Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Sorghum is drought resistant, has adapted to water-logging from heavy rain, and can grow in both temperate and tropical zones. (Photo credit: Trends Updates)

Sorghum is Africa’s contribution to the world’s major food crops, with only rice, wheat, maize, and potatoes playing a larger role. Collectively, these five crops provide over 85 percent of all human energy. Sorghum was eaten in Egypt 4,000 years ago, and today is Africa’s second most important cereal. Ethiopia is the center of the crop’s diversity and sorghum is still an important staple food for most of the Horn of Africa. It has long been a staple food in South Asia,brought by traders as many as 20 centuries ago.

Sorghum is an extremely versatile crop. It can be cooked like rice, made into porridge, malted for beer, baked into flatbreads, and popped like popcorn. The sorghum plant is often used as hay, and the stems are used for buildings, fences, and firewood. And the seeds are commonly used as livestock feed. The sorghum kernel is about 70 percent carbohydrate and 12 percent protein—very much like wheat and maize—but the grain has more vitamin B than maize.

Sorghum is drought resistant, has adapted to water-logging from heavy rain, and can grow in both temperate and tropical zones. It is an important mainstay in sub-Saharan Africa’s most food insecure communities. Sorghum thrives in many marginal and difficult croplands, and can produce up to three harvests a year.

Long established throughout Asia and Africa, sorghum has now become important in Latin America as well. The crop has gained prominence in Mexico over the past half-century, and the number of hectares of sorghum planted in the country grew over 1,000 percent from 1958 to 1980. Mexico has large areas of dry farmland, and sorghum requires less water than maize and wheat. Sorghum is mainly used as an animal feed in Mexico, and now supplies 74 percent of Mexico’s feed stocks.

Africa now produces 20 million tons of sorghum per year, a third of the world total. Its production in Africa has increased steadily, by about 55 percent, over the last 25 years. But for all of its prominence, it is not very heavily supported by policy makers and scientific research. It is still largely a subsistence crop, and there has not been extensive research to develop improved varieties. But that could change, as demand for sorghum increases. It’s increasingly become a popular ingredient for  sorghum beer, instant porridge, vegetable oil, adhesives, waxes, and dyes.

Last year, Dr. Gebisa Ejeta in Ethiopia won the World Food Prize for his hybrid varieties of sorghum. Dr. Ejeta’s sorghums are more drought resistant and hold up well against striga —a parasitic weed that attaches itself to the roots of cereals, such as sorghum, and deprives them of necessary nutrients. These hybrids have dramatically increased the production of the grain and made it a more viable food crop for millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.

To learn more about vegetables indigenous to Africa, 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, Pigeonpea: A Little Crop That’s Come a Long Way, Seeds, Seeds, Seeds: Egusi the Miracle Melon, and Celosia: Nature’s Prettiest Vegetable.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Throughout the Sahel, recurrent drought since the late 1960’s is turning once crop covered land into desert.  And the sand is spreading. Picked up by wind, dunes created by soil particles from the West African coastline and the Sahel are covering villages, roads, crops, and irrigation systems, making it increasingly difficult to farm and maintain infrastructure.

Throughout the Sahel, recurrent drought since the late 1960’s is turning once crop covered land into desert. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

In Mauritania, especially, desertification has significantly reduced arable land. Studies from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that moving sand dunes cover two-thirds of the country’s land area. Reduced farmed land and water scarcity are threatening food security and forcing large-scale movement of people to urban areas in a country where 70 percent of the population is rural.

A new report from the FAO presents a model of success in halting desertification in the Sahel. Based on the FAO’s seven year project in Mauritania, Fighting Sand Encroachment: Lessons from Mauritania provides lessons for similar efforts taking place throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Given the complexity of the problem, and its significant economic implications, the Mauritanian Government decided to make halting desertification a political priority, incorporating desertification control into every aspect of its development strategy. With the support of development partners, such as the FAO, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), among many others, national-level projects and programs were implemented in order to create wide-spread and synchronized action to stop the spread of the sand.

Between 2000 and 2007, for example, the Rehabilitation and Extension of Nouakchott Green Belt Project, initiated by Prince Laurent of Belgium, funded by the Walloon Region and in partnership with the FAO and the Mauritanian Government worked to improve sand encroachment control and protect the infrastructure of Mauritania’s capital city, Nouakchott.

A series of fences were designed to use wind to create artificial dunes surrounding the city. These dunes reduced the strength of the wind and slowed the advancement of more sand. Set at a 120 to 140 degree angle, deflection fences were also erected in order to redirect the incoming winds and sands, also reducing sand build up. Both fences are made from branches and twigs that were collected from mature forests. Woven together, these materials provide just enough permeability to slow down wind speed while also remaining upright in the face of especially strong gusts.

