Nourishing the Planet

Check out this interview featured in Eco-Chick about Nourishing the Planet’s on-the-ground research in Africa by Stephanie Rogers:

Photo: Bernard Pollack

If it’s true that there are sayers and there are doers, Danielle Nierenberg falls firmly into the latter camp. Danielle is currently traveling through sub-saharan Africa to highlight stories of hope and success in sustainable agriculture and blogging about it at WorldWatch.org.

A Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and co-Project Director of State of World 2011: Nourishing the Planet, Danielle is a widely cited expert in sustainable agriculture issues and the spread of factory farming. She knows better than most of us how our eating habits affect the world, and the experiences she shares on her blog will blow you away.

So of course, Danielle fits right in as an Eco Chick Heroine for the Planet! I talked to her about women in agriculture, global food issues and what we can all do to help.

SR: We were surprised to learn through your blog, Nourishing the Planet, that 80% of sub-Saharan farmers in Africa are women and that women make up the majority of farmers worldwide. What are some of the unique problems that female farmers face?

DN: Although women produce most of the food and raise most of the livestock in Africa, they rarely have access to land tenure, credit, agricultural extension services, and are under-represented in farmers groups, associations, unions. But by increasing women’s participation and representation in these groups, women and men farmers alike can work together to improve gender awareness, as well as improve their access to loans and agricultural inputs and land tenure. As a result, women are able to earn a greater income, which translates into better nutrition for their families. But womens voices often go unheard, or even ignored, and that has to change.

SR: How has your focus on sustainable agriculture influenced your own eating habits?

Photo: Bernard Pollack

DN: I’ve been a vegetarian since I was a teenager, but the more I learn about the global food system, the more interested I become in knowing where my food comes from and how it was produced. I think it’s important to put a face to your food and know not only how the animals you eat were treated, but if the farmers who raised the vegetables and other foods you eat were given a fair price for their crops and if the workers who processed and packaged the food you eat had safe working conditions and were paid a fair wage.

SR: As much as we all care about global food issues and how they affect human health and the environment, sometimes we’re not sure how to help – and sometimes, the problems of people in third-world countries can seem so far away. What can we do to contribute, even if it’s just in a small way?

DN: This is a question we’re asking as part of our Nourishing the Planet project: Why should wealthy foodies in the United States and Europe care about hunger in Africa?

The foodie community in the United States and Europe are a powerful force in pushing for organically grown and local foods in hospitals and schools, more farmers markets, and better welfare of livestock and I think that some of that energy can be harnessed to promote more diversity and resilience in the food system. Right now, the world depends on just a few crops–maize, wheat, and rice–which are vulnerable not only to price fluctuations, but the impacts of climate change. Many indigenous crops–including millet, sorghum, sweet potato, and many others–however, are not only more nutritious than monoculture crops, but also more resilient to adverse weather events and disease.

By supporting–and funding–NGOs and research institutions, such as Slow Food International, Heifer International, and the World Vegetable Center, wealthy foodies can help ensure that farmers in sub-Saharan Africa help maintain agricultural biodiversity.

SR: Did you have any moments of extreme culture shock when you first got to Africa?

DN: We started this trip in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a place most Americans associate with war and hunger because of the famines of the mid 1980s and 1990s. Even today, more than 6 million people in Ethiopia are at risk for starvation so I think I had mentally prepared myself for seeing very desperate people. Instead, though, I found farmers and NGO workers full of hope for agriculture in their country. I think that’s been my greatest surprise about the continent in general — how vibrant, entrepreneurial, friendly, positive, and alive people are here. Six months and thirteen countries later, I’m now in Antananarivo, Madagascar, feeling more hopeful than ever that things are really changing.

The trip is surprising in a lot of different ways. While we’ve seen extreme poverty and environmental degradation during our trip, we’ve also been impressed by the level of knowledge about things like hunger, climate change, HIV/AIDS and other issues from the farmers we meet. The people in many of these countries know better than anyone how to solve the problems their facing, they just need attention–and support–from the international community. In Africa, maybe more than anywhere else we’ve traveled, a little funding can go a long way (if used the right way).

SR: What’s your biggest goal for the Nourishing the Planet trip?

DN: We’ve made a point during this trip to focus on stories of hope and success in agriculture. Most of what Americans hear about Africa is famine, conflict and HIV/AIDS, and we wanted to highlight the things that are going well on the continent. There’s a lot of hope out here – a lot of individuals and organizations doing terrific work – but that doesn’t necessarily translate into them receiving resources or funding.

We hope to create a roadmap for funders and the donor community and shine a big spotlight on the projects and innovations that seem to be working, so that they can be scaled up or replicated in other places. Please check out our site and sign up for our weekly newsletter — and if you know anyone or project we should visit on the continent, please email me at dnierenberg@worldwatch.org.

Thanks Danielle, and many thanks as well to Bernard Pollack for the beautiful photos!

