by Brahima Ouédraogo
The government of Burkina Faso has responded to long-standing demands of farmers for greater support for small family producers with the launch of "Operation 100,000 Ploughs." Smallholder farmers say this will strengthen the country's food security.
"The operation is welcomed by the Confédération Paysanne du Faso," said Bassiako Dao, who is president of the country's largest smallholder farmer organisation. "Because today, the difficulty facing our agriculture sector is that it is not mechanised. Mechanisation would allow us to quickly reduce the labour time needed.
"Instead of having five people working year-round on two hectares, with an animal-drawn plough, just one person can work two hectares in four days, covering half a hectare per day. The four others are freed up to do something else," Dao said.
The operation, launched in June, will make 20,000 ploughs available to the poorest rural households in each of the next five years, half of them to be given to women. According to Dao, the ploughs will be made affordable thanks to an 80 percent subsidy from the government.
The agriculture ministry says that half of the farmers in the cotton-producing regions of the country have access to some level of mechanisation, but in other zones this falls to just one or two percent.
The agriculture sector generates 40 percent of the gross domestic product of Burkina Faso and the authorities hope that with funding for agricultural mechanisation over the next four years, it can raise the proportion of farmers who are mechanised country-wide from the present 20 percent to 75 percent in 2015.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Water, draught power is the most widespread form of mechanisation in Burkina, where 30 percent of households own at least one draught animal; 30 percent of these households also possess a tool for tillage and 20 percent have a cart.
Farmers also say that tilling with a plough allows the soil to better absorb water, preserving moisture far longer than a field tilled with a traditional hoe, known in Burkina Faso as a daba. Sawadogo also explains that animals provide a natural fertiliser in the form of manure.
Women, who constitute an important part of the agricultural labour force will receive half of the ploughs. "They will till more than the usual quarter of a hectare – they'll be able to cultivate as much as four hectares," says Dao. "The sight of women bent over, working in a field, babies on their backs; that will be finished, thanks to this initiative."
Since demonstrations against the high cost of living in the country in 2008, the government has provided around 15.7 million dollars of support to farmers in the form of agricultural inputs.
"We have to encouarge this initiative which will benefit families. On the other hand, we are opposed to those who have plenty of money, and buy 150 hectares and a Caterpillar and then strip the land of trees and plant cotton or maize," says SOS Sahel's Sawadogo, who is critical of authorities' encouragement of agri-business operators in recent years.
"It's a bad form of agriculture which will destroy our environment and our soils which cannot support work with tractors for a long time. If there is not adquate support so that there is organic fertiliser with livestock to enrich the soils, the tractors will turn our soil into sand," warned Sawadogo.
IPS
August 02, 2011
Burkina Faso to supply small scale farmers with subsidized ploughs
Burkina Faso, Ghana to cooperate on tomato marketing
The Upper East Region of Ghana and the Central Province of the Republic of Burkina Faso have agreed to enter into a tomato joint venture enterprise. The aim of the joint venture between the two countries is to help find a lasting solution to the problems confronting tomato farmers in both countries, especially in the area of marketing.
Ghanaian regional minister Mr. Woyongo said tomato was a major crop cultivated by a large number of farmers in both Burkina Faso and Ghana, and noted that Ghana imported a lot of tomato from Burkina Faso.
He said statistics from the Customs department indicated that during the 2008 to 2009 crop season, Ghana imported 6,562.43 metric tones of tomato from Burkina Faso.
He said the Northern Star Tomato Factory in the Upper East Region was now operating at full capacity, but was facing the problem of inadequate supply of raw materials. He expressed the hope that with the joint venture, the factory would be able to get adequate materials to operate and that would help solve the problem of marketing of tomato in the two countries.
He said plans were also far advanced by some Italian business groups with the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council to establish another tomato factory in Navrongo in the Upper East Region, which would purchase the produce from farmers of both countries.
Ghana Ministry of Agriculture
July 26, 2011
Burkina Faso cotton farmers destroy crop to force price boycott, one killed
by Simon Gongo
Farmers in Burkina Faso destroyed more than 450 hectares (1,112 acres) of cotton by digging up fields in an attempt to force a boycott of this year’s harvest, Radio Burkina reported, citing Laurent Sedogo, agriculture minister.
Sedogo was meeting with farmers in the Bales province, 200 kilometers from Ouagadougou, the capital, to find a resolution to the dispute, the state-owned broadcaster reported.
Burkina Faso’s cotton-planting season, which runs in June and July, has been marred by farmers’ boycotts over prices they say are too low and later-than-normal seasonal rains. The West African nation is the biggest grower of the fiber in sub- Saharan Africa.
One person was killed and five others injured when a farmer allegedly opened fire on growers who were trying to dig up plants on his field on July 23...
The farmer killed supported a boycott by about 8,000 producers nationwide against planting the crop to protest a government plan to raise fertilizer prices and cap the amount growers were paid for their produce after world prices soared to a record on March 7.
The farmers “went to extract the plants in the farms of one of the producers who didn’t support the boycott. When they arrived, the owner shot him and hurt the others.”
Bloomberg
Bloomberg
July 19, 2011
Price formula means cotton boom benefits buyers, but not African farmers
by Cam Simpson and Alan Katz
Amado Kafando, 45, ..was elated following news on March 7 that the price of cotton, a crop he plants each summer in rows broken by a cow- tethered plow, hit a record $2.197 a pound, capping a two-year surge of 430 percent. Finally, he said, cotton could fulfill the promise of its nickname in his homeland of Burkina Faso: white gold.
Within weeks, Kafando was clenching his fists again, this time in anger.
The government and regional cotton monopolies, which Burkinabe farmers must sell to, announced they would charge growers 38 percent more for fertilizer -- and pay them as little as 39 percent of the world price at the time for their crop.
Thousands of the nation’s farmers took to the streets in May, threatening to do the unthinkable -- boycott planting the top cash crop in one of the world’s poorest countries.
A few days earlier, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Jerome Vick... declared that he would do precisely the opposite. “We’re going to put in as much cotton as we can,” said Vick, 61...on the 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) his family farms in Wilson, North Carolina.
The Vicks have already locked in a price of about $1.25 a pound -- more than double what Kafando will get -- for about 40 percent of their harvest later this year. If the Carolina weather cooperates and prices stop their recent slide, they expect a profit as high as $1 million, enough to add 300 acres.
The divergent fortunes of Kafando and Vick aren’t the result of differences in product quality. As it’s grown in the field, hand-picked west African cotton can be superior to that sprouting on the flatlands of North Carolina or Texas.
Nor is it about subsidies. Throughout much of the last decade, U.S. price supports were credited with Vick’s prosperity and blamed for the poverty in Kafando’s country. They artificially depress world prices, the argument went, robbing African farmers of the only cash most get each year. It was a debate that derailed World Trade Organization talks in 2003.
With cotton prices this year reaching record levels even though U.S. support programs remain, it’s clear the conventional narrative ignored more significant forces right outside the gates of African farms, said John Baffes, a senior economist at the World Bank who studies the global cotton trade.
