TODAY’S STUDY: THE REAL WORLD 2011

Enormously rich in natural resources, Africa is far richer in people urgently in need of food and energy -- and those needs offer a huge opportunity for New Energy entrepreneurs. That opportunity informs the report highlighted below, from Worldwatch Institute (WWI).

A two-years-in-the-making report financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it catalogues ways that innovations in information technology, New Energy and business finance can alleviate hunger, lift people out of poverty and protect the environment at a profit to entrepreneurs who deliver solutions not just to Africa but to economies throughout the underdeveloped world. That’s a pretty big market for ideas that prove workable.

From mobile phone networks that allow rural farmers access to mobile banking, information about livestock diseases and market prices, to solar drip irrigation systems that multiply rural farmers’ incomes 500%, to advanced fertilizers and herbicides that not only increase farm yeilds but make entrepreneurs out of local suppliers, the report details huge opportunities to do well by doing good.

2011 State of the World; Innovations that Nourish the Planet
Danielle Nierenberg, Brian Halweil, et. al., January 2011 (The Worldwatch Institute)

Foreword

We live in a world in which we produce more food than ever before and in which the hungry have never been as many. There is a reason for this: for too many years we have focused on increasing food availability while neglecting both the distributional impacts of food production and their long-term environmental impacts. We have succeeded, remarkably, in increasing yields. But we must now realize that we can produce more and yet fail to tackle hunger at the same time, that increases in yields—while a necessary condition for alleviating hunger and malnutrition—are not a sufficient condition, and that as we spectacularly boosted overall levels of production during the second half of the twentieth century we created the conditions for a major ecological disaster in the twenty-first century.

This thinking is part of the reason that the global fight against hunger and malnutrition has been increasingly grounded since the 1996 World Food Summit on the right to adequate food. In 2000, the United Nations established the mandate of the appointment of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, whose role is to update it on progress—or lack thereof—toward eliminating hunger. And in 2004, governments agreed to support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security. These developments are evidence of the international community’s conviction that we need to address the problem of global hunger not as one of production only but also as one of marginalization, deepening inequalities, and social injustice.

The right to food seeks to improve accountability and to ensure that governments do not mistake the challenge of combating hunger and malnutrition for the challenge of increasing yields. But accountability is also a tool to ensure that public policies will be guided by the needs of those at the bottom of the social ladder and that policies will be permanently tested and, where necessary, revised. In an increasingly complex and fast- changing world, learning becomes vital to sound public policies—learning that revises our values and presuppositions, the very paradigms under which we work and our ways of framing the problems we address.

In agricultural and food policies, three important developments make such learning not just urgent but indispensable…

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Preface

The heat wave that swept western Russia in the summer of 2010 seemed at first like a local crisis. Temperatures soared to 40 degrees Celsius or more for several weeks, making Moscow feel more like Dubai. A population that largely lacks air conditioning suffered in the sweltering temperatures. Conditions deteriorated further when the heat wave caused extensive forest fires that destroyed suburban neighborhoods and left Muscovites choking on heavy smoke for over a week. Before the calamity was over, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had taken the controls of a firefighting plane in a theatrical effort to show that the government had not lost control of the situation.

For other parts of the world, the unusual Russian weather seemed at first to be a television spectacle—until it became clear that the heat wave and accompanying drought had devastated the country’s wheat crop. Within days, Russian officials announced the suspension of wheat exports, which immediately sent world prices soaring by more than a third, with follow-on effects on corn, soybeans, and the rest of the world food market.

This second spike in world food prices in just two years was a harsh reminder of the vulnerability of a world food system striving to feed nearly 6.9 billion people amidst a host of environmental limits and an increasingly unstable world climate. The frontlines of this agricultural crisis are occupied by the world’s 925 million undernourished people—many of them children living in Africa and South Asia—who face the prospect that their lives will become even more precarious in the months ahead.

