Nourishing the Planet

Danielle (left) with Madyo Couto. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

Madyo Couto has a tough job. He works under the Mozambique Ministry of Tourism to help manage the country’s Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs). These areas were initially established to help conserve and protect wildlife, but they’re now evolving to include other uses of land that aren’t specifically for conservation.

Madyo explained that in addition to linking the communities that live near or in conservation areas to the private sector to build lodges and other services for tourists, they’re also helping farmers establish honey projects to generate income. In many of national parks and other conservation areas, farmers resort to poaching and hunting wildlife to earn money. Establishing alternative—and profitable—sources of income is vital to protecting both agriculture and biodiversity in the TFCAs.

Stay tuned for more blogs about the links between wildlife conservation and agriculture.

Everywhere I travel in Africa, there’s increasing acknowledgement about the importance of nutrition when it comes to treating HIV/AIDS.  Many retroviral and HIV/AIDS drugs don’t work if patients aren’t getting enough vitamins and nutrients in their diets or accumulating enough body fat.

According to Dr. Rosa Costa, Director of the Kyeema Foundation in Mozambique, many farmers are often too sick to grow crops, but “chickens are easy.”

The International Rural Poultry Center of the Kyeema Foundation and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics are working with farmers—most of them women—to raise chickens on their farms. Because women are often the primary caregivers for family members with HIV/AIDS, they need easy, low-cost sources of both food and income.

Unlike many crops, raising free-range birds can require few outside inputs and very little maintenance from farmers. Birds can forage for insects and eat kitchen scraps, instead of expensive grains. They provide not only meat and eggs for household use and income, but also pest control and manure for fertilizer.

Via La Vida Locavore, check out thenew guidelines from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch on which seafood is the best/most sustainable. For more information, check out Worldwatch’s work on sustainable seafood.

Sylvia Banda, founder of Sylva Professional Catering Services, with her husband (Photo: Business Week).

Sylvia Banda was tired of seeing traditional Zambian meals, such as chibwabwa (pumpkin leaves) and impwa (dry garden egg plant) snubbed for Western-style foods in her country. As a result, she founded Sylva Professional Catering Services  in 1986 and in its success, created a market for local farmers and emphasized traditional cooking methods. Her business is presented by Winrock International as a model for other aspiring entrepreneurs to follow (see Innovation of the Week: Winrock International and Sylva Professional Catering Services Limited).

Ironically, Sylvia doesn’t officially own her business. Sylva catering is in her husband’s name because of lending policies that discriminate against women. Sylvia founded Sylva Professional Catering Training College in 2001 and Sylva Food Solutions in 2003, to respond to the growing need for skilled service employees and locally grown raw ingredients. Her training sessions teach farmers, mostly women, to grow traditional vegetables. Her catering and restaurant business purchases the resulting crops, ensuring that there is a market for the vegetables produced by the newly trained farmers. In this way, Sylvia is able to grow her business while keeping the majority of the profit within the community.

“When I first met some of these families, their children were at home while school was in session,” said Sylvia during a Community Food Enterprise Panel and Discussion hosted by Winrock International in Washington, D.C. in January. “They told me that they didn’t have money to pay for education. But after becoming suppliers for my business, the families can afford to send their children to school and even to buy things like furniture for their houses.”

Sylvia makes sure to follow up with the farmers that participate in the program and provide her restaurant with supplies, ensuring that they continue to follow her strict production standards, which include hygiene and consistent pricing practices. It also allows her to see the marked improvements to their daily lives that her partnership with them provides.

Still looking to expand her business model in a way that empowers her employees and local farmers, Sylvia recently released a Zambian cookbook, complete with a list of the nutritional benefits of each homegrown ingredient. She also uses her growing national notoriety to work with NGOs to increase funding for farmer training and support and plans to turn the Sylva Guest House into a full service restaurant and hotel.

Chef, and food-statesman, Dan Barber with some of the poultry that will supply his restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Photograph: By Andrew Hetherington

As the local food movement sweeps across America—and into its school cafeterias, hospitals, and supermarkets—what locavore wisdom might be gleaned for poor and hungry communities in the developing world?

