Readers of the Sunday Monitor in Uganda were treated this morning to a long article about Jatropha carcus, a shrubby tree whose seeds contain 40% oil that can be made into biodiesel. The piece is extremely thorough, giving a mass of numbers about Jatropha and pointing out that it can deliver multiple benefits as part of agroforestry systems. Hand presses can keep production local. The seedcake, after pressing out the oil, is rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and so can be returned to the farm to boost soil fertility. Intercropping suggests that it need not detract from food production. Uganda currently spends US$ 230 million on diesel imports.
An open letter to Kofi Annan
Dear Mr Annan
Congratulations on your appointment as Chair of the Board of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. In your inaugural lecture in Capetown you said categorically that the Alliance would “work with farmers using traditional seeds known to them”. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “traditional seeds,” especially in view of Agra’s strong focus on breeding: “we will develop improved varieties for the full range of Africa’s important staple food crops,” it says on the Agra web site.
Maybe you just mean “not genetically engineered”. That might make sense, because the sentence before the one on “traditional seeds” reads: “We in the Alliance will not incorporate GMOs in our programmes.”
“Sensually mapping the world”
An article by Andrew Jefford over at the Financial Times’ Food and Drink section dissects the concept of “appellations d’origine controlée.” This refers to a system which provides legal protection for a name of an agricultural product made in a particular way in a particular place. Thus, champagne is not just any old sparkling wine, but, “wine produced by a special method, from pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay grapes grown in a circumscribed region of France lying east of Paris.”
The article is a great read. Here’s a longer sample, to give you the — as it were — flavour:
Thanks to the efforts of some 250 local growers with 9,000 ha of meadows irrigated by the river Durance via an intricate series of canals in place since the late 17th century, even hay from the stony Crau plain achieved certification, in 1997, to protect and expand the reputation of this uniquely sweet, nutritious animal feed; only these growers have the right to tie their bales with a distinctive red and white twine. The hay is cut three times every summer, the first cut being ideal for horses and beef cattle, the second cut for dairy cattle and milking ewes, and the third for sheep and goats… Appellations are a way of sensually mapping the world.
Farmer Field Schools in the Pacific and beyond
Danny Hunter has sent us this contribution. Until recently, Danny ran the TaroGen and DSAP projects at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Fiji. Thanks, Danny.
An interesting article from SciDevNet about farmer empowerment through Farmer Field Schools (FFS) reminded me of a great little programme that we had running in Samoa in the late nineties. Farmer Field Schools began as a training and extension approach for integrated pest management of rice, largely supported by FAO in Asia. Since then FFS have been used for a variety of agricultural crops, systems and problems, including livestock, and have spread to other regions of the world.
The article prompted me to reflect on earlier efforts that we made at the Alafua Campus of the University of the South Pacific in Samoa, using similar “field-based” approaches to help students and farmers (as well as researchers and extensionists!) learn about taro diversity and improvement. In 1993 Samoa was devastated by an outbreak of taro leaf blight. Initial responses using pesticides and cultural methods were futile and while introduced “resistant” varieties helped, the disease was still a major problem.
Continue reading “Farmer Field Schools in the Pacific and beyond”
Bamboo galore
The latest issue of FAO’s NWFP-Digest seems to be joining in with the celebrations of the 10th birthday of the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR). In addition to the International Bamboo & Rattan Expo in Guangzhou, China (see map), it points to a new technique from India for rapid bamboo propagation, the manufacture of bamboo bicycles in Ghana, the sale of bamboo socks in the UK and the planting of bamboo in Bhutan. There’s lots of other stuff too, though.