveling with, I started to understand the people’s way of doing things. The Basotho living in this village were making the best use their resources given what they have. Looking into the future was not a possibility if you couldn’t be able to feed your children today. Putting aside grass plots to recuperate was not an option when there are not other places to take the animals to. A sad reality of surviving the day hoping better things come tomorrow.


But it seems that worse things, rather than better ones, are coming their way. According to an Special Report released by FAO yesterday, the country is in the way to what it could become a very drastic food shortages. The report estimates 400.000 people- a fifth of the population- won’t be able to meet their minimum food requirements. FAO and WFP believe that at least 30.000 tons of cereal or its cash equivalent will be necessary to address the crisis.

What or who to blame? Well there are local natural factors such as the poor agricultural practices, lack of arable land, and land degradation as well as a 30 year high drought. By the way, water is their main source of income as is dam and then sold to south Africa. Lesotho also has one of the highest rates of AIDS (percentage wise about 30%) which undermines the productive population leaving land idle. More significant though is the increase in cereal prices that its only neighbor and main exporter, South Africa, is experiencing. According to the report there has been 400% increase in the price basic cereals like sorghum and maize. These are essential to the Basotho diet which consist mainly of Papa (boiled corn or sorghum floor with), some vegetables and meat if you’re better off.


Is it the Chinese eating more meat, or the American craze toward ethanol, or the reduction in regional harvest due to weather? I don’t know. What I’m sure is that the village in the photo you see in this blog has probably gone elsewhere looking for fresher fields that probably don’t exist. So next time you see that photo think about them and act. I’ll do the same.

Trends on Food Security and the work of Gordon Conway

Hola readers,

The debate on food security seems to be shifting from undernutrition to malnutrition or, in other words, from quantity to quality. The developing world, urbanizing at a rapid stage, is experiencing a move from diseases resulting from lack of food to diseases resulting from a poor diet balance. As food in the cities tend to be more accessible, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are becoming very prevalent in emerging economies like Mexico and India. Both, the change in the diet (more meat, sugars, and oils) and the change in life styles (less walking more sitting) are causing this health care crisis. However, the international development community must not forget about the people who are still living on conditions of starvation and severe food insecurity.

As clearly discussed on the book “The Elusive Quest for Growth” by William Easterly, development practitioners keep coming out with panaceas in attempting to solve world’s problems. Ranging from industrialization and education to production and more recently governance, each “golden bullet” takes away resources of other programs. For instance, the World Bank’s relatively new emphasis on governance and institutional reform has displaced resource from still vital agricultural projects.

Although comprehensive and holistic approaches are becoming more popular in international development, the panacea approach still prevails, undermining the sustainability and continuity of the development process (which is generational on its nature). This is not to say that programs proven to be unsuccessful should remain funded. Rather programs that were effective must not be replaced for newer and trendier approaches to development.

All this to say that, although diet quality will definitely present a new challenge to developing countries, there is still a lot of work needed for those that are not getting enough on their tables. In this point, Gordon Conway, world renowned agricultural ecologist and one of the first one to develop the concept of sustainable agriculture, suggest what he calls the “doubly green revolution”; a “green revolution” with its increases in productivity and efficiency with an additional emphasis on environmental sustainability and participatory approaches.

In a couple hours I’ll be attending a presentation of his work at IFPRI from which I’ll be posting some of his remarks in this blog. Yet, from what I’ve read so far, his work needs support, not only because we still have a lot of hungry people in this world, but also because we must give continuity to the programs that worked.

His book “The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century”

His paper “The Paradoxes of Integrated Development”

Quote "To realize lasting peace and sustainable development in human society, members of the international community have to cooperate with one another fully and make concerted efforts" Wu Bangguo
to tackle

Is Raining Coffee in Nicaragua

As Juan Luis Guerra once hoped "I wish it rains coffee in the field" in Nicaragua it is coffee time and you can feel it in the atmosphere. Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to Jinotega, the department north of Matagalpa in the Honduran border, famous for its shade-grown Arabica coffee. The purpose of the visit was to check on the progress of a School Garden we had helped implement a couple months ago. But as we travelled this mountainous region, I was amazed by how it looks so different now that the coffee is being harvested.

The rural roads look like ant paths, with hundreds of people going back and forth carrying sacks of coffee, food, tools, and guitars. Although the pick of the seasons hasn’t started yet, you’ll be able to find Nicaraguan from all over. Some come from the Atlantic coast where poverty is more prevalent. Others live in the region and spend some time harvesting coffee, then sugar cane and then back to their farms. This region in fact, has been a reservoir of agricultural labour. This is one of the reasons why so many agricultural projects that try to convert these seasonal workers to producers fail.

The town is bursting and the money starts to trickledown to restaurants, shops, and obviously to the local tavern. There are problem, most of then alcohol related after pay-day, yet the mood is pleasant as the farmers know that all the hard work is finally producing the first fruits and the workers are getting some money to bring back to their families. The farms where the berry pickers work are filled with joy: don’t get me wrong as I’m not saying that coffee picking is an easy, pleasant job. What I’m saying is that to the foreign eye it looks like a romantic painting of blue skies and green landscapes: a resting yet deceiving image from colonial times.

But forget about the Germans and other Europeans who once owned and managed these coffee farms, although there is some left, most farms are now owned and operated by Nicas. So Nica is the music played on the radio, or sang by the workers as they pick the berries. At lunch time, you'll hear a whistle telling you is time for lunch. A Nica lunch of beans, tortilla, cuajada, meat (sometimes), and of course coffee, giving these good-hearted Nicaraguans the energy to keep going.

During the Sandinistas time and to some degree today, you hear many voices that complained about coffee and other monocultures as being promoters of poverty and food insecurity. The rationality of their argument is based on a colonial systems of production that reflect little to today’s reality. Nowdays, the wages for pickers are regulated and there are a wide range of standards for the conditions in which they have to work, guarantying their safety and wellbeing. People also think food security for farmers means producing food, when most of the time they are better off by producing goods to commerce and then buying food.

A quintal (100LB) of dry coffee is being paid at US$120.oo aprox. The coffee price is now recuperating from a two decade low that busted the market for speciality coffees such as shade-grown, fair treaded, organic, etc. Now, there are plenty of farmers that are meeting their ends by growing this berry. So next time you drink a cup coffee, imagine all the bliss that came into bringing it to you.
Salud,

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”.— Old Chinese Saying

My version: “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to sell the fish, so he can also eat some chicken”. – Rafael I Merchan