Photo Credit: J.M. Garg

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

You may know it as that pretty ornamental flower in your garden, but did you know that Celosia could also be a delicious snack? This beautiful plant with flame-like flowers is actually a common and important food in parts of tropical Africa, its original home

Because of its flavor and nutritional value, Celosia is widely consumed in several parts of Africa. It is an especially important food in Nigeria, Benin and Congo because of its affinity for hot and humid climates, and it is also commonly eaten in Indonesia and India. The leaves, young stems, and flowers a can be made into soups and stews, served as a nutty-flavored side dish with meat or fish or with a cereal-based main course such as maize porridge. Celosia has a pleasant, mild flavor, and lacks the bitterness of other leafy vegetables.

Celosia grow easily, require little care, and often reseed themselves making them high yielding, cheap and simple to grow. Having proven widely tolerant to both tropical and dry conditions and usually unaffected by pests, diseases, or soil type, this crop is among the most flexible greens for harsh growing conditions.

In addition to their nutritional and aesthetic value, Celosia may also help repress striga, a parasitic weed which devastates other crops such as sorghum, millet and maize. Though the research on this trait is still far from clear, farmers call it “striga chaser”.

With the potential to increase food security, Celosia is valuable in more ways than one. When cultivated near homes, the colorful flowers will brighten villages and local cooks can also pluck off some leaves each day to add to dinner or for a snack.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

As climate change worsens, and fresh water availability grows more erratic, the food security of small-scale farmers throughout Africa will increasingly depend on their water management abilities. Luckily, the tools for improving water management already exist.  But, as a recent report from the Rockefeller Foundation notes, the key to getting these tools to the people who need them the most will be making sure that the funding, donor, and policy-making community understands what they are and why they need more support.

As climate change worsens, and fresh water availability grows more erratic, the food security of small-scale farmers throughout Africa will increasingly depend on their water management abilities.(Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

There are many examples of simple and inexpensive ways of improving water management for small-scale farmers and the report highlights a number of them. Increased investment in small holder irrigation, for example, creates greater diversity of water source options, such as small streams, shallow wells, boreholes, and rainwater storage, and gives farmers and small communities’ autonomy over their water sources. Low technology irrigation methods are also cost-efficient, such as surface irrigation systems like furrows and small basins, pressurized systems such as sprinklers and drip, and water lifting technologies which can be driven by gravity, manual labor, and motorized pumps.

On the ground, there are countless groups working to help farmers improve water management techniques and gain access to improved water management technologies. Many of these organizations will be highlighted in State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet as deserving of more resources and funding from the donor and policy making community in order to alleviate global hunger and poverty.

In Accra, Ghana the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a non-profit organization working in Asia and Africa to improve water and land management for farmers and the environment, received funding  from several groups, including the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) initiative Challenge Program for Water and Food, to work with urban farmers in Ghana to develop improved farm wastewater management. Because of lack of alternate options, farmers often use wastewater to irrigate their crops and clean their vegetables. But IWMI is working to help these farmers clean the water they have, as well as conserve it, improving sanitation, crop yields and livelihoods.

In Zambia, International Development Enterprises (IDE), an organization working to improve the livelihoods of farmers in Asia and Africa through improved agricultural technology and market access, is helping families improve their livelihoods, eat balanced meals, and afford education for their children with a single technology: a treadle pump. The pump makes irrigating larger pieces of land easier and improves crop yields, allowing farmers to diversify and increase their harvest, and increasing a surplus that can be sold at local markets for a profit. (See also: Access to Water Improves Quality of Life for Women and Children)

And in Ethiopia, a farmer-priest named Kes Malede Abreha was able to develop a water management system on his farm with the help of funding from the global, NGO-initiated organization, Prolinnova. His system has allowed his family to move from a one room house to a larger home where he is now able to grow a diversity of crops, and raise, chickens, cattle goats, and bees.  (See also: Persistently Innovative: One Farmer Teaches by Example)

He is also showing farmers in the community how small investments in technology, like those outlined in the Rockefeller report, can go a long way to improving a family’s quality of life.

To read more about innovations that improve small-scale farmer water management see: Getting Water to Crops, Water Harvesting, Slow and Steady Irrigation Wins the Race, and Weathering the Famine.

