SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY National & Global Perspectives

International Rural Development Spring 2013 ird MATTERS SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY National & Global Perspectives Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation strategies among rural communities in Karonga district, northern Malawi Biotechnology and Food Security: A global Perspective IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE Foreword T he provision of a sustainable, accessible and affordable food supply for the whole of the world’s population has to be a priority. And each of these adjectives is important; of the one billion people who go to bed hungry each night, a good proportion do so because they either cannot afford or do not have ready access to food that is available in plenty to others. And it is a challenge for all, not just those in need, for not only is it a moral issue it is also a deeply pragmatic issue for those countries who currently feed the majority of their own populations (and even in “wealthy” nations there are some who are seriously undernourished). Populations that are hungry are inherently unsettled and unpredictable – who wouldn’t be – and understandably feel less need to worry about the sustainability of agricultural methods. Hunger prompts civil unrest, migration and conlict, issues that are the proper concern of all governments whether directly involved or not. 02 SPRING 2013 A food supply that is sustainable, affordable and accessible also needs to be nutritious. It is a developing paradox that as the challenges of food security - more food from less land with fewer resources, for a growing world population – grow, so too do the number of people in so-called ‘developed’ countries who are overweight and obese. So to “sustainable”, “affordable” and “accessible” we should add “appropriate” and “nutritious”. This makes the challenge even greater; that’s quite a responsibility for those with the education and training to help. Professor Chris Gaskell, CBE Principal, Royal Agricultural College Contents 09 07 19 32 15 05 07 Climate Change, Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies among rural communities in Karonga District, Northern Malawi Food security: in the pastoral communities in arid and semi-arid lands of Africa. 09 Opinion Piece: The time is ripe for a modal shift in support to African Agriculture 11 Apiculture and Food Security 12 Mixed Farming and Food Security 15 Biotechnology and Food Security: a Global Perspective 19 Soil Pollution in China: Future Food Security in danger! 21 Making the Distinction: Undesirable Land Grabs Versus Large Scale Land Acquisitions, Concessions and Investments in Africa 24 China Food Crisis and Countermeasures 26 Mapping Gender: the Food Security Agenda in post Conlict Communities 29 The Journey so far 32 Peasant Rights or Food Riots: the challenges of institutionalising food sovereignty SPRING 2013 03 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE THE TEAM PROJECT MANAGER Bayode Anifowose CHAIRMAN EDITORIAL BOARD Collis Mukungurutse MEMBER, EDITORIAL BOARD nthamyo Mbeye Yan Zhang dandan Liu FINANCE, ADVERTS & SPONSORSHIP shuting Pan Peninah nangobi DESIGN & GRAPHICS Philip Kang’ethe david Cheruiyot Edmond sibanda Ming He ADDRESS royal Agricultural College, stroud road, Cirencester, gloucestershire, gL7 6Js, United Kingdom W: www.rac.ac.uk F: The royal Agricultural College T: @royalagcollege Welcome SPRING ISSUE 2013 T he world today is plagued with about one billion hungry people. There is though enough food production, one third of which is wasted (1.3 billion tons annually) but with massive environmental degradation. The theme of this edition - Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security: National & Global Perspectives - is therefore very timely. We have carefully selected our topics to touch on topical issues such as Biotechnology, gender, land grabs, environmental degradation, food sovereignty etc and linked them to the theme. Africa and Asia (China) are in special focus for obvious reasons. Most Africans are engaged in subsistence agriculture and an average of 60% lives below the poverty level yet Africa is home to the world’s largest uncultivated land. Elimination of hunger and feeding 9 billion people in years to come will depend on how well the world explores Africa land sustainably. China with its huge population remains a highly sensitive country in the global food system, any distortion to its local food production we are all aware will have ripple effects on the global scene instantaneously. The production of the magazine was a learning process for us in the magazine team; we owe its success to our distinguished guest writers, sponsors (Marketing department, Drs John Conway & Richard Baines), RAC staff and our colleagues for both editorial and technical support. Please enjoy the piece. Bayode Anifowose Project Manager, IRD Matters 2013 Disclaimer The views expressed in this magazine are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Royal Agricultural College. Dr. R.N. Baines, IRD Tutor Front row (R-L): Shuting PAN (China),Dandan LIU (China), Philip Kang’ethe (Kenya), David Cheruiyot (Kenya). Back row (R-L): Dr Richard Baines (Principal Lecturer & Magazine Sponsor), Collis Mukungurutse (Zimbabwe), Peninah Nangobi (Uganda), Edmond Sibanda (Zimbabwe), Nthamyo Mbeye (Malawi), Yan ZHANG (China), Bayode Anifowose (Nigeria), Ming HE (China). 04 SPRING 2013 Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies among rural communities in Karonga District, Northern Malawi Sibongile Zimba food security, climate change and sustainable development1 MALAWIAN NATIONAL WITH A POSTGRADUATE MSC IN HORTICULTURE FROM UNIVERSITY OF MALAWI, BUNDA COLLEGE. CLIMATE CHANGE IN MALAWI She is working as a Staff Associate in Horticultural Crops Production at Bunda College of Agriculture. She has been working on several projects on climate change and sustainable agriculture. In addition she has participated in and attended several conferences on climate change. Email; sibozim@ yahoo.co.uk Cell: +265 999 044 484 +265 881 872 386 I mpacts of climate change on food security are global and local. Climate change will affect agricultural food systems in all countries, including exporters and importers as well as those at subsistence level . However, there is increasing evidence that the additional burden of climate change, including variability and extreme events and associated disaster risk, falls disproportionately on the poorest of developing countries and the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the populations within these countries2. Changes in mean rainfall and temperature as well as the increase in extreme events will affect agriculture, livestock, forestry and isheries. Many impacts, such as increased land degradation and soil erosion, changes in water availability, biodiversity loss, more frequent and more intense pest and disease outbreaks as well as disasters need to be addressed across sectors. It is imperative to identify and institutionalize mechanisms that enable the most vulnerable to cope with climate change impacts. This requires collaborative thinking and responses to the issues generated by the interaction of Climate change continues to pose serious threats to different sectors and mainly agriculture the back bone of Malawi’s economy. Malawi has not been spared from the adverse impacts of extreme weather and climate variability such as loods and droughts. In the last 15 years, there have been no less than 6 episodes of drought that have affected agricultural production2. In addition, rainfall has been erratic with frequent dry spells causing shorter growing seasons, poor crop yields, food shortages, hunger and the spread of disease in a country where 29 percent of people already live in extreme poverty2. Climate change in Malawi is pushing people further into poverty and women and children are suffering most4. There has been a noticeable increase in diseases, such as malaria, cholera and dysentery, associated with changes in rainfall patterns, creating health challenges that are particularly affecting mostly poor people in rural communities. Women travel longer distances to fetch water, and spend most of the time in health centres instead of working in their ields2. These new challenges will not only make achieving the Millennium Development Goals more dificult, but also threatens some of the progress already made in ighting extreme hunger, malnutrition and poverty. Therefore, in order to reduce the vulnerability to the anticipated negative impacts of climate change there has been a recent call for modern climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies among different stakeholders in the country and a continent as the whole2. While policy responses to global warming have been mainly driven by debates among scientists, the insights of poor people living on the frontline have been largely neglected5. Climate change issues are not new to rural communities in Karonga being one of the districts in Northern Malawi that has been severely affected by frequent loods and droughts. The local people in the district have historically been able to adapt to climatic variability with creative and indigenous practices that has enabled them to reduce vulnerability. INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS Interest in the topic of indigenous knowledge began several decades ago with the study of ethnoscience and taxonomy. It was then expanded into many areas of agricultural development and natural resource management2. Recent studies document the effectiveness of indigenous knowledge in land management in a number of settings and show that indigenous knowledge persists even in contexts of commercial land use and government land management3. The term indigenous knowledge refers to the place-based knowledge that is rooted in local cultures and generally associated with long-settled communities which have strong ties to their natural environments. Such knowledge tends to be the result of cumulative experience and observation, tested in the context of everyday life, and devolved by oral communication and repetitive engagement rather than through formal instruction3. While it is often deined in contrast to scientiic or Western knowledge, indigenous knowledge should not be seen as a rigid, static repertoire of traditions that is unable to incorporate innovations3. Rather, it is a lexible entity which, by virtue of its diverse and empirical nature, can easily integrate skills and insights from other knowledge systems as well as from experimental practice. THE EXISTING INDIGENOUS STRATEGIES IN MALAWI Most of the dwellers in Karonga have stayed for so long in their area, therefore they have a longstanding familiarity with seasonal patterns of weather. The understanding of the weather pattern gives them an idea to observe and SPRING 2013 05 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE POOR MAIZE STAND DUE TO PROLONGED DRY SPELLS REFERENCES Cleveland D, Soleri D (2007) Farmer knowledge and scientist knowledge is sustainable agricultural development: ontology, epistemology, and praxis. In: Sillitoe P (ed) Local science vs global science: approaches to indigenous knowledge in international development. Berghahn, New York, pp 209–230 7 predict any variability and changes to rainfall pattern. Local people have different names to rainy seasons and are familiar with timing and duration of the season. The irst rainy season runs from end October to December, it is characterized by few rain drops. This is the time people get prepared for planting; the second rainy season run from February to April and it is characterized by heavy rains. Although they are not able to describe the amount of rainfall in millimetres, they are able to know the moisture content of the soil by digging with hoes or scrapping the soil by hands. The same experience has also been noted in most parts of Africa such as in Uganda10. In addition, farmers have noted that of late the timing of the onset of rains has become irregular and they are experiencing frequent prolonged dry spells especially in Lupembe area (Karonga). Furthermore people in Karonga have particular indicators or signs that are able to predict precipitation, wind and temperature. One farmer indicated that when the winter season (May to July) is too cold they know there will be enough rains or heavy rains in the rainy season (October through April). If the winter season turns to be warmer than usual it can be predicted that few rains will be received and they will be dry spells. In addition if there are a lot of mangoes at the onset of rains they can predict that they will be few rains in the rainy season and the duration will be shorter. The local people in the district have also been able to predict looding. The north and central part of Karonga has been experiencing frequent loods in the past. These areas are surrounded by Rukulu River, Lusilya River, Songwe river and north part of Lake Malawi. The people have been able to adapt to and predict looding. If there are heavy rains in the surrounding mountains and strong sound of the rivers in those area they know they will be loods. . “When there are heavy rains we know they will be looding and sometimes we move to the upper area before looding and sometimes not. After the loods the remaining water can be used for rice growing and horticultural crops and we have adapted to this” said one farmer. Rural communities are aware of the rainfall patterns and can predict if there will be heavy rains or not. This helps them to prepare in advance. Climate change continues to pose serious threats to different sectors and mainly agriculture the back bone of Malawi’s economy. 06 SPRING 2013 1 FAO, (2008) Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in the Food and Agriculture Sector. Technical background document from the expert consultation. Rome Jumbe C. B., Wiyo, A. K., Njewa E. and Msiska M. F (2008). The role of government, donors, civil society and the private sector in climate change adaptation in Malawi : Scoping Study Centre for Agricultural Research & Development, Bunda College . Lilongwe. Malawi 3 McDaniel J, Kennard D, Fuentes A (2005) Smokey the Tapir: traditional ire knowledge and ire prevention campaigns in lowland Bolivia. Soc Nat Resour 18(10):921–931 9 Nyong A., Adesina F., Elasha O. B., (2007) The value of indigenous knowledge in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies in the African Sahel 6 Olhoff, 2011 Opportunities for Integrating CCA and DRR in Development Planning and Decision-Making Examples from 2 Sub-Saharan Africa. Global assessment report on disaster risks reduction. Orlove B. Roncoli C., Kabugo M., Majugu A. (2009) Indigenous climate knowledge in southern Uganda: the multiple components of a dynamic regional system. Climatic Change DOI 10.1007/s10584-009-9586-2 7 Oxfam international, (2009). The Winds of Change: Climate change, poverty and the environment in Malawi. [www.oxfam.org/sites/Malawi (12/07/2011)] 4 5 Relief Web report, (2007). Integrated Regional Information Networks. Available on line http://reliefweb.int/node/231275 Robinson J, Herbert D. (2001) Integrating climate change and sustainable development. Int J Glob Environ. Issues 1(2):130–148 Verlinden et al. 2006) Verlinden A, Seely MK, Hillyer A (2006) Settlement, trees and termites in Central North Namibia: a case of indigenous resource management. J Arid Environ 66(2):307–335 8 Food security in the pastoral communities in arid and semi-arid lands of Africa. Koech Oscar Kipchirchir KENYAN NATIONAL BORN ON 25TH JULY, 1985. He holds a masters degree in Range Management (Livestock Production and Ecology), BSc degree in Range Management both from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He is currently PhD student in Drylands Resource Management at the University of Nairobi. He has vast experience working in research projects in the drylands of Kenya, Somalia and Uganda. Areas of interest are climate change mitigation and adaptation to increase food security in the ASALs. Currently he is an assistant Lecturer at the University of Nairobi. He can be contacted at: P.O Box 00625-00625, Nairobi, Kenya, Mobile Phone: +254 725 513 044. Email: okkoech@yahoo.com okkoech@gmail.com, oscarkip@uonbi.ac.ke D rylands of Africa are inhabited by about 268 million people, which is about 40% of the total continent’s human population. These areas have been on the media news both locally and international, not by the virtue of their areal extent and services they provide only, but mainly on the high demand for humanitarian assistance in the recent past. In the past this situation was not the case as the human population was in balance with the resources they exploited. Many studies carried out in these areas document a tremendous change in climatic conditions, which constrains resource use and exploitation. The communities living in the drylands of Eastern and Central Africa have always provided information to researchers on the many changes observed and the increasing challenges they are faced with in attaining their livelihoods. The drylands of Africa have great potential for provision of many goods and services, these include: livestock and livestock products (hides and skins, meat, milk, ghee, bones, hooves, horns, and poultry), Signiicant quantities of diversiied nature-based products (i.e., Aloe, Gum Arabic, bio-fuels- jatropha, incense, herbal products, herbal tea, honey, ish, tree dyes, fragrance, wild sisal, wild fruits), minerals ( asbestos, gold, quartz crystals, green and red garnet), pockets of land that are suitable for farming on agro-pastoralism basis, substantial potential for ecological and cultural-based tourism. Despite all the above beneits that could be fully derived in the arid and semi-arid lands if proper planning and utilization of the resources in a sustainable manner there are many challenges limiting the optimization of the beneits. This includes; the generally hostile climatic conditions, low availability of surface water, poor infrastructure, low productivity, few and underdeveloped marketing opportunities, unavailability of credit schemes for producers and ineffective production and marketing policies, temperatures are becoming hotter, rainfall patterns are increasingly erratic, and loods and droughts more widespread. Population growth on the other hand has led to increasing demand for settlement in the marginal areas and reducing the herding areas which is a recipe for desertiication. This has also been exacerbated by climate change phenomenons. Consequently, the inhabitants of these areas have continued to live in poverty and are dependent on relief as their livelihoods source. The continued challenges in the African drylands, mainly the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs), have necessitated both the local and international communities to look for ways of reducing the challenges of food insecurity and relief reliance by over 70% of the population living in these areas. For example in East African drylands, there are many efforts by governments and development partners to reduce climate change impacts that have led to frequent droughts. The governments are investing in research and development that addresses dryland challenges. This has become a great dream by increased collaborative research within institutions of higher learning focusing on individual institution strength. An example of efforts to increase food security in Eastern and Central Africa is the development of Regional Universities Forum on Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), a regional organization that seeks to increase capacity for Agriculture production and food security in eastern and central Africa. This organization identiied the strength of the University of Nairobi in Range sciences and drylands resources management, and started a PhD program on Drylands Resource Management in the quest to improve drylands food security. This program provides training for researchers and professionals in drylands, it has produced more than 15 