2013
Climbing Together in Tanzania
Mount Kilimanjaro.
Article and Photo by Katie Boots, Senior Advisor to Henrietta Fore, Holsman International
Two weeks ago I arrived in Tanzania to celebrate (a milestone) birthday by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. A long-time Washingtonian originally from Indiana, the first thing I noticed when riding from the airport to my hotel were corn stalks lining the “bumping roads,” as my driver described them in what I have since coined “Swahenglish.” I noticed it was tall for July, but that most of it was dead. I did not know if pests, poor soil quality or lack of water contributed to its demise.
Although it was my first time in Africa, I have long known of the food and water crises that plague the region. My background is agriculture policy, having started my career working for Senator Lugar in 1996 when he was Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. In 2002 I left the Committee to go to USDA where I worked for seven years. There I had the opportunity to meet Norman Borlaug at his 90th birthday celebration and became an unlikely groupie. I was working for the Under Secretary for Research at the time, and learned about Dr. Borlaug’s work developing disease-resistant, high-yield varieties of wheat, maize and other crops. I immediately admired him, not because I was interested in plant science, but because he was a Midwesterner who had dedicated his life to finding ways to save lives in the world’s poorest regions. He was funny, smart, charming (and flirtatious), and didn’t talk about his work. He didn’t need to: it had already been established as a profound legacy.
Despite some reports claiming that Tanzania’s farmers are meeting many production goals, the kind and humble people I met in Moshi, Tanzania did not generally seem to be past the point of struggling to obtain basic needs like food and water. I was dismayed to learn that their government is nevertheless resistant to adopting biotechnology that could not only boost the economy through potential future exports, but also save lives by meeting local nutrition needs.
Working within the U.S. agricultural sector over the last fifteen years or so, I have witnessed many of biotechnology’s trials and tribulations. It has not gone without its share of controversy and setbacks. But with proper regulation, the benefits of biotechnology far outweigh its costs. According to the FAO, growth in agriculture is on average at least two times as effective at reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. And with good investment and land use, agricultural output in Africa could increase from $280 billion per year to as much as $880 billion by 2030.
If all variables could be eliminated, and we had the luxury of being philosophical, there is a series of important questions we might consider. Wouldn’t countries who receive unfailing aid from the U.S. and other countries embrace a method to eradicate -- or at least alleviate -- poverty, rather than resisting it? Should acceptance of biotechnology be a condition for receiving aid? In the U.S. and Europe, activists can choose to reject biotechnology for a variety of reasons; can developing countries afford to be as political?
Dr. Borlaug hypothesized that increasing crop yields would help curb deforestation, contributing to a healthier ecosystem and promoting rainfall. This would begin a healthful cycle of food production and a potential lessening of reliance on food aid. This is a dream scenario for Tanzania, as tourists (like me) threaten to diminish the health of the many pristine ecosystems found as one ascends and descends Mount Kilimanjaro.
I fell in love with Tanzania, and I hope one day to return to a thriving East African region. But finding ways to help the poor, needy and vulnerable in East Africa and elsewhere is a mountain we all have to climb – for humanitarian reasons, and for the promotion of political stability and national security. And like the pathways to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, pathways to productivity can be rocky and perilous. But as I learned during my six day trek to the Roof of Africa at 19,341 breathless feet, climbing mountains is accomplished one step at a time.
Johnny Appleseed in Africa
A smallholder farmer in Columbia plants corn seeds using a pointed stick
Article and Photo by Dr. Paul Rigterink of Potomac Technical Advisors
Numerous government and charitable organizations are attempting to reduce poverty and increase the agricultural productivity of subsistence farmers in Africa. The main response to poverty has been to increase the supply of micro-credit services, grain seeds, and tools to smallholder farmers. This post advocates two further interventions: one-acre tree nurseries/demonstration farms to help identify a wider variety of potential crops, and affordable seed packs for subsistence farmers.