In this regular series, crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet, we profile African indigenous crops that can improve food security and protect the environment.

In dry areas, the baobab’s large, hollow stem holds a valuable water resource, as it can store as much as 10,000 liters of water for many months. (Photo credit: http://www.lightomega.org)

The basic needs for human survival include food, water and shelter. Baobab, a tree indigenous to the semi arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa can provide all three, and more. Baobabs can be found in areas from the Senegal coast to northern South Africa, and Madagascar, where seven out of the eight species occur.

The baobab’s leaves, fruit and seeds are all edible. In West African countries, including Ghana and Burkina Faso, leaves are commonly ground up and used in soups, and for condiments and sauces served with yam, cassava, maize, millet and sorghum. The leaves are high in protein and contain a wide spectrum of essential amino acids. They are high in lysine, which is often missing in the daily diets of poor populations who consume mostly cereals and tubers, and little meat. As these leaves are also high in vitamin A, frequent consumption should be encouraged in pregnant women and children as it can help prevent blindness and birth defects resulting from vitamin A deficiency.

The baobab’s fruit, known as “monkey bread,” can be used to make flour or stirred into drinks or porridges. Its pulp has ten times the vitamin C of an orange, which explains the tart flavor. It is often beaten into pancakes and dried in the sun. The kernels of baobab seeds, with a taste similar to almonds, can be roasted and made into creamy butter. Due to their long shelf-life, and high energy and protein content, both of these can be important food sources in times of low crop yields and natural disaster.

Beyond its uses as a staple food, other parts of the tree such as its bark are used as cooking fuel for stoves, pottery kilns and ovens. In dry areas, the baobab’s large, hollow stem holds a valuable water resource, as it can store as much as 10,000 liters of water for many months.

Local populations often build shelter and keep livestock inside of baobabs’ trunks. In Australia, where the only species outside of Africa originates, there is even a prison built inside a baobab trunk.

While the baobab can act as a reliable provider for sub-Saharan Africa’s malnourished populations, some particular species require special care and protection. Poor land management and deforestation has left the Giant Madagascar baobab, widely honored as the dwelling place of spirits and known locally as renala (Mother of the Forest), scattered in degraded lands. It is classified as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Some people are reluctant to grow baobab due to cultural taboos and its slow seedling process. But several villages in Niger have been producing seedlings in nurseries since the 60s. Once mature, baobab is resilient and almost “immortal.” Results from carbon dating found some baobab species to be over 2000 years old. Nutrition and poverty relief programs should explore more widely the tree’s potential role in improving food security for generations ahead.

To learn more about sub-Saharan Africa’s indigenous food crops, read Native African Vegetables Could Help Solve Food Crises, Traditional Food Crops Provide Community Resilience in Face of Climate Change, Kenyan Professor Promotes Indigenous Food to Solve Climate Change Food Crisis, Amaranth: Food Production Without Attention, African Eggplant: The Fruit that is Enjoyed as a Vegetable, Pigeonpea: A Little Crop That’s Come a Long Way and Many Good Reasons to Grow Teff.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

On July 29^th of this year the Ford Foundation announced a new, five-year and $85 million initiative to address climate change through the inclusion and empowerment of rural and indigenous people. In the first part of this two-part interview we are speaking with David Kaimowitz ,director of Sustainable Development at the Ford Foundation and its natural resource and climate work, about the reasoning and goals behind the Foundation’s new initiative.

(Photo credit: University of Wisconsin)

To help develop its new initiative, the Ford Foundation referenced studies on community rights to forest lands by the Rights and Resources Initiative, a coalition of research, conservation and development organizations. According to these studies, forest areas suffer disproportionately from conflicts, humanitarian crises and corruption. What is it about forest areas that make them, in many cases, some of the most disputed and poverty stricken?

The remaining forests in developing countries tend to be in remote areas with limited government presence and poorly developed property rights that have a large proportion of ethnic minorities. The forests are still there because historically governments and the dominant ethnic groups were not interested enough in those areas to firmly establish themselves there and clear the forest for agriculture and other uses. When changes in policies, markets, technologies, or other factors lead outside companies and settlers to become interested in these areas for their land, timber, minerals, petroleum, hydroelectric potential, biodiversity, or carbon stocks that often leads to conflict. Lack of access to government services and markets, ethnic discrimination, and soils poorly suited for agriculture are among the main causes of widespread poverty in these regions.