PhD’s since the launch of the programme in 2010. These experts are working on the drylands of Eastern and Central Africa with research organizations, NGOs and training institutions. The areas being of specialization in the program are; pastoral livelihoods, climate change , livestock marketing, land use changes, livestock insurance and early warning systems, livestock production systems and forage science, indigenous technical knowledge (ITK), human wildlife conlicts and mitigations among others. For example, one of the graduates, Dr. Baaru, carried out research to show the seriousness of climate change impacts in the drylands of Africa, did her research on climate change in North eastern Kenya, in a community most PhD program on Drylands Resource Management in the quest to improve drylands food security. SPRING 2013 07 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE PASTORAL COMMUNITIES IN NORTHERN KENYA MAKING HAY USING LOCAL TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE THEIR LIVELIHOODS. affected by frequent droughts and found out that “The rivers were running dry, and the forests were disappearing. It was clear that the area was getting worse and worse,” The University of Nairobi has also established a new Centre for Sustainable Drylands Ecosystems and Societies (CSDES), launched in 2011 as a joint project of the University of Nairobi and Colorado State University to support drylands research in the region, supported by USAID. The Centre together to solve the prevailing rangeland problems. One of the success stories from this initiative is that the current PhD research in the drylands resource management programme was action oriented research with the problems being addressed initiated by the pastoral communities. The future of the drylands of Africa lies in the response of local governments, international community, researchers, development agencies and the communities working in a collaborative way to address the challenges facing them. This entails coming up with solutions through appropriate technologies, innovations, and knowledge needed to enhance sustainability and resilience of the dryland ecosystems. The key focus areas for research includes; studies that enhance adaptation and mitigation measures against Food security in the drylands of Africa can only be attained through a multi disciplinary approach to solving existing problems helps to connect PhD students in the programme with sources of research support as well as linking the research students to farmers, pastoralists, policy makers and other stakeholders working in the drylands. This is perhaps the new approach of solving some of the challenges in the Drylands where researchers and practitioners were not working 08 SPRING 2013 climate change, alternative livelihood options for pastoralists, dryland policy analysis that enhances productivity and competitiveness, marketing of dryland products and services, enhanced and improved livestock production systems, technology transfer and participatory research approaches. Food security in the drylands of Africa can only be attained through a multi disciplinary approach to solving existing problems; this will ensure sustainable resource management and utilization. As said by Professor Agnes Mwangombe, the Principal of the College of Agriculture and Veterinary Science at the University of Nairobi. “The challenge for Eastern and Southern Africa drylands is perpetual and repeated drought and famine! How do we manage very fragile resources there to sustain humanity and life?” this is a challenge to scientists that we should be working to address if we are to make the arid and semi-arid lands a happy place for all humankind. Opinion Piece: The time is ripe for a modal shift in support to African Agriculture Martin Whiteside ENVIRONMENT & DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT With over thirty years’ experience in agricultural programmes in Africa and Asia. He studies Agriculture and Forest Sciences at Oxford University and has worked for a number of development charities. He has lived in Botswana and Mozambique. For the last 16 years Martin has been a consultant designing and evaluating rural development programmes for a wide variety of organisations including Oxfam, DFID, United Nations, Christian Aid, WWF and many others. He currently lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire and can be contacted at whiteside@gn.apc.org. P roductive, sustainable and climatechange resilient farming in Africa could deliver beneits not only to farmers, but also to urban populations and, through reducing carbon emissions, could bring beneits to the wider world. If these potential external beneits are recognised and invested in, a long term modal shift to proitability and ending poverty could be achieved. In Europe and North America there has been a long-term recognition of the need to support the rural economy for the good of the wider, increasingly urban population. Most urban and rural people alike want a countryside that continues to be farmed and populated, that produces local food and provides areas for recreation and biodiversity conservation. The means of achieving this – for instance the Common Agricultural Policy in Europe or the different farm subsidies in North America – may be debated. Concerns about bureaucracy, and about larger farmers beneitting more than their smaller neighbours, are legitimate but these are issues of delivery rather than principle. The public good of a viable rural economy is now widely accepted, despite the fact that only a tiny minority of us are still actually ‘farmers’. The challenge to the principle of subsidising European and American Agriculture has most often come from those working for development of poorer countries. Rich-world farm subsidies are considered to undermine poor-world farmers. The calls have therefore been to cut the rich-world subsidies, rather than try to do something similar in the South. This paper suggests that there is an opportunity to think again, particularly in Africa. For the last twenty years, support to African agriculture has been more sticking plaster than strategic (despite some honourable exceptions). Public agricultural extension services have been run down and ‘subsidy’ has become a dirty word – despite continued subsidy in the rich world. The proportion of aid money going to agriculture plummeted in the 1980s. This started to change at the end of the last decade, with fears of food shortage and food price hikes sparking, often urban based, challenges to governments across the poor world. The World Bank has admitted that it and the IMF made mistakes in the implementation of the structural adjustment programmes that led to the running down of services like agricultural extension. At the same time, the realisation that agriculture is a major emitter of carbon dioxide, and particularly the massive carbon emissions (and reduced biodiversity) on conversion of forest and grassland to poorly managed cropland, also concentrated a few people’s minds. Some money has started to low for both biodiversity conservation and to reduce carbon emissions, but often still within a sticking plaster mind-set. To change our mind-set, it is worth thinking about the potential multiple beneits of creating and maintaining a vibrant rural farming economy in poor countries, beneits which are potentially stronger than those for the rich world. The numbers of beneiciaries from a vibrant rural economy are higher in poorer countries, as a The numbers of beneiciaries from a vibrant rural economy are higher in poorer countries, as a high proportion of the population. WIN-WIN-WIN: CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE IN ZAMBIA PRODUCES INCREASED YIELDS, LESS EROSION AND RETAINS MORE CARBON IN THE SOIL SPRING 2013 09 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE high proportion of the population. They are often disproportionately the poorest and are mostly small farmers or agricultural labourers. Even as the percentage of the population engaged in agriculture declines with development and urbanisation, it is almost certainly better for a vibrant farming sector to offer a future for young people as well as to be a positive springboard from which young people move into the urban and service economy. This is preferable to a negative light from rural areas forced by hunger and desperation, leaving behind the old and even more desperate. A diverse, productive and resilient local farming sector contributes to national and international food security. In tomorrow’s world more food will be needed. Both urban and rural households beneit from affordable and stable food prices, indeed many farming families are actually net-purchasers of food. Preventing famine is certainly much better in human terms and probably also cheaper in pure cash terms than paying for recurring emergency relief and rehabilitation. Sustainably farmed and managed rural areas are essential for the preservation of urban water supplies, prevention of looding and maintaining the ability of soils to produce in the future. Maintaining a balance between farmed and biodiverse wilderness areas are also important in many countries to attract tourists and beneit the national economy. A relatively newly recognised beneit is the avoided carbon cost of reducing soil degradation and continued expansion of ploughing into forest and grassland. Fertile, organic matter rich soil locks away carbon. Producing more, sustainably, on a smaller area creates the possibility of setting aside more land as forest and grassland. Many of these beneits go to the wider society, including urban areas and rich countries (especially in relation to climate change mitigation). Therefore we shouldn’t talk about ‘subsidising’ African agriculture, but rather about paying African farmers for the beneits that good farming and rural management can bring to the wider world community. How does this help change our mind-set? How would we design support to African agriculture if we knew we had signiicant, consistent funds to be able to pay African farmers for their contribution to a healthy planet and a healthy wider economy over the next 20, 30 or 40 years? What would be possible? Would the likely beneits outweigh the costs of continuing with our sticking plaster? A modal shift is possible, perhaps for the irst time, because of the availability of signiicant climate change funds that are due to low from rich industrialised carbon polluting countries to 10 SPRING 2013 BY LEAVING LAST YEAR’S CROP RESIDUE ON THE SURFACE, INFILTRATION IS IMPROVED, SOIL TEMPERATURES ARE LOWER AND SOI L ORGANIC MATTER REMAINS HIGHER. those with historically low carbon pollution under legally binding international agreements that are already signed. Will the money be used to buy ever increasing amounts of sticking plaster or have we got the vision to do something very different? The potential amounts of money are very signiicant. The Copenhagen Accord commits developed countries to the goal of sending $100 billion per year to developing countries in assistance for climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation through 2020 . If ten per cent of this went to African farmers this would be around $800 per farming household per year, which could provide a powerful incentive to change. We know there are ways of farming that drastically reduce erosion, keep more carbon in the soil and are more resilient to unpredictable weather. ‘Climate-Smart’ agricultural techniques include reduced tillage, combining trees with crops, more rotation, more use of nitrogen ixing crops, bio char, managing soil fertility, anti-erosion measures, reducing burning and managing grazing better . The details vary from place to place, but increasingly farmers and scientists know what needs to be done, but lack the incentive or the means to do it. Farmers need stable, predictable stable incentives to be able to invest in changed practices. Carbon inance could help to provide the incentive and the means to do this. Farmer associations can play a role in organising farmers to practice climate-smart farming. Remote sensing with satellites can audit farmer level compliance. Recent advances in cash payment systems through mobile telephony (e.g. M-pesa in Kenya) and aid agency experience in cash transfer programmes, mean that we now know how to transfer money to reach poor farmers, and especially rural women, eficiently and at reasonable cost. This means we can invest in farmers to do the things that are good for their family, good for their country and good for the world. In other words we can create a win-winwin outcome. The time might just be right. © Martin Whiteside REFERENCES Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (Copenhagen, December 7–18, 2009) 2 Branca, Giacomo; McCarthy, Nancy; Lipper, Leslie; Jolejole, Maria Christina. (2011). Climate Smart 1 Agriculture: A Synthesis of Empirical Evidence of Food Security and Mitigation Beneits from Improved Cropland Management. Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) series, report 3. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, December 2011. Apiculture and food security Apiculture is the rearing of honeybees Donald Rugira KUGONZA (PhD) SENIOR LECTURER (ANIMAL AGRICULTURE, LIVESTOCK BREEDING & APICULTURE) Department of Agricultural Production, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Makerere University, P.O. Box 7062, Kampala -Uganda, Phone: 256-414532269/ 256-782874551, Fax: 256-414-531641 T he main focus of apiculture in the world is production of honey. Some beekeeping enterprises in many countries also focus on pollination services, and production of other products such as beeswax, royal jelly, bee pollen, venom and propolis. Three of the honeybee products are highly nutritious foods, namely: honey, bee pollen and royal jelly. Though young un-hatched bees (called brood) are also edible, it is recommended that they should not be eaten so that they can repopulate the hive after honey harvest. Honeybees also indirectly contribute to food production, by pollination of most food and cash-generation crops. Some crops for example coffee and melons rely exclusively on honeybees for their pollination. Even for other crops, such as oil seed crops – sun lower, simsim, and groundnuts, honeybees play a signiicant role. When harvests are made, either food is then available to the human populace; or when it’s a cash crop harvested, such as coffee, then the inancial proceeds can be used to procure foodstuffs for the household and hence support household food security. Household income and hence food security can be enhanced by the sale of different bee products and services. In limited cases, but with much potential for growth in developing countries, is the concept of “beekeeping for agro-tourism” where well established apiaries can attract paying visitors and hence support income generation for the households involved, beekeeping communal groups and related entities. Apiculture is one of the few enterprises that are promoted in protected areas and fragile ecosystems in Uganda. Since the initial thrusts in the development of beekeeping technology in the mid-20th century, the practice has been growing rapidly especially in the western world. In developing countries, much of the production system remains subsistence in nature, with very few beekeepers aiming at proit making. In both instances, whether commercial or subsistence, honey is used as food at the household level, both directly and indirectly. What makes honey standout as a food security food is that when harvested, unlike many if not all other foodstuffs which get spoilt rapidly within hours or at most, days; honey can stay edible for decades or even longer. This can be achieved even by resource poor households who cannot afford food treatment and exotic post-harvest handling technologies for their homes. Due to its nature to stay in a good form (unspoilt), it can be kept at household level in airtight buckets, and can readily be used as a food anytime, hence securing the nutrition status of the household members. Among pastoralists for instance, beekeeping/ honey hunting offers a source of nourishment in the honey season-times of the year. These also tend to be times when crop harvests dwindle and milk production also declines. Hence along with nuts and fruits, honey readily provides nourishment for the pastoral communities. It is not surprising that over the last centuries of interaction between Kenya pastoralists and honeybees; a special relationship has arisen between the pastoralists and an aide, in the form of a bird, the honeyguide, Indicator. Both the Boran pastoralists and the bird enjoy honey, wherever and whenever it is available. Unfortunately, the pastoralists have to search in thickets and trees for wild bee colonies to get honey from. This takes them several hours just to ind one site. On the other hand, the birds easily locate honeybee nests, but the colonies are lodged inside tree trunks or anthills, which the bird cannot enter to access the honey. The birds alert the pastoralists wandering in the thickets on where to ind the bee nests and in this way, the pastoralist can save up to six hours per nest hunt, nourish himself, his family and the honey guide also beneits. This is food security for all in a way. Since the advent of the notorious “Colony Collapse Disorder” disease complex in honeybees over a decade ago, there is a global threat to food security especially for insect-pollination-reliant crops. In particular Africa has recently seen the proliferation of Varroa destructor, a mite previously common in the Western world and the Orient. This mite has been associated with decimation of the beekeeping sector in many countries of the developed world. It is still not clear how Africa will tackle this newest challenge. It is the hope of many that it will not be after Africa goes to ashes that hope will then be searched for. The need to support the beekeeping world is now, not tomorrow. Since the advent of the notorious “Colony Collapse Disorder” disease complex in honeybees over a decade ago, there is a global threat to food security especially for insect-pollinationreliant crops. SPRING 2013 11 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE Mixed Farming and Food Security Edmond Sibanda, David Cheruiyot and Philip Kang’ethe. AFriCAn LAnd And FOOd FELLOWs, rOYAL AgriCULTUrAL COLLEgE, CirEnCEsTEr, UK M ixed farming is one which combines crop production with livestock rearing. The livestock enterprises are complementary to crop production; so as to provide a balanced and productive system of farming to boost agricultural production hence improve food security. Many farmers in tropical and temperate countries survive by managing a mix of different crops and/or animals. The best known form of mixed farming is when crop residues are used to feed the animals and the excreta from the animals are used as nutrients for the crops in form of manure. Other forms of mixing take place where grazing under fruit-trees keeps the grass short, or where manure from pigs is used to “feed” the ish pond. Traditionally, a wide variety of mixed farming systems has been used worldwide. These systems are essential for the livelihood of farmers and for the production of food and other commodities for the ever increasing urban centers (cities) and export markets. Even many highly specialized crop and livestock systems in developed and developing countries are rediscovering the advantages of mixed farming. For example, specialized industrial pig and poultry farmers are banned from modern countries such as Singapore, and in Western Europe they are forced to exchange their dung surpluses with crop farmers. Moreover, the essence of many modern organic farming systems lies in the mixing of crops and animals. The essence of mixed farming ideally lies in the concept of sustainability. In the same way that dung from animals is recycled for use on crops, and the crop residues acting as feed to the animals. In many cities the concept of recycling is becoming increasingly. Recycling can be necessary because of a lack of resources, such as in low external input agriculture, and as a result of problems with waste disposal in high external input agriculture. Mixed farming is common worldwide, in spite of a tendency in agribusiness, research and teaching towards specialized forms of farming. Mixing has both advantages and disadvantages. For example, farmers in mixed systems have to divide their attention and resources over several activities, thus leading to reduced economies of scale. Advantages include the possibility of reducing risk, spreading labour and re-utilizing resources. The importance of these advantages and disadvantages differs according to the sociocultural preferences of the farmers and to the biophysical conditions as determined by rainfall, radiation, soil type and The essence of mixed farming ideally lies in the concept of sustainability. In the same way that dung from animals is recycled for use on crops, and the crop residues acting as feed to the animals. 