Burkinabe farmers have no choice but to sell to government- sanctioned monopolies whose shareholders include trading firms such as Paris-based Geocoton and Paul Reinhart AG of Winterthur, Switzerland. In March, as cotton was hitting its highest price since the U.S. was recovering from the Civil War, a committee dominated by the monopolies altered the formula for setting the price each farmer gets. That cut payments for last season’s crop by 39 percent and reduced the base price announced in April.
This should have been a year “when people can finally get a few dollars and put a metal roof on their house,” said Thomas J. Bassett, a geography professor at the University of Illinois who has been studying and writing about west African cotton farmers for more than 20 years. “These mechanisms result in poverty for producers and wealth for companies and traders. It’s subtle and it’s dastardly.”
Representatives for the three regional cotton monopolies in Burkina Faso -- SOCOMA, Faso Coton and Sofitex -- declined multiple requests for interviews for this story. They also denied requests for financial statements or other disclosures.
Among the biggest shareholders in SOCOMA and Faso Coton are closely held international commodities trading firms. They enjoy privileged positions, according to an unpublished April 2010 report done for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, sitting in the middle of a supply chain stretching from African cotton fields to factories that make bluejeans, T- shirts and other clothing.
Yannick Morillon, chief executive officer of Paris-based Geocoton, the majority shareholder of SOCOMA, defended changes to the price formula this year. SOCOMA would have suffered a 6 million euro ($8.4 million) loss if the formula hadn’t been changed, Morillon said. Cotton companies in Burkina Faso had contracted to sell most of their fiber before the price surged in the second half of 2010, according to a March 31 report by consultants hired to propose changes to the formula.
“The economic equation wasn’t possible any longer,” he said in an interview at Geocoton’s headquarters off the Champs Elysees. “And if the entire industry collapses, it’s the farmers that are affected.”
Any loss of cotton profits cuts deep in the rural and often impoverished villages of west and central Africa, where the livelihood of about 10 million people depends on the fiber. About 3 million of them are in Burkina Faso, a landlocked country where the World Bank estimates that one out of six citizens relies on cotton.
... in the village of Bakata, 17 miles from the nearest paved road, is where Amado Kafando was born and raises cotton today. Among the salesmen’s stalls more than 30 years ago, he noticed people beginning to treat his father differently; some nodded or even bowed slightly as the patriarch approached. The family had just sold its first cotton harvest.
Until that year, survival dominated the family’s daily existence...they had grown only subsistence crops -- corn and millet. Now their crop was exported into the global commodities market.
Since taking over after his father died in 1988, Kafando has roughly doubled the family’s lands to about 25 acres. He grows a mixture of cereals for food and cotton for cash.
“I’m not a wealthy man,” Kafando said, “but cotton has improved our living conditions.”
If cotton money helps Kafando’s kids learn to read, they will be ahead of the more than 71 percent of their countrymen who are illiterate, according to the United Nations, in a place where many children are sent into the fields rather than the classroom.
Education can also improve their health in a nation where their father, although only 45, is well beyond middle age. Life expectancy here stands at just 54.
Using data on health, education and other socioeconomic indicators, the U.N. Human Development Report ranked Burkina Faso 161st out of 169 nations last year. About 46 percent of Burkina Faso’s 17 million people live in poverty, according to the World Bank.
Cotton, which constituted 23 percent of the country’s exports in 2009, is the perfect crop for the fields where Kafando’s father first planted the fiber. It needs steady rains for sowing, matching Burkina Faso’s June-to-August rainy season before maturing for harvest in October and November.
Bolls as big as baseballs and light as feathers also flourish in the flatlands of eastern North Carolina, where Jerome Vick’s father gave him 25 acres. Increasing the size of his farm has been an obsession for Vick since he and his wife developed those 25 acres in 1975 with $25,000 obtained from the First Union bank after two other loan rejections.
The family tried cotton... They first planted a few hundred acres of it in 1991...Then, the market turned. Though spikes occurred in 2003 and 2008, cotton averaged just 55 cents a pound from January 2000 to the start of 2010, Bloomberg data show.
The family turned those fields and hopes to soybeans. On Sept. 20, though, more than halfway into the Northern Hemisphere’s growing season, cotton for December delivery rose above $1 a pound in New York trading for the first time since 1995, as low world stocks and strong demand from China surprised forecasters.
The Vicks did an about-face, dedicating 150 percent more of their land to cotton than in 2009. They planted about 2,000 acres of the fiber this year.
Unlike Kafando, the Vicks have direct access to the world market. Through a broker, the family has contracted 42 percent of its expected harvest to Allenberg Cotton Co., a unit of Paris-based Louis Dreyfus SAS, at an average price of about $1.25 a pound.
The same market stirred hopes for similar prosperity in Africa, where Kafando followed the rising price of cotton on the radio or through friends surfing the Internet.
Functionally illiterate, Kafando said he doesn’t understand the formula used to pay him, let alone how changes to it this year will leave him with more income than last season yet much less than he could have earned. When he heard the price that monopolies were offering, he knew something was amiss.
“The price has multiplied by three or four times, so at our level it should be multiplied three or four times as well,” Kafando said. Instead, he said, the monopolies “are getting fat, and we are the ones who are feeding them.”
Anger throughout Burkina Faso prompted a government public relations campaign aimed at persuading producers to abandon their calls for a boycott -- and even to increase production. Provincial and village-level farm union representatives were invited for confabs across the country.
At the front of the room sat Laurent Sedogo, the nation’s agriculture minister. A poster proclaimed farmers should enter into a “new and dynamic contract” with the cotton companies and the government, which had vowed to boost production this season to 600,000 metric tons, 71 percent more than the 350,000 tons picked, processed and sold in the last one.
A few miles away the next day, more than 70 local union representatives packed long benches in a meeting hall no bigger than a classroom, debating how to counter Sedogo’s message.
Other than refusing to plant, though, there’s little they can do under the rules of the local cotton market because farmers must sell to the regional monopoly. The system in Burkina Faso, and in much of French-speaking west Africa, is a legacy of colonial times. A French state-owned textile company, Geocoton’s predecessor, established cotton buying and production monopolies in partnership with African state-owned companies, including Sofitex, now majority-owned by the Burkinabe government.
Today, the second-largest stake in Faso Coton is held by Reinhart through direct and indirect ownership. A family business that’s bought cotton since 1788, the firm remains one of the world’s largest traders in the fiber, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Reinhart declined to commentt.
The cotton monopolies give Kafando and the other farmers a base price set each spring through a formula controlled by a committee that includes the three monopolies and the president of the national cotton growers union.Introduced in 2006, the formula was meant to more closely align the prices paid to farmers with the depressed world market of the last decade. In return, the growers were to get more transparency in how prices were reached, and a promise: They’d be paid based on world averages, not on the selling savvy of the monopolies.
Yet this year, as the world price set records, crucial components of the formula were changed. Six of eight revisions hit farmers, slashing pay 39 percent for the season that ended in March, according to data in the March 31 report by the consultants who came up with the new mechanism.
Some of the best-performing months in the history of the cotton market were removed from pricing averages, while poorer ones were weighted in. Months in which the monopolies failed to sell also got booted from the averages. That meant farmers paid the price for the companies having missed most of the surge in global fiber rates since mid-2010, the report shows.
