Nourishing the Planet

"Vertical gardens:" a version of a micro garden being used in Kibera, Kenya to grow vegetables.

For the past few months, we’ve been collecting information about agricultural innovations from all over the world (survey in English and French). We shared the initial responses in September but continue to receive interesting information and recommendations from farmers, NGOs, research groups, and policymakers in a multitude of countries. Below are a few tidbits we’d like to share:

From our friends at the World Vegetable Center in Arusha, Tanzania, which Danielle plans to visit later this month: “The world currently depends on a few exotic vegetable species such as tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, cauliflower, etc., and yet hundreds of other species of indigenous vegetables exist but are not properly exploited. In many cases they are much more nutrient-dense than the common exotics, which is of substantive importance in areas in which malnutrition — both under-nutrition and obesity — are serious problems. The difficulty at present resides in the fact that seed of such species are difficult to get, breeding programs are rare or absent, and the supporting agronomic research to maximize their quality and performance has not received sufficient investment.

This innovation needs both a change in policy environment by governments and other supporters of agricultural research to embrace a much greater investment in crop diversity rather than relying on funding only a few staple crops…. [T]he introduction of improved indigenous vegetables has a considerable chance of not only allowing farmers to grow and market themselves out of poverty but also to ensure that the poor, vulnerable, and disadvantaged and their families have a much better chance of attaining a sensible balanced diet than at present.”

From a member of our Advisory Group in Senegal: “The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) introduced the Micro Gardens in Senegal. Rodale International was contracted to train women and implement micro gardens in neighborhoods in Thies. The practice rapidly spread in Thies and other cities. A medical doctor from the Fann Hospital in Dakar established a micro garden and is now feeding his patients and monitoring its impact on their health and recovery.”

From the International Rural Poultry Centre and Kyeema Foundation in Mozambique: “Mortality due to Newcastle Disease (ND) is a major constraint to village chicken production and, consequently, impacts on household food security and livelihood…. With support from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), the European Union, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the FAO, the International Rural Poultry Centre is supporting veterinary laboratories to produce quality vaccine and veterinary services [and] local NGOs and communities to implement ND vaccination campaigns…. Impact studies have demonstrated a significant increase in village chicken flock size, and poultry consumption and sale in participating households. As women and children are frequently the owners and carers of village chickens, they benefit directly from the vaccination program. Increased village chicken production also contributes to wildlife conservation and HIV/AIDS mitigation.”

From Premier Organic Farms Corporation in the United States: “Premier’s Pod Unit is a Closed-Loop Food Tilapia Fish RAS (recirculation aquaculture system) that provides a nutrient source to grow a Vegetables & Food Production greenhouse system, which in turn filters water through root uptake; it then re-cycles purified water back into fish tanks for re-use. Rainfall is harvested to conserve water and reduce system water requirements. The Pod Unit is designed to grow organic vegetables and foodstuffs based on regional needs. The system uses approx. 70% less water than a conventional farming system, with subsequent water conservation accumulation each time the water is filtered and re-cycled through the system. The fish produce nitrogen-rich water used as the nutrient and water source for growing vegetables; the vegetable root system filters the nitrogen out of the water creating a symbiotic relationship between the two growing segments. Methane gas biofuels from excess fish effluent can be used to produce electricity to operate the system. The system is also designed for adaptation for use with solar and wind power, or can use downstream scrubbed/filtered waste energy from power plants in the form of steam and water.”

From Martindale Farm in Zambia: “Holistic Management (started by Allen Savory) came about to deal with environmental degradation but has potential to reverse global warming as well. It has been most applicable to grazing land but the principles can be applied to anything successfully.”

From Rainbow Sustainable Solutions in the Netherlands: “[One practice is] turning coconut waste into added-value products like cattle feed, fish feed, and fertilizers. Continuing R&D in the Netherlands includes the establishment of a certification system. Through a fermentation process, coconut waste is turned into cattle feed and fish feed, which makes it possible to set up cattle farms and aquaculture in coconut regions.”

Stay tuned for more updates from the survey, and please fill it out or pass it on to others who might be interested!

This is the first of a two-part series on my trip to the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

The World Agroforestry Centre is located in Nairobi, Kenya, but you wouldn’t know it from the surroundings. Located on a lush campus, thick with vegetation, it offers a quiet oasis that seems far from the city of racing matatus and pollution ubiquitous in the city.

We were there to meet with the Director General, Dr. Dennis Garrity, and his colleagues to talk about the Centre’s work and learn more about how the types of innovations they are promoting for agriculture in Africa. We also had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Roger Leakey, the former head of the Centre.