Can you discuss the relationship between the issues of agriculture, human rights, food security and climate change that can be addressed through improved land tenure systems in forest areas?

Providing local inhabitants of forested regions clear rights over their natural resources can limit human rights abuses by logging, mining, petroleum, ranching, and plantation companies. It can also give them greater political clout, which can help them to defend themselves against human rights abuses. Several studies from Brazil and Mesoamerica have shown that providing secure rights over forests to Indigenous Peoples and community forestry groups has been at least as effective as protected areas at conserving forests, and hence reducing Green House Gas emissions from deforestation that contribute to climate change. In some countries loss of access to natural resources has been one of the main causes of loss of stable access to food, particularly when people are displaced by violent conflicts. Displaced peoples in many countries urgently need secure access to land and forest to farm and collect forest products for their use.

What is the “myth of the empty wilderness?”  Can you discuss how preserving large swaths of forest is not as simple as putting up public protected areas?

People that live in urban areas tend to think of forests as places where no one lives. In fact hundreds of millions of people live in heavily forested regions, and many more depend on natural forest vegetation and wildlife for their fuelwood, medicinal plants, wild meat, construction materials, fodder, fertilizers, and other basic needs. It would be neither ethical nor practical to simply deny all of these people access to the forests they depend on. Governments, NGOs, universities and other groups must recognize that these people have a right to live in dignity and control the natural resources they have traditionally managed and need to work with local communities to encourage them to manage their resources as sustainably as possible.

How can local communities be integrated into conservation efforts?

In some parts of world communities’ cultures already favor conservation. For example, many African and Asian peoples have forests they consider sacred, which they leave untouched. Many hunters and fishers practice norms that ensure that they species they rely on can reproduce. Indeed, many Indigenous Peoples and other forest dwellers have successfully co-existed with their forested surrounding for long periods of time. This is by no means universal, and population growth, cultural changes, and the growing power of market forces may weaken the institutions and practices that traditionally protected the ecosystem, but in many cases it provides a base to work from. Governments and Non-Governmental Organizations can strengthen communities’ efforts to conserve their natural resources by helping them to defend their territories against incursion by outside groups that seek to use those resources to earn short-term profits.

Please explain the relationship between the threat of infectious diseases and land-use?

Forest clearing and fragmentation affect the populations of mosquitoes, flies, bats, rodents, and other vectors that spread disease, and migration of people into forested areas affects their exposure to these vectors. This has been shown to affect the prevalence of malaria, yellow fever, leishmaniasis, river blindness, and chagas, among other diseases. However, one cannot simply say that less forest will mean more disease. In some cases it is the opposite.

Regular contact between wild animals and hunters in forested areas can also be a major source of new zoonotic diseases. Many diseases spread from wild animals to people through hunting, and increased mobility and trade can help them spread faster and farther. This applies to well-known cases such as HIV-AIDs, SARs, and Ebola, as well as many lesser known cases, and probably many diseases that have yet to appear.

Can you discuss the unique relationship between women’s rights and quality of life, and land tenure and forest management?

Since natural resources, and specifically land and forest, are the most important asset in many rural areas access to them, or lack of it, greatly determines a person’s wealth, vulnerability, health, and independence. Women’s role in rural societies varies greatly, as does their access to land and forest. In most African countries women do most of the agricultural work, whereas in other regions that is largely considered man’s work. In many societies women collect most of the fuelwood, medicinal plants, and materials for making handicrafts. Nonetheless, women are often marginalized from the decision-making processes about their resources, and their needs and opinions are often not taken into account. If women lack rights over natural resources they are particularly vulnerable in situations where many of the men die of HIV-AIDS or other diseases, migrate for work, or are displaced by conflict. For all those reasons there is an urgent need to give women rights over land and forest.

What is the significance of emphasizing local governance of forested areas? How are governments and communities working to clarify land access laws and regulations?

