GardenAfrica, a non-profit organization in southern Africa that helps families and communities establish organic gardens in small private plots, schools, hospitals and other public areas, prefers that its work be described as solidarity rather than charity. “Charity is all too often about externally imposed solutions, solidarity is a partnership of equals,” says its website.

Working with farmers in both rural and urban areas in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South Africa, GardenAfrica provides training and materials to improve food production as well as to help preserve local biodiversity, soil quality, and water conservation. The organization works closely with farmers to help develop “garden plans” that will best suit the natural resources available, as well as the dietary and medicinal needs of the farmers and their families.

Throughout much of southern Africa, high food prices have limited what is actually available to eat for families living on less than USD$1.25 per day. Many families are forced people to make do with one or two staple crops, like maize or cassava. But without critical vitamins and minerals, families are at greater risk for illness and disease, such as stunted growth and development and osteoporosis. To fight these problems, GardenAfrica emphasizes the medicinal and nutritional value of various local vegetable varieties, encouraging farmers to plant a diverse range of plants in order to provide year-round harvests and improve nutritional value of each harvest.

Once a family is producing food enough food to take care of their own needs–the average garden is cultivated on a plot that is only 100 square meters in size—the organization helps establish that family as a source of information, guidance and support for other members of the community.

In Swaziland, a farmer named Futhi Fakudze was caring for a house full of 17 people. With 11 children and six adults to feed, Futhi was spending 250 Swazi Lilangeni—or about USD$30.00—per month on groceries. But a year ago she participated in a training session with GardenAfrica in Swaziland and learned how to better take advantage of the natural resources available to her in order to improve her soil and her yields. Now she is able to produce almost all of her household’s monthly dietary needs in her small backyard. And she has even started another project garden in a separate 200 square meter plot where she is growing peppers, tomatoes, leaks, chard, spinach, beets, lettuce, carrots, and mango.

And beyond just taking care of her own family, Futhi is also helping the rest of her community learn from her training. After passing her new knowledge on to her husband, who helps her take care of the two garden plots, Futhi is also working with 6 of her neighbors who regularly stop by to help out and learn from her new “garden plan.” Soon enough they will have their own garden plans with which to grow their own food and share with the rest of the community.

To learn more about farming techniques that improve production and diets as well as soil quality, water conservation and biodiversity, see: Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture and Wildlife Conservation, Malawi’s Real Miracle, Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops, Finding ‘Abundance’ in What is Local, Honoring the Farmers that Nourish their Communities and the Planet, and Investing in Projects that Protect Both Agriculture and Wildlife.

Please also visit the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet Blog

Part I: Farming in Sudan’s War-Torn Darfur Region

Producing enough food to satisfy domestic markets is a challenge that countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa face. But for places in Africa where conflict and war prevail, the threat of hunger and malnutrition is particularly acute. For many, the biggest obstacle is accessibility, as internal conflict often limits a farmer’s ability to get her products to market. When this occurs, vulnerable and marginalized groups often suffer the most.

This is just one of the issues that exacerbate food insecurity in Sudan’s Darfur region, where farmers are often placed in direct conflict with militias groups over access to water and farm land. As the United Nations media service has observed, “The conflict pits farming communities against nomads who have aligned themselves with the militia groups – for whom the raids are a way of life – in stiff competition for land and resources. The militias, known as the Janjaweed, attack in large numbers on horseback and camels and are driving the farmers from their land, often pushing them towards town centers.”

Most of the population of North Darfur is dependent on locally produced grain for food, but local harvests rarely produce more than 15 percent of the region’s food needs, increasing the region’s reliance on emergency food aid. In response to local farmers’ limited access to seed and other inputs, groups like the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization have succeeded in supplying thousands of local farmers with seed and farming tools since the conflict first erupted in 2003.

The cash generated by programs that support farmers’ livelihoods often go towards children’s education and health care and allow the purchase of essential goods and services such as clothes, mats, oil and sugar. However, with continued conflict, drought, and failed harvests to contend with, the prospects for farming in Darfur remain extremely limited.

Part II: Farming in the Niger Delta

Nigeria’s Niger Delta region (located in the southern tip of the nation) is blessed with natural resources. The region contains some of the country’s most fertile land, ideal for producing cassava, rubber, timber, and pineapple. But, instead of capitalizing on the region’s arable land and natural resource endowment, local farmers have been handicapped by years of conflict and environmental degradation.

Foreign engineers first discovered oil in the Niger Delta in 1953. Since then, thousands of oil spills have polluted the water, soil and air across the region, destroying the livelihoods of fishermen and farmers. In fact, more oil is spilled in the Niger Delta every year than was lost in the Gulf of Mexico this past summer. According to the Nigerian government, approximately 7,000 oil spills (of varying sizes) occurred between 1970 and 2000.

