LEISA's Farm

Yes it's out: LEISA Magazine 25:2

posted by Bertie

Theme of this issue:
Farmers as entrepreneurs
Small-scale farmers and their support institutions are becoming more convinced that there is little future for them unless they become more entrepreneurial in their approach to farming. Which means that they produce increasingly for markets - local, regional as well as global, and with a profit motive. There's nothing new about rural entrepreneurship. But the challenges faced by family farms in the South right now are unique in scope and scale.
What options are there for small-scale farmers to become more entrepreneurial?
Read/Download the articles.

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LEISA Network partners at ... Niamé, Niger!

Posted by Frank van Schoubroeck

Today Sunday afternoon I arrived in Niamé 33 degrees :o). This is the capital of Niger, West Africa. I just chatted with two Dutch colleagues, Fenke Elskamp of OXFAM-NOVIB and Christel Schiphorst of AgriProFocus.

 

I am yet to meet Safi of IED-Afrique - but the hotel manager says she did not check in here. I thought she'd be here yesterday... Safi, if you read this: come to Hotel Terminus, Room 119 - or send me an SMS!!!

 

We are planning a field trip to get ideas from villagers about options for productivity in the area. Niger has a history of bad famines that some people call "Free-market induced famines" - shops are full of food but people have no money to buy it. What is the long-term solution for this? Should people produce for the market, and make money to buy food, or should people try producing their own food, or should people care for trees and feed cattle? Or a mix of all?

 

We AgriProFocus partners would like to figure this out so that we can look how the range of expertise in the network can be used to solve food problems, also for the poorest. So we try to get a picture and see how the Netherlands can support.

 

Tomorrow: More!
Frank


"Niger"

Photo credit:
Vodkamax
CC-licensed
BY-NC-SA

A story from Ghana

posted by Bertie

"We produce in abundance here... One hectare we can produce five, six tonnes here and we have over two thousand hectares here just on this project....

Ghana's Roosting Bird
(Click title to view video)
Pangea Day Film directed by
Jemma Gander and Miriam Rowe

...We can't consume it by ourselves. But still, the foreign rice is coming more and this one is lying here....
We can't compare our rice to the US rice because the marketing, the promotion of that rice... But if we harvest and the harvested rice will stay over one year before it will be marketed then where will the farmer be getting money to sustain himself? Send his children to school and maintain his family?"

Who controls Africa's farm lands?

posted by Bertie

The planned long term leasing of 1.3m hectares of Madagascar's farm land by South Korean Daewoo Logistics may have become problematic since Madagascar's new president Andry Rajoelina cancelled the deal last week.¹⁾ However, more and more foreign companies make large-scale land deals in Africa and Asia, planning to ship food and biofuel harvests to their own countries. For example, a Libyan investment fund and several Chinese companies have recently obtained 100.000 ha of prime rice land from the Mali government.²⁾

What are the impacts of these growing foreign direct investments for poorer rural people? The stated objective of the Mali project is to meet local food needs. Food and biofuels production could become an important instrument in rural appraisal and improvement of livelihoods for the poor. But only if local land rights and environmental values are observed and secured and if small farmers get a fair chance in the negotiations with foreign investors.
An article published last week in The Economist³⁾ sketches an optimistic view on the effects of the global food crisis on market opportunities for private agricultural investors. With regard to the discharged deal in Madagascar, after riots and a coup, the article concludes:
"That sort of meddling undermines some investments and businesses. But in a strong market, it makes the businesses that can operate freely all the more lucrative and valuable."

Not a word though about the less profitable impacts this land grabbing may have on local farmers, food sovereignty and biodiversity.

ILEIA Foundation’s Frank van Schoubroeck added the following comment to the article:

"Thanks for the attention to the business of food making. We probably agree that the food sector is more important than some other economic sectors. Without cheap airlines, we adjust our holidays; without food, we die. Therefore I fail to understand why The Economist does not look over the horizon of the fossile fuel era. In May last year we had a taste of what happens with our food when oil prices soar - so what when oil runs out in a decade or so? Aren't we working towards a global food crash? Can somebody provide us with a vision for feeding humanity after 2050? Maybe, small (in terms of money) 'alternative' movements bear more relevance than suggested by The Economist's coverage. (See for thousands of examples LEISA Magazine.) Add to this that 1.5 billion or so small farmers cannot even buy inputs from Monsanto c.s. - I would think it is high time to highlight alternative pathways to future food supplies. Maybe small farmers should get the rights to produce? (rather than that their land gets grabbed), and supported in their role and knowledge to feed the world? (rather than that they are considered backward). Small-scale farmers produce more per hectare than big companies; if supported (and not competed out) they maintain soil and produce more crop per drop, and with their farming systems they keep the bio-diversity even Monsanto depends upon for its GM crops (and never pays them for). Small-scale farmers can produce our food with much less fuel than Daewoo. In the process you work on poverty reduction, health, and other development goals. Was that not what economy was about? Good investment?"