In many developing countries (and even some developed ones) national governments find it extremely difficult to control what goes on in forested areas. Most are remote and relatively inaccessible. The governments have very limited resources to devote to managing forests and it is easy for isolated groups of forested guards or park guards to be bought off by groups that want to exploit the natural resources. Local governance of forested areas ensures that more decisions will be made by groups that live closer to the forest and can monitor them better. Often these systems work best when national governments give communities the power to use their natural resources, on the condition that they use them sustainably. This is not a panacea, however, there are many cases around the world of Indigenous groups and other forest communities that manage their forests sustainably – or at least more sustainably than other groups have done. Thus, for example, there is less deforestation in the Indigenous Territories in the Brazilian Amazon than in many of the national parks there and many degraded forests have regenerated in India and Nepal after the government gave local communities greater control over those resources.

Stay tuned for part-two of this interview series in the coming days.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

CNFA provides farmers with the training and tools to turn their farms into businesses. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

Before Kenya’s independence, the Migori District’s economy was driven by the Macalder Mining Company, the area’s largest employer. When the company shut down in 1966, it left behind a lot of abandoned land—and a lot of unemployed miners. These miners, some of whom bought up land from the closed-mining company, continued, for the most part, to mine for gold. But the work became increasingly dangerous as gold deposits shrunk over time and miners were forced to go deep into abandoned mines to look for what little gold was left.

Many of the miners were poor in gold but rich in land. Yet, without proper training and an appreciation for the business potential of farming, they continued to return to the empty mines despite dwindling profits.

In 2007, CNFA, a non-profit organization that emphasizes access to the private sector as a means of improving livelihoods and creating economic growth, and its Kenya affiliate, Agriculture Market Development Trust (AGMARK), set out to help miners develop new skills and improve their livelihoods.

CNFA provided improved seeds and fertilizers, as well as training in new methods of farming. CNFA also connected farmers with input suppliers and markets for their produce. The organization connected one former-miner-turned-farmer, James Adiang, with the Ministry of Agriculture which advised him to start growing tomatoes, watermelon, kale, butternuts, beans, soya beans, green grains, banana and potatoes. In just over two years’ time, James was able to purchase more land and livestock, as well as take up bee keeping.

“I became a gold miner on a full-time basis for over 10 years, and frankly speaking, it was like chasing after the wind because there was nothing I could show off,” James said in a CNFA case study. “Occasionally I used to get some unrefined gold particles which I sold to gold agents or brokers at a price of between Ksh. 150 to 500. The hope of some day digging big pieces of gold and instantaneously become rich is what kept me coming back and digging for all those years.

Now James sees the promise of financial security in agriculture. And he is sharing his new knowledge with the community. He has hosted CNFA-facilitated field days and demonstrations on his farm and hopes to use the business training he’s received to become an agrodealer, providing farm inputs and information for the local area.

James hopes that he can help his “community through education and demonstration to embrace agriculture as a better and sustainable alternative [to gold mining to improve] livelihood, food security and household income.”

To read more about how access to farmer training, tools and a market can improve livelihoods, see: Bringing Inputs to Farmers, ECOVA MALI: Building Home Grown Knowledge, New Frontier Farmers and Processor Group: Reviving Farmland and Improving Livelihoods, The Abooman Women’s Group: Working together to Improve Livelihoods, It’s All About the Process and Turning the Catch of the Day into Improved Livelihoods.

Waterleaf is a common food crop Yao’s home country, Togo, in West Africa. (Photo credit: Molly Theobald)

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In the main section of the Lederer Youth Garden in northeast Washington D.C., run by the DC Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), a staff member pulled up a weed from the rows of ochre, peppers, and watermelons. “This will sell for 3 dollars a bunch at the farmers market,” he said. “But here in our garden, we consider it a weed.”

Looking on, Yao Afantchao, who works with the University of the District of Columbia’s (UDC) cooperative extension service and its agricultural experimentation service, smiled and shook his head. On just the other side of the Lederer Garden’s green house, the small demonstration garden he manages boasts an entire section dedicated to growing this weed. It’s called water leaf and it is a common food crop Yao’s home country, Togo, in West Africa.

Through his work with UDC, Yao is helping to introduce farmers in the greater DC area to water leaf and other plants like it, as well as providing the local immigrant community with a source for all the vegetables they miss from home.