12 SPRING 2013 disease pressure. What counts is the yield of the total, not of the parts. Trees in and on the edge of a crop ield generally reduce the grain yield, but the combination of the trees (for fodder and timber) and crops is valuable, because each of the components produces useful products for the farm. WHY PRACTICE MIXED FARMING? Mixed farming exists in many forms depending on external and internal factors. External factors are weather patterns, market prices, political stability, and technological developments among others. Internal factors relate to local soil characteristics, composition of the family and farmers’ ingenuity. Farmers can decide to opt for mixed enterprises when they want to save resources by interchanging them on the farm because these permit wider crop rotations and thus reduce dependence on chemicals, MIXED FARMING TOWARDS FOOD SECURITY PHOTOGRAPHY SOURCE GEOGRAPH because they consider mixed systems closer to nature, or because they allow diversiication for better risk management. Pastoralists can also practice a form of mixed farming since their livelihood depends on the management of different feed resources and animal species. At a higher level, a region can consist of individual specialized farms and service systems that together act as a mixed system. Other forms of mixed farming include cultivation of different crops on the same ield, such as millet and cowpea or millet and sorghum, or several varieties of the same crop with different life cycles, which uses space more eficiently and spreads risks more uniformly Knowledge on mixed farming systems at different levels is beneicial to understanding the logic of mixed systems in general. Disciplines such as ecology, economics and complex system theory have tools and concepts that can help us to understand better the diverse blessings of mixed systems. Another point is that in mixing the different functions of plants and animals can be observed: a cereal crop produces grain and straw, a legume provides grain, organic matter, fodder and nitrogen. A third point is that it tends to be more important to look for high yield of the combination of the components rather than for the (high) yield of one component. Mixed farms are systems that consist of different parts, which together should act as a whole. They thus need to be studied in their entirety and not as separate parts in order to understand the system and the factors that drive farmers and inluence their decisions. This principle is referred to as the “command ideotype” (Donald, 1981; Schiere et al., 1999). It may be the most important principle to achieve increased production in mixed systems, together with the awareness that crops and animals have multiple functions ON-FARM VERSUS BETWEEN-FARM MIXING The modes of farming refer to different degrees of availability of land, labour and inputs, ranging from plenty of land to a shortage of land. The modes are characterized as expansion agriculture (EXPAGR, plenty of land), Low External Input Agriculture (LEIA), High External Input Agriculture (HEIA) and new conservation agriculture (NCA, a form of land use where shortages are overcome by more labour, more inputs and keen management). Pastoralists from such systems in West Africa and on the Indian subcontinent also exchange cattle and crop products with crop farmers. Cultivators receive manure, labour and, less important, milk in return for cash, grain and water rights traded to pastoralists. Entrustment of livestock from crop farmers to pastoralists follows more or less the same rules. In return for taking care of the herd, herders receive either cash, or cropland, or labour for the cropland or a share of the milk and the offspring. Mixing between nearby farms is considered as providing the same advantages as on-farm mixing, but it should be underlined that there are important differences in terms of social organization and transaction costs. For example, in West Africa the exchange between farms leads to tension and accidents as crop farmers start to use land that used to be pastoral only. The amount of grazing land is decreasing and dependence on the grazing of crop residues is increasing. When herders bring in the animals before the ield is properly harvested serious incidents and conlicts can arise. Mixed farming is common worldwide, in spite of a tendency in agribusiness, research and teaching towards specialized forms of farming. FORMS OF MIXED FARMING Mixed farming systems can be classiied in many ways; based on land size, type of crops and animals, geographical distribution, market orientation among others. Three major categories are distinguished as follows: i. On-farm versus between-farm mixing ii. Mixing within crops and/or animal systems iii. Diversiied versus integrated systems MIXING WITHIN CROP AND/OR ANIMAL SYSTEMS Mixing within crop and/or within animal systems refers to conditions where multiple cropping is practiced, often over time, or where different types of animals are kept together, mostly on-farm. Both these systems occur frequently though they are not always apparent. Within-crop mixing takes place where crop rotations are practiced over and within years. For example, a farmer has a grain-legume rotation to provide the grain with nitrogen or a potato-beet-grain rotation to avoid disease in the potatoes. Plants can also be intercropped to take maximum advantage of light and moisture, to suppress weeds or prevent leaching of nutrients through the use of catch crops. Examples of mixing between animals are found in chicken-ish pond systems where chicken dung fertilizes the ish pond; in beef-pork systems where pigs eat the undigested grains from the beef cattle dung; or in mixed grazing such as cow-sheep mixes to maximize biomass utilization or to suppress disease occurrence DIVERSIFIED VERSUS INTEGRATED SYSTEMS Diversiied systems consist of components such as crops and livestock that co-exist independently from each other. In particular, farmers can have pigs, dairy and crops as quite independent units. In this case the mixing of crops and livestock primarily serves to minimize risk and not to recycle resources. Integration is done to recycle resources eficiently. It occurs in mixed ecological farms of temperate countries, but also in mixed, relatively low input farms of southern and southwestern Australia with grain-legumesheep mixtures. Integration occurs most often, however, in LEIA farming systems that exist in many tropical countries where products or byproducts of one component serve as a resource for the other - dung goes to the crops and straw to the animals. In this case the integration serves to make maximum use of the resources. Unfortunately, these systems tend to become more vulnerable to disturbance because mixing of resource lows makes the system internally more complex and interdependent. In Asia, the integration of livestock, ish and crops has proved to be a sustainable system through centuries of experience. In China, for example, the integration of ishpond production with ducks, geese, chickens, sheep, cattle or pigs increased ish production by 2 to 3.9 times (Chen, 1996), while there were added ecological ADVANTAGES Reduced Risk – owing to diversiication spreads out risk shielding them from price and proitability luctuation Re-utilize Resources - resources in different ventures can be re-utilized between and among ventures DISADVANTAGES More Resources Required - a farmer who only grows different crops requires different planting and harvesting equipments Reduced Economies of Scale – a farmer must spread his resources, including capital (money), time, labour and land over various enterprises SPRING 2013 13 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE and economic beneits of ish utilizing animal wastes. Environmentally sound integration is ensured where livestock droppings and feed waste can be poured directly into the pond to constitute feed for ish and zooplankton. Livestock manure can be used to fertilize grass or other plant growth that can also constitute feed for ish. Vegetables can be irrigated from the ishponds, and their residues and byproducts can be used for feeding livestock. Grazing of livestock under plantation trees such as rubber, oil palm or coconut is a form of crop-livestock integration that is often found in Southeast Asia. Experiments in Malaysia with cattle and goats under oil palm showed better oil palm bunch harvest and comparable results were found where goats fed under rubber trees. In rubber and oil palm plantations in Malaysia, the integration of livestock to utilize the vegetative ground cover under the tree canopy increased overall production and saved up to 40 percent of the cost of weed control. Similarly, sheep helped to control weeds in sugar cane ields in Colombia. This suppressed the costs of herbicides, reduced the cost of weed control by half and provided additional income from meat production (FAO, 1995a). This also occurs where cows graze under coconuts. CONCLUSION Mixed systems occur in several forms; pastoral systems have also experience in the management of mixed herds and of livestock with feed resources. One form of mixing occurs where livestock is kept on grazing lands distant from cropland in the EXPAGR mode where land is abundant. Mixed systems can also occur as a combination of specialized farms that exchange resources among them, particularly in HEIA. The table below compares the advantages and dsisadvantages of mixed farming: Based on the analysis above, mixed farming would be more viable towards increased food production and assure food security. Diversiied systems are a combination of specialized subsystems that aim to reduce risk in conditions of variable but relatively abundant resources. Strong integration is associated Based on the analysis above, mixed farming would be more viable towards increased food production and assure food security. with LEIA and NCA conditions where use of resources such as fertilizer and fossil fuel is restricted because of problems with pollution. This gives clues to development workers and policy-makers: cheap resources lead to specialization, restricted use of resources leads to mixing. An important aspect in promoting mixed farming is that the yield of the total enterprise is more important than the yield and/ or eficiency of the parts. REFERENCES Chen, H. In H. Hayakawa, M. Sasaki & K. Kimura, eds. Integrated systems of animal production in the Asian region. Proceedings of a symposium held in conjunction with the 8th AAAP Animal Science Congress, Chiba, Japan, 13-18 October 1996. AAAP and FAO, Rome. Donald, C.M. 1981. Competitive plants, communal plants, and yield in wheat crops. In L.T. Evans & W.J. Peacock, eds. Wheat science - today and tomorrow, p. 243-247. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. 290 pp. FAO. 1995a. Livestock, a driving force for food security and sustainable development, by R. Sansoucy. World Animal Review, 84/85: 5-17. FAO. 2000. Peri-urban livestock systems. Problems, approaches and opportunities, by J.B. Schiere. Report prepared for FAO Animal Production and Health Division, Rome. FAO. 2001. Mixed crop-livestock farming. A Review of Traditional Technologies Based on Literature and Field Experience. FAO Animal Production and Health Papers 152 Understanding the Rules to Access Value Markets: BSc (Hons) Food Production and Supply Management part of the chain to meet the needs of the supply chain and consumers. This degree, therefore, focuses on addressing these issues, as well as the management and quality enhancement of products from ield to fork. It is grounded in the science and technologies that deine modern food production, processing and supply. At the same time, the course explores the rapidly evolving areas of consumer science and behaviour and the inluences these have on supply chain management Food supply chains provide the link between primary producers and consumers through intermediaries such as processors, manufacturers, ingredients suppliers, marketing organisations, wholesalers and retailers. Not only must all of these actors link effectively together, but they must address the issues of sustainability by considering the economic, social and environmental aspects and impacts of food supply. As these supply chains become more integrated, there is also greater emphasis on food safety and quality, traceability and public health. Primary producers wherever they are in the world now have to work as For further information visit www.rac.ac.uk/study/undergraduate-study /food-production-supply-management or Contact the Programme Manager, Dr.Karim Farag on telephone 01 285 652531 Ext. 2304 or email: Karim.Farag@ rac.ac.uk 14 SPRING 2013 The University College at Cirencester Biotechnology and Food Security: A Global Perspective Andrew Speedy Roopa Speedy Le Huy Ham FAO Representative in Vietnam from 2006-2010. Prior to that (1998-2006), he was a Senior Oficer in FAO Headquarters in Rome. He graduated with an MA and PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, and spent nine years (1972-1981) in agricultural research, teaching and extension in Scotland. He was Lecturer in Agricultural Science at the University of Oxford and Tutor in biological sciences at Christ Church from1981 to1998. In 2001, he was elected an Emeritus Student (Fellow) of Christ Church, Oxford. In 2005, he was made a Visiting Professor at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, UK. He has worked in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Information Management Specialist at FAO where she built, published and establish a web-based “African Biotechnology Information Network” (ABNETA) for biotechnologists in Africa, formulated the design of various websites for international organizations and initiated and implemented the development of web content. She researched, wrote, designed and published a book for high school children to introduce the concept of “Biotechnology tools for Conservation of Plant Genetic Resource and Use”. Prior to that she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania with a Masters in Endocrinology and PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology. Director General of the Agricultural Genetics Institute (AGI), Hanoi, Vietnam since 2006. He was Director General Biotechnology Ofice, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development from 2005-2006 and Vice-Director General of AGI from 2002. From 1992, he was Group leader, Plant Cell Technology Division of AGI. He has been leader of many projects relating to biotechnology in rice, soya beans, maize, bananas, fruit, forestry and loriculture, supported by the EU, FAO and the World Bank among others. He obtained his Bachelors degree and PhD at the Kishinov National University, Republic of Moldova,former Soviet Union. He has published some 60 papers in scientiic journals and conference proceedings. A WORLD OF MISCONCEPTION Biotechnology is widely misunderstood. The deinition in Article 2 of the Convention on Biological Diversity covers “any technological application that uses biological systems...” It encompasses everything from detergents to yoghurt, including bacteria, crops, animals, ish and silage and the ields of agriculture, medicine and industry. Furthermore, the subject of genetically modiied organisms (GMOs) is an emotive political issue caught in a rather confused public debate (see e.g., Lynas 2013). Biotechnology has had, and continues to have, an enormous positive impact on food and agricultural production. In this context, biotechnology refers to the application of laboratory techniques to plant (and animal) breeding. It includes tissue culture, induced mutation, genomics and marker assisted selection, as well as genetic engineering through recombinant DNA methods and gene transfer. The contribution of biotechnology to food security is not so straightforward. Referring to India in a recent discussion on the Right to Food, it is summed up in the phrase: “Food self-suficiency has not translated into the right to food for all” (FAO, 2011). In other words, the ability to produce or to buy food is more important that the absolute supply. Nutrition security (diet quality) is also more important than food security. Many countries, including India and Vietnam, are net food exporters and yet levels of child malnutrition and stunting remain high, especially among the poor. There is a need for quality as well as quantity in the national food supply. ‘Think global, act local’ is the key to helping the poor to an adequate and nutritious diet. There are several techniques that may assist the development of better local varieties. Examples here are taken from experiences in Vietnam where food production has increased dramatically in the last 30 years, not only in rice but also in other crops. (FAO, 2009). The FAO/IAEA Mutant Varieties Database contains more than 3200 oficially released mutant varieties from 224 different species in more than 60 countries throughout the world. These thousands of plant mutants produced mainly by physical mutagens not only increased biodiversity, but also provided breeding material for conventional plant breeding, thus directly contributing to the conservation and use of plant genetic resources. Worldwide, more than 60 percent of all mutant varieties were oficially released after the year 1985, in the era of biotechnology in plant breeding. The integration of mutation techniques and eficiency-enhancing biomolecular techniques that permit rapid selection of the most beneicial mutants has pushed the use of mutation induction to new and higher levels of applicability (FAO/IAEA, 2009). THE IMPACT OF MUTATION BREEDING DEVELOPING COUNTRY SUCCESS STORY – VIETNAM Mutation breeding is the use of chemicals or more commonly gamma radiation or x-rays to induce new strains that are not found in nature, thus increasing the scope for plant breeding Since the 1980’s, the Agricultural Genetics Institute (AGI) in Hanoi, Vietnam has been engaged in R&D activities and has contributed much to technology transfer to the agricultural SPRING 2013 15 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE HMONG LADIES IN A SOYA BEAN FIELD sector of Vietnam. Mutation breeding is one of the major ields of the Institute in crop improvement, in which the biggest accomplishments have been achieved in the development of mutant varieties for crop production. With support from the FAO/IAEA, 30 mutant varieties were developed and released to farmers, including 17 rice cultivars, 10 soybean varieties, two maize varieties and one chrysanthemum variety. Most of these crop varieties are high yielding with insect pest resistance, disease resistance/tolerance and high quality. The two most widely cultivated rice varieties in the north of Vietnam are mutant. Variety DT 10, released in the 1980’s, continues to be cultivated on half a million ha/year; variety KDDB that was released in 2009, now covers about 400,000 ha. Mutant rice variety VND95-20 with high quality and tolerance to salinity has become the key rice variety for export (30 percent of the one million ha export rice area in the Mekong Delta). Mutant rice variety VND99-3, registered as a national variety with quality for export, is of short duration (100 days), allowing three rice harvests per year in the Mekong Delta. More than 50 percent of the soybean cultivation area is covered by mutant varieties developed in the Institute, which is contributing to oil crop production of Vietnam. The application of modern biotechnology, such as tissue culture and molecular marker-assisted-selection methodologies, is increasing the eficiency of mutation breeding. With support from the FAO/IAEA, 30 mutant varieties were developed and released to farmers. 