Wilfried Yameogo, the Burkinabe government official who oversees the cotton sector, denied that the formula was overhauled to benefit the monopolies, calling the changes ordinary reforms that were in the works long before cotton’s price peak.
Karim Traore, president of the national cotton growers union in Burkina Faso, defended the formula change as necessary to preserve the health of the cotton companies.
“I want to make money from my harvest, but we need to have a balance so everyone gets their share,” Traore said. “The consultants told us that if the prices stayed as they were, the cotton companies were going to close their doors. But farmers can’t live without cotton companies. And cotton companies can’t live without farmers.”
The companies and the growers union, which holds government-financed stakes in each of the three cotton monopolies, provide training and seminars on how to improve yields.
Bassett, the Illinois professor, said farmers' unions, especially in Burkina Faso, are either too close to the cotton companies to bargain over prices for their members or incapable of marshaling the technical expertise needed for a robust defense.
“Who is protecting the interests of producers?” Bassett said. “The cotton companies represent their own interests.”
Sales between the monopolies and their trader-owners are opaque, and “signals of collusion are quite apparent,” according to the unpublished April 2010 paper for the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Reinhart is first on a list of “approved customers” for Faso Coton’s fiber posted on the regional monopoly’s website.
“An improvement of governance would be to make information more transparent,” said Lorenzo Giovanni Bellu, an economist for the U.N. agency who co-wrote the report. “That would be good for everybody.”
After the formula changes were approved, the pricing committee announced on April 25 that the nation’s growers would get the equivalent of about 59 cents a pound for their cotton lint. That’s less than half the price Vick has locked in so far for the same product.
While subsidies for Vick’s fellow U.S. farmers aren’t an issue this year, during the past decade price supports in the U.S., Europe, India and China cut prices for cotton in Africa by about 15 percent, said Jose Tissier, deputy director of the agricultural and rural development division of the French development agency.
The mechanism in Burkina Faso gives cotton producers there access to credit and certainty that all of the crop will be sold, Tissier said, without endorsing the changes to the price mechanism made by the cotton companies and growers union.
By late June in this record year, the Burkina Faso government responded to the boycott threats by trimming the price hikes in fertilizer, the cost of which has surged this year. The offering price for cotton was left unchanged.
Some protest leaders urged farmers into the field. Others wouldn’t budge. A number of extremists ripped cotton plants from the ground of larger landholders, according to images shown on national television.
For all of them, cotton’s recent slide on world markets has added to their sense that the crop planted this year represents the season of a lifetime. Growers chasing the record prices will drive global cotton production even higher in the year starting Aug. 1, according to the International Cotton Advisory Committee, dampening prices.
Wherever the price settles by harvest time, though, Vick said his experience this season illustrates the benefits of an open market.
“We’ve sold enough that we have locked in a profit,” he said. “That’s the advantage we have over farmers in west Africa. We can lock in enough to make sure we at least break even, then we can gamble on the upside, on the profit.”
Vick wants this season’s yield to underwrite his legacy, building his farm to a size that would allow it to last for generations.
“Expanding our land can guarantee a place for my children to farm,” said Vick, whose hands remain gnarled from a bout of Guillain-Barre syndrome that nearly killed him in 2002.
Although 16 years younger than Vick, Kafando is just nine years shy of reaching life expectancy in Burkina Faso. He too wants to increase the security of his family. He had hoped to use the historic cotton prices to spread a small amount of wealth beyond the fields they farm, perhaps by starting an enterprise that runs from one of those shacks made of twisted tree limbs.
“Cotton farming is very difficult,” Kafando said. “You may be strong today, but tomorrow you can become weak. I used to dream of opening businesses and employing my brothers, putting money in the bank every day. Now I’m afraid it might be too late.”
full article...Bloomberg
May 29, 2011
Burkina Faso’s farming miracle
by Duncan Green
Just been reading ‘Helping Africa to Feed Itself: Promoting Agriculture to Reduce Poverty and Hunger’, a paper by Steve Wiggins and Henri Leturque, both of the ODI. It’s a brilliant and to my mind, very fair overview, with one of its main messages being that regional generalizations about Africa are usually misleading – some subregions of Africa (eg West and North) have actually done very well in producing food and feeding their populations (not always the same thing), while others (e.g. southern Africa) have bombed. One box particularly jumped out – on the extraordinary success of Burkina Faso.
“The statistics are remarkable. Since the early 1960s output in cereals in Burkina has grown at an annual average of 3.5% a year, well ahead of population growth, a rate that matches that of Vietnam (see chart).
Production of rice in Vietnam and cereals in Burkina Faso, 1961/65 to 2001/05
How has this generally unheralded success been achieved? In the 1960s the central plateau of Burkina was an area of average rainfall in the range 500–700mm, poor soils, and yields of cereals — mainly millet and sorghum — of just 500kg/ha. With such meagre resources, many of the able-bodied young men migrated to find better work, often to Côte d’Ivoire and other countries to the south. But since then field surveys reveal the following changes:
Soil and water have been conserved, most notably by use of stone bunds and improved traditional planting pits (‘zai’) to retain water and topsoil;
Trees have been planted, livestock have been kept in semi-intensive systems and the manure gathered and applied to the fields; and,
Collective institutions to manage wells, natural resources, village cereal banks and schools have multiplied.
http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=3851
Burkina Faso: Organic cotton under threat from GM cotton
by Inoussa Maiga
Maxime Ouoba is committed to growing organic cotton. He explains, “It has no adverse effects on [the] health of the producer. Organic farming also allows me to sustain the fertility of my land. I chose to produce organic cotton because this production method is right for me.”
Mr. Ouoba is a farmer in the Eastern Region of Burkina Faso. He began growing cotton when he heard about a program promoting organic cotton. This program, led by the Swiss NGO, Helvetas, began in 2004.
At that time, 72 producers produced about 12 tonnes of seed cotton. By 2008, almost 7000 farmers were producing 2200 tonnes of seed cotton. This rapid expansion encouraged producers and project staff.
But today, producers and project staff are worried about the future of organic cotton. What concerns them is the jump in plantings of genetically modified or GM cotton. By 2009, genes from GM crops had been found in organic cotton. At that time, only 10% of conventional cotton farmers were growing GM varieties. But with the massive spread of GM cotton in 2010, almost 90% of conventional producers now grow GM cotton.
Organic cotton can be contaminated in many ways. Organic cotton seed can be mixed with GM or conventional seed before planting. Cross-pollination is possible between neighbouring fields of GM or conventional and organic cotton. Contamination can occur through mixing (whether unintentional or intentional) during storage, transport or processing.
Many supporters of organic cotton believe that the program in Burkina Faso is threatened. Pierre works for the organic project. He laments, “Today, it is virtually impossible to produce 100% organic cotton. What we want is to reduce the level of contamination.”
Another staff member adds, “Only two years ago, our mission was to recruit more and more farmers to produce organic cotton. Today, our priority is to retain those who have invested in recent years.”