When he first moved to the United States, Yao says, it was hard to find the food ingredients he was used to cooking with back home. “It was hard to find the ingredients at all,” he said, “let alone fresh ingredients.” Yao realized that he couldn’t be the only immigrant in DC looking for a taste of home. And local DC farmers, he believed, could benefit from serving this untapped market for indigenous African vegetables.

At first, Yao says, it was an uphill battle to convince farmers to grow these crops. But after the tobacco buyout in 2004, many former tobacco farmers in southern Maryland were looking for a new cash crop. Yao was confident that some of the best new cash crops were ones from his home—ones that most of the tobacco farmers had never heard about before. Now, these same farmers can’t seem to grow enough of vegetables with names like Sawa Sawa, Gilo, garden eggs, and Gboma to sell at local farmers markets and ethnic grocery stores.

Another benefit of these “new crops,” as Yao calls them, is that they bring together groups of people who would otherwise never interact. One farm he works with sells pick your OWN vegetables and families from all over the world who have moved to the area come to pick food together. It’s a learning experience for everyone. Yao was surprised to learn that some of his favorite foods from his home are also the favorite foods of Egyptians and Liberians, and they all have learned new ways to prepare those foods from each other. One farmer in Maryland was surprised to learn that with his new customers he can make more selling the leaves of sweet potatoes than the tubers. And when families come to pick vegetables from the farm, children learn to appreciate “fresh foods and healthy eating habits,” says Yao.

“It’s really about bringing communities together,” says Yao. “That is the real value in growing and sharing these crops.”

To read more about the benefits of growing indigenous African vegetables, and of connecting farmers to markets, see: Malawi’s Real Miracle, Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops, Breeding Vegetables with Farmers in Mind, Listening to Farmers, Keeping Weeds for Nutrition and Taste, In Eastern and Southern Africa, Improving Trade and Identifying Investment Opportunities, Creating Game Plans for Investment and Policy to Improve Food Security, To Improve Competitiveness of Rural Businesses, Linking Farmers to the Private Sector, A Sustainable Calling Plan, and Working to Connect Farmers, Researchers, and Policy Makers in Africa.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In part two of this two-part interview, Co-Coordinator of La Via Campesina’s North America region Dena Hoff talks about the different players in our global food system, and why we each of us needs to be an activist. To read part one, see La Via Campesina: Fighting for Food Sovereignty, Social Justice, Land Rights, and Gender Equity.

How does global agriculture and trade policy affect the environment, global hunger, and poverty?

We had all the hype about how industrial agriculture was going to end hunger, how GMOs were going to end hunger, and look what’s happened. There’s a billion hungry people, almost a half a million of those are in the United States. Hunger is increasing, poverty is increasing, and all of the industrialization hasn’t done one single thing to end hunger, and we’ve been destroying the environment. So the solution actually turned out to be very, very damaging – far more damaging than the problems that we had before industrial agriculture was proposed as the solution to hunger and the environment.

Look at the deforestation for biofuels in Brazil, the destruction of traditional agriculture in Indonesia in favor of palm plantations for biofuels. Shoving people off the land and forcing them to the cities where there are no livelihoods is not the solution. Or forcing them to become slaves as is happening all over the world. We like to think that we’re in the twenty-first century, and slavery is something of the past: it isn’t. It’s worse. It’s getting worse every day. There are so many examples of people being forced into slavery, literally having their livelihoods taken away from them because somebody else wants to make a profit off of the resources that they made a modest living with. And then if they wish to survive they can become practically slave labor for these people who just took away their livelihood. So if that’s not slavery, I don’t know what the definition is.

Why are large scale land acquisitions, or land-grabs, problematic?

It’s problematic because there are a lot of places where land is owned communally, or there’s not a deed to the land, and it’s just land that communities have made their living with, in some places for over 1000 years, maybe more. And suddenly, this has a value beyond somebody’s livelihood, beyond somebody having to have food and shelter. And someone finds out they can make a profit, and they come in and take it.

Now in the case of Mali, Mali has put food sovereignty in their constitution – and then their President leases large amounts of arable land to the Saudis, for ten years. That’s totally against the constitution, it’s totally illegal, but there doesn’t seem to be a national or international mechanism to force governments to abide by their own laws and their own constitution. It just seems like increasingly the world is a more lawless place, where anything goes if it makes money.

What policies or programs are needed for more robust protection of land rights and land reform?