“We’re trying,” said Dr. Garrity, “to build the case that what farmers are doing with trees on farms is important.” What they’re doing is integrating trees with crops, a simple approach that can have huge benefits.

According to Dr. Leakey, “agro-forestry is an interface,” combining social, institutional, policy, and scientific approaches, making it more holistic. “All the other single approaches,” he says, “end up not working.”

One particularly innovative example Dr. Leakey talked about was a Centre project in Cameroon. There, he explained, combining agroforestry with horticulture, the processing of value-added products, and marketing has helped strengthen the community. In fact, the project has resulted in more than 30 “measurable positive impacts.” Now, for example,young men are no longer leaving the farms to find jobs in towns, because they can make a good living by continuing to farm. (See “A Pathway out of Poverty. Good News from Africa.”)

The Centre is hoping to help farmers respond to the many challenges they face—low use of agricultural inputs, degraded soils, and food insecurity among them—through what they call “Evergreen Agriculture.” Both conservation agriculture with trees—a system that uses minimal tillage practices to increase soil fertility—and maize agroforestry (the practice of growing leguminous trees along with maize that replace the need for inorganic fertilizers) have been successful in terms of raising productivity and reducing costs for farmers, but they also have their limitations.

Maize agroforestry, according to the Centre report “Creating an Evergreen Agriculture in Africa,” has improved soil health and allowed farmers to double or even triple their yields, but it’s also extremely labor intensive. Conservation agriculture, on the other hand, can reduce labor requirements and costs of preparing the land initially, but can require more time later on for weeding crops.

Evergreen agriculture would combine the best of both these approaches. Its intention, according to the Centre, “is to dramatically improve soil conditions and crop yields, while keeping labor requirements to a minimum.” Garrity acknowledges that the system is still under development and needs much more investigation, but, he says, “Our hypothesis, however,. . . is that it will increase maize yields and provide greater household food security, while significantly reducing the smallholders labor and lowering overall investment in maize production. We also have evidence that it will improve drought resilience and increase above and below ground carbon sequestration as well”– An increasingly important component of any agricultural system as the impacts of agriculture on greenhouse gases becomes more evident.

I’ll be writing more about our visit to the Centre—stay tuned for blogs about their work on rainwater harvesting, Land Care International, and more about fertilizer trees.

Milk stored in plastic bags sealed with candlewax to sell at the market.

By Abby Massey

As we’ve seen throughout Danielle’s travels, livestock is an important source of food, income, and culture for many people in sub-Saharan Africa. Livestock can also be a means of preserving local genetic diversity and a defense against climate change (see The Keepers of Genetic Diversity, Maintaining Links to Tradition in a Changing World.)

In Kenya, for example, the dairy sector alone accounts for 14 percent of the agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and smallholder farmers account for 80 percent of total marketed milk—making the ability to process dairy an essential defense against losing money on spoiled milk. Additionally, processing milk ensures access to its nutritional benefits while also reducing the risks of food borne illness.

Though it’s a top commodity, milk’s journey to the market is not an easy one, especially when the market is hours away, as most are in sub Saharan Africa. Unpasteurized milk can easily spoil by the time it gets to market, so pasteurization, which requires the milk to be heated to a specific pointthereby killing pathogenic bacteria, is key. Reducing the number of harmful bacteria means that it won’t spoil as fast, allowing for milk to make it to the market unspoiled—increasing income and consumer base.

In Nairobi, Kenya, Danielle Nierenberg met a farmer, Margaret Njeri Ndimu, who is seeing an increase in her income by selling her goats milk in plastic bags sealed with candlewax. She learned this process through a training program provided by the Mazingira Institute. This very simple means of processing her product makes it easier to manage and sell, allowing her customers to purchase small quantities of the perishable milk in portable containers.

According to Innovations for Agricultural Value Chains in Africa produced by the Meridian Institute, unpasteurized milk is more popular with consumers than pasteurized milk because of the significant cost difference. And many farmers couldn’t afford to pasteurize their milk, or even have access to facilities that could pasteurize their milk, even if they had a consumer base that could afford to purchase it.

A project implemented by the FAO and WHO promotes the use of the lactoperoxidase system (LP-s)—where an anti-bacterial compound is mixed into unpasteurized milk, allowing farmers to keep it safe for longer periods of time. With the application of the use LP-s, milk will last 5-6 days in refrigeration (+4°C or +39°F) and up to 4-7 hours at high temperatures (from 31 to 35°C or 87.8 to 95°F), allowing the farmer time to transport milk to market.