16 SPRING 2013 TISSUE CULTURE Plant tissue culture (the growth of plant cells in vitro) is a technique that has been around for more than 30 years, and is still seen as an important technology for the production of diseasefree, high quality planting material and the rapid production of uniform plants. Also, micropropagation, which is a form of tissue culture, increases the amount of planting materials to facilitate distribution and large scale planting. In general, micro-propagated plants are observed to establish more quickly, grow more vigorously and taller, have shorter and more uniform production cycles, and produce higher yields as compared to conventional propagules. Tissue culture is used to select more eficiently for characters such as tolerance and herbicide resistance using the micro-propagule rather than the plant. It is also important as a commercial production tool in forestry and loriculture. Farmers in the fruit, vegetable and lower growing area around Da Lat in Lam Dong Province of Vietnam have actively invested in plant tissue culture laboratories and create high quality, disease-resistant breeds of plants for export. Many farmers have their own laboratories and hire well-trained technicians and agricultural engineers. Ninety percent of the 58 plant tissue culture laboratories in Da Lat are funded by farmers and private investors. Each of these facilities produces an average of 500,000 seedlings annually. Haploid methods - anther culture and ovary culture - are in vitro techniques to retain homozygosity of desired genotypes that can be achieved within a few months instead of 7-8 generations in the ield by conventional breeding. In Vietnam these techniques have been developed for rice since the 1980’s and for maize since 1990’s and are now used widely to shorten the breeding process. MARKER ASSISTED SELECTION The advent of DNA technology and gene mapping has enabled indirect selection for desired traits on a genotypic instead of phenotypic basis (FAO, 2007) and hence further improve plant breeding techniques. For example, DNA marker technology has been applied at the Agricultural Genetics Institute in Vietnam, for genetic analysis and characterization of various rice accessions, ingerprinting for purity tests, as well as for use in marker assisted backcrossing (MABC) to breed rice varieties and hybrids possessing particular traits such as speciic grain quality and salt tolerance. The MABC breeding method was recently used to confer salt and submergence tolerance and resistance to bacterial blight, brown plant hopper on a number of popular cultivars by phenotype and genotype selection. The salt tolerance gene (Saltol) from the donor parent “FL478” was successfully transferred into the agronomically desirable “BT7”. GENETIC ENGINEERING Whereas radiation breeding dates from 1920 (92 years) and the work of Lewis J Stadler in the University of Missouri, more advanced methods of genetic engineering have a history of just 30 years. In the plant genetics laboratory, genes for speciic characteristics are inserted into the plant from different (transgenesis) or the same species (cisgenesis). Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and direct gene transfer using the gene gun (microparticle-bombardment) are the two most widely used methods for plant genetic modiication. Genetic engineering was developed in the US and UK and has been commercialized by multinational companies: Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont, Bayer Crop Science, Sakata, Takii and a few others. The top ten companies have 67% of the global seed market. Genetically modiied varieties have been strongly protected by patent s and licensing agreements. Cultivation and commercial production of GM crops are capital intensive owing to high costs of seed and technology. Species that have been commercially developed are tomato, corn, soya, cotton, rapeseed, canola (edible rapeseed), papaya, lax, tobacco and a few others. Commercial cultivation of transgenic crops started in the early 1996. By far the greatest applications have been insect resistance (Bt crops) and herbicide tolerance (resistance to glyphosate), and the main crops are: soybean, maize, canola and cotton. GM crops are now commercially planted on about 160 million hectares in some 29 developed and developing countries (ISAAA, 2012). Argentina, Brazil, China and India are the largest developing-country producers of transgenic crops. The choice of GM crops varies among the developing countries, with insect resistant cotton being the most important commercially produced transgenic crop in Asian and African countries, while herbicide-resistant soybean followed by insect-resistant corn is predominant on the Latin American continent. No GM crops are being grown commercially in the UK, but imported GM commodities, especially soya, are being used mainly for animal feed, and to a lesser extent in some food products. Two types of GM crop are currently authorised for cultivation in the EU: an insectresistant maize and a potato with modiied starch content for industrial use. Neither of these is relevant or suitable for production in the UK. In 2011, the maize was grown on 114,490 hectares in 6 EU countries and the potato was grown on 17 hectares in 2 countries. SAFETY ASPECTS The increasing cultivation of GM crops has raised a wide range of concerns with respect to food safety, environmental effects and socio-economic issues (FAO, 2012). From the food and health perspective, the main concerns are related to possible toxicity and allergenicity of GM foods and products. Concerns about environmental risks include the impact of introgression of the transgenes into the natural landscape, impact of gene low, effect on non-target organisms, evolution of pest resistance and loss of biodiversity. Adoption of GM technologies has also evoked a range of social and ethical concerns about restricting access to genetic resources and new technologies, loss of traditions (such as saving seeds), private sector monopoly and loss of income of resource-poor farmers. The scientiic evidence concerning the environmental and health impacts of GMOs is still emerging, but so far there is no conclusive information on the deinitive negative impacts of GMOs on health or the environment. Nevertheless, public perceptions about GMOs in food and agriculture are divided with a tendency toward avoiding GM food and products in many developed and developing countries. An international agreement, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, came into force in 2003, and by October 2011 has been ratiied by 161 countries (FAO, 2012). The objective of the Protocol, as stated, “is to contribute to ensuring an adequate level of protection in the ield of the safe transfer, handling and use of living modiied organisms resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks Biotechnology has had, and continues to have, an enormous positive impact on food and agricultural production to human health, and speciically focusing on trans-boundary movements”. In many countries, it is also mandatory to label products that use GM ingredients. As a consequence, GM and non-GM crops must be kept separate, but as the area cultivated with GM varieties increases, this task is becoming more dificult and costly. APPLICATIONS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES It is clear that mutation breeding has been far more signiicant in developing countries as this has been applied to such crops as rice, legumes, peanuts, sesame, bananas, cassava and sorghum, whereas modern genetic engineering has been mainly applied to corn, soya and cotton. However, an important new approach has been the attempt to develop a nutritionally improved strain of rice with increased level of vitamin A that is aimed at reducing the problem of vitamin A deiciency in developing countries. Golden Rice represents a genetic engineering concept aimed at making an important contribution to the reduction of malnutrition in developing countries (Potrykus, 2003). Major micronutrient deiciency disorders concern iron, zinc, vitamin A and iodine. These deiciencies are especially severe in countries where rice is the major staple. The author suggests that traditional interventions such as supplementation, fortiication, dietary diversiication and measures against infectious diseases cannot solve the problem. Statistics demonstrate that, despite the efforts made to apply these traditional interventions, there are 2.4 billion women and children suffering from iron deiciency, and 400 million children suffering from vitamin A deiciency. Nutrientdense staple crops represent an opportunity to complement traditional interventions in a sustainable manner; and genetic engineering has the potential to substantially enhance breeding for nutrient-dense staple crop varieties. THE GOLDEN RICE CONTROVERSY At irst, golden rice did not have suficient vitamin A. This was solved by the development of new strains in 2005. Studies in 2009 and 2012 have concluded that golden rice given to children was as good as vitamin A supplements and better than the natural beta-carotene in spinach. But golden rice has met strong opposition from opponents of GM technology and has not yet been commercially released. It has also been argued that growing and consuming vegetables would be a better way for families to obtain a nutritionally balance SPRING 2013 17 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE diet including vitamin A. Golden rice itself may not be really as useful as expected but nutritional enhancement through metabolomics technologies may offer new prospects for improving nutrition security (Hall et al., 2007). TOWARDS FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY IN THE FUTURE Techniques such as mutation breeding, recently enhanced by DNA marker techniques, have been widely adopted in developing countries and have contributed many varieties of staples and other food crops to local supplies. Transgenic, genetically modiied crops such as corn and soya are traded and marketed by a few multi-national companies for commercial farmers. These are two lines of development with different roles and contributions. In terms of global food supply, GM crops are needed to meet the growing demand for starch and protein and for animal feed (including aquaculture). Local seeds are needed for local food security and other crops may contribute more to balanced diets and nutrition security. Improved local varieties and a range of crops (vegetable and fruit) are the main concern for nutrition security in low-income developing countries and the poorer areas of middleincome countries. GM crops are principally grown in the USA, Canada, to a limited extent in Europe, but also in middle-income countries Argentina and Brazil, and now China and India. Other countries are developing their interests. Vietnam is entering the GM business with corn and would hope to be an exporter of commodity crops in the future. Commercial application of tissue culture, especially in loriculture, is a niche market that tropical countries can exploit to supply the international market. This lucrative business contributes to local livelihoods and wellbeing. Biotechnology in its various forms, including GM and more widespread use of mutation breeding, tissue culture, marker genes and other techniques, is a useful tool in reducing hunger and achieving food security. But much more can be achieved by poverty reduction, reduced inequality, rural development and livelihood approaches, as well as better application of existing technologies of water management, sustainable crop intensiication methods and their extension and education of farmers. Biotechnology is not a silver bullet. REFERENCES FAO, 2007. Marker assisted selection. i FAO, 2009. Induce Mutations in Food and Agriculture ii FAO, 2011. The Right to Food. iii FAO, 2012. Statistical Yearbook 2012. iv FAO/IAEA, 2009. From the Lab to the Farm. http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/news/vietnam-lab-tofarm.html Retrieved 12/01/2013. viHall, RD, Brower, ID and Fitzgerald, MA. 2007. REVIEW: Plant metabolomics and its potential application for human nutrition Physiologia Plantarum 132: 162–175. v ISAAA, 2012. Pocket K No. 16: Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops in 2011. International Service for the Aquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications. http://www.isaaa.org/resources/ publications/pocketk/16/default.asp Retrieved 13/01/2013 Lynas, M, 2013. Lecture to Oxford Farming Conference, 3 January 2013. http://www.marklynas.org/ Retrieved 27/01/2013. vii Potrykus, I. 2003. Golden Rice. In: Sustainable rice production for food security. Proceedings of the 20th Session of the International Rice Commission. FAO, 2003. vii The Farmer’s Jug Many years ago I asked my father about the Jug in the kitchen and the origins of the poem; he said ‘it’s a toast to us farmers’. money’ to spend in celebration. I The poem is also claimed to be the guess this means the local pub also Farmer’s prayer; however, on further prospered from the celebration! research the origins probably date back to a phrase in a 15th Century folk song ‘God Speed the Plow’. There are many variants, but the basic toast is as follows The song was to wish prosperity on Let the wealthy and great the farmer and was sung by ploughmen roll in splendor and state, on Plough Monday, the irst Monday I envy them not. I declare it. after Twelfth Day, which was the end of I eat my own lamb, the Christmas holidays. This is when my own chicken and ham, farm labourers returned to the plough I shear my own fleece and I wear it. after plough Sunday, which is the irst I have lawns. I have bowers. I have Sunday after Epiphany, when the plough fruits. I have flowers. is blessed. The lark is my morning alarmer. On the Monday ploughmen customarily So jolly boys now, God speed the plow, went from door to door dressed in white Long life and success to the farmer. and drawing a plough, soliciting ‘plough Dr Richard Baines 18 SPRING 2013 Soil Pollution in China: Future Food Security in danger! Haishun, Liu and Guocheng, Zhang, Heibei Tourism Vocational College, Chengde City, Heibei Province, China and Yan Zhang ROYAL AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, CIRENCESTER, UK SOURCE: HTTP://GREENLIFEFARMING.BLOGSPOT.CO.UK/2010/11/BLOG-POST_22.HTML C hina is the most populous country in the world. About 1,339,724,852 people lived in mainland China in 2011, accounting for about 19% of the world’s total population. The National Population and Family Planning Commission predicts that over the next decade, China’s population will continue to grow at a speed of 8-10 million annually. By 2020, China’s total population will reach 1.46 billion; total population peak will occur around 2033 (about 1.5 billion). The rapid development of China has been characterized by industrialization and urbanization. Pollution – one of the attendance effect of these developments - is beginning to take a serious toll on the arable land to produce food for the ever growing population. Between 1996 and 2007, arable land declined from 19.51 million acres to 18.26 million acres as a result of pollution induced soil degradation. SOURCES OF SOIL POLLUTION Heavy metals pollution of the soil is caused mainly by Cadmium, Arsenic, Mercury to say a few and petroleum organics. High pesticides residues occur from indiscriminate use by farmers either from ignorance or as a result of serious pests and diseases. A recent survey in the Yangtze River Delta on the main agricultural products by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (CAS) shows that pesticide residues exceeded 16%. A major source of soil pollution in China is the extensive use of plastic ilm in agricultural production and the problem of degradation associated with it. The consequence of its use on the environment now outweighs its positive effects of prevention of evapotranspiration and soil erosion due to the un-degradable piles of plastic ilm in the soil. Annually about 0.5 million tons of plastic sheet residues gets into the soil in China with a residual rate of 40%. Another source of soil pollution is solid wastes from factories and mines such as tailings, barren rock, ly ash and generally industrial refuse. Also the discharge of municipal wastes including sewages without adequate treatment is highly detrimental to the health of the soil. Sewage contains nutrients such as Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium many plants need, so reasonable use of sewage irrigation is generally good for plant growth. However, many toxic and hazardous substances such as heavy metals, phenols and cyanide, pathogens etc are inherent in sewages. They are not only harmful to the soil they equally ind their way into crops grown on such soil with serious health implications on consumers. Harmful gases in the form of dust, soot, liquid smoke, fog and other particles of industrial emissions cause soil pollution by sedimentation or precipitation into the soil. Also with the wide application of nuclear technology in the ields of industry, agriculture, medical, geological, scientiic research, more and more radioactive contaminants goes into the soil. Beside that these radioactive contaminants are directly harmful to humans; they also enter the body through the food web and food chain. Effects of these substances on humans could include internal radiation and damaged human tissue cells, causing cancer, leukaemia, genetic disorders and other diseases. There is no gain saying that the current level of soil pollution in China is high and unsustainable. Various checks, analysis and evaluation show the existence of both old and new pollutants, inorganic and organic compound contamination. This causes imbalance in the ecological relationships, biodiversity and deterioration of the environment. And increased pollution leads to signiicant reduction of soil fauna, declining SPRING 2013 19 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE soil quality and self-puriication capacity, affecting the yield and quality of crops and overall threatening the food security of a large proportion of the populace. Effects of soil pollution on food production and food security ■ National Agricultural Technology Promotion Centre of the Ministry of Agriculture said that the reduction of food output is about 10 billion kilograms due to the pesticides, fertilizers and industrial pollution. ■ The Environmental Protection department estimates that as high as 12 million tons of food is contaminated by heavy metal in each year, which causes direct economic loss of over 20 billion RMB. ■ Ministry of Land and Resources statistics show that currently more than 10% of China’s arable land area has been contaminated by heavy metals. ■ Total grains consumption was 548 million tons in 2010. In 2011 the grains output was 571 million tons. The increase is barely adequate to satisfy the needs of the Chinese population rations. Prevention and control of soil pollution to ensure food security The present regulatory provisions are somehow weak and not effective. There is need for a solid regulatory policy framework that is: ■ Robust, holistic and detailed ■ With clear goals and objectives ■ With speciic standards and permissible limits ■ Well deined consequences and possible remedial ■ Clear penalties and incentives ■ Easy to understand and interpret for compliance and enforcement ■ Fit easily into the National legislation and legal system The adoption of sustainable agricultural practices is now a must. There should be rational and effective use of fertilizers and pesticides and the use of high eficiency, low toxicity and residues pesticides. Agro-ecological practices that promote soil conservation and regeneration must be initiated and encouraged from local to national levels. An early warning system of soil pollution must be designed and put in place. This is a more proactive mechanism to detect and nip in the pollution at the formative phase and highly cost effective. It can help in the establishment of the patterns of soil pollution and useful in the planning of prevention cum remedial measures. In conclusion, soil pollution is an invincible killer that not only harms human bodies but also reduces agricultural productivity by soil degradation. A food secure China is possible but the rate of soil pollution must be reversed. The world at present is grappling with about 1 billion food insecure and hungry people, we cannot afford more! The high level of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in China can play signiicant roles in the establishment and implementation of the early warning system. ICT will also during compliance checks, monitoring and enforcement enhance digital testing, evaluation and analysis with attendant speed and precision. REFERENCES 1. Gao, F.