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Food Security Concern Grows in Kenya as Farmers Switch from Maize to Coffee

ELDORET, 23 November 2011 (IRIN) – The switch by many farmers in Kenya’s Rift Valley province from staple cereals to more profitable coffee is likely to increase the country’s dependence on grain imports and possibly affect food security, agricultural experts have warned.

“It is unsafe to use our land for crops with the hopes of being fed by other countries,” said James Nyoro, managing director for Africa of the Rockefeller Foundation, which works to “promote the wellbeing of humanity around the world”.

“What if these countries do not harvest excess for us?”

Kenya will have to import 2.3 million tonnes of cereal during the 2011-2012 marketing year to meet demand, a year-on-year increase of 37 percent, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, which estimated domestic harvests of maize – a staple for 90 percent of Kenyans – at 2.5 million tonnes, down 18 percent because of poor weather.

This import dependency and the threat posed by increased coffee growing could be mitigated with the use of improved inputs by cereal growers, Nyoro said. Another food security specialist recommended improving storage conditions of grain after it is harvested, when some 30 percent of production is traditionally lost.

In the meantime, any additional costs accrued by importing will be passed on to consumers.

“There is inflation already, joblessness and low purchasing power for many Kenyans; if food prices go higher than they have in the recent past then the number of people accessing even two meals a day will be much lower,” he said.

Feasibility study

“The Rift Valley is the country’s granary; it is where most people get their food from. Increased coffee growing could compromise the country’s grain basket,” said one food security specialist, who asked not to be identified.

“If we lose significant land in the province to coffee, we have to weigh what we gain in the process. If coffee pays better and farmers can [by investing in inputs] improve the yield of maize crop in the acreage they put under maize, perhaps this could be the trade-off,” the specialist said, recommending that the government undertake a feasibility study on the implications of expanding coffee production in the Rift Valley.

A draft of Kenya’s land-use policy has been submitted to parliament and has yet to be debated for subsequent enactment.

There is little data available about how much former cereal-growing land in the province is now used to produce coffee. But in just one of its 50-odd districts, Trans Nzoia, the area under maize cultivation has fallen by 450 hectares over the last year, according to an agricultural officer there.

Across the province, areas of coffee cultivation grew by an annual 20 percent over the past two years, said Bonface Wekesa, manager of a new milling plant in the town of Eldoret.

“We have distributed over one million seedlings of coffee over the last one year and have even run short as the current demand stands at double what we have distributed to farmers,” Wekesa said, explaining that typically 2,200 seedlings would be planted on each hectare of land.

Coffee offers much better returns to farmers at a time when traditional coffee-growing areas in the centre of the country have been greatly reduced by real-estate developments.

In the past year, more than 2,000ha of coffee-growing land in Kiambu County, which neighbours the capital, Nairobi, have been given over to developers.

“Payback time”

Farmers in Rift Valley, according to agronomist Zabron Njoroge, “have been growing a lot of cereals to feed the nation while their pockets are left empty. It is their time to fill their pockets with income from the same farms.

“Maybe it’s time the government started massive irrigation in arid and semi-arid areas,” he said.

Joseph Kurui, a farmer and father of 10 in Tindiret, in Rift Valley’s Nandi County, told IRIN: “I have already planted coffee in 14 [5.7ha] out of my 21 acres [8.5ha]. I am waiting for seedlings to plant in six more acres and will only reserve one acre to plant maize for family consumption.”

Whereas 0.4047ha of maize earns him about Ksh25,000 (US$280) coffee delivers 10 times that, he said.

“A serious farmers who follows instructions from agronomists can make even more than Sh500,000 per acre,” said Wekesa.

Symon Mahungu, a food and agricultural scientist at Egerton University in Nakuru, Rift Valley’s provincial capital, said although coffee’s growing popularity could reduce cereal production, it would not affect people’s access to food, at least in the province.

“If these farmers are not accessing food through selling their maize but are well fed buying food from the proceeds of coffee, then this means they are food secure,” Mahungu told IRIN, adding that food security was not a matter of the amount of food produced from farms but, rather, people’s ability to access food.

He added: “Maize has been imported even when local farmers have their granaries full; let them [farmers] grow what suits their pockets best

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Is There Hope for The African Child?

