EARTH SUMMIT at Columbia University

For those readers in NY, make sure you sign up for a great event I'm helping organize:

Columbia Earth Summit: A Call to Action
April 25, 2012 12:30-6:00pm
Low Memorial Library

As we face a growing number of environmental challenges, we believe that the solutions will come from partnerships between public, private and academic sectors. On April 25, 2012 at Columbia University experts, thought leaders and practitioners from a variety of sectors will come together to discuss some of the most pressing environmental questions. This FREE event (RSVP recommended), will feature interactive panels and key one on one discussions with leaders from: Bunge Limited, the Rockefeller Foundation, UNDP, TB Bank, NRDC and the Acumen Fund among others.

The Food Security and Agriculture Panel (which I'm organizing) will count with the participation of:
Glenn Denning: Director of the Center for Globalization and Sustainable Development at Columbia’s Earth Institute.
Cherly Palm: Senior Research Scientist at Earth Institute's Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program.
Gary Toenniessen: Managing Director at Rockefeller Foundation's initiatives in agricultural development.
Carl Hausmann:  Managing Director at Bunge's Global Government and Corporate Affairs

The panel will address the main question of how to feed the world by 2050. We'll cover issues of vital importance such as sustainability, climate change, changing diets, GMOs and Biotechnology, and the role of the public sector.

Visit our website for registration and more information: http://columbiaearthsummit.weebly.com/

Grains and Leaves: Weekly Ag-Related News, Events, and Others

• My piece on Earth Institute blog State of the Planet: Growing Food, Protecting the Land in Africa
• From Science Daily: Feeding the World While Protecting the Planet: Global Plan for Sustainable Agriculture
• Great piece by Roger Thurow: Outrage and Inspire - "Food Aid's Evolution: Landing a One-Two Punch Against Hunger"

• EcoAgriculture blog also has a list of things about how to feed the world:
• AGRA comes up with a new acronym: Farmer Organization Support Centre in Africa (FOSCA)
• Register for RIO + 20 Agriculture and Rural Development Day
• Check out Food+Tech's Infographic of the Week: More Bang for Your Food Aid Buck
• Tanzania to reach the 10% budget target allocation next year 
• Professor Sachs writes on the NYTimes about how Malawi fed itself
• Center for Investigative Reporting host the  "Food for 9 Billion Project" 

• At UN conference, Latin American countries reaffirm commitment to eradicate hunger

• The Guardian's Katine project - very similar to MVP
• DuPont Opens a $40 Million Agriculture Research Facility in Johnston IA. Also, check out their Food Security site
• AllAfrica's West Africa: Is Sustainable Agriculture Possible in the Sahel? If interested in the subject, also check out the New Yorker's piece: The Great Oaisi - Can a Wall of Trees Stop the Sahara from Spreading 

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. 

Grains and Leaves: Weekly Ag-Related News, Events, and Others

• Check out Farming First's excellent guide to understand global Food Security Initiatives and tell me what you think about their Food Security Statement
• Gordon Conway argues about the importance of continued support for agriculture development in Africa and presents the latest  Montpelier Report Growth with Resilience: Opportunities in African Agriculture
• Read the The Guardian's coverage of the report, and while you are doing that say hi to their wonderful section on Global Development
• The republican party proposes severe cuts to foreign aid, including Obama's flagship Feed the Future Initiative. See Chicago Council's Roger Thurow thoughtful commentary  
• Tired of crude poverty pictures? Tried to figures at FAO's 2012 Statistical Yearbook. The report covers the key factors related to global food and agricultural production and how they interact with broader issues.
• Check out the work of Harvest Plus' innovative and promising work on bio-fortification. They are adding Vitamin A the the otherwise micro nutrient-deficient Cassava and rolling it out in Nigeria. 
• The Rockefeller Foundation and the Institute for the Future will release on April 2 a game dubbed Catalyst for Change -  not sure exactly what this is about seems like a neat idea
• Obama Picks Dr. Kim and heads for a world tour to promote his candidacy. Would Ocampo and Okonjo-Iweala have a chance? Probably not
• IFPRI tell us why we should love them: Reducing Poverty and Hunger through Food Policy Research 
• Soon i'll be blogging about a recent conference i attended on “Debates in Development: The Search for Answers"  and Michael Clemens' views

Focus on Farmers to Feed the World by 2050

The Female Face of Farming

Check out this cool initiative started by FAO and Farming First about the role of women in food production.