Once the dunes have been halted with hand-woven fences, the process of creating long-term barriers begins.  Though dunes are perhaps the least hospitable environment upon which to grow trees and other vegetation, walls of mature plant growth also provide one of the most effective barriers for sand. Depending on the climate and soil conditions, dry-tolerant and indigenous tree species are selected and planted to act as barriers.

Initial care of plants is critical to their survival due to the harsh growing conditions, but the maintenance of these natural barriers contains more benefits than just the slowing of the spread of sand. Government hired guards protect the barriers from vandalism and wind damage and the natural walls are also tended by members of the rural community who will eventually benefit from the new source of food, firewood, seed and livestock fodder that the mature trees and shrubbery provide.

To read more about the importance of government involvement in agricultural development and about innovations that mitigate land degradation, see: An Agricultural Success Story, “Regreening” the Sahel Through Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, An Evergreen Revolution? Using Trees to Nourish the Planet, It’s About More Than Trees at the World Agroforestry Centre, Trees as Crops in Africa, and Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the planet.

Egusi, a wild member of the gourd family, has the potential to spread its popularity on the global market nearly as quickly as it grows. Native to parts of Western Africa, this peculiar looking plant can grow just about anywhere, from humid gullies, to dry savannahs, to tropical highlands –making it possible source of food for farmers in even the worst conditions.

Although the egusi looks almost identical to its cousin, the watermelon, don’t be fooled, they are actually quite different. (Photo credit: H. Zell)

Although the egusi looks almost identical to its cousin, the watermelon, don’t be fooled, they are actually quite different.  Because the egusi is filled with very dry, bitter flesh, the seeds are the true delicacy of this melon. Composed of nearly 50 percent edible oil and another 30 percent pure protein, these little seeds pack a lot of nutrition into a very small package. In many parts of Africa, where farmers lack access to meat or dairy, the high oil and protein content can make an excellent dietary supplement.

While the seeds are often shelled and eaten individually as a snack, many processed forms of the seeds have made their way into common cooking practices. After soaking, fermenting, or boiling, the seeds take on different flavors and are frequently added to thicken soups and stews. On their own, the seeds can also be roasted and ground into a spread like peanut butter.  With further preparation, egusi-seed meal can be pressed into patties to be used like a meat substitute, and its oil can be used for cooking.

The egusi plant is also easy to grow. It is extremely resilient to pests and diseases and because it blankets the ground as it grows, it can help suppress weeds. Because of this, farmers often intercrop egusi with other crops, including sorghum, cassava, coffee, cotton, maize, or bananas.  Mature egusi melons can also remain in the field for a long time without rotting, so crop loss and waste is rare. And once the seeds are harvested, they can be a reliable year-round food source because they store well.

The egusi can also be an important supplementary baby food, helping prevent malnutrition. Blending the seeds with water and honey produces a milky liquid that can be used as formula if breast milk is unavailable, making the plant as diverse in its uses as it is easy to grow!

To learn more about vegetables indigenous to Africa, 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, Pigeonpea: A Little Crop That’s Come a Long Way, and Celosia: Nature’s Prettiest Vegetable

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Around 1 million people in South Africa—the majority of whom are recent arrivals from the former apartheid homelands, Transkei and Ciskei— live in the shacks that make up Khayelitsha, Nyanga and the area surrounding the Cape Flats outside Cape Town.  Just under half, or 40 percent, of the population is unemployed, while the rest barely earn enough income to feed their families.

While Abalimi Bezekhaya is bringing food and wild flora into the townships, it is also helping the townships to bring fresh produce into the city. (Photo credit: harounkola.com)

In Xhosa, the most common language found in the area, the word ablalimi means “the planters”. Through partnerships with local grassroots organizations, the aptly named, Abalimi Bezekhaya, a non-profit organization working with the people living in these informal settlements, is helping to create a community of planters who can feed the township.

Abalimi Bezekhaya is helping to transform townships into food—and income—generating green spaces in order to alleviate poverty and to protect the fragile surrounding ecosystem.  Providing training and materials, Abalimi Bezekhaya helps people to turn school yards and empty plots of land into gardens. Each gardens is run by 6 to 8 farmers who, with support and time, are  soon able to produce enough food to feed their families. Abalimi Bezekhaya encourages community members to plant indigenous trees and other flora in the township streets to create shade and increase awareness of the local plant life, much of which is endangered due to urban sprawl.

But while Abalimi Bezekhaya is bringing food and wild flora into the townships, it is also helping the townships to bring fresh produce into the city.

With support from the Ackerman Pick n’Pay Foundation, and in partnership with the South African Institute of Entrepreneurship (SAIE) and the Business Place Philippi, Abalimi Bezekhaya founded Harvest of Hope (HoH) in 2008. HoH purchases the surplus crops from 14 groups of farmers working in Abalimi Bezekhaya’s community plots, packages them in boxes and delivers them to selected schools where parents can purchase them to take home.