The answer came this past weekend at the World Economic Forum in Davos where Dan Barber, the chef-owner of the farm-to-table icon Blue Hill in New York City, played the outlier along side heads of state and agribusiness. (Blue Hill’s sister restaurant-cum-think tank Stone Barns is north of the city, where it nurtures community-based food production on the former estate of the Rockefeller family, which—interestingly—helped launch the Green Revolution four decades ago and remains engaged in international agricultural development today.)

In a series of talks, Barber, who The Guardian called a “a new breed of chef-intellectual,” suggested that the greatest potential for shoring up the global food system will not come from boosting food production or opening up international markets. Instead, it will come from knitting more diversity into all links of the global food chain.

This isn’t the first time high-profile food debates have called for a radical rethink. Last October, at the World Food Prize Conference in Des Moines, participants noted that despite decades of international efforts, the number of hungry people on the planet continues to swell. The global food system remains vulnerable to rising fuel costs and shrinking stores of food bio-diversity. In the latest twist, international investors are buying up land across Africa, mostly to supply export markets—in the short term, local farmers might benefit from a buyout; over the long term, they may be giving up their nation’s agricultural base.

So, Barber sang the praises of the Mountain Magic tomato, the result of a regional breeding effort that proved resistant to the blight that eliminated much of the Northeast’s homogenous crop this year. A world away, but sharing similar principles, farmers in Tanzania are engaged in their own regional breeding, working with researchers at the World Vegetable Center to improve—and market—a diversity of traditional vegetables, as my colleague Danielle Nierenberg recently chronicled. Young farmers working with Slow Food International in Uganda are learning about the importance of growing—and eating—indigenous African crops like leafy greens and tropical fruits, which can cope with erratic weather, emerging diseases and seasonal food shortages better than imported staples.

At a time when 30 to 50 percent of the world’s food supply goes bad or is otherwise wasted, Barber uses nose-to-tail cuisine to make use of every bit of the animal, not to mention fava bean leaves, turnip greens, and other neglected vegetable parts. Just as farmers in West Africa are using simple, sealable storage bags to ensure a greater share of cowpeas, an important, indigenous protein source, gets from field-to-plate.

Yes, the ingredients will vary but the advantages of building resilience into the system are the same the world around. The massive—and revolutionary—International Assessment for Agricultural Science and Technology for Development report concluded that organic techniques for improving soils can complement chemical fertilizers, while neglected crop varieties, like millet and sorghum, can help reduce malnutrition and improve livelihoods, particularly in areas where corn, rice and wheat haven’t thrived.

And the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Millions Fed book found that often getting more food onto hungry people’s plates depends on local, rather than farflung resources, like when farmers across the Sahel use stone contours, planting pits and other homegrown techniques to nurture drought-torn trees, rehabilitate millions of hectares of farmland and boost food production for about 3 million people. Back in the Hudson Valley, the livestock farmer at Stone Barns has restored woodlands, built up his soils, and kept his animals healthy through a dance of rotational grazing.

Of course, this is not an either or proposition. Global investment in agriculture—in the form of government collaborations or support from universities—can jumpstart all sorts of good on the ground. There’s no shortage of appropriate technology that can be shared across borders—from solar-powered drip irrigation to tissue culture that accelerates distribution of disease-free sweet potato and banana cuttings. And the same food-interested Americans who are flocking to farmers markets and pushing agribusiness away from feedlots, may soon emerge as a new lobbying ally in matters of international hunger. (American food aid policy is just as problematic as the dysfunctional Farm Bill.)

The New Yorker once called Barber’s restaurant “back to the land in a limosine.” But such a jab misses the potential for interplanetary solidarity. Barber’s success isn’t just built on kitchen talent. His restaurants thrive because they harness local food diversity, build up the regional farm economy, and rejuvenate the nearby landscape. Now what rural community wouldn’t want that?

Today, farmers and breeders alike have a greater respect for Mozambique’s indigenous seed varieties. (Photo by Jose Gonzalez de Tanago)

Jessica Milgroom isn’t your typical graduate student. Rather than spending her days in the library of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, her research is done in the field—literally. Since 2006, Jessica has been working with farming communities living inside Limpopo National Park, in southern Mozambique.