Also, IFPRI just published a great book, Reshaping Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, about the linkages that exist between these sectors. 

Grains and Leaves: Weekly Ag-Related News, Events, and Others

• The Economist The Guardian and FT write about nutrition after Save the Children publishes A Life Free From Hunger: Tackling Child Malnutrition  
• “Just because we can produce more on less doesn’t mean people will stop expanding (land for crops)” Says Ruth Defries from The Earth Institute referring to a common misconception about increases in productivity lead to less deforestation.
• Gates criticizes outdated UN agencies Gates attacks 'outdated' UN food agencies
• New World Bank data reports a drop in extreme poverty in every continent: Many write about it: The Economist, Shanta Devarajan's Blog
• Foreign Policy report about the Last Famine
• USAID's Infant and Young Child Nutrition Project ends, leaving behind a website full of great resources
• The Guardian reports how Ethiopian farmers are testing new chickpea crops. This comes after PepsiCo announced last year to invest in country’s Chickpeas crops
• Gates Foundation continues to bankroll agricultural projects
• Forbes’ Bill Conerly writes about the money main in ag commodities
• NPR on Monsanto’s recent court victory over organic growers’ patent sue 
• Oliver De Schutter, UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

A História da Agricultura e a Economia Verde

Check out the English version HERE of this great video

Brazil's Most Valuable Export: Fome Zero and its Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos da Agricultura Familiar (PAA)

With funding from Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), the country's foreign aid agency,  WFP and FAO are rolling out a new food security program modeled after the successful Programa de  Aquisição de Alimentos da Agricultura Familiar (PAA). PAA, Family Agriculture Food Procurement Program, connects smallholder farmers with school feeding programs by purchasing their products at a subsidized price. In addition, PAA gives farmers access to credit, training, and technical advice. 

The government committed 2.3 million dollars for pilot projects in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Senegal. According the WFP, these funds will strengthen their ongoing initiative on local procurement called P4P.

This is also the latest example of the growing south-to-south cooperation between Brazil and the rest of the developing world. In addition to private investments in soybean cultivation in Mozambique, this year the Brazilian government formed an alliance with WFP to open the Center of Excellence against Hunger. The goal of this initiative is the strengthen developing countries' capacity to design and carry out effective programs against food insecurity and malnutrition, with special emphasis on school feeding. Watch WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran describe the Center.

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.

Grains and Leaves: Weekly Ag-Related News, Events, and Others

As my semester keeps getting busier Agdes has suffered from serious neglect. However, I'll try to continue blogging about some cool things happening this year: I'll be starting an internship at the Earth Institute's Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program. Over the summer, I'll also be going to Rome and Mozambique as part of a internship placement with the UN's Renewed Efforts Against Child Hunger (REACH). For now, enyoy this week's version of Grains and Leaves.

• Glenn Denning, Director of both the Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and J. Matthew Roney, Research Associate, Earth Policy Institute, examine the global food supply at the The Leonard Lopate Show
• The World Economic Forum publishes Putting the New Vision for  Agriculture into Action: A Transformation Is  Happening
• Roger Thurow, Senior Fellow, Global Agriculture & Food Policy at the Chicago Council, discusses Mr. Xi visit to the US and its implication on global agriculture. WSJ also reported on the issue.  
• Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), argues at the HuffPost that small holder farmers stand ready for climate-smart, more productive agriculture. 
•  Save the Children publishes new report on malnutrition: A Life Free from Hunger and The Guardian covers it.
• Mr. Green forgets to talk about increasing food production on his The Guardian oped piece about  how to end world hunger
• The White House talks about its efforts on innovation in global development 
•  In Tanzania, the country's Agriculture Minister supports GMOS in their fight against hunger and AllAfrica describes how small holder farmers in developing countries are benefiting from advances in biotech crops.
• A recent report published by the Global Development and Environment Institute and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy criticizes the World Bank's agriculture agenda as is"too heavily focused on improving access to liberalised markets and promote the expansion of high-input agriculture rather than a transition to more sustainable methods."
• The Economist holds a conference on Feeding the World: the 9-billion people question
• At the conference, DuPont committed to invest US $10 billion in research and development dedicated to the food, agriculture and nutrition sectors and advancing 4,000 new products by the end of 2020. See Dupont Food Security strategy 
• Check out USAID's ICT to Enhance Impact of Agriculture Development (requires subscription)
• Prof Monty Patrick Jones Co-winner of the prestigious 2004 World Food Prize for his discovery of the genetic process to create the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) talks about the future of Africa's Agricultural Sector