For families in Cape Town, HoH means fresh vegetables instead of the older, and often imported, produce at the grocery store. But for families of the farmers working with Hope of Harvest, it means much more.  “To grow these vegetables here for me, first, is a life,” said Christina Kaba, a farmer working with HoH in a video about the project. “Second, is how you can give to your family without asking anyone for a donation for money or food.  Here you are making money, you are making food.”

To read more about innovations that bring produce to cities, see: Vertical Farms: Finding Ways to Grow Food in Kibera, Growing Food in Urban “Trash,” Creating a Market for the Taste of Home,  Looking for an Answer in the Private Sector, and Reducing Wastewater Starts with a Conversation.

This interview is crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet blog.

Philip Bereano is Professor Emeritus in the field of Technology and Public Policy at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has been an active and outspoken proponent of democratic social ethics in technology for decades. He is on the roster of experts for the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol, a participant in the UN’s Codex Alimentarius processes, and co-founder of the Council for Responsible Genetics, the Washington Biotechnology Action Council, and the 49th Parallel Biotechnology Consortium.

Philip Bereano is Professor Emeritus in the field of Technology and Public Policy at the University of Washington in Seattle. (Photo credit: Phil Bereano)

Why does a technology like genetic engineering (GE) need an active and outspoken proponent of ethics like yourself?

I deal with social ethics: issues of equity, justice, fairness, and democracy. Frankly, GE fails when measured against most of these values. GE, like all high-techs, is inherently anti-democratic. Computers, for example, can be democratic in their usage because anybody can buy into it in a consumer society. But they’re not democratic in terms of development, which is under the control of a very small number of people. Similarly, GE is under the control of small numbers of highly educated people and incredibly wealthy organizations.

While most people believe that GE is too complicated for them to understand, the ethical and social issues that come up in a democratic society have little to do with the technical stuff; the basis of these issues can be easily understood. However, the technological elite hasn’t felt any obligation to present materials in a way that invites public participation, and regulatory agencies have often been opposed to transparency or are captives of the industries they are supposedly overseeing–this is certainly true of the FDA, USDA/APHIS, and, perhaps to a lesser extent, EPA.

What ethical issues are associated with GE in agriculture?

GE has been presented in a way that attempts to gain public acceptance for it, but none of the GE technologies have, in any sustained fashion, increased food production or decreased world hunger. However, they’ve certainly increased funding for the biotechnology scientists and the profits for the Monsantos of the world.

“Golden Rice”–with enhanced levels of vitamin A–while touted by GE proponents as an example of GE benefits, has not reduced blindness at all in the Third World and, in fact, is highly unlikely to do so because of the huge quantities of Golden Rice a kid would have to eat. And he or she still may not be getting a balanced diet with the other nutrients needed to make use of the vitamin A.

There’s a major ethical issue in the very simplistic reductionist model this technology is based on. The central dogma of GE is this image of the genome as a Lego set, where you can take out the green one and put in a red one. In reality, however, the genome is highly fluid and the parts interact. The Lego model is quite wrong, yet it’s used constantly in public discourse, regulatory submissions, and legislative testimony. Biologists know how the genome actually works, but advancement in the profession rules out of play such subjects of discourse because they would challenge the positions taken by industry funders. Scientists who wish to break that boundary, either by scientific experimentation or by public writings, have largely been isolated and marginalized by the wealthy and the powerful within the academic-industrial complex–for example the experiences of Dr. Arpad Pusztai, Dr. Ignacio Chapela, and Dr. Terje Traavik [Editor's Note: These are leading international scientists who were criticized by biotechnology companies and other scientists for raising health and environmental concerns about genetically modified crops.] I think these examples indicate a profound set of ethical issues surrounding the professional functioning of geneticists and academic and industry biologists.

You have argued that this technology poses risks to the world’s smallholder farmers. Why?

It was quite unprecedented when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the patentability of microbial gene products. The Patent Office ran away with the decision and allowed the patentability of plants and mammals as well. The creation of intellectual property monopolies in agricultural germplasm by large transnational corporations certainly presents a set of ethical issues, and works to the disadvantage of smallholder farms and sustainable agriculture. “Sustainability” doesn’t just mean profitability forever. Sustainability has qualitative dimensions, like justice and distributional considerations–otherwise, a totalitarian society could be called sustainable! So we are having this tremendous transfer of knowledge, power, and control from smallholder farmers to multinational corporations.

Back to the example of Golden Rice. Vandana Shiva found that in one village in India, there were 350 plants growing nearby that had been routinely eaten and that provided vitamin A or its precursors. Under industrial agricultural models, however, these were defined as “weeds,” and farmers were encouraged to plow them under and plant cotton instead. Locals no longer have access to the foods that used to provide them with vitamin A, and blindness increased. Instead of understanding that agro-ecological approaches could minimize blindness by preserving access to indigenous diets, Golden Rice has been offered as a “high-tech miracle” way to overcome this situation; the high-tech mindset tries to solve problems brought on largely by technologies through the application of more technologies of higher complexity.