(2012), Governance of land pollution, protect the ecological environment, in Fujian Agriculture, Issue 3 2. Hong, J. (2005), Soil Pollution and Control [M], Chinese Agriculture Press, Beijing 3. Chinese shares Finance (2012), Challenging the current situation of Chinese land pollution caused grain production to 10 billion kilograms annually, June Contract Research & Consultancy Sally Story, Contract Research and Consultancy Manager The Royal Agricultural College has been at the forefront of agricultural development since 1845. It prides itself in its extensive links with the industry and its ability to constantly reine and update in line with the current and future needs of industry. Contract Research and Consultancy gives you access to top class academics who are all experts in their ield and are familiar with the latest academic knowledge and practical understanding of their sectors. Key areas of expertise include: • International Agricultural and Rural Development • Agriculture and agribusiness • Food chains • Land use, countryside and real estate • Environment and sustainability • Equine • Education development Their expertise is supported by a dedicated and commercial Contract Research and Consultancy team as well as a network of trusted associates. 20 SPRING 2013 If the area you’re interested in isn’t featured, please contact us to discuss your requirements further, sally.story@rac.ac.uk or telephone +44 (0)1285 889 906 / +44 (0)1285 889 890. The University College at Cirencester Making the Distinction: Undesirable Land Grabs Versus Large Scale Land Acquisitions, Concessions and Investments in Africa Dr Maxwell Mutema INTERNATIONAL LAND, PROPERTY, CONSTRUCTION, AGRICULTURE, FOOD, RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT EXPERT AND CONSULTANT. Maxwell is a graduate of both the Royal Agricultural College and Reading University. He studied the MBA in Agriculture and the Food Industries at the RAC and obtained two degrees from the University of Reading, a PhD in Land Management & Agricultural Economics and an MBA in Real Estate & Construction Management. He is the Founder and Director of RMM Africa Development Consultancy LTD based in Reading, Berkshire, UK. The company has wide investments and business interests in the UK, USA, Europe and Africa. He can be contacted on e-mail: mmutema@hotmail.com I n recent times the debate on land grabs has been gaining momentum and receiving some good media attention, from all quarters. As the debate rages on it is crucial to disentangle the distinction between undesirable land grabs and desirable foreign investments in agriculture in Africa, as the later is desperately needed in Africa and many African governments are on desperate crusades, competing to attract foreign investment to uplift farming in their respective countries. As such, it is important that genuine attempts to address land grab concerns do not end up with an equally negative effect of choking up genuine attempts to attract foreign investment to promote agriculture development in Africa, bearing in mind that genuine foreign investments in agriculture could have catalytic and cascading effects in terms of improving and modernising agriculture in Africa. Most foreign corporate agricultural investments, especially from western developed countries bring with them all the ingredients of organised agriculture-surveyed farmland boundaries, installation and construction of enabling infrastructure-dams, power supply, roads, irrigation and others. The common distinction of land grabs as opposed to desirable large land acquisitions, concessions and investments can be summarised as follows: ACQUISITIONS OR CONCESSIONS OF LAND THAT IS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ in violation of human rights; not based on free, prior and informed consent of the affected land-users; not based on a thorough assessment, or in disregard of, social, economic and environmental impacts not based on transparent contracts that specify clear and binding commitments about activities, employment and beneit sharing, and; not based on effective democratic planning, independent oversight and meaningful participation Even where indeed genuine land grabs are taking place, they could just be a symptom of the real problem. There is a lot of literature on land today pointing to the fact that Africa has the biggest reserves of uncultivated land remaining on which to expand agricultural production in future to feed the ever ballooning population of the world. In many respects, and may be truly so, land in many parts of subAfrica is not productively utilised or perceived not to be utilised fully. This means that land grabs are not just happening haphazardly, irrationally and in a vacuum but they could be in response to anticipated possible market outcomes and the market cannot be managed through cosmetics, emotions, politicking and wishful thinking. In the same vain I would argue that the underlying force of land grabs are market signals-future food supply and demand trends in view of rapid world population increase. Entrepreneurs and investors are starting to take positions in view of these anticipated outcomes. To pre-empt the momentum of land grabs, which might even get worse and more vicious in future, Africa must immediately start to put in place land policy frameworks and lanking supporting institutional frameworks to create an enabling environment for Africans to start using their own land as an economic and productive asset, moving from suboptimal subsistence farming to more business and commercial forms of farming. There is need for a major structural shift of mindset in terms of the future of African agriculture and land management. It is no longer business as usual anymore. Most of the farming in contemporary Africa today, is still very much the way it was in the 20th century when the population was low and there was abundant land to practice shifting cultivation. The focus then was household food security and mere survival whilst in today’s world, although it is not a written rule but given that land is a inite resource and is only accessible to small proportion of citizens of any given nation, it is no longer acceptable for those with access to good agricultural land to produce just enough to meet their household needs, if we are to survive now and into the future. In many cases today the population has increased more than forty fold than it was a century ago, with predictions of additional massive population increases for the continent in the coming decades and other adverse pressures such as climate change, not being able to feed itself at the present moment, worsening food security situation plus the rest of it. There is, therefore, need for a sea change in the way we conduct agriculture and manage land in Africa today. In other words we need to abandon antiquated and archaic forms of agriculture and move towards more land market-based, commercial and organised agriculture policies and systems. Forget what SPRING 2013 21 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE they say about how nice and sustainable the traditional hoe and hand-weeding based farming methods are!! We cannot keep arguing about maintaining the status quo of what was sustainable or working yesterday but not today. It would be insane on our part to assume that what we have tried over and over again without success and results would eventually work by simply keep doing the same thing over and over again. And is there on the wall for everyone to see, take any comparison, igures or statistics on how Africa is fairing with the rest of the world in terms of agriculture, food production, food security and anything to do with land, and see how the continent ranks. It is dismal. It is a disaster. This takes me to the next section of this paper, of what Africa needs to do in order not to be overtaken by land events, including the land grab phenomenon and make the best use of its abundant agricultural land resources. And the good news: it is not rocket science and there is no need to re-invent the wheel because it is a matter of adapting existing proven lessons and experiences both from within Africa itself and elsewhere so pervasively incomplete. Even land reform programmes that ambitiously redistribute land and alter property rights tend to grant incomplete property rights to beneiciaries. And incomplete property rights, once assigned, are rarely subsequently transformed into complete rights. This creates a major puzzle in the ield of land reform. Why is land reform so vastly under-used and ill-used as a policy instrument in spite of its well recognised potential to generate eficiency and welfare gains? Much of the literature addressing this puzzle has identiied potential political risks as the main reason why incomplete property rights remain. Equally, most African government are prepared only to grant incomplete or partial property rights to land in order to ensure that household behaviour is strongly dependent on state tutelage. Engaging in a land reform that grants complete property rights has been proved to be only less risk politically to pro-market political parties, thus providing a rationale as to why so many land reforms done by left wing-leaning governments remain incomplete. Complete property rights, would confer rights that give the owner of the land not only freedom to access, extract, manage, and exclude others, but also to transfer or alienate, thus the state relinquishing to the community the complete property right over the land assets it controls, which could be a considerable political cost to those in power. On the other hand incomplete property rights do not allow the owners of the land to sell, rent or collateralise their land and access can be arbitrarily revoked by the state. Thus incomplete property rights become carefully crafted political equilibrium that keeps governments in power. The preceding section thus tries to explain the ominous implications for a very large number of African governments that may be tempted to engage in property rights reforms in search of eficiency gains but fear the political fallout of the reform. It also helps explain the well recognised gap between economic logic and lagging reality in implementing complete land reforms throughout the world. There is a lot of literature on land today pointing to the fact that Africa has the biggest reserves of uncultivated land remaining on which to expand agricultural production in future to feed the ever ballooning population of the world. WHY MOST AFRICAN GOVERNMENTS ARE NOT PREPARED TO GIVE THEIR CITIZENS COMPLETE PROPERTY RIGHTS TO LAND It is well recognised in economics that complete property rights are the cornerstone of eficient land use. In the context of international economic development, De Soto (a renowned Peruvian economist in the property rights school of thought) emphasises the role of formal property rights over assets in helping the poor make more eficient use of the limited wealth they control. He laments, “What creates capital in the West is an implicit process buried in the intricacies of its formal property systems.” A large literature on land reform has shown the importance for agricultural growth and rural welfare of property rights that offer security of tenure to land and incentives to invest in agriculture. In spite of this, it is surprising to observe that property rights over farm land remain 22 SPRING 2013 WAY FORWARD: LAND OWNERSHIP FORMALISATION AND MARKET BASED LAND TENURE SYSTEM FOR AFRICA The bulk of the world’s wealth is generated from 13% of the total global land formally registered (property rights to land), and most of this in the developed western countries. So, whilst it is commonsense that an imposed social order that is not supported by consensus means enormous enforcement costs, the quest for a market led economy based on private property rights to land and private owned businesses should be the pathway of choice to achieve economic development and wealth creation for Africa. African governments should embrace institutional and legal frameworks which promote market-based land tenure system which typically has the following characteristics, which help to create a conducive business operating environment:■ Transactions occur between willing buyers (lessees) and willing sellers (lessors). ■ Transactions occur for economic gain and not primarily for non-economic considerations which have as their purpose the establishment or maintenance of a discriminatory pattern of land tenure based on social or political factors. ■ Land tenure is suficiently secure so that arms-length transactions can occur. ■ Land tenure is suficiently secure so that land may be used as collateral for the purpose of obtaining capital. ■ Entry into the market for land is unrestricted by legal or administrative barriers that artiicially limit the number of buyers (lessees) and sellers (lessors). (However, temporary, transitional limitations may be desirable to protect the rights of economically disadvantaged or underprivileged groups.) ■ Limitations on use of the land may be imposed by zoning laws which relect the society’s interest in the pattern of land use, protection of the environment and other legitimate external factors. ■ Knowledge of the opportunity to buy or use land is widely disseminated, as is knowledge of the transaction process. ■ Joint ownership arrangements (e.g., families, partnerships, corporations, cooperatives, employee stock option programmes, etc.) are suficiently well deined so that one or more of the partners within the joint ownership is able to withdraw assets in accordance with a plan understood by the other joint owners. ■ The reservation of land for community ownership or management does not signiicantly impinge upon an individual’s right to own or use land alone or in association with others. As an economy grows and becomes more complex, the legal, administrative and market systems related to viable and responsive land tenure arrangements should also develop. ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ The land law or legal framework should deine: ■ The nature of land (whether it includes building and construction); ■ The rights that relate to land and the manner in which these are held and can be transferred; The restrictions and obligations that may apply to the land (for example as a result of physical planning controls); The regulations that govern the way in which land ownership and rights are determined and transferred; Procedures for settling disputes over land; Procedures for the state’s compulsory purchase of land and associated compensation; The manner in which the transition from informal to formal markets is to be handled; and intellectually property rights as they relate to land information. • • • • • • • Africa is touted to have 60% of uncultivated land today. Nearly 40 out of Africa 54 countries rely on food imports at exorbitant prices (at a huge cost) in particular maize imports, whilst they are seating on some of the best agricultural land in the world. Africa stretches for 8 000 kilometres from north to south and can grow all the crops in the world twice a year. In 2005, Sub-Saharan Africa was the world’s poorest region with just over 50% of its population still living on $1.25 a day. This was almost the same as it was 25 years ago. One of Mark Twain’s best known aphorisms is “Buy land, they are not making it any more’. Perhaps nowhere is this aphorism more relevant than it is to Africa today. Land sales in Africa are pulling in the top 10 investment banks and corporate consultants. Africa cannot continue to afford to have 70% of its population in the rural areas producing only 20% of GDP. Direct agricultural investment has been dubbed as going to become the next major ‘must have’ asset class in world investment. It is projected that within a decade or so, a relatively small number of multinationals will wield disproportionate inluence over the process that governs what is grown in the ield, to how it ends up on the end of our forks. The plunder of Africa by Africans sometimes compels me to wonder-who will save Africa from outside forces when we cannot save it from ourselves. I am not sure I will get to see the Africa I dream about, but I still want to ight for it even if it takes 50 or 100 years. The market is the greatest force for change. Smallholder farmers yes, everyone talks about them but none does anything meaningful for them. Is it not the right time to start asking, but why? And what are the alternatives in case, indeed smallholders are not the panacea to Africa’s perennial hunger problems? Facts and Figures • QUOTES • • • • • • Improving the ‘Doing Business’ environment and infrastructure is essential. In Nigeria in 2002-03 it could take up to four weeks for companies to clear their goods from the port. By the time the goods were cleared the Asian competitor had goods already shipped and the client had received already it. Climate change is real, if business as usual continues Africa stands to lose 50% of crop yield. Africa’s population will be about 1.3 billion by 2030 and about 2.2 billion by 2050. Africa has one of the fastest urbanisation rates in the world and the average age in urban communities is 18 years. FAO, IFAD, WFP and others project that the world needs to increase food production by 50% by 2030 and 70% by 2050 because the world population will be 9 billion then going forward. At the global stage Africa’s manufacturing base is not signiicant, less than 2% of the global manufacturing value. The foreign direct investment that Africa attracts is miniscule. Africa’s capital markets, except perhaps South Africa, are irrelevant, being too small. If you have 70% of your population being peasant farmers desperately trying to earn a decent living out of subsistence farming, this is not something to brag about. The priority should be to change the status quo not to perpetuate it. The problem of leadership in Africa and getting anything done is that the best people do not usually participate because of bad politics-the way politics is conducted in Africa, many times is barbaric. Leadership, I repeat, is what we need in Africa and it is possible for it to evolve. Investors look for transparency, longevity and credibility of government policies BUT despite all the challenges, all hope is not lost yet, for example:■ ■ ■ 75% of global CEOs say their company’s next expansion is in Africa More wealth has been created in Africa in the past 10 years than any at other point in history. The more hawkish/buoyant optimists have even gone as far as claiming ‘Africa is going to rule the 21st century.’ SPRING 2013 23 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE China Food Crisis and Countermeasures shuting Pan and dandan Liu rOYAL AgriCULTUrAL COLLEgE, CirEnCEsTEr , UK EXTERNAL INFLUENCES In an attempt to discuss the China food crisis we must take the global market into consideration. The global inancial crisis which started in 2008 has caused severe recession of world’s economy now characterized with price volatility. Its effect on food production and prices coupled with the attendance effect on the world’s poor and food security has brought food markets to the front burner in the world. The FAO on the 11th of April in 2008 pointed out that chaos caused by food crisis had taken place in several African countries, Indonesia, the Philippines, Haiti, and others. It also stated that major grain producing countries had not taken effective countermeasures to stabilize price yet, and the “food chaos” recently appearing in developing countries will possibly spread further.1 Export restraint - many countries have taken measures to restrain food exports. Some have reduced the export rebates, some have decreased export volume, and some have raised prices of exported grains. Some countries have even called off grain export, all of which have lowered grain trade volumes worldwide and intensify local food supply. Biofuel - plenty of grains which otherwise should be used for human or animal consumption are being converted to the production of ethanol fuel, which is another important factor leading to rising food prices. The United States estimated that 1.3 hundred million tons of corns were converted into ethanol fuel in 2008, which was half of the total corn yield of the USA. In India, 9 states and 3 areas have put a regulation to utilize petrol blend with 5% ethanol. The intention to prepare mitigating measures against high fossil energy cost and even future increase may seems logical but its potential to explode the already fragile world food system is starring all us in the face. Increasing cost of food production - in the past 5 years, the international price of chemical fertilizer has risen almost twice along with the rising price of global oil, which directly causes the cost of food production to increase. The FAO on the 11th of April in 2008 pointed out that chaos caused by food crisis had taken place in several African countries, Indonesia, the Philippines, Haiti, and others. Furthermore, the FAO pointed that there are 37 countries who are confronted with the food crisis, which is in accordance with the report from World Bank. The World Bank warned that 33 countries including Mexico and Yemen will also face social instability because the prices of food and energy has reached the highest point in 6 years. A large number of famine refugees have appeared in some of these countries and some are appearing in other countries due to the high food price1. It is stated from statistics that major grain prices in the world have risen by 80% in average since 2005. In March, 2008, rice price rose to the highest point in 19 years, and the wheat price rose to the highest point in 28 years. World grain price in the irst two months of 2008 rose by 9%. Quite a number of inluential factors have caused the grain price to rise further. They include: Climate change - grain yield reduction is taking place in some places due to the negative effects of climate change and global warming across the world. 24 SPRING 2013 THE LOCAL FACTORS Luckily, China has succeeded in maintaining a continuous good yield in 4 years while other countries are facing grain yield reduction, by keeping its balance of supply and demand. However, the grain price in China also increased greatly. A survey conducted by National Statistics Bureau2 for prices of agricultural products in the markets in 200 nationwide major agricultural counties showed that in January and February of 2008, Chinese’s grain price kept rising, the prices of soybean, corn and wheat rose by 41.6%, 14.4% and 8.8% respectively. In comparison with other countries China has the biggest population and is also the biggest grain consuming country in the world. Lack of grain supply in China will have tremendous consequences. Dongwen3 in The Current Situation of Chinese Grain Safety and Technological Countermeasures presented the possible causes of the Chinese food crisis as: 1. Vast reduction of sowing areas and severe reduction of overall production From 1998 to 2003, the overall sowing area was reduced from 1.13 to 0.99 hundred million hectares, the areas for corn, wheat and rice was reduced to 0.136 million hectares. Consequently, overall grain production was sharply reduced from 5.12 to 4.31 hundred million tons. 2. Continuous population increase and lowering of per capita food occupation volume China’s population has been increasing continuously ever since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. In 1949, the population of China was about 5.4 hundred million, but now it has reached to over 13 hundred million, which is about 2.4 times of the original population. Although the overall grain production has passed 5 hundred million tons with the development of high production methods and technology, the per capita occupation volume has declined. In 1949, the average occupation volume was 208kg, and the volume in 1998 reached 412kg, which was the highest ever and by 2003 it had declined to 334 kg. 3. Reduction of food trade and continuous lowering of food inventory From 2000 onwards, inluenced by food yield reduction, global food trade has been about one eighth of the overall grain production. Meanwhile, the food trade in China kept on reducing. From 2002 to 2003, China was a net exporter of food, but from 2004 onwards China became a net importer of food. What is worrying is the fact that both the global and Chinese food inventory keeps on declining. 4. Gradual increase in grain consumption and the increasing gap between production and demand China’s grain consumption has been increasing due to the demand from the growing population, industry and feedstuffs. From 2000 to 2003, the overall grain consumption in China increased from 4.31 to 5.62 hundred million tons, but in 2004 it declined to 4.9 hundred million tons, and the gap of supply and demand increased. It was predicted in White Papers of Chinese Food Problems that by about 2010 the overall demand of food in China will be 5.5 hundred million tons. 5. Other inluential causes of food crisis With the accelerated industrialization, urbanization and intensive expansion of other industries such as real estates, the area under agricultural cultivation will be reduced. Agricultural resources in the form of land, water and labour will be diverted into other uses. COUNTERMEASURES FOR THE FUTURE Lester Brown4, the director of American World Watch Academy presented the food dilemma in China with an article titled “Who will feed China in the Future?” in the World Watch issues of September and October of 1994. Admittedly, Brown’s analysis and assumption though with a very strong political undertone were partially correct. As a famous environmentalist and agriculturalist, he pointed out the key issues That may affect China’s food systems in the future as hyperinlation of population, reduced farmland , environmental degradation, gradual deiciency of water resource and declining yield. The food crisis in China existed before the present population peak. Between now and 2020 the Chinese population has been predicted to increase at a rate of 10 million people per year with a total population of 14.5 hundred million to 14.9 hundred million, and by 2030 the population is projected to be around 15 hundred million. More food will need to be produced in order to feed the growing population. Demand for grain in the developed southeast coastal zones in China will increase to feed the growing urban population. The following countermeasures are proposed in order to deal with the anticipated food crisis: 1. Land use management must be regulated to control non-agricultural land and stabilize agricultural acreage. The productive lands in China will need to be protected and about one hundred million hectares of productive agricultural land will be required by 2030. 2. There is need to promote agricultural research and technology transfer in order to increase the yield levels of rice, soya beans and wheat. Production of strategic crops will need to be focused in key areas. 3. The government of China needs to develop policies that will promote grain production. There is need to develop policies that stimulate agriculture production and also international trade in the grain market. REFERENCES FAO (2008): The Global partnership initiative for plant Breeding Capacity Building. 1 National Statistics Bureau (2008): National Economy: Steady and Fast Growth in 2008. 2 Dun, W. (2008): The Current Situation of Chinese Grain Safety and Technological Countermeasures Anhui Agricultural Sciences 3 Brown, L. R. (1994): Who will feed China? World Watch Sept/October edition 4 WHEAT FIELD READY FOR HARVEST SPRING 2013 25 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE Mapping Gender The Food Security Agenda in post Conlict Communities Mukyala Rebecca Mukyala Rebecca is a lecturer in the Department of Development Studies, Faculty of Business and Development Studies at Gulu University, Northern Uganda. She received a Master of Arts Degree in Development (Women) Studies, at The Hague, the Netherlands and Post Graduate Diploma in Peace Research and Conlict Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Research, Makerere University; Programme oficer Research, Policy, Planning and Data Management in the National Council for Children. Her academic interests are in Gender and Rural Sociology, the informal Sector and Governance. She can be contacted at rebecca.mukyala@yahoo.com and kasoga.rachel@gmail.com T alking to a colleague about doing a paper “Mapping Gender - the Food Security Agenda in post Conflict Communities”; the immediate response was ‘How is access to food related to sex?’ Although we started with deining gender, I will not be tempted to do it here. In the post conlict communities, humaninduced ecological insecurity orchestrated by abductions, killings etc.; tempered with social chains that, hitherto bound persons together. The destruction of links mediating entitlement to livelihood assets denied widows and children born to war lords during encampment thus, socially disinherited them (Whyte S. 2012). With many losing out on the socio-culturally mediated productive resources, especially land, many people have become victims of degraded ecological environments and livelihood base. For many, personal coping mechanisms are cast in personal ingenuity and capabilities, as they navigate and cope with hazards, disasters and the damages associated with environmental shocks and stressors including droughts, loods, storms….or else in institutional, technical and, organizational arrangements. This has outrightly shaped the social, political and economic vulnerabilities of people and communities. The extent, to which such forces affect people in the short term, could be insigniicant when pertaining socioeconomic development challenges are addressed through appropriate social protection arrangements. The Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) on the state of agriculture in Uganda recently revealed that about 80% of the population in Uganda depends on agricultural production. For more than 85% of the total population living in the rural areas; agriculture is the main source of livelihood - practicing either pure subsistence with limited commercial farming. If we consider all rural women working and handling all forms of post harvest agro-processing, agricultural production is increasingly becoming dependent on women, employing to between 72% and 90% of the women in the rural area; compared to only 53% of rural men3. This feminization of agriculture is attributed to low earnings in the agricultural sector and the consequent rural urban migration, ill health and death due to HIV/AIDs, malaria and other diseases and security related threats, in the north where mostly men, boys and girls were abducted. Available statistics demonstrate that in the majority of cases, close to one third A WOMAN WORKING ON A LEGUME COP IN DR CONGO SOURCE: HTTP://WWW.CIATNEWS.CGIAR.ORG 26 SPRING 2013 (26.3%) of the rural households in Uganda are female headed households (FHH) – often young women of between 26 - 49 years. The majority – about 39% FHH compared to only 10 percent of their male counter parts are lacking formal education (UBOS, 2007). Although women constitute the majority agricultural work force, few own land in their own right, because land is not merely a factor of production; most importantly, land deines and binds primary social and spiritual relations within and across generations in many communities in Uganda. Hence, land remains a highly volatile political issue about whose control is a critical factor in development. The recognized systems of land ownership in Uganda’s laws are multiple - including: Mailo, freehold and customary tenure systems. A 2003 National Household Surveys (UNHS) showed that FHH have low levels of cultivatable land compared to the Male-Headed Households (MHH); with a critical analysis revealing that households headed by un-married women have less land assets with the widowed having slightly more. Larger land sizes have helped the MHH to commercialize their agricultural activities thus earning higher incomes and reducing their poverty levels. This is not the case in the majority of FHH owning smaller land sizes not amenable to commercialization. MHH are still more advantaged in using land as collateral to access credit for growing more cash crops and livestock rearing compared to the majority of the women. Women work on the land more than men but have unequal land rights, which are limited to access, while men are more inclined to enjoy ownership rights. Available literature indicates that only 30% of women have access to and control over proceeds from land but ownership and control over land is ultimately with men (Ovonji-Odida et al, 2000). Generally, women’s access to land is mediated through their spouse or male relatives – sons, brothers, and loss of one’s spouse increases the chances of violation of their rights to land, with limited exceptions however, in urban areas where some working women are able to purchase land and where poor women have taken on the role of family breadwinner such as when widowed. Male tasks in agriculture are predominantly extractive - felling trees and mechanized ploughing with oxen or tractors, digging holes, the purchase and use of chemicals, looking for markets and the sale of produce; compared to the women who usually undertake sowing, harvesting, head loading of produce, cropdrying, winnowing, seed selection, pig and poultry-rearing and bartering sunlower seeds for oil. Both men and women under take weeding, bagging and crop storage. Although I am not answering my colleagues’ concern regarding the gender of hunger or food security, when foreseen or otherwise compromises get in the way of achieving food security by denying entitlements to productive resources like land, certain groups are relegated to vulnerable and insecure ecologies. Thus, mapping the gender – food security nexus should help reveal the subtle often invisible experiences controlling people’s lives, among them gender. Often, gender appears innocent, yet, when remotely cast in ‘common community good’ its effects become explicit within deprived livelihoods and human insecurity; via the gendered values and beliefs that deine differentiated roles and access to life sustaining resources, assets, leisure and decision making. And, although many recognize biological differences between people, they have demonstrated that in most societies at all times, the social relations of production are gendered in nature. Shakeshaft. 1987, observed that social roles are sex biased with male roles valued over the female ones in all social realms or life cycles and that societal management principles in public administration are biased against women: If we deined work, we ind that work is what men do!! Some men - Mwalimu Julius Nyerere observed that “…many women toil seeds – obukaala. The wild cat would say of her – engadhaba enno!, “…look at this imbecile…”. Among the Baganda, another ethnic group in the central southern region called such woman “…njabala…”, - the one who cannot do anything for herself such that she could invite the ghost of her dead mother to dig for her. Currently, food sovereignty is cast within changing economic and political regimes redeining entitlement to food within competitive monetary and individualistic forces wherein individuals and vulnerable group food entitlements affected differently. Whereas the traditional food sovereignty regimes weighed onto supporting vulnerabilities the emerging trend is more capitalist. Organizationally, trade, labour movements, conlicts and wars, scientiic and technological advancement threaten food sovereignty. At the household levels autonomy of access is inluenced by ecological and agricultural regimes which represent limits of independence and require interdependent navigation to food security. Available literature explicating the twenty years of violent war in northern Uganda explains that many men were turned into laggards in encampment through compulsive conditions with many of them controlled by fear of abduction. The women scavenged to ill the gap left by the world food programme (WFP). It was dificult to achieve food sovereignty under unstable systems when household (HH) production was very minimal and, all forms markets - goods/commodities, labour and currency were dysfunctional. Most social cultural institutions were weak or ineficient, or moderated. Hitherto, widowed women would be inherited; marriage was mediated by bride wealth. All these practices no longer worked during the period of encampment. Socialization especially in work ethics was dificult and anecdote indings reveal vices replacing virtues of community care. Pooling of labor was impossible and there was bulging dependence of men and children on women. What hope exists in post conlict areas when the violence destroys labour organization and deployment, replacing it with individuation? Literary, the primary source of livelihood for an average household in many Ugandan communities is land. With increased numbers of “lazy” women many children are food insecure. What about the men? They are Women provide from 70-80 per cent of agricultural labor and yet few have rights to own (7%) or control use of land. on the land without pay, the land they don’t own and they produce crops they do not control…if they are not lucky the marriage may inevitably dissolve through death, divorce or separation and they will go away empty handed” Mwalimu J.K. Nyerere at the 3rd World Conference on Women, 1984. A conscious historical analysis about gender and entitlement reveals that it moves with social sexual differentiation. The Basoga ethnic group where I grew up in central eastern Uganda, laziness is synonymous with being a woman and, a man exhibiting laziness is described as a laggard, an idler like a woman!!. In the contrary, the community accolades for a hard working woman will be likening her to a man “she is a woman-man (mukazi-musadha) equivalent for being more than a woman. Whereas the responsibility for food security at the family/household level was presumed to be a responsibility of the men as heads of households, lazy women endeared negative comments attributed to a wild cat annoyed by a garden infested by jack SPRING 2013 27 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE A WOMAN AND HER TWO DAUGHTERS CARRYING OUT SOIL PREPARATION FOR PLANTING IN UGANDA denying paternity, ighting for land to sell and deepen vulnerability of more women and young ones. Government legislation provides for land associations where groups of people can register land (as a family, clan or any other arrangement) to protect the socially weak. But the rich investors have pitted kin and kith with the powerful quickly selling land and dispossessing many because ‘your mother refused to be inherited meaning your father was not our brother…’. Already the cultural leaders have lost clout during the insurgency and although they sometimes represent the vulnerable, everybody knows they lack capacity to put in effect what they say. A recent interview with a sub county chief revealed that traditional leaders cannot prevent land owners to sell land. This view was justiied by a district oficial who insisted that people should only appreciate that development takes place on land not in air. “…with development, land will deinitely be alienated…regardless of who loses out…” The feminists who believe that women are people argue that in the economy, women with limited education are misits in a corporate world. The processing industry is undeveloped, depending on female labour which renders all surplus wasted - the mango and tomato seasons see lots of rot at home and in markets. Many women lack post harvest handling skills due to low levels of education. The majority (women), cannot access relevant information. Moreover a whole generation of the post conlict communities lost out on education and socialization in indigenous food preservation and post harvest handling is unhygienic. This fetches limited proit. 