Unfortunately, the state’s economic dependence on crude oil exploration has also led to inadequate investment in the agricultural sector. Indeed, annual production of both cash and staple food crops has dropped significantly since oil was first discovered. For example, although Nigeria was the world’s largest cocoa exporter in 1960, cocoa production has since dropped by 43 percent. And rubber production has dropped by 29 percent, cotton by 65 percent, and groundnuts by 64 percent.

The militarization of the region by local militia groups has produced yet another threat to the region’s agriculture sector. Since the early 1990s, competition for oil wealth has fueled violence between ethnic militia groups, the Nigerian military and police forces. While militia groups claim to attack or siphon off oil from pipelines or wells in order to prompt government officials (at the state and federal level) to direct more oil revenue toward development activities in the region, their actions have had a debilitating effect on local farmers. The Niger Delta’s fertile land should draw private investment from across the country, but with the constant threat of oil spills and social unrest, investors have been wary.

Recognizing that Nigeria was once able to produce enough food to feed its people, as well as supply raw materials to local industries and for export, the federal government seems poised for a change of course. With any luck, the government will lead the way for investors to rediscover the agricultural potential of the Niger Delta, unveiling the region’s enormous untapped potential and enabling farmers to reclaim their livelihoods.

Part III: Rebuilding Liberian Farms in the Aftermath of War

After fourteen years of bloody civil war from1989 to 2003, Liberia has struggled to overcome aftermath of conflict. Some 10 percent of the population, 3 million people, was killed, and most of the country’s physical infrastructure, including roads and bridges, was destroyed. Food production also suffered.

According to the World Food Program, 39 percent of Liberian children under the age of five are stunted, and 27 percent are underweight as a result of food shortages. More than 40 percent of people are malnourished in more than half of the nation’s counties, while between 30-40 percent of people are malnourished in the remaining six counties.

For farmers like Lincoln Yeneken, low productivity, limited access to tools and seed, crop pests, and an inadequate road network, are major obstacles to agricultural development. In an interview with allAfrica.com, Yeneken said, “within the next five years I would like to plant coffee and rubber but I need tools and help to rebuild,” as he pointed to the frames of the simple huts and granary for the rice he is now putting up. Yeneken’s modest but productive subsistence farm and traps for bush meat are already doing relatively well, producing enough rice, cassava, plantain, and eddoes to feed his family and pay for his children’s school fees. But during the rainy season, his fields turn into swamp lands, dramatically raising the incidence of malaria infections and making it all but impossible to raise enough food.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like the Agricultural Cooperative Development International and Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (ACDI/VOCA) are trying to address these problems, by working with farmers on drainage projects, activities to improve their agricultural skills and improve their access to farming equipment and credit, but many Liberian farmers remain untouched by such programs.

The government’s limited capacity means that most of the county-level work in agriculture is currently being done by NGOs, but under the leadership of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, there is hope that this will soon change, particularly with increased private investment in Liberia. Her administration has made it clear that paying more attention to the agriculture sector is one of the keys to kick starting the economy. President Johnson-Sirleaf stated at a Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security of the Global Agricultural Development Initiative in Washington DC over the summer that “our policy goal in the sector is to revitalize operations and activities that contribute to sustainable economic growth and development; to provide food security and nutrition; and to increase farmers’ employment and income – all aimed at measurably reducing poverty.”

In the wake of such a long and devastating civil war, there is no shortage of work for the Liberian government. But, among the long list of projects to be undertaken, helping small-scale farmers to rebound is the only way to ensure that Liberia is set on the road to recover.

Parts I, II, and III were originally featured as a three-part blog series on the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet blog.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Controlling the temperature at a plant’s root zone can dramatically increase growth and production. (Photo credit: Roots Ltd.)

Every summer, many farmers and gardeners re-learn the sometimes unfortunate reality that the weather is out of their control. Vegetables wilt in the heat and the rain never seems to come when it’s needed. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where the summer heat is intense and water shortages are common, it can be particularly difficult to keep crops healthy and productive through the growing season.

But the company Roots Sustainable Agriculture Systems Ltd. (Roots Ltd.) has developed a system that could help farmers beat the heat. The company’s Root Zone Temperature (RZT) Optimization technology uses geothermal energy to help farmers control soil temperature at plant root zones, dramatically increasing growth and production.