Suddenly, we have a system of consolidation where one dominant multinational corporation, Monsanto, is seeking to obtain majority control of the world’s agricultural plant germplasm, rather than sustaining the resilient, decentralized system for germplasm protection and utilization in rural and indigenous communities that has fed us well for millennia.

In your opinion, what sorts of agricultural innovations should major donors be funding to eradicate hunger and improve food security in both developing and developed countries?

Donors should be funding agro-ecological approaches. The Gates Foundation’s grants are usually quite large: over $100,000 [Grand Challenges in Global Health Program award size]. This is too much for small village cooperatives in Africa that could utilize $5,000 really well. I know people who teach at agricultural schools in Tanzania or work with ag cooperatives in Kenya, and they can’t get adequate funding. Big donors are undermining huge numbers of local initiatives to increase food security and protect biodiversity when they exclude small-scale projects in favor of industrial ones that actually have consequences counter to such goals.

How does the promotion of GMO crops affect global food security and public health in developing countries?

The World Bank and UN agencies did a major study called the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). The report concluded that high-tech approaches aren’t likely to answer the food needs of the future. Other, lower-cost, approaches–in particular what’s becoming known as “agro-ecological” approaches–are far more promising. The reason is simple: Third World farmers can’t afford an industrial-ag approach to farming–family farms in the U.S. often can’t! This is why the first Green Revolution didn’t reduce world hunger. There is more than enough food being produced in the world today to adequately feed every man, woman, and child and have leftovers. People go hungry because they can’t afford food, not because we can’t produce enough. And this will be true for decades in the future.

Our AGRA Watch group put out a press release recently criticizing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for its investments in Monsanto. The high-tech approach is not the right way to move toward food security and sustainability, but it is the approach the Gates Foundation is favoring. The Foundation has indicated that it thinks there are too many small farmers in Africa, and knows that its policies will lead to many farmers having to leave their land–euphemistically referred to as “land mobility.”

But people have been leaving the land in Africa and around the world for a long time. What’s different today?

Well, this is what happened during the first Green Revolution. The larger farmers can afford the mechanization, and the smaller ones get wiped out. Cities are growing exponentially in developing countries, and becoming ungovernable hotbeds of unemployment and crime. Nairobi doesn’t need more people coming in from the countryside looking for jobs. This poses a threat to public health, while the monoculture of the farms is a threat to food security.

You are closely involved with the international negotiations to govern genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Can you tell us the current status of those talks?

We have the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol, now with 160 member countries–which doesn’t include the U.S., Canada, or Australia, the major producers of GMOs, because they don’t like the fact that we were able to get language about international regulation of this technology into the Protocol. Member countries are having their fifth Meeting of the Parties (MOP5) in Nagoya, Japan, in October. Biosafety legislation has been passed in various countries, which is helping developing countries build capacity to deal with the oversight and regulation of this technology. But, if it is weak, it may be providing an entrance for GE [genetically engineered] crops.

As one example, I’ve been working over the past six years as an NGO delegate to Protocol meetings, trying to craft an international regime of legal liability for damages caused by GMOs. Hundreds of incidents of damage have already occurred and been documented. There should be a finished liability regime presented for consideration at the Protocol meeting this fall.

I’ve also been involved in a UN Agency called the Codex Alimentarius, a collaboration of the UN’s World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, which deals with international food laws and regulations. There’s been a 15-year struggle to get international guidelines for GE food labeling, which has been rigorously opposed by the U.S. and some of its allies. I’ll be in attendance at a working group meeting in Brussels in November that will try to resolve some of the issues in the current document, and there will be an annual meeting of the Codex Labeling Committee in May in Quebec City. There’s a decent chance that the negotiations will be resolved by the meeting in May, and some final international guidelines on labeling GE foods will be able to be adopted.

Since the U.S. is the largest producer of GMOs, do you think these decisions will affect domestic trends?

I don’t know how long the U.S. can stay isolated from these world trends. It’s encouraging that in two or three legal cases recently, U.S. courts have required the government and the industry to do actual environmental impact assessments of GE crops, and other court decisions have imposed monetary damages for GE contamination of fields of conventional crops. But there’s no independent regulatory oversight in the U.S. whatsoever; the agencies merely accept the industry’s conclusions that there are no problems with the GE crop variety.

The Codex Alimentarius unanimously–including the U.S. and Canada delegations–adopted a set of principles for doing risk assessments for GE foods. The problem is that they’re just guidelines, and no country has to adopt them, so we don’t know whether they are having an impact. Codex no longer asks governments to inform it of adoptions, since countries never did so when the organization had such a rule. Certainly the U.S. has not adopted assessment procedures such as those urged by the Codex.

How does the UN’s Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety address the potential risks associated with GMOs?