28 SPRING 2013 Agreeably, the voiceless, in the majority women and children disarticulated and disinherited should incite debates in the public arena. The truth is that economic liberalization will deliver no alternative productive initiatives for lack of voice. A 2005/06 Uganda National Household Survey put overall literacy rate at 69% among the 10 above years; Men constitute 76% of the literate compared to 63% of the women. The Central region excluding Kampala is highest with 80%, compared to 59% in the Northern. Bearing in mind its special characteristics Kampala had 91%. Urban literacy rates are generally 86% than their rural counter parts 66%. If we deined literacy as the ability to write meaningfully and read with understanding in any language, the majority of the women do not qualify even as they need it to achieve food security. Women ight in many spaces, support project for the Sabiny women in post harvest handling by introducing donkeys to transport produce in the mountainous terrain is shunned because it is a gateway to food insecurity when men market produce are also allowed to ride donkeys. This is true for women in the central region of Buganda, who are not expected to ride bicycles even when this could lessen their laborious work in ferrying produce. In the cattle corridor of western Uganda (Ankole) improved value chains in milk handling through provision of cooling centers and milk tanks to the capital has deprived women of family needs. Hitherto, women controlled most of the milk, using it for getting food and, making ghee for other household requirements. A study on child health status in the late 1990s (FOWODE) revealed that many children were malnourished in Bushenyi and current Kiruhura Districts in western Uganda. Where gender analysis by women activists has tried to offer some solutions by thoroughly identifying the conlicting impacts of any proposed innovations and technologies; considerations of equity and participatory is beginning to yield positive impacts. When the “Uganda Women Efforts to Save Orphans” (UWESO) responded to the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS that left many women widowed and a multitude of orphaned children, many women shunned a savings and credit scheme, handouts because the men membership continuously inluenced the use money. An extreme case was a family migrated because man had compelled the group to give him money and disappeared. The above experiences provide valuable lessons on gender issues in food security agenda through different approaches, including local aspects of value chain improvement in the agricultural sector for increased access to lucrative markets, provision of household water needs feeding into time and labour saving and health promotion. The clear lesson is that local conditions have signiicant impacts on the success of many programs that would improve food security through saving labour and time efforts. Speciically in the water and farming sectors, increasing on the prospects of increasing earnings from household produce without sensitivity to gendered differentials at the farm level may strip many women of due inluence, denying them voice and consequent control over their efforts even as they augur promising innovations. BIBLIOGRAPHY Angela Mwaniki () Achieving Food Security in Africa: Challenges and Issues. Cornell University Forum for Women and Democracy (FOWODE). 2012. Gender Policy Brief for Uganda’s Agriculture Sector under the United Nations Joint Programme on Gender Equality support ISBN: 978-9970-14-002-2 H. Charles J. Godfray and others, “Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people”, Science, vol. 327, No. 5967 (2010), p. 812 Modirwa S. and O. I. Oladele. 2012. Food Security among Male and Female-headed Households in Eden District Municipality of the Western Cape, South Africa in the J Human Ecology, 37(1): 29-35 (2012). Mukyala R. et.al. 1995. The Impact of Privatisation on the Delivery of Clean Water and Sanitation in the PeriUrban areas of in Iganga District in Eastern Uganda. MAK, Kampala. Madeleine Fairbairn (n.d.) Framing Resistance: International Food Regimes and the Roots of Food Sovereignty Whyte Reynolds S. et.al. 2012. Remaining internally Displaced: Missing Links to Security in Northern Uganda in the Journal of Refugee Studies, Oxford University Press. ZERO Regional Environment Organisation (). Linking Land and Food Security in Africa: a focus on Southern Africa Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF EWU), 2012. FOOD SECURITY SUMMARY REPORT FOR UGANDA The Journey So Far A personal Relection on Africa’s Land and Food Fellowship Programme Dr Richard Baines BSc (Wales), MSc (Southbank), PhD (Reading) Director, Africa’s Land and Food Fellowship Principal Lecturer, Principal Lecturer in Management Systems for Food Safety and the Environment E Research Interests ■ Management Systems for Food Safety and the Environment ■ Food Safety & Farm Assurance ■ Strategic Environmental Appraisal, Impact Assessment and Auditing ■ International Rural Development e.g. International RuralDevelopment Programme stablished in 2006, the Africa’s Land and Food Fellowship programme provides leadership training and mentoring for Africans with agricultural and rural development experience and a desire ‘to make a difference’ so that they can provide ‘on the ground’ support and strategic management for industry and communities when they return home (see Box 1). To date over £1.3 million has been raised primarily from industry and we have, and are, mentoring some 60 Africans from 11 Sub-Saharan countries as part of this leadership initiative. As programme Director I have been asked on a number of occasions why Africa and why land and food? There are several reasons that look backwards to our shared history and also look forwards towards an Africa that Europe will increasingly depend on for its food in the coming decades. At the personal level, I was struck by the humanity and dignity in the face of poverty I observed on my irst visit to Africa to follow up on Sierra Leoneans I had helped train at my previous college. You can imagine the concern for my friends when that country decayed into civil war some 2 years later. HOW HAS OUR SHARED HISTORY AFFECTED DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA? Much of Europe’s early knowledge of subSaharan Africa came from our colonisation of coastal areas and navigable rivers while the centre of the continent was unknown and sometimes referred to as darkest Africa. The carving up of the continent began in earnest with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 that aimed to settle how European countries would claim colonial land in Africa and avoid a war over African territory. No Africans were present at this conference, nor were any Europeans present to ensure that native Africans had any say in the proceedings. Many of the lines drawn on the map were either straight (as ALFF in a Nut Shell Established in 2006 as a leadership programme for Africans, ALFF offers up to 10 scholarships annually. ALFF Objectives: Fellowship Oversight: To build capacity in Africans with experience in agriculture and rural development and a desire to make a difference so that they can build capacity in others at home. The African Fellowship Trust, a registered charity, is responsible for fund raising, programme oversight and for evaluating the impact of Fellows when they return to Africa. The Programme: Trustees: Made up of 4 elements, ALFF tutors work closely with Fellows to complete: ■ An M.Sc. in either International Rural Development or Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security at the Royal Agricultural College; ■ Networking with key individuals and organisations in the UK and Africa; ■ Industrial secondments in Africa organised by the Stand ard Bank Centre for Agri-business Leadership and Mentorship Development at Stellenbosch University; and, ■ Development planning workshops to design and cost potential projects for implementation back in Africa with mentoring from the College and Centre. Institutional trustees represent the Royal Agricultural College, the International Institute for Environment and Development and the Royal African Society along with a number of independent trustees. Scholarships: The programme is mainly funded by industry including scholarships from: Barclays Bank, Garfield Weston Foundation, Imperial Tobacco, Bordeaux Quay, British American Tobacco, Anglo American, the Royal Agricultural College and the Amersi Foundation. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office began supporting the programme in 2012 with up to five Chevening Scholarships per year. SPRING 2013 29 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE Africa’s Land and Food Fellowship Alumni 2006-2013 ALFF Tutors and the Trust maintain close contact with Fellows when they return home, in order to monitor progress on projects and careers, to act as mentors and to evaluate impacts on communities and business. BURKINA FASO 4 CAMEROON 1 UGANDA 4 ZIMBABWE 8 SWAZILAND 2 BIQUE 2 SOUTH AFRICA 24 KENYA 2 Alumni have also been contracted to carry out research and consultancy on behalf of the Royal Agricultural College and we see this growing year on year. the landscape was unknown) or followed defendable borders for the Europeans. These borders became codiied as Africa’s borders today through the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations. The problem is that many of these borders do not relect the diverse peoples, cultures and languages of African pre-European colonization and this legacy is the root cause of problems even today. Each European country that claimed possession over a part of Africa was to bring civilization, in the form of Christianity, and trade to each region that it would occupy. By 1900 Europeans were extracting raw materials from the interior (such as rubber, palm oil, gold, copper, and diamonds) making Africa a vital resource for European economies. By the start of the First World War about 90% of Africa had been divided between seven European countries with only Liberia and Ethiopia remaining independent nations. However, the economic drain of the Second World War on the colonial powers allied to the contributions Africans made to the war effort initiated a period where African nations began to emerge from colonial rule starting with Ghana (independence in 1957). By the turn of the millennium, virtually all of the former colonies had gained independence. However, many African countries now occupy the 30 SPRING 2013 lower ranks as measured by the Millennium Development Goals launched in 2000. WHAT HAS GONE WRONG FOR A NUMBER OF COUNTRIES IN AFRICA SINCE THE MARSHALL PLAN OF THE 1950’S? Marshall Plan aid, largely from the USA, worked well in reconstructing Europe therefore the argument was that similar plans should work in Africa. Europe’s success was largely attributed to the presence of well established legal systems and institutions allied to the eficient enforcement of policies and regulations. Aid to Africa, however, occurred at a time of increasing independence from colonial powers, with some being preceded by armed conlict. These new governments generally inherited alien political, inancial and legal systems that carried over from colonial rule. Moreover, many of the indigenous and customary community governance structures had evolved to address local needs pre colonisation did not scale up to national levels easily. Add to this the imposed borders and it is understandable why many new nations initially struggles and some failed. A number of African countries also suffered through armed conlict driven in part by their alliances with either the USA or Russia during the cold war. To further complicate matters, the nature of aid was not consistent over the last six decades. The Marshall Plan for Europe in the 1950’s came out of the Bretton Woods Conference that also established the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariff’s (Now the WTO). By the 1960’s the aid agenda was for industrialization linked to accessing essential raw materials from African states. By the end of the decade Africa had received some $100 million in development aid. The 1970’s saw many African countries investing in commodity agriculture as an engine for development and as a way of sourcing foreign currency; however oil price hikes linked to the Arab Israeli war and the actions of OPEC countries saw a collapse in commodity prices but a rise in domestic food prices. As a result, much of the decade’s aid was directed towards poverty alleviation and Africa had received some $36 billion in foreign assistance. By the 1980’s a number of African states were unable to service debts due to commodity prices collapsing so the next theme was structural adjustment or re-scheduling of debt resulting in yet more debt but under international inancial rules. These rules also opened the door for private investment and the privatisation of state enterprises. By the end of the decade emerging countries owed over $1 trillion and there was a net low of some $1 billion annually in the form of debt repayments out of Africa to developed nations. At the same time, a number of commentators began to argue that aid does not work or that aid can lead to petty and state corruption. In response to this, the 1990’s saw the decade of aid in return for good governance and democracy (or regime change if you are a pessimist). SOURCE: HTTP://WWW.ZCOOL.COM.CN/GFX/ZOTAZNJQ=.HTML WHAT OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM? Africa became the focus for global concern over poverty and the morality of demanding debt repayments versus funding health and education. Add in a little ‘Glam aid’ from the 1970’s 80’s and 90’s allied to celebrity advocacy and we saw a number of the poorest countries have their debt cancelled – in return for good governance. It appears that the prevailing western view now is that aid is the only solution to Africa’s problems while many Asian countries, not least China, see Africa as an investment opportunity. More recently, as the global economic climate deteriorated, donor agency funds have come under pressure at home and there is a new call for the private sector to become involved in development through public private partnerships. At the same time aid is now being directed towards failing nations or post natural disasters. WHY LEADERSHIP AT THE GROUND LEVEL FOCUSING ON LAND AND FOOD? With a world population growing towards 9 billion and with a signiicant proportion becoming more afluent, agricultural production has never been more important. How do we ensure there is enough of the right food in the right place and why is Africa important. First of all, Africa is the only continent with vast areas of fertile land that is not yet under cultivation – accepting we also need space for the rich diversity of wildlife. Secondly, population growth in Africa is well above the global average. Thirdly, there is a desperate need for Africans to practice sustainable agriculture in order to protect their essential natural resources and achieve food security at the household, local, national and regional level. If food security can be realised and a surplus produced, then African farmers, the majority of which are smallscale producers, need support in accessing value markets. Therefore the ifth ingredient to growth and prosperity in my view is the need to stimulate good business practices and entrepreneurship. This will need leaders and innovators’ acting at the ground level and this is the focus of Africa’s Land and Food Fellowship programme. Moreover, our partnership with the Standard Bank Centre for Agri-business Leadership and Mentorship Development at Stellenbosch University means that Fellows are now grounded in agri-business in the African context, especially where these businesses are actively working with smallscale and emerging farmers. IS THE FELLOWSHIP WORKING? The success of programmes like this can be measured in many ways including: academic success (a 100% pass rate to date); monitoring of actions back in Africa (over 66% of Fellows update us on their career progress); or in terms of impact on communities. The latter is dificult to measure quantitatively; however, perhaps impact can be judged qualitatively through narrative. I would like to inish with just a few examples of what our Fellows are achieving. Nephas was one of the irst Fellows in 2006. His placement was in Liberia where he helped develop agricultural training for child soldiers. Later he was responsible for internally displaced refugees in Northern Uganda before he set out on a PhD with me. His study is near completion; however, his ield research in Zambia was also a community development project. Jeffrey joined us from his job in extension in South Africa; since returning he had been promoted to Deputy Director of Agricultural Extension in the National Department of Agriculture. Sphiwe, also from South Africa, joined a small NGO on her return and has been involved in implementing a number of her Governments development programmes. However, in her spare time she has set up a charity with a friend to help street kids in Pretoria re-integrate back into their families and the community. Emmanuel, while not employed at present, has been a signiicant asset for the College by undertaking student placement visits to industry, ield research and monitoring and evaluation of projects in-country. We will seek to harness his and other Fellows ‘on the ground’ expertise as the journey progresses and as I progress from mentor to co-learner with my African colleagues and friends. The story is a long one and I apologies to all those who are making signiicant contributions who I have not mentioned; however, I would like to especially thank David Campbell who is the co-founder of this initiative and CEO of the Trust that provides strategic oversight of the programme. Thank you for the sparks of creativity we both had when we conceptualised the Fellowship and for your tireless efforts in raising the funds that enable us to fund Africa’s future leaders and innovators. The journey continues. SPRING 2013 31 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE Peasant Rights or Food Riots: The challenges of institutionalizing food sovereignty Hannah Wittman FACULTY OF LAND AND FOOD SYSTEMS UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 2205 EAST MALL, VANCOUVER, BC V6T 1Z4, CANADA hannah.wittman@ubc.ca Hannah Wittman an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems and the Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her research examines how rights to produce and consume food are contested and transformed through global struggles for agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and agrarian citizenship. Areas of empirical focus include: agrarian reform settlements, citizenship and food sovereignty in rural Brazil in collaboration with the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST); socio-ecological