After the Hiatus

The break is over and I'm back in NYC after a wonderful time in Milwaukee and Nicaragua. So after this winter break Agdes has a lot of catching up to do. I'll be writing about my visit to Growing Power in Milwaukee; some of the work I did in Nicaragua; and a paper I wrote about the new push for integrated rural development.

I will also continue compiling the Grains and Leaves series: a biweekly email with Ag-related news, events, and others. Similarly, I'll be logging about content cover by a couple of classes I'm taking this semester, in particular one in global food systems and micro-enterprise development.

I hope you had a fantastic break. As always, feel free to email me with suggestions or questions you may have.

Reading List for the Cold Days Ahead

Looking for a good read for your winter break? Check this list of development books shamelessly copied from by Chris Blattman awesome blog on international development. Also check out a similar list put together by the Guardian. Enjoy

1. The Anti-Politics Machine, James Ferguson. (“Sometimes markets don’t exist for a reason.”)

2. Peasants into Frenchmen, Eugen Weber (“Do not forget that French was recently a foreign language to most Frenchmen,” or “Nation building is a long and messy business.”)

3. Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell (“So you think we’re so far away from abject poverty ourselves?”)

4. African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, Nic van de Walle (“Everything you think about the African crisis and structural adjustment is wrong,” or “the aid and democratization folks seem to forget that incentives matter.”)

5. Seeing Like A State, Jim Scott. (“The perils of scientific approaches to planning and development.”)

6. and 7. Other Jim Scott must reads: Moral Economy of the Peasant (“Don’t overestimate the material.”) and Art of Not Being Governed (“Development usually means coercion, and underdevelopment is a strategy not a condition.”)

8. In the Company of Strangers, Paul Seabright (“The origins of market cooperation, industry and development are evolutionary.”)

9. Emergence of Autocracy in Liberia, Amos Sawyer (“Authoritarian politics are not solely the products of colonialism; seek checks and balances.”)

10. and 11. Party Games, Mark Summers, and Right to Vote, Alexander Keyssar (“Corruption and electoral mayhem — not so crippling to growth as you think,” or “Chill out, America, and remember you were recently much worse.”)

12. Coffee and Power, by Jeffrey Paige (“Five coffee producing nations, five different power structures, five very different democratic outcomes a hundred years later”)

13. and 14. Coercion, Capital and European States, Charles Tilly (“War makes the state”). See Jeffrey Herbst’s States and Power in Africa for the post-colonial converse (“An absence of war doesn’t make the state”).

15. Embedded Autonomy, Peter Evans. (“Most of the time state-led industrialization doesn’t work, but guess what? Sometimes it does.”)

16. and 17. Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs. (“Seek healthy cities not healthy nations, and here’s how.”) which is interesting to read alongside Max Weber’s The City (“Man, are we lucky the merchants not the ruling classes lived in European cities.”)

18. Staples, Markets and Cultural Change, Harold Innis. (“Everything you need to know about New World development can be gleaned from cod, fur, and wheat.”) The most forgotten AEA President ever, and also a mentor to Marshall McLuhen.