Creating large numbers of one-acre tree nurseries/demonstration farms will allow subsistence farmers to identify a wide variety of tropical fruit trees and melons suitable for planting in the areas where they live and work. The farms will demonstrate the techniques that local farmers should use to grow a wide variety of fruit trees. Additionally, the farms will provide sample products for the farmers to taste and training materials so that they can improve their food security and income using the tree products. I estimate that each one-acre tropical fruit tree nursery/demonstration farm will cost less than $3000 to set up and maintain by a local caretaker. Enough farms should be built such that all subsistence farmers in a particular country will have easy access to their services, ideally within 50 kilometers of their homes and in places where they typically go.
Second, local development officials should sell one dollar “tropical tree value packs” containing a variety of tropical fruit tree and melon seeds to subsistence farmers. These seeds should be grown and tested locally on the one-acre tropical fruit tree nurseries/demonstration farms. Based on my experience, I expect that these value packs will allow smallholder farmers to grow 10-20 types of trees on 10-15% of their land, helping to reduce poverty, improve food security and increase agricultural productivity.
Many Africans are aware of how Johnny Appleseed, an American pioneer nurseryman, distributed apple tree nurseries for use by poor farmers in large parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and the western United States. Contrary to popular belief, Johnny Appleseed did not randomly spread apple seeds. As Howard Means explains in his 2011 book Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story, the pioneer carefully planted nurseries protected by fences and then left them with a caretaker who sold the trees on shares. The model suggested by this post is similar to Johnny Appleseed’s technique, with a few modifications.
Focusing on a single type of fruit is not recommended in tropical Africa for several reasons: subsistence farmers need to grow a wide variety of crops to ensure that the destruction of one crop by insects or disease will not be a total disaster, and different tropical trees survive at different altitudes and climatic conditions. The Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization (ECHO) lists the types of tropical fruit trees that will grow under different tropical conditions and provides a fruit calendar that shows when these tropical trees produce fruit in their area. Local caretakers can provide a fruit calendar explaining when different tropical fruit trees produce fruit in the area, so that local subsistence farmers can make informed decisions about which trees to grow. The one-acre tropical fruit tree nurseries/demonstration farms should use the same tools that are commonly available to the subsistence farmers in the region so as not to frustrate the poor farmers with tools and supplies that they cannot obtain or afford. Finally, it is important to use fresh seeds that have been tested in the regions where they will be grown. Development officials can then learn and understand the modern African chant: “Grow Baby Grow!”
A version of this article was originally posted to Dr. Rigterink's website in November 2010.
The Expanding Role of Smallholder Farmers in Feeding the World
May 9, 2013
Photo by ICRISAT
By Michael Robach, Vice President of Food Safety, Quality and Regulatory Affairs at Cargill
On May 20, it will be my privilege to present at the Summit on Global Health and Hunger at the World Affairs Council of Atlanta. Like all of the council’s programs, this event is designed to bring together leaders from the business community, government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and development agencies to discuss global issues that affect us all. In this case, it’s food security: ensuring that a population expected to reach nine billion by 2050 has access to sufficient amounts of safe, affordable and nutritious food.
At Cargill, we’re optimistic that global food security can be achieved. The world has doubled its food production since 1975. We have managed to do it by cultivating roughly the same number of acres. Clearly, we are going to have to increase production to meet the demands of the world’s growing population and by raising the right crops with the right technology on the right land and trade with others, we can.
One of the things I will talk about in my presentation is the critical role that commercial smallholder farmers will play in achieving food security. Our ability to feed the world depends on successful farmers at every level of production, but we believe smallholder farmers need support to fulfill their expanding role in feeding a hungry world.
A fundamental ingredient will be providing a degree of revenue certainty to farmers. Smallholders are often are forced to sell at harvest when they are cash-flow destitute and they have limited access to real credit. Selling at depressed prices creates a cycle of discouraging further production in future years.
To break this cycle, farmers in developing countries need land rights and reliable markets in which to sell their crops each season. This is part of the reason Cargill advocates for policies that encourage open markets and free trade in a fair, rules-based and rigorously enforced system. Free trade benefits smallholder farmers because it provides them with greater access to markets. When also rewarded with an adequate price, this provides incentive to continue production the following year so they can continue to raise their personal incomes.