The theme for this year African Child’s Day, was ‘All Together For Actions in Favor of Street Children’. This was targeted at some estimated 30million African street children and was celebrated all over the African continent. June 6 of every year is set aside by the African Union (AU) to commemorate the wanton massacre of some children in the street of Soweto, during the black days of Apartheid in South Africa on June 6, 1976. They were gruesomely murdered because they came out to demonstrate against the authority in order for them to be taught in their local language in their school. Thirty-four years on, the remembrance still continue, which goes to show the crucial nature of the day for Africa as a continent.

Across the length and breadth of the continent, Continue reading “Is There Hope for The African Child?”

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Somalia on Brink of Humanitarian Disaster Due to Drought, Warns UN expert

2 March 2011 – A United Nations human rights expert today called on the international community to step up efforts to address the impact of the devastating drought in Somalia, warning that the country is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster if action is not taken immediately.

Shamsul Bari, the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia, noted in a news release that the ongoing drought response is far from meeting the needs of the affected population in terms of access to food, clean water and health.

“The drought situation in the country and the slow international response is extremely serious and may lead to a natural and human disaster,” said Mr. Bari, who visited Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti last month.

“I strongly urge the international community, including the UN, to take immediate and concerted measures to address the dire humanitarian crisis that affects all human rights of the vulnerable Somali population, including women, children and the elderly as well as the internally displaced people (IDP) and minorities,” he said.

The drought is exacerbating an already dire humanitarian situation in Somalia, where civilians have been caught up in the fighting pitting forces of the country’s transitional government, who are backed by African Union peacekeepers, against insurgents of the Al-Shabaab armed group and other militants.

Mr. Bari warned that “the drought is now a cause for displacement in Somalia, in addition to conflict,” and expressed his deep concerns over its effect on the life of the population in many regions of Somalia.

“It was with shock and great sadness that during my recent field visit to Mogadishu, Puntland and Somaliland I learnt from local authorities and civil society from the various parts of Somalia that the drought affected population has sought assistance closer to urban areas, such as Mogadishu, where the ongoing fighting presents increased risk for the civilian population.”

Last month UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos had warned that severe drought in Somalia had led to more people becoming internally displaced and others moving into refugee camps across the border in Kenya, as food and water scarcity worsen.

“People are moving due to the deteriorating living conditions and a lack of a way to make a living. Families are said to be selling their assets, including houses and land, to get by and to facilitate their movement to the refugee camps in Kenya,” she told reporters following a visit to the country.

An estimated 2.4 million people – 32 per cent of the country’s 7.2 million people – are in need of relief aid as a result of drought and two decades of conflict.

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In Africa, a Man Without Job Has no Status

Michael Fleshman

For 17 years Peter worked as a machine operator in a South African textile plant. It was not high-paying work, but it paid the bills and kept his family above the poverty line. When he lost his job because foreign imports were cheaper, he told University of KwaZulu-Natal researcher Claire Ichou, he was plunged into poverty — and despair. “Peter explains very painfully how he has lost his dignity,” she wrote in an academic paper. “He declares that his wife does not respect him. He tells us that his children are starving.” In Peter’s eyes, she continued, “a man without a job is not a man and there is nothing he can do. He has no status.”

As the world enters the final phase of the drive to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), ambitious targets for slashing poverty, improving health and education, empowering women and protecting the environment by 2015, African leaders are starting to focus on the economic underpinnings of sustainable progress. Lifting the most destitute out of poverty, they note, will require greater investments in agricultural and industrial production, greater job creation and policies that favour economic growth.

Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika, who also serves as chair of the African Union (AU) this year, told world leaders gathered in New York last September for the UN MDGs Summit, “For Africa as a whole, we strongly appeal to the United Nations to review the supply side [of development] to improve access of ordinary people, especially women and children, to the services envisaged under the MDGs. Most MDGs depend on the availability of more schools, more hospitals, more rural infrastructures, more boreholes, dams and wells, more trained teachers, doctors, nurses, agronomists, scientists.… Let us pay attention to the supply side if we are to meet these goals.”

Tanzanian Prime Minister Mizengo K. Peter Pinda told the audience that creating jobs and opportunities in the countryside is critical to Tanzania’s progress on the goals, since the majority of his citizens make their living from the land, and farm incomes are well below the poverty line.

Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank, received the loudest applause at a meeting when he observed that when donors first began aid programmes in Africa, “they brought us fish, but we told them we had fish. Then they came to teach us how to fish, and we told them we already knew how to fish.” What Africa needs today, Mr. Kaberuka said with a smile, is for its partners to “help us build a fishing industry” that supports processing and packing industries, generates steady jobs, links up with other parts of the domestic economy and improves African competitiveness in the global marketplace.

‘Assume effective leadership’

Such a focus on employment and economic development has grown more important in the wake of the global economic crisis and the failure of Africa’s traditional donors to honour pledges to double development aid to the region.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda told the MDG Summit that “the MDGs must remain the international priority.” But he underscored the importance of Africa’s charting its own path: “The debate on the MDG agenda has, at times, been dominated by a few voices, primarily from the developed nations and affiliated non-governmental organizations. Despite their good intentions, their perspective is often predicated on paternalism not partnership, on charity not self-reliance, and on promises unfulfilled rather than real change.”

President Kagame continued, “We can no longer rely on the goodwill of other nations — we neither need to, nor should want to. We must assume effective leadership, take full ownership of the development of our countries and truly deliver for our citizens.”

Supachai Panitchpakdi, the secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), cautioned that expanded social services, while important, are not sustainable without a firm economic base. Excessive emphasis on social services, along with widening social and economic inequality, Mr. Panitchpakdi continued, require “repositioning the MDGs within a broader development framework.

Such a framework emphasizes investment, especially in productive capacity, an equitable distribution of resources, policy space, and sustainable employment generation as the main drivers of poverty reduction.” He concluded, “One reason we risk missing many MDG targets is that the economic model that underpinned them has, I believe, been indifferent to the kind of values behind a ‘sufficiency economy’” that provides a decent living for all.

Michael Fleshman has been a writer and consultant for the UN Department of Public Information in New York since 2000, working primarily for the UN’s Africa Renewal Magazine and Africa Renewal Online programme. Prior to joining the UN he spent 20 years at the anti-apartheid American Committee On Africa and The Africa Fund, working to build US solidarity with the African liberation struggles in South and southern Africa, and with the Nigerian pro-democracy and environmental movements

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Africa: Unlocking the Economic Potential of Biotechnology

Jose W. Fernandez

By 2050 population growth is expected to translate into a 70 percent increase in global demand for food. Add the estimated 27 percent decline in global productivity expected due to climate change, and it is clear that the demand for food production will become more critical in the coming decades.

Countries that depend on rain-fed agriculture will be especially vulnerable. Crop models for Sub-Saharan Africa have indicated that in 2050, average rice, wheat, and maize yields will decline by up to 14 percent, 22 percent, and 5 percent, respectively.

But there are rays of hope as we go towards 2050. The potential for agriculture in Africa is great. African countries can use their own experiences, indigenous knowledge and traditional methods, as well as the many talents of their people to adopt and adapt the best of what science has to offer in new technologies.

An essential lever for raising agricultural productivity is increasing investments in science and technology. An important lesson of the 1960s “Green Revolution” was that agricultural research could contribute decisively to spurring agricultural growth. Countries that simultaneously adopted the technology and increased their investments in agricultural research have maintained and even accelerated their rate of productivity and growth. New technologies – like biotechnology, conservation tillage, drip irrigation, integrated pest management, and new multiple-cropping practices – have improved the efficiency and productivity of agricultural resources over the last decade. Around the world some 14 million small and resource poor farmers in the developing world have already benefited from biotechnology crops.

In a 2008 survey of the global impact of biotech crops, the global net economic benefits to biotech crop farmers was $9.2 billion dollars, divided roughly equally between developed and developing countries. In South Africa, for example, biotech maize, soybean, and cotton are estimated to have enhanced farm incomes by $383 million dollars. In other areas of the world, the technology has changed the lives of farmers and raised incomes in a matter of years. In India, conservative estimates for small-scale farmers have indicated that the use of biotech cotton has increased yield by 31 percent, decreased insecticide application by 39 percent, and increased profitability by 88 percent, equivalent to $250 U.S. dollars per hectare. With the advent of enhanced tools, such as drought-resistant corn and disease-resistant bananas, those who have paved the way for the technology will reap even further economic benefits.