Using a low pressure pump that can be easily powered by a solar panel, water is circulated from an above ground tank into a system of pipes buried six feet underground that acts like a radiator. In the summer the ground cools the water, and in the winter the ground warms the water. This water is then circulated back up to closed pipes embedded beneath the vegetable rows, cooling or warming the roots before it goes back to the tank to be used again.

By maintaining plant roots in an optimal range of 72 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, this system can increase the rate of carbon dioxide exchange in plants, as well as the transport of sugars from leaves to roots, boosting plant growth. In trials conducted by Roots Ltd. on Israeli farms between 2007 and 2010, the system successfully raised yields of strawberries, cucumbers, and peppers and helped crops reach maturity earlier.

Roots Ltd. has also developed a similar technology that irrigates crops by condensation. Instead of going through an underground radiator, the water is pumped through a solar-powered unit that chills it. The chilled water is then circulated through un-perforated pipes next to the plants, causing water vapor in the air to condense on the pipes, just as it would on a glass of ice water. The condensation then drips off, simultaneously irrigating and cooling the crops. By utilizing water in the air, this system conserves other water sources.

These innovations can be used on both covered and uncovered crops, require very little energy, and can operate “off the grid,” meaning they can be installed in remote locations. Following installation, costs are minimal and upkeep is simple, making them inexpensive, viable options for small farmers in developing nations. By keeping it cool (and hot) Roots Ltd.’s technologies could help smallholders grow more food at less cost.

To read more about innovations that are helping farmers grow more for less check out: Getting Water to Crops, Water Harvesting, Water Out of Thin Air, Handling Pests with Care Instead of Chemicals, and Improving the Harvest, From the Soil to the Market.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Safou, an indigenous African tree fruit known for its buttery texture, is a promising cash crop with a variety of uses.(Photo credit: S. Olanrewaju Disu)

Native to the humid, tropical forests of West and Central Africa, safou (Dacryodes edulis) is also known as the “butterfruit” for its rich, oily pulp. But safou is more than just creamy and delicious. It’s quickly becoming an important cash crop for small farmers in Africa and has proven useful in agroforestry systems and in preventing hunger.
People in West and Central Africa have been eating safou for centuries as a fresh fruit between meals and cooked as a main course. When roasted or quickly boiled in salted water, the pulp separates from the skin and seed and takes on a buttery texture. In Nigeria, cooked pulp is combined with starchy foods like maize to make a main course. And if cooked for even longer, a healthy oil, primarily made up of unsaturated fats, can be extracted from the pulp and seed.

Like its namesake, butter, safou is high in fats and very calorie-dense. But unlike butter, safou is also high in amino acids, the chemical building blocks of proteins. Concentrations of some its essential amino acids, such as lysine and leucine, are comparable to concentrations found in eggs and meat. Plus, the fruit is also high in micronutrients and minerals, particularly potassium, calcium, and magnesium, makingsafou a superfoodwith the potential to help alleviate hunger and malnutrition.

Aside from producing nutritious fruits, safou trees also yield a variety of other products. Its wood is stiff and elastic, making it useful for tool handles. The bark produces a resin that makes both a glue for mending pottery and topical treatment for jiggers, a parasitic flea that embeds itself in the skin. And the leaves and roots are also found in a variety of traditional medicines used to treat everything from dysentery to joint pain.

Given their many uses, safou trees are highly coveted in West and Central Africa. Farmers and smallholders go to great lengths to cultivate wild seedlings and protect them from being removed. But despite its popularity, safou is still not widely domesticated or commercially produced. But over the past ten years, researchers and non-profit groups have realized its usefulness and begun endorsing it as a viable new crop.

The World Agroforestry Center has been promoting it as a key tree species in agroforestry systems that can be intercropped with food crops to provide shade and biomass while also producing edible fruit. And the UK-based International Centre for Underutilised Crops has been searching for varieties that combine high-quality taste, nutrition, and disease-resistance.

This recent interest in safou has led to a proliferation of safou plantations in Africa and serious efforts to domesticate and breed varieties for commercial use. Fruits are sold at local markets and the oil is extracted for use in both cooking and natural cosmetics. Safou has even gained popularity in European markets where immigrant communities are importing the fruit in large quantities.

High in calories and nutrients, safou is a food that could prove useful in reducing hunger and malnutrition, and the tree’s many other uses make it a practical option for small farmers in Africa.