This treaty provides for countries to impose a requirement of “advanced informed agreement (AIA)” before receiving imports of GMOs, and it outlines general principles and methodology for doing a risk assessment on them for the country to decide whether or not to agree. Every sovereign country has the right to control what crosses its borders. But we need the Protocol because countries that have joined the World Trade Organization have given up the right to control imports in certain circumstances. The Protocol says despite that, it’s okay for governments to have some regulation without it being deemed a “barrier to trade.”

The WTO is not an organ of the UN. How WTO rules and regulations, the UN’s Codex, and the Cartagena Protocol mesh with each other is not clear. The only linkage between them is that in 1995, the WTO decided that the rules of a few specifically named international agencies would be reference points for trade disputes, and one of them was the Codex. So in theory, the Codex guidelines on risk assessments for GE foods or on their labeling would protect countries against being “sued” in the dispute mechanisms of the WTO. The problem is that the Codex only covers foods, and a lot of GMOs are not foods, like cotton. So that’s why we need the Cartagena Protocol, legally speaking. Also, weaker countries need something that they can refer to when they’re under pressure from Monsanto, U.S. trade representatives, U.S. ambassadors, and others to accept GMOs. Wealthy developed countries such as Switzerland and Norway have these rules in place, and perhaps don’t really need the Protocol as much. But most countries in the world are not as powerful, and they do need the strength of numbers provided by the Protocol.

How effective has the Protocol been?

The Cartagena Protocol is an unprecedented treaty on a new technology. It’s one of the first international environmental treaties and is an outcome of the signing of the Convention on Biological Diversity at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. What you have is a treaty that falls within the environmental ministry in most countries. The problem is that sometimes the other ministries in a government don’t see eye-to-eye–the trade ministry might be pushing to adopt GMOs, or the Agricultural Minister might have learned all about GE while studying at a land grant university in the U.S. and has accepted what she or he was told there, that GE is a great idea. So it’s very hard to predict what’s going to come out. It’s dependent on a lot of political factors that may have nothing to do with the substance of the matter. Civil society around the world is mobilizing around these issues–the only way toward a democratic and equitable future.

What does the ethical use of GMOs in agriculture look like?

No one knows. The closest thing to any real evaluation of GMOs versus alternatives was the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). This was a multi-year study funded by the World Bank and a number of UN agencies that concluded that there’s no obvious or particular advantage to GM foods. But I would contend that GE is inherently unethical because it is not a democratic technology–its development, ownership, and decision-making apparatus are all concentrated in the hands of a tiny techno-corporate elite.

Do you think there is a legitimate role for GMOs in providing food security and developing agricultural policy?

I’m skeptical because GMOs haven’t been developed to provide food security. Roundup Ready GE, for example, was developed to extend Monsanto’s monopoly over Roundup weed killer because the patent was expiring. It turned out to be a great money maker for them. Second, food security has to do with the control the consumers, as well as the farmers and producers, have over the production of food. But GMOs remove that control. Food security is not just a quantitative concept. Many of the industry’s proponents use the term food security as if producing more is all that matters.

GMOs don’t produce more–in the long run, anyway. Weeds and insects develop resistance, as Darwinian evolution teaches. Although the first Green Revolution did produce more food, it did not reduce hunger. Hunger is a function of poverty, not a function of the amount of food that’s around. The only way to reduce hunger is to improve the income of the world’s poorest people and return control of food production to local communities and farmers. This is “food sovereignty.” The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter [Editor's Note: Professor De Schutter is a member of the Nourishing the Planet Advisory Group], recently presented a report to the UN General Assembly highlighting all of this.

The question of whether GE has a legitimate role to play in food security is stimulated by the hype that the industry has been putting out for a decade and a half. But, in fact, most of the unbiased analyses have come to the conclusion that there’s not much of a role for GMOs at all, and their effect on real food security is quite negative. Because there are no adequate risk assessments going on, we have no idea what the long-term consequences of the growing and consuming of these foods are to the environment or human health. Those should be giant question marks, and you can’t be secure in the face of giant question marks.

That is why both the Protocol and the Codex have embodied the “Precautionary Principle”–which used to be so common in U.S. regulatory rules until the rise of conservative power 30 years ago under Reagan–to “look before you leap” or, in other words, when confronted by great uncertainties, do research and evaluation before deciding whether to adopt a new technology. In recent years, the U.S. has experienced huge increases in all sorts of health problems that appear to be linked to food intake–for example, diabetes, obesity, food poisoning, maybe even autism. No one can say whether or not GMOs are responsible, because no assessments have been done with any scientific rigor.

Though rarely consumed in the West, millet is a staple grain for much of the world’s population, particularly in South Asia and East Africa, and has been cultivated for thousands of years. The African native variety, finger millet, likely originated  from the highlands of Ethiopia and Uganda and is one of the most nutritious all of the world’s major cereal crops. It can be used to make porridge, bread, malt, animal feed, popped millet (like popcorn), Ethiopian liquor called arake, and even beer.