We have seen this work in our cocoa supply chain, where Cargill’s on-the-ground training programs have helped smallholder farmers in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil improve their farming practices, increase their yields and raise their incomes. But what makes these productivity-enhancing programs work is having a reliable market for their crops and partners with which to trade.
Cargill has a stake in all of this which isn’t philanthropic; the global food system is core to our commercial business. But while many of the policies for which we advocate and programs we support are in Cargill’s best interest, we believe they are also in the best interest of smallholder farmers and the growing global population they will help feed.
One of the reasons Cargill is optimistic about feeding a hungry world is the momentum we’re seeing in public-private partnerships to tackle these complex challenges. We hope opportunities like the Atlanta Summit on Health and Hunger can be catalysts for creative new ideas and innovative partnerships that benefit farmers around the globe.
Nutrition and Food Security in the City
By William J. Garvelink, Kristin Wedding
Mar 5, 2013
How do we feed a growing, richer, more urban population? We often hear about how demographic trends will shape food security: we will need to feed over 9 billion people in 2050. At the same time, we will see massive urbanization; almost all future population growth between now and 2050 will be urban, with the majority of it taking place in Asia and Africa. In 2010, Africa and Asia remained the two most rural regions of the world. By 2100, the urban population of Africa will increase by 2.5 billion people and the Asian urban population will grow by 2 billion people. It is expected that incomes will rise and people will demand more food, especially meat, dairy products, and processed foods so we will need to at least double food production by 2050 to meet global demand. And we need to do it using less land and water and in an environmentally sustainable way.
The commonly discussed solution is an admittedly over-simplified view has been to invest in smallholder farmers, improve their productivity to feed the urban centers that are popping up during the rural-to-urban migration since currently seventy percent of the poor in developing countries live in rural areas and are engaged in agriculture.
If only it were so straightforward. However, this solution is incomplete and does not take into account some of the major implications of urbanization. Although we cannot underscore enough the importance of investing in smallholder farmers, it’s time to think more strategically about how we will address the food security challenges of rapid urbanization. The rural and urban poor in low- to middle-income import dependent countries are among the world’s most vulnerable and urban challenges differ significantly from those of rural populations.
Urbanization: A New Set of Challenges
Historically, increases in agricultural productivity have served as a push factor for urbanization. As farms become more productive and profitable there is excess farm labor that then migrates to urban centers. We have seen this take hold during the industrial revolutions of Western Europe, North America, East Asia and other parts of the world, as people left agriculture for manufacturing-based jobs in cities.
However, while urbanization in the past promoted economic growth and prosperity, the rapid urban expansion that is underway now, particularly in Africa and South Asia, does not seem to be following historical trends. Urbanization today in the developing world is occurring faster than the cities can absorb. Poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition are shifting rapidly from rural areas in the developing world to its urban centers.
Most of the urban growth in Africa and in South Asia is occurring in secondary cities without adequate budgets, planning, or services and without significant job opportunities. This urban expansion is largely uncontrolled and unmanaged. In many parts of the developing world, urbanization is tantamount to slum creation. Over one billion people already live in urban slums in Africa and South Asia. In Africa, 72 percent of the urban population lives in slum conditions.
What is Urban Food Insecurity?
Urban dwellers, and especially the urban poor, are increasingly much more affected by international food prices than small farmers. Food security in urban areas is tied to purchasing power whereas in rural areas food security is related to the availability of food. In many cities, the urban poor spend up to 90 percent of their household income on food. Compounding the problem, urban centers are highly dependent on imported foods and are surprisingly divorced from food produced within their country or regionally. In many cities in Africa, 30-50 percent of food staples and vegetable oil found in the markets are imported. Imported staples most often cost more than urban garden produce or street vender foods.