To learn more about crops indigenous to Africa, see: Reigniting an Interest in Local food, Traditional Food Crops Provide Community Resilience in Face of Climate Change, Monkey Oranges: Mouthwatering Potential, The Green Gold of Africa, Fonio: Africa’s Oldest Cereal Needs More Attention, The Locust Bean: An Answer to Africa’s Greatest Needs in One Tree, Lablab: The Bountiful, Beautiful Legume, Moringa: The Giving Tree, Black-eyed Peas to the Rescue, and The Taming of the Dika: West Africa’s Most Eligible Wild Tree.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

At the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder, Colorado, a young social entrepreneur can gain exactly “the kind of perspective” he or she needs to get a solid business off the ground, says Jehan Ratnatunga, a fellow at the institute. In a single day, he says, “you [might] have lunch with someone from Pakistan and then go and talk to someone from France and then go bounce ideas off of someone from Nigeria.”

The Unreasonable Institute was founded by University of Colorado at Boulder graduates Daniel Epstein, Teju Ravilochan, Tyler Hartung, Vladimir Dubovskiy and Nikhil Dandavati with the goal of providing promising young entrepreneurs from all over the world with the skills they need to make their ventures sustainable, scalable, and replicable. “We were all trying to create some large-scale change in the world,” says Hartung in an interview with Entrepreneur Magazine. “‘But we realized we lacked the skill, the knowledge, the networks–all the tangible things needed to create that impact. We want to give those tools to other young entrepreneurs.”

In order to do that, the Institute selects 25 young entrepreneurs from all over the world for a 6-week training session in Boulder, which is followed by a trip to San Francisco to meet with potential investors and supporters. At the institute, fellows meet with each other, attend classes and workshops, gain advice from expert mentors –who include Paul Polak, the founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE) and Bernard Amadei, founder of Engineers Without Borders (EWB)—and refine their project proposals. The fellows are also given the opportunity to connect with the institute’s “capital partners,” a group of 30 of the world’s top funds and foundations, including the Acumen Fund, Good Capital, and ResponsAbility. Representatives from each of these partner funding organizations spend time at the institute, getting to know the entrepreneurs and building long-lasting relationships with them.

The Institute training sessions culminate in the Unreasonable Global Summit, held in Boulder, an opportunity for fellows to further present and showcase their proposals in order to attract more funding and support. These presentations are broadcast online on Unreasonable.TV and are available for viewing.

“To have an opportunity to get serious and pitch your ideas to investors [. . .] that’s an amazing opportunity,” says Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu, a participating fellow from Nigeria. Ikegwuonu manages a radio station in Nigeria that “broadcasts agricultural, environmental and market information that is timely, relevant and well adapted , to over 250,000 listeners who are smallscale farmers.” But there are over 90 million smallscale farmers in Nigeria, he says in an interview on the organization’s website, and he wants to reach more of them.

Ikegwuonu needs an investment of $270,000 to build a taller radio tower and purchase a stronger transmitter. And the institute, he says, provided him with not only a platform with which to reach the funders and supporters who might be interested in helping him reach those additional farmers, it also gave him the experience of a “cross-fertilization of ideas.” Ikegwuonu says “I already have a business plan but I want[ed] to make sure it include[ed] one or two new ideas that will benefit my listeners and my pitch.”

“Nigeria is a big country and a big country should also have big problems and big solutions,” says Ikegwuonu. At the Unreasonable Institute, he is gaining the support and tools he needs to make his business a part of the solution.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In just a few short weeks State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet will be launched! We’re excited to share with you a sneak preview of Chapter 1 entitled, “Charting a New Path to Eliminating Hunger,” authored by co-project directors Brian Halweil and Danielle Nierenberg.

State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet will illuminate a new generation of innovative approaches to hunger alleviation that has emerged from farmers’ groups, private voluntary organizations, universities, and agribusiness companies. After traveling to 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and visiting over 200 projects, groups, and individuals, we found that while these organizations span a large variety of industries and disciplines, they all share the common goal of equipping farmers with the tools to improve their livelihoods and feed their communities while also protecting local ecosystems. And many of their solutions are working.

These projects and voices from the field have been combined with expert input from over 60 contributing authors, creating a roadmap to help guide policy-makers, farmers, NGOs, agribusiness, and development agencies in making more informed decisions regarding food production and food security goals.

Our research has illustrated that there is no one single solution. The first chapter of State of the World 2011 describes three major shifts to be made within the food system, moving beyond new seed development as the default solution to hunger and poverty and focusing more broadly than just increasing production to find the solutions in making better use of what we already have. Click HERE to download Chapter 1 and read them for yourself.

We’ll be launching the book in New York City at WNYC Radio’s The Greene Space on January 12th, followed by a State of the World Symposium on January 19th at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. We hope many of you can join us at both events, which will also be broadcast live on www.nourishingtheplanet.org. Stay tuned for more information.

For information on how to pre-purchase the book now click HERE.