LEISA's Farm

and now ... plant clinics reach the Netherlands!

posted by Karen

A local nursery and garden was holding an open day this weekend. My neighbour and her friend are keen allotment-holders, so in beautiful early summer sunshine we went along to see if we could get some inspiration and interesting seedlings for our gardens. We were not disappointed, finding lots of interesting herbs and fruits to buy and try out. They even had a section called "lost vegetables", selling seedlings of rare and underutilised vegetables.

 

But what really surprised me, especially after my blog post last week on how plant clinics are reaching Africa, was to find the very same thing, tucked away in a small nursery in the Netherlands - nothing less than a plant clinic, complete with two experts, microscope, a host of reference books and a queue of people looking for advice about what to do with their diseased plants.

Good ideas travel fast it seems!  

New potentials of ICT in rural areas

Found on the Crisscrossed Blog:

The Participatory Web: New Potentials Of ICT In Rural Areas,
ed. by Christian Kreutz. Publ. by GTZ 2008.

It's a 44 pages pdf providing a systematic overview of Web 2.0 experiences made to date in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The brochure serves as a practice-oriented introduction to the theme and discusses both the potentials and the possible limits to the participatory web.

Contents:
- Participatory Web – New Potentials for ICT in Rural Areas
- NABUUR: Effective Online Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Transfer
- Innovation, Interaction, Information: Using the Social Web in Agricultural Development
- Empowering Farmers in India Using the Kisan Blog
- Web 2.0 in Ecuador: Enhancing Citizenship
- Farmer-led Documentation
- Potential of Mobile: Cambodian Farmers Turn to their Phones
- The Knowledge Sharing Kit: CGIAR's Wiki Approach

Find a link here if you wish to download the pdf.

Story of a cover photo

posted by Karen

Finding a cover photo for the LEISA Magazine often gives the editorial team a bit of a headache. This time around we looked at more than 500 images, and were still struggling to find a good, authentic shot reflecting agricultural diversity. Having exhausted our usual contacts, we turned to Flickr and discovered photos of farmer Burton Caliz posted by the people from Sustainable Harvest International (SHI). With three days to go till the print deadline, we (frantically) called Sarah Kennedy from SHI, who then contacted their office in Belize to get permissions to use the photo. However, it was election day in Belize! But she managed to get hold of Nana Mensah, SHI-Belize Program Director, who offered to drive to Burton Caliz's farm. We'd like to say thanks to our new friends at SHI for such efforts, and helping secure such a great cover.

We were especially pleased with our choice when we learned a bit more about the man himself, Burton Caliz. SHI told us "He started practicing organic agriculture in the dry season of 1974. At that time, he used slash-and-burn techniques to grow his corn and other crops, but has since adopted methods that he says, 'feed the earth, not destroy it.' He is very committed to sustainable and organic methods, and recognises that to work within mother nature's systems you have to work hard, as he says, 'None of the wild creatures take vacations, so I follow their methods and work 7 days a week, no holidays.' Burton's wife, Adelina Caliz, won the Belize National Agriculture and Trade Show Woman Farmer of the Year Award in 1987 for the Toledo District. In 2005 and 2006, Burton won the award of Senior Organic Farmer of the year. Burton has established a school garden program in the local village school in his community of Mafridi."

Sustainable Harvest International has been working in Belize in 1999 and the local programme is now an independent affiliate organisation recognised by the local government as Sustainable Harvest International-Belize. The local field trainers provide farming families with the training and tools to overcome poverty while restoring our planet's tropical forests. Burton is a shining example of what SHI hope that families working with them can achieve with sustainable land-use practices. 

 

Soybean in Mozambique?

posted by Karen

Domingos Dias, a researcher in Mozambique, recently contacted us to tell us about his decision to promote soybean there. 

“Since the year 2000, the Instituto de Investigação Agrária de Moçambique (IIAM) has started to test, on-station and on-farm, new varieties of soybean. Sussundenga Agrarian Station was one of the first to join in and evaluate these trials. They mostly use hired labour for sowing, weeding, fertilizing, harvesting and threshing. One day, I asked a lady who was busy weeding a trial:

-Madam, do you know the name of this crop? 

-They are saying it is soybean.

-What is the importance of this crop?

-To be sold outside the country.

Wondering, and at same time perturbed about this general lack of knowledge, I decided to promote soybean. But how, with few resources? I wrote a research proposal, which was accepted by USAID: “Soybean Evaluation and Promotion in the Communities of Manica and Sofala”. The objectives are to identify, evaluate and promote improved soy varieties for production, sale and agro-processing at village level. In Manica and Sofala, poverty and hunger is high and about 40% of the children do not receive food rich in vitamins and minerals that are essential for their survival, growth and development during the first years of their lives.