An East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project also recognizes the benefits farmers see when they gain access to improved processing and preservation of their dairy. It encourages farmers to join cooperatives (See Innovation of the Week: Farmers Groups and Cooperatives) so that instead of processing the milk alone, farmers can turn to group owned and run refrigerated milk collection centers, significantly reducing the financial burden of the process. The milk is then transported to a milk processing facility and sent to market. EADD has projects in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda that not only provide help with processing, but also training and extension.

Proper milk processing is not only important for health reasons; finding ways to preserve a product as perishable as milk makes it more marketable and increases income, improving the livelihoods for smallholder dairy farmers and their families.

Abby Massey is a Food & Agriculture intern with Nourishing the Planet.

As a North American traveling and doing research on hunger in sub-Saharan Africa, I’m often struck by the contrasts between the United States and whichever country I happen to be in. The abundance and cheapness of food in the U.S. is something, I have to admit, I miss.

In Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, where I’ve spent the last month, drought has exacerbated already high food prices, millions of livestock have starved to death, and 23 million people in the horn of Africa are at risk for starvation. But when I opened the paper on Monday, I was struck by the irony of just how similar Africans and Americans can be.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food insecurity in the United States, the richest country in the world, is at a 14-year high. Forty-nine million people in the U.S. lack what the USDA calls consistent access to adequate food. This increase of 13 million over the last year, according to the New York Times, was more dire than even the most pessimistic predictions about how the economy was impacting peoples’ daily lives.

While Americans aren’t starving because of lack of access to food, it’s troubling that poor families are cutting back on food purchases, which can have a whole range of impacts on child health. Single family homes headed by women, says USDA, are the worst off—another reminder that, just as here in Africa, women and children tend to suffer the most from poverty and food insecurity.

Meanwhile the World Food Summit is wrapping up in Rome this week and very little has been said, so far, about environmentally sustainable ways of alleviating hunger and poverty in rich and poor countries alike. As the effects of climate change become more and more evident and the global economic crisis continues, the world needs better ways of producing food that nourish both people and the planet.

It sounds like a child’s fantasy—chocolate berries, gingerbread plums, and sugar plums. But these aren’t the contents of a Christmas stocking, but some of the wild fruits of Africa that the U.S. National Research Council has recognized as important to improving food supplies and nutrition in some of the world’s poorest, most malnourished countries.

Organizations such as the World Agroforestry Centre which we had the pleasure of visiting earlier this week (stay tuned for a blog about the visit), are working with farmers to help identify indigenous fruit trees that farmers can grow along with their crops. These initiatives not only give a name to these fruits (many of which scientists didn’t know about), but also a value that wasn’t recognized previously. Although they’re often referred to as famine foods because they’re usually eaten after granaries are exhausted, many have enormous nutritional value, making them important foods year round.

Dr. Roger Leakey, former head of the World Agroforestry Centre, says in a recent article in New Scientist that unlike the Green Revolution that took place in the 1960s, this current revolution of domesticated fruit trees is not led by agribusiness, but by farmers. “Local farmers play a key role in developing and testing new varieties,” says Leakey, “and they’re the ones who stand to benefit the most.”

Because fruit trees can be grown along with other crops, they don’t require much additional work from the farmer. Trees also provide a variety of products, in addition to food, including fodder for livestock, fuel, and ingredients for medicines.

And corporations are taking notice, but in a way that likely benefits local communities. Unilever, for example, has entered into a partnership to promote the domestication of Allanblackia, a tree whose seeds contain an oil useful for cosmetics and the food industry. By providing farmers a fair price, Unilever is helping both generate income and protect biodiversity—two things that sub-Saharan Africa needs more of.

Danielle takes notes during a discussion with members of a pastoralist community in Samburu (photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

Maralal, Kenya is mostly known for its wildlife. And as we made the seven hour, bumpy trek from Nairobi—half of it on unpaved roads—we saw our fair share of water buffaloes, rhinos, impala, and giraffes. But we weren’t here to go on safari. We were here to meet with a group of pastoralists—livestock keepers who had agreed to meet with us and talk about the challenges they face (see video below).

We met in the community primary school and it was humbling to see so many people—many wearing traditional Maasai clothing, brightly woven clothe, beads, elaborate earrings—come through the door to greet us.

Although most of these people don’t have access to cable TV or even radios, they do have a good sense of the challenges their fellow livestock keepers face all over Kenya. They are aware that climate change is likely responsible for the drought plaguing much of East Africa, killing thousands of livestock over the last few months. They know that conflict with neighboring pastoral communities over water resources and access to land makes headlines in Kenya’s newspapers. And they know that many policy-makers would like to forget they exist, considering their nomadic lifestyle barbaric, as our guide Dr. Pat Lanyasunya, a member of the Africa LIFE Network, explained.