By 2010, the number of organic cotton producers had dropped to around 2,400. One explanation for this drop could be the stringent measures that farmers are required to take to minimize contamination. George Giébré is responsible for the Helvetas organic cotton program. He explains, “On advice of the National Institute for Environment and Agricultural Research, we asked producers to observe a safe distance of at least 100 metres between the organic cotton fields and GM cotton fields.” But it is difficult for farmers to comply due to the size and layout of their plots.
A second way to prevent contamination is to ban the cultivation of organic cotton and GM cotton on the same farm. But the effect of this restriction is to exclude women from growing cotton. Mr. Giébré explains: “Before, in the same farm, men would grow conventional cotton and the women would grow organic cotton in the field next door. But with GMOs, this coexistence is not possible. If there is already a field of GM cotton on a farm, it is no longer possible to grow organic cotton. Thus, many women have been excluded.”
Forced to abandon organic cotton, Moustapha, a farmer in his forties, views his situation with a dose of fatalism. He says, “I was told that I could not grow organic cotton because my field is surrounded by fields of GM cotton. If they say you cannot produce, and you insist on harvesting, they downgrade your cotton.” Cotton downgraded from organic to conventional receives a much lower price.
There is fear that the production of organic cotton will come to a standstill in Burkina Faso in the coming years. Georges Giébré acknowledges the pressure on farmers: “The threats posed by the introduction of GM cotton are real and taken with the utmost seriousness. But this does not undermine the viability of the program.”
Some farmers suggest creating separate zones for organic cotton and GM cotton. This proposition would need state support. At the moment, there are three major cotton production areas in Burkina Faso. Organic cotton is grown in the eastern zone.
While waiting for a solution, the only thing that program staff can do is raise awareness. Pierre says, “We encourage our producers to talk to their neighbours before the start of the season to see who plans to produce what and where. Then they can negotiate with GM cotton farmers to plant on another side of their land.” But even Pierre is not sure if this is a sustainable solution.
Farm Radio Weekly
May 18, 2011
Burkina Faso cotton growers protest low prices
Hundreds of cotton farmers marched in Burkina Faso's second-largest city on April 27, demanding better prices for cotton and subsidies to help them ahead of the 2011-2012 planting season.
The march in Bobo-Dioulasso follows a wave of violent protests for higher pay by soldiers and demonstrations by angry students, business people and residents against rising food prices, police brutality and crime.
The previous week, Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore had sacked his government and named himself defence minister in a bid to quell the army dissent and popular unrest which has shaken the capital and outlying towns since mid-March.
Cotton is one of the major exports in the impoverished West African country that produced 363,000 tonnes of the crop during the 2009-2010 season. Its 337,556 tonnes for the 2010-2011 season fell short of the 450,000 tonnes target.
"We are asking the government to intervene so that the minimum price paid to farmers is at least 500 CFA Francs per kilogram," the farmers said in a declaration handed to the provincial governor in Bobo-Dioulasso, 350 km (271 miles) south west of the capital Ouagadougou.
The farmers said they were paid 160 CFA kg last year, while the price of cotton fibre on the world market had now risen to more than 2,000 CFA per kg.
They said they could guarantee a record production of 700,000 tonnes of cotton in 2011-2012 if their demands were met, but threatened to join the unrest jolting the country if they did not receive a higher price for their crop.
"If not, the country will witness a peasant revolt," the farmers said in the declaration.
Burkina Faso's cotton industry association which includes the nation's three largest cotton and textile industries, said the farmers' demands were unrealistic and it would pay them 245 CFA per kg this season.
"Their demands may be legitimate, but paying farmers 500 CFA per kg is unrealistic," said Ali Compaore, director of the Gourma cotton company.
Denis Mana, a cotton producer from the Bobo-Dioulasso region, said the cotton industry could suffer if farmers did not get what they wanted.
"We expect a positive response and if nothing is done, no cotton this year," said Mana.
Reuters
Burkina Faso cotton producers protest fertilizer price hike
by Simon Gongo
Cotton growers in western Burkina Faso, Africa’s biggest producer of the fiber, held protests in two cities yesterday against government-set prices and threatened to boycott the crop season, union officials said.
More than 2,000 producers demonstrated in Bobo Dioulasso, 360 kilometers (217 miles) west of the capital, Ouagadougou, Abou Ouattara, president of a producers union in Houet Bobo province, said in an interview May 13. About 2,500 people marched in Dedougou, 250 kilometers northwest of the capital, Nouhanta Bonzi, a spokesman of the demonstrators, said by phone.
The growers demand fertilizer prices be reduced to last year’s levels, Ouattara said. The state increased the price by 38 percent. Farmers also want the government to double the minimum price it pays growers to 500 CFA francs ($1.07) per kilogram (2.2 pounds). The West African state raised the fee by 35 percent to 245 francs on April 25.
Burkina Faso produced 226,000 metric tons of cotton in 2008, the latest data available on the Food and Agricultural Organization’s website. The country is the world’s 11th biggest grower of the fiber, according to the United Nations agency.
Bloomberg
October 09, 2009
Monsanto forecasts Africa to increase biotech crop planting
by Aya Takada
Monsanto Co., the world’s biggest seed producer, expects African countries to increase planting of genetically-modified crops to boost food security and economic development as the region is affected by climate change.
Burkina Faso plans to double the area planted with the company’s insect-resistant cotton next year from 129,000 hectares (318,766 acres) this year, said Natalie DiNicola, director at Monsanto’s public policy and sustainable yield division. Maize modified to tolerate drought may be introduced to the sub-Saharan region by 2017, she said.
Farming in developing countries needs $83 billion of annual investment for production to feed the world in 2050, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization said in a paper this week.
Monsanto is introducing new modified seeds to boost yields as part of a plan to double gross profit from 2007 to 2012. Africa is affected by climate change as more than 95 percent of sub-Sahara cropland is rain-fed, DiNicola said. Africa is the only continent where per-capita food output is falling, as a lack of investment and technology curbs yields, she said.
“Genetic modification technology will be increasingly accepted by developing countries as they face the problem of how to feed rapidly growing populations,” said Takaki Shigemoto, a commodity analyst at research and investment company TOS in Tokyo. “Crops modified to produce better yields under limited water supply will be attractive to them.”
Developing countries may experience a drop of between 9 and 21 percent in overall potential agricultural productivity as a result of global warming, the FAO said in a Sept. 30 report. Poorest regions with the highest levels of chronic hunger are likely to be among the worst affected by climate change, according to the report.
St. Louis-based Monsanto is the largest producer of GMO crop varieties. Area planted with GMO crops, including corn, soybeans and cotton, topped 1.8 million hectares in Africa last year as Egypt and Burkina Faso began production of modified corn and cotton respectively, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications.
In the western African country, less than 50,000 hectares were planted with modified cotton in 2008, the industry group estimates. Area planted with GMO cotton rose by more than 158 percent this year, covering about 25 percent of Burkina Faso’s cotton acreage, as the biotechnology is forecast to boost yield by 35 to 45 percent, DiNicola said. “Cotton is a very important income-generating crop for smallholder farmers,” she said. Increased yield makes “a very big impact on their livelihood,” she added.