A farmer shares his experiences with other farmers at a workshop in Maputo, Mozambique. (Photo: Bernard Pollack)

“There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ in extension” writes Ismail Kimole, a teacher with the Kenya Institute of Organic Farming (KIOF), in the December 2009 issue of ILEIA’s magazine Farming Matters. This seemingly simple point comes up many times throughout the issue, as each of its articles take a closer look at how successful agricultural innovations can best be shared with the people who need them the most.

From multi-media presentations in classrooms to demonstration plots on neighborhood farms, what is clear is that the more personal and practical the information on any innovation is, the more likely the practice will be adopted, shared, and spread. “Social and cultural factors need to be understood and respected when trying to get farmers to adopt new practices,” writes Kimole. And farmers need to see for themselves how a new practice will be applied to their own farm, and how that new practice will directly benefit their families, if they are going to be willing to take a risk of trying something new.

In Makuyu in the district of Thika, Kenya, Kimole describes how one innovation spread from a single farmer who participated in water conservation training by KIOF to six, without the aid of any formal information sharing. After noticing that their neighbor practiced a water saving technique that saved her harvest during a severe water shortage that caused many farmers’ crops to fail, six of her neighbors, during the next rainy season, started mimicking the way she had dug holes along the crop rows. 

Another example of the potential of farmer to farmer sharing is featured in Mireille Vermeulen’s article about System of Rice Intensification (SRI). Developed in 1980 in Madagascar, SRI is now used in 36 countries by farmers growing rice on land areas ranging from .5 to 20 hectares. Although scientists still don’t agree on whether or not the technique has actually been proven to increase crop yields, farmers are seeing the benefits and adopting the practice on their own.

But the larger question still remains, if the best way to reach farmers is through their community and by example, how does one approach spreading information about innovations that work to the largest possible audience?

The Africa Rice Center has been creating short videos, using local farmers to demonstrate a particular technique on film, and then disseminating them through their website and during educational presentations. Last week Danielle Nierenberg, co-project director of Nourishing the Planet,  visited a workshop in Maputo, Mozambique organized by Prolinnova, the Spanish NGO Centro de Iniciativas para la Cooperacion/Bata, and the National Farmers Union of Mozambique (UNAC) where famers gathered to share their experiences and learn from each other about different innovations being practiced in different communities. And ILEA itself presents an opportunity to compare and analyze innovations that are working all over the world through its website, magazine, and other publications.

To contribute your own ideas and experiences, suggest other ways that farmers can share their success stories with each other, or spread information about useful innovations, leave a comment below or fill out our agriculture innovation survey.  Just as important as an innovation that nourishes people and the planet is making sure that the innovation is actually being used and shared.

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.

photo credit: Bernard Pollack

This is the first of a two-part series about pastoralist communities.

I never thought I’d be talking about livestock genetic diversity with Dr. Jacob Wanyama, someone who I’ve admired since I first started writing about livestock issues in 2002, in a food court. But there we were, eating Indian food In Nairobi’s first shopping mall, and talking about how pastoralist communities in Kenya, Uganda, and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa are mostly unrecognized by governments and not allowed in most decision-making processes. And Wanyama, as he likes to be called, should know. He’s been working for pastoralist peoples for nearly two decades, with organizations like Practical Action (formerly ITDG) and Veternaires Sans Frontiers (VSF), and is coordinator for the African LIFE Network, which works to increase rights for pastoralist communities.

Wanyama was kind enough to fly from Uganda, where he’s currently on assignment, to talk to us and to introduce us to his colleague, Dr. Pat Lanyasunya, who would accompany us on a trip to Samburu province in North Central Kenya over the weekend.

Wanyama explained to us how, over the years, pastoralists like the well-known Maasai here in Kenya have been pushed out of their traditional grazing lands to drier and drier regions, places where it was easy to ignore them. But as the effects of climate change, hunger, drought, and the loss of biodiversity become more evident, it’s increasingly hard to push livestock keepers’ rights aside. “Governments need to recognize,” says Wanyama, “that pastoralists are the best keepers of genetic diversity.” Anikole cattle, for example, a breed indigenous to Eastern Africa, are not only “beautiful to look at,” says Wanyama, but they’re one of the “highest quality” breeds of cattle because they can survive in extremely harsh, dry conditions—something that’s more important than ever as climate change takes a bigger hold on Africa.

Unfortunately, governments and agribusiness don’t share the same viewpoint. They’re increasingly promoting cross-breeding of native breed with exotic breeds—breeds that were designed to gain more weight and produce more milk. The problem is, however, that these newer breeds have hard time adapting to sub-Saharan Africa’s dry conditions, as well as the pests and diseases present here. As a result, pastoralists who adopt these breeds have to spend more on feed and inputs, like pesticides and antibiotics to keep cattle healthy.

We’ll share what we learned first-hand about these problems outside the town of Maralal in Samburu, Kenya, where we talked to a group of 25 pastoralists.