When the park was established in 2001, it was essentially “parked on top of 27,000 people,” says Jessica. Some 7,000 of the residents needed to be resettled to other areas, including within the park, which affected their access to food and farmland. Jessica’s job is to see what can be done to improve resettlement food security.

But rather than simply recommending intensified agriculture in the park to make better use of less land, Jessica worked with the local community to collect and identify local seed varieties. One of the major problems in Mozambique, as well as other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, is the lack of seed. As a result, farmers are forced to buy low-quality seed because nothing else is available.

In addition to identifying and collecting seeds, Jessica is working with a farmer’s association on seed trials, testing varieties to see what people like best. In addition, farmers are learning how to purify and store seeds (see Innovation of the Week: Investing in Better Food Storage in Africa).

Weevils, the farmers tell Jessica, are worse than ever, destroying both the seed and crops they store in traditional open-air, granaries. But the farmers are now building newer granaries that are more tightly sealed and help prevent not only weevils but also mold and aflatoxins from damaging crops.

Today, farmers and breeders alike have a greater respect for Mozambique’s indigenous seed varieties. According to Jessica, one of the biggest accomplishments of the project has been getting breeders and farmers to talk to each other. “It’s been interesting for both groups,” says Jessica, “and it needs to be a regular discussion” between them.

Danielle (right) with Dr. Rosa Costa, Kyeema’s director in Mozambique. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

This is the first in a two-part series about my visit to the Kyeema Foundation in Maputo, Mozambique

 

Although avian influenza and H1N1 have dominated the news for the last few years, many other serious diseases can ravage livestock and rural communities. Newcastle disease, which can wipe out entire flocks of chickens and can spread from farm to farm, is especially devastating for rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Vaccines for Newcastle used to be hard to come by in Africa. They were imported and usually expensive, putting them out of reach of small farmers. And even when they were available, they required refrigeration, which is not common in many rural villages.

Today, however, thanks to the work of the International Rural Poultry Center of the Kyeema Foundation in Mozambique, villages have access not only to vaccines, but also to locally trained community vaccinators (or para-vets) who can help spot and treat Newcastle and other poultry diseases before they spread.

With help from a grant from the Australian Government’s overseas aid program (AusAID), Kyeema developed a thermo-stable vaccine that doesn’t need to be refrigerated and is easier for rural farmers to administer to their birds. Dr. Rosa Costa, Kyeema’s director in Mozambique, explained that vaccinations take place three times a year and farmers are taught—with cleverly designed flip-charts and posters—how to apply the vaccines with eyedroppers.

In addition, according to Dr. Costa, the community vaccinators try to link the control of Newcastle with efforts to address avian influenza because the symptoms of the two diseases—coughing, diarrhea, lethargy, runny eyes, mortality—are often similar.

Community leaders help Kyeema identify people who are well respected in the community to be community vaccinators, who then receive training. The vaccinators aren’t compensated by Kyeema, but they can make a small profit from each bottle of vaccination. Typically, women are chosen as vaccinators, says Dr. Costa. Not only do they tend to stay in the villages more than men, but the money they earn usually does much more to help the family because they use it to buy food or schoolbooks for their children.

Because more birds are surviving because of vaccinations, Kyeema is also working with farmers to build better housing for their poultry and to find additional sources of feed.

Stay tuned for more on our visit to Kyeema later this week.

Methane gas produced by livestock accounts for an estimated 4 percent of the U.K.'s total carbon emissions. (Photo credit: FAO)

McDonald’s is hoping to change the way consumers view fast food. In partnership with the E-CO2 Project, an independent U.K. consulting firm, the company is launching a three-year study to assess methane production from beef cows in the United Kingdom, as well as ways to reduce livestock production of the greenhouse gas.

A burger joint famous for drive-thru windows and Happy Meals is certainly not the first business that comes to mind when one thinks about environmental sustainability. But with increasing mainstream awareness of the negative consequences of beef production for both human health and the environment, the fast-food giant is looking to reposition itself as leader of green business models.