resilience and communitybased resource management in Guatemala; and local food system transformation, farmland protection initiatives, farmers’ markets and community-based farming in British Columbia, Canada. T he right to food has been enshrined as an international human right for decades. But the contemporary governance of the global agri-food system signiicantly challenges the ability of communities and nations to develop concrete strategies that are appropriate for their distinctive institutional, cultural, and environmental contexts. In response, global social movements have mobilized around the framework of food sovereignty, or the right of peoples to have control over their food and agricultural systems. Food sovereignty is a framework for democratic participation in food and agriculture policies that would uphold the right to food for individual citizens, while also protecting the environment and the rights of 32 SPRING 2013 the world’s two billion small scale and family farmers, indigenous people, and isherfolk, who produce almost 70% of the food that humans eat on a daily basis. Grassroots mobilization has been successful in the insertion of language protecting the right to food and promoting the framework of food sovereignty in constitutional amendments and national legislation in countries including Ecuador, Brazil, Nepal, Venezuela, Mali, and Bolivia. The focus of these provisions is on the right of peasants, indigenous peoples, isherfolk, and rural women to have sovereignty –the right to decide – over the development of their own food and agricultural systems. This article describes the proposal of the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina to enact a food sovereignty regime supported by an International Convention on Peasant Rights. In what is becoming an increasingly entrenched conluence of food, energy, and inancial crises, rising food prices and periods of food price volatility have contributed to the maintenance of global hunger, affecting nearly 1 billion people today. Global food imports continue to rise (25% in 2011, to $1.3 trillion dollars) and 227 million hectares of land have been sold or leased to international investors in what is known as the ‘global land grab’ since 2001, with most of those between 2009-2011 – a direct response to rising food prices (Wise and Murphy 2012). Displacement of rural populations to urban centers, environmental degradation associated with large-scale and export oriented agriculture, and violent and exploitative agricultural labour practices igure among the problems associated with a globalized and industrialized food system. In response, grassroots actors, led by the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, a coalition of almost 150 peasant organizations from 70 countries, representing about 200 million farmers, rural women, ishers, and indigenous peoples, have called for a new framework for food production and consumption (cf. Wittman et al, 2010; Wittman 2011). This framework is builds on the commitment to food security that emerged from the 1966 International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the 1974 Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition, which set out as a state responsibility to support national agricultural systems for food production. The 1981 Peasant’s Charter, a declaration of principles and “programme of action” of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s 1st World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, was a subsequent agreement to prioritize national needs and priorities in agricultural investment, promote agrarian reform and redistribution of economic and political power, further the democratic organization of farmers and rural peoples, and to develop policies of collective self-reliance (FAO 1981). Nonetheless, the same declaration vigorously encouraged further measures of trade liberalization as the best way to achieve the aforementioned goals. Since the 1970s, productivity gains from Green Revolution technologies have tapered off, and structural adjustment programs have weakened agricultural investment in developing countries, leading to supply constraints and continual increases in global hunger. WTO protocols, in particular the Agreement on Agriculture, prohibited price supports in the Global South while allowing developed countries to maintain key agricultural subsidies. This left small- A Declaration of Peasants’ Rights In the food sovereignty framework, food security, environmental resilience, and food democracy require legal and political reform at international, national, and local levels. scale and family farmers worldwide unable to compete in global markets, suffering instead the impacts of “dumping” of cheap, subsidized foods on their local markets. Consolidation of control over marketing of seeds and inputs (the top ten global seed companies control more than 70% of the world’s seed market, while three companies alone control over half of commercial seed production and distribution) was also of concern to many small-scale and family farmers who depend on localized and adapted seed varieties. In contrast to the Rights to (Consume) Food, the focus of most national and international approaches to Food Security, the food sovereignty framework emphasizes the Right to Produce as a necessary precursor to the right to eat. This requires a critique of the food security via trade model, which is subject to the volatility of international commodity markets in which food-fuel-fodder are substitutable and priced to the highest bidder. Food riots and food insecurity, not food rights, have been the eventual legacy of a food security model that prioritizes international trade over food democracy. RIO+20: INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN OF STRUGGLES: PEOPLES OF THE WORLD AGAINST THE COMMODITISATION OF NATURE IN THE MONTH OF JUNE 2012 (SOURCE: WWW.VIACAMPESINA.ORG) A DECLARATION OF PEASANTS’ RIGHTS In the food sovereignty framework, food security, environmental resilience, and food democracy require legal and political reform at international, national, and local levels. To address the transnational character of the need to protect the framework of food sovereignty - as a human right – La Vía Campesina developed a Declaration of Rights of Peasants, - Women and Men through a set of regional and international workshops and conferences between 2001 and 2008. The member organizations have argued that current international rights conventions fail to protect the rights of peasants, and that “the violation of the rights of peasants damages the world’s ability to feed itself” (La Vía Campesina 2009). The Campaign for Peasant’s Rights has been brought before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and by September of 2012, the UN Human Rights Council successfully adopted a resolution on the “Promotion of the Human Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNHRC 2012). This resolution notes that globally, 80 percent of the people suffering from hunger live in rural areas, and 50 percent of these are small scale and traditional farm holders lacking access to land, resources, education, and technology needed to sustain their community food systems. Strategically, although cross border organizing for peasant rights is transnational in character, the ways in which each afiliated organization will pursue those rights differ in national contexts. Internationally, the right to food and food sovereignty has been pushed onto the public agenda by grassroots movements, and in a growing number of instances, into national legislative frameworks. INSTITUTIONALIZING FOOD SOVEREIGNTY Ecuador’s 2008 constitution was one of the irst to explicitly recognize the goal of food sovereignty in a national legal context. As a social right connected with the right to food, Article 13 states that “Persons and community groups have the right to safe and permanent access to healthy, suficient and nutritional food, preferably produced locally and in keeping with their various identities and cultural traditions. The Ecuadorian State shall promote food sovereignty.” Article 281 mirrors many of the items in the proposed international Convention on Peasants Rights – declaring that “Food sovereignty is a strategic objective and an obligation of the State in order to ensure that persons, communities, peoples and nations achieve self-suficiency with respect to healthy and culturally appropriate food on a permanent basis.” Article 281 sets out 14 provisions for the enactment of food sovereignty (see Below) 2008 ECUADOR CONSTITUTION, ARTICLE 281 1. Fostering the production, and the agrifood and ishing transformation of small and medium-sized production units, SPRING 2013 33 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE community production units and those of the social, mutually supportive economy. 2. Adopting iscal, tax and tariff policies that protect the national agri-food and ishing sector to prevent dependence on food imports. 3. Bolstering diversiication and the introduction of ecological and organic technologies in farm and livestock production. 4. Promoting policies of redistribution that will enable small farmers to have access to land, water and other production resources. 5. Establishing preferential mechanisms for the inancing of small and mediumsized producers, facilitating for them the acquisition of means of production. 6. Promoting the conservation and recovery of agricultural biodiversity and related ancestral wisdom, along with the use, conservation and free exchange of seeds. 7. Ensuring that animals for human consumption are healthy and raised in a salubrious setting. 8. Ensuring the development of appropriate scientiic research and technological innovation to guarantee food sovereignty. 9. Regulating, under biosecurity regulations, the use and development of biotechnology, as well as its experimentation, use and marketing. 10. Strengthening the development of organizations and networks of producers and consumers, along with those for the marketing and distribution of food stuffs, so as to promote equity between rural and urban spaces. 11. Creating fair, mutually supportive systems for the distribution and marketing of food stuffs. Preventing monopoly practices and any type of speculation with food products. 12. Providing food to population groups that are the victims of natural and manmade disasters that jeopardize access to food. Food received through international aid shall not affect the health or the future production of locally produced food stuffs. 13. Preventing and protecting the population from consuming polluted food stuffs, or those that jeopardize their health or whose effects are still scientiically uncertain. 14. Acquiring food and raw materials for social and food programs, giving priority to associative networks of small producers. 34 SPRING 2013 EUROPE, GOOD FOOD, GOOD FARMING LET’S MARCH TO BRUSSELS! 11TH SEPTEMBER 2012 (SOURCE: HTTP://VIACAMPESINA.ORG/EN/) Under the government of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s new 2009 constitution states not only that all people have the right to water and food, and that the state has the obligation to guarantee food security (Article 16), but that the negotiation and ratiication of international treaties shall be subject to the principles of food security and sovereignty for the population (Article 255). In speciic reference to the principle of subsidiarity – the right of decisions to be made at the appropriate level of community –, and in explicit response to the contradictions of a resource/energy extraction led model of development, Articles 300/302 indicate the “Exclusive competence of regional and municipal governments to govern alternative and renewable energy projects to preserve food sovereignty”. Finally, Article 407 indicates that state development policy will prioritize the production and consumption of food produced in Bolivian territory to guarantee food sovereignty and security In Brazil, recent national legislation has further engaged in the institutionalization of food sovereignty, with speciic language around protecting the human right to food through food sovereignty. These include several measures enacted the last decade that prioritize local food production for local consumption. A 2003 sub-program of Brazil’s well-known Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) campaign facilitated food procurement through guaranteed government contracts for land reform beneiciaries. The purchased food was destined for schools, hospitals, and other government sponsored food programs, and has expanded to more than 2,300 Brazilian municipalities in 2011. The food procurement program facilitated the development of strong local food economies in land reform settlements. Scaling this up further, a 2009 National School Food program law requires that 30% of school food procurement be sourced from regional small-scale family farmers and land reform settlements. Finally, national food security legislation passed in 2010 indicates support for agro-ecological production systems, respect for biodiversity, indigenous peoples and family agriculture, and a “respect for sovereignty”. CHALLENGES TO IMPLEMENTING FOOD SOVEREIGNTY While the language and ideas of food sovereignty and peasants’ rights are increasingly appearing in national and international legislative contexts, challenges about for their successful implementation on the ground. Land access for food production by small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples are threatened by the expansion of industrial agricultural and biofuels production. In both Ecuador and Bolivia, oil and gas extraction initiatives have made inroads despite constitutional provisions protecting both the right to food sovereignty and the rights to nature upheld in the concept of buen vivir (Gudynas 2011). In Bolivia, the export commodity orientation of the ‘media luna’ in the soybean producing area of eastern Bolivia has resulted in violent conlict over land access and agrarian reform initiatives. In these countries, little has been done to institutionalize food sovereignty, or the right of smallholder farmers to produce food for local consumption. In Brazil, where agricultural support systems including public food procurement, improved access to agricultural credit, and rural housing support have been strengthened under the administration of the PT since 2003, land reform and land distribution have ground to a halt. For decades, local and national food sovereignty has been threatened by the dismantling of national agricultural systems and dependence on export oriented, and highly volatile, commodity production systems. Much has been made of the inluence of international trade agreements on national agricultural policies and on increasing world hunger – of the almost 1 billion undernourished people in the world, 75 percent are concentrated in rural areas and half of these farming families. The obligation of signatories to the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights are to take “positive actions” to ensure the right to food. According to the proposed international convention of peasant’s rights, these actions include those that facilitate the ‘right to farm’ and the right to ‘fair and equitable, and environmentally sustainable’ food production and trading systems. FURTHER READING FAO. 1981. “The Peasants’ Charter.” Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (http://www.fao.org/docrep/U8719E/U8719e00.htm). Gudynas, E. 2011. “Buen Vivir.” Development 54(4):441–47. La Vía Campesina. 2009. “Declaration of Rights of Peasants - Women and Men.” (http://viacampesina.org/ en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104 3:declaration-of-rights-of-peasants-women-and-men-&cati d=14:publications&Itemid=30). United Nations Human Rights Council. 2012. Promotion of the human rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. Resolution A/HRC/21/L.23. Geneva: United Nations General Assembly. Wise, T. A., and S. Murphy. 2012. Resolving the Food Crisis: Assessing Global Policy Reforms Since 2007. Medford/ Tufts University: Global Development and Environment Institute and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Wittman, H. 2011. “Food Sovereignty: A new rights framework for food and nature?.” Environment and Society: Advances in Research 2(1):87–105. Wittman, H., A.A. Desmarais and N. Wiebe (eds). 2010. Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community. Halifax: Fernwood. http://viacampesina.org/en/ Sustainable Agriculture Mitigating Climate Change This is an exciting way to gain your Masters and develop your research skills as part of a multi-disciplined team investigating key challenge facing agriculture and land management. This one-year MSc programme includes training in research skills and an opportunity to undertake a short internship in industry linked to your research. As part of an interdisciplinary team, you will contribute to monthly discussion seminars on the progress of your study. In addition, you may also attend taught subject classes to update your knowledge and understanding on disciplines related to your study and to further your critical review skills. The programme is completed when you submit your thesis for assessment at the end of the year and defend your research in a viva voce examination. For 2013, we are recruiting graduates for research into Sustainable Agriculture Mitigating Climate Change. This programme is led by Dr Richard Baines, Dr John Conway and Dr Louise Manning. We are seeking to understand better the challenges of addressing climate change mitigations; key themes include. 1. Soils and carbon sequestration 2. Sustainable water management 3. Extending current research on livestock GHG mitigation to include economic modeling and consequences 4. Carbon sequestration and pasture management 5. Economic implications of optimising carbon sequestration in pastures 6. Engaging farmers in reducing GHG emissions 7. Whole chain carbon footprints - comparison of farm and business carbon calculators to deine scopes and boundaries for agriculture and land management 8. Cropping and climate change mitigation 9. Economic and environmental comparisons of aquaculture and livestock production in delivering protein at lower carbon costs 10. Tradeoffs between carbon footprints and ecosystem services in realising sustainable farming For further information contact Dr John Conway john.conway@rac.ac.uk The University College at Cirencester SPRING 2013 35 IRD MATTERS MAGAZINE SAFS & IRD CLASS OF 2013 MSc Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security MSc International Rural Development This course combines the principles of sustainable development with an examination of the various systems of food production in the context of providing a secure supply to meet the ever-changing requirements of a growing world population This course develops professional understanding, skills and attitudes for sustainable rural development through knowledge acquisition, intellectual enquiry, debate, research, and interaction with fellow students from around the world. COUrsE COnTEnT COUrsE COnTEnT You will study : Development Project Management, Poverty and Food Security, Agricultural and Rural Policy, Integrated Agricultural Systems, and Sustainable Management of Soil & Water. You will then choose three electives from Organic Agriculture, Sustainable Agricultural Intensiication, Smallscale Farming & Local Food Supply, Climate change. You will study : Development Project Management, Poverty and Food Security, Agricultural and Rural Policy, Economics of the environment, Natural Resource Appraisal then choose three electives from Natural Resource Management, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Rural Tourism, Climate Change, Sustainable Management of Soil & Water, Integrated Agricultural Systems, Organic Agriculture. For further information about the course please contact Dr. John Conway, The Programme Manager john.conway@rac.ac.uk www.rac.ac.uk 36 SPRING 2013 The University College at Cirencester www.rac.ac.uk