Well, first of all I wish the international court would actually take a look at what’s happening in countries where a lot of land grabbing is going on, and tell governments that this is not acceptable, and that you are being held up to international public scrutiny, and we’re not going to allow you to do this. Ultimately I guess it’s just the people having to take control. And that’s difficult, especially in governments where they just send the army in to kill you if you protest.

Do you think there’s any role for multinational corporations to play in improving the situation for farmers and peasants here and across the world?

I’m not sure that’s the role they want. Their mission is their bottom line, to pay dividends to their investors. Their mission is not to do good. Their mission is not to protect the environment or nurture societies. They’re doing what they’re set up to do, and they’ve been given far too many rights and too much power. I mean, equal protection under the law for a corporation? A friend of mine who was inside used to say, “What kind of craziness is that?” Corporations have no soul to save and no ass to kick and they are totally unaccountable to anyone.

What happens when they do something ugly that causes people to lose their lives? If I would do something accidentally like kill someone in a traffic accident, that would be manslaughter, I would be brought up on charges, I would have to suffer the consequences. You don’t really hear about anyone in a corporation having to take responsibility for the lives they cause to be lost through their greed and negligence. They have the same protection as any individual, but I guess they don’t have the same responsibility.

How could agencies like the World Bank and UN Food and Agriculture Organization do a better job to support La Via Campesina’s mission?

They could do a better job by ensuring that people in countries that need food aid have access to means of production so that they can feed themselves, and not rely on charity. To make them self-reliant. Education, condemning the privatization of water, health care – the poorest people don’t get those basic things and they don’t get basic services, because they simply can’t pay. And all this hype about corporations being able to produce more – producing more is not the answer. You can go to the markets in the poorest countries and you can see mountains of food, and people starving to death right nearby. If they have no means to a livelihood, they have no means to feed themselves, and no means to make a living, then they can’t buy food. There can be all the extra food in the world, but if they don’t have money, they die.

How can people get involved to help La Via Campesina’s efforts?

We always need people to hook up with our organizations in all of our countries, and support legislation in those countries that will turn governments around – so that they do the right thing for civil society and are not totally governed by corporations. We have six organizations in the U.S. that belong to Via Campesina. And we’re always looking for people who can help with translation.

We want people to take an interest in the policies of their own countries, in the plight of family agriculture, family fishermen, migrant workers and landless workers, and get educated about what these people face. And also how it impacts you! Because even if you think you are isolated and insulated from all the trouble that’s happening, it impacts everybody because everybody eats. Everybody eats!

If there are only huge massive plantations producing our food with basically slave labor, if workers have no rights, and the environment is just sneered at (because no-one enforces environmental laws), if human rights are not protected, and people are allowed to be brought into the country illegally or otherwise and then just dumped if they’re injured or hurt, and are not well paid – that does not reflect very well on us as a society or as people. Especially people that like to call themselves “good Christians”, and think that anybody who doesn’t look just like them should be shipped out, or denied services. That they shouldn’t be allowed to eat, that they shouldn’t have health care, that they shouldn’t be allowed to be educated because they “don’t belong.”

My family came as immigrants from Europe, and they had things to overcome too. I think people in this country should realize that unless you’re a Native American, you’re an immigrant – and [they should] identify with the new immigrants.

So much of La Via Campesina’s work is about mobilizing people. What agricultural or economic policies do you think could be implemented to address the needs of small-scale farmers and agricultural producers in order to help create the change you envision?

Certainly a decent farm bill with a farmer-owned reserve, and a farm bill that actually gives farmers a price so that they can live and support their communities. Because it isn’t just about farmers –I mean, the money they make supports a whole entire community, our states. And I think people need to understand the importance of agriculture to this country, and what happens to countries that let their agriculture go, and depend on importing all their food from somewhere else. There are plenty of examples in the world of countries that can no longer feed themselves because somebody decided it was cheaper or more intelligent to buy all their food from somebody else, and concentrate on economies that don’t feed people, and concentrate the wealth into the hands of just a very few.

Final thoughts:

Everybody has to become an activist, even if it’s just educating themselves. Even if it’s just making a phone call or planting a garden, or looking around and seeing if your neighbors are one of the one-in-eight people who are hungry. Be aware of what’s going on around you!

