Farmer field schools are growing in popularity, as a way for farmers and technocrats alike to learn what works and why in real life. From The Rodale Institute, one of the foremost organic organizations in the United States, comes a lengthy feature article about how things operate in Burkina Faso. Relentlessly upbeat, it gives the low-down on the individual farmers who make farmer field schools such a success. An excellent read.
From the well-digger’s mouth
I like hearing the views of people who know what it is like on the ground, even if — especially if? — they have a strong point of view. I probably don’t come across enough of them.
Wells for Zoë is a small Irish humanitarian organization that helps people in Malawi to dig wells and manage water. After listening to a news item about a conference in Malawi one of the well-diggers felt compelled to set the record straight with a list of recommendations. I don’t agree with all of them, but this is clearly someone who knows the scene there.
What is needed are community-based systems of cooperative family farms, organized to market for local and regional distribution and re-integrating livestock wherever feasible term rehabilitative approach. Malawi needs a systemic approach to both restore its ecosystems and to produce enough food sustainably for its people.
There are lots of specific suggestions too. More of this and less globe-trotting punditry would go a long way towards helping Malawi feed itself.
Traditional rice cultivation at risk
Saving the Ifugao rice terraces, and their agrobiodiversity.
Longest maize ears in the world
They’re as long as your arm, and celebrated each year in Jala, Mexico.
Access and benefit sharing discussed… again
All too often it seems as if the “debate” on access to genetic resources (and the sharing of the benefits derived from access and use ((Together known as “access and benefit sharing,” or ABS.)) mostly consists of people talking past each other. Today we have, from the animal genetic resources conference at Interlaken, a statement to the effect that the talking is coming at the expense of urgent action on conservation. Meanwhile, we have more talking from an international workshop in Beijing on genetic resources and indigenous knowledge, ((Held in Beijing on 4 September, but I can’t find further information about it on the CBD website, or anywhere else for that matter! Maybe someone out there can educate me?)) where Gurdial Singh Nijar, a law professor at the University of Malaya in Malaysia, said that:
Developing countries are losing out because their laws do not specify which resources should be paid for and how… This is due to the lack of a legal definition of what constitutes payable genetic resources, and clarity on who owns these resources: national governments or local communities of origin.