Even if you can afford the seeds, the inputs.  Even if drought and bugs don’t wipe out your crop.  Even if you can harvest a bumper crop, it don’t mean squat unless you can deliver it to market.

Nestle announced today that they will halt their buys from Zimbabwe’s dictator, Mugabe. Seems the former owner of a dairy farm in Zimbabwe was strong armed into selling to Mugabe’s wife. After the Telegraph reported the incident, calls for boycotting Nestle quickly spread throughout the Internet.

photo courtesy of flickr user World Economic Forum

Last night, Bill Clinton hosted an anything-goes meeting of the minds with a diverse group of bloggers to kick off the 5th Annual Clinton Global Initiative conference.  I was lucky enough to attend, and we got a few really good questions in about agricultural aid.  I’ll have more on the policy later, but I wanted to share one memorable line of the night.

Natasha Chart asked the former President about how they (aid organizations) plan to address the problem of seed patents turning peasant farmers into indentured servants of mega-seed companies like Monsanto.  While we didn’t get him to declare that this indeed is a problem in need of fixing, he did exclaim:

“If it were up to me, we’d do it all organically.”

Now Natasha had not even mentioned the word “organic” in her question. Clinton kinda pulled that out of no where.  It was unclear if that was the solution that he thought food activists want to hear, or even if he fully understands what it means for developing countries to go organic and has heard the arguments for and against an organic solution.

I for one, don’t think that we have to have an organic solution, but we do need a sustainable one. I’ll have more on Clinton’s comments from last night later.

When the Great Recession hit here, people lose their McMansions.  When a  global economic crisis hits the developing world, people starve to death.

Worldwide, the number of hungry people is estimated to have reached 1.02 billion — up 11 percent from last year’s 915 million, FAO has said.

Use the phrase “Green Revolution” these days and most people will think of new age windmills and solar panels.  But, back in the sixties, the Green Revolution meant something very different.  The term was coined in 1968 to describe the massive advances agriculture experienced during the preceding 20 years.

The Green Revolution was funded by the massive foundations of the time, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. These foundation still exist and are still amongst the largest in the world, however it could be argued that their contributions to the Green Revolution was their most defining success (with the eradication of certain diseases such as yellow fever as a close second). In the mid 1940s, the Foundations decided to partner with the Mexican government to develop a program to conduct agriculture research in hopes of developing high yield crop species.

In 1944, Norman Borlaug was hired away from DuPont labs to become the chief geneticist and plant pathologist of the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program, and agriculture was never the same again. Borlaug developed over 6,000 varieties of wheat during his time in Mexico, including many disease resistant hybrids to protect against such blights as stem rust.  In 1953, Borlaug’s research lead to the creation of the semi-dwarf wheat, the plant that changed the face of hunger on Earth.

The semi-dwarf wheat produced wheat with tougher, thicker stalks 1/2 to 2/3 the height of normal wheat.  These stalks had been crossed with high yield wheat that produced double the head seed size of normal wheat.  Normally such large seed heads would cause the stalks to fall over, but the new shorter, sturdy stalks could support the weight.  With this discovery, wheat production doubled(pdf).

Mexico went from importing half its wheat in 1943 to self-sufficiency by 1956 and, by 1964, to exporting half a million tons of wheat.

Prior to the semi-dwarf wheat, it was a widely held belief that India, with its massive population who never be able to feed itself due to the fact that the country simply did not have enough farmland to yield the amount of crop necessary to support themselves.  Borlaug’s discovery changed all that.

The Green Revolution never quite made it to Africa for a number of reasons, including lack of government support and reliable irrigation systems. However, Borlaug’s discoveries did change the reality of life for much of Latin America and the sub-continent, and he is widely credited with saving over 245 million people.  Kinda of hard to match that.

The industrialization of food production and the creation of the terminator seed has reversed many of Borlaug’s advances.  Yet, thanks to him, we know such advances are possible, and know that we already have the necessary building blocks to feed the world.  Now we just need the political will.

Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in relieving hunger across the world.  He died Saturday at the age of 95.

Amusing article in Ghana bemoaning the lack of interest that Ghanian youths show in agriculture jobs. Amusingly claims that in developed countries like the US, agriculre is an elite field.

Massive GM FAIL in South Africa. But GM will feed the world, right? Thanks, Monsanto!

Except when it doesn’t.  Corn in Africa with no seed (ie kernels) isn’t going to feed a whole lot of people.

Uganda’s finance minister has presented the country’s budget for the coming year, and the principles behind it sound extremely promising.  The financial plan has an agriculture first focus, with supporting roles for irrigation, transportation and energy. This is makes sense for a number of reasons.  Uganda is still incredibly poor even 30 years after the mass destruction caused by Idid Amin.  About half the population lives in poverty, defined by the UN as living on less than $1.25 per day. However their land is very fertile, particularly in the south which is bordered by Lake Victoria which provides consistent rainfall and moderated tempatures.  Approximately 80% of the workforce is in agriculture already. The average age in Uganda is an astonishing 15 years.  And the AIDS rate has dropped from 18.5% to 5% in the past 15 years. All these factors points to a strong, resurgent workforce in the coming years.