To read more about workers in our global food system, see: Giving Farm Workers a Voice, Depending on A Global Workforce, and Giving Farmworkers a Seat at the Negotiating Table.

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Between the years of 1975 – 1976, the Cambodian farmer, Name Name, like most farmers in the country during that time, grew vegetables and rice to feed the soldiers of the Lon Nol regime.

Using his bare hands, Name mixed the chemicals DDT, Folidol, Phostrin and Kontrin in order to keep the pests away from his crops. As a result, he suffered from strange and uncomfortable physical symptoms. Sometimes he was unable to move or feel his hands and lower arms, and he experienced pain in his lungs and heart. His short term memory was also affected. All of these symptoms often persisted for up to six months after exposure to the chemicals.

When the regime ended, Name went back to farming for himself and his family, and decided that he would do so without the use of any of the harmful chemical fertilizers that he realized are so dangerous to his health.

With training from organizations supported by the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its Regional Vegetable IPM Program in Asia — in addition to some of his own research — Name learned how to prepare botanical insecticides and organic composts from animal wastes and other materials already available on his farm. Now he is now able to avoid expensive and dangerous insecticides almost completely.

This alternative approach is called Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and it combines various strategies and practices to grow healthy crops, reduce damage from pests and minimize the use of artificial inputs. The FAO Regional IPM Program uses informal farmer training schools, facilitated by extension staff or other local farmers, to help train and implement field experiments. Local farmers learn new techniques from each other — as well as develop their own methods through facilitated field experiments — to minimize the use of chemical inputs on their farm.

In addition to raising animals and growing vegetables and rice, Name also produces several varieties of mushrooms organically which he sells at local markets. Though he does not yet receive a higher price for his organic produce, his crops are marketed to an increasingly conscious consumer base as being chemical free. And Name hopes that as awareness about the dangers of many chemical fertilizers increases, so will the value of his crops.

For now, he is happy to be producing enough food to feed his family and earn a significant portion of their income, without endangering his own health, or the health of those that enjoy his crops.

To read more about how farmers can reduce the financial – as well as environmental and health — costs of chemical inputs, see: and For Pest Control, Following Nature’s Lead, Tiny Bugs to Solve Big Pest Problem, In Botswana, Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture and Wildlife Conservation, Malawi’s Real Miracle, Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops, and Finding ‘Abundance’ in What is Local.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty. She has already traveled to over 19 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Gabon next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates. Please don’t hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

For many farmers, an abundant harvest is only the first step toward feeding their families and earning an income. Vegetables ripening in the field—or even harvested and stored nearby—are still a long way from the market where they can be sold for a profit.

One farmer in Sudan’s Kebkabyia province, Abdall Omer Saeedo, has to travel 10 kilometers twice a week to the nearest market to sell his vegetables and green fodder. Without a cart, truck, or other means of transporting a large amount of goods efficiently, he couldn’t make enough money to cover his production and packing costs, let alone the cost of seeds for the next season, education for his children, and other household needs. And after making it to market with his 10 sacks and five bags of produce on the back of his donkey, he was still at risk for loss if he wasn’t able to sell it all. Instead of dealing with the hassle of trying to pack it back home again, he would throw away whatever wasn’t sold.

Saeedo sought the help of Practical Action, a development non-profit that uses technology to help people gain access to basic services like clean water and sanitation in order to improve food production and incomes (see Beating the Heat to Reduce Post-Harvest Waste). Working with local metal workers, the organization designed a donkey cart for him. Now, Saeedo is not only able to cart his produce to market twice a week, he can also easily bring back whatever he is unable to sell. His income has increased along with the quality and quantity of his product, which is no longer lost or destroyed by travel time and conditions.

Practical Action’s transportation innovations are helping to improve farmer livelihoods throughout sub-Saharan Africa and around the world. In Kenya, the organization introduced bicycle taxis as a way for people to earn a living, as well as an energy-efficient means to transport people from place to place. In Nepal, Practical Action’s bicycle ambulances help carry sick or injured people from remote areas to hospitals safely and comfortably. And in Sri Lanka, the group’s bicycle trailers—capable of carrying loads of up to 200 kilograms—are used to transport goods to market, people to hospitals, and even books to local communities.