The African native variety, finger millet, likely originated from the highlands of Ethiopia and Uganda and is one of the most nutritious all of the world’s major cereal crops.(Photo credit: Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species)

Finger millet is high in starch and is considered “superior” to wheat in that its proteins are more easily digested. It has the third highest iron content of any grain, after amaranth and quinoa. Some varieties, such as those in Uganda and southern Sudan, have high levels of methionine, an amino acid lacking in the diets of hundreds of millions of poor people who depend on starchy foods, such as cassava. The cereal grain is generally ground into flour for making flatbreads. It’s made into a porridge called tuo zaafi in the north of Africa, and into a flatbread called taguella in the Sahara.

Finger millet can be an ideal crop in dry areas because it can lie dormant for weeks. Once the rains do come, the grain springs to life and can be ready to harvest in just forty-five days. The grain is resistant to rot and insects and keeps well in storage, making it an important staple when no other food is available. If kept dry, it can store for as long as five years.

Finger millet has an annual production of 4.5 million tons of grain, and Africa produces around 2 million tons. Though it was a predominant crop in Africa until recent decades, the crop’s production has declined significantly. Despite its importance as a food crop, many policy makers in countries that grow finger millet generally regard it as a poor person’s crop, and the scientific community has largely ignored it. Many farmers are giving up growing the labor intensive finger millet in favor of maize, sorghum, and cassava.

There’s been somewhat of a finger millet resurgence, however. In Kenya, the grain currently sells at more than twice the price of sorghum and maize. In Uganda, half of all cereal cropland is producing finger millet. It is an important food in Uganda, and finger millet bread is served during harvest celebrations to impress visitors and neighbors. Ugandans also commonly serve finger millet porridge with sugar or banana juice.

The crop appears to be as beneficial in Asia as it is in Africa. In fact, India has increased yields by 50 percent in the last fifty years, and in Nepal finger millet acreage is expanding at the rate of 8 percent per year. This nutritious grain could also be beneficial for use in weaning foods and other cereal products in parts of the world where it is not currently being cultivated, such as South and Central America.

One hurdle in finger millet production is that it is a labor intensive crop. In Africa, the crop is most often harvested by hand and individual heads are cut off with a knife. The small size of the seeds makes it difficult to handle, and it takes a lot of skill and effort to make it into flour, especially by hand. Weeding is also problematic because the dominant weed in African finger millet fields is a relative of the crop and hard to discern from finger millet itself.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

This is the second part in a two-part interview with Steve Osofsky, Director of Wildlife Health Policy for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). In this first part of the interview, Osofsky explains Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) and how small-scale farmers can benefit from the conservation of wildlife. To read the first part of this interview see: Finding Common Ground to Improve Livelihoods and Conserve Wildlife.

What role do Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) play in the relationship between wildlife and food systems?

Let me first just explain what TFCA’s are. If you look back at the colonial era when many of the southern African colonies or protectorates were looking for economic traction— one of the obvious sources was the export of beef. And we talked about how foot and mouth disease, a virus that is naturally harbored by the African buffalo, is a constraint to exports. The Europeans don’t want foot and mouth getting into their animals. It’s happened—you may remember in the UK , the multi-billion dollar losses, the farmers committing suicide, when foot and mouth got in. And actually right now there is an outbreak coming to an end in Japan and they are still not sure where that virus  came in from. But it’s an economically important disease. So from that context, going back to the late 1950’s and early 1960’s you can understand why fences were put up to separate wildlife and livestock. They were creating disease-free areas so that beef could be exported safely to markets like Europe which were providing good prices for many, many years. At that time, tourism was really not a major activity—there was some trophy hunting by the elite but it wasn’t an economic driver. But if you fast forward to today, we’ve learned from analysis like the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment that nature-based activities like photographic tourism and hunting safaris contribute about as much to the GDP in southern Africa as forestry, fishing and agriculture combined. So we’ve had a dramatic swelling of economic benefits related to wildlife-based activities. Leaders of these countries have said: what can we do to capitalize on something we actually have a strategic comparative advantage in? One of the solutions they are coming up with is to increase the amount of land available for wildlife, and TFCA s are a way for two or more countries to create  connections—many of which were historically present but were wiped out over the past several decades—to in fact recreate connections between some of their national parks and other conservation areas. If you think about it, we already have a precedent in a place like the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem located between Kenya and Tanzania, that is essentially a TFCA, although it was not set-up under those formal auspices but because of the recognized migratory patterns of the wildebeest. It was a natural landscape that luckily for us the Kenyans and Tanzanians agreed to cooperatively manage. But now we are seeing more and more countries creating these areas across international boundaries. And it’s good for conservation and it could be good for these countries’ GDPs but there is also a fundamental conflict that is set up between the current strategy for dealing with foot and mouth disease and this idea of restored connectivity. So we are looking at ways to, literally, bring these different sectors to the same table because there’s been a lot of hostility between conservationists and livestock agriculturalists for many decades in these countries, and we think the only way forward is if they can share their perspectives and we can look at ways whereby both activities can be undertaken. The way forward may involve some new tools and approaches so that land-use planning can be addressed through a different lens. But we think the time has come, given the future economic drivers that are being pointed to in the region-if we don’t recognize the importance of both livestock and wildlife, southern Africa is going to lose out. And frankly it’s been the wildlife sector that has been one of the real shining glimmers of hope for economic growth in southern Africa.  It’s very encouraging and we want to help these countries pursue the development trajectories that they’ve identified. We are not—we at WCS, AHEAD—we are not driving the peace parks movement or the TFCA movement—we are offering technical assistance in the form of an enabling environment to reconcile what are essentially, as I said before, conflicts between agricultural policy and a vision of enhanced connectivity for wildlife across international boundaries.