Ironically, world agriculture has in some respects been an impressive success story in recent decades. Efforts to raise crop yields by investing in new agricultural technologies and infrastructure have met many of their immediate goals. Productivity has risen steadily in major grain producers such as Australia and the United States, while large areas of Asia, including China, have succeeded in raising yields and thereby reducing rural poverty and hunger…

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1 Charting a New Path to Eliminating Hunger

Along the shoreline of the Gambia River, a group of women has achieved rare success in reducing hunger in their communities. It revolves around a certain briny mollusk. To boost their incomes and safeguard a source of nourishment, the 15 communities in the Women’s Oyster Harvesting Association—a total of nearly 6,000 people—agreed to close one tributary in their oyster territories for an entire year and to lengthen the “closed” season in other areas…

These steps were difficult in the short term. But by the following season the oysters were bigger, and so was the price they commanded. Customers, primarily other local merchants or women who want to make fried oysters for their families as a protein-filled treat, have so far been willing to pay a little bit more. Meanwhile, the harvesters—many of them immigrants from surrounding nations and the poorest of the poor in The Gambia—are also putting on plays about mangrove restoration and building hatcheries to further boost the wild stocks, as well as eyeing upscale markets in hotels and restaurants that cater to tourists…

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2 Moving Ecoagriculture into the Mainstream

David Kuria points out with pride the new features of the Lari landscape in Kenya. A decade ago, he and the Kijabe Environmental Volunteers, a local group, began mobilizing farmers to protect and restore the threatened, high-biodiversity forests and watersheds in this densely populated area. Now the forest and wildlife are thriving, and the farmers are benefiting too—from healthier soils, higher crop yields, well-fed livestock, and new markets…

A growing enthusiasm for such ecosystemfriendly, locally adapted agricultural systems is sparking widespread innovation—and in some cases large-scale expansion—throughout Africa and around the world. Part of the motivation is the need to restore dynamic rural livelihoods and communities where agriculture’s roles beyond production are also valued. There is also growing concern about extensive soil and water degradation due to current agricultural practices. And wild plant and animal species are under threat both from the expansion of cropland into natural forests, savannas, and wetlands and from the push to increase yields in ways that damage ecosystems. In a warming world, agricultural systems and communities will need to adapt to abrupt and sometimes extreme changes in temperature and precipitation and to the higher cost of fertilizers from fossil fuels. And farmers will be called on to help mitigate the effects of climate change by sequestering more carbon in plants and soils,,,

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3 The Nutritional and Economic Potential of Vegetables

Six decades ago, the world’s food supply increased dramatically thanks to the development of more productive varieties of wheat and rice by Dr. Norman Borlaug and others. These were better adapted to cultivation, responded better to fertilizers, and allocated more of the soil resources to the edible fraction of the crops. Plant breeders and geneticists changed the genetic makeup of the crops to make them less vulnerable to diseases and other problems. These achievements occurred primarily in Asia and Latin America, two of the most populated regions of the world, but the effects have been felt throughout the world and have inspired hundreds of agricultural scientists working on other staple crops…

Replicating this Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa, where the world’s poorest and fastest-growing populations live, has proved challenging, however. One reason is that the region often lacks the necessary supporting infrastructure. Another is insufficient understanding of the local nature of agricultural development. People’s attitudes toward new opportunities are driven first by their food choices and second by affordable access to yield-boosting technologies, including improved crop varieties…

Nevertheless, new approaches are now improving the prospects for sub-Saharan Africa’s food supply. But while staples such as rice, maize, wheat, and cassava have been the focus of much research and investment, an abundance of these crops will only amount to a “Grain Revolution” if the vegetables required to balance the diet are not equally abundant. The staples are traditionally consumed with vegetables in the region, and a “Revolution of Greens” is consequently necessary as well…

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4 Getting More Crop per Drop

Every farmer needs the right mix of sunshine, soil, seeds, nutrients, and water to work the magic on the land that is agriculture. The Green Revolution of recent decades brought the last three of these ingredients to millions of farmers and vast areas of the world’s cropland. The combination of high-yielding seed varieties, fertilizer, and a doubling of world irrigated area led to a near tripling of the global grain harvest since 1960. By lifting the productivity of millions of hectares of cropland, this revolution not only enabled grain harvests to rise along with population, it spared substantial areas of forest and grassland from the plow.

