Policy

June 26, 2009June 26, 2009

New LEISA mag online

A new edition of LEISA magazine is online, with it’s usual eclectic selection of articles, this time dedicated to the farmer as entrepreneur. It isn’t the most user-friendly site, but we did a bit of work and singled out a few articles.

Anything else you think we should link to specifically?

June 26, 2009June 26, 2009

Nibbles: Treaty, EU ministers, Sustainability

Scidev.net explains how “deadlock broken on international seed sharing“. Don’t hold your breath.
EU environment ministers “‘deeply concerned’ by biodiversity loss“. Don’t hold your breath.
Report says “investment in global agriculture will become critically important“. Don’t hold your breath.

June 24, 2009June 24, 2009

Diversification of livelihoods

A 10-year study of Tanzanaia’s Kagera region concludes that:

households that have diversified their farming activities, growing food crops for their own consumption, cash crops for sale, and keeping livestock, have found it easiest to escape from poverty
households involved in business and trade have also been successful, though this option has only been open to households in better-connected villages with initial endowments of land and other wealth
good health and extensive trust networks have helped households move out of poverty
illness and agricultural shocks have important negative effects on everyone, except the most well-off

Good news, you might have thought, unless you were loaded for vampire.

June 22, 2009June 20, 2009

Biodiversity in agriculture

We need to look at food security not only in terms of quantity of food but the quality of food, that will have an impact on health outcomes. And that requires diverse diet based on a broad use of local agricultural biodiversity.

Emile Frison, Director-General of Bioversity International, in a Q&A with Sabina Zaccaro and Miren Gutierrez of IPS.

June 19, 2009June 19, 2009

Will the “Green Revolution” Ever Hit Africa?

No.

Approximately two-thirds of Africa’s population labors on small, dusty farms, frequently failing to produce enough food to feed their families. Europe, North America, and Asia got their “Green Revolutions” and the ensuing productivity growth allowed small farmers to send their kids off to school in the big cities. Africa completely missed the boat.

A long article in the New York Times Freakonomics blog by Dwyer Gunn asks “Will the Green Revolution Ever Hit Africa“? It’s long, and very straightforward. While giving the naysayers a hearing, the article is firmly on the side of GMOs, fertilizer and irrigation. Oh, and forward contracts to supply the Gates Foundation’s ((And labelling it thus rather tells you where the story is coming from.)) Purchase for Progress program, cooked up so that the World Food Programme can buy emergency rations locally, injecting some cash into local economies. Because the two thirds of Africa’s people who labour “on small, dusty farms, frequently failing to produce enough food to feed their families” are going to be entering into forward contracts with WFP? Do me a favour.

I started reading the article in full optimistic flood; here was somebody who understood the issue, really understood it. I finished very, very disappointed. Round up the usual suspects. Luckily there were only three comments, and only two really annoyed me, ((Sturgeon’s Law: 95% of everything is crap really makes itself felt in large-traffic blogs)) so here’s my suggestion. Go there, but leave your comments, if you have any, here. Or, at the very least, in both places.