Beyond wildlife tourism, how else can agriculture serve to benefit from these new approaches of wildlife conservation?

I’ll just continue to use Botswana as an example-though it applies elsewhere. In Botswana, if you want to export beef right now you have to have this physical separation of cattle and wildlife. But in order to produce beef that is free of foot and mouth disease, there are other ways through which it appears that that can be done safely. And this involves what we call commodity based trade—which exists in other parts of the world. And what we are really talking about is managing the risk of foot and mouth disease in a different way. Instead of necessarily requiring all of this separation of wildlife and livestock—you process the beef, you debone it, you take out the lymph nodes— which is usually done to produce high quality steaks, anyway— and you age the beef (which changes the pH and kills the foot and mouth disease virus if it were there)–which is also done to produce high quality beef. And those processes alone, the removing of bone and lymph nodes, the aging of beef which changes the ph of the meat, make the chances of foot and mouth being present, even if an animal actually had it, virtually nil. And cattle are still quarantined for sufficient time so as to ensure they are free from foot and mouth and otherwise healthy before slaughter. So what we need to do is to continue to evaluate and document this approach with good science and to partner with agro-industry, so that we can produce beef in this value-added way so that the world market will view it as a safe product. We do this all the time in other parts of the world, but the southern Africans have really been held to a higher standard in a lot of ways.

But another benefit to this processing is that the producer country is actually exporting a higher-value product. So that per unit of production, per animal, the amount of revenue that stays in the country and then goes back to the farmer is significantly higher than if you are exporting a relatively unprocessed product to Europe and having the Europeans get all the value-added benefit. So this has got important implications for developing countries—many of the market countries for foreign beef from Africa are providing a tremendous amount of aid to African countries in terms of development assistance. But if we really want these countries to stand up on their own two feet without an ongoing cycle of aid dependence, this is the type of “out of the box” (or “out of the fence”) thinking we need to be looking at. If these countries can increase their incomes by producing a product that brings in more revenue per unit of production- fantastic. That’s why we are interested in some of these more modern approaches to risk management and why the international community is gradually coming along. It’s really going to take good science and robust pilot work and countries willing to explore this both on the exporter side, as well as on the importer side, so that these trade restrictions that are currently in place can be gradually lifted- and enable these new opportunities. Finally, keep in mind that the rural poor who currently live closest to wildlife currently have no access to wider markets- so the market-based ideas we’ve been discussing have the potential to help the very stakeholders who are in fact the primary targets of most development assistance.

It seems clear this has got to be driven by economics, and by public-private partnerships. We are going to need the private sector, in all likelihood, running many of the laboratories and meat processing facilities, but it has to be a partnership with government because ultimately government is accountable. So the enabling legislation has to be in place and the policies have to be right, and again, not just on the producer side, but we also have to see a willingness on the importer side—largely developed nations, particularly the Europeans but potentially, eventually, the United States, in terms of recognizing the validity of this approach as it can be demonstrated over time. The other thing is that by producing higher value products, there is also a very important set of regional markets. This doesn’t all relate to markets overseas. In many of these countries there is a growing middle class and there is an opportunity to produce value-added products for regional consumption. And there is also the Asian market. So there are a lot of opportunities, and accessing them will depend on the types of solid partnerships between industry and government that drive many such transitions.

How do you convince governments that this is a priority?

I should note that here in the United States, there are some huge disconnects between the conservation community and the livestock sector. We see a long history of conflict, for example, out in Yellowstone and the Greater Yellowstone region- there are disease-related conflicts between livestock agriculture and the conservation of bison and elk. We find that in many places, all over the world, ministries of environment and ministries of agriculture often have very poor communication with each other. There are, of course, some exceptions, but in many places where we work, we find one of the most important things we can do is to help these different sectors to start communicating within a given country. It’s important to remember that the vision for TFCAs has been driven largely by conservationists, by those who ultimately relate to an environmental ministry. As I said, communication between conservationists and the agriculture sector has not always been good, so only recently (now that the TFCA movement is gaining momentum and being taken more seriously), is the agriculture sector starting to realize that this is something that they also need to start paying attention to. We are interested in trying to facilitate some critical discussions, our theory being that if the various stakeholders all want to get this right then they need to start talking about their respective interests. And it takes time to get some of the old histories set aside so that these sectors can talk about their differences. It’s become very clear that there are very basic conflicts between the vision for the creation of TFCAs and current livestock agriculture policy, and now is the time to get things resolved constructively in the interest of sustainable development and conservation success.