Monsanto’s earnings will fall in fiscal 2010, the company has forecast, ending eight consecutive years of gains as U.S. farmers spend less and Chinese competitors sell cheaper generic versions of its Roundup herbicide. The shares have rallied 6.6 percent this year, closing at $74.97 in New York yesterday.
Monsanto is conducting field tests on corn modified to increase yield under drought conditions for commercialization in 2012 in the U.S., the world’s largest exporter of the grain. The new varieties will help achieve a goal of doubling the crop yield to 300 bushels per acre by 2030, DiNicola said. The company is cooperating with government and non-profit organizations to develop drought-tolerant corn suitable for Africa and may release varieties in the region five years after the U.S. introduction, she said.
Corn yield in sub-Saharan Africa is about one metric ton per hectare, compared with eight tons in the U.S. and the global average of five tons, according to Monsanto. Drought-tolerant crops could boost African yields by 20 to 35 percent in 10 years, DiNicola said. “Water is definitely a very serious challenge for agriculture today, and that’s likely to get even more challenging going forward,” DiNicola said.
About 218 million people in Africa, or around 30 percent of the total population, are estimated to be suffering from chronic hunger and malnutrition, according to the FAO report last week.
Bloomberg
March 26, 2009
Burkinabe cotton farmers expanding GM and organic cultivation
by Katrina Manson
sai
The Guardian
February 17, 2009
Can organic cotton save the industry?
Global organic cotton production grew by more than 150 percent to 145,000 metric tons in 2008 – an estimated 0.55 percent of total cotton production, according to the US-based non-profit Organic Exchange, which promotes and monitors organic agriculture. Though West African cotton growers produced only about two percent of this amount, this was double the region’s yield of 2007.
But the global financial crisis has posed a “headache” for promoters of organic cotton, said Jens Soth with the Swiss NGO Helvetas, which promotes farmers’ livelihoods through organic agriculture.“The financial crisis has reduced business’s appetite for risk. Companies are still honouring their organic cotton contracts, but demand is not growing. They are waiting to see how their consumers react [to the recession].”
Soth said more farmers want to join Helvetas’s programmes that have trained farmers and monitored and purchased organic cotton from nearly 10,000 farmers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Kyrgyzstan since 2002. “But we are not taking on more farmers now. Not in this climate. I hope we can even sell this year’s production.”
Despite the grim economic outlook Soth said he is optimistic that the organic market can withstand a downturn. He said Helvetas’s buyers, including the US-based Victoria’s Secret lingerie store and Swiss companies - including cotton trading firm Reinhart, retailer Migros and textile group Switcher - have not cancelled their orders, but demand has levelled.
Conventional cotton farmers in Burkina Faso have had dwindling incomes despite increased production (file photo)Burkina FasoOne of West Africa’s top cotton exporters, Burkina Faso became the world’s 10th largest organic cotton producer in 2008 with 2,000 metric tons, double the amount of the previous year, according to Organic Exchange.
While organic cotton commands a higher price than non-organic, it might not be worth the trouble, the head of Burkina Faso’s cotton producer association said. “It is not easy to cultivate organic cotton,” said National Union of Burkinabe Cotton Producers president, Francois Traoré. “The members [of the union] do not grow organic cotton even though they promote it.”
Traoré said it is becoming increasingly difficult to stay competitive because producers in India “have started undercutting organic prices.” Burkina Faso producers of organic cotton earn about 50 US cents per kilo. Profits have also been lower than for conventional cotton because even though farmers earn up to 30 percent more per kilo, yields are less than half on average, Traoré said.
Pesticide-free cultivation requires crop rotation and manual weeding and fertilising, which limit cotton production, according to the cotton association president. One advantage of organic cotton, which is produced without chemicals, is that women excluded from agriculture that uses heavy pesticides are able to participate, according to Traoré. “Some 70 percent of organic producers in this country are women. [With traditional cotton] the fumes [from pesticide spraying] are noxious for children [who are with their mothers at work] and pregnant women.”
Smaller yields are to be expected initially when switching to organic cotton, according to a 2008 comparison of organic and conventional cotton in Mali by Canada’s University of Moncton.
Researchers wrote that because organic cultivation requires crop rotation, which decreases the land available for cotton, it can take at least four years before new crops and improved soil fertility compensate for the loss in income. But even if there is a short-term shortfall in profits, the researchers wrote, the long-term health and environmental benefits from non-chemical cultivation outweigh any losses. The researchers concluded that over the long term, as long as cheap labour is available, chemical-free cotton farming is more profitable than conventional cotton, can decrease rural poverty by employing more women and can improve soil management.
In Benin some 1,500 producers produced 500 metric tons of organic cotton in 2008, according to the country’s Organisation for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture.Helvetas’s representative in Benin, Evelyne Sissinto, said high fertiliser and fuel prices plus environmental degradation have started pushing farmers into organic production. She said organic cotton production is about livelihood as much as it is about agriculture.
"Helvetas offers cotton producers a minimum guaranteed price and families no longer have to go into debt to buy expensive fertilisers and pesticides." Helvetas pays farmers up to 59 cents per kilo, in addition to providing organic certification, training and follow-up help, according to Sissinto.
While thousands of farmers have begun producing organic cotton in West Africa, the majority of the region’s cotton farmers still grow conventional cotton. In Burkina Faso 350,000 farmers practice conventional cotton farming and slightly fewer in Benin, according to the countries’ trade groups. Organic producers form 0.1 percent of growers in both countries.
But no matter how long it takes, agriculture researcher Jeanne Zoudjihekpon in Benin’s economic capital Cotonou, said it is time farmers come “full circle” to their natural roots. “Our ancestors grew things organically and did not know anything about chemicals. If we want to stay true to ourselves, we can do only organic cultivation.”
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization has named 2009 the International Year of Natural Fibres to help promote a sector that has typically brought in $40 billion annually - mostly in cotton earnings - but has shrunk in recent years because of losses in the conventional cotton sector.
February 02, 2009
Burkina Faso has bumper grain harvest, but marketing decisions cause shortages, high prices
by Brahima Ouédraogo
Looking worried, Hadja Mamounata Belegda, commercial grain farmer, rubs the beads of her rosary between her fingers and ponders the consequences of grain shortages on the market in Burkina Faso.
"In previous years I would have had 4,000 - 5,000 tonnes of grain in my warehouses but this year (2008-2009), I did not even have 1,000 tonnes in my four warehouses," she laments. Belegda explains that as soon as the bumper harvest of the 2008-2009 agricultural season was announced, traders from neighbouring countries rushed to Burkina Faso to purchase grain.Thanks to good rainfall and a grant input from the Burkina Faso government, cereal production for 2008-2009 reached more than 4.2 million tonnes - a surplus of 717,000 tonnes.
"We expected prices would go down, but we were caught off guard and now see that prices will continue to rise," laments Belegda. According to her, rather than cereals being imported from elsewhere as usual, this year they are being exported to Ghana, Mali and the Ivory Coast.
The trend is confirmed by Green Africa, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) specialising in information on grain prices in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The Ouagadougou-based NGO said in its January report that the scarcity of grain on the market led to a price increase of 14 percent for millet and 20 percent for sorghum and maize.
