Category: Policy

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Bunfight to feed Africa

The African Green Revolution conference will be held in Oslo from 29 August to 1 September. The Can Africa Feed Itself? conference will be held Oslo from 6 June to 8 June. What a shame there is no overlap; so neither side is likely to hear directly what the other is saying. Which would I rather be at?

At one:

As a conference participant, you can expect an environment of cross-disciplinary dialogue with abundant opportunity for personal interaction with colleagues and participants.

At the other:

There are different views among the speakers and the organizers of the conference on many of the issues approached. Exciting discussions will take place.

Tough call. Really. If you’re going to either — and especially if you’re going to both — we’d love to hear your impressions.

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Stop the mudness

Stop the mudness is the slogan of the Great Lakes Commission sediment-reduction campaign aimed squarely at farmers in North America. It’s the centre of an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun pointing out the many pitfalls associated with farms that grow monocultures of annuals and leave the soil bare most of the year. What’s pleasing is that efforts to reduce soil run-off will always also increase agricultural biodiversity.

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Alphabet soup — with no sustenance

IMoSEB is the International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity. It was dreamed up at a conference in Paris in January 2005, with the blessing of French President Jacques Chirac. It has been meeting, in various forms, ever since, to try and define itself and its role. The latest meeting, a European Consultation, took place in Geneva from 26-28 April 2007. As far as I can tell from a very lengthy report, participants did not discuss agriculture.

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Biofuel prospects muddled

Biofuel boosters have admitted that what we really need is cellulosic conversion — turning the bulk of plants like corn, not to mention inedible plants, into ethanol rather than relying on their seeds. Now comes news from the USDA that to do so threatens the soil in which those biofuels will grow. If farmers harvest the stovers, or corn stalks, rather than leaving them on the land, they risk depleting the organic matter in the soil in addition to severe soil erosion. That cuts the value of maize for ethanol even more.

Meanwhile, AllAfrica.com carries a long report on the recent FAO meeting on biofuels. FAO tried very hard to be balanced:

Joseph Schmidhuber, Senior Economist at FAO’s Agricultural Development and Economics Division, explained that the impact of the new bioenergy market on food security could be negative or positive, depending on whether a country’s economy was a net exporter or importer of food and energy. The same held true at household level, indicating that the rural landless and the urban poor were most at risk, and special measures would be needed to protect both countries and groups.

Everything is possible, no? But I find it hard hard to conclude that the emphasis on turning food for people into fuel for cars and trucks will be a good thing on balance.

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India needs small farmers

Vandana Shiva has a long post at countercurrents.org outlining some of the ways in which small but biodiverse farms could make a greater contribution to food security in India. She lambasts the government for its policies and quotes some very favourable figures for harvests and incomes, alas without supporting references.