And now Uganda has a plan.

The government wants Uganda to become the region’s food basket and to use its location to develop as a regional trading hub. Simply stated, economic policy initiatives will aim to increase agricultural production and productivity, increase agro-processing and value added, and make the investments in infrastructure and human resources to bring this about.

This is a country on the cusp of joining the developing world.  One of the most challenging geographical elements of Uganda has been that it is a landlocked country, meaning that it too often has been dependent on its unreliable neighbors in order to ship exports internationally. However, if Uganda can position itself to become the new bread basket of central Africa, it would benefit from the needy neighbors all around them. Additionally, Uganda has strong trading partners in Europe for their coffee trade that has the potential to expand into other crops. The Economists summarizes the agricultural aspects of the plan:

Agricultural production and value added. Pests and diseases, lack of inputs and technology, the weather and inadequate extension services have been identified as the biggest constraints. To address these problems, the government will provide various vaccinations for cattle and poultry; 25 new crop varieties will be introduced; and 20m disease-resistant coffee seedlings and 4,000 tons of cotton seeds will be made available. Drought is to be tackled by the construction of dams and piped storage facilities. Commercial farming and agro-processing will benefit from new agricultural credits worth NUSh30bn (US$14.3m) from the government, with matching funds from financial institutions, including commercial banks, for on-lending. Additionally, the Uganda Development Bank will provide credits worth US$7m for agricultural lending, and the Islamic Development Bank has earmarked US$100m for water development.

The vaccinations is great news, along with the 25 new crop varieties.  A key component to economical stability and sustainability is crop diversification., that way when one crop goes bad, it doesn’t take down the entire country with it. The focus on coffee seedlings and cotton seeds is a little disturbing as these are cash crops meant for Europe, however it is unreasonable to expect a country to completely switch gears from one year to the next.

The “lack of inputs and technology” is a cause for concern, primarily because these are code words for the elements of agriculture that comprise the yoke that the developed world places over the 3rd world.  We will have to wait and see how much of the plan hinges on Monsanto seeds and petroleum based fertilizers shipped in from donor states.

So far over 6.2 million acres of African land have been bought up from foreign investors in Asia and the Middle East. Clearly, this is just new capitalism-based form of colonialism and is robbing natives of one of the few assets they have - land. For those of us concerned about forging a sustainable solution in Africa, this is not a good development.  What is worse is these activities have the tacit approval of the UN.

Now, several international players are weighing in, calling for a code of conduct to govern these land deals. Marilou Uy, sector director for the World Bank’s Africa Financial and Private Sector Development Department,had this to say:

“It is quite apparent that the upsurge in interest, especially among foreign investors and large scale enterprises in land acquisition might need a code of conduct,” she said.

“This code of conduct might need to bring a clear understanding on a wide range of matters from land policy, social development…governance and transparency.”

It’s unclear what these Code of Conducts would look like, how they would be structured, or if they would have the strength of law behind them.  Perhaps there could be requirements on the percentage of workforce that must be local.  They could also cut the leases down to a more reasonable 5-10 years as opposed to 99.  There are number of issues that would need to be addressed.  Regardless, with out strict restrictions, these land deals really are naked land grabs.  And will ultimately make poor Africans even poorer, as Kofi Annan’s new group points out:

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, said last week governments needed to consult widely, especially with small farmers, before signing deals that may increase poverty.

The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Migiro made a strong statement on Tuesday calling for sustainable green approach to building up farmers in Africa.

“In contrast to the original Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which largely bypassed Africa, this must be a sustainable green revolution,” Asha-Rose Migiro said in remarks to the opening of the 17th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

She emphasized the development of agricultural practices that respect diverse cropping systems and ecological conditions to preserve biodiversity. She also stressed the need to guarantee African farmers equitable access to markets for their products.

“An African Green Revolution must empower farmers, particularly smallholders, both women and men,” Ms. Migiro said.

Parts of Africa are seeing a resurgence in agriculture, such as Malawi.  But there is fear that a dependence of foreign, chemical fertilizer still leaves the area vulnerable to climate change, poor soil, and market fluctuations.

“My worry though, is can this really be sustainable in the long term?”, says France Gondwe, of Malawi’s World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

“The Nitrogen fertiliser is a quick fix - but without it, the harvest is low, because the soils are suffering from years of [monoculture]. Even with the fertiliser, they are not performing to their full potential.

“There are alternatives to fertiliser - crop rotation, manure, agroforestry. But with the food shortages, the government is trapped. And so the people are trapped too.”

A key piece to sustainability is access to non-terminator seed, so that Africa may produce its own seed in order to remove dependency on outside seed providers such as the very powerful Monsanto.  Let’s see how far Migiro is willing to go in this call for sustainability.