¹⁾ Financial Times, March 18, 2009
²⁾ Grain, Jan. 2009
³⁾ The Economist, March 19, 2009

Food crisis: real issues are distribution and income inequity

Michael Pimbert, director of the agriculture and biodiversity program at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) says that the current food crisis is the outcome of a market-driven, global food system. In a new publication "Towards Food Sovereignty" he highlights local production as a potential solution. Chapter 1-2-3 were published online in 2008, chapter 4 in January 2009. You can read or download them here (click). More chapters will follow.

Pimbert: "It is a persistent myth that there isn't enough food to feed everyone. There is still enough food grown to feed everyone. Food distribution and income inequity are the real issues."
Read an interview of Pimbert by Tierramérica's Stephen Leahy, Febr. 15, 2006 (website also in Spanish and Portuguese)

Rethinking 'Buy Local' and 'Buy Fair'

Western consumers are growing more and more keen to do their bit for the environment. Buying local food and thus shortening the traveling distance between farm and plate seems an obvious way to reduce greenhouse emissions.* Others argument that consumers should consider buying "fair" rather than buying "local". Many poor producers in the South could lose their chances to earn a decent living if Western consumers would stop buying imported products from developing countries.

To avoid a too simplistic view on the subject some relevant questions need to be considered. This is done in an interesting article by Craig Mackintosh on www.permaculture.org.au:

- Are our purchasing dollars helping support native Africans in their bid to have a small patch of ground, and live low-carbon, self-sufficient and sustainable lives, perhaps selling/trading their excess locally?
- Or, are we instead financing their plug into the global economy, effectively subscribing them to an energy-intensive ecologically unsustainable factory-farm system of agriculture that has only a few people (farm owners, distributors, and transnationals) making the real profits?
- Is prosperity reaching the individual that wields the farm implement, or is the bulk of the money heading out-of-country to seed and chemical companies, manufacturers of heavy equipment and to western supermarket chains?
- When considering the “food miles or fair miles?” question - ask yourself, are ‘fair miles’ really fair? Is the money we spend at our local supermarket actually ending up where we think it is, or are we promoting the disintegration of the small local farming communities that are our last hope in combating ecological destruction and global inequality?
- What would happen if we funneled our aid endeavours at training small-scale farmers in developing countries how to successfully stay just that - small scale?

*However, read here about a study reporting that in the US only 4% of the greenhouse emissions comes from transporting the food from producers to retailers. The study also concluded that adopting a vegetarian diet, even if the vegetarian food is transported over very long distances, does far more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, than does eating a locally grown diet.

Use carbon markets to halt deforestation, let small farmers partake

At the UN Climate Change Conferences, agroforestry scientists argued that existing technology to effectively monitor carbon storage in developing country landscapes could be an effective way to save carbon.
"If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly and effectively as possible, we need to do everything we can to encourage the people living in and around the world’s tropical forests to adopt carbon-saving and carbon-enhancing approaches to development" - these are the words of Dennis Garrity, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre. "One crucial way to do that is to give them the same opportunities to sell their carbon as a commodity in the global market as is encouraged in other sectors."

Kyoto: Think Global, Act Local (K:TGAL) is a research and capacity building program, financed by the Netherlands Development Cooperation, which is investigating the possibilities and potential for Community Based Forest Management of existing natural forest to be included as an eligible carbon mitigation activity under international climate change agreements in the future. It is also exploring the value of CBFM as a climate adaptation strategy. In the Himalayan region, the program aims to explore the capacity of community forests in carbon storing. Its objective is to develop simple but reliable measurement methods that can be carried out by communities.

In LEISA Magazine's December 2008 issue you will find an article on The potential of community managed forests for carbon trade. In a research project in the state of Uttarakhand, India, local people were trained to measure how much carbon their forests store per year. They learned how to use modern gadgets for biomass carbon measurement, and are now training other community members. They are now looking for more “buyers” for their carbon, while continuing to manage their forests sustainably.
Inclusion of forest conservation activities in international agreements and protocols will give incentives to the local population to get certified emission reductions for their efforts to conserve the forest. This would not only provide resources for sustainable livelihoods and improved lifestyles, but also encourage poor people in rural areas to make a meaningful contribution to reducing global emissions and forest conservation. In the meantime, private carbon markets can be exploited.
Click here to read the whole article.

See also this article in The East African, Dec. 27, 2008.

Access to markets

Many farmers still see themselves as commodity producers and not businessmen. There is a growing need for them to collaborate with different actors to link into the financial services and modern markets.

From Nov. 12-14, a workshop was held on  "Inclusion of Small Producers in the Value Chain: From Field Evidence to Action". It was attended by 30 participants from Indonesian NGOs and focused on sustainable agriculture issues. Anton Muhajir from VECO Indonesia, Denpasar, Bali, published a summarizing article in The Jakarta Post.  Click here to read his article.