Danielle met with about twenty-five members of the pastoralist community in Samburu (photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

One of the most serious problems we heard about was the effects that replacing indigenous breeds of livestock with mixed breeds of more exotic cattle have had during the drought. These livestock keepers began replacing their indigenous Zebu cattle with mixed breeds about 15 years ago after missionaries introduced them to the community. While the new breeds were bigger and could potentially produce more meat or milk, they aren’t as hardy as native cattle that can travel long distances without much water. According to one of the community elders, the “old breeds could go 40 kilometers (for food and water) and come back,” but the new breeds can’t tolerate the distance or the heat. In the past, water sources could be much farther away and the cattle could thrive, but now they need to be much closer.

That’s one reason different pastoralist communities sometimes clash—when cattle can’t travel far for water, livestock keepers have to find it elsewhere, often at sites that are traditionally used by different communities. A man wearing a Harley-Davidson hat along with his Maasai shawl acknowledged that although they fight with other communities over resources, “they’re just like us,” trying to survive with very little support from the government or NGOs. And the conflict has not only impacted the raising of livestock, but also forced schools to close and created more internally displaced people as they are driven off the land.

What surprised me most about these livestock keepers is their understanding that the world is changing. They know that many of their children won’t live the same kind of lives that their ancestors lived for centuries. Many will choose to go to the cities, but they said if their children become ”landed,” they want them to maintain links to the pastoralist way of life. And they said that for some of them, livestock is what they do best and what they have a passion for—and that they should be allowed to continue doing it.

Dr. Lanyana and Dr. Wanyama (a member of our Nourishing the Planet Advisory Group) are working with this community and others like them to make sure their rights—and needs—aren’t ignored.

Urban Harvest farm in Kibera

This is the second of a two part series on the farmers of Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

We met Mary Matou—and a group of about 20 urban farmers—on a farm across from Kibera, a slum of nearly one million people that live on just ten hectares of land in Nairobi. Dressed in a skirt and rubber muck boots, Mrs. Matou has farmed the land here for nearly two decades. She and the other farmers—more women than men—don’t own the land where they grow spinach, kale, spider plant, squash, amaranth, and other vegetables. Instead the land is owned by the Kenyan Social Security Administration, which has allowed the farmers to farm the land through an informal arrangement; in other words, the farmers have no legal right to the land (see Urban Farming in Kibera: Land Tenure). They’ve been forced to stop farming more than once over the years, and although they’re getting harassed less frequently, they still face challenges.

About a year ago, the city forced them to stop using wastewater (sewage from an underground pipe they tapped into) to both irrigate and fertilize their crops. Although wastewater can carry a number of risks, including pathogens and contamination from heavy metals, it also provides a rich—and free—source of fertilizer to farmers who don’t have the money to buy expensive store-bought fertilizer and other inputs. And because of longer periods of drought (likely a result of climate change) in sub-Saharan Africa, the farmers didn’t have to depend on rainfall to water their crops.

Urban Harvest farm in Kibera

But even with the loss of their main water supply and nutrient sources, Mrs. Matou and the other farmers are continuing to come up with innovative ways of raising food—and incomes—on the farm.

With the help of Nancy Karanja and Mary Njenga from Urban Harvest, the farmers are not only growing food to eat and sell, but, perhaps surprisingly, becoming a source of seed for rural farmers. Kibera’s farmers have always grown fodder for livestock feed for both urban and rural farmers, but by establishing a continual source of seed for traditional African vegetables, they’re helping dispel the myth that urban agriculture only benefits poor people living in cities.

Using very small plots of land, just a quarter of an acre, and double dug beds, the farmers can raise seeds very quickly. Fast-growing varieties like amarynth and spider plant take only about three months to produce seeds, with about 3,000 Kenyan shillings in profit. And these seed plots—because they are small—take very little additional time to weed and manage.

The future for these farmers continues to be uncertain. Their land could be taken away, the drought could further jeopardize their crops, and the loss of wastewater for fertilizer could reduce production; but they continue to persevere despite these challenges thanks, in part, to the work of groups like Urban Harvest and the Mazingira Institute.

Mr. Francis Wachira Meru raises about 500 rabbits, 30 chickens, one goat, and a variety of traditional African vegetables and crops on a space smaller than most backyards in the suburban United States.

This is the final in a three-part series about our visit to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the projects they’re funding in Africa.