McDonald’s purchases beef from more than 16,000 British and Irish farmers, who raise their cattle in large feedlots. The methane gas produced by livestock accounts for an estimated 4 percent of the U.K.’s total carbon emissions. McDonald’s hopes that the results of the study will help guide efforts to reduce suppliers’ methane production. The initiative also will likely help “green” the corporation’s image in the minds of an increasingly environmentally conscious public.

Before the quake, the FAO alone was implementing 23 food and agriculture projects in Haiti. (Photo credit: FAO)

By Abby Massey

 

A recent article in the New York Times highlights the critical role that agriculture will play in rebuilding Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake of January 2010. 

Food security is not a new problem in Haiti, and development organizations such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme, as well as nongovernmental organizations like Heifer International and Oxfam, have been forced to halt food programs in the country as these groups themselves attempt to recover from the disaster. 

Before the quake, the FAO alone was implementing 23 food and agriculture projects in Haiti, hoping to improve access to food in the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Prior to the disaster, an estimated 46 percent of Haiti’s population was undernourished, and chronic malnutrition affected 24 percent of children under five.

Right now the most urgent need is to get food and water to millions of people in the capital city of Port au Prince and elsewhere in Haiti. But as the country looks to the future, the need for sustainable sources of food, such as those we are learning about in sub-Saharan Africa, is more important than ever.

Abby Massey is a food  & agriculture intern with the Nourishing the Planet project.

Madame Helen Bahikwe received help from the Rwandan government to purchase her biogas unit. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

For half the world’s population, every meal depends on an open fire that is fueled by wood, coal, dung, and other smoke-producing combustibles. These indoor cookfires consume large amounts of fuel and emit carbon dioxide and other dangerous toxins into the air, blackening the insides of homes and leading to respiratory diseases, especially among women and children.

Biogas, however, takes advantage of what is typically considered waste, providing a cleaner and safer source of energy. Biogas units use methane from manure to produce electricity, heat, and fertilizer while emitting significantly less smoke and carbon monoxide than other sources of fuel. Access to an efficient, clean-burning stove not only saves lives—smoke inhalation-related illnesses result in 1.5 million deaths per year—it also reduces the amount of time that women spend gathering firewood, which the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) estimates is 10 hours per week for the average household in some rural areas.

The IFAD-funded Gash Barka Livestock and Agricultural Development Project (GBLADP) helped one farmer in Eritrea, Tekie Mekerka, make the most of the manure his 30 cows produce by helping to install a biogas unit on his farm (similar to the unit that Danielle saw in Rwanda with Heifer International). Now, says Mekerka, “we no longer have to go out to collect wood for cooking, the kitchen is now smoke-free, and the children can study at night because we have electricity.”Additionally, Mekerka is using the organic residue left by the biogas process as fertilizer for his family’s new vegetable garden.

In Rwanda, the government is making biogas stove units more accessible by subsidizing installation costs, and it hopes to have 15,000 households nationwide using biogas by 2012.  While visiting with Heifer Rwanda, Danielle met Madame Helen Bahikwe, who, after receiving government help to purchase her biogas unit, is now more easily cooking for her 10-person family and improving hygiene on the farm with hot water for cleaning.

In China, IFAD found that biogas saved farmers so much time collecting firewood that farm production increased. In Tanzania, the Foundation for Sustainable Rural Development (SURUDE), with funding from UNDP, found that each biogas unit used in their study reduced deforestation by 37 hectares per year. And in Nigeria, on a much larger scale, methane and carbon dioxide produced by a water purifying plant is now being used to provide more affordable gas to 5,400 families a month, thanks to one of the largest biogas installations in Africa.

To read more about how waste can be turned into a source of fuel, energy, and nutrition see: Making Fuel Out of Waste, Growing Food in Urban “Trash,” ECHOing a Need for Innovation in Agriculture, Keeping Weeds for Nutrition and Taste, and Vertical Farms: Finding Creative Ways to Grow Food in Kibera.

If you know of other ways people are making the most of their waste and would like to share it with us, we encourage you to leave a comment or fill out our agriculture innovation survey here.