African researchers are already working on the next generation of biotech crops that will have a wider array of benefits for farmers, like drought tolerance, nitrogen-use efficiency, and salt tolerance to help address shifting environments due to climate change. But second generation biotech crops will go beyond benefits to the farmer. Work is underway in crops, like cassava and rice, to increase their vitamin, mineral, and protein content, benefitting the consumer as well.

So we know what technology can do. The question is what has been keeping it out of the hands of those who could benefit from it? In many cases misinformation has made people fear a process and its products. However, the real obstacle is the lack of functioning regulatory systems that would allow countries to make their own decisions about the safety of these products. Biotechnology-produced crops have been assessed for safety in all regions of the world – from the European Union to Japan to Brazil to Burkina Faso. Not to adopt biotechnology because of unfounded claims after more than 15 years of safe use and proven benefits would be to unnecessarily narrow an African farmer’s agricultural potential. It is one of the tools, which, when paired with the right incentives, can enable Africa’s farmers and businesses to close the productivity gap.

But those incentives must have political will behind them. Technology alone is not the answer. To make use of the potential of biotechnology, science-based regulatory systems must be established. I call upon those who have the ability to do so to put in place such sound policies, based on science, and to take full advantage of what investment in agricultural science and technology can do for African farmers and economies.

Several African countries have already adopted the policies and regulatory frameworks needed to support the responsible and safe use of biotechnology. I applaud their courage and foresight to move forward. With increased political will, strong research support, and biosafety policies and regulations that empower the use of the technology, African countries can revolutionize their agricultural sector. What’s more, they can squarely look those in the eye who maintain that crop technology leads to lost markets, and ask them to explain why the expanding economies of the world are exactly those that are developing and using biotechnology.

To those who fear monopolies and multinational ownership of the food supply, I say promote competition, don’t stifle innovation. It is clear that economic growth will be achieved by those countries that are innovators in agriculture and that take the leap of faith needed to invest in their farmers, which is an investment in their future.

Mr. Fernandez was nominated by President Obama on August 6, 2009, and sworn in as Assistant Secretary on December 1, 2009. He serves as the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs. He leads the Bureau that is responsible for overseeing work on international trade and investment policy; international finance, development, and debt policy; economic sanctions and combating terrorist financing; international energy security policy; international telecommunications and transportation policies; and support for U.S. businesses and the private sector overseas. Mr. Fernandez was named one of the “World’s Leading Lawyers” by Chambers Global for his M&A and corporate expertise, an “Expert” in International Financial Law Review’s “Guide to the World’s Leading Project Finance Lawyers”, and one of the “World’s Leading Privatization Lawyers” by Euromoney Publications.
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Millions in Niger need help to avoid another food crisis, warn UN agencies

 20 January 2011 – The United Nations food agencies are urging continued assistance for Niger, where acute malnutrition rates remain high despite a good harvest and millions need help to avoid another food crisis.

Last year the Government of Niger, supported by the UN, launched a massive humanitarian intervention which averted the worst effects of a food and nutrition crisis that threatened the lives of more than seven million people and the livelihoods of the country’s farmers and pastoralists.

As part of that effort, the World Food Programme (WFP) delivered emergency food assistance to more than 5 million people, including vulnerable groups such as children under five, and pregnant or lactating women.

In addition, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provided 13,000 tonnes of animal feed and distributed over 3,400 tonnes of quality seeds, covering 94 per cent of affected villages.

These interventions, coupled with a good rainy season in 2010, led to a 60 per cent increase in domestic cereal production. Livestock that survived the drought were also restored to health as pastures returned.

However, according to a joint assessment published today by the two Rome-based UN agencies, the acute malnutrition rate was still above 15 per cent in most parts of the country in October and November, reaching 17 per cent in the area around Agadez and Zinder.

“Food and non-food assistance is still necessary to reconstitute the resilience capacity of the affected populations to allow them to have independent access to food,” said the report.

The agencies are calling for assistance to pastoralists to help them replenish their livestock, help with restoring cereal banks and reconstituting the national grain stock, as well as continued support of feeding centres for malnourished people.

Assistance needs to begin immediately, they stressed, so that farmers will have the necessary quality seeds and fertilizers before the next planting season that starts in May.

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