“You can get Coca-Cola at any store in any village in Kenya, but you have to travel 50 to 60 kilometers to get fertilizer,” says James Mutonyi, Country Director for the Agricultural Market Development Trust (AGMARK), which through CNFA has received support from AGRA to help build a system of agro-dealers in Kenya (see our post on AGRA called AGRA Sets the Record Straight)

The “low use” of inputs, says Mutonyi, is the biggest challenge agriculture faces in Africa. Farmers not only don’t have access to improved seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs, but they are, he says, “ignorant” about how to use them. But by investing in existing agro-dealers and helping train new ones, CNFA and AGMARK are hoping to reach more and more farmers. There are currently about 2,000 agro-dealers in Kenya, which they hope to more than double over the next two years. One agro-dealer, according to Mutonyi, serves about 500 farmers and because of large family sizes, the real number of people each dealer reaches can be about 20,000 people.

And, says Mutonyi, they’re “building rural enterprises that will survive beyond donor funding.” By building the private market, CNFA and AGMARK want to make Kenyans less dependent on subsidies for inputs, as well as food aid from the United States and other Western nations. They’re collaborating with the World Food Program and the biggest food millers in Africa to help ensure that African food supplies for drought- and famine-affected regions comes from African producers.

They’re also working on ways to make it easier for both agro-dealers and farmers to gain access to information through electronic platforms, such as cell phones. As a result, farmers can find out prices for both inputs and outputs without leaving the farm.

Mutonyi admits that although they’ve boasted of training hundreds of agro-dealers and farmers, they’re missing an important audience—women. Men are the ones who buy the seeds, but it’s women who are planting them and they’re not getting the information and education they need.

Ultimately, just expanding the agro-dealer program won’t be enough, according to Mutonyi. More technology is needed, he says, “right down to the farmer.” And, he says, AGRA has encouraged them to be more aware of environmental problems that can result from the overuse and misuse of agricultural inputs. “If you want to do anything for the environment,” says Mutonyi, “you need to include agro-dealers” because they’re often the first and only source of information for farmers.

Danielle with farmers, and representatives from Urban Harvest, working together to grow food in Kibera, Kenya (photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

Co-written by Abby Massey

Just last week in Kibera, Danielle saw firsthand the benefit that small-scale farmers experience by participating in cooperatives or farmers groups (Urban Farming in Kibera, Kenya: Land Tenure, Vertical Farms: Finding Creative Ways to Grow Food in Kibera).  Through a shared plot of land in the middle of the slum, forty farmers are collectively improving their income and diets, receiving training and exchanging knowledge and experience. “The human capital and brain is here, let it be used,” said Nancy Karanja of Urban Harvest, the organization behind the plot of land and other farmers groups around the world.

In Kampala, Uganda, for example, Urban Harvest supports a project called Sustainable Neighborhood in Focus (SNF).  Organizing workshops that encourage safe solid waste disposal, through sorting leftovers, biodegradables, plastics and peelings for recycling, reuse or resale – depending on the product, the project also empowers people to support policies that reduce the negative impact of urban areas on the surrounding environment.

Another  prime example of the impact farmers groups can have is in Oromia, Ethiopia, where  139 cooperatives, including about 617,700 households are involved in the production of Coffee Arabica.  These smallholder growers, processors and suppliers are all part of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (OCFCU), working since 1999 to bring fair trade, organic coffee to consumers.  Creating a product standard that consumers can trust through regulation of the final product and training, the cooperation also teaches farmers how to maximize their harvest with Intercropping, or planting other crops with the coffee.  As a result, farmers can grow food for consumption or sale in addition to coffee.

With the help of ADCI/VOCA’s Agricultural Cooperatives in Ethiopia (ACE) program, OCFCU was able to directly export their coffee instead of selling their product through the central coffee auction.  Today, because of this and their organic, fair-trade certification, they are able to get $1.41 per lb of coffee.  Since they are involved in a cooperative, everyone involved in the production process is able to get a fair price for their work and products.

Rural Innovation Systems and Networks: Findings from a Study of Ethiopian Smallholders, a case study produced by IFPRI, suggests that networks are important in such a fluid market.  Utilizing local cooperation and governmental involvement, networking will make smallholders stronger and more resistant to market changes.

Cooperatives give power to small-scale farmers, allowing them access to a larger group and a stronger voice. It is amazing that such a simple act–coming together to share information and achieve collective goals–could have such a strong impact.  But, as Nancy Karanja said to Danielle in Kibera just last week, “solutions are so simple, you just have to articulate them.”

Abby Massey is a Food & Agriculture intern with the Nourishing the Planet Project