"The bag of maize which cost 7,500 CFA francs (about $15) on our markets in November, has quickly risen to 12,000 CFA francs in December and 15,000 CFA francs in January, following strong demand for the cereal from Ghana." This is according to Joseph Dagano Moussa, President of the Federation of Agricultural Professional Producers of Sissili (FEPACI), in the mid-west of the Sahelian West African country.
According to Green Africa, the scarcity of grain, despite an exceptional harvest, is mainly linked to the renewing of stocks by producers and traders in deficit areas. Furthermore, traders are already busy stockpiling. The NGO adds that this heavy demand impacts on grain prices and availability.
The NGO says the situation remains worrying, even though some observers predict a drop in prices, given that much of the grain producers' stock is not yet on the market - especially in surplus areas. Green Africa adds that as an additional measure, farmers in production areas are for now selling peanuts, sesame and beans; all of which were also produced in abundance this year.
To encourage farmers to put their produce on the market, members of the Burkinabé government met with producers and traders in the second week of January in the capital Ouagadougou.
The Minister of Agriculture, Water and Fisheries, Laurent Sédogo, who attended the meeting, says, "There are urgent measures to be taken and awareness needs to be raised because this meeting with the traders and producers helped us understand that there is some reluctance from producers, who need to feel trusted."
According to Sédogo, the government will renew production subsidies granted to producers for the past season.
"We will go to producers and reassure them, put our trust in them and encourage them so that they make their grain available to retailers," says Sédogo. He stresses that, amongst other things, the grants will be renewed this year (2009-2010) so as to produce sufficient grain, as was the case in the previous season.
"I feel reassured because this year I must collect 30,000 tonnes of cereals (maize and sorghum) and I think there will be a surge of patriotism that will see us supplying our people with this stock before we bring out other cereals," says Charles Sawadogo, director-general of the National Agency for the Management of Food Security Reserves, a public company.
Last year, to help the most needy populations cope with soaring prices, the government took 30,000 tonnes of grain from its security stocks, which it sold at a discounted price of about $18 for a 100 kg bag.
However, Sawadogo remains concerned about the market price: "We buy at a certain price to be able to resell at a discounted price, hence when we buy too expensively, not only does this give us insufficient stock, but we then sell at a significant loss."
According to Soumaila Cissé, president of the Interprofessional Committee for the Cereal Sector, an interface between producers and traders, the government should have undertaken consultations with stakeholders at the end of the agricultural season to prevent the export of several thousand tons of cereals.
"This dialogue is good because it's not about pointing fingers at each other; it's about everyone being aware of their responsibilities," says Cisse, whose organisation has less than 200 tonnes in its warehouses yet usually has 3,000 - 6,000 tonnes of collected grain at this time of year.
Mamadou Sanou, the Burkinabé Minister for Trade, Entrepreneurship, Arts and Crafts, says, "We will maintain contact at all times, we will work with them in a spirit of mutual understanding, consensus and problem-solving. But as for robust solutions, we are not there yet. If prices continue to rise, we could have a repeat of last year's violence, when we instead want peace in the country iif we are to develop as a people," Sanou stresses to producers.
According to Bassiaka Dao, president of the Farmers Federation of Burkina Faso (CPF), it is particularly important to subsidise agriculture for several years to ensure food self-sufficiency and the wellbeing of producers.
He explains, "To avoid problems, the government should agree to buy the surplus and sell it at an acceptable price on the market so that producers can, at the end of each season, look after themselves and put their children in school - through their work."
The increase in grain prices has already led to similar meetings being held between the different stakeholders in the cities of Bobo-Dioulasso and Koudougou, in the west and midwestern parts of Burkina Faso.
November 19, 2008
Burkina Faso stresses need for Doha cotton deal
Africa's biggest cotton exporter Burkina Faso called again on members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to conclude a trade deal that would tackle rich countries' distorting subsidies on cotton.
President Blaise Compaore urged WTO members to finish the Doha round to open up trade, stressing that poor countries' dependence on commerce as they face a global financial crisis.
"I urge members of the WTO to make agriculture a priority, in particular cotton, in these negotiations," he told WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy.
Cotton has become a litmus test of WTO members' ability to produce a fair deal for developing countries.
It was a speech by Compaore to WTO members in June 2003 that put cotton on the trade agenda, trade experts say.
Four African nations -- Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad and Mali -- proposed in 2006 that U.S. cotton subsidies should be cut by 82.2 percent, against a 60 percent fall in other farm subsidies, as part of a new trade deal. The United States has not yet made a counter-proposal.
The WTO has already found existing U.S. cotton subsidies to be in breach of international trade rules, and this will allow Brazil to impose sanctions on the United States.
Compaore told Lamy that agriculture accounted for 30 percent of the impoverished West African country's economy, with cotton exports running at about 320,000 tonnes a year.
"But our agriculture, in particular the cotton sector, has been hurt by subsidies granted by rich countries to their producers and by tariff barriers they have raised to limit our exports of farm produce and cotton," he said, according to a text of his remarks circulated by the WTO.
Burkina Faso is West Africa's biggest cotton grower. Compaore said output was expected at 520,000 tonnes in 2008/09, above 370,000 tonnes in 2007/08 when bad weather and rising costs hit the harvest, but below 600,000 tonnes in 2006/07.
The Doha round was launched seven years ago to open up world trade and help developing countries export their way out of poverty, but agreement has proved elusive.
Diplomats said on Wednesday that pressure is building for a meeting of ministers next month to reach a breakthrough in the core areas of agriculture and industrial goods.
The poorest developing countries are particularly keen to see a deal, as proposals on the table would secure duty-free access to rich markets for most of their products while requiring few concessions of them in return.
Campaore said his country needed aid as well as trade reforms to help its cotton industry. Yields in Burkina Faso are only 394 kilos per hectare, against a world average of 746 kilos, he said.
"I urge the donor community to pursue development aid for the cotton sector and for our part we will continue to accompany this process with reforms at the national level," he said.
September 14, 2008
African cotton growers' fight against western subsidies to continue
Burkina Faso Commerce Minister Mamadou Sanou is still smouldering more than a month after world trade negotiators ignored his pleas to debate the salvation of west Africa's critical but foundering cotton sector.
"We are fighting for the future of African cotton," he said. "African cotton is not going to die like that, just because the big powers have decided that it should."
Sanou said that in Geneva in late July, where trade chiefs had gathered to forge a new multilateral deal eliminating barriers to global commerce, "we asked, right from the first day, that cotton be given priority treatment because we were afraid of being trapped if the issue were discussed at the last minute. Unfortunately, cotton was not discussed at the last minute - it wasn't discussed at all."
Burkina Faso and fellow west African producers Benin, Mali and Chad have long been demanding a cut in generous government subsidies provided cotton growers in the United States and other industrialised states that they say undercut their ability to compete on world markets and depress prices.
They had hoped for action in the Doha round of talks, held under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation and designed to launch a fresh global free-trade mechanism.
Inaugurated seven years ago in the Qatari capital, the Doha negotiations have produced little tangible headway and July's bid to spur momentum ended in failure for all parties.