Promising Trends in the African Continent

Le Grand Marche Lome. (C) Rafael Merchan 2008

In a time where developed countries continue to shrink their development aid portfolios, exciting things are happening in Africa that may hold the answer to solve the continent's chronic poverty. The news comes from South Africa's Standard Bank with the publication of an excellent series of reports about Africa's unprecedented potential to catch up to the rest of the world. A recent editorial and article by The Economist also cover this promising trend, citing some of the reports' findings.

The series, entitled "The Five Trends Powering Africa's Enduring Allure" provide a robust evidence about the continent's strategic position to meet the world appetite for food, natural resources, and manufacturing goods, all while reinvigorating local economies and bringing much needed revenue to the governments' treasures. More importantly, the report talks about how the urbanization process in the continent is resulting in a middle class with more disposable income. This extra cash is exactly what farmers need to market their product and diversified into more profitable activities.

Although those living in remote communities and/or subsistence poverty will likely be passed by the emerging local markets, with the spread of ICT, better rural infrastructure, and more committed local governments, their future does not seem as grim as a decade ago.  Finally, one of the reports highlights the central role of agriculture in this new development. Below are the main points made by the fantastic work of  Standar's Bank Simon Freemantle on his report about Africa's Dormant Resource Potential.

• Donor institutions have re-prioritised development assistance for African agriculture as a means to elevate socio-economic prosperity.  Meanwhile, programmes such as NEPAD’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) are gaining momentum.
• Foreign land leasing deals are on the increase. Estimates vary, yet it is believed that between 50 mn and 60 mn ha of land in SSA has been purchased or leased since 2001. The majority of land leasing agreements are structured on a government-to-government basis. Unsurprisingly, Gulf States have been prominent. Meanwhile, Asian nations, particularly China and South Korea, are prioritizing Africa as a means to ensure long-term food security. 
• Private and institutional investor interest is growing. For instance, London-listed Agriterra owns a variety of agricultural assets in Africa, including 14,000 ha of land for ranching, as well as a maize processing facility in Mozambique. And, Indian horticultural firm Karuturi Global has emerged as the world’s largest exporter of fresh cut roses on the spine of its investments in Kenya and Ethiopia.
• While there are meaningful objections to the nature and structure of much of the new investment in African agriculture, it is clear that the introduction of new capital, skills, and technology is an essential component in unlocking the continent’s ultimate allure. Africa’s agricultural sector has persistently underperformed for much of the past half century—having been a net food exporter in the early 1960s, Africa is now a net importer. Between 1998 and 2008 the number of hungry people in SSA increased by 20%. And, between 1967 and 2007, farm output per person in SSA fell by one-quarter, even while it doubled in South Asia and tripled in East Asia.
• The reasons for Africa’s poor agricultural performance are complex, and myriad. For one, on average, African countries allocate only 4% of their budgetary expenditures to agriculture, compared to 14% in Asia. Only around 6.5% of African farmland is irrigated, compared to 40% in Asia. And, according to the World Bank, SSA uses just 11.6 kilograms (kg) of fertilizer per ha of arable land, compared to a world average of 119 kg/ha. Meanwhile, post-harvest grain losses due to inadequate storage and transport facilities in SSA are equal to USD4 bn per year around 15% of total output.
• Though much is required, and a collective inertia still in large part remains, there are increasing signs of how Africa’s agricultural fortunes are changing. Under CAADP, 22 African countries have committed to raise the budget share for agriculture to 10%. And, in partnership with AGRA, commercial banks are beginning to lend to small-scale farmers. According to OECD/Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projections, Africa’s production of wheat is expected to increase by 30%, rice by 75%, and milk and sugar by 35% within the next decade. Approximately 25% of the source of crop production growth in SSA between 2010 and 2050 will come from arable land expansion, 7% from increases in cropping intensity, and 68% from an increase in yields. Other estimates have posited that the value of Africa’s annual agricultural output could double by 2020, based largely on gains produced by new land placed under cultivation, yield growth, and the transfer to higher-value crops.
• Africa’s agricultural allure is vast, yet central to the realisation of commensurate socio-economic benefits is an appreciation, on the part of African stakeholders, of how pivotal and intensely valuable this opportunity is—and to position accordingly.