The ability to buy and store food is not an option for most of the urban poor as they cannot afford refrigerators and access to reliable electricity is a luxury for very few. The options are to borrow food from relatives, borrow money at usurious rate to buy food, or eat the cheaper and questionable street food. Studies show that in many African cities, up to 70 percent of the caloric intake of a poor urban household is from street food. Street venders are largely unregulated, lack access to clean water and refrigeration, and do not adhere to any standards of hygienic food preparation and packaging.
The most common solution is for a household to cut back on the amount and diversity of food. If these coping mechanisms are necessary for any length of time, food insecurity increases and malnutrition rates climb quickly, especially among children. We are all aware that the link between proper nutrition and normal physical and cognitive growth is a hardwired system; if children are malnourished from conception to two years, the impact is life-long as their physical growth and intellectual development will be permanently impaired. That is a scary prospect when experts tell us that by 2030, 60 percent of the urban slum population, with high child malnutrition rates, will be under the age of 18. This has huge implications not only for national productivity but also for political stability.
Most of the urbanization in the developing world is occurring in fragile and conflict-affected states. That is an ominous trend. Fragile states are the most susceptible to urban poverty, food insecurity, high malnutrition, and are the least able to deal with them. For urban growth and economic prosperity to evolve and be sustainable there must be good governance, rule-of-law, transparency, equitable access to education, health care, employment, and an enabling environment for national and international private sector investment. These characteristics of a well-functioning nation state are in short supply in the world’s 60 fragile states.
Naturally, these are issues for the host governments but they are also concerns for the international community, including the United States. Discontent over poverty and food insecurity in rural areas is one thing, but it becomes politically explosive when it occurs in cities as we saw in 2007-2008. During the Arab Spring, poverty and food shortages were contributing factors to other more deep seeded political issues. We leave urban poverty and food insecurity unaddressed at our peril.
Policy Steps to Improving Urban Food Security
The global community has witnessed a revival of agricultural development efforts since the 2007-2008 food price spikes. Initiatives like the G8’s 2009 L’Aquila Summit pledges, the United States’ Feed the Future program, the World Bank-managed Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), and 2012 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, are critical to stimulating agricultural productivity and economic growth in the developing world. All of these initiatives aim to improve food security and reduce rural poverty by stimulating agricultural productivity and economic growth. They all focus on investing in smallholder farmers, especially women and girls, and include a focus on nutrition, sustainable agricultural growth, and investing in research and development. These initiatives are critical to reducing rural poverty around the world, especially in Africa and South Asia, and to stimulating agricultural productivity and economic growth in the developing world.
However, given the urbanization trends in Africa and Asia, the policy community needs to build upon the groundwork laid by these initiatives to take steps to ensure the food security of growing urban populations. There are five steps that can be taken now:
First, the international community should acknowledge that poverty and its attendant food insecurity and malnutrition issues are no longer exclusively rural concerns; they are serious urban development problems with national and international security ramifications.
Second, Feed the Future began by focusing on the good performing countries in the developing world for good and understandable reasons. The need to address urban poverty, food security, and nutrition is equally critical in fragile states. Fragile states present complicated policy, development, and security environments which require new approaches by the international community. Feed the Future, as a whole-of- government initiative already has the requisite skills and resources to begin to address these problems.
Third, the private sector, in collaboration with Feed the Future in its priority countries and in the six African countries in the “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,” should build linkages between a country’s domestic food production and its urban markets and pay special attention to the employment, health, and nutritional needs of the urban poor. The World Bank’s Global Agriculture and Food Security Program should do the same.
Fourth, universities and international agricultural research centers should begin to focus more of their research on the food security and nutrition needs of the urban poor in the developing world.
Fifth, the NGO community, like the donor development agencies, has not expended great energy on urban problems and their community-level expertise is sorely needed.
The platform to address these urban issues has been created by the Feed the Future initiative. The partnerships it has molded to attack the problems of rural poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition can serve as a launching pad for an expanded effort in the in the developing world’s urban centers.