But for Sanou, who coordinates negotiating strategy for the west African group, the breakdown in Geneva was especially galling.
"The big powers spent their time squabbling among themselves and their interests were at levels other than that of cotton. It was a divergence of interests between the United States, China and India that put us in that situation."
Sanou was adamant in asserting that what he and his colleagues are seeking is hardly charity.
"When we ask that cotton subsidies be lifted we are not begging for anything. We are acting within our rights. We are asking that the rules of the international trading system be applied, that basic WTO principles be applied. For us the question is fundamental."
The minister added that he and his west African counterparts were still determined to raise cotton's profile in the Doha talks. "Even if negotiations on other WTO questions go nowhere, cotton can at least be considered, given its particular importance."
Seydou Ouedraogo, former head of Burkina Faso's national cotton growers' union, took particular aim at the United States in a separate interview.
"I've been to the United States three times to discuss the subsidy problem with members of Congress and other influential people. We're not looking for favors or help ... We just want them to stop the subsidies to allow us to sell our cotton at a fair price."
Prices for west African cotton have been steadily declining as producers struggle to stay afloat against competitors from the industrialised world.
In Burkina Faso, where cotton is the principal export, prices have gone from 210 CFA francs (32 eurocents) a kilogram in 2003 to 145 in 2008. In 2009 industry sources foresee an uptick to 165 CFA francs per kilo.
Throughout the country cotton growers have begun to diversify their crops, turning increasingly to corn, sesame, peanuts, sweet potatoes and green beans in order to stay in business.
"Cotton used to be my only activity," said Abdou Nignan, a grower near Leo in Sissili province in central Burkina Faso.
"But I have had to add corn because all the money from cotton goes to food. Last year our cotton sold at 145 CFA francs a kilo. Do you know how much it costs to grow a hectare of cotton? 130,000 CFA francs. I sold 4.5 tonnes. You can do the math."
Business Report
July 30, 2008
African cotton growers gradually embrace GM varieties
African cotton growers are set to embrace the same wave of yield increases hitting China and India, thanks to GM varieties.
The Government of Burkina Faso has authorised planting of 15,000 hectares of biotech cotton in 2008/09 for planting seed production and to evaluate impacts on cotton yields, quality, rural economies and the environment.
Research conducted in experimental plots by the Institute D'Economie Rural (IER) indicates that the use of Bt cotton in Burkina Faso can lead to a gain in yields of as much as 30pc while reducing pesticide use by 60pc.
According to the International Cotton Advisory Council, if commercial results from the 2008/09 crop confirm the research results, the use of biotech cotton will expand rapidly in Burkina Faso beginning in 2009/10.
July 20, 2008
Burkina Faso puts hope of increased cotton yields on GM cotton
Bt cotton, developed by U.S. farming biotechnology leader Monsanto contains a bacterial protein that deters insects, reducing the need for costly pesticides and raising yields by around 30 percent, Burkinabe researchers said.
Two strains of Bt cotton, both developed from local varieties, have been approved for production and general sale, Zourata Lompo, director of Burkina Faso's National Biosecurity Agency (ANB) told a news conference on July 17.
"This year we have authorised 15,000 hectares for seed production and if the socio-economic evaluation by our field workers is conclusive there is no reason why next season we won't move to generalised production of genetically modified cotton," Lompo said.
Burkina has been the top cotton producer in West Africa in recent years, although its harvest slumped to 360,000 tonnes in the 2007-08 season from 660,000 tonnes the previous year.
Researchers at Burkina Faso's INERA agricultural research institute said Bt cotton required only two pesticide treatments per season, compared with six or eight for non-modified cotton. That cut pesticide use by at least 60 percent. Pesticides currently make up around 30 percent of production costs. It translates into a saving of around 35,000 CFA francs ($84.64) per hectare each season, while the 30 percent higher yield from Bt cotton increases revenues by around 55,000 CFA, the researchers said.
Royalties from seed production will be split with local farmers receiving 72 percent of seed sales and Monsanto 28 percent, officials said. "It's a co-ownership scheme. The gene belongs to Monsanto, but all the scientific work to select and evaluate performance and toxicity has been done by Burkinabe scientists on Burkinabe varieties," Lompo said.
St. Louis-based Monsanto's cotton, which is already grown in some other countries around the world, has a gene derived from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that protects the plants from specific lepidopteron insect pests, the company says.
Use of genetically modified crops for food and textiles has increased in recent years but has faced opposition from environmentalists who say the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could upset delicately balanced habitats or even lead to uncontrolled super species.
Last year, 23 countries planted genetically modified crops, Monsanto said. Only one, South Africa, was on the continent where advocates like Monsanto say GMO crops could have their greatest impact in increasing food output and fighting poverty.
Burkina National Cotton Producers' Union President Francois Traore said farmers had nothing to fear from GMO cotton.
"We are going ahead because we have followed the process since the start and the researchers have proved our fears were unfounded. The trials have demonstrated that at a productivity level, we will earn more with Bt cotton," he said.Reuters
July 12, 2008
Burkina Faso begins planting of GM cotton
Burkina Faso has commercialized Bt cotton, making it the third African country after South After and Egypt to join the ranks of biotech crop countries.
Burkina National Agricultural Research Institute (INERA) and Monsanto recently signed a commercial agreement paving way for the importation of Bt cotton seeds to be grown for seed multiplication. Mr. Kinyua Mbijjewe of Monsanto Africa confirmed that seeds enough for 15,000
hectares had been imported and are already being planted by Burkinabe farmers. INERA hopes to produce 400,000 hectares worth of seeds for the next planting season.
Burkina Faso in Western Africa is one of the poorest countries in the world with 90 percent of the population engaged in subsistence agriculture. Where possible, farmers are producing cotton as a cash crop, accounting for more than 50 percent of all exports in Burkina Faso. However, cotton production in Burkina Faso is susceptible to frequent drought and insect infestations that can often result in damage to up to 90 percent of the crop. As a result, cotton production
is highly dependent on insecticide treatments to control these pests.
“It’s true that we have some varieties that are productive, but we also have to use a lot of pesticides first to treat the seed, then to protect the plants until they are virtually mature,” explains Dr. Ouola Traoré, an agronomist and head of the Cotton Program the Institute for
the Environment and Agricultural Research (INERA). “At present, the cost of insecticide treatment means that often we can’t be competitive internationally.”
To provide growers with more options for insect control and potentially greater productivity in the field, Burkina Faso began field trials and evaluations with genetically modified (GM) or transgenic cotton crops in 2003.
The advantages of transgenic insect-protected cotton crops are built-in to the plant, which contain a protein from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that protects against specific lepidopteron insect pests.
“The experiments are intended – with transgenic cotton – to see what the advantages are. … It’s to see if there is some other alternative to battling the various pests chemically,” continues Dr. Traoré.
The objectives of the experiments and tests were to assess the effectiveness of Bt cotton on the insects that infest fields in Burkina Faso, to analyze the financial profitability of the Bt
technology for Burkinabe farmers, to analyze the impact of the technology on the environment, and to assess the composition and safety of the cotton seed and oil byproducts that are used for animal feed and human consumption.