A New Report on Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America

For those of you interested in CCT, make sure to check out this report just published by ECLA, the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, on Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America. 


The report sums up the experience with in Latin America and the Caribbean, over more than 15 years. During this period, CCTs have spread through the region’s various countries as a tool of choice for poverty-reduction policy. CCTs entails the transfer of monetary and nonmonetary resources to families with young children, living in poverty or extreme poverty, on condition that they fulfil specific commitments aimed at improving their human capacities. They are consider just one of many non-contributory social protection instruments in the countries’ poverty reduction toolkits, other can be social pensions, emergency jobs, educational scholarships and subsidies for home purchases etc. 


A couple of interesting points about the report:

• CCT have worked sufficiently well and produced their expected outcomes in large countries with considerable resources at their disposal, such as Brazil and Mexico, but this does not mean that they can be exported to any country and produce the same results
• Viewing the CCTs in terms of entitlement and rights makes it hard to interpret them as instruments of patronage that can be manipulated by different political actors
• CCTs can help to create a “virtuous circle” for poor and vulnerable families. Income transfers, when constant over time, provide a basic safety net for the poor, who by having a guaranteed minimum level of subsistence will have greater opportunities to enter the labor market.

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

Renewed Prosperity, Enhanced Security: The Case for Sustained American Leadership in Global Agricultural Development

THE CHALLENGE: Feeding the World
World population reached 7 billion on Monday, October 31. It is expected to exceed 9.5 billion by 2050. Today, while much of our attention is rightly focused on the glaring needs at home, another crisis is quietly brewing: the growing global demand for food and the deep poverty and hunger of 925 million people threaten the basic human condition and America’s national interests.

The solution to this crisis lies in the improvement of the agricultural systems in the developing world and so reducing poverty in the areas where it is deepest and making nations more economically secure – the twin foundations of international peace and prosperity. Growth in the agricultural sector is twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. This solution also creates opportunities for American businesses while strengthening our national security.

The U.S. Congress and Administration have recognized these benefits and since 2009 have demonstrated transformative leadership on global agricultural development. Yet, the current commitment to global agricultural development is fragile. U.S. leadership is critical to sustaining renewed international attention to these issues.

At a time when it would be tempting to ignore the plight of those so distant, we must realize that they are not so far away. With demand for food expected to more than double in the next 40 years, our futures are tied together in a world facing formidable challenges, including scarce natural resources and the effects of extreme and fluctuating weather patterns amidst ever-growing populations.

THE NECESSITY: How Global Agricultural Development is in America’s Interest
Some Americans ask why the government should spend their hard-earned tax dollars on agricultural development abroad at a time of severe economic distress at home. The answer is simple: America’s prosperity and security will be improved by the reduced hunger, higher incomes, more vibrant markets, and stable societies that agricultural development will make possible

• Increasing opportunities for American business
• Hedging against failed states, violence, and extremism
• Strengthening American institutions and advancing scientific frontiers
• Harnessing the abilities and improving the lives of girls and women
• Meeting the rising global demand for food
• Protecting the environment and mitigating the impact of climate change

THE CALL: Sustaining American Leadership in Global Agricultural Development
The U.S. government must sustain American leadership for global agricultural development. This means preserving support for U.S. global agricultural development programs and fulfilling the commitment the United States made at the L’Aquila summit in 2009 to dedicate $3.5 billion to agricultural development over three years. In nearly every international policy arena, including agricultural development, America’s leadership has proven essential to global action. When America’s leadership in global agricultural development faltered at the end of the 1980s, efforts of most others faltered as well. More recently, when America challenged the global community to reinvigorate its commitment to agriculture, members of the G-8 pledged $22 billion. The lesson is that without American leadership little will happen.

The cost to America to sustain its support for development is approximately $1 billion a year – less than 1/10th of 1% of total U.S. spending. Even this small investment, when coupled with political leadership on the international stage, enables the U.S. to leverage the international community’s collective effort and advance U.S. political, economic, and security interests. The Congress and the Administration have already taken the first, critical steps. This leadership must now be sustained: the long-term gains far outweigh the costs.