For all its benefits, however, the Green Revolution also came with some downsides. Among them is that it demanded vast quantities of water. Today, 70 percent of all the water withdrawn from rivers, lakes, and underground aquifers goes to irrigation. In many of the most important food-producing regions of China, India, Pakistan, and elsewhere, the use of water surpasses sustainable levels. Rivers are running dry, water tables are falling, lakes are shrinking, and wetlands are disappearing. Adding to these pressures on water, expanding cities and industries are now in keen competition with agriculture for finite supplies of water…

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5 Farmers Take the Lead in Research and Development

Smallholder farmers in Africa, like those the world over, are relentless experimenters. On their own, without any external support, they have always created and tested possible solutions to the challenges they face. “I have been experimenting all along, as my father used to do,” said Eddy Ouko, a Kenyan farmer. Building on this innovative capacity and encouraging farmers to drive the development of locally appropriate technologies are the keys to addressing the challenges that smallholders face…

In Potshini in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, a farmer heard by chance about a new method of growing potatoes that involved burying the seed potatoes under a layer of mulch instead of beneath soil. He experimented with different materials for mulch and different depths of it in his attempts to obtain a satisfactory yield with much less work. Similarly, in Eastern Tigray in Ethiopia, farmers noticed a plant that had been unintentionally introduced in sacks of grain brought into the area as food aid, and they explored how the new plant could be used. After informal trial-and-error experiments, they found that a solution made from its leaves kills ticks on livestock…

6 Africa’s Soil Fertility Crisis and the Coming Famine…7 Safeguarding Local Food Biodiversity…8 Coping with Climate Change and Building Resilience…9 Post-Harvest Losses: A Neglected Field…10 Feeding the Cities…11 Harnessing the Knowledge and Skills of Women Farmers…12 Investing in Africa’s Land: Crisis and Opportunity…13 The Missing Links: Going Beyond Production…14 Improving Food Production from Livestock…

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15 A Road Map for Nourishing the Planet

Throughout this book, we have discussed the diversity of innovations that exist to help alleviate hunger and poverty in the places where these problems are most acute. From participatory plant breeding techniques and rainwater harvesting to making sure that crops do not spoil before they get to market, the chapters have highlighted ways to nourish both people and the planet.

These on-the-ground innovations, however, do not exist in a vacuum. They depend on other innovations—including innovations that help us understand the connections between all parts of the food system; innovations that guide us in evaluating how well a particular practice or policy work; and innovations in institutional, governance, and policy reform that protect farmers, food sovereignty, and the fundamental human right to food. The experts we have gathered for this final chapter include some of the world’s leading thinkers, scientists, and advocates in agricultural development…

Innovations in Institutions to Support People and the Planet

We find ourselves poised today on the threshold of the potential collapse of vital ecosystem functions on which people and the planet depend. At the same time, we are seeing intolerable levels of poverty, with nearly 1 billion people going hungry every day as a result. With agriculture facing converging global crises of climate change, water scarcity, and diminishing fossil fuel supplies, alongside severe social and economic crises on the farm and an epidemic of land grabs, a rapid and decisive reorientation toward ecological sustainability and equity is imperative…

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Innovations in Governance

Agriculture is the world’s largest industry, employing more than 1 billion people and generating at least a trillion dollars’ worth of food annually. Yet nearly a billion people remain hungry, even while agriculture’s destructive impacts on climate and biodiversity continue to expand…

A humanitarian and ecological crisis of this proportion necessitates a questioning of the current industrial agricultural system. In 2008 an alarming increase in the number of hungry people triggered numerous high-level conferences on food security. Lofty commitments and pledges were made promising aid and change. Two years later, not much has changed. The problem lies in this key fallacy: World hunger continues to be framed as a crisis of supply and demand that should be addressed mainly by improving agricultural output and development. This has resulted in undue emphasis on technological solutions such as genetic engineering and increased use of chemical inputs to boost production, while ignoring issues of governance and accountability related to aid commitments, public spending, public/private partnerships, and policy recommendations of international financial institutions and donor countries…

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Innovations in Policy Reform

The remarkable news is that after years of neglect, governments are reinvesting in agriculture and giving priority to small-scale producers.

They are recognizing the important role of women, infrastructure, safety nets, and local markets, and they are rightfully reviewing ways to improve emergency food assistance, financial markets, and market linkages. They are claiming support for a stronger United Nations and for more coordinated and effective responses to the food crisis. All of this holds great potential for eradicating hunger…