With the entry of Bt Cotton however, there is widespread optimism in the country that Burkinabe farmers will finally enjoy the economic and agronomic benefits of Bt Cotton that South African, Chinese and Indian small scale farmers have been enjoying for many years.
With Burkina Faso and Egypt joining the ranks of biotech countries, the challenge is now on eastern and central African regions to stop dragging their feet on the technology.
Egypt recently commercialized Bt. maize (MON 810) and South Africa has been growing biotech crops (Bt. maize, Bt. Cotton and GM Soybean) for about 10 years.
Africa Science News Service
June 06, 2008
Market gardening catches on in Burkina Faso
In poverty stricken Burkina Faso, a West African nation plagued by droughts, market gardening, the small scale production of fruit and vegetables as cash crops, is catching on.
"According to our calculations a market gardener can earn up to 200,000 francs CFA (300 euros, 465 dollars) a month in the right season," said agriculture ministry official Jeanne Zongo.
"Market gardening is very popular with farmers because there are no problems with finding buyers, especially for farmers close to the big urban centres," said Zongo, who coordinates the centre region for the ministry.
According to her, more and more farmers are turning to market gardens, small plots of fruits and vegetables, because of the substantial revenues they can get from them.
In Tanghin-Dassouri and Komki-Ipala, two municipalities to the west of the capital Ouagadougou, many inhabitants have turned to tending small vegetable patches in addition to their regular grain crops.
Souleymane Yalpougoudou, who lives in de Oueguelga village in Tanghin-Dassouri, says he plants more and more vegetables and fruits like onions, cabbage, courgette, carrots, strawberries and spinach. He started his market garden over 25 years ago. "It was the drought of 1973 that made me change. At the time the rain season was so catastrophic that we ate leaves from trees here," he said.
"The rains were not good and the harvests were mediocre. To protect against nature's follies, I dug wells with the help of my friends from the village to grow vegetables," Yalpougoudou, a 63-year old father of 18, recalled. "I already made in four months money which I had not done in four years with my big fields" of millet, sorghum and corn, he added.
With his vegetables, sold to city clients from Ouagadougou, Yalpougoudou has already earned some 400,000 francs CFA (600 euros, 927 dollars) this year. His eldest son Abdou did not manage to make that kind of money with his four hectares of grain crops.
Burkina Faso is one of the world's driest countries with only 1,500 cubic metres of rain fall per year. The region around Ouagadougou only gets around 700 cubic metres annually.
Although the agricultural authorities here stress that market gardening is very lucrative for farmers, some remain careful.
"It's true you can earn a lot of money and buy grains to feed your family," Yalpougoudou's son Abdou said. "But if everybody started doing that there would be no more grains to buy or the prices would be too high for anyone to afford them," he said.
"For example in a bad rain year like last year we would have the money but there would be no grains for us to buy," Abdou's friend Boukary Ouedraogo said.
GM cotton trials continue in Burkina Faso
In a new online video and podcast, Dr. Ouola Traoré, an agronomist and head of the cotton program at the Institute for the Environment and Agricultural Research (INERA), discusses the field trials and evaluations that have been conducted since 2003 to assess if transgenic cotton crops provide advantages to farmers in Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso in Western Africa is one of the poorest countries in the world with 90 percent of the population engaged in subsistence agriculture. Where possible, farmers are producing cotton as a cash crop, yet are susceptible to frequent drought and insect infestations.
“It’s true that we have some varieties that are productive, but we also have to use a lot of pesticides first to treat the seed, then to protect the plants until they are mature,” explains Dr. Traoré. “At present, the cost of insecticide treatment means that often we can’t be competitive internationally.”
GM insect-protected cotton crops contain a protein from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that protects the plants from specific lepidopteron insect pests.
“The experiments are intended – with transgenic cotton – to see what the advantages are. … It’s to see if there is some other alternative to battling the various pests chemically,” continues Dr. Traoré.
Once approved for commercial use, Burkinabe farmers are expected to benefit from less labor, less pesticide spraying and increased income. According to a recent report from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), the adoption of genetically modified crops among resource-poor farmers in other countries is resulting in unprecedented benefits that are contributing to the Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty by 50 percent by 2015.
In addition to assessing the agronomic characteristics and effectiveness of GM cotton, researchers at INERA are evaluating the impact of the technology on the environment and the composition and safety of the cotton seed and oil byproducts used for animal feed and human consumption.
“I’m interested in giving the best possible information to the producer. And it’s not in the interest of others, but in my own interest – as a scientist,” says Dr. Traoré. “It’s in the interest of the country, in the interest of the producers – because I myself am the son of a producer – to convey to them the right information.”
May 17, 2008
Burkinabe rice growers increasingly turn to NERICA
Stricken by rising food prices, rice growers in Burkina Faso are pinning their hopes on state subsidies to grow a new rice which can resist harsh climate, drought and disease.
In a country of 13 million people where the staple food has been in short supply or too pricey, Nerica -- short for "new rice of Africa" -- an extra-nutritional hybrid of Asian and African grains, offers a chance to grow more rice, faster.
"With just a bit of political commitment, Nerica could improve food security in Burkina Faso," said Ernest Yoda, leader of a rice growers' group. "We can get through it. We can feed our country with rice."
Developed by African researchers funded by Japan, Nerica is resistant to insects and diseases and adapts well to poor soil and dry conditions.
Since 2006 nearly 2,000 rice growers in the eastern Bagre plains have been growing Nerica on a 1,600-hectare (3,900-acre) stretch of land along the Nakambe riverbank, perched near a hydro-electric dam. Across the plain, up to 30,000 hectares (roughly 74,000 acres) of land could be irrigated.
"We've got everything else: the people, the energy and the will," said Zacharie Segda, a spokesman for the INERA agricultural research institute. "If all the conditions are met, we can be self-sufficient in rice."
The landlocked, drought-prone West African state is one of the world's poorest countries and in recent months has seen violent protests and strikes sparked by the global food price crisis, including a three-day general strike that shut down many sectors this week.
Government support is needed to improve food security there, Yoda said. He calculates that growers need 1.5 million euros (around 2.3 million dollars) in state subsidies. "The government should subsidise the buying of fertiliser because we have difficulty getting it," said Yoda, adding that fertilisers could triple current rice yields of four tonnes per hectare.
Burkina Faso is among many African countries that have born the brunt of soaring prices of food, including rice, as demand from nations such as India, Brazil and China has surged. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in several Burkinabe towns this week to protest the rising cost of living in the three-day general strike, calling for price controls and a regular supply of basic foods.
Rising use of biofuels, trade restrictions, increased demand from Asia to serve changing diets, poor harvests and increasing transport costs have all been blamed for the price rise.
Until recently, Burkina Faso produced only 30 percent of the rice it consumed. Every year, it has had to import 300,000 tonnes of the staple, which cost 61 million euros (around 94 million dollars) in 2007.
Global food prices have nearly doubled in three years, according to the World Bank, sparking riots and protests in several countries and restrictions on food exports.
"The high cost of living is forcing the authorities to review their agricultural production strategy," said a Burkina Faso agriculture ministry official who asked not to be named.
"The situation is going to drive the authorities to make solutions to help farmers."