Ambassador William J. Garvelink is a senior adviser with the Global Strategy, International Medical Corps at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Kristin Wedding is a fellow and deputy director with the CSIS Global Food Security Project.
Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
Impressions from Tanzania: Pathways to Productivity Project
Photo: Wiebke Foerch
By: Anna Applefield, Research Associate, Global Food Security Project, The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
In December 2012, the CSIS Global Food Security Project and the Africa Program traveled to Tanzania to learn about attitudes towards GMOs and the role the technology might play in enhancing food security in the region.
On our trip, we found the debate extremely active. There are a number of stakeholders involved in the debate including agricultural scientists, farmers, NGOs and donors, commercial farmers, and a range of government officials from the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Science and Technology. President Kikwete’s recent launch of Kilimo Kwanza, a new agricultural development strategy and a major national priority, may help ensure that this discussion stays at the fore of the policy arena in Tanzania.
Historically, Tanzania has been restrictive of GMO technology. They have fully adopted the Cartagena Protocol, and its strict liability clause has made it impossible for seed companies and/or agricultural scientists to bring the technology to Tanzania. In this way, Tanzania differs from its neighbors in Kenya and Uganda who have partially adopted the Protocol and developed different regulations surrounding biotechnology to permit initial research on GMO crops. Hesitancy around biotechnology has had some economic consequences for Tanzania. For example, in 2008 Tanzania undertook the Gates-funded Water Efficient Maize for Africa project, which funds African scientists working with Monsanto to develop varieties of maize that will be more resilient in the East African climate. Although Tanzania agreed to help develop and run trials for both transgenic and non-transgenic varieties of maize, its regulatory structure has hampered progress on the transgenic varieties and for a time even jeopardized its ability to proceed with WEMA efforts.
While it remains unclear whether Tanzania will move forward in removing strict liability and adopting GM technology, Tanzania is very focused on agricultural development as a key part of its economy. As the government continues to grapple with the controversial GMO issue and develop strategies to improve the agriculture sector, we have identified 3 key areas that merit attention and focus:
1. Increased collaboration and communication. The current debate over GMO technology is extremely lively. With increased communication between scientists, environmentalists, farmers, and policymakers, misinformation could be minimized to allow for a clear and productive discussion. It seems that there are areas of clear overlapping priorities and interests that could be exploited while some of the more controversial issues are worked out. There is also a great deal of external investment in Tanzania, due to major projects such as SAGCOT, Feed the Future, the Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition , and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, among other major aid programs. This has put increased pressure on the Tanzanian government to coordinate effectively, maintain transparency, and achieve development results quickly. Investing in greater capacity in government staff can help ensure success in the eyes of the international community and domestically.
2. Seed industry development. Experts have estimated that Tanzania produces less than one third of the seed it needs to meet demand for maize. Historically, Tanzania’s seed has been produced by public sector agriculture programs. When Tanzania opened its markets and changed its economic structure in the 1980s, there was a decline in seed availability which has yet to be filled. Without this public service, the NGO sector has filled this gap. In an effort to protect farmers from counterfeit seed and shield them from seed price volatility, NGOs encourage farmers to save their seed and only buy new seed every few years. While this is a safe solution, reusing seed in this way can lead to declining productivity, and means that farmers are not able to access the most advanced, appropriate seeds for their environment. Restoring and empowering public sector agencies, such as The Tanzania Official Seed Certification Institute, which is responsible for reducing counterfeit seed and certifying seed, can help farmers feel comfortable experimenting with new seed varieties to maximize their productivity.
3. Extension challenges.Farmers are eager to utilize new technologies, but are wary of counterfeit seed and need to be appropriately trained in order to reap the benefits of improved inputs. This requires investment from both private and public sectors. Current public sector efforts are limited, but have been useful in getting new products to farmers, and should be scaled up. Internships for graduate agriculture students with seed companies may be one effective way to bridge the gap between academia and the private sector, and may help leverage investments in currently untapped markets. Currently, NGOs are filling the extension role with little or no regulation, and as a result the quality of services and information varies widely.