The AHEAD (Animal & Human Health for the Environment And Development) Program works at the wildlife / livestock / human interface and strives to catalyze win-win opportunities related to food security, biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation and enhanced livelihood diversification- all of which enhance resilience in the face of climate change.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, people are forced to travel long distances and spend hours at a time collecting the water needed for cooking and drinking from far away streams or wells. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, people are forced to travel long distances and spend hours at a time collecting the water needed for cooking and drinking from far away streams or wells. But the residents of Cabazane, South Africa have found a much less labor intensive alternative. They use gravity and let water come to them.

With the help of a team of scientists lead by Jana Olivier from the University of South Africa’s School of Agriculture and Environmental Studies, featured on AlterNet last month, the residents of Cabazane are using nets strung up across a nearby mountain pass to harvest water from the air.

Built at an altitude of 1,600 meters, steel cables held by wood posts support the two layers of shade clothe nets used to catch tiny droplets of water from the passing mountain fog near Brooks Nek Pass. The drops of water create run-off that is caught in gutters built at the bottom of the nets. This water is then carried by tubes down the side of the mountain and to the village. With each square meter of netting providing up to five liters of water per day, Cabazane can collect hundreds of liters on a good day.

And, most importantly, coming from the clouds, the water is very clean—an especially valuable commodity in area previously suffering from water shortages. The nearest stream to the village is two kilometers away and contaminated by animal use. Residents who used the stream were often exposed to water-borne diseases.  Once dams were used to collect water in the area, but extreme drought has even dried up this source.

Nandi Ntsiko, a resident of  Cabazane, in the Alternet article, “having piped water was a pipe dream for us. We were forced to share drinking water with animals in this stream. The situation was dire.”

Now the villagers not only have a steady supply of clean water, they have enough of it to store in newly constructed tanks. The netting also provides the additional benefit of being completely gravity-driven. No electricity is needed to power this innovation, making it affordable and environmentally friendly, and the technology is simple enough that maintenance is relatively easy.

Collecting water from fog is a technique that has been used for almost 30 years in some mountainous parts of Chile, and the project at Cabazane has been so successful that it’s already been replicated in other dry areas of South Africa, including Venda and Limpopo.

To read more about innovations that improve access to water, see: Getting Water to Crops, Access to Water Improves Life for Women and Children, Reducing Wastewater Contamination Starts with a Question, and ECHOing a Need for Innovations.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Listen to Radio Fanaka Fana and Radio Jigiya, in the Fana and Zégoua regions of Mali, and you are much more likely to hear tips for improving compost piles and soil quality than you are pop music hits or current events. That’s because the station is participating in Farm Radio International’s Africa Farm Radio Research Initiative (AFRRI), a project to test the viability of using radio as a tool for spreading agricultural information to farmers throughout Africa.

Farm Radio International is a Canadian-based, non-profit organization with partner broadcasters from over 300 radio stations in over 39 sub-Saharan African countries.  Its programs reach an audience of over 600 million people speaking more than 300 languages, providing listeners with valuable information that is increasing harvest yields and improving livelihoods.

Though cell phones, computers, and televisions might seem like more obvious—and increasingly popular—forms of mass communication, the radio is still the least expensive and most widespread communications technology in Africa. In Mali, where the soil is often dry and eroded, AFRRI is taking advantage of radio’s popularity by working with local leaders and extension officers to present radio programs that can help farmers improve soil quality. Radio Fanaka Fana and Radio Jigiya—which have a combined audience of over 170,000 people— present regular shows promoting the use of compost pits to create organic fertilizer.

A case study for this particular campaign shows that farmers in the two radio stations’ regions were listening and responding to the programs in overwhelming numbers. In Radio Zégoua ‘s region alone, households practicing improved composting increased from just over 25 percent to over 89 percent. Farmers reported feeling more comfortable with local extension officers after hearing them on the radio, and—based on word of mouth— other communities outside the reach of the radio stations started requesting programs of their own. One outside community even built a homemade antenna so they could hear the programs being broadcast in the next region over.

To read more about innovations  that use communication technology to improve farmer livelihoods, see: Makutano Junction Soap Opera, Using Digital Technology to Empower and Connect Young Farmers, Messages from One Rice Farmer to Another, Improving Women’s Access to Agriculture Training and A Sustainable Calling Plan.