The first training on agro-processing benefited our neighbours, living near to the agricultural station. They include farmers, teachers, students, health professionals and nurses as well as the agrarian station's workers. So far we have carried out three trainings and the reactions from participants are encouraging.”

Victoria, a health technician, said: "I'm going to apply the knowledge at the Health Centre."

Domingos has agreed to keep us updated on developments, so we hope to be posting more news about soybean soon. Have you been involved in trying out a new crop in your area? Or promoting soybean? Why not let us know how you are getting on, we will post some of your experiences here. E-mail us at: leisasfarm (at) gmail.com.

Diversity for Life campaign

posted by Karen

Bioversity International has been running a global campaign to highlight the links between agriculture and diversity, and raise awareness of the value of agricultural biodiveristy for people's lives.

At the Diversity for Life campaign's launch last year, Emile Frison, Director General of Bioversity stated:  "Agricultural biodiversity ... delivers better nutrition and health. It makes harvests more sustainable and minimizes the risk of failure. It offers income-earning opportunities and is especially valuable to the poorest people on the most marginal lands. It confers greater sustainability on farming systems. And in the medium term, it will be absolutely essential to cope with climate change. That's a pretty important list."

Ruth Raymond, co-ordinator of the global campaign, has recently been looking for stories about "Guardians of Diversity". She says "We are looking for stories about individuals who are devoting their lives to ensuring that agricultural biodiversity is being conserved and used. We are more interested in grassroots stories than in institutions. We want stories about people. The individuals need to have faces and names and voices. Right now we are just gathering ideas. Later on, we might want to follow up on these in more detail."

The Guardians of Diversity already include Doña Adeleiva Castillo who conserves 120 varieties of quinoa on their farm in the Peruvian Andes in memory of her son who died tragically in a motorbike accident a few years ago. Then there is well-known Japanese artist Mitsuaki Tanabe who uses his art to communicate the urgent need for conserving wild rice and protecting the habitats in which it grows.  Patrick Maundu, in Kenya, has spent his life promoting traditional African leafy vegetables. 

So, if you know someone who you would describe as a Guardian of Diversity, mail your ideas to Ruth at  r.raymond at cgiar.org  and she will let you know more details and how they will use your story. 

Bioversity will be promoting the stories of the Guardians of Diversity on their website, and are trying to negotiate a large scale, highly illustrated coffee table book about the Guardians. In addition, they are in discussion with the BBC to do a documentary or a series of documentaries on selected Guardians.

Diversity is also the theme of the most recent LEISA Magazine, hot off the press this week. Look out for a blog post with links next week.

Featured link: Author Aid

posted by Bertie

Author Aid is a global research community that supports developing country researchers in publishing their work, providing networking, mentoring, resources and training. LEISA's Farm thinks the discussions, guidelines and tips on the website could be useful not only for researchers, but also for field workers, educators and farmers who wish to be guided in documenting and presenting their practices.
Author Aid's website publishes a weekly news item. Last week's item was based on an Author Aid workshop in Rwanda. It linked to a lecture given by journalist Pius Sawa, in which he gives advice on how your work can be presented to media like local newspapers and radio and TV stations, and attract attention. Sawa's presentation can be downloaded for free.

Mobile phone as a development tool

Many blog posts and news items are about the growing impact of mobile phone technology in developing countries. On the Social Edge website a discussion on this topic is going on since November 2008.
Go to SocialEdge.org to read different views and/or to participate.

Related news:
- Mobile banking could provide easier route to addressing global poverty
- The dawn of cell phone-based carbon micro-credits
- A program to reach many farmers
- No more spilt milk

AGCommons' selection of five Quick Win Projects

You can hardly call it low external input, but anyway here's some examples of how geospatial technology is going to be used to provide solutions that ultimately meet the needs of smallholder farmers.

AGCommons has announced its selection of five Quick Win Projects for immediate implementation:

• Nodes of growth: Improving legume seed networks in Kenya  (CIAT-Africa)
• Seeing Is Believing: unlocking precision agriculture in West African smallholder communities with very high resolution imagery   (ICRISAT)
• Roads Data Development in Ethiopia  (NASA (SEDAC))
• Community Level Crop Disease Surveillance  (Grameen Foundation)
• Africa Trial Sites Catalogue: Reaching out to farmers, agronomists and plant breeders with spatially efficient, participatory testing networks  (CGIAR)

For more info see the AGCommons website.

How to get connected without being online

Remote rural areas often don't have easy access to the internet. But rural communities are finding their own ways to digital tools.
Read here on SciDev.net about inventive methods to participate in the digital blessings without being (constantly) connected.

Via Appropedia on Twitter.

IFOAM vacancies and work opportunities

Special announcement from IFOAM's Head Office:

IFOAM is offering a short term contract for a qualified individual to serve as Managing Editor for Ecology & Farming for the remainder of 2009. Emphasis in this job is on overall management and content planning.
For more info (and more vacancies) click here.