To read more about innovations that help get crops to market, reduce post-harvest waste, and improve livelihoods see: Beating the Heat to Reduce Post-Harvest Waste, It’s All About the Process,  Investing in Better Food Storage, Reducing the Things They Carry, and In a World of Abundance, Food Waste is a Crime.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

This is the third blog in a series about the increasing prevalence of large-scale land acquisitions, or land-grabs.

In numerous deals, land under negotiation is described as “idle” or “unused” – a glaring misrepresentation of the indigenous people (including many pastoralists) who in fact have grown food on the land for years. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

In April 2010, more than 120 farmers’ groups and non-governmental organizations all across the world signed a statement declaring their opposition to the guiding principles endorsed by the World Bank, the FAO, IFAD and UNCTAD on “responsible” land investments.

The campaign, spearheaded by NGOs GRAIN, FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN), Land Research Action Network (LRAN) and La Via Campesina, calls for an immediate end to land grabbing, claiming that it “denies land for local communities, destroys livelihoods, reduces the political space for peasant oriented agricultural policies and distorts markets towards increasingly concentrated agribusiness interests and global trade rather than towards sustainable peasant/smallhold production for local and national markets.”

The groups also believe that land-grabbing will “accelerate eco-system destruction and the climate crisis” because many of the deals rely on industrial and “mono-culture oriented” production systems.

In an interview with Nourishing the Planet, writer and activist Raj Patel denounced land-grabs as “modern forms of colonialism, except with colonialism there was the argument that the colonizers were bringing civilization to the people they were colonizing. This time around, they don’t bother with that justification. There’s not even the pretense of bringing civilization – now it’s just about efficiency.”

Patel noted that when people tout these land deals as an effective means to end hunger, they often ignore the fact that many deals are not growing food at all, but instead pursuing the rapidly expanding biofuels market. “When you’re talking about turning arable land into zones of cultivation for jatropha, you’ve a hard time arguing that anyone’s belly is going to be fuller as a result,” he said. A 2008 report by the FAO and the International Institute for Environment and Development documents the displacement of households due to this trend in particular. One example the report cites is a multimillion dollar British jatropha project in the Kisarawe district of Tanzania that “has been reported to involve acquiring 9,000 ha of land and the clearing of 11 villages which, according to the 2002 population census, are home to 11,277 people.”

The issue of capturing water in these deals is also often not discussed, but it was mentioned in the April statement, as an example of the many factors that need to be included when assessing the value of the land being leased or sold.

In numerous deals, land under negotiation is described as “idle” or “unused” – a glaring misrepresentation of the indigenous people (including many pastoralists) who in fact live on and have worked the land for years. In an interview with GRAIN, Nyikaw Ochalla, a member of the indigenous Anuak nation in Ethiopia describes the government’s complete disregard for his people’s livelihoods. “There is no consultation with the indigenous population, who remain far away from the deals,” he says. “The only thing the local people see is people coming with lots of tractors to invade their lands. And they have no place to voice their opposition. They are just being evicted without any proper consultation, any proper compensation.”

“There are 1.5 billion small-scale farmers in the world who live on less than 2 hectares of land,” according to Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of The Oakland Institute and member of the Nourishing the Planet Advisory Group. “Secure and equitable access to and control over land allows these farmers to produce food, which is vital for their own food security as well as that of rural populations throughout the developing world.”

The signatories of the April statement (of which Patel was one), demand true agrarian reform, which includes investment in research and training programs for small-holder farmers, overhauling trade policies, supporting regional markets, enforcing strict regulations to foreign direct investment, and promoting “community-oriented food and farming systems hinged on local people’s control over land, water and biodiversity.”

When asked about alternative business models like contract farming, proposed by many intergovernmental agencies, Raj Patel concluded, “What we need is for people to decide what they want to do with the land. The alternative to contract farming on grabbed-land is if people were able to decide in a community forum, in which women had equal voice with men, what the fate of the land should be. That’s what food sovereignty is about. And anything less than that is really just crumbs from the table.”

To read the second half of the interview with Raj Patel, see Change is Possible in this Complex Food System. For examples of agricultural training programs in Africa, see Girl Up: Helping Girls around the Globe Help Each Other Working with the Root, and Improving African